The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (6 page)

“Hah,” the one by the cash register says. A bark. Amused.

Nate is carefully still. He is searching, eyes going from man to man. Franny looks as if she is about to cry.

It is only a matter of time. They will be on her. Should she play up to the man at the cash register? If she tries to flirt, will it release the rising tension in the room, allow them to spring on all of them? Will they kill Nate? What will they do to Franny? Or she can use her sex as currency. Go willingly. She does not feel as if they care if she goes willingly or not. They know there is nothing to stop them.

“There’s no beer here, is there,” she says. She can hear her voice failing.

“Nope,” says the man sitting at the cash register.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

It’s the wrong thing to say. He slides off the counter. Most of the men are smiling now.

Nate says, “Stav?”

One of the guys on the floor looks up. His eyes narrow.

Nate says, “Hey, Stav.”

“Hi,” the guy says cautiously.

“You remember me,” Nate says. “Nick. From the Blue Moon Inn.”

Nothing. Stav’s face is blank. But another guy, the one in the hoodie, says, “Speedy Nick!”

Stav grins. “Speedy Nick! Fuck! Your hair’s not blond anymore!”

Nate says, “Yeah, well, you know, upkeep is tough on the road.” He jerks a thumb at Jane. “This is my sister, Janey. My niece, Franny. I’m taking ’em up to Toronto. There’s supposed to be a place up there.”

“I heard about that,” the guy in the hoodie says. “Some kind of camp.”

“Ben, right?” Nate says.

“Yeah,” the guy says.

The guy who was sitting on the counter is standing now, cigarette still smoldering. He wants it, doesn’t want everybody to get all friendly. But the moment is shifting away from him.

“We found some distilled water,” Stav says. “Tastes like shit but you can have it if you want.”

Jane doesn’t ask him why he told her his name was Nate. For all she knows, “Nate” is his name and “Nick” is the lie.

They walk each day. Each night she goes to his bedroll. She owes him. Part of her wonders is maybe he’s gay? Maybe he has to lie there and fantasize she’s a guy or something. She doesn’t know.

They are passing by water. They have some, so there is no reason to stop. There’s an egret standing in the water, white as anything she has seen since this started, immaculately clean. Oblivious to their passing. Oblivious to the passing of everything. This is all good for the egrets. Jane hasn’t had a drink since they started for Canada. She can’t think of a time since she was sixteen or so that she went so long without one. She wants to get dressed up and go out someplace and have a good time and not think about anything, because the bad thing about not having a drink is that she thinks all the time and, fuck, there’s nothing in her life right now she really wants to think about. Especially not Canada, which she is deeply but silently certain is only a rumor. Not the country, she doesn’t think it doesn’t exist, but the camp. It is a mirage. A shimmer on the horizon. Something to go toward but which isn’t really there.

Or maybe they’re the rumors. The three of them. Rumors of things gone wrong.

At a rest stop in the middle of nowhere they come across an encampment. A huge number of people, camped under tarps, pieces of plastic, and tatters, and astonishingly, a convoy of military trucks and jeeps including a couple of fuel trucks and a couple of water trucks. Kids stop and watch as they walk in and then go back to chasing each other around picnic tables. The two groups are clearly separate. The military men have control of all the asphalt and one end of the picnic area. They stand around or lounge at picnic tables. They look so equipped, from hats to combat boots. They look so clean. So much like the world Jane has put mostly out of her mind. They awake in her the longing that she has put down. The longing to be clean. To have walls. Electric lights. Plumbing. To have order.

The rest look like refugees, the word she denied on the sidewalks outside the condo. Dirty people in T-shirts with bundles and plastic grocery bags and even a couple of suitcases. She has seen people like this as they walked. Walked past them sitting by the side of the road. Sat by the side of the road as others walked past them. But to see them all together like this . . . this is what it will be like in Canada? A camp full of people with bags of wretched clothes waiting for someone to give them something to eat? A toddler with no pants and curly hair watches solemnly like one of those children in those “save a child” commercials. He’s just as dirty. His hair is blond.

