The Three Most Wanted (16 page)

I heard them coming back, but couldn’t seem to stop.

“
Margo
... Margo, are you hurt?” Bane’s steps approached quickly and his arm wrapped around me.

“Not hurt, I’m not hurt,” I sniffed. “Just being silly.”

“Oh, Margo.” His other arm wrapped around me as well, enfolding me in warm, safe
Bane
. “Not being silly. You hate bears. Of course you were scared. You were so brave.”

“Poor Margo.” Jon’s hand stroked my hair. “You didn’t get to stay up a tree, did you?”

With my pack around me again, I began to get hold of myself. “You sweetie-pie, Jon. I know you really want to say for pity’s sake, Margo, stop sniveling so we can eat.”

“That too,” he grinned.

Eat we did. We speared the pieces of venison on the fork-spoons and gnawed at them like the wolves we’d stolen them from.

“If I live to be a hundred and fifty,” sighed Jon, three venison strips later, “I will never eat a more delicious meal.”

“S’gorgeous,” I managed around a mouthful.

“Divine,” said Bane, barely pausing his chewing.

We washed it down with weak nettle tea as the clouds drifted slowly away across the night sky. Bane propped his back against a tree and slipped his un-clawed arm around me as we sat gazing at the now moon-drenched clearing. Jon put his head in my lap and lay staring up as though he could sense the brilliant stars above us. Bane was so used to me doing double-duty as a pillow he didn’t even twitch.

“We’re going to make it,” he said softly. “Am I allowed to say it?”

“Fire away,” said Jon sleepily.

“Course you are,” I said. “Seems pretty likely, at least to Lausanne. Vatican State...
maybe
...”
Please, Lord?

“Wonder if Anne’s still there?” said Jon.

I blinked. “Who’s Anne?”

Bane shot me a look as if to say, you shared a bunk with this guy for four months and you have to ask
that?

Jon just said, “My sister.”

I blinked again. “Isn’t she... dead?”

“Isn’t your brother Kyle
dead?”

“No, surely you know that...
oh
. She went to follow her vocation too?”

“Yes. Years ago. So she’s probably
not
there now, even if she made it.”

Nice to learn that his sister wasn’t—necessarily—dead, but my mind drifted quickly back to Lausanne ...Then the Alps. Italy. Vatican State. I moistened lips dry with excitement. Could we really do it?

Lausanne. Food. Danger. If the theft—well, one could not precisely say
theft
if we left money—if the
break in
was reported, we might find the EuroGov waiting for us at the passes.

“We must pick the house, or houses, very carefully,” I said, listening to Jon’s soft snores. “Check the living rooms—if only we could find one with oak wreaths...”

“Brilliant, Margo,” said Bane. “We’ll look until we find one.”

Some parents dealt with their child failing Sorting by removing all photographs, by never mentioning them again. Others did pretty much the opposite, keeping—
adding
—photos, each crowned with a little wreath of oak leaves and acorns. A small defiance of the system.

We could’ve slept where we sat, bellies full and hearts light, but before long habit and prudence—and the nip in the air—drove us into our sleeping bag.

“Thank you for the venison, Lord,” I murmured, “and for not letting us be eaten by the bear.”

“Or the wolves,” muttered Bane dryly. “Ta for the grub, I s’pose. Night, Margo.”

“Night, Bane.”

...Blackness all around... a bear snuffling in my ear! I screamed...

“
Margo
,” said the bear, sounding startled.

“Bane?
Bane
, what the hell are you doing? I thought that damned bear was back!”

“Uh, nothing. Nothing.” Sounded embarrassed. Stroking my hair or sneaking me a kiss after stoking the stove? We’d decided to try and keep it alight tonight. Probably wouldn’t normally have alarmed me.

“What’s going on?” yawned Jon.

“Nothing,” I groaned. “Just Bane doing a fine imitation of
ursus major
. Back to sleep, back to sleep.”

I settled my head on the mat and closed my eyes...

...Warm sun struck through my eyelids. Day. I opened my eyes and looked around. Everything untouched. Bane, a hot shape on one side; Jon, a warm form on the other—good, nothing had snuck up and eaten either of them. Okay, feeling a little paranoid.

