Return from the Apocalypse Page 5

  PART TWO: Pony Express Man

  Chapter 9: Revelations

  “Wait up.” Roger stumbles along the footpath. His rescuer, a tall but slight girl clad in faded Mossy Oak steps quickly along with Dixie at her heels. She doesn’t turn her head as she replies.

  “You’re on your own, now.”

  “Let me follow you a ways more.” Roger gasps for breath, tasting blood in his mouth. Elliston must be less than a quarter mile behind him.

  “Keep up.”

  The girl had led him out, showed him the forest path, but apparently had little intention of helping him further.

  Roger stubs his foot on a root in the path and collapses onto his chest. His nose is jammed with the decay of last autumn’s leaves and they stick damply to his cheek. The girl disappears over a knoll, Dixie close behind.

  Roger rolls onto his back, thinks about exerting himself to his feet, and relaxes back into the earth. Winter’s chill lingers in the ground, but feels good against his bruised body. Above, the stars sit out of reach of the trees’ crooked branches.

  I’ll just lie here awhile.

  But already the stars are dimming, giving way to dawn. Roger knows he must get farther from town. But to where, and how?

  And why?

  Even if he evaded recapture, what were his prospects? He had nothing left— not supplies, or Esther, or any friends. So why not just lie here on the chilled brown earth.

  But then there is the padding of paws and two familiar black eyes and a black-lipped mouth panting above his head.

  Dixie.

  She’d returned.

  So there was that.

  “Good dog,” Roger says, “I’m just going to keep lying here. So go on. Go on and follow that girl. You’ll be better off.”

  Dixie considers this, but seems reluctant to abandon him. Her nose pushes urgently at his side, and she looks up the path, then back to Roger again.

  “Go on. Go.” Roger can’t bring himself to be harsh with the dog. Not with Dixie.

  “Fine, stay here,” he says. You’re old enough to make your own decisions. Older than me, in dog years anyway.”

  Dixie circles him, whining gently as she looks down the path and then at Roger, finally settling beside him in the fecund leaves.

  The last star diminishes to morning and the surroundings slowly saturate with color. Five, ten, maybe twenty minutes pass— Roger isn’t sure. He isn’t sure of many things, including whether or not he’ll ever bother to get up.

  And then her face is above him, without warning. He had not seen her face before, stumbling after her in the darkness. Matted blonde hair frames a stoic expression, but her eyes are not unkind.

  “You’re lucky Dixie likes you so much,” she says.

  “Luck is my thing, these days,” Roger says. “I’m very fortunate.”

  “Can you get up?”

  “I don’t know.” Roger listens to the aches complaining in his bones and muscles. “Just grab up the dog and leave me.”

  A bell sounds in the distance, echoing over the leafless trees.

  “Stay and the steward will finish the job when he finds you,” she says calmly. “But not quickly. Elliston is just a short ways behind us.”

  Roger grunts and draws himself upright, staggering to his feet.

  “Let’s go.”

  The three continue down the path, the girl in the lead followed by a limping Roger. Dixie takes up the rear to ensure no one is left behind. The girl looks back often, to admonish Roger to quicken his pace, to which he breathily agrees but has difficulty doing. The path curves uphill, at a steady ascent. The seemingly minor change in incline has pangs attacking his sides. Each breath is painful and shallow.

  Halfway up the long incline Roger is gassed. “Let’s sit… for… just a second… to catch my breath.”

  The girl shakes her head and keeps jogging. “Up there.” She points to where the incline levels out into a ridgetop.

  Sure, that’s reasonable, Roger thinks. If I don’t collapse first. But he puts one foot in front of the other, and manages to keep within a few paces of the jogging girl, though he suspects she could go much faster without him. The last stretch proves the harshest with the incline graduating from painful to torturous. At the ridgetop the girl motions for him to sit where a fallen tree rests besides the path.

  Roger plunks himself on the log but the girl shakes her head sharply. “Behind it.”

