11
DARWIN’S ANGEL
Gaston hadn’t seen this many people in years, Darwin thought. Forsyth was a bigger town, and even though it wasn’t full, it exceeded the capacity of this small place. With the lush vegetation creeping in on every side, there was even less space.
A small market had already been set up just outside the small corner store he had raided two years ago, the rusted cars in worse condition than back then, the metal almost disintegrating before his eyes. It looked like some of the vendors had brought their entire livelihoods with them. Tents and tables had been set up and smoke from cooking fires rose through the air. Others had only a few square feet of wet ground to work on. The Threaders he had left behind to empty the Forsyth market had let through more than just people. The sky was overcast and a penetrating drizzle permeated the air, soaking everyone to the bone in seconds.
He hadn’t seen Teresa since he’d arrived. She’d been triaging anyone that came through the hole, and when it closed behind him, she’d put Carlos on a stretcher and had him taken to the hotel down the street. The roof of the place was sagging, and the outside walls were covered in vines, but at least it was out of the rain. He’d followed her and someone there had taken care of the cut on his face.
It was better that she had her work to do. It gave him time to figure out what to do. He wanted to get her out of here, away from the fighting. It was obvious to him, but he was sure she wouldn’t see it that way. He chuckled—even that hurt—knowing that it really didn’t matter what he wanted. Teresa had always had a mind of her own, it was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. He knew she would choose to stay. Even if they tried to take back the QPS, she would be there, right near the front lines, doing her best to take care of the wounded.
They had lost a lot of people today . . . at both the dam and Forsyth. If he hadn’t created the holes and started moving people, the losses would have been much higher. Civilian losses. The Source inside him was still in the process of waking up. He could feel it reaching out into the world, unsure of its newfound freedom. It wasn’t creating new Threads yet, and the thought of it made Darwin more scared of what was ahead. The abrupt awakening it had at the dam must have been because of the QPS.
He turned away from the market and the makeshift hospital, heading south down the only road he’d ever taken out of Gaston. Enton was only a few hours away, and he needed the old man’s guidance. He chuckled again. You knew things were turning sour when you needed the advice of a man who had been dead for almost two years.
He reached the edge of town before realizing the sky was turning dark, and in the rain and cold, he was more likely to die of exposure than anything else. He turned back around reluctantly and plodded toward the market, his pace slower heading back than it had been only a moment ago. It was tough to admit, but being in Gaston meant he’d have to face Carlos and Teresa eventually. He thought Carlos might be the easier of the two.
He ended up not seeing either of them. The market was shutting down for the night as he passed through it again, and he stopped to try to barter for some food. He wasn’t in the mood for dancing, and Teresa wasn’t around to offer healing, so he did the best he could, offering manual labor for something to eat. He knew if he found what was left of the Threader army he could eat as much as he wanted, but the urge to separate himself from them and everyone else stayed strong. Old habits died hard.
The smell of grilling meat made him stop at the first place selling food. The owner ran out from behind the table and waved him to the back under a greasy tarp and three patched walls that caught the smoke of the fire and the cooking.
“I’m just looking for something to eat,” Darwin said. “The only thing I can offer in return is work. If you have anything that needs cleaning or moving or . . .”
“Sit.” The man swept his hand toward the fire. A young boy stood, relinquishing his stool. Darwin hesitated for a moment before sinking onto it with a soft sigh.
“Rory, bring us two plates. Don’t be skimpy. You and your sister can start shutting things down.” The boy walked away, his shoulders slumped. “It shouldn’t take long, Rory. When you two are done, our guest will still be here. If anyone comes by wanting to eat, give them extra. Anything we don’t sell will have to be thrown away in this humidity. And run down to Cathy’s place for some wine. Tell her I’ll pay her in the morning.”
“But I—” Darwin said.
“I don’t mean to interrupt, but we know who you are and what you did. If not for you, we may have left all of this behind just to stay alive.” He waved his hand around the small space. “I am Medad. I don’t have much to offer, but what I do have is yours. Please stay. My daughter is still too young to be alone out front. I’ll be back when my son returns.”
The boy returned only a handful of minutes later with two steaming bowls and a bottle of red wine, the cork still sealed with a ring of wax. The man followed him with spoons.
The food was simple, but delicious. Thin bread baked over an open flame and a thick stew that was mainly potatoes and carrots, but he found a chunk of meat or two in it as well. He didn’t ask what the meat was.
