North

by Frank Owen

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘Faith, then.’

  ‘For sure. Same as the church kind. You can call it whatever you want. It doesn’t matter.’

  Dyce watched the procession. There were all sorts – tall and short, ragged and neat. He kept thinking of those Depression posters of the food lines. So many of us, he thought. If he thought about it too much it would get the better of him, and so he concentrated on one or two people. That was the way to do it: focus; get specific; keep your eyes on the prize.

  Like this guy here. He’d seen better days, that was for fucking sure. His arms dangled by his sides like a sleepwalker, and he hadn’t washed them in a while. Adams would shit when he saw that: he couldn’t allow his precious mushrooms to be cross-contaminated.

  The man kept wavering. Now he was trying to make his way against the people in the line, as if he was coming up the staircase. Dyce was fascinated. The man’s arms, from his fingers to his elbows, were stained brown. As he got closer, Dyce saw that his clothes were none too clean neither, speckled with something black; his flesh hung sallow on his cheekbones.

  And his torn cheek.

  Christ. It was Adams.

  Dyce’s stomach clenched. The man had lost ten pounds and gained ten years overnight. He stopped when he got to them.

  ‘In case you hadn’t figured, we’re moving house,’ he said. As he talked, his hands kept moving, wiping themselves against his trousers, over and over. Dyce was pretty sure he didn’t know he was doing it. ‘How’re we doing on those boomers, Dyce? You seeing stars yet?’ He grinned, and it was awful, a death’s head. Dyce was gentle with him.

  ‘Took another dose of mushrooms a few minutes back, when I got something in the throat that wasn’t going away. I’d say they gave me about three weeks’ immunity. Give or take.’

  ‘Good. Good,’ said Adams, still wiping, still grinning. ‘Man’s gotta be able to talk, don’t he? To parley? Three weeks! That’s more than we need. Much more. It’s good!’

  ‘Are you sure we been spotted here? I mean, are you sure the whole building is at risk?’ Ruth asked carefully. Adams shrugged. She had seen this kind of dissociation before in the ghost colony. Folks let their minds wander when they came up against something truly terrible, and you never knew how it was going to manifest. Here Adams was, out of his mind and betrayed by his busy hands, but still the bold leader of his troops.

  ‘We’ve been seen. I can’t say they know what it is they’ve seen. But we can’t wait for them to put two and two together.’ Wiping, turning the palms over, wiping again. ‘We’ll hold off on our attack as long as we can, but we could be forced to pull the trigger early. Maybe Renard will bail on the meeting. Maybe he won’t. That’s out of our control.

  ‘But I wanted to come by and wish you luck. And I got a present for you, a thank you for all your doctoring work with us here. Buddy’s truck is yours. It’s gassed up. You’ll find it where you left it.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ Ruth answered.

  Adams leant forward, and for the first time they got the butchery smell off him. Here was a man who’d been slaughtering things.

  ‘There is a condition.’

  Ruth tried not to lean away. ‘Say it.’

  ‘When you find Renard, you make him suffer.’

  She didn’t hesitate. ‘You can rely on me.’

  ‘Now there’s only one more thing I’m going to ask you. We’re going to move now, but I’m not one for loose ends. And this whole building?’ He waved one bloodstained hand and then looked at it in surprise. He dragged his attention back. ‘This is a loose end. Our plans of attack are pinned to the walls, that sort of thing. Too much of us still in it if anyone comes sniffing around for the wrong reasons.’

  Ruth nodded. This was easy. Maybe they’d given Adams what he wanted: the mushrooms.

  Adams permitted himself a smile. ‘I want you to burn the place down when you leave. Last one out, whoosh! There’s gasoline and matches in the store. Won’t be much left, so I don’t have to tell you to use it wisely. I’m kind of sorry I won’t be doing it myself, but they’ll need me on the front lines.’ He drifted off, seeing other things than the people in front of him. Then he snapped back and gave his hands some final, decisive wipes.

  ‘We will,’ said Ruth. ‘I promise.’ She didn’t care, even if it was a trap. She just wanted to be clean and free. To be done with everything, once and for all – the half-truths and the struggle and the blind allegiances to who-knew-what.

