Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (32 page)

“Y’all right, Ben?” he asks, putting a hand under my armpit to help me up but even with that I can’t barely stand nor even raise my head much and so I feel his other hand under my other armpit. That don’t work neither so he goes even further than that and lifts me over his shoulder. I stare down at the back of his legs as he carries me to his cart.

“Hoo is it, Wilf?” I hear a woman’s voice ask.

“’s Ben,” Wilf says. “Lookin poorly.”

Next thing I know he’s setting me down on the back of his cart. It’s piled rag-tag with parcels and boxes covered in leather skins, bits of furniture and large baskets, all tumbled together, almost overflowing with itself.

“It’s too late,” I say. “It’s over.”

The woman’s walked over the back of the cart from the seat and hops down to face me. She’s broad with a worn dress and flyaway hair and lines at the corners of her eyes and her voice is quick, like a mouse. “What’s over, young’un?”

“She’s gone.” I feel my chin crumpling and my throat pulling. “I lost her.”

I feel a cool hand on my forehead and it feels so good I press into it. She takes it away and says, “Fever,” to Wilf.

“Yup,” Wilf says.

“Best make a poultice,” the woman says and I think she heads off into the ditch but that don’t make no sense.

“Where’s Hildy, Ben?” Wilf says, trying to get his eyes to meet mine. Mine are so watery it’s hard to even see him.

“Her name ain’t Hildy,” I say.

“Ah know,” Wilf says, “but at’s whatcha call her.”

“She’s gone,” I say, my eyes filling. My head falls forward again. I feel Wilf put a hand on my shoulder and he squeezes it.

“Todd?” I hear Manchee bark, unsure, a ways off the road.

“I ain’t called Ben,” I say to Wilf, still not looking up.

“Ah know,” Wilf says again. “But at’s what we’re callin ya.”

I look up to him. His face and his Noise are as blank as I remember but the lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man’s mind ain’t knowing the man.

Wilf don’t say nothing more and goes back to the front of the cart. The woman comes back with a seriously foul-smelling rag in her hands. It stinks of roots and mud and ugly herbs but I’m so tired I let her tie it round my forehead, right over the bandage that’s still stuck on the side of my head.

“At should work onna fever,” she says, hopping back up. We both lurch forward a little bit as Wilf snaps the rein on his oxes. The woman’s eyes are wide open, looking into mine like searching for exciting news. “Yoo runnin from the army, too?”

Her quiet next to me reminds me so much of Viola it’s all I can do not to just lean against her. “Kinda,” I say.

“Yoo’s what told Wilf about it, huh?” she says. “Yoo’s and a girl told Wilf bout the army, told him to tell people, tell people they had to gettaway, dincha?”

I look up at her, smelly brown root water dripping down my face, and I turn back to look at Wilf, up there driving his cart. He hears me looking. “They lissened to Wilf,” he says.

I look up and past him to the road ahead. As we go round a bend, I can hear not only the rush of the river to my right again, like an old friend, an old foe, I can see a line of carts stretching on up ahead of us on the road at least as far as the next bend, carts packed with belongings just like Wilf’s and all kindsa people straggled along the tops, holding on to anything that won’t knock ’em off.

It’s a caravan. Wilf is taking the rear of a long caravan. Men and women and I think even children, too, if I can see clearly thru the stink of the thing tied round my head, their Noise and silence floating up and back like a great, clattery thing all its own.

Army
I hear a lot.
Army
and
army
and
army
.

And
cursed town
.

“Brockley Falls?” I ask.

“Bar Vista, too,” the woman says, nodding her head fast. “And others. Rumour’s been flyin up the river and road. Army from cursed town comin and comin, growin as it comes, with men pickin up arms to join in.”

Growing as it comes,
I think.

“Thousands strong, they say,” says the woman.

Wilf makes a scoffing sound. “Ain’t no thousand people ’tween here and cursed town.”

The woman twists her lips. “Ah’m only sayin what people are sayin.”

