by Amy Briant
The vehicle East and I finally stumbled our way to was a really old van. Even Before, it would have been considered old. I’d seen a photograph of a much younger and bell-bottomed Gran standing in front of a van like this. It was a funny looking thing, a rectangular box on wheels with a rounded top. Snazzy two-toned paint with baby blue on the sides and white on the top that extended into a triangle on the front, where a chrome symbol something like the peace sign Gran was making in the picture was displayed. Except that van was shiny and new, kind of like Gran was too at that time.
This van was rusty and a complete wreck. It was tipped over on its side, for starters. It was hard to tell who had T-boned whom, but a demolished sedan was propping up the van. All the windows in both cars were busted out. The van’s windshield was cracked and starred but still in place. We went around the far side so no one approaching from the south could see us. I got her settled on the ground, leaning against the van’s undercarriage. She gratefully accepted my canteen and took a big drink.
“How you doing?” I said to her. She had her head back, her eyes closed. She nodded without saying anything. I knelt down beside her and touched her jean-clad thigh lightly. She opened her eyes and looked at me questioningly.
“Okay if I take a look?” I asked.
She shrugged, but I could feel her eyes on me as I gently manipulated her knee, checking to see if the joint was still moving all the ways it was supposed to, trying to feel with my hands if there was any grinding or any sign of a broken bone. Not that I was any kind of a medic, but I knew all about falling out of trees, leaping without looking, and the resultant bruises, bangs and bumps. East bore it all without complaint, although there was a sharp intake of breath at one particular movement. She squeezed my shoulder tightly.
“Ow. That hurt.”
“Sorry.” I used one of Mr. Giovanni’s extra-long socks to bind up the knee. I gave it my best shot, which was clumsy and probably all wrong, but East gave me a wan smile when I was done and said it felt a little better. I pulled her to her feet and let her test it, taking a few tentative steps to and fro behind the cover of the van. She kept a grip on my arm for balance.
All this time I had kept my ears cocked for any sound of pursuit. It was hard for more reasons than one. The wind had picked up. The fog, which had started as delicate white tendrils creeping over the top of the hills, had now grown and revealed itself to be a huge bank of epic proportions. The clouds had proliferated and darkened as the afternoon progressed. The very air felt ripe with the need to rain, but so far not much had come down. Just an occasional sprinkle here and there. And I’d be lying if I told you East’s grip on my arm wasn’t a bit of a distraction. The way she’d pinned those big dark eyes on me when I touched her thigh. Something electric jumped in my stomach when that happened. It was not really that enjoyable of a sensation. Maybe because my stomach knew it was way out of its league.
And it was dumb to think about that anyhow. This wasn’t a date. This wasn’t even school. Or if it was, I hoped we lived through the final. Survival 101.
“Kell, I think it’s feeling better now. Maybe if I keep it moving, it won’t stiffen up so much.”
“Great,” I said with relief. We simply could not afford injury or sickness. Not then. Not there. The walk we had ahead of us was not going to be easy, but I hoped we could at least make it back to the point where the creek had intersected the highway. We could camp there and resume the hunt for the damn V in the morning. Presuming East’s bum knee was indeed just a minor strain. I took a deep breath. No point in worrying about everything under the sun. Just put one foot ahead of the other.
I was about to tell her the plan when a wild shriek rent the air. Ducking down, I glanced around the side of the van. Something else Gabriel had taught me—if you have to stick your head around a corner, don’t do it at eye level where someone watching expects you to appear. No need to make it easy on a sniper or other enemy. Take a different angle and you might just gain that split second that is so often the difference between life and death.
Matteo had climbed onto the freeway a hundred feet south and was babbling and keening to himself.
And he’d brought his little metal pipe with him too.
Chapter Fourteen
The Bridge
“Pretty! Boy!” he roared as East and I huddled behind the van. “I know you ain’t far! And I’m comin’…”
He looked like a madman, which no doubt he was. Who wouldn’t be, after living all alone in a ghost town for ten years or more? Surviving on who knows what…I snuck another quick peek. He was looking up and down the highway, apparently trying to decide which way to go. He looked uneasy, uncomfortable perhaps at being out in the open on the freeway. Like a wild animal out of its accustomed territory.
“Okay,” I turned to East, who was huddled by my side. “We need to get going now.”
“What if he comes after us?” Her eyes were as big as saucers. “We can’t let him get too close with those darts.”
I showed her the gun. She nodded without saying anything. I suppose I could have tried to shoot him from behind the van, but I was not that confident of my ability to hit him at such a distance, with an unfamiliar weapon and with the wind picking up. I had no bullets to spare for target practice. The gun would have to be a last resort.
And honestly, I didn’t want to kill him or anybody else. I just wanted him (and everybody else) to leave us alone. But I didn’t think a courteous and well-reasoned request was going to do the trick.
“I see you now! Where’s your little friend?” Matteo yelled.
How could he have seen us? I snuck another peek. He was facing south, gesturing wildly. I squinted. There might have been something moving in the distance—a deer, maybe? It didn’t matter. This was our chance.
