The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (24 page)

“You may not want to hear this, Rachel, but your eyes are starting to fail you.” He walks into the space between the two groups, his body the only thing keeping both sides apart. “What you're looking for is standing right in front of you.”

“No thanks to you.”

“Isn't it? I knew if I flushed them out they would come back here, and here they are. The only thing they're missing is a big, red bow.”

“Instead they came with armed backup who nearly killed us trying to return the favor.”

Someone from the hotel shouts, “You burned our house down!”

“Haddie is dead because of you!”

“You infected us, pendejo.”

“Easy, everyone.” Terence holds them back from pushing forward. “Easy.”

“Yes, calm down everyone,” Graham says, “you wouldn't want to feel an emotion without voting on it first.”

“I recommend shutting your mouth before these people tear you apart.”

“I don't see why they should be mad at me, I was just following Rachel's orders.”

“That's not what we asked you to do.”

“You left me no choice.”

“We might believe you,” Boyd says, “if you didn't take such obvious pleasure in it.”

Graham sets his eyes on Boyd. “A lesson on morality from the super-criminal.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Then you don't mind if I ask how you got into the base? Short of finding the severed hand of of a four-star general, that is.”

Boyd looks surprised.

“I know what every person here is doing at all times. Just like I know every way in and out of this base, this mountain, the city and every town and house that surrounds it, because that's what you do when you run things. That's why Terence and Rachel both failed- they haven't figured out it's about maintaining control over every person, every inch, every second of the day.”

“I think the phrase you're looking for is 'god complex'.”

“That's only what it looks like from far away.”

“By far away,” Doc says, “you mean beneath you.”

“Doc. Above all people I don't want to fight with you. You never should have left in the first place, you should have stayed here and continued your research.”

“That was always a shot in the dark. In all my time I never made any real progress.”

“You never had such willing test subjects before.” He looks at Child with eyes that are strange and hungry. What Boyd said was right- he enjoys this. The feeling of scratching and fighting to be on top. For all the hate he has for Munies, he acts very much like one.

I push Child behind my legs. “Look at her again and I'll pull your throat out.”

“Are you letting this monster make threats? What happened, how did this thing manage to sucker you into letting your guard down?”

“We haven't been suckered,” Terence says, “we can see the good in people in a way you forgot how years ago.”

“People?” He goes closer to Terence, his foot sounds slow in the grass. Terence's body is straight and stiff and ready for anything, any move, any hit. Blood moves under the surface of his bruises and cuts. “If you can really stand there and call these monsters people, then you've  changed worse than anyone here, and I feel sorry for you.”

“Impossible, brother, you never learned how to feel sorry for anyone. Unlike her, who saw a Child in need and decided to help it.”

Graham smiles wider. “I see you've gotten acquainted. I'm sure it told you how it survived so long out there without being infected.”

Terence says nothing.

“It didn't tell you about the trailer? Or the, what was it, silvery tape? Or more importantly, what it lived on for all those years? Go ahead, tell him. Tell my brother here where you got all that food that let you hide like a fucking rat in a cage while the rest of us had to fight and die for everything we had. Tell him!”

I turn to Terence. His face is full of doubt but he waits for me to speak.

“Yesterday wasn't my first day here. That passed years ago, when I was young.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“I took the supplies, the ones in the guard building. I found them and I didn't know they were yours. I took them away from here, and for years they kept me from finding the death, but I only took them because I thought they belonged to no one, to people who had found the death. If I had known-”

“Stop.”

“I wish I had gone to the lights, because I would have found you. We could have known each other as real people. But I saw the lights, the shadows, and they gave me the fear-”

“Stop it.”

“We could have shared the supplies, shared them and hidden together-”

“Stop!”

I've never heard Terence shout like this. The blood under his bruises moves to his forehead and through the neck veins hidden under his mask. The group speaks to each other behind him, looking at me differently now. Taking another's supplies was an awful thing to do in the real times, in these times it's almost as bad as trying to give them the death. Supplies are everything and I took almost everything they had. That makes me a giver of death to the one's they've lost. A hunter of the pictures in their eyes.

Graham goes to where he can whisper to Terence. “How about now, brother? Still feel like helping it knowing how much it took from you, from the people you protect? Can you honestly look in it's eyes and say you want it to live with you as an equal? Share with it and talk to it rather than use it as the tool it is?”

Terence looks up from the dirt and meets my eyes. I don't know what to expect, what he'll say to me after learning the damage I did to him and his family. He makes a sound with his throat. Then he speaks.

“It hurt when those supplies disappeared, and I personally took the brunt of the fallout. But she's a survivor, and that's what survivors do. They paw and scrape for every inch. She didn't know who it would affect. So am I happy about it? No. I should have found out from her. But can I live with it? Of course I can, because I've lived with much worse.”

He turns to Graham. “I've lived with you.”

Graham's face turns to anger. His eyes wrinkle as he reaches down into his belt, and I see it in slow, the fingers around the handle, the metal shine of the gun in the sunlight.

Before Terence has time to act, I move.

**

Someone is screaming.

This time it isn't me.

My teeth cut into cloth and meat so easily now, like a knife heated to a bright glow. Graham's scream meets my ears like a friend. His hand drops the gun but the other comes down on the back of my head, and as my body impacts the ground the air above me explodes with gun voices, one, then another, then another. It's the panic. It finds the real people and makes them fire their guns and scatter into the wood, with them the plan to keep this about talking and not about fighting.

