Summer Of The Apocalypse Part 9

She traced a figure in the dirt with her finger, shrugged her shoulders, looked at Eric like a portrait artist, smoothed the figure out again and retraced it. Eric shifted positiona"his back was crampinga"and the woman glanced up, like a bird, half rising from her crouch. Her eyes, reflecting fire light, met Eric's and he shook his head, no. Please, he thought, please don't go. There was something inspiring and beautiful in her, some primal element that made her seem more tree and stone than human. He couldn't place it. Scratches covered her legs; her hair was matted and tangled, but the line of her arms and legs, the strength in her thighs. In this position, her muscles bulged, and Eric decided "scrawny" was a wrong word to apply to her. Hard was better. He remembered women who worked out in the Gone Timea"he'd had a poster of some on the wall of his room when he was fifteena"aerobic instructors with smooth, rounded muscles, tanned skin, beautiful hair. They were . . . buffed. The Earth Dancer's musculature looked efficient, not showy, pure animal. He imagined her grandparents or great-grandparents in the Gone Time, driving to work, probably in a Volvo, stopping for breakfast ata"what was that place?a" McDonalds, having an Egg Mcm.u.f.fin and drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup. Eric remembered a friend of his in school talking about a schoolmate of theirs, a pathetic, fat girl who waddled down the hall, the b.u.t.t of jokes. He cringed at the memory. Undoubtedly both of them were dead now, gone in the plague. Old friends and bad jokes all lost. His friend had said, "She's built for comfort, not for speed." The Earth Dancer looked built for speed, like she could take on a mountain lion.

Teach whispered, "We find signs of them in the woods: cairns of stones arranged in circles, and animal bones carefully stacked."

"How many of them are there?"

The woman sidled around, looking at whatever she was drawing on the ground from a different angle. Teach said, "The land can only support so many carnivores. A hundred and twelve people live in Highwater. I'd guess their tribe might be half that size."

She stood, hands resting on her thighs, and waved her hand at Eric, a beckoning. He looked behind himself at the fire and the men around it, then back at the woman. She waved again. He pointed his hand to his chest. "Me," he mouthed. She waved a third time, more emphatically.

"She wants you to follow her," said Teach. "I wouldn't."

"G.o.d," someone said. "It's a summoning. It's like a deer asking you to dinner."

"More like a dream."

"I wish she'd ask me," said someone else wistfully.

She walked a few steps away and motioned to Eric again.

Eric faced Teach. He felt a swelling in his chest. The woman, he thought, for a moment there was like Leda, intent and focused. "I'm going," he said. He thought, What am I doing? But she stood, her hand outstretched to him, and everything felt right. Her dancing, the ceremony to moon light and night, the nakedness and vulnerability of it all, felt right, mystical. He would go with her and he would be safe.

"They must know you," said Teach. "Maybe they watched us following you, or maybe they've always known you. They've never tried to communicate with us." He sounded a little jealous. Eric brushed dirt from his pants and walked into the darkness. A few strides into the clearing he looked back. Teach and his boys stared after him. A couple waved. He turned and followed the woman. For the first few hundred yards, walking was easy. The Earth Dancer stayed ten feet in front of him on a faint trail that started on the other side of the old highway. A bright moon provided enough light to see his step although he couldn't tell if shadows on the ground were holes or safe places to set his feet. Then the trail grew steep, and the woman, her skin the color of moon, used her hands to brace herself as she climbed.

Sandy soil and rip rap skittered beneath Eric's shoes, and he grabbed tree roots, weeds, and rocky outcrops to keep from slipping. "Where are we going, young lady?" She shook her head impatiently and kept moving up. The trail was steep, and several times Eric got close enough to smell her. He wrinkled his noise. She was rank, but it wasn't really an unclean smell, he decided. She smelled like... deep caves, moist and warm and close, and like crushed leaves. Aggressively female too.

