600 Miles: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (9 page)

"Ramiro,"
the skeleton man replied, his voice deep and gravelly.

Then they started talking, them Mexican words slowly passing back and forth, the two of them calm and unafraid, ready for whatever was going to happen next.

They stopped talking a moment.

"Roy?"

He looked at me.

"Roy, what are you talking about?"

He thought about it a second, like he still couldn't quite figure it himself.

"His name is Ramiro. He says he left the Hijos de Muerte. He says they're all cowards and deserved to die."

"Deserved it? He said that?"

"He said he wants to come with us."

I shook my head, the cold, deathly eyes of the Mexican falling upon me.

"Is—Is this some kind of joke? "

Gitty, still breathless, anxiously turned to face the skeleton man, her arms covering up her chest.

"Gracias!"
she gasped.

He just looked at her, that skull-face cold and unreadable, then back to Roy.

"Listen, Roy," I said, "I ain't understand this whole thing, but he done saved Gitty's life for sure. I mean, I don't know."

Roy looked at the bodies then back up the street, all of us waiting on him. "Let's get out of here in case these shitbags had any friends. This lunatic can follow us if he wants. If he tries anything, he'll be the first to go."

We took what was worth taking from them dead men and moved on, the skeleton man coming along.

Chapter 15

Thankfully, Roy weren't shot too bad. The bullet had hit him high in the shoulder and had just passed through, and after cleaning out the wound with some water Gitty boiled to make sure it weren't too dirty we bandaged him up. Our new friend, if you could call him that, told Roy he was going to go fetch some more water from the concrete river that was still trickling, me and Roy wondering what he might have really been planning though we let him go.

He startled us something good when he came back, the three of us at first thinking he were someone else. Apart from his big tattoo, it didn't even look like him anymore. The paint was gone from his face so that he were no longer a skellie but a normal man—a rough, mean-looking man for sure, his tanned face all weathered and scarred, but nothing as scary as he was before.

We stared at him as he came to set down an old plastic milk jug full of water near the fire, all of us still in shock.

"
Agua
," he declared.

"Thank you," Gitty said, trying not to look at him, taking the water and pouring it in the pan to boil. She was feeling much better now and was wearing a green hunting vest I'd taken off one of the dead men which I wished had covered her a bit more modestly, though after getting her shirt ripped off it were the only thing decent she had to wear.

We sat around going through our new things, them men having been well supplied compared to us: a good amount of ammo, a couple of flares, eating utensils, a fancy tin cup that had its own lid, some crackers, dried fish, a can of baked beans of questionable edibility, a couple packs of matches, and lots of other little things that would come in handy later on.

Roy and our fresh yet not so fresh faced Son of Death started talking, Roy nodding his head like he understood what the fella was saying.

"He ain't quite the same now, is he?" I said to Roy as we sat there, knowing I couldn't be understood. "Who would have thought that under all that scary paint that it were just some normal-looking Mexican."

"He says it's not his place to wear the death face anymore now that he's turned his back on his gang."

"What else he say?"

"That he's hungry."

We spread what we had around, saving enough for supper in case there weren't enough critters later on like the squirrels we had shot the day before. Afterwards we packed up, dividing the load. I watched as Roy gave our new friend his own gun and a handful of ammo—one of the several extra pistols we now had thanks to those men we'd killed—though I didn't want to tell him it were a bad idea.

We was well-armed now, better than before, and there was even one more of us, though I'd rather that Mexican fella—"Ramiro," Roy started calling him—had not been with us at all. After some time of walking though, ain't nothing bad occur, and I figured if he hadn't pulled that gun on us after Roy gave it to him then there weren't much chance of it happening from then on. Roy himself didn't seem to give it no mind, like he trusted him or simply weren't afraid. I weren't Roy though. I weren't some tough pistolero like the Mexican told him he were, and without a doubt he weren't nothing less. It was hard for me though, in a way, no matter how much I respected him, because I weren't half the man Roy was and it probably weren't something that were missed by Gitty. Weren't no doubt neither that if it weren't for him we'd be dead by now, which made it even worse. I'd have dragged Gitty to Lost Angeles only to die, and it was bitter knowing that, bitter knowing that no matter what I'd told her about staying by the creek that eventually the itch would have gotten too much and I would have brought her there and we'd be dead.

Maybe it wouldn't have been that way though. Maybe there really was a God watching down, and, knowing what I was fixing to do, he'd sent Roy along to keep us safe. Maybe that was it then, because I started thinking about it a long time and it seemed to me that Roy might have been one of them lost angels the city was named for: lonesome, drifting, never having no home.

The thought picked me up even as it pulled me down. Lost Angeles was a sad place to roam. Hell, anyplace I'd been was kind of like that, but something about Lost Angeles was even worse: all them dead buildings, all them lonely streets, all them poor people who once lived there in those lonely old houses we passed dead and gone.

"What are you thinking about?" Gitty asked me.

"Ain't nothing," I said.

"What ain't nothing? You still thinking about what happened back there?"

"Naw. Ain't no use in thinking about it no more."

She smiled and got closer to me, putting her hand in mine as we walked. Ahead, Roy and Ramiro, that tough-looking Mexican who had stopped being a Son of Death, chatted about things I couldn't understand, the both of them seeming to have a lot to talk about. I didn't like it too much, wondering why Roy had never talked so much when it was just me and him, though I tried not to pay it much mind.

We was moving south through them deserted streets, eventually coming to one that ran east and west as far as we could see. West we went for a whole day, the only other human beings we saw being some dried up corpses baking in the sun, passing for a few blocks signs of the fighting that had happened long ago: blown up buildings, huge craters in the road, and flipped over on its side across from a post office was a truck full of bullet holes, though whether them bullet holes was from back then or a lot more recent we didn't know.

