The Traveler 01-03 Home, Canyon, Wall

by Tom Abrahams

  Another gust of swirling wind accelerated through the valley, and thick, cold drops of rain began to fall.

  Canton cried out in anticipation of the pain that didn’t come. His body shuddered against the tree. “Fine,” he said throughout the slobber that coated his lips and chin. “I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything.”

  CHAPTER 24

  OCTOBER 26, 2037, 12:38 AM

  SCOURGE +5 YEARS

  INTERSTATE 45, RICHLAND, TEXAS

  Ana was spitting the spiderweb from her lips when she saw it. It flashed out of the corner of her eye, and at first she didn’t think anything of it.

  When she bent over and picked up the rifle and checked to make sure she hadn’t damaged it, she saw it again. The light swept across her face and then panned back. It was coming from inside the building. It shone directly in her face. Ana tried shielding her face with her hand despite holding the long gun. She was squinting, trying to see beyond the light. She couldn’t.

  A stern voice called from inside the building. “Drop the weapon.”

  Ana glanced down at Penny and then back at the light. “I can’t do that,” she said.

  “Drop it,” said the voice. “Or I drop you.”

  Ana couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. She bit her lower lip and raised the weapon, but kept the business end pointed away from the light. “You’re gonna have to drop me, then. I’m not giving up my weapon.”

  The light danced across Ana’s body, shifted to the stroller, and moved back to blind her again. In the moment it panned away from her face, Ana could see the large frame of the person holding the light. Her eyes couldn’t adjust quickly enough to make out more than that.

  “Who are you?” asked the voice. “Why are you here?”

  “Who are you?” asked Ana. “Can you get that light out of my eyes? I can’t see anything.”

  “That’s the point. Give me your name.”

  “Ana.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Ana sighed. “My car died.”

  There was a pause before the voice responded. “You have a car?” The question was laced with confusion.

  “I did,” said Ana. “It’s overheated.”

  “Why do you have a gun like that?”

  “Protection,” Ana said incredulously. “Why do you have yours?”

  The light went dark and Ana blinked past the afterimage until she could see a tall, broad-shouldered woman standing feet from her. She was inside the building at one of the broken windows. There was the hint of a sweetly accented sour odor coming from the building’s interior.

  The woman’s hair was short and matted to her head. Her voice resonated with depth when she spoke. “I’m Michelle,” she said. “I live here.”

  The woman, who must have stood six feet tall, was wearing a filthy tight-fitting Longhorns T-shirt and sweatpants torn at the knees. She was barefoot and was holding a hand-crank flashlight. Ana slowly lowered the weapon and nodded at the building. “This is your home?”

  Michelle glanced at the rifle and then at Penny. “For a few weeks,” she said. “Who are you running from?”

  Ana looked over her shoulder. “Could I come inside, please? I don’t like being out here.”

  Michelle took a step back from the window. “Leave the gun at the door and you can come inside.”

  Ana rolled Penny in through the front door. She laid the gun and her backpack at the entry, unloaded her pack, and gave Penny the lone bottle she’d brought. Michelle stood watch from a distance.

  Ana looked around the space. She couldn’t see much in the dark, but the foul odor was stronger. It smelled like spoiled meat. She walked toward Michelle, trying not to wrinkle her nose in disgust. “You’re alone?”

  Michelle nodded. “For a while now.”

  “I’m running from everyone,” she said. “The Cartel mainly.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “The Wall.”

  Michelle’s eyes widened. Even in the dark, Ana could see the surprise on her face. “Why?”

  Ana looked down at her feet. “I need a fresh start,” she said. “Long story.”

  Her eyes having adjusted to the darkness, she could see hints of Michelle’s lifestyle. The place looked like the homeless encampments Ana used to see under highway overpasses or along the banks of Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston. There were scraps of food, animal carcasses, and piles of clothing cluttering the floor.

  Michelle frowned. “It’s dangerous along the Wall,” she said. “You shouldn’t go there alone.”