  Of course. We’re more visible up here. He sits on the ground and leans his back against the log. “This better?”

  The girl kneels behind the log and peers down at the trail. “They must really not like you.” She rolls onto her back. “There’s two of them coming, and they’re starting up the hill.”

  “We’ve got to move, right? Keep going?”

  “They’ll see us.”

  “What if we go down the other side of this ridge?”

  “Swamp. They’ll catch us for sure trying to slog through that.”

  “Just leave me. Leave me and book it. They only want me anyway.”

  The girl takes a rolled up sheet from her knapsack and points to a spot a few feet off of the path. “Over there, head down. Curl up and hold Dixie.”

  Roger obeys, taking Dixie into his arms and curling up as tightly as he can. The girl unrolls the sheet and lies behind Roger, spooning him. She pulls the sheet over all three of them and lies still.

  Voices echo over the hill. Roger sees the path through the mesh. There’s no way they won’t see us.

  Two pairs of legs come into Roger’s view. The boots are so close they seem as if they could step on his fingers as he clutches the edge of the mesh over his face. He tries to control his breathing; it feels loud. The girl is as still as the earth, but warmer.

  The legs stop impossibly close to Roger’s view as the men talk.

  “We should be able to get a good look from up here.”

  “I ain’t going no farther.”

  “Let Sal hear you say that, yeah?”

  “Sal ain’t running his ass up the hogsback.”

  “True. I’m not seeing anything. Good half mile of trail ahead of us, clear as water, don’t see no one.”

  “Yep.”

  “How the hell that guy get away? He was pretty well beat. Had help you think?”

  “I don’t give a shit.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Sal’s business. Why we care about some tramp that shows up?”

  “Seems personal. Should we wait here, eat up some time?”

  “Screw that. I’m hungry.”

  “I guess we can take our time walking back.”

  “I’m gonna have the lady make me some breakfast.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Hell yeah, eggs. Eggs and some venison sausage.”

  “Yeah. Well we’d have seen them from up here.”

  “Yep.”

  The tension eases from Roger’s body as the legs return from whence they came. He waits for the girl’s cue to move; five minutes passes, but it feels like an hour. Then, as if a timer sounded, she pulls back the mesh and swiftly finds her feet. Roger stretches out on the ground. “Too much up and down,” he says.

  “If you’re going to follow me any farther, you’re going to have to tell me why Sal hates you so bad,” Chelsey says. “What’d you do?”

  “More like who I knew. I’m looking for my wife. Apparently he didn’t like that we’re married.”

  “You know Miss Esther?”

  “I’m her husband.”

  “You’re Roger?”

  “How’d you know my name?

  The girl kneels beside Dixie, petting her. “Miss Esther told me.”

  “You talked to her? When?”

  “Before she left to meet the Pony Express man,” she says, “To find her way to you.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  Strands of sunshine breaking through the trees warm Roger’s skin in patches as he follows the path thinking about all Chelsey has told hi
m. Esther, alive, last seen leaving to meet a Pony Express rider. Destination: Germantown.

  Except she never arrived in Germantown.

  According to its inhabitants.

  Roger struggles with the new revelation, knowing more, but still unclear how he should proceed. Ahead, the relentless Chelsey jogs along. The girl had known Esther as a teacher, had helped her escape.

  “This Pony Express man, can you describe what he looks like?” Roger huffs and gasps in between words.

  “Again?”

  “You said he has dark, long hair. What else do you remember?”

  “I’m not even sure he was the guy Esther was meeting. Just probably was, because his route’s between the two communes.”

  “Is he tall? Short?”

  “Tall, I guess. Kind of.”

  “How old?”

  “Pretty old, I guess,” Chelsey says. “Almost as old as you.”

  Roger grimaces. “Thanks. Anything else?”

  “He has a beard. He smokes.”

  “So I need to find some guy of an unknown age with long hair. And he might work for the Pony Express and smell like cigarettes. Great.”