“You have saved me a second time, Darwin Lloyd,” the man said when Darwin put down his bowl, scraped clean with the last bits of bread.
Darwin glanced around the small space, the food turning into a lump in his belly. The floor was the dirt they’d hung their tarps over and rivulets of water ran in from the edges, making their way to the lowest spot. There wasn’t anything here to show that this was a family of believers. He thought he’d seen enough of them to recognize one when he saw one. It seemed he’d missed it this time. He stood to leave, mumbling his thanks.
“No, please,” the man said, scrambling to his feet as well. “It’s still raining, and we have room if you want.”
Darwin hesitated.
“You don’t remember me, do you? We met a few years ago just outside of Forsyth. You’d wandered by our fire, and my mother gave you a cup of coffee.”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“My mother, Missy, had no tongue.”
The memories rushed back to the surface, buried by everything that had happened since then. Sandra had joined Carlos at the fire, despite her misgivings about working with Salem. The smell of coffee—real coffee—had pulled him to a fire behind the Salem tents, and an old woman had given him a cup before he’d even finished asking if he could have one. When he’d asked her name, she didn’t—couldn’t—respond. Her tongue had been cut out.
“I was the one who told you her name. We could see that you were angry. You made her feel more like a person than she had in years that night.”
“What happened to her?”
Medad poured more wine into Darwin’s glass as they both sat back down. “She died only a few months ago. She would have loved to see you again.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Because of you, she was a free woman. There are a few of us here in this market. When the Qabal fell and the bastards from Salem took off, we were given the choice to return to being slaves or staying as free people. Some returned to Salem. They didn’t know any other life and were scared. I would have been one of them if not for my mother. She made us stay, and I have all of this because of her.”
“But you have kids here.” He could still hear the banging of pots from the front as they closed up for the night.
Medad’s face brightened, his smile threatening to break his face. “Mia and Rory. They are good kids. I am married now. Who would have thought there’d be someone out there that wanted me? The kids are hers from her first husband. Now they are mine as well.” He grinned again. “Who would have thought, eh? Me, a family man. I love them like they were my own.”
“And their mother?”
“She should be back shortly. She and some of the others brought food to the hospital. Those that take care of us when we are hurt or sick need taking care of as well.”
A pang of guilt spread through Darwin at the thought of the hospital. He hadn’t seen Teresa since getting back here, and he knew he’d been avoiding her. Mellisa’s death had brought back the fear of losing her, and brought out some of his old habits. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to talk to her. Nothing he could say would make her stay away from where this war would end, and he didn’t want the guilt of her death on his hands, or his on hers.
“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
“No. No . . . I . . .”
“Ah! I think this is a matter of the heart, no? They are a lucky person, to have found someone that cares as much as you?” It came out as a question.
Darwin shook his head.
“Of course you care! I saw it when you gave the coffee back to my mother. I saw it when you came to the market earlier today and got us out of there. Though, truth be told, I’m glad you left when you did. Where would we be if the two that had stayed hadn’t let us bring all of this? Cold and hungry, that’s where. You care, but you don’t always think things through, do you?”
Darwin stared at Medad as the kids came in from the front. “I thought you were believers, but you’re not, are you?”
“I believe in what I can see and what I can touch.” The kids sat down and served themselves from the food still warm around the small fire. Medad poured them each a bit of wine. “I believe in the next generation. I believe that though times may get tough once in a while, there will always be a time when it will get better. And I believe that if I have another glass of wine, I’ll start crying in my cups over how good life is right now. Mia, Rory, I’d like you to meet our guest, Darwin Lloyd. He is an old friend.”
The kids nodded, their mouths full of stew and bread.
“You should go to her, but perhaps not tonight. You are welcome to stay here. It’s not much, but it will be warm. In the morning, you go and talk to her. I’ll send Rory out to let her know you are safe.”
“Aww, but it’s raining,” Rory said around a mouthful of bread.
“Yes, and if your mother can brave it, then so can you. Finish your supper and go to the hospital and find . . .”
“Teresa,” Darwin said.
“Teresa. Tell her Darwin is staying with us tonight, and he will see her first thing in the morning.”
Darwin leaned back. It felt good, somehow, to have someone else make the decisions. And it would be good to have the night to think of how to tell Teresa that he didn’t want her near the fighting that was sure to come.
“Mia, when you are done, please go to Cathy’s and see if she can spare another bottle. If I know her, she wouldn’t have left a single one behind in Forsyth.” The look on Mia’s face matched the one Rory had given only moments before, but she didn’t say anything.
