Chapter 15: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Three weeks after leaving Quebec Station, Lily saw living trees for the first time in her life.

The air cleared and softened as they came down out of the pass, trudging along the shoulder of a cracked old highway. A dark blur below and ahead of them soon resolved itself into a forest of thin-trunked, towering trees capped with fragrant needles.

Her mother had been in possession of an artifact: half a book, its yellow cover sun-faded, the glossy pages water damaged. Not a single woman in the house could read, but the words didn’t matter. It was the pictures: huge blue skies, oceans of grain, blue-tinged mountains, canyons shaded all the colors of a sunset.

“It’s all still out there,” Johanna had whispered, rocking her in the creaking old chair. The cancer had already taken root in her gut. “Past where the sun sets. We’ll go when you’re big, I’ll show you.”

Lily laid her hand cautiously to the rough, sticky bark, feeling pressure at the back of her throat.

She looked back to see the others bumping into each other trying to walk and stare at the same time. Maggie laughed at a flock of startled birds. Gabe pretended not to be impressed while Em pointed at everything, wide-eyed.

It had been a miserable crossing. High altitude and low temperatures, the burden of the inexperienced Station-dwellers, the way Michael only rejoined the party at dusk to clean the guns.

He’d spoken once to Maggie and once to Gabe, a total of eight words: “I’m not hungry”, and, “Don’t touch that, it’s loaded”.

Now he walked several paces ahead of them, visible here and there through the trees. She tried not to take her eyes off him. His arm had been hurt, she suspected, by the door. But he moved normally now.

“Sun’s getting low,” Lily heard herself say. “We should set up camp.”

They found a break in the trees and threw their burdens down. Lily explained what firewood was and how to gather it, then turned them loose and scouted for a level place to build the shelter.

After checking to make sure she was alone, she knelt and pushed her fingers into the dirt. It was rich and black, and moist…anything could grow here. Everything was growing here.

She remembered the garden behind the house, how each of the women had donated a portion of their water rations to irrigate the thin, pale potatoes. The anemic carrots. Lily never cried from thirst, her mother had always said, even as a baby. She’d never cried at all.

Lily stood, wiping her hand on her trousers, leaving a vivid black streak.

Everything would be fine now that she’d made it. Somehow all the horror, all the pain, all the dark and ugly things she’d been forced to do and to become…all of it would fade. She would make it fade. She would hammer the dents out of her soul and polish it until it shone. She would…

How long had Michael been standing there?

She was self-conscious suddenly about the dirt on her hands. It was on her knees, too, and resisted her half-hearted attempts to brush it off.

It had been too long since they’d spoken. Weeks. The entire miserable, awful crossing. He was looking at her like he was waiting, but Lily didn’t know what for.

Then she noticed his backpack. Slung over one shoulder, limp as a shed skin.

“What are you doing?” She asked, even though she already knew. “Are you leaving?”

“South.” He said it like he was still Operative 74. Almost. “I’m going south. To New Columbia.”

It was the first time they’d spoken since leaving the Station, it was the last time they were ever going to speak, and he couldn’t even look her in the eye.

Lily wanted to be a stone wall, a locked door. “Why? Do you have to?”

Michael blinked at her. “No?”

“Then stay.” She’d been hard, once. Impervious to pain. Now she felt so deeply, impossibly sad. “You should just stay.”

He set his things down. Not that he’d had much.

“Ok,” she said. “Good.”

Lily sat against a tree with the rifle in her lap, watching the shadows lengthen and listening to the fire crackling back in camp. Gabe was chattering about the trees, words tripping over each other.

They’d push west in the morning. All six of them.

Michael hadn’t said anything else. While they worked she’d tried to ignore him too. He wasn’t going to stay. She would wake up one morning in this sun-dappled forest and he would be—

Footsteps crunched behind her; Lily’s imagination conjured up black-coated soldiers in the deepening shadows, but she relaxed her death grip on the gun when she saw it was only Michael, carrying two steaming mugs. Maggie’s contribution: a dark, herbal tea.

