Wolves (19 page)

I'll forget who I was.

Never mind who I am. That ship has sailed.

But who I was? Now, there is something to cling to.

I was an educated man. Loved by my wife. Loved by my daughter. I was a good person.

He leans forward from his bedroll, then climbs slowly to his feet. The sounds of Don and Jay's breathing stays slow and steady. They are still asleep. He steps over a jumble of blankets that had clustered at his feet while he kicked at them in his dreams—not his blankets, but the blankets of the people they had killed. The floor creaks underneath him, but it is the only sound, and still Jay and Don sleep.

He goes to the door. He can feel the cold air rushing around the flimsy seal that it creates, seeping into the trailer and drawing the warm air out. These lands take everything from you, whether they need it or not. Sometimes it seems like a vacuum.

Huxley pushes the door and it opens, unlatched. The cold takes him. He steps out onto the little metal stairs and then down onto dirt, packed hard enough to be concrete. The door hisses closed behind him.

Coming from the almost perfect dark of the trailer, the outside seems bright and clear. The moon has long ago sunk across the horizon, but the clouds have been scoured away, and the eastern sky has already begun to blush, the stars fizzling out in the path of the sun.

The boy, Low, stands between the two mounds that had been dragged away from the trailer. Huxley can tell at first sight that the bodies had been disturbed—and not by Low. The clothing has been ripped away, bellies opened and soft tissue stripped. Jackals and coyotes and rats do not wait long.

Low stands between the two ravaged bodies, kneeling down to the ground, clutching what Huxley realizes is a spear. The boy has nothing else on his person. Just the clothes he wears and the spear he holds. He is bent over, the spear seeming to be the only thing keeping him from falling over. His shoulders shake violently, but he doesn't make a sound.

Huxley approaches, and when he is about halfway to Low, the boy straightens and turns, hearing Huxley's footsteps. He holds the spear in both hands, brandished with the point hovering in the air before him, extended out toward Huxley like an accusing finger.

“You stay away from me,” Low says shakily. “I'll stab you. I will.”

Huxley believes him. He stops and holds up his hands. “What are you doing, Low?”

Low makes a strangled noise and glances down at the two bodies next to him, then back up. Huxley looks at the bodies too, but he doesn't feel what the boy feels. They are only bodies to him. They are not people anymore, and when they were, they'd been troublesome. Huxley feels bad about the woman, but the man had fought them.

Why are you like this?

Because I have to be.

The point of the spear wavers and dips a bit. “I'm going,” the boy says, resolutely.

Huxley wrinkles his nose. “Don't be stupid, kid.”

“You killed them.”

“I killed your father. I didn't kill your mother.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It does. And be honest, Low, were they really your parents?” Huxley lowers his hands, slowly, and they find their way into his jacket pockets. Through the cloth he can feel the grip of his revolver, still stuffed into his waistband. “Did they understand you, Low? Yes, they fed you. They gave you a roof over your head. But think, kid. Because I can see things inside of you. I can see hardness. Strength. You're not the same as them. You're more like us.” Huxley sniffs, snorts, then spits. He feels filthy saying these things to the child, but he can't think of any other way to convince the boy to stay. These horrible things are where his mind goes now. It's who he is. “Did they understand you, Low? Or were they afraid of you?”

The spear is shaking. Low's entire body is shaking. Even from ten feet away, Huxley can see the tears in his eyes, glistening, and then falling down his cheeks.

Huxley's brow furrows. “Stop crying, Low. I told you about that.”

Low bares his teeth, sheer willpower cutting off his grief. “She was Mother.”

“Yes, she was Mother. The woman that you called mother. The woman who you wanted to be your mother. But she wasn't.” Huxley shakes his head. “The world is full of people like you, Low. Children born to weak parents that couldn't survive. Left alone. Orphaned. Adopted by some others along the way, out of pity or a sense of duty, who knows. But they were foolish to adopt you when they knew that they were not strong enough to keep themselves alive. But you're stronger than all of them, Low. I know this. Do you know how I know?”

Low shook his head, eyes wide and watching. An impressionable child.

“Because you're still alive. They're all dead, and you're still alive.”

Low looks at them, the spear pointed down now. “They're all I remember.”

Huxley kneels down next to the boy and addresses him, eye to eye. “I'm not afraid of you, Low,” he says quietly. “I can see what's inside of you. And it doesn't scare me. Because I know exactly what's inside of you. I know how it feels to be that angry, to have that much sitting inside of your heart. You want to do to the world what it's done to you. You want to lash out but you feel like you're not strong enough. I know how you're feeling, because I've felt it too. I still feel it, sometimes. But you know what I've learned?”

