Rainwalkers

by Matt Ritter

  “Don’t move, Hellie,” Will yelled to her. She seemed strangely calm, her tiny legs barely supporting the weight on her back. She looked up into the darkness and rain above her, lost her balance momentarily, then took a step to brace herself.

  “There are ten cubes in that pack. Enough to destroy this whole camp. She knows exactly where to take it.”

  “No,” was all Will could think of to say.

  Captain Wilson, who wore no mask, turned to Helen. “Do as you were told, Helen,” he yelled. “You know where to take that backpack. This is for the Valley. Your dad will be here when you get back.”

  “Hellie, stay right there.” Will trained his gun on Captain Wilson’s head, watching the black detonator in his hand.

  “Don’t do anything stupid. You’ll kill all of us. She’ll drop the backpack and be back here in half an hour.”

  “They’ll kill her. She can’t just walk into the Benician camp.”

  “In this rain, she can. Did you see the first explosion? There probably aren’t any of them left anyway. This one will destroy the rest.” A closed-lip smile came across the captain’s face.

  “They’ll kill her. You know it.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Where’s the child who carried the other explosives?” Will asked.

  “We had to detonate that one before he could make it back.” Captain Wilson looked at the detonator, then down at his boot. “I won’t push this button until Helen returns. You’ll be free to go after that.” After a long hesitation, he said, “You have my word.”

  Will turned to his daughter. “Hellie, take that backpack off slowly.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Captain Wilson yelled at her. “You touch that backpack and I’ll blow all of us up. You’ll be responsible for killing your own father.”

  Helen stood frozen, shivering in the rain, looking up at both men on the porch. Water dripped from her bangs.

  “Go on now,” Captain Wilson yelled at her. “Do what you’ve been told to do. Save your father and this Valley.”

  Will watched over Captain Wilson’s shoulder as Helen walked into the darkness toward the crossing. He stared down the sights of his gun barrel at the shortly cropped orange hair on the back of the captain’s head. He drew a deep breath and took one long step forward. The drips of rain from the porch roof slowed in their descent, and Will’s vision narrowed to the target at the end of his gun barrel. He felt the trigger and the weight of the gun in his two hands.

  The captain turned back to face Will. He squinted down the barrel of Will’s gun and lifted the detonator.

  “Drop that gun or I’ll push this button as soon as she gets far enough away.”

  Will continued to stare across the top of the barrel at the captain’s forehead.

  “Drop it,” the Captain yelled, raising the detonator. “You may shoot me, but not before I push this button.”

  Will bent his elbows and brought the gun back to his chest, then tossed it onto the porch in front of him.

  The captain stepped forward, close to Will, and kicked the gun under the railing out into the rain. As he went for his holstered firearm with the hand not holding the detonator, Will lunged forward and shoved him backward off the walkway into the rain. His eyes grew wide as his light blue uniform was darkened by the torrent of water falling from above. He let out an abbreviated groan, then crumpled down onto one knee and was still, with his head down and his free hand in the mud in front of him.

  Will watched in terror as the captain lifted his head and looked up into the night sky, the rain soaking his face. He pulled his massive frame up onto his feet and stood tall in the rain, wolfishly smirking at Will.

  Rage consumed Will as the captain walked out of the rain, back up the lower steps and under the covered walkway.

  “You coward,” Will said in disgust.

  The captain set the detonator on the railing next to him and pulled his gun from his holster.

  “You’re sending children over the border to do a job you could do yourself.”

  The captain shrugged. “I just do as I’m told.” He lifted the gun to Will’s head. “Now it’s your turn to go for a walk in the rain,” he said, his voice icy, his face still dripping with water.

  Will’s eyes darted between the barrel of the captain’s gun and the detonator resting on top of the railing.

  “Turn around. Walk,” the captain commanded, gesturing with his gun to a second set of stairs behind Will.

  “Face the stairs. Go on. Turn around,” the captain shouted.

  Will twisted around slowly and stepped to the edge of the short stairs, then stopped.

  He could sense Wilson standing impatiently at his back. “Go on now, step out into it.”

  Will’s legs were being splashed with the water dripping from the covered walkway. He stood unmoving. The canister of his mask pulsed under his squinted eyes.

  “Move,” the captain commanded, “or I’ll shoot you in the back.”

  Will waited.

  He heard the wooden deck creak as the captain shuffled forward to kick Will into the rain. In one continuous movement, Will ducked and swung around, catching the captain’s leg in the middle of his kick. The captain fired while losing his balance, missing Will and shattering the wooden handrail near his head. The gun’s explosive crack was muffled by the roar of the rain but left Will’s ears ringing. As the captain fell, Will came down on top of him. He held the captain’s wrist and swung his free hand with all his force in the direction of his head. Will’s fist landed in the middle of the captain’s wet throat, and he could feel the windpipe collapse within.

  The captain let out a groan as his face contorted in pain. He tried to turn the gun on Will, but the blow to his neck had weakened him. Will knocked the gun out of his hand, then brought his elbow down hard onto the captain’s jaw. He rolled off him in the gun's direction, grabbing it as the captain sat up.

