Moriah

  “How you two feeling?” Kevin asked his friends.

  “Foot hurts like hell.”

  “I think my shoulder is infected.” Bruce pressed his chin to his chest, trying to look at the wound. “It’s starting to stink.”

  “I can’t believe they’re all gone.” Dee paid little attention to the food package in his hands, his gaze drawn instead to Riley amid the grasses.

  Bruce sighed. “Tris…”

  “I don’t think I ever really thought she’d check out,” admitted Kevin.

  “You loved her, didn’t you, Bruce?”

  “Yeah, Dee, I loved her. But it wasn’t like I was actually in love with her. I mean, I didn’t think we were ever going to settle down and make a family or anything like that.”

  Kevin laughed at some image this brought to mind.

  “I just always had a…she was so bad, and so good at it. I could appreciate her, that’s all.”

  “How about you, Kev?” Dee never took his eyes off Riley. “You ever been in love?”

  “Yes, I’ve been in love.”

  “What was her name?” Bruce smirked, learning something about an old friend he had never known.

  “Nadjia.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “She was a pretty lady, Dee.”

  “She your wife?” Bruce inquired. “Before this?” He referred to the entirety of their lives this past quarter century.

  “No.” Kevin looked at Dee. “Met her when I met your dad,” he said. Glancing back to Bruce, “before I met you.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Well, Dee, she said to me once—she said fighting zombies the way she and Bear were fighting them, she said it had a way of taking a toll on you, that it wears you down. Said she couldn’t go on fighting forever. And she was right. It wore her down.”

  Bruce and Dee looked at one another.

  “Well,” ventured Bruce. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean what happened?”

  “Did she,” Dee tried to think of some delicate way of putting it. “Did she, you know?”

  “No. Not that I know about. She just stopped fighting one day. Settled down.”

  “And you didn’t settle down with her?” Bruce looked at his friend.

  “I was still fighting.”

  “Did she know you were in love with her?”

  “Yeah, Dee, I’m pretty sure she knew.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And you never did anything about it?”

  “What was I going to do?” Kevin asked them and then repeated the question, as if to himself. “What was I going to do?” He looked at his friends. “You remember those days, Bruce—you remember too, Dee. Zed everywhere.” He looked away again. “All those Zed.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “How’d I know what, Dee?”

  “How’d you know you were in love?”

  “Aw, shit. It’s one of those things. You just know when you know.”

  “You’re in love with Riley,” Bruce had wised up, “aren’t you, Dee?”

  “What? No, I—”

  “Come on, Dee. You don’t have to act like that around us. We’re practically family.”

  “Act like what?”

  “Like a shy child.”

  “I’m no shy child.”

  “Like an embarrassed kid.”

  “I’m not embarrassed.”

  “Don’t worry, Dee,” Kevin assured him. “We’re not going to say anything.”

  “Dee. You gonna talk to her?”

  “I talk to her, Bruce.”

  “No, I mean are you going to talk to her. Let her know how you’re feeling?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Eventually.”

  “In the words of a very wise man,” Bruce quoted, “tell her about it.”

  “Tell her everything you feel,” Kevin pointed a finger at Dee, smiling at Bruce.

  “Give her every reason to accept—” Bruce gave Kevin a thumbs up “—that you’re for real.” The two older men reached out to one another—“Tell her all your crazy dreams”—and high fived one another.

  “Yeah,” Kevin sighed, satisfied.

  “Whatever-whatever-whatever.” Bruce had forgotten the words.

  “Well,” Dee acknowledged, “you guys just shared some kind of moment.”

  “Billy Joel, my friend,” explained Bruce. “And you’d be wise to heed his advice.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll get around to it.”

  “Good rock ‘n roll never stops being good rock ‘n roll, does it?” Kevin remarked.

  “Too old to rock ‘n roll, too young to die.”

  “I hear that, Bruce.”

  Riley returned and they kindled a fire with the thin limbs and brambles she’d gathered. They ate from the packages and sat around the fire as the day’s afterglow made way for the nightfall. Stars appeared in the purple sky like pinpricks granting access to the illume of an otherworld beyond the overhang of their own blackened dome.

  “What if you were right about that other part?” Kevin asked Bruce the last question of the evening. “What if we’re being paranoid here and it isn’t the way we imagine it?”

  “Then we’ve got nothing to lose.”

  A watch was kept through the night.

  * * *

  In its wake, the night brought with it the uncertainty and mystery of the dark. Alex’s apprehension had ratcheted up another several notches, though the actual pain from his ankle had subsided to a dull, ever present throb. He’d propped his leg up and refused to move the ankle, which he knew was broken. He was alone and wounded, in the Outlands, in the night.

  Among the items he could resort to for personal defense was his Model 7. He had six magazines of ammunition for it in addition to the full magazine already housed in the well. He’d stacked three of the magazines within easy reach next to where he lay. The remaining three rested in their tactical pouch beside the exposed magazines. There were things out there in the dark of the night, and if any of them came too close, Alex was ready for them.

  Or so he told himself. In all honesty, he’d never felt so alone. Never had the night seemed so ominous.

