“I would, but I glued all of my dildos to Dale’s locker. I’ll have to borrow yours, if that’s okay.”
“The banana model I stole from your moms’ shoebox?” Zaley said. “You can’t. That’s my favorite.”
“Zaley!” Micah said in appreciative shock.
“Gimp high five,” Corbin said, offering his wounded hand. Zaley smacked it. They continued to razz each other over the next mile while the baby made dental impressions in the rubber badge. Every step brought them closer to the harbor.
The scent of a body joined the one of fire. A crumpled form was near the trail, a sorry heap of jeans and shoes. Vultures were around it. Austin shifted the baby so he wouldn’t see. A child shouldn’t look at that, whether he could remember it or not. Austin didn’t want to look at it either.
A trail met up with their own and combined into one. The scrub changed to trees. Then they came to a road lined with homes, big ones belonging to rich people. Two stories, big wooden decks, stained glass windows, and at the elevation, they overlooked part of the bay. No one was visible through the windows, and two places had been trashed. Nervous about people, Austin checked out Micah and Corbin’s necks. There could also be ferals in those junked homes, seeking out the shade. But Austin had the rifle and Micah the gun. Corbin had his bow. If some dick wanted to dish out trouble, he’d get it dished right back. Just like dear old Uncle Danny had discovered yesterday.
Corbin opened the map and Zaley glanced over it confidently. “We’re going the right way. Redfern is just a little farther.”
Beyond that road was another one that had burned. Blackened wrecks of homes, blackened cars in the driveways, the scorched trees had been stripped of their leaves. The fire was so recent that no new green growth had yet to push up from the soil. The baby sneezed. It was the singed smell, which was tickling Austin’s nose, too. Micah wiped off the snot onto the sweatshirt he was wearing and took him back.
The freeway came into sight, empty lanes to their right. All of those people who had come over the bridge had had to go somewhere without their cars. A lot had likely gone to Sausalito for food and shelter, to find rides. There was a small chance that that enormous blue van could be there, too. It would have looked like a clown car when all of those people climbed out yesterday.
Then that girl who couldn’t free the jammed latch on the car seat could have finally told an adult who would listen that there was a baby forgotten on the bridge. The ratio of adults to children had been a freakish imbalance that went the wrong way. Or the mother (if that woman at the window wasn’t his mother) would search the chaos of little faces and scream when Marcien didn’t appear. And the stupid woman who rejected him would know a zombie had tried to do a good thing, and she would be ashamed. Oh . . . uh . . . well, you see . . . someone tried to hand your baby to me but I . . . uh . . .
If the firefighters put up flyers about an abandoned baby on the Golden Gate Bridge, someone from that group, if it was still in the area, could see one and claim him once he tested clean of Sombra C. So this would be all right in the end, the kid back where he belonged. Even if that was with Shepherds, or Shepherd supporters.
The road dipped down. Burnt debris was scattered across it. They picked carefully through it and came to Redfern’s downtown area. The fire had taken out a huge chunk of a mobile home park and nibbled on the trees and shops of the main road. A sign had gone untouched. Redfern, established 2014, pop. 3055.
Of those three thousand, there wasn’t a soul. No one drove on the streets, nor was anyone around in the few mobile homes to have escaped unscathed. Just as Austin was starting to get spooked, a door to a boutique opened. A man came out and got into a car at the curb. He pulled a U-turn in the road and drove away. It wasn’t abandoned, not entirely. The stores that had sold clothes and food had been vandalized.
Another store had been a headquarters for Shepherds. That one was smashed to bits, the windows and desks in shards and splinters, the pictures torn from the walls and TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY spray-painted on the sidewalk outside. Rage had taken apart those headquarters, whereas the other stores had shelves and racks still upright. There just wasn’t anything on them.
A body was in there, buried under the rubble. The smell was unmistakable.
