Notes: I'm sorry for taking so long in getting this chapter up! Lately, my muse has attacked me on doing original stuff – writing the meat and the ending of a short story I had been working on and drawing advance pages for my webcomic. With me, original stuff usually takes precedence over my fan work. I also recently switched domains for my original art and writing website (got my own domain), and even more recently finished the fan art and fanfiction sub domain on that, so I've had those to work on. If anyone is interested, my main domain is listed under my website, and the subdomain for fanworks is "Devotion" in the Links.
I also got to go to Anime Expo this summer. It was my first anime convention, and I got to meet a lot of my good online friends there. It was awesome! If anyone reading this was there – I was the dorky female Vash sprouting Angel Arm feathers out of my shoulder and right glove. ^_^; I also passed out little "Vash the Stampede" business cards I designed.
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JOURNEY OF REMEMBRANCE
Part III
"Rem..." he called out, shaking and shivering. "Is it you?"
The sands at her feet were silver-gray in the moonlight, and there, cushioned and covered in blankets, sheltered from the wind by a rock cleft, was a little boy.
"Vash! I'm here Vash!" Rem said, dropping to her knees and reaching out to touch his forehead. The tips of her fingers appeared to pass through his skin. Another child hiked up the sand dune, bearing a metal canteen.
"Vash," Knives said, dropping to his knees opposite of Rem. He apparently did not see her. Knives placed his own small fingers to Vash's forehead and gently placed the canteen to his lips. "The fever hasn't broken yet. Drink."
Vash softly moaned. "Hot...cold... Knives, how long have I been sick? How did this happen?"
"Four days, Vash. I think it might be flu. There could be any number of pathogens on this planet we don't know about."
"Thought we didn't get sick..."
"I don't think we're supposed to, Vash... other Plants don't seem to...." Knives paused for a long time. "But... we both did get that cold that one time."
Vash laughed weakly. "Yeah... after the water-fight in the Rec. Room. Rem was worried but it wasn't as bad as this..."
Knives' expression soured at the mention of Rem's name. Vash coughed several times. Knives stared out over the sea of dunes. "We're miles away from any of our brethren," he sighed.
Rem gazed upon this scene, silent, and apparently unknown. She was there, but knew, somehow, that she wasn't. Her form seemed to have no substance. She stroked Vash's cheek, but felt no warmth from it. He turned his face to her, his eyes widening, as if he had just seen her and was startled.
"Rem?" he asked, "Rem, I'm so sorry..."
"What?" Knives asked angrily, "Vash, what are you talking about?"
"She's here..." Vash responded, "Rem, I - "
"Vash, you're hallucinating. Snap out of it! Stop talking about that damned woman! She's not here!"
Vash reached out toward the vision he saw, trying to grasp her hand. "I said I'd always be there for you... I said I'd never leave you..."
"She's dead, Vash."
"He killed you, Rem...I should have seen...I should have stopped..."
"Vash! Will you stop it with this nonsense?"
"What?" Rem questioned. Knives' face held a look of both great anger and genuine worry. He grabbed Vash by the shoulders and shook him. "Listen to me, Vash, she can't have you! She can't have you!"
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A rooster crowed. Rem's eyes fluttered open and she gently put the fingertips of her right hand to her forehead. She hauled herself upright and sat in bed, blinking at the sunlight coming through the gauzy white curtains of her bedside window.
"A dream," she said to herself. "But... it felt... so real. He was sick...Vash was sick and I couldn't help...Why was Knives so angry?"
Rem was startled by the clink of a ceramic teacup against a dish. The bedroom door was open and Melody stepped through it, as quiet as a corpse. She held a cup and saucer in her delicate hands and was dressed in a thin pink nightgown. Upon her feet were fuzzy slippers, which muffled her steps to silence.
"Miss Saverem?" she said, "I brought you some tea. Are you okay? You were talking to yourself again."
"Oh, I'm alright." Rem replied, "You don't have to call me 'Miss Saverem.' I've told you before – I'm just Rem."
"Daddy says I need to be polite. Were you dreaming about Alex again? You were talking to him the last time."