  He’d hurt himself in the full light of day. The rise had not been very steep, but he’d lost his footing and slid, the stones and earth going out underneath him, a minor rockslide. The ankle had caught on something and snapped and he’d yelled out loud, rolling down the slope until he’d come to a rest in the grass. He’d lain there and gasped. Seemingly every move he’d made, even those not directly connected to his ankle, brought pain from it.

  It had take him some time to get his boot off. He’d wasted no time on delicacy, cutting away the sock. His ankle hadn’t looked good then and it didn’t look any better now, several hours later. The last time he’d checked on it with the flashlight, it was swollen and discolored.

  After he’d initially checked and made sure his injury was not life threatening, Alex had lain there in disbelief. It hadn’t even been a full day out of New Harmony. Grimaldi had dropped him off in the Outlands that morning. Alex had had the helicopter pilot set him down in nearly the exact spot as Riley and her brother and friends had set off from. Grimaldi had thought Alex was crazy, what he was doing, and the pilot volunteered as much. He told Alex he’d thought Evan and his friends were just as crazy when he’d brought them out here nearly a fortnight past, but Alex made no reply.

  Grimaldi, Alex couldn’t help thinking now, was right. Alex carried a radio, but he was two hundred kilometers into the Outlands and out of New Harmony’s range. He’d set off his distress beacon as soon as he’d thought to do so. Anyone tuned to its frequency would pick it up, but they’d have to be out here in the Outlands with him to pick it up.

  Now it was dark and it was night and there was something out there with him.

  Alex could hear it. He had a flashlight riding the rail of his Model 7. The last time he’d turned it on had been to take
a look at his ankle. He fought the urge—and it was a very powerful urge—to shine the light and see what was out there with him. If he turned on the light, he might get a look at whatever it was out there, but it’d also be like shining a search beacon on his exact location for whatever lurked there.

  It was some kind of animal, Alex told himself. Had to be. Zed couldn’t be this close in, could he? This close in, Alex corrected himself, I’m two hundred kilometers in. He checked his Geiger meter again. If it was Zed out there, it hadn’t wandered in from a radiated zone. Or if it had, it wasn’t close enough to set off the device yet.

  Before the sun had retreated, he’d tried to set himself in a defensible position. Standing for any length of time was nearly impossible, but he’d gotten up on his one good leg and looked around as best he could. Having settled back to the earth, Alex worked his way forward on his hands and the knee of his good leg. He tried to keep the leg of his bad ankle straight out behind him, but it occasionally brushed the earth as he scampered and later crawled forward, and he grit his teeth and sweated out the discomfort.

  He’d worked his way through the grass, towards his goal. When he reached the section of chain link fence he’d breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he was near. The fence’s top section was angled. Other portions slumped in the grass. Alex figured further parts were long buried under the soil. He crawled past the fence, under the steel pole that rose into the sky, atop which rested a bank of lights and anodized reflectors. He worked his way towards the small, collapsed structure, long ago given to rot. Before he reached it, Alex’s hand chanced upon something in the grass and he dug it free.

  A five-sided slab of whitened rubber. He’d found home plate. Alex was on a baseball field. Looking out across the uninterrupted sea of grass and wildflowers that had engulfed the soil, he’d thought this a strange place for a former baseball field, out in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere now, sure, except this used to be somewhere.

  Alex dragged himself the remaining meters to the dugout. Its walls and roof had partially collapsed inwards and moss covered the wood. When he’d realized what it was, he’d thought he could hole up and spend the night inside. Reaching it, he found stagnant water pooled within. He’d consulted his Geiger meter at that point and found a higher reading coming off the water than from the surrounding area and atmosphere. He chalked it up to toxic rain and crawled away from the dugout. Couldn’t sleep there tonight.

  Half crawling, half rolling himself back to home plate, Alex settled down, waiting for the night, stacking his ammunition.

  Grimaldi. The flyboy had been right. Alex was crazy to come out here. What had been going through his head? He wanted to find Riley. Okay. He was going to find Riley and then what? She was going to throw her arms around him, Oh, Alex, you cared so much, thank you, I never want to be apart from you again. No. He didn’t expect that. They’d seen each other at the party two weeks ago. She was with her brother and her friend Troi. She’d said hi to him and he’d said hi to her and they’d spoken. Everything had been cool, cordial, not unfriendly. But not like it had once been.

  No, Alex hadn’t thought Riley was going to be overwhelmed with emotion when she saw him. But, just as he should never have come out here, neither should she have. Her father didn’t stop her and shame on him that he hadn’t, letting both his children go. And Evan. What had Evan been thinking? Alex knew Evan from their time in the Defense Forces together. Evan had been stoned out of his skull at the party, dancing with his shirt off. Evan had come out here with Riley and Anthony and Troi. Evan, at least, would be happy to see Alex. Surprised? Sure. But happy.

  I came out here to protect her, Alex admitted to himself. Because he had. He nearly laughed aloud. Who had he been kidding? Protect Riley. Rescue her from danger? Riley could take care of herself, probably better than Alex could take care of himself. Considering his broken ankle resting atop his backpack, Alex figured wherever Riley was at the moment, chances were she was doing better than he was. It was Alex who needed rescuing. He’d come out here to play some kind of hero, and now he was the one in want of a hero.