He eased down next to her and offered her a cup.

It was the bitterest thing Lily had ever tasted. Worse than boiled grass. She made a face and emptied it into the underbrush, and looked up just in time to see Michael do the exact same thing.

A smile was born and died on her face in the space of a heartbeat. Thankfully he didn’t see it.

“I thought.” Michael cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure if you still wanted me to leave.”

“I don’t.” It came out too quick, too sharp. Almost two months living in each other’s pockets down in that hole and he still had the nerve to say such a thing.

He didn’t say anything else.

A bird trilled on a branch high above them. Lily’s heels sank into the soft moss as she watched Michael sideways, carefully.

He didn’t have that unnatural stillness about him anymore, or the machine coldness; he just looked disheveled, tired, and human. She wondered when he’d actually become Michael instead of 74 putting on an act.

“Why’d you come all this way with me,” she said, finally.

“I don’t know.” It sounded like an apology.

“I don’t know why I asked,” Lily muttered.

Michael coughed into his sleeve; that had been a laugh; she was certain of it.

“What’s so special about New Columbia, anyway,” she said.

He stilled, and she thought she’d lost him again. His eyes emptied, his face went slack and cold. But he blinked and seemed to shake himself free of it. “I—”

“Don’t know,” Lily finished.

Michael smiled down at his hands. On anyone else it would’ve looked humorless.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to face the unknown alone. Maybe the Coalition’s radio silence meant they no longer had a presence west of the Brown River. Maybe Operative 63 had gone back to Delphi empty-handed, and everything would be all right.

She had the next question ready on her tongue: how much farther are you going to go? Any answer at all was more terrifying than not knowing.

Lily’s smile faded. Silence drew down from the trees, worse then before. Heavy. Michael put his empty cup down and picked it up again, rolling it between his palms.

“I’m glad you did,” she said.

He blinked at her. “What?”

“I’m glad you came with me.”

Voices rose and fell by the fire behind them, indistinct and comforting. Together they watched darkness swallow up the trees.

“So am I,” he said. That sounded like an apology too.

A tight corner of Lily’s heart, the one that had been preparing for him to walk off into the night without her, finally eased. “Good thing you’re staying, then.”

Gabe found the road, a wide dirt track edged in broken paving that predated the Collapse and maybe the whole forest, scarred by unmistakable wagon tracks.

It ran sort of northwest and southeast. Directions were difficult to gauge in the trees; what sky Lily could see was blanketed in malevolent steel-wool clouds. A storm was creeping in from the Wasteland, but they’d make good time now. Maybe they’d stay ahead of it.

“You’re navigating from now on,” Lily sighed, stretching until something in her back gave a satisfying pop. Gabe went red to the tips of his ears, and she caught Maggie and Ellis exchanging a look. “What?”

“Lily, this isn’t… I mean, we were going to tell you. We just didn’t get the chance.” Tears gleamed in Maggie’s eyes as she boosted Em up onto her hip. “We’ve been discussing it, me and Ellis, and we’re going south.”

Lily hesitated. Swallowed. “I thought you were coming with us.”

“It’s a story.” Her voice broke on the second syllable. “It’s a lovely story, but you don’t know if your city is there, and we’ve got children to think of.”

Lily was so, so tired of goodbyes. She’d just gotten used to having people again, and now—

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll find it, it’s just…” Maggie hugged Em tighter. “This New Columbia you told us about, that’s a certainty. Ellis knows machines, I know farming. We’ll have a place there.”

“We couldn’t have made it without you,” Ellis added, “But this is as far as we go.”

She gave them the tent and most of the food. Michael put the rifle into Gabe’s hands and said something quiet; the boy clutched the weapon tight and nodded.

Lily made herself watch until the four figures were out of sight. She swallowed her frustration and grief.

Then she and Michael took the road northwest.