"No." Rem whispered. "That felt like a dream. This felt real."
Melody set the teacup and saucer on the bedside table. "Would you like some toast or eggs or something? I can check if the hens laid this morning."
"Yes, that will be fine."
Rem spun around in the bed, carefully lifting her prosthetic leg and hauling it over the side. Her natural leg felt stiff and sore. She shivered as she caught a gentle morning chill, and rubbed the arms of her thin fuzzy pajamas. She couldn't help but smile, remembering how she got them. They were a gift from the Bluesummers family, white, and covered with a pattern of little red flowers. They weren't exactly geraniums, more like a made-up flower to fit the design, but the thought behind them was sweet.
"Daddy and Dr. Greer are going to go to the livestock market today," Melody said, "Daddy said we need a couple of thomases and saddles. He hopes the things will be able to pull a plow 'cause we sure can't afford a horse."
"I wonder why people have been calling them 'thomases,'" Rem quietly said. She knew the native species of this planet, as the herds of the animals often grazed on rock-lichen just outside of town. They were unruly, ornery creatures, unlike the few horses and asses salvaged from Coldsleep stock and generated from genetic samples using the Plants.
Some people joked that the thomases must have been the result of DNA screw-ups in the Crash, but most held that they were animals native to this sandy planet. They were strange beasts, almost a cross between mammal and bird, and even dinosauric in some ways. It was speculated that their enormous bony facial overplates were an adaptation to protect them from the sandy desert winds. Though rather ornery, they were remarkably easy to domesticate – probably because they had few natural predators and had never encountered humans until recently.
Melody helped Rem out of bed. "I think it has something to do with a guy named Thomas," she said, "Heard a rumor that the guy who started the thomas trade had a cousin named Thomas and that he named the critters after him for whatever reason."
Melody and Rem entered the dining room. William, Sforzando and Dr. Greer were there, drinking a kind of coffee made from the beans of a species of local scrub-bush. Soprano stood at the kitchen counter, his hands covered in pale green feathers and bright crimson blood. Rem stared.
"What are you doing?" she gently gasped.
"We just got in from morning hunting," William Bluesummers explained. "Soprano and I shot some of them little greenquail. Poultry for breakfast!"
Rem started at Soprano's work. On the counter were ten small carcasses. Soprano made quick work of plucking them, then, with quick flicks and heavy chops with a large hunting knife, removed their heads and eviscerated them, throwing the unwanted parts into a basket on the floor. The "greenquail" were birds the size of pigeons and they very much resembled quail of Earth. They had cream-colored breasts, pale green body feathers and golden head-crests. Sforzando happily hummed as she gathered the cleaned birds into a roasting pan and sprinkled them with herbs.
"Rem, are you okay?" Salem Greer asked as she sat at the table, silent, wringing her hands nervously.
"I – I...." she began, "do we have any toast or eggs or anything? I'm... I'm not trying to be rude..."
"Hmmm?" Soprano interjected, sitting down after having cleaned himself up and donning fresh clothing, "This is the first meat we've had since... well, almost since the Crash."
Rem looked down. "I'm a vegetarian," she whispered. "I don't like meat much. I haven't had any in a long time."
"Oh," Soprano said blankly.
"You should have some," Greer insisted, "Try to keep it down if you can. You need the protein and the iron right now – besides, it's all we've got."
Sforzando dished out the birds, one apiece on small ceramic plates, leaving the rest in the roasting pan on the center of the table for anyone who wanted seconds. Rem nervously cut into the breast of her roast fowl and lifted a tiny piece of flesh to her lips with a fork. She stared at the pale cooked threads of muscle and the tiny red veins that snaked through it. She closed her eyes and gulped it down.
The greenquail had a mild but not very pleasant flavor. The flesh was tough and bitter with the flavor of the scrub-bush leaves the bird had lived on. Rem was very hungry, so she continued to eat, despite the poor flavor of the meat and the twinge of guilt she felt.
