Out of Exodia (2 page)

Someone yelled, “They’re caught on a
ledge. Quick get some rope.” Two words broke through the trauma
that deafened her: ledge, rope.

She sprang up with a single hope: the
wheeled sled that Mira had brought was laden with supplies tied on
with fifty feet of hoarded clothesline.

* * *

Five minutes.

A thin rope dangles down with a loop
tied hastily to its end. It slithers past shrubs that vie to catch
its end before it reaches us.

There is no breathing in my ear. No
struggle from Bear.

I let the rope flop against my hand.
Our rescuers give it several more feet of slack so I can tie us
together. I slip the loop around Barrett’s hand, pull it tight,
then twirl my own arm in and out of the slack, all while I lie as
still as I can on this precarious ledge.

They pull the rope taut. With one arm’s
worth of warrior’s strength I pull my weight off Barrett’s chest
and twist to catch his body with my other arm before they begin to
heave us up.

The rope burns my arm as those above
exert themselves. Barrett’s head lolls back and his whole body
flops lifeless like a discarded rag-doll. I anchor my feet where I
can, trying to find footholds to help with our ascent. The weight
of both our bodies makes the rope bite and rip into my flesh. It
takes too long to rise. It’s no easy thing to haul us up from this
pit. I look down.

I wish I hadn’t.

* * *

Strong arms pushed back the crowd and
formed a barrier between the Mourners and those on Bram’s side.
Lydia dropped to her knees in relief when she saw Bram being pulled
with Barrett the last couple feet past the edge. Bram’s wide chest
and strong shoulders were heaving and his breaths broke hard with
choked cries as he allowed his rescuers to take Barrett from his
grasp. Lydia’s own breath caught as she realized the awful
stillness of Barrett’s body.

“
Bear
—
” She dropped her head and wept
into her hands.

* * *

Several hands grab for Barrett’s arms,
legs, head, back, and I help them lower his quiet frame to the
heel-scuffed ground. They slip the rope’s end from his wrist and I
untwist the rest from my arm. Trails of blood run off my elbow and
splatter in the dust. I can’t hold back the inevitable tears.
Through them I see Lydia a short ways away, head bowed, her tall
figure folded into a grieving ball. Jenny wraps herself around her
daughter. Neither lifts a head to look my way.

Suddenly I feel my brother’s shoulder
hefting up my arm and Mira at my side examining the rope burns.
Then her hand grips mine. Both of them lead me away from the edge
of so much misery. I hear hushed and angry voices among the
mob.

Barrett’s other friends hurry to dig
his grave. Our Exodian custom of quick burials is followed without
hesitation, while Harmon sets up a tent for me to hide in. The pain
of my grief is far, far greater than the stinging discomfort I
suffer as Mira tends to my arm. I’d cut this arm off if it would
bring Barrett back.

I’d cut off the other one too if it
meant that Lydia could forgive me.

Jenny ducks in. “The Mourners are
satisfied that a sacrifice has been made,” she says.

I shake my head in disgust. “What’s
wrong with these people?” I’ll have to deal with them somehow.
“Where’s Lydia? Who’s with her?”

“
She wanted to be alone.”
Jenny lowers her voice. “At the grave.”

It’s still morning and though we walked
all night I think we should continue on for at least half the day.
I glance at my brother Harmon and he reads my mind.

“
I’ll get Malcolm up to the
north side and start moving everyone that way,” he says. “You can
stay back. Come along with Lydia later.”

“
I can bring her back
here,” Jenny says.

“
No, that’s all right. I’ll
go to her.”

* * *

This side of the gorge is flat and
barren for half a mile with scraggly trees and brush dotting the
expanse. Reds are everywhere, milling aimlessly, though most have
turned their backs on the broken bridge. They’re anxious, I hope,
to keep moving onward. Jenny pointed me in this direction, west of
the crowd, where several people surround a mounded lump of dirt.
The rich scent of freshly dug earth reaches my nostrils. I hear
whispers. Lydia stands next to a man whose body shudders. She
comforts him, her right arm squeezing his shoulders. Barrett’s
father. I hardly know this stocky, broad-faced man with thinning
hair and gentle eyes.

I stop to listen, then inch a few feet
closer as they exchange memories about Barrett. A mission he
finished. A joke he told. A fight he won. How he first revealed his
gemfry gifts to his father. To Lydia.

I stand directly behind Lydia and
imagine the enormity of her grief. A thousand words cross my mind
and dance before my eyes. Condolences. Regrets. My own remembrances
should be shared, but they stay buried in my heart because my
tongue, slow and heavy, fails me yet again.

I clear my throat; eyes quickly dart my
way. My pulse quickens when Lydia reaches back for me and spies my
bandaged arm. Her sad face puckers even more with empathy and
undeserved concern. “Oh, Bram.” My name slips through her lips as
if she’d never called me anything else. She pulls back her
outstretched arm without touching me.

“
I’m sorry,” I say. Such
inadequate words.

