TORMENT (39 page)

“We’ll wait for them to drown.”

A miniature avalanche of sand slid down the sand mound behind Austin. Mia traced its path with her eyes. “Look out!” she shouted before drawing her weapon and firing two rounds. The first missed the man running down the sand-hill, but the second caught him in the chest. He spun hard, fell and crashed onto the hard packed dirt next to a wide-eyed Austin.

“Two more!”
Garbarino shouted before popping off two shots and dropping a man and woman rounding the sand pile.

Austin stood and shoved Mia ahead of him. “Run!”

As they cleared the cover of the construction site, each looked back and each saw a human waterfall pouring over the ridge that they’d come down. The three they’d just shot had been the front runners.

The group at the top was suddenly struck from behind. Three of them shot into the air and fell. Then Henry Masters stood at the top of the ridge, his eagle looking more like a fiery phoenix, shimmering in the light of the continuous heat lightning.

Masters roared, scaring Mia enough to trip when she reached the pavement. She fell to her hands and skinned her knees. Garbarino stopped, took her by the shoulders and hoisted her. As he did, he looked down the long, straight road and saw an army charging toward them, drawn by the gun fire.

“Go,” he said.
“Follow Austin!”

Mia listened without hesitation. Austin had just entered the woods and she stayed right behind him. Thirty seconds later she noticed there weren’t any footsteps behind her. She stopped and turned around.
“Garbarino?”

He wasn’t there. She looked back to the road, but couldn’t see it, or Garbarino.

Austin stopped and turned around. “What happened?”

“He’s gone.”

Two gunshots rang out from the road followed by, “Come and get me, you sons-a-bitches.”

The voices of the condemned responded, shouting their sorrows in unison.

“No!” Mia took a step back the way they’d come.

Austin caught her arm. “Nothing you can do for him now.”

“But—”

“When a man sacrifices his life to save someone, it’s reprehensible to throw that life away.” Austin looked into her eyes, locking her in a stare that would have made a bull elephant think twice.

She pulled her arm away.
“Fine.
Let’s go.”

The woods thinned as they approached the residential neighborhood. The houses were mostly vinyl sided capes sporting two car garages. Most of the buildings leaned toward the woods as a result of being at the outskirts of a nuclear explosion’s blast radius.

Austin climbed over a small white picket fence and made his way into the backyard of the nearest house. A swing set lay on its side behind an above ground swimming pool that had burst. “Stay away from the houses,” he said. “They look like they could fall if a butterfly lands on them.”

Mia slid over the fence. “Good thing there aren’t any butterflies left in the world.”

Austin frowned at her, but said nothing. He led the way through five more backyards before stopping behind the second to last house on the street. He hugged the back wall and peeked around the corner. Mia knelt next to him.

He held a finger to his lips, pointed first at his eyes and then around the corner.

Mia took a peek and saw a man, skinny and frail looking. He leaned against the olive-green sidewall of the next house between the brick chimney and red bulkhead, catching his breath.
It’s a runner
, she thought,
and where there are runners, there are
—

“I don’t want to do it!” a shrill voice cried out. “Someone stop me. Please, God, someone stop me!”

The runner yelped at the sound of the voice, but remained stuck in place, shaking uncontrollably.

Austin swore under his breath. “He’s going to lead them straight to us.”

Hearing the question buried within the statement, she wondered the same thing,
should
we use him as a decoy?
She nodded. Austin jumped from this hiding place and shouted at the man.
“Gah!”

The man jumped up from his hiding place and ran into the road, making for the opposite side of the street. The response was instantaneous. A chorus of voices rose up and whatever horde was hunting on the opposite side of the neighborhood, between them and the river, gave chase. They’d catch and kill him, again, but it would clear the way for those still living.

As they ran past the last house on the street and headed for the stand of maple trees that concealed the river bank beyond, Mia wondered if agreeing to such a brutal distraction would make her escape from this place less likely. She was already an adulterer in her own eyes. Was she an accessory to murder now?
No
, she thought,
he’s already dead
.

The man’s scream ripped into her.
Not dead
, she told herself,
damned
. And if she didn’t find time to stop and think things through, she would be one of them soon enough. The woods across from the neighborhood greeted her with thorns, scratching her exposed skin and tugging against her clothes. She fought against the clinging vines and pain, following Austin’s broad back. The man moved like a tank, never slowing even through the thickest of the thorns. He just grunted and pushed forward.

She wondered how he kept going. She was the only one left for him to protect. When she died—she had no doubt Austin would outlast her—what would he do? With no one left to save, what would Austin have to live for?

Before she could dwell on the question, they emerged from the woods, standing above a strip of water-worn brown stones. Beyond the stones lay the stagnant yellow river. And beyond that, the opposite shore where a concrete staircase led up a steep slope to the back of a massive brick mill.

