by Linda L Zern
Hearing something in the woods, she’d stopped and turned, her hair flaring out like a curtain of honeyed gold. Like a dream, she’d been like a dream to him seeing her like that, after everything he’d done, everything they’d made him do in the junior militias. She’d stolen his breath and more.
Then she’d cut her hair off so she could go after Ally. What had she said? That she’d be less easy to pull off a slow mule by a fast human wolf with her hair cut short.
There was a thump and then a bird’s squawk. The vultures were already at them.
He forced himself to walk forward. If nothing else he’d beat those disgusting animals off them. He could do that. He could. He would. He’d help them.
Inside the longhouse, the smell threatened to suck the air out of his lungs. The space was filled with bodies, burned black and now starting to rot. Two big turkey vultures fought each other for the soft parts. There were four or five bodies, hard to tell how many. He smashed at the birds with a branch he’d picked up somewhere along the way. The last tree branch not burned in the whole world. He stared at the stick in his hand. He couldn’t remember picking it up.
The birds smashed upward into the metal roof in a screaming panic and a cloud of feathers. The body at his feet broke apart, collapsed. He gagged, then staggered to get outside—to fresh air, to be able to breathe.
He caught at the edge of door of the Quonset hut, felt the smear of soot under his fingers. He sucked air and smelled only death. The birds thrashed and screamed behind him.
Not them, it wasn’t them. It was pigs, just fat pigs—probably run from the fire into the hut and had gotten trapped, killed by smoke.
“Parrish.”
He shook his head, stared at the stick in his hand, dropped it.
“You’re here.”
Her voice. Had he heard it? He’d been visited one too many times by the ghosts that always threatened; he was losing his mind, hearing her voice in the middle of all this ruin.
“Parrish! Parrish!”
He was tempted to crush his filthy hands to his ears.
“I’m here. Parrish!”
Again, he heard his name over and over again, and then his arms were full of her, and she was there. Not a dream. Real. He held her face between his hands. “Tess.”
Her hair was wet with sweat. There were tears on her face. He saw the way they streaked her skin, through the mud and black smears of ash.
He crushed her mouth with his own, and breathed against her lips, “You’re not dead.” He kissed her again because then it would be real, he would make her real. There was sand on her lips.
“I’m not.” Her fingers dug into his back. “The longhouse, I couldn’t think of where else to go.”
“But I thought . . .” Pushing her back, he searched her face. Her fingers curled in his shirtfront.
Her pants were black to the knee. There was a huge black smear across her forehead. He ran his hand over her hair, that wild nest of too-short curls.
“You’re hurt?” She reached up and touched his face. It stung, a cut he didn’t remember getting. He hadn’t wanted his appearance to frighten her: filthy, bruised, torn, wearing a dead man’s boots. They’d taken his vest, his backpack, but let him keep his clothes. A man dead of exposure was hard to sell or use.
“And you’ve been crying.”
“I was so frightened.” She reached up again and brushed his cheek with her fingertips. “I’m not the only who’s been crying.”
“No.” He cupped her face in both his hands. “I don’t cry. I can’t.” And knew it for a lie when she gave him a watery smirk.
“Okay.” She gave him a smile and brought her hands up, grabbed his wrists. “Okay, okay. We’re both breathing.” Pressing her face against his chest, she said, “I went looking. I went to your sisters. They wouldn’t help me and then the fire trapped me away from . . . the rest.”
The faces of the men he’d killed pushed their way into his head. He’d waited for them, a day and a night to kill them all. He’d have killed more to get to her. “Tess, I’m here. But I thought it was you, at first, those birds, inside.”
Another vulture exploded out of the longhouse, blasting into the sky with the stench of rot.
“Ugh.”
He pulled her away from the open door of the longhouse, dragged her to stand in a patch of smooth, clean sand. “But I thought you were in there. Dead.”
A slanted wedge of shifting light hit the ground at their feet. He held her hard against him, hard enough to hurt. He knew it, but couldn’t stop himself.
