Selection Event (7 page)

“You're a pal,” he said to her.

She pushed her head once against his leg and then rested her muzzle on his knee, waiting for his next move.

“Let's go do it,” he said to her, “whatever it is.”

He locked the door of Delana's apartment when he left.

Chapter 10

“I gotta travel,” Diaz said, adjusting his mirror-surfaced sunglasses on his nose and then swinging his leg over his bike and settling into the wide leather seat. “When I'm on my up cycle, I gotta move, go places, do stuff. Tonight I'll blow into Reno, look around tomorrow, and about sundown, head for Denver.”

“Across the desert?”

“Straight across. But I got safeguards,” he said with his grin. “If my machine blows and there's no vehicle to be found far or wide—” He popped open one of the saddle-boxes and pulled out a pair of white high-top roller skates with yellow wheels. “On a good day, no hills, I can make fifty, sixty miles on these.”

“You're kidding. Roller skates?”

“Yo. Street skates and a big canteen. Laugh not. What am I supposed to haul on this thing, a bicycle, a canoe?”

“I was just starting to think you were normal.”

“An error made by many casual observers.” He shook his finger under Martin's face. “I'm unstable as they come. I see things sideways. I figure I get to New York in three, four weeks' easy travelin', then my down-cycle hits, I weather it out in some five-star hotel, eat all their food, wait till the good times roll, then see what I do next.” With his toe, he nudged out the kick-lever, lifted himself into the air and dropped his weight on it. The bike chugged, coughed black smoke, and then rumbled slowly and evenly, a bass purr. “A beauty, ain't she?” he said over the noise.

“Diaz,” Martin said, “come back by sometime. If I leave this place, I'll put a note in the mailbox there, let you know where to find me.”

He nodded, did his big grin, and twisted the accelerator. Over the noise he chanted, “Stompin' my pedal to the floor, wanta see me some more, what else you got to show me? Drive, I said, cause I'm one of the few that ain't dead, still got a brain in my head, a belly that's been fed, so let's hit the road now.” Another bigger grin. “I'm a poet, I know it, I don't show it, I'll prob'ly blow it.” He knocked it into gear, eased out the clutch, and rumbled down the street. Turning backward, he waved. “Ciao, pardner!”

Martin waved back but Diaz didn't see. He had gassed it and was gone.

Martin stood on the sidewalk a minute longer, till he could no longer hear the bike's motor, and then went into the house, Isha trailing behind, to read the letter his parents had left him. It would be a day of goodbyes.

Goodbye Delana, goodbye Diaz — so he would say the last one. He sat on the sofa, the papers between his fingers, and hesitated. Once he read the final words, all his past would be over, all his ties would be gone, and in front of him there would only be what future he decided to walk into. His future. By himself. His alone. All his options would be open.

He unfolded the pages, began reading, and heard his mother's voice.

Hello, son. First we want you to know that we love you and we are not uncomfortable.
 

....

With the pen gripped in her fingers, the woman looked at the blank pages. “I don't know what to say.” Her eyes were rimmed with tears, but she did not cry.

She sat on their sofa, her husband next to her, with Isha at their feet, watching them carefully.

“I want to see him again... once more.”

Martin's father had one arm around her. “I know.” His voice choked off. He took a deep breath. “I know.”

They had awakened that morning with headaches and a slight fever, so they knew they had only a day or two remaining. It was the eventuality they had prepared for. Already, most of the neighborhood was vacant, and the day before, three people had gone down their street to see if there were any confined pets. Mr. and Mrs. Lake had said goodbye to their remaining friends, their house was clean, everything was in order, and they were ready.

The man reached behind him to his back pocket and took out his wallet. From it he removed a photograph — actually a piece cut from another photograph — of Martin, when he was 24, with his mother. It had been Christmas and they had their cheeks pressed together, caught in mid-laugh. He put the picture on the coffee table.

“I didn't know you carried that,” she said, studying it.

“For quite a while,” he said.

Isha bobbed her head and pushed her long muzzle against his side and snuffled.

“And my sweetest half, of course,” he said, petting her.  

“What will we do with her?”

“We leave her for Martin. He's due to come out in a month. He's had no physical contact with the outside, so he will be safe till he comes out. And when he comes out, in the worst case, if he's exposed right then, he'll have at least three days. Forty pounds of food and a tub of water should last her till them.”

“We know he'll come back here.” She nodded and put one hand atop her husband's. “Now, what do we say to him?”

“We don't want to sound grieved or... tortured,” he said. “Or hysterical.”

She smiled a little. “We never sound hysterical.”

 He kissed her neck, just below her ear. “I think there's a bottle of wine in the refrigerator. Before we talk to our son, why don't you heat up the French bread. We have a few grapes, and the cheese will go bad if we don't eat it. We'll go outside, have a picnic in the backyard. We can write to him out there.”

She leaned her head a moment on his shoulder. “We were all set to be grim, weren't we.”

They spread a blanket under the mulberry tree and ate warm bread and grapes and cheese and drank wine and threw Isha's orange tennis ball for her to retrieve. They even laughed.

Several times they thought of Martin as being there, quietly listening as they talked to each other about there being more birds this season and what they would do if they could do things over again.

His father wrote, “I would have married your mother first, instead of second, and I would have been more like Isha. I would have smelled the air more often and listened to what I could hear. I would have done for the last fifty years what I'm doing now.”

“I would have talked your father into having more children,” his mother wrote. Then she lay on her back on the blanket with her hands clasped behind her head and looked into the jungle of leaves over her. “I would have had more picnics.”

