Stranger

Forty-three

Birds called in the forest. Their cries ran through the trees to die out there in the wilderness. Still tingling from making love to Michaela, I sat on the fence to gaze dreamily into the morning mist. Images of her beautiful body seemed to overlay the view of the surrounding trees and the meadow that ran down from the garage.

My bag had still been where I’d left it in the garage. I’d dressed using the spare clothes I’d brought with me from Sullivan, only they didn’t amount to more than a pair of jeans and a shirt. My boots and leather jacket remained beyond reach in Phoenix’s bunker. Michaela still lay dead to the world in the sleeping bag. And for the first time I began to wonder about the future. Had the lovemaking been a spur of the moment thing after our escape? Or would something longer lasting come from it?

I hoped so. Believe me, I didn’t want to face the future alone.

Sunlight burned through the mist. Soon I felt its heat on my hands and face, and, boy, was it good to see real daylight after being locked away in Phoenix’s concrete fun house. No sooner had I felt sheer relief at being in the open air again then I remembered what Phoenix had said. He claimed I was the product of a hive. That the monstrosity he was harboring had somehow recognized me.

No way, Phoenix, you insane son of a bitch. You invented that to keep us in the bunker. Your only motive was to feed us to the hive. If we’d stayed, we’d have wound up as sacks of dry skin and bone, sucked dry of blood, then left to hang there like clothes on a line.

You’re a murdering fuck, too, Phoenix. Anger burned under my skin. He’d lured people in there, given them food and shelter, then fed them to the monster. If I could find enough dynamite I’d stack it against the building and blow it all to hell.

“I guess we’re going to have to find our own break-fast this morning.”

I looked back to see Michaela standing by the garage door. Without any spare clothes she’d chosen one of my T-shirts. The hem reached the top of her thighs like a miniskirt. Arms folded, her dark hair tumbling down over her shoulders, she walked up to me.

Suddenly we both seemed lost for words. I found myself thinking: Is this where we pretend nothing happened last night? Yeah, we’re just good friends, a kiss on the cheek, a slap on the back… that’s as far as it goes, OK?

But I didn’t want that. I realized we were good for one another. We connected. Not just physically either.

“Greg…” she began, as if to say something significant. Then she glanced down at my bare feet. “No shoes?”

“No. But I’m not wearing those rubber sandals again.”

“Me neither. I wouldn’t be seen dead in them.” She gave a tight smile. “Bad choice of words. We saw people who were.”

“Last night…” I began.

“Yes?”

“Well, I liked what happened. It seemed as if it was…” I struggled for the right word, then chose the wrong one. “Natural.”

She shook her head, smiling. “It was natural, Greg. Very natural.”

“Sorry, I’m not good at this, but… hell… run away screaming if you want… but, dammit, I liked what- no, not liked: loved. I loved what we did, and I don’t want it to be just a one-off. .. a one-night stand, I think-”

She lightly touched my lips. “Shh. I loved it, too.” She smiled, her eyes glinting. “I’ve been waiting to find someone special for a long time.”

I began to speak.

She touched my lips again. “You run away screaming if you want, but I think I’ve found him.”

Sliding her hands deliciously ’round my neck, she pulled me down to kiss her lips. Her breath tickled my ear as she spoke. “Come back inside. Prove to me last night wasn’t a fluke.”

After we made love we fell asleep. I woke to see the shadows of two figures thrown against the wall. I scrambled up from the sleeping bag, shielding my eyes against the sunlight streaming through the open door. Two men stood in the entrance, and one held what seemed to be a club.

“Jesus, I beg your pardon, Greg. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were-well, you know?”

“Ben? Zak? Didn’t anyone teach you guys to knock before you walk in?” Despite their sudden appearance I found myself grinning so much my cheeks ached.

Ben’s hands fluttered as he raised his hands in apology. “Jeez. We didn’t expect to find anyone here. And we thought-huh, Michaela? Oh, man, sorry, I didn’t realize you two were-”

“Ben,” Zak broke in. “I think we should give them some privacy, don’t you?”

Laughing, I shook my head. “Give me a minute to get on some clothes.”

They backed out through the door, Zak resting the shotgun I’d mistaken for a club over his shoulder. Once the door closed, Michaela reached across to stroke my leg. “Well, if we intended to keep this relationship a secret I guess we’ve gone and blown it.”

I smiled. “I’m pretty relaxed about that.”

