The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale

by Martinez, Brian

  And of her mother.

  “I'm sorry.” I watch her eyes move over the body. “I saw my mother find the death, too.”

  She shakes her head. “Not mother.”

  “But you said she was.”

  “Mother not want hurt child. Not want give death.”

  I think I understand what she means. This was her mother once, back when she kept Child safe from danger, but as soon as she wanted to hurt Child instead of help her she became something else.

  A monster.

  Child points to the female's rags and tells me I should take them. When I look down at myself I see what she means- the suit is almost nothing now, just pieces of it stuck to me with bits of silvery tape. I need new clothes but I don't feel good about taking the rags from the female, especially with her blood all over them, so I decide to find a fake real person and take their clothes instead.

  Further into the museum we come to the room my mother liked best. It's where she passed most of her time while she was here, the room for the world she went to that summer, the one made of sand and sun. The invisible beast came from there. It came from inside the hidden building to attack the real people and give them the change. That's how my mother's story went. How the vision screen showed us.

  Behind the glass are things made of stone and old paper marked with strange words. Some of the fake real people are dressed as their leaders, in bright and shiny clothes, but some are dressed as the regular people, in gray and brown, almost like rags but not. One of them is a woman about the same size as me in a box of glass. I remember my mother telling me something about her, but it was too long ago now and it doesn't come to me. I peel the bits of suit and silvery tape from my skin until I'm wearing nothing. The picture of me in the glass looks so much like my mother.

  I push the glass box over and let it smash on the floor. Then I pull the clothes from the fake woman and put them on.

  “They fit,” I tell Child. She smiles up at me.

  At the other end of the room is a door I know well, a serious door where people who came to the museum weren't allowed to go in, but my mother was because she had the same kind of plastic they use at the base to let them through doors.

  What's left of the suit is a pile at my feet, like garbage. Something with no more use.

  “Let's go,” I tell Child, and we walk away from the world of sun and sand, away from the door and the suit, through the museum and back into the city.

  **

  Some time later we make it back to the base. The fire is gone from the moat and Terence is back on the inside checking the fence for weakness. When we walk up he tries a weak smile but his face has a look I know by now, of sadness and pictures in the eyes. He lets us in and tells us the rest are inside the base, either being healed by Doc or figuring out where they belong.

  “Cruz and Werner are getting the place ready for you, as promised.” He points to the small building where they move things around and curse at each other. I send Child ahead and she runs into the building behind Cruz. He didn't expect a munie to come up behind him so he jumps at the sight of her. Werner laughs at him, and the cursing goes on.

  Satisfied with the fence, Terence turns away from it. “What happened to the mother?”

  I shake my head.

  “I suppose it's too bad the kid didn't pick her.”

  Anger comes up in me when he says this.

  “I just mean you're not sticking around. At least if she'd gone with the mother she'd have someone like herself to relate to. Tommy and Vanessa have each other. Children need that kind of thing. ”

  Child is nothing like her mother. She has good in her that anyone can see, even someone with bad eyes like mine. That's why Child didn't pick her. The problem is the only other choice she had was me.

  I won't be alive for long, I owe that to my own mother, that sacrifice, the same way she sacrificed for me. I can't live as one of the monsters that gave her the death. I can't.

  “When do you leave,” I ask Terence.

  “After dark, that'll give things a chance to calm down.”

  I tell him to wait for me.

  **

  Werner has all the masks his arms will carry. He looks at me strangely as he empties them into a box on the table. It's the look my father would give me when I disappointed him. Child tears apart blankets in the corner with her claws, making a nest.

  “I hear you're not staying,” Werner says. “I think that's a mistake. You need our help as much as we need yours.”

  “I don't need help.”

  “Well fuck you very much. I'm pretty sure we were saving each other's asses down there today.”

  “I mean I don't need it anymore.”

  Werner looks confused. Cruz says, “Didn't you hear? Monster-girl here don't wanna ride no more, she's checkin' out.” And again the sign, the finger across the neck.

  “You're not serious. You have things worth sticking around for.”

  “Who cares?” Cruz collects guns from a locked drawer. “One less monster for us to worry about, right ese'?”

  Werner turns back to me. “I'm sure you have your reasons, my only question is who's gonna watch her.” He motions to Child, busy stomping a circle into the pile of blankets.

  “She can watch herself.”

  “Sure,” Cruz laughs, “she's done such a good job 'til now.”

  Werner tells him to shut up and finish what he's doing. They take what's left of their supplies, but before they go Werner comes close to me one last time. “She'll be safe here, I can promise you that, but safety is only as important as what you have to stay alive for.”

  After Werner walks away, Cruz stops a few feet from me. I'm not sure if he wants to speak to me or not. He looks at what's in his hands, picks something out and throws it to me. It's a gun, one of the smaller ones. “Don't say I never got you nothin',” he says.