She could visualize the place in its heyday.
Acrid smoke rising from the ten smokestacks.
Laborers at work.
The river thick with pollution.
Maybe it had been a shoe factory.
A tannery.
A rubber plant.
Whatever the bright red remnant of the industrial revolution had been before, it now promised refuge from the killing fields of the city streets. And she wanted nothing more than to find some dark corner inside where she could get herself right with God.

But it seemed God had other plans.

The surface of the yellow river rippled. A pale body bobbed to the surface.
Then another.
Hundreds more followed.
The drowners.
She sat down as the sea of people sputtered and screamed for help, tearing at each other, fighting for lives they couldn’t possibly save.

Mia sat down on a large chunk of smooth granite and wept. The desperation in the drowning voices struck a nerve. “What did they do?”

Austin looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“To deserve this?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

“The only thing that matters is the living. And I mean those of us that are
really
living. Not
this
.” He pointed to the bodies as they sank back down beneath the water. “And right now, that’s you and me. If we can lose the killers in the city and get clear, maybe we can—”

Mia laughed. “You don’t really think we can survive this, do you? We’re going to die. Sooner or later, probably sooner, we will both be killed. The only question is whether or not we’ll come back, or stay dead.”

Austin shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe that. I can’t give up on living. I won’t let you die.”

“This isn’t living,” Mia said. “And even if we aren’t killed, we’re not going to last much longer. When was the last time you ate? Or drank? We have no supplies, and I’m not about to touch that yellow piss of a river, are you?”

Austin stared at the water as the last of the bodies drifted back down.

“We have a day—maybe two—before we get dehydrated. It’s time to face death, face God, and—”

“God,” Austin
said,
his voice full of disdain. But he said nothing else. Instead he stepped toward the water. “They’re back down.
Now or never.”

Mia contemplated staying. She still wasn’t ready for death, and thought for sure the dead would rise up and drag her down again. But the horde might find her here, and surrounded by drowning victims wasn’t exactly the best environment to sort out whether or not she deserved mercy. Because if she couldn’t forgive herself for her betrayal, how could Matt. How could God?

If there even was a God.
Maybe Austin was right? Maybe there were other survivors further north. If this was just the way the world had become and the dead simply ceased to exist, shouldn’t she fight to live, like him, instead of accepting death like some sort of religious martyr?

Austin slipped into the water, pushed out and began swimming. When he wasn’t instantly pulled under, Mia followed him into the ammonia scented liquid and began swimming, keenly aware that each downward kick of her feet struck a drowner’s floating limb and that sometime in the next minute or two, those limbs would start grappling for the surface, and anything, or anyone, on it.

47

It’s piss
, Mia thought.
I’m swimming in piss
!

Her water-logged clothes made swimming laborious, and her muscles burned from the effort. Each breath, tinged with the smell and taste of ammonia, combined with the water pressure around her chest made breathing hard. And then the yellow liquid sloshed into her mouth. She gagged, spitting and coughing. Treading water, her legs tangled down into the brown depths.

“Don’t stop!” Austin said from the far shore. He’d just pulled himself out of the water.

But Mia didn’t hear him. She was lost in disgust at first, and then her leg struck a body below her. Fingers grazed over her thigh. She shouted and kicked, but the wild motion only slowed her down. She struggled only ten feet from shore, but it could have been a mile as far as she was concerned.
I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to—I’m not ready!

“Help,” she sputtered, dipping under the water for a moment. She opened her eyes and saw heat lightning in the sky above, tinged yellow by the water. When she surfaced, her eyes burned and rainbow halos bloomed in her vision.

“Swim!” Austin urged.

She turned her body toward the shore and reached out to begin a stroke, but a small splash to her side drew her attention. A stark white naked body—man or woman she couldn’t tell—had surfaced just a few feet away.

A cry, like some kind of animal, rose from her chest and exploded out of her mouth. It repeated when a second body rose up. “I’m not ready!” she shouted.

She felt a tug on her leg, like a fish testing a lure. She kicked away, frantically reaching for the shore, moving slowly.

As more bodies rose to the surface, the first few to arrive began coughing and hacking, clearing their lungs of the foul liquid. The drowning would start soon, and she’d be caught in the middle of it.

She clawed for shore. A body rose up next to her.
A man.
He was large and sported a yellow-stained handlebar mustache. His dead, white eyes stared at her for a moment. He returned to life with a scream. He reached for her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling down, fighting to stay up.

Mia went under. Her mouth filled. She felt her gun fall out of her pants. It would be impossible to retrieve. Then, just as quickly as she’d been pulled under, she broke the surface. She saw flashes of Austin pounding the mustached man’s face and felt
herself
dragged to shore. The hard warm rocks on the shore felt more comfortable than any bed she’d ever slept on, and she longed to sleep and forget this horrible world. But Austin wouldn’t allow it.