A Girl Called Badger

A Girl Called Badger - By Stephen Colegrove


ONE



The forest smelled like rain and the hunters walked faster.

Four carried wooden crossbows at the ready, metal staves bent and strings cocked. At the end of the single file a young man twirled a shredded length of electrical wire. An occasional slap of the wire against his hemp trousers earned a look from the others. He held a crossbow over one shoulder, by the strap.

The leader held up a palm and the group halted near a pair of white-flowering trees at the edge of a clearing. Thorns as long as a thumb spiked from the knobby branches.

The young man rushed forward with a loud rustle of leaves and snapping twigs. “That’s hawthorn!”

“Quiet, Wilson,” hissed the leader.

“But I can use the flowers and leaves–”

“We’re not here for that. Stop talking.”

The hunters moved deeper into the forest. They stopped before a tangle of chokeberry bushes and sat with legs crossed. After half an hour the lead hunter stood up. He cupped his hands and made a sound halfway between a caw and a squeak.

Something small rustled through the bushes. Instead of the expected coyote, a white-spotted bear cub squeezed into view and ambled happily toward the hunters.

Deep in the thicket twigs cracked like gunshots and a hoarse bellow ripped the air. With a spray of leaves a massive bear charged from the bushes.

Bolts flew at her as Wilson fumbled with his crossbow. The brown and yellow-spotted coat shivered from the hits but the bear kept whoofing forward and swiped the lead hunter across the chest. He flew six feet and tumbled through the leaves.

Wilson shot his bolt as the hunters reloaded and fired again. Steel points ripped through the bear’s heart. She wandered into the trees and collapsed like an exhausted old woman at the end of her day.

The four made a crude litter for the bleeding hunter and raced home across the mountain. Wilson tried to remember his lessons on surgery. He found it difficult to think about anything but the dead bear on the brown chokeberry leaves.



HE FELT THE BLOOD on his face and in the air. It freckled his arms, his clothes, and his hands. It pooled under the wounded man to the edge of the operating table and splashed perfect round circles on the floor.

Wilson jiggled another clamp in his hand but Father Reed was too wrapped up in thoracic surgery. His bloody fingers struggled to find every shredded artery and seal them with the silver pen of the micro-cauterizer. Around the patient, machines flashed yellow and bleated like mechanical sheep.

In the end, the blood loss was too much for the wounded man. After the second cardiac arrest his heart stopped. Sounds from the machinery slowed and paused, became a solitary cricket.

“Trauma monitor––all systems off,” said Reed. He wiped his forehead with the back of a hand. “As it begins ...”

“What was that, sir?”

Reed startled and knocked a metal tray to the floor.

“Cat’s teeth, Wilson, don’t sneak up behind me! I need a washcloth.”

“Yes, sir.”

He helped to clean and wrap the body in hemp cloth, then donned a heavy yellow suit and a scratched, bulbous helmet.

Family and friends waited at the top of the concrete steps that led from the rectory to the surface. Two men came forward to help Reed and Wilson carry the stretcher. The procession officially began, and carved a furrow through the crowds of quiet mourners.

Blunt gray peaks footed by evergreen forests surrounded the valley. In the flat center of the village, pots of lemon trees covered a circular stone plaza. A concrete mouth gaped at each cardinal point and offered worn, narrow steps into the earth.

Windowless buildings broke the lines of intensely cultivated fields around the central stone circle. The gray boxes stood solemn in the midst of leafy vegetable plants and bright herb gardens, but were nothing more than crumbling spider-traps waiting to collapse. To the north lay fields of green hemp and the sheep corral. To the south, intertwined plots of maize and beans stretched to the pass out of the valley.

Reed and Wilson led the procession to a rusted gate at the foot of a mountain. A collection of weather-beaten signs covered the gate and fence. The only visible word was “Station.”

