Penny Candles

June, 2184 Sullivan Eberle found it ironic that after almost failing the physical to enlist because he had abysmal night vision, he was now forced to do most of his traveling after dark. He’d tried walking during the day. While his time was better, the fear he encountered in every stranger’s face wasn’t worth it. Scared people acted irrationally. It was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. The journey might have been easier if he had a fixed destination in mind, rather than a name that meant nothing to him and puffs of memory that evaporated when he tried to catch them. He walked on instinct, catching the occasional faded sign and steering his course in a new direction. The slip of paper in his pocket got heavier every day. Taunting him. Begging him. Screaming at him to get there, damn it, who did he think he was dawdling like this? The screams were the easiest to block out. He’d trained too many years to fall prey to such manipulative tactics. Strike would be proud of him. At one point, he debated losing the uniform for something less noticeable. Civilian clothes would help him blend. He might be able to risk journeying during daylight hours then, provided he also had a hat to hide his shaved head. But he’d left his money and credit behind, ties he’d cut without knowing why, and nobody in their right mind would trade for a Strike set. That left thievery. Somehow, in logic he knew was twisted, that was too much. He couldn’t justify crossing that line. At least his other crimes had been officially sanctioned. He refused to break this particular law. On this, he had a choice. He marched along deserted highways under pitch-covered skies. Only once did a vehicle pass him, but the roar of its archaic engine proclaimed its presence long before twin beams pricked the darkness. He hid in a wet ditch until it passed, vaguely wondering where they got the fuel to make the vehicle run. Brackish sludge seeped inside his boots, his pants hems soaking even more, but he remained stationary long after the night was silent again. When he resumed his trek, the oppressive silence tried to flatten him into his own grave. The earth was more than ready for it, which bothered him on a whole lot of levels. At the fronts, they had to burn the dead, in pyres, with throwers, anywhere they could find. Even before the current insurgences, he didn’t know anyone who’d died who hadn’t been cremated. There was just no place to put the bodies. People wouldn’t have to worry about that out here in the middle of nowhere, but then again, he didn’t know how people could live where it was so quiet. In the beginning, he’d hoped he’d hear crickets, not that he was really sure what crickets even sounded like. Story was, some rural areas still had them. There had been a kid from Ohio in his squadron who spent hours telling him and anyone who wanted to listen about growing up on a farm. Nobody ever told him to shut up unless a ranking officer was in earshot. That kind of life seemed like a fairy tale. Sullivan probably wasn’t in Ohio, anyway. That was farther north and east. But if his search proved fruitless, he might consider going there instead. His hair would be growing back by then. He could leave his career behind him. Where it belonged. * * * * He was always hungry. His discharge came with a month’s rations, but he had no idea how long he would need to reach his destination. He split one serving of whatever he pulled out—dried fruit, smoked meat, the leavened protein wafers they used to feed to stray dogs—over an entire day. Sometimes, he supplemented his scant meals with greenery he found along the way, but after the third bout of hard cramps that left him weaker than before, he gave that up. It was better to be hungry. It gave him an edge. At this stage, he took everything he could get. Water was a different story. Water was precious. He knew what chemicals lingered in the atmosphere and how toxic rainfall could be. He’d been taught never to trust natural sources. But on his own, he didn’t have access to a Personal Filtration Unit, and no funds to waste on processed water after the first week. He had no other choice but to dip into streams. He chose only sources that seemed healthy, where life teemed and thrived in recognizable patterns. At those, he refilled his two canteens, to save in case he didn’t find another one quickly. He almost always emptied them before spying a new source. On the eleventh day after his discharge, he had to use a different hole on his belt to keep it tight. When dusk broke on the sixteenth, he trudged alongside a sweeping field of long, tawny grains. His pace slowed. In the midst of battles, when the only organic elements around him were blood and body parts, it was easy to forget there was another world beyond the ones he’d always known. Plants grew in pots, not the ground. Anything stretching taller than him was made of steel or glass. Breezes carried chemicals and death. Wind didn’t exist to make the slender fronds of identifiable grasses whisper to him in the night air. He touched one, and when it didn’t feel like much of anything, he caught its center and held it still long enough to break part of it off. