Another Like Me

by Albert Norton, Jr.

  All of this took time, but even so, Jack was headed north out of Alpine well before noon. Alpine presented as a small valley over which imposing mountains loomed, even though Alpine itself was at an altitude in excess of 8,000 feet. Jack continued north on the highway and found that he was still climbing. He felt closed in by the mountains on either side. The shadow of those mountains and the tall ponderosa pine on their slopes meant that the snow was as deep and the roads as icy as anything he had yet encountered. Uphill was not a challenge so much as going downhill, and he looked everywhere about him for run-offs in case the traction would not hold. He used the lower gears of the SUV in earnest, for the first time since he’d played around with them in the hillocks of the east. Jack passed a sign indicating that the elevation was even higher than Alpine—8,550 feet. The snow was still thick, but not as treacherous as he worried it would be. At this elevation, and shadowed as much as it was during the day, it had not had time to thaw and freeze repeatedly so as to create dangerous ice patches.

  At length, he passed the Nelson Reservoir. It was beautiful, but he still wasn’t out of the woods—figuratively and literally—of the ecosystem surrounding Alpine. Soon, though, the road climbed and dropped less precipitously, even as it opened to long and gradual ascents and descents along the edges of now less wooded mountains. He was going through a narrow pass. At the end of it, he saw occasional houses and some indication of commercial buildup ahead and realized that he’d been suddenly dumped into the Round Valley, wherein lay Eagar and Springerville. Despite the snow, less than an hour after departing Alpine, Jack entered Round Valley and went left at the fork, toward Eagar.

  In Eagar, Jack’s instinct was that he was probably wasting his time. How often had he been to a new place, thinking he’d see some sign of recent life, only to find, in big cities and small towns alike, nothing, nothing, nothing but the remains of a once-great civilization. And here he was in the antithesis of the metropolis, a tiny town in a remote corner of the world. Why would he find life here? Jack stopped in the middle of an intersection and got out of his car, standing there in the quiet and looking down each road from the intersection.

  On the other hand, he thought, all that looking had not been for nothing, after all. In Luna, New Mexico, of all places, he’d found another human being. Or you could say the person had found him. Now he was part of a little community of three. His whole way of thinking had changed as a result. In his earlier life, Jack’s self-awareness had been derived from others, as would an actor’s on stage, seeing his own performance through the eyes of the audience. Then the audience had faded away—quite rapidly—and Jack had seen himself as through the eyes of a hypothetical audience—and then a hypothetical One. But this camera obscura had faded, too, as there seemed no outside illumination to penetrate and create an inner self-awareness. An inner-outward projection had been slowly taking its place. An animal mind. Jack had been undergoing this process of fading when Robin found him. The process had not been complete, however, and his encounter with Others had re-illuminated, if dimly, the stage in his mind on which he acted.

  Nothing stirred in Eagar. Jack left his vehicle right where it was and began walking up the street that seemed to have had the most commercial activity, long ago. The snow here was gone from the roads and lay in patches on the lee side of the buildings and under the sparse vegetation. It had never occurred to Jack to target liquor stores before, but now he searched them out. He walked a mile north and circled back around through a couple of blocks, unintentionally diverging into a residential area. This was a very small town. Almost back to the intersection he left his car in, Jack found the door open at a little restaurant and bar located in an outparcel to a grocery store parking lot. No one was about, and it didn’t appear that anyone had been for quite some time. Jack sauntered over to the bar, which was badly lit in the interior of the building, away from the windows. Taking a seat on a barstool, he absentmindedly looked behind the bar and saw that there was no alcohol in sight. Not typical, in his recent experience. He walked around to the back side of the bar and looked under cabinets, but there was no alcohol. He walked further toward the back, to what appeared to be a storeroom next to the kitchen, but here it was too dark to see anything. Jack began to think of ways he might make a torch but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He just needed a flicker of light for a minute or less. So he found some paper towels and wadded them up and put them in the doorway to the storeroom, and lit them on fire with matches he found behind the bar. He could see nothing, so he kicked the wad of paper forward a bit, and in the waning light could see nothing but shelves that were empty but for some plates and silverware on one side. No sign of alcohol. In the kitchen, there was a little more light from a rear window, but there was no booze. For that matter, there was no food, either.