  Chelsey sighs. “Would you like me to draw you a picture?”

  Roger thinks of Vane’s drawing of Esther, at what seems so long ago back in the Fort Davis camp in Texas. She had taken his description of Esther and turned it into physical reality. “You could do that?”

  “It’s a figure of speech.” Chelsey hesitates. “I might be able to connect you to the Pony Express.”

  “Really?” In his excitement to learn more Roger ignores the swelling pain in his head. “Talk to me.”

  “My dad is connected. I’m not making any promises.”

  “Of course not,” Roger says. He is about to ask Chelsey another question when the pain in his head swells all the way against his skull, pounding and whiting out his thoughts. Everything sounds like an echo as he collapses.

  Chapter 10: The Two Sisters

  Roger raises his arm only to have it hit against something.

  “Easy now,” says a woman’s voice above his head. “You’re safe here.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Heaven. You’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  “What?” Roger’s senses slowly come back to him. He lies on his back in a small, crudely made shelter in a bed of leaves.

  “Nah, you’re not in heaven— just Secret Glen. You’re in Secret Glen in a little leaf hut. How’s that?” The woman wipes his brow with a musky cloth. The space is tight, and she kneels over him.

  “What are you doing?” Roger cranes his neck to see, head pounding with the slightest movement.

  The woman belts out a laugh and claps her side. “Aren’t you the inquisitive patient?” She laughs some more and continues to dab and wipe. “How about ‘nice to meet you,’ or ‘thank you for saving my sorry bum’?”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “I’m your fairy godmother.”

  Roger twists his body, feels his feet bump against the walls of the shelter.

  “Keep still and let me finish dressing your wounds. The rain is coming, and as cute as you are, I don’t fancy spending the rest of the night in this little hut with you.” The woman finishes her rites and tucks a wreath of dried herbs around Roger’s neck.

  “It scratches,” Roger says.

  “Catnip. It’ll help keep the mosquitos away. You can take it off, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” The woman crawls back out of the lean-to. A screen door creaks and slaps shut nearby.

  He moves his head, but is met with rolling pain and some nausea. He feels the catnip wreath around his neck. A mosquito hovers, whining near his ear, then decides to find a new victim. Raindrops begin to pat against the lean-to’s roof and sides. Faster now. But Roger remains dry, and to his surprise, relatively comfortable.

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  When you sleep in the open air you hear all the sounds of the forest more keenly. The creak of the trees, the pitter-patter of small feet; snuffling and distant coos and shrieks; a bullfrog. The lean-to meets at a point by the feet, but what of the head? What shall protect it? Stay away, pitter-pattering feet. Be gone, shrieking animal of the night. The morning starts early and lasts ages when you open your eyes too soon, only to close and open them again to increasingly lighter shades of gray.

  At least it’s warm in this nest of leaves… save for the cool trace of night air on the face . The canopy is cool and gray. Close your eyes and the colors slowly saturate. By the time the sun’s arrived, morning has long set in. Only sleep will pass the time, so close your eyes and also your ears, if you can...

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  “Rise and shine, handsome.”

  Roger awakes feeling as good as someone who has been recently beaten and spent the night sleeping on the ground can. He tries to sit up, but the top of the lean-to is just a couple of feet above his head.

  “Scoot on out of there; we’ll help.” Hands reach in under his arms. “Now you grab his other arm.”

  The pairs of hands pull him out from the lean-to and rest him against the trunk of a tree. “Help us a little maybe? Push with your feet.”

  Roger complies and finds himself sitting up in the midst of a small clearing. His shelter looks terribly small. The simple structure is a forked branch leaning against a tree with the far end touching down to the ground. Inside, Roger can see the wooden ribs of branches which support the layers of leaves and moss piled on top of them. Roger thinks he would have walked right past it without notice if he had been wandering in the woods.

