savage 06 - the savage dream Read online

  Jim thought about the zombies of his world. Well, not usually, anyway.

  But not wanting to confuse the issue, he stayed quiet, letting Edwin chew on his comments.

  When Edwin didn't respond, Adahy said, “We can go on, but the Traveler's words hold wisdom.”

  “I will scout for food. You will stay with the women and the Band,” Edwin said. He walked to where Calia was bound in a kind of handmade sling against Philip's broad back. The guy was a mountain of muscle.

  “I will return, sister.” He stroked her cheek, and Calia turned her head, sweaty hair matted against her flushed face. She simply nodded, too sick to give a smart ass response. Jim took the canteens from everyone after the women had forced a few more sips down their cracked lips.

  “Water, too.”

  Edwin snagged the canteens from Jim and stalked off.

  Jim watched him go, relieved and concerned in equal parts. There was something really shitty about any of them separating.

  The Fragment were lurking around like assholes.

  The women were a liability because they were so sick. The trail mix and dried strips of bird were gone—Jim guessed it was pheasant, though it had tasted like chicken to him, an observation that caused a chuckling hiccup to escape his throat.

  The big guy gave Jim a sharp look.

  He lifted his chin back at Philip with a little wave.

  If he survived the Band, he'd be doing well.

  Then there was the Pathway trip and the question of who to give the pill to—if there was even time.

  And add to that the fun of a possible plague. It seemed that it affected only females, but with Jim's luck, it'd take his ass out.

  And there was nobody here to give a shit.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Elise

  Elise came to the surface of consciousness several times, only to drown in what could only be described as a twilight sleep. She was partially numb. Though Adahy made every effort to keep her warm, the lack of food and water had not helped her ability to fight the pox.

  She could feel the insidious progression of it.

  Whenever she glanced at Calia, taking the measure of her health, she appeared as sick as Elise. Elise inhaled deeply, and the rattle on exhalation alarmed her.

  It got Adahy's attention, as well.

  He unwrapped her—swaddled as she was, like an infant—brought her around to his front, and sat her on his lap. Adahy touched his forehead to her own. “Hot.”

  Elise nodded. So hot. He was right. Elise felt like she was burning up, yet the cold made her shiver. Nothing was right. Edwin had gone after a clear goading from Jim. She thought they would come to blows. But that would not have been smart. Everyone's reserves were depleted. Wasting energy on conflict within their party would have been akin to suicide.

  “Adahy sorry,” he said softly against her temple.

  She shook her head, wincing at the pain, then cupped his cheek. It was rough from a few daysʼ stubble. He clasped his hand over hers and leaned into the embrace.

  “I would have come regardless,” she said. His eyes found hers. “When you asked if I would be with you, and you said the sphere was not to your liking…”

  He smiled inside her palm, and she gave a little smile in return. “What I said was that my spirit lay elsewhere.”

  Elise nodded. That was what he had said. The culture of the Red Men was more circular than what she was accustomed to. The Fragment saw everything as linear. It began at a definitive point then went on in a straight line to end somewhere indefinite. With the Red Men, or Iroquois, as Adahy's tribe was named, it was an unending loop. What they did at any particular moment affected everything, small to large. The Iroquois believed they would be held accountable for something bigger than they were, so every action mattered.

  “Now that you are ill, it is Adahy's wish that you had remained in the sphere-dwellersʼ tribe.”

  Elise shook her head and sucked in with a pained noise. Adahy was very aware and cupped her chin, gently holding her face still so she had to look into his. “I was selfish.”

  Elise nodded. “As I was.”

  His brows screwed into a frown, and she laughed quietly. “Adahy, it was your gentle courtship of me that became everything to me.”

  Adahy opened his mouth, and she put a finger over his lips. “I know you had a wife.”

  His gaze darkened at the mention of her.

  “And that you do not want another.”

  Elise knew she played with fire and that a male warrior, whether Band or Iroquois, was not a person to trifle with.

