We stayed up most of the night, but grew tired of waiting on the street, learning nothing, and having no comfort to give. Johnny and I finally abandoned the street, went inside and stayed in the living room. With no electricity, the house grew colder. Wrapped in blankets, we sat on the couch and watched silhouettes of people who huddled over the dim flames waving up from trash cans. The fires died away over time and people drifted back to their homes and left a deserted street.
Before the sun even cracked the horizon, we watched Uncle Ray turn his truck into the driveway. The charcoal gray vehicle came to an abrupt stop and he bounded out, not even closing the driver side door. He jogged up the front walk, his camouflage hunting jacket flapping behind him.
Johnny charged off the couch, blankets flying, and pulled open the door before Uncle Ray even reached the front step. “I’m glad to see you!” he said, hugging him and then pulled him into the house.
I ran over and threw my arm around my uncle’s waist.
“Okay, now!” He chuckled, sounding relieved and returned our embrace. “Where’re your mom and dad?” An instant of cold silence caused him to lean away from us without letting go. “What’s wrong?”
“We don’t know where they are,” Johnny began and then told the story of the previous night. When he finished another long silence followed.
Uncle Ray gnawed on his lower lip and gave out a deep sigh, which made me realize how much he looked like my dad, with his long face and thick, arching eyebrows. A sudden pang of fear twisted in my stomach as I thought of my parents.
Uncle Ray nodded to himself, saying, “Okay, We’ve got to get moving.”
“What—where?” Johnny shook his head.
“I want to get us to a safe place as soon as possible.”
“But what about Mom and Dad?” My brother continued to shake his head.
“Guys, I barely got here.” Uncle Ray took Johnny by the shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. “I couldn’t call you or reach your parents. No telephones work. It took me almost six hours to make a two hour drive. Things are going very wrong right now.”
Johnny didn’t say a word.
Uncle Ray turned to me. “Do you understand?”
The world slowed for an uneasy second. I nodded, but said, “I don’t like it.”
Drawing a hand over his stubbly chin, he said, “You’re not supposed to.”
From the hard, accusing look in Johnny’s eyes, it was obvious that he didn’t like it either, but he said nothing and stayed silent as the morning wore on. He helped scour the house and packed every box and can of food there was, along with clothing, batteries, and anything else we could think of into the truck. But he moved slower than us, as if trying to stretch out the time or prevent that inevitable moment when we would leave. At one point, Uncle Ray finally took him aside and said, “I don’t know when your parents will show up. And I don’t think we can wait.”
But Johnny knew Uncle Ray was trying to avoid saying, “I don’t know if they will show up.” I saw that in Johnny’s look, or rather, in how he looked away.
Some of our neighbors packed as well. I saw them every time I headed out into the cold morning, my arms full of supplies.
Smoke rose from the city, in a black swirling haze, being carried away to the east on a brisk wind, but still the thin layer of snow in the yards of all the houses was dotted with black speckles of ash.
“It’s time to go,” Uncle Ray said.
Johnny left a simple note in pencil on a big sheet of newspaper print taped to the kitchen table.
We hopped into the truck, me in the middle. Uncle Ray drove slowly down the street. Trash cans still smoldered with wispy gray smoke. Mrs. McKee stood in front of her house with Mr. Haley and his wife. They talked, but in Mrs. McKee’s face, in the way she held her baby, I knew her fear and that sudden loneliness . . . and the hollow depth of her loss . . .
Chapter 7
So much loss and not so long ago. And even more death.
Up ahead I saw the end of the Yostville Road Bridge. The trees thinned out to the left of the intersection of the two roads.
The car slowed and Mr. Wheeler pulled over onto the right shoulder about twenty feet away from the end of the bridge. The engine noise stopped and I heard the rush of the water that flowed under the bridge. The last two days of rain bloated the stream, which rumbled as if it were a broad river.
I stepped out of the car and onto the wet grass growing along the shoulder of the road. Through trees and bushes, which still glistened from the rain, I saw the stream.
We weren’t near Mr. Wheeler’s home, which was across the bridge and further on down the Yostville Road.
I slung the quiver over my shoulder, and then I strung the bow, carefully bending it, looping the ends of the string around the notched ends of the bow.
“You really think you’re going to need that?” Mr. Wheeler grinned.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone out here.” He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Yeah, there is, but he’s dead.” The words came out before I could stop myself. I wasn’t being smart, but I wasn’t interested in any surprises. My uncle and I’d had too many of those lately. My Dad would’ve said, one surprise was one too many. I didn’t like to think about how right he was.
Mr. Wheeler stopped smiling. “Yeah, he’s dead, but you’re not going to find anyone else.”
“You sure?”
He looked at me and shook his head like I was being silly, and I shook my head, knowing better than him.
“You ever really use that thing?” He pointed to the bow.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You hunt with it? You’re good with it, I’d guess.”
“No guessing. I’m good.”
“Oh, you’re good at hunting.”
“Well . . .” I looked at Mr. Wheeler, real hard. He didn’t know I’d killed a man. Mr. Marcus knew. I suspect Sara did also, but she never asked about it. The killing was something I didn’t want to talk about, and Uncle Ray didn’t have to teach me that. “I’ve had to use it,” I said, trying to make him understand. “I used it when I had to.”