“Me, too.” She kissed me. “Don’t keep the guys waiting. I guess they want to hear what happened to us.” She looked down at my feet. “Looks as if you’re going to wind up wearing those pretty white sandals again.”

“Aw, crap.”

After Zak and Ben had heard about our experiences in the bunker, and after telling us that they were convinced we were raccoon meat (even though they had regularly checked the garage for our return), they carried us on the pillons of their bikes to the ruins of a strip mall. Then they set about fixing us up with replacement clothes from the stockpile they had tucked away in an old water tank (now dry as a bone.) Michaela kept my T-shirt but dumped the bunker green sweat pants in favor of shorts and sneakers. She found a denim jacket, but the temperature had climbed high enough for her to tie it ’round her waist. After going through a packing case full of shoes, boots and sneakers I hauled out a pair of brown work boots that fit perfectly. Zak went through plastic sacks crammed tight with coats, jackets and parkas.

“Here,” he said, throwing a bundle to me. “It smells a bit ripe, but it should fit a big guy like you.”

The leather jacket must have belonged to some biker who, I’d wager, had gone to the big Harley roundup in the sky by now. It smelled of gasoline and had become musty as hell from sitting in the bag for months on end, but it appeared in good shape, apart from some pale scuffs at the elbow where the long-gone biker had enjoyed a rumble or two in the past, or maybe just taken a roll on his bike. Painted on the back, surrounded by a starburst of studs, a Norse dragon’s head breathed fire.

“It’s OK,” Zak told me. “I didn’t peel it off a fatbellied corpse. Boy found it hanging on a peg in a chapel around six months ago. If you throw it over a fence for a couple of hours it’ll soon freshen up.”

For an hour or so the time was taken up preparing a meal from a few cans Zak carried in the pannier of the big Harley. Ben took the usual run on the dirt bike ’round the neighborhood to check to see whether any hornets were nearby. He came back to report the allclear, then we set about eating.

They told us that Tony had moved the clan to a cluster of vacation cabins they’d found out in the hills. The place looked untouched by hornets. With luck they could spend the summer there before moving south for the winter. Once more the dark reality of life out here away from Sullivan struck me. Supplies were scarce. Hornets kept them moving from place to place. How many years could you keep living the life of a rootless refugee? What happened when the fuel ran out? What did they do when they couldn’t find spark plugs and tires for the bikes? There was only a limited amount of canned food to be picked out of the ruined buildings. When that went, what then?

As I sat there watching them spoon food into their mouths my mind flew forward five or six years. I saw how it would be. There we were, half-walking, half-crawling through the snow. We were clad in rags. We were so starved our cheekbones cut their way out from inside our faces. One by one we were dropping into snow drifts. Our fingers were blackened from frostbite. Toes snapped off inside boots. One by one we were dying. And I saw this as clearly as I saw Zak scratch his bald head with the end of his spoon. As clearly as I watched Ben unlace his boots with those jittery fingers. I saw Michaela glance across at me and smile. And I saw her in five years’ time; she was staggering through that blizzard with a baby in her arms that was too cold and too hungry to even cry. I saw all that like it was a goddam vision from the Bible. That wasn’t imagination. That is what will happen. OK, OK, I wasn’t claiming supernatural second sight. Nothing like that. But if those people didn’t die in a snowstorm it would be something else. They’d be so worn down by exhaustion they’d die of infections. Or they’d drink contaminated water. Or they’d be caught by the bad guys. One way or another, the people sitting here with me had the clock ticking against them. Counting down the seconds until bad luck tore the life force out of them.

I had to slam the plate of food down because suddenly it was choking me. A surge of blistering fury climbed up through my throat. I stood up, began pacing ’round the clearing, grinding my fist into my palm.

Michaela looked up at me. “Greg, what’s wrong?”

I looked at Zak and Ben. “These cabins you’ve taken everyone to: There’s clean water there?”

“Sure.” Zak looked puzzled, wondering what had gotten into me.

“There’s a deep well,” Ben said. “A big old one with a crank and bucket. It’s not going to dry up for years.”

“Did you check whether it was clean?”

“Clean?” Zak’s puzzled expression grew more perplexed.

“What are you getting at, Greg?” Michaela looked puzzled, too.

I looked into my cup. “Where did this water come from?”

“A bottle we brought with us.” Zak nodded at empty plastic bottles lined up by a wall. “I was going to fill them here.”

“But there’s no water main close by.”

“No, but the last time we were here we found a well.”

