The Touch of Heaven

Chapter 4

III

The sun was starting to rise higher over Haven. The sky turned a pleasant shade of blue and pigeons – ones I hoped weren't infected and capable of wiping out the entire community with a well-placed aerial turd laced with the Phantom – flew free overhead. Miles' car was pretty cramped. There wasn't much room for my legs, the seat was rigid and uncomfortable, and the seat belt was tight as a motherfucker. I silently joked to myself that was a modification Miles made himself; of course he'd want his own car airtight, just in case he hit a bump in the road or something. That'd probably be enough to make him paranoid he'd hit a raccoon or something. God knew he wouldn't be able to look at or touch it anyways; he'd freaked out once and called me over because he'd found a dead mouse behind his fridge once. True to his careful nature, Miles went at a measly twenty-miles per hour. Everywhere. If he was feeling particularly ambitious, he'd speed up to a whopping twenty-two miles per hour, but he mainly just drove at a boringly slow cruise. I didn't really like that. I wanted to open the window and feel the wind against my face, stick out my tongue and let the saliva dry off of it so I had that wonderfully weird feeling of a crusty piece of s**t sticking out of my lip. Miles kept his eyes on the road at all times. To be fair, though, this was as far as I'd ever seen him drive – the few occasions I actually did get into the car with him, it was mainly just to the office or the center Darby and Lavender lived in. Neither of those two were exactly trusted to drive yet despite being older than the rest of us, given their recent registration. Jilton, on the other hand, didn't even want to drive.

To my surprise, Miles continued out of the usual neighborhood and out to the exterior of Haven. I could see the walls surrounding Haven come into view, and realized we were on a road leading through them to the outside. Miles actually went outside the walls? I'd figured he'd be too paranoid to even come near the walls. That was the plot twist of the f*****g century, right there.

I quietly nudged Miles and he gave me a side glance without fully peeling his eyes off the road. "What?" he asked. I pointed out to the walls and gave him an indication I had no idea where the hell we were going. He looked a little bit more towards me. "We're, uh, heading outside Haven. Not far off, just into a side area in the woods. That's where my private area is," Miles said, surprisingly casually.

I looked at him with a flat "are you kidding me" face. He didn't seem to catch the hint until a moment later, prompting a laugh from him.

"Oh, don't worry!" Miles said. "The local area's guarded by officials, we're registered to the database and our exact positions will be tracked so long as we stay in ten miles of Haven, I know the area like the back of my hand, we're stocked with..."

Miles started prattling on about the six-hundred security measures he'd taken and I just kind of spaced out as we came closer to the walls. That was more like Miles; to go into something without worrying about it, he'd have make a dozen safety measures and then a dozen more backups to make sure absolutely nothing went wrong. We started to get close to the walls, which towered over us. Multi-million dollar project right there.

Miles suddenly nudged me and I snapped out of the trance. He'd placed a box filled to the f*****g brim with a bunch of band-aids.

"Do you want one?" he said, with a dorky grin. "For luck? Or in case you scrape yourself or something?" I looked at him with slanted eyebrows. That seemed to trigger Miles into another fit of worrying. "Gosh, I'd hate to be responsible for an injury. Oh, God, I'd really hate it if you didn't take one... what if you fell into a trench or something? Or get attacked by a wild animal? O-Or-"

I took a handful and stuffed them into the pocket of my shorts to shut him up, silently laughing. Miles watched me do so, blushed a bit, and smiled as best he could.

"Uh, sorry about that," he said, chuckling. "But, like, I know the area well and you don't, and I'd really hate it if you got lost or injured on my watch. Promise me you'll stay by my side?"

I nodded.

"You absolutely promise?"

Bigger nod.

Miles sighed, relieved. "Alright. I trust you. Thanks, Tango."

He finally took his eyes off the road to look me in the eyes and smile. He was kind of cute; there was a weird, nerdy little vulnerability to him. I grinned back.

Miles suddenly looked back at the road, screamed, and swerved back onto the road suddenly enough to nearly jostle me out of my seat even in spite of the seat belt. My heart leaping, I steadied myself as Miles got back on the road, slowing down and catching his breath. His eyes were wide and he was white as a sheet, his eyes now very much locked on the road.

Airhead.

When we got to the road cutting through the walls, we stopped by the security booth built into the side of the wall itself. It was manned by a guy in a navy-blue cap and sleek, navy-shaded aviators, his eyes hidden much the same way as Mint's behind the lenes and a bushy chestnut moustache covering most of his stern upper lip. The guard leaned a bit out of the booth and looked us over.

"Heading out?" he said.

