Steps (11 page)

Chapter 21

Mountain Sons   
(Man)

M
an rubbed his eyes as he ran, night-blinded by the sudden fury of the fire. White flashes bobbed in front of him, and he relied on his finer senses to navigate the forest. The rise of ground predicted a tree and he angled left. His ears picked up the scraping of limbs. He raised his arms and crashed through a thin patch of underbrush.

He ran until his feet touched the road. By then his eyes had readjusted to the night, and in the distance he detected two soldiers, one of them with the metal leg. They flanked one another with their weapons held in readiness.

One of them stopped. The soldier with the metal leg lifted his fist and the other soldier stopped. He raised his rifle, pressed his eye to the scope and panned the forest and the road. When he fixed the scope on Man, the soldier froze, whispered something to the other soldier, and pointed up the road at Man.

Man stepped into the woods to hide himself. He ran down the mountainside, angled behind the soldiers and ran upward until he emerged on the road at their rear. They huddled closer together, away from the trees, with their rifles pressed against their shoulders taking the slow, careful, quiet steps of a hunter. They were not as quiet as Man.

He approached them from the rear, and it was not a noise that turned one of them, but perhaps a habit of theirs to check behind them from time to time. The one-legged soldier’s head swiveled and found Man one long step behind them.

There was a grunt from his throat, a curse in their language, followed by softer words, and both of them pivoted toward Man. They moved with the cautious nature of men afraid to frighten the prey, but Man was not prey, and he was not frightened.

He had no words for them. He glanced over his shoulder, wishing Woman were here to sing her songs. They would understand her songs. They would listen to her. Without Woman, Man felt lost, but he opened his mouth and spoke the only words he knew. “
Shelly Lynn.
”

A silence rested between them, until the soldier with the metal leg said, “Shelly Lynn.”

Man repeated the words, careful to form each syllable across his teeth, and when they did not lower their weapons, Man could not wait, but approached them as he would a deer or a hog, low and so smooth he appeared not to move at all.

When he was near enough, he stared down on the soldier and repeated the words. The soldier’s rifle angled upward at his chest and Man placed one hand on the rifle.

The soldier understood the meaning, because he stepped away from Man, lowered his rifle, and motioned for the other soldier to do the same.

Man bent his knees and studied their faces. Burn scars covered the one-legged soldier, and when Man touched his cheek, the soldier did not flinch, but allowed Man to inspect him. The soldier showed bravery, because Man smelled his fear, and yet he remained still when Man leaned closer and sniffed his neck, his chest, and lower, where the scent grew strong and rank.

Man straightened, glanced one to the other between the soldiers who stared back at him with a piercing intelligence, with the eyes of Woman, with her understanding and emotion.

He lowered himself and touched the soldier’s metal leg. He was careful not to squeeze it or break it, and the soldier rested an arm against his partner when Man lifted the metal foot off the ground and put it to his nose.

Man rested the foot on the ground and focused on the second soldier. He bore no scars, only a scraggly beard and a kind expression. Man did not move, but motioned for the second soldier to approach, which he did. Man touched his face and smelled him in the same way as the other, and he showed the same bravado and fear. He placed the soldier’s hand in his, tiny, smaller than Woman’s, as breakable as a twig.

Man remembered other tiny hands and tiny feet, with fingers and toes too fragile for his clumsy hands. He remembered the smell, similar to these soldiers, his children’s children’s children, memories lodged deep in the seat of scent alone.

He could bear it no longer, and Man fled up the mountainside toward Woman. He ran through the woods without caution, bending trees and crushing rock beneath his feet, thinking all the way of tiny feet and tiny toes.

He found Woman beside the fire, poking at the embers and perhaps stirring her own forgotten memories.

“You are disturbed,” Woman said to him. It was not a question, and it did not require an answer.

Man paced around the camp, not to catch his breath, but to fight off a deeper emotion welling in his chest.

“Come to me,” Woman said, and Man came to her.