Austin asked everyone to wait for a minute and slipped cautiously into a demolished bakery. The door was locked, although that was meaningless when the windows had been smashed to smithereens. Benches were lined up along the walls. Some of the tables were overturned, and there were spots on the carpet where they were missing altogether. Austin crunched on glass to the counter. The glass cases around the register were empty, as were the breadbaskets on the shelves behind the counter. The register was wide open and cleaned out.
He peeked into the kitchen, holding the rifle up. The knives were gone, leaving a block with empty cuts, and the refrigerator door was ajar. On the floor was a pink sugar packet. He took it and searched for more. A couple had slid under the island in the center of the room. The fridge was bare and so was a giant pantry, sprays of flour on the wall and an unidentifiable liquid on the tile.
He canvassed every inch, collecting a handful of sugar packets. This had been someone’s livelihood, someone else’s favorite place to eat, and now it was just a trashed husk. Like the country. Like his life. He went back outside. “Just a bit of sugar.”
“No complaints,” Corbin said about the little packages. “It’s calories.”
Only a few stores were still open, and none bustled with customers. No one needed knickknacks and African masks, or a psychic who did palm readings and Tarot cards. Still, a cashier was sitting behind the counter of the knickknack store and a woman was walking around in the psychic shop. Other businesses looked open but actually weren’t. They were being used as temporary shelters, tents erected among the desks and aisles. A couple looked out of one and smiled at the baby.
Zaley noticed a police station at the end of the road. It was the smallest station imaginable, separated from the stores by a field and parking lot. Two squad cars rested in the spaces. Neither was burned or junked, so presumably, there were cops inside the station. Austin said, “Should Zaley go in there and hand over Mars? Or should we just leave him by the door?” He was voting by the door.
“Outside,” Corbin said. “She should put him down, bang on the door, and run back to us in the field. We can watch from there.”
Austin felt bad about leaving the kid on the ground, but that was the safest thing to do. If the cops hassled Zaley about the baby, it was risky to have the three of them go in there to get her out. Keen eyes could notice the cosmetics. Mars wouldn’t be on the ground long.
They stopped in a grove of trees about two hundred feet from the station. Micah took off the sweatshirt. Austin kissed the baby’s forehead and said, “Goodbye, Marsie. You be good.” The baby smiled and grasped Austin’s chin.
“Good luck, little dude,” said Corbin, keeping his distance. Zaley put out her arms awkwardly to take the baby.
“No, I’ll do it,” Micah said. No one argued. Something in her face stopped them from trying. She shifted Mars to her hip, took the star from Austin, and walked into the parking lot. They moved to a thicker patch of trees and bushes to watch her go.
Please, Jesus. Let there be a nice cop inside. As Micah approached the squad cars, Austin said, “Do you think there’s still a foster care system?”
“I don’t know,” Corbin said. “Maybe one of the officers will just take him home for now, until the system is working again.”
Micah reached the sidewalk that extended around the station. A step away from the doors, she kissed Mars’ forehead and spoke to him. Then she untangled her hair from his hands and gave him the star. She put him down with excruciating care, her hand behind his head until it touched the fabric of the diaper bag for a pillow.
Hoping no one was watching them stand around suspiciously in the trees to spy on the police station, Austin checked their surroundings. Redfern was close to a ghost t
own, and he was reassured. Stiffening at his side, Corbin said, “Come on!”
Micah was frozen on the sidewalk, her eyes drawn down to the baby. A thin wail was coming from his throat and he waved his arms at her to be picked up. After a moment, her fingers curled into a fist and she inched to the doors. The baby began to cry in earnest.
Her fist never touched the glass to pound. Backing away, Micah pulled the baby into her arms. The diaper bag went over her shoulder and she strode off. Not into the station, nor back to the park, but to the hills. “What the hell is she doing?” Austin asked as she stepped off the sidewalk and cut through trees.
The doors to the station opened and a cop came out to look at the street. Micah was gone. They waited for the officer to get in a squad car and drive away before rushing through the park and to the hills to catch up. Austin was in the lead, his legs chugging over the incline and his eyes searching for blue.
