The Book of Kell

by Amy Briant

  On the opposite bank, a coyote suddenly appeared. I probably never would have seen it if I hadn’t been looking directly at the spot where it materialized from the bushes like a grayish brown wraith. It looked around cautiously, sniffing, then lapped at the water. High above our heads in the pine tree, a raven cawed. The coyote stiffened and cocked an ear, almost as if it were a signal, then slunk back into the undergrowth.

  “I’m going in,” I said to East.

  “What? Where?”

  I pointed out the blackberries, so enticingly close.

  “You’re gonna swim in that?” She sounded skeptical, but I could tell she wanted the berries too.

  “It’s a marsh, right? I mean, how deep can it be?”

  About knee deep as it turned out, but the bottom was a layer of mud so thick and sticky it threatened to pull off my boots. When I fell down—of course—my pants and the front of my shirt were soaked with stinky swamp water. The mud on my hands smelled worse, like something that had been putrid when it was alive had died and gone bad. Way, way bad.

  East thought it was hilarious. At least she was smiling again. I wiped my hands on the seat of my pants, persevered and finally climbed up on the islet only to realize I had nothing in which to carry the berries. Except the hat on my head, which I swept off with a flourish to East who was still mocking me from the shore.

  Some animal had beaten me to one side of the bush and eaten all that fruit. There was more than enough left to fill my hat. I would’ve thought the swamp water would produce only stunted and bitter berries, but these were just about perfect—plump, juicy and luscious. I noticed other tiny islands in the marsh were also sporting blackberry bushes, but they were too far from shore for me.

  “That’s right,” I said loudly to East. “Keep making fun of me. That’s the way to get some blackberries.”

  She laughed. A raven circling overhead added his cawing to our racket. Something finally clicked in my brain:

  The coyote hears the raven

  The raven follows the bear

  And when they get together

  You better not be there

  That was it! I turned to East to tell her this gem, one of several bits of doggerel Gran had made up to teach us about nature. In this case, to tell us how ravens are smart—they follow bears and feed on the pickings the bears leave behind. Coyotes are smart too—when they hear the ravens cawing, they invite themselves to the party.

  But East was looking downstream, back the way we had come.

  “Hey,” she called uncertainly, still staring down the channel. “Is that a dog?”

  I turned to look. Quite a ways downstream, but still too close for comfort, a big light brown head could be seen against the black of the deeper water in the middle. Bobbing up and down. Splashing. No—two light brown heads, one big and one not so big. Coming right at us. Mama bear and a cub.

  You better not be there.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, shoving my full cap down the front of my shirt and wading as fast as I could back to shore. Which was nightmarishly slow.

  “Those are bears, East!” I hissed. “Grab the packs!”

  We scrambled up the hillside, putting as much distance as we could between us and them.

  “Are they after us?” East gasped as we fled through the brush.

  “More likely the blackberries,” I told her. I knew bears were omnivores—I could only hope those two were strictly vegetarian.

  After about half a mile, we found ourselves breaking free of the dense undergrowth. To my surprise, we were on the remains of a broad asphalt street. I’d pictured the swamp and forest stretching for miles. But no, here was a formerly residential neighborhood, where either earthquakes or bombs had torn the houses apart. Maybe both. A street sign still stood on one of the corners: Grizzly View Road.

  Now you tell me.

  Although the road was buckled and broken, we still made good time over it compared to the rough going in the swamp. There was no sign of the bears trailing us. I kept my ears peeled for the shrieks and caws of the ravens, but I heard none of that either. After an hour or so, the road began to both climb and curve, first northward and finally back to the west. We had rounded the swamp and were on our way back to where we’d started. We caught glimpses of the channel (but thankfully, no bears) through the dense trees. The sun sparkled on the dark water, making it look almost pretty from a safe distance.

  “Look!” East cried out, late in the day. “I can see the bridge again.”