South was not an option at that moment. My hope was that we could sneak over to the side and disappear in the bushes without him noticing us. I grabbed East around the waist and we frog-marched as fast as we could to the non-Deadwood side of the freeway. Unfortunately, Matteo must have caught our movement in his peripheral vision before we’d gone thirty feet.
“Hey there!” he screeched as he whirled around. “Get back here! You don’t want to be late for dinner!”
That last bit was accompanied by a nasty laugh. He started after us, but I noted with a grim sense of satisfaction that he was walking mighty funny. His pace wasn’t any quicker than ours.
“Keep moving,” I muttered to East, although I might have been talking to myself. We turned to head north, the exact opposite of where we needed to go, but we had no choice. As soon as Matteo had seen us, I gave up on the idea of disappearing into the brush. He probably knew every inch of the countryside around there. I could see the next off-ramp coming up, this one headed east toward the as-yet-unseen bay. If we could keep our distance from him until the next burnt-out car or other cover, maybe we could lure him close enough so I could put him out of his misery once and for all. Or maybe he’d get tired and give up. Yeah, right. Hungry cannibals do that all the time.
Just keep going, I told myself. And breathe.
“Hey, Pretty! Come back here!” Matteo was gaining on us. I disengaged from East and told her to keep moving. I wasn’t going to waste a bullet on a warning shot, but I picked up a rock from the road and heaved it back at him. It missed, bouncing in front of him, which seemed to startle him. But he kept on coming.
“Stay back!” I yelled at him. “Don’t make me shoot you!”
“Don’t run,” he answered. “I like dark meat.” This amused him greatly. What a funny guy.
I threw another rock as East hightailed it, nightmarishly slow, for the next off-ramp. If he got within poison dart range (whatever that was), I would have to shoot him, I thought with despair. He dodged my rock, but in doing so lost his balance, stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. He watched us pull further away and gave an angry howl.
“The bridge is out,” he yelled. “You’re trapped, you
little—”
He stopped as I continued backing away, staring at something high in the sky. I didn’t look up. Gabriel had taught me the old fake-like-you’re-looking-at-something-horrible-behind-your-enemy trick when I was eight years old. I wasn’t about to fall for it now. I wondered what bridge he was talking about. But I didn’t care as long as we were getting away from him. I turned and hurried to catch up with East.
As I put my arm around her waist, a quick glance over my shoulder showed him painfully scuttling back toward Deadwood as fast as his skinny legs would carry him. I looked up then to see what had caused this powerful reaction. What I saw stopped me cold in my tracks.
“What?” East gasped in between heaving breaths, bent over and clutching her knee.
I mutely pointed skyward to a sight I’d only seen twice before in my short life—the vapor trail of a fighter jet which streaked high above San Francisco, an emphatically straight white line in the dark gray sky. We both just stood there, gaping in astonishment like a couple of boneheads, for far too long. I think our brains were simply stupefied with way too much information.
Finally, I was snapped back to my senses by an ice-cold raindrop hitting me smack dab in the middle of the forehead. The good news was two-fold. Matteo had turned tail and run back to his hole, never to be seen again, hopefully. And we had reached the off-ramp we’d been aiming for. A large orange sign saying “Bridge Closed” was riddled with bullet holes. I hurried us down the ramp as the rain intensified. We were getting pretty good at the two-stepping in sync. If nothing else, I was finding her increasingly easy to work with.
“We need to get under the ramp,” I told her. “In case they’re looking for things that give off heat. You know, like people-type things.”
“Like a drone? Infra-red?” We’d been taught this in school, along with fire drills, earthquake drills, nuclear attack drills and how abstinence was the best birth control method ever.
“Exactly.” We found a spot underneath the freeway, in a convenient pile of rubble that sheltered us with concrete on all sides but one. There was a triangular wedge of open space amongst the rubble with enough room for us to squeeze in. As a bonus, it appeared to be snake-free. The concrete slab above our heads was a good six inches thick. I hoped it would keep us safe from any scanning, although I was starting to redefine the word “safe” on an almost hourly basis.
East and I sat on our packs, welcoming the chance to rest. Our view was back the way we’d come, so we could see if Matteo or anyone else was headed toward us. Thankfully, we saw nothing but asphalt, weeds and rain. And an occasional seagull swooping past. The bay must be near, I thought. East and I sat very close together by necessity in the small space. I could feel the warmth coming off her body.
“Is it them?” she whispered, meaning the jet. She looked scared, but not panicked. I was probably poker-faced as usual. I had learned early—and perhaps too well—that showing no reaction was helpful when dealing with bullies, snoops and other assorted assholes.
Who exactly is them, I thought. I had no idea what the jet was looking for or who had sent it. It was far too distant for us to make out any markings on it. Us? Them? Figuring that out seemed not only impossible, but moot. The only “us” at the moment was me and East. Until we found Gabriel, that was how it would remain. I shrugged, which was the best answer I had to her question.
“How’s your knee?”
She massaged it gently with both hands, as if my question had reminded her it hurt. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”
We were both silent for a while, staring out into the rain. A random thought struck me. What if there were only about twenty-seven people left in the whole world, and Number Twenty-Seven happened to be a jet fighter pilot? Just out for a spin. It was ridiculous, but it made me smile for a second. A tiny snort escaped my nostrils as well.
