South

by Frank Owen

He was halfway up the slope again before the rage kicked in.

  ‘Jesus! How could you lose it, you old fart?’

  But then the thought came swirling that he’d lodged it too loosely on his belt on purpose. Maybe his sick brain had already poisoned the rest of his system, hollowing him out like a gourd.

  All told, he must have searched the hillside for an hour, desperate for the gleam of metal.

  He gave up and went back to the shack. He sat down against the tethering pole.

  ‘Okay. I give up. Where’s the closest gun, then, you asshole?’

  The answer was simple.

  The ghost colony. Had to be.

  He struggled up again. He’d pack a bag real quick – just something to eat. He wouldn’t be staying long when he got there, would he? He had a pressing engagement with dementia. He made his way back inside the shack.

  The day turned and against it Felix Callahan went walking, the lyrics of a hundred childhood songs falling at his heels.

  ‘The cat was Dallas,’ he kept mouthing to himself. ‘The cat. His name was Dallas.’

  At the river he stopped to check the canvas bag for food. He reached in, feeling for jerky or nuts. There were none.

  He looked inside and then tipped the whole bag upside down.

  He’d packed its pockets with dirt and dried grass.

  31

  The Mouth.

  Even the name was fearsome. Maybe it was the soup, but his own mouth was dry. Dyce looked at Ears McCreedy in the pack where he had been set to keep him away from the fire. The idea of losing the little squirrel turned something like a vise in Dyce’s chest. Strange, after all the times he’d told Garrett to ditch the thing.

  ‘You got to eat a whole extra meal a week just to carry that sand bag around. It’s a waste of calories.’

  ‘Keeps me trim, now, don’t it, Fatty?’ Garrett had lifted his shirt, shown off the scarred skin stretched over his ribs, the horrific punch line to his joke.

  Dyce stared Ears down. The pupils were black plastic eyes for a teddy bear that his dad had found in a sewing kit. There was something wrong about the perfection of the work on the squirrel’s face. Garrett’s handiwork always had an obvious flaw – the stitches prominent, or too much skin folded in on itself, which made the creature gaunt, the tail shriveled, dry as jerky. And Garrett knew they were bad. He didn’t do it because he liked the way they looked. Ears seemed real: that was all.

  It kept Dyce thinking about Garrett, about how he could be alive and well and somewhere else, on his way to freedom in another country across the water. The trek south to the ocean was another thousand miles. Even without the Callahans on Garrett’s tail, getting there would be nigh-on impossible. The closer he got to the coast, the more the wet sea air would foster the viruses. The still air itself would turn to poison. And the onshore winds with their heat and humidity would make it worse. On his own Garrett would miss the signs of the rising wind, no question. Dyce was sure he would find himself out in the open, without the right kind of shelter. All his life he’d relied too heavily on his little brother to clean up, to apologize, to take responsibility. For Dyce that had meant that whatever big talk Garrett had delivered about going on alone, he’d never meant a word of it. They’d been inseparable because they needed to be – the bravado and the smarts in equal measure. Garrett needed him. Right?

  Garrett needed him, and this ghost colony didn’t. Not the way it needed Ruth.

  How long would it take him and Vida to catch Garrett up? He and she were both healthy, getting stronger by the day – and they had each other for protection.

  And not just protection. Dyce remembered Vida’s desperation in the night, the smell of her body between them, the way she had got up first and left in a hurry.

  Oh, man. He remembered.

  And would it be so wrong, anyway? The two of them? She wasn’t that much older, was she? Maybe a ten-year gap between them. People did it all the time – and that wasn’t even when the world was ending.

  ‘Come on, Ears. Give me some of that squirrel wisdom, buddy. What do you say?’

  Ears was no fucking help at all.

  Vida and Ruth walked up slowly between the shelters. As they went, she made an automatic note of the wind, blowing north. She was constantly vigilant, more so after the Weatherman’s dire prediction, waiting for the thunderous orange sky that would precede the deluge. If he was right, every hundred years was the end of the world. The super-storm when it came always wiped out the things people called civilization, the way the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 did, and a hundred years before that with The Big Rain, and again a hundred years prior to that, before people were naming their weather – when the severity of the thing could only be counted by the number of bodies that floated past, human and animal. We run to the places that are the least help to us, Vida told herself.

