Moriah

• Moriah (Eden Book 4)
  
• Midpoint
  
• About the Author
  

For Garet Jax and Raymond & Andrew Garth

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords.

ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-140-9

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-141-6

Eden: Moriah
copyright © 2013

by Tony Monchinski.

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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“I Never wanna die/ I Never wanna leave/ I’ll Never say goodbye/ Forever, whatever”

—Foo Fighters,
Walk

“How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.”

—Cormac McCarthy,
Suttree

Riley dragged herself out of the water, over the stones of the riverbed and into a grassy field. Exhausted and soaked through, the autumn chill left her shivering. The river, swollen from the rains, had swept her downstream. How far, she did not know. The field she crawled through was surrounded on three sides by hills carpeted with orange- and brown-leaved trees. They stretched a short distance before becoming mountains.

She had lost Anthony’s beanie in the river.
That damned beanie
. She hated the thing, but her breath was catching in her throat as she considered its loss. Overcome with grief and mounting enervation, Riley did not take note of her surroundings.

She did not notice that the grass she lay in was parched. The rain had missed this area and the summer here had been extremely dry.

She did not see the upper half of the two thousand pound Mark 84 bomb jutting from the earth in the center of the mead. Riley lay among the brittle onion grass and Golden Rod, bone-weary, unaware of the explosive ordinance’s proximity.

Nor did Riley see the man sitting with his back against the weapon.

But he saw her.

Lowering the single lens field glasses, the man let the minocular hang from the cord around his thick neck. Now this,
this
was interesting. He had been sitting here for some time, not really expecting to see anyone, and this one was definitely
not
the one he had hoped to see. Still…

He rose to his full height, over two meters, and looked about the field. The woman was apparently alone. He had watched her pull herself out of the river to where she now sprawled.
Like something the cat had dragged in
, his father would have said. Judging by the looks of her, and the fact that she appeared unarmed, he didn’t expect she was going to be able to put up much of a fight, even if she wanted to. He slung the FN FAL .63 with the chain saw mounted under the barrel over his shoulder, but left his Australian Outback Drover coat open, the butt of the .357 revolver holstered in a belly band around his midsection. Just in case.

Riley heard movement in the grass and rolled over to her hands and knees before standing unsteadily.

The man approaching her was tall and huge and cloaked in a full length sheep herders coat. His ebony hands were empty but the rubber grip of the big six shooter at his waist was obvious. He wore the strangest looking black goggles attached to a headpiece with faux dreadlocks sprouting from it. He was not a zombie. Was he a mutant?

She didn’t know what he was.

* * *

When he reached her, he saw that she had been crying.

“You know you’re being followed?” he asked.

The woman looked the worse for wear but she also looked ready to throw down. She was in some kind of fighting stance, one leg out in front of the other, hands open in front of her.

“Relax.” He held his hands out at his sides, open palmed. “Take it easy.”

“Who are you?”

“Boy…” He looked her over, thinking,
yeah
, he had been right in his assessment: Something the cat dragged in. “You look like you’ve been through hell.”

“I said, ‘Who are you?’”

As he pulled the Oakley Medusa hat and goggles off, revealing his shaved head, the man thought this woman was in no position to be making demands of him. But he didn’t see how answering her would do him any harm, so he did.

“Call me Dee.”

“
Dee
?”

“Yeah.”

“Dee?”

“Yeah, like the fourth letter in the alphabet.”

“How long have you been watching me?”

“I was just sitting, over there…” Dee turned and pointed behind him to the bomb. Riley saw it and her eyes widened in disbelief. “And I saw you get up out of the water and come over here. That’s all.”

“Is that what I think it is…?”

“Well, it’s not a nuke, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“How do I know you’re not with
them
?” Even as she asked it, Riley saw how this man Dee made no move to threaten her, even with the pistol in his belt and the big battle rifle slung over his back.

“How do you know I’m not with
whom
?”

“The people I—forget it.” Riley waved her hand. “What do you think you’re going to do to me?”

“What do I think I’m going
to do
to you?” Dee was puzzled. The way she said it…it came across as a threat. He wasn’t planning on doing
anything
with her and he told her so, and after he had told her so he asked, “Why—what is it you think I was going to do with you?”

