“Is there a bow?” Mayer asks.
“No, but—ach!”
Mayer and I turn back toward Graham, lowering our defenses. He sounded like he was stung by a bee, but I’ve seen him stung before. He doesn’t even flinch. He moves through the woods with a swiftness I recognize, the kind that means trouble is behind him, but I’m still caught off guard when he emerges from the woods with an arrow sticking out of his triceps, in one side and out the other.
Did he stab himself with an arrow? Did he trip and fall on it?
I quickly dispel these ideas. He would never do either. And that meant he was shot.
Whoever this drop was meant for is still here.
And then, the person who shot Graham, is among us.
A black blur springs from the forest behind Graham, slamming into his back and sending him sprawling into Mayer. The pair fall to the ground, Mayer unleashing a string of curses in her native tongue.
I raise my AK-47, finger already on the trigger, already squeezing. But the attacker is too fast. A whirling, spinning kick strikes my rifle, twisting the barrel away from my target, sending four rounds shooting into the sky. I reach for my P229, while thinking I should have gone for my knife instead—Graham always said a knife beat a gun in close quarters—but neither choice would have helped. The stranger is too fast, moving with a kind of primal elegance, fueled by rage. The best word to describe the attack is ‘wild,’ but also coordinated and practiced.
“Wait,” I say, before two feet slam into my chest, knocking me flat on my back and driving the air from my lungs.
Gasping for air, I get my first good look at the attacker, whose shape reveals we’re dealing with a woman. She’s covered in mud and plants, perfectly camouflaged. Had we not stopped to pilfer her supplies, we might have continued on past without ever knowing she was here. Her hair is coiled into muddy, inch-thick strands embedded with leaves, which make the tendrils look more like tree branches or some kind of new Scionic life. For a moment, I wonder if that’s what she is, but her distinctly human shape, lack of bulging sacks and the fact that she is wearing clothing, albeit dirty rags, mark her as a fellow human.
Someone who can be reasoned with, if I can catch my breath and find my voice.
Mayer frees herself from Graham’s sprawled form and raises her assault rifle too late. The woman leaps to the side, landing on her hands like an animal, and then she springs further around Graham, using his body to shield herself. Then she hurls a stone. I don’t know if she picked it up while leaping around, or if she had it in one of the many pouches hanging from her waist, but she whips the stone like an expert, striking Mayer’s head. She follows that up by leaping on Graham’s back like an ape, gripping the arrow in his arm and tearing it free. Then she punches him in the back of the head, sending him into a near unconscious state that matches Mayer’s.
She’s not trying to kill us, I think. But she’s definitely delivering a message. This is her territory. And we are not welcome.
“We’ll leave,” I say, between gasps.
Her face snaps toward me. Covered in dry mud and leaves, she looks inhuman.
But her eyes, dark brown and wide, they’re...
She leaps at me using Graham’s back as a springboard.
I lift my hands, disarmed. “Wait. Wait.”
She draws a knife from behind her back, closing in on me. Her eyes lock on mine. I see anger and ferocity, desperation and loneliness.
And then confusion.
She sees what I’m seeing. Familiarity. Some sense of something nearly forgotten.
It can’t be...
It’s not.
I’m seeing what I want to see, because of where we are, conjuring the distant past, jogged by fresh memories.
And she proves it by pouncing, knife gripped to strike.
Catch her striking arm, I think. Twist it. Free the knife. Punch her in the side of the head. End this before she ends you.
I have killed before, animal, Scion and even human. I loathe the latter of the three. It makes me sick. But sometimes, people remove the choice, and you do what you have to. Survival depends on it. And not just mine. As much as I need Graham and Mayer, they need me. Without me, they’d be pincushions back on the polka-dotted shoreline, not to mention a hundred other deaths avoided, thanks to not brawn, but brain.
But this time, those big black eyes disarm me.
The woman, built like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s jungle Queens, wielding a blade and dressed like a cave woman, has a kind of power over me.
I can’t kill her.
I can’t even fight her.