  Adams nodded and moved dreamily away, following some ghostly voice. ‘Look after yourselves,’ he called when he reached the top of the stairs. ‘And the friendly fungus.’

  Then he descended.

  Ruth stared after him. ‘You know, sometimes I kind of feel sorry for that guy. He’s so hot with the idea that he’s going to set himself alight if he’s not careful. Then other times I think he’s two hooves and two horns away from being the devil.’

  ‘It would be easier if he was just plain bad, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Young man, sometimes your insight surprises me.’ Dyce bowed and Ruth went on. ‘Right. Let’s get going. I’ll check on Vida.’

  ‘I’ll hunt down the gasoline.’

  47

  Everyone was moving in a different direction and it took Dyce a few minutes to work his way down. When he reached the floor of the atrium, Felix and Kurt had already received their rations. Dyce made his way closer. They were standing side by side, the slices of mushroom lying on their palms. Dyce wanted to shake the old man.

  ‘Hey. What’s up with you?’ he asked.

  Felix turned to him and the smile dropped off his face. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘That day I saw you, after the meeting, you’d had enough of this place. Saw you head for the ladies’ room and I figured that’d be the last we’d see of you. Felix Callahan, the one I met down South, he’d have cleared out of here long ago. Probably have gone to find some open ground – one of them silos in the middle of Nebraska, maybe. Then you come back with this kid,’ Dyce pointed a finger at Kurt, ‘and suddenly you’re a team player?’

  Felix eyed him and popped the mushroom onto his tongue. He spoke through the chewing. ‘Time’s come, I suppose. That’s the only way I can explain it. Got me some family in young Kurt, so we’re going to see how that pans out. Us loners got to stick together. Besides, settling a silo in Nebraska is going to be more days’ work than I got left in me. This is good. This is the way it ends for me.’

  Now people were beginning to get noisier, working on the wave of elation that would turn them into an army. The shouting and whooping grew louder around them, and Dyce wasn’t sure he caught the last of what Felix had to say.

  Felix shook Dyce’s hand – he’d never been this genial – and then he and Kurt were gone.

  When Dyce got back to the room, Vida was holding an instrument, plucking curiously at the strings and listening to the notes linger.

  ‘What’s that? A hamdolin?’

  ‘Some guy in a waistcoat left it for you. He said he wasn’t quite done sanding and painting it but that things are as they are.’ She cocked an eyebrow at him and held it out. Dyce took it and turned it over. ‘Looks like a cross between a mandolin and a ukulele, doesn’t it?’

  The body was an old cookie tin with the paint scraped off down to the rust-spotted silver. The machine heads sat polished and proud, jewels in a crown. Dyce set himself down on the bed and felt the strings under his fingers.

  ‘You know the reason I never learnt to play an instrument?’ he asked.

  ‘No talent?’

  He ignored the joke. ‘It’s the same reason Southerners don’t get married.’ He kept his black eyes fixed on the instrument. ‘Why start, you know? Long-term isn’t exactly something we can count on. But this: I got a good feeling about this. Like maybe I’m a natural. I’ll get good. I’ll teach myself.’

  Vida smiled. ‘So what’s your first song, troubadour?’

  ‘F
irst I reckon I’m going to get the hang of the lullabies.’

  48

  The troops were lined up along either side of the passages, some winding up the stairs, ready as they’d ever be. The plan was to pass through the bowels of the Capitol Building and emerge, Adams kept saying, like a shadow army from beneath the dumpster, and then – pow!

  Felix shook his head, out of breath. He knew what usually came out of bowels. He held onto the back of Kurt’s shirt – they’d offered him a new one, but he had kept the blouse in defiance – and said, ‘Don’t know whether I’ll make it up and down those rungs one more time. You know that story about the boy in the well?’

  Kurt said nothing. He knew Felix was talking to hear himself talk. The boy patted the handgun he’d shoved in the waistband of his pants, and adjusted the rifle slung across his back. Now that it was really going to happen, he was jumpy. He tried to stand up straighter, to be worthy of those weapons.

  Felix stopped. There was something warm pressing against his shin: Linus. The stripy tail curled around his leg.