I look back at the empty road behind us, Manchee panting along a little distance away, and I remember Ivan, the man in the barn at Farbranch, who told me that not everyone felt the same about history, that Pren– that my town had allies still. Maybe not thousands, but still maybe growing. Getting bigger and bigger as it marches on till it’s so big how can anyone stand against it?

“We’re going to Haven,” the woman says. “They’ll pruhtekt us there.”

“Haven,” I mumble to myself.

“Say they even got a cure for Noise in them there parts,” the woman says. “Now there’s a thing Ah’d like to see.” She laughs out loud at herself. “Or
hear,
Ah guess.” She slaps her thigh.

“They got Spackle there?” I ask.

The woman turns to me surprised. “Spackle don’t come near people,” she says. “Not no more, not since the war. They’s keep to theirselves and we’s keep to ourselves and such is the peace kept.” It sounds like she’s reciting the last part. “Tain’t hardly none left anyway.”

“I gotta go.” I put my hands down and try to lift myself up. “I gotta find her.”

All that happens is that I lose my balance and fall off the end of the cart. The woman calls to Wilf to stop and they both lift me back up on it, the woman getting Manchee up top, too. She clears a few boxes away to lay me down and Wilf gets the cart going again. He snaps the oxes a bit harder this time and I can feel us moving along faster – faster than I could walk at least.

“Eat,” the woman says, holding up some bread to my face. “Yoo can’t go nowhere till yoo eat.”

I take the bread from her and eat a bite, then tear into the rest so hungrily I forget to give some to Manchee. The woman just takes out some more and gives some to both of us, watching wide-eyed at every move I make.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Ah’m Jane,” she says. Her eyes are still way open, like she’s just bursting to say stuff. “Didja see the army?” she asks. “With yer own eyes?”

“I did,” I say. “In Farbranch.”

She sucks in her breath. “So it’s true.” Not an asking, just saying it.

“
Told
yoo it were true,” Wilf says from up front.

“Ah hear they’re cuttin off people’s heads and boilin their eyes,” Jane says.

“Jane!” Wilf snaps.

“Ah’m just
sayin
.”

“They’re killing folk,” I say, low. “Killing’s enough.”

Jane’s eyes dart all over my face and Noise but all she says after a bit is, “Wilf told me all bout yoo,” and I can’t figure out at all what her smile means.

A drip from the rag makes it to my mouth and I gag and spit and cough some more. “What
is
this?” I say, pressing the rag with my fingers and wincing from the smell.

“Poultice,” Jane says. “For fevers and ague.”

“It
stinks
.”

“Evil smell draws out evil fever,” she says, as if telling me a lesson everyone knows.

“Evil?” I say. “Fever ain’t evil. It’s
fever
.”

“Yeah, and this poultice treats fever.”

I stare at her. Her eyes never leave me and the wide open part of them is starting to make me uncomfortable. It’s how Aaron looks when he’s pinning you down, how he looks when he’s imparting a sermon with his fists, when he’s preaching you into a hole you might never come out of.

It’s a mad look, I realize.

I try to check the thought but Jane don’t give no sign she heard.

“I gotta go,” I say again. “Thank you kindly for the food and the poultry but I gotta go.”

“Yoo can’t go off in these woods here, nosirree,” she says, still staring, still not blinking. “Them’s dangerous woods, them is.”

“What do you mean, dangerous?” I push myself away from her a little.

“Settlements up the way,” she says, her eyes even wider and a smile now, like she can’t wait to tell me. “Crazy as anything. Noise sent ’em wild. Hear tell of one where everyone wears masks so’s no one kin see their faces. There’s another where no one don’t do nothing but sing all day long they gone so crazy. And one where everyone’s walls are made a glass and no one wears no clothes cuz no one’s got secrets in Noise, do they?”

She’s closer to me now. I can smell her breath, which is worse than the rag, and I feel the silence behind all these words. How can that be so? How can silence contain so much racket?

“People can keep secrets in Noise,” I say. “People can keep all kindsa secrets.”

“Leave a boy alone,” Wilf says from his seat.

Jane’s face goes slack. “Sorry,” she says, a little grudgingly.