On the off chance that there is something to those eyes, I manage to shout just two words before she lands on me. “It’s me!”
Then her thighs are wrapped around my chest, pinning my arms to my sides.
I could lift my legs up, wrap them around her head and pull her off. I’ve practiced the move with Graham. But I don’t. Instead, I watch as she takes a fistful of my thick beard, lifts my chin and swipes down with the knife. I feel a tug and a sting, and I hear the knife cut.
Is that it?
Am I dying?
I wait for the pain. For the warmth of blood oozing from my neck. But I feel nothing until she grabs another handful of hair and cuts it away.
“No,” she says, her voice deep and gravelly—practiced—but not her own.
She cuts and grabs, cuts and grabs.
“No!” Her voice is full of anguish now.
The sneer revealing bright white teeth loses its power, her lower lip quivering.
“No! No!” She takes a handful of shaggy hair on my head, cutting it away with a swipe of the blade, repeating the process around my head, weeping now, the warm tears weakening the mud on her face, chipping it away as new expressions break through.
Pain.
Disbelief.
And then joy.
She’s trembling all over as she makes the final cut, revealing a face that I haven’t seen in over a decade. The mask of dirt covering her face crumbles away, falling on my chest. I see her for the first time in fifteen years, older, a little wrinkled, gray creeping into her brown hair. But her eyes. Her lips. Her cheeks.
“Are you real?” I ask.
She responds by leaning down and placing her lips against mine. Dirt becomes mud as our mouths join, slowly and gently at first, but then with a passion that can only come from love lost and regained. When we finally separate, I rub her cheeks with my thumbs and say a name that has only brought me pain for fifteen years.
“Bell.”
38
The past rears up like a tidal wave, overwhelming with sights, sounds and smells I thought would never be part of the world again. I’m sitting in my house. My house. In the kitchen, listening to the tea kettle whistle, smelling hot food and hearing the sound of Bell’s soothing voice as she apologizes to Graham and Mayer, tending to their wounds.
Wounds she inflicted.
While much of the old duplex is still as I remember it—the furniture, the fixtures, framed paintings, family photos and lines on the hallway wall charting the boys’ growth—much of it has changed. The windows have been barred. Some boarded up. The doors are metal and have reinforced locks. Weapons are everywhere. Most of them blades or bow and arrows. But there are a few firearms and buckets of ammunition laid out beside windows and doors.
But the biggest change is Bell. The woman before me now... She’s no longer the Christ-like pacifist who would turn the other cheek even at the risk of life. She’s a hunter. Maybe a killer. The way she fights, savage and primal, says a lot about who she has become. I don’t hold it against her. Just the opposite. I adore her for it. I had called her strong-willed, but she’s shown herself to be so much more. At the same time, there is something missing.
She’s no longer at peace. She used to face down life’s challenges with a smile on her face. The kids. Work. Bills. Nothing seemed to faze her. What was it she said? Tomorrow will take care of itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own. That and something about birds and bees being taken care of, and how much more important people were to God.
But now, with the human race on the brink, that belief must have been shaken.
Not shaken, I think. Lost. That’s what’s different. She’s lost her faith.
Bell has washed away the mud and living camouflage, and replaced rags with an old pair of shorts and a t-shirt, both of which are too large for her. But she still carries herself like someone used to roughing it, squatting instead of bending, tearing with teeth instead of cutting. Gone are the smooth movements that accentuated her curves. Gone too, are most of the curves. She’s slender and wiry from living in a hostile world. No wonder she was willing to fight for those supplies.
She stands up from bandaging Mayer’s head. Back in the days of hospitals, Mayer might have gotten stitches for the wound opened up by the flung rock, but these days, duct tape did the trick. The hole through Graham’s arm took more work, but Bell sealed it closed with superglue before wrapping it in a copious amount of gauze. “Sorry again,” Bell says, closing up her first aid kit and carrying it back into the bathroom.