  Adahy said, “My sorrow is as deep as the river that runs swift, never stopping, always changing—yet it continues to flow.”

  That was what Elise had been afraid of. Adahy could not get past the atrocity of his past to move on with her. Yet she had thought if they could but be together longer, some attachment might develop. She had sacrificed her safety for the potential.

  “You misunderstand me, Elise of the Band—of the tribe.”

  Both her hands went to his face, her eyes searching the clean emerald of his. “Tell me then. What is it that I do not know?”

  “That though the river of my sorrow carries my grief, it empties into the ocean of my love.”

  Elise felt her heart rate—sluggish and mute with sickness these past two days—quicken.

  “It is you that quenches that sorrow. It is you, Elise, who has given me a hope I thought had perished along with Onatah.”

  Hot tears came. They slipped out of Elise's eyes though she squeezed them shut to try to keep the wet hurt of her heart from escaping.

  She was ill, hungry, tired… and in love.

  So in love.

  She had forbidden hope—bound it with chains and hoisted it into the depths of her soul where it had lain dormant.

  Then Adahy had come.

  He had searched for that forgotten part of her, coaxing it into trembling life.

  “Do not,” Elise said as his mouth hovered over her own. “You may sicken.”

  Adahy shook his head, his lips hardly touching her fevered skin. “I will not.”

  Then he was kissing her in front of Philip, Calia, and Jim. The audience did not matter.

  Her illness receded, malaise replaced with passion. Her arms wound around his neck, and she pulled him against her more tightly. When Adahy tore her away from him, placing her at arm's length, Elise gave a little moan. She had wanted more.

  The food and water that Edwin gathered were unnecessary. She fed on Adahy. He sustained her, watched over her.

  Protected her.

  “You are sick. I will not—I do not wish to take you like this.”

  Had he been talking about intimacy? And where was her constant fear? It was somewhere other than lodged in her chest in a tight knot of terror.

  However, kissing had been all that Elise had committed to.

  Adahy, his expression as serious as ever, had wanted more. He studied her expression, and a crooked smile hooked one side of his mouth. “I wish for a private audience of one,” he said. “And I wish for my new bride to be well and whole.”

  Elise dipped her chin. She could never give Adahy a child. His seed would not find fertile ground within the ruin of her womb.

  “Do not, Elise.” He wiped the tears from her face.

  Philip walked toward them and Adahy broke apart from Elise. She stared at her hands, embarrassed.

  When she looked up through her eyelashes, she gasped at the sight of Calia. Fine dots ran from her hairline to a sliver of bare ankle, revealed by a hiked-up pant leg.

  “She worsens,” Elise whispered.

  “Aye,” Philip said and gave a guttural curse. “And Edwin tarries.”

  “I doubt that it is of a purpose,” Elise said quietly.

  Philip sank down beside them. Calia's head lolled into the crook of his shoulder. They sat in heavy silence for more than a minute.

  Jim stood up from his perch against a lone tree an
d walked over to where they sat.

  “Where's Edwin?”

  Philip shrugged.

  Elise determined they could not wait much longer. They might have to get their own sustenance, and Edwin would need to track them to catch up.

  “We hunt,” Adahy said suddenly, standing.

  Philip shook his head, carefully laying Calia on a blanket from his rucksack. Elise moved to Calia and lay down beside her. She barely stirred. The pox seemed to attack Calia more strongly. Yet it was those of the Band who were most robust. It was a contrary development.

  It seemed as though the very design of the illness hit the people of her world exactly where it hurt their perpetuation the hardest.

  An epiphany struck Elise speechless.

  Jim saw her expression. “What is it?”

  “I have just thought of the strangest notion.”

  “Lay it on us,” Jim said.

  Elise ignored his odd phrasing. “What if this—pox—” Jim nodded his head at her use of the disease's name, “—were engineered of a purpose to cull only a select group.”

