Chapter 7

Beyond the quiet desert town, past shifting sands and clouds of smog and dust and what might have once passed for cleansing rain, there was a body. The rain and the wind and the sand had done their best to rip the skin away, leaving the meat and organs exposed for the scavengers, not all of which could be classified as animal. There were tooth marks on the thigh and bicep muscles, rangy as they were, that were a testament to the humanoid scavengers that had tried the body and disregarded it. These gourmets preferred something more supple for the palate. But none of these elements, none of these 'natural' dangers had killed the once living form.


They couldn't have cared less for the bag full of bobbles that the man had once carried, and even ignored the crusty half loaf of bread and wilted, dried herbs hanging from the strap of the bag. In fact there was nothing of value but the body itself, and the wind and the sun had shriveled even that to leather.


A skin and bones bobcat sat in the crag of a large pile of stones, barely moving but for the occasional rasp of her tongue over a wounded paw, and the twitch of her tail. Her eyes watched as the wind lifted and tossed the flap of the dead thing's bag, knowing that the smell meant it was dead, but the movement still kept her interest. She had ventured from her hiding spot as soon as the sun went down to sniff at the body. But it had been too long dead and sundried to provide nourishment and after batting it a few times she had retreated back to the stones, a place more and more likely to become her tombstone.


Venturing from the mountains had been a mistake, but the prize had overwhelmed her sense of caution. Now, there were no kits to return to, her mate had died long ago, there were no new males worthy, and none of them had shown interest. They had moved farther north, closer to water and ready food. The two other females among them could feed the pack and bear their young. There was nothing left but this mildly amusing dead thing that was somehow not entirely dead, and the long cool night.


She had almost fallen into restful slumber when the lights swept across her face, cutting through the haze and repeating over and over again. A line of lights that moved through the desert without pausing or slowing. The lights were followed by dark shapes that growled and grumbled, marking their turf with angry snarls, then bafflingly, leaving the turf behind. A dark, unpleasant fog followed them before it was caught by the wind and tossed out into the emptiness.


The lights and the noise moved away from the mountains, away from life, and toward the place of death. A place that stank of progress and settlement and the death of all things wild. The bobcat watched, her eyes growing heavy again with the need for sleep. She panted until the insistent beat of her heart slowed and her body relaxed, giving a final disdainful snort before she lay her head across her paws and closed out the night.




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A week had passed, a week full of routine and bodies becoming accustomed to the strain of caring for another human being. Rachel was comfortable around Jack, and yet, the thought of him there, the threat that his mere existence posed, made her more and more paranoid.


One positive development. He was healing, getting stronger; and faster than Rachel would have expected. He had pulled himself out of bed only two days before and Rachel was horrified when she brought his soup in that morning, to find him standing, pale and sweating, but on his own two feet. Worse, he hadn't merely been trying to get from point A to point B, he had been pacing. For almost an hour, Jack said.


When she found him attempting a pushup the next day, and prostrate on his back after trying more the following evening the frustration and fear boiled  into a directed anger that she pointed solely at him.


"You're a damned fool! Idiot!" She spat going to her knees beside him. "Are you trying to kill yourself? How much blood do I have to clean up? If I didn't care so much for clean floors I would let you bleed out." She snarled, ripping the stained but clean shirt back from the bandages, and roughly pushing them out of the way too. The wound, still red in some places, and not nearly healed  enough for the trauma he had been putting it through, was seeping. With a grunt Rachel pushed the bandages back down, using them as a compress while she turned blazing brown eyes back toward startled and pained blue.


"Do you know how dangerous this is? Do you? You came into this town riding a motorcycle."


The thought spilled out, harsh and fast, before Rachel realized that it was happening out loud, that her long internalized arguments were overflowing into the outside world.


"The boss knows about the bike. She knew three weeks ago, because every man in this town that wants to get ahead, does it by snitching to her. They've been looking for it all this time. When they find out that I've been hiding you up here..."


Jack winced, his eyes settling into a dull and desperate apology that he couldn't vocalize. Rachel looked down to her hands, to the blood spots appearing on the bandage, surprised to see Jack's hands there too, trying to push hers away.


Taking a sharp, deep breath she yanked her hands back. The minute he was free of her Jack started to backpedal, crabbing backward until he had the support of the wall behind his shoulders.

"I've been hiding you." She said, watching her hands begin to shake. "We've been hiding you. Because you didn't deserve to die, and I couldn't have a dead body in my attic. And because..." Her words ground to a halt behind tears preparing to spill, her anger not anywhere near depleted. "Because you're from the outside. You know things. You escaped some other town, you had to have to be here. And...and that picture."


He was getting his breathing under control, some color was returning to his face, his posture was relaxing just a little, and no new spots were appearing on the bandage. Rachel flushed, realizing that her angry actions might have done more damage than his premature exercise. His eyes closed for a moment, like he was thinking about passing out, then they opened again and she could see his teeth clenched behind the mustache.

"The picture of my son.." He said, his voice like a neglected two-stroke engine coughing to life.

Rachel nodded.

"Micah...?"

She nodded again feeling the misery, the depression she had been holding at bay for the longest time settle on her shoulders and sink into her bones.

"How old is he?"

Rachel raised her knees up, drawing them toward her chest, defending herself against an enemy that could penetrate any shield. She started to lie, the way she always did, the lie more familiar to her tongue than the truth. But something stopped her.

"He's seven-years-old." She said bitterly.

"Seven...you're hiding him too, then."

"I have a deal, sort of, with the boss. But the price is higher ten fold each year. I'm..." Her face flooded with heat. She'd be paying very dearly by next year, and she knew no price truly guaranteed Micah's freedom. It would only take one wrong move on Rachel's part for the deal to be broken.

"He's smart." Jack said, and this time the flash of teeth was more like a smile and less like a grimace. Rachel agreed not wanting to know how he knew.

"We don't have much time." Jack said, reaching his left hand up towards the bed, his right hand to the floor, working his way back to his feet before Rachel could stop him.

Chapter 6

"How long were you on the road?"

"Weeks, months....years. Stopped thinking in terms of time miles ago."

"I guess that makes sense. We don't really use clocks here either." Rachel was silent for a moment, picking at a loose thread as it unwound from the compress she'd been holding. "First bell, second bell. We go by the worker's schedule."

Jack nodded, worked a sip of soup into his mouth. He was good with his left arm, but his right arm he could move only with difficulty. Somehow the muscles in his torso were connected with the muscles in his arm. One affected the other, damaged the other.

"So the tavern downstairs-"

"Tavern?" Rachel snorted. She hadn't expected so antiquated a term to come from his mouth and thought he was likely mocking her. She watched his face for the grin but it didn't come right away. He had been in earnest and Rachel looked away quickly, embarrassed.

"Alright...what do you call it?"

"It's a restaurant, or at least it was. Still is."

He narrowed his eyes at her and she could no longer read his emotions. She quirked her head to the side and that strange yet comfortable silence started again. She'd had half a dozen lengthy conversations with Jack since he'd awakened three days before, this silence had become an unavoidable part of them.

"It's not open all the time though." Jack stated.

"No...we only open for the lunch and dinner bells, we're open late, so we close in the mornings."

"In the old days that wasn't a restaurant."

"It also wasn't a tavern."

Jack closed his eyes and leaned back against his pillows. Rachel let him rest for a moment, waiting for him to lift the cup to his lips once more. When he did she asked, "How far did you travel?"

Jack cleared his throat and made a noise of appreciation as the soup slid down it. "Far...I started near the east coast, worked my way north, then south again, then west." Jack's eyes slid over to look into hers but Rachel dropped his gaze. She knew what would come next. They still hadn't talked about it. Still hadn't addressed the words that Rachel had blurted in the attic room when she thought Jack was about to die.

When he saw that she wasn't exactly eager to launch into an explination he dropped his gaze to the soup bowl and sipped from it. He swallowed, leaned his head back looking drained.

"Soup is thinner today." He commented quietly.

"It's end-of-the-month soup." She said, matter of fact. There was this seperation between her and the rest of the world that she had begun to feel when Jack started talking.

She wanted to ask him everything.

What was life like out there beyond the desert? Were things worse or better than those around her imagined daily? What were the real plans of the government? When would the good times come again? When would the shipments get better?

All of them were things she could only assume he knew the answer to. Anyone from beyond the desert had to have answers. It was something they had all hoped for.

And yet she hadn't asked, and he obviously hadn't answered. And she sat there staring into the light of knowledge and freedom, that she had been dying for, afraid to step forward.

Jack had closed his eyes, his finger tapping against the side of the half-emptied bowl. His breathing was settling and after a moment Rachel realized that he was keeping himself awake, tapping with his finger that way.

She pursed her lips and reached forward with one hand, grabbing the bowl and gently pulling it from his hand, pressing her other palm against his forehead, sweeping the hair back. He was still warm, but it was a healthier warmth, the difference between a living body and a dead one.

Hooded eyes opened briefly, sluggishly roving to focus on Rachel before Jack passed out completely.

It didn't surprise her. A body on the mend did what it willed and once the energy was gone, it was gone.

"Small steps.." She mumbled to herself, cradling the bowl of lukewarm broth in both hands over her knees. "But to what end?" The question, and the severity that entered her voice surprised her.

Would he survive? There was a very real chance now. When he was better, would he leave? Would she let him? What about the bike, the boss, the unveiled threat posed against her son...his son?

