by Lisa Stowe
“Where are you going?” the man with the blunt voice asked.
“To the top of the Wall. I’m looking for a friend. And I want to see how bad the repeater tower is damaged. If it can be fixed we might be able to call out. You haven’t seen Henry have you?”
“The old guy who walks like a quail?” the mother asked. “He took me mushrooming one spring. Is he the one you’re looking for?”
Curtis nodded hopefully, but her headshake killed that brief blossom.
“No, sorry. I haven’t seen him for about a week.”
“Okay then,” he said. “Well, be careful. The road’s a mess.”
“No shit,” said the blunt voiced man.
They worked their way around each other, heading in their opposite directions. The blunt-voiced man nodded tersely to Curtis, his eyes on Curtis’s backpack with something like hunger in them. Not physical hunger, Curtis thought, but the hunger to possess. As if safety came from things.
And maybe, in this new world, that wasn’t so far off the mark.
He’d only gone a few yards when the ground suddenly heaved up under his boots. Curtis was thrown to the ground, hitting hard. His breath was knocked out of him and what should have been a scream came out a breathless whimper. He rolled, tried to get to his knees, and was thrown down again. Someone screamed and more trees splintered like gunshots.
And then, almost before he had time to register the thought, the aftershock was over. Tentatively, he stood, wheezing for breath. His hands and knees were scraped, his hip ached where he’d hit the ground, and his elbow felt strangely warm. When he craned around to look at it, he saw a hole in his raincoat and shirt, and an abrasion on his elbow that was seeping slowly. He pressed his hand against his elbow and started back to the people from Sky Country Club.
“Everyone okay?” he managed to shout.
They stood frozen, staring in one direction. Curtis came up behind them.
The blunt-voiced man was dead. Impaled and pinned to the ground by a fir branch at least six inches in diameter and several feet long. It had come down with such speed and force that it had gone clean through the man’s neck, almost severing his head.
Curtis staggered to the side and threw up in a fern. Someone was retching behind him, someone else crying. When his stomach settled a little, he wiped his mouth and went back to the others.
“Is anyone else injured? The baby?”
The woman shook her head, her face white as bone and her eyes so dilated they were black. He scanned the small group and saw scrapes and cuts, but nothing else looked major. Just the man, in the wrong place at the wrong second.
“It’s not that far to town,” he said. “You need to get there as fast as you can. You don’t want to go into shock out here.”
“What about Big Al?” a man asked. “We can’t just leave him.”
“Sure you can,” Curtis said. “This lady needs to be taken to the fire department. Get that done then come back for…Big Al? That’s his name? Come back for Big Al’s remains. You can’t do anything for him now, but you can for this mom here.”
“Can’t you help us?” the woman asked, shaking with deep tremors.
Yes, Curtis thought. He could. He could stay with them all the way back to town, then gather others to come back here. Help with body recovery. It would all take time and it would be a legitimate reason to put off his quest.
It would be so easy.
But it wouldn’t help Henry.
He swallowed. “I can’t. I have to find Henry.”
Slowly, as if lost, the small group of people turned toward town. Curtis watched them for a moment and then resolutely turned his back to them. His elbow had stopped seeping and none of his injuries gave him an additional reason to give up.
So he kept going.
He clambered up over a fir, the sharp resin of crushed needles biting into his sinuses. The rain had moved down the sides of the Wall, hiding granite and trees in a soft gray curtain. The pattering of drops hitting pavement and rocks and earth was almost soothing. He pulled the hood of his raincoat up and concentrated on climbing over the next log. And the next.
It was early afternoon by the time Curtis reached where the Hole should have been. Huge boulders had calved off the Wall and hit so hard they’d cratered deeply into the ground. If the quake had hit when he was at work, he’d be dead and his car would be a thin smear of metal under one of those hunks of mountain. The door itself was only partially blocked, but he had no desire to work his way through the cracks and go inside.
