Alexandria (35 page)

“I’ll get some more worms,” she says, and jumps back to the bank and falls to her hands and knees, crawling about and picking through the grass with her face close to the ground.

Jack steps back over and sets the fish on the ground, then draws out his knife and scrapes off its scales and slits it up the middle.

“I can’t find any…
oh
, here’s one.”

“Here,” says Jack, “let’s try this.”

He gives Lia a handful of guts and they walk on opposite sides of the crick and chum the shallow water.

“They’re gonna eat their friend?”

“I hope so.”

They bend down and wash the slime off of their hands, then Jack takes his spear and sets one foot on a flat rock and straddles the crick and waits. Lia forages till she comes up with more worms. She wraps the thread around them, winding them into a squirming ball, then ties it off and plunks it back into the water. She sits down on the opposite bank, stretching her legs out, and dances the bait idly through the water.

“We’ll see who they come to first,” she says pertly.

“It’s like when we used to go to the big river.”

“Yeah. That was so long ago…”

They grow quiet, reliving silent memories.

“I see one,” says Lia.

“Your side or mine?”

“Yours—he’s just under you. I see his little eyes.”

Jack looks down at a bit of chum swirling in the slow current, and from underneath the rock on which he stands a timid trout makes a quick play for it. He pistons the spear down and skewers him, setting off a cloud of muddy silt. He extracts the fish and tosses it on the bank.

“Think we’ll settle like that someplace again?” she asks.

“Someday, I guess.”

“You want to wander?”

“Kind of. I don’t know. I always wanted to see what’s out there.”

“I guess now we get to.”

“Yeah.”

“I like the water. It’s pretty out here.”

“It is. Never seen anything like it till we got to the Temple.”

“I wonder how far south it all goes.”

“The water?”

“The world,” she says simply. “Ethan’s map just ended at the bottom, like the lines wanted to keep going but there wasn’t any more room to draw them. That’s not all there is to the world.”

“No, course not. There’s lots more in the east, too, enough to spend thirty years walking around it.”

“Unless those old people led Kas and her friends around in circles for thirty years. I wouldn’t have followed those people anywhere.”

Jack laughs. “I don’t want to wander around that long. But maybe for a while.”

“Fish stole my worms.” She holds up her oak branch pole and the thin line has been picked clean. “I didn’t even see ‘em take it.”

“Have to be smarter than they are.”

She whips him with the wet line. “Hey, it worked the first time.”

They tarry around for a while longer and catch a couple more, then clean them upstream and set out on their way. The gentle sunshine and flattening landscape make their progress a bit more comfortable, but already the old blisters on their feet are starting to freshen up and sting again. As they walk, Lia carves off little squares of shiny white fish meat and they chew languidly and look around at the changing scenery.

As they press farther south, the signs of recent human activity become more abundant. They have strayed beyond the broad circumference of burned villages and slaughtered tribes and finally reached a land that is unsullied by the vengeful exploits of the Nezra. It feels a relief, to travel and not be chased, but they fear it will not last. From time to time they still peer over their shoulders, half expecting to see a new brigade rumbling toward them from the north.

The day passes its midpoint and far to the west a pale blue ghost moon descends into the calm ocean. Rocky outcroppings and narrow sandbars extend outward from the coast like gnarled fingers reaching for the deep. The remains of burned-out bonfires are scattered along the shoreline, with drifts of sand collected against them from the many days they’ve gone unused, evidence of wanderers who’ve come and gone with unknown purpose toward unknown destinations.

Jack and Lia look nervously about for any remaining inhabitants and they see no one. Despite the absence, the land feels far from lonely. Screeches and calls abound from the shadowy inland breaches, and every step they take causes the field grass to rustle with the furtive evacuations of small creatures fearing their approach, lizards and gray mice that scuttle about and halt suddenly at the sight of these two enormous giants trespassing on their homeland. The travelers look back as curiously as they are looked upon. It is a populated world they roam, prosperous with life, and they seem little more than mere creatures themselves in the midst of it all.