She rose and stroked his cheeks. She lifted onto her toes and kissed him, nestled her head into his chest and clung to him with such force that he felt his chest tighten from her grip. Man wrapped his arms around her, gently, and after a while he heard her sobbing.

Man could not cry, nor could he laugh, nor could he do so many of the things of Woman. He could only hold her while she cycled through emotions for which he had no words or understanding.

Even so, his chest ached as he held her, and he stared at the fire because the ache was that of hot coals buried beneath his ribs, smoldering in a never-ending burn.

As they clung to one another, Man heard movement near the camp. He counted several footsteps, and when he lifted his nose, Woman’s head rose off his chest, and she said, “What is it?”

“It is nothing,” Man said, because he recognized the scent. “A deer. A fawn. Too young for us. I will carry him away so that he might grow, and later we will meet him again, when he is ready.”

Man released Woman and raced to the noise before the line-of-sight reached Woman, and before she could follow. It was not a deer or a fawn, but a male child of perhaps twenty winters, a sickly soldier from the camp at the base of the mountain. Man did not slow as he yanked the child from its feet and ran with it headlong down the mountainside.

He was well away from camp before he slowed, and farther still before he stopped. He listened. All he heard was the child’s breathing. These were the hard, ragged breaths of something not-so-alive. The child clawed at Man’s back, bit his shoulder, and kneed him in the chest. The child stiffened rigid as oak, and Man placed him on the ground and watched him writhe and vomit until the twitching passed over him.

Man thought death had taken the child because he smelled of death and not of life, but after he lay still for a while, the boy clutched a rock, stood, and delivered blows to Man’s body. The child spoke in its language and screamed. Blood streaked out of its nose and filled its eyes. It attacked him with the savagery of things Man had long ago forgotten, things with slitted eyes as black as the child’s, and Man let him beat upon his chest with the rock, thinking he would grow weary and collapse.

The child’s intensity did not wane, nor did its savagery diminish with each repeated strike. Man checked behind him, up the mountain, toward camp where Woman would be, and he listened for the sounds of her approach. When he did not hear her, he grasped the child, broke its neck, and caught it as it fell limp. The burning in his chest grew hotter.

Man stayed beside the child as the night bled into dawn, and with the morning sun on his shoulders, he left the body deep in the woods, beyond where Woman might roam or forage, and returned to her. Woman had stoked the fire, and beside it on a wooden plate waited three cooked doves and a pile of roasted pine nuts.

“You were gone so long,” she said.

“I was.”

Woman leaned over her fire, pushed a stick into it, picked up the plate and handed it to Man. “Eat.”

“I have something to show you.”

“Where?”

Man pointed down the mountain.

Woman shook her head.

“They see the Father,” Man said.

“Because I let them drink of me.”

“I do not mean they sense the Father, as is the way of our children. They see him as you once did.”

A series of gunshots erupted from down the mountain. They were quiet to Man’s ear, so far away, and to Woman’s they were nothing at all. She made no sign of hearing them, but she must have seen his eyes flit toward the sound, and she said, “What is it?”

“It is nothing.”

“Would you have me believe this as well?” She picked at her dove, tore off a piece of meat and pressed it to her lips. “It is not in you to be untruthful, Husband.”

When she bore into him, Man realized he had not misled her, and he confessed about the young soldier. As he spoke, he heard more gunshots. He rose and tensed his muscles. Sensing his mood, Woman said, “Go to them.”

Man ran toward the sounds of the gunshots, an explosion, more gunshots. The raucous grew quiet as he glided through the trees, and in the silence he smelled burning wood and cinder and ash. His feet met the road and he flew faster until he reached the driveway to Shelly Lynn’s cabin. The truck that had been there was missing. He knelt and touched the fresh tire tracks leading out of the driveway and down the mountainside.

Smoke filled the forest, thick as morning fog, and wood burst under the heat of flame. Black-eyed soldiers limped through the trees. They were aimless creatures stumbling about in the smoke.

