Gaunt Rainbow

By Matthew Sawyer

A young woman nicknamed Rainbow is cursed. She drains life from living beings, unintentionally. When Pamela was a girl, a boy, who claimed to be the messiah, cured her blindness. Pamela believes the messiah resurrected her after she died, soon after the boy healed her eyesight, just before the destruction of the Chosen's Promised Land. The curse began once Pamela returned to life. Pamela searches the Shur desert to find the errant messiah. She hopes he will remove her curse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Sawyer
• Release date: Oct 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005231002

Matthew Sawyer

I hate talking about myself. Like everyone, I suppose, I am a bit narcissistic, but not egotistical. My own failure for success is that I just do not think much about myself. That is not to say I spend too much time thinking about others. In truth, I should think more of everyone; and there is a dull guilt attached to that confession. There is something of who I am, I am old enough for regrets.At my age, I am prone to think about immortality And being an atheist, there seems no alternative but science. Even so, I know that science is beyond my lifetime. I have no faith nor hope, nor do I believe in ghosts, elves, unicorns...In that hopeless disbelief, I write so there remains a record of accomplishments in my life. Unrecognized and even scorned, I continue to tell stories so I will be remembered after I am dead. My struggle with grammar and punctuation are evidence of my effort to make my writing decipherable. Because, what success means to me are hieroglyphics upon a Pharaoh's tomb.

Book preview

Gaunt Rainbow

Seventh Revision

Matthew Sawyer

Published by Matthew Sawyer at Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Matthew Sawyer

ISBN: 9781452484860

Gaunt Rainbow is a fictional story. All characters, names and locations are the creations of Matthew Sawyer. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

Gaunt Rainbow by Matthew Sawyer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Please contact the author for permissions beyond the scope of this license.

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Thanks for Nothing

Gaunt Rainbow

Matthew Sawyer

Chapter 1 The Reborn

Chapter 2 Food of Gods

Chapter 3 Feral

Chapter 4 The Waste

Chapter 5 Coming of Age

Chapter 6 Journey from Mourning

Chapter 7 Bright Colors

Chapter 8 Somber Shadows

Chapter 9 Heels of Desire

Chapter 10 Poor and Beaten

Chapter 11 Hopeless and Hungry

Chapter 12 Past Due

Chapter 13 Victim

Chapter 14 Divine Love

Chapter 15 Second Thoughts

Chapter 16 Love and Charity

Chapter 17 Stand and Deliver

Chapter 18 Alright

Chapter 19 Spoils of War

Chapter 20 Old Friends

Chapter 21 Soulless

Chapter 22 Infirm

Chapter 23 Horse of Fire

Chapter 24 Shadows of Grief

Chapter 25 Battleground

Chapter 26 Graveyard

Epilogue

1

The Reborn

They are Unchosen. Most had come to the encampment a generation ago. They had come from all over the Shur to build the monumental Wall for the Chosen. And when their parents and their grandparents, their great uncles and their great aunts, finished that bright limestone Wall, the Chosen put them all outside the gates of the Promised Land.

Outside Khetam, the city built long ago atop said Promised Land, the Unchosen were robbed and killed and cannibalized by the heathen who fight the Chosen. Heathens were why the Wall was built. Then, years after the Chosen had sealed themselves from the horrors of the Shur, the heathen found the Unchosen sheltering in the encampment were too impoverished to exploit. More Unchosen migrants would come every winter and all were indigent. They were even too poor to eat.

The heathen went south, until the night Khetam was burned to the sands. All within the Wall suffocated on poison smoke. Those who had not suffered to death were tortured and killed by heathen terrorists. All the heathen tribes came to the Promised Land that night – last night. Already this morning, the Unchosen in the encampment whisper and say, The heathen brought those monsters. Did you see? Some escaped the inferno inside the Wall.

