"I think we'll sleep here."
"Good."
She went over and she and the girl selected a few cans, which they took to the fire. Cooper used his Swiss Army knife, which Mikaela had returned. He pried open the tops, Spaghetti O's and Campbell's Beef Vegetable and Pea soups. They removed the paper labels and settled them into hot spots in the fire and quietly watched them cook. Mikaela had a partially moldy loaf of white bread, which they used to mop up the sauce when the soup was done.
It was only the type of scrounged food that he would have eaten during penniless college days. Beggars couldn't be choosers, though. Cooper found it delicious.
He poured out some of the soup into an empty can that he'd cut and reconfigured into a crude bowl. He blew on it to cool it off, then set it in front of Turk, who lapped the soup up ravenously. It seemed like he needed a gallon of it. After they ate every last drop of the soup and cheap pasta, they curled up on beds of pine needles and pulled coats and blankets over their heads.
Cooper kept his pistol and bow next to him, using his backpack as a pillow. Last he checked, the little girl slept partially on top of Turk; cuddled up to him. He knew that because she'd stopped talking. He watched the comforting rise and fall of the dog's furred body.
"Thanks for the grub," he said to Mikaela. He wanted to add and for not killing me back there.
"Pleasure," she said, then she pulled the blanket over her own head. "It's good to have some company."
They passed out next to the ebbing flames and glowing embers.
CHAPTER 9
The next morning, they ate the left-over soup and spaghetti, then headed back to the same town where Mikaela had copped her provisions. They thought they'd keep their eye out for an abandoned vehicle that could get them farther away from the mountain. Low gun-metal clouds threatened rain; they drifted ominously over the tree-tops, mixed with a dirty brown haze that seeped from the mushroom cloud capping Rainier.
"How did you end up here?" Cooper asked as they meandered along.
"I was supposed to take a bus to Spokane for an MMA match, meet my boyfriend Larson. He's still there as far as I know, but they cancelled my ride when the mountain blew. I'm standing there at the bus station with my bag, with nowhere to go. Now I just want to get to the coast, as far from Rainer as possible, and maybe get a boat north." All she had for baggage, which she'd tossed over her back, was the athletic bag containing sneakers and a few changes of clothes.
They walked slowly downhill through evenly spaced trees. They could see the two rivers, now dirtied by effluent, flowing on either side of the village of Orting. They followed Turk, who liked to go ahead and seek out the smells. They put him on the leash when they got closer to town.
"How did you get into that fighting game?"
"My energy had to go somewhere–I was either going to become a bad kid like some of my friends, or channel it. I ended up landing in MMA. It keeps me in shape, better than anything."
"You the competitive type? I can tell you're disciplined. I never met a gal who had less fat on her, and who could easily rip my head off." He thought longingly of his old girlfriend Alexis, her willowy figure and midnight black hair laying softly almost to her waste. She couldn't hold her own with Mikaela; they were different breeds altogether.
"I've been in MMA gyms since I was thirteen. It changed my life. It gives me a lift, and it keeps me aloft. As a side effect, it helped me with a difficult step-dad. I vowed I'd never lose a battle to an nasty man, like him."
"You won't," Cooper said.
They were near the edge of where homes and streets began. No one around. The air had a metallic, rusty odor, like an old steel town.
The empty, sullen neighborhoods seemed wiped out by a mutant virus. It didn't feel right to Cooper; he didn't want any more trouble, just food and a clear road to the coast. They came down out of the hills and entered a main suburban drag. The streets were empty of moving cars and pedestrians; the homes unlit. The only sign of humans were three bodies, distributed randomly and anonymously along the sidewalks, as if dropped from the sky.
They had Turk on his leash; they figured he'd bark if anything came up. Cooper took his scope out, detached from the crossbow, and scanned all the way down the drag. He saw nothing but burned, looted stores and shattered glass. Down a side street he spotted a weakly flashing red neon sign; they headed that way, along a sidewalk of more shards of glass, windswept trash, burn marks, from what looked like exploded Molotov cocktails. In the distance, through the scope, he saw two burnt-car carcasses that had collided, one a police car.
