by Anthology
“Town?”
“Ronda,” she replied, faking a smile as she fluffed his sleeping bag and motioned for him to slide in. “The town sits on a gorge, high above the plains. There is an old town and a new town, separated by a tall Roman bridge. One of the oldest bullrings in Spain is there. In fact”—she rubbed his cheek—“one of my father’s favorite writers loved the town—a man named Hemingway. Maybe we’ll find food. And survivors, if we’re lucky.”
“Who’s Hemingway?” he asked as she pulled the covers to his neck.
“I’ll tell you more after Antequera,” she said. “If moribund are there, they’ll have protected water. Hopefully we won’t have to enter the city. We may have to risk traveling at night, though, depending on the rain.”
“Will you read to me?”
“Tomorrow,” she said, and rose, checking the handgun before moving to the doorway.
Jeanie appeared ghostly as she stood, veiled, staring at the rain. Almost as if he could see through her wisp of a frame and into the downpour.
Something was wrong, he knew.
Inside her.
***
On the fourth day of rain he could not get her to stand up. She slumped near the doorway, crying, handgun in her lap. At least the acidic clouds had lessened, the rains no longer stung—almost as if they had purged the poisons they held. For as long as Rennie could remember, she had told him the clouds would clear, one day, and the rain would be normal. Whatever normal meant. Sometimes he found it better not to ask.
“Please,” he said, and tugged at her arm. “Mama?”
“I just want to go home,” she wept.
Her body too heavy, he too weak. Still, he worked his arm under hers. “Please, get up. Put the gun away. You’re scaring me.”
“Scaring you?” She laughed. “You know what happens when we die, right?”
He cringed as he pulled her.
“We turn into them,” she spat. Her damp hair clung to her face. “Like scorched earth and starvation isn’t bad enough. Or dying of thirst.”
His hands slipped and he fell backward, landing in a stagnant puddle.
“One bullet,” she said, crying as she stared at the pistol. “All this way and only one bullet left. Guess we’ll just have to deal with the cards we’re dealt.”
“Cards? Mama? Please, don’t leave me.”
She forced a crazy smile. Tears rimmed her eyes.
“Happy name day, kiddo,” she said wearily. “Happy New Year. Year five. Five.” She sobbed as she lifted the pistol. “I can’t. Not anymore. So tired.”
“Mama?”
She glanced up, angry, cheeks reddening. “What?” she barked. “What do you need now, Rennie? Do you need me to—”
“The rain.”
“Rain? Do you have any idea what—”
He pointed to the doorway. “It’s stopped, Mama.”
HIGHWAY A376
Pain.
Warm blood trickled down the inside of her thigh as she stumbled down the roadway, sun beating on her shoulders and neck, vision blurry, listening to footsteps trailing behind her. Every stride down the highway was harder than the last as they maneuvered around the rusted vehicles. Her limp, bad since Paris, had turned her left foot into a useless stump.
Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, step.
The footfalls behind Jeanie were Death’s. The cowled bitch had been following, waiting for Jeanie to pause, stop, and peek over her shoulder. If she did, if she looked, she was fucked. Death would peel her hood back, revealing a white skull, a skeletal hand would reach out, and Jeanie would float above the highway, away from her body, and—
Pain.
Gritting her teeth, she staggered, barely able to keep her footing. Refusing to give Death any attention, she focused on the road’s cracked surface. On her tennis shoes, and on the cars, skulls and skeletons waiting inside the cabs. Children more often than not. The babes were the worst. Still strapped in car seats. Made her shudder and recall the catacombs in Paris, what she had done in desperation to Rennie, to keep them both alive. She had long suspected something unnatural happened. Uncanny, his ability to hide. Almost like—
Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, pain.
She fell to one knee and her breath went out in a rush. At impact, hot blood poured from her wound and vision went dark at the edges. The sun cooked her back.
How did I get here? And where the hell is—
Antequera.