Halfway through the second bottle, Medad’s wife returned with Rory. Darwin remembered being introduced, and being led to a bed in the corner, but not much beyond that. Sometime during the evening, he’d told Mellisa’s story, raising one too many glasses, putting too much detail into what he said for kids to hear. They let him carry on, taking some of his burden as their own.
Darwin walked out of the market early the next morning with a headache, a packed lunch, and a plan, surrounded by stall owners delivering more food to the hospital. He had tried to help Medad prepare the shop for opening, but only got in the way. They didn’t have much food left, but what they had was cut and sliced and fried in yesterday’s leftover grease. It smelled spectacular. Medad and his wife—he couldn’t remember her name and was too embarrassed to ask—cooked everything they had left, putting only half of it on display. The other half went into large containers and he helped Medad’s wife carry them to the hospital. By the time they reached the end of the makeshift market they’d been joined by others.
These were the people Darwin could fight for. Yes, he knew a lot of Threaders, and some of them were his friends, but despite how he wanted it to be different, they felt elite against the men and women of the market. The Threaders lived in their own communities, they ate together, trained together, traveled around the country with barely a thought. But were they humanity?
Darwin realized that even he felt better than the people who had fed and housed him last night. He had been them only days before, but even then not quite. Back then, he had a legacy he could lean on as well as the dance, and he had used both to travel with Teresa. She had used her healing skills the same way. Not once had they worked in the fields to bring home the food they ate or served others only for the chance to earn enough to feed themselves. They were the elite . . . they weren’t what made the world a bearable place to live. Even the fight for control over the QPS was elite. There was no doubt that the common man’s life would be better if Salem was gone, but in the end this was a war to find out who would control the Threads, who would be the elite that wouldn’t get blisters on their hands.
The hospital had moved overnight, leaving the falling-apart hotel for the high school a few blocks west of the main strip. He rushed to the front of the group from the market when they reached the school, adjusting the food he carried so it fit under one arm. With the other one, he opened the door and stepped out of the way, letting everyone else in first, following the group to a large auditorium.
The space wasn’t full. Even if every Threader who had made it here had been injured, they wouldn’t have made the place feel cramped. Teresa and another healer walked between the injured lying on the floor, stopping to check how wounds were healing and offering some comfort against the pain. She looked tired, but at home . . . comfortable in what she was doing. It was hard to think of her as elite when she was helping others.
The people from the market put the food on the floor off to the side and picked up the containers from the previous night. A few brought the warm meal to the patients on the floor. Teresa jumped to help them before she saw Darwin. She stopped, almost looking like she was about to ignore him. He put down his food with the others and watched her approach.
“You look like you had a long night,” she said as she got closer. “And your breath smells like it as well.” She stopped in front of him and he Saw soft white Threads hover around his head. His headache all but disappeared.
“Thanks. I—”
“Don’t. Just don’t. Whatever you had to work through last night, I hope it’s done. If it’s not, the door is over there. If it is, we have work to do.”
Darwin nodded.
“Good. Carlos came looking for you last night. I don’t know where you two are finding the alcohol, but he wasn’t in any condition to be seen.”
“Was he still mad at me?”
“He was crying. I put him in the office by the front door. I was about to go see him, he’s probably feeling worse than you did this morning. It’ll wait, though. Go see him.”
“I’m not sure that’s what he wants.”
“Maybe not, but he needs his friends, and that’s what you are. Go see him.” She turned him around and pushed him to the gym door.
Darwin knocked on the office door and walked in to a wave of stench. Carlos had thrown up during the night. There wasn’t any glass left in the windows, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Carlos had also had the sense to use the rusted metal trash can as a receptacle. Darwin stepped back outside the office, took a deep breath and held it before venturing inside again. He lifted the trash can without looking inside it, the liquid sloshing as he scurried to the window, and placed the can in the overgrown field outside. The can tipped, releasing a new wave of smells, and he rushed back to the open doorway before letting out his breath and sucking in another one.
When he turned around, Carlos was on his feet, both hands on the surface of a desk that looked like it wouldn’t hold his weight for much longer. He heaved himself upright and stumbled backward. Darwin rushed back into the room to catch him.
“I may have had too much to drink last night.”
“You and me both, though I think you’re the winner in this one.”
“I don’t feel like a winner.”
Darwin chuckled. “No, I don’t imagine you do. There’s some food in the gym, and I think a bucket of water down your gullet would help.”
