Moriah

by Monchinski, Tony

  “What kind of whiskey is in this, Kev?”

  “Bourbon.”

  “Did it go bad or something?”

  “Nah.” Kevin sipped his drink. “This stuff will last forever.”

  Dee eyed his glass suspiciously. People used to enjoy this stuff? “Kev?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “How important is Africa to you, really?”

  “Really?” Kevin touched the fresh mint sprig garnishing his glass. “Not at all. Up until about now, I was just thinking we’d catch up to the others, get some help for Bruce.”

  “They’re long gone by now.”

  “What about you? What about your foot, Dee?”

  “Oh, I’ll be all right.”

  Riley and Kevin had carted water from the cistern and heated it on a fire. Kevin helped Riley carry water into the house to fill one of the tubs. A bath, Kevin had to admit, sounded like a great idea, but he was exhausted. He’d washed his side and crotch and under his arms.

  “Hey, Kev.” Dee fingered the crutch he’d put together out of a mop, a sofa pillow and duct tape.

  “I’m here, Dee.”

  “Maybe we can stay right here.”

  “Right here?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “And what?”

  “And heal up. My foot. Your side. Then get Riley back to where she’s from.”

  “What about you and me, Dee?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we can check it out ourselves.”

  “Check what out?”

  “Where Riley’s from.”

  “What about where Riley’s from?” She stepped around the veranda, a towel on her head, her hair wet. She was wearing thin cotton pants and a t-shirt she’d found somewhere in the house and had placed a blanket across her shoulders.

  “Dee was just saying, maybe we should stay here for awhile, lick our wounds. Then see about getting you back to New Harmony.”

  “I was just thinking,” said Dee.

  Riley sat down on the couch next to Dee. She inspected the bandages on his foot before picking up his glass, eyeing its contents. “What is this?”

  “Bourbon,” answered Kevin.

  “Tastes like crap, Riley.”

  She sipped from the glass. “It does.” She took another sip. “Is this how it’s supposed to taste?”

  Dee looked towards Kevin. “He says it is.”

  “It needs ice,” Kevin hastened to add. “And sugar.”

  They sat around on the veranda, listening to the night, for a few minutes until Riley said, “You guys have given up on finding the rest of your friends?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘given up,’” explained Kevin. “It just doesn’t seem like the most important thing right now. Crossing the ocean to—where was it again, Dee?”

  “Africa.”

  “Yeah.” Kevin scoffed. “Africa.”

  “I think we should all get a good night’s sleep,” offered Riley, “and talk about what we’re going to do tomorrow. Personally? I’m in no hurry to leave here.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Kevin was agreeable. “How are we doing as far as our ammo goes?”

  “I’ve got six in my Python and eighteen loose rounds.”

  “I’ve got a full mag in the AR. Five in my revolver.”

  “And I’ve got this magazine,” Kevin tapped the banana clip in his AK, “and one other. Oh yeah, Riley, I put your speedloader up on the bureau in my room.”

  “Thanks, Kevin. I’ll get it later.”

  “You’re welcome.” It took Kevin a little longer than usual to get up out of his chair. The drink. The fatigue. “I’m going to go sit down over there.” He nodded towards a rocker on the far end of the veranda. The young dog rolled off its back and onto its feet, rubbing its head against his side. “Sleep for a little while out here, I’m thinking.” Kevin slung his AK over one shoulder and reached down with the hand that wasn’t holding his glass, petting the dog between her ears.

  “Don’t freeze out here,” Dee told him.

  “I won’t freeze.” Kevin had his blanket and his dogs.

  Riley wished him a good night. Kevin walked off with the younger dog at his side. The old dog did not stir beside the chair he’d vacated.

  Riley sipped at the cocktail before holding the glass up for Dee. He took a drink and turned his head so she wouldn’t see him blanch.

  “You really like that stuff?” he asked her.

  “Not one bit.”

  “Then why are you drinking it?”

  “It’s chilly.”

