Wolves (28 page)

After a time, he hears a quiet rustle of clothing, and two very slow steps on the decking.

Huxley keeps looking at the ceiling, because he knows who it is.

A hand on his leg.

Jay's voice, quietly assured of itself: “Tell me.”

Huxley tilts his neck, stares at the other man's cold blue eyes, so very opposite from his own.

So very different. And yet the same.

A good man turned bad.

His own thought angers him.
I'm not bad. I've had to do bad things, that's all.

Necessary evils.

Huxley reaches his hand up to his face to rub it, but notices how badly it shakes in the air. Jay notices it too. Huxley grimaces and then plants his hand onto his beard to hide its instability. His fingers rake through the greasy, tangled mess of hair. He swallows and finds his tongue dry and his throat raw-feeling.

“Is there anything to drink?” he asks.

Jay looks behind him to a few jugs stacked in a corner. “Water and whiskey. Take your pick.”

He yearns for the whiskey, but knows it will only hurt him more. “Water.”

Jay turns and lackadaisically takes one of the water jugs from the floor, along with what looks like an old, plastic children's cup. It is blue. Huxley can see some sort of design on it. Jay pours it full of water and hands it over to Huxley.

Huxley takes the water down in two gulps. It tastes metallic and earthy at once, but it is cold in his throat, and wets the dry parts of him. He holds the cup for a moment longer, looking at the design. Stuffed teddy bears holding balloons, smiling happily, ignorantly. Most of their images had been worn out to nothing, but a few remained, and in their slight reliefs, dirt and grime had gathered.

Huxley puts the water cup on the floor, refusing to think about who might have owned this cup so many years ago. Perhaps no one had owned this cup. Maybe it'd been found in a raided supermarket, back before they'd been stripped down to nothing—even the wood and metal framing taken.

“Speak,” Jay says, quietly, commandingly.

Huxley turns away from Jay. He faces the brazier. The embers are burning out.

What do you say? Sometimes it seems like he is waiting for inspiration to speak. For the right words. But there were no
right words
. There was just … the past. The past was the truth. It was history recorded, if not on paper, then in his head. And there was nothing here but to spill it, to let it out of him, to tell Jay what he'd not told anyone else in the past eighteen months.

He did not know Brie. She had not earned the truth from him.

But Jay … 

Well … Jay was Jay.

Huxley isn't even sure what that means, but he finds himself taking a breath, and then he is speaking.

“Charity was my wife,” he says with the suddenness of someone making a decision to confess everything. “Nadine was my daughter. I …” he hesitates, then starts again. “Do you ever feel like you've lived three lives? I do. I think about it sometimes. Who I was. Before the skyfire. And then after. And then now. Except that now's not really a life. It's just … a nightmare.” He shakes his head. “Two lives. Two
good
lives, anyway. One bad.”

Huxley smiles faintly, going far back. “In the Old World I was a school teacher. I taught English. Made kids read all the old books. We lived in a little house, in a little neighborhood. We had problems, but …” he thinks back to the things that were so major back then. Things that could bring you to the tip of divorce. Like money. Money, of all things. “We made it through. Charity got pregnant, and we stayed together and things were a little tough, but not so bad now that I look back. It was really … It just wasn't that bad. We had Nadine. She was a beautiful girl. I called her my sweet girl, because she was kind, like her mother. You could tell it from the day she was born.” He smiles fully, then lets it fade. “I got to see her grow up to just past her second birthday in a normal world. And then the skyfire hit and everything went to shit, and we were running. But you know what's odd?”

Huxley looks at Jay. “It was good. Looking back, it was good. We were scared at the time. But looking back, I think we were relatively safe. We got out of the city fast enough that I think we were never really caught in any bad situations. And we were just … kind of nomadic for a time. It had its own hardships, but we were together and all the bullshit from the Old World was burned up. It was strange. We made love like we actually loved each other. And we did. I think we'd forgotten, but we remembered. That was the key. It was hard, but it made you remember who you were.”

Huxley looks at his grimy hands again. Steadier now. Bloody.