Graham's foot impacts my left cheek. “Get up you filthy monster.” He hits me again until I'm on my back. My head is dizzy and I can't tell which way is up. I'm back in the lake but there's no bastard water, only the anger of a real person, a weak man who falls without the strength of followers holding him up.

Someone is croaking.

This time it isn't me.

In the edge of my eye: the shape of a crouch. My focus on it is clear for only a second, but it's enough to realize who it is, to see the size and color and heat of the small body ready to attack.

“What's the matter, miss your mama,” Graham says. Child's stare is a thing to give the fear, her tongue and teeth shaking in her snarled mouth. Graham feels this, and instead of giving her more words he glances for his gun. When he sees it by my open hand his eyes stop, along with his heart.

“You don't want to fight me,” he warns her.

“Want,” she says, getting closer.

He looks down at me through his foggy mask. “You'd better talk some sense into this girl before she gets hurt.”

“Now she's a girl?”

He looks from me to Child and back. Gun voices shout nearby, through the trees, screams and foot sounds and panic and fear. Without speaking any more words he turns and runs into the wood. Child goes to chase him but I stop her, tell her to let him go for now.

“You fought well,” I tell her.

“No fight.”

“You did better. You gave him so much fear he didn't want to.”

I sniff the air for Terence's scent but find it mixed with gasoline and smoke and other real people. Instead I listen for his voice between the shouts and screams. I follow it to where he hides, behind a tree falling apart under the impact of bullets. We stay low and join him. He's surprised to see us.

“What happened to Graham,” he asks through exploding wood.

“He ran toward the city.”

“Sorry I couldn't stay and help but I had more than one gun pointed at me.” He nods over his shoulder. “Cruz has me pinned down, can you sneak around and distract him? A few seconds is all I need. One solid hit in the leg and he'll go down.”

“If you need to give him the death, give the death.”

“I will if I have to. Now hurry up, we need to get this back under control before the gunshots attract attention.”

“I should have told you about the supplies,” I say.

“No time for that, we'll talk later.”

Before I leave I wipe my hand over my face where Graham's foot impacted it. I take a bloody hand away and wipe it on Terence's ankle, where the skin shows above his boot.

“What was that for,” he asks.

“To find you better.”

“You scare me a little sometimes.”

“I know.”

Child and I hold close to the ground as we leave Terence in the rain of exploding wood. Without saying it Child goes to the right and I go to the left, dead leaves and grass at our bellies and bullets above.

Cruz hides behind a great, fallen tree, resting his gun on wood alive with green.

I go around to the end of the fallen tree, where I find it hollow and filled with the sound of winged beasts. There's just enough room for me to fit, so I crawl inside. On the inside the tree is moist and full of crawling things that scurry and wriggle around and over my gripping fingers, and above me, through the wet wood, the gun of Cruz explodes and he curses over it and at it until I'm just beneath him and the light from the gun fire shows through the tiny cracks in the tree.

One chance. I get one chance at this or I find the death. Or worse- Child does.

I listen to the way the gun voice speaks through the wood, and I pick my spot. Then, focused on nothing but that spot, I pull my hand down as far as it will go, into the wet dirt and winged beasts, and I explode it up and through the wood. Cruz shouts “Carajo!” as I grab the gun and pull it down through the hole I've made. The metal is hot and burns my skin so I drop it and crawl backward, out the way I came. Above he curses and beats on the fallen tree, trying to break through, making winged beasts and old wood fall onto my head, and the whole time all I can think is, where's Terence? I gave him enough time to take his shot.

As my feet clear the tree, Cruz grabs them and pulls me out. My nails dig up dirt but take no hold.

“I don't need no gun to kick your ass.” He flips me over and reaches for my face but I kick his mask to knock it off. It holds tight. “I can see why everybody likes you, monster-girl. You got cajones.”

I see it before it happens.

He doesn't.

Child jumps on his back and sinks her claws in. He thrashes, trying to pull her free, but her small size on his big back means he can't reach her. She uses this as her strength, lets him tire as he jerks back and forth. By the time he reaches up over his head and pulls her free, throwing her to the ground in front of him, I'm on my feet. I drag Child away and stand between them with my claws aimed.

“I don't want to give you the death.”

“What makes you think you'll get the chance?”

“Your lungs are heavy. There isn't enough strength in you to fight us both.”

He lets out a tired laugh. “You might be right about that, but I bet if you listen real hard you'll figure out why I'm smilin'.”

I hear someone standing some distance behind me, then spit hitting dirt. It's the man with the glasses and the beard around his mouth. He walks over with his eyes burning yellow. “Told you I'd get it back,” he says to his gun. “Wasn't easy, but like I said, this baby's my favorite.”

Cruz says, “We gotta wait for Rachel, see what she wants to do with 'em.”

“If I listened to those assholes I'd never have any fun.” He clicks the gun ready.

“We ain't here to have fun, hombre, now wait five stinkin' minutes while we look for Rachel. If she says she wants 'em dead, you can be the one to pull the trigger.”

“Why wait?”

“Because she's leader, that's why. Those are the rules.”

“No one leads him,” I say.

He licks his beard. “That's right.”

Cruz turns to me. “Estupido, you wanna die?” He shakes his head. “Well, if you're gonna do it go on, but when they ask me what happened I ain't gonna lie for you.”