Ingenious #1

Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

M ax estimated two to four miles of tough striated purple stalks to cut before reaching the thinner, bendable purple stalks found closer to the canal. The older stalks in the deep outland resembled thick leafy poles, spaced less than two inches apart and rising taller than Max before branching into a dense canopy of soft broad-leafed vines. To squeeze through, Max cut three or four stalks, gaining him a half-step forward. Cut another three or four stalks, move forward, and repeat hundreds of times. He could rip vines apart with his bare hands, but he would exhaust himself sooner without extra food and water.

The leafy canopy housed a variety of vermin. Leeches slept inside cocoons until ground movement disturbed the supporting stalk. When vibrations awakened them, they cracked their cocoons and fell like wet leaves. The purple leeches moved sluggishly and quickly shriveled and died if they didn’t land directly on exposed skin. A toothless mouth attached with a sealing, numbing mucous, and their proboscis drilled a hole. After the leeches sucked enough, they regurgitated nourished eggs into the hole and fell off, the process completed in a few hours. Unless the clot of eggs was excised before hatching, the victim faced an agonizing death. If detected, a fingernail or a knife easily scraped the creatures off the skin before they gifted a host with eggs.

Soldiers on border patrol performed frequent body checks on each other, usually ending in perfunctory sex. Max remembered how frequently he’d checked his comrades during his first year of patrols. As for himself, his sensory hairs signaled if a leech landed on his skin.

Instead of covering up as Max advised him, Quiggs rubbed the cheap lube herders carried in their backpacks to his exposed skin.

When Max looked surprised, Quiggs explained, “Beau told me it prevents a leech from forming a seal.”

Max stopped after a few hours and opened the backpack for a canteen. “We’ll rest for ten minutes. Sit back to back. Keep your limbs tucked in and your mind alert.”

Quiggs examined his floppy herder’s hat for leeches, then slumped wearily against Max’s back. He sipped sparingly and handed the canteen back to Max. “Drink my share. You’re sweating buckets.”

Max accepted without a token protest. He feared by tomorrow night he’d show signs of going vine daft.

“Meh-eh-eh. Meh-eh-eh.”

The weak cry came from ahead to their left.

“ Meh-eh-eh. Meh-eh-eh.”

Quiggs rolled to his feet. “It’s a goat in distress.” He sang out to it, “Where are you, sweetheart?”

The sweetheart meant extra fluids, regardless of Quiggs’s objections. Blood would hydrate them, though the hot coppery taste would test his baby cadet’s stomach.

Max cut vines, following the plaintive bleats to a large tri-color doe in a flattened circle of stalks. Black eyes with slit-pupils in a brown-and-tan face gazed at them when they approached. She showed her horns when Max moved toward her. The tri-colors were ornery and bit and kicked when herded from a comfortable grazing site. If scared, they gored. Max would kill her with a quick snap of the neck.

“Careful, Quiggs. Stay back. Don’t watch.”

“Pfft. Step aside. She’s harmless.” Quiggs shed his backpack and patted the sides of his thighs. “Come here, you gorgeous sweetheart,” he cooed to her. “What’s wrong? Did those nasty ferals hurt you?” She trotted over, letting him wrap his arms around her long white neck. He ran a hand over her sides and flanks, then examined beneath. “Oh, I see. Your teats are leaking. Max, she’s desperate for milking.”

Max’s gaze strayed to her dead baby, its wizened size telling him it was premature, probably from the trauma of a raid. He’d rather drink milk than blood, but he’d never milked a goat in his life, and his sheltered concubine wouldn’t have a clue either. Fuck it all. Their lives depended on drinking extra fluids. He’d have to kill her, slice open her throat, and force Quiggs to drink.

He braced himself for hysterical sobbing. “Step aside.”

Quiggs knelt on her right side. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I won’t let the evil commander snap your neck and drink your blood because I know that’s what he’s thinking.” He reached his right hand under her belly. “Beau taught me how to milk his dairy goats. I need to gently massage her teats and udder to accustom her to my hand in case she’s a first freshener.”

Max’s jaw dropped at his competence. Was there anything Quiggs didn’t know? “How do we catch the milk if we don’t have a pail? Do we lie beneath her belly and take turns squirting it into our mouths? Do I need to tie her hind legs?” All the questions made him sound like Quiggs.

Quiggs rolled his eyes and handed him his herder’s hat. “It’s waterproofed. Kneel by me and hold it under her belly.”

Max knelt with the hat in place. “Your sweetheart is glaring at me. What the—ouch! She bit my ear.”

“She gave you a sharp nibble telling us to quit stalling. If she meant to bite, you’d be missing your ear. ”

“Should I pat her flank or something to calm her?”