“Okay. Okay. Hush now,” she whispered. “Parrish, it was the only place I could think of. I’d given up. I gave you up, before . . .”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She let him hold her, let herself melt into him, close enough so that he could feel her breathing, close enough to feel her heart hammering against his.
Tess felt joy give way to panic. “No. It matters. Where are they? Why wouldn’t they come back to the longhouse, if they could? We never talked about a rally point. I realized that too late. We should have, and that’s my fault. What should we do? I don’t know what to do, and I have to bury them if they’re dead. I have to find—”
His eyes were like tidal pools, green and calm. He’d left her to drag over the remains of a palm tree stump, pushed her down onto it, then squatted in front of her to watch her, to touch her face, her hands.
“I made it all the way to the Marketplace before the fire after we’d lost you,” she struggled to explain. “I thought your sisters were the only place that you might be. They talked about you like you’d gone to the latrine, and I was an idiot for worrying. But then I got caught up there, separated from everyone, and the fire was on us.”
She hadn’t said any of their names, not yet. But she had to ask. “Blane?”
“I don’t know. I sent him back—alone. I just don’t know.”
He took her hand, traced the length of her fingers with his.
“I have to know.” She glanced back at the longhouse. If only she had proof that her family wasn’t a pile of stinking, rotting bodies—
“Don’t go there and don’t think it. Until there are bones to bury, don’t do this to yourself. We’ll look. We’ll try. Get up. We can’t stay here until we clean those pigs out of the longhouse.”
His shadow on the ground made her think of scarecrows. The light slipped again.
“We’ve got to find somewhere safe. There are too many animals wandering, frightened and hungry. They’ll come to the feast in there. The wolves. The panthers.” Unconsciously, he rolled his shoulder, the one with the eight-inch wound that had healed in a ridge of bubbled flesh.
CHAPTER 34
It was still there, the Green Spring, singed at the edges like so much of the woods on this side of the river. The blackberry hedge showed the mark of burning, but the water was still clear, cold, and perfect. The thatch of trees where Parrish had built his hunting stand remained a lonely green outpost—most of it. The fire had burned the refuge down to the dirt on the S-Line side of the Little-Big Econ River, but on this side, it wasn’t as bad.
The swamps stopped the burning; the river where it was wide held the fire back. There might be more places where the others could have waited out the destruction. If they’d had to crawl into a bog to survive, Stone would know what to do. Gwen would help him. Jamie wasn’t stupid. They were alive. They had to be.
“See, Tess? It’s not all gone. We’ll find them. The fire burned itself out in spots along the river. The spring protected this stand of trees. The swamps protected more.”
She nodded. She held on to the hope in his voice, the matter of fact way he talked to her as a wave of exhaustion poured through her body. He must have seen it. His voice turned bossy.
“You know the rules. Take a pee break. Get something to drink. Then up we go. It’ll be safe enough high up. It’s luck. The tree stand is still here, and there’ll be other spots. You know that it’s t
rue. Go ahead. We’ll take the luck while we can.” He gave her a gentle push.
She shaded her eyes—there was more sun now everywhere in the skimpy woods, less canopy. The fire had peeled the woods back, opened up the sky. They’d be able to see the stars tonight, so much more sky through the clouds of smoke that still drifted.
“No, I won’t take luck. Not after this.” She waved at the oasis of green. “It’s a sign. They’re out there. They are.” She stared at the fluttering edges of soot-covered leaves. “I’m taking the sign.”
He nodded. “Okay. Good girl, now go on.”
She knelt at the edge of lapping water to wash her face, ignoring the bees drawn to her sweat. The flowers were gone. The bees were desperate, needing food that no longer existed: sugar. She understood.
When she climbed the tree stand, he reached for her hand and didn’t let go. They held hands, sitting side by side. Breezes swirled and dipped over them and through the dry leaves of the big oak tree; sometimes the air was rank with ash, at times full of a light, clean, salt smell.
“Hungry?”
