Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

“I’m sorry about your Mama,” the girl was saying. Then, in a voice like she was trying to make me feel better, she said, “They’ll keep her around if they think she’s useful. Is she good at fixing things, or making clothes, or fighting, or finding food? Anything like that?”

I wanted to tell the girl about Mama’s big orange work bag and her long busy days working for the king in Grayfall but I remembered how Jamie told me one time what happened if scav armies caught you and didn’t think you were useful. And I got really scared that if I said Mama’s job was to find people’s secrets then the girl would tell me that that’s not useful enough and if I heard that I didn’t know what I’d do, my whole self would close up like a fist so I couldn’t hear that Mama wasn’t useful enough to keep alive, so I didn’t say anything.

The girl thought for a second and said, “That is, if she wasn’t dead already.” And made a question-face at me.

That one was easy to answer and I shook my head.

“Okay. Good. That’s good.” Now the question-face turned into a thinking-face, and while I was wondering if this girl would get as mad as Mama does when I interrupt her thinking-face, the cart slowed down, then stopped, and quick as a snake the girl spun around and slapped a pile of nasty old blankets in the corner. “Wake up,” she whisper-yelled at the pile.

The pile kind of rustled around for a second.

“Slag you, Nina, help me out here.”

The pile didn’t say anything.

“Whatever,” the girl said. “You’re on your own. I tried.” Then to me, “You saw me try.”

All of a sudden she got a new look, like she could hear something I couldn’t, and one of those quick hands shot out and covered my mouth. “Quiet.”

“But I didn’t say—”

“QUIET.”

There was a kind of door in the side of the cart, and the girl gave it one sharp scared look and then back to me. She was holding my face in both her hands now, staring at me like Mama did when I had to listen to something really important.

“Quick,” the girl whispered. “Tell me your name.”She was whispering so fast it all squished into one word, TELLMEYOURNAME, but I knew what she meant.

“Aneko,” I whispered back.

“I’m Sam. Okay, Aneko. Listen. Wherever they take you. Wherever they put you. Don’t try to run. You’ll just make it worse. Just do what they say and I’ll find you. I’ll help you. As soon as I can. Promise. Just—”

Then the door came open, and hands reached in and dragged Sam out, and before I ever got to talk to her again she was dead, lying there on the roadside staring up at the rain. I don’t know what killed her, but I knew she was dead because her eyes were open and flies were walking on them and she didn’t blink them away. Just lying there for the flies and ghosts and dogs to chew on. I wanted to help her somehow, I didn’t know how really, maybe close her eyes so her ghost wouldn’t see other ghosts coming at her across the Waste. It’d keep the flies out anyway, with their dirty feet. Her mouth was open a little like she was about to say something. But she didn’t.

You draw stars over dead people’s eyelids so Catchkeep can find them easy. You put something in their mouth so they can cross the dead people’s river and their ghost doesn’t get stuck in the Waste to walk forever. Mama never did those things herself, if one of the king’s secret-keepers died before her work was done. The king had a person who did that. I watched it one time, even though that secret-keeper’s mouth was a mess and he didn’t have any eyelids anymore to draw on, so I’m pretty sure I know how.

But I couldn’t stop and do those things for Sam, because they pushed us right on past her, and I stumbled looking down at her but the kids on the chain in front of me kept walking so I had to get my feet back under me or be dragged. But I held her name in my mouth without saying it. SAM, I thought, HER NAME IS SAM. I closed my mouth on the name and held on tight like the secret-keepers do when they make Mama work so late that she doesn’t have any time to play with me after.

One time I heard a secret-keeper yell at Mama. I’LL TAKE IT TO MY GRAVE, he yelled at her, and there was a kind of spitty sound. Then there was a little space of quiet, and then the secret-keeper made the worst noise I’ve ever heard anybody make and I was happy I was behind the door and couldn’t see what happened to him to make that sound come out of his mouth.

I didn’t know what the secret-keeper wanted to take to his grave, or if he took it there. But it sounded like a brave strong thing to say. HER NAME IS SAM, I thought again. I’LL TAKE IT TO MY GRAVE.

Then I tucked it away in the back of my mind, where I keep the things I have to remember, like holy days and promises and chores. I didn’t want to forget, but I also needed to clear some room in my head for the great big thing that was in there, itching in my mind, pushing everything else away, hot and red like blood.

I had to stay alive long enough for Mama to find me. And then we were going to escape.

Like Mama would say, first things first. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t even know where I was. She might be a ghost now for all I know. We walked for days. I think maybe the cart broke, but nobody ever said. We got dragged out and chained together, me and Sam and the other girl Nina who was asleep under the blankets, and some other kids from other carts. Mama was nowhere, and if Sam and Nina and everybody had grownups with them before, they were nowhere now too. But then that first night they unchained Sam and took her away and I thought she was going with the grownups because she was almost a grownup really herself but then the next day was when I saw her dead and I looked around for a chain like ours except with grownups on it but I couldn’t find one. Just Waste on both sides, and the cart burning in a big chopped-up pile, and the road going forever in front and behind.

Nina was in front of me on the chain but I couldn’t talk to her. There was somebody else on the chain behind me but I couldn’t turn around to see who it was. If I did either of those things, bad stuff would happen. One time there was a lot of noise somewhere behind me, a grownup yelling and a kid crying, and after a minute of that the chain stopped, and the crying got louder for a second and then the kid started screaming, screaming like some secret-keepers do when they see Mama start to slowly unpack her work bag, and then there was a noise like something thunking into something else, a firewood-chopping kind of sound, and after that the crying stopped, but when the chain started moving again it was harder to walk, like we were dragging something heavy behind us.

After that I didn’t cry, not even quietly. And I made sure to walk fast enough and pull extra hard with every step on that heavy mystery off behind us, because if I didn’t then Nina would have to pull her part and mine too and Mama taught me from little that if we treat other people like tools to be useful to us, then the only thing making us different than the scav armies is that we live in towns and not on the Waste-roads in between.

I tried to keep my mind off of my hurting back and my tired feet and my growling belly and my thirsty thirsty mouth by counting the kids in front of me. But it was hard. We were all walking in a straight line on a straight road so I had to kind of remember which arms and legs and tops of heads belonged to which kid, so if one kid stepped sideways a little or put an arm out, I’d see that part of the kid, and if that happened enough times with enough different kids, I could have some kind of count. I counted five separate kids plus Nina and over the long day I double-checked and even triple-checked my count but when we finally stopped at sundown and they sat us in a circle with a raider guarding us I saw I was wrong. There were eight kids in front of me, and another eleven behind, ten alive and one dead, just lying there all dirty from the road with a horrible huge split in his head. There were other groups of people on chains, farther off, and a bunch of raiders in a big group beyond. I did see two chains of grownups, but no Mama.