The Second Intelligent Species: The Cyclical Earth (12 page)

I wasn’t just fighting to save my own life, but to save the life of those four children and their nurses. One of them was Beth.

I reached up with my right hand and dug my finger into the eye of this big bastard who was trying to kill me. My finger went into the orbital socket as eye goo ran down my arm. He still didn’t let go. I clawed, punched, and dug at him as fiercely as I could. A tidal wave of fear overcame me. Not the fear of dying, but the realization that I had failed the others. I started to black out when he just went limp and fell on top of me. When he fell, he released his death grip on my neck. I could feel warmth all around him. He was all covered in blood and so was I. Close to passing out from lack of oxygen, I still had enough consciousness left to be confused by the blood. I could smell it. Other than his eye, I had done little damage.

It took a few attempts to roll his limp corpse off my chest. I saw Beth, shaking, vomiting and crying all at the same time. She had the Leatherman in her hand.

She had killed the big guy before he killed me. Being a nurse she knew just where to stab a man for the quickest, most efficient kill. She had stuck him under his arm and lacerated an artery, then again in his chest under his arm, piercing his lung. One last jab in his mid back sliced his liver.
She never had time to reach his carotid artery. He collapsed before she could.

“Nick, Nick, I’m sorry I followed you, but I couldn’t let you leave us alone.” She bent down to pick up the flashlight that was still on.

I tried to talk but my windpipe was crushed and I was worrying about breathing, let alone talking. Air was getting in, but only enough to make me crave more.

“Breathe, Nick, breathe.” She shined the light into my eyes. “You’ll be fine in a couple of minutes.” After diagnosing me, she kept on to the business that I was unable to do.

As I recuperated I was amazed at how quickly she left me to fill the containers.

Beth twisted the pipe wrench and filled the canteens, baby bottles and soda bottles. “You still okay over there?” she asked as she worked, her voice uneasy.

“Mm hmm,” was all I could muster at the time.

She set the flashlight down on waist-level pipes. I could see her for the first time in a long time. Still crying, and shaking, she stripped, and washed the blood off with the lukewarm water from the leaking pipe. Then she turned the flashlight towards me. “Are you feeling better?”

I slowly got to my feet and stripped down. I was covered in blood and shit. I didn’t answer her.
After washing myself and my clothes, I put the same wet clothes back on. I had thought about taking the clothes off the two dead guys, but one was covered in as much blood as I was. We did take Tex’s clothes. We could use the material for torches, or toilet paper.

Beth carried the backpack as we started back to the others, leaving the two bodies where we had laid them. When I panned the area to see where I was going, the flashlight caught something. I went back to it to see what it was. There on a pole was a human head. Upon closer inspection I could tell it was Mick’s. His nametag was pinned to his face. He had been too free with information. Too many people wanted the type of escape that he kept in his pocket. He’d said it was like money now.

“I bet they have his retirement fund. I bet it’s still in the tower.”

“We’ll look for it, but if we find it, then I’m in charge of it and you don’t tell anybody about it. Okay?” she said.

“No way. Look what happens when you talk too much.” I pointed to Mick’s head.

We walked back up to the tower and looked on the bodies and all around, but no drugs could be found. Mick must have taken their location to his grave—as if he was given one.

I double-checked each man’s pockets. “I was hoping these guys might have a gun or some kind
of a weapon. They didn’t even have so much as a knife or a pipe like I did. I don’t think they had been here long. They weren’t well organized or anything. I wonder if they were even the ones who killed Mick. It would have been hard to cut off his head without a knife.”

“I think they were guarding this place for somebody else. These guys didn’t seem like they had the initiative to do this on their own. They were probably put here to frighten people away. Whoever put them here probably didn’t expect them to encounter anyone anyways.” Beth paused. “Let’s get to hell out of here. Whoever’s eating Mick’s body is going to need a drink soon. I don’t want to be here when they do.”

Chapter 16

One More

We walked in the dark, not wanting to waste the batteries in the flashlight.

It was hard to walk because we drank as much water as our bellies could hold while we were at the tower. We were bloated and uncomfortable, but we needed as much water as possible.

“Do you know where we’re going now?” she asked.

I hadn’t made any long-term plans. “Down to the others, then…” I stopped because I didn’t have an answer.

“I’ll tell you where we’re going, back the way we came. Then to Buffalo. The Eco-Meat plant is on the way. There must be something left. I can get water. You start me a fire when we stop to rest. All those cans of food are still at the building we spent the night in, and I bet that we can find more. There are fewer people in the country, less competition. We need to get away before the diseases start. We need to get the children out. We can’t keep them quiet. They’re going to attract attention.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” The most important thing of all was she expected me to build a fire. I couldn’t let her down. How in the hell was I going to start a fire, short of rubbing two sticks together? I was starting to panic. We were almost with the rest of the group and I hadn’t thought of a way to start a fire.
Think, think, think, asshole. Okay. I’ll need a strong stick to use as a dowel, then another one to use to hold the top and another one at the bottom, I can use my shoe laces as the string to spin the dowel, I can whittle some dry wood for kindling… Yea that’s the ticket, maybe I can; or maybe I can find a battery, some plastic, birch bark, …
. Then I realized that everything I could think of was probably burned already.
Why did she give me the hard part?