  His caretaker, a robust lady of graying years, stands over him backed by a gentle slope in a clearing. Her helper has a face covered in mud. A shock of reddish hair protrudes above it, reminiscent of a freshly pulled carrot.

  His savior, Chelsey Dee, is there, too, standing farther up the slope in front of a small cabin.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” the robust lady drawls, the lines in her face crinkling into a toothy smile.

  “Or what the chickadee dragged in,” says the mud-covered carrot.

  “Ha! A chickadee dragged in the cat, that’s hilarious.” The lady laughs, with the carrot joining her.

  “I’m the cat?” Roger asks.

  The two women laugh more. “And Chickadee’s the chickadee,” says the lady pointing back at Chelsey Dee.

  “Your name’s ‘cat’ now,” the carrot tells Roger.

  “Obviously,” says the robust lady.

  “I met a Kat in Germantown,” Roger says, for lack of anything else to say.

  “Germantown.” The robust lady pretends to spit. “I’ll pretend you never mentioned the dump.”

  “Or that whore.” The carrot giggles.

  “You look clean from up here.” The robust lady squints at Roger with a hesitant smile as if she could actually see if germs were sticking to him.

  “Roger’s my actual name.”

  “Chickadee told us,” the carrot says.

  “I’m Jodi,” says the robust lady.

  “Calluna,” says the carrot. “That’s my name, that I go by of late.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Roger says.

  “Don’t sound so convincing,” says Jodi.

  “Yeah,” Calluna adds. “We saved your ass.”

  “We saved your ass because of Chickadee,” Jodi clarifies. “Although dragging you through the woods wasn’t too hard. You’ve lost a little weight the last ten years or so, I’m guessing.”

  “Thank you,” says Roger.

  “You’re alright, Roger,” Jodi says. “I know people. I can tell.” She motions to the clearing in a sweeping gesture. The area is comprised of Roger’s lean-to, another similar lean-to nearby, the cabin up on the hill and a tee-pee. “This is Secret Glen. And you’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.” Jodi pauses, and looks firmly at Roger. “Given you contribute.”

  “Everyone pulls their weight around here,” Calluna says. The once wet mud has begun
to dry and form little cracks around the movements of her face.

  “I don’t want to impose,” says Roger, standing up with some difficulty. His head still spins, and his legs have a rubbery feeling.

  “It’s not an imposition,” says Jodi. “If you contribute.”

  “How can I contribute?”

  Jodi looks to the cabin up the slope. “Good gracious. It’s tea time.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  The inside of the cabin is small. Two bunks against the wall, with bouquets of herbs hanging from them; an antique white sink with small, open cupboards above it; a small round table with three wooden chairs; a black Kodiak stove in the corner heating a whistling kettle. Jodi takes the kettle and fills rose-adorned china glasses with a steaming liquid that smells of licorice and something else Roger can’t quite place. He sits at the table with Jodi while Chickadee moseys about the cabin, claiming she isn’t much for sitting at tables, which is either true or just being polite or a little of both. Dixie is in the cabin, too, scooted under the bottom bunk with her chin on her paws. She sighs heavily and bites at her shoulder occasionally.

  Jodi throws her a suspicious look. “Should have treated her with my flea tincture.”

  Calluna enters through the swinging screen door with the mud washed from her face. Her eyes are both alive and tired, glowing and faintly distant over her newly revealed freckles. “You must think I’m crazy,” she says to Roger. “And maybe I am.” She laughs capriciously. “The mud draws toxins out. We’re all getting them now, from Stranger Sun.”

  “Sister Sun,” Jodi says raising her cup to her lips. “Like us.” She sips.

  “Before, it was all the microwaves and cell phone waves and whatever waves,” Calluna says.

  “Hmmm.” Jodi sips her tea. “Not anymore.” The joking and gut laughs have eased from her system. She leans back in her chair and hums softly to herself for a moment, before speaking again. “So Mr. Roger, what is on your agenda?”