Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) (30 page)

Cavalo looked away. “It’s suicide.”

“We’re dead either way, right?”

“Probably. Maybe not today. But soon.”

“Then we go knowing we’re going to die.”

Cavalo looked up at his friend. “Then why go at all?”

Hank leaned forward and took Cavalo’s uninjured hand in his own. “Because I don’t want to be surprised by death,” he said. “If it’s going to take me, then it will be on my own terms.”

“Aubrey.”

“She’ll follow you.”

“She’s just a girl.”

“And Deke was just a boy.” Though Cavalo knew Hank hadn’t meant that.

“I can’t be responsible for that,” Cavalo choked out.

“Then let us be responsible for you,” Hank said, squeezing his hand tight.

Cavalo struggled to breathe. It was too much. All of it. Everything. He didn’t know how he’d gotten to this point in his life, where a man whose son’s death rested at Cavalo’s feet comforted him. Held him. Gave him strength. Cavalo knew he’d been a coward for much of his life. He had done terrible things. Hurt innocent people. And yet, salvation, of a kind. Holding his hand.

“Dworshak?” he said in a quiet voice.

“Dworshak,” Hank agreed.

“Smaller the better.”

“Figured. You. Bad Dog. Me and Aubrey. Alma. Bill and Richie.”

His rage burst again at Bill’s name. Hank waited as he pushed through it. Once he’d swallowed it back down, he nodded and gave Hank one last chance. “Stay here,” he said. “With your daughter. Live for Deke. For her. You may be surprised at what happens.”

“I fucking hate surprises,” Hank said, and the smile he gave was all teeth.

ARE WE
going to get them back?
Bad Dog whispered to him in the early morning hours. Neither of them had been able to sleep.

“I don’t know,” Cavalo said, unable to lie but unable to be more honest.

SIRS not a bad guy?

“No.”

He hit me.

“I know.”

Got crazy eyes.

“Yeah.”

Bad Dog huffed. Cavalo waited to let him work through it. Finally,
Not a bad guy. Tin Man is my friend. We’ll get him back.

Cavalo kept his hands from shaking. It was a battle he almost lost. “Okay” was all he said.

And Smells Different.

“Okay.”

MasterBossLord?

“Yeah?”

We’ll get them back.

He held his friend and waited for morning.

dworshak

THE SNOW
held off as the group of six people and one dog followed the road east. Cavalo wondered if it was a sign.

They could have easily gone by way of Cottonwood, but there was an unspoken consensus to avoid it at all costs. No one knew if the Dead Rabbits had taken it over or burned it to the ground. Cavalo thought of Deke lying in an empty house, the blanket across his body probably frozen to his coat and face, the ice crystals a red that was dark and deep.

They didn’t speak much. There didn’t seem to be anything to say, and all Cavalo could think was
I am Lucas I am Lucas I am Lucas
. His wrist hurt. His back hurt. His ankles hurt from the snowshoes on his feet. He’d hoped they wouldn’t need them, but there were drifts that Bad Dog would disappear into every now and then, causing him to bark in frustration until Hank lifted him out.

The others spoke behind him in low voices, as if they didn’t want to disturb him. He set a punishing pace but knew it would take at least another day before they’d get to Dworshak. He tried not to think about what was happening to Lucas and SIRS. But they were there, images flashing of blood spilled and wires ripped from robotic chests. Every step he took was a struggle, but it was getting him closer. He was under no illusions about what would happen. He just wanted to take out as many of them as he could before then.

Light was starting to fade when Cavalo heard the sounds of a river and knew they were near what used to be Kamiah, Idaho. There’d once been a rusted sign, but it’d fallen years ago and was buried somewhere under the snow. Kamiah was empty. Had been for a long time. Nothing much swam in the river these days, and what did surely wasn’t edible. A few small buildings still stood, but ceilings had collapsed and walls had fallen down.

But it was the river that Cavalo focused on. The sound of the water. The crack of ice along the edges. Clearwater, it’d been called. Before.

And it led directly to Dworshak.

They were quiet as they approached Kamiah. They’d all seen the snow trampled down before them, a pathway leading toward the buildings that still stood.

“Anything?” Cavalo whispered to Bad Dog.

He raised his snout, nostrils flaring.
Yes. But faint. Old smells. Fire and dirt. Blood.

Cavalo told himself the blood could be from anything, not just Lucas.

