It's Memorial Day here in the U.S.A.. Let us always remember those who gave their life fighting for something they believed so strongly in - we, the people.
It takes an ocean of trust in the Kingdom of Rust.
- Kingdom of Rust by Doves
. . . | . . .
C H A P T E R - F I V E
The Water Siren
~. . . . -=|=- . . . .~
I woke. There were shapes of familiarity in front of me, cracked and broken. The sweet, smokey scent of burned wood filled my nostrils as I took in a breath. There was something I felt now, that I hadn't felt in days; life. It had returned to me, however I remained still in this new awakening.
My name, her voice, echoed through the trees.
My neck ached when I tried to lift it, so I rolled onto my back and met the canopy of branches and leaves overhead. Beyond that was the pale sky, wisps of white clouds passing over slowly.
"Edward," she said then appeared above me, hovering with her hands on her knees and a smile pushing on her cheeks. The ends of her hair clung together, yet separated. Was it wet? "Guess what."
I pushed my fingers into my eyes, stirring the burn away that occurred when I woke. "Steak?"
"What's with you and steak these days?"
"'Cause it's good."
It was then that I noticed what was at her feet. Her old, red t-shirt was ripped and tied around two large branches. In the middle was a pile of small silver, gleaming fish that flopped and jumped around each other. Some landed on the dirt next to the tarp.
"Go ahead and say it. I'm amazing. Tell me how awesome I am."
"You're the most amazing person on Earth," I said with a grin.
"I know." Her lips pulled back so eloquently, revealing her happiness. "Um, I was thinking about roasting them over the fire like kabobs. What do you think?"
They were small, but probably large enough to skewer. "Yeah. I can make skewers with my knife. I just need to find the right size sticks."
"Uh, you're not doing anything. You're letting this," she pointed to my leg, "heal. Remember?"
"So, I can't move at all, then?"
"Nope."
"I can't even go wash if I wanted?"
"Not until you get better. A couple of days, maybe. You can wash here."
I lay back on the tarp. "It's not quite the same."
I couldn't begin to describe how it felt to be completely useless for the days that followed, but I didn't move from the tarp except for more obvious reasons, like using the designated bathroom vicinity. Our time was spent just like Alice said we would spend it. While I rested, she boiled water and caught minnows from the pond. I had never been much of a fish person, but I quickly became one. Even the weather showed us mercy in our bare conditions.
For days we ate and rested like kings. Our kingdom became the forest; shrouded by trees, we were at home in the leaves and dirt beneath our feet. My cares, like the signs of the human populace, was low.
I woke on our fourth day in our forest haven, and while Alice slept, I rose to my feet without heavy effort. I felt like a man again, a real man. Not some stiff puppet pretending to be something I was not. My leg, once the master of my body, didn't hold me back as I made my way to the pond Alice had been lifting water from for the past few days.
Even though the trees were blocking the late morning sun, the water still gleamed and rippled in the breeze. The air was mild. If I had to guess, I'd say it was in the high sixties. It reminded me of the single time my dad and I went camping when I was younger. Of course, we didn't rough it like Alice and I were forced to. He never really believed in that. I often wondered if he had been alive at the end of the war, if he would've survived.
I looked down to my toes covered in the dirt that coated the bank. There was a nice-sized rock that lied next to me. I picked it up and examined it with my fingers and all its rough, sharp edges, then threw it into the water. I could only imagine it scared every living thing that it landed near.
Leaves crackled behind me, then Alice and her disheveled hair appeared on my left.
"Can we just stay here forever?" She wrapped her forearms around mine. "You can build us a log cabin out of sticks, and we'll live off fire-roasted fish."
I closed my eyes with a sigh. The thought of settling down somewhere was nice. "It would be a really small cabin. Midget sized." I looked to her small frame, sizing her up for the next thing I would say. "Should be perfect for you."
She jarred me in the ribs.
Ouch.
"Not nice," she chuckled for a moment, then let out a breath of content. "I'm serious, though. We should forget Florida. Forget everything, and just stay here the rest of our lives and live off the river. I'll even let you keep the mountain-man beard."
