The Rain
Author: Joseph A. Turkot
Date: 2013-12-29 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Horror; Adventure
Description: Perfect for fans of the hit TV series The Last of Us and novels like Camp Zero , this riveting novel set in a postapocalyptic America brings us a chilling look at survival in the face of a catastrophic climate disaster and the collapse of civilization as we know it. The rain began nineteen years ago, and it never stopped: more than a foot of rain per day until almost the whole of North America was underwater. Those who survived the first year were forced to take drastic measures, and those who held to the veneer of civilization were few and very far between. Seventeen-year-old Tanner grew up a
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

A Post-Apocalyptic Story by Joseph A. Turkot

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Part 1

Chapter 1

There are a lot of stories about how the rain started.

The thing that always comes to mind first isn’t the how though, it’s the how much. Back when they were taking measurements still, according to Russell, the numbers to know were 15 and 5,400. Now he’s slapped a new number on after those two: 8,550.

15 inches a day, 5,400 in a year, and 19 years since the rain started. That’s 8,550 feet of rain. He still does the math, keeping track after all these years with that old formula. We have no idea if it’s accurate. But it’s important to think about it, he says, because it reminds us to keep moving.

We’re camped again tonight in the Bighorn mountains as I ponder the numbers for the millionth time. Our tent isn’t much—a leaky spread of canvas on some aluminum poles. The bandits that have been trailing us for the last few days don’t seem to know where we’re at anymore. Russell says they used to call this mountain Hesse. He thinks the highest peaks on the range are still several thousand feet above the water, but right now we’re only a few feet from the edge, in case we have to move out quick—in case they find us. All I know is it’s cold as hell up here. And out there, on the water, it looks like the dirty canvas that our tent is made out of, except it goes on forever. I can see a couple other spikes rising out of the canvas—other mountain tops. Some more rock than mud, some only mud. Our boat’s no good though. It won’t make it much farther. And I think ice has been forming on the water for the past few days, but Russell says it’s my imagination.

When I can get Russell to talk about it, the time before the rain, he doesn’t give me too much. He only likes to talk about why it started. Which theory he buys. Since Rapid City though, he doesn’t want to talk about anything but Leadville.

When he found me, and my dad died in the rain, he took me because he was worried someone might try to eat me. That was fourteen years ago. He said it didn’t matter that I was a happy baby girl, with bright blonde hair and a smile that vanquished the gloom of the rain. They’d eat me as soon as burp me.

He usually mentions the solar flare first—he says it was a sunburst, something that comes once in a long time. The scientists talked about it on TV he said—TV is when there are pictures of people that move. So the sun shot out a long branch of invisible something, messed up the Earth’s magnetic field, currents, or jet streams, or something like that. And then it happened—the great Pacific started swooping up into the sky, as he says. And everywhere else, the rain started.

It came slow at first, and sometimes, not even every day. Russell seems to like telling this part, but I have a hard time believing it. I’ve never seen the rain turn off. He said no one even wore plastic yet, covered their skin, worried about exposure, hypothermia, or the rubber flesh that forms and slides off like a glove. And then it became clear to everyone that the rain wasn’t going to stop. It was just going to keep on coming. And everyone thought that there’d be some explanation, something that would help fix the problem. But there never was.

The other theories are bullshit, he’s told me a thousand times. Conspiracy theories. Weather manipulation, manmade effects of pollution. All of it bullshit. Only the sun could cause this, he says.

I don’t really care too much about the reason it started. I guess, since it’s been this way my whole life, it would be like contemplating that you fall down after you jump up. You accept that it happens, and you move on.

And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last fourteen years. Moving. One place to the next. I remember when I was a little girl, and we walked on the roads a lot more. Russell says where we’re going, there are whole towns that are still above the water. We’ll be walking roads again. And there’s a place where it’s stopped raining. That’s when I know the bullshit has started coming from him instead of the conspiracy theories. It’s raining everywhere. I’ve never seen anything to make me think otherwise. And we’ve traveled from New Jersey to Wyoming. But now we have to move 520 miles south he says. Leadville, Colorado. He hasn’t stopped talking about it for the last year. We’re going to Leadville, there’s a whole city there, thousands of feet above the water. Where the veneer is still thick.

But we couldn’t go directly there, because the route across the Great Plains is flooded. Thousands of feet of water, but moving water. I don’t mind the still water. I hate the moving water. And the worst are the waterspouts. Used to be called tornados, Russell says. But there are too many of them on the Plains, tall and clear and deadly, spinning arms to heaven, and we had to move north first. And that’s how we picked up this crew of face eaters, as he calls them. They’ve been following us for days, but suddenly, they haven’t been in sight. Each time we cross a valley of water along the Bighorns, they’re behind us, rowing after us in their boat, a canoe similar to ours. There’s three of them, so they can rotate bailers more often, and they move a bit faster over the brown. I thought we’d hit a patch of water too wide, and they might overtake us, but we didn’t. We’ve kept them at bay. But now they’re gone. Russell thinks they drowned. But I haven’t seen any bodies floating by.

I think the canoe has about had it—it’s made out of some kind of manmade stuff, fiberglass, I think. He says that it will make the trip to Colorado. How long will we have to be on the water, I asked him. A week he said. We’ve never been on water for more than a day, and we stop when we can, so a whole day is a lie. A day with rest stops.

The exposure is worse than the face eaters. It’s creeping down again today, I can feel it. Cold wet sickness. And this is the longest we’ve been without a fire. Russell says he’ll find what we need for one tomorrow, but I don’t see how. All the trees are ripped away or waterlogged up here. And now, while the sun’s showing behind the gray, he’s sleeping. Sleeping during the day is a waste, he says. So I adopted his attitude. Looking at him, it’s a waste to me, because he’s breaking his own rule. But he needs it after all the rowing. I let him be.

The numbness in my left foot is getting a little bit worse. It comes and goes. He says at these altitudes in Wyoming we’re too far north, so we can’t stay here long, and winter’s coming. Going south to Colorado won’t be much better. If the winter comes early, we won’t have a chance. It used to be that we could camp on rooftops for months at a time, keep a fire throughout the winter. Back in Philadelphia we did that. And Pittsburg. Then again in Chicago. Indianapolis. Sioux Falls. Rapid City. But Wyoming is like no man’s land. To the east, like a high island, is Yellowstone. But Russell says we can’t go that way. There’s nothing on those mountains. To me they look like rescue. And when I look south, I don’t see any more peaks. Just the canvas of water. Little dancing splashes all over it, letting me know the rain is at medium. When it’s on high, there is a mist that rises up, like a low-lying cloud that kisses the surface. The rain never goes to low anymore. The last time I saw a drizzle I was six.

If the skin is left out, it prunes at first. Then it becomes rubbery. Eventually, the skin slides off. It’s like it’s been all filled up, like it absorbed all the rain, the constant sloshing, and there is no other way for the body to expel the moisture. So the skin slides right off.

It happened to part of Russell’s left leg. He keeps the plastic on that leg real tight. But the infection comes and goes. He says he’s never seen the rain this bad. He thinks it’s getting worse.

I wear plastic gloves, but there are a few small holes in them now, as always come with shitty plastic gear. My fingers are constantly wrinkled, and when we’re in the rain for too long, I start to think of Russell’s leg. Sometimes I worry that when I take off the gloves, my hand will slip off with it.

He showed it to me once. Normally I just look away when he changes plastic. It looked like a dark red hump, as if it was still swelling up after all the years. Only the skin is gone. And the hump is something else. I don’t know if it’s muscle or tendons or what. I never really asked for the science on it, and he’s never volunteered.

Although Russell hasn’t said anything, I know we’re almost out of food. Our last major pickup, a high rise apartment near Rapid City, had a crate full of hardtack. That and some cans of beans, rice, lentils, and some kind of powder soup. A survivalist’s den. But we lost half the hardtack. The canoe tipped over. I can’t believe Russell managed to get the pack on the hull in time to save any of it.

The waves are what really scare me. They used to be called avalanches, Russell says. They would come sliding down the mountain. Now, it’s the swells. They rise up, and the blank stretch of brown canvas gets rolly, like something is boiling down there. And then the white foam starts up, and the howling wind. And he calls it a gale. We both row, and I do my best. I’m sixteen years old and as strong as any boy I’ve ever seen. Stronger. He says we have to point into the waves, and I listen, although it doesn’t make sense to me with how much the swells seem to want to drive us under.

Once there was a waterspout right next to us. It started in the sky, coiled down, touched the water, then disappeared like a sharp snarling tendril of storm cloud. Then it came back down, stuck, and started to draw up water. It threw us away from it. I was afraid it would drag us in, down, to the forgotten cities below us, the graveyard, as Russell calls it. It was beautiful though, clear, miraculous, powerful, like something apart from the rain, something that was fighting the rain. It kept up the fight for almost ten minutes. Then it fell away, just like everything else does.

I’m still stronger than any boy, but I’m a lot skinnier than I used to be. I can tell by looking at my legs, my arms. I’m glad we don’t carry the mirror anymore. That was when he shaved. I still try to. But the razors are lines of rust now, useless, dangerous. I should stop using them.

Russell thinks the antibiotics are no good from the rain. He thinks his leg infection might come back. And he worries about me. I’m not sure why, but he’s always worrying about me. He thinks that if I get sick now, the antibiotics won’t work. He doesn’t want me to use the razors anymore, so I do it at night. I use the rain. It helps keep me sane. If he’s noticed my legs are still bare, he hasn’t said anything.

I tried to get an age out of him twice, and from his replies, I gather he must be twice as old as me. Maybe older. I can’t tell. But all he said was, “Old enough to be your Dad.” And I told him that no he wasn’t. Then he said, “Close to it.”

We don’t celebrate birthdays. But we used to celebrate food. Whenever we found a survivalist’s stash, we would celebrate. He would sing, I would try to. We tried dancing sometimes too. He’s no good. He thinks I’m pretty good, but I know he’s full of shit. But now that we’re out past the Great Plains, we don’t celebrate anymore. It’s like we’re too close now, too close to something that can save us.

It took Russell a long time to figure out we had to keep moving west. He thought we could stay in the cities. We did for a lot of years. But the soil stopped draining the water. And the rain kept going.

We lost the contact we had with the radio. It’s hard to keep anything working in the rain. When we find a pack of batteries in an apartment, Russell goes nuts. Only thing is we have nothing to put them in, nothing to use them on. I kind of remember the electricity, when it was everywhere, like Russell says. He even goes on about the invisible internet, and how it connected everything with moving pictures and sounds. It sounds pretty made up, and I think he’s been sacrificing food on account of me for ten years, and it must be adding up. He has to be losing his mind a little bit. We need to find vitamins, he says.

He thinks they’re dead, the bandits. We’ve had a couple close calls, and it seems like they come more and more since we passed into South Dakota. It’s the higher elevation, Russell says. Before we hit Rapid City, it was low country. But the water hadn’t risen so high then. There were more dead bodies. They were everywhere. We saw a raft of them once. A boy and his dog on the raft, floating somewhere. All tied together, the bodies. Some drift wood, probably a house. It looked pretty safe and sturdy. I wonder about how far he made it sometimes.

Our years in Rapid City were different. More people were alive there. We moved to Harney Peak before long, just over 7,000 feet. Then there were too many people alive. We were traveling on foot more again then, which was a change, but everyone came to the same spots. That’s the problem out west. There’s only these peaks, rising out of the brown canvas. They’re easy to see, and so everyone goes for them. The bandits come to feed.

When we passed the Great Lakes, coming up from Indianapolis, there was a giant steam powered ship. We lived on it for a long time. I thought we were never going to leave. It was home. The water was calm for such a long time, and we sailed from skyline to skyline. Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee. We had more food than we could ever want. There were no bandits, no face eaters. There didn’t have to be. Russell says society is a veneer, made up of all the human principles. The ship was building the veneer again, he’d said. But when it comes down it, people eat and drink. Anything they can. No veneer.

On the steamer, the Sea Queen Marie, I thought we were done moving. The daily struggle, finding the next meal, higher ground, avoiding suspect wanderers, was over. No one talked about a place where it didn’t rain because we didn’t need to—the ship had a hundred rooms and a giant galley, and a roof. We had a few attacks after we reached capacity, but nothing much. They couldn’t scale the gunwales. They never even made it halfway up. We were a unit. But it wasn’t the face eaters or the rain that destroyed the Sea Queen. It was a gale, Russell says. All I could tell that day was that the sky had blackened to charcoal, and behind me the sun was out and shining. Two different worlds. It was the first time I’d seen night come during the day. The waves started, and being in deep water like I never had been before, and old enough to be aware of it, I felt scared of dying for really what must have been the first time. I can take a lot, and I can row all day. But I can’t take the waves.

They started out small at first, swells everyone was calling them. And then the wind came. A lot of arguing happened. Russell had the ear of one of the guy’s who controlled everyone else. His name was Wallace. Everyone called him Cap’n though. Cap’n was arguing with Russell, I remember that. Something about changing course.

But old Cap’n told Russell there was no more fuel for any kind of moving, and the ship would have to hope that the storm turned, because the ship wouldn’t. Then Cap’n started talking about the direction of the wind a whole lot. He started to say that it was changing, hitting us at first from the east, and then, when the black took over the sky, from the north. I didn’t quite take the meaning of that, but he sure seemed to think it was a big deal. Russell did too, eventually. They called it a hurricane.

It took the bow of the ship right down into the swells, snapped it off. The only skyline in sight was Chicago. The tower was there. It still stood way above the water. But I thought we might knock right into it, that’s how bad the waves were pushing us. And when the bow went in and snapped off that way, I knew we were going to die. I made peace with it. I thanked Russell for taking care of me. Sometimes, I feel like death would just mean leaving the rain. And then it’s not such a bad thing, death.

But he wasn’t ready yet. And I guess I wasn’t either, because when the fights over the boats started, I helped him. That was the only time I think I really hurt somebody. Maybe I killed him, I don’t know. Russell won’t talk to me about it, because he said I shouldn’t think about it. We do what we have to and move on, to higher ground, to where we can get warm and dry.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been warm or dry. And I think I’m dying now, too, but just really slowly this time. But maybe not, because I can still row, and I can still run. But I know we don’t have much food left. And Russell’s been acting too serious, and we have a week on the water till the next land, and I know we won’t make it.

And I don’t for one minute think those face eaters drowned. We haven’t had a gun that works since Rapid City. Now it’s knives. That’s it. And that’s what they’ll have to, if they’re not dead.

The ridges of Bighorns poke up in about a thousand places, puncturing the brown canvas. We’re on one of the lower parts of the Hesse. Some of the islands drop into the water real steep, and that’s how we messed up the canoe. Sometimes you can’t see when the ground comes back to you, up out of the brown. Then it jumps up on you, smacking the boat. We almost drowned six times I’d guess since we hit Wyoming. At least Russell says it’s Wyoming, and the Hesse mountain, and the Bighorns. I couldn’t tell you if we were in the Himalayas or not. But I trust Russell.

The canoe smacked into a sharp rock when we tried to land it, and it cut a long line along the side. The cut is near the top, so it doesn’t draw water. But the line is getting deeper, even though Russell won’t mention it. I feel like it’s splitting the whole thing in half real slow, and that it will finally happen when we’re out somewhere on the water, somewhere where we can’t swim back. Then we’ll just go under. And we’ll go right down, I know.

I see the thin little layers of frost that Russell doesn’t, clear blue, like purity is trying to conceal the canvas of pattering sea. It’s cold enough up here. I can barely keep my hands from freezing. If we go into that water, I’m out. It’s not that I can’t swim half decent, but I’ve stuck my finger in along the way, all the way since Rapid City I’ve been touching. I tried to tell him it’s getting colder, and too cold, and that we need to go south, or back west. But he said no, we have to push on. There’s nothing else to go back to, and the water is running too fast through the Great Plains in the south.

I don’t know how he knows all this. I think he learned it in Rapid City, and maybe even as far back as the Sea Queen Marie. People were always trading rumors, as if they were news, something that just happened. But it was always the same tired legends. A place where there’s no rain. A place where a city is entirely above the waterline. Leadville.

When I first noticed the crystals on the water, as we drew close to the Bighorns, Russell started to put his own finger in the water. I yelled at him, “Told you so!” I meant it to be playful, to cheer him up, because I could tell he’s been getting sicker. When I was little, he had chubby red cheeks. Hell, he was fat. He was a smiling fat person though. I guess I was 8 or 9 when I realized he wasn’t fat anymore. It was like I hadn’t noticed. But then, when he kept getting skinnier, and I didn’t, I thought he was dying. I thought he had cancer, or a parasite. But he didn’t. He kept on just fine. But he was skinny. Now, he looks skeletal. And paler than I’ve ever seen him. He has dark olive skin—he used to anyway. Now, he looks like some of the bodies I’ve seen floating past the canoe.

There was a bodyjam outside of Sioux Falls. We’d just come over a rise, and there it was, a million bodies all clumped together, blocking the whole sea. We had to turn around, head south for a bit, but not into Nebraska, he’d said—never into Nebraska. There are a thousand waterspouts there, spinning up to the sky all the time. Waterspout alley was what he calls it. Everyone knew that. It was the talk of the Sea Queen Marie. Waterspout alley, from Nebraska all the way down to Oklahoma, rushing water and waterspouts all the time. Nobody survives that way anymore.

He lifted his finger out of the water though, and he just scowled at me. But now that I’m sitting here, and we actually made it to the Bighorns, I don’t think he was scowling at me because I said he was wrong. It was the turn of fate. We didn’t need any ice. We had enough other things to deal with. But there it was, and here it is. If we fall in now, we die. It’s that simple. There are no more life vests. Just the crack in the canoe, and the mounds of rock that spring out of the canvas. At least it’s daytime.

We finally decide to start moving again, before Russell even has the sleep he needs. I stare at his face, the long shaggy, brown mane, the emaciated, sunken eyes that when he’d been just a little bit plump were pretty and mesmerizing, even attractive. I try not to think about the fact that I’m attracted to him—that I was. Now, it’s hard to be. But every once in awhile, when he’s asleep like this, I can still feel that way. Like I want to cuddle against him like I normally do, but find something more there. Of course I could never say anything to him. He could be my Dad, he says. It’s clear he’s not interested in me. And those kinds of thoughts are artifacts anyway, part of the veneer. It’s been eroding. Despite the fact that we’re still going, that he still has hope we’ll make it across the water, all the way down through Wyoming, past Denver, and to Leadville, and find the city above the waterline, I can’t help but acknowledge that it’s all part of the veneer. That’s Russell’s source of strength, it seems. The veneer. He talks about it like it’s an artificial piece of shit, and like we’re animals, and that everything is random, and we’re fucked and all—but at the same time he still makes the veneer sound like something romantic. Like it amounts to humanity, and all that we are, and that if we can get to Leadville, we can be a part of it again.

The way he talks about it sometimes, I don’t know why he wants to keep it going so bad. The veneer is stripped away when nature takes over, he says. It’s really like a thin surface we’ve built up over millions of years on top of our primitive minds. And the rain has washed it down to nothing. Yet we move on, and he keeps worrying about me.

It’s not that I don’t think I’m attractive either. I’ve had a lot of offers for sex, and the food that goes along with giving it out. But Russell hasn’t let me do it. At first I never wanted to anyway, from everything he told me. Sex is part of the veneer. A layer that’s gone. Meaningless now.

But part of me wanted it, to at least try it. I felt ashamed about it after awhile, when I got into an argument with him that we needed the food, and that we could get medicine for it this time. The offer had come from a young man in Rapid City who didn’t look deranged, or creepy like all the others. I had wanted it so bad. But Russell said no. And since then, I haven’t bothered to think much about it.

I’ve seen him watching me while I sleep. The first time it happened I started up, bolted away, and he had to calm me down. It wasn’t that I was scared of him—it was that I thought he was a bandit. Every other time when he watches me sleep, and I notice, I pretend like I don’t. I let him keep on looking.

It’s now, when I’m looking at him, I realize that, even with the ghostly face, he’s still as attractive as ever to me. It’s as I wonder how he could never have wanted me when I’m lying asleep and he’s watching me that I see the face eaters.

There are two of them. Then three. They stand up atop a ridge about two hundred feet from us. They’re moving fast. I know right away they want us. They really do want to eat us. The veneer is all gone in them. I move over to Russell and shake him. He’s usually quick to respond, knowing we have to be on our guard, but the trip from Rapid City has worn him down. He’s no longer himself. He slowly opens his eyes, slowly recognizes what I say, as if the altitude has gotten to him. But he’d said we wouldn’t get altitude sickness, we are acclimatized. It doesn’t seem that way with how slow he stands up. I look back to the face eaters. They’re running now.

“They don’t have a boat,” says Russell finally.

He’s right. They’re charging, but we’re right at the water, and our canoe is right here.

“They should have waited till dark,” he says. He goes down to the water line. I stay up behind a boulder watching, keeping an eye on things while he unties the rope. The nylon rope is about as precious as our hardtack. If we lose that, we lose the canoe. He takes his time. He has to. I break down the tent in less than a minute and fling it in. The runners get a little bit closer. I think I see them squinting. They’re running west, right into the smear behind the clouds that is the sun. There is a lot of daytime left, but Wyoming’s sky is huge, and things in it change too fast for me to be sure.

I see one grinning. He looks mad, like if he doesn’t get us he’ll turn on his friends and start eating them right away. The others just look sickly. Like Russell’s starting to look. They trip a few times, but keep coming. Only about fifty feet away now and Russell calls my name. I turn around, and he’s waving me down. I run to the edge, watching my step, eyes glued to the trash bags taped around my sneakers. It’s easy to slip on the rocks with these plastic shoes, and it’s even easier because the mud’s flowing. As I hear grunting, I descend a bit faster, and too fast, and start to slide. Somehow, Russell jumps out of the boat, steadies me, and guides me the rest of the way to the canoe. I don’t know how he risked it, because the canoe could have pushed off without us. But he did. I fall back into the canoe and it rolls heavily to one side. Immediately, I start bailing.

When you’re not rowing, you’re bailing. When the rain’s on medium, you can take a break once in awhile, unless there are waves. When it’s on high, you can’t. A week in it and we’ll die, it’s just that Russell doesn’t see it that way yet. I dump the water over the side using one of the bright orange buckets we picked up in Rapid City. Its color is the only life here. The four inches of rain on the bottom of the canoe start to go down. I look up. Russell is heaving, worse than usual, thrusting the oars into the water, pushing us away from land. Gaunt faces stare at us, and one looks as if he’s ready to jump into the water after us.

I’m about to say something to Russell to make him laugh, because these depraved face eaters have become so common now that there is a delirium that starts each time you escape from them. But before I can speak the mania-ridden comes in. He goes wading in to his knees, then just dives forward, dropping his head into the frigid water. I see his soaked head pop back up about ten feet away, and he moves deeper into the brown to get us. I look around to see where we might find refuge. Another one of Hesse’s heads is poking up a couple hundred feet away. We can make it there in ten minutes. But this guy just struggles into the ocean of rain. The others, desperate but not insane yet, watch with him hope, as if they expect him to reach us.

He starts to swim in a direct line toward us. Russell doesn’t even look back—he just keeps pumping, and his breaths sound horrible. I think he’s worse than he’s been telling me. I wonder if he really is getting the infection again. Rain splashes in little fountains on the back of the man’s head when it protrudes from the brown, and he raises his arms to stroke. Then another stroke. He is trying very hard to catch up to us, and he’s moving fast enough that I say something to Russell.

He’s coming.

Usually, saying something just works in reverse, and slows Russell down, so I let him work silently most of the time when we’re running for our lives. But I’ve never seen anyone this possessed. He plows through the canvas at about half our speed, making tiny swells. I realize that in just a couple more strokes, he’ll have come too far out to make it back.

When the first gasp comes, Russell finally turns his neck to look back. He only gives the man one second of his time though, just enough to recognize that he’s drowning, and then he returns to the oars. He rows, pushing us along through the water, no faster and no slower. The hope in the faces of the man’s friends, back on the rocky shore, looks like it’s fading now. I can’t be sure, but I think I see one of them close his eyes. The gasps get louder, and I can’t take my eyes away from the drowning one. The maniac strength is gone now, but his head is still above water. He’s realized how far he went, and how cold it is. He knows it’s the end. His eyes look wild, and he stares at me. I hear him whimper, and wonder if he’s crying, but the sound isn’t coming out right because of all the water he’s spitting up. Maybe he’s thinking about the mistake he made, and how it will be the last thing he knows in the world.

I watch the head go under for the first time, and he makes a turn, like he’s going to try to make it back to the island. But he can’t, he doesn’t even move that way. He just sort of jerks and rotates, his body frenzied and writhing, clawing at the sky, like a magical ledge might materialize to keep him alive a little while longer, maybe even save him.

Then his head goes under again, and we’re almost thirty feet away. I stopped thinking about saving people a long time ago, after the Sea Queen Marie went down, and I don’t even beckon Russell’s attention. I know if I do, he won’t look anyway. But still, even though I’m cold, ruthless, conditioned now to feel nothing, except the need to keep Russell and me alive, I shudder when I hear the man yelp, a cry that’s crystal clear. He says, “Help me!”

I listen to the plea no one cares about, and watch the head go under for the third, and then fourth and final time. He swallowed a big gulp of water that time, I could tell. Aboard the Sea Queen Marie, Cap’n had told us all one night, after a long festival of plays and songs, with a roaring fire to dismiss the notions that we were living in a hell, what drowning is like. He said you don’t actually breathe in water most of the time. I had a hard time believing that, but some of the others had seconded the fact. He said you try to breathe, and that your throat closes shut, because it’s a reflex, the body’s last desperate attempt to save itself. Then, you suffocate. It might even be pleasant, Cap’n said. When the brain stops receiving oxygen, it’s only be a minute until lights out.

The man’s flailing body doesn’t seem pleasant to me. But then, right at the end, it kind of does, as he gently slides underneath the brown. The wet forms on the shore start walking back the way they came, almost sad, maybe not because they lost their friend but because they lost a perfectly good two day’s sustenance. Either way, Russell finally speaks.

“They’re getting the boat,” he says. I already know that. I want to mock him, remind him he was wrong about them being drowned, mainly because I’m mad at how much he’s heaving. He never used to struggle so much to row. Now, it’s as if he’s faking it, pretending like he has no strength. But it’s real. And I can’t deal with that, so I mock him anyway.

“Told you they were alive,” I say.

But he doesn’t look up like normal. No flash of his handsome smile. He keeps his head down, like he’s really concentrating. And he keeps on grunting. I don’t know if he’s thinking about me worrying that he’s not doing so good, and that I might ask to take over rowing, so all he says is “Bail.” He’s tired. His voice is gruff.

I start to bail, and watch the permanent gray overhead. It’s medium gray, which means medium rain. The sunset, really just a smear of brighter gray, golden in one long band, doesn’t cheer me up like it usually does. I worry about the week on the water, but even more, I worry about tonight, and how we’re going to fend off the second attack if they come back and find us. Looking south, in the direction we’re heading, I don’t see any more islands past this one we’re going to. Just open brown, and rain, and gray forever, all the way to the Rocky Mountains, that I’m told exist somewhere that way. If we have to shove off again, there’s no going back. I take away the horizon, the view of the future, and clear everything out in favor of the bright neon bucket, and I bail.

Chapter 2

I watch the mountain we’re leaving behind recede. It’s dirty, a mound of muddy rock, a lot like my clothes. I haven’t had a change of clothes in three weeks. Russell thinks that we might get sick a lot faster if we don’t find new clothes soon. I really don’t give a shit, because right now Russell seems like he can’t even row. He slumps down, then picks the oars back up, pushes them again into the water, digging, but it’s like he doesn’t find anything there to push against.

I ask if he’s okay, and he nods, but we’re not moving anymore. The blear of the sun is still high, so I’m not afraid of stalling out on the water in the dark. That happened a few times. Every time it’s happened so far there haven’t been any waves. It wasn’t too bad. But I realize now that I’m going to have to take over the rowing. And I don’t know if he’ll be able to bail.

“Take the antibiotics,” I say, and I take the oars from him without any protesting, pushing his body off of the rowing seat, sitting in it myself. Two inches of water sloshes around at my feet as I move. The ice is gone. Maybe I imagined it. He moves to my seat and lies down.

“Russell, bail,” I say. He still doesn’t respond. I look ahead to the mountain top we’re heading for. It’s a mix of stone and slush, one of the lowest lying strips I’ve seen in the Bighorns. Sometimes I can’t tell if we’re in a lake, or if we’re in the real water—the everlasting stretch. But I’ve never had to deal with the rain alone. And he looks like he’s about to die on me.

“Bail, bail,” I say. I press into the water with the oars, feel the familiar ache in my back and my legs. The water cooperates and the canoe starts to move again. We’re gliding to the last edge of the mountain range. Beyond this, there’s nothing. And I know I can’t make it over 500 miles south alone.

On my head I’m wearing a plastic tarp, taped around my shoulders to keep it in place. The rain slides off, funneling right into the canoe. I can’t even keep my eyes on the island ahead because I’m too worried about the rising water at my feet. I don’t know how high it would have to get to sink. But with each stroke, the canoe is feeling more sluggish, like its struggling to move.

“Russell!” I yell. I only hear the rain in response. Everywhere are a million tiny fountains splashing freezing cold water. The key to life. The thing that wants us dead.

When I first met Russell, and he was plump, jolly, and altogether unconcerned with the bleak world that surrounded us, he used to talk about God a lot. He said he was quite a religious man once. He believed in the spiritual power of a connection with God. He used to tell me I should pray, and sometimes I pretended to for him. I could never help but feel like I was talking to nothing, the rain maybe.

Some people said that Poseidon was the only god now, and that he had killed all the other gods. Russell explained that they meant the ancient god of the sea, the one that had caused all this to happen. But it wasn’t Poseidon, he’d assured me. It was just the sun.

The numbers he always talks about, 15 inches a day, 5,400 a year, stopped being accurate a long time ago. He confesses this once in a while, and declares that we really know nothing about the real depth of the rain sea now. He says he can’t be sure that what we’re looking at is really the sea at all—maybe it’s just like this east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, he says once in a while. The Pacific hasn’t connected yet. Just a Great Lake. I don’t really care one way or the other. I just want something warm, and something dry. The Sea Queen Marie had been those things for such a long time, and then after that, Sioux Falls and Rapid City. But when we left Rapid City, I sort of knew we would never be dry and warm again.

The gray clouds cover the sky night and day, and I can tell its past noon because the smear of the sun, visible on a good day, is starting to fall again. It’s telling which way is west, and we can tell from that which way is south. As long as a gale doesn’t blow up, Russell started saying three days ago, a new mantra.

The crack on the side of the canoe looks a little bigger, as if its widening somehow, even though we haven’t hit anything. The water is growing higher in the boat. I think about the timing. Russell says the timing of things is everything. Because it won’t be winter for another month, we can make the trip to Leadville in time. But I’ve already seen ice crystals. No snow though. That’s a good sign, he says.

I dig the oars in again, and watch the last island grow bigger as we approach it. Russell is useless now. I hear him breathing really loud, like he can’t catch his breath. He coughs a little bit. I’ve been ignoring his cough for the last few days, because I know he won’t take the antibiotics. I’m thinking about forcing them in when he’s asleep. I don’t want the cough to mean what I’ve seen it mean for everyone else—the long fever, the sweating when it’s cold, the in-between period when life and death separate and leave a pale, rolling eye nightmare that trembles through the whole body.

I know we can make it now. The muddy rise is showing itself, the place where I’m going to attempt to land the boat. I’ll need a rocky bank, something to throw the nylon around. This last island looks all mud, like it’s ready to wash into the brown canvas, slowly pushed down by the endless drops.

On the Sea Queen Marie, Cap’n said that the climate has changed too. It isn’t as cold anymore. There is less shielding or something, and despite the constant clouds, the sun is getting through in a worse way than ever before. I’d seen some of the boils on the passengers, the ones who said they’d come up and east from the top of Texas, Amarillo I think. They had come through The Great Plains nine years before getting to Marie, through part of waterspout alley. By now it’s a raging crush of water there, they had warned. Russell took it to heart. We have to avoid the Plains at all costs he said after that, and has continued to say ever since. But the Bighorns are on the edge of the Plains, and I know it. Really close. We can’t drift too far east when we push out for Leadville. We’ll be swept in.

I pick the softest-rising slope on the mud heap and try to put the boat in. The canoe nudges along the underwater hill, then grinds to a halt. Then it rocks back and springs off the mud bank, as if the land is trying to cough us out. I look behind, even though there’s no way they could be following already. There’s nothing out there in the permanent fog, just gray and brown. I don’t know how those face eaters could possibly follow us any farther. I try again and get the canoe lodged in place, and walk over to Russell and start shaking him. Get up, I say, we’re here. He comes to life like a zombie. He grabs the tent, the poles, and takes the nylon. The water in the canoe is too high, but we’re off the sea. The boat will be under water when we wake up tomorrow, but if we tie it up good, it won’t be gone. We can flip it. Keep going.

We didn’t used to live like this. When the electricity was still on, back in Philadelphia, we barely noticed the rain. We lived in an old castle of a building. It was once an Art museum Russell said. Giant columns, rising high above the low lakes surrounding it. Low risk of flash floods. Plenty of food around and in the city. A lot of streets you could still walk through. That was almost eleven years ago.

I remember him taking me to see the bridge. We walked on it. It was called the Walt Whitman, he’d said. It still looked like a bridge then too, but you could see the low-lying building tops under the water, the endless rows of cars, submerged, and the tipped container ships. The ships were important. We went down as close as we could to the docks then, hauling as much food and supplies as fit in our packs. There seemed to be an endless amount of everything then.

Philadelphia had animals too. I saw deer running around, over hills, sliding sometimes, jumping like they couldn’t figure out where to go. Then they all disappeared. Russell said they found a burrow somewhere. I didn’t buy it.

Russell finds a nice jagged rock and loops the nylon rope around it. Then again. Three times in all. But he needs my help to do it. I ask him if he thinks they’ll keep following us.

“If they’re starving,” is all he gets out.

I want to take care of him, but I can’t. He’s kept me safe my whole life. When he was still happy, and believed in God, he would discuss the pieces of humanity, the veneer, he calls it now. Art, music, culture. Politics, governments, wars, history. Charity, rescue organizations, the army.

After the Sea Queen went down, he just called it the veneer, and he never goes into it more than that now—he doesn’t talk about the pieces. For a long time we’d been able to ignore the rumors about the place where it doesn’t rain, the city above the water line. We didn’t need to go there. It comforted me to know it was out there, even though Russell called it a matter of faith. But when we lost the Cap’n and our family on that boat, long after we’d left our homes in Philadelphia and Pittsburg, he said that crew was the last humanity we’ll ever see. I don’t know how he meant that if he really believes we can reach Leadville.

I used to ask him, “Won’t it be too hot there?” I’d heard the horror stories about the heat for years. No, he’d replied. That was way south, past Texas. The equator. And I’d been relieved. I never thought we’d see ice though. Now I’m not so sure how relieved it makes me feel.

I have to help Russell up the mud bank. There are barely any trees on this island. Our tent will have to be naked. He sits down and puts the tent and the poles on the ground. I look at him and I want to scream. I want to demand that he tell me what’s wrong with him. But I don’t want to hear about the infection, the bad antibiotics.

I work as quickly as I can getting the tent up. I’ve done it so many times that I could do it in the pitch black. Russell doesn’t even get the plastic food sack out of the canoe. I have to go down.

I walk slowly, carefully to the edge of the bank. I feel like I can see the underwater valley below, descending for thousands of feet to some dark graveyard where millions of skeletons decompose, disperse like dissolved salt. I’m almost to the boat when I slip. One foot tries to steady the mistake of the other, but it doesn’t work, because this island is all mud. Barely any rock for grip.

