Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection (20 page)

Being able to look down, stretch my vision out miles; to see in the night and the darkness without worrying what kind of stalker is hugging the walls, waiting to shank you. It’s good to be able to survey the city, before foraging, and today I survey a lot of things I hate.

The list of things I hate used to be very, very long. Exquisitely long. Leaves of Fucking Grass long.

Now it’s basically whittled down to “Freaks” and “whoever stole my backup generator.”

Seriously, if you’re out there: you are a total prick.

***

She sobs and holds her MP3 player and looks at the cracked screen; and its battery was full, and she frantically plugs in her headphones, missing the port twice, trying to see if it will at least play. After infinite half-seconds at the buttons the Philharmonic comes on; she doesn’t know which one but – she is no longer hectic and she doesn’t even care anymore which one.

She has counted, always, the number and direction of button presses to get to certain spots on each menu; and fingers-shaking she moves the wheel, press-right-down-press-down-down-down-enter; she listens to one whole song and then it switches from orchestral heights to Dollhouse in the Desert by Talking Lambs, loud and raucous and full of bass, and it is sent to shuffle forever; spice of life.

Cane in hand, she walks out.

***

I used to sit for moments at a time, but sitting becomes a sort of profession, waiting does; and up here I can spend whole days with books, the precious hundred that I’ve scavenged, just me and whatever I feel like reading that day and the city; but today is different.

Today is one of those days where my right leg twitches, up and down, vibrato, and I wonder what the heck is going to happen. I turn the goggles up and look, scanning, and then I see him, west by the apartments.

That freak with the mops. Mr. Spike Cannibal himself.

He’s doing what he does to one of the less-harmful-still-obnoxious casualties of the crash, and I can’t hear the screaming but from the looks of things the Mopman has already got the trachea out, maybe blooded his great big spike, and he’s going to probably get to the cooking stage anytime.

I level the rifle and hold my breath and a bird, wonderfully anarchic blue thing, follies into my scope and I pull back wavering.

Shoo-shoo get-get, but I look back and the Cannibal is gone; the other freak left asphyxiating.

When he plays with his food; that I hate too.

***

She limps, softly, around the apartment complexes, trying hard to listen; she has shut the music off because she cannot run well, and if she cannot run well she cannot afford to be anywhere but the place she is.

Out of the roadway, past a broken wall where a large explosive must have gone off, she enters a rubble-strewn intersection. The traffic lights have been moved to the middle of it, arranged in a pile at the top of which is a little statue of a woman in a grass skirt, and she wonders what it is for.

In front of her is a concrete divide, and leaning against it is a man or a boy with a brown beard, darkened by the shadow of a cloud. Rummaging behind that barrier in another street, the man with the mops is prowling. A large metal pipe rests on his shoulder, the bottom of which is wrapped in gauze, the top blossomed open, inelegant.

She hits the ground so hard, the wind is forced from her lungs.

The boy is still against the barrier, every so often peeking over to the freak beyond, and in one hand is a knife, the kind which folds into its own handle; it is very bright and she can tell, even from a distance, very sharp. She begins to quietly cat-paw her way through the rubble and dust to get to him, and just before he looks over and sees her, she can perceive that the beard on his face is thick, mysteriously well-cut, a whole shade darker than the hair on his head. The look at each other with their mouths slightly ajar, and she determines that he is about as old as her, about give or take a year, and that makes him not old enough to drink either, so: he must be a boy.

She shuts her mouth and raises her hand from the brick it was perched on and waves with her fingers, disjointedly. He waits and then he smiles, and motions her to his cover.

She scrambles up and puts her back against the wall, pack in lap, not just like him but the posture makes sense, and he arcs again to peak.

“You come a long way?” and she nods. “Yeah, everyone does. I’ve been following him,” and he points with a thumb before arcing again. “The guy with the mops.”