A pregnant silence and emptiness had befallen the town, except way down at the end of the street he saw a man scurry, with more of a rat-like than human aspect, across the intersection. He disappeared.
The place, with its storefront window smashed in, was apparently once a mom-and-pop store that sold cigarettes, lottery tickets, rot-gut booze, and snack food. The register and shelves were ransacked. The girl held on to the dog outside. Cooper stood guard at the door with his pistol, the backpack at his feet, while Mikaela poked around inside. She found some partly frozen and moldy burritos in the back of a freezer, Beef Jerky on a dusty shelf, a stale candy bar, and some bruised apples that had rolled behind the counter. No water or other drinks.
When she went into the back room, the door stuck on something. She looked down and saw a man's comatose body with a huge gash on the back of his head. His trousered legs and shoes were splayed into the room.
"Don't let Turk and Ruff in," she called out. She turned the man's head with the pistol muzzle and felt for a pulse, but he was dead. On the wall, she found a cracked framed portrait of a pleasant looking man and woman, from India or Pakistan she guessed. She stored her meagre harvest in her own gym bag, then went back outside.
She nodded inside. "Owner's dead. Didn't get much but lousy old food."
"Oh," he said. A situation had evolved where bodies were no longer earth-shattering news.
"Where now?"
"We're on the outskirts of Orting," he said. "It's not 20 miles to Tacoma and the inland bays. Maybe we can find some transportation there. Otherwise…" He looked around regretfully at the girl and the dog. "We walk."
"This place gives me the creeps. We can't stay out here. We're going to have go into houses to find shelter, and real food and water, then get the hell out of here."
They walked towards the river, which flowed past sluggishly, full of debris and looking ill. They found a few restaurants that were in the same shape; front windows busted in, leaves blowing in the open doors. They took turns going in and giving them a quick search. Mikaela did find a week-old bussed tray with a few scraps of edible food, stale bread and meat on the bone, which she added to the plastic bag that held the bread.
She came out and said, "Lets look for a place to eat and hide out for the night."
"Yes…I'll take the dog now, Ruff." The girl handed the leash up to him. She looked thin, gaunt, to him.
"Thanks a lot for looking after him."
"I'm tired," she said. "What is this place? What kind of crazy place is this?"
"It's called Orting."
"I don't like it. All the people are gone. It smells horrible, like diapers."
"How do you know what diapers smell like?"
She looked at him blankly, then looked away. She had an expression of jaded disapproval beyond her years, of the abandoned homes and littered, broken-down streets.
"When are we stopping? Where the heck are we going, anyways? We're just walking, for the heck of it."
"We're fine. We're headed to the coast, to a boat." He gently took Turk and they started walking.
"Which one? Which boat? A ferry?"
"Yeah, ever been on a ferry?"
"Sure I have!"
"We've got food, a candy bar!" Mikaela said, interrupting, somewhat to Cooper's relief. She took the girl's hand, the pistol held loosely from the other one. They walked up ahead on the sidewalk, under the gray
, darkening skies. Cooper was reminded of photographs of battle-torn areas with soldiers holding the hands of war orphans. This wasn't so different, he thought. Not even a helicopter, an undamaged car moving at normal speed along the road, a federal occupying force, or even people like them, trying to flee the mountain and make the coast. It was a bad dream.
They entered the first undamaged and intact home they could find, with an unlocked front door. It had a broken screen door hanging off it, a shriveled shrub in a pot. A pile of black ashes stood in the middle of the wooden porch, but the house wasn't burned down. Cooper went in first.
He yelled out, "Hello!" No one answered. He moved quickly through the first floor, including the kitchen, with broken glass on part of the floor and a sink full of dishes. He found the kitchen empty. It smelled like a house was supposed to smell, with no mold, rot, or worse, like it was taken care of but abandoned quickly.
