Everyone had always thought “the end” would be nation against nation or something. One big guy comes in and beats everyone else just for the yuks, bombs them off the map, sends a couple armies in to get rid of whatever was left. But that wasn't how it happened, not at all. The humans' lust for more, and better, and bigger, had caused them to drill too far. They had flown right past oil and natural resources and then they hit spirit. The Tempests of old arose from the ground, and then the long-dormant siren speakers shrieked into the pre-morning hour, awakening everyone and sending them in different directions. The Tempests had used their dangerous touch to spread a new destruction, one that leapt from person to person and ended only in death or a withered, violent mind.
The idea of a president was as laughable now as sitting around in front of the TV, whining about not wanting to go to school for the day. Blue had done that, what seemed like a long time ago. He'd complained about school or snack foods or not wanting to vote or volunteer or whatever. Complained about
what
he was eating, instead of complaining because his stomach was going to gnaw itself inside out from being empty for too long.
“Listen. If it ever comes down to it, you kill them first,” Blue said. “Kill them so they can't kill you.” He shifted then, so he could pick up one of the weapons he kept close at hand for guard duty. “Now go to bed, Danny.”
“Why do people turn into Mangled?”
Blue sighed. “Danny.”
“But why? Timmy said there dint used to be Mangled.”
This felt a bit like trying to explain the science of the universe, but Blue considered for a few seconds and said, “The Tempests have a bunch of ancient powers or something, and they're mad at us for ruining their land with our cars and our planes and all the other ways we wasted resources. So they do bad things.”
Danny's eyes were huge, but surprisingly empty of emotion. “Like what?”
“They touch a person and it makes the person get really crazy and violent, I don't know. The Mangled kinda lose their mind and they forget about good things. There's no bringing them back once they've been turned. I guess they have enough left in their brains to camp together and hunt together, but I don't understand all of the details of it. All I know is that they want to kill and destroy.” He thought of his time in their camp, sitting in the crude cage they'd thrown him in and listening to the grunts and hoarse whispers they'd exchanged among each other. He thought of the young woman they'd dragged into the center of their ugly little circle. He thought of her screams as they tore into her, and how one of them had suggested they save Blue for later that night, and he had to push the memories away. “I'm not a scientist, kid. But that's it; you need to get to bed. Go, before I tell on you to Nicolas.”
The pipsqueak scampered away and Blue was left to a bruising silence and a six-hour shift. Around dawn, one of the teenage girls took his place and Blue was able to retreat to his own tent for sleep. His dreams were confused and hurried, chasing each other through his head and pouring out of his ears as he woke to Thanksgiving Day.
It rained early in the day. Everyone ran about, collecting up the water and squealing with delight. One of the girls danced, and then some of the other girls joined her, and soon everyone was wet and muddy and laughing.
Blue's girlfriend found him just before lunchtime, still damp and glistening from the morning rain. “We collected up more today than we have in weeks!” she said, her voice even more breathy than usual. “Nicolas said we have enough saved forâ¦for a long time. He said a week, but you know he's always pessimistic.”
“Even more reason to celebrate tonight, then,” Blue said, busily moving large pieces of wood into a wheelbarrow so they could be transported to the other side of camp and burned in the threatening cold.
Sammy was all of twenty years old and had met Blue while trying to dig herself out of a hole she'd fallen into. It wasn't the most normal way to meet your future boyfriend, but these days, it was merciful compared to some of the ways people found each other. After everything Sammy had been through, though, maybe it made sense that she liked to squint and consider Blue's ideas with a sort of silent judgment. “Nicolas said you want to turn off the Flashers.”
Blue sighed, peeling off his vest and wiping sweat from his eyes. “Yeah, we're gonna turn off the Flashers.”
“That's not very⦔
“I haven't seen any of them for seven months.” Blue tossed a piece of wood into the wheelbarrow, sending splinters in every direction. “Seven months. For all we know, they moved on. Maybe they went to California, you know? Maybe they wanted to hit the beaches, go surfing. Maybe they wanted to ski in Colorado. All I know is that they're not around here. They're gone. They're dead or they'reâ¦they're probably dead.”
