by Sam Ryder
Rome was two days away, as the crow flies. With a horse, you could make it in three. We’d be lucky to get there in four. No rush, I thought. We were better off conserving our energy and enjoying the bumpy ride.
At first, the ride was silent, save for the crackling of rocks under our wheels. Gehn had finally drifted off to sleep while Hannah continued to stroke her hair, using a damp cloth to clean the blood from her chin, neck and chest. Her clothes were soaked in it too, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that right now. Hannah didn’t seem interested in talking either, going about her business methodically. The silence gave me time to think about all that had transpired in Geneva.
The time in the town was eye-opening. I had long maintained the impression that Geneva was a place where everybody just got along. The other cities, Rome and Paris, were the garbage, partisan tribal nightmares where somebody killed you just for being the way you were. Geneva was neutral territory.
But it wasn’t. It was just a façade, created by the so-called Council. As a mixed group, we got so much shit. Men wanted to kill us—and tried to—just because they didn’t like we were hanging out together.
It was like something out of an old history textbook. We didn’t do shit to anybody without being provoked. Yet, everyone was pissed off at us.
It was the first time I felt like the Ends truly needed a change. For the first time since this hellish nightmare all began, some of that old fire that had caused me to become a soldier was rekindled. It wasn’t just about my survival anymore. There was a whole world of innocents at the mercy of the Rising, the Guild, the Geneva Council. I’d stayed so far away from all the Ends’ politics that I overlooked the fact that bad shit was happening. My perspective on the Ends was evolving, and all because two sisters had tracked me down.
I was no saint. I was no do-gooder. And I certainly didn’t aspire to be one.
But I fought what I hated. I wasn’t willing to let the insidious actions of a few power-hungry fuckers go unpunished. This was the wild wild west now, and I could deputize myself if I wanted to. Gehn believed in her dream and this so-called dream-reader, so I would make that much happen, at least. We could figure out the rest later.
The rocking of the wagon finally lulled Hannah to sleep too. Chuck had gone down almost the minute we started moving. As a man who enjoyed silence, I felt myself begin to relax. The cool night air refreshed me, washing over the sweat on my skin in the peacefulness of the night-dark open plain.
After about two hours, the girls stirred awake, and they were hungry. The rumbling in my stomach concurred. It was time for a midnight snack.
“Are you all right?” I asked Gehn. She had refused to make eye contact since sitting up.
“I’m a monster,” she said.
Anger boiled within me, but not at her—never at her. At the world for making such a beautiful person think such a thing. Yes, what she’d done had been insanely violence, but what the men had been planning was even worse. “It was a self-defense,” I said. I shook my head. No, that wasn’t right, exactly. “No, it was goddamn heroic. You saved us, Gehn. We were about to be done, and you swooped in and saved us all.”
She finally looked at me, her eyes moist. “I tore out his throat with my teeth,” she said. She bit her lip and I thought I needed to respond, but I could tell she had more to say. “I enjoyed it,” she admitted. “His blood tasted good. I’m like a vampire or something.”
The ache in her tone sent a pang through my chest. I didn’t know much about Enders, but just because she’d enjoyed killing a murderer didn’t make her some kind of psychopath. I wasn’t sure what tactic to take, but I’d used humor as a defense mechanism before, and it felt like I needed to lighten the mood. “Do you burn up in the sun?” I asked.
She blinked, not following me yet. “No, but—”
“Does human food make you sick to your stomach?”
“No, but—”
“Is your skin cold to the touch?”
“No, but—”
“Nope,” I said. “Definitely not a vamp. Nor a werewolf, given your lack of fur and howling at the moon.”
She smiled, slightly. Behind her, I could see the thankfulness in Hannah’s eyes. I guess my dumb jokes had worked. Spurred on, I continued. “Honestly, if I’d thought of it sooner, I’d have been the one to bite him. Though manflesh isn’t my preference. I definitely prefer womanflesh.”
