Return from the Apocalypse Page 8

  Roger tries to touch down, but the water is over his head and the tree is squarely in his path. Over or under? Roger chooses under as another barrage of stones and mud begins. He sucks in a deep breath and swims down, keeping his eyes open. Small stones with streaking tails of bubbles shoot down around him. He dives even deeper to avoid being caught by the long branches.

  He is beyond the trunk. He propels himself upward and also away from the reaching tentacles of the maple’s branches. They scratch at him and snag his shirt, but it tears away after a brief moment of panic.

  Fresh, beautiful air.

  And chaos, with stones and screams flying.

  The tree provides a measure of protection as Roger swims forward. Chelsey has made it too, with Dixie, opting to scramble over the top. They swim beside him, willing their fatigued muscles to expend every last ounce of energy.

  The shouts are lessening, and so are the stones.

  “We made it,” Roger gasps as a wayward stone plops somewhere behind him.

  Before Chelsey can respond, another stone coasts in and strikes her in the back of the head. Her face falls forward, and her body sinks into the murky water. The last thing Roger sees is the tangle of her blond hair swirling out of sight.

  Chapter 16: Pony Express Man

  Flee.

  Fear propels Roger onward, to stroke his flailing arms through the water, to churn his legs in desperate kicking.

  The cries of the hyenas ring in his ears, skew his wiring.

  Make him afraid.

  Faithful Dixie circles the area where Chelsey vanished, letting loose pained howls and ducking her head under the water.

  Ashamed of his impulse, Roger swims back to Dixie, takes a deep breath and wills himself under. In the growing darkness, it is difficult to see anything but gray. Roger reaches out, feels nothing, sees nothing. Surfacing, he pants for breath.

  “I can’t find her, girl,” he tells Dixie. “I tried.”

  “Try harder,” Dixie seems to say, treading and yipping anxiously.

  Roger kicks his feet harder and holds his breath longer, until his eyes bulge. About to give up, he feels a strand of hair against his finger. He propels himself deeper— there is the top of her head, hair reaching out. He grabs a fistful close to the scalp and pulls up, bringing their bodies together. He wraps his arm under her shoulder and thrusts upward.

  The surface is impossibly far away until he is suddenly coughing above it. Chelsey is still. Roger floats on his back keeping her head above the water and swims onward with energy he didn’t know he had.

  The fallen maple has disappeared into the night, and all is silent, save the gentle churning of Dixie’s body alongside him. On the verge of total exhaustion, Roger decides he must return to the shore, or drown. He pulls Chelsey’s limp body out of the water and up the muddy bank, laying her on her back in the first dry, level spot he can find.

  CPR, Roger, CPR. THINK. How does it go? Roger frantically tries to recall that class he took once so long ago.

  He tilts back her head, pinches her nose and breathes into her mouth. He presses on her seemingly frail chest. He repeats the process, several times, but she does not respond. He rolls to his back, alongside her body. Futility and exhaustion overcome him as he succumbs to a dark, terrible sleep.

  Dixie whines and curls up beside Chelsey’s head. The dog does not sleep, keeping a watchful eye and ear on the moonlit river before them.

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  Sleep is a carousel of uneasy faces, of uneasy places. Roger is the centerpost and he watches as they circle around him. Esther, and the boy— his son? The White Texan and Zulé. All grim-faced and resolute, the romance side faces outward…

  And then Chelsey Dee’s dead little face, just under the water, blue eyelids and pale skin, until the eyes blink open...

  Roger’s eyes want to stick shut, but he forces them open, only to have them stabbed by a beam of morning sunlight. His hand reflexively covers his face. Every muscle in his body aches from the exertion of the swim. He had survived the night unmolested.

  The events of the night play back in his memory, and it strikes him—

  He is alone.

  No Chelsey. No Dixie.

  Roger looks about, teetering between grief and paranoia. Who took her body, and were they watching him now, laughing? Was this some horrific joke?

  The birds chirp their morning songs. The water of the river moves placidly along.

