EXALTED (An Exalted Novel) (28 page)

Rusted vehicles litter the bridg
e like the majority of the landscape here. Most of the cars are abandoned. Some are not. A few of the metal, traveling boxes became final resting places for their owners. The elements have left them nothing more than dust and bones. Some of the corpses still have pieces of hair or scraps of clothing hanging from them.

I travel cautiously up the soaring bridge, weaving between all of the obstacles. It’s important to take my time so someone doesn’t get a jump on me. I have to remember that there are guns in this world.

I’m at the highest point of the bridge in no time. I’m able to see the shapes of the body of water around me, the broken city on the east, a smaller town to the north, and forests to the south and west. I search my map again in the remaining whispers of light from the setting sun.

I was headed the right way. I must continue to go west so I can return to the Republic and take what
is rightfully mine. First place. But it will take days. Probably between six to eight days after I factor in finding food and running into marauders or other trainees. But I can’t be sure.

* * *

Thoughts of the Republic and winning are the only thoughts in my head now. They are overpowering and all-consuming. I need to get in a full day of travel tomorrow to make up for the time I lost while searching for supplies. I’ll start before dawn, but right now I need to eat and get a few hours of rest.

I momentarily wonder how Ethan is doing
and where they dropped him off. If what Ethan says about not being able to sleep is true, then we have a fair shot at being United when we return. We would be the most respected Exalted in our year. I crave that honor.

Returning from my thoughts of the future, I find an abandoned vehicle on the bridge. It has dark windows and a large enclosed back compartment. The old leather seats crumble as I climb over them to get to the cave-like space in the back. I stay fully clothed
incase I need to leave quickly—even my boots don’t leave my feet. I rummage through my bag and pull out two mushrooms for dinner. My dagger serves as the perfect tool to cut them in half. As I eat, I reflect on how this meal is very different from my regularly prepared meals at the Republic. It’s not the specially designed portions that will keep me at my peak physical condition. I imagine that my stamina will wane over the days to come.

I sip some water and then curl up in a bare corner, knife in hand. Before I drift off to sleep, I think,
what will tomorrow bring?

Not wasting any
time on breakfast, I set off on my second day the Third Trial. I leave before the sun comes up. Darkness still fills the sky around me so I’m extra cautious on my descent down the bridge. Nothing moves except the light breeze on the air—even the birds are still resting.

Once at the foot of the bridge, I get off the rubble of the once overly traveled interstate. I walk in the tall grass that grows beside the crumbling, blacktopped road. I want to avoid the vehicles and all the hiding places they create, as well as the dangerous footing on the roadway. The best option would be to travel inside the bordering tree line, but the overgrown brush wouldn’t even let me step foot in there. Most of it is too thick to tackle without a machete or something similar.

The heat of the day really begins to set in by mid-morning. Sweat beads on my upper lip and pools on my chest and back. I’ve walked and jogged for miles now with no hint of human life. My hunger and thirst are driving my need for a break. I fight my way inside the tree line and duck behind a thick bush.

As I take a few sips from the water bottle, a gentle
breeze passes through the trees. With the breeze, I hear the faint sound of a child crying. I crane my neck in the direction of the sobbing, while I hastily stuff everything back in my backpack. My Exalted training has taught me not to spare anyone. It also taught me not to go seeking an ambush.

Even though I know I need to head out, my feet pull me deeper into the woods. Each step forward takes a lifetime to achieve. I have to use my skinning knife to tackle the thick growth between the trees. My pants get snagged every few steps, but I keep heading toward the distressed child. I actually fall a couple of times as my bootlaces ge
t wrapped in thorns of the wild underbrush. And still, I go in the opposite direction than the Republic expects me to go. I feel like my skull is going to split in half from this battle being waged inside of me.

The crying is getting louder as I get closer to the child. Creeping through the thick brush proves to be even more difficult
than I could have ever imagined. Every step I take echoes through the air. Every branch cracking under my foot feels amplified a hundred times over.

The crying turns into a whimpering, but there are no other sounds of human life nearby. I creep closer. A small clearing spreads out before me. The child, no more than 10 or 11 years old, is huddled next to something large. I patiently wait and wat
ch.

Finally, when I feel it’s safe to emerge from my camouflage, I sneak closer to the child. She’s female, with curly, white-blonde hair that bounces off her shoulders as she shudders from crying so hard. She’s crying over a woman’s body—a woman with the same curly, blonde hair and fair features.

I crouch down beside her, “Is that your mother?”

The girl nods her head, but doesn’t say anything. She holds her dead mother’s hand. My head is still screaming at me to leave, and nausea sweeps over me as a side effect of the struggle being waged inside of me. I grab my pack and pull out a half empty water bottle and one mushroom, along with a knife. I place them by h
er feet and then stand to leave without her. She’s not my problem. My priority is to get back to the Republic. It’s not like I can take this girl with me. The Republic would probably make me kill her, and then punish me for not taking care of it sooner.

When I turn around to head back to the highway, there are four men and one woman blocking my path. They stand on the opposite side of the clearing, only a mere ten feet away.

“Going somewhere, girl?” one of the men asks me.

The man that spoke to me has sores on his face like the men from the city. He snarls at me, while holding a machete in his right hand that he taps in the palm of his left hand. The weapon explains how they get around this wooded area so well. “Well?” the man grunts while his friends laugh.

I simply stare at the man. One of the male marauders tries to come at me from behind. I take him at with one quick flick of my wrist. He drops to the ground without a twitch.

