Moriah

by Monchinski, Tony

  “Moriarity?”

  “Mallory.”

  “I’m not calling you that,” Dee reminded him. “You ever hear of an outfit calls themselves Burning Man Tribe?”

  Moriarity laughed in confirmation.

  “What do you know about them?”

  “They fear me. They fear the magic.” He chewed a maraschino cherry. “Why? What do you know of them?”

  “They’re pretty much defunct by now.”

  The old man laughed.

  * * *

  Several tins of fruit and peaches later, his appetite sated, Moriarity began to speak. He told them tales of life as it had been. Kevin and Bruce listened with mild interest because they had known some of the things of which he spoke to be true. Having heard the stories before, Dee considered the remains of the meal before them and the lengthening shadows of the day’s end.

  Riley weighed the parallels between this blind old man and Krieger, the tracker guide who had delivered herself and her friends to these Outlands. Both had carried staffs. They had that in common. Krieger had put on a good act, like he was disinterested, with no stake in society or civilization. And though Riley and her brother and Evan had found Krieger seated by himself in a bar, he had been social enough that he sought out New Harmony. Unlike this man Moriarity before them with his caduceus and his hole in the earth.

  Krieger had died, though his death—Riley was certain—had been premeditated. Still, their tracker guide had not wanted to die alone. Moriarity was out here on his own, separate and apart, blind and alive.

  They listened to him talk and watched the night descend about them, wondering if the gloom itself or anything in it was looking back. There was no indication. Bruce stood with the M40 in his arms, a wary eye on the encroaching dark. Maybe, Riley thought, Bruce had been right when he’d asked if there couldn’t be another explanation for what they had seen, for what had happened to her brother’s body, to the old man’s. Yet she didn’t think so. And it didn’t look to her like Bruce—standing there eyeing the dark—thought so either.

  Moriarity did not invite them into his cave, and even if he had, they probably would not have entered. They most definitely would not have spent the night in it, preferring the open sky and vast plains spread out about them. Only Burning Man’s ineptness had kept them from being trapped in the apartment building.

  Kevin asked what he had in his cave, to which Moriarity replied “chotskies, bric-a-brac and books.” Bruce, alone among them standing, asked what kind of books and the old man replied with names none of them had ever heard—Friedman and Hayek and Nozick. When Kevin disregarded Dee’s waved-palm warning—

  Don’t get him started! Don’t get him started!

  —and asked the old man what the books were about, the hermit launched into an exegesis.

  He spoke of ideas and beliefs long forgotten, his speech erudite, rife with esoteric references. Moriarity spoke of the divine right and feudalism and other antiquated human relationships, of the rise of classical liberalism with its emphasis on freedom as the ultimate goal, of the individual human being as the decisive entity in society.

  Kevin yawned.

  Moriarity said that the state was never meant to get involved in the economy the way it had. Its existence, he assured them, was meant to ensure the freedom of markets at home, free trade among nations, and the protection of individual liberties. But the individualist tradition underlying classical liberalism itself was betrayed, he related sadly, and liberalism went from being the revolutionary doctrine of the free man—and woman, he added, with a nod towards Riley though he could not see her—to a mask for coercive, centralized state power.

  Kevin had completely tuned him out.

  Above them, the stars began to wink into life as the old man waxed poetically about what he and the men whose books he cherished saw as the magic of something he referred to as “the market”. Riley was familiar with markets in New Harmony where she purchased items she needed, but quickly caught on that the market this man spoke to was a larger, all encompassing entity. Moriarity spoke of the “equilibrium” of this market and how individuals were protected in it because sellers always had more buyers and buyers always had more sellers, or that a worker could always find another boss and a boss another worker.

  Moriarity pointed out that this was Friedman’s example and not his own, and then he offered another that he posited to Friedman, noting, “When you buy a loaf of bread you don’t know if the wheat it was made out of was grown by a Commie or a Republican, a constitutionalist or a Fascist, a Negro or a white.” Riley would have laughed at the antiquated terms—Negro, Republican, constitutionalist—but the thought of spending a night with this mentally ill man did nothing for her somber mien or spirits.

  Dee had risen and wandered over to where Bruce stood and the two men conferred in quiet tones. Moriarity never stopped speaking, explicating the benefits and drawbacks of monetary policy.

  Riley again found herself wishing Anthony were here. Her brother would have loved this conversation, would have relished challenging the man. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have. Anthony had known people, and maybe he would have been content to let the old man speak his piece. Anthony would have seen him as an old, lonely person out here by himself in the middle of what was basically nowhere. These were the rantings of an abandoned, friendless soul, one who clung to an archaic faith, desperate to believe.

  When Moriarity stopped speaking and took a breath, Riley interrupted him. “So what are you then, out here?”

  “I’m a free market liberal. In the classical sense.”

  “In the classical sense.”

  Moriarity nodded. “I am the forgotten man.”

  “The forgotten man.”

