Circles in the Dust (11 page)

             
The water had begun to boil while they talked. David tore the tops off two dehydrated meals and poured in an estimated amount of water. He set one of them next to his feet, giving the more savory-smelling one to Elizabeth, cautioning her to grab it by the top and let it sit for a minute. She set hers on her lap, her hands resting on the outside of the bag for warmth.

             
So she was younger than he was. She had been raised in a commune. She must have spent all the years she could remember there, unaware of what it was like outside those walls. They were getting along and that was good; his conversational skills were coming back to him after lying in disuse for so long, and he did truly enjoy her company.

             
“So you’re an odd-job kind of girl,” he summed up.

             
“And you’re a hunter-gatherer,” she countered.

             
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Less of a hunter, thanks to the scarce pickings.”

             
“It’s always a big deal when anyone who goes out of the Base comes back with any game. One of the few things we celebrate.”

             
“There was a time I thought someone was crazy because they told me they were eating deer,” he laughed, thinking about his much younger, foolish self. “But I can tell you, I’d give my left nut for a piece of jerky right now,” he said with a wistful smile on his face.

             
“I would have guessed you did pretty well, though, considering that.” She pointed at his bow strapped to the side of his pack.

             
“It came in handy more in the beginning,” he said. “After a while it became more for… self-defense,” he told her, grimacing as the faces of men stuck like porcupines flashed behind his eyes. She seemed to sense the change in his demeanor.

             
“Are these ready yet?” she asked.

             
“Should be,” he said, returning to himself. He picked up the bag of grub and dug his tarnished camping multi-utensil into it, stirring the ancient rice and beef, hoping for a moment they would be tasteless. It was better than the more probable alternative. His wish was granted. He rolled the rubbery chunks of meat around his mouth, savoring the saltiness that his taste buds could discern. Elizabeth dug into hers and coughed, opening her mouth to suck in air. He laughed at her impatience and watched a wisp of steam come drifting out from between her lips.

             
“Hot?”

             
She nodded her assent and chewed vigorously, swallowing after a moment and gasping, letting her tongue loll out into the frosty night air.

             
“So,” he continued with the questions, “do you have a lot of friends back home?”

             
She gazed at him idly while her burns healed. Eventually, she licked her lips and answered, “Yes, I suppose so. We’re like a big family.”

“Okay,” David said, “walk me through a typical day on the farm. I want to know what it’s really like to live there.”

              She cocked an eyebrow at his calling the Base ‘the farm’ but answered his question.

             
“Well, everyone gets up at dawn. Most people head out into the fields. Or get some food started. I’d rather be out in the fields, but my dad always tries to stick me in the kitchen, or with some message he could just walk over himself. He thinks I’m still a child.” Her voice took on a slight pout at the mention of her father. “He’s probably going to kill me when I get back. Anyway, we spend most of the day working, fixing up the house, or adding to it. Since we’ve gotten so many new people, we’ve started building a lot more little houses around the main one. There’s more than enough to keep everyone busy, at least while the snow lets up.

             
“It’s kind of like going back in time, at least that’s what everyone says. I remember when I was little, watching TV and stuff, and now I work on a farm without electricity or anything.” She laughed. “I feel like one of the characters in an old book, livin’ off the land, makin’ my own clothes,” she said, with what David supposed must be an attempt at a farmer’s accent.  “Everyone talks about what it used to be like, and it sounds nothing like the present.”

             
“You read books?” He sat up a little straighter.

             
“Yeah.” Her voice raised with the subject, her words cascading more freely than any she had spoken to him thus far. “We have lots of books, mostly boring old manuals and stuff, but a lot of good ones too. I love to read. When we were still trying to salvage things from the cities around here, someone came up with the idea of looking for all the books we could find. That way we could preserve some of the achievements of mankind and not lose everything. Maybe rebuild some things, get electricity again, stuff like that. There’s a huge library in a shed back at the Base; well, not so much a library as a ton of books in boxes, there for anyone who wants to read them. My favorites are the old novels, the ones that talk about the way life used to be. There are books about wars and adventures, people falling in love, knights in shining armor. My goal is to read all of them.” Her eyes gleamed as she talked.

             
David thought it was odd that they would have kept books when there were so many more useful things they could have salvaged. She must have seen the confusion on his face.

             
“Well, the plan is to try and recreate what we had before. Start over,” she explained. “Books will help us get there. We can learn from our ancestors, see what they did right and copy it, what they messed up and do it right—”

             
“That’s always worked so well,” he interrupted. “The people who put us here in this mess had all those books and more, and they still went on to blow each other into oblivion.” He had spent many a night by the fire, thinking about what he would do to the people responsible for his life turning out the way it was, if he got the chance, maybe when he met them in hell someday. There’s a reason to believe in life after death if ever there was one. “Maybe it would better to get rid of all traces of the past and get a real, fresh start.”

             
“But—” Elizabeth started, but her face showed the bewilderment her mind was experiencing. Obviously this was not an idea that had been presented to her yet, and David started wondering if he would fit in with these people if this was their philosophy. “It at least gives us somewhere to start,” she managed to mumble. She looked hurt. David realized he had just attacked her passion, and he felt sorry.

