by Darrell Bain
* * * *
Carla was sticking close to Deputy Breedlove, and he didn't know quite how to handle it. His last girlfriend had dropped him almost two years ago. Since then, he had been singularly lonely, eating too much and drinking too much, and sort of drifting along. Sometimes he slept in his squad car at night, even though his conscience bothered him when he did, but shit, nothing ever happened in Goodpasture anyway, at least until now. If he could have read Carla's thoughts, he would have been amazed.
He wondered if Carla remembered his warning to Fred not to leave. How did she see him now that Fred's decision to go against his warning proved so fatal for him? Was he still the bumbling overweight bubba in her eyes? He had the feeling that he just may have been magically transformed in her eyes to the very epitome of authority and stability. As it was, her presence gave his confidence a much-needed boost, and the other kids went right along. As the day wore on, he began to think more and more like a leader and less like a pawn, good only for issuing speeding tickets and cadging donuts from the grocery store.
The next morning, Breedlove assigned one of the boys to fetch and carry various supplies from the homes of the widows and the other two couples to the feed store where he decided to set up headquarters. There was plenty of room there. He set the other to calling and listening from his squad car radio, even though nothing but static still came over the air. He checked their newly acquired weapons with authority and made sure that the safeties were on.
That afternoon, he explored the periphery where the shops ended and forest began. Carla followed along, never letting herself get more than a few feet away from him. He was completely puzzled at the way the downtown area ended so abruptly in tangles of wild growth, as if part of Goodpasture had been set down in the middle of the Amazon. He stood staring into the wilderness and felt his heart thump inside at the thought, wild as it was. Carla clung to his arm, and the pressure of her breast against it made his heart race faster. Good God, doesn't she know that I'm almost forty years old? Or am I imagining things? What would a kid like her see in me, other than someone to protect her? He turned back toward the town, unable to sort out the girl's intentions or at least not daring to believe them.
By day's end, Breedlove was really scared. No help had arrived. No word had come over the radio. So far as the little area of Goodpasture was concerned, it could have been the only town left in America. He tried not to let his fear show.
As darkness closed in, he ordered everyone into the feed store, moving bedding and blankets and air mattresses over from the sporting center to sleep on. He posted sentries, thinking of how Fred Whitestone had been taken by some wild animal. The deputy took the first shift himself, to set an example, as he thought of it.
There had been a few protests about sleeping in the confines of the feed store, but he quickly stifled it by telling everyone they would be safer there. Besides, there was plenty of space and the storerooms gave adequate privacy. He was grateful for the privacy later, when he returned to the room he had taken and found Carla there waiting for him, lying curled up on the pallet he had made.
“What are you doing here, Carla?"
“I'm scared. I want to stay with you."
Breedlove leaned his rifle against the wall and lit a cigarette. Carla looked trustfully up at him, her face lit with shadows from a flickering candle.
“People will talk."
“I don't care. Please, can I stay?"
Breedlove let himself be persuaded, remembering that there weren't that many people around to talk anyway. He sat down and Carla snuggled up against him. His stomach rumbled and he was glad that the girl couldn't see the blush that suffused his face. He had very carefully not eaten much at the evening meal. It seemed that he was going to be a leader, and he thought maybe it might be a good idea to make an effort to start looking like one.
He couldn't help but notice how the two widows smirked at him the next morning when he and Carla came out of the storeroom together, but he ignored it and began conferring with the two teenage boys, planning the day's activities. Screw those old broads. They've been living by themselves for so long they wouldn't know what a man was if one came up and bit them on the ass.
* * * *
Darla and Brent, accompanied by Bob Jezak and the short blond woman named Alice, had hardly begun their exodus away from the roadside park when a series of shots sounded from behind them. They all stopped to listen but there was no more gunfire. Only the rustle of leaves in the morning breeze broke the silence.
“I've been expecting that,” Jezak finally remarked.
Brent raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?"
“Did you hear a shot last night?"
“Yes, but it was just one."
“One's all it takes, if it's aimed right. What you heard last night was one of those dudes warning the other one away from his woman. I suspect there's one less man alive back there now. No great loss, though. Neither one of them was worth a damn.” Jezak spat on the ground.
“What about the women? Weren't there two of them?"
“I talked to both of them,” Alice said. “One of them I think might be okay, but the other I'm not sure of. I only saw her for a few minutes, but I think she's a groupie. Or maybe a prostitute working the parks."
“That was my impression, too,” Jezec said. “Think we should go back, Brent? Maybe take a peek without showing ourselves?"
While Brent was considering Bob's question, another series of shots rang out, like the snapping of reins on a balky horse. That decided Brent.
“No, let's go on, at least for the morning. If we don't find any help by noon, we'll turn back and see what happened, if we can. After that, we can head for the gulf again."
Brent wasn't entirely satisfied with his decision, but it was the best compromise he could think of. He had no desire to get into a shooting match with the unruly truckers and if the change was only local, they could send the law back to deal with the situation. If not, it might be best to return and see if anyone were left alive. Humans might be awfully scarce in this odd New World, and if it were possible, maybe they could salvage whoever was left. Selling western wear certainly didn't do anything to prepare me for this, he thought wryly.