Mayer and Graham give me concerned glances. They’re no doubt wondering if this is the Bell I remember, or if she’s off her rocker. Mayer calls it ‘going native.’ Some people we’ve come across have devolved into a kind of tribal living, not just in how they interact with their land, but with how they treat outsiders. Like rival chimpanzee troupes, some tribes just start wailing and attacking, chasing the outsiders until they’re either dead or far outside their territory. There are more civilized tribes, particularly in former third world countries already accustomed to living off the land, but they’re harder to find. Solitary survivors, ones with little or no human contact…they’re traditionally the most dangerous.
I raise my palms to them and mouth the words, ‘She’s okay.’
Bell reenters the kitchen before I can hide my hand gesture. She stops, eyes me for a moment, and then the others. “You’re wondering if I’m nuts, right?”
“You have that air about you,” Mayer says with her normal direct approach.
Bell grins, either finding humor in Mayer’s comment, or she’s proud of it. “How did you three survive?”
“Us?” I say. “He’s an Army Ranger. She’s Mossad.”
“And you used to be a nerd.” Bell bends down and kisses my forehead, which has been wiped clean with a facecloth and bowl of warm, now dirty water resting on the kitchen table beside me.
“Thanks for the past tense,” I say.
She grins. “Still kind of a nerd.”
Bell pours four cups of hot water without asking anyone if they’re interested in a drink. It pretty much goes without saying. Then she drops a tea bag in each and sits down beside me. Her hand slides up my leg. Her fingers find mine and weave their way into my grasp. The skin-on-skin contact sets my heart racing and wakes up long dormant parts of my psyche. I squeeze her hand, wanting the moment to linger.
And then I ruin it by asking, not just a question, but the question. “Where are the others?”
Her hand pulls away. She stands up and fiddles with the tea bags.
“If it’s too painful,” I say, “we can—”
“Painful,” she says, “but not in the way you’re imagining. They’re alive.”
I nearly fall from my chair.
Even Mayer gasps.
“Mina. Ike. Ishah. All of them.”
I’m on my feet, desperate to move, to run to them. “Where are they?”
“Not here,” she says, deflating my urgency, but not my desperate need for knowledge. “I haven’t seen them...” Her hands are shaking. I reach out and take her hands, guiding her back into the seat.
“I’ll take care of the tea,” Mayer says, helping herself to the silverware and pretending to fuss over the steaming cups. But I can tell she was really just listening. While Mayer and Graham had never met my family, they’d heard enough about them, and my feelings for them, to be fully invested in this moment. I have been hunting and hoping for answers about them for all this time, and now that I have them, the news is impossible to comprehend.
Alive. All of them. But Bell is here. Alone.
Something went wrong.
“Take your time,” I tell her, but I can see she’s already called up a reserve of strength.
“I haven’t seen them in fourteen years.”
The news sucks the air from my lungs. It’s been longer than that for me, but I’ve had Graham and Mayer by my side.
“You’ve been alone all that time?” The question comes from Graham, who is now leaning forward, elbows on knees, his full attention on Bell.
“Visitors come and go,” she says. “Most of them never come back. Some of them are chased away. But yeah, alone.”
“Why?” I ask.
“The First Lady...what was her name?”
“Susan,” I say. “McKnight.”
“Right. She kept their promise. Our family stayed with the government’s core for that whole first year after you left... After you went missing.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, but she continues without acknowledging the apology.
“Then we ended up in Raven Rock.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Underground bunker in Pennsylvania,” Graham says. “One of the few places on Earth designed to wait out an apocalypse.”
“Six months later, there was a military coup. People who were considered useful, and their families, were allowed to stay. Mina is an engineer. The boys share her last name. And I was just a Bible-thumping, homeschooling mother. But they didn’t just kick us to the curb. They set us up around the country, let us choose where we wanted to live.” She motions to the house around us. “I chose home. They dropped supplies four times a year at first, but that increased to eight when internal strife settled down and the thousand VIPs living there voted for a new President.
“I could have gone back then. She invited me. But I stayed here in case...” she rubs her temples, hands shaking again. “In case this... In case you came back.”
