Red Runs the River

by Tony Urban

  "I think an acquaintance of mine might have been there. Zeke?"

  Mead thought about the name, then shook his head. "Maybe, but I don't remember the name."

  "Older fellow, probably in the range of seventy. Blind in one eye with a cataract."

  A slow smile crossed Mead's mouth. He dropped his voice a few octaves and he tapped his helmet. "Wishum I had me a helmet like yours."

  Wim couldn't hold back and laughed so loud that Gypsy glanced back to see what the ado was about. "That's him."

  "Shit, yeah, I remember him now. Came and went like a fart in the wind. I think he just wanted food and anything else he could guilt us into giving him."

  "I gave him my cabin."

  "Holy shit, Wim! All I gave him were some cans of fruit and a few jugs of water."

  Wim shrugged his shoulders. "Took a burden off my shoulders though so I shouldn't complain."

  "Fucking Zeke, man. That old coot. What was his deal with green beans anyway?"

  "He didn't appreciate the texture."

  Now Mead laughed too. "Guess he never heard the saying about beggars and choosers."

  It took them almost a week to get back to Arkansas via horse and wagon. Wim didn't mind the journey. He'd already been on the road for several weeks, but he thought Mead seemed anxious, maybe even nervous. He rarely slept and always surveyed the area around them. He remembered Mead to be high strung the last time they were together, but he seemed amped up by a factor of ten now. To say he was cautious was an extreme understatement.

  As they rolled into Brimley, Wim was impressed. The town was fortified by metal shipping containers stacked two and three high. It was clearly a place meant to withstand the end of the world, but at the same time Wim could understand why Zeke likened it to a prison and he doubted he could spend too much time confined within those walls either.

  The man Mead wanted him to meet was named Aben and upon their arrival, he came to them with a slight limp. Wim also noticed, upon first impression, that the man was minus his left hand. His face was scarred, but most of those old wounds were covered by a patchy beard. Wim wondered what the man had suffered through to obtain all those injuries but didn't dare ask. Most men of character tend to keep their pain hidden away inside and didn't care to have it brought up.

  Aben was a big man. Taller and wider than Wim, although around fifteen years older. He looked like a rough character, the kind who wouldn't take gruff off anyone, and before the man had even said a word, Wim understood why Mead wanted to bring him along on their journey.

  They stayed three days in Brimley, long enough for Mead to tell the residents about the traveling tent revival he'd found in Alabama and about how another man from town had elected to stay behind and join the show. Wim didn't mind the delay and thought it would be a good rest for the horse, but he didn't care to get to know anyone there on more than a superficial level. He supposed the last compound he'd found himself in had soured his opinion on other people to some extent and while these seemed like good folks, he was fine with limiting his conversations with them to the 'How you doing', 'Nice to meet you' variety.

  Aben was the exception. He didn't say as much, but Wim got the feeling that the man was restless. Maybe it was the way he agreed to travel to West Virginia with them before Mead even got out a quarter of the story. Or maybe it was the way Wim caught him staring at the walls for long periods of time when he thought no one was watching him. Either way, Wim was glad they'd come back here and that they were bringing Aben along.

  While Mead was busy making certain everything was secure in town and that they had enough supplies to last them through until they got back (and Wim, Mead, and Aben all knew until was really if) Wim had a chance to talk to Aben alone while the man gathered together the few belongings he wanted to take with.

  "We're coming down on the time where it'll be too late for you to change your mind," Wim said.

  Aben glanced up from the small bag he was packing. "That won't happen."

  "I'm just saying, if you do, there won't be no hard feelings on my part. This is my fight, after all. Not yours."

  Aben zippered the bag closed and took a seat on the edge of the bed beside his dog. "I wish that was true, but it's not." He scratched the dog's head absentmindedly.

  "How's that?" Wim sat in a chair across from him.

  "I didn't realize right away, but that island you mentioned and the men who attacked it that winter, I was hooked up with them for a while."

