The Blue (The Complete Novel) (31 page)

            “It’s not a big ship,” the old man says. And then I hear the footsteps run off. That’s when I stop, before getting onto the plank. Even as I see the tarp covered houses in the distance made of some kind of aluminum and wood, some kind of forested city of pine shrouded in a light mist, I tell him I need to go back.

            “What for?” he asks me, alarmed. And I tell him that I can’t get off without my friend. And then, when I try to go, his arms lifts off me and he lets me leave.

I make my way back onto the ship, and right away I see the younger one searching down in the fore hatch. Pulling out one thing after the next—one of the bags I recognize as filled with some of Russell’s clothes. I walk over to him and silently grab the bag and then head back down into the dark. And there I sit and wait next to Voley.

            “Oh my god,” comes the man’s voice when he follows me down and sees the bodies. I tell him I need a bolt cutter. If you want your equipment, get me a bolt cutter. When he doesn’t answer me, too busy shining the light in his hand over the blood-soaked wooden floor, my attitude roars to life. “Get me a fucking bolt cutter,” I say. And right away I want to draw the words back, afraid that now he’ll know the truth about me. That I’m a raging face eater. Out of control. Long ago slipped from the last layers of the veneers, no longer worthy of entry into Leadville. Someone who once could have gotten in. Not any longer though. But all he does in response is tell me, Yeah, a bolt cutter. I’ll get your dog out. And like that he’s gone. By the time he comes back and cuts through the bolt, Voley is clawing at the floor. But then we’re together. And I hug him like I’m hugging all of them—Russell and Dusty and Ernest. They’re all bound up in him, the last trace that any of them existed, or that any of my story is real. And I decide I’m going to keep on squeezing him forever. Finally Voley jerks free because it’s way too tight, and together, because he won’t move more than a foot from my side, we head back out into the light.

Voley walks right past the old man without a growl, and something clicks inside me. That it means something good. As if since Voley isn’t barking, this is not a bad place. A sign that we finally did make it to Leadville. But it isn’t until we walk all the way over the dock, onto the dirt, where there’s a sign, that it sinks in for real.

Pikes Peak Visitor City

Formerly: Leadville

And then, I walk the trail with Voley. Through a misty path dripping with water and surrounded by the strangest pine trees I’ve ever seen. Each time I look back, I see the old man following me. Giving me just enough distance. I wonder what they’ve done with the machine guns. What I’m walking into. What will happen once they figure out I’ve lied. But I keep walking, open to whatever the world wants to throw at me next. And once the trees start to thin out, and the path widens into the beginning of buildings, I see a whole bunch of people standing around. Half of them are in rain suits, and the other half are in rubber gear. Some are even wearing what look like plain clothes, short-sleeves even, and hanging under the rattling metal eaves of houses. There along a stretch of open mud street is a smaller group of people. Two of them come up to me. One is a young girl. She almost looks like she’s my age. The other woman is older. And then, just like that, the old man is there from behind. Surrounding me.

            They’re all so close to me that I want to scream and make a run for it, or fight each and every one of them. But Voley doesn’t growl. And I look everywhere, trying to assess the threat, but no one seems to want to do anything but watch me. Some look out from the misshapen windows. I think I see little kids even, and then I’m sure, because I hear a voice talking about how
skinny they look
. And then, the hood comes down from the woman in front of me. She stares at me, her bangs dripping water into her eyes as a smile crosses her face. She holds out her hand, and suddenly, everyone starts to clap. I feel delirious but I shake her hand.

            “What a miracle,” she says. And then, she introduces herself. She calls herself Jen and asks me my name. I don’t say anything because I can’t make the words. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how this is possible. And when she tells me we need to get in out of the rain, and she starts to lead me into one of the nearby houses, she tells me that I can’t begin to know how big a deal what I’ve done is. And that after losing her husband, this is somehow going to make his sacrifice worth it. Getting the equipment. But none of it makes sense to me. I push it out because it’s all a lie. And I’ve done nothing for her. She just doesn’t know it yet. None of them do.

            By the time we get to a plastic table and sit down, she tells me she’s going to get me fixed up right away. And you’ll probably want to sleep for a week, she tells me, But then you have to tell us your story. She says
both of you
, referring to Voley who wanders out to sniff at all the people, some of them petting him, and then he comes back to me. But something isn’t right. It rises up in me, very sharply, and my mind whips back to the ship. Something worse than the fact that they won’t find the equipment. That it’s gone, buried in Plane Floe somewhere a couple hundred miles away. It’s the pieces of the bodies I carved out. They were in the bags. The ones the man is looking through on the ship right now. He’ll find them and then they’ll all know. He’ll figure me out and tell them all, and then the words rush back into my head—
we don’t let them in.
She had told me that over the radio, the same woman who smiles at me now from across the table. And I know they’ll kill me. I start to rifle through my options, but there doesn’t seem to be any fight left. There are fifteen people at least just in the house, all of them crowding in, looking for a glimpse of my face, my beaten up body, the words to come from my pale lips. Proof that I’m really alive. And the only thing that could shock me back into reality happens so quickly that I could have never imagined it coming in a million years.