There were monsters, and not a trick like smoke whirled around flame. People did witness winged monstrosities rise out of Khetam and murder the Chosen soldiers who ascended the Wall to fight heathens. Their silhouettes were sharp against the sheets of flame coming off the city. The black shapes of these monstrous wasps then tore apart the shadows of heathen terrorists who stole victory over the Chosen military. People then said, No one knows where the monsters come from.

This morning, people wonder and say, No one knows where they went.

The heathens evacuated, too, driven away from their reward in Khetam by the creatures they themselves had not smuggled into the Promised Land. Caravans of heathen militants, in stolen trucks loaded with spoils won from the Chosen military, go back south in crooked columns. Inexplicably, all throughout the night, the encampment had lasted untouched. And today, bloodied and blood-sated heathens withdraw along wide paths around the derelict hive of Unchosen migrants.

A naked girl also stumbles out of Khetam. She comes out of an abandoned gate alone and ignored by any heathen who might spot her from a distance. The girl is covered all over with black soot. Although, only her waist-length hair is clean and naturally darker than ash. She walks the road out of the gate, its blacktop still warm from a sweltering yesterday and the flames that yet consume Khetam.

A thin Unchosen woman sees the girl and she says to an always present couple of encampment neighbors, The Promised Land is still burning. Was that little girl in the fire?

Little girl, stay on the road, she shouted across the desert space between the Wall and her hut on the always bulging outskirt of the encampment. Her volume could not exceed that of an echo of big engines bounced off the Chosen monument that now becomes their people’s tombstone.

Shh, implores a nearby nervous crone. Look, there are heathens.

They can’t hear me, pleads the thin woman who shouted. I want to warn the girl about the landmines.

I don’t think she can hear you, an unshaven old man guessed for the starving woman.

I can’t hear myself over that racket heathens are making, complained the woman.

At least, they’re retreating. You should thank the Mortal God, he told her.

Are you sure? she asked him. Are you sure it’s not the Living God, now? The Chosen made us worship the Mortal God. Now, we’ll have to spill blood for the god of the heathens.

Come here, angel. the thin lady cried to the nude girl on the road. Her voice had no way to jump over the noise of the heathen route. Simply suggested by the direction of the pavement, the girl walks safely upon the road. She fortunately avoids the planted hazards in the sand.

The shifting heathen columns ignore everything still happening in the encampment, and in the smoldering Promised Land and the bare minefields between. From their distance, even with binoculars looted from a slain Chosen soldier, the sooty girl appears as a shadow moving atop the sand or a smudge of ash on a lens.

Give her your shirt, the thin woman tells the whiskered old man. She’s coming to the encampment. Quick, give her back her modesty.

That old man stalls and moans, Uh.

Eldoro, commanded the woman.

The unshaven old man she had named then does as he was told. Eldoro takes off his indigo denim shirt. He then holds it out in front him, posed as if he readied himself to throw a net over of small prey such as a bird a cat or a dog. All the while, the little soot-covered nude girl drifts toward the fence outside the northern face of the encampment. The Chosen military had erected the barbed wire barrier here while they dominated the Shur.

The girl spots the thin woman step onto the road and wave. Closer, she hears the woman call, Come here, you’re safe. Come here.

The old man, Eldoro, is also there and he was ready to catch the displaced child. More unwashed Unchosen come outside their broken homes and all watch the bare refugee arrive. Eldoro wraps the girl in his shirt once she is near. He, himself, would not take one step out of the encampment while heathens were about.

Who are you, the old man asks the girl he rescues. What’s your name?

All the while she approached, the sooty girl made no sound. Nothing but air passed out of her agape mouth. Her dry eyes were also wide, but concealed beneath wild tresses of untrimmed hair. Her voice, too, remains hidden.

You’re so dirty, greasy, the thin woman told her. Your hair is so clean, but it needs a cut.

That crone who warned the woman about heathens earlier wonders aloud. "Did she wash her hair?

Maybe she wore a hat, Eldoro answered.

Where’s the hat? the thin asked the growing crowd of witnesses.