  But Horse Head was peaceful. The wisps of smoke rose from the friendly fires, straight and slow, until they hit the stream of air above, forced up and away by the mountain ridge. I hope they’re grateful, Vida thought. These folks got their own personal groundhog standing by.

  She hadn’t really paid close attention to the people, not since she’d had her own problems to take care of, but she saw again as she walked that the groups of residents were not regular families at all. Not traditional ones. There were no mothers or fathers with their children here, neat four-square units built for buying cars. These were new-world families, built from the remnant outcasts. There were men and women taking care of each other, sure, but they had formed themselves into groups that took care of the kids, the scared and lonely ones who’d been shut out of their home camps and made to walk away.

  And we are part of them, Vida thought. We’ve done it too. You can’t just look after your own.

  Vida and Ma walked slowly among the people at the graves, greeting the sick who were tending to the dead. A man wandered over with his basket of roasted sweet potatoes. Vida handled a hot one for her mama and divided it. They would share it, as they shared everything, its skin crisp and sweet. They watched the man hand the rest out to all who would take them, until his basket was empty. Hoarding was for the living.

  Vida looked at Ruth and saw she was tired. ‘Let’s sit here and have a picnic, Ma.’

  She wiped one hand and then helped Ruth to sit on a stump at the edge of the camp in the shade of a pine. Ma puffed her cheeks and looked at her half of the sweet potato.

  ‘Vida, baby. I’m going to stay here.’

  ‘Okay. Should I come by and get you later?’

  ‘No, I mean that I’m going to stay here, in the camp, and help. And I think you should go.’

  ‘What?’ Vida felt the tears pushing up from her chest, a tap that had been turned on.

  ‘You’re right,’ Ruth said. ‘I think I can help. I need to do something. And it’s time you did your own thing, anyway.’

  Vida wanted to say all kinds of things to change her mother’s mind, but the tears were getting in the way. She gave in to them and put her arms around Ruth, who let her cry against her chest. Ruth talked and her voice made her sternum vibrate against her daughter’s cheek. Vida tried to calm herself but she ended up thinking of all the nights her ma had stayed up with her when she was scared or sick or just lonely. How did you ever let go of your mother? It made her cry harder, a storm of tears that had been a long time gathering. Ruth kept going, her potato cooling in her hand. It was better to say it all, get it out right away and not let it fester.

  ‘Of course, you can stay if you want. That’s your choice. But I’m going stay and help. I had a lot of time alone with my thoughts those nights in the house, Vida, and I did not like what I saw. There are a lot of things I have to put right – demons that followed me all the way from up north that I need to parley with. You know some of the story but you’re not ready to know all of it, and one day I’ll tell you. But, right now, you just need to trust that there are things I need to make right, and I think I can do it here.
’

  ‘Then I’ll stay too.’

  ‘I can’t see Dyce wanting to stay here, baby. He’s too young. He’s going to go looking for his brother, and you need to decide whether you going to follow him. You want my advice? When he goes, I think you should go along. Not ’cause I think you should marry the boy and have his kids – Jesus, no! – but because he’s going someplace. And I’m done going places. I’m saying this because I love you. You’ve always been a part of my story, but now it’s time to start your own.’

  ‘We’re not books, Ma.’ Vida sniffed.

  ‘You of all people should know how important books are, Vida. You keeping the recipes safe?’

  ‘I am, Mama. Don’t worry.’ Vida didn’t mention the spilled bag, the remedy book lying beside it in the morning sun, damp from the grass – and that she’d chosen already between Dyce and the book.

  Between Dyce and Ma.

  But maybe it wasn’t Dyce she’d chosen. Maybe he was just an option that wasn’t Ma – a choice different to the only one she’d ever had.

  ‘But I won’t go. He can go. I don’t care. I won’t.’ The words out of her mouth sounded hollow even to her own ears.

