Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (8 page)

“See the gash here?” he asked them. “Right across its middle? It probably took him a long time to die. Nature at its finest . . .”

The bright spots of sun grew brighter and the woods took on the glow of a full-fledged mid-August day. Soon, through her helmet, Natasha could hear a new sound: like water gushing from a sink but magnified by a thousand. Eventually, the trees thinned and the land curved downward, sloping into a bank of rock and mud, identical to the one opposite. A fast path of dark water ran in between. A river.

“Amazing,” rang Alejandra's voice in her ear. “It's like it has its own life.”

“I wish we had one of these in the settlement,” Eric added. “Do the Tribes actually drink from this?”

“Of course they do,” Nolan answered. “And so did a lot of other people too, before the Storm.”

“Didn't work out well for them, though,” Jeffrey said. “That water may look pretty, but it sickened thousands. In Pre-Storm times, it was flowing with toxins. People would drink and then their stomachs would puff out like balloons.”

“And worse things that we won't mention,” Douglas added.

“But it's clean now?” Natasha asked. The water was so clear and bright, she could not imagine it making anyone sick.

“Clean enough for the animals, and for the Tribes,” Jeffrey said. “But not for us.”

They veered off from the river, toward the northern mountain ridge, approaching the place of the first downed sensor. They were in a deadzone now. The Office of Mercy could not see them, and would not be able to catch sight of a bear approaching or a dead branch swaying dangerously in the wind. The team reached the ridge and began to climb. The ground became loose and dry. They ascended higher than the sprawling tops of trees, keeping to a natural pathway along the mountain edge. The cliffs bordered them on one side, and their other side was wide open to the valley beneath. The sun beat down, making Natasha sweat.

“Don't look right at it,” Jeffrey kept reminding them. “Unless you want a very unpleasant few hours in the Office of Bioreplacement.”

At a place where the path momentarily widened and flattened, Douglas and Nolan broke off from the group to find sensor RN22, while Jeffrey, Alejandra, Eric, and Natasha continued on to the Pine camp. They followed a declivity into a low, isolated area of thick trees, before climbing a second mountain path, this one a little less steep than the first. They had not walked long before they entered onto a rocky plateau that was bordered by pocketed cliffs.

Initially the place did not strike Natasha as familiar, but then she saw: the gaping mouth of the cave where the Pines had kept disappearing, and the black smudge at its entrance where their fire had burned. Scattered on the dry ground were the jagged shards of a clay pot, and at the opposite end of the plateau lay the rotting and discarded bones of animal carcasses, buzzing with flies. The brush that grew along the cliff sides had been trampled and ravaged for kindling; and the loose ground had been scuffed smooth by milling life.

“The camp,” Eric said, seeing it too. They had arrived at last.

They found the silver and white ruins of sensor RN59 by a group of tall birch trees. Jeffrey took a collapsible ladder from his pack and extended it against the trunk of the tree where the sensor had been.

“They unscrewed the bolts,” Jeffrey called down, once he had reached the top. “Except for a couple of scratches, the base is completely unscathed.”

A chill ran through Natasha, despite the glare of the afternoon sun.

“How did they?” she asked. “It's not like they have tools.”

“Maybe they do, maybe they stole stuff from America-Six,” Eric said. “What if they don't lock their storehouse like we do?”

Alejandra glanced behind them, suddenly jumpy.

Jeffrey descended the ladder. “It's possible they used a spearhead. They're not bad at crafting tools. They're just as ingenious as we are, only with different starting materials. The good news is that it won't take long to repair.”

While Alejandra began photographing the shattered sensor, Jeffrey moved to examine the trash heap, and Eric and Natasha returned to the circle of charred wood outside the cave. They sifted through it with their hands. The blackened wood splintered at a touch and the soft ash billowed up with every disturbance. Natasha knew it was safe. The fire had been out for nearly a day and could not spontaneously ignite, but she still recoiled from the puffs of ash, imagining that it would.

They moved into the cave, passing through the arched opening that Natasha had spent hours observing from the settlement. The roof of the cave was low, and they put their hands up to keep from bumping their heads. Jeffrey followed them in with a flashlight and swept the beam across the interior: a dank-looking fur, a pile of stones, a stack of dry twigs and leaves, two pieces of a snapped bow, still connected by sinew, and a lump of leaves that must have served as a bed.

“It's so much smaller than I thought it would be,” Natasha said. “They must've really squeezed in here.”

“Didn't leave much behind either, did they?” Alejandra said.

“They're pretty thorough that way,” Eric agreed. He sounded disappointed. “I'm going back outside.” But as Eric turned to go, he stopped just before the archway. “Hey Alejandra, take a photo of this.”

