Moriah (3 page)

“I don’t think that’s the word you wanted to use.” Riley heard the annoyance in Dee’s voice. Victor stood back and watched, his smirk gone.

“You come back just in time to head to the motherland, D.L.,” the woman answered. “Who’s the trollop?”

“Riley, Tris.” There was no enthusiasm in Dee’s introduction. “Tris, Riley.”

“Hello.” Riley greeted the older woman, who looked her up and down. Riley tried not to stare back. Tris wore a hand grenade around her neck.

“Well, little chicken, I’m guessing you clean up okay?”

Riley didn’t know what to say to that.

“D.L., you finally bring a hoochie back home and what’s the matter—she can’t talk?”

“Look,” Riley turned to Dee, “what the hell is this woman’s problem?”

“You want to keep your tongue,” the black woman spoke, “hold it, girl.” Riley noticed the pistols Tris wore on her hip and thigh. Two handles jutted over her shoulders from the sickles strapped on her back.

“Tris—lay off.” Dee wasn’t asking. “Riley’s had it rough. Anyone can see that. Let’s get her looked at.”

“She looks like she’s gonna be all right to me. You’re a tough little bitch, ain’t you, chickenhead?”

“Lady…” Riley looked into the other woman’s burnt, scarred face, into her eyes. “Don’t. Fuck. With. Me.”

“
Ohhhh
.” Tris whistled. “You go, girlfriend. This one’s a tart.” Two other men had wandered over as Tris spoke. They were both taller than Riley, but shorter than Dee. One bore a bullet scar on either side of his neck. The other had streaks of white in his hair and dark eyes. “I think I’m going to like this one. Where’d you say you picked her up, Dee?”

“Out by the bomb. She was being chased.”

“Chased?” Tris looked mildly interested. “By who?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell us, right, Riley?”

“Yes.” Riley continued to glare at the disfigured woman.

“D.L.” As she said it, Tris held Riley’s gaze. “We got enough of our own shit to deal with here. Did you really have to go and adopt a stray? Yeah—
you,
freak. What’chu lookin’ at?”

“Go fuck yourself, lady.”

“You know what, D.L.?” Tris showed her teeth but there was no smile in her eyes. “Nah, scratch that—I’m
not
gonna like this one. Girl, something here stinks like dead fish.”

“Must be you.”

Victor and the two other men sniggered. Dee did not. “What the fuck are you laughing at?” Tris flared at the three. “Bruce, Kevin—shut the fuck up. You too, Victor.”

“She was looking for Bear.” Dee’s declaration gave the others pause.

Tris looked Riley over again. “Bear, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you hear about Bear?”

Riley shook her head. “Everyone’s heard of Bear…”

“Is that so?” Tris did not look pleased. “What’d you hear about him?”

“I want to see him.”

“You want to see Bear.”

“What’d you tell her, D.L.?” the man with dark eyes, Kevin, asked.

“I didn’t tell her anything.”

“I said—” Tris asked a second time, none too patiently “—why do you want to see Bear?”

“Because I have something to show him.”

“Show me.”

Riley looked daggers at her. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Gurl…you
keep
sayin’ that to me…” Tris shook her head and licked her upper lip.

Bruce, the man with the bullet wounds in his neck, looked at Kevin, nodding in approval.

“Tris,” Dee spoke. “You’re not helping.”

“This chick’s tough.” Bruce whispered to Kevin, his voice hoarse.

“Or fucking crazy,” Kevin whispered back.

“Well,” Riley demanded of Dee, “can I see Bear or not?”

“You want to see Bear?” Tris looked at Riley as though the younger woman was ignorant. She spoke to the others. “She wants to see Bear. Let her go see Bear then, D.L.”

“Where is he?” Riley did not wait for Dee to direct her.

Tris pointed to a tent several yards off. Riley immediately started walking towards it.

“Riley, wait!”

“Let her go, D.L. You heard her. She wants to see Bear.”

* * *

Riley entered the tent. It was lit by candles and large enough that its corners were lost in shadow. Crates stood packed atop one another, waiting to be moved. A high-backed chair was placed in the center. Something rested against it and a figure was seated in it. Riley could not see the person because the back of the chair was to her.

“Bear?” she asked hesitantly.

When the person did not answer, Riley walked determinedly to the chair and around it. A man was seated there, but she couldn’t believe this was the Bear she had heard about. The man she looked upon was ancient and frail, his clothes hanging off him. He looked up at her as she stood there and then he looked away. A flanged mace was propped against the chair and a stuffed animal of some sort rested on his lap.

Riley looked at the man and took the photograph out of her shirt. This couldn’t be Bear, could it? But it had to be…

“Are you Bear?” She asked him and when he still did not answer she asked him again, more forcefully, more desperately.

“He’s not Bear.” Victor and the others had come into the tent behind her.

“What happened to Bear?”

“He won’t answer you,” said Victor, his spikes sticking out of his bandana. “He hasn’t spoken since I’ve known him. And I’ve known him all my life. Ask D.L.”

The man in the chair was stroking the stuffed cat in his lap.

“It’s true,” Dee affirmed. Tris stood with her arms folded under the grenade on her neck, looking oddly satisfied.

Riley shook her head, feeling overwhelmed. She didn’t understand any of this.
Where was Bear
?
Where was he
?

“I’m sorry…” She didn’t want to cry, especially not in front of Tris. “There’s just some things—some things I’m not getting right now.”

“Go ahead,” encouraged Dee.

“First,” Riley sniffled and wiped a finger under her eye. “…is Dee short for something?”

“Short for D.L.,” answered Victor.

“And what’s D.L.?”

“Short for D.L.R.,” Victor added.

