Stranger

Twenty

Ben hated it; you could see that. He helped pass the supplies to where I stood at the bottom of the harbor steps, but he hated it. The idea of being in Lewis terrified him. Being in the company of a stranger sweated him with fear. He kept shooting looks back across at Sullivan with its tennis courts, neatly trimmed lawns, comfortable homes, supermarkets and ordered lives.

I nodded across the water. “You can’t go back there, Ben, you know that?”

Again he shot a longing look at the tidy little town on the far side of the lake. I suddenly had a mental image of him taking the wheel of the boat and powering home. But he shook his head, his expression worried as hell. “I know,” he said. “Here, don’t forget your rifle.”

“Thanks.” Then I looked at Michaela. “We won’t be able to carry all this food at once.”

“I’ll go ahead with Ben, then bring back help.”

Ben nodded, that expression of uncertainty pasted all over his face. Walking through a burned-out city ruin with a stranger for company must have been as appealing to him as stepping out through hell with Satan on his arm. Like a man going to his execution he walked up the steps (taking them one unhappy riser at a time). “It’s the first time I’ve been off the island in more than six months,” he admitted. “It feels weird.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Michaela told him crisply. “You got a gun?”

“No.”

A gun in Ben’s hands with those twitchy fingers?

“We’ll have a spare you can have.”

“Well, I don’t use guns. I don’t think I’d-”

“You’ve got to, buddy. If you want to last more than a day out here.”

His look of uncertainty darkened into one I’d call depression. He appeared to me a man on a suicide mission. Before he picked up a sack of cans he shot me a glare that as good as said Valdiva, you moron. How could you do this to me?

Michaela paid no attention. Turning to me, she jerked her head in the direction of Sullivan. “You think those guys will follow us across here?”

“I doubt it,” Ben said with feeling.

I shook my head. “Unlikely. They’re terrified of contamination. And like Ben, they’ve lost the knack of leaving the place.”

“Yeah, I lost the knack,” he muttered under his breath. “Lost it big time when everyone started dying.”

“Greg,” she said, “you best sit tight here and guard the food.”

Ben looked ’round at the dead tomb of a town. “Guard the food? You think there are actually people here who’d try and take it.”

“I don’t think,” she told him. “I know.”

“Jesus.”

“Stick close to me.” Shouldering a holdall that clanked with cans, she rested the shotgun barrel on her other shoulder. Safety off, I noticed.

“We’ll be back in twenty minutes,” she told me; then, with Ben following, his head turning this way and that as he anxiously scanned the wrecked buildings, they walked away.

So I sat there in the ghost town with the sun going down. Shadows crept along the street like the buildings themselves bled darkness. It oozed over sidewalks, joined with more pools of shade and crept toward me. Cool air moved in from the lake. When the shadows crawled over me at last the chill of the evening slithered over my skin. Silence oozed in with the coming gloom. Even the birds stopped their chirping. I began to notice the smell, too. That compost smell that made you think of mushrooms, damp basements and decay.

Twenty minutes became half an hour. Still no sign of Michaela or her people to collect the supplies. They’re not coming back, Valdiva.

… Face it, you’re alone.

To close off the thought I checked that the rifle was loaded (even though I knew it was), then counted how many cartons of shells I’d stuffed into the bag. Nine cartons. That should be ample for a while.

I stared along the street, expecting to see Michaela or Ben turn the corner at any second. As I stared I suddenly had this sensation of cool air playing on the back of my neck.

Someone’s behind you.

I twisted fast to see who was there. Maybe Crowther junior couldn’t resist making the trip across the water to blow off my head when I wasn’t looking. Instead of Crowther leering down a rifle at me I saw a rat slinking through all that crud on the ground. It must have gotten the scent of the food I’d brought. Its claws rustled shreds of paper. When I stood up it disappeared under a burnt-out truck.