  Roger traces the imprint in the leaves where he had laid her body down. She had been there, it was not a dream. She had been there and now she wasn’t.

  And Dixie, gone without a trace? Without a bark?

  Roger rests his head between his knees and stares dully at the ground. I don’t even know how to complete the trip on my own.

  Ninety-five percent was not enough. He had fallen short again.

  Maybe he would hunt down the hyenas and give them a taste of their own medicine. Bring revenge for the death of Chelsey Dee.

  Right. Because you would be successful at that. Roger is frozen. Roger is useless. I will stare here at the dirt.

  Five minutes, ten minutes. Time crawls by, uncounted and unknown.

  The padding of feet in leaves catches his ear.

  It’s Dixie, with an oddly cheerful countenance.

  Behind the dog, Chelsey Dee steps out from the overgrowth. Her damp clothes cling heavily to her slender frame. Caked blood decorates the left side of her face, and her hair is a mucky, bloody mess. She looks like a corpse.

  A corpse holding a dead rabbit by the neck fur.

  “Breakfast.” She drops the carcass at Roger’s feet. “What’re you staring at?”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Why?”

  “You drowned.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “You were hit in the head with a rock… you went under the water. I pulled you to the shore.” Roger remembers his moment of weakness and feels Dixie eyeing him judgmentally.

  Chelsey is placidly indifferent. “I woke up this morning between you and Dixie. You seemed pretty out so I went foraging. I found this poor guy in a snare.”

  “I gave you CPR and you didn’t respond.” Roger’s voice trembles.

  “Did you check my pulse?”

  “No.”

  “See if I was breathing?”

  “Well... no.”

  “You gave me mouth to mouth?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Chelsey grimaces and wipes her lips with the back of her hand. “Not exactly how I envisioned my first kiss.”

  “This isn’t funny. I thought you were dead.”

  “Then I guess we’re both pleasantly surprised that I’m not.” Chelsey prods the rabbit with her foot. “You know how to clean that?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to eat it raw,” Roger says. “We lost our supplies with the boat.”

  Chelsey unzips a pocket on the leg of her pants and retrieves a small waterproof vial. “Never go anywhere without an extra flint.” She pulls up her pant leg and slides out a knife sheathed to her leg. She carefully grasps the blade and offers the handle to Roger. “You’ll be needing this.”

  Soon Chelsey has a small fire crackling. Roger completes his task, and they roast small strips of meat on sharpened sticks.

  Roger watches as wisps of smoke drift up through the treetops. “Are you worried that the hyenas might see that?”

  Chelsey turns her stick over the fire. “No. They’re probably sleeping off the night somewhere. The hyenas have short attention spans.”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  “Kids. Teens. They come from Roughie families, from the communes. Sometimes they’re orphans or they’re just living on the edge. They roam in packs during the summer, breaking stuff, now, even killing. It’s getting worse the last couple of years. The packs are bigger, the kids are wilder.

  “Over the winter they tend to disappear, back to their families, back to
wherever, if they have a wherever. Sometimes they just freeze to death. But in the summer they paint their bodies and rampage. You can’t reason with them; they’re going to do what they’re going to do.”

  Roger reflects on this, and thinks about how well equipped the girl was for this life. “You’re a good kid, Chelsey Dee.” He says it without awkwardness.

  Chelsey looks amused. “I haven’t been a kid for a long time, Roger.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  The undercooked rabbit meat slides around in his stomach and his clothing clings damply to his skin, but Roger feels things are looking up. He is filled with the near satisfaction of completing a trip, regardless of its ultimate outcome. The trio traverses potted roads and overgrown fields that cover sloping hills. The sun is out in its full strangeness, but despite its deformation, its rays still warm. Chelsey leads Roger to an old farmhouse alongside a long forgotten road.

  The farmhouse stands resolutely amongst fenced-in fields, aging but sturdy barns and other outhouses. The fences are in good repair; horses chew grass behind the rails and ignore them as they walk up the drive, save a careless whinny.