At the mention of food, Carlos’s face blanched and he put a hand back on the desk.
“Okay, maybe just some water, then. I’ll go find some and bring it back. You may want to sit on the floor.”
Darwin walked Carlos to the office door and lowered him down in the hallway. Carlos pulled up his knees and leaned his head against his arms.
“I’ll be right back. Are you going to be okay?”
Carlos nodded his head, looking like he immediately regretted the action.
Darwin returned with a plastic gallon jug of water and one of the healers from the gym. He’d never seen the young man before, but the healer had almost come running when he’d asked for help with Carlos. By the time the healer left, Carlos was looking much better.
“I’m sorry,” Carlos said. “I’ve been a real ass.”
“So have I. Don’t worry about it.”
“Did . . . did you see her?” Carlos’s words petered out.
Darwin shook his head.
“Then she might have made . . . might have found some place to hide.” The hope that crept into Carlos’s voice broke Darwin’s heart.
“The only way she would have made it is if she ran when the Skends approached.”
Carlos slumped down again. They both knew she wouldn’t have done that. She wouldn’t have left the others protecting the damn machine. Silence settled in the hallway and an errant wind blew in the sour smell from outside the window.
“So, what now?” Darwin asked.
It took so long for Carlos to respond that he thought the man hadn’t heard his question.
“We destroy the motherfuckers,” Carlos whispered.
Darwin didn’t see Carlos for another two days. For being such a small town, Gaston seemed to be very good at hiding people. There were around a thousand people that had managed to escape before Salem attacked Forsyth, and the city wasn’t able to hold quite that many. He doubted the population was that big before the QPS had been turned on.
Only around half of the current population were Threaders, and they weren’t what he would have called the cream of the crop. Those had been at Hoover Dam as part of Sandra’s protection contingent.
He was surprised to find out the number of Threaders protecting the QPS had been so low; only around one hundred people stayed at the dam at any one time. They knew Salem was getting stronger and creating more Skends, so why hadn’t they increased that number? They’d taken the place away from Salem using over a thousand Threaders, but most of them were a distraction for the small team sent directly to the generator room.
Feeding the people of Gaston had turned into a logistical nightmare. The group from the market had managed to bring some of their goods, including food, with them, but it wasn’t enough to sustain an entire city. As Carlos organized the Threaders, Darwin found some of his believers and began the hunt for food. Remembering the deer he had Seen the night Enton died, the first night he had tried monitoring the Threads, he sent more than a dozen of them into the wilds around the city to hunt. Three others, including himself, went to the coast to barter for whatever they could. With the potential of being discovered, it was a dangerous move, but it was better than watching a thousand people slowly starve.
Though Darwin’s team brought back fish and as many vegetables as they could find, it was the hunters that kept everyone fed. The overgrown fields and forests of northern Oregon were teeming with life, and their daily catch of rabbits and deer and whatever else they could kill kept the town full. Even after two days, Darwin had eaten more than enough meat to last a lifetime.
The market restaurants and food stalls took the fare and cooked it with whatever they had brought with them, and as the days wore on, the meals became bland and gamey.
Most of the Threaders in the hospital were released. Three remained, and he didn’t think they were going to make it. The healers could do amazing things, but they weren’t miracle workers.
Darwin grabbed a quick meal from Medad on his way through the market. The hunters had become a larger group, some hunting with bows and arrows. Yesterday’s group had found a pack of pigs and Medad had made sausage using the last of his spices.
It was time to visit Enton. He’d considered waiting a day and building a hole to get him there, but he knew part of the visit was a pilgrimage, a time to reflect on life and memories and the future.
He remembered the walk taking most of the day when they had pushed Enton’s disease-wracked body in the wheelbarrow. Today, that walk took him less than half the time. Maybe having been here only a few months ago had made the walk easier. He left the road, wading through the tall grass and overgrown woods to the pile of rocks at the edge of what used to be a field. Trampling down the grass, he sat and stared at the weathered wooden cross.
Enton wasn’t quite where his journey in this world had started, but it was where his life as a Threader had. He still remembered the day Enton had tested him, checking to see how much of the Threads he knew. He’d Seen this grave, here at the edge of a field. In that image, he’d also Seen Teresa, though he hadn’t known who it was at the time.
Both of them shared parts of his brain. He shied away from following the thought, but that was why he had come here, wasn’t it? To sort things out.
