Circles in the Dust (17 page)

Chapter 19

David knew his eyes were open but he saw only black.

He blinked a few times, though that did not help. He noticed as he did that the skin of his forehead was tight. He couldn’t remember where he was or why he was there. His attempts at retrieving the past were met with a nominal force, just enough to push his tendrils of thought back to the dark room, which left him with nothing. He tried to raise his hand to his face but couldn’t. It was restrained he discovered as he wiggled it around, some very coarse rope binding his wrists around a thick pole or beam. He lifted his head, which initiated a tremendous pounding, and let it fall back against the pole, flinching at the impact.

His legs were unbound, though that meant little. He slid his hands down to feel the ground, which was gritty and dirty, but solid underneath that; he guessed he was in a building that had fallen into disrepair, like everything else, or that wasn’t used much perhaps. There were no windows or lights, not even a crack in a wall or a glow underneath a door, so perhaps he was in a cellar or basement. Hopefully it was a cellar or basement; for all he knew, he could be in a tomb. His heart sank as the possibility of that entered his mind; he pushed it away, scoffing at the idea with a false confidence.

What was the last thing that had happened to him, leading to his being bound in a basement? He struggled to eke out the details of the last remembered moments of his life and came up with a dark morning in a field. The sun was just beginning to illuminate the clouds on the eastern horizon, and the grass was catching a little yellow light. He remembered walking, laughing, maybe? But why would he be laughing? This wasn’t funny. He seriously doubted this was some kind of joke. But that morning, that morning must have something to do with it, something to do with the awful electrifying pain in his head that kept him from thinking any more than this. He curled up, as much as he could in his current state, and settled in to wait out the waves of pain that radiated from the top of his head.

He sat there for a while, thinking nothing, feeling nothing but pain, until a noise permeated his wretched mind. A slight boom. A footstep? A door closing? There was only one at first, then a quiet scuffling, footsteps on dirt? This distraction was enough for him to forget his agony temporarily and wander outside his own mind. The shuffling steps grew louder and louder, coming closer and closer, until they stopped abruptly, replaced by the jingling of keys and the scrape of an old metal lock sliding open.

David opened his eyes in anticipation but shut them as a door slid open and the low light of a lantern spilled into the room. He squinted, trying to see who had entered, but only a silhouette stood in front of him. A round man, in front of whoever held the lantern. The shadowy figure took three steps forward so they were just outside the reach of David’s unbound, naked feet. He crouched down, his face so close David could feel his moist breath.

“Hello.”

His voice was deep and the word ripped through David, tearing away any hope of this man helping him out of the dark.

“Where am I?” David asked.

“Where are you?” the man repeated in his throaty rumble, slowly enough to taste the words as they slipped past his tongue. “Where do you think you are?”

“I—” David started, though he knew he could not finish. Now that he was able to ignore his aching head, he took a moment to search the depths of his memory, until the image of that early morning came to him complete, and he saw the Base, and everything after came rushing back to him. “This is the Base,” he whispered. “I’m in the Base, I came to help you. Why am I tied up?”

The man laughed at the question, a sound that reminded David of a thunderstorm.

“Why did you come here?” the man responded, ignoring David’s question.

“I came to help you!” David yelled, frustrated already by the dark stranger. “I came to help you with the Outliers, and you beat me and tied me up! What
—”

“Why did you come here?” the man roared back, just as David was beginning an outraged rant.

David recoiled from the power in that voice. Looking up into the depthless face of his questioner, cold fear settled in as he realized this was not going to be anything like convincing Elizabeth.

Elizabeth!

“Where is Elizabeth? Is she all right? Can I talk to her?” The words came spilling out of David’s mouth before he had even a moment to think about what he was saying.

“You will not speak her name!” the shadowy man spat in his face. “Where did you find her? Why did you
—” His line of questioning was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder, the hand of the lantern-bearer standing behind him. He stopped mid-sentence and his head drooped. He stood there for a minute, his breathing hard and shallow at first, slowly deepening and lengthening. David cringed at the man’s outburst and pressed himself up against the post, legs folded against his body, saying nothing.

“You will not see her again,” the man said calmly, his voice directed at the floor. “I don’t know what your real intentions are for coming here but I, yes, I will find out.”

With that, the man turned and exited the room. David caught a glimpse of the young girl holding the lantern, eyes wide, adrift somewhere in early adolescence. She gave David a wary look, like one might give an unfriendly dog on a leash, and followed the man out of the room, closing the door behind her. David was submerged once more in utter darkness, the throbbing in his head returning with a vengeance. He tried to sleep, but managed only a shallow unconsciousness, though even that did not come soon.

There was a scraping of dirt on the floor outside the door, just as there had been when the angry round man approached. This slight sound was more than enough to wake David from his restless slumber. He heard the footsteps come to a stop, presumably at the door, and slumped back against the pole as another interrogation approached.

There was a voice, a man’s voice coming from the outside the door, sounding distant, hushed. A low whisper responded, too low for David to make out. The man’s voice got louder and closer as they exchanged words back and forth. The masculine voice sounded angry, the feminine almost pleading. There was a rattle of a doorknob and a bitter exclamation from the man. They were yelling in whispers, the sound of their voices fading as the scraping of their feet announced to David they were leaving. Relieved, though only slightly, he hung his head once more and slipped into unconsciousness.