She rejects it. Rejects it all so viscerally that she stops and for a moment can’t walk to the people in the rest stop. She doesn’t know if she would have walked past, or if she would have turned around, or if she would have struck off across the country. It doesn’t matter what she would have done, because Nate and Franny walk right on up the exit ramp. Franny’s tank top is bright, insistent pink under its filth and her shorts have a tear in them, and her legs are brown and skinny and she could be a child on a news channel after a hurricane or an earthquake, clad in the loud synthetic colors so at odds with the dirt or ash that coats her. Plastic and synthetics are the indestructibles left to the survivors.

Jane is ashamed. She wants to explain that she’s not like this. She wants to say, she’s an American. By which she means she belongs to the military side, although she has never been interested in the military, never particularly liked soldiers.

If she could call her parents in Pennsylvania. Get a phone from one of the soldiers. Surrender. You were right, Mom. I should have straightened up and flown right. I should have worried more about school. I should have done it your way. I’m sorry. Can we come home?

Would her parents still be there? Do the phones work just north of Philadelphia? It has not until this moment occurred to her that it is all gone.

She sticks her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out, sick with understanding. It is all gone. She has thought herself all brave and realistic, getting Franny to Canada, but somehow she didn’t until this moment realize that it all might be gone. That there might be nowhere for her where the electricity is still on and there are still carpets on the hardwood floors and someone still cares about damask.

Nate has finally noticed that she isn’t with them and he looks back, frowning at her.
What’s wrong?
his expression says. She limps after them, defeated.

Nate walks up to a group of people camped around and under a stone picnic table. “Are they giving out water?” he asks, meaning the military.

“Yeah,” says a guy in a Cowboys football jersey. “If you go ask, they’ll give you water.”

“Food?”

“They say tonight.”

All the shade is taken. Nate takes their water bottles—a couple of two-liters and a plastic gallon milk jug. “You guys wait, and I’ll get us some water,” he says.

Jane doesn’t like being near these people, so she walks back to a wire fence at the back of the rest area and sits down. She puts her arms on her knees and puts her head down. She is looking at the grass.

“Mom?” Franny says.

Jane doesn’t answer.

“Mom? Are you okay?” After a moment more. “Are you crying?”

“I’m just tired,” June says to the grass.

Franny doesn’t say anything after that.

Nate comes back with all the bottles filled. Jane hears him coming and hears Franny say, “Oh, wow. I’m so thirsty.”

Nate nudges her arm with a bottle. “Hey, Babe. Have some.”

She takes a two-liter from him and drinks some. It’s got a flat, faintly metal/chemical taste. She gets a big drink and feels a little better. “I’ll be back,” she says. She walks to the shelter where the bathrooms are.

“You don’t want to go in there,” a black man says to her. The whites of his eyes are yellow.

She ignores him and pushes in the door. Inside, the smell is excruciating, and the sinks are all stopped and full of trash. There is some light from windows up near the ceiling. She looks at herself in the dim mirror. She pours a little water into her hand and scrubs at her face. There is a little bit of paper towel left on a roll, and she peels it off and cleans her face and her hands, using every bit of the scrap of paper towel. She wets her hair and combs her fingers through it, working the tangles for a long time until it is still curly but not the rat’s nest it was. She is so careful with the water. Even so, she uses every bit of it on her face and arms and hair. She would kill for a little lipstick. For a comb. Anything. At least she has water.

She is cute. The sun hasn’t been too hard on her. She practices smiling.

When she comes out of the bathroom, the air is so sweet. The sunlight is blinding.

She walks over to the soldiers and smiles. “Can I get some more water, please?”

There are three of them at the water truck. One of them is a blond-haired boy with a brick-red complexion. “You sure can,” he says, smiling back at her.

She stands, one foot thrust out in front of her like a ballerina, back a little arched. “You’re sweet,” she says. “Where are you from?”

“We’re all stationed at Fort Hood,” he says. “Down in Texas. But we’ve been up north for a couple of months.”

“How are things up north?” she asks.

“Crazy,” he says. “But not as crazy as they are in Texas, I guess.”

She has no plan. She is just moving with the moment. Drawn like a moth.

He gets her water. All three of them are smiling at her.

“How long are you here?” she asks. “Are you like a way station or something?”

One of the others, a skinny Chicano, laughs. “Oh, no. We’re here tonight and then headed west.”