“Nope. She’s fine. Her milk’s let down. Now pay close attention.” Quiggs enclosed a long plump teat with his thumb and forefinger and set up a squeezing rhythm with three fingers. Soon, he used both hands, squeezing one teat while the other teat refilled. He leaned into her as he milked into the hat, all the while praising her in the happy nonsensical way he’d learned from Beau.

After Quiggs finished, Max stuck a finger into the hat and sampled the milk. He spat it out. “The milk’s bad. Is she sick?”

Quiggs tasted and did the same. “Yuck. She’s been grazing the older vines. Something in them is contaminating her milk.”

“Can we still drink it to keep hydrated?”

“If it causes gripe, we’ll dehydrate faster from diarrhea.”

The doe stretched her long neck around and licked Quiggs’s face with gratitude. She nuzzled her dead baby, then selected a stalk near it. Using her front hooves, she trampled the stalk to get at the upper leaves, then ate her way down, stopping at the woody base.

The doe’s red collar identified her as the property of the Port Paducah Guild. Quiggs examined the tags. “The last grazing marker on her collar was Milepost Sixteen. She escaped the first raid. Gave birth soon after. Stayed near her stillborn…” His voice trailed, then brightened. “She didn’t wander deep if she gave birth. We’re less than a mile from the canal. We can reach it tomorrow, barring detours or dark skies.”

“We have enough water through tomorrow.” Max narrowed his eyes on the doe. “Will she follow us?”

“She’ll graze and catch up.”

“Good.” The doe would provide tomorrow’s supper if they didn’t reach the canal. With extra food and liquids, he could afford a longer rest. “Wake me in fifteen minutes.” Max used the backpack as a pillow and closed his eyes, instantly asleep.

Max woke to the day fading out. Why had Quiggs let him sleep? He leaped up, frantic that Quiggs had gone into a fog and predators had seized an easy meal.

A quick sweep showed Quiggs missing, as was the doe. The vines looked like a herd had stampeded through the rest area, smashing down a wide avenue of stalks and churning the undergrowth. The vines hadn’t begun repairing the damage. The bordering stalks looked yellow and exhausted. He’d never seen so much sky exposed. What the fuck had happened? He’d slept through the stampede without his sensory hairs triggering him awake.

Fear rushed through his veins. He gave two sharp whistles. “Quiggs, dammit, if you’re dead—”

“Over here!” Quiggs emerged from one side of the sickly fringe. “Watch this!” His voice vibrated with a new discovery. He broke off a piece of fallen stalk, then crumbled it in his palms. “It was so fast I wasn’t sure what had happened. The canopy whipped as if caught in a strong wind. The leaves curled and dropped. Then I saw the mother roots breaking through the ground cover, as if a new species of underground insects was attacking them.”

Looking down Max saw an exposed black root covered with a yellow exudate. The root crumbled when he kicked it. He squatted and sifted his hands through the brownish clumps. They felt slightly sticky, like tilled earth in the early morning, and smelled faintly sulfurous when rubbed between his palms. He wasn’t a genius like Quiggs, but he realized he’d just created a handful of fertilized dirt for the exhausted farms of the Triangle.

Max fell back on his ass, trying to deal with the knowledge.

Vines crackled, and another section of the canopy toppled beyond Quiggs. The doe bleated, bounding out from beneath the falling vines. Quiggs stroked her neck until she quieted.

Whatever parasite was attacking the vines had frightened the doe. He and Quiggs needed to get away before it attacked them also.

Max picked up the backpack. “Why didn’t you wake me? ”

Quiggs blinked at the obvious. “Because I needed to observe what was causing the damage.”

“Put on your backpack. We’re leaving before it infects us.”

“Exactly why I didn’t wake you. I knew you’d drag me away without giving me a chance to prove my theory.”

The doe glared at Max and showed her horns. Quiggs tickled her ear, cooing. “Play nice to Max, my sweetheart. He’s our friend.” The doe backed down, gave Quiggs a drippy lick on the hand, and then searched out a friendlier section of vines to graze.

The infected doe was off the menu for supper.

“Put your backpack on. Explain your theory while I clear a path out of here.”

“We can’t leave yet.” Quiggs knelt and dragged his hand through the dirt. “While you napped, I walked to the edge of the vines to pee. I watched tendrils shoot out to absorb it seconds after it splattered the stalks. As I tapped off, I heard a rustling from where I’d poured out the bad goat milk. I turned around, expecting to find the tendrils drinking up and spreading over the area the doe had grazed. Instead, I watched the roots—I’m speaking of those deep woody hearts buried ten feet under—buck through the surface. They blackened and swelled until they cracked. The sap leaking out was a putrid yellow instead of a normal purple, but sap is never wasted, so other tendrils shot out to collect it. The contagion spread in a vicious cycle, the vines absorbing bad sap to repair themselves and causing more damage, generating more bad sap.”