They had discovered the village, she and Rennie, from the highway outside of town, staring at buildings through her binoculars, starving and beyond thirsty. For the first time they had drunk their own urine that morning, pissing into a T-shirt and squeezing the liquid into their mouths. No food. No water. One bullet.
She remembered standing on the outskirts of Antequera, glancing at the windows, feeling no moribund toying with her thoughts, wondering if the town held a gas station or a convenience store, and when a single pop came out of nowhere, Jeanie sighed and dropped.
They shouted, their Spanish insults unintelligible, yet their meaning clear. Threats and a gunshot. She and the boy were not wanted.
Moving on.
Grimacing, she used pain to focus and wobbled to her feet, refusing to give in. She swayed, nearly toppled, bracing on a guardrail, frowning as she realized she no longer held her backpack. When, she wondered, did she lose their provisions?
Two tin cups, a backpacking stove, their last white gas canister, and her map. Always about the map. At least Rennie knows Andalucía’s highways by heart. But without the map, we may as well lie down and—
She stumbled down the road’s shoulder. From her buttock, the gunshot’s exit wound pounded—large, too, which meant the bastards had hollowed out their tips. When she grew strong enough, when she had healed, she planned to head back there and—
Wait. Rennie? Where’s Rennie?
As she paused, Death leaned close and exhaled—an awful, empty breeze on the back of her neck—Jeanie gasped and doubled her pace.
Slide-slide, step. Slide-slide, step.
Stay awake, damn it. Stay—
“Mom?”
Jeanie smiled when she spotted him, standing down the road. She tried not to imagine what a vision she must be, all bloody and filthy, crazy-eyed and barely able to walk. Rennie, her little boy, maybe the last boy, standing between two overturned trucks, his hazel eyes so concerned, his matted brown hair needing a comb. Round face so pale. When she realized he stood before a roadblock, she frowned. Who would place a roadblock way out here, in the middle of nowhere, where nothing but sunlight held court? Who would stop anyone from—
Pain.
This time he caught her. All of five, groaning against her weight, his head against her chest, pushing at her, refusing to let her fall.
“Mama?”
A smile so innocent, missing his first tooth, fallen out a week ago. Born to such a world, his world. She marveled at the sight of him.
“A town, Mama,” he said, and pointed. “Can you read the sign? Mama?”
She blinked, realized they stood at an off-ramp, and squinted at the road sign. Her legs trembled as he tried to right her. Her boy. She loved him so much.
His world. A terrible place to grow up.
“Mama? What does it say?”
She shook her head and blinked at the white sign. A blue roundabout circumnavigating a town with different highways as little arrows, sprouting away. They stood on the A367 highway. Another exited opposite the city, the A374, west toward Sevilla. The A397 pointed south to Málaga. One arrow headed into town.
Ronda.
Death reached out, tickled her ear, and blood rushed from the wound, drenching her leg.
“Go,” she commanded Rennie. “Leave me.”
As she began her ragged, stumbling turn toward Death, a small hand slid into hers. “Mama? Let me help. I think I hear a bell.”
Together, they took the off-ramp. Limping, dependent on a five-year-old to walk, leaving the
broken highway behind and heading into the small Spanish town. As she stumbled, the pain faded away, consciousness slipped, and she realized she could just make out the ringing of a bell in the distance, light, airy. Bong, bong.
“Is that for us?”
She grunted.
“You and me, Mama. Right?” His voice broke. “Always?”
“Moving on,” she muttered, and tumbled, the ground rushing up to meet her. As she fell, she closed her eyes and smiled, awaiting impact. She had made it.
For him.
PART ONE
THE WITCH
“In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”
—Federico García Lorca, Play and Theory of the Duende, 1933
CHAPTER ONE
Year Thirteen
Ren smirked as he stared into the stairwell, schooled in disappearing into the shadows. The crowbar clanged on the sidewalk as he gripped the security gate and pulled. Metal screeched while the gap spread, protesting years of inactivity. Letting go, he stepped into the light and elbowed his friend in the ribs, hard enough to draw a grunt.
“You first.”