“Okay, taking it too far, Cutter,” Hannah said.
“I’m good at that,” I said, but the dark mood had been effectively shattered. “Now, who’s ready to eat?”
We all were, Chuck included. Hunting was difficult out here in these wastelands, though we’d have to try it eventually. For now, though, we had the food Barley had packed for us. Then again, we should probably keep them for another time.
“Hang on,” I said. “Let me see if we can nab something out here. Save the rations for an emergency.”
Disappointed, Gehn put the salted meat back in the pack. I pulled the mule to a stop and eased down, Chuck bounding down next to me. I scoured the moonlit terrain, searching for signs of life. nearby, I noticed a series of bones with meat still on them. “There’s a carcass over there,” I said.
“We’re not going to eat that, are we?” Hannah asked.
“No,” I said. “But I can see there is meat still on the bones. That means whatever did that will come back for more. We may have scared it off. Let’s wait a few minutes and see if it returns.”
I slowly stepped forward to get closer to the bones. Slipping Alpha out of the holster, I tried to get a sense of which direction the beast might be.
A large rock shielded slurping noises a few feet from the carcass.
Bingo. There’s our beast.
Chuck crept along beside me, eager, but smart enough to hold back until the right moment.
The chewing sounds were far too loud to be coming from a small animal, like a tetroyote. Bigger animals were always slower out here in the Ends, so I could afford to get a little closer to the action.
I peered around the corner from a safe distance to see a hideous beast.
Brown fur covered its body head-to-toe. Bloody guts hung from its chin and chest—remnants from this unidentifiable carcass it slobbered all over. A row of antlers stuck out of its head, and big, leathery lips curled and flattened with each bite, smacking loudly.
I twisted my face in disgust. It wasn’t the most appealing-looking thing in the world. But it was definitely big enough for all of us to eat.
Hell if I knew what it was. For every mule or dog, there were tetroyotes and other weirdly-mutated creatures scattered along the wasteland. Eating them would probably give us all cancer one day, but that was a foregone conclusion already considering the nukes that had sent us back to the Stone Ages.
Once the creature licked clean the bones in its possession, the animal pushed itself up on its fists and lumbered from behind the rock, crawling like a massive ape, oblivious to our presence.
Its eyes were as big as softballs, constantly moving in almost neurotic fashion. They were huge targets, and they would be perfect for me to aim for when I took my shot.
Realizing that the thing was coming back to the carcass I was next to, I scrambled to get back and let it move. The beast seemed to be in some kind of a single-minded fugue state, completely focused on eating, still not noticing us. It was weird as hell. It grabbed the carcass with both hands and cracked it more, separating bones and tendons and shoving the meat into its mouth.
I aimed my six-shooter in the beast’s direction. Then I whistled loudly, hoping to get its attention. Finally, it noticed me. The beast’s head snapped up and I had a clear shot. I squeezed the trigger, hitting it in its broad chest, which was the plan. I thought it would slow the beast enough for me to move closer for a kill shot.
I was wrong. Either this thing had skin like armor, or I hadn’t hit anything vital on the inside. What I had done was piss him off. With a growl, he charged.
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I stood my ground, firing off another shot, this one riskier, aimed higher, hoping to finish him off. The bullet hit him in the forehead, I swear to God, but he didn’t even flinch, charging on.
Oh shit.
I had to think quickly. I tossed my useless gun aside and yanked out the dagger strapped to my leg. He would be too close to take another shot, and the bullets didn’t seem to pierce his thick hide anyway. Plus, my knee kept me from escaping. It was fight or die.
Instead of trying to dodge, I stood directly in its path, waiting for the perfect moment. It lunged high at my head, but I was already diving to ground, slashing at its midsection with my dagger.
The blade scraped against it but didn’t penetrate, my wrist bending back from the impact. Somehow I managed to maintain my grip on the weapon.
