Leaving the City: Episode 1

  Chapter 8

  Mare joined me, so we walked in a square rather than a line, which was actually much safer. A line was easy to break for mercenaries. Fortunately I didn’t think they’d come after us again for a little while, not after the damage we had caused them. For a while we walked in silence, all of us. Alex and Jake probably didn’t have any idea what they should say to each other, while Mare and I didn’t always feel the need to talk, although as soon as I heard Alex’s voice I made certain to start my own conversation.

  “What are your plans when we get to Hamilton?” I asked Mare.

  “Jake hasn’t told you?”

  “I chose not to ask him. You’re the one in charge.”

  She laughed. “I guess I am. He does listen to me more now than he did before, thanks to the mercenaries.”

  “This is the wasteland, Mare. Something was always going to happen to make him realize he was out of his depth. I’m just glad it happened while we were there.”

  “He would have been dead if you weren’t.”

  “Fortunately he knows that as well as we do. If he didn’t I think we would still be having problems with him, but he realizes that he needs to learn how to live up here. The cities are very different to the wasteland.”

  “Even though I tried to tell him that he wouldn’t listen to me. We had a very long argument when he said he was coming with me. I know having him is helpful, because of his ability to feel where my brother is, but at the same time he’s so useless with any sort of weapon that I knew he was going to end up getting hurt one way or another.” She sighed. “At least taking on the mercenaries means he understands why I was pushing him as hard as I was. It wasn’t enough though.”

  “He’s asked me to teach him how to fight.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I said I would as long as he didn’t give up because it was too hard.”

  “Learning to fight is hard.”

  “We both know that, but he’s going to get a shock when he realizes that every single muscle in his body’s aching.” I shrugged. “It serves him right for coming out here unprepared.”

  “You’re right about that.” There was a moment if silence. “Did he ask you to come with us?”

  I nodded. “Yes, he did. That’s why Alex is spending time with him now. He needs to give Jake a chance before we make any sort of decision about whether or not we are coming with you. Right now Alex is assuming that Jake is going to lose himself out here and that is always possible, but I don’t think it will happen. He’s too focused on you and your brother.”

  “For a long time after my brother left Jake was very angry. I couldn’t talk to him at all, because all he did was snarl at me, as though it was my fault that it had happened. Even when he told me he wasn’t upset with me I had a hard time accepting that he was telling me the truth. Finally we did manage to talk honestly about it and that was when I told him I was coming to the wastes in order to search for my brother, no matter how hard that search was going to be, because I need to find him, Kat. I need to know why he made the choices that he did.”

  “Jake asked me if I thought your brother would have survived out here.”

  “He told me and also mentioned his worries that my brother might be a ghoul, but I don’t think he is. I think he would have survived out here, somehow, and it’s the how that scares me. What if he became a mercenary?”

  “As much as I hate to say it that is always a possibility.” I sighed. “People do literally do anything they can to survive. It’s what you have to do out here, but there is just as much of a chance that he found his way to Hamilton, met someone he wanted to travel with, and has spent all the time he’s been out here doing the same thing Alex and I have.”

  “Why would he be out in the deep wastes?”

  “That is a question I can’t answer. No one has ever come back from the deep wastes, so we have this terrible habit of assuming they’re dead, but there is a chance that they simply find a reason to stay out there. I don’t know what it is. You might find it when you find him.”

  “If we find him.”

  I tried to reassure her. “You’re going to find him.”

  “What do we do if he’s a ghoul?”

  “Out here there are stories of ghouls who’ve found a reason to live again. Maybe, if you find him, you’ll be able to give him that reason.”

  “Have you ever met someone like that?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  She shook her head. “If it happens I’ll believe it. Until then I’m going to listen to those stories with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

  “Generally I do too. There are just times when believing in something helps and I want you to have some belief in your heart, although I agree with you that it’s very unlikely that it will happen.”

  “What should we expect out there?”

  “Mercenaries and mutants.” I bit my lip. “Most of the mercenary camps are on the outskirts of the deep wastes.”

  “There’s an outskirts?”

  “Yes, there is, as hard as that is to believe. The mercenary camps are marked on the maps, to show the outskirts - well, the ones we know of at least, because we don’t doubt they’ve managed to hide some from us. If anyone survives finding one of the ones we don’t know about they get added to the maps. Most people don’t travel as much as Alex and I do, mostly because it’s simpler not to. Alex feels the urge to explore, no matter how dangerous it is for us, and I go with him because I want to keep him safe. I’m certain that even without you the time would have come when he wanted to go to the deep wastes, although he would deny that. If we go out there we’ll be on our own and that means we’ll need to be ready for anything. Even fighting mutants.”

  “Haven’t you fought mutants before?”

  “It’s much easier to run for your life. A pack of mutants isn’t something anyone really wants to fight, because you’re probably going to lose. They’re nothing like us, Mare, and because they do work in a pack they’re actually more dangerous that the mercenaries. People don’t work together in the same way that mutants do.”

  “Why do the mutants work in packs?”

  “No one knows for certain. There are theories, the way there are theories about why the ghouls exist, but it’s one of those things we may never know. We have the same problem working out why the mutants still exist, when they should have died out centuries ago. Most people believe that they breed, although there are some who think it’s possible that they’ve simply lived very long lives.”

  “So they’re the mutants that were created when the nukes hit?”

  “Personally I think it’s very unlikely. The most likely theory is that they have bred over the years and the packs don’t grow because of fights over who’s going to be in control which lead to splintering.” I shrugged. “Mutants do fight other mutants. Although I’ve never seen it happen other people have.” I looked at Mare. “When we get to Hamilton one of the most precious possessions we have are the stories we can tell. If we go to one of the record keepers we should be able to rent ourselves a nice room for at least a couple of night so we can get cleaned up and decide what our next step is going to be.”

  “That all depends on Alex, doesn’t it?”

  “For me it does, because I’m not going to leave him, but I don’t want to leave the two of you, either. You need us and I think he’s going to realize that.”

  “Jake’s the problem.”

  “Unfortunately Jake made the wrong choice when he first met us, because he saw us as enemies instead of allies. It meant he made a mistake that Alex is finding it hard to forgive him for. I believe, in the end, Alex will forgive Jake, as he remembers what it was like when we were newly out of the city, and it’s not easy to make the right choices straight away.”

  “When he noticed you he wanted us to run. I refused. I wanted to talk to you, because I could tell from the look of you that you’d been out here long enough to help us.”
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  “How did you know that we use to be city dwellers?”

  “I wasn’t certain, but your boots looked like they’d come out of the city and that was enough for me.”

  Alex and I had been lucky enough to have the same boots since we’d left the city, because he knew how to fix them. I’m not certain where he learned how to replace the soles, but I will always be grateful that he did, as new boots were a luxury out here. Had we gone back to the city it would have been a different matter. After the first time I snuck back into Fifth City for the supplies we so desperately needed for Alex to survive, we promised each other that it wouldn’t happen again. We’d learn how to survive in the wastelands. Fortunately we did, although we gave ourselves no other choice, because we started walking and didn’t look back.

  I haven’t seen my parents or my younger sister since that day. Sometimes I do miss them, especially my sister, but Alex was my future. Even though they told me, more than once, that I was making a huge mistake because Alex was just a man, I ignored them. Maybe Alex was just a man, but he was the man I loved, and I was going to stay with him until the day that love faded. Hopefully it never would, although that was something I could never be certain of.