They all looked. Jeffrey moved the flashlight. Within the circle of light to the right of the cave's opening blazed the brown-red imprint of a human hand. Blood, Natasha thought, and shuddered.

“That's creepy,” Alejandra said.

The circle of light wavered and Natasha looked over at Jeffrey.

“Have you seen anything like this before?” she asked.

“No,” he said, then adding, as if to temper his quick response, “But it's not all that strange. Most Tribes decorate their habitats in some way. It's art.”

“Not to me, it's not,” Alejandra said. “The Dome is art. This is just sick.”

Jeffrey shrugged. He ran the light once more along the cave walls; yet except for the long striations and pockets in the stone, the rest of the cave bore no markings.

Natasha walked over to the print.

“You don't think it's
human
blood, do you?” she asked.

“No,” Jeffrey said. “I'm sure it's animal.”

Natasha held her hand over the print; they were almost exactly the same size, accounting for the added bulk of the biosuit. She spread her fingers so that she matched its position.

“What are you doing?” Jeffrey asked.

“Nothing.” She took her hand away. “I think it might be a woman's hand.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or a teenage male's. The young make most of the markings.”

They had just set to work fixing the sensor when Arthur radioed. Douglas and Nolan needed an extra person back at sensor RN22, and Arthur wanted Natasha to go. Natasha didn't mind at all; she had already seen everything at the camp. But Jeffrey, who had up until this moment treated Natasha and Eric as competent and equally qualified members of the team, rejected Arthur's order outright. Before Natasha could respond to Arthur, Jeffrey came in over the comm-link. He told Arthur that he would send Alejandra instead, as she was a Delta, and experienced enough to go off on her own. But that was no good. Alejandra was an engineer, and Jeffrey would need her help for the sensor repair. In response, Jeffrey said that he would go himself. But by then, Natasha had heard enough; she could not let Jeffrey continue speaking for her. Arthur had assigned her a job, and she had no problem getting it done.

“I'll be fine,” Natasha said. “Arthur has my position.”

“I don't want you walking alone.”

“It's a mile back the same way we came. I'll radio if I see anything out of the ordinary.” She started across the plateau.

“Or
hear
anything. Or
sense
anything,” Jeffrey said after her.

“Okay. Got it.”

“And if suddenly things don't look familiar to you—”

She gave him a small smile that he did not return, and as she crossed the plateau, returning to the mountain path, she could feel the pressure of his gaze at her back. As she walked farther, though, his presence thinned, and the brush and the cliff edge came between them.

6

I
n a settlement, you never got to be far away from everyone. Even when you were by yourself in a sleeproom or Pod, there were always other people stacked in nearly identical rooms above and below and at each side. Cry out in your sleep, and someone would call the Department of Health; tap on the wall, and they'd hear you. What a strange feeling, Natasha thought as she descended the mountain path into the valley. How strange to be alone, absolutely alone in the folds of this insentient, nonhuman world. She took several more strides, breathing hard. She had never been more removed from human company in all her life. One third of a mile separated her from the plateau; two thirds of a mile from the RN22 sensor. A flock of birds flew overhead in a V formation and she stopped to watch them pass. She had to; she was the only person in the world to see it. When she started walking again, she stepped more slowly, eager to savor these moments. She was experiencing a liberating sensation, like some immaterial part of her was at last expanding, like souls in old religious texts connecting to a universal spirit, breaking free from the body. Was this how the Tribespeople felt? Full and large and continuous with everything between the sky and the ground under their feet? Or was it not? (Natasha frowned, considering this.) Because without a settlement to go home to at night, and with the possibility of injury and death waking with them at every dawn, the Tribespeople must constantly feel fear; and perhaps fear made the world feel,
not
continuous, but divided and small. Natasha regarded again the intricacy of the spreading treetops and the effortless scatter of dry leaves across the orange pine needles of the forest floor, only this time with a more ethical understanding. A life in nature was a life that rushed toward death, without relief, without the possibility of resistance, without the pity of the blue-faced mountains or the monstrous sky. Dwelling upon the prettiness of the wild, as Natasha was doing, was as reprehensible as admiring the beauty of cancer cells on a slide.

Amid these thoughts, Natasha had become somewhat careless in monitoring her surroundings. And only several meters before reaching the rise of land which led to where Douglas and Nolan were working, she saw a bright streak of close movement in her peripheral vision. Her muscles tensed. She threw herself into a defensive position, just as she'd practiced a hundred times in the Pretends: her back up against the trunk of a large, half-dead sycamore tree, her gun unholstered and thrust forward in both hands.

“Natasha, what's the matter? You're nervous—”

Arthur's voice from the Office of Mercy. She had forgotten; they could see her heart beating.

“There's something. An animal.”

“You're loaded?”

“Yes.”

