South

by Frank Owen

  For the first time in his life, Tye Callahan turned and ran.

  ‘Well, I guess that answers that.’ The bald man stretched out his hand. One shoulder was a little higher than the other. ‘Welcome to Horse Head, ma’am.’

  21

  Tye Callahan kept running. As he went, he pulled his shirt off and tied it over his face mask for double protection. The men were leaving quicker than they’d come, beating a path through the birches and up over the lip of the ridge, rolling and sliding and tumbling their way back to the safety of the pine forest.

  Vida slumped back. I’m strong, she told herself. If Stringbeard couldn’t kill me, nothing will.

  The soldiers were waiting for her to gather herself. She sat up and looked more closely at the decaying battalion. They regarded one another in the rising heat. This was a detachment of the almost-dead, already reduced to their essentials, flesh peeling back from the determined bones below. The Callahans had been less afraid of the guns than the rotting hands that held them. The soldiers could have come brandishing willow stalks and earthworms and still found themselves left with Dyce and Vida, the hunting party gone like patchy fog across the Colorado plains.

  The crooked soldier held out Vida’s pack. His head was shaved – or the hair fallen out of its own accord. He looked as if he might have had a Comanche somewhere in his family.

  ‘Yours, I believe.’

  ‘Thank you. I thought it was gone for good.’ She felt for the recipe book and the old envelope pasted into the back. Everything was still there. The Callahans had been too intent on chasing them down to ransack their belongings.

  The man spoke, his voice strong though his back was bent to the will of his disease.

  ‘All are welcome.’ He gave them a small smile. ‘None stay too long.’

  One of the women went on, as if it was rehearsed. ‘These are our hills and we watch them well.’

  Vida nodded. Of course they did. They had something to protect. She inspected each grim and faithful face, steady with purpose. There was no leader among them.

  ‘Now,’ said the bent man, ‘should we show our visitors some colonial hospitality?’

  A few confederates came forward and helped Dyce to his feet. He had not spoken since the chase. Thank God he can’t see who’s holding him up, thought Vida. The group turned and muddled back to the settlement.

  It sat on the leeward side of the hill, as all the new towns did, but it was otherwise foreign to Vida. There were no walls or fences around it, no gates to keep the unwanted out of the fort. The shelters were collected in groups, constructed in the old style with poles and planks and grasses, set in teepees here and there, or over holes cut into the slope and lined with tufts of straw. Vida felt a tug that seemed like time travel. My God, she thought. People have been making houses like these for thousands of years. There was some comfort in that, some expertise. With a jolt she realized that it was the first time since the sicknesses had come in earnest that she felt as if people knew what they were doing, that they had the sense and the hope to plan for the life to come, that they were going to meet it with their eyes open and their hands joined. Fuck Renard. As they went on, people greeted the soldiers, unsurprised to see them. There was no right way to enter, no permission or proof of wellness required, no need for a fellow traveler to vouch for your status and sanity.

  And then, of course, below the settlement was the familiar shadow, the shadow township of the dead: the mounds of dirt as the Weatherman had drawn them, the graves dug by the dying for those gone on ahead, and for themselves. Vida began counting. Some had crosses set over the heads, others not, but they were all looked after – cleared of weeds and converted into small gardens of clover and stonecrop and shooting stars. And dandelions and yarrow, of course, always and everywhere. Vida’s fake grave for Ruth seemed careless in comparison, not a respectful memorial but a hole to hide a body, nothing more. No ancestral spirit would be satisfied with that.

  The bald man was leading them through the middle of the town. Up close, the shelters themselves seemed to be less well made than the graves – temporary places of safety for nomadic people; those moving between this world and the next.

