Whisperworld
Chapter 14
Someone was shaking me. It was gentle and didn’t seem very important, so I kept sleeping and hoped that whoever it was would just go away. Awake was a place full of hunger and thirst and guilt and fear. Sleep was a soft, dark place. Sometimes the dreams were confusing, but it was safe.
The shaking didn’t stop, though. It was getting rougher, more urgent, so I decided to get it over with and wake up before whoever it was shook me into little pieces. I cracked open my eyes and squinted against the bright white sky. I moved my too-heavy head until it was protected from the sun by the silhouette leaning over me. My eyes adjusted reluctantly, but I recognized Zach’s square jaw and flat-brimmed hat before he even spoke.
“Julia, are you awake?” he asked.
“Yes,” I groaned. “And it’s your fault.”
“Are you okay? You look like shit.”
“Fuck you. I’m rosy.”
I sat up gingerly and only managed it with a great deal of help from Zach. I vaguely recalled keeling over in the middle of open sands, but the sky here wasn’t as bright as I first thought and we were in the shade. Zach must have moved me. We were sitting near a section of old overpass that had collapsed long ago, but he had chosen carefully and the ancient structure didn’t seem like it could fall down much more.
I looked Zach over. The bruises on his face had darkened to purple, but they were already healing to an unpleasant yellow color around the edges. He had a crossbow with a full quiver and his belt was hung with a pair of canteens. He took one and handed it to me, then helped me raise it to my lips when my hands proved too unsteady to do it on their own.
Zach pulled the canteen away before I could drink too much and make myself sick, but my stomach cramped anyway. I clenched my teeth as hard as I could and kept the water down. Zach waited before he gave me another drink.
“Slowly,” he said.
I took small sips and swished the water around my parched mouth until it lost all coolness before swallowing. I felt life seeping back into my body. But with life came pain — the ache in my head was deep and my left leg was stiff, pulsing with agony. I sagged into the sand and rolled over onto my good side.
Other than the bruises, Zach looked like he’d come out of his escape much better than me. He opened a pouch on his belt and unwrapped a slice of prickly pear cactus. I’d have preferred the pear itself, but the paddle-shaped leaf was a lot tastier than my last meal.
“Where did you get this?” I asked. My voice still cracked, but came out a bit stronger with use. “Did you find it out here, or get it off one of the Blackthumbs?”
“I…” Zach trailed off and looked away.
The expression across his broad face was unhappy. He must have gotten his supplies the same way as I had — by killing other Greenguard. I guess we were lucky that one of them had been carrying lunch when he escorted us out to our deaths.
I ate the green cactus slowly. Zach had grown up poor like me and had fought his way into the Greenguard, but the difference between us was that he wanted to be there. Some of the other Blackthumbs gave Zach a hard time because of his background, but I think they were afraid he would kick their collective asses if they pushed their luck. And he could have.
But what they never understood was that Zach wouldn’t do that. He believed in the Greenguard. He wanted to protect the people of the Whisperward.
I could only imagine how much it hurt Zach to fight other Blackthumbs, people that he thought of as brothers and sisters. I put my hand on his arm and squeezed gently. The thick muscles were as taut as a drawn crossbow.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I told him. “I’m just glad you’re alive, Zee.”
“Julia… I…”
Zach looked down at me with dark, wet eyes. I didn’t know if that wound would ever heal. I gave his thick arm one last reassuring squeeze and did the only thing I could to help — I changed the subject.
“What now, Zee?” I gestured around us. “I have no idea where the hell we are. A long way out from Angel City, I guess.”
Zach adjusted his hat. The leather was looking more dusty and sun-faded than I’d ever seen it. He squinted out at the broken ruins.
“We’re about two days from the Whisperward,” Zach said.
“I’ve been wandering around out here for three days, at least,” I protested.
“More like four, Julia. But mostly in circles.”
I flipped Zach off, but I did it with a smile. It was good not to be alone out here anymore and I was happier to see Zach than I could ever have put into words.
“So we’re close enough to get back to Angel City. But they’ll kill us as soon as we get through the gates,” I said.
Zach nodded. I sighed and finished off the cactus, wondering if Zach had any more.
“Do you think we could make it up to Boulder City?” I asked. “If their Stormsphere is still working and anyone’s even there. What’s the next ‘Ward after that? Wind City?”
Zach shook his head. “Too far. We don’t have the supplies to make it halfway to Boulder, much less Wind City.”
“There has to be a way to live out here. The Whitefingers do it all the time. I know there are animals to catch. There might be wild cactus, too.”
“What about the Whitefingers?” asked Zach.
“Um… what about them?” I didn’t understand Zach’s question. “I don’t really know how they survive outside the Whisperwards, but–”
“No, that’s not what I…” Zach hesitated. “Do you think we could find them?”
My first thought was that it wouldn’t be at all bad to see Kiyu again. It wasn’t often that I met a woman who caught my interest. And even when I was done admonishing myself for thinking with my cunny, Zach’s idea still made some sense. The Whitefingers had been fair to us as captives. Jacks and his people hadn’t tortured us. They even fed us and tended our wounds. But I doubted the wastelanders would be very happy to see us, even if we knew where to find them.