I stick my hand out to break my fall and smack my shoulder into the ground, then tumble down toward the water. Freezing needles stab me as I realize water is rushing over me. I’m in the water. I feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t even pull myself to the surface. But then I find the ground again, it’s still there. I stand up, already numb. I don’t feel the cold at all anymore. I just pull the nylon line to draw the canoe, grab the bail buckets and the plastic bag, then let the canoe drift back out into the brown.

Up until Indianapolis, we didn’t have to worry about exposure. In Pittsburg, we didn’t even wrap ourselves in plastic. I remember looking at my hands then, and seeing them start to prune. I remember wondering for the first time if the texture of my skin would ever return to normal. I don’t care if I look like shit, except to Russell. And I don’t want my skin to slide off. I’m always better about keeping my plastic on than him. He is stupid like that sometimes, like he’s invincible.

He used to talk about the exposure—how it will get colder as we go west. He said even in the warm waters though, if we get stuck in them, we’d become hypothermic. The human body is 98 degrees. The warmest water we’ll see, he said, will be around 70 degrees. That temperature will suck the life right out of us in a few hours. Walking back to him, I wonder what the temperature of the water is here. Maybe 50? And we don’t have anything to make a fire with, and a week ahead on the flat brown sea. If there is a Poseidon god, I think it’s time to ask him that the brown stays flat. I can take medium rain. Even heavy rain. If there are no waves.

I walk back to Russell. He hasn’t gone inside the tent yet. Just lying in the mud. I kneel next to him and study his face, and notice the sinking feeling in my stomach is coming back. He looks like he’s sleeping, but his breathing is slowed. I put my hand on his forehead, like he’s done so many times for me. But I’m no good at it, and I can’t tell if he’s too hot. His eyes look sunken, and his skin is soggy. He’s not even leaning away from the rain.

“Russell,” I say, trying not to let my stirring anxiety show. I glance over at the sea, realizing that if the face eaters appear out there, we’re not running anywhere. I reach into my pocket, careful not to punch another hole in the plastic glove, and feel for my knife. He has one too. But his won’t be any good to us if he keeps acting like this. No boats are out on the water. Maybe they’ve given up. Maybe that run across the last rock was the last of their strength. Maybe they decided to just eat each other.

“C’mon, let’s get inside.” I nudge him. He doesn’t respond. I really start to worry, and I can’t help but let it show in my voice. “Russell! Get the fuck in the tent!”

Usually he gets excited when I use bad language. He always tells me never to curse, because it’s a way to keep ourselves close to the veneer. But sometimes I need to know he’s alive, still feeling, and I curse to get a reaction from him. He never smiles about it, but he always reminds me not to do it. Over the last few months though, he’s barely protested at all. I almost think he’d let me have sex with someone for food now if we had another chance. It’s like he’s not caring as much anymore about me, or anything, just Leadville.

I grab his wrist, then bring it close to his other, and start to pull him to the tent flap. He finally rolls his eyes open, watches me, and apologizes. I don’t want to hear it, so I just keep pulling him toward the tent. But he’s too heavy. At first he sort of slides across the mud, and it’s only a few feet away, but now it’s too much. Even though he’s a skeleton, I can’t move his body. If he doesn’t start moving on his own, he’s going to stay out in the rain. I realize that with a panic and do something irrational. I start shaking him as hard as I can.

“C’mon you heavy bastard,” I say, my voice quavering. It’s as if he recognizes who I am again. Maybe the terror I’m sounding like. And he starts to crawl to the tent. I push his butt behind him until he’s in and get inside after him. I close the tent flap. He lies down on the mush, and I lie next to him. Above our heads, the splotches of the rain appear and disappear, a hundred times a second, each time in a different place. The canvas is leaking in two spots, a steady drip. One of the drips is right in the center of the tent, the other by the tent flap. I roll him on his side, getting him as close to the far wall of the tent as I can. The drone on the roof makes the rain sound hard, loud, like it’s on heavy. I start again with panic, wondering if it is turning heavy, if maybe a gale is blowing up, but I stop myself—it’s just being in the tent. I’ve been in the tent hundreds of times. Not this tent. We picked this one up in Rapid City. But the sound always gets louder in the tent, the rain always feels like it’s on heavy when we’re inside.

I try to talk to him again, and he still isn’t responding. I realize his face is pressed into the mud from how I rolled him. I pull him back and make sure he’s on his back. He smiles at me.

“You’re a piece of shit, you know that?” I say, feeling the weight of the world slide away at the sight of his smile.

“I just need some sleep,” he says, and then the smile disappears. He’s out. I push myself down into the mud, turn him against the wall of the tent, and press my stomach against his back and butt. I push in close, as close as I can. Usually he’s really warm. Some nights, when we first started staying in the tent a lot, in Chicago, he was too warm. I had to stay on the other side of the tent because of how much heat his body put out. He told me to stay close anyway, that when we were sleeping the temperature might drop suddenly. But I couldn’t. He was too hot. I would wake up sweating every time and have to disentangle myself from his body. Sometimes he wrapped me up, really right, so I couldn’t get out. I used to hate that. And sometimes, I really didn’t mind. But ever since Sioux Falls, I can’t stay far from him in the tent for more than a minute. The second we set it up, he goes right to sleep. No conversation. And I get right on him, right away. But now he doesn’t feel like he used to. It’s like he’s taking all the heat from me instead of giving it. And I’m happy to give it to him, as long as he doesn’t get sick on me. I tell him he’s not allowed to get sick. He agrees.

Sometimes, when we talked about the veneer of humanity, and he still seemed to enjoy indulging in the idea of it, he would bring up love. He’d mention a girl he used to know. She had been his girlfriend. He said they wanted to get married, but they could never get the money up. He said he regretted that they’d never just settled for a cheap wedding. I didn’t really know what a wedding was, and he told me it used to be a giant waste of money. But it was part of the veneer, and so he had tried to save up for it. She died before they could get married though. They had a kid too. He doesn’t talk about that at all. A picture fell out of his jacket once in Pittsburg, and he wouldn’t even tell me who it was. After the Sea Queen Marie went down, and we survived by the hand of god, as he put it, he admitted that it was his daughter. He’d wanted to get married most for her. But more than just for her. He said he really loved his lady. We were soul mates, he had said. That one took a lot of explaining. I got out of it that two people pretended like they’d be together forever. He said forever was one of the veneer ideas, easy to embrace when you don’t have to struggle through the rain for food, higher ground, warmth, a dry place to lay down.

It sounded really silly to me. But part of me is jealous. It sounds like something I am sure I will never have. Love. Soul mate. Wedding. A baby. And then I start to feel the attraction to him. I start to take all those things he has said and place them on him and me. But he won’t talk about any of it with me. Just Leadville.

She didn’t drown, his daughter. It was that there were no hospitals around to take her. They’d all been abandoned. There were militia hospitals. But they couldn’t do anything. Bad antibiotics. Now he won’t touch them. Says the rain’s gotten to them all. I don’t think that’s the real reason he doesn’t take them.

I push into him, begging in my mind that the warmth return, that his warmth come into me, like it was always there before. Too hot. But it doesn’t. And I lie awake thinking, watching the drab nothing above the tent, noticing that it is darkening by degrees outside. At first I think it’s getting dark too fast, and I remember the charcoal black sky of the hurricane that sank us. But it’s not, it’s getting dark at normal speed. And the rain is on medium. I calm myself back down.

I know that if the face eaters left ten minutes after we did, and guess right about which mudslide we crawled up onto, they’ll be arriving any minute now. We’ll be easy prey inside the tent. We won’t even hear their footsteps. But our normal guard duty where we take turns on watch is out—it has been for the past few nights. And I don’t have the energy to watch the water right now. I can’t leave Russell. I hope they miss us, find the wrong island. I try to recall how many other islands are around this one, how many they’ll have to choose from. Two, three? Really only one though. One that’s big enough to set up a tent on. Maybe they’re dead. Drowned now for real this time, the last two. I don’t remember the bandits ever being this persistent, not even in South Dakota. Something’s different here in Wyoming.

Just to be safe, I take out my knife, and I accidentally hit Russell with it as I put it into my fist while trying to stay as nestled into him as possible. He doesn’t move, and he doesn’t moan. He just breathes, real soft like, which at least is better than how he sounded on the boat. Some people can get sick real fast, he’d told me. One minute they’re in top shape, and the next they’re near to a coma, and before the night is out, they die. That’s just the way it is in the rain, he says. But not him.

I start to wonder if maybe Russell is my soul mate. He says he’s my dad’s age, as if my dad is alive or something, and he never tells me I’m pretty. But I know he watches me. I see him watching. At least I used to. When I’m walking away, and I turn back, he’s there, not even smiling, just looking at me like an animal. But I’m not scared, and I know it’s something besides watching out for my safety. I started doing it on purpose, walking away and turning back, just to make sure he is watching. But he doesn’t act interested. It’s like I’m his kid. He doesn’t want to be my soul mate. And for some reason, he keeps taking care of me. I asked him once if he leaves me, would he get to Leadville faster. He didn’t even answer. I thought he couldn’t say it, because it was true, and what was the point in bringing it up. But that night, when we were cuddled together in the tent, and he still had the warmth, he told me that he’d die without me. I made a mistake then. I asked him if we’d be together forever. I know it was veneer. Pointless. Unhelpful of me to bring it up. “Will you always be with me?” I asked him after he admitted he needed my help to make it to Leadville. He said yes for some reason. I said “Forever?” He said yes. It sounded like he meant it. I squeezed him, wanting him so bad.

I push my hands up along his back, into his stomach, wrapping tightly to him like some kind of cub. Then I reach up and feel his face again. I put my fingers against his lips, and wait for the breath. It rolls out slow. A small rush of warmth, and I know he’s still with me. Then I go up to his forehead, and feel it again, but I only feel the cold wet of his dripping hair. I can’t tell if he’s burning up. That’s when I hear something other than the rain. It sounds like someone’s splashing in the water outside. We didn’t pitch the tent very far from the water. It sounds very close. I shake Russell and ask him if he heard that. He doesn’t reply. I’m scared, and think for sure that it’s the face eaters. They have to have found us. But I don’t think I can fend off two of them with my knife. I take it into my hand. It’s only about six inches long. I don’t even know if I can hit one of them, and if I do, I don’t think I’ll kill him. I don’t want to go to the tent flap to look outside and check. I think I’d rather let them come kill us, end the rain forever. But that fear subsides as I continue to listen because I don’t hear any more sounds. And then I hear something again, a bigger splash. I know it’s them. They’ve found us, and they’re trying to land on the banks. Maybe they’ll just cut away our canoe and push on, head back north where there’re more peaks. But I know they won’t. They need to eat. We have hardtack, and our bodies. That’s what they’re after.

I crawl on my knees to the tent flap, ready to try one last struggle with Russell to wake him when I see my fears confirmed outside. The rain pelts the roof, drips cold on me as I get to the flap. I open it and see nothing but gray, then I recognize the difference between the sky and the mud. I see the long stretch of brown canvas water, but I don’t have a good enough angle to see down to where the rocks meet the water, where our canoe is. “Russell,” I whisper, but I know it’s useless now. I say it so softly that he probably doesn’t hear it even if he is awake and alert and not pretending to be sick anymore. I peel the flap back further and poke my head out.

Everything looks blank. Just dull sky and flat water, endless pattering on it as far as I can see. The rain hits. There’s not even any wind. The sky is getting darker, but I can’t see anything out there, and that gives me enough courage to step out of the tent. I rise on the mud, careful not to slip again.

I rotate all the way around, expecting to see something, a boat, men climbing the rocky banks to get to us, the greedy, deranged look in their faces like the one who drowned. But there’s no one. Just the gray and brown. Then I hear the splash again, and I look because I know exactly where it’s coming from now. I see a dark blue body moving in the water. It’s twenty times the size of our canoe. Water shoots into the sky, really high, and falls back down in a wide splashing arc. Then the body disappears again. An animal. It’s just an animal. I think about what Russell’s taught me about sea animals. Sharks, dolphins, squids. They’re all just magic to me. This one was too big though. Whale. It’s a whale.

I wait a long time, and it never comes back up. It’s strange for me, like the whale is some glimpse of hope, and I feel as if we aren’t totally alone anymore. I wonder if the whale minds the rain, or even notices it at all, and if all this that has happened to the human veneer matters one bit to it. No, it hasn’t even noticed we’re here. I have the compulsion to call to it, grab the oar and paddle out to it. Like it will know we need its help. And it will take us down into the rain sea and be a submarine for us. Carrying us south, straight to Leadville, no stops. It can probably have us there by the morning. I wait a long time for the whale to come back, until it’s almost dark. As tired as Russell seems all the time lately, I feel like I have more energy. Like now that everything is so close to death, I am constantly energized. He used to make fun of me because I sleep in. He says it’s like wasting your life, sleeping in. Sleep is for the dead, he says. But since Rapid City, I probably could have done without sleep altogether. And when I do sleep, it doesn’t do much for me. It usually brings me to some warm, dry place, like Philadelphia was, and Pittsburg, and for a time even Indianapolis. But those years are gone forever. And I always wake up, angry and depressed that we ever left there. But I have always trusted Russell’s judgment, more than my own or anyone else’s. He had said that there was a place where it wasn’t raining. Some people said, and he tended to believe them, that some countries are completely dry. But they can’t help anybody else. It used to be our country that helped everyone else he said. And when it came to the time after the rain, once people learned it wasn’t going to stop, and the veneer started to erode, and people started to starve, and lose power, and die, and get lost in mile long bodyjams that floated west, no one place that is dry can afford to do anything but help itself. That’s why we don’t hear about a rescue. But we can’t worry about the other countries, Russell says. The other places where it isn’t raining. Only Leadville.

And once it became clear that Philadelphia was getting bad, and the east coast was all too low, and we had to start moving west, we would never be able to turn back. Just stay on the move, seeking elevation. When Russell said we couldn’t stay in Philadelphia anymore, I accepted it without question. Even though we could still walk most of the streets there. And then again, when it happened in Pittsburg, I knew he was right. But in Indianapolis I fought him. Things didn’t seem bad there yet, it seemed dumb to move, but he said we had to go. We’d only been there two years. The rain didn’t seem to be taking as much then. But he’d said he knew we’d be in trouble in another year if we stayed.

And you never hear about how those places are doing after you leave them. They’re just gone, like they weren’t real, fading memories of a drier, warmer past, forsaken for the sake of faith, as Russell had called it. That’s what my dreams are. The memories of those decisions that I question now. The roofs over our head, the food in the cabinet, the streets to run through, the other normal people to talk to. The mistake of moving on when it isn’t that bad.

The sky is telling me that it’s almost night now, as the sun smear dips to my left, making some of the gray endless mass of clouds glow red and pink. The whale has forsaken us too. He doesn’t need to help, for what connection does he have to the veneer? What favor does he owe people like us? Even still, I can’t force myself to go back in just yet. The sight of its body, now the memory of its body, eases my mind. The same ease it had moving through the death pool all around us. I need it to come back, just so I can see it again, be filled with its grace, its lack of concern, its playfulness. I strain my eyes looking for it over the canvas of brown, imagining it will come back. I think about Russell and his wife and his daughter. I wonder if this is how he feels about them. I wonder if because he said forever to them, and had meant it, if now he feels like I do about the whale not coming back. It doesn’t make any logical sense that it will return, but I cling to the idea anyway. I look out over the muddled horizon for the whale, but instead, I see a boat. I think it’s a boat. I move down to the water, and all at once it’s like the fear from before has jumped back into me, but twice as strong, because after I double check, and triple check, I realize it really is a boat. I tell myself it’s a different boat, but I know it’s not. It’s the same one. It’s the one I’ve seen for days now trailing us in the open water. And it’s moving toward our rock of mud. I almost run back up to the tent, but I know that if I go in the water again, I might not come back up. I slowly climb up the rocks, onto the mud, walking between the little streams leading down to the sea so they don’t send me flying down along with the rain into the brown.

I open the tent flap. Russell’s still sleeping, but he’s rolled over onto his other side, facing the tent flap now. It sounds like he’s not even breathing, and the double fear of that and the face eaters launches me across to him. I grab him violently on his arm. He wakes up right away, like he isn’t even sick one bit.

“What’s up Tan?” he says. Hearing my name makes me feel like I’m suddenly awake again, like the whale never happened, the trip I took down into the sea with it. I try to choke out the words, but I can’t. I feel paralyzed, like I’m going to fall down and start crying. It’s a combination of the fact that he’s okay and the fact that we’re going to die anyway. He sits upright, concern gripping his gaunt face.

“Tanner!” he says, angry, desperate to know what’s happening. He’s awake, and he seems fine. I point outside the tent and finally mutter, “They’re coming.”

But he’s not fine. He goes to stand on his knees, like he’s always done at the first sign of danger when we stay in the tent, but he grunts and sits back down.

“What is it?” I say, panicked.

“I’m just dizzy, give me a second,” he moans. Then he reaches into his pocket, and it takes him forever but he finally takes out his knife and tries to stand on his knees again. He falls a little bit but I grab him, hold him upright until he can find his strength. It seems like he won’t find it though, and I know the boat is getting closer. It’s not so dark that they won’t see where our canoe is tied up on the bank.

“How close?” he says, weathered, but ready to move. I tell him a couple hundred feet. He starts to walk on his knees to the tent flap, and as always, I get behind him, waiting for his direction. I’ve never had to take charge, and I don’t want to start now. He’ll tell me what to do—either we run, or we stand our ground. But I don’t know how we can stand our ground, and I don’t know where we can row to. We’ll be on dark water if we row out there now. And we’ll have to backtrack north to find a patch of land to escape onto. And before all that we’ll have to flip the canoe because it’s half sunken.

Russell opens the flap and peers out, and then he steps out and stands up. I follow after him, locking my eyes right onto the sea. The boat is a lot closer now, or maybe I didn’t call it right, and it hadn’t been hundreds of feet away. I can see the blue plastic of their body suits. One of the men is limp, the other rowing. That must be what we looked like, with me at the oar.

“They’re low,” Russell says. I see what he means—the edge of their boat is perilously close to the water line, because the limp guy isn’t bailing. They’re moving slow, taking on rain, and it looks like they might sink before they reach us.

“What should we do?” I say, because it’s taking way too long for Russell to decide. He’s thinking slower than usual. He usually has a plan by now. He has them ahead of time. But he just looks out there, judging something silently to himself. I push into his chest, out of fright, out of having no words to express my need for him to make the call—to tell me to break the tent down again and tip our canoe over to empty out the water. But he always tips the canoe at the first sight of danger, because I usually can’t handle the weight by myself. But he isn’t moving yet. I squeeze him.

“Russell, I’m scared,” I say. The storm had hit us so fast in the Sea Queen Marie that I hadn’t had time to register my fright. It was just one minute we were okay, and the next, we were fighting for the rafts, and then we were knocked around for two hours in swells that rose as tall as houses. But ever since we’ve been in Wyoming, and the face eaters started showing up everywhere, I notice my fear more. Maybe it’s related to the sinking feeling I get in my stomach now, that we are forever beyond all the warm and dry places in the world, forever beyond the veneer. And in the total dreariness of the place, I start more and more to fixate upon ideas. Like the idea of Russell and me being together forever. Maybe even in the idea, now separated from everything else, that I love him. And he might never know it. Love, the word, hasn’t passed his lips since Philadelphia. I think it stopped after his family died. He’s never told me he loves me. But the love is in me now, and alive, and it drives the fear of death to a pulsing and horrible swelling inside my chest—I don’t want to lose him, and I don’t want to die. Even if the rain doesn’t ever stop, I don’t want us to end. I tell him I need him again. “Russell, what are we gonna do?” I say.

“They’re too low,” he says. He leaves me, pushes me off of him, and walks down to the water’s edge. I follow right after him and wait, hoping he’ll tell me what the plan is. He just stares, and I look too. They’re waists are level with the water.

“Can they make it?” I say. They’re so close. Russell doesn’t say anything, but he kneels down for a minute, like something’s wrong. I kneel next to him, put my arm on his back, rubbing it, but he just keeps looking at the mud. He’s not even checking the water anymore. I ask if he’s okay, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s breathing really loud again, like the short walk to the water was too much for him. They see us I tell him, but he already knows that. My hope that they might miss, get swept in the wrong direction, or not see us altogether evaporates.

“You have your knife?” he finally asks me. I show him it, and try to remember the way to stab that he taught me. You go across, not down. You keep the blade pointed toward your feet, not up to the sky. You swipe, not stab. I rehearse everything. I can’t believe he sounds like I’m actually going to use it.

The silence and rain stay united, until finally, after a long torment, the splashing of oars interferes, and the boat can’t hold any more water. The limp man looks like he’s dead. He isn’t moving, bailing, even opening his eyes. I wonder if he will even try to get off the boat. The other man has a look on his face like the one that died earlier today. His eyes are spread way open, unblinking despite the rain, like he’s had a last shot of adrenaline, the final push before death. Sea water starts spilling over the rail of the boat, and the whole thing tips over. They fall out together with a quiet splash. The limp man doesn’t even try to swim, he just sort of bobs for a bit, and then floats back out into the brown, like a current is dragging him south. The other one knows how to swim and he isn’t too tired to do it.

“He’ll make it,” is all Russell says. He stands back up, holds his knife ready, and looks at me. His face isn’t blank like before on the boat, and in the tent, or even a minute ago when he was kneeling in the mud. He looks concerned, like life’s back in him, a last fight. I stand behind him, scared to death.

“Get next to me,” he says. I obey him immediately. We stand side by side right at the water’s edge. The man makes good time swimming in. But he’s not crying for help like the last man. Finally, he reaches our canoe, where it’s half-submerged, and uses it to hoist himself up for air. He gasps loudly, destroying for a moment the consistency of the rain taps. Then he moves again, back into the water, walking underwater right up to our feet. His hands come onto the bank first, and they find a small rock to cling to. Russell steps up and stomps on his foot. The crushing pain makes the man scream. I cringe, unsure whether or not I should jump in. Then, like the pain brought him back to full strength, the man rises to his feet and ducks his head down way low, and charges at Russell like a bull. The head rams in. Russell stumbles from the blow before he can force his knife forward. The man falls on top of Russell. I finally snap alive and run to them.

I can’t tell who’s screaming. I reach the back of the wet animal and he throws his elbow backward at me as soon as I’m close enough to stab him. White flashing pain stuns me for a second. I can’t focus, I don’t know if Russell is pinned. I hear them grunting, a fight for life between the walking dead. I rise again, feeling undead myself, and try again to save Russell. Only he doesn’t need my help. He stands up all on his own, pushing the man off his chest. The man rolls over, both his hands firmly gripping the handle of a knife. It’s deep in his belly, right in the middle. Russell stabbed him in the gut. He doesn’t even make a sound even though the sight of it hurts my own stomach. It’s like he’s numb to it. And he starts to rise again.

I think I should stand next to Russell but I can’t. I can’t take my eyes off of the face eater. He looks like one of the rotting corpses. His whole face is a beard, a dripping mop, funneling rain onto his gut where the red is streaming out. He doesn’t act fazed by the wound. He looks at Russell, and Russell steps back a couple feet. And then Russell slips when he tries to back up even farther. He falls, hits a mud stream, and rolls down, all the way down, out into the water. The man pauses, both hands still feeling the knife handle, testing it, like he wants to try to loosen it. But he decides to leave it in, and he looks from Russell to me and then back to Russell. Russell doesn’t move in the water. I panic, thinking he hit his head and he can’t breathe. And then the man walks toward me, ignoring the knife sticking out of him, raising his hands toward me, moving in with like giant claws to make sure I don’t escape.

When I was little, and I first learned that I don’t have a real family, and back then some people still had real families, I felt sad. I felt sad for a really long time. I couldn’t remember my mom, or my dad. Russell filled me in with some details about my parents over the years, but I don’t know for sure if he just made them up because he knew I was sad then. He always cares if I’m sad. But Russell is my family, the closest thing to it I’ll ever know. And I turn away from the man coming at me because I can’t take my eyes off Russell, helpless in the brown.

I used to talk him up to anyone I met. The other boys, girls, older men, women, it didn’t matter. He was the toughest guy around. Who is he? they’d ask me. I never called him Dad once, always just Russell. He’s Russell I’d say, like they were idiots for not knowing that. Back then he was stocky, but he was tall and stocky. Enormous really. A bear of a man. Six foot three. Maybe two hundred and seventy five pounds. I was always safe when he was around. He’d beaten the shit out of a boy once who’d tried to get me to go home with him. Russell told me that boy had no intention of taking me to his house. He’d been about my age, and I was more curious than anything—I’d never really had a friend my age. He was after my body, Russell said. For food or sex, it didn’t matter. Though things were relatively calm in Philadelphia, and Pittsburg even, and the rain didn’t mean yet what it means now, the reports of cannibalism had already started. Despite those warmer, dryer times, people hadn’t seen the reason to wait, when it was necessary to survive, to eat other people. Society crumbled so fast, Russell says, that it makes the veneer disappear in many before the environment dictates that it has to. Some had different caveats about eating human flesh—they only do it in near-death situations, only if the person is already dead from natural causes, only if it is the thigh muscle, or the bicep, or the breast. Most of those rules about eating human flesh faded by the time we reached Chicago. By Rapid City, all the caveats were gone—and now it’s just the face eaters. Some of them I’ve seen, the ones who hunt in packs, have pieces of their faces missing, and other parts too Russell says, but those missing chunks are concealed under the plastic suits. Russell told me that they’d just as soon cut a block from each other’s arms for a meal than risk the rain some nights. I had thought it was bullshit. But then I saw the bodies—large sections missing, bones with teeth marks, faces with the serrated punctures of canines and molars. Until Rapid City, we were once removed from the face eaters, all the cannibals, because we played it safe. We stuck to the high rises, where food was more plentiful. We stuck to the Sea Queen Marie. We stuck to the towers and the skylines and the towns on mountain tops. It was in the backcountry you ran into the face eaters, Russell told me then. We avoided backcountry like the plague. But after Rapid City, and even long before that, the cannibals weren’t the minority anymore. If a body floated by in the rain that hadn’t been dead for more than a day, it simply meant another day of life for someone else. But we’ve managed to make it this far without doing it. It’s one of the last pieces of the veneer Russell will talk about. That we don’t eat other people. The veneer was so strong before the rain, he says, that no one ate people. I can’t imagine that. We’re just another food source, like any other animal out there.

The man steps carefully on the mud, then again, moving toward me his food source and ignoring Russell in the water. He’ll eat every part of me raw is all I can think as he comes. But I hear water splashing, and movement at the bank—it’s Russell. I watch him trample up the mudslide on his hands and knees, weaponless, but seething. The face eater halts and turns to Russell as Russell barrels into his legs. I charge at him too. I see the knife handle sticking out of his stomach and grab it and push as hard as I can, wedging it deeper in. It slides in, like his skin has no measure of resistance anymore, like he’s one big sponge soaked in red water, and the whole handle disappears inside him. He falls, almost on Russell. He misses and rolls off to the side. I run to him even though I think he’s dead now, and my fear disappears, and I stomp on his face like it’s a big spider. I do it over and over again until I slip. Mud smacks my mouth and I bite my lip. I taste the blood, very different from the rain. I stand back up immediately, expecting to have to continue, but the man is dead. I walk over top of him and look down at him. His eyes are still wild, and they’re still wide open. He looks just like he did when he was coming after me. But all the other life has gone out of him. And maybe it’s traveled somewhere else, like Russell used to say happens, but I don’t think so. I pause at my instinct, which screams that I roll him down into the water. The pause comes because for a moment I think that he’s food. We don’t have any food, not much. Not enough for the trip to Leadville. It’s five hundred some miles to Leadville. It’s a wasteland out here. But I can’t look at Russell, can’t bear to ask him. I know he’ll refuse. I follow my gut and kick the man, then get down in the mud on my knees, rain smacking my back, and push. I grunt, and I cry, and I push him down into the water. He floats away some, then his body drifts back toward the bank, like the gravity of our living bodies is pulling him toward us, because our bodies need him for nourishment. But then he is sucked away, captured by the same current that took his friend. He disappears before I realize I haven’t heard Russell move.

I turn around and race back up the mud, careless, forgetting to watch my step so I don’t tumble down into the water myself. It’s getting really dark. But I see Russell. His eyes are closed. He’s lying on his back. And his chest isn’t rising up and down. No, I think I scream, but nothing comes out. I just go to him and fall on top of him. Rain falls on us.

Part 2

Chapter 3

The rain is freezing cold. I talk to Russell, quietly at first, pretending I don’t notice that he’s not breathing, then I start shouting at him. I start slapping his chest. Then I stop everything because it’s all useless. He isn’t responding. But I see up close that he still is breathing. Really softly, but he’s alive. I’m shivering, and I look around, as if someone will spring out of the gloom and help me. Help me carry him to the tent. But no one comes.

When I was eight or nine, there were two people who lived with us. We moved together from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, across the flooding farmlands, where by the end, we navigated by the sight of the grain silos that rose from the water. But when we reached Pittsburg, we found a high rise building. We were safe from the rain.

Delly and Jennifer were their names. They came with us and settled next door in the high rise. Russell really trusted them, and so I did too. It was the first time I learned you could still trust an outsider—that not everyone was out to get you or what you had. Their two kids, I can’t remember their names, tagged along with us everywhere we went. We’d go out into the rain together sometimes—supermarkets, abandoned warehouses, militia hospitals, radio towers to check for transmissions. There were never any transmissions, but it was enjoyable then to go out, running through the rain, like it made everything an adventure, and not the cold advance of death that it really was. When Russell got sick back then, with a cold, or a headache, or his leg infection, Delly and Jennifer helped out. I tried my best to contribute—make him soup, find some extra cookies somewhere, trade for ice, anything I thought might cheer him up or make him better faster. Sometimes I found Tylenol that was still dry and edible. But Delly and Jennifer were really the ones taking care of him, as much as I thought I was helping. Most of the time they left us alone, and they worried about their own small space in the high rise, keeping anyone from getting too close to their family in case things became too desperate. That’s how things became in Philadelphia, Russell says—too desperate. But I remember feeling a sense of comfort knowing they were around, within shouting distance, neighbors even. Getting the Tylenol for Russell was really going to Delly and asking him for some. Or maybe running down into the gutted supermarkets by myself, climbing through the ransacked pharmacies, though Russell didn’t like me doing that. He said it was too risky.    Despite the distance they kept from us, I felt like Delly and Jennifer actually cared about us. After Pittsburg, we left Delly and Jennifer behind because they refused to travel through the open rain again. They’d had enough moving from place to place like nomads without a home, even though all the streets were flooded by then, and the militia hospitals were falling apart from disease, and the rampant mindset about heading west was in full fever. We didn’t have anyone else that cared about us for a long time after that. Not until the Sea Queen Marie. In Indianapolis, Russell did the work: he traded for food, weapons, clothing, and medicine. That’s when we had a gun. I’d help scavenge, and we’d have extra to trade sometimes. He’d always trade for books with the extra, or let me pick out board games to play with him. But there, in Indianapolis, when I was twelve, I realized no one gave a shit anymore. No one actually cared about us. It was every man for himself. No one would help you there unless you helped them in what they considered an equal way. And that was the best case scenario. If it wasn’t that, it was more often someone who would just try to take what you had. Russell used his gun sometimes, but he didn’t talk to me about it when he did. I could tell he didn’t like that he had to use it. Still, he did use it, and he thought it was important I know how to use it too. He taught me how to shoot then.

If something had happened to Russell then, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably went and asked someone to help me move him, get him medicine, and I would give whatever we had in our tarp house. I would give them anything they wanted. We lived in a ratty tarp house then, in a tarp city, on a rooftop. But I could have traded something there at least, and someone would probably have helped us, even if they didn’t give a shit about us. People at least gave a shit about your supplies. Only Russell stopped getting sick for a long time, so I never had to look for help. And when we got to the Sea Queen
Marie, I started to feel like I used to around Delly and Jennifer again. On that ship, people even helped when you didn’t have anything to trade. They’d let you owe them, and they trusted you to repay them. That’s how close we all became on the Marie.

But after the storm, after the ship capsized, and we passed through Sioux Falls on our way to Wyoming, there was no one to ask for anything. Just salvage what you can and keep your distance from people. There was a selfish, dangerous hunger in everyone we met after the sinking, and I started to feel like the West was the opposite of what Russell said it would be—instead of the veneer, it was the absence of the veneer. I held onto Russell’s hope though, like things would eventually turn around. We never brought it up that everything was getting worse. Just keep moving. Leadville.

I look at the great expanse of brown water surrounding our crust of raised mud. Here, there’s no one in every direction forever. Because the face eaters don’t count, they’re not people. No one cares out here. Not the rain, the cold, or the wet. It’s just us.

Russell coughs, and it sounds really weak. He coughs again, stronger, and I realize he’s trying to talk to me. I lean down against him and listen, but nothing comes out. I get on my knees, rain pounding my back, and as I start to slide down the bank into the sea, I push against Russell, trying to roll him up toward the tent. I dig in and press hard but his body goes nowhere, and the force works in reverse, sending me sliding down to the edge of the water. I sink my heels into the mud hard enough to slow down and finally stop before spilling in. The canoe’s right next to me—it’s taken a beating from the rain and it’s sunken all the way under now. It looks up at me like a murky ghost, mocking the fact that we’ve considered it our best and only hope to make it to safety. And I know that even with all my might I can’t get Russell into the tent. Not if he’s not moving himself to help me. In all my years, I’ve never slept an entire night outside in the rain. It’s hard to believe, but we always find a roof. I wonder if Russell ever had to sleep in the rain all night before we teamed up. But tonight, I can’t see any other way for things to go. And it terrifies me because I know the rain’s too cold to spend the night outside. Hypothermia is guaranteed.

I look out over the dark water and I feel overwhelmed and utterly useless. I want to jump in. Go down and find the whale. I can’t deal with Russell dying. My whole body starts to shake from the cold and the wet. Then I hear a moan, and the sound of movement. I turn around and see Russell try to get on his knees but he slips. He can’t get up. The rain drives in rivulets down my head, onto my arms, and my neck. I want to give up. Everything in me is telling me I can’t do this anymore. The warm, cozy days of the past are gone forever. I’ll never find a real home. I’ll never have love. Just the bleak gray, and the wet, and the cold, until I die. Which now looks like it will be shortly after Russell dies. And there’s nothing I can do. I don’t see a point in going on.

And then it hits me as I stand up again. I’m an idiot. I was almost ready to curl up on the mud beside Russell and let myself fall asleep, leave this place, let the cold pull me gently into the permanent nothingness. It’s so obvious I could slap myself.

Just move the tent, not him.

The thought collapses my panic into a singular focus, and I tread back up the slippery bank. I pass Russell but I can’t bear to look at him. I think I hear him breathing, and that’s good enough. I go through the motions, pulling out the tent poles, collapsing the canvas, dragging it over to him, and setting it up all over again. I struggle at first because of the slope, but in just five minutes it’s up, and he’s underneath the canvas ceiling now. We’re perilously close to the water, and I think a mudslide could take the whole tent into the sea while we sleep. But I can’t resist sleep. It’s the only thing that makes sense now. I roll Russell over as best I can and pull myself into him. He is breathing regularly again, and without the groans that were coming before. I hug him and stare at the brown canvas wall, wondering what tomorrow will bring. I think about the canoe’s crack, and the fact that Russell doesn’t seem like he can bail or row. Without him, I don’t know how I’ll make it back to the bigger sections of the Bighorns where there is better shelter, where we still had a chance of finding fuel for a fire. I can’t even think of the sea voyage to Leadville. It seems out of the question now. We’ve pushed ourselves to a point where we can’t turn back, but we can’t go forward either. Every problem at once is too much for me to take, so I stop thinking about how messed up it all is. At least we’re in the tent again. I let my mind dissolve into the noise of the rain, its steady patter on the ocean just a few feet away from our heads, its soft patter on the mud all around us. The cold starts to slide away because the rain is no longer hitting me. I’m getting warm again, but Russell is taking most of it, it seems, faster than I can generate it. I close my eyes and think of the face eaters floating away, and wonder about what direction they’re drifting. Will they pass through Colorado? And what about the whale—what magical place will it visit?