“Whose hands are these?” he asks, quietly. “I don't know these hands. Mine never had another man's blood on them. They were never cut by another man's knife. Never blackened by gunpowder. Chalk. They had chalk on them. They were clean. I was clean. Clean-shaven. Healthy layer of fat—I drank a lot of wine.” He laughs, as though he's said something ridiculous. “Wine,” he mutters disdainfully, more to himself than Jay.

Huxley clasps his hands together, as though to hide his bloody, calloused, gun-blacked palms from his sight. “We found a commune. This was maybe two years after the skyfire. Nadine was four. She was good. She was a good kid. I remember just watching her. Just watching her walking along with us and thinking how good she was. She never complained. Always kind. She was her mother's daughter.

“The commune was small when we found it. Just a couple of other families that were trying to get together in the middle of nowhere, away from everyone else. Trying to make something. Grow some food. Live out some semblance of a life. And we stayed. And the commune grew. We had a dozen families. A bunch of kids. We had a school, but by then I was busy with farming, so I didn't teach unless I really needed to. I grew barley. Big fields of it. I built a cottage for me and Charity and Nadine. We lived there for nine years. And it was good.” Huxley takes a deep shaky breath. “Those were the two lives I lived that were good.”

Huxley's voice becomes low, almost trancelike, his gaze absent, faraway, as he pictures old, horrible things. “I was in the fields when I saw it. The smoke, rising up over the commune. I stood there for a minute, thinking about it, thinking about what was happening, and I was absolutely terrified. I wonder what that minute cost me now. That one minute of inaction. Maybe it cost me everything. But when I finally got my wits back, I ran, all the way back to the commune. But when I got there, they were still there. They'd set fire to every standing structure. They'd taken everything there was to take. Killed the men. And now they were raping the women, while their children watched and screamed. When they were done, they'd stab them in the gut. Birth control, one of them called it, and they laughed. They stabbed them just one time, not to kill them immediately, but to make sure they'd never make it out. So that they died slow deaths.”

He looks at Jay, desperation in his eyes. “Why? Why do that, Jay? If you're gonna kill them, then kill them. But why wound them so they die so slow?”

Jay has no answer—why would he?

But he has a question: “Where were you?”

Huxley blinks rapidly, then looks away again. “Watching. Hiding and watching. Too scared to do anything about it. There were more than a dozen of them, and only one of me. I would have died. But still … I just sat there and watched. I watched them go around and take the jaws from the men. All the while the women wailing in pain. The children screaming in terror. I couldn't see where Nadine was. They had a wagon and it was filled with the kids. But I couldn't see where she was.

“Then they left. And so many of the women were still alive. They were still screaming, still crawling, and everything was burning around them, some of them couldn't crawl fast enough and they were being burned alive. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't help all of them. I couldn't help
any
of them. I was blank. I had nothing.”

Huxley opens his hands and finally looks at his palms. They are dark hands. He stares into them like one might stare into a crystal ball. “I found Charity on the doorstep of our cottage. It was a shack, really. They'd dragged her out and done the same to her as they'd done to everyone else. She was holding her stomach. I could see she was bleeding. I went to her. I wish I'd had something to say, but I had nothing. I was sitting there on my knees.” He looks at Jay, like he is asking for forgiveness. “I was weak. That's why they're gone.”

Jay considers this for a time. “How long ago was this?”

“Eighteen months. A year and a half.” Huxley hates himself for it. “I tried to go after them, straight out of the commune. But … I caught something.” He laughs, a dry wheeze at the ridiculousness of it all. “Something in the water or food I ate when I was going after them. I was eating anything I could get my hands on. Drinking from stagnant puddles. It was something in my gut. I knew I wasn't going to make it across the desert. I found another commune. Barely alive. And they kept me from dying, but they demanded I help with the harvest to pay for the care they'd given me. They were smaller than my commune had been. They didn't have enough people. And by the time I got my strength back and paid them off …”

Huxley trails off.

Jay fixes him with a stare. “That's too long, Huxley. You know it's too long.”

Huxley frowns at him. He doesn't understand why Jay would say that. Has he been listening to anything Huxley has said? Does he even care?

“Your daughter is …” Jay sighs. “It would be hopeless to try to find her.”

Huxley comes up a bit, leaning on an elbow. “I know that, Jay! I'm not an idiot. I know it's been too long, you don't need to tell me.” He leans back down again. “I'm not looking for my daughter.”