Rachel watched him sleep, numb to the passing of time, her mind running through imagined scenario after scenario.

Jack dying despite his miraculous recovery. Her and Cookie in the dead of night finding the bike, turning it over to the boss, buying another year. Or finding the bike and using it to escape the town.

Jack living, taking Micah and running; all of them running. The boss and her henchmen giving chase. Their dead bodies stretched out across the desert basin, covered in sand.  Somehow there was never a happy ending to any of the possibilities.

Saving the stranger, that had been her first big mistake, she accepted this. But the mistake was made and the consequences long considered.

The cold, calculated intelligence that guided her through many a trade had vanished the moment another human life entered the equation. Some would say she was too soft to survive, not thinking enough about number one. The voice, she recalled, that had said that long ago had belonged to a woman of about twenty that Rachel had been traveling with the day she found Micah.

"It's dead weight." She had said. "Leave it."

When Rachel, halted with the toes of her sneakers mere inches from the head of the infant, failed to respond, her red headed traveling companion stopped too and turned.

"It'll be buzzard food in a coupl'a hours, and you ain't lactatin' sister." She'd said. Rachel couldn't remember her name, something ending in an "er".

Whoever she was, she had turned then and continued along the road leaving Rachel. Over her shoulder she'd delivered what should have been the final and convincing argument. "You're too soft, Rachel. Remember, always think about number one. They ain't room enough for any others."

But Rachel had knelt, pulled the stiff infant into her arms and pressed it..him, against her breast. In moments the child responded, squirming, melding into the supporting embrace, seeking out nourishment that she couldn't provide.

A heart that had begun to harden after too many losses melted just a little, and despite knowing that the baby would be trouble, Rachel also knew that she had made the right decision for once.

There in the room with Jack, the sun setting and glaring its final sadistic rays into the room, Rachel felt it again. A thrill of adrenalin spiking in her stomach. The choice was made, and she knew it was the right one.

Chapter 5

The door opened quietly behind her but Rachel didn't look up. She was counting and concentrating on the feel of the weak pulse under her finger tips. She'd already twice made the mistake of counting her own heart beat instead of that of the patient's. She did the resulting math quietly in her head, marked down the numbers at the bottom of a long list of similar numbers then analyzed the data.

There used to be machines that did this in a fraction of the time and with less reference to a worn medical book. Tucking his hand back under the blankets Rachel sighed, "Those times are long gone." She muttered to herself, then turned to see Micah poised halfway through the door. She smiled at him, encouraging him over the threshold that he had been told several days ago not to cross.

Micah walked cautiously toward the bed and the chair his mother sat in, staring at the pale bearded face against the pillow.

"He smells better." Micah whispered and Rachel grinned, poking two fingers into Micah's side until he giggled. 

"Cookie said he was finally well enough for a bath and we gave him one." She told him, a small measure of pride in her voice.

It had been a hassle and time consuming, and there had been some things deeply hidden under all the dirt that neither woman expected. But keeping his wound clean had been hell up to that point. Rachel only wished they had done it sooner.

"Did he wake up?" Bright blue eyes turned towards her and Rachel drew in a sudden breath at a memory that flashed through her mind. Micah as a toddler, asking question after question in pidgin English until he finally understood, and those same beautiful eyes would snap to attention and focus right on her. It was the first time she began to comprehend just how smart her boy was going to be.

"No, honey. He didn't...but he's doing a little better. Look at this." Rachel leaned easily toward the bedside table, pulling Micah onto her knee on the way back and settling against the chair. "These are his vitals. They're numbers that represent what his body is doing. If it's healing right, or if he's in distress."

"What's diss-ress?"

"Distress? Sometimes it is when you have a bad feeling about something. In this case..it means that he might be having trouble breathing, or his heart might be beating too fast."

"Like he's scared?"

Rachel felt heat rise to her cheeks. "Yes...I guess he might be scared. Maybe he's had a few nightmares."

"Oh." Micah said. "What's his name?"

Rachel shook her head, her cheek resting close to the top of Micah's head. His hair was still damp from washing. "We don't know. He doesn't have any tags or ID. He didn't tell me his name when I first met him."

"Is he still a secret?"

"Yes, for now."

"Is he a bad man?"

Rachel leaned away and creased her brow, "What makes you think he's bad?"

Micah shrugged his shoulders, his brow furrowing in concentration. In most children it was a mockery of an adult's facial expression. In Micah's case it meant that he was about to say something that no one would expect from a child his age. 

"He looks...like a wolf."

Both of them watched the stranger while he slept, and Rachel could see what Micah meant. Yes the whiskers and the lines on his face made him look like a wild animal, or a mountain man. But there was also an edge. The same inexplicable thing that she had seen in that quiet room on the second floor.

"He does...a little bit."

Rachel smirked and leaned her lips toward Micah's ear, whispering. "Do you think we should give him a shave? See what he looks like under all that hair?"

Micah giggled again and scooted off her knee, stepping close to the bed and leaning over it. His arms carefully held behind his back so that he wouldn't touch the wounded man.

Rachel stood once her legs were free and placed the list of vitals on the bedside table along with the medical book. She stretched the cramping muscles in her back and moved to where she could see out the window. See where the sun was in comparison to the horizon.

There was always a dirty brown smear out beyond the town. Smog, radiation, poison. No one ever really knew what it was except that it appeared around the time the end began and hovered there in the distance, like a wall. Cutting off what used to be miles of visibility. As if separating the very soul from the rest of the world. To Rachel it was like the threshold she had warned Micah not to cross.

And yet the man in the bed seemed to have come from beyond that wall. She wanted to know what he had seen. She wanted to know what he had left behind in favor of pressing onward. How much was left out there? How much was gone?

Micah had taken to smoothing the blankets on either side of the stranger. He had started on the left and had nearly worked his way around to the right side of the bed. The careful precision that he exhibited, the concentration, kept her in quiet contemplation. Once he was done with his task Micah stood for a moment to review his work, then crossed to Rachel and leaned in against her legs. In that short walk he had gone from grown up nurse maid to tired and needy child.

Rachel cupped the side of his head against her hip and fought the tears that had been all too prevalent in the past few weeks. Micah could still do that. He could still return to being her little boy, but there would come a time, and soon, that he would be taken from her, and every bit of that small boy would be beaten, electrocuted and trained out of him; until nothing remained but what the government saw a use for. Humanity was never one of those things.

She had to break herself from that train of thought. She kissed the top of Micah's head.

"Have you finished your chores?"

She felt his head nod against her.

"Why don't you go ask Cookie for lunch, for you and me. We'll have a picnic up here, then. Maybe we can convince that one to wake up and take some broth."

Micah squeezed her around the leg then took off for the door, careful to shut it quietly before scampering down the stairs.

There was a groan from the bed. Clot moved against cloth and his knee came up.  Rachel moved casually around the bed, watching him.

His mouth moved under the bed of hair. Mumbles came out, the same sounds and half-spoken words that she'd heard a dozen times. Another night mare. Another fevered dream. How many days had it been? How many long hours when his mind was captive, his lips silent.

Rachel had begun to wonder how long a body could stay asleep, how long could a mind stay dormant before it was lost all together. She had known that he would need sleep for the first 72 hours, if he survived at all. When the fourth and fifth days came and the fever set in, the time passed so quickly. She and Cookie were passing one another in the halls constantly, relaying last minute information.

"His pressure is up and the fever has been high but steady. The second poultice needs an hour." Even while Rachel's words echoed down the hall, her hands full of bedding she had to wash, Cookie was making her own report.

"Rex has asked about you again. I've told him that Micah isn't well. It may only work a few days."

"Well have to keep him out of sight when we're open. I can occupy him." Rachel knew that Micah understood about the stranger. He would make the sacrifice without too much resistance.

It had been an on going cycle that left little room for the daily lives, let alone luxuries like sleep. After Micah returned with their 'picnic' Rachel would only have an hour before she needed to give Cookie a break from the chaos of the restaurant below. 

Voices, faces. Trades had passed through her hands and straight to the back without her really seeing them. The soup changed every day, the bread came from the oven hot enough to scald, but the smells and the burns never reached her. Whether she was bent over an unbathed worker or a fragrant sugar pie, all she knew was the dark upper room, the smell of blood faint under the heated wave of warm glass and lamp oil

It was like she and Cookie were trapped between two versions of hell. One was loud and raucous and hectic. The other....the other was hell only because of how well it disguised itself as heaven.

By the end of that day exhaustion could not sufficiently describe the weariness in her body. Halfway through clearing the tables in the dim light of the low lanterns, Rachel sank into a chair and let her arms hang at her side. She closed her eyes to let the stillness sink into her bones. One by one she quieted the echoing voices in her mind.

Rex's was first. He'd been especially drunk. His hands were everywhere. On her arms, where he had left bruises, or clutching at the back pockets of her pants to pull her back into range.

In the past she might have played along. Made nice so as not to upset the powers that be. She didn't this time. With Cookie upstairs and no slack in the customers, Rex had been almost more than she could handle.

She raised the sleeve of her shirt to look at the small discolorations on her upper arm. They would flesh out in the next few days. If Micah saw them he would quietly show his disapproval. Cookie no longer reacted. They both knew that bruises in this time were merely signs of life.