Bane’s forehead was rather
too
hot, his bad arm burning. Infected, surely. He didn’t stir as I slid out. I fetched a water bottle and the first aid kit, read the back of a packet of antibiotics, then shook his shoulder.

“Another half hour...” He tried to roll over.

“You can have as long as you like. The meat will take ages to cook. But you’ve got to take one of these now, okay?”

He pushed himself up on his good arm, looking blearily at what I held. Grimaced. Okay, we all knew how important it was not to take antibiotics unnecessarily but...

“You need them, Bane. Come on, open up...”

He took the pill from me instead, popped it in and washed it down with a quick swig of water, then flopped back. “I’ll help you with the meat in a minute...”

He started snoring again.

“You do that,” I murmured, “...in your dreams. I dare say I can cope.”

I managed to construct a safe open fire according to the instructions given in the books, then two little tripods out of sticks to hold a spit. Following Bane’s marks on the trees to retrieve the meat, I skinned it rather ineptly, then fastened it to a spit and balanced it over the fire.

Midmorning by the time all was arranged and I could turn my attention to breakfast. I followed the first few of Bane’s marks back to a reasonable patch of nettles and put a pan of those to cook over the fire, with a couple of slices of venison for each of us in with it. The smell now arising made my stomach gurgle and woke Jon.

He’d rolled into the space I’d vacated and now sighed sleepy contentment. “Bane’s nice and warm.”

“Nice has nothing to do with it.”

Jon blinked and came somewhat more awake. His hand found its way to Bane’s injured arm. “Oh dear. See what you mean. Antibiotics?”

“I’ve given him the first one already.”

“’Course you have. Any of those gorgeous smells breakfast?”

“Yeah. Venison and nettle stew. It’s ready, let’s tuck in. Don’t wake Bane, he can have some later.”

Jon and I polished off the entire panful, so I made another trip to the nettles and put a new stew on for Bane, who slept on, oblivious.

“We may as well eat as much as we want,” I said. “We can more easily do the last few days to Lausanne on nettles only than on rotten meat.”

Sitting back against a tree, I took out my bookReader, which’d survived its earlier soaking in the stream—clearly not too old to be waterproof—and re-read the sections on bears to Jon.

It was just as irrelevant to people whose lives depended on their food as I remembered, and he snorted when I’d finished.

“And not one of them mentions chasing them with fire.”

“In light of the dry summers of recent decades, funny, that.”

He winced. “Yeah, I s’pose it was chancing it a bit. I’m quite sure the average hiker would be well advised to let the bear have what it liked.”

“Huh, you’ve done everything...” a drowsy voice broke in. Bane, propped on his elbow, peering around the clearing. “Sorry...”

“Don’t be silly.” I checked my watch and picked up the antibiotics. “It’s time for your next one of these, anyway.”

“Okay.” Bane slid slowly up into a sitting position as though his head ached. “Is there something to eat?”

“There’s a pan of stew for you. How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“Honestly, Bane?”

He shrugged. “Okay, a bit off. But better than this morning.”

“Good. Perhaps that pill’s working already.”

We stepped out as briskly as we could the next day, racing against the changing season, racing against our finite food supply, and racing against the search potentially fanning out from our original route to Zurich. We still collected any edible vegetation that caught our eye for the sake of the extra nutrients, but we needed speed, now, not food. But every time we heard wolves in the night we murmured thanks—even Jon.

Bane remained feverish; his step was heavy, his head clearly foggy, and he avoided using his arm as much as possible. I took over both the map and the task of driving us on. Frightening to find myself the fittest.

“Here’s your pill, here’s your water.” I passed them to Bane as we made camp well after dark three nights later. “Come on, get in the sleeping bag, don’t get cold...”

“Margo, I’m feeling heaps better.” He gulped the pill down. “Stop babying me.”

“Shall I apologize for loving you?”

“No,” he pulled me into his lap, “but you can swap the entire evening’s fussing for one big kiss right now.”

“I
could, ”
I agreed, rubbing noses with him. “I might not manage to stick to a promise not to fuss, though.”

“I’ll take the chance.” He kissed me thoroughly.

He practically had a beard now, scratchy but I didn’t care. I kissed him right back. He was warm and alive and who in their right mind would care about more than that in the one they loved?

Drawing apart, I nestled my cheek under his grubby, bristly neck. “I love you, Bane.”

