The Burn

  Chapter Eight

  A large paved area (I think this is what Mr. Klein called a parking lot) leads to a street. The concrete is cracked and some comes up in chunks. The four people pick their way along a path they seem to know from memory, barely pausing to catch their footing on the uneven ground. I’m much slower as I trudge along in my heavy boots. I don’t need to worry about staying far enough away; I need to worry about just keeping up.

  Houses, mostly small simple buildings, line the street. They feel warm to me. The brick, wood, and colors of them have texture and depth that the plastic and metal from the colony could never match. I try to imagine people living in them. Now they are husks, with sad broken-window eyes dripping rain like tears into the overgrown vegetation. New trees spring up close to the houses, and the grass is up to my waist. In another hundred years, this might be a forest with the houses crumbling to dust. It makes me sad. How many people are at the settlement that all these houses go to waste? It can’t be very large. David, Mary, Red, Jack, and a few others might be all there are.

  I slip behind a building. Dave’s head has been half-turning the entire time, like he has an itch he needs to scratch, to see if someone is there. If he only knew it is his mysterious rescuer following behind. I go around the back of the building, hoping to follow them from off the road and more carefully out of sight. Huge vats with rusted metal arms and long, rectangular pools sprawl before me, filled with rain water and leaves. Some sort of water treatment plant. We have filters and processors like this down in the colony, but much smaller. How inefficient these big ones must be. I remind myself that these are more than a hundred years old.

  I pass a long double row of pools and reach a jumble of trees that hide me from the road. I peer through branches. The road ends maybe a thousand feet ahead of me, and Jack and Red’s hunched forms waver in the distance as they help Dave turn the corner onto another street. I ignore the voice in my head telling me to be more discreet and I race ahead, following the marshy land to the west of me. It curves toward the street they follow, and there is plenty of brush to cover me.

  Whatever their destination, they follow the decaying roads. I don’t blame them. The roads cut swathes through weeds, new trees, and other debris. I thought following them off the road would be easier, but I change my mind as they more often fall out of sight and I stumble over dead, fallen trees and land up to my wrists in mud.

  Weird, prickly balls from some of the plants stick to my pants and socks and the harder I try to rip them out of the fabric, the more of them cling to me. I yowl in frustration, and I sound like some caged animal. I plunge through the brush.

  What am I doing following them? Dave has no idea who I am and I will never be able to tell him. He’ll be repulsed—they all will be—and I’ll wander out here on the Burn for the rest of my life because my tongue is cut out and I’m from the colonies, and people up here hate the colonies. How could I be so naive to think this would have worked?

  The clouds are clearing and the sun hangs fat and red along the horizon. A large brick building hunkers up from the road south of me. A narrow strip of trees and rocks separate it from the Puget Sound. With Mary in the lead, the four figures climb steps that lead to a door. This must be the settlement. A sign next to the road says Junior High School. It is so different from our curriculum corridors in the colony. Everything there is so sterile. With the windows radiating light and the gentle murmur of voices, this building pulses with life.

  I ignore my previous instincts to hide. I am here to meet these people, to become one of them. Scurrying through the trees out of sight is no way to do that. I can at least go and peek in a window. If they see me now, they see me.

  I slide around the corner of the building and find a low window. Long tables line up and down the room, and about fifty people sit at them—people than I thought there'd be. A short row of stainless steel carts with glass shields in front hold steaming piles of food. Two people dish up food onto old, chipped plates. There is a blue floral pattern on one, another is square and white. Another is cream and rimmed in silver. How odd that they don’t match. I think of Jessa. She’d probably like how eccentric it all is.

  Most of the people are about thirty or forty, though there are some younger like me and older like my grandma. A couple kids run around the tables, playing some dizzying game that I can’t make out the rules to. Then my stomach falls.

  There are watchers in every corner of the ceiling. But no, the lenses are smashed. A monitor that could be the great-grandfather to the one in my quarters hangs blank on the wall.

  Three of the survivors hunch around a small metal box with knobs and an antennae. Radio, my Burn history lessons fill in for me. Their brows knot and they listen intently. One of them jots down notes every so often. Then one of them puts a hand to her mouth and they look at each other. They wave others over. Most of them stand around the radio when Dave and his group walk in.

  They come through a swinging door on the left side of the room and an older woman stands up to greet them. She kisses Red, and he hugs her tightly. His eyes crinkle along the corners when he burrows his cheek in her silver hair.

  I turn around and lean against the wall, sliding down until I sit on the ground. I’m an intruder watching the intimate homecoming. I take my pack off and wrap my arms around myself. I can’t stay. They’re a family, and I’m not one of them. I look west. The sun sets and lavender dark creeps around the school.