  ‘Don’t decide yet. I’m going to stay, and that’s all we need to say for now. Now wipe your eyes.’ Ma, her message delivered, tore into her sweet potato, wolfing down the orange flesh. Vida held onto hers but couldn’t bring herself to bite into it.

  ‘I think I will sit here for a bit, baby girl,’ said Ma, after the last mouthful. ‘Come and find me later.’

  Vida was dismissed. She stood to go, and when she was some way off she turned to watch her ma sitting with her head in her hands. At least she’s sad about it, thought Vida. When Ruth saw Vida watching her, she wiped her face and forced a smile and a wave. It turned into another gesture, and Vida saw Dyce coming up the hill. He looked healthy and quick, purposeful, swaggering. Give a man a pair of dry pants and he thinks he owns the world, thought Vida. Ma was right that he wouldn’t stay. And Vida knew, just watching him walk to her, smiling and dirty, that she would go with him. He was a gateway, a big old fucking door to some other way of living. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Maybe it was the hushed air, making her weepy. Her cells knew that the weather was changing, and the rain would be here soon. Not yet, but soon.

  ‘Where’s your ma?’

  ‘Resting for a bit.’

  ‘So, I got some news.’

  Vida had not thought her heart could sink lower than it already had.

  ‘I heard about this place. Settlement they call The Mouth.’

  32

  Dyce spent the rest of the morning going around the camp, asking people what they knew about The Mouth – its exact location, in particular – while Vida sulked and checked the weather. So far he had not found anyone who had been there themselves, but the third- and fourth-hand accounts made it sound like heaven.

  And heaven was due south, in the cleft of a valley. It made sense, Dyce thought. Protection from the wind. The name, one man said, came from the fact that it used to be a copper mine. He wheezed as he talked, whole sentences in sharp breaths, but Dyce could make it all out pretty clearly. The Mouth was where the series of tunnels began. There were probably dozens of little shafts and air vents and caves, an extra blessing if the wind ever did find its way down the slopes. But what did you do if there wasn’t space for everyone? Dyce wondered if you left the worst-off outside – the feeble and the old – to take their chances. Let nature take its course, and all that. He had always hated that saying. Nature wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t always right, either.

  But the best part about The Mouth, if Dyce’s calculations were correct, was that it was beyond the edge of the world – beyond the reach of the Callahan clan, and on the way to the coast. Whatever order the Callahans brought was likely not welcome there, so Garrett at least stood a chance of survival. The Mouth probably ran itself too, the way Horse Head did. The little pockets of resistance maintained their own structures, but their freedom was hard-won.

  When Dyce told Vida about it he’d expected more of a reaction, but she was subdued. She folded her arms and looked at the ground and kept saying, ‘But how do you know for sure, Allerdyce?’

  It irked him. ‘You got anything of your own to add to the pot?’

  Her mouth tightened and they stood in silence, looking out to the horizon. Beyond it the clouds were gathering, menacing and mute, readying themselves for attack.

  The scream, when it came, pierced the lowering sky between them, and they watched as a woman came running down the slope towards the camp. She kept shouting and waving, high-pitched and desperate, like a long-dead siren come back to life. Dyce and Vida couldn’t make out what she was saying: as her feet thumped on the ground the air was punched out of her. She would be with them soon enough – and you never knew if it was a brain disease that was doing the talking.

  When she reached their shelter the woman stopped, her hands holding her sides as she caught her breath. But before she could talk she bent over and retched like a dog. Dyce and Vida jumped back as the strings of bile dangled down towards the earth. The woman wiped her mouth on her sleeve and then spat out her words like vomit, panting in between.

  ‘Allerdyce! It’s Sam. Oh, God! It’s Sam! Other side of the peak!’

  Dyce felt his heart ratcheting up, the urgency passed on like a fever.

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  She straightened and pointed, her thin arm shaking. ‘Straight over the ridge.’ Dyce followed the line of the limb, the blackened fingernail. She looked as if she’d been digging in the dirt.

