The corner arrives and before I turn down the main road I look at the building walls, at the windows. I check each window, expecting to see a shadow. My imagination shapes the form into something more concrete. The form becomes a sniper: Long rifle. Watching me from above, waiting to fire. I wonder for a second if he’d let Voley go if he got me. I’m angry because somehow I let myself start thinking again, and thinking brings questions with answers I already know. We’re walking food. Maybe warmth and food for the last snow walker. And it all comes down to who sees the other first. I get the urge to break into the building on my left and travel down the main road from inside the apartments instead of on the open snow. I debate the noise—the shattering the window. Then I get stuck on how I’d ever get Voley inside without Dusty. I could lift him up, try to get him high enough, and let him drop. It would take a long time because the window would be sticking out death shards and I’d have to clear them all away before I could send him through. And then the floor. He’d drop on the shattered glass. By then the rifle man hears everything, I tell myself. He gets a nice shot in the back. Voley has glass stuck in his paw and no one to know he’s in there. Stuck and never again with food or warmth, until the end. Forget breaking into the apartments, I tell myself. We walk the rest of the road and then take a left, going along the edge of the building instead of in the center of the street. Up ahead the fog has cleared—against the white sky I see the outline of the buildings—Nuke headquarters and the giant cooling tower.
With each step on the main road I feel a rising panic. I look at Voley and tell him to give me a heads up, as if he’ll know somehow way before me if someone else is around. But Voley is sniffing the ground and doesn’t look concerned about the buildings and the roofs. He’s moving through the snow behind me, following my tracks, no whining or trying to stop us like he did when there was wind. I see his quick sniffs and his head shifting from one side of the trail to the other and can’t help but get the feeling he’s enjoying this all again. And I keep going, both of my guns tucked close, so close I convince myself no one will know I’m holding them if they spot me. That if I’m unarmed they might not shoot on sight. Ernest had his gun raised, after all. My eyes roam wild with adrenaline as I pick up the pace. In an endless pattern I scan the buildings in the distance, the roofs, and then the sides of the streets, the thousand eyes of black windows.
Timeless thought sets in again and we make it past two more buildings. I slow down because I know this is the spot—this is where the rifle man was. Inside the apartment I’m walking alongside. Or at least against it, somewhere hidden near where I am now, somewhere Ernest couldn’t see him. I stop and look at the windows, the street, behind me, the roofs, everything, but it’s all the same. Empty quiet. The only change is a slightly darker white that’s saturating the sky. It’s coming from far away, probably from over the sea. To fill the sky with dark ink. I look back at our apartment and there’s a small gray puff, and then another, the smoke still streaming out from the fire. Anyone could see it from here. From anywhere on the main road, high or low. So why hasn’t the third man come yet? I move my feet again, deciding there’s nothing more to do here. No hints at the sniper’s hiding spot. I just have to push on. Drive forward and try to get into that building. I try to figure out how far I am from it. There are three more apartment buildings, and then there’s a long stretch of nothing before I’ll reach the tower. It looks like it’s a mile away at least and I’ll never reach it. I’ll be shot or get frozen to the dunes like Clemmy. At the pace I’m going it will take me at least forty-five minutes. We can do that, right Voley? I say. He looks at me for a moment, just to see if there’s a real problem. Then his nose goes right back into the snow. Eyes ahead, I start the machine and the rhythm and we go.
I look for a sign of the skirmish—some of the red, the place where Ernest fell and tried to crawl. As if the snow preserved that spot, prevented any fresh white from covering up the history of it. But there is no red, not even a soft, faded red. Nothing but the pureness. The snow works faster than the rain to make memories of us. And the thought of memory and its strangeness pushes at me—that without my memory, there’d be no telling what happened here yesterday. Or any telling that I lived a life at all, all the way up to the step I’m taking now. And death will take all the memories. I wonder if I’ll be sure it’s really happening when the shot rings out. I pause and wait like it’s going to happen right now, but no one fires. Then I get the urge to run out and start to dig. To go against the snow. Like I won’t let it bury the clues, bury the story of the life that fell right there. Clemmy’s clothes had clues too, but I didn’t stop to dig. If I only had ignored Ernest and stopped, dug Clemmy up. I would have figured out what happened to Russell.
