Summer Of The Apocalypse Part 7

Eric squinted, tried to use the dim light to discern more of the watchers' features. "Yes," he said. "Who are you?" Eric called. Leaves brushed together, muttering in the wind. The figures didn't answer. After a moment Eric said, "Go away. You're frightening the boy."

One figure stood. He carried a staff or a long, unstrung bow. Darkness hid his face and the kind of clothes he wore, but Eric saw a flicker of light in his eyes when he turned and walked into the shadows. The other watchers faded into the landscape. Eric blinked. The visitors had made no sounds.

"Where's Rabbit?" Eric asked. A flat sleeping bag marked where the boy had slept. Eric scrambled from his bag, ignoring the stiffness in his legs, over to Rabbit's spot. Where is he? He dashed a few steps away from camp. As far as he could see, black, blue and gray shapes formed the landscape. To the west, the foothills and mountains behind them loomed like tidal waves on the horizon. Below their camp, the two-lane highway cut through hip-high weeds. "Where'd he go?"

Dodge said, "A noise woke me." Now that the dark figures were gone, he seemed more self a.s.sured.

"Maybe what I heard was Rabbit. I didn't see anything. Then the men came." Eric placed his hands into the small of his back and pushed. He worried that the men had taken Rabbit, but he said, keeping his voice calm, "We won't find him until it's lighter. Let's eat, then we can look." As they finished their breakfast of dried fruits and beef jerky, the sky lightened and the wind died down. A couple of hundred yards away, on the crest of the hill overlooking their camp, Eric saw the group that had surrounded them, sitting. They too appeared to be eating. Watching them closely for hostile movement, Eric put on his backpack and prepared to track Rabbit. From the dew-cleared path of gra.s.s leading from his sleeping bag, it was clear that he had headed north, parallel to the highway, but as soon as Eric and Dodge broke camp, the group on the hill stood and walked down toward them.

"Stay close," said Eric. He kept himself between Dodge and the strangers. The men drifted toward them like a mist. In the dawn light, they moved . . . deliberately. He could think of no better word. Each watched where he was stepping, missing twigs or patches of dry leaves, like deer crossing a meadow. They wore leather skirtsa" their bare legs were sun browneda"and what looked like homespun-wool s.h.i.+rts. Moccasins. No socks. Each carried a bow, a spear or a staff. Several were weighted with heavy, leather water bags. He guessed they were in their twenties except for the one leading, who might be forty or fifty. A broad-chested man with a weathered face and light blue eyes above a gray-flecked beard, he planted himself in front of Eric. The others spread out in a semi-circle. He raised an empty hand to Eric and Dodge. "I'm sorry, old one, but you can't go farther on this road." The voice rumbled.

"Where's the boy?" demanded Eric. His own firm voice surprised him. The smallest and weakest of the men out-weighed him by at least thirty pounds.They seemed like cave men, hard and rangy and animal like.

Gray Beard looked puzzled. He gestured at his men. "We have no boys here." The deepness of his voice impressed Eric. The man spoke from the bottom of a well.

"Our boy," said Eric. "Where is he?"

Gray Beard glanced around, then signaled one of his party. "Skylar, you had the watch. Where is the other one?"

A man carrying a heavy water bag looked embarra.s.sed and shrugged his shoulders.

"Find him," ordered Gray Beard. Skylar dropped the bag and circled the camp. He found the trail Eric had noticed earlier and pointed north.

"He's gone into the Flats," said Skylar.

Gray Beard threw his staff on the ground and stamped his foot. "After him, all of you!" The men melted into the underbrush, and Gray Beard, Eric and Dodge were left to contemplate the rising sun. The rush of men hurrying off, the strangely dressed man standing next to him, and the mystery of Rabbit's whereabouts confused Eric. He took a step to follow Rabbit's trail, but Dodge tugged on his arm. "We're supposed to stay here, I think," he whispered.

Gray Beard picked up his staff, inspecting it for cracks. "The Flats," he said. "One job to do, and I ruin it." He turned to Eric. "The boy won't go far, do you think? He'll come back on his own?" Concern creased his features. Eric thought his posture was odda" forced and uncomfortablea"as if he expected Eric to scold him.

Gray Beard twisted both hands slowly on the staff. "d.a.m.n."

