Exodia (6 page)

“
It smells like Vinn Will
and Carter Tosh, some of Ronel’s people who help, uh, special
travelers. I’ll bet they’re looking for us. Probably saw the
solar-bikes and figured there was a fugitive.”

I cringe at that word. I can’t wrap my
brain around any of this.

Lydia puts her hand on my shoulder,
reaches past me with her other hand and taps Barrett. She whispers,
“Are you sure it’s safe? Should we hide? Or climb,
maybe?”

Barrett lowers his gold filled bag to
the ground and sits on it. He sniffs the breeze again. “I’m sure,”
he says in a normal voice. “That’s Vinn. We wait and let them find
us. That’s the safest way.”

Lydia’s hand slips beneath my shoulder
strap. She helps me get free of the pack and hangs it on a
branch.

“
I wasn’t going to sit on
it,” I say.

“
I know.” She opens a side
flap and pulls out a small device. “Old Mrs. Delia, my neighbor,
says this was a popular item when she was little and went camping
with her family. Of course, now camping is more or less our
lifestyle. And these things aren’t made anymore … of
course.”

Of course. Not much manufacturing going
on beyond the absolute necessities. I watch her take the strange
contraption and attach one end to the broken branch she had touched
before. I hear a sucking sound and see the rolled up bottom begin
to expand, filling, I suspect, with liquid from the tree. She shows
me how it works, where to pinch the top, how to attach and release
the clips, and how to detach the now full reservoir of pure
water.

“
Drink up,” she says. “You
were thirsty.”

“
After you.”

She smiles that smile I can’t get
enough of and takes a delicate sip. She pretends to gag and we both
laugh. I take the device from her hand and our fingers touch. I
guzzle the rest and show her what a quick learner I am by attaching
the thing to a different branch, one I break first. I offer the
filled container to her and she drinks half and hands the rest to
Barrett. We repeat the process a few more times until we feel
satisfied. Lydia tells me my life may depend on this little gadget
so I better not lose it. I promise not to.

“
What’s it called again?” I
ask as I stuff it into my belt sack.

“
It has some technical name
with an acronym, but it’s easier to call it a camp
well.”

“
Oh.” I am out of words and
ideas. My mouth, so recently wet, dries up. She is standing very
close.

“
Hey Vinn!” Barrett shouts.
“Carter! We’re over here. Don’t shoot us.”

Barrett is on his feet and swinging up
the money bag. My heart seizes up as I realize this might be the
end of the road for him and Lydia. They’ll hand me over to Ronel’s
people and go back to Exodia.

I am not ready for that.

And I’m certainly not ready for the two
men who appear on the trail. I’ve never seen two more grotesque
beings in my life. No wonder Barrett could smell them. They smell
like death.

Chapter 4 Death All Around

From the 1st page of the
Ledger:

Like sheep they are laid in
the grave; death shall feed on them.

THE STINK OF death swirled around,
unmistakable, floating in the air like dark despair. Kassandra rose
from her bed and quietly closed the window, effectively shutting
out the dread of truth. She tiptoed out of the room without waking
Katie. Katie would go berserk if one of the lambs had
died.

At the front door she grabbed a pair of
well-worn tire sandals and tied the straps around her ankles. She
opened up the door only far enough to duck under. She rolled it
back down, rose up, and headed toward the sheep pen. The gross
smell grew stronger. A single old ewe lay like a woolen lump up
against the gate, as if someone had tried to pull her under it. The
rest of the flock huddled in the center of the
enclosure.

Overnight the pond had completely
disappeared.

Kassandra ignored the trickle of fear
that threatened to overtake her and she ignored the ominous fact of
the muddy expanse in order to deal with the immediate death before
her.

The ewe’s front legs were chewed off.
Kassandra stared. She was close enough to see that the tracks
around the body told a story. She was more than a little concerned
by the size of the prints. The sheep died during the night,
certainly not of thirst, not this soon, more likely simply of old
age. Attracted by the scent of death, a wild dog or bobcat had
tried to pull the ewe out, gotten her wedged under the gate, and
settled for a dinner of the only parts that fit under the wooden
slats.

Kassandra bristled at the waste. She
still stood a good six feet away, but couldn’t make her feet move
her body closer. She knew exactly which ewe this was–she knew all
of her sheep. This was the first one that Flor, her youngest
sister, had named. She had called her Carnation, and picked flower
names for every lamb born that year.

“
What happened?”

Kassandra jumped at Katie’s
voice.

“
See for yourself. It’s
Carnation.”

Katie strode past Kassandra,
tight-lipped and holding back the tears. “I wish dad would get
home.” She opened the gate and pulled the ewe out by her tail.
“Grab the shovel. We can’t use the meat and this smell is going to
bring trouble out of the north woods. Lions and tigers.”

“
I doubt it. Nobody’s seen
one in years. Mom said we don’t have to worry about the
non-indigenous species anymore.”

“
Well, we better worry about
the indigenous ones, then, because whatever ate off her legs is
going to get hungry again and come back.”

With the two of them working they had
Carnation buried within ten minutes.

“
Do you think Flor will
notice?”

“
Yeah, she’ll
notice.”

Kassandra looked toward the house and
then the pond. It was time to face a discouraging fact. “What are
we going to do for water?”