  If I leave now, I’ll probably stumble into something and kill myself. I’ll stay until first light. I dig the blanket out of the pack and unfold it over myself. I contemplate an energy bar, but without my tongue I can’t taste very well, and the memory of vomiting the others up turns my stomach. My lips are tight with thirst. I should go find water for my purifier, but I don’t want to leave the faint comfort being near the settlement gives me.

  I jump at a sound at the window. Curtains snap closed. I look around. Almost all the windows on the second floor are boarded up. All the windows on the ground floor are being shuttered or curtained. A muffled voice says, “The windows all dark?”

  “Yeah, no light tonight.”

  My sleepy mind spins. Why can’t they let any light out? I feel cold without the light shining on me. I pull the blanket up to my chin. When I close my eyes, all I hear is the pop of gunfire. I see a man slump over the side of a boat. But the images are far away, behind the haze of rain. I lay my head on the pack and fall asleep.

  In my dreams I hear voices swirl on the wind around me.

  “Who do you think she is?”

  “She looks familiar to me.”

  “She can’t have been wandering long. That or she knows what she’s doing out here. She has some mild dehydration, but that’s it.”

  “I don’t recognize the pack. Looks military issue.”

  I feel them stiffen around me. A hand on my arm, turning it over.

  “No tracker.”

  “She cut it out?”

  “No tracker as in she’s never had one.”

  A short breath. Then rough fingertips gently touch my face, brushing the hair from my eyes. “Yeah, she definitely looks familiar.”

  I crack open my eyes. It’s raining again, and the water beads on the plastic sheeting and pours off on either side. I shiver.

  “Look, guys, she’s cold. I think we should bring her in.”

  Then I recognize Mary’s voice. There’s a hard edge to it. “We have no idea who she is.” She pulls Dave from his crouch next to me and turns him to face her. “She could be anybody. She could be harmless, or she could be one of them.”

  Jack kneels down next to me. He runs his fingers along the blanket and eyes my pack. “This isn’t stuff scrounged up from some abandoned house. Military or something. We’d better be careful.” A vague fear creeps into his eyes.

  “See?” Mary says.

  Dave touches her arm. “Then we’ll be careful.” He squats down next to me again and shakes my shoulder. “Hey, wake
up.”

  I finally flutter my eyes open, brushing out the rain that persistently falls on my face.

  “Can you get up?”

  My neck has a nasty crink and my back is stiff, but I’m alright. I fight the stiffness and stand, folding my blanket that somehow gave me away.

  Dave crosses his arms and looks at me. Mary approves of the stance and adopts it herself, but she misses the compassion that gleams in his eyes.

  “So who are you?”

  My toes squirm in the heavy boots. The moment I’ve dreaded—a question requiring more than a nod or shake of the head. I can’t just shrug my shoulders. I know who I am, and I can’t lie to them about everything. I debate for another agonizing minute, when Mary steps forward and prods my shoulder with the barrel of a rifle.

  “Come on, answer the question.”

  I see the suspicion like needles in her eyes. I hate her completely at that moment, and so I open my mutilated mouth wide for her, hoping it will disgust her into silence.

  She whips a hand over her mouth. Jack whistles in a quick gasp. Only Dave stands unmoved, but I can’t read anything on his face. I want to ask him if I can at least come in and eat something and warm up. But I don’t look at him again. His face is too carefully guarded, and I can’t tell if he’s repulsed or concerned, and not knowing is too dangerous.

  “You military?” he says. “And don’t dare lie.”

  I shake my head.

  “From a gang?”

  I shake my head. At this rate he’ll never guess who I am.

  Finally he shakes the rain off the brim of his cap and walks to me with his right hand extended.

  “I’m Dave.”

  His hand is warm and rough and he seems like the only stable fixture on the earth at this moment. I grab his hand with my other one as well. Mary makes a move forward, but Jack puts an arm out. She wrenches away.

  I open Dave’s hand and spell my name on his palm with my finger.

  “Terra?” A smile breaks through the shield over his face. The smile warms me. I nod.

  “Come on in. We can talk more about this inside.”

  Mary glares but doesn’t try to stop me.

  I look around for my pack and then notice it on Jack’s shoulders.

  “Oh, your pack?” Dave says. I nod. “Jack’ll take it for you. Don’t worry.”

  But I do worry. Printing off the message from Jessa was the stupidest thing I could have done. Even if the supplies don’t give me away, the note certainly will. I need to get it back, but from my position now, I’m helpless.

  I hobble along beside Dave. My legs are still half asleep from spending all night on the ground. Inside the school is a small lobby with restrooms off to one side.

  “Do you need to use the bathroom?” Dave says.

