Edge of Mercy (Young Adult Dystopian)(Volume 1) (The Mercy Series) (7 page)

“You’re too serious, Charlie.”

I hadn’t always been so somber, but now I was almost as grave as Thomas.
Almost.
But not quite.
“Not as serious as your cousin.”

“That doofus? Not many are.”

My stupor faded as we trudged along. And the thought occurred to me, maybe Zeke wasn’t serious enough. Too reckless, just like Thomas said.

“You want to hear a joke?”

Over the past months I’d heard several of Zeke’s jokes, some of them twice or more, but starting the day with a joke helped ease the dread when so few breaks would lighten it. And, right now, I needed the tension to dissolve. I still couldn’t believe Zeke’s near-sacrifice.

“Alright, but I’ve probably already heard it.”

“No, I overheard this one just yesterday from some of the older men.”

I rolled my eyes and rubbed my hand over my newly shaven head. One of the necessary tasks to continue my disguise here was frequent haircuts. I never allowed my hair to grow more than an inch before I had one of the men shave it. I still hadn’t figured out how to respond when they asked whether I wanted to shave my face. Soon, someone would notice I didn’t have whiskers, but I’d worry about that when the time came.

“Okay, did you hear about the Draghoul who had an eye for the ladies?”

I shook my head slowly. My gaze lifted to the trees, a feeling that we were crossing a line came over me. Could you joke about Draghoul?

“He kept it in his back pocket.” He laughed low, his eyes shining with humor.

It was an awful joke, gross and insensitive, but I felt the tension leak out of my muscles. A boy would no doubt laugh, even at such a terrible joke, and would probably have one even worse to tell. Would I give myself away if I reacted like I wanted? I smiled and gave a short laugh that sounded forced to my ears, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Apparently it was the right reaction because he slapped me on the back and scrubbed his hand over my shaved head. “See, it feels good to laugh. You should do it more often, instead of always looking like the world’s ended or something.”

This time I did give a strained laugh, but he grinned and ran off toward the fields.

The thing Zeke didn’t understand is that I wanted to be able to laugh and forget that the world as I knew it ended, but each day there were reminders that we lived in a world of pure danger. One false move and I could lose everything, he could lose everything. It had happened before, so I had no doubt it could happen again.

Today was unusually hot for this time of year, not that we knew the exact date, the records kept were more seasonal than daily now, but work in the fields never changed, only the weather did. So, we pressed on, until the coming harvest, which we were quickly reaching, if the height of the plants was any indication. The corn stalks waved taller than Thomas or Zeke, and the rest of the plants hung full and close to being plucked and stored for a long, long winter. Before the Draghoul came, I never really knew where the food I ate came from. I was young, but I remember going to a grocery store with other people and my mother pushing around a wheeled cart filling it up with fresh produce, packaged meats, and boxes and boxes of so many items. Man, I missed potato chips and chocolate chip cookies. So much of my world I’d assumed would always be there.

I tried not to dwell on younger days because it reminded me of all I’d lost, and what was the good in that? What was the good in remembering a time I took for granted? It only made me angry and frustrated. After all, I was powerless to change my situation. It was better to focus on what I had control over now. The fact Star and I had food and shelter through the winter is all that mattered right here, right now.

Throughout the morning, I worked by Zeke’s side, using my hoe to dig out the weeds that had sprouted over the previous rainy days. My back ached and sweat dripped down my forehead and temples, but Zeke entertained with stories and jokes, so I hardly noticed what miserable work we did.

We took a break around mid-morning for water brought in large, orange buckets. Around mid-day we took another for a brief lunch of bread and a little treat of goat cheese.

My mind turned to more serious things as we sat chewing and drinking, and I wondered about the one thing Zeke took very seriously. “How’s your father?”

He hesitated before taking another drink, looking toward the forest like he watched something in the empty branches of the trees. “Same as before. Shut up in his room, refusing to leave. He eats a little when I bring him something, but his health isn’t good.”

“Sorry.” And I really was. I knew what it was like to lose a father, but I couldn’t imagine having a father who was completely alive but refused to live.

