The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (14 page)

She looks serious, the way I looked in the Real Times when I talked about ghosts that lived in my closet, or tapping I heard under the bed. “Old hungry,” she says, “make supplies of all.”

**

If I can smell the old Munies, the Brown Beast can, too. It shows this by letting go of the Tree, turning toward them and waiting for them to come out of the Wood. There's nothing we can do but what Child said, wait for them to attack the Beast and then crawl away with the shouts covering our foot sounds and the scent of our escape.

Bushes move, and then the damaged croaks of Munies dragging their dry legs against the Grass find our ears. The Brown Beast opens its mouth of teeth and shouts back, making them slow and spread.

“Be ready.” We crouch on the other side of the tiny house, where there are no Tree stairs but there are enough branches to climb down. I keep the blanket around me to keep the Sun away. When we hear the screams of the old Munies, their hands and feet running at the Beast, we move.

Child takes the branches fast, moving down to the first and then the next. Her arms and legs work together in a way which is amazing to see. Mine aren't as good as hers but they still surprise me when I drop to the second Branch and my feet keep me steady by staying above and wrapping around the first. Then it's the third and then the fourth with two smaller ones to go. Before I can check on Child again she's already on the Ground and running away.

But her limbs are younger and more practiced than mine, and in the second I take to check on her my Feet lose their place on the Branch. My balance is lost and my Shoulder impacts the Branch in front. It bursts with pain and my Fingers lose grip. Before I can get it back I slip from the Branch and fall through the Air, bouncing off the last Branch and impacting with the Ground, the blanket floating down to the Grass next to me.

My Eyes lose the Light. Then the Light is back but the sound is gone. Then the sound is back and filled with Munie croaks and Brown Beast shouts and Child is over me pulling on my Arm until my Legs tingle, so I move them around and stand and take the blanket and run with her.

The old Munies are losing. One of the males is under the Beast, where it's already found the Death. A male and a female face the Beast with nails bare and Blood falling from their bodies, mouths wide and falling blood, too, while the other female is to its side making loud moves and shouts to distract the Beast and give the others a chance to attack or escape. Their skin hangs from the claws of the Beast, but also from the claws of too many Days.

Child leads me away, saying, “Quick, quick!” and we run between Trees lit loud with Sun, through Bushes and Grass full of colors I want to stop and see but can't because we don't have the time, need to get away from the Beast and the four Munies who-

“Four?”

The feel of nails on my Neck. My Lungs stop breathing as the nails pull me off my Feet and Sky fills my Eyes. Grass is under me and the last male hunches over me. He must have circled around to sneak up on the Brown Beast but saw us escaping and decided we were easier Supplies.

I'll make him wrong about that.

The dusty skin around his mouth stretches to let him hiss, but it surprises him to hear me do the same. It surprises me more. I use his stopped moves against him by scratching four lines across his chest and he screams into the Air in pain. In the dark center of me, in a part I've seen once before and only for the seconds I was ripping at Tom, something wakes.

Something forever as the World.

Something I like.

My Legs wrap around the Munie. My Teeth find his arm and push into the warmth until its falling down my Face. It feels as beautiful as the Sun. The Munie howls but it doesn't help him, the others are gone or found the Death and Child is on his back biting into the soft shoulder, making him howl louder.

We're being cruel, I decide, so I end it quickly.

The Munie lays under us, so still I can hear the World again, and it sounds like a great thumping in the Grass, a shuffling that comes closer. I turn and find the Brown Beast close to us with its mouth wet and the teeth inside pink.

It shouts to say it's about to run at us, to attack. I push Child back with one Hand and aim the other at the Beast's thick body, its fur shaking with anger. And even though it's as big as four of me, even though it could pull me in half with its claws, even though my Brain is screaming inside my Head and my Heart is choking on its Blood, because Child is behind me, I shout back.

Our eyes talk for a long time. It makes a final sound and then it walks off into the Wood. When I can't hear it anymore, I continue our path toward the small buildings at the top of a long hill, in the place where the Sky meets the Ground.

**

We stay to the shadows, moving fast and quiet. It doesn't take long to travel the long hill to the top. By watching the way the Sun moves in the Sky, it's two hours and then some. Behind us the low path through the Mountain can all be seen, the entire Wood stretching past the house in the Tree, a tiny, brown speck now in the center of all green. I can't believe I can see something so small so far away but my new Eyes use the Sunlight well, and I should take the few, small gifts that come with the one, big curse.

Far in the distance we came from: dust. Maybe a fight, a kill, something big moving in the dirt. Not enough minutes to think about it, have to keep going. Have to keep walking.

We come up over the hill and onto the first street. It scares me how it's barely changed since I was small, all the houses with their shingles and garages and rooms I used to think were impossible to cover in silvery tape, but now I don't have to because the Air won.

I haven't seen it in so long. The Town of my home.

**

My Feet push through the Bastard Water and the things I feel floating on top. Child follows behind. “I know you don't want this. I don't, either, but the streets are full of danger.”

“Then why here?”

She's right. Trying to find a safe place for Child, I've only found more danger. But this is what life is, it's ten places of danger to one of safety, and that makes the safety even more important. Even more alone.

“A Lake lives at the center of this Town,” I tell her, “and at the center of the Lake is a piece of land with a great, big house on it. You can live in that house safe from the Munies, making Supplies of the slippery Beasts that swim in the Lake. That's the safest place I know.”