Mr. Wheeler’s eyes narrowed; then widened. “But you’re just a boy.”
I turned away. “We’re going this way?” I nodded toward the bridge.
He didn’t say anything, so I started walking.
“We should wait for the others,” Mr. Wheeler called.
“Why?” I kept going, scanning the surrounding woods along the road.
“Because . . .”
With every step I took along the roadside the grass bristled and the gravel crunched.
“Wait,” he called.
I looked back.
“We should wait. Your uncle said others would be coming. He’d want us to wait, right?” Mr. Wheeler looked concerned, even a little worried. He still hadn’t moved from where he stood next to the car.
“I’m just going to take a look,” I said. Waiting didn’t make any sense. I didn’t think it made a difference if I saw the body now or later.
I neared the end of the bridge. Something like a black snake lay in the grass. I looked closer. It was a telephone wire. I grabbed it, pulled it loose from the intertwining grass. The wire led to a telephone pole about ten feet away. The pole rose out of the bank just where the shoulder of the road dropped off and ran down to the stream. The wire dangled from the crossbar at the top. I wrapped the wire around my hands and pulled; then pulled harder.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Wheeler yelled. I heard him coming up behind me.
“This wire, I want it,” I said.
“It’s not yours!”
“Whose is it, then?”
He looked at me like I hit him. He blinked, taking a small step back.
“I don’t think—” he began.
“I can use this—we can use this! This is good wire and it’s here do
ing nothing!” I pulled again.
“I—” he started again and stopped as I yanked and the wire fell free.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“I don’t understand, Mr. Wheeler.”
He stood in silence as I coiled the wire up and laid it on the ground where I could get it later.
“I’m going to the bridge now,” I said. “You coming?”
He looked at me, for what seemed like a long time, and then brushed a hand by his ear as if shooing away a fly. He nodded and we walked side by side.
The trees thinned out near the end of the bridge. The SUV rested on its roof, but at a slant, so that the driver side, which faced downstream, wasn’t entirely submerged. The surging black water, more than halfway up the windows, broke around the overturned vehicle creating streaming whitecaps. I looked from the SUV to the bridge, and saw where the guardrail had been struck, the metal bent outward and slightly down.
“He was moving fast,” I said.
Here the sunlight showed directly on the gray metal grating of the bridge. Bits of red and dark-blue plastic glistened.
“It must’ve been the heavy rain. And the darkness,” I said. “Mr. Wheeler, you figured the accident happened last night, right?”
He nodded. “I came to fish here this morning. It’s one of my favorite spots. I . . .” He shook his head.
I walked far enough onto the bridge so I could see downstream. The body of a man bobbed along the right bank, but it didn’t move with the current.
“He’s stuck on something.” I said, heading off the bridge and around the guardrail.
“Where you going?” Mr. Wheeler turned to me.
“Down. Just to see.” I looped my bow over my shoulder with the quiver.
Mr. Wheeler was about to say something more and then just nodded.
I ducked under a branch, taking my time, being careful not to slip on the moist dirt and ending up in the roaring stream. The water ran higher up the bank than usual. The trunks of weeds and young trees were underwater. I stepped along the bank, leaning into it, using one hand to brace myself and keep my balance. The dark water rushed past, taking tree branches, leaves and bushes downstream. I was so intent on not falling that I was next to the body before I knew it.
I froze and saw all of the dead man in an instant, the gray polo shirt and blue jeans, the big bald spot on his head, with little hairs moving with the water as the corpse bobbed facedown. The swift bubbling current drove the body against the bank. Green pieces of weeds and dead leaves clung to the dead man like a weird kind of halo.
Studying the body for a long moment, I puzzled about him, wondering where he had come from, where he was going, and if it mattered if he’d been alive to get there. In heavy rain, he’d been in a big hurry. Now, he was just a corpse in a stream in the middle of nowhere. Other than the watery muck clinging to the body, I didn’t see anything wrong with him. He could’ve simply drowned. I eased down a little closer, crouching on the bank, and reached out to him.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Wheeler’s call startled me.
I drew my hand back. “Nothing! Just looking.”
“Then just look! Leave him alone.”
For that moment, anger tightened my jaw, and then I nodded, because the man floated like he’d just fallen in, and suddenly, the thought of him looking up—reaching out—caused me to move a little further back up the bank.
How’d he get out? I looked at the SUV.
The dark, dirty water rushed around the midnight-blue vehicle and poured out of the driver side window and through the broken windshield.
“Somehow the water washed him out,” I said, looking up the bank to Mr. Wheeler.
He stood in silence, arms crossed.
I looked back at the SUV.
Something moved at the rear passenger window which was halfway visible above the coursing water. I gazed at the flapping thing as it moved regularly with the surging water.
A gagging feeling rose up my throat, and made my neck and mouth tighten.
A hand, a young, dead hand, flapped at the glass.
I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or boy, and suddenly, I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t interested in answering questions. I didn’t want to know who the dead kid was or where he was from. Right then, I didn’t care. I’d never seen someone my age dead before.