They walk with purpose through the living afternoon, traipsing through the rolling pastures and hiking past decayed barns and farmhouses, town squares, neighborhoods and the like, inspecting the subtle geometry that their concrete foundations have left behind on the flourishing ground, showing only the rough shape of the structures that once stood atop them, barely discernible rectangular formations poking through the underbrush as if they, too, are sprouting from the fertile earth in which they are planted. Jack and Lia peer at them as new age archeologists who’ve discovered an untrodden site ripe for study, imagining the exotic artifacts their excavations might turn up.

The mountains lay far to the east now, curved like an irregular crescent, and a sliver of smoke rises from one of the slopes in the distance.

“People?”

“Could be,” says Jack. “It’s not a very big fire, though. Must not be many.”

For a short span in the late afternoon the fire remains visible and their eyes keep darting back to it, wondering what kind of small band could be camped on the face of the foothill. They move past it, and as Lia fetches one last glance over her shoulder she sees that it has been extinguished. The last of the smoke rises and dissipates in the light blue sky.

“What if they saw us?”

Jack chews his lip. “We’re pretty far away… I don’t think they could.”

“We’re out in the open.”

“I know,” he says, troubled, and looks over his shoulder again.

They march over the top of a crooked gathering of hills and glide down the other side into broader, sweeping grasslands. They stop halfway through their descent to rest and survey the course ahead. Jack’s arm hangs loosely at his side with the long machete gripped in his hand, and its sharp blade grazes the tips of the grass stalks at his feet. Lia holds the whittled spear like a walking staff and she squints across the expanse before her. The land looks carpeted with green, glowing slightly golden in the evening sun, with clusters of cockeyed old trees scattered throughout, bursting with new foliage. A vigorous river spans across the low point, deep looking and wide.

A tremendous herd of deer steps daintily along the water’s edge, and they lower their small mouths to the running current and drink. Others mill around them, ranging from petite fawn clipping about on spindly legs to enormous bucks with multi-tined antlers and stern dispositions.

“Look at all of them.”

They settle down on their haunches and watch the spectacular parade pass by. A stout buck ambles upstream, and the rest take their time in catching up. A few of the deer sit in the grass with their legs tucked under them, looking around at the countryside as if on a picnic. Lia coos as the littlest ones frolic around the edges of the herd, running spry circles around some of the eldest.

Jack looks downstream and grips her elbow. “Look.”

“No,”
she gasps.

A baleful mountain lion slinks out from a thicket of brush and creeps low along the ground toward the herd. An aging buck sees it first and spikes up his tail. The rest of the herd swivels their heads and for one fleeting instant every single one of them freezes in an exquisite tableau of shock.

The lion sprints.

The herd breaks for a narrow passage through the hills, stampeding in a mad frenzy and crying out in fear. The lion is a blur—he gains on them instantly and veers toward a terrified doe stuck near the end of the pack. She darts to the side and bounds ahead and the lion leaps on her, knocking into her shoulder and throwing her off balance. She manages a couple more strides before the weight and ferocity of the lion pull her to the ground. Her kin race away and do not look back. The lion hugs his foreleg around her neck like an old friend and sinks his fangs into the soft white fur of her throat and she goes limp in his embrace.

Jack and Lia sit petrified on the hillside and watch as the lion drags her away from the kill spot. He stops and looks around, then yawns widely, showing a vicious row of bloodstained teeth.

“They left her to die…”

“Mmm.”

“Why didn’t they kick him to death? There was so many of them.”

“It’s just not what they do. They run.”

Lia leans forwards and looks on somberly as the lion returns to the doe and clenches its jaw around the scruff of her neck and hauls her across the ground toward the patch of brush that he used as his concealment before the attack. He places her carefully under the thicket and uses his forepaws to scoop piles of dead leaves and twigs over her body.