  On inspiration, Jack stepped over to a small walk-in freezer. He’d early on learned the hard way not to mess with those. He yanked at the door and stepped back away from the opening, anticipating a whoosh of stench from the darkness within. But there was none. The restaurant had long ago been picked clean, even of whatever fresh food had been on hand when the lights went out. Jack made his way back to the front of the restaurant, taking one last look behind him. If the people Robin and Peter had seen were addicts, then that would explain the absence of alcohol. Jack stepped outside. It was a beautiful day. The sky was vividly blue, and the coolness in the air was refreshing but not so cold. He walked to the end of the little porch of the building, and upon reaching the edge, caught a whiff of smoke. Not from his little makeshift light inside. He’d put that out thoroughly. This was the smell of burning marijuana.

  Just as quickly, on a touch of breeze, the odor evanesced. There was no smell of marijuana at all, and Jack strained after it, wondering if it had been all in his mind. But in a moment, there it was again, no mistaking.

  Jack’s pulse was already quickened by the realization that there might be someone about. His reaction to Robin’s footprints sprang to his mind, and he resolved to be smarter. He was not altogether surprised this time around. He had crouched down, instinctively, and was peering around the corner of the porch when he heard the sound of a car engine. This was as alarming to Jack as anything he’d experienced so far. In years, he had not heard a car engine other than his own. He knew from the sound, before he looked, that the vehicle was traveling north on Main, coming from the direction of the intersection he’d parked in. Sure enough, there was his SUV, creeping along the wide thoroughfare. Whoever was in it could not miss seeing Jack. The vehicle stopped in the street, which was to the side of the restaurant. Jack looked on, wondering what he should do next. The passenger door opened, and the first thing Jack saw was the muzzle of his Weatherby, followed by a head of long, sandy-colored hair held back by a bandana, and a long beard.

  The man cradled the Weatherby as if it were a little baby and called over to Jack, “Hola, hola!” He took a couple of steps forward. The driver, a smaller and more furtive-looking man, had gotten out, and Jack saw that he held Jack’s Sig Sauer. But a hopeful sign—he slipped the strap over his shoulder and let the gun bounce against his back as he rounded the corner of the vehicle. Jack couldn’t see anyone else in the car, but there was little enough room with all his gear.

  The first man had stopped in the road, a few feet from the car. “Amigo si, amigo no, yes no, friend or foe.” He said it more like a chant than a question. He was a big man, perhaps six foot three and well past 200 in weight. He resumed his lurch forward to greet Jack, his manner all friendliness and bonhomie, but Jack was on guard. Their approach was not menacing, nor did they have Jack at gunpoint. On the other hand, they were certainly armed, and they were driving around in Jack’s vehicle. He briefly considered yanking his .45 out to keep them at bay, but such a move would likely not end well.

  The front porch of the restaurant ended at a gravel bed with a concrete walk through the middle, and then steps down to the sidewalk that ran directly in front of the restaur
ant and perpendicular to Main Street. The two men stopped short of mounting those steps. The bigger man continued to hold the Weatherby in an embrace across his chest, but neither hand was on the receiver, and he evidently felt no need to brandish it in a more threatening way. The smaller man stopped beside him and put his thumbs in his belt, smiling hyena-like up at Jack.

  “Diné?” the larger man said.

  “Dinner?” Jack answered.

  The big man laughed. “Dude, amigo, you’re what, a spy? Your compadres all around us here, closing in?” He used the rifle to mark out the imaginary compadres on the horizon.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The big man looked at his partner. “He ain’t Apache, is he?”

  The smaller man shook his head. He had a downward turn to the edges of his mouth that said he was sure of it.

