Red the First (4 page)

A strangled yelp came from the fight.
Zena stood over the limp body of the Doberman. Blood wetted her
muzzle. Was that a windpipe hanging from her mouth?

She wagged her tail for Red’s approval,
while the other pack dogs cowered nearby, tails between their legs.
They seemed to assume that Zena would be their new leader. Her
cocked head indicated confusion. She glanced at Red as if to say,
why the hell aren’t these fools going away?
and leapt at a
black mongrel, tearing off half of its ear. The pack scattered. She
trotted back with the ear in her mouth to set it at Red’s
feet.

“
That’s my girl.” He knelt
on one knee, checking her over for injuries. Other than a few
scratches, she had come out unscathed.

“
I love you, Zena.” Michael
hugged her around the neck, tears streaming down his face,
sniffling. “You are the strongest, prettiest, bravest dog in all of
the world. I knew you wouldn’t die. You can’t ever die. I love
you.”

The dog, Red was sure, actually smiled.
When Michael pulled away, he was covered in Doberman blood, but he
looked happy.

“
Let’s go,” Michael said,
wiping his nose on his sleeve, giving a wide grin. “This house is
gonna be sweet.”

Over the next eight hours they wandered
out of from the suburbs, deeper into the country, until they found
a side road full of humble older homes on multi-acre
lots.

“
I don’t know, dear,”
Elizabeth said, nose in the air. “I had my heart set on a new
edifice with tray ceilings and a theater room.” Red glanced at her
sharply, only to see she was smirking.

Who would have guessed the
ever-blubbering woman had a sense of humor? He laughed and
remarked, “My needs are simple: a small house with a real
fireplace.”

Michael brought them to a winding
gravel driveway, which led to a Cape Cod-style home with peeling
barn-red paint and white trim. They went to the backyard first
where a large metal shed and a wide meadow backed up to woods. An
orange hand pump stood in front of the shed. Michael primed it
until rusty water gushed forth.

“
It is beautiful!” Elizabeth
exclaimed, hugging Michael to her waist, tears streaming down her
face.

A lump formed in Red’s throat as
Michael handed him a tin cup full of still slightly brown-tinged
water. Bottled water had been Red’s staple beverage before the
apocalypse. Now, he gingerly held the cup between his fingers,
considering that all ground water was sure to be contaminated by
runoff from abandoned factories, and God help them all, failing
nuclear power plants. He figured it was only a matter of time
before they all came down with radiation sickness or cancer, but he
suppressed the thought, as he had done since the fall of
civilization. “You sure you’ve never been here before?”

“
Only in my
dreams.”

“
Have you had other dreams
that come true?”

“
Sometimes.”

“
Like what?”

“
That you’d be coming down
the street with your wagon and I’d have to talk you into letting us
come with you.”

“
You expect me to believe
that?” Michael shrugged. “Anything else?”

“
Aliens.”

Red choked on his water.

“
Michael’s dreams are spot
on about some things,” Elizabeth said between laughs, “but some of
them are just way out there.”

She ran her fingers under the water,
splashing it all over her face, not seeming to notice how Red’s
hands had started to tremble.

“
Aliens, you say,” Red said
carefully. “What were they doing?”

“
Bad things.” Michael said
somberly. “Evil things.”

“
Like what?”

Michael’s hands flew to his face. He
began to rock back and forth, screaming like he’d just broken a
bone.

“
Good Lord, Red.” Elizabeth
shot him a vexed frown. “Learn to back off. Hasn’t he been through
enough?”

She hugged the boy to her chest,
stroking his blond hair.

Red stood there, feeling awkward. “Uh,
sorry, kid. Um, you’ve found us a real nice piece of property. Be
sure to thank your granny for me.”

Michael stopped rocking to meet his
gaze. “You like it?”

“
Very much.” Red held up his
cup. “Cheers to you, Michael. Well done.”

