The Outside

by Laura Bickle

  Alex sloshed into the water. He wrapped his arms around me, and I sobbed into his shoulder.

  “What have I done?”

  “Shhh. It’ll be all right, Bonnet,” he said.

  But I didn’t believe him.

  ***

  Something had moved between us.

  I think it was more than just one thing. It was this . . . evolution into something else, something more than human. Matt called us “Homo luciferus.” It made me shudder every time I heard him say it.

  It was also the knowledge that we were going to be apart. Alex was going north, to his family. And I, having done all that I had done, felt that I had no choice but to go south. To try to see what was left of my home, to see if I could save anyone.

  And it was also time that moved between us.

  We lay in darkness, in silence. I closed my eyes when we made love, against the light and the idea of the humanity we’d lost. I could not bear the idea of losing him, of letting go.

  “I love you,” he said. His forehead rested heavy on mine.

  “And I love you.” My palm rested on his cheek.

  But there was nothing to be done for it. I rationalized it: We came from different worlds. It would not have lasted, under even ideal conditions. But a part of me wanted it to. A large part, larger than I wanted to admit.

  When the time came to leave, maps were spread out on the kitchen table. All the people who were young and healthy traced their routes out on the maps and packed their bags. Matt would stay here, it was decided, nursing the mother algae culture. Cora and a few of the others would stay with him. Cora had carefully sectioned off pieces of the mother culture into plastic bottles for us to carry, and Matt was cleaning and writing out instructions on sterilizing needles and dividing the daughter colonies to provide cultures to the people we’d hopefully meet along the way.

  Peter and Judy were among those who were leaving. I saw Judy lacing up her snow boots.

  “Where will you go?” I asked.

  She nodded to the map. “South. I have family in Tennessee. I expect that it will be hard, but”—she double-knotted her boot laces—“I think that there must be some survivors.”

  “And you?” I asked Peter.

  “West. He put his hands in the pockets of his tan coveralls and grinned. “I always wanted to see Colorado. Maybe I’ll get that far.”

  “Katie, the best way for you to get back to your community is by water,” Matt said.

  I wrinkled my brow. I had been practicing a bit, with the small boats at the edge of the lake. It seemed simple enough when I was within sight of shore. My concern must have shown.

  “Don’t worry. It’s easy. The water shouldn’t freeze for another few weeks.” Matt pointed to a blue line on the map. “You can follow the water south and east, mostly downstream. We’ll send a map with you, and you can cross off the bridges as checkpoints to see where you are.”

  I nodded. The idea of navigating a river alone frightened me. But I didn’t want to say I was afraid. There were others heading off by themselves, on boats, on foot, in twos and threes. We had an elixir to save the world. My fear didn’t matter.

  “What about Horace?” I asked.

  “I’ll take Horace,” Alex said quietly. “North.”

  I knew the horse would be in good hands. But it hurt me to hear Alex say that they weren’t coming with me. I blinked back tears and stared down at my boots.

  The handful of men and women leaving by water gathered down at the dock. Cora had given me a plastic bottle and a package of needles with instructions to keep the culture cold and dark. Judy armed me with a fishing pole and a kiss on the cheek.

  I gathered my supplies into the boat as Alex handed them down to me. Other boats slipped away, down a narrow stream to the marshlands Alex and I had seen when we walked here.

  I had hoped Fenrir would accompany me. But he whimpered and stayed on the dock, afraid of the water. Or perhaps he loved Alex more.

  Alex held my hand. Neither one of us wanted to let go. I could feel it in the way our cold fingers laced together.

  “Be safe, Bonnet.”

  And he let me go, out into the water and into the world alone.

  ***

  The light I’d been given provided no warmth.

  Cold radiated from the water through the bottom of the aluminum boat, soaking into my cramped legs and feet. Wind pushed at my back, and I huddled down in the seat. I paddled hard against the current, making slow progress until the river turned into a new watershed basin. Then I followed the fast current of the little rivers south, dipping the oars into the water to keep the boat from nearing the banks, where trees reached in with long brown branch fingers. They trailed into the frigid water, providing haven for cold-sluggish fish.

