Ariel (21 page)

But they hadn't been.

Fifteen

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.

—Ulysses S. Grant

Three days later we were walking through concrete wasteland again. The green landscape had given way to the beginnings of megalopolis. The roads and cities were empty, dusty tombs of abandoned civilization. We were just south of Alexandria. I kept glancing in all directions. Sometimes we had to go off the road for long stretches because it would have taken hours longer to thread through the permanent traffic jam. Four-thirty had been early rush hour. My gaze kept drifting nervously to the Interstate and the empty, silent cars. I couldn't shake the feeling they weren't empty at all, that at any moment all the doors of hundreds of cars would jerk open at once and we'd be set upon by armed men from New York who had been waiting for just this chance  .  .  .  .

"Pete, will you for God's sake relax?" said Ariel. "You're making me more nervous than you are."

"I can't help it." I shrugged my left shoulder, adjusting the pack strap. "I'm so glad guns won't work—I'd freak completely trying to keep my eyes open for snipers."

Shaughnessy made a face at the piece of beef jerky she was trying, without a great deal of success, to nibble on. "I wish I could say you were being paranoid. I'd feel safer." She clamped down with her teeth and wrenched the piece around, trying to tear off a bite. "This stuff's impossible. I'd die of starvation before I could get it down my throat."

"Suffer. Try hunting rabbits around here." I rolled my head slowly in a clockwise circle, trying to relieve some of the stiffness in my neck muscles. You'd think I'd be used to carrying a loaded pack by now. "Deer are a possibility, though."

"Don't get my hopes up."

"I want a piece of peppermint candy," Ariel whined.

"Sure," I said. "Get me a pack of cigarettes, too. And a banana split to go, hold the pineapple."

Shaughnessy bit her lower lip. "Oh, when was the last time I ate ice cream?"

"Or even ice?" I added.

She made a face. "I had ice enough last winter, thank you."

"Yeah—but in your lemonade?"

"What's a banana split?" Ariel wanted to know.

I told her in nostalgically pornographic detail.

"Sounds terribly indulgent," she said.

"It was. You'd have loved them."

We picked up momentum, and for the next half-hour listed things we missed. As I could have predicted, Shaughnessy missed a lot more than I did.

After a while Shaughnessy asked me to call a bathroom break. I conceded and she took off at a careful gallop, if you can imagine such a thing, behind a useless Mack truck three lanes over.

"You sure are quiet when she and I talk," I said when she was gone.

"That's because it's you and her talking."

"Bullshit. That never stopped you from sticking in your two cents' worth with me and anybody else."

She dipped her horn. A glossy white band of sunlight danced along her back. "It's interesting to watch her trying to get to know you."

"Interesting."

"Yes. She learns about you by arguing with you. I'm not sure I'd like being a woman, Pete, no matter what you think. They're too subtle."

I asked her if she didn't think perhaps she was generalizing from a single example, but Shaughnessy returned—looking enormously relieved—and we resumed walking.

Sometimes I felt I was a cartoon log-roller and the entire world was the log beneath my feet. I had to turn it under me, but the scale hadn't changed: it was still five-foot, ten-inch Pete and twenty-four-thousand-miles-around Earth. I watched this part of it slide beneath me at around three miles an hour and wished for roller skates, at least. Heck, Bugs Bunny used to do it.

A little over a mile ahead was where I-95 turned due east. If we kept going straight it would become I-395, which ran smack into the middle of Washington, D.C., and I wasn't about to go into that. Instead we were going to veer west at the junction of I-95, I-395, and I-495, the latter of which would take us in roundabout fashion around Washington and straight back to I-95, which I intended to tread all the way into the Big Rotten Apple itself.

We passed a sign that read JUNCTION 395-495 1 MILE. "Look up ahead," said Ariel. "In the air."

We did. Slowly circling black glider shapes flapped occasionally. "Buzzards?" I asked.

"I think so. Scavengers."

"Something's dead."

"Or dying." She blinked. "We might want to steer clear." Funny how she'd picked up expressions. She probably didn't know what "steering" was.

"We'll take it slow and see what's going on," I decided.

A few minutes later it was obvious from the shapes on the road that nothing there was about to bother us. The buzzards circled high overhead, and occasionally one swooped down to an abrupt halt on the asphalt and pecked leisurely at one of the corpses. The smell was pretty bad, but that wasn't what made me feel sick. In my mind's eye I'd seen close to this exact scene in Richmond as I'd lied to that group about how I'd found Fred.

Though there wasn't much left to make out, I recognized them. Three bodies sprawled on the road. A small grave had been dug in the grass nearby. Flies buzzed a summertime drone. A severed hand still clutched a cutlass. A double-bladed axe had been cut cleanly in two through the handle. Dried blood darkened the asphalt in a huge patch. A white Chevy in the left lane had been discolored by a streak of red on the left front fender. It had dripped as if from a sloppy paint job.

These were the remains of three of the four men who'd been after Malachi. Judging from the dismemberment, disembowelment, and decapitation, they had found him.

Shaughnessy turned around and clutched her stomach. I glanced at her and walked closer to the carnage. They all had weapons drawn but looked as if they'd been cut down in mid-stride.

Ariel called me from the side of the road. I went to her and looked. The rapier had been thrust point-first into the head of a small grave. The metal was dark brown along the edge of the bottom half, broadening to a completely bloodstained six inches toward the tip. The grave looked hurriedly dug. It was poorly squared and incompletely tamped down. Probably shallow. I was surprised predators hadn't gotten to it yet. A torn-off back binding from a paperback book was tied by a piece of string to the handle of the rapier. It dangled from the bell-shaped guard, moving slightly in the warm breeze. A name was written in blue ink on the white side:

FAUST

I looked at Ariel. There was nothing to say, really. Finally I drew in a deep breath and said, "I, uh, I'm going to see if Shaughnessy's all right."

She nodded, not taking her eyes from the grave. "I don't know which makes me feel worse—Faust's death, or Malachi's loss." Her voice was a slender thread, barely audible. "Pete, I can think of a lot of people I'd rather see dead than this dog."

I touched the softness beneath her eye and went to Shaughnessy. She had stopped vomiting but was still on her hands and knees before the mess, eyes closed, absurdly reverent. I patted her back, ignoring her admonitions to leave her alone, removed the
bota
from its precarious sling—she had hung it diagonally across her torso and it dangled over the mess—and forced her to sip from it. She choked and spit, then took a few more long swallows. "Thanks," she gasped.

I screwed the cap back on. "You all right?"

She nodded and stood shakily, stepping back a few paces. I removed the cap from the
bota
once more. "Here, cup your hands and splash some water on your face. It'll make you feel a little better."

She complied and then wiped her cheeks dry against her T-shirt sleeves. "I just—I've seen people who'd been killed before, you know? But never  .  .  . not like this."

"It's okay. It's happened to me, too."

"Your  .  .  . friend did this? By himself?"

"Yes. At least, I'm fairly sure he was by himself."

Ariel stood behind me. "Something's missing. Did you notice?"

"Yeah. Our man with the samurai sword."

She nodded. "One of the bodies, the one with the cutlass. His arm was cut off, but that's not what killed him. His throat was ripped out."

"Faust?"

"I think so, yes."

"Well, at least he took one with him." I put a hand on Shaughnessy's arm and handed her the
bota
. "We'd better get moving before somebody else shows up to investigate. Those buzzards can be seen from a long way off."

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.