Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (28 page)

A long pause, then, "Oh sweetie, oranges sound great! But I'm all the way up in North Beach." The voice started to waver and the mike was keyed off. There was another long pause, then the woman's voice returned in an almost playful tone. "Actually, I'm surprised you can hear me from so far away! I guess someone wanted us to be able to talk, huh?"

"I guess," Mackenzie said noncommittally, then she asked off-handedly, "Is Tom your husband?"

More silence as the woman swept away tears, then the voice came back, strong and clear.

"Yes, sweetie, he is. He drives a truck. He put a radio in our home so that whenever he gets close enough, we can talk and talk and talk." There was nothing but static for several seconds, then an almost plaintive, "I haven't heard from him for a while, so I'm just a little worried….."

Mason heard a thud against the door of the truck and looked to see a bloody handprint on his window. A wilder. With the truck rumbling away like slow thunder, this would be the first of what was bound to be many.

He turned to Mackenzie and told her, reluctantly, "We have to move, babygirl," and even more reluctantly, he released her hand so he could shift into gear.

As he pulled forward, he heard Mackenzie key the mike and say, "Maybe Tom's just hiding and can't hear you. Mace and I hid
all
the time until we found this truck. I bet that's it….. I bet Tom's just hiding."

The big rig edged forward, crushing three creepers under the wheels. Just in time to hide the horrific sounds of bones coming apart and bodies exploding like oversized packets of ketchup, the radio crackled again.

"You're probably right, Mackenzie. He's probably just hiding. He was always the king of hide-and-seek.….."

Damn!
….. The woman was crying again. Tom was the king of hide-and-seek. He
was
the king
.
Was;
past tense. Past tense for the husband on whom she was about to give up, and the kids he used to play with who were already gone. ……
Goddam it!

He was thankful that Mackenzie couldn't see the dark melancholy that was his own default setting, and as she keyed the mike and filled the cab with her sweet, cheerful voice, he almost hoped she never would.

"Tom sounds nice," she said delightedly, "Maybe once he gets home, you can come to where we are."

"That sounds wonderful," the woman said, then the microphone was keyed off abruptly. After enough time for her to wipe her eyes and clear her throat, there was another click, and her voice returned, clear and warm. "I'm glad I got the chance to talk to you, Mackenzie. And Mace, whoever you are…… you take care of that special little girl."

Whoever you are
. With those three words, the woman summed up the entire exchange. They knew each other’s others' names, but nothing else. As far as Mason knew, this woman could be anyone. She could be white, black, Hispanic or Asian. She could be a teacher, an artist, a firefighter, or a full time mother. She could be the young cutie he'd passed a few weeks ago who'd flashed a smile bright enough to put a spring in his step for the rest of the day, or the waitress with the overbite who'd brought him his pie and coffee and sketched a little happy face on the back of his bill. She could be the girl he'd yelled at for cutting him off in traffic, or the cashier at Safeway who'd declined his credit card. She could be a complete stranger he'd never meet in a million years, or the daughter or niece or best friend of someone he'd known since childhood. But whatever else she was, of one thing he was certain; this faceless woman was someone's mother, someone's wife, and someone's daughter. She was someone's friend, someone's confidante and someone else's worst nightmare. She was nobody, and she was everybody, all at once. And with that sudden realization, Mason's heart grew heavy again.

He'd had every intention of letting Mackenzie conclude the conversation without any input from him, but the girl suddenly leaned into him, held the mike up to his lips and keyed it, and he suddenly had no choice.

"Uh…..of course….." he was caught off-guard at first, so nothing else came. But once he took a moment to collect himself, he was able to speak loud and clear, and with absolute honesty, "I promise you, Christine, I'll take care of her. Believe me when I say, nothing else in the whole world is more important to me than Mackenzie."

Mackenzie beamed a broad smile, her cheeks reddened perceptibly, and she climbed over the seats to grace Mason's cheek with a kiss as light as the touch of a butterfly. Then she sat back down, held the mike to her own mouth, and kept her eyes aimed directly at Mason as she added sweetly, "Don't worry, Christine. Mace is the best man I've ever known."

Mason pulled the truck to a stop just short of the I-80 overpass, just in case it somehow interfered with the signal. Even as creepers appeared out of nowhere and the bloody-handed wilder came charging up from behind, he stayed put. Whatever else he accomplished this day, he wanted to let the conversation end only when it had to.

"Good luck to both of you," the faceless everywoman said plaintively, "Good luck, and God bless you both…."

And good luck to you, Christine
, Mason thought to himself, thankful that Mackenzie didn't pass him the mike so he'd have to say the words out loud.
But I'd rather do without the blessing of a God that would do this, thanks all the same.…..

"Good luck to you, too!" Mackenzie said, if not more fittingly, at least more cordially. Then her cheery tone tempered as it dawned on her that this would probably be the last she'd ever hear from her new long-distant friend, and she sounded almost disheartened when she tacked on, "It was nice talking to you, Christine."

"It was my pleasure, sweetie," the voice came through again, so softly that it was barely discernible over the crackling static, "…..I hope you have a good, long,
happy
life……"

" ‘Kay, you too," Mackenzie said awkwardly.

"Goodbye, you precious little angel….." the voice was almost gone now; lost in static and overcome by the woman's own tears.

Mackenzie keyed the mike one last time, managed a clumsy," ‘Kay…..bye, Christine…." and then both she and the radio fell silent.