The path leading up the Wall was still faintly visible and he was almost sorry because that meant he had no excuse to back out. Plus, parts of the trail had slid away. His knees fluttered in anxiousness. He’d thought the road with downed trees had been hard.
There was nothing for it but to take one step at a time. Henry was out there somewhere.
He deeply wished there was someone else to go. A hero. Someone strong. Someone capable. Someone who knew how to save lives and stitch the world back together.
Someone who wasn’t afraid of everything.
He waited a moment longer, hoping. The rain plopped on the hood of his raincoat. Leaves rustled in the damp wind. Somewhere in the distant forest canopy, a raven or crow cawed and then was silent.
But no one came.
And so he pulled in a deep, shaky breath, and started uphill.
2
Technically the sun was up. Well, some place flat, like maybe Montana, it would be up. But here it was still behind the mountains. The light was visible though, giving the ridgeline a halo that, unfortunately, didn’t promise a day of sunshine. The halo simply illuminated the undersides of charcoal clouds moving in on morning wind. The brief respite from rain appeared to be ending.
Ethan entered the bus, his boots crunching on broken glass. The kids still slept, including Zack, slumped by the fire. Ethan though, hadn’t slept all night and his eyes felt like the sockets held gravel instead of eyeballs. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone without sleep though, and he knew how to function and just how long he could function well. He still had a while to go before his body’s demand for sleep knocked him on his ass.
He moved carefully toward the back of the bus, assessing in daylight. The damage was a lot worse than it had looked in headlamp beams. It amazed him more kids weren’t injured.
Near where one of the backseats should have been, he saw only twisted metal. And in that debris was Amy. The poor girl hadn’t had a chance. She’d been impaled as the bus rolled and had bled out so heavily that the flow was just now starting to congeal. Ethan hoped she hadn’t known what happened. He rested a hand on her forehead, smoothed her cropped black hair.
She’d been an average student. Usually B’s and C’s. Occasionally an A that got her a fifty-dollar bill from her dad. She saved that money, telling Ethan she wanted a Smart car because they were so cute. Who were her friends? He couldn’t remember who she hung out with and that lapse made him clench his fists. Her brief life should have been more than this ending with a teacher who didn’t remember shit.
She’d had a big, obvious crush on Zack. He remembered suddenly watching her at the sidelines of a track meet when the guy had crossed the finish line first. Of course, most of the girls had crushes on Zack. Ethan rested a hand over hers, relieved he had remembered something.
All that blood. He’d have to keep the kids out of the bus. He didn’t want them seeing her, let alone that dark pooling blood. He looked away for something to cover her with, but then his eyes returned to the blood. What was niggling at him? He studied the coagulating mess.
Most of it had puddled under and around her, flooding over her torso and running downhill. But on one side the blood was smeared outward, uphill. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at.
Something had been licking up the blood.
And there were slight smudges, almost like tracks, along the edges of the blood, as if whatever drank had rested there. Except that
the marks didn’t look like prints from paws.
They looked like handprints.
Ethan swallowed against rising bile, swallowed against the jolt of fear.
Just what the hell was out there?
Reflexively, he grabbed for his gun, only to remember it was in his backpack out by Zack. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He stood to get it and then paused. From this height the tracks didn’t look so much like handprints. They looked more like long smears. He blew out a breath of relief. Exhaustion was making him see things. Just to be sure though, he squatted back down and studied the marks closely.
Definitely handprints. Up close he made out the details of palms, and inches away, what could only be fingerprints. Maybe even nails. There were tiny red drops an inch or so out from the fingertips.
Okay, so maybe one of the girls had come in here during the night to sit with her friend one last time. Or to mourn in private.
Except for those long swipes where something very like a tongue had licked around the edges of the blood pool.
Ethan stood again and took a step backward. He didn’t know what was going on but the gun had to stay with him from now on even if the kids saw it. And they needed to get the hell out of here and back down below where there were more people and someplace safe for the kids.
