The Final Trade (14 page)

21

They leave the installation at dawn, the first lancing rays of light deflecting off the hills in the east, creating a half halo in the ashen sky.

Merrill drives the armored security vehicle, or ASV, as Lyle told them it is called. Chelsea sits beside him in the passenger seat while Zoey rests on one of the benches behind them along with Ian, Tia, and Eli. The rough road crackles beneath the heavy machine, the sound almost lost beneath the constant hum of the engine. Through the thick, tinted windows Zoey watches the land glide past, the rise and plateau where Halie rests appearing in the view pane and then gone.

She readjusts her position on the bench and silently wishes that the rear of the ASV had a window. Then she could look back, watch the installation grow smaller and fainter until it was swallowed up by the distance and curve in the road. She imagines Rita and Sherell and Newton standing there with Seamus by their side, watching them fade away down the drive, and feels an apology on her lips for the weight she’s burdened them with.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Eli says, nudging her in the ribs.

“What?”

“It’s an old saying. Kinda means you want to know what someone’s thinking so bad, you’ll pay them.”

“Did some people actually make money that way?”

Eli chuckles. “I guess you could say that.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“Now you’re straight-up lying. Everyone’s always thinking something. Even if it’s bullshit.”

She sighs and glances at Ian and Tia. They are talking quietly to one another. “Do you regret anything you’ve done?” she asks.

Eli sits back, one of his hands going to his arm with the tattoo before settling onto his thigh. “Regret is like air: can’t be alive without it.” He seems to be lost in a memory for a second before coming back. “But I’ll tell you what—regret’s made out of lead. It’ll drag you under if you let it.” He glances down at the name tattooed on his arm and looks away. “If I could go back to do some things over, I would in a heartbeat. But that ain’t reality. It ain’t life. You got to forgive yourself before you can move on. When you forgive yourself the regret gets lighter and lighter and you manage to keep going.”

“Have you forgiven yourself?”

Eli’s face darkens and he leans back against the side of the ASV. He tries to smile and fails. “No. Not yet.”

They drive for most of the day, stopping several times to gain their bearings and relieve themselves. Zoey watches the landscape recede into itself, the highest buttes gradually leveling off, ravines rising into wider plains. The sky expands so that it becomes half of everything she sees. The scope of it stuns her to the point she can do nothing but look out the window, marveling at the immensity of it all. Just when she’s sure she’s got a grip on the world, it unfolds again, revealing another side of itself.

“Pretty vast, isn’t it?” Merrill calls from the front seat in the midafternoon. “We’re on the edge of the Great Basin Desert. This whole area burned flat about fifteen years ago. Doesn’t look like much grew back since then.”

Zoey gazes out the window at the rolling desolation. The scrub is shorter than any she’s seen before, the land pocked and cracked like burnt skin. As she watches, an area far left of the road drops and opens into a wide hole. Something flashes there, bright and gone in an instant.

“What is that?” she asks, pointing toward the depression.

“Not sure. Maybe a sinkhole?” Merrill says.

“I saw something.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. A flash of metal maybe.” She turns from the window. “Can we check it out?”

“Sure. No sign of life yet.” Merrill slows, turning off the highway onto a rocky decline the ASV handles with ease.

Zoey leans up between the two front seats, staring at the drop in the land. It is more defined than she thought before, its edges somewhat squared rather than round. Beyond the depression the horizon is smudged with the smoky outlines of a mountain range.

Merrill stops thirty yards from the hole and shuts the vehicle off. He stares out the windshield, and after a moment Chelsea glances at him.

“What?” she asks.

“This looks manmade.”

Zoey frowns. “What could make something this big?”

“Backhoes, dredges, a bomb, I don’t know. It’s washed some but the shape is still here.”

Zoey grasps a pair of binoculars from the center console and opens the side door, dry wind buffeting her face and hair. She jumps down and walks around the front of the ASV, stopping a dozen steps away from the drop’s edge.

Merrill was right. The hole is square shaped, its far border at least a hundred and fifty yards away. Some of its sides have crumbled and fallen down, but for the most part the work of men is recognizable. Its middle is strewn with dried tumbleweed and bramble, the twisted remains leached of any color by the unrelenting sun.

She walks along the edge’s perimeter, the others joining her. There, the flash again. It’s partially up the opposite wall, glinting when she moves a certain way. Zoey brings up the binoculars.

The shining comes from a rounded dial, small and rimmed with silver. Bleached sage roots twist into the parched soil above and below it. She squints at the small disc adjusting the binoculars so that it comes into tight focus.

It’s a wristwatch, burnished from the weather, its face broken and clouded. Several of the guards at the ARC wore them on the arm opposite their bracelets. She always wondered why they bothered with them since you couldn’t turn a corner in the compound without seeing a calendar.

