"How'd you do that?"
"I fell."
She studied him for a time, then spat again. "You know anything about hunting foxes?"
Masako chuckled politely.
"Not a thing," Cerulean said, "but we're willing to learn."
"Willing's good," said the woman, brushing a sliver of silvery hair out of her face. "God willing and all. I ain't seen folks since the big flood rolled out. Sit down." She gestured to the grass around the fire.
Masako climbed out cautiously and started over, Cerulean following.
"Cynthia," the woman said, pointing the shotgun down. "That's me."
They cooked and ate fried spam and beans together from the RV's stores, with wild onions the woman rustled up out of a burlap sack.
"You need these for vitamins," she said, holding one up like it was a diamond to be studied in a fine light. "They'll put the stink on you, but you'll shit perfect for three days."
Masako gasped and laughed. They made other small talk, sharing theories about where everyone had gone, though Cynthia was certain it had to be the rapture.
"There's not a more sinful soul than me," she said, and winked at Masako. "I ain't never said my rosaries right."
Cerulean laughed, but it was a show. He didn't really care, though Masako bought it. Maybe Cynthia didn't, but what did that matter? Maybe he could just leave, with Masako in Cynthia's care, heading to Amo…
Masako explained about Amo's plan, heading to LA, and Cynthia thought on it, spat once, then nodded.
"All right."
They drove on, taking it in turns at the wheel and sharing stories.
"I just roamed," Cerulean told them when it was his turn. "Nothing impressive. Up and down the coast."
They pressed a little, but he didn't tell them about Matthew, or about Amo. That was for him alone.
That night Cynthia retreated into the woods to sleep, carrying her shotgun and a sleeping roll. "Don't come looking for me, and I'll not come looking for you," she said.
After she was gone Masako laughed and rested both her hands on Cerulean's shoulders in his chair, like they were a couple.
* * *
Three days later they passed another survivor on the road near Cleveland.
He was in his early thirties, standing in the parking lot of an Arby's, dressed in denim pants with tall cowboy boots and no shirt. A leather gun-belt was slung around his waist with a pistol holster on his left hip and a long shotgun holster fastened to his right hip like a sword scabbard. He also wore a black shoulder harness around his tanned bare chest with a dark pistol flush to his side.
He was standing next to a red Mustang muscle car with a yellow sponge in his hand and a red foamy bucket by his feet. He stared at them and they stared at him as they rolled to a stop.
"I'll be damned," Cynthia said, peering out the open window in the passenger seat. "Boy, are you washing that car?"
The man glared back at her. He had dark features, Hispanic, with a tousle of black hair over heavy brows. He looked angry, Cerulean thought, to be stumbled upon in such a way.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Mustang '69. It's a good car."
Cynthia cackled like a crazy old witch.
Cerulean was already opening the back doors and lowering the wheelchair out. Seconds later he was rolling over to the man, who took a step back and put his hand to the gun at his waist.
"Far enough," he said.
Cerulean stopped a few yards away near the back of the car and raised his empty hands, palm out. "I'm sorry about her," he said quietly. "Cynthia. We just met her."
"Can't hear you, boy!" Cynthia called from the RV. "Speak up, this is first contact."
He spoke up. "I'm Cerulean, that's Cynthia, and here's Masako. It's good to see another survivor." He smiled to show he meant it even though he didn't. "We're on Amo's trail headed west, have you seen it?"
The man's brows pressed close together like lumps of suspicious meat in a fox stew. "Julio. And yes," he inclined his head at the highway, "I'm on the trail."
Cerulean nodded, studying the man. He wore three guns and drove in an overpowered hot rod car. Metal grilles lay on the asphalt nearby, partially clean, partially stained black and red, cut to match the shapes of the windows. All of that told a story. Plus there were two infected on the gravel behind the car with their heads blown off, leaking blood from the severed necks, which pretty much shouted it out.
Julio noticed him looking. "Shotgun," he said. "Clean, takes off the whole head. Only way to kill them I figure."
"I've got news, then," Cerulean said. "You won't believe it, but it's true." He pointed at the pallid gray bodies. "You don't need to kill them."