  “I’m not.”

  The woman licked her lips. “Your baby doesn’t count.”

  “I’m going to the canyon,” Ana clarified. “The Dwellers will help me.”

  Michelle laughed. “Dwellers?” she said. “They don’t exist anymore. The Cartel killed them off.”

  Ana planted her hands on her hips. “Who told you that?”

  “Everybody. It’s a fact. Dwellers are a myth.”

  “No,” Ana said softly. “They’re not. They live in the canyon. They have passage to the wall. They’re about to overthrow the Cartel.”

  Michelle took another step back. She was shaking her head. “I don’t believe you. That can’t be.”

  “Michelle,” Ana said, stepping forward, “it is true. I know because the Dwellers recruited me to help them.”

  Michelle backed up again. She vigorously cranked the flashlight before turning it on and shining it in Ana’s eyes. “Who are you really? What do you want from me?”

  Ana stopped her approach and tried shielding her eyes with her hands. “I don’t want anything from you. I was looking—”

  “I’ve been here by myself for months. I haven’t seen a soul. Then you show up with your rifle and your lies. It doesn’t make sense. Something’s up. You need to leave.”

  Ana waved her hands. “I promise you, I am who I say I am. Wait…how long have you been here?”

  “You need to leave,” said Michelle. “I don’t need a liar in my home. I’ve had liars here before. There was one the other day. I had to stop his lies.”

  “I thought you said nobody had been here for—”

  Michelle flashed the light toward the door. Her voice was forceful and sharp. “You need to leave before something happens.”

  Ana looked over her shoulder, following the beam of light. In the corner, behind the door where she’d entered, was a dead, half-eaten animal. Ana squinted and focused on the remains, trying to identify what kind of animal it was. The bones looked familiar. The light moved away from the corner and back toward her. She turned to Michelle.

  “What would happen?” she asked. “It’s you and me and my baby. I don’t want anything from you.”

  The woman was pacing. She started muttering to herself in a high-pitched, whiny voice. “I told you not to let them in,” she rambled. “You insisted. This is your fault.”

  Ana took a step back toward Penny, keeping her eyes on the woman. “Michelle?”

  Michelle kept muttering, the voice deeper this time. “Don’t blame me for this. I’m not the one who let the last one inside. I’m not the one who believes the lying liars.” She was shaking her finger at the air as she marched.

  Ana looked toward the door. Her rifle was there. It was a few steps away, but she calculated she could get to it, release the safety, and take aim before Michelle closed the distance. She glanced back at Michelle, who was still in her trance, and made her move.

  She bolted to her right and dove at the rifle, grabbing it with one hand and sliding the safety lever down with the other. She slid on the floor, her back hitting the frame at the door as she turned around to level the heavy assault rifle at Michelle. She wasn’t fast enough.

  Michelle was already on her by the time Ana turned halfway. She grabbed Ana with her thick, muscular hands and pulled her from the floor. Ana dropped the weapon, which slid across the floor. Michelle withdrew one hand and wrapped her arm tightly around A
na’s neck. She squeezed and pulled back to lift Ana’s feet from the floor.

  “You can’t be trusted,” Michelle grunted through her clenched teeth. “You have to go.”

  Ana grabbed at Michelle’s mighty forearm and failed to pull it from her throat. She tried kicking her feet backward, hoping to catch Michelle in the knee or groin. That didn’t work either.

  When Michelle turned her body, wrenching Ana from side to side, Ana caught her feet on the wall next to the door. Michelle leaned forward for an instant, and Ana, on the verge of losing consciousness, planted both of her feet and shoved backward as hard as she could. She timed it perfectly.

  Michelle was stepping back at the moment Ana kicked. The momentum threw Michelle off balance and she stumbled backward. She tripped, lost her grip on Ana, and landed hard on her back, smacking her head against the floor.

