by John Inman
AN HOUR later, Joe sported a backpack with a big fluffy smiling koala on the front, while Ned’s displayed a grinning polar bear. The backpacks were clearly meant for kids, but Ned liked them anyway. They were roomy. They cheered him up. And it seemed a long time since he had done anything silly. Having a full belly for a change was pretty enjoyable too. Ned’s pack was heavy, laden with extra food. Joe’s pack was stuffed with food as well. Plus extra sweaters, socks, gloves, and spare flashlights lifted from the same gift shop. The sweaters and socks were bedecked with images of animals too. They both wore long woolen scarves wrapped around their necks, with the San Diego Zoo logo knitted up and down their length. The scarves were necessary because it might be less frigid than it was a day or two earlier, but it was still far from warm. Away from shelter as they were about to be, hypothermia was a real threat, so they dressed as warmly as they could. Plus with the world gone dogshit crazy, one never knew when the temperature might drop again. Or for all they knew, spiral all the way down to a brand-new Ice Age.
Ned adjusted the straps across his shoulders. They stood in the gift shop surrounded by all the touristy crap the San Diego Zoo had to offer, which was a lot. Ned laughed out loud when Joe pulled a credit card from his wallet and slapped it down on the counter by the cash register.
In the flashlight beam, Joe looked impish. A second later, he shot Ned a wink, then reclaimed the credit card and stuffed it back in his wallet. “Guess they don’t want my money,” he mumbled. “Can’t imagine why.”
Getting back to business, Ned watched Joe tie the shotgun to his pack to free up his hands. That was necessary because he had found hiking sticks, which he said might come in handy while traversing the canyon trails in the dark. Ned, of course, had another opinion. He thought the sturdy sticks might be useful for smashing in a few dog brains if the feral bastards should decide to attack them again.
Ned gazed down at himself, then eyed Joe with his koala pack and tall wooden stick. “We look like a couple of overgrown Von Trapp kids setting out to tackle the Alps.”
“Yes, and we’re going to do it as quietly as we can,” Joe said, “so don’t yodel.”
Ned bit back a laugh. “Gotcha.” His mood just as quickly sobered. “Is it dawn yet, Joe? Has the day begun?”
Joe dutifully checked his watch and smiled up at Ned in the flashlight’s beam. “Yes, babe. Somewhere behind all this darkness, the sun is up. In a normal world, we would be bitching about the heat and wishing we’d remembered our sunblock and parasols.”
Ned’s answering grin was feeble, and he knew it. “I miss that world,” he said softly, then added with a snicker, “not that I’ve ever used a parasol in my life, like you apparently have.”
Joe offered up a good-natured snarl. “I miss that world too. Snide gay insults and all.”
Still grinning, Joe adjusted the weight of the pack on his back and reseated the straps digging into his shoulders. He reached behind to make sure the shotgun was secure. Apparently satisfied, he said, “You ready?”
Ned nodded, his smile fading. “I’m ready.”
“Then stay close. And try to be quiet. We have no idea what—or who—is out there.”
“I know.”
“And don’t be afraid.”
“I won’t,” Ned said. “I’m not. I trust you, Joe. I’ll trust everything you decide.”
“You mean until I do something stupid, right?”
“Exactly.”
Joe turned off the flashlight, and no sooner had he done so than Ned felt Joe’s strong hands pulling him close. Joe’s warm lips sought his in the dark. They kissed and clung to each other for a long minute, and finally Joe eased himself from Ned’s arms.
“All righty, then,” Ned muttered, still tasting Joe’s kiss. “Now I really am ready. Lead the way.”
Joe’s hand slid through Ned’s hair in a gentle caress, lightly brushing the scar beneath. As if the feel of it gave him strength, Joe turned his back and set off. Ned stayed two steps behind, adjusting the weight of his pack and wielding the unfamiliar walking stick like a cane. He quickly decided the walking stick helped a lot, not only in maintaining his balance in the blinding darkness, but it also felt sturdy enough to be used as a weapon if the need arose, just as he’d thought it might.