A window shattered. Part of the cabin collapsed, and then he was running again, this time down the driveway. When he reached the foot of the mountain, the road turned from dirt to rock. He knelt and touched the pavement, warm in the noontime sun. He put his nose to it. He listened, and for a while after that, he did nothing at all.

He hunted his way back to Woman, killing a hawk that had been too concerned with a half-eaten rabbit. She had occupied herself by digging roots, as was her custom when troubled. Dirt covered her hands and forearms. Streaks of it smudged her face. She did not look at him as she huddled over her pile of roots, sorting through them, picking at the bulbs and ranking her troubles.

“They are gone,” he said.

“It is for the best, Husband. Nothing can be done for them.”

Woman placed a handful of roots onto the white stone Shelly Lynn had picked. She arranged the roots and laid them by the fire to warm. In the fire rested the black stone, charred from hours of exposure to the coals and flame. “Where did they go?” she asked. She focused on her task, but she stiffened as if in anticipation of the answer.

“South,” he said. “Down the mountain.”

“And soon there will be none to see,” she said. She whispered it, almost imperceptible to Man’s ears. He was not sure she meant him to hear it, and so he sat next to her and contented himself by placing fresh wood onto the flames.

Chapter 22

Like Hell You’ll Take It   
(Edwin)

W
here will we go
? That was the foremost question in Edwin’s mind, fighting for his attention amidst a hundred swarming worries.

On the dash sat an old water-filled floating ball-shaped compass that bounced and swiveled as he drove down the road. They headed southwest, toward Dallas, maybe not the best place to go. They would stop later and decide on a route, but for now, distance between them and the mountain was the first priority.

The fuel gauge read halfway to full, maybe one-fifty or two-hundred miles of range. Edwin could find fuel in gas stations or cars, and then he shook his head. If it was as bad as Dale Lincoln had said, then looters and hoarders would have bled the available fuel, or at least the most readily-available sources. He would try, but his hopes were slim he would find easy fuel for the truck.

A glance in the rearview mirror showed the five soldiers perched with rifles across their knees atop a pile of bundled dry goods and other supplies. They would check later to see what Dale Lincoln had managed to salvage when he abandoned his property. The soldiers studied the woods and the winding mountain road, blacktop with no center stripe, eerily quiet but for the grunting of the four-wheel-drive truck.

The next question nagging Edwin’s mind caused him to consider his wife in the passenger’s seat. Amalie stared out the side window, breathing heavy through a broken jaw. She wore a rough splint on either side of her face, held in place by strips of bed sheet, effectively silenced because the braced clamped her teeth shut.

“I’m sorry,” Edwin said. “Amy.” She did not respond.

“Daddy?”

It was a small voice from the back seat, and Edwin said, “Yeah, Baby Bird?”

“Him Potty Man says to watch for the flag. He says it has a bad word on it. I won’t say the word, but it’s bad. It’s where the devil lives.”

“Hell?”

“That’s the word, Daddy. He says to find the flag with that word on it.”

“Okay, Baby Bird, I will. Perry? You want to help me watch?”

Perry answered him with the same silence as Amalie.

A pounding on the top of the truck signaled Edwin, and Billings hollered up to him, “Slow down.”

Beyond the rise in the road, a pair of SUVs rested against the shoulder with the remains of suitcases tied to the top.

“Stop,” Billings hollered.

Edwin braked the truck, and the soldiers piled out and tramped ahead of him. Billings cupped a hand to his mouth and screamed, “Hello! Hold your fire!” He paused, repeated the words, waited, and motioned for Edwin to pull forward.

Edwin followed until Billings held up a fist. Edwin cut the engine and hobbled out of the truck on his wounded ankle, limping with the same halting stride as Billings, and followed the soldiers toward the vehicles. They were empty with the doors and hoods thrown wide. The suitcases had been ransacked and tossed into the ditch. Gentry slid beneath one
SUV
, and then the other, and shook his head and said, “This tank’s poked, too. Gas anyway, no diesel, and whoever poked the tank ruined the vehicle and was lucky it didn’t explode. Anything up top?”