Eric said, "What is this about the Flats? Do you mean Rocky Flats?" Rocky Flats were a few miles to the north and east, he remembered. They used to make triggers for nuclear weapons there.

"The Flats," he said. "We just call them the Flats." Gray Beard bent and rubbed his hand over the fabric of Eric's sleeping bag. "You're jackals," he said, "but that won't keep you safe." Eric remembered Rabbit's story about the little girl who called him a jackal. "What do you mean, safe?" The man smiled at him, a strained smile but an honest-seeming one that softened his face and crinkled long laugh lines from the corners of his eyes. Eric felt less threatened by him, although still frightened for Rabbit. Whatever was happening, this man was scared.

Gray Beard said, "I don't believe the stories, but some of the others do, that Jackals are protected from the spirits in the Flats."

"Spirits?"

The man leaned on his staff and looked past Eric to where the others had headed in their pursuit of Rabbit. "Spirits. G.o.ds perhaps. But my parents told me the Flats were always evil, that even in the Gone Times people feared it. Not because of spirits though. Plutonium contamination." He p.r.o.nounced "plutonium contamination" a syllable at a time, as if they were foreign words. Eric wondered if he had any idea what they meant. The man continued, "Animals don't go into the Flats. People who are stupid enough to go in get sick. Some die."

What a strange superst.i.tion, Eric thought. "So you patrol the border, to keep people out?" Gray Beard shrugged his shoulders. "Foolish people come and go as they please until an animal eats them or they fall off cliffs. n.o.body patrols the boundary. If they ignore a clear warning, who can help them?

We have been following you since you sang with the wolves." He paused, embarra.s.sed-looking, as if he were waiting for Eric to laugh at him. "Some of the men think you are a spirit, a manitou. Wolves carry power. To sing with them is a rare gift."

Dodge stiffened beside when Gray Beard mentioned following them. "Bugbears, Grandpa. They're the Bugbears."

Eric put a hand on Dodge's shoulder and pulled him close. "I know." After being trailed the entire trip (and why?), after listening to Phil's fears, actually meeting them seemed anticlimactic. They're just men in badly made clothes, and what do they want with us?

Too many mysteries here, he thought, but he didn't let his confusion show on his face. He remembered the first night he left Littletona"it seemed long ago, nowa"and howling with the wolves in the middle of the night. Their long, st.u.r.dy shadows milled around the base of the rock he slept on, and they made harmonies to the sky.

Gray Beard said, "It's a small thing, really, I told them, but the young men see the world differently. Lots of ways you could've acted around the wolves, and maybe we'd have stopped you from going into the Flats anyway. No one has come so far from the Jackals in years, and you're olda"we don't see many old ones away from their homesa"but of all the things you could've done, you sang, so we've been watching. We wouldn't want you to come this far, then have plutonium get you." He glanced north into the brush. Eric looked too. Surely the man's fear of Rocky Flats was unjustified, but he realized he knew nothing about how plutonium was stored. All he remembered was the incredible toxicity of the element. A millionth of a grain, less than a dust mote, on your skin would kill. When the plague hit, was the facility safely shut down? Were they even still working with plutonium? He s.h.i.+vered. Dodge handed Eric a coat. "You should wrap up, Grandpa," he said. Clouds glowed on the horizon. Sunrise was a few minutes away. "How far north would be unsafe?" asked Eric as he pushed his hand into a sleeve.

Gray Beard shrugged. "A mile or two maybe. Who knows what plutonium will do? We don't trespa.s.s." He turned, concerned again. "It will kill him if he gets too far. I've seen men who've tried to cross. They .

. ." He paused. "Their deaths are ... ugly." He stopped as if contemplating a bad memory. "He won't get too far. A town boy. My men will find him soon."

Eric thought about the way Rabbit could move in the underbrush, his preternatural speed and sense of self preservation. "Not if he doesn't want them to," Eric said.

A half hour after the sun rose, one of the men dashed into the campsite. Gray Beard still stood, leaning on his staff. Eric and Dodge had rewrapped themselves in the sleeping bags. Eric had been guessing at what Rabbit had done. When he heard (or sensed?) the approach of the strangers, he must have awakened, realized there were too many to stand up to, and fled. He must have figured that he could do more good if he were free than if the men captured him. But why did he go north? He wouldn't leave us, would he, and try to reach Boulder on his own?

