Penny Candles

Chapter 1June, 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?”