I have a really hard time sleeping. The morning comes after a long time. I can’t help but feel nervous about the new day, and what it will mean for me if Russell isn’t revived by his rest. It’s the only thing I can hope for—that the night of sleep will get him moving again.

I disentangle from him and poke my head out of the tent. The smear of the sun is visible again in the gray sky, near to the floor of the flat brown horizon. It’s rising from the East, taking its time, filtering through the endless layers of clouds.

I wrap my plastic suit around my body tight and step outside to survey the water. I don’t expect to see anything out there and I don’t. I’m glad I don’t see any waves, and it feels a little warmer. There is no sign of ice on the water. Something like hope floods my spirit for a moment, but it only lasts until I go back inside to wake Russell up. He doesn’t move. Russell, I say. He jerks at his name and sits up slowly, rubbing his head. I put my hand to his forehead. He’s hot, even I can tell.

“You’ve got to take the antibiotics,” I say. He ignores me and starts to move toward the tent flap. He pulls his plastic hood down over his face and pokes his head out. Canoe’s still here, he says, and he sits back down and coughs. I ask if he thinks it’s his leg or just a cold. He doesn’t answer me, and he lays down, blocking the tent entrance, like he’s going to go back to sleep. He lies right under the leak and lets it drip on his shoulder.

Russell used to have endless energy. After he started to grow thinner, and I wondered if he wasn’t sick with how thin he was, he started to run. It was his favorite thing to do. First thing in the morning, he’d go out running. Running through the rain, through the streams, hopping the puddles and the little torrents that laced the streets. He would always try to convince me to come, and he would say that it was the only thing that cleared his mind, brought him back to center. It does for me what God once did, he said. But he still seemed to believe in God when he said that, even though running was replacing his belief. I think he believed right up until the Marie sank.

But he was never tired. His leg injury happened when I was too little to remember. He’d been out on a run, like normal, when a flash flood hit. It was just outside of the tarp city we were living in outside Pittsburg. Tarp cities are the places where people gather up together and try to build a giant network of roof, to keep the rain out, and where, in those times, people helped each other by trading supplies. Getting new clothes, restocking food, keeping weapons on hand more and more as the bandits grew in number. Group after group of bandits started popping up then for the first time. Organized, and always after the innocent tarp city dwellers. The flash flood took Russell under an old bridge and then sucked him right out into a giant lake. The lake stretched way to the middle of Ohio the ones who found him said. Russell was gone for three days, floating in the water, clinging to jetsam. Exposure gave him the rubber skin. Eventually a motor boat saw him. They moved in close and talked to him, taking his word that he’d repay their favor if they saved him. They took off his skin when they hauled him out of the water. Then they took him back to the edge of Pittsburg. He paid them in gasoline. I remember that he wore gauze for a long time after that, but then he just wrapped it in plastic and started running again. It’s like he knew he’d have to be in shape for what was to come. And the nagging pain of the disintegrating, infected leg didn’t matter. He could run through the pain forever. But it hasn’t really worked out. He’s withered away to nothing now. Skin and bones. His legs are of no use anymore. In my head, I picture him when he looked best, and that’s still how I see him now, when I stare long enough. But he’s going back to sleep and it’s blocking us from leaving.

I don’t argue, I lay down next to him. I’ve barely had any sleep myself. I wonder if there could be more face eaters following the three. But no, they were the only ones we’d seen for days. They must have thought we were crazy for heading to Leadville, those families that stayed behind in Rapid City. But the water was getting too high there. It was one place I was glad to leave. I’ll forever question our first few departures, but nothing we left behind after the Marie. The West, I am convinced, has it worse than the East. And the rain is higher and higher out here. I close my eyes and finally get some rest.

When I get up, Russell’s already awake and the sun’s directly over the canvas at the center of the tent. He’s sitting up and reading his soggy, barely legible map. On it, he’s tracing with his mind the route he’s envisioned for us, the 520 mile trip to the south, on which we don’t count on seeing any land above the water. But there might be, he says. He tells me about the theory of some of the men on the Sea Queen Marie, the one where the rain sea is uneven. It has to do with the composition of the ground he says, the soil, the layers underneath everything. I ask him to go on and tell me more, because I feel hope in the idea. Maybe there will be land along the way. He says certain kinds of sediment absorb the water and send it way down into the Earth’s core, where it evaporates, and so the water level is lower in some spots. He says the mountains keep the water together in certain areas, making it higher, and that the former world is a bad model now because the plates of the Earth are shifted. Some of them are raised way up. It used to be that the Bighorns were 13,000 feet above sea level, he says. Now, we have no idea how high they are. Then he tells me there’s probably no such thing as sea level anymore, not like the old map says. It’s all rearranged. I ask him how the solar flare could have done all that. He says it’s more than just the solar flare. Much more. But it doesn’t matter. I wonder if he’s delusional with sickness, because he sounds like he’s started buying into the conspiracy theories he hates. He reminds me that we’re focused on getting to Colorado, and it doesn’t really matter much how the rain started. I ask him if the veneer is in Leadville. He doesn’t say anything. I want to ask him about his family, his daughter, his old girlfriend. Love and forever. Ideas that humans create, that mean so much to them, but are invisible, and as useless in the rain as the thought of a fire, or the idea of being dry. Impractical and useless leftover pieces of the veneer. But I can’t bring myself to bring any of it up, maybe because he’s finally acting okay again. But then he coughs, doubles over, and coughs again. He grabs his head, like he has a tremendous splitting pain inside it, and that’s when I decide I will sneak him the antibiotics. I’ll do it the next time he’s asleep. I remember his fear, that they’re spoiled, and I think about the bad antibiotics that killed his little girl. Maybe that will happen to him—what if you kill him? I push away the thought.

I start to imagine how old he must have been when he had his baby. How old he is now. It’s a mystery. And then he lies back down again and I ask him what we’re going to do. He closes his eyes and turns his head away from me.

“We have to get going,” he says softly. But his action is the opposite of the remark. He shows no sign of moving or going anywhere.

“Do you think we can really make it there now?” I say, unable to voice my real concern, and say that he is too sick to bail and row.

“Come on,” he says, and he tries to move out of the tent. I have to help him. We crawl out together. He half leans on me and then finally stands up outside in the rain. I start breaking down the tent because there’s nothing else to do on this barren rock of slime. I want to yell at him for lying about our chances of making a fire. He’d said he’d find something to make a fire today. But there’s nothing. Just the endless sea and a week’s worth of hardtack. For a second I remember that sleeping in the rain for seven days will kill us both. He’s weaker than me now, and he’ll die first. Just me alone, the last to die, only the canvas of brown to see it. And the rain. I’ve never thought of suicide, and I can’t bring myself to think of it now. But I can’t imagine staying on the boat without him.

Russell walks very slowly down to the canoe and leans into the water. I watch him nervously as I carry the tent and the food sack. I put everything down and help him raise the canoe and tip it. The rain fights us both but we finally get it done. The thing is floating again, taking on water again. I throw the bags and the tent in, the neon bucket. But then, just as we’re about to push off, and I think Russell has regained some of his strength, he sits down, his butt right in the mud, his feet nearly in the water, and puts his head into his hands. He starts crying, really quietly, and then he starts to laugh a little. I sit down next to him and he looks at me. He turns away and the crying starts over. I ask him what’s wrong. He doesn’t tell me, but he keeps crying, and he’s doing it like it’s using up the last of his energy. Then he admits to me what it is. We are committing suicide, pushing out like this. But it’s our only choice. He mentions something about Frank Worsley and an open boat journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island. He says they made it through just like we are going to do, and that they went 800 miles, and through Drake’s Passage, the roughest sea in the world. He says he’s worried because they had stars. And we don’t have stars. We won’t know where we’re going. It doesn’t matter anyway, because even with them, we’re in a canoe. And we couldn’t make it that far in such a small boat. With a crack. And the rain. But we have no other choice. We had to come this way. There was only rising water, empty pantries, and the face eaters in Rapid City. One nearly took you, he reminds me.

I remember it. Russell killed it, bludgeoned its head with a pipe, and we ran away. And the rest of its pack followed us. All down to that last three. And even they’re gone now, claimed by the sea.

But we can’t go back, I tell him. We can only head off this last step, into the long canvas of rain, and hope that Poseidon grants us mercy somehow. That’s what it’s come down to.

He can’t bring himself to do it—to finally leave the last piece of land. But there’s no wood here, no fire, no warmth, and nothing dry. And I don’t want to stay either, because he’s getting sicker.

We can make it, I say, trying to stop his sobs. It does nothing. I lean into him, press against him, wrap my arms around him, and try to get him to look at me but he doesn’t. I force his jaw around so that he’s looking into my eyes. His hair is running down past his eyebrows, clear across his face. “We’re getting in the fucking boat,” I tell him. I ask if he understands. His eyes seem to start to clear up and he eventually comes back to life. We have to do it—there’s nothing else anyway. We’re not going out without a fight, I tell him. I’m giving him everything I have, because that’s what he’s done for me.

He stops crying. I ask him if he remembers what he told me. His ignores me and says that it’s all his fault, that we shouldn’t have moved so fast to the West. But he’s second-guessing because he’s forgotten that we did what we had to do. I remind him of that but he ignores it. I ask him again—do you remember what you told me? He stands up and looks down at me. He’s quieted, ready to push out on one last quest for the veneer. I remind him about what he told me.

“We’d be together. Always,” I say. “You remember that?” He wobbles like he might fall back down and he coughs violently. But then he nods. He remembers.

“Well, I’m getting in this god damned boat. And I’m leaving. So if you stay here, without a tent, and without anything, then you broke the promise, didn’t you?” I turn around before I see if I get any reaction out of him. I check my pockets to make sure I still have my knife, and then I leap into the canoe, steadying it as it rocks after I land. I turn back and see him untying the nylon rope on the bank. He carefully brings it down and gets in the boat. “Bail,” I tell him, letting him shuffle past me to the stern bench. I slice one of the oars into the water, through to the firm earth beneath us. I push with everything I have and tell Russell to get me something out of the bag for us to eat. I hear water splashing behind me. Thank god he’s bailing. Alive. Still with me. We drift south, leaving the islands. As the smear of the sun wears across the sky, everything leaves us behind but the rain and the gray and the flat brown water.

I say a prayer to Poseidon that we don’t get any waves. I think that maybe we’ll pick up a current, and get there before we even know it.

An hour passes and I think we’ve already gone twenty miles, but I really have no idea. Everything looks the same. But the sound is different. Suddenly, I realize what has changed. The bailing has stopped. I turn around. Russell’s leaning back, asleep sitting up, and his hands loose, the bucket floating around in the accumulating water in the bottom of the canoe. He won’t say anything when I instruct him to keep bailing. And the pale of his face is gone. Instead, it’s bright red.

The canoe looks like it’s filling up faster all of the sudden, and Russell is out cold. I move over to him, walking through several inches of water, carefully placing the oars down in the center of the boat. I feel his cheeks. They’re hot. And then his forehead. It’s hot. He’s closed his eyes and he isn’t responding to me. I tell him I can’t keep rowing if he doesn’t bail. I glance over at the crack and see that it’s the same size as before. But all around us now is open water, a flat lifeless stretch of dropping rain bursts. And I have no idea what direction we’re heading. The smear of the sun is almost directly overhead, maybe even starting to fall westward, I can’t be sure. I want to cry because Russell won’t talk to me, and his breathing sounds really shallow. I move back to the oars, leaving him asleep, and sit down. I just sit and don’t do anything. No rowing, no bailing. Just watch the rain rise up on the floor of the canoe. I wonder if this is it. I don’t see a way out. But maybe if I can get Russell better.

I go to the food sack and open it underneath my plastic shirt to keep the rain out. I dig around inside and find the antibiotics Russell thinks have gone bad. But I have no other option. I take one out and put it into the neon bucket. I push my thumb into it, then harder because nothing happens, and finally it smashes into a fine powder. I do another pill. Then a third. I don’t know what kind of antibiotic it’s supposed to be, but I remember we spent four cans of beans on these pills. They better be good. I scoop some water into the bucket and swish it around as best I can, mixing the powder in, then move over to Russell. I look at him. He looks sad. A pathetic shadow of his former self. I push his head back and slip my fingers into his lips. His mouth is warm. I pry his mouth apart and start to pour the water down. It causes him to gag and he wakes up. You’ve got to drink something, you’re dehydrated, I tell him. I don’t say it nice. I mean business and he’s too sick to argue. He opens his mouth and I let him take a couple sips, but I keep going until it’s all gone. He makes a sour face like the water tastes awful but he drinks it anyway. I check the waterline at my feet—there’s maybe three inches of rain in the boat now. At least the crack’s not getting any bigger. I look out at the gray. Uniform death is everywhere. I look up to the sky, hoping some miracle break will show me blue.

In my life, I remember seeing blue sky one time. It was in Pittsburg. We were out camping on the ridge of Mount Washington. Hunting for food back when there was food to hunt. It was a long miraculous sliver that rolled across the sky in one single finger, saying goodbye to me. It was like the rain could have stopped right then. We talked for a long time after that about what was happening directly beneath that blue slit in the gray. Whether or not it was raining underneath it. If the sky was dry where it moved across the horizon.

I pick up the neon bucket now that Russell has drunk everything he can from it. He closes his eyes again, his expression unchanged. I try one more time to talk to him but get nothing. I think about looking at his leg, peeling back the plastic and the cloth to see what it looks like. If it’s infected again. But I don’t have the nerve. I dip the neon plastic into the canoe’s water and start to bail. I’ll have to rotate between bailing and rowing myself. I don’t know how I’ll sleep, or what will happen when I can’t stay awake anymore. But I don’t want to think about that. That’s the end. Right now, we’re still going. Heading to Leadville. Although to which direction we’re really heading, or the canoe is drifting, I can’t say.

After about twenty minutes I’ve got the water line down as low I can get it. I’m way ahead of the rain. But it’s as if Poseidon didn’t like that I made progress, and he throws a swell at the boat. We rock up and then down, very gently, but enough of a rise and fall to freeze me and start the vicious cycle of panic. I scan the sky and start to question the darkness behind us. In that direction, the sky looks darker than in front of the boat. I convince myself it’s just night time, and that we’ve shifted directions because I haven’t been rowing. That’s the East, and the sun is setting in the West. Nothing ominous. But I can’t be sure, and I grab the oars with blind panic, as if there’s somewhere I can get us safely ashore tonight if I row really hard. But as I start to furiously row I know there’s no safe harbor anywhere. And there’s no navigation. This was the long shot Russell hadn’t wanted to talk about since Rapid City. There is nowhere to go. Nowhere to stay. And no way to navigate the enormous stretch of sea all the way to Colorado. We can only float on.

The swells roll one after the other under the canoe for an hour, but they never get bigger, and they never get smaller. Two inches of water sloshes over my feet on the bottom of the boat as I row. The darkness hanging in the sky behind me is just the night time, not a storm coming. And I suddenly feel way too tired to go on. I turn to Russell, expecting him to feel revived. I’ve let him sleep all day after all. Let him break his most time-honored rule, to never waste the daylight. He especially shouldn’t be doing it now that his strength is really needed—when our combined strength is really needed. But he doesn’t even stir. It’s like he’s forgotten all about his rule. And the sleep hasn’t rejuvenated him one bit.

I put the oars down and move over to him, kneeling in the water at the bottom of the canoe. I ask him if he’s hungry, but he doesn’t say anything. I shake him a little bit. The way he’s tilted his head, his plastic hood isn’t draining the water into the boat, but right down onto his chest. I realize some of it has been flowing underneath his plastic, right into his dirty cotton shirt, soaking it. I turn around so my butt is right in the water on the bottom of the boat. In front of me in the sky, the band of the sun is starting to fall, but the sky is so enormous that it looks like it will take a long time to get all the way down. I wonder if the whale will come visit us when it’s dark tonight, and I’ll miss it.

I put my shoulders and my back in between Russell’s legs and lay back against him. He doesn’t move. I turn a little bit to look at him. I look up at him. He’s rolling with the swells now, like he’s going to topple over, but he doesn’t. I ask him if he’s okay, and surprisingly, he looks like he understands, but he doesn’t say a word. I stand back up and pull him down between the two canoe benches, into the center of the boat, so he’s secure and doesn’t fall right over the rail and into the water. You hungry? I ask again. He keeps his eyes shut and his only response is to just bob up and down with the swells. He’s sitting in the water in the center of the canoe now, and I sit back down between his legs, and lean back into him again. He’s sturdily against the edge of the seat now. I lay back, my back along his chest. Next to me is the canvas tarp for the tent. I pull it alongside us and unroll it, spreading it out like a blanket. I hoist it as high as I can, getting us both out of the rain. The rain grows louder, angry at the cover I’ve provided, and slams off the canvas and into the floor of the boat. 15 inches a day, I tell myself repeatedly. If that’s right, Russell’s old formula, then I can take a nap. There’s about three feet of canoe. I have a lot of time before I need to get up to bail. I already lost the right direction anyway. Or I never had it. Rowing is useless. It’s just drift and bail now. Keep us alive, keep us floating long enough to find something. Land. A motor boat. Anything.

“We’re going to Leadville,” I say. “Russell, you hear me?”

He’s the same as he has been all day. I say a prayer that the antibiotics start to work. That when I wake up, he’s up already again, like this morning, feeling better, ready to work together again. I tell him I love him. I think about giving him a kiss. I know he won’t mind right now. And I think there might be magic in it. I love you Russell, I tell him. I reach up, hoisting myself on the edge of the canoe seat, and lean into him, and kiss his hot forehead. Don’t die on me, please. Don’t break the promise. We’re in this together.

I close my eyes and the gray turns to black. I try not to think about the fact that this might be my last night alive as I fall asleep to the sound of the rain hitting our tent blanket.

Chapter 4

I wake to the sight of a clear tube of water rising from the sea all the way up into a hanging cloud. It’s far away, a long spiral stretching into the sky, hundreds of feet high. A waterspout tornado. I pull the tent off of my face and sit up a little bit, moving between Russell’s legs to get a better look. It looks like it’s a mile away but I can’t be sure. Then I realize the water in the canoe is up to my waist. I look left and see the water line of the sea. I’m almost at eye level with it, like the canoe is sagging so low that we’re about to go under. A swell hits the boat and cold spray splashes my face. I see the neon bucket floating around in the pool I’m lying in. I grab it before it slips overboard. Once it’s in my hand, I turn around and see Russell. He’s still lying against the edge of the seat. His eyes are closed. I see his chest rising and falling. I pull the tent back over him to keep the rain from pelting his face.

I realize I can’t feel either of my feet, they’ve gone entirely numb. But I can’t stop to think about it because we’re going to sink. I start to bail as fast as I can. It looks like the morning but I don’t stop to check for the smear of the sun. I call Russell’s name as I bail, just to see if he’s recovered at all. My heart sinks because he’s acting the same and doesn’t say a word. I see the crack of the canoe is dipping underwater with each cresting swell, and I can’t make progress with the bailing. One big roll and we’ll go down. I fixate on the giant waterspout, a monster on the water, far away enough that it doesn’t paralyze me with fear and I recognize how beautiful it is. I bail and stare at it to distract myself. My hands pump in and out, over and over, but I’m too tired to keep it up much longer, like I haven’t slept in a week. And I haven’t. I’ve just lived nightmares. But somehow we didn’t sink last night. If I’d slept another ten minutes, I’d have woken up in the sea, maybe with the canoe over my head. Russell’s in no condition to swim. I keep bailing, and my eyes turn to the food sack. It’s floating around at the other end of the canoe, knocking against the lip and bouncing back against the seat. It won’t go over unless a big swell hits us.

The waterspout is the smoothest, most perfect thing in nature I’ve ever seen. It would chew this hunk of fiber glass up and spit it out, I know, and then send us spinning down to the bottom. It’s so beautiful though that I can’t stop looking at it as I bail.

My body reminds me with pangs and numbness that I’m cold and hungry. And above the waterspout, even though all other signs point to it being early morning, it looks dark and gray—grayer than the surrounding gray, and darker than the foggy brown swells hitting us.

I keep going like a machine fueled by the majesty of the spinning column in the horizon. Bailing. Waiting for Russell to snap into life. I yell at him to get me some hardtack to eat. Take a turn bailing. But he doesn’t do either. He just stays asleep, breathing softly. I remember the antibiotics. I gave them to him last night. But how long do they take to work?

I remember waking from a nightmare last night. I had nearly forgotten it. The boat was sinking, water was rushing in. A storm had hit—swells the size of the islands. I woke up, bailed the canoe down in the middle of the night, half-conscious, and went right back to sleep. How had I woken up? And now again in the morning, just in time? Thank you Poseidon, if it’s you. Keep us alive just a little bit longer.

I bail until the water is nearly gone from the floor of the canoe. My arms are lead. Finally I drop the neon bucket and turn to the food sack. Russell’s still out cold. The waterspout is receding in the distance, and I can’t tell if the current is pulling us away from it, or if the thing itself is repelling everything in a wide arc. Either way, it slips away. Its beauty, and the terrible sight of the dark storm cloud it descends from. I stop worrying that a storm will spread out from it and swallow us up. Enough so that I rest against the seat and open the food sack. The rain runs down my hair and into my eyes and my mouth and I slurp it up. I carefully untie the food sack, move the nylon rope out of the way, and find the double-wrapped stack of hardtack. I open it and take a couple pieces out. As wet as everything around me is, the hardtack dries my mouth instantly. I eat more than I should, but I can’t help it. I feel like my bones and muscles are screaming. I scoop some rain water into the neon bucket and drink from it, washing down the last of the stale crackers. I look at Russell. He doesn’t look as red as he did yesterday—his face looks like it’s almost the regular shade of pale again, the color it has been since the Marie went down. Not the beat red color of fever and death. He hasn’t eaten in a long time, so I get out some more hardtack, close up the plastic sack, and move up to him and try to lift his head so I can slide in some food. His eyes move under his lids, and the very subtle hint that he’s alive reminds me to feel happy. It’s like the veneer is vanished completely now, even the love I feel for him, but his eyelids remind me for some reason of hope. I put my finger into his mouth and pry apart his lips. He groans a bit, opens his eyes, and stares at me. You need to eat something, I tell him. It’s cold, he says. I know, I say. I’m relieved to hear him talk. I want to squeeze him but I can’t. I just crumble up some of the hardtack and put it on his tongue. He tries to swallow and has a really hard time, so I lift the bucket to his lips and dump some rain in.

One day down, I tell him, trying to cheer him up, like he’ll snap back to his usual self. Only six more to go. And then Leadville. But the name that’s raised such excitement in him over the past year, that’s meant hope and a return to the veneer, does nothing for him now. He just moans again, acknowledging me, and then opens his mouth, like he’s hungry for more. I put in another bit of hardtack and repeat. I do it over again and again until it’s gone. I ask if he wants more out of the sack, or if he wants me to open one of the cans of beans. He shakes his head no.

I seal everything, float the bag back into the inch of water on the floor of the canoe, and then survey our surroundings. I expect to see a landmark for some reason, some sign of where we’re going. But there’s nothing. Even the enormous waterspout is gone, vanished into vapor and nothingness, like it never was. I have no idea which direction we’re going, or how far we’ve drifted. I look at Russell and wonder if he’s concerned about the route anymore. He had been very clear that we had to navigate by the sun—he said we just needed to go directly south. Keep the morning sun on our left, and the afternoon sun on our right. I look for the smear behind the gray after I remember this. It’s almost directly behind us. The swells have started to calm down, and the great canvas of water is nearly flat again, so I take the oars and give it a shot, trying to get the sun on our left side. After a few pumps we’re riding with the sun on the left, heading south again.

“Heading south,” I say.

He opens his eyes and starts to move for the first time in almost 24 hours. He hoists himself out of the cold floor of water and sits on the bench. You ready to take your turn? I say, more as a joke than anything else. I just need to get a reaction out of him, to know he’s getting better, even though that’s what the color of his face tells me. No more bright red. Regular pale. Yea, he says.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” I say, almost with anger. I’m disappointed he even considered dying, as if it was a choice that was his to make—the decision to quit. That he would leave me out here, stranded. Break his promise.

“It’s just a headache. It’s going away,” he says. He coughs after he’s done talking, which reminds me that he’s lying, and it’s way more than just a headache. He almost falls off the seat because he’s coughing so hard. But he asks for the oars anyway after he’s done hacking. No, just bail if the water gets high again, I tell him. He doesn’t argue, probably because he doesn’t have the strength to. Sun’s on our left, like you said it should be, I tell him. Good job, Tan, he says.

Time passes quietly except for the rain. I row for as long as I can, until the fiber of my arms is shredded, and the pain is long numbed, and now there is just the futile command I give my arms to work, but they simply refuse to comply. Nothing happens. I can’t push the oars anymore. Before they slip out of my hands and into the rain sea, I reel their length in and drop them along the center of the canoe. It’s your turn, I tell Russell. He’s fading out again though, and he hasn’t bailed one bit. He’s holding the sides of the canoe again, like he did yesterday, steadying himself so he doesn’t fall overboard or into the center of the canoe. I tread the several inches of water in the center of the canoe to get to him, put my hand on his shoulder and rub. I rub and I can’t feel my fingers. They’re as numb as my toes, my entire feet. I’ve forgotten how cold the rain is. All I want to do is go to sleep again, even though it’s the daytime, and it would mean breaking Russell’s rule, and drifting off course again, to god knows what emptiness.

Hey, I say. Russell opens his eyes and looks at me. You want me to give it a go? he says, like he’s been awake the whole time. I look at the rising water, the crack in the canoe, the sun that’s dead overhead now. Yea, you better. I can barely move anymore, I tell him.

It’s the truth. If I’m ever going to bail again, I need to rest. I pull Russell off his bench and help him get to the other one. Really slowly he grabs the oars, like his whole body is protesting it, and he pushes them softly into the water. I sit down across from him and watch. He pushes them in, but it looks like he can’t bring them back up. He tries really hard, and he grunts, and they finally return to him. He repeats this over and over, but so slowly that he’s not preventing the current from turning the boat. The sun is rotating above us, I’m sure, and we’re no longer going south. I watch the oars extend out again and Russell almost lets go and loses one of them. I move back to him quickly and steady his hand. You’re going to drop it in the water, I scold him. It’s hard for me not to be angry at him because he’s never shown any sign of weakness before. But he can hardly get the oars in and out of the water. I have to lie down he says. He doesn’t wait for me—he just moves in between the two seats and lies as flat as he can, his neck half underwater on the canoe floor, his legs rising up onto the rowing bench. Your head’s going to be underwater if you lie like that, I tell him. Lift it up onto the bench. I say this as I get the oars back in my hands. I sit between his legs, put the oars back into the water, and try to row. But it’s no use. My arms feel like gassed rubber. All I can do is get them back into the canoe without losing them.

You hungry? I ask him. He doesn’t make a sound. He’s lying face up, looking right into the sun. Rain is hitting his nose, running into his parted mouth. I decide all I’m going to do now is bail. Rowing takes up too much energy. Trying to keep us in line with the sun so we’re heading south is pointless now. I can’t do it alone. And Russell isn’t really better. It’s a false hope. I get down in the center with him and grab the food sack. I open it and find one of our cans of beans. It’s rusted around the edges. I root around, praying the can opener hasn’t somehow been lost. I find it and open the beans. I don’t know how I’ll conserve the leftovers. I just start spooning beans into my mouth with my fingers, and the taste is indescribable. I put a little bit on Russell’s lips to make sure he won’t choke. He opens and closes his mouth to show me he can still chew. I feed him as much as he’ll take, then finish off the can. I know I should have conserved them, but I can’t help it. My whole body is dead. I look at the rain in the canoe, the crack, then the sky for signs of any storms. There’s nothing out there. And I still have time before I need to start bailing again. I lie down right in the middle on Russell’s chest so the rain will wake me up when it’s time to go to work again. I lean into him so I can hear his breathing. It doesn’t sound too bad. I whisper to him, Are you okay? He seems to murmur something in response, and I take it to mean yes. I look up for a moment, see the tent which is crumpled against the side now and grab it. I pull it over our heads to keep the rain off. Underneath the canvas, the sound of the drops is magnified a hundred times. As loud as it is, it helps to drown out every other thought I have, and my tired body does the rest of the work. I fall asleep again.

When I wake up, it’s to the sound of rushing water. I feel it hit my face, and I hear Russell coughing violently. It’s the crack. Water is flooding through it. It’s widened, so that it reaches almost halfway down the side of the canoe. A shot of adrenaline sends me after the bucket. It’s still in the boat, near the back, banging up against the wall. Russell sits up and wraps his arms over the edge of the canoe to sit himself upright and prevent water from going down his lungs. I start attacking the water, sending bucketful after bucketful over the side, hoping it’s not too late. The crack is pouring in the brown sea as fast as I can bail it out. We’re almost level with the water again, and if I stop bailing for a minute, we’ll go under. I can’t stop. I tell Russell we’re going to have to take turns. Or else we’re going to sink. He seems alert enough to understand. He starts cupping water out of the boat with his hands. He does it like he’s half frozen solid, and he doesn’t realize he’s not really getting anything out.

It feels like an hour passes by, but it’s probably only been a few minutes. I see that I’m getting ahead of the crack, and the canoe is rising above the sea again. If I keep it up, I think I’ll get us light enough so that the crack is above the water line again. Russell’s all but given up on cupping the water out, instead rubbing his temples like his headache has come back. He asks me, You didn’t give me any antibiotics, did you? I tell him no and keep bailing. The smear of the sun is on our backs again, so we must be drifting west. I keep going, my numb hands and arms ready to fail again, but I get more and more water out. I’m making progress. At last, just as I’m about to let Russell take over or drown trying to get him to, we’re above the crack again. The canoe is light enough that the level of the sea is lower than it. It gives me energy to keep bailing. I don’t want anything on the floor of the canoe, not a single drop of rain.

I want it all out so I can go to sleep again. But this time for a long time. Russell is one step ahead of me, lying against the seat, arms spread over it, his head resting against his shoulder.

Within half an hour I’ve gotten as much rain out of the canoe as is possible. I can’t even scrape the bucket along the bottom close enough to collect anything, so I drop it and sit up on the seat. I can’t believe we’re still winning against the rain. Is this all you’ve got? passes through my head. It’s directed at Poseidon. I regret it as soon as I say it, remembering how fast the swells can come. And there haven’t been any real waves yet. Reminding myself of the sea’s temper, I scan the horizon for a sign of dark clouds, anything that seems like it might be a storm. There’s nothing. But the small rise of dark gray protruding from the distant muddiness where the clouds meet the sea. It’s a long sliver of a bump. But it’s protruding, higher than it should. I think it’s the tidal wave I heard Cap’n Wallace talk about. It’s passing round the Earth every three months, hits a random spot each time, and it wipes away anything in its path. Could that be it? Its darkness seems much darker than the water’s though, the more I look at it. We’ve only been at sea for two days, but my brain starts to tell me that I see land. It’s land. Unmoving.

“Russell,” I shout. I scream his name again. I run to him, almost too fast, and rock the boat so much that water pours through the crack for a moment, until the boat rolls back to center. Look, I say over and over again until he’s half conscious. I grab his shoulders and start to turn him until he realizes what I’m trying to get him to do. Finally he commits on his own and turns to look. Leadville, he says scratchily. I look at him and see a smile flash across his face. I can’t bring myself to tell him it isn’t Leadville, and that I have no idea what it is. Even if it really is land. But it’s not moving, and it has to be land. Russell tells me not to let us drift by and miss it. Then his smile fades and he’s out again. His face is beat red again. He looks like death. I won’t miss it, I tell him.

I take turns with myself, rowing and bailing, renewed energy burning in me from the vision of hope on the horizon, even though I can’t feel anything. My hands are numb, my feet are numb, my face is numb. I’m convinced I feel the rubber forming like a crust over my leg at the same spot where Russell had it happen. I know when I peel off my plastic suit, the pants, and finally look at my naked body, I’ll see the markings, the rubbery pink welts, the sign that the skin is ready to pry loose at the slightest prodding. But I see the blue on the land, a blue stretching back and out of view, just on top of the rise of the land. The sun is setting behind us, but we might make it there before it gets dark. As long as the water stays calm, and the current doesn’t pull us too hard, I think I can steer us into it, like a train wreck coming out of the abyss. The blue is the roofs of tarps, and there ahead on the island is a tarp city like I haven’t seen since Sioux Falls. Face eaters don’t live in tarp cities. People do. Real living people. A small piece of the veneer is on that muddy rock, I tell myself, and I intend with every fiber of my power to get us there alive. I bail, and then I row. We’re on our way, Russell.

Chapter 5

The blue tarps spread across the top of the island, which was once a great mountain, but now is just a long slope rising out of the water and I can’t see where it ends. Near the edge of the land, where it glides down into the water, there’s nothing. The tarps are near the top. I think of how warm it must be under them, how dry, and how much food there must be for so many to be living together. We’ve been alone for so many weeks now that the thought of company almost frightens me, and I don’t even know if my muscles will hold out to get us there. Russell is still incapacitated, so I sacrifice my body, because it’s all I can do to get him off this godforsaken boat. I start getting ahead of myself. I think about the tarp dwellers. I’m not sure if we should go right up to the tents—or at least I’m not sure if I should make the call without Russell’s input. But he’s in no condition to advise me. Even though I’ve never heard of face eaters living in organized tarp cities like this one, that doesn’t mean they can’t exist. Communities of death. And there are plenty of non-face eaters who hate strange folks coming on what they consider their own piece of the warm and dry. Russell and I know all too well how thin supplies are, especially in the West. There’s only so much to go around. I debate what to do as I row, digging with the last bits of my strength into the rain sea, pushing us along much slower now, but with the last of my energy making sure we don’t drift past the bank I’ve been eyeing for the last half hour. It’s the only spot where the rise looks gradual enough that I won’t lose the canoe if I try to park it there. Everywhere else it’s like the land rises straight up, like on the mountain there had been a sheer face. As we get very near to the bank where I intend to put us in, I lose sight of the blue tarps. They are only visible from a distance because they’re so high up on the land, along the top ridge. I wish Russell was well enough to help me land the canoe, because I’m no good at it. But I’ve seen him do it enough, and I’m happy to hear the sound of his breathing, which is shallow but steady.

I stroke in, then push the oar into the water and hold it broadside to try to slow the boat down. Rain punishes the muddy rise that I wedge the canoe into. She sticks into the bank on the first try and I collapse. It’s like I don’t even have the energy to get out of the canoe. I slump down in the seat and take it in—we’re off the water. No more swells. No more bailing. At least not for the moment. But the sooner we get onto the land, the sooner we find out if we have to go right back into the sea, and I can’t bring myself to get off yet to find that out. Lying down as best I can I turn to Russell and tell him we made it. He responds by trying to get up. Hold on I tell him, and he obeys. I rest. I need to rest before moving onto the land. I check for my knife, and thankfully, it’s still in my pocket. I have no idea if Russell has his, but it doesn’t matter because he couldn’t use it even if he did. He’s much too weak now. If this is an organized dwelling of cannibals, it’ll be just me to defend us now. And my best defense is pushing out to sea again, as shitty as our boat is. Maybe I can take one face eater, if I sneak up on him. But we can’t take an ambush, and that’s how the face eaters usually operate—surprise attacks from behind rocks, bushes, trees, from anywhere where they have an unfair advantage.

