by Matt Ritter
“I have to get going now,” Will said, stuffing the handgun back into his belt.
“I’ll go with you.”
Will looked at him and scoffed. “No, you won’t.”
“Come on. I have nothing here. I have nowhere else to go. More UP will come, you said it yourself, and I’ll be shipped off to the border zone, or worse.” Zach paused and looked down at his leg. “My limp is getting better. I can help you get to Gonzales.”
“Look, kid, I understand. I do. But there are people after me. It’s dangerous where I’m headed.”
“I know the old farm roads and fields between here and Greenfield.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Collected several years ago.” Zach looked at the ground and bit on his lip. “We haven’t heard from them since.”
Will witnessed the woman coax the confused old man back inside the house. Hunger pulled on the pit of his stomach, and he glanced back at the open barn doors where he'd left the brown bag with the remaining bread.
He looked into the distance, considering his options.
After he didn’t reply, Zach whispered, “I can walk in the rain.”
Will took a step back away from the boy and looked him up and down in surprise.
“What did you say?” Will asked.
“You heard me,” Zach whispered.
“How do you know?”
“It doesn’t make me sick. Never has.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“My parents knew.”
Will looked at the boy for a long time as if he were studying an animal in the zoo. He’d heard rumors of such people but had never met one and doubted if it were true. The screen door slammed, and the old woman came out onto the porch.
“Alright,” Will said after a long pause. “Pack a bag, and don’t bring a bunch of unnecessary stuff. Something you can walk with all day. One pack, with food and water in it. And bring a pack for me. We have ten minutes.”
“Thank you,” Zach said as he rushed past the old woman into the house to pack.
Will picked up the soldiers’ weapons from the porch.
“You watch over him,” the old woman said.
“I can’t promise he’ll be safe,” Will said while hoisting the rifle over his shoulder. “It’s dangerous where we’re headed.”
The old woman held onto Will’s forearm and looked up at him. “You watch after him,” she repeated.
Will nodded.
They were interrupted by a shout from one of the soldiers. “Hey, are you just going to leave us out here?” he yelled, craning his neck to look at Will and the old woman.
“Do you want me to take care of them?” Will asked.
“No, I can handle it. You two need to get going.”
“Leave them there a couple of hours after we’ve gone before doing anything,” Will said.
“I might just leave them out in the rain.”
“Your choice.”
The old woman studied Will, then with a smile and nod said, “Alright then, I’ll help him pack some food.”
Will went through the jeep and collected what ammunition he could. Zach returned with a pack for Will and another one already loaded on his back.
As Zach said his goodbyes on the porch, the clouds were rolling away. Will could feel the heat of the day rising. Behind the farmhouse, steam rose in the fields where the sun warmed the soggy earth. Will loaded the ammunition into his pack and took a bite of the stale bread he recovered from the floor of the barn. As he chewed, the pain in his cheek shot through him and ran down his neck. He gently touched the wound, and his fingertips came away wet with blood.
He thought about his daughter, alone in Gonzales, wondering where he was. His wife’s pale face covered by sand flashed across his mind. Anger enveloped him like a disease. Both hands were clenched into tight fists and his fingernails bit into his palms.
CHAPTER THREE
During the night, the rain had come in waves, pulsing in a loud and deadly rhythm on the rooftops. Muddy water rose in the lower Salinas and ran over the sand bight through the low-lying salt marshes and into the cold Pacific, forming a brown mushroom cloud. Beyond the dirty billow, beyond the slow rotation of an ancient raft of plastic, in what was once called the Monterey Bay, dolphins gathered to wait for the upwelling, with no human eye to witness their healthy numbers nor human aggression to disturb their quiet community.
Ben Harrison awoke cold and alone in the predawn darkness. He had dreamed of a deep and abiding sickness that came into him in every breath and a heat in his throat that couldn’t be coughed out. Lying awake, he listened to the rain on the window and wondered if it was changing. What would become of the Valley? What had become of the Valley in which he once believed so deeply?
The sun was rising when Ben closed the door of his apartment and walked toward the elevator. Halfway down the hallway, he stopped to peer up at a flickering fluorescent bulb. Five such lights had gone out in the last year and were never replaced. The back of his neck grew tight as he continued to stare into the blinking uncertain light, then it went out, and that small stretch of hallway was left dim. Ben looked up and down the hallway, wondering how many lights would go before someone required action.
He had a natural inclination toward scientific thought and wanted to get a stepladder, deactivate one light each day, and record the point at which any of his neighbors complained. Only through malfunction did the objects of the world expose their true nature. Would the world fall apart one light at a time, and what was it like to preside over a subtle slip into darkness?
Fourteen floors down, the elevator door opened to the cold, smoky light of the foyer where a young man stood waiting.
“Good morning, Minister,” he said, standing straight and pulling on his light blue uniform as Ben exited the elevator. The guard looked like a boy barely out of his teen years. Although Ben was only in his mid-thirties, he often felt old, as the UP guards and soldiers got younger and younger.
