Exodia (5 page)

“
What are you doing to him?
Leave him alone,” I say this with all the confidence of my height
and weight advantage, not to mention my combat training.

“
Who are you to boss us
around?” the ringleader says. He waves a stick in my face. “Are you
going to kill us, too, like you killed Sarkis Tait last night?” He
shocks me with these words. My heart skips a beat, restarts with a
hollow thump.

I forget about Lydia. I forget about
the pages of notes in my sack. My tongue is stuck and I can’t
swallow. If my awful deed is known here, and among children yet,
how is it that I have not been seized by my grandfather’s men or
shuttled off by my mother’s servants?

I look at these children’s bold faces
and panic. I run. I reach the fence, the capitol grounds, the side
door. I make it through unseen. I search for my mother. She’ll know
what to do. Maybe she’ll send me to my nanny.

Punishable by death …
punishable by death.
But maybe not. Maybe
being the Executive President’s grandson will have its
privilege.

Maybe.

I come to my room. My hand
is on the knob, but I hear voices behind the door.
And scuffing, and banging. Guards are searching
through my things. It won’t take long. My heart’s in my throat now;
my mind’s racing through a million things. I step away as quietly
as I can, turn down the back hall and take the farthest
stairwell.

And run.

* * *

I’ve been north before. It doesn’t even
occur to me to head south, too many settlements that way. And north
will take me up the B streets toward Lydia. If she hasn’t heard of
my crime she might give me supplies, maybe a map, even come along
for a ways.

I shake the stupid thoughts out of my
head. Desperate. Not thinking clearly. I have to run away. With
nothing. Alone.

The streets are crowded this time of
day. Heads swivel to follow me as I streak through the slum. Faces
frown, eyes dart away. They know.

I am tempted to go back and face my
grandfather. I have a defense.

But … the Culling Mandate. A man who
could direct such an atrocity because of some bit of clairvoyance
would not hesitate to inflict his more recent law that demands
capital punishment. My grandfather is an evil man. I’ve always
known it. He wouldn’t accept my defense.

I see her street ahead and I need to
make a decision. Do I slow down, stop, knock? My feet decide for
me. The path to her door seems clear until my tunnel vision widens.
People in the streets are whispering, pointing. I look behind and
others are moving away from me, hiding their feelings towards me
with nervous smiles, speaking into phones they are angling toward
the morning sun.

“
Dalton!” A girl’s voice. I
swing my head back around to see Lydia bounding down the steps,
Barrett shadowing after her, hurrying. She yells to me, “Follow
us.” She motions with her hand, turns, and speeds away. I catch up
to Barrett whose shorter legs can’t match my long strides. He
doesn’t look at me, just stretches his legs as well as he can. A
backpack bounces to his rhythm.

I focus on an identical bag on Lydia’s
back and keep the space between us to five or six feet. I can catch
her, but I’d rather not. Barrett trails behind. I doubt he’ll be
able to keep up. I glance back, but he’s right at my
heels.

We reach the outer streets, pass the
poorest dwellings, and leave the slum behind. The change from gray
to green is striking as the landscape ahead of us is open, lush,
and only marred by the occasional cannibalized vehicle. Lydia slows
her pace and at last looks back at me. She smiles and I catch up to
her side. We jog along in harmony for what must be five miles, our
legs in sync, our breathing matched. A sheen of sweat glints off
her face. She glows.

The road dips and I stumble.

“
Easy,” she says and grabs
at my arm. She pulls me to a stop and scans around us. Barrett is
right there; he never lagged behind and I’m amazed to see that his
breathing is not labored and he hasn’t broken a sweat. I wipe my
forehead and follow them both off the road. They swing their
backpacks off in unison and drop them in a clump of weeds that are
speckled with tiny purple flowers.

“
We can rest here a while.
Right, Barrett? Do you hear anything?” Lydia raises her
eyebrows.

