“Maybe,” he said, choosing to let her dream. He supposed that, no matter how he and Dante had spent the past few years, the horsemen would still have found them. Maybe the brothers would have had help, and maybe they would have succeeded in fending the horsemen off or killing them. But what was the point in thinking about it?
Spilled milk, he thought.
“You don’t believe it,” she said, her tone suggesting this was more an observation than an accusation.
“No.” He sighed. He might have left it there. But Jenny kept turning her head toward him, waiting for him to continue, so he decided to speak his mind.
“I made a lot of mistakes before…” He paused, not knowing how to refer to how the country had changed.
“Before the Collapse,” Jenny suggested. “That’s what Allen always called it.”
“Anyway, I guess I’ve always known my past would eventually catch up with me. Maybe it catches up with everyone.”
“Is that why you hid at the cabin?”
Victor grimaced at the word “hid.” But no, she was right. He had been more concerned with escaping society than contributing to it, and he’d dragged Dante along with him.
“I don’t know,” he answered, which was the only honest thing he could have said.
The road stretched ahead of them, surprisingly straight. The hills looked like speed bumps from where they stood. On their right was a residential community with a pair of gates swung open like the arms of welcoming parent at the airport. Green paint was falling from the gates in chunks the size of oak leaves.
Victor idly snapped off one of these flakes as they were walking by, still engrossed in what Jenny had said.
Jenny took a sharp breath of air. “Victor!”
He lifted his head, uncomprehending. Then he heard an unmistakable sound: the squeal of a rusty chain. He craned his head and saw a boy on a bicycle emerging from between the gated community’s brick pillars, his body swaying side to side as his legs pumped the pedals. He was wearing a tweed cap, the kind newsboys had worn in the Industrial Age. One hand guided the bicycle while the other was spread across the basket dangling from the front of the bike. It appeared to be full of fliers.
“Hey, mister!” the boy shouted as he careened closer, swaying so much that Victor wondered if one of the tires might fall off. “You heard the good news?” He began circling Victor and Jenny like a wind-up toy.
“Kassel!” the boy exclaimed with a beatific smile. He drew a paper from the basket on his bike and slapped it in Victor’s hand as he passed. “It’s the best place on earth!” He rode on without another word, heading in the direction they had come from.
“Wait!” Victor shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth, but the boy was already bent forward over the handle bars like a jockey pushing his mount for all it’s worth, the bike wobbling beneath him as the chain squeaked and screeched.
Jenny looked as dazed as Victor felt. “What just happened?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Victor answered. He spread the newspaper in his hands. It felt clean and new. He cleared his throat, prepared his best stage voice, and read:
“Fellow Americans, give me your strong, your industrious, your skilled hands ready to labor! The great city of Kassel stands as the beacon of hope in a sea of terror! For all who are able to contribute to the well-being of the community, there is food, water, and safety.
“Beware of anyone else who promises food from the earth—it is all tainted, and if you eat from it you shall surely die.
“For all who desire the food of life, come to Kassel. The new world awaits you.”
Victor lowered the paper.
“You heard him too, right?” he said, trying to assure himself it had not been a hallucination, some side-effect of malnutrition and physical duress.
The boy was shrinking as he pedaled down the road at a speed Victor could only have described as mad. Victor was reminded of a sci-fi story in which all the machines kept going long after civilization died out. This kid was still running his paper route as if nothing had changed. He didn’t know when to quit.
And the tweed cap… That bit could only have been a joke. Or maybe some whimsical mother had insisted he wear it. But what kind of mother would send her boy on a paper delivery in this kind of world?
Victor raised the newspaper again, feeling it, smelling it. Everything about it seemed right, as if it had been made by a real press. There was even a section of funny pages toward the back. But the stories…
His eyes scanned the headlines:
“Trial by Combat set for the Twelfth”
“Wall Walkers Needed”
“Theories on Human Extinction”
Some of them were the most outlandish headlines he’d ever read. Was this too a joke, just like the bicycle boy?
I must be hallucinating, Victor thought. I hope I’m hallucinating.
Then he flipped to the back of the newspaper. Under a heading titled “Directions” lay a black-and-white map of the greater Rayburn area. A numbered list on the side showed the best approaches to the city, and below the list was a brief description of what to bring or leave behind, what to expect, and any other information a tourist might need when entering a foreign country.
“Bring your friends and family,” the description read. “There’s room for everyone at Kassel.”
“I’ll be damned,” Victor murmured. “He just gave us a road map.”
_____
Ten or twelve miles down the road, the trail of the horsemen led them to a highway.