Julio's brows nuzzled closer together. "What?"
"It's true. They come close, sure, but they don't kill. So you don't need your guns."
Julio's brows pressed so close they combined into one fuzzy line. At the same time his right hand crept over to the stock of the pistol on his hip. "You want me to put my guns down, now?"
Cerulean licked his lips. The situation was slipping. "I'm not saying that. Look at me, in a wheelchair. You think I could outrun a horde? You see me carrying a gun? That's all. Keep them on, whatever you like, I'm just saying you don't need them."
Julio looked over the wheelchair frame. His hand was still on the pistol. "So you're in a chair. I could sit in a chair too, doesn't mean anything."
"Is he a moron?" Cynthia shouted through the window, laughing again. Cerulean winced. "Is that right, boy, you too thick to see it, or you don't want to?"
"Sorry," Cerulean mouthed, "she's-"
"You shut that old bitch up," Julio interrupted, his voice level and firm. "You may be the first people I've seen in months, but that doesn't make me sport. You hear that grandma?"
"Pose for us!" she called back. "Sud yourself good, boy, and give us a muscle show."
Julio's eyebrows throbbed, a calculation turning inside his head, then he drew his gun and pointed it at the RV.
"Slight me one more time, you crazy old bitch, and you'll find out. Once more."
Cerulean felt abruptly ill. This was ruining everything.
"Find out what?" Cynthia asked and cackled madly. Julio clicked back the hammer on his gun, and Cerulean wondered how hard it would be for this man to kill all three of them, shotguns to the head like they were infected, then just drive on in his Mustang like nothing had happened.
He didn't want that. Not for Masako, just an innocent.
"Cynthia, shut up," he said.
"Why should I? Jumped-up shit like him, he's not for us anyway."
"Who are you to say? He's a survivor."
She laughed some more. "You think he's like us? Think again, boy. This one loves what he's found out here, don't you see? Loves it a little too much, so he's ready to draw down on a little provocation. He don't know I've got my hunting rifle, armor-piercing round, pointed at him through this here tissue-thin door. Maybe he thinks I don't know how to shoot from the hip. Either way, he's an idiot and we'd best be driving on."
Sweat beaded on the tip of Cerulean's nose. To rub it away now seemed too provocative a movement. How did he end up responsible for this? The air was suddenly hot and still, chafing against his skin like a sweaty, salty sponge.
"If we all just-" he tried, but Julio cut him off.
"I'll count to three," he said, as cool and calm as Clint Eastwood. Perhaps he was enjoying it. "On three, you drop your rifle out the door and make your apologies to me."
"And if I don't?"
Julio pointed with his free hand toward the bonnet of his car. "You join the choir, like everyone else."
Cerulean craned to the side to see what he was pointing at, and saw a low metal rack mounted on the car's front fender, with a few tufts of what looked like white hair sticking up in two places.
Heads.
He gulped. He looked at the headless infected on the ground. Cynthia had had a clear view of the trophy rack the whole time.
&
nbsp; "Now you get it," Cynthia said.
"One," Julio said.
"Call out three already," Cynthia hollered back.
"Two."
Cerulean looked between them, locked in a stupid battle of wills. This was not what he'd planned. This wasn't any better than Matthew under the gun tower, dying for nothing, and he couldn't let it happen again. Without thinking he pushed hard on the chair's wheels, driving it forward toward Julio, then set his hands on the armrests and dived.
It wasn't a pretty dive, nothing like a true arm-stand with his legs up in the air so gracefully, but it had power and sent him flying through the air at Julio.
Julio spun too late and Cerulean hit him bodily, chest-to-chest, so together they fell. Julio hit the asphalt hard on his bare back and Cerulean landed across him, thumping the air out of his lungs. Julio tried to throw him off but he wasn't nearly as strong in the upper body as Cerulean, who'd been crawling and climbing using only his arms for months.
He snatched Julio's wrists and smacked the right one against the ground until the gun came loose, then rolled off and easily guided both of Julio's arms tightly behind his back.
Julio cursed and jerked but Cerulean held him locked, using his arms like they were reins.
