Moriah (5 page)

“Word to the mother.” Tris sounded unimpressed.

“I hate the damned heat.” Bruce huffed. “
That
kind of heat.”

“Relatively safe…,” continued Dee “…aside from several million zombies, but we’ll deal with them. Our people here were packing up, were going to head out and meet everyone else at the ocean. Then you showed up.”

Unbidden, Tim returned and handed Riley a second plate of food. She thanked him.

“And you have that picture, and now the Bishop is talking.”

“Yes I am.” Fred Turner smiled down at his cat. “I waited years to hear God’s voice, like Elijah on Mt. Horeb.”

“You ever hear it?” Tris looked suspiciously at Fred.

“Today.”

“How long have you guys been out here?” asked Riley.

“Here?
This
camp?” Dee asked her by way of answering. When she nodded, he said, “A few years. The last really big zombie battles ended for us, what? Three, three and a half years ago. We’ve been resting up, collecting what information we can, sending scouts out, getting ready for Africa.”

“Where were you before this?”

“All over the east coast and further south. Before that out west. We went where the zombies were.”

“Except for the hot zones,” rasped Bruce. “We stayed clear of those.”

“There are five thousand of you?” The number boggled Riley’s mind.

“Give or take. We’ve got about three hundred left here at this camp at the moment.”

“We were twenty, thirty thousand once.” Kevin looked sad as he said it.

“What happened? Zed?”

“Yeah,” Dee confirmed. “Zed happened. But we left people behind along the way too. You clean out a city or town, you lose some people, the ones that stay behind to start repopulating it. Most people can’t go on fighting forever.”

“And the ones who think they can,” Bruce looked at Tris as he said it, “
shouldn’t
.”

“The Lord is my shield and the horn of my salvation,” Fred recited from memory. “My fortress and my deliverer, my stronghold.”

“Isn’t that nice?” jeered Tris.

Riley had wolfed down the second helping of food.

“Want more?” Tim asked her.

“No, thank you. In a little while. It was delicious. What was it?”

“Goose.”

“Goose?” Riley had never eaten goose before.

“Yeah.”

“I had no idea those things tasted so good.”

“Back before all of this,” Bruce gestured to their world, “those goddamn geese—excuse me, Bishop—they used to be a protected species or some shit. You couldn’t kill ‘em, couldn’t eat ‘em. And all they did was shit all over the place.”

“Please…” Fred fixed Riley with a gaze that radiated warmth and kindness. “Tell me the details behind this photograph. Tell us how you got here.”

Riley breathed out and did so. She told them about the two men who had wandered into New Harmony; of how Evan thought her brother looked like the man in the picture; how she and Anthony had confronted their father and how he, in turn, had sent them to see a woman named Gwen.

“Gwen!” gasped Fred. “My Lord, how is she?”

“She’s okay,” said Riley. “I guess.”

“I knew her husband, Bobby. He was a fine man, a good Christian man.”

Riley continued, explaining how they had set out from New Harmony with the guide. She spoke of Krieger’s fate in the mountains. She hesitated at times, as she recounted their confrontations with the mutants and Thomas’ people. And she had to stop when she got to the point where she described the death of her brother.

“You think your friends made it?” Victor asked her.

She shook her head.

“What happened to this Thomas motherfucker?” Tris demanded.

“I killed him,” Riley said bluntly.

Bruce cocked a thumb and forefinger and leveled it at Kevin, who nodded approvingly.

“And she got away,” said Dee. “And you eventually found me, at the bomb, right?”

“That’s right. You saved my life.”

“Well, look at you,” Tris remarked to Dee. “Super-hero homeboy.”

“The bomb,” Carrie was awed, “that thing is still out there?”

“No one’s blown it up yet.” Kevin sounded equally amazed.

“And Dee,” Tris didn’t ask, “you said you saw them following her.”

“I did.”

“You counted how many, ten?”

“At least. Hard to tell. They were still a way off.”

“Well, they’d be stupid to try anything here.” Tris told Riley, “Our sentries are all on alert. If these people show up anywhere near here, we’ll take care of them.”

“We’ve seen mutants like you described,” noted Kevin. “Remember New Jersey? What was that place?”

“Budd Lake.” Bruce whistled. “Yeah, those were some nasty fuckers up there.”

Tris snickered. “They died real good though.”

“Yes they did.” Bruce shared a smile with Kevin and Tris.

“Is Mickey still alive?” asked Fred.

“He was when I left.”

“The plague. God almighty. To live that long with it. Even Job only faced boils and the death of his family.”

“
Only
?” The derision dripped off Tris’ tongue.

Riley pulled out the second photograph she carried, the picture crumpled and damp.

“Who’s that?” asked Victor.

“Me, my brother, Anthony, and our dad.”

“Let me see that.” Tris snatched the picture out of Riley’s hand none too gently. She studied the photograph and as she did so she shook her head. “This your father?”

“Yes.”

“Your biological?”

“No.”

“This shit just keeps getting weirder. I knew this motherfucker. His name is Steve, right?”

“You know my dad?”

“Sure I knew his punk-ass.” Fred Turner took the picture from Tris and looked it over as the black woman continued. “When people were leaving to go and fight and die, he was too scared to come along, the little bitch. Remember, Carrie? This motherfucker didn’t want to go with us to Eden.”

“Tris—” Dee tried, but she ignored him.

“Uh-huh. I can see you know what I’m talking about. Sound like your father?”

“He sure does look like Harris,” Fred marveled. “Your brother. You probably have a lot of questions for us.”

Riley did.

“What happened to Bear?”