* * * *
Home health care surely never prepared me for anything like this, Peggy Carlino thought as she struggled out of the grasp of another blackberry vine. The first day, she had alternated between sitting in her car and getting out to walk in circles around it, gazing in wonder at the surrounding forest.
Even on the second day of her isolation, she still half hoped that she had become disoriented while on her way to visit one of her patients, an old black man slowly dying from lung cancer. He lived way off the beaten path, several miles down a gravel road from the farm to market, and that was where the change had caught her just as his tarpaper shack came into view. She was running very late and really should have put off the visit until the next day, but she knew the old man needed her, and besides, she always liked to visit with him.
Peggy always stayed a little longer than necessary with the old man, fascinated with his tales of what his youth had been like in the old segregated south. Now, she wished mightily that she had delayed the visit until the next day. The more she gazed into the depths of the climax forest surrounding her, the less room there was to think she had simply gotten lost.
The shack had disappeared from the beam of her headlights at the same time as the flash of light and clap of thunder startled her. She had been tuned to a news station that gave the weather every half-hour, and there had been no mention of thunderstorms. Fortunately, she had slowed as the shack came into view so stopping in time had been no problem.
The rest of the night was still mostly a blurred memory of alternating fear and disgust at getting herself so thoroughly lost, even though she couldn't imagine how it could have happened, and so suddenly at that. Until the next morning when she realized the extent of the disaster, she almost convinced h
erself that she had only imagined the nearness of the old man's shack and had taken a wrong turn well before arriving there. Daylight brought a horrifying return to reality.
After Peggy finally struck out through the woods, she tried to orient her path in the direction of the nearest town to where the old man's home had been; as the day wore on she began to doubt her ability to find it anyway. She was as thoroughly lost and as scared as she had been the first time she scrubbed for surgery, back during her student days. The first thing she did was drop an instrument and, forgetting her sterile status, bent over to pick it up. The surgeon had chewed her up and down unmercifully and she thought for a day or two that she would simply drop out of nursing, but the feeling passed, just as she hoped and intermittently prayed that this dreamlike experience would come to an end.
One thing Peggy was grateful for was the little automatic pistol she carried in her right hand. The noises she heard as she worked her way through the woods were fearful, and not at all familiar. Don, her husband of twelve years had bought the gun for her soon after she began working for the home health agency out of Livingston, and insisted that she learn how to use it. It was a comfort, now, but not that much of one.
Once, she had seen a bear. She stopped while it inspected her calmly, then it went back to digging roots. She made a wide detour around it, wondering what zoo it had escaped from. There just couldn't be any bears left in this area of Texas. Could there?
Before abandoning her vehicle, she had used a pair of forceps from her medical bag to pull the foil off the top of a liter of distilled water. She stuffed it and the remainder of her lunch, which she had never gotten around to finishing, into her medical bag. During the day, she drank half the bottle of flat tasting water but still hadn't touched the orange and other sandwich. She had no appetite, and didn't want to stop and take time to eat anyway. She wanted to get out of this forest and back home with Don and Bridgette.
The forest didn't cooperate and by evening, Peggy began to think she had lost her sense of direction, even though she had tried to travel according to the way sunbeams slanted through the overhead growth. She knew the sun was close to setting, even though she couldn't see it; the darkening forest gave ample evidence of how low it must be on the horizon. There seemed to be no end to the huge trees, larger than any she had ever seen, and she was tired and bug bitten. At least I'm wearing pants and sensible shoes, she thought, even if they are wet and muddy. Please, please, let me find someone soon. This just can't be real. I'm scared, and by now Don and everyone he could drum up must be searching for me. Did Bridgette go to school today? Has she asked why I didn't come home last night? Oh, God, let me find someone soon, I can't bear much more of this.
As if in answer to her prayer, from somewhere in front of her, Peggy heard faint sounds of sobbing. Why, that's a child, she thought, like a young girl crying because her horse has broken a leg and has to be shot; no, more like a grade schooler who has missed the bus and been left forgotten in an empty school yard.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” she called out, trying to peer through the deepening gloom.
The sobbing broke off. Peggy heard the sound of a nose being sniffed, then, “Mama? Is that you? I'm over here!"
Peggy followed the sound, and suddenly broke into a cleared area. Mown grass softened her steps. Thank God, she prayed silently, I've found my way back.
“Mama?"
Now, the voice came from her right and slightly behind her. She backtracked, looking all around.
“Mama?” The voice came from above. A flash of white moved, descending from the lower branches of a tree, just at the edge of the clearing. She ran forward, and just in time, managed to break the fall as Melanie Woods’ strength failed her and she fell the last few feet to the ground.
Peggy held a weak, dirt smeared and very scared little girl in her arms. “You're not my mama,” Melanie accused.
“Where is your mama, dear? Let's go find her."
Melanie began crying again. Between sobs, she said, “I don't know. The house disappeared and never came back. I saw some monsters and hid in the tree."