I want to dig up the red, and then I can believe everything is real again. This is all happening, not just a dream. As if Ernest’s blood will bring me some clarity about what to do, a choice other than just marching down the street to my death. To the place where the snow walkers live, watch, and wait for me. But I don’t go out to the middle and I don’t dig. Instead I look at the roofs again, checking for sticks rising up in broad daylight. No one’s watching. Those sticks are dead, lying in the hallway of the apartment with the smoke rising out of it. Next to a boy I used to know. Three buildings behind me and as far as Philadelphia.
I hear Voley make a noise and when I look he’s got his head in the snow. Whatever bothered him, it went away before I could see it, and he looks like everything’s fine. Moving at his own slow pace, right through the tracks I’m making for him, sniffing for trails I can’t imagine exist, waiting for me to make more progress forward. What’s the matter boy? I ask, too cold to care anymore about my voice being loud. My fingers are swollen again, the pain of frostbite hitting as I grip the gun handles. And the grind of walking has stripped all the precautions I had when we first left the apartment. I just want to get to the building, to get somewhere, so that I can stop moving. Where each step isn’t cold burning. Voley looks at me again with my question, then glances off, and then goes back to the snow. Nose going again. Alright, I say. And we push forward. It’s only a minute later, and four steps, when he barks. I turn around, and just the same as when we were shoveling out the snow around the door yesterday, the fur on his back is standing up. He’s stuck ten feet behind me, staring down the side street we just passed.
I run back through my tracks and up against the apartment wall and say, Voley, come here! Out of the street! He doesn’t listen and I feel the pressure of a gun firing, striking him down just like Ernest. He barks again, standing in the wide open crossroad. I edge toward the last bit of wall and start to poke my head around to see what’s there, my guns ready to fire. That’s when Voley tries to run. He bolts up and then down, as if in slow motion, stuck in the thick snow, moving like a deer ten feet down the side street. Then he starts barking again. I know something’s there and it has to be the rifle man. He’s pulling up for his shot. No! I yell, Come back Voley! And then his barking stops. He looks down the road and snarls low. I raise my arms and take the concrete steps and thrust my body until my thighs burn, pass the edge of the building, turn the corner, and point my guns down the street. There’s nothing there and I barely catch my fingers before I fire anyway. Snow mocks me for missing its clues, wobbling through the sky and soundlessly piling up between the two apartment buildings. All the way out I can see, past apartment buildings, deep into the white fog of nothingness, behind which must be the mountains. But I can’t see a thing. What is it boy? I say, guns raised. Then I look up because I forgot to keep scanning the roofs. They’re clear though, no bodies moving. My eyes slowly work over the windows, watching the road too, ready for something to appear, break the uniform white and the tan cement walls. Voley whines, like he wants to give chase. He looks at me, waiting for permission that I can’t give him. What did you see? I ask again, but he just cocks his head and barks, then looks down the road and barks again. His fur stays up, and he’s saying, Som
eone’s out there. But that’s all I’m getting, and I question whether I should run down the road, which would amount to a slow walk, and find the phantom before it disappears for good. Because for a moment, I think it’s Russell or Ernest out there. But wouldn’t Voley know, even from far away, if it was one of his friends? He wouldn’t bark at them, I tell myself. And then, as my right arm starts to ache from holding the gun up too long, and it starts back down to my side, I hear something in the distance. It’s not the crunch of a man walking and it’s not the wind. Maybe a broad daylight snow demon. I want to fire into the nothing, just to bring it out, or to scare it away, whatever it is. But nothing happens. My mind replays the sound—a screeching whistle.
