The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Read online

  Our eyes talk for a long time. It makes a final sound and then it walks off into the Wood. When I can't hear it anymore, I continue our path toward the small buildings at the top of a long hill, in the place where the Sky meets the Ground.

  **

  We stay to the shadows, moving fast and quiet. It doesn't take long to travel the long hill to the top. By watching the way the Sun moves in the Sky, it's two hours and then some. Behind us the low path through the Mountain can all be seen, the entire Wood stretching past the house in the Tree, a tiny, brown speck now in the center of all green. I can't believe I can see something so small so far away but my new Eyes use the Sunlight well, and I should take the few, small gifts that come with the one, big curse.

  Far in the distance we came from: dust. Maybe a fight, a kill, something big moving in the dirt. Not enough minutes to think about it, have to keep going. Have to keep walking.

  We come up over the hill and onto the first street. It scares me how it's barely changed since I was small, all the houses with their shingles and garages and rooms I used to think were impossible to cover in silvery tape, but now I don't have to because the Air won.

  I haven't seen it in so long. The Town of my home.

  **

  My Feet push through the Bastard Water and the things I feel floating on top. Child follows behind. “I know you don't want this. I don't, either, but the streets are full of danger.”

  “Then why here?”

  She's right. Trying to find a safe place for Child, I've only found more danger. But this is what life is, it's ten places of danger to one of safety, and that makes the safety even more important. Even more alone.

  “A Lake lives at the center of this Town,” I tell her, “and at the center of the Lake is a piece of land with a great, big house on it. You can live in that house safe from the Munies, making Supplies of the slippery Beasts that swim in the Lake. That's the safest place I know.”

  I turn the Night Eyes louder. Either the Bastard Water or the things that live in it are going between my Toes, and I don't like the feeling. It's hard not to scream and run but I have Child to think about. The Munies won't be down here, not under the street where it's dark and the Ground is Water, but that doesn't mean it's safe. Beasts live here with tails and teeth, and winged ones that find the filth. We walk the path as straight as we can, turning only when we have to, and whenever I think ten minutes have passed I find a place to climb and check the Town to see if the houses are familiar.

  I have other reasons for traveling this way.

  Graham was right about the Change going quicker under the sun's push. I was only in it a little when I felt myself go vicious and attack that old Munie. It was worse than what I did to Tom because it wasn't just survival or protecting Child, it was something I liked. I felt good and I had to stop myself. The Sun was on me for two hours after that and it started to disappear some part of me, something important I've held for a long time. The blanket helped, but I had to get back to the dark before I was total gone. I had to slow the Change.

  I don't want to keep looking at the Town but I have to see where we're going. I see older Trees that have fallen onto cars and houses, but from their Deaths new Trees grow up, young and green and lifting where they can. This way when an old Tree falls it isn't so bad. I think more than many other things, this is what life is. If it is, I was wrong to leave that old Munie on the Ground. If we don't make Supplies out of their Deaths the Beasts will anyway.

  The Bastard Water is higher as we get closer, first at my Ankles then my Knees. When it's up to my Stomach Child starts to struggle so I let go of the blanket and pick her up and carry her, both our Night Eyes aimed forward, looking for the ladder and hoping we don't see eyes glowing back at us. When I check the houses again they look too familiar, like the pictures I see in my sleep, except the windows are gone and the shingles fallen.

  I know which part of the town we're under. Even though I shouldn't, I'm looking for my house.

  When I check again, I find it.

  Back down the ladder, Child's heart is loud in her chest as she holds to the wall and moves a Water shape with her finger. It's only a shoe, but her shoulder still twitches when I touch it.

  “Find lake?”

  I tell her, not yet.

  **

  The metal bones of the swings still stand behind the house, but the seats have come off from the pull of time. With a kick the chains make their sound down in the Grass, the Grass so tall without the loud machine or my father to push it. The Wood fence around it has fallen, which is good because we got in where it fell, but we can see the street from the Grass, dangerous because if we can see the street the street can see us.

  Munie sounds come from the Town. Running and hunting sounds.

  “After my father closed the door,” I say, “I went to my bed, trying to sleep.”

  **

  I tried to pretend everything was okay but my Lip was changing the color of the pillow. I didn't know what to do, so I pretended my mother was there. I kept her in the middle of my vision until I could see her in front of me and hear her voice in my Head.

  Go to the bathroom, she said. Turn on the cold water and clean the cut. So that's what I did. When she told me to put a towel in the cold Water and hold it to the Lip, I did that, too. After some minutes I took the towel away and the Blood was gone. My mother was right, like she always was.

  My father opened the door a long time later, after I put the towel and the Stuffed Beast inside the pillow and hid them under my bed. He said he was sorry but there were things he had to do to stay home with me while my mother was away. If he didn't do them, he said, the house wouldn't have a roof and the kitchen wouldn't have Supplies. I didn't understand this, and he left without seeing my Lip.

