Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (12 page)

“I know.”

His ears flattened.
He gonna yell?

“Probably.”

Stupid robot SIRS
, the dog grumbled as he joined the man near the door.

Cavalo put his hand on the handle of the door, and a pang of
something
clenched his stomach. It felt like regret, a feeling he hadn’t had in years. Leaving like this was wrong, slinking out in the middle of the night. Even if the snow was coming. Even if he told himself he needed to get back before it fell. It still felt wrong, like running away.

You’re good at that
, the bees mocked.
You are so good at running. Run, little man. Run away. Leave them here to fend for themselves and run away while you still can. Government men are coming, so run while you can.

What about Smells Different?
Bad Dog asked, nudging Cavalo’s hand.

“Smells Different?” Cavalo asked, sure he’d heard the dog say the words as if they were a name.

Trapped man. Boy. Bad guy. Smells Different.

Cavalo’s hand tightened on the door handle. “Why do you ask?”

Gonna get him? I can bite him for you. Guard him, I mean. Then bite him. Bet he tastes different too.

The fire crackled behind them.

“No,” the man said. “He stays here.”

Oh. Why? He was
my
prisoner.

“He’s a bad guy.”

Oh. Bad guys die, right?

“Right.”

Oh. Home?

“Home.”

He opened the door into the cold night.

DON’T LEAVE
without saying something
, Hank had told him.
I’ll put supplies out back, but don’t you leave
.
We need to have a talk, you and I.

It couldn’t be helped. Cavalo was starting to feel the cold hands of claustrophobia wrapping around his heart and mind. He thought his breath was whistling in his throat. He thought it all in his head. He wondered, not for the first time, how much of his sanity was lost. If all these things in his life were imagined things and he was really trapped in a room somewhere, in a dark corner, this whole world nothing but a creation in his head. It wouldn’t surprise him.

So no. He had to leave. He had to get out of here. He didn’t know why he came in the first place. It had to do with the Dead Rabbit, but even that seemed small. Inconsequential. He should have just killed him, and then he could have gone home. He shouldn’t have crossed the divide. He should’ve killed the deer with the first shot. He should have saved his family.

He should have succeeded in killing himself.

He touched the scar on the side of his head. He felt the bees against his fingers, just under the skin.

He shook his head.
Get out
, he thought.

He continued on, sticking to the deep shadows of the night. His breath trailed behind him in a thick plume. The air was bitterly cold against his ears. Bad Dog stuck close to his side, his nose close to the ground.

“We have to be quiet,” he told the dog.

Yeah, I kind of figured.

Cavalo swore Bad Dog rolled his eyes.

Hank lived toward the center of Cottonwood. The majority of the town had been destroyed during the End. In the time of Before, it had been a little place, a small farming town. There were still bent and broken signs showing US 95, which had been the main road through Cottonwood Before. Now, all the cement and pavement was gone, only dirt roads left in their place. People still called the main drag US 95, though it didn’t mean what it had before. Outside of Cottonwood, US 95 was lost to brush and trees and grass and debris.

Houses had been built, functional things that were walls and roofs, square and squat. Others, like Alma’s, had been built like farmhouses from Before, large and airy, triangularly peaked.

And still others, like that of Hank Wells, had survived the End. They were houses from Before. They’d been husks whose foundations still stood, whose memories were still buried inside the walls. Cavalo could have never lived in a place like those houses. He would rather have seen them all burned to the ground. To start over from scratch.

Here was the general store, run by an elderly couple named Jerry and Martha, who bickered back and forth so much it was a wonder they hadn’t yet murdered each other.

Here was a hardware store. The owner, a quiet man named Fazil Hadi, managed a group of five or six men and woman who entered the woods early each morning, logging the surrounding area.

Here was a tiny school, built by Alma. Two rooms, divided between the older and younger kids. Last Cavalo had asked, seventeen children in all attended.

Here was Warren’s office. Or what had been Warren’s office. It was shuttered and dark, like it too was dead. Cavalo stopped, just for a moment. He placed his hand upon the door. The wood was cold. Alma had built this place for her brother, as a way to congratulate him on being chosen as constable when the previous man in the position, Maloney, had passed due to illness.

Cavalo tried to think of the last thing he’d said to Warren or that Warren had said to him. Something about trees? Or maybe about SIRS. Warren was fascinated by the robot. He’d probably asked questions Cavalo didn’t know the answer to. Question after question in that way he had.

He stepped away from Warren’s office. He didn’t look back.

He saw sentries up along the walls, patrolling in pairs, bundled up against the cold. One scanned outside the car wall. The other looked into Cottonwood. If this had been a test, they would have failed. Cavalo kept to the shadows and remained unseen. He’d have to let Hank know, since Hank was in charge now.

He reached the A-frame that Hank called home with Deke and Aubrey. He circled back behind the house and found a burlap sack just where Hank had said it would be. On the top was a note in Hank’s tight scrawl.

Figured you’d leave in the middle of the night. Be safe up there this winter. We’re down here if you need anything.

—H

The sack was full. A couple of pairs of hide pants, woven painstakingly. Dried meats and fruits. A couple of cans of preserves that Aubrey made that Cavalo loved so. Batteries for the flashlights. Mush for Bad Dog. What looked like a coat for him too. A blanket.

It was what was owed. Cavalo had done some jobs for the town years prior, before the bees had come. He couldn’t remember if this was the last time or if he was owed one more set of supplies. It didn’t matter. He’d worry about it later.

He emptied the bag into his own pack. It’d be heavy, but he’d make it. He reached the bottom and his fingers brushed against something solid. He pulled it out. A little book, the cover worn, the words gone. It felt precious, this thing. A tiny bird feather stuck out, marking one of the pages. He opened it and found another note.

