Circles in the Dust (32 page)

             
The sounds of death faded as he left the battlefield that should have never been.

CHAPTER 39

The sky was an angry gray, pregnant clouds clambering over each other, rolling and shifting, mixing into one sky-encompassing mass. Two sets of footprints traced a faint line through the shallow snow. The morning mist had dissipated to reveal an afternoon storm, and the first snowflakes of winter crusted the ground.

              David pulled his coat a little tighter around himself. It had been much warmer this morning; he had not even needed his coat. But now, as he trudged through the snow, he was glad he had thought to leave it with Elizabeth.

             
“It’s all over then?” Elizabeth said, looking down at her feet, clad in worn old boots, a soft brown, the laces frayed.

             
“I think so,” David answered.

             
“I wish I had been there. I don’t know why you had to hide me away in the woods.”

             
“Because,” David mumbled, “if anyone from the Base had seen you, they would have thought you were a traitor and probably shot you first. I couldn’t let that happen to you.” The truth went further than that, though he left it there. He wanted to protect her, from everything. Having her anywhere near such a risky situation, even watching from afar, was more than he could bear.

             
“Still,” she insisted, “how did you get away?”

             
“The plan worked, it was so close, and then Mitch came along, and—” He paused, staring at his own feet, not knowing what to say. Should he tell her that Mitch was the one that killed her father? He was so numb that it didn’t seem like a big deal to tell her all of what happened, but that scared him. Now was not the time to be impersonal and harsh. He was so close.

             
“Then Mitch came along and screwed it all up,” he ended up saying.

             
She gave him a long, hard look, though he refused to meet her eyes.

             
“You’ll tell me what happened later, won’t you?” she whispered. David was glad that some of what he was feeling inside must be showing; he did not feel like talking, about what happened, what the future held, what battles raged within him. He wanted nothing more than to walk through the snow and let the cold seep through his clothes, into his bones, into his brain, and feel nothing.

             
They continued on as the day darkened. The woods were silent now. David had his bow over his shoulder, the few arrows he had left in the quiver at his hip, and his revolver stuck in its usual place in his waist. He had nothing else; he had left all his possessions in Mitch’s cabin, and he would probably never return to that place. He turned and looked over his shoulder, searching for another place he would never see again. Maybe one day, when the world had all recovered and whatever made the Base special spread to his valley, he could go back, find his old cabin, rebuild it, make it a house. He could go wherever he wanted then, maybe south, where it was warmer. Or east, where he might find more survivors.

             
For now, his future lay ahead. David took Elizabeth’s hand, and she intertwined her warm fingers with his. Out of the corner of his eye David saw her blush, and the corner of her mouth turned up in a hidden smile. Her skin felt good against his.

             
The trees began to thin as they neared the grassy slope between the woods and the Base. They stood on the same rocky outcropping they had when they first arrived. How much had changed since then, David pondered, as they stepped down into the crackling grass and began their descent. How many people he had met, and how many of them had died. He had been a prisoner, then an informer, and ended up a revolutionary. And he had started out no more than a hermit.

             
As they neared the gates, night was sweeping down upon them. No stars could be seen in the sky, and none would likely be seen for a while. David could scarcely remember what they even looked like. The gates were left wide open with no one there to guard them. In fact, as David and Elizabeth entered the compound, there was no one to be seen. There were lights in the main house, though, and so they headed toward it.

             
The door was unguarded and they walked into the house. There were no lights on in the entryway and they had to rely on Elizabeth’s knowledge of the building to navigate their way to the dining room, where light shone through the bottom of the door. Elizabeth turned the doorknob and a hazy light tumbled over them. The room was filled with people, lots of women scurrying to and fro between men stretched out on the large table that filled the room. David wondered if there were more elsewhere. He had not stayed around to see the results of the battle, but he hoped these were not the only ones to make it back. There was room to spare on the table, though he didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign.

             
The faces of the wounded were pale and gaunt; blood flowed from wounds still open, though most of the men were bandaged and wrapped up in cloth cocoons. The face of the closest one was turned toward the door, though it was impossible to tell who it was. His head was buried in thick bandages, with only crude holes cut for the mouth and eyes. There was a broad brown streak where he must have been bleeding from a gash stretching from temple to chin. A weak moan reached out from behind the mask, and David shuddered. 

             
A portly woman with a harried expression trundled past them, shoving David aside. A few faces turned when they entered the room, but no one paid them too much attention. David wondered which of the men on the table were from the Base, and which had been Outliers, if any. As he looked around, he noted one man, a tall, wiry fellow from the camp outside the Base. His wounds were being tended just as well as the others. A young woman was sitting on the table next to him, dabbing at his brow with a rag. Her gaze fell tenderly on the injured Outlier and David wondered if that name, that division, had died with the hot-headed men this morning.

             
Elizabeth left David’s side, wandered into the room and looked at the men on the table. Her brow was furrowed as she moved through the room; she must know most of the men there who lay so near death, with no traditional medicine, no more than a botanist could offer, though even then the lack of sunlight had eliminated a good number of plants that might have been useful. He watched as a steaming bucket was thrust into her hands and she was pulled over to one of the men, conscripted into service. David smiled, watching her take to the job without hesitation.

