Temper (24 page)

“Do it.” I’m yelling at him, myself, the Company. But he’s the only one listening.

Shoot me and end this now, but I will not stop.

He fires. The Company officer fires. Something whizzes over my head. A warning shot? I’m almost on him, ready to let the anger inside me have its way and he’s warning me. Laughter scrapes at my throat as my hands wrap around his neck.

“Don’t,” he says.

I see his lips move and feel his breath on my face. It smells like apples. I close my eyes, ignoring the stab of a hundred apple memories. Of pies with mother and drinks with friends. Of my very favorite dessert. I tighten my hold.

His throat works, I can feel it beneath my fingers, but with my eyes closed I can’t tell what he says.

All I know is he’ll stop trying to speak soon and I will have killed him. And I won’t regret it because he’s Company and he’s done all of this. I won’t regret it.

I won’t …

But he’s not fighting back, and while I can’t hear him I can hear the voices of the past, and the people I love who I could never look in the eye again. Asher. Megs. Myself. Because he’s not fighting back.

I let go and fall to my knees. Head bowed, I wait there on the rocks for it to end. He might be Company and deserve whatever he gets, but I can’t do it. I can’t kill someone who isn’t fighting back.

He doesn’t run or fire or do any of the things I expect. Instead he hunkers down beside me and waits.

Minutes pass, finally I look up. Now I notice all the things I didn’t let myself notice before. Like the warm brown of his eyes and the tired lines in his dark skin and the hint of gray peppering his dark hair and stubble. His face is kind and I’m in no mood for kindness. Not from one of the Company.

“Why?” I beg. “Why didn’t you fight back?”

He says something, but thanks to the fading light and the shadow he’s standing in, I can’t guess what it is. His words are no more than an indistinct rumble over my breathing; an improvement on the silence, but not by much.

“I can’t hear you,” I admit.

He steps closer and angles his face to catch the remaining light. “You’re hurt.” He mouths the simple phrase carefully and points to my head.

I lift my hand to where he’s pointing toward the back of my skull. It’s open, bloody, raw. Flesh parts beneath my probing fingers, and I’m reminded of sticking my fingers into just cooked pudding. Only this is my head and there’s flesh and the bits that feel crunch must be bone.

I turn and vomit until my body heaves and nothing comes out.

His hands grip my shoulders, big and strong and keep me upright until I finish. I don’t know whether to thank him or run as fast as my wobbly legs will let me. In the end I do neither. Instead, I shake free, wipe my mouth and look him in the eye.

“What now?”

He swallows. “Come with me. Help.”

“New City?”

He shakes his head. “Closer. Help.”

Already whatever adrenaline has kept me going and the pain away, is fading. I don’t know whether it’s a product of my imagination or what, but now that I know it’s there I can feel the wound sucking my strength. The pounding in my head drowns out thought or feeling. I sway on my feet and he reaches out one thickly muscled arm to steady me.

He’s right, I need help.

“I’m not alone.” I think I say the words aloud, but I’m not sure. I stumble toward Megs. I’ll show him. The officer follows at first, but when we’re close to the unmoving girl in the shadows of the cliff he overtakes. He’s on his knees at her side by the time I reach them.

He looks up. “She’ll be okay.”

I don’t know how he knows, and I’m not completely sure that’s what he said, but I need to believe it. Because the alternative, that Megs could be dying, isn’t something I can consider right now. I’m taking hearing what I want to hear to the extreme.

The rain falls like sheets of water, soaking through my clothes and chilling my skin. I can’t control the shivers wracking my body. “Sh-shelter?”

I can only manage the one word but he gets the question and nods.

He lifts Megs in a swoop of arms so thick with muscle they stick out from his sides rather than hang straight down. Once upright, he cradles her like the last apple on a dying tree. Seeing it, the last of my wariness drains away. If he’s doing this to lure us into some Company trap then he’s succeeded. Remaining upright is hard enough; I can no longer fight.

