The Balance of Silence (4 page)

The first knot of wariness settled in his stomach as he came deliberately around the other side, and then melted away again when he saw that his visitor was likely more frightened than he was.

“Hey there, Ducks.” He got a puzzled look, and patted his head to explain. “Your hair. Reminds me of fuzzy little duck babies. Sorry.”

That same ghostly grin flickered in the dim green light cast through the window by the instrument panel. As it fled the man stepped closer, extending a shaking hand to briefly touch the badges hanging around Riv’s neck.

“Yeah, I’m civilian aid. You look pretty civil to me…and like you could maybe use some help.”

Careful to keep his movements slow and non-threatening, he gestured towards the hopper with his chin.

“What do you say, want to get out of this joint?”

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By way of an answer, he reached for the door handle, eyes downcast, and Riv found himself leaping forward to knock the hand away. “Shit, don’t—” He hadn’t deactivated the lock plate yet, hadn’t had a chance.

The frantic wail was somehow more frightening after the previous silence, even more so for being completely wordless. Shocked, Riv took a step back, patting frantically at the hand he found himself grasping. “Shh, hey, it’s okay. The door, I didn’t want you to get zapped, it’s okay.”

Blue eyes were wide, blank with terror, and Riv knew they weren’t seeing him, but that didn’t stop him from attempting a reassuring smile. “Ducks, it’s okay, really. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He dropped his hands and backed up a step. “See, not going to hurt you, nothing to be scared of.”

Impossible to tell if it was the words or the simple fact that he wasn’t touching him anymore, but the wail quieted to a whimper, and finally to silent heaving gasps. Equaled by his own, actually. It had been a long time since anything had startled him that badly, and Riv took a minute to catch his breath.

“Holy fuck, you have to promise to not do anything like that ever again.” He swiped a hand across a forehead sweaty from more than just the heat, and sighed. “I’m going to take the alarm off the door, okay?”

Seemed easier to walk them both through it, less room for surprises that way. Keeping both hands in clear view, he punched in the code, waited for the door to swing open, then stepped away again. “All set, safe as houses now.”

The several seconds of silence did wonders for his nerves. “I’m sorry. Can you get into the hopper?”

Shuffling steps took Ducks to the door, arms held tightly against his sides, hands clenched as he kept as far away from Riv as physically possible. He climbed slowly into the hopper, immediately hunching in on himself in the narrow seat.

“I’m gonna close the door now, okay?” The solid clunk didn’t get a reaction, which he found himself halfway grateful for, and the sound of his own door closing after he slid in was immensely comforting, although not nearly as much as the steady hum of the hopper’s engines warming up.

“Right, then. Ready to get out of town?”

No reply, but he didn’t expect one anymore. He could see already that this was more than he was going to be able to fix, and the best he could hope for was not making it any worse. As they rumbled slowly out of the clearing, he didn’t miss the flicker of a flashlight through the trees, and even though it was a somewhat foolish waste of power, he turned the safety system back on. His passenger sat still in the seat next to him, eyes straight ahead and blank, and Riv left him there as they lost themselves deeper and deeper in the foliage.

His need for sleep had finally caught up with him a few hours before dawn, and after some deliberation he’d chosen to put down and catch a nap before they went any farther. His companion, if someone who was seemingly catatonic could be called such, had taken the suggestion to stretch out on 20

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The Balance of Silence

Riv’s usual bed in the back. Riv himself had managed an uncomfortable sort of slouch, wedged into the front seat. He’d woken with his breath fogging the window, drool on his shoulder and eyes that felt like someone had poured sand into them.

After checking to see if Ducks was still asleep, and a quick look at the perimeter security scans, he’d opened the door as quietly as he could and wandered out of sight to take care of the morning necessities.

