“Frankie!”
When he saw Eda, the German Shepherd ran across the clearing towards her, ears down and tail wagging. He looked as overjoyed as Eda felt.
“Thank God,” she said, kneeling down and burying her face in the black and tan coat. It was damp and yet it smelled divine.
“Eda for Christ’s sake!” Becky said. She was looking across the clearing towards the happy reunion. Her eyes ballooned with fear, as if she was expecting a horde of murderous, sword wielding women to barge through the foliage at any second.
“Right,” Eda said. “C’mon Frankie.”
They moved fast.
It wasn’t easy going, making their escape through the Meadows. On multiple occasions, their feet became weighed down in the black oozy mud. At times Eda felt like she was running on the spot. The landscape was rugged and the swamp, very much a living thing, wanted them to fail. Eda pushed through. She saw the empty road in her mind and felt the joy of standing there with the world and all its doors wide open. The road was opportunity and freedom.
Surely it was only a matter of time. It was just ahead of her, always.
The odd chink of sunlight stole past the clouds and it made the grass look like long strands of white crystal. Now and then, Eda and Becky would stumble upon the remains of a dirt path, forged by feet from the old world. These disappearing pathways were a reminder that people, such as Baldilocks and his father, had once visited the Meadows for recreation. Eda thought it madness to come to such a place to relax. There were other reminders of the past too. At one point, Eda saw an overturned table and chairs, withering to the point that it had become one with the landscape. Eda tried to imagine them, the people of yesteryear, sitting by the riverbank, drinking tea and laughing. The picture in her head wasn’t clear. It seemed too far-fetched.
Becky slowed down a little and Eda, whose legs were surprisingly fresh, took the lead.
About a minute later, she stopped dead. She pointed a finger ahead, noticing as she did that her hand was trembling.
There was something up there – something in between a tight row of river birch trees.
And it was looking at her.
“You see that?” she said. “Becky, do you see it?”
It was the Uncle Sam mask. There it was, peering out at the two women from in between the narrow gap in the trees. Hideous and grinning. Long strands of stringy, gray hair spilled down from the back and sides of the mask.
Eda thought she could hear him laughing. She staggered backwards and her boots made a loud squelching noise underneath.
“Baldilocks!” she yelled. “I see you.”
Becky caught up with her at last.
“What is it?” Becky said. Her shoulders sagged wearily and she gasped for breath. Frightened eyes searched the landscape, trying to find the source of Eda’s outburst.
Eda was still pointing towards the gap in between the two river birches. She was like a statue, frozen in terror.
There was nothing there.
Eda dropped her arm, shaking her head.
“I don’t see it,” Becky said. “I don’t see anything at all Eda.”
“It was there,” Eda said.
“Are you alright?” Becky said, looking at Eda with a concerned expression. “There’s no one there Eda. How could Baldilocks be here if he didn’t even get in the canoes with the others? There’s no way that old bastard could get in front of us.”
Eda ran a hand through her damp hair. She was well aware of how crazy she must have seemed in that moment. Loco, as Lucia back in the Complex would say. “Thought I saw something.”
“You know what it is?” Becky said. “It’s this place. It’s fucking with us.”
“I guess.”
All of a sudden, a deer bounded out from behind a large bush up ahead. It was a big animal and it skipped away in the opposite direction, trying to get clear of the three intruders who’d appeared in its territory.
Both Eda and Becky shrieked.
Frankie Boy charged after the deer, barking furiously. Eda watched the dog take off with a look of horror in her eyes.
“Frankie!” she hissed. “No!” She ran after the dog but he was gone before she could even get started.
“Come back Frankie!” Eda said, slowing to a halt.
“Forget it Eda,” Becky said. “That dog’s got a mind of his own. You can’t stop him doing what he wants.”
“Shit,” Eda said. She looked into the wetlands, trying to pry him back with willpower alone. But Frankie was gone.
“Where the hell are we?” she said. The rancid smell of the river drifted up from her suit, choking Eda quietly. It was a constant reminder of almost drowning.
As far as Eda was concerned, they were trapped in a giant green labyrinth. One that didn’t want to let them go.
“Are you sure we’re going north?” she asked Becky.
Becky shrugged. “I think so,” she said. “When Mike and I first got here, Baldilocks gave us a tour. We came up this way first. Baldilocks said this was their hunting grounds. And you know what that means right? It means they know this place well. A hell of a lot better than we do.”
“That’s just great,” Eda said.
Becky nodded. “What the fuck have we done?”
“It’s too late to turn back,” Eda said.
Her eyes darted back and forth across the rugged terrain. She was still keeping an eye out for Frankie Boy, hoping he’d come back at the last minute.
“We’d better keep going,” Becky said. “We can’t be too far away now. Right? I mean, how big can this place be?”
“Sure,” Eda said. “We’re close.”
At that moment, the Two Bridges Road felt like a long way away. Eda sensed it and she was sure that Becky did too.
A noise up ahead.
It sounded like someone walking on fallen branches.
