Circles in the Dust (23 page)

chapter 30

“David?”

             
The sound of his name woke David from the light sleep of the survivor. He lay still, silent. Adrenaline pulsed through his body as he tried to take stock of where he was and who would be calling to him in the middle of the night. It was little more than a whisper. It took David a few moments of consciousness to remember that he was lying in Mitch’s cabin. He cracked open his eyes and saw nothing but darkness broken by scattered tendrils of light drifting in through the gaps in the crude shutters and illuminating the cracks and flaws in the wooden ceiling.

             
The whispered call was followed by a rustling near David’s head. His hand tightened around the smooth hilt of the knife he had stashed underneath his pillow. He was lying on his back, and slowly turned his head toward the disturbance behind him. A figure was standing there, visible only as a silhouette, a dark soul with a faint blue outline. David froze when he caught sight of the tall figure preparing his muscles to spring into action. There was a movement David saw through squinted eyes. It looked like a hand was moving, lifting. To grab something? To fire a bullet into David’s brain? Should he leap up and strike with surprise? What if the shock caused them to pull the trigger and silence him while he crouched on the floor?

             
The hand reached upward and disappeared. There was a relieved sigh and the hand reappeared, a host of dust now visible above what must be the intruder’s hair. As David focused his attention on the figure, he saw a scraggly protrusion and deduced that he had been preparing to strike his friend Mitch, and allowed the tension to fade from his stony muscles. Mitch turned and abruptly swept from the room, leaving David alone. As David allowed his muscles to relax, they dragged his consciousness with them. He wondered fuzzily why Mitch would be leaving so suddenly in the middle of the night. He had found Mitch lurking in the woods under a full moon in the first place, so perhaps it was just another shift of the watch. Whatever it was could wait until tomorrow. The world grew distant as the warmth of his familiar blankets pushed everything else to the back of his mind and then clean out of it.

chapter 31

“So we’re looking for fiddle-sticks?”

             
“Fiddleheads,” Mitch corrected.

             
“Okay. What do they look like again?”

             
“Well, it’s a fern. You know what a fern is, David?”

             
“Why, no. Please enlighten me.”

             
“Fuck you. We’re looking for the ones with the curly fronds. They’re called fiddleheads. And you can eat them. And we can dig up the rootstock and use it to make flour.”

             
“Sounds like a wonderful plant.”

             
Mitch shot him a look that acknowledged David’s proximity to the edge of his patience. David responded with a toothy grin. “How have you survived so long, David, if you haven’t heard of any of these plants?”

             
“Hey now, I know of plenty. I showed you a few you could eat, back in the day.”

             
“Oh yeah, those Oregon grapes were exquisite,” Mitch drawled.             

             
“They kept you alive, didn’t they?”

             
“Barely.”

             
The day was more gray than usual and there was a drizzling of chilly rain, just enough to keep their coats damp and a thin trickle of cold water running down their necks. David was walking behind Mitch, keeping his eyes low as he scanned for the aforementioned edibles. Everything in this part of the forest, the deep part that extended in the opposite direction from the Base, looked thin and pretty well picked over, but David made no mention of that. He knew the Outliers had been foraging since they arrived here at the Base, and it was sure to be a long journey before they found any morsel that had been overlooked on one of the previous outings. Still, Mitch scoured the shrubbery as intently as if the object of their intent had to be around him, perhaps just under his feet. David was impressed by the stalwart nature of the Outliers. They had forged themselves into one people, and they seemed determined to live or die as one.

             
That was a level of organization and zeal David had not been expecting.

             
Mitch was wearing a black raincoat that hung from his thin shoulders down to his knees, and water beaded itself on every inch of the material. David’s own wool jacket was sodden and droopy. Water dripped down his head and ran down the length of his beard to fall drop-after-drop onto his chest. He reached a hand up and wrung out the saturated facial hair, knowing that would only buy him time.

             
“So Mitch,” David called ahead, “you’re pretty sure of your plan to get into the Base?”

             
“Yes, sir, I am,” Mitch called back in brash confidence.

             
“What is that plan, exactly?”

             
Mitch stopped in his tracks and whirled around so quickly that David nearly crashed into his intent face.

             
“All right, David. There’s no one else around. It’s just you and me. Why were you in the Base for so long?” Mitch spoke in a hushed tone despite his assurance that they were alone. He leaned forward toward David with a hungry look in his eyes. Again, he acted as if David had not spoken.

             
“I told you alread
y
—”

             
“Yes, I listened to your bullshit the first time,” Mitch interrupted. “Now I want to know the truth. You are here because of me, David. Maybe it took a while for you to get here but you came because of what I told you. So you owe me. What were you doing in there for three days?”

             
David avoided meeting that characteristically intent stare Mitch had directed at him. It was hard to look straight into that glaring light. David wondered if he had used that to ensure his leadership. It couldn’t have hurt.

             
“Mitch, they kept me locked up in the cellar. I don’t know what else I can tell you. I didn’t even know it was that long.”

             
“David, you want to know what my plan is?” Mitch asked.

             
“Wha—? Yeah, I do,” David stuttered.

             
“We’re in this together, right?”

             
David recalled his grouping Mitch and himself together as the ones who would get the Outliers into the Base.

             
“Right. Mitch, I’m one of you. I came here because I have nothing left, just like you. I want to help.”

             
“You want to help, huh? You’ve been here for one day and you’re ready to spearhead the operation?”