  By the time the nest is ready and the room is how it should be, door safe, room to move around, the sun is as low on the sky as Child's eyes are on her face. She's worn from all she's gone through today, and I know how she feels.

  Child finally lays down and settles in. I sit by her side and push the blankets in around her, making sure they hold her tightly so the heat stays in. At this moment all I want is for her to close her eyes and be taken by sleep so I can leave quietly, but she has her eyes on me.

  “Mother come?”

  “I keep telling you not to call me that.” She says nothing, just wrinkles her face at me. “I have some things to do outside first, but I'll be back.” I hate telling her things that aren't the truth, but I don't know what else to do.

  “What do tomorrow,” she asks, pulling her feet in.

  “Sleep. Sleep for a long time.”

  Voices outside speak in fighting whispers. Their shadows on the windows remind me of the first time I came here those years ago, when the sight of them scared me away.

  “Need find supplies. Cold soon.”

  “You can help them with that, you know. You're a very good hunter.”

  “This truth?”

  “Of course. I've never seen anyone catch a slither beast as fast as you. The eggs, the apples, all the scurry beasts, no one can hunt like you, not the real people, not the munies, not even me.”

  She closes her eyes. Her face is soft in the weak sun, her body small and curled in the nest. I take the gun and slip out the door before I can't.

  **

  Out in the dim light I find more real people than I expected. Terence is waiting for me with packed supplies around his feet, while Rachel talks to him with her hand on his arm. All he does in return is shake his head. Not far from them stand Boyd and Kate, and past them Neil showing Tommy and Vanessa something on their guns. All around are some of the others, the ones I never learned the names of.

  “They wanted to see you off,” Rachel says. “As much as you've put them through pure, living hell these past few days they're grateful for the way you brought us back together. I was even grateful, u
ntil I learned you were taking Terence away from us.”

  “She had nothing to do with it,” Terence says. “Ask Boyd, I already made up my mind up about this.”

  Everyone looks to Boyd. “Not that I agree with it,” he says, “but yeah.”

  “So you made a bad choice on your own, it isn't your first. At least if you stay here it won't be your last.”

  “Every time I look in one of your faces, I see the mistakes I've made. The bad judgment calls, the people I got killed. Don't you see it's just not right? A man should be able to leave it behind, but instead I've been dragging it along. I appreciate that you care but it's time to move on.”

  They start giving Terence their goodbyes, telling him to be safe, to be smart, to travel only in dark, all the things he knows but they don't want him to forget. Boyd and Kate come to me, and from their faces they know what I'm going to do.

  “Terence told me, I just don't understand why.”

  “I'm a monster.”

  “And I'm a thief, but I'm trying my best to be more. I'd like to think that means something.”

  “It does.”

  “Then stay. Or go. But don't do this.”

  He doesn't understand what the change has done to me, what it means to be the thing that gave my mother the death. He wants good things for me, but I no longer deserve good things.

  I turn to Kate. “Child is very curious. She looks for trouble when there's no need.”

  “It's only natural, kids are always trying to learn about the world, even one as screwed up as this one.” Her eyes open wider. “Oh. Are you asking me to...?”

  I know what I want to say. That I see she cares about Child, that she's already saved her life once and I know she would do it again, but my words don't come. Kate must hear it anyway, because she rushes forward and puts her arms around me until her mask digs into my neck. Then she backs away, red face looking up at the birthing moon, and she leaves without saying anything else.

  “You have no idea what just happened, do you,” Boyd asks. I shake my head. “A few years ago we were out scouting for food when Kate got herself into trouble. This monster got a hold of her and nearly tore her to pieces. We got her back here and Doc was able to save her, but the damage...well, the damage was done. She, uh, she can't have children.” He clears his throat. “She would have been a great mother in another life, but unfortunately this is the one she got. Now do you understand why she acted the way she did?”

  “I chose her for Child's safety, not to make her happy.”

  “That's exactly why it meant so much. She knows you don't do anything to be polite or nice, you do it because it's the best choice.”

  He gets in closer, almost touching my elbow. “If you place no value on yourself, you'll never notice when you do something worth a damn.”

  Terence takes up his supplies and we leave through the gate, across the moat and into the wood, away from the base and the building and everything inside it.

  **

  My eyes are becoming better in the dark. I started to notice it last night but I pushed the thought away to put my attention where it was needed. Now, walking across the mountain in a direction I know well, I can see just how much clearer my vision is than it was a few days ago. The change started to take me badly in the beginning but then it backed off. That doesn't make sense, though. As much as I wish it was, that's not how the change works.

  Terence makes no sound at my side, the light in his hand, watching the trees for signs of movement as the blood moves fast under his skin. I tell him to calm himself, that I can hear and smell them coming from far away, and right now the only beasts nearby are the kind that smell like supplies.

  “I hope that doesn't include me,” he says.

  “Where will you go now?”

  “So long as its surrounded by four walls, the rest is details. But the real question isn't what I'm about to do.”

