Lifeless (Lawless Saga Book 2)

by Tarah Benner

  Walt listened to their story without interrupting, his expression hardening little by little. Starlight was still hysterical, but Soren could tell Walt had already processed the elements of danger and moved on to worry about more practical matters.

  The Baileys had been counting on the food pantry at the church. Soren saw that plainly. And while the farm put them in a better position than most families, Soren got the impression that they’d only recently amped up production.

  Feeling anxious and off-kilter, Soren crossed the yard and let himself inside to check on Lark. She wasn’t anywhere downstairs, but he could hear water running somewhere above him.

  He took the stairs slowly and deliberately, still trying to process everything that had happened. He felt as though he was barely holding it together, but his anguish was nothing compared to what Lark must have been feeling.

  The door to the bathroom was closed, and he could hear the shower running. Denali was sitting on the floor outside the bathroom, paws outstretched and tail flopping impatiently against the hardwood.

  “Lark?” he called.

  “Yeah?” Her voice was level but an octave higher than normal.

  “You okay?”

  There was another long stretch of silence, and Soren wanted to slap himself. Of course she wasn’t okay.

  “Fine.”

  Soren dragged in a long breath of air and sank down against the wall, wondering what he should say to her. What was there to say? He couldn’t make her forget the events at the church, and it seemed ridiculous — not to mention insensitive — to tell her that everything would be all right.

  Soren sat there for what felt like an eternity, listening to the shower. Finally the water shut off, and Lark emerged wrapped in a towel. Her hair was wet and smelled very clean, and she was holding a bundle of bloody clothes.

  “Hey,” Soren croaked, getting to his feet and prying the bundle out of her hands.

  Her eyes were red and puffy, but she looked otherwise okay. He opened his mouth to say something, but she just shook her head and walked across the hall to her room.

  She closed the door behind her without so much as a backward glance, and Soren stared after her with a feeling of debilitating helplessness.

  It had been less than forty-eight hours since their escape, and already it felt as though he’d done irreparable damage. Bernie was dead. Finn was dead. And Lark had been forced to kill again because of his stupidity.

  Soren wandered downstairs in a haze of defeat and threw the bloody clothes into the trash. This was all his fault. It had been his idea for them to go on the supply run. He’d led Lark right into harm’s way.

  He shuffled absently into the kitchen, where Simjay and Katrina were deep in conversation with Walt. They were telling him more about the bikers and how they’d narrowly avoided massacre. Walt’s mouth tightened as Simjay described their confrontation, but Walt seemed most interested in the bikers’ territory.

  “Did their vests say where they were from?” he asked. “What charter? Anything?”

  “Phoenix, I think,” said Simjay.

  Walt let out a heavy sigh.

  “Does that mean something to you?” asked Soren.

  “Well, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.”

  Soren glanced at Simjay, who looked equally puzzled.

  “Arizona was hit very hard by the drought,” Walt explained. “Even before everything went to pot, the Colorado River had been drying up for years. Arizona and California got a rough shake of things — water wars like you wouldn’t believe. The cost of water got so high that most of the small farmers went under, and the big factory farms moved out of state. The government had to offer subsidies for household use, but when they stopped, most people were forced out . . . had to move someplace else.”

  Soren raised his eyebrows. Before he’d been sent away, he’d heard a few things about the water crisis, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Texas had been dealing with a bought of flash flooding, so he couldn’t understand what the big deal was. He still couldn’t imagine the crisis escalating to the point that people couldn’t afford water, but clearly it had.

  “They’d been living on borrowed time for a while,” said Walt, as if he’d read Soren’s mind. “A few companies were trying to lower the cost of desalinization, but we use water for so much more than drinking and washing and growing food. The energy companies use it, the mining industry uses it . . . That kind of growth in the desert’s unnatural. And I say that as a lifelong desert man myself.”

  Walt fell silent and then pushed himself up out of his chair. It seemed he’d heard and said everything he’d wanted to and was ready to get back to work. He slumped out of the kitchen, and Simjay threw Katrina a questioning look.

  “He’s worried,” she murmured. “He tries not to show it, but he is.”

  After a few minutes of strained silence, Katrina got to her feet, too. She mumbled something about the chickens, and Simjay trailed after her like a child.

  Soren watched them go with a kick of loneliness. He didn’t know what to do with himself, but he couldn’t just sit there. Lark still hadn’t come out of her room. Axel was off with Mitch trying to scavenge some tires for the Ranger, and Thompson was out in the yard with Starlight.

  Feeling a little lost, Soren wandered into Walt’s study and flipped on the light. It wasn’t a study in the traditional sense. The books crammed into the built-in shelves looked as though they hadn’t been touched in years, but the desk was crowded with topographical maps.

  Glancing down the hallway to make sure everyone was gone, Soren wandered over to the desk and bent to examine one of the maps. It was an enlarged snapshot of Eddy County.

  Based on his notes, Walt had been recording water levels and human migration patterns in the region, trying to predict which water sources had dried up and where the people who’d depended on them might be headed.