The leader
, holding the machete, decides our conversation is over. He rushes me with his blade raised over his head. As I back up, preparing to fight, I trip over the dead mother’s feet. I fall to the ground, causing the marauder to get an advantage on me. Thankfully, I shift in time to miss his swinging machete. His weapon gets stuck in a tree trunk instead of my face, but he’s able to backhand me when he pulls it from the tree. My cheek explodes with red-hot pain, but I hurriedly shake it off and follow my orders. As I push myself off the ground, I drag my knife on the inside of the man’s thigh. He’s useless now.

My head jerks back as one o
f the two remaining men yanks me by the hair. I slice at his hand with my knife, while the other man with a black beard kicks me in the ribs. I counter by kicking the bearded man in the chest. He stumbles back, eyes wild. Then, suddenly, he stiffens and an odd look crosses his face. He’s dead before he hits the ground. The man clutching my hair pauses at the sight. It gives me ample time to twist out of his grip and end him. I followed my orders. The Republic will be pleased.

I stand and take stock of the scene around me. The man that kicked me has a knife in his back—my knife. The now motherless girl is standing behind him shaking and staring at me with huge blue eyes. I stare back into them, but suddenly remember that there was one more person here. I search for the marauder woman. She’s nowhere in sight. Only the machete man is left, and he’s dragging himself into the woods using only his arms. I should kill him, but hopefully bleeding to death in the woods will be a far better punishment for attacking me and killing the girl’s mother.

I wipe my weapons clean on the shirts of the dead mean until they are gleaming. After cleaning the last one, I hand it back to the still shaking girl. “Nice work,” I tell her and then turn to leave her once again.

She gathers the water bottle up and the mushroom, clumsily holding them in her tiny hands as she tries to catch up with me. “Can I come with you?”

“No.” I keep walking without looking at her.

“I can fish. I can clean your animals. I can carry your bag. Please. I don’t h
ave anywhere else to go,” she begs, her tiny voice desperate.

My instructors’ voices pop into my head, telling me to get rid of such an inconvenience. I should kill her or even tie her to a tree for the wolves. Instead of doing any of those things, I just keep walking . . . and she keeps following me.

We don’t speak to each other again for a long time.

***

I walk for hours. The girl never makes a sound until she finally falls to the ground from exhaustion. She cries as she gathers her new possessions back up and struggles to stand.

My inner struggle is raging a war right now.
Do I help her or leave her?

I decide to help the little girl whose name I still don’t know—whose name I don’t want to know. There’s a hint of something deep inside of me that is somehow able to override whatever is making my decisions for me now. I’ve been carrying the child on my back for several hours. My backpack is now on my chest, which is making it difficult to walk.
All this for a marauder girl—what am I thinking?

We finally stop to rest. The girl
falls asleep under a bush. I lie nearby, wondering what I’m going to do with her. Maybe I can send her off with some food and water and tell her to head North to Toledo Lake. I could send her to Ryker’s village. They’d take care of her there. Maybe she could even find a new family, a new mother and father, siblings.

She could have a life I’ll never know.

I need to think about hunting soon, since I have to split my already meager supply of food. It will be gone in no time. We are down to two carrots, and we ran out of water hours ago. Perhaps, the girl will know of somewhere to get fresh water. Every body of water that I’ve seen so far has been stagnant and brown. There are no fresh springs or creeks here. My throat feels dry as I think about the water that I don’t have.

* * *

I wake, before the sun has risen, to the sound of the girl whimpering in her sleep. I remember the nightmare that plagued me over the past couple of weeks. Last night there was nothing. Only sleep. In fact, I haven’t had the dream with my father and the wall since I’ve been in the Third Trial. It’s strange.

I gather my things and check my gear. This morning we will have to go without food, until I figure out a plan for hunting and finding water.

The girl hears me making noise. She stirs. “Momma?” She looks around frantically.

“It’s just me. Your momma’s gone, remember?” I can’t even force myself to say something sympathetic to her. The words won’t form in my mouth.

The girl doesn’t say anything in response. She stands and brushes off the leaves that stick to her plain clothes. Then, she hurries off behind a bush to take care of business.

When she returns, I ask her, “Girl, where did your people get drinking water?”

“We had rain barrels where we camped,” she says, while she ties the lace on her shoe.

“That doesn’t really help us,” I mumble.

“Sometimes when we traveled, we would find old cisterns on the side of a house—like on farms.” The girl eagerly adds, not wanting me to find her useless.

“We’ll have to leave the highway for that,” I say and I look around. “I’m leaving. Come on, if you’re following me.”

She hurriedly falls into step behind me, walking in my path so that she can avoid the thicker brush that I haven’t flattened with my steps. I pull out my map. It proves to be unhelpful when searching for farms. However, this interstate or highway seems to run fairly straight, so if I were to cut due north or south of it, I should be able to keep parallel to the road. The only problem is the plant life. It’s so thick here.

We walk for an hour or two before the landscape changes. It’s becoming dry, and the trees become fewer as we carry on. We come to a place on the interstate where we have to stop. The road is gone and all that is left is inert chaos. There are pieces of rusted vehicles in the trees, shards of black top creating vertical walls, holes in the earth where we can’t see the bottom, and death.
The girl squeals at the sight of a long dead person. She latches onto my leg and digs her fingers in my thigh.

It’s time to leave the interstate. There isn’t much in the way of plant life here, so I decide to head north. Avoiding the south side is probably for the best, because the coastline has eroded, and I’m not sure how much land there will be to search.