I finally decide we have to get off. I’m tired again. The boat’s sinking. I need to sleep. Russell needs to get out of the rain. Hypothermia is setting in, I’m sure I feel it in my bones. I thought I saw a lot of green near the blue tarps, like there were trees, or some other kind of vegetation. If that’s the case, the tarpers will have some of it, as much of it as possible, under their tarps, dried out. That means there will be fires. The thought of fire pushes my legs down into the floor of the canoe and makes me stand up. I take the nylon rope out of the food sack. I walk up through the shallow water and find a large root slicing through the mud.  It pokes out at just the right spot for me to tie the nylon around it. A root is never as good as a rock, but I don’t care. The canoe seems stable enough. Come on, I call to Russell, as if he’ll just get up and walk off with me. But he’s much too sick now to do that. I take the tent off of him and bring it with the poles up onto the first flat patch of earth I reach. It’s about twenty feet up the bank, but still way down from the tarps, out of sight. I get to work setting up the tent, realizing that this time Russell will have to get in it himself. I can’t pitch the tent over top of him while he’s lying in the boat. The tent is set up in no time, because the thought of being under a roof surges in me. To rest under all its leaky canvas spread like a haven of the dry and the warm.

We used to carry fuel with us all the time. But we haven’t had any in weeks. There’s not much fuel left in Wyoming it seems. I wonder if they have fuel up in the tarps, and if I could avoid interacting with them at all, and just sneak up later and try to steal some gasoline.

I check the tent poles to be sure they’re in where they won’t slide out while we’re sleeping. They seem sturdy enough. I head back to the canoe. It’s starting to collect too much rain, losing its buoyancy. I step in again and walk up to Russell. I touch his face, but I give up trying to tell if he has a fever or not anymore. His eyes open at my touch. Hey, come on. I can’t get you out of here on my own. You have to help me. He obliges without so much as a groan. He stands up like his bones need oil, and he’s rusted beyond repair. I let him keep his left hand on my shoulder for balance and together we tread the low water up the muddy rise toward the tent. He does pretty good, only stumbling once, but leaning on me to prevent the fall. When we get to the tent flap I pull it open for him and he is really slow to get down on his knees. He gets wet and dirty again moving in, because he’s too spent to move carefully. He drags a long patch of mud and water across the bottom of the tent, but it doesn’t matter too much because cold rain is dripping in from the two holes in the roof anyway. I get in behind him and close the tent flap immediately. I ask if he still has his knife. I think so, he says. Then he curls up in the fetal position and faces the far wall of the tent. The sky is gray, and so gray that I can’t even tell what time of day it is anymore. But the idea of real sleep overtakes all other thoughts. On the sea, sleep was a temporary fantasy, where water would eventually rush in to remind me that I can’t really leave. But now, we’re on solid ground, and the lack of motion, the pure stillness beneath my body, puts me into a trance. It’s almost like I’m done, and I can stop struggling now, and I can finally go away from this all. There won’t be nightmares this time, I know. Just a dream of warmth. I miss having a blanket. But I have hope for the tarps. Even if it’s just stealing some gasoline. At least we’re not on the water, I tell myself. Then I pull my body in close to Russell’s, loop my arms around his chest. I think I feel warmth again coming from him. It’s a sign that he’s getting better I tell myself. We made it, I whisper in his ear. He utters a long mmmm, and I think he’s as content as me to be off the water. I pull myself even closer into him, sharing my own heat, pushing us further into the tent wall so we’re not touching the rain that’s pooling in the center of the tent. For a moment, I think the hypothermia is setting in really hard now, and the rubber skin, and everything else, and it’s no time to go to sleep. It’s time to panic. Something screams in me to go get help right now from the tarps, and risk everything for the chance to be saved. But my closed eyes are like an elixir that I can’t escape from, and the blackness pulls me like a vortex into the cusp of the sweetest sleep I have ever known. We breathe in sync, and the sound of the rain on the tent fades away.

I hear really heavy breathing and open my eyes. Something is nudging against the other end of the tent. It’s breathing hard, in bursts. Something wants to get in. I look at the tent wall and see a silhouette moving along the outside of the tent. The floor of the tent is covered in water. I have no idea what time it is or how long we’ve been sleeping. Then the shape moves again, walking close to our heads. It huffs, pushing a long snout into the canvas. It’s a dog.

“Russell,” I say. “There’s a dog outside the tent.” I shake him a little. It must have wandered down from the tarps. I can’t believe they’ve got a dog living here, and as much as I want to meet it, I’m scared it might want to eat us, or that it might bark and send the tarpers to our tent. Maybe they’re already here, right behind the dog. Watching it investigate us for them. I prod Russell until I get a reaction out of him. Surprisingly, he sits up on his own and looks at the dog.

“I’ll be damned,” he says. It’s like he’s feeling all better until he coughs. The dog jumps back and barks once. Russell responds by heading to the tent flap, opening it and poking his head out.

“What are you doing?” I ask him, questioning his sanity. But he shushes the dog, calling it to him. I don’t want it to attract attention, he says. How do you know people aren’t with it already? I ask. I don’t, he says. Then the dog pokes its head into the tent. It’s a dirty blond mutt. Its fur is soaked through but it doesn’t look cold. It starts to wag its tail now that it’s pushed itself into the tent some, and before Russell can calm it further it starts to lick him. Good boy, Russell says. He’s smiling, like he hasn’t done in days. He’s getting better. The antibiotics must be working. The dog pushes its wet body past Russell as soon as it gets in far enough to see me. A giant tongue lolls out and slides across my cheek, then my nose, and then my mouth. I back up and spit for a second, but he’s persistent and pushes in again, happy for some reason to meet me.

“Alright, let’s go boy, out,” Russell says, tugging the dog’s chest a bit, trying to point it around, back out into the rain. It doesn’t seem to want to go and Russell doesn’t have the strength to make it. I can’t believe this creature. Everything around us is awful, bitter cold, gray, desperate, and this dog is in ecstasy at meeting two strangers who, as likely as not, would eat him for food before pet him. But he stays with us, wagging his tail, expecting something like love. And I think of the veneer, almost enough to ask Russell about it, but he’s just getting better, and it’s too soon. But I really want to ask because I think of something—the dog seems to have it. Love. So what could the veneer be then, if it’s supposed to be a creation of humanity and yet animals have part of it in them? Maybe it’s a lot simpler than that. Or maybe love isn’t even a part of the veneer like Russell says it is. Maybe it transcends the veneer. Maybe things will work out in the end. I almost trick myself into thinking we’re in Leadville. And then I hear the shout.

It comes from up the hill, a distance away, but clear as day even despite the smacking of the rain on the roof of our tent. The dog jerks his head at the shout. “Marvolo!” it comes again. The dog looks confused, unsure whether he really wants to leave so soon after meeting us. The call comes for the third time, this time, “Voley!” The dog darts out through the tent flap. Through the canvas I watch his silhouette bound up the ridge and well out of sight, and then I hear talking. It’s his master, asking him what he’s found. I turn to Russell, wondering if he’s well enough to fight if we have to. Have your knife? I ask him again. He starts looking in his pocket but can’t find it. I remember now. Shit, it’s in the guy, isn’t it? I say. Stuck in his chest, floating somewhere out on the canvas brown. There’s only mine now. I almost give it to him, but he doesn’t look like he’d be any good with it. He’s just strong enough to sit up and talk, but not to fight anyone off.

“He’s coming,” I say as the silhouette of a person appears, coming down the ridge the way the dog left.

Russell tries to move to the edge of the tent, but he does it so slowly and awkwardly that he slips on the rain that’s pooled on the canvas floor. “Shit.” He asks me what the island looked like, where I think we are. I tell him I have no idea, but I describe the blue tarps, all connected at the top of the island’s highest ridge, like one of the tarp cities we saw in Sioux Falls. How big is the island? he asks. I tell him I have no idea because I’ve only seen it from the front. But it looked pretty big. And the tarps stretched on and on. That’s a good thing, right? Means it can’t be face eaters, I say. Right, he says. But he’s not convincing. Give me your knife, he says. I tell him no.

“Who’s in there?” calls the dog’s master from a safe distance in case we’re maniacs. But we’re not, and he might be the maniac. Stay, says Russell. Give me the knife. You stay, I tell him. I’ve kept him alive for two days, and I can’t bring myself to let him risk his life now, after coming through all that. I stand a better chance of protecting us now and he knows it. All I can think as I step out of the tent, knife in my hand, is that this person might have fire to share. That thought alone bears me out into the rain, and I stand up and turn, looking up the hill. The soaked dog is wagging its tail next to a man holding a gun. He’s young, but I can’t tell how young, because he’s in a full plastic suit, one much better than mine. He’s pointing a rifle right at me, unconcerned with the rain that’s hitting it, waiting for me to say something—to identify myself. He asks again who we are. Don’t move and tell me who you are.

“We’re friendly, not face eaters. Heading to Colorado and got lost coming out of the Bighorns.”

“You came all the way down from the Bighorns in that?” he says, his face half concealed under the plastic hood he’s wearing, once bright green, but now dirtied to a brownish tint. He’s looking at the canoe at the end of the nylon rope. The sea is attempting to bury it.

“Yea,” I say. Russell coughs violently in the tent. After he’s finished coughing, the man, unmoving and keeping the gun trained on me, his dog still obediently at his side, says “Who’s we?”

“Me and Russell. My name’s Tanner. He’s really sick. We have some antibiotics and food if you have fire.”

The man starts to walk down the slope but he doesn’t lower the gun, like he’s expecting me to try something at any moment. He tells me to call Russell out so he can look for himself. I say I don’t know if he’ll make it outside right now because he’s too weak. Do it, he tells me. I can’t just trust anyone, he says.

“Russell, can you come out?” I ask. He must have been listening because he’s already crawling around the side of the tent on his hands and knees, and when he gets close to me he stands up, balancing on my shoulder for support.

“We’re heading to Leadville,” is all Russell says. “Don’t mean to trespass.” It’s like he’s out of gas after that short crawl and admission. The man watches us both, wondering if we’re telling the truth. It must be our appearance that confirms it for him, because he lowers his gun and takes off his hood. He’s just a boy, not a man. He can’t be much older than me. But the back of my head tells me he’s beautiful. Dark eyes, hair falling across his face in a wet mess, and skin that’s alive, even from twenty feet away I can tell. He’s not dying. Bright life in his cheeks, his eyes.

“Come on,” he says. “Can you make it up on your own?” Yea, I tell him. And he keeps his distance, never putting the gun away, but no longer keeping it aimed at us, and we walk up the hill together. The tent and canoe stay behind, sentenced to endure the rain, which seems to have gotten heavier a bit. But it doesn’t feel as cold all of the sudden. Marvolo, the dog, finally leaves his master’s side again and runs to us and circles around our legs, as if the rain is a playful thing to him, and we’re his best friends, even though he’s just met us. Every once in a while the boy looks back at me, and then Russell, who walks by leaning on me. I can’t tell if he’s mad we’re taking so long, or if he’s still wondering who we are, or where we came from, or what our intentions are. There’s no one left to trust, Russell started saying in South Dakota. Nobody. Face eater or not. But we’d trusted Cap’n Wallace. And we’d trusted Delly and  Jennifer. So I know there are exceptions to the rule, even if Russell won’t say it anymore. I watch the boy from behind, moving up the slope with ease. His body is fit, not emaciated like the rain does to people, like it’s done to Russell. He’s alive, and though he’s so far away from us, I feel a strange energy rolling off his body. It’s the warmth, somehow I can tell, even from all the way back here. He’s got it. It’s pulling me in.

We make our way up the slippery brown ridge and to a flat expanse where the tarps start to appear. At first I’m surprised when I see people going about their business, moving around, carrying bags, but then it starts happening so much it becomes common. The place is huge. Then I see a fire. And another. The place is alive. The boy slows down and Marvolo trails back to me. Russell just keeps breathing hard and staring at our feet, leaning against me. The boy stops me by walking right up to me and he puts his hand near my head. I flinch for a moment, then realize what he’s doing. He pushes my hood off so he can see my face. He smiles at me. Like there’s nothing wrong in the world, and we’re not surrounded by the great grave of the sea and the empty gray forever sky and the barren ridge of mud. And sickness and wet and cold. He tells me we’d better get Russell to the doctor. I’m still in shock, and wonder if this could all be a setup to eat us. But his gun’s lowered now, enough that I could jump on him and wrestle it free if I didn’t think the dog would bite my neck defending his master. But Marvolo seems as friendly as the boy, and runs around at our feet, endlessly excited to see strangers, licking my hand.

I say we have some supplies in the tent, and I ask if we can trade our antibiotics for the fire I see under some of the tarps. Most of the blue tarps connect, fastened together by rope, stitched tightly to each other like a large quilt roof. Some of the tarp houses stand alone, not connected to the main artery. Then, as we push on and the boy doesn’t answer my question, I see some tin roof houses. The roofs are tiny ripples of aluminum, and the rain beats louder upon them than the tarps. Underneath, the people look as clean and healthy as the boy. It’s like I’ve been transported back to Indianapolis, the way this place feels. The life is filling me up. But Russell’s wary of all folks in the West, because he thinks the majority of them have become face eaters, and that’s what we’d been told on the Sea Queen Marie. But as I watch the boy in front of me, I can tell he’s not a face eater. He looks too content, sure of himself. Despite the stretch of nothing surrounding this village.

I can see beyond the tarp city now, past the last of the tin roof houses, and it’s all glistening brown. No trees and no rocks. Just bare soil that’s soaking in the endless rain. No man’s land out there. We walk right up to a large section of raised tarp where there are some wooden chairs and a table. Cans line a shelf and I can’t believe all the supplies I’m seeing. Rope, tape, cans, flashlights, knives, pans and pots, gasoline drums, dry towels, clothes, cardboard boxes that aren’t ruined by the wet, sealed up with god knows what inside.

“Wait here,” the boy says, and he looks at me as he says it, as if he wants to make sure he’s made eye contact with me. I tell him okay and get Russell to sit down in one of the chairs. Russell lays his head on the table, his arms wrapped around himself, and he mutters that we made it. I tell him we did, and that he’s going to get the help he needs. Marvolo stays with us and I pet his wet fur. He licks my hand and his tongue is warm. It’s like he’s never thought about the rain once. I notice some of the passersby looking in at us and I feel like we must look out of place, especially because of how dirty we look compared to everyone else. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror for a long time. I start to let the luxuries this place might hold in store for us creep into the secret place where I hide my desire—a fire, a hot meal, a shower, a warm bed.

After a long while of sitting and watching everything around us, the boy returns with an older man. This is my dad, he says. I introduce myself and he asks about our trip. I explain everything in ten minutes, all the way up from Philadelphia. I talk about where we’re going, Leadville, and the man tells me that we’ve landed ourselves in Utah, probably because of the crossing currents. He tells me that the southern Great Plains sweep east, into waterspout alley like we’d heard, but the northern Plains sweep west. And it’s no wonder that we ended up near King Mountain riding on a tiny canoe like his son told him we had come in on. Any face eaters on the way? he asks me. I tell him about how we lost Russell’s knife. Then the man comes over to Russell and tries to talk to him. I help.

“Russell, I’m goin’ to get you over to the infirmary tent. Now you think you can stand up with me here a minute?” the old man asks. The old man is withered in his face, a false appearance of weakness, because he lifts Russell out of the chair with ease. And in a moment, with very little protest, they’re walking together through a network of tarps, tunnels protected from the rain. I can’t see a single hole in the roofs, just patches here and there. Panic rises in me and I move like I’m going to follow after them to make sure nothing happens to him. I’m tired, and relieved, but I can’t be lulled into a false sense of security and let him go with complete strangers.

“Sit,” says the boy. “He’ll be fine.”

“That’s your dad?” I ask, slowly sitting back down, realizing I have zero strength left.

“Yep. He’ll get him whatever help we can give.”

“We have some food and antibiotics,” I say, ready to rise and get the food sack from the canoe. He sits down on the chair across from me and puts his hand on mine to keep me still. Through the plastic I can feel how warm he is. His touch stops my thoughts dead in their tracks. He says not to worry about it. They help anyone who’s not one of the face eaters out here. It’s nothing I need to pay back. He takes his hand off and leans back.

I ask him about the place, this miracle island that’s saved us. He summarizes the history of what he calls Blue Island. He first came when he was thirteen from Salt Lake City. Since then, supplies are ferried across from Grandview Peak, where there are still trees that have been tarped over. A lot of Salt Lake City’s population is still up on that range he says. I ask him why they moved off then, and he says because the face eaters were getting worse. Because of the supplies, the bandits started coming from everywhere. At first just thieves, out to steal your gasoline, or your food, or your canvas and plastic. But after a while, the reports were coming in every few days. Mutilation, bodies floating by with teeth lacerations, half-finished corpse meals gone adrift. He says that now, the bandits have been coming even farther east, toward King Mountain, and the raids have been occurring much more frequently. That’s why he has to approach castaways with the gun. He says he didn’t mean to scare me.

He asks me about Russell—who he is in relation to me, and how he got sick. I tell him Russell has a leg infection, and I’m afraid it may have come back. But it could be the exposure. He could be sick from the cold. He might have a fever, but I don’t know, because I’m no good at checking. Then he asks how I know Russell again, like I didn’t answer his question. Who is he to you? He doesn’t say it angrily. His tone is even cheery, a shocking contrast to the blight of our surroundings. But still I struggle to answer him. His dark eyes study me, his smooth bright face undimmed by the rain. He looks like he’s happy to be with me and it’s blindsiding me. He isn’t looking at me like the burden that could cost him his own life. Emotions rush up in me, and worry about Russell. I know I could say he’s my father, but I’m in love with him. I don’t know what to say. The idea of what love is supposed to be has been one confusing mess, but I can’t say that. Russell has helped me get to higher ground since I was little, I say. He’s pushed us all the way out here from the East. We’ve had each others’ backs for a long time, I say, and we’re going to Leadville together.

The boy looks confused at the mentioning of Leadville. It’s the second time I’ve mentioned it now, but the effect it has on Russell and me isn’t shared by him, I can tell. What’s in Leadville, he asks? I try to explain everything Russell and I believe in—it’s stopped raining there, the whole town is still above the water line. It’s the highest town in the United States. Not a tarp town, but a regular town with brick buildings and electrical power. The boy laughs until he realizes it’s hurting my feelings. It’s like he thinks I’m full of it, or I’ve been conned. But he doesn’t say any of that. Just that he’s met a few castaways from Colorado and they hadn’t wanted to go back that way. Said the whole region sweeps down from the Rockies with a great push, shoving everything east and into the great waterspout rapids. Where everything boils, and the water is more foam than brown. He thinks we’re crazy to push anywhere but west. But you fled from the west, I tell him. He tells me that they’re going to go back, that they’re building a great big barge. Something as big as a small island, along with a lot of smaller boats. And that they’re going to head straight out to the Sierra Nevada mountains. That’s where it’s at, he says. Then he looks me dead in the eyes and tells me I should come. I can’t believe what he’s asking, especially since I’ve just told him my whole life has been about Russell and me getting to Leadville. Everything depends on getting there. I tell him I can’t and I look away. I don’t know why he’s looking at me so long, and so hard, like something’s wrong with me. But I look up and he’s still there, watching me, half smiling too. You need a shower, he tells me. Come on. I can’t resist the thought, and I follow him. He leads me through a narrow strip of tarp. Then we come to a hanging flap and he tells me to get in. Turn the knob on the left. You’ll have hot water. I don’t know what to say, except that I can hardly believe him about the knob. That there’s hot water that will come out of this rusty pipe hanging over my head. There’s a hook in there that you can hang your clothes on. And I might have some stuff that’ll fit you when you’re done. Just holler for me, he says.

I’m torn. Already I want to try to convince Russell that we need to stay here, with these people, and go with them, wherever they do, because they’ve got it all figured out. And as I hear the footsteps recede, I realize I don’t know the boy’s name. I call out to him.

“What’s your name?” The comment is unnatural, because it seems entirely unnecessary. It’s like names that aren’t Russell or Tanner are just missing pieces of the veneer, inconsequential and unneeded until we reach Leadville. No point in knowing any of them. They haven’t mattered since the Sea Queen Marie.

“Dustin. I mean Dusty,” he says. Then he keeps on walking away.

I take off my clothes slowly, peeling first the plastic away, and then the wet cotton, dirtied and shredded in most places. I think I must really stink but I can’t tell. I think about how awful I must look. I look around and thank god there’s no mirror in here, just four blue walls and the silver pipe hanging over my head. I see my legs, my chest, my arms. They’re caked in brown. I think of Dusty, and then my razors in the food sack back in the tent. I almost run to get them, but then I stop—I’m naked. I feel exposed for the first time in forever. Open and alone. I turn the knob and the water comes out freezing cold and I jump back, thinking that it was too good to be true anyway. But then it starts to steam, and it gets too hot, and I have to turn the knob the other way. Then I get under it, and my whole body melts. There’s nothing to clean myself with so I use my hands and turn the water on as hot as I can stand it. How are they getting hot water? But I can’t stop to think it over, it feels too good. I run my hands over every part of my body and rub it all away, let the almost scalding water dissolve the dirt and grime and the rain. No welts on my legs, my arms. No rubber skin. I breathe easier. I open my mouth to the running water and let it pour inside. It bounces off my tongue and my shoulders, runs down my hair. Dirt-streaked water falls off me at first, but then it becomes clear. I stop thinking about what’s going to happen next, and every other thought. I become one with the water, and all I know or feel is the heat.

Chapter 6

I call out for Dusty. He brings me a towel, poking his arm in so he won’t see me. I tell him thanks and dry myself off. I feel cleaner than I ever have in my life. Be right back with clothes he says, and then he’s gone again. The tarp door starts to open and I jump back, startled, wondering if he’d try coming in. But it’s just Marvolo. He’s curious and I tell him to wait outside, pushing him back. Dusty returns and hands in some clothes. I grab them and say thanks. He says to leave the dirties on the floor and we’ll get them later. Then I bring the new clothes up to my nose. They smell like clean nothing. I breathe deeply into them, taking in the blank scent again and again. Just plain dry and clean. There’s a pair of sweat pants and a sweater and a pair of boxer shorts. And dry socks. I put everything on and head back out, thinking about Russell. At the door of the tarp house, Dusty is standing by, his plastic suit off now, just in a sweater of his own. His hair is dry again, but he’s holding his rifle. What’s wrong? I ask him. There’s been a report of a raid coming in. Might hit tonight. Where’s Russell? I ask. He’s still in the infirmary he tells me, and then shows me how to get there if I want to go. I ask him what he’s going to do. I have to stand watch on this end of the tarp entrance, he says. Standard procedure. Do you have a weapon? he asks me. Just in case, he says. I go to show him the knife.

The shower has created more hope than I can deal with. I just want to stay and talk to Dusty, find out what he’s like. But I have to see Russell so I follow the way he showed me, down a long connecting series of tarps toward a split, and take the left, like he told me. I run into Dusty’s dad in the room of moving people, the only face I recognize.

“He’s pretty sick,” says Dusty’s dad. I look over at Russell who’s lying on a white bed. He’s dirtied the blanket. “But he should get through fine now that he’s on medicine.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say. Dusty’s dad tells me I can make up for it by standing guard for the raid, and he asks whether or not Dusty told me about the raid. I say he did, and that I just want to talk to Russell. He tells me I can try, but he’s in and out. I lean down at the side of the bed.

“Russell,” I say. He comes to life at the sound of my voice, turning his head to me, opening his eyes. “Hey.”

“It’s warm here,” he says, then he closes his eyes tightly like he’s got a sharp headache.

“They’re fixing you up.” I grab his hand to see if he’s any warmer. He feels just as cold as before. And his face is still beat red.

“They are?” he says, like he has no idea what’s going on. “Tell them I don’t take antibiotics.”

“I will,” I say. I press my lips to his forehead, kiss him. I can’t help but tell him I love him, because I’m so overwhelmed with everything, that we’ve arrived somewhere safe, warm, dry.

“Tan,” he says. I look at him, his eyes are open again.

“Yea?”

“We’ll get out on the boat again tomorrow. It’s not Leadville.” And I don’t even begin to answer him. It must be delirium. I can’t imagine Leadville will stick in his brain once he sees where we’ve landed. How good we have it again now. But he just repeats it again, that we’ll leave tomorrow, and that he’s sorry to have delayed us on the trip. I tell him it’s okay, and I grab his hand again. I feel like he’s going to make it now. A woman and a man walk up and eye me over. Who are you? they ask me. I explain it in as brief a way as I can and ask how he’s doing. I gather they’re the ones who are working on the sick bodies that crowd this part of the tarp town. He’s got an infection in his leg, one tells me. I cringe. It’s back. And he’s got pneumonia, says the other. But we’ve given him the strongest stuff we’ve got, and we think he’ll pull through. I hear the loud report of gunfire interrupt the steady rain, and I look around for Dusty’s dad, but he’s gone. I remember what he told me, to help watch for the raid. The face eaters are coming. And I look back to Russell, but he’s asleep again, the gun didn’t even wake him up. Before saying goodbye to the man and the woman working in the infirmary I run back the way I came, toward Dusty’s house. The tarp goes by in a blue blur, the rain pattering over my head, and no more gunfire. But when I get there Dusty stares at me and for the first time he doesn’t look like his calm peaceful happy self. Can you use a pistol? is all he says, and his rifle is raised up to his shoulder, pointed out into the long expanse of muddy brown land where there are no more tarps. The wilderness of the ridge.

I tell him I’ve used one before but I don’t tell him I never shot at a person. He points me to a rack behind him and tells me to grab a gun quick.

“Get behind me,” he says urgently, like something is seriously wrong now. “Two of them coming up this side.”

Marvolo runs out into the rain, like he’s scouting ahead. But then I see a face in the distance, it rises over the brown hill of the ridge, and it looks like the head of every other face eater I’ve ever seen. Except as this one rises up a gun rises up with him, a rifle a lot like Dusty’s. The face eaters are armed.

“Marvolo, get back!” yells Dusty, and he crouches and hides inside the blue tarp to get out of sight. I get down and move behind him. I wait, afraid I’ll hear some kind of painful yelping and Marvolo will be shot. I hear a gunshot and there’s no yelp. Marvolo comes bounding back into the tarp, unhurt.

“Don’t move, boy!” Dusty says, anger and firmness in his voice for the first time. Marvolo obeys and walks around to the hall leading to the shower. Dusty looks at me, staring deep into my heart, confident, unafraid, and asks me if I’m ready. I nod, but I’m not sure if I am. I look at the gun in my hands, and I remember to check the safety but it’s already off. At that moment, Dusty leans around the edge of the tarp entrance, pokes his head and shoulder out where the face eaters will be able to see him, and takes aim in the rain. The loud bang of a gunshot splits the sky.

Part 3

Chapter 7

The rifle fire tears through my head. It’s the loudest thing I’ve heard in months. A bullet pierces the tarp wall with a plastic pop, just above our heads. Dusty ducks down and moves back inside the tarp. He didn’t get a shot off. I stay behind him, afraid to look out because I think I’ll see the face eaters charging at us, pointing their guns, ready to fire at first sight of anything. I almost tell Dusty not to poke his head back out but he does it before I can utter a sound. He nests his face against the sight of his rifle, takes aim and fires. The bang feels like it’s making my ears bleed. I poke my head out for a second to see if he hit something. Out there on the brown hill are two face eaters, both of them running full speed toward us. He didn’t hit either one of them.

“Shit,” he says, pulling back inside and sitting against the tarp wall. “We have to move.” I don’t object and follow him as he races away into the tarp hallway that leads in the direction of the infirmary. As soon as we leave, another gunshot sounds from the hill. I hear the same plastic ripping pop above our heads that means a new hole has opened in the tarp. They must see our silhouettes moving.

Halfway down the tarp hall Dusty kneels down and pulls up a tiny flap near his feet. He ushers me and Marvolo out of the way and squats on the plastic floor. I keep my eyes down the hallway on the room we just left, expecting the face eaters to come charging inside at any moment. But they were far away enough that Dusty has another chance to shoot one of them. On the ground he raises the rifle to his eye again and slides the barrel through the tarp, out into the rain. I have no idea if they see it coming. He fires.

A loud cry of pain breaks the sound of the rain pounding on the roof. Got one, he says. Let’s go.

And he stands again and tugs me for a second, just enough that I know he means it’s life or death. I follow behind him and look at the pistol in my hands. I put my index finger on the trigger very lightly, because I don’t want to accidentally kill one of us. But I know I might have to use it. How many are there? I ask him. Lately it’s been waves of ten or twelve, he says. They’ve started to work together more and more. I glance back as we near the split in the corridor. To the left is Russell and the infirmary room, to the right, I have no idea. My heart sinks as Dusty leads me to the right.

“We have to get Russell,” I say. Dusty pauses and looks at me, his face full of fright. “What is it?” I ask at the same time as he yells for me to duck down. He reaches out and grabs my shoulder and forces me hard to the ground. I hit my knees and feel a shock roll through me, twisting around to see what he did it for. I don’t have to see anything though because I hear another gunshot. It came from the surviving face eater. He’s fixed aim on us from the end of the hallway, and as I look, knowing he missed with his first bullet, I realize he won’t miss again. Instinctively I raise my pistol and pull the trigger. The sound of my gun deafens me further and smoke rises from the tip, a silver shell flying into the wall next to me. The face eater ducks down. At first I think I’ve hit him, but he just stands up again. Dusty lines up his rifle over my shoulder and fires. The face eater collapses to the ground with a loud groan, clutching at his stomach. Direct hit. Come on, Dusty tells me, keep moving. He runs back the way we came, to the face eater writhing on the ground, clutching its stomach. Marvolo and I chase him back. Dusty stops over top of the man and looks down. I look too. I see pleading eyes, desperate from madness, or hunger, or something else entirely. I can’t say what, and I almost look away but I can’t. His skin looks like it’s overexposed, a rubber crust, ready to fall off. I watch the life pass from his body as Dusty shoots him close range, directly in his heart. He stops squirming. That might be all of them, Dusty says. And he’s gone, back to the tarp door to check the ridge. He freezes there and looks out. Shit, he says. There’s no panic in his voice, just calm disappointment. What is it, I ask. But I get there in time to look out for myself and he doesn’t have to say anything. There are three, then four, then five coming over the hill. Each one has a gun. Shoot! he yells. Then he yells at Marvolo to get back again as the dog tries to run out into the rain again toward the invaders.

I don’t think I can hit anything that far away but I try. I hide behind Dusty until he moves out into the open again to take his own shot. He edges just slightly past the tarp wall and puts one of the face eaters in his sights. I flop onto the ground and edge past his legs, pointing my pistol straight out into the brown abyss. I see the face eaters running like it’s a race. They look haggard and worn out and I can’t understand how they’re moving so quickly. We fire at nearly the same time. One of the face eaters topples to the ground. I can’t tell who hit him. Another one appears from behind the ridge, replacing the one we killed. Too many, Dusty says. He backs up and bolts into the tarp hallway for escape. Come on, he commands me. Can’t defend this on our own.

I chase after him and Marvolo, who has gone ahead of both of us. We veer right again at the fork and hear more gunfire. It’s coming from in front of us now, where it shouldn’t. I shudder and realize the face eaters are attacking there too.

“They’re hitting the other side,” Dusty mutters, checking his rifle, making sure it’s ready. We walk into a large square room with boxes and shelves. On the opposite side of the room are two entrances to more tarp hallways. A loud scuffle sounds from the one on the right. It sounds like someone’s in a fight, and metal cans are getting knocked over. Wait here, Dusty says. He pulls me over to a pile of boxes. I duck down and look around, waiting for one of the face eaters to explode into the room but nothing happens. Dusty gets down behind a box next to me, waiting for some clue to give us a sign whether we should advance or not. They’ll be here any second, he alerts me, and he rotates around to face the hallway we came from. Keep an eye on that side, he tells me. I can’t argue because I know they might come from both the front and the back, but I know how many are coming the way Dusty’s watching. There are too many for him to take on alone. I’m dying to look in the direction he is guarding, but I keep my eyes focused on the front.

Footsteps start stomping somewhere down the hall. They’re racing up, the five face eaters we saw on the ridge, a herd moving toward us. Then some seem to trail off in a different direction and I panic. They’re going for Russell, I whisper urgently. Dusty doesn’t react except to quiet me. He puts his finger to his mouth and glares at me. It means there’s nothing we can do. But I feel like I have to do something. What if no one is in there with Russell? What if he’s all alone on the bed, still passed out? A set of footsteps is too close to us now for me to think about playing the hero and running to find out. I sit and wait next to Dusty, concealed as best as I can be by the boxes. Marvolo sits silently like he understands that we have to be quiet despite all the racket. Aim, whispers Dusty.

Two face eaters rush into the room and run by us, directly for the hallways at the opposite side. They look possessed by demons and they don’t even bother to look around the room. You hit right, he whispers. I stare at the backs of the face eaters as they diverge, one running to the left hall and the other, mine, to the right. I raise my pistol and aim squarely at the back of the mindless runner. Dusty fires first, and the sound startles me, but I steady my hand and shoot before I lose my target. My face eater crumples to the floor just after Dusty’s. Good shot, he says, but leaves me the second after they fall. Come on, he calls softly. He heads back to the hallway leading to the infirmary. I bolt after him, Marvolo on my heels, and we take a u-turn toward where Russell should be. We rush into the hospital room with our guns drawn and see one of the face eaters is in there, but he doesn’t take notice of us. He’s bent over one of the white beds, only the bed is splattered with blood now. He’s put his face down into the body of one of the patients. The patient isn’t fighting back.

“Oh my god,” I scream, thinking it must be Russell. The face eater hears me and turns, blood drool flopping from his mouth, his gun momentarily out of reach on the bed. I see the lifeless body beneath him is not Russell. Dusty raises his rifle and shoots but all I hear is a click. Something’s wrong, his gun is jammed or out of ammo. The face eater pauses, finally understanding it must react to us or die, and it reaches for the rifle on the bed. I raise my pistol and fire, the recoil rocking me. My shot is higher than it should have been. I see a beam of light shoot through a tiny hole where I missed in the far wall. The face eater raises his gun and fixes aim on Dusty just as Marvolo reaches him. The dog’s leap is as high as the man’s neck. His jaw latches on and brings the man down in one snarling thump. Marvolo growls and shakes, over and over, while the man’s arms flail around, at first trying to peel the dog away, and then just in random moans of futility and death. Blood spits from his neck and pools around the feet of the hospital bed. Marvolo releases the man at Dusty’s command and he comes back to us. Good boy, Dusty says, but then he silences all of us to listen for movement or scuffle. Where is everyone? I whisper, looking around the empty infirmary. He doesn’t answer me because more footsteps drift through the tarp, and more noises of a struggle, and then more gunshots that sound like they’re ahead on the left. Come on, Dusty finally says, and he slowly starts toward the far exit of the infirmary. I keep the same pace as him, listening closely to the rain, listening for a break in it, any sound that might mean more face eaters coming from behind us. We have no idea how many there are, but I get the feeling this isn’t an ordinary attack. The numbers are too high. What do they want so badly here?

We enter another narrow blue hallway. Nothing in front or behind us. I keep looking outside through the tarp, expecting to see a shadow streak past, someone running by, but no one passes. Marvolo wants to run ahead, but Dusty keeps him back. Take it easy boy, he says. We work our way down to the end of the hall where it breaks into a new large room. Dusty looks back at me, steeled to ice, and asks if I’m ready. I nod yes because I know Russell is somewhere on the other side.

