The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (18 page)

**

Real People spill to the grass, their clothes burnt, their faces black as the house that crackles and roars in front of their wet eyes. Others shout and try to bring Bastard Water from the lake to throw onto it, trying to stop the Fire, but its flames are too bright and its hunger too strong for them to fight. It's like they're doing nothing at all, like Winged Beasts buzzing in the face of a great Beast.

The Fire turns night into day all around us. Something I wish I could do.

“Hey!” Someone shouts at me. It's Tommy, the boy twin, with his sister right behind him spitting black into the grass. “Have you seen Terence?”

I shake my head.

“Shit. Can you track him?”

There's too much smoke in the air, too much fear and screaming. But then I hear something- foot sounds, very fast, not going back and forth between the lake and the house to get Water for the Fire, these foot sounds are running away from the house and toward the wood lines.

If I say the truth, if I say the things I sense now without being embarrassed, I know exactly who it is. But I don't want to say it.

“No go,” Child says, her face lit by Fire.

“Stay here.” She shakes her head. “You're not following me. If you follow me we won't speak to each other ever again, understand?” She doesn't answer, so I shake her by her arm and shout, “Do you?”

She nods.

I run away from her, away from the house and away from the Fire, toward the lake where I know I'll find him. My feet are strong, thumping the ground and gripping the grass. Behind me I hear the woman from the Fire asking Child for her name, telling her to stay put. I'm happy Child is safe with them, but I don't like this woman talking to her, taking care of her the way I should be.

Close to the lake it gets hard to see. I didn't realize until now that the Night Eyes are back in the room. After we went through so much for them, they're already gone. Strange how I had one pair of eyes for years but these I only had for hours. The difference between life inside and life outside.

I squint at the wood lines as I come near. The man who ran here stands on them, and by his scent I know it isn't the one with the white hair and the crushed ear from when we came, though his scent is still here, but faded, and covered by the scent of blood.

The man here- it's Graham.

“Look how you've changed,” he says, smiling by the sound of him. “It's amazing how fast it's happening now, isn't it?”

“Why did you come here?” I watch his shadow against the lake, follow the sound of the wood shifting under his feet.

“And you're still talking in full sentences. You really are something special. But I bet that's nothing my brother hasn't been telling you.” He stops smiling. “You and I had a deal.”

The lines sway beneath me. “You will never get her,” I growl. “I would get the Death before I let that happen.”

“Ahh, you see that? That's why I like you. You have passion, and passion is something that can't be taught. That's why I decided I'd rather take you than that dirty, little shit.”

A croak starts in my stomach.

“This is my new offer,” he says. “If you come with me, right now, I'll tell everyone at the base that the younger one is dead. They'll believe me, because they always do. Then you can stay on as our new tracker and it...she gets to live. Everyone wins.”

The croak grows.

“What are you mad at me for? This is your fault. If you really wanted to protect her you would have taken me out by now. Killed me where I stood.”

As I move slowly forward I feel the croak push up through my chest and into my throat.

“You should be honored. I burned that place to the ground just to get you out of it. All those deaths are on your head, and anyone left alive has you to thank for ruining the only home on Earth they had left.”

Something floats on the Bastard Water. Something with hands. It's the man with the crushed ear, his mouth open and his eyes watching the moon. The smell of blood is strong now, and in the dim light I see it covers my hands.

“He was too trusting. His name was Ernie, Ernie Sanders.  He'd be alive now if you'd listened to me in the first place.”

“You gave him the Death. You put Fire to the house. You did these things.”

“When those people back there are standing over the bodies of their loved ones, who do you think they'll blame in their hearts? Me, a human being? Or the dirty, rag-wearing monster with the bad temper?”

He starts to laugh behind his mask. It puts a feeling in my skull I can't explain and can't stop. All I can do about it is scream and run at him, run the lines and jump at him with my nails aimed at his eyes, wanting so badly to pull them from his head, but when my feet leave the wood he pulls something out and fires it at me. It hits me in the shoulder and my body explodes as I fall to the wood like lightning has struck me, my arms and legs frozen and my teeth grinding.

I can't move. A spike is buried in my shoulder.

“You see? Bad temper.” He puts away the strange gun and drags me off the lines  into a small Water-car. I can't do anything to stop him, can't move a single part of me as he puts his sticks with flat ends into the Water and moves us away. Foot sounds and shouts come from land. People looking for me, Real People, and above them the sky burning.

The Water-car moves into the Bastard Water like a voice. My mouth won't work. My body won't work. But I feel something in my fingers and toes, like Winged Beasts running over and inside them.

“Picturing you trying to explain to those idiots how you didn't set the Fire is amusing, but you're my ticket home.”

As he talks I feel my arms and legs being born back to me. I let him push us through the Bastard Water until my body is alive enough.

“Let's see them put me on trial now,” he says.

I wiggle my toes.

Fast as I can I scramble to the side of the Water-car and pull myself over the side. I feel his fingers grab at my feet as I splash down.

I slip into the cold black.

**

Someone down here is screaming.

Slippery Beasts- fish- dart and push out of my way. They choke the lake. There aren't hunters of fish anymore, not like when I was a child. Their poles sit behind the windows of stores back on shore. I swim against the fish, their sharp bodies slicing at my skin where the suit doesn't cover it.

If I found the Death itself, slit its stomach open with my nails and crawled inside it, that might be close to what this feels like.