The man said, "He lost us, Teach. Got off the soft ground. Skylar split the group, though. He can't stay gone long." Gray Beard nodded an acknowledgment, and the man ran back into the brush. Gray Beard shook his head. "Boy must be as fast as blue blazes." Eric pulled the sleeping bag off his shoulders. It was a climbing expedition bag, and too warm for the summer. "He called you Teach. Is that your name?"

Gray Beard squatted and faced him, the sun flush on his face. "It's what I do. Teacher. Teach. It's a good name. You're Eric. Littleton's oldest resident. The last of the Gone Time survivors." Eric started at his own name. Teach said, "We've heard you talking. That one," he pointed to Dodge, "is your grandson, Dodge. The other is Rabbit."

"But who are you? Where are your people? Why were you following me in the first place?" A different man ran into the camp. Teach looked up at him. "Skylar picked up the boy's trail and we followed it for a while, but he doubled back. Then we figured out he lead us in a big figure eight. The little demon has us going in circles."

Teach thought for a second, then said, "Ignore the trail. Tell Skylar to spread the men out and come back toward this camp. Better poke a stick into every hole or pile of leaves. The boy knows what he's doing." He turned back to Eric and Dodge. "I've told you who I am." He scratched a figure in the dirt at his feet, a circle, then smoothed the image away. "We live upstream." He nodded toward the mountains, now drenched with light, the high peaks of the continental divide still white and glistening with snow. Eric didn't know what to ask next, but there was something alien about Teach, not just his clothes, but his demeanor, something wildly awake about him. When he wasn't speaking, he listened, not just to Eric, but to the air. He rested his head on the breeze. His nostrils flared, like a blink, a couple of times a minute. He didn't behave like someone who spent time indoors a lot. It would be hard to sneak past this man at night.

Teach tilted his head to the side, then stood. The man he'd called Skylar stepped through the bushes and approached Teach. "We cornered him," said Skylar, "but he got away. The boy's a devil, Teach. I say we let him go and the Flats can have him." A large purple knot swelled below the young man's left eye. He touched it gingerly with his fingertips. "He's good with rocks too. Jackson caught one in the knee, and I think we'll have to carry him home."

Teach said, "He's not going north, then?"

Skylar spit. "Bah! He's gaming with us. He stuck his tongue at me before he threw the rock." Teach laughed. "How'd you let that happen? You were a sharp little rock thrower yourself once." Skylar scowled at him, then stalked out of camp.

"They won't catch him, I think," said Eric, "unless he thinks Dodge and I are safe."

"Good," Teach said, "if that means he's not heading into the Flats." They waited for an hour. Three times men came to report no progress. Eric and Dodge packed their sleeping bags. Dodge didn't seem to be afraid for Rabbit or of Teach, and Eric found himself more relaxed around the man, even though he wasn't sure if he was a friend, an odd stranger or their captor. Finally Eric said, "You followed us for days secretly. Now that you've come out in the open, what's your plan?"

Teach said, "Today, the wind is my plan." He added, "Getting off the flats." He scuffed the dirt at his feet.

"And maybe asking you to talk to my students about the Gone Time around a campfire. They love ghost stories. Or you could tell them about singing with wolves."

Teach c.o.c.ked his head to the side, listening. In the distance, a bird chirped. A bit closer, another answered. That's like no bird I've heard, thought Eric. Sounded like nut-hatches, sort of. From the hill above them, a third chirp drifted down. Ah, he thought, not birds at all. Men. He listened intently. After a few minutes he knew approximately where all of Teach's men were, and Rabbit probably knew too. If they kept chirping, they'd never catch him.

Eric touched Dodge's shoulder. Leaning against his backpack, the boy was almost asleep. "Dodge, can you do a meadowlark for me?" He nodded, pursed his lips and blew. The first try came out airy. The top note of a meadowlark's call is high and hard to hit. He tried again, and the call trilled down perfectly.

"That's good, boy," said Teach. "Meadowlark's a tough one." From the middle of a bush fifteen feet away, a meadowlark answered. The bush shook, and Rabbit rose from the center of it like a wood sprite, twigs and leaves caught in his hair, a goose egg-sized rock clasped in each hand.