Rifle pointing the way, Dusty leads into the room. I follow behind him with both hands on my pistol, aiming at eye level. I wonder how many bullets I have left in the chamber, but I don’t ask. I don’t want to give away our position in case one of the face eaters is in here. The room is another large supply tent with shelves and boxes and crates, but there’s a fire going in the middle. It’s centered beneath a tin pipe that lets the smoke out through the ceiling. It’s really warm and I want to stop moving here.

“No one’s here,” Dusty says. Almost at the same time as he says this, we hear more gunshots. They’re coming from the next room over. We run into the hallway and as we reach it, I hear a terrible, pained moaning. Then I feel something. It’s a hand tugging on my ankle. I almost trip but I slip out of the thing’s grasp. It’s a downed face eater. Downed but not dead. It’s slugging along on the floor, in its death throes, but with enough energy still to come after us.

“Fucker!” I say, recoiling in anger and fright. I take aim, about ready to shoot, when Dusty pushes my hands down. No, he says. Don’t waste ammo. Then I have to look away, because Dusty steps forward and stomps down, squashing the face eater’s head with his boot. I hear a sickening crunch, and then the spilling of guts and blood. I open my eyes to see the cracked remains of the man’s head. They’re on something, he says, but I don’t get what he means. It’s some kind of drug, he says. It makes sense now—how else could that one have kept coming, it’s lower half already blown away.

We move into the tunnel, waiting for more noise, then proceed into another large room. There are two bodies on the floor, both covered in blood, stark against the blue plastic floor of the tent.

“Fuck,” Dusty says. I think I recognize the faces of the bodies. They look like the nurses I saw who talked to me about Russell’s condition. But where’s Russell? I ask Dusty and he ignores me. He’s focused on moving into the next room, like if we stop for too long we’ll die. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a clip. Here, he says. Then he checks his own ammo. I look around at the empty room we’re in. No fire here. In the infirmary, the face eater had stopped to feed on the patient. Here, it looks like they killed and moved on, shooting the nurses but not stopping to feed on them. It’s like Dusty understands my thoughts because he says that some are hungrier than others. Some want to collect and store. Some can’t help but eat right away.

We carefully walk into the next room, Marvolo leading in front. I don’t see anyone, but then I hear Marvolo yelp, a high-pitched squeal. My heart sinks. I think he’s walked right into a gunshot, but there was no noise. Then Marvolo runs back, lifting one of his paws up as he comes, retreating behind me. Dusty is furious and runs into the center of the room. As he swings around, looking for what hurt Marvolo, a face eater lunges from the side of the room. I charge in but can’t take a shot because they’re too close to each other. The face eater is on him. It doesn’t have a gun but it’s trying to force its head down to Dusty’s neck, working its mouth to bite down right on his neck muscles and veins. I raise the pistol again but I can’t shoot. I look at Marvolo and tell him to help, but he just whimpers in response. He’s scared and his paw hurts. Then I remember my knife. Dusty falls to the floor, the face eater on top of him, when I finally get the blade out and the handle in my fist. I switch the gun to my left hand and run forward with the knife in my right. The man’s back is a giant raised hump in front of me, pushing down on Dusty, trying to take his life. I can’t tell from the noises if he’s already bitten him, but I raise my hand and slam down hard. The knife slices into the man’s back muscle. I pull it out and wait for the face eater to fall over but he doesn’t. Dusty! I yell. The face eater is losing strength but still pushing in to bite him. Marvolo comes up behind me and bites the face eater’s left calf, tearing through the dirty plastic suit wrapped around his leg. But the face eater doesn’t even moan or cry out in pain. It’s like he’s on some kind of drug too. I don’t know what else to do but stab down again. The knife hits the back again and probably the spine because it doesn’t sink in so easily this time. The face eater finally takes notice of me and turns around to look at my face. I point my pistol at his mouth but I don’t fire—Dusty is right below him and I don’t know if it will go through his head and into Dusty. It’s enough time for Dusty to make a move. He jumps up and shoves into the face eater. They fall together into a shelf, crashing, spilling bottles and cans in a loud rattle. Marvolo starts barking and I look at him—with a fright, I realize he’s not barking at us—he’s looking down the hallway and his hair’s on end. More are coming.

I get my gun ready and watch Dusty struggle against the face eater, waiting for a clear shot. Get back, I yell, but Dusty doesn’t listen. He keeps trying to overpower the man, who finally seems to be losing some of his strength. Get off him Dusty! I say. Dusty finally gets it. He rolls away, kicking into the man to create as much distance as possible. Then I have a shot and I pull the trigger. Russell taught me to aim for center mass. Forget head shots. I hit the man squarely in his chest. He finally catches on that he’s dead and falls to the ground and doesn’t move anymore. I put my knife into my pocket and help Dusty up from the floor.

We have to keep moving he says when he’s back on his feet. I look at his face, his beautiful eyes, and thank god that he isn’t bleeding from his neck like I thought I’d see. Marvolo is still barking at the hallway and we hear a gunshot. Marvolo yelps again, this time much louder than last, like he’s in real pain. I feel my chest cave in as the he falls to the ground under his own weight. He starts whining and can’t get back up. Mother fuckers, Dusty roars. He runs forward and I yell at him to stop. Wait for them, I say. And he knows I’m right. He moves to the side, out of sight of the hallway. But Marvolo is lying there in the open, in view of the hall, unable to push himself away. He circles around with his good legs, but can’t raise his body enough to get away.

I think about what Russell’s taught me about the veneer. How in the end, we’re on a mission to find it again, even though it’s superficial, and disappears with the rain. He used to say that the veneer can get scraped off by a lot of things, and it just happened to be the rain. But it could have been anything. That’s how frail the thing is. But I’ve come to the conclusion that it lives in all things, and it’s not just a thin human construction. It’s alive everywhere, and right here, and in Marvolo on the ground. He’s fighting for his life and I can’t let him die. I won’t let Dusty risk himself, but for some reason, I can take the risk myself. I run out with my pistol pointed down the hall. And there in front of me, with a gun of his own, is another face eater. He takes aim and fires. I feel a searing bolt of pain in my right arm and I drop my gun, doubled over in pain. It’s like my whole arm is on fire. I look at it, the source of the blinding pain, and see a gushing red waterfall of blood. I lay on the ground, looking up, wondering if this is it—after how far I’ve come, I lost it all for a stupid dog. But then the face eater collapses right next to me to the sound of another rifle blast. Dusty got him. He’s on the floor next to me, staring into my eyes, blinking endlessly. Then he starts to move, even though he should be dead, because Dusty hit him in the forehead. His arms stretch out for me, ready to suck me toward him, to his mouth, which has a blistered tongue hanging out between crusted lips. His pupils are as big as his whole eyes, a large well of black emptiness. Dusty’s boot swings into view, kicking relentlessly, pounding the man’s skull against the plastic tarp. Something disgusting sprays into my eyes and I look over again, feeling like I’m about to pass out. The man’s head is a squashed pumpkin. Dusty lifts me up and raises my arm. He takes off his sweater. Through a daze I realize how perfect his skin is and I think for a moment that its silly to notice such a thing with my own death about to occur. But I can’t help it. It’s like he’s a sculpture—his stomach and his chest. I’m delirious. He starts to wrap his sweater around my arm where I’m bleeding and yells at me to keep it up high in the air. Then he tells me to sit down and puts me against the tarp wall on top of a crate. I watch him go to work on Marvolo, carrying him over to me, putting him behind the same crate I’m sitting on. He strips down to his underwear now and wraps his pants around the dog’s leg where it’s bleeding.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, on the cusp of fainting just from the sight of all the blood.

“Wait here,” he says. Then he goes and grabs my gun and puts it in my left hand and tells me to hold it. “Don’t let it go, okay?” he says. But I realize he’s not going to wait with us, because he disappears down the hallway. I try to keep my arm up but it’s so hard to do. The blood feels really warm and it’s running down my arm onto my chest and I wonder if I’m losing all my heat with it. Marvolo is crying on the floor behind me. I watch Dusty’s underwear as he moves away down the hallway. I think about how funny it is that I’m attracted to him as I’m about to die. Why is he leaving us? I ask Marvolo. Where’s he going? But Voley doesn’t reply. He’s more worried than I am because he can’t help anymore. But soon his whimpers die down and he’s softly breathing, not making much of any kind of sound. I remember Dusty’s orders, that I have to keep the gun up in case someone else comes. And then I hear it. Footsteps. It snaps me as close to reality as I can come right now with my arm losing blood like it is. But I realize I barely have any strength. The footsteps aren’t coming from the way that Dusty left us. They’re coming from behind, where the face eaters first started pouring in from the wasteland outside. Be quiet boy, I tell Voley, even though he’s barely making any sounds. I realize that Dusty put us into the corner, positioned on crates blocked by other crates, so we are hard to spot if someone just walks into the room and doesn’t really look around well. I keep my head trained on the sliver of the door that I can see behind us. Then the footsteps grow louder and closer, and I see someone walk into the room. The man moves through the room, keeps going, ignoring the blood and the bodies, right past me and Voley. He’s about to head down after Dusty. The dirty, torn plastic suit he wears tells me he is another face eater. I point the pistol, hoping I have enough energy to nail him squarely in the back, and I pull the trigger. The bang that I think I’ll hear comes out as a click. My clip is empty. I remember the clip Dusty gave me and dig in my pocket for it but I drop it and it clangs on the floor. The face eater turns around and sees me. His jaw drops open and his eyes widen in excitement like he’s found a present. His lips let a disgusting tongue slip past in anticipation of what he thinks he’ll soon taste. I know right away how hungry he is and it wakes me up. I struggle with my bad arm, bending it in lightning pain to pick up the clip and put it in, but it hurts too much and I drop the whole gun. The only thing I can do is go for my knife. But the face eater is charging at me now. He doesn’t have a gun, or any weapon other than his mouth and his outstretched fingers, which want to bring me toward his face. He pushes up to me in his run, so electrified by finding me that he nearly spills into the crates, but he steadies himself, grabs my shoulder, and drives in to bite my neck. It’s like a second life comes into Voley, or the primal urge to defend a friend, even though we’ve just met, and he lunges from his three good legs and bites down on the face eater’s thigh. I kick with all my might to help him and get the face eater onto the ground so he can make the kill. But the face eater must be on the drug because he just jumps back up, kicking Voley away. He looks around, unsure whether to take on me or the dog first. But he can’t resist me and comes again. Everything starts to flicker and I feel flashes of white numbness swell in and out of my consciousness. But I’m aware enough to see Voley charge in again, this time biting the back of the man’s knee, piercing all the plastic and dirty cloth, shredding the tissue that connects the man’s knee to the muscles that control his legs. He spills to the floor and it’s like Voley won’t let up no matter how hard the man pounds back into the dog. Voley growls and growls, ignoring the pain of the man’s fists, and I use my last ounce of life to jump off the crate and stab my knife into his ribs as far as it will go. I push in and push in deeper, feeling the anger I know Russell would feel if he knew what this man was trying to do to me. Feeling the anger at the things that tear off everything good about what it means to be human. I keep hitting the man with the knife long after he’s dead. I forget to keep my arm up and Dusty’s sweater is soaked through. Voley limps over to me. We’re lying out now, exposed near the edge of the hallway, but I don’t have any energy to get back into hiding, and neither does Voley. He curls up next to me and we lay down together, like it’s all been a game and now it’s time for a nap. I try to keep my arm pointed straight at the ceiling, but it’s impossible. I can’t. It falls down and rests on the ground next to the face eater. I turn my head to look at the man’s face to check his eyes. I thank god that his eyes are not blinking. His pupils are no longer dilated. He’s dead. I look up at the blue ceiling of the tarp and listen to the rain that hasn’t noticed or cared about any of this. I think I hear more gunshots, shouting, and another scuffle. But I can’t be sure. I’m drifting in and out. I fall asleep, wondering if I’m dead.

Chapter 8

Everything is blurry. I can’t tell if I’ve been asleep for a day or an hour. The first thing I see is blue, blue everywhere. But it’s not the beautiful deep blue that Russell says the ocean used to be—before it was all brown. It’s bright, glaring. I realize I’m still inside the tarp city. I remember my arm from the throbbing pain there and look. Gauze is wrapped around so many times that it’s like there’s a bump rising out from where the bullet hit me. There’s a tiny spot of red on the white, a small reminder of how much blood I lost. My emotions return to me as I hear a whimper. It’s Voley. He’s across the room. He has gauze on his leg too, but he’s not whimpering in pain. He wants someone to play with.

Out of the blurriness I see someone walk over to Marvolo and start petting him and he quiets down at the attention. Then the figure turns and comes toward me. I notice the warmth now. It’s almost too warm—I turn my neck and see a fire behind my bed, burning in a gray steel oil drum, its smoke rising up through an aluminum chute in the roof. I watch her come toward me and I try to recognize her face but I can’t. I swivel my head around, trying to see if anyone else is here, but the room’s empty. A sinking feeling starts because Russell pops into my head. I wonder if he’s okay, and if Dusty is okay. She comes and stands over me and tells me to lie back down. I sat up and she doesn’t like it.

“Where are they?” I ask. She looks puzzled, like she doesn’t know if I mean the face eaters or one of the good guys. I tell her Russell and Dusty. They’re okay, she says. I listen to the rain hitting the roof and hear a tiny drip inside the room every few seconds. Where are they? I repeat, and I stay sitting up because I don’t feel like I’ve just been shot. I feel warm and fuzzy, like there’s no pain. She must have given me medicine.

“Russell’s back in the infirmary. Dusty is with his dad. They’re surveying the damage.” The word damage rings in my head and I remember all the face eaters. How many had there been? I can’t believe they came in such numbers. And some of them—they acted like they had some kind of superhuman strength. I save my questions and stand up from the bed. The woman, not unattractive, but much older than Russell, tries to tell me again to stay put and lie down. You’re still recovering, she says. But I feel fine and I don’t need to hear a stranger’s advice right now. I need to see Russell and Dusty. Marvolo sees me get up and whines, licking the air, looking longingly at me. I walk over to him and bend my right arm to pet him, forgetting it’s all screwed up, and wince at the painful movement. I steady the arm and use my left instead to let him give me kisses. Good boy, I say. Suit yourself, says the woman behind me, not anger but disappointment in her voice. I ask her which way to the infirmary, but I recognize where I am before she can answer me. I head down the blue tunnel at the end of the room.

As I head down the hallway, I keep expecting to hear guns start firing again, the sound of more fighting somewhere far out in another part of the tarp city, but I don’t. I don’t hear anything but the rain. Then I’m reminded of what happened as I walk through the next room. On the ground are long streaks of dried blood, and wooden boxes that have been broken to bits. Two people are attempting to clean the room up as I walk past. I glance at them and look away. I don’t want anyone to question me. I just need to see Russell.

When I get to the infirmary, I see Russell sitting up on a bed. His skin looks normal pale again, and his eyes are open. It’s like whatever they’ve been giving him is working already. He doesn’t see me and I run up to him. I put my good arm out and wrap it around him as hard as I can. He coughs a little bit and smiles wide, recognizing that it’s me. He puts his arms around me and squeezes me tight, drawing me in. Then he pushes me away but keeps his hands on my shoulders, watching my face with his smile, and his face looks alive again. I don’t know what to say—I want to ask him how he got out of there, and tell him about the body I saw being eaten that I thought was him. I look around at the thought, expecting to still see the blood soaked bed somewhere, the half-eaten corpse lying there. But everything is cleaned up. It’s like nothing happened in this room. Someone is wandering around near two beds at the back, both of which have new bodies in them. They both look like they’re unconscious.

“I hear you did good,” he says, watching me, unable to take the smile off his face. I nod and tell him I kicked ass. But that it was nothing special, in mock humility. And then I ask him how he’s feeling. He tells me that they say his leg infection is back, and that he’s got a cold, but that’s about it. Nothing that should prevent us from leaving for Leadville. My jaw drops and I step back, escaping his hands. I can’t believe he still wants to go. I expected it when he was delirious, but now he looks half fine. And he still wants to go. He must not have talked to Dusty or Dusty’s dad yet. He must not realize what this place is like yet.

Before I can tell him how angry I am that he’s suggested leaving safety, Dusty’s dad walks into the room followed by the woman who was there when I woke up.

“There you are,” says Dusty’s dad. I nod and look at the woman, thinking she’s gone and gotten me into trouble, as if I owe them good behavior for having treated me. My old defenses rear up, and I look questioningly at Russell, as if we’ll have to snap into action, because they might want to start with us. But they continue to talk and I realize that they don’t want any trouble, just to see that I’m alright. I tell them I feel fine. Dusty’s dad tells me it’s the pain medicine, and he says I shouldn’t be out of bed. I ignore him. The woman puts her arm around Dusty’s dad, and I figure it out that they’re together. I wonder if it’s Dusty’s real mom because she looks nothing like him. He looks just like his father though. Russell speaks up and asks how the rain is. He says he wants to go check on our canoe.

“What do you want with that canoe?” Dusty’s dad asks, alarmed that Russell is worried about it. Russell tells him we have to get going soon, hit the water and start south for Leadville. Dusty’s dad tells him we’re a long ways from Leadville, and we’d be pushing east as much as south now. And there’s a great current drawing in that direction, pushing things way too far east. He says we’ll be swept up in the waterspouts on the Great Plains sea. It’s a never-ending gale there, he says. Russell doesn’t seem to care, or at least he doesn’t respond with a counter to that point. He just looks antsy, like he’s rejuvenated enough that he’s feeling his old motto roar back to life, and now that we’re sitting in some infirmary unit, he’s wasting precious daylight hours.

“We plan on doing a little trading here, and then we’re getting on our way,” Russell says. The woman leans forward and puts her arm on Russell, like she’s going to calm him down from the ridiculousness of his mission. She says he should just relax for tonight. He shouldn’t go worrying about anything too much for now, while he’s recovering. There’ve been a couple deaths, she says, and the whole place isn’t likely to be interested in trading at a time like this. We’ll rest tonight, and then we’ll be on our way, Russell says. And he’s dead serious. I see the flicker of the fire in the other room through the tarp, a lighter blue against the blue, and I think Russell’s gone mad. He just doesn’t know there’s hot water here. And fire. And food. And good people. And Dusty.

Dusty walks in from the other end of the room toward us. He’s still got his rifle with him, and his face is lit with joy to see us—but I notice he’s looking more to me than anyone else. He tries not to let it show, but he keeps glancing back to me. For a moment, I forget Russell’s insanity and melt at the sight of his face. I can’t bring myself to want to leave Dusty for some reason. There’s something magnetic about him that I’ve never felt before in all my life. I worry that my feelings for Russell are getting screwed up, but I push the thought out of my head. I can’t deal with it. The pain medicine has me too cozy inside right now.

Dusty is so filled with excitement that he tells us everything that happened after I passed out. He first recounts everything we did before that too, making sure Russell hears every detail of my heroic attacks against the face eaters. Dusty says that after I was shot and he sat me down, he ran into another room that was packed with them, but there were a group of tarp dwellers too, and there was a short gunfight. And they all went down, the last of the face eaters. One of them they kept alive to try to question, he says, but it wouldn’t say anything that could be understood. The man was foaming at the mouth, and it’s true what folks have been saying, Dusty says. The face eaters have taken a great big supply of the drug. What’s the drug? I ask. He tells us it’s a stimulant they take, something to keep the hunger off their minds, but that it really ends up making the hunger worse, and makes them keep going long after they should be dead. And sometimes, it stops their hearts straightaway, but most of the time it just makes them more crazy than they already are.

I think about the one that was blown apart but still crawled toward me on the floor. It had to have been on the drug. The thought scares me. And Dusty then says they’re banding together more and more, making their assaults in unison for some reason. He can’t explain, and his dad hangs his head like he’s right, and there really is no explanation. Then the woman just looks at us and says they must want our flesh all the more now. All the more. And that’s all she says and then she walks right out of the infirmary and leaves us all alone. It felt like she was holding something back and I wonder if Russell felt it too but I can’t ask right now.

“What happened to you?” I ask Russell, still not having heard a word from him about what happened in the infirmary.

“He’s a hero too,” says Dusty’s dad. I look dumbfounded, unsure of what he means. Then he goes on to tell me what happened. He says after the gunshots got closer, Russell shot right up out of bed, high fever no matter, and went to the rear shelf looking for a gun to help defend. And that’s when one of them burst into the room. I was there too, with my gun, but it was Russell that took him down, this face eater. It was crazed. One of the deranged ones. High on the speed. Russell just took up one of them chairs there, and I never saw a head explode from a chair before. But this man’s did. He looks at Russell and grins, and Russell looks down, showing no happiness at the reminiscence of what he did. He looks distracted all together, like he’s thinking of Leadville, and somehow, he’s seriously considering taking us out into that boat again. His face shows a puzzle, like he’s figuring out what’s so wrong about all this.

“Look, Tan and I need a minute alone. Is that alright?” Russell finally says after Dusty’s dad finishes up his story about him killing the face eater and then apparently running around like a madman trying to find me. Yea, sure, says Dusty’s dad. And Dusty just smiles at me, like he’s sure he’ll see me later, and then he turns. I watch him go, his rifle hanging down from his side, out the door toward his father. Marvolo appears in the hallway and Dusty shouts in excitement at the sight of his friend. Their voices fade as Russell pulls me close to him. He’s serious now, and he makes sure I’m looking right at him.

“We can’t stay here Tanner. I don’t know what it is yet, but something’s not right,” he says. And all of the sudden, all the beauty I know in him vanishes with those ugly words because I’m scared to death to leave. And I know he’s somehow lost his senses, and he’s still sick, and the defense against the face eaters was a fluke, because he isn’t thinking right. I don’t tell him that I felt something odd about that woman too, like she had a secret, and instead I tell him we have to stay here, and that there’s fire, food, hot water, clothes, and good people. And there’s no reason to move anywhere. He looks upset with me and says, No reason to move? He tells me what Dusty’s dad told him: the face eaters are coming from the west, heading east, and there’s been more and more. More together, operating like a team almost. He says that west of here is a death trap. And if we stay, the attack we had will only come again, but it’ll be worse, and one of us won’t survive next time. I stop and think about what he’s said. I know he’s partially right, and the face eaters are coming from the west, and that we did get attacked on our first day here, and that Dusty’s dad did say things are getting worse. And I realize I’ve never seen face eaters that are high on drugs, and it’s much more terrifying than the old cannibals I’ve come to expect since Rapid City. But still, with all of that, the alternative is the open brown nothing. The cold rain and the endless ocean. The swells that I know are waiting for us. Some of them a quarter-mile long. I tell Russell this, but I don’t just tell him. I plead with him. I explain how hard it was on the boat alone, how we almost died. How Poseidon spared us, and if we fuck with him again we’re going to die. How our canoe is screwed, how we don’t have anything to trade anyway even if we wanted to get enough supplies to move south. And how do we even navigate to get there? Then I hit him where it hurts: Do you remember when you were crying? How bad it was? Look at what’s happened since then. We’ve been saved. Even if a hundred face eaters come tonight, at least we’re on land. And we’ve got guns. And people to help us.

It’s like he doesn’t hear any of my reasons, but he’s also lost the will of his own to fight for his decision to move out. We’re at a stalemate, and he rocks back a little bit and puts his hands on his head. Then I realize it’s not that he’s starting to give up on Leadville, it’s that his headache is back. I move up to him and start to rub his back, his arm, and ask if he’s okay. He says he’s fine. If we go anywhere, I’m not going until you’re better, I tell him. He doesn’t say anything to this. I remind him I can’t do it alone again. I tell him he almost killed me, both of us. Then he compromises with me, and I feel my spirit soar as high as it’s been since my hot shower. He says we’ll wait a couple days and feel things out around here. See if his hunch is right. But then, we’ve got to make a decision. And as far as he can see it, he says, Leadville is the only real option. He reminds me that it’s the highest elevation city in the country, something I’ve heard a thousand times so it doesn’t even mean anything anymore. He reminds me of the whole town being above the water line. He says that it might not be raining there. Even Cap’n Wallace believed that, he says. I don’t let him get away with all that this time though. I tell him we’ve found a piece of the veneer right here in Utah. It’s alive and well, I tell him. In Dusty and his dad, in that woman, and Marvolo. He doesn’t say anything, and he breathes in real deep and lets out a long sigh, like he’s upset by something but won’t say what. I wonder for a second if he’s psychic, and he’s upset by my new feelings for Dusty. But I know that’s not it, because he finally says, We think we have. We think we’ve found a piece of it. But we don’t know what this place is all about yet, do we? And then he reminds me about what happened in Rochester. I don’t want to think about it. I hate thinking about what happened in Rochester. But he spells it out for me, because he’s afraid I’m seeing all the bright colors of this place, and not the thing that’s producing them.

Russell starts out by saying that the plan of these people, as far as everything he’s gathered, is to float a barge west to the Sierra Nevada mountains. He asks me if I remember the barge in Rochester. I don’t nod, because I don’t want to remember it. But he goes on anyway, like it’s something we need to remember right now.

After the Sea Queen Marie sunk, and we had floated on a whale boat for a week, we were picked up by a small gas powered motor boat. They lifted us out of the water and asked where we came from. There were two of them, a man and a woman. They didn’t hesitate to save us.

Both of them were about Russell’s age, and with smiles on their faces they told us about how lucky we were. They just happened to spot us, and had they not, we would have floated on to god knows what terrible hump of raised land in the West. The West, where the face eaters are everywhere, they had said. They took us on that boat and we drove for a long time, in a direct line over blank water, to an enormous steel barge that was raised high above the water. It looked like a big stinking pile of shit just floating there. But it was a tent city pile of shit, and all the tents were high off the water. They said it used to be an aircraft carrier, and Russell told me that meant planes used to land on it. Now it just floated aimlessly, but the people on it could head out on their small boats and gather up supplies and food from even as far north as Canada. But up there the rain has turned to snow, they said. So they’d stopped getting supplies from the north, and even the south. Snow and ice in the north, and strong currents in the south. Once we were hoisted onto the carrier, everything looked like a dream. There was a long line of white plastic that had turned a dirty shade of brown, tied high around poles to form a long triangular tunnel. Underneath were bags and bags of supplies, a lot of it food. What Russell and I couldn’t understand was why so much it smelled rotten, like it had gone bad. We couldn’t understand why all the food would go bad with as many people as there were living on the carrier. The ones who took us in had told us on the way that there were just over a thousand people.

Once we got off the motor boat and started exploring, it became clear that there weren’t that many people. It was more like a ghost town. We went through the stinking piles, looking at wasted food, and that’s when Russell started to say that things didn’t seem right. But there were pockets of the tent packed with people, and fresh supplies, and they were happy to give us what we needed—shelter and food and warmth. They even told us we didn’t have to pay them back. Russell grew more and more wary because he said no one gives you something for nothing. Not in this world. We slept the first night under the triangle, and I couldn’t even tell we were on water, the barge was so quiet and still. The man who rescued us came over once in the middle of the night and asked if we were hungry. I felt like he was almost catering to us. It was all too good to be true after the Sea Queen. Russell told me he thought the man had been watching us sleep, and made up the food excuse once we startled awake. I fell under the spell of that place in the first two days, but Russell never eased up, and never let me know he disapproved of my feelings. He started walking the edges of the barge endlessly, watching where the motor boats came in at, how they hoisted themselves up to the carrier surface, studying where the drivers went. Where they put their keys.

I kept telling him everything was alright, and that he’d grown too skeptical and cold toward people. The world wasn’t as bad as he’d grown to think it was. I was still in the afterglow of our Sea Queen family and thought it wasn’t strange for people to be good-natured. And after the loss, I felt like the carrier could be the replacement family we needed. But it was only the next night that we heard the scream.

Russell reminds me about the sound of the scream. I say I remember it and he doesn’t have to remind me about it. It came in the middle of the dead night. Russell got up and walked over to the edge of the tent and peered out into the rain. The cry was coming from somewhere far away on the other side of the carrier. Where are you going? I asked. He didn’t respond, just told me to wait a second. I told him hell no and followed after him. We didn’t have our knives yet.

We walked through wet darkness for about ten minutes until we reached the edge of a steel tower, some high building built right into the carrier floor with a couple doors at the base. Russell kept looking around, like someone was going to see us sneaking around, but no one was out there but us. I didn’t think that was strange because it was the middle of the night.

He looked into a few of the windows on the tower and didn’t see anything, and neither did I, so we went inside. I wanted to know what the hell we were doing, why we were nosing around when they were treating us so good. All he said was because something isn’t right. And we have to make sure it’s all wrong here so that we can steal a boat and take off tomorrow. I followed him through a dark hallway to where a thin line of light shone, and then we heard the screaming again but it was very loud, right near us. We’d found the source of the painful noise. It was a room with a large glass window. The strangest part was, it was all frosted over with ice. Like a giant freezer. And then Russell crept up to it and pushed his face against the glass and I can still remember his breath hitting the iced glass and melting a small spot of it. He looked in through the spot. I pushed against him to see too. There was a long tube coming out of someone’s body. The body was jacked into some kind of pump and it was making a small noise. And what the screams had been, he knew right away: the person had woken up when they should have been dead. That’s what Russell said afterward. But either way, it was red, the tube. It was a line of their blood, Russell says. And that was a freezer. I remember all the barrels in there, lined in a row, neatly stacked, iced over, one after the next. Frozen blood. All of it stored for whoever the hell is really running this ship, Russell said in the triangle tarp after we got back. We both stayed awake all night. He talked about what probably happened to the rest of the bodies after the blood was gone. They don’t waste one bit of a body. They’re in this for the long haul. Professional, clean living face eaters.

I don’t know how no one caught on that we knew what was happening on that barge. I know I must have worn it on my face over the next two days as Russell planned our escape. But we were never caught. We looked into the faces of the ones who rescued us and told them how lovely it was on their barge, and how nice things were. Each day we were on board, at least another two or three people were found and brought back to the barge, plucked from somewhere out on the eternal ocean surrounding us.

We never found out how they kept the freezer room working, or where the rest of those bodies were stored after all the blood was extracted, or why that one person woke up during the pumping. Russell had it figured that we only had a matter of days before it was our turn on the pump. He stole a pair of motor boat keys, a rifle, and we left in the middle of the night. There was a gunshot, and then another in the empty gray night as we sped away over calm waters, but nothing hit us. They let us go, like we didn’t matter. No one chased.

I asked Russell what he really thought was going on there. He said it’s a way to survive. And that they might have let us in on it, or made us part of the supply, but it was no way we were going to survive. That’s no veneer either, he kept saying, as if they’re appearance of having survival all figured out was just clouds and smoke. It didn’t matter, he said, that they seemed nice and everything was working well for them on the outside. It had to do with the way they were getting by. That’s no veneer. And the stinking food. Their preferences have changed—they would rather have human, Russell said. No veneer.

I can remember the long island shape of that carrier disappearing in the black as we sped west, not knowing where the hell we were going, totally unaware that the horror of Sioux Falls lay in wait for us. The rain hit us, but there was a tarp on the boat, and we’d taken enough food to last two weeks. And the motor boat was full of gas. And everything was quiet on that water, and the beautiful hope that had come into my spirit had been killed just as fast as born. I kept thinking I’d hear a motor boat coming after us, but none came. They had it too good on that ship to care.

Russell finishes reminding me about Rochester and tells me we don’t know anything about the people here in Utah. He says he’s known me for fourteen years, and I’ve known him just as long, but these are strangers, and the sooner we can get out from under their generosity, the better. He asks if anyone’s done anything for me that they said I wouldn’t have to repay the favor for. I say I think Dusty did. Russell isn’t happy to hear it. He says there’s something that doesn’t feel right about the blind kindness these people have. Something that doesn’t feel right at all. And he’s downright ready to go find our canoe right now, way down on the muddy ridge, and flip out all the water, and break our tent down and grab our sack and jump in and head out into the canvas. Leave all this uncertainty behind us, and head for the one thing that’s certain. I tell him Leadville is just as certain as that barge was. Clouds and smoke. He doesn’t say anything because he knows I’m right. And he’s starting to feel sick again so he lies back down. I climb right on the bed with him, just barely fitting, and lie with my bad arm across his chest. He sighs again and I tell him that no matter what we do, we’ll do it together. I don’t know if this comforts him or not, but he falls asleep just when I say it. And the warm fuzzy feeling of the pain medicine rolls through me, up my body in happy waves, and then into my brain, settling it, and I’m out too.

Chapter 9

I wake up to the feeling of a hand on my arm. It’s tapping me. I open my eyes. Dusty is staring at me. I see the top of Voley’s tail wagging behind him. Come with me, he says. I slowly dislodge from Russell, who is still sleeping. The sky is dark through the tarp around us, and the fire has made it warm everywhere. I stand up, still groggy, and Dusty drags me off through one of the hallways. Pretty soon we’re back in his home, and we sit down at the table. I look to the tarp flap that leads out to the mountain ridge, where the face eaters attacked from. I wonder if there are more out there. It’s like Dusty senses my thoughts though, and he tells me they’ve set an extra watch tonight, but there shouldn’t be any more attacks. I fix on his face, studying it, the curve of his chin, and his lips, and his eyes that look  like they’re feeding on me. I think of Rochester, and Russell’s warning, and I realize how right he is. We don’t know anyone here, and we can’t trust anyone here. But even when I’m looking for it, I don’t feel any malice in Dusty or in Marvolo. I’m torn. How does your arm feel, Dusty asks. I almost forgot about it. I look it over, following the white gauze, noticing with relief that the red blood spot is still the same size as it was earlier. I feel okay, I say. And then he loses his smile, like something urgent has come into his mind, and everything up until now has been a pretense for something he wants to tell me. He doesn’t say anything though, so I look away before it becomes awkward.  I look at the hard plastic flooring, miraculously dry. I ask what’s wrong. I ask because I feel like he’s sitting on some big problem, but he’s not coughing it up unless I prod him.

“You were really good,” he says. I look back up to him, and his smile’s back. Russell taught me to shoot, I say, even though I know I missed as many times as I hit with the pistol. I think of the gun, and where it might be now. I didn’t expect them to just give me a gun, but when I’d had it, I felt a lot safer. I almost ask Dusty if I can have it back to keep, but I know better. And I grow cautious about asking for anything we might have to pay back later, and I’m on alert for any offers that seem too good to be true—gestures of help that don’t need to be repaid, like on the carrier in Rochester. But there’s already been a lot of those. The shower, the medical care, the shelter, the clothes. I’m becoming more and more paranoid. And Russell’s in the other room. Where’s your dad? I ask to break the silence. He’s with Linda, says Dusty. He tells me that Linda is his dad’s girlfriend, and that his real mom died a long time ago, but that Linda’s been like his real mom ever since. She’s the one who took care of your arm, he tells me. I almost regret the help that probably saved my life, like the bandage on my arm is a debt. But Marvolo comes up and licks my hand and sits right next to me, and I look down at him, and he’s calm and happy. Innocence in his eyes. I look at Dusty and I think I see the same thing. But I’m all mixed up now from what Russell said. Then Dusty finally admits why he woke me up.

“We’re going to be leaving here,” he says. I’m not sure what to say, or why he’s telling me. The tarp city here is huge, and has so many supplies, that I can’t understand why anyone would even consider leaving. The next thing I think is that if they are leaving, and everyone’s abandoning this place, Russell and I can stay behind and make it our own fortress. All alone, just the two of us, our own Leadville. I don’t ask if that would be okay.

“Reports say the face eaters are going to keep coming. More of them than before,” he says. They’re getting desperate he explains, and the drugs they’re getting near Salt Lake are different now—they’re able to go long distances without food. And the manner of their killings has changed. It’s rape and cannibalism now, Dusty says. The two urges mixed into one terrible act. They’ve bent up their brains, he says. The types of killings that have been happening are too horrible to describe. And the attack we just fought off has become the norm here. He says that his dad told him the barge is going to be stocked and everyone able will move out on it in a couple days. West to the Sierra Nevada mountains. He asks if we’ll come. I wonder what able means.