“We’re Greenguard, Zach. We hunt them. I’m not sure they would help us.”
“Julia, you know we’re not Greenguard anymore.”
I flinched at the bitterness in Zach’s tone. Did he feel as betrayed as I did? Even more, I suspected. He had been loyal to the Gardeners and the Greenguard from the beginning, right up to the point where they chained him to a stake to die. Zach had even been yelling at me about killing Woods, I seemed to recall.
“Aren’t you afraid of the Whitefingers?” I asked.
“Yes,” he admitted. “And you should be, too. But I have no other choice.”
I felt like shit. He was right. Zach had dedicated his life to the Greenguard and the Gardeners, but lost it all because of me.
“Alright, Zee,” I said. “Let’s see if the Whitefingers will take us in. Any idea where the hell to find them?”
Zach helped me to my feet — noting that at least I had lost some weight — but I had to hop around for a bit until my legs worked properly again. When he asked how bad it was, I had to confess that I didn’t really know. I bit my lip and dropped my pants so he could take a look. I blushed hard, but it was Zach.
He peeled away the bandages I had made and cleaned the wounds free of crusted blood and sand. Fortunately, Woods hadn’t cut me too deeply. It was a jagged slash from the bottom of my left ass cheek to a point an inch or two above the back of my knee. The cut was long, but shallow. The one on my hip was about the length of my finger and only a little deeper. The muscles weren’t damaged, as far as Zach could tell, so when my leg stopped hurting, I probably wouldn’t keep the limp.
Zach couldn’t find any signs of infection, either. He cut some clean new bandages from his own undershirt and then re-wrapped my leg.
“You’ve been lucky so far, Julia,” Zach told me. “But you’re going to need medicine to stay that way.”
I couldn’t face my partner as I pulled my pants back up, but I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Zach’s expression was perfectly neutral. I should have known that I could trust him not to be a pervert even with me sticking my ass in his face. Zach scanned the horizon in a slow circle.
“I think I can at least get us back to where we lost the girl last time,” he said. “You know, where you were supposed to meet me. We can start there.”
Zach set out, walking slowly so I could keep up. It was already midday and I wondered how much ground we would be able to cover. I felt bad for dragging Zach down yet again.
“Well, at least we can tell the Whitefingers we delivered their message,” I said. “They might even be hoping for a response. Maybe we can use that to get their help.”
“And hope they don’t throw us out into a sandstorm when we tell them Thorn ignored us.”
“Yeah,” I chuckled. It faded quickly.
Thorn hadn’t simply ignored us. Woods and the other Blackthumbs, even Gregory, seemed nervous and afraid at the warning, to think that Angel City might be the next Whisperward to fall. But Thorn hadn’t looked surprised at all. Like he already knew exactly what was going on.
“Zee?” I asked.
Zach grunted in response.
“Did Thorn seem surprised to you when we told him what the Whitefingers said?” I asked. “That the Whispers were dying?”
Zach thought for a moment. “No, not really. I suppose the Gardeners would be the first to know if there was something wrong with the Tear.”
“And not tell anyone about it?”
“Tell anyone? What could he say? Everyone in Angel City is frightened enough with the stories of other Whisperwards failing. What do you want Thorn to do? Start a panic? Send everyone away, out into the desert and storms?”
“No…” I agreed reluctantly. “I guess not. But Thorn knew that the Whitefingers were right. He lied to the Greenguard when he said we were tainted.”
Zach winced, but nodded grimly. “Yeah, he did.”
“He’s hiding something.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what?”
“No, Julia. I don’t know what’s going on. I just want to find the Whitefingers and get this done.”
I limped on in silence for several minutes, replaying Thorn’s interrogation over and over again in my head. My thoughts were a little less sandy now and a bit more of the scene in the High Gardener’s office was coming back to me. He hadn’t seemed surprised at the Whitefinger’s warning, so why did Thorn ask us questions about it? Because he wanted to find out how much the Whitefingers knew. Once we told him that, Thorn stopped questioning us and pronounced sentence.
Something else was nagging at me.
“Zee, do you remember what Thorn said at the end? Something about wandering the wastes?”
“The High Gardener said that he refused to see his people wandering the desert like animals. He thinks they deserve better than being prey to storms and mutant creatures,” Zach answered.
“No! That’s close, though,” I said, and then I remembered. “He said he refused to see our people go back to the desert.”
I smiled. I had found it. And I had no idea what it meant.
“Go… back?” asked Zach.
“After God’s Wrath, He was supposed to have wept the Tears, right? According to the Gardeners, that’s the only reason anyone is still alive.”
“His compassion saved us,” Zach said.
“That’s what the Gardeners tell us. So when exactly did people wander the Earth?”
“The Whitefingers do,” Zach pointed out.
I could tell he didn’t like that thought very much. The Whitefingers lived outside the Whisperwards and if I remembered what Thorn had said correctly, did that mean we had all been Whitefingers once?
I limped a little faster. Maybe Kiyu and her people knew even more than we thought.