Michaela explained, “Most homes out here drew water from their own wells; that’s why we stayed. After all, the water mains in towns and cities failed months ago. And one thing we do need if we’re going to survive is a good supply of clean drinking water, otherwise- Greg? What’s wrong?”

“Zak, show me the well.”

“Now?”

“Sure now; come on.”

“OK, OK, but I don’t see the hurry.”

“You will in a minute. Ben, you got a flashlight?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Bring it to the well.”

Zak led the way to the backyard of a trashed motel, then along a path downhill. We’d only been walking a few seconds when he pointed to a steel hatch set beside the path. “Before the Fall the motel drew their water supply from there. There’s an electric pump under the hatch. Of course, that’s no good now.”

“What do you use to get the water?”

Zak shrugged, as if I was asking a bunch of stupid questions for the goddam stupid fun of it. “A bucket and a line. Lower it down-splash-haul it up with the water.”

“When did you use this well last?”

Michaela frowned. “What are you driving at, Greg?”

“Got that flashlight, Ben?”

“Here you go.” He handed it to me. “Zak, can you open the well cover?”

Again he gave a mystified shrug. “Sure.” He reached down to the steel ring and easily hauled open the metal cover that was perhaps the size of a house door. “There, knock yourself out.” He grinned at the others, as if I’d got myself wrapped up in some idiotic obsession about well water.

I flicked on the flashlight and shone it down the well shaft. About twenty feet down the water glinted in the light. I clicked my tongue. “See what I see?”

They all looked. Ben recoiled, like something had burned his face. Michaela stepped back, swallowing. Zak looked a little longer, then sighed. “God… what a mess.”

I looked down again. A man floated in the water. Decomposition gases had bloated arms and legs and face into a cartoonish figure with little piggy eyes and a black, puckered mouth. I checked for the characteristic death blow to the head. Yup; I could just see the head wound through molting corpse hair.

“He’s been knocked on the head and thrown down the well,” I said, looking down at the corpse that bled its poisons into the water.

“The murdering bastards.”

“Yeah… but they murdered one of their own kind.”

“Hell, why on earth did they do that?”

“Think about it. How do they get rid of our kind?” I snapped off the flashlight and nodded to Zak to drop the metal cover back down. “They can hunt us down and kill us. But that takes time, energy and manpower. Or they can starve us by taking all the food they can find. What they can’t carry they destroy. But…” I nodded down at the well. “The subtle way is to poison the water supply.”

Michaela nodded. “They wrecked the main supply months ago. So now they’re poisoning the wells.”

“Damn right.” Ben looked as if he’d just bitten into something rotten. “The quick way is to kill one of their own kind and drop him into the water.”

“So they either finish us with cholera or typhoid… or they get lucky and infect us with the bug that’s swimming ’round in their own blood and we all turn Jumpy.” I shook my head. “They’re pushing us closer to extinction, guys.”

“So we check the wells first,” Zak said. “They can’t find every well and spring, can they?”

“Maybe not,” I agreed. “But they’ll find most in a year or so.” I tapped the metal hatch with the toe of my boot. “And I guess one adult corpse will crap out the drinking water for a good five years or more.”

“We could boil it.”

“ ’Course you could. But you’d have to boil every drop of water you used for drinking, cooking and washing.”

“We’d manage.” Zak sounded defiant. “

And you’d really want to drink something with chunks of rotting face and genitals floating in it?” I shrugged. “Be my guest.”

Michaela folded her arms, her face tense. “So that’s why you asked about the well at the cabins?”

“If our people drink water with one of those rot boys down the hole then they’re going to wind up sick, if not dead.”

Michaela started to walk back to the bikes. “How far away to the cabins?”

“About an hour’s ride.”

I threw the flashlight back to Ben. “Ride up there and warn them about the well.”

“There’s a chance it might still be all right. The place hadn’t been touched by hornets.”

“It might be sweet as a nut,” I agreed. “But the hornets could be getting cute. They might be content with dropping a corpse down the well and leaving it to do their dirty work.”

They started to walk back to the bikes but paused when they saw I’d squatted down by the fire.

Ben looked back. “Greg? You’re coming, too?”

“I’ll wait for you here.”

“Why? We’ll be staying at the cabins.”

I shook my head. “You can’t guarantee the water will be fresh. You’ve hardly any food. You’re low on ammunition.”

Ben looked bemused. “Yeah, I know… but what do you suggest?”

I shot him a smile that he must have read as crazed. “Well, old buddy, I’ve decided it’s high time we went back home to Sullivan.”