“I love you too.” He kissed the scar on my forehead as though he could make it all better. As he almost could. On those mercifully few occasions I’d dreamt of my dismantling and woken, drowning in sweat and terror, I’d cuddled to him until it all drifted away again.

We remained snuggled together for the amount of time it took Jon’s stomach to overrule his manners, so probably longer than we realized.

“Sorry to interrupt, but is one of you going to cut this meat or shall I do it?” Jon was still kind of shaky and we weren’t letting him wield the knife—one sliced-up person was enough.

“Coming,” I said. “We’d better get the stove lit as well, so we don’t have any furry visitors. Bane, are you going to get in... Uh. Okay, never mind. Can I have the knife?”

I hefted the foil-wrapped haunch onto my lap and unwrapped it enough to reach the meat. Our prudent restraint on the first night had saved us from anything worse than stomach ache, and we’d been stuffing ourselves ever since. But still plenty left. The taste getting stronger, but not gone off yet.

“How many slices, you two?”

“Three again,” said Bane.

“And for...” Jon broke off, his head snapped round and he called in Esperanto, “
Who’s there
?”

Bane lunged forward, reaching for the knife...

Click.

Light blazed, swallowing the puny glow of the flashlights and fixing us like rabbits in car headlights.

***+***

12

RABBITS IN THE HEADLIGHTS

I flung up a hand to shield my eyes, heart hammering in my throat. The shadowy form of a person behind the light—just one, but... the long slender silhouette of a gun barrel pointed in our direction.

“Don’t move,” said Bane softly, in Esperanto, “it’s a shotgun. A Lethal.”

“Very good, young man.” The voice came from behind that blinding light. Some sort of high-powered hand light. “It is a shotgun. Now why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

I blinked.
What are you doing here
implied he hadn’t recognized us. My bare forehead felt horribly conspicuous. How long had the man been there and how much had he heard? “Is this private land?” No need to pretend surprise. It wasn’t marked as such on the map. “We had no intention to trespass, sir. Our map must be wrong.”

The man didn’t tell me whether it was or was not private land. Instead he demanded, “
What
is that in your lap?”

I gulped. The deer’s hoof stuck out of the wrappings.

“We didn’t kill it, sir, we found it dead.”

“You found it dead.” His voice was heavy with disbelief.

Fair enough. Most New Adults would recoil from a dead deer in horror—or try to give it a decent burial—not whip out a knife and carve it up for tea.

“Where is your tent?”

“Trust me, sir, it’s a long story,” said Bane lightly. “We’re very sorry if we’ve trespassed. We can leave right away if you want, or first thing in the morning.”

I didn’t dare look at Jon. Staring straight into that blinding light, oblivious?

The light was lowered slightly, allowing us to see a middle-aged, bearded man in rough country clothes. A dog stood quiet and obedient at his side.

“I can believe it’s a long story.” His weathered face broke into a smile. “You are without doubt the sorriest lot of New Adults I’ve seen in a long time. You’d better pick up what little you have left and come along to my cottage for the night. I’m sure I can find you something better for dinner than carrion and...” the light flicked over the heap beside the stove, “half-dead nettles. And soft beds afterwards. Come on, come on with you.” An absentminded jerk of the shotgun invited us to follow.

I looked at Bane. For all the grin and the genial tone, the gun hadn’t been lowered. Invitation or order? We didn’t want any of us getting shot; the reward was doubtless for our bodies in any condition whatsoever, provided they were identifiable.

Food... A soft bed... If he lived out here in the middle of nowhere, perhaps he didn’t even have a television... No. More likely he just hadn’t figured it out...
yet
.

“Very kind of you, sir.” Bane began unzipping the sleeping bags to put them away again. Not prepared to risk the shotgun. Well, when we reached his cottage the man would have to either put the gun down or make his intentions plain.

Casually, I put my hat back on and went to help Bane, slipping the knife to him. He slid it inside his jacket while his back was turned to our insistent host.

“What’s your name, sir?” asked Jon, perhaps to conceal the fact he didn’t help us. “I’m Jeff, that’s May, and that’s Brad.”

“I’m François. François Bernier. You’re in my old game park.”

