Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (55 page)

Miz Claire who never cared about anyone except herself, and who is sitting here so scared I want to crap my pants, realizing that I came within inches and seconds of finally being able to taste love and trust, and then having it go away.

Through our early years in the refugee camps, and then scrounging work as cowboys, and grubstaking the Rafter XOX and building it up, it was Mattie who taught me to see the way I was as a gift. My RAD meant I could lose people and just say, well, they're not here anymore, they're not useful anymore, that's that. I could keep going, without hesitation, calmly and precisely, taking care of our people, no matter what the loss.

And today I almost lost
him
.

Today I found out I no longer have my gift. Not where he's concerned.

*   *   *

T
HURSDAY
, M
ARCH
19, 1998, 6:20
P.M.
J
UST
S
OUTH OF
L
YONS
, C
OLORADO

Daylight was fading and the sun was already down when we turned in at Twilight Drive, a cluster of houses around a short stretch of road just off 7. Orry led us to the north end of the road and undid the combination lock on one backyard gate. “Is there a dog?” Mattie asked nervously.

“Little Yorkie, probably inside if anyone's home,” Orry said. He pulled the gate open. “Fuck.”

“What's the matter?”

“Tracks—all those tracks from the house to the back gate. That's the way up to the shelter. Nothing else up there.”

“Well, so—”

“So Dad offered to let them share if they'd let him use their property for free. But they didn't want that. Dad paid them three hundred a month to have the shelter on their property, and they took all that money, because they said they'd never need the shelter and—”

“Maybe they'll give you a refund,” Mattie said.

Orry nearly exploded before I said, “Mattie.”

“Guess that was stupid,” he admitted. “Sorry, Orry.”

“We're all tired,” Orry said. “Okay, so there'll be Dave Buchanan and his wife, Angie. Her brother Kevin usually lives at their house too, and they have two real little kids. So at worst I guess it's three against three.”

That last trudge up the snow-covered hillside was hard work. Near the top, we crouched and crawled up to the ridgeline, and looked over.

“Fuck,” Orry said. A bright campfire was burning in front of what looked like an open bank vault door in the hillside. From the open doorway, brilliant light poured into the gathering darkness. “They tore off most of the camouflage, broke the door open, they built a fire outside; shit, shit, shit, who knows how many other people have seen that by now? I can understand stealing it but they ruined—”

A man came out. “Dave Buchanan,” Orry said. Buchanan set up lawn chairs around the fire. “What the fuck, are they going to hold a fucking sing-along?”

A woman and two little kids in snowsuits came out to hold long sticks over the fire.

“Oh, Jesus God, they're holding a weenie roast,” Orry groaned. “Okay, now—”

“What are you kids doing?” a voice said behind us.

I rolled over. There was a man there with a shotgun.

“Kevin, you're wearing one of the spare coats from the shelter,” Orry said to him. “That belongs to me. The whole shelter belongs to me. You assholes need to get your shitty asshole looter selves out of my shelter.”

“Oh, shut up, boy—”

I stood up. Kevin swung the gun to point it at me, and I walked straight toward him. “You're a pussy,” I told him, “and you don't have the guts to pull the trigger, so put the gun down and—”

“I'll shoot. You put your hands up.”

I walked toward him. “Pussy, pussy, pussy. Pussy won't use his gun. Pussy's too much of a pussy.”

He raised the shotgun to his shoulder and I was looking down the barrels.

“The safety is still on, dumbshit,” I said.

He looked down. With both hands, I grabbed and yanked the barrel toward me, then wrenched it around like a big steering wheel. He let go with a cry of pain—his finger had been trapped in the guard. I swung the gun out and back to bring the butt into his crotch.

He gasped and bent over. I brought the gun back around, then over my head, then swung it down like John Fucking Henry being a Steel Drivin' Man on Dad's old CDs. The stock smashed into the back of his head hard enough to face-plant him. Then I just pounded up and down like a crazy bitch churning butter with a shotgun, whamming the stock on his head till he stopped moving. I kicked his shoulder to turn him on his back; blood had gushed from his nose and mouth.

