“Perhaps you should ask me,” she said, oh so quietly, “the woman you hung from chains in a room filled with men ready to rape and sodomize me at your bidding. I could tell you what unfair is like.”
Shell looked away at the ground, unable to face her any longer.
“Ghost Wind,” Horace walked up and looked at their captive with contempt. “You gonna put one in his brainpan, or will ya be a sweetheart and let me do it for ya?”
“Well, that would be quick for him, wouldn’t it?” she said. “Oh no Horace, I have plans for Mr. Shell. None of them involve quick.”
****
The elderly bio-diesel truck moved slowly up the old logging road.
They were high in the Cascades now, on a road that had been graveled and oiled years ago, somewhat retarding the number of small trees in the way. The huge tires rolled over the smaller ones and the larger trees were far enough apart to weave around.
“You sure you want to do this?” Eli asked.
“Yes. Sure.” Ghost Wind’s answer was terse.
They sat on opposite sides of the open back of the big truck, Shell and his wheelchair, tied to the truck with extensive rope-work, sat between them.
“What are you going to do to me?” Shell whined. “You can’t just take me out and execute me like a mad dog! It’s inhuman. Your soul will suffer, I promise you!”
He’d been going on in this vein for approximately the last hour. Eli and Ghost Wind ignored him.
“I got no problem with shootin’ him. It’s not like there’s a judge and jury here. I do however, have a problem with sitting there and torturing the man, human vermin that he is.” Eli looked very pointedly at Shell as he said this.
“I have skills! I CAN be useful!” the man began lightly crying.
“I don’t intend that you, myself, or Horace will lay a hand upon him,” Ghost Wind said. She banged on the back of the truck’s cab and the big diesel came to a stop. She jumped down from the back and walked up to where Horace sat in the driver seat, Kita next to him on the passenger side. Horace rolled down the window.
“Well, miss! This where you want to give the old boy a new hole in his head?”
Ghost Wind looked up the road. “There’s a wide spot just ahead where you can turn the truck around. Eli can help me get him down.”
Eli didn’t really need her help to get Shell from the truck. Once untied, Shell’s chair with Shell in it, seemed to be no more trouble than the fusion cycle he had carried earlier. Less in fact. Once on the ground, he began to push, but Ghost Wind gently elbowed him out of the way.
“I’ll do this.” she told him.
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
“Come if you wish, but I will do this deed.”
Eli looked at her grim countenance, beautiful even with its huge scar and relented. As much trouble as Shell had caused the people here, none of them could hold a candle to what Ghost Wind had been through, even before she came here. He nodded and walked beside her as she wheeled the chair up the rough surface of the old road. He didn’t try to assist when the going became difficult and simply walked on, listening to Shell try to bargain for his life.
“Now look, you two, be reasonable,” Shell whined. “I know we’ve had our differences, but this was a simple case of
conflicting visions of what could be. I wanted to unify this region under one government, much like the old republic, but you can’t make the ol’ omelet without breaking eggs.”
“Godamighty,” Eli laughed, “That stale analogy has been used for more fucking atrocities than any other in the history of man. Shell, just be honest, you were the king of assholes, man. This is Karma, Your Royal Highness, and Karma likes to eat the arrogant. Shut up and take your medicine like a man.”
“You do not understand what you’re throwing away here, Eli. I have a lot to offer you people! I’m a skilled tactician and planner! I can manage people! I have a lot of Beforetime knowledge that will be fucking LOST if you do this! All I want in return is a place to live and people to help me get along. I’m not asking for much. PLEASE! See reason!”
“Not my call, man,” Eli said, looking at Ghost Wind. Her face was a stony mask and Eli was glad he wasn’t her enemy at that moment.
She stopped, then walked a little ways farther, leaving Shell and Eli to wait. She kneeled, looking at something in the road. She nodded with seeming satisfaction then walked back. Pushing their enemy again, she moved toward what looked like a wide turnout in the old road. As they advanced, Eli looked at what she had kneeled to see. A grim smile came to his face.
