by R. A. Hakok
I feel a sudden weight across my shoulders as it lands on the back, and a second later I hear the snapping of jaws inches from my neck. I’m pitched forward; I feel my shoulder bounce off brace wire, but somehow I manage to stay on my feet. I know it can’t last. It’s lunging forward again and again, straining to get inside the parka, but my hood and the backpack are getting in its way. I’m trying to free myself from the straps but when I reach down I realize they’re not straps but its arms.
And then finally I lose my balance and I’m pitched forward, and suddenly I’m no longer in the tunnel but tumbling out into gray morning light between two crumbling gateposts. I don’t need to read the sign on the flaking paintwork to know where this place is. My boots sink into the drifted snow and I fall forward, flailing in the deep powder.
Behind me the fury’s keening and howling like an animal caught in a trap. Its emaciated arms are wrapped around its head and its face is pushed into the gray snow, like it’s trying to burrow its way out of whatever torment it’s suddenly found itself in.
I look down and realize I’m holding Marv’s gun. There’s only one bullet; I can’t afford to miss like I did in the tunnel at Mount Weather. I take a step closer, using my other hand to steady my aim. My finger slips through the trigger guard and I take a deep breath. There’s a sharp crack as I squeeze. The grip whacks itself against my palm and the pistol rears up. A neat black circle appears in the back of the fury’s head and it stops moving.
The thick, sulfurous smell of gunpowder fills my nostrils and for the first time I begin to realize something’s very wrong. I let the gun fall from my fingers.
I look down again. The fury’s head is shaved on both sides. But in the center there’s a familiar strip of hair, once so dark it was almost black, now shot through with white. Blood, thick with the cold, wells up from the hole the bullet has made. It trickles down her neck and drops into the gray snow.
I wake with a start. Hicks is standing over me shaking my shoulder.
‘Time to get up. Lot of ground to cover today.’
I blink sleep from my eyes. The dream’s evaporating, but not quickly enough. I look around. It’s still at least an hour ’till dawn and cold. I banked the fire but it’s died overnight. There’s no wood left so I pull on my boots and parka and head outside to find some more. When I get back Mags is awake, sitting up with the sleeping bag pulled tight around her.
I dump the meager collection of branches I’ve gathered on the ground and busy myself with the fire. The wood’s damp and won’t light but for once I’m glad of it. The fury’s gone, and soon I will have to tell her. I don’t know what Hicks said to make it leave but I can guess. When he came back from behind the altar I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. But I heard it, soon after, making its way to the back of the church. I didn’t stir from my sleeping bag as the door opened and it stepped out into the wind.
I fiddle with the branches for longer than I need to and then finally I use some of the gas and they catch. The withered limbs hiss as I feed them to the chary flames, sending up coils of dense gray smoke that smell of decay. I fill the tin mug with water from my canteen and place it among the smoldering branches.
What little heat the fire’s offering draws Mags closer. She sits next to me, cowled up inside the sleeping bag, the faint light playing across her features. I don’t want to look at her but I can’t help it. The circles under her eyes are almost black now, and underneath her cheeks have sunken in, sharpening the angles of the bones there. The water’s starting to bubble so I mix in a packet of coffee and fish out the charred mug. She reaches for the cup she uses. As she holds it up so I can transfer the contents I see the virus’s scabrous advance. I doubt it’ll hold liquid much longer. The cup disappears inside the sleeping bag and she huddles around it, like she needs to extract every last ounce of the warmth that’s there.
‘How’re you feeling?’
She takes a sip of the coffee.
‘Yeah. So-so.’
‘Just a couple more days. Hicks reckons we can be there tomorrow night.’
I take a couple of MREs from my backpack and start unwrapping them. She shakes her head.
‘Not for me.’
‘Mags.’
‘It’s too early, Gabe. I’ll eat later, when we’ve been on the road a while. Promise.’