Single file, navigating by Joe’s memory, they wound their way along the zoo’s walkways without any light to show their way. After long minutes, when Joe slowed his pace and began to zigzag around an array of unseen obstacles, Ned was confused. Then the scent of flowers and loam hit him, and he knew they were back in the nursery. The chain-link fence to the outside would be just ahead.
Joe flicked on the flashlight long enough to find his secret hole in the fence, then just as quickly switched it off. The fence rattled when Joe peeled back the flap of snipped wire that constituted a trapdoor. A moment later, Joe tugged at Ned’s coat, steering him toward the opening. With a whispered “Watch your head,” he ushered Ned through the fence first, then quickly followed.
Joe replaced the flap of wire, crunching it into place, and the next thing Ned knew they were on the trail leading down the canyon into Balboa Park. The familiar piney scent of fir trees lay thick on the air. And something else lay on the air as well. It was a smell Ned couldn’t quite place.
“Cordite,” Joe whispered as if reading Ned’s mind. “It’s used these days in place of gunpowder. Creates less smoke and doesn’t wreck the gun barrels as fast. The fighting must have come closer than we thought.”
“What don’t you know?” Ned asked, dutifully impressed.
Joe laughed. “A lot. The trail is rough here. Give me your hand.”
Ned complied. “I don’t hear any gunfire now. Do you think the fighting is over?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t hear any crazyass dogs either.”
Joe grunted in agreement. “Neither do I, thank God.”
They hurried along the trail as quickly and quietly as they could. Ned understood Joe didn’t want to use the flashlight any more than they had to, so he did his best to tread carefully and not fall on his face. When the trail grew rocky, or a root tripped him up, he reached out and Joe was always there to offer support.
“The air is still warmer,” Ned whispered. “I think it’s even warmer than it was before.”
“I know,” Joe said, sounding cautiously hopeful. “I thought I felt a breeze a minute ago too. The air hasn’t moved for days. It must mean something.”
Ned peered through the surrounding pines to pan the sky from one horizon to the other, or as much of it as he could see. The heavens were still as black as pitch. That one single star they had glimpsed in the night had not returned. Ned wondered if it ever would.
Joe grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop. “Listen!”
Ned froze. Sure enough, he heard a faint rumbling noise. It seemed to be coming from far away, like a gentle continuous thunder.
He began to detect human voices buried inside the sound. Furious yelling and screaming. Then his straining ear captured other components of the noise. The metallic clang of machinery. Breaking glass. The roar of engines. Trucks maybe. And once again the sputter of gunfire ricocheted through the air—the staccato chatter of small arms, the heavy concussive thuds of what sounded like heavy artillery.
“It’s a riot!” Joe hissed. “Somewhere in the city. The cops must be using everything they’ve got to break it up. Those loud booms you hear are from stun grenades, I think. Like SWAT guys use.”
Fear clutched at Ned’s heart. “And we’re walking toward the fighting?”
Again, Joe said what he’d said back in the hay barn. “We need to know what’s going on. It’s the only way we can decide what we have to do. Come on.”
“Joe….”
Joe turned from the path before him and, fingers splayed, pressed his hand to Ned’s chest, as if seeking his heartbeat. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered again. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll keep you safe. But we
have to get closer!”
“I—I know. It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?”
Ned pointed a trembling finger down the trail. “There’s a light up ahead. On the footbridge. And I can see something… hanging there.”
JOE HAD been so concentrated on the sounds of distant fighting, he hadn’t noticed what lay straight ahead. Ned was right. Down the trail where the path met the footbridge that crossed the freeway below, a pale light hovered, encasing the bridge. It didn’t come from passing traffic because the light wasn’t moving. But the light didn’t originate on the bridge either. It glowed from beneath it.
And in that light, Joe could see that Ned was right again. There was something hanging on the bridge.
He slipped his fingers through Ned’s, as much for his own comfort as Ned’s. “Come on. Stay close. Don’t wander off.”
“Trust me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Joe smiled. Then looking closer at what lay ahead, or more correctly what hung ahead, he felt the smile slip from his face like a cold slice of pizza sliding off a plate.
