Ashes of the Earth (25 page)

"I
told you I didn't know. But it wasn't a message I could ignore.
Shenker had just come back into camp from one of his travels. He said
we had to go, right away, he promised to go with me. We signaled
immediately that we were coming."

"You
mean with the tree on the ridge." She did not respond. "But
I think you had some idea of what he wanted."

"Something
about the medicines, that's what I assumed."

"You
said you made a list of illnesses."

"Carthage
needs medicines too. I think he thought that working jointly to heal
the sick would bring us together."

"What
illnesses? What were the ones you told him about?"

"Influenza.
Dysentery. Typhus. Snow blindness. Dropsy."

"Snow
blindness?"

"It's
what they're calling a new disease among our young. They go into
intermittent comas. Their eyes go all white. Three or four have
died."

Hadrian
stared at her in silence. "In Carthage," he said, "we
call it an industrial accident." He began to explain what he
knew about the death of Jamie Reese. "It had something to do
with the murder of that policeman, I am sure of it," he
concluded. "What was it, Nelly," he pressed, "why did
Jonah have to see you so urgently?"

"Don't
you think I've been trying to understand ever since I saw you with
his body that night?

"You
saw me?"

"I
was in the crowd, with my cloak over my head. I was about to run
inside to look for him when you came out carrying him. Shenker pulled
me away, said police would be swarming over the building soon."

"But
you had been watching the building, waiting for a safe time to go in
to Jonah. Surely you saw something."

"We
were waiting in the shadows for more than hour. Two families came out
carrying books. A delivery boy took in what looked like a tin of
food, ran out a few minutes later. A police patrol went by. I've
replayed it in my head again and again. There was nothing
suspicious."

"You
watched the rear door too?"

"Shenker
did. Whichever entry cleared first we would use to go to Jonah. A
janitor left, he said. A garbage wagon was emptying bins."

"His
funeral was two days later. Where were you? Not at his house. I was
there."

"I
was there too, long enough to see through the window that it had been
ransacked."

"Where
were you?" he asked. "Maybe I can find witnesses who will
help, at least make it clear you didn't kidnap the owner of that
house."

"Sanctuary
is where you take it," came her cryptic reply.

It
was daybreak by the time Hadrian gathered his backpack and had
checked on Emily's mare, praying that Nelly's influence would keep
the horse from exile stewpots. He moved up the rutted road away from
the harbor, toward the plateau where most of the camps' population
lived. Kinzler's improvements faded quickly as he walked away from
the waterfront. A scarecrow in a field resolved itself into a woman
who pried with a stick at frost heaves, looking for potatoes that had
escaped the blight. At the other end of the field a pig, less
discriminating, rooted among a pile of the diseased tubers. A goose
waddled by, extending a broken wing.

A
tall man, thin as a stick, struggled with a shovel in the rocky soil
at the edge of the cemetery. With a sagging heart Hadrian saw the row
of fresh graves, most marked only with makeshift pine crosses or
upended flat rocks. Beyond lay a row of shabby cottages whose roofs
at least signaled the benefit of the new salvage trade. Two were
covered with large sheets of plastic cloth, another with a mosaic of
automobile license plates wired together like shingles.

He
thought he recognized the face of a man walking with a cane and
lifted his chin in tentative greeting. The man glared at him, then
hobbled on. The haggard face would inhabit his nightmares now.

Hadrian
had been the most persistent of all the founders to seek out other
survivors, ignoring the warnings of Jonah and Buchanan when he had
pressed farther and farther toward the ruined cities. There had been
ten in the last group he had found, wandering along a stream in
search of roots and amphibians to eat. Every one of them had been
sick, damaged by radiation or the diseases of the malnourished. They
had not welcomed him, they had thrown stones at him. He had to call
out from behind a tree trunk to explain who he was and where he
wished to take them. He'd emptied the food from his pack and watched
them devour it like animals, then retch most of it back up as the
fresh grain and meat hit their ravaged stomachs. They had encircled
him, staring with wild, hateful eyes, as if he were responsible for
their plight, then they had jumped him, ripping his clothes, kicking
him until an older woman with a crutch had beat away his attackers.
Once in Carthage, half had died within weeks. The other half were
exiled months later. He had stopped searching for survivors.

He
sat on a stump, watching the morning chores and remembering. Jars of
night soil were being emptied into communal sewage pits. A child ran
past him. A bird trilled from the forest. A goat bleated from a shed
by the trees, waiting to be milked. Another child ran past him.
Hadrian paused as a third child emerged from a house at a trot. The
children were all running to the goat shed. No. He stood, watching
more closely. They were being summoned by the bird in the woods.

Two
minutes later he was crouching by the shed, watching as they gathered
around a lanky, fair-haired boy sitting by a rolled-up blanket. Dax
looked worn from his travels but seemed to take strength from the
children, who were anxious to share the tattered magazine he produced
from his bedroll. Only when he pushed the roll to the side did
Hadrian see the canvas pouch hanging from his shoulder, the size of a
courier bag. He crept back into the shadows. The boy had beseeched
the dead Jonah for words to carry and now he had some.

There
was a patient, almost gentle air about the boy as he entertained the
little ones, a kindness Hadrian hadn't seen before. Dax had the
manner of an older brother. Hadrian rose, about to descend toward the
group, when the wind died and he caught a snippet of the
conversation. The boy was explaining a glossy photo of an airliner
with children waving to it. "On the other side each of us gets a
big silver bird," Dax said, "and we flies inside it beyond
the sky, all around the world, just 'cause we can."