I hand her one of the plastic containers. She picks it up, unscrews the cap and raises it to her lips. She hesitates a moment and then knocks it back with a grimace.
‘Have you given Johnny his yet?’
I don’t know what to say, so I stare down at the MRE that’s hissing away at my feet.
‘Gabe?’
Hicks voices carries over to us from somewhere behind me in the darkness.
‘It’s gone. Left in the middle of the night.’
‘Gone where?’
Hicks steps out of the shadows. He’s holding the thermos in one hand.
‘Can’t say that I know.’
Mags throws back the sleeping bag and gets to her feet. She has to steady herself on one of the pews.
‘Didn’t you try and stop him?’
But she doesn’t wait for a response. She’s already pulling on her boots.
‘Mags. Maybe it’s for the best.’
She stops what she’s doing. And what scares me then isn’t the dark circles under her eyes, or the way there are hollow shadows where her cheeks used to be. It’s the way she’s looking at me, like I’ve said something that has surprised her, and now I’m being re-evaluated.
‘He’s not a bird with a broken wing, Gabriel. He’s a child, just like we were, when Kane took us.’ She points at Hicks. ‘And when I was in that cage and one of his soldiers wouldn’t let me have Gilbey’s medicine that child gave me his.’
She reaches for her parka and then turns around to look at me again.
‘Don’t you see? We can’t allow ourselves to think like them, like there might be some reason that makes it okay to do bad things to people.’
She goes back to gathering up her things. I stare down at the floor. I doubt I could feel any worse than I do right now. Hicks looks at her like he’s just starting to figure out what he’s gotten himself into.
‘Alright, calm down now. It can’t have gone far. I’ll go find it.’
‘No.’
‘I thought you wanted it back.’
‘I do want him back. I just don’t trust you to do it.’
She looks back at me.
‘Are you coming with me?’
I don’t know how I’ve let it come to this but there’s only one thing now that might save us. I look up at her and slowly shake my head.
‘No, Mags, I’m not.’
*
I SAY GOODBYE to them by a faded red Do Not Enter sign just as another gray dawn’s taking shape over the lifeless hills to the east. Hicks passes me a handful of the plastic containers. I ask him how many he has left for Mags and he says plenty but I make him take them out and show me anyway. He says they’re going to try and make it to a place called Falling Waters by nightfall. It’s a little town just off the interstate a mile or so shy of the Maryland state line. There’s a small church that sits at a bend in the Potomac; they’ll wait for me there ’till sunup. He sets off down the off-ramp. Mags hangs back.
‘Thank you for doing this.’
I look down at the snow.
‘I knew-’ I realize I’m about to say it but at the last minute I stop myself ‘-he was going to go. I didn’t stop him either.’
‘Yeah, I figured. Thanks anyway.’
She reaches out one mitten like she means to take hold of my hand and then thinks better of it. She’s about to pull it back when I grab it. She looks up at me.
‘Take care, Gabe. Find him quickly and catch us up.’
She turns around and sets off after Hicks. I watch her making her way slowly down to the interstate as I hike across the overpass. The wind’s picked up. It swirls the snow around her. The highway
curves around to the east as soon as the off-ramp joins it. Within minutes she’s gone.
I turn my attention back to finding the kid. I told Mags I’d know where to look for him, that I’d find him faster on my own. But that was just to get her to leave with Hicks. The truth is I’m no Marv, or Truck. And whatever tracks the kid might have made a few hours ago the wind’s long covered them.
I tell myself it’s just another puzzle. All I have to do is put myself in his shoes and try and figure out where he would have gone. Truck’s hot on our heels so I doubt he’ll have gone back the way we’ve come. He knows we were headed north on I-81, so it’s unlikely he’d choose that way either. Taking the interstate south would certainly get him out of everyone’s way but as I look at it stretching out for miles behind me I figure he’ll have passed on that too. He’ll only have had a few hours to find somewhere to hole up before it got light and there’s nothing that might pass for shelter that way as far as the eye can see. That only leaves east. The map says there’s a town on the other side of the highway. I tighten the straps on my backpack and make my way down towards it.
