Circles in the Dust (30 page)

She looked down at him and the fear climbed into her eyes to peer out at the world. She looked beseechingly at him, and he realized that was all she had been prepared to say. Holding a hand out toward his attacker, he lifted himself off the ground and went to stand by Elizabeth.

“This is Elizabeth,” David said. “And we are going to figure out what to do.”

“Oh, really?” Mort snorted. “Any ideas?”

David was silent. He had no plan. That was a bluff, and a stupid one. The Outliers were grumbling among themselves now, trading discontentment back and forth. One was griping about how he wished he could have had one last beer before his time came. They were all dejected, not the fighting men David had expected. He overheard some remark about how futile it would even be to fight; none of them had more than a handful of bullets and their guns were all wasting away, just like the men who carried them.  That reminded David of something he heard inside the Base, the man he had heard through the window.

“I know exactly what we’re going to do.”

CHAPTER 37

Dawn crept up over the horizon, reaching tender fingers of light over the tops of trees and mountains. The air was thick with misty fog, and the light illuminated twisting, shifting patterns hovering before every stone and around every leaf. The morning was quiet; there were no birds to sing an ode to the new day, no squirrels to chatter and run haphazardly from branch to branch. These were relics of times past. The wind was off elsewhere, leaving the leaves and clouds untouched, still as ice. Even the chill of encroaching winter was nowhere to be found; it was not warm, but the morning bite was gentle. Peace reigned, not a blade of grass out of place.

Everywhere else.

In this part of the forest, where the trees flanked an old farmhouse circled by a timber wall, where fields were tilled and life remained, where fires burned and the Earth still went by its given name, the pregnant air was disrupted by the sounds of boots falling heavily on pine needles dry and crisp. Voices sliced through the flesh of the fog as commands were shouted and exultations intertwined with whispered doubts and fears.

War was peeking its bloody face over this young day.

David sat on a log, looking around him at the trees and cabins. There was a spot of blue here and orange there where shirts and hats were visible, poking out of doorways and window slats. Behind the wall of the nearest cabin, the toe of a boot was visible, and across the clearing, the muzzle of a rifle stood out against the soft greenery behind as it rose above a pile of felled trees. He returned his gaze to the woods, where the sounds of marching echoed through the otherwise listless foliage. He could hear them, the sounds of their approach coming straight toward him. As they should. A large fire burned in front of David, the only one to be found in the Outliers’ camp, crackling and lapping hungrily at the wood it consumed.

David tossed another branch on the fire, and it hissed thankfully. The smell of smoke burned in his nostrils and his eyes watered from night-long exposure to the stinging exhaust, but he remained where he was, squinting a little, breathing through his mouth. There was no one around him; he was the only one left out in the open. He felt vulnerable, as well he was. There would be no one beside him with a gun in hand, no one to dive before him and take a bullet meant for his own flesh. Sweat dripped from his palms and he wiped them on his already sopping pants. He rubbed them together and the stale sweat intruded upon the smoke’s dominion over his olfactory center, but was thrust out by the ashen air once more when he lowered his clammy paws.

He wished there were someone behind him. Someone to hold his hand and tell him it would be all right, tell him the day would end with celebration and joy and that no graves would be dug. He wished he had someone to spill his doubts and fears on, to be honest with for but a moment about how unsure he was of himself and his plans, how certain he was in his own demise, as well as all those he had sworn to protect. He had been alone in the woods for too long. Having so many people around, he could not fight the desire for camaraderie. His soul craved it. This was new for him. For the first time in years, his sense that everything he needed he could provide for himself waned.

He tried to keep his courage on the forefront of his face while he sat, hungry, tired, facing an army alone, while inside his less noble emotions clamored for recognition. Courage is only outward, he mused as he perched alone upon the log; it never has a majority in the mind. It is only seen when it can overcome the rest, if not in truth, at least in appearance.

They were close now. He could make out the voices, almost well enough to understand what they were saying. Someone shouted something and they all quieted. This was no army, just a band of men with guns in their hands. If they had any sense they would have been quieter and given no warning of their approach, but surely they expected no real opposition.

