Madelyn's Nephew

by Ike Hamill

  “You couldn’t have known,” someone said.

  “Gabriel,” Madelyn said. She gently shook his shoulder. She nearly jumped when he licked his lips and prepared to speak.

  “Find Harper,” Gabriel whispered. His eye turned to Madelyn. “You know where. I’m sure she’s alive.”

  “I don’t know where,” she said. “Do you think she went back to the camp? When did this happen?”

  He opened his mouth again and she fell silent to listen. All that came out was a sigh. His gaze returned to the ceiling. Madelyn felt the life leave his body under her hand.

  “Get him out of here,” Cleo said. “We can’t wait for the healer to get here. Take him down to Flower Street.”

  Madelyn slipped backwards in shock. Elijah caught her and held her up.

  “Where’s Harper? What’s this camp you mentioned?” Cleo asked. Her hard eyes were focused on Madelyn.

  “It’s the place on the lake he was talking about. I know where it is,” she said. “All I can think is that maybe Harper went back there.” She didn’t vocalize any of the million questions on her lips.

  Cleo didn’t believe her. Madelyn didn’t care at that moment.

  “How did he get here?” Madelyn asked. “Who found him?”

  Cleo turned to one of the men who had dragged Gabriel back to the office. He was another one whom Madelyn didn’t recognize. The two of them whispered. Madelyn wanted to get closer to see if she could hear what they were saying, but Elijah pulled her back.

  “You knew Gabriel?”

  Madelyn nodded. “I told you that.”

  “No, you never said anything about it. You mentioned his granddaughter, Harper, but you never said anything about Gabriel,” Elijah said.

  “Oh?”

  Madelyn was still preoccupied with what the man was telling Cleo. He seemed to be describing where they had found him. Madelyn went to them and inserted herself into the conversation.

  “What are we going to do?” Madelyn asked. “Are you going to heed him, or do you think we should go look for Harper?”

  Cleo shook her head. “Neither. It looks like he probably had a stroke and he was clearly exhausted from walking. I suspect that he imagined those things he was talking about.”

  “He didn’t imagine the camp he mentioned. I’ve seen it. Maybe he didn’t imagine that Harper needs our help. If his truck is still working, I can take a small party up there and back in two days. We can check for Harper and see if she needs us.”

  “It seems a little odd that you’re suddenly so interested in the welfare of Harper,” Cleo said. “Why weren’t you agitating for her rescue earlier?”

  “She asked me about Harper,” Elijah said. Madelyn gave him a look to get him to shut up. It was nice of him to try to defend her, but he wasn’t really helping.

  “I knew Harper was up in the mountains and I didn’t think it was something that needed intervention. After all, I lived up there for years. Why shouldn’t she? But now that Gabriel has revealed that she might need help, I think I’m the one qualified to lead the party,” Madelyn said.

  Cleo considered this argument for a second.

  The leader shook her head. “I’m not going to send a group of people away from their families based on the report of a sick old man.”

  Cleo said something to the other man and he began to herd Elijah and Madelyn towards the door. Madelyn wanted to stay and argue, but Elijah took her arm and persuaded her to go.

  # # # # #

  She rolled up her synthetic jacket and pushed it into her pack. Most of the weight was water. She wasn’t going to be caught without water again.

  “If you flee your sentence, you’ll have to start it over when you come back,” Elijah said. “It’s not worth it.”

  Madelyn stopped packing and looked up at him. He had his arms crossed and was leaning against the corner of the wall. He wasn’t saying what he meant. Madelyn hated when people did that.

  “What’s the point of a community if you people don’t help each other out when there’s trouble?”

  “That’s not fair,” Elijah said. “We help each other plenty. We’ve pooled our efforts, resources, and intelligence to make a better life here than any of us could have on our own. But when someone goes out into the wilderness alone, they incur a certain amount of risk that the group can’t assume.”

  “That’s garbage,” Madelyn said. “You have matches?”

  He backed into the kitchen and returned with a small tin of matches. Elijah gave her the whole thing.