  A stablehand greets them casually as they walk up to the long front porch lined with empty rocking chairs. Chelsey speaks with him; if she drops a passcode Roger certainly can’t tell, but they are graciously invited inside.

  “His office is over here,” they are told, and also that ‘he’ will be with them shortly.

  Like waiting for a doctor, Roger thinks as they stand idly in a plain room with faded wallpaper and a beadboard ceiling. A chess set is arranged in the early stages of a game on a wide pine table.

  Roger recognizes the opening move— a queen’s gambit. Chelsey toes the floor impatiently. Dixie wags her tail.

  The door swings open with a creak and a young, bespectacled man enters, his neatly shined boots tapping against the rough cut floorboards.

  “Catch anything, lately?” The man smiles broadly and points to the table with the chess set. “Or maybe you have time for a game?”

  It takes Roger a moment— he hasn’t seen the boy, or man, rather, in years. But the name finds its way to his lips in the form of a question:

  “Ernesto?’

  “Hola, Roger. Long time, no see.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  “Old Roger here was quite the commando.” Ernesto laughs, leaned back in a chair behind the old pine table. “The sharpshooter. Taught me everything I know.”

  The Xbox playing neighbor kid turned Pony Express honcho has thinned out and traded some of his softness for muscle. His black-rimmed glasses and friendly eyes make him approachable. He regales Chelsey Dee with the story of his and Roger’s shootout with the home invaders. She listens receptively, even laughing at parts where Ernesto acts out and embellishes the action. Maybe it is Dixie, curled up at his feet that so readily wins her trust. The yellow dog sleeps soundly, surrounded by all the humans she loves.

  Ernesto is talkative; to Roger he seems unbroken by the harshness of the last ten years. Weathered, but not broken like so many others. Chelsey strikes Roger as unbroken, too. Himself— he was fractured at the very least.

  “There’s a question I have to ask.” Roger breaks in as Ernesto is about to spin off into another story.

  “How the hell did I get all the way up here?” Ernesto asks smugly.

  “That’s part of it.”

  “How did I end up in the Pony Express?”

  “That’s another part of it.”

  “It’s all connected.” Ernesto gazes out the window, watching the horses graze in the corrals. “After you left town I was hunkered down, doing my thing. Waiting things out. Dixie showed up a couple of days after she had ran away. We stuck together.

  “But things started getting tight. The Freedom Republic—”

  “Liberty and life,” Roger inserts dryly.

  “Yeah, liberty and life. The Freedom Republic isn’t too high on either of those things, are they? It got to the point where I had about three choices. One, join up with the republic. Except, ravaging the countryside with stiff old white guys isn’t my thing. Two, end up dead, or worse, one of the Penitents.”

  “Three, join the Pony Express,” Roger says.

  “You got it. I figured out the horse riding thing pretty quick, and I brought Dixie with me. Or rather, she chose to stay with me. I was probably the youngest rider to join. Took jobs and routes that led me north, not for any particular reason. I liked seeing new things. Dixie was small enough to ride with me in a saddlebag I customized. She kept me company on the long trails. Eventually I made it here.”

  “And now you’re the boss.”

  “More like a boss. There’s no top authority in our ranks, but there’s probably a good dozen or so at my level that oversee things now. That’s one of the things I like about this gig, you know? It’s not too structured.” Ernesto sounds proud, yet layered with humility. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

  “And then Dixie?” Chelsey’s voice is a silver bell in a room full of white noise. Roger senses she needs an adequate answer for Dixie, for how she ended up in a snare.

  “Dixie was always her own dog, you know?” Ernesto is matter of fact. “She comes when she wants and she leaves when she wants, too. One day she didn’t come back.” Ernesto’s manner stiffens. “I can’t help that.”

  On the floor, Dixie whistles through her nose with a faint snore. Clearly at peace with the situation, Roger thinks.

  Chelsey accepts Ernesto’s explanation. “She’s her own dog, for sure.”

  Roger doesn’t want to crack the veneer of the pleasant conversation being had. But they came here for a reason. Ernesto or not, the Pony Express was implicated in the vanishing of Esther.