Sammy backed away from him. “What about theâ¦theâ¦Tempests?” She whispered the last word, eyes darting around.
After a long moment of consideration, and a few more backbreaking pieces of wood loaded into the wheelbarrow, Blue looked at her. “They owned this place long before us, right? So they finally decided to do something about it. We're the visitors. I guess the most we can do is hope they're done, or that they've forgiven us. We have no weapons to fight them with. There is no way to fight them.” He shook his head. “If only everyone else had realized that before they tried blasting the Tempests back where they came from⦔ He wiped more sweat from his eyes and brushed his hair off his forehead. “We're going to have the celebration tonight. It's not too much for any of us to sit down for a few hours and appreciate people like Jeremy or Corey or Bella, who got scalped or murdered or burned alive. We'll focus on how we'll work together to survive. It's just like what my teachers kept telling us about the original Thanksgiving.”
He tossed another piece of wood but missed the wheelbarrow. It hit the ground with a terrible crash that seemed to resonate in his ears for several furious seconds afterward.
“Don't be mad,” Sammy whispered.
“I'm not mad. We haven't taken a second to look at what we have in a long time. I survived capture, but you know what? I shouldn't have been able to. Not many have survived. We have reason to celebrate. We
lived
.”
Sammy pressed her lips closed and looked anywhere but at Blue. “All of us are happy that you survived, and we're happy that
we
survived.”
“So we'll set aside some time to celebrate that. Good?”
She nodded and walked away with her head down, leaving Blue to finish his work, clean himself up, and find his way to the others.
“Today we're going to have our Thanksgiving feast and ceremony,” he said, his voice carrying easily over everyone for once. Thirty-two pairs of eyes stared unblinking back at him, many of them accompanied by expressions of suspicion or dull fear. “As some of you may have heard, we're not gonna turn on the Flashers tonight.” He paused here, but no one made any objection. “We'll resume business as usual starting tomorrow morning. And I'll be on my watch tonight, as always, in case anyone orâ¦anything decides to sneak into the camp.”
Another long pause followed. Blue swept his gaze over his thirty-two charges, noting that only one of them was sitting up straight and leaning a bit to the leftâtense-mouthed and narrow-eyed. Nicolas. And sure enough, only seconds later, Nicolas spoke.
“And as for this feastâ¦?”
“We're going to eat what we have.” Blue reached into his battered leather bag and retrieved his most recent treasure. “And this. I think some of you know what this isâ¦?”
“A cake!” one of the pipsqueaks said, and a chorus of oooohs and ahhhs sounded in Blue's ears. “Can we all have some?”
“Yeah, we're gonna cut it up, fair. Sammy's gonna do it, because she's good with knives and stuff.” Blue handed the thickly wrapped, very old cake off to his girlfriend, and she held it between her hands like the most fragile of prizes. “All right, so everyone change into nice clothes if you want, because we're not gonna work for the rest of today. No digging, no fire duty, no sewing, no gathering. We're just gonna have a rest, and we're gonna celebrate being alive. Meet back here in three hours and the feast will begin.”
After returning to his tent, Blue combed his hair, wrapped a piece of red rag around his neck so that it looked like a scarf, and placed his favorite hat on his head. A few months ago he'd found a mirror on a food and supply expedition, and he'd hauled it back to the crater. The spidery legs of a break in the glass interrupted any full view, but if he stepped close enough to it, he could make out the premature wrinkles around his eyes, the dust that caked his face, and the deep melancholy that had formed in his soul. When had he gotten so old? When had he gotten so sad? Before or after being hauled into the enemy camp and toyed with, struck by them? Before or after he killed someone for the very first time?
Despite grumbling from Nicolas, the ceremony began around three. Mismatched, heavily abused plates were passed from hand to hand and the food was portioned as evenly as possible. Danny, the pipsqueak from the night before, stuck close to Blue through the beginning of the feast, and was the first to spot the shapes on the horizon.