Mason started moving again, but the girl didn't even notice. She simply sat there, cross-legged on her seat with the microphone clutched to her chest.  There may have been a tear, but it was difficult to tell. Mason wheeled west onto Bryant in order to scoot back to 7th Street, and was forced to steer hard right and then deke left to get around an old accident littered with bodies. And all the while, neither of them said anything. At last, after nearly a full minute passed, Mackenzie suddenly threw the microphone to the floor. It smacked hard on the floor and snapped back to Mason's side of the cab, then it pendulumed at the end of the cord until an equilibrium was reached and hung there like a silent, dead thing.

Mackenzie screwed up her pretty little face into an angry grimace and all but spat the words, "This sucks!"

The outburst caught Mason by surprise, but it was understandable. After all, Christine was
everywoman
. To Mason, she was the girl at the gas station or the woman he'd shared a smile with in the elevator. But to Mackenzie, she was Aunt Sarah and she was Mrs. Dobson, and she was all the other nurses at the Trident Urgent Care Clinic who'd watch over her when Sarah was busy. And whether she knew it or not, that everywoman was also her mother. The mother she'd never had the chance to know. The mother who'd been taken from her so long ago that she'd never be able to remember her face.

Instead of offering some saccharine attempt at sentimentality, Mason told her honestly, "Yes, Mack, it does. It surely does suck," and left it at that. Being no stranger to foul moods, he knew better than to try dragging her out by force. He knew from a lifetime of experience that sometimes one simply had to wallow in their own misery for a while, like an elephant in the mud. Eventually, the self-pity would start to chafe, and Mackenzie would crawl out on her own, and when she did, she'd be better protected against the biting insects of disappointment. The best thing Mason could do as a friend was to wait patiently onshore and offer Mackenzie a helping hand when she was ready to emerge.

Sure enough, by the time they turned south on 7th Street a few minutes later, Mackenzie had already begun the long slog to dry land. She turned to Mason and informed him casually, "If you didn't find me, I'd be dead by now."

"Maybe," he shrugged noncommittally, "But I could say the same thing."

The girl snorted. "Are you kidding? You're a big, strong man. You'd be better off if you didn't have me to worry about."

Mason had to drive up on the sidewalk to avoid a cluster of abandoned vehicles, but when he bounced the truck back down to open roadway, he pulled the truck to a stop and swung in his seat to give Mackenzie his full attention.

"First of all, Mack, we're a team," he told her sincerely, and when she scoffed, he became even more insistent, "I admit, I might have managed well enough on my own for a while, but believe me, young lady, it's a
lot
easier to keep going when you have something to keep going
for."

It didn't look like Mackenzie was buying it, but she was too inherently sweet to contradict him. Instead, she turned to her window and blindly watched the world go by.

"Sarah's dead, isn't she?" she asked coolly.

"I don't know, babygirl," Mason managed through a beleaguered sigh, "but Sarah has something to live for, too. And she's smart. And if she has even half of your determination…..well, I pity any mountain that stands in her way."

Mackenzie pondered the notion for a moment, then allowed a morose, "I suppose."

"I
know
," Mason declared in no uncertain terms, then he gave the girl a gentle pat on the knee and started the truck moving again.

A wilder shot out of a side street and came at them, but Mason didn't even bother to steer around it. He kept the wheel straight and steady, let the wilder charge out into the middle of the road, and barreled over it with a wet
thunk!
and a barely noticeable shiver through the chassis of the truck.

"It's a long way for Sarah to go," Mackenzie said dispiritedly.

"It is," Mason agreed.

"And there's lots of those things out there. Like,
lots!"

"Yes, there are."

Mackenzie kept her face turned to the side window and even craned her neck as if she were actually on the lookout for a familiar face.

"She's all alone, Mace."

At last, here was a single point with which Mason could contend, and he leapt at the opportunity.

"Actually, we don't know that, do we? In fact, we don't know anything at
all
about her situation. Maybe she's alone, or maybe she's with a whole bunch of people. Maybe she found some group with a safe place to stay, and a big stack of guns….."

Mackenzie fixed him with a scowl.

"People with guns?" she glowered.

Mason heard his own words coming back to haunt him and countered them in like manner.

"Not everyone can be bad, Mack."

The girl allowed the slightest of smirks to dissolve away one corner of the scowl.

"I guess."

The image of the faceless Christine popped back into Mason's mind, and his heart ached when he pictured that unknown woman descending into her own private hell. Then the image of the faceless everywoman faded and dissipated, and the pixels slowly coalesced back together into a crystal-clear image of Becks.

"We have to have hope," he found himself saying aloud, "If we lose that, we're done. So if Sarah isn't there to meet us, all it means is that she isn't there
yet
. We can't give up hope, Mack. Whatever happens."

He was telling her what he figured she needed to hear, but it didn't count as a lie. Not exactly. The words were Becks', and though it was the same sort of idealistic crap as Doc Walker's lie the day before, it wasn't fundamentally untrue. And to her credit, Mackenzie didn't scoff outright. She retreated into some kind of internal debate and sat in silence long enough for Mason to admit to his mental image,
Tricky thing, this
hope
….. but I'm trying, Becks……I'm trying…..

At last, Mackenzie nodded, "Okay," then she turned back to the window and admitted a little more meekly, "But I hope she's there."

"So do I, Mack.…… So do I," Mason agreed, but his reasons weren't quite as selfless as hers. The previous night's scare was still fresh in his mind, and all he could think was that if Sarah was there when he was forced to do what he would ultimately have to, maybe it would make the thing somehow less devastating. He knew immediately that it wasn't true, but he'd made no promise not to lie to himself, and if such a thing kept the future alive for another day or another hour or another minute, he was alright with that. Maybe it could even be considered a kind of hope, after all.

Baby steps, Becks, ……
he told the image even as it vanished from his mind's eye, then he saw railroad tracks paralleling the road and he declared aloud to Mackenzie, "Well, we're about to find out real quick, Mack. One way or the other."