  I didn’t notice outside. But now that my heart isn’t racing, my bladder catches up with me. I nod emphatically. Jack laughs and points to the door marked with the silhouette of a girl.

  The facilities are crude, but the toilet flushes and water runs into the sink. I didn’t think about things like running water when I made my way through the Pacific Ocean. Is this a luxury?

  When I come back out, Jack and Mary are both gone. I cock an eyebrow at Dave to ask the question. He smiles.

  “They went into the cafeteria to breakfast.”

  I shake my head. Wrong question. Don’t get frustrated, I remind myself. This will take some practice for both of us.

  “What then?”

  I try to make the sound of rushing water. It sounds more like a cat hocking up a fur ball. I growl. Then I make the motion of washing my hands.

  “The running water?”

  I nod, happy to not have to resort to making more savage noises again.

  “That’s one of the first things we got working when we decided on the school for the settlement. It took some time, but it really wasn’t that hard. Turns out everyone was pretty willing to put some elbow grease in when faced with the thought of digging a latrine out back.” He chuckles at the memory, and I love the sound. I smile with him, careful to keep my teeth closed. He scratches his cheek.

  “You really look familiar to me. Have you been up to Washington before?”

  Before I can even think through an answer, I shake my head. I can’t lie to him. His eyes are too earnest.

  “Yeah, you’re probably from down south, judging from the way your skin is peeling.” He touches my cheek with a rough fingertip and I shiver. I hope he doesn’t notice.

  “Still cold?” Worry laces his voice. Understandably. With the sun coming up, everything is warming and drying off. I can’t hide anything from him.

  I shake my head and put a hand to my stomach.

  “Hungry?”

  I nod.

  “That’s my girl,” he says, indicating the doors to the cafeteria. How easy it is to fall in step alongside him. He’s about a foot taller than I am, and I feel comfortable walking next to him, like his shadow would. I’m safe there, even from Mary’s frosty stare as we walk into the cafeteria.

  Dave steers me to the food carts, and an older man with shining, red cheeks ladles me up some gloopy oatmeal.

  “Strawberries, too?” he says.

  I pause. I have a choice? I founder for a moment, lost in the limbo of indecision. I’ve always had my food prescribed. I always had to eat every bit—it was optimized of course, down to the last teaspoon. But now, I have a choice. I won’t be able to taste the strawberries, but they look delicious.

  I nod.

  He scoops a generous portion of sliced strawberries on top of my cereal. Then he winks.

  “And we even have a little honey this morning, so they’re sweetened, too.”

  The first time I’ll be able to try something unnecessarily sweetened, and I won’t be able to taste much of anything. But this is my sacrifice. This is what I gave up to be on the Burn. I harden myself just a bit. I’ve hardened just about every part of me to deal with the colonies. I can handle not tasting food. Small sacrifices, I tell myself. I take the tray he offers me.

  As we walk to a table, I notice the radio. Two people listen, but all I hear is static. One flips through a notebook while they eat breakfast. Jack waves us to the table where he and Mary sit. Mary shoots me daggers the whole time, but pats the bench next to her for Dave. Dave smiles, then side-steps and leads me to where Red eats with his silver-haired companion.

  “Red, Nell, this is Terra.”

  I bob my head to them. Nell’s mouth widens into an irresistible smile full of white, crooked teeth. I smile wide back, opening my teeth in spite of myself. But Nell doesn’t flinch. She extends a soft, wrinkled hand. I shake it gently, almost an apology for showing my mouth to her.

  “Not to worry, dear. You’ll find all of us have our own scars here. Not everyone’s is as obvious, but we’re all just a bit broken. Comes with the territory.”

  I spoon some oatmeal and strawberries and put them in my mouth. I faintly taste a trace of the sweet. It isn’t much, but it’s enough. Dave smiles as I down three more bites. After the energy bars in the sub, this food, tasteless or not, is heavenly.

  Red looks like he wants to ask more about my mouth, but Nell lays a hand on his arm. Red puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes her. She smiles.

  I peer out the window behind them. A realization strikes me in the chest. Through the window, I see the sky blue and hazy in the morning sunlight. Trees sway. I can see out the window and really see. No black ocean, no heavy weight. I walked through the rain last night and slept in it. I woke up to rain on my face this morning. And here I am looking through the window at a world illuminated by sunlight.

  “What’s wrong?” Dave says.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re crying.”

  I realize my face is wet. I sit here with two people who have spent their lives together on the Burn and are so completely in love, I can feel the emotion radiating off them. In the colonies we are led to believe that such a thing is im
possible—the Burn is filled with killers and destroyers and such things as love and hope are shadows.

  I shrug. I don’t have the ability to tell him how happy I am at this moment.