Chapter Twenty-Five

She had worried that she would slow the caravan down, given that many were in gasoline powered vehicles and she was on horseback, but she quickly realized she shouldn’t have. With the dodgy state of the vehicles and the lack of maintained roads, they crawled across the landscape. Still, the convoy looked impressive; functioning automobiles were not unheard of, but refined gas was harder and harder to come by and she had not seen one in many years. It occurred to her that her younger cousins would get a thrill from seeing them arrive, and she felt a pang of homesickness. Her old life seemed very far away.

There were perhaps two dozen of them, along with Haojing, Clay, and Simon, who had described them merely as “loyalists.” Most were younger than the average member of the Colony, and carried themselves with the practiced air of technicians and soldiers. She was slightly disappointed that Carl and Wei were not among them, but she knew that they were not the soldiering type. A battered cargo van carried computer equipment and battery packs. A pickup truck trundled along beside it, a metal rack for kayaks having been welded into its bed, on which were strapped long thin metal boxes, padlocked shut. Clay rode in a the back of a Jeep, strapped in to a seat facing backwards, the front occupied by a driver and a woman in aviator sunglasses manning a machine gun that had been installed to the frame. It was the only obvious defensive capability for their caravan. Haojing knew it was sensible to be armed, but she still felt unease when she saw the gun. Whatever this convoy might have been, it was not subtle.

The whole thing struck her as excessive, and not for the first time she wished that she and Simon could have traveled together, alone. Surely he could have conducted most of the work himself. But she reminded herself that Clay saw this as the start of a much larger mission for his organization, and besides, she had come begging for help and had no right to complain.

One way or another, it was a thrill to be a part of something. As they passed people on the road, who hurried by and averted their gaze, she felt guilty for disturbing them – and more guilty for liking the feeling of being feared. For a time she permitted herself to fantasize about where they might go next, with a healthy Long Fei by her side, this group of adventurers wandering the landscape, righting wrongs.

The fantasy could not last. The trip was long and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Several times the van got stuck, and the group had to push to free it from the mud or the rocks. The first time she got down to help, Simon protested that it wasn’t necessary, but by the third time or so, he just grunted his assent as she lent her shoulder. A young engineer with prosthetic arms grinned as his pneumatic limbs pushed with a satisfying sound of compressed air. Even Clay did his part, despite his age, leaning in his shoulder, pushing with his own cybernetic arm. Her horse, for his part, was well-behaved and proceeded on the journey with the same bored apathy she was used to.

At night, they would camp out in the brush. That first night some of the younger members of the Colony built a fire, gathering stones from a ridge and laying them out in a ring, then gathering sticks and logs together for fuel. In short order the whole group was sitting around a blazing fire, like something out of her father’s books on settlers and pilgrims in the ancient past. It seemed incongruous, to her, to see these people with their cybernetic hearts lit by fire on a wooded hill. Some of them talked quietly among themselves, but generally it was quiet. Haojing was content to sit curled up against the trunk of a tree, wrapped in a blanket that had been offered for her. Clay sat at the head of the fire, slightly elevated above the rest, looking distant and serene with his halo of white flowing hair touched by shadows from the dancing firelight. At times Haojing caught herself thinking of his facial prosthesis as a kind of mask, imagining to herself that right below its smooth surface sat his human face, natural and untouched. She kept one eye on her horse, as usual, and drifted off to a deep and satisfying sleep.

When they started spotting familiar landmarks that meant her village was near, she found both her excitement and her anxiety increasing. At times she felt she could not bear all the feelings, the chance for all this effort to come to fruition. At one point her hands went numb and she realized that she was grasping the reins so tightly that they had dug deep impressions into her skin. She found she could not picture the home that she ached to return to.

Soon, she would not have to. They rounded a grove of trees she knew as well as anything in her world, which with the changing calendar and changing climate shrank and grew and changed and didn’t, but which she was nevertheless intimately familiar with, and the rusting truck came into view.

As they rolled into town, she was unsurprised to see concern on the face of the villagers they passed, given the motley and threatening appearance of their caravan. Even still, she was taken aback by the sullen looks of those she knew and was cordial with, the distrust and unhappiness that was obvious on their faces. People rushed away from the caravan as it approached. She waved to a woman she had known for most of her life, someone she would have considered a friend, but she simply turned and scuttled inside her tent. As they passed through the center of town, she grimaced at the state of the computer shed, its roof still lying unclaimed next to the building, the debris and mess left untouched and unrepaired. She could not say if the sense of doom had come along with their convoy, or if it had hung in the air since before she had left. All she could do was to remind the members of the Colony to try their best to appear unthreatening, to show that they meant no harm.

Her mood brightened when her eyes fell, finally, on her family home. As she approached, she caught the familiar sight of her younger cousins playing in the grass in front. They spotted the caravan and scattered, running towards the house, except for one, a cousin she knew and liked well. He stood staring from behind an old fence post, which sat lonely in the yard, the fence it had once supported having long since wandered away for other projects. As they drew up to the house, the gunner in the Jeep gave him a thumbs up, which he returned reverentially. When he saw Haojing on top of her horse, his eyes widened, and she could not help but laugh. She dismounted quickly and grabbed him up in a hug.

