After The Virus (9 page)

“She’s just a child,” Rhiannon, disgusted and disturbed, yelled and then immediately couldn’t believe she was actually engaging with him at all.
 

“Practice makes perfect,” he sing-songed. “Push in, pull out, make hole big, big enough for baby, sell baby for even more than the girl!”
 

She had raised and fired the shotgun before she knew it. He was faster than she anticipated, and she aimed with anger, not concentration. He, even clipped by spray, rushed her and knocked her over as she was pumping the gun for her second shot. She lost the gun in the fall. She felt his hands, his skin, fever-hot even through her jacket, and in their frantic tussle, she realized he was trying to bite her neck.
 

She rolled, once, twice, and in the third roll she got her knee to his chest and tossed him off her. Momentum carried him to the cliff edge.

Snickers hesitated; knife in one hand and B.B.’s collar in the other.

Rhiannon yelled, “Run!” in the child’s direction even as she charged Wee Wee, who was trying to stand. One more kick would launch him over the cliff, into the raging river and out of their lives, but a voice froze her mid-kick.

“Nope, no more running,” Asshole sneered.

“And leash the dog or it’ll be a bullet to the head for it and the girl,” Buddy threatened.

She spun to see they had hands on Snickers, who, despite being half-off her feet, was holding B.B. from attacking the nasty new arrivals.

Wee Wee grabbed Rhiannon’s leg and tried to twist her off her feet. With no momentum he couldn’t manage it, so he just hung off her like a tantruming toddler. Rhiannon raised her chain-wrapped arm over Wee Wee’s head; he was now chewing on her leg.

“That’s enough braining for the day,” Asshole ordered, and then elaborated. “Plus he’s a, a, collaborator, yes, that’s the right word —”
 

“Yes, very Nazi of you,” Rhiannon interjected and he ignored.

“Who do you think pointed us in your direction?”

“It was the wrong direction.” A weak retort, sure, but she felt the need to say something.

They stepped closer. Snickers clung to B.B.’s back with her hands acting as a muzzle. Buddy was dragging them both by the back of Snickers’ belt. Asshole and Buddy had guns trained on her, but then Buddy, perhaps the smarter of the two, pressed his gun to the back of Snickers’ head.
 

Wee Wee, now manic, started rolling and giggling. She wondered if she could knock him over the cliff edge before Asshole could stop her. She didn’t get to ponder for long.
 

A bullet bit the dirt inches in front of Asshole’s oncoming foot. They all dumbly stared at this patch of disturbed earth.

Rhiannon wondered, in the chaos that ensued, how she found the focus to notice:

The seeping — almost black — blood from Asshole’s bandaged hand.
 

Or that Buddy wore a happy face pin with fangs.

Or that Snickers' eyes were flecked with gold.

She saw all that — and more — in rapid-fire still images.

“Close enough,” Will yelled from his cliff top vantage. He backed this proclamation with another shot, which hit slightly to Buddy’s left.
 

Everyone froze. But then realizing the bad guys weren’t out gunned yet, Rhiannon dove for her shotgun, only feet away in the dirt. It was the wrong choice, the wrong move, and she sure had been making more than her share of those lately.

Snickers loosened her hold on B.B., who immediately went after Asshole. Buddy grabbed for Rhiannon, as Will half-ran, half-fell down the cliff.

All this strategic adult movement left Snickers defenseless against Wee Wee.

As Rhiannon grabbed and swung the shotgun on Buddy, she saw Snickers thrashing to get away from Wee Wee, who was dragging her off by one foot.

She screamed, aimed again, but didn’t have time to get off a shot before Snickers had slammed her foot into Wee Wee’s crotch and he crumpled. In her desperation, Snickers spun away, spun to the edge of the cliff. So near the edge, which was dry and eroded and old, that it buckled.

And Snickers fell. She twisted. The rocks underneath her feet crumbled. She fell, right off the cliff, off the cliff into the raging river below.
 

She didn’t make a sound as she fell, her arms around her ears like a dancer, no scream, nothing.
Maybe it wasn’t psychological then, Snickers’ muteness;
Rhiannon’s dull brain was still making meaningless observations.

