by T. Wyse
M'grevor gave no response to her shouting, the door slammed behind her. There were immediately raised words among her and another voice in the hallway. Amelie's dazed mind raced as well as it could. Were people defending her, willing to help her? Or perhaps it was the other way around, was Donna Woolley the one standing in their way? The yelling stopped, and footsteps retreated away from the door, down the hallway.
"Alright, alright, here's what we're going to do." The man held both her shoulders, looking into her blurry eyes. "Are you fit to move?" He asked quickly.
Her hands trembled, her knees were weak. "I don't, I don't think I can run," she managed a slurred mumble.
"No running, promise. We have a plan. No running.” The great man produced a sack. "We threw together a cart from car parts. It should carry you. You’ll have to keep company with some potatoes and carrots, but no running.”
“Now listen to me, this is important, you must be honest with me: Will they see you if we cover you with cloth, and surround you with vegetables?” His breath was calm, but hastened, urgent.
"I...no…I don't think so." Amelie replied, her eyes moving to Kokopelli. He was standing at attention on the edge of the bed, surveying the situation. She made an urgent motion with her eyes, and he whispered the words on the wind itself: “They cannot.”
Bolstered by the confirmation Amelie continued with growing confidence. "They didn't know I was here, not until they'd seen me working in the garden." Her mind began to wake slightly, realizing that she had the answer and hadn’t needed the confirmation of the little guardian. "And they didn't know where I was in the house, until they saw me directly. I think I could ride in a cart without them knowing, but they'll suspect…" She looked at him, desperate and trembling. "They aren't crows, they're something more, they might know, they might." Her voice trembled.
"Pursued by demons one must be watchful of the wake." The man sighed. The sobriety of his statement was frightening.
"Gather anything up you'll miss, we need to leave immediately." He winced, another yelling match apparently both louder and further down in the house had commenced.
"This is all I have," She hugged the ragged dress and shoe tightly. "And I suppose this cat." She pointed at Kokopelli, his tail twitched with aggravation. "These clothes I'm wearing aren't even mine. Everything else is gone." She was on the verge of crying once more.
"Don't worry about that," he assured her. “We’ll assume you can keep what you’re wearing, so if that's it, then let's go. Can you make it downstairs?"
She collected the socks, and bundled them into the dress, but left the shoes behind. Her steps were even less sure than usual, but he held her hand all the way, steadying her path as she gripped the still blood-wet dress.
He stopped her at the art room, and deposited her onto one of the couches, her grip still firm on her bundle. He snuck a look into the fields behind.
"They're there, too, aren't they?" She asked with a dreaming lucidity.
"No, none back there." She could taste the lie. It was so blatant that it stirred an image in her mind: the beautiful garden, the crops reaching for the sky, covered in a blanket of black into the horizon. How could they escape this legion, with such a simple ploy?
“Here, take this and tie up your hair, it was yours right? Once you’re in the cart you cannot move, understand?”
Her heart tore from her chest, rattling against her hushed breath. In his massive palm was her silly little wooden tie.
A maddened gaping smile on her face, she gingerly accepted it. Touching it was electricity, a flowing joy, and even tethering her matted hair with it was reminiscent of flight’s escape.
“You look a little better for it.” M’grevor smiled gently, offering his hand again.
“Thank you.” She beamed through the dulled mask. “Thank you.” She staggered on with him, down the stairwell.
The coolness of the tile of the entryway brought her back to reality for a moment. Everyone was assembled there, in addition there was a laughably ramshackle and thin 'cart' ridiculously out of place inside the landing of the house. Two strangers, a teenage boy, and a man younger than M'grevor stood by each of the cart's handles.
Amelie was afraid to look at the faces of the residents, afraid to see scowls of distaste, of blame. She knew that seeing that on Meldice's face would cause her grief enough that the trinket’s return would be meaningless. Instead she focused solely on her own air, breathing in and breathing out. She closed her eyes, allowed herself to be guided by that huge hand, and cast her sight inwards into the glowing tree within.