What is a wristwatch doing in a hole in the middle of a desert?

“Zoey,” Merrill says, somewhere beside her. She can’t see him since her eyes are still glued to the binoculars, but his voice is odd, light and airy. The sage roots are weird under the magnification, straighter and whiter than they ought to be.

“Zoey.”

And they seem to run through the watch’s band.

Something locks into place in her mind and her breath catches.

Not roots.

Bones.

The wristwatch is still attached to an arm, clean and dry of any flesh. The binoculars waver and she catches sight of more bones protruding from the thin layer of dirt to the right of the watch. Her arms lose some of their strength and the binoculars drop away from her eyes, allowing her to see the entire hole at once.

It is full of bodies.

Most are covered by soil that’s eroded or blown into the depression, but the details emerge as she stares. A row of skulls here, a frayed and blanched patch of clothing there. What she first mistook for dried sage that had tumbled down into the hole becomes clear. Bones, so many bones interlaced and partially buried.

Thousands.

“Zoey.” Merrill’s hand touches her shoulder and she nearly screams. She looks up into his eyes and sees a reflection of the horror she’s feeling.

“What is this?” she breathes.

“A mass grave. These are rebels. I heard about things like this but never saw one.”

She swallows bile and glances again at the pit. It draws her gaze like a magnet, unbearable to look at but impossible not to. “So many.”

“Come on.” He tries to guide her away but she stays where she is. Entranced by the overwhelming weight of death.

“NOA did this.”

“Yes, or the military. At the end it was basically the same thing.”

“How. How did they . . .” She falters, the sheer mechanics of the genocide numbing her mind.

“Come on. There’s nothing here for us. We have to go.”

She lets herself be led away, the hole an engraved picture behind her eyes.
How?
she asks herself.
How could they do it? How could they let it happen?

But already she knows. She’s felt the rage, the hatred, the absolute and utter need to destroy. She’s partaken in it, drank the bitter draft of murder and did it unblinkingly. That is how all travesties occur. Because of people like her.

When they begin to drive again, she curls up at the far end of the bench, tucking her legs in close to her chest, becoming as small as she can be. A hurricane of emotions rises inside her, pummeling her mind with accusations and vindications at the same time.

You’re a monster.

They deserve it. Every last one of them.

Monster.

No one else. Never again.

Murderer.

She clenches her eyes shut and wishes Meeka’s voice would return and speak to her like it did when she was traveling alone and feverish in the wilderness.

But Meeka is silent. And she knows she’ll remain that way.

Because she’s on her own again, as solitary as she was when she escaped.

22

Zoey wakes, arm asleep beneath her, neck brimming with pain from the awkward angle she’s lying at on the bench.

She sits up, groggy, eyes crusted with sleep, and blinks at Tia who’s watching her.

“Nice nap?” Tia says.

“Didn’t realize I fell asleep. How long was I out?”

“Maybe two hours. We figured you could use it.”

“Thank you.” Zoey cracks her neck and stretches her tingling arm, the feeling slowly returning. “Where are we?”

“Passed into the great state of Oregon a while back,” Merrill says from the front. “Thinking about stopping pretty soon for the night.”

Zoey nods, swiping at her eyes before feeling an indentation in the side of her face. Her fingertips run over it and she glances at Ian and Tia who are grinning at her.

“You’ve got quite the imprint from the seam in the seat there, my girl,” Ian says, beginning to laugh.

“Looks like someone put a zipper in your face,” Eli chimes in.

She smiles, trying to rub the mark away, only then recalling what happened before she fell asleep.

The pit.

The bones.

The death.

I still have a choice.

“Zoey?”

She looks at Eli whose brow is furrowed. “What?”

“Didn’t you hear Tia?”

“No, sorry. What did you say?”

Tia shakes her head, all the mirth gone from her now. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Zoey meets Ian’s eyes and looks away, unable to withstand the concern within them.

The ASV shudders as Merrill slows their speed, glancing around the deserted highway. “Well, there’s a drive headed off to the left and a draw to the right we could hide the vehicle in overnight. Wouldn’t be visible from the road. What do you guys thi—”

“Holy shit!” Tia says, standing suddenly. “There’s a kid over there.”

Zoey spins, nearly knocking her forehead against the window behind her. It takes a split second for her to see the small figure standing in the center of the small drive on the left. The light is still good enough to make out delicate features, blond hair that hangs down over his ears. Gauging from his height she guesses he’s anywhere from twelve to fourteen years old.

The boy stands his ground for a long second, then bolts away from the highway, feet kicking up puffs of dust.

They watch him run until he vanishes over a small rise in the road.

“Should we follow him?” Chelsea asks.