I turn the Night Eyes louder. Either the Bastard Water or the things that live in it are going between my Toes, and I don't like the feeling. It's hard not to scream and run but I have Child to think about. The Munies won't be down here, not under the street where it's dark and the Ground is Water, but that doesn't mean it's safe. Beasts live here with tails and teeth, and winged ones that find the filth. We walk the path as straight as we can, turning only when we have to, and whenever I think ten minutes have passed I find a place to climb and check the Town to see if the houses are familiar.

I have other reasons for traveling this way.

Graham was right about the Change going quicker under the sun's push. I was only in it a little when I felt myself go vicious and attack that old Munie. It was worse than what I did to Tom because it wasn't just survival or protecting Child, it was something I liked. I felt good and I had to stop myself. The Sun was on me for two hours after that and it started to disappear some part of me, something important I've held for a long time. The blanket helped, but I had to get back to the dark before I was total gone. I had to slow the Change.

I don't want to keep looking at the Town but I have to see where we're going. I see older Trees that have fallen onto cars and houses, but from their Deaths new Trees grow up, young and green and lifting where they can. This way when an old Tree falls it isn't so bad. I think more than many other things, this is what life is. If it is, I was wrong to leave that old Munie on the Ground. If we don't make Supplies out of their Deaths the Beasts will anyway.

The Bastard Water is higher as we get closer, first at my Ankles then my Knees. When it's up to my Stomach Child starts to struggle so I let go of the blanket and pick her up and carry her, both our Night Eyes aimed forward, looking for the ladder and hoping we don't see eyes glowing back at us. When I check the houses again they look too familiar, like the pictures I see in my sleep, except the windows are gone and the shingles fallen.

I know which part of the town we're under. Even though I shouldn't, I'm looking for my house.

When I check again, I find it.

Back down the ladder, Child's heart is loud in her chest as she holds to the wall and moves a Water shape with her finger. It's only a shoe, but her shoulder still twitches when I touch it.

“Find lake?”

I tell her, not yet.

**

The metal bones of the swings still stand behind the house, but the seats have come off from the pull of time. With a kick the chains make their sound down in the Grass, the Grass so tall without the loud machine or my father to push it. The Wood fence around it has fallen, which is good because we got in where it fell, but we can see the street from the Grass, dangerous because if we can see the street the street can see us.

Munie sounds come from the Town. Running and hunting sounds.

“After my father closed the door,” I say, “I went to my bed, trying to sleep.”

**

I tried to pretend everything was okay but my Lip was changing the color of the pillow. I didn't know what to do, so I pretended my mother was there. I kept her in the middle of my vision until I could see her in front of me and hear her voice in my Head.

Go to the bathroom, she said. Turn on the cold water and clean the cut. So that's what I did. When she told me to put a towel in the cold Water and hold it to the Lip, I did that, too. After some minutes I took the towel away and the Blood was gone. My mother was right, like she always was.

My father opened the door a long time later, after I put the towel and the Stuffed Beast inside the pillow and hid them under my bed. He said he was sorry but there were things he had to do to stay home with me while my mother was away. If he didn't do them, he said, the house wouldn't have a roof and the kitchen wouldn't have Supplies. I didn't understand this, and he left without seeing my Lip.

The days after that passed in my room with the door and the windows shut, not in the Grass or on the swings. The Sun was too loud and it hurt my Eyes. I only came out to see my mother's face on the Vision Screen and ask her when she was coming back. I took Supplies to my room and ate them in quiet and slept on the bed with the pillow underneath.

One Day, when the Sun woke, I heard the voice of my mother. I wasn't sure if it was in the house or in my Head until I heard the door open and there was her face, not on the Vision Screen but right in my room. She was one week, five days early, and as her arms went around me she said how she couldn't wait anymore to see me and oh my God, I felt so small and skinny. My father smiled from the hallway and I was happy.

But then my mother's eyes changed. I could see she was looking at my Mouth. She asked me what  the line was but I didn't say, and she asked my father but he didn't know. She asked me again but she was angry now, and I didn't want her angry I just wanted her home, so I went to my bed and pulled the pillow across the floor and I told her what happened.

They left me alone, but I heard the shouting. I heard my father say he was sorry. I heard my mother say his head was somewhere else and not at the house and if he loved that place so much his body should go there, too. The house went quiet after that. In the days that followed it was only me and my mother, which I liked sometimes, but some nights she sat by herself in her room and didn't say many things, and I didn't like that.

I didn't go on the swings again that Summer. I knew they were danger, they hurt my Lip and they hurt my father and they hurt my mother. But it was the jump from them that did those things, the wrong jump, not just the swings that brought the Blood and made my mother quiet. I knew that when I looked at them. I know it now, because that's what life is. It's doing the wrong thing, and watching the World fall.

**

It's time to go inside. We leave the swings, the place I went so high in the Air I left my family behind.

The door isn't locked, the house like no years have passed, like my mother could be in the other room putting away Supplies. My father could be sitting in the important room, mad that someone put dust on everything. But I look in the kitchen and in the room and they're not there.

Too many pictures come to my Eyes to see any of them clearly, parts and pieces that impact and become one. Playing, laughing, crying, talking to my mother as I leave for school. Watching rain through the window. The pictures come and leave until Child touches my Leg, and when they shatter from my Eyes I see how dirty the house really is.