The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 9

  “Fine. You can tell the others I have this under control.”

  “You think you do, and there's a big, damn difference. Only small minds think they can control things. It's because of small minds that the world fell apart in the first place, and I refuse to let what's left of it be ruined.”

  “I'm the leadership here, not you. The rules-”

  “The rules say it killed Tom so you kill it. What are you waiting for? Get on with it. Kill it, but do it outside.”

  “You really don't think I have a plan, do you? Did the others tell you there's another monster running around outside?”

  “I heard you've been unable to find it.”

  “It's a female. A young one.”

  She's quiet. “You really think you can catch it?”

  He speaks lower. “Not without this one's help. If I can gain its trust I can use it to lure the younger one in. I was making progress until you came in.”

  “Well the others didn't know that, and neither did I. You could tell us these things, you know, fill us in on what you're planning.”

  “And I do. When there's time.”

  “Okay. But after you catch the young one, you kill this one.”

  “It killed Tom, didn't it?”

  “That's right. It killed Tom.”

  **

  The thin plastic from his pocket goes into the wall beneath one of the screens, in a place where it doesn't look like it goes. But it must, because a part of the wall the size of my Hand opens to show a tiny, round hole, and Graham pushes a strange, metal pin in. When he takes it out, a bigger piece of the wall moves out of the way to show a passage. It's tall enough to walk into, but I don't want to.

  “Move.” Graham pushes me into the tight space where breathing is faster and my Hands find the walls. Soon we're at another door, the most hidden door I've seen.

  “I stood in that control room every day for years, yet I only found this door a few months ago. It was a hiding spot for the senior officer in case the base was attacked. It's sound-proof, water-proof. It even has its own air. The monsters never got in, ironic considering what we use it for now.”

  He uses the metal pin again and puts it back in his pocket. The door opens, and the first thing that comes out is the smell. The room is complete dark but I know there's a Munie inside, male, not big and not healthy. It's been in the dark a long time, and so has the rotten meat at his feet. He has a lonely, dangerous feel to him, a weak fear that can change quickly.

  Graham turns on the Light and shows him to me. The chain around his ankle goes loud when he scurries.

  “Still trying to run.” Graham kicks meat across the filthy floor at him. The Munie hisses from the corner and it makes Graham smile.

  I take my Eyes from the Munie. “What is this?”

  “Your favorite question. This is our tracker, we use it to find food. What I told you before was true, the base came with ten years of food, but for half the amount of people. We're almost out, and we've been forced to scavenge for what we need in the city and the towns close by. It's been getting harder lately, which is where the tracker comes in.”

  The Munie snaps his teeth at Graham. He stares at me with a kind of hunger and opens his stinking mouth at me to croak one word again and again: want.

  “Why did you show me this?”

  You know why.

  “I thought that would have been obvious to someone who survived as long as you did, but the virus is taking over your mind. You've learned a few things about the monsters by now, no?”

  I nod. In the ceiling there's a handle with words around it.

  “From what you've seen, which are the better hunters, males or females?”

  “Female.”

  “Good. And tell me, what's even better than a female? What has the best senses of all the dirty, little monsters?”

  The young ones.

  “I can already see you figuring this out. Believe me, we've tried capturing a young one ourselves and we couldn't. They're slippery when they're small. They can see and smell farther and their minds are sharper. We need that young one. So here's my offer: help me, and you can go free. I can tell you don't like me, but I'm a man of my word.”

  Ten minutes ago he promised the Rachel woman he'd kill you. Now he promises you he won't. Whatever happens, he isn't a man of his word.

  “Yes,” I say, “I'll help.”

  **

  Cruz sits in the glass room. He stands when he sees us, watches Graham open a locker to take out a Suit.

  “What's up, jefe'? Trial's over?”

  “There won't be any trial.”

  His eyebrows drop. “Tom's dead, what do you mean there ain't gonna be a trial?”

  “This one's helping us get the other, which is more valuable to us than revenge.” He steps into the Suit and pulls it up around him.

  “Are you serious? You're gonna let Tom's killer walk outta here cuz you need its help?”

  “If I have to.”

  When my Back is to them I hear Graham drag the side of his hand across his neck. It's a picture I know, a signal from one Real Person to another when they mean to talk about giving the Death without saying it. The sound of his hand is rough on the hairs under his jaw and from the way the Air moves.

  I can see a man without seeing him. This is how serious the Change is.

  Cruz says, “You want company?”

  “I have to do this alone for it to work. Besides, your size fifteens will scare it off in ten seconds flat.”

  “Oh c'mon, the ladies like big feet.”

  “This is no lady.”

  Graham puts the Mask on as the Second Door opens. I hope not to see the same room but that's what's there, the room between the two doors with the Water in the walls and the grate in the Floor for taking it back. The Suit zips and the door shuts behind us and my Heart shuts, too, in my Chest. The room seals with a boom and then a fsst like breath and with a click the red light is back.

  Wait for your time.

  Graham's face is purple behind the Mask. “There's one thing about you that doesn't sit right with me.”