“Is he burying her?”

“He’s hiding her. He’ll eat her later.”

Lia’s hand flies to the bandage on her left shoulder and she imagines the nape of her own neck caught in the vice-like jaws of the lion, being dragged off dispassionately and eviscerated with surgical precision, then covered away so that he can return later to eat a leg, and again the next day to devour an arm, and so forth until she is nothing but a little pile of bones. She shivers and hugs her arms tightly around herself.

“I’m glad you didn’t run away from me.”

“Never.”

They observe the lion’s unwholesome activities for a long span. Cool evening breeze is flowing toward them from the west by the time he finally finishes his work and leaves the vicinity.

“Let’s go.”

Jack peels off his sweat-soaked shirt and wraps it around the machete’s blade, then uses his belt to strap the little bundle to their spear. They hike down the rest of the hill, looking wildly around for the lion’s return, then scamper across the open field, past the bloodied ground, and when they get to the edge of the river they stop. Jack hands Lia the bundled spear.

“Hold on to this and I’ll swim us across.”

He wades into the slick current and Lia steps in after him. He gets behind her and braces an arm under her shoulder and pulls her into the deepening water, kicking out with his legs and stroking powerfully with his free arm. He angles upstream but the current still pulls them downstream as they progress. They flop down on the opposite bank and lay back, breathing heavily.

“They teach you that at the Temple?”

“Yeah,” says Jack, “it wasn’t all bad.”

“Least we had beds to sleep on.”

“We did have beds. And hot food. Wanna go back?”

Lia smirks at him and shakes her drenched hair, spritzing him with cold droplets.

Jack unties the bundle and wrings the river water out of his shirt, then fastens his belt and slips the machete through it. Lia takes the spear and uses it to heft herself back to her feet.

Across the water, the mountain lion has returned to his hunting ground. He prowls along the river’s edge and flickers his distrustful eyes their way.

“He’s back.”

“Let’s just go.”

“Will he follow us?”

“I don’t think so. Not across the river. If he does—”

“We fight him,” she says.

“Yes.”

They hike until the light is all but gone and only a thin amber glow silhouettes the spiky palm groves along the beach, and before long they happen upon the remains of a quaint little hillside town. They meander down a flowering avenue covered with delicate ferns and blossoming berry shrubs, their vibrant colors dulling and taking on the dark tannins of evening. They trudge past small ranges of toppled brick and cinderblock, webbed over with ivy, and make their way to a center point where several winding roads seem to converge. There is a modest structure there, with four walls but no roof. Jack and Lia climb an earthen ramp that was once a stairway and stand at the threshold of a doorway pulled off-kilter by the onslaught of gravity and peer inside.

A tangle of greenery has grown over a compost of old wood beams and machinery. A long marble counter stands in the middle of the large main room, next to a corroded wrought-iron gate. They look around by the dim light of the Milky Way, searching for a corner in which to sleep. Jack clears out some brush and finds the ground absent of animal burrows and snakes, at least for now, and he settles there with the strained sigh of a man much older than his fifteen years. Lia leans the spear against the threshold and joins him. They lie down in the corner and doze off quickly, the day having taken its toll.

Near the middle of the night, Jack’s eyes open. Some beast lumbers outside their shelter. Lia hears it too and flinches awake. Slow, crunching footfalls pass by the entrance in curious fits. It moves a pace or two, then pauses to sniff around with low, grunting inhalations. It moves on a bit more and repeats the process. Jack and Lia huddle together, their skin slickening with a sweaty film. It lurches heavily toward them and casts a sinister shadow on the cluttered interior shapes, hulking and long-jawed. Their pupils dilate with fear and they take thin, measured breaths. After a long excruciating wait, the footfalls round a bend and dwindle away.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know…”

“It sounded big.”

“I think it’s gone… listen…”

The only sounds now are familiar ones. They lie back down in their corner and settle in, and they find that sleep does not come so easily as it had before.