Captives (17 page)

Skottie smirked at him. “Let’s tag you up!”

Inside, Surface was dark and loud. The place smelled of strong incense, and Omar breathed in deeply. Glowing Wyndo screens covered every inch of the walls, flashing pictures of the types of SimArt a person could choose from: sleeve, fluorescent, cosmetic. Omar trailed after Skottie and Charlz, staring at the designs on the walls.

“We need to get this one into a chair,” Skottie yelled.

Omar turned his focus to Skottie, who was talking to a shapely woman so pierced and marked up that Omar couldn’t guess how she’d originally looked.

The woman dragged Omar to a reclining chair covered in black leather and pushed him into it. “How many you want and where?”

Omar glanced at Skottie.

Skottie waved his hand. “Go on, peer, tell Suli what you want.”

Omar swallowed and panned the Wyndo screens. What did he want? Everything looked mad good.

“It’s not that big of deal,” Suli said. “You don’t like ’em? You can turn ’em off or come let me take ’em out.”

Right. This wasn’t like the tattoos of Old. These weren’t permanent. “I want a sleeve.”

“Right or left?”

“Right.” He caught sight of one of the screens, which showed a hawk on a man’s back with the wings trailing down both arms. He pointed. “I want that!”

Suli smirked. “Let’s start with a sleeve. You like it, you come get more. If I give you that many tags in one sitting, you’re gonna be real sorry when you try and sleep tonight.”

“Okay,” Omar said, feeling stupid for being so eager.

Together with Skottie and Charlz, Omar chose the perfect SimArt for his first sleeve. He landed on a black web that wound its way up his arm and reminded him of an Old comic book hero.

“Lose your jacket and shirt,” Suli told him.

Omar did, wishing he were as muscular as the pictures of the men on the screens. Compared to them, Omar looked like a half-starved child.

Suli twisted Omar’s chair and pulled up a flap on the right side. She set a thick roll of plastic on the flap and unrolled it. “Stretch out your arm.”

Omar set his arm on the plastic, and Suli covered it with the material, then grabbed the sheet and walked away.

Skottie and Charlz stood on Omar’s left.

“She’s getting a simulation of your arm so she knows where to put the tags,” Skottie said.

“I love watching the gun,” Charlz said. “Wish I could buy my own.”

Suli returned with a thin plastic sleeve that she pulled over Omar’s arm. It had circles and dots all over it.

“How many is he getting?” Skottie asked.

“Twenty-eight,” Suli said.

Skottie threw back his head. “Aw, you long-armed ape. You beat me!”

Omar smiled, as if his having a longer arm that Skottie somehow made him worthy of friendship. He’d take every advantage he could get.

“Here we go,” Suli said.

Omar looked back to his arm. Suli held a gun like the one the medic had used. She set it over one of the dots and fired. It made a soft clicking noise and stung. Only twenty-seven more.

Once they were all in, Suli programmed the tags and the design flicked on. Omar paid by touching his fist to a computer screen.

When they were done at Surface, Skottie drove them to a place called Main Event. It was dark inside, except for the pinwheels of orange and yellow light that spun on the ceiling. Omar’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim atmosphere. The room was filled with a maze of low counters and crowded with men.

“Is this a bar?” Omar asked, recalling the term from Old movies.

“That, and more,” Skottie said.

Main Event turned out to be a bar where voluptuous waitresses walked on the counters to serve the drinks, and every time one of them was given extra credits, they all did a dance.

Omar liked watching them dance.

Omar had never drunk alcohol before, and he likely drank too much. The night passed in a blur. The last thing he remembered was Skottie escorting him to his apartment.

L
evi woke with his face in the dirt, sure he’d heard a noise. He was lying on the mound that was his father’s grave. The realization brought back the heavy sorrow that sleep had numbed.

“Levi!” Someone grabbed his arm.

Levi pulled Sam’s empty pistol from his waistband and rolled over, aiming the gun at … “Beshup?”

“I thought you were dead, my friend.” Beshup was a tall man of twenty-six with white-blond hair, which he’d grown long and wore in two braids, in accordance with the Native American traditions passed down by the founders of his village.