  “Come here.”

  She was already sitting next to him. She scooted under the arm he lifted. Dee held her and she felt good. She offered him the mint julep and he took a sip. It didn’t taste nearly as awful this time.

  “Doesn’t this feel right to you, Dee?”

  “What—this place?”

  “Yeah. Us, being here.”

  He knew exactly what she meant and it did.

  “Riley, this is the closest I’ve ever felt to home, whatever that means. You. Me. Kevin. This place. You had a house in New Harmony you grew up in?”

  She told him she had.

  “I didn’t. We were always on the move. Always.”

  “Can we stay here forever, Dee?”

  He looked pleased. They sat together and shared the drink, Kevin’s back to them in the rocker, the chair swaying back and forth slightly.

  Dee looked down at Riley and she was looking back up at him. “Not tired?”

  “No, I am. But I can’t sleep.” He waited for her to offer a reason and she did. “I see her in my dreams.”

  “Who?”

  “The red-haired one.”

  “She’s dead, Riley.”

  “I know.” Her head was on his shoulder.

  “So. Glad we got off the boat?”

  “Would you quit?”

  “This moment…” He smiled at her. “If I could keep this and preserve it, just like it is, I would. Forever.”

  “Forever?”

  When he leaned down and kissed her, she kissed him back.

  “Forever,” he said, lowering his head to hers again.

  Sometime later they pulled their mouths away from one another, both looking towards Kevin at the end of the veranda. His back was still to them and his chair was still. The old dog had opened an eye and was watching them interestedly, swishing its tail slowly across the veranda floor.

  Dee looked at his home-made crutch.

  “Help me inside?” he asked Riley.

  “Get up, you!”

  * * *

  The first sheen of dawn was paling the windows when Dee stirred. Riley slept faithfully at his side, and he leaned over, kissing her on her forehead. He got out of bed as quietly as he could with his injured foot and dressed. Riley had found more clothes in some drawers elsewhere in the house, leaving them for him on the three-drawer dresser next to the bed they’d shared.

  He pulled on a long-sleeved fleece pajama top and bottom, glad for the warmth this fall morning. The pajama top smelled old going on over his head and he supposed it was. He would see about washing it later on today, about finding some more clothes. He had the sweatpants from the night before for a second pair, but taking them on and off involved two people with his leg splinted. Dee wrapped the belly-band around his midsection, outside his pajama top, fastening the Velcro. He checked the cylinder on his revolver out of habit before stuffing it deep into the elastic.

  He took the Oakley Medusa from the table with the arch mirror and fit it to his head. He knew he looked outrageous in the thing, but it brought him comfort.

  Pausing before he left the room, Dee looked at Riley. She was so pretty there, her head on the pillow, the butt of her own revolver poking out from under the cushion. Dee grinned and told himself what a lucky man he was.

  In the hallway, on his makeshift crutch, Dee saw that the door to Kevin’s bedroom was open. No one appeared to be in there. The stairs creaked under Dee’s feet and crutch. He
paused to balance himself on the intermediate landing. At the bottom of the stairwell, dull light seeped into the house through the side windows that flanked the front double doors.

  He found Kevin standing on the veranda, next to the chair he’d originally sat in last night. The butt of his AK was on the seat of the chair and his hand was on the foregrip. On the table was the bottle of bourbon, half empty. The rocking chair faced away from them at the end of the veranda, into the rising sun. The young dog was nowhere to be seen, but the older one sat sheepishly at Kevin’s side, obviously bothered.

  “You’re up early.” Dee carried Riley’s AR, taken from the umbrella stand.

  “Thought I heard something.” Concern hovered in Kevin’s voice. “Heard something again.” He appeared relieved to see Dee; they both knew what had happened the last time Kevin thought he’d heard something. “Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

  “Where’s the other dog?”

  “That’s what I was wondering.”

  “The zombies?”

  “Still there.” Kev gestured towards that side of the house. “First thing I checked.”