The boy searched his face for any sign
of insincerity.

“
Show us the house,” Red
said, trying to steer the three away from talk of
aliens.

“
It’s old,” Michael said.
“But you’re gonna love it.”

Chapter 7

The house was stuffy and smelled of
musty urine. Elizabeth went straight to a window, slid it open, and
let in some fresh air. The walls were wood-paneled and the
mismatched furniture looked as if it had been acquired over the
span of several decades. The kitchen cupboards were grainy oak,
covered with dings and nicks, but well built. The pea-soup green
linoleum had seen better days—the subfloor showed through in
various places. A faux–marble topped table, trimmed in chrome,
stood in the center of the room.

The kitchen, dining area and living
room, though delineated by different flooring, formed a continuous
U-shape around the staircase in the middle of the space. The living
room had two wooden rockers with gingham cushions. A blue sofa sat
across from them. A framed image of Elvis painted on black velvet,
flanked by two sconces, with burned-out candelabra bulbs, hung on
the wall behind it. A huge television, complete with aerial, sat in
the corner, but it wasn’t like they could watch the news or a movie
anyway.

One wall in the living room was made of
stone. Red’s heart did a cartwheel when his eyes fell on an object
more valuable than gold. There, standing majestically in dull black
splendor, making up for the house’s other deficits, was a
wood-burning stove.

Elizabeth slapped her cheeks in pure
joy. “An old-fashioned stove!”

“
And look over there.”
Michael pointed through the glass sliding doors at the back of the
kitchen. On the far side of the patio was an outdoor fireplace. An
iron tripod and Dutch oven were already waiting inside of it. A
fireplace poker and shovel still hung on their hooks, drilled into
the stone of the fireplace housing.

“
Jackpot!” Red exclaimed,
picking-up Elizabeth and twirling her in his arms.

“
The people who used to live
here were into camping,” Michael said. “If you look around, I’m
sure you’ll find other useful stuff.”

Red picked up Michael, held him high,
and twirled him in the air, too. “Good job, kid! You’ve found the
perfect place!”

Michael grinned and seemed pleased by
the praise. It was good to see him happy like a normal kid. The
thought hit Red—what if I had died and my children had lived? Would
anybody have stepped in to take care for
them
? At that
moment he vowed to protect Michael. Considering the circumstances,
the boy had adjusted remarkably well. The rocking back and forth
thing…well, he’d just have to accept that as collateral damage to
the child.

He looked over at Elizabeth, who was
waltzing with Michael across the living room, with dawning
admiration. The child was no relation to her, just a strange kid
she had spotted wandering through the streets alone, parentless.
She’d lost two children of her own, could barely function, yet she
had taken Michael under her wing and cared for him all this time.
Michael and Elizabeth were exceptional people. Why hadn’t he seen
that before?

Red and his companions spent the
twilight hours exploring the property. Exhausted, they flopped down
in the musty smelling house and woke with the birds chirping
outside their window. Red returned to the shed first thing in the
morning. The wooden structure was full of tools he could use to
support his new and rustic lifestyle. He figured now was the time
to learn how to chop wood. How hard could it be?

He set out into the woods, which
spanned three or four acres. The trees were close together. Poison
ivy climbed up trunks. Light filtered through the leaves, keeping
the air about ten degrees cooler than under the open sky. He
decided to make it easy on himself by starting on a tree that had
fallen on its own. Spongy white toadstools covered the trunk. He
scraped off some of them and began chopping at the trunk near the
base.

After ten minutes of hard labor, he’d
barely made a dent.

“
Dang!” He wiped the sweat
from his brow. “How did the men do it back in the old days?” His
hands were already blistered and he hadn’t cut a single log.
Sliding his fingers along the edge of the ax, he realized it must
be dull.

He envisioned the atoms inside the
blade shifting like the ocean, scraping over a pebbled beach like a
sheet of sandpaper grinding metal into a fine edge.