“Yes,” Zoey says at once. Without another comment, Merrill turns the wheel of the machine and guides it slowly down the drive. They come over the rise where they lost sight of the boy and drop down into a narrow gully with steep sides. Far ahead the path rises again before opening up into a vast field populated by a low stand of brush, dying grass, and a solitary tree holding on to its last few leaves. Beside the tree is a small stone house and garage.

The boy stands on the front porch and as soon as he sees them, ducks inside the building.

“The hell is going on?” Eli says.

“Don’t know if I like this,” Tia says, holding on to the back of Chelsea’s seat.

Zoey looks for cover that could conceal someone on either side of the drive but it is an open expanse of nothing but wilting grass, barely knee-high. Beyond the house is a twisting stream that flows out of sight into a larger brace of trees.

“Think it’s a trap?” Eli asks, already picking up his rifle from the seat beside him.

“No. It doesn’t feel like one,” Merrill says. “I think he’s scared.”

They idle up to an overgrown turnaround, white rocks set in a circle that have gone mossy with time. “I’m keeping this running until it’s clear,” Merrill says. “Eli and I will check it out.”

“I want to—”

“Zoey. No. Let us at least make sure it’s safe. This was your plan, remember?”

“Yes,” she says begrudgingly.

“We’ll be quick.” He slaps Eli on the shoulder and hoists a rifle sling over his head.

“Be careful,” Chelsea says.

“Always. And if anyone comes out of that house besides us, you drive away and don’t look back.”

With that, he and Eli open the ASV’s door and step into the evening light. Their boots puff dust up just as the boy’s had while he ran. Tia yanks the door shut behind them and Zoey stands, peering through the windshield, watching their progress.

Merrill and Eli move well together, one leapfrogging while the other covers him. After they gain the porch they stand to either side of the door. Merrill reaches out and knocks with one fist. Zoey waits, the anticipation of gunfire as an answer bringing her heart rate up. After several seconds Merrill nods and Eli swings in, opening the door before going inside low. Merrill follows, standing high, rifle pivoting back and forth. They move out of sight leaving the door wide open.

Minutes tick by.

The interior of the vehicle is quiet save for everyone’s shallow breathing and the idling of the machine itself. Just as Zoey is about to insist that they go in after the men, Merrill reappears with Eli behind him and trailing them is the boy they followed to the house. He steps out onto the porch and stares at the ASV with a look of wonder. Zoey is about to reach for the door handle when another child appears. He is several years younger but has the same characteristic blond hair as what can only be his brother.

“Two kids?” Tia says.

But then two more boys step into the light, the youngest no older than five. Behind them two taller figures appear. One is a slender man with dark, shaggy hair and a goatee who walks with a slight hunch, while the other is a heavyset woman with long, reddish-blonde hair. In her arms is another boy, much smaller than the rest, who wears only a long-sleeved shirt and a diaper. He has a mop of hair matching the man’s.

“My God,” Ian says.

Merrill waves toward the vehicle and nods. Tia shuts the ASV off and the others climb out. Zoey hears the man say something in an awed voice, words that are lost to her but whose meaning is clear. He is as surprised to see them as they are to see his family.

The dark-haired man blinks, mouth opening and closing several times before taking a step forward, his hand reaching out toward Zoey. Tia steps in front of him, pulling her handgun free of its holster.

“It’s okay, Tia. We checked them. They’re clean,” Merrill says. Tia reholsters her weapon and lets the man step past her. All the while his gaze hasn’t left Zoey’s face. He continues to blink and stops several feet away, both hands now palms up in supplication.

“Thanks be to God,” he says, smiling widely. “Unless I’m dreaming.”

Zoey shifts her gaze from the man to the rest of the group, uncertain of what to do. “Hello,” she finally says, holding out her hand. “My name is Zoey.”

The man takes her hand and squeezes it. “I’m Travis. And we are so glad to see you.”

Firelight dances across the gray stone hearth. Shadows, from the simple furniture in the room, elongate on the close-set walls. Zoey sits in the closest chair to the fire, chewing the last piece of bread slathered with rich butter. She savors the taste, similar to the flavor of butter she had at the ARC, but wholly different as well. It is richer, saltier, more . . . real. She drinks cold water from a chipped glass painted with flowers on one side, their yellow petals delicate and outlined in black.

“It was part of my mother’s set.” Zoey turns to see Travis’s wife, Anniel, standing in the doorway that leads to the small kitchen beyond. “There’s only two glasses, three plates, and one bowl left. Everything else has been broken or lost over the years.”

Zoey turns the cup around in her hands. “It’s beautiful.”

Anniel smiles. “Would you like more food? There’s still some soup left.”

“No. Thank you. It was delicious.”