"All right, dammit!" Julio shouted when it was clear he wouldn't escape. "Let me go."
Cynthia trotted over and chuckled down on them. "Neat work, son. Trussed up like a chicken."
Cerulean turned to look up at her, red-faced himself. She was holding her rifle over her shoulder at a coquettish angle with obvious pleasure on her face, and something about that just punched all his buttons at once.
"You never do that again," he snapped up from the ground. "Do you understand me, Cynthia? Play the crazy old woman all you want, but you do not pull a gun on another survivor again. I don't care how many heads they've got on the front of their car, or round their necks like a necklace, you just … Goddamn … don't."
Cynthia frowned down at him, her weathered features wrinkling like skin on custard. "You sure look a prize specimen, son, a cripple negro barking orders to his betters. Stand up if you want to put your foot down, boy, else hush up and let the adults deal."
Cerulean stared at her for a second, processing all that. She stared back. Then he laughed. She really didn't get it.
"You're not thinking," he said. "You think you're in charge here? You think I'll give a shit if we leave you behind? I won't. I'll drive on, with Masako and Julio here if he wants to come, and we'll go to LA and find Amo, because people are all we've got. Get that in your head. So he killed some infected, I don't care! I will leave you behind, and then you'll be alone. Hunt foxes all day long; if that's what you want, go do it. If not, and I'm pretty sure it's not, Cynthia, then you apologize right now to Julio."
Cynthia snorted. "Exile me, is it? You don't scare me. You ain't got the nuts to do anything like it."
He laughed again. Did these people not know about Matthew? They didn't know who he was at all.
He let go of Julio's arms and snatched up his pistol off the road. Julio let out a gasp and rolled away, coming up with the gun from his chest holster steady in both his hands, leveled on Cynthia. In turn Cynthia had her rifle leveled at his chest.
"Puto bitch," he said.
"Wetback spic," she said.
"Goddamn," Cerulean roared from the floor, holding Julio's pistol trained on Cynthia too. "Spit one more foul piece of racist shit, you stupid old cow, and I'll shoot you myself. Are we clear? Now put your goddamn rifle down and tell this man you're sorry."
Cynthia's eyelid twitched. Julio stood red-faced but impassive.
"Say it!" Cerulean shouted. "And you can apologize to me too, while you're at it. Hunting foxes, Goddamn!"
Cynthia licked her lips, her tongue darting out. Calculations worked behind her eyes; probably imagining a solitary life, exiled from the future. The balance came down and something in her snapped.
She turned to Julio. "I apologize for insulting you," she said, enunciating each word carefully, and when she was done she gave Cerulean a look a child might give, as if to say, 'Enough?'.
"And me," he said.
She rolled it out again. "I apologize for insulting you. I didn't mean nothing by it."
"Good," huffed Cerulean. "Julio, I'm sorry I jumped you. Cynthia, I'm sorry I called you a stupid cow. I hope you don't mind, but I'm borrowing this gun. I'm driving a hundred yards up the road, and you two are going to make up. One of you shoots the other, Masako and I are gone. Either of you wants to join us, you need only come ask nicely. Else we're gone in," he stopped to look at his wrist, but he hadn't worn a watch there in a year. "Real soon."
Julio chanced a glance down at him, sneering. He wouldn't forget being jumped any time soon, that was clear. Cynthia didn't budge.
"This is it," Cerulean said to them both, "this is your future," then he turned his back and crawled to the wheelchair. It was undignified perhaps, but what was dignity now? A sham. Democracy too. He reached the chair, hauled himself up, and was unsurprised to see the two of them still pointing their weapons at each other.
"It's my damn van," Cerulean said, "and I say who rides in it."
* * *
He parked up a hundred yards away with a good eyeline on Julio and Cynthia, still standing like the last two pistoleers in a Mexican standoff. Masako rested her hand on his.
"That was amazing," she said.
He shrugged. "Screw them."
Masako nodded. "She's an angry lady. She may have a point though. He doesn't look quite right in the head."
Cerulean grunted, not looking. "She's dumb, racist and too proud. He's crazy from being alone."
