Blaze

16. Five Raiders

"They have these machines," Ismael says, trailing a finger down his arm, "hooked up to a tube that goes right through here. They suck up your blood, filter it for water. You don't know about this, because whoever's in charge of this Region has been keeping it from you."

We sit with our legs sprawled on the road, searching each others' faces. Butts numb from rock-hard, dry soil. His words sound like he carves them into the air with the movement of his lips.

He pauses. Looks embarrassed. Looks crazed.

"No, no," he clarifies, as if I asked, "I was the one who did the sucking. I came here to warn you all."

Then he nods very quickly, seemingly pleased (although I have yet to ask a question). Speckled with white flecks, his tongue sneaks past his lips, wetting their rim, seeking some leftover of his recent drink.

"Do you want to know something they probably never taught you, about the Blaze? When you blast an alien's head, it doesn't explode: it implodes. There's a sound like a toilet flushing, then the sound of wet lips sucking wet things, then a silence. Those things never screamed. I don't know if they could.

"No," he says, "the screams always came from me."

To my (unpleasant) surprise, he utters a low, long shriek, slapping his cheeks. It's guttural. Thick. It's so sudden my heart skips a beat to swear.

He doesn't smile.

"It sounded like that," he says.

"You didn't have to do that," I retort.

He finally seems to notice my weariness.

"Don't tell me you already knew?"

"No," I say. And realize, suddenly, that I have no real way of telling time; I don't know how to read the moons. For all I know, we could have been here for hours. I feel the urge to laugh at this. But my mouth is too dry for mirth.

"My father fought in the Blaze," I say.

I have the strange feeling he's stealing the words from me somehow. Pulling them up my throat with an invisible string, maybe.

And I almost say: My mother lost her legs to one of the attacks.

Bio mines.

Some of their byproducts were mutated animals.

(Sometimes sick, mangled humans.)

It was sitting there waiting. Lost under the earth. Long after the war calmed down into quieter parting shots (the last of the aliens were being shuttled into extermination camps; a long, tedious campaign to rid this planet of its original inhabitants). Everyone was thinking of peace.

Mother was looking for Dad. I don't know where she went, exactly, or why she still clung to the thought that she would find him there (or anywhere).

I just know she wasn't supposed to take that step.

Maybe it's the way Ismael watches me, absolutely still, scarf dancing even in stillness. But I feel like he can hold on to the memory. I feel like I'm allowed to think of it.

Slowly, the scarf darkens into hair (a sheer curtain). I'm left to imagine his face.

I see Austin's.

Austin would know how to read the moons. Austin would know how much time passed.

I take a breath.