Steps (3 page)

Chapter 5

Coming of Night   
(Perry)

P
erry Peacemaker lay with the shotgun in his bed. He didn’t touch the trigger or the safety, but he ran his fingers along the barrel and the pump, the stock, hearing in his head the sound of the gun’s discharge and seeing things blown apart and stopped in their tracks, dead on arrival, twitching, dying, gone. The slugs could kill a bear, or a mountain lion, or anything in the woods.

“Good night, Perry,” his father said. The face appeared at the edge of the bunk bed. A hand reached over the covers and patted him.

“Good night, Dad,” he answered.

Perry waited until the lights blinked out. He counted to a hundred thousand by hundreds and thousands. He stroked the shotgun to stay awake. The minutes passed. Silence settled over the cabin like a thrown blanket.

When he reached his count, Perry rolled out of bed, and with his shotgun he crept through the cabin, down the stairs on light feet, careful not to make a creak, and slipped out the door on the front patio.

He had never imagined such brilliant stars. The Milky Way cut a swath through the Big Dipper clear as a kid’s connect-the-dot, with black between the stars rather than the blue-gray of cityscape. No airplanes contaminated the stars, and nothing moved at all, not a blink or a flash. No horns honked in the distance. No sirens or engines or any other human noise interrupted him as he peered up with his shotgun. He heard only the insects and a long hiss from somewhere in the woods, but he wasn’t scared. He panned the shotgun toward the noise and thought about how much damage a slug would do to anything out there.

He walked down the front porch and around to the back, daring himself into the dark as it confronted him. A spider-web roped across his face, something new from the evening spinnings. He pushed through it and brushed his shoulder in case the spider had fallen there.

Perry dropped into the rocking chair and rested his gun across his lap. He watched the woods. He listened. He guarded.

Something thumped in front of the house. It was a soft whump of a sound. Perry stood and cocked his ear. He heard silence, and then soft or distant voices. He gripped the shotgun and slunk to the edge of the cabin. Footsteps crunched in the driveway and stopped. Perry steeled himself and stepped the way his father had shown him, quiet and slow. When he reached the corner, a man stood in the driveway, clutching a rifle. The man stared at their Tahoe as if it might wake up and charge him. He wore a black cap with a Harley-Davidson logo, and he swiveled as Perry rounded the cabin onto the porch.

“Who are you?” the man asked Perry. He didn’t raise the rifle, but he adjusted his grip.

“I’m Perry Peacemaker. This is my dad’s house. Who are you?”

The man scanned the cabin, back to the Tahoe, back to Perry. “Peacemaker, huh? I’m Dale Lincoln. Your daddy’s name is what now . . . Ed. Ain’t that right?” He tilted his head toward the far part of the driveway, toward the road. “Got my wife and two boys in the truck back there. I built your daddy this cabin last March. How many of you are there?” Dale spat, licked his lips, and waited.

When Perry didn’t answer, Dale continued. “Is your daddy in there? Your momma?”

“Yes, sir,” Perry said.

“Any of you sick?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what did you say your name was, boy?”

“Perry.”

“Perry, why don’t you go fetch your daddy for me, then. Wake him up. Tell him Dale Lincoln is out front. He’ll remember who I am. I ain’t here to hurt nobody, okay. Just don’t worry me none with that shotgun of yours.”

When Perry turned to the cabin, his father’s face appeared in the bay window of the master bedroom, situated a few feet behind him on the front porch. He motioned for Perry to come inside, and by the time he made his way through the front door and the living area, his father met him with his own shotgun. He pressed a hand into Perry’s shoulder, squeezed, and stepped past him onto the front porch. His mother followed a few steps behind as she wrapped a robe around her shoulders.

Dale stood in the same place like a guardian behind the Tahoe, rifle half-lifted into shooting position, not quite threatening, not quite casual.

“Dale,” his father said.

“Ed,” Dale answered. “Ain’t none of you sick, are there?”

“No. You?”

“Don’t think so.” Dale spat, licked his lips, and stared hard at Perry’s father.

“What does that mean? Either you are, or you aren’t. Any fever?”

“No, we ain’t got no fever. We, um. Man.” Dale paced over to the Tahoe and rested his rifle against the back bumper. It had a long black scope.

Dale put his fingers in his eyes, pinched his nose. He glanced up at the sky, stretched his arms, and said to Perry’s father. “Lost my little girl three days ago, Ed. Remember she was just walking last time you all were out here, you and your sister, what’s her name?”

“Tricia.”

“Yeah, you and, um,” Dale peered off into the woods, squinting. His lips moved and he mumbled something to himself. He stared for a moment at Perry, and then spoke to his father. “You and what’s her, when you all were stocking the house and we had just lacquered them inside stairs.”

