Trail of Blood

by Michael McBride

  Missy’s heart sank into her stomach and a tear rolled from the corner of her eye. She understood now.

  Closing her eyes, she wiped the saline from her cheeks and turned away. It felt as though she’d been punched in the gut. The night seemed to close in around her as she descended the rubble again, preparing to wring her like a dishrag. She just needed to put her body to work, and with any luck that would divert her mind. She wanted to crawl out of her flesh, go curl up somewhere in the dark, and cry. She imagined her old bedroom in her old house, the pictures of her mom on the walls and the rows of stuffed animals waiting to cuddle her and absorb her tears. She was tired of being afraid and tired of the emotional pain. Life was now an exercise in tedium. For one fleeting moment, she thought she’d found someone special, someone to bind her world together, but as always, she’d been wrong. Life was as it always was and always would be, and there was only pain to meter its passage.

  Missy looked to the sky as she walked, but there was no comfort to be found in the stars, only cold white dots stabbing through the tapestry of night. She had always envisioned her mother somewhere up there, watching over her, but she felt nothing, no celestial kindness or omniscience, only the chilly wind rising from the south.

  Gathering an armful of wooden poles yet to be sharpened, she headed back toward the cave, doing everything in her power to keep from looking at the graves and contemplating how utterly alone she felt.

  IV

  “WE SHOULD BE HELPING THE OTHERS UNLOAD THE TRUCK,” EVELYN SAID, following Phoenix down the beach in the direction of the lone, poorly assembled cross.

  “This will only take a minute,” he said without turning to face her. “I want to do this while everyone else is distracted.”

  He had approached her in the cave after she had piled the bundles of clothing against the rear wall and he was preparing to unload the first of many loads of dowels. There had been something in his eyes, a slight tremor in his voice that added to the insistence of his words. He needed to talk to her—and only her. At first, she thought it must have been something to do with Missy, but as they walked toward the shoreline, she sensed that what troubled him was of a far graver nature.

  Carefully treading the flat ground between the mounds of sand, he sat down right beside the cross, still unable to look directly at her. She hovered behind him for a moment, waiting for him to speak, but finally sat down beside him when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to say anything until she did so.

  “You’re very special,” he whispered, barely loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the briny foam.

  “Phoenix…”

  When he looked up at her, there were tears in his eyes, and she knew she needed to allow him to finish.

  “What you did with the kelp… You have a gift.”

  “All I did was warm the water so it could survive.”

  “It was more than that. You willed those plants to live, and look at them now.”

  Evelyn glanced back over her shoulder to the point along the beach where the white sand met with the burnt sienna rocks. The kelp had broken the surface of the water like so many bushes on a flood plain and had expanded a dozen feet in all directions. They were now so well acclimated that she was certain they no longer needed the fire pits and the exhaust tubes to maintain the ambient water temperature, but she still felt more confident when she could look from afar and see the four plumes of smoke rising from the pipes.

  “It’s a resilient species,” she said, turning back to Phoenix. “All it needed was a little help.”

  “You did far more than that.”

  They sat in silence. While Phoenix looked nervously from her face to his hands in his lap, Evelyn watched the others moving back and forth over the barricade, unloading the truck.

  “What’s on your mind, Phoenix?” she finally asked.

  “I want you to have something.” He pulled one of the vines from where it coiled around the vertical post of the cross, laying it carefully across his lap. There were several blood-red blossoms that reminded Evelyn of snapdragons crossed with orchids, long sunset-orange stamens hanging from their open blossoms like a squid’s tentacles from a dog’s mouth. He touched each of the flowers, the powdery pollen coating his fingertips, before finding the one he desired. Gently pinching off the stem and holding it flat in his palm, he presented it to her. Evelyn studied it for a moment before hesitantly taking it from him.

  “Phoenix… You’re a very sweet kid, but I…”

  Her voice petered off as the tips of the petals started to whiten, spreading downward along the bulb until all the color had drained from the blossom. The stamens released their golden powder with a puff like tiny cigarettes to blow from her palm and along the sand, glittering. She looked at the vines entwined around the makeshift cross. They had faded to white as well. She was just about to ask what was going on when she felt something sting her open palm. All of the color that had seeped from the flower was now a puddle in her hand, though all she felt was warmth. She tried to lift the flower with her free hand, but it wouldn’t come away without her skin. The stem had poked through her flesh and felt as though it were embedded with a barbed hook. She could only watch as the collection of fluid contracted, growing smaller by the second like bathwater down a drain. At first, she thought it must have been pouring out through the thin gaps between her fingers, but nothing dripped into her lap. It wasn’t until the intense heat began to spread from her hand, through her wrist and into her forearm, that she realized what was happening.

  The pale green veins running up her arms swelled and rose to the surface, darkening to the color of palm leaves. She screamed and shook her hand. The dried and shriveled flower finally dropped from her palm. When it hit the beach, it turned to dust. The needle-sized hole in her skin allowed the last of the scarlet fluid to drain beneath and then closed as though it had never been. The veins that had stood out only a heartbeat prior faded back into her flesh, yet the warmth poured unimpeded into her chest, where it resonated before pumping out through the entirety of her body. She felt her face flush and her toes tingle. Her eyes burned—

  And then the sensation was gone.