She heard someone scream, was fucking sure it was herself screaming, and someone, probably her again, blew the back of Wee Wee’s head off.

She ran to the cliff edge.

She dropped the gun.

She dropped the pack off her back, Snickers’ backpack and, quite simply, dove off the cliff.

Dove right off, right at the spot where Snickers had fallen. The cliff face streaked by until the water rose up to swallow, or perhaps welcome, her.
 

Then the hungry, vengeful, breathtakingly beautiful river pulled her down, down into its crashing white rapids and rocky outcrops.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WILL

Will felt, rather than heard, himself scream. The second scream, “Rhiannon” — the first had been “Snickers” — felt like it shredded his throat. She had just dived off. Just ran and dived off. Like it was a sunny summer day and she needed a little cool down, a little dip in the pool.

He recognized as he tried to run to the cliff edge that the two men, One Ear and his Buddy from that, that town, turned their guns on him. They didn’t shoot him, but they didn’t let him get to the edge of the cliff either. Instead, they tackled him. B.B. was somehow in the mix.

He tried to crawl, but they sat, crushed his legs and dug their heels into hard-packed ground. They found holds in the rock and anchored.

His hearing came back with the roar of machine gun fire. They cringed and covered their heads, little good that would do against bullets.

“You get off! You assholes, get the hell offa Tex!” Big swore. “Or I’ll forget I recently decided to believe in the sanctity of life.”

One Ear and Buddy scrambled off him.

Big, followed by ten other people with guns, shotguns and rifles, was striding in from the west.

Thus freed, Will finally got to the cliff edge, but couldn’t see anything beyond rock and river.

“Clarence, go up. See if you can put eyes on them girls,” Big ordered. Stupid, who apparently was Clarence, went from having his gun crammed under Buddy’s eye to scampering up the cliff Will had just come down in his rescue attempt.

Big and another bearded man — Dale, according to what Big was saying — seemed to be trying to help him to his feet. But if he was going anywhere, he was going over into that river.
 

One Ear and Buddy were on their knees with hands on heads. Each had five guns pointed at them.

Where the hell had all these people come from?

Big seemed to be trying to soothe him by mumbling about “everything being okay” and them “figuring it all out.”
 

Stupid yelled from the cliff top, “I see the lady!”

Will stopped struggling and turned toward Stupid’s voice. So many hands were on him, so much concern in the eyes of people he didn’t know. He turned to see Stupid up on the cliff. He was staring west with binoculars.
 

Stupid yelled again, “I see her, she’s got the little girl!”

Will brushed off helpful hands and climbed the cliff.

Stupid continued to narrate, “They’re riding the river feet first, like pros! No! They hit a rock, gone under.”

Will’s heart stopped but his feet and hands didn’t. His fingers would be bloody next time he noticed.

“Wait! No, there they are! Clinging to the rock! That river is some bitch, but they’re winning. That lady is a good swimmer, hey Tex?”
 

That lady is good at everything,
his numb brain offered.
I might wring her neck when I get my hands on her or at least kiss her really hard.
 

“The lady looks like she’s trying to get to the other side, and the girl is okay, ‘cause she’s clinging to the lady like shit on a log.”

He realized B.B. was with him as he got near the top of the cliff. She was scrambling for footing, but the rock was crumbling underneath. She started to slip backward just as he grabbed for her collar and hauled her up the last few feet. They finally stepped onto solid ground.

Stupid offered him the binoculars with an apologetic look. “They’re okay, but they got swept around that bend and out of sight, see?”

Will scanned the river, following Stupid’s direction, but couldn’t see the girls.

“I promise, Tex, I promise they’re okay,” Stupid stuttered.

He felt like his brain was going to shut down, but was pretty sure this wasn’t the time for a reboot. Then Big had his hand on his shoulder.

“We better get going if we’re going to get to them before dusk,” Big said. “Think they’ll know to wait for us, know we’re coming for them?”
 

Will laughed at that.

He laughed at the thought of Rhiannon waiting for anything, for anyone. He laughed for her unbelievable courage and for that damn dive. The look between Big and Stupid made it pretty clear they thought he was going insane. So he stopped laughing and started giving orders.