Even Rex had paled in comparison to that night's visitor, one of Margaret's newest henchmen. He'd come in early into Rachel's shift. It didn't matter to him that she had a hot platter of soup and bread in her hands or a room full of hungry, rowdy workers. He grabbed at her sleeve and pulled her away from the tumult long enough to grope her unnecessarily and ask her if she had heard anything of the stranger with the bike.

"She knows you've been very distracted. Not around as much."

"Micah has been sick. He's my son. There's something going around."

"It takes two women to care for one boy? How old is he again?"

Rachel swallowed around the fear and anger and clenched her lips tightly shut for a moment. "When he's unwell...when he needs someone to help him eat and clean him up...yes."

"He is very sick?"

"He is not well.." Rachel insisted, breaking eye contact.

"You must be so frightened..." He cooed, stepping in closer, crowding Rachel back against the wall. He smelled of sweat, stale alcohol and gasoline fumes.

"I have customers-"

He drew even closer, so that Rachel could count the lice eggs in his hair. She could almost taste the Scotch he had either stolen or earned from the Boss. Rachel knew what he wanted but she couldn't fathom why. Why so openly, why at the busiest time of the night? Why in sight of everyone in the restaurant? Who was he, afterall, and what was he trying to prove?

She hadn't seen Rex stand up but she felt the tension in the air change.

The noise around her died and Margaret's new man turned his head. There was a silent threat in Rex's stance. A claim of ownerhip that Rachel dared not acknowledge. Margaret's man responded to it, stepping back at first, then loosing his grip so that Rachel could hold her tray with two hands again.

"She'll see you at the end of the week. You'd do well to have something for her. Something good." He said, then left, intentionally avoiding making eye contact with Rex, taunting him with his back and his relaxed gait as he exited.

That had been why Rex grabbed at her the rest of the night. Rachel knew exactly what was happening in his mind. He'd done her a favor, protected her from a new enemy, worse than he. Rachel now owed him.

Looking up she realized that she had chosen to sink down into the chair he had occupied most of the night. The solid stillness of the wood beneath her helped her quell the echoes.

There had to be an end. For years she had been resisting. For years she had been refusing to accept a fate linked with Rex, devoid of hope. Somewhere in her she had expected a different future. She had been following the old rules, the rules of before. Unconciously she had determined that the anarchy would end, the chaos was a temporary dream that would fade.

Micah had been the first part of that decision. Keeping him had been hard, but she didn't regret it now.

His life had given her reason to live.

Now she wondered if she could live when Micah was taken from her. Would she kill herself? Or would she give in to Rex. Kill her soul, her pride, her fighting spirit. Would Cookie survive? Rachel thought she would. Cookie's value to the Boss and the town was vastly different than Rachel's.

Rachel pulled herself to her feet. There was cleaning to be done and she took her time with it. Methodically clearing every dish, every crack, every spec. She put the dough up to rise overnight and was done an hour and a half later than usual.

She had missed hearing Cookie descend the stairs but there she stood when Rachel put a foot on the first step. She met Cookie's gaze and smiled. The weight of the day moistened her eyes but the work and the quiet had done her some good. She leaned forward and squeezed Cookie's arm. She had only once received a hug from the older woman and she didn't want one in that moment. In her own way Cookie fully understood.

"He's awake." She said.

Rachel blinked, tilting her head to the side. "Right now?"

Cookie nodded. "Asked to speak with you."

Rachel felt her heart start to pound. An electric pulse shot through her, almost painful in its intensity. She started to sweat from the heat rising to her face.

"Will he eat?" She asked, Cookie already nodding.

"I'll bring it up."

Rachel acknowledged her words thankfully and stepped to the side so that Cookie could pass. She barely remembered going up the stairs. When she reached the doorway to his room she hesitated. Up until that moment there had only been a body in that room, in that bed. There wasn't a stranger who could cause potential harm, nor a man requiring respect or privacy.

She had become so familiar with his sleeping pattern, the sinewy curve of his wrist and the thready pulse beneath. His face had always been flaccid and still, his eyes always closed. She realized as she paused there that she would see his eyes for the first time since she had found him in the attic. Rachel took a deep breath, held it, and pushed the door open staring studiously at the wood paneling until the door had closed again. She stayed close to the door, crossing her arms in front of her as she turned.

He was awake. Silver blue eyes focused intently on her. His left arm lay at his side on top of the covers. It took her a moment to recognize the wooden cup held in his hand.

She crossed the floor in a hurry, as if afraid that going slower would give her the time to change her mind. The cup was empty. She pulled it easily from his grasp and filled it from the pitcher on the bedside table.

His eyes were still open, still focused on her when she turned back towards him. For some reason that surprised her. She bent over him, lifting his head slightly with one hand while she tipped the cup to his lips with the other. His left hand came up, his fingertips brushing against the back of her hand. Not stopping her, nor helping. She felt that same electricity.

The cup was small but still held more water than he had consumed at any one time in the past week. He drank it all and for Rachel it was a monumental victory.

She sat down in the chair by the bed with the empty cup in her hands. Stupid, irrational tears welled in her eyes. She quickly brushed them away, raised her head and opened her mouth to speak. When she closed it again she still hadn't spoken a word. What could she say to a man she barely knew and yet knew intimately.

"My name's Jack." His voice cracked when he spoke and Rachel caught the brief wince in the thin lines at the edge of his eyes.

"Rachel," she said, lifting a hand as if to point to herself, then letting it flop back into her lap. She was nervous, indecisive, practically on the verge of hysteria. And over it all a very thin, slowly crumbling lay of peace. "The woman from before was Cookie."

Jack nodded and through the beard Rachel caught a flash of teeth. "She told me."

There was a moment of silence, his eyes started to drift. Rachel looked to the blanket, one arm self-consciously rising.

"How long have I-"

"Six days," she said, "And nights."

His eyes widened. "That must have been hard."

Rachel smiled softly. The comment had been quick. His voice was weak but clearly his mind wasn't. In a single breath he had acknowledged the sacrifice Rachel, Cookie and Micah had made so that he might survive. It was not what she would have expected from a man on his death bed.

She broke the silence to ask him if he thought he could keep down a little broth and bread. She could tell he was tiring quickly, but he nodded his head then closed his eyes.

Rachel stood and set the cup on the bedside table. She started to lean forward to tuck his arm under the cover. The moment her hand touched his he jumped. He sucked in a sharp breath and his eyes snapped open, fastening on her in alarm for a second then roving around the room as his breathing calmed. Rachel tried to pull away from him but found that he had grabbed hold of her hand, holding it tightly, insistent.

When Jack's head settled back against the pillow, his brow tight and his face growing ashen, Rachel reached awkwardly for the wet compress on the bedside table. With one hand she could ring out most of the water before she wiped his face down. The man on the bed fought the pain quietly, his face and the pressure of his fingers around her hand the only indication of his suffering.

He had finally relaxed by the time Cookie knocked against the door. She'd put the broth in a cup, then wrapped a cloth around it to protect against the translated heat. A slice of bread, lathered in butter was steaming on top. It was a trick of Cookie's. Warm the bread on top of the sou and the customer couldn't tell that it was stale and several days old.

Rachel heard Cookie put the tray down on the table behind her then move around to the other side of the bed. She silently stooped down to roll back the covers and pushed clothing out of the way to reveal the blood soaked bandages tightly bound to Jack's torso.

He opened his eyes. Rachel watched him read the expression on her face. He grunted, a wry curve of the lips parting his unruly beard and mustache. "Not there yet, huh?"

Rachel used her compress to brush hair from around his eyes. Her lips pursed but she could feel the muscles betraying her, stretching to smile.

"Not yet." She said softly, then freed her hands so that she could help Cookie change the dressing.

Chapter 4

That night, after the restaurant had emptied, the tables had been cleaned and the kitchen tightly locked up, Rachel carried an oil lantern up the stairs to the second level. She edged the door of the room she shared with Micah open a tiny bit, peered in to make sure his form was there under the blankets, then continued on up the stairs.

The third level rooms were empty. On the rare days that it rained the roof leaked, some of the windows were cracked and most wouldn't open or close. It wasn't nearly as livable as the second level so these rooms were reserved for storage. The last room on the left allowed access to the roof. She had climbed the rusted metal ladder with more than just the lantern in her hands before.

The hatch that kept the mice in and the crows out moved easily and quietly on its hinges and she stood in the cool, still night air of the roof, sheltering the lantern with a hand, listening to the town. She didn't come up as much as she used to. Most nights she was too tired to think, much less unwind in this quiet place.

Her meeting with Margaret had changed things however.

Rachel dug into her pocket for the small key she kept on her at all times. She crossed the roof to the shack that perched at the back of the building. More storage space. Not much bigger than what she imagined a porta john to be. But big enough for her purposes.

The padlock had sand in it. She scraped it out with the edge of the key then popped it open and pulled at the thin door. Three bags sat just inside, untouched. Rachel set the lantern on a shelf at eye level and knelt in the glow to look through what she had managed to gather.

Three duffel bags. Each could easily be carried on the back of one person. There were plastic jugs filled with clean water sitting near each one. There was a knife in each, and matches in plastic baggies, two blankets in each bag, one of them the shiny thermal kind that she had found in old first aid kits over the years.

Rachel checked to make sure the mice and bats hadn't burrowed there way into the bags. In the smallest of bags she put the collection of buttons that Nathaniel had brought along with the bone tools.