His shoulders lifted briefly. “He hasn’t been the same since last October. I’m pretty sure he’ll never be the same.” The details of October were never discussed. I honestly didn’t know what happened. All I knew, just the mere mention of it caused everyone to hang their heads and act all mopey and depressed, so I stopped asking about it after a while. Seemed like another one of those things on which no one would ever elaborate, so I quit prying.

As we got back to work, I noticed Zeke and I’d pushed ourselves almost to the end of a row of beans, which sprouted on the outer edge, close to the forest. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I hated the forest so much and dreaded getting near it. Thankfully, I’d only had to make one quick, lone visit inside today. I wouldn’t have to worry about girl stuff again for a little while.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as we got closer to the edge, but I couldn’t help but watch the dark, crowded trees. I got a feeling we weren’t alone, but as usual the forest was completely quiet. Nothing moved or made a sound. Perhaps, there wasn’t a single
living
thing left in the forest. Maybe a few insects like the ants and worms I saw crawling through the fields. They went about digging and marching in their own little realm, oblivious to the changes in human reality, and I envied them. My own existence before the infection felt like someone else’s life. I wished I could get back there. I wished none of this had happened. What if we really were the last people on earth? What if no one else in the world survived?

I shook my head and returned to work.
Don’t think like that.
That was a sure way to spiral into a tailspin of despair, which would only lead to Star having no family to watch out for her because if anything happened to me, I wasn’t sure they would continue to protect my baby sister. Why would they? She’d just be another mouth to feed with no contribution on her part. No, I had to avoid that line of thinking. I had to focus on the pieces of life I had some influence over. Only think about what I could control here and now. Here and now.

I snapped my head up hard. I’d heard a sharp break of a twig just inside the trees. There was nothing living left in the forest, so my mind automatically thought of the only other possibility—Draghoul. Why would they be out in sunlight though?

A quick glance at the sky and I was reassured that the heat I felt on my skin was a bright, hot sun that the Draghoul wouldn’t dare venture into. Not when the sun was detrimental to their survival.

A Draghoul was already dead, at least in the mind. Though his or her body continued to function, they weren’t the same as when they’d lived. You had to kill them again by removing their head or in some way destroying the brain. It was called re-killing them, and they were described as re-dead or re-killed. Then, it was best to burn them.

I’d seen re-dead ones lying in the sunlight after their heads had been chopped off. In the sun, their skin melted from their bones like wax from a candle, seeming to speed up the decomposition process until there was little left besides bones and what little clothes they’d retained on their bodies. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

I turned my head back toward the forest as I heard another snap. Zeke looked up this time. “Did you hear that?”

I nodded.

He stepped out of the field and toward the tree line, and I grabbed at the back of his shirt. If it were Draghoul, and they’d somehow found a way to come out into the sunlight, we should warn the others, not go chasing after them ourselves. It could be a trap.

“Where are you going?

“There’s someone in there.”

“What if it’s a Draghoul?”

His expression when he turned wasn’t entirely dismissive of the idea. He’d obviously thought the same, at least for a moment, but he shook his head and continued toward the tree line.

“Can’t be Draghoul. The sun’s out.”

I snagged his shirt again. “But if you don’t know what it is, let’s get a few others. I don’t want to go in there, just the two of us.”

He waved his hand at me, his way of dismissing my concerns.

“Come on. You’re as much a baby as your sister. It’s probably just Thomas or somebody, playing a trick.”

He could be right. That sounded more logical than a group of bloodthirsty Draghoul out in the daytime, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced going in alone was the right thing to do. I’d made up my mind, I wasn’t going in, no matter what.

“Thomas doesn’t play pranks, and the guys who do are all working. I can see them.”

“Yeah, well, I’m telling you, I heard something, and I’m going to see what it was.”

He charged through the tree line, into the forest, and despite my resolve, I stepped in after him. We headed straight at first, but heard a sound to our right, turned, and began to pace quickly in that direction. After a few moments, I began to lose my nerve and turned back to make sure I could still see the field behind us. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the movement of a shadow, racing through the trees, running in the opposite direction. Without thinking, I rushed forward with a small squeak and crashed into Zeke’s back, clinging in desperation to his large frame.

