Circles in the Dust Read online

  But that was the whole problem. Now they had seen a light. They had found an end to their aimless wandering. They had found the Base, their lifeline, and they would sooner die than leave it.

  David’s job was to make them give that up.

  He sat on his freshly assembled sleeping quarters, looking over at Elizabeth as she rifled through her voluminous duffle bag. He watched her face shrink into a tight expression of focus and wondered who she really was. They hadn’t talked very much since she’d had found him by the river the day before. He needed to learn more about her, hopefully get a glimpse into the outpost of humanity he was headed toward. That society may love him and his scheme or may want to kill him out of a well-developed sense of self-preservation. He would have to find out the hard way.

  They exchanged only a few words as they made their camp for the night; David heading to the stream for water after setting up his tarp over an A-frame of solid fallen branches he’d lashed together. He headed off without a second thought, amused as he became aware of this habit for the first time. At least this time he actually needed water. Elizabeth was eager to get a fire going and was collecting the driest wood she could find when he left her. He made his way through the damp brush, barely noticing as more water collected on his damp clothing, which consisted of his thick raincoat, a muddy brown color, and some heavy-duty work pants that had lain dormant in his pile of treasure back home, tossed away because they were for meant for someone much larger. At least they were free of holes. The trees around him were dark in the fading light, the shadows cutting jagged lines down the length of trunks and the blanket of needles. Thousands of the golden daggers glinted in the twilight, their dagger points reaching up to grasp feebly at his worn hiking boots. It would be dark soon but had lightened up after the rain had stopped. David was enjoying the brisk evening air, reveling in the comfort he felt when he was surrounded on all sides by trees.

  The smell of the brook drifted to him, a thick, clear scent that sent him back to the morning before when he lay down to die by the river. He froze in his tracks as he felt the crushing depression that had gripped him so recently return with a devastating swiftness. Pain lanced through his chest, constricting his heart and making him wish for the end all over again. Everything was useless, nothing would ever change. This girl would lead him to his death. What could he possibly hope to accomplish? Why even bother? If he wasn’t hanged by the people of the Base for fear he was a spy, he would be dismembered and strung up over a fire by the barbarians he was going to face and try to turn away from their last hope. The stream was only a few steps farther. The bank would be rough, but he wouldn’t notice, not for long. The water was sure to be freezing, cold enough to numb his body, and his spirit soon after. At least he would have finally gotten out of his valley.

  He made it to the water and looked down to see his face, distorted slightly by the running water. The image was clear enough that he could see his sunken eyes and the skin pulled tight over his once fleshy cheeks. He looked like death already.

  But there were people waiting for him. The thought sent a chill down his spine and a warmth blossomed in his stomach, spreading to his fingertips, bringing an unconscious grin to his face. He had just found the last people on Earth, and that at least was worth a few more days of anxiety. Even if they wanted him dead, they were there to want it. His hands shook as he lowered his vessel into the icy water, sending little ripples traveling downstream, the wan moonlight glinting off their bumps and ridges as they moved away. His mind was fragile. He needed to keep it together. He needed a distraction.

  He returned to the clearing to find Elizabeth blowing on a family of newborn flames, coaxing them out from under the square structure she had erected with the twigs and sticks she had gathered, a few of which still sat in a jumbled heap next to her. She had one hand on the ground and one holding back her hair. The feeble light of the young fire glinted off her hair, catching here and there before rippling back in a wildfire that cascaded over her head. David stared at her as he walked up with his small pot full of water, stepping carefully to avoid wasting any of the precious liquid.

  “How are you so good at that?” he asked.

  “I hate the cold,” she responded, not lifting her eyes to look at him. David was beginning to notice that she was hesitant to give him any real answers, when she responded to his queries at all. That was about to end. This could be his distraction.

  “You hate to be cold,” he repeated. “I had no idea.”

  “What?” She didn’t look up from the fire.

  “I’m just saying I don’t know much about you. I’m coming to risk my life, to try and save your ‘Base,’ and I don’t really know anything about it,” he said, leaning over more and more in an attempt to force her to look at him. It didn’t work, even when his face grazed the dirt.

  “Hey, I already saved your life,” she reminded him, still engrossed in her work. “You haven’t quite paid that debt off yet.”

  “I took you home and fed you,” he said. “And we still haven’t gotten to know each other. At all. We need each other. There’s no need to be strangers.” She continued to coax the flames out into the open, leaving David waiting for a response.

  “You need me more than I need you,” she told him as she became confident that her creation would survive on its own and rose to her feet, letting her hair fall down her back and brushing the dirt off her knees. It struck David that she was nearly as tall as he was. She wore a slim raincoat over a dark t-shirt. No wonder she was cold. She put her hands on her hips as she studied him, watching her words sink in.

