anders/book-1/13.tex

\chapter{13}

Almost half of the day was spent in a state of shock between speechless horror,
bewildered disbelief,
and anger.
Ten days?
Apparently he laid there in a fever for \textit{ten days} without noticing it?
Other than that it was hard for him to believe it,
he just didn't \textit{want} to.
The consequences would have been too frightening.

Just like before,
Andrew was convinced that his father would try anything to find him.
Surely he had already started the largest manhunt the country had ever seen,
and he wouldn't rest until his people had overturned every stone,
searched every lake,
looked in every well,
and grilled every applicable previously arrested wannabe-criminal for any information.

But ten days was an unbelievably long time.
Of course Andrew had never been the subject of a manhunt,
but he wasn't the first person to disappear,
and he had followed other manhunts on the news:
Hundreds of policemen and thousands of volunteers that searched woods and marshes,
supported by airplanes,
helicopters,
and sometimes even fighter jets that would scan the ground below them with thermal cameras and all sorts of other technical equipment.
Regrettably, he also knew that the longer the undertaking took,
the less likely it was that they would be successful.
Missing people were mostly found quickly
--- or not at all.
Most of the missing people that weren't found within the first couple of hours or days would only be found after weeks or sometimes months;
Buried in the woods and found by people walking by or in a plastic bag that got caught in the dam of a sewage treatment plant.

It took some effort for Andrew to reign in his rampaging fantasy.
In the end he was still alive,
and with some luck it could stay that way.
But not here.
He just couldn't imagine that his father would give up before he hadn't found him
--- or held the definitive proof that he was dead in his hands.

Andrew didn't want it,
but the thought created a reality in his head that he would have loved to deny:
The men in the black outfits that had collected the wreckage of the Cessna and loaded it into the helicopters that had landed on the plaza.
Maybe they \textit{had} convinced his father of his death a long time ago,
and instead of a search party he was standing in front of an open grave with an empty coffin in it,
just like they did in some symbolic burials.
Maybe he was already dead and this was hell,
or at least the purgatory where he would spend the next six hundred thousand years or at least until Judgement Day.

Just that as far as he knew he had not done anything bad enough to deserve this.

The sound of naked feet on a hard stone floor tore him out of his sullen contemplations.
He looked up and noticed that Katt had come in and was slowly approaching him with an almost shy smile.
He returned it,
even though it was more out of relief that it wasn't her sister,
but not \textit{just} for that reason.
Ratt had come in two or three times and he was happy when she left every time.
He didn't have anything against the rat-girl;
It was quite the opposite.
Once you got used to the way she looked she was kinda cute in her own way.
But she was also a complete pain in the neck:
Her character had inherited a healthy amount of the non-human parts of her heritage.

``How are you doing?", asked Katt.

Andrew shrugged.
Katt wasn't just making conversation, he knew that much.
She was actually worried about him.
``How am I supposed to be doing?''

Katt slowly got closer and stood still two steps away from him.
Andrew could see how hard she was debating what to say.
Eventually she shrugged her shoulders and made an awkward hand movement behind her,
towards the exit.

``I have water duty'', she said hesitantly.
``Do you want to come with?''

What ever \textit{water duty} was.
Andrew shrugged,
letting the motion seamlessly transform into a nod and standing up.
He had sat here half a day and felt bad for himself;
maybe it would be good if he got some fresh air and let the bleak thoughts blow away with the wind.
``Why not?''

Katt looked at him questioning for another moment,
but then she nodded and went outside,
Andrew following close behind her.

The sun was shining down so brightly from the cloudless sky that he was forced to close his eyes and raised his hand over his face.
It was very warm, almost hot,
and there was not even the slightest breeze.
Andrew let a moment pass for his eyes to adjust to the change in light conditions,
then motioned to Katt with a nod that she should keep going.
She motioned to the left,
but went in the opposite direction out of the same movement.
Two steps away from the door an unorganized row of old metal canisters,
rusty and big enough to hold at least twenty liters each.
They were similar to the containers that held the \textit{firewater}
that Katt used to protect the safe place.