The trail quit climbing. They'd reached a high ridge that sloped away to either side. In the valley to Eric's right, the fire flickered through the intervening trees, and the highway shone like a pale ribbon. Now that his eyes had fully adjusted, he walked as confidently as he would in full daylight. Ahead, the rest of the Earth Dancers waited, squatting by the sides of the trail. They gazed at Eric as he pa.s.sed, faces white and neutral, eyes aglitter with the moon. None looked over thirty. He wondered if their life-spans were short, like medieval man. Did they have any kind of doctoring, or had that disappeared too? "Do any of you . . ." The sound of his voice breaking the silence startled him. "... speak?" Far away, a coyote yipped and a host of others joined in. No Earth Dancer replied. Eric said, "I'm feeling over-dressed for this party." One of the men walked beside him, casting quick glances from the corner of his eye. Eric felt like he was being measured in some way. He sighed. "Lots of nights I've kicked my clothes off too." And he had. Since his house was a couple of miles from his nearest neighbor, on hot summer nights he would sit on his porch and watch the stars slip behind the mountains one by one. A wink and they were gone, and after he'd sat long enough, he'd feel a part of the revolution of the Earth, a speck on a plate, tilting, tilting ever up. After hours on the porch, he had no illusion that the stars moved, and he wondered how anyone could have ever believed that they revolved around us.

Ahead, a mountain swallowed the ridge, and the trail turned right, becoming a narrow shelf road. He kicked a rock over the edge and it bounced and clattered for seconds, starting a half a dozen other rocks on their way before reaching the tree line. The woman led the way, then Eric, then the rest of the party. He started whistling the theme music to The Bridge Over the River Kwai to hear the sound. The woman peeked over her shoulder. He launched into a second chorus, and another whistler joined him. Eric grinned. In a moment, they were all whistling, and he laughed at the image of it: a hard, wild naked woman powdered in white, followed by an old man from another time, followed by the rest of the tribe, all whistling a tune from a one-hundred-year-old movie about a war that only he knew anything about. After a third time through, he stopped, and they walked in silence again. A hand patted him on the back. The man behind Eric ducked his head when Eric looked at him, but he thought he saw a smile. At the next turn in the trail, the woman stopped and Eric nearly ran into her. She stepped to a rock wall that blocked the trail and slapped her hand sharply on it three times. A rope ladder tumbled from above. When she reached the top, she waved him up and he followed clumsily, having a hard time finding the loose rungs with his feet as the ladder twisted. Swinging from one side to the other, he banged his hip twice. The rope felt ragged and homemade. He wondered what they used to make it. Another Earth Dancer, this one an unpowdered blonde woman, seven or eight months pregnant, held a torch that instantly ruined his night vision. Eric thought, Ah, they do use fire. She handed the leader a torch, lit it for her, and they waited for the rest of the Dancers to join them. The flickering light showed the entrance to a mine. Huge, rough beams framed the entrance, and beyond them, bright sparkles reflected the light back to him.

The pregnant woman led.

What is this? Eric thought. The mine's walls and ceiling were pure gold. He inspected closer, but the torch moved several paces farther away, and the bright color faded to gray. Down the shaft, golden light bathed the two torch bearers, while the rest of the Dancers waited for Eric to continue. He touched the wall, and something small and flat fell into his hand. He hurried to catch up. A turn brought them into a large room that smelled moist and human. Other torches sputtered from niches in the walls, revealing the home of the Earth Dancers. Piles of skins dotted the floor, and Eric thought at first that this was a storage room until he spotted eyes looking at him from each pile. Here the walls were golden too. Eric took down a torch and held the flame next to the piece he'd taken from the shaft. One side was white with a dark stripe along its length. He flipped it over. It was a Visa Gold card. He walked around the room. Thousands of Gold cards covered the rock, each held with a tiny bit of something gummy. It might even be gum, he thought, but where would they get so many cards? He checked the back of the Visa he held. The signature read, Mason Withers, which matched the embossing on the front. He checked others; they were all embossed and signed. "G.o.d," he said, "what a horrible job collecting them must have been." The Earth Dancers watched him. "Someone was very persistent," he added, holding up the card.

The woman, who he now thought of as his Earth Dancer, pulled on his shirt sleeve and tugged him toward a shaft at the back of the room where the rest of the Earth Dancers had gathered. "Okay, I'm coming." He pulled away to stick the cards he held back in place.

Light green covered the walls in the new shaft. He checked. "American Express," he said to her. "Don't leave home without it."