Teach didn't even look particularly surprised. He sighed, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Within a couple of minutes all of the men returned. The last one limped in, supported by two others, his knee darkly swollen. "I was looking the wrong direction," he said cheerfully. "I figure I can walk on it. Might have to go slow, though. Heck of a throw from thirty yards." He gave Rabbit a thumbs up.

"My parents destroyed the old Coal Creek Canyon Road from the highway to the canyon itself," said Teach. Eric walked behind him; Dodge and Rabbit followed. Spread to either side, the rest of the men hiked, sometimes in sight, other times hidden behind thick stands of scrub oak. We can't be leaving much of a trail, observed Eric.

Teach continued, "They told me they blocked all the ways into the mountains. Some they blew up, like the Boulder Creek Road. Knocked down half a canyon. The Peak to Peak Highway to Black Hawk and Central City they cut the bridges. But this one, they obliterated. Earth movers, my dad told me. He and a handful of others dug it up, spread the asphalt and replanted. He called it a 'deconstruction project' or 'highway beautification.'" Teach's thick, bare calves flexed as he stepped onto a deadfall branch and pushed himself over. Unscarred foothills rose before them, and the land looked clean and untouched. If there had been a highway here fifty years ago, they did a darned good job hiding it, Eric thought. Eric puffed. Legs, achy and weak, protested at the pace, and they'd generally been climbing since they'd walked into what looked like an open field to the west of Colorado 93. "Must have been afraid of people coming," he said, finally. "Somebody got the tunnel on U.S. 6 west out of Denver the summer I was there."

Teach looked back over his shoulder. "U.S. 6?"

Eric rested, pressing his hand deep into his side, thought a second, then said, "Clear Creek Canyon Road."

"Oh, yes." Teach stopped. "Here, let me handle that." He took Eric's pack. A broad sweat patch on Eric's back cooled quickly, and as soon as they started again he felt like Teach had subtracted years, not pounds. Teach said, "Couldn't do anything about the maps, Dad told me, but a line on paper doesn't mean much if you can't find the road it belongs to."

Eric tried to reconstruct a map of Colorado. He had a good head for geography. The Coal Creek Canyon Road led to... to...Golden Gate Canyon State Park, he thought. And above that, a couple of little towns. He couldn't remember their names, but he didn't think the road cut north soon. Every step took them farther from Boulder. If we could just go straight, we're probably not ten miles away. He looked north, past the hills, to Boulder and its library, if it still existed. "How far do we have to go?" he asked.

"We might make Pinecliffe today." Teach looked back again, obviously gauging Eric's fitness. "Maybe not. Then it's another day and a half to Highwater."

Eric couldn't place the name. "Highwater?"

It was Teach's turn to think a second. "Nederland in the Gone Times. That's where we live. It isn't safe to cut any closer to the Flats than that, and there isn't a good trail anyway." Nederland, Eric recalled, was an old mining town twenty or thirty miles into the mountains and not too far from the Continental Divide. A big difference between twenty and thirty when you're walking, he thought. A granite boulder blocked their path. Eric drug his hand across its rough face as they walked around, but another one the same size stood next to the first. A wall of boulders choked the mouth of the narrow canyon they were about to enter. "Your dad did all this?" Eric asked. He thought, what an immense project!

"Persistent man," said Teach as he ducked into a narrow pa.s.sage. The rest of the men had vanished. There must be many entrances, thought Eric. Dodge and Rabbit pushed into the corridor behind him. Rock framed a narrow band of sky. Dust kicked up in the pa.s.sage scratched Eric's eyes, and he rubbed his wrist across his nose to keep from sneezing. Then they broke into the open on the other side and Eric could see the extent of Teach's father's work. From side to side boulders choked the skinny opening of the steep valley. A man on foot would have no trouble getting through, but Eric doubted that one could lead a pack animal through the jumble, and a car, of course, would be stopped. Coal Creek, a three-foot wide ripple, tumbled down beside the two-lane asphalt road and dove under a pair of the boulders. Dodge walked to the creek's edge and knelt to take a drink. In a move frighteningly fast for a man his size, Teach reached him and grabbed his wrist. For an instant the tabula was frozen, the hulking, leather-clad savage bent over the slight child. Eric's breath seized in his chest.