  I ate from the supplies I carried with me and the fishing pole Judy had given me. I let the line trail behind me with a hook made from part of a floating pop can top. My success was small. Every night, I dragged the boat up to the edge of the bank, built a fire, and slept alone.

  Mostly, I lay in the bottom of the boat, tangled in my sleeping bag, staring up at the sky. I had traveled far from home, farther than I could imagine. I had gained a great deal and lost much. I expected that they would turn me away when I reached home. But I would know that I had tried, that I had attempted to bring this terrible temptation of survival to their doorstep.

  I would bring them the choice.

  I thought of what Alex had said in his delirium and his honesty, that he had thought of forcing the serum on me. I vacillated on that. Perhaps it would be easier if he had. There would have been no element of free will, no choice. God would not blame me for being a victim.

  But Alex respected me. He let me choose.

  And that was part of why I think I loved him so much. No one else in my life had really given me choices. My parents had given me some latitude, but I always felt the weight of their expectations upon me: that I would grow up, be baptized in the church, continue living life on the same land and in the same way that they had. I also had felt the weight of Elijah’s expectations on me: that he assumed that I would marry him, become a certain kind of wife. And the expectations of the Elders: that I would obey them and their interpretation of the Ordnung without question.

  I had even resented God. I had doubted his existence, in a dark moment. But I came to realize that it was not he who was placing these expectations upon me. It was other people. In many ways, he had blessed me. Kept me safe, when others perished. In some strange way, I could see that I had his favor.

  Maybe it was the light moving in my veins, but I also felt the stirring of faith.

  And I saw life around me. The seagulls receded the farther south I drifted, replaced by starlings and sparrows. The river, a living thing, broadened into the flat floodplain of the fields. Squirrels warred along the trees beside the bank, scurrying with walnuts in their mouths. A red-tailed hawk perched in a tree, searching for rodents along the ground. At dusk, the deer came to the water’s edge to drink, warily eyeing my shining reflection. A great stag watched me, noble and majestic, his eyes as dark as sloes.

  Not human life, but aspects of God’s creation. Being Plain, I was largely accustomed to these things in a way that the English were not. I grew up with my hands always in the dirt, and my eyes always overhead, noting the time and the season. I thought that this was the way that things should be. And after all my time in the Outside world, I was ever more certain of it.

  And as terrible as it was, I thought that perhaps this catastrophe was just part of God’s plan. The world looked much more beautiful from the cold river, without cars and noise and electricity.

  And even if we humans did not survive as a species, I was comforted by the idea that life would go on. There would be plants that would sprout up under the concrete and split it apart. There would be animals that grazed in sunshine who were too fast for the vampires to capture. Birds would continue to sing.

  All of God’s kingdom on
earth was not lost.

  I only wished that I had someone to talk to about this. I wished that Alex were here to challenge me, to give voice to my fears. He was a good teacher that way.

  I supposed that now I would have to do that for myself.

  At dusk, I felt scraping at the bottom of my boat. I sat upright, thinking that I’d drifted too close to shore and scudded over a felled tree.

  It was debris, but not the kind I expected. Up ahead, I could make out a blockage in the river. Fallen trees, it looked like, their leaves gone brown and sodden in the water. It didn’t have the organized shape of a beaver dam; I’d seen those before, and this water was too deep for their liking.

  My boat bumped along the branches. There were three trees, two reaching from one side of the river. I prodded them with the oar, searching for a way past, but found no opening.

  I sighed. I would have to drag the boat ashore and take it around. The branches scraped the side of my rowboat as I pushed it toward the bank. I didn’t relish the feel of frigid water on my feet, so I searched for the shallowest spot I could find.