Finally both of my arms go down. The ridge on Voley’s back starts to fall, and I’m almost ready to turn back to the main street when I see a tiny red dog. It’s only a building away and it just flies across the snow, as if it isn’t sinking in at all like Voley and I do when we walk. And then, that fast, it’s gone. I hear Voley snarl again and bark and go wild, and he starts to plow forward like a deer again, as if he could chase it down, but I tell him to stay. And I remember. It hits me. Fox. Or some kind of small wolf. But no, I remember what they looked like. It has to be a fox. There were plenty of them on the way to Pittsburgh. But how could they live here? There’s no food. Insects, I tell myself. But I haven’t seen one. There’s got to be something. Something to eat here. My heart fills up and I picture him—soft and red and unaffected by the snow or the rain or the weather at all. Somehow alive. I think he must have a family of foxes here. All of them ignoring the things people worry and die over. And they must ignore the radiation too. Besides the whale, and Voley, I haven’t seen wild animals in almost a year. I want him to come back, to join us. To help us find Russell and Ernest, to show the secrets he must know about this dead town, and how to move through it safely. But as long as I stand, he doesn’t come back to the road, and already Voley is distracted, sniffing the empty air in the direction of the main road, like he’s telling me it’s time to move on.
When I step out of my position, my feet protest, locked in place. How long did I let myself stand and watch and dream about the fox? It could have only been a minute…
My legs grind into a start like unoiled gears. I force my body over new dunes, producing the cold heat again. My adrenaline fades and I remember the frostbite setting in, swelling my fingers and my toes. I want to rip away my gloves because I don’t feel like they’re doing anything. And it hits me, with just that one thought, that I’ve felt a piece of what Clemmy felt. To rip the clothes away because they can’t stop the cold anyway, and if I’m going to freeze to death, I might as well have more speed to give myself a chance. Shed every layer and run.
I put my left gun into my pocket so I can wipe my nose. Frozen snot cracks painfully away, and then I’m almost around the edge of the side street and back to the main road. The road to the tower. Salvation or tomb. But right as soon as I step onto the main street, Voley starts up again, but differently this time—not playful at all. It’s a deep, angry growl. Like what I thought was his concern over the fox was really nothing. He doesn’t even bark. And it must be because he doesn’t want to give us away, and I see why. There, dead ahead, mixed into the white fog that’s kicking up again, walking with his eyes on his feet, is a brown rain suit. A snow walker. He looks like he’s somewhere out in the death zone space between the last apartments and the industrial building. I peel back quickly out of sight, into the side street again, moving like the fox over the snow. I am the fox now, I have to be, because of what I’ve seen: in one arm, extending down to what looked like the snow itself, was a dark black line. The rifle. And from behind the apartment where he can’t see me, I tell Voley very calmly to stay quiet, because our lives depend on it. You hear me, boy? I whisper. He keeps growling, and I pet him, tell him again. Slowly his voice dies out. And then I look behind us, and there it is: the faint streak of smoke above the roof. Just what rifle man is walking toward. His target, his missing friends. To find out why they never came back, and that they became cold bodies. I gather myself, my mind telling me to think of a god damned plan over and over, but not making anything up.
The stillness starts to kill us again, freezing us into the snow. If I have to move fast, my feet might not cooperate anymore. And Voley is alternating his paws still, raising one, then another, because he’s running out of time too. We’ll wait here, against the wall, until he passes by, so you can’t make a sound, okay? I say softly to Voley. Not a whimper, nothing, I say. He just turns his head back toward the street, like he’s ready to poke out and see how close the rifle walker is now. No, I say. You hear me? Stay, and quiet. Our lives depend on those words, the ones I heard Dusty use a thousand times and that Voley seems to know like he’s a native speaker. Together we ice over, and the beginning of a new noise starts at last—the wind—and an old pain returns, the stinging blasts that hit my nose and cheeks and mouth. I brace myself for the crunching that will come at any moment. In no time, he’s going to walk right by the side street. And you’re in the wide open. What’s the plan, Tanner? I try to remember how far he was, and figure out from that how long it will take before we can hear his footsteps. And if the frostbite will be irreversible by then, and if he’ll look right away down the side street at us. He has to—why else would he carry that long gun? But it’s only as I’m just starting to think about the distances again, and the time, and the gun, that I can already hear a faint repeating sound. It comes, and then again. It’s walking, a direct line for the apartment with the smoke. Louder and louder. My left gun comes out again, slowly and carefully, and I look at the silver metal. I raise it with the right. And then the wind gusts, and the faint steps are lost in a howl.
Chapter 12
The wind can’t make up its mind about which direction to blow. It spares us for a moment and I can hear clearly. Crunching footsteps. Very close.