He asks her, Where are her clothes?

They probably burned off, answered the woman. A wild idea then comes out her mouth. Her hair is so clean, it’s like that too, all burned off – and grew back very quick.

Are you hurt? the crone asked the girl wrapped in Eldoro’s blue shirt.

Everyone is amazed when the little girl shakes her head. All seem more astounded she replied at all rather than she survived the rape and pillage of Khetam without injury. Although, the thin woman is encouraged.

I am Tomi, the woman told the girl. What is you name?"

Eldoro and the crone gasp when that girls tell them, Pamlea.

How old are you? Tomi immediately inquired. Pamlea would not reply. Instead, she stared into each face surrounding her. She grabs hold of Tomi. Pamlea resists the women’s embrace, but instead, she squeezes Tomi’s arms then legs. She touches the woman’s face, smearing her creased brow with ash.

Six or seven, Eldoro answered the question Tomi had asked. She might look older, I think, under that soot. She might be small for her age.

Aye, a woman shouted from the crowd. Because our Unchosen children don’t have enough to eat. The Chosen made us raise a generation of runts.

She’s not a Chosen child, another voice shouted.

Another yells, She’s too thin.

A third person then declares, She is one of us. Heathens spared her because she is Unchosen.

Come with me, Pamlea, Tomi told her. You can stay with me. Are you’re parents dead?

Tomi shocked herself because her bold question assumed so much. She expected the answer was more private than the age of the girl. Pamlea surprises everyone and she does reply with a soft voice.

My mom. My father, I don’t know.

The answer revealed nothing more than anyone knew. Pamlea truly did not know her father. Her mother never spoke of him, but Pamlea pretended he was gone. She was at the age to imagine her father had probably been a migrant and killed by the Chosen military inside the Wall.

Are you hungry, Pamlea? Tomi asked her newly adopted daughter. Pamlea shakes her head.

Come with me, anyway, Tomi insisted. This second time she asks, she snatches the little girl’s hand. We’ll get you cleaned up. I had a daughter. She lived to be as old as you.

While they walked toward Tomi’s squat home, Eldoro mentions, Well, I’m hungry. Most others in the gathering agree. They, too, feel starved more than any ordinary day in the encampment. But it was an extraordinary day, the Promised Land burned and so did the Chosen Church. Heathens had last night freed the Unchosen from tyranny.

There’s no food here, shouted a young man. Who has food. We have to go into Khetam.

We need to loot the Promised Land, another man shouted.

An Unchosen woman announces, The heathens are leaving. They’re taking only what they carry.

There will be more, the young man declared.

That young man musters all the witnesses that had gathered to greet Pamlea. They become a mob and dare venture past the Wall, even while flame still consumed the Promised Land. Tomi keeps the little girl with her in the encampment and Pamlea goes home.

****

A week after Pamlea had come to the encampment, Eldoro is there with Tomi at her small shack. Pamlea wears a denim shirt Eldoro had given her. The garment was sizable. With its sleeves rolled into dense arm pads and cinched at the waist with twine, the shirt stretched beneath her knees. The girl was without shoes.

The black grease had been scrubbed off the orphan girl, revealing radiant caramel skin. Pamlea had so far spent this hot summer outside and earned a rich tan. Tomi had also cut her untamed hair no longer than the nape of the girl’s neck, all the way around.

The shack could not contain all three, so they stand and speak outside. Eldoro tells the others, Everybody is saying Pamlea is the only person to leave Khetam alive.

That's not true. Lots of people escaped the Promised Land, objected Tomi.

And heathens shot them dead out there in the Shur, Eldoro claimed. After Tomi says nothing, the old man inquires, How is Pamlea?

She doesn’t eat much, Tomi said through her distraction, After thinking long about what she was about to say, Tomi is yet wary of her reply. I doubt Pamlea is the lone survivor. I’m sure people made it to Khanazir. There's a Chosen military outpost there.