Pure white reflected the light in the small room the shaft led to. Eric chuckled. Sears cards, of course. In the middle of the room stood a large grandfather clock. Earth Dancers formed a semi-circle around it and sat on the stone floor. The woman lit two torches on the wall, then placed her torch in an empty niche. She knelt in front of the clock and pressed her forehead to the floor. How out of place the clock looks, Eric thought. A beautiful piece of work, though. Its mirrored oak finish and polished bra.s.s fittings called to his mind paneled drawing rooms. No, smoking rooms, where ma.s.sive, overstuffed leather chairs held proper gentleman who smoked pipes and read from gilt-edged books. "Your drink, sir," the butler would say, and in the background, the grandfather clock ticked majestically, calling out the hour with measured chimes.

All of the naked Earth Dancers leaned toward the clock until their foreheads pressed against the floor. This is a cathedral! I'm in a place of worship. Why have they brought me here?

After a minute where no one moved, the woman, barely raising her head, crawled to the base of the clock and opened the gla.s.s front that covered the weights and pendulum. Blindly she groped in the cavity until she touched the pendulum, then she pushed it so if began moving back and forth. Each swing grew shorter, and the clock didn't tick. She pushed it again, looking at Eric this time.

"It's just a clock," he said. His face flushed, and he felt embarra.s.sed for their posture. He pictured their wild leaps at the moon, their wonderful patterns of dance. They belonged. They were scary and primitive and feral, but they seemed proud. He was the one that was out of place, in his clothes, in his remembrances. "It's just an old, dead clock from a world that never existed." He spat the words. Anger filled him too. They hadn't chosen him from the camp because there was a special connection. They didn't know him from anyone else. He was just the oldest, the most likely to know how to fix the clock. The closest human to their parents' age.

She kept her head on the floor. The pendulum stopped. Eric's] head sagged. He felt tired. It's late, he thought, and I should be asleep. Voice thick with irony, he asked, "Does anyone know the time?" Her eyes pleaded with him to help, and again she reminded him of Leda whose eyes were so expressive, and he said, "I'm sorry." He didn't know exactly why he was apologizing, but he knew he should. "You're not responsible for your G.o.ds. I mean, they're not your fault. You've been sold a bill of goods by moms and dads who didn't even know what they were doing."

He thought, at least this G.o.d, if that is what it is, when it works is visible. At least this G.o.d is dependable and regular. This G.o.d keeps good time, and a G.o.d could do a lot worse than that. He stepped into the circle, and, not knowing what to do, bowed a little before peering into the clock. The woman crawled out of his way.

"Have you tried pulling on the weights?" Bottoms of three acorn patterned, bra.s.s weights barely showed at the top of the case. "Of course you have." But he pulled one to the bottom anyway. When he let go, it rattled back to the top.

"I had a pendulum clock once," he said. "Here, give me a torch." No one moved. He got one himself and held it so it cast light inside. This is tricky work, he thought. When the flame approached the clock close enough to see the works, it also scorched his cheek. He didn't want to singe the wood, so he put the torch back, reached inside and worked by touch. As he hoped, just like his clock at home, the main weight pulley screw was loose so that the gear on the back of it wasn't engaging anymore. Awkwardly reaching both hands inside, he pushed the pulley wheel against the gears, then tightened the screw by hand. This time when he pulled the weight down, it stayed.

"Here goes," he said and pushed the pendulum. The ticking echoed loudly in the small chamber. Dawn light doused the last and brightest stars as Eric and the Earth Dancer climbed down the steep path into Coal Creek Canyon. "It's been a pleasure," he said, "being able to help you." She reached the bottom and waited for him. During the hike back, she stayed much closer than she had on the way to their home. In the morning light, she seemed much smaller than she had in her moon-lit costume, and though she seemed no less animal-like, she was less threatening. Her smell at close quarters was almost overpowering, pure mountain creature.

Eric found himself staring at her as she walked in front of him across the highway, the muscles in her back and b.u.t.t contracting pleasantly at each stride, and even though she was narrow-hipped, she still had a slight side to side sway.

