Black River Falls

by Jeff Hirsch

  He was still for a moment, then slowly looked over his shoulder. “So why did you?”

  I sat down at the table. He’d had enough excuses. “Ever since that night, since the sixteenth, I . . . it’s like I get caught up in this current I can’t even see. And before I can stop it, I’m a hundred miles away from where I started. You know?”

  There was a long stretch of silence, and then he nodded. Outside, the rest of the kids were emerging from their cabins and gathering at the head of the trail.

  “Anyway. I just wanted to say I was sorry. Looks like you better get moving.”

  He started to leave, then paused at the door. “You going to be here when we get back?”

  “Are you kidding? Can’t miss hot dog night.”

  Benny grinned, and then Greer hollered out in the camp, “Listen up, everybody! We are leaving in five . . . four . . . three . . .”

  I gave Benny a nod, and he ran out into the sunshine. I tossed his soda can into the trash and followed.

  Greer managed to get the kids into some semblance of order, then did a final head count. His face was scrubbed, and he’d changed into a cleanish pair of jeans and a button-down shirt that was only a little too big for him. He looked good, despite the fact that on closer inspection he was clearly more than a little jumpy. Whether it was because he was about to lead his charges into the largest gathering of infected since the outbreak or because of his impending date with a Ferris wheel and a green-haired girl was hard to say.

  “Maybe you should dip into some of Makela’s happy pills before you go,” I said. “Might take the edge off.”

  He chuckled nervously. The door to the girls’ cabin slammed open behind us, and then came Hannah’s voice.

  “I’m coming! Sorry I’m late!”

  “No problem,” Greer said. “We were just—”

  He shut up the second he saw her. I didn’t blame him. She’d changed into a white dress that was speckled all over with small blue flowers. Her arms and shoulders were bare, and she’d put her hair up with a few clips Astrid had made out of twigs and sparkling bits of stone. She stopped dead a few feet from us, likely because our slack-jawed staring was freaking her out.

  “What? Do I look stupid? I look stupid, don’t I?”

  “No!”

  “It’s the boots, isn’t it?” She looked down at her feet, which were still clad in her old black combat boots. “Can you believe that? We find this dress, but no shoes that fit me. Forget it, this was a dumb idea. I’m going to change.”

  Greer almost jumped out of his skin to stop her. “No! Don’t. You look great. Seriously. Awesome. You look like a completely different person.”

  Hannah gave him a look. Good lord, Tennant, he really didn’t have any moves whatsoever.

  “You guys should probably get going,” I said, hoping to save him from any further embarrassment.

  “Yes!” Greer said. “Let’s go! Good times ahead!”

  He trotted off, but Hannah didn’t move. She stood there fiddling with the hem of her dress, looking nervous and worried.

  “It’s going to be fun,” I said.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Dude!” Greer called out. “Come on!”

  Hannah rolled her eyes, smiling at the same time. “Better go.”

  She started toward the others, green hair bouncing, dress swishing at her knees. In no time at all she’d be around the corner, down the mountain, and gone.

  “I feel it too.”

  She stopped and turned around, suspended halfway between me and the kids. My mouth felt as if it were coated in sand.

  “That heartbeat,” I heard myself say. “I feel it too. All the time.”

  Greer called out again, but Hannah made a motion for him to wait. She came back up the trail.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  There were all sorts of things I could say, some of them even sounded pretty good in my head, but in the end I told her the truth.

  “I don’t know.”

  For a moment it was like we were back on that trail under the moonlight. Hannah reached out and took my gloved hand. She started to come closer but stopped herself mid-stride.

  “I wish we could—”

  “I know,” I said. “Me too.”

  Greer called again.

  “Go on,” I said, barely able to speak around the catch in my throat. “I’ll see you later. We’ve got a date with some fireflies, right?”

  Hannah smiled, then hurried toward Greer and Benny and Margo. She took Benny’s hand, Greer scooped up Margo in his arms, and they all continued down the trail. There was a bark behind me as Snow Cone and Hershey Bar raced out of a cabin to see them off. I stood there listening to their fading voices. Once they were gone, the dogs came trotting back. They followed me as I returned to the garden.

