The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

The Human Trail, pt. 2

The man took off running. This was a response I didn't expect. Mark and Everett were amused by this, so they let him run in terror for a few seconds before they outpaced him in one bound. The man let out a startled cry as they grabbed hold of him.

"Be nice!" I shouted.

The boys held him as the rest of us caught up. The moon had gone behind the clouds and I could hardly see a thing. "We need light," I said.

"I got it," Ben said, and he closed his palm and opened it to a ball of fire.

I looked at him, dumbfounded. "That's not water," I said. His individual power was to manipulate water in all forms, but, if nothing else, fire was the opposite of water. He could do that? But he just shrugged.

"What's your name?" I asked the man in Turkish.

With eyes wide, he stuttered, "Berkant."

I gestured for Ben to hold the light toward Berkant's face so I could see him better. He was a small, frail man with a wiry beard. But the defining feature of his face was a grisly scar that cut diagonally from the top of the left side of his head between his eyes, across his nose, to his right ear.

"Please!" he begged, shaken to his core.

"We won't hurt you," I responded. "I promise. We just need to talk to you. They'll let go now, if you won't run."

"Just talk?" he asked, hesitant. He wasn't looking at me.

I nodded, and he relaxed. They let him go. "I have some questions. Is there somewhere we could go? Perhaps somewhere warmer?" He had to be cold.

He nodded and pointed up a long hill that led up and away from the ruins. There was nothing else on it, save for scattered trees. We followed him for about a mile until we came to what can best be described a shack. We all went inside, where his wife and a young son were. He said nothing to them, and they said nothing to us. The woman and small boy didn't even look us in the eye as they clung to the corner of the room.

Berkant would address only Ben, Mark, and Everett, until it was clear I was doing the talking for us. I wasn't unfamiliar with the fact that there were cultures on this earth that still didn't equally respect or even acknowledge the existence of women. I learned early on that this was the case. But if I could grow up among dozens of Puritans who evolved in such a way that they never treated a woman as less than a man, then I could assert myself in front of any man in the world. Berkant would have to deal with me. I wasn't going to coddle his prejudices.

Then I told the others to go outside, knowing our collective presence was overwhelming him.

"Why did you call us Survivors?" I asked.

"You were in the Survivors' Cave," he said. "My family has watched this monument for seven generations, ever since an old Survivor instructed us to do so. Since then, only a handful of times has someone come there. They called themselves Survivors, and so I knew you must be Survivors too."

"Did you know them?" I asked, my mind hot at the thought.

His wife, who sat quietly in the corner, crossed herself and said a prayer under her breath.

"I met an old one...once." A penetrating image flashed across Berkant's mind of an angular-faced man with dark hair and dark eyes, dressed in black. He reached out and put his hand on Berkant's face until he felt a white-hot pain across his whole face. It was a cross between the burn of branding and the raw pain of a sliced-open wound. The memory faded out as blood ran into Berkant's vision and his stomach lurched from the pain. I understood that this was how he'd gotten the scar on his face. The pain of the memory churned my stomach.

"He's the one who hurt you," I said, understanding. Berkant nodded. I pulled out my Moleskine notebook and made a note:

"Survivor" who mangled Berkant, maybe the one who killed Hannah's father, if he were killed?

"And the generations before you?" I asked.

"He marked each of my forefathers in some way. Some had scars like mine. Others, he'd take an eye or a limb. But all of us were marked—his guarantee that we'd stay here and be loyal to him." Berkant said, his voice sad. "That is how it has always been. The old Survivor told each generation to work and keep his children here, that we have to watch that cave. He made us take a berkant, a solid oath. Each of us has been named that ever since," he explained. This rubbed me the wrong way, that the old Survivor had named him. It was a form of proclaiming ownership. "Each father teaches his son that this is our purpose. And who can defy his father? We are loyal people," Berkant said, his young son on his lap now. He hugged the boy close to him. I understood Berkant's loyalty to his father, better yet his unwillingness to defy his family. Half of me did, anyway.

"You all have lived here for seven generations?"

"My son will be the eighth," he said, grief now emanating from his small body. He hated to think what the Survivor might do to his son.

"How did you meet your wife if you never left?" I asked.

"He brought her to me."

"So you would have a child," I said, understanding.

He stroked his son's face. "I can only hope he will spare my boy. He will stay here and guard Ephesus and the Survivors' cave without such pain," he said.

My throat was tight with the guilt and fear in Berkant's voice. "He's the only one you've ever met?" I confirmed.

"There was someone with him. A loyal friend," Berkant said.

"Do you remember anything about this friend?" I asked.

"He called his friend Sam."

I nodded, scribbling furiously. "What do you think a Survivor is?" I asked.

He considered this. "Something not of God," he said.

A fair—albeit offensive—description, I thought. "What if I told you we were Christians?" I asked.

"Your old Survivor, he thinks he is a kind of messiah," Berkant spat. "He can be no Christian."

"Do you think the old one put the symbols in the cave?" I asked.

"I assume so," Berkant said.

"I thank you for your help, Berkant," I said, rising to my feet. It was time to leave the man. He and his family had been scared enough for one night. I picked through Berkant's thoughts quickly, determining all I could about what he knew.

"One last question," I said as he walked me outside his small home.

"Yes?" he asked, the color coming back to his face now that we were leaving.

"What did they call him?" I asked.

"Kuzgun," he said.

"Kuzgun," I repeated. "Raven."