The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (10 page)

“Tom!”

He lets go with another laugh. Child runs toward us but stops when she sees the Hole in the Ground. I tell her to stay back and she does, crouched and picking out sounds from the Dark.

The smaller one wipes his Mask face. “Well, I'll be goddamned. I think the monster listens to her.”

“Yeah? Listen to this.” Tom raises the Gun next to my Face and points it at Child. I bite my Teeth hard into his hand and taste his blood. The Gun explodes but the Bullet misses. He shoves me into the Fence, screaming, but I don't look back to see him. I hold the Fence and watch Child run into the Wood, and it calms me to see it.

When she can't be seen anymore, I turn to Tom. Now he has two bad hands. His Gun is on the Ground and he's screaming in his Mask.

“Shoot her!”

The smaller one looks at me, then at Tom, then back at me.

“What are you waiting for? She bit me, you dumb-ass, shoot her!”

“Let me think about this.”

“What's there to think about? Goddamn it, do I have to do everything?” He swings his bandaged hand and hits me across the Face. I bounce off the Fence and fall to the Ground on my Knees with my Ears buzzing and my Eyes confused.

He kicks me in the Stomach and I crumple. “When I catch your little monster friend out there she'll be begging me to be this nice to her. Man hasn't made words for the kind of stuff I'll be doing to her. But don't worry, you won't miss any of it. I'll let you watch the whole thing.”

“I really don't think we should be doing this.”

“Would you stop with that? Jesus Christ, always telling me what I can't do. I can't take from people who've been dead ten years. I can't use monsters for target practice. I can't do anything fun without asking Graham. And shut your mouth about getting disinfected, you can't catch the goddamn virus that way, or did you forget?”

“Of course I didn't forget, but you still-”

He stops talking. It's because he sees my Eyes, and what he sees in them makes him take a step back.

As Tom turns his body to me, I land on it with everything I am. He shouts and falls to the Ground. The back of his head hits the Concrete, but I don't give him Time to feel it. I rip at him with my Hands in ways I didn't know I could.

The Mask comes off his face easily under my Nails.

So does the skin.

**

When I'm done, Tom isn't screaming anymore.

I've done a terrible thing, something my mother and father wouldn't want to see, but I know because I've done it Child has one less danger to worry about, and that's something they would do.

That's what life is. I just don't know what I am.

The smaller one hasn't moved. The Gun in his hand is pointed at me but like him it hasn't spoken yet. His eyes stay on my Hands as I wipe them on the Suit.

“Are you giving me the Death?”

He looks over his shoulder to the Giant Mouth in the Mountain. “I...I can't.”

“Then let me leave.”

“The others will never believe me. They won't believe a monster got past the moat. They'll think...they'll think I killed him. I didn't like him but I would never kill him.”

I stand.

“Stay away from me,” he says. “I have to think.” He looks at what I've done and his breathing is faster and shorter. I can hear the heart in his chest and it sounds wounded and weak.

He points the Gun to the Giant Mouth. “Walk. Right now.”

“If you're giving me the Death, give it here.”

“They'll decide what to do with you, it's not up to me. I just know I'm not dying for this. Not for you, and not for him.”

He keeps the Gun pointed at me. We go away from the Fence and past the Building to the Mouth, where he turns on a Hand Light and shows the way. We walk between the Cars that sit on either side of the Passage, large, thick cars colored tan and brown and green with Guns on them colored the same way.

The Passage is high and dark. It goes deep into the Mountain and ends at a metal Door bigger than any I've seen, Real Times or since. It has the look of serious machines. He tells me to stand back and goes to a Box at the side of the Door and presses a button.

The Box says, “That you, Tom?”

“It's Neil. Tom's dead.” He looks at me, frowning.

The box says, “Are you screwing with me?”

“I wish I was. I have the...person who did it. Prepare to receive a hostile, and go wake up Graham.”

Three seconds of quiet. Then a loud rush of Air fills the Passage. Neil waves the Gun at the Door as it separates from the rock and slowly swings open.

The Voice of the Outside breathes In. We breathe in, too.

III

When the Door shuts behind us everything goes red. It's as if my Eyes have become angry and put Fire to the World.

“Listen to me. Stand against that wall for the next three minutes and don't move, alright? Nod if you understand me.”