Like the artery of some prehistoric beast, this new thoroughfare plunged east and west beyond sight, miles upon miles, cutting past the sprawling devastation of the body whose blood it had once circulated. To the east, in the direction of Rayburn, wherever Victor’s eye landed he saw marks of the passing of the horsemen. Most of the houses once lining the road had been reduced to blackened timbers. An apartment building facing the highway looked like a giant maw whose teeth had been punched in. Not a single window remained. As Victor watched, a dresser appeared from one of the windows and went careening down to splinter on the asphalt below.
Jenny flinched. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” he said. Then they heard the staccato pop-pop-pop of gunfire in the distance, and Victor’s roving eye caught the glare of firelight among the buildings.
“I wonder how many people are out here,” she said uncertainly.
“Too many,” Victor answered. “The worst ones always survive the longest.” He took Jenny’s shoulders and turned her toward him. “Listen, the horsemen are leading us toward the city. The closer we get, the worse everything will become. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Do you trust me?”
A wolf howled in the distance. A few human voices answered in kind. Jenny began to breathe faster, her eyes widening beneath the sunglasses.
Victor snapped his fingers. “Jenny. I need to know you trust me.”
But still she hesitated. “What happens when we find your brother?” she asked.
“Leave that part to me.”
She nodded, though still reluctant. “Then I’m ready to go. Just not too fast, please.”
“I won’t.” Victor began moving forward again, leading Jenny by the hand, but he could not help thinking how she had avoided his question. It shouldn’t have bothered him—after all, he didn’t need her to trust him. But he had asked because he wanted to be reassured she could still draw a line between him and the men they were following, that he had not become the evil he meant to destroy. Perhaps it was not a judgment to be made until all was said and done.
The first stars were appearing in the sky. A pair of deer, doe and fawn, stopped in the middle of the road and stared at them for a few seconds before crossing. The gunshots continued in the distance, rising and falling on an unseen tide of violence, and Victor wondered how the world had gone bad so quickly. First the crop failure, then the food shortages, then the riots. Society could have adjusted, he tho
ught, if society were composed of rational human beings. But once the panic began, it spread like a virus.
There would still be people scratching a living in the city, he supposed. But there would be just as many people hanging around simply to rob those who had found a way to grow anything from the sterile earth. Carrion birds.
Vultures.
Bushes and vines crowded the edges of the road as nature worked to retake what it had lost. The asphalt beneath them was cracked and riddled with potholes, and in some places they encountered craters that could only be explained by some form of explosion. A smell began to ride the current of the night air. Jenny was the first to notice it. They did not know what it was until, passing an overturned SUV, Victor heard a growl and turned to see a dog, still wearing a spiked collar, glaring at him with its teeth set in the shoulder of a dead man belted into the passenger seat. They left the dog to enjoy its prize.
The closer they moved toward the city, the darker and louder the night became. Cackles of laughter mixed with screams of terror. As the shadows lengthened, Victor began to notice the glow of eyes watching them from either side of the road.
“Victor!” Jenny called in a tight, anxious voice. “We’re not alone.”
Victor did not know how she had sensed this, but he had no doubt she was right. “Just stay close to me,” he said, hoping she would believe the implicit lie that he could protect her. The truth was that he was getting in over his head, and if things went the wrong way, he would be powerless to save even himself.
“Wait,” she said, before he started moving again. “We should stop for the night—wait until morning.”
“Jenny—”
“I know I’m blind. I’m not talking about the light. I’m talking about how people behave in the darkness. Everything’s different when nobody can see them.”
You have no idea how true that is, Victor thought. He knew she was right about stopping, but he also knew Dante might not be far away. They had already lost too much precious time.
He was about to explain why they had to continue when he noticed a few figures stealing across the road behind them, trailed by long shadows. More figures began to appear along both sides of the road, emerging from between the ramshackle buildings, adults and children dressed in miss-matched clothes. Many, Victor began to notice as they crowded closer, were missing limbs.
Victor reached beneath his coat and felt the cold steel of the Colt’s barrel. He didn’t have nearly enough bullets for all of them, but maybe the sound would scare them. Then again, it might just as easily draw them.
“We have to keep moving,” he whispered to Jenny. He glanced over his shoulder again to see that more figures had moved in behind them, closing the highway.
The only choice was to go forward—closer to the city, deeper into the night.
_____
Like a scattering of sparks, the open spaces alongside the road came steadily alive with dozens of fires. Surrounding these fires in a great sea stood hundreds of small shelters—some of wood, some of animal hides, some of plastic or styrofoam. It was as if some strange race had arrived in the twilight of humanity, bringing with them a distrust for whatever had belonged to their predecessors.
The farther they ventured, the more surprised Victor was to find just how many people lived in the ruins of civilization. For all those who gathered along the road, staring at Victor and Jenny with wide, vacant eyes, many more lingered among the shadows—watching, waiting, measuring them. Whatever Victor had thought he knew about the outside world was going out the window.
