Grants Pass (27 page)

He swallowed and glanced around the
room. His face filled with fear. Terror, even. “Nobody’s here, are they?”

“
I’m here.”
Was the man a fool? Quite likely. Most people were fools, and if they hadn’t been
before the world fell apart, they certainly were now. Or, rather, they were
dead now, the vast majority of them. And the fools like Christos had sailed off
to follow a dream, a computer hoax, a cruel fantasy someone had written, about
a place called Grants Pass, where society would begin again. As if there was
any chance of that.

“
You...” The
man struggled to sit up, and Beth didn’t stop him. He leaned against the
pillows and shivered in the heat. “Who are you?”

“
Elizabeth
Barnett.” She watched his eyes as she said her name, but he gave no flicker of
recognition. “Who are you?”

“
Tyler.” He
blinked and swallowed, and she stared at his throat, but saw no swelling.
“Tyler Anderson.”

“
I am
pleased to meet you, Tyler Anderson,” Beth said, slipping into the tone she
would use when greeting over-eager fans.

Tyler closed his eyes, leaned
against the headboard, then opened them again. He had already smeared the white
coverlet with his filthy, stained hands. But without water, she’d have no way
of washing them. Everything was just going to get dirtier and dirtier from here
on out, until everything was the color of the sun-baked earth. Including
herself.

“
Is it true
that California...?” His eyes appealed to her as he broke off, then started
again. “Is San Diego really ruined?”

Now Beth stared at him. “That was
two years ago.”

****

She was not a nurse, she told
herself that she didn’t care if he lived or died, but for some reason she fed
him and cleaned him up a bit, and changed the bandage on his forehead. The
bleeding slowed and stopped, and seemed like it would heal.

Once he was cleaner, she saw that he
was even younger than she’d realized. Probably in his twenties, though he’d
lived a hard life during those few years. Well, who hadn’t, lately?

He slept a lot, and ate the halloumi
she brought, and the canned foods. Beth began to wonder if she’d need to make
another raid on the neighboring houses, or even — god forbid — venture down
into Larnaka again. Christos had packed the small cellar full before he’d left,
even as he’d continued to beg her to change her mind. But an old woman didn’t
eat nearly as much as a young man.

Within a week, Tyler was able to
walk around a little, and a day or two later, he washed himself, using most of
a bucket of brackish water. Beth brought him pants and a cotton shirt that had
belonged to James, handing it to him without comment.

Tyler dressed himself, then came and
found Beth in the living room.

“
Drink?” she
asked, indicating the bottle of Bombay on the sideboard.

“
Oh my god,”
he said, his blue eyes glittering with a touch of madness. Or at least that’s
how she would have written it, as she thought about it later. In the moment,
she only thought,
Now, there’s a healthy young man who appreciates quality
gin.

He poured himself a full three
fingers of the stuff, his arms shaking as he lifted the heavy bottle with both
hands. Sitting in the second leather chair, he raised the glass and smiled at
her.

She lifted her half-empty glass, and
they clinked.

He took a generous swallow of the
gin, closing his eyes as it went down, and turned to face Beth, grinning. “Oh,
man. That’s incredible.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “I take it
it’s been a while?”

“
Ha!” It
wasn’t a laugh; more like an ironic bark, and a bit too loud. “Yes, it has. I’d
say two years, at least.”

Beth leaned forward, holding him
with her eyes. “So, Tyler, tell me: what do you know of what has gone on in our
world these last few years?”

He took another drink, not quite as
gulpish as his last, but she still noted it.
If he drinks like that, eighteen
bottles won’t be near enough
, she thought. “Not a whole hell of a lot, to
tell you the truth.”

“
What’s an
American boy doing in Cyprus anyway, now, knowing nothing? If I didn’t know
better, I’d say you’ve been in prison.”

Now he did laugh, though it was as
bitter as before. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I was in prison.” He finished
the glass of gin, setting it quite deliberately on the table beside his chair,
next to the cut-glass coaster.

****

It turned out to be the usual
story — young tourist arrested for drugs in a country with little patience for
such things, thrown into prison to teach him a lesson. It would have had the
usual outcome — his parents sending money or coming to retrieve him, a whole
lot of nuisance and no lasting ill effects — except for the unfortunate timing
of the apocalypse.

Tyler spoke no Greek, no Turkish,
nothing but English. His parents had presumably died in the initial earthquake,
but he didn’t know for sure, as communications went down almost immediately
thereafter. The plagues had come then, sweeping across the world. He had known
almost nothing of this as he languished in prison, waiting for rescue, for
anything. His guards changed weekly, then daily, with no explanation. Then one
died right in front of him, and he finally, belatedly, understood.

“
How did you
get out of the locked cell?” Beth asked him, swirling her drink.

He shrugged, looking down. “Reached
out, took the keys from him. I thought for sure I’d get the plague then, but I
guess not.” His words were casual, but his face was bleak. There was more to
the story. If he wanted to tell her, he would.

He was vague on the timing — how
long he had been out of the prison, surviving on the rough countryside. But
that was because he didn’t know, Beth felt, not because he was trying to
deceive. It had obviously been a while. He must have wandered the entire island
before finding her. Christos had come to her in the first few weeks after the
initial devastation, when the few survivors were banding together. And Christos
had stayed with her when the others had left the island. Until he, too, could
no longer resist the empty promise of a dream.