Neil keeps the Gun pointed at me as he backs against the other Wall, next to the second Door. The Room is small. I can tell he doesn't like this because he's sweating. The red Light makes his face look covered in blood but I know for sure it's sweat coming out of him and not blood.

I know what blood smells like.

“Nod your damn head!”

My Head goes up. Then it comes down. There's a drain in the ground under my Feet.

“Don't move for anything, anything at all, or help me God I'll shoot you and deal with the consequences.” He raises the Gun higher when he sees my Mouth open.

“You know the God?”

“Of course I know God. Why?”

“I want to know what he's like.”

He squints through his Mask. “Are you screwing with me?”

“No.”

“Well, if you want to know what God's like, go ask Tom.”

A picture comes into my Head of Tom laying on the Ground, looking up with his new face.

Neil says, “Not for nothing, but Tom was an asshole. I know it, the whole base knows it. Hell, Tom knew it. It doesn't mean he deserved to die, though. Not like that.”

“Yes, it was too quick.”

He shakes his head. “That's not what I meant.”

“He tried to give the Death to the little one and I stopped him. If he'd given it to her you'd be next to him, watching the Stars.”

I add, “Help me God.”

His eyes are big as Rocks through the Glass of the Mask. “You really are half-monster. Jesus, I should have killed you when I had the chance.” He checks the straps of his Mask and puts his hand over the red Button on the Wall.

“Just do me a favor,” he says as he pushes it. “Try not to scream.”

The red Light goes out and the World with it. It's like the Cavern again except worse. There are no Night Eyes here, no leaking Lights or Glow Beasts for my Eyes. There's only the Dark, as black as Leatherwing eyes and wrapped around my Neck, and then a sound: hissing, but not Munie. And then a feeling:

Water on my Skin.

It sprays from the Walls and Ceiling, cold on my Face and running down the Suit. I hear it everywhere with the echo of his voice repeating in my Head again and again and again.

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

One-hundred eighty seconds of the Death Feeling. Gun or not, I scream.

**

Calm down. Slow your heart. Remember Child's face, remember she's still alive out there.

I failed her, but at least I gave her a chance to run into the Wood, to disappear. I don't know if I'll see her again, and even though I want to, I hope she's far away from here. Somewhere without Real People and Guns and Giant Mouths that lead to Water Rooms.

Don't think about the Water.

It's all over me, in my Hair, on my Face. I try to ignore it and think about other things, like apples and eggs and nests. I pull those pictures into the middle of my Eyes and let them push the Water to the creases.

Being Keeper of the Time meant I knew what minutes felt like. But I'm not the Keeper anymore, because the watch was lost and the Time with it, and the further the Time falls the less I know it. When the Water finally stops and the red Light comes back, it means three minutes have passed like a Beast in the Night, and not like a friend.

“I told you not to scream.”

The Water is a layer of tiny Beasts on my Skin. I wipe them off and spit them out, crouched in a corner I don't remember backing into. Neil takes a Mask from a hook where some hang. It's different than the one he wears, with dark holes in the mouth instead of a tube, and no round, metal part for the back.

“Put it on. Over the mouth, like this.” He holds it over his own dripping Mask.

“Don't want to.”

“That really doesn't matter. If they see you without it they'll kill you on the spot. They do what they have to around here to keep the peace and stay alive, I wouldn't try to fight it.”

I look at the first Door.

“Locked,” he says. “One way at a time, either in or out.” He holds the Mask out and I take it. I pull it over my Face. The second Door makes a loud noise, so I get away and watch it open, thick and heavy and letting white Light bleed into the red.

Neil rubs his fingers together. His blinking goes quicker.

“You're afraid of them,” I say.

“Afraid of the others?”

“You're worried about what they'll do to you. Isn't this your family?”

He shakes his hands to get the Water off them. “They keep me alive,” he says, and pushes me through the second Door.

**

A man with big hands holding a big Gun stands behind glass, machines on the walls around him. He yells at Neil, but even the glass between us doesn't make his voice quieter.

“Just what were you thinking, pendejo? Why would you bring that in here?”

His hair is long and dark, his skin the kind that likes Sun and shows it, not like Munie skin which cooks all Day but only keeps pink to let them stay and stay in it. I don't blame them, though; the Sun is warm and strong and bright and must feel good on the Face.

“I was thinking, wouldn't it be great
not
to be found guilty of murder?”

