Ariel

by Steven R. Boyett

  She nodded silently. I looked at Ariel worriedly and led Shaughnessy by the arm. After a few steps she shrugged me off. “I can walk by myself.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  Before we left I searched through their packs for anything we might need, feeling like the scavenger I was. I didn’t need their weapons or clothes. I took some freeze-dried and canned food and a pair of binoculars, and we left the rest behind. Ariel kept glancing back at Faust’s grave.

  *

  Half a mile from the Interstate junction Ariel called a halt. She craned her neck forward, looking down the car—littered road, her head cocked to the right as though she were straining to catch stray sounds. “Up ahead,” she said. “At the junction—” She broke off. “Get behind a car, fast.” I didn’t question, just did as she said. Shaughnessy and I knelt behind a gray Cadillac. Ariel stood behind a white Chevy van, driver’s door standing open in empty invitation. The two cars were side by side; I could see the van’s keys hanging in the ignition.

  “It’s a griffin,” said Ariel. “Shai-tan, I’m sure; it’s wearing a saddle.” She craned her head around the side of the van to look again. “There’s a man standing beside it. He has those things—binoculars.” She looked away. “They’re waiting for us, Pete. They must be. Or for Malachi, if he found our dead friends back there. He could put it together the same way we did.”

  I tried to think. Shaughnessy looked at me expectantly. Shit. The mention of the griffin had sent adrenaline surging, a white burst within my chest. “All right.” The fingers of my left hand tapped a nervous staccato on the scabbard of my sword while I said “all right” another two or three times. I pulled the road atlas from its flap, opened it, studied it. “All right,” I said again. “We head east. No more highways, no more main roads. We cut across to Delaware and follow the coast the rest of the way up.” I looked at Ariel. “Do you think they’ll be watching the coast?”

  “I can’t see how they could. Too much area, not enough manpower. Besides, they have the griffin rider. He’d be much more effective from the air.”

  My teeth played with my lower lip. “So we still have to lie low.”

  She nodded. I turned to Shaughnessy. “You don’t have to come along the rest of the way. It’ll probably start to get pretty bad from here on out.”

  Her gaze didn’t waver. “No. I’m with you two.”

  I nodded and looked back to the map. “Let’s do this, then. Let’s head back the way we came for a mile or so, then leave the road and head east until we reach the Chesapeake. Maybe we can find a small sailboat and cross—it’d save us some time. There’s only one bridge on the map, so they might be watching it. We’ll have to assume they are. From there we head northeast into Delaware, cross Delaware Bay, and parallel I-95 the rest of the way to New York. How about it?”

  Shaughnessy shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  I shook my head in exasperation.

  “What’s the Chesapeake?” Ariel wanted to know.

  “An ungodly huge bay,” I answered.

  “Hmm.”

  “Something?”

  “Just an idea. You think you can find a sailboat?”

  “I think we’ll find dozens. Finding a seaworthy sailboat is another matter.”

  She looked thoughtful. “Let me see your map.” I got it out and unfolded it. She studied it carefully. Behind her I saw Shaughnessy put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. I narrowed my eyes at her and the laugh came out.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “She looks like a surrealist painting.” She put her hands out in front of her like a director framing a scene. “I want to put a frame around this and call it Unicorn Behind Chevy Van. Rush Hour in Wonderland.”

  I frowned. Ariel looked up from the map. “I think I might be able to take us out of the bay and into New York Harbor, if you can find a good boat and get it to deep water.”

  I gaped. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. But I’m also not certain I can do it. It’s worth a try though, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure it is. How are you going to do it?”

  “We’ll see when we get there.”