To our left were the woods, all thick and green, both the city and nature blending together for a space until nature finally hit a place where the city weren't going to budge. There were lots of deer we spotted, and it was a nice surprise when we first seen them, and though Gitty thought they was pretty we ended up shooting one.

"Why do they have to look so sweet and gentle," she said. "I don't feel right eating this poor thing."

"Well, if they was ugly then they'd probably be mean and try to eat us instead. Think about
that
. Look at snakes for example. Hell, you ever walked by a rattlesnake minding your own business, like being nice and peaceable and all?"

"Them snakes don't eat people," she told me.

"All right, well maybe we're too big for them to try to swallow but how come then they still try to bite? You see, it's the same thing, and if them deer was ugly I'm sure they'd be trying to bite us too."

It made her feel a little better about it. "I suppose you have a point there," she said, thinking about it as she nibbled a little meat from the bone. Women was funny like that, or at least ladylike ones like Gitty, what with their tender hearts that got to feeling bad about doing what you had to in order to survive, whether it was shooting deer or little rabbits or scaring away hungry dogs that was begging for food because you hardly had enough to eat yourself.

We went west a little more, searching for a clear road south, which were impossible because everything south of that long road called Ventura we was walking, or so read the street signs, was so overgrown or otherwise cluttered up with smashed up automobiles and broken buildings that there weren't no way through. So we kept walking, our Mexican friend useless with anything he might have known because, according to Roy, he'd never been so far from where he lived among them big skyscrapers. I still didn't trust him—that "Ramiro" or whatever his name really was—wondering if he was planning something sinister, the fact that Roy was the only one who could talk to him not making it any easier to find out what he was really all about.

Finally our way was made clear, coming to an intersection of roads and a wide street that, besides the wrecks that cluttered it, seemed open for a long ways to the south. And so south we went, seeing nothing but crumbling houses and the remains of a laundry mat and a grocery store and a gas station that had burned down and was nothing more than a big sign advertising gasoline prices and a pile of ash.

Then all that fell behind and there weren't nothing but dry hills and some trees and a busted chain link fence behind which was a rickety looking trailer that we stopped at to have a look. Weren't nothing in there though, just an old skellie and a bunch of empty tin cans, though I did find a few playing cards with naked ladies on them that Gitty didn't like me looking at—big titties, spread open legs, and all that—and so I gave them to Roy and Roy gave them to Ramiro who smiled as he took a seat and chuckled as he went through them all, saying dirty things in Mexican as he held them up to show Roy.

Them cards had stirred me up a bit, and as Roy and then Ramiro got farther ahead after leaving that trailer I started laying eyes on Gitty. Not that I hadn't been, but now I did so without hiding it, a big grin on my face as I stood in front of her and brought her into the bushes where ain't no one could see and did my business as fast as I could. Gitty was smiling after that and I was real happy too, though I couldn't shake the thoughts that kept coming to me. I didn't say anything though, and I must have been putting on good enough of a face because she never asked what was wrong for the rest of the afternoon.

That night I must have been really tired because I couldn't help but feel stranger than I usually did, like there was something clinging to me I couldn't shake. I don't know what it was, just a dark feeling that wouldn't go away, like the Devil, if he were real, were sitting on my head. I tried to act like I wasn't feeling it, but the more I tried the more it pulled me down, like a man who don't know how to swim splashing around instead of just being calm, if you understand me, only the splashing were all inside my brain and no one knew I needed a hand.

I heard someone laughing from over my shoulder and it was Roy. First time I think I'd heard him done that. He was sitting near Ramiro and I heard them talking back and forth near the fire. Gitty was sleeping on her side and I stared at her from where I was sitting. She looked so peaceful and I was feeling such strong emotion for her that she must have felt it in her sleep because she finally turned over and opened her eyes.

"What are you doing?" she said. "Come to bed."

"Nothing. I'm just sitting."

She heard the laughing and looked over to where the others were. She smiled, settling back down. "I can't believe I'm hearing Roy laughing," she said. "I don't think he's ever done that."

"Yeah, such a serious man and all."

"Is something wrong?"

I shook my head, looking away. "Nah, ain't nothing to talk about at least."

"Are you still worried about me?"

"I worry about a lot of things, even if you ain't heard me talk about it."

"Come lie down and tell me."

"I ain't ready to lie down just yet. Maybe I should leave you to sleep and go sit next to Roy. I ain't mean to disturb you."

"No, don't go. Just come down here where it's nice and warm."

I hemmed a bit, but Gitty kept insisting and I finally broke. I got down and took off my pistol, laying on my back with my hands under my head and looking up at the stars. Gitty put her arm around me, laying her head on my chest, her hair tickling my nose, the murmur of Roy and Ramiro's conversation still reaching my ears.

"I love you," Gitty said.

"I love you too, Gitty."

Soon, I thought she might be sleeping again.

"You know I'll keep you safe, don't you?"

She stirred when I said it, lifting her head off my chest.

"Of course I know it. Why are you talking like that?"

"Nothing. Just saying is all."

She kept looking at me. I fidgeted a bit, looking away.

"Elgin?"

"What?"

"What are you thinking? Something's been bothering you all day. I can tell."

Weren't no getting away from it. She kept staring, waiting.

"You ain't going to tell me?"

"Go to sleep now. I'm tired is all."

She didn't believe me but she didn't press it no more, laying her head back down until her breathing was nice and steady and I knew she had fallen asleep. Nearby, Roy and Ramiro kept talking, the quiet murmur of it going on a long time.