The River at Night(49)

“Be serious,” Rachel started. “You know they were here.” She glanced around at the buzzing woods, the putrefied crop. “Where’s it safe to—”

“There’s a place I saw back there—close by—that looks kind of hidden,” Pia said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

She turned, and we gathered our corpselike selves, shuffling along behind her across the rock and back up the bank, Rachel grumbling. It struck me that we were still following this woman no matter where she led us. But I too felt about to drop with fatigue. Even more than food, the idea of sleep called like a sweet siren to every fiber of my being. Pia paused at the raft to collect several long strips of canvas and rubber, which we carried to the edge of the field. Behind a screen of scrubby pines, a ruined fieldstone foundation bordered a ten-foot square of sunken ground. We gathered a few branches to cover ourselves before Pia climbed down into the depression. She arranged the pitiful remnants of the raft near an old chimney that sat crumbling at the center of the pit, as if there she would find at least the memory of comfort.

Like sheep, we did as she did, half falling down next to each other in speckled sunshine. She took off her helmet and tossed it on the ground in disgust, her hair matted so close to her head she looked as if she were wearing a cloche. The rest of us followed suit.

“You look totally psycho,” Rachel said, smiling weakly as she looked at my head.

I reached up, touching corners, hard wings, strange bumps. “Let’s ditch these helmets,” I said, suddenly noticing how CMYK we looked in all our absurdly bright clothing and orange vests. How very findable.

“Mine keeps my head warm,” Sandra said, taking hers off and laying it gently next to her.

“We need everything we have,” Rachel said. “I don’t give a shit how uncomfortable it is.” Her helmet was barely a helmet anymore, it was so bent and cracked, but she removed it respectfully and placed it alongside her. She might have gotten more comfort from hers than we did from ours, as she was hardly able to see three feet in front of her.

Pia curled up on the cool earth and dragged the branches over her. I stored my sharp stick alongside me as we settled under the pine boughs. It felt like a grave, as if we were giving up. Somehow the thought didn’t much bother me. My limbs shuddered with exhaustion, muscles twitching and spasming, while my head pounded with hunger, since my stomach was beyond feeling it. I breathed in the urinous tang of the pine branches that rested on us, trying to release my fear with every exhale, but I could still taste it on my tongue. The others were asleep in seconds. Sandra snored softly next to me.

I closed my eyes and saw six-year-old Marcus standing over me, his floppy black hair covering one eye, fists jammed on narrow boy hips. He leaned over and tapped me on my shoulder. I signed to please leave me alone, I was trying to sleep.

He signed, “But it’s time to play.”

In my dream I got up and pointed to the others, signed, “Don’t wake them, they’re exhausted.”

He scrambled to the top of the fieldstone wall, where he turned and plopped down cross-legged on the stones. “Come here,” he signed, looking down at me. “Surprise for you.”

I gazed at him. Loved him. Signed slowly, with stiff fingers, “Marcus, I can’t take care of you anymore.”

He signed, “It’s okay.” Shrugged.

I climbed up to sit by him, the fieldstones cold under my thin shorts. He reached in his mouth, pulled out a purple LEGO piece, and set it down on a flat section of stone. He smiled with pride. After a pause, he reached back in and withdrew a dozen more—blue, yellow, red, and orange—and lined them up in a row. In dreamworld, this made sense. Marcus helping out in his way. One last time he reached in and extracted bits of colored paper, which he carefully arranged on the rock in front of him. Studiously, he bent over his work and jockeyed the pieces around, like a puzzle. I looked down. It was Rory’s map.

A branch snapped. My eyes flew open, and Marcus vanished. I stared into Sandra’s face, her eyes bright with fear. Slow as death, I turned my head to look through the branches that covered my face.

Longbow slung across his shoulders, Dean towered over us from where he stood on the lip of the stony foundation, his dark form blocking the sun.





33


His breath came ragged and heavy as if he’d been running, and I could smell the tang of his body under the strips of cloth that covered him. With aching slowness, I lifted a pine bough off my face. Leaves rustled as Pia turned in her sleep, then stopped, nudged awake by Rachel, whose own breathing had quickened from the depths of slumber to shallow gasps.

Dean gazed down on us, his expression ravaged and sad as if he already regretted what he had to do. “Hello, Dean,” I said and signed.

He didn’t sign back.

“Wini!” Pia whispered harshly. “What are you doing, don’t—”

In one fluid motion, never taking his eyes off me, he reached behind his shoulder into a leather quiver of arrows, drew one ablaze with cardinal feathers, and nocked it to the string of his bow. He pulled back to full draw and aimed all that power and savage accuracy at my pounding heart.

“No,” I said and signed, forcing my fingers to move. “Please, no, please.” The bow squeaked under the strain of his draw, the muscles of his forearm standing out in ropy lines. How could anything so motionless be so full of energy and intent, so alive? I thought of the slaughtered creatures roasting over the fire at his homestead, how they had once been wet nosed and bright eyed, flying or bounding through the forest, armed with the things small creatures are armed with—speed, camouflage, sharp claws, a vicious beak, the talent for impossible stillness—but how even with all that brilliant nature, only a fraction of their numbers survived. How most were lost, tiny throats clamped in the teeth of predators, dead in seconds.