“He was here one day,” Bruce held out one hand, then the other, “and the next he wasn’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“He up and left,” stated Dee.

“He must have known he was dying,” said Tris. “The cancer gets everybody eventually.”

“Except you, right Tris?” Bruce winked.

“Cancer won’t kill me,” the woman behind the scars promised.

“It wasn’t cancer.” Dee was shaking his head. “He was just gone one day.”

“Did he leave anything?” Riley pressed. “A note?”

“He left this…” Kevin reached over and picked up a notebook. He looked at Dee, who said, “Go ahead,” before he handed it to Riley.

“What is this?” She started to leaf through it.

“There was a warehouse we used to raid for supplies,” explained Fred. “Every time we went there, me or John—that was my boy—we would find Bear off by himself, in what used to be a little office. He’d be reading this. Whoever had written in it was a bunch of bones behind a desk by then.”

“So that’s where it came from…” Dee’s voice trailed off.

Riley read aloud from the notebook:

“
We had to call them something
,
so we came up with a variety of names
…” She looked up from the notebook. “You’ve all read this, I assume?”

“Yeah,” confirmed Dee, but when Tris snorted he amended, “Most of us.”

“And you’re really the black angel?” Riley shut the book.

“The black angel
of death
,” Tris corrected. She looked at Kevin and Bruce. “You hear how they’re shortening my name already? And I’m not even dead yet.”

“I don’t know, Tris…” Kevin commiserated.

“Yeah, Tris,” said Bruce. “Black angel sounds kind of bad ass enough.”

“Fuck that noise. Black angel my
black
ass. Let me ask you stupid white boys a question: when you think of angels, what you think of?”

Bruce and Kevin looked at one another.

“You think of little pudgy babies,” Tris told them. “That’s what you think of. You think of mercy and…and
benevolence
, and other bullshit. Cherubs. Add
black
to that and what do you get? Some warm and fuzzy multicultural watered-down pussy-assed bullshit. That’s what.”

Dee cocked his eyebrow. “Your point being?”

“My point, likkle dread bwoy, is that the black angel
of death
negates
all
that bullshit.
Of death
. Understand?”

“Were you Bear’s wife?” When Riley asked, Kevin and Bruce both sputtered while Dee groaned.

Tris looked angry. “Is that what they’re saying about me? Jesus H. Christ.”

“No, I just thought—”

“Don’t think, chicken.” Tris glared at Bruce. “And what are you laughing at?”

“Nothing, Tris.” Bruce had a hand to his mouth and was trying to control himself. “Nothing.”

“Better be nothing.”

“Woman, you’re getting meaner as you get older.”

“You’ll have to excuse Tris,” Kevin mentioned to Riley. “She hasn’t killed anything in about a week, so she’s feeling kind of irritable.”

“And you want me to go to Africa,” Tris muttered. “Fucking Africa. For what? Rescue a bunch of jungle bunnies?”

“Tris is mad at life.” There was sadness in Dee’s eyes as he said it. He wasn’t trying to be funny.

“You’re goddamn right. Because life’s a motherfucker.”

* * *

“All of us here,” Dee remarked to Riley, “you know what we got in common? He saved us.
Bear
saved us. Each one of us.”

“More than once, too,” added Kevin.

As Dee said the words he looked at Tris. “Even the ones who don’t like to admit it.”

“I should have died in New York City,” declared the disfigured woman.

“We went down—well, I mean we were up in New York State then,” Carrie offered by way of explanation. “We went down to the city twice. The first time, what I was telling you about in the tent, Bear left us.”

“That’s when they rescued Fred here,” said Victor, “and his cat.”

“Kate and Phil, Larry and Keara as well,” Fred added quietly. “There weren’t many of us left by then.”

“I don’t know how we got out of there that first time,” Carrie resumed. “The place was full of those things. It was,
insane
I guess is the best word.” She shook her head. “We got out of there because of you, Tris.”

Tris did not answer.

“The second time we went down, Bear was leading us,” Carrie resumed her story. “And we went down there in force.”

“That’s when they met me,” said Dee.

Bruce grinned at the memory. “You were just a little nothin’ back then.”

“Took us six months to clear Manhattan Island alone,” Kevin remembered. “We lost a lot of good people.
A lot
of good people. I thought for sure Tris was dead on Fifth Avenue.”

“I should have been.” Tris nearly spat. “Here’s what you need to know about me,” she addressed Riley directly. “When this shit all started, my husband and kids, they got bit. They turned. I killed them.” As she spoke, a far-off look came to her eyes. “My husband tried to put up a fight. He was a tough man.”

“But he wasn’t tough enough,” Bruce pointed out. “Ain’t nobody as bomb as you, Tris.”

“I’m not a religious woman…” The distant look went out of Tris’ eyes, and she was back in the moment with them. She looked at Fred quickly as she spoke. “…but I’ve always hoped I’d see them again, the way they were.
Be
with them. That time in New York City—I thought that was
the
time.”

Riley noticed that as Tris spoke, she fingered the grenade hanging on her neck.

“We’d gotten cut off from everybody else, outside the library on Fifth Avenue. The street was thick with them, thousands and thousands of them. You ever seen that many of them? Ever had to
smell
that many of them? No, of course you haven’t…

“I climbed up on top of one of the two lion statues they had there, and I picked Zed off as he climbed up to get me. My people were dead. I was alone. A helicopter came in—one of those Apaches, AH-64. The pilot must have been a crazy flyboy to bring it down into that cavern, tight as it was. They unloaded on the dead—and I gotta admit—it was fun to watch those fuckers die like that. Fuck ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em!” Kevin spit and accidentally hit Bruce’s boot.

“Hey!”