If I found the Death itself, slit its stomach open with my nails and crawled inside it, that might be close to what this feels like.
I don't remember how to swim. My hands push and pull at the Bastard Water but I can't see if I'm moving. My lungs reach and my throat takes in Bastard Water and more than anything I need my mother right now. More than anything I need my mother. More than anything. Anything.
It's okay. Calm down.
I can't swim, mother, I can't swim.
Yes, you can. You've done this before.
But I don't even know if I'm going up or down.
Stop moving. The air in your lungs will lift you up, then you'll know which way is up.
It's the truth. It works.
Now, calmly push your hands together like you're praying, the way your father showed you, then push them out in front of you, and when they can't go any further take them apart and bring them toward your feet, hard, palms back like you're pulling yourself through the Water.
I try it, and that works, too.
Keep doing that until the air in your lungs runs out, then pull yourself up to the surface the same way.
Thank you.
Just stay calm. Always stay calm.
When the air runs out I swim to the surface and breathe, finding myself a small distance from the Water-car. Graham is faced the other way, the panic in his moves as he looks into the lake trying to find me. The other way is land, where flashlights are bouncing like Winged Light Beasts at the shore. I shake off a shudder and swim toward them, splashing in the Water and hearing Graham shout for me to stop, but I don't.
He puts the flat-end sticks in the lake and follows. When I get close enough to the land I hear another shout, this one from land, someone saying they see something in the Water, which is me. I turn one more time to see where Graham is. He's stopped moving the sticks, his eyes on the flashlights. His face is serious, the look saying he knows he can't follow me any further without risking the Death.
He stands in the Water-car. “You can't get rid of me this easy,” he says.
I don't answer him. I keep moving toward land, past the floating, staring body of Ernie Sanders and onto a place where I can let the shouting flashlights pull me up. Child is with them, but I don't let her touch me because of the Bastard Water. Behind her are the man and the woman from the Fire and some other people, Real People with blaming eyes, the ones past them still trying to put Water to the Fire. People of different years and hair, of different clothes and face.
The hotel flames have mostly gone down, the building collapsed into itself, glowing orange and red. Fifteen people are scattered on the grass, choking and moaning, and in the middle of them Terence pushes on the chest of an old woman laying on the ground, putting his mouth to hers and breathing air into her. It looks like what I did to Graham back in that terrible room, but I know it's different. Terence is trying to give life to her, not take it away.
He does this for some minutes. The woman's eyes stay closed, her face still and her heart silent. When someone from the crowd finally pulls Terence away from her, both of their eyes are wet.
“That's her,” someone points, “this is her fault.”
Terence wipes the Bastard Water from his face. “No. She's a friend here.”
“Don't be blind, Terence. She's infected, and that kid is full-monster.”
Terence goes to this man in the crowd, his face angry. “They use fire to kill now? We both know if this girl wanted to hurt one of us by now she would have.” He turns to the others. “She happened to have saved my life back on the mainland, and the fire started on the opposite side of the house.” He looks to the smoking pile.
The man from the burning hallway puts his hand out. “Kate and I would be dead meat if it wasn't for her. We were trapped and she found the way out.”
“See? Why would she help Boyd and Kate if she was trying to kill them? I'm not sure how this fire started, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence it happened when it did.”
I step forward with the eyes of the crowd on me, and I tell Terence it isn't.
“Tell me you didn't do this,” he says.
“I didn't do this. It was Graham.”
A quiet goes into the crowd. Then someone from the shore shouts, “Come quick, there's someone in the Water!” We go down to the lake, where two men are pulling the body from it. When they see the cut in his throat they turn their stares to me.
“Graham gave him the Death. He used the Fire to bring me out of the nest.”
“What does he want from you,” Boyd asks.
I tell them how he keeps Munies locked up, how he's used them to find Supplies ever since the base started running low. How he wanted Child at first but now he wants me, and how he almost had me but he didn't expect his strange gun to wear off and for me to jump into the Bastard Water.
A short man with no hair says, “How do we know you're not making this all up?”
I point to the body. “Graham told me his name. Ernie Sanders.”
“That's supposed to be proof? You could have forced it out of him before you slit his throat.”
“My nails are long, sharp, the nails of a Munie. They could give a man the Death easily, and have, but they didn't give it to him.”
I don't know how to make them understand this. They start shouting at me and each other, their home turned to smoke behind them and their anger on me. I can feel them ready to grab me and drag me away when Terence tells them to stop, his voice louder than any of theirs.
