by Matt Ritter
Will followed Zach up the stairs onto a weathered deck around a trailer set down on wooden cribbage six feet off the ground. They hesitated and looked back at the old man, who was at the bottom of the steps. From where they stood Will could see back into the Valley along the path from where they’d come. A breeze had begun to blow, and Will could smell sulfur in the air.
“Go on. Whatcha waiting for?”
Will turned the nob and pushed the hollow door open. Inside it was warm and bright and smelled of baked beans. The trailer was a one-room affair. A mattress on a frayed blue carpet was at the far end. A potbellied stove sat on loosely placed bricks. Closer to them was a small table near a window that looked over the darkening Valley. An iron skillet on the cooktop was full of something dark brown.
Will and Zach waited while the old man stomped his shoes on the doormat, came inside, and closed the door behind him. No sooner had he closed the door than the first heavy drops of rain came down on the roof and deck.
“Hear that? By now you’d be runnin’ around, faces burnin’, tryin’ to find shelter. From where I sat eatin’, I could see you comin’ for a mile. You ought to be more careful. There ain’t as many friendlies left in this part of the Valley anymore. Only gets worse downvalley. Grab those crates and have a seat there.” He pointed to the table while laying the rifle against the wall.
“I got some of my dinner left in that skillet. Less you have a problem with it, I’ll dole it out halfways.”
“No problem at all. Thank you,” Zach said.
The old man looked at Will, waiting for him to respond.
“Sure,” Will said, lifting a hand to his aching cheek.
“You need to pull that cut together, son, or it ain’t ever going to heal right. I got some strips I’ll give you after you eat.”
Will nodded.
“Alright, I’m gonna set down my bow and get you food. I’m goin’ to ask you to remove that pistol you’ve been hidin’ in your belt and set it down over by the rifle. You’ll have your guns back before you leave.”
“Sounds fair,” Zach said, looking at Will.
Will reluctantly took the pistol from his belt and set it on the floor by the rifle.
The old man went to a cupboard, then to the skillet, and came back with two bowls of food. Will hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the bowl was set in front of him.
“Name’s Elbridge.”
“Thanks, Elbridge. I’m Zach, that’s Will.”
They ate in silence while the old man took off his cap, exposing a thick head of poorly cut silver hair. His nose was big and round and lighter in color than the rest of his tanned face. The white and black hairs of his mustache curved over his upper lip, and he parted them with his thumb and forefinger while watching them eat. The backs of his hands were like a parched lakebed, cracked and dried, with little hexagonal islands of peeling skin. All three men looked out the window and listened to the rain as it grew louder.
“Don’t talk much, do you, Will?” Elbridge asked.
Will looked up from his bowl. “Guess not.”
“Where you two headed?”
Zach looked at Will, then back to the old man. “Downvalley.”
“Seems like that’s the wrong way to be headed, into more rain and more trouble.”
“What do you mean, more trouble?” Zach asked.
“I heard they’re collecting people downvalley, closer to UP headquarters. Clearing out whole areas.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Will asked.
“A man came by here a few days back, walking alone, headed downvalley, too. Begging me for food. Said he’d been transferred to one of them upvalley work camps. But he escaped. Told me nearly all the people in his town had been collected.”
“Did he say where he was from?” Will asked.
“Chualar.” The old man shook his head. “Where you from?” he asked Zach.
“Outside King City.”
“Wheat country.”
“You ever been that far upvalley?” Zach asked.
The old man stared indignantly at Zach. “Son, I’ve been around a long time. I’ve been all over this Valley and outside it, too.”
A look of disbelief stretched across Zach’s face, and he looked to Will for confirmation that the old man wasn’t to be trusted. Will studied the food in his bowl.
“You’re too young to know this, but this Valley hasn’t always been the way it is now, and it sure as hell ain’t the only place in the world.” He shook his head slowly and looked at Will. “You have no idea what’s been lost. Things you only read about in what few books are left, I’ve seen in person.”
“Like what?” Zach asked.
The old man just shook his head and seemed to get lost in thought. “If somethin’s gone and nobody knows it was ever here, does it matter?” the old man asked himself quietly.
“I think it does,” Will said while crushing an ant as it passed across the windowsill. The old man eyed him.
“Tell you what. Them little Argentinian ants know the rain better than any of us. I can tell how their lines change, how they get agitated when it’s about to start. They seem to know in advance. Never seen ‘em be wrong about it neither.”
Will picked up a crushed ant and looked at it while the old man went on.
“Ain’t many insects left in this part of the Valley or any animals for that matter. But them ants don’t seem to have any problem with it. Saw a line of them comin’ in out of the full rain just yesterday, wet as could be.”
“I don’t understand why the UP would be collecting more people. What are they looking for? Who will work the fields?” Zach asked.
“Like I said, I don’t know. They need more people to guard that wall, I guess.”
“The same thing happened to me,” Will said, feeling a rare urge to speak.
Both Zach and Eldridge stared at him. “What did?”
“Last week my wife and I got pulled out of the fields and transferred to an upvalley work camp, separated from our daughter.”