That's where military radio said Ilu Simon was, before the attack on Khetam, the old man said. The old news was already trivia. People say the heathen leader died in the fires his terrorists started.

Tomi blessed the sentiment. Good riddance to Ilu Simon.

Eldoro wished for more excitement. He pokes at the miracle girl until she speaks. Pamlea, you were there. Are you ready to talk about it? What did you see?

Once the girl giggles the first time since they have met, Tomi ignores all her lingering thoughts. Overjoyed her new child laughed, she, too, is curious if Pamlea might tell them about Khetam as late as a week ago. What happened, Pamlea?

The grin on the girl’s face becomes a frown. Pamlea tells them, There was a spider.

She’s talking about the monsters that night, Eldoro automatically concluded.

There was a web. It was filled with souls, Pamlea also said. She then stopped talking again.

That’s all? Eldoro wondered. He had stopped poking the girl. After her answer, Pamlea appeared once more in serious contemplation. Eldoro got no answer.

Speaking to Tomi, he tells her, You look thinner. Tomi, are you eating?

I have so little to eat, but I give it to Pamlea, the thin woman complained. You’ve been in Khetam, Eldoro, there are gangs now. They’re taking all the food.

Ebbi was right, reminisces the old man about someone who may have been in the mob last week. We should have raided Khetam as much as we could while the fires still burned. The streets are still warm, but you’re right. Those gangs came out of the encampment.

I know, they charge too much for food, Tomi lamented.

With a low tone, Eldoro asks his female friend, You’re not thinking about selling her? You know, rent her out?

Shame, Eldoro, Tomi condemned. I know that happens. It was happening before the Chosen Church was brought down.

I know, he interjects. I know things are especially tough now.

Tomi is clear when she tells him, Pamlea is my daughter now. I have a little girl again. And she’s not sick. There wasn’t even a mark on her after she was cleaned up. She is a miracle.

That’s good, granted Eldoro. The geezer flu wiped out the military headquarters; that’s what people are saying. They were talking about Pamlea being a carrier...

She’s not a carrier. spat Tomi. She didn’t carry anything out of Khetam, she was naked.

Pamlea listened to the pair talk the whole while. Everyday, the girl felt more secure in this world. She started to feel safe, especially from flashes of memories from her life in Khetam. Blind nightmares came at night. And she could always see the shining web, a web greater than the whole world of the Shur.

Something came before and Pamlea was compelled to reveal her vision. The sight was new. She wanted now to talk about the past. Before… there was fire.

We know, Eldoro affirmed. The Promised Land burned for days. It’s still smoldering.

Pamlea then tells both adults what came after. And I died.

No, Tomi told her.

Pamlea tells her to her face, Then I awoke alive.

Yes, Tomi said through a smile.

Eldoro praised her and said, Good job.

Pamlea then fell mute once more. Her attention remains fixed on an approaching figure comes up the crowded dirt road. There was not a single paved street in the encampment, but the constant traffic and congestion compressed the ground into thick ceramic.

So, what are you doing for whatever? Eldoro sheepishly inquires of his friend.

She tells him, Stealing.

Me too, Eldoro confessed to Tomi. Nothing has changed.

Nearer now to Pamlea, the little girl sees the figure with a face wrapped in bandages dripping pus and blood. As startling as the apparition appears, it is that its bare hands are blue is what transfixes the girl.

She remembers the breeze off the sea at the west of Khetam. She recalls only the odor of diesel issued from ships in the harbor, and that of carcasses discarded in the sun from nearby slaughterhouses. Pamlea remembered she could not see then.

The wounded figure with blue hands comes near enough and distracts both Tomi and Eldoro. Pamlea then remembers this man’s hands were blue because the indigo dye mills in Khetam. Her real mother, not Tomi, had worked there when she was alive.

Pamlea’s mother had blue hands, although Pamlea had not seen them until fire surrounded everyone. Next, she saw everyone shrivel into ribbons charbroiled like bacon in a fiery explosion. Then is when her mother died. Pamlea had died, too, then she was alive and well.