  The Carquinez Bridge, or rather the mess that was made when it collapsed, was now on our left. Before long we had regained the freeway. I was tempted to get down and kiss it, I was so glad to see it.

  But my elation was short-lived. The freeway led us up a short, steep hill and at the top—it simply disappeared. We stood looking down at a vast chasm maybe a mile in diameter. Towering sandstone cliffs lined the bowl. So steep were the sides that little vegetation could cling. Far down at the bottom—five hundred feet? a thousand?—was more of the awful black water. The setting sun glinted on man-made debris as well, although it was too far to tell if it was cars or buildings or something else. I tried not to dwell on the something else. I’d seen a picture of such massive destruction like this once before in a book back at the Settlement. The caption described an asteroid exploding into the earth’s surface in some faraway country. The impact had created an immense crater like this one. Was that what had happened here? An asteroid. Or maybe a bomb or an earthquake beyond all imagining.

  It made no difference. Its only significance to me was as another obstacle between us and Segundo. East had silently slipped her hand into mine as we gazed, awestruck, at the devastation. A lot of people had died here once upon a time.

  “C’mon,” I finally said, but she didn’t move. Her eyes were wide and unblinking.

  “East?”

  I put my arm around her waist and led her slowly away like a child, tears rolling down her face, but no sound to accompany them.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Food

  It only got harder for us after that. Food was our biggest concern. We were fortunate to find water fairly regularly, or it found us in the form of rain. The conundrum was to stay put for a few days and set traps and maybe catch a squirrel or a rabbit, or keep moving to try to reach Segundo as quickly as we could. Sometimes we happened on a source of food and would set up camp there for a day or two, like we had so long ago on the beach with the shore birds and their eggs. I knew that the longer we were out on the road, though, the more our odds of survival decreased.

  It would have helped if we knew where we were going.

  After the road ended and the blast zones we found beyond that first crater forced us so many miles off our planned route, I tried to think what Gabriel must have done. After all, her group had to have encountered the same obstacles, assuming they had made it to the end of the freeway. I finally settled on a plan of hiking as near to due north as possible in the a.m. and due east in the p.m. It seemed like a logical approach to staying on track with the original course. And I couldn’t think of anything better. Having a plan was preferable to blind wandering in any event.

  But sometimes our need for food and water interfered with that orderly scheme. Streams were good, because they provided us with water and sometimes fish. Cattails as well, which were edible if not delicious. But streams don’t run perfectly north and east, so my attempts at orienteering were all too often cast aside in favor of the search for sustenance.

  I found I had better luck fishing than I did with trapping. One trick Gabriel had taught me was the fish dam. Even East grew skilled at this tactic. First, you needed a small stream. At a narrow spot, you piled rocks in the stream to block it with a more or less circular enclosure. One with a small, fish-sized opening. The next step was to put leafy branches over the top of that rock circle to create a dark and welcoming haven for the fish. Lastly—and this was East’s area of expertise—one person went a little bit upstrea
m to thrash and splash the water to drive the fish into the trap. Where I was waiting to spear them with a sharpened stick or simply scoop them out of the water onto the bank, where the challenge was to keep them from flopping right back into the drink.

  We ate a lot of fish.

  One chilly afternoon, we were huddled by our luncheon campfire trying to remember what bacon tasted like. East claimed she could still recall the flavor, but I was skeptical. We’d had only leftover cattails to eat that day and our water was running low again. I looked across the dwindling flames at her. The girl from high school was all but gone. Her face was drawn and dirty, her hair a mess, her cheeks hollow and her beautiful eyes had dark shadows underneath. I was sure I looked even worse, considering where I’d started from.

  We were running out of time, plain and simple.

  With a grunt, East rose to her feet and stretched. Without a word, she set about extinguishing the fire, kicking dirt on the embers and concealing the most obvious evidence of our passing. Our routine was well set by then. No conversation needed. I stood as well. It was overcast, but the distant landmark I’d identified as due east the day before—a hill where fire had cut a swath through the forest, leaving a prominent bald patch—was still visible.