  Wim leaned forward in his chair, intrigued. "You were?"

  Aben nodded. "For a few months. It started out normal enough, just a bunch of hard cases surviving all this bullshit. But then it got mean. Or, Saw did, anyway."

  "Saw?"

  "Solomon Baldwin. He's the one you talked about with the hole in his forehead. And the boy with the cut-up face. I can't be a hundred percent certain, but that must have been Mitch. Duplicitous little shit.

  "Saw told us about his plan to take over the island and that's when I decided I'd had enough. But before I cut ties I made the mistake of telling Mitch, and Mitch told Saw and..." He held up his foot to show the missing half. "Would have been a whole lot worse if Mead hadn't come along when he did."

  Wim thought about this for a long moment. The events that brought down the Ark all happened so fast and he'd been so caught up in mourning Emory, and the shock of learning Ramey wasn't immune, that he barely remembered much of it.

  "I hope that doesn't sour your opinion of me too much."

  Wim realized he'd stayed silent too long. "Oh, no. I'm just surprised, is all. You weren't there. You didn't do nothing wrong."

  "That might be true, but I still feel partly responsible. Aiding and abetting, at the very least."

  Wim shook his head. "Don't you fret about it. Everything at the Ark was bad. That place was like a poison. I'm not saying that Saw character was right in doing what he did, but the faster that all came to an end, the better."

  Aben sighed and Wim thought he seemed to sit up straighter. "Well, that's one less burden to carry anyway."

  "You have others?" Wim meant it as a joke, something to lighten the mood, but it had the opposite effect.

  "Hell, I got too many to keep an accurate count on all of them." Aben stopped petting his dog and glanced Wim's way. "Don't you?"

  Wim only nodded in response. He supposed that was the price to pay for survival.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mead laid on his back, sweated soaking wet and out of breath. So tired was he from the exertion that his eyes were slow to focus when the vaguely yellow shape came into view above him.

  "Fuckeroo. That was incredible," Mead said between mouthfuls of air.

  The woman who straddled him smiled. It was on the crooked side and revealed a gap where an incisor should have been, but the sight of her grin never failed to bring about one from him too. "Well I'm pleased as punch to hear that. We could do this a hell of a lot more often if you'd stop leaving."

  He grabbed her by the waist, his fingers sinking into her pudgy midsection. He liked all her soft curves almost as much as her lopsided grin. He pulled her down onto him and she landed hard, pushing a happy oof from his lips. She giggled.

  On one of the scouting missions, Mead had found Lydia Danville and two others traveling through Oklahoma. The man with them, Mead seemed to remember his name was maybe Frank, had a badly broken hip that had gone septic. The women, Lydia and a middle-aged spinster type named Myrna, were dragging him along on a homemade stretcher cobbled together from tree limbs, twine, and a ratty wool blanket.

  Mead told them about Brimley and they all agreed to return there with him, but Maybe Frank was delirious with fever and less than a few days later he died in the night. Mead awoke to Lydia's screams and found Maybe Frank grabbing hold of her shirt and leaning in for a mouthful of tit.

  Even when sleeping, Mead never had a weapon more than a foot away and that night was no different. He gripped a spear made of metal conduit and impaled the man
from behind. The sharp end popped out Maybe Frank's right eyeball and that made Lydia scream even louder, but she was alive and her (in Mead's opinion) perfect tits were unmarred.

  So, after that, it was just the three of them that finished the trip back to Brimley. Myrna wasn't much for chit chat, or common courtesy for that matter, and seemed to dislike Mead on general principle, but Lydia cozened up to him and he wasn't about to push her away. She was in her mid-twenties with dirty blonde hair to go along with her curves. She'd been a school teacher before the plague and Mead often thought teachers were a hell of a lot hotter now than when he went to school. That was well over a year ago and, in Mead's opinion, she was just about the best damned thing left in the world.