I got up and worked my way up the bank and joined Mr. Wheeler who sat on the side of the road.
“You took a long time,” he said.
I nodded. “I guess he drowned.”
“Maybe. We can’t be sure.”
“I wonder where he came from.”
“Who knows?”
I realized Mr. Wheeler thought I was talking about the dead man.
“I was just wondering,” I said.
“Just wondering?” Mr. Wheeler looked at me and then the SUV. “I’m tired of wondering. I’m tired of the way things are, the way they’ve become. I’m tired of fishing to eat, and telephones that don’t work and boys who have to carry bows.”
I stared at Mr. Wheeler, anger scalding me inside, burning away. I wanted to yell at him that there was a dead kid, and that we should wonder about him, and about the dead man too. We needed to think about them.
But Mr. Wheeler gazed into the stream. He wasn’t even talking to me.
“I’m just tired of . . . of living this way,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say. I sat down with him on the side of the road to wait for the others.
Chapter 8
In the SUV, we found the body of Terri Knapp with her two kids, a little girl named Lea, and a son Barry, who was about my age. Her husband Kevin was the one floating in the stream. Their names were on papers found in a small, brown metal box that was packed with the waterlogged luggage.
A dozen people showed up at the accident site to help bring out the bodies, one by one, and very carefully, for the stream flowed fast and brought a lot of loose branches and garbage, like tires and some wood planks downstream. The bodies were taken up the bank and laid in the shade on the side of the road. The individual pieces of luggage were lined up along the road, water spilled out as the cases opened and unpacked. The contents, all the clothes, the small bags of toiletries were left to dry in the sun, and then the stuff would be given out to those who needed things. After that anyone could take what was left. The guilt of stealing from the dead hung in the air, but we had to get over it. There wasn’t another choice.
Mr. Harper and his wife Jean came to help. Maggie Waite, the nurse who’d been watching over Mr. Marcus’s wife, was with them. Sara had stayed with her mom, which gave Maggie the opportunity to look over the bodies.
“I’m not a medical examiner, but I’m pretty sure they drowned.” She sighed. “The crash stunned them . . . if it wasn’t for the rain, for the flooding, they all probably would’ve lived.” She kneeled between the little girl and the boy. Her short cut brown hair waved a little as she shook her head.
“If it hadn’t been raining the accident probably wouldn’t have happened at all,” I said.
“If he just would’ve slowed down,” Mr. Harper said, pulled off his cap and scratched his thinning brown hair, which was working its way into going gray.
His wife Jean, standing next to him, touched his shoulder. “Honey, there’s a lot of ifs.”
“Yeah.” He thrust his cap back on again, the visor lower over his eyes. “Let’s finish up.”
The vehicle was pulled over on its wheels. With ropes brought by a man named Mr. Becker, who’d just finished his turn at watch early that morning. The rest of the afternoon was spent standing in the knee-deep water, maneuvering the SUV up the bank and onto the side of the road. Mr. Hansel, the garage mechanic, had brought tools. He bled the gas and oil out of the SUV into some metal canisters.
Mr. Wheeler, his pants still damp from the stream, stood watching over the bodies of the family while the last of the luggage and clothes were being selected and taken
away. When the subject of burying them arose, he was the one who offered a plot for them on his land. He wanted to keep their documents. “Someone might be looking for them one day. And these poor people have a right to be found.”
***
Two weeks after we buried the Knapp family, Sara’s mother fell into a coma.
Mrs. Marcus was too ill for me to have the opportunity to get to know her, to learn anything about her. She simply existed, always on the verge of dying. She spent her time in the living room of their house, stretched out in a recliner before the woodstove, looking small and wasted under a mountain of blankets. She wore one of those summer hats with the wide brim to cover the baldness. Her pale skin seemed to glow, and deep-purple skin circled her eyes and darkened her eyelids. She hardly had any energy to talk, but she would smile a thin smile that seemed to take all her energy.
A strange sadness filled me because spring was here and Mrs. Marcus was wilting away. The day before she died we dug her grave. With shovels in hand, Uncle Ray and I followed Mr. Marcus to a spot some hundred yards from the house. The setting sun gave off a yellow-orange light that broke through the long-needled pines.
“Here will be the family cemetery.” Mr. Marcus stabbed into the ground with a long handled shovel.
I stared at him, and then looked away. The very idea of a family cemetery, of there being more than one grave, made Mrs. Marcus’s dying more than sad, but stunning. I thought of my brother’s grave. I was struck by the immediate reality of death, my death—my uncle’s death.
“Something wrong?” Uncle Ray looked at me, his gaze intense.
“No,” I said. Maybe he suspected I was lying, but what else was there to say?
“Okay,” he said, slowly, as if giving me a chance to say something.
But I began to dig and then tossed each scoop of dark earth on a growing piling of moist dirt. The same dirt I helped shovel back into the grave the next morning.
***
Even with his bad knee Mr. Marcus had little difficulty carrying his wife’s shriveled body.
I wasn’t there when she died, or when they prepared her for burial. All I saw was the shroud, a heavy green tarp sewn shut with heavy twine.
Dark Land: An Apocalyptic Novel Page 5