  He asks if I'm really going through with it, if I've made sure it's the best option, the only option, because a choice like this is a choice that lasts. There's no coming back and no changing my mind. He says he needs to know it's not because of a sadness.

  “For years after the real times ended, the only voice I heard was the voice of my mother. She talked to me to help me stay calm, stay safe. But she's not talking to me anymore, and I know it's because of what I've changed into.”

  “You've become a stronger person.”

  “I've become not a person.”

  “Being human,” he says, “it's not a scientific term. It's a willingness to help others even when, especially when, it makes no sense to. I think if your mother was as wise as you're making her sound, she would have been proud of how you turned out. I have to wonder if she'd really want you to end your life just because it isn't the one she pictured for you.”

  I don't agree with anything he's said, and I tell him this. He stops walking and looks me in the eye.

  “Do you want to know how my mama died?” He looks into the dark of the wood. “My brother and I used to argue about everything, about the most ridiculous things you can think of. You name it and we fought about it. It drove her crazy that the two of us couldn't go more than five minutes without screaming at each other.” His lips are tight against his teeth. “This one night we're in the car, me driving, Graham in the passenger seat, mama in the back. We get to fighting because I took a wrong turn and got us cut off from the group. It gets so heated I tell him I'll punch him in the mouth if he doesn't shut it. Of course he doesn't, so I get out, pull my brother from the car and lay into him. Mama gets out begging me to stop. Meanwhile Graham just smiles that crazy smile at me, blood in his teeth, as if to say, 'You're the bad guy now. You're the bad son, and I win.'

  “But then I hear it. That awful noise that means it's too late.”

  The attack sound. The happy cry of the hunter.

  “The first one was on mama before I could even react. It must have been sleeping in one of the broken-down cars on the side of the road, woken up from the ruckus. I don't know where it came from exactly, but I know it wasn't alone.”

  He stops, not wanting to say more. He does anyway.

  “So Graham, he uh...he pulls me into the car, through the same door I just pulled him out of, and he screams for me to go, to drive. I don't know what to do or what to think so I crawl over into the driver's seat, turn the key and put the pedal to the floor.” He swallows. “The worst part of the whole goddamned thing was that rear-view mirror. Seeing mama on the ground, a munie on top of her and more on their way. Her eyes were...they were open the whole time.

  He lifts his mask to run a hand over his neck, as if the words are cutting it.

  “They tell me they found us some distance away, car ran into a ditch trying to kill each other, but I'd be lying if I said I remembered any of that. Either way it was the beginning of the end for my brother and I, relations never healed after that. I threw myself into being what mama expected of me, and Graham put all his energy into manipulating the group to make me look like an unfit leader. Two very different paths, and look where they both got us.”

  “Why did you tell me this?”

  “Your mother. When you say she talked to you, you mean?” He taps on the side of his head.

  “I heard her inside.”

  He nods. “Sometimes the best thing you can do for a person is stop helping them, let them figure it out on their own. It's possible she stopped talking to you because you didn't need to hear her anymore.”

  I think about this a while, walking in quiet with only my feet making sound in the fallen leaves. The moon lights up the wood up in front of us. Beasts of all kinds talk in the night. It feels like a good day to have my last day, to give myself the death, but before I can do that I see there's one more thing I need to do. For Terence.

  “Follow me,” I say, “there's something I need to show you.”

  **

  It's colder in here than I remember. I used to enjoy this, the feeling of being cut off fro
m the dangers, the munies and the beasts and the sky full of bastard air. Even the total dark of this place, strong with the fear and the panic, gave me a sense of safety, like a blanket hiding me from the hungry teeth of the world.

  Now it's the dark that feels like teeth.

  We walk past the waxy, wet spikes hanging with leatherwings, down the metal stairs to where the ceiling goes taller, past the waterfall and the rushing water, to the yellow room and what it holds inside.

  “By my count I could live one year four months on these, but they're not mine. The only reason I kept from the death for so long was because of what I took from you.”

  “You didn't know.”

  “I saw shadows. Shapes. Things that might have been real people, but I ran and hid and kept the supplies to live on. Now they're yours again.”

  “With proper rationing this could get the group through the whole winter.” Terence is quiet for a while. “Now I have to go back to the base.”

  I nod. He tries to convince me to come back with him, to the base and to Child, but I tell him no. At the mouth of the cavern he turns to me with one of the crates held in his arms.

  “You think you're a munie, but you're not like them. There's something different about you, something inside keeping you on the right path. Whatever it is, you got it from those parents of yours. ”

  I listen to Terence's foot sounds until they disappear into the wood and are replaced by the squeaks of leatherwings and the echoes of water drips. For the first time in days, I'm alone.

  **

  The trailer is destroyed. I'd forgotten that when I took Child to the cavern to hide her from the munies they'd followed the scent of real people, which I still was then, and they ripped apart the trailer looking for us.