“Where are we going?” Dante hisses through the dark.
“Next phase of the plan,” I say, breaking away from him and climbing the ridge ahead on my own, swinging my good leg from one hold to another, dragging myself up the incline with my arms.
“What about Gamma?” He continues, sliding over the crest of the ridge and turning to reach down to help Path up, who drags Smokes behind him. “And Bianca?”
“Who?” Asks Smokes.
“Delta-Omega-Gamma and Bianca. Women we had with us,” Path says quickly, dropping him down in the dirt and bending over to catch his breath and rest. “A dog-woman and a scribe.”
“What about them?” Smokes asks rhetorically.
We collectively ignore him.
“As I said, we’re splitting up,” I tell Dante. “They know the plan, where to go next.”
“So we’ll see them at HQ?” He asks.
“If they’re alive. And they remember the plan.”
He’s quiet, and I can see his expression shift from worry to despair in the dark. He reaches down and I take his hand. He pulls me up the rest of the way and then turns away, fingers tangling into the hair on the back of his head.
“If the Old-traditionalists took out most of the dogs, Gamma could take the rest and protect Bianca,” Path tries to reassure Dante as he stands up straight again, his tone concise and logical. “There’s a good chance they’ll be there.”
Dante doesn’t turn back towards us. He stares out into the dark and lets out a deep breath. His fingers dig into the back of his head and his knuckles turn white as he stumbles forward slightly and after a moment, his knees buckle underneath him.
“Dante? You okay?” I ask.
He sucks in a shaky breath and leans over, resting on top of his knees. His shoulders shake as he sobs.
I bite the inside of my cheek and lean against a tall tree, resting my leg. In my periphery, I watch Smokes and Path settle quietly, resting on the forest floor as we listen to the youngest remaining Timber muffle his sobs into his hands.
We sit patiently and nobody says a word. After a few minutes, he sniffles and sucks in a breath, and it sounds like an attempt at sucking the despair back into his body to be dealt with another time.
He rises, wiping his face with his back to us. He firmly situates his helmet back on top of his head and turns to me. His eyes glisten but his face is a mask of steel.
“I’m fine,” he says. “On your ready, Paladin.”
I nod to him and leave the tree, catching up to him and letting him slide his arm under my shoulders.
I consider telling him he’s an admirable soldier, and that his perseverance would make Elder Aozin proud. If the rest of the Timber could see him here and now, they would agree. Then again, if the rest of the Timber were here, he wouldn’t have to persevere.
But I say nothing. And neither does anyone else. Path helps Smokes back to his feet and the four of us set out again, watching a blip on the map on Dante’s PMI. Slowly, as we walk, the sound of insects and birds starts growing in the dark, and the forest comes to life. Above us, the stars grow in brightness and number until they fill the sky, and I get glimpses of them through the trees as we go.
Slowly, we draw to a stop beneath a small clearing, all gazing up at the cloudless sky. Beside me, Path recites a Chao’mee prayer, and I join him in my mind. Together, we wish safety for the remains of our family and pray that Gamma and Bianca can find their way.
Dante nudges me after a moment and then I nod and break away from him to keep walking on my own, leading the way.
I stare down at the softly glowing green lines on the PMI screen and the white dot blinking slowly, indicating our movement through the trees with a radar, pixels moving at a snail’s pace. It’s going to take some time to get to the edge of the territory. But we aren’t yet heading for the edge.
In fact, our backs face North, walking almost exactly in the opposite direction of the contested territory where we plan to escape. Our current goal is nearly dead center, a little icon in the shape of a triangle labeled “HOME.”
"Wait- Just," Smokes says and slowly breaks from Path, sliding into a sitting position on the ground. "Wait. I need... A minute."
I pause and look back at him. His face is pale and stark white in the dark, his eyes sunken and obscured in shadow. He looks ghastly. I glance at Path and then back at Smokes, and the sickly man's eyes are closed.
"Hey-" I panic, scooting closer, and he jolts, making an angry face at me. "Hey, don't go out. You're hurt, aren't you?"