That explained that. Deeds to old hunting estates might still be held by the owners, but the EuroGov marked them as common forest on maps. Hard to tell in the darkness, but the man must be at least sixty if he’d run this place as a game park for any length of time before the ban. Also explained how he’d come up to us without Jon hearing him, even allowing for our talking and me rustling the foil wrappings.

“Oh. I see,” said Jon, in a suitably commiserating tone.

“I doubt you do, really, at your age.” But François’s tone was still friendly. “Well, chop chop. I’ve got a stew at home, real stew with rabbit, potatoes and veggies. Plenty to go round.”

“Sounds nice,” said Jon, as Bane stuffed the deer’s leg back into his pack as surreptitiously as possible.

I fished out Jon’s stick and handed it to him. “Here you go, Jeff, you’ll need it again tonight after all.”

I helped him up to support the impression of a bad leg—hopefully it’d explain why he carried no pack. He managed the full day’s walking more easily now, but he was still so weak that we’d fended off his attempts to reclaim his share of the load.

“This way.” François turned and headed into the forest.

I led Jon after him and Bane fell in on the other side. “Should we make a run for it?” I stared at the Frenchman’s shadowy back.

“He’s still got that gun ready to fire,” Bane murmured back. “When you’re not using a shotgun like that you break it and carry it open over your arm, but he hasn’t, and the trees aren’t close enough together to provide much cover.”

“And speaking for myself,” put in Jon under his breath, “None of us are in top form for sprinting.”

Jon would surely trip and fall and get shot. We’d better go quietly. For now.

It wasn’t too long a walk. François soon dropped back to join us, and with his handheld spotlight lighting up the path ahead, we made almost as good time as in daylight. Eventually a high mass of tumbled stones rose before us—the gaunt skeleton of some ancient hunting lodge, half demolished and ivy-twined.

The light gleamed off the dew-dampened terracotta roof of the little cottage which leant against the ruin, perhaps once part of one wing. It looked in reasonable order, and no lights showed in the windows—hopefully we’d only the old hunter to worry about.

Unlocking the back door, he ushered us inside, pausing in the porch to remove his footwear. We stood in an awkward silence, pretending not to notice. I’d no wish to be parted from my walking boots. What if we had to make a run for it?

Without any comment about our rudeness, he joined us inside the house, pulled the door shut, and locked it. Turning, he caught me and Bane with our eyes on the key, and very deliberately hung it from a hook beside the back door. A fraction of tension eased from my shoulders.

Still without saying anything, François opened a long thin metal case beside the back door, and put the gun inside—ah, it was a gun cabinet!—fished a handful of cartridges from his pocket and deposited them on the top shelf, closed and locked it. This key he returned to his own pocket. Bane relaxed even more than I did. What’d he picked up on? Ah, François hadn’t unloaded the gun, so had it even been loaded in the first place?

Unless he just thought he might want it in a hurry...

We stood in a kitchen, its floor paved with stone slabs worn smooth by countless feet. The cupboards were as old as in most houses of my acquaintance, but from the solid wood they’d been expensive thirty years ago. A scrumptious savory aroma came from the old cooking range.

“Go through to the hall,” François urged. “I must make up the beds. There are only two in the spare room: will that be all right, or would one of you like the sofa?”

“Two will be ample,” said Bane quickly. He was no keener than I to sleep scattered around the house.
If
we slept here.

We stepped into the hallway—long, narrow and tiled, with a flight of stairs at the far end and the front door halfway along. After a few steps, Jon stumbled into us as Bane and I stopped dead, staring at the photo hanging immediately opposite the main door, the first thing anyone entering the house would see. A photo crowned with an oak wreath.

We both bent to peer at it in the dim light.

The same young man twice? The background gave the lie to that. Twins. Identical. My gaze lifted to the wreath. Wreaths. Two, nestled together.
Oh
...

We turned back to François, who’d followed and stood watching, his face closed.

“Your... sons?” I wouldn’t normally raise the subject uninvited, but...

François nodded. “Yes. Very unexpected. A heart defect. They both had it.”

I swallowed. Poor man. But much as I hated to prod old wounds, we had to know what we were dealing with. “That must’ve been a terrible shock for you and... their mother?”

François swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment, spoke with a certain amount of resignation. “It was. Too great. My wife put a noose around her neck not three weeks later. Now, I must make up the beds. The living room is on the right, please make yourselves comfortable...”