  “You sleep out here last night?” Dee crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I did.” The lone dog glanced up and licked Kevin’s hand. “Almost froze my ass off, too. Nice jammies, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Think I’ll take a walk. Go check things out.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. Stay here. Riley’s still asleep.”

  “You’re in no shape with that foot, Dee. Stick around.”

  “No. I want to check it out.”

  “It feels different, Dee. You feel it?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I want to take a look.”

  “Dee.”

  “Kevin?”

  “Think.”

  “About?”

  “The battle with Tris. Burning Man. Yesterday with that thing. What do they all have in common?”

  “I don’t know. We killed a lot of motherfuckers?”

  “Morning, Dee. Each happened in the morning.”

  “Which means?”

  “Probably nothing, but…”

  “If I stand here any longer you just might freak me out, Kev. I’m going to go, take a look. I need you I’ll let you know.”

  Dee hobbled off the porch on his crutch, grimacing anew each time he put his weight on his foot. At the bottom of the stairs, Kevin hailed him.

  “What’s that, Kev?”

  “Dee. Be careful out there. Something ain’t right.”

  “Okay.” Dee looked ahead to the palms and the beach past them. “Hey. That thing on the dock… There’s no way it could have survived, is there?”

  Kevin kind’ve laughed. “Now we both sound paranoid.”

  “Nothing wrong being careful.” Dee drew the Python, held it up and dipped the barrel, the AR across his back.

  Kevin waved as Dee disappeared into the trees. He reached down—“That’s a good girl”—and patted the old dog on her head. “You’re okay.”

  After a while Kevin decided to go have another look at the zombies around back. He left the old dog where she was, taking his AK.

  He found the pen much as he had earlier: locked and secure. The zombie with the beard and gut was standing closest to the bars, watching him. Kevin stepped nearer and looked in on it and the other dead things inside. The little girl one had shifted position, sitting somewhere other than where it had been before. The suited zombie had its back to him, its attention drawn to the palm trees.

  Kevin didn’t see the yellow-toothed monstrosity at first, then spied it crouching in the shadows in its Guayabera.

  The bearded zombie groaned, reaching between the bars, trying to touch him.

  “You poor bastard.” Kevin wanted to reach in and pull the thing’s t-shirt over its stomach but thought better of it. That would be a good way to get his hand bitten off. And dignity, he reflected, didn’t mean anything to these things.

  Its forearms resting on its knees, its hands upturned, the Guayabera-clad zombie studied Kevin intently, peering out at him from behind its bearded relation. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?” He took a step away from the cage. The thing gave him the creeps. “Bet you’re fast, too.”

  He looked around the grounds, his eyes passing over the bare stump, the blue tarp pulled over the fire wood, up to the window where the woman had sat for who knew how long, back to the thing lurking in the rear of the cage, still watching him.

  “Yeah, I bet you are.”

  Satisfied yet still unsettled, Kevin returned to the wicker chair. The old dog had her head down on her paws. He sat back, the assault rifle across his upper thighs, listening. This island wasn’t that big. If Dee fired his pistol or rifle he’d hear it. Hell, if Dee yelled he’d probably hear it.

  When she loosed a low growl at his side, Kevin looked from the old dog to the trees.

  “What is it, girl?”

  The dog whined and sat up, her tail sweeping the veranda floor.

  Kevin leaned forward in the chair.

  She raised herself as quickly as her old bones allowed and stepped daintily from the porch to the steps and the ground below.

  “Hey.” Kevin stood.

  She disappeared in the trees, her tail going the whole time.

  “Hey!”

  Kevin waited but the dog did not come back. He looked around the veranda, the rising sun flooding the pillared gallery above the rocker, his hand rising to his eyes against the glare.

  “Yeah.” He said it aloud. “Something ain’t right.” The next few words he whispered to himself. “Come on back, Dee.”