“I’m sorry,” Perry’s father said. “Three days?”

“Yeah. Ten, sort of. Hell, I don’t know. How long you been up here?”

“Five weeks. Thereabouts. Since about a week before the rains started.”

“Dang, Ed, that’s a whole eternity ago. If you been up here that long, you got out right.”

“We were on vacation. Now we’re stranded by the flooding. Are the roads put back together?”

“Hell to the power of no. I did a lot of off-roading to get up here. Got stuck a dozen times, ’bout near burned out my thingadoochie. Whatchacallit. On the front of the truck. My wench. You won’t make it down in this old Tahoe, buddy. You all still have food?”

Perry waited, but his father did not answer.

Dale pressed on. “Well, you have a water well, don’t you? We had to get up here, Ed. They mandated us wearing masks and taking nations and whatnot.”

“Nations?”

“Food.”

“Rations, you mean,” Perry’s father said.

“Whatever. Stuck my neighbors for hoarding, stupid rednecks. Hauled ’em off in a dang cattle trailer. I ain’t never seen nothing like it. Had all my goodies in the barn, this rifle and some other whatnots, buried in a hay fort my boys built. Thank God for boys, huh. Otherwise I’d of been hauled off, too. They would of took everything, Ed, and then give it back to them what’s got nothing, making sure ain’t nobody got nothing, and in equal parts. It’s a goddamn welfare state, is what it is.

“Now listen here, I ain’t got no idea how she caught it, because we all stayed indoors like they said, but Casey, the little one, she run a fever last week, and we thought it was breeding.” Dale eyed his feet and shook his head. “Teething I mean. God, we prayed for teething. Then her eyes changed red and she bled tears, ran out her nose and coughed up this red sludge. Damn Ed, she ain’t but a baby.”

Dale stopped and sucked a breath. “It hit her brain, you understand how it works, right. Muddies up your waters.” Dale waved a finger around his ear. He touched his cheek beneath his eye. “Shows in the eyes first, that’s how you can tell, then mucks the brain. If you ever seen a rabid coon, it’s like that, stumbling all sideways, ain’t got no bambulance . . . ain’t got no balance is what I mean. Get all thirsty cause they can’t drink nothing, speaking gibbiddy-gook. It’s um, well . . . She had a few words went all gibbiddy-gook, I mean to say. Like kids do, but worse, and she couldn’t hold water no more. Then they come and took her. They charge in your house ever’ day or two, don’t knock or nothing. Bunch of toy soldiers with toy guns, just kids themselves, scared half to hell and back. They wear their masks and rubber gloves, and they marched into Casey’s room, seen her eyes and drug her out like she was a rabid coon. Hell, Ed, she screamed and fought like a rabid coon. She didn’t look much like a little girl at all, bleeding out the eyes by now no matter how much we wiped her cheeks. You ever seen that boy of yours cry blood?”

Dale pointed at Perry. “Precious, my wife, they restrained her pretty quick when she broke down, but they near had to shoot me and my boys. Took half a-dozen of ’em to hold me down. Had to choke me out there at the end. Look at my face.”

Dale ran his finger over the side of his face, but Perry couldn’t see much in the dark.

“There were so many of ’em, and they would have shot me if I’d of tried harder. Yeah, they’d of shot me, and my boys, and my wife for good measure. Them toy soldiers might be scared, but they ain’t screwing around.”

Dale paused and spit. “Stimulized Casey’s room and most of the house with this foam stuff, ruined ever’ damned thing in there. That was um . . .” The man ticked off numbers on his fingers. “About near four days ago.

“Next day they come back, and they said Casey didn’t make it, real matter-of-fact like, sort of the way a vet might say he shot a lame horse. ‘No kidding.’ That’s what I told ’em, and they just stared back from behind them gas masks.

“But they weren’t there to fill us in on Casey. They pointed their guns at us, took our fevers, checked our eyes, drew some blood, and left without even buying us dinner.

“That was it for me and mine, Ed. I left before their dust settled. We been on the road for three days. Took us three ever-loving days to make a five hour drive. I been stealing fuel from abandoned cars like one of them damned city-gang thuggers. You should see the roadblocks. You should see all the cars they stopped. People dying like winter leaves, and just that fast. You know what they been doing with them bodies?”

“Bodies?”

“Too many to bury proper,” Dale said. “Raking ’em into piles, then tossing ’em all in hardshells . . . naw, landfills, is what I mean to say. Don’t show you that on the news, do they, but I seen one on the way up. Hell, I found it down at the foot of the mountain here. They’re hauling folks in by the truckload, using construction trucks with the covered tops. Dump ’em out like they’re twenty yards of dirt, bulldoze ’em into the ground and cover ’em up. That’s where my baby girl is. Off in a ditch with ever’-goddamned-body else who caught that red-eye bug. I ain’t losing another one like that.”

