E j deen, p.7
E. J. Deen, page 7
Even when she had exhausted herself of weeping, he still held her, stroking her hair in silence, transmitting his caring to her in the firm yet gentle way he held her. The dog sat next to them, his tail still for once, his ears flattened against his head, as if he knew. Even the mutt knew, and he seemed to mirror Zach’s sorrow.
When she finally spoke, her voice was muffled against his broad chest, almost unintelligible. “Will you come see me often?”
“Sure, I will,” he whispered, eager to reassure her. “I come this way all the time, and I’ll stop and see my favorite girl every time I do. I promise.”
She pulled away and looked up into his face, her own little mug streaked with drying tears, her nose pink and swollen, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from crying. She looked so pitiful.
“Then I’ll stay,” she whispered.
He smiled then, a genuine, heart-felt smile. The first in a decade. All for her. “That’s a good girl.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him hard one more time before drawing away and giving Hangdog a reassuring pat. “I’ll have to stay and take care of Hangdog.” She gave a little sigh of conviction. “He needs me, don’t you think?”
“He needs you very much,” Zach agreed, relieved that she was taking it so well. She was being so brave. He didn’t know if he could have been so brave. He would have raged, been angry. And
cowardly.
“Serena….”
She glanced up at him, waiting.
“There is one thing you can do to help me.”
Her face brightened at the prospect of helping him, and her obvious desire to please touched him somewhere deep down inside where he hadn’t been touched in years.
“Tell me about the men who took you from your parents.”
She glanced back down at Hangdog, her expression grim. Then her chin came up and she swung her gaze out over the bayou. Zach watched her, marveling at her spirit. She looked so adult, so mature. She seemed to be struggling within herself, trying to make up her mind. He could understand that, and he was patient with her. She needed time to decide.
Once she made her silent conclusion, she turned her eyes back to his and nodded. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for her, but she would do it. Then he would have his vengeance on those men. Even if it took the rest of his life to find them, he would have his vengeance.
6
Two days later Zach left the encampment. He wasn’t quite prepared to start the journey back to Serena’s parents just yet, but it was inevitable. It would be an arduous undertaking, both physically and emotionally exhausting. But before he began, there were a few items he needed to collect. Bargaining tools. Money. The only sort of money that was any good in this society anymore. Besides weapons, food was one of the best trading items, and sugarcane topped the list. It was a much sought after indulgence, as good as any drug, and where he was going it would bring the most value.
It wasn’t easy leaving Serena behind, knowing that she was the only one among a group of healthy men, the only one faced with the virus and a slow death. She had no one to identify with, no peers. She was alone in every sense of the word.
When he said goodbye, she clung to him for a long time before finally releasing him and bidding him a safe journey. Hangdog sat next to her, his tail still as he watched the big man retreat into the distance. It was a picture Zach knew would stay burned into his memory for all eternity. The girl and the dog, each needing the other, each relying on the other for comfort, for support, for the very threads that would hold their lives together into the future.
As he left them behind and disappeared into the swamp, he felt an odd sensation in the region of his heart. He hadn’t felt anything like it in years, not since his mother’s blood had dried against his face and chest on that awful day when he’d lain against her body pretending to be dead so that the soldiers would pass him over. That was the last time he had allowed himself to feel anything for another human being. Until now. Until Serena. Somehow, she had awakened the old Zach. He was coming to life
again. A tiny flicker of his former self, buried deep inside, must have survived all the hell. But sometimes a flicker was all it took to ignite a fuse.
Brownish water swirled and slopped around his boots as he stepped off the path and entered the swamp. The mosquitoes were out in force today, and he was grateful for the grease Doc had given him.
The malodorous muck acted as a natural repellant against the tiny vampires. Without the added
protection, he would have been raw meat for their appetites.
It seemed unusually quiet in the bayou, almost eerily so, and he listened with a keenness borne of necessity. It had become a habit for him. Even when there was no threat, he listened. He was close enough to Doc’s camp that there was no real danger here, except perhaps for that of his memories.
*
He wasn’t certain how, but he survived the National Guard’s invasion of Washington, D.C. The details were murky, like a bad dream, but he vaguely remembered getting to his feet, leaving his mother’s stiff body behind, and staggering through the streets. His arm ached terribly, his mouth was dry, and his head throbbed. Despite the pain, he kept moving. He didn’t even know where he was going. He only knew that he had to get away.
Danger was everywhere. Death lay just around the corner, waiting to ambush him, just as it had the rest of them. So damn many of them, lying in the streets, their mouths gaping, their eyes wide and staring as he passed them by. All of them had died with the same astonished expression on their faces, as if they’d all been asking themselves the same question when they had suddenly been caught by death.
Why?
Why was the National Guard doing this? What were they looking for? The zealots? Was every citizen fair game now? Was every citizen considered the enemy?
There wasn’t much of a government left. The president was already dead. That asshole McNeil, the man who had tried to make order out of the chaos, must have been behind this heinous order. Just like everything else he’d done, he’d botched it miserably. There was no rhyme or reason to his actions.