“What?”
I shook my head and shrugged again. “Nothing.”
“You do that a lot, you know. It’s fucking obnoxious,” she said. Pissed off again.
I was genuinely taken aback. “I’m sorry.” I tried to explain. “I just thought of something stupid and it made me laugh inside my head. You know what I mean?”
“I’m right here,” she said, sounding more and more angry. “You could share some of your precious thoughts with me once in a while.”
I didn’t understand what she was so mad about. Hello to another arbitrary mood swing.
“Sorry,” I told her again. “I guess I’m just not used to having someone to talk to. And most of my thoughts are not really that brilliant.”
I described my image of the twenty-seventh person left on Earth, the fighter pilot out for a spin. She shook her head.
“That is truly asinine.” But she was smiling.
“I warned you.” I smiled back at her. I had a sudden compelling urge to pick up her hand from where it lay on her thigh. To hold her hand in mine. My fingers even started to move on their own, but my brain made them stop. I clenched my fists. What the hell was I thinking?
“You used to do that a lot in class too,” East said. “That secretly-smiling-to-yourself thing.”
“You were watching me in class?” I asked skeptically. I certainly had never noticed that. On the other hand, at school I was usually trying to keep my head down and just get through the day without conflict. Sometimes I would even learn shit. She nodded.
“Why would you do that?” I said, still skeptical.
She went back to rubbing her knee. “I don’t know…I guess I thought you were…”
Bizarre? Repellent? Contemptible?
A freak?
She finally looked up and caught my eye. “…interesting.”
What a cop-out. I kind of hoped she would go on. And I kind of hoped she would shut up.
“And cute,” she added. There was a new look in that dark blue eye now. Was she making fun of me?
Probably. And yet, there was something in the way she said it…
I was having a little trouble with my breathing. Most of the air seemed to have fled from our little concrete haven. How did that happen? If she was yanking my chain, I could always throw her off the bridge Matteo had mentioned.
“You thought I was a cute boy? Or a cute girl?”
“Just…cute,” she said with a grin and a shrug. “That whole androgyny thing is kind of hot, you know.”
Androgyny. I’d come across that word for the first time the year before. In a book, of course. I looked it up. How strange to find my whole life summed up in the dictionary, in words so dry they practically choked me when I said them out loud. I never knew there was a word for people like me. Never knew there were people like me.
I think Gran tried to talk to me about it once, toward the end. “Transgender” was the word she used as she went off into one of her stories about Before. I didn’t understand at first that she was trying to talk to me about me. When I did, it got awkward. And embarrassing. When she started talking about surgery, I was horrified. In the Settlement, surgery was an absolute last resort and not something most people survived. If the operation didn’t kill you, the infections would. And then a coughing fit shut Gran down. Between her coughing and my embarrassment, somehow we never quite made our way back to that conversation. I tried to look up transgender in the big dictionary at school, but that entry had been censored like so many others.
I searched East’s face for a clue as to whether there was even one percent of truth in what she was telling me. Her grin widened.
“I’m trying to give you a compliment, dumbass. This is where you say thank you. Or maybe you tell me I’m cute too.”
She knew she was cute. She knew she was beautiful. She didn’t need me to remind her. I’m sure she’d heard it ten thousand times already in her first seventeen years. I didn’t trust her.
“You like little brown mutts, huh?” I said with no humor in my voice. There was a warning in my tone if she was bright enough to hear it.
“Well, you ma
y be little, but you’re strong.” She picked up my left hand and showed it to me. “See? Strong.”
My skin looked dark next to her whiteness. It was kind of a nice contrast, though, I caught myself thinking. Her hand was warm and dry. I was highly conscious of my heart beating in my chest. Could she could hear it too?
“People used to say you and your sister were exotic looking,” she went on. “But I always thought you just had a nice face.”
I could not think of a single thing to say. Silence. Rain falling on pavement outside. More of a light drizzle now. Say something, my brain commanded.
When I said nothing, she gave me a small woeful smile. She let go of my hand.
“Sorry,” she said. I didn’t know what she was apologizing for. Maybe she didn’t either. “I guess I just wanted to say…I’m glad you’re here with me.”
Of course she was. She would probably have been dead five times over by then without me.
Oh, well. At least I was useful.
And…cute?
We waited for a half hour or so, during which the rain stopped, started and stopped again. The sky could not make up its mind. I set one of the cooking pots out to gather the rainwater, but it only yielded about half a cup for each of us. If the point of our being indoors wasn’t to hide, I would have been more aggressive about collecting some drinking water.
When I finally poked my head out of our cramped little shelter, there was no sign of the fighter jet. It might have been lurking behind the gray clouds massing above the bay, or the fog bank which had crept further down the hills as we hid. But we couldn’t stay where we were forever, the plane was nowhere to be seen and I couldn’t seriously believe they—whoever they were—would send a jet to look for two stray teenagers. If that scanning stuff was even true—a lot of what they told us in school seemed pretty outlandish to me.