  I shrugged into my pack and picked up East’s bag to hand to her.

  “Ready?” I said.

  Before she could answer, we heard it. The unmistakable sound of a turkey. Gobble gobble. And not far off.

  East’s face lit up, but she nodded silently at my finger to the lips. She raised her eyebrows and held out her hands, palms up. Where is it? We listened, hearing the wind in the trees and nothing else for a long minute or two.

  Gobble gobble. There! At about the same distance. Another turkey answered the first, helping me to pinpoint the direction. Between us and the bald hill. A flock, perhaps? My hopes soared. The more turkeys to aim at, the better chance I had of bringing one down. I’d filled my time at night around the fire recently by constructing a new weapon. Gran called it a bola. One day long ago, when I was maybe nine and Gabriel twelve, we were fussing and fighting over something, or more likely nothing. Gran pulled us apart, set us down on the porch, and told us to pipe down and learn something useful. She had Gabriel cut three lengths of cord as long as her arm and sent me off to gather three small spherical rocks “no bigger than a golf ball.”

  “A what, Gran?” I asked, confused.

  “Round,” she explained. “Half the size of my fist.” She held out her bunched fist for me to compare. Small, but strong, like her.

  When I didn’t move fast enough, she told me to just go find a bunch of round rocks and not come back until my baseball hat was full of them. She was always adept at assigning small tasks to us that would ensure her at least ten minutes of peace and quiet.

  When I returned, Gabriel had tied the three lengths of cord together at one end. Gran showed us how to attach a rock to each of the strands. You then grasped the knotted end, whirled the bola about your head and flung it at some unsuspecting critter, entangling its legs long enough for you to run up and brain it.

  In theory, at least. At nine, I wasn’t much of a marksman, but Gabriel managed to catch us a few dinners that way. Possum, as I recalled. I hadn’t had much opportunity to practice with my newly made weapon, but long, skinny turkey legs were perfect for a well-aimed bola. I pulled it out of my pack and double-checked the knots.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered to East.

  It turned out to be a small group of turkeys, just four. A flockette. My attempts to stalk them were hampered by the wind, which insisted on unreliably shifting, and by East, who was constitutionally incapable of going more than five minutes without speaking. The turkeys were unhurriedly moving east, more or less, pausing to feed on whatever turkeys eat from time to time. They were in no hurry, just grazing, but every time I’d get set, they’d move again.

  My plan was to sneak up on the dumbest and slowest turkey, throw the bola and then club it to death with a rock. No doubt all the other birds would scatter at this, but one turkey would provide plenty of meat for us. So far, though, the fowl had managed to keep a safe distance from me. I was almost desperate enough to use a bullet. But with the shifting wind and shaky aim on an empty stomach, my confidence level wasn’t high. A couple of cattails and a few sips of water only takes you so far.

  And I knew in my heart that it was more important to save our limited ammunition for truly dire circumstances. We were hungry, yes—but we weren’t quite starving. Yet.

  I probably would have given up after a couple of hours, but the birds continued to move east, so it made sense to keep following them. I kept an eye out for anything else edible as we crept along, which was a pace well-suited to our waning strength. The sun finally appeared late in the afternoon and was warm on our backs as we crested a small hill. The turkeys had paused again to feed in a small meadow just below us. The good news was there was plenty of cover on the downslope of the hill for us to get close. Closer, in fact, that we had all afternoon.

  The bad news was what lay beyond the meadow. First, a fence. A serious fence—tall, imposing, eight feet high chain-link with razor wire on top. Gabriel and I had climbed numerous fences just like it in our scavenging trips in San Tomas. From right to left, the fence stretched as far as I could see, disappearing in both directions into the dense forest which bordered the meadow on both sides. It wasn’t a new fence—time and weather had taken a toll on it. Portions sagged. I could see a rusty spot where someone had long ago cut through the links and made an opening. Weeds and shrubs flourished on the near side of the fence, but the far side was a barren, jumbled area of broken up concrete and asphalt. A few lonely dandelions poked their heads up through the cracks, but this was one of those rare places where the hand of man still dominated the landscape.