  “Where can I get fuel for the truck?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to requisition it from Samantha or Alexandra. They’re in charge of producing antique fuels.”

  “Great. Where do I find them?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t. They find you. They move their equipment around and nobody is allowed to know where they are at any given time. It’s for security.”

  Madelyn rolled her eyes and sighed. “You people have to make everything so complicated.”

  She pulled the string on the top of her pack and buttoned it up. When she swung it over her shoulder, the momentum nearly knocked her off balance. It was way too heavy. She widened her stance and found the right posture for the pack.

  Elijah held his position as she climbed the stairs. He started up after her as she opened the door to the afternoon air.

  “Wait, you’re going to walk?” he asked as he climbed behind her.

  “I suppose I have to,” she said. “I’ve done it before.”

  She pushed through the front door to Elijah’s lawn. He was careful to always approach the house on the concrete walkway. By sticking to the path, he didn’t leave an obvious trail through the grass. As far as Madelyn knew, it wouldn’t have mattered. It wasn’t like Roamers tracked people based on their footprints. Still, she honored his path and turned left.

  “Wait,” he said from the door.

  She stopped at the driveway and turned. Elijah ran through the tall grass to a leaning shed. The door protested and resisted as he jerked it open. He pulled a bright red can from the spiderwebs and slammed the door shut again. He jogged back through the grass until he was at her side.

  “This is old, but it’s still good. Is it enough to get you home?”

  Madelyn shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, it will help.”

  He held it out for her. When she tried to take it, she nearly fell over. The pack was bad enough. The twenty liter can pulled her too far to the side.

  “I’ll carry it for you,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  They walked in silence for a bit. Madelyn let her eyes wander to the houses and buildings that she was just beginning to know. The people had a network of paths that led between the areas they inhabited. Everyone went to great lengths to randomize how they moved around. They still fell into patterns. Madelyn could see it.

  On his rounds—delivering supplies to the produce growers—Oliver had rolled a pair of dice to determine which trail he would use to get to the depot. Then, he would roll again to pick the order of his drop offs. It was wasted effort. Regardless of how he got there, he always arrived at the depot within an hour or two of noon. That was the kind of pattern that Roamers would lock onto. If the bonfires weren’t keeping him safe, he would have been dead in a week. All of his randomization was wasted effort. It did nothing except provide a false sense of security.

  “There’s a chance they won’t let you back. It has happened before,” Elijah said.

  “Okay,” Madelyn said.

  “That doesn’t bother you? You’ve spent so much effort to prove that you want to be a part of this community and you’re going to throw it away on an unreliable, unverifiable report?”

  Madelyn glanced at Elijah. He still wasn’t saying what he meant.

  “I think that Cleo’s message was clear. She couldn’t order a group of people off to track down one stray member. I’m not a group. I’m just one person with no attachments. If I can
possibly trade the life of one old woman for the promise of a young person, why wouldn’t I?”

  “You’re not old.”

  “I’m twice the age of Harper. And I have maybe ten-percent of her optimism. She’ll accomplish great things while she’s trying to make the world into what she believes it can be.”

  Elijah shifted the can over to his other hand. It swung between them.

  “I think it’s noble that you’re risking your life for Harper, but I don’t believe that her life is any more valuable than yours.”

  “It’s my fault that she’s up in the mountains. I took her hostage and forced her to go.”

  She looked to Elijah to gauge his shock. He barely glanced at her before he turned his eyes forward again.

  “You’re not shocked by that?”

  “Patton saw you take her. We all know.”

  “What?”

  “He was right there when you took her. Why would you think that we didn’t know?” Elijah asked her.

  “I was never charged with kidnapping,” she said. “I figured that if he said anything, it would have been held against me as a crime. I guess I figured that he was embarrassed that I got the drop on them so he didn’t say anything.”

  “We all knew. It wasn’t a crime. Harper was responsible for you. She was the one who rescued you in the first place, so anything you did after that was going to be held against her. Your actions against her didn’t count for anything from the moment that she saved you.”