Indeed, they would find only one man sitting before them, a bow upon his lap, a smile on his face.

The light of morning was gray. Everything had been lightened while colors faded. Past the first few trees ahead there was naught but black and white, and those barely distinguishable from each other. David caught a flicker of movement, then another, until one took the shape of a man, then another, and another. They multiplied until they were all in front of him, a shaky shot away. One kill could be certain, maybe two or three if he was fast enough on the draw and they hesitated, as they strode toward him, rifles hugged tight to their chests, or handguns, a handful of axes and knives in the rear.

His hands stayed obediently on his knees while he forced a warm, welcoming smile to his lips. Underneath he screamed and struggled to jump up and run, back to his valley, back to his home. He could still feel his massive sentinel tree drawing him, as it always had. He knew which direction it lay in, and he could be there in a handful of days, back in his cabin, with his mighty protector always at his back. But there was nothing there anymore. That was not his home. Not really. Neither was the camp he sat in now.

He was a vagrant, without a place to truly call his own that would sustain his life. He needed to make one, and this was the time. The lumber marched toward him, nails in hand, with mud and tin and all the supplies he needed. He just had to manipulate them, build his house with them. It would not be easy; he could just as easily be sitting by a warm hearth in an hour as six feet under the soil. Yet he smiled on, as if oblivious to any thoughts of dread, as his construction crew came closer and closer.

“Well, hello, David,” the Mayor called out from the head of the procession. He wore a smile as well, though David hoped his own did not have the same sinister curl of the lip.

“Good morning,” David called back as cheerily as he could.

The men of the Base continued until they were a lazy stone’s throw from where David sat, and stopped as the Mayor did. He patted Al on his right with a pudgy palm, the man who had carried him up from the basement. Sympathy had swum in his eyes that night, but those same wide brown pools were void of any emotion now, any pity he might have shown hidden behind a steely glint. The Mayor strode forward alone, and sat opposite David on another natural seat.

“I’m pleasantly surprised,” the Mayor began. “I didn’t actually think you’d be able to scatter all of those campers. Looks like that plan wasn’t so bad after all.”

The smile on David’s face gained a smidgen of sincerity. “You think they’re gone?” David said. “Why don’t you have another look?”

The Mayor let his gaze wander from David’s face, one eyebrow twitching every time he caught a glimpse of a gun’s muzzle or the tip of a boot. His smile remained. “I suppose I was wrong,” the Mayor ceded. “But why are they all hiding? That’s no way to welcome guests.”

“Nor is it very polite to massacre your hosts,” David shot back, reminding himself to smile and exude as much confidence as possible while fearing his imminent death.

“Massacre?” the Mayor repeated. “That seems more like a word to describe what the Outliers have been doing to my people. Not the other way around, David. I come to bring justice. But you were expecting us, weren’t you?” He gave no sign that he was bothered by the fact that the Outliers had been tipped off about their plans. David settled a cold stare on the one man who managed to retain a surplus of body mass despite the dearth of food available.

“Who are they?” David asked.

“Who do you mean?” the Mayor inquired.

“What are the names of the men who have been so ruthlessly murdered by the Outliers?”

The Mayor’s mouth twitched. “How far would you like me to go back?” he challenged.

David kept his eyes even with the Mayor’s. “Start with the most recent.”

The Mayor hesitated. He cocked an eyebrow at David, and looked him up and down as if sizing up an opponent before a face off. “Darien Aimes,” he called out. “Patrick Connelly. Richard Smith. All those in the last month. Shall I go on?” The Mayor seemed perturbed, though David found himself wondering at the cause of the disturbance. Maybe it really was concern for his dead comrades.

             
David turned his attention to the mass of men behind the Mayor. “Who knew Pat? Or Darien?” he asked them. They looked back at him with blank stares. Some shuffled their feet; some looked around at the others.