“
Oh my god
,” she says. And then, like she’s seen me again for the first time, Jen moves in against the table. She pushes the hood of my rain suit all the way off. Then she backs up and screams. A loud, quick scream, and I know—they’ve figured out that I’m a monster. I stand up quickly and back away so that the chair spills over and Voley barks. He barks again and louder this time, and I try to push my way all the way into a corner to prepare for the onslaught. I expect we can take down at least a few of them with us before they kill us. But they never charge in, and the screaming woman calms down and just stares at me. And then, it happens. The most impossible thing imaginable. She says, very slowly, and very cautiously, my name.

            “Tanner, do you remember me?”

            I watch her, trying to study the lines on her face, her eyes, trying to figure out how she could know my name. I try to remember if I said it over the radio, but I’m convinced I didn’t. And it hits me like a ton of bricks—it starts with her nose, something about the end of her nose. The way her nostrils flare out. And past the wrinkles and the worn lines of her age, I see a young smiling figure over me, watching me run around her legs. It all makes sense as she opens her arms and presses in to hug me.

            “Jennifer?” I say. But she’s already crying. And I know it has to be her. I can’t control it either and start to wrap myself up in her arms, and I feel the tears of the old life I used to know, with Russell, and the safety of Philadelphia. All of the history that I barely remember starts to flood back into me like an impossible charge of electricity. And then, once we’ve released each other to the amazement of everyone else, I watch her wipe away her tears. She asks first.

            “You left with Russell two years before we did…
Russell?
”

            I can’t answer her. And even as I want to ask her too, about Delly, and her two kids, the ones that followed me around everywhere and tried to emulate me, I can’t get out a word. But I don’t have to. She says it all on her own:
Delly was on the plane.

            I feel a knot seize my gut. It numbs everything in me. The tears and the emotions dry up that fast. And then, she holds her gaze and asks me sincerely if I saw him, if he was still in the plane. And I just look at her and hold my head and shake it no. Finally the words crawl out of my throat.

            “No. He wasn’t in the plane,” I say. And then, by the door, the young man appears, the one who took over the wheel during the night. He looks in at the scene in bewilderment. But something is too important and he can’t wait for us to finish. And I’m sure he has found out about the pieces of body in the bag back on the ship, and that’s why he’s rushed back to town. To tell everyone what I am and that they have to kill me or set me back out into the rain sea. But he just watches Jennifer and me, wondering what the hell’s going on. And then, she finally tells him. This is
Tanner
, she tells him. He looks dumbfounded, like he doesn’t get it. But I figure it out—long before he does. I realize that the man standing at the door, the one who climbed on board and kept the ship going for me, following the cutter all the way to Leadville, is her son. The one who used to chase after me through the abandoned and flooded pharmacies and supermarkets all those years ago. She has to explain it to him, but still he doesn’t seem to remember. Like he was too young, and then, he finally interrupts her.

            “Sorry,” he says, looking at me nervously and forcing a fake smile because he doesn’t remember me. And then he says it. “We can’t find it.”

            He turns away and looks at his mother. “The thing is loaded with bodies. Cut up and not cut up. I’m going to need some help.” And then, his glance carves back across the room to me, as if he expects me to run back out there and help him find the equipment too. But instead Jennifer tells him to quiet down. And then, just like that, she steps outside into the rain. One of the men nearby comes over to me and hands me a cup of water. I tell him thanks and take a sip and then offer the rest to Voley. And as he starts to ask me questions, about if I’m ready to take a hot bath and get cleaned up and then take some rest, I can’t do anything but ignore him. All I can do is watch the door. Waiting for the private conversation outside to end. To get the verdict about my fate. And then, so loud that I can hear her from inside, and everyone else can too, I hear Jennifer say, “She’ll help you after she rests if you can’t find it. And she doesn’t have to explain anything until then either. That ship’s not going anywhere.” And just like that, she comes back inside, smile still stretched across her face.

            “Bring in something hot,” she says to one of the men standing around. He goes off, and then she turns to me.

            “Give us some space,” she says, and somehow, they all listen to her. Everyone leaves the room and funnels back out into the rain. “You let me know when you’re done eating, and I’ll get you cleaned up, okay? We have a doctor here,” she says. And then, she just leans in as a bowl comes into the room that smells so good my stomach starts to tie itself in knots. She hugs me again, and all over again, she starts to cry. Like she can’t believe who I am. And then, the funniest thing in the world happens. She just leaves me be. Voley and I, all alone, in some stranger’s house. With a steaming bowl of soup. I take a few quick glances out the windows, but no one’s even staring in at us anymore. They’re all down at the dock, scouring the ship, trying to find the damned equipment. Trying to figure out how a girl came to be riding a face eater ship.

    I take the wooden spoon and hunch myself over the table. A cool gust of wind blows through the room. I blow again and watch the steam spin away, the sight and smell of it melting all the pain and aches in my body. Voley whines because he wants his share. I tell him to hold on, and then, calmly, after I taste it, a flavor that explodes so hard upon my tongue that I could die and be happy that this was the end, I scoop out another spoonful and blow on it until it’s cool. I lower the spoon down to Voley. And once he’s lapped it all up, I grab his jaw weakly and point his dark eyes at mine.

    “Everything stays between us, okay?” I whisper. His tongue falls out and licks up at his nose in anticipation of another bite. I know—he’s already over it. With one taste of the soup, it’s behind him. And then, just like that, I let go and look out the window at the rolling gray sky. I know that somewhere out there is the stretch of blue. And over my head I hear the rain still falling down. Even here in Leadville. Still falling down.

A new post-apocalyptic journey has its beginning in WIPE

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The Blue
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