He
sank back into the shadows. Minutes later he returned to the woods
and began to parallel the boy's path as Dax rose, leaving the
magazine with the bewildered children. Toward the harbor, a man
cleaning a stable waved at the boy and Dax handed him a folded piece
of paper before trotting to a woman at a laundry tub. She joyfully
accepted an envelope, then gave him a grateful hug.

Hadrian
strode ahead to a point where he could see the waterfront. Two men at
the boathouse watched the dusty road as if expecting the boy. Two
others were splitting firewood and stacking it by the dock. Dax
paused as he crested the hill, looking first at the waiting men and
then beyond them before breaking into a desperate run. Hadrian
strained to see what so worried the boy, cupping his hand over his
eyes to look toward the rising sun. Then the morning wind pushed the
cloud cover stretching toward the north. It seemed but a thread in
the sky at first but as he watched it grew steadily bigger. One of
the steamboats was coming.

When
he looked back, Dax and the men who had awaited him were disappearing
into the mysterious compound on the little peninsula. Hadrian
abandoned his caution and began running toward the water's edge.

Gasping
for breath, squeezing his throbbing arm, he watched from the shadows
as the guard at the gate was called inside the palisade. The man
returned wheeling a wooden barrow bearing a single wooden keg. As the
man headed with his cargo toward the boathouse, Hadrian moved along
the shore until he was directly across from the rear of the palisade.
Spotting a gate open in the rear wall, he lowered his pack and
entered the water at a run.

Moments
later he leaned against the log wall, dripping wet. He hadn't been
spotted but soon would be in plain sight of the approaching boat. He
slipped through the gate into the nearest shadow, nearly gagging from
the acrid odor that filled the confined space. It was a small lean-to
piled with kegs, several of which were leaking their contents. He
dipped a finger in the pool at his feet and sniffed. Turpentine. The
year before a farmer living between the camps and Carthage had opened
a mill to process the pungent solvent from the pine trees on his
land.

He
stole along the rear of the nearest building. Through its window he
saw stacks of supplies inside, most in kegs and rough crates, with
pieces of salvage hanging from pegs. Voices rose, and he heard the
crackle of the wheelbarrow on the gravel. He ventured a look around
the corner and watched as another keg was carefully loaded, as if it
might explode.

Through
a window of the largest building Hadrian glimpsed Dax, a frightened,
guilty expression on his face as he gazed at the men gathered around
a chair in the center of the room. Only when Shenker raised his hand
to slap the figure in the chair did the others step back enough for
Hadrian to see.

Jori
Waller's face was already swelling from her beating. Blood trickled
down her chin.

"When
are the others coming?" Shenker was shouting loud enough to be
heard outside. "Buchanan didn't send his slag bitch for
nothing!"

Hadrian
retreated along the wall, desperately scanning the grounds for a
means of distraction. Rags were piled against the wall of the storage
shed. A smoldering brazier sat near the gate where it had warmed the
night guards. He snatched up several rags and darted back to the
lean-to, dipping them into the puddle of turpentine. Watching as the
next keg was wheeled from the compound, he ran toward the gate,
tossed the soaked rags on the brazier, and disappeared into the
shadows along the far wall.

The
explosion of flame brought frantic cries from inside the main
building. As the blaze licked around the gateposts, three men ran
out, shouting, clearly frightened the flames would soon reach
something else.

Shenker,
standing just inside the door, gave a surprised gasp as Hadrian
slammed his shoulder against him, knocking him to the floor.

He
had his knife open and had cut half of the ropes on the sergeant's
chair before the men from outside returned, with fury in their eyes
and clubs in their hands.

He
was on
a
train, holding his grandfather's hand as he nodded off to the regular
hissing, chugging sounds of the wonderful antique locomotive. He
could smell the hot dog the boy in the next seat was eating. His
grandfather had promised him ice cream when they reached the station.

Gradually
other sounds and smells began to stir Hadrian from his slumber. He
groggily nestled into his grandfather's shoulder. Suddenly something
cold and slimy pressed into his cheek. He sniffed and nearly gagged
from the stench of putrid water and long dead fish, regaining
consciousness in a fit of coughing and retching.

Someone
pulled his shoulder up, lifting him out of the foul air along the
bottom of the dark chamber. He shook his head violently from side to
side, trying to regain his senses, feeling now the throbbing aches on
his shoulders and back where he had been beaten.

"If
that's how you rescue me," came a hoarse voice, "remind me
to apply for a new hero."

"Sergeant?"
He struggled with his words. "You weren't supposed to be in the
camps."

"I
didn't know where the boy was bound when I started following him. You
said he was carrying secret messages. I certainly didn't know he had
discovered me tracking him."

"Dax
turned you in?"

"I
am such a fool." Her tone was bitter. "I watched him hail
someone working at a field by the woods, watched the two of them
speak, even saw the stranger run toward the waterfront. I never
imagined it was about me. They gave him a fresh loaf of bread and
some dried herring after four of them cornered me at the edge of the
village. That's what I'm worth. A fish sandwich."

A
sudden violent lurch that sent Hadrian reeling against the wall left
no doubt where they were. On a boat that was out in the swells,
straining its engine. "What direction?" he asked as he
looked at the partially open hatch overhead. Without a ladder they
had no way out.

"North."