Low looks up at him, waiting.

Huxley stands up and looks down at the boy. “If you're strong, you don't have to be afraid. And we're strong together. So we can lash out at this world, because that's what this world deserves. It's taken everything from me, just like it's taken everything from you. And we can do it because we're strong.” Huxley looks off to the sunrise. “I know you, Low. And I'm not afraid of who you are. You can be who you are. I want you to be who you are. Who you are is who you need to be to survive. That's good.” Huxley nods toward the glow in the sky. “We're heading east. To the Riverlands. You can go off by yourself and die, or you can stick with us, be strong, and live. The choice is yours.”

Low closes his eyes for a time, as though he cannot bear to look at the bodies anymore, their rent clothing and the foul smell of them, the way their insides are trailed off in random directions where the night creatures have grabbed what they could and run. When he opens his eyes again, they are dry and calm.

Huxley can appreciate that. It shows a fortitude that was rare in someone Low's age.

Huxley jerks his head back to the trailer. “Come back inside. We'll leave soon enough.”

When he walks back in, the boy follows after him.

Chapter 2

In the dawn blush, Huxley and Don work their way through the trailer's kitchen, rifling for containers that might hold water. Jay tends to the fire in the brazier while Low hauls in old, sun-seasoned wood, stacking small cords next to the brazier. Jay watches the boy, but neither of them speak to each other.

Don is not so reserved with Huxley. He rattles and clanks through old and dented pots and pans, looking for a water container with a sealable lid. “So, tell me, Mr. Huxley, why you headin' east? Seems like a long trip, and you seem pretty dead-set on goin'.”

Huxley stands on tiptoes to rummage the top cabinet in the cramped kitchen. “I'm curious. About the Riverlands,” he says.
I'm curious where the slavers are going, obviously somewhere in the Riverlands. Obviously someone is buying the slaves. I want to know who. And I want the man with the scorpion tattoo.

“The Riverlands, huh?” There is a smile and a laugh in Don's voice.

Huxley stops and turns to him, tapping a pot lid on the Formica countertop. “Yeah. The Riverland Nations.”

Don returns to the search. “Well, technically you are already in the Riverlands. Or a province of them, anyway. Council claims to own pretty much everything west of the Mississippi, though they got no way to enforce that past the Red River. But, you know … on
paper
 …”

Huxley keeps tapping the pot lid on the countertop, louder now. He is wondering what it would do to Don's face. He doesn't like the man. “You come from out east?”

Don comes up with a moldy-looking, plastic half-gallon jug, which he waggles in the air, proudly. He sets it on the countertop. “Yeah, used to live out there. Was a
leal subject
to Councilman Grafter. But …” Don shrugs. “… you know how it gets, sometimes.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

His neck is itching.

“No,” Huxley says. “I don't.”

Don regards him steadily for a moment, then goes back to the cabinets. “Well, my brother got into a little scrape at a bar. Got a little extra friendly with one of the tavern girls, after hours, that sort of thing. She set her grievance before Councilman Grafter and he signed a death warrant and sent the Black Hats after him.” Don laughs. “A bar bitch! She had to've been a piece on the side for Grafter. Can't imagine why else he would give a fuck about a bar bitch. Anyway. Maybe I was mixed up in the whole thing. And the Black Hats like to kill the man as well as his associates, so when I heard about the warrant on my brother, I decided to head out into the Wastelands until this shit blows over. Or they catch and execute my brother, one of the two.”

Huxley looks down at the pot lid. “Black Hats spend a lot of time chasing down random criminals. Can't seem to get a handle on the slavers, though.”

Don gives him an odd look. “How's that?”

Huxley feels stiff. The way Don is looking at him, like he just said something completely ridiculous. Like a child whose understanding of the world is very naïve. It flushes the back of Huxley's neck and suddenly he is not so sure. “I was just saying. It doesn't seem like the Black Hats do a good job of controlling the slavers.”

Don blinks a few times, mystified. Then suddenly, inexplicably, he starts laughing.

Huxley grinds his teeth at the other man's braying. He glances around, almost self-conscious, but Jay has stepped outside and there is no one else in the trailer. No one else there to see Huxley if he were to ram the pot lid into Don's face, maybe into his throat, using the edge of it to crush his larynx and stifle that laughter.