Victor pushed forward, trying not to think about how big the mob around them was growing or how close they were pressing, trying to keep the girl close to him and think only of finding Dante. This mental diversion worked—until, that is, he saw the child.
Victor could not have said whether it was a boy or a girl. It was sitting in the middle of the road, its legs encircling a Mr. Potato Head who was dirty enough to look like the real thing. His eyes were currently serving in place of his feet, with one arm dangling from his head like an angler’s lantern. The child was in the process of trying to straighten Mr. Potato Head’s second arm, which had been blackened with a piece of charcoal.
“What’s your name, kid?” Victor said.
Mr. Potato Head fell from the child’s hands. The child twisted until it was on all fours, then climbed to its feet and began racing toward one of the fires, shouting something that sounded like “Max! Max!”
Within seconds, figures were pouring - some stumbling - from the shelters, all rushing toward Victor and Jenny. He drew the Colt and pointed it downward in his right hand, keeping his left around Jenny’s shoulders. They pushed toward him with dirty faces and dirty hands, reaching, fawning, as if they had never seen such creatures before, and again Victor wondered if he and Jenny had not stepped into an alien world.
“Stay back,” he said, gesturing with the Colt but not yet raising it. If he pointed the gun, he would fire it. Part of him wanted to fire it, to provoke a turmoil that might allow them to escape. But he also knew that any aggression might just as easily end with them being torn apart by this mob.
The closer figures began holding objects toward them—a shampoo bottle, a single worn sneaker, a set of car keys with a name dangling from the chain in block letters.
“What do they want?” Jenny asked, burying herself in Victor’s coat.
The figures had encircled them, but they made no attempt to get any closer. They just stood there, holding their useless trinkets.
“Open my backpack,” Victor said to Jenny. “We need something to give them.”
He felt Jenny’s hands travel across the backpack, then there was the zzzt of the zipper as it opened.
“What did you find?” he said. She handed him a small plastic package that contained a folded rain poncho. Victor pointed to the man holding the shampoo bottle. “Trade?” he said. He held up the poncho for the man to see.
The stranger reached for it, and Victor placed the poncho in the grimy hand. The man ran his fingers across the smooth plastic. Then, for good measure, he lifted it to his face and smelled it. The ritual finished, he nodded.
After exchanging the poncho for the shampoo bottle, Victor raised his hands. “That’s all, I have nothing more.” At first there was no movement. Then, one by one, the figures began stealing back toward their fires and tents, and in a few minutes Victor and Jenny were nearly alone in the road again.
“Don’t let the children too close,” said on old woman. She was sitting on a tire in the breakdown lane of the highway, hunched forward over her knees. “They wouldn’t know what to do with a gun, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t make trouble.”
Victor glanced at the child, who had resumed playing with Mr. Potato Head. He said to the old woman, “Are you Max?”
“Might be. Could be. That’s what they call me, so why not?” She smiled. It was a measured smile, the kind some people reserve for strangers they may not be able to trust. Still, the sound of her voice was a marked contrast from the dumb grasping hands of that mob, and Victor hoped he might reason with her.
“I’m Victor,” he said. “This is Jenny. What is this place?”
“The last bastion of free civilization,” she answered. The smile had not completely slipped away from her face, but her eyes had taken on an edge that suggested she was ready for Victor to challenge her description. He decided to let her enjoy her fiction.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll just be on our way.” He started forward, leading Jenny by the hand. They walked a short distance past the old woman before she spoke.
“It’s the Reapers you’re after,” she said.
Victor stopped, turning to face the old woman. “Reapers?”
“Oh, aye. They reap what others sow. It’s their way. It’s not enough that they steal or burn what crops the earth will grow—oh, no. They must take the crop of the womb as well.”
Her wrinkled eyes fell on Jenny and seemed to
gleam with rheumy interest. “Best you be careful, stranger, or they’ll take your crop as well.” She slipped off the edge of the tire and tottered toward them on bent legs.
Jenny instinctively moved behind Victor, and he shielded her with his free hand.
“Shy, is she?” the old woman asked, then gave a hoot of laughter. “Wait till the Reapers come for you, child. Then you’ll truly be quaking in your boots.”
“The Reapers won’t be laying a finger on this one,” Victor answered grimly.
The old woman bobbed her head side to side, as if this were a matter up for debate. “Maybe not, maybe so. But if the girl is not for them, then why do you follow their trail?”
Sly, this one, Victor thought. He saw little point in lying. That did not mean, however, that he would tell the full truth. “I need to speak with them,” he answered. “How long ago did they pass through here?”
Brothers (The Last Colony Book 1) Page 15