I knelt and pulled out the big chef's knife from my coat pocket, felt for a pulse in the man's neck, and didn't find one. “Where are the carotids?” I asked Mattie.

“Uh, they run straight down from the ear, there's one on each side and um—”

Mattie gabbled about blood veins till Orry said, “Shut up. They might hear you down there.”

Since I'd already heard what I needed, I ignored them. I grabbed Kevin's bloody chin by his stupid neck beard, swung his head to one side, and cut as deep as I could along his jaw and into his neck; I felt bone scrape. Then I flipped his head the other way and did it again.

Blood just oozed out, though there was a lot of it.

“No spurting,” Mattie said. “So he's dead.”

“That was the idea,” I said. “Did the happy-happy family down there hear us?”

They were still all gathered around the fire; it sounded like one of the kids was crying and Angie was trying to soothe it.

“I guess he didn't realize guns don't work anymore,” Orry said.

“He should have tried one out,” Mattie said. “If it
had
been working, at least he'd have known whether the safety was on.”

Orry giggled. “That shotgun doesn't have one. Did you know that, Claire?”

“Nope, but I guessed
he
wouldn't know.”

“If I could guess what people know,” Mattie said, “the world would make more sense.”

“No shit,” Orry said. “Let's follow Kevin's tracks in the snow toward the shelter. If we go that way maybe we'll meet them coming the other way, and we can ambush them.”

Kevin's tracks led us down around the ridge to a big backpack. Orry opened it and said, “Yeah, canned goods and frozen food. Couple jugs of milk. We should remember to pick this stuff up after we settle with Buchanan; we don't need it right now.”

“What was he doing with it?” Mattie asked.

Orry shrugged. “Probably he was coming back from looting the neighbors, saw us on the ridge, and just walked right up. We're not exactly woods scouts, are we?”

The weird thing was, those were his last words, ever. Like one minute later, as we followed the tracks toward the shelter, Buchanan stepped out of the shadow of a pine tree and jabbed a bat under Orry's chin, full force, then brought it up and back down savagely across Orry's forehead.

I pulled the linoleum knife from my pocket and lunged forward, raking Buchanan's face from cheek to cheek across the eyes. Buchanan dropped the bat and screamed.

I jabbed forward with the steak knife in my other hand, but it just bent on his leather coat. Meanwhile I backhanded with the linoleum knife across the hands covering his face, slashing through flesh and tendons. By then Mattie was behind him, swinging with a hard sidearm to jam a wood-drill bit deep into the man's back.

Buchanan fell to his hands and knees. I stepped over him, jerked his head back by his mullet, and cut my second throat of the day. This one spurted, so I guess his heart was still going, but not for long.

We turned Orry over; he was breathing but unconscious. “We need to get him into the shelter,” Mattie said.

“Turn him on his side so he won't choke,” I said. “We need to get those assholes out of our way.”

At the fire, the wife was huddled with the two kids, trying to quiet them with, “Daddy will be right back.”

“Your husband and your brother are both dead,” I said. “This is our shelter now. Get out. Run and keep running.”

She screamed.

I remembered Orry lying back there in the snow, and how bad we needed to get him in, and the mess these redneck dipshits had made of the shelter, and just snapped. I grabbed the end of a stick in the fire and threw it at the bitch's head. She jumped back, still shrieking.

Mattie threw another one that hit her on the chest, maybe singed her coat, and she burned her hands keeping it from landing on the kids. She grabbed her little brats by the hands and started running up the hill, slipping and stumbling on the snowy slope. Mattie and I threw some more burning sticks after her. I yelled, “Don't come back, bitch!”

“Should we tell her she's heading straight for her dead brother?” Mattie asked.

“Does it matter?” I shrugged. “Think she's gone for good?”

“Probably. But let's make sure we stay alert while we carry Orry in.”

A minute or two later, as we were scooping Orry up, with me taking the shoulders, we heard a screaming wail. “See, she found out about her brother anyway,” I told Mattie.

