Circles in the Dust (18 page)

“You think I won’t help you give human kind a second chance? I was prepared to let my own life slip away, the last human. I really thought my life would be the last to flicker out, and without any others, it made no difference to me whether I lived or died. But here you are, making a go of it, growing food.” He put emphasis on this last phrase. “You are the best chance we have of taking back our place at the top of the food chain, as the rulers of the Earth, and I want to be a part of that. Everyone outside your walls wants to be a part of that. That’s why they want in; they’re starving, yes, but even if they can’t see it, they know that coming to the Base is the last chance any of us have.

“We need a solution that will give, not all of us as individuals, but our species the best chance of survival. I came here because Elizabeth thought I might be able to help with that. If you and the Outliers continue on as you are, I fear for the longevity of mankind. Elizabeth agrees,” David thought he’d use her, as she had already spilled all the beans she had on him, “that if you go on like this, you will squander our only hope. I just want to do what I can to keep that from happening, and I think I am in a unique position to do just that.

“I don’t have a plan of my own; I had never seen this place before…” he paused, not knowing if yesterday would be accurate, “…before Elizabeth brought me here. I don’t know what you’ve tried, or what you are able to offer those laying siege to your home. I just want to help. I know that somehow I can.”

David was impressed by the speech he’d been able to make; he had gone  over it in his head on his way to the Base, thinking of what he would say to the Mayor when he met him, though he obviously had thought it would be under better circumstances. But this felt like his only hope, unless the man unknowingly dropped a knife when he left or the girl that had come to his door was able to get into his room and free him, if that had even been her goal.

The man rose on his stalky legs and kicked his seat back toward the stack where he had found it. He didn’t say a word before he reached the doorway and turned around to look at David. The lines in his old face were pronounced cracks in the candlelight, his bushy white eyebrows casting shadows across his forehead, his eyes catching the glow.

“You want to help us, eh?” he said.

David wanted to scream, ‘That was what I said in the first place!’ but held his tongue, hoping this was a good sign. The door swung shut and David was left alone again, in the dark, less certain than ever whether or not he was glad he had not died that morning by the river.

Chapter 20

David wanted to stay strong. He wanted to show his colors as a survivor. He had made it through the chaos that consumed most of the world. This wasn’t the first time he’d been the victim of other survivors. He’d always managed to escape. The avalanche of death had chased him nearly all his life, but he had always managed to slide just ahead of the crushing snow. This time, though, he was beginning to worry he would not see the bottom of the mountain.

It felt like at least a day since the Mayor last visited, and David’s head was pounding more than ever. Even if someone had come to talk to him, he wondered if his parched throat would be capable of uttering a decipherable word. The room spun around him, the relentless darkness only making it worse, giving him no bearing to try and convince his brain he was motionless. He emptied the contents of his stomach on the floor next to him, the reek of vomit only compounding his ill state.

He began to hear noises, scrapes and bumps, and wondered if he was truly alone in this prison. What if there were others, tied up behind him, where he couldn’t see? What if there were rats, come to gnaw through his bonds, or his throat? It was not being certain of anything that caused David’s mind to begin gnawing at itself; he didn’t know if he would get out alive, if anyone would come again, if he had seen the last face he ever would.

If this were the end, he at least wanted to die in his home, back in the woods that had swaddled him in their bristly arms. Lying by the river, as he had been that fateful morning, to drift away. Not like this. It felt wrong.

He wanted to see Elizabeth’s wide, emerald eyes one more time.

She could help him. She would, if only she would come see him. Why hadn’t she come yet? Why had she not convinced the Mayor to let him go? She worked for him, she must know him well. Had this all been a trap, tying up a loose end she had found in the woods? Maybe she was worried he would ruin some plan the Base had to exterminate all those outside its walls, to give themselves a clean start. Maybe she wasn’t the innocent, caring girl he had come to know.

Maybe.

He slipped into another short episode of fitful rest, images of death and destruction dancing before his eyes. He saw demons with familiar faces, though he could not put a name to them. They danced on the grave of the old man and laughed at David as he shooed them off. They were in his clothes, in his head. He screamed, but they were everywhere. He looked all around, but knew that nowhere was the same for them. They chased him through the woods, lashing out with their claws and howling from the shadows. He came to a cliff and stopped just before tumbling over. The expanse before him looked exactly as he had remembered it. The night was black, but lit everywhere with the fires of war that decimated buildings and cooked people in their homes. It had been a while since he had dreamt of the night everything had changed, when they had been invaded, attacked; the war that would so nearly end humanity altogether begun. Those sights, smells, and sounds came to him now in his half-sleep. He remembered having no idea why his family had just been murdered, why the life he had known had been pulled out from beneath him, why no one was there to catch him.

There was a blur of snow and darkness, of distant wailing and of graves being dug all day long. A man sitting next to him, a nice, older man, tried to help David find his family. The grandfatherly man gave David a blanket and a place in his tent when David finally managed to speak of what had happened to his family. The man was a camper, he had lots of food and blankets and a constant fire burning. He told David not to tell anyone what he had, that he would take care of him if David would do the things he was too frail to do on his own. His hair was a light brown flecked with gray; he told David he was a professor, a teacher at a college in the city.

He and David set up their camp far from anyone else, and they stayed up late into the night, the man telling David about what had happened and why it had happened. Even when David dozed off, the man would continue, still rambling on when David awoke. He would talk about anything; how things were when he was a child, the television shows he would watch, the books he had read. David learned to listen to the man but tune him out when he needed to; it wasn’t long before the man mumbled constantly; even when David was speaking, he would hear nothing and just keep going.