“I don’t know,” I say after another awkward moment. I don’t admit that I know Russell won’t go. It’s a mistake, he’ll say, to keep going west from Utah. We’d be going to high seas, too close to the Pacific. Russell has told me again and again that the oceans are the last place we want to go near. The Pacific is swooping up into the sky, he’s always said. Like a giant vacuum, and it’s carrying anyone stupid enough to go that way up with it. And that’s where the rain’s coming from. We have to go south. Dusty looks at me without saying a word, like my uncertainty isn’t good enough. Let me show you it, he says. He’s got a look of excitement and adventure that doesn’t fit the terrible news he’s just told me. But there it is, like he’s optimistic about the voyage into the sea that will lead away from this beautiful place. A home with fire and hot water and food. A home that’s dry. A home that’s shown me a mirage of the veneer.

Show me what? I ask. And the question is enough to bring his hand down on top of mine. He pulls me up to my feet, brings me over to the shelf, gives me a plastic suit to slip on, picks up his rifle, and drags me out into the rain.

The night air isn’t too cold, and neither is the rain. It’s like it’s warmer down here in Utah. But I don’t trust it. The rain is still coming down at medium, and it pelts off the hood of my suit loudly. Dusty takes my arm again and tugs me a little bit. Voley is bounding ahead of us as if his leg isn’t bothering him very much, his own gauze wrapped under plastic that covers his injury. We’re going right out into the brown wilderness where the face eaters came from. Are you sure this is safe? I ask. I look around, then back at the comfort of the blue tarp behind us, wondering what the hell he’s thinking. Everything I want is in there. But he’s leading me away into the blank nothing, the muddy slopes that go on into death country.

We follow a thin trail up the ridge where the face eaters first appeared from. The darkness blends the sea and the land and I realize I don’t even see the tarps behind us anymore. It’s like I’m back in Wyoming on the empty Bighorns. But he leads me on, getting a couple feet ahead. Voley has disappeared in front of both of us, running ahead like he’s been this way a thousand times before.

I push through rocky mud streams, soaking my feet before long, wondering when the hell the scenery will change, and where the hell we’re going. Where are we going? I ask, but Dusty ignores me and keeps going. He just looks back to make sure I’m following him. And I suddenly feel like something’s not right about this. Panic rises in me and I consider sprinting back to the tarps and waking Russell. Could Dusty be tricking me? My mind wanders to the bank where we landed the canoe and put up our tent. Our supply bag is still down there. I feel the sudden pressure of time, like there’s a small window of it that I have now to get free and escape, and if I don’t act now by running back, everything will be lost. We have to get back to the canoe and push out, start south again, a voice whispers in my head. But I pause and ignore my apprehension at the sight of the summit. I’ve almost caught up to Dusty where he’s standing still, looking forward and then back to me eagerly, like he’s now able to see something important. I forget my plan to escape and race up the last few feet to get next to him and Voley.

The brown flat canvas of water stretches out to infinity in front of me, and I can see everything. The wide expanse of water, the rising ridges of the Utah mountains that surround our island, and there, directly down the hill before us, an opening bay. In it, there is a light colored square extension from the bank. It’s an enormous barge with several small boats tied up together. The barge looks like it’s been put together from random pieces of aluminum and wood, with two high poles stretching into the night sky on either end of it. From the poles are limp coils of canvas, which I guess are makeshift sails. It looks far from sea worthy, but it excites Dusty beyond words.

“That’s what you’re going to take to the Sierra Nevada mountains?” I say. It’s hard to believe. It looks like it’ll go under with the smallest crashing swells. I want to tell him about the Sea Queen Marie, and how well built she was, and how that didn’t matter when a hurricane hit. Its nose broke into the water and it flooded and sank. This thing wouldn’t survive even a small gale. But I don’t say anything, because I’ve already decided I would never set foot on the thing. But he asks me if I think it’s beautiful. And to look at how big it is. I tell him it is big, but I don’t say anything else.

“We’re going to load her up over the next couple days,” Dusty tells me. His dad’s been funneling him all the information, he says. The final plan has been made, and everyone will pile on that giant raft, and the small boats, and head west. I almost plead with him, What do you think is out there? In the west that close to the Pacific?

He looks at me and thinks about his answer but never gives it. He just tells me he’s asked his dad if I can come. His dad said yes. He doesn’t even mention Russell. I ask him why he’d want me to come. He says I’ve proved my worth. I shoot well enough. I know he’s lying. His face is dark under the night sky and the lip of his hood. Rain rolls down his plastic and hits a tiny stream that snakes down toward the bay. The alarm that he hasn’t mentioned Russell creeps into my mind. I tell him I could never leave Russell, and he tells me Russell is coming too. You don’t know Russell, I say.

We stand for a moment in silence. He’s clearly in awe at the sight of the barge, like it’s been a long process for him, for them, the tarpers here, and it is the culmination of some long effort. It’s some sort of twisted salvation for them, despite that it looks to me like suicide. I can’t get past how sloppy the thing looks, and I think of the much bigger carrier, and how sturdy that looked in comparison. I have to wait until Russell is better to decide, I tell him. But it’s a lie. I don’t want to go. I’ll stay back with Russell on this island. We can hole up, defend against the hordes of face eaters. Keep close to the fire. Found our own Leadville. But I don’t say any of this. I can help you convince him, Dusty tells me. And he comes closer to me. I look at Marvolo so I don’t have to see his beautiful face. Voley runs down the hill some, splashing up muddy water. Hey, says Dusty. I feel his eyes watching me. I want to ask him a million questions, tell him my fears about our situation, even Russell’s fears that this place isn’t what it appears to be—Dusty, his dad, all the tarpers. I want to tell him places like this don’t exist anymore. And it’s all a con, too good to be true, and somewhere along the way, we’re going to be used up for something evil, some broken version of the veneer. But I don’t tell him any of my thoughts or ask him any more questions. I can’t because he wraps me in his arms. At first it’s strange, because the rain is running off his suit and hood and some of it is splashing in my face. I feel like I’m betraying Russell for some strange reason, just by being here alone and talking about all this. But Dusty reaches under my chin and points my head up so I have to look at him now.

“When I first saw you…” Dusty starts. I look at him, taking in all of him, and I feel my attraction for him flare. I wonder about what love really is. Or if it is the same thing as emotions. And what I feel burning in my body all of a sudden, and how does one really know if they love a person. “I’ve never seen anyone like you,” he finishes. I don’t even know what he means, but there’s something about how he says it that makes me want to tell him that’s how I’ve felt about him. That I can’t understand why but my body is telling me it wants him to stay this close.

“Don’t you think it’s all pointless?” I ask him, the gnawing idea that the veneer is dead erupting in the back of my mind. That whatever this feeling is, it’s useless and pointless because it doesn’t help keep us alive, keep us moving, keep us heading to a place where it isn’t raining. But Dusty doesn’t know what I’m referring to, I can see by the confusion that lights up in his eyes. I tell him I mean love. I admit the word. And it falls out of my mouth like a forbidden artifact from Philadelphia and Pittsburg, something that’s been long ago laid to rest and been made a forever taboo.

“I don’t know what love feels like,” he says. He says he’s seen it in other people, and he’s seen it in his father and Linda. But it’s never been in his life before. And I can’t tell if he means the emotions in his body or the feeling I feel. They start to blur together in my mind too, like a mirror of his words. I tell him I don’t know what it feels like either. I’ve thought I might have it someday, if we ever got to Leadville. Where we’re going is as good as Leadville, he says. He just watches me, for a long time, and the rain keeps hitting us. He pulls my body so close that it’s pressing into his, my stomach against his. Do you feel this? he asks me. I want to tell him I think he’s beautiful, but I remember Russell, and the thought works to stop my words. I can’t say anything, I feel like he’s captured me against my will. But I know I feel it too. So I nod. Come on, he says. And he races back, away from the bay with the barge and the boats. Marvolo flies to us again at the sound of Dusty sprinting. I run after him, desperate for the feeling to come back, mad that I didn’t speak up more than I did so it didn’t go away. I think that maybe it would be worth it to take the risk, despite that it’s useless, and that it’s unimportant, and that it won’t help us get to Leadville. And I can’t stop chasing after him because I still feel whatever it was that lit me up inside. It’s on him and it’s pulling me after him. I go as fast as I can, afraid I might lose them both and get lost in the mountains with the face eaters. But before I know it the blue tarps are in sight again, and we’re back inside Dusty’s house.

I step in and he’s looking all around, like he’s checking for something. Then I realize what he’s doing—he’s checking to see if anyone else is there. But no one’s home. He pulls off his plastic suit and I do the same thing, because I’m caught up in some strange dream and I’ve stopped caring about the trip over the ocean, and the face eaters, and the exposure that threatens us whichever path we choose, barge or not, canoe or not, and I wait for Dusty to say something. But he doesn’t say anything, he just takes my arm again, and his hand slips down to mine, and he pulls me along the hallway. He pulls me right in front of the shower. I look at him, and all the thousand cries inside my spirit are stifled because I feel still the same as I felt on the mountain. It’s like I’ve felt a hundred times before except Russell was always there to deny me, tell me it’s wrong, and useless, and something that we shouldn’t think about anymore. But I can’t help it. Dusty asks me if I feel the same still, and I just nod, because I can’t make words. It’s like a spell has taken control of me, and he takes off his shirt, and the sight of his chest and stomach melts me. He reaches in past the tarp door of the shower and turns the knob. I hear the hiss of water, and soon feel the steam coming from beneath the flap at my feet. He grabs my sweater and slides it up, then throws it on the floor. A singular feeling wells up in me, and I know that I can’t change the course of this now, so I stop thinking about Russell, and everything we have ahead of us. I collapse into this moment, and I look back now confidently into Dusty’s eyes, ready to go forward. His eyes are dark, but a tiny star of light hangs in them, and he breathes on me close, and then he just closes them and pushes his mouth in toward me. I feel soft warmth press against my lips, and then a stronger warmth, and his arms pull me into him. He sends his hands out wandering over my body, each touch sending electricity and heat through me, and I can’t help it—I move over him too. I move around the curves of his body, his chest, his stomach, his arms, and his butt. He pulls me into the shower, and it’s like the rain is now coming from a fire, and I feel his tongue and lips on my neck. I look at him standing naked in front of me, and it’s like I understand some hidden piece of who I am. I can’t stop to correct myself, and to clean up my irrational thinking, because the singular force driving me has limited all cognition, and I feel like I’m an animal, just mindless, with only my body. All of my questions are gone. All of my fears.

The warmth rolls down our bodies into the floor, and I feel like an eternity passes. We kiss. He leaves the shower abruptly and I stand in the hot water and feel hungry for him, watching him go with the hope that this isn’t all a dream. He comes back in and turns the knob off and hands me a towel. We dry off. My doubts have been cleaned away, and I feel like he could never be like the people in Rochester. But he won’t let me start to think again, because he starts pulling me into the hallway, and down to a room with a bed. The air is cold until he pulls me close again, his skin warming mine, and together we fall onto a blanket. Do you still? he asks, almost pausing. I look at him and tell him yes, but that I don’t know what it is, but that I feel it. He seems satisfied and presses into me, kissing me hard. The sweet flavor of his mouth fills me and I feel like I might lose consciousness. His hands find every part of me, and I am sure now that I have been my whole life starved of a part of love I have only dreamed about. The rain hits the roof above our heads, and again and again we find each other, in our eyes, mouths, and bodies, and I want nothing ever to happen again but this. But it stops before I find out what happens next because Marvolo barks. It isn’t one of his friendly barks. Dusty jumps up from the bed and pulls on a pair of pants. He runs out into the hall and yells at me to get dressed. In a moment, he throws my clothes down and stands in the hallway with his rifle, watching toward the outside door flap. What is it, I ask? But he doesn’t even answer me. Instead he raises his rifle, pointing down into the hallway where I can’t see.

The blast of his rifle jolts me coldly back to reality. There’s no time for depression to set in, I just pull on my clothes and panic because I don’t know where my knife is. I don’t have any weapon. Dusty reloads in the hallway and Marvolo barks again. Shit, says Dusty.

I run out into the hall behind him and look ahead. There’s a dead man on the floor, but he’s not dead—he’s crawling toward us. And then someone runs into the room from the rain outside. The man is haggard and soaking wet. But he’s alive with evil, unarmed, and charging to kill us both. Dusty raises his rifle and I plug my ears. The shot fires and I watch the face eater fly back, a line of blood flying up from his chest. Then Dusty turns his rifle down on the floor and fires at the crawling body. It finally stops moving. Your pistol’s on the rack. You think you can still shoot it with your arm? he asks. I don’t have time to answer because I hear Dusty’s dad shouting from behind us. He’s coming up from the infirmary. Dusty! he yells. But Dusty’s concentrating on the tarp door. He’s moved out into the center of the room so I can get past him to the gun rack. He’s pointing out into the night shaded expanse of barren mountain. I jump over the two bodies and grab the same pistol I used before. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it feels like my arm is throbbing with pain again. It’s all in your head, I tell myself. And I raise the pistol next to Dusty, ready to fire if anything appears out there in the darkness. Finally Dusty says, without turning to look, Yea Dad?

“They’re hitting from both sides,” his dad replies, rushing into the room with his own rifle in his hands. “They were testing us before. This one’s going to be big—really big.” Dusty’s dad just looks at Dusty, nods, looks at me and does the same, and then he runs back the way he came. No! hollers Dusty. What is it? I ask. Marvolo! shouts Dusty and I understand. But Dusty’s already run out into the rain without his plastic suit, chasing Marvolo, but Voley is nowhere in sight. I run out after them.

Part 4

Chapter 10

I chase out after Dusty, who’s chasing after Marvolo. The rain is hitting harder. The darkness makes it hard to see anything on the slopes. Marvolo isn’t coming back at Dusty’s command. And there are at least two more face eaters out there—I can see their shapes rising over the ridge that we came down on the way back from the barge. Their black bodies are running at us, just enough darker than the clouds to be seen. Then they dip into a valley and I can’t see them anymore. Shit, I shout as I slip on a bank of mud. My butt slides down about six feet, and I dig my left hand, pistol and all, into the mud to slow myself down. I’m not wearing my plastic suit either. Exposure and my stitches ripping open cross my mind. It’s cold and I’m soaked and my arm is hurting again. I stumble to my feet and lift the gun up to see if mud’s jammed in the barrel—it looks clear but I can’t really tell in the dark. I wipe it off on my sweatpants. Then I look toward the face eaters—they’re still charging, about fifty feet away now. I shout out for Dusty. He doesn’t reply. He’s gone.

Dusty! I try again. Then I take my eyes off the face eaters long enough to spin around and look over the brown mud hills at the glowing blue tarp. He’s nowhere in sight. Neither is Marvolo. I start to panic. Chasing Voley and he left me alone with the monsters. I look back at them and point my pistol. It’s useless, I’ll never hit when it’s this dark. I know it. But I try anyway. I line up the gun in my sight and aim for the one on the left. I pull the trigger until the noise and flash erupt. The blast throws my hand up and I almost drop the pistol. The maniac doesn’t slow down one bit. But it’s much worse than missing—I realize as they turn they hadn’t even seen me before, they were going for the tent flap. I blew my cover. They’ve turned course, and both of them are converging in a line straight for me.

I debate whether to race them back into Dusty’s tent and run down the hallway, or head to my left over the bank and try to find Dusty on the hills. One more slip and I’m dead. My body freezes like it won’t do either, and it wants me to stay still so that I die tonight—so that they eat me alive. For a moment, the idea of them biting my skin paints onto my brain before I can stop it—it’s too visual and painful and real—I see parts of me in their stomachs, digesting, before I’m even dead—tearing into me by strips—or something worse. The horrible nightmare pushes my legs down and toward the tent, but a nearby rifle blast stops me before I get inside.

Dusty! I call again. It has to be him. Even though he still doesn’t respond to my cry, I run toward the gunfire instead of back inside. Maybe it’s better to stay outside since I know that there are probably face eaters inside the tarp too, rushing through the halls like they did last time, coming from every side like Dusty’s dad warned us they would. The thought that I’ve got to get to Russell flashes into my head—just make it to him, and I’ll be safe. I jog carefully with my gun arm cocked at my waist, ready to shoot at the first thing I see over the ridge. My feet climb quickly over the sliding terrain and I mount the bank. On my left is the fire-lighted blue city of tarp. Ahead and to my right is the murky abyss of mud desert. No one is out there. I hear the panting gasps of the frenzied cannibals charging at my back. They must be so close now but I can’t bring myself to look back. Just keep moving. Can’t waste a second.

I crest the hill and look in the direction where I think the gunshot came from, expecting to see Dusty and Marvolo. Instead it’s a face eater. He’s stumbling toward a door flap along the tarp tunnel, a rifle in his arms. He’s beaten up by the rain and the cold. Worn to shreds. He can barely move. But he’s still pressing on like the rest of them. A dead energy that never stops. Maybe the drug.

I pick up the pace and run at his back while he doesn’t know I’m there. I only slow for half a second to pull the trigger when I’m a few feet away, too close to miss. He never even knows what hit him. He doesn’t even groan as the bullet strikes. He just flops over on his stomach, his body burying a little into the mud. I want to check behind me so bad but I can’t because they’re too close—they’re feet beat the ground, rhythm for the rain, and I wonder why they haven’t fired their guns. They must not have any, a wild stroke of luck. But they’ll have knives.

The tarp flap blows out into the night, revealing a slit of yellow fire-light inside. I race toward it like it can save me. Just to be inside again. I call out for Dusty, and then for Russell. No one answers. I keep expecting another gunshot from somewhere to steer me toward people, but nothing sounds. I reach the tent flap and bolt inside without hesitation. I hear the flap swish again a moment later as the face eaters run through it after me.

Two loud bangs glaze my vision to white and my hearing to a high siren. I think I’m dead, that I’ve been shot. But I’m not hit. The shots hit the face eaters that followed me inside, I see as I turn around half-blinded. There’s my savior—it’s the woman, Dusty’s dad’s girlfriend. Go! That way! she yells. And she’s pointing with her rifle toward the farthest hall that leads to one of the supply rooms. I want to go the other way, back to the split so I can get to the infirmary and find Russell. But with how she yells at me to move, it doesn’t sound like an option. She steps to the two face eaters on the floor and fires another bullet into one of them that’s still wiggling. Then she kicks the other one sharply. Now! she yells angrily after she’s done, noticing I’m still there. Where’s Russell? I say, backing up toward the hall as I ask. But she’s done talking to me, she’s fixed back on the outside, the great brown. She has more face eaters in her sights. The rifle blasts again, and then again. She kneels to reload and I turn and run, a mad dash down the hallway. I don’t know where I’m going or who I’m going to find. I notice the throb in my arm now that face eaters aren’t bearing down on my back. I clench the pistol tightly in my left hand. The room opens up before me at the end of the hallway.

“Tanner!” comes Russell’s voice. It’s a miracle. He’s somewhere to my left, but I can’t see him at first because there’s a stack of crates. I turn toward him and sprint, crashing into the boxes in my excitement. I turn over on the ground and try to hoist myself up, but I can’t. Russell wasn’t calling me over to him, he was warning me that something else was in the room. I look right up into the face of death. Its mouth opens, dry, ready to push down into me. The eyes are wide, the same look I’ve seen a hundred times, wet glass desperation. He drops down on top of me, his knees hitting my leg, pinning me. I holler with pain. And then his arms go to mine, pressing me against the ground. His left arm pushes against mine right at my stitches. Searing pain lights my body, traveling away from the arm and into my back and legs. Then the blur of a boot sweeps across my vision—it’s Russell’s. He kicks all his weight into its gut. Gun! he yells, and he just takes it from me. He points and fires. Again my ears ring. Through the hissing I hear the labored breaths of the face eater finally stop, and Russell’s hand drops and grabs me and lifts me up. Come on, we have to hide. Up. He tugs me with the strength of his old self, like he’s completely recovered. We go through another hallway that opens into a room. I look around at the new destruction. There are more bodies but it’s all a blur and he’s pulling me so fast that I can’t tell if they’re all face eater corpses or if some of them are tarpers. Dusty! I say, jerking back for a moment, wanting to get a look at the room and see if he’s dead. But Russell won’t allow it. He’s got the strength again, the life force is back, and he’s dragging me on whether I want to or not.

“Did you see him?” I ask. No. Stay with me, he says, and then he starts to run. I follow at his heels. He lets go of my arm. We run into a wide room with four aisles of metal shelves that rise up to a pointed ceiling. In the corner, he says, and he darts to the aisle at the end, the last row, secluded more than the others. It only has one way in and out. We go to the dead end and push through a couple piles of supply crates. Russell starts to stack them up in front of us as high as possible. What are we going to do? I ask. But I get the sense he’s building a wall. And he doesn’t say anything, so I try to help him by making it wider.

We stack crates and boxes until we’re out of sight except for a tiny slit to see through. A face eater would have to come down the dead end aisle and knock into our crates to know we’re in here. No noise, says Russell. He watches through the slit between the crates, waiting for something to pass through the hallway. A scuffle starts somewhere far away. We hear feet stamping, more shouting and gunfire, but I can’t see a thing. Just the back of Russell’s shirt. Then the footsteps start moving our way.

They’re so close that I think they might be in the room with us now. But they’re not, they’re just outside the room. Russell nudges me to be on guard. But I don’t have any weapon, he’s got my gun. All I can use are my fists and my feet now. I start to look around at the crates surrounding us. They’re all sealed. I want to pry one open to find something sharp and made of metal but I know I can’t make any noise or else the thing will come at us. The footsteps move into the room. It’s a face eater. Russell sees it through the slit and signals. Then my worst nightmare happens.

It starts as a tickle, then it becomes an itch. I shove my finger across my nose to bar any air from entering so I won’t sneeze. I stop it, no noise. But the footsteps stop anyway, like the thing heard me press my finger to my face. I look to Russell, waiting for some sign of what’s happening out there. He doesn’t move and I can’t see anything. He turns his head as the footsteps start up again. It’s walking out, leaving the room. I want to sigh in relief but Russell looks concerned. He’s locked his eyes on the aisle next to ours as if something is about to spring at us. I follow his eyes and see what it is. I want to ask, but I know better than to make a sound. I think I see what he’s staring at. Under a pile of boxes on the floor of the next aisle there is a metal plate. It looks like the tarp flooring has been cut away around it, like it’s a door leading underground. We can only see the edges because of the boxes on it. Russell turns his head back to the slit to look out, listens to make sure there are no more footsteps, then whispers to me.

“That might be a cellar,” he says. “Can you fit through?” He wants me to climb through the shelf to get behind the boxes at the back of the next aisle. I whisper that I’ll try to squeeze through, but that I don’t have any weapon. I’m scared as shit that as soon as I get through there’ll be a face eater waiting for me. It will hear me knock over a box. And then I’m cornered, alone. Russell can’t follow me.

“I got you covered,” Russell reassures me. And he’s right—the shelving has enough open space that he can shoot anything before it gets to me. I tell myself that as I start to wriggle my way through the middle shelf. I stick my elbows onto the cold steel, then use my good arm to hoist my body in. My head pops through, and then it falls down to the ground. Russell guides my legs through and I’m in. I twist awkwardly on the ground and upset some of the crates, but none of them fall. Even still, it sounds like thunder to me and I look back to Russell, hoping his face doesn’t confirm what I fear. His eyes dart back and forth, from me to the hallway, and he nods because I’m okay—no one heard anything. I kneel down and start to push everything off the metal flooring but the boxes are too heavy. I tell Russell I might not be able to move them. Shove hard, he says, ignoring my desire to give up and squirm back to his side. I know I’m risking knocking the whole pile over, but I trust Russell. I dig my feet in and press my shoulder against the bottom crate, guiding the ones above with my outstretched left arm. Slowly, the stack moves. Then it stops again. It’s stuck on an edge—the metal on the floor has a raised lip, like a rim, and the boxes are stuck on its outside edge. I slip for a moment as the momentum slams to a halt, and my elbow falls down to break my fall. It touches the corner of the metal floor with a thump, and I pull back at a strange sensation. I touch my elbow where it hit the metal and look at Russell like he can read my mind. He looks back, confused, waiting for me to tell him what it is. Only I’m not sure what it is. Just that the metal was freezing cold, so much so that frost melted on my elbow, leaving it wet. Cold, I mouth to him. His lip drops for a moment, then his eyes open wide, like he’s figured something out. He doesn’t say what. Stay where you are, he tells me, then he starts to recklessly push boxes out of his way so he can escape the aisle and come around to me. Don’t, I whisper, but he’s already made up his mind.

I watch him get past the boxes without spilling one, barely making any sound at all, and he runs around the end of the aisle and down mine. He gets to the crates I’m squatting behind and together we move them off the metal flooring. It’s a door to something. There’s a latch that can be pulled up, and it doesn’t even look like it has a lock. But Russell sees what I felt, a thin layer of frost on the metal. And now I know what he’s thinking. It’s exactly what he reminded me about earlier. In my imagination I still see it—the frost on the glass window. Aboard the carrier. The lines of red tubes, the steady pump motor, the screams. It can’t be that, I say finally. Both of us have become distracted from the scuffle in the tarp behind us, even though it’s come back louder, closer. Gunshots blast and they seem like they might be coming from the very next room. But Russell is oblivious for the moment, and he doesn’t settle for my dismissal—he kneels down quickly and grips the latch and pulls up. At first nothing happens, like it’s sealed shut, but then with a groan it opens. A cloud of frost curls up from the exposed cellar, the frigid air below released toward our faces.

At first I can’t make out any shapes past the door—it all looks dark. There are no stairs leading down, just darkness and what I focus to see as reddish squares. They have a white plastic sheen. Russell drops the door before I can see better. Hey, I say, angered that he didn’t let me look. But he ignores me like he’s figured it all out in that three second glance. Quiet, he says, looking back out to the fray in the other room. What was in there? I whisper. But he gives me an angry stare, and I shut up and think the worst.

I can’t imagine that Dusty and his family would eat people. What had those plastic squares been? Dark and cold, buried in there—hidden. Russell says it as I’m thinking it—bodies, he says. Bodies in there. Can’t be, you didn’t even look, I say. I did, chopped. They’re chopped and wrapped. Frozen in blocks. But his sudden willingness to tell me what he thinks he’s seen stops when two bodies storm into our room. I peer out from between Russell and the boxes. I see Dusty’s dad and a face eater. They’re grappling right at the opposite end of the room. Get down! Russell yells, and he slaps away the top box, revealing us, but gaining a clear shot at the face eater. Dusty’s dad turns to see us for a split second, his own arms stiff and out, keeping the face eater away. Down! Russell shouts again. Dusty’s dad sinks to the ground, the face eater falling right on top of him. This one has no hair on its head, like it’s old, or it’s all fallen out for some other reason. It’s scalp is red and scraped. The thought of an old face eater crosses my mind just for a second, the idea that someone could live that way for that long, but I can’t grasp it because the pistol goes off right in front of me, deadening everything else. Russell fires three times. The last shot sends it rolling off Dusty’s dad and into the tarp wall. Dusty’s dad scurries away down our aisle. Russell sidesteps around him and fires again at the downed man.

Where’s Dusty? I ask as soon as I realize we’re safe again. I don’t know, he says. I saw him, he starts, but he can’t finish because Russell turns around and the gun is pointing at both of us. Down Tanner, says Russell. He’s got the gun trained on Dusty’s dad’s head. I duck and scream no. And I know the look on his face. He’s ready to kill.

“What’s down there?” Russell asks. What? replies Dusty’s dad. Under there, Russell clarifies, and he points with one hand. As he does this, I slide through the shelving again to the last aisle and run to the front of the room. Watch the hallway, Russell tells me. I look for a moment and see nothing there, and I hear nothing, and I come back to hear what Dusty’s dad says about the metal door.

“There’s no other way to survive,” Dusty’s dad says, catching on to the reason for Russell’s anger. Not out here in the West, he continues, hoping that’s logical enough for Russell to put the gun down. Russell’s face contorts, like he’s thinking up a reply, some kind of reason why it really isn’t necessary to eat people, like he’s always believed. But he doesn’t say a word. He just walks up to Dusty’s dad and whips the pistol across his face. A cry of pain fills the air and he goes down on all fours. Russell lifts his head up and says, Keys! Dusty’s dad doesn’t seem to understand because he’s dazed from the hit. Blood is running to the floor from his lip. Russell, don’t kill him! I shout, fearing his impatience. Then I hear someone coming toward us. I take a few steps to look who it is. I hear Russell again from behind me say, Boat keys! and finally the clinking of a set of keys. Then I recognize who it is that’s approaching. It’s the woman—Dusty’s dad’s girlfriend. She looks relieved to see me. Are you okay? she asks. Then she tells me there are more coming and we have to keep moving to get to the north tent. Where’s Dusty? I ask. She doesn’t know. But she hears her boyfriend shouting in the other room.

“Kelly!” Russell’s dad yells. Daniel, she calls back. She runs into the room and I chase after. Together we see Russell at the edge of the aisle holding Daniel with a gun to his head. What are you doing? Kelly yells, terrified. She doesn’t understand. Only I do. And I can’t stop it. Drop it, says Russell. I can’t see what he means, but he points the pistol away from Daniel and toward Kelly’s chest for just an instant. I get out of the way, dodging back into the hallway. Then I hear a gun blast and a body hit the floor. Russell! I scream. I run back in and almost trip over Kelly and the blood pooling out from under her body. She’s still alive, groaning, but she’s losing a lot of blood. And by her outstretched left hand is a pistol. Pick up the gun, Russell tells me. Then he starts walking with Daniel still wrapped in his arm, like a human shield, his own pistol pushed against Daniel’s head. As Russell is about to step around Kelly’s body, Daniel loses it. He spins free in a fit of rage. He turns on Russell and barrels into him, throwing him headlong into the edge of one of the shelves. Stop it! I yell. Words are useless now. I charge in and kick Daniel in his ribs, putting everything into it, but it does nothing to stop him. It’s like he’s gone mad because Russell’s killed his Kelly, and he’s immune to pain. All he wants is to kill Russell in revenge.

I drop to my knees so I won’t shoot into Russell, and I fire my gun point blank into the side of Daniel’s chest. He rolls off Russell. Get up, get up! I tell Russell. He rubs his head for a moment, no longer feeling the urgency he had just a moment ago. Then he snaps back, grabs his gun again, and stands up. Time to go, he says. We’re taking a boat? I ask. Yea, he tells me, leading me over the bodies and into the hallway. We pause to listen for noises. I can’t even look back, and I can’t think about Dusty anymore. The only thought that keeps coming through my head is did he know about the door? But I can’t bear to think through the possibility.

Russell leads us into another supply room. Keep an eye on that hallway, he directs me. Then he grabs a canvas sack off one of the shelf posts and starts throwing in everything he can get his hands on. Water, cans, unlabeled bottles, small boxes. He doesn’t even know what’s inside most of them. He’s trying to give us a chance on the open sea. Hundreds of miles under the rain. And then our time runs out, because a bunch of footsteps erupt all at once in the next room down. I step to the edge of the hallway and see that the footsteps aren’t more face eaters—they’re a group of tarpers. Most of them have rifles, and there’s Dusty in the pack. I tell Russell and then I slip back before he sees me, but it’s no use. He spotted me the moment I stepped into the open. The group goes left to the bodies and starts to talk loudly. But Dusty’s seen me, that I’m still alive, and he doesn’t turn with them. I know what the talk is, and that the rest of the group has seen the bodies. They’ll think it was the face eaters, says Russell behind me, as if he’s psychic and understands the garbled discussion coming from the other room. We’re okay. But he doesn’t know that Dusty saw me. And he’s coming up the hallway with a smile lighting up his face. Then as the last of the pack has turned to find Daniel and Kelly’s bodies, another form comes charging, even faster than Dusty, toward me. It’s Marvolo.

But before they can reach our room, Russell, as if sensing the presences coming, figuring things out, tugs on my arm. He hands me one of the canvas bags—he’s filled two—and tells me to carry it and run after him. I pause for a moment, because I know Marvolo and Dusty want to see me so badly. Dusty’s smile makes me think that the face eater attack is over. But Kelly said more were coming, so he must just be happy to see me—that I’m still alive. Russell shouts at me for lagging, Tanner! He slows to jerk me so hard I almost trip. I start to sprint after him and I don’t look back again. I can’t. It hurts too much to know what I’m leaving behind.

We break through the blur of blue tarps and out into the rain again. The brown mud surrounds us and I realize in just a moment that something’s still following us. It’s Marvolo. He saw us run and chased after. Now he thinks it’s a game as we move out into the rain and over the hills. Hey! someone calls from behind. It’s Dusty. Where are you going? he shouts. He’s still unaware, he hasn’t figured it out yet. I can’t do anything but turn my head halfway, just enough to see Voley. I yell at him, Go home boy! But he won’t. He keeps chasing after me like he has to protect me. The docks are this way, Russell says. And I figure it out because he already knows the way—he’s been cooking this escape up ever since he had the strength to sit up. He’s seen the same barge I have, and all the motorboats surrounding it. And now, he has keys from Daniel.

I fight off the question of whether or not Dusty will continue chasing after us. Soon, I catch up to Russell because it’s slow going over the wet hills and the dark makes it so that he’s not absolutely sure we’re going the right way. Then I recognize the giant hill I climbed earlier with Dusty. I know the way, I say. And I lead him on. Russell turns back and shoots at Marvolo. He misses on purpose, shooting to scare him so he’ll stay back and stop following us. Russell’s afraid Marvolo will give us away. And he will. He will lure Dusty. And I don’t want to know the truth about the bodies in the cellar, and I don’t want him to know the truth about Russell killing his dad. I just want to get off this rock now. As much as Russell does. We keep rushing and I think I hear footsteps racing along with Voley now. There’s a bark. We almost slide as we turn down the slope that heads all the way to the bay. The water opens up before us, a black and silent forever. We aim for a spit of rocky shoreline, to the barge and the motorboats.

Russell charges again with full speed, reaching the edge of the water. This way, he yells. I follow him out onto a piece of wooden planking that floats on the water. I look back because I know the wide hill and spread of land is behind me now, and I’ll see the truth. And there it is. Marvolo and Dusty are at the top of the hill and speeding down after us. Russell throws his canvas sack into one of the motorboats and hops aboard. I follow him. Dusty has to realize now what we’re doing, that we’re stealing a boat. I can’t take my eyes off them as they trace our path down to the bay. Russell starts trying every single key in his clanking loop, working frantically for one that fits. Come on, come on. Damn it, he says for the third time as the key he tries won’t turn.

I hear Dusty shouting at us but I can’t make out what he’s saying. It’s just him and Voley dashing together down the hill. No one else came with them. And then something startles me. At the top of the hill two forms appear. They’re following. Shit, they’re on to us, I tell Russell. They’re coming. Make it work. I’m trying, he says. But he can’t get a key to start the boat. And there are three figures now rushing down the hill behind Marvolo and Dusty, who are nearly halfway. They’re all coming because they know we killed Daniel and Kelly. But then something strikes me about the way the tarpers are running. I figure out what it is—they’re not running with Dusty and Voley toward us, they’re running at them. And the way they’re running. The crazed, wild stride. Face eaters! I scream to Russell. He’s totally in his own world now though, going through the last five keys on the loop, waiting for one that will turn the boat’s engine. I can’t wait for him to understand what’s happening. I lift my pistol and point into the rain, then jump off the boat and onto the plank. It wobbles for a moment. As soon as it steadies I run toward the hill to intercept Dusty and Marvolo, screaming, Behind you!