  Ana rolled to the floor on her side, close to where the rifle stopped its bounce. She grabbed it without turning to find Michelle and rolled onto her back. Sitting up and pulling the rifle to her shoulder, she scanned the room for the giant.

  Michelle was five feet from her, lying on the floor, dazed, her legs splayed such that the black bottoms of her feet faced Ana.

  Recognizing that she had the momentary advantage, Ana pushed herself to her feet. She backed away from Michelle and stepped to her daughter.

  Penny was surprisingly content, still sucking on her near empty bottle. She’d need a diaper change.

  Ana smiled at her daughter and tilted her head. Her neck throbbed. Her shoulder was sore. Swallowing was tinged with discomfort.

  She stepped to Michelle, the rifle pointed squarely at the Amazonian’s chest, making certain she was out of the woman’s long reach. She stood watch as Michelle’s haze evaporated.

  “This isn’t fair,” moaned the woman. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “You’re a liar. You should be gone.”

  Ana tightened her grip on the rifle and lowered her eye to the sight. She rested her finger on the trigger.

  Michelle turned her head toward Ana and opened her eyes. She started to speak.

  Ana tapped the trigger long enough to silence Michelle. She twitched reflexively, stiffened, and relaxed as if her body would sink into the floor.

  Penny started crying and dropped her bottle. It bounced on the floor and rolled to a stop at Michelle’s foot.

  Ana heard the baby crying but didn’t listen. She stood over her latest victim. When she’d awoken that morning, she’d never taken a life. Now she’d taken six, maybe seven, lives and killing Michelle had been way too easy. She’d not hesitated.

  Ana stood in the dark, watching the blood drain from Michelle’s body, her blood appearing black on the floor. Then it hit her; the animal in the corner. She knew what it was.

  She scoured the floor for the flashlight. Michelle had dropped it or thrown it when she moved to attack her. Ana found it on the floor and thumbed on the bright white LED beam.

  She panned the light around the room, stopping at the piles of clothes, the small mounds of bones and decaying flesh she now saw were swarming with flies. The bile rising in her aching throat, she walked toward the animal carcass by the door.

  Her hand trembled and she aimed the beam at the half-eaten animal. Except, what she found partially clothed in the corner wasn’t an animal. It was human.

  Ana bent over at her waist and retched until her stomach pulsed. She now recognized the sweetly sour odor that overpowered Michelle’s home.

  It was death.

  Ana shook off the nausea, wiped her face clean with her shirt, and lifted Penny into her arms. She pulled her sobbing child to her chest and swayed, moving her hips gently from one side to the other. She rubbed her hand along the back of Penny’s head and whispered sweetly into her daughter’s ear through the tears streaming from her eyes.

  ***

  With a freshly diapered Penny sucking on her pacifier in her stroller, Ana refocused on the path forward. She needed a way north to Dallas.

  The rest area was a sprawling piece of property. Ana would have been surprised by the lack of humanity there had it not been for the lack of humanity she’d witnessed firsthand in Michelle.

  Rolling Penny in front of her, the pack slung over her shoulders, Ana somehow maneuvered the stroller while holding the rifle and the flashlight. She moved north along the grounds, looking for anything that might help her get closer to Dallas, the canyon, the wall, and a new life on the northern side.

  Adjacent to the main rest building was a second one. It was smaller and looked to be where the public restrooms were. Ana stopped at its entrance and cranked the flashlight. There was a shattered Dr. Pepper vending machine chained to a metal eyehook cemented into the concrete. On either side of the machine were doorless entries to the restrooms. Ana had no interest in exploring them.

  She was cursing her luck as she reached the edge of a second large building, when she heard noises coming from its far end. They didn’t sound human, so she didn’t reach for her gun.

  She slowed her roll, though, and inched to the building’s corner, where it met with more dirt and weeds, holding the light in front of her, illuminating her path like a headlight.

  As the noise grew louder, it became more familiar. In front of Ana, its nose buried in the weeds, was a horse. Behind it were two more. All of them were tacked up. None of them seemed spooked by her presence or the light or Penny pointing at them and babbling.