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled like the dusty road he traveled, the one cutting through the field’s heart. His tongue darted out, but his tentative lick only sent a prickling sensation into his teeth. Against his better judgment, he nibbled at the broken end of the stalk. Faint moisture, sticky and a little sweet, clung to his lips. Whatever it was, it tasted like the warm sunshine that inevitably found his daily hideaways. He chewed at the stalk for the rest of the night, using the sharp edges to pick at his teeth when he found a ditch to sleep in for the day. A use for everything. Nothing wasted. Some military lessons could apply to life, no matter where he was. * * * * Voices woke him. They were muffled, mostly blocked by the fabric covering his ears. Every dawn, before he went to sleep, he wrapped his thin coat around his head. It gave him extra padding as he slept, but that was a secondary purpose. There were two better reasons he did it. One, with his head wrapped, he wasn’t immediately identifiable as military. His hair was long enough to stipple across his palm when he ran it over his scalp, but it wasn’t nearly long enough to look normal, not yet, not to really protect him. The fact that he’d have to live up to who he was and what he’d done when he found what he was looking for was an irony he refused to consider. His other purpose was just as practical. Covering his ears protected them. Nothing could crawl in this way. Strike didn’t teach that in basic. That was a lesson learned in the field, away from barracks and allies, where finding a safe corner to grab a short nap often meant the difference between living and dying. He could stomach a lot, but the first time he’d had to watch a medic pull a roach out of a soldier’s ear, he’d had nightmares for a week. He never left his ears exposed after that. Even with the coat’s protection, however, the voices were sufficient to rouse him to the day. “…too paranoid.” “She’s a dog. It’s what she does.” “And if she chased down a rabbit? Would you make us go after that, too?” “Only if you’d brought your gun with you.” “Then you’d be the one accusing me of paranoid.” “If the gun fits…” He opened his eyes to cool dusky shadows. The sun was low enough on the horizon to skim over the surface of the deep ditch, but the crunch of footsteps getting louder meant it wasn’t as safe as he’d hoped. Any second now, he’d be spotted, unless he got lucky and the dog got distracted. A sharp bark practically overhead announced it was too late. Though he rolled to his feet in ready alert, he was pre-empted by the sudden appearance of a golden retriever leaping into the ditch. The men accompanying her appeared moments later, though they remained on the upper ridge. Both were old enough to be his father, skin leathered and chapped from a lifetime exposed to the sun. One was taller, with one of those pot-bellied forms that always seemed to hit skinny men in old age, like it was impossible for them to gain weight anywhere but in their gut. His almost simple smile vanished when he saw what their dog had cornered, and his blue eyes dimmed. His friend was a lot less subtle. “Definitely should’ve brought my gun.” Slowly, Sullivan brought his hands up, palms out to show he was unarmed. “I was just taking a nap.” “Nobody naps in a ditch.” The taller one nudged his buddy. “He’s wearing a uniform.” Shorty’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no fighting around here, son.” He bristled at the nickname, though years of experience had him biting his tongue. “I don’t fight anymore.” “Run away?” “Discharged.” Shorty snorted. “You think I look stupid? The government’s not about to let an able body walk away. And you look plenty able to me.” “It’s the truth, sir.” “Maybe he was too dumb for service,” the taller man said. “Look at the way he’s got his coat wrapped around his head.” “They’re all too dumb for service.” Shorty waved Sullivan forward. “Get your ass up here. You’re not worth busting up my knee to drag you out.” He had no fear of either man. Even tired and hungry as he was, he was pretty sure he could take both of them if things got physical. It was the dog he didn’t trust, and short tempers that might order the animal to attack, just because. He moved slowly, first unknotting the coat sleeves to switch it from his head to tie around his waist. His pack came next, and he shrugged it on under the twin scowls boring into him. “Hurry it up,” Shorty said. The dog barked in agreement. The loose grit of the steep banks forced him to dig his toes into the dirt if he didn’t want to fall in front of them. If push came to shove, he’d defend himself, but what he really wanted to do was get out of there as soon as possible. From the sun’s position in the sky, it was nearing sunset anyway. An early start would get him farther away from men who weren’t afraid to demonstrate exactly how they felt about the military. “Pat him down, Joe,” Shorty instructed. “We don’t want him surprising us.” Sullivan didn’t need a blade or a gun to take these two down, but he lifted his arms obediently, setting his jaw as he stared straight ahead. Indignity was nothing new to a soldier, and Joe didn’t have the same rough technique any number of his commanding officers ever had. He’d prove to them he wasn’t a threat, then be on his way. In the opposite direction they were going. He flinched when Joe reached his hips and his fingers slid into