He waved a hand towards a doorway opposite the stairs and paused only to glance at and pocket a little portable unit from a charging base on the hall table—the alarm unit of a movement sensor, probably attached to the gates at the end of his long, long drive. An expensive but common security measure for those who lived in the middle of nowhere. Nice to know no one could sneak up on the cottage; not in a vehicle.

Once François made his escape up the stairs, Jon’s hands rose and travelled delicately across the wall until they touched the portrait. They brushed over the oak leaves and acorns and dropped again. “Ah.”

The dog followed us into the living room, and when we settled ourselves on the battered old sofa—Bane and I exchanging a look and a glance at the television in the corner—it put its head between Jon and Bane. Jon stroked its soft fur a couple of times before letting his hand rest tiredly on his knees. Bane didn’t seem to notice the dog’s appealing gaze, so I reached across to pet it. Quite a mean-looking dog, actually, but pretty tame after the wolves.

The dog moved its head to Bane’s lap—still got no response. Bane was... drooping. Taking one hand from petting his new friend, I put it to his forehead. That persistent heat still gnawed away at him.

“Are you okay, B... Brad?” I asked cautiously.

“M’fine. Thought you weren’t going to baby me tonight?”

No, but he seemed worse. Not that I’d entirely believed his protestations of being so much better, not when he was still letting me handle the map reading. No doubt back in our—as we’d thought—safe little camp in the middle of nowhere, we’d have been fed and abed by now.

“Perhaps François has something better for that shoulder.”

The dog abandoned us and ran to the door as François came back through it. “Shoulder?” His eyes settled on Bane’s torn jacket, rather more visible in this well illuminated room. “What’s up with that, lad?”

“Bear clawed it.”

“Did it, now. That what happened to you all, eh?” His broad wave encompassed our missing tent and general condition of starved desperation, also laid bare under the electric lights.

“Yes,” said Bane, just as uninformatively.

Well, we needed to change the subject anyway... I said, “Brad’s got a bit of an infection in those cuts. He’s been taking Naromil but it’s not quite healing it.”

“Dirty bear claws. Might need something stronger,” grunted François. “Come on, Jeff, shift over, and let me take a look at your friend.”

Jon’s head rose in suppressed panic and I jumped up hastily. “Oh, don’t get on that leg, Jeff. Sit here, sir...”

Bane shifted along so the older man could sit on his injured side, and reluctantly pulled off his layers. Oh... perhaps this hadn’t been such a good idea. His gaunt ribs stuck out with inescapable horribleness in this civilized setting.

François whistled. “You three
have
been through it, haven’t you? Well, let’s take a look...”

He unwrapped the dressing, which due to our limited supplies was well overdue changing, and peered at the inexpertly stitched cuts, red and inflamed and oozing pus.

“Well, it’s infected, all right. Time for the big guns—I’ve some Cortimil which should mend it fast enough. You must finish the other course as well, though.”

“Of course,” said Bane politely,
I’m not stupid
barely kept from his tone.

“Well, you can take the first one with dinner, which is ready when you are, which is now, from the look of you.” He left the room briefly and returned with a clean dressing and a box of antibiotics.

“Bear got your food, eh?” he said as he finished applying the dressing. “Better to let it have it, you know, even if you are in the middle of nowhere.”

“Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?” Bane’s tone was edged this time.

François just laughed and got to his feet, slipping the box of antibiotics into his pocket. The dog jumped up, following close at his heels. “Well, you’re not dead, so you lived to learn. Let’s eat. Oh, this is Hugo, by the way.”

Leading us through a door into a small dining room, he disappeared through another door which opened into the hall, opposite the kitchen. Reappeared almost at once with a stack of four plates; glanced at Jon’s arm in mine. “If... er... Jeff... wishes to use his stick inside, I’ve no objection. I’ll try not to leave anything lying around.”

Jon’s arm stiffened in mine. François
did
know who we were. Of course he did! If he’d found three genuine hikers in our condition—certainly once he’d seen the state of Bane—skeleton thin, oozing wounds—he’d put all three of us in the old truck parked outside and drive us straight to the hospital, even if it were many kilometers away. But with us? Not a word of it. Just pills and dinner.