“You’ve been waiting here for me?”
“Told Him I would believe, until you returned.”
“Told who?” Mayer asks.
I point to the ceiling and say, “Him. Him Him.”
“Ahh,” she says, scooping sugar into the tea, and licking it off her fingertip with a slightly orgasmic look on her face.
“And now?” I ask.
“We’ll talk,” Bell says. “Him and me.”
I smile. “I’m glad to hear that.”
She squints at me. “You are?”
“I’ve had a few words with Him over the years. Most of them angry.” I shrug. “The whole world is a foxhole now.”
Bell laughs, and the sound of it nearly breaks my heart.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Graham says. “Who is the president now?”
That there is still a President of the United States means that Graham still has a boss. I don’t think Mayer will see it that way, but once a Ranger, always a Ranger. Or something like that.
“It’s Mina.”
I flinch back like I’ve been slapped. “What?”
“Apparently her engineering skills kept everyone alive on two occasions. She’s organized. Direct. You know how she is. She’s the opposite of me, which means she could run a country better than I could a household.”
I’m more aghast than surprised. “And she left you out here?”
“I chose to stay,” Bell says. “She tried to get me back. Sent choppers to pick me up a few times. Even sent the boys after me. Don’t blame her.”
It’s a lot to absorb. Too much to absorb. So I move on. “The boys. They’re okay?”
“Ishah.” She says her son’s name with a bright smile. “He’s got a wife and five kids. Three boys, two girls. He’s a nerd, like his Dad. And like his Dad, he’s trying to find a way to kill it.”
/> “Kill what?” I ask.
“It.”
“The Machine.”
“They still call it ‘the aberration.’”
“It calls it the Machine.”
Her brows furrow. “I’m not following you, Abe.”
“Every time he touches it, he sees things,” Mayer says. “Visions. He talks to it. It tells him things. Old news and probably delusions brought on by fear.”
“You’ve touched it?”
“Twice,” I say. “And I wasn’t delusional.”
Mayer hands the tea cups out, one by one, while we observe this solemn moment in silence. Graham takes a sip, closes his eyes and says, “Black tea?”
“Mmhmm.” Bell takes a sip. “Whoo. Lot of sugar there, Aliza.”
Graham tilts his head back and chugs the tea until it’s gone. “Oh, God that is good.”
“Been a while since you had tea?” Bell asks, smiling.
“Caffeine,” Graham admits. “Rangers take caffeine pills to stay awake on long missions. We end up addicted to the stuff. It’s been too long.”
“Well, I’ll have to ask Ike about that. See if they still use the pills.” She gives Graham a wink. “Maybe he can sneak you some.”
“Wait,” I say, putting together the pieces, albeit very slowly. “Is Ike in the military?”
She nods. “Ranger, same as him. Deployed at an Outpost like me.”
“Mina deployed Ike to an outpost, too?” My fatherly ire is up. It was bad enough that Mina didn’t send a whole Special Forces platoon after Bell, but to let her own son...their son...fend for himself in the wild instead of the safety of a mountain base…
“Mount Hood, on the West Coast,” Bell says. “Keeping watch for the…Machine. He volunteered. And he’s good at his job. One of the best, I’m told. Mina’s quite proud of him. And she’s a good grandmother to Ishah’s kids.”
Frustration rears up, catching me off guard. I’m beyond thrilled that they’re alive, but I can’t say I’m happy about some of the decisions they’ve made. My family is alive, but scattered and still very much in harm’s way. “I should never have left.”
“That’s true,” Bell says, inflicting a deep emotional wound. “But we share the blame. I could have stopped you. Mina could have stopped you. And if we’re honest about it, if you had stayed, we wouldn’t have been taken in by the First Lady. We’d all be dead. But we’re not.” She shakes her head with a grin that reveals some of the old Bell that I’ve been missing is still there, just beneath the surface. “Mysterious ways...” She looks me in the eyes. “It’s been a long time, but we’re alive, and we’ll be together again.”
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