  21

  I WAS IN MY tent reading when I heard the helicopter.

  It was a distant buzz at first, but it grew steadily louder until it shot by, right overhead. The dogs jumped up and ran down the trail. I’d moved back to my old camp by then, so I made it to the cabins in no time. Just as I did, helicopters screamed by, skimming the treetops on their way to town. I picked out Marvin logos on their bellies as they slipped past. The Guard had flown helicopters over the QZ plenty of times when they were in charge, but never so many at once and never so low. Did it have something to do with the carnival? Some kind of air show? The dogs stayed close as I headed farther down the trail for a better view.

  The Marvins’ carnival had transformed Monument Park into a pool of light in the middle of the dark valley. The helicopters swept across town and took up positions high above it. I grabbed my knife’s hilt as Hershey Bar and Snow Cone whined. Something was wrong. They could feel it too.

  “Come on, guys.”

  The dogs ran ahead as I sprinted back to camp and found our radio in the boys’ cabin. Nothing but static on every channel. There was a shout coming from up the mountain. I dropped the radio and went to the back window. Flashlights lit up the trees. Jen and Marty, the couple who’d told Greer about Ricky and Margo, came stumbling down the trail, pushed along by a pair of Marvins. As they passed out of view, another couple appeared behind them, then a family of four, then more Marvins. They were herding the infected through camp toward the trailhead that led off Lucy’s Promise.

  “You can’t do this!” Marty screamed as they dipped down into the trees. “This is our home!”

  “Don’t worry.” One of the Marvins laughed. “I hear Arizona is great this time of year!”

  Arizona? I ran back to my tent and pulled the phone Gonzalez had given me out of my backpack, thinking maybe he’d know what was going on. But when I powered it up, there was no signal. Not a weak signal. No signal. It didn’t make sense. Gonzalez said there was a cell tower on the next mountain.

  I pulled on my mask and gloves, then tossed the phone into my pack and threw it over my shoulder. The dogs tried to join me as I came back through the camp, but I warned them off and started down the mountain.

  By the time I got to the foot of Lucy’s Promise, Jen, Marty, and a dozen other infected were being loaded into the back of one of the Marvins’ big cargo trucks. I searched for someone in charge and spotted a familiar face right away.

  “Raney! What’s going on? Where are you taking them?”

  As soon as he saw me, Raney barked an order to his men, then headed for a Humvee that was parked on the side of the road.

  I ran to catch up with him. “What the hell are you doing? You said nothing was going to change. You said everything was going to stay just like it was.”

  “What did you think?” he barked. “The governor was going to wall off an entire town and play nanny to you and your friends for the rest of your lives? There are thousands of uninfected people out there who want their homes back. Who want their businesses back.” He yanked open the Humvee door. “World’s moving on, kid, starting tonight.”

  “Where are you taking them?” />
  Raney slid into his seat and signaled to the driver. The engine rumbled.

  “Good places,” he said. “Safe places. We’ve got facilities in Arizona, Oregon, The Dakotas. A few in Canada. Your friends will be perfectly safe until somebody figures out a cure for this thing. In the meantime, Black River, New York, will be back in business. Hell, a month from now it’ll be like none of this ever happened.”

  “But it’s not right! You can’t just—”

  I was interrupted by a deep boom coming from somewhere across town. The ground trembled, and then a ball of fire rose over the treetops. All around me radios screeched and Marvins scrambled to their vehicles.

  “What was that? What’s happening? Raney—”

  But he was already moving. His Humvee sped away, and so did all the others around me. There was another boom, smaller this time, followed by a crash. I spun around, trying to figure out where the sounds were coming from. A third explosion made it clear. They were coming from Monument Park.

  I ran flat out, jumping fences and cutting through yards. Every street I passed was full of sirens and flashing lights and roaring engines. When I got to within a block of the park, I heard thousands of voices all yelling at once, so many that they merged into a storm of white noise. I hooked around the back side and climbed the hill, staying low, moving from shadow to shadow until I reached the crest. Once there, I found a thicket of trees and dropped to my belly.