  Several rubber bins were strewn around the room, and Soren saw several dozen more maps carefully bundled together with rubber bands, sorted by location. Soren pulled the nearest bin toward him and rifled through the maps until he found one that included Arroyo Verde and San Judas.

  He was surprised to find that the area had been relatively insulated against the troubles that plagued other parts of New Mexico. According to Walt’s notes, the river would sustain the area for several more years, and there were four wells on the property, fed by a large aquifer.

  It was almost six when he heard the back door slam and Starlight’s cheery dinner call from the kitchen. Soren carefully refolded the map he’d been perusing and tucked it back among its fellows in a box labeled “Northern New Mexico.”

  Instead of heading straight for the dining room, he swung around the banister and jogged upstairs to make sure Lark had gotten the message about dinner.

  When he reached the landing, he saw that the door to the guest room was closed and the lights were off. His heart constricted. Lark hadn’t emerged in almost three hours, and he was starting to worry. He knocked, but no one answered.

  Soren hesitated, debating whether he should just leave her be. But his internal pull to do something was nagging at him, and he finally made up his mind and opened the door.

  Peering inside, he saw that the shades were drawn and the room was dark. At first he thought that Lark might have gone downstairs after all, but then he noticed a large lump under the covers on the far side of the bed. His heart sank.

  “Lark?” he called.

  No answer.

  Treading lightly, he padded across the room and came around to the far side of the bed. Lark was huddled under the covers with Denali curled up in the crook of her legs. Her hair was tucked behind her on the pillow, still damp from her shower.

  She wasn’t sleeping. She was staring straight ahead at the wall, looking lost and forlorn.

  Soren sank down beside her, running a finger softly down her cheek. “Dinner’s ready,” he whispered.

  Lark drew in a deep breath and let it
out slowly. “I’m not very hungry.” She tilted her head toward him. “Could you save me something for later?”

  “Sure,” said Soren, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Lark . . .”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said, sounding a million miles away. “I just need some time.”

  Soren nodded because he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t want to leave her up there all by herself, but it was clear to him that she wanted to be alone. He didn’t blame her. No person should have to experience what she’d been through in the past forty-eight hours.

  With a heavy heart, Soren got to his feet and let himself out of the room. He could hear the rumble of conversation and feel the warmth from the kitchen below his feet. Something smelled amazing, and he was starving.

  Since there were so many of them, Starlight had served dinner in the formal dining room on the other side of the kitchen. Axel, Simjay, Thompson, and the Baileys were already seated around the table, passing a basket of what appeared to be homemade cheesy bread. Karen and the kids were notably absent, but nobody said anything as Starlight doled out drinks.

  She gave Soren an understanding smile and handed him a glass of red wine. He knew he didn’t have to explain Lark’s absence to her; Starlight was the type of person who always just knew.

  Soren thanked her and sat down, trying to remember the last time he’d had a luxury like wine. The table was heaped with more delicious food than Soren had seen in years. Mitch was carving a roasted chicken, and Thompson was serving herself a heap of mashed potatoes. In the middle of the table stood a glass bowl of bitter greens sprinkled with goat cheese and a rainbow of red, yellow, and candy-striped beets.

  “Is Lark coming down?” Thompson asked as Soren took his seat.

  “No,” he said, clearing his throat. “She’s . . . resting.”

  Axel and Simjay exchanged a look, but Starlight swooped in with a cheery smile. “I’ll save her a plate, then,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll be hungry later.”

  Soren felt a surge of gratitude toward Starlight, and the moment he tasted the roasted chicken, every dark thought he’d ever had seemed to evaporate at once.

  After four years in prison, Soren was sure his taste buds must have shut down to allow him to survive on a diet of bland prison food. He’d been wrong. The chicken was warm and juicy, coated in a savory lemon-tarragon sauce, and the potatoes tasted like butter, garlic, and rosemary. Starlight confessed that she’d had to use an ancient bottle of store-bought lemon juice for the chicken, but Soren didn’t think it could have been any better.

  As they ate, everyone seemed determined to keep the conversation away from what had happened at the church. Katrina reminisced with Mitch about funny things that had happened on the farm when they were teenagers, and Starlight told them all about Katrina’s time with the Belligerent Beavers and her own brief career as a groupie.

  Soren suspected these anecdotes were mainly for their benefit — the Baileys acted as though they’d heard them dozens of times — and he appreciated it. But every so often the table would fall silent, and reality would come crashing down around them. No matter how light the story had been, it was impossible to forget that there was no longer time in the world to enjoy feminist punk-rock bands or to temporarily relocate neighbors’ cows as a joke.

  After a particularly awkward silence, Soren broached a topic that had been nagging at him all afternoon.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said to Walt.

  “Shoot,” said the old man, tucking into a drumstick and splattering grease down his front.

  “If the entire Southwest has been in a drought, how is it that places like this and San Judas still have water?”

  Walt sighed and wiped his face with a checkered napkin. “To say it’s been bad would be the understatement of the year,” he said gruffly. “Water is life. We can’t sustain civilization without it. Paradoxically, the things that give life have power to ruin lives — millions and millions of them.”