“By killing us all. Bringing her in here puts every one of us in danger, or didn't that cross your mind?”

“One, she's wearing a mask. Two, she's only a little infected.”

“A little? Did you just say a
little
infected? You're either infected or you ain't, puto. This one hasn't changed all the way but it's still a carrier for the freakin' virus.”

Neil keeps arguing with the big man behind the glass. I step away from them and find lockers against the wall, all closed and locked, with a chair pushed into the corner. Across from the second Door is a third, but this one is regular size. Above it is a dead Vision Box, and next to that something long that looks like a Gun.

The big man says, “Is this about Abby? I mean, we all liked her and everything but that's no reason to pull this.”

“Don't dare bring her up.” Neil's voice is lower, like a growl. “I have no problem with you, Cruz, but if you say her name again that might change.”

I try to reach the thing over my Head. Big man says, “That's a flame-thrower, monster girl, and I got the switch for it right here. I can barbeque your ass with one flick of my finger.” He wiggles his finger like a Dirt Beast.  “You better believe if I get the go-ahead, I'll be serving up monster chorizo in thirty seconds. Delicioso.” Pictures are drawn on his arms in red and blue and orange, as if his skin is paper.

“Barbeque?”

He turns to Neil and says, “Way to go, you brought a hungry monster into the base.”

“If you were in my shoes you'd do the same thing.”

“Never happen, cuz monsters never made it over the fence on my watch, hear me, and if they did I'd have enough brains to deal with it. Your problem is you lost your nerve when-”

“Cruz.” A deep voice comes from above my Head. I back away from the Vision Box and find it filled with the face of another Real Person, this one with dark, dark skin and calm eyes. The two men stand straight at the sound.

“I'm here.”

“Is our visitor behaving?”

Cruz frowns at me. “Right now it is, but I don't like this, Graham. ”

“You're sure Tom's dead?”

Neil steps forward. “Pretty sure. She made an awful mess of him.”

His eyes go serious to Neil. “Tell me, if you were lying on the ground bleeding, wouldn't you hope someone took the time to check your vitals before saying they were 'pretty sure' you were dead?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then why didn't you extend the same courtesy to Tom?”

“I panicked. If you'd seen what I saw...” He looks over at me; his eyes have pictures in them.

“We've all watched a man die, we know exactly what it looks like. You put the whole group in danger when you brought her in here, that alone could get you executed.”

“It was a risk I had to take.”

“And why is that?”

“I'd be lying if I said I put anyone's life here above my own.”

Cruz looks angry at this. Graham's face is silent for some seconds, then it smiles in a way I feel inside, like a black spot in my Stomach.

“I appreciate your honesty. Cuff it and put it in holding, there's something I have to take care of first.”

Cruz shouts, “Graham!”

“Yes, Cruz? Did you have something to say?”

Cruz faces away from the Vision Screen. Graham's eyes find me before his face disappears and the Screen goes dark.

I don't like his eyes.

**

After Neil points the Gun at me and ties my Hands behind my Back with metal rings, Cruz pushes a button on his desk that opens the third Door. Struggling with the rings and the way they feel against my Wrists, I step through and learn how big this place inside the Mountain is. This Base.

The hallway is long, wide, made of metal and full of Doors, regular Doors for Regular People. It goes for at least ten of them before it breaks into two hallways made of more metal, full of more doors, all open and all real. Everywhere are signs of Real People. Words on the walls, bits of garbage, and most of all the smell.

“C'mon. Get in.”

Neil puts his cold hand on my Arm and pushes me into the Room to my left. I notice him wipe his hand on his pants when he takes it away.

The only thing in the Room is a small, white bed with no pillows, so I sit on it. There's also a sink and a toilet, but I don't look at them because they're for Water.

“It's cold,” I say.

“Not for me it isn't.” His mouth looks sad when it makes the words.

“What do I do now?”

“You wait for Graham. Just be quiet and you'll be fine.”

He stops himself, as if he wants to take what he said back but knows he can't. Instead he leaves and shuts the Door behind him and locks it and walks away.

The ceiling is low, and I can hear myself breathing in its corners. Ten years passed for me like this, alone in the silence, alone in a Room, but it doesn't feel right anymore. These past Days have been filled up with voices and sounds, with moving from one place to another, with talking and seeing things. Now that the quiet has caught up with me, and I sit between walls again, I can feel the way it whispers to me.

