Benjamin Percy - The Dead Lands

She doesn’t know what to do. She alternately wants to smack Simon and smash him into her chest as if to smother him with her heart. But before she can act on either impulse, the figure pulls back her hood, revealing the white-blond hair and sharply cut face of Danica Lancer.

There is a held breath of a moment before Danica says, “Let’s sit down, everyone.”

They gather at a table in the corner of the kitchen. Simon and Ella sit on one side and Danica on the other. “We certainly have a lot to talk about.” She looks at them and talks to them as a mother would her disobedient children. Ella knows that Danica wants them to feel that way, as children, because children do as they are told. Lewis would do the same to Ella and she would not tolerate it then and she will not tolerate it now. She crosses her arms and pinches her mouth into a frown.

Danica says, “No one knows I am here, and no one will know I was here, so long as we all understand each other.”

The second bell is ringing. The day is brightening, beginning to heat up. Sweat dots their temples. Danica reaches below the table then and withdraws a black dagger like a nightmarish piece of cutlery. “You must realize how complicated this situation is.”

Ella has a biting way of speaking when she says, “I realize that very well, thank you.”

“I am grateful to you for delivering the letter, but I am worried about you too.” Danica runs the blade along her arm, tracing its bare length, pausing a moment in the pale hollow of her elbow, continuing to the snaked veins of her wrists, across her palm, to the very tip of her middle finger, where she scrapes away some sand embedded beneath the nail. “You know things about me you shouldn’t. You know things about me that could get me killed.”

“We’re even, then,” Ella says. “You know things about us could do the same.”

Danica’s eyes narrow. Ella knows what’s going on behind them. Danica believes, as a rule, women want to be her, and because they cannot, they choose to hate her. She knows Ella hates her and hate is a great motivator for foolish behavior. Ella tries to release some of her hate by turning to Simon and saying, “You said you could be quiet as a cat. You said you could sneak in and out of there like a shadow.”

He wilts with every word, his posture conveying his apology.

Danica says, “Where do we go from here, children?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The boy says Lewis asked you to spread news of their success.”

Ella stabs Simon with her elbow. “Are you an idiot? Do you want to die? Why did you tell her that?”

He does not respond except to shrink even further into his chair and look at her sidelong.

“He had a blade on him. He didn’t have much of a choice.” Danica twirls the dagger in her palm, spinning it like a clock dial. She wants them to look at it, to acknowledge the power and the slicing threat of it, but Ella refuses, keeping her gaze steady.

Danica says, “In these desperate times, it’s hard to know how people will respond to that kind of information. If they learned that there was water — if they knew the expedition had traveled safely to it — they might do nothing. Or they might do something. Something dramatic. Fiery.”

Ella shifts in her seat but keeps her face flat with seeming disinterest. “Fiery?”

“Would you like to start a fire? I think we can help each other start a fire. This city is dry enough that it should burn right up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, dear?”

“Your husband is the mayor. Why would you want to threaten his power?”

She slams the dagger into the table, where it hums upright like an exclamation mark. “Because I hate him.”

IT HAS BEEN a long time since Lewis saw the moon. How long, he doesn’t know, because its cratered face is his clock and calendar. Ever since they crossed into North Dakota, ever since the oil-black clouds thickened, they have been cut off from its rhythms, lost in time. The new moon is when it is darkest, when its surface is shadowed. In myth, in folklore, in witchcraft, it is associated with death. Since they are living in a world absent light, they are living in a permanent new moon. They are living with death, Reed’s.

The ground is frozen, so they don’t bother to bury the body except with a gray mound of snow. No one utters any words — except for Lewis, who says they ought to carry on. He believes they are a half day’s hike from Bismarck. “That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?” He is not the type to utter hopeful phrases, but Clark has gone silent and he feels the need to serve as her mouthpiece, lift their spirits and pressure them onward.

They trudge on and they can see so little, with the snow ripping up and down, left and right, a swirling vertiginous gray-black blur. And they can hear even less, with the wind gusting and the snow making a constant patter against their hoods and hats.

Finally they decide to stop and build a shelter, an igloo. When they shove and pack the snow, it molds nicely to their liking. They build it up into head-high walls, making a half circle that connects to the downed tree. Enough room for all of them, but barely. They use the branches as rafters. And hack down more to drape over the open sections of ceiling so that they can shingle it with snow.

For ventilation, they punch a hole in the center of the ceiling and six more in the walls, each of them small enough to fit a fist through. The air grows instantly warm from their breathing and the small fire. The walls go blue and slick, melting and freezing into a lacquer. In the dim light, they strip off their hats and mittens and scarves. One by one, they curl up their bodies and shut their eyes, exhausted by the cold. The doctor takes the first watch.

* * *

She leans against the wall and warms up with her pipe. She lights it, and then dozes off, and lights the bowl again. She has seated herself next to one of the ventilation holes. Now and then she rises to her knees and peers out of it but sees only a thick veil of snow.

She plops down and studies Clark. Her eyes shudder and her body twitches. Even when dreaming, she cannot stay still. The doctor wishes she could get closer. Comb her fingers through that red hair, over and over, to clear away the burrs and tangles, to massage her scalp, to help calm her. She is so tense, like a body stiffening with death, and the doctor understands why. Clark is the reason they have made it this far, and if they make it any farther, it will be because of her. She, the dear girl, feels responsible for them all. And that responsibility must be sickening. Maybe she’ll do better now that Reed is gone, as if he were an excised tumor, a lanced boil. Maybe they’ll all do better now. But for the moment the poor dear is sick with guilt. There was a time when she shared a bed with Reed, and the memory of that connection must be poisoning her now. But she’ll get over it. She’ll heal.

The doctor lights her pipe again and fills her mouth with smoke. When she exhales, she realizes her smoke is twinned by a cloud of steam above her head. As she breathes out, it breathes in, the gusts storming together near the ventilation hole. By the time she realizes what is happening, it is too late.

To either side of her, arms stab through the walls, arms bristling with coarse white hair. She begins a scream that is cut short when the arms wrap around her chest and drag her back and leave a rough cavity in the wall through which snowflakes quietly tumble.

* * *

Clark rises on one elbow, still somewhere between waking and dreaming, still seeing Reed, the hopeless look on his face when the gun kicked and the brains coughed out the back of his skull. By the time she realizes what has happened and screams at everyone to arm themselves, it is too late — the walls of the shelter are already crashing inward.