  There wasn’t much left of the carnival. The Ferris wheel and a few wooden booths were about the only things still standing. Everything else had been trampled under the feet of nearly five thousand infected who stood shoulder to shoulder below me, fists raised and shouting. They were facing a stage that sat on the far side of the park. It was empty except for a podium and a couple of knocked-over mic stands. There was a knot of Marvin blue to one side of it. It looked like they’d been trying to make their escape, but had been blocked by a wall of infected. Three of their vehicles had been flipped over and were spewing flames and black smoke. Hannah had mentioned there was going to be an announcement at the carnival. I was pretty sure I knew what it was and about how well it had gone over.

  Gonzalez had been right. Black River was nothing but a contract to the Marvins. Everything Raney had done had been to keep us quiet until the Guard was gone and no one was watching.

  A horde of Marvin vehicles arrived with a screech of sirens. They began lining the road that circled the park, like bricks in a wall surrounding it. Once they were all in position, they’d have the infected trapped. They’d only have to load them onto trucks and drive them away. I scanned the crowd, becoming more and more anxious, until I caught a flash of green. Hannah. She was locked in the middle of the mob with Greer and the kids. They were bunched together, hand in hand, making a chain to fight the tides of people pushing against them. They were barely a hundred yards away, but a trio of Marvin trucks sat between us. I looked up and down the line but didn’t see a single break.

  A black bus pulled up near the stage. An amplified voice came from loudspeakers on top of it.

  “By order of the governor, you are to disperse. Return to your homes and await further instruction. Anyone who does not comply is subject to immediate arrest.”

  A door opened in the side of the bus, and dozens of Marvins poured out. They were in riot gear—black body armor, helmets, gas masks. As they advanced toward the crowd, they beat truncheons against Plexiglas shields. The infected retreated at first, but then there was a rallying cry and they threw themselves forward. Another patrol car was flipped onto its side, with a crunch of broken glass. More carnival booths collapsed. Once the infected saw what they could do, they surged even harder. The riot cops were pushed back, but the reaction was immediate. Two of the three Humvees in front of me backed out of their spots and headed toward the center of the chaos. It was my opening. I bolted down the hill.

  “Hannah! Greer! This way!”

  Hannah turned, and when she saw me, she grabbed Greer’s arm and he started shouting at the kids, turning them in my direction. There were screams on the other side of the park, single voices at first and then a chorus. Fire from one of the burning patrol cars spread to the stage, and flames shot out over the crowd. Silhouetted by the blaze, the infected looked like trees writhing in a forest fire. My stomach flipped and my vision started to collapse, but I couldn’t give in to it. I waved the kids past me and up the hill, then followed behind. By the time we all made it to the top, the kids were nearly hysterical with fear. Not Hannah, though. She seemed almost eerily calm. Her eyes were filled with the same kind of hunted intensity as the first time I’d seen her.

  “Did you hear what they’re going to do?” she asked. “They must have been planning it the whole time.”

  Behind her, Eliot wailed. “They’re going to split us up. They’re going to send us away!”

  “What do we do?” Astrid cried. “What are we going to do?”

  Everyone was looking to me. I searched around us, trying to find some kind of out. Somewhere to go. Something to do. All I saw was the dark outline of Lucy’s Promise rising above the town.

  “We go back up the mountain,” I said. “It’s our only choice.”

  “They’ll come looking for us,” Hannah argued. “Every infected person in Black River is getting cleared out. That’s what they said.”

  “Then we’ll go deeper into the woods,” I countered. “Over the quarantine fence if we have to. We stick together and we stay out of sight until people find out what the Marvins are trying to do. There’s no way they’ll let them get away with it.”

  There was a roar as another helicopter streaked over the trees toward the park.

  “Go!” I yelled. “Run! And don’t look back.”

  Hannah took the lead and the kids ran after her. I started to follow until I realized that Greer wasn’t behind me. He had moved to the edge of the hill, his head down, his hands curled into fists.