“I used to live in California,” she says. “In Pasadena. Where the Rose Parade is. I used to walk down that street where the cameras are every day.”

The blond glances around. “Look, we aren’t supposed to be talking too much right now. But later on, when it gets dark, you should come back over here and talk to us some more.”

“Mom!” Franny says when she gets back to the fence, “You’re all cleaned up!”

“Nice, Babe,” Nate says. He’s frowning a little.

“Can I get cleaned up?” Franny asks.

“The bathroom smells really bad,” Jane says. “I don’t think you want to go in there.” But she digs her other T-shirt out of her backpack and wets it and washes Franny’s face. The girl is never going to be pretty, but now that she’s not chubby, she’s got a cute thing going on. She’s got the sense to work it, or will learn it. “You’re a girl that the boys are going to look at,” Jane says to her.

Franny smiles, delighted.

“Don’t you think?” Jane says to Nate. “She’s got that thing, that sparkle, doesn’t she?”

“She sure does,” Nate says.

They nap in the grass until the sun starts to go down, and then the soldiers line everyone up and hand out MREs. Nate gets Beef Ravioli, and Jane gets Sloppy Joe. Franny gets Lemon Pepper Tuna and looks ready to cry, but Jane offers to trade with her. The meals are positive cornucopias—a side dish, a little packet of candy, peanut butter and crackers, fruit punch powder. Everybody has different things, and Jane makes everybody give everyone else a taste.

Nate keeps looking at her oddly. “You’re in a great mood.”

“It’s like a party,” she says.

Jane and Franny are really pleased by the moist towelette. Franny carefully saves her plastic fork, knife, and spoon. “Was your tuna okay?” she asks. She is feeling guilty now that the food is gone.

“It was good,” Jane says. “And all the other stuff made it really special. And I got the best dessert.”

The night comes down. Before they got on the road, Jane didn’t know how dark night was. Without electric lights it is cripplingly dark. But the soldiers have lights.

Jane says, “I’m going to go see if I can find out about the camp.”

“I’ll go with you,” Nate says.

“No,” Jane says. “They talk to a girl more than they’ll talk to a guy. You keep Franny company.”

She scouts around the edge of the light until she sees the blond soldier. He says, “There you are!”

“Here I am!” she says.

They are standing around a truck where they’ll sleep this night, shooting the shit. The blond soldier boosts her into the truck, into the darkness. “So you aren’t so conspicuous,” he says, grinning.

Two of the men standing and talking aren’t wearing uniforms. It takes her a while to figure out that they’re civilian contractors. They aren’t soldiers. They are technicians, nothing like the soldiers. They are softer, easier in their polo shirts and khaki pants. The soldiers are too sure in their uniforms, but the contractors, they’re used to getting the leftovers. They’re
grateful.
They have a truck of their own, a white pickup truck that travels with the convoy. They do something with satellite tracking, but Jane doesn’t really care what they do.

It takes a lot of careful maneuvering, but one of them finally whispers to her, “We’ve got some beer in our truck.”

The blond soldier looks hurt by her defection.

She stays out of sight in the morning, crouched among the equipment in the back of the pickup truck. The soldiers hand out MREs. Ted, one of the contractors, smuggles her one.

She thinks of Franny. Nate will keep an eye on her. Jane was only a year older than Franny when she lit out for California the first time. For a second she pictures Franny’s face as the convoy pulls out.

Then she doesn’t think of Franny.

She doesn’t know where she is going. She is in motion.

The protection of the devil you know is preferable to being meat to something else. Besides, you never know when a giant mutant possum might change the situation . . .

Sun Falls
Angela Slatter

I tap the fingers of one hand against the steering wheel, beating out a rhythm to replace the one that went missing when we got beyond the reach of any radio reception. It helps me to ignore the noises from the back seat.

The window is down so I can blow away the smoke from a hand-rolled ciggie. Barry hates it when I smoke in his car. Few things in the world Barry loves more than this old Holden, with its mag wheels, racing stripes, flames painted on the bonnet, and the fluffy dice dangling from the rear view mirror like a pair of square, furry testicles. He adores it better than any woman. I wouldn’t be allowed to drive if it weren’t an emergency of the most urgent kind.