The flash of pale movement appeared again through the bushes. It could not be a bear, unless it was a very small bear. She had once seen a mountain lion on the sensors here. What if a mountain lion had slipped into the deadzone without anyone noticing? Or what if it had lived here for months, and just emerged from hiding now that the Pines had gone? It barked. Natasha raised her head from the crosshairs. The animal bounded out of the bushes, its pink tongue hanging to one side and its ears down, its coat bright in the sun.

“A dog,” said Natasha. She could have cried with relief. They had studied dog breeds in their fifth year of school, a very popular lesson. “Part golden retriever, I think.”

The dog wagged its tail and barked again, then leapt up against Natasha with its front paws on her stomach.

“Whoa,” she said, and staggered back, laughing.

“Take care of it then,” Arthur said. “Quickly.” Then he began talking to Nolan.

But Natasha, instead of following Arthur's orders right away, turned off her speaker. She wouldn't get a chance like this again, a couple of minutes wouldn't hurt the mission. She put her hand out and the dog sniffed. She wished she wasn't wearing gloves.

“Poor thing,” Natasha said. “The Pines must've forgotten you, didn't they? You're not part of a pack.”

Then, amazed at her own daring, Natasha reached down and scratched its head; a gesture remembered from some Pre-Storm book she had read long ago. The dog leaned into her hands. Then it barked and pulled away, not in a threatening motion, but like it wanted Natasha to play.

“Sorry, buddy, I've got to go.”

She took a deep breath and hoisted up her LUV-3.

“Stay still, this is for your own good.”

The dog stared, panting, its black lips pulled back, as if to smile. The gun drifted a little in Natasha's hands. She stopped and took another long breath and repositioned her grip.

“Good dog,” she said.

Now was the moment to shoot, but something was wrong. She could not disengage from the immediate and see the dog's life from a universal perspective. She could not build the Wall.

The dog barked and wagged its tail; its ears perked up and it turned, bounding back toward the bushes. With a cry, Natasha dropped her arms; she could hear it barking, chasing a rodent or squirrel maybe. She started running after it. She had to. She could sweep the dog and get back to the route before Arthur or anyone else noticed that she was taking too long. Natasha plunged through the branches. The dog's golden back caught the light. Luckily it was moving toward the mountain, only a little farther north from where she needed to be. A bark sounded ahead and she ran forward. Her heart beat hard, too hard, they would notice in the Office of Mercy. She moved quickly, tripping and stumbling on the rough ground, holding back tears of frustration. How would she be able to return to the settlement knowing the dog was out here? It could starve or freeze to death in the winter, all because she had failed to hold her stupid feelings behind the Wall for one eighth of a second.

But her anguish did not torment her for long. As the trees began to give way to the rise of rock, she saw the dog near the edge of the mountain. She stopped and reached for her gun. Her hand had only just touched the metal when a branch cracked directly behind her. Before Natasha had time to react, a blow to the back of her head launched her entire body forward. She landed on her side, with her right arm tucked under her. A foggy darkness rose before her eyes. And the last thing Natasha saw was the golden dog a little way up the rocks, smiling and wagging its tail and leaning against a pair of human legs, while a human hand, streaked with grime, petted and ruffled its ears.

•   •   •

In her dreams, Natasha was a child again, clasping her teacher's hand and circling the Dome to walk off a stomachache while the noise of a boisterous celebration echoed from one of the wings. Natasha was groaning and holding her middle while her teacher said
step breathe step breathe or else we'll have to take you to the medical wing with the other children who ate too many sweets
. Then the noise was gone and Natasha was watching herself from above, as one can choose to watch a prescripted drama play out in the Pretends. She stood all alone in the black Dome, and the glass of one of the honeycomb windows was missing. Natasha watched herself watch in horror as one, two, three yellow jaguars slunk in from the Outside. . . .

A pain from the back of her head rushed over her skull and the ground pressing against her cheek felt unsteady, swaying. From far away in the darkness came two voices, dreamlike and strange.

“Her?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“I was sure then and I'm sure now.”

“We should call . . .”

But then the world lapsed into silence again and when Natasha woke, the voices were gone.

It was the dry air that had roused her: it caught in her throat and made her cough. And the heat too, the flesh of her face stung with heat. When she unstuck her eyes, she found herself on a floor of gravel, and staring into a fire. Instinctively, she recoiled from it, her back hitting a rough wall. The light was too much, it burned her eyeballs and she squinted against it with a cry. Where were the overhead lights? But then with a sickening feeling she remembered the mission, the dog, the naked limbs, and the blow that had come from behind. She cried out again, this time with dread. Her eyes opened wide. She had no helmet and the pressure of her biosuit had deflated to nothing, the fabric limp against her skin. She held her breath. Frantically she looked around, registering vaguely that she was in a cave, that she saw no exit. Her helmet sat on its side several feet away. But when she reached for it, she realized her wrists were tied together at her stomach. She jerked one leg; her ankles were tied together too. A low groan escaped her lips. They would kill her, whoever they were. They might return to do it themselves or they might leave her here to die of thirst; either way, whoever had brought her here would kill her.