A touch of the tie’s smooth wood offered savory comfort, and a cold wash against the dry blooded itch of the pajamas.
Still clenching her taste of the wind to internal blindness, she cast her eyes over her chariot. It was assembled from car parts it seemed, featuring only two wheels and handles so that the efforts of two were needed to move it. Being led to the back, she tore her gaze downwards, lest she see the shadowed people, and couldn’t help but smile seeing a license plate hanging squarely upon the cart’s rear.
He hoisted her up onto the cart, and she slipped neatly into the indentation. It was lumpy but softened by layers and cloth below. The naked and brown burlap rubbed against her without the hooks of detergent or chemicals.
“It’s going to be a bit of a trek, and you’ll have to be as still as possible.” M’grevor appeared before her, another oversized burlap sheet draped over an arm. “You can’t move, you can’t get out, we’ll surround you in padding and vegetables and we’ll have to hope that it won’t slip, cause I’m sure you’re going to need to breathe.”
She waited, hugging her stained dress. She was actually thankful to have whet the pajamas with her blood the evening before, as it at least seemed to satiate its lapping barbed tongues.
“No, wait.” There was a snarl from the entryway, and a sliding blur of blue and black. A little sparkle of purple in the light shot in front of M’grevor.
Meldice leaned in, her breath catching and staggering as she leaned in to the cart. “Worried.” The child Amelie was identified, panged empathy.
She just stared down, eyes glistening with fought back tears. “It’s…It’s just not…” The older girl fought to retain composure.
“I’m sorry, really. Really, I am.” Amelie sat up from her indent and hugged the girl, praying to mercy itself that none of the blood painted over to the blue and white. “I didn’t want to bring this, I didn’t mean to, and now that it’s here…well, I need to go. You’ve all been through enough.”
“It’s not right.” Meldice bit, whispering in Amelie’s ear. “I’m sorry we couldn’t fix your dress.”
"Thank you. For believing in me," she finished, then let go of their embrace, and to her relief Meldice was as immaculate as ever.
“We’re burning light I’m afraid.” M’grevor cut in. “Don’t want to get caught out there at night, even with the cart.”
“We’ll see each other again, I’m sure.” Meldice nodded crisply, though her breath trembled and her heart rattled with unsure beats. Kokopelli shifted in just as the tarp came down, and the last thing Amelie saw was Meldice covering her mouth, eyes locked on Amelie’s.
She lay there, the burlap a few inches from her face, and she stole one last touch of the tie as the others sealed the tarp’s stretch with vegetables. There was more than enough room for her chest to move at least, and the burlap breathed, so it was better than being buried alive, she rationalized.
"Hup!" The large man declared, and on cue the cart hoisted up onto a relatively level plane. The sound of the front doors opening pierced the darkness, and the girl felt an icy chill rise in her throat. This was it.
“If things go bad, I’m leading the crows as far from the cart as I can.” She leaned directly into Kokopelli’s ear.
“Understood.” He barely moved air with his whisper.
A bump stalled the beating of her heart. A few vegetables slid off the side, landing
with a cascade of thuds and a corner of the cloth loosed itself to light. She tensed, ready to make good on the promise, but with the cursing of the young man’s voice the vegetables returned and the cloth tucked back in.
The cart started once again, now rolling with soft ease on the soil. The echoing squeak of the gate’s hinge signaled their passage, and still the crows hadn’t attacked.
“So, uh, you’ll let us know when we can take a break, right?” the youngest asked to the air, his voice coming from behind the cart.
“Yes, I’ll be very clear when we can relax a bit. We seem to be doing well so far.” M’grevor’s voice came from her left.
There was no sound as they travelled, save the lightly crunching rumble of the cart passing over the still earth. The girl allowed herself a careful breath, her lungs having almost gone entirely dark in the moments before.
It could work, she assured herself.