“D.L.R.?”

Dee said, “David Lee Roth.”

“Okay.” That meant nothing to Riley. “And do you…or don’t you…know Bear?”

“Of course I know him.” Dee was adamant. “He’s my father.”

“Okay,” Riley nodded.
His father
. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” She hoped so at least. “And where can I find your father, D.L.?”

“You won’t.” Tris answered before Dee could. “You can’t. He dead.”

“
What
?” Riley didn’t believe what she’d heard.

“He’s not here anymore.” Dee gave Tris another cold look as he spoke, but Riley was so spent she barely noticed.

“But—but,” she stammered, the information registering in her shocked, harried brain. “I came all this way…Anthony…we…” Riley put one hand out as she sunk to the ground.

“Hey, you okay?” Dee was at her side. “Victor, go get Carrie.”

Riley was weeping inconsolably.

“This girl is a mess,” Kevin whispered to Bruce.

“Yeah,” the other rasped back. “Maybe she ain’t as hard as she seems.”

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” Riley spoke through her tears. “Bear’s gone. That’s, that’s…
great
. Then…then who’s this guy?”

“He’s the Bishop,” Kevin said.

“Okay.
Right
. Look—again—it’s me, I’m sorry…”

“You need to rest, Riley,” Dee told her. “When was the last time you slept?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s okay…I need to go…I’ll…”

“That’s just crazy talk, Riley. You need a meal and a cot.”

“That’s a real cat in his lap, too, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Dee acknowledged. “I’ll have to explain later.”

“I brought this…to show…” Riley held the photo up and then let it fall from her fingers to the earthen floor. “I brought this to show Bear…but now…” What was the use? There was no Bear to show it to.

Dee was kneeling beside Riley, comforting her. Tris stood, arms crossed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Kevin looked at Bruce and Bruce looked at Kevin and when the two of them looked to Tris, she rolled her eyes in her burnt head.

The elderly man they called the Bishop had gotten out of the chair and bent gingerly to retrieve the picture. His mouth opened.

“Young lady, please…” The Bishop sunk down besides Dee, cupping Riley’s face in his hands. He’d set his stuffed cat on the chair cushion. “Tell me. Where did you get this?”

Dee was staring at the Bishop, baffled. Kevin’s eyes were wide and Bruce’s attention was rapt. Even Tris had unfolded her arms and stood expectantly with her hands on her hips.

“A man gave it to me.”

“What was his name?”

“He was crazy.”

“Did he have a name?”

“Mickey. He said his name was Mickey.”

The Bishop looked fixedly at Riley. The others in the tent watched him watch her. When he held the photo up in his hand, he declared, “I knew this man.”

“You did—that’s...” Riley didn’t know how to respond or what to say. “Who—who are you?”

“Here they call me the Bishop.” His voice was loud and clear—“But my Christian name is Turner.”—stronger than Riley would have imagined, judging by his frail frame. “Fred Turner.” The elderly man raised the photograph for all to see. “And I knew this man. In a place called Eden.”

“Keep quiet,” Little Red ordered Rodriguez.

“Why? They can’t hear us.”

In the distance below them, the tail-end of a heavily armored cavalcade of people and their vehicles disappeared into the east.

“I don’t care. Hush.”

Rodriguez looked at the girl. Earlier she’d killed his best friend in the world, and now she was telling
him
to shut up?
Right
. In the past, Rodriguez had deferred to Red like everyone else. He’d done so because Thomas held the little girl in such high regard. But Thomas,
well
, Thomas wasn’t here now.

“Where do you think they’re going?” Tommy wondered.

“To the coast,” replied Gammon. The four of them were on their stomachs atop the rise where Dee and Riley had stopped an hour before.

“If she’s with all those people…” Rodriguez made himself look away from Red. “…then that’s it. We can’t fight all them.”

“Fuck that,” Tommy snarled.

“She’s not with them,” declared Red. “See their four-wheeler’s tracks? They went off north-west. Maybe they don’t know those people. Maybe they were trying to avoid them. Maybe they knew them, but something else took them over there.”

“What do you think, Red?” Gammon asked the girl.

“I think we keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

“Follow their trail?”

“Follow their trail.”

“Do you think she knows we’re on her tail?” Rodriguez asked.

“We ought to assume she does,” said Gammon. “And play it safe.”

“I just want to get my hands on that—”

“There’ll be time for that, Tommy,” Gammon told his friend’s boy. “Calmer heads need to prevail now.”

The young man did not look satisfied.

They crawled back down off the rise, on their bellies, standing only when there was no chance they could be seen by the people off in the distance.

David, Keith and the others were waiting for them at the bottom of the hill.

“We got troop movements east of here,” Gammon explained to the assembled hard men. “Tough to tell how many and where they’re going. The bad news is there’s thousands of them. The good news is they’re heading away from us, over in that direction.” He pointed. “The woman’s trail continues over there. We’re going to keep on it. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Good.”

Red led them through the trees and hills. She kept one eye on the path the four-wheeled vehicle had left, her other on the foliage around them, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that might indicate an ambush or trap. She felt like
she
was the one playing the game now.

It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

Red enjoyed being tested and she hadn’t been tested like this in some time. In her mind she wrestled with the death of Thomas, with what she’d had to do to Mac, with the knowledge that their camp had most likely fallen to Cosmo and his ilk.

She was aware that Rodriguez was behind her, that he had that H&K HK416 in both of his hands, that he was staring holes into her back every step of the way. Rodriguez could fire from behind and cut her down, kill her whenever he wanted. She wouldn’t put it past him, though she didn’t think he’d go through with it in front of Gammon, in front of Tommy and the others. She knew that if Rodriguez did that, he’d die next.