Eda looked towards the huddle of birch trees where she’d imagined seeing the Uncle Sam mask a few minutes earlier.
There was something there. There really was something there.
“Oh Christ,” Eda said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Becky. Over there.”
“Holy shit,” Becky said.
It was a man.
He stepped out from behind the trees, dressed in a camouflage jacket and matching pants. It wasn’t Baldilocks but it was one of the Children. He was an older man, perhaps sixty with a full head of gray hair and fat cheeks that sagged into jowls. His eyes were an intense, otherworldly blue. There was a short sword in his hand and Eda saw a splatter of blood on its distinct, leaf-shaped blade.
“Uh-oh,” Becky said.
Eda guessed he was a survivor – perhaps the only survivor from the warriors’ attack on the Children’s camp. Had he fought to the end with his people? Or had he run away, deserting everyone including the dead boy?
“You’re the Sinners,” he said. His voice was unpleasant, like a bite inside the ears. He acted as if Eda and Becky’s presence was a personal insult. With a fat finger, he pointed to their suits, the purpose of which he must have known. “You’ve been chosen. You can’t leave Uncle Sam hanging like that or he’ll...no, no, no. It’ll never be over unless you go back.”
Becky’s sword arm hung limp at her side. It was like she’d forgotten the weapon was there and as the man talked, she backed off.
It was Eda who stepped forward, brandishing her sword in the air. The steel was heavy and nothing felt good or familiar about it. It was like wielding a skyscraper. But it was all she had and she had to at least make sure she looked comfortable with the blade. If she could scare the old man off they might avoid an unpleasant, not to mention time-consuming confrontation.
“You’re in our way mister,” she said. “Look, we don’t want any trouble. Just let us go past and we’ll pretend like we never saw one another.”
The man approached Eda slowly. His eyes burned with blue fire.
“You belong to Uncle Sam.”
Eda’s hands were
shaking but she came forward with false bravado. The warriors and the Children were on their tail, probably not far behind, and they had to get past this man. Quickly.
“You could just go,” she said. “Forget all this Uncle Sam crap and take off. We both know it’s not real, don’t we? There doesn’t have to be any more blood spilled today. We saw what happened in camp back there. That must have been hard…”
To her surprise, the man smiled. “You must be joking little girl.”
“No,” Eda said, her brow creasing in a mix of anger and frustration. “I’m not. Let us go or you’re going to end up like them. Dead in a swamp.”
A look of indignation flashed across the old man’s face. He raised his sword and walked towards Eda at a terrifyingly rapid pace.
Eda glanced over at Becky. She was frozen to the spot, feet trapped in the mud, her eyes locked onto the sword in the man’s hands.
“It’s going to be alright,” Eda said, nodding at her.
She turned around and charged forward. Her opponent wasn’t smiling anymore. As Eda rushed in with sword aloft, the man wheezed in horror. His already wrinkled face aged twenty years in a split second. Eda realized now that he’d been trying to psych her out all along and that the last thing he wanted was a fight.
Too late.
The swords made a loud clanging noise as they clashed. The old man did his best to fight back but it quickly became apparent that he was no fighter and that he probably hadn’t held a weapon in years. His swing was slow and clumsy. Predictable. Eda pushed him backwards, using a combination of speed and skill and brute force. Had she been fighting one of the warriors, her limitations with the short sword would have been exposed. Fatally. Fortunately what she had was enough for this encounter.
The man’s defense became non-existent as his arms tired. After a feeble attack, he left himself wide open. Eda saw it, leapt forward and with lightning fast speed, slashed the tip of the blade across his ample waist like she was trying to spill his insides onto the dirt.
He shrieked and dropped to his knees. The sword tilted to the side, then slipped from his grip.
Eda took a step back and surveyed the damage while she caught her breath. The man was bleeding out badly from the middle. He snarled like a threatened animal, touching the wound repeatedly to confirm that it was real and then he let go, knowing that his escape from death earlier that day had only been a temporary reprieve. His face was eerily calm.
“Let’s go Eda,” Becky said. She was behind Eda now, tugging on her arm like she wanted to pull it off. “For God’s sake.”
But Eda knew they couldn’t leave, not yet. The old man was still conscious. And when the warriors or the Children showed up he’d be capable of giving them information about the two Sinners. At the very least he’d confirm their presence in the hunting grounds.
The man grunted. His blue eyes were on Eda, as if he could read her mind. Unlike Becky, he knew what she had to do next.
“You should have let us pass,” Eda said.
“You can’t escape,” the old man said through a coughing fit. His face was a sickly shade of white. “Nobody escapes.”
Eda took a long, deep breath. She tightened her grip on the hilt. Then she charged forward and with all the strength she could muster, buried the sword deep in the man’s chest. There was a loud ripping noise, like the sky being torn in half. The blade cut through him like his skin was paper. The man screamed, just for a second but it was enough of a primal roar that it sent a barrage of shivers down Eda’s spine.
Eda stepped back. She watched him, panting like a dog on a hot day, gasping loudly before at last he fell over and curled up into a ball.