When he got to her, he burst, “Micah!”
The baby wasn’t crying any more, pleased as punch to be in her arms. She was walking up the grade, her gaze fixed on the crest. “No, Aussie.”
“He’ll be okay. We can’t take him with us.”
“No.” When she turned, he was startled at her teary blue-green eyes. Micah wasn’t much of a crier. “They left him behind to die in the van and then closed the window in his face. So he’s mine now. I’m not leaving him outside a police station.”
Catching up, Corbin said, “Micah, go back there and give him to the cops!” Zaley panted at his side.
“No,” Micah said.
“A kid needs bottles. Formula. Diapers!” Corbin exclaimed. “All sorts of shit! How are we supposed to get to the harbor with him?”
“What is this we business? You’re not involved. I walked off on my own. He’s my problem, not yours. You three get to the harbor. I’ll get there with him. We’re not holding you back. So go along and we’ll see you there.”
“We aren’t splitting up!” Austin said. They needed Micah and her craziness as much as Zaley and her clear neck. What they didn’t need was a baby! That was going to complicate everything. “Micah, you aren’t thinking straight. This is too dangerous,” he said, gesturing to the wild space all around them, “to take a little kid through. We shouldn’t even be here.”
“He’s not a stray dog you can take home,” Corbin said.
Angrily, Micah said, “Fuck you! I know what he is and we don’t have a home!”
“He belongs to someone,” Corbin said just as strongly. “If that wasn’t his mom in the window, then some woman out there cried last night because she didn’t know where he was.”
“And if it was his mom, she didn’t,” Micah retorted. “It’s a breakdown! The cops aren’t going to locate his family to find out which it is. They can’t. What do you think they’re going to do? Launch an investigation? They’re just going to shuffle him off to whatever makeshift foster home they can find and forget about him. A foster home which is not, by the way, receiving its support checks from the government because there isn’t really much of a government any more. Foster parents who don’t have any better access to resources than anyone else! He’ll end up like that shitty little Shepherd Boomslang, tossed from foster home to foster home and dead on a trail one day because he’s messed up in the head and stupid as fuck!”
“I just don’t think this is the best solution,” Zaley said quietly in the standoff. The baby watched.
“There isn’t any solution that’s best, or even all that good,” Micah said. “So he’s mine. Do you hear me? He’s mine. You guys go north. Please let me keep the gun, or trade me for the rifle. I’m going to cut ahead here and take the road on the other side down to Sausalito, so I can find formula and other baby shit for him. We will see you in Sonoma.”
“No, no, no!” Austin said. This was her loose screw, which he loved in every instance except when it pulled stunts like this one. He wasn’t going to let her walk away from them and they couldn’t walk forty miles or steal cars or get through braces with a child. That she couldn’t see it made him want to pull at his hair, and he felt betrayed that she was tossing them aside so easily. “How can you pick some stupid kid over us? I thought we were friends. We’ve been friends for years!”
“I’m not picking him over you and I didn’t ask for him either. It’s not his fault that he’s in this world. He didn’t ask to be here any more than we did.” Micah’s arms tightened around Mars, who babbled for her attention. “Look, you guys can debate what you’re going to do for as long as you want. But I need to get going.” She walked away.
They looked at one another speechlessly. Austin wanted to storm after Micah, yank the baby from her arms, and return him to the police station for the cops to deal with. Instead, he said wrathfully to Zaley and Corbin, “Well, are you coming? We have to get to the harbor.”
Over the crest of the hill and down a slope was the road. Micah was cutting down to it. Giving her one more furious glance, Austin banished her from his thoughts and turned his attention to the trail across the street. While it was scrub to the west, the trail bypassed it to wind between tall trees. Shade that deep would lure ferals. They had to be careful, or skip it altogether to walk in the scrub. It was thick in some places and was going to be difficult to pass through. He chose the trail. Straying from it was an invitation to lose it altogether.