She almost laughed: food. Thinking about it, planning for it, wanting it, needing more of it. “Yeah, I could eat. I can’t remember the last time—”
“I know. Here.” He pushed a wad of dried venison and a chunk of hardtack into her hand. “I’ve got water. You won’t need to climb down to get a drink. Eat it. I ate before.”
Salty and tough. She sincerely doubted he’d had time to stop along the trail to dry venison. Where had he gotten it? Or who had he taken it from? She didn’t ask.
“Hey, I almost forgot.” She pulled a plump yellow guava out of her pocket. “Found it near the glider port. I came the back way.”
He took it out of her hand and in the sudden fading sunlight she watched him switch open a wicked length of knife blade. He cut the fruit into four equal parts, passed her two. It smelled strongly of citrus and sugar.
“A knife. That’s lucky, too.” Since it was all they had in the way of weapons, it would have to be enough. “I’ve got nothing to offer. They weren’t keen on my having weapons.”
“Yeah, got it from a guy who didn’t need it anymore.” His voice turned brittle. “Nothing lucky about it—I was more determined.”
She put her hand on his arm, felt him still. “I’m glad you have it.”
Parrish didn’t look at her when he shrugged.
They ate the guava in silence, listening to the changing noises of the woods: the dry rattle of limbless tree trunks, the whoosh of the wind over the barren ground, the faraway murmuring sizzle of hotspots and muck fires.
She stretched out on her back, afraid to close her eyes, afraid of what she would see if she let her imagination color in the shadows. The tree stand vibrated when he stretched out next to her. It felt more rickety than the last time they’d shared the platform. Didn’t matter. Lucky to have it standing at all—luck or a sign.
“Tess,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Roll on your side.” Shadows began to replace sunlight. “Away from me.”
She almost told him no, that they should talk. That they should make a plan for tomorrow.
“Please,” he asked again. It was close to a whisper.
She rolled away from him and felt him shift so that he could curl carefully against her back; he put his arm around her waist, brought his lips to her ear.
“Parrish, I didn’t think I’d ever get you back—” She felt the sharp prick of tears sting.
“Hush. Be quiet.” His breath tickled her ear. “Just let me hold you and tell you. Be still and listen.” Overhead stars began to appear. “Tessla Lane, I thought when I got to the longhouse . . . there was that moment when I thought you were inside.” He stopped. His arm tightened around her. “I was sure you were inside.”
She took a breath to say something. He felt her begin, squeezed her, and made her stop.
“Just listen. Please. For a while, I thought I wouldn’t get back to you and that my luck was done. I’ve been there before, in places like the raider’s camp, but before I always thought, ‘Fine. Let it be done. I’m tired. Finished.’ But it was different this time. I lay in that cage and knew it was different. I wasn’t ready to be finished.”
He drew her back into his arms, held her closer.
“Because of you. Not because of your family, not because of the Dunn kid. You. This time, it was different because I was coming for you, and I knew I would do anything to make it happen.”
She reached up and over, took his hand in hers. They were wrapped in each other. She pulled their hands to her mouth.
“Is it wrong to want you the way I do?” It was her turn to whisper. “Do you think it’s wrong, even when my family might already be . . .”
He knew the moment she started to cry, the instant when the tears began to slide down the side of her cheek to drip on the knot of their fingers. He felt her struggle for control, could feel the way she held her body tight against the shudders that racked her.
“Hush. Hush now.” He waited for her to be still. “Tessla Lane, I want to come home to you forever. Marry me.” He stopped when a coyote pack started crying farther upriver, lonely and hurting.
“Marry?” It was the last thing she expected. “Why? I mean, I don’t think anyone is keeping track of that kind of stuff anymore.”
He didn’t answer her right away.
“Tess, in the militia there were girls.”
Smoke rolled over them in a smothering cloud. It made her cough.
“Listen. After the Flare-Out Wars, women, and girls, they were like prizes passed out at a party. I watched them get used. I watched them die. Unprotected. Alone. I watched people I loved, too many, die.” He stopped, collected himself, pressed his face into her neck. “I can’t treat you like that. I won’t. Marry me.”