Russell turns to see what I’ve done and he shouts at me, No! Get back! It’s at the same time that I hear the motor of the boat roar to life. He found the right key. I can turn around and leave, but that would be the end for Dusty and Marvolo. Behind you! I yell again. Dusty’s smile slides off his face as he realizes what I’m saying. He turns around to see the three forms closing in on him. Voley bounds toward me, then turns around and starts barking. Keep moving! I yell at Dusty. I fire my gun and miss. I fire again and they’re still coming, faster, enraged by my attempt to shoot them. Get in the fucking boat! Russell yells from behind me.

Hurry, into the boat! I tell Dusty as he reaches me. And he thinks it’s just to escape the face eaters, and he doesn’t seem to understand that we’re leaving for good. I wonder if he even knows about his dad and his mom yet. I shoot one more time, the last chance I’ll have, and I hit one of the freaks. He slides along the mud, then slowly rises again. He limps forward. Together, we turn and run back toward the boat. Russell is standing at the wheel, the engine purring now, and he’s pointing his gun out into the brown slope. For a moment, I think he’s going to shoot Dusty down before he can climb onto the boat with me. But he fires and Dusty’s still alive and next to me. He’s shooting the face eaters. Then, he fires again and I hear a wet thump. I know he’s hit one of them. We reach the planks and jump into the boat. It rolls heavy to one side, almost dipping into the water. Voley jumps in after us. Russell kicks on the gas and a rush of white foam shoots out from the stern and pushes us into the rain sea. More dark figures crest the hill in the distance. A chorus of rifles fire. The remaining face eaters drop by the edge of the planks. It’s really the tarpers now. But they’re too late to get to us. We’re on the water now, speeding past the barge monstrosity, leaving its ugly fake hope, and the beauty of Blue City. I feel then for sure that I’ll never see the place again, and probably never again the fire and the warmth and the dry. Somehow, I know this was the last of it. The illusion of the veneer that this place had going. I look shamefully at Dusty as he asks me, What the hell’s going on? It’s like he really hasn’t figured it out yet. He watches Russell steer us straight out to sea, not along the coast. I see it set in on his face. He gets it. We’re not just running from the face eaters. We’re gone for good.

Russell slows the boat down, confident he hasn’t heard the sound of another motor boat pursuing us. What do you know? he asks. Dusty looks confused and Marvolo looks afraid of the swells that rock the dead motorboat. What do you mean? replies Dusty. I mean, what do you know about what’s going on? You asked what’s going on? Well—what do you know about it? Dusty looks like he’s still confused, and then Russell and I realize by the delay that he doesn’t know about his mom and dad. He has no idea. But the fact that we’re stealing a motor boat and leaving the tarp city has come to him now, and he says that. He asks us why we’re doing this.

“Because we’re going to Leadville. That’s where we’ve always been going. And you don’t have to become a face eater to survive, do you understand me?” But Dusty doesn’t, and I can’t decide if he’s playing dumb because he doesn’t want us to shoot him, or if he really has no idea about the body meat stored under the metal door. For a moment it crosses my mind that Russell wasn’t sure either what was under there, but then I remember what Daniel said. He practically admitted it. Said it was necessary for survival. That angered Russell so much because we’re the evidence that it isn’t necessary, but he didn’t say that. There had been no point then. You can’t change their minds once they’ve started, Russell says. They’ve grown used to an easier form of survival. Something more basic, and somehow, more barren. Stripped.

Dusty still acts like he has no idea why there would be any reason to leave Blue City. He starts to persuade us to go back. He says that it’s insane to try to go back east, toward Colorado. He explains about the current, and he looks at me pleadingly, like he loves me, and he doesn’t want to see me go. Like I have the power to alter all this. Then Russell tells him his options.

“You can still make it back to shore. I’ll let you off here. Go back if you want. Otherwise, you’re stuck until next land.”

I look at Marvolo. He looks terrified. Whining. I wonder for a moment if Marvolo would be able to swim back that far. I look to the mountain that rises out of the sea behind us. I think about how cold it is in the water. The rain is freezing, but the sea is much colder. I look at Russell and think about how glad I am he’s recovered his strength, but how scared I am now that I’ve lent out some of my heart to these two. He’d warned me not to ever lend out my heart, not while the veneer’s stripped. If you do that, you’ll slip and fall. And you may never get up, he’d said. But I screwed it all up already because I feel that part of my heart is in them now. I care about what happens to them now. I have no choice about it anymore. But I can’t make the choice for them. I watch Dusty’s face. He’s working through the option. Then he finally says, I can’t leave my dad behind.

Off, Russell orders. Dusty looks at me and I think he’s crying. Or it’s the rain. He takes off his shirt and his pants and jumps into the rain sea. The water splashes back at me. I think about how he’s risking his life to see his dad but his dad’s dead. Then Marvolo, as scared as he is, wants to protect Dusty so much that he jumps right in after him. I watch them start to swim. Voley paddles right beside him, working through the freezing brown, back toward the distant barge. Russell doesn’t watch. He turns away and steps on the gas. The propeller blasts them with foam.

I watch them swim, unable to look away. It looks like they’re going to make it back just fine. Their movement is steady. But my heart is ripping in two. I feel like I should have listened to Russell, and never dared to latch on to a piece of the veneer when I knew there was none. And then I think I see Voley’s head going under the water, like he’s struggling to stay afloat. His paws can’t keep up. It’s too cold. And I’m sure it’s happening because Dusty turns to start swimming toward him. They get smaller. They’re wrapped up together now, one mess of struggle, splashing, only halfway back to the shore. Then they start to go under. They come back up. They’re drowning together.

Russell hears me start to cry. I make it extra loud. He asks me what’s wrong. I know it’s the wrong thing to do, but I cry harder. I put every ounce of my energy into my tears, make them as loud as I can. It’s some kind of instinct that has been suppressed forever. You can’t leave them, I sob. They’re going to die.

He doesn’t reply. And I know how much Russell loves me because I feel the boat start to turn. He’s figured it out, that I’ve become attached to them, broken his rule, lent out my heart, but he’s forgiven me already. He heads the boat in a straight line for the two struggling bodies, desperately rising for breath. He guns it. We can drop them off on a farther shore, I tell him, trying to make him feel okay with his decision, one that I know must toss his own gut. But he still won’t say anything. And I wonder if somehow he understands what I’m feeling. We pull up and stop fast, splashing them both with a wave. We reach our arms over the rail and haul them out of the water and back into the rain. Soaked and alive.

“You’re not going back, kid,” Russell tells Dusty. Then he just points the boat back out toward the dark, cloudy sky. Dusty can’t say anything because he’s fighting for air, and Marvolo recovers long before Dusty is able to talk again. I look at him, his dark eyes, bluish skin, and pull him close to me to warm him up, not even nervous that Russell will see. I tell him it’s okay. He’s safe now. His body feels like ice, so I open my shirt and bring him up against my own body. Voley is running around the boat in circles, rolling his fur into the floor and then shaking, trying to get the excess wet off, even though the rain just keeps putting it back on him. Fear eclipses my joy—none of us have our plastic suits. And the rain is coming down colder than it has in days. And we don’t really know if we’re going the right way.

But Russell’s alive again. And we’re still with each other. And the boat has a rubber tarp and oars for when the gas runs dry. And we have two canvas sacks of food. And two guns. And a boy and his dog.

Looking at Dusty, his breathing finally slowing down again, I can’t help but feel okay. A sweeping calm that doesn’t make sense given our surroundings. Like somehow, everything is going to work out in the end. As if Leadville does exist, and this is all meant to be. Russell would kill me if I say my thoughts out loud, so I don’t. I keep them all to myself. Maybe it’s the delirium from everything that happened on that island, but I don’t care. Voley gives me a bunch of kisses, like he was never scared that he was going to die, and I lie down next to Dusty for a moment. As soon as I do, Russell calls me. Get up here, he says. Something’s not right. I can tell from his voice.

He doesn’t have to explain. I look ahead the same as him at the horizon. It’s much darker than it should be, even at night. Normally the night sky is dull black, as if the bars of clouds can’t completely conceal the stars that I’m told are shining behind them. But the sky ahead of us is perfect black. It’s not even a bit gray. And what’s worse is the flash that I see the next moment. It lights up a thunderhead that looks as wide across as the sky itself. Russell says we’re going to turn to avoid it. But I’m hyperaware of the swells already. I feel the boat rock more than it should, not having noticed it until now. Looks like a strong gale, he says. I feel queasy, like I might throw up over the rail before I even feel any real waves. We’ll be okay, Russell says, knowing my fear of bad weather. But I don’t see how we’ll turn to avoid it. Another flash lights up the distant dome of blackness, and for a moment, the clouds are all blue and white, and they’ve funneled down to the dead sea below them. Only the sea isn’t dead out there, I know. It’s foaming, ripping in every direction. Swells as tall as houses—taller. I think about the Sea Queen again even though I know that’s a downward spiral pattern of thought.

The Cap’n had drowned with a giant crashing wave. Russell said those are the ones that spill over because of a confused sea. Rogues. I saw him go sliding down the ship. We’d rolled so hard to the side that I had hopped up on a bulkhead and I could stand upright on its side. We were helpless to do anything. One minute he was rattling off orders, and the next, his head slid into the rail and he went limp. And then it was like he was all soaped up, the way he slid up and over the edge, right into the white teeth of the wave. Russell held me so I didn’t go over too. She righted herself one last time and we made it off. It was that simple. A chance escape. Most lost their lives. And I’d sworn that I would never see a rough ocean again.

I try to take my mind off the storm by turning back to Dusty. Then back to the storm. Russell’s turning the boat and I feel us roll just a little bit as we make a new line through the water. The storm is shifting to our right at last as I look away and back to Dusty on the floor. He’s soaked, still in just his underwear, because he left the rest of his clothes on the boat so he’d have a better chance to swim ashore. His eyes are open and he’s looking up at me like I owe him an explanation. I know I can’t give him one. Voley comes over and gives Dusty a kiss, then another, right on his mouth, like he’s urging him to get up. Then a clap of distant thunder hits our ears. And it’s my face that needs an explanation now: How the hell are we going to get by this thing? I look away from Dusty and to the storm cloud again, only ten seconds after I told myself I wouldn’t look again. The immensity of it unnerves me but it’s magnetic. Russell turns his head to see how we’re doing. You better get your clothes on, he calls back to Dusty. There’s a pump. Start pumping.

I see the pump and I’m almost glad to be pumping again because I don’t need to use a bucket. The rain is pooling slowly in the center of the boat. Dusty stands up and starts to put his heavy clothes back on. I walk over to the pump, eyes off the horizon, and start to drive the water out of the boat. I feel Dusty’s presence hovering over my back.

What’s going on? he asks me loud enough that Russell hears it. Russell doesn’t reply. He knows I can handle it. He knows I’m not to tell the truth about his parents. We don’t know how he’ll react, if he’ll go crazy and try to take the boat from us. I remember he doesn’t have his rifle, and we both have pistols. He’s outgunned. It’s unlikely he could do anything. But I still won’t tell him. I don’t even say anything because I know that there’s nothing to say that won’t just lead to more questions. I just keep working the pump, and the water drops fast. The tarp is latched to a center pole coming out of the boat so most of the rain is sliding off into the sea. Much better than our canoe. We just might make Leadville in this thing. As long as I don’t look to my right.

“Hey,” Dusty says again, angry I’m not giving him anything. He repeats his question. I look at his chest instead of his face. I tell him what Russell would tell him: we’re heading to Colorado. And that we’re going where there’s a city above the waterline. So you stole our boat to do it? he yells. The anger’s rising now, and I glance over to Russell. His head is slightly cocked, like he’s paying attention even while he’s steering the boat. Just in case I need him. In case Dusty loses control. Voley comes into the center of the boat under the tarp where I’ve rid most of the water that was there. I look at Dusty’s dripping clothes, and I realize all of our clothes look that way. None of us have a plastic suit. That was the one thing we forgot in our getaway. Exposure. Wet skin. The centimeter of tarp over the boat, pointed up at the dead sky, is the only thing that protects us. Russell is exposed in the driver’s seat. But right now he doesn’t care, because the thunder claps are coming regularly. They’re not getting louder, and I thank Poseidon for that, but I think they’re coming at shorter intervals.

Dusty looks at Russell now, realizing I won’t help him. And you? he asks Russell. Can’t you tell me what the hell you did this for? He’s more upset now than angry. Hurt. It’s like Russell said. He did expect something in return for his kindness. Always something, Russell says. No one does something for nothing anymore. He expected our kindness in return. I see all the hope he had about leaving in that piece of shit barge burning up in flames. All the grand dreams he had about living somewhere better with his family. With his dad. All of it blowing up in his mind. The island behind us is just about out of sight. He’ll never see it again and he’s feeling it hard.

Russell turns to Dusty and says very calmly, Relax kid. There’s a storm coming and I’m trying to keep us from capsizing. Then he says no more. He’s at ease. Confident we won’t sink. I try to let that feeling spill into me. Borrow some of it. But then it’s gone. I can only feel the rise and fall, hear the thunder. And I’m caught somewhere between fear and anxiety. The boat rocks to its side a little as we hit a swell. It seems higher than the ones we’ve been hitting. Then another. Definitely higher. I look out and see the ocean moving like a collection of tiny hills that are pushing toward us. All of them taking aim. I’m happy there’s no white—no foam—nothing that’s breaking.

“Take me back,” Dusty demands helplessly. Neither of us pretend to pay attention to him. He says it again, stern this time, like he means there will be consequences if we don’t obey. What do you intend to do about it, boy? says Russell. He turns around this time and points his pistol at him. Dusty bites his lip and stares at Russell, through the beating rain, and the rising seas in front of the boat, and the endless gray before us. Then he concedes and sits down under the tarp. Voley comes over to him and they sit together. Russell turns back to the wheel. We move up and then twenty seconds later we go down again. Thunder claps. I sit under the tarp across from Dusty.

“We didn’t mean for you to come,” I say. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m weak. And it’s no comfort at all anyway, he doesn’t even acknowledge me. I wonder if the feeling we had is gone now, just an illusion, just like Russell had warned. Don’t go chasing the veneer where there isn’t any, he’s told me countless times. I’d done it though, it had been a force beyond my control, a spell that pulled me into Dusty’s body and wouldn’t let me go once I’d touched it. It had come before I’d touched him. When I’d first seen him there with his rifle on the hill, looking down at our tent. But now there was no feeling. Just the cold and a driving wind that cuts through the tarp strings and starts to scream, a gust that reminds me about what’s on our right.

Dusty lies down on the seat, puts his hands over his head. He doesn’t seem to care one way or the other about the storm. Like he isn’t one bit frightened of it. He looks like he’s just going to sleep. There with Voley right beside him. Every few minutes Voley whines with the rocking boat, or the clapping thunder, or the beating rain that flies sideways under our protection. The spray of metal salt. The endless canvas brown, now its own mountain, blasting us.

I’m jealous of him. His ability to block everything out—the terrible sea and the wind and the water. Russell does it too. But I know why Dusty can. He’s battling something else entirely. And then Russell comes from the steering wheel and asks me to relieve him. He says he needs to sit down out of the rain for a minute. I tell him that’s a good idea without a suit on. You’re just getting better, I say. I feel guilty I didn’t ask sooner. He nods and sits down. Then he tells me to keep her heading the way she is, and keep the storm on the right of us. I head out into the rain. I’ll have to look.

I open my mouth to the cold water and let it run into my throat. I’ve forgotten how hungry I am. The boat is cruising up and down the swells but they don’t seem to be getting any bigger, and the thunder isn’t getting any louder. I’m even staring at the sky monster now, and the storm is as big as ever, covering the whole sky, but it’s way out there on our right. A lot of miles between the center mass and our small tub. And we’re passing it. I truly believe we are. I look to the edge of the tarp and see the two sacks of canvas. I walk over and grab one and come back to the steering wheel. Russell and Dusty both look like they’re sleeping. Voley is not. His tongue is hanging out and he’s staring out at the rollers that are lifting our boat. He doesn’t seem so nervous anymore about the weather, just terribly interested in it. He’s curious.

I rummage through the bag for something I can shove right into my mouth. I find a plastic tube of crackers and open it. In about five minutes I eat them all. I hear something behind me, and I become alarmed, thinking maybe Dusty woke up and he’s going to try something. But he just appears out of nowhere right next to me, and sits down in the passenger’s seat.

“Did you plan it all along?” he asks me. I look at him. Then I look back at Russell. I really want to open up to him but I know I can’t. Russell looks like he’s passed out, his head against the rail. The swells seem to be dying off a little bit. The fear of dying in a rogue wave has started to recede, enough so that I take my eyes off the wheel and look at Dusty. His big dark eyes are staring right into me. I knew they would be. The only thing we had planned was going to Leadville. Nothing else. It was planned a long time before Blue City too, I tell him.

So you’ll steal whatever you need to get there? he fires back. We’ll do what we have to do. And we have our reasons why. Do you know what the veneer is? I ask him. He looks at me dumbly. I tell him it’s what he’s still trapped in, and he’d better realize it’s gone, and sooner than later. But that does nothing to clear up his confusion. He’s still trying to find reasons. But I won’t tell him we killed his parents because they’re cannibals, and I won’t confront him about what he’s eaten himself. I decide he was probably fed people all along and never knew it anyway. That’s what I tell myself anyway because he can stay innocent that way. And I can’t bring myself to ask. I’m not answering his questions honestly, so I don’t expect he’d answer mine that way.

We were going to go away on the barge, all of us together, he says. He says it to himself. Didn’t you feel like I felt? he asks. I don’t respond, but check that my pistol is still at my side. It is. And I think about what I felt, and how real it was for me. But I can’t tell him a word of it. Not when my attention is on the swells. I look at the gas gauge. The needle is still near full even though we’ve been on the water for a while. So do you have any idea where we’re going? he asks me. I tell him away from the storm. That’s all he’s getting from me. I feel too mixed up inside to tell him anything more than I already have. He’s asking dumb questions. He seems to get the point and he retreats back to the tarp. All I can think about is whether or not he’ll try something, try to kill us or throw us overboard and steal the boat back and go back home. I know I would if I was him.

Russell! I yell. It’s been long enough, and I feel like we’re past the worst edge of the storm. The thunder is barely audible any more. He slowly comes to life and relieves me again. You okay? I ask as he gets to the wheel. Yea, he grunts. Then I head back to cover under the tarp. He tells me we’ll rotate, and first chance we get, we’ll raise the sails. Conserve gas. I tell him okay, then I toss him the canvas bag so he can get something to eat. He starts to look through it when I get under the center of the boat again. I work the pump for ten minutes so the floor is drained again, and then I lie down sidelong on one of the seats. Dusty is across from me, his eyes closed. Voley is up on the seat with him, somehow bundled up in a ball small enough so that they both fit. I wonder if he’s thinking about me, dreaming about me. Or if he’s plotting to kill me. I close my eyes and slip into a dream, confident we’ll make it through the night.

It’s still the middle of the night when I wake up. The first thing I see is the empty seat across from me. Dusty’s gone, and so is Voley. Slowly I come to, rubbing my eyes. I get the weird feeling that Russell has let me sleep for too long. I look to the wheel and the first thing I notice is the tarp. Russell must have extended it somehow because less of it is covering the center, but the driver’s seat is partially covered by a sliver of it. And the sails are raised. I don’t even hear the motor. I realize just how quiet it is out here on the open brown sea. Just the old rain. And we aren’t rocking anymore. I sit upright and my feet go into the water in the center of the boat. Going to have to pump again. I look back to the front of the boat because something isn’t right—there’s Dusty standing up behind Russell. Then I realize what’s happening. Dusty’s got one of our guns. His arm is outstretched and pointed at the back of Russell’s head.

No! I shout instinctively, and then I lunge forward. Voley, hanging near the stern, sees me jolt and follows me to the front with excitement, sloshing water as he follows. Then it’s like Russell wakes up, as if he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, and he turns to see the gun in his face. Dusty doesn’t react, but he’s shaking. Like he can’t decide whether or not to pull the trigger. Don’t do it! I yell as I almost reach him, heading to dive into him and throw him to the ground. Over the rail. Anything to stop him. Take me home, Dusty says limply, still shaking. But he can’t ever fire the gun because Russell slams him one deep in his gut. Then Russell gets up and slaps the gun out of his hand. I stop before I reach them to watch. The space at the wheel is too cramped. The gun clanks loudly and skids across the rain on the floor of the boat. Russell bends to pick it up and then he shoves Dusty back. Dusty’s so off-balance from the first gut punch that he rocks backward and right over the rail into the water. Water splashes me. Voley bounds up on top of the passenger seat and puts his paws on the edge of the rail, whining and watching Dusty drift past us. He starts flailing. Ice daggers stabbing him in that freezing water.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know whether or not I should keep trying to save him now. He was about to shoot Russell. And it hurts because some part of me understands why, and thinks I’d be doing the same thing if the circumstances were reversed. But the words don’t come out of my mouth one way or the other. Part of me wants to watch him die. I go to Voley and tug him backwards so he doesn’t spill in too.

“Son of a bitch,” Russell says. Then he scares me, not because of how angered he is at Dusty’s attempt, but because he can barely get the words out before he coughs loudly. Then it’s like a chain reaction and he’s in another coughing fit. He can’t stop. Finally he calms down after I walk up to him. I see Dusty behind the boat now, and I hear him calling for help. He’s slipping out of sight and I know he’s freezing to death. Are you okay? I ask Russell. I hope that we accidentally threw more antibiotics in the canvas bags we stole. What are the chances though that Russell packed them? He’d never throw them in. But maybe he would, for me he would. How long does a course of antibiotics need to go for? I ask him. He tells me he’s fine and not to worry about it. Five days or something, isn’t it? I ask, knowing we were only in Blue City for a couple days. And there’s no way he completed all the medicine he was supposed to.

I start to think about him getting sick again, and even though our motor boat is a little bit more seaworthy, I don’t care for the thought of bailing alone, getting caught in high seas alone. Are you sure you’re okay? I urgently ask him. It’s not like him to fall asleep at the wheel—not when he’s okay again. It only makes sense if he’s still sick. He tells me he’s fine, and from his confident tone I decide whether or not to plea for Dusty’s life. But it’s not me who turns the boat around. I don’t even prompt it. Russell just sits down in the driver’s seat and does it all himself. Like he knows something and he’s not telling me. The boat glides in a wide arc, riding a few gentle humps, repelling the rain with her roof and sails, moving under soft wind, and Dusty’s calls for help suddenly grow louder again. He sees that we’re returning and he tries to swim toward us.

Part of me wants to ask him why, but I don’t because I’m scared it has to do with him lying about his health. Maybe he thinks I’ll need Dusty. The thought of losing Russell passes through me, like it did before when he was very sick, and I tremble. Then I think that maybe it’s some part of the veneer—to prevent unnecessary loss of life. Russell said once that humanity learned over time to harm less and less. It still did it, harmed all kinds of things. Groups of people, animals, the environment. But there was a momentum, an evolution. Empathy, he’d called it. And we were somewhere on the arc of that evolution, working all the time to increase our empathy. He had told me that the ancients used to watch humans get eaten alive and fight to death in arenas, all real and live and everything. After a long time, humanity learned it was less harmful to do the same thing through movies. Moving pictures. And people learned that the harm could be less harmful, but humanity wasn’t past needing it. Intimacy with violence.

Of course all of that was before the rain. And who’s to say if the evolution would ever start up again? The idea of not creating harm, being as least harmful as possible. In fact, that increasing empathy was a luxury of the veneer, he’d said. Without it, there’s nothing but survival of the fittest. The same as the hawks and the deer. But as I remember this all, he’s turning the boat around. And something about it makes me think Russell is clinging to more of the veneer than he lets on. Because we pull up to Dusty, and it’s Russell whose hands extend, haul him out of a watery grave. Dusty just lies on the floor of the boat, stunned that he’s alive, and that the man he planned to kill saved him.

I help Dusty get under the center of the boat. Marvolo comes over. I pump the water dry and let him recuperate for a minute. Russell is back at the wheel and I hear him coughing again. He hasn’t said a word since picking his assassin out of the water. The sky is changing a little bit, and I can’t help but feel like this long darkness might be lifted before long. Smear sunrise. The thought of another surprise land sighting crosses my mind. A place like the one we just left, except where they won’t resort to eating people to survive. Wishful thinking. Like believing in whales.

Are you okay? I finally ask Dusty. He says yea, he’s fine. Russell tells me he needs me to take over so he can get some sleep. He walks over, stepping right over Dusty’s stretched out body.

“You know how to work the primer stove?” asks Russell. I realize he’s talking to Dusty. Dusty is as startled as me to realize it. We’ve all forgotten how cold we are, completely numb and nearing frostbite. The thought that we have a stove floors me and Russell pulls out the equipment from one of the canvas bags. There’s a canister of fuel and more in the boat, he says. Dusty finally sits up and says yea, he can work it. And he gets to work. I walk up to keep the boat in line.

“Which way are we headed?” I yell back to Russell, wondering if he really knows without any landmarks. See the sunset? he calls back to me. Yea, I tell him. It’s starting to lighten a few bands of the gray. Keep it on our back. Just a little to your left, but mostly on our back. All the way to Colorado. A straight line. The Rockies, you hear me Tan? he says. It’s like some new spirit of life has come into Russell. He sounds happy about Leadville for the first time in a week. It’s the old familiar hope. The belief. A city above the waterline. And we’ve traded a broken canoe for a motor boat with sails. And a tarp. A stove. Food. And there’s three of us. Four I mean.

There’ll be a fire for you when your shift’s up, Russell tells me. I steer us in a line, and it feels like the wind is hitting just right. I wonder how far we are from Leadville, what our speed is. Somewhere there’s an invisible number counting down. The rain is glancing away from me, off the narrow band of tarp Russell’s draped above the driver’s seat. I glance back and see the glow of the primer stove. It’s right in the center of the boat. And a nylon blanket has found its way across from one rail of the boat to the other. The sides drape down and I realize they’ve build a fort. A fort of warmth. And I’m out here freezing. I want to end my shift right now. It’s not fair. But Russell needs the sleep. I wonder if we could trust Dusty enough to take a turn at the wheel. That would end my shift right now. I steer us on in a line, keeping the smear of the sun in the proper place at our backs, happy that the skies are as clear as they’ll ever be. No more signs of the storm.

After I’m ready to ask for relief myself, because my fingers are starting to freeze in place, Dusty emerges from the blanket. He walks up to me and tells me to go get warm. You know which direction to steer? I say. He nods and I get up. I head off to the makeshift tent, watching with great anticipation the line of smoke rising from its center, the sign of burning fuel, heat, and life.

Chapter 11

I pull the pull the flap of blanket aside to enter the little hut at the center of the boat. Immediately a rush of warmth hits me. With the roof overhead, the floor is almost empty of water. Marvolo is curled up right in front of the primer stove, his eyes closed, dead asleep. Exhausted or just cozy, I can’t tell. And Russell is lying near him, his own eyes closed. I look him over once and then find my spot on the opposite side. He’s not really asleep though, because he asks me a question as soon as I lie down. You think he’s going to turn us around? he asks. I listen to the beating rain hit the roof over our heads. I think about his question because it hadn’t occurred to me until now. I almost want to check that we have the guns safely away, because he could try to kill us both this time while we sleep. But something about how Russell asks me, his voice, makes it seem like it wasn’t a real question. Like it was almost a joke. And that Dusty would never think of it somehow, despite what he tried to do just a little bit ago. I don’t think so, I say. It must be the answer Russell wanted because he doesn’t say anything more. We lie in silence and my body melts with the warmth of the primer stove. I keep my hands right on it for about five minutes, moving my fingers back and forth. Then I give my feet a turn. Everything is coming back to life.

I turn onto my back and look up at the blanket above, the tiny hole where rain is dripping in and the primer stove smoke is escaping up. I see lines of rain running down the sides of the roof, little veins of light and dark, reminding me that it’s daytime again because I can see them. The boat rocks a little bit, up then down, and the swells are so gentle now that they’re rocking me to sleep instead of terrifying me. Something about having Dusty out there guiding us makes me feel safe. I don’t want to say anything about that to Russell, because I know he must at least feel the same way. He saved him, after all, when Dusty had tried to kill him. And he’d sent him out to steer instead of getting me. For a moment I wonder if it was out of pity he’d done all this, but I remember that he says pity is gone. It’s a relic. You can’t feel sorry for people or you’ll get yourself killed. Not anymore, not anymore can you pity the bad guys. That message has been pretty clear ever since leaving the Sea Queen Marie. Don’t have feelings for anyone. Feelings are liabilities. Worthless as they concern survival. Yet my mind wrestles against some of Russell’s truths, like it always has. I’ve always felt feelings for Russell. And they seem to drive me on, especially since he’s been weak. They’ve actually helped me act stronger. And so my mind plays with the idea of feelings being important to survival, and maybe I still do have feelings for Dusty too. Even after what he tried to do. And I know I have feelings for Marvolo, I can’t even pretend I don’t. But still, I understand Russell’s attitude about feelings—if we started getting too attached to people, even on the Sea Queen, we would have done more to help others when it couldn’t have been done. We’d have gotten ourselves killed twenty times over since Indianapolis doing that. And finally, as I drift off at last into needed sleep, I think that maybe it’s not so bad to be out and moving on the canvas brown again. It feels like we’re back on track on some level. Even though it was beautiful in Blue City, it was an illusion. A mirage of the veneer, not the actual thing. We’d seen the proof with our own eyes.

“Hey,” says a voice from some kind of heated womb. It comes again and again, trying to raise me from my peacefulness. Back into some harsh reality. I open my eyes and there’s Dusty. He’s sitting up under the blanket across from me. I’m awake again. We’re under the blanket together. The stove’s still going. It’s still light out above the roof. How long have I been sleeping? I ask. A couple hours. Russell took over again. Says he’ll come to get you in a few more. You can go back to sleep. I wonder why he woke me up then, just to tell me I can go back to sleep? But I can tell from his face he wants say more.

“What is it?” I ask, purposely trying to keep my voice empty of emotion. Voley is gone I realize. He must have crept out into the rain to take in the sea from the edge of the rail again. I almost want to poke my head out to see that Dusty isn’t lying, that Russell really is out there steering us still, that Voley is with us still.

Dusty takes a long time to say something, and when he does, it doesn’t mean much. Can’t get back, you know? he says. I almost sympathize with him. He just wants to see his dad again. He’s probably known that place for a long time. It’s his home. They moved from Salt Lake City, but he hasn’t moved nearly as much as Russell and me. At least I don’t think he has. He has a concept of home in the first place. I feel my sympathy slip away. I’ve never had that. Russell and I are each others’ moving homes. I remember he pointed the gun at Russell’s head and I can’t say anything.

He moves closer to the primer stove, but he gets closer to me too. I know it’s intentional, but he doesn’t act that way. I want to ask him what he’s doing. What he’s trying to pull now. Then he just pushes right into me. His legs are right against mine. A flash of electricity runs through my body, and I’m wide alert. And then alarmed. I think about Russell right outside. And whether or not he can make out our silhouettes. And if he’s checking at all. I almost draw back, intentionally move away from his touch, but I can’t. I can’t bring myself to. He finally starts to answer my question. He looks into my eyes and I have to look away because I’m afraid my anger at him will melt away instantly. I have to keep my feelings dead. Forget what happened between us on the hill, in the shower. It was all a slip, and it almost cost us our lives. I sit up, moving my legs off of his.

It’s—I know you’re not telling me something. You won’t tell me something, he says. He’s fishing for information that I can’t provide. Maybe if we reach land again, or maybe not until Leadville. But on the sea, I know it’s too unpredictable. If he knows the truth, he’ll get too upset. I almost follow through on a kneejerk reaction to ask him if he eats people. If that’s okay to him the way the tarpers do it—frozen in small pieces, so you can’t tell what it really is. Does the change in appearance somehow make it okay? But I don’t ask him anything. I tell him he knows everything there is to know. And that I need to get some more sleep because it’s probably over four hundred miles to Leadville. I pull that number out of my ass.

He gets the hint and moves back to the other side of the primer stove. I hear a rustling, then see a bulge press against the edge of the blanket wall. It’s a nose. Voley wants to come in. Dusty opens the blanket and lets him in. He comes over to me for some reason instead of Dusty and circles around and then drops down right on top of my arm. I holler in pain and bolt up. There’s nothing covering the stitches now. And the skin is bright pink all around the bullet hole. A bit of blood is still seeping out. Are you okay? asks Dusty. He looks really concerned, but it’s hard to care because the pain’s shooting. I hear Russell walking across the boat floor fast. The flap opens again and it’s him. He asks, What’s going on? Voley sat on my arm, I tell him. His face is washed in relief and he leaves for the wheel. Get sleep. You’re up soon, he says as he heads back to the wheel.

Voley moves away, sad that he hurt me. He finds a spot by Dusty and lies down. Can you tell me what Leadville is like? asks Dusty after a minute of silence. I almost thought he’d gone back to sleep. Sure, I tell him. It’s a whole city. But a normal city, working just like they used to work. Before the rain. The highest elevation in America. And they have electricity still. Hot water just like you had. But everything else you’d ever want too. And there’s something more about it but I’m not sure if I buy it.

What? asks Dusty. I can tell he’s curious now. It’s a distraction for him. It’s like he has to believe in Leadville because what’s happened to him is so awful that he can’t not have hope for something. I tell him the bit that Russell tells about it not raining there. Dusty laughs. It’s the only thing he doesn’t seem to be able to hope for. You don’t buy it either? I say. It’s raining everywhere, he says. Maybe in Europe, or China, or Australia, it’s not raining. But in America, it’s raining everywhere. We got hit the hardest.

Hit? I ask. He tells me this whole story about a comet, and how it came too close, and dumped all this ice that turned into rain. I say I’ve heard that one before with a snicker. So what do you think it is? he shoots back at me, upset I’m taunting his idea. Easy, I say. Solar flare. It moved the axis of the earth. Now the Pacific is evaporating and flying up into the sky like a great big vacuum. And it gets slung across the sky and dumped on the land here. Dusty laughs again. It’s the first time he’s heard Russell’s favorite theory. And it just confirms for me a gut feeling that I’ve had my whole life—that believing you know the real reason behind the rain is like believing in hokey pokey religion stories about angels and gods and prophets and devils. Because the truth is that no one knows. And everyone has a theory. But what it all boils down to is eating, staying warm, and staying dry. The rest is an afterthought. I tell Dusty this, hoping it’s as profound for him as it is for me, since Russell has pounded it into my head for as long as I can remember. The impact isn’t quite the same though. Dusty just nods a little bit and acts like he understands, but I don’t think he gets it. Then Russell shouts “boats!” He shouts it again, and Dusty and I run out to see. We rush into the rain and there are seven dots. They’re all boats, and they’re moving toward us.

I edge under the tarp, right against Russell, and Dusty is left in the rain watching the horizon. All of us look at the tiny fleet moving over the brown sea toward us. Are they face eaters? I ask. Dusty says they can’t be, since they’re coming from the east. Doesn’t matter, Russell says. We came from the east. They dogged us all the way to your tarp town.

None of us say anything and we just wait. Marvolo lets out a bark because none of us are doing anything. Shut him up, Russell says. Dusty gets down on his knees and tries to lead Voley back under the canopy with the primer stove but he’s not having it. They both return to the bow. Gun? Russell asks me. I tell him yea, it’s under the seat compartment so it won’t get any more wet than it already is. He tells me I’d better go get it. I run off and leave them, duck under the blanket, feel for a moment a wind of warm air, lift the door under the bench seat, grab the pistol and return. They’re talking when I get back. Trying to plan out what to do.