  In my Head I ask the God where Child is, but there's no answer.

  “Why did you come here? Why go through the trouble of crossing the moat, climbing the fence and breaking into the guard booth of a military base?”

  “You know what I came for.”

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don't.”

  The holes in the wall stare at me. I stare back.

  “Ingenious, isn't it? Retrofitted after the virus hit. Takes a little longer to come and go but it's worth it. Didn't do the former tenants much good. Now answer the question.”

  “I came for the Night Eyes so we could move in the Dark. It's safe away from the Sun, that's the best time to move.”

  He touches the red button. The grate shakes under my Feet.

  “And you just knew these night eyes would be waiting for you.”

  Water jumps from the walls. I duck, crouch low, hold my Knees to the Ground and feel the Water run over me. I hate it, hate the Water. It might as well be Fire. I want to cover my Face with my Hands but they're still tied with the metal rings, so I push it into my Legs instead. Even with my Face covered up the sound is loud and angry as all the World.

  Graham's Mask is close to my Ear now. “A man named Terence found this place. Him and his team left most of our supplies in the guard booth before they came back to our camp to gather us up. But by the time we got here, someone had taken it all. Strange thing was, they left everything inside the base untouched, as if they never knew it was here.”

  Three minutes.

  “Losing everything we owned was Terence's first major fuck-up. They loved him before that, looked at him as their savior while I worked in the shadows. But when people saw those crates missing? Even with finding the base, the group wasn't too happy with him after that. People had fought for those things. Loved ones had died, and even more died trying to replace them. The doubt was planted in them. All I h
ad to do was water it slowly over the years.”

  Two minutes.

  “I deserve to be leader, not Terence. He was too easy on these people, too nice to make the hard choices. Under his watch we'd all be dead in a few years. Dead by democracy. Voting on every, little, fucking point as the monsters picked us off one at a time. I refuse to let that happen. To let myself be a victim of patience and understanding and all the things that get in the way of real progress and real living. So I forced him out. Him and the ones who got too attached to let him walk away.”

  He takes the metal rings away from my Wrists. My Hands are free again.

  “And it all started with you. The one who crept in and stole what Terence left behind. I would thank you, if I thought you could appreciate a thing like thanks anymore.”

  One minute.

  “That's how you stayed alive. You holed up in the woods with a few years of our supplies, stayed low-key to avoid the monsters. You never would have lasted without what you took from us.”

  “I lasted before.”

  “By pure chance, like Terence. The idiots hang onto all the luck.”

  The Water finally stops. I take the Mask off and stand to face Graham.

  He aims the Gun at my Mouth. “You still have any of those supplies left?” I shake my head. “That's too bad, but they did their job. It's funny how I'm thanking you for what you did for our group, but we did just as much to help you.”

  The first door opens behind me, and with it the light shouts from red to immediate bright. The feeling is a dizzy one.

  Use it before it fades. Do it now.

  I run at him and scream, watch his face slip to surprise so serious the room explodes around us. My Hands grab his chest and push him into the wall, knock the Gun from his hand and throw it away then grip the Mask where it meets the Suit and rip the two apart. The Suit sighs with breath and his eyes with white, nothing between our faces now.

  I try to say something but it comes out different.

  More of a croak.

  His teeth show and his neck is rope as he pushes from the wall. I fall back with his foot behind my leg and the grate shouts metal against my Back and Water bounces as I feel the Air forced out of me.

  “That was stupid.” He spits down on my Face. The white light is over him as his chest rises and falls. “I'm willing to forget that for now, but there are consequences for your actions.” As he steps to my left to get the Mask, I see how shiny his boots are with Bastard Water.

  I grab the boot and pull. He slips and falls to the grate next to me, and in a second I'm on top, holding him down. As he struggles under me I bring my Lips to him and let them touch his. Let our breaths mix.

  He pushes me off. I cross the room and slip my Body between the wall and the First Door. The Voice of the Outside breathes across my back, making the Skin cool.

  “What was that for,” he shouts, wiping his face.

  “Time.”

  The skin on his face is loose. “I'm infected.” He looks from me to his Gun to the red button as I shake my head.

  “Three minutes in. Three minutes out. That's six minutes.” I leave enough room for him to see my Eyes.

  “Make them count. They're the last you get.” I hear an anger in his voice that wasn't there before, hidden in his words. The Beasts read each other's sounds this way, and I'm not much different from them now.

  The door shuts and locks the way I watched and then I'm left alone in the black. Using the pictures in my Head I run through the dark tunnel, impacting with cars two, three, four times, my Legs hurting and my Arm, too.

  The slightest Light is ahead. Finally I pass through the Great Mouth and stand under the Sky and feel the Voice of the Outside on my Face. The Moon used to be a friend but now we don't talk. It still gives me Light, but not the way friends do.

  Go past the guard's booth. Go to the fence. Find the night eyes and the silvery tape, take them and disappear.

