Mungus: Book 1 (14 page)

             
The barbed wire curved in circles around the top of the fence.  My only plan was to crawl through it.  I was going to cut myself badly, but I had a better chance of surviving trying to leave then I did staying and being locked in the Cell.  The barbs look sharp in the moonlight and a curious thing happened when I touched the wire and tried to move it.  It snapped.  I felt the metal on the fence and then the material on the barbed wire.  It was plastic.  It wasn’t real barbed wire, Glen had been too cheap for that.  Instead, they had strung up a plastic replica to scare servants from getting onto the fence.  It was a scarecrow.  “It’s not barbed wire, it’s plastic!” I called down to Saul.

He sighed audibly.  He had been scared about sacrificing his body like that.  I pulled the cord of plastic down and crawled over it.  I looked over my shoulder and saw that, to my relief, the lanterns weren’t moving any closer.  Then, I began to crawl on the fence that separated the two dog yards.  The top of the chain link fence was narrow and the dogs jumped up on either side of me and shook the fence.  “C’mon, hurry!” I called to Saul.

Saul stabbed the dogs through the fence, just like I had, then put the satchel around his shoulder and began to climb.  His weight shook the fence with tremors and as the dogs snapped and bit at him I heard him whimper in fear.  He continued to climb, just as I had and when he reached the top he started shimmying over the middle fence.  When I reached the other side I found that, to my relief, the other set of barbed wire was plastic as well.  I pushed the cords down, crawled down a few feet and then jumped and landed on the grass outside the farm.  I breathed in deeply and looked around.  Next, Saul jumped down and landed on the grass beside me.

“We did it!” he said.

“Of course we did it.  Now we need to move.”

I jogged off over the grassy fields and Saul followed me.  If we didn’t get out of the middle of the field soon, we would be easy prey for the Salyers with their guns and horses.  I saw in the distance a tree line and I ran straight towards it.  It was a few minutes jog away and when we were halfway there Saul’s breathing was harsh.  “Can we rest, Walt?”

“No, we need to keep going.”

As we got closer, the trees seemed to grow.  They were much taller trees then were around the town.  The great towers of wood rose up over one hundred feet.  We continued running and only stopped once we were deep inside of the tree line.  It was shady under the protection of the limbs and out across the fields we could see the farm in the light of the moon.  Saul rested his hands on his knees and caught his breath and I leaned against a tree and got out a canteen of water.

“What now?” Saul asked through heavy breaths.

“We find shelter and then we wait until the morning, I guess.”  I realized then that my planning had only gone far enough to get us off of the farm.  Once that was accomplished, I wasn’t sure what to do next.

A groan came from behind us and both Saul and I turned around.  We were looking into a dark forest.  Great trees rose out of the dirt with branches reaching and crisscrossing like spider webs.  The leaves rustled in the night.  The wind kissed my face and whispered in my ears.  Crazy shadows fell in the dark and I, like Saul, at that time was afraid of the unknown.

“Where are we going to sleep, Walt?” Saul asked.

I looked around for an answer and then tested a trees lowest branch.  It was a branch from a giant tree.   The branch itself was six feet in diameter.  It felt strong.  I climbed up onto it then climbed up onto the one above it.  “Follow me,” I said.  We climbed the tree until we were about fifty feet up.  Every few branches I reminded Saul to be careful.  When we were high up in the tree the moonlight penetrated better and it wasn’t so dark.  It wasn’t as mysterious.

“Is this better?” I asked Saul.

“It sure is, Walt.”

The branches that we were sitting on were very thick and close to the base of the tree were little indentions like the bowl in a spoon.  We slept in those dents in the wood that night.  Saul and I passed the canteen of water back and forth and I looked out over the farm.

The fences and dogs looked small from that height.  They were small.  I felt free and my heart felt light.  I decided that in those nights of running that this was the feeling that I was trying to achieve.  I felt good.

When I thought Saul was asleep he said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said.

I rested my head on the bark with my feet scrunched up against the base of the tree.  The indention held me in and since I hadn’t fallen off of my tiny cot in my cabin I was not afraid of falling off of this much thicker tree branch.  With my heart at ease, Saul safe, and my freedom gained, I drifted off to sleep.

10

WANTED!!!

The heat woke me.  I didn’t know much about seasons because I had lived on a ship my whole life, but I knew enough to be sure that we were in the middle of summer.  The first thing that I heard in the morning was a slurping sound.  I opened my eyes and saw sunlight leaking through a blanket of green leaves.  I sat up and Saul was sitting on the branch beside me, his feet dangling down into the open air.  Around his lips, chin and neck his skin was stained purple.  “Good morning, Walt!” he said with a big smile showing his purple teeth.

              I laughed.

             
“What?” he said, looking concerned.

             
“Why is your mouth so purple?”

             
Saul put a hand up to his lips, then smiled.  “Oh,” he said.  “I’ve been eating these.”

             
Saul held out a piece of half eaten fruit.  It was the size of a mango, and was a perfect red half-sphere on the outside.  The outside skin was the consistency and feel of an apple’s and on the inside was a juicy mush that looked like a combination of a strawberry and a grape.  I held the fruit up to my nose and sniffed it.  It smelled sweet and I was tempted to take a bite.

             
“You can’t just eat things that you find in the wilderness, Saul,” I said, “they could be poisonous.”

             
Saul shook his head.  “They’re not poisonous, I’ve been eating them since last night and I feel great.  Try a bite.  It’s good.”

