What Came After

by Sam Winston

  “Just get a move on and come back and see her with your own eyes. Get yourself home with your little girl.”

  Bainbridge the motivator. Weller picturing himself dying here without ever knowing how Penny’s and Liz’s stories would end. Cursing himself for having made this call and broken his own heart.

  Bainbridge asked about Marlowe again. How he was holding up. What kind of arrangements he’d made for himself down there in the wilderness.

  Weller wanted to hurt him. “You wouldn’t believe your eyes,” he said. “He’s living like the king of some tropical island.”

  “No.”

  “He’s so happy it would make you sick.”

  “Honest? I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe what you want,” said Weller. “But tell those doctors it’s time to get serious. And have Carmichael get them home the minute she’s ready, in case I get held up.” The battery was blinking red and the blinking was getting slower, dying out. “Tell everybody I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  Later on, running the film between his fingers and holding it up to the light, he found a sequence with a barnyard in it. No horses, but at least a barnyard. People moving around in a dirt yard in front of a house and going in between the house and a barn. Black and white images but brown with age. A storm brewing and a snakelike cloud whipping the sky and a little girl hurrying down a path with a suitcase in her hand. He didn’t know if maybe this was part of that National Velvet the old woman remembered. Most of the film was sticky and rotted and glued together at some molecular level and he’d never get the loops of it separated from one another so he’d never know for sure, but there were still parts of it that he could make out. He fed one length into the projector and got it clicking along and looked through the gate. Watching the girl hurry down the path. A dog alongside her or maybe a cat that she stopped to pick up. Shooting a desperate look around and getting that dog or cat before she dared go on. Weller thinking she looked like she wanted to get home. Looking at the girl and thinking of Penny. Thinking that if he ever got home he’d get her a dog or a cat. Whichever she wanted.

  The film ran out and slid into a pile on the floor and he bent to retrieve it. Stood up and put his arm out the square window holding it like a caught snake and called down to the old woman. Saying he’d found something.

  She came up and asked what it was.

  He told her. He said he had no idea if it was that horse movie she’d seen once upon a time, but it had a little girl in it and a barnyard so it might be the one. Either way it was only part. A few seconds. But he had the projector sort of going and you could see the pictures move against the light that came in from the hole in the roof, so if she wanted to take a look, now was the time. Her people would be back soon. Her son. And then she’d have to wait.

  She made him promise. She made him swear on his daughter’s heart that he wouldn’t do anything rash, by which she meant trying to slip out while the door was unlocked or striking her over the head and tying her up or something on that order. Saying her son would kill her if Weller got loose before they had the chance to make a deal with Black Rose and Weller didn’t want that on his hands did he, no matter how much she deserved it. Even though she had made her own bed a long time ago. Both of their beds it turned out. She just wanted a look at that National Velvet if that was what it was. Just a look.

  He said, “All right. I promise.”

  She said, “I think we understand each other.”

  He said, “I believe we do.”

  She said, “I’ll work on my son if that deal with Black Rose doesn’t turn out.”

  He said, “I know you will.”

  She said, “I can’t make any promises.”

  He said, “ I know you can’t.”

  She let herself in. Latched the door behind her and saw him feeding the film into the machinery. She said, “Careful now,” as if he might be otherwise. Weller not even turning to see her come in. Not even turning to see about the door behind her.

  He lined her up alongside the projector and slightly behind, where she could see best. Clouds passed overhead and the column of light in the room below went dim and she squinted. He said, “Wait.” Reaching out a hand to her shoulder to put her in the right spot. While the light was dim he gave the pin a half-turn and asked her if she could see the picture move and she said she could. It was blurry but she could. He moved her back a few inches and gave it another little turn and she said it was worse. He gave her the big lens and she looked through that. Experimenting for a minute until it was clear as a bell, she said. Clear as a bell. Right there.

  He pulled the film and set it back to the beginning and they waited until the clouds passed. “All right,” he said. “Here goes.” The film beginning to pass over the sprockets. The gate snapping open and shut.

  The old woman held the lens up to her eye and gasped. People moving about in a barnyard. “I believe I’ve seen this one,” she said.

  “Wait,” said Weller. “Wait for the girl.”

  “Oh, my,” said the woman. “A storm’s coming.”

  “I don’t know about any storm,” said Weller. “I never looked through that big lens myself.”

  The woman was motionless. Rapt. “Here she comes now,” she said. “The little girl.” Her mouth dropping open as the child turned and bent to gather up her dog. “A storm’s coming,” she said, woeful and full of panic, as if it were coming right here. “She’ll be caught out in it.”

  “It sure looks that way,” said Weller.

  The last frame snapped through and he quit turning.

  The old woman lowered the lens. Tears in her eyes. Tears for the resurrection of this long dead story and tears for the rebirth of this poor suffering child. Tears for the storm that was coming, and for the storm that had already come. “You make that phone call?” she asked.

  “I did.”

  “And what’d you find out about your girl?”

  “Not much,” he said, “But I guess I’m still hopeful.”

  “Then go,” she said. “Go on right now.”

  And he went.