Footsteps approach from outside and a second later Travis enters the room followed by Merrill, Chelsea, and Ian.

“The ASV is pretty well hidden behind a stand of trees to the east. Should be fine overnight,” Merrill says.

“Are Eli and Tia still outside?” Zoey asks.

“Yeah. They’re entertaining the young ones.” Merrill smiles at Travis who shakes his head.

“I’m sorry, they’re probably bothering them.”

“No. I’m pretty sure they’re enjoying the attention.”

“They’ve led pretty sheltered lives up until now,” Travis says. “None of them have ever met a black man before. That’s probably part of the fascination.”

The baby, whose name Zoey learned is Isaac, squeals somewhere in the kitchen and Anniel leaves to tend to him while the others all find a place to sit in the cramped living room.

“On that note,” Ian says, “tell us how it is you came to live here with your family.”

Travis smiles and gazes at the fire. “Anniel and I met through our church years before the Dearth. It was a nice little congregation maybe a hundred miles west of here. I was studying to become a pastor and she worked as a consultant for a railroad. When the Dearth came we went to stay with my parents on their farm but it soon became clear it wasn’t safe. Anniel and I were terrified of what was happening, so we decided to go into hiding.”

“Smart choice,” Chelsea says.

“It turned out to be, yes. We searched for a remote area along with several other families from our church, thinking there was strength in numbers. We settled here along with our pastor at the time. There’s around forty of us, counting the kids, scattered in the area. We have a regular commune every Sunday after service, each household taking turns hosting it. We try to keep traditions close even though it’s hard to do in these times.”

“Staying alive is hard, let alone traditions,” Merrill says, glancing out a window.

“Amen to that,” Travis says. “When John, our oldest, was born, we knew God had blessed us and that we would be safe in this place. And for the last fourteen years, we have been. We have worship, community, plenty of food from the river and surrounding land, and, of course, the children, which are the most important.”

Travis’s eyes grow distant and Zoey studies him. “You said earlier that you were so glad to see me,” she says. “What did you mean by that?”

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but are you not by far the youngest of your group?”

“Yes,” she says, still hesitant to mention Rita and Sherell.

“Well, we are of the Quiverfull belief.”

“What’s that?”

“We believe that each child is a gift directly from God and that it is our duty as Christians to multiply, to fill the Earth with mankind. These last decades have proven to us how important our mission is. The world is growing sparser and sparser of man, and we will vanish without the effort to fulfill God’s will.”

“I still don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

“My wife is forty-four now, and I am nearly fifty years old. You are by far the youngest woman we’ve seen in over twenty years.” Travis leans forward, the firelight splashing against his features. “You are a symbol of hope, Zoey. A living, breathing testament of God’s plan. Just sitting here with you fills me with a divine wonder and renewed vigor of spirit.” Tears shine in his eyes. “When I look at you, I know that everything will be all right.”

Zoey shifts in her chair, the weight of Travis’s stare and reverent smile pressing upon her. “Thank you, but I’m not sure I’m who you think I am.”

“It doesn’t matter if you believe or not.”

“Okay. Well, we did have a couple questions for you if you don’t mind?”

“By all means.”

“Have you ever heard of the Fae Trade?”

Travis’s face instantly darkens, eyes flicking toward the floor. “I suppose that’s what they call themselves.”

Zoey sits forward. “Who?”

“The men that pass through every so often. It’s usually a little later in the season than this. We haven’t seen them in nearly three years now, thank God. They’re scouts, I believe, for the main body of the group. They come in vehicles looking for women. That’s why all of us have hidden root cellars outside our homes. We hide there the minute trouble appears, like today when you fine folks came up our drive. That’s where Merrill and Eli found us.”

“I thought you said the cellars are hidden.”

Travis looks somewhat sheepish. “Isaac wasn’t able to keep quiet like the rest of us. He’s only a year and a half. Merrill heard him. I didn’t see any other choice than to open the doors and accept our fate. You could’ve burned us out. That’s what happened to the Starks.”

“Who are they?” Zoey asks.

Travis sighs. “They were the oldest of our community. Got caught unawares six or seven years ago. There were four of them. Two sons, eighteen and twenty. All of them burnt up in their home by those you mentioned. I’m assuming Glenda wasn’t taken because of her age. She was past childbearing, you see.”

Zoey traces the flowers on her glass with a fingertip. “You said they haven’t come through here in several years. Do you know their route?”

Travis shakes his head. “No. But I heard rumor that they stop at the largest towns to draw in crowds of men. I can only imagine the unholy things that go on there.”

“Where’s the next largest town?”

“I suppose that would be Southland. It’s about a hundred miles to the west. Used to be a little ski resort town at the base of Scrimshaw Mountain.”