Moriah (24 page)

It whined and parted its jaws, revealing a mouthful of broken and jagged teeth.

Dee fired his revolver once and the zombie went down. He limped back to the others, holstering the Python in its belly band, the kettle whistling sharply. Back at the fire, he donned an oven mitt and removed the kettle from the flame, the whistle trailing off.

“Get over here, Bruce. Let’s clean out that shoulder.”

* * *

The mouth of the river widened as it flowed out into the sound. They resorted to their improvised oars to a greater degree than previously, steering their small vessel near enough to shore to keep land in sight. The fish here lived out in the sea but migrated up the river to spawn.

By mid-morning they spied a pier projecting into the water. They glassed the scene with the minocular. A boat not much larger than their own puttered out into the open water of the sound, away from them, its outboard motor inaudible to them from this distance. Wispy vapors touched the sky from beyond the trees fronting the pier. Smoke.

“That’s what we need,” Kevin remarked of the vessel.

“I’m not feeling so hot…” Bruce finally admitted, and he didn’t look it either. “…so let me make sure I have this right. We’re further south than where we need to be, right? Because we took the river?”

Dee told him that he was correct.

“Are we still serious about this Africa bullshit?”

No one answered him.

“Okay, good. I thought it was just me.”

“We need to find someone who can help us help you, Bruce.”

“If we can get to New Harmony,” Riley reminded them all, “that won’t be a problem.”

“So we need that boat,” explained Kevin. “It’ll get us where we need to go a lot faster than this thing.”

“You think they’re just going to give us their boat?”

“Let’s go talk to them,” Dee suggested.

None of them particularly liked the idea. There were four of them, and although it appeared there was only one man on the boat, there was no telling how many people there were where the smoke emanated from. Riley knew that if the men she travelled with were a different kind of people, they would have all waited at the pier, hidden, letting the boat come back and taking it from its pilot, forcefully if need be. Instead they beached their own small skiff and went ashore.

They proceeded guardedly and, from necessity, slowly. There were no signs of life at the pier, a wooden dock that overhung the water beneath by half a meter. A few barrels of diesel fuel were stacked where the wooden structure met the beach. A short strip of sand gave to trees where a clear path had been trampled through the underbrush. They moved through the trees together, Kevin supporting Dee, Riley with an eye on Bruce—“I got it”—the wind rustling the branches about them.

A short distance later they looked out from the trees onto the remains of a society. A dilapidated strip mall faced a simple house across a distance of twenty meters. The strip mall was barely recognizable. Like many of the abandoned structures they had passed along the way, this one was largely given to corrosion and disrepair. Parts of its walls had come down and the last two stores had collapsed into heaps of building materials.

The house looked better kept, solid save where one part of its roof had been boarded over. Further in the distance, a water tower stood against the sky.

Three children played in what had been the street between the house and the strip mall. The lush grasses had long before retaken the territory, but someone had cleared a space for the kids. They kicked a ball back and forth between the weeds and the wild grasses; a girl no more than eleven, another girl younger than the first, and a boy younger than both .

The older of the girls saw them first: Riley supporting Dee, Kevin helping Bruce stay on his feet, crossing from the trees. She grabbed her sister’s arm and ran with her and the boy to the house, calling for someone inside. A young man came out of the house, armed with a rifle.

“This guy tries anything,” Dee had one arm over Riley, his other hand helping to balance himself as he hopped forward, “you guys take him out.”

They kept their muzzles down at the ground. The guy from the house kept his up towards the sky. When they got close enough to him, they could see he was little more than a kid himself, a young man grown tall and awkward, thin. “What do you all want?” He tried to sound tough, but there was no mistaking the look of worry on his face.

Kevin answered. “We want to talk to you about the boat we saw down at the dock.”

“You’d need to talk to my uncle about that.”

“Can we? Can you go get him?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“He’s gone. Won’t be back.”

“That was him on the boat, wasn’t it?”

The kid didn’t answer.

“He left you here with the kids, didn’t he?”

The young man took a step back, lowering the barrel of his rifle.

“Stop!” Riley stepped forward, dropping her assault rifle, putting herself between the kid and the three men of Bear’s Army. She turned to them first. “Do you guys have any idea how threatening you sound and look to him?” To the young man she said, “And you, what’d you even come out of the house for?”

“What do you mean?”

“Four people show up at your house with guns, so why’d you come outside?”

“I wanted to see what you all wanted.”

“What if we were bad people? You came out of that house, anything could have happened to you.”

“Maybe.”

“
Maybe
? And then what would happen to those kids?”

“Who’s to say you’re not?” There was a blackened tooth in the guy’s mouth. “Bad people, I mean?”

“Lucky for you, we’re not.” Riley thought about meeting Dee days earlier. She thought about the family she and Anthony and their friends had spied on their first day out of New Harmony, how they hadn’t made contact with them because they hadn’t wanted to alarm them. How they’d wanted to avoid a situation just like this one. “You’re just going to have to believe us.”

“Your uncle,” asked Dee, “he won’t be back at all, or won’t be back until later?”

“Why?” The kid still looked suspicious. “What do you want?”

“We want to find out about renting your boat.”

“Why?”

“We want to get out of here,” explained Kevin. “Our friend is hurt.”

“He don’t look so good,” the kid said of Bruce, who looked like he was going to fall over where he stood.

“We’ll pay,” Kevin assured him.

The kid looked at them, puzzled. “Where do you want to go?”

“Out onto the water. The ocean.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“We’ll pay,” Kevin told him again.