The day David buried him came to him in his ethereal state of remembrance, as vivid as if he were there again. David was older now, taller than the old man, much taller considering the hunch in his mentor’s back that had gotten so pronounced toward the end of his life. He was standing in a pit he spent all day digging, his arms sticky with sweat, his cheeks soaked with frozen tears. The friend he had known and protected, that he had learned from and come to love, his only human companion, was now gone. His body was wrapped in his favorite blanket on the edge of the pit, dusted with snow. David climbed out of the pit and put his hands on the old man’s shoulders, and stopped as the shaggy head rolled over and the clouded eyes came to rest on David’s. His throat burned and he couldn’t breathe for a moment. Then he gave a violent shove on his best friend’s shoulders.

“Hello? Are you still alive, son?” David shot back to consciousness as the Mayor’s voice cut into his memory. The wide face of an old man, the antithesis of the one he had been thinking of, no soft features or warm smiles, jutted out from burly shoulders inches from David’s eyes.

David tried to respond but managed only a hoarse rasp. An irritated rumble emanated from the wide lips in front of him, coupled with a blast of rancid breath. A dented and scratched canteen appeared in the captor’s hand, and he held it up to David’s lips. The immense thirst harbored within David was not fully known to him until the moment that first drop of liquid touched his cracked lips. He slurped hungrily at the slow stream of water, though the movement of his head awakened the splitting pain therein.

The man pulled the bottle away before it was empty, and David followed it as far as he could stretch from the pole.

“Better?” the man asked with disaffection.

David leaned back, breathing heavily as he hadn’t stopped for air while drinking. His chest heaved a few times before he decided to give his voice a second try.

“Fuck you,” he croaked.

The frog-faced Mayor laughed a cynical, humorless laugh.  “Not enjoying your stay?” he responded with a wicked grin.

“I just…had to…get that…out…before…I die here,” David said between breaths.

“I see. You don’t want to plead your case one more time, try and convince me to let you go?”

“I’ve told you everything.” David kept his eyes closed, sucking in air, air that now seemed dryer. He needed more of that water.

“How disappointing,” the Mayor responded, sounding genuinely morose. “I was hoping to see you squirm a little before we began again.”

“Begin what?” David had finally wrestled his breathing to a moderate rate that allowed him to speak. “You really have more questions?”

“Just a couple,” the Mayor rumbled as he reached for his seat from the previous interrogation. David watched him through cracked eyelids, wondering what this decrepit creature could possibly want from him now. “You say you want to help us? Do you really mean that?”

David wondered if he should even bother answering. If the man was simply toying with him like a cat who has its paw over a mouse’s tail, it was pointless and demeaning. But he still had that canteen, and the survivor within David, shrunken and weak as he may be, would not give up on a few more hours of life, a few more sips of water.

“Not game today?” the Mayor added as David sat defiantly silent. “Maybe I should come back tomorrow?”

“I wanted to help you,” David began as the Mayor raised himself from his seat. At the sound of David’s voice, the Mayor sat back down, a triumphant grin spreading his thick lips. “I thought you needed my help, that you’d be glad to have me. I guess I was wrong.” David gave his bonds a tug at the last phrase to prove his point. “But I don’t see why you are still holding me down here.”

The Mayor’s brow lifted, giving David a look that was almost impressed by his observation. “We are not stupid, David. I couldn’t just let you walk in here, having sweet-talked a young girl into bringing you home. You think they haven’t tried that one before? Never mind the fact that you came with Elizabeth.” His face contorted with the same anger whenever she came up. “She thinks very highly of you. She hasn’t stopped yammering in my ear about you since you arrived. We thought she’d been taken hostage, so I’m frankly surprised the guards didn’t shoot you on sight—” he stopped and his grin spread further as he saw David gulp, though it was more from dehydration than fear, “but alas, here you are, our savior.” He couldn’t have finished the sentence with more sarcasm, David thought. Though he wasn’t sure he disliked the way this seemed to be going.

“So…?” David queried.

“So? So what?” the Mayor responded tersely.

“Are you going to let me out of here?” he ventured, hoping this wouldn’t burn a bridge under construction.

“I’m not sure yet,” he responded, and David’s heart sank as he felt the cat bat him around playfully. The Mayor gestured with his head toward the ceiling. “The rest of them seem to think you’re worth a shot. I’m not so sure. How can I be certain you weren’t just hoping to get a peek at what we have, so you can come back and steal it?” David waited, sensing there was more, but the Mayor held up his hands, waiting for an explanation from his prisoner.

“Well, you’ve let me rot in here for, who knows how long?” David began. “Why would I ever want to hurt you?” His anger overrode his better judgment and he regretted this sarcastic answer as soon as it left his lips.

“I guess that answers my question,” the Mayor responded reverently. “Elizabeth tried to convince me that you wanted what was best for us, but you’re just like the rest of them.” At the mention of her name, David’s cheeks burned as he pictured her next to the Mayor, the look of disgusted surprise at his answer, the disappointment, the betrayal. He knew he hadn’t meant it; revenge wasn’t a part of the new David, as much as he might want it to be at the moment. The Mayor was on his way out the door when David called him back.

“Wait,” he shouted, the effort and noise causing him to reel and nearly faint. “I’ll help you, but I want something in return.”

The Mayor froze and turned his head, looking over his shoulder at David’s pitiful form on the ground. “What do you want?” he growled.

There was only one thing David wanted. One thing that had allowed him to outlive so many others. He had given up much, taken so much more, to achieve it. After all he had been through, he could not delude himself into martyrdom. He had no principles so strong they could allow him to give up now, lying in his own shit in a dank cellar.

“I want to live. Here.”

This was answered by another growl, or croak, from the froggy lips of the Mayor and the door slammed once again, perhaps for the last time. David slumped against the pole and cursed himself, wishing he had asked for another drink of water instead.