“I’m sorry,” he continues, “I didn’t mean to overstep a boundary. I’m just pleased to see that a member of the old guard has returned to the roost. You must join me in my hut some time and tell me all about the town’s early days, and—” He pauses for a moment, and then a faint smile crosses his lips. “You must forgive me, I forgot for a moment about your inability to speak. Still—”
He reaches out to put a hand on my shoulder, but I instantly pull away. I’m absolutely certain that he’s up to something, but at the same time he seems to have convinced the people of Steadfall to follow him blindly.
“I’m afraid your friend Asher really did lose her mind,” he says calmly. “Ask anyone here, they’ll all tell you it’s true. As soon as her authority was challenged, she made a series of increasingly bad decisions and finally a vote was called. It was perfectly democratic and above-board, but she didn’t take kindly to the idea that she was no longer welcome here. Evidently she was filled with a kind of blind rage, and her downward spiral was remarkably rapid.”
“I can’t believe she killed Carly,” whispers someone nearby in the crowd. “It seems so awful.”
“It is awful,” Harold continues, keeping his eyes fixed on me. “Carly seemed like a lovely young woman, and she’ll be sorely missed. I’m just sorry that she fell victim to Asher’s madness, but at least she’ll be the last victim.”
“That’s for sure,” one of the other new arrivals mutters. He’s the guy who claimed to have killed Asher, and it takes every ounce of strength for me to keep from lunging at him. Maybe I’m crazy and delusional, but I swear I can tell he’s lying. Ever since I lost my tongue, I’ve felt I’m getting a lot better at reading body language, and this guy seems nervy. He keeps watching Harold, as if he’s waiting to make sure his story about killing Asher is believed.
“Tomorrow we’ll start planning for our next step,” Harold tells the crowd. “This town has been through so much already, but I believe a new era is about to start. With Asher and her friends gone, we can really start moving forward. I look forward to being a part of the change. For now, I encourage you all…” He pauses for a moment. “Go to sleep.”
As the crowd starts to disperse, I watch Harold with a growing sense of suspicion. There’s no doubt that he’s the same Harold who was mentioned by Walter, or that he and his friends are the same trio who destroyed that other town. I remember the sight of burned bodies huddled in huts, and corpses tied to the ground after having been tortured to death, and I’m certain Steadfall is heading toward the same fate. As Harold talks to his two friends, however, he glances at me, and we maintain eye contact for a moment before finally I turn away. If he felt he had to drive Asher and Deckard away, I’m sure I’ll be next on his list.
“Iris,” he says suddenly, as a hand touches my shoulder. “Please—”
Spinning around, I find that Harold has followed me.
“Please,” he continues, “would you allow me to pick your brains about an important matter? Ordinarily I’d say it could wait ’til morning, but since you were here at Steadfall from the start…” He pauses for a moment, watching me carefully, almost as if he’s studying me. “It’s important,” he adds finally. “It’s about your friend Asher.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Reaching my hand between the rocks, I fumble for something, anything, I can grab. I need to keep pulling myself through the darkness, but the effort is almost too much and my entire body aches. Still, deep down I know I can’t give up, so finally I force myself to ignore the pain as I haul myself forward inch by inch.
Suddenly another hand grabs mine in the darkness, holding it tight.
“I’m here,” Deckard gasps, his voice filled with pain. “Asher, I’ve found the way out!”
Chapter Forty
“Asher’s alive,” Harold says as soon as we reach one of the huts at the far side of the clearing. With just a small fire burning near the doorway, there’s barely enough light for me to see his face as he turns to me. “I feel it. You feel it too, don’t you?”
I wait for him to continue, but after a moment I realize that he’s testing me.
“It’s okay,” he continues. “I can lip-read. Please, Iris, tell me you feel it too. Maybe Ben and Leanne are mistaken, or maybe they’re lying to me, but I know Asher is alive. She’s far too smart to get picked off by those idiots.”
“You can lip-read?” I mouth.
He nods.
I feel a shudder pass through my chest. Harold’s only the second person I’ve met who seems able to understand me.
“I don’t know where Asher is,” I mouth carefully, moving my lips slowly so he can read them. “I haven’t seen her since I left here months ago.”
“Lip-reading isn’t always enough,” he replies. “Without a tongue, you clearly struggle to form certain shapes.” He steps closer. “It must be frustrating, Iris, not being able to talk to anyone. I’m sure you have so much to say, I’m sure you see a great deal, but—”
I flinch and pull away when he tries to put a hand on my shoulder.
“Where did you go?” he asks with a faint smile. “I heard the others saying that you set out to look for other towns. Tell me, did you find anything?”
I swallow hard, before slowly shaking my head.
“Really?” he continues. “I find that difficult to believe. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I mouth.
He stares at me for a moment, as if he’s trying to see the truth in my eyes. “You didn’t find ruins, Iris?” he asks finally. “You didn’t stumble across the remains of old towns out there? You didn’t find the bodies of people who tried but failed to work together?”
Again, I shake my head.
“They are out there, you know,” he continues. “Maybe you weren’t looking in the right places, but there are ruined towns on the island. Few of them are as impressive as Steadfall, although one or two even surpassed this muddy little place. Every single one of them fell, though, and can you guess why?” He waits for me to answer. “I’ll tell you,” he adds once he realizes I’m not going to reply. “They fell because here on the island, mankind is a savage beast, ruled by his baser instincts.”
“Not everyone’s like that,” I mouth.
“Oh, I know,” he replies. “There are still some hold-outs, people who cling to the idea of civilization. They even build little towns from time to time, just like this one here at Steadfall. They pretend to have recovered their own corner of peace, a sanctuary in the heart of such a terrible place, but it never lasts. The savages always turn up eventually and tear everything down. The best part is that the same is true of the wider world, the world you and the others here left behind. No matter what mankind builds, eventually some form of human savagery will tear it down again.”
I want to turn and get out of here, but at the same time I feel as if I need to hear what he has to say. I need to understand him a little better.
“I fought in the war,” he continues finally. “I was a medic, but still, I fought. Like Asher, I was shipped off far away to fight an enemy whose very identity is a closely-guarded secret. And like Asher, once I came back from many years on the battlefield, my mind was wiped so that I would not remember any of it.” He smiles. “Do you have a fondness for history, Iris? Do you know how things were done in the old days?”
I shake my head.
“Once upon a time,” he replies, “mankind couldn’t wipe memories so easily. People who returned from war had no option but to remember what they’d seen, what they’d experienced. Some of them coped with it admirably, but others fell apart. The horrors of war were too much for their minds to comprehend. There are accounts of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, of men and women who tried but failed to fit back into society. They were haunted by what had happened to them in the war, and they couldn’t be normal again.”