She took two of the containers that were apparently empty and Andrew followed her and did the same.
Katt doubtfully furrowed her brow.

``Are you sure?'', she asked.

``What?''

``The canisters get pretty heavy when they're full''
, answered Katt.

``Doy you think you've recovered enough to be able to do that?''

``I guess we'll see'', Andrew answered.
Even though he knew that Katt only meant well,
they bothered him again.
Mostly because she was probably right.
He felt everything but refreshed and as a matter of fact he already felt the weight of the two \textit{empty} canisters.
But of course he was too proud to accept Katt's almost unnoticeable offer and only to only entertain himself with one canister.
Instead he added in an obviously spiteful tone:
``Bull said I need to work if I want to eat.''

``He didn't say that you have to overexert yourself'', answered Katt,
but left it at a shrug and turned around.
Andrew was finally smart enough not to continue the senseless discussion,
but to shut up instead.

In the bright daylight the ruined city made a maybe not friendly,
but at least less creepy impression.
The ruins were the same as they were before,
immense black skeletons that looked like they had never housed anyone.
The left side of the plaza was blocked by piles of rubble that nobody had seemed to put in the effort to move,
and even though Katt had said there were at least one hundred members in the tribe,
most of the buildings seemed to be empty.
Only a hand full of the doors had the grey rags that Katt and her sister used as curtains.
Almost nobody from the tribe was currently able to be seen,
which Andrew wasn't too sad about.
On the other side of the large plaza some kids were playing,
but Andrew decided he didn't want to look at them too closely.
Even if he had gotten a taste of the tribe through Ratt, Liz, and the others,
he felt it would be better to get to know the rest of the menagerie in homeopathic doses.

Shortly before they left the plaza,
Andrew stopped and looked around him.
On the roof of the house next to where Katt and her sister lived a fire was still burning.
It was too bright to really see the flames,
but Andrew could see the column of oily black smoke that went almost completely vertical in the unmoving air,
before it dissolved into the air thirty or forty meters up.
He blinked questioningly.

``She'll have her child today'', answered Katt,
who had noticed his facial expression.
``At the latest tomorrow.''

``You always light a bonfire when one of you expects a child?''

``Is it not like that where you're from?'', asked Katt blankly.

Andrew laughed.
``No.
Our tribes are \dots a little bigger than yours.''

``That much bigger?''

Andrew nodded.

``How many?'', asked Katt.

Andrew thought about it for a moment,
then he made a sweeping motion around himself with the empty canister.
``Imagine this whole city were full of humans.
A whole family would live in each room.''

Katt's eyes widened.
``I don't believe you.''

``And then imagine it was a hundred times as big'', Andrew continued.
``And there were a hundred of those cities.''

Katt stared at him further in bewilderment and in her eyes a fear appeared that Andrew didn't understand at first.
She laughed, but it sounded nervous and not real.
``You're pulling my leg'', she said.
``No tribe can get that big.
What would they all eat?''

Andrew mentally warned himself to be careful.
It might not matter to him if Katt believed him or not,
but maybe the danger was that she \textit{would} believe him.
Maybe he wasn't the only one that needed the truth in homeopathic doses.

``Yeah, you are probably right'', he said ambiguously and made motions to continue walking.
She looked at him for a moment longer with such hopelessness and bewilderment that Andrew almost regretted his own words.
As they kept walking Andrew mentally warned himself again to be much more careful with what he said.
He really should be thinking about every word he says very carefully.

They left the plaza and stepped on to a street that was mostly blocked by rubble and other debris.
It continued straight for a good one and a half or two kilometers.
The houses,
even though they were destroyed,
were still so tall that they held most of the sunlight back;
At the floor of the brick ravine it was not only darker,
but also noticeably cooler than on the big plaza where the tribe lived.
only a small stripe on the left lay in the sun,
but Katt avoided walking there,
instead opting to march along the other side even though they were constantly forced to climb over frequent boulders and other rubble.
Andrew was wondering why she was doing that,
but he figured that Katt would know what she was doing and followed her without complaints.
He also passed on asking how far they had to go.
With two full water canisters the way back would be torture.

While he was closely following Katt he took the time to really look around himself.