Jay spreads his hands. “Relax, Huxley. Don't attack me on this. I'm not the enemy. But we're going to Shreveport for a reason. And it's your reason. I'm trying to understand it. I'm trying. Help me out here.”

If you're going to tell him the truth, tell him the whole truth. He knows most of it anyway.

Huxley continues. “Just before she died, Charity said that it was a man with a scorpion tattoo. He was the one that killed her. He was the one that took my daughter. I know that I can't find her, I know I can't bring my wife back from the dead, and I'm not trying.” Huxley has to restrain himself from raising his voice. “I'm not trying to do that. But if this man is still alive, then I intend to find him, Jay. And I'm going to kill him.”

Jay frowns down at Huxley for a few moments, then looks away. “I understand. I'm here for the same reason as you, Huxley. The same exact reasons. But I don't want a man. I don't care about the man. I want them all. I want to terrify them. I want to make them feel what I felt—what you felt when you saw the smoke coming out of your commune.” Huxley watches the muscles in Jay's face clench and unclench, a vein in his temple becoming more prominent. “Blood and death, Huxley. That's all there is once we step off this boat. Just blood and death.”

Huxley lies back again, staring at the ceiling. The only sounds in the cabin for a time are the steady lapping of the river, and the creaking and groaning of the old wooden barge rocking away in its berth.

“Don't talk about this,” Huxley says finally. “Don't tell anyone what I've told you.”

Chapter 12

It is in the predawn hours when Huxley wakes again. He opens his eyes to see the brazier dark and cold, but the light through the cracks is that deep blue-black of a morning just shortly over the horizon. He knows that something has stirred him, but he is half in and half out of sleep, and strange dreams of terror and love and bloodlust still color everything he sees, and the pain in his side is hot and excruciating. He is cold, but sweat dots his brow, chilly and greasy.

Jay is not in the room.

And yet, Huxley is not alone.

His eyes track to the door, and there he sees what caused him to wake.

A dark, smallish shadow standing there with the closed door to its back.

“Lowell?” Huxley says in a dry, thin whisper.

There is something in Lowell's hands, and for a half second, Huxley feels fear. But it is a low flame, and it blows out in the midst of everything else. Huxley is so full of other, darker fears, that it seems he has no room for more. Besides, why should he fear this child?

The wild is in his eyes.

Lowell steps carefully away from the door, his footsteps almost inaudible, his steps chosen and placed, padded like a cat. He is a stealthy creature when he wants to be. Huxley can see that Lowell's arms are glistening like he is wearing wet sleeves. And the object that he holds, long and thin … 

The knife I gave him.

He stands in front of Huxley now, at the side of his bunk.

Huxley looks the kid up and down. Wild-eyed waif. Fearful urchin. Dangerous creature.

Blood. He's covered in blood.

Is this a dream?

“What are you doing?” Huxley asks, as his own hand strays to the revolver that still lies in his waistband.

Huxley has been so focused on the blood and the knife, that he hasn't looked up into Lowell's eyes until that second, and he sees the tears in them, just a thin layer, which the child quickly blinks away. He is silent though, his mouth seeming to be clamped shut.

Huxley considers asking his question again, or perhaps asking whose blood is on Lowell's hands, but then Lowell sinks down to the ground, not as though he is fainting, but a controlled crumpling, and he curls into a ball at the side of Huxley's bunk.

Huxley leans over the side of the bunk and looks down at the child. Bloody and strange, Lowell holds the knife to his chest as though it brings him comfort. Both hands clasped around the handle, the blade glimmering weakly in the light of the coming dawn. Very still, and very silent, Lowell closes his eyes and seems to be instantly asleep.

Huxley stares at the child for a time before exhaustion takes him under again.

His dreams continue as though he never left them. They wait on the other side of his consciousness with open arms and then they drag him down, they smother him. He falls into them, and they are the same as before, but now the strange child is standing before him, bathed in blood, with a bloody knife in his hand, and he is trying to push it into Huxley's chest.

Huxley has his hand on Lowell's, staying him, but the boy seems incredibly strong. The tip of the knife is inching slowly to his chest.

“Why are you doing this?” Huxley's voice is a weak whisper.