She had been fantasizing about escaping the town and hiding in the mountains since the day Micah started telling people he was six years old. She had tried talking Cookie into it early on. Cookie finally sat down with Rachel in the kitchen, a pad of paper and pencil in front of her, and listed all the things they would need to prepare if they were going to do such a thing.

Some of the supplies had been easy to gather. Others had come at a dear price. There were two books that were absolutely important, Cookie said. Rachel stared in disbelief as the older woman spelled out their titles, the names of the editor or author, a full bibliography at the end of the survival list. Those two final entries would have been all it took to break her of this plan until Cookie handed her a flat package wrapped in a towel a day later.

She'd had the books all the time. Cookie smiled softly when Rachel took the tomes with shaking hands, then threw her arms around the younger woman and whispered, "I have been reading these books since before we met. You need their knowledge too. Just in case."

Rachel understood what she meant then. Cookie might not be coming with them. Still Rachel made a point of collecting three of everything. The books were carefully packed between blankets in Cookie's bag. Rachel pulled them out, looking through each. The first book had a long title, most of which had been obliterated by exposure to sunlight and human hands. It was filled with 336 pages of line drawings and descriptions, edible plants, medicinal plants, all of them the most common to be found in what used to be called North America.

Every page was familiar to her but Rachel went over them again. She knew the book wouldn't last forever, she had to memorize what she could. There were also hand written notations inside. Preparations and combinations that made rough living a little better. Most of them were in Cookie's hand writing. Some, the ink a little brighter, were in Rachel's.

The second book was written by a man named Auerbach. 994 pages filled with illustrations of bodies torn to pieces, specifically geared towards treating any medical condition that might arise in the wild. Most of it was far beyond what Rachel could comprehend. And yet she read through the parts she had the most trouble with, mumbling softly to herself as the night grew colder and the lantern dimmer.

Cookie had asked her once why she didn't study the book inside. Rachel couldn't risk it. She couldn't risk losing it. Rex and his men had charged upstairs more than once hoping to find unregistered traders or take advantage of any unaccompanied females if they were drunk enough. Something as valuable as those books would be snatched up in seconds. Worse they would start the Boss to thinking that someone was planning to leave the town, and take something of value from it, and Rachel couldn't have that.

Even the presence of the stranger and the stir it was causing had Rachel nervous. Long after she had packed the books away and returned to her room she sat up by the window watching the town. Was the stranger still out there, or was he long gone? Was he dead, rotting somewhere, or was he even now in a stronghold reporting to the government that he still hadn't found the boy in the photo. Could Micah have really been the man's son? Was that really all he wanted in the world, to meet his boy?

Rachel glanced to the bed where he slept, sighed softly at the sight of the blankets that he had kicked off in his sleep and rose to replace them. As she sat on the bed beside him, Micah shifted, rolling onto his side and curling into the fetal position. His profile came suddenly into sharp relief against the pillow. The feathering of his hair, the curve of his eye lashes, the small crimson line of skin at his hairline. There was no denying it. This was the boy in the photo. This was the man's relation.

Why was he suddenly now interested in the boy when he had clearly not been around to care seven years ago? Anger started to boil and Rachel stood, crossed to her bed and pulled the top blanket off, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. She couldn't sleep and there were chores she could start in the restaurant.

The moon was up and close to being full allowing her to see well enough without lighting a lantern. She moved quietly around the kitchen pouring water into her bucket, measuring out the lye then pouring about a quarter of a cup of ethanol alcohol in. She mixed the concoction with her face away from the bucket until it settled then reached for the tool she used to clean the windows. A long wooden spoon with a sponge strapped to either side of one end. It wasn't Windex but it cut through the sand and dust.

The first three windows were quick, smaller than the rest and facing away from where the wind usually drove the outside world at them. The front windows would take the longest and Rachel new she would have to go back for a second bucket before she could finish the job. As she passed by the doors the first time she tugged on the handle til she felt the doors stop and heard the chain rattle reassuringly. She was warm enough now to ditch the blanket and she set it on the counter, folded neatly, before she moved to the back door. This door should have also been locked but when she grasped the door handle to check it the knob came free in her hand.

She jerked back as if she had been electrocuted and the heavy metal piece clattered to the floor. Rachel turned a full circle in panic before she bent and scooped up the door knob. The screws that attached it to the door were still there. It wasn't broken. It had been dismantled. Anger, fueled by fear coursed through her and she jerked the door open picking up the other half of the knob and looking it over. This side was covered in smears of mud. No...not mud. She smelled copper and sweat and the knob was slippery with it...blood. How...when..where?

Who?

Rachel launched herself toward the counter, her hands shaking as she struggled to open the tin of matches, broke two before she could finally get a flame and forced herself to calm as she lit the wick of a candle. She searched for two seconds before she decided to simply hold the candle in her hands, up and away from her line of sight. She lit the wall mounted candelabra in the kitchen, ignoring the sting of hot wax on her fingers. With her free hand she located and brandished the largest kitchen knife Cookie owned.

Returning to the back door Rachel searched the floor for signs of blood loss, or footprints in the dust. Was it a vagrant? Or one of Boss Wilson's goons looking for...for what? They would hardly come here for medical attention. How could she not have heard someone entering? But then the door hadn't been busted down. The screws on the handle had been removed. Such entry would have been undetectable to someone not standing in the kitchen itself.

Her trip to the roof and the hour she spent reading. That would have been the perfect time.

Rachel's heart was pattering hard in her chest, the blade of the knife wavered with her pulse, she was breathing too heavily to think about stealth. Building up her courage she burst through the kitchen door into the restaurant, not even flinching when it banged loudly against the far wall. She didn't care who she woke now.

As she reached up a hand to light a second candelabra she felt something tug at her skin. She hadn't even noticed the building shell of wax at the base of the candle. It was probably the only thing preventing her from dropping it. She moved forward, leading with the blade of the knife, checking every corner.

What if the intruder didn't actually come this far? What if they only wanted something in the kitchen, then left? Could she possibly have missed someone coming up the stairs? Passing her bedroom?

She had reached the stairs, every candelabra in the room lit and burning brightly, before she noticed the beginning of a blood trail. Small droplets, leading up the stairs. The calm she had started to feel threatened to retreat and take her logic with it, but she held tight this time.  The blood on the doorknob meant the intruder was wounded.  But there had been none on the floor of the kitchen...had they found a towel or something to stop the blood flow? Perhaps, but not the rubbing alcohol. That had been in place and untouched, she remembered that distinctly.

So whoever it was didn't feel safe yet, at least not safe enough to stop and treat the wound. They made it through the kitchen and to the stairs before the blood started to drop again. It was a bad wound.  Or a fresh one. All the images in Auerbach's book came flooding into her mind's eye and she started up the stairs, the knife ready.

At the point where the wall fell away from the stairs and opened into the hallway, there was a bloody handprint. She had been walking without light but how could she have possibly missed it the first time? The palm was bigger than her own. A very large woman, or a man.

Her fear spiked. Cookie's hands were bigger than her own. She felt suddenly stupid, desperate and remorseful. Was she wasting time while Cookie died? She was rushing toward the older woman's room when the door swung open and Cookie, pulling on a robe, stepped into the hallway.

"What in heaven's na-"

"SHHHhh!" Rachel hissed, her knife hand flapping urgently. "Someone's here...someone bleeding."

Cookie tied the sash at her waist, her eyes focused on the knife blade. "Did you stab them?"

Rachel grunted in frustration shaking her head. She got in front of Cookie before the older woman could protest and continued down the hall. The lantern in Micah's room was still burning, the light glowing from beneath the door jam. Rachel checked just in case. The steady drip of blood didn't deviate from its path towards the stairs and Micah was still sleeping soundly.

"Rachel.."

"Shh...Cookie. Someone broke in. You see the blood? Someone is hiding upstairs."

Cookie's eyes finally widened with understanding and she reached around the dripping candle to grab hold of the knife. "Alright. Let's do this together then. Go up behind me."

Rachel released her white knuckled grip and nodded, swallowing air like a fish out of water. Cookie took the stairs slow and easy and Rachel followed behind. At the landing there was no way to deny the signs. Someone was injured, bleeding heavily, and not likely to last very long.

The first door on the left was dark and open. The blood trail widened and curved into the room. Cookie stopped and stepped to one side just outside the room, while Rachel stepped to the other. Their eyes met, then both shrieked at the sound of a voice.

"You both are the loudest whisperer's I've ever heard."

Rachel nearly set her hair on fire whipping the candle around and pointing it into the room as if it were a flashlight. The light glinted off a pair of eyes before the wick bent toward the collecting wax and the flame dimmed. Rachel righted the candle stepping into the room, keeping up with Cookie who was edging toward the corner the voice had come from.

She saw his boots first. Boots she had never actually seen before and yet she recognised them from Boss Wilson's description.

Halfway up his pant leg the blood soaked through the fabric and dust. Most of his shirt was soaked too and his hand and arm were slick with it. He smelled horribly and not just of blood, but of urine and filth as well. He was pale, quaking as he sat there, but when she finally met his eyes she didn't see fear.

She couldn't describe what she did see, but whatever it was it changed everything.

"You were shot?" She asked, avoiding stepping in the blood pooling around him.

"Stabbed...la-laceration." It was paining him even to speak, and she could hear the quaking in his voice.