  The men were quiet.

  Finally, Jim asked, “What group?”

  Elise was horrified and excited at the same time. “That it kill females but, most importantly, eliminates the women of the Band.”

  Philip's face closed down. “That would leave Outside unprotected. The Fragment would have no predator, save themselves.”

  Elise nodded. “Their spheres would be vulnerable for certain. Yet, without any women of the Band, its warriors would soon die out. And what few women survived the plague would be scooped up by the Fragment to increase their numbers—while leaving the others decimated.”

  “She's right,” Jim said slowly.

  Adahy shook his head, understanding just enough to be deeply disturbed. “You no—have to…”

  Elise nodded. “I am aware that my value is negated due to my infertility.”

  Philip and Adahy looked at Elise.

  Jim said, “Why are you infertile?”

  “Do not ask it,” Adahy said in Iroquois.

  Elise watched his face as he took in the serious expressions of the others.

  “I was used quite badly… when I was very young.”

  Jim's expression of horrified disgust was the best validation Elise had ever received.

  Compassion flooded his face. “I'm sorry. Those bastards.”

  Everyone understood that word perfectly.

  They were quiet for a time after that declaration. Then Elise said, “So you see, I am not important to the Fragment except as a Healer.”

  Jim's head jerked back. “You're not going back to those guys, ever. Right, guys?”

  Adahy nodded, though Elise could not be sure how much he actually had understood. But some communication was universally understood.

  They all wanted Elise to be protected.

  In that, there was perfect agreement.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jim

  This wasn't going to fly.

  Philip and Adahy argued because Edwin had been MIA for going on six hours.

  What none of them would say was that maybe Edwin hadn't made it back because he'd run into some Fragment and it hadn't ended well.

  Now the men were tasking Jim with keeping an eye on the women while they went out and played hunter-gatherer.

  It scared the shit out of him.

  When there'd been the four of them, with crap odds against the last group of Fragment, that'd been different. Everything had just happened to go off without a hitch. But this time was different.

  Jim was navigating uncharted waters. He was a geeker, a scientist and quad-lingual tech guy. It had been that diversity that had got him noticed and recruited to work for the HC in a supposed seek and collect.

  What a crock of shit that had turned out to be.

  Jim was not a he-man type. Now he was responsible for a couple of women, just out of their teens, who were sick with an extinct virus brought from his home world to—what? Exterminate their world. It was the only motive that made sense. Of course, Jim was expendable in that theoretical landscape.

  “It shall work, Jim.” Philip turned the argument to him. “We will hide you and the females in a nearby shelter, gather food and water, and return in a few hours hence. We can wait for Edwin no longer.” He shrugged his massive shoulders in dismissal of the missing Band. These guys go hard. Maybe Edwin was alive or whatever, but they would go on regardless. Jim had the distinct feeling there was no love lost between Edwin and Philip.

  And Philip had a point. Edwin had skipped town, even though his reasons were solid.

  Jim was pretty sure his body was digesting its own spine at this point. He couldn't remember ever having been this hungry. The women fared better because all the group's food had gone to them. But even they would be desperate soon. If there was even a small chance of survival for them, they had to eat. They were in no shape to travel, though Elise seemed to be in better shape than Calia. There must have been some significance to the amount of Band blood each one had. In this one aspect, it sucked to be Band.

  His thoughts tore through his mind like a freight train without a depot. “I can stay, but if the Fragment comes, we're screwed.” Loosely translated, that meant, I'm dead.

  Philip scowled, and Jim got the feeling he was vaguely insulted. “They will find you not. They do not roam often in this weather.”

  Jim's lips quirked at Philip's comment. “Yeah, like two days ago? They were on it out there, guys.”

  “We go, he stays,” Adahy said, pointing decisively at Jim.

  Great.

  “We are without choice. Someone must stay with the women. You know the disease. You are a Healer.”

