FORTRESS
OF FROZEN WOOD

JAMES

THE TREES SAT OVER THEM LIKE WALLS THAT FORMED, MOVED, and shaped their maze, trapping them like rats on an island where animals were scarce but never far from their minds. The flames came closer on the outskirts of their labyrinth with the crackle and flicker of light louder than any thunder James had ever heard, louder than the last gasp of air he heard Geoff gargle before James slid the blade into Geoff’s broken chest and watched the light fade from his eyes. How dark that light had been in the first place until it fizzled like spit on smoldering wood. Here the flames wound around the walls, broke apart from the long, single line of orange and yellow James thought it was, into individual torches of smoky wood with people attached, Abe in front, Kelsey with her head down by his side, Shia lingering behind and the entire settlement sloping backwards in the light.

The torches guided the people through the trees and into the open air near the greenhouse, where the path began. Abe stopped with a short burst. His arms stretched out as he sniffed the air, like a dog smelling rancid fear mixed with some perverse sense of victory. Phil had left the scent on the committee door with the rest of the liquid he had sprayed, an animal marking its territory.

“Can he sm—” Cheryl said and was shushed by the group that made the huddled mass sound like sea spray instead of hidden refugees in search of safety, unsure how to flee. The entire fire ceased its movement through the jungle. James wanted to stand up and push everyone deeper into the trees, but they would be spotted.

“They were here,” Abe said. James couldn’t see the look on Abe’s face but he heard it. He’d known Abe long enough to see Abe’s face by the tone of his voice. The controlled tone made Abe’s rage scarier, the calm before the storm. “Check the granary.”

Four flames separated from the pack and ran through the village. James’s footprints, Charlotte’s and Sarah’s and everyone else’s footprints would betray them as much as the stocks they had emptied. James hadn’t thought about the prints they left behind, not thinking that a smart kid could tell the explosive number of feet that had tread through the village.

“The storage has been tampered with,” a boy called out to Abe, from building to tree.

“Judging by the steps,” the boy said, “and the intense smell of piss, we just missed them.”

“If we just missed them then we could still catch them,” Abe said. “I promised we would come back. Get the young ones and the injured ones inside. Rachel.” Everyone paused. James heard the settlement’s hesitation in the midst of Abe’s command. “Stay here and rest. You’ve done enough.” Sincerity ran through his voice and for a brief moment James forgot he crouched in the woods hiding. “Everyone else, you know what’s coming.”

“Shit,” Charlotte whispered to James. Her words were hot in his ear. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“Hopefully he’ll go back into the trees. We can leave when the fire fades, make our way perpendicular to the flames.”

“But—”

“We don’t have a place to go, Charlotte. It’s not like we’ll be missing out on our trail back somewhere.”

The quiet sounds of their voices felt more fragile than snowflakes caught on a hot surface, ready to fizzle and melt. Some young kids shivered/ James heard their teeth chatter against the flicker of distant light and the crashing footsteps of those desperate to make it back into the warmth where James knew most of the outliers wished they could go.

ABE

Abe knew the outliers had been in the settlement before anyone told him. He could smell them, that putrid stench of endless desperation, not to mention their acidic body odor wrapped around a drape of shit Abe hadn’t escaped from since James let him loose on the ship. No, they were somewhere near, close enough for Abe to find if they set out now. The young and infirm would slow them down. He could let them go home and it would make him look merciful and understanding. The rest of them would catch up to the outliers for the last time. They had tricked him earlier but not this time. Abe could taste how close they were in their icy stink. A howl rose up from the woods behind them. It didn’t sound like a dog though; it shouted a call to the wild, to them all, an animal so different from them, a signal from an outlier maybe.

Abe told the weaker kids to go and those with weapons to follow him as he turned around and led with his torch outstretched, once more into the darkness. The trees were less haunted in the torchlight. Abe realized when he was stuck in James’s room that he didn’t want to become the darkness; darkness was overcome by light, which cast over the island every day. Even when the useless sun didn’t make an appearance, light shined through and over the island.

Darkness was useless. Abe stepped over the branches, refused defeat by light. Light was powerless because it always faded. Abe wanted to transcend both light and dark into something more eternal, something that shaped and formed in the bodies of everyone everywhere, always present in people’s thoughts and fears, happiness and pleasures. The torches guided him away from the settlement. He searched the air and the ground for signs, prints or smells that could get him closer to his last obstacle, the one thing that kept the settlement from greatness, the last living colony in the world, as far as they knew. They had the only human settlement left in their world and that was all that mattered now; no one had ever cared about them before, so why should they bother with the world outside? They had been shaped and gathered by Fornland and now they shaped and gathered the world. James couldn’t stop that. They earned this—Abe earned this, the right to lead a world that was theirs and theirs alone. The snow didn’t make a sound as he stepped. He floated, followed the single flame ahead of him toward the howl that rang through the jungle and called to him in its contrived symbolism, saying the settlers had returned and for James and the outliers to run—except there was nowhere to run, not anymore.

JAMES

The calls of the wild led the outliers from their hiding place as the flames drifted farther away. None of them spoke and the younger kids were too afraid to whimper. It reminded James of thunderstorms, when some kids would cry and others would look stoically out the window at the flashes of light; James was one of the latter. People had thought him brave or indifferent. In truth James had been too scared to move, which included screaming. Instead he sat on his bed and watched the bolts out the windows. When the light flickered, he would blink and it would scatter; it was the only time in the storm he felt he could do anything, and it came down to a blink. In the forest he needed to do more than blink and help bring these kids to safety, through the snow and along the wooden walls the trees made.

The moment felt too similar to San Diego, when he had run from the scavengers who tore through the city, who eventually caught up to him and tore through Marcus, and there had been nothing James could do.

They made their way through the trees as silent as ghosts, hoping the hazy light from the sunrise would continue to break the darkness. James and Charlotte stuck close together. Sarah was somewhere behind them herding the pack through the trees, bordered by the settlement. James prepared for inevitable screams and curses, hunters chasing them with bows and flying spears. The outliers moved in a straight line in the darkness. Small scrapes against the trees and broken, crystalized snow opened the night and closed in on them. How had life brought James to this place again, running away from hunters who wanted to take what he had, which was less now than it had been in San Diego? The longer he stayed on the island, the less he owned and the less he became. He had the clothes on his back and Charlotte by his side, which counted for more than the clothes considering he spent so many recent days held up inside a blanket with Charlotte wrapped around him. His happiest moments on the island all came from the simple touches, the moments that literally brought him back from the brink of death.

The light hovered on the horizon, scattered like a shattered sunrise unable to piece itself back together and finish the job. Something was wrong with the light. It didn’t move one way or the other. It didn’t fade or flicker, fall or rise. The color of the jungle stayed in a limbo between night and day, brought about by torches James realized had been stuck in the ground.

“Hold on,” James said. “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” Charlotte asked. She tried to keep moving, continue into the secrets of the jungle. James brought her to a stop with the rest of the outliers behind him.

“The torches haven’t moved.”

“Good,” she said. “They aren’t coming closer. We should keep going.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” he said.

Charlotte looked at the lingering torches along the horizon. “Oh no,” she said.

She’s right, James thought. Oh no.