  “Why we’re here,” Roger begins.

  “Your wife,” Ernesto responds. “I figured as much.”

  “Then I don’t need to ask you.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, hermano.”

  Chapter 17: Ambush at the Moonshine Sadie

  “Germantown. That explains a lot,” Ernesto says after listening to Roger’s account of his futile attempt to reunite with Esther. “They say nothing good ever came from that broke-down heap of a commune.” He casually checks outside the window and behind the door before speaking in a confidential tone. “I know the rider you described, and I’ve had suspicions about him for a while now. The tentacles of the Freedom Republic are reaching farther than ever. I’ve suspected that they might have undue influence with some of our riders, bribing them, or maybe even having members of the Enlisted covertly join us. Of course, we do business with the Republic, and they let us operate in their territory— our services are still useful to them— but I imagine the idea of an autonomous organization grates at them.”

  “This rider that Chelsey saw with Esther, he’s with the Republic?” A chill runs down Roger’s spine.

  “His name’s Beckett. I can’t pin anything on him directly, but he just gives me that feeling. And he matches Chelsey’s description. He’s a good rider, effective and timely, but his face is just plain unlikable.” Disdain spreads over Ernesto’s expression. “In other words, he’s a schmuck.”

  “What would he want with Esther?” Roger is about to add “and my son,” but his chest is tightening. Each breath wavers in his lungs, and his voice threatens to crack. So he inhales, exhales and waits to listen.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’ve been up to the last ten years, but you sure managed to piss them off.” Ernesto walks to a desk in the corner of the room and retrieves a wrinkled flyer from the top drawer. “They’ve had us circulating dozens of these.” He hands it to Roger, who already knows what it is— the wanted poster.

  “This is bullshit,” Roger says.

  “Don’t have to tell me. But for whatever reason, they’re holding a grudge.” Ernesto takes back the flyer, folding it, and placing it back in the drawer. “Never seen anything like it. The flyers themselves, well, they’re pay
ing us to send them around, it’s all legit. We’re not in the business of fact-checking correspondence.”

  Roger controls his voice carefully, speaking as levelly and coolly as he can manage. “This Beckett, you think he still has her? He wouldn’t…” Roger cannot finish his question, cannot handle the grimness of the answer.

  “The possibilities range from bad to worse. If the Republic is trying to get at you through her... I wouldn’t want to speculate.”

  “Speculate.”

  Ernesto swallows. “She could be dead. They might’ve had her killed.”

  “How could they be sure?”

  “There are ways, tokens that can be sent.” Ernesto toes the floor. “Or, she might be alive, held somewhere. Or she could have escaped. It all comes back to Beckett. He’s the link.”

  “Where do we find this Beckett?”

  “I have a few ideas.” Ernesto smiles broadly. “But we’re going to need some weapons.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  Ernesto leads them outside, where he puts on the pretense of giving his guests a tour of the grounds, chatting up stable hands and visiting the outbuildings.

  “And here we have our stable,” Ernesto says, swinging open the big barn doors. “Usually have half a dozen horses on hand, resting up.”

  Chelsey eyes a sack of sugar cubes. “Can I?”

  “You certainly may,” Ernesto says.

  Chelsey pats the horses and offers them the cubes, which they greedily accept.

  “Want to go for a ride?” Ernesto suggests.

  “Sure,” Chelsey says.

  Roger is less eager, but he catches Ernesto’s drift. This would be no leisure activity.

  Ernest outfits them each with a horse. As they trot out he calls to the nearest stable hand, “I’m taking my friends for a trail ride. We might get dinner at the Forks commune, so don’t wait on us.”

  The stablehand’s gaze rests on Roger for an extended moment. Roger imagines a slight furrowing of the eyebrows, a gleam of recognition from the wanted posters, perhaps. But the stablehand simply nods and waves them off. What else would he do? Roger worries. But the worry is short-lived, because he is back on a damned horse, trying his best to stay that way.