Wade picked himself up, forcing himself to remain still. His hands were sticky, and he wiped a few small stones from cuts in his palms. It would take precious water from the barrels to clean out the wounds. His fear had already cost them that.
No more mistakes.
He felt gravel under his shoes. He was in the driveway. He slid sideways until he felt the stones give way to grass, then stepped carefully, toeing the surface of the earth to skirt the driveway’s edge. After about a hundred feet, he scooped up a handful of stones and threw one with as much force as he could muster. There was a soft snap as it ricocheted off a tree. He turned several degrees and heaved another, with identical results. The third gave a hollow thud as it struck the house’s wooden siding. He followed that sound, with a few more thrown stones, until he was back on the front steps. He climbed them like a castaway washed up on dry land, filled with such relief that his knees gave out.
There was a crack, like a stone thrown against a distant tree, and a long, lingering thunder. Another. And another. By the time Wade realized they were gunshots, they had stopped.
He put the flats of his hands on the step and suppressed the urge to run headlong into the yard. His father had a gun, and the sound came from down the road, in the direction he had gone foraging. There was no way to know if he was involved. Something was happening, and Wade was utterly helpless to do anything about it.
He waited.
His dad might be hurt, or lost. Maybe he should light a fire to guide him home. Wade discarded the idea. The matches were in the moldy stillness of the basement. More importantly, his father had insisted that they betray no sign that the house was inhabited. No fire, no lights after dark, no cooking smoke, as little sound as possible.
Before they had turned off the radio for good, they’d heard stories of lawlessness, of mobs and violence—at first just a few, then a troubling number. Then nothing else, as if the stories had grown together over the earth like healing skin. The voices on the radio had expressed shock, then restrained horror. Finally, disdain. It wasn’t just a few desperate people, damaged or sick, like rabid animals. It was people, predatory in their wild state, slipped free of the harnesses that had once made them appear tame.
*
The night would never end. He’d fallen out of the normal stream of time and entered an eddying section, his mind turning and turning. This sensation, he knew, was a common report of people who had been lost in the wild. Fear primed the mind for action, and stretched one minute into five.
He lay on the edge of the porch, closing and opening his eyes. After what might have been hours, a chalk smear went through the air, a feeble light which he took for a moment to be morning. The blurred shadows of trees slid over the yard in parallel furrows.
Headlights shone in the driveway.
He pushed himself back against the front wall, feeling cornered. A car slid to a halt before the house. Ghosts writhed in the twin beams.
“Help me get her out!”
His dad was already out of the car and circling in front of the headlights. In the unflinching beams, he was an ungainly puppet with stick limbs.
Wade descended the steps and came around to the passenger side. A woman was slumped over in the front seat. His dad was trying to get her arm over his shoulder, then gave up and tried to pull her out by both hands.
“Help me!” he demanded.
She was limp and grey, and Wade felt an unexpected surge of horror at the prospect of touching her. Her hair hung in knotted curtains around an expressionless face. Oil soaked her dirty shirt and pants. She looked profoundly ill, nearly dead.
He’d never felt this way before, never shown any such disgust around sick people, but something ancient in him was shouting to avoid any contact, even if it meant letting her die. It was a new voice, raw and shrill, like a child’s cry or the sudden wail of a fire alarm. The sensation was ugly, shameful, and thrilling.
A hard voice came from behind him. “For god’s sake, get out of the way.” A girl pushed past him, ignored his father and tugged the semi-conscious woman out of the seat. Wade’s dad ducked under the woman’s other arm, and together they supported her to the porch stairs. Wade ran ahead to get the door. With the light behind them, they looked like scarecrows, so thin he half expected them to rattle as they walked.
The woman’s feet bumped up the steps.
“Turn off those headlights,” his dad hissed as he went by.
“What’s wrong with her?” Wade cried. The woman groaned, and no one answered him. The girl tripped in the dark hall, and the woman and Wade’s father fell into a writhing heap.
“Get a flashlight!” the girl yelled.
Wade ran to the kitchen, his right hand tracing the wall, and extracted a flashlight from a drawer. The sudden brightness made his eyes hurt. In its beam, the oily smear on the woman’s shirt was a vivid red. His father and the girl managed to support the injured woman to the couch.
“What happened?” Wade asked.
“He shot her!” the girl answered, pointing at his father. She stood a head taller than Wade, and was probably a couple years older. “Then he said we were taking her to a hospital!”
“I said we were taking her someplace we could treat her,” his father interjected.
The girl gestured wildly. “So where are the doctors?”
“We’ll take care of her. It wasn’t safe down there,” Wade’s father replied.
“It was until you showed up!”
“Whose car is that?” Wade asked.
His father and the girl regarded him, just for a moment, with a look he recognized but could never anticipate. Their faces betrayed surprise and faint distaste, as if an animal had uttered an offensive word.
“You’re shining the light in my eyes,” his dad said quietly. His pale face was angular, the lips not quite meeting over the teeth. Wade clicked them back into darkness. The living room smelled of unwashed bedding and smoke—the scent of destruction, slow and fast.
