Wasteland

by Noah Mann

  “Sleep,” she said.

  I reached up and put my hand to her warm cheek, tilting my head a bit to the side to plant a soft kiss on her for head.

  “I will,” I told her. “I will.”

  And I did, falling into a deep sleep. Dreaming of nothing. Not of the cool, green earth as it once was. Nor did I dream of anyone. Not even of the one I held close. The one who held me just as close. If I’d been able to analyze the lack of her presence in my sleeping thoughts I might’ve considered that my subconscious was as attuned to the world as it existed in reality as my conscious self was. That part of me, quiet while the waking world spot on, might be trying to protect me. Might be trying to keep thoughts of Elaine at bay. That part of me, all parts of me, knew how easy it was for a soul to be erased in an instant.

  Part Two

  Survivors

  Seven

  The sound woke me. Squeaky wheels and singing. Some nonsense tune in a small voice.

  A little girl’s voice.

  “Elaine,” I said, gently moving my shoulder where her head rested. “Wake up.”

  She stirred softly, then her body tensed, ready to bolt into action. I laid a hand upon her stomach to stop the abrupt response.

  “What is it?”

  Before I had a chance to answer her question, she heard it. The screech in the near distance. The childish melody made of gibberish.

  “It’s a little girl,” she said, a mix of wonder and worry rising quickly. “A child?”

  That singular descriptor was misleading. We both knew that a child, particularly a small child, indicated the presence of an adult. A parent or some other person to watch over them. To keep them alive.

  I stood, taking my AR in hand, Elaine doing the same with her MP5 as she rose from the couch. We went to the window behind the easy chair, each of us to one side, scanning the street beyond the small dead lawn out front and the intersecting avenue that defined the corner property.

  “I don’t see anything,” Elaine said.

  “Same here,” I said, glancing out to the hallway behind as the singing and squeaking drifted in from somewhere out there. “I’ll get Neil.”

  I walked quickly down the hallway, ready to rouse my friend from sleep. That turned out to not be necessary. Neil stood beside the bedroom’s broken window, looking out, watching, as the same sounds made their way inside. Louder here.

  Neil heard my approach and signaled silence with a finger to his lips, then motioned me over. I noticed both his hands were empty. The Benelli rested on the bare mattress where he’d slept with it next to him. I couldn’t say that any of us felt threatened by what we were hearing, but Neil was displaying some extra relaxation at what he was witness to.

  “What do you have?” I asked, stepping close and slightly behind my friend.

  “At first I thought I was dreaming,” Neil said.

  I looked past him and understood immediately why he’d described the sight as he had. In the middle of the dusty street, several houses up, at too severe an angle for Elaine and I too have seen from the front window, a little girl pedaled a tricycle in front of a blue house with plastic taped over the windows.

  “Son of a...”

  “Exactly,” Neil agreed.

  Elaine came into the bedroom, puzzled. I gestured her over to the window with a tip of my head. She approached and looked out just as the little girl turned her tricycle and pedaled back the other way, completing a circuit in front of the blue house.

  “You’ve gotta be...”

  “Yeah, we’ve gone there already,” I told Elaine.

  “She can’t be more than six,” Elaine said.

  I thought she was right on the money. The girl did appear to be just about that age. Six years old and riding a tricycle wearing a yellow dress on an empty street in a deserted town in the middle of a dead country.

  “She can’t be alone here,” Neil suggested.

  “No, she can’t,” I agreed. “The real question is how not alone she is. Is there one other person with her? Five? Fifty?”

  “She rides,” Elaine said, and both Neil and I looked from the little girl to her. “Isn’t that what the guy last night said before he died?”

  It was. ‘She rides.’ Nothing more. In a world with six billion people a statement like that might refer to any number of persons and activities. But in this world, in our world, with the proximity of the speaker of those words and what we were looking at in the street outside, the odds that the dying stranger was not referring to this were miniscule.

  “Why would he use his last breath to tell us about her?” Neil wondered. “She sure as hell didn’t shoot him.”

  “You’re the one who said she couldn’t be alone,” Elaine said.

  We could stand there at the window all day, watching the little girl ride her tricycle back and forth, maybe glimpsing where she’d come from when she finished. But we didn’t have all day. We needed to move on. And just as that was a fact, I also knew that we would have to talk to the child. And to anyone who might be with her.

  “I’m going out there,” I said, slinging my AR across the front of my body, as ready as it could be without the weapon being in my hands. “You two can cover me from here.”

  Neil retrieved his Benelli from where it lay on the mattress and slid the safety off. He took a position on the right side of the window, Elaine on the left, the pair of them able to see both up and down the street. I moved toward the door but was stopped before I left the bedroom by words from behind. Elaine’s words.

  “Be damn careful out there.”

  I nodded to her, and at the same instant caught the look that Neil was giving the two of us. A knowing look. A happy look. My friend smiled at me, then turned to the window again and raised his weapon, ready.

