The Altonevers (17 page)

“
Telling you it wasn't safe
for you when that wasn't the case,”

“
You mean in that first
place?”

“
Yeah. It's just that it
was your first time in a new place, and I was worried you might get
lost or something.”

“
Or something. Like running
from any form of authority alongside a self indulgent, compulsively
intoxicated, who gambles his life in the chances of near death for
fun,” she says jabbing at the scab off his remorse for the danger
when in his presence.

“
That's nothing to worry
about,” the still handed killer says as he looks away. She sees
he's nervous, or at least caring enough to be mindful of himself to
her. She relaxes from the worry of reaching anything, a place, a
gas station, or any sign of civilization. Comfortably marching
alongside him, down the side of the meandering road. The pristine
grass seems like an emerald green desert stretching for a far as
can be seen.

“
Look, Look,” she shouts
pointing, and jumping up and down in glee.

“
What? gold?”

“
No over there you see
that?”

“
I don't see
anything.”

“
That, over there, on that
hill, the gray patch.”

“
So?”

“
It's a difference, a
change,” noticing the sides of the hills slowly become spotted with
blots of thin silvery gossamer. Spreading and webbing, thickening
and blotching over the dewy emerald hills accompanied by a creeping
eerily serene feeling.

“
Reminds me of a summer
camp as a kid, the first time I was out of the city, out in the
open, but this is ceaseless.”

“
Ceaseless? who talks like
that,” he says.

“
It's English, you were
taught English in school weren't you?”

“
Not really.”

“
Oh,” she says.

“
Look over there,” he
shouts pointing to “A fence, a white picket fence,” she says
jumping for joy at the first sure sign of people. Stout steep steps
made of slabs of mossy stone lead six feet up the side of a slope
crowned by a three foot high unblemished white picket fence.
Fencing off a flat flowerless bed of off color green contrasting
the emerald everywhere else. A still pool of water that's white as
the wall of clouds standing still high above them., beside a
reddened bark sycamore tree with deep green leaves hanging without
shadow over the field and water.

“
Sit in the shade?” he
asks.

“
Not even the tree has a
shadow.”

“
And look at our
footsteps,” he says, pointing to the imprints left by each step
like they’re footprints left in snow.

“
Seems like we've been the
only people here in, forever,” she says.

“
If nothing else has left
their mark, then maybe.”

“
Maybe we can drink the
water and rinse our faces at least,” she says, stepping through the
missing gate onto the patch of flat field.

“
Ladies first,”

“
Want some bread?” he
asks.

“
Bread from
where?”

“
Back there, where else?
always take a piece of bread, and cheese if you can.”

“
You have
cheese?”

“
It’s hard cheese, harder
than the bread is stale.”

“
It is, white lies help if
only you believe them?” she says.

“
Only to fill your stomach,
and to ease the guilt of doing it,” he answers. Sitting for a while
in a scene of still serenity on the green bed having their hobo’s
picnic. He kneels down, cupping water in his hands that drips
through his fingers and splashing it onto his face.

“
Cider, Cider!” she says in
disbelief.

“
What?” he asks and she
nods her head to the pond, to the trail of crystal clear water
dripping from his hands standing collectively as a pillar
suspending the pattern of the splash across his face. Each drip and
drop is staying in the air after leaving his skin, and there's a
hole left in the surface of the still pond carved out by his cupped
hands as though dug from something solid.

“
That's amazing,” she says,
admiring it as he looks on, perplexed by the fluid suspended in
place. She runs over and digs a hole in the pond, admonishing
what’s cupped in her hands and the tiny crater they leave. Ordinary
water she thinks, then throws it skyward, leaving a stroke of
glistening clear fluid formed by the tips of her fingers suspended
in the air a feet from her face. They keep running their hands
through the water, laughing, splashing it up and walking through it
to see where it stays. Spraying it up and swatting it into
different shapes and patterns while suspended in the air. Anna’s
admires the ruptures and ripples in stasis spreading across the
otherwise undisturbed pond’s sleek surface.

The two then lay their backs to the
bushy green bed. She starts to relate the many pockmarks and
craters they left in the pond with the massive holes bored through
the mass of ivory clouds above. Then she slips behind the shade of
her eyelids, though unable to actually sleep in the sunless
daylight.

Vanitas

Bursts of sound are reaching from far
and away to lightly tap her eardrums with increasing frequency.
Then a noise begins erupting, sounding like a full brigade of
rifles at a firing range.

“
Do you hear that?” She
asks jumping to sit up from her sleepless rest.

“
Yeah I hear it, it's
coming from over that hill. Definitely gunfire, sounds like some
heavy stuff.”

“
It could be
fireworks.”

“
Maybe,” he says, though
he's sure isn’t, “either way it's something, so there must be
people, or something people like em. Hopefully they have a way out
of here.”

“
Or gas,” she
says.

“
Right, tanks need
gas.”

“
Tanks?” she asks muted by
what sounds like a volley of artillery landing on the popping of
rifles, “or fireworks.”

“
You got that pistol
right?” he asks.

“
Yeah.”

“
Good. Let's go see the
fireworks,” he smiles. They creep around the base of a twenty foot
hill. Peeking with guns first round its bend while listening
intently to the growing sounds of a battlefield, or
fireworks.

“
A wall of trees,” he says
resting his weapon at his side when coming to the other side of the
twelve foot hill.