“Good morning,” Ben repeated.
“I’ve been advised to take you on a different route to the laboratory this morning.”
“Why is that?”
“Last night, before the rain began, there were reports of resistance activity in the Boranda sector.”
Ben nodded.
“Okay, hold here,” said the guard, holding out his hand.
While Ben waited, the guard walked out the glass doors into a covered parking area. He waved to an awaiting black vehicle. The car pulled forward, and the guard opened the back door and motioned to Ben. Once Ben was inside, the guard slammed the door and got into the front passenger seat.
“Good morning, Minister Harrison,” said the driver as the car rolled out of the covered entrance and down an empty street.
“Good morning. It’s been a few weeks.”
“Well, I’ve had a bunch of assignments for the Manager. Glad to be back on my regular duty. How are you, sir?”
“Fine.” Ben wondered how much truth the driver wanted to hear. “Things could be better with our efforts to fix the rain.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” said the driver as he downshifted loudly and sped through a large puddle. “As you know, we can’t go through the Boranda, so the drive will be longer than we’d like.”
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes, tops,” said the driver.
“What’s the forecast?”
“Supposed to be dry for the entire morning. Doesn’t look like it though,” the driver said, leaning his head down near the steering wheel and peering up into the looming clouds.
“Ahead on the right,” said the guard.
“I see it,” said the driver. He slowed and came around the only other car on the street, a blue sedan stopped in the middle of the lane.
“Give it plenty of room,” said the guard.
In the driver’s seat of the car, a man sat slumped over the wheel as if he were asleep.
“K
eep moving,” the guard said as the driver slowed the car. “We’re not stopping.”
Ben shifted in his seat, struggling to see the man through the fogged window as they slowly rolled by.
“Stop the car,” he yelled.
“Sir, we were told to not stop for any reason,” the guard said, turning around to face Ben in the back seat.
“I don't care what you were told. That man could be in trouble.”
“Sir, it could rain any minute,” the driver said, studying the sky.
“Pull over right here,” Ben commanded.
The guard and driver looked at each other. “Alright, let me get out first,” the guard said.
The driver stopped the car, and the young guard jumped out with his rifle.
“I have a bad feeling about this, sir,” said the driver. “I’ll keep the car running.”
As Ben stepped out of the back seat, the smell of sulfur in the air was overwhelming. The guard had drawn his weapon and stood away from the car, frantically scanning the edge of the road and the buildings beyond with his rifle.
Ben approached the blue sedan cautiously from the front. The reflection of the gray sky on the windshield made it difficult to see the driver’s seat. As he came around the side, he could see that the driver was still buckled in his seat. His mouth and eyes were wide open. Ben knocked on the window. No response. His heart raced as he opened the driver’s door. Nothing inside the car moved.
“Hurry, sir,” the guard yelled, looking up at the sky.
Ben picked up the man’s hand to check for a pulse, but it was stiff and cold to the touch. He reached across, unbuckled his seatbelt, and pushed him forward onto the steering wheel. With the dead man slumped forward, Ben reached for his wallet in his back pocket.
The smell of sulfur intensified, and Ben felt light-headed. His throat burned with every breath.
“Sir, we need to get back into our car,” the guard yelled in a cracked voice.
Ben took short quick breaths and scanned the rest of the sedan. The interior was empty except for a briefcase that sat on the back seat behind the dead driver. Ben put the wallet into his jacket pocket and reached into the back seat for the briefcase. He closed the driver’s door again and headed back toward the guard.
“Quickly, get inside,” said the guard, holding the back door open for Ben.
The doors slammed, and the driver sped forward. Inside the car, the air felt drier, and Ben’s breath came more easily. The burning in his throat subsided.
“How do you explain that?” Ben asked as he looked through the man’s wallet.
“Not sure, Minister.”
“The car should have protected him from the rain.”
The driver looked at the guard, who looked back at him. Neither man answered.
“He was dry,” Ben said.
Both the driver and the guard looked forward, waiting for the other to speak.
“What are you not telling me?” Ben asked.
“Sir, we’ve heard rumors of people dying even when dry.”
“Impossible,” Ben protested.
“I don’t know, sir. You’re the expert. Just letting you know that rumors have circulated.”
Ben looked at the Valley Administration identification card in the wallet. “That man worked for the Administration. You’re saying he could have died in the rain while driving home last night?”
The driver shrugged. The guard watched the road ahead in silence.
Ben continued, “That man’s family if he has one, needs to know what happened. Someone needs to come back to recover the body.”
“We’ll make sure someone is sent out, sir.”
Ben sat back in his seat, trying to collect his thoughts. He had feared this as a possibility with the rain but didn’t know how it would come. He watched the mud-stained bases of tall buildings pass. Weak, dispersed light showed on their east-facing facades while black clouds accumulated above them.
They entered the city center. Tall buildings loomed above, many of which looked abandoned, but none were so. The streets were lined with hastily-built sidewalk covers, little tunnels of corrugated tin sheeting on wooden scaffolding. The street stretched out in front of them, rutted, pocked, and deserted. It had been years since anyone outside the Administration operated an automobile.