  “Yes. All of my life, my own labor—my own self-denial—were taken from me to benefit others.”

  “Well…” Riley gazed past the man to the outline of his cave in the night. “No one’s taking your labor from you now, are they?”

  “No, they most certainly are not.” Moriarity shook the caduceus. “And I challenge any man to.”

  Riley looked at the man, studying him, considering his existence. “Do you ever get lonely out here, by yourself?”

  “No one tells me what to do or how to do it.”

  “But you’re all alone.”

  “I’ve got my books.”

  “Which you can’t read any more.”

  “I’ve read them enough. I know what they say.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be able to read them again?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Riley invited him, not sure why she did. An image—the fox girl on top of the beer truck, surrounded by the undead—had flashed in her mind. “Come back to where I’m from. They’d fix your vision.”

  The old man laughed. “I’m better off out here by myself.” He touched the back of his head. “And how would I pay to fix my sight anyway?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t. Who would?”

  “New Harmony. Where I’m from. The state would.”

  “Government. The state.” The old man rubbed his forehead. “What good was the state when the zombies came? Do you know that most countries collapsed within a few months? Individuals stood against the zombies. Individuals.”

  “Yes,” Riley granted him. “But they stood together.”

  “And the ones that didn’t, fell.” Kevin spoke up from where he lay near the fire. “We know, Moriarity. We were there.”

  “I’m nothing but an old man with big ideas in a world that isn’t listening anymore.”

  He was an old man, Riley granted, an old, lonesome man whose ideas were fantasy. She yawned. “I’m getting tired.”

  “None of you were planning to murder me in my sleep, were you?”

  They all ignored him.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” Bruce announced, he and Dee rejoining them.

  “Someone needs to warn him,” Riley t
old the men she travelled with.

  “Warn me about what?” Moriarity asked suspiciously.

  Dee told him. “We might be being followed.”

  “Might be?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “And who might it be following you? Burning Man Tribe? They couldn’t follow you if you left bread crumbs.”

  “Not them,” Riley admitted. “We don’t know.”

  “Whoever it is,” continued Dee, “I don’t think it’ll mess with you. But you might want to stick close to your cave for a day or two after we leave.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “I’m serious here, Moriarity.”

  “Just like strangers to show up and throw a man’s routine off.”

  “Just be careful is what we’re saying,” said Bruce.

  “The end’s chased me I don’t know how many times. I’m through running.”

  “Too old?” Kevin inquired.

  “Got nothing to do with age.”

  “Just be careful, okay?” Dee echoed Bruce’s words.

  In reply, Moriarity hefted his handgun, the light from the fire glinting off the slide. “I wield powerful magic.”

  “No argument there.” Kevin yawned.

  Dee nodded. “Okay.”

  * * *

  By mid-morning of the day they had left Moriarity to his cave, they came to a river. It flowed fast and wide, dark with sediment. They kept the water in sight, their quads revving beneath them, each all too aware that the gas in their tanks was ebbing ever closer to empty with no hope of refueling.

  Riley watched the country pass from Dee’s back. They rolled by the shells of vehicles overgrown with plant life, their chassis melded with the undergrowth. There had been highways under these cars and trucks, but the roadways had long disappeared. Stone chimneys stood as tall as the winds and salts eroding them allowed. The sky was clear except for some innocuous white clouds, while a chill breeze stirred the grasses of the plains.

  She spotted a groundhog on its hind feet in the wild flowers, standing stock still, observing their passage.

  They reached the remains of a bridge, long fallen into the river on their side and the other. Passing the derelict span, they came upon overgrown mounds, greater and lesser piles of rubble and wreckage. Scattered among these were relatively intact blocks of two- and three-story buildings, all of it constituting the ruins of an abandoned town. The structures were largely swallowed by greenery, roots having expanded into crevices, forcing mortar and stone aside, entire facades crumbled and crumpled. Gutters hung from buildings, their leaders peeled off, stirring in the autumn breeze. Segments of paved roads were visible in spots through a covering of moss and lichen.

  They halted the quads, killing the engines.

  “Are those mannequins in the windows?” Kevin had the stock of his AK pressed to his shoulder, the muzzle somewhere between the ground and parallel to the ground.

  Riley looked through the vines and bushes overgrowing openings that once fronted stores behind long-removed panes of glass. From window to window it was as Kevin had thought, figures propped in several, many of them mere shadowy forms in the murk of buildings.

  “Looks like it,” confirmed Bruce.

  “Why would someone put them like that?” Riley pondered.

  “A warning. Like scarecrows.”

  “A warning?” She looked at Bruce and again thought that he didn’t look good. He was sweating. His shoulder must be infected.

  “To scare off other humans.”

  The stillness in the ghost town was palpable. It brought to mind the abandoned city Riley had travelled through earlier. Unlike those streets, this place showed no signs of life. Riley didn’t feel that anyone was observing their passage here. In fact, it seemed to her that nothing had passed through this place in years.