             
The room smelled of sickness and death, a sweet, cloying scent, and it began to churn his stomach as he sucked in the fumes of decay. He stepped back into the hallway, letting the door steal the light away from him. He turned and fumbled his way through the empty periphery of the building. Emerging into the night, he stood breathing in the freshness of a recovering nature laced with the scent of winter’s first snowfall.

             
He stepped off the porch, onto the ground. The feel of the dirt beneath his feet was reassuring, as if he had just returned to land after being on a ship for a long time. He raised his head to the heavens and let the snow fall on his face. It melted in his beard and ran in cool rivulets down his cheeks; it had been too warm inside with the sick and injured, and the hollow chill was welcome against his burning flesh. He peered around, seeing nothing but the faint outlines of some of the other buildings and the jagged line of the surrounding wall beyond. He set a course for the gap in the line that was the gate, and journeyed alone into the dark.

             
Eddies of wind swirled around him, kicking up the dusty snow around his feet. He looked back at the trail of prints he was leaving in the snow. There were his, plainly sunken into the snow, and the two sets of his and Elizabeth’s arrival were faintly visible underneath. That was all.

             
He stuck his hands in his pockets and huddled deeper into his thick wool coat. The gate was upon him before long. He stopped before it and admired the door. The bar keeping it closed had been tossed carelessly aside, the doors left wide open; the edge of the far one was stuck behind a boulder. Whoever had been on the wall when the survivors returned had been in a rush to usher them in. The other door had come back around, and was nearly shut. David went to the far door and grabbed it, heaving it over the rock and tossing it back into place. It creaked on rusty hinges, and he reached for the bar to seal it.

             
“What are you doing out here?” a voice called from behind him.

             
He turned to see Elizabeth prancing through the snow toward him.

             
“Just closing up,” he said.

             
“Are you okay?” she said.

             
“I’m fine.”

             
Elizabeth wrapped her coat more tightly against the biting wind. “I didn’t see my father in there,” she said.

             
David met her gaze. It was hard, the gaze of a survivor who had lived to see the lives of everyone they had ever known come to an end. But this was different; they were supposed to keep anyone else from dying. He told her he would.

             
“I’m so sorry,” was all he could think of to say.

             
She closed the distance between them, eyes locked with his, hard, but full of sadness. “He was all I had left,” she said. “Now I have…”

             
“Me,” David finished. He grabbed her face in his hands and lifted it up to his own. He leaned into her and their lips connected. He could taste the salt of tears, though who they belonged to he could not tell. He kissed her long and hard, his hands coiling around to bring her close to him. She grasped him in return, squeezing him against her. Their lips broke apart but neither could let go of the other. Tears that David was sure were his own now leapt into his eyes. She was all he had too. She was all he had ever wanted. Someone to be with, someone to make a life with. Before he had no life, only a shallow existence, but now he had her, and he wanted more from life. More than a bed for one at the end of the day, and a belly full of food. He wanted to keep her safe and provide for her. He wanted to know that she would be there at the end of the day, with her devious smile and her sharp tongue, and her compassionate eyes. He needed her. He had not been brought here by someone from the Base; he had been brought here by her, by his need to be with her. He knew it the moment he saw her face. He had been ready to die, and knowing there was someone else out there was enough to get him off the riverbank, but knowing she was out there had been enough to make him risk life and limb, lie to his oldest friend and leave him to die.

             
He would never again be alone. And it was too much. He felt a pressure rising within, forcing tears from his eyes and snot from his nose. He feared he would crush Elizabeth’s body against his, the pressure was taking control of his muscles, and it refused to let her go. But eventually he opened his eyes and broke away. He coughed and sobbed, wiping his eyes and nose. She took his hand and it made his heart leap just as it had the first time. Their fingers fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It felt so right.

             
David stepped toward the beam to place it across the doors. He stopped as he looked at it, laughed to himself, and abandoned the act. They turned back to the Base, and strode together, side by side, two of the last survivors. The night was black and the farmhouse itself was a vague outline, but above it David saw a vertical figure rising well into the sky. No other trees were visible, but this one stood out starkly in his vision. Branches wide and strong, trunk thick, and a green so deep it brought a fresh tear to David’s already sodden eyes. His sentinel was there, then he blinked and it was gone. Vivid as a photograph one moment and gone the next. David smiled, content at last. He led Elizabeth back, to their first night together, to their home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Joe for showing me that grown ups can be writers. To Marilyn for keeping me company while I wrote this. To Marlene and Brandi for helping me put together a real, professional book. Most importantly, thanks to my mom for making sure I never ran out of books to read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Harrop is a lif
elong inhabitant of Spokane, WA, where he grew up reading all the science fiction and fantasy he could get his hands on, especially anything with the word “dragon” in the title. He lives with his beautiful fiancée and their menagerie of pets.