             
“I guess not everything from the past is bad,” he lied. “We could learn a thing or two from them.” The words burned on their way out.

             
“Just wait, I’ll show you when we get there,” she said, coming reluctantly out of her funk.

             
“It’s a lot of work, just trying to get by?” He tried to turn the conversation back to its original course. “That I can at least understand.”

             
“Yeah, it’s not easy,” she responded. “It used to be pretty peaceful, until all the Outliers showed up. Now no one can leave, we have to have guards all around and we built a wall. I miss the way it used to be. I just want everything to go back to the way it used to be,” she finished in a gloomy voice. He had finished his meal while listening to her talk and tossed the plastic bag into the fire. She was still picking at hers, looking morosely down into the mush, poking at it with her fork.

             
“Do you remember when it happened?” he asked, the thought popping out of his mouth before he could process it.

             
“When what happened?” She looked up at him, her eyes shimmering with tears not yet fallen.

             
“When everything went to shit. When the war started,” he elaborated.

             
“Not really,” she stammered after a minute. “I was pretty young.”

             
“Hmm.” He felt a stirring within him. He missed the way things used to be too. He may not remember them that well, but he missed his family. He missed knowing what would happen every day when he awoke. After all these years, he remembered that feeling. He wanted to stop. A part of him wanted to suppress the memories, just like he had done for years. He wanted to forget the old man chattering in his ear while he worked to keep them alive. Another part of him wanted to tell her. He did not know why but he wanted her to know. “I remember. I remember my home being blasted apart with my family still in it. I remember children crawling, bloody and screaming, through the street, only to be trampled by the terrified masses. I remember watching my innocent home town burn. Not an enemy soldier in sight. They just dropped bombs on us and watched us burn.” He choked, trying to suppress the tears that were on their way. His throat was tight and his eyes stung. He wanted to stop, to change the subject, but he had never spoken about that night. Not to the little gang he had been a part of at first, not around one of the communal fires that had attracted him in the beginning, when the adults who had survived would debate in vain what had caused the deconstruction of civilization and how it could have been avoided.  He had never wanted to revisit it, had avoided ever thinking about it; but now he was ready. He wanted to tell her, he wanted this to be a part of the new David and for her to see this new side of him.

             
“It was… awful. I was young too, but those things don’t go away. They get burned into your brain forever. I never really thought there was a chance to start over, but if there is someone out there trying, a reboot of the past is the last thing they should strive for. In the past, most people were okay with being ruled by a few old assholes who started wars and told them it was for the greater good. They watched their people die and praised them for sacrificing themselves for  their country, never telling them that they were really fighting for supremacy over another group or retaliating to some little political jab. They lived with the belief that their group was always better than the rest, and were just fine with going to war and annihilating them. They led us to this, this nightmare we live in, and why would we want to repeat that?”

             
The words gushed out, his pent-up feelings finally given a voice. He had been looking in Elizabeth’s direction as they sat around the fire, fiercely concentrating on her eyes, though he was talking more to himself than to her. He just felt relieved to have gotten that out of himself, and hoped he hadn’t undone his previous work of bringing them closer together. She looked afraid at first. Her eyes were wide, her face pale, though that could have been the moon spilling its first light down on them. She stared at him for a minute, a beautiful statue, the waning firelight dancing across her skin.

             
David rose to gather some firewood, going off into the forest without saying another word, leaving her still as stone behind him. He returned with an armful of fallen braches, set a few on the dying fire and dropped the rest in a pile beside it. He sat down on his blankets, centering his attention on reviving the fire, stealing a glance at Elizabeth every once in a while. She never took her eyes off him. What was she thinking? He wished he knew.

             
Eventually she spoke.

             
“I’m sorry you lost your family,” was all she said.

             
He looked up at her and forced a smile. “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to start a new one. I never thought about that before, but now…”

             
A shy smile lifted the corners of her lips as he said this, bringing life back into her.

             
“I’m sure you will,” she returned. “Back home, no one stays single for long. Got to rebuild the population.” Her voice was quiet, shallow, but picking up a little as she spoke.

             
“That makes sense,” he said with a crooked smile. “Though, ironically, overpopulation seems to be a big problem of yours.”

             
“That is true,” she relented. “But still. I’m sure you’ll find someone soon enough.” She looked away from the fire out into the night.

             
David laughed a little at that and dropped his eyes. Suddenly the air felt tense, and he didn’t really know why. His thoughts wandered to the girls he was sure to find at the Base, what they looked like, the color of their hair, their eyes, how they would act around him.

             
He didn’t realize Elizabeth was looking at him again until she cleared her throat and caught his attention. “It’s late. We should probably get some sleep,” she said evenly.

             
“Good idea,” he said. “How much farther do we have until we get there?”

             
“We should be there tomorrow night, maybe the morning after,” she said as she slid down into her bed, rolling over so her back was to David and the fire.

             
David simply grunted a response that he had heard her. One more day and they would be at the Base, and he would have to explain himself to a whole host of people he never knew he would find. As his head hit the ground, the question popped into his head whether he would recognize anyone, or if anyone would recognize him. Depending on the person, that could change things, make them harder. Maybe Mitch would be there. He hoped Mitch had made it; he was the one person David considered to be his friend out in the woods, and he hoped he had survived.