  “Scientist,” Jim corrected.

  Philip waved the difference away with a massive palm. “It matters not. You have identified this pox, and they are both safer with someone who knows what ails them than if we were to remain and fret over them while everyone starves. These are difficult choices. Choices I am reluctant to make. Leaving Calia feels like a kind of death, Jim.”

  Jim studied Philip's expression—dark eyes that were hard and resolute in a face of sculpted and unyielding lines. Jim wouldn't be able to say dick to change their minds. Swell.

  The truth was, he didn't know anything about hunting. The girls were too sick to travel so that left him. It was logical, but still felt like a bad fit. Jim could tell the Band was used to delegating and prioritizing in the midst of chaos and unrest.

  They packed up the gear. Elise was okay to walk—barely—but Adahy picked her up anyway, and Philip carried Calia. Jim hauled three of the backpacks they called “rucksacks.”

  The air grew thick and moist as they wove deeper through the forest. When the ground grew spongy, Jim looked at his feet. Mud bled through the short layer of moss. He frowned.

  What in the blue blazes is this?

  When he strained to see between branches, he saw why the terrain had softened to muck.

  A body of water no larger than an Olympic-sized pool was positioned at the base of the small ravine they were traversing. Jim guessed they'd hiked about half a mile in, and already the canopy of trees closed around them.

  The heat from the water rose in lazy spirals and mist constantly skated along the surface like greedy fog. He towed the gear up to where water lapped.

  At the “shore,” his worse-for-wear boots sunk in an inch.

  Philip turned to him and pointed to a stone outcropping across the spring.

  Jim stared hard, squinting his eyes, full of questions

  “Do you see the shadow inside that crevice?” Philip pointed.

  Jim looked again. He studied a dark line that appeared to split the rock. And there, toward the bottom, was a murky slit, maybe two meters long by one meter deep.

  “Really?” Jim asked, disbelieving. The ledge that led to the indent in the rock was about half a meter wide. Two people couldn't walk side by side and make it. It was
a tightrope of stone.

  Philip nodded. “You will have to be careful on the ledge—”

  No shit.

  “—that surrounds the stone, but it is a place you and the women can hide until our return.”

  They turned as Elise made a sound of pure contentment. “I have missed the springs.”

  She was kneeling at the edge, her heavy skirts getting soaked at the knees—not that she seemed to mind. Her hand swirled in the heated water, and she smiled. Her hair was damp against her temple, her skin flushed from fever.

  Small dots had begun to appear on her neck and face.

  Jim gulped hard as guilt bit at him. It was jerks from his world who had done this. He didn't have the skill to fix it. And what good was it to identify what disease the women had if he was helpless to cure it? It was bullshit.

  Jim found he wasn't much of a fan of Edwin, either. He understood the cultural precedence that made the male of a clan family responsible for the care of the female family members. But the way Edwin had discounted the years that Calia had suffered and survived in the harsh environment was obtuse as fuck. She'd somehow managed without his domineering ass for years, thank you very much.

  Jim didn't explain his misgivings about his lack of skill to resolve the disease, and how Edwin couldn't catch a clue if it lit his ass on fire. He stifled a chuckle at the idea of how unpopular his thoughts would be if he voiced them. They wouldn't be received well—understatement of the year. The Band dudes were going to pursue the food angle, and that was all there was to it.

  “Fine,” Jim consented. “But I can't promise a great defense.” And that was really the crux of his unease. He didn't want to deepen his guilt by screwing up with Calia and Elise. His kind had already done plenty of damage.

  “You defend well,” Adahy said in Iroquois, and though Jim was rusty as hell, he managed to understand the formal use of the language.

  Jim gave him a weak smile.

  “Thanks.” He clapped the huge Iroquois on the back. Adahy's face drew into a puzzled frown.

  Maybe no touching.

  Jim slowly backed away, and the two Band men began to slide through the dense forest, back in the direction they'd come from.