Levi let his head fall back to the dirt. “It seems like I’m the only one who’s not.” He always knew he’d be an elder someday. And here he was. But elder of what? Nothing was left.

“What time is it?” he asked Beshup.

Beshup looked up into the sky. “The sun is nearing the west, but there are several hours before it will get dark.”

Levi pushed to his feet and walked away from the graveyard, toward the square. Seeing the stack of bodies again made him stumble.
So many dead. He turned to Beshup. “What can I do with the bodies? There are too many to bury.”

“According to my elders, the coyote said that when men died, their friends should burn their bodies.”

“It’s too dry,” Levi said. “I’d be setting fire to the whole valley.”

Beshup pointed to the square. “The stage can serve as a pyre.”

Levi set his hands on his hips and studied the stage. It
was
in a clearing with no overhanging branches.

“It’s too soon, though,” Beshup said. “We should wait so your people can pay their respects.”

“I’m all that’s left, Beshup!”

Beshup gestured to the bodies. “This is not all of Glenrock.”

“I think they took the women and children into the compound. But I need to deal with the bodies before I go after them, or the wolves will get them.”

Beshup stared at Levi, as if considering Levi’s dilemma. “I will help you. Then come home with me to Jack’s Peak and speak with Chief Kimama.”

Levi nodded. Maybe Chief Kimama would offer to help rescue Glenrock’s people. This could just as easily have happened there, after all.

Levi followed Beshup’s every instruction. They covered the stage in two more layers of wooden planks, alternating their direction. Then stacked firewood. Beshup insisted it be four feet high, so Levi used his ATV and cart to gather firewood from every home until a massive pile covered the stage. They tried to keep the pyre as even as possible so the fire wouldn’t burn lopsided.

As they worked, Levi distracted himself with a mental checklist. After this, he’d go with Beshup to Jack’s Peak to ask Chief Kimama for help. Then he’d come back to gather supplies and check the cache to see if any ammo was left.

They poured ethanol over the wood. Levi worried he should save some, since he didn’t know how to make more without Uncle Colton’s or Penelope’s help.

Then they were ready to move the bodies.

It was tricky getting all the bodies on the pyre. Twice, a chunk of firewood shifted under Levi’s feet and fell off the side of the stage. Once all the bodies were on the pyre, Levi brought a couple of bedsheets from his house. He and Beshup draped them over the top.

When Beshup sat on one of the benches in the square, Levi asked, “That’s it, then?”

“You must say farewell.”

Levi took a deep breath and looked up to the sky, thinking back to the funerals Papa Eli had given. He spoke loudly, for all heaven and nature to hear. “ ‘Let not your hearts be troubled … In my Father’s house are many rooms.’ He has prepared a place for you and now taken you there to be with him. ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ ”

Levi’s voice softened, emotion taking hold. “Take my people, Lord, into your heavenly home.” Then he sang a verse from an old hymn.

Levi and Beshup struck several matches and lit the pyre around its perimeter. It took a little while to get started, then the fire rose hot and fast, crackling, engulfing the stage in orange, yellow, and pink flames. Black smoke twisted into the sky like a tornado. The air became so hot that Beshup and Levi moved to the tree line, occasionally racing forward to douse a smoldering spark that leapt away from the pyre.

Even standing upwind, the village reeked of a sweet yet putrid smell, almost like tanned leather. Levi tried to ignore it, but the smell antagonized his stomach. These were his friends and family.

The entire pyre burned in less than an hour, but they waited longer for the coals to die down. Then Levi unhitched his cart from the back of his ATV, he and Beshup climbed on, and Levi pulled away, leaving the remains smoldering.

It was usually a two-and-a-half hour drive up to Jack’s Peak, but
without the cart—and in spite of all the potholes filled with rainwater—the ATV made it in two.

Jack’s Peak sat on the edge of Mill Creek, which enabled them to get clean water before the Safe Lands collected it into their dam and compound. For some reason, Safe Lands enforcers had not attacked here … yet.

Levi rolled to a stop near the village fire pit, and a crowd of children and young men clustered around his rig. The people of Jack’s Peak wore leather, fur, or cattail clothing, mixing in nothing Old. Some tattooed their bodies with clay, charcoal, and plant juices.