He went up the stairs to the second floor; a family portrait hung on the wall, two young parents with three children seated in front of them in their Sunday best. He hesitated before he went into the bedrooms, dreading what he might find. But they were all empty, one of the kid's rooms with all the drawers pulled out and still a worn pair of pajamas tossed onto the bed. They left in a hurry, but maybe expected to return soon? he wondered. A third flight of stairs led to a closed door; an attic–he yelled up there and no one answered.
Satisfied, he ran back down the stairs and told the others to come in. They gathered in the living room, including the dog. Mikaela pulled out her food. She borrowed Cooper's knife and cut up the burrito and the Snicker's into four even pieces each, but they didn't give any Snicker's to the dog. They sat on the rug and ate quietly; the girl chewed the food slowly with her legs crossed, then she lay out-stretched on the floor.
Mikaela picked her up and carried her upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Cooper chewed on the stale burrito and looked out the cracked front window to the silent street. It wasn't a bad combination with the Snicker's bar, scrounged food that at the moment tasted wondrous.
He locked the front door from the inside. He heard nothing from upstairs, so he walked up and followed the low voices. The girl lay in one of the children's beds, clutching two dolls.
"Millie and Tom," she said, when she saw Cooper standing at the entrance to the room. She beamed like it was a revelation.
"Yeah, it seems we've found Millie and Tom," Mikaela said.
"Oh nice."
"They were lost for so long," the girl said, then she placed them on either side of her pillow and hugged them tighter, curling up under a blanket. "I knew I'd find them. I knew it…" She closed her eyes, and fell fast asleep.
Cooper and Mikaela left the room, closing the door behind them.
"I thought Millie and Tom were her parents," Cooper said.
"No, she figures these are her long-lost dolls, which is good enough for me." Mikaela looked at him thoughtfully as they stood on the top of the stairs.
"She told me what happened to her parents. They were driving outside of Rainier National Park. They stopped on the side of the road, so Amy, that's her real name, could pick some flowers in a field. Then the lahar came all of a sudden and took the car, leaving Amy in the field. It had her mom, dad, little brother Joey, and her dolls, Millie and Tom."
CHAPTER 10
He'd fallen asleep in one of the living-room chairs. Then Turk pawing and scratching at the front door jerked him awake. Cooper stiffly pulled himself upright out of the chair. He found the leash. He hooked it onto the dog's collar; then he located Mikaela in the kitchen. She'd lit a candle and gone through the refrigerator, which was empty except for spoiled fruits and a carton of sour milk. Remarkably, however, there was a little running water left from the faucet; she'd filled a pan. Her own eyes had a puffy, just-slept look, as she arranged cups, the pan of water, and remaining food on the table.
"Did you conk out?" Cooper asked, seizing one of the cups and draining it.
"I did. Amy's out like a light, under the blankets."
"Good. It's better than sleeping outside. I've got to walk the dog; he's about to poop on the floor."
She gave him a sidelong glance with a half smile. She looked a lot prettier without the wool cap, her auburn hair fluffed to around shoulder length. Bright, calm, green eyes. "Sounds positively suburban," she said.
"Yeah, the burbs without the suburbanites."
He picked up the leash, grabbed his crossbow on the way to the door, then both he and Turk went outside.
Turk immediately pulled strenuously on the restraint, plowing his nose into leaves and locating new scents.
The wind blew leaves and clutter along the dark streets, which had the bleak, somnolent atmosphere of a graveyard. He heard nothing but the creak of branches, and what he thought, a low rumble from the horizon. The air had a sour-sweet odor, as if from a pet-food factory; but it had to be the polluted river smells mixing with the ash and fumes from the lahar. It was puke from the center of the earth, he thought, walking the dog halfway down the block.
They kept going and reached an intersection; he let Turk explore a tangle of bushes and trees. He saw a pool of moving lights far at the end of the street, which was laid out straight a mile or more ahead. Could be a car, could be a flashlight, could be a group carrying torches, he thought. He rounded up Turk and they walked around the corner onto another road. The dog pulled hard, like a husky on a sled team. "C'mon Turk, we can't go forever," he complained. All the other homes were dark and likely uninhabited. Once again, he wondered where everyone had gone.