  Madelyn’s foot scuffed the broken pavement. She nearly stopped moving forward. She shook her head and tried to assimilate the new information.

  “Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

  Elijah gave her a sad laugh. “People do what they do. To judge others is to judge ourselves.”

  “Tell that to Cleo. She doesn’t seem to have any problem judging people.”

  “Believe me, she has nothing but problems.”

  “Well, I’m even with Harper, but I still want to help her if I can. I know where she is. I just can’t figure out what Gabriel was talking about. There’s a good chance that I was no more than fifteen kilometers away from whatever he was describing. I never saw or heard anything. I wish I knew what he was talking about.”

  Elijah didn’t say another word until they finally got within sight of the old truck. Madelyn’s eyes were already studying the vehicle, trying to ascertain if the tires were still inflated and ready to roll.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  “You’re not prepared.”

  “We can stop at the old storehouse. I have a full kit stashed there with food and clothes.”

  “Once I get that thing rolling, I don’t slow down. The engine attracts too much attention.”

  “Then give me twenty minutes and I’ll meet you back at the truck. If I’m not back in twenty, you can leave without me. If it weren’t for my fuel, you wouldn’t even be taking the truck. I think you owe me at least twenty minutes.”

  “It’s not the time, Elijah. Once I get out there, I’m going to be on a mission. What if I have to choose between saving you and going after Harper? What if I choose Harper?”

  Elijah stopped walking.

  Madelyn walked a few more paces and then stopped. She refused to turn and look at him.

  “What?”

  “This is my fuel. You want my fuel? I’m coming with you.”

  “I’ll go on foot.”

  “Then I’ll use the truck to run you down.”

  Madelyn laughed. For once, merry Elijah didn’t join her.

  “Fine. But we’re not stopping at the storehouse. They’ll be on us in an instant. Trust me—I know what I’m talking about.”

  “I can go with what I have on me. I’m resourceful.”

  “You’re going to have to be.”

  Chapter 20

  {Trouble}

  Elijah was not a carefree passenger, like Jacob had been. As they drove up into the hills, he was more nervous and fidgety than she had ever seen him.

  “I told you not to come,” Madelyn said. “Now you’re stuck with me. If I let you out, those things would find you and tear you apart.”

  “I’ve heard that the instruments show a ninety-eight percent containment in these hills,” he said. “I’m not worried about Hunters.”

  “I wish you’d sit back. There’s nothing you can do right now and your nerves are making this whole truck jittery.”

  Elijah leaned back against his seat. She could still see the tension in his muscles.

  “Maybe I’ve grown too accustomed to the city,” he said. “All this empty space around me makes me nervous.” He tried out a little laugh. Madelyn cut a glance over to him. He took a deep breath and then let it out while he closed his eyes. His shoulders dropped. It almost looked like he was forcing himself to relax.

  Madelyn returned her eyes forward when Elijah turned to look at her.

  “What is it that you’re not telling me?” he asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “We’re probably headed towards danger. Tell me everything.”

  Madelyn thought through all the things she had held back in their conversations. She considered the problem carefully before she answered.

  “There’s an old town near my cabin. It’s where we’re headed now. The place was called Circle Poke. It was empty even when I was a kid. That’s where Harper and I left this truck. When I went back for the truck to come down to Fairbanks, someone had moved it. They did a pretty half-assed job of hiding the truck with some brush. I never figured out why.”

  “Where is Circle Poke with respect to where you think Harper and Gabriel were staying?”

  “My cabin is roughly in between Harper’s camp and Circle Poke. There’s a trail that used to go to the lake camps, but it has been impassable for years.”

  “So if she were running for her life, she would have gone to your cabin before she went to the truck?”

  “I would assume so. I can’t be sure of the timing of all this,” Madelyn said. “Gabriel didn’t say when he got injured, so I don’t know if it was before or after I left.”

  “Why did you come down to Fairbanks after all these years?”

  This was the question that Madelyn really didn’t want to answer.

  “I got lonely,” she said. She wanted to look at him, to see how this idea landed. She forced herself to keep looking forward so she wouldn’t weaken the lie.