From the whisper a picture comes to me of my father. A day he punished me, sent me to my Room. It's been years since I thought of the Day I coiled in bed and watched the pillow change color. The sound in the House changed, too, when my mother came home, and it never changed back. The same way my mother tried to clean the pillowcase but threw it out.

“I see you're getting comfortable.”

The dark man named Graham stands where the Door was. Without realizing it, I've pulled all the covers out from the mattress and bunched them around me, curled up inside them.

“The name's Graham, but I'm sure you know that. What you may not know is I run this place. I enforce the rules, of which there aren't many, but you broke the first.”

It's hard to sit up with my Hands behind me, and just as my Feet touch the ground he pushes me over and twists my Wrists up toward my Head. I kick my Feet and scream at him until he lets go and backs away to the Door.

“Just looking. Your nails are coming in, I see.” He crosses his arms.
“We had a few scientists in our group who studied the virus. They learned a few things, one is it needs sunlight, which is why those things rarely come out at night. And two, it's surprisingly weak against plain, old water.”

The Water between the Doors. They use it to kill the Bastard Air.

“That's why you don't like water anymore. The virus is changing you into a perfect carrier, nothing more than a brainless home. Soon you'll avoid water, stay in the sunlight, eat all the time to give it energy. In its first stage the virus is so weak, it can be fought off by putting the patient in water and total darkness. Imagine if we'd known that in the early days.”

I think of the rushing Water in the Mountain. If I'd just put the Mask back on, I could have stopped the Change.

“I know what you're thinking but you're already in stage two. I've seen it enough times to know. And the tricky thing about stage two and after? If the virus dies, you die. By stage three, well, it's too strong to be killed at all, only weakened. That's probably why your friend out there hasn't torn your head off. It's weak. And you, I bet you've been keeping out of the sun, right? That's instinct. Self-preservation. After a while the virus kills that, too. Amazing, isn't it?”

“You haven't felt it.”

“So you do speak. You're right, I haven't experienced the virus myself, but I do know what it's capable of. And what you're capable of.” His voice goes lower. “They brought Tom's body in. I was curious how you stayed alive so long, but I think I'm starting to understand. It doesn't explain where you were all that time, though.”

You can tell him. You can't ever go back to it.

“The Trailer kept me safe. The Trailer and the Silvery Tape.”

“The what?”

I look to the Door and make a square with my Eyes to surround it, pretending to put Silvery Tape on it.

He nods. “Hard to believe anyone could live long like that. The tape wasn't necessary, though, the virus isn't in the air. It's exhaled, spread through droplets like the common cold. It can't survive long without a body to protect it. But I suppose tape helps if a monster comes poking around.”

“One did.”

“So what went wrong?”

“I poked back.”

A smile. “I wish I could let you go, but there are a few problems with that. Now that you've been here you might try to keep coming back after you change. Also you killed one of our people. You may not understand this, but communities live and die by the rules they put in place. The one we have here is very simple: if someone commits a crime, I kill them. And if I fail to kill that person, the people kill me. It may sound harsh but it works. It keeps us honest, and keeps me working.”

“Then you live in danger of the Death every Day.”

“We all do, at least I can control this danger. The people only kill me if I fail them. As you can see, I haven't failed yet.”

A knock comes from the Door. A Real Person with shaky feet and the smell of spit on his fingernails whispers to Graham while staring at me with fast eyes. The two of them try not to let me hear.

“We, um, we can't catch the other one, but we're pretty sure she's still out there.”

“It's an it, not a she. Tell me why you think that.”

“Well...because we hear it.”

“And it can't be one of the thousand other monsters running around?”

“No, no, I don't think so. It's still dark out there, which they don't like and, um, it sounds, you know...small.”

Graham puts his hand around the man's neck and pulls their faces together, talking into the man's ear. “We need to catch that fucking thing no matter what, you do understand that. It can lead others here and ruin everything we've built.”

“Of, of course. But it's too fast, Graham, too fast!”

“If you put the rest of us in danger with your incompetence-”

“I won't! I mean I didn't!”

“Then why haven't you caught it yet?”

“Because it's a young one, y'know? They have sharp senses at that age, very sharp senses! Have you ever caught a young one? Cuz I haven't, and I don't know anyone who has. Please, Graham. Please.”

Graham lets go of the man whose nose shakes with the shine of Water.