Sullivan’s front pockets. He’d extracted the tiny slip of paper before Sullivan could think to stop him, but when Sullivan tried to snatch it back, the dog growled at him, edging forward to provide a barrier for Joe to hide behind. His blood ran cold when Joe opened it up and read it. Joe’s eyes went wide, and he looked back at Sullivan for a long, assessing moment. “What is it?” Shorty asked. He grabbed the paper from his friend’s fingers and scanned it over. The distrustful eyes he fixed on Sullivan echoed any number of the nameless faces who regularly haunted Sullivan’s dreams. “What’s your name, son?” “Eberle, sir!” He barked it automatically, coloring slightly when he realized he’d straightened at the same time. Rather than bring even more attention to the fact he recognized his behavior, he stayed utterly still, waiting for whatever would come next, wishing he’d chosen someplace to sleep for the day. “There’s no Eberles around here,” Joe commented. “Never had any soldiers, neither.” Shorty stuffed the paper into his front pocket, scrutinizing every twitch Sullivan might make. He didn’t dare react. The dog looked ready to spring, even without word from its owners. “So what’re we going to do with this one?” “I’m not looking for trouble.” It was important to get that out there, whether they believed him or not. He held his hand out, keeping his fingers loose to appear as unmenacing as possible. “If you’ll just let me have my paper back, I’ll be on my way.” “Oh, I don’t think so.” Even Joe seemed surprised by Shorty’s denial. People outside of the cities made it clear what they thought of Strike and anyone associated with it, but few were bold enough to be so blatant about their hatred. Sullivan avoided civilization as much as he could because he didn’t want to witness their fear. In the face of open hostility, his body went on alert, hand dropping, senses sharpening, tempered only by the same survival instinct that had had him rolling into the alleyway the split second before the bomb went off that put him in the hospital. He didn’t actually need the paper. The name scrawled across it had long ago been etched onto his brain. But he wanted it. It was his, one of the few things he could claim for his own. Having it honed his determination to keep going, regardless of the fact he was probably more lost than ever. He held his ground and stared Shorty in the eye. “That’s not yours.” Shorty shrugged. “You really want to have a fight about a piece of trash, be my guest. But Leviticus there has sharper teeth than you. Something tells me you’d be the one missing some body parts if push came to shove.” “It’s not trash.” He wanted the words back as soon as they came out. Weakness wouldn’t help his cause. “What is it, then?” Sullivan held his tongue. The one answer he had was the one he refused to share. “You should go,” Joe said. “We don’t need your kind around here.” “I don’t serve anymore.” “Once a soldier, always a soldier.” He wanted to refute that, but the truth of the matter was, he couldn’t honestly say Joe didn’t have a point. He’d known most of his life he would be a part of Strike. He’d started preparing for it before he turned ten. If he hadn’t been hit, he would still be on the front, killing whoever was necessary. That knowledge didn’t make him feel any better about his current predicament. “We let him go, we don’t know where he’ll end up,” Shorty mused. Joe frowned. “What’re you saying? You don’t want to take him back with us, do you?” Alarm shot through Sullivan. The last thing he needed was a bunch of civilians, ready to exact their personal brand of revenge because he happened to be handy. He’d been too careful about avoiding confrontation to get caught at this point. When he took a step backward, ready to run, however, Leviticus growled and raised his hackles. He halted, stopped as effectively by the returned attention of both distrustful men. “Look at him.” Shorty swept an age-mottled hand at Sullivan. “That mangy cat that keeps dumping dead rats on my doorstep looks better fed than he does.” “But—” “No weapons, right? What’s he going to do to us Leviticus can’t stop?” The thin smile he leveled at Sullivan wasn’t friendly, in spite of the words that came next. “Besides, anyone with eyes can see you’re in need of some good Christian kindness. Some hot food, maybe a shower, and you’ll be a brand new man.” Joe looked as unconvinced as Sullivan felt, but he stopped arguing. He waited for the response as patiently as Shorty did. The notion of any kind of beneficence coming from these men, Christian or otherwise, would have made him laugh only a few weeks earlier. Maybe more than that, if he took into consideration his hospital time. They didn’t like him. Nothing good would come from agreeing. He’d be at an even greater disadvantage with more people around. But wasn’t this part of his rationale for leaving the security of the city in the first place? He could have gone home. His family would have welcomed him, perhaps not with a hero’s return but certainly with some honor. He’d been injured in the line of duty. That mattered. The possibility paled in light of his chosen task. And if he wanted to see it through to its end, he needed to leave his past behind him. “A hot meal would be nice,” he admitted. “There you go, then.” Turning around, Shorty