“Don't,” he says, “we're better than this, better than Graham. Don't you see this is what he wants? Us tearing each other apart, it's what he always wants. I know him better than any of you, but you lived with him for years. you've seen how he manipulates and corrupts everyone around him. He gets them to fight each other and then he positions himself at the top of the heap.” He comes close to me, close to Child. “It's easy to see these two as the outsiders, the danger, but I'm telling you I've seen the good in them. They care about each other. They may be infected but that doesn't make them monsters. It doesn't make them like the savages we've seen out there, mindlessly killing and eating. Don't turn on them, either help them or let them go, the same as you'd hope for in their place, because like it or not they're just like us: lost and scared and clinging to each other.”
The crowd is silent now, looking at each other. Boyd says, “What are we supposed to do, Terence? Our home is gone. We have nowhere to go.”
He turns to see the smoking pile. “The hotel was always a temporary solution. Now we have to find a new home, somewhere permanent. You know I've always believed we should find somewhere colder, somewhere those things might stay away.”
“But the trip alone-”
“I know, and heat is an issue, but we have to try something. Staying here out of sentimentality for the past has become more and more foolish.”
I touch the suit, feeling for the small pocket and what it hides inside. It's still there, even after the lake. It didn't fall out and sink into that terrible dark. This must be what people used to talk about when they talked about the God, when impossible things were hoped for even when it didn't make sense to. Child watches me. She knows when there's a picture in my eyes, like I know when there's one in hers.
“You can get the base back,” I say.
All the eyes are on me.
“I'll help you, if you let Child have the small building inside the fence.” Child complains but I quiet her.
“It's not possible. There's no way in unless they let us in, and believe me they won't.”
“With my help it's possible.”
“With all due respect, there's not much you can offer us except an extra hand, and we can't claw our way in.” The other Real People agree, nodding their heads.
I tell them to follow me to the shore. We go where the rocks become smaller and smaller and then sand, and I find a stick to make a picture. With lines that impact each other I draw the word I saw. It's a word I don't
know, like I don't know all words, but I know the kinds of places I've seen this word, so I think I know what it means.
When I'm finished I step away. “What does this say?”
Terence says, “Why?”
Boyd leans in. “Exit,” he says. I breathe when I hear this.
“What's this about? Where have you seen this word?”
From the pocket inside the suit I take out the small key, the one Graham dropped on the floor of my mother's house. It's the key that goes with the word on the ceiling, the ceiling in the room where Graham kept the tracker Munie. Behind that word I could hear the empty place, like a hallway or cavern, something that went up into the Mountain. I tell them this, and as I speak I see their faces in the moonlight. It's as if something inside them changes, a feeling I know as much as anyone can know it.
Terence wipes the word away with his foot. “That's all very promising, but we need time to come up with a plan. Maybe in a week or so we can think about making a move.”
“No.” I shake my head. “We move now.”
“That's suicide. We're not prepared, and the sun will be up by the time we get there.”
“Without me Graham can't go back to the base. This means the people don't know the key is gone.”
People start to whisper.
“I understand what you're saying, but it's a tremendous risk for us to try something like that. People can die without a proper plan. Simple as that.”
Boyd steps forward. “Sorry Terence, but she's right.”
“Boyd...”
“Listen to me. If we wait too long Graham might realize it's gone and try to warn them as a way to win back their favor. Or they may take his not coming back as proof he failed and seal up this secret entrance as a precaution. Hold on- does anyone other than Graham know about the door that you know of?”
“The Rachel woman.”
He frowns at Terence. “Within twenty-four hours she'll have herself elected leader. She'll do whatever she can to shut Graham out, permanently. She did it to you, and she actually liked you.”
“Don't rub it in.”
Boyd faces the crowd. “I know we're all scared. We're scared of living in here and we're scared of dying out there, but we may never get this chance again. This is home we're talking about. Our home. If there's a possibility of getting it back, the slightest chance, I say it's worth a shot.”
Terence's face is full of understanding. To Kate he says, “When did your husband become such a convincing salesman?”
“He had practice. He had to ask me to marry him seven times before I said yes.”
The two of them bring their hands together.
Terence says, “Okay, we'll have to vote on it. Who's in favor of using the key to take back the base?”
Every Real Person puts their hand in the Air.
“Keep in mind that a vote for the plan makes you a part of it. That means you come along. You don't wait it out here until the path is clear, you fight with us, and there are absolutely no guarantees it will work.”
The hands stay in the air.
“Okay. Then say your goodbyes to the island, everyone.” He looks at me. “It looks like we're going home.”
**
The Water-car again. I wouldn't have come here if I knew it would be like this- back and forth on the Bastard Water, covering Child's head to keep her from seeing the lake. It's surface is hostile from the waves of the other Water-cars.
Into my arm, Child says, “Mother too much help Child.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
Silence.
“It's not too much.”
“No want mother get Death.”
“I won't get the Death, don't think about that.”
The Sun is coming, rising at the crease of the world. It's still a few hours away but already the pull of it is hard to push back. It speaks to my skeleton, and as I watch Terence steer the Water-car I can't help thinking how sweet his skin smells. I shake the picture away and bury my nose into the top of Child's head.