“Whatever you do, do not fall asleep,” a hushed crackle warned.
6
Travelling Tales
It had been an hour or so by Amelie’s crude reckoning, an hour of movement in jarring silence. There had been nothing but the sounds of travel: the wheels grinding against earth, the footsteps of the three of them as they moved the makeshift wagon through the world.
Somewhere passed that hour, seemingly aware of her own worries on why they hadn’t stopped, M’grevor’s voice broke the silence.
"I'd have thought we'd have had time for a break by now, but it looks like that isn’t going to happen. Our little friends are still watching over us, persistent little things. So, lacking any formal introductions, why don’t you two explain your stories to me.”
“Uh, sir?” A young voice asked, bewildered. “We’ve already told you—“
“Then explain it to the crows, let everyone around us be your audience. Speak to the ruined houses, to the dead trees!” The man boomed, more than a little irritation in his tone.
There was an awkward silence, then M'grevor added with more gentleness: "It's going to be another hour or two before we manage to get where we're going, and it looks like there won’t be any breaks. Just humor me would you?"
Was the subtlety of what he was saying really lost on these two? Perhaps the exhaustion and monotony had got to them, or had banished thoughts of her secretly riding with them from their minds.
“Then why don’t we begin with my story.” The man sighed.
“Had been driving most of the afternoon, hoping to get home before night. Didn’t happen though. I’d heard about it on the radio, one of the few stations still broadcasting. Voice saying we needed to find shelter, but before they could even explain anything specific, the station was gone.”
"Not one to question omens like this I did just that, pulled up under the sturdiest thing I could find, handful of other people had the same idea. Funny kid appears out of nowhere then, looking totally lost, but she joins us.”
“Then it came, and we all know what that brought.” His voice was low, soft.
“Then the little girl’s up on her feet, running out like a fool. She’s slipping and tripping, and it gets me moving, and I catch her before she can bury herself in the dirt, clumsy thing.” Amelie winced at the description, remembering the frustrated movements.
"Isn’t till then that I realize, looking around us. My stupid car, all the cars, they’re all wrecks. Complete messes, like they’ve been sitting by the ocean for years. Not a damn thing working on it, nothing. Not the strangest thing given that there’s nothing left of the world but a flat plane of dirt, right?”
“The girl’s off, going scouting, some such nonsense. I’m too distracted to stop her, whatever.” He trailed off, mumbling. “Then my idiot car falls right through its own chassis, slams into the ground. Then the other ones follow, all in a line.” He chuckled darkly.
“Then the other two come at me, aggravated. They’d rather argue about what did this, they’d rather lay blame. Me, I see what we need, I see what we’ve got to do. The girl comes back, then leaves again right away, but then the real weirdness starts.”
“Comes back pretty quick, stumbles back into the dirt, skidding down. You two know how funny this dirt is, how you can rustle it up and it’ll all just get airborne right away, turn into a foggy cloud. Nasty stuff, the dirt.” The other two replied with agreeing sounds of irritation.
“Well she comes and kicks up a whole bloody storm of the stuff, starts screaming at us, to run. She’s cut herself on something, looks a real mess. Then the whole place goes black, like we’re being pelted with coal smoke, just dirt and screaming, and this horrible sound. The wave was silent, but this…well….” Even after time he was having trouble finding the words. “It was something else, still can’t think of it.”
"The thing, the cloud passes, and the girl, she's being attacked by these bedeviled crows. I picked up a piece of my junked car and started whacking at the damn things. There were so many of them, little black maggots on a corpse, but they burst like bubbles at the slightest touch, they burst into black dust and blew away onto the wind. A few of the others got their wits and helped me clear the pile of the filthy things off of her, we cleared em all up like that. We finally get to the girl and well...let's say she wasn't in a good state, was a right mess, we took her for dead even." The man's deep gruffness trembled for a moment, then collected itself. “Got to understand, so much blood on a person can make it look worse’n it is.”
