Madelyn's Nephew

“Not all of them. A lot of them died on their own,” she said.

  “I was raised to believe that human life is precious,” he said.

  “So was I.”

  She held the scattergun on the kid and took the skull from under her arm. She looked into the eye sockets and imagined the deep brown eyes that had looked out from there. His name was David, and he had been quite precious.

  She sat David’s skull down on the counter so it could look at the room. She hadn’t thought about him in a while.

  Chapter 5

  {David}

  Years before.

  Madelyn woke up in her loft and looked at the sloped ceiling. She listened to David’s snoring below. She liked to imagine that an angry bear had broken into the cabin and was curled up on the sofa. She had to stay perfectly still or it would wake up and tear her to pieces. Madelyn crept silently to the edge of the loft and looked down at her wild animal.

  David would never be coaxed up into the loft. He said that it looked like it wouldn’t support him, but that wasn’t the real reason he didn’t come up. He liked to sleep alone—he couldn’t be domesticated.

  Madelyn climbed down and dressed in the bathroom after her shower.

  She stepped onto the porch and took a deep breath of the morning air. Mountain air tasted different. It filled every cubic centimeter of her lungs and brought tiny particles of energy. The clouds were low. On a morning like this, her grandmother would have sat on the porch smoking her pipe all morning. Madelyn didn’t have that luxury. She had to go out and check the snares before some other animal did the work for her.

  She grabbed her sack.

  Madelyn came back with two rabbits.

  She found David standing next to the old outhouse. He was peeing on it. Madelyn frowned.

  “Perfectly good bathroom inside. Recycles heat and waste right into the ground, all powered by a healthy Q-bat,” she said.

  David grunted at her and kept peeing.

  “That smell actually attracts predators, you know,” she said.

  He grunted again, paused his stream, and then started again with a fart.

  Madelyn rolled her eyes. She gave him a good push, right in the middle of his back. He yelled as his forehead hit the side of the old building.

  Madelyn ran for the cabin. David was right on her heels.

  Before she was halfway there, he scooped her up and slung her over his shoulder. Her rabbit sack bounced on his back as he kept jogging for the cabin.

  # # # # #

  Madelyn broke into her store of precious rice and cooked some to go with their lunch. Grilled rabbit, rice, and salad greens on the porch made for the perfect lunch. David sucked the fat from his fingers and tossed his bones in the yard. Madelyn shook her head and went to collect them.

  “Rats, you brute,” she said.

  “The meat was good,” he said. “Tasted like more. I think I’ll bag a deer tomorrow. I’ll treat you to venison steaks.”

  “No,” she said. They had been over this before.

  “One deer. Whatever doesn’t fit in your freezer we can shove in your composter with those bones.”

  She looked at the bones in her hand. David thought the composter was a waste of time. He didn’t believe in gardening and he hated the idea of the colony of microbes that she was feeding.

  “It’s too much,” she said.

  “I know what this is about,” he said. His voice was full of gravel when he geared up for an argument. “You don’t want me providing anything because you think I’ll wander off some day and then you’ll be stuck. You’re afraid that if you depend on me, you won’t be able to get along without me.”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s not it. I just don’t like the way you field dress your animals. You leave too much fat and you always take big, musky bucks.”

  “Oh, hell,” he said. David spat in the grass.

  Madelyn took the rabbit bones inside and fed them to the composter chute. When she closed the lid, a rush of water flushed the bones down to the stack.

  David banged through the door and went to his pack for his gun and some ammo.

  “Don’t do it,” she said. “I’m serious. I won’t eat it if you bring it back.”

  “Then I’ll eat it alone,” he said. Once he was armed, he left.

  “Be careful,” she said. He was already through the door.

  Madelyn folded her arms and leaned back against the counter. Maybe if they had a pack of people trying to get through a hard winter it would make sense to take a big animal. But it was just the two of them. They could probably survive on mice and crows if they had to. She scrunched up her nose at the idea. If anything tasted worse than David’s venison, it was crow.

  Before she would resort to that, she would simply live off the stores of food below the cabin. Her grandmother had left years of dried rations. Madelyn had increased those stores ten-fold. Back when she could still get food in Heritage, she had made a hobby of collecting provisions.

  David had about fallen over the first time she took him downstairs, and he had only seen a quarter of what she had.

  And, of course, the Q-bat would manufacture just about anything if she let it. She would never resort to using battery power to manufacture food. It was a frivolous waste of energy for something that she should be able to provide for herself.

  She moved through the rest of her day like a ghost. She barely paid attention to what was going on around her. Her ears were straining all day to hear his single gunshot. Her eyes kept scanning the woods for any sign of him, and the horizon for smoke from his fire. David was careless about putting heat into the world. Madelyn was convinced that it would get him killed one day. She hoped that day was a long way off.

  # # # # #

  Madelyn went to bed hungry that night. She wasn’t tired, and sleep wouldn’t come without the buzzsaw of his breathing below. She just wanted the day to be over. She wanted the next day to arrive so he would come back to her. At that point, she would have eaten his deer steaks raw if it meant that he was back under her roof.

