OTHERBORN: IN THE WASTELANDS ALONE

CHAPTER 5

LUCKY

I try to sort through the many voices.

They all scream over each other, and I feebly tap my walking stick at the rocks under me.

"Custer!" Maddie cries. "The Custer?!"

"Bunch of crooks!" Kai's voice, even more livid than hers. "You all tricked us!"

"Wait!" I howl into the darkness before my eyes—and mine alone.

Everyone else exists in the light of the day, seeing things I can't, and so I use my other senses to maneuver around them. I listen, snuffle, tighten my grip around my walking stick tapping it, tapping, tapping, at the rocks.

"He's after his son." Elena's voice, now, bizarrely calm. "You won't have any trouble!"

"You work for Custer!" Kai shuffles to and fro, troubling the rocks, and I wince at the racket he makes.

"No!" Myra's voice, weak, hoarse, not used to yelling. "He provided us generators and that's all there is to it! The man isn't what you seem to think he is!"

I manage to grab someone's wrist. I'm not sure whose.

"H-Hello?" I stutter.

"Yes it's me." Maddie's voice. "Come to the side. Don't want you tripping."

"Wait!" I call out to whoever will listen.

The silence tells me I'm heard.

"Custer isn't here?" I blink my sightless eyes. "He's away?"

"Yes." Elena's voice. "Gone."

"Bullshit!" Maddie's voice, right in my ear, deafening. "I'll never trust you!"

Then all I hear is shouting, everyone at the same time, a cacophony.

I thwack my cane against the rocks.

Silence.

"We can't stay!" I hold up my head to account for my inability to accurately make eye contact with anyone. "But thank you for the food! Right?"

Nobody speaks now.

Maddie pulls me along.

Custer owns everything.

He may have good qualities—and everyone does. Who's all evil or all good? None of us. Our bodies have been trained to the wasteland and its hopes, its horrors. The Mag is in our blood at this point. We're the sum of our experiences, and that's both optimistic and the worst thing about us.

But we have to keep living.

So we press on and on, and I know this not because I see us moving but because I feel it, our steps under us, the breaths of those we leave behind fading in the distance. I've noticed the soil has gotten more and more brittle as the years roll by; it crunches differently beneath my shoes.

If I could observe what the world has become, what would I see?

Maybe blindness is my blessing here.

Do I want to see the children's faces, the hurt in their eyes, the way their lips crinkle as they recall their many traumas?

No.

If I were to ever receive the miracle of sight I'd want it after we fixed things.

If we fix things.

"Hey," I call out.

"All good?" Maddie's voice, somber, true. "We're leaving. They let us go."

I nod, swallow my spit. "What if they weren't lying?"