  The confederates showed Dyce to a shelter where he could lie in the fullness of the morning sun. Vida knew what it meant that there was an empty shelter waiting for them, sleeping mat and all: it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out. She looked down toward the graves and gave a nod of thanks to the departed who’d left it behind. Vida watched carefully as a woman with a wheezing cough came to Dyce with a medicine: yarrow stems pulped into a warm brew, it smelt like. She helped Dyce sip at the froth until it was cool, and then he downed it. The woman took the bowl away, and then came back with a coverlet for his legs. Vida inspected the weave: long grass, tight enough to warm, loose enough to breathe, and the smell! Mown fields, back when there was season and order, the scent of childhood and sweet, dry summer, and her stepdad calling, ‘Veedles! Here it comes! Catch the ball!’

  The bald man had moved inside a pale tent, to nurse someone else, Vida thought. It seemed fairly organized. What was the word her ma used? Egalitarian. They just took care of each other.

  He poked his head out. ‘Come on in here.’

  ‘You sure? It’s safe?’

  He nodded and retreated, making space. She lifted the flap and went inside. He was wiping the mouth of a frail woman but made sure to shield his hands from the spittle. Even Vida could tell the patient was a coughing fit away from crossing over to the deadlands.

  He sat back again, his skew spine making him rock a little. He kept one eye on the dying woman but gave Vida his attention.

  ‘What you got? Can’t tell from the outside.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘What is it? Brainworm?’

  ‘No.’ Vida smiled. ‘Maybe, actually. But I’m not really here for all that.’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘Dying, I guess.’

  The woman moaned, and he shushed her and rubbed her chest, high up, like a child. She managed to open her eyes. She was concentrating on Vida, who shifted.

  He went on. ‘This woman is dying. Don’t be afraid to look at her.’ Vida did. ‘But the rest of us – we’re all living. This settlement works. Just tell me. You have nothing to lose.’

  Vida felt ashamed, and her shame made her tell him nearly everything: about Stringbeard, about the double infection and the cure she dreamt. She told him about Dyce and she told him about Ma, who was a week further along and that much nearer to death.

  As Vida spoke, the man leant forward and looked her deep in the eyes, searching her pupils for dilation, for the flecks of red that might tell on the brain virus.

  ‘Heard about Fieldstone, but not that fellow. Got a good few recruits from there. But in all my days I only ever seen double viruses kill a person. We still got to be cautious here. No sipping from the same cups and such.’

  Vida felt another pang of guilt and wondered whether he had made the connection about Dyce and the water, and how she’d been too selfish to make him stop.

  ‘But I’m not ruling it out, mind. These are strange times.’

  Vida nodded. Don’t ruin it. Don’t get hysterical. And don’t laugh. There’s a chance he might listen.

  He went on. ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that this place’ – Vida gestured at the cloth sides of the tent and the whole textured settlement beyond it – ‘is perfectly placed for us to find out how it works. If it works.’

  ‘You mean testing people? Making them sick? That sort of thing?’ He was already shaking his head.

  ‘Think about it before you say no. Just think about it. Please. These people came here to die. This could give them another chance.’

  ‘Not sure that kind of testing is fair.’ Vida looked away, her heart a rock thrown in a river. He hadn’t finished. ‘But I suppose I got no jurisdiction to disallow it.’

  ‘Let’s talk hypoth
etical, then.’

  ‘Hypothetical settles my nerves some.’ He wet the cloth and wiped the woman’s cheeks and neck, careful, Vida noticed, not to touch her skin.

  ‘Anyone you think might be a candidate for Dyce?’

  ‘Dyce your traveling partner?’

  Vida nodded.

  ‘What’s he got?’

  ‘That red blindness, plus a bad fever. And the shits.’

  ‘Don’t they all?’ The man fell quiet, and then made up his mind. ‘You might not have noticed, but one of our men followed you last night.’

  ‘I sure as shit noticed! Thought he was a big cat. Tried to brain him with a branch.’