We take a narrow trail up to higher ground. I fall behind, sometimes moving only at the tug of his hand on my wrist. Twice I forget who or where I am as the darkness and the rain muffle the world like a thick blanket. The wind picks up. I don’t flinch as drops of water spit into my face. I taste blood. Mine? It must be, the Company officer is several feet ahead. Perhaps my whole head has split open, a ripe melon busting with the weight of its own flesh. The growth sticking out at the back like a sign post, ‘Crazy Angry Person This Way.’

I laugh at the image and then swallow against a lump in my throat.

“I don’t understand,” I say to his back at one point. “Why are you helping us?” But he doesn’t glance back, and I keep putting one foot in front of the other. It’s all I can do.

I don’t know how long we stumble along the trail but it’s completely dark when we reach the small building mostly hidden from the trail by a thicket of trees. Waiting for me on the front step, his arms full of Megs, the officer jerks his head for me to open the door. I push and the heavy metal door moves in response. I imagine it squeaks as it swings, but I don’t know if the sound I’m hearing is real or in my head.

I hold it open and he strides through. I follow and collapse on a seat at a small wooden table. The room has a sink and bench on one side, and a door on the opposite wall. It’s bare but functional with a small fireplace in the corner.

The officer places Megs on a sofa a few feet away. Her legs jerk when he steps away and I see his lips move.

“Is she awake?” I ask.

Neither of them respond. That I can hear, anyway. I stand and try to move closer but the room spins. “Talk to me.”

The officer turns then. He simply nods and gestures for me to come over. It takes everything in me to close the few steps but when I do I see Megs, her eyes open, fear in them.

“He’s okay,” I say, despite having no idea if I’m speaking the truth.

“I’m so tired,” she says.

Now isn’t the time for long explanations so I don’t tell her I’m only understanding her because I’m staring at her lips. “Everything’s fine,” I say. I hope she can’t see the wound on my head. “You can rest.”

Her mouth curves and her eyelids flutter closed for a moment before opening. “Where are we?”

The officer steps in then. In clear simple words, he introduces himself as Cyril and explains that he carried her here after the rock fall. He says she’s suffered no damage beyond a few scratches and a knock to her head that caused her to be unconscious.

She stretches her arms up and rolls her shoulders. She’s about to try to stand when I place a hand on her knee. “Rest,” I say again.

“I hurt,” she says.

Cyril offers a while tablet. “Painkiller,” he explains simply, so I can understand. He hasn’t pointed out my hearing loss to Megs yet, and I’m grateful. I don’t want to worry her. Or think about the fact that the wound in my head doesn’t hurt at all.

When I hesitate he takes one himself to prove it’s safe.

With my encouragement, Megs swallows the tablet with a sip of water and settles back on the dark blue sofa. Cyril starts a fire and Megs watches the flames. As the room warms up, I help her remove her wet jacket but she refuses my offer to help her with her jeans. Cyril brings a blanket for Megs and some old jeans for me. I change in the corner. They’re wide in the waist and short in the leg but they’re dry. My shivering stops at last and I think I can feel my feet again.

I’m happy not to talk. It gives me time to process. To rub my fingers together next to my ear and realize I hear nothing. To shift the chair on the laminate floor and feel the vibration more than I hear the thud.

With Megs lost in the fire, Cyril cleans the wound in my head and wraps on a dirty old bandage. He tries to give me a painkiller, but I refuse.

“It doesn’t really hurt.”

“It should.”

I shrug. Maybe in a few hours it will be agonizing, but right now the ache of my body and the pounding of my head remain in the realms of what I can handle. For the first time in a long time, I’m in control.

Cyril shares some bread and meat that he cooks over the fire. As soon as it begins to sizzle in the pan, my stomach clenches in hunger. Nothing has ever tasted as good as that rough sandwich. Roasted meat between slabs of fresh buttered bread. I eat until my gut aches from it.

Megs manages a little of the broth Cyril makes from the meat juices and water.

After we eat, I help him clean up as much as I can. Megs drifts off to sleep on the single mattress in the far corner of the room, and the comfortable rise and fall of her chest tells me it’s the best thing for her right now. I’m drying one of the old plates we ate off with what I think was a T-shirt when Cyril speaks. “I had a daughter.”

I’m not sure he means to speak to me. The only light comes from the flickering fire in the corner, but since I’m staring at him I can make out his words.