began walking along the edge of the road, heedless of the rest of them. “We hurry, we can beat the sun. C’mon, Joe.” After a moment’s hesitation, Joe snapped his fingers. The dog broke free of its guard position on Sullivan and loped to his owner’s side, following in Shorty’s footsteps. Sullivan did the same. Some battles were better left unfought. * * * * Shorty’s estimation on how long it would take was off by more than a few dozen stars. The moon glimmered in a thin crescent near the horizon, but there was still sufficient illumination for him to read the sign at the town limits. You are now entering Chadwick, Kansas Population: 653 The numbers were brighter than everything else, the paint fresher. Someone in town kept a close eye on who came and who went. In Sullivan’s mind, a little too close. Shorty and Joe’s pace had slowed throughout the trip. Now, their shoulders sagged in obvious exhaustion, leaving Sullivan and the dog to keep them going. Ironic, when he hadn’t wanted to tag along in the first place. At some point, Leviticus had decided Sullivan must not be too much of a threat after all. He loped along beside him, tongue lolling, whenever he didn’t run off ahead. The first time he took off, Joe whistled him back, but Sullivan was the one he returned to. Remnants of what Chadwick must have been like before still dotted the terrain. Abandoned power lines like collapsed veins. Faded billboards depicting food so washed out it was impossible to tell what it might have originally been. A traffic light, now dead, standing as silent sentinel to an era the town might never see again. Not everything was as lifeless, though. They walked along a cracked sidewalk, past houses that should have merged with the darkness. Instead, lights glowed from inside, candles flickering against closed curtains, bringing ghostly inhabitants to form. The faint thud of a bass line sent his senses into automatic alert, too much resembling the dull roar of constant mortar fire. He must have reacted in some way, flinched or breathed differently or something to make Leviticus growl deep within his throat. So much for détente. “Look,” he said, speaking up for the first time since they’d started. His voice seemed to echo back at him, reflecting off the world like it wasn’t even there. Neither Joe nor Shorty even glanced back. A little bit louder, “Where are we going? Because it looks like we’re already here.” “Mama Maria’s.” Joe might not have reacted to Sullivan’s query, but he sure as hell did to Shorty’s answer. “Really? You think that’s such a good idea?” “Boy needs to eat.” “There’s other ways.” “It’s public. Safest all around.” Sullivan listened to this odd exchange in silence. Safest for who? He wasn’t armed. They were clearly taking him someplace with other people. He thought he’d been the model of propriety so far. He almost turned on his heel and ran then, uncaring of what Leviticus might do. This wasn’t part of the mission, not part of the plan. He needed to find the path again and stick to it, see it through to the finish no matter what the result. Reminding himself that the promise of civilization was why he’d agreed in the first place was the only way he could stop from fleeing. Chadwick was small. A good training ground. It would help prepare him for however this ended. The residential neighborhood merged into taller, heavier buildings with signs announcing everything under the sun for sale. These weren’t relics from the past, like the spectral watchmen at the town’s border. These businesses thrived in the present, with handwritten notices announcing sales and flyers mounted inside the intact plate glass windows. A hardware store was still open, in fact, with a man squatting in front of a display taking a moment to wave at Joe and Shorty as they passed by. So many questions rambled through Sullivan’s head, none of which had answers. He hadn’t been a great student, and while he knew a lot of other soldiers who could recite entire timelines about the country’s history, he didn’t know very much about what had transpired for all these people. Most of what he’d collected over the years came from the media, but he’d known for most of his life how untrustworthy they were. He’d never bothered to question it before. Now, he wondered just how much of what he knew was truth, and how much of it wasn’t. A small thrill ran through him. Passages from behind the divide had been trickling open for the past two decades, but other than the kid from Ohio, he’d never personally known anyone to actually come through it. He might have spent the past month wandering over the terrain, but now he had the opportunity to find out how the survivors actually existed. Firsthand. That made it all worth it. Mama Maria’s was a block past the hardware store, lit up brighter than anything else in the vicinity. The music was louder here, the unmistakable tones of laughter drifting into the night every time the front door opened. Sullivan shifted his pack on his shoulder as they approached, trying to quell his racing nerves. A real test of whether or not he was deluding himself about escaping the city. A smarter man would probably be more scared. At the door, Joe snapped his fingers at Leviticus and pointed to the ground. The dog sat without hesitating, then stretched out on its stomach, resting