  ‘Boy. Looks like your cat came home. Didn’t think he’d want to play Happy Families.’

  ‘He’s not here for me,’ Kurt said. ‘That cat hates me and I guess he’s got a right.’

  ‘Goodbyes are not only for friends, son,’ said Felix. He bent down to stroke Linus, craving the forgiving fur, but the tabby ducked out of reach and then didn’t stop, skittering back into the building. ‘Hope he’s smart enough to get himself out when he needs to.’

  ‘You seen how fat he is already? He’s gonna survive us all. King of the castle.’

  ‘Cats. They tell it how it is.’ Felix sighed. Dallas. Was it stupid to mourn a creature lost as long as you could remember?

  Of course it was. But still.

  ‘I was always more of a dog person,’ said Kurt.

  Did that kid feel anything at all? Maybe not all cats were as special as his old Dallas had been, back in the day. Felix looked at Kurt again, wondering if it was the boy himself that was cold, or if all teenagers were another species. He had thought he was getting a handle on him.

  There was a thud and a crash behind them, then the crack of splintering wood.

  ‘What’s that?’ Kurt asked.

  ‘You know what, runt? It don’t matter,’ Felix told him. ‘But whyn’t you go take a look? Make yourself useful.’

  Kurt left his place and walked back toward the commotion. It soon became obvious. Four men were pulling boarding from the frame of the Capitol Building’s grand entrance, clearing a way out, groundhogs out of their hole to face the weather. Kurt could feel the difference in the air already: fresh and cold, the scent of the new order – or of the old one being smashed like a matchstick ship.

  He reported back. When word spread about the door, the lines of armed men and women did an about-turn, and those who’d been last in line found themselves first. Best of all, Kurt and Felix were automatically bumped up to the front, or near enough. Still they waited, quiet with nerves, for Adams to give the go-ahead – his final command, if Felix knew anything about old men.

  And now he appeared, aged and filthy, a homelessness to him that hadn’t been there the day before. His voice was giving way, and he looked like he was going to keel over any minute right where he stood.

  He made his way down the middle of the corridor, sweating the dirt into streaks, through the guard of honor the army made for him. Or maybe it was just that they stood back because they didn’t want to be contaminated by whatever he had. People hushed and stood to attention as he passed. When he got to the doorway, it was mostly clear of debris. He stopped and faced them.

  ‘I thought you-all’d like this new exit. Better than crawling out the toilet. Been a while since we used the door, hasn’t it?’

  Titters. Nerves, thought Kurt. But also people wanted to please him.

  Adams didn’t need to go over the plan again. He’d been through it a thousand times himself, and at least a dozen more times with the whole of the Resistance. So he just stood front and center, lifted a fist into the air and yelled, ‘Fuck . . . !’ His voice was hoarse and wet – hardly a voice to instill courage – and Kurt thought: What he needs is me. I could help him.

  Instead Adams gathered himself, rubbed hard at his throat with his red right hand and said, ‘Forgive me. I’ve had a hard night.’

  He cleared his throat and tried again.

  ‘Fuck Renard!’

  This time the message got through the way he had meant it, and the soldiers responded with their own shout of consent. Then he stepped to one side and the army took his lead, filing past him. Felix wondered how long they’d been in the Capitol Building. Years, some of them. Goddam! He found his own throat clogged with unexpected tears. There weren’t a whole lot of times in a man’s life that he came to a clear choice and understood it for what it was.

  ‘Two roads in the wood,’ he said to himself, and swallowed against the lump.

  He felt Kurt’s hard eyes looking him over for signs of weakness, signs of failure. He pretended to be busy, checking his bag for the hard little apples he’d taken from the kitchen. Still there. When he raised his head again on his wobbly neck, Kurt was looking elsewhere.

  One man and one woman, each with a torch, were leading the exit march. Some soldiers cursed as they clambered over the rubble like an obstacle race; they were making for the hole that had been cut in the razor wire. They went on without looking at the headless statues and the sawn-off trees, the gaping fountains with their long-dead fish. It made Felix heartsick for some other time when he’d sprinted down the night streets of Norman, Oklahoma with his brothers, ringing doorbells and running away, laughing their buzz-cut heads off, high with drink and daring.