"Don't, son," Teach said. "Not till we're at Highwater." He released Dodge and turned to Eric and Rabbit. "Let me see your canteens." After sniffing them disdainfully, he dumped the water on the ground.

"You'll drink from our supplies till I tell you different."

Friend or foe? thought Eric. The ribbon of asphalt wound up the valley. The group walked single file now, Teach in the lead, then Eric, the boys, and the rest of Teach's men, his students as Teach had called them. Students of what? What does Teach, teach? Not too far ahead, maybe a mile, the bush-covered hills gave way to more rugged mountains, and Eric could see that granite, canyon walls swallowed the road and Coal Creek.

Dodge pressed close behind Eric and whispered, "They're Bugbears, Grandpa. I was just thirsty. He's mean." Dodge sounded more angry than frightened. Eric reached back and patted him on the arm. They rounded another corner. Here the old road builders had calved away a portion of a landscape to make way for the road. The bed cut deep through a hill, leaving almost vertical walls on either side. The clean cut revealed layers of different colored rocks. A million years an inch, thought Eric, and when mankind is done, we'll be no thicker than a coat of paint on top of all of it. He walked close to one wall and saw that the road builders had cut into a seep. A line of dampness oozed at about head height and stretched the length of the cut. He reached to touch it, then drew his hand back. The seep looked unhealthy. Instead of clear water, it was red, and it thickly stained the rocks below. He stopped walking. For fifty feet in front of him, the red moisture coated the rocks, and he smelled something from it, coppery and foul. Coal Creek, only a couple of feet wide here, and fast, rushed by the base of the cut. Red leeched into the stream. Tendrils of it eddied in little pools, then vanished in the water that s.n.a.t.c.hed it downstream.

In the length of creek from the boulders to here, not a thread of algae waved in the current, and, he realized, he'd seen no minnows, water striders or tadpoles, and not a single bird near the stream. He thought of the poem he'd made up that morning, where he'd compared the sun to a red whale surfacing on the horizon, but now he thought of the Earth as the whale, and somehow it was cut, and here it was wounded. Layers of rock sc.r.a.ped away like skin.

As if reading his mind, Teach stepped beside Eric and gazed at the red slime that slid down the crusty rocks into the tiny stream. "The land bleeds," said Teach.

Chapter Ten.

MORE PRECIOUS THAN WATER, AND NOT SO THIN.

After five miles of riding his bike down U.S. 6, throwing himself to the gravel shoulder once when a truck rocketed by on the other side of the median heading west, cringing at the sound of a distant shot, too drained and frightened to consider crying, Eric decided to jump the waist-high concrete divider and head south to Littleton on the smaller streets. He crossed the two-lane frontage road into Union Ridge Park, where the gra.s.s was uncut but well watered. Sprinklers at the far edge of the park popped up and sprayed long streams. Sun rainbowed in the mist, and the air smelled wet and green. He paused at the swing sets. Their metal seats hung motionless above well-worn grooves in the gra.s.s. I used to swing, he thought. Feet in the air, head down. Whoosh. He imagined sitting quietly, hands wrapped around the chains, his feet dragging in the dust, waiting for Dad to give him a push. When his hip began to go numb from the bike leaning against it, he realized he hadn't moved for minutes. A sound behind him made him start to turn. Then it seemed his head swelled, the ground slipped awaya"he was fallinga"and as he fell, he twisted and saw the sky. Slowly, so slowly it seemed, it turned to black.

Waves marched out of the horizon, green and gla.s.sy, building as they got closer. A hundred feet from sh.o.r.e, Eric saw a dark form in the water. A seal? he thought. Dad said there might be seals, but it was a patch of seaweed riding up the solid-looking slope. A frond waved forlornly at the crest, then disappeared as the wave slid in. Seconds later the smooth, cascade leaned too far forward, toppled from the top into foam and noise to rush up the beach, spent at his toes. Sizzling like bacon, the water slid back into the ocean to be swallowed by the next wave.

He scooted a foot closer to the sea, playing a game with the waves.

Far away from the beach, in another world, Eric strained against consciousness. His head hurt, and something pulled against his chest, holding him under the arms.

I'm dreaming I'm three. It's the San Francisco trip when I was three, and we spent an afternoon on the coast.

He didn't want to wake upa"the world was bad; awful things waited for him therea"he forced himself back to the dream.

