Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (29 page)

“What do they want?”

Thomas sighed. “Everything.”

He lapsed into unconsciousness.

Cavalo did not move for hours.

EARLY ON
the morning of the seventh day, Cavalo was awoken.

“What?” he asked gruffly.

Orange eyes stared at him. “Thomas is dead.”

“How? The injuries?”

“No. He would have recovered from those. In time.”

“How, then?”

“A small capsule hidden near his back tooth. He crushed it. It released a poison. Appears it was very fast acting.”

Cavalo was wide awake. “Were you watching?”

“Yes, but there was nothing that could have been done. It was over in a matter of seconds.”

“Wormwood,” Cavalo muttered. “It’s all Mr. Fluff and Wormwood.”

“I don’t understand, Cavalo.”

“I know.”

“The body. Should I bury it with the others?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

“You’ll need to do it soon.”

“Why?”

“Storms are coming. All in a row, one right after another. This is going to be a bad winter. Maybe the worst I’ve seen since Before.”

“What about Cottonwood?”

“What about Cottonwood, Cavalo?”

“We have to warn them.”

The robot clicked. “We have time. They won’t return during the winter. Nuclear winters are harsh. In the spring, we can warn Cottonwood.”

Months
, Thomas had said.
Years
.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Cavalo. I’m sure.”

Cavalo rose from the cot and started dressing.

SIRS watched him. “What about Lucas?”

“What about him?”

“He is important.”

“I know.”

“They will come for him.”

“I know.”

“What is it about him?”

Cavalo couldn’t look at the robot. “What do you mean?”

“He makes you… different. You act different. You see things different.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, Cavalo.”

“We can use him. As a bargaining chip.”

The orange eyes burned bright. “We can.”

“That is all he is.”

“Of course.”

Cavalo left the robot in the dark.

IT WAS
beginning to lighten in the east when Cavalo realized he was no longer alone.

It was slow going, digging a serviceable hole. The ground was frozen. Snow fell in fat clumps. His hands, though gloved, were icy. His head hurt. His back was sore. His chest pulled. SIRS could have done this in under an hour, but it didn’t feel right. He didn’t want the robot around the body any more than necessary.

Now why is that?
the bees asked.

Because of what he did
, Cavalo replied.

The bees laughed at him. They were not fooled.

Gray gloom peeked through the black, and Cavalo felt someone standing near him.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, without looking up. “Go back inside.”

Bad Dog huffed.
You’re out here. And now so am I. You’re MasterBossLord. I am Bad Dog. That is how we are.

“You’ll get wet. You’ll smell.”

You are sweating. I can already smell you.

Cavalo didn’t argue.

Moments later, they were joined by another.

“You’ll rust,” Cavalo said.

“Highly unlikely,” SIRS said. “I am constructed of a titanium alloy and am stronger than you will ever be. Besides, this is where I belong.”

“Your processor will malfunction.”

“Doubtful, but you can keep talking if you’d like.”

Cavalo didn’t answer. He kept chipping away at the frozen ground. It was getting easier now.

He wasn’t surprised when they were joined by the Dead Rabbit. What
did
surprise him was how a brief and panicky sense of
completeness
came washing over him. Cavalo pushed it away and eyed Lucas warily.

He’d put on one of Cavalo’s coats. Since they were roughly the same size, it fit him well. The Dead Rabbit stared down at the tarp-wrapped body of Thomas.

“You can’t eat him,” Cavalo said, more harshly than he intended. “He’s been dead a while, and the body is probably halfway frozen. Don’t you try and eat him.”

Lucas looked up at him. Stared openly, his forehead lined, eyes narrowed. He tilted his head slightly, like a bird. Then he smiled. It was the smile of someone not used to smiling. Too wide, too maniacal. The lips stretched almost obscenely. His shoulders shook a little, and he sounded like he was breathing heavily.

He was laughing. The clever monster, the clever cannibal, that psycho fucking bulldog was laughing.

Unease filled Cavalo, mixed with something else he dared not focus on….

Lucas stopped laughing. Cocked his head again. Pointed at Cavalo.

“What?”

Insistent pointing.

Trees swayed.

“I don’t understand.”

Cavalo was still in the snow globe.

The Dead Rabbit rolled his eyes. Pointed at himself.

“You. Yes. You’re Lucas.”

He nodded. Pointed back at Cavalo.

“Cavalo,” he said. “We’ve told you.”

Lucas nodded again. He raised one finger. Waited a beat. Raised two fingers. Shrugged in question.

“One or two?”

Shook his head. One finger. Then two. Pointed at Cavalo.

“He wants to know if Cavalo is your first or last name,” SIRS said quietly.

Cavalo stiffened. He was hit by so many memories at once, like he was bludgeoned upside the head. Everything fired all at the same time, synapses, little electrical sparks between nerves, and rubber bands broke and bees were fried and it was
so much fucking snow in this fucking snow globe
—

“No,” he said hoarsely, trying to hold on to what he had left. It was a fight he almost lost. “No.”

The Dead Rabbit watched him. Waited.

Desperately, Cavalo tried to push it back. “What about you? Lucas? Lucas what?”

Lucas shrugged, but those shrewd eyes showed Cavalo that he was not fooled.
Never had one
, he seemed to say, and Cavalo remembered that day in the Deadlands, the other side of the woods, when he’d been hiding in the bushes, waiting to die. What had the large tumor man said?

Found him in the woods sucking on his dead momma’s titties when he was nothing but a babe. Raised him since. Pet. Fucking bulldog.

Cavalo felt cold. It was not because of the snow.

Lucas pointed at Cavalo again. The same damn question burning in his eyes.
What’s your other name? You’re not just Cavalo. You know it. I know it. What’s your other name?