  Will fired. An instant later, a dark hole formed at the center of the captain’s forehead as his head jerked back. Will saw pieces of the back of his skull splatter onto the wooden post behind him. His mouth fell open, a stunned look solidified on his face, then his whole body buckled.

  Will pushed himself to his feet and rushed for the detonator. He scooped it up off the railing and held it carefully. With the gun in his other hand, he swung around, surveying the walkways for other soldiers.

  He ran to the edge of the walkway where he last saw Helen.

  “Helen,” he yelled into the roaring rain beyond the porch. “Helen.”

  He lifted the gas mask to his forehead. “Helen,” he screamed again as loudly as he could, her name cracking in his throat. “Come back,” he said, his voice coming forth as a hoarse croak. The river of rain that fell around him dampened his voice.

  Will looked around in a panic. Captain Wilson laid dead in the fetal position on the raw wood walkway. He carefully set his gun and the detonator on the railing, then put both hands around his mouth and yelled again into the darkness. No answer came back. He ran around to the other side of the walkway and, leaning as far as he could over the handrail without getting wet, yelled again into the void.

  He stared into the blackness, then down at the steps to the mud beyond the porch. The surface of a puddle churned and boiled as water splashed out of the sky onto it. He felt trapped and helpless. The rain scorched his throat with each breath, but he left the mask on his forehead.

  He fell to his knees on the walkway, eyes red and watering. “Helen,” he cried. “No.”

  “Daddy,” Helen yelled, coming out of the darkness. “Daddy!”

  Will saw Helen’s small figure coming toward him in the rain. As soon as she was under the overhang, he grabbed her.

  “It’s okay. It’s over,” he said, pulling the backpack off her tiny shoulders.

  He lifted her cold wet body into his arms and pulled her close. She seemed so small and bony, much lighter than he remembered. Hugging her firmly, he felt the ladder of h
er tiny ribcage squeeze inward. Her fawn-like legs dangled in front of him, and she shook and sobbed. He carried her inside, removed his mask, and sat on a bench.

  “It’s over now,” he said, while she cried, his eyes and throat burning. “You’re okay.”

  She looked around the room, then up at him with wild bloodshot eyes and tried to say something but began to cry again. He thought of all she’d been through, and it hadn’t occurred to him until that moment she’d also lost her mother. In trying to process these thoughts, all his hard-fought control over his emotions finally slipped. His lip quivered, and he pulled her against his chest.

  “Can we go home?” she cried. “Is Mommy at home?”

  Will pulled her tightly to his chest and was silent. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “My friend’s been hurt. We need to check on him.”

  Will knelt next to Zach while Helen stood behind him. His eyes were closed, and his face twitched slightly. His hands still covered his gunshot wound, and blood formed a gelatinous film between his fingers. Will put his hand on Zach’s forehead, which felt cold and clammy.

  “Hey, buddy, how’re you doing?” Will asked softly.

  Zach’s eyelids fluttered, then opened. His pale blue irises were consumed with red, and he looked possessed and confused.

  “Hang in there. We’ll get you out of here,” Will said.

  “Did you find her?” Zach asked, his voice soft and strained.

  “I did. I want you to meet her,” Will said, turning back to Helen.

  Helen kneeled next to her father. Zach opened both eyes and strained to lift his head so he could get a look at her. A smile lit his face, then his head fell back onto the floor. The smile remained.

  “Nice to meet you,” Zach said, mouthing the words with barely any sound coming forth.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Zach was dead. He’d died in the back seat as they drove out of Salinas City, and Will knew it. While his daughter slept in the front seat, the jeep heater blowing its warm dry air, Will talked to Zach. As they passed Colonel Adams’ caravan of military vehicles, he told him of his early years in the UP. Will talked to Zach about how he’d learned to be alone as a young soldier, not without people around him, but to be alone in his thoughts.

  He spoke of how he coped during his time in the border camps and patrolling the wall by thinking of his parents and the people of Gonzales. For the first time, he talked about his visions and how much they’d frightened him. He apologized to Zach for not having been more talkative during their time together.

  As Will drove through the downvalley darkness, the rain began to clear, and the moon was revealed through the clouds. The paddocks of rice reflected the strange white light under the longvalley causeway, and Will felt like they were gliding above a lake.

  He told Zach about his wife, how they’d met, and about their days by the river. He told him how afraid he was to tell her about the things he’d done as a soldier. How he thought she’d be ashamed of him, but instead, when he finally told her, she held him and didn’t say

  anything.

  He continued to talk to Zach as the Salinas City skyline dwindled in the side mirror. He discussed the Salinas and his love for that river. He made promises to Zach. To visit his grandparents at their upvalley farm and tell them of the heroic things he’d done, to help care for his grandfather. He promised to honor his memory, then he promised it all again. Willie Taft used more words on that drive through the early morning hours than he’d used in the previous year.