“What?” Huxley snaps, loudly through Don's breathless humor.

“You fucking Wastelanders,” Don cackles, as though Huxley has told the best joke. As though people from the Wastelands have the very best senses of humor. “You don't get it, do you?”

Huxley's teeth hurt. His jaw aches.

Kill him. He's a rotten thing anyway … 

But Huxley is on the precipice of an understanding. He can feel it, uncomfortable, hurtling at him. But he needs to know. He needs to find out what he doesn't get. He needs to control his irrational anger for a moment and let Don talk, let the fool spill his guts.

“Let me explain,” Don forces his laughter down. He uses his hands on the countertop, pointing to random points on the surface to illustrate an invisible hierarchy. “The Riverland Nations is run by the Great Council. The Great Council is led by Chairman Warner and twenty-some-odd councilmen who own big pieces of land in Louisiana and Mississippi. The Black Hats work for the councilmen. And the councilmen are the ones that buy the slaves. Of course the Black Hats don't go after the slavers!” Don guffaws again. “You really didn't know that? You're this far east and you didn't
know that
?”

Huxley almost lunges for Don. Killing the messenger. Killing this spawn of the Riverlands, this piece of shit, this being who holds everyone else in such low, dispensable regard. Was this how everyone in the Riverlands was? Was the whole damn place filled with creatures like this?

I'll kill them all.

“You Wastelanders,” Don says, somewhat more serious, because he can see the rage bubbling up in Huxley. “You're just fodder for the Riverlands. How did you think they rebuilt a society?”

Huxley can't speak for a moment.
Where do the slavers go?
The words are on the tip of his tongue … 

Jay bursts into the trailer. “Someone's coming.”

Huxley just stares at him for a moment. He doesn't know what to do. The words
someone is coming
make it into his brain, but they just kind of roll around in the back. He keeps thinking to himself, keeps picturing it now, an accurate picture … 

The people they call “Wastelanders.” Simple people in their isolated little farming communes. Just trying to scratch a life out of the dirt. Naïve. Ignorant to the fact that others were gathering power and looking at them greedily. They were far away. They were removed. They were not “Riverlanders,” they were just “Wastelanders,” just savages really.

But I was just like you
, Huxley thinks.
I taught English to your children.

All I wanted was to live. I just wanted to live and to farm. To be left alone to enjoy what time I had left in this miserable world with my wife and my daughter.

But none of that mattered. They would come anyway; they would come for those people out beyond the desert. People like Huxley and his family. Because they could. And there was nothing to stop them.

It's not fair
, Huxley thinks, and feels like a child for it, though it is as true as anything he's ever thought. It wasn't fair. It was the highest inequity imaginable.

“Huxley!” Jay says sharply, bringing him back to the real world. “You hear me? Someone's coming!”

Huxley slaps the lid down on the countertop and squeezes through the narrow opening and into the tiny living space where they'd slept the night before. Who was coming? More Riverlanders? More of those corrupt beings?

I'll kill them all,
he thinks again, but he forces himself to be rational.

Think first. Kill if you need to.

Jay is standing in the open door of the trailer, staring at something in the distance. Low is there with a load of thin wood under one arm, the other holding the door open. Huxley looks down at the body of the door and he can see the holes in the flimsy sheet metal where Low's mother had fired a single shot from a scattergun, and Don had answered back.

Badly done … 

Huxley brings his eyes up and squints into the eastern sky. The red blush has turned to pinks and golds. It looks like the sky will be cloudless this morning. It is hard to stare into the sun as it crests that overwhelming flat and expansive landscape, but Huxley can see the object of their attention, not by the object itself, but by the small trail of dust it leaves rising behind it on the road.

“Wagon,” Jay says. “Got to be a wagon.”

Don is rubbing his face. “Fuck, man. Are they coming here?” He turns his gaze on Low. “Hey, fucker! Who is that? Who the hell is that coming? You set off a signal last night? Who are those people in the wagon? You tell me or I'll take your eyes out!”

Huxley takes a hold of the man's chest by seizing a fistful of his jacket, then he pulls him off balance and shoves him into the wall, still holding him there with one hand while the other pulls his revolver, but keeps it pointed low to the ground.

“I told you once, Don. Don't threaten the boy. I won't warn you a third time.” Huxley shakes his head. He takes in a breath through clenched teeth and stares down into Don's dark little soul. Very quietly he says, “Don't try my patience.”