Cavalo turned away, took a breath, and continued to dig the hole in the ground where he would bury the man he knew only as Thomas. It seemed easier to bury the dead than to dig the dead back up.

the ballad of bad dog

THE NEXT
month brought storm after storm unlike anything Cavalo had ever seen in his time at the prison. He often wondered if the quick succession of these winter squalls had to do with radiation that surely still lingered. He wasn’t savvy enough to know how such things worked, and the thought of it hurt his head, but he’d rather think the storms outside were manmade and not acts of God. If they
were
acts of God, then God was very pissed off indeed. Of course, there was Wormwood and Revelations, and that was even more unsettling.

He thought of asking SIRS, but didn’t. He didn’t want to remind the robot of the torture of the UFSA man named Thomas, though surely the robot remembered this very clearly. Cavalo could not detect any change in the robot’s demeanor, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something there. Doing such things changed a man. Cavalo didn’t know what effect those dark actions would have on a robot who was slowly losing his mind.

So there were storms, both inside the prison and out.

It was on a rare break in the storms, a dull and lifeless day, that Cavalo decided to head out into the woods around the prison to hunt. Having spent time cooped up inside the barracks was nothing new; before this winter there had been times that days would pass before he stepped foot outside.

Now, though, he was painfully aware of the passage of days. The hours. The minutes. Cavalo told himself it was nothing, that it was just his imagination, but even he knew his words were lies. The bees would chuckle at him, mocking him as they swirled in his head. He would prowl the tunnels below the prisons, moving between the buildings that still stood. Bad Dog would go with him sometimes. Sometimes SIRS would follow.

But it never helped. Cavalo was always aware of the fourth. Of Lucas. No matter how far he would get from the main barracks, he would always feel Lucas like an aching tooth. There was constant
awareness
of him
.
An
insistence
. He was like the bees. Always there.

They spoke, barely. Lucas asked questions Cavalo refused to answer. Personal questions. Where had Cavalo come from? What had Cavalo done with his life? When was the first time Cavalo had killed a man? Had Cavalo ever killed a woman? A child? Had he burned things before? Had he stolen? In one particularly odd moment, Lucas had asked if Cavalo believed in monsters, twisting his face terribly, making his hands like claws out in front of him.

Cavalo had hidden in the tunnels for hours after that.

But today was different. Today was not a day of questions that demanded answers. Today was not a day of piercing gazes from a psychopathic cannibal. Today the sky was gray above. The snow was deep at his feet. His eyes and nose were cold. The air hurt to breathe. The snowshoes on his feet hurt his ankles. The forest felt dead around him. Bad Dog was yipping like a puppy, surely scaring any scavenging animals away.

For Cavalo, it was wonderful, or something so closely approaching wonder that it made no difference. His head was clear, or almost so. “I’ll be back,” he’d told SIRS. “By tomorrow. I’ll probably camp in the lookout tonight.” He’d said this only after he’d made sure Lucas was not within earshot. He didn’t want to take the chance of the Dead Rabbit overhearing.

“Make sure you’re back by tomorrow night,” SIRS had warned. “More storms are on the way. I would be positively beside myself if you froze to death. I might even shed a tear if something happened to the fleabag.”

Bad Dog had huffed indignantly.
I’ll haunt you as Ghost Dog.

But now? Now the world was wide open! Bathed in white, birds singing above. Fresh tracks in the snow. A rabbit, from the looks of it. Maybe two or three.

Bad Dog bounded up from a deep drift.
Cold!
he called out.
I like the cold stuff. I bite it, and it melts on my tongue.
He barked, and the birds above took flight before settling in a tree farther away, calling their displeasure.

It was strange, this feeling. It was something Cavalo hadn’t felt in years. It was a bright thing, a wounded thing, but it held strong.

Free. Cavalo felt free.

He took a deep breath and let it out as he moved through the trees.

It was only minutes later when Bad Dog stopped. His ears stood tall, and he trembled. He looked off into the trees.

Cavalo listened. He could hear the birds. Clumps of wet snow falling to the ground. The lonely call of a coyote off in the distance.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

Wait
, Bad Dog said. He raised his snout. Inhaled and exhaled in short little bursts.
There’s something.
The muscles under his fur twitched. Then his tail wagged.
Smells Different
, he said happily. His tongue rolled out of his mouth and he grinned.
It’s Smells Different.

Cavalo looked around. Nothing. “You sure?”

Bad Dog snorted.
Of course I am. My nose is better than yours. No offense, MasterBossLord, but you should be embarrassed by that thing.

Cavalo ignored him. “You can come out now,” he called out. His voice sounded rough in the winter forest. “I know you’re there.”

At first there was nothing. Just the birds and the snow. Then thirty feet to the left, Lucas stepped out from behind a large stark elm, the trunk peeling white. He wore one of Cavalo’s coats, an old faded thing that bore the curious legend
IDAHO VANDALS
. Cavalo had found it vacuum sealed with others like it in an old farmhouse after he first crossed into Idaho many years before. He wondered how Lucas had found it. He’d also found another pair of snowshoes, strapped clumsily to his boots.

Bad Dog bounded over to him, hopping in the snow, disappearing into a deep drift before jumping into view again. He reached Lucas and bumped his head into the Dead Rabbit’s hand. Lucas reached down and pulled gently on one of the dog’s ears, but his eyes never left Cavalo. His mouth was spread in that too-wide smile.

They stood there for a time. Apart. Waiting.

Finally Cavalo said, “What are you doing out here?”

Lucas raised his hand in front of him and wiggled two fingers in air.
Going for a walk.

“I doubt that. What are you really doing here?”