Wind pushed spray into his face. He wiped the salt from his eyes. The next wave spilled itself on the sand, but stopped a yard short. He scrunched closer, and the next wash of water sent him scurrying backwards like a crab. He giggled. We're playing tag, he thought. The film of water, no thicker than his hand, rushed away from him. Eric jumped up. Sand fell off his calves, and he brushed the back of his overalls. He loved the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons that snapped the shoulder straps on because he could do them himself. Not like his shoelaces; they still gave him trouble. He rushed down the firm sand after the retreating wave. Water wants to play, he thought. I'll chase it. But the wave retreated too quickly. I'll catch you. He ran, hands outstretched, reaching, laughing, toward the ocean. Then, the next wave towered above him, and he stopped, his feet rooted to the sand. The dreamer Eric whimpereda"he heard himself make the noise out of his dreama"it was one he had often. The wave, that huge, unstoppable wave looming up, and panic, like frozen oil filling his head. Oh, Dad, he thought, and in the dream he looked back up the beach and saw his dad, a tiny figure, miles away it seemed.

"Daddy," he yelled, and the ocean roared above him. "Daddy!" Nothing could save him; time stopped. He squirmed, and whatever pinched him under the arms squeezed even tighter, and then, in the dream, his dad was there, swooping Eric up and out of harm's way, the water reaching no higher than Dad's waist.

Dad held him high, hands locked under Eric's armpits, and he laughed with Eric as the wave bubbled and foamed on the sand. Eric reached down and hugged his dad's head.

The dreamer Eric thought, I'm alive. I'm alive and safe with my dad.

I can wake now. The dream is over. Everything is okay.

He awoke.

Nothing was okay.

Eyes closed, he struggled to breathe, but a tight band of pressure constricted his chest. Also, in dull, thudding rhythms, the back of his head throbbed. He tried to touch it, sure he'd find a baseball-sized lump, but his hands were trapped behind his back, and, oddly, he still felt his dad's strong grip supporting his armpits. He was swaying, as if Dad were carrying him, but he knew he was awake. Finally, Eric forced his eyes open.

Slowly, the room rotated to his left. Eric felt nauseated, and clamped his eyes shut again. I'm in a bas.e.m.e.nt, he thought. He'd seen a small window high on the wall. No other lights. Open rafters. Cement floor. A dusty water heater and furnace in a corner next to a beat up, wooden door; the edge of a toilet beyond in a darkened room. His inner ear told him he was still moving, so he sneaked another peek. I'm hanging! Below his feet, a tall, backless bar stool lay on its side. He kicked once and started swinging side to side. The rope creaked above him.

"Stay still," said a voice behind him. Eric kicked himself around. As he rotated, he saw two other people on stools next to the wall. The closest one, a woman in her mid-twenties, dark hair, said, "I told you to not move. You'll just get sick."

The man sitting beside her did look sick. Eyes shut, face drawn, he sagged against his rope. On the next circuit, Eric saw that their ropes were tied to their necks, not their chests, and their hands were tied behind their backs too. He wondered if the sick man were dead, but the man s.h.i.+fted in his stool without opening his eyes. Two empty nooses hung from the rafters beyond them. An unlit stairwell led upstairs. Beside it, on the wall, hung a Budweiser mirror, and on the other side, a dart board, one of the fancy kinds with levered doors. Light blue or gray paint covered the walls except in the large patches where it had peeled away to the cement. He spun slowly, and when he stopped he faced the wall behind his stool. Duct tape held a Grateful Dead poster to the wall, the poster of a violin-playing skeleton with a long stemmed rose in his teeth.

"Are you all right?" asked the woman.

"It's hard to breathe," said Eric. Dots swam through his vision. On the other stool, the man coughed weakly.

The woman said, "Listen close. I'm going to call for help, but we're in a fix here and probably going to die." She had a narrow face, fine boned, and her dark hair fell in ringlets to the collar of her blouse. "But we're not dead yet, so don't do anything stupid."

Her voice was low and hoa.r.s.e, like she'd bruised her throat, and Eric strained to hear her. She continued, "There are two of them. I know what they want, so they won't kill us right away, but don't tick them off". The man, Jared, is the worst, but Meg is dangerous too." She paused. Eric tried to take a full breath; the pressure was too much.

