by Amy Briant
I decided to be productive and work on untangling the ball of fishing line I’d found on the beach. I wound it around a stick I’d collected during my morning ramble. About an hour and ten feet later, East finally deigned to join the world.
“Good morning,” I said from my perch on the pack. I felt kind of funny. Hot but cold. Amped up but tired. Probably just nerves from being cooped up.
East nodded, squinting at me in the grayish light. She sat up and ran both hands through her hair. The rain was drumming on the roof of the tent, loud in the absence of all other sounds.
“Coming down hard,” she said, yawning.
I nodded.
“What’s for breakfast?”
I pointed toward her water bottle. Next to it, I’d piled some berries on a large green leaf.
“Oh, that’s so sweet! Thanks, Kell.”
She seemed genuinely pleased. Which made me feel a little funny in the pit of my stomach. Or funnier. I shrugged it off and returned to my fishing line. By the time East had finished her meal, I had the fishing line all neatly untangled and wrapped around the stick. My next task was carving hooks out of wood. This was very boring. Would the rain never stop?
East put the slicker on for a trip outside, but came back with her hair all wet, hanging in dripping strands around her face.
“What’d you do that for? You’re getting everything wet,” I chided her as she dried herself with Mr. G’s all-purpose shirt.
“Sorry,” she said. “But I couldn’t resist the chance to wash the salt out of my hair.”
That was such a good idea I had to follow suit. Except I just unzipped the door and stuck my head out for five seconds. One more upside to having short hair. If it had been warmer, I would have thought about stepping out into the rain for a quick shower in the buff, but it was too cold for that.
We idled another day away. Hours that would have been much better spent walking were instead spent talking. I couldn’t remember the last time I had talked so much. It had to have been before Gabriel left. By unspoken agreement, East and I avoided the most difficult subjects. There were quite a few of those.
We talked about our childhoods, our families, things we liked and things we didn’t. We shared our few murky memories of Before. As I’d grown older, I noticed many of the adults talked about Before like it was perfect. Clearly, it wasn’t or it wouldn’t have led to our present predicament. And by “our,” I mean all of us—the human race or what was left of it. Although the adults spoke so glowingly of their precious past, it didn’t sound that great to me. It sounded like a time when people were selfish. And greedy and stupid. It sounded to me like they didn’t value what they’d had, and they’d had just about everything. Talk about spoiled brats. Brats with nothing better to do than play with their toys and pick fights with each other over nothing. Over who was better. Foolishly, maliciously, arbitrarily deciding this group was good, this group was bad. Weren’t we all just people? Doesn’t everybody want the same things? Food, friendship, love, sex, a roof over your head, a good book to read…
Of course, the topic of sex came up. She wanted to know if I’d ever been kissed. I thought about lying. I thought about telling her to mind her own business. I thought about asking her who the hell did she think would ever have wanted to kiss me?
I thought about telling her I wanted to kiss her.
In the end, I just told the truth.
“No,” I said quietly, staring at my boots, listening to the rain pummel the tent. I was sitting on the pack, and she was cross-legged on the sleeping bag. Our chosen spots.
There were a few moments of silence. I wasn’t exactly embarrassed. Not exactly. I mean, I was only seventeen, I had lived in a very small community with only a few other kids my age and frankly, I’d rather be un-kissed than be kissed by someone I didn’t care about. East had had a lot more kissing opportunities than I’d had, that was for sure. I stole a glance at her. She looked deep in thought, like she was cooking up another question for me, one I probably wouldn’t like any better than the last one. I decided I’d better come up with a question of my own. I caught her eye.
“So did you like kissing Hunter?”
She seemed to flinch a bit when I said his name, but held my gaze.
“He was okay, I guess.”
Since I would have willingly kissed a dead possum with rabies before ever locking lips with Hunter Cohen, I thought “okay” was likely an exaggeration.
“Boys are always in such a rush, you know?”
I did not know, but I’d heard. And I’d read some books. I braved another question.
“So are you saying you like kissing girls more than you like kissing boys?”
She hesitated, which made me wonder again if she was lying. Made me wonder if she even liked me at all, or if she liked me simply because I was there. I’d seen her play the chameleon at school, being whatever the people around her needed her to be. Going along with whatever the other popular girls ordained. Flirtatious for the boys. Compliant for the adults.
I was increasingly suspicious that she wanted me to think she liked me because she needed my survival skills. Because that was her survival skill. A lot of doubt flickered in my brain during that second East hesitated.
At the same time, I couldn’t deny my growing attraction to her.
“Well, what’s better?” she finally asked me. “Sunrise or sunset?”
I rolled my eyes at her.
“No, listen,” she said, exasperated. “I’m trying, but it’s hard to explain. It’s like…”
She screwed up her face and stared at the ceiling, searching for a comparison I would get. She snapped her fingers and pointed at me.
“Okay, you tell me what’s better. Your first choice is roast beef.”
The Settlement had cattle. There had been a small herd at the university Before for its agriculture and veterinary programs. Cows were even more important After. Milk, cheese, meat, leather…I loved cows. And I loved roast beef, but I was not at all sure what “beef” was in East’s metaphor. I also thought it was highly unfair of her to bring up food when I was so hungry I could almost eat a banana slug.