I don't remember how to swim. My hands push and pull at the Bastard Water but I can't see if I'm moving. My lungs reach and my throat takes in Bastard Water and more than anything I need my mother right now. More than anything I need my mother. More than anything. Anything.

It's okay. Calm down.

I can't swim, mother, I can't swim.

Yes, you can. You've done this before.

But I don't even know if I'm going up or down.

Stop moving. The air in your lungs will lift you up, then you'll know which way is up.

It's the truth. It works.

Now, calmly push your hands together like you're praying, the way your father showed you, then push them out in front of you, and when they can't go any further take them apart and bring them toward your feet, hard, palms back like you're pulling yourself through the Water.

I try it, and that works, too.

Keep doing that until the air in your lungs runs out, then pull yourself up to the surface the same way.

Thank you.

Just stay calm. Always stay calm.

When the air runs out I swim to the surface and breathe, finding myself a small distance from the Water-car. Graham is faced the other way, the panic in his moves as he looks into the lake trying to find me. The other way is land, where flashlights are bouncing like Winged Light Beasts at the shore. I shake off a shudder and swim toward them, splashing in the Water and hearing Graham shout for me to stop, but I don't.

He puts the flat-end sticks in the lake and follows. When I get close enough to the land I hear another shout, this one from land, someone saying they see something in the Water, which is me. I turn one more time to see where Graham is. He's stopped moving the sticks, his eyes on the flashlights. His face is serious, the look saying he knows he can't follow me any further without risking the Death.

He stands in the Water-car. “You can't get rid of me this easy,” he says.

I don't answer him. I keep moving toward land, past the floating, staring body of Ernie Sanders and onto a place where I can let the shouting flashlights pull me up. Child is with them, but I don't let her touch me because of the Bastard Water. Behind her are the man and the woman from the Fire and some other people, Real People with blaming eyes, the ones past them still trying to put Water to the Fire. People of different years and hair, of different clothes and face.

The hotel flames have mostly gone down, the building collapsed into itself, glowing orange and red. Fifteen people are scattered on the grass, choking and moaning, and in the middle of them Terence pushes on the chest of an old woman laying on the ground, putting his mouth to hers and breathing air into her. It looks like what I did to Graham back in that terrible room, but I know it's different. Terence is trying to give life to her, not take it away.

He does this for some minutes. The woman's eyes stay closed, her face still and her heart silent. When someone from the crowd finally pulls Terence away from her, both of their eyes are wet.

“That's her,” someone points, “this is her fault.”

Terence wipes the Bastard Water from his face. “No. She's a friend here.”

“Don't be blind, Terence. She's infected, and that kid is full-monster.”

Terence goes to this man in the crowd, his face angry. “They use fire to kill now? We both know if this girl wanted to hurt one of us by now she would have.” He turns to the others. “She happened to have saved my life back on the mainland, and the fire started on the opposite side of the house.” He looks to the smoking pile.

The man from the burning hallway puts his hand out. “Kate and I would be dead meat if it wasn't for her. We were trapped and she found the way out.”

“See? Why would she help Boyd and Kate if she was trying to kill them? I'm not sure how this fire started, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence it happened when it did.”

I step forward with the eyes of the crowd on me, and I tell Terence it isn't.

“Tell me you didn't do this,” he says.

“I didn't do this. It was Graham.”

A quiet goes into the crowd. Then someone from the shore shouts, “Come quick, there's someone in the Water!” We go down to the lake, where two men are pulling the body from it. When they see the cut in his throat they turn their stares to me.

“Graham gave him the Death. He used the Fire to bring me out of the nest.”

“What does he want from you,” Boyd asks.

I tell them how he keeps Munies locked up, how he's used them to find Supplies ever since the base started running low. How he wanted Child at first but now he wants me, and how he almost had me but he didn't expect his strange gun to wear off and for me to jump into the Bastard Water.

A short man with no hair says, “How do we know you're not making this all up?”

I point to the body. “Graham told me his name. Ernie Sanders.”

“That's supposed to be proof? You could have forced it out of him before you slit his throat.”

“My nails are long, sharp, the nails of a Munie. They could give a man the Death easily, and have, but they didn't give it to him.”

I don't know how to make them understand this. They start shouting at me and each other, their home turned to smoke behind them and their anger on me. I can feel them ready to grab me and drag me away when Terence tells them to stop, his voice louder than any of theirs.

“Don't,” he says, “we're better than this, better than Graham. Don't you see this is what he wants? Us tearing each other apart, it's what he always wants. I know him better than any of you, but you lived with him for years. you've seen how he manipulates and corrupts everyone around him. He gets them to fight each other and then he positions himself at the top of the heap.” He comes close to me, close to Child. “It's easy to see these two as the outsiders, the danger, but I'm telling you I've seen the good in them. They care about each other. They may be infected but that doesn't make them monsters. It doesn't make them like the savages we've seen out there, mindlessly killing and eating. Don't turn on them, either help them or let them go, the same as you'd hope for in their place, because like it or not they're just like us: lost and scared and clinging to each other.”

The crowd is silent now, looking at each other. Boyd says, “What are we supposed to do, Terence? Our home is gone. We have nowhere to go.”

He turns to see the smoking pile. “The hotel was always a temporary solution. Now we have to find a new home, somewhere permanent. You know I've always believed we should find somewhere colder, somewhere those things might stay away.”