  As he looked at her body pressed against his, her wavy hair spilling across his chest, that opinion certainly didn't change.

  "Believe me, I'd love nothing more than to do this every day. Multiple times a day, for that matter."

  "Then why are you going? You don't even know this Will guy."

  "Wim. And I know him. I saved his life four years ago as a matter of fact."

  "You did?"

  She looked up at him with her drab, hazel eyes and he told her the story about finding Wim and the old man, Emory, trapped in a hotel surrounded by zombies. The way he told it they were teetering on the precipice of death until he came along with his hockey stick swords and brought down hell on the undead horde. He might have embellished a bit here and there, but that was hard not to do with that beautiful woman looking at him in awe and he felt he'd earned the right to be a bit of a braggart.

  By the time the story was finished, Mead was recuperated and ready for round two. Lydia must have felt him rise to the occasion because she reached between his legs and took his hardness in her hand as a coy smile crossed her lips.

  "Only way we do it again is if you make me a promise."

  "What's that?"

  She kissed his chin, then the corner of his mouth. "I want you to promise me..." She kissed him on the lips, her tongue pushing its way inside his mouth and tickling him.

  Her hair fell into his face and Mead put his hand behind her head and kissed her back. He was starting to think he really was crazy for even considering leaving this woman when she broke their kiss.

  "Promise me you'll come back."

  "You know I will, Lydia." He didn't want to outright lie to her, he cared for her too much to do that, and hoped those words would suffice.

  "You don't know what I know. I want a promise. I want the words, 'I promise'. No hedging."

  Mead looked her direct in the eyes, steeled himself. "I'll come back when this mess is done. I promise you."

  She grinned again, and Mead felt both relieved and guilty that she hadn't realized that he'd had his fingers crossed.

  "I've never said this before because I take words serious. And I've never made a habit of saying something just for the sake of saying it. But, I love you, Mead."

  That made Mead feel even more guilty about the possible lie, but at the same time there came a tightness in his throat that stretched all the way down to his stomach.

  He couldn't remember a woman ever saying she loved him. He imagined his mother might have once or twice but couldn't pinpoint any particular memory of her actually speaking the words. And his blink and you miss it marriage started with "Oh shit, I'm pregnant" and ended with "I hope you rot in hell!" and there was little time for pleasantries in the middle.

  As he looked at Lydia, he knew he wanted to spend his life with her and he thought about telling her that in the moment. That he wanted to marry her. But he knew proposing the night before he went on a journey that had the very real possibility of leading to his death would have been a shitty thing to do.

  He settled with, "I love you too."

  That satisfied her, but Mead thought it seemed flippant. Four short words that did little to express his true feelings for this woman and his hopes for their future together. As they made love again, he told himself that, if he survived the trip to the Ark and back, he'd never leave her again. He owed her that. Shit, he owed himself that too.

  Chapter Twelve

  Aben tossed and turned for hours but sleep wouldn't come. He crawled out of bed and strolled to the window where he tried to guess the time, but the sky was full of clouds and all he could tell for certain was that it was still dark. He knew returning to bed for another try would lead to nothing but more restlessness and decided to save himself the trouble.

  As he exited the cramped, three room cottage that had been his home for the last few years, Prince glanced up at him with half-closed eyes. The dog didn't speak to him, but Aben answered him anyway.

  "I'm just going out for a spell. You stay in bed."

  The dog flopped its head down on the quilt, satisfied, and Aben stepped into the night.

  He was glad to be leaving Brimley. He had no bad feelings against anyone here, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find a way to feel comfortable. He was a round peg living in a square hole. If you tried hard enough, you could squeeze it in, but it was never quite right.

  The idea of the trip excited him. The road had been calling him since soon after his arrival in Brimley, and even semi-frequent scouting missions did little to satiate the need to be on the move because, no matter how big of a circle they made while out gathering supplies, he always knew he was going to end up back at the starting point again. He needed something open-ended and this was the perfect fit.