My deep thought was interrupted by the sound of something moving near a dumpster. I immediately went on full alert and reached for my knife. “Hey, get out of here!” I yelled more out of terror than aggression. My tubing was getting cleaned out today.

Whatever it was came running out of the darkness before Beth could turn on the flashlight. Beth found the switch about same time that we both figured what it was.

“I know youse guys,” said a small voice with no face.

Beth shined the light on him. I couldn’t remember his name, but I recognized the burns on his head and back.

“Marcos, is that you?” Beth pointed the beam directly at his face.

“How do you like your canteens?” he asked. The innocence of his youth spilled out of his smile and all over his cheeks. After all he’d been through, he could still smile.

Beth knelt down in front the boy. “Are you okay Marcos?”

“Can I stay with you? I’m scared and I’m thirsty and I’m hungry. C’mon let’s go hide.”

“What happened Marcos? What happened to Mick? Where’s everyone else?”

“I think there all dead,” he said.

“What did you see?”

“Some guys came up behind Irene and cut her neck with a knife. There was more too. I ran away and hid behind a burned bus. I watched where they couldn’t see me. I saw the train man fighting with two guys. He was winning for a while, but then the guy who killed Irene helped the other two. He couldn’t beat up all three. He started to scream. That’s when I ran away.”

Beth stood up and examined his wounds. “You can stay with us. There are some more kids you can play with just up the road. We’re going to take a long walk and get out of the city. Have you
ever been to the country, Marcos?” Beth reached for his hand but he cried out in pain when his arm lifted. His burns were making his skin tighten up to the point that he didn’t want to move his arms.

Fortunately Beth was only four foot, eleven and one half of an inch tall. She only had to slouch down a little to hold his hand.

Before she shut off the flashlight, I noticed her gradually stand more upright. She wasn’t being lazy. She was doing it to exercise Marcos’ arm, to keep it flexible, so he didn’t lose his range of motion.

“I think it’s starting to rain, I just felt a sprinkle,” she said to Marcos.

I went back to thinking about how I was going to build a fire. Now I had to do it in the rain.

We could hear the babies crying. They were in an alleyway between two masonry buildings that hadn’t collapsed—actually pretty smart of Beth to put them there. Their crying could only be heard in about one general direction, and it was quickly apparent that it wasn’t going to end soon.

Huddled in the far corner the two women held the children, but keeping them quiet proved to be an impossibility.

While Beth gave everyone water, I kept looking for something to build a fire. I walked by Maria. Every now and then the flashlight would cross her face. I could see she had witnessed horrors in
the darkness. Even though she was taking care of the little ones, her stare was off into the emptiness, aimed at some imaginary target.

She jumped as if startled. “Does anybody have any cigarettes?” she said without breathing enough air to finish the sentence. The word “cigarettes” was barely audible.

“Do you have a lighter?” I asked.

Without answering she dug into a pocket. Split seconds later she produced a Bic lighter, just like she had so many times on her way out to the designated smoking area,

“Sorry I don’t have any cigarettes, but if I could borrow that lighter, I would appreciate it.” She handed it to me without question, put her hands to her face and started crying.

I took off the cross, knelt down and handed it to Maria.

She took both my hands in hers, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “God bless you.” Raising my hands to her mouth, she kissed the cross before placing it around her neck.

Chapter 17

Marcos’s Inheritance

We headed out of the city. The rain was coming down quite steadily now. It felt great, unusually large drops of lukewarm rain, warmer than any hot summer cloudburst I had experienced. The grime of the city was washing off, but only on the outside, the filth on the inside would always be there. The memories of death, rape and murder would always cloud happy memories of a past that only seemed a dream now.

I looked up into the sky to let the water wash my face. The drops stung and made me blink. When I could keep an eye open long enough, I made out the outline of clouds in between the drops that slammed into my eyeball. Holding my hand up only concentrated the amount of water obscuring vision.

Now that it was raining, building a fire to boil water wasn’t needed. Now we had to find a way to catch water. Pots were easy to find since they were in every household. With a small amount of tugging, we freed a large sheet of steel roofing. There was little wood remaining under the bent metal.

We still had water, but decided to fill the canteens and containers while it was raining.

We took all the screws out of the corrugated roofing except one. The one on the corner would be used to hold the two corners together, making a funnel shape. Then we cleaned both sides with cloth. Not like cleaning with an antibacterial soap, but at least it took off most of the soot. Using a few cinderblocks we stabilized our makeshift aqueduct so the saucepot was at the lowest point.

Everyone huddled down on the driest side of a concrete wall that withstood the earthquake. Everyone but Marcos and me. We were the new water gatherers. We stood out in the open where we could capture only the cleanest rain, void of soot and ash.

I could tell the rain felt good on Marcos, he was moving more and crying less.

I felt uncomfortable standing there silent; I never held a good rapport with kids. “How old are you Marcos?” I asked in an attempt to stymie the awkwardness.

“I just turned eleven. Boy, it sure is raining now isn’t it, mister?”