There was no telling how long he had been stuck in this prison, but it was long enough that David was beginning to feel the sharp pains of hunger. He guessed it had been at least a full day, though it was hard to tell with no light and only fitful episodes of what could hardly even be called sleep.

His mind began to wander, the only part of him that could. He thought at first, out of habit formed in the last few days, about his plan to save the Base. A bitter laugh resonated in his head as he realized what he was doing, thinking of saving the people that had imprisoned him in a dark, dank pit. That goal was swiftly descending his list of priorities as he discovered a promising plot to escape this place and return to his home in the woods.

He spent more time trying to figure out how he was bound, and how he could escape. The rope was thick and his wrists were all but immobile, so he turned his thoughts to what he would do when he escaped, which gave him more pleasure. The first thing he decided was that he would find the man who had come to talk to him, make sure he knew that David knew the truth of his intentions to come and save the Base and make a life for himself there, and then kill him. Then he would find the guard that had smitten him down outside the Base and tie him up in this basement, gagged, so that he would know what he had condemned David to. He would raze every building, steal as much food as he could carry, and retreat to the camps of the Outliers in the forest. That would save them, at least; they could take over what was left of the Base and make it their own. And they would probably be a little more hospitable. They had better be, for their own sake.

He was toying with an image of flames rising around the buildings of the Base as he had seen it for the first time when he was standing on the boulder when there was a clang just as before and he could hear someone approaching his cell. David had to suppress a chuckle as he hoped it was the man who had first come to speak with him. Maybe this time he would get to see his face, so he could form a more accurate depiction of him gasping for air as David’s hands tightened around his throat. A man can dream.

The door opened and David’s wish came true; the man was alone this time, holding a candle in his left hand. His face was old; that was the first thing David noticed, plus the prickly white whiskers were clumsily trimmed, something David had not seen in his time in the forest. Beards were long and unkempt. Men had more important things to worry about.

As the man entered with his candle, David got a look at what was contained in the room. There were large, wooden crates all around him, a few old farm tools, rusted and broken. The walls were concrete and the floor the same, though hidden in most places under a layer of dirt. Altogether, it was a drab room, as any good prison should be.

The man rummaged around the crates, finally pulling a smaller one over to where David sat on the floor. He lowered himself onto this seat, which let out a groan in protest. He let his beady eyes bore into David for a full minute before saying anything. David was not about to start things off; there was no lantern-bearer to keep the man’s temper in check this time.

The man finally cleared his throat and licked his lips, and David’s thoughts of ending this man’s life disappeared as he was reminded that the reverse was so much more likely.

“So, David,” the man began, “I suppose I haven’t properly introduced myself. My name is,
well, you can just call me the Mayor. Most people do.”

So this was the man in charge, David thought. He seemed like the type to thrive in a dark age.

“Apparently you already know who I am,” David replied.

The man chuckled in response, his plump lips curled up into an ugly smile.

“I admit I know a little about you already. Elizabeth has told me what she knows about you,” the Mayor went on. “She tells me you have to come to save us; how very kind of you. She seemed a little fuzzy on the details of that plan, however. You have assured her you will be able to bring us all to peace, because you are willing to work with us and blend in with the outsiders. You’ll be a sort of mediator, I deduced. But believe me, it is not as if we have simply shut them out, those Outliers.” His voice drawled with disgust as he spoke of them, a slip in his odious attempt at charm. “We have tried to reason with them, but they simply will not accept any other solution than we share everything we have with them, which would leave us all with empty bellies. What makes you think you can come in here and solve our problems? From what I hear, you could use a little help yourself.”

David knew he was lost; Elizabeth had obviously filled this man in on everything she knew about him, hopefully trying to help David win the trust of the leader of the Base so he could enact his plan to bring about peace. He needed something new to tell this man if he wanted to be relieved of his bonds. He would need to come up with a plan, a real one. This brute would not be won over by the promise of David trying his very best, and he may die here if he didn’t come up with something soon.

“I don’t think you realize, Mr. Mayor,” he tried not to sound sarcastic as he addressed the man by his title, though the man’s face remained stoic, “what I am really capable of. You have before you a tool that can be used to relay your ideas for a solution to the Outliers without them coming from their enemy,” he paused, hoping this was not the wrong word to use, “but coming from within. Do you have anyone willing to venture out into the Outliers, anyone who will be recognized as one of them, who can support your offers as one of them?”

“My dear boy, I don’t think this is as simple as you suggest
—”

“But it is!” David interrupted. “I’m sure you have solutions in mind that would allow you here at the Base to continue undisturbed in your life, while also giving something to the Outliers so they will go and leave you alone, let you grow your food and give humanity a second chance. But I would also be willing to guess that you don’t have a way to communicate those ideas except as a plea to leave you alone and go beg elsewhere. You need a middleman. Someone who can put those ideas in their heads, make them think they came up with them on their own. Then you can reluctantly agree and they will feel as though they have twisted your arm and gotten the better deal.

“I’m not from here. Elizabeth found me in the forest, on my own. Everyone I knew had moved on, come here I suppose, and I had no idea. She found me starving,  raving mad, accepting my own death, and saved my life. She gave me something to live for, showed me there are others left besides myself. I thought I was the last vestige of humanity, but now I now the Base exists, that there are other survivors making a stand. Not lying down and accepting extinction, but rising against it.” David took a breath and tried to measure the impact his speech was having on the Mayor; there remained no emotion on his frog-like face, nor any sign that the Mayor had a comment, so he continued.