“
Look! in the air,” she
points to dozens of clouds of bursted black artillery rounds
hanging like splashes of smoke in the air. The two tiptoe toward
the thick row of interwoven willow branches, whose leaves patch
together into a solid wall of variegated greens. The two are
careful of each blade of grass they touch as they inch their way
closer, listening to shouting muffled by the popping of muzzles.
None of the bullets or bombs are passing anywhere near them, easing
their nerves with their ears listening intently until close enough
to tell the difference between the voices valiant and the
dying.
He finds a hole in the brush and
peeks through to see a pastel blue skied battlefield of trench
warfare on the other side. The tops of hundreds of soldier's
helmets are popping up and down from massive snaking scars they've
dug to trade potshots from.

“
There's a lot of people,”
he says.

“
Let me see.”

“
Wait a minute.”

“
I want to see. Move,” she
says pushing him out of the way “stop pushing me,” he says. She
doesn’t and moves him from his sight of the hole. She sees a sea of
barb wire and no man’s land for miles around two large trenches,
each heavily fortified with intricately detailed tunneling and
holes as though dug by big army ants. Powdery multicolored vapors
of chemical gases and bombs are breaking in the air, bursting
outward and lingering in shape longer than they should.

“
You see the tanks,” he
says.

“
Yea there really old,” she
says.

“
Tanks need gas, maybe they
have some gas.”

“
That's crazy.”

“
They'll probably shoot us
if they see us, or kill us if they catch us. What we need must be
somewhere over there,” he says pointing to the tanks.

“
I don't know, I think
we'll die,” she says.

“
What else can we do? stay
here forever?” he says as he rubs her head like condescending to a
child. She huffs and walks in nervous circles, muttering to herself
in panic.

“
This is madness,” she
finally says.

“
Relax” he says, “have you
ever seen a war movie?”

“
Yes,”

“
Then you'll be
fine,”

“
I’m really starting to
wonder which of us is naive?”

“
You, but remember when
they duck walked through the fields? like this,” he says as he
squats and shifts awkwardly from foot to foot waving his gun in the
air. She laughs, then imitates him, and they get carried away
laughing and quacking while duck walking in circles.

“
Hello.”

“
Hello,” she says back,
thinking it’s Cider playing around. She jumps to her feet at the
sight of an ill looking man’s gaunt eyes looking vacantly back at
her. Waving his small hand in a clean white glove warmly as if
welcoming them. He's dressed in a yellowed white shirt emblazoned
with the double helix of medic's cross, and a wide white tie. His
olive green knickers reach to his boots that reach to his knee. The
man’s hair is graying from ash blonde and likely combed back under
his disk like helmet that's also bearing a medic’s double helix and
cross. Though having a thousand yard, horrific hollow stare, he has
a welcoming smile that's not without its warmth. He says nothing,
only taking a flask from his satchel and a tin mug and holding one
in each hand. He has a multitude of randomly sized pockets placed
all around his pants, each filled with medicines, elixirs and all
sorts of other small things. He pours an oily fluid from the flask
into the mug then sips from it.

“
Enjoying the fireworks?”
the man, appearing as a medic asks with friendliness.

“
I guess. Is that coffee by
any chance?” she asks.

“
Sure is,” the man
says.

“
Are you gonna?” Cider
asks.

“
Capture you? kill you?
certainly not. I haven't had company in…well forever,” the medic
says.

“
Isn't there a war going on
there? are you in the military?” he asks.

“
Yes and yes, but that's
the show, I'm not part of the show,” the man answers.

“
What do you mean by the
show? this is real, isn't it,” Anna asks.

“
As much as it could be I
suppose, to me anyway. But it's real in the sense that you could
die here and maybe have to stay.”

“
So then yes,” she
says.

“
Yes. Who are you anyway?”
the man asks.

“
Who are you?” Cider asks
insistently, now standing and pointing his gun to the man's
chest.

“
Going to be rude
intruders?” the man asks in a salty tone.

“
I'm Anna,” she says,
nodding a disarming look to Cider.

“
And I'm Cider”, he says
taking Anna's cue of friendliness instead of fighting, and shaking
the man’s hand.

“
And my name is Mickey.
It's nice to meet you,” Mickey says shaking hands with Cider, for a
minute too long.

“
And you,” she
replies.

“
How'd you guys get here
anyway?” Mickey asks.

“
We drove.”

“
He drove,” she
says.

“
Drove? in a car? from
where?” Mickey asks. “I’ve never found a way out, no matter how
many days I’ve tried.”

“
Around here somewhere,
somewhere back there. We had to leave it a while back, we ran out
of gas.”

“
Yeah, right when it was my
turn to drive,” she says rolling her stare to Cider.

“
Let it go,” Cider
says.

“
I did,” she
answers.

“
You need gas? for your
auto?” Mickey asks.

“
Yes, we,” he
says.

“
We do,” she says over
him.

“
I can get some gas for
you, easily,” he says “It's back at the base. I'll bring you
there,” The medic says “It's not too dangerous for you and me, us.
I know the way?” he says to soothe their doubts of following him.
Something about Mickey’s soft way of speaking and tall domineering
demeanor casts a chill to his proposition and his presence, to her
at least.

“
Don't worry about all
that,” Mickey says pointing over the trees, “this is the
show.”

“
What do you mean by that?”
she asks.

“
This is the same battle
they fight every day, it is every day. From mortar to rifle down to
the very smallest piece of shrapnel and blade of grass,” he says,
looking to the imprints left by their feet. “Troop movements and
the actions of brave men and cowards. The nerve curdling screams of
dying men, with torn limbs or fatal wounds, shrapnel slashing their
arteries. All of it is forever recurring. It's never ending, the
pestilence of man's wrath onto one another for some ideal none of
the soldier’s even hold,” he sips his coffee.