He heard a loud pop pierce the night, then two more. Shouts, coming from the direction of their house. He called for Turk and they ran together, to the intersection, and then around the corner along the street. More loud pops broke the deep windy silence. From a block away from their sanctuary, he spotted a man prowling and crouching on the front lawn. He quieted the dog and they hid in some nearby bushes.
The man wore a black kerchief and white face paint; he made a war whoop sound, "eeow! eeow!." A second man, same tribal get-up, came running up out of the shadows. Both of them clutched weapons, one a hand-gun, and the other what looked like a grappling hook.
Cooper and the dog knelt together in the shadows, watching. The man with the gun knelt down on the lawn in a firing position. "You're on your own Turk," Cooper whispered, fitting his crossbow with an arrow.
He ran in a crouch across one adjacent yard, then scrambled over a wooden fence, and sprinted to a row of trees. He heard several more shots fired, pops like cherry bombs in succession. He spotted at least three men on the front lawn, including the guy with the grappling hook; two of them looked pinned down on their stomachs by Mikaela firing the pistol, as pops and flashes came from a second-floor window. The window in front was shattered and gaping open. He knew she'd be near out of ammunition.
He felt swamped with fear and guilt; he'd left the two girls alone. The man with the hook left his companions and sprinted around the back of the house. He whooped, like a cheap movie depiction of an Apache, as he ran.
One of the remaining attackers rose up to one knee with his arm extended and the handgun aimed through the second-floor window. Cooper already had a fix on him in the scope; he lowered the cross-hairs to just beneath the man's left shoulder, the firing one. The arrow made a twang sound and sliced the air in seconds. It hit home. "Bull's eye," he whispered, his heart racing. The strike knocked the man over onto his right side; he gripped the arrow impaling his body, kicked his legs spasmodically, then weakly let go of it. Cooper rearmed and headed in a crouched run to the back of the house.
He found the hook man jiggling a latch on the backdoor. He heard Turk barking out front. There was no negotiating with these crazies. They'll kill Mikaela and take Amy; who knows what they're doing to captives. So that was that; no help was coming. It would have already arrived. Before the man could get through the backdoor, Cooper drilled him between the shoulder blades with an arrow. Leaving the body
at the backdoor step, he ran back around to the front of the house, his heart beating like a hammer.
When he got there, Mikaela was standing on the front lawn.
She looked at him wild-eyed; she was scared also, he thought, but warily triumphant. "He ran when he saw what you'd done to his buddy, that other one in the Halloween costume. The coward, he chickened out."
"You okay?"
"Yeah." He stepped forward and they hugged each other hard, no hesitation.
"Amy?"
"She never left the bedroom."
"That guy is gonna come back with his friends."
"I know. We have to go."
Cooper stood over the dead man as Turk wandered up to the body and nosed its thigh.
"You recognize him?"
"Same tribe of morons," he said. "The painted faces and the black headgear. I saw them with Amy and Turk, back then." He leaned down, put his foot on the dead man's chest, and gripped the arrow by its feathered end. It resisted his pull, then it came out like a dried cork from an old bottle.
They went back inside and found Amy, sitting on her bed with her hands over her ears. Cooper went over and picked her up; Mikaela collected her belongings, including Millie and Tom.
"Shit, I thought this place was going to be home for a few days," she muttered bitterly.
"No place is, for very long."
They gathered the rest of their things when they got downstairs, the meagre food and water; blankets. Cooper thought they should go out the back. He rolled the limp, heavy body of the second assailant away from the backdoor frame. He recovered his arrow, then hid the dead man in some shrubs after dragging him by the armpits across the dirt lawn. Then he put on his rucksack, picked up Amy again, and they wandered with Turk back out into the night.
They walked for about an hour. They found a worn dog-walking path through the stricken exurb, traversing empty yards and clumps of woods that separated neighborhoods. The backyards were silent, with chain-link fences and soggy volcanic ash floating in the built-in pools. Black ash clouds drifted like a poison tide across a luminous moon.
Devastated Lands Page 4