Who are you? Eldoro said when he intercepted the stranger.

The man with blue hands tells him, I know the girl. That is Pamlea.

He stops talking to the old man and Tomi. The bandaged man with blue hands directly asks the girl, Do you remember Dawud, Dowie Shoud? He is the Living God.

Who are you, a lunatic? I will kill you, Eldoro warned the stranger.

Mad from his injuries, Tomi conjectured. You, leave my little girl alone.

Pamlea did remember Dawud Shoud. Her mother had taken her from the dye mills to witness this messiah at Saint Erasmus the day before heathen terrorists wasted Khetam. Dawud had healed the blindness Pamlea had suffered since being a toddler.

He is the Living God? Pamlea asked the wounded man. She was yet perplexed.

He said so himself, the man claimed. You were there. I was there. I saw him cure you.

Eldoro challenges him. And you got out?

I was burned, the man explained. You see.

But the Living God? Tomi groaned.

He slaughtered Chosen soldiers, he claimed. And he summoned heathens into the Promised Land to fight the Elohim.

You mean the monsters? Eldoro questioned him. That’s what people are calling them, right? There are still monsters in Khetam. Some people call them the angels of the Living God.

They are not, the wounded blue-handed man growled. But neither are they the Elohim, and they are merely agents of the gods of their worlds.

Appalled at the complexity, Tomi moans, Is this what heathens believe.

Eldoro insists for his friend, No. He then asks the stranger, The Elohim are alien gods?

Yes, he said.

What’s all this about Pamlea? Eldoro demanded.

The Elohim have tainted her blessing, he revealed.

Eldoro asks him, What?

She is the cause of the geezer flu.

No, Tomi denied. We were just talking about that.

I can prove it, but you will have to run away, promised the stranger. You will need to run or you will suffer the curse.

What curse? The only one going to run is you, Eldoro threatened him.

The bandaged man with blue hands produces a serrated knife. I’ll prove it, he chants again and over again. He then lunges at the little girl. Eldoro is too slow and the old man cannot stop the blade. Tomi does nothing.

Pamlea is stabbed. Before the bright day becomes black, she sees her adopted parents shrivel and die. The man with dyed blue hand also cannot get away. Death for Pamlea was as blinking her eyes. When she awakes, everyone around her is dead and she was made whole again.

2

Food of Gods

The Unchosen in the encampment panic because the geezer flu comes to the permanent bivouac. Pamlea, the miracle who had arrived unscathed through the fiery wreckage of Khetam, this small girl stood in the midst. Witnesses were inevitable in the crowded settlement.

She does carry the flu, more than one neighbor shouted. Pamlea knew about the geezer flu and the rumors about her. She had heard her adopted parents, Tomi and Eldoro, talk about so much while they lived.

No, Pamlea shouted. Today she regained her voice, though her volume was always soft. The little girl points at the withered corpse next to the wrinkled remains of her good mother Tomi and her unrelated grandfather Eldoro. Those two and Pamlea had been family for days.

The corpse next to the newly beloved was distinct beside the gauze wrapped around its face and head. The hands of this dead man were dyed indigo.

No, Pamlea protested once more. It was him. He was sick. Look at his bandages. He was hiding.

Once the accused girl thought no one believed what she said, a single voice shouts for her. Get away from the dead. Don’t touch the infected.

I’m not, Pamlea squeaked and jumped away.

Other benefactors advise the twice-again orphan, but no one touches the girl. The strangers and Pamlea’s neighbors guide the girl through the task of burning the dead where they had fallen. The smell of gasoline the people had told her to use helps her to remember the boy who had restored her sight. His name was Dawud, and he did say he was the Living God of the heathen.

Pamlea remained in the shack she inherited from Tomi while the dried bodies burned to ashes outside. A year later, a neighbor in the encampment asks Pamlea, How old are you now?