“No way.”
Refuse cluttered the basement landing, congealed paper, possibly an animal carcass or two mixing with the garbage, no indication anyone had descended for a decade. The teens gaped at the storefront—Ren’s hood drawn over his head, Óscar’s hair stuffed beneath a ratty baseball cap—fixated on the door. Bright sunbeams filtered three steps before tapering into the gloom.
“Come on, chicken.”
“Cabrón, I don’t know. I don’t want any trouble.”
A dry wind blew down the narrow street, stinking of burnt rubber. Behind the gate, the glass door teased from below, plastered with signs from another time. One in particular made Ren antsy. White background, big green letters. ABIERTO. Open.
he building sat on the outskirts of Ronda, blocks past the failing barricades where the ruins—mostly apartments—had burned during the fallout. Tattered sheets blew from balconies as dust devils twisted about the lane, remnants of the recent sandstorms. Ren, the taller of the two, gripped the gate and spread the gap wider.
“Óscar,” he pleaded. “Vamos, amigo. I’ve been stuck at home for a week dreaming about this place. You’ve been doing the same since the storms hit, admit it.”
Óscar adjusted his glasses and stared appreciatively down at the broken barrier. “You’re getting pretty good at opening these things, you know? Real pro, Ren.”
“Busting old locks is easy. You’d know if you tried. Now see if that door is open.”
“No sé,” Óscar replied and shuffled, uneasily. “We should tell someone. If mi padre finds out—”
“You and your padre. No one’s found anything like this in forever. We’ll tell them, we just won’t say we searched it first.”
Slipping from beneath his hood, Ren brushed his unkempt hair from his ashen face—dark brown tips lightened by the year-round sun—and wiggled past, knowing his friend would have no problem following. Although Ren’s body had filled out, Óscar’s remained rail thin. One of many wonderful side effects of starvation.
“I don’t know, we’re supposed to be getting agua.”
“What’re you so worried about?” Ren said, shrugging as he took the stairs. “There could be shoes, amigo. Ones that fit. Wouldn’t you like that? Or new glasses? Maybe even batteries.”
With a chuckle, Ren wiped the glass clean. Peering through the door he spotted dusty aisles and shelves. His heart skipped a beat. Lots of shelves.
“Ho-lee shit. A market.”
Óscar’s stomach growled like a feral cat. “A market? Don’t tease me. I haven’t eaten anything but gachas for weeks. I dream of oats. See anything else? Anything…moving?”
“You stay right there. I promise not to eat all the candy. Or is that chocolate con leche?”
“But what about them? If one of—”
Ren snorted. “No one’s seen a walking carcass since that skinny thing in the fields last June and you know it. The moribund are all in the cities, wasting away like we are. Come on.”
“But what about the stragglers? The ones who remember?”
Ren peered inside, his hazel eyes—green leaning toward gold—gleaming as he reached for the doorknob. Óscar was right to worry, yet Ren would be damned before he let fear drive him. Unlike most of the adults, who either locked themselves up or slunk away at night, leaving the safety of town for the villas in the plains, lured by the hope of farming dead soil.
The chime rattled as he opened the door. “My bad. That’s not chocolate. It’s Coca-Cola. Red cans, right?”
Óscar’s hollow belly gurgled as he shimmied through the gate.
***
Standing in the aisle, Ren took a bite of dry almond cookie and grinned. Plucking a can from the shelf, he blew dust and squinted at the label. ANCHOAS. Anchovies. The fact that none of the adults had unearthed a store on the outskirts of Ronda, nestled between the burnt-out buildings and spitting distance from the barricades?
Amazing.
Ren handed Óscar a second roll of cookies and laughed. For months he had eaten nothing but oats. Dry. Difficult to swallow. He barely remembered the tang of gazpacho. Crunch of paella. At a party once he had tried sheep’s milk cheese with jamón ibérico—but that was years before rationing. Now only occasions like Christmas or birthdays afforded broth-soaked oats.