The men stared at each other for a while, and then Perry’s father said, “Best not to mix, yet. Don’t you think?”

Dale spat, licked, inspected the cabin and those on the porch, and thought for a moment. Then he said, “Sure. You’re probably right. Hell, I know you’re right. We brought food and whatnot, but I’m low on water. I’m thirsty as a desert whore. That water well working?”

“We’ll set out a bucket in a minute. Give it three or four days, Dale, make sure you and your family are clean. Then we’ll talk about mixing up. ’Til then, no contact.”

“All right,” Dale said. He hefted his rifle and stared at Perry’s father for a moment. “All right. We’re friends here, ain’t we, Ed?”

“So long as you have your own food and aren’t sick, we’re friends.”

“And if we ain’t?”

“Then we’re not.”

Perry felt like something was about to happen, but then Dale spun and stalked down the driveway, into the darkness where he must have left his truck and family.

Chapter 6

Mountain Dreams   
(Man)

M
an rose with the sun and left Woman in the shelter to chew her hides, sing her songs, and dry and hang her meats. He had built a stack of pelts for her. He would add more.

He hunted toward the rising sun, away from the road, ever deeper into the forest and farther up the mountain. He killed a small hog, hardly fifty pounds gutted, and carried it over his shoulder as he ran back to camp.

He dropped the hog next to Woman and gathered wood for her fire. Soon the pile of wood grew as high as his chest, and he crouched beside the fire next to Woman. He sucked a piece of dried meat and ate a handful of blackberries she had collected during his hunt.

“Would you like to see them?” he asked her.

“Tonight, you mean?”

“Yes. You’ve been on the mountain too long. I see them when I go down, but you never come. I see them every night. Soon, there won’t be any to see.”

She held her hand over the heat, testing it, and adjusted a piece of meat smoking there. “I don’t want to see them.”

“They are your children.”

She shook her head. “It’s too cruel. I’d rather not see them.”

He placed his hand on Woman’s shoulder. She brushed it away. He stood, gathered more wood even though they didn’t need it, walked to the river, and bathed in the afternoon sun. The rains had left the water healthy and clear.

Woman came to him as he bathed. She didn’t face him as she cleaned herself, but after a while she swam next to him. She let him put his arms around her from behind. He ran his fingers through her hair, combing out the knots and mud. He kissed her neck, the top of her head, and caressed her shoulders.

“Tell me about them,” she said.

“They are beautiful. They have your eyes, all of them.”

“Are there newborns?”

“No. But there are younglings.”

She pulled free of his arms, dunked herself, and rose facing him. The sunset painted the water a burning orange.

“The Father’s hand is cruel,” Woman said. “There is no mercy or forgiveness. Not for me.”

He had no argument against hers, and so Man said nothing. After a while, she said, “How many did you count? Younglings, I mean?”

“Two. One is a girl yet cutting her teeth. They call her Shelly Lynn. The other will be a man soon.”

She waited, thinking, and then said, “How far?”

“An hour’s run, not far.”

She dunked herself again, and as she swam to the bank, she said, “No. You go. I don’t want to see them. It’s too cruel. It’s more than I can bear.”

He observed that night without her, as he had every night before, and he crouched in the woods becoming the woods. He scanned the cabin and counted the people inside. He marked new ones tonight, two adults and two boys, twins, these outside the cabin. He watched them eat near their truck in the driveway. They sat cross-legged outside in the dirt digging beans out of cans with plastic spoons around a small campfire. After they ate, the man in the cabin and the man in the truck approached each other, one on the front steps of the cabin, the other in the driveway.

“Still all right, Dale?” one said.

“Fine.” the other answered. “You?”

“We’re all right.”

One brought a bucket of water into the driveway and backed away. The other approached, lifted the bucket, and said, “G’night, then.”

“G’night, then.”

Man watched as the new ones shared the water and supped. The twin boys sat in chairs with their backs to him, the parents facing them on the far side of the fire. They ate from cans and tossed the remains into the fire. They rested in silence, all of them cloaked in a sullen disposition that Man recognized as mourning. When the moon rose and their fire dwindled, the four of them crawled inside their vehicle. Man waited until they slept, and then he slunk to the truck window, partially rolled down, so close he could reach inside and touch the twin boys. They smelled musty, natural, hardly any taint of soap or perfume. They were dark-haired like him with the round eyes of Woman. All of them had eyes like Woman, soft and kind even when closed. A leg twitched. One of the boys came awake in the backseat and gawked at him with Woman’s soft, wide eyes.

Man melted into the trees before the boy screamed. As he crossed the road, he heard a door slam, followed by a gunshot.