****

Tyler’s strength grew, and soon
enough he was poking around the place, exploring neighboring houses, trying to
figure out ways to improve their lot. Just like Christos had done. Beth was
pleased enough to have the help, although she’d been doing perfectly well on
her own, thank you very much. Tyler began talking more, yammering on to her in
the evenings about everything and nothing — his boyhood in California, girls
he’d liked, his world travels on a shoestring. She took to retiring early,
going to her room with a book and a candle where she could read in peace until
she felt like sleeping.

“
What’s
this?” he asked one day. Beth was in the kitchen, trying to decide whether to
light a fire to heat up the canned lakerda or just eat it cold. She turned
around at the sound of his voice. He was holding a sheaf of papers.

Beth recognized them at once. “Where
did you get that?”

Tyler shrugged. “I was cleaning up,
I found them. Is it true?”

“
Give me
those.” Beth reached out for the papers, but Tyler held them away from her. “I
asked you where you got that.”

He stared at her, his eyes wide and
needful. “We could find other people. We could go; we don’t have to stay here!”

“
Put that
down. You’re a goddamned fool, do you know that?”

He started to say something else,
but she interrupted. “I said,
put that down
, and don’t speak of it to me
again.”

He paled and set the papers on the
counter, backing out of the kitchen.

Beth took the Grants Pass email
hoax, intending to put it back in her bedroom, where Tyler had had no business
snooping in the first place. She had made it perfectly clear that her room was
off limits, yet where else had he gotten it? It was the only copy.

She stopped at the doorway, thinking
for a moment, and then went back into the kitchen to light the fire.

****

But once he’d read it, he
wouldn’t let it go. He was worse than Christos. “We can be saved!”

“
You go
ahead if you like,” she said. “I’m fine here.”

“
I can’t
leave you here. You’re, um, you’ll die.” He was shaking his head, stubborn,
desperate. “Please!”

She laughed in his face. “You were
going to tell me I’m old. I
know
I’m old, and I know I’m going to die.
And therefore, I’m not going anywhere.”

“
We can take
a boat — there’re plenty of boats left in the harbor.”

“
And
petrol?” She sneered at his naiveté. “Do you know how many people already left
the island? You don’t think they left a lot of petrol lying around? That’s why
Christos sailed, you idiot American. And now he sleeps with the sharks.”

He bristled. “You don’t know that
for sure. And yes, I am American — what of it? Why shouldn’t I want to go
home?”

She waved at the harbor. “I am not
stopping you.”

****

That night, she heard him sobbing
in his bedroom, long after she’d gone to her own. “Mom...oh, Mom...”

So that was it: he missed his mommy.
And he’d fixated on Beth, in some sort of perverse mother-complex way. She
snorted to herself. “More like a grandmother.”

But the next morning he was at her
again. She had to shout at him again to get him to stop. He stormed out without
eating breakfast, and spent the day somewhere else. Down at the water, if she
was any judge.

He returned at twilight, calm, not
mentioning where he’d been. She offered him a glass of gin, and they sat on the
veranda, drinking together.

After two drinks, he said, “I found
a boat. I think it could make it across the ocean. And it’s got a full tank of
gas. So I know I could find more.”

“
I’m not leaving,”
she said, without turning her head. The sun glimmered red on the water as it
sank. “I hate America. And I forbade you to speak of this.” She set her glass
down, got up, and went inside.

She walked all the way to her
bedroom, then through it into her small private bathroom. Of course she didn’t
use it as a bathroom any more — the septic tank was overfull, and there was
nobody to call to come clean it out — but it had other uses. She opened the
medicine cabinet, first looking, then rummaging, then yanking everything out.
But they weren’t there.

He’d not only stolen the email from
her bedroom. He’d also raided her stash of narcotics, carefully hoarded from
James’ final illness.

Beth stood before the ransacked
medicine cabinet, shaking with anger. She had to make him leave. He was not
like Christos — he was worse, far worse. Bad enough that he would harangue her,
try to control her. But that he should steal from her — that he should steal
drugs
from her — a man who had already gone to prison for drugs — oh, this was not
good. A man whose life she’d saved.

“
Not good,”
she whispered.

She felt a prickle on the back of
her neck and wheeled around. He was standing in the doorway of the small
bathroom. She hadn’t even heard him come in.

He was pale, and shaking. Now that
she knew, she recognized the signs easily. He must have taken several pills,
and then two — at least two — glasses of gin on top of that. “Beth,” he
started, taking a step towards her. The name was a bit slurred, the consonants
softer than they should be.

“
Get out of
here,” she said.

He took another step, and now he was
right in front of her. He reached up and took her shoulders in his hands, hard,
and shook her. It hurt. She pushed back against his chest, trying to twist out
of his grip, but he was decades younger than she, and very strong.
“We...have...to...go,” he said, staring at her even as he rattled her thin
bones. His eyes were too liquid, too glossy. “I’ll
make
you go.”

She pushed harder, and he abruptly
let go, staggering back and bumping into the wall behind him. He didn’t seem to
notice. “You’re drunk,” she said. “Go and lie down. We’ll talk about this in
the morning.”

He looked at her, wary. “You mean
it? We’ll talk about it?”

She shrugged, resisting the urge to
rub her throbbing shoulders. “You are in no condition to talk now.”

He kept staring at her, then turned
and went to his own bedroom. She stood in the bathroom a long time, shaking,
listening as he fell onto his bed. He was snoring within a few minutes. Only
then did she pull her shirt open and examine the bruises, peering into the
mirror. He’d crushed her shoulders so hard she could almost see the imprint of
his fingerprints.