"Right. So we have an argument over what to do, woman wants to bury her there, mark a headstone and all, and move on. The husband he says she doesn't know, she says she knows dead when she sees it. They get into a spat, start arguing uselessly." M'grevor mumbled, adding, "I know better than to get into that."
"So I think we might as well bring her along, for whatever its worth. We scavenged what we could from the car, the way it fell apart was another of these damned things to contend with. It's still as strong as ever, the metal isn't rusted or anything like that. The damn thing just fell apart, the engine just crumbled to bits. So..." The man announced to the people in the past, "We made a cart, figured it'd help us carry what supplies we could, especially in the damned silt."
"We went aimlessly, decided with some discussion, that we'd head the direction of the overpass, marking the way we went with an arrow carved into the asphalt. Was worrying stuff, we didn't have much in the way of food, or water. We made our way through the waste about half a day, people started getting frantic, letting the worry get to them. Then, just when it's getting bad, getting to angry shouts, getting to that point where we're placing blame on each other, we spot a house off in the distance."
"We move towards the house, and there's a whole bunch of them, we start thinking that maybe it really was a local thing, some kind of strange bomb or something. Then we see the houses proper, and we aren’t so hopeful. They were all ruined, in the process of falling to pieces, like the cars. We went through the streets like that, then finally we see one, one that's complete."
"House looks old, really old, like colonial. We go to the door, knock for a bit, not sure what we were going to find, and lo and behold, we meet Donna."
"Donna was in a state, half crazy, chattering on. There was a kid there too, quiet, huddled and hiding. We tell Donna what we've seen, and I swear, something snaps in her then, but instead of snapping towards going completely crazy she goes to the reverse, and that weirdness from before, it’s gone. She starts talking about how she knows what needs doing, she knows how we're going to survive, and goes over what she wants us to do, to stay there, and help her."
"That wasn't for me though, I wanted to move on, wanted to get back home again. Going to make sure my wife n' kid are safe, make sure I can protect them. I say to her, I'm going to move on, come the morning. But there's one thing I'd like to ask, see we've got this body with us, poor kid didn't make it through, and could we bury her somewhere near."
"I swear, didn't know, honest. The kid didn't twitch or move, or make a soun
d the entire time, the entire ride. We uncover her, well we all must have been blinded by the blood...and the stress...cause the girl we've been lugging around, she's breathing, definitely breathing." M'grevor's voice rose with hope and subtle triumph.
"She says she'll take care of the kid, and to leave her there. Sets her up in a room and all. Funniest thing, there was a cat too with her. Didn’t even see him until we’d looked in the cart again, dunno how he slipped in like that Strange looking fellow, must have been in her pack when she was at the underpass, or could’ve been a stray or such. Friendly enough thing though.”
"We left in the morning, the kid still isn't awake. Donna set us up with some rations, and Randal n' Karen decide to stay. I was set on going true to our heading, but Todd, and Barbara, they were the older couple, they've figured out which way they need to be going, to get home, and they split with us just like that. Stephanie and Louren, they come with me, and we keep heading west."
There was a protracted pause, the man was collecting his thoughts, or steeling himself to say something.
"That first night, out there naked in the open, that was a real killer. We tried to sleep like that, in the silted dirt, but we couldn't."
"No stars, moon feels like it's barely even there." The unidentified man, younger than M'grevor offered with a whisper.
"No...nothing." The boy offered. "It’s pure stillness, the wind doesn't even blow the dirt. I was afraid to leave the house at all, even though the house was as dark as the rest of the world, especially at night."
"That's when we found you Timothy." M'grevor added, continuing his story. "We couldn't sleep, so like idiots we start walking again, stumbling through the darkness. Nothing to tell us where we were, where we were going or anything, nothing to tell us how long it had been. The moon was there, sure, but like I said there was something about it that made it feel like it wasn't. Then out of nowhere, even more of a shock than the first bunch of houses, we saw the houses in your block."