“What the…”

He turned and scraped me off his back, setting me away as I worked to scramble back to him.

“Charlie, calm down, son. It was probably just a critter of some sort. Maybe we’ll find more meat.”

I shook my head up and down vigorously but kept throwing glances over my shoulders, sure whoever or whatever I saw would sneak up and attack at any moment.

“Sorry. I saw someone or something running back there. Got scared.”

My breath came too quickly into my lungs, and I began to cough to try to get it even again.

Zeke pounded my back a few times, probably cracked a rib or two, but I got myself under control enough to say, “Can we, please, get out of here?”

His mouth twisted into a grim expression, but he seemed to relent. “Come on, mousie. Let’s get you back to the field before you piss your pants.”

We turned and began to walk back toward the field, when out of the brush, stepped an elderly woman, thin as the pines around us, trudging wearily, wearing a dingy, mud-stained pair of jeans and a possibly once-blue sweatshirt with large lettering on the front. She had her head down, a mass of gray hair, full of twigs and grass, covering her face. She wasn’t making a noise, but I could tell by the heaves of her body as she hugged her arms around her mid-section, she was crying as silently as she could.

Both still as the trees around us, neither Zeke nor I made a noise to alert her to our presence. If she was newly infected, it was possible she was turning and might attack the closest living thing in range. All it would take was a scratch, and we’d be Draghoul-bound.

I began to inch back toward the field and pulled on Zeke’s arm, hoping he’d follow. Instead, he took a step toward her.

“Hello. Can we help you?”

Her head turned with a slow precision, as if she couldn’t quite believe someone had spoken here. She stared at us for what seemed like ages, and then began sprinting toward us at a hobbled, but speedy pace.

“Oh, thank goodness. You’re alive, aren’t you? Real, living people?”

My legs cramped with a need to run away, but something about her made me stay, even as I saw Zeke reach for a whip-like branch lying on the ground to his right.

She stopped a few feet from us, a grin stretched across her wrinkled cheeks. “I didn’t think I’d ever find another living soul. Are you two alone, or do you have a family?”

“We live nearby in a fortified building that used to be a hospital.”

I wanted to kick Zeke for revealing so much information. I still thought about that shadow. This woman was too frail to run through the forest. Surely, she couldn’t move as fast as that person was going, but that meant there were others out here. Possibly she wasn’t alone and this was a trap of a different kind.

I darted a look here and there, to catch any movements. Nothing moved at all.

We’d heard stories of other communities taken over by passing bands of wild and immoral people. The communities were mistreated and abused then given over to the Draghoul while the invaders raided the food and supplies. What if the woman was just a decoy to get us to let our guard down?

I was about to grab Zeke by his elbow and drag him back toward the field, back toward the safety of numbers, but he shook my hand free and stepped toward the woman instead. His impulsivity would get us all killed. How could he not be thinking this was a trap?

“I came from a buried bunker several miles from here. I’m the only survivor from my family.” Tears fell from her eyes. It seemed heartfelt as she continued, “I ate my last stores two days ago. I need help.”

Her words softened my harsh resolve. The situation she’d described was my own, except I’d had my mom and unborn sister’s safety to worry about then, too. It was possible she was just a single, lonely woman lost in The Dead Forest, trying to find safety, just like I was eight months ago before I found my way here. I’d be a hypocrite to turn her away.

These were the moments when, instead of an emotional heart, I wished I had a cold, logical mind to make decisions. No matter how hard I tried though, I knew I couldn’t turn away anyone in need, especially when I’d been through the same.

“Come on. Come with us. We’ll keep you safe.”

Zeke’s eyes widened, and he turned his gaze to give a meaningful look. Though he was more than likely willing to do the same, he probably thought I was borrowing trouble by offering safety. After all, he’d been before the Council, had served on nightwatch duty as a consequence for doing this very thing, only it had been for my mother and me then.