The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (20 page)

“But you know what's wrong with her?”

“Possibly.” He puts his tired eyes on me. “How long has it been since she's had some sun?”

“Some minutes yesterday,” I manage to say.

“And besides that?”

“Two days. At sunbirth, three.”

“Under optimal conditions two or three days without sun would weaken her. From the looks of her she's been subjected to one trauma after the other. And the Water?” He shrugs. “The Water alone could do this. Human children have weaker immune systems than adults, it stands to reason she would as well.”

“She's stronger than most.”

“I don't doubt that, but look at her.”

Vanessa appears from the crowd with a leather bag. Doc takes small machines from it, including one that pulls blood from her arm into a glass bottle. He adds colored Water to it from another bottle and puts it to the side. Then he opens a tiny plastic under her nose, and the tingling smell inside it is so strong that her eyes explode open. She sits up from the concrete so fast it almost pushes Doc onto his back.

I calm her before she has a chance to attack him.

“You fell,” I tell her. “It's good to see you get back up.”

She pushes her face into my side.

“It's just like I thought.” Doc holds out the bottle of Child's blood, darker now.

“It should be almost black,” Boyd says. “She barely has any virus in her.”

“For you and I that would be good news, but for someone who's gone completely through the changes...” His words fade before he finishes talking. When I ask him to finish them he just looks at Terence, who calls me over. After I make sure Child won't fall again, I go to the side of the bridge and look over the side with him at the Gator Beasts fighting over the last pieces of meat.

Terence leans close to me so no one can hear. “She can't live like this for much longer, you know. Neither can you.”

“I won't.”

“I'm thankful for your help in this, maybe more than you can ever understand, but when it comes down to it this isn't your fight. If you need to walk away right now I say do it. No one here would blame you.”

“I need to find a safe place for Child.”

“Give me the key and come back in two days time, when all the fighting is done. I promise you she'll have a place waiting for her in the guard's booth.”

“If I leave you for two days there won't be a guard's booth.”

He smiles. “You're that confident we need your help?”

“Your group is made of good people. Too good. I don't think you'll give the Death if you need to.”

“We've been doing this a long time, we're capable of more than you realize. ”

I say nothing.

He says, “Do I have to worry about you?”

“Yes.”

Doc joins us, his face wet with sweat. “She's very weak. I gave her some food but I don't think it will help much. She needs...”

“Munie Supplies.”

“Yes. And soon, before I get my fat fingers too close and she decides to take a bite.”

“Come on now, Doc, show some respect,” Terence says.

“He says the truth,” I say, “I've thought of making Supplies of them.”

They both look at me serious. I return to Child and look at her arm to make sure Doc didn't hurt her. Terence looks around at the group and says, “Okay. Werner, we need you to take a handful of people to the warehouse and get the cars. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” a big man with glasses says.

“Cars,” I ask.

“You didn't think we were going to walk the whole way, did you? Alright, you two, take inventory on weapons. See what we have, make sure it's working and make sure it's loaded. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Doc, do you think you could cook up some explosives with what we have?”

“How big do you need them?”

“Enough to scare. I think the greatest challenge we have is getting them away from the base. We all know that's a long, safe tunnel to the front door, so we have to make it as unappealing as we can. So get them out of it and past that moat.”

“You.” He points to me. “You have twenty minutes to kill. I suggest you spend them killing.”

**

It only takes me ten minutes to find a Slither Beast and give it the Death. It's easy when they rub their dry, loose skin against the rocks. It can be heard from very far away, and when they're half out of their old skin they can't move as quickly as normal.

I strip the meat from the bones with my nails and hand a small piece at a time to Child. As I watch Terence, he walks over to Boyd.

“I need you to come with me and our new friends to the second entrance,” he says quietly.

“Why me?”

“We might need your particular skill-set when we reach it.”

“I gave that up a long time ago.”

“You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't necessary. I don't enjoy making a man go back on his promises but this would be for the right reasons.”

Boyd looks at the ground. He looks at the sky. Then he says, “Kate comes with us.”

“I'd rather she stay with the group.”

“And I'd rather her stay with me, where she can help me remember why I'm doing this shit in the first place,” Boyd says. At this, Terence nods. “How do we know they won't retreat back inside once we run out of Fireworks?”

“I have no idea. This whole plan is too last-minute for my tastes, but under the circumstances it's all we have.” They stand in silence trying to figure this out. Suddenly a small voice at the side of them stops the quiet, and they turn to see it. It's Child.

“What did you say,” they ask her.

“Moat,” Child says, her hands and mouth full of meat. “Put Fire moat.”

“Set Fire to it?”

She nods. “Real People no want Fire.”

Terence looks at Boyd. “We'll need gasoline. A lot of it.”

**

The others come back in cars, five of them. It's been years since I've seen a car moving around, heard the sounds of its machines working and smelled the stinking breath it pushes out. They were such a big part of the world back in the Real Times, but now I know them as holders of nests and not much else. It's strange to see them alive again.

Werner pulls close and leans his big arm out the open window. “Wouldn't you know it? Right where we left 'em.”

“Is everything in working order,” Terence asks.

“Purring like newborn kittens. You can thank me later by giving me the biggest room. That used to be yours, didn't it?”