It turned wickedly fast, a stark contradiction to its slow lumbering before, leaping on top of me, snorting and grunting. Drool seeped from its chops and onto my face but I managed to hold it back with both arms extended, searching its hide for a weak spot but seeing nothing but thick leathery skin holding back bulging muscles.
Its front was like armor and I was weakening. The eyes then—it was the only choice. I shoved the dagger into one of its orb-like eyes, which exploded, showering me with milky liquid that tasted bitter on my lips. Instead of pulling the dagger out, I shoved it deeper into the soft spot, which seemed to go all the way into its skull. As I did, it screamed a high-pitched scream that gave me the heeby-jeebies. But I didn’t stop, not until it stopped screaming and I was able to shove it to the side and off me.
Once it took its last breath, I toppled to the side and just breathed. “Cutter?” Hannah asked. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” I said, gasping from the effort. We would eat well tonight.
Hannah had hopped down and was approaching. “We’ll get a fire going. Whoa, you smell terrible.”
“Let’s hope the meat doesn’t taste as bad as this creature smells,” I said.
“I’m sure we can find a pond or lake on the way to Rome that we can wash up in,” she said. “In the meantime, maybe you should stay downwind.”
She and Gehn got to work getting a fire going. I gutted the animal. The meat of the animal didn’t stink like the guts and its breath, so that was good. I cut out the beast’s liver and called Chuck to my side.
Chuck was eager to get a taste. I tossed the liver to him, thanking him for having my back earlier. Nothing like a good piece of meat to keep a dog happy.
I peeled the furry skin off the animal and hung it to dry. Maybe it would come in handy later. Nights could get chilly, and any extra layers we could have were welcome. Besides, now that we had a wagon, we could carry a lot more supplies.
The women had a fire blazing quickly, and soon I had some choice cuts of meat—whatever the hell this thing was—roasting over the flames.
Chapter 19
The past and all that shit
Silence hung in the air as we ate, broken only by the sounds of chewing—mainly Chuck’s, whose table manners were not up to snuff.
“Are you okay, Gehn?” I asked. She seemed somewhat better now that she’d gotten some food in her belly, but still, I was worried about her after the incident back in the alley behind Barley’s place.
She looked up, finishing chewing her last bite. There was a distantness about her that felt like I didn’t know her anymore, like we were back at the beginning when she and her sister had walked into The Last Stop. “I’m…not not okay,” she said, which was sort of a funny way of putting it.
“I hear you. I feel like that’s how I feel most days,” I said. “Seriously though, you don’t need to be ashamed for defending yourself or protecting us. Never.”
She sighed and looked at her hands in her lap. “I know. It’s not that. It’s how I defended us. The way I lost control. If I could be like you or Hannah and shoot someone or punch and kick them, it would be different. I bit that man. In the neck.”
It wasn’t really funny, but I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped my lips. “Sorry,” I said, when she frowned. “I’m not laughing at you, I swear it. I’m laughing at the face that you’re differentiating between death by biting and death by gunshot wound. Dead is dead, regardless of how it happens. So what difference does it make?”
She sighed again, closed her eyes. Opened them. “It’s because of how I feel as it’s happening. The first sign that I’m losing control is the red.”
“The red?” I said, not following.
“I see red,” she explained. “Like, my vision darkens on the edges and a red haze falls over everything. My blood seems to rush through my veins and my heartrate speeds up. Every muscle in my body urges me to attack attack attack! That’s why I usually cower back and try to hold back the urges. It’s like a war is being fought in my own body. Unlike the male Enders, I’ve gotten adept at resisting, but this time, when I saw you and Hannah being hurt…”
“You did the right thing,” I said.
“Thank you, but I know that,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t feel ashamed afterwards.”
I didn’t want to tell her how to feel, so I just said, “Ok. Fair enough. But thank you for helping us. Our asses were grass if you hadn’t stepped in.”
“You’re welcome.” We left it at that.
“Cutter, tell us about you,” Hannah said, changing the subject. Not my favorite subject.
Great.
“Not much to say,” I said, trying to deflect.