She didn't begrudge people who ate meat. She understood that animals ate each other to survive and that it was simply the way of nature. She, herself, however, felt guilty at the thought of an animal being forced to give its life for her. She'd never much liked the taste of meat, either, and had been a vegetarian since she was twelve years old. She felt no guilt over eating eggs or drinking milk, because animals didn't die to provide people with those things, and she would have felt less guilty if she were eating replicated meat, but as it was, this was all she had to eat and she needed the protein right now.
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Rem sat on the fence of the thomas pen with Salem Greer. It had been two weeks since the family had purchased their thomases, five in all. The pen was built of welded metal, pieces of spaceship, recycled to new usage. Everyone was still trying to come up with names for the animals and Rem took a special liking to the white one – a creature whose cream-coloration stood out sharply from that of its shaggy brown comrades.
"I shoved Vash in..." Rem recalled, "Knives was already inside. Vash did not want to go without me..." Her voice trailed off, becoming incredibly sad. "He kept begging me – begging for me to get inside. But... I had to try to save the fleet. I had to help Joey... I - That is all I remember. I started running back to the Bridge... I just can't remember anything beyond that. It's all blank... until I woke up in the wreckage."
Rem broke down into heavy sobs. Greer put his right arm around her. "I failed! We must have failed! The Crash.... it was... a disaster! It shouldn't have happened this way!"
"Shhhh.... you didn't fail..." Greer gently said, rubbing the young woman's back. "You did all you could. The important thing is that we're alive. We are making a life here, on this ball of sand. We are alive."
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The survivors of the Crash, or the Fall, as it was alternately called, did indeed make a life. All over the planet, in the disparate places the ships had crashed and Plants survived, cities and towns sprang up. There were even a few settlements built apart from Plants, but those were very few and often didn't last long. The Plants made the harsh soil useable for crops, and provided most of the water the people used. There was groundwater on this planet, and wells were dug with much hard labor, but it wouldn't have sustained the people for long without the Plants.
In the early years, people ran the Plants hard, out of necessity for survival. There was talk of a few towns that had run their Plants too hard, and killed them with exhaustion. As much as the Plants provided, resources were scarce. Most people made do with their scarcity, trying to live as much in harmony with the Plants and with the land as possible.
Some people, however, turned to simply taking from others. Feeling cheated out of their futures, some people formed roving bandit gangs. Arming themselves, they ruled the outlands and raided peaceful towns. In response, many peaceful folks took up arms to defend themselves from these outlaws. It wasn't very long before people began to nickname their new planet "Gunsmoke."
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Gunfire shattered the peace of the morning. Rem sat up straight in bed and the sounds of running echoed through the house.
"Get in the house! Get in and stay down!" the voice of Salem Greer shouted. Panicked and confused, Rem took a look out the window. Eight men, armed with rifles, daggers and handguns, sat mounted on thomases outside in a semi-circle around the house. Rem rolled out of bed onto the floor and ducked behind the bed. Bullets shattered the bedside window.
The leader of the bandits shouted.
"Come out, ya cowards! Face us!"
"What do you want?" William Bluesummers cried. "We are not rich. All we've got are a few thomases and a few chickens. We are peaceful people. Leave us be!"
Rem struggled to get up. Her cybernetic leg jammed. She tried to bend the knee, but the mechanism didn't respond. She dragged herself along the floor, toward the living room and the voices of the others. The metal prosthetic was a dead weight, scraping the clay floor-tile, keeping Rem from getting up or getting far.
"We know ya got women-folk in thar!" the bandit-leader yelled. "We want 'em! Send 'em out and we'll let the rest of ya be!"
"Never!" shouted Soprano. Rem heard the click of his hunting rifle being loaded and cocked, William's also. She managed to crawl through the door and out into the main living area. She saw Dr. Greer load a pistol. Sforzando and Melody huddled behind the couch. Soprano and William were crouched behind an overturned table, but made ready to go out with their guns.
"No!" Rem pleaded, "It doesn't have to be this way!"
"Stay down, Rem!" Greer commanded. "We aren't going to let them take you!"