“Negative,” Arroyo answered. “They took the batteries, alternators, hoses, everything but the doors.” He kicked one of the doors shut. “And where the hell are the people in them?”

“Let’s move out,” Billings said. He waved for Fletcher, who had wandered into the ditch. Fletcher cast one last glance at the trees, and then he jogged to the truck and hauled himself into the bed with the others.

Edwin slid into the truck and resisted the urge to speak to Amalie. A hand-slap on the roof signaled Edwin to pull forward, and he angled through the ditch around the vehicles and back onto the road. Here the flood debris thickened, and Edwin’s mind took a much needed break from worry and focused on winding around washed-up limbs and rocks scattered along the pavement.

It was the same road they had come up on their way to camp, but hardly recognizable. The smaller road signs were bent over in the ditch, the larger ones torn off the hinges and cast into the woods. Felled trees lay decaying atop downed power lines and shattered creosote posts. Edwin glimpsed hooves stiff in the air amid the debris.

“There’s a dead deer, Daddy,” Shelly Lynn said. “There’s a dead pig, Daddy. Him Potty Man says they are all his creatures.”

“Okay, Baby Bird,” Edwin said. “Let’s be quiet for a little bit, all right?”

“I not scared, Daddy, even after the people in the woods came after us. Are there more people in the woods? Are they all sick like that? Are you even watching for the flag like He said?”

“I don’t know, Baby Bird,” Edwin said. “Your mom wanted to go home, so wish granted, right Amy?”

The words stung even as he spoke them, but they were from someplace inside screaming far worse. “I’m sorry,” he added, withdrawing the words but leaving the wound.

Amalie shook her head, and unable to speak simply rotated further away from him, so far sideways it must have been killing her jaw. She held up a middle finger in her lap, low so the children in the back seat could not see.

“Whatever,” Edwin said.

“Yabba dabba doo,” Perry murmured.

Edwin checked the rearview mirror. Perry’s reflection showed a slack-jawed young man staring blankly out the window. “What did you say, son?”

“You passed it,” Perry said. “That flag. The one Shelly Belly said about to watch for. It was babba back there.”

“What? You saw a flag?”

“Yeah.”

“How far back?”

“I dunno.”

“Why didn’t you say something, son?”

“I dunno.

“Okay.” Edwin glanced in the rearview mirror at the soldiers in the back, twisted his hands on the steering wheel, and said, “Hold on.”

He stopped the truck, and Billings and Gentry and the others were on the ground before he exited the cab. Fletcher jogged toward a wrecked minivan in the road ahead, while the others flanked the vehicle.

“We’ll check the van up there and keep heading southwest,” Billings said. He stood at the front of the truck and pointed toward Fletcher.

“That’s not why I stopped,” Edwin said. “We, um, Shelly Lynn heard the voice again. Back there a ways.”

That got Moore’s attention, and she moved past Edwin and stuck her head into the truck.

“
Eve her on,
” Amalie said. She spoke it through clenched teeth at Moore, and Moore turned to Edwin.

Edwin translated. “She said, ‘Leave her alone.’”

Moore considered it for a moment, and after exchanging a long stare with Amalie, she removed her head from the cab of the truck and marched to the rear, where Gentry and Arroyo stood on either side, both searching the trees.

Billings said, “So we stopped because your girl heard her friend?”

“Don’t say it,” Edwin said.

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“I wasn’t thinking nothing, neither. I seen too much in my life to think anything about anything. I roll on dumb as a rock, if you get me.” Billings stuck his head into the cab of the truck, stared at Amalie for a moment, and for a long while inspected Perry. “You okay, Maggot?”

“Yeah,” Perry answered.

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Yeah.”

“Hang in there, brother. You’ll be okay.” Then he spoke to Shelly Lynn. “Hey, girl. Your daddy says you heard from that buddy of yours. Is everything okay?”

“Him Potty Man said we should watch for the flag with the bad word on it. I can’t say the word.”

“The word is
Hell
,” Perry added.

“Okay,” Billings said. He extracted his head from the truck and said to Edwin, “There was one like that a ways back. Genny? What did that flag say?”