Cookie reached forward with the tip of her knife, setting it against the stranger's chest before she ventured toward him with the other hand, moving cloth from the wound. Rachel recognized it as one of her kitchen towels. What she saw underneath explained why he hadn't stopped for the ethanol. Alcohol wouldn't have done much for him.

He was burning hot, sweating, going into shock. He should have been dead. Parts of him were being pushed past the abdominal wall and into the open air. Cookie was shaking her head even as she recovered the wound. The three of them in that silence knew that there was nothing that could be done to save him.

But something in her welled to the top. It brought with it tears, and the taste of bile, and the pain of a growing ulcer in her belly. She gasped and threw a hand over her mouth to stop the sickness, swallowed hard and grabbed Cookie's wrist.

To her startled reaction Rachel said, "He's Micah's father, Cookie."

The stranger grunted in surprise and Cookie stared at Rachel open mouthed and speechless.

"I need him."

Chapter 3

"What are these stones?"

The precise, crisp, female voice rang through the room. It might have once been a living room in the big house. The ceiling was high and vaulted and housed a chimney and fireplace.

Rachel's eyes focused on the box that was shifting back and forth in front of her so that the light from the windows on the ceiling would catch in the gems.

"Garnets..I think. They're semi-precious."

"Mmm...semi...precious." Dark brown eyes set into sockets that were surrounded by tightly stretched, paper thin skin danced over the top of the box. Then her fingertips, tracing around the tightly woven strands, over the polished surface of each piece.  "And where did you find it."

"It was a trade, from a traveler."

The eyes darted up, and Rachel forced herself to raise her gaze and meet them. She already knew the question but she waited to hear it, her shoulders tense.

"And this traveler's name." The words came out slowly and strained. There was irritation behind them. Rachel felt a small glimmer of satisfaction but would never let it register on her face.

"He's gone. He was there only one night. He left before the third shift whistle."

The room she stood in was void of humanity but for Rachel and the woman she spoke to. Rarely were her guards allowed to remain inside while she was in audience. Rachel had met with the boss many times before but she was always surprised at the newest acquisitions that were displayed. Old mounted animal heads from the time before had been re purposed. Necklaces, bracelets and earrings hung from their antlers, and candles perched in holes drilled through their heads. The raised floor that stretched out in front of the fire place had been turned into a raised Dias with a throne, an armchair covered in a deep purple blanket. Every inch of space on the walls either supported shelves or hooks. Hats, coats, books, magazines, paper and pencil, cans of food. It was a museum and a general store crushed together into one room.

The woman who inhabited the space, and the whole house, matched it perfectly. Her long white hair stuck up in places, unkempt. She wore wrinkled clothes in layers, browns and tans with the occasional spark of red or neon blue.

No one ever saw her outside of the main house, in the streets or in the fields. The meager, sandbag walls that surrounded the town were nothing compared to the tall, brick and stone parapets that completely blocked the view of all but the top most level of the house. There were other houses like it, but they had been gutted and burned, or subdivided into many different apartments and worn down by too many bodies in too small a space. This place was the best possible place, and it had been selected intentionally.

Margaret Wilson hadn't been the first boss, but she was the only one that Rachel remembered. The old woman was as close to a vampire as Rachel could imagine. Boss Wilson had a leech like nature about her. Every move was hungry, desperate and unnaturally graceful. Someone her age was supposed to be blind and arthritic and swelling at every joint. But Margaret was corpse thin and impenatrable.

Rachel knew, as well as anyone else in their town, that a lot of what the government allotted them, intending that it be shared by the whole town, was staying right here in this house. Stored away some where, used as bribes or payoffs, to buy the loyalty of people that would much rather be left to their own devices.

Sometimes Boss Wilson would reward one family of workers inexplicably. Rachel hated those times. There would be happy children's faces, weeping mothers, suspicious but relieved fathers, all thinking that life was finally turning upward. They would tell everyone in the town about their gift, and about who gave it to them. But there was always an agenda. Anyone finding favor with Boss Wilson didn't keep it. There was never a clear reason.  It was cruelty for cruelty's sake, Rachel thought.

She had learned never to accept charity in this new world, and especially not from someone in power. It could mean more than losing her life, or even her soul. Because there was always another life at stake.

"Why would you give this to me?" Margaret asked, finally setting the box down on the small table near her throne. A blanket had been across her lap from the moment Rachel entered. The house was air conditioned, powered by who knew what source. Rachel couldn't imagine wanting something so heavy on her during the day time but if she were stuck in this house every day...she might just. The waste was starting to get to her, as it always did.

"It seemed valuable. We are running low on hops and wheat at the restaurant. We have very little to put in the soup that will keep the workers nourished and h-.." Rachel nearly choked on the word. It was bull, all of it, but it was necessary. "Happy."

Boss Wilson nodded her head slowly, as if moving it any faster might jostle the great inner workings of a genius mind. Rachel knew better, and she recognized the heady smell that always seemed to permeate the house. Perhaps that was why Margaret always seemed so numb. She was always high.

"There may be more wheat...there may be more hops. But those things are not cheap. The government doesn't always send me everything that we need, Rachel."

Crossing her arms, Rachel shuddered involuntarily. It was cold in this room, but the drop in temperature had more to do with Boss Wilson's change of tone. Nothing Rachel didn't expect.

"There have been very few traders coming through. Most of them see the men at the town gates and turn away." She explained.

Margaret leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her fingers playing over the top of the box, tracing the edges of the biggest gem there. Rachel stood there long enough to assume that she had fallen asleep, when the Boss took a deep breath. "Rex tells me there were two strangers...four days ago. One he only saw leaving, the other...the other seemed to catch his interest."

"Really? Did he describe this-"

"A tall man. He appeared to be strong enough, not too old or young. About your age. Long, wavy hair. Wearing a most curious set of boots."

Rachel's eyes widened a bit, a sense of familiarity and panic setting in. She scrambled to grasp where Boss Wilson was going before she got there.

"Boots...I...yes I remember a stranger like that. He...he tried to trade some old, dead batteries for some soup. He went on his way." Rachel desperately thought back to her first lie. Was she keeping them straight? Was there a hole somewhere that Margaret could dig into?

"Rex saw him leaving, dear Rachel. Walking from the town. Sometimes he is a dull boy, but Rex followed this stranger and found that he had hidden the most remarkable machine on the road outside of town. A motorcycle, Rachel, from the old days. Now...that would have been a very worthy trade. Something very...exciting...something that could keep the government occupied for another...year."

Rachel's mouth opened but she didn't speak. A motorcycle, a machine. The Boss wanted it, and clearly didn't yet have it. If Rex, a large, muscular man who thought himself capable of anything, hadn't managed to get the cycle then he had either had a rare moment and made his own wise decision to leave it be, or he had tried and been defeated by the stranger. She hadn't seen Rex at the restaurant since the stranger had gone, but she had been hoping that he had been sent by the Boss to do more of her dirty work. Any time away from that man and his unending sex drive was a blessing.

If the stranger escaped, then he and his machine were long gone. Surely the Boss had to know that. And yet she was bringing it to Rachel's attention. Which meant the Boss thought that Rachel knew where the bike was, or the stranger.  Or both?

"I've never seen the motorcycle." Rachel ventured.

There was a long silence, while Margaret tested the air between them for lies, the tip of her tongue pulsing just past her front teeth, like a snake.

"Then you've seen the stranger?"

What had Rex reported? Had there been an altercation between the two men? Even if Rex had been defeated Rachel couldn't imagine that the stranger escaped without a scratch. The stranger hadn't been showcasing any weapons when he first entered the restaurant. Rex liked to carry around a gun or two, and a billy club made of pipes soldered together.

"No...I haven't..Boss Wilson. Should I watch for him?"

Margaret smiled suddenly. It looked more like a grimace, but the pleased sigh coming from behind it seemed to release the tension in the room. "Would you? That motorcycle would be a lovely trade, and I'm sure a stranger in the desert might want some help from someone so talented as you. You have such a giving heart Rachel."

The compliment was as empty as the room and Rachel took it as a dismissal, turning to leave.

 "Who knows? Maybe the stranger could become a father to Micah."

The sound of her son's name struck like lightning. Rachel turned slowly, crossing her arms over her chest attempting to make her reaction look more casual than it was. The one year reprieve had been veiled before, but Boss Wilson had now made it fairly clear. She wanted the bike, she wanted the stranger. If Rachel could deliver one or both, the Boss would keep Micah's existence hidden from the government for one more year. Most children were supposed to go for training at the age of six. Micah had just turned seven a few months before.


"Do you like the box, Boss Wilson?" Rachel asked. She kept the shaking from her voice, steeling her stomach and the vat of tears preparing to spill.

Margaret craned her neck awkwardly, picked up the box with a limp wrist and let it hang precariously from her finger tips. She seemed to look at everything in the room but the box before she said. "It suits me. I can see that a bag of hops, and a bag of wheat are delivered to the restaurant. We must keep the workers...happy...mustn't we?"

Rachel left the moment the doors at the opposite end of the room swung out. She hurried down the cold corridors and out into the hot dusty sunlight, not stopping until she was outside the back door of the restaurant. The heat of the day hit fast and hard but this time it was welcome. She slammed the back door of the kitchen behind her. The room was empty. Cookie was probably resting upstairs. The restaurant wouldn't open for hours yet. Micah should have been upstairs working on his morning cleaning chores, but moments after she sank into a corner, she heard his quiet, frightened voice say, "Momma?"