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s got day blindness. The other kind. Virus got him one evening – caught out in the open when the wind changed. Over the night he starts seeing things clear as day. Critters in the bushes, leaves in all their detail, owls and bats above. Course he feels like shit, but it’s worth it. Told me the stars above are like a highway straight to heaven paved with jewels. Then the sun rises and Sam – that’s his name – Sam’s in agony. Like barbed wire right into the corneas. He pulls his mask up over his eyes and manages to find his way here. We wrap him up, feed and water him like he’s a baby deer and all that. Then, as soon as the sun’s gone, he’s up and he’s okay again. Like a vampire.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘You still talking hypothetical?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Before I do that, you want to tell me your name?’

  ‘Vida Washington. And you are?’ Running Horse, I’ll bet.

  ‘Peter Stuyvesant.’

  She snorted.

  ‘I know, I know. You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Just call me Pete.’

  22

  Tye Callahan stopped running as soon as he figured the air was safe. Running came second only to crying in the Callahan code of honor. He stood, panting, as his harrier came to roost on his shoulder, faithful to the last. His scattershot group was congregating, man by man, near the thin river below the pines. They looked like they were slapping midges off their bodies, all feeling for raised glands in their necks, or swallowing hard, waiting for the first signs of the scrape. What a sorry bunch of assholes!

  ‘Quit it, you sissies! If it’s gonna show up you’ll know by sundown, and being afraid of your own shadows ain’t going to stop it coming.’

  Most of them let their hands fall, but every now and again, as Tye berated them, he saw a hand creeping across a chest, or a palm slapping at the back of a sunburnt neck.

  ‘Who was it who stopped on the ridge? Who gave up?’

  Tye knew already. He’d taken careful stock of each man’s courage.

  ‘Don’t make me fucking shoot you in the back on the trek home. Show me you have at least a teaspoon of guts. You call yourselves marshals!’

  Three men stepped forward, unable to meet Tye’s eyes. Paul Callahan hung back, at the end of the line of sorry men. Tye glared at the three who had presented themselves, and they took their hats off to hold over their chests as though they were singing the national anthem – or shielding themselves from a bullet, putting one more layer between themselves and the wrath of the old leader.

  Tye pulled his gun from his belt and cocked it.

  ‘Course I’m not going to shoot you.’ His dry lips drew back. It was worse when Tye smiled. ‘We’re Callahans. We’re a team, right?’

  The three men smiled hopefully and nodded.

  ‘Course you fellas had the guts to stay the night, and that stands for something now, doesn’t it?’

  The men agreed, terrified, clutching their hats, scrunching the leather in their white fists.

  ‘So here’s the deal I’m going to make with you, out of the kindness of my heart and because we are brethren.’

  The men shuffled, swallowed.

  ‘When you all get back to Glenvale, you’re going to find the first couple of Callahans who turned back last evening – the first three who got home to their wives for a nice wet fuck and a bottle of moonshine – and you’re going to shoot them for me.’

  ‘Well, now, Tye,’ the oldest of the men began. ‘We’re good men here, all of us. Even those fellas who left. But they got their reasons. Now I’m not suggesting they get off scot-free, no way . . .’

  ‘Too many good men, that’s my damn problem. How’s about I shoot some now, save you the trouble?’ Tye raised his gun and the men around him began shifting out of the line of fire. If they moved too fast, he might strike, the way adders did.

  ‘One of these two things will happen. Either way, someone pays for their cowardly ways. Your choice.’

  The three marshals nodded, pale with fright but thinking that they might survive the discipline session after all. Tye could see the thoughts wheeling in their heads: We don’t have to kill anyone. He doesn’t have to know.

  Then Tye swung his crooked arm round and fired his gun. The bullet hit Paul Callahan in the chest. He fell forward to his knees, disbelieving, and Tye’s bird fluttered away to sit on a nearby branch.

  ‘There were four stopped on the hill, Paul. I saw you,’ said Tye, slow and calm.

  He turned to the line of men. ‘Now you all listen good. I see everything. We clear?’

  The men nodded, stunned into agreement.

  ‘When he quits that twitching, you bury him – and I don’t want a fucking marker on the grave. This man’s disappearing. I want no sign he ever existed. No one’s gonna be paying no respects.’