"Maybe we can talk to them?" Rem asked, "Let me go out - "
"No, Rem!" Greer barked, heading out the door with his pistol drawn, followed by William and Soprano.
"Please!" Rem cried, struggling with her leg, desperately trying to stand, "There's got to be another way!"
She winced as gunfire erupted again. Soprano fell back through the front door with a scream, holding his right arm.
"My boy!" Sforzando cried, running to him and catching him in her heavy arms.
"Mother, get back!" the young man growled. Sforzando, instead of heeding him, grabbed his rifle and headed out the door.
"Mom!" he yelped, getting up despite his heavy bleeding. He went after her.
"Mother!" Melody screamed, crawling out from behind the couch.
Rem grunted and struggled with her leg again. This was madness! To her surprise, the knee bent and she rose. She ran to the door to see William, Greer and Soprano on the porch, crouched behind rain barrels, guns aimed on the bandits. Sforzando was beside Soprano, bandaging his bleeding arm with a strip of fabric torn from her dress.
"Please... stop this!" Rem shouted, stepping out onto the porch. She stood straight and addressed the bandits. "You don't really want to do this. We've done you no harm. This is no way to live."
The bandit leader smiled at her. One of the other bandits laughed. "She's purdy," yet another of the men said.
Rem's heartbeat pounded in her ears. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
"Will you come with us?" the leader asked. "If you come with us, we'll leave everyone else alone."
"Rem, no!" William gasped.
Rem spoke nervously, shaking. "Will you... Will you really leave the others in peace... if I go with you?" She didn't like at all the idea of becoming these outlaws' plaything, but she wasn't really thinking about that at the moment. She thought only to appease these men now, and to try to escape them before anything happened to her, though she had no idea how. She wanted her adoptive family to be safe, and for the moment, it was all she thought about. She walked forward one more step.
"That's it, sweetheart, come on," the bandit chief sneered.
A gunshot rang out. Rem screamed as a fine spray of dark crimson erupted from the man's head and he fell from his thomas. His body dropped with a thump into the sand as the thomas panicked and ran. The other men's beasts reared up and moaned.
"He got the boss!" someone yelped. Rem glanced back to see smoke trailing from the muzzle of Greer's gun. More gunfire erupted, this time from the weapons of the remaining bandits. Rem hit the ground. Soprano, William and Greer exchanged fire. The air was filled with shouting, smoke, and the scent of blood.
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Rem sat in a chair in the kitchen, shivering and crying. Dr. Greer carefully wrapped a bandage tightly around the wounded arm of Soprano, who was sitting in another chair, after having removed the bullet from the young man's flesh.
Sedona's sheriff had arrived with his small contingent of deputies – a tiny and poor police force, but thus far, it had been all Sedona had needed. Three of the bandits had escaped. Four had been wounded by the Bluesummers' and Greer and were now in the local jail.
The leader of the gang, due to Salem Greer's swift bullet, was dead. The sheriff made sure the family was okay, and left Soprano to the expert hands of the doctor. After interviewing everyone, the sheriff decided Greer's action to be justifiable homicide, an act of self-defense, and decided that no charges needed to be pressed against him. Sedona's undertaker took the body away.
Rem couldn't stop crying. Sforzando rubbed her shoulders, her own face in tears. Melody made tea.
"It's okay," the girl said, "We're okay... we're okay."
Salem turned to Rem after finishing with Soprano.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry you had to see that."
"Why?" Rem asked, shaking, "Why did you do that? You killed him... why?"
"He was going to take you." Greer replied. "I couldn't let them do that."
"I was trying to keep anyone from being hurt..." Rem whispered, "I just needed more time."
"Rem, listen," the doctor spoke in a gentle but serious tone, "There's no negotiating with people like that. They would have taken you. They would have done terrible things to you. They probably would have killed you. I had no other choice. I couldn't let that happen."
Rem looked up at him, her eyes glazed with stress and sorrow. "Things shouldn't have to be that way."
Salem Greer regarded her with a dark look. "You're right. They shouldn't."
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To be Continued!! Turn to the Next!!
S. E. Nordwall, 2003