  Thankfully, no actual man was present. From my vantage point on the hill, flat on the ground beside East and behind a concealing bush, I saw no evidence of the current or even recent presence of humans. That was comforting.

  A hundred feet beyond the fence was the first of many enormous circular tanks, like the ones we’d seen on the hills around Carquinez. Metal or concrete, I wasn’t sure. Each tank was easily fifty feet high. There were dozens of them, some collapsed, some still standing. All had once been painted white or pastel blues, greens, pinks and lavenders. White for water? Pink for petroleum?

  All of this I took in at a glance. I wanted no part of it, whatever it was. Any water was likely to be contaminated. My focus was on the turkeys.

  “What is it?” East breathed into my ear.

  I shrugged. Did it matter? Something from Before—something for their power, their water, their communications. Just one more ridiculously giant eyesore those people had built before fleeing or dying.

  “Stay here,” I whispered to East, who was all too happy to comply.

  I wormed my way down to the foot of the hill, as close to silent as all my years of training with Gabriel and Gran could make me. The wind was in my favor for the moment. One of the turkeys, a young male, was grazing closer and closer to my spot. My muscles tensed as I silently readied my bola for a throw. I held my breath. One more step…

  I jumped to my feet and hurled the bola, all in one smooth movement.

  And, of course, the not-so-dumb turkey was a split second faster. My weapon flew harmlessly by as he raced away, sounding the alarm. The other birds, infected by his panic, joined in the mad dash for the fence. I grabbed up my bola on the run, thinking I might get a second shot. To my chagrin, however, each of the birds zipped through the gash in the fence, leaving me on the wrong side. In a moment, they had disappeared behind the tanks. I heard a faint gobble gobble in the distance. Taunted by poultry. How rude.

  I pondered our options as East came down the hill with a scowl on her face. I checked the sun, which was getting low in the sky directly behind us. That meant our eastward path ran right through the power plant or tank farm or whatever the hell yo
u called it. I’d heard tales of strange men being drawn to such places, to the remnants of the technology and machinery that once ruled their lives. But I was reassured again by the stark absence of any sign of people. The turkeys certainly had no fear of it. I still had hopes of bagging one—I hadn’t missed by that much.

  On the other hand, it was late afternoon and I had no idea how many miles across this place was. I didn’t like the idea of spending the night in there.

  But if we meekly followed the fence line instead, who knew how far we’d have to go out of our way?

  As usual, all our choices sucked. By the time East arrived at my side, I’d made up my mind.

  “You giving up?” she asked.

  “Hell, no,” I told her. “We’re going in.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The Tank Farm

  A rusty and mangled NO TRESPASSING sign dangled above the slit in the chain-link fence. Well, the birds hadn’t heeded it, so why should we? I wrenched back the flap of fence for East to squeeze through, then followed.

  Walking among the giant, decaying tanks was spookier than I had feared. It was dim in there, for one thing, with the huge metal structures casting shadows and blocking the setting sun. And with the tanks being curved, there was never a corner around which to see. The circle just kept going—and you were never sure what the next step might reveal.

  So far, not much had been revealed. We continued to hear the turkeys every once in a while. But sound was distorted amongst the tanks. Vibrations bounced off one metal surface and on to another. It was hard to tell how far the birds were from us.

  It felt colder in there too. The wind was picking up as dusk approached. Normally, that was a time of day when birds were most active—feeding, swooping through the sky, calling to each other. Apart from the intermittent gobbles, however, there was no birdsong in the tank farm. No squirrels darted across our path. It was not a place for growth and life. It was sterile. Eerie and abandoned. The not so ancient ruins of another failed civilization.