Reed and Wilson waited while a child put a clipping of hair in the hands of the deceased, then carried the stretcher to a concrete trench in the earth. After a short walk underground they arrived at a keypad. Reed pressed a sequence and after a few seconds the metal door rumbled to the side along a slotted track. They stepped into a bare concrete room filled with red light and waited for the heavy door to close. Another metal door labeled “Restricted” faced them across the room. A square, yellowed board on the wall held rows of tiny hooks and dangling tags in a faded rainbow of colors. A dozen black boots were arranged in a neat and dusty line below. In the center of the room lay a scratched floor panel edged with yellow and black stripes. “Do Not Stand” and “Danger” were stenciled in black.

The two lowered the body to the floor. Reed crouched down and opened a tiny door next to the panel. He stuck his hand inside the opening and a silver console hissed from the floor to waist height. A display screen with keyboard yawned open and hummed to life.

“Your turn.” The helmet muffled Reed’s voice.

Wilson stepped to the screen. Through scratches in his face-shield he could see a single line of green text and a lazy, blinking square.



USAF Altmann Research Station

05.03.2312

[]



He typed the memorized words one letter at a time.



ARSRS032 [Enter]

bluebird45645 [Enter]

term002 manop [Enter]

rel lift002 [Enter]



Wilson closed the screen and the console hissed down to the floor. A klaxon whined somewhere deep below his feet and the floor vibrated. After a minute the floor panel split apart and a black slab rose from the pit. Hydraulics moaned as the obelisk slowly turned flat. A horizontal seam appeared in the center. The sides of the black rectangle opened and folded down like the wings of a stone butterfly.

Together, Wilson and Reed slid the dead man onto the concave surface in the middle.

Reed touched the cold, waxy forehead. “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. Dust you are and to dust you will return.“

He bent down to the small hatch and again turned his hand. The wings hissed together to form a seamless, inscrutable block, and the underground klaxon woke from its nap with a groan. The block descended and the metal floor slid over the pit.

“Goodbye, Airman Ralph Lewis,” said Reed.

Wilson followed him out of the Tombs into the warm sunshine.

People in the village had returned to their daily chores. Many of the men and women were busy in the gardens. A half-dozen men walked toward the southern forest with axes on their shoulders. A group of women carried bundles of hemp from the fields. Three boys laughed and chased each other toward the smokehouse.

Wilson watched the running boys and wondered if his life could ever be that simple again.



HE DIDN’T SLEEP WELL and went to breakfast early.

A thick mist filled the air and hid the mountains from view. Wilson walked along a stone path and passed rows of staked tomato plants and green squash. At the plaza, the lemon trees splashed the mist with color. A pair of hunters passed him, headed for the gap out of the valley. They talked about finding deer in the corn fields.

The path led him to a concrete opening in the earth. Wilson walked down a set of stairs to a heavy metal hatch and went through the entrance tunnel to the cafeteria. He took a bowl of porridge with a teaspoon of honey to a bench in a far corner. Memories of the bloody, lifeless body of Lewis kept him from finishing his breakfast as quickly as usual.

The cafeteria slowly filled up. A pair of boys sat next to him with a clatter of wooden bowls.

“Hey, Wilson,” said a tall, red-haired scarecrow. “Out of your cave?”

“Leave him be,” said a muscular teenager. “Wilson is holy material. He’ll tell the big man upstairs and–” He whacked a spoon on the table. “–hello, lightning bolt.”

“Keep your voice down, Mast. But if anyone deserves to fry, it’s the Colonel,” said Wilson.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Inside voice, please,” said Mast.

He swallowed a mouthful of tea and pointed the cup at Wilson. “You look tired. Some unlucky lady? I bet you’ve been wandering the Tombs.”

“Yesterday was the first time I’d been there in months. I don’t enjoy it.”

“Yeah, right,” said Mast. “I bet all those stories about singing ghosts are just made up. You priests just want a peaceful nap down there, undisturbed by us nosy citizens.”

“ How could I sleep? You know I’m scared of spiders.”

“Scared of spiders,” chanted Robb. “Scared of sleeping. Scared of sleeping spiders.”

