Moriah (17 page)

“How do we know there’s only the one?”

“More than one, it would have attacked us,” wagered Dee. “You saw the ones on the battlefield.”

“Yeah, I did.” Kevin didn’t look reassured. “Did that one really have a foot growing out of the side of its head?”

“What?”

“It did,” Riley declared.

“Nothing,” Kevin told Bruce.

“I can’t imagine it can keep up with us on the quads,” said Dee.

“I’m telling you, I think it got here before we did.” Bruce scanned the surrounding countryside through the scope mounted on the M40A3 he’d appropriated. “It’s got to have some kind of transportation.”

“Wouldn’t we have heard it?”

Kevin answered. “We didn’t know to listen, Dee.”

“Yeah, well,” Riley stared into the trees about them, “now we do.”

“Isn’t it possible…” Bruce had the side of his face pressed to the saddle-type cheek piece. “…that there’s another explanation for this?”

“It’s possible.”

“Something we’re not thinking of?” Bruce said it but he didn’t sound like he bought it.

“Something.”

“I’m spooked.” Bruce lowered the sniper rifle. “I’m shot.” He tapped his chest beneath the bandages taped to his shoulder, under his shirt and vest. “My imagination could be running away with me.”

“Could be.”

“I’m a little deaf, too. What’d you say?”

“She said it could be,” Kevin repeated.

“Oh.” Bruce nodded, understanding. “Could be, right?”

“But it’s not,” stated Riley.

“Well, that isn’t good.”

Dee looked at the woman. “We stick together. We stay alert. We’re okay.”

“We’re a week away from New Harmony, at least.”

“I was that thing,” Dee speculated. “This isn’t over…”

“This—” Kevin referred to the remains afire in the pit, to the blood stained earth around them “—was just the warm-up.”

“It is,” Riley confirmed.

“…I’d be watching us now,” Dee finished his thought.

“It is.”

“Riley’s right.” Bruce made a conscious effort to lower his voice. “But if it was going to attack us, it would have already.”

“That’s what Riley said before.”

“What, Kev?”

“It’ll wait for night,” Dee speculated. “Wait until we’re not on our guard.”

“We’re forgetting one thing,” Riley reminded them.

“Which is?”

“It doesn’t know we know about it.”

“It could be hearing our every word…”

“It’s not.” Kevin referred to the dosimeter. “Unless it’s got hearing none of us can imagine. I think it’s watching us, but it can’t hear what we’re saying. Even you,” he remarked to Bruce. “It doesn’t know we know.”

“So we have some kind of advantage?”

“Maybe, Dee.”

“What do we do now?” Kevin looked down at the fire in the pit.

“The coast is three, maybe four days on the quads,” Dee offered.

“We have enough gas for that?” Riley didn’t know much about the four-wheelers and had no idea how far the fuel in the red metal cans strapped to the chassis would take them.

“They’d have left resupply points.” Dee spoke of army. “Best idea,” he looked at Riley, urging, “we stick together.”

“Let’s get to the coast,” she consented, “ and put this thing—whatever it is—behind us. Then I can get back to New Harmony. Get—”

“To Africa.” Dee’s tone lacked luster.

“Out of here,” Riley amended.

* * *

Dee let Riley drive their quad. She was hesitant on the handlebars, learning her way, but they were in no particular rush. They rolled through foothills long reclaimed by nature, low, rolling hills gone to russet with autumn. The hillocks they crested and dipped were all that was left of ancient mountain chains, worn and weathered. Sticking to the open grasses, they skirted pine and hickory forests, the soil beneath their four-wheeler a brown sandy loam.

“What’s that?” Riley called back to Dee, her head nodding towards a field overgrown with wild, dark-leaved flowers.

“Tobacco.”

They went by a train stalled on tracks covered over with grasses, a skein of long abandoned railcars, now no more than empty rectangles, civilization quitclaim. They passed what had been a pig farm, the piggery long untouched by trotters. Fresh, green growth sprouted from its former waste lagoon. The plateau region let out onto flat, low-lying lands, a vast coastal plain. Beneath their feet, igneous rocks yielded to sedimentary.

Kevin wore the dosimeter but Dee rarely called a halt to consult the device, this terrain familiar to the three men. A relatively narrow strait of land was open to them, free of the worst excesses of radiation.

About them, the signs of a congregation’s pilgrimage, the land and grasses trod under by many feet. Bear’s Army had passed this way. As now did these wayfarers, hosting injuries bodily and emotional, limbs bound and forced inflexible with jerry-rigged splints, their spirits contuse.

They stopped for the evening at what remained of a cache left for them by their comrades. Freeze-dried provisions, ammunition, and medicines were scattered and pilfered, torn open and pawed through by hands human or humanoid, impossible to tell.

“Who would have done this?” Riley asked. They spread out, cautiously watchful, gathering what was salvageable.

“We always had stragglers.” Bruce thumbed through some medications. His hearing was returning and he spoke in a more normal tone. “Groups of people would follow us.” He meant the army. “Never wanted to do the fighting, but they were always there for the clean up.”

“Human hyenas,” Dee added disdainfully, settling himself to the ground.

“Why’d they leave any ammo?”

“Lot of it is useless to them.” Kevin held up a round. “Us too.” He tossed it aside, puffing his cheeks and exhaling.

“They took most of the food,” Bruce mentioned, to which Kevin interjected “All of the gas” before Bruce finished, “But we’ve still got some. And they left these.” He held up freeze-dried packages that had not been tampered with.

“Do you think they’ll be back?” Riley scanned the horizon about them.

“No,” Dee pronounced with finality.