When he heard running water nearby, he perked up, carefully marking his path away from the hopper as he headed towards the promise of a clean face. The river was clear when he got there, not the muddy soup he normally found, and without a second of hesitation he pulled off his shirt and dunked it. The drops that hit his arms were icy, raising goose bumps as they rolled lazily across his skin, and he nearly yelped when he buried his face in the wet cloth. He tried not to jump when he dropped the cloth and found Ducks standing there, calm and curious.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” he said with a shrug. Actually, that had always been in his portfolio of personal beliefs, in one form or another. Cleanliness of soul and conscience more than body, though, but that wasn’t to say that some physical cleansing wasn’t good for the soul. Riv carefully held out his shirt one-handed, the other staying still at his side. “Here, wash up. You’ll feel better.”

There was a flash of awareness in the formerly blank eyes, almost amusement if you really wanted to stretch the imagination, and Riv felt a faint smile of his own form. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than a wash-up to make Ducks better, and it seemed like they both realized that.

The thin hand was surprisingly steady as it took the wet shirt, quick step forward, then a stumbling step back and away, shirt in hand.

Riv swiped a hand across his forehead, catching the last of the water drops from his hair, and froze at the sudden flash of fear his movement elicited, hand still half-raised. “What? What did I do?”

The five-minute discourse on why he was such a threatening figure failed to materialize, and holding back a sigh of frustration, he hunkered down on his heels and reached for his boots. “I’m not going to hit you, you know.” Glancing up, he squinted against the hazy sun. “People made it a habit of whacking you in the past?” Except that it wasn’t his hands that Ducks was staring at, it was his head.

Half self-consciously, he rubbed at his hair, already shaggy after four weeks out. “There a bug in my hair or something? I know I didn’t use some fancy shampoo, but I did at least wash it. And last time I checked, I wasn’t frightening children with my appearance.” No fathomable reason for the horrified fascination with his head that he could see, at least until Ducks pointed at the water.

“It’s not safe to drink without a clarifier tablet. Did you want to go in?”

Ducks shook his head, quick and adamant, then pointed at the water again. He threaded a hand through his own hair, and mimed bending over, looking back up at Riv expectantly.

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“I…I don’t get it. Did someone push you into the water?” He didn’t get an answer, obviously, but Ducks made the same gesture again, this time making it more evident that his head was being pushed down.

“Someone…someone held your head under water?”

He rewarded Riv with a nod and the hint of a sad smile, before touching his throat and throwing his hand away.

“And that’s when you lost your voice. Was there an injury? Did someone choke you?” He tried not to push too hard, but if he was dealing with a head injury, or even a crushed windpipe, Ducks could still be in serious danger, and he’d have to find some way to boost a scanner signal to a MedAid satellite to know how to proceed. Still, when Ducks shrugged and shook his head again, Riv wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. The lack of physical reason seemed to indicate a psychological break of some kind, and while he had the basic trauma psych training that all ReliefCorp volunteers were run through, he tried to stay as far away from messing with anyone’s head as he possibly could.

“Do you feel okay to go on? I want to try and get us back to Rulough as soon as I can, so we can get you some help.” He pulled on his soaked shirt, warmer now that it had dried a bit, but still blessedly cool against his skin. When his head popped through the neck again, he could see that Ducks was watching him closely, lower lip caught in his teeth. After a long moment where his shaking fingers curled into the hem of his overly large shirt, he lifted the hem. Riv gasped, unable to hold back an outraged cry at the swath of burn scars, still fresh enough to be pink and shiny, where they were healing at all. Near the edges of the wounds it was obvious that they’d become infected, even to Riv’s limited range of medical knowledge.

“I have some burn cream and antibiotics back in the hopper. I’ll have to touch you to treat them. Can you handle that?”

The affirmative nod came without hesitation, and Riv led them back to the vehicle, pulling the hatch shut and locking it behind them. The bulletproof glass in the windows let in enough light, but he turned on the overhead strips anyway, wanting a clear look at the damage he was dealing with.

Ducks flinched away at first, then squeezed his eyes shut and sat up straighter.