“This is the spot,” she said. “This will do.”
She had pushed Shell near the edge of the slope. The view over the valley below was stunningly beautiful. She stood looking out at the view, but Shell could only watch her, trembling.
“Please, you can’t just dump me down this hill like trash. It’s inhuman!”
“I have no intention of doing so,” she said, still admiring the vista before her.
“Well, if you’re going to shoot me goddamn it, just get it over with!”
“Not that either. Nor knife, nor fist, nor club.” Ghost Wind heard something up the hill behind her and turned to look. Eli saw some birds fly up from the brush up there and when he looked back at the wolf woman, she had a small, slightly satisfied smile on her face.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Eli might have argued earlier, but just nodded. Shell watched them walk away.
“You’re just leaving me here!?” he yelled.
“Remember the lesson of Karma,” Eli yelled over his shoulder. “Or simple cause and effect. You caused this, and this is the effect. Goodbye Shell.”
****
Darwin Shell, former leader of the Road Sharks, looked out over the valley and wondered what the hell had just happened. He had no illusions that this was supposed to be mercy, being left out here to freeze to death, but Darwin Fucking Shell did not intend to go out like that.
He laboriously turned the wheelchair and pushed himself down the road. After about twenty yards, he was breathing hard and the part of his lower back he could still feel throbbed. Surviving this might be harder than he thought. If this had been the Beforetime, he’d still be in a hospital bed and maybe have a chance of at least a partial recovery.
He really hated this new age.
“Don’t know what I’m gonna do when I get to the bottom of this road, but I sure as shit don’t want to die out here in the ass-end of nowhere.”
He passed over what Ghost Wind had seen on the ground without noticing. This wasn’t surprising. Shell was the kind of man who noticed if his potato didn’t have enough butter or if his home brew was too warm. He wasn’t the sort of man to take much interest in marks on the ground.
He’d been hearing small birds nearby, but didn’t really notice their song until it stopped completely. He ceased straining at the wheels of his chair for a moment, and looked around. He, of course, saw nothing. Nonetheless, he instinctively knew something wasn’t right. He tried to ignore it.
“They think they can just leave me to die of the cold out here, well Mama Shell’s little boy won’t be going down without a fight. Who knows, I get to the main road, and find someone who’ll take pity on a man in a wheelchair. Might take me south, maybe to Nevada!”
He knew this was unlikely, in this age of wide open spaces with few people. You could go for days, weeks even and not see another person but Shell had to hang his hope somewhere.
“Goddamn it, I AM going to make it, and Axyl, and that bitch will be damn sorry when I do!”
It was as he pushed over a particularly stubborn hump that he heard growling behind him.
Shell’s bladder, none to steady since his injury, emptied and he smelled the pee that ran down his leg.
The growling grew louder and he heard a twig break a short way behind his chair. He stared straight ahead, frozen. He was too afraid to look over his shoulder.
When the impact came, it was over much more quickly than his enemies might have liked.
****
As they rode back down the hill in the truck, Eli looked over at Ghost Wind’s stoic face.
“I guess he thought you were being merciful.”
She looked away and grimaced. “I gave him all the mercy he deserved.”
“I saw the tracks.”
Ghost Wind returned Eli’s stare. “He had to be punished, and her tracks said she was getting old. Probably having difficulty making her kills. I was just going to leave him to die alone in the cold, but two birds, one stone.”
“Death by big cat?”
“No less than he deserved.” Ghost Wind looked back over the passing landscape, and her thoughts for the rest of the trip were her own.
The next day started with a cool spring morning. Ghost Wind stood on the small plateau were her shelter had been built a couple of days before and looked out over the incredibly beautiful sunrise view. She had spent the last two nights alone, asking Eli to drop her off near where she had originally been captured, so she could just sit and think for a while.
In the past week, she had killed several men (though she felt she was using the term
men
quite loosely) and the thought weighed on her. Without empathy, those men destroyed others and she did not want to walk that path. She didn’t want to be one who killed without remorse, to truly walk into darkness. She had no sympathy for the Road Sharks; she just didn’t want to become one.
