Infinity's Reach (16 page)

It’s hard to believe it’s only been four years since the Event. Actually, it’s funny that they refer to it that way. The EMP was the first event, sure, but we could have survived that on our own. It was the anthrax, the nukes and then the actual invasion that did us all in. Nowadays, you had a hard time knowing where the lines were, and an even harder ti
me knowing who you could trust.

I’d been a trucker when it all happened, but that was only the last career in a series. My old lady back in Joliet used to tell me I was bound for nowhere. She was probably right, but it’s a lot prettier sight looking at the Ohio from Wickliffe than looking up from the bottom of a nuclear grave, which is where most everyone in north Illinois was these days, including her. I still dreamed about her though. The dreams took turns; one night she would scream at me, the next she would be tender and lo
ving. But they’re just dreams.

Everyone has dreams.

My dream today was to set myself up with a small general store, somewhere off the beaten track. Nothing special; maybe just a store with a walkup apartment above to live in. I actually had a place in mind here in town. Wickliffe was growing now that more people were trying to escape the fighting up north. I could make a decent life for myself.

The only problem, of course, was money. Old Man Hatfield was willing to sell his store and attached apartment and let me take over. But there was the buyout price, and then startup costs. I had put aside about 500 caps, but I figured I needed another 200 to be sure. That’s why I did the occasional odd job, including the one that no one else would do, and yet was
more lucrative than any other.

The moment I saw the kid talking to Hatfield, I knew what he wanted. I also knew that the kid was wasting my time. The boy looked about 14, and was skinny as a rail. He wore an overcoat two sizes too big for him, beat up boots and a brown wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his head. I was sitting in the back of Hatfield’s store, nursing a bottle of Grape Neh
i when Hatfield pointed to me.

The boy looked at me, then back at Hatfield and
nodded. Then he headed my way.

Thanks, old man, I thought. You’re about to get a kid kille
d, and maybe me in the process.

“You the one they call Faithful?” the kid asked, sidling up to the table, his hands in his pants. A second later the three other men in the building burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” the kid said, looking over his shoulder.

I grimaced. “Old joke, that’s NOT FUNNY ANYMORE.” I added the last few words for the bene
fit of Hatfield and the others.

“Yeah, some idiots still refer to me at Faithful, but my name’s Mack Hawley. This here is Hopeful.” I gestured to the old hound at my feet. “He gets fed every morning, but he’s always Hopeful that someone will give him just one more scrap.” In response, the yellow hound raised his head
and wagged his tail leisurely.

“I’m Johnny Pilgrim. People just call me Pilgrim.” He fidgeted nervously and stuck a slender hand out
for me to shake. I ignored it.

“What can I do for you, Mr
. Pilgrim?”

“I need a guide. I need someo
ne to get me across the river.”

“Fighting’s north of the river. You’d be better off staying in Kentucky. We have our f
ill of refugees from Illinois.”

“I don’t plan on crossing the Ohio,” he said quietly. “I need to cross the Muddy.”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at the kid. I could tell he was serious. He shot me a look that told me he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.

I shook my head. “Too dang
erous. That’s demon territory.”

He nodded. “I know what’s over there. I just need yo
u to get me to the other side.”

I sighed a
nd took another sip of my Nehi.

“I can
pay,” he said. “I’ve got caps.”

I shifted my glance from the Nehi to h
im. “It’ll take a lot of caps.”

“I have ’em,” he said. He started to shift a backpack around to open it, and I could hear the metallic clink of hundreds of caps in the pack.
I reached out and stopped him.

“Best not be opening that here in public,” I said. “That’s a go
od way to get your throat cut.”

“I can hold my own,” he said, a gri
mness coming into his face.

“How old are you, kid?
” I asked. “Fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Nineteen.”

And I’m Abe Lincoln, I thought.

I eyed him again.

“So what’s west of the Muddy?” I asked, more curious than anything else.

“My father.”

“Why doesn’t he come and get you?”

“He’s…he’s busy.”

“More likely he has more common sense than his son does.” I sat up and put my empty Nehi bottle down on the table. “Look, kid. There are ways to get across. Legal ways. Easier ways. Go north to Davenport or south to Memphis….”

“I already did,” he said. “Been to Memphis, Baton Rouge, Davenport, all of the big cities,” he said. “Th
e guides who took me got shot.”

“And you survived?”

“I was lucky,” he said. “Dad always said I was lucky.”

“Sounds like your luck didn’t carry over to your guides,” I said. The thou
ght didn’t make me comfortable.

“They all left me halfway across an
d ran,” he said. “I shot them.”

I stared at the kid. He was telling the truth, I could tell. A
nd I had a new respect for him.

“Look,” I said to him, finally talking to him as an adult. “I won’t run, and I won’t strand you. I’ll get you across. What you do when you get t
o the other side is up to you.”

A faint smile broke out on the kid’s face, and I continue
d before he could say anything.

“But we do it my way, or not at all. We do it at night. Tonight. And it’ll co
st you 200 caps. All up front.”

Johnny shook his head. “Half up front, half when we get to the other side.”
I nodded. “You’re learning, kid.”

We waited until three a.m. I would have gone earlier, but the moon was too bright. I got out my old orange Coleman canoe that I had spray painted a dull green. With the moon down, we pushed off from the eastern shore. I put Pilgrim in the front and told him how to paddle and steer. He knew more about it than I suspected, and we were moving out quickly before more than a few minutes.

