1: As You Push Up From The Soil

Boone had been walking for days.

He was focused on the rifle in his hands and the dirt beneath his feet and the sun pounding down on his back, but everything else was a blur. Nothing else made sense. Nothing else mattered.

He was walking in the general direction of home, but he didn't feel like he was going anywhere. He knew he had a destination in mind. He was going home, but not to stay for long. He knew he was going the right way, but he didn't care. A part of him wanted to just walk in the opposite direction and let the Mojave swallow him up. He felt utterly detached from the world around him; his senses had decided, somehow, to disobey nature. The sun was hot, but he was shivering, his hands numb and seemingly frozen. He was only half here, the other half of him buried in the ground. Never in his life had he felt so wretched, so firmly planted in rock bottom. He couldn't forget. For the life of him, he couldn't forget. He tried to think of other things, but everything stank of his wife and dragged him back to that place on the cliff over Cottonwood Cove.

He'd been following them for only three days when he'd tracked them to their destination. When he drew near, he had to pause. For all this time he'd been hoping that perhaps he could catch them at a weak point, hoping that he could save her and then leave Novac and never return. But the escort patrol hadn't let up. He'd been following them from afar, lining them up in his scope, trying to get a clear shot, but somehow unwilling or unable to pull the trigger. He'd been discouraged by the numbers. Stupid. He was sure that somewhere down the road, he'd had a chance. He'd been too careful. Too scared. Too confident that there was a better window elsewhere. Now he was standing only a few hundred yards from the sign marked Cottonwood Cove.

It was crowded, and he had a sick feeling that he knew what was going on. The commotion confirmed his theory. It was a slave auction. They were bringing them up one by one, shouting out prices. Bidding on things that no man had any right to. For a moment he'd entertained storming the crowd and just shooting everyone, but then he had a better idea. He ran in the opposite direction.

Boone's breath was ragged and sweat was running down his face but he didn't care. He climbed the hill and found a place safely tucked away from view, a place that commanded a sweeping view over the camp. He could see the slaves and the Legionaries bidding on them. He brought the rifle to his eye and searched the crowd of prisoners, trying to seek out the one he'd been looking for.

There she was. Even in her bloody, bruised, terrified, malnourished, tired state, she was still beautiful. Her wide eyes were filled with terror, looking around desperately, praying that someone would please come and save her. Save them both. There were tear tracks on her face. I'll save you, thought Boone. I'll save you.

He swept his scope over her, over the round, natural bump in her belly. It felt like just seconds ago that he'd been running his hand over that belly, cooing gently to the life inside, his heart bursting with pride and joy. Even now, he couldn't help the little burst of pride that shot through him, but he also felt fear and a desperate need for this all to turn out okay.

But even as he looked, the throng of Legionaries seemed to grow ever larger, and Craig realized that there was no hope. He didn't have the ammunition for this kind of job. A few grenades would have scattered them, but even he could not throw that far. There were too many. She was too far away. He could already see it in her eyes, five hundred meters away. A part of her was already dead. He couldn't save her.

In the instant that the realization became clear, Boone felt pain he'd long thought suppressed by the veil of passing time. He felt helplessness and despair. His demons had come back to haunt him. She had not been his salvation. She had been his punishment, he realized. It had had to come to this; she had been doomed from the day they'd met. And he felt himself seized by hatred - hatred for the Legion, hatred for himself, hatred for everyone in Novac who'd had a hand in this. Hatred at the world for there was only one way for this to end. Only one. He refocused his wife in his sights, the way forward now clear.

He could not let her life like this, degraded like an animal, forced to shoulder a burden that was not hers. He could not allow his child to be born into such a life. He could not stand the thought of another man having his wife. It was intolerable. This was the only way.

It was still murder. Blood would still be on his hands, but he was now resigned to his fate. One bullet. Painless. It was what she deserved. It was the least and the most that he could do for her.

Tears rose to his eyes and he let them fall, only because no one would see. He wept for his wife and for himself, but mostly for the child she carried that would never see the light of day. He was truly fortune's fool, he thought. How he could have let his curse befall another he did not know. He steadied his rifle and placed a finger on the trigger. Placed the crosshairs between her two beautiful, expressive eyes. And then it was over.

There was the explosive crack of the rifle and in the same instant that Carla Boone crumpled, her husband on the cliff clutched the rifle to his chest and a sob wracked his body, and a cry of agony was ripped from his lips, so loud he was sure that everyone in the camp below heard it. He lay there for what seemed like an eternity, the harsh smell of gunpowder in his nostrils, feeling like his chest had been ripped open. Someone had reached through his ribcage and ripped his heart out, probably the pregnant woman sprawled out on the sand with the life bleeding out of her. His mind took a few seconds to catch up to his heart, but when he was finally able to process what he had just done, it was devastating.

He had just killed his own wife.

Mercy killing or no mercy killing, he would never see her again.