Barrett stands with his head cocked
bird-like and waits a beat. “Nothing,” he says. “No trucks are
following. No one on foot either.” He directs his gaze northward.
“Pretty quiet ahead, too. Just birds.”

I stare at him and wonder if he could
be a GMFRE, a gemfry. Most likely a second generation gemfry, born
of one of the first gemfries who immigrated here. The people with
Genetic Mutations From Radiation Exposure were concentrated along
the west coast. I’ve heard stories. Jamie told me he’d seen several
where they used to live. Special powers sometimes. But mostly
horrible deformities.

“
I know what you’re
thinking,” Barrett says as he eyes me. For a second I fear he has
some psychic ability, then he says, “You’re worried we’re gonna
lead you into a trap.”

I let my breath out in a half-chuckle
and shake my head. “No,” I say, “what I think … is that you’re a
gemfry.”

He juts his chin out, looks ready to
fight, then he sits easily down among the flowers. “Yup, and it’s
lucky for you that I am.”

I remember what I heard about him being
a spy for Ronel’s people. It makes sense that they’d use a kid, a
special kid with exceptional hearing, and the ability to run for
miles without getting winded, but why lucky for me?

Lydia drops to the earth and I find my
own soft spot. We make a loose triangle, with two of us still
breathing deeply.

I voice my question and Lydia answers,
“Lucky for you because Barrett will help you get away with no
chance of falling into one of Battista’s traps.” She speaks my
grandfather’s name with a snarl. It makes me wish it wasn’t my
name, too.

“
Traps?” I’m not so eloquent
out loud. My head is stringing together full sentences, but my
mouth defaults to single words.

She sighs.
“
He may be glad you left so he doesn’t have
to kill you, but he’s not going to be happy that you took such
vital information with you.
He’ll do all he
can to get you back. Safely or not.” She pulls a small purple bloom
and holds it above her lip, sniffs. Sitting here my heart rate
should be slowing down, but it’s not. I fix my gaze on her mouth
for a bit too long, drop my eyes, then raise them to try to focus
on a distant hill.

I process her words. I don’t know what
vital information I could have, but I can no more contradict her
than I can give a speech in front of thousands. It occurs to me
that Barrett, or perhaps Lydia, has some odd power over me. My eyes
drift back to her. The flower is tucked behind her ear now and she
is rummaging through her backpack.

“
Here,” she says. She offers
me and Barrett each an apple, then takes a smaller one for herself
and twirls the stem off.

I work up the words to ask Barrett why
he isn’t sweating. Between bites he explains all of his gemfry
gifts.

“
No one noticed at first. I
guess I discovered my uniqueness on my own. My mother died when I
was four and my father used to leave me with a woman who cares for
kids while their folks work all day. I always knew when my dad was
returning. I could hear him speaking with his companion as they
walked back from the project. A quarter mile away.” He nods to
himself, his face softens to the memory. “I figured it out when I
was eight or nine. It isn’t just my hearing that is better than
yours. Nobody can hide stuff from me. I can sniff it out. My night
vision is pretty useful, too, and I can run all day and all night,
no problem.” He spits an apple seed back toward the road and adds,
“I’ve done it, too. Once I had to get a message to Ronel, nearly
three hundred miles away. And I did.”

“
Mmm,” I say with obvious
awe in my tone. I’m thinking too many things to make time for any
words. I can’t believe that the government didn’t snatch him long
ago. Apparently they know about him, or at least the guard with the
whip knows he spies for Ronel. I’m impressed with his running
ability. A question forms that my tongue can handle, “Are we
running that far?”

His expression brightens. He laughs.
Lydia laughs. And because I always think I’m the butt of every
joke, I laugh too. They shake their heads no. I toss my apple core
away and stand up.

“
But it’s pretty far,” Lydia
says. “We’ll go with you about a hundred miles and then we’ll have
to turn back. You’ll be on your own. It’s up to you … and your
destiny … just how far you go.” She rises, too, brushes off her
backside and smiles at Barrett. She asks him, “Are we good?” A
twinge of jealousy stabs at my insides as I imagine them together.
She’s a good five or six inches taller than he is, but that hardly
matters when there are no Red boys her age.