I send my right hand back to Voley and he doesn’t make a sound. But he’s waiting. His fur is up and his breath is a dense rising solid. We have four more feet of wall cover, but then we will be in plain view if he looks down the side street. I pray the wind doesn’t reverse and blow our breath into the main road. We’re already too easy for crosshairs.
A conflict jumps in me, and I wonder if I should try to do what Ernest did—try to talk to him. Reason. Get information. Find out the history of this place. Russell and Ernest’s history. That’s insane, I tell myself, and I remember how it went for Ernest when he tried. But it’s different now—there are no more snow walkers in the apartments to cover this one, hidden and watching. There were only three, and this guy has to be the last one. But how can I be sure? There might be a lot more, crippled snow walkers, all back at the nuclear fort, deformed and unable to travel anymore. Just as dangerous to me when I try to get inside.
The footsteps are right on us and I still can’t decide. Part of me really wants to yell “Freeze!” and ask questions. And then I look up at the white sky, turning deep gray now, and I ask what to do. The sky is plain and quiet and keeps sending down the soft cold white on my face. It gives me no answer. There are no gods, Russell says. But there is still comfort in the self-deception. I blink as the flakes go into my eyes. Something inside me misses the rain. Misses the half warmth of rain air that I used to curse as freezing. The first foot crunches into sight before us. Then the other.
He passes and goes by in plain sight, head still down, and he doesn’t even check the side street where we’re huddled. He has tunnel vision on the snow floor. His legs slog through the dense pack with a slight hiccup, like something is wrong with him. He’s just that beat up by the snow, or the invisible death is eating one side of him. And Voley can’t hold out any longer, not with the snow walker right in front of us. He lets out a low growl and vaults forward over unbroken snow. I don’t wait for the man to turn and see us—it’s enough to see his head start to rotate at the sound, and I raise both pistols and shoot. The b
ang happens twice, right gun then left, and it relieves me to see I’ve hit—and I pull again and again on the triggers and then stop because Voley is bounding out at the man and I don’t want to hit him too. I see three red holes on the rain suit and then he goes down. Drops the gun and doesn’t move or groan, but Voley’s on top of him anyway. I argue with my legs and try to get them to run but it’s no use. Slowly I plod toward the body. He looks dead, but then when I’m right on him, I hear the horrible breathing. Deep and wheezing. And Voley isn’t going in for the neck this time. There’s something about this one he doesn’t want in his mouth. Or he just knows the man’s dead already. We listen.
When I kneel beside him I get a quick sensation of fear, like his friends are watching what I’ve done, lining up their shot, and I check all the roofs again. I search the sky and see the gray and the white—this must have been the last living man in Nuke Town. Then his painful breaths start up again, one last fit, and I think of Dusty. His wordless mouthing. The last dream of what must be hoped was a life. Where’s Ernest? I ask the wheezing body. I say it calmly but loud. Fiercely I say it again. His face is sideways and buried in a mound of snow and I can’t even tell if he can hear me. I nudge his head with my boot. Voley barks. Then he comes right against me and waits. I notice he’s holding one of his paws in the air again—rotating them so they don’t stiffen and freeze. The man coughs. I nudge his head around with my foot and I see his face. It’s mostly red beard, bright against the snow, with bushy blonde eyebrows. His eyes are slits, barely open, and blood leaks from his mouth. I want to kick him and scream, to make sure he hurts really bad before his light turns out for good. But I don’t, I just kneel deeper in the snow, grab the rifle from where it fell, and keep studying his face like I can read its past. Where is Ernest? The man you shot yesterday? I ask. Rifle man coughs and closes his eyes completely. His chest rises sharply, holds, and then collapses. It takes a long time for it to rise again. I see the patches on his rain suit, dark red running through the holes where he’s bleeding out. Tainting the snow. I must have hit his lung. Then he mumbles something and it jerks me from my daze. I smack him, yelling for him to speak up because I can’t hear what he said. I think of Dusty and I smack him again. Where is he? What did you do with him? I yell, my voice bouncing back to me from the apartment walls. Then I hear him, and it’s as clear as the snow—My brothers, he says. What? I ask. Where are my brothers? he chokes out.
The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Page 11