  Jack was sizing these guys up as misfits, more likely to do harm with the guns accidentally, than on purpose. Jack said, “I’m not Apache,” more from impatience than from a cool consideration of his circumstance. Why did they suppose he might be Apache, and who cared anyway? This was an odd conversation, and it seemed to Jack there were more important things to discuss. Aside from himself and his friends on the ride to Alpine, as far as Jack knew, these two goofballs were the only two people left on earth.

  “No,” the smaller man said.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so, either. I’d have remembered.” To Jack, the big man said, “So you’re Diné, right?”

  Jack just looked at him quizzically.

  “Navajo?”

  “I’m not a Navajo Indian or an Apache.” Jack looked from one to the other. “I mean, look at me, I’m an Anglo-Saxon white guy.”

  “Cool,” the big man said declaratively.

  “And so are you, apparently. Why are we talking about Indians?” Whatever these two individuals were about, this Indian tribal thing seemed to matter to them, yet neither of them was an Indian. Certainly not the bigger of them. He was an outgoing, sociable, Viking-type, if anything.

  “You’re an outsider,” the big man said. His tone suggested that it was not so much to accuse as to satisfy his need to categorize.

  Jack laughed. The irony was too rich. He was the ultimate outsider, all right.

  “What’s so funny, pard?”

  “I guess you could call me an outsider. I’m not from here. Or Springerville. Or Arizona.” Jack was glad for being designated the man’s “pard,” though, and he felt some of the tension slip away. If the two weren’t in possession of his vehicle and supplies and guns, this would be a comic moment.

  “He’s an outsider,” the smaller man said. No accent from either of them, other than that their way of speaking might mark them as Western Americans.

  Jack wondered if being an “outsider” might mean something sinister to them.

  The bigger man nodded grandly as if he’d made a regal decision. “We must smoke peace pipe.” With that, he reached inside his vest and pulled out a bag of marijuana. He moved forward to the steps, only to turn around and sit on them, his back to Jack and the perfectly visible .45 at Jack’s side.

  The smaller man hesitated, watching Jack.

  Nothing for it, Jack realized, but to go along—to pretend to smoke marijuana, to try to keep his wits about him, and to look for an opportunity to reclaim his belongings. The guns could be replaced if necessary, but the car, not so easily. It sat there in the middle of the street, both front doors open, not thirty yards away.

  “Gunja, free gunja. What’s your name, dude?”

  Jack had seated himself beside the man, who expertly loaded a pipe. “Jack.”

  “Jack Diné? Jack Outsider?”

  “Pence. I’m from New York. I have no idea what a Diné is.”

  The man coughed loud, whether from the smoke or Jack’s pronouncement, Jack couldn’t tell.

  “New York? New York? Here.”

  Jack had to take the pipe. The other man was more attentive and was leaning against the rail to the steps, looking on. Jack tried to take it light, but he was under scrutiny. He managed the harsh smoke all right, but the effect of the drug was, to his surprise, almost immediate. If he were going to have the presence of mind to effect any kind of escape, he was going to have to risk faking it. He offered the pipe back to the bigger man.

  “New York, over to Mitchell.” Jack handed the pipe over the big man’s head to Mitchell.

  The big man thumped his chest, as though he were the heap big chief. “Bonzo.”

  “Bonzo,” Jack repeated.

  “A Diné is a Navajo. Or used to be, back when there were Navajo. The new Diné are just a bunch of commies.” Bonzo took another hit and tried to talk as he breathed out, inducing some contained coughing. “Were you in New York when people died off?” he asked.

  “I was. In fact, I just made the road trip out here.”

  “No one left in New Yawk City?

  “No, as far as I could tell. Nor between there and here. At least the way I came. I don’t think there’s anyone left anywhere. Or at least I would have said so until I got here.” Loosening of the tongue. Careful.

  “Now you’re in Apache land. The Apaches are your friends.”