  Across the table, Mitch and Katrina exchanged exasperated looks. Soren got the feeling that they had heard this lecture many times before, but he was clinging to Walt’s every word.

  He continued. “The impact has not been felt everywhere equally. Arroyo Verde gets most of its water from the Embudo River, and GreenSeed snapped up water rights in the area years ago. That river is fed by snowmelt runoff, but the snowpack has been declining for decades. So far GreenSeed’s been lucky. They also have wells fed by some decent-sized aquifers, but mark my words . . . Their luck won’t last forever — not at the rate we’re going.”

  His face grew serious, and he leaned forward to emphasize his point. “Plenty of men would kill to have our water rights, son. And believe me, plenty have tried.”

  Soren stared at him. He couldn’t be sure if Walt was speaking literally, but the dark look in his eyes told him that he was.

  “Years ago I had oil and gas companies begging me to sell my water.” He shook his head. “I told them to go fuck themselves. I know plenty of people who took them up on their offer, and now half the groundwater is contaminated.” He shook his head. “People just don’t think things through anymore. All they see are dollar signs. It’s the reason we’re in this mess.”

  Soren nodded.

  “I mean, what good is having enough oil for your goddamned truck if you’re starvin’ to death and you don’t have clean water to drink?”

  The table fell silent.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, though,” said Walt. “If we survive this, those GreenSeed executives stand to make a hell of a lot of money from our misery.”

  “From the drought-resistant seeds?”

  “Hell, yeah!” cried Walt. Clearly corporate greed was one of his favorite topics. “And you know what? Eight or ten years ago, they were pouring all their research and development dollars into petrochemical fertilizers like everybody else. But when the new cap-and-trade program came into effect, they realized they were gonna lose their asses. They started getting really aggressive with genetically modified versions of ancient crops that could grow with very little water and very few chemical inputs.”

  Soren raised his eyebrows. “How do you know all this?”

  Walt lowered his voice, as if there were spies outside the kitchen window who might be listening. “Look . . . When you’ve been a farmer as long as I have and seen dozens of your friends declare bankruptcy, you hear things.”

  For a moment, Walt’s indignation seemed to fizzle out, and Starlight seized the opportunity to bring out a dish of rhubarb cake. Soren ate his piece without really tasting it and got up to help Thompson clear the table. Mitch returned to the guesthouse, and the others trickled into the living room.

  Over the splash of running water, Soren heard the dainty twang of music emanating from the other room. Then a sweet voice joined in, singing what sounded like “Moon River.” Soren stopped mid-dish and listened. It sounded as though Starlight was singing, but it was hard to be sure.

  “Go in and listen,” said Thompson. “I can finish up here.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Soren rinsed off the plate he was washing and handed it to her to dry.

  “Really,” she said with a shadow of her commanding cop voice. “She doesn’t play much anymore. You shouldn’t miss it.”

  Throwing Thompson an awkward smile, Soren wiped his hands on his jeans and followed the soft melody into the living room. But before he reached the doorway, he stopped dead.

  Lark was standing under the wide archway with her shoulder resting against the wall. She was dressed in pajama pants and a baggy wool sweater with several small holes near the elbows. Her big beautiful eyes were red and puffy, but she looked better than she had when they’d spoken in the bathroom.

  She was staring at Starlight, who was propped up on the window seat, strumming a mahogany ukulele and singing with her eyes closed. Katrina was seated on the floor beside her.

  Soren had come to watch Starlight’s per
formance, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lark. Her expression was gloomy, her face strained with fatigue, but as he watched, her lips cracked into a smile.

  Soren moved closer and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He half expected her to stiffen or pull away, but Lark leaned into him, and he tightened his grip.

  Starlight picked up a rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” and Soren’s chest swelled with familiarity. Lark rested her head against him, and he breathed in the smell of her hair.

  No matter what had happened, Lark would get through this, he told himself. She was still the strongest person he knew.

  ten

  Lark

  That night, Lark dreamt of Bernie. It wasn’t a violent, heart-wrenching dream — at least it didn’t start out that way. They were sitting under Mother Mercy’s pergola back at San Judas, but the ground beneath their feet was covered in sand.

  They were staring out at the ocean, but Lark could still make out the tall adobe wall to her left, hemming them in on three sides. She was still dressed in her drab prison clothing, but Bernie was wearing a coconut bra and sipping a piña colada. Starlight was hovering behind them, swishing her hips in a grass skirt and playing her ukulele.

  “How did we get back here?” Lark asked, examining the slushy blue drink perched on her armrest.

  Bernie scrunched her eyebrows together in confusion. “Back where?”

  Lark opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. They weren’t in San Judas anymore. That much was certain. But even with the ocean waves lapping at the sand a few feet in front of them, she still felt trapped and isolated. She picked up her drink and took a sip from the crazy straw, her tongue tingling from the alcohol and berries.

  “I wanna get my belly button pierced,” Bernie mused, staring down at her naval and pinching the little pocket of fat protruding from her bikini. “Eck! Maybe not.”

  “You should,” said Lark without hesitation.

  After what Bernie had been through, she deserved to get whatever she wanted. For some reason, Lark couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to her, but it filled her with sadness just the same.