  In the house, he checked the windows on the ground floor. He drew back the curtains and opened the blinds, making sure each window was locked. Although he tied back the curtains, there were still shadows. Another hour and it would be fully light. Kevin thought about waking Riley but decided against it. Chances were he was being paranoid. It was understandable. Let Riley enjoy her sleep.

  And then it hit him. A detail he hadn’t first noticed outside, one that now stood out crystal clear in his mind. The axe in the stump. Was the axe still outside? Kevin went to the window in the kitchen—there was the smaller axe on the granite-topped island where Riley or Dee had left it—went to look and see if he was really being cuckoo.

  And when he looked out the window he could not believe what he saw.

  Kevin flicked the safety off the AK-47 as he exited the house through the vestibule. Rounding the veranda, he scrunched up his eyes against the sun.

  Dee had returned, settling his large, dark frame in the rocker. As Kevin neared—

  “Dee, you’re not going to believe this.”

  —something in his mind noted that Dee was a black man, and that this thing in the rocker rising and turning to face him wasn’t black.

  It was burnt.

  * * *

  It took him awhile to get to the beach, but when he did Dee found the boat a few meters from where he found the dog.

  There wasn’t much left of the dog. So little in fact that it was hard to tell that this was Kevin’s new friend. But Dee knew it was. Parts of her spotted the dunes, strewn over the cabbage palmetto and cacti.

  Unlike the dog, the boat was immediately recognizable. They’d rode in it together, the four of them: Dee, Riley, Kevin and Bruce. They’d taken it down the river, all the way to Elmore and his uncle’s place. And here it was drawn up on the sand. Why here?

  Dee knew exactly what it was doing here.

  “Damn.”

  He turned and hopped away on his crutch, cursing himself for leaving Riley asleep, for leaving Kevin by himself. He made for the palm trees and thought he should fire a shot and warn them.

  He’d almost cleared the revolver of the band when a monster leapt up from the sand dune—a flash of yellowed teeth and dirtied Guayabera—and was on him.

  * * *

  She walked in a cold and threatening place, surrounded by the night. She walk
ed towards a light. At first it appeared to her a star, the way it shone, its intensity, a pinpoint against the dusk. As she neared it, a figure stepped from the effulgence, a form beckoning.

  Anthony.

  Not grown Anthony. Not Anthony as she had last seen him, but Anthony as a kid, the way she remembered him as a kid. He wore his beanie, the strings hanging down either side of his face.

  He was speaking to her but she could not understand his words. The darkness followed, close on her heels, threatening to absorb her at any moment. Almost to her brother, she saw the concern writ on his face and heard him as he pointed behind her, into the dark, the Cimmerian shade imperiling the light.

  Heard him clearly: Sis, wake up.

  She heard something mechanical in the distance, through the black. She turned—

  Wake up, sis.

  —and it was coming for her, through the night, through her dreams. Short and mean, backlit crimson. A blade in either hand, chopsticks in its hair. Blood coursed out of its mouth and ran down off its chin. And it was smiling as it came for her—

  Riley sat up with a gasp. Morning light streamed through the slats over the window in the bedroom. She reached out but the bed beside her was empty, though still somewhat warm.

  Dee.

  The house was silent around her. He must have risen sometime earlier. She yawned and wiped her eyes. Riley found the Taurus under her pillow and placed the revolver on the three-draw bureau with the arched mirror while she made the bed. She folded the top sheet down over the top edge of the blanket. She retrieved the pillows from the floor—knocked there last night—and fluffed them, replacing the shams before adjusting them on the bed.

  Satisfied, Riley placed her five-shot revolver on top of the pillow and stood back to admire her handiwork.

  She padded across the hardwood floor sockless, the grain cool beneath the balls of her feet. Outside the bedroom, the long hallway was deserted, the stairwell yawning at the end of the corridor. A powerful shaft of light beamed in through the window above the curio table and she held up her forearm, squinting against the glare. The door to Kevin’s bedroom was closed. Riley figured he might still be asleep. She would have been, if Dee were next to her still.