“What’s the other choice?” I asked cautiously.
“Hmm,” she pondered some more. She was really getting into this. “How about a chunk of warm cornbread with butter melting on it and honey drizzled over the top?”
“Those are two totally different things,” I argued. “How am I supposed to choose just one when they’re both…oh.”
I finally got her point. She smirked from her corner of the tent. I felt like she’d tricked me.
“No way,” I told her, still arguing. “I am not a piece of cornbread.”
“Maybe you’re the roast beef,” she said, still grinning.
I shook my head adamantly. “Look, East, not to be rude, but I still don’t see how you can like guys and girls. They’re so different. They’re too different.”
A frown clouded her face.
“Of all people, I thought you’d understand, Kell,” she said. Now she was the one looking at the floor. I felt like a jerk. Felt like everything I was trying to say was coming out all wrong. I groped for the right words, but finally just blurted out what was in my heart.
“How could you like Hunter? That guy was such an asshole.”
For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she shrugged and spoke softly without looking at me.
“I guess I didn’t want to be alone.”
We were quiet then for a while. In my opinion, being alone was far superior to being with an asshole, but there was no point in saying it. I was quite aware just how far apart my opinions set me from my peers. And how well they generally reacted to that.
I remembered a conversation I’d had with Gran when I was younger. She’d caught me silently crying into my pillow after a hard day at school.
“Why?” I asked her forlornly, tears streaking my face. “Why do they have to be so mean?”
Gr
an sat on the edge of my bed, gently patting my back. She was always a comfort in her own way.
“You will meet good people in this world, Kell,” she said reassuringly. But then followed that up with a solid whack of truth, in typical Gran fashion. “But even they will have some bad in them. It’s just the way we’re built.”
“Everybody?” I sniffled, wiping my nose on my sleeve as I sat up.
“Everybody,” she said flatly. But then smiled, albeit a little woefully. “Even you and me, kiddo.”
“You’re good, Gran,” I insisted, thinking what a weird argument this was. Me trying to convince my beloved grandmother that she was a good person. She was only the best person I’d ever met in my whole life. Not to mention the smartest. And hands down the funniest.
“I’m good,” she agreed. But then couldn’t help adding with her wicked grin, “But only ninety-seven percent.”
“Grannnnnnn,” I said, rolling my eyeballs while she cackled away.
“Well, anyhow I’m good,” I staunchly tried. I was very young, after all. “I’m not mean like the rest of those kids.”
“You never wished they were dead? Or punched one of them in the gut? Called ’em names under your breath?”
I looked sideways at her, still wanting to argue, but finding nothing to say. Gran put her bony arm around my shoulders and pulled me in for one of her quick, fierce hugs.
“Don’t worry, Kell,” she told me. “I love every bit of you. And you’re about as good as they come. Sometimes it just takes folks a while to figure that out.”
“And if I punch ’em in the gut?” I inquired, knowing I would inevitably need to revisit that issue. Probably sooner rather than later.
“Go for the face,” my grandmother sagely advised me. “It’s more discouraging.”
Chapter Twenty
Cannibal Germs
We headed inland the next day into the rising sun, looking for Interstate 80, the highway that ran north and south alongside the bay before eventually curving due east. Since we’d cut straight across on the bridge, we were intersecting the right fork from Gabriel’s dirt map several miles up from that pesky V. I was pleased when we found the interstate after less than an hour of walking. Once back on the pavement, we turned north. Toward Segundo, I hoped.
East’s knee was back to one hundred percent. On the other hand, I wasn’t feeling so great. In point of fact, I felt distinctly peculiar, but at least it was a sunny day. Sunny, but cold. Even well away from the water, the strong wind had a bite to it that we hadn’t experienced before on our journey. I stumbled along, letting East take the lead, feeling alternately hot and chilly, sweaty and parched, hungry and nauseated. Oh no, not sick, my foggy brain said distantly, but mostly I was too miserable to form an opinion. Oh no no no no…
“Are you all right?” East asked me when we paused mid-morning for a water break. She looked at me intently.
“I’m fine,” I said shortly, avoiding eye contact. Somehow, it seemed incredibly important to me that I keep up the front of being tough, of not letting her see any vulnerability. That was another Dupont family tradition. Gabriel and I had learned that stoicism from Gran, who’d continued it to the very end, gruffly telling me she was fine, just fine, while she wiped the red blood from her lips.
East and I sat on the side of the highway for our break, dangling our feet off the edge which dropped down sharply. Beneath us was a steep dirt slope to what had once been a busy street running parallel to the interstate. We might have been in Oakland or Berkeley. I wouldn’t have been sure even with a clear head. Whatever city it had been, it had sustained devastating damage during the Bad Times. From where we sat, facing inland, our shoulders and knees touching, East and I were looking out over a vast landscape of rubble and scorched earth. Nothing moved. Hardly anything was higher than ten feet. Most of it was unrecognizable after years of exposure to the elements. Just an immense jumbled wreckage of concrete, steel, asphalt and bones, bleached by the sun, pitted by the wind.