“I’m sorry. Do you want a painkiller?” Riv looked back up to see what answer he was going to get, but it was obvious that Ducks had checked out of the proceedings, his face gone slack, eyes now open but distant.

“Right then,” he said, focusing on the treatment and letting any hope of further information fall by the wayside for the time being.

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A week on, and they’d settled fairly easily into each other’s company. There were long stretches of time where Ducks was present and engaging, as much as he could be without speaking or using a proper sign language. Riv did his best to keep him there, not touching, making as few sudden movements as he could, and was rewarded with a traveling companion who had a wicked sense of humor, even stifled by his lack of words. The hours when he faded away left Riv feeling the lack. Sleeping arrangements had been harder to deal with, but he’d gotten used to twisting himself up in the driver’s seat, and Ducks never seemed to crash for more than two or three hours at a time, usually woken by nightmares.

Beyond the hesitant game of charades they’d played next to the stream, Ducks had made no further effort to tell him what had gone on. Riv’d played connect the dots as a kid, making pictures out of random numbers, but there were no dots to connect here. There was nothing he could do that would make sense of this situation.

When they finally arrived in Rulough, the city was a seething mass of humanity, worse than he’d expected, filthy, crowded and hot, fear clouding the air like a black miasma. They’d had to abandon the hopper at a parking station, fighting their way through the millions of refugees filling the streets, and the tension was starting to wear on them both. Ducks was terrified, jammed against him so tightly that he could feel every ragged breath, and Riv was getting the bad feeling that a breakdown wasn’t far off. They needed to get off the street.

Directions hadn’t been easy to obtain. No one wanted to slow down enough to talk, and definitely not to someone who may or may not be part of the toppling regime. It was pure luck that he spotted the street sign, partially obscured by the effigy of someone obviously not in favor. He felt Ducks shiver at the all-too-realistic body, and using a careful hand on his shoulder, Riv hustled them both past it, trying to ignore the blood dripping onto the dusty street. Not an effigy, then.

Miraculously enough, they had the street almost to themselves, and it wasn’t until Riv squinted against the afternoon sun and spotted the roadblock that he realized why. Vehicles mostly, and some wooden barricades, smoke still leaking from the burned-out heap.

“Fuck, this can’t be a good sign.” Right, because the day had been so full of them already. Sighing, he scanned down the doors without much hope. But there, third door down in the row of shopfronts, the distinctive green cross quartered by red. The plate glass was still intact, instead of being scattered on the sidewalk like most of the rest of the street’s windows. It was more likely due to the shatterproof glass most
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relief agencies equipped their offices with, in preparation for situations such as this, rather than any respect for the group.

The door, of course, was locked. Locked and barred, and for a moment despair was a bitter flood in the back of his throat. And while Ducks waited docilely at his side, Riv rested his head against the glass with a groan.

The flash of movement was just visible through the dirty glass, and Riv quickly made a fist, wiping a spot clean and then banging.

The vague shape moved closer. “Sorry, we’re closed. You’ll have to go to the processing center.”

“No, wait! I’m with ReliefCorp, I need to talk to you.”

Interminable seconds passed as the person on the other side unlocked and slid the bars out, and Riv was clenching and unclenching his hands when the door finally opened. “Thank you. Gods, you have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

“You must really be running late. ReliefCorp pulled out a week ago, and they were sending shuttles for their volunteers in the field.” The woman smiled tiredly. “Either you really like it here or you missed the boat.” Stepping back, she held the door open. “And either way, you should probably come in off the street. It hasn’t exactly been safe recently.”

“Yeah, I got that impression, people hanging from the light posts and all.” He drew a deep breath, relief almost making him lightheaded. “But this isn’t about me. I have a friend here who really needs some help.” Riv reached behind him, pulling Ducks forward.

Her gasp brought him up short, and he found himself glancing wildly over his shoulder, certain someone was coming up behind them.

“Pryce! Oh my God, we thought… We were told—” She caught herself, smile huge. “But here you are.”