"And scare off all the decent men coming from miles around to ask for your hand? I'd take a knife to it once a month for you." I grinned.
"You're so kind, sir."
My stretched lips slowly dissolved and my brow tightened as I stared at the sun-lit tree tops across the water. The scenery was picture perfect, or as I heard a long time ago, 'post card worthy'. Even though the water was a murky brown, it held a salvation, a power that could free all the excess filth that clung to my skin. I hadn't bathed in what I calculated to be weeks, and no matter what the conditions were, I don't think anybody ever got used to the feel of dirt under their nails or in their hair.
"So, can I wash off?"
"Should be okay. Just don't get the dressing wet."
"No shit." Even I knew that. The wound was healing nicely now. Alice had continued to pack it with fresh gauze every morning, and left it to the open air during the day, only wrapping it with a bandage (from the remaining part of her old t-shirt left, over from the man-made net) at night. In the end, I believe it was the air that helped it along.
Instead of stepping away and allowing me privacy, like she did in the past, she peeled her blue shirt over her head, revealing her pale skin underneath that flushed with her bra.
"Wha—what are you doing?" I asked and blinked several times. My eyes suddenly burned. I didn't know why.
"Bathing," she said with a grin.
It wasn't safe for us to both be so vulnerable, so exposed. "We'll take turns," I said, backing away and giving her the space she would require. "You go first."
"It's okay. No one is around for miles. No one will see." Her light voice was so convincing, so trusting, but even though it was delicate, it had the power to stop me from moving away. I had to question whether or not I heard what I thought I heard in these quiet surroundings.
She smiled as her hands moved to her pants, and I didn't look away, like some curious, perverted, teenage boy watching a girl undress for the first time. Her pants slid down her thighs then collected at her ankles before she stepped out. Heat collided with my cheeks and I turned away. I'd seen Alice undress before, but somehow this was different. It was seductive. It pulled me away from the reason and logic that kept me sane, focused.
"Edward?"
"Yes?" I answered, keeping my back to her.
"Would you mind getting the canteen?"
I nodded, and made my way to our camp. The canteen was sitting upright near the fire. It was empty.
My stomach twisted into terrible knots as I took short strides back to her. She was sitting on her feet in the grass, leaned over the edge and dipping her hands into the water.
Her dark hair spilled over her creamy shoulders that lined perfectly with her slender waist, covered in gray grime. Her shoulders, working with her arms to pull water to her face, accentuated her feminine muscles and the contour of her back, all the way to the top of her small, pink underwear.
I looked to the blue sky overhead and took in a breath in hopes that it would calm me, keep me from thinking of things I shouldn't have been thinking of.
I stopped beside her and held the canteen over her shoulder.
"Oh, thanks." She took the item from me. "Aren't you going to undress?"
Was I going to undress? Um...
"No, I'm going to wait... until you're done."
She stood, then, leaving the canteen on the grass and began to assault the hem of my shirt with her cool, wet fingers.
"It'll be okay," she said reassuringly.
She pulled the shirt over my head, leaving my tags bare.
The strength I felt earlier slipped away. I was a puppet again. And it most certainly would not be okay.
"Not at the same time," I urged. I stepped away; away from her dark, hooded eyes and soft lips that begged without saying or doing anything at all!
Her expression was amused, even though she didn't smile. Did she know what she was doing to me; what kind of beast she was waking?
She picked up the canteen again then dipped the mouth into the water, filling it. She tilted her head back and poured it over her scalp. Her hair became longer. It clung to her neck and shoulders, and a sensation that had eluded me for months pushed to the front of every thought and nerve. The sight of her; the curve of her neck and her fleshy, parted lips as she inhaled around the dripping water made her indescribably beautiful.
The hairs on my arms stood on end, and the ache, which wanted nothing more except relief, ate through my bones.
I was at a crossroad on the edge of that pond, and beyond there were two very different outcomes.
There was nothing I wanted more than to preserve our sibling-like relationship. She wasn't part of my blood, but she was my family in all aspects of the word; the sister I never had.
But if that was so, then why did I have the urge to wrap my arms around her and loose myself? When I first met her, I thought about it, but those ideas faded as the world violently enveloped us. I knew what I had to do, then. I wouldn't allow such pettiness to distract me.
