attractive to Harrison.
“Want company?”
The following morning, roused at the fast-breaking dawn by one of the multitude of chickens penned inside their walls, Harrison sat bolt upright in bed as he woke from the dream which haunted him. The same dream, which hadn’t tormented him for many months, was nothing to do with the threat that roamed outside their walls in the darkness. Instead, it was caused by the origin of the scars on his chest, carved in a brutally simplistic T shape and created slowly with a rusted edge of jagged metal. His right hand clutched at his chest as his breathing slowly settled. Beside him, her bare back smooth and unblemished in stark contrast, Tori stirred and rolled her head to face the opposite side.
He threw off the covers as he rose and stalked naked toward the window which showed the flash of orange on the horizon. Downing the last of the water in a glass on a table, he poured himself more from a jug and repeated the process. He pulled on pants and boots, dressed in a ragged but clean shirt, and went outside armed only with the dagger on his belt.
As he strode though the town at dawn, only a few people were active between his home and the gates. Every one of them nodded in deference to him, some gestures he returned if he knew and respected the person, and others he ignored if the supplicant was of insufficient stature to acknowledge. That was how it had always been, when survival of the fittest was taken literally and their entire hierarchical existence was based on the concept.
Reaching the gates and climbing the steep wooden staircase to the ramparts, he was greeted silently by one of his lieutenants, Taylor, who had been left in charge when he led the war party south.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Taylor responded as he tried to sound awake despite his tiredness at spending the night awake and on edge, “they didn’t come past this time.”
That had happened before, and fairly often in fact, but Harrison feared that they would have gone south to the new disruption to their territory. The reason he had been satisfied to leave contact with the others the previous day was that he was assured of their safety because of the encircling walls he had seen. Had they been unprepared, it was likely that they would have found nothing but wreckage and destruction. He was certain that they were prepared for the threat each moon brought, filling the darkest nights with terror and death, otherwise he would have been forced to make contact with them for fear that the newcomers would be wiped out. Thinking further, he realized that they had likely survived the first night by sheer luck that the swarm had avoided them, then the second because of their walls. He only hoped that they hadn’t been foolish enough to open their gates whilst he slept, and that was what troubled him.
Did I make the right choice? he asked himself. Should I have spoken to them and told them of the dangers?
No, he was sure he was right to avoid them until he knew more, and was certain that they weren’t like others who would kill and conquer.
The only reason that Three Hills existed at all was that the cost of waging war was simply too high to either side, and the great battle which saw huge losses on both sides as well as massive destruction to his home had left a genetic memory on his people to avoid all-out conflict. That’s why he fought the cold war with Tanaka’s people, and why he was wary to make contact with the others who legend had said were waiting above the clouds, in the cold blackness of space, to return to the earth.
At that moment, watching the sun burst over the treetops to bathe him in sudden warmth, he knew what he should do and he knew that Tori was right; he needed answers before he could make decisions, and the risk of conflict was worth those answers to know whether the arrival of the others was a good or bad omen for his people.
“Get some rest,” he told Taylor as the town below began to grow louder and busier, “we may have trouble soon.”
~
Our eagerness to see what our trap had caught overnight was palpable as soon as we woke. Before I could ask Annie, I saw Hendricks with a finger to his earpiece and an