The parts they shared were filled with guilt. For Enton, it was in not being able to save him, knowing that his death was because the old man had stayed behind too long, protecting Darwin from Skends and the Qabal. For Teresa, the feeling was stronger and more recent. He had gone out of his way to avoid her since the dam. Since Mellisa had died. He kept telling himself it was all for her sake, to keep her away from what was coming.
And that was the crux of the matter. What was coming. He didn’t have a crystal ball. He couldn’t see the future unless he tried to see what a specific action would lead to, like he had with Enton’s dandelion so long ago. But following a dandelion’s Thread was easier than following the action of a man. He had to try anyway.
The questions of the future hung in the Threads surrounding him, and as he spoke the questions out loud, they responded, and he followed them. The images formed, overlapped and chaotic. He couldn’t make sense of what he saw; the variables of what was about to happen were too great.
With that thought, a single image snapped into view. Its clarity overshadowed all the others, and it grew until the image was part of him, and he was part of it. He could smell burned flesh, taste the scent of blood, feel the smoke in the air. Threads, frozen in time, sliced through the air. Ada stood in front of him, her face a mask of hatred and insanity mixed by a master painter into a visage of pure evil. Until you looked into her eyes. Buried there was doubt and horror and fear.
He knew what she was afraid of. In this, they shared a common point. Her hands lay on top of the QPS and Threads wrapped them, holding so tight it looked like her hands had sunk into the surface of the machine. A thick trunk of gossamer connected him to it as well. He knew the look in his eyes echoed hers.
There were two Sources in the scene. Though he could only see the one from the machine itself, he could feel the one in his chest. It was alive.
A silken arc of crimson red leapt from Ada’s chest, reaching not for Darwin, but for the far end of the room. He followed it, spinning within the image. Its destination stood out like an angel. His angel. The Thread had just touched her skin, and he could see it crack and split.
He collapsed into the long grass at the edge of Enton’s grave.
Warm arms wrapped around him, pulling him close and holding him tight. He leaned into them, tears leaving tracks down his cheeks and dripping into the dry grass. He knew who had come to him, who had always come to him. He wrapped his arms around Teresa, his body racked with giant sobs that he couldn’t contain. She held on to him until the shaking stopped, not letting go until he pushed himself away, turning his back on her.
“Don’t do that.”
He didn’t answer.
A warm hand pulled on his shoulder, and when he resisted, held him in place as she walked around him. She moved an errant hair off his forehead, her hand running down the old scar on his face. It wasn’t one of the ones that Baila had given him. Her fingers traced the one than ran down his face from the car accident. The one the plastic surgeons had hidden away, that she had Seen since day one.
“I saw,” she said. “You were dancing, and I saw. A woman had her hands on the Source. You were connected to it as well. She . . . she was attacking a beautiful woman with wings made of light.” Teresa paused, looking for the right words. “I . . . I didn’t know you saw me that way.”
“Since the first time in Chollas.” His words came out broken and soft.
“I love you, Darwin Lloyd, but I’m not that angel. I’m Teresa. I’m human, just like you. Don’t make me more than I am.”
“I know.”
“Is this why you’ve been avoiding me?”
He knew she was referring not to the angel, but to the other images she saw, and nodded.
“Life is full of risks. We’ve done almost a year on the road together, you know that. And you know that if we need to fight to get the Source back under our control, I’m going to be there.”
Darwin’s face flushed and he jumped to his feet. “You saw what happened. You saw that I couldn’t do anything to stop it, and you still want to go?”
“What I saw was a possible outcome, not the outcome. You know Threads better than that. Our choices as we go along could completely invalidate everything.”
“That’s not how it worked for Enton. Don’t go back to the dam.”
“Are you going?” she asked.
He took a step back. “That’s not what we’re talking about.”
Teresa stood in one fluid motion, keeping eye contact with him. “Are you going?”
He nodded.
“I saw your connection to the Source in the images. I’ve seen it before, and both times I thought I’d lost you. You know what that connection does, how it scrambles your brain. You’ve told me. If Baila hadn’t been there last time, you would have ended up like Rebecca . . . drooling and in a bed for the rest of your life.”
Darwin knew what he’d seen, and he knew the potential consequences of having that connection to the machine. He also knew that if he wasn’t there, there would be no chance of beating Ada. She was already over the edge and wouldn’t have second thoughts about using her connection to it to destroy anyone and anything that stood in her way. He’d seen that last year.
“I don’t have a choice,” was all he said.
“We all have choices. You make yours, and I’ll make mine.”
She turned and left. When Darwin went back to the campsite near the road, she wasn’t there either.