“Beshup!” Beshup’s wife, Tsana, threaded her way through the sea of onlookers. “What news of Glenrock? Our elders were worried when they saw the smoke.”

Beshup and Levi got off the ATV, and Levi glanced over Beshup’s shoulder to the valley below. “Glenrock is destroyed, our elders are dead, and our young men, women, and children are taken. I need to speak with your chief.”

The group gasped and stepped back.

“Come on,” Beshup said.

Beshup led Levi around a dozen cabins and teepees. Chief Kimama allowed her people to build cabins, but many lived in teepees made of animal skins and bark.

“
Behne
, Levi!” A young woman with dark skin and hair waved from outside a teepee they passed. She stood over a washtub scrubbing a small red-headed child, and wore a leather dress with fringe and turquoise beads that clicked against the tub as she moved.

The sight of her stiffened Levi’s posture, and he looked away. Kosowe. The woman they’d tried to match with Omar. Images from two years ago flashed in his memory. Finding the alcohol. Hiding it in his cart to bring to Beshup. Father making him take Omar along. The dancing. Sneaking away. The burn of the alcohol. Kissing Kosowe. Omar finding them.

Omar … His little brother was somehow mixed up in this attack by the Safe Lands. If Levi had been a better example, if he would
have destroyed the alcohol when he’d found it, then he wouldn’t have messed up so badly that night, and maybe Omar wouldn’t have either. A village elder couldn’t afford to make such mistakes. He had to be an example for his people. He’d blown it that night. He could never let that happen again.

Chief Kimama lived in the biggest teepee Levi had ever seen. He’d been inside it only once, when he was a boy and had come to visit with Papa Eli.

“Wait here,” Beshup said. “I’m sure she’ll see you, but …” Beshup slipped into the teepee. A moment later he held open the door flap. “Go on in.”

Levi ducked inside. The sun shone through the animal skins, creating a golden glow on the walls. Two rectangular mats woven in fat red and tan stripes covered a ground of wood chips. Between the mats, a circle of stones held the smoldering embers of a fire. The smoke trailed out a flap in the apex of the roof.

Chief Kimama sat crosslegged on a mattress behind the fire pit. Levi knew that Kimama was a bit younger than Papa Eli, but she looked the opposite. Thick wrinkles creased her tanned skin from the corners of her wide nose to the sides of her mouth. Her hair was white, parted down the middle, and twisted into two long braids that hung to her waist. Her posture was so hunched she reminded Levi of a hen nestled down to rest.

“Levi of Elias,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I smell death on the air. The shadow of the owl has been circling the valley for days. Has it fallen on Glenrock?”

Her voice chilled him, but he kept his posture straight and his voice strong. “Yes, ma’am. Safe Lands enforcers killed our men and took the women, young men, and children captive.”

“How many were killed?”

“Eighteen, ma’am.”

“And Elder Elias?”

“Dead, ma’am.”

She worked her mouth as if she were chewing something. “You’re certain he’s gone?”

The image of Papa Eli closing his eyes flashed through Levi’s mind. “I buried him myself.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Your father was Justin?”

“That’s right.”

She rocked back and straightened her posture, revealing that she did in fact have a neck. “Then you are no direct relation to me.”

“No, ma’am.” Maybe he should sit or kneel. What if standing was disrespectful in Jack’s Peak?

“You are welcome to join us, Levi of Elias. Several females in Jack’s Peak are old enough to marry. I grant you leave to choose a wife from my tribe and build a life here.”

Great, now he had to tell the woman no. He searched for the perfect words. “You’re very generous, Chief Kimama, but I’m not looking for a wife or a place to live.”

She grunted and settled back into her hen-like position. “What is it you seek from Jack’s Peak, then, Levi of Elias?”

“Your help, ma’am. I intend to free my people and bring them back to Glenrock.”

Chief Kimama laughed, changing the shape of her face so drastically that Levi took a step back. She had no teeth at all, and when she laughed, her mouth curved like a U. Her laugh wheezed to a close, and she focused her dark eyes back on him. “No one who enters the Safe Lands comes out.”

“All the same, ma’am, would you consider taking the matter to your tribal council?”

Again she straightened, her eyes stormy and dark. “I would not. What you ask is impossible, as are your intentions.”