Gentry sucked in a breath, thinking, and then said, “
Like Hell you’ll take it.
There was a rifle or a shotgun or something on it, I think. Why?”

“I don’t know.” Billings said to Edwin. “Why is that important?”

Edwin didn’t know either, and so he stuck his head in the truck, and despite the cold of Amalie’s silence, said, “Baby Bird, why was that flag important?”

“I not know, Daddy. He said watch for it.”

“
Eve her on
,” Amalie said.

“Amy, please,” Edwin said. “Let us figure this out.”

“You need to listen to your daughter,” Moore said. “He’s done with me. But your girl sees Him.”

“What does she see?” Edwin said.

“I’m not sure,” Moore said. “She sees something, though.” She shook her head and adjusted her
MOLLE
bag. Edwin noticed she stood close to Gentry, and one of his hands rested her on the back.

The touch seemed to irritate Arroyo. He snorted, and when Edwin made eye contact, he said, “What? I told Genny not to bring no strays into camp. Now look what happened. She done brought the whole forest down on us, and we lost a perfectly good camp. Man, I didn’t even get my supplies.”

Billings slapped the pockets on his pants, stuffed full as always. “I got my supplies, Arroyo. I told you all not to leave everything in your packs.”

“Whatever, chico. I’m starting to think Riggs was right, until that boy shot him in the gut.” He stared at Edwin. “That’s right, chico. Riggs didn’t do nothing but get shot in cold blood.”

“That’s enough, Arroyo,” Billings said. “The boy was in shock.”

“Yeah, and who gave him a shotgun? Daddy-O did. Now we a man down because of it. Could have used Riggs in that fight up there, with them freakies coming out of the woods.”

“Those
freakies
are fallen soldiers,” Billings said.

“Well, they got some freaky eyes. We found us one crazy-ass kid carrying a shotgun, and now we gonna let the little girl’s imaginary friend give us directions?”

“It’s not imaginary,” Moore said. “It’s—”

“It’s God, I get it. Congratulations, Abraham, you see Jesus in your toast, and looky there behind you, it’s a angel playing armpit farts. You crazy as a Catholic on Jamaican rum, you and that little girl. How you know the bug didn’t get you and that’s why you’re seeing things? Don’t it get in your brain and stuff? We need to be watching you and that little girl for fevers, not listening to your stories.”

“Daddy?”

Shelly Lynn leaned forward, between the seats. Her eyes were white and brown, no trace of red, thank God Almighty no trace of red. “What is bimstone?”

“Brimstone?”

“Yeah, that. What is it?”

“Baby Bird, not right now.”

“Him Potty Man says—”

“Goddammit, Shelly Lynn, I said not right now!” Edwin felt the words tear at his vocal cords and heard them bounce around the cab of the truck. Shelly Lynn recoiled, and in the after-silence he sucked in a fresh breath. Shelly Lynn eased herself into the back seat next to Perry and stared out the window.

In the lingering silence, Edwin heard something whisper above his head. In the high parts of the atmosphere, the streak of a vapor trail formed a crisp, straight line. It seemed odd, because he thought all airplanes were grounded, and because the line grew so much faster and thicker than a typical vapor stream. Another trail appeared behind the first one. More trails appeared behind those, so far away that they disappeared beyond the curve of the horizon.

By now, Fletcher had run back to the truck, and Billings said, “Load up. We need to find cover.”

“What are they?” Edwin said.

“Not good, that’s what. Look.”

Edwin followed to where Billings pointed. One of the white streaks slammed into the side of a faraway hilltop. Smoke rose in silence, and after a few seconds the Earth rumbled. Another thump vibrated through his feet, and another, until the ground felt like a beating, living drum.

White lines filled the sky as if by the raking of claws. Thunder welled up from the ground, and as the sky darkened with the rising clouds of dust and smoke, Edwin started Dale Lincoln’s truck, turned around in the road, and weaved his way through the debris toward a flag with the word
Hell
on it.