  “I made it this far on my own,” he mumbled, trying to disguise the embarrassment he had brought on himself, looking away. “But anyway,” he went on, setting his pan over the fire to boil, “I was just thinking it couldn’t hurt to get to know each other a little before we get to the Base. Don’t you want to make sure I’m not some kind of spy?” he asked. He forced a sly grin to his face. Her face remained stony.

  “You’re not a spy,” she said, so softly that David could barely hear. “That wasn’t acting out there by the river.”

  Everything he thought he knew about himself had been turned on its head. He looked back at this girl, Elizabeth, his naïve savior fresh from the community that would have been an impossible dream a couple of days ago, and realized that she knew nothing about him. She knew only this new David, this scrawny, weak David. She had not seen the wild man who had grown up without his family, without school or anyone but an old man and a sense of self-preservation to carry him through this new world. She had not seen the iron-hard individual who had killed men when food was short, who had fought tooth and nail to hold his place in the world. She had only seen the David that had given up after living a full life of pain and suffering. That David had been so happy to see another human being he had giggled. Literally giggled.

  This David, this new version of himself, was a revelation. He didn’t know himself anymore. That day by the river was a turning point. Why not use this to his advantage? He was a blank slate, he could be anyone. No one had to know who he had been. This could be David, part two. He knew a few things about this new self so far: he wasn’t going to die, he was going to find the Base and make a new life for himself there. He was not interested in the precarious existence he had led before; he wanted a stable life. And he needed someone to help him achieve these goals, a ticket in.

  His eyes rose to his ticket and he tried to suppress a smile as they reached her face. “Well, I am a professional,” he continued. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ll be pardoned once we’ve taken over.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she said with a dismissive smile.

  “You are a valuable accomplice,” he went on. “You could be my partner, if you wanted.”

  “Sounds lovely. We could take over this rotten world.” A short burst of laughter escaped her lips as she knelt on her bedroll and held her hands up to the flames.

  “We certainly could.
King and queen of a fallen kingdom,” he said. “But, I’ll have to know a little more about you before I grant you power like that, of course.”

  “But of course,” she responded with mock seriousness. “What exactly would you like to know, my liege?”

  He had to think for a moment. It dawned on him that interrogations worked better when one had a more precise objective than simply ‘gain information.’ What could he ask her about? She’d been so vague before, he knew he’d have to start with a light topic, something easy.

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough,” she replied. “Not that age means much anymore. How old are you?”

  If this was how the questioning was going to go, they were going to be up all night, he thought. “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “Really? You haven’t kept track of the years?” she responded, seeming amazed.

  “I had more important things to worry about,” he shot back, reminded again of her sheltered nature. “How old are you really, since you obviously must know what the date is?”

  “Twenty.”

  He was surprised by her age. She looked like she was at least as old as he was. Could he be that young?

  “You’re young.”

  “Not that young.” She seemed stung by his words. “Old enough to come out here on my own and find you.”

  He chuckled a little at her indignation but made no comment on it. “So what do you do at the Base?”

  “I told you, it’s kind of like a big farm—”

  “No, I mean what do you do there?”

  “Oh.” She paused. “I do this and that. We don’t all have set jobs. I help with the laundry, pull weeds, cook…” she trailed off, her head cocked to one side.

  “Such fitting work for a brave adventurer.” He tried not to smirk.

  She threw a nasty look his direction, then laughed. “Very funny. I help the mayor a lot, running errands, sending messages and all that too.”

  She seemed to be warming up to him, so David thought he’d turn up the heat.

  “Do you have a family back at the Base?”

  “I have my father, yeah,” she responded. He was glad to see she didn’t look disturbed by the question. “And a girl I share a room with, Ann. We’re not related, but she’s like a little sister. We share what used to be the master bedroom in the farmhouse.”

  “The master bedroom, eh?” Fancy.

  “Believe me, it’s seen better days,” she said. “Though it’s no hand-built cabin.”

  Now it was David’s turn to scowl good-naturedly. “Hey, my cabin is all master bedroom.” She smiled her agreement.

  The water had begun to boil while they talked. David tore the tops off two dehydrated meals and poured in an estimated amount of water. He set one of them next to his feet, giving the more savory-smelling one to Elizabeth, cautioning her to grab it by the top and let it sit for a minute. She set hers on her lap, her hands resting on the outside of the bag for warmth.

  So she was younger than he was. She had been raised in a commune. She must have spent all the years she could remember there, unaware of what it was like outside those walls. They were getting along and that was good; his conversational skills were coming back to him after lying in disuse for so long, and he did truly enjoy her company.

  “So you’re an odd-job kind of girl,” he summed up.

  “And you’re a hunter-gatherer,” she countered.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Less of a hunter, thanks to the scarce pickings.”

  “It’s always a big deal when anyone who goes out of the Base comes back with any game. One of the few things we celebrate.”

  “There was a time I thought someone was crazy because they told me they were eating deer,” he laughed, thinking about his much younger, foolish self. “But I can tell you, I’d give my left nut for a piece of jerky right now,” he said with a wistful smile on his face.