"Stop it, Eric," he said. "She's young enough to be your great-granddaughter." Then to her, he said, "You know, some of the young men I'm traveling with have dreams about you. Maybe you ought to not be such a stranger." She didn't even look back. He'd been talking to her the whole walk. No one in camp appeared to be awake yet. Fifty yards from the sleeping men, she stopped, facing Eric. He thought he might have a few dreams about her himself. "I'd invite you for breakfast, but I think you need a coat."

Impa.s.sive, she looked at him, and he could tell now, peering through the white powder that covered her face, that her eyes were brown. He wanted to shake her hand, or hug her, but he was sure she would run away, and now he didn't want this odd meeting to end. "You'll have to fix the clock yourself the next time," he said.

The woman reached out and held his wrist. Shocked, Eric flinched but didn't pull away. She pressed his hand against his chest, then pulled it to her breast, holding it palm flat to her. She said, slowly and distinctly in a low, throaty voice, another reminder of Leda, "Don't tell them where we live." Then she let go and ran across the road. Eric stood for a long time watching the last place he'd seen the Earth Dancer. Finally he walked into the camp, trying to decide what he could tell them of the night. Before he bent over to shake Teach awake, he realized he could still feel the shape of her breast in his hand.

After a breakfast of strong herb tea and hard bread, where Eric told the party almost nothing of his evening, Teach pulled him aside.

"You got some secrets last night, that's obvious, but maybe you can tell me something about this." He took Eric to a spot outside the camp where a blanket lay on the ground. "We covered it up so the wind wouldn't get at it."

He pulled the blanket away. "It's what the Earth Dancer woman was drawing in the dirt before you went with her. Does it mean anything to you?"

Eric rubbed his throat, and an almost religious ecstasy filled him. The world is a magical stage, he thought; she did choose me. She knew who I was. The drawing, sketched in the dirt she had smoothed so carefully, was a noose.

Chapter Twelve.

HIS FOOTSTEPS.

No breath! Eric opened his mouth widea"his jaw pressed against the rope buried in his neck, but no air came in. Pressure pulsed in his forehead and droned in his ears.

He thought, I don't have to die. He pointed his toes and felt beneath him for the stool. Darkness hid it. He was blind. If I catch it with my foot, I can tip it up or maybe stand on it. His foot b.u.mped something and he stretched, but he couldn't find it again. I'm spinning or swinging, he thought. Reach! Take the weight off the rope. Breathe! His tongue filled his mouth. Time slowed. His hands clenched in fists behind his back, firmly tied. He opened thema"felt his fingertips press together. Consciousness divided. A part concentrated on the sensations: rope, choking, dangling; a part separated and saw him twisting above the floor, and a part went back to his fingers touching behind his back so much like prayer. Dad used to take him to church every Sunday when he was little. He kicked his feet, weaker now.

The pews were hard and after a few minutes Eric wanted to squirm to find a comfortable position. Once, he remembered believing that the Devil made him feel this waya"it was temptation. The rope dug deeper. I'll last longer if I don't move, he thought.

If he could just stay perfectly still, then G.o.d would recognize his virtue, but the longer Eric remained motionless, the harder the pew became. After a few more minutes, he began to itch. First behind his knees, then the middle of his back.

Odd, I don't hurt, he thought.

Finally, even his eyeb.a.l.l.s. In agony, he prayed for strength to resist the itching, his fingers pressed together. "Oh, G.o.d, come to me now and stand between me and the Devil." He concentrated, strained to hear the voice of G.o.d, waited for some sign to show that G.o.d appreciated his efforts. A sweat bead dribbled down his forehead and into his right eye. He resisted the urge to wipe the stinging away. He imagined himself like a nun, down on his knees in some bare cell, a plank and a plain blanket for a bed, a severe Christ bleeding from deep wounds hanging from the wall, the only decoration. The Devil comes for the righteous. The Devil wrestles in the privacy of the mind, in the hollow s.p.a.ces between faith and fear. Speak to me, G.o.d, he thought.

Dad leaned over and whispered in Eric's ear, "It's not the prayer part of the service, son," and then Eric knew his Dad and the Devil worked together.

Eric felt his spin slowing, or maybe it was a trick of the inner ear. He remembered a short story t.i.tle, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

He thought, I should pray. Now I lay me down to sleep ... Yea, though I walk through the valley... I pledge allegiance to the flag...