  TEN:

  Salted Earth

  He stayed off the highways and kept his profile low. He took the dead battery out of the satellite phone rather than risk any trickle of power that might betray his lie to Bainbridge. He ate what he found, not touching the handful of Black Rose rations he’d snatched up, holding those in reserve in case he had his bearings wrong and the trip to Spartanburg stretched out.

  He was careful to stay away from any green thing that looked as if it had ever been cultivated, sticking instead with mulberries and blackberries and bitter acorns, feeling his energy waning. He ate his way through the banks of kudzu that grew rampant everywhere. Toward evening on the second day he killed a two-headed mud turtle in a reedy slough and started a fire and boiled it in its own shell. It made dinner and breakfast plus some extra to carry along in his pack. He spent most of the next morning skirting a broad acreage of ripe feed corn that beckoned him with its numberless bobbing heads. The hardiness of it smelled powerfully of PharmAgra intervention. That mud turtle had likely fed here and he had fed on the mud turtle but you couldn’t control everything. He went on.

  The woods were dense with game trails but not with game. He had the spare pistol and some ammunition and he was halfway hoping for a wild boar but he found no sign of one. They were supposed to be everywhere in these hills. Good eating but fierce. Aggressive and impatient with man. He began thinking a deer would be easier, although he didn’t have any interest in shooting a deer. He would rather shoot a boar than a deer unless he had to, but he guessed he might have to so he kept his eyes open.

  Alongside a dry creek bed some fresh prints crossed the trail, coming out of dense woods and vanishing back into the same. Not game, but men. Two and a half days out of Greensboro and more than halfway to Spartanburg with Charlotte not even visible to the south from the highest points. Willfully in the middle of nowhere. Tha
t far away from anything like a city. And yet here they were. He thought he’d been going quietly but he went even more quietly now, thinking they might have seen the smoke from his fire last night. That fire he’d lit with the old man’s Zippo. Wondering what else that two-headed mud turtle might be about to cost him. Walking on and wishing he hadn’t seen those prints and glad he had. Calculating his odds and not liking them and figuring how to change them to his benefit.

  Damn it if he’d be ambushed again. He stopped and doubled back to the place where the prints crossed the trail. They pointed south, toward Charlotte. He stepped off the trail and followed. Drawing his pistol and vowing that if there were any ambushing to be done he would be the one to do it.

  He found the men in a grassy place where their path went under a road. One of those big dry culverts that were starting to seem like part of some secret underground transit system. He came out of the woods and saw two men sitting face to face just inside the lip of the culvert, eating. Passing a canteen back and forth. Out of the sun the way a person would want to be when he ate his lunch, but still visible. Weller didn’t need to know everything they’d taught him in Washington to see that if they got up and ran they’d have to come either toward him or straight down the culvert, and either way he’d have a clean shot. Either way he had them. He clicked back the hammer of the gun to announce himself and they raised their hands.

  These men weren’t like the people in Greensboro. They were rough but businesslike in the way of soldiers or pioneers. Experienced traveling men who’d made a mistake out here where they’d thought they owned the place and it turned out they didn’t. They carried backpacks and duffel bags and they had pretty fair hiking boots from someplace. They were lean but not starvation lean. They weren’t the two runners he’d seen in Connecticut, but they could have been their twins.

  Weller said, “Don’t worry, I’m not PharmAgra.”

  The men didn’t lower their hands and he didn’t lower the .38 either.

  One of them lifted up his chin and said, “No shit.” His mouth full. Like PharmAgra didn’t come out here anyhow, and like they would be better equipped if they did. Better equipped and more formidable than Weller, who was standing there like some kind of lightly armed scarecrow.

  Weller kept on. “I don’t want that stock you’ve got. Those seeds or whatever. Those plants.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “All right. Have it your way.” Like Weller was crazy and he was humoring him.

  “I’m a friend of that plant doctor. Doctor Patel up in Connecticut.”

  “Good for you,” said the man in the culvert. Staring down the gun. “I ain’t nobody’s friend.” He tilted his head toward the other man, who hadn’t said anything yet. “I ain’t even his.”

  “I’m talking about that doctor you work for.”

  The man shrugged, but with the heel of his boot he pushed back his duffel bag to conceal it behind him. “I don’t work for anybody.”

  “Fine,” said Weller. Figuring he knew who paid at least some of the freight, and not caring.

  “Fine,” echoed the man. Actually echoing in that culvert. “So now we know what you don’t want, what is it you do want? We got places to be.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” said Weller. “Charlotte, maybe.”

  “None of your business.”

  “Spartanburg.”

  The man blew air through his nose. Not quite a laugh. Hard to say what it meant.

  “What do you know about Spartanburg?” Weller asked. Thinking whatever these two had seen from ground level would trump all of the airborne reconnaissance in the world.

  The other man answered this time. His voice was low and cracked and he had to work to make it come out. Like there was something wrong with the parts of him that made it. “Spartanburg ain’t what it used to be,” he said.

  “Is that right? What’d it used to be?”

  “It used to be a nice friendly town.”

  Weller smiled. “You find a nice friendly town out here, you let me know about it.”