Both men were silent, waiting for him to go on. Will sat for a moment, collecting his thoughts. Conversation never came easily to him, and he felt like he was forcing the words out.
Finally, he said, “I heard similar rumors in the camp, that children were being left at schools all up and down the Valley. All their parents collected. It’s been over a week since I’ve seen Helen.” Will choked on the words of the last sentence. “I’m headed downvalley to get her.” He could feel a dark pressure building in his chest.
“Where’s your wife?” the old man asked, nervously pulling on his beard.
“We escaped from the camp together, but a guard injured her. We made it a day and a half until she couldn’t go any further,” Will said, staring into his empty bowl. “That was yesterday.”
Nobody spoke. Zach looked away, and the old man stared up at the ceiling.
“I’m so sorry, son. Are they comin’ after you?”
Will nodded. “Likely.”
Through glistening eyes, he looked out the window to the wet darkness beyond and smelled the bitter formic acid from the crushed ant on his fingers. Thinking about their collection and transfer to the labor camp filled him with rage. Every promise he’d made to himself after returning from the war would now have to be broken. On that sandy bank above the Salinas, Willie Taft told his wife over and over again that he’d stop at nothing to get back to their daughter. He whispered it to her, even after she’d died.
He turned to the old man, then to Zach, both catching his eyes, then looking away. “When the rain lets up, we need to get going.”
The old man knocked on the table. “You’re a full two days walk from Gonzalez. It’ll likely rain through the night.” He rose. “You two can lie down here, get some rest until the rain stops. In the meantime, let’s get that cut pulled together and get you two outfitted for the rest of your walk. If you’re tryin’ to get to Gonzales, you’ll need every bit of help you can get.”
<
br /> CHAPTER FIVE
“This is where he buried her.”
Three men stood on the riverbank above a willow thicket. Down the gravely slope, a partially exhumed woman laid pale and face-up in the sand.
“She died in the rain?”
“Hard to tell. Maybe from that wound on her side.”
“How long ago did they escape?”
“Two days. Killed a guard on the way out, too.”
Millard Fillmore brushed his long black coat over the holster on his hip and squatted on his heels at the top of the bank. The others stood nearby, watching him carefully. He ran a finger across a black clod of soil, then picked it up and smelled it. He rose and looked into the downvalley distance. He bit the toothpick, which sat permanently in his mouth, and wiggled it between his teeth.
“Willie Taft?” Millard asked.
“Yup.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
“I’ll find him.” After a long pause, Millard said, “Dead or alive.”
“It don’t matter all that much which. There hasn’t been a single successful escape since I’ve been running that camp, and hell if I’m goin’ to start allowin’ it now.”
“What about the woman?” Millard asked.
“We’ll recover the body.”
Millard turned back to the two men from where he’d been staring into the distance. “You ought to tie her to a fence pole next to the camp barracks.”
The two men glanced at each other.
Millard continued, “As a warning to the other workers.”
“I guess that would get the message across. A might bit extreme. Anyway, the way news travels around that camp, everyone’ll know by afternoon that she died during the escape. They’ll also know that I sent you to recover Taft, which ought to help dissuade folks from future attempts.”
“Tracks lead downvalley.” Millard pointed to the soil, but there were no obvious tracks. “Shouldn’t be hard to stay on his trail.”
“He’s probably dead already. If the downvalley weather hasn’t already killed him, I’m sure you’ll find him.”
“Likely.”
“Well, get to it then. Bring him back, like the others. Quickly as possible.”
“Yes, sir,” Millard said in a sarcastic tone and walked away without another word.
The two men kept their eyes on him as he went.
“That’s a tough one right there,” one of the men said when Millard was out of earshot.
“I ain’t met a man with a colder heart, but damn good at what he does. Decorated war veteran. Captain in the UP. You’ve probably heard the stories.”
“Cold-blooded killer is what I heard.”
“He’s that, too.”
“Wouldn’t want him on my trail. The guy who escaped last month, I heard he only brought his head back.”
“That’s true. Willie Taft’s the same, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Served in the UP at the border. Decorated hero himself. Rumors are he was ruthless. Guess we’re lucky he only killed one guard on their way out.”
“Millard’s the right man for the job then.”
“He’ll bring Taft back, or he won’t come back at all.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Excuse me, Minister, the Valley Manager has sent for you.”
Ben Harrison turned around from his lab bench to see a UP guard at the door.
“When?”
“He’d like to see you now, sir.”
“Alright, you can tell him I’ll be up in fifteen minutes.”
“Sir?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“He’s expecting you now.”
“Alright.” Ben looked at the microscope and slides laid out on his bench. “Let me get changed.”
“I’ll wait in the hall.”
Ben went back to his microscope, carefully took the slide off the stage, and racked it on a shelf above the bench. He grabbed a second slide off the rack, mounted it on the scope, bent over the lenses, and scanned the slide.
“Still living,” he said quietly to himself while taking the second slide out of the microscope.
He removed his white coat, carefully hung it on a peg on the wall, and went out into the hallway where the guard awaited him.