More wheezing. Eventually he stopped moving.
Becky approached the corpse in slow motion. Her shoulders were heaving, her breath out of control. “You killed him,” she said, turning back to Eda. She spoke quietly, as if they were intruders on sacred ground. “Holy shit.”
Eda hurried over, knelt down and began hurling leaves, sticks and dirt over the body. Anything she could find. She worked relentlessly and alone. When the remains were hidden, she got back to her feet.
Eda reached for the collar of the shirt. Her fingers pulled at the tie, searching, wrestling back and forth until the knot was loose.
At last, she could breathe.
10
Eda and Becky fought their way through this hostile maze, through Great Piece Meadows, as best they could. Wooden limbs, extending out of fat trunks, and spear-like branches, made a grab for them as they hurried past. The swamp floor devoured their legs up to the knees at times. These muddy trenches were becoming more common the further they went into the hunting grounds. As a result, valuable energy was expended in the basics of movement. The rewards were pitiful.
It didn’t feel like they were getting closer to anything that mattered. Everything was a repeat of what they’d just battled through moments earlier. It was as if the landscape was constantly imitating itself to fool them. To drive them mad.
They were slowing down too. There was a muggy heat enclosed within the swamp and it was robbing them of oxygen.
Because of the slow pace, Eda noticed something that she hadn’t seen before. It was something that broke the unchanging rhythm of the monotonous environment. More importantly, it was something that allowed her to hope again. The trees were marked, at least some of them were. Marked with shapes. At first, Eda didn’t pay too much attention to it but when these landmarks kept showing up time and time again, spaced twenty or thirty feet apart, she realized it wasn’t just random swamp graffiti. It had to mean something.
There were only two shapes – circles and triangles. Crude carvings in the heart of the trunk. And there was always just one shape per tree. Each marked tree had a twin nearby, about ten feet away, standing parallel to the other. The next set of markings, thirty feet further north, would feature a different shape from the previous set, but it was essentially the same thing over and over again – two trees running parallel, with a wide gap in between. There was clear design on display. And as time went on, Eda became convinced that she was looking at a trail on the Meadows’ floor.
“You see that?” Eda said.
Becky had been quiet since the old man’s death. As she looked at the nearest set of marked trees, she cleared her throat.
“Shapes? Oh yeah, I see them.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Eda said. “Wanna know what I think? It might be some kind of mapping system designed by the Children. Or maybe it was put there by the people who came here before the Children – you know? We’ve seen tables and chairs and other things left over from the past. People used to come here all the time before the war. How did they find their way around? Don’t you see Becky? I’m talking about directions. That right there might be our way out of here.”
“A map?” Becky said.
“Why not?” Eda said. “You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty easy to get lost in here and…”
She was about to say – let’s face it, we’re probably lost already – but decided against it.
“Look at it Becky,” Eda said. She could hear the enthusiasm in her voice again. Despite this, the two women kept their distance from the carved trees, cautious spectators hovering in between faith and skepticism.
“I see the carvings,” Becky said. “But what makes you think it’s a map?”
“Not a map so much,” Eda said. “More like road signs.”
“I still don’t see it,” Becky said, shaking her head.
“You’ve got two trees with markings,” Eda said. “In each set there are always two trees with either circles or triangles. A narrow path runs straight through the middle, you see that? It’s kind of beaten down but it looks like a trail. You go through that and then it’s a short walk to the next set. I don’t know Becky, it looks to me like it’s leading somewhere. Go through the trees and you’re following the route.”
“But where?” Becky said. “If that is a route
marked out, where’s it taking people?”
“Two Bridges Road?” Eda said. “Why the hell not? We’re going north aren’t we?”
Becky looked at the markings again. She scratched her arm, leaving an angry red patch. “Maybe we’re just seeing what we want to see Eda.”
“Maybe,” Eda said. “But maybe not.”
“And the circles and triangles?” Becky asked. She tilted her head to the side a little. “Why the different shapes?”
Eda sighed. “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe they got bored. Who cares as long as it takes us to the road?”
“I guess it could be a path,” Becky said. She sounded a little less doubtful.
“I think the Children made it,” Eda said. “The grass looks kind of beat down in between the trees, doesn’t it? That’s a fresh trail if you ask me. Think about it. It only makes sense they use some sort of mapping system to find their way around this place. They’ve probably got them all over the swamp.”
“So do we follow it?” Becky said. “I guess we’ve got nothing to lose right?”
Eda held up a hand. She strained her ears, certain that she’d picked up on voices behind them.
“Warriors,” she said quietly. “They’re catching up.”
Becky shook her head slowly. Her haggard features suggested a cocktail of emotions – fear and exasperation. There was something unnerving about being the centerpiece of an enduring, determined pursuit. About being hunted. But it was annoying too, it was damn annoying. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone?
“Okay,” Becky said. She put a hand on Eda’s shoulder and squeezed. “We follow the Children’s map. Right?”
Eda nodded. “We don’t have a choice,” she said. “Not if we want to get out.”
After the End Trilogy Box Set Page 26