  Ana wasn’t an equestrian. She hadn’t even been on a horse since the Scourge, but if she was going anywhere anytime soon, it would be aboard one of the sweet animals she found in front of her. She closed her eyes and tilted back her head.

  “Thank you,” she said, apologizing for having cursed her luck moments earlier. She was thoroughly convinced the horses were a Godsend.

  CHAPTER 25

  OCTOBER 26, 2037, 1:30 AM

  SCOURGE +5 YEARS

  INTERSTATE 27, TULIA, TEXAS

  Skinner pulled his collar up around his neck and lowered his hat over his face. Not that it did any good. The wind-driven rain was pounding him as the Humvee plowed through Tulia, Texas.

  They were halfway to Amarillo, and were it not for the storm, they’d reach the canyon before sunrise as planned. Instead, they were crawling along the interstate at a snail’s pace, making the deluge even worse for Skinner and Grat Dalton. Both of them were in the back of Roof’s Humvee.

  The water was pooling at the bottom of Skinner’s boots, squishing between his toes. He looked over his shoulder at Roof, riding in the dry cabin, and yanked on his collar again.

  “This ain’t what we bargained for, is it?” said Dalton, trying to make light of the untenable weather. “I mean war is one thing. Getting rain soaked, though…” Dalton chuckled.

  Skinner wasn’t interested in small talk. Partly because he couldn’t say anything and partly because he wanted to be left alone.

  He’d never been outgoing. He never had a lot of friends. Even before the Scourge, his human interaction consisted of torturing prisoners he was in charge of guarding and dealing with those with whom he employed in his drug trade.

  The Scourge had provided an exponentially more solitary existence save interactions with by-the-hour women and posse bosses he controlled. It wasn’t all that different from working in a prison culture.

  His encounter with Roof had served to reinforce his desire for solitude and self-preservation. It had also deprived him of the ability to enjoy a cigarette. His swollen tongue made it nearly impossible for him to smoke. He was more ornery than usual and his hands were trembling.

  “I was kidding,” Dalton said loudly over the beating rain. “Sheesh.”

  Skinner faced the grunt. He tipped back his hat, the rain pouring across his face, and caught Dalton’s beady little green eyes. He held them there with his angry gaze, telling the boy to shut up and leave him alone.

  Cyrus Skinner didn’t need to talk to speak. Dalton got it and lowered his head like a scolded dog, wipe
d rain from underneath his eyes, and pouted.

  Skinner looked over his shoulder, past the driver’s door and into the storm. The cold pellets of rain peppered his face, stinging when they hit him. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, catching the drops.

  He closed his eyes and relished the water washing over the wound. Although it hurt, it soothed the throbbing ache at the same time.

  Light flashed against his closed lids and he opened his eyes in time to see a fork of lightning reach the horizon. The sky flickered with a purple afterglow before the thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Skinner was struck by the beauty of something so deadly. A bolt of lightning, as hot as 53,540 degrees Fahrenheit, could fry a man where he stood. That same bolt, from miles away, was a marvel.

  The Scourge was the same, he reckoned. It was a scientifically beautiful connection of nucleic acid and proteins. He’d seen a model of it on television before it killed virtually everyone he knew. It looked like a dandelion. A dandelion that could kill a man where he stood.

  Another bright flicker lit the thick layer of clouds that had built on their way north. The thunder was a soft vibration.

  Skinner closed his mouth and turned back to face where they’d been instead of where they were headed. Both looked good from afar, especially in the dark. He chuckled, thinking how both were far deadlier up close. A sense of dread washed away the smile. For the first time in his life, Skinner felt mortal. He feared death. He wondered if that was because it too was drawing closer. The captain tilted his hat forward, leaned his back against the Humvee’s cab, and closed his eyes. He needed rest. It might be the last he ever got.

  Skinner didn’t want to die as a man in need of a nap.

  CHAPTER 26