Only desperation that ended in sick failure.
Smoke, thick and choking, still hovered over the city. Most of the buildings were nothing more than charred remains of their former glory. Some fires still burned, but most of those were in the distance.
Zach was barely able to assimilate what he was seeing. His mind almost refused to believe it. It was too awful. This wasn’t America, the country that had sheltered every refugee that came down the pike. It couldn’t be. This was just a nightmare. He would wake up soon. God, please let me wake up.
Blood oozed thick against the pavement where he walked. By the time he realized what it was, it was too late. He suddenly lost his footing and went down hard on one elbow. Pain like lightning shot through his wounded shoulder. He cried out, then tried to stifle the sound, afraid some of the Guardsmen were lurking nearby and would hear him. Tears of pain squeezed out between his closed eyelids, and he took several quick breaths to keep from crying out again. The jarring motion of his fall had caused his wound to start bleeding again, and his stomach churned with nausea as he fought to stifle his panic. He wasn’t sure if he could make it. It was too much for him.
When the pain began to ebb, he opened his eyes and glanced around. Only then did he see whose blood he sat in. A woman, naked, lay a few feet away, her legs sprawled apart. She was dead, all her blood having left her body through the gaping knife wound in her belly. Beside her lay the unborn infant she had carried, a third trimester fetus, covered in its mother’s blood. Sickened by the sight, his body reacted before he could prevent it. A quick expulsion of bile jetted from his mouth and splattered down his chin, down the front of his shirt, a shirt starched with dried blood.
Disgusted and afraid, he pushed himself to his feet, and ignoring the reeling in his head, propelled himself down the sidewalk. He was desperate to put some distance between himself and that horrible sight. Someone had deliberately gutted that woman, had deliberately yanked her baby from her womb and left it lying on the pavement next to her. Someone horrible. He couldn’t think about it, didn’t want to think about it.
“God, help me,” he moaned, his handsome face set in a grimace of pain and revulsion as he stumbled along.
He wasn’t sure how he came to be standing in front of the house. Perhaps something about it had caught his eye and made him pause. Whatever the case, he was drawn to this place. Unlike the
buildings around it, this one seemed untouched. It hadn’t been torched. No one had vandalized it. He stared at the facade for a long time. It took a moment for his mind to adjust, and then he realized what had drawn him there. He recognized the house. Vaguely, but he recognized it nonetheless.
His head pounding with the effort of his exertion, he stumbled up the front steps. For a split second, he felt relief, even a little excitement, at coming to a place he knew. But before he could make an effort to get inside, everything began to tilt and whirl around him, and his world once again went black.
*
Zach finished bundling the sugarcane he’d gathered into two tight backpacks and slung them over his shoulder, his jaw set in a hard line. He didn’t like the memories. He wanted to forget, but they wouldn’t let him.
As he straightened, he readjusted the backpacks to a more comfortable position, perspiration making tiny little runnels in the mosquito grease smeared on his face. It dripped into his eyes, stinging. He tried to blink it away, but more stubbornly followed. Ignoring the sweat that blurred his vision, he started back through the swamp. Now that he had his bargaining chips, he was anxious to be on his way.
It was a long walk from the cane field to the clearing where he’d left the Hummer. Long enough to think. Over the years, he’d made it a point to stay as busy as possible at all times. It was the only way to keep the memories from recurring. But sometimes even work didn’t help. Like now, when the
memories were so vivid.
Back at the Hummer, Zach thanked the two men who had guarded his vehicle, and then took his leave.
The journey into Texas was not something he looked forward to. It wasn’t the danger. Serena’s family lived far enough away from the border skirmishes taking place between the south Texans and the Mexicans. It was the drive. It was abysmally long. He was eager to get the trip over with so he could begin his new quest.
*
The family had taken him in. He would never know why they risked their lives to help him. Perhaps because their family had once been such close friends with his own parents. They’d suffered casualties, as well. Their young daughter was dead of a gunshot wound not unlike his own. Despite the added strain he created, they took him along on their hasty flight out of the city and up into the West Virginia hills where they hid for a short time. It was an arduous journey, mostly taken on foot. It was dangerous to travel by vehicle anymore. Cars were too conspicuous, such easy targets. He vaguely remembered being jostled around on a makeshift cot between two drag-poles, drifting in and out of fever. Along the way, the woman had hastily yanked the bullet from the muscle in his shoulder and then cleaned and bandaged his wound. He was in pain and he was delirious. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered to him anymore. Most of the time he didn’t even recognize the woman who tended him.
Days later, they left the mountains. Zach did not go with them. Instead, they left him in the cave where they’d taken sanctuary. He didn’t blame them for leaving him behind. They had no choice. They
couldn’t take him any farther. He’d lost too much blood, and the infection from his wound was raging throughout his body. He would only slow them down. They’d done all they could for him. His fate was now in the hands of the cosmos.
The woman pressed some jerky into his hand, placed a small jug of water beside him, and something else that she kept insisting would rid him of the infection in his wound.