“Hello, Valley Manager,” Ben said after an elevator ride and walk down a long sterile hallway.
“Hello, Science Minister,” said the Manager, looking up from his desk. “You can close the door behind you and leave us alone,” he said to the guard.
Through a wide window behind the Manager’s desk, Ben could see Salinas City. High rise apartment buildings stretched out and faded into the dingy mist. It had begun to rain again.
As the guard left, Ben sat in the green metal chair facing the Manager’s desk. “What can I do for you?”
“Any progress? Anything to report?” the Valley Manager asked.
His eyes were cold and remote, sunken into his pale, almost larval skin. He looked as if he didn’t care about Ben’s answer but was instead calculating his next move. From across his wide desk, a rotten smell escaped from the Manager’s thin lips. Although they’d known each other for years, the Manager never ceased to make Ben uneasy.
“The tests aren’t working. I need more rats, and I’d like to move on to pigs soon. Our experiments with the ants yielded no results.”
“Remind me what you were doing with the ants.”
“Several species of ants in the Valley have some natural resistance to the bacterial toxins in the rain.”
“Right.”
“They’re the only animals that seem to be unaffected. We’ve made so many different solutions from the ants, but none affected the bacteria in collected rainwater.”
The Manager shook his head in disappointment. “Keep working.”
Ben nodded. “I had to wear a gas mask on my way here this morning. Is it true that people are dying without getting wet?”
“Nothing has been confirmed.”
“I don’t see how it’s possible,” Ben spoke to himself. “I need more rain. New samples of the bacteria. We can volatilize the rain in a chamber.” He looked up at the Manager. “This is not good.”
“I know. We’ll get to that. I have something to report to you,” the Manager said.
“What is it?” Ben asked.
“We may have found some survivors.”
“Of what? The rain? How?” Ben stuttered.
“Never mind that.” The Manager waved his hand in front of Ben. It was an awkward and contrived gesture as if the Manager was mimicking royal pomp. “We’ve found three boys, various ages. As far as we know they can be out in it for as long as they want.” The Manager paused and turned from Ben to look out over the city. “True rainwalkers.”
“So, the rumors were true,” Ben said, trying to conceal the excitement in his voice. “Where are they now?”
“We discovered them at the school in Greenfield. We’re having them transferred here.”
“How did you find them?” Ben asked.
The Manager sat looking at him and didn’t answer.
“Goddammit.” Ben rose. “How did you find them?”
“It had to be done. This rain is killing us. There will be nothing left of our great valley, or our civilization if we don’t do something.”
Ben shuddered. “What are you thinking? We talked about this, we all talked about it. We agreed it wouldn’t happen.”
The Manager’s face became stony, and he stared with indifference at Ben. “We agreed to nothing. You watch your tone with me. We may go way back, but I could have you replaced instantly.”
“We can fix this in other ways,” Ben yelled.
“Fix this? You’ve fixed nothing. It’s you and your kind tinkering with the Valley’s weather that got us into this mess in the first place. Couldn’t leave well enough alone.”
“My kind? The rains changed long before either of us were born. What do you mean, my kind?
”
“Scientists. Trying to improve the Valley. Always meddling,” the Manager said.
“This Valley wouldn’t exist without the rain. Do you want to return to the hundred-year droughts?”
“Unharvested crops, dead people in the fields, soldiers who can’t defend the borders, and it’s getting worse. Sit down.” The Manager pointed to the chair and waited for Ben to sit. “We’re dying, Ben. We’re being attacked at every border. The wall is constantly under siege. Castroville is underwater. The upvalley oil camps are producing less and less. I don’t know what else to do. We’re weakened by this damn rain.”
Ben shook his head and didn’t respond.
“You get your people together and figure out what makes these children special and how we can replicate that in other people.”
“No more screening children. No more,” Ben said, pointing his finger at the Manager.
“Don’t presume to tell me how to run this Valley,” said the Manager, pointing back at Ben. “We need solutions, and you’re failing. We’re done here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
While Will and Zach slept on the floor of the old man’s trailer, clouds shuddered in the darkness on the Santa Lucias at the western edge of the Valley. It was from that purple and brooding wall that rain came each night. Up on the steep ridgeline, a forest of firs basked in moonlight above a gossamer of gloom, and silence prevailed, no bird song, no hum of insects, nor hooves sneaking across soft leaves. All gone.
Marine fog rolled down the east-facing slopes and mixed in the air with microscopic debris and man-made bacteria. Each night, the Valley basin filled with clouds that rung out like an old sponge. Artificial bacteria designed by forgotten scientists in their experiments gone wrong nucleated ice around every particle of Valley dust that fell from the sky in each rain. During their descent, the bacteria filled each raindrop with a foul-smelling airborne chemical deadly to humans but neutralized in the soil within seconds.
Before sun up, water flowed off the thin flinty soils and scented shrubs of the hillsides to the riches of black mud and shapeless clumps of plowed earth on the Valley floor. The drinking water that squeezed through the deep soils into the Salinas River was once again pure. The rain