Smokes chuckles and sarcastically replies, "You think I'm just bein' lazy needing Path to carry me around?"
"Shit-" I grunt, resting my right knee down into the soft dirt, bracing against the pain in my side. "Where? What is it? We need to fix it."
I had completely forgotten to check him over while we were hiding and running for our lives. He hikes up his t-shirt and reveals a sizable twisted gash across his lower abdomen, muscle sliced near his hip, and across his upper leg.
The wound is still bleeding and has been for a while, based on the amount there is on him and his clothes. I hadn't realized that his shirt and pants were supposed to be green, they looked dark as black in the dim light.
"Stimpaks if you've got 'em," I tell Dante and Path without looking up, bringing out my first-aid kit and preparing to try to fix him up as quickly as possible so we can keep moving.
Everyone in the territory knew to turn to the unbelievable capabilities of Stimpaks in cases where bandages, antibiotics, rest, and a hot meal would never suffice. The accepted alternatives were Psycho or booze, anything just to numb the pain while the patient died.
Path picks out three small plastic bags full of a damp red powder and hands them to me. "Re'mee recipe. Works a treat, for stopping bleeding especially."
Smokes sneers, but I nod and pull a roll of bandages and sterile tissues from the first-aid kit. I dress the bandages and tissues with the red powder and then push it into the wound, wrapping loosely with bandages and tape. Smokes is quiet but indignantly squirms the entire time.
“Are you sure it’s not poison? Or I’m not allergic?” He pesters.
“If you were allergic, we’d know by now,” I tell him. “Quit being a baby.”
“I’m not being a baby! I’m a doctor! Why is Path suddenly the expert on field medicine?” He continues, rubbing his hand over the bandages.
“Because he’s an expert on field medicine,” says Dante suddenly. “He’s literally the expert, Smokes. Because he’s studied the plants in this area and learned from the tribes.”
“Thank you, Dante,” Path says, satisfied.
“Stimpaks are better,” he argues. “They’re just better in every way.”
“How would you even know? You’ve never used this stuff before,” Path replies, visibly annoyed. “Besides, we can’t make Stimpaks. We’ve gotten really lucky they’re as common as they are, and that they aren’t expired. Someday we’re gonna run out and what do you propose we use to heal our wounds then?”
“We’ll figure out how to make them,” Smokes says dismissively.
“And if we don’t?”
“We will. We figure everything out.”
“Bianca is going to hate you,” Dante murmurs, loud enough for me to hear but too low for Smokes to pick up on.
“Whatever, Smokes. Believe whatever you wanna believe, I’m gonna do what’s best for us,” says Path. He puts the remaining bags of powder back into his vest. “Let me know when you decide to stop being a fucking prick.”
“Oh, I’m the fucking prick? Then you-”
“Boys,” I snap, and they fall silent. Something lets out a warning call somewhere nearby, and a flock of birds takes off. “That’s enough. Let’s keep moving.”116Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsfWjO7y6V6
116Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTCeadmiEEt
~~~
I plop down onto the ground and Dante passes by me, peering through the trees at the indistinct shape of the bunker entrance.
I sit and recover from the long walk, Smokes half-collapsing off of Path’s shoulder and into the dirt just in front of me, resting mostly on his good hip.
“Well,” I say. “We’re here. Should we wait or should we go in?”
Dante spins around, his eyes are wide and his mouth is already open but then he stops and chokes out his own voice.
“I don’t know…” He breathes. “We need to wait for Bianca and Gamma but what if there’s someone in there and the tribals come? We need to get them out.”
Path walks past him, almost into the small clearing just big enough to hold the concrete mound, and stares for a second too long. He lingers in the silence and uncertainty.
“There’s no one in there,” he says finally.
“How do you know?” Dante demands. “You don’t know.”
Path doesn’t respond.
Dante stands beside him and they both just look. Eventually, I take a deep breath and get up to join them both. We stand and stare.