  “So you’re an Apache.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Bonzo said. “Me and Mitchell and the whole clan.”

  “But you’re not actually Indian.”

  “Don’t get all racial on me. Heh heh.” Bonzo was preparing the pipe for another hit. To Jack’s relief, Mitchell sat down on the opposite of Bonzo, the rifle still slung over his back and now bumping against the steps. Jack’s Weatherby was resting on the steps between Bonzo and Mitchell. From this position, Jack could better fake his next hit.

  “After this, we’ll go meet some more of the tribe,” Bonzo said.

  Jack badly wanted to be free of this and to reunite with his friends. But he’d have to bide his time. It also occurred to Jack that he ought to use his time wisely to get as much information as he could. He’d come looking for zombies, after all, and now he’d found them.

  “What about this tribe?” he asked. “Do you mean the Apaches? How many are there?”

  “I don’t know, forty?”

  “Sixty,” Mitchell said.

  “What’s the purpose of the tribe? I mean, why do you consider yourself a tribe?

  “We’re Apaches, man,” Bonzo replied. “And the main thing is, we’re not Diné.”

  Ah, Jack thought, understanding finally beginning to filter in. Like all gangs, defined by what it is not—which is to say, not the rival gang.

  “Do you fight the Diné?”

  “The Diné have lost their humanity, man. They’re robots. Here.”

  Jack took the pipe. He leaned back, to put the inattentive Bonzo between himself and Mitchell, and then made an inhaling noise followed by much dramatic coughing off to the side, holding that position for a while. He returned to normal and held the pipe in front of him, pretending to have a drug-induced absentmindedness about what to do with it next.

  “You okay, New York? Here.” Bonzo gave Mitchell the pipe. “They’re robots because they can’t think for themselves. It’s like they’re all units in the machine, man. They can’t do anything without deciding it by committee. But us Apaches, we’re free.”

  “So the Diné aren’t Indians any more than you are?”

  “What difference does it make, New York?”

  “Well, you’re the ones calling yourselves ‘Apaches.’”

  Bonzo roared with laughter. This was evidently the funniest thing he had ever heard. Even Mitchell chuckled a little.

  Eventually the trio departed, walking through the lot behind the restaurant, leaving Jack’s vehicle in the middle of the street, the doors still open. They encountered associates of Bonzo’s and Mitchell’s. More introductions ensued, names passed around that Jack couldn’t remember. Weird, he thought, that in a couple of days he’d gone from being alone in the whole world, to being one of only five�
�but the addition of a few more was a few too many. He was fuzzy-headed, but not, he thought, like his passive captors. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, he was able to pretend to prefer whiskey to marijuana and to prefer “girl-drinks,” whiskey mixed with soft drinks. This made it much easier to fake consumption. As much as Jack was dismayed to find himself in the company of still more zombies, he began to think that his escape would be easier. Maybe he could even secure his rifles.

  And so it proved. By ten p.m., Jack could have slipped away, but he hung on a couple more hours, in hopes that he could not only leave, but leave with all of his possessions. With a sigh of relief, he found his keys still in the ignition, and his car started right up. A quick look around told him that his stuff was still in place. Jack stowed the rifles he’d recovered on the front seat floorboard where they belonged, and wasted no time quitting Eagar.

  He was relieved to be out of the town and back on the lonely road. He felt like he was heading home, to his family. And yet, he didn’t want to storm in on them after midnight, in their abode where he’d never been. He resorted to his usual ways and found a place in Alpine for the night. There were little tourist cabins in a grassy field behind the Alpine Café, right on the main street in town. It was quite comfortable, and Jack slept soundly. He dreamed of the open, expansive desert, with mountains ringing the far horizon. On closer view, the floor of the desert seemed to be moving, like wheat in a soft breeze, or water with the surface lightly disturbed. On zooming in still closer, however, he saw that the movement was the shifting and stirring of people, in their hundreds of thousands. And millions. Standing room only, to the far horizon in every direction.