  Her skin prickled as the cool breeze relieved her of the lingering heat, and the night closed back in upon her.

  “What did you do to me?” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes.

  He didn’t answer. He was already on his feet and walking back toward the others.

  “Phoenix?”

  She was sure he could hear her, but he didn’t turn around. Rising, her head still spinning, she stumbled after him, unaware that behind her the coiled stems had fallen away from the cross and dissociated on impact. With each step, her equilibrium returned by degree and she began to feel more like herself. The image of the blossom bleeding through her skin vanished like a dream. By the time she reached the crest of the mound, she could barely remember the pain.

  Phoenix and Mare were already walking back toward her, carrying what looked like a statue between them. It took her a second to rationalize the polished gray sculpture. It was an ornate headstone.

  “Phoenix,” she whispered as he passed, but he only stared through her with heartrending eyes and kept walking, using all of his concentration to balance the unwieldy payload while maintaining his tenuous footing on the rubble. His face had noticeably paled, the bags beneath his faded pink eyes more pronounced.

  Missy came around the back of the trailer with a bundle of the smooth sticks across her arms, but didn’t even look at her when she passed, walking deliberately out of her way to avoid any contact. Her eyelids were puffy and her cheeks glistened with moonlight.

  Evelyn climbed down the mess of burnt wood until she reached the flat sand and headed for the rear of the truck. Adam grunted and shoved the final grave marker from the tailgate into the sand, where it rested facedown beside the others, so many fallen angels. He hopped down and was just about to begin standing them up when Evelyn started to cry.

&nb
sp; “What’s wrong?” he asked as she started around the back of the trailer toward him.

  She couldn’t hold it back any longer. It was as though suddenly she were alone and trying to find a way to grasp what had just transpired. The tears spilled in waves.

  Adam ran to her, taking her by the shoulders and looking deep into her eyes.

  “Talk to me, Evelyn. What happened?”

  “The flower…it…it…and then Phoenix and Missy… They acted like they didn’t even see me.”

  “Come here,” Adam said, pulling her into his arms. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  She sobbed into his shoulder, trembling against him while he stroked her hair. When she finally calmed enough to speak again, she leaned away from him so she could see his face, but not so far as to vacate his embrace.

  “I just don’t understand what’s happening anymore,” she sniffled.

  “You and me both. The whole world is changing around us and I…” He paused. “Didn’t your eyes used to be hazel?”

  “They are hazel.”

  Adam could only shake his head, his confusion evident by the wrinkle in his brow.

  Evelyn pulled away, the tears beginning anew, and ran around the back of the tailgate and to the cab. She hopped up on the runner and twisted the side mirror so that it faced her…and screamed.

  Her irises were no longer brown around the pupils, ringed with a pale green like an eclipsed sun, but a blinding shade of shamrock.

  V

  RAY JERKED HIS HANDS AWAY FROM THE BLINDFOLD AND JAKE LET IT FALL to the ground.

  “There’s no way,” Ray whispered. He refused to believe it. Jake had to be lying to him, his fingertips conspiring against him. There was absolutely no way that fire had risen from his eye sockets.

  “I saw it, Ray.”

  Ray traced those hollow pits with his fingers again, the warmth now faded to what he assumed to be normal.

  “When it happened,” Jake asked, “did you see anything?”

  “No,” Ray said too quickly, scanning the darkness of memory. But he had, hadn’t he? He clearly remembered tripping over something. Falling forward. There had been a flash of gray before he hit the ground. Maybe it had simply been the bloom of light that explodes across one’s vision with blunt impact to the head, but now that he really tried, he could recall the vague gray outline of the cluttered cave floor before impact. Had there been the faint outline of a mound of clothing? Blankets? The sharp edges of randomly strewn boxes, the texture of the cave wall?

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Ray said. “I just can’t be sure. I thought… I don’t know.”

  A scream shattered the night, setting a flock of birds sleeping on the lake to screeching flight.

  Ray turned toward the sound and stood, this time far more conscious of the piles of blankets beneath him and the maze of cardboard boxes leading to the beach. Scuffing his feet along the stone floor through the transition zone of sand on granite and into the giving sand of the beach, he listened for another scream, any sound to guide him, and followed the direction he had chosen in a straight line. It sounded like the scream had come from the shore to his right, but he couldn’t be sure. Wet sand from high tide clapped underfoot and he knew he hadn’t veered far enough to the right, so he used the slap of his tread to lead him to the south. Jake caught up and took his hand.

  “Evelyn!” Jake called. She stood at the head of Carrie’s grave, but she either didn’t hear or chose to ignore him. Phoenix was already hurrying away from her in the direction of the fallen barricade. Evelyn stumbled after him, oblivious to the fact that Jake and Ray were heading down the waterline in her direction. “Evelyn!”