Dear God, it's happened here too. The poor child. She must have been frightened to death. Peggy uncapped the bottle of distilled water and gave the child a drink. It seemed to revive her, and she began talking incessantly. Peggy listened attentively while she cleaned the girl up as well as she was able to in the gloom. The sandwich she had never had time to eat stilled the little girl's excited jabber, while she wondered what to do next. Her own predicament was almost completely forgotten as she ministered to the girl. She was a nurse again, and her own concerns were forgotten until she noticed that it was almost completely dark.
“Did you say you've been hiding in this tree?"
“Yep,” Melanie mumbled around a huge wad of tuna sandwich in her mouth. “It's scratchy, though. The bark hurt my bottom. I didn't sleep much."
“Do you think maybe you can stand one more night in the tree?"
“I guess so. Will we find mama tomorrow?"
“Well, we'll certainly try, as soon as it gets light. Now how ‘bout you showing me how to climb your tree? I haven't been in a tree since I was a little girl like you.” Peggy smiled when Melanie giggled at the idea of showing a grownup how to climb a tree. It made the closing dark not quite so threatening.
* * *
Chapter Five
The cowboy, called “Big Bucks” or Bucks for short by his friends, had seen his partner taken that morning by the sabertooth, and learned to be very cautious, even though he wondered what in hell one of those critters was doing in Texas, if this still was Texas. By this time he was doubtful, though he still had hopes.
Bucks was not introspective, nor a very learned man, but even he could tell that an unprecedented phenomena had taken place and caught him up in it. The only idea he could come up with was to work his way east and hope Huntsville was still on the map. He would have to be very careful in the meantime to never let himself get far from a climbable tree, and never going anywhere near any animal larger than a jackrabbit even if it meant long detours.
He used the sun to mark his direction of travel, and tried to compensate for the times when he was forced into another path. Huntsville lay to the east if it were still there, and that was where he was headed; he didn't know anything else to try.
The second day Bucks crossed a stream and drank thirstily, then wished he had something to eat. He tried to catch perch with his hands but soon gave that up. He wouldn't starve immediately, he knew, even if his thoughts were turning more and more frequently to memories of Jenny's chicken fried steak and cream gravy. If Huntsville is still there it can't be too much farther, he thought, and in fact, it wasn't, or at least what remained of it. On this day, his travels had brought him to less than 15 miles from the displaced area of that city, and only a mile or so from where the girls waited by their wrecked bus, and not much further than that from where Cecil McMasters had begun striking out in the direction of the campfire he had seen the night before.
* * * *
Thirst had driven Doris Jenkins to finally decide that nothing would be gained by sending a lone girl toward the distant building; they would all have to try for it. As soon as it was full daylight, she climbed again to the top of the bus and marked the direction as carefully as she could. She searched the area for signs of the great cat they had seen the day before (which she still half-believed must have been an hallucination), and finally, led off with the girls in tow.
Judy, her daughter, walked by her side, silent and completely obedient. Doris felt a wry amusement. It was one thing for Judy to debate with her over rights and privileges when all it meant was an extra night out or whether she spent too much money on clothes, but it was quite another when her whole world had been turned upside down in a manner so inexplicable that she still couldn't grasp it. And she must be thirsty, so thirsty that even the memory of that last sip of warm coke the day before was like a sweet dream.
&
nbsp; “Mother, look!"
Doris stopped and turned. She peered in the direction that Judy was pointing. The figure of a man, stick-like in the distance, waved and began running toward them. The wave threw him off balance and he stumbled, almost fell, and then continued on again.
“Thank God!” Doris said, but already she was wondering what a lone figure was doing out in this wilderness, and even if that could be explained, the wilderness could not.
Bucks drew up in front of the two grown women and their flock of teenagers, panting heavily. “What—?” he puffed. “Where—?” He couldn't get his tangled thoughts past his gasps for breaths.
“Our bus overturned. We've been out here for two days. Do you know where we are?” Doris asked
The man, Bucks, finally got his breathing under enough control to answer. “Ma'am, I hope we're still in east Texas, but I've got my doubts. Two days, you said? Lord God, that's how long I've been walking, and you're the first persons I've seen so far!"
Doris’ throat rasped as she tried to speak. She cleared it and tried again. “We need some water. Do you have any?"
“Sorry, ma'am, I haven't had a drink since yesterday, myself."
Doris saw Bucks examining her and the crowd of girls and knew he was wondering how they came to be together.
“Oh. Look, Mr.—"
“Jamison, ma'am, but call me Bucks. Most folks do."
The girls began crowding in close to listen to the cowboy, not noticing that he was eyeing them with dashed hopes, seeing their cracked lips and dusty clothes.
“I'm Doris Jenkins. Mr. Bucks, have you been to that house up ahead? Is there anything to drink there?"
“House? What house?"
“House, building. I climbed on top of our bus and saw something.” Doris’ voice rasped again. She had to clear her throat before answering. “It's over that way, somewhere.” She pointed.