  “You don’t look too good, Bruce.”

  “Since when are you a doctor?” The other man waved off Dee’s assessment. “I’ll be okay.”

  “I’m going to take a look around,” said Dee. “See what I can find.”

  “With that leg and foot?” Kevin looked at Dee. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Riley unslung her AR-15.

  As they walked they spoke to one another, neither Riley nor Kevin concerned that anyone would hear their conversation.

  “I’m thinking we can follow the river to the sea,” he said to her. The water had disappeared behind the ruins. “The quads aren’t going to make it much further.”

  “Bruce doesn’t look good.”

  “Nope.”

  “I cleaned out his shoulder as best as I could this morning again. He must have some bullet fragments or something in there.”

  They stopped to study a mannequin leaning halfway out of a window frame.

  “Riley, we’re not going to make it if we have to get there on foot.”

  “We can carry Dee if we have to.”

  The mannequin had been white once but exposure and weathering had stained it a different color.

  “Let’s see if we can find what I’m looking for.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  The dark eyed man didn’t answer.

  They stepped through tall grasses between what had been two blocks of buildings. One had nearly disappeared completely, the wood-framed structures long since razed and devoured, termites feasting on the lumber’s cellulose. The other block of houses and stores was still recognizable. Its roofs sagged, beams having given way and collapsed. Mortar and rock still rose, crumbled in sections. The process of quiet decay proceeded uninterrupted. Rust accumulated on exposed metal, concrete buildings deteriorated, and vegetation tore masonry asunder. Nature was slowly, inexorably, but certainly swallowing it all back up.

  “Who was—” Riley squinted, trying to read the sun faded name on the former museum sign “—Ava Gardner?”

  “An actress or something, I think.”

  Riley guessed the woman must have come from this place. “Who do you think set up the mannequins?”

  “Whoever they were,” Kevin looked around, “I think they’re gone a long time now.” He consulted his dosimeter. “Let me ask you, Riley. Why’d you go and invite him along last night?”

  “Who? Moriarity?” Riley shrugged. “I felt bad.”

  “Did you think he’d say yes?”

  She thought about it. “No.”

  “You felt bad about that girl, the one who thought she was a fox or something, didn’t you?”

  “I did. What’d you do before all this, Kevin? What was your job?”

  “I was a therapist. School psychologist.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Glad you think so.” The dosimeter wasn’t telling him anything they needed to worry about. “And I’m glad he didn’t come along. Moriarity. You know, Bear would have killed him.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  “Call it philosophical differences.” An owl inspected them from a window. “Dee wouldn’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?” asked Riley.

  As they walked by, the owl turned its head without moving its body.

  “He wouldn’t want you to think bad about him. About Bear.”

  Lifeless telephone and electrical wires snaked across the ground, disappearing into the soil and grass.

  “When they saved me…” Kevin stopped where he was, resting the muzzle of the AK-47 against his thigh, the shoulder stock on the ground. “I was in a town a lot like this. I heard them. At first I thought it was just some people passing by, bit off more than they could chew. There were thousands of zombies where I was.”

  “Thousands?”

  “Thousands. No way out. It was bad. I listened to them fight, the two of them—Bear and Nadjia. Nadjia,” Kevin sighed the name. “Now there was a sight for sore eyes.” He whispered this last sentence nostalgically. “She was from San Diego. You ever hear of San Diego?”

  “No.”

 
“That woman was tough. She could fight. You should have seen her. No Tris, but who is? You know, you kind of remind me of her though, come to think of it. A little bit.”

  “Of …?”

  “Tris.”

  Riley didn’t see how. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked him, not because she wasn’t interested or didn’t want to listen. She hadn’t expected his forthcomingness.

  “I guess I’m just worried.”

  “We have something to worry about,” Riley gestured to the dosimeter.

  “Lots of things to worry about,” granted Kevin, “But no, not the radiation. Not here.”

  “Worried about what then?”

  “That if a person dies, whatever they know, whatever they’ve experienced, lived—what if it all dies with them?”

  “And you’re expecting…?”

  “No.” Kevin looked around the ghost town. “It’s just this place. Brings back bad memories.”

  “I don’t want to spend the night here.”

  “We’re not. Let’s keep looking. River should be over that way a bit.”

  They passed the hollowed hull of a personal computer left outdoors to weather the elements. A wren bolted from the hard drive casing and into the air. They tread across greened-over embankments and piles. The shells of cars rested on their undercarriages. Many were windowless, tendrils of vines and creepers twining around door and roof posts.

  Riley spied a gap between two stone facades. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “You going to be awhile?”

  “A minute.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait up ahead.”

  She stepped into the space between the buildings, soil and human artifacts crunching under her feet. A chipmunk bounded from her. Riley worked her way through the narrow passage, advancing no further when the passage ended in a wall of vegetation. She undid her pants and squatted, going about her business. As she urinated, she considered the slate shingles underfoot, realizing she was now on top of what had once been a roof.