A few awkward words with her aunt, a more-successful introduction with Clay – who was, she found, capable of being quite charming when needed, despite the intensity of his appearance – and within the hour, the Colony was setting up in their yard. She felt a sudden shot of panic that they would trample her mother’s garden, but was impressed with the workmanlike manner in which they went about their business, erecting tents and deploying the vehicles in a horseshoe pattern in the space. If they were as inexperienced as Simon had said, they were at least well practiced.

It was while they were setting their equipment up that she spotted Mac, emerging from the nearby woods, carrying a sack of mushrooms. His injured arm still dangled in the sling, but he looked healthy otherwise. His hands were dirty from rooting in the soil, and he wore a set of dingy overalls. He gave off the impression of a lifelong farmer, and it suited him. He smiled broadly when he saw her and she embraced him without hesitation. They walked over to a favorite stump of hers to chat freely.

“Nice horse,” Mac said, admiring him from where he stood tethered by the side of the house, his tail swishing in satisfaction as he drank from a makeshift trough.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What’s his name?”

She paused. The question had never occurred to her.

“Ummm….” she said, pondering. “Jelly.”

He smiled.

“Great name.” He cast a look around at the spectacle of the Colony setting up. “Well, I guess you found your help.”

“I think so, yes,” she said softly, feeling somehow self-conscious. “I did my best.”

She told him about her journey and the Colony, though she did not mention getting caught in the walled city. He sat impassively, nodding along, as she filled him in.

“You trust him, then,” he said finally.

She shrugged.

“I don’t have a choice. I do think he’s a good man. But whether he is or not, this is the only chance Long Fei has.”

He nodded again, and she felt glad for his simple acceptance. She tried to imagine how her mother would have reacted to her story, if her mother were here. But her mother was not here.

“How’s my aunt?” she said, squinting at him in the dimming light.

“She’s, well….” he said gruffly. “She’s not a fan of mine. But she’s been good for the boys, and she’s put up with a lot. She’s not what I would call cheery but she’s adapting. Everyone is.”

“The boys look good.”

“The boys are fine. They’re good kids,” he said. “But they’re tired of being cooped up, stuck in the house.”

“Why haven’t you taken them out, then? Just around the village?”

“Things have been tense. Really tense, in the village.”

“I noticed. I guess it’s natural, with what happened.”

He shook his head.

“It’s not just that. The village, there’s a rumor – they think the drone came for your family, specifically. Looking for your house. They think you drew it here.”

“What?” she said, flushing with anger. “That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“I know that,” he said. “Of course I know that. But they don’t.”

He nodded towards the Colony.

“And this isn’t gonna help any,” he said.

She suddenly felt very tired.

“Well,” he said. “There’s nothing to do about it now. It’ll be alright.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

“You, uh… you think they brought food?”

She bit her lip for a minute, then barked out a laugh.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, they brought food. Why, you not into those mushrooms?”

He grimaced.

“I feel like I’ve dug ever last mushroom out of that forest,” he said. “We’re fine – there’s oats, and the garden’s doing OK. But there hasn’t been a lot of trading to speak of lately.”

“Well, I’ll introduce you and see if you can get some of their rations,” she said, smiling.

“Thanks,” he said. “But I think you have someone you need to visit with first.”

She studied her feet.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I just…. I dunno, I’m scared to see him. I don’t know why.”

“I understand,” he said.

“How is he?” she asked.

“He’s OK,” he said. “He has bad days. It’s hard to get him to eat. But he’s OK.”

He stood up and extended his hand, pulling her to her feet off of the stump.

“It’ll be fine,” he said, and wandered off to leave her to her task.

His room was lit by an oil lamp, the last of the daylight disappearing through the window. He had bartered for the lamp from a half-crazed peddler who had camped on the edge of the village for a summer, carefully collecting unbroken glassware from everywhere he could scavenge to trade. Generally it was more efficient to put all of the gas one could get their hands on into the family generator, but Long Fei was such a diligent worker for the family, and had taken so many turns running and maintaining the gasifier, that no one begrudged him his lamp. Now that he was so often bedridden, with nothing to do but read, it had become even more essential to his life.

“I saw you arrive,” he said, as she crept quietly up to his bed. “It was quite a sight.”

“We do make a scene, don’t we?” she said, and grabbed him in a fierce embrace.

They stayed up until the late hours of the night, talking about the time they had been apart. She told him her story, every step of it, telling him about her long journey, her fears, her success. His eyes widened at times as she spoke, and he prompted her with a few short questions, but was mostly content to listen. When she told him about Simon, and about Clay, and how they had agreed to help, he betrayed no emotions, only nodding along quietly. But she knew him well enough to know how he must be feeling inside. Finally she came to it.

“They knew our father,” she said.

“And he’s dead,” he said, quietly.

“Yes,” she said. “They found the body.”

He only nodded, then took her hand in his own.

“We’re the ones who have to remember them, now,” he said. “You and me. We have to tell their stories.”

“Yeah,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed that she was sitting next to him.

“Like the time he accidentally poisoned her tomatoes,” he said.

A shot of laughter, wild and perfect, rang through her whole body, and he joined her, laughing along with her, wheezing as he did.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

And so they spoke for hours, telling each other the stories they both already knew, getting the details just right. At last, well past midnight, she said goodbye and headed out his door. For a long while she stopped and waited there, looking at the flickering light under his door, hearing the faint noises of his hub as it kept him alive, listening to him breathe.