  When she woke in the morning, she slid to the edge of her loft and had to make a decision—what type of person did she want to be?

  It was her grandmother’s old question.

  If Madelyn or Noah ever got hurt, angry, disappointed, or frustrated, their grandmother would always ask, “Is that the type of person you want to be?”

  For a brief moment when she was a teenager, Madelyn had flirted with the idea of being moody. She had answered the question once in her snottiest tone.

  “It’s normal for a person to get upset when they nearly cut their finger off,” Madelyn had said.

  Her grandmother simply looked at her. “So that’s the type of person you want to be. You want to be the girl who cuts herself and falls to pieces about it. Then what?”

  “Then, I bleed.”

  “True. Forever?”

  “What? Why am I even talking to you. You never say anything useful.”

  “Do you plan on bleeding forever? Nothing bleeds forever, Mac. This is a simple question.”

  “No. Of course I’m not going to bleed forever.”

  “Exactly,” her grandmother said. “In fact, I’m sure all that whining will make it stop bleeding and hurting much sooner.”

  That’s when Madelyn had stormed off.

  The point had landed though. Madelyn still asked herself that same question whenever she had the inclination to feel sorry for herself.

  She took her shower and decided that dwelling on David was not the person she wanted to be. He might have gotten mad and simply stormed off. Maybe he wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t dependable. It was possible that he had lit another campfire and attracted Roamers. Whatever the reason, obsessively worrying about him wasn’t going to bring him back sooner. And that wasn’t the type of person she wanted to be.

  Madelyn went about her day like everything was normal.

  By the afternoon, she rea
lized that she had gone almost an hour without thinking about him. She smiled. It would take time, but she was going to be okay.

  As the sun began to set, Madelyn realized her mistake.

  Worrying needlessly was stupid, but ignoring the problem was equally as stupid. His trail was less than two days old. She could have followed his tracks and made sure that he was okay. Maybe he had slipped and broken his ankle. Maybe he had gotten himself pinned under a rock.

  She jumped up and ran inside. The pipe went in the sink. She piled supplies into a light bag. Madelyn changed her shoes and strode out into the dwindling light. It was stupid to leave the cabin at night. Her heat would shine like a beacon while she walked around.

  The cabin was triple insulated and had heat-reclaiming layers that sent all the extra energy back down into the ground. It was perfectly safe. As she walked through the woods, all of her heat radiated out to signal her position. It was a stupid, stupid idea.

  She kept her eyes focused on the path, looking for signs of David. He brushed his right heel when he stepped over things. His tracks were easy to spot while there was still enough light. She counted off fifty paces where she didn’t find any sign of him.

  Madelyn stopped and cursed under her breath. It was always like this when she made mistakes—they weren’t big, blow-up-the-world moments. She made her mistakes with small, incremental bad decisions. She crept closer and closer to the ledge, never realizing that she was already falling.

  She took out her light.

  # # # # #

  It was just a matter of getting a little more light on the subject. As soon as her beam hit the path, she noticed one of David’s footprints. She snapped off the light and listened. If one of them was near, it would be closing on her position. Madelyn had a theory that the only thing that attracted them more than heat was electronic light.

  Convinced that she was still alone, Madelyn turned her light back on. She followed David’s trail.

  He turned off the path over near the ridge line. It was easy to imagine his thought process. He could find a nice place on the rocky hillside and look out over the scrubby marsh grass. A dozen game trails crossed through there. The deer used a couple of them this time of year. David would have tested the wind, put the sun at his back, and found a nice place to camp out and blend in.

  She closed her eyes and pictured him nestled next to a rock. The shadow would disguise his movement. She knew the place. Madelyn followed the tracks for a bit, but when they meandered off to the left, she kept going straight. Her mind was set on where she would find him.

  As Madelyn moved towards the place were the rocks broke through the thin crust of soil and the trees gave up trying to grow, she turned off her light and moved by the starlight that filtered through the branches. She found the edge of the cliff and stood there, looking out over the marsh.

  This was the place where the cliff was lowest. It was fairly easy to descend. To her south, the hill rose and the marsh fell away—it was a much more formidable cliff.

  The night was alive with movement. Her eyes jumped to a branch that was caught by the wind. Ripples in a puddle flashed the stars at her. Fear settled into her belly. She wanted to run. It had been years since she had been out at night. Her body was an infrared torch on the ridge line. Anything hiding down in that grass would see her and would be creeping towards her. She couldn’t afford to stay in once place.

  Madelyn lowered herself to the ground and felt her way down the rocks. Once she had a little protection from the scrub bushes, she felt more at ease. She made her way south along the wall of rock with a particular lookout in mind.

  It didn’t take long to find it. The way the rocks curved made a natural spot where David could have camped for an afternoon. Crawling around, she proved herself right. Her hands came on the ashes of his fire. She had located the spot where he had spent the night, but she still hadn’t found him. Madelyn searched the area by starlight and then gave up and used her light. She found the fire, a stick he had cut on, and sunflower seed shells. Those were all sure signs of him, but his gear was gone.