She looked him up and down, less warily though still on her guard. He was pretty damned big. Tall. Black. And bald. His eyes looked tough, but not cruel. Riley looked from him to the river, but only for a moment. “You have no idea what I’ve been through the last few days.”

“Those people behind you have anything to do with that?”

Riley turned her back on him again, staring across the field and up the river, but she saw no one. When she turned around to tell him so he hadn’t moved any closer but had extended the minocular to her.

“Take a look.”

Riley relaxed her stance and lowered her hands. She took the proffered lens. When she figured out how to focus it, she saw them. The redhead was in the lead. The son, Tommy, followed, and then the brothers, David and Keith. Behind them, MacKenzie and Rodriguez and Gammon and others she didn’t know the names of.
So many of them
.

“Shit,” she muttered to herself.

“Maybe you should come with me.” It was just a suggestion.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I don’t think you especially want those people to catch up with you, now do you?”

She did not answer right away and Dee started to wonder what he was getting himself mixed up in. Maybe it would be better to leave her here, let her deal with whatever she had gotten herself into. He did not know this woman. There might be a good reason people were after her. Maybe she had done something to deserve it.

“Just give me a gun,” Riley said. “Give me that revolver you’ve got there.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for any number of reasons.”

“Like what?” Her voice nearly cracked, on the verge of hysteria.

“Listen, I don’t mean to alarm you…”
Yeah
, Dee thought, he would definitely have to extricate himself from this situation. This woman wasn’t right. “…but do you really think you’re in a position to make demands here?” She did not answer. “And its obvious those people pursuing you are responsible for whatever it is you’ve gone through—and whatever
that
was, it’s obvious it sure wasn’t good. Am I right?”

Riley looked back over her shoulder to the river again.

“So, what am I going to do?” Dee considered aloud. “Give you
my
gun? It’s got six bullets. You count how many people are coming down here after you?”

She shook her head.

“Yeah, well I have. There’s more than six of them. And even if you’re the best shot in the world, the way you look right now, if I hadn’t walked up on you—you would have fallen asleep right there. You’re done. You’re not in any shape to fight today.”

“You don’t understand…” She looked at wit’s end. “You don’t understand what they did!”

“You’re right, I
don’t
.” Dee had a change of heart. He didn’t like to see women cry. Neither had his father. “So why don’t you come with me and tell me about it. I give you my word: I’m not going to try and hurt you, unless you try to hurt me.”

“No, you don’t get it.” She was shaking her head vigorously. “I have to…I have to kill them, all of them, and then I have to find
him
.”

“Find who?”

“Why should I tell you?” She almost barked back.

“You’re really going to persist with that crap?” Despite what his father had taught him, he was ready to turn and walk away, to leave her to her fate.

“No,” she answered, distraught.

“Good.”

“This is crazy.”

“Damn right it is.”

She blurted it out: “I have to find a man named Bear.”

Dee paused and looked at her anew. “You say you’re…” He wanted to make sure he had heard her right. “You’re looking for someone named Bear?”

“Yes!” She nearly yelled at him. “Damn it! Give me your gun, mister,
please
.”

“I can’t do that. And now you
have
to come with me.” Dee made to reach out and grab her arm—“Come.”—but she pulled away, looking like she might bolt at any moment.

“Get away from me!” But she wasn’t making to run from him. She had settled into the fighting stance again, feet shoulder width apart, a slight bend in her knees, one hand up near her face, the other down by her waist.

“No—no—no, listen to me. Okay?” Dee stepped back from her, holding his hands up. “Listen. I know this man you’ve come to see.
Bear
? I know Bear, okay?”

“Yeah, right.” Riley shot back contemptuously. “How do you know him?”

“What I want to know…” It was the way his voice changed—like Dee was protecting someone—that sold Riley, “…is what
you
want with him.”

“I have to find him.”

“I heard that.
Why
?”

“That’s for me to tell him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Please—do you really know Bear?”

The black man in the Drover coat just continued to look at her.

“Take me to him, okay? Then I’ll explain everything.”