its head on his front paws. A common command, obviously. Sullivan’s attention jumped between Leviticus and the door as Shorty led the way inside. The scents assailed him first. Spicy and rich, they promised delicacies he hadn’t savored in years, not since before enlisting. His stomach grumbled loud enough for Joe to frown at him, but Sullivan didn’t care, not with the way his mouth watered. He could practically taste the hot food already, and he swallowed hard, stifling the urge to bolt for the kitchen. The restaurant wasn’t as packed as the noise and brightness would lead outsiders to believe. Half of the tables were empty, but those that had patrons catered to a wide variety of people. Men, women, children, seniors, shades of skin every color under the sun with a hodgepodge of clothing to match. When a nearby girl, barely out of teenage, glanced at him and froze, Sullivan did the same, voiding his features of any expression, willing away his hunger. Safest for who? he wondered again. It took a few minutes for others to follow the girl’s example, time enough for Shorty to disappear through a door and a statuesque Hispanic woman in jeans and an apron to come around the end of the long counter. She approached them without fear, wiping her hands off on a towel as she moved. “What’ve you gone and found this time, Joe?” She didn’t sound angry, but rather amused, like it was normal practice for Joe to bring home strays. Still, she stopped several feet away and never let go of her towel. Safe. “He was sleeping in a ditch.” Joe edged closer to the nearest seat at the counter, separating himself from Sullivan whether consciously or not. “And it wasn’t me. It was Leviticus.” “You can’t blame everything on that damn dog.” Her dark eyes narrowed in assessment, never straying from Sullivan’s. She wasn’t as young as she’d first appeared. Lines radiated from the corners of her eyes, and a deeper furrow between her thick brows told of years of worry. Wispy strands of gray were nearly hidden in the hair she swept back into a ponytail. “Though you smell bad enough for even Joe to sniff out, young man.” Unexpected shame burned high in his cheeks. “Sorry, ma’am. I can go—” “Without eating something? I don’t think so.” She snapped Joe with her towel. “Move over. You can keep him downwind since you’re the one who brought him here.” With a grimace, Joe rose, but as he slid onto the adjacent stool, the door through which Shorty had exited opened again. Shorty emerged and promptly scurried past the woman, but the man who came after him stopped and blocked Sullivan’s path to his seat. In his hand was the scrap of paper Shorty had taken from Sullivan’s pocket. “Looks like we have company, Mama.” Though his statement was clearly directed at the woman, his gaze never left Sullivan. He was young, though Sullivan suspected older than him, and while he was the same height as the woman, he lacked the same thick solidity. His shoulders might have been broad, but his hips were slim, his hands long and almost elegant at his sides. He had the deepest brown eyes Sullivan had ever seen, too, dark enough to be black, with a hint of a slant at their corners. High cheekbones and a wide, full mouth gave him an air of exotic sensuality that his burnished coppery skin only added to. A jolt of familiarity shot through Sullivan’s gut, but as soon as he tried to grab onto the memory, it ran away. When he chased after it, his left eye started to throb, so he let it go, unable to concentrate. Regardless of the impression, though, he knew in his heart he’d never seen this man before. There was no way he would ever forget that face. When Sullivan remained silent, the man smiled. It wasn’t a big one. His lips never parted. But it reached his eyes, banishing any thought they were as fathomless as they appeared. Sullivan couldn’t look away. “What’s this about?” He held up the scrap of paper between two fingers without glancing at it. “This isn’t you, is it?” “No, sir.” The sir just slipped out, a conditioned reflex in too many ways. The man’s eyes lifted a fraction, and his smile vanished. “Then what do you care about the name Raphael Hamada?” The room seemed quieter now, the customers more aware of the exchange occurring near the door. Sullivan steeled against the scrutiny. “I’m looking for him.” “Why?” For all the questions that had both plagued and excited him, this one left Sullivan floundering. Too much seemed to hinge on it, a pass/fail he hadn’t expected, a choice to make that would alter everything to come. He’d learned to trust his instincts in the field. Life and death weighed upon simple, instantaneous decisions. He’d come through alive, if not entirely intact, so he needed faith that responding would not fail him now. He’d come too far to lose his way. “I don’t know.” He paused. That didn’t feel like enough. “I wish I did.” A longer pause elapsed. It was the other man’s turn to assess his words. Sullivan refused to fidget or break the stare, but each passing second weighed heavier on the back of his brain. Finally, the man dropped his arm and took a step forward, holding the paper out to Sullivan. “Then it looks like this is your lucky day.” Their fingers didn’t touch as Sullivan took the scrap, but the other man didn’t lower his hand, keeping it there in obvious greeting. “I’m Rafe Hamada.”