“Come on,” she insisted. “We told you about us. You know who I was before the Blast. Who were you? How did you get to this point?”
I didn’t want to answer. For ten years, I had told no one except Chuck and he was good at keeping secrets. It was a part of my life I didn’t want to revisit.
“I already told you, I was a soldier,” I said.
“No, you just told us about being in war,” Hannah said. “You told us about your friend Silas. But what about your personal life? Who was Cutter in the old world, outside of war?”
I sighed and took a minute to chew my food, trying to buy time.
“Wait, we don’t know everything about Gehn,” I said, grasping at straws.
“What do you want to know?” Gehn asked.
“Why are you called ‘Gehn’?” I asked. “Enders change their names. Why?”
Gehn finished her bite and swallowed. “When you become an Ender, you feel like your old life has been ripped away from you. Reality as you know it ceases to exist. It usually destroys all your relationships. You’re cast out from your previous life. A lot of us Enders struggle with that. One way to cope with the transformation is to change your name—take on a new identity to match your new state of being.”
“So what made you pick ‘Gehn’?” I asked.
“‘Gehn’ was my family’s name,” she said. “I took it on to honor my family’s memory. My name used to be Julia. But Julia died when these horns came out. And Julia was gone forever when they killed the rest of my family. I just wanted to remember them.” I didn’t look at Hannah, because I didn’t want to put her on the spot. As Gehn’s sister, she might feel the same way but didn’t have the luxury of claiming to be transformed into a different person.
“That’s a good reason for a name change,” I said. “What about your life? You said you were a nine-year-old at the time of the blast.”
“Yeah. I was just a kid,” she said. “I dreamed of going to medical school and becoming a doctor. Maybe a veterinarian. Something where I helped people, you know?”
I smiled at the thought. “You would’ve been a First if you were in the Guild.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, I would’ve. But thank God I’m not. I wouldn’t want to live my life with those assholes.”
We all shared a laugh as we threw the bones of the beast on the fire and let them burn. The sharp bite of the smoke filled the air. The food had been more delicious than expected. Plus, the smoke helped mask the disgusting stench
clinging to my clothes.
“Your turn, Cutter,” Hannah said. “We’re traveling with you. We want to know.”
I thought of the picture hiding inside my jacket pocket.
You knew if you went with them, you’d have to talk about it. This is why you always keep to yourself.
“I was married,” I revealed. “Had a wife and a young son. The boy was four years old at the time of the Blast.”
The answer knocked the wind out of the both of them.
“I wasn’t with them. Because I was on the base when everything went to hell in a handbasket, I couldn’t get to them or warn them in time. When Silas put out the warning, I scrambled to find safety. I tried to contact them, but my wife didn’t answer her phone. I never even got to hear her voice again.”
That was only part of the story, and the only part that I was willing to explain at this point. It pissed me off that I couldn’t get to them in time. It’s why I drank. Part of me still hurt thinking about it, the pain buried deep within in. Drinking helped keep those feelings from rising to the surface where I’d be forced to examine them. As a man, it was my responsibility to keep them safe. I was at work, providing for them. But I needed to be there with them. I failed them.
The last time I saw my wife, we argued. I can’t even remember what we were fighting about. Something stupid. I left to catch a plane to go to the base, and we never resolved our argument. The last words I said to her were, “Fine, we’ll talk later.” I didn’t even tell her I loved her.
That pain hung on my heart, dragging it down. I didn’t share it. Nobody needed to know. And besides, nothing would bring them back. I had dealt with that grief already. Whenever it popped back up, I quieted it down with a drink. Or maybe I was in denial.
“I’m so sorry,” Hannah said.
I shrugged. “It’s been ten years,” I said. “I miss them, but it’s not like this is fresh in my mind anymore.”
It was a lie. It was the first thing I thought about every morning and the last thing I thought about before I slept at night. But I didn’t need a microscope on it. I just wanted to forget about it. This was my life now.
