High Plains Drifter

[Dogs231]

NOAH DAVIS: CONTINUED FROM "Star in the Dust"

Noah walked through the expanse, aimless and purposeless. His nominal goal was still the guardhouse, but his movement was dull and listless.

At some point in time, though he had lost track of when, the announcements blared. Wailing feedback, lists of names, people dead and gone.

He'd known them once.

In his mind, Noah remembered their shared past, the chance meetings, and friendships from forever ago, cut and gone, drifting in the past like aimless ships. They were lost connections from another life.

That first set of names were those personally killed by the captors; they practically bragged about it. Noah felt his hands ball into angered, powerless fists. They didn't have the right, he thought, to kill them. They'd done nothing wrong but stand against the terror.

Noah and Kincaid hadn't ever been more than acquaintances. He had tried to reach out, but the other boy never wanted to talk. Noah stayed away because of that. He wished he'd tried harder to forge that connection, but he knew that his wishes amounted to nothing.

Jenelle was much the same; they'd met here and there, but she pushed him as far away as possible. He sympathized with her, but it still stung when she talked to him with awful words and awful tones. If he'd tried harder to understand, maybe they wouldn't have been so far apart, but it wasn't possible now.

He could imagine the pain Austin would feel, and it reminded him that the two would need to meet once more. They'd lost the people closest to them; now more than ever, they needed to support one another. Noah realized that he should have warned the other boy before he left; at the time, he'd been in what amounted to a trance.

Sydney and Noah had been friends before. When he'd seen her alone, he'd stuck out his hand in greeting, then sat down beside her. They'd talked for a moment, then minutes, then an hour.

He remembered her love of sci-fi and fantasy books and how they'd swapped recommendations. She liked music, too; she played the drums, him the guitar. She drew characters from tabletop games and dragons from medieval stories. They swapped woodworking tips; he told her how to build a chair, and she taught him how to carve a spear.

The second slate were those killed by their peers, which the captors announced with derisive, sickening pride. Noah's heart sank further, and he could feel a pit grow within his stomach. The game had changed them, he thought. A day ago and the thought would have been inconceivable.

The first victim was Moose, one of Crispin's friends. He didn't know him well, but he did know the killer, Mercedes, to an extent; he counted her among his friends, and while they'd never been close, he didn't take her for a murderer. He couldn't feel sure, though, not after what he'd experienced.

Orion had been killed with a rock by Joel. He didn't know either of them very well, but the caginess left Noah suspicious; as far as he could tell, there wasn't any reason for them not to say what happened. There was more to the story, Noah was sure.

Cyrus was the next on the list, his collar detonated by the terrorists after a struggle with Jacob; he had no love for Cyrus, but it still felt wrong to think about him as dead. He couldn't imagine Jacob killing someone maliciously, but a part of himself nagged at the thought.

He thought back to the guardhouse. He clenched his fist.

Noah knew Yvette somewhat; they'd talked about their Gifts before, and he'd always sympathized with her and her with him. He wasn't sure they were close enough to call each other friends, but the news of her death was a blow to him nonetheless. The circumstances, to him, sounded somewhat uncertain; she might have been killed unrelated to the injury, he theorized, but he wasn't sure.

Raja was the last of the dead, poisoned by Isabella's hive. He'd been wrong in saying that she wouldn't hurt anybody, completely and utterly. Noah didn't know if she even tried to do so, but it happened nonetheless. He worried for August and Ana; he hoped, in his heart, that they would be safe.

As it stood now, nine people were dead. Nine lit candles, bright lights, snuffed out, nothing but embers left. They all deserved better, Noah knew, better than this.

It wouldn't have ever happened if they'd just been allowed to go about their lives.

NOAH DAVIS: CONTINUED IN "a mutual problem"