Kamiah was empty, as it’d been for a long time. There was evidence all over that people had recently been there. It smelled ripe and wild. Dark maroon stains in the snow and floorboards. The smell of smoke from blackened extinguished fires. Charred wood. Discarded clothing. Cavalo went into one of the buildings near the river’s edge and found bodies of four Dead Rabbits piled in the corner. They hadn’t started to rot, but it was close. Wide eyes and torn limbs. One of them was slumped against the wall. A man. Cavalo could see part of his rib cage poking through shredded skin. It was white and wet. His tongue poked through the stiff split of his lips. Arms laid at his sides, hands hooked into claws.

Cavalo turned away. There was nothing for him here. None of them were Lucas. There was a brief stutter to his step, but that was all.

And then from behind him came a shuddering breath. Ragged. Painful. And close.

He whirled, dropping to a knee, bringing up his old rifle. He ignored the sharp flash of pain in his wrist, the pull and ache of his muscles.

The man against the wall took another breath. Not dead after all.

He raised his head. His hands clawed the ground at his sides. “Hurts,” he said with a grimace. “It… hurts.”

Cavalo leveled his breathing. Calmed his heart.

And submerged himself into the cold.

He stood, shouldering the rifle. The man grinned up at him, and dark blood dripped from his mouth over his chin. “I… know… you,” he said. He coughed, and a thick plug of mucus fell onto his leg. It looked like he’d spat out his tongue. “You….”

Cavalo stood. Leaned his head side to side to crack his neck. Pulled Lucas’s knife from the scabbard at his side. He could hear the others moving outside. He needed to make this quick before one of them came in. Or Bad Dog caught his scent. Everything already smelled like blood and death in here. He was just going to add a little more.

He walked to the Dead Rabbit. Stood above him. The man looked up. He was no longer smiling. In fact, he looked very afraid.

Cavalo knelt beside him. He reached out with the knife and dragged the tip gently over the Dead Rabbit’s cheek. The man shook. “You took from me,” Cavalo said quietly.

“Patrick,” the man said, and a bubble of blood burst from his mouth, misting his nose and chin. “He is… God. He is… Death.”

“I will kill your god,” Cavalo promised him and the bees cried happily in his head. He curled a hand around the back of the man’s neck.

“You can’t.”

“Watch me.”

“Daddy,” the man said, eyes going wide. “He’s not who he seems. Mr. Fluff said—”

Cavalo didn’t let it continue. The knife went up between the fourth and fifth ribs and into the heart. The man tensed beneath him. His head jerked back. His mouth opened obscenely wide, but no sound came out. Then he exhaled and died.

He pulled the knife out. Wiped it against the Dead Rabbit’s coat. Sheathed it. Stood and walked out of the house.

Hank was standing near the river. He looked back at Cavalo. “Anything?”

“A body. Nothing else.”

Hank turned back toward the river.

THEY BUILT
a fire in one of the buildings that seemed the sturdiest. The roof was gone, so the smoke drifted out into the sky. Cavalo lay with his head resting on his pack. Bad Dog dozed at his side. Only Hank was still awake, the others curled under thin blankets.

Above him, there was a shift in the clouds. The stars blinked coldly in the dark space around them. His breath caught in his throat, and Cavalo had never felt so small in his life.

Hank must have heard his choked breath, as he looked over at Cavalo with concern in his eyes. He followed Cavalo’s line of sight and saw the stars for himself. “Would you look at that,” he whispered. “Been a while.”

Product of the nuclear holocaust. Or so the stories went. Perpetual cloud cover with minimal breaks. Sometimes he could feel the sun on his face. And sometimes, like now, he could see the stars above. He wondered if it was a sign. He wondered if he even believed in signs.

“Do you think they know?”

“Who?”

“The others. Back at the prison.”

“Know what?”

“That we aren’t coming back.”

Cavalo shrugged. “Maybe. They have hope. Or they had it. I don’t know what they have anymore.”

“We all did,” Hank said. “Hope is what keeps you alive when everything else goes to shit.”

Cavalo snorted. “Poetic.” One star was bigger than the others. Brighter. Cavalo desperately wished he could know its name. He hoped it wasn’t Wormwood.

“They’ll be okay,” Hank said. “I hope.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know the Nez Perce?” Hank asked him.

Cavalo shook his head, unsure about the quick change in topic.