Yet diminutive, Pamlea had managed to find denim jeans and shirts that fit her frame. The girl had also found adorable black boots durable enough to climb over the ruins of Khetam. Her ashen hair was now the length of her shoulders, but the exotic shade of her skin never changed. She was not shy to address the familiar woman.

I’m ten, she said surprised. It was not the day she was born – today was the first that someone got near her on purpose.

You look seven or eight, claimed the young woman speaking to the unofficially quarantined miracle girl. Pamlea knew the woman. The friendly lady lived a hundred meters away with two children of her own. Her name was Ditla.

Pamlea asserts herself, even as her voice was permanently quiet. I’m ten. I know I’m ten.

And you are so skinny, Ditla observed aloud. Every child in the encampment was thin, but Pamlea was thinner than most, and shorter.

I’m not hungry, Pamlea stated. She was suspicious if the friendly woman had heard she had been corrected concerning Pamlea’s age. The confusion bothered the girl.

Friendly Ditla suggests, Well, just tell people you’re small. There’s nothing wrong with that. At least, you’re not Chosen.

The woman is blunt and she tells Pamlea, Heathens would kill you if you were Chosen.

Ditla is also directly honest. I want you to be friends with my daughter, Ketina. We call her Kettie.

Why? Pamlea asked. After so much time, she had gotten accustomed to being untouched and left alone.

Because, Ditla said and paused. The hesitation helps Pamlea to wonder if the woman would explain anything more. Ditla then says, Because you’re the same age, and you are both too young to go with scavengers into the Promised Land.

That’s where I get my food and clothes, Pamlea protested. The friendship the woman proposed hindered her basic survival instinct. I go there alone.

I know, Ditla moaned. She accepted the truth. Okay, you can go, but don’t take my daughter. Keep her in the encampment.

Pamlea wonders aloud. Okay?

There are gangs, Ditla realized. How do stay alive?

The woman then lowers her voice and speaks to the girl. People say there are monsters.

There are monsters, Pamlea replied. She had seen them. Instead of describing the impossible shapes in which they appeared, Pamlea answers the question Ditla asked. I’m small. It helps me hide.

I suppose, Ditla admitted. Will you be friends with my daughter, Kettie?

I suppose, echoed Pamlea.

Ditla then extends her hand. Pamlea then touches another living being after so much time, and she instantly trusts the woman. Up close, Pamlea could see the lines deepen beneath Ditla’s eyes. The sight is alarming, but not nearly as unsettling as the sunken eyes of all her adjacent neighbors. They all looked sick to her.

Pamlea herself was a pariah, so she understood only the ill accepted living beside her. Not one would speak to her, as if the geezer flu was carried upon words. All surrounding her were as silent corpses who fled the sight of the girl.

Ditla, today, changes her life and Pamlea is healed. The girl feels resurrected again; because Pamlea knows she had died in a warehouse fire inside the Wall. Dawud, the messiah who had restored her sight, also brought her back to life. She had remembered all this in her time alone.

Good, Kettie will introduce herself tomorrow. She has been curious about you, Ditla tells Pamlea. I’ve been curious, too. Tell me, Pamlea, how did you escape?

I just walked out the gate, Pamlea replied. She stopped telling people months ago she had died in the fire. The boy who healed her in Khetam was also a topic Pamlea often shunned. She kept Dawud private and for herself.

Disappointed, Ditla says, That was all?

I don’t remember anything, Pamlea lied. Whatever I said before was in a dream. I’m grown up now.

Yes, a now suspicious Ditla granted. But you’re ten?

Yeah.

Okay, Ditla said. Just don’t go past the Wall with Kettie. Stay here in the encampment – here on the outskirts. The gangs are not concentrated here.

I know, Pamlea confirmed. We won’t go into Khetam, either.

Thank you, Pamlea, Ditla gushed. It will be a big help Kettie is distracted. She has a younger brother, Tim. When he’s old enough, maybe he can be your friend, too.