             
“Well, I’m glad that they’re not poisonous, but please, try not to eat unidentified things in the forest without me.  I don’t want to wake up to find you dead from eating some wild blueberries.”

             
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to lecture.  I’ll be more careful.  It’s good, just try it.  Take a bite.”

             
I sniffed the fruit once more and then broke off a piece with my teeth.  Flavor exploded in my mouth.  The outside shell was crisp like the outside of an apple, but about half an inch in it became soft and gooey.  I chewed and sugary syrup laced my mouth purple.  I licked my lips and laughed. 

“These are pretty good,” I said.

              “I told you.”

             
Saul stood up and picked another one of the fruits from a limb above and we sat up high in the tree eating our breakfast.  It was cool under the shade of the leaves and I was in high spirits.  I felt careless and free.  Then I looked over at the farm and a terrible feeling came into my stomach.  The night before and our current situation came back to me.  I had murdered a man the about twelve hours ago and I was on the run from a group of Salyer guards who wouldn’t think more of killing me than swatting a mosquito.  I felt sick.

             
“What are those guys doing out there?” Saul asked.  He pointed out into the field beyond the fences of the farm.  In the distance I could see people moving on horseback, but I couldn’t make out any detail.  I opened up the satchel, took out the binoculars that I had taken the night before, and magnified the field in front of me.  The binoculars allowed me to see remarkably far.  Out in the fields, walking with the grass up to their knees, were horses with men in cowboy hats riding on top.  They had found out what happened and they were looking for me.  I only hoped that Lauren and Julia were okay.

             
“How did you get those?” Saul asked, admiring the binoculars.

             
“They were at Glen’s house.”

             
“How did you get them without him catching you?”

             
I looked over Saul.  His vacant eyes stared at me underneath his dirty tangles of brown hair.  I thought about the time that Saul had heard that our father had died and how he flopped around crying and wailing uncontrolled.  I wondered if he would react the same way if I told him what I had done.  A family member of his hadn’t died, but still, what had happened was awful.  He was my partner, though, and there could be an advantage in telling him.  He had been so good to me so far and he did well when I told him that I wanted to leave.  Maybe he was maturing.

             
I told Saul the story of what had happened the night before.  I talked in a slow fashion, testing him with my words before moving on.  He remained quiet while I explained and when I got to the part about killing Glen he shut his eyes.  He remained calm and when I was done he asked, “why didn’t you tell me this before we left?”

             
I felt guilty.  He was right.  I was giving him all of the responsibilities of an equal but the information of an inferior.  “I don’t know,” I said.  “I think that I was just scared that you would freak out.”

             
Saul remained quiet for a while as his slow brain digested the new information.  The wind rustled the leaves.  “So what’s the plan?”

             
“The plan is to get to town.  If we can get there then we can tell the President what is going on and he can put a stop to the bad parts about the farm.  No more beating.  No more keeping people more than seven years.  No more working all day every day.”

             
“Do you really think that the president would do that?” Saul asked.

             
“He seems like a good guy.  Remember when he made Di and Hank remove the handcuffs?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“I think that if he knew what was going on here that he would do the same on a bigger scale; make the guards remove the cuffs.”

             
“Do you think that you will get into trouble?”  Saul paused, thinking of a nice way to say it, “for last night?”

             
“I was defending myself.  He was coming after me.  So, no.”

             
“Do you think that Di and Hank and them will be but into the Theatre?”

             
“I don’t know.”

             
Saul took the binoculars and looked out over the fields.  “How are we going to get passed them, Walt?”

             
“How tall does the grass look to you?  It looks like it’s grown since we’ve been on the farm.”

             
“Probably about two feet,” said Saul.  “Why?”

             
I took the binoculars from Saul and looked over the plains.  The wind blew and the grass rose and fell like the ocean.  It was at least two feet tall, maybe even taller.  “I say that we wait until night time and try to crawl passed them.”

             
And that was our plan.  Saul and I hung around in the tree all day, eating fruit, taking naps, and telling stories until night fall.  The fruit was delicious and each was as good as the last.  When the sun went down and the sky grew dark a new shift of Salyer guards went on watch for the escapees outside of the farm.  Their horses tramped over the ground and the guards were all carrying lanterns.  I counted eight of them.  From the tree branch they looked like floating balls of fire in the night.  Saul and I gathered up our things, put a few pieces of fruit into the satchel for later, and made our way down the tree.  We had been sitting down all day so when we got to the ground we stretched out our bodies.

             
The night was quiet.  In front of us was a sea of grass with what appeared to be flames floating in the night air.  Behind us, the trees grew thick and vegetation curled and fought in tangles over the forest floor.  It grew darker the deeper it went.

Saul put the satchel around his neck, we walked to where the grass began, and were off.  We got onto our hands and knees and began to move forward.  Bugs and insects moved in the dirt and over my hands as I crawled.  Sweat began to gather on my forehead and dampen the tips of my hair.  We crawled onward in the direction that we thought the town was in and whenever a Salyer with a lantern got close we ducked down into the grass and waited.  The clouds were thick that night and except for a small radius around the guard’s lanterns there wasn’t much visibility.

              The guards were spread out far, some were alone by a mile or more, and so they were easy to dodge.  They had miles of ground to watch and they kept on going into the forest to look for us.  I was thankful that we hadn’t chosen that as our route.  It was so heavily monitored that we would have been caught for sure.  We moved through the grass and the hours went by.  My shoulders ached and Saul was breathing heavily behind me.  The grass was yellow and dry and my hands itched.  The glowing balls of fire drifted around in the blackness.