Eric thought, it's the prayer part now, Dad. He could feel himself losing consciousness. His legs numbed. Even if he could touch the stool, he wouldn't be able to control his limbs. He couldn't save himself. But I don't hurt. The rope gripped his neck like a strong hand, and he realized, strangely, that he was happy. I hope the dark-haired woman is okay. Maybe she isn't, but I tried. I'm not a kid. I did something. He began to rise, pressure dropped from the rope, and he thought, I'm ascending! and he wished he'd prayed more in the last few years. His pastor used to preach about being "ill prepared to meet your maker." Since he was ten, he had thought of himself as an atheist, or at least an agnostic.

"Breathe, d.a.m.n it," said the dark-haired woman, her voice coming from the black below. Her hands gripped his thighs, and he felt her head between his legs pushing him toward the ceiling piggyback. He sucked in air down his burning throat, then began coughing.

"That's it," she said. "Open that airway."

His head knocked against a rafter, and spider web covered his face, but he was breathing. He filled his lungs and coughed again, then inhaled deeply.

"Thank you," he tried to say, but it came out a croak. He swallowed and said it again, a bit more clearly, though still rough.

"I haven't got you down yet," she said. "I can't hold you forever." Eric felt her quiver.

In another part of the house, voices shouted. Inarticulate. All rage. Loud thuds. A gunshot. Silence. Eric strained to hear more.

The woman spoke urgent and low, "I'm going to move to the wall and untie your rope." Eric ducked his head out of the rafters. She turned and stepped to the wall. His head b.u.mped the concrete.

"Sorry," she said. "Now stay balanced." She let go of his legs. He gripped her ribs with his feet, and he felt her respiration, quick and even. As she fumbled with the rope, she said, "We got to ambush them when they come down. It's our best chance. You stand on one side of the stairwell, and I'll stand on the other."

His pulley rattled and he knew the rope was free.

"There," she said. She bent and Eric slid down the wall until his feet touched the floor. Her hands steadied him for a second, then untied his neck. "You're lucky the knot didn't slip. The noose should have tightened, and I might not have been able to get it off." She bent to his wrists. "When your hands are loose, grab a stool. We'll nail the first one down."

"What was the shot?" Eric whispered.

He sensed her shrug. The darkness in the bas.e.m.e.nt was complete. "Lover's quarrel, maybe. But it was only one and whoever is left won't be pleasant, a.s.suming either one of them is shot." Eric said, "That would be a blessing." His hands wouldn't work. They were wood. And it was all he could do not to fall over. He felt blindly for the stool, and when he found it, he had to hook his wrists under the seat to lift it. Fiery tingles rushed into his fingertips. He grimaced but said nothing, then slid along the wall until he reached the stairwell.

He said, "How'd you get free?"

She whispered huskily across the s.p.a.ce between them, "Small wrists and hands. I almost hoped he'd try something like that. All I needed was to be let down." Her stool sc.r.a.ped the cement, loud in the dark room. "Of course, it was a stupid plan."

Eric set his stool down and rubbed his palms together. "Why?"

"Jared's big. Girls my size who think they can do anything physical to stop a determined guy his size are just fooling themselves. You need a gun."

He remembered the almost out of body feeling he had when she was being attacked, like he had been in her mind. Jared pressed down, an inexorable force, hot gusts of breath in her ear, on her neck. He offered weakly, "Maybe if you threw your knee, you know."

She snickered, not unkindly. "Yeah, sure."

Black silence stretched between them. He set the stool down, rubbed his hands together. They almost felt normal. "They might both be dead."

"Doubt it." Cloth sc.r.a.ped against cement. Eric guessed she was sidling along the wall. "I'm going to get that bat," she said. "We'll see how he likes his toy when somebody else is playing with it."

"Are we going upstairs?"

She whispered back, "Only thing we got is surprise. They don't know we're free. Jared let me down, but he's got to figure my wrists are tied and that I'm leashed to the wall. I couldn't have undone the rope with my teeth, so he won't necessarily be in a hurry to come back. If Meg shot him, then she probably has no idea at all. Ha! Got it."