  She turned off her light and tried to decide what the clues meant.

  If he had been taken, his gear would have stayed behind.

  She hadn’t found hair or fingernails.

  David had stayed there and then simply moved on.

  There was only one logical conclusion to make—he had left on his own accord and didn’t intend to come back to her. She had been silly to rush out here in the dark. She had put herself at risk and torn the bandage off a wound that had already begun to scab over.

  Madelyn sighed and turned back for the rocks. She wanted to be out of this marsh as quickly as possible. The woods were harder to navigate, but at least they provided some cover.

  She only got halfway to the face of the cliff.

  She heard their click.

  Madelyn turned.

  # # # # #

  Madelyn didn’t bother with strategy. She simply ran. Each time a foot landed safely, without a stubbed toe or rolled ankle, she gave silent thanks. When it was fast, their clicking sounded almost like crickets. It was impossible to pin down the origin of the noise.

  She saw a spot that wasn’t as steep and angled herself towards the cliff. A stream had cut a notch in the face. The rocks were eroded and covered with sand. Madelyn’s fingers tore at the loose gravel as she kicked her way up.

  Part of her brain continued to worry about the sound—whether it was louder and whether it was also coming from above.

  When she started to slip, she knew it was over. The scene played out in her head and was immediately recreated by her hands and feet. There was a difference between static friction and kinetic friction. As soon as she started to slip, the sandy gravel was perfectly willing to let her continue to fall.

  She slid downwards. She didn’t want to look. They were definitely down there.

  This wasn’t the way that Madelyn was going to go die. This wasn’t the person she wanted to be.

  She flattened herself to the slope, begging for anything that could arrest her fall.

  For no reason she could discern, she stopped. Quickly, but carefully, she reached for handholds. She imagined the tug she would feel on her ankle at any second. She imagined being dragged away by the Roamers.

  With both hands planted, she moved a foot. She moved the other. Carefully, she straightened her legs and gained a few precious centimeters of altitude.

  The clicking slowed and seemed to get quieter. Had they lost her? She couldn’t imagine that was the case. Stuck to the side of the cliff like a desperate lizard, the infrared must have been pouring off of her. She climbed higher and found a line of solid rock poking through the sand. It offered her the opportunity to make decent progress. She pulled herself up until her feet found a decent grip.

  Madelyn worked that way, raising herself up, until she was breathing hard and sweating. The cliff here was much higher than she had expected.

  The notch she was working turned vertical. The handholds ran out. She couldn’t feel another good place to grab. Her flashlight was in her pocket. The clicking below gave her the impression that the Roamers had lost her scent, but she couldn’t risk using the light.

  She stayed in that spot for minutes, trying to decide what to do.

  If they had truly gone away, she might sneak back down and elude them.

  If they were actively tracking her, then she might as well use her light to climb higher. If they already knew where she was, there was no harm in the light.

  It was an impossible decision. Both options were terrible.

  Madelyn decided to try to climb higher without her light. The other two options offered her an even chance of death by Roamer. If given the choice, she would opt for death by falling.

  # # # # #

  Madelyn worked her way sideways along a crack, hoping it would yield a better spot. If anything, her predicament was worse. She was stuck on the side of a flat face an
d she couldn’t even see a way to get back to where she had come from. There was only one positive thing—at her current height, she could easily imagine dying from the fall.

  This was it.

  She had no way to retreat and no obvious hand-holds above her. She couldn’t even trust one hand to hold long enough to use her flashlight. All her options were exhausted except the most desperate one.

  Who was the person she wanted to be?

  It was an easy answer. She wouldn’t cling to her perch until her muscles wore out and she eventually slipped. She would press upwards, right into the face of the challenge, and she would accept whatever came next.

  She gathered the remaining strength in her legs and pushed.

  Madelyn sprung upwards, hoping to reach the lip of the rock above. She couldn’t clearly see the lip. It was defined only as the place where the night sky was blotted out.

  Her hand found nothing but air.

  She panicked and tried to grab at the rock before she fell.

  A firm grip clamped around her wrist.

  # # # # #

  She was lifted by her arm. Her shoulder felt like the bones were going pop apart. She reached up with her other hand, hoping to grab something to take the strain off, but it fell away empty. She kicked at the rocks, using the force to help push herself up.

  A second hand landed on her mouth.

  She hadn’t intended to speak, so the second hand was unnecessary and rude. She recognized the smell of her own pipe tobacco. Apparently, David had been dipping into her stash again. As quickly as her feet found solid ground, she pulled away from his grip. She was furious, of course, but couldn’t say anything. She balled one hand into a fist, but didn’t even dare to hit him.

  Madelyn strained to make out his features in the dark. His face was different—more angular. She figured it was a trick of the shadows.

  He was smart to not grab her again. He must have sensed her frustration. David motioned for her to follow. He led her very slowly south, along the cliff, until they were almost overlooking the place where she had found his campfire. The marsh was spread below them like a minefield—there were hidden dangers down there in the shadows.

  She waited for David to communicate what was going on. It took her a second to realize that he was trying.