Forty minutes had crawled by since Michaela and Ben had left. Maybe she’d need to find her people if they’d relocated in the last twenty-four hours. That yard where they were camping was hardly the lap of luxury. They might have found a house somewhere that hadn’t been trashed.

Darkness was coming down a storm now. Clouds ballooned over the horizon to bury the sun as it rested on the hills. Soon nothing remained but a bloody smear of red across the western quarter of the sky. It grew cooler. I zipped up my leather jacket, then shivered to the roots of my bones. Now I found I couldn’t sit still. I paced the stretch of road where we’d stacked the food supplies. A police car rotted by the ferry terminal. Another rat sat in the back seat cleaning its whiskers. Across in Sullivan the town lights burned bright. Even though it wasn’t much more than three miles away, now it could have been on Neptune. Ben and I wouldn’t be welcomed back there with open arms for sure. In fact, it was my guess that the Caucus would issue an order that we be shot on sight if we even came within spitting distance of the place.

With the barrel of the rifle resting on my shoulder I nosed into the abandoned ticket hall of the ferry office (bread bandits had even torn the carpets up), then I crossed the street to look into what remained of a general store (nothing but empty boxes and baby bones). Next to it was a hotel that seemed pretty much intact. A canvas awning projected over the sidewalk. It looked dirty but otherwise undamaged. I began to ask myself if this would serve as a place to stay until we decided what we should do next.

I backstepped into the road, looking up at the six-storied building. Its facade could have been a tear-stained face. Rain teamed with soot from the fires that destroyed most of Lewis to create the illusion. Black bands ran down from each window. A pretty little bitch she wasn’t, but she might do for we poor waifs and strays who had no roof over our heads. Hell, even the glass in the windows was intact. And get this; this was the odd thing. All the glass in the windows must have been set at a certain precise angle because as I looked up into the dark face of the building I could see my reflection in a dozen or more windows.

I gazed up, and my reflection gazed down with a wide-eyed intensity that-

Shit. Those aren’t reflections, Valdiva.

There, looking down at me, with a silent, brooding intensity, were men’s faces. There was something alien about the way they didn’t move. Only their eyes moved to follow me as I, not taking my eyes off them, edged slowly away.

Only when I had moved out of their line of sight did I turn my back on them. Then I moved quickly-but not running, not looking scared-because if I ran, a little bird with terrible frightened eyes told me, that would provoke those guys in the hotel into chasing me.

Ahead of me a group of men blocked my way. Pulling back the rifle bolt, I raised the muzzle, aimed.

“Greg. Whoa… it’s us. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.”

I wiped the perspiration from my eyes to see Ben waving his hands above his head. With him were the people I’d seen yesterday, including Michaela. The others were more interested in the food bags. They hurried forward to drop down onto their knees, where they rooted through the supplies like excited kids at Christmas rifling through their stockings.

“Corned beef… hey, tinned chili.”

“Bread! Beautiful white bread!”

“Creamed chicken.”

“Get a load of this, tinned peaches. Wow!”

Heart thumping, I ran up to Michaela. “Get your people to pick up this stuff, then get out of here.”

“Greg, give them a minute or two to enjoy this, can’t you? They haven’t seen food like-”

“Michaela, get these people away from here!”

Instinct kicked in. She glanced ’round, her senses suddenly razor sharp. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a bunch of people in a building back there.”

“They look like hornets?”

Ben frowned. “What the hell are hornets?”

“Bread bandits.”

“Oh, shit.”

Michaela slipped the shotgun from her shoulder. “They see you?”

I nodded. “But they didn’t seem to be in any rush to follow me.”

“If they stayed put we should have time to get away. They’re probably guarding a hive.”

The memory of that thing I found in the apartment came back to me like a bad taste in my mouth. “You mean there are more of those things ’round here?”

“Hives? Yes, probably dozens in a place this size.”

“Hornets? Hives?” Ben looked bewildered. “What are you guys talking about?”

I said, “Hell on Earth. That’s what we’re talking about, Ben. Hell on Earth.”