The man had been admiring her upturned arms and her neck. He put down the pen, leaned over her and kissed her mouth. They knew it could be one of their last.

She folded her arms around him and said private things. They were quiet for a while, then they wrote their last words to Martin, straightened everything up, put the pages on the kitchen table under the paperweight rock, had a final cup of coffee together, and left the two cups unwashed on the counter. Then they drove down to the clinic.

....

We love you, son.
 

Martin stared dully at the last line. The last door to his past had closed. His new life had begun.

Part Two

 
The New Order
 

Chapter 11

The next morning, he awakened to Isha's barking. As soon as light hit his retinas and he could focus on being awake, he knew something was wrong — her barking was alarmed and ferocious. He swung his legs off the sofa and sat up. Isha was at the front window, her ears back, glancing at him and then continuing her shrill, rapid alarm.

From outside, a strangely amplified voice announced, “We're armed but we're friendly. We want you to come out.”

In front of the house, up on the lawn, was a green and tan camouflaged Land Rover, and behind it, with just his head showing, stood a man in a beret with bullhorn. He was round-faced and had dark eyes and a thin mustache.

“Come on out. You just met civilization.”

Martin was not comforted by that statement. Another head bobbed up. It was Stewart.

“That's one of them,” he heard Stewart say excitedly. “There's another one too, a big guy.”

“Where's your friend?” asked the man through the bullhorn.

Martin opened the front door but not the screen. “He isn't here,” he said.

“Throw out your weapons.”

“I don't have any weapons.”

The man with the bullhorn conferred with someone concealed behind the Land Rover.

“We don't believe you,” the man announced. “Come out with your hands up.”

“You're friendly, but you're telling me to put my hands up. Why?” Martin asked. It seemed like a reasonable question. And after being underground for a year, it made him instantly angry that someone would stand in front of his house and yell at him through a bullhorn. “What have I got that you could possibly want?”

The man with the bullhorn said something inaudible, and a third person, a gaunt, hollow-eyed man with thin red hair, came up from behind the Land Rover and laid a rifle across the hood of the Land Rover. He sighted along it, aiming it at Martin.

“We could come in and get you,” said the mustached man through his bullhorn. “Or we could just kill you. Be a nice boy and come on out. We have some things to talk about.”

Beside him, Isha looked up at him anxiously.

Leaving the door open and disabling the screen latch so Isha could push it open, Martin went out. The morning air was crisp and chilled his skin. He put his hands in his front pockets and stood on the porch. “So?” he said.

Stewart ran out from behind the vehicle, pointing and babbling. “He's the one! He's the son of a bitch that shot my car! He has a gun in there.”

“Shut up, Stewart,” the man said evenly.

Stewart shut up and looked sullen.

The red-haired man with the rifle nodded and seven or eight other men appeared from around the house and from behind other cars the neighbors had left along the street. All of them wore similar camouflage fatigues, all of them hollow-cheeked and silent. They moved slowly and stared unwaveringly at Martin, holding their weapons ready. The man with the rifle sighted along the barrel at Martin's chest.

“My name is Cord Curtiz. I am the First Leader,” the man in the beret said, strolling around in front of the Land Rover. “You'll call me Mr. Curtiz. And you are?”

“Martin.”

“Good, Martin. That's good. We're conversing already, exchanging information. That's the essence of civilization, isn't it?”

“Sure it is. One person threatens to kill another to get what he wants. Sounds like civilization to me. What do you want?”

“Martin, I can see that you're just the kind of person I've been wanting to meet. You're direct, you come to the point, and you aren't easily intimidated.”

“What do you want?”

The man in the beret grinned. “And you're persistent. So am I, Martin. So am I.” He nodded and smiled at the ground as he strolled one way and then the other in front of the Land Rover. His thumbs he hooked in his belt loops. There was a huge serrated knife on his hip and his olive drab camouflaged pants were stuffed into the tops of his highly polished black boots.

He looked up at Martin and grinned. “We live in important times, Martin, and I've got one very simple little idea here. My simple little idea is that if we want to bring back America as we all remember it, we have to get organized. That sound like an idea to you?”

“In the America where I lived, I didn't have anybody parking on my lawn and pointing a rifle at me. What do you want?”

“We're here, Martin, because you might be dangerous. I don't think you are. I think we can work out a cooperative arrangement.” There always seemed to be a faint smile on his lips.

“He shot my car!” Stewart yelped, windmilling his arms. “He's responsible and he should have to pay for it!”

“You're getting in the way of progress,” the man said to Stewart. “You know what can happen if you get in the way of progress.”

Stewart's mouth dropped open half an inch and he lost color. Then he backed away. What Stewart knew Martin suspected he would probably find out all too soon.

“As I was saying.” He walked over now and stood directly in front of Martin. His dark eyes were faintly crows-footed and his mustache precisely trimmed. He smelled of menthol aftershave. “We can work something out between us, Martin. We need more people, not morons like Stewart, to help get things together. I want to get us organized, find more survivors, have some organization, and bring back some civilization. How bad an idea is that?"

To help clarify the situation, Martin thought he would push it a little: “What if I don't want to join?”

The man's face didn't change, the faint smile was still there, but he took his thumbs out of his belt-loops and propped his fists on his hips. “There aren't many people left, Martin. You know that. We need everyone. If you deny us your help, then you're hurting us. If you hurt us, Martin, then you're getting in the way of progress.”

“What if somebody gets in the way of progress?”he asked.