We both laughed too long and too hard. It sounded all sick and weird. Maybe she heard us. By the time we stopped, she'd quit wailing.

We carried Orry inside into the brightly lighted bedroom, undressed him, and put him under the covers. “Never would have thought I was going to see his dick or care so little when I did.”

Mattie snorted. He felt Orry's head very gently. “No soft spots on his skull. Big bump high on the back.” We peeled back his eyelids and held the kerosene lantern close. His pupils were different sizes, and there was some blood on the whites. “All I remember about that is that it's bad,” Mattie said, “but we'll have to look that up in the survival library that Orry said they have here.”

The shelter was like Bilbo Baggins' summerhouse: three bedrooms, kitchen, toilet, common living area, workroom. A whole wall of useful books contained a bunch of medical and first aid manuals. We confirmed that Orry probably had a bad concussion, from which he could recover, but might have worse brain damage and could die from it any time. All we could do was to keep him warm and clean and gently put water into his mouth till he woke up. “Speaking of warm,” I said, “why is it so freaking cold in here? And I could really use some food.”

“I have an idea,” Mattie said. “Smell all that smoke? Bet you for sure they didn't know to open the damper on the woodstove.” He turned the damper. “Yep. Orry said the smoke goes up to some kind of condenser system that prevents a big plume going up into the air, so it's safe to have a fire here. And you can see they laid this one and couldn't get it going. Thank God they didn't think of taking kerosene from that lantern.”

“Yeah. Hey, does it have to be so bright?”

He twisted the little valve at the base. “Nope. All right, well, the damper's open, I'll re-lay this fire—it's way more than we need—and see about some cleanup.” The kitchen was a mess; apparently the family had just been breaking into things and dumping them on the floor. “We should probably put that fire out, outside, and see if the door can be blocked, will you please?”

Outside, I kicked the fire apart and dumped dirt and snow on it with a shovel. The thin crescent moon showed tracks on the snowfield, plainly and clearly. If this didn't melt tomorrow, good luck staying hidden. For sure there'd be more crowds on the roads soon. But for tonight, the dark and cold would probably shelter us.

When I went back inside, Mattie had the fire going. I dragged the door closed on its remaining hinge, then lashed it by its handle to a board I propped diagonally across the frame, and stuffed some spare towels into the remaining crack. I hung a string of bear bells on that diagonal brace; if anyone tried to break in, we'd know.

That night Mattie and me shared the double bed that was probably built when Orry's mother was still living with his dad.

Mattie curled up against me with his face in my neck. I could feel his tears running down.

“You okay?”

“Just thinking about how scared I am not to have Mom and Dad anymore. And about how hard I cried for that poor murdered little boy on the road, and taking care of the dog . . . and then I thought, I just chased a mother and her kids out in the snow to die. After I killed her husband.”

“We don't
know
that they're gonna die.”

“Claire.”

“Okay,
you
don't know. And I don't
care
.”

He cried harder, and hung on to me. It was easier to put an arm around him than anything else.

What the hell, he was warm.

*   *   *

F
RIDAY
, M
ARCH
19–S
UNDAY
, M
ARCH
22, 1998
J
UST
S
OUTH OF
L
YONS
, C
OLORADO

The snow melted early the next morning as another chinook came in. We moved Buchanan and Kevin into a dry creek nearby. Mattie said that bears or coyotes or dogs gone feral would mess them up enough so that no one would be able to tell we'd killed them, and anyway probably no one cared.

We rested, ate, and made sure that condenser chimney was really working.

Two days later, we got up to find another blizzard blowing, and Orry, who had never awakened even when we'd dripped water into his mouth, was dead.

We gave it some time in case it was just a coma, but after we'd had breakfast and cleaned up, he was cold and stiff.

“I was thinking,” Mattie said. “We've been seeing billows of black smoke south toward Boulder, north toward Lyons, and southeast toward Denver, right? And the cities will run out of food soon, but right now everyone's locked down by the snow, right?”