  “I would have guessed you did pretty well, though, considering that.” She pointed at his bow strapped to the side of his pack.

  “It came in handy more in the beginning,” he said. “After a while it became more for… self-defense,” he told her, grimacing as the faces of men stuck like porcupines flashed behind his eyes. She seemed to sense the change in his demeanor.

  “Are these ready yet?” she asked.

  “Should be,” he said, returning to himself. He picked up the bag of grub and dug his tarnished camping multi-utensil into it, stirring the ancient rice and beef, hoping for a moment they would be tasteless. It was better than the more probable alternative. His wish was granted. He rolled the rubbery chunks of meat around his mouth, savoring the saltiness that his taste buds could discern. Elizabeth dug into hers and coughed, opening her mouth to suck in air. He laughed at her impatience and watched a wisp of steam come drifting out from between her lips.

  “Hot?”

  She nodded her assent and chewed vigorously, swallowing after a moment and gasping, letting her tongue loll out into the frosty night air.

  “So,” he continued with the questions, “do you have a lot of friends back home?”

  She gazed at him idly while her burns healed. Eventually, she licked her lips and answered, “Yes, I suppose so. We’re like a big family.”

  “Okay,” David said, “walk me through a typical day on the farm. I want to know what it’s really like to live there.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at his calling the Base ‘the farm’ but answered his question.

  “Well, everyone gets up at dawn. Most people head out into the fields. Or get some food started. I’d rather be out in the fields, but my dad always tries to stick me in the kitchen, or with some message he could just walk over himself. He thinks I’m still a child.” Her voice took on a slight pout at the mention of her father. “He’s probably going to kill me when I get back. Anyway, we spend most of the day working, fixing up the house, or adding to it. Since we’ve gotten so many new people, we’ve started building a lot more little houses around the main one. There’s more than enough to keep everyone busy, at least while the snow lets up.

  “It’s kind of like going back in time, at least that’s what everyone says. I remember when I was little, watching TV and stuff, and now I work on a farm without electricity or anything.” She laughed. “I feel like one of the characters in an old book, livin’ off the land, makin’ my own clothes,” she said, with what David supposed must be an attempt at a farmer’s accent. “Everyone talks about what it used to be like, and it sounds nothing like the present.”

  “You read books?” He sat up a little straighter.

  “Yeah.” Her voice raised with the subject, her words cascading more freely than any she had spoken to him thus far. “We have lots of books, mostly boring old manuals and stuff, but a lot of good ones too. I love to read. When we were still trying to salvage things from the cities around here, someone came up with the idea of looking for all the books we could find. That way we could preserve some of the achievements of mankind and not lose everything. Maybe rebuild some things, get electricity again, stuff like that. There’s a huge library in a shed back at the Base; well, not so much a library as a ton of books in boxes, there for anyone who wants to read them. My favorites are the old novels, the ones that talk about the way life used to be. There are books about wars and adventures, people falling in love, knights in shining armor. My goal is to read all of them.” Her eyes gleamed as she talked.

  David thought it was odd that they would have kept books when there were so many more useful things they could have salvaged. She must have seen the confusion on his face.

  “Well, the plan is to try and recreate what we had before. Start over,” she explained. “Books will help us get there. We can learn from our ancestors, see what they did right and copy it, what they messed up and do it right—”

  “That’s always worked so well,” he interrupted. “The people who put us here in this mess had all those books and more, and they still went on to blow each other i
nto oblivion.” He had spent many a night by the fire, thinking about what he would do to the people responsible for his life turning out the way it was, if he got the chance, maybe when he met them in hell someday. There’s a reason to believe in life after death if ever there was one. “Maybe it would better to get rid of all traces of the past and get a real, fresh start.”

  “But—” Elizabeth started, but her face showed the bewilderment her mind was experiencing. Obviously this was not an idea that had been presented to her yet, and David started wondering if he would fit in with these people if this was their philosophy. “It at least gives us somewhere to start,” she managed to mumble. She looked hurt. David realized he had just attacked her passion, and he felt sorry.

  “I guess not everything from the past is bad,” he lied. “We could learn a thing or two from them.” The words burned on their way out.

  “Just wait, I’ll show you when we get there,” she said, coming reluctantly out of her funk.

  “It’s a lot of work, just trying to get by?” He tried to turn the conversation back to its original course. “That I can at least understand.”

  “Yeah, it’s not easy,” she responded. “It used to be pretty peaceful, until all the Outliers showed up. Now no one can leave, we have to have guards all around and we built a wall. I miss the way it used to be. I just want everything to go back to the way it used to be,” she finished in a gloomy voice. He had finished his meal while listening to her talk and tossed the plastic bag into the fire. She was still picking at hers, looking morosely down into the mush, poking at it with her fork.

  “Do you remember when it happened?” he asked, the thought popping out of his mouth before he could process it.