Tears had already streamed down her face, but her sobs had been silent. Had something happened? She held her hands out to her boy and he sank down into her lap, wrapping his arms around her neck, burying his face there. She waited for him to tell her what was wrong, but he stayed silent, curling as tightly into her embrace as he could.

What ever the problem was it clearly wasn't an emergency, and in that moment she desperately needed her baby in her arms. She held tight to him, quietly letting the tears fall, pulling back on the reigns. Panic wasn't allowed, she reigned it in. Fear couldn't be permitted to take over rational thought, she reigned it in. By then Micah had drifted quietly into sleep. Rachel smiled. When he was an infant Micah had refused to sleep unless he was being held in someone's arms. She couldn't count the hours, days, weeks she had spent holding Micah until her shoulders screamed in pain. Devising slings and carriers that let her keep him close to her chest but save her lower back.

In those days she could never have imagined a time when she would want to hold her boy for hours and hours. Rachel kissed his head, brushed hair from his forehead, then held the strands back looking at his hairline. The red mark was still there, the birthmark. As a baby it had been easily visible. Some would ask if he had been dropped or had hit his head. Rachel kissed the mark. A mark that she had just as easily seen in the photograph the stranger had shown her.

A stranger that kept turning up. Why was he so important? Why was the bike so important? There weren't many working motorcycles in town. Even still they weren't that valuable. Why was this one so important to Margret?

It wasn't just a trade. It couldn't just be Margret's greed driving this. If it had been Margaret would have sent her goons after the trader. She wouldn't have bothered to offer something of value to someone not directly under her thumb. No...Boss Wilson was avoiding the stranger somehow...she was wary of him...or maybe even afraid of him. She was going through back channels and side lines. 

The whole thing stunk horribly of the government and its ever growing control of the small colonies or towns that remained after the end. Rachel wanted no part of it, but she was being drawn in. She was smart, she had always been smart. She would figure a way to work this to her advantage. Ultimately it wouldn't matter how smart she was. All that mattered in the end was Micah.

Chapter 2

Every night was the same. The same workers with the same attitudes. The same girls with the same ratty clothes and ill applied makeup. The same dusty, mangy mongrel dogs trying to scratch their way through the kitchen door to where all the tasty smells were coming from. The bread was the same, the soup was the same, the ale was the same. But it was the only place in town where people were allowed to gather in large numbers. Without building their own still it was the only place where the workers could get drunk.

The only things that changed really were the rare travelers that happened across the town. Some of them were returning from work visas. Some were homeless, wanderers, vagrants. They came through at their own risk and most of the time very few of them left with their hide intact. All of them were supposed to register with the Boss within 24 hours of arriving but very few of them lasted the night.

No one said anything...but any new women were immediately taken behind the building and used til there was nothing left. The children could sometimes be saved from the horrors of the worst of the workers. The men either challenged the pecking order or became the pecked.

Those workers that were registered in the town didn't have to pay or trade for meals, housing or booze. They all had tabs. They were registered parts of the government. They were to be provided for. They had to show their identification tags until Rachel or Sasha or one of the other girls could easily recognize them, to get what they wanted.

The strangers in town could trade. The trades could be mundane or extraordinary. During the day very few traders came in because they didn't make it past the loafers that lay about just outside of town. At night the loafers were in the restaurant drinking away what they did nothing to earn.

The first trader of the night came in very quietly. Rachel recognized him immediately. He had been living in the distant mountains for almost a full year. He managed to grow some green things, foraged others, and he had opted to trade with Cookie and Rachel instead of the boss.

The relationship they had developed was a good one, based on what little trust a person could have for another person without being related.

He called himself Nathaniel. He was young, Rachel's age, but the sun, and the wind, and hard living had made his hair gray, and his head to wrinkle. He rarely shaved, and his long beard reminded Rachel of the old traditions. Of Santa Claus at Christmas time. As she led Nathaniel back behind the counter with his bag of trades she realized that Christmas had passed by a month ago. She had completely forgotten it.

Just as Rachel came into the kitchen, Cookie headed out, an unspoken exchange of responsibilities. Cookie didn't get along with Nathaniel for reasons that Rachel never understood. After all, Nathaniel was generally the source of the good green things that Cookie loved to eat.

"The winds are up." Nathaniel said, putting his bag on the table. Rachel could see where the weight of the bag had created long sweat stains over his shoulder and down his back. The tan coat he always wore smelled horribly of unwashed skin and campfire smoke. Nathaniel's teeth were rotting worse too and she knew that he had to have run out of the brushing powder that she had sent with him. That or else he'd simply given up on brushing all together.

"Another sand storm is coming. Cookie says she can feel it in her bones."

"Could use some water up in those hills. Haven't got much green for you today."

Rachel felt some of her hopes falter a little. But she knew Nathaniel. He never came down unless he had something good to trade. Together they opened the thick canvas bag.

Inside there were bundles of dried herbs, roots, and berries still clinging to the branches that had birthed them. Enough to enrich the soup and bread that Rachel made especially for Cookie and Micah for a month or so.

Beneath these were several articles made from animal bone. Needles and knives, and buttons of various sizes. Rachel spotted a few that were thicker than they should have been and had only one hole. She plucked them from the stack, drawing in a breath to tell Nathaniel that she couldn't take them. Before she could the bearded man smiled. "Wheels...for young Micah."

"Oh how clever. He will love those Nathaniel."

"I wasn't down for Christmas, had nothing to give him. Took down a wild dog. Took me some time to make these." He never really met her eyes as he spoke. His speech pattern was simple and steady. The words of a man who rarely talked, and when he did it was most often to himself.

Rachel beamed, resisting the urge to hug him. Pestilence was hard enough to combat without welcoming it with open arms. She didn't want to speculate on what kind of bugs used his body for a hotel.

"They are perfect, thank you."

"I woulda liked to give 'em to him maself but...I know how you like him to stay up in the room when you've got a full house. Other than this here basket, I haven't got much else to trade. I'll take whatever you can give me. I don't want no charity. Just like always."

The basket he pulled out was small, in the shape of a box and decorated on the top with several semi-precious gems woven tightly in. It reminded Rachel of a jewelry box she had owned as a young girl.

"It's lovely. You've been finding more and more gems."

Nathaniel shook his head, a dirty finger with a ragged, tooth-worn nail resting on the lid, inches from the largest of stones. "Those are the last of what I could find. I gotta move my camp soon. Might be movin' it pretty far. North, probably."

Her stomach dropped. She knew what it meant. Fewer visits, a loss of the nourishing roots and berries that couldn't be found in the desert, a loss of a lot of the trade items that Rachel needed in order to keep Micah out of sight of the government, the boss, the people that meant to take his talents and twist them.

She swallowed and nodded her head, her fingers tightening around the box. It was valuable to someone who could afford pretty things. Someone like the boss. She would show the box to Cookie. They could decide how best to trade it later. She set the box down on the counter and quietly collected the herbs and berries and the stone wheels into it.

"We'll miss you greatly Nathaniel." She said before she held out her hands to him. Reluctantly, in the manner of a man who already had nothing, he released the strap that he hadn't let go of since he came in. Rachel took the bag and moved to the back, filling it with the things they could spare. Cans of powdered milk, meat and snails, something no one would eat but that came from the government in spades. Nathaniel never complained about receiving them so she always saved the cans for him.

She put in several loaves bread, most of them left over from the day before, a large box of matches and a bag of tobacco that she had been saving for months. It was as valuable as oil and gasoline, if not more so, and very few were able to get their hands on a bag. It had cost her a lot of time and careful trading to get it but for what Nathaniel provided, and for the friendship and loyalty that he had offered Micah and herself, it was worth it.

When she returned she smiled at Nathaniel, who had characteristically helped himself to a bowl of soup. She let him eat, leaving his bag beside him. Even before she could leave the kitchen he had unconsciously slipped his hand back through the strap of the bag.

"He gone?" Cookie asked quietly, turning briefly from the bar full of hungry men and women. Rachel shook her head, smiling softly.

"He's eating. But he says he's moving on. Further north. Perhaps you should make amends-"

Cookie scoffed and turned to walk down the bar and tap another keg. Rachel walked away from the counter, taking up her rag and moving to clear and wipe down the tables. As she worked she dodged exploratory hands, both male and female, ignored comments and ducked at least one thrown piece of crust.

Nothing was ever good enough of course. The soup was too thin, the ale tasted like dog spit and the bread was too hard and too tasteless. The insults bounced off of her like the bread did. There had been far worse things, far harsher climates that she'd weathered.

By the time she returned to the kitchen with a stack of dirty dishes, Nathaniel had gone. He always ducked quietly out the back door when he was finished. It was safest for everyone that way but Rachel felt a pang of regret that she hadn't actually said good bye.

The mid-afternoon rush of workers filed out. Some to return home to what semblance of families they might have, others returning to the wells and mines. The worst of the worst, especially Rex and his crew would be in later. There was work to be done but Rachel was excited to show Micah the present Nathaniel had brought him. It would give him something to do for the rest of the evening and keep him from coming to the top of the stairs to listen too closely to the conversations below.

She was mere feet from the stairs, when a voice behind her caused her to pause. With the restaurant quiet it was hard to miss. A man had entered. Someone she had never before seen. He looked to be her age, but like Nathaniel he had some gray appearing at his temples. He wore traveling clothes and was covered in the dust of the road. The black jacket and hat looked almost tan. His face was covered in unkempt beard and framed with long, wavy brown hair.