I raise up a little, feeling the benefit of food in my belly whatever the stinking rag may or may not be doing.

We’ve pulled closer to the rest of the caravan, close enough for me to see the backs of a few heads and hear more closely the Noise of men chattering up and down and the silence of women twixt them, like stones in a creek.

Every now and then one of them, usually a man, glances back at us, and I feel like they’re seeking me out, seeing what I’m made of.

“I need to find her,” I say.

“Yer girl?” Jane asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Thank you, but I need to go.”

“But yer fever! And the other settlements!”

“I’ll take my chances.” I untie the dirty rag. “C’mon, Manchee.”

“Yoo can’t go,” Jane says, eyes wider than ever, worry on her face. “The army–”

“I’ll worry about the army.” I pull myself up, readying to jump down off the cart. I’m still pretty unsteady so I have to take a cloudy breath or two before I do anything.

“But they’ll get yoo!” Jane says, her voice rising. “Yer from Prentisstown–”

I look up, sharp.

Jane slaps a hand over her mouth.

“Wife!”
Wilf yells, turning his head round from the front of the cart.

“Ah didn’t mean it,” she whispers to me.

But it’s too late. Already the word is bouncing up and down the caravan in a way that’s become too familiar, not just the word, but what pins it to me, what everyone knows or thinks they know about me, already faces turning about to look deeper at the last cart in the caravan, oxes and horses drawing to a stop as people turn more fully to examine us.

Faces and Noise aimed right back down the road at us.

“Who yoo got back there, Wilf?” a man’s voice says from just one cart up.

“Feverish boy,” Wilf shouts back. “Crazy with sickness. Don’t know what he’s sayin.”

“Yoo entirely sure about that?”

“Yessir,” Wilf says. “Sick boy.”

“Bring him out,” a woman’s voice calls. “Let’s see him.”

“What if he’s a spy?” another woman’s voice calls, rising in pitch. “Leadin the army right to us?”

“We don’t want no spies!” cries a different man.

“He’s Ben,” Wilf says. “He’s from Farbranch. Got nightmares of cursed town army killin what he loves. I vouch for him.”

No one shouts nothing for a minute but the Noise of the men buzzes in the air like a swarm. Everyone’s face is still on us. I try to make my own look more feverish and put the invasion of Farbranch first and foremost. It ain’t hard and it makes my heart sick.

And there’s a long moment where nobody says nothing and it’s as loud as a screaming crowd.

And then it’s enough.

Slowly but slowly the oxes and horses start moving forward again, pulling away from us, people still looking back but at least getting farther away. Wilf snaps the reins on his oxes but keeps them slower than the rest, letting a distance open between us and everyone else.

“Ah’m
sorry,
” Jane says again, breathless. “Wilf told me not to say. He told me but–”

“That’s okay,” I say, just wanting her to stop talking already.

“Ah’m so so sorry.”

There’s a lurch and Wilf’s stopped the cart. He waits till the caravan’s off a good distance then hops down and comes back.

“No one lissens to Wilf,” he says, maybe with a small smile. “But when they do, they believe him.”

“I need to go,” I say.

“Yup,” he says. “T’ain’t safe.”

“Ah’m sorry,” Jane keeps saying.

I jump off the cart, Manchee following me. Wilf reaches for Viola’s bag and holds it open. He looks at Jane, who understands him. She takes an armful of fruits and breads and puts them in the bag, then another armful of dried meats.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Hope yoo find her,” Wilf says as I close the bag.

“I hope so, too.”

With a nod, Wilf goes and reseats himself on the cart and snaps the reins on his oxes.

“Be careful,” Jane calls after me, in the loudest whisper you ever heard. “Watch out for the crazies.”

I stand for a minute and watch ’em pull away, coughing still, feverish still, but feeling better for the food if not the smell of roots and I’m hoping Manchee can find the trail again and I’m also wondering just exactly what kinda welcome I’m gonna get if I ever do get to Haven.

It takes a little while, a horrible little while, for Manchee to find the scent again once we’re back in the woods but then he barks, “This way,” and we’re off again.