Thought you’d understand this one
.

—
H

He lifted the note and found a poem underneath, the page torn and faded but still legible. “Ulalume,” it was called. By Edgar Allen Poe. Cavalo didn’t recognize the name. A stanza had been circled.

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere—

The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year.

Cavalo closed the little book. He thought about leaving it in the bag. Fuck Hank. He knew what he was doing when he placed it there. He knew exactly what he was doing. Fuck Hank. Fuck this town. Fuck them all. He didn’t need to come back. He’d leave the book here and Hank would find it in the morning, and that alone would be enough.

He placed it into his pack.

It was time to go.

The man whistled softly, a short burst of air, and Bad Dog returned to his side from watering a bush.
That is mine too
, he said.

“Home.”

Home
, the dog agreed.

He turned the corner around the house and saw a flash of light in a building farther down the way, off from all the others. Set back from the road. Surrounded by trees. He didn’t remember a house there before. Even in the dark, he could see it wasn’t completed, the roof covered in plastic sheeting. One wall looked to still be just a frame.

Said they needed a home base
, the bees said.
A
liaison
office, he called it. If you can believe such a thing.

He could. He could believe.

Every part of him told him to walk away. To leave. To sneak out, go home. Hole up. Wait for the snows to come and bury everything. Maybe by spring he’d be dead. Wouldn’t that be something.

So imagine his surprise when he walked toward the light, toward the partially constructed liaison office. The office being built for the government. The UFSA. Cavalo was not the smartest man in the world. He didn’t understand politics. He didn’t understand the need for people to be near one another. He didn’t understand why he still lived.

But he understood the minds of men. What happened when they grouped. When they mobbed. He understood that very well.

Smells Different
, Bad Dog said.

“Yeah,” Cavalo said. Because that is where he would be. Now that Warren was gone. The old constable office had been empty. The prisoner would be with his captors.

Snow began to fall. Flurries, just. More would come. The sky would break open and the world would fill with white. He needed to go home. Time was running out.

And yet….

“Shit,” he muttered.

Going?
Bad Dog asked.

“No,” he said, even though he wanted to. Even though it should have been the only idea. The only plan.

Leave now
, the bees said.

Instead Cavalo crouched and took the dog’s face in his hands. “You follow my lead,” he said. It was a mantra between them. Those secret words. They were said anytime the unknown reared its head. If Cavalo was pressed, he would even admit to believing in his secret heart that they held some kind of dying magic, the last bit in this shell of a world.

I follow you, for you are my MasterBossLord
, Bad Dog said, his eyes never leaving Cavalo’s.

“You listen for my commands.”

I listen to you, for you are my MasterBossLord.

“I will have your back.”

And I will have yours.

“Together.”

Together.

Cavalo stood, hesitated only briefly, and then moved toward the building. Toward the lights that flashed within. For even if he wasn’t the smartest man and even if he didn’t understand how all things worked, the man named Cavalo was still a curious man, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. He still wondered about things, deep in his secret heart.

His sanity. He wondered about that a lot.

His isolation. Self-imposed, that. For what reason? To let the world pass him by until Death finally came for him with open arms and sweet relief?

He wondered about that. Constantly.

And this Wilkinson. He wondered about him too. About this government. About what they wanted. About what they would do.

But above all, he wondered about the boy. The Dead Rabbit. Smells Different. The psycho fucking bulldog. His smudged black mask. His bared teeth. His fury. He wondered about him more than he should have. He couldn’t find a way to stop.

He murders
, the bee said.
He eats people. He eats flesh from their bones. People like Warren.

Like Jamie.

Well, yes. He did. But curiosity was an overwhelming thing, and Cavalo was only human.

He could hear voices upon approach. Not the higher vibrato of Wilkinson. Blond and Black, maybe. Deeper. Like rumbles in the earth. They sounded like the big black Dead Rabbit from the stunted forest near the Deadlands. The one with the tumors. Cavalo wondered then for the first time (and it wouldn’t be the last, oh no) if there was a difference between Dead Rabbit men and government men. He did not know. But surely they
had
to be different, didn’t they?

He kept to the shadows. He noticed no Patrol running along these back walls. Was that intentional? Did Wilkinson order them away? Cavalo thought not. He didn’t think these men could be here for so short a time and have control over Cottonwood so quickly. Hank and Warren would never have allowed it.

But Warren is dead, isn’t he? Maybe he
didn’t
allow it. Maybe that’s what happens. Maybe you’re fed to the Dead Rabbits.

The minds of men. Dangerous things.

Cavalo finally heard Wilkinson as he reached the building, speaking in low tones. The words came into sharper focus as Cavalo pressed up near an unfinished window. Bad Dog sat near his feet, ears pricked.

“This can go on all night, you know,” Wilkinson said. “And it will until you give me what I want.”

There was no answer.

“I find myself fascinated by you and your kind,” Wilkinson continued. “You are such mindless savages. Hidden in your woods. The Deadlands. How is it that you are not suffering the effects of radiation sickness? What has he given you?”

No response.

“Pity,” Wilkinson said. “Though, if it had been that easy, I think I might have been disappointed. You have a reputation to uphold, I know. Anyone who can sit at the right hand of that man must be psychotic. Bernard, if you will.”

An electrical snap filled the air, crackling. Cavalo smelled something burning.

“Stop,” Wilkinson said.

The electricity ceased.

“I don’t know whether to consider it a gift or a curse that you can’t make a sound,” Wilkinson said. “On one hand, there’s something positively delicious about the choked cries. The pleading. The begging. But… on the other, no one can hear you, so this can go on all night. And it will. Now. We’ll try this again.” His voice went soft, and Cavalo strained to hear. “Where. Is. Patrick?”