  A rustle in the grass, and the thing came closer, whatever it was. Alex stared out into the dark but it gave him nothing in return.

  It had to be some kind of animal. Had to be. Alex tried to be logical, rational. The bone had not broken from the skin; his ankle hadn’t bled. If it had, the scent of his blood would have attracted any zombies for kilometers.

  Which—if he was being completely rational, he knew he had to grant—didn’t mean the thing out there with him wasn’t Zed. It could be. Zombies were out here, wandering around. They even still occasionally found themselves outside New Harmony’s walls. Hadn’t two just shown up recently? Of course there was some story that those weren’t actually zombies, or maybe one of them was or wasn’t or whatever, but—

  A chortle sounded, a raspy sound like sand paper being drawn across timber.

  Alex raised his head and shoulders, his finger moving from the M-7’s trigger guard to the trigger itself. His other hand supported the barrel. He waited. He could hear it clearly now. It was coming towards him.

  Two circles shone in the night before him and Alex gasped. He came within a hair’s breadth of firing the M-7 when the reasoning part of his brain halted him, reassuring him. They were corneas out there, light reflecting off the tapeta.

  The hand on the M-7’s barrel went to the flashlight and thumbed it on.

  The thing screeched and Alex beheld long front claws, muscled legs, an elongated body covered in black hair. The feet, which had been digging in the ground for grubs and insects, were stomping, the hair on the creature’s body standing up, two white stripes along its back, its tail high. It hissed at Alex before turning—

  “No, don’t!”

  —and loosing its anal scent glands at him. Alex managed to shut his eyes before the skunk doused him. He groaned and yelled at it, frustrated, indignity added to injury. He would have shot at it, but firing his M-7 out here was not a good idea. He heard a rustle as the polecat retreated into the night.

  “You little son of a bitch!” Alex yelled after it, wiping at his face. The stench was unbelievable, like rotten eggs and burnt rubber. “Son of a bitch!”

  His eyes closed, Alex rummaged through his pack until he found the package of wipes. He dabbed at his eyes—it hadn’t gotten in his eyes—and rubbed his face. Son of a bitch. Little son of a bitch. He used half a pack of the wipes before he conceded that the stench was not going anywhere. Frustrated, he discarded the wipes and threw his upper body back down into the grass.

  A skunk. A frigging skunk.

  When he had calmed down, Alex checked his Geiger meter. Nothing to worry about. He lay in the dark on what had been a baseball field, a foe the size of a house cat somewhere out there in the night with him, either long gone or waiting him out, awaiting his departure. Yeah, you might be waiting a long while, you little son of a bitch.

  At least, Alex tried to console himself, it hadn’t been Zed. Where were the zombies? He lay there, exhausted and injured, reeking of skunk, and when his ears first heard the motorized reverberations in the distance, Alex thought it was his mind playing tricks on him.

  * * *

  As though the cosmos sought to make amends for the scenes from the prior day, Riley woke with the dawn to find herself face to face with a sight of exquisite beauty. An equine eye blinked at her, its owner a mere meter from her sleeping body. Despite herself, she drew her breath in shortly and sat up, her sudden action startling the feral horse. Whickering—Riley got a good glimpse of its sorrel coat, the fine hairs on its fetlocks whipping through the air—it joined its band, five of them galloping away across the grasslands.

  The horses’ abrupt departure woke Kevin and Bruce.

  “What was that?” Kevin sat up with the barrel of his AK-47, searching for a target.

  “Wild horses.” Dee had been on watch. “They wandered over in the night. Curious about us.”

  “Loo
k at them go…” Bruce had stood and watched the receding horses grow smaller on the horizon. He reached up and touched at his wound.

  “How’s your shoulder?” asked Riley.

  “Okay.”

  They left their slumber behind for the day, rising and busying themselves. Dee had spent the night with his boot off to let the air get to the wound and Riley helped him clean and re-bandage his foot. Kevin dug around in his pack until he found a roll of toilet paper and walked off, away from the others, the bathroom tissue in one hand, his AK in the other.

  “I’m going to go and see if I can find us something to eat for breakfast.” Bruce slung the sniper rifle over his shoulder.

  “Don’t shoot a horse.”

  “Lot of good meat on a horse, Dee. But don’t worry, I’ll bring you back a raccoon or something.”

  Dee noticed the way Riley looked pained when Bruce mentioned a raccoon. He waited until the others were out of earshot before asking her if she was okay.

  “What? Yeah.”

  “You looked kind of…far away there.”

  “I was. Come on, help me put on your boot.”

  “I got it. You were thinking about your brother.”

  She nodded.

  It had only been a few days since he’d found Riley, but between that first day at the river and this morning it felt like an eternity had passed. Dee didn’t know why and couldn’t explain it, but he felt like he had known her for a much longer time.

  “He was a good guy, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Dee winced as they pulled his boot back up over his foot. “What’d you say he did?”

  “He was a teacher.”

  “He liked it?”

  “He loved it.”

  “I’m sorry you had to, had to watch him…”