“We should have a fire,” said Kevin. “Got to get some wood. Something that will burn.”

“I’ll go,” Riley volunteered. They looked at her. “I’m the most able-bodied. Look at you.” The three men looked each other over, an assortment of lacerations and bullet punctures, their bodies testament to her words.

“Don’t go far,” Bruce cautioned.

The CTME destroyed in the bomb blast, Riley held up an AR-15 she had taken. “You hear this,” she looked at Dee, “you come hopping.” She wandered off from them, clearly visible to their eyes as she went about her foraging, this cool day ebbing unto a chill evening. The three men sat together and considered the packages they had reclaimed.

“How you two feeling?” Kevin asked his friends.

“Foot hurts like hell.”

“I think my shoulder is infected.” Bruce pressed his chin to his chest, trying to look at the wound. “It’s starting to stink.”

“I can’t believe they’re all gone.” Dee paid little attention to the food package in his hands, his gaze drawn instead to Riley amid the grasses.

Bruce sighed. “Tris…”

“I don’t think I ever really thought
she’d
check out,” admitted Kevin.

“You loved her, didn’t you, Bruce?”

“Yeah, Dee, I loved her. But it wasn’t like I was actually
in love
with her. I mean, I didn’t think we were ever going to settle down and make a family or anything like that.”

Kevin laughed at some image this brought to mind.

“I just always had a…she was so
bad
, and so
good
at it. I could appreciate her, that’s all.”

“How about you, Kev?” Dee never took his eyes off Riley. “You ever been in love?”

“Yes, I’ve been in love.”

“What was her name?” Bruce smirked, learning something about an old friend he had never known.

“Nadjia.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“She was a pretty lady, Dee.”

“She your wife?” Bruce inquired. “Before this?” He referred to the entirety of their lives this past quarter century.

“No.” Kevin looked at Dee. “Met her when I met your dad,” he said. Glancing back to Bruce, “before I met you.”

“What happened to her?”

“Well, Dee, she said to me once—she said fighting zombies the way she and Bear were fighting them, she said it had a way of taking a toll on you, that it wears you down. Said she couldn’t go on fighting forever. And she was right. It wore her down.”

Bruce and Dee looked at one another.

“Well,” ventured Bruce. “What happened?”

“What do you mean what happened?”

“Did she,” Dee tried to think of some delicate way of putting it. “Did she, you know?”

“No. Not that I know about. She just stopped fighting one day. Settled down.”

“And you didn’t settle down with her?” Bruce looked at his friend.

“I was still fighting.”

“Did she know you were in love with her?”

“Yeah, Dee, I’m pretty sure she knew.”

“And?”

“
And
what?”

“And you never did anything about it?”

“What was I going to do?” Kevin asked them and then repeated the question, as if to himself. “What was I going to do?” He looked at his friends. “You remember those days, Bruce—you remember too, Dee. Zed everywhere.” He looked away again. “All those Zed.”

“How’d you know?”

“How’d I know
what
, Dee?”

“How’d you know you were in love?”

“Aw, shit. It’s one of those things. You just know when you know.”

“You’re in love with Riley,” Bruce had wised up, “aren’t you, Dee?”

“What? No, I—”

“Come on, Dee. You don’t have to act like that around us. We’re practically family.”

“Act like what?”

“Like a shy child.”

“I’m no shy child.”

“Like an embarrassed kid.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“Don’t worry, Dee,” Kevin assured him. “We’re not going to say anything.”

“Dee. You gonna talk to her?”

“I talk to her, Bruce.”

“No, I mean are you going to
talk
to her. Let her know how you’re feeling?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Eventually.”

“In the words of a very wise man,” Bruce quoted, “
tell her about it
.”

“
Tell her everything you feel
,” Kevin pointed a finger at Dee, smiling at Bruce.

“
Give her every reason to accept
—” Bruce gave Kevin a thumbs up “—
that you’re for real
.” The two older men reached out to one another—“
Tell her all your crazy dreams
”—and high fived one another.

“Yeah,” Kevin sighed, satisfied.

“Whatever-whatever-whatever.” Bruce had forgotten the words.

“Well,” Dee acknowledged, “you guys just shared some kind of moment.”

“Billy Joel, my friend,” explained Bruce. “And you’d be wise to heed his advice.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll get around to it.”

“Good rock ‘n roll never stops being good rock ‘n roll, does it?” Kevin remarked.

“Too old to rock ‘n roll, too young to die.”

“I hear that, Bruce.”

Riley returned and they kindled a fire with the thin limbs and brambles she’d gathered. They ate from the packages and sat around the fire as the day’s afterglow made way for the nightfall. Stars appeared in the purple sky like pinpricks granting access to the illume of an otherworld beyond the overhang of their own blackened dome.

“What if you were right about that other part?” Kevin asked Bruce the last question of the evening. “What if we’re being paranoid here and it isn’t the way we imagine it?”

“Then we’ve got nothing to lose.”

A watch was kept through the night.

* * *

In its wake, the night brought with it the uncertainty and mystery of the dark. Alex’s apprehension had ratcheted up another several notches, though the actual pain from his ankle had subsided to a dull, ever present throb. He’d propped his leg up and refused to move the ankle, which he knew was broken. He was alone and wounded, in the Outlands, in the night.

Among the items he could resort to for personal defense was his Model 7. He had six magazines of ammunition for it in addition to the full magazine already housed in the well. He’d stacked three of the magazines within easy reach next to where he lay. The remaining three rested in their tactical pouch beside the exposed magazines. There were things out there in the dark of the night, and if any of them came too close, Alex was ready for them.