I’d had nothing to eat that day, my insides rebelling at even the thought of solid food. My belly rumbled as I took another swig from my canteen, then lurched as I suddenly puked. Fortunately, I was looking away from East when that happened.
“Oh, no, you are sick,” she said with dismay. I drew a shaking hand across my mouth and ineffectually tried to fend her off, but she clapped a hand to my forehead. “Damn, Kell, you’re burning up!”
“I’m fine,” I told her again, hoping to persuade at least one of us. I hardly ever got sick, so this was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Maybe it was all that swimming in the bay. Or being out in the rain. The disgusting memory of Matteo sneezing on me suddenly sparked in my brain. Gross—cannibal germs! God only knew what foul disease he’d afflicted me with.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled one last time, the taste of bile in my mouth. I closed my eyes for just a second. I was shivering and East put her arm around me to warm me up. I thought that was awfully nice of her, considering my somewhat puke-ified condition. So far, we’d survived a terrorist bombing, an earthquake, wild dogs, a homicidal lunatic, immersion in the chill, shark-infested waters of the bay, two waterspouts and a whole lot of general deprivation/starvation/wandering in the goddamn wilderness. Brought down by a sneeze, I thought blearily. What a way to go…particularly for such a badass like myself.
“Do you want to go back to the beach?” East asked with a tremble in her voice. She looked worried and upset.
“No!” I said, astonished that she’d suggest it even in my feeble state. “We’ve got to keep moving north.”
I gathered what little energy I had and found the will to stand. And walk. I took a step. And then another.
“We’re walking,” I told her although I felt like shit, more so with each passing minute. “Let’s go.”
In retrospect, it might not have been the wisest of decisions. All around us, as far as the eye could see, was the urban wasteland. And the thing about wastelands was there’s nothing to eat. We needed to find food that day and I had no idea how long the wasteland would continue. But the fever was upon me—impairing my judgment, weakening my limbs. All I could think, all I could do, was keep walking north.
That day was agonizing. East stopped trying to get me to talk after a while, but I could see how concerned she was. She kept giving me looks—the furrowed brow, the frowny face. I might have thought it was sensitive and caring of her if I wasn’t mindful of the fact that without me, she’d be dead meat.
Only my will kept me going as the morning turned to afternoon, and the afternoon turned to evening. I didn’t think it was a hallucination that I was hearing Gran’s voice in my head: “You can do it, Kell. One foot in front of the other. One more…one more…”
The sun was near to the horizon when East took my arm, the sky a dull pewter gray. The temperature had dropped drastically. It felt like it was in the forties, maybe lower, especially with the wind chill. I was shuffling by then, shivers wracking my frame, my breath rasping in my chest. I had almost forgotten she was with me. It felt like a week since we had left the beach that morning.
“Drink this,” she said, tipping the last of the water in my canteen down my gullet. My hands were shaking too badly to hold it myself. We had come out of the wasteland a few miles back. Nature had first modestly, then boldly reclaimed the land on both sides of the freeway. Just ahead, a prominent hill arose from the otherwise flat landscape, its flanks lushly covered with pine trees. A few hundred feet up the road, the freeway split to form another V—one route heading west around the shoreline of the bay, the other continuing north.
Every bone in my body ached. I felt like I wanted to die and was aware that was a viable option if we didn’t find some cover for the night.
“Why are we stopping?” I said hoarsely to East, my throat, my head, my lungs on fire.
“I think I see something,” she said, gesturing toward the hill.
I squinted, but my vision was blurry along with everything
else.
East put her arm around my shoulders.
“Come on,” a voice said. It was either hers or Gran’s. “We’re almost there.”
That final leg was an absolute nightmare. I was almost on the point of collapse, but East’s strong arm kept me upright and moving.
“Almost there, Kell.”
Her breath was cool on my feverish brow. She led me up the hill, into the trees as the day began to fade. There was a light winking ahead of us—flickering amongst the pines, leading us on. I was too sick and faint to wonder what it was, too exhausted to warn her that a light probably meant other people, and other people could only mean trouble.
I slipped out of her grasp and fell heavily to my knees as we reached a clearing in the woods. First one, then another snowflake grazed my cheek like cold, wet, ghostly fingertips, melting as soon as they hit the ground.
“Kell!” I heard East cry as I slowly toppled onto my side, but it was like I was hearing her from underwater. The world began to recede. I knew I was hallucinating then as I breathed deeply of the pine needles on the forest floor and beheld a tiny log cabin in the gloom of the clearing. A bright white light winked on and off from its front window. I lost consciousness as East began to drag me toward the door, the snow falling ever faster.
Chapter Twenty-one
Cabin Fever
I was neither asleep nor awake, but in that wonderful place in between. I didn’t want to wake up, but I couldn’t remember why. Slowly, gradually, I became aware of three things. I was warm. I was lying on a bed. The fever was gone.
I opened my eyes. Gentle pale yellow light crept through curtains framing the window at the front of the cabin. It was early morning, but of what day? My internal clock told me a significant chunk of time had passed.