  I paddled up into the mud and anchored the boat among the tree branches and debris and tucked the oars into the bottom. With the tow rope in my fist, I leaped lightly onto the bank. My boots slipped and smeared in the mud. I dragged the boat forward a few feet, searching among the weeds for a smooth path to haul it ashore.

  It was then that I realized that something was wrong. By the dim light of the moon, I could make out a flaccid outline along the bank. It was the deflated remains of a raft, tangled in the tree roots and cattails.

  I looked up. The trees on this side of the bank had not fallen jaggedly, as if from a wind or the char of a lightning strike. These were smooth, clean cuts, from a saw.

  The hair on the back of my neck lifted. I knew of traps that the vampires could lay. Alex had told me of a roadblock that he’d encountered before we met, dead deer in the road. He’d nearly wrecked his motorcycle trying to avoid them, and the vampires had fallen on him. It was then he had lost his girlfriend, Cassia.

  Something clattered overhead. I stared up, expecting to see the waning moon tangled in the branches. I saw it, gleaming through the stripped trees.

  And also bones. Pale, stripped bones jammed and dangling from the maples like Christmas ornaments: the cage of ribs, a femur, the broken socket of a skull . . .

  With a certainty that reached from the top of my scalp down to the frozen soles of my feet, I knew it was a trap.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I reached behind me for an oar. If I could get back to the water, I could wait night out, cross during the day . . .

  But I was too late. A dark shape knocked me off my feet, pressed me into the cold mud. Fetid breath raked over my face. I saw glowing red eyes and felt the weight of the creature against me.

  “Come here, fishy.”

  Claws raked the hood of my coat, tearing it aside. My hands scrabbled in the mud behind me, searching for a stick to use as a weapon.

  “Little fish, stop struggling.”

  The vampire ripped my hood away and cried out as light from my face spilled out into its eyes. It flinched back.

  I thrust my hands before me, full of blotchy light.

  It growled and got off me, backing away.

  “You’re no fish!” it cried out.

  I felt the light surge up and sing in me. I scrambled to my feet, opening my heavy coat. Light shone through the thinner fabric of my dress, like a candle flame behind a curtain. It reflected in the water and confused birds roosting overhead, who took off in a dark flurry of wing shadows.

  “You can’t touch me,” I whispered.

  I felt powerful, more powerful than ever before in my life.

  I moved toward the vampire. It slipped and scrambled in the mud, caught between me and the moving water. I realized that it had once been an old man. A backwoodsman, I guessed. He wore rubber hip waders and a shirt that was rotting out from under his arms. His stubbled face was contorted in horror.

  Of me. Of the light I brought.

  I reached down for a stick. The stick was attached to a root. I tugged at it awkwardly, but the mud wouldn’t release it.

  The vampire snatched a piece of driftwood and clubbed me with it. It struck me in the shoulder, knocking me back to the mud.

  He stood over me, swinging with the piece of soft, dripping wood.

  “I may not be able to eat you, glowfish. But I can kill you and hang you in that tree until the glowing flesh drips from your bones. Then I’ll suck the marrow out.”

  And I saw in his hot red eyes that he would do his best to bludgeon me to death. Not for survival, but for pure evil.

  Suddenly, a growl emanated from my left. A blur of gray fur slammed into the vampire, knocking him into the river. The water churned around the creature’s screaming, flailing form.

  I scrambled to my feet, watching wet fur and vampire flesh splash in the thick water.

  “Fenrir?” I gasped. My heart burst at the idea that he had followed me.

  “Bonnet!”

  I heard a voice up the bank from me. I turned, catching sight of a green shining form, gleaming flesh behind intricate black tattoos.

  My filthy face split into a grin. “Alex!”

  “Here.” He tossed me a broken-off sapling.

  I caught it, waded into the water. My coat flared out behind me, dragging at my steps. Fenrir backed off, leaving the thrashing creature in the water.