The boy only stares on with those wild eyes of his, pressing the knife closer.

Then the knife slips and slices into Huxley's side.

Huxley wakes up, reaching for his wounded side and feeling someone else's fingers there. Anger and fear make him come fully awake. He grasps two of the fingers in his fist and pulls them away from his side.

It is Brie, standing over him with a look of consternation and concern on her long face.

Huxley groans, feeling the ache of his wounds overcome his sudden reactions. “You again.”

“Just checking the wound,” she says, shaking her fingers away from his grip. “Seeing if it looks inflamed.”

“Infected, you mean?”

“Yes.” She leans down and peels the bit of bandaging back to inspect those little holes in his flesh that could cause such problems. She makes a face like she's not happy. “Well. It could be better, but it could be much worse. Little bit of reddening around them. How do you feel? Feverish at all?”

Huxley takes a few breaths to see how he feels, then shakes his head.

Brie nods. She seems to be coming down to something in her mind.

“What is it?” Huxley asks, seeing her expression.

“You feel good enough to walk?”

Huxley glances over at the bunk beside him, sees that Jay is now awake, watching the two of them. Huxley turns back to Brie and nods, swinging his legs out of bed with significant effort and pain.

“Yeah,” he strains to get the words out without making them sound like lies. “I can walk.”

His legs are fine. But each step engages the muscles in his side where lead balls had so recently been lodged. He walks carefully, but glances down at the base of his bed. Lowell is huddled there like a lost dog, awake and watchful, but not moving from his spot. There is something like guilt in his eyes, and Huxley notes that his hands are still reddened, though he wiped the majority of the blood off on his pants and shirt where they left dark brown stains.

Lowell watches him.

Neither says a word.

Jay climbs out of bed and follows behind, not waiting for an invitation, and certainly not expecting one. Brie leads them outside of the crew quarters, out onto the decking, where a clear morning is breaking, sharp as a knife, with no trace of the fog from the previous night, and not a cloud apparent in the blue sky.

Brie shrugs her shoulders against a slight autumn chill. She leads them around the mass of the slave cages that takes up the majority of the barge, past the doors that lead in, and to the starboard corner, where, slumped against a pile of ropes and a set of oars, Don lies.

Huxley stands there, looking at the man for a minute, not quite computing what he is seeing.

Don is dead. That becomes apparent almost immediately. His skin is milky white. His eyes glazed. His neck and chest are dark red, almost black. Someone has opened his throat with two cuts, the first shallow and hesitating, and the second strong, deep, and running from ear to ear.

“Hm,” Jay grunts from where he has appeared beside Huxley. “That's interesting.”

Brie watches Huxley carefully. “We found him like this, not ten minutes ago. It was none of us. I'm the only one that's unchained. And it wasn't me. I was in with the others all night. I swear by that. You can ask anyone in there.”

Huxley nods, slowly. “No. I believe you.”

He looks back toward the slave cages and sees Lowell there, standing at the corner. The two of them lock eyes for a brief moment, and then Lowell turns to duck away.

“Lowell,” Huxley calls out, keeping his voice calm.

He watches the corner of the slave cages for a long moment.

Lowell turns the corner again. He stands hesitantly, but also with a certain posture, as though he has been caught, but he is challenging Huxley to do something about it.
Why would I?
he thinks.
This is what I told you to do. I told you to let it out. And Don … Don kept pushing you.

He motions Lowell over—just a quick wave of his hand.

The boy takes his steps slowly, judgingly at first. But then his strides lengthen, quicken, and he is standing before Huxley, watching him very carefully. Like something that could very easily destroy you, but you remain calm simply because … you don't think it will.

A moment of silence lengthens between them.

Just the water on the underside of the barge.

Huxley asks, “You kill him?”

Lowell glances down at the body. His expression is unknowable.

“Did you?” Huxley presses.

Lowell straightens. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he would've killed me,” Lowell says, taking the words slowly. “And because he killed Mother.”

Huxley can't do anything but nod. He can't be angry. He looks to Jay, who just shrugs. Then to Brie, who evaluates the boy carefully. Then to the body, the blood long stopped pumping. Killed sometime in the night. Just before he entered Huxley's cabin, covered in blood. Don's blood.