  He'd made it a third of the way through town when he smelled a familiar aroma. Baking bread. He didn't have to follow his nose to the source. He knew where it was coming from and when he reached the porch of Coraline's house, the smell was so strong he was salivating.

  Coraline's fresh-baked bread was one of the few things he'd miss about Brimley. And, to a lesser extent, Coraline herself.

  "Only thing worse than a hungry dog is a hungry man."

  He looked toward the voice and saw her silhouette in the kitchen window. "Morning, Coraline."

  "For Christ's sake, Aben, it ain't even morning for another few hours. The smell of my bread wake you all the way from here to there?"

  Aben shook his head, not that he was certain she could even see the gesture. "Can't sleep. Insomnia, I suppose. What's your excuse anyway?"

  "Come inside and maybe I'll tell you."

  He did.

  Coraline was somewhere in the vicinity of sixty years old. Her black hair had gone mostly gray and she kept it pulled up in a top knot so tight it doubled as a face-lift. She was one of the first residents of Brimley and although she was prone to cantankerous episodes when she didn't get her way, she was one of the more helpful members of town.

  She'd pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and motioned for Aben to sit in it. He did. Then she sat across from him and picked up a pitcher.

  "Coffee? I should forewarn you, I brewed it about lunchtime so it's apt to be cold."

  "Goes down the same regardless of the temperature."

  She poured him a cup and he took a swig. It was cold and bitter, but he wasn't about to complain. They sat there in silence for at least two full minutes with the orange glow of a kerosene lantern illuminating their wordless faces. Aben finished the coffee and had had just about enough of the scintillating conversation to last the rest of the night, but as he began to push his chair back from the table, Coraline finally broke the silence.

  "Where are you in a rush off to?"

  Somewhere less chatty, he thought. "Oh, nowhere in particular."

  "Then sit and keep an old widow company for a bit."

  Another long silence passed and Aben cursed his nose for leading him to this house. He realized Coraline wasn't going to start a conversation and decided he'd give it a go. "So, you're baking bread."

  She nodded. "We covered that already."

  "How could I forget?"

  She poured him another cup of coffee even though he didn't request nor desire it. Nevertheless, he drank it bec
ause it gave him something to do.

  "You said you'd tell me why you were awake at this hour."

  "I said I might."

  Aben nodded. "You're quite specific, aren't you?"

  "I'm baking bread--"

  "As we've discussed."

  Coraline gave a pinched smile. In his experience, that was about as good as it got from her. "Bread for you to take on the trip."

  He liked that she called it a trip. Like they were going to Disney World or maybe Bar Harbor or Miami Beach. Just a few guys hitting the road for some fun in the sun and not three men heading to some deranged madman's island of misfit toys.

  "You didn't have to do that."

  "Course I didn't have to. I wanted to. There's a difference."

  Aben finished off his second cup of coffee and turned it upside down on the saucer to prevent her from forcing upon him a third.

  "I suspect you'll tire of canned goods in short order and I never saw any great culinary talents from you or Mead so unless that new fella can work magic over a campfire, your pickings are bound to be on the slim side."

  "Well thank you for that. I appreciate it. I've always been fond of your bread."

  "I know it."

  That seemed to exhaust the potential conversation and after a while Aben stood. "Well, Coraline, I've got some packing to do so I think I'll be getting on."

  Coraline nodded and watched him move to the door. When his hand fell upon the knob, she spoke again. "Aben?"

  He looked back, reluctant.

  "You'll be careful out there, won't you?"

  "I intend to be just that."

  "Good. I occasionally get the sense you feel out of your element here. But you're an important part of this town. People respect you."

  "There's no reason to."

  "Well they do. Whether you want them to or not. And I'm one of them. So be careful and come back to us."

  "Thanks again for the bread, Coraline." Aben opened the door and left the woman and the smell of her bread, behind him.