He was pretty sure they’d been waiting for him to wake up and take charge for a while now.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

RHIANNON

She sliced through the water, and within the peaceful grip of the thundering river, she momentarily thought about not surfacing at all. She could just surrender… life was such an endless fight, a constant struggle to move and do and consume and try, try to just be, to exist.

She thought of Snickers, who was too young to be overwhelmed in all of this. And then her legs moved, kicked against the demanding water. She panicked that she wasn’t going to break free, that she’d waited too long, let the current have its way and signed over her life rights.

She broke through and pulled air into her deflated lungs. Her rib was still stuck, maybe broken, but she had other things to worry about. Such as the insane speed with which she was being dragged and the jutting, jagged rocks that she was lucky she hadn’t yet hit headfirst. Instructions from a river-rafting trip taken with her father in her teens came to her, and she faced downriver and stuck her legs forward. Her father had died a few weeks after that trip. By his own hand. She stuffed that memory away for another dark day.

She let the current direct her, as she was sure it had directed Snickers. Scanning, she squinted against the sun. She’d lost her sunglasses. Everything was white. White water surrounded and pulled her around rocky outcrops. Snickers' dark hair had to show against all this white.

If Snickers had made it to the surface… if… if… if
, her brain nagged.
The river was so strong and Snickers was so little.

The river twisted and she scraped her leg on something jagged underneath the surface.
At least there weren’t any sharks in a river.
She hadn’t realized before how cold the water was —
cold and clear — good enough to drink.
 

She suddenly dropped a few feet and went under; when she surfaced again she found herself in a sort of resting place.
A pool drop
, her brain unhelpfully supplied.

Going under the water brought her to her senses again and…
there!

A scarf tied around a rock?

She swam to the other side of the calm pool. She wedged up against a boulder so the river didn’t drag her up and over the next set of rapids. Then, tracing the scarf, she found Snickers.

The girl had tried to anchor to the rock, but was now hanging on to the ends of the scarf and barely keeping her head out of the water.
 

Rhiannon wrapped her legs around her side of the rock and reached over to drag Snickers back. The river wasn’t too happy about releasing the girl.

Snickers' lips and hands were blue-tinged, and her head rolled limp. She seemed unaware of being pulled over and wedged against the boulder.
 

Rhiannon fumbled with the scarf and the knots that Snickers had made around her wrists. The constant pull of the current had painfully tightened those knots.

Only when blood rushed back into Snickers’ hands did she react, and the girl’s pained, ferocious look gradually eased into recognition and…
joy
?

“Hey baby,” Rhiannon smiled, and almost got a return smile. ”What a ride! But maybe now is a good time to dry off?”

Snickers nodded her agreement.

She looked for a place to climb out of the river, but saw none nearby.

“Looks like we might need to go down river farther. You up for it?”

Snickers nodded and tried to climb around onto her back, but couldn’t seem to move or grip very well with her right arm.
Was it broken?
Snickers didn’t seem to be bleeding and she saw no jutting bone, but given the way the girl was moving, it was at least painful.

“Sorry, baby, this might hurt. Try arms around my neck, legs like this.” She coached Snickers until she was wrapped around her frontways.

Then, fingers clumsy with cold, she tied one end of the scarf to Snickers’ belt and one end to her own, and hoped that was the right choice.

The child didn’t make a sound, but Rhiannon felt her desperately clenched limbs and her fierce little heart pounding against her breastbone.

As she eased around the rock and let the current catch them, she realized she wasn’t scared anymore. With Snickers, she could accomplish anything.

She tried to steer toward a group of rocks and hoped for another calm pool. But instead of a safe haven, she found a sinkhole in disguise. They went under, but rather than fighting and getting confused, she shielded Snickers as best she could and let the river have its way. They tumbled over and over. Her back smashed against a rock, and for a while, direction had no meaning.

Then they bobbed to the surface.

She needed both arms to grab another rock, so she had to trust that Snickers could hang on. Then she coughed up a lungful, as did the girl.