  “Greer, we have to go. Now!”

  I grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. His gray eyes locked on mine. It was as if time had slipped its gears and turned backwards. It was the old Greer. I stepped back without thinking, my hand falling to the hilt of the knife.

  “They can’t do this,” he roared. “Black River is ours! It’s our home.”

  Just then five trails of white arced over the heads of the infected. Tear gas. When the canisters landed, plumes of smoke billowed in every direction. The crowd screamed and reared back. People were clawing at their eyes and struggling to breathe. The Marvins waded into them, clubs raised over their heads.

  “You want to go?” Greer cried. “Then go! Run!”

  He turned away, but I managed to get a hold of his arm and yank him back. The glare he gave me was the same one he’d given a hundred kids on the schoolyard. It had always been enough to send us all running, but right then I refused to back off, refused to wither like I had so many times before.

  “Hannah and I need you,” I said. “We have to stay together!”

  “Greer! Card!”

  Hannah had stopped running. The kids were huddled behind her. Benny. DeShaun. Astrid. Makela. Eliot cradled Margo in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder. They were all streaked with soot and tears. I turned back to Greer, and it was as if a switch flipped inside him. His arm slipped out of my hand and he ran toward Hannah. He took Margo from Eliot and waved them all down the other side of the hill. I turned for a last look back at the park. The Ferris wheel had fallen over, and every last trace of the carnival was gone, crushed underfoot. A house on an adjacent street was burning. Smoke from the fires mixed with the tear gas, churning in the rotor wash from the helicopters. Deep inside the haze, faceless forms grappled hand to hand.

  Behold, Abaddon.

  I turned and fled. By the time we hit the roadway on the other side of the hill, the riot had spilled into the streets. Main was blocked by a barricade of vehicles, so we ended up twisting through Black River’s neighborhoods, just barely
avoiding the Marvins. I kept my eyes locked on the summit of Lucy’s Promise with every turn we took, frustrated by how it drew closer and slipped away over and over again.

  At Washington Street we stumbled into one of the clouds of tear gas and the kids started coughing violently. I could breathe because of my mask, but it was like a swarm of bees gouging at my eyes. Greer pushed everyone into a nearby yard, then stripped off his shirt and told Ren and Eliot to do the same. He handed the shirts to me and I used my knife to cut them into wide strips. Greer and Hannah moved through the group, tying the fabric tightly around mouths and noses. It wasn’t much, but it was all we had, and it was enough to get everyone back on their feet and moving.

  There was a full-on brawl underway at the end of Washington, so we jumped fences until we hit the next street over. I caught a flash of the bridge up ahead and called out to the others, but by the time we’d turned toward it, a Marvin patrol cut us off and we lost sight of it again. We tumbled from street to street, as if we’d fallen into the churn of Black River Falls. The world became flickers of light and darkness. There and then gone again. I saw riot clubs falling. Clouds of smoke. People running. All around us was the sound of broken glass and sirens and the pop pop pop of gunfire.

  Astrid fell, and I helped her up and pushed her on. Blood poured from a cut on the side of her head and across her pale skin, but she didn’t seem to notice. Hannah had DeShaun in her arms. Greer carried Margo. Makela snatched a rock off the street and hurled it at a passing car. Every few minutes another mass of infected crashed into us, overwhelming and scattering our group. We fought to pull ourselves together again and again, clasping hands, making a chain. Stay together. Keep moving. It was all I could think. All I could do.

  “Card! Look!”

  My head snapped left at Hannah’s voice. Gray stone showed through the trees, and then there was a rush of sound that I took for the roar of voices until I realized what it really was—white water crashing over the falls.

  By then we’d mixed in with at least three other groups of infected. We turned a corner, and suddenly there it was. The bridge. The roadway was clear. It was a straight shot to Lucy’s Promise. Seeing it gave us a jolt, and we raced out onto it. Hannah and I looked around wildly as we ran, counting heads, making sure everyone was there. I panicked when I didn’t see Tomiko, but then the crowd shifted and I caught sight of her.