  Madelyn gave the old truck a little more speed. After so many years of traveling exclusively on foot, she was amazed at how normal it all seemed. Even in her grandmother’s day, when the roads were maintained and a person could pick up fuel at a dozen stations, they had never commuted so often between the cabin and Fairbanks. Then again, the weather had been much tougher back then. Madelyn could remember a season of snow that lasted for months. That was back before the sun had turned.

  “I moved north bit by bit,” Elijah said. “My brother was always preparing for a war that never came. He expected looters and starving bands of criminals to storm our house at any moment. After my father died, we made his stash mobile and began to follow the sun.”

  Madelyn thought she should ask a question to be polite. Elijah continued before she got the chance.

  “He discovered that the Hunters were tracking on heat signatures long before it was on the ether. Saul had a couple of thermo suits. They were built to defeat night vision scopes, but they worked well enough on the Hunters back then. If they got too close, my brother had a collection of grenades and land mines that would throw them off. If you’re being chased and you don’t care about what’s behind you, toss a grenade as far as you can in your wake. It’s a decent last-ditch measure.”

  Elijah smiled at a memory.

  “We were up in the mountains. We had staked out a decent territory to inhabit. Of course this was before the really deep snow came. Saul had a theory that the Hunters moved slower in higher elevations. I don’t think he was right, but there certain
ly seemed to be fewer of them up there. The two of us stayed mobile. Someone had set up some air traps here and there for water. We trapped a lot of meat for food. I swear we had it all figured out. Saul heard a rumor that the Hunters were only going to clean for five years. It was going to be tough, but we thought we could make it.”

  “How long ago was this?” Madelyn asked.

  “Maybe twenty years ago. We got sloppy and stopped moving around so much. Saul had a monitor that showed a big mule deer in one of the traps. I don’t know what we thought we would do with all that meat, but it was too enticing. We went to collect the bounty. It was halfway butchered when the first alarm went off. I told him to leave it. He had a different idea.”

  Madelyn noticed that their speed had dropped. She was so engrossed in the story that she had let off the accelerator.

  “The trap was in a terrible place. There was basically nowhere to go but over a cliff. The drop must have been a couple of hundred meters at least. Saul looped a rope around the feet of the buck, tied the other end to a stump, and tossed it over the edge. He intended to follow it.”

  “Over the cliff?”

  Elijah nodded.

  “There were caves there. He thought maybe we could wait them out. The Hunters don’t like cliffs.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “It seemed like a terrible idea, but I didn’t have a better one. We used a grenade, but the important part of that trick is you have to have somewhere to run. On the edge of a cliff, the grenade just gave us enough time to get over the side and find the best place to start our descent. We didn’t have time to secure new lines. I’m a pretty good climber. Saul had more guts than skill. I struggled to keep up as he climbed down the face of the cliff. He called to me after a bit. I wanted him to shut up before they keyed in on his voice. That’s when I realized that I couldn’t even hear the Hunters up there. We had descended far enough to evade them I guess.”

  Elijah surprised her when he laughed again.

  “Saul called to me again. He had found a ledge under an overhang. I still remember how it felt. I was so amped up that I could hardly catch my breath. Saul was pulling stuff out of his pack. I asked him what he was looking for, but he didn’t answer until he found it. He had a couple of body sails in there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rich people toys,” he said. “You probably heard of them and then immediately dismissed the idea as crazy. The government banned them as soon as they came out. They were like a cross between a hang glider and a parachute, but it was self-propelled. I told him he was crazy. I asked him what happened to the idea of waiting them out. He just shook his head and told me that I was the crazy one if I thought that waiting them out was an option. The body sail had a built-in tutorial. We watched it a dozen times. Maybe if we had practiced on a sand dune, like it said. Maybe if we had at least a hundred BASE jumps under our belts, as they recommended. I argued every way I could think, but Saul wouldn’t be dissuaded. He wanted to get off of that cliff before night fell. That was the one thing we could agree on.”