“It had to be done, Go-Go. If the Road Sharks hadn’t been broken, they would have continued to grow like a cancer in this area.” She told her small companion.
She packed everything including the stuffed bear, broke down her camp and spent time making all traces of her having been there disappear.
It was time to go.
****
At mid-afternoon she walked up on the concrete building at the old hatchery, and a slight whiff of smoke told her the hibachi was going.
“Hello the house!” she called out, mindful of the appropriate way to approach these things. “This is the entire Road Shark gang. Permission to pass?”
She felt a tug of happiness when Kenji walked out and saw her. He broke into a quick run, dashing up to give her a quick hug, then fell back a little, embarrassed at his own audacity.
“Ghost Wind! You finally came! Eli told me to watch carefully for you and he told me you’re coming to live with us. It’s AWESOME!” Kenji sang the last word and started a little dance, obviously of his own design. It took every resource
Ghost Wind had not to start laughing.
“It seems that I am, Kenji. The thought of it makes me happy too.”
“This is so great! Here, let me escort you to the village.”
Ghost Wind simply looked at him.
“I know I’m on lookout, but you all trashed the Road Sharks, so being on lookout isn’t as important…”
She continued to look at him.
“Oh. Well… I suppose I probably shouldn’t leave my post anyway….” He said, disappointment in his voice.
“I’ll see you when your shift is done Kenji.” She patted him on the shoulder.
“Or sooner, if they kick me out again.”
“They won’t do that!”
Ghost Wind grinned and continued up the path to Yama No Matsu. Then she stopped, went back and kissed him on the cheek. Kenji blushed.
As she came to the main “street,” she realized everyone was looking at her. Ghost Wind halted for a moment, ready to turn and bolt for the nearby forest, when she saw that many of them were smiling. Many walked up to her, saying variations of “welcome” and she soon found herself overwhelmed by names, handshakes and attempted conversations about the village. She was surrounded by more people than she had seen in many a year.
“People, people!” Eli pushed through the crowd. “She’s new, she’s a forest elf, not a schmoozer. Let’s give her a little time to adjust and get used to us before we rush her en mass.”
“Sorry ‘bout that.” Eli led her away from the group. “Everyone has heard about your part in subduing the Sharks and they’re stoked to meet you.”
“I…” she said dazed, “I just did what needed to be done. There’s no need to treat me like some sort of hero.”
“So said by the most heroic, usually.” Eli smiled that big smile at her. “I want to show you your new digs. Kita’s going to meet us there.”
“Digs?”
“We had just built a new cabin for the Sheffields. It’s kinda small but it has a stove and some solar.” Eli grew quiet for a moment. “The Sheffields are moving into Mort’s cabin. It’s larger, and Mort was a bachelor with no kin. So, we have a cabin ready for you, and as a bonus, it backs up to the forest.”
When they reached the cabin, she saw it was small, around six hundred square feet, but for someone who had never had a house of their own, it was a palace. It was new log construction with a slightly rusty aluminum roof and covered front porch. On the porch sat a rustic newly-made wooden bench, built with an angled backrest. A steel bucket sat to one side.
“That bucket is for hauling water,” Eli told her. “We need to scrounge some more Ultraflex pipe before we can get something running from the creek system we’re using. Sorry ‘bout that.”
“I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. It’s… wonderful!”
“Good. I felt a little bad we hadn’t gotten that done for you. Lack of materials…” Eli opened the cabin’s rough-hewn plank door for her.
There was furniture inside, obviously handmade also. The bed was wooden framed with a grid work of leather straps taking the place of a mattress. There was a table and two chairs that looked to have been Beforetime products and a squat wood stove sat on bricks in one corner. Next to a slightly worse for wear loveseat, she saw the wonder of wonders, a handmade bookshelf. It was almost half full of books.
“The books,” Eli said, noting the stars in her eyes as she looked at it, “were donated by the townsfolk. I told them about your taking the books from the farmhouse, and they stepped up to the plate and helped start your library.”