             
“Are you trying to get me to back off, Mitch, because
I
—”

             
“Dammit, David!” Mitch swore. “I’m putting my life on the line here. If my plan doesn’t work—”  Mitch paused. “It will work. But if it doesn’t, they’ll kill me. I’ve done what I can to tame these people, David, to mold them into model citizens that will fit in at the Base, but they’re survivors at heart. If my plan fails, I’m dead. There won’t be a second chance. They’ll probably roast me over a fire and suck the meat off my bones. David, if you know something, if you came from the Base to sabotage me or something, I’m going to give you one chance to leave. Because if that’s your intent, to destroy everything I’ve been working for, I will kill you. This is your one warning.”

             
David stared slack-jawed at Mitch. There was a murderous glint in the hazel eyes that spoke for the truthfulness of his friend’s words. The mouth buried in the shadowy beard was a hard line.

             
“Mitch, I told you, I’m here to help,” David began, piecing his words together. “My life is on the block right next to yours. If I can’t find some solution here,” he stopped, putting as much steel into his eyes as Mitch’s doubled their intensity, “then it’s all over for me.”

             
“I knew it,” Mitch spat. “You made some deal with them, didn’t you? They were probably gonna kill you, and you sold your soul to that fat-faced Mayor to save your own skin. You’re here to ‘help,’ David? Who exactly are you helping out here?”

             
“I’m with you!” David barked. “I came here because there was nothing left for me back in the valley, and this was my last hope. I was starving, I thought everyone had died and I was the last one left. I was lying by the river, ready to die, hoping to die, when…”

             
“When what?” Mitch said with a raised eyebrow.

 
              “I remembered something,” David said, glad he had not gone on to mention Elizabeth. He didn’t want Mitch to know about her. It might be useless, because he probably already did, but David couldn’t help but feel protective of her. “What you said to me the last time I saw you. About there having to be something out there. ‘Someone had to have dug in somewhere.’ You remember that?”

             
“Yeah, it’s what I told everyone,” Mitch said. “I liked the way it sounded so much I turned it into a kind of speech when I was trying to get people to come with me.”

             
“Yeah, well, I remembered that and I headed off in the opposite direction of the city. I knew there was nothing that way. But Mitch, you have to know that I am with you, all right? I’m not a spy, and I’m not a member of the Base. I’m just working for a place for myself, and I’m gonna bring you in with me. I’m going to find a place for everyone. That’s how it’s going to work.”

             
“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Mitch said, his iron jaw relaxing, though he did not quite smile. “You were always better with plans than I was. So what are your orders then, Dave? From the Base?”

             
“Well, it’s a pretty tough sell, bu
t
—”

             
“Just tell me.”

             
“And then you’ll tell me your plan?”

             
“Absolutely.”

             
“Okay. Well, the plan starts with you guys, the Outliers…” David hesitated. It had seemed like a plausible idea at the Base, had even been sound in his own mind, but now that the words were in his throat, he saw the ludicrous nature of what he was about to say.

             
“Us doing what?”

             
“It starts with the Outliers… giving up their weapons.”

             
“What? Is that a joke?”  Mitch looked at David with wide eyes and the hint of a grin playing at the corner of his mouth.

             
“No. That’s the only way the Base would be able to trust you. You have been raiding them, an
d
—”

             
“They would have told you that. No one is getting in. The raids are nothing.”

             
“But they are happening,” David surmised.

             
“Sort of. Go on. I’ll explain when you’re done. So far your plan is terrible but please, continue.”

             
“You would have to give up your arms and move closer to the Base, where they could guard you and keep an eye on you, to ensure their own safety.”

             
“Much better. Then what?”

             
“And they would give you all the food they could spare through the winter, and when the spring comes, they would give you their excess seeds and you would start your own ‘Base’ somewhere else.”

             
“So they have the means to do this but they would still rather not take us on full-time? Afraid we might drag them to the bottom of they let us come aboard?” Mitch mocked. His tone was sardonic and it was beginning to get under David’s skin.

             
“They might, they don’t know, or at least that’s what I was told. The harvest was better than they anticipated and the Mayor thinks they could support you for the winter, but that would run their stores dry. They know you won’t last the winter, or at least they assume, I guess.”

             
“They know because I’ve told them that a thousand times,” Mitch grumbled. “I’m glad they didn’t bother mentioning any of this to me. I don’t see why they couldn’t have at least bounced it off me when I was meeting with the Mayor.”

             
“They expect you to attack them before the snow starts. They imagine you’re growing desperate.”

             
“They have no idea,” Mitch murmured.

             
“So that’s what you’re planning?”

             
“What?” Mitch burst from his internal reverie.

             
“You’re going to attack them?”

             
“David, are you stupid?”

             
“No. I don’t think so. Why?”

             
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Mitch asked with all the patience of an adult speaking to a toddler.

             
“No,” David replied deliberately.

             
“Why would I be trying to get the Outliers to forget their anger and resentment toward the Base whenever it comes up if I want them to attack it?”

             
The question danced circles around David’s mind, and he had no answer. An exasperated sigh escaped Mitch’s lips.

             
“David, I am not planning to attack the Base, at least not if I can avoid it. I am aiming for a smooth transition. Willing immigration versus militant overthrow. We’re waiting them out. An
d
—”

             
“You’re waiting them out? You are waiting out the ones who have food to spare?”

             
“Will you let me finish, please?”

             
“Sorry. Proceed.” David motioned forward.

             
“We are waiting until there is the right number of us that can be comfortably supported by the Base.”

             
“What does that mean exactly?”

             
“It mean
s
—”

             
“You’re not waiting for your own people to starve?” David gasped.

             
“What the—? Can I get a word in here?”

             
“Sorry. Go on.”

             
“If you interrupt me again, I’ll cut something off, David. Something you’ll sorely miss, I promise.”