“Why did you shoot her?” Wade asked.
“I don’t have time to answer your questions,” his father told him. “Go to bed.”
Wade was halfway to the stairs when he felt the knife in his pocket. It lay heavy against his hip, like a new muscle. He returned to the living room. “Maybe I can help,” he said.
Even in darkness, Wade felt the girl’s confusion, heard her hair swish as she looked rapidly between them.
“I don’t think so, Wade,” his father said.
“I studied wilderness first aid,” he replied.
“You’re kidding.” The girl’s voice broke.
His father sighed. “Fine. Just take a look.”
Wade turned on the flashlight and handed it over. His father directed the beam at the red spattered woman on the couch. Her narrow chest rose and fell irregularly—short panting followed by a longer, heaving inhalation, as if she was breathing in code.
He’d read a few books about treating medical emergencies, mostly as a supplement to his interest in search and rescue. Lost people often got injured. Fear caused them to make bad decisions. They risked descending a steep slope, crossing a frozen stream or bushwhacking blindly in rugged country. They got hurt, and that affected their rate of movement, or caused them to stop entirely and seek shelter. Even rescuers on recovery missions, months or years later, had to factor in the possibility that a missing person had been injured.
His father pushed the woman’s shirt up a few inches, leaving a red paint-swipe on her pale flank. Wade noticed for the first time the dark stains on his father’s hands, a crust that broke to reveal skin at his knuckles.
The wound was hidden under the soaked fabric of her waistband, a little incision over her hip bone that drooled a fresh line of blood when exposed. You wouldn’t think someone’s life could escape through such a tiny gap.
“What are you going to do?” the girl asked. No one replied. “Does he know what he’s doing?” she said, louder.
“Never mind,”
Wade’s father said. “Just go to bed.”
It’s just like school, Wade thought. His uselessness had been on daily display there, like a curiosity in a glass case. School had taught him how to be alone. “Is there an exit wound?” Wade asked.
“No,” his father replied. His voice was faint, distant. “I don’t think so. There was a lot of blood.”
“We should, um… check. For an exit wound. She could be bleeding out of it. Can you help me roll her on her side?”
The girl stepped in to help. People wanted to do something in a crisis, Wade thought. Lost hikers often wandered, worsening their situation, because they couldn’t bring themselves to sit down and do nothing while awaiting rescue. It had never made sense to him before.
They found no additional wounds.
“Are you going to take out the bullet?” the girl asked.
“That’s surgery,” he said. He felt emboldened by her question, as merely answering it made him more of an authority. “And, uh, in most cases they leave bullets alone. Removing them could cause more damage.”
“We should clean the wound,” his father said.
“Yeah,” Wade said. “Right.” His fleeting sense of importance was already vanishing. “I’ll go get some water.”
He used the camp stove to heat a quart of brown water scooped from the barrel, consuming some of their precious cooking fuel. He used a half-cup to scrub his own hands, then approached the couch with some medical supplies he’d found under the sink in his parents’ old bedroom.
He offered the hot water, but neither his father nor the girl took it, so he knelt down, washed the wound and taped a clean bandage over it.
“Is she going to die?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe. She might be bleeding internally. If—”
“We can’t tell yet,” his father broke in. “I’ll sleep down here and keep an eye on her. Wade can show you our guest room.”
“I’ll stay with her,” the girl said.
“You can—” his father began.
The woman moaned. No one breathed for a moment, waiting for her to inhale again. Then her short, rasping breaths resumed.
They regarded each other, no one speaking, as if disrupting the silence would break a spell.
“I’m going to bed,” Wade announced.
The moaning began again late that night. Even with his door closed, Wade could hear the woman’s voice filling the house like a reproachful ghost.
Later, exhausted and sleepless, he began to resent the woman. She must have done something wrong for his father to have shot her. Maybe she threatened him, or tried to steal the goods he was scavenging.
Another sound began to fill the spaces between her moans, a low static. The voices from the driveway were back. Wade suddenly felt as if he’d awakened in a deep hole and glimpsed a circle of sky. He was ashamed at having hated the woman. He strained to hear the whispers, the hiss of conversations from the edge of space. The sound amplified, then there was a sharp series of reports on the ceiling, a fierce drumming that gathered into an onslaught. It was raining.
It had been weeks since the last rain. He could almost feel the water sliding down the roof shingles, chattering into the gutters and the downspouts, like veins feeding the rain barrels, blood swelling the chambers of the house’s hearts.
I should put the knife back, he thought, and slept.
*
In the morning, the moaning had ceased. The woman was pale against the flowery upholstery of the sofa, panting softly with the girl curled up on the floor beside her. Wade’s father was folded uncomfortably into a love seat. Wade went out to check the rain barrels, and discovered he could see the woods beyond the driveway. The rain had beaten back the smoke. The house was no longer an island. Down the slope, two neighbor’s houses leaned like shipwrecks.
He could see the sky.