“
It wasn’t your
fault.”

Barrett’s father nods in agreement and
clutches two belt sacks—Barrett’s—to his chest. He mumbles
something about his son’s quick actions getting him into trouble
all his life.

But it was my fault. It was my body
that crushed his.

We stand there for quite a while,
silent. Slowly I realize that the sound of anxious people settling
down around us has created a humming drone that almost
soothes.

“
We can’t stay,” I say.
“I’m sorry. We have to move on.” I hold my hand out. As soon as
Lydia’s dark hand touches mine a pang of deep mourning skips
through me. I more fully know her sorrow. The heartbreak in her
soul matches mine yet hers is free of guilt. My breath eases out in
shared despair.

And something else.

Lydia’s heart holds regret for the
souls, the Blue souls, at the bottom of the canyon. A whole army. I
glance back across the gorge toward Exodia and wonder if the
Executive President has anyone to stand with him as he buries his
son. Just my mother, I suppose—the woman I thought was my mother.
How long before he raises another army and comes after
us?

“
We have to move on,” I
repeat. There are no tears to dissolve this clinging
burden.

Chapter 2 Sheltered

From the eighth page of the
first Ledger:

Then their tongues were
parched. They grumbled against him saying, “What are we to
drink?”

FOR TOO LONG we’ve traveled without
finding water. Exhaustion and thirst hold everyone captive. The
first night we spread across a meadow and slept in tents and
makeshift shelters or shared the bare ground with blankets and
bugs. It reminded me of the march into Exodia fourteen months ago,
when I had a wife, a baby, an extended family of eight
more.

The second night Malcolm’s cloud-like
beam from Ronel’s electronic device changed our course and we
trudged northeast until we came upon a ghost town. It wasn’t much
different from the nameless town where Kassandra and her family and
I were captured. Perhaps the same thing happened to this place
though it must have been ten or more years ago. The streets were
trackless, littered, dusty even. We filled the empty houses with
our horde of exiles, slept on beds and musty couches, and dreamed
of finding a town where electricity and water both
flowed.

This is our third day of what started
out as a hopeful journey, flags waving and songs shouted more than
sung. Yesterday heads hung, men grumbled, and women whispered about
turning back.

I help gather our things and walk out
of the dilapidated house with Harmon and Mira. Our timing is
perfect. Lydia, her mother, and two others are wrestling their bags
through the broken door of the house across the way.

“
A step up from the Red
slum, isn’t it?” Lydia calls out in obvious jest. Her smile masks
the grief that continues to keep her countenance from
glowing.

Out of the corner of my eye I sense
movement to the side of the third house down. Eugene Hoi, the
leader of the Mourners, stands with hands on hips, staring. A group
of people mimic him, setting their bags and boxes at their feet and
moving in closer to him. More hands on hips. All men, and too young
to be the aggrieved fathers of the murdered babies.

Murdered
babies
. It’s a quick jump for me to
understand the connection. The letters tell what mourning parents
remember:
berm buries
dead
. Mira has told me the story of how my
mother saved me from the Culling Mandate, brought me to the
capitol, and exchanged me for Olivia Battista’s stillborn son so
I’d be raised in safety. Mira, still a child herself, added that
tiny corpse to the berm where so many children were buried. It
frightens me that these Mourners have held another’s sin against me
all these twenty years.

The
Mourners
. My prophetic gift holds my
tongue as those eleven letters slip around it until I say,
“
Resume north
.”
Lydia stops and follows my gaze. It is a strange response I make to
her remark, but she understands when she sees the Mourners. She
hurries her mother and the two women with them on up the street
toward the cloudy beacon that Malcolm has charged.

Harmon urges Mira to follow the women
as more and more people group up in the street and head
north.

“
Hey, O’Shea! Or whatever
you call yourself now,” Eugene yells from down the street. “Don’t
think we’re on your side. We wanted out of Exodia and we’ll use you
and your brother for as long as it’s convenient. But you’ll never
be our leader. Understand?”

I hear Harmon’s slow intake of breath
next to me. We are under David Ronel’s authority. He’s the one who
put my brother and me in charge. I doubt that Eugene and his
cronies would dispute that or even consider fighting against Ronel,
but there’s nothing in any phrase or sentence he speaks that
reforms in my mind to give me the words to control this
situation.

I picture the last anagram and say no
louder than necessary to be heard, “Mourners. Resume
north.”

We don’t wait for their response; we
heave up our bags and packs and step into the street, turning to
follow the rest.

I hear Eugene’s soft curse and I hear
something else too that makes me keep my back to them as they
charge us. These mindless bullies roar foul threats at our backs
and come up wild and fast. Harmon turns to fight, but I’m not
surprised when they swerve around us, hoot and holler, then turn
back to fetch their gear.

We catch up to the women and try to
quicken our pace to reach the front of the crowd, but it’s like an
obstacle course. Rusted relics, broken cars, and other sorts of
trash litter the way like metallic weeds sprouting to impede our
passage.