But what about Amy? What could he do for the girl now? It was going to be difficult if not impossible to free her body. And then what? How would he bury her with nothing but a fold up shovel and a crowbar in an area of ancient glacial till? In land that was nothing but rocks and boulders from a shedding, eroding mountain?
After thinking about it for a few moments, he rummaged around until he found a discarded coat and gently laid it over Amy. He’d come back for her after he got the other kids safe and to their parents.
He had to prioritize the living.
Outside the bus, he walked a perimeter, looking for signs of the animal or for anything that might tell him what had happened to Val, the bus driver. When he heard voices, he returned to the fire and camp.
“Find anything from last night?” Zack asked as he stirred the fire back up.
“Maybe some drag marks,” Ethan said, reluctantly. “It’s hard to tell with the forest floor here. All the underbrush is so lush and resilient. But maybe something was dragged through the salal over there.”
“You think Val?” Spike asked.
Ethan turned. He hadn’t heard the kid come up behind him, and a little spurt of annoyance hit him. He couldn’t allow those kinds of lapses. “Maybe,” he answered. “Look, I don’t want to scare you kids-”
Spike held a hand up. “We’re not kids. Some of us are old enough to vote. Some of us even have jobs. We’re going to graduate in a few months and be out on our own. Some of us already are out on our own. So far you’re treating us like we have brains. Don’t stop.”
Ethan cocked his head to one side as he evaluated Spike, with his tattoos and piercings. And a rough home life from the rumors. “You saying you want me to be honest with you?”
Spike nodded, once.
Ethan looked at Zack and decided that some honesty might be okay but definitely not all. “You want to tell him or should I?”
Zack laughed. “Dude, we had some kind of animal here last night.”
Spike snorted. “We’re in the fucking woods.”
“No, not just a wild animal,” Zack said. “Something big.”
“Like what? And where’d it go?” Spike asked.
“Those are the questions. No answers though,” Ethan said. “Let’s hope wherever it went, it was some place far away.”
“And you let me sleep through it?” Spike said.
“You needed your beauty rest more than I did,” Zack answered, his fear from the night before obviously eased slightly.
Ethan left them to their brief moment of normal humor and went to the tarp, where he bent down underneath its flapping edges. The wind was picking up.
“Come on,” he said, shaking the tarp for emphasis. “Let’s get a move on.”
When it looked like most of them were awake, he squatted in the opening. “Listen up. Check out injuries now that we have daylight. I want to hear how everyone is, in detail. Pack your gear, have a granola bar and some water but remember to ration. Come out to the fire when you’re ready and report in.”
“Mr. Reynolds?” Rowan asked, from the other side of the tarp. “I can’t get John to wake up.”
John? Had he been injured? Ethan stood and walked around the tarp to Rowan’s side. John Delaney. Who wanted to be a racecar driver. The kid so anxious to help Payton with her phone.
Rowan moved back out of the way so Ethan could duck under the edge of the tarp. As he bent down, she spoke with her voice lowered for only him to hear.
“I think he’s dead.” Tears started to track down her cheeks. “I can’t find any pulse. I didn’t hear him during the night but when he got out of the bus he said his stomach hurt.” Her voice broke on the last word and she drew in a shaky breath. “I made him my buddy like you said. But I didn’t hear him die.”
Ethan lifted the edge of the tarp and saw John there, eyes open and staring, skin bluish gray and flaccid. Beyond help. He straightened and caught Rowan’s shoulder. She shook uncontrollably, her breathing coming fast and shallow.
“Look at me,” Ethan said, taking on the voice he’d used many times in similar situations, following his parents through violence. Calm and in control, even if that’s not how he felt. “Rowan, look at me. You helped him, you stayed with him, and he didn’t die alone. He knew you were there. Sometimes all we can do is just be there.”
“But I was sleeping. I didn’t know.” She shoved tears away with the palms of her hands. “I fell asleep when I shouldn’t have.”