Sometimes I think I’m hearing more, but then it’s like the world laughs and turns the volume back down. I haven’t thought too much about the snatches of sound because I don’t want to get my hopes up. Chances are this isn’t permanent. I have to believe I’ll hear again.

“A daughter?” I say.

Cyril pours us each a mug of tea and sips at it as I finish the last of the dishes. Maybe I didn’t speak loud enough for him to hear.

But when I relax into the seat opposite and breathe in the steam from the herby liquid, he nods. He leans forward so he’s looking straight at me. “I helped you because I couldn’t help her.”

At least, that’s what I think he says. It’s the answer to the question I asked as I staggered behind him on the trail.

“What happened?” I ask the question although I know I’ll struggle to understand any answer longer than a few words.

But Cyril looks like a man who needs to talk, and after all he’s done for us, I want to give him what I can.

As he talks, I piece together his story. I have to ask him to repeat the details when I don’t catch enough from the movement of his lips and the context to work it out. The fire burns low as he describes a desperate situation. Having to leave his daughter holed up in their home to get his terminally ill wife medical attention and then learning his daughter died while he was gone. He tells of their pain and his debt. Working for the Company in return for them keeping his wife alive.

By the end of his tale, he’s wiping at his eyes, and he’s asking me what else he could have done.

I have no answers.

When the tea is done and the fire stoked with wood, I rest my head on my arms. I only mean to close my eyes briefly but I wake some time later. It’s still dark and raining outside the single small window. Megs hasn’t moved from her spot near the fire and Cyril is watching me from the seat opposite.

“How long was I asleep?” I ask.

“A couple of hours. Feel better?”

“A little,” I say. And I mean it. It’s taken this long but my body is at last dry and warm, and the chills are gone. The rest and food were exactly what I needed. Trying to listen to Cyril earlier has helped to keep thoughts of my injuries and the task ahead at bay.

Cyril stands and gestures me to follow him into the adjoining room at the back of the small shack.

“But what about Megs?”

“I’ll hear her,” he promises.

I hesitate, but not for long. He might be Company but before that he was a father and a husband and without him, Megs and I would have spent the night by that rock fall and might not have seen morning. I check that Megs is comfortable and make sure there’s water nearby if she wakes to cross the room.

There’s a small mirror hanging next to the door. It’s small, but perfect. There’s not a single crack or dent. Not even a finger mark. I lift my head, and Cyril must read the question in my face. Why is this mirror pristine when everything else in here is second-hand at best?

He opens his mouth and then hesitates, grabbing a pencil from his pocket and scrawling something on a piece of paper in loopy script.

“I need to be able to look myself in the eye at the end of each day.”

The wide doorway opens into a workshop with dented and scratched wooden benches and metal open shelves piled high with different machine parts. I wonder whether it’s Company stock or if he’s some kind of collector. I move closer to the nearest shelf, reach out my hand, and shoot him a questioning glance.

He nods.

With his permission, I pick up the rusted metal tube, feel the weight of it in my hand.

Cyril touches my shoulder. “From a car,” he says.

There’s more like this one and alongside them are other vehicle parts I couldn’t begin to guess what from or what to call them. And all of a sudden I don’t care. A stab of pain in my skull behind my ear reminds me of the wound hidden beneath Cyril’s old bandage. The dressing was rudimentary at best. How much blood did I lose in the trek along the trail? My knees tremble, and the flicker of the fire in the other room calls to me.

Lie down
…
rest
…
you deserve it
…

“This is all very interesting but …” I yawn.

His mouth curves, showing yellow teeth against dark lips. He points to the bench against the far wall, his chest puffed out in pride. I follow the line of his finger. There’s a motor bike resting there. Not just any bike, but the one I last saw half buried beneath rocks and dirt, with only the handlebars and front wheel poking out like a gravestone marking its final resting place.

“How?” I ask.

I cross the room, not waiting for an explanation I won’t hear anyway. He must have gone back for it while I slept. I run my fingers over the body, brushing away dirt and dust. It’s not as bad as I thought. The front frame is cracked and the tire slashed, but the body is largely intact. Our packs lie next to the bike; its contents complete as best I can tell.