He landed his one good eye on Madelyn. She felt Elijah turn his attention to her as well.
“We were up in one of those fancy houses on a lake. The house said there was a storm coming. It wasn’t a storm at all. My granddaughter went out to hike over the ridge. From what the house was showing us, a massive front was coming down from the north. She promised to take a quick look and then scurry back to me. I never saw her again. After a few hours, I got nervous and hobbled out after her.”
The old man started to cough. He doubled over as half of his face went bright red. The other half—the side with the dead eye and missing ear—was splotchy white and gray. He looked like a good chunk of his body had already died and neglected to tell the other parts. When he looked back up, his good eye was focused on the back of the room.
Madelyn leaned forward. Elijah put his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it away.
“He lit up the sky like a volcano. He’s coming to burn the souls right out of our bones. It’s hopeless. He’s going to scour every living thing from…” Gabriel started coughing again and slipped down behind the podium. Madelyn rose up to see him as Cleo bent to his aid. Gabriel was on the floor. Cleo sprang back up a second later.
“Meeting adjourned, everyone. Please use the emergency exit plans.”
Murmured comments shot through the crowd. Madelyn began to squeeze by Elijah—she had to get to Gabriel to find out more. Some others had the same idea. The tiny sound of the alarms went through the room in a chain reaction. A few people wore devices clipped to their boots or their belts. Each had a quiet chime to alert them to danger. The sound rushed through the crowd in a wave.
The sound got their feet moving towards the exits.
Madelyn fought the current of people.
Elijah gripped her elbow.
“Let go,” she said, turning.
His face was sad and resolved. “Madelyn, we have to go. They could be coming.”
Madelyn leaned in close to whisper at him over the sound of the evacuation. “They’re not coming. This is a ploy so we won’t learn what Gabriel knows.”
She turned back towards the front of the room and saw two men dragging Gabriel through the doorway. Cleo was bringing up the rear of the abductors. She looked back over her shoulder towards Madelyn, but her eyes never settled. The woman looked like she had bigger problems to cope with.
Madelyn took the hand that was holding her elbow and pulled Elijah with her.
He was reluctant at first.
#
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Madelyn didn’t recognize the man who was standing in the doorway. She tried to push past without addressing him. He pushed back.
“I know him,” Madelyn said.
“It’s time to evacuate,” the man said. He pointed towards the rear of the assembly room.
“Frederick, please,” Elijah said.
The man tightened his lips to a straight line and then let Madelyn and Elijah by. A couple of people had moved Gabriel on top of a desk. Cleo was leaning over him. Madelyn went to the other side.
She thought the old man was dead. His mouth was open and his good eye looked straight up. Madelyn pressed her ear to his chest. His heart was beating—barely.
“Gabriel, what did you see?” Madelyn asked.
“Leave him be!” Cleo said. “He’s very sick. I shouldn’t have let him get up to speak like that. I should have sent him right to healing.”
“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.
#
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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.”