  He set off, and Vida followed. He had not tried running since he’d been sick, doing only as much as he felt he reasonably could while his body did its best to catch up with his expectations. But now that he was actually doing it, he felt good – nimble. He pumped his legs and Vida, surprised by the burst of speed, had trouble keeping up. At the crest Dyce zig-zagged over the rocks and down, feeling the way the air changed as he went. Here it was fresh, rising from the muddy valley, green and pine-scented and energizing.

  Every couple of meters he called out. ‘Sam! Sam! If you can hear me, yell!’

  A couple of hundred yards down, beyond the stone border of the colony, Dyce heard the moans. They adjusted their course, stopping and listening for the sounds every few seconds to get their bearings. Then Dyce heard Pete calling out.

  ‘This way! Over here!’

  Dyce pushed through the foliage and found himself in a clearing. Pete stood to one side, his brown face pale with horror. On the ground was a body with its ankle held in the claws of a bear trap. The man’s face was hidden under Pete’s jacket, but Sam’s voice was still his own. The skin that Dyce and Vida could see had once been so pale it was blue, like a drowning victim, the veins mapping the surface. But the hours in the sun had burnt and blistered the skin, and each time Sam twisted away from the trap he rubbed himself raw. Under the jacket he kept moaning.

  Dyce came closer and saw his leg, the bone snapped by the spring of the trap. Flies circled the sticky mess.

  Oh, Jeez. I can see the marrow!

  Pete touched his arm and Dyce shook him off. ‘Sorry,’ Pete said. ‘You’ve been exposed to whatever he has, right?’

  Dyce nodded.

  Pete went on. ‘I can’t touch him without getting infected. But you—’

  ‘Get me a branch, then. Quick.’

  Pete dodged off, glad to have something to do, and Dyce bent to inspect the trap. Rusty and sharp-toothed, laid recently, fingermarks in the dirt where someone had scooped leaves to cover it over.

  And a feather: long-shafted, banded gray and brown.

  Dyce picked it up.

  Tye fucking Callahan.

  He handed it to Vida. They looked at each other and then she set the feather aside. ‘You gonna try to get that man out of there?’

  Dyce sat on the down-slope and found a grip for his fingers on the jaw of the thing. Then he tried to wedge
a boot heel into the gap. Sam screamed in pain.

  ‘Easy, easy, easy,’ Dyce spoke, as much to himself as to Sam. He looked at Vida and gestured at Sam. Vida knelt and spoke to him – stroking his arm through his shirt like he was an animal she had to gentle: careful, always careful. He’d suffered bad here, she could see, his hands bloody from trying to free himself, the palms and fingers cut in his fight to be free before the punishing dawn.

  ‘Pete! For fuck’s sake! Where’s that branch?’

  ‘Coming!’

  He appeared, out of breath, with a chunk of damp wood in his hand.

  ‘Okay. On three I’m going to open it. Then I want that wedged in here, right?’

  Pete nodded and aimed at the jaws like a knight with his lance ready to pierce a dragon.

  ‘One . . .’

  Vida gripped Sam’s arm.

  ‘Two . . .’

  Sam brought the wood closer, right to the lips of the beast.

  ‘Three!’

  Dyce dug his heel in and pulled. The ancient spring groaned and popped, readjusting itself, and the teeth opened slowly. Sam shrieked. Vida looked over at Dyce. His face was red with the strain, his neck a web of sinews and muscles, his lips pulled back against his teeth.

  When the trap was open just wide enough, Pete jammed the wood in. Dyce let go, his hands wet with blood – his own and Sam’s co-mingled.

  The wood held.

  Dyce took hold of the trap and worked it off Sam’s leg, past the splinter of bone and over his bare foot. The calf was shredded. In the wound Dyce could see specks of rust and dirt, the welcome mat laid out for infection.

  ‘Got to get him back to my ma,’ said Vida. ‘Can you lift him?’

  Dyce winced. ‘Give me a second.’ His back was in spasm from the exertion. He leant back against the pain. He would pay for that the next morning.

  ‘Wish we could help.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He stretched his neck from side to side and then crouched down carefully beside Sam. He had blacked out. Good. Dyce slid his hands around the man and laid him over his shoulder like a baby. Sam was light, skin and brittle bones.