“Can it,” said Wilson.

Mast shrugged. “I admit those things grow big. But an all-seeing, all-knowing priest like yourself shouldn’t be worried.”

“More like all-work all-the-time. My apprenticeship has been nothing but broken fingers, display screens, books, crying babies, and more books,” said Wilson. “I can’t escape on Sunday like you two.”

Robb covered his mouth. “Look over there. It’s Badger,” he whispered.

The tall girl ate alone and without looking up. Unlike the other village girls, her dark hair was parted into two braids that stretched down the front of her white shirt. On the right side of her face, two pale scars ran from temple to jaw and disappeared into her collar.

“Badger looks sad. Maybe she hasn’t killed anything today,” said Robb.

Wilson glared at him. “Her name’s Kira and don’t say things like that.”

“You keep bringing up her birth name,” said Mast. “Nobody cares, including her. Especially her.”

“I can’t believe it.” Robb laughed and pointed his spoon at Mast. “He’s still sore about his broken nose!”

“Shut up.”

“She’s got fourteen wolf pelts. What’s your count again?”

Mast sighed. “Allow me recreate the famous battle of My Hands. It takes place at Scrawny Neck, Robb.”

Wilson watched the girl until she finished her meal and left.



HE RAN AFTER HIS father through a field of sunflowers. Something banged, rapid and metallic. His hands whipped through tall, needle-covered stems and the banging came again. Wilson jerked out of his apprentice bunk and scrambled to the hatch. In the dark tunnel three hunters held a long stretcher covered by a bear pelt. They breathed hard and sweat dotted their faces.

“We need help!”

Father Reed shuffled into the corridor. “Were you born in a cave, Wilson? Let them in and shut the hatch.”

The men squinted in the light as they brought the stretcher to the treatment room. As they set the stretcher on a black slab in the middle of the room, a wooden hunting mask clattered on the floor. Wilson saw a braid of long black hair and realized who was under the blanket.

One hunter took off his gloves and wiped his face.

“We werent’t doing anything, just watching the outer line when she fell down. I couldn’t get her to stop shaking or wake up.”

“Thank you, Simpson, we’ll take care of it. You can return to your posts,” said Father Reed.

“Please look after her, sir.”

The metal door rumbled shut after the men and Wilson and Reed were left alone with Badger. Reed pulled off the blanket and her arms and legs began to tremble violently.

“Don’t let her fall! I have to get her clothes off.”

“What?!!”

“Don’t be so shy. You don’t have to look.”

Wilson turned red and his ears burned as Reed unbuttoned the furs. Luckily, she still had an undershirt, but it had pushed up and exposed her midriff. Near the navel Wilson saw a curved scar longer than his hand. Without thinking he touched it. Her skin was cool and soft under his fingers.

“Stop that and get things hooked up,” said Reed.

“Yes sir. Sorry sir.” Wilson pulled Badger’s arm out of the overcoat and wrapped it with a flexible blue band.

Reed handed him a small disc. “Put this on her left shoulder. No, the other left!”

The priest slid a metal circlet onto Badger’s forehead then wrapped her torso with blue material. The bands and discs all had long black cables that stretched across the girl and down to the slab.

“Display screen.”

Wilson found it on the counter. Reed touched the screen a few times and the Badger’s body stopped moving.

“Fix some tea, please.”

“How?”

“Hell’s bells, the water is over there! Seventeen years old and you can’t–”

“No, sir,” said Wilson. “I mean, how did you stop the shaking?”

“Oh, that. Just a reset.”

“What if you didn’t do that … reset?”

Reed shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very nice, now would it? She’d die, eventually. At least that’s my guess––I’ve never seen it go that far. Twenty years ago I had a patient with this sickness, and had to do quite a few resets.”

“He was fine?”

“Not as such. But he was mostly the same grumpy Gus until he died years later. In fact, we were on a scouting trip the second time it happened. That time I had to do a manual reset.”

“A manual?”