She gets on her knees and her nose hovers above the wall. From here she sees the melted edges on part of the freak’s pipe, others which have been hammered flat and sharpened awkwardly; the pipe is five feet long and the freak, she finally appreciates, is perhaps the largest man she has ever had the displeasure of seeing.

“I’m not sure where he got the pipe from. I’m kind of upset about that,” the boy says.

***

They have carefully and quietly crawled from their barrier to the top of a building; it was an apartment, new when the Crash happened, well-kept and untouched. She watched with complete and honest fascination as the boy picked the door’s still-strong lock, and now with half an eye turned down to the streets for scavengers or monsters, she non-too-graciously tells him to teach her.

She bites her lip as he laughs, and she wants to apologize but he has already said “Sure, my grandpap taught me. I keep a few locks, in case I meet people.”

His hands are warm on hers, as he shows her fingers how to move.

***

The girl practices all night, her blanket wrapped tight; she is aware that he has fallen asleep next to her, his head gently back with his nose heavenward, and she is not ungrateful for the warmth. Alien Chasers slept in great big piles, but she was not allowed to join; they told her it was “improper for the Carrier of Prayers to be seen in such a state,” and gave her many blankets. She was warm.

When she wakes up it is with an undone padlock in her hands, the picks fallen to the rooftop, and her head buried deep in his shoulder.

He snorts and stirs and she is sitting upright instantly, working at a new lock.

“Have you been at it all night?” She shakes her head no, and he says “Well hey, I’ve got food.”

They eat jerky and he gives pointers on how you can feel when the tumblers are in place.

***

At noon, tucked down behind a roof edge, they watch the freak with the mops. He is blocks away, quietly cleaning blood from the edge of his spike the way a cat cleans its paws.

***

A new day and it’s bright out; I use the goggles only to zoom and I’m looking for the Spike Cannibal because, I’m just going to be honest, I very badly want to shoot him.

It may be bad form, to want to kill someone, but you don’t go from leading the Countdown to living at the top of the Sears Tower by way of being passive; everything is either on or off, yes or no, one or zero; I wanted to be on, yes, one, so I keep looking.

Maybe that prig thief is still chasing him. I’d be fine using two bullets today.

***

“I grew up in Oklahoma. It’s been a long walk, yeah. First we drove, you know? Drove a lot, all over the place, trying to find out what happened to everyone, why we couldn’t get people to wake up. My parents were logged in, when it happened. The crash caught everyone by surprise, you know? Everyone.

“Just grandpap and me after that. We tried to feed them, tried to get them to come out of it, but they died in days. Grandpap said it was just the way some things happen, I said I didn’t understand. I mean, I was eleven, you know? Well yeah, of course you know. Sorry. I don’t get to talk often, anymore. So yeah, they died in the aftermath, and Grandpap and I drove. We got to OK City, we thought something would be happening there. We got there about the time the freaks broke down. A two day drive, just in time for the Riot. He told me to close my eyes but, I still remember the sounds.

“We kept driving after that. Grandpap said it wouldn’t have been that bad, if there weren’t soldiers logged in at the same time. We stayed a spell with some lucids. It was safe with them and it was good to finally talk to people both of our ages, to know that we weren’t the only ones out there. They had a generator, but it was too big. They said too many people were gone, there was no way to support the city. One used to be an engineer, and he was teaching the people how to run the power grid, but it was never enough. They worked and we drove on. We came back there two years later, and it had been taken over, run down by Freaks. I hated them so much. I still kind of do, but I know it’s not their fault, I know they don’t understand. I saw people, friends, completely good people, you know? I think I should hate whoever did it. Whoever crashed the world.

“We got there in time to see their remains, still smoking. I just can’t really stand it, sometimes. After the car broke we walked, and after Grandpap died I kept walking anyway. I hear cities on the east coast were small enough to get running with less people. I hear it’s got some livable places, from the people wandering this way. So maybe I’ll end up East.

“What about you, where’re you from?”