She would have dismissed him immediately if it hadn't been for his eyes. Clear blue, crystalline eyes.

"Do you own the place?" He asked her, craning his neck to one side to scan the few occupied tables, then looking the other way, toward the door that led to the kitchen.

Rachel automatically followed his gaze. "No." She said, carefully hiding the box behind the curve of a hip. "But I work here. If you'll give me a moment...I..." She gestured vaguely up the stairs, waiting until the stranger nodded before she took the steps two at a time.

There was something about his face. Something about the way his hair hung near his cheekbones. And his eyes. It was as if she had met him before, and yet she was certain that she didn't know him. Halfway up the stairs she realized that Cookie was in the back of the kitchen, likely occupied with another batch of bread. She wouldn't be able to hear if the stranger decided to take advantage and steal something from behind the bar.

Rachel wouldn't have immediately labeled him as a killer or a thief but she had no real way of knowing his intentions. It wasn't safe to leave him alone in the restaurant longer than a minute or so. At the top of the steps she paused in consideration then tucked the box up against the base of the banister and went back down the stairs.

She could show Micah later.

"Have you tags?" She asked as she crossed the floor to the bar. The stranger had already seated himself on the stool and set a bag on the counter top. It had to have been one that he carried on his back because she hadn't seen it before.

"Tags?" He asked, and his eyes flickered toward the door that led to the outside.

Rachel gave a humorless smile without parting her lips and said, "Then if you'd like a meal or a room you'll have to trade. I can tell you our prices are stiff. There isn't much to be had in the desert."

"I've noticed that." The man said and pulled the bag off the counter and into his lap. Rachel heard the sound of a zipper being pulled back. She didn't like that she couldn't see into the bag anymore and she took a step or two away from the counter, watching for his hands.

When both came up forming fists she arched a brow in confusion then stepped forward again. Several objects made plunking sounds on the counter. He pulled his hands away and she blinked in surprise.

"These can't possibly work!" She said, picking up one of the two inch cylinders and turning it in her hands.

"They do...but only when combined with this." The stranger said, pulling another object out of the bag. It was made of metal, about four inches long, and four inches high. It felt heavy when she lifted it and underneath she could see a spot for the batteries that he had produced first.

She fit two of them into the slot and set the object down on its wheels. It didn't move at first and she looked back to the traveller. Pulling his hand free of the gloves he had been wearing, the man reached out a single finger, poked at a small button on the top of the cab and set the small train engine into motion.

It took off slowly, chugging away down the counter top.

"Send it back down this way." He said and Rachel picked up the toy, feeling it pulse in her hands. As it returned to him the stranger put out a hand to halt its course, and quickly attached three cars of similar design behind the engine, then let them go.

"Where did you find these?" Rachel asked, her mind working through the possibilities.  He didn't look government but there were always rumors about spies sent out to test the workers. To make sure that all trades were going to the bosses.

He paused, looking after the toy. "I made them," he said turning the train with the practiced ease of someone who had handled it many times before. He let the toy run a few more moments before he stopped the engine and removed the batteries.

Micah would love them, Rachel thought. He would be excited for days. There would be hours of taking apart and rebuilding. Hours of learning. And this man had created them? She was getting ahead of herself she knew, but could he be another Nathaniel? Could she persuade him to stay there in the town? She didn't think he was lying. No one lied about having the ability to create things. It made him valuable, and it would be dangerous for him to misrepresent such an ability. Did she dare trust him with her knowledge of Micah?

"What...what is it you want exactly?" She asked finally, her eyes latching onto his, wanting to see how his irises reacted when he answered. She only caught a glimpse however because the stranger had looked down to his bag again. He was pulling out something else and Rachel instinctively backed away.

He must have caught the movement because he paused as well and glanced around the room again before setting something hard and flat down on the counter. When Rachel stepped closer she could see that it was an old metal picture frame, turned upside down. The metal around the outside had been reshaped and the black cardboard backing faced upright. When she turned it over she found another backing where the glass should have been. She looked askance at the stranger who grinned awkwardly and slid one of the cardboard pieces free.

"Glass never lasts long on the back of the...well...in the desert, you know." He said then tilted the frame up for her to see, his grin disappearing. An old photo, taken before the end. Just before the end according to the date in the corner. The subject was an infant, a boy judging by the clothing.

She met the stranger's eyes then looked back to the picture.

"I'm looking for this boy." He said. "It might be my son, or my nephew maybe...I don't really know...but if he's you know..." The stranger brushed at his face hastily. He might have been scratching his face or wiping a tear, but the air between them thickened when he did. "If he's alive I think he's mine."

Rachel looked from the face in the photo to the stranger and back again. "He looks like you." She said, feeling something horrible starting in the pit of her stomach. The stranger smirked awkwardly again and nodded.

"Yeah I get that a lot."

The boy also looked an awful lot like someone she knew. The photo was faded and cracked. She could see why the stranger had chosen to hide it in the frame. She couldn't know for sure but the longer she stared at the photo the more she felt her heart clench.

"If I don't know him...I mean if you can't find him here...I can't really take this." She said, pushing the toy back towards him. She wanted him to take it back. She wanted him to take his photo and move on and look somewhere else. So she could forget the sinking feeling, the feeling she had been dreading all of Micah's life.

She could see the traveler's eyes dull immediately. He was already giving up on his quest and she got the feeling that he had been searching for a very long time.

"I saw that you have rooms to rent upstairs. I could use a place to sleep for the night, some food."

Rachel folded her hands together, pressed them lightly against the place where her stomach was threatening to rebel. She wanted to tell him that there were no rooms available. She would feed him and get him out as soon as possible, but she couldn't risk him going up stairs. Couldn't risk him seeing...no. That picture wasn't of anyone she knew. It was too much of a coincidence. Too far fetched.

"We don't have any rooms." She said, her voice freezing and her pitch dropping. "I have some soup in the back, some ale, but the bread is cold."

"I'll take just about anything." He said and opened his mouth to say more, but Rachel wouldn't let him.

"You can have the food just this once. You can keep your toy and your batteries." She told him then turned and dissappeared through the kitchen door. Once she passed through that threshold she planned to gather food for the stranger as quickly as possible, let him eat and rush him on his way. Her body rebeled before she could and she was soon bent over the bucket she had used for mop water hours before, wretching.

Cookie rushed over to her, then moved away and Rachel could hear water running. Moments later there was a cold wet cloth pressed against the back of her neck, while Cookie pulled her hair away from her face.

"Was it the ale again? Have we got a bad batch.  I knew I couldn't trust that Nathaniel. He's poisoned the soup hasn't he?"

Rachel trembeled, her stomach muscles still clenching while she tried to take deep breaths. Her throat felt raw, her eyes stung with tears. She was able to shake her head before she leaned back against Cookie's strong arms, gulping air.

"It wasn't one of the workers was it? I saw that traveler out there. Didn't recognize him though."

"I don't know him." Rachel said softly, her voice congested and raw. She pulled the rag away from her neck and wiped her face with it, then accepted Cookie's help to stand. "He needs soup and bread and to be on his way."

Cookie guided her to the stool the older woman had been seated on before and walked only a few feet away to pull down a glass bottle from behind several sacks of flour. She poured a small measure of the amber liquid into a wooden cup and set it on the counter.

"You take slow slips of that then. I'll take care of this one."

Cookie's hand rested briefly on Rachel's shoulder, warm and strong, before it slid away, leaving a gap that seemed to expand and swallow the entire kitchen in seconds. There were no more sounds or smells, only a terrible black hole that threatened to take away any hope left in the world.

Rachel had long ago forced herself to forget the truth. Forget anything that didn't help to keep her sanity and her family together. There were too many other things to remember. How to survive, how to stay tough, how to hide a small genius and still allow him to grow and breathe and be as close to a normal boy as he could be. His name was Micah, he had to know that. He was only seven, he had to know that too. He was loved...that was the most important part.

What hadn't been important at all was how exactly he had come into Rachel's life. He had been so small and young when she first held him in her arms. It didn't matter that he wasn't of her womb. He needed a mother...she desperately needed a son. Needed him.

Seven years ago, mere months after the chaos had began, no one cared to dispute her claim of motherhood. An infant was extra baggage, an extra mouth to feed that no one else wanted. He had already been discarded once.

Rachel had been so wrapped up in finding this new life that it had taken away the pain of the loss of...

A sudden gust of wind beyond the walls of the kitchen pressed grains of sand against brick. The sound, so often reminding her of the rain storms of her past, brought her back from the brink and her hand closed around the hand carved cup. The centimeter of liquor inside was from before the end, a bottle that Cookie saved for special occasions only. No one but Rachel and Cookie even knew about it. Sometimes it was all that got them through the day, just knowing that a part of the past still existed.

Rachel sniffed at it and knew she couldn't keep it down. She would let Cookie drink it later, but the rough hewn nature of the cup was grounding her.

She had clung to Micah for so long. Fighting to keep him alive when he was little, fighting to feed and cloth a rapidly growing boy with little more than rags on her own back. Fighting to keep him hidden from a developing ruling power that wanted every asset at its beck and call, promised a bright future but only returned more nightmares.