“I’m sorry, Zachary,” she whispered, stroking his sweat-dampened hair away from his feverish
forehead.
She made him drink something bitter, muttered a quick prayer over him, and then she was gone. He couldn’t even remember her name. The future would bring him news of their demise. They were killed on their way to Montana. In an odd twist of fate, the woman had been the one who had needed the prayers. Their attempt to find a safer haven had failed, and they had only succeeded in becoming a few more bodies added to the rapidly climbing statistics.
No place was safe anymore. Not for anyone.
Somehow, Zach had escaped becoming one of those statistics. But at the time, he’d had no way of knowing that he would survive. Death seemed to hover over him like a dark bird of prey.
Alone in his hell, he drifted in and out of consciousness for days, a faint echo replaying itself inside his fevered brain. Something he was supposed to remember.
“Take the medicine. Don’t forget to take the medicine. It’s the last little bit I have, but it will keep you alive.”
Compelled by the memory, Zach had managed to take the vile tablets from the bottle clutched in his fist. One by one, until they were gone.
Roughly two days after being abandoned, he ran out of jerky and was forced to begin rationing the small amount of water he had left to him. It was dark in the cave, almost pitch black, and that darkness sometimes pressed in on him so that he thought he would go mad. It was like being completely blind.
Powerless to do anything else, he lay there in that blindness, waiting for the dark bird to claim him.
Time, something he had once taken for granted, became nonexistent. He had no real way of knowing the passage of even a day. He tried to keep track as best he could, but he knew his system wasn’t nearly accurate enough. He wasn’t even sure he cared.
On what seemed like the fourth day, he became obsessed with the idea that a bear was in the cave with him. It was an uncertainty that kept him bathed in panic every waking second. He waited for the bear to find him and maul him to death, but the torture never descended on him. In the end, he concluded that the scuffling noises had only been his imagination, perhaps the effects of delirium, because nothing ever came of it. The sounds simply stopped.
Always he was hungry, his stomach aching for sustenance, but he was far too weak to do anything about it. Even if he’d known how to find food in the forest, he didn’t have the energy to try. He wouldn’t know what to eat, which things to avoid. Harvard graduates were accustomed to eating in five-star restaurants, not scavenging on berries and roots. He wouldn’t even know which ones were safe. That was something he would learn later, by trial and error, by watching what the animals ate, and by a hell of a lot of starving.
The hunger was a constant gnawing annoyance that seemed to never end. That and the fear. It
tormented him, made him so crazy that he finally crossed over into a place where the fear left him altogether. It was the beginning of his learning process, the first stages of his metamorphosis.
Then one day he suddenly became lucid enough to realize that he heard water. Running water! He heard it with an almost impossibly sharp clarity, coming from somewhere deep inside the cave. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? It had been there all along, but he’d been too consumed with fever to pay attention.
Water. The foundation of all life. It was there, somewhere, making vague promises to sustain him, to cleanse him, to give him back his life force. Soon the intense thirst drove him to seek the source.
Inch by precious inch, he began to pull himself toward the sound, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t experiencing some sort of hallucination. It was an agonizingly slow journey and physically painful for him, but he wouldn’t give up. He refused to give up. He needed the water to survive, and survival was suddenly of utmost importance to him.
Perhaps it was nothing more than instinct that drove him, or maybe it was merely the fear of death.
Either way, when the drive finally kicked in, it laid hold of him and wouldn’t let go. He didn’t even know if there was a world left to live in. He didn’t know what was happening out there beyond that cave. But he knew he wanted to live.
For most of the journey, he was forced to drag himself, pulling his body along with his good arm.
Sometimes he found the strength to crawl along on his knees for a short distance. And always he listened for the direction from which the sound of the running water came. He would crawl on his belly a few yards only to collapse into unconsciousness for several hours. When he awakened, he would start again. Determined. Driven. Never entertaining the notion that he wouldn’t make it.
Once, he woke and started to crawl forward only to realize his hands were clawing at nothing but thin air. He was on the edge of a precipice, and judging by the sound of the falling rocks he’d dislodged, it was a deep one. One that would have ended in his death if he’d plunged headlong into it.
The drop made his journey even more grueling. He had to find his way around the rim, feeling along in the pitch blackness, blind to whatever danger lay ahead of him. He was taunted by the fear that he would tire and lapse into unconsciousness before he could make it to safer ground, and go catapulting into the deep recess, to be snapped in half on the rocks below.
Then there was the disappointing possibility that the running water he heard lay below him, in the drop.
If so, he would never be able to get to it. Without light and with no means of lowering himself into the pit, he would never be able to reach it. Even with the right tools, he hadn’t the strength, anyway. Even more haunting was the fear that he would find the water only to learn that it wasn’t pure enough to drink. Still, he doggedly pressed onward.
There were moments when he felt he couldn’t go on. Too weak to move, he would lie in the dust, the rocks that lined the floor of the cave biting into his ribs, his shoulder aching, weeping until he passed out from sheer frustration. When he awoke, he would take hold of himself again and press on,
unwilling, or unable to give up the fight.