Moving slowly closer, he discerned what was hanging there in front of them in the same instant Ned did. He knew by the way his fingers popped when Ned convulsively squeezed them tight.
Both men jerked to a stop.
“It’s a body!” Ned gasped.
“Y-yes,” Joe stammered. “It is.”
They warily stepped closer.
Hanging from the crossbeam that arched across the footbridge—the crossbeam that the surrounding mesh was anchored to—hung the body of a woman. Her hands were tied behind her back and a heavy rope was wound about her throat, clumsily knotted into a hangman’s noose. The rope idly creaked as the body lazily spun in the faint breeze that Joe suddenly felt wafting up from the canyon floor. The woman was dressed in rags. One battered shoe was missing, nowhere to be seen. The toenails on her bare foot were black with filth. A few feet away, overturned on the footbridge, lay a rusty shopping cart, its contents spilling out. Rags. A dirty water bottle. A book, mushy with age, its pages ripped out and scattered about. Perhaps this woman was one of the many homeless who made Balboa Park their home. Perhaps she had once enjoyed the balmy summer days here before the sun took a swan dive and left them all in the dark. But what had happened to her now? How could she have ended up like this?
Ned must have been asking himself the same questions. “Was it suicide, Joe? Did she kill herself?”
“No,” Joe said, since that was the first thing he had figured out. “There’s nothing for her to have stood on or stepped off of after she adjusted the rope. The shopping cart is too far away to have been any use. Plus her hands are tied.”
Edging closer, Joe, with Ned on his heels, took his first step onto the footbridge and peered down through the mesh surrounding it to the freeway below. And the source of light.
It was a car. An old station wagon with a bunged-up front fender and bigass fins on the rear end, straight out of the sixties. The passenger door was wide open. It had been abandoned. Joe knew it must have happened a while back since the battery was growing weak, the headlights beginning to dim. It seemed even the crazies had ceased using the freeway to get around, since there was no traffic moving in either direction. While its battery might be draining, the flickering headlights of the abandoned vehicle still had just enough power to shine upward and illuminate the gruesome scene in front of them.
That thought brought Joe’s eyes back to the woman twisting idly in the breeze.
He averted his gaze from her face, turning to Ned instead.
“You all right?”
“It was murder, wasn’t it? Somebody did this to her. She was… lynched.”
Sadly, Joe answered, “Yes. I think she was.”
In the distance, the sound of stun grenades increased. A flurry of them. Thump. Thump. Thump. The concussive pulses pounded through the air like frightened heartbeats. Ned moved closer. He slipped a hand into Joe’s coat pocket and leaned in to whisper hoarsely, “Let’s go back to the zoo, Joe. There’s food there. And walls. We can lock ourselves in the hay barn. We’ll be safer than we are out here.”
Joe pulled Ned against him. At the same time, he twisted Ned around so he wouldn’t have to look at the poor woman hanging by her neck from the bridge. “But the zoo isn’t safe. We were attacked there once already. More people will find their way in. We need to leave the city, Ned. I think it’s the only way for us to protect ourselves.”
He captured Ned in his arms and pressed his lips to his ear. “It took me a lifetime to find you. I don’t want to lose you now. Please trust me. You said you did. Now show me you meant it. Please. Let me find one person in authority to talk to. A cop, a National Guardsman, hell, the fucking mayor. I just want to know what’s going on before we make a decision.”
Ned inhaled a shaky breath. “All right. I’m sorry. The woman rattled me.”
“She rattled me too. And now I think we should get across the bridge and away from this light. We’re perfect targets standing here. You with me?”
Joe heard the gurgle of Ned swallowing what sounded like a bucket of spit. “You know I am. Lead on.”
Before Ned could change his mind, Joe once again took his hand and led him quickly across the footbridge, hugging the mesh wall, staying as far away from the dead woman as they could get. Not looking directly at her. Trying to ignore her presence completely. Like that was even remotely possible.