“We were in the eastern plains and well out of range. Watch now and I’ll show you how to do it. Take the forearm here–”

Father Reed placed the Badger’s left arm in Wilson’s hands. The soft skin had warmed and deepened in color to a healthy tan.

“Supinate the palm to the sky, put two fingers from your other hand to the medial forearm, then press five times––short short long long long.”

The point was in the middle of the six-inch scar from the name-giving ceremony. Wilson’s fingers brushed the delicate, tiny hairs on Badger’s arm as he laid it down. He rubbed the scar on his own arm in reflex.

“If you two are done touching me, can I have my clothes back?”

Wilson and the priest both jumped two feet.



WISPS OF COLD AIR swept through the doors of the wooden building as if the morning breeze wanted a part in the service. Most villagers entered and headed straight for a favorite bench. Others chatted around the iron stove and fussed over it as they would a small child. Painted symbols from the old days lined the walls and bundles of hemp dried in the rafters above.

Wearing a bulky yellow suit and carrying his priest’s helmet, Wilson walked to a walnut pulpit at the far end. The conversations trailed off and the villagers sat down as he opened a small book and whispered to a gray-haired woman holding a guitar in her lap. The woman nodded and strummed a pair of stanzas, then everyone joined Wilson as he began to sing:



What a fellowship, what a joy divine,

Leaning on the everlasting arms;

What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,

Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms

O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,

Leaning on the everlasting arms;

O how bright the path grows from day to day,

Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Wilson led the villagers in three more hymns then closed the book and stepped to the left. Father Reed walked to the pulpit in his special blue jumpsuit.

“Praise be to the founders that sustain us and guide us. They provide a safe haven from forces of darkness. They provide shelter against the bitter cold of winter. We’ve been protected from harm, but not only that, have been given the knowledge and power to improve ourselves. In return we honor the rules of the founders with our actions. Airman Ralph Lewis was a brave and honest member of Station. As the third rule states, by protecting others we give meaning to our lives. Lewis was a good example of that, and many times–”

Wilson was tired from the night before and strangely unsettled. Badger sat in the second row and he couldn’t keep from looking at her. He tried to distract himself by staring at a blue and gold founder’s shield painted on the wall nearby. He didn’t understand what was wrong with him and why she wouldn’t get out of his head. Everyone knew everything about everyone else at Station and Badger was bad news. She didn’t socialize with the other girls and kept to herself. If she talked to anyone it was the men of the hunting parties and guard duty. They were all solitary types like her. They stalked deer and set traps for tribals who wandered over the perimeter. Wilson guessed the long, silent hunts attracted lone wolves. But was she born that way? Even when she was first brought to Station she’d been a quiet child––the black duck, as his grandmother used to say.

He still thought she was beautiful.

“Ensign!” Father Reed was frowning at him. A few children giggled.

“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”

Flushed, he quickly read from a sheet of hemp paper.

“Weather is expected to be clear all week. A group of tribals are moving southwest, four kilometers from Yellow Creek. A small pack of dogs or wolves is following.”

“Thank you, Ensign Wilson. Please bow your heads. The Shepherd watches me, I lack for nothing; he makes me lie in meadows green, he leads me to refreshing streams, he revives life in me. He guides me by true paths, as he himself is true. My road may run through a valley of doom, but I fear no harm, for he is beside me.”



AFTER CHANGING OUT OF his heavy priest’s outfit Wilson walked to a hut on the western edge of the valley. Deer and wolf skins stretched over racks outside and the foul smell of ammonia and rotting flesh hung in the air. Inside, all grades and sizes of leather hung on the walls. His mother sat at a workbench sewing a moccasin with a thick needle and leather thong. Dark stains covered her yellow hemp blouse and brown trousers.

“Hi Cubbie! I’m almost done.”

“Mother, I’m seventeen, don’t call me that. I’ve been Ensign Wilson five years now.”

She chuckled. “Don’t get so twisted up, dear. There’s nobody around.”

“Why weren’t you at the meeting today?”

