Black Bird of the Gallows(61)
“Where…uh, where should we go?” I shouldn’t ask this. Asking any question to my friends, who do not know if their families are safe, is a cruelty right now, but we can’t remain here. The huge fall of rock and earth looks at least twenty feet high. A narrow stretch of it spans straight through the valley, spewing debris nearly straight across to the base of Mt. Franklin. We can’t pass through any of these streets to the other side of the slide, to where Lacey and Deno’s houses lie.
Deno squeezes through a gap in two cars and turns around in a hair salon parking lot. “I think I know a way around.”
“Around to where?” Lacey wails. “Does the van suddenly grow wings?”
All three of us turn around. Behind us is a backed-up Tetris screen of stopped cars. Several are overturned. People are getting out, running erratically. One car is halfway up a telephone pole and on fire. The highway is impassable.
Lacey takes a death grip on my arm. “What if the rest of the mountain goes?”
Deno pins her with a look of pure determination. “Screw the mountain.” He reaches out, squeezes her hand. “We’re finding our families.”
The fight goes right out of Lacey. I hug her as Deno maneuvers the van away from the slide and along the side of the road. He jumps the sidewalk and cuts through another parking lot, into a residential neighborhood. Visibility is crap. The wipers swipe mud and rain and whatever else the wind feels like throwing at the windshield. It doesn’t help that the speed limit is twenty-five and he’s blasting through at fifty.
My face is wet with tears, even though I’m not aware that I’m crying. Reality feels like a thin, insubstantial thing. There is a small, self-preserving slice of me that desperately wants my head to believe we are actors in an action movie. Because the alternative pushes my sanity to the brink. “Do you know where you’re going?” I ask Deno.
“There’s a dirt road up here that leads to one of the old mine entrances in Mt. Franklin.” His jaw is set. “We can get close to the edge of the slide and go the rest of the way on foot. I think I remember where it is. It will hopefully bypass most of the debris.”
I don’t mention how very unsafe this sounds. How much I hate this plan, because, if it were my family down there in the valley, I’d take unwise risks, too. Nothing could change Deno’s course, now, anyway. We bust through someone’s hedges and plunge into the forest. There is a road here. Sort of. It’s full of ruts and rocks and small trees, and it slopes distinctly upward. The aging minivan bounces violently. I drag the seat belt over Lacey and me and click it. Not that it’s going to help us if the van goes tumbling.
“Slow down, will you please?” I grind out, clinging to the handle above the window. “Losing a wheel isn’t going to help.”
Deno expels a harsh breath but slows down. Not a lot, but enough so each bounce doesn’t render us airborne. He nurses the van to a rocky area where the slide pushed debris clear across the valley to the foot of Mt. Franklin. Here, he comes to a stop, unable to go farther. I gaze at the blocked road ahead. If we could continue, we’d wind up in the general area of my development. I’m nearly 100 percent sure the north face of Mt. Franklin—where I live—is unscathed.
“We walk from here.” Deno opens the door and jumps out. “If we just skirt the edge of the slide, it should take us to the center of town. To our…homes.” He doesn’t say families. “Angie, if you don’t want to go…”
Where else would I go at this point? Trudge home alone to an empty, dark house? Roger’s automatic feeder and water bowl will keep him fed and hydrated for at least a few days. And, in any case, I’m not leaving my friends now, when we need to stay together. When I need to stay with them. I look behind me, not for the first time. For something moving in the dark forest. For the Beekeeper who vowed to keep me “safe.” No, I don’t want to be alone.
For an answer, I start walking. So do they.
28-into the ruins
Within moments, we are soaked with chilled, dirty rain. Grit crunches between my teeth and burns my eyes. Sirens scream in the distance, from all directions, and Serenity is still making more rumbling sounds. My nails dig deeper into my palms with each tremor.
My crow—Hank, I should remember to call him—is nowhere to be found. It’s strange and…lonely, after being followed by him for all this time, to walk without his dark, papery-winged presence in the trees above me. But even he can’t deny the call of fresh death, I suppose. Even misshapen and twisted as he is, he is still a harbinger of death. He still needs to feed on the dead.
Lacey and I struggle on the wide trail of debris strewn out before us. It’s not just rock. There are whole trees and sections of brick walls, probably from the buildings on Main Street. We are now walking on the disgorged bulk of a mountain that is likely still unstable. I suck air through my teeth and try not to think about that. About what would happen if the rest of the mountain gave way. Twenty feet away, part of a roof protrudes from the rubble. There’re bound to be people, too…or what’s left of them.
Oh, Reece. Is this your reality? He’s here, somewhere, feeding on all this death. I imagine him crouched over the broken bodies, eyes that horrible red-black, an expression of suppressed ecstasy on his tortured face. Slightly more animal than human.