A moment later, they found themselves back on the dirt trail, heading uphill this time, climbing the opposite bank of the canyon. The light on the footbridge faded behind them, and Joe was glad to be back in darkness. At least it covered them. It let them slip among the shadows unseen. Amazingly enough, at this particular moment the darkness was almost a friend.
“You all right?”
“I’m okay, Joe. Don’t worry about me.”
“Still a barnacle?”
Ned gave a sarcastic snort. “Yes, wise guy. I’m still a barnacle.”
Moving as casually as he could so as not to worry Ned any more than he already was, Joe slipped the shotgun free from the backpack it was tethered to and replaced it with his walking stick to free up his hands. As he walked along, he kept his thumb on the gun’s safety. Ned reached out once and Joe felt the weight of his hand as it touched the gun.
“Good,” Ned mumbled. “You’re armed.” He pulled his hand away from the gun barrel, then returned it to Joe’s pocket. Side by side they continued groping their way up the darkened trail. Periodically, Joe could still hear the creak of the rope, twisting in the breeze behind them, its fibers taut from the weight of its gruesome cargo.
Poor woman.
And aloud, beside him in the darkness, Ned muttered, “Poor woman,” as if Joe’s thoughts had burrowed into his.
Joe tried to concentrate on the trail ahead. It still climbed upward, steeply twisting here and there between the pines. Every once in a while, Joe would switch on the flashlight, just for a moment, so they could get their bearings. As they rounded another bend, Ned softly asked, “Where would we go, Joe? If we leave the city. Where would we go?”
Joe had been thinking about that. “The mountains maybe. Or the desert. Anywhere we can get away from all these crazy people.”
“There’ll be crazy people there too, won’t there?”
“Maybe. But not as many. It’ll be easier for us to avoid them. Maybe we can find a secluded cabin somewhere. Break in. Make it our own.”
“That would be nice,” Ned said, his voice suddenly wistful, as if that idea pleased him very much indeed.
Joe smiled. “It does sound good, doesn’t it?”
“Illegal, of course.”
Sadly, Joe said, “What once was legal or illegal doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.”
“No,” Ned sighed, “I suppose it doesn’t.”
Again, Joe sought Ned’s hand, claiming it in the dark. “Maybe all that matters now is how we care for the ones we love.�
�
“Maybe that’s all that really ever mattered,” Ned whispered, edging closer.
Joe tilted his head to brush a kiss through Ned’s hair and was met with the woolen stocking cap Ned had swiped from the gift shop. He kissed it anyway.
At that moment, gunshots erupted not twenty feet away.
Without thinking, Joe grabbed Ned’s arm and yanked him into the underbrush at the side of the trail. He slapped his hand over Ned’s mouth while they cowered on the ground, trying not to move because of the brittle pine needles crunching underfoot. They both held their breath and listened while Joe, oh so quietly, released the safety on the shotgun.
“Stop wasting bullets!” a man barked. “You’re shooting at nothing!”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” another snapped. The second speaker sounded young. His voice still cracked as if his journey through puberty had not yet ended. “And there was someone there. I know there was! I heard footsteps. Whispers.”
Joe heard the sound of a slap, and after that a muted weeping. He clutched Ned close to him, ignoring the ache in his knees as he knelt in the scrub. Ned’s stunted breathing seemed a fluttering fear in the darkness beside him. Joe could feel him trembling. When Ned spoke, his voice was next to soundless and aimed directly into Joe’s ear. Yet it was taut with hate. As chilling as any voice Joe had ever heard. Most of all, Joe was astonished by the words coming from a man as gentle as Ned.
“If they hurt you, I’ll kill them,” Ned seethed in the shadows, his grip on Joe’s hand all but cutting off the circulation.
Only then did Joe fully understand. Ned was trembling in fury, not fear. And his fury had nothing to do with his own safety. It was centered solely on Joe’s.
They both remained as still as statues, clinging to each other, listening with every ounce of concentration they possessed, prepared to either fly up and lash out to protect themselves, or run like rabbits if that seemed the wiser choice. It didn’t take Joe long to realize he felt the same as Ned. He was furious. There was no fear left inside him—only a desperate desire for survival.