Terence nods.

“Just messing with you, buddy.”

Terence walks away to the people putting guns and other Supplies into the cars. Werner shakes his big head. “Seeing his brother really did a number on him.”

“Why?”

“Graham betrayed him, for starters, and they already blamed each other for the death of their mom. You can't even imagine what losing her did to him. We're talking total meltdown. The man you see now is a hollow copy of the one he used to be.”

Like the skin shed by the Slither Beasts.

“He loved that woman, I tell you. All of us did.”

“How did she find the Death?”

“No one knows exactly except them two, and they've never told. The only thing I know is three of them were riding in the same car, got separated from the group, and by the time we saw them again there were only two of them left, trying their damnedest to pull the life out of each other. Been like that ever since.”

“Will Terence give him the Death?”

He chews his lip, thinking about it. “He's a good man, Terence, but I couldn't say what he might be pushed to under the circumstances. I'll tell you this, though- I wouldn't want to be in the same car with him at a time like this.”

Terence takes the attention of the group.“Alright everyone, time to head out. You know what you have to do and you know what's at stake. There's a chance we're going home this morning, but it won't be easy. So let's do this, and do this right.” He points to me and says, “You're riding with me.”

Werner shrugs.

**

As the cars roll through the town we stay quiet, pulled into our seats to not wake the Munies sleeping behind the walls of houses. Once we have to go around a skeleton laying in the center of the street, because the bones would be too loud to drive over.

Terence drives with pictures in his eyes, the wheel squeezed tight between his fingers. In the front with him Boyd talks about where the secret door should be. He guesses this by the shape of the base and what I told them about where the secret room was and what I could hear above it. On his legs is a bag full of machines Terence handed him, which he doesn't look happy to see.

Behind Boyd is Kate, Boyd's wife, who agrees with what Boyd is saying but doesn't do it with words. Instead she nods and watches the town go past and scratches lines into her pale arm with her dull nails.

Between us Child's body is pulled into a ball, her eyes closed. She's trying to save all the strength she took from the Slither Beast meat.

Boyd jumps when I touch his shoulder. “What are you,” I ask him.

“I'm...I'm just a man.”

“She means what do you do,” Terence says.

“Oh. Do you know what a hacker is?” I shake my head no. “Okay, I'll start earlier- do you know what a computer is?”

“The vision screens.”

“Well, let's just say I used to do very bad things with those vision screens. I stole money from people, even ruined a few lives. If you'd asked me then I'd have said I didn't care who I hurt. See I could talk to those vision screens the way I've seen you talk to the wind, the way you know what's coming just by listening to it. I thought I was a king of men in those days. I was just a no-good thief.”

Kate says, “You're being rough on yourself.”

“Not rough enough, my love.” He turns in his seat to me. “I used computers to be a bad person, a very bad person, but then the virus came and all the computers were taken away. Just like that the satellites were space junk and the networks became ghosts. And you know what it felt like? Like I was being taught a lesson.”

“By the God?”

He thinks about it. “I don't know the answer to that. To be honest I don't have to know who's talking for me to listen. But I had a chance to start over, so I took it. I walked  away. Not that I had much choice, but I did it happily. And wouldn't you know it? Not two months later, I met the lovely lady sitting behind me.”

She touches his neck.

“Will you be able to do what you need to when the time comes,” Terence asks him.

“Will you?”

“I do everything I can, with everything I have.”

“And look where that's gotten us.”

Kate says, “Boyd.”

“No, he's right, I'm responsible for this. That's why I'm trying to make things right by everyone. And when it's all over, I'm suggesting we hold a new vote for leader. I've held the weight of it long enough.”

All are quiet as we leave the town.

The road that goes through the Wood, I remember it from when I was small. The last time I was on it my mother was to my left with a serious face, the trees going by so fast and her hand shaking on the wheel. Now to my left is a window, and outside it the Trees, and behind us the other people in the cars trying to keep up with Terence.

Child begins shaking in her sleep, legs kicking, face squeezed in, but before I get a chance to calm her Kate puts her hand on Child's leg and tells her it's okay, shhh, it's okay.

She takes her hand away when she realizes the croaking sound she hears is coming from my throat.

“I was just trying to help,” she says.

I show her my teeth. She doesn't say anything else.

**

In a place where the road becomes two we go left, and the rest of the cars go right. Boyd tells them through the machine in his ear to stay in contact, to use the protected line and good luck, and when he says this everyone's heart goes faster and they smell of the Fear.

We take the road as far as it goes until it curves up and up and turns to dirt, then the mountain becomes too much for the car so we have to get out and climb. Terence and Boyd are good climbers, and they keep up without breathing heavy. Child does the best she can being a child and being sick. But Kate is weak, and she shows it by not keeping up, and by breathing heavy. She has to be helped up the steep by Boyd, and it slows us down.

Terence stops climbing. “Anything?”

Boyd checks the machine in his hand. “No signal yet. I have a feeling what we're looking for is somewhere up there.” He points through a hole in the leaves to a deep line higher up on the mountain, big enough to walk on. I can see it because the sun is being born and the sky is brighter above us, which is good, but also not good.