  She didn’t even slow as she ascended the mound.

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked.

  “She didn’t hear me,” Jake whispered, squeezing Ray’s hand.

  “Why did she scream? Is everything okay?”

  “I…I can’t tell.” Jake watched Evelyn vanish over the scorched hill. Phoenix and Mare crested it, moving in the opposite direction, carrying what appeared to be a large statue between them. Missy skirted the stone face of the mountain alone, laboring under the weight of an armful of dowels.

  Ray peeled apart the layers of sound. Since Jake either wouldn’t or couldn’t tell him what was happening, he needed to try to figure it out himself. He could hear the advancing waves crashing to shore and hissing as they rolled along the beach. The startled birds circled above with the whistle of wings before dropping back down beyond the breakwaters with so many muffled splashes. Footsteps approached through the shifting sand like the swishing of corduroy, but all he could smell was the smoke from the dwindling fires in the pit, carried downwind into his face by the gentle, silent breeze.

  Jake released Ray’s hand and knelt at the foot of the thin cross. There were no longer vines spiraling around the upright post; their dried remains crumbled to ash on the sand. How could they have been thriving mere hours ago and now be so far dead? He looked up in time to see that Phoenix and Mare were now nearly upon him with a tombstone between them. Even burdened by such great weight, they tread carefully so as to only walk on the thin strips of level ground between the graves. Jake pulled the cross out of the ground and stepped back to allow them room to set the statue of the weeping Virgin Mary in its stead. After a moment of leveling the pedestal on the soft, shifting ground, they stood back to appraise their work. There was a certain measure of formality and closure provided by the marble, while the crossed sticks had always seemed transient.

  “Should we say something?” Mare asked.

  “No,” Phoenix said. “Everything of importance has already been said. These markers are for those yet to come, so they might know the sacrifices made in their honor, whether they are the children of man or not.”

  Mare nodded and stretched his arms. “I suppose that means we should head back for another.”

  Ray was about to ask why Evelyn had screamed when he heard her crying in the distance. He turned toward the sound and started walking. Jake’s hand slid into his.

  Together they crossed the beach toward what Ray could tell was the charred remains of the barricade by the smell. He heard the swishing of footsteps in the sand as Mare and Phoenix passed them, the clamor of shoes on unsettled planks. The sorrowful, muted sounds of Evelyn—

  Ray stopped.

  The smell of charcoaled wood was too strong. It had taken him a moment to realize it, though he should have recognized it immediately. The burning wall of pickets had collapsed days ago. Even the last of its ashes had been chased away by the wind, leaving only the blackened remains. What he smelled now wasn’t the scent of burnt lumber, but of burning wood.

  He turned around to again face the lake, tilting his head directly into the wind that had shifted to blow inland across the waves. The smell was faint, as though carried a great distance, but it was unmistakable.

  The wind changed its mind and the aroma was gone, as though in that precious moment it had been brought specifically to him.

  “What is it?” Jake asked.

  “Look across the lake. What do you see?”

  “Just water.”

  “No smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Not even way off in the distance?”

  “No… Why?”

  Ray shook his head. “No reason.” But there was, and he knew it. Beneath the acrid smell of flaming timber was something else, a scent that had become all too familiar.

  Burning flesh.

  And it scared the living hell out of him.

  VI

  The Ruins of Denver, Colorado

  DEATH STOOD ATOP THE BLACK TOWER WHILE THE WORLD BURNED AROUND him. Behind, the seamless eastern plains where one enormous blaze that turned night to day, save for the swatches of pure black where everything living had been burned to cinder, the soil hiding beneath a deep layer of soot and ash. With no one remaining to try to douse the flames, only Mother Nature s
tood a chance of combating the surging fires, and she had yet to shed a single tear. What little remained of the buildings ringing his monolith smoldered, issuing tendrils of smoke into the clogged sky with the wretched ebon smoke that swirled around his head. The fire advanced only as far as the foot of the tower, dying in a circle around it as though even the inferno feared to reach into the wicked fortress, lending the impression from Death’s vantage of a lake of molten fire from which only this lone construct of iron and concrete rose. But it wasn’t the destruction hundreds of feet below him or its easterly migration that was the focus of his unwavering attention. It was the western horizon, marred by the jagged teeth of the Rocky Mountains that held him enrapt. The foothills glowed with the distant fires, which stretched all the way up the steep slopes to timberline. He had watched the progress of his minions by the wall of flames driven before them, which now spread to the north and south in their wake, fueled by a seemingly limitless supply of evergreens. They had crossed over the Front Range to the west, his children of bedlam, and were now firmly entrenched in the wilderness, incinerating everything in their path. Soon, any creature caught in their advance of hellfire would be slaughtered or driven ahead, no longer to be of any potential help to his ultimate targets on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. He had rolled out a carpet of black death to guide them to him, and come they shall, but not on the backs of their flying steeds. No. Maybe those amphibious equines could escape the Leviathan’s fire beneath the refuge of waves, but the time had come to implement his plan to remove them from the equation.