  The man wasn’t amused. “My people come from Spartanburg. Way back. Generations.”

  “Lucky them.”

  “I guess. They got evacuated a long time ago. Some by the dying and the rest by the mercs.”

  “Marlowe.”

  “Right. Shown the door. I was a teenage boy living in my grandfather’s house. They took everything useful and barricaded themselves inside the old car plant. Bunch of locusts swarming through.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  Weller scratched his forehead with the butt of the .38 and the first man spoke up. “Are you going to put that thing down one of these days?”

  “I just didn’t want anybody getting the drop on me.”

  “Mission accomplished.” Both of them lowering their hands.

  Weller watching them. Lowering the gun too. Releasing the hammer easy and saying, “There’s just one more thing.”

  They shrugged.

  “I could use a little bit of that food you’ve got.” Hanging the pistol in its rope sling and drawing near.

  * * *

  They went their separate ways. Weller back through the woods to where he’d left the game trail and the other two down the culvert. They wouldn’t say where they were headed. He thought Charlotte or someplace in that general direction whose name he didn’t know. Maybe a place without a name at all. Patel had said that there were stations like hers scattered everywhere. Who knew how many or where.

  The landscape opened up. Hills rose to the southwest and he rose with them. Mile after mile of green spreading out below, great expanses of it visible from certain open vantages, more shades of green than a person might have thought possible. Different greens from up north.

  He kept close to the highways but not on them. Not again. Progress was slow but it was progress and it was secure or if not secure then at least more or less secret. Eighty-Five was his touchstone and he kept to it, not even seeing Spartanburg proper when he passed by to the northwest. Just an exit ramp labeled with the name of the city suspended high overhead with the last five letters of the word shot out. The work of a machine gun by the look of it and no ammunition spared.

  He crept up the ramp and reconned and saw that the highway itself was in fair shape. Carpeted in green but no doubt passable in that car he was after. If he got the car and if he got gasoline for it and if he got out. He thought of Greensboro. How that barricade of ironwork had driven him off the main road and down into the remains of the city, where people he’d taken for bears did their hunting. He thought now that he should have suspected something. He should have wondered why someone would divert people off the road.

  He descended and walked on through a forest of pine and hardwood with a high canopy and not much undergrowth. Looking up once and seeing in a stand of hickory the husk of a two-man helicopter dangling down. The rotors gone and white bones in canvas harnesses picked clean. Not even skeletons, just bones. Birds nesting up there. Birds that must be finding something to eat someplace.

  He walked on thinking that there were dangers here beyond the natural.

  When he came near the old car factory twenty miles west of town, the woods ended abruptly. He hesitated in the protection of the trees, reluctant to step out, finding himself on the perimeter of a circle so scorched and surgically cleared that not one blade of grass grew. Death radiated a mile in all directions. At least a mile and maybe more. Salted earth. Within it stood a maze of fence and wire. Razor wire topping sixteen-foot hurricane fence, and barbed wire in tangled gusts strewn everywhere, and nearly invisible lengths of trip wire running from fencepost to fencepost.

  The day was growing late. He unshouldered his pack and emptied it out and went back into the woods to gather up rocks for checking his path against landmines come morning. He located a straight tree limb half again as long as he was tall. Then he gathered dry wood an
d sorted kindling and started a fire. Planning to warm up those last Black Rose rations and let the flames climb as high as they would and spend the night here at the edge of the clearing.

  The people in the factory may as well know he was here. They’d find out soon enough. And if they came out to get him, so be it. It would save him the trouble of passing through the minefield come morning. He stuck the pistol in his boot just in case, and lay down underneath the stars.

  * * *

  But they didn’t come. He sat up half the night and he slept the other half and nothing whatsoever happened. Lights came on at full dark way up high on the roof of the distant building. One or two of them moving around as the night went along, as if someone were carrying them. Someone on guard duty. Then again they may have been nothing but stars. He kept the fire going and made himself obvious and nothing came of it.

  In the morning he set out, scoping a course through the fences and wire. Climbing where he had to. Crossing wide retaining ponds drained dry and gray asphalt parking lots cracked to pieces. Testing the path ahead with the tree limb and sending rocks thumping on ahead of him. He didn’t care if he made a racket and he hid behind his backpack each time in case something blew, but nothing did. Nothing tripped and no matter how exposed he was on those sixteen-foot chain link fences nobody tried to stop him.

  As he drew near the factory he could see why. It was a blank fortress of cast concrete and steel. Impregnable and uncaring. The forward section had once been a great sweeping horseshoe of glass as long as a city block, but it was just a skeleton now. Something for the wind to whistle through. All of the glass was gone and birds nested in the steel framework, coming and going unmolested. It was practically an exhibit of birds, framed there uncaged. He caught himself marveling at them and wondering how they lived. What they ate. Nothing from that mile-wide wasteland so well maintained. Something else. Bugs and worms but from where. They fluttered and sang in the ruined building and he listened to them for a moment and then he walked on. Around the side and down a pathway, keeping close to the wall. Toward the place where the real work must have happened in the old days before the factory closed. Where it must still happen now.