Uncommitted, Pamlea tells the woman, Sure. The orphan girl was excited Ditla had arranged a friend for her daughter, but she still distrusted anything was real. Pamlea was truly glad, but she already, at her age, guarded herself against the disappointment she expected would come.

****

Pamlea only dreamed Ditla forgot about yesterday. This morning, she is awoken when sand is thrown against a plastic tarp. Tomi, herself, when the kind woman was alive, had covered the entrance of her home with the transparent tarp in place of an ordinary door. Passing cars and trucks had yellowed the tarp with dust and exhaust. Today, it was nearly opaque.

Diffused light coming through the stained plastic molds a shadow standing outside Pamlea’s home. She watches when the shape tosses another handful of sand against the entrance. Kettie? Pamlea guessed.

It’s me, a girl outside called back. I’m sorry if I woke you up, but I’m hungry. I can’t wait.

You’re hungry? Pamlea wondered as she rolled from a military cot.

Pamlea often forgets about hunger. She never eats much, but the girl is never hungry in the encampment. She sometimes felt pangs when she scavenged Khetam, but those always disappeared when she came back home, whether she had found anything to eat or not.

Do you have anything to eat? Kettie chanced to ask.

Yeah, Pamlea volunteered. You can have what I got.

Stepping out of her inherited home, Pamlea brings with her an opened box of crackers and a sealed plastic bag of dried beans. Pamlea tells Kettie about the beans, You’re suppose to boil them until they get soft.

She also recommends, But they’re good to suck on, if you got no fresh water – or nothing else to eat.

Thanks, Kettie tells Pamlea. The new skinny girl with brown hair is a clone of her mother, Ditla, who looks like every other Unchosen woman in the Shur.

Everyone in this world might be a brother or a sister to one another. Even the Chosen and heathen resembled one another, except the heathen were muscular and thin. And the Unchosen were thinner than either, whereas Pamlea was smaller than all of them.

Are we friends? she asked Kettie while the other girl munches all the crackers at once. That’s what you mother wanted.

No, Kettie accidentally spit. She gathers each crumb she finds while she speaks. I mean, I like you. I want to be your friend. That’s what I want.

That’s good to know, Pamlea told her friend. Your mother said something like that, too. But, I am glad to meet you. I do want to be your friend.

Good. Kettie grinned. The smile and new companion thrilled Pamlea. She was interested in preserving the newly born friendship.

We should get out of the road, Pamlea tells Kettie. The drivers here will run us of over, like they did in the Cap.

Nobody’s going to the Promised Land now, Kettie reiterated. She meant specifically that Pamlea lived on the outskirt of the encampment closest the Wall.

Both girls nodded. Pamlea mentions, Hey, do you know the safe path into the mine field, the one called the ‘Run.’

Is it the one that ends where that Church sedan blew up? Kettie affirmed, Yeah.

Let’s go there, Pamlea proposed. She already leads the way. We can eat a real breakfast there. I got a tin of pork.

Kettie tells her, We can't eat pork. Heathens will think we're making fun of them.

Pamlea laughs at her friend. No heathen would starve himself.

Following the brave daredevil, Kettie adds, No Chosen, either.

Stepping onto a trodden path off a paved road between the encampment and the Wall, Pamlea also inputs, Just us.

The Unchosen, Kettie said as the girls trod, with Pamlea ahead of the other, toward a blackened husk of an automobile.

Pamlea concludes, Food is food.

The Run does end where a Church fleet sedan was blown in half by one of the landmines surrounding the girls. Pamlea twists toward the rear seat ten yards away. Someone, and not either of these girls, had covered the charred leather seat with dusty indigo blankets and brown vinyl sofa cushions, both robbed out of the Promised Land.

Pamlea tells Kettie what she knows, Somebody was squatting in this wreck, but they aren’t here now. I haven’t seen anybody out here in a long time.

I know, Kettie told her