“Child fear,” she says.
I rub her pink arm with my pink fingers. “More than any other thing, quiet gives me the Fear now. Sitting in one place. All those years in the trailer, I thought I was hiding from the Death, but really I was waiting for it to come. Now I see that to keep moving is life. To make it harder for the Death to find you.”
She closes her eyes against my chest. It hurts to think I have to leave her alone when this is done, when her safe place in the small building is sure. But I can't let my mother see me as a full Munie. To have her know her child is a thing that makes Supplies of Real People.
The way they made Supplies of her.
**
Minutes from land all the Water-cars shut off. The Real People take out sticks to push us the rest of the way, quietly watching for moving shapes in the buildings and between the trees, until we reach the wooden lines and attach to them.
Child and I run to land and turn to watch them take Supplies from crates in the Water-car: guns, small things that explode, masks of all kinds, and small machines that go over their ears and mouths. They speak into them and after a minute I realize they're speaking to each other this way because they can't hear each other from distances or pick up each others' scent trails.
Terence wraps a rope around his arm in circles. “Luckily we leave the boats heavily supplied. The upside of being thrown out of your house is the paranoia keeps you prepared.”
Boats.
“What's your plan?”
Boyd joins us with Kate behind him, helping to put his machine on over his mask. “We think it would be a mistake if we all rushed into the base at once. It might start a bigger fight than we want.”
“Agreed. I want as little bloodshed as possible,” Terence says.
“Then we need to figure out a way to draw them out, cut them off from the base. The thought of being outside in the daytime might make them more open to negotiating.”
“It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't bet on it.”
“Then how can we convince them to leave? We can't exactly set Fire to it, as much as we might want to.”
“I don't want to do that.”
Boyd smiles. “No, of course not, neither do I. Look, we need something that can scare them, get them out of there and keep them out.” More Real People gather, all in suits and guns and talking machines.
“The Change.” The masks all turn when I speak. “We give them the Bastard Air, push them into the Water room. One way in or out, they'll come out.”
Terence nods. “It's not bad. They'd be infected, but the decontamination would kill the virus. All we need then is a way to draw them the rest of the way out.”
“We'll figure something out. The bigger problem is how we infect every, single one of them short of having her cough in their faces one-at-a-time.”
A voice from the crowd says, “Through the vents.” When they part it's Vanessa, the young girl. She points at me and says, “If she breathes into the air processor it'll go through the whole base. Every room.”
“She's right,” her brother says. “Remember what happened that time I threw up in it?”
Terence says, “I've tried very hard to forget.”
**
We leave the Bastard Water behind. After we pass the loud rocks and the fishing stores we come back to the bridge where we climb down again to avoid the cars on top. I count eleven Real People with us, plus Terence, all lowering down to the murk, quiet as the Death so no one wakes the sleeping Munies over our heads.
I feel the scream in Child's throat ready to be born, her small arms and legs wanting to run. First the lake, then the murk, and all on little sleep. She needs to be calmed, but my touch isn't calming her quick enough. I tell Terence this and he watches her face.
“What can we do?”
“My mother would tell me stories when she wanted me to calm.”
“Then tell her one.” Our feet splash through the green Bastard Wate
r, the giant bridge legs on either side of us.
“I told her all my stories.”
“I'm sure you have one more.”
“Not good stories.”
“It doesn't have to be a happy story, you just have to keep her mind off what she's doing long enough for us to make it to the other side.”
I swallow and wipe the Bastard Water off the suit.
“I see,” he says. “I'm afraid I don't have any good stories for either of you.”
“It doesn't have to be a happy story.”
“Not happy,” Child echoes, listening to us.
Terence watches the Water with his gun. As long as we don't make a sound, he says, he'll tell us a story. So we don't make a sound, and he tells us a story.
**
There was a time, not long ago, when the two groups were one. They were friends, better than friends, family, strong from surviving the Change together. Ernie would tell stories around the dinner table while Rachel, a mother to them, healed their wounds. Cruz was the protector. Werner, the crazy uncle. They would laugh as they watched Tommy and Vanessa play with Neil's daughter in the control room, pretending to be grown-up things that don't exist anymore, like generals and soldiers. There was trust and there was truth, with Terence as their leader not because he wanted to be but because the group had voted for him. He was proud to be leader, and he did the best he could to keep all the people alive and happy. But behind it all, he could feel a river of jealousy, an ocean of doubt, and the trail, whenever he looked for it, led to Graham. His own brother.
One day, a man calling himself Vin showed up at the base wanting to trade for Supplies. At first they told him to go away, but then, when he showed them the kinds of things he had, things they hadn't seen since the Real Times, they let him inside.
This was a mistake.
The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 14