Mouth full of cookies, excitement seized him and he shoved Óscar into the shelves, cackled and took off, laughing as he sent pasta bags spraying into the walkway.
“Come get me, loser!”
Rounding the aisle, he slammed against the refrigerator doors, snickering so hard his ribs hurt. An undiscovered market?
Find of the effing century.
“¡Ay cabrón!”
With a hoot, Óscar laughed and loosed his slingshot. The rock whizzed past Ren’s ear, smashing glass. Launching the anchovy can from his hand, Ren turned before it struck Óscar, plucked a bottle from the shelf, and blindly tossed the thing over his head.
He shouted—spittle flying, loving the sound of glass exploding on the floor—reveling in the joy of letting go.
Taking the corner, he hurtled over the front counter, avoided a jar of olives, and crashed behind the cash register. Suppressing laughter, he scrambled for anything to throw—energy pills, fútbol magazines, packs of cigarettes—and glanced directly into teeth.
Ren cried out, backpedaled, and on instinct, froze.
A desiccated clerk was slumped in the corner, draped in a ratty smock, revolver resting on its lap, shrunken finger on the trigger. A hole cratered the man’s skull where the bullet had passed.
Ren wiped crumbs from his mouth and exhaled.
At least this suicide isn’t messy, he thought as he peered over the counter. Unlike the family the boys had stumbled across last month. Seeing the crispy mother leaning into the oven, her three children in their beds—decapitated heads left on pillows above their necks—had given Ren nightmares for weeks.
Grabbing a dried stick of chorizo from the counter, he pushed the corpse away, cringing as the body crumpled. With a shudder, he turned to the shelves. Some tins had distended, their contents likely spoiled, but most jars appeared in great shape.
If the townsfolk knew, he would get busted. Only forty-two people left in Ronda, and almost a third from different countries. During Ren’s studies he’d read that thirty-seven thousand had crowded Ronda’s streets before the EMP—even more during bullfighting season.
“What are you, scared?” he called out. “¡El padre que te parió!”
“Leave my father out of it!” Óscar shouted, his mouth full of food.
Ren plucked a bag of nuts from the counter. Wrapped, sealed, canned. Rice, dried cakes, almendras. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, they would keep the discovery to themselves for a day or two. A couple of candy bars, maybe a soda pop. The thought made his pulse thrum.
&nb
sp; “I’m eating chocolate!”
“No you’re not!” Óscar scrambled, and rushed closer.
Ren dipped down, stifled a giggle as he went cold—stalling all feelings like his mother had taught him, slipping into darkness—his natural gift, she called it, his ability to hide from the moribund as they preyed on emotion—staring blankly as he waited for Óscar to get closer and shot up, whooping as he let the peanuts fly.
The jubilant shout came off as cocky—Ren liked this newfound bravado, rearing its head often as he neared his fourteenth birthday—turning into a gasp when he realized the bag of nuts was hurtling toward a figure rising from the gloom.
CHAPTER TWO
Seated on the curb, Ren tossed a pebble into the street, watching it bounce beneath a car. Beside him on the sidewalk, Óscar fingered a hole in his sneaker.
“Puta madre, Ren. Mi padre, when he finds out—”
“We’ll be fine. Let me do the talking. After they’re done, go peek behind the counter. I saw a fútbol magazine. Iniesta is on the cover.”
“Serious? Iniesta?”
Ren opened his mouth to reply and the sound of footsteps slapped around the corner. Their pace told him two things. One, she had rushed all the way from Old Town.
Two, his mother was furious.
He pulled his hood low as Jeanie rounded the building, coming to a ragged stop. She stepped forward, sleeves rolled to her elbows from doing laundry with the last of their morning water.
“Mom, it’s all my fault. I—”
“Mom-I-nothing. Dude, you are in sooo much trouble.”
She wiped her brow, winded as she glared. His mother had raced from Old Town, he knew, passing Ronda’s abandoned eastern apartments. He glanced away when she pointed to the staircase and raised an eyebrow. “Outside the barricades? Again?”