I started to tell Pilgrim about the dangers we faced; floating mines that drifted down from upstream that didn’t care who they killed, unmanned chain guns that were activated by motion detectors, and alligators. Funny how the gators profited from the insanity of the past four years and how they were this far north. Half the time you saw a floa
ting log it had teeth attached.

But Johnny seemed to know about all of this stuff, and so after rambling on for a while, I shut my mouth. It was better we were quiet on the river anyway. The usual runoff of May and June was over with, and the river had dropped significantly. The good news was that it wasn’t running so swift and strong; the bad was that more sandbars were there to slow us down, which could be a problem if s
omeone started shooting at you.

We were just about halfway across, and I was counting my blessings, when the world ended. The first warning we got was a faint pop, and then a shooting star rose from the mortar that was hidden on the other side. I watched the faint light go up in the sky and knew what was coming. Without a word, I leaned over an
d rolled the canoe upside down.

I didn’t look back to see if Johnny was OK; in this day and age, you either had survival skills or you were dead. The water was deep enough that I couldn’t touch bottom, and I grasped the edge of the rolling canoe, trying to use it as a flotation device. I looked upstream and saw what had caused the ruckus to begin wit
h.

In the darkness, I’d believed that we were alone. Instead, in the brightness of the flare that drifted down, I saw that the Muddy was filled with other boats. A dozen square-nosed wooden skiffs were filled with soldiers, headed west just as we were. Around them, other heads bobbed in the water, soldiers unlucky—or lucky—enough to not find a ride. As I watched, the chain guns opened up on the far
side, and the slaughter began.

I didn’t stay and watch. I’d seen it too many times before. Instead I ducked down and put my head under the overturned canoe. To my surprise, Johnny was inside already. I pulled out my one luxury—a waterproof flashlight—and flicked it on.
“I lost my backpack,” Johnny gasped. “It had all the caps in it.”

I wasn’t thinking about the money. What I saw in the light of the flashlight took an
y other thought out of my mind.

“You’re a girl!” I spat out.

Johnny had lost his—her—hat and overcoat, and it became a lot more obvious that my passenger was not a scrawny boy but an adequately equipped female. She continued to splutter in the water, but shot words back at me.

“You say that as if
you never seen a girl before.”

“You lied to me,” I said.

“I didn’t lie,” she said. “Johnny Pilgrim is my traveling name. My real name is Infinity Richards.”

“That’s harder to believe than Johnny Pilgrim,” I said.
“What were you trying to pull?”

“Trying to stay alive,” she shouted back. “It’s not easy living o
ut here as a girl on your own.”

I nodded, still paddling and holding the canoe edge as the river took us f
urther south.

“I’ll have to reconsider our arrangement,” I said, my words chosen carefully. “Meanwhile I suggest we stay put and get some distance be
tween us and those chain guns.”

We held onto the bottom of the canoe for another half hour, and then I felt sand and mud beneath my feet. I took the risk of dipping my head beneath the edge of the canoe and po
pping it out on the other side.

It was still dark, but a hint of light was showing in the east, and I knew it would be morning soon. We had come up against a sandbar not too far from the Missouri shore, and so I figured now was as good a time as any to get out. We turned the canoe over and left it on the sandbar, then Johnny—Infinity, ack, what a name—followed me for a short swim over into the trees that li
ned the shoreline.

We lay there at the edge of the shoreline, upper bodies on the beach, legs still in the water, and I pondered what to do. I looked at the young girl, and knew I was looking at a disaster in the maki
ng. Finally, I made a decision.

“OK, here’s the deal. I’ll take you wherever it is your going, and you can pay me when we get there. I’ll do my darndest to keep you alive and in one piece. But if you die before we ge
t there, don’t blame me. Deal?”

Infinity stared at me for a long moment. “But you don’t know where I’m going.”
“I do know that if I leave you out here by yourself, you’re not going to last the day.” I held out my hand, and the young girl shook it. Her heavy clothes had covered up features that I knew would get her in trouble soon enough, so I took off my own coat and put around her.

Then I took off my Peterbilt cap and put it on her as well. It wasn’t perfect, but it was bette
r than what she’d been wearing.

I pulled her to her feet as the morning light broke through from the opposite shore. “Come on,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll b
e able to find some breakfast.”

She followed me into the bushes that lined the river and headed west.
  
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20. salt of the earth

MACK HAWLEY: OUTSIDE POPLAR BLUFF, MO: DAY 1571

It took us about five days to get out of the area most of the people in Wickliffe refer to as Demon Country. Fact is, we discovered that there weren’t no demons at all. There were lots of sign of someone being there. We were welcomed to the western shore by a line of poles with human skulls stuck on the top of them. I told the girl that it didn’t bother me none, but then neither of us talked about it much after that.

We came upon a camp that was abandoned on the second day across the Muddy. It looked like there had been some sort of firefight there, with black scorch marks and some blood spilled here and there. But there weren’t any bodies.

Neither me nor the girl wanted to stay longer than we needed to, knowing the reputation of those parts, so we took off across country. She suggested we stay off the main road, which I didn’t have a problem with, since I didn’t know nobody in that area anyways. Folks these days are likely to shoot you just as soon as look at you, so I’d rather see them first and not be seen myself.

The walking was pretty good for about four days. Then it started raining. It poured for about a day, soaking us and the road around us. Despite Pilgrim’s protests—she insisted I call her that, so I wouldn’t slip up if we was around people—I got us onto a regular road. It made all the difference. No one was coming out in the pouring rain if they could help it, and having a good road helped us make good time.