             
“Darien was a guard,” the Mayor answered after a sufficiently awkward silence had passed. “Had been for most of his time at the Base. Kept to himself. He was watching the wall when the Outliers attacked a few days ago.”

             
“Did any of you see the body?” David asked, still speaking to the army. They avoided his gaze and his question.

             
“The body was laid out in a wake held the next day,” Al said, his bass voice reverberating through the still air. “We all saw him. We saw the way he had been hacked to pieces by the man who got away.”

             
David felt the shock surge through him and rack his face for a moment, before being wrestled back down. There was a body. That was not what David had been expecting. How had they managed that?

             
“You all saw it?” he asked the general assembly.

             
“He was a skinny little guy,” one of the men said. The Mayor turned to look at him when he spoke. Though David could not see the look they exchanged, the man seemed to cringe when the Mayor’s head spun. “He had blond hair, no shirt. Apparently the Outliers stole the very thing off his back, to make room for a knife, I guess.”

             
David laughed aloud at the grisly realization. Clever.

             
“So you’ve all met Dmitri?” he said. They only looked confused at that. The Mayor turned back to face David and his smile was gone, replaced with a violent snarl only David could see. The façade was gone, and the true emotions underneath the man’s outward courage had come to light. He was not a confident, empathetic leader. Not quite. David shook his head and changed the subject.

             
“So,” he said to the Mayor this time, lowering his voice so that only the Mayor could hear him. “As you can see, I know what your little plan is. The gig’s up. You can still leave with a little dignity, if you let the Outliers into the Base. There aren’t that many anymore, as you well know. It shouldn’t be too hard. We can make it work. You’d be gaining good, strong hands to till the fields; it would benefit everyone.”

             
“I should never have listened to her,” the Mayor snarled. David wondered what the men standing behind would think of their leader if they saw him like this now. “I knew you would be trouble. Let some Outlier I’ve never seen before in on my plans, give him a job to do. She was so sure you could do it too. But I knew better. At least I should have.” He breathed an impatient sigh. He was wringing his hands, and David could see white knuckles whenever fat fingers and sweaty palms passed over them.

             
“You didn’t let me in on all your plans. Some I had to find out on my own. But you know you can let them in,” David said firmly. “You know you have enough food. For god’s sake, you have more food than I have ever seen, at least since the war. You still have so much, and yet you would hoard it for yourself.” David’s face began to harden, and he had to place a new smile on his lips. The men behind the Mayor were facing him, after all, and it wouldn’t do for them to begin to worry. They might accidentally pull a trigger.

             
“Hoard it for myself?” The Mayor snorted. “I am responsible for the lives of  many, David. It’s easy to talk of selfishness when you’re on your own. But what of collective selfishness? Is it so selfish of me to want to give my people the best chance of surviving? We are all that’s left, David. There are a few stragglers still, and I’m sure a handful are still kicking in safe houses out there, but the world is empty. What do you think the chances are that there is another group of survivors as large as ours?  You can’t rebuild a population from a handful of individuals. It doesn’t work that way. Think of humanity, David. Letting them in,” his eyes flicked behind David as he spoke of the Outliers. David rejoiced inwardly; he was hooked, “that would jeopardize humanity.”

             
“Humanity?” David repeated. “You want to talk about humanity? That had a different meaning before the war, I think. Don’t you remember? It was the sum of all the qualities that separated us from the beasts? Empathy, compassion, love. These were the tenants of humanity. Not the number of individuals in a population.

             
“I met a survivor born after the war out here. The first to really grow up in this world. You should meet him too. No idea what a family is, what love is, what life is all about. Obsessed with survival. No social skills to speak of, even out here he’s a pariah. Is that what ‘humanity’ is doomed to become? Just a collection of humans, with none of our former humane qualities? Don’t you see how much worse that is than our going extinct? Losing those things that make us human, we might as well have never risen to the level we had.

             
“There’s no chance of starting over if we lose who we are,” David affirmed. “We’re hovering on the brink of the abyss here. We can’t go that far back. We’d never return.”