Miles held up his identification card. "Yeah. Uh, just going a bit out to enjoy the scenery and talk a bit."

The guard smirked upon recognizing Miles. "As usual, Mr. Everence? I see you're bringing your friend this time?"

"Yeah," he replied. "Gotta talk to them about registration."

The guard shrugged. "Alright. Be careful." He snickered under his breath. "Like I have to tell you."

Miles nodded and we drove into the tunnel cutting through the walls. The beaming sun was replaced with the hazy orange glow of the lights lined at the sides of the tunnel. A minute or two went by and we came out on the other side. The road we were on was now directly outside Haven and wound right into the forest. A pleasant, natural smell entered my nose upon rolling down the window, kind of a strange sensation after being cooped up in Haven for so long, the trees around us covered in snow and a touch of winter in the air. There didn't seem to be anyone else out, and after a good fifteen minutes of slowly cruising by in the woods and observing the scenery, Miles abruptly pulled to the side of the road and parked on the edge of the grass. He stepped out and I followed, confused.

"Like the scenery?" Miles asked as he gently closed the door and slung a pack over his shoulders. "It's nice to get out of the feel of constant supervision and just amble out into the woods. I feel free out here. And I'm still safe because I'm still being watched! Isn't that a win-win?" he said, with a weird smile on his face.

I didn't really know what part of being perpetually monitored eased Miles' paranoid mind. If anything, that should have made his paranoia even worse. But I suppose both the bureau and the Mayor had done a reasonably good job of protecting us all. It wasn't fun being watched. But life was still fairly casual. At least you could say the people watching us actually cared about us instead of some hellish New Oceania-esque society where everyone was oppressed for the sake of it. I wondered if life would return to how it had been previously if the Phantom was ever cured. Likely not; damage from these sorts of things did take a hell of a long time to heal. Humanity did have a tendency to bounce back from a lot of nasty s**t, though.

Miles started off down deeper into the woods, cutting into the trees as I followed. It was mildly chilly and I started craving a sweater.

"You know," Miles begun, as he walked, "I've, uh, actually been coming here for a long while now. Just shy of a year. The local area's been cleared of the Phantom, so I like just... getting out and stretching without having to worry about something going wrong for once."

I felt a compulsion to tell him the closest quarantine center was a mere eighteen miles from here. Then again, with the recent security breach and how that'd already affected him, it was probably best to skip on it. I listened intently as he poured his thoughts onto me.

"I'm scared of this world, Tango. I miss Dad. I'm scared something like that will happen to Mom, or me, or someone else, and it'll all just come crashing down. I keep thinking about that horrible stuff every single time I go to sleep. Those intrusive thoughts keep me up and I hate it. It's all as sudden as one minor event... you know? One small thing and everything can suddenly change. Something as simple as a stray bullet or a wrong turn or a misplaced document can alter things so that they're never the same. That's... That's what happened with Dad." He sighed. "I shouldn't be talking about this, but I need someone to listen. I'm sorry for putting you into a position you probably don't even want to be in."

I lightheartedly brushed it off and gave him a smile. I couldn't talk worth s**t, so I guess I was a good person to listen. Besides, he was my friend and I didn't like seeing him down any more than I liked seeing Mint or Jilton or whoever down. I'd known him for about four months, ever since me and the other ragtags had first been brought here. I still hadn't told him about all the stuff that had happened to me; about Ash, about the program, about my own father using me as a test subject. He knew that I'd been flown in from the east, I was the kid of Tara Waits – who, as I'd discovered, was sort of f*****g famous for being one of the senior members of Paradise Association proper – and I was an immune. I wondered that if he was thinking that if he told his personal troubles to me, I'd do the same to him. Perhaps we'd reached that point. Either way, I had a feeling we hadn't just have come out for talk of registration. Miles wanted something more.

We finally stopped at a small, snow-covered clearing. A single stump poked out of the ground at the highest point of the clearing, and Miles walked over. He sat on it and tapped it, beckoning me over and sliding over as best he could. I leaned down on it and sat next to him, still confused.

"I come here to think," Miles said. "This place, uh, has a weird effect on me. Normally, when I'm alone to my own thoughts... I just worry. I fret. I can't get over my anxiety. But when I'm here, I just feel... at ease. Peaceful, even. I don't think of all that bad stuff here. That's why I come here."

I gave him a look and then pointed to myself to ask why the f**k I was relevant to this. He raised an eyebrow. "You? Um... oh. Oh, yeah, you've probably figured this goes beyond just talk of getting a job." He laughed and scratched the back of his neck. "Sorry. Needed to get Mint off our tail. You know they're worried about you."