  One by one now the soldiers emerged into the streets of Des Moines, the cloudless Northern sky above sprinkled with innocent stars. When they judged enough time had passed for orientation, the leaders motioned them onward, and they spread out like spores to find the cars parked in the ruins of the city.

  Kurt was through the razor wire; Felix had to hobble after him. It was first come, first served with the cars and the trucks, and it made Adams’s change to the exit strategy all the more telling. The last first, all right. Here were the stragglers, the bone-thin men, the pre-teen girls, the sick and lowly and disenfranchised – the ones who had the most to lose were the ones who had the pick of the vehicles. There was something dishonest but honorable in that. Typical Adams.

  Felix tried to follow close, but Kurt loped on along the streets, past the four-by-fours and the double cabs and the luxury sedans that had once had seat-warmers and fancy speakers. Those didn’t interest him one bit; he’d seen something else that called him on. Felix stopped and shouted after him, but it was impossible to hear anything. He took off again, puffing hard, the rifle slapping against his bony back hard enough almost to wind him.

  Kurt had stopped. The car he was after was parked trunk-first in a deserted clothing store. It was the white Toyota, brought in by a recce squad, maybe: too good to pass up. He went around the front. The pronghorn had been removed and the bonnet wiped clean, but he recognized the bent bumper, the squint headlight.

  ‘That your car?’ Felix asked between breaths. ‘Don’t recognize it without the butchery.’

  ‘Hey. Look what they did. You think that was Buddy?’ Kurt was running his hand along the bonnet to where the pronghorn’s cleaned horns had been secured to the grille. The figurehead had been cut roughly from the animal’s skull and secured with wire.

  ‘Nice,’ said Felix. He didn’t approve of the posturing, but Kurt did, and he was in no position to disagree. He felt some balance in the world tip slowly against him.

  Kurt hoisted himself into the driver’s seat and felt for the keys. Without asking, Felix stashed his rifle under the foam bench at the back. He kept the handgun tucked into his trousers.

  ‘Now what?’ said Kurt.

  ‘You know what the man said. Gotta have every ca
r full.’

  They waited. People streamed by them, and then one person didn’t. A tousled red head shoved itself in the back window.

  ‘This seat taken?’

  Felix jutted his chin at the back seat, but it was Kurt who wanted to speak yet couldn’t. Bethie. That was who she looked like. He felt at once the flustered weight of his fifteen years and the ancient sadness that descended whenever he thought of his lost girl in her grave.

  She slid into the passenger seat and exhaled. ‘Whew. I’m Danni.’ She reached for Felix’s hand and then Kurt’s. ‘Nice blouse. And nice swan necklace. They really go.’

  Afterward he folded the touch into his fist. They must have met before in passing – maybe at one of the explosives lectures. Kurt watched her in the rear-view mirror. She had Beth’s ears, sculptured and exact, delicate as seashells.

  They didn’t have long. Two men arrived, real GI Joes, their shirts too tight and their hair cut close, their aggression making brothers out of them. They were pissed off that Adams had turned the line back to front. Felix was sure he’d seen them near the women’s bathroom, preparing to slide down into the sewers and come up first. They sat either side of Danni.

  ‘Mario, and that’s Sy. Why’re you sitting with your dick out? Go already.’ They were wriggling to get comfortable on the guns. Kurt turned the key in the ignition and rolled the car into the street. He followed the line of vehicles.

  ‘I hope you can drive, kid, ’cause me, I am itching,’ said Mario.

  ‘You get a cream for that,’ said Danni. She said it softly, but she meant it, and Felix snorted his appreciation.

  ‘Hardy-har-har,’ said the tough man. ‘If you weren’t sitting down, you’d be a stand-up comedian. Jesus, what car is this anyway? A fucking Toyota? We’ll all probably die today, you know that, right? And here we are driving a motherfucking thirteen-hundred Toyota. And what the hell’s that strapped to the grille?’

  ‘The last thing that fucked with me,’ muttered Kurt.

  ‘Woo! Well, isn’t that just going to make Renard shit himself? Here we come, big man, ready to tear you a new one: Team Pronghorn!’