I start checking houses as soon as I leave the interstate. I’m pretty sure now this is the way he’s come. He struggles with the snow so he won’t have gone far, and out here by the highway it’s sparsely populated, just the occasional dwelling set back from the road. I don’t even have to check all of them. He’s too small to go clambering through windows and he doesn’t have the means to force a lock, so he’ll have been looking for somewhere that’s already been broken into. I allow my hopes to rise a little. It won’t be long until I find him.
But as I get closer to town roads start branching off to the left and right, each one lined with squat little boxes, and a lot of them have busted front doors. I begin to realize the enormity of the task that lies ahead of me. It might have taken Marv and me all day to work a single street like this when we were back in Eden. I have to find the kid in the next couple of hours if I’m to have any hope of catching Mags and Hicks.
I make my way up to the next house along, a brick and shingle single story with a sagging snow-laden roof, trying to figure out how else to narrow my search. Darkened windows stare back at me as I trudge up to the screen door and unsnap my bindings. And that’s when it hits me: he’ll have taken his snowshoes off outside. That should speed things up considerably. I’ll still have to hike up to each stoop or porch to check, but at least I won’t have to venture inside.
An hour and three streets later and I still haven’t found him, though. I cross the road and start up the next one along. The house on the corner is burned to the ground, just a charred chimney breast standing alone in what I guess used to be the yard. The next one’s not much better; the walls have been stripped to the studs and when I look up there’s little left of the roof between the gables. But the third house looks more promising. The boards have been pried loose, exposing the insulation underneath, but otherwise it looks in decent shape, and I can see the front door’s open. An old Bronco, long since sunken onto its tires, sits at a haphazard angle on the scrub of ground that might once have passed for lawn. There’s no tracks to tell anyone’s been here, but when I walk around to check the porch I find what I’m looking for: a pair of red snowshoes, already almost covered with gray snow. Another hour and I would have walked on by.
I climb the steps. The front door’s ajar; I push it open and look in. There’s no mistaking which way he’s gone; the prints left by his small boots stop at a door near the end. The pair of hiking poles I got him lie abandoned next to it.
I unsnap my snowshoes and step inside. There’s little to distinguish this place from the countless others like it I’ve scavenged over the years. The wallpaper’s peeling from the walls and the ceiling’s stained and cracked, in places the lathes showing through. I call out but there’s no answer so I make my way down the hallway and open the door. A narrow staircase winds down into darkness. I pull the flashlight from the pocket of my parka and turn the handle, but the faltering yellow beam doesn’t extend much beyond the first few steps.
It was Marv’s job to scavenge the dark places, that was the deal. Claus may not live inside my head anymore but I’d be grateful for that arrangement now, just the same. I call out again but still there’s no answer, and now that’s beginning to worry me too. He has to be down there. I wonder if he’s already turned. Hicks said it could happen at any moment, and when it did there’d be no warning; it’d be like a switch had been flipped. I look behind me at the busted door. Spidey’s offering all sorts of helpful suggestions, most of them variations on a single theme: let’s get out of here and catch up with Mags and Hicks. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted.
I pull off my mittens and slip my hand into the pocket of my parka, feeling for Marv’s gun. I take it out and pull the slide back to chamber the only round it holds.
I take a deep breath and start down the stairs.
*
I HAVEN’T MADE more than a couple of steps when the toe of my boot catches on something and I stumble. I grab for the railing to steady myself and almost drop the gun. The beam from the flashlight briefly shows a pair of ski goggles, the lenses taped, before they skitter off down the stairs and are lost to darkness.