“
Let it be,” he
whispered.

The edge of the ax smoothed and gleamed
in the dappled light. Running an index finger over the sharpness,
he whispered, “Incredible…”

“
Hi,” an upbeat voice came
from behind him.

He spun around to see Michael standing
there, holding a bucket of water. “What ‘cha doing?” he
asked.

“
Cutting wood.”

“
You’ve been out here a long
time.” Michael’s inquisitive blue eyes landed on the wedge he had
cut into into the fallen tree trunk. “But I don’t see any
logs.”

“
Knock yourself out, kid.”
Red offered him the ax. “Here you go.”

Michael turned up his nose. “I’m
busy.”

“
Doing what?”

“
Elizabeth said she’d make a
pumpkin pie if I could find a pumpkin. I’m gonna plant these.” He
held out his palm to show a fistful of pale seeds.

Red smiled at his innocence, but
thought he ought to explain. “Those seeds will take months to
produce a pumpkin. You’re not going to find one today.”

“
When I touched them, I saw
pumpkins,” Michael said with a gritty look of determination. “And
I’m gonna have me some pie.” He stomped off through the woods in
his sneakers, back toward the house.

Worried how the emotionally damaged boy
would handle failure, Red decided to follow him. He hung about the
yard, coiling a long rope, just to look like he was working instead
of hovering about like a mother hen. From the corner of his eye he
watched Michael get a hoe from the shed and use it to loosen dirt
in the middle of the back yard. He mounded the soil with his hands,
pausing to send Red glares for his lack of faith.

“
Creator of earth, sea, and
sky—,” Michael held the seeds a few inches from his mouth and
closed his eyes. “Speed these to our bellies.” Even though the air
was warm, his breath fogged over the seeds.

Red thought his eyes were playing
tricks on him when tiny twinkly lights drifted out of the boy’s
mouth and absorbed into the seed hulls. He wasn’t sure if the boy
was aware of the phenomenon. If he was, it hadn’t fazed him in the
slightest. Without further ado, Michael pushed three seeds into the
little mound of dirt, repeating the process until he’d planted all
the seeds. By the time he was finished, the yard was peppered with
tiny mountains of dirt.

Red turned his baseball cap backwards
and leaned against his ax handle, watching Michael water the
mounds. He couldn’t help admiring the boy’s work ethic, but he
wanted to be there for the inevitable disappointment. An hour
passed. Michael walked from mound to mound checking for sprouts.
The scene reminded Red of Linus in the field on Halloween night
waiting for the mythical Great Pumpkin to appear. If he remembered
the storyline correctly, the Great Pumpkin was a no
show.

“
I was so sure this would
work,” Michael sighed, shaking his head.

“
It will,” Red said. “But
these things take time, several months actually.” He gave the boy a
reassuring pat on the back, guiding him toward the door to the
house. “Let’s go inside and open a can of pre-grown
corn.”

Chapter 8

The smell of bleach bombed his nose as
soon as he opened the back door. Elizabeth had cleaned the house
from top to bottom. Throughout the course of the day, she must have
carried fifty buckets of water from the pump. There was a stack of
wet dishes in a dish drainer on the countertop. A fire burned in
the stove, and as if she had read his mind, corn warmed on the
stovetop.

“
There are two bedrooms
upstairs,” she informed him. “Michael, you may have your own room.
I don’t care which one. You decide.”

Michael’s face perked up.
“Really?”

“
Sure.” He put down his fork
and started to stand up. “After you finish your dinner!” she said
sternly. Michael shoveled it in like there was no tomorrow and then
hurried up the stairs.

“
I’ll make up the couch for
you tonight,” she told Red. “And tomorrow night you can have the
bed. We’ll alternate.”

“
We don’t have to alternate.
You can have the bed,” Red replied between spoonfuls of warm corn.
He watched her closely as she stooped to pick up a yellow kernel
from the floor.