But this traveler. She couldn't trust him, it would be foolish to assume so. He hadn't been to the town before, and he had managed to enter it without injury to his person. Maybe he was a survivor, maybe he was a spy. Maybe...

She couldn't deny what she had seen in his eyes and in the photo. The boy in the picture and the boy that she had taken as her own, they were one and the same. And Micah looked an awful lot like the stranger.

Chapter 1

"Momma look! I fixed it."

Micah ran from the base of the stairs the moment he spotted Rachel across the room. He scrambled to is knees and gently lowered a contraption made of metal and stone to the floor. The moment his small hands moved away from it, the device propelled itself forward. The stone wheels, motor made of tightly wound metal and wire chassis cruised smoothly across the well worn wood until it came to rest against the base of a counter.

Rachel's eyes brightened and she beamed at the car, then at its creator. She knelt beside Micah and hugged him tightly, pressing her cheek down hard against his head.

"How wonderful. Just wonderful, Micah."

The boy grinned and threw his arms around her briefly before he excitedly broke from her grasp. He charged across the floor, picked up the small vehicle and quickly wound it again before setting it loose. Though the room was void of other people there were plenty of obstacles, chairs and tables and stools that stood in the car's path. Since he had not yet developed a way to remotely steer the small car Micah had to closely follow behind his contraption righting and winding it.

Rachel smiled after him as she stood. He was a smart boy. Had always been. She bent to the bucket full of lye soap and hot water. Broken skin stung as she retrieved the cloth she had been using before, wrung out the excess and wiped it over the nearest table top.

"Have you discovered a way to steer it?" She asked.

"No...I would have to re do the whole front...um..."

"Axle?"

Micah nodded after a moment of thought, the vehicle in his hands, his fingers wrapped around the part whose name he could never remember. "Right, I would have to redo the joints on the front axle for that."

"Is that all?"

Micah took in a breath and turned his car upside down while he weaved through the maze of tables and chairs finally plopping down on the corner of a chair near where his mother worked.

He was silent longer than Rachel expected and she glanced up to see him bent slightly, carefully focusing on the front wheels as he pushed the car back and forth on the table.

"I don't know." He said finally, but Rachel could hear not defeat, but future planning in his voice. They had been working lately on not giving up on a problem when it first presented itself.

"You'll have to work on it then..." She said, finishing the tables and moving to the long polished wooden bar. "But...after you've done your chores."

Micah groaned softly, his chin resting on the table, the car still moving back and forth a few inches.

"And you have your writing lessons."

There was another groan and Rachel smiled softly then strengthened her voice. "Come on, Micah. We only have an hour until the workers come in."

Large brown eyes rolled in her direction and the tousled head of hair rose with exaggerated slowness that seemed at odds with the energy she'd seen only a moment before.

"Cookie's waiting for you."

Micah trudged behind the bar and into the large kitchen looking more like the seven year old boy that he was, than he had moments before. He looked very much like any seven year old boy would look when given undesirable chores to do. It was so normal, so nostalgic, it gave Rachel pause.

Her hand went automatically to the handle of the mop, discarding the wet cleaning cloth, and she sunk the bundle of rags at the end into the bucket of water, and paused.

The room around her was quiet, which was rare. Twenty-two round tables, ten cracked and mended booths, a bar with ten stools, none of which managed to make order out of the mess of humanity that would fill the place in less than forty minutes. The windows were always covered with sand and dust on both sides no matter how many times she tried to clean them. Sweeping only passed the dust around, she had long ago given up on hoping to keep things clean that way.

But she thought, pulling at the heavy mop handle and slopping the lye water over the floor boards,  wetting it down seemed to help. It kept the air cleaner when the mob of sand covered, sweat soaked men and women stormed in and out through the course of an evening.

"He's done so much to that car in the past three days..."

Rachel jumped, and a hand flew to her breast over the place where her heart seemed to try beating out of her chest. "Oh...Cookie, " she sighed.

The older woman's eyes widened a bit, her mouth quirked the tiniest bit in the corner, the only sign of humor before she finished her statement. "He'll be making tiny people next..."

Rachel shook her head, letting her heart calm as she forced the mop back and forth over a large area of open floor. When she moved back to the bucket she could feel Cookie's presence still in the room.

"Lost?" Cookie asked, poised with a stack of clean glasses in her arms.

"In thought...yes." Rachel moved the bucket to a drier part of the floor and slopped water out again. "Every once in a while I forget how long we've been stuck in this place." The wet rags moved back and forth smoothly over the boards, deftly guided around well known snags.

Cookie straightened from her task of putting glasses under the bar and pressed her fingers into the aching muscles in her lower back. Chronic pain, part of getting old. She wondered sometimes if it made a difference that things were the way they were now.

"That's the problem with dreamers..." She said, and her face slipped into a wizened repose when Rachel looked up. "You're able to escape. The rest of us never forget because we never leave."

Cookie took the empty tray into the kitchen with her leaving the younger woman in silence. After a moment Rachel broke it with a miffed laugh. Cookie was an enigma, even before the end, but now...

Rachel attacked the floor more vigorously. She would have time to think later. Outside the shadows were getting longer. There would be wind that night without a doubt and the angrier the wind, the angrier the workers. She would have to send Micah up to bed early, and tuck him in before the late shift arrived or he would be up listening to it all night.

That meant she had to prepare a story for him and she set her mind to that while she finished the floor. By the time she reached the door and dumped what little water remained in the bucket, the place where she had begun her task was already bone dry. Nothing ever stayed wet in the desert.

Micah ran past her as she carried the bucket behind the bar and into the dimly lit kitchen. She just barely caught a glimpse of the car he held in his hands as he ran.  She sighed, dropping her arms in exasperation as she looked at Cookie.

The woman was turned slightly away and Rachel could sense the conspiracy already.

"I asked him to help you."

"And he did." Cookie said.

"For five minutes." Rachel protested and put her cleaning tools away. She slipped into an apron and sat at the central counter where Cookie was running a sharpened blade over the skins of thin, emaciated onions. The last of the shipment for the month, and they were only halfway through.

"He needn't peel the onions and there was nothing else left for him. He wanted to do his lessons so that he would have light left to work on his car."

Rachel pursed her lips, took a peeled onion from the basket and started chopping it. The process was smooth and fast and practiced and she had diced two more before she responded.

"He's smart, Cookie. Too smart. And the more I let him learn, the greater the risk that knowledge is to him."

Cookie said nothing, concentrating on a green spot that might turn into a chute, carefully cutting it away and setting it aside.

"And he likes to show it off." Rachel said, jabbing the point of her knife into the air before attacking another onion. "I've encouraged that in him too. It's dangerous. Far too dangerous."

She shook her head, moving to the stove and casting the diced onions into the large cook pot, scraping the cutting board clean with the dulled side of the blade before she stirred the boiling, murky water. She could feel a familiar lump forming in her throat and she knew the tears that might follow would have nothing to do with the onions.

Beside the pot she pulled a cloth away from a wooden bowl containing rising dough. This she carried back to the counter where Cookie worked, preparing a surface for the kneading.

"It won't be long before Rex or one of the others sees him. Sees what he can do. They'll take him before his tenth birthday and turn him into something-"

"Rachel..."

"I know...I know, Cookie. We've been over this. We've been through this far too many times. It's just..." There was flour everywhere. On her hands, on the dough, on the surface of the counter, on the floor.  Rachel sat back on a work stool and let the back of her hands rest against her knees. She took a deep breath, feeling it catch in her. She wiped the cleanest part of her arm across her forehead and sighed.

"Every time he accomplishes something...I feel so proud. So happy for him. I want to encourage him." Tears threatened to spill from her eyes and she finally let them. She'd blame the damned onions if anyone asked. "He deserves to be encouraged. He is such a smart boy."

"But..."  Cookie said, finishing with the last of the onions and moving them to the pot before she focused her eyes on Rachel.

"But...it makes me feel as if I'm training a gladiator...giving him skills that will ultimately destroy him.  Or worse...someone else." With effort Rachel was able to stuff the rest of her emotions back into the tight mental box where she kept them. She swallowed once or twice to get past the taste of bile that always rose when she made the mistake of thinking of Micah's future.

Cookie said nothing, only turning toward the next task. Had she gone to Rachel, comforted her, said meaningless things that changed nothing, Rachel might have slapped her. But that wasn't Cookie's way, and Rachel pulled herself back from the edge, her hands sinking into the dough and working it into loaves that were soon baking in the brick, sun-heated oven.

There were other things to be done. Tea leaves to boil, salt and seasonings to be added to the thin soup. They would have to tap between five and seven kegs of what amounted to moonshine for the evening and they had to be moved from the cool cellar where they aged to the bar top.

The women worked together quietly until the first of the workers started tapping at the glass of the windows.

"Do we ever open early?" Cookie asked, exasperation fueling the famous anger that she exhibited only when the bar was open.

Rachel smirked wryly. "It's Walter...he doesn't know when we open because he doesn't know when the workers are released."

"Because he doesn't work, the souse."

Rachel retrieved her loaves and put more dough into the oven, pleased with the way this batch had browned. It was never a good night when the bread was burned.

"Are we ready then?" She asked, pulling off the flour covered apron and draping it over the back of a chair.

Cookie pressed withered hands against graying hair, pulling it up and back into a bun that she tied with a bit of wire. "Give me a moment to spit in the soup."

Rachel cackled wickedly, took the keys and moved to the door to open the flood gates.