Now that they had the bat, Eric relaxed. Not that it means much, he thought. They've got at least one gun, and they could come in blazing. I'll look pretty dumb holding this stool above me when I get shot.

"Don't try for the head," she said, returning to the stairwell. "Hit low. A sharp thwack on a knee or shin will hurt enough so we can get a second swing in. You miss the head and you're dead." Eric snickered.

"'Scuse me?" she said.

"You rhymed." He thought, I'm not going to die on that rope. I'm still alive. A breath that seemed long and pent up whooshed out of him and he giggled again. "Dead head." She said nothing for a second, then giggled too. "I saw them once, the Grateful Dead. Used to be my favorite t-shirt."

"I'm more into AC/DC," said Eric.

"So you go both ways?" They laughed. Eric covered his mouth to m.u.f.fle it.

"Led Zepplin too. When the levee breaks. . ."

"You got no place to go." She said, "My name's Leda."

"Eric," he said.

"Nice meeting you, Eric."

They whispered secrets about rock-n-roll for a long time until, despite his best efforts, he drifted off. Eric shook himself awake. Soft, gray light filled the bas.e.m.e.nt. Leda sat with her back to the wall, her legs flat in a "V" on the floor, the bat resting on her thigh. She snored softly. He rolled onto his side, moving the stool.

"What. . .what?" she said, frantically grabbing the bat and rising to her knees.

"Shhh. . . sorry. I made a noise."

Dropping onto her hands, her hair covered her face. "G.o.d, I thought I was dreaming." She looked around. "We'll have to go up after all."

Tension gripped him, tightening his stomach. They were upstairs: bloated Jared and hard-hitting Meg. And a gun. Eric sucked air between his teeth. "I'll lead."

Mercifully, the stairs didn't creak. Eric, holding the bat now, slowly tested each step before putting his weight on it. They climbed higher. Looking back, he saw her smile grimly, and beyond her, just visible, the feet of the still dangling dead man.

On the kitchen counter, foul dishes were piled precariously. Eric crept past them, quietly opened a door next to the counter to reveal a washer and dryer, and a back door.

"We can get away," he hissed.

She shook her head. "No, I have to know what happened. I won't ever feel safe." Her eyes were round and deep and intense. "Okay."

He peeked around the corner into the small living room where maroon curtains cut most of the morning light. Dust motes swirled lazily in a narrow shaft that slipped through a gap between them. A shadow of a couch crouched under the window, and a pair of recliners faced a television. He couldn't imagine Jared and Meg sitting in them, watching a show. But the room seemed so suburban. The light beam ended on a pleasant landscape on the opposite wall.

"The bedroom," she said. "Could be they're sleeping." Her voice quavered. She's scared too, he thought, but she's going on. It made him feel braver.

"Smells bad," he said. Holding the bat in front of him like a probe, he moved into a hallway, past a bathroom, then past a bedroom with boxes of canned goods piled to the ceiling. Blotches spotted the carpet. He bent down, touched one. It was wet. The door to the last room was partly closed. He pushed it with the end of the bat and it creaked as it opened. Bad air wafted around him, menthol, alcohol and the distinctive smell of vomit. Eric wrinkled his nose.

Micro-inch by micro-inch, he edged his eyes by the doorway. A dresser covered with empty blood bags spilled from a carton, then the end of a bed, someone under the covers, someone with bare feet on top. Then, jeans. A red flannel shirt. Meg lay motionless on her side on top the covers, back to the door, her arm across Jared's chest who faced the ceiling, the blanket pulled up neatly under his chin. An almost black stain soaked the blanket above Jared's midsection. Clearly, he was dead, his face rigid and held in a grimace that wasn't quite human. Eric couldn't see a gun.

Leda crowded behind him, pushing him into the room. She held his arm against her. A sheer curtain covered the window, but through. it Eric saw a tree, and a car parked on the street. Everything felt surreal. How could he be here? How could he be in danger? The sun is rising. Wind is blowing in the leaves.

Taking the bat from him, Leda eased herself to the edge of the bed and reached out to touch Meg. Without moving, Meg said, "He was a bad, man."

Leda gasped and jumped back, banging into the closet door, Eric almost ran out of the room. He gripped the doorsill, panting like he'd run a race.