I shrugged. That's what friends were for.

"I can see why," Miles said. "They're a good person. They're on top of things, they're controlled... They're a lot of things I wish I could be, actually. I think I consider them more a role model than a casual friend. You, though... You I consider a true friend. You're more like me, Tango. I know you worry. I know you don't want to change what you've already gotten used to. Believe me, I can relate."

I snorted in humor. Miles looked at his shoes. "Tango, man, I feel close to you. Do you feel close to me?"

I nodded, still not really picking up why the hell this conversation was happening. Miles smiled. "That's good. That... That makes me happy. I sometimes worry that you or the others don't care about me. It's not just the stuff that could go wrong I get anxious about. It's the stuff that might already be wrong." He scoffed. "Ah, but what do I know? I'm just a big old worrywart."

We both laughed and leaned on the stump. We looked to the sky above, half-covered by trees. The sky was half-blue and half-white, sunbeams streaking across the winter sky as some thin clouds started to set in and flecks of snow started to gently drift down from above.

"Nice, isn't it?" Miles said. "Winter carries a certain atmosphere to it... I like just basking in this sort of day and just letting my troubles evaporate."

I nodded to agree with him, even though this was my first time doing it. This was a pretty damn peaceful set-up. The birds chirping, the slight chill of the snow and wind, the feeling of relaxation and the absence of stress; it was all quite wonderful. I could tell, in the midst of it all, Miles was trying to find some way to continue the conversation to a certain point he wanted it to come to.

"Uh... you feeling good, then?" he asked, a little more awkwardly.

I leaned over and tilted my head to him, my eyes narrowed. I winked at him with a content smile over my face and put my hand behind my head, causing Miles to chuckle a bit.

"Good," he said. "Hmm..."

Another brief silence.

"Uh, Tango?" Miles suddenly asked.

I looked over at him again. He started fumbling over his words again.

"Look, uh... you don't have to like, answer me here, but... well, I don't want to come on too strong, but-"

There was a sudden bang through the woods. Miles immediately sat himself up, alert and freaking out. I jumped, slid off the stump, and rolled over onto my face in the snow.

Nice.

I stood up, dusting the snow off my face and out of my goddamned clothes as Miles called out. "W-Who's there? Is s-s-someone!?..."

There was another brief moment of silence. Then, I could see a moving shape coming at us from the trees ahead. I realized about a second too late the silhouette was, in fact, a person. The figure tripped on a log before she could reach the clearing and fell onto her face just as a trio of other figures seemingly materialized from the snow itself, stepping from the trees and hounding her. Miles started to panic and hyperventilate, but I found it in myself in what I retroactively considered an incredibly stupid move to lunge over to the figure and confront the other figures. The person who'd tripped got up, dazed. She was female, from the looks of it, wild, stringy ginger hair, blue eyes – one of which was black and swollen – and bruises over her figure. She was wearing a pink sweater and what looked like a partially torn white shirt underneath, splotched with blood and part of her jeans cut. Before I could begin to talk to her, another person stepped out from the trees and silenced the other three.

He looked mean. Really, really mean. He had pale skin, slanted amber eyes that reminded me strikingly of Ash's, and a featureless, rippling black bandanna wrapped around his mouth. His grayish-black hair was mangy and all over the place, utterly filthy by the looks of it. He was clad in a dark-green poncho, what looked to be spotted camouflage wear, his hands and upper arms covered in skin-tight black gloves and a metallic gray belt binding some filthy-ass jeans to his body. He had a couple of things tied to the belt: a gun, for starters, a water bottle filled with toxic-looking water, a combat knife, a flashlight, all generally s**t one might have taken if they were intending on going out in the wild. Maybe the guy was a traveler. But his animal-looking eyes and his unkempt appearance told me he certainly wasn't a friendly face.

The girl who'd tripped immediately darted behind me as the wild-haired f**k and his cronies, each ratty-looking loons clad in rags and belts, approached us. Neither of us said anything for a long time. Miles was utterly quiet, the girl silently whimpered behind me, and none of these assholes said anything. Finally, the wild-haired shithead spoke, his bandanna vaguely shifting as he did.

"You. You're with the town up ahead, I take it?" he asked in a low, slick voice. I was expecting him to sound a little more like Ash, with the tone of some snarling, crude accent and the feel of a chainsaw. This guy didn't sound that crude, though. His voice was smooth, deep, and bizarrely civilized for someone who looked like he walked off the set of f*****g Mad Max.

I nodded my head frantically. His eyes looked to behind me. Then he quietly grunted.