"You got that?" she said.

"Yes," he gasped.

She faced the stairwell and yelled, "Hey! We need some help down here!" Except for the wheezy breathing from the man who still hadn't opened his eyes, Eric heard nothing. The woman shouted again, then the ceiling squeaked, and he heard heavy footsteps. A door opened and light filled the stairwell. Jared was a fifty-year-old slob. Eric guessed he might be five and a half feet tall, but he probably weighed over two-hundred and fifty pounds, most of it in his gut that hung out of the dirty t-s.h.i.+rt and nearly covered his yellowed underwear. Brown hair with streaks of white stuck straight up on the left side of his head, as if he'd slept on it. His breath reeked of alcohol, his pocked complexion was flushed, and his eyes watery. He stretched up and put his hand on Eric's forehead.

"Not hot. No fever at all," Jared said to Meg. He coughed hard, doubling over, then hawked phlegm onto the floor. "I told you so." He smirked and gave Eric a push that swung him hard enough that his feet hit the wall behind him. Eric clenched his teeth so he wouldn't scream. The rope bit under his arms and pulled underarm hairs out.

Meg snorted, stepped forward and put the flat of her hand on Eric's chest, stopping his motion. She was big too, huge, maybe the same weight but a couple of inches taller than Jared, and younger by fifteen or twenty years. Eric's momentum didn't jolt her at all. He just stopped. She bent down, picked up the fallen stool and, supporting Eric's weight with an arm wrapped around his waist, slid it under his b.u.t.t. The pressure off his chest, Eric almost fell over. She steadied him. He could feel the fever baking out of her. "You gonna stay there?" she said. Her bloodshot eyes looked right in to his from six inches away, and her breath smelled sick, like old cough drops. Underneath that smell came something else, something sad and slippery and rotting. Eric didn't flinch away, but tried not to inhale too deeply. He looked at her lips, which were incredibly chapped. Cracked scabs covered the corners of her mouth. He nodded, and she stepped back. She was wearing jeans and a red flannel s.h.i.+rt. Eric had never seen such an expanse of flannel before. Neatly combed blonde hair fell to her shoulders from a dead-centered part.

"I'm gonna change your rope, youngster. Now that you're awake, I don't want you thinking about going anywhere." She stepped behind him. "Jared," she snapped. He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand off the dark-haired woman's thigh and got a club from beside the water heater. It looked like a cut-in-half baseball bat. Duct tape, the same type holding the Grateful Dead poster, wrapped around the end of it. Jared rubbed his hand up and down its length, glaring at Eric as Meg undid the rope, then retied it around his neck. "If you get too rambunctious here, you'll choke to death. You got that?" She put her hand on Eric's chest again, tipping his stool backwards. He kicked his feet out to maintain balance. The rope snugged tight, and Meg held him there, feet out, stool tipped, rope cutting off his air for a handful of seconds. He couldn't swallow. "Yes," he tried to say, but it came out a gurgle.

"Good," she said, and tipped him forward.

Eric squeezed his eyes shut against the pain in this throat, then opened them. A tear spilled out of each eye, and he brushed his cheeks against his shoulders to wipe them off.

Jared said, "I'll check the girl," and put his hand on her forehead. She grimaced but didn't pull back. "Not bad." He caressed her cheek, his hand cupping the side of it. "I don't think she's fevered," he said and moved his hand down her neck and onto her chest. "No sweat." He chuckled and pushed his fingers inside the top of her blouse. A b.u.t.ton popped off and clattered to the floor. Eric stared as Jared worked his way farther down the woman's chest. Her face was grim, lips bloodless, but her eyes were open and defiant.

Meg stepped around Eric and slapped the side of Jared's head with a loud pop. The blow staggered him, and he retreated. "Hey, I didn't . . ." he said, and she slapped him again. He seemed to have forgotten the baseball bat he was holding as he tried to protect himself. Meg didn't say anything. "Wait!" She brought her hand around again, connecting smartly across his mouth. He fell back, saying, "Lay off... lay off," and knelt in the corner of the room, arms wrapped around his head. She stood over him, palm raised, and held the poise for several seconds.

Finally, she put her hand down. "Get up," she said. He looked at her from between his arms, like a clam peeking out. "Get up!" Spittle flew from her mouth.