“Shock does that to you,” Ethan said. “But you were with him and he knew it.”
She didn’t look convinced, but then he didn’t expect her to. Those kinds of words were platitudes, not truths. They simply filled the space around your brain and cushioned it until your heart figured out how to deal with the grief.
Squatting slowly, his leg complaining, Ethan went in under the sloping tarp and knelt next to John’s body. The boy was on his side, knees pulled up and hands tucked between them. Gently, he pulled up the gray tee shirt.
A massive dark bruise stretched hip to hip across the swollen abdomen. Clearly John hit something that had resulted in internal bleeding. From the looks of it Ethan wondered if the boy hadn’t been thrown out of the seat and into the metal bar of the seat in front of him. Damn school buses with no seatbelts. Anger whipped through him again at this wasted life, this death that shouldn’t have happened. This death on his watch.
He’d thought a safe teaching job would allow him peace, allow him to leave death behind. Instead he was losing kids too young to die. Kids who should still be immortal and full of dreams.
Ethan ran a hand over his face as if he could erase the anger and pain, and then reached out to close John’s eyes. He looked up and saw Nathaniel, Lucy, and Jennifer staring at John, immobile.
“Nothing we can do,” he said, trying to keep the coldness from his voice. It was a frost he’d used to survive emotional pain, to keep from going insane years ago, but it had no place with these kids. It belonged to his parents. “Gather up your stuff and go out to the fire.”
He pulled John’s coat up over his face, and stood slowly, walking out from under the tarp. As he did, dizziness swept through him and he grabbed the side of the bus for balance. He must be more exhausted than he realized.
But the kids were grabbing on to things, too, and Payton screamed.
The ground under his feet shifted, rolled, as if he stood on a boat. And then lifted upward, tossing them around like toddlers in a jumpy station. Trees crashed to the ground, boulders rolled like thunder.
Ethan fell to his knees, tried to get up, failed, and crawled toward the others. He managed to catch Payton before she stumbled into the fire.
“Spread out!” he shouted at them, but got only glazed terror in return.
There was no place safe to go. No doorway to stand in, no table to get under. They didn’t know what to do.
“Drop and cover your heads!” he shouted, pulling Payton down and shielding her.
This, the students seemed to understand. They dropped, some huddling up against boulders. He saw Rowan scrabble down tight against a downed tree, wrapping her arms around her head. If another tree came down, she might be protected by the one she huddled against.
And then it was over. Rumbling, a few more cracks and sharp breaks of branches, but the sounds were like the end of a heavy downpour, when all that is left is dripping water.
Cautiously, Ethan stood, helping Payton to her feet. She clung to his arm, crying. Jennifer still huddled on the ground near the bus, hands over her head, and shoulders shaking with sobs. Rowan, pale and shaky, stumbled to Jennifer, pulling her to her feet. Zack stood dazed, and then turned in a slow circle as if trying to figure out what had just happened.
Spike bent and lifted Lucy into his arms from where she’d fallen against a tree. He carried her over to the fire, still burning merrily, and lowered her down, before going back for Nathaniel who was on his feet but gripping one of the ropes and shaking.
“What the hell was that?” Michael’s voice was a high-pitched scream.
“Aftershock,” Ethan said, trying to keep his voice calm and authoritative. He knew they needed to see someone in control. “Bound to happen.”
“Bullshit!” Michael shouted. “I almost landed in the fire! I might have burned to death!”
“Not in that fire,” Spike said, carefully loosening Nathaniel’s fingers from the rope. “Not big enough.”
“You don’t know that!” Michael’s voice came down a notch in tone as his shoulders bunched up.
Spike took a step forward.
Ethan recognized the signs of panic giving way to fury in both young men. He pulled free of Payton’s grip and moved in.
“Just shut the fuck up,” Spike said. “Your little pussy panic isn’t helping anyone. Grow some balls.”