  The days after that passed in my room with the door and the windows shut, not in the Grass or on the swings. The Sun was too loud and it hurt my Eyes. I only came out to see my mother's face on the Vision Screen and ask her when she was coming back. I took Supplies to my room and ate them in quiet and slept on the bed with the pillow underneath.

  One Day, when the Sun woke, I heard the voice of my mother. I wasn't sure if it was in the house or in my Head until I heard the door open and there was her face, not on the Vision Screen but right in my room. She was one week, five days early, and as her arms went around me she said how she couldn't wait anymore to see me and oh my God, I felt so small and skinny. My father smiled from the hallway and I was happy.

  But then my mother's eyes changed. I could see she was looking at my Mouth. She asked me what the line was but I didn't say, and she asked my father but he didn't know. She asked me again but she was angry now, and I didn't want her angry I just wanted her home, so I went to my bed and pulled the pillow across the floor and I told her what happened.

  They left me alone, but I heard the shouting. I heard my father say he was sorry. I heard my mother say his head was somewhere else and not at the house and if he loved that place so much his body should go there, too. The house went quiet after that. In the days that followed it was only me and my mother, which I liked sometimes, but some nights she sat by herself in her room and didn't say many things, and I didn't like that.

  I didn't go on the swings again that Summer. I knew they were danger, they hurt my Lip and they hurt my father and they hurt my mother. But it was the jump from them that did those things, the wrong jump, not just the swings that brought the Blood and made my mother quiet. I knew that when I looked at them. I know it now, because that's what life is. It's doing the wrong thing, and watching the World fall.

  **

  It's time to go inside. We leave the swings, the place I went so high in the Air I left my family behind.

  The door isn't locked, the house like no years have passed, like my mother could be in the other room putting away Supplies. My father could be sitting in the important room, mad that someone put dust on everything. But I look in the kitchen and in the room and they're not the
re.

  Too many pictures come to my Eyes to see any of them clearly, parts and pieces that impact and become one. Playing, laughing, crying, talking to my mother as I leave for school. Watching rain through the window. The pictures come and leave until Child touches my Leg, and when they shatter from my Eyes I see how dirty the house really is.

  “I didn't know it was my last Day when we left here,” I tell her. “Then the Change came, and it came so quick I couldn't come back. One time I tried to but I couldn't make it. I really tried but there was too much danger in the low part of the Mountain.”

  Her big eyes look up at me.

  “It's okay. I'm okay.” I realize I'm touching her face and pull my Hand away.

  “Hear metal,” she says.

  “You did? From where?”

  A voice across the room says, “I think I can answer that.”

  Graham is in the front door, aiming a gun at us. His face is serious under his mask. “I would say it's the metal wrapped around my Humvee, but if I had a second guess...” He pulls a chain and brings something else into the room- the tracker Munie, thin and dirty with the chain around his neck and a kind of cage on his mouth to keep his bite in. His hands have thick gloves with silvery tape wrapped around the wrists to hold them on. He drags his muddy legs over my mother's floor and makes a sound like laughing, or choking.

  Graham says, “I think he's excited, but you would know better than me at this point. I promised it a reward if it did a good job tracking you down.”

  “Good-good-good-good-good,” the Munie croaks.

  “You can smell them, can't you? The pheromones? You can do all kinds of things now. The virus is working quicker on you than I thought, which is why I underestimated you. You were even clever enough to cut through the sewers to throw off the scent trail. Nice moves, but in the end they were useless.”

  “It took you a long time to track us.”

  He pushes his teeth together. “I was...delayed. Some people don't approve of how I do things, but part of being a leader is encouraging healthy debate.”

  “You don't believe your own words. I don't believe them, either.”

  “It's hurtful that you think I've done anything but tell the truth. Why would you say I'm lying?”

  “I know your Munie's wants, but I know yours, too. To get what you want you would say anything.”

  Graham laughs. “It's too bad I only have room to keep one of you. I enjoy the way your mind works, even if it is rotting out from under you. You're right, it wasn't a debate, it was a trial. My own people put me on trial. And you know what? I hated it. I hate every second I waste explaining myself.”

  He pulls the chain to make the tracker Munie still his moves. Then he pushes his mask close and speaks into its face cage.

  “Will you promise not to eat me?” The Munie keeps his eyes on me, never looks away even with Graham so close. “Once they catch a scent they don't see anything else. You have to admire that level of stubbornness. It's unfortunate that such a good trait is wasted on such a disgusting creature.” He unties the chain and removes the face cage. “Now if you don't mind, a trade.”

  The Munie makes the choking sound again as it moves closer. I put my Body lower and move between him and Child, telling her to stay behind me. Graham moves the part of the gun that makes it ready to fire.

  “I thought you understood. The only way the young one lives is by coming with me, any other way ends with it dead. Give it to me, and at least I can give it a safe place to live. It'll have its own room and it'll be fed and protected. Can you give it that same guarantee out here?”

  “I've seen your room.”