The concrete is overgrown in bright green leaves, red thorns, and berries from a species of vine, a large tree growing out of the left side. Most of the mound is covered in greenery, but the door itself is kept well and clear of obstruction, camouflaged with a simple green and brown tarp.
The forest here is uncannily still. No noise from animals around us, no birdsong. The tarp is loose at the bottom, allowing it to brush the undergrowth as it moves in the faint and inconsistent breeze.
Smokes comes up beside me. All four of us watch as the wind picks up the tarp and flips it open for just a moment, exposing the underside, splattered with dried blood.
A knot forms in my gut.
"Let's go," I say resolutely. I take the first step towards the door. Closing the rest of the distance is harder and harder by the step.
I don't want to see what's on the other side of that door. I don't want to see what happened here. I don't want to know. I never want to know.
But I need to know.
I pull up the tarp and try to ignore the blood splashed across the inside. The doorknob is covered in a thin layer of brown dried blood. I grip it firmly and push it down, hearing the latch click. I push the door open into the darkness inside the bunker entrance.
The only light, a small red bulb, flickers across the room. Below it, the doorway, the door hanging wide open.
There’s blood everywhere.
We cross the room without looking at the gore splattered across the walls and push through the open door. Inside, the scene is even worse.
I consider turning back. I consider telling the others to wait outside. I do neither.
My legs lock into place and they file in after me, and we stand in a line at the entrance, staring at what was once our home, now littered with bodies. Smokes steps in front of us, and is the first to kneel down and touch one of the bodies.
“This is the worst fight I’ve ever seen,” says Path.
“A fight?” Asks Smokes. “I think you mean massacre.”
He carries himself on his good leg and uses an overturned table to keep himself upright, checking the body of a petite woman, her brown hair matted with dried blood and stuck in clumps to her face.
He doesn’t disturb her, and I’m grateful not to see her face. Path leaves the doorway next and begins checking the bodies in other parts of the main room, followed by Dante. I watch them kneel, check, and get up, kneel, check, and get up, over and over again. The grim certainty on Smokes’s face gets grimmer, and Path’s faint hope turns to desperation, becoming a pleading look on his tired face.
Dante is made of stone, but when he glances up and sees me still standing at the door, I can see the heartbreak in his eyes.
“I’m gonna go check the safe room,” I say. My voice is weak, too quiet for them to have heard, but I go anyway. I hobble alone down the corridor and past bedrooms, classrooms, studies, research labs, workshops, assembly lines, underground farms, kitchens, and community rooms. My home.
Pre-War architecture melts into Timber handiwork, parts of the facility we built for ourselves when the original bunker became too small for our growing family. Built by craftsmen of all kinds; craftsmen taught by self-taught craftsmen, and craftsmen taught by those craftsmen. Generations of innovation, knowledge, and an entire culture, soaked in blood. Our promising future, erased. I grieve, not just for the dead in the main room, but for the children they could have made. The future those children could have built for us.
The safe room door is shut tight. I pull the handle and it’s locked. The screen to the right of the door beeps and blinks red: ID Card required.
I pull my ID card from my pocket and tap it against the scanner. It blips and flashes green, then turns off for the final time, flashing the System Battery Dead message, a message I’ve never seen on the screens in this bunker before. I hear a click and try the handle again. The door swings open and the light from the hall behind me floods into the room.
I turn away.
Down the hall, Dante, Path, and Smokes round the corner. Their faces are dark and no words pass between them. They stop and I meet their eyes, one at a time.
“Well?” Dante asks.
I shake my head.
Path stares at me, dissecting me as always. “There’s nothing in there, is there? Not even a bloodstain.”
I shake my head. “They didn’t even make it to the safe room.”
We stand in silence, each of us hearing our private ghosts as the walls groan and shift under the weight of the soil above us.
“That’s it, then,” says Path. A clock on the wall ticks, ticks, ticks. The hallway is quiet enough that I can count the seconds as the clock marks them.
1,
2,
3,
4,
5.
10 seconds pass, without movement.
“We’re all there is,” I announce. “We’re all that’s left."
ns 15.158.61.5da2