“Huxley,” Jay says, demanding attention.

Huxley turns to Low, revolver still in hand. He doesn't brandish it at the boy, but Low stares at it anyway. “Low, you need to tell us who's coming. Even if you're not sure who it is. We don't want them to know that we're here. If we can make it so these people get out of here without us having to shoot them, that's what we'd like to do.”

Low looks horrified. “No, don't shoot them. Please don't.” The words tumble out of him so quickly he forgets about his bundle of sticks and it clatters to the floor. “It's just Mr. Crofter. Maybe his wife too, but they only come by to check on us and make sure we're doing okay. Mr. Crofter lost his kids, so he tries to look after us and make sure we're safe, make sure that I'm okay. He brings me sweet meat from the market when he can afford a few pieces. Please don't hurt him. He didn't do nothing wrong. If he don't see you, he won't say nothing. Please. He's nice. He's a nice man. Don't hurt him.”

Huxley blinks rapidly, processing the information. “Is he going to the market right now? To a town?”

Low grabs his head, his fingers clawing into his hair. “I don't … yes, I guess so.”

“Is there a sheriff in that town?”

“I don't know!” Low seems on the verge of tears again, but he is holding them back. Either out of conscious effort, or perhaps because he has nothing left inside of him. “Please, don't hurt him. Don't do it. He'll go away. You don't need to hurt him.”

In his distress, Low has let go of the door and it has swung closed, though not latched. Huxley leans into the door and looks out the small glass window pane to the eastern horizon where the smudge of road-dust has grown slightly bigger, and now there is a dark shape growing, taking on the dimensions and form of a small wagon and a single horse.

“Okay. Okay.” Huxley scratches his neck, thinking for a moment. He scratches until it hurts, and then he turns back to Low. “Here's what you're going to do. You're going to walk out to him. We're going to stay in here. You're going to tell him that your mother and father are very sick and that you're tending to them.” Huxley reaches into his pocket and draws out a faded piece of cloth. “Tie this around your face. Tell him that what they have is contagious and not to come close.” Huxley pushes the piece of cloth into Low's hands. “You need to be convincing, Low. Convince him to go away, or we're going to have to hurt him. Him and whoever is with him. Do you understand that?”

Low nods, looking scared. “Yes.”

“Do you understand what you need to do?”

“Yes.”

Huxley folds the cloth in half to form a triangle. “Turn around.” As Low does it, Huxley glances out the window again, sees the approaching shape. It's clear now. One man on a wagon drawn by a single horse. The wagon is an old chassis—what had been a small, compact car—built up with what looked like wood. They were moving at a good clip. They would be there any second now.

With Low's back to him, Huxley ties the cloth around the boy's face, then double-knots it. “Okay. You're ready.” The thoughts storm through his mind:
What reason does this boy have to lie for you? Wouldn't it be quicker if he just told the man that he was being held, then jumped in the wagon and drove away? We have no horses. We would not be able to catch them.

Huxley looks across at Jay, sees the man's cold blue eyes. Somehow, Jay gives him the answer without speaking.
Because the boy thinks that we'll just gun them both down if they make a run for it. He doesn't know that I won't shoot him … 

Huxley pulls his own revolver from his waistband. Checks the chambers. They are loaded and ready. He pulls the hammer back, watches the cylinder rotate and
snick
into place. He holds the revolver close to his torso, then steps back away from the door and waves for Jay and Don to do the same. They melt away into shadows turning from blue to gray to orange as tiny facets of the dawn's light seep through cracks and openings in the trailer. The brazier gives off stifling heat, but still they can see their own breath.

Huxley waves at Low with the barrel of his revolver. “Go now.”

The boy's hands tremble as they take the door and unlatch it, pushing it open.

T
he townsman will know. He'll see the shake in Low's hands. He'll see the fear in his eyes.

Maybe he'll believe it's fever … 

The door swings shut on its hinges, the hydraulic cylinder in the upper corner barely putting up any resistance. It bangs closed noisily, much more noisily than the night before. Low had crept out and he'd been quiet save for the sound of the latch. He was a sneak, this young man. He was more than just a scared, mourning child. There were other things underneath that surface. Things the boy was trying to hide, trying to deny their power over him.

From the shadows inside the trailer, Huxley leans out, just slightly. Most of his body is hidden behind a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that marks the beginning of the kitchen area of the trailer. Only half of his face sticks out, a single eye peering out of the darkness, staring into the dawn light, watching what unfolds.