  Over the roar of the engine, Will couldn’t hear when Zach stopped breathing, but he knew it’d happened and that nothing could be done to save him. As early morning light framed the Gabilans to the east, Will reached back to where Zach laid on the back seat and held his cold hand. When he couldn’t untie the knot forming in his throat, Will pulled the jeep to the side of the longvalley freeway, left it running, and stepped out onto the edge overlooking the expansive black agricultural plane below. While the sun rose, long shadows pulled back across the fields, and Willie Taft cried as silently as possible.

  Through watery eyes, he cursed the ugly buildings of Salinas City in the distance. He cursed the Administration, the Manager, the fantasy of a strong and warring Valley, and his willful participation in the system that had caused the suffering of so many innocent people. He pounded the railing of the longvalley as the tears came. He cried for Zach, for his wife, for the boys he'd killed, for what his daughter had been through, and for the news he’d have to share about her mother. When all the frustration and sadness settled, he looked back at the idling jeep.

  Helen was still peacefully rolled up in a ball on the front seat. A wave of relief came over him, and he felt his chest loosen as if to make room for the slightest bit of hope. When there were no more tears, he felt he could finally breathe for the first time. He drew in a deep breath and noticed something different. The smell was gone. Some vaguely rotten odor that had lingered in the Valley for his entire lifetime was missing. He couldn’t remember a time when the air seemed fresh, but it did on that morning. He wiped tears from his cheeks and returned to the jeep.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  For six days after Will drove Zach and his daughter away from the border camp, a golden haze sat behind voluptuous thunderheads in the downvalley sky. A battle raged inside billions of minute droplets, throwing burning reflections from their disordered surfaces across the Valley skyline. Great clouds welled up one day, threatening rain but never delivering, then flattening on the following day, yet, by virtue of an epic microbial struggle therein, even at midday, the clouds never lost their golden hue.

  For six days, a type of cloud never before observed by Valley residents settled into the Valley. They were more robust, stable, and not prone to rain. People stood in the newly shadowed streets and bright daylight of Salinas City and bore witness to an unfamiliar sky above the tall buildings, which altogether altered the feel of their dreary metropolis. Workers balanced on their hoes and rakes in the mid-Valley fields and studied the sky, waiting for the typical afternoon change that never came. Each early morning, as workers tied up rows of rapeseed and twisted sugar beets from their birthplace, colors in the sky unknown to them oozed out from behind the eastern hills. In the dry upvalley, wheat farms, oil fields, and labor camps people huddled in small groups and watched the brilliant colors in the distant sky while whispering rumors of a sweeping change overtaking the Valley Administration.

  The moment the concentrated viral fluid from Helen’s blood entered the clouds, precipitated by Ben Harrison, carried to the airport by Dick Nixon and flown aloft by a young soldier, those skyward bodies of water were never the same. For six days they churned, the skyline on fire, refusing to rain, as Valley residents watched awakening orange and purple reefs of light in awe and confusion. As the toxic air was cleared, parts of the Valley fell into a six-day-long sunset that would be the seed of legends for generations to come.

  The sun would rise, a bloody globe, wavering in the haze, and hanging in the amber sky for hours. They watched the color pool up along the horizons, then drain, then flare out again across the sky. The Salinas pulled back from its muddy banks and braided tranquil through the sandy bottom into the cold and calm Pacific.

  At night countless stars and a full-bellied moon swung overhead in a slow procession. Fires were lit, and Valley residents suffered from lack of sleep as to not miss a moment of the slow arch of the night sky. Constellations were renamed.

  On the seventh day, the sun rose into a brilliant cobalt morning sky the likes of which no living Valley person had ever seen. The entire length of the Valley sat burning in the sunrise. The afternoon of that seventh day was warm and golden. The sun seared the Valley floor, and steam rose everywhere. Years of sogginess and sickness rose in distorted clear lines and were carried out into the eastern deserts on a sweetly scented wind. That night, no clouds formed in the early evening sky. There was nothing to block the view of the Milky Way as it stret
ched out a path above the Valley, the infinite heavens, so much closer than previously imagined, perfectly parallel with the long edges of the Valley.

  While Will and Helen Taft stayed at the old Salinas Valley State Prison, nearly two weeks passed without even the hint of a cloud in the sky. When the lost seasons returned to the Valley, it was early spring, and another week passed before any rain fell.

  When it did, the crops drank greedily, and Valley residents praised the thing they’d feared and cursed. The bravest among them hazarded moments in the wetness and were left unscathed.

  The rain had changed, void of any poison, only sweet water rising from the Pacific on the cold orographic air of the Santa Lucias and condensing around fertile Valley dust.

  The end.

  an imprint of Sunbury Press, Inc.

  Mechanicsburg, PA USA

  NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Matt Ritter.

  Cover Copyright © 2019 by Sunbury Press, Inc.

  Sunbury Press supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Sunbury Press to continue to publish books for every reader. For information contact Sunbury Press, Inc., Subsidiary Rights Dept., PO Box 548, Boiling Springs, PA 17007 USA or legal@sunburypress.com.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Sunbury Press Orders Dept. at (855) 338-8359 or orders@sunburypress.com.