“
Yup,” he says, “no sights,
sounds, or smells to worry about.” He stays on the ground a moment
more. He’s waiting for more of my questions. Or he’s waiting for me
to do something.

Lydia reaches for her bag and I bend
forward to grab it first. “I can carry it for you,” I say and swing
it up onto one shoulder.

“
Careful. It’s full of food
and a couple of weapons.”

“
Okay.” I look at Barrett.
“I can carry yours, too,” I say. I’m probably too boastful. I grab
at the strap and it’s as if the bag is in a tug of war with me. I
succeed in lifting it, but I wish I hadn’t offered. “Is this full
of bricks?” I wonder aloud. They laugh again.

“
Money,” Barrett says. He
motions for me to drop the bag and I do. He unzips the main part
and I see the coins. We’ve all heard the old stories of how people
used to use paper or plastic for money. That must have been so much
lighter. The wealthy carry heavy belt sacks nowadays. My sacks have
a few coins each, but I rarely have the need of money, living in
the capitol, my castle. I’m glad they thought to bring
some.

“
Don’t worry, it’s not
stolen,” Barrett says. He zips the bag up and pitches it up onto
his back as easily as if it were full of old fashion paper bills.
Lydia had said his nickname is Bear, maybe that isn’t short for
Barrett, maybe he earned it because of his special
strength.

“
I don’t want to take all
your money,” I say, looking from one to the other. I sidestep onto
the road.

Lydia hops onto the pavement and
assures me it’s not theirs.

Barrett agrees. “What’s here is one
coin from everyone in the Red village who doesn’t blame you for
Sarkis Tait’s death. You have no idea what he would have done to
that boy if you hadn’t stopped him.” I color at the mention of that
name and my deed, but their faces show no negative
emotion.

We begin to trot and Barrett tells me
things about my victim that should make me feel better about
killing him. But remarkably I’m not moved. I’ll take the money, not
as the reward it’s intended to be, but as a loan. I’ll pay the Red
village back. With interest. Nothing will lessen my
guilt.

“
Oh, oh,” Barrett says and
speeds up. He can easily outrun me after all and does so, cutting
off to the left and into a dark forest. Lydia doesn’t hesitate to
follow. Of course I lope after them. By the time we are totally
enveloped by leaves and trunks and brush I hear the soft whoosh of
solar-bikes. The only solar-bikes still in service after all the
factories burned were confiscated by the government years ago for
use as pursuit vehicles. The fact that they are on this road,
following us, can only mean one thing: my grandfather has sent men
after me.

* * *

I am tired of escaping through a forest
of heavy vegetation, pesky mosquitoes, and slapping branches. The
trail we’ve been on for the last hour isn’t much more than a deer
path and we have to stay in a single file, Barrett leading. My
backpack has grown heavy. I’m thirsty, but I won’t be the first to
ask to stop.

Thankfully Barrett stops. I wonder if
he still hears our pursuers or if his head-tilting indicates some
new and more dangerous threat. I glance back at Lydia who is
brushing her fingers through her hair. The forgotten flower she had
tucked behind her ear dislodges and floats to the forest floor. She
snaps a twig off a branch and stabs it through the twist of hair
she has made and skewers the bun in place. She sees me gawking and
grins.

My heart stops. She looks away and I
reach for the tiny flower, tuck it in my sack before she turns back
to me.

“
Tired?” she
asks.

“
Thirsty,” I say.

“
Shh!” Barrett scowls back
at us.

We wait. I try not to slap at the
mosquitoes, but apparently my blowing at them is just as noisy to
Barrett. He signals me to stop. We wait. Finally he seems
satisfied.

“
It’s okay,” he breathes the
words in a fine whisper. “I know them.”

“
Them? Who?” I search
around, overhead, in every direction looking for them.