“Indians. Native Americans. From Before. Hundreds of years ago. All of this land used to be theirs. All the way up past Dworshak and all the way down past Cottonwood. I found a book on them once. In a library that had been left behind. Most of the books were rotten and illegible. Some could be saved.”

“Where?” Cavalo asked, because Hank didn’t like to talk about what happened before he came to Cottonwood. About Deke and Aubrey’s mother. Life in their Before.

“Far from here,” Hank said, still looking at the stars.

Cavalo didn’t push. It wasn’t his place.

“They had a story,” Hank continued. “About how man came to be. I remember reading and thinking I’d never heard anything more beautiful.”

“What was the story?” Cavalo asked.

Hank sighed. “A long time ago, before man ever walked the earth, a monster came from the north. He was a gigantic monster, and he ate everything he could see. All of the animals. The little ones. The squirrels and the raccoons and the mice. The big ones. He ate deer and elk and the mountain lion.”

There was a Coyote, Hank said. He couldn’t find his friends anymore, and it made him very angry. He decided it was time to stop the monster.

Coyote went across the Snake River and tied himself to the highest peak in the Wallowa Mountains. Then he called out to the monster who stood on the other side of the river. He dared the monster to try and eat him.

The monster charged across the river and up into the mountains. He tried as hard as he could to suck Coyote off the mountain with his breath, but it was no use. Coyote’s rope was too strong.

This scared the monster. He decided to make friends with Coyote, and he invited Coyote to come stay with him. The monster was clever, as monsters often are. But so was Coyote.

One day, Coyote told the monster he would like to see all of the animals trapped in the monster’s belly. The monster agreed, and he ate Coyote. The monster was very clever.

When he went inside, Coyote saw all of his friends were safe. He told them to get ready to escape, and began to work. With his fire starter, he built a huge fire in the pit of the monster’s stomach. Then he took his knife and cut the monster’s heart out. The monster died a great death, and all of the animals escaped. Coyote was the last one to leave.

Coyote said that in honor of the monster’s death, he was going to create a new animal: a human being. Coyote cut the monster up in pieces and scattered the pieces to the four winds. Where each piece landed (in the north and the south, in the east and the west) a tribe was born. It was in this way that all the tribes came to be.

When he was finished, Coyote’s friend Fox said that no tribe had been created on the spot where they stood. Coyote was sorry he had no more parts of the monster. But then he had an idea. He washed the blood from his hands with water from the river and sprinkled the drops on the ground.

Coyote said, “Here on this ground I make the Nez Perce. They will be few in number, but they will be strong and pure.” And this is how human beings came to be.

Hank’s voice died away. The stars were long gone.

Cavalo said the only thing he could. “I’m sorry about Deke.” Because he was.

“So am I.” Hank’s voice was hoarse. “Don’t you see, Cavalo? He’s taken all the little animals away. The monster has eaten everything as he heads back to the north where he came from.”

Cavalo
could
see, and the clarity burned. “I will cut out his heart.”

“Will you?” Hank asked.

“Yes,” he said, though they both knew it was a lie.

“And scatter his pieces to the wind?”

“Yes.”

“And what will you make out of him, James? What will you make out of the monster?”

And because Cavalo didn’t know the answer, he closed his eyes. Eventually he dreamt of stars.

THEY REACHED
Dworshak the next afternoon. Bad Dog kept his nose close to the ground yards ahead of them, making sure they wouldn’t be caught off guard. They kept low to the ground as they crested a hill south of the dam, hidden amongst the thick forest.

He’d been here once before, back in his wandering days. Those days when he never stopped walking for fear of whatever would catch up with him if he ever stopped. He remembered looking at it with disinterested awe, unable to quantify what exactly it was he’d been looking at. Metal and concrete carved out into a valley in a place no longer inhabited by man.

Dworshak was big. Very big. When the name Dworshak had first been uttered after Lucas revealed his skin, SIRS had told him the dam had been considered the third tallest dam Before the bombs fell. Seven hundred seventeen feet tall. Over half a mile long. Six and a half
million
cubic yards of concrete. As SIRS rattled off the stats, Cavalo couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed at the entirety of it all. He didn’t know how he was able to overcome that feeling, that feeling of insignificance that he felt akin to when he saw the stars above. It’d been so much greater than Cavalo could imagine, and the enormity of what it could mean if they could harness the power of the dam took his breath away.