  I could see she didn’t want to commit herself. “Whatever you say.” I took off my pack and stretched; my legs had begun to stiffen. I touched my toes and did stretches to loosen my knotted calves. Before putting the pack back on I untied the main flap and removed the binoculars I’d taken in Alexandria. I peered around the right side of the Cadillac and brought the black-bordered lenses to my eyes. They pressed against the bridge of my nose; I moved them farther apart. I was looking at a sideways figure eight, blurred, as the separate images overlapped. I adjusted the focus; the blur became the rear end of a car. I moved the view down the road to the junction, and there they were. The griffin stood alert, head flicking as it looked about, a Greek guardian sculpture come to life. The memory of hot brass flared my nostrils. My eyes met eyes of bright, predatory gold. They blinked once, lazily. I saw the feathers on the beast’s neck ruffle in the breeze, slid my view down its length to where feathers became leonine fur. The saddle arrangement was on its back, riderless. The rider was at the road’s edge a few yards from the griffin. Adjusting the focus a touch, I noted with satisfaction that there was dark discoloration around his left eye. Score one for our side, I thought. One day we’ll finish the job begun in Atlanta, you bastard.

  As I watched he raised something to his good right eye. Not binoculars, as Ariel had said. A telescope. Still, Ariel’s vision must have been incredible, considering it took 8 x 40 binoculars to let me make that out.

  He was directly facing me, and I ducked back behind the car as the telescope came to his eye. If I could see him, he could see me. I told Ariel and Shaughnessy not to move. We were still for five minutes, until I decided to risk another look. His back was to me. The broadsword hung from his left side. He turned slowly to his right, scanning with the telescope. Shai-tan opened her beak and flapped her huge wings. I lowered the binoculars and the dim sound of the screech reached my ears across the silent distance. “All right, let’s go. Stay low until I say, Shaughnessy. Always keep a car between us and them to block the view. Ariel—”

  “They won’t see me.”

  I handed the binoculars to Shaughnessy and she put them back and re-tied the flap. I left the waistbelt untied and walked half-crouched, causing most of the pack’s weight to rest high on my shoulder blades. Ever try to maneuver while wearing a backpack, blowgun, and samurai sword?

  I made Shaughnessy go ahead of me so I could keep an eye on her without constantly having to look back. She kept low and hugged close to the cars along the road’s edge. She deserved more credit than I gave her, I guess.

  The outside lane gave the advantage of a narrow angle of view from the vantage point of the rider. If we tried to walk in one of the inside lanes he might see us as we darted from one car to another. There was no way he’d spot Ariel. We barely saw her ourselves. She kept pace with us, but did it by streaking to the rear of a car in the next lane in a white blur, pausing until we caught up, and speeding to the next car, appearing there as if she hadn’t covered any space between the two.

  It took us an hour and a half to travel a mile. Behind a rusted-out yellow taxicab with the hood open, I called a ten-minute rest and removed my pack. My back and hamstrings were rubber bands stretched almost to snapping point. I wiped sweat from my face with the tail of my ragged T-shirt, salt stinging my eyes. Shaughnessy became an X on the asphalt. Ariel just stood behind a car and looked at us, impassive.

  “Goddammit,” I panted, “can’t you at least look tired?”

  She said nothing, tail swishing restlessly. I saw that, though she understood that we were only human and therefore tired quickly, she was anxious to move on, so after ten blissful but unfairly short minutes, which had mostly served to let me know how tired I really was, Shaughnessy and I stood, groaning, and we set out away from I-95. We paralleled the highway for five miles before returning to it
. We saw no one. Empty streets, empty buildings, empty houses. The area around Washington seemed deader than it ought to be. Usually this fact wouldn’t bother me a bit, and even now I found some security in it, but that only served to make me more wary. Any black speck in the distance automatically became a waiting griffin; as we approached, it would resolve into a building. I tried to calm myself, knowing that Ariel would warn us if Shai-tan and her master were up ahead. I kept a hand on Fred.

  I’d handed the crossbow to Shaughnessy. “It’s already loaded and ready to fire,” I told her. “Just aim it like a rifle—look through the scope if you have time—and pull the trigger. Aim a little higher than your mark if your target’s a good distance off.”

  “Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You talk to me as though I can’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. I’m perfectly capable of comprehending a crossbow, thank you.”

  “I just want to be sure you know how to use it in an emergency. Don’t be so defensive.”