Quiggs scrunched up his face. “I guess the simplest way to describe the process is the milk poisoned the sap, causing it to clot as it sped through the venous system from the roots to the canopy.”

Max feared Quiggs had gone vine daft. Yes, the vines were dead, but the explanation was insects or blight, likely transported by the ferals from their isolated valley. If Quiggs and he lingered, those parasites might discover red-blooded humans were tastier than sap. He pulled a canteen from the backpack, his face neutral. “Clots, huh? ”

“Coagulation confirmed with a crude dissection of random slices of stalks and branches before they crumbled, of course.”

Max nodded amiably, unscrewing the canteen. “Of course.”

“The vines can’t regenerate in an area where their mother roots are poisoned.” Quiggs beamed as if waiting for applause. None coming, he frowned. “I just told you how we can kill the vines. You’re looking at me as if I’ve gone vine daft.”

Max pressed the canteen to Quiggs’s lips. “Stop talking. Take a deep drink.”

Quiggs took a small sip, puzzled by Max’s calm reaction.

“Keep drinking. You need to hydrate.”

Quiggs snickered and danced away. “You do think I’m vine daft.”

His tone soothing, Max said, “A new species of blight or insect is affecting the roots, and when we’re a safe distance away, you can ponder where the parasite originated and how to use it our advantage. The rest is a grand delusion.”

“Men don’t go vine daft after a few hours.”

“Proof the more ingenious a mind, the sooner it goes vine daft. Until you recover, you’ll wear a leash so you won’t wander off.”

Quiggs folded his arms. “I’m not leaving yet.”

Max tried a scientific approach. “You’re under the influence of the corrosive effect of the vine’s exhaustive gases compounded by a concussion, stress, hunger, grief.”

“It’s the goat milk.”

“Our scientists have tested the effect of goat’s milk. They documented thousands of diets on the dairy herds, including a diet of the older vines without success.”

“All documented centuries ago. The vines have certainly evolved since then. Why not our bioengineered goats?”

Max held out the end of a leash. “Don’t make me chase you.”

“I’ll prove my theory.” Quiggs patted his thighs and called out to the doe. “Hello, my sweetheart. Come here.”

The doe trotted from the vines over to her hero. Before she kicked away, Quiggs milked an ounce in his palm. He carefully divided drops on the ground between healthy stalks, then moved away.

“I feel anything crawling on my skin, we’re out of here,” Max muttered to himself. He’d give Quiggs five minutes.

A mad rustling began. The silvery tendrils shot out, behaving as Quiggs had described. The stalks trembled, and the canopy swayed. Leaves sprinkled down, and the ground vibrated as if rats crawled to the surface. Then the mother roots corkscrewed through. Nodes burst with tiny pops. The leaking sap triggered the spawning of hundreds of thirsty tendrils.

Max stood transfixed. He wanted to believe… he so wanted to believe…

“Fuck me,” Max breathed when the supporting stalks collapsed. He believed.

Max crumbled stalks in his hands and trampled roots into new soil. He threw back his head and roared his victory to the swathe of visible sky. Quiggs had done it. His ingenious concubine had figured out how to kill the vines.

Quiggs performed Beau’s silly happy-hoppy dance, then stopped and dropped his face in his hands, deep gulping sobs shaking his shoulders. Max let him cry it out. These were healing tears washing away the grief. Beau had taught his friend how to handle an ornery tri-color, and Beau should be here celebrating with them.

“We’ll return for Beau,” Max promised.

They spent the night where they were, in the middle of a bared acre of deep outland. Supper was a handful of nuts chased down with water. They collected leaves for a pallet. Max turned the hat, smelling like sour milk, inside out and pulled it low over Quiggs’s ears. “Tuck your hands and feet in against rats. They’ll sneak out later. Hopefully they’ll feed on the dead kid instead of us.”

The doe settled beside Quiggs. He snuggled into her furry warmth as the fog rolled in. Quiggs sniffled. “I’m glad I forgave him.”

Max spooned his concubine. He waited until the sniffling stopped and Quiggs’s breathing evened out before closing his eyes and falling into a deep dreamless sleep.

At the first rays of sunlight burning away the fog, Max awakened. He groaned when he rolled to his back. Shoulders, arms, back ached. He did a quick inventory of his fingers and toes. Nothing nibbled them overnight.