A soldier could never be distracted. It meant death. Sex was a silly thing to die for, but what about now? We hadn't seen anyone for days. Surely, we were alone, and the hunger I felt was unwavering. I wanted to put my mouth to her neck and touch her in ways that I hadn't touched a woman in so long. I wanted to feel her soft skin under mine however rough or callused my hands were. I could imagine her surrounding me and how warm and good she would make me feel.
I'd lose myself in her. I'd lose track of the sun and how badly we needed to be further south where the air was warmer because Fall wouldn't hold off forever.
I looked to her as my fingers stroked the waist of my pants, waiting to be shed to the ground.
She didn't seem phased like I was by this entire experience happening around us. She was always immune to such things, never taking them in. I wasn't sure she even knew what she was doing to me in that long moment while I stood on the shore, hanging on the edge of desire and catastrophe. She only grinned as she always did, that seemingly innocent grin that would never change.
My fingers were stiff as I unbuttoned and unzipped my fly. I thought I heard her faint laugh, although I didn't see it escape her lips.
I was so torn, so completely unsure of what to do in that moment. I dropped to the ground next to my shirt, my knees bent, holding my elbows which took the weight of my head. My palms were moist on my face as I pried the frustration away on my cheeks and beard. They found their way to my hair, pulling hard at the strands that were at the longest they've ever been – nearly past my ears, now.
When I looked up I found those deep brown eyes staring at me from under the beads of dripping water.
"You don't look yourself," I said. I didn't even sound myself. I was possessed.
"What do you mean?"
But I didn't know what I meant; not in a way that I could tell her. To me she appeared other-worldly, almost like a water-dwelling siren that emerged from her home to tempt me into darkness from which there was no return. It was not how I wanted to think of this woman no matter how beautiful she was. She was not here for my pleasure.
Every thought stopped just as quickly as it began.
It was her. It was Alice, and I couldn't think of her like that. I couldn't think of her under me after all we'd been through, after all she told me, after all the emotions! She had a fiance before the war, and she mourned him after. She probably mourned him still.
"Are you okay?" Her voice interrupted.
I stood up and re-did my pants, pushing the bulge away. It hurt to refuse the temptation. It hurt worse than anything I'd gone through the past couple of weeks, but I knew it was right. As soon as my shirt found it's way around my body I knew I'd made the right choice. "Finish bathing. If you need me then you know what to do."
"Yeah," she said softly, "I know."
I made it safely back to the confines of the tarp. I refused to look in her direction. If I did, I knew the thought would trample back.
Hell, even without looking at her, it did.
Sex.
Fucking sex.
I breathed deeply, willing the urge to go away with the deep intakes of air.
Flash of white!
In my peripheral, through the forest, movement interrupted me, moved me. Was it my imagination?
Again!
I grabbed a pistol next to the tarp, slipped on my boots then rose to my feet. It wasn't my imagination. There was someone there, someone in the distance. Did they know about us? They were far away, venturing to the south. However, I wasn't sure they would miss the pond, and if they didn't then they would have to go around; no telling which way.
I began to follow as quietly as I could.
I wove through the trees, finding it hard to keep silent while moving over the fallen leaves and branches. They crunched so loudly that I was sure my position would be given away, but it wasn't.
Ahead, and to the left, approximately fifty feet, my target was there with their back to me. I moved behind a tree and stood as still as my body would allow. This person was wearing white. I didn't recognize the clothing, and knew that it was someone we hadn't encountered before. This particular article wasn't covered in filth, nor was it torn, which led me to believe they hadn't been wearing it long.
It was a woman. Beside her was a large metal pail that sat idle as she dipped her hands into a private pool of water and splashed it onto her face then arms, not knowing that she was being watched. I should have felt guilty for laying my eyes on her, but I couldn't conjure the emotion as I watched her wet parts of her body. She straightened and tilted her face toward the sky to brush her wet hands along her throat. Her thick, brown hair, much longer than Alice's, fell down between her bare shoulder blades.
My god.
I lowered my gun at the sight, tucking it in the waist of my black pants as she dipped the large pail into the water, filling it to the brim. When she turned I couldn't conceal myself. Our eyes locked.