  The posse was quiet, unmoving as Paul lay wheezing in the dust.

  Pathetic, Tye thought to himself. They all just let me do it. Standing there, watching one of their own dying in the dirt and no one lifted a fucking finger. Shameful.

  It didn’t take Paul Callahan long to die. He breathed his last and still no one moved, afraid of another explosion from their leader.

  ‘Bury him!’ bellowed Tye. The men began scurrying to get his body into the hard-packed earth.

  Tye left them to shifting stones and looking for sticks to loosen the ground. It would take time, but there was no rush. He knew where the Jackson boy and that woman were. He wasn’t likely to forget. Once Tye Callahan had marked you down in his mind, there was no getting away.

  He crossed the shallow river by the stepping stones and walked some way off into the shrubs. He found a clearing and searched out the smoothest rock for a seat. He needed to get comfortable: he had a message to send.

  From his bag he produced the tiny cylinder with its straps. His harrier was used to the harness: the capsule was light. He called the bird down from her branch with a whistle and she came to him.

  ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, girl. You up for a delivery? You remember how to do it?’

  She cocked her head and pecked lightly at his sleeve.

  ‘Easy! That’s my writing hand.’

  He reached into his bag and brought out a dried perch fillet for her. It sure stank, but she loved the fish. As she ate, he stroked the soft speckled feathers on her back.

  Then he found his notepad and a pencil stub. He pressed on the rock, crouching beside it, and wrote as small as he could. He knew Renard, and so he chose his words carefully, trying as best he could to trim the rage from his prose. With the right tone, Tye could win back the trust his men sorely lacked, not just for his leadership, but for the Callahan name as it stood.

  Attention: Renard – A Message from Tye Callahan

  Greetings from the South,

  I hope in the years I’ve kept a watch on things below the border that you haven’t once questioned my loyalty. I have burnt bridges and found myself firmly on your side.

  I write to you here to tell you that I have grown to see eye to eye with your way. I have found that this Southern breed is hardly worth the air they breathe, and I include my own no-good family when I say that. The reason I raise my enduring loyalty will become clear as you read on.

>   I am currently very far south, beyond Glenvale and the remnants of Fieldstone even, further than I myself have been since my horse died. I am right on the edge of the settlements, and I had thought that there were none further.

  I see now that I have been wrong in my estimation. There are rumors from my men, as well as others I have had to question in the line of my duty. There is a settlement not far from here that survives to defy you, Renard. They say it is immune to the viruses, and that it does not expel any sick as the other places do. An enterprising man who needs a base in the South might take the opportunity to look into this settlement. They call it The Mouth.

  If I myself had a man on the ground inside The Mouth, I would not be writing a letter based so heavily on hearsay, but those Callahans who have tried to infiltrate the place say it is run by someone else altogether: a man who does not acknowledge you. It is a worrisome problem to someone of your worth.

  I have seen firsthand the sort of rebellious locals in these deep Southern lands, and though I had hoped to visit The Mouth myself in order to give an account, I have come to feel that doing so will serve no purpose beyond delaying your intervention. My sources are trustworthy and this matter needs to be dealt with swiftly. It may deserve the same treatment as Snow Peak received.

  And here is where my loyalty raises its head. Send scouts – in my mind that would be wise – and I will be glad to lead them so that we might have a full report of the settlement’s strengths and weaknesses.

  And if, perhaps, you later raise an army to demolish The Mouth, might you consider a small detour for your forces? I have recently had trouble from a ghost colony called Horse Head, situated not far from Fieldstone. Without vaccines I cannot set foot across the boundary – otherwise I would not be bothering you with this trifle. This place has given refuge to two murderers who felled one of my best men. My revenge on them is tied to my leadership of this clan that has served you so well over the years.

  I hope it will continue to serve you for years yet to come.

  Faithfully yours,

  Tye Hawk-Eye Callahan