“You said that. I told you, you’re gonna have to talk to my uncle.”

“When’s he getting back?” Dee asked.

“Tonight sometime.”

“Then we’ll wait for him,” said Kevin.

“Well, shit,” the kid said, “don’t think I’m going to invite you all into the house.”

“We’ll wait over there,” Riley pointed. “In those buildings.”

“Nothing in there but junk and some mice.”

“Yeah, well we’ve got some people here who are pretty badly banged up. We can’t go far.”

“Maybe you’re not bad people,” the kid weighed the situation. “But be honest with you, I’m not so comfortable with you this close to my sisters and brother.”

“Look.” Riley laid it out for him. “There’s four of us and there’s one of you and some little kids. We’re not going to hurt any of you. We’re not bad people.”

“We aren’t either.”

“My name is Riley. And this is Bruce, that’s Kevin and the big, bald guy is Dee.”

“I’m Elmore. You scared my sister Melissa something bad.”

“We’re sorry about that.”

“What’s that on your head, mister?” Elmore asked Dee.

“It’s an Oakley Medusa headpiece.”

“A what?”

“It’s kind of like my hat.”

“Makes you look somethin’ fierce.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Like a gorgon or somethin’.”

As she had the day before, Riley turned to the three men she travelled with. “Someone’s got to tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Elmore’s suspicion—recently abated—returned.

“We’re being followed.”

The kid waited for an explanation.

“This person following us,” Dee warned, “he isn’t going to be friendly.”

“And you’re telling me this because?”

“Because of Melissa,” Riley said quickly. “Because of those other little kids you’ve got in there. Because of you, Elmore.”

“If you’re so worried that you’re putting us in danger, why don’t you get out of here then?” Elmore nodded to Dee’s foot and the stained bandages above Bruce’s chest. “We’re already gonna have zombies dropping by.”

“We’re sorry about that.” Dee meant it. “We really are. We’re going to put someone up in that water tower over there. Keep an eye on things until we leave. You have food for those kids?” He asked Elmore. “For yourself?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Dee gestured to Kevin. “Give him some.”

Kevin knelt down on one knee, placing his AK-47 on the ground by his side. He opened his backpack and retrieved some freeze-dried packages. He held them out to Elmore. The kid made no move forward.

“Just put them down,” Riley told Kevin. “Like I said, we’re going to wait inside over there. And you’re right, Elmore. If there are any zombies around here, they’re going to be showing up sometime soon. We’d rather not be out here in the open with them when they do. And that’s just one more thing for you to look out for with those kids.”

“When your uncle gets in,” Dee requested, “can you tell him we’d like to speak to him?”

“You bet I will.”

“Okay, listen, Elmore,” Riley told him sincerely. “I’m sorry we got off the way…I’m sorry this played out the way it did. We really are not bad people.”

He nodded.

“Okay, Elmore,” she smiled at him. “You know where we’ll be when your uncle gets in.”

* * *

“Bruce,” said Dee. “This doesn’t feel right, us leaving you here.” Dee leaned on Riley while Kevin, bent over with his hands on his knees, caught his breath. Kevin had lent Dee a hand hopping from the buildings to the base of the water tower, a task that—with the distance and their assorted injuries—took them the better part of an hour.

“Yeah, well,” Bruce rasped. He’d volunteered to climb the tower. Dee’s leg and foot wouldn’t allow him to do it. Kevin was the only one among them who, if he had to, could pilot the boat. Without speaking to it, each man felt for Riley and what she had gone through these past weeks. They didn’t want to put her up on the tower by herself. So Bruce had said he’d go, that he was the best shot, that he had the sniper rifle, that the rest up top would do him good.

“Wait.” Kevin straightened, sliding out of his pack. “I’ve got something for you.”

“Your side bothering you, Kevin?” Riley asked.

“Only when I breathe. Here, Bruce.” Kevin pulled two milky, twenty-centimeter tubes from his bag. “Glow sticks,” he explained as he handed them to Bruce. “Bend them to make them light up. You need help, place one where we can see it up there.”

“You’ll be able to see this?” Bruce sounded skeptical.

“With Dee’s minocular. They stay lit for six to eight hours.”

“Whoever that is following us,” Bruce stared up the ladder to the catwalk that circled the water drum. “I’ll see him from up there a long time before he sees me.”

“If he’s still following us,” Riley said, though she had no doubt whoever was on their trail would still be.

“Stay alert up there.” Kevin looked up at his friend, who was drenched in sweat.

“I’m planning on it.”

“Bruce,” Dee told him. “It’s something you can’t handle, fire a shot.”

“Believe me, I will,” The hint of a smile passed over Bruce’s worn face.

“Here, take another canteen.” Riley handed him another.

“Thanks.”

“Whether the uncle is back or not,” Kevin promised, “by morning one of us is going to come and get you.”

“Well, I’ll see you when I see you then.”

“Bruce?”

“Yeah, Dee?”

“You see that thing following us? Just shoot it.”

Bruce raised the sniper rifle before slinging it over his back for the ascent. “That’s what I was thinking.”

* * *

They watched Bruce climb and when he reached the catwalk he waved down to them that he was okay. Leaving him to his perch, Kevin and Riley supported Dee and the three headed back to the erstwhile strip mall. It took them another hour and by this time the sun was well into its descent. They spent the remainder of the daylight finding a suitable place to sleep amid the mess that constituted the interior of the tumbledown stores, settling on a suite of rooms on the second floor. The stairwell creaked and protested under their feet and parts of the roof and corridor wall were open to the elements, but the floors of the rooms they chose were solid.