Her mind drifted again, and the next time her vision cleared, she was no longer alone. A shape moved in the dark behind the fire, rising up to full height. A man. He moved above the flames and the light revealed a weathered, round face, a head of curly hair, and an expression of gruesome expectation.

“Who are you?” Natasha said, kicking herself backward against the stone.

Her legs were shaking, her teeth knocked against each other. It was like her body already knew. I'll die here, Natasha thought, I'm going to die. She wished to be anywhere in the world but here. She wished that some force, anything, would come and take her away from this place. She could see Jeffrey as he watched her leave the Pine camp; she could feel his face close to her own. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, her lips whispered in a rush. A low rumble reverberated around her, shaking the walls of the cave. Natasha didn't know what it was, maybe the noise of the universe ending.

The man stepped around the fire. His ragged, animal clothes smelled of earth and sweat; a string of long, curving teeth hung from around his neck. He grinned, making his cheeks fat and dimpled. Suddenly Natasha recognized him: he was a Pine, the chief, one of the two hunters who had survived when the tattooed man died. This was the man who had looked into the sensor eye.

“Let me go!” Natasha screamed, her fear bursting forth as rage. “You let me go right now.”

To her surprise, the man stopped and frowned, and a flicker of near-comprehension lit his face, like he had understood her words and was contemplating how to respond. But that was impossible. Her outburst must have only startled him. He moved toward her again.

“Let me go,” she sobbed, knowing that he could not understand. “I'm not anything to you.”

“You are!” the man said. The sounds emerged rough and gravelly through his lips, caught up with bits of phlegm, but they were unmistakable.

He was standing directly over her now. Had she not seen his lips move, she would not have believed that the words came from him. For a moment, Natasha's shock caused her to forget her own situation. She stared at him, her mouth open, her eyes dry.

“How—how can you speak?”

“Speak? Why shouldn't I speak?”

Suspicion flared within Natasha anew. “Who are you?” she demanded. “You can't be a Tribesperson. You're from another America. A spy!”

But then she remembered again how this man had fought the bear. No settlement citizens would ever risk so much for a disguise, just to get a peek at their neighbors. He breathed in, unhurried, smelling her as if she were a Garden plant.

“We are the People,” he said at last. “My name is Axel. I am the chief.”

“What are you doing here? What do you want?”

It was terrifying, the way he stared.

“We live in the forest near the water. When the cold comes, we travel south. We always have.”

“What do you want?” Natasha demanded again.

He paused for a long moment, entranced by the look of her, her face, her body, her biosuit. Then the rumbling came again, like thunder.

“I am not the one to explain,” he said.

“You said you're the chief.”

He seemed amused; two boyish dimples showed in his cheeks. He found a long stick on the ground and poked at the fire. “Yes, and as chief, I have promised the job to a different person.”

The sound of other voices came from the dark recesses beyond the fire, echoing and full, and approaching at an urgent pace. Axel looked around. From a thin break in the rocks—Natasha's vision had adjusted enough to see it now—entered two Pine men and a woman. The first man had a shiny ponytail, and the second carried a bow and arrow. The woman had strings of red beads stacked up her neck.

Behind them by several paces arrived a second, younger woman with two tiny people at her sides: children, a boy and a girl, each clinging to the woman's skirt. They all stared at Natasha, the children too.

“Axel,” said the ponytailed man, the first to break his gaze. “They've found the area. They're attacking from above.”

“They have fire weapons!” the man with arrows added. “We should have had more people stay behind. Who will fight with us now? Them?” He threw a dismissive gesture toward the woman and her children, but the ponytailed man caught his arm.

“Don't mention my family.”

The woman with red beads jumped between them, then looked to Axel for help.

“Enough, Raul,” Axel said, addressing the ponytailed man. “How did they find us? They followed us?”

“No,” said the woman, still eyeing the two men. “I circled the area. She was alone. The others didn't come till much later.”

“It's her.” The man with arrows pointed at Natasha. “She's calling them. Right now, you're calling them!”

More rumbles came from overhead and rock and dust showered down on the fire. In the midst of everyone coughing, a new noise came: rhythmic cracks from high above,
tkk-et-koom tkk-et-koom
, what could only be the shots of a gun. Her team, Natasha realized, a thrill of relief running through her. Jeffrey. Her team. They were trying to find her.

“We can watch them better from above. Mattias, Hesma.”