A moment later she tapped him playfully on the cheek. He had to fight to keep the irritation off his face. He was glad he did, because she was grinning flirtatiously.
"You seemed pretty confident I'd come with you. You and me in the RV?"
There wasn't much to say to that. The truth, maybe, that he didn't too much care if she came? His obligation would be finished if she didn't. Or should he let her go on believing her truth; that they were two lone survivors slowly falling in love, only for him to jilt her in LA?
He couldn't decide which one was less cruel, so he said nothing. Maybe there was a chance her version was true. Part of him wanted it to be. Who really knew, anyhow? He was crazy with being alone for so long so well.
Her hand stayed on his for a long time, and every second it itched. He focused on the confrontation in the lot behind them, until after maybe five minutes Cynthia lowered the barrel of her rifle a few degrees. For a horrible second it seemed like Julio was about to shoot, then he lowered his gun too.
They started talking. It took a while for them to put the weapons away completely. Then Cynthia pointed, and Julio took the heads off the front of his car. Next, bizarrely, Cynthia picked up the sponge and started washing the car.
"What on Earth?" Masako whispered.
Cerulean snorted. "Looks like they cut a deal."
Julio walked around the car's perimeter, kicking the window grills to the side. So perhaps he believed them? Soon enough he got in his shiny clean Mustang and drove over slowly, with Cynthia walking alongside.
"We've reached an understanding," she said, as he parked alongside the RV.
"Rush me and steal the van?" Cerulean asked. Nobody laughed.
"Avoid each other. Take a look at your friend, this Amo, see what he's worth, then decide."
Cerulean nodded, and looked down through the open window to Julio. Sitting up in the RV he was taller than him.
"Good plan. We're glad to have you."
"Yeah," Julio said, though something about his expression was off. The brows, perhaps, calculating furiously under the surface. His dark eyes maybe, gazing a second too hard. "I'll scout ahead."
He revved the Mustang's engine and tore off. Masako opened the slide door and Cynthia climbed in.
"I reckon you've let the devil in by the front door wit
h him," she said. "He's madder than me. You'll see."
"Sit down," Cerulean said, a little more harshly than he meant to, and put the RV into gear.
12. CAIRN 3
Three days later in Iowa, in the middle of a corn field a hundred miles west of Des Moines, they found Amo's third cairn. It was a stripe of black and white across a nondescript road in the midst of fields of ripe corn, with two cars parked either side like pillars flanking a finish line.
By the wayside was a young man boiling corn in a silver tub. He saw them and came running over.
"Put your damn gun down," Cerulean said to Julio over the walkie-talkies they'd picked up from a Radio Shack. "Right now."
He did. The young man, tall and gangly with feathery black hair, reached the Mustang's side and leaned in.
"Lord above, am I glad to see some people. Oh man, I thought I was alone!"
"That's great kid," Julio said. "Don't scratch the paintwork."
The kid frowned and turned to Cerulean, who was already out and rolling over, one hand extended. The young man looked overjoyed but there was a slightly queasy expression on Julio's face, like the odds had just shifted out of his favor.
"You're in a wheelchair," the young man said, shaking his hand. "Sorry, I mean, I'm Jake. I've got corn. Listen, do you know that the ocean won't hurt you? I just read the most excellent comic book." He pulled at his inner jacket pocket; Julio's hand went to his pistol, but Jake came out with an actual comic book.
Cerulean stared at it. On the front cover, heaped up and rising from Times Square in a great zombie pile-on, was the final piece of art Amo had showed him before the apocalypse.
ZOMBIES OF AMERICA
It was printed and professional looking, bound properly like he'd had it done at a publisher's.
Cerulean laughed.
"I know, it's amazing right?" Jake gushed on. "This guy Amo, he's like the Pied Piper leaving a trail for us to follow. The things he's done, damn, it's amazing."
He stopped for a second, taking in Cynthia and Masako. "Wait, are you guys following him? Amo, I mean?"
Cerulean smiled, and said yes, then introduced himself and explained, with Julio's dark brows scowling throughout.
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