“Too much work.”

“Ma, that’s always your excuse.”

She waved a hand at the walls. “That’s because I’m always busy!”

“I’ll help you tomorrow, I promise.”

“Son, I didn’t fall from the apple tree yesterday. I know that Reed twists his mind in knots just to find a project for you every single day. So don’t worry about your old mother.”

“Don’t be like that, ma!”

She knotted off her work and stood up.

“Finished! Let’s take these to Brownie.”

Sunshine cut through the cool droplets of mist as they walked toward the center of the valley.

“Why so quiet, Cubbie? Is something wrong?”

Wilson hesitated as a young couple passed, holding a wicker basket between them.

“It’s just ... we buried Lewis today. I wonder if he’s with father right now.”

His mother rubbed Wilson’s brown hair and hugged him tight.



WILSON FINISHED HIS MID-DAY meal and walked through one of the underground corridors that connected sections of the village. He took a short-cut through the greenhouse. Now just a dark, empty space, in the winter it would be packed with greenery and bright lights. In the earthen ceiling above his head tiny dots felt his steps, glowed red to light the way, then faded to black.

The far wall of the greenhouse and a tunnel emerged from the darkness. Wilson walked a dozen meters and turned left. The walls were painted with reflective white triangles, meaning an old earthquake had damaged the passage. Wilson thought it was stupid. All the kids used shortcuts and nothing ever happened.

He passed a black opening, also marked with a triangle. A pebble cracked and rolled in the dark. Wilson turned to look and someone shoved him from behind.

“Hey!”

He stumbled a few steps and dropped to one knee. A firm hand twisted his right arm behind his back.

“Stop!”

“Keep walking,” said Badger. She pushed him into the dark a few dozen steps, turned him right for a bit, then let go of the arm.

“I wouldn’t move,” she said. “There’s a thirty-foot drop-off right here.”

“You’re crazy!”

Wilson couldn’t see anything. He kept both feet on the ground and a hand on the corridor wall. He considered backing away and thought it morbidly funny that he was more nervous about being alone with Badger than falling to his death.

“What’s this about?”

Badger snorted. “About? You tell ME what it’s about. Last night, when you two–”

“I didn’t see anything!”

“I hope not, you pervert. I’m not asking about that. I’m talking about my problem. You priests are supposed to have all the answers, but all I’ve been told is ‘don’t worry, it’s happened before,’ or ‘we can handle it, dear.’”

Wilson smelled spearmint on her breath and cedar from her clothes.

“I don’t know any more than you,” he stammered.

“Do you think I’m a child? All your books and machines and you don’t know?”

“We don’t … we don’t know everything.”

“That’s for sure. Spotted bears aren’t in your books. Range lizards aren’t in your books. What I know and you priests don’t should be in a book.”

After a long silence, Wilson cleared his throat.

“Hello?”

Footsteps echoed in the distance and he wondered if she’d left. His hand was still on the wall and he wondered if he could get back to the main corridor.

“Keep still,” whispered Badger.

Something squished against the wall and Wilson jerked his hand away.

“What the–!”

“It’s dead now. Answer my question.”

“I told you, I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“I’ve seen you staring at me, priest. I’m not stupid. You must be disgusted with me just like everyone else.”

“That’s not true!”

“Which one? That you stare at me or I’m a freak?” Wilson heard the smile in her voice.

“Never mind,” she said. “Just use the power of the Holy Spirit or whatever stupid ways you priests have to find out. And by Holy Spirit I mean beg, borrow, or steal to find out why.”

“All right, I’ll try.”

“Don’t say that, just do it.”

Wilson heard steps and Badger’s voice came from farther away. “If you don’t want a long trip in your future, keep a hand on that wall.”

Wilson did as he was told and walked around the corner. He still couldn’t see a thing.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Watch out for spiders!”

Her laughter echoed in the hallway as Wilson walked faster. He realized he’d never heard Badger laugh before. He felt strangely elated she hadn’t punched him in the nose.