Finally he looks at the boy. “Why are you cowering then? Like you're in trouble?”

Lowell is silent.

Huxley bends at the waist, down so that his eyes are on a level with Lowell's. “This is dirty business, Lowell.” He remembers Jay's own words. “There's nothing ahead of us but blood and death. You need to be able to handle that. You need to understand it.” Huxley straightens, looking this time to Brie. “You need to understand it too.”

Brie seems a bit surprised at the sudden switch.

Huxley gestures to the slave cages. “You said you were the only one unchained?”

She nods.

“What are you going to do when this ship lands in Shreveport?” he asks her. “What are all the slaves in there going to do? If I pull those chains off, what happens? Do they go home?”

“Home?” she lets out a black chuckle. “We don't have homes anymore, Mr. Huxley.” Her face goes bitter. “The slavers destroyed them along with everything else. No. If you pull the chains off … I'm not sure what they'll do. They've got no place to go. And I'm no different. Some of us might be able to sneak in as freemen and find work—those of us old enough to have a skill. I'm sure I could.”

Huxley is nodding as she talks.

She stops and eyes him. “What are you doing? You and your men?”

“You don't want that.”

“Maybe I do.” There's a glimmer in her eyes that he hadn't seen before. A hardness. “Maybe I want what you want. Maybe I don't want to make nice with these people.”

“And what about the rest of the slaves? How many are like the man I shot last night? How many don't even want to be free? How many are going to run back to the slavers as soon as we dock?”

“A few,” Brie concedes. “But more won't.”

“Half of them are kids,” Huxley says.

“They're not much younger than him,” she points to Lowell. “There are three that are very young, but what else would you have them do? They have no parents. No caretakers. You either leave them for the slavers or you take them in. There isn't another option.”

“Take them in?” Huxley scoffs. “I don't think you understand what we're doing.”

“No, I do understand. I'm not slow. You have a vendetta. So do I.” Her voice pitches up a notch. “You know, you're not the only one that watched slavers murder their family. I did too. I want to hurt them just as much as you do. But I also don't want to leave these others behind. We can figure it out.
I
can figure it out.”

Huxley spits on the deck between their feet. He looks into her eyes and takes the measure of her. Wonders how serious she is. Does it matter? Does any of it matter? He doesn't know that it does. He cannot leave the slaves, not without at least giving them the choice. You cannot battle something with every fiber of your being but turn a blind eye to the wastage that it leaves behind. That must be taken into account too.

“Come with me,” he says. Then he stalks toward the slave cages. Brie hesitates for two of his long strides, but then jogs to catch up. By the time she is with him, Huxley has reached the door and thrown it open. He steps into the center and he hears the small voices around him, the whispers and the gasps, wondering if he has come to murder another of them.

I don't even recognize you anymore.

“Look at me,” he nearly shouts, though everyone already is. “This is what you will be. Either that, or a slave. You're being given the choice. You can choose to stay behind when we land in Shreveport. You'll stay in your chains as we leave. You'll eventually be found. You'll be sold. If you are a male, they might castrate you to be a slave for their wives. If you're a female, you might be sold to a brothel, or raped at the pleasure of the councilman who buys you. But you will live. Probably. And you will be fed. They will give you a place to sleep. And you'll probably avoid dying a violent death.”

Huxley spreads his arms. “I am your other option. I am not a good option. I will not make your life any better. It will be a trade. One for the other. You will give up safety and comfort. You will be cold. You will probably go hungry. Some of you will die. But you will gain blood, if that's what you want. You will kill slavers, and you will terrorize the very people that preyed on you and your family. But listen to me when I tell you … do not romanticize this. There is nothing good here. There is nothing noble down my path. It is exactly what it is—bloody revenge. You will have blood on your hands, and you will wonder if your family members that were slaughtered by the slavers would even recognize you if they survived to see what you have become. And it will tear you apart inside. But you'll have blood. And you will be free. For however long you live.

“Those are your choices, as bluntly as I can put them, as simple as I can make them for you. I don't care what you choose, but remember what I told you.” He turns to Brie. “We should land in Shreveport in two days. They have until then to make a decision. Release the ones that want to come with us. Leave the other ones chained up for their masters.”

And then he walks out.