  I moved quickly through the house to the front door and stepped past the broken barrier that hung on a single hinge, wrenched inward, leaning precariously against a bookcase. The porch creaked beneath my feet, the steps leading down to the walkway crunching, as if the weathered wood was ready to snap. I crossed what had been lawn to the side of the house, the street that bordered the corner lot open before me. Maybe twenty yards away the little girl rode in slow ovals, jabbering her nonsense tune.

  There they go. Here they go. Go go go.

  That was her song. For a moment I just stood there, listening, and watching. Watching the houses. Scanning for movement. For light glinting off a rifle scope zeroed in on me.

  I saw none of that. No threats. No sign of life at all, except for the little girl trundling happily along on her tricycle.

  Here they go. Go go go.

  Slowly, I approached her, the oval circuit she was pedaling keeping her facing away from me half the time. But the other half she was facing me. And she looked at me. Unmistakably right at me, her narrowed eyes on her thinning face finding me, watching me, then looking away as she made the turn to continue her ride in the opposite direction.

  “Hello,” I said when I drew close enough that I was certain she could hear me.

  She gave no reply. Just looked at me as she pedaled my way again, then away as she turned.

  “My name is Eric.”

  “There they go. Here they go. Go go go.”

  The nonsense was no response. It poured in repetition from the little girl, leaving me standing there, wondering who else was out there. Watching over her. Watching me.

  I glanced back toward the house I’d come from, catching sight of Neil and Elaine as I shrugged. They looked to each other, then Neil signaled that they were coming to join me. Tactically that might not make sense, but then nothing we were witnessing right now did, so I didn’t protest, giving them a nod and turning to watch the little girl ride as my friends approached. They each wore their packs, and Neil held mine in hand, lowering it to the ground as he neared.

  “She won’t answer,” I said.

  Elaine, who stood next to me, studied the little girl as Neil held position a few yards to our left, scann
ing the street and houses beyond the child. Alert for any threat while we focused on the smallest of survivors before us.

  “She’s looking thin,” Elaine commented.

  “Maybe whoever’s been taking care of her isn’t anymore,” I suggested.

  “Or can’t,” Elaine said.

  I’d wondered before how many children since the blight took hold had succumbed simply because those who’d provided for them, who’d cared for them, had themselves died, one passing leading to another.

  “Sweetie,” Elaine called out gently. “Sweetie, can you stop for a minute?”

  The child glanced at Elaine and kept riding.

  “Should we just stop her?” I asked.

  Elaine shook her head. Even in the wasteland that the world had become, there were certain actions that still felt uncomfortable to take. Certain lines that were difficult to cross. Physically confronting a child fell into those categories.

  “Just give me a minute,” Elaine said, slinging her MP5 and stepping closer to the little girl, crouching down a bit to her level. “Can we just talk to you? That’s all we want to do. Just talk.”

  The little girl completed another circuit and turned, riding back toward Elaine. This time, though, she slowed, her gaze fixing fully on Elaine as she came to a stop.

  “That’s a very nice tricycle,” Elaine told the little girl.

  No response came from the child. No nod, no word, no acknowledgment at all that anything had been addressed to her.

  “Do you live here with someone?” Elaine asked.

  Again, she said nothing, gave no answer, but her gaze did shift, from Elaine to Neil.

  “There they go,” the little girl said in her singsong voice, directly to my friend, as if the tune was meant especially for him. “Here they go. Go go go.”

  Neil puzzled at the song. At the words. And at the attention focused on him.

  “What does it mean?” Neil asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “There they go. Here they go.”

  Elaine stood, looking down at the little girl.

  “Go go go go go go...”

  The child’s expression changed. It grew hard. Tense. Something was wrong.

  That suspicion was confirmed when I saw Elaine bringing her MP5 up and aiming toward Neil. I looked to my friend and saw him, startled at our friend’s action.

  He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d seen the man charging at him from behind with a pitchfork in hand.

  Eight

  “Neil!”

  My friend turned just fast enough at my warning that only a single tine at the business end of the pitchfork clipped his shoulder, penetrating jacket and shirt, spearing then into his flesh, driving a shallow, painful hole.

  Elaine, who’d glimpsed the man first as he charged at us from behind, had her MP5 to bear before Neil or I could react, with at least a partially clear shot at the man’s side. She fired two rounds, which the man turned into, his body doubling half over, pitchfork dropping from his gloved grip. He moved in Elaine’s direction, maybe stumbling toward her, and she fired twice more, one shot dead center in his chest, the other higher, just below his Adam’s apple. That last round she fired blasted out the back of the man’s neck and he dropped like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.

  Neil almost tripped retreating from the attack. Bleeding and grimacing in agony, he still brought his Benelli up, taking aim at his fallen assailant.

  “Dammit!” Neil swore, settling to his knees, free hand reaching over the top of the shoulder to probe the wound.

  “He’s covered!” Elaine shouted, backing slightly away from the man she’d taken down and glancing quickly to me. “Help Neil.”

  I went to my friend and took the shotgun from his hand, resting it on the ground next to him.

  “She sure as hell wasn’t alone,” Neil half joked, his jaw bearing down against the pain.