  I brought the sapling down into that dead flesh, like staking a slippery fish. The body was pinned underwater. Its legs kicked up in a spray, making me gasp, and its fingers broke the surface. But I had the head and chest pinned to the silt below. I leaned forward, pressing all my weight against it, until a black stain was released into the water.

  I waited for the dark water to dissipate and the thrashing to subside. Fenrir danced in the shallows, growling and snapping at the feet.

  When Fenrir stopped growling, I released the stake and backed away.

  Alex stood on the bank, gazing at me with glowing approval.

  “I missed you, Bonnet.”

  I ran to him and pressed my cheek to his cold and luminous chest. “I . . . I thought you went north,” I stammered.

  He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt a sigh deep in his chest.

  “My place is with you.”

  And that was all he would say. I could feel the lump in his throat, and I didn’t force him to say anything further.

  ***

  I knew that it had cost Alex greatly to follow me. I knew what it meant. It meant giving up hope of seeing his family again on earth, likely any hope of ever seeing his home again. But my heart swelled to see him, to hold him in my arms.

  Fenrir whimpered and washed my face with his tongue when I knelt to pet him. He was certainly a dog and not a wolf—he smelled like wet dog.

  And I was glad to see Horace, to rub his nose and tell him that he was a good horse. Working silently, we salvaged my gear from the boat and moved away from the river. I shivered as we walked down a dirt road for a couple of miles, hoping we didn’t encounter any other vampires.

  When we stopped, Alex built a fire using the steel spark tool from the department store. I stripped out of my wet clothes and into my only dry set, wormed into a sleeping bag. Under the uneven glow of my skin, I couldn’t tell if my toes had grown black with frostbite. They began to burn as they warmed, so I knew that it wasn’t serious. Alex rubbed Fenrir down with a dry sweatshirt and then spread the wet clothes out on the ground near the fire, propped up with sticks.

  I watched him feed the fire. From behind, in shadow, he glowed like an alien being. From the front, in the light of the fire, he looked human. Like the Alex I’d grown to love.

  “Why did you follow me?”

  He didn’t answer me for a long while, just stirred the fire.

  “I just couldn’t leave you alone. I love my family, but . . .” He blew out his breath. “I did s
ome ruthless, ugly math in my head.”

  I waited for him to continue. Fenrir plopped down beside me, in the curve of my belly. I reached down to rub his ears.

  “My folks are old,” he blurted. “They’re academic types. They’re soft and theoretical. They’re wonderful people. Good people. Loving people. They collect books and have a beautiful garden. My mom makes really nice afghans, and my dad plays guitar.”

  I watched the flame and shadow flicker across his face. “Bluntly, there’s no way that they were going to survive.” His hands knotted around the stick he was using to prod the fire. “My father couldn’t kill wasps that got in the house. He’d gather them up in a jar and set them free outside, even though my mother was allergic to bees. Goddamn bees. My mom habitually runs the car out of gas and has to call for my dad to bring her some. Dad is an insulin-dependent diabetic. Neither one of them can figure out how to change a tire without help.”

  I shrank back from the harshness of what he said. I felt his pain and my own guilt at drawing him away from people who needed him.

  He rubbed his eyebrow. “I was hoping . . . maybe I was kidding myself. I wanted to believe that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. But . . . I can’t see my parents fighting off one vampire, much less a neighborhood of them.

  “I think I had hope up until the time that I started off north by myself. I’d built a fantasy that home was safe, untouched. But then I saw fire in the distance. I knew that this was everywhere. Matt had told me, but I didn’t want to believe. And I realized that all I’ve got left in this life is a horse, a wolf who thinks he’s a dog, and you. All I have is what I can see and touch—right now.”

  He stared into the fire. It hissed and popped.

  I wriggled my hand out of the sleeping bag to reach for him. “Thank you.” The words seemed tiny and insignificant in the face of his loss, but they were all I could give.

  He kicked off his shoes and snuggled into the sleeping bag behind me. I savored that warmth, but I pretended to sleep so that he wouldn’t know that I knew he was crying.

  ***