That fact alone might have been enough for him to have condemned her to a life of slavery. She would have been a slave and she would have been miserable, but she would have been alive, and there would have been a chance, however small, of him being able to rescue her. But as he thought this, a part of him knew that he'd done the right thing. It would have been selfish for him to leave her to that fate, but it didn't make it feel any better. He wanted to die. He wanted to join her in heaven, but he was afraid that he'd end up in hell instead.

Perhaps it was this that gave him the crazed self-preservation to pick up his rifle and run, to get as far away from it as possible. He just turned away from his dead wife and ran without looking back, not caring if he was being pursued. He just needed to get away.

Through the haze of her pain and confusion, she felt two pairs of arms roughly yank her upright. She felt herself being dragged across the dirt, and then she felt the waning sun on her face again. Her fuzzy vision cleared a little. Her head was spinning. She struggled, trying to get her bearings, trying to see what was going on. They were too strong.

They dragged her for what seemed like forever before they dropped her unceremoniously on the ground, where she collapsed in a shameful heap. She braced her hands on the ground and slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position. She blinked, her heart racing with equal parts fear and anticipation.

The first thing she saw was Jacob, kneeling silently in the dirt with a White Leg standing over him with a machete. His face was streaked with blood and she saw that his nose had been broken. Rebecca saw the rest of her family there too - her father, her mother, and Megan. Where were they? Why were they here? What was going on? She looked desperately to her parents for answers, but they shook their heads. She suddenly remembered what had happened to the rest of her town, and cold fear settled in her gut.

There was someone else there, too, someone she didn't recognize. He was an old, balding man, somehow old enough for his hair to be white and yet he didn't look much older than her mother. He was wearing a crimson garb with a black fur draped over his shoulder. He looked...royal, almost. And it seemed that the White Legs answered to him. Well, maybe. He was flanked by two other crimson-clad soldiers, both wearing these ridiculous leather skirts. Their faces were both hidden by sunglasses and they both had pneumatic gauntlets on their hands. They probably were what they looked like - cold, impersonal bodyguards. But for who? She didn't want to guess who they were, partly because she already knew.

The man looked at her curiously. "So," he remarked. "You're Rebecca. A little skinny if you ask me," he added, giving her mother an amused look. It was a comment she heard from her relatives all the time. It didn't stop her from seething in rage at the comment. Who was this man? He had no right to comment on her size.

She stared back at him in part defiance, a million questions running through her head. Who was he? How did he know her? Why were they the only people who'd been brought before him? He was obviously the one calling the shots. Why hadn't he sought out the mayor, or the leaders of the local militia? Were they themselves special in some way? Why did he seem to know her mother? They were questions that would not all have answers until much later.

She was surprised to hear her mother answer. "She never had a big stomach," she said stiffly, her voice tightly under control.

"She takes after you, though," he said, a little wistfully. The tone of his voice made her skin crawl. She was forced to look down from his prying gaze and stared resolutely at the dust on the road.

"Don't lay a hand on her," her mother whispered.

"You betrayed me, Madison," he declared, staring at her with what seemed to be veiled revulsion, but also perhaps nostalgia. "I found myself in the East. Was it at the cost of losing you?"

"You never had me," she said. Rebecca heard the slightest tremor in her voice. "You were dead to me when we heard of what you'd done. You were dead to all of us."

She let her words hang in the air. The man in the fur looked like he'd been slapped in the face. Civilizations rose and fell in the silence that followed. Then he slapped her, hard, and she fell across her father's lap. Rebecca screamed and somewhere to her right she heard Megan scream too. Jacob winced but his face remained impassive. She couldn't read his emotions behind the blood on his face. She scrambled across towards her mother, not knowing if someone was trying to stop her but not caring, either. She just needed to be near her parents, to console and to be consoled. She didn't know what was going on, but it was slowly starting to make sense. As much as she wanted the truth, her mind rejected it. She could only focus on her mother, a strong, proud woman reduced to...to this. Hate rose in her chest. Hate and fear.

"Mom," she cried. She looked up at her dad. He looked dazed, confused. She saw blood trickling from a cut on his head. "Dad?" He nodded weakly and tried to offer her a smile.

The man towered above them all, breathing hard. "Who are you?" Rebecca screamed at him. "What do you want from us?"

He forced a harsh laugh. "You never told them?" he mocked her mother, eyes flashing. "Even after I took Joshua away, you never told them?"

"There was nothing to tell," her mother told him. Her voice cracked. "They didn't need to know."

"Those words will sound awfully hollow strung up on the cross," he remarked. "Madison, you betrayed me. In the Legion, there's only one punishment for betrayal."

His words, stamped behind her eyes for the rest of her life.

She didn't know why he spared her. Maybe it was because she was the youngest. Maybe it was just...because. Maybe it had been her resemblance to the one that'd gotten away. It didn't matter. He'd made a mistake. She would never forget him. She would never forgive him. And she knew his name. Edward Sallow.

There was only one punishment for betrayal.