He inspected Quiggs, sleeping deeply snuggled against the doe, his dark beard scruffy on a pale face bereft of cute baby fat.

Shadows flitted over the clearing. Squinting up, Max watched a flock of gulls flying toward their morning feeding ground. He tracked their descent, encouraged the canal was close. But the gulls could be flying to a feeding ground in the city or toward the middle leg of the canal. If he overshot the leg of the canal, he’d never know he missed his target until he hit old vines on the other side.

The stillborn kid was gone, dragged away by rats. The stalks not attached to the dead mother roots appeared healthy, but they had not invaded the poisoned area. In fact, they bent away.

The doe woke up. She stretched her legs, then nosed at Quiggs, who flopped on his stomach, mumbling at Beau to leave him alone. The doe didn’t spare a glance where her baby had been. Out of sight, out of mind. She butted Quiggs, impatient for milking so she could graze comfortably.

Quiggs rubbed his puffy eyes. “Hello, sweetheart. Give me a few minutes to wake up.” He yawned and brushed fur off his sweaty face, unperturbed he’d awakened on the ground with a goat.

The doe’s hunger led her into the vines to graze until Quiggs was ready to milk her. Max squeezed a buttock. “You know we could—”

Quiggs rolled away. “Forget it, Max. All our morning fucks end with us nearly killed.”

True. Max laughed softly. They shared dried fruit, jerky, and half of the last canteen while they mapped their day .

They set out with Max maintaining a steady pace cutting the stalks and Quiggs occasionally sprinkling milk to test the toxicity further inland. Their dry throats limited talk, but their smiles spoke volumes.

As they neared the canal, the stalks became slenderer and more bendable, but they also entwined to form a tangled, suffocating mass. Max quit using a vine cutter and ripped them apart in fistfuls to create a path that closed up as quickly as they shouldered through. Quiggs stayed on his tail, the leash a lifeline when the vines blinded them with showers of silvery pollen. If the leash broke, Max could always locate him by listening for his rumbling stomach.

Max found a nest of leaf hoppers filled with fat yellow larvae. He chewed a squirming larva. “Tastes a lot like scrambled eggs.” He smacked his lips and offered Quiggs one, amused when he recoiled to the end of the leash. “Where’s your fearless stomach?”

Quiggs held the larva between his thumb and forefinger. “But it’s alive and gooey, and it stinks.”

“Close your eyes, open your mouth, and pretend it’s a glob of honey custard squirting when you chomp down.”

Quiggs stared at the squirming larva. “Honey custard, my ass. It has beady eyes.”

“We’re out of rations. Eat it.”

Quiggs pinched his nose to block the stench, then spat on the larva before sucking it down like a wet noodle. He massaged his neck to keep from gagging as it wiggled down. “Never chew a hopper larva. Tastes like rancid bacon grease. Beau taught me the trick of swallowing it whole instead of gagging on the insides when you bite down. I’m starving. Pass me another.”

Dark clouds blocked the sun at noon. Max ordered a halt until the skies cleared, rather than risk veering off course and traveling parallel to the canal .

The doe had disappeared. Quiggs believed she had found the canal nearby. “Don’t stop,” he pleaded. “We’re close. I know it.”

Max shook his head. “I’ve found dead soldiers fifty feet from the canal because the rustling vines blocked the stench and sounds from guiding them in the right direction. We wait until the clouds pass.”

Quiggs sprinkled a circle of milk to clear a resting area. The vines nearing the canal withered at a faster pace than the older vines in the deep outland. The fresh yellow exudate from the roots smelled like a row of plugged toilets, but the smell muted as it dried.

Max trampled the circle, creating a mound of pungent soil for them to sit on. They sat back to back, waiting for the sun to show. On Border Patrol, Max used these quiet times for fast, uncomplicated sex. Words were unnecessary. A direct look, a nod… two soldiers accommodated each other. It was all about physical relief without emotions demeaning their manhood. The academy trained cadets to reserve love for a wife. Wedded husbands enjoyed companionship with the benefits of convenient sex, but romantic expressions of love for one another drew ridicule.

Lavishing affection on a concubine did not demean a man; however, affection inadequately described what Max lavished on Quiggs when they were together.

It felt like a consuming need to melt into him until they were one.

Quiggs chose that vulnerable moment to reach around and clasp Max’s hand. He squeezed and shyly whispered, “I have strong feelings for you.”

He knew Quiggs waited for him to respond that three years together was not enough. To offer some hope that after his service ended, they stayed together in wedlock. It was illegal for two men to live together. They wedded and reciprocated at leisure, or they met discreetly for quick sex.

When Max said nothing, Quiggs slid his hand away.