  The things I dropped are still where I left them. I take the Silvery Tape and push it inside the Suit, then one of the Night Eyes. When I pick up the second Night Eyes the World flips like a Sea Beast and gets me dizzy, so much my Body tries to push the dizzy out of my Mouth but there's nothing inside so only the sound streams over my Tongue and into the Grass like Water from the Mountain.

  My Arms hold me up. The left one is red, starting with a hole in the Suit between my Shoulder and Elbow and going down to the Ground. I touch it and pain fills me.

  When I ran at Graham in the room between the doors, I heard it explode around me. It wasn't the room, it was Graham pulling the trigger and the gun shouting a bullet and the bullet finding its way into my Arm and out the other side.

  This is what I do about the hole in my arm: I run.

  **

  The Wood takes me in like a bed. Even though the Trees hid me for all those years and months, they never spoke to me like they do now. I hear their language and the language of the Beasts that crouch in their branches and leaves, their voices telling me distance and danger in ways no Vision Screen can. They help me shake off the unnatural feel of metal and doors so I can get to the serious work of calling for Child.

  Pictures shake in my Head of my mother's voice. In them I crouch under a circle made of clothes and hear my giggle because she can't find me no matter how many times she calls my old name. She repeats and repeats but I pull further into the empty legs, and for some reason I'm happy that not finding me is making her breathe faster.

  I hope Child doesn't laugh like that.

  “Child!” I shout into the Night. “Child!” hoping to find her before the six minutes run out. I go toward the City because that's the way that pulls me, and so that's the way that pulls her. The Fire of the virus is inside me now. I have to listen to it.

  “Child!”

  Only Winged Beasts come back.

  “Child!”

  The Voice of the Outside blowing through the Suit.

  Then, on a Tree like the others, I see a color I've never seen before. I can't explain it except that the color was put there by my Nose and not my Eyes, that when I read it I have to read it differently.

  Then I understand. The color is Child. Her scent.

  From Tree to Tree I follow the color of her scent, through Bushes and over Rocks, while other colors mix with it on and off, scents of the Real People looking for her, scents of Beasts who look to make Supplies of each other. I keep her color at the center and follow it and follow it until it disappears under a Tree laying on the Ground where the roots have left a great, big hole in the Ground covered by dry leaves and dirt. My Fingers dig here, rip up the roots and leaves and throw them away.

  I dig until my Nails impact something soft.

  Something that hisses.

  My Stomach pushed to the World, I pull up against the roots and wrestle the Beast from the Ground. The hairy roots rip out of my way. Through the dirt Child's face comes up, hissing at danger she can't see. I fall onto my Back with her attacking me, but not scared because this is what she should be doing to danger. She should attack it, not let it pull her from her nest in the Night. That's what life is. Attacking, not letting.

  Her teeth are small and wet in the Moon.

  “Your face is very serious,” I say.

  **

  Child looks up at me as I stalk through the Wood, dirty hair stuck to her head and stick arms dangling beneath. She has the same face as when I watch the Vision Screens, like not sleeping but still having dreams that can't be trusted.

  “You? Mother?”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Mother face?” She squints up without watching where she walks. I know she won't stop this so I reach into the Suit and pull out the Night Eyes and put them on over her head. When they're in the right place I tell her to stay quiet and I turn them on. She jumps, but then she understands, and her face is wide and open. My Night Eyes go on, too, to join her in seeing, to join her in being open to the Night and the things that live in it.

  We
cut through the Wood with the scent of Real People in our Noses. Most of it is faded away, so we decide without saying it that only one Real Person is left out here and the rest are back at the base. We follow this trail until its joined by a stronger smell, and then we see the Real Person standing behind a bush with his pants loose around his hips, marking a Tree brightly.

  I almost leave, but then I have a thought.

  Close enough to touch his back I wait for him to finish marking and then, when he turns toward me, I swipe at the neck of his mask to cut it open. As the Air breathes out the man steps backward and falls into his own puddle, trying to put his hand into the throat to cover the hole.

  “Shitshitshit,” he says, his other hand behind his back where the belt is. He's looking for something. He has a beard that goes around his empty mouth but doesn't connect to his ears, and he wears glasses over his yellow eyes.

  “Is that your name?” The Night Eyes pushed at him like the Shelled Slime Beasts.

  “Wha-what?”

  “Is your name Shit?”

  “No that ain't my name. What do you want my name for, to know who you're rippin' to shreds?”

  I show him his Gun. He says, “Shit.”

  “We're leaving now. You're not allowed to give us the Death because your Graham needs us.”

  He runs his tongue over his lips, wetting the beard. “Still, I'd really like my gun back.”

  I throw it into a Tree hole to my Side and it falls down deep.

  “That was real stupid, girlie. I got more where that came from, but that happened to be my favorite. It's gonna be a real pain in the ass to fish it outta there.

  “Yes.”

  “If you're leavin' then leave, but the next time I see you I'm gonna make you sorry 'bout that.”

  Time is passing, even without the Watch.

  “Your Graham won't find us. We'll disappear into the City and he'll die looking in all the buildings for us.”