When Blue and the others had first found and claimed the crater, they had done so with the knowledge that they had neighbors. About a half-mile away, a group of fifteen or twenty survivors had set up a camp in the remains of a three-story Victorian-style home. It was a disconcerting building, with boarded-up windows, a gaping hole in one portion of the roof, and a broken jungle gym out front. The leader of that particular group was a young woman with purple-colored eyes and a steely speaking voice. Blue had interacted with her a few times, but always felt he must be on his best behavior, lest she decide to blast him to kingdom come with one of the many guns she carried on her person.
Their neighbors were self-sufficient and tough. All of them were teenagers or adults, so they were more capable of protecting themselves than Blue's group. To see or hear from them more than the agreed-upon once a month was unusual. To see only three of them was even more unusual.
Nicolas moved to Blue's side without a word, both of them peering into the distance at the approaching shapes.
“Is that our friends?” Danny whispered.
“Yeah, look, I want you to go stand with Sammy. Nicolas and I are gonna go out andâ¦meet them,” Blue said, already patting himself down to make sure he was armed. The gun in his hip holster and the knife he kept inside his jacket were not enough, though, or at least that's what his gut instinct said.
Nicolas must have felt the same thing, because he snatched up his pistol and slung a shotgun against his shoulder. Blue and Nicolas had found several guns and a wealth of ammunition in an abandoned house on a scouting mission three months ago, and they'd dragged it all back to their camp. So far they hadn't needed the weapons for anything other than target practiceâ¦but it seemed that was about to change.
Blue chose a rifle and the two young men climbed out of the crater together.
The three shapes became more person-like as the distance was closed. The middle one was most certainly Hannah, the leader of their neighbors. To her right was a woman with a harsh face, and to her left was a man who looked as if he hadn't eaten in too long. Blue's eyes flickered between them, over and over, watching for signs of danger or suspicion, anything to explain the twisting sensation of dread deep in his stomach.
“Hello!” Blue called, because he knew Nicolas would never be so forward. Silence met his greeting, which caused him to slow his pace slightly.
“They're not armed,” Nicolas muttered.
“Hannah never carries large weapons.”
“Unless she has one of those cartoon pockets, she's not carrying a gun at all. Look. There'd be nowhere to hide it in those tight pants.”
Blue didn't have time to reply, because their visitors had walked into hearing range.
“We've lost some,” Hannah said, her voice the usual mix of steel and cigarettes. “Four of them. Decided to set out for who knows where.”
Blue's eyes continued to flick over her, over her companions, but something about the familiar edge in her voice eased his tension. He nodded once. “We used to run into those kinds all the time. We had the sense to settle down as soon as we got the chance.”
“We need help.” Hannah locked eyes with Blue, and the words fell from her mouth in an angry tangle. Maybe she hated him for seeing her weakness, or maybe she hated herself, but either way, Blue had a feeling she wanted nothing more than to have their roles reversed. He should be the one begging, after all, per their last barely civil debate, at which time she told him he was a fool to keep so many children in his camp.
“What do you need?” Blue asked, balancing his tone to keep from enraging her further.
“Food, if you have any.”
Nicolas shifted, letting out some quiet snort of displeasure.
“How much food?” Blue asked.
“As much as you can spare. We've lost our scouts.”
“Everything we have, we got the same way that you did,” Nicolas said. “We don't sit around eating grapes and figs all day, you know. We have to hunt, we have to send scouts, we have to take missions, and we have to grow whatever we can.” He took a breath to go on, but Blue interrupted him.
“We're celebrating Thanksgiving. Tonight.”
“Celebrating Thanksgiving?” Hannah repeated, a black ghost of a smile crossing her face. “What do you mean?”
“We're celebrating being alive and thanking theâ¦well, thanking the Tempests for not destroying us for what we've done to their land.”
Hannah cocked her head to the side, considering Blue as if in a new light. “And have you ever considered what the Tempests might think about such a thing?”