"Pleasant," he said, a dry sarcasm apparent in his voice. "We don't need to spill blood here. Give us the girl and you can go back without getting hurt," he said, his words lethal and his offer unshakable.

There wasn't going to be any form of a negotiation. I took one look at the beaten-up girl behind me, knew these savages didn't want to do anything friendly with her, and I shook my head again with a terrified scowl on my face. The wild-haired dude's eyebrows furrowed a bit.

"You want to protect her?" he asked, apparently for clarity.

I nodded. He took a step forth and I felt my heart drop. Then, one of his cronies behind him called out.

"Oi, boss! They got those key cards, remember?" he said. "If we loot 'em now, the Association's gonna be on our asses! Plus-"

The wild-haired fuckaroonie looked behind at him and silenced him with a quick glare. "Aye."

He turned back to us and seemed to consider things. He looked me over for a few seconds, causing me to tremble even f*****g more, then his eyes darted to Miles, who was quivering his ass off. The wild-haired f**k narrowed his eyes, then he looked at me.

"Alright," he said, not raising his voice or even seeming particularly angry. "You can have her." The girl's eyes widened. The wild-haired man stepped back, his voice now with a harsh edge. "We'll be back, though. We'll take her. No matter how many bodies have to drop in the process."

The man turned, snapped his fingers, and darted off into the woods. The men diverged into three separate paths, the wild-haired loony darted back into the deeper woods, and they were gone. The atmosphere was still markedly tense, though.

Not three seconds after they'd vanished, predictably, Miles began to panic. "Oh God, oh God, oh God, those w-were raiders..." he said, stammering. "W-We haven't seen people like those in m-months!"

I let Miles freak the f**k out. My target of concern was the beaten-up girl, who was still standing wide-eyed behind me. She was sweating like crazy, her hair in a tangle and a portion of her jeans cut off and wrapped over her arm. Me and her eyed each other for a little bit as Miles devolved into a frantic panic attack a bit away from us. Finally, the girl spoke.

"You're... You're, uh, from the town, aren't you?..." she asked, her raspy voice cautious and quavering. I nodded to indicate so and pointed out towards the forest, in the direction of where that psychotic f**k and his cronies had dashed to. The girl looked where I was pointing and caught the hint.

"Your friend was right," she said, nervously sighing. "Raiders. The one with the bandanna is named Jango. Razed my village because they were looking for me."

Miles took a step towards the girl, throwing up his arms in a fit. "W-Why? Why have they come back? What do you have to do with them?"

The girl came a little closer to me. "...I should speak to your own town's head about that. Haven, right?"

Miles seemed to calm down ever so slightly. "Yes... We're, uh, not a mile out. Now, uh, do you have any registration, or, uh..."

The girl was already perking up. "Wonderful! We need to go. Immediately. Before they show up again, y'know. Jango doesn't take prisoners." Amid Miles incredulous look – obviously he wanted some questions answered, the paranoid little s**t – the girl turned to look at me. She came a little suddenly, but when I opened my eyes next I realized she was suddenly hugging me, rather tightly. She wasn't much bigger than me, actually pretty scrawny, but my own bread-thin body cracked under her grip.

Two minutes and apparently I was already her best friend. f*****g wonderful.

I did my best to audibly cough (although even that was pretty bloody quiet) and the girl cleared her throat. "Thank you for saving me. Really. I would've been dead meat if it wasn't for you guys." She tilted her head. "Don't believe I got a name from you?..."

I was about to indicate, for the millionth time, that I couldn't talk, when Miles – flustered, from the look of it – mercifully spoke for me. "Their name's Tango. Mine's Miles."

The girl smiled at Miles. "Mine's Celia Wilde. Lived in a settlement not far from here. Emphasis on 'lived...' Jango's raiders torched it. I know most of the people got out okay, but I got separated."

"Then we should probably find those people and get you to a facility pronto," Miles said. "We need to get you scanned, tested, registered, and don't even get me started on the bodily-"

Celia was already starting off. "No need! I need to talk to Haven's head. Pleasant or whatever? I've got information he needs to know. Stat. Now's a good a time as any. Come on!"

I looked at Celia, glanced at Miles, and started off after her. Miles hurriedly followed after me, stuttering.

"W-W-Wait, Tango! T-Tango, we s-still need to get her... I m-mean, like, if they're, and if, uh... on the o-off chance that she might be infect-"

I turned around and gave Miles a look that told him everything I wanted to say. She looked f****d. Jango probably wouldn't feel merciful for much longer. The sooner she was cared for – the better. I continued running after them as Miles followed me, panicked.

"W-Wait, you guys! The car's t-the other way!" he screeched, his voice echoing across the woods.