  “Inside a very safe mountain, if you remember. Tell me you can honestly say that either of you will be alive a year from now.”

  I shake my head.

  “If you really cared you would give it over to me and let me leave. I could just kill you and take it, of course, but we both know it'll fight me, and I'll end up shooting it. That's why I need you to make it listen.”

  Child shakes her head at me. I can't stand the picture of her in Graham's room, with the rotten Supplies around her, but she might not survive at all outside of it.

  I can stand that picture even less. So I nod.

  “Good. What's left of your mind had made the right choice. Now tell it to come here.” He points at the floor next to his foot. I tell her, but she shouts and hides behind the couch, digging her nails in.

  “He's right,” I tell her, “I can't make you safe, not like he can.”

  “No want.”

  “Yes you do, you want to pass this day and the day after. With me is only the Death.” I move closer to her. “I hurt your foot, didn't I? I put you in the cold Water and dropped you from the window? I got you hunted by Real People, and Beast after Beast, and I couldn't stop any of it.”

  “Can stop.”

  “I can't, Child. I can't. But he can.”

  She looks at Graham, then back to me. Her nails soften on the couch.

  “Go with him. I promise I'll be safe.”

  After a few seconds she moves to him, slowly, stopping some feet away. He goes to her and grabs her arm too strong, and I lunge.

  “No, no, no, you took the deal. It's my property now, to handle as I want. The same goes for your new boyfriend.” Graham whistles at the tracker Munie. He tears the gloves off with his teeth and moves toward me. Spit falls from his mouth.

  Graham says, “See that? They can be house-trained.”

  The Munie crawls to me and I want to run, to fight, but for Child I still my Body and let him sniff me with his eyes wide and his mouth full of rot. And his smell, so much want and sick, so many broken pictures in those wide eyes and laughing tongue. Who knows how many Days he's passed in that dirty room, how many Nights he's been kicked and pushed to hunt for Supplies he can't have. I feel sad for him, but I feel more sad for Child because this is what life is for her now.

  This is the final thing I've done to her.

  The Munie moves in to lick my Cheek, but an explosion sounds through the house. Right in front of me the Munie's face opens and goes to Blood and his body falls away into the Death.

  I don't understand what's happened. But then, across the room, I see the back door is open, and in it a man in a mask with dark hair and dark skin like Graham, and he has a gun in his hand that breathes smoke.

  Graham aims his gun. When he sees the man, his face changes to a way I haven't seen it.

  “Terence?”

  The man steps into the room. “Hello, brother. It's been a while.”

  **

  Terence has passed more years than Graham, harder years. The skin under his eyes is soft and fallen in, and a beard has taken his face the way Moss takes the Trees when the Clouds come and the Rain doesn't stop for months.

  “Look at you, Graham, still sticking your thumb in every pie that comes your way. When do you plan on growing up, when you're dead?”

  “This isn't your business.”

  “I'm not sure what sort of evil you're getting up to in here, but you need to get your ass on that truck you rode in on and ride the hell back out. And I would do it before the others get here.”

  Graham moves around the room in long, slow steps, leaving Child crouched near the door looking at me for what to do. Without words I tell her to be quiet, still herself until I can figure something out.

  “So this is where the misfits ended up? You've been in town this whole time?”

  “There's nothing misfit about us. We were betrayed.”

  “I always pictured you far off, maybe someplace cold like you never shut up about. If I'd known you were less than fifty miles away this whole time? Shit, I might have made this trip months ago to finish the job.”

  Terence lowers the gun. “I'm so sorry I let you become this. If Mama could see the man you are now, it would kill her.”

  “She's dead anyway.”

  “I remember who was responsible for that.”

  “I di
dn't see you going back for her. Your failed leadership let Mama down, not mine.” He pushes his finger to Terence's chest. “You, brother. You're the one who killed her.”

  Terence hits Graham. They grab each other and start to struggle, and with their eyes no longer on us I crawl over the Munie's body and go to Child, grab her arm and take her to the door.

  Outside the Sky is between Day and Night, a time when Real People and Munies have always mixed. A time when the Death runs through the World the most, because Real People and Munies don't go together, not without Blood and Death and screaming.

  The two men fight through the living room, impact the wall and fall over the table with shouts. Their guns are on the floor but they don't notice them, don't look at them because their anger is past guns. They want to tear each other apart from the years they've given each other. I know Graham is bad and cruel, but I don't feel this from Terence.

  The outside Air is on my face, the house Air on my back.

  “Need go,” Child pleads. “People danger.”

  “I think he needs our help.”

  She looks back at them rolling on the floor. Graham gets on top of Terence, pulls the man's mask off and impacts Terence's face with his fist. Then again. Terence tries to stop it but Graham does it again.

  Child looks back up at me. After a second, she nods. It surprises me to see her do this, to care about a Real Person, but Child surprises me a lot.

  I take Graham's gun from under the table and aim it at his face. Child goes behind him, grabs him around the neck and squeezes her nails into his throat, stopping his moves.