I wait for a long moment, my heart pounding, my breath white and heavy in the air in front of me. Once I've calmed myself a little I continue my descent. When I reach the bottom stair I stop and look around. In the corner nearest to me there’s a small furnace, the flue pipe snaking up to a rough hole cut into the low plasterboard ceiling. A washing machine and dryer sit side by side next to it, a pile of moldering clothes heaped in a laundry basket on top. Cardboard boxes have been stacked against the wall opposite. Snowmelt’s got to them, turning the card to mulch, spilling their contents across the concrete floor.
My pulse is still racing but the fading beam refuses to show me any further so I inch forward, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other. My finger’s already slipped through the slit Hicks cut in my liners and now it curls around the cold trigger. I slide the safety, feeling it click softly under my thumb.
I advance slowly, the yellowing cone of light sweeping the darkness uncertainly in front of me. It slowly illuminates a small boy, his knees pulled to his chest. He looks asleep, just like the little girl I found, in the closet in Shreve, all those years ago. She hadn’t been able to move, but still Marv had grabbed the straps of my backpack and hauled me away, like he’d found me with my hand out to a maddening dog.
Johnny’s not like that girl, though. He may not have gotten the hang of snowshoeing yet, but he can move just fine. My eyes flick to the floor. His mittens lie discarded, the frayed remnants of the duct tape still clinging to the cuffs.
The flashlight’s starting to dim. I raise the gun and level it at his head. My hand’s shaking a little and I only have one bullet, but I reckon from this distance not even I could miss. My finger tightens around the trigger. I feel the last of the slack come out of it.
‘Johnny.’
I hold the pistol on him, waiting for his reaction. For a long time there’s nothing and then his eyes fly open, flashing silver as they catch the beam from the dying flashlight. The muscles in his jaw are working now, clenching and unclenching, as though he’s grinding his teeth. Just like the little girl in the closet, after Marv held the knife with the blood on it under her nose.
I call his name again, louder. At last his face softens. He slowly raises one hand to ward off the weakening beam and squints back at me.
‘Didn’t you hear me calling you?’
He nods.
‘It was the other one’s turn. I had to push him out of the way.’
I don’t care to dwell on what that might mean. I reach into the pocket of my parka and toss him one of the plastic vials. It bounces across the dusty concrete floor and comes to rest at his feet.
‘Take that then put your mittens back on. We’ve got to get going.’
He looks at the
container but makes no move to pick it up.
‘The girl sent you back for me.’
He doesn’t say it like it’s a question, but I nod anyway.
‘The soldier said I was holding you up. Maybe it’d be better if you went back and told her you couldn’t find me.’
The truth is it might. I don’t say that though. Instead I tell him Mags has gone on ahead; before we start worrying about slowing her down first we’ll need to catch up. A look of concern crosses his small face as he hears this.
‘The girl isn’t with you?’
I shake my head.
‘She and Hicks set off up I-81 this morning. We’ll meet them on the road.’
His brow furrows and he reaches for the container. He unscrews the cap and downs the liquid inside, grimacing with the taste. He reaches for his mittens. As I’m taping them up he looks at me.
‘The soldier’s like me you know. You shouldn’t trust him.’
We head back out to the porch. The kid hangs back in the shadow of the doorway, looking up at the darkening sky. The wind’s picked up since I went inside; there’s definitely more weather coming. I tell myself Hicks will know to get off the interstate and find shelter before it hits, and besides, there’s nothing I can do about that right now; I just need to focus on keeping us ahead of it. Storms this late in the season normally blow themselves out after a day or two. But right now that’s time I can’t afford.
I coax the kid out and we snap on our snowshoes and make our way back up to the interstate. I can see he’s trying but we’re moving far too slowly. It’s already well past noon. At this rate it’ll take us most of the night to reach Falling Waters.
I’m waiting at the top of the on-ramp for him to catch up when I happen to look back in the direction we came that morning. The snow’s drifting across the road, and I can barely make out the church where we spent the night. But then the wind drops and in the instant before it picks up again I spot movement. I tell myself it could be anything: the weakening light playing tricks with my eyes; some random piece of debris blowing across the highway. Part of me already knows better than that, however.