Her dress, that I once thought white, was drenched in red on the front.
Slaughter.
The word passed through my mind without delay. I took a step toward her, holding out my hands. Was she hurt?
I couldn't imagine what could've passed through her mind to draw up such a reaction. Her delicate, womanly features turned with horror. The tin pail fell to the ground, and all the water inside rushed downhill. She was running away from me before I could even tell her I meant her no harm!
I called after her to wait, but she didn't stop. I wanted to chase her and grab her by the shoulders and tell her that it was alright. She wouldn't believe me. Men with good intentions didn't chase strange women. If men pursue a running woman, it's only because they mean them harm. My words would mean absolutely nothing to her and everything to me.
It was dangerous out here, and I knew it well. There were so few good people remaining. It hurt me to think what would happen to a beautiful woman like that if she were caught alone. But what if she was already hurt? What happened to her to cause the entire front of her dress to be stained red?
I ran back to the campsite to find Alice. She was just pulling on her jeans.
When she saw me she smiled, but it quickly faded. "Where did you go... what? What's wrong?"
"There's a woman out here," I said quickly while gathering my things, not bothering to attach anything to my person. "She's alone, and I think she's hurt. I can't be sure."
"So?"
"We've gotta find her. She may need help, or something."
"Or... something?" she questioned.
She didn't seem enthusiastic about stuffing our things into her backpack. Her motions were lazy and indifferent, but when I broke into a jog so did she, keeping pace with my jingle and crunching through the forest.
When I located the pail, Alice asked, "This is where you saw her?"
I nodded as I picked up the large item, now empty.
"I only wanted to assess the situation, you know, see who it was, but when she saw me..." I couldn't finish. I was nearly breathless.
"She ran off."
"Yeah."
"Well, maybe she knows to stay away from people. Especially military," she eyed me.
I began to follow the path she took when she ran off. Alice crunched behind.
"I'm sure she's fine, Edward." Her footsteps ceased, and I turned. Her hands went to her hips. "What's this really about? What are you trying to do?"
"I just want to see if she's okay."
"Why? You don't have a duty to anyone anymore." Why did she sound so careless, so desperate. It wasn't in her character to act that way. Alice had always been caring.
"Why are you saying this? What's wrong?"
Her lips parted and for once I thought she was at a loss for words. "I just want to get to where we're going. Don't you? Don't you want to stop having to worry about whether or not we're going to freezing in a few months? I'm ready to stop traveling. I'm ready to set up a life somewhere new. Isn't that what you want, too?"
"More than anything, but while we're out here, making our way through this goddamn hell, why not help people like us along the way?"
"No one helps us! It's not our job, it's not mine, and it's not yours anymore. Your mission is over. It was over the moment everything we ever knew died! It was over the moment everyone we ever loved died."
"Why are you acting this way? What's wrong with you?" She wasn't the Alice I knew and loved. She was another woman completely. This darker character swallowed the sunlight I once saw on her face.
I pulled at my tags through everything I held in my hand. "This means something to me," I said, my voice calm. "No matter what the conditions are, this means something, Alice."
"That," she pointed to me, "has almost gotten you killed on more occasions than I care to count. It's a lost cause, something that used to be, that will never be again."
"Not to me, it's not."
She hung her head with a sigh, and turned away from me. An odd chuckle escaped her lips as she cradled her forehead in her slender fingers.
I wanted to bring her close to me, to tell her that everything would be okay, but I was dirty, and she was cleaner so I tucked my holsters under my arm, and placed a now-free hand on her shoulder, but found myself pulling her wet hair behind her ear. I was ever hopeful that she would look at me, but she didn't. Not even when I leaned in and kissed the back of her head did she turn.
Just as I felt defeated and horrible, she said, "I just want you to be happy." She paused for a moment, breathing in a few times. "C'mon, lets go find her."
I grinned, and something inside me buzzed with a sort-of joy. In that last moment of clipping my holsters to my waist and legs, Alice turned from me and wiped her fingertips under one of her eyes. She must've been tired, which gave us all the more reason to not delay in finding that girl.