  “Me defensive!” She brushed a strand of hair from her eye. “You’ve got this attitude that I’m a burden to you. If you feel you’ve got to look out for me, that’s your problem, not mine. I can look out for myself.” I started to protest; she held up a hand to stop me and continued. “You seem to feel that if we got into a fight you’d have to both fight and look out for me. Her voice hardened. “It is not your manly duty to protect me. I expect to be helping out, too.”

  “That’s an easy thing to say. But would you be in the middle of it all if it were really happening? Would you put a bolt in a man’s back while I’m busy fighting him?”

  She frowned.

  “See? I’m not talking chivalry, I’m talking survival. I don’t expect you to like it; I don’t like it either. I just want you to understand it. There aren’t any rules, no ‘honorable combat’ bullshit. I’m not a fighter, so if I’m in the middle of a fight it’s because I had no choice.”

  “How naive do you think I am? Do you think I could have survived six years without at least being aware of that? Do you honestly think no one’s tried to rape me?” She was almost crying; I ducked my head, feeling embarrassed. “God damn you, Pete, do you really feel so holier-than-thou that you need to justify your every act by preaching to everyone else?”

  “You’re trying to make it sound as if I think I’m the only one who’s had to kill to survive,” I said. “Certainly I know that’s not true. But if you want to know the truth, yes, I think you’re that naive. You say you’ve got that ‘protective paranoia’ attitude, but you don’t even carry a weapon. You were reading on a bus bench when we met you, for Christ’s sake!”

  Her eyes slitted. “I carry a knife.”

  “Oh, boy. A knife.”

  Her eyes were bright, glistening with tears. “Yes, a knife. And I hate it. I hate having to carry it, I hate the idea that I’m supposed to be good with it, I hate the fact that I’m vulnerable without it. You walk around with your ‘you gotta kill to survive’ bullshit, and I resent it. I can’t tell you how many people—always men—I’ve heard rationalize it that way. I’ve survived as well as you, and I haven’t had to kill, or fight. I’ve run away. I’ve hidden. I’ve lied, I’ve done anything I could not to have to be in that situation, because I know you don’t really have to kill. I resent hearing you say how much you like the Change, because I despise it. I always have to be on guard. I can’t get close to anyone. Sure, you can romanticize the Change. Try it from my end.”

  I should have shut up, but I didn’t. “You think this is different than it used to be? There were rapists before the Change. There were people who’d shoot you six times in the head because you honked behind them when the light turned green. There are people who’d kill me the second they saw me because there might be food in my pack, and sometimes you have to hurt people to keep from being hurt yourself.”

  “I haven’t had to.”

  “That’s you, then. It doesn’t seem to work that way for me.”

  “If that isn’t rationalization, nothing is. You could avoid killing as easy as I do, but you don’t. I avoid it because I loathe the idea, and you just seem to accept it as the way things are.”

  “What, do you think you can change it? Do you think it’s uncivilized?” I swept my arms around. “Look around you—no civilization. Do you think the Change should be this neat Disney movie with animals like Ariel? Come on, Shaughnessy—it’s not Disney. It’s Dante. And if you don’t realize that, if you act as if it’s Disney, they’ll win. Every time.”

  “I do realize that. Why do you think I carry a weapon? That doesn’t mean I think it has to be this way. It’s not some unwritten law that says things are like this and can’t change.”

  “But it is like this. You can be as idealistic as you want—but if you don’t act realistically in a world of reality, unicorns or not, magic or not, you won’t be able to act at all.”

  We let it hang there, but the argument still ran through my head. No matter how many times I went through it, not understanding why I felt obliged to defend my position, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was right and I was wrong.

  *

  We were at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. It made me nervous: no place to go except toward an opponent or back the way you came—by which time, if they were even moderately smart, there’d be a greeting party there, too. Unless you wanted to dive over the side. I looked at the massive concrete of the car-filled bridge and wondered. In the cars? Possible.

  “How ‘bout it, Ariel?”

  “Feels okay. Which is why it feels wrong.”