  I slid the strap of his pack aside and pulled the jacket down over his shoulder, then his shirt, both soaked with blood from the wound I could now see.

  “It’s not bad,” I told him, reaching into the left cargo pocket of my pants and retrieving the small trauma kit I kept their. “It was just your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  I tore open a gauze package and pressed it over the puncture. My friend recoiled slightly at the pressure.

  “Your turn,” I repeated. “I’ve been shot. Elaine’s been shot. All you got was this little poke in your shoulder.”

  Neil grimaced a chuckle. As I worked on his shoulder, he looked past me, the little girl, sitting still atop her tricycle, staring at the man who’d tried to kill us.

  “She was bait,” Neil said. “She rides. I guess we know why he said that now.”

  I nodded and glanced to the pitchfork on the ground. Its three tines were sharpened to gleaming tips, spaced evenly. The pattern matched exactly the holes in the stranger’s back that I’d assumed were from gunfire.

  “Who the hell would use a child?”

  Neil tipped his head toward the man on the ground in answer to my question.

  “How is he?” I asked Elaine without looking away from my friends wound.

  “Not a problem anymore,” she said.

  I glanced her way and noted a more relaxed posture. Her MP5 hung across her chest, just one hand upon it, holding the grip loosely. The attacker on the ground before her lay still. Deathly still. Gone.

  Elaine knelt on one knee close to the man, not in any act of reverence, but out of curiosity. Blood was spreading slowly from beneath his body, pooling and saturating the dry earth around him. In one red puddle his right hand rested, its gloved fingers soaking in the thick, warm liquid.

  “Look at his hand,” Elaine said.

  Neil came to his knees, and stood with my help, wanting to see what Elaine had noticed. The two of us took a few steps and stood over the body.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  She reached across the bloody puddle and gripped the glove covering his right hand at the wrist¸ sliding it downward and off.

  “Jesus...”

  Neil had offered the quiet exclamation, though I just as easily could have. The man’s exposed hand was missing three digits, just pinky and ring finger remaining. The thumb, index, and middle finger were missing. Clipped off at the base, just reddened scabs of skin remaining where they had once sprouted.

  Elaine removed the glove from his other hand, revealing a similar, if not as dramatic, sight. Just index and middle finger had been removed on this hand, leaving him a thumb that he had used to awkwardly grip the pitchfork.

  “Are you thinking what I am?” Neil asked.

  I was. And I suspected Elaine was, as well. In unison, the three of us looked away from the dead man and back to the little girl.

  But she wasn’t there anymore. Her tricycle sat, abandoned, in the middle of the street. On a yard beyond the far sidewalk, tiny puffs of parched earth swirled low to the ground, her tiny feet kicking up the dusty wake as she ran toward a house, bounded up the steps, and disappeared inside.

  I took my pack from the ground and slipped it over my shoulders then started to cross the street, to move toward the house, but Neil grabbed my arm, stopping me.

  “Just because he’s dead,” Neil said, “that doesn’t mean she’s alone now.”

  He was right. I brought my AR up, ready, and started across the street again, my friends right behind, watching my back.

  Nine

  I entered the house, my AR ready, finger on the trigger. Ahead a hallway stretched past doors on either side, bedrooms and a bathroom, I presumed, and to my left beyond the mostly open door a dining table filled the space. Places set, two, with something small on one of the plates. Small and white and spotted with red.

  There was no doubt what it was.

  A sound startled me, coming from the hallway, and I was in the first instant of reacting, my brain instructing muscles to bring my AR to bear, when the source
of the disturbance became clear. I kept the muzzle of my rifle pointed at the floor as the little girl trotted in and went to the table.

  Behind, Elaine and Neil entered, joining me in watching the scene of terrible necessity.

  “Daddy said we couldn’t catch the other man, so he had to get some other food.”

  The little girl stood at the table and reached to her plate and lifted the tawny finger bone, bringing it to her mouth to gnaw off the last specks of flesh, like one might chicken from a wing.

  “The man got away,” the little girl said, biting and chewing.

  “Sweetie,” Elaine said, going to the child and gripping her hand.

  The little girl jerked free and glared at Elaine.

  “It’s mine! It’s my food! Daddy said no one can take our food!”

  Elaine didn’t try to seize the girl again, choosing to slip off her pack and reach inside, pulling an MRE from within. She held it out to the girl, who stared at it, puzzled, her father’s finger bone gripped dearly in hand close to her mouth.

  “It’s food,” Elaine said.

  The child made no move. She eyed the brown plastic pouch that Elaine held like a curiosity, safe or dangerous, both unknowns.

  “Here,” Elaine said, peeling the end of the package open. “Look.”

  “What’s in there?” the girl asked, leery.

  Elaine tipped the package toward her so she could see inside. The girl looked, squinting at first, her eyes soon widening, seizing on the true content. She looked to Elaine, and Elaine nodded, an invitation, a signal, to go ahead. To take. The little girl held onto the finger bone with one hand and slipped the other into the package, pulling out a wrapped brownie bar.

  “That’s my favorite,” Elaine said.

  “Mine, too,” Neil concurred.