The first droplets of rain hit the windshield.
“This was supposed to hold off for another hour,” said the guard. “How far out are we?”
“Five minutes. Four if I speed.”
“Well, pick it up then.”
“Sir, it’s beginning to rain, and we’ve been told to take every precaution.” The guard reached under the seat and retrieved a black gas mask. “Can you please put this on until we arrive, or the rain stops?”
Ben took the black rubber mask and looked at it. “What is this? This won’t help.”
“Here it comes,” said the driver, gripping the wheel tightly.
They drove into a wall of rain, and it pounded the windshield of the car.
“Please, Minister. We’ve been asked to have you wear the mask if the rain started. Your cooperation is important.”
Ben smelled the latex of the mask, fine white powder on black rubber, as he took his glasses off and set them on his lap. He pulled the gas mask over his head and pushed it tight against his face by holding the filter port. He inhaled through his nose and the rubber suctioned onto his cheeks.
The driver sped through the open streets, then slowed as he approached the guard tower and gate of the Valley Administration Building.
“Hurry up. Open it,” the driver said under his breath.
“A gas mask,” Ben said ten minutes later, standing in his lab. He was speaking to a younger man in a white lab coat.
“How did they think that would help?”
“They told me that people are dying in the rain in closed cars.” As he said the words Ben felt a sickening nervousness in his stomach.
“Impossible.”
“We found an Administration technician dead in his car. Stopped right in the middle of the lane, still buckled in.”
Ben stared out the lab window and shivered. Stories below, rain drilled down onto the pavement. A constellation of noxious water droplets was mapped out on the lab’s windowpanes, half-spheres each with a halo of condensation around them.
“Do you think it could be volatilized into the air?” Ben asked.
“I don’t see how, but I suppose anything is possible now.”
Ben shook his head. “What have we done?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Will and Zach crossed the mud causeway above soggy fields of black earth. Will followed Zach and watched him limp with the UP rifle tied to his pack.
The boy stopped and looked up. “It’ll be getting dark soon and the rain will start. We need to find shelter.” He turned around to face Will.
“Let’s keep moving. We can walk in the dark.” Will motioned ahead of them to push on.
“Aren’t you afraid of the rain coming?”
“I am. More afraid of not making it to Gonzales soon, though.”
“The farther downvalley we get, the worse the rains will become.”
“I know.”
The afternoon sun went down, and the smooth trunks of eucalyptus trees edging the fields turned the color of steel. They walked on tufts of weedy grass above the mud through cart paths between black expanses of partially planted fields. In the distance they could see the line of flickering yellow lights from Administration trucks high on the longvalley highway, their Doppler whirr permeating the silence.
A dispersed white cloud from the evening fires drifted upvalley, and Will could smell it over the scent of wet loam all around him. They came to a clearing where they could see lights in the downvalley distance.
“Should we stop in on one of those farmhouses? I think I smell meat cooking,” Zach said.
“It’s too dangerous. Any of those houses could be filled with UP sympathizers.”
“There’s no way for us to know. We should only stop when we need to,” Will said, but the smell of the sweet smoke brought on pangs of hunger.
They came to a place where the path between fields narrowed and went down into a low wash. The arroyo willows arched over them on both sides, making it too dark to see well. Will walked cautiously in front of Zach and could hear his uneven steps a few feet behind. As the path climbed back up onto the levee, Will heard a quiet but distinct click to his right side.
“Hold it right there. Neither of you move.” An old man with a wild silver beard and greasy baseball cap stepped out of the trees.
The old man held a crossbow with the aluminum-tipped arrow pointed at Will’s chest. He aimed the crossbow at Zach, then back at Will, who turned while raising his hands. Nobody spoke, and he waited to see what the old man would do.
He spoke directly to Will. “Tell your friend to lie down that long-barrel or I’ll put this arrow right through you.”
Will turned to Zach and nodded, who bent and set the gun down. He came back up with his hands up.
“You two ain't unifieds are you?”
“No, we’re just walking downvalley. Passing by,” Will replied.
“Didn’t think so. Resistance?”
“No.”
The old man seemed to speak to himself. “Fools out here in the rain. I ain't picking up no more dead bodies on my property. You,” he said, pointing to Zach with the crossbow, “get up here with your friend.” Zach shuffled toward Will while the old man considered the two with an undisguised look of irritation. “Can’t you two smell the rain comin’? You’re goin’ to die out here in about fifteen minutes. You can either move off my property and become someone else’s problem or get under some shelter ’til it passes.”
“Where do we go?” Will asked.
“Head up that way,” the old man said, nodding and pointing with the arrow, “and don’t go trying anything stupid.”
He picked up the rifle and followed them onto the levee. They went down the other side to a wide dirt road leading uphill to a gathering of rundown buildings with farm implements strewn about.
“Go on up into that door ahead.”