“Marry. What does that even mean now?”
He sat up, pulled her close, so they sat face to face. Starlight glittered in his eyes. He was shadows and sparks.
“It means that I won’t abandon you or our children. It means I’ll protect you to my last breath. We’ll make it mean what we want it to. I know what I want it to mean, that you belong to me.” He pulled her close.
“Children?”
He smiled into her hair. “That’s the part you heard?”
“Yeah,” she said. She moved to kiss him. It tickled. She touched the scruff on his face, thought about how close he’d been to not coming back to her at all, how close they always walked on the edge of the abyss.
He pushed her back down onto her back, leaned over her until his face filled the sky. “You haven’t answered me.”
She looked up into his face. His hair had fallen loose. Somewhere he’d lost the leather strip he used to tie it back. She put her hands against his shirtfront, felt the outline of metal in his pocket. She remembered the dog tags they’d found in Terry’s pack.
“Why did they let you keep them?”
He put his hand over hers. “What? The tags Jamie found? There was a guy, one of the mercenaries who thought about taking them. He pulled them out, gave me a dumb look, and then stuffed them back in my pocket and said, ‘Keep the faith, Brother.’ Ex militia, I guess. More likely, he was hoping the others would find that I still had them and beat me down over it some more. Who knows what it meant to him. Sentimental maybe.” He trailed a finger over the curve of her cheek.
“Sentimental?” she asked. “Are you a sentimental man, Richmond Parrish, aka Ryan Summerlin? Or is it the other way around?” She pulled the dog tags free; they were still covered in gooey duct tape. “You don’t want to know if there’s a name?”
He shook his head. “A dead kid, probably. Who knows why Terry kept it, or why I do.” He pulled the shell necklace out of her shirt. The pinks and whites of the shell tinted the petals of the rose he’d carved and gave the symbol depth and warmth. It was her only jewelry.
“You still haven’t answered me.”
“Marry you
? Belong to each other, and we decide what that means?”
Parrish smiled. She sounded thoughtful and solemn. He let go of the necklace and watched her tuck it away. She slipped the dog tags back into his shirt pocket.
Downriver, beyond the Green Spring, the Little-Big Econ River swept along to the ocean, constant and determined. Somewhere along its banks, closer now, the coyotes set up their primal call—their characteristic yip, yip, yipping sliding away into a communal howl. They were calling to each other, seeking out members of the pack—displaced or lost.
Farther out, a single, distant howl answered the pack—a lone survivor, friendless and lost. It made the hairs on Parrish’s neck stand up. He couldn’t help it. It was impossible to pretend that the sound of animal pain and loss didn’t chill him.
She reached up and touched his face. “For whatever it means to us now. Yes, I’m yours.”
He quit holding his breath and buried his face in her hair, in the smell of her. She rolled back onto her side again away from him.
“Okay. Okay then.” Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her neck, relaxed, felt exhaustion take her.
“Hold me while I sleep,” she said. “Will you? Don’t let me go.”
“Yes. I won’t leave you again, I promise. That’s part of what it’s going to mean to us. Tomorrow. We’ll find out what happened to the rest, tomorrow. I promise.”
CHAPTER 35
Brittany Anne Summerlin had asked for swirly paints and paintbrushes for Christmas once. Swirly paints. She’d been trying to say watercolors. She was three. Her family liked to say she was born with an artist’s eye and painters’ fingers. Before the solar flares, she’d been a promising watercolorist, placing first in the county’s young artists’ contest.
Then after . . .
Brittany Anne Summerlin used her artist’s eye like a laser to see what others couldn’t: the soft-edged tracks of a young woman moving fast through the alien landscape left behind. Moving as quickly as the girl she tracked, the woman with dark green eyes closed in on her quarry. Panic rode low in her belly. The sick feeling helped her cover the distance between the Marketplace Fortress and what was left of Tess’s home in double time, helped her ignore the stink of ash and destruction. Not that she would have registered the smell of death. Even artists lose their sensitivity to decomposition, eventually.