They should give themselves a few hours at the tail end of the day to find shelter, not just press on blindly until evening and hope they stumbled into something like the minivan. Austin walked across the street and straight into the shade, daring a feral to come over and make trouble. He was ready to blow it away.
She had ditched them. It was too astonishing to comprehend. His strides were quick and purposeful. He remembered that the trail wobbled around in the map, and eventually it had an offshoot that dumped out in Marin. They’d break into a house or a store there for food and water. Steal a car and press on. He had seen people hotwire cars in movies. You just yanked down wires from underneath the steering column, did something to them, and the car started. Corbin would know. He had a mechanical mind.
“Austin,” Zaley called. She and Corbin were standing at the edge of the shade. Austin read everything in their posture. Both of them were slightly turned to the road that led to Sausalito. So they wanted to leave him, too!
“Fine, go!” Austin yelled. He would get to the harbor on his own, and he’d be the only one to make it.
“Come with us,” Zaley pleaded.
As mad at them as he was at Micah, Austin shouted, “You do know she’s crazy, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Corbin. It was all over his face how well he knew that. “But she’s still our friend. It’s smarter if we stick together.”
“Zaley, you know that she’s making a mistake!” Austin said.
“She’s being unreasonable. But let’s not break up over this,” Zaley said.
It was Micah who broke them up. Austin was sick of people walking out on him. The only safe way was to be alone. Then he would never be disappointed in anyone. He continued down the trail and Zaley said, “Please, Austin! We can convince her this isn’t a good idea. Sausalito has got to have better places to leave him than Redfern anyway.”
They weren’t going to convince Micah of anything. Austin listened to the sound of the wind in the trees, the scratching of two pairs of feet going in the other direction. Choosing Micah over him. They hadn’t even stuck around long enough to make sure Austin had a share of the food and water in his backpack.
A smell came on the breeze, a body rotting somewhere in the trees. The world was such an ugly, horrible place. The worst part was how it pretended not to be. Friends forever, kittens and rainbows, everyone is equal, and that was bullshit. Real was the confinement point and the attack on the bridge, his mom dumping off his belongings at the hospital and the window closing on the baby’s face. Real was two thick pieces of fresh, delicious bread, and a fat log of gooey shit hidden inside.
The body wasn’t in the trees. It was on the path around a bend. He stopped in his tracks and stared at the twisted form of an old black man in a green jacket. Blood had soaked into the ground around his head and turned brown from time. There wasn’t a stamp on his neck, nor was he dressed in a Shepherd’s vest. The injury was to his chest. He stared at Austin, who stared at him.
Austin couldn’t pray for the man and there weren’t any flowers to pick. He couldn’t even make himself walk around the forgotten body, to pass any further into the nonsense of their lives.
He would walk into the harbor alone and be alone while he was there and what was the point? There wasn’t a point to anything. And one day he’d be dead and there wasn’t a point to that either. People would look down at his body and wonder absentmindedly, and soon they’d forget about him.
His body made the decision independent of his mind. He returned down the path, his walk kicking up to a jog at an eh-eh-eh that was scarily close. A chorus of feral voices answered the first and his jog transformed into a run. Hoots and squeals and bays, there were too many voices to count. Choosing the path in the shade over the scrub had been stupid, Austin using his angry brain rather than his logical one.
Zaley and Corbin were standing on the road not far from the trail, engaged in a serious though not angry debate. Both were relieved to see him dash out of the trees. His pace turned their relief to alarm. The feral cries had quieted, but that didn’t mean the ferals had gone away.
They were all he had, Micah and Zaley and Corbin, and now Mars. Austin wasn’t so rich in friends that he could toss them aside for new ones. He didn’t want to walk into that harbor alone, or die alone trying to get there either. To be a body that a stranger found in a nowhere place. “Let’s go. There are a lot of ferals in the trees.”
All three of them broke into a jog. Austin scanned ahead for Micah. For all they knew, she and the baby could have already been attacked. She wouldn’t be able to fight as well with a kid on her hip and that was exactly why they shouldn’t have a kid at all!
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 127