***

The Box People are fleeing, diving through windows and doorways, dragging the fallen to their feet so they can keep to flight, to get away; because they think they are a peaceful race, something out of a fairy tale, and they have no idea what they think he is, but they know he kills them with his great spike, spikes them and then eats.

***

She and he are searching, patiently, for more food to last out the day; both of their reserves are running low and she still hasn’t brought up the issue of pineapple because she’s fairly certain it’s not quite time yet, and so food has become the matter of the hour.

He talks discordantly, his voice rising and falling baritone, wandering like his hands through the remains of kitchens. Finally – in the fifth house of the day – when he is talking about the car he and his grandpap used to have and when he is not quite able to stop and when he is not quite ready for it, she touches his beard and tells him to relax.

“Oh,” he says, holding up a can of preserved fish, “and here I thought I was going to have to do all the work.”

***

They sit and eat on the stoop of a house that’s roof has fallen in, and they smile, and she tells him of wandering and the Alien Chasers and how badly she wonders what happened to her father, and what she knows of her mother, and of the music she loves.

“I wish I had a player, but really? You traded a knife for one?”

She nods, smiling softly.

“Oh, well. I’ve got more knives, if you ever want trade backs.”

They eat in an odd semi-silence, and she pushes him, and he pushes her back, and there is laughter as she punches him in the arm.

***

She lets him listen to her music.

“Wow, there’s. A lot,” and she asks him if there’s any reason there shouldn’t be.

“No, I guess there’s every reason for there to be. Just, pick something.”

The girl asks if it should be random, and he says “Sure, random,” and she clicks shuffle once on the Sansa and looks at what comes up and smiles, diligent. She covers his eyes and puts the headphones on for him and he listens, grinning, until his face turns into the face people make when they are concentrating, deeply, on things which they know are beautiful.

“I wish we were farmers,” he recites lyrics, “I wish that we knew how. Who is this?” he asks, but she smiles and tells him to listen to another.

***

Walking through the city streets, they are calm. Wind flaps at clothes hanging out to dry or tugs at those left on weather-beaten corpses being consumed by time and fungus. They are still talking.

“Yeah, there’s a local group, of Freaks? They’re helpful, but they always hide things. Places you can’t reach easy, or in boxes.”

The Box People, she says, and she says they’re good folk.

“They are. I got them a generator, from the Sears Tower. The guy up there, he’s a bit of a jerk.”

She asks what the Sears Tower is, and he points, and she says: oh.

“Yeah, I think he’s just a nut. Hates people, doesn’t like coming out. Just sits up there with his rifle, all day. Something wrong with that alone, but. He’s not using all the stuff he has.” The boy spits. “Makes me sick, when people hoard.”

***

Lunch: liver and onions.

It wasn’t my idea, to ventilate the fiftieth through seventieth floors, carefully removing the windows, but hey; well-constructed cellophane makes for great greenhouses.

The freezer floor, though: that was my idea. The liver is a little bad but it’s amazing what preservatives will do.

I watch the Spike Cannibal chase some of the freaks around the city; and I watch him skewer one, shake him around and smear him against the wall, but I left my rifle on the table when cooking so I just sit in my chair, lean back and eat.

***

“You really want to go see him, up there?” and she says it wouldn’t hurt, would it? If he has so much maybe she can trade something.

“But not an MP3 player,” and she says no and looks away, and looking back he is stern-faced and so is she, and they see how long they can keep it that way, and she likes this type of play.

“Well it’s got a big lock on the front, and I bet he’s changed it since last I was there, but sure; I bet I can get us in again,” and she has a great welling in her chest, and she tells him so, and she is going to say more but instead they walk in silence, their fingers occasionally meeting at their tips.

***

Always keep your rifle clean.

Always keep everything clean, in case you have company, but I’m not expecting any so it’s fine, I’d say, to default to “Rifle, maybe pistol, probably bathroom.”