  I nodded. “It says a lot when you can’t trust a safe feeling anymore. Keep your eyes peeled.” She stepped alongside me, followed by Shaughnessy, who held the crossbow with the butt clamped under her right arm, hand on the trigger guard, other hand on the stock. She’d been silent for the past few hours. I made her follow a different path through the cars than the one I took, then began threading my own way through, trying not to think about her. I concentrated on the cars, looking intently into their interiors as I came up on them.

  I kept glancing at both banks of the Potomac to see if perhaps we were being watched. I just couldn’t shake the feeling. Motion out of the corner of my eye caused me to bring Fred up to guard position. I relaxed. Shaughnessy, looking nervous but resolute.

  We crossed the bridge without incident. Ariel was already waiting on the other side. All was still and quiet. I sheathed Fred, reached out, and gently dislodged Shaughnessy’s hand from around the crossbow’s trigger guard.

  *

  We made camp well out of sight of the Interstate. Ariel assured me she would keep the night vigil, and Shaughnessy and I collapsed on our sides of the sleeping bag.

  We reached the Chesapeake about two-thirty the next afternoon. We smelled it long before we saw it; something in the very atmosphere, in the feel of the landscape, changed as we neared it. Weathered houses indelicately pulled their skirts up against the eventuality of flooding. The bay was deep blue and serene.

  “Nice, huh?” I asked Shaughnessy, hoping to get some sort of enthusiasm out of her. I was rewarded by a broad smile.

  “Yes! I’d be happy just to stop here and sit around for a decade or so.”

  “I like looking at this,” said Ariel. “It looks … serene. Timeless, or something. As if your civilization could start up again tomorrow and I’d disappear, and this would still be here. And things could Change again, and again, and that—” she nodded at the indigo horizon “—would still be there, regardless.”

  I realized then that she’d never seen the ocean before. All that wandering we’d done in Florida, and we’d never been to a beach. I wanted to see her on the beach in moonlight, waves unfurling behind her with foam on them like the fluff of her mane, her silver hooves firmly in the wet sand and she a ghostly silhouette against the eternal crescendo of wave after wave.

  We did nothing but look at it for a lon
g time. It was Shaughnessy who finally broke the spell. “Well, what now?”

  I looked at Ariel. “Find a marina, I guess. You can forget about any boat in the water, but a boat in dry dock might not be in bad shape.”

  She nodded. Shaughnessy and I got up, slapping sand from our pants, and the three of us walked along the beach.

  *

  Its name was Lady Woof and it hung twelve feet above the water. It was at least forty feet long and held from a crane by steel cables.

  “Good-looking boat,” remarked Shaughnessy. “How do we get it from there to there?” She pointed from the crane to the water.

  “Let’s just count our blessings,” I said. “At least we’ve found a seaworthy boat—I hope. After so long she might ship water like a clothes basket, for all we know. The sails may have dry rotted.”

  “Most sails are nylon, not canvas,” said Shaughnessy. “Nylon won’t dry rot in six years.” She grinned. “Besides, there’s no rigging on that boat, in case you didn’t notice. They had to remove the masts when they raised her.”

  *

  The Lady Woof turned out to be in good shape. I clambered up the framework of the crane and lowered myself down the cable and onto the deck. Boat fixtures are built to be waterproof, so half a dozen years’ worth of storms had barely affected her. There was a lot of birdshit crusted on deck. Surprisingly, the wheel and rudder moved freely. The cabin was luxurious. Dust had settled about the rich wooden cabinets and countertops. The plush green sofabed was faded. I found a few hurricane lamps tucked away, and a bottle of lemon-scented lamp oil. Whoever had owned her had, to coin a phrase, gone overboard on the interior. Varying tones of wood were everywhere, and the musty air smelled of cedar. Yellow curtains trimmed the left and right windows—I mean, the port and starboard hatches—drawn in at their centers.

  I returned to the deck and leaned out over the starboard side. Ariel and Shaughnessy looked up at me from the dock. “Looks seaworthy,” I said. “But how we’ll get her to sea I don’t—”