Katie took the shovel from her and
tapped some more dirt over the mound. “Build a well, a pump, a
windmill, or something, I guess.”

“
You guess?”

Katie gave a grunt-like laugh. “Should
probably ask Deandra. All of her guesses are right.”

Kassandra walked back on Katie’s right
side, her shadow stretching long across her sister’s in the early
morning light. As they neared the house their next-to-youngest
sister, twelve-year-old Sana, came out.

“
Oh, oh. Sana for sure will
have something to say about this.” Kassandra waved at Sana then
whispered to Katie, “I’m going to give it to her straight and see
what prediction she makes.”

Both girls were used to Sana’s strange
ability. As a second generation gemfry she had a unique
gift.

Katie leaned the shovel against the
house and got ready to grab Sana in case she reacted physically to
the news. It wasn’t uncommon for the girl to have a
seizure.

Kassandra looked in Sana’s eyes and
said, “Carnation died.”

The younger girl’s eyes widened, rolled
back for an instant, and focused on her sister again. Her words
came out in her usual cryptic manner, “Addiction near.” She paused
then added, “Iron candidate.”

The little girl shook her head and
looked toward the sheep pen. Blood that had puddled on the ground
near the gate looked brown. Sana said, “Raid contained.” She ducked
back into the house.

“
Whoa,” Katie almost
chuckled. “I didn’t expect that. Pretty clear, don’t you think?
There’s nothing to fear. The “raid” was contained. How does she do
it?”

Kassandra frowned. “But who is the iron
candidate? And what is the addiction?”

A shrug was the only answer.

* * *

Kassandra took her turn in the hidden
garden. Behind the house, down a hill and sheltered by a row of
leafless trees, her parents had turned a meadow into a two acre
field of hand-tended crops. Kassandra didn’t mind the weeding so
much, but carrying buckets and buckets of water here when it didn’t
rain enough was a chore that she hated. And now that the pond was
dry, well, she didn’t want to think about that.

She knelt on the edge of the first row
and let her thoughts escape the drudgery.

This morning’s sad event had been
followed by a hasty breakfast and afterward the girls had worked
together to move the flock to the gulches. It was a last ditch
effort, quite literally, to get the flock to water. They had to
cross an old highway and hope there wouldn’t be any travelers to
deal with. It was getting so that some Red travelers were as
dangerous as the soldiers. The sheep easily leaped the barriers and
settled into the long grasses in the marshy ditches between the
east and westbound lanes. An occasional vehicle passed, sometimes
going east on the west lane or vice versa, but no one stopped to
harass the girls or steal a sheep, Kassandra’s biggest fear. It had
happened before, and she prayed it would never happen
again.

The bedraggled sheep didn’t
hesitate to slurp from the pools of standing water in the median.
The girls stayed along the perimeters. These seven girls, ages
eleven to sixteen,
were caring guardians
and alert sentinels, burdened with more responsibilities and work
than girls of a hundred years ago.

Kassandra finished weeding the first
row and stood up to stretch. A v-line of geese flew overhead, the
lead goose squawking randomly. No, not randomly, she thought. He
was the leader. He encouraged his followers. He was an “iron
candidate” for the job of getting his flock to some safer
place.

She got to work on the second row and
mulled over Sana’s predictions. There had been talk for as long as
she could remember that a special leader, chosen by Ronel, would
soon turn up and erase decades of subjugation, a half-century of
internal war, and change the retreat of progress to
revival.

Sounded like fairy tales to
her.
An iron candidate … not
likely.

She got to the end of the second row
and clapped the dirt off her hands, stood again, and checked her
surroundings. She spotted movement by the old tree near the path
that led to the house. A bunny hopped forward then raced left as
Kassandra’s sister Araceli appeared.

“
Well, it’s about time,”
Kassandra yelled. Sister number five was always late, a dawdler,
and something akin to the black sheep of the family. Kassandra and
Katie were close, the twins were close, of course, and the two
youngest, Sana and Flor, were an inseparable pair, but Araceli was
a loner, trying to attach herself from time to time to one or
another of her sisters. Independent. Without a single gemfry
attribute.

But that was a good thing, Kassandra
thought. That made Araceli more like her, though maybe others would
think they were both emotionally maimed. She smiled at Araceli and
put her impatience in check. “I’ve done the first two rows. Why
don’t you start on the far end and when we meet up we’ll be
done.”

Araceli tossed her braids back. “Can’t
I work alongside of you? I’ve got more questions about … you know.
Period stuff.”

Kassandra nodded and bent to start the
third row. Araceli crouched across from her and weeded the fourth
row. Her first question seemed a practical one. “How are we going
to get the stink out of our clothes? I mean, what if we never get
the windmill fixed?”

“
Dad will be back tomorrow.
He’ll have supplies, lumber and stuff. Or maybe the Dixons will
come help us dig a new well. Lots of people have wells they have to
pump by hand, you know.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead with
the back of her arm.

Araceli threw some weeds over her
shoulder. “Two days until TM. I can’t smell like this at TM,
Kassandra.”

The older Luna girl bristled with
jealousy. Weekly get-togethers in their anonymous town included
church services, market shopping, town meetings, and general
socializing. Because nearly everyone attended the town meeting the
day was simply called TM.