Wade stood at the foot of the porch steps, wondering if it had always been this blue. As he watched, a tiny white shape, little more than a speck on the surface of his eye, glided soundlessly across the expanse, trailing a filament of vapor behind it. He resisted the sudden, foolish urge to wave his hands and call out. From the airplane, he was neither alive nor dead, just a pixel in a thousand mile panorama. A fragment of debris.
Weeks ago, he might have mistaken it for a sign of pending rescue. Now he knew better. No one was coming. The people outside the frayed margins of the disaster were resuming their lives, passing with impunity over the fractured roads, observing at a distance the wave-scoured and burned cities, the wounded skin of the world.
He made a full loop of the house. All of the barrels were full. He dipped out several cool handfuls and scrubbed his face.
“Your dad is looking for you,” the girl said. She was grubby, her hair wild. Dried blood caked her shirt and pants. She was thin, but she reminded Wade of long distance runners, lean and athletic. He had a strange intuition that the woman on the couch had been making sure the girl ate before she took her own share.
“Okay.”
“Can I get some water to wash up?” she asked.
“Oh. Sure,” he said, fishing out the milk jug they used as a scoop. “They’re full.”
“Thanks.”
She rinsed her face and poured another scoop full through her hair, sighing. Water streamed off her and wet her stained collar when she stood up again.
“I’m Cara.”
“Oh. Hi.”
Her lips tightened. He recognized the look, the beginning of frustration, and felt his pulse kick up uncomfortably.
“What’s your name?” she prompted.
“Wade.” She seemed to expect more, but he was at a loss, so he turned to go inside.
“Your dad tried to run,” Cara said.
“Huh?”
“After he shot my mom, he ran for his bike. I had to chase him down to get him to help us. He broke in the house where we were living, and he shot my mom when she tried to stop him from taking our stuff.”
“He probably didn’t know you were there. Was it your house?”
“Of course it wasn’t,” she sneered. “Is this yours?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? You’ve been here ever since the quake?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Good for you, I guess. You’re lucky. No one has come through here yet? Raiding?”
“I guess not. My dad made a couple roadblocks in both directions leading up the mountain. He parked a bunch of cars across the road.”
“He didn’t do a very good job,” Cara said. “We pushed through pretty easy. We thought there might be a community up here. We were hoping to join up with you, but my mom wanted to check things out. She wasn’t going to have sex with anyone for protection.”
Wade was suddenly uncomfortable. “I’d better go check with my dad.”
“He tried to run,” Cara repeated. “You should know.”
He turned to go inside. “You already told me that.”
*
The living room was empty, and Wade had a momentary thought, like something lopsided tipping over inside him, that his father had left for good. A moment later, his dad emerged from the bathroom. He’d changed out of his blood-spattered clothes.
“I had to leave my bike behind,” his father said in greeting. “I’m going to walk down to get it. I need you to keep an eye on her.”
“Do you mean me or my mother?” Cara asked from the sofa. “I won’t steal your food, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“We only have five cans anyway,” Wade said.
“It’s a few miles from here,” his dad went on. “I’ll be back by night time.”
“You’re going to leave my mom alone?” Cara interjected.
“You’ll have Wade with you.”
Cara made a dismissive noise.
“I’ll go,” Wade said.
“No, you won’t,” his father replied.
“Let him go,” Cara suggested.
&nbs
p; “I’m not letting Wade out there!” his dad insisted. “He can’t… I can’t let him go on such a long trip. Unsupervised.”
“Don’t you have a car?” Cara asked.
“I can’t drive,” Wade said.
“No driving,” his dad insisted. “There’s too much of a chance of arousing attention.”
Cara turned away from him. Her face was set in stone. “I’ll drive you,” she told Wade.
“No, you won’t!” his father stepped forward.
Cara ignored him. “I left a bunch of our stuff behind at the house. I need to go get it. When I get back, I’ll head out with my mom. We’ll go inland. I’ll find somewhere they can treat her.”
“There’s nothing left for hundreds of miles,” his dad said. “There are roadblocks, and lots of bad people. You’ll never make it.”
“Better than sitting here with you!” she burst out.
“Both of you are going to stay put!” his dad commanded.
“You can’t tell me what to do!”
“You forgot the gun,” Wade said.
They both stopped. For a second, he thought it was the usual look, the one he never saw coming. But this time, the expressions were different. “Right?” he asked.
“Yes,” his father admitted.
“You should be thinking about food. We have four people and maybe enough food for three days, if we go hungry. We need to get more.”
“I’m trying to protect you,” his father said.
“From what?” Cara interjected. “Me?”
“Maybe. You would have done the same thing, if you had the gun.”
“Bullshit.” Cara spun around and stalked out. The front door slammed.
Wade had never seen anyone speak to his father like that. Before that moment, he’d never really imagined it was possible. It was as if Cara had blazed a trail through terrain he’d thought impassible. The route behind her was clear and easy to follow.
He nodded. “I’ll go get the gun. And try to find some food.”
His father followed him out to the porch. “That’s not a good idea,” he said.
“He’ll be fine,” Cara called over her shoulder. “I promise I’ll take care of him.”
You Are Here: Tales of Cartographic Wonders Page 9