If it is face eaters, there’re too many of them, Dusty says anxiously. I don’t even have a gun. Those aren’t motor boats, Russell says. They look like whale boats. No engines. Why aren’t the sails up? I ask. They’re heading into the wind, says Dusty. But something strange is going on out there on the foggy sea. And we all seem to feel it together. Russell finally says it out loud.

“This isn’t right,” he says. He explains that we’re close enough now that we should be able to see something, someone, standing on the decks, moving, even sitting. But there’s nobody. No one moving. No one steering. No oars hitting the water. It’s like the seven boats are ghost ships. But I don’t say that. I just crowd in under the sliver of tarp and start to shiver, no longer used to the permanent cold because I’ve been spoiled for hours by the primer stove. Russell wraps his arm around me and draws me into his chest. We need to move away from them, says Dusty. The boats are getting close, and with the direction we’re going, we’ll run right by the southern edge of the group. But Russell doesn’t listen to Dusty’s idea. Dusty starts to fidget, used to having way more control than he has over our boat. Russell, he says. Russell tells him he’d better be quiet, because they could all be sleeping. And if they wake up, and they have guns, we’re dead. And if they’re face eaters, it’s worse than dead. We’re eaten alive. He cuts off the engine and we’re drifting now. Then turn us away, Dusty whispers. This time Russell doesn’t reply at all. There’s a cold steel silence. The only thing breaking it is the rain pattering the swells, so constant that it’s almost as if there’s no sound at all. And I know now that Russell plans for us to just slip past all seven. Because somehow, he’s convinced they’re no threat to us. But I get the feeling something went terribly wrong on those boats.

We glide slowly up a swell, then down. The two closest boats of the seven come right alongside us. I feel a jolt of fear strike through my body as Russell turns the engine back on. He does this so he can drive us right up to the nearest boat. I get my gun up in the air, despite the nagging pain in my arm. Russell has his half-raised, almost like he thinks it’s pointless to keep it at the ready because he’s already convinced there’s no one there.

Then he suddenly climbs the rail without warning us and jumps into the boat. It’s a long wooden whale boat with three long benches and two oars. I lean over the rail and look in. There really is no one on board. From the boat he’s in, Russell can see the next one. All empty, he calls back. Then he starts scouring the floor of the boat for supplies. Anything of use. The oars are better than ours. Catch, he says, and he throws one at me. I grab it midair and set it down, then repeat for the second. It’s good wood, he says. Dusty comes under the tarp sliver with me, Voley pushing through our feet to get a glimpse. Russell starts to paddle himself from one whale boat to the next. He calls out for us to bring her around. I sit down in the driver’s seat and steer.

“What happened to them?” asks Dusty. He’s no longer frightened. He’s mystified. He hasn’t been on the road as much as Russell and me. Not nearly as much. Things still surprise him. I’ve seen mile-long bodyjams and schools of empty boats. I don’t really care what happened to them. But I know something probably killed them, so that’s what I tell Dusty. He seems more alarmed, like he’s completely out of his element on the sea. He can’t take the mystery of it. How much have you traveled? I ask him. He tells me he’s been around Salt Lake City. Grandview Peak and then to King Mountain. And I know for sure now that he hasn’t seen anything. I pull up alongside Russell and he gets back in with a plastic duffel bag and a gun. It looks like an automatic rifle. Don’t know if it’ll still work, he says. Then he tells me to steer us around to the other five boats. He wants to check each one, get whatever’s left in them. Dusty can’t help but ask Russell now. He asks what happened to the people that were on these boats. I pull up to the third boat, rocking it away from us by pulling in too fast. Russell turns to look at Dusty, maybe just to make sure he’s serious. He sees Dusty is serious. All he says is that they’re somewhere, dead or alive he doesn’t care, but that they’re not here on their boats. And he jumps onto the next whale boat to look for anything more we can take. We go through every boat and get another bag of supplies and we take another two oars, barely getting them to fit by sliding them under the primer stove canopy.

Things quiet back down and I take a turn at the wheel while Russell tinkers under the canopy with the automatic rifle. The boats are gone. After almost an hour, when my hands start to lock in place, frozen, I hear a loud bang of a gun. It’s the rifle and it scares the shit out of me. But he’s got it working. Russell comes out and tells me there was a cache of ammo in one of the bags, and he’s managed to dry it out and it works just fine. Then he disappears back under the blanket to get Dusty for a turn at the wheel. The smear of sun behind the gray clouds is hanging above us, hesitant to drop. I retreat to the warmth and Dusty tells me there’s food and it’s warm as he passes. I move faster and start to smell it. Beans, heated over the primer stove. I start to shovel them into my mouth. Russell is still rooting through the bags he’s found. Anything good? I say after my throat clears. I’m shoveling everything from the bottom of the can down with my fingers. Can opener, those beans, some medicine, pills, I don’t know what they are. Another knife. More cans of food. A radio of some kind. I look at Russell’s face, smoky and shadowed around the edges. He’s smiling. He’s happy. And he hasn’t coughed in a long time. Whatever they gave him in Blue City, it was enough to keep him alive and get him better. Then he takes out a crumpled piece of paper. He smiles, as big as he did when he used to be able to run for miles over land. He would come home smiling after his long runs, cleared, freed, happy. He looks the same way as he straightens the paper out. He moves closer to show me. I look at it. It’s a map with elevation numbers and a bunch of squiggly circles and bendy loops inside of more circles and loops. I can’t tell where it’s supposed to be until he says, “Look.” He points with his finger. Look! he says. Right where he points it says Colorado in bold capital letters. Where’s Leadville I ask him. It’s marked, he says. What? I ask. Do you know what this means Tan? I look more closely and see what he’s talking about. It’s a giant cross marking the town. Leadville. There it is. Hand-written numbers show the elevation. 10,152 feet. But it doesn’t say anything about the rain, how high the rain is there. What do you think it’s marked for? I ask. Because that’s the place. The destination. The treasure. I stop and think about it and it makes total sense. These boats had been trying to get to Leadville. They’d marked it on a map. It was their destination. My train of thought comes to an end that upsets the remarkable excitement of the discovery. I realize that we’re well to the west of Leadville. I ask Russell about this. Could it mean they passed Leadville, that there was nothing there? I say. Why else would they be drifting so far west of the spot they marked? Russell ignores my idea, like it’s a setback he doesn’t need. He’s got it all figured out and he explains it to me as clear as day. Don’t you see, Tan? These boats did make it to Leadville, but when there were people on them. Hell, they may have been in Leadville for a long time after. But they broke loose, maybe in a storm, or maybe the line was cut some other way. And they drifted out. That’s why there are no bodies. These boats drifted in a straight line to us all the way from Leadville! he exclaims like a child. He pulls me into his chest and kisses my forehead. Then he hugs me really hard so that I feel my chest closing up. But I let him do it. I love him. And I believe it too now. They did come all the way from Leadville. And I can’t believe how dumb I was to not think that the obvious explanation was that they’d simply broken loose and drifted. How far away do you think we are? I ask, pulling back just enough to look into Russell’s eyes. They’re big and bright and filled with hope again. In the back of my head, even in the warmth of Russell’s hug, I think about what this might mean for Dusty and me. Maybe we can reach part of the veneer, at least just enough so that we can be together one more time. The feeling again, one more time. Things will work out washes through my brain. Things are going to work out. Finally. We can’t be too far. Those boats were all close together still. They couldn’t stay that way for very long on the open water. So we have to be close.

As I keep thinking about it, something about Russell’s logic makes no sense to me. We had hundreds of miles to go, at least a couple weeks’ journey. But now, he’s saying we’re very close. Unless the location of Blue City was wrong, according to the people who lived there for years, then it makes no sense for the whale boats to drift all the way from Leadville in a tight pack. Unless they had people in them to manage their direction. Unless it was recently that they left their boats. I tell all this to Russell, opening up every fear, even telling him he might be getting too optimistic. He stops and considers my reasoning. He says I’m right, but that it doesn’t matter. Either way, they marked Leadville. It’s real. It’s really the place we think it is. And the explanation for the boats being so close together doesn’t matter.

In the back of my head appear horrible scenarios for the boats. Maybe they got to Leadville and there was nothing there—it was all under the rain. And they kept on moving. Maybe they were forced off. Exiled. Maybe they got there and it’s nothing like we think it is. Maybe it’s a face eater city. Even a clean-cut face eater city, like Blue City. Russell wouldn’t have anywhere else to say we can go after that. There’d be nowhere left in the world to shoot for. And we’d have to starve and die, or live like everyone else. Give up the last bits of the veneer we’re clinging to. Give up the bond that keeps us close to each other. But all of my dark ideas don’t seem to even slightly run through Russell’s head. He moves back against the wall of the blanket and he stares at the map. Tracing its lines, figuring things out in his head. That’s when Dusty shouts. He sees something new. It doesn’t sound good. We can’t catch a break in an ocean that’s supposed to be as barren as a desert. Russell and I head to the wheel. We don’t need any explanations. Just to watch as bodies bob on swells. They go up and down lifelessly, and we steer the boat right at them. Then we pull alongside two of them and look down. The one I look at has his eyes open. They’re looking straight up into the rain. No more blinking to shut out the wet. They’re swollen a little bit, absorbing too much salt. But it’s not the eyes I get stuck on. It’s the open chest. And legs. And arms. Empty cavities. They’ve been scooped of all their muscle. Like empty cages, sacks of flesh emptied to the core. I look away. For all I’ve seen of bloated, rotting corpses, I can never get over these kinds. The ones with teeth marks.

We roll with our engine off now past the rest of the bodies. There are about sixteen in total. Each one we pass is checked and it’s the same thing. Some look normal, but they’re the ones floating face down in the water. And I know they’re carved out ribcages are exposed to the depths of the sea. That somewhere deep under the murky brown, the whale sees the mutilation when it swims up for air. And I can only know it’s there. As if we needed the clarification, Dusty says that these are the bodies of the people from the boats. Russell looks undisturbed, and I know he’s debating whether or not to search their clothes, their pockets, for anything that might provide information. But he doesn’t have time to tell us to draw one of the bodies in with an oar because Voley starts barking loudly. We all look up from the eviscerated bodies to the horizon and see what he’s going crazy over. At first we only hear something though. Nothing to see. It sounds like the distant hum of a motor, like our own boat’s. But it’s coming from nothing. Then we see the source. A line of trimmed cloth. Black as night. Rising from a dipping swell, then revealing two more triangles. Clinging to masts. Trimmed sails. And I see figures, even from this far away, moving on deck. Out of the way, Russell says, and he shoves past Dusty and me and sits in front of the wheel. The engine kicks on and he turns the wheel hard. We’re flying hard and to the right, heading south, and just barely, using my full concentration, as I wipe the rain out of my eyes, I think I see the ship turn too. They see us.

They’re following us, I say as soon as I’m half-convinced about what I see. Russell doesn’t care. He’s transfixed, his foot pressing the pedal as far as it goes, the motor whining in protest, as we dip and rise over swells. Dusty disappears and then he’s back. Keep our back on them, says Dusty. He’s got the rifle in his hands. Russell listens to Dusty.

Part 5

Chapter 12

Foam spits up into my face as I lean out over the stern next to Dusty. We’re both in the rain, out from the tarp’s protection, watching the phantom ship slice toward us like a razor through the swells. Its motor is stronger than ours. And it’s gaining on us despite Russell giving our boat everything it has.

I can see three figures now, all out on the deck of the boat. They’re watching us run. I think I see guns in their hands too but we’re still too far so I can’t be sure. How we doing? shouts Russell from the wheel. I tell him that they’re too fast, we can’t outrun them. Voley quiets down again, hanging at the back of the boat with us, his tongue hanging out, his eyes looking out at the horizon as if he knows just what’s going on, just what’s at stake. They’re the ones who did those bodies like that, aren’t they? asks Dusty without taking his eye off the rifle sight. He’s like ice, staring down the biggest man on the enemy deck. I look at his finger and it’s gliding along the trigger. He’s waiting to fire until they’re close enough, or maybe it’s the swells we’re bumping over. Maybe he won’t be able to hit them. Part of me wants to ask Russell if it’s smart to open fire—what if they’re not face eaters? But what else could they be. There’s nothing out here. And Russell gave permission the moment he listened to Dusty’s order. I start to shiver because the spray is hitting me now with every hump we crest. The water stings. It’s getting colder—too cold. Our boat glides up a high swell and then dips suddenly into the trough. I taste salt metal drops and the wind beats my face. This is it. It boils down to this.

And then, when we’re so close that Dusty can take his first shot, he lowers the rifle. What the hell are you doing? I ask him. He’s giving up for some reason, and I move my arms in to rip the rifle away from him. I’ll have to do it myself, because maybe he thinks this is somehow his salvation, that they’re his ticket back home. He’s lost his nerve or his mind. But he pulls away from me. He won’t let me have it. Look, he tells me. And I stop focusing on him and turn out to the gray to see something white. The reason he’s put the gun down. A white flag. A trick.

It’s a trap, I tell him. How do you know? he says. You saw the bodies! I scream sense into him. Russell hollers back, What’s going on? He can’t leave the wheel. He has to keep the pedal on the floor. He’s doing everything he can to keep us alive. His hope is back. It sprung up again with the map, and he’s not going to let my scuffle with Dusty ruin our chance to get away. I run up to the front of the boat.

“They raised a white flag and he won’t shoot,” I tell him. He’s coughing when I reach him, softly, purposely trying to muffle it. How close? he asks. In range but he won’t shoot—he won’t give me the damned gun! Take the wheel, Russell orders. What? I ask, but I know now—he needs to see for himself. He carefully slides out, leaving his foot on the gas as long as possible. Keep her straight, ride into the swells, he tells me, and then he races back to Dusty. Shit, I mutter as I sit down in the seat. I hadn’t realized how big the sea had become. Or it’s just how fast we’re moving over the water. Either way, the boat’s a lot harder to handle than before. Everything feels loose.

I hear loud talk but I can’t make out any words with the wind screaming into my ears. I try to turn my head to get a glimpse of what’s going on but I can’t. I keep waiting to hear a gun go off, so I know Russell beat the rifle out of Dusty’s hands and started shooting at them. Keep them off us, Russell, I mouth. I think of the bodies—the floating shells. And I know that’ll be us next unless I hear a gun go off soon. But nothing comes. I can’t help it—I turn my head again and almost look for too long. When I turn back the boat has veered sideways and we nearly meet the next swell sideways. I jerk the wheel to get us straight and I hear Voley whine in complaint. Then Russell yells loud and clear, even above the numbing wind: Shut it off, Tan!

“What?” I yell. I can’t believe what he’s saying. How can he give up too? I think for a second that Dusty’s turned the gun on him again, has him at gunpoint, giving orders to stay put until the ship catches up with us. His ticket back to Blue City. But that’s not it, I find out as I let off the gas and the boat goes into a long glide. We cruise up another long roller and I’m confident we won’t roll, so I get up. I run to them to find out why I’m the only sane one left.

I jump around the tarp, past the line of dark smoke rising from the primer stove, and reach them at the back of the ship. The black-sailed ship is right there. And I see them all clearly—there are three men, and the one holding the white flag starts to wave it. Give me the gun, I tell Russell. He’s gotten it from Dusty, but now he’s just holding it limply at his side too, completely useless, giving up. Throwing in the towel over a white flag. I can’t believe it.

Russell holds it back out of my reach. Alright, I’ll get my own then, I tell him, and I head to the tent to get my pistol. Don’t shoot it, Russell says. You going to give me a good reason why not? I say. I’ve made up my mind and he has just one moment to change it. It’s like they’ve forgotten the bodies we’ve just passed, like the map has them all mixed up with hope. He can’t give me a reason, he just looks at me, his face that means I’m supposed to trust him. That there’s not supposed to be a reason. It’s another one of his gut feelings. He’s had them so many times. I know that he’s usually right. But this one’s too hard to buy. We’ve never been out this deep in the rain sea. This far west. This close to Leadville. And he’s putting it all on the line, everything we’ve been clinging to, not to call their bluff.

I get the gun and run back to them. A soft throb of pain shoots through my arm as I squeeze the handle, but it’s not as bad anymore. I almost think it’s healing.

The ship pulls up right alongside of us. Russell is aiming the gun now, and relief comes back to me that he hasn’t given in yet. He raises it high, pointing at the men who stare out from the bow of the ship. They watch us like we’re some kind of curiosity. Keep your pistol on them, but don’t shoot it, Russell repeats. Wait for them to make the first move. I watch the men. Just the white flag. None of them have guns.

Dusty has Russell’s pistol now and he’s aiming at them too. I point mine up at them as they finally get within shouting distance. We rise and fall on the waves and study each others’ faces. I try to work out by their complexion—their eyes—whether or not they’re face eaters. But how could they not be? The bodies had teethmarks…

Russell says the first words. He plays along: We’re alright. Don’t need any help. Thanks, but you can move on.

Then they speak as normal as any tarper from Blue City sounded. At once half of my fears dissolve. I’ve never heard a face eater speak in a calm, collected manner. And they’re unarmed. They raise their hands in response to Russell’s command to show us the white flag was genuine. Then they speak.

The biggest one talks to us. He stands to the right of the flag holder, and looks like a giant compared to his crewmates. By his tone, I know he’s speaking for the whole crew. I’m afraid we didn’t mean to help you, says the big man. Rain splashes off his soaked beard and onto his plastic suit. We wanted to see what you know about the country to the south. Despite the tension choking my throat, and the fact that our lives are hanging by the balance of a sudden movement, Russell laughs. I don’t get the joke and I think he’s lost his mind. Russell tells the man that there is no country to the south. It’s all rain. Brown sea. Just that.

All of us still have our guns trained on them, but for some reason they don’t look concerned. Fear starts to rise in me, the feeling I had when I first saw the flag—that this all has to be some kind of trap. I want to talk alone with Dusty and Russell so bad but I can’t right now. We’re locked in the stalemate. Yet the ship’s crew doesn’t seem to care. There is only the invisible trust of Russell now.

There most certainly is. Rainless country at that, says the big man. His beard is black and wild and untrimmed, but his skin is clear and rose-colored. The realization sinks in—he is no face eater.

Bullshit, replies Russell. Then he asks the man to explain the bodies we passed, and I watch  his finger dance on the trigger. I know the sound of his voice, and they seem to get it now too. He’s ready to start shooting, even though he has to know by now, like I do, that they’re not face eaters. But that doesn’t really matter. There’s a long way to fall before you become one of them. Steps along the slope. The carrier people were on one step. Blue City tarpers on another. These three might be halfway down, the sophisticated face eaters. Maybe not mad on the drugs, but stripped of the same rules. The ones Russell and I think still matter.

The big man motions to the one who stands on the opposite side of the flag holder. He must have ordered him to do something because he runs off, disappearing somewhere in the ship behind. Keep him in sight, Russell tells us, but it’s impossible to see where he went on the ship. And the bearded man doesn’t seem to fear our threat. He just looks at us and says, Bait. Russell’s face lights up like somehow he’s understanding something from that word. Dusty fidgets and turns because he sees the man who disappeared coming back again. He raises his gun to him and so do I in case he’s come back with a gun of his own. I’m ready to pull the trigger when I see he’s got something else. Dusty shouts out, Drop it! but Russell tells him to relax, that it’s okay. It’s a net—he raises it high into the air so we can all see it. Only it’s not empty. It’s stuffed and moving.

“Jesus,” says Russell, and he almost falls to the floor of the boat. I put my arm on his shoulder. Fish, he says. Jesus, fish. And I look back up. It is—a bag of fish. For how wretched they look, the fish think they taste great, says the bearded man. Russell stands back up and looks at us and tells us to lower our guns. How did you know? Russell asks. How did you know we weren’t…

Because face eaters aren’t men, the big man says. And you are a man, he continues. He winks and motions toward the side of the boat. I don’t get it, but I follow Russell’s glance. He stares at the side rail where Voley is standing over the edge, wind blowing his ears back, calmly watching the tense exchange, wagging his tail. Man’s best friend, Russell mutters. Of course.

So can we talk belowdecks, or do we have to do this over open water? the big man says. He waits for Russell but Russell hasn’t made up his mind. We’re pushing on south, but we’d like to talk. Like to know what you’ve seen, the big man continues. Russell turns to us, as if we’re part of the decision making process all of the sudden. He motions us to come in close, but keep our eyes on them. What do you think? he asks us. I know that Russell is getting greedy now. He wants information on Leadville. He wants to know what they’ve seen as much as they want to know what we’ve seen. But I don’t feel like we can trust anything they’ve said. One of them stares only at me.

I don’t know, says Dusty. Your dog does, says Russell. Marvolo has stopped barking. I wonder if they’d let us have some of their fish to eat. Still, I second Dusty’s wariness. And it’s usually Russell who is most cautious of strangers. Somehow this all doesn’t make sense. He’s getting desperate because we’re so close now. It’s not the exposure, Russell used to say, Desperation is the rain’s killer. He’s gullible now though. I tell him we should move on. We need to keep going. Let them tell us what they have to over the water, but not on board their ship.

Rain’s getting colder, says the big man. I see him scan over each of us as we talk. He’s working something out. Finally, as if deeply considering my point of view, Russell figures out what he wants to do. You two stay here. Keep all the guns. I’ll go talk to them. We have an extra can of gas we can trade for food. We need that gas, I say. We have more gas than food. They’re catching fish—do you know what that means? Russell says. And I stop to think about it. I haven’t seen a fish in a year. I thought they’d all died. That the sea wasn’t blue enough for them anymore.

It means maybe I can get a rod and tackle, Russell says. There’re a lot of miles to Leadville still. I know he’s right, but I can’t let him go alone. Alright, to hell with it, I say. I’m coming then. He knows me too well to try and stop me. Dusty looks at us. You want me to stay here? he asks, perfectly willing. Do whatever you want, Russell says. He looks at Voley, our boat, and then back to the three waiting for our response. Just because we’re getting close doesn’t mean we can start trusting people again, I tell Russell. You’ve got to remember that. I know, he says.

Russell leans in close to me and kisses me on the forehead. He makes sure they see this for some reason. Then he turns to the big man. Throw us a line, Russell says. The man sends one of his crew to grab rope, and in a couple more minutes we’re tied together with the strangers, for better or worse.

Chapter 13

Russell hands Dusty the rifle and goes up first. The bearded man helps pull him up a rope ladder. I feel like they might try something as soon as Russell is out of our sight, but they don’t. We follow him up and they don’t seem to mind that we’re bringing our guns aboard. They understand the need for caution, or at least that’s the act they’re putting on. Everything I’ve seen—from the carrier to Blue City, makes me skeptical that there are any good people left in the world. Good without an ugly secret.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Altruism is dead, Russell says, but it doesn’t mean people can’t exchange goods—food, medicine, weapons, or now, information. We’re coming on board to exchange hope.

I reach the deck and the rain hits my neck. It feels light now, like Poseidon has loosened up on us. Maybe he’s taking a nap. Spending time on the sea floor. But in his sleep he’s left the temperature unchecked. It’s dropping too fast. I start to think about slipping away to search the ship for plastic suits I can steal for us.

We’re led down a staircase to a wide room below the deck. It’s like liquid air fire underneath. A cocoon that softens all of my apprehension. Dangerously softens. One of the men leaves us at the boss’s instructions, and we all find a seat around a wooden table. There’s a stove, much better than ours, with a steel pipe running its smoke out the side of the hull. That’s the first thing I realize as I sit down—the warmth is like a drug. It slows me down too much. And everything in this room is dry. Dry all around. A watertight ship.

I watch enviously as the bearded man and his other remaining partner sit down in their gray plastic suits. They’ve got it good here. Russell starts up the conversation right away. He asks about the bait. He’s fact-checking, I know him. But it doesn’t come across that way to them. The big man gets defensive, like he’s mad Russell didn’t believe that’s what he used the human bodies for. He explains that they’ve had more than a couple run-ins with face eaters since heading south from Montana. All the way from Montana! I want to exclaim, but I keep my mouth shut and glance at Dusty and Marvolo. Voley is quiet, sitting at Dusty’s feet next to the rifle which is lying against his chair. Still close enough to be used. Voley’s calm is a good sign. Dogs sense evil—or I’ve always heard it said. And he isn’t so much as making a sound.

Dusty looks back at me, his face wrapped in some of the same emotion I’m feeling, but I can tell he’s distant. He’s back in Blue City. Probably thinking about how quickly this big ship could motor him back home. Maybe the will to return isn’t dead in him yet. Maybe he’ll secretly try to bribe this grizzly when Russell and I aren’t paying attention. It would only take a moment. He could tell the man about the treasure of that stocked island. A place with everything. And he could leave out the part about it being target number one for the coordinated attacks of the Utah madmen.

“Never waste good bait,” says the bearded man. He goes on to explain to Russell that every time they’ve hit a group of bandits, they skin and gut them. Just like you would a fish. Because that’s what they are—somewhere down there on the food chain. Not humans anymore. They gave that up with their choices, says the big man. Too low on the ladder now to have any kind of sympathy for them. But their bodies are far too useful to waste. It’s just we don’t eat them, says the man. He knows that’s just what Russell wants to hear. He talks for a moment about how the rain has made people sink to it—the necessity to waste nothing. He even admits to understanding it. Says he might do the same, if it ever came to it. But it hasn’t. Not yet. Because it’s the one thing he’s bent on making sure doesn’t happen. They’re going to find the Rainless Land. Russell smiles at this, like it’s an affirmation of everything his gut was telling him.

Why’d you leave? asks Russell. Dusty slides his chair, loudly grating the floor, moving closer to me. The bearded man and his mate look at us, as if we’re edging close to try something, but then he just leans back again. Before the long tale, and the idea that we’re in a great rush to survive separates us in the rain sea, I’d like to know your names. At least, I’ll give you mine. The giant man leans forward in his chair and smiles, his rosy cheeks rising with his lips, his black beard still dripping a bit from the wet. He lowers the hood of his plastic suit. The black of his beard is mirrored in a nest of hair that falls well off the rest of his head. His eyes are wrinkled by the weather, but they’re alive. My name is Ernest, he says. And that’s all he gives us. No one says anything, and the room becomes awkwardly quiet. Russell might be struck dumb because we haven’t had to tell anyone our names in a long time, even on Blue City. No one asked. I sure as hell don’t want to be the first of us to do it. But Ernest, who looks about twice as old as Russell, but stronger from the aging rather than weaker, turns and puts the pressure on his man to speak. My eyes fall for the first time on his mate. He’s taken his hood off and I hadn’t really noticed. His face is somewhat drawn and stretched, but it’s filled with the same hue of life that Ernest’s has. He’s well-fed, and lively, and still filled inside with hope, I can tell. He has soft blue eyes and curled lips, all packed into the calm appearance of innocence, and I’m startled to realize that, until Ernest’s interruption, he’d been staring directly at me. He’s older than Dusty, I can tell, but younger than Russell. I can’t tell age very well anyway, so I could be entirely wrong, especially because when he speaks, it’s with a voice I would with my eyes closed think belonged to a much older man. At Ernest’s prodding, he sits upright and looks at Russell, who seems to have noticed where his eyes had drifted previously, and says his name is Clint. Clint’s my name, he says. One by one, starting with Russell, we mutter our names. There’s false cheer in Dusty and me when we say them. And him? says Ernest. That’s Voley, Dusty says.

Good to meet folk without the devil eyes, says Clint. Devil eyes? asks Russell. Ernest chimes in that those are the face eaters, as most of them look anyway, especially with their drug. So that’s all true then? asks Russell. And Ernest just points to a wooden crate in the corner of the softly glowing room. Against the wood planking of the hull rests several crates together, all marked with a giant Y. That’s the stuff right there, he says. The drug? asks Russell. Sure enough, Ernest says. And it might come in handy. I don’t know how. And you know, the ones that don’t use it—they’re the ones I really fear. Once they slip into that stuff, and it takes away their hunger or distorts it to something else, they’re sloppier. Pain doesn’t deter them any longer. At least, it’s been that way through Montana and Wyoming.

The sight of the drug gives Russell pause, like he doesn’t know what to make of it. I think he’s deciding if it moves the captain down a notch in his notion of the man’s humanity. Wondering if the captain’s ever used it. I’m good enough to know Russell’s thinking that clear, because in the next moment he asks: Have you taken it? Of course, says Ernest. Russell’s scowl forms fast, and he studies the eyes of the captain and his mate. Ernest laughs, knowing well the look of judgment. I’ll never touch it again. Unless it comes to the time before I have to eat a body to survive. Not sure which I’ll do first. But there’s no sense figuring on that until the time comes, right? Russell still doesn’t reply. He’s unsure. And so am I. Part of me is curious what the drug does. What it feels like. If it really takes away hunger and pain. I’ve never taken any kind of drug other than antibiotics and Tylenol. Nothing with this kind of reputation. But it is, after all, their drug. The ones who are completely stripped. No vestige left. To take it can only mean taking a step closer to them.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not one of them. You can relax a bit, if you have a mind to. Although I know you won’t. And I don’t blame you. If you hadn’t had that dog on board, says Ernest, looking to Voley with love in his voice, we’d have opened fire on you. Yes, we do have weapons on board. God’s honest truth. But God’s been with this ship since it sailed, and that’s no coincidence your dog was on deck and in plain sight.

Russell recoils at the mentioning of God. I know when he thinks of it he remembers his daughter. He used to tell me he believed in the bullshit. The great lie that something invisible is taking care of you. Survival is what we make through our own stubborn effort, and our deaths through nature’s, he says. That’s how he sees it now. But he doesn’t criticize Ernest for his belief, not out loud anyway. This man is carrying too much of the veneer in him, most of its weight in honesty, and it’s overwhelming all of us. Except for Dusty. I look at him, and his eyes are stuck on Clint. I trace his line of sight to Clint’s, and I look away immediately, because Clint’s blue eyes are still on me. Just watching me. I can’t help but look back, but there he is again, still looking at me. The fact that he knows I see him watching me doesn’t break his stare, and it’s angering Dusty. I feel the anger. And then, finally, Ernest tells us what we really want to know. He tells us what happened in Montana.

We left Cooke City when the supplies ran dry. Used to be relatively dry there, and warm. Rain was lighter. I swear to hell it was. And a hell of a lot warmer. Things really took a turn last year.

More and more of the people we knew, some of them loved, started to turn to people for food. What else could they do? There’s no more fish there. The sea’s too brown now. So the talk started, all of it based on some old broadcast. Broadcast? Russell cuts in. Yea, something coming over the radio. My eyes glue to Ernest’s face. The idea of a radio signal triggers the thought that we have a radio, taken from the face eater boats we just passed. I don’t butt in though, I wait. He goes on: It was a looped recording, and it was about the Rainless Land. Russell is fidgeting and he coughs. Ernest pauses and looks him over. He’s making an assessment of his health, I know. I’ve been doing the same thing for weeks. Maybe he needs to know how easily he could take us out, if he has to. How weak we’ve really become. That our guns are just props holding us up so the wind and rain doesn’t blow us away. But he’s made it clear that face eaters would have eaten a dog before taking it on a sea voyage. Long before doing that. So he’s made up his mind that we’re not the enemy. And maybe we’re the same.

What did the recording say? Dusty asks, finally his attention shifting from Clint. Ernest explains that it was just a broken voice, in and out of static, claiming that there was a safe haven, somewhere in Colorado. It wasn’t raining there, said the radio voice, Ernest goes on. Russell can’t contain it any longer and he says Leadville. Ernest doesn’t seem to know the name, or at least it doesn’t mean anything to him. That’s your Rainless Land, Russell fills in. We don’t know, says Ernest. That recording had been going for years. But a lot of us there, in Cooke City, got to talking. Talking about our options. There’s nothing left of the law in all of America, you know? he says. So the idea for a grand expedition started to eat at everyone. It took us about two years to get the boats together. And all the supplies. We had—what did we have when we first set out, Clint? All eyes turn to him, whose silent gaze is finally upset as he looks up in thought. Finally he retrieves a number. Fourteen I think, he says. Ernest tells us that fourteen ships left, staggered some of them, together some of them. Resilience had five other ships with her. Resilience? Russell asks. Our ship, says Ernest. A good crew of men. Ernest rocks back again and starts to fidget under his plastic suit. You all left in a hurry without suits? he asks us. We’re not ready to answer though, because we don’t know what he’s looking for under his shirt. But it’s just a tiny wooden tube, a pipe. He waits for us to answer, as if he wants us to now tell our own story before he’s finished with his. He takes out a small bag and a box of matches and puts them on the table. His eyes fall down to stuff his pipe with tobacco. He lights his pipe and then he looks again at Russell, waiting.

Where are all the other ships? Russell asks. Ernest draws from his pipe and then tells us about a gale. A waterspout gale. We lost them, he says. Monster seas. It was black as night, and the swells were crashing. Couldn’t see them by the next morning. They might have reached the Rainless Land for all we know. More likely they’re on the bottom.

I want to press him because I can’t believe that all those ships could disappear in a storm. One or two makes sense, but not that many. Ernest is reeling in thought, like a sadness of thought, as he smokes. Russell understands and waits. I look back at Clint, expecting his blue eyes to be on me again, but they’re not. His eyes are closed now. There is something painful in his mind, but I can’t tell what. Memories. The bane of people with hope. At least if they’re not stored properly, out of the imagination where they can return as real as the day they happened. I’ve learned to ignore most memories when they come up, because all of mine are about the East, where it was better. Where we should have stayed. Finally, Ernest goes on.

So we couldn’t do anything else but sail on, right? We’re making a go of it anyway. The three of us. Keep her flying south. See what we find. Ernest is done, even I can tell. He won’t tell us anymore. And he makes it clear that it’s our turn with a fixed and blank look. He grunts as if to say that that’s the reason we’re all sitting here anyway—to exchange information. What we know. So that some kind of hope can be kept alive, despite how painful such a thing is.

Russell summarizes our journey. Dusty listens intently, learning about us for the first time. Russell only spends a moment on each city. How the water rose, the flash floods started coming all the time. The chaos of panicking millions. He just tells about how much worse it got: Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Indianapolis, the Sea Queen Marie, Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Wyoming, and he stops at Blue City. He doesn’t talk about Blue City. He knows Dusty is hanging on every word. Russell tells our entire lives in the span of five minutes, and he comes to the point of Leadville. It’s the same as your Rainless Land, he says.

“So you’ve come all this way for the same thing?” Ernest says. “And come a much greater distance than we have.” Ernest asks about the law in the East. He asks if there was any. Russell tells him there hasn’t been law since two years after the rain started. Ernest tells him it’s the same everywhere then. Then a great silence comes into the room, because all the information that we were hoping for, and that they were hoping for, seems like dead weight. It all amounts to nothing. Nothing more concrete than what we’d each already known. And all of the sudden the thought seems as obvious to everyone else as it is to me—that we’re completely useless to each other. But Ernest says something that knocks me back, and I’m hit harder even by Russell’s reply to it.

Ernest just leans back in his chair, like he has been doing every few minutes, takes another smoke, and looks at each of us. So then it’s settled, isn’t it? You won’t get far in that little boat. The seas are rising. It’s getting colder. His meaning is clear to me, and I see Clint react in surprise, as if the underlying suggestion is as unexpected to him as it is to us. Dusty misunderstands, and thinks that Ernest means to gut us too, clean out our insides and throw it in a barrel for fish bait. He moves toward the rifle. Join us, Ernest clarifies. Dusty stops and realizes. It all sounds like a trap still, in part of my mind, but I haven’t heard a man talk the way Ernest talks in a long time. He sounds like Russell used to sound on board the Sea Queen Marie. Filled with optimism despite the rain, the exposure, the cold, the face eaters. More than just gnawing pressure. More real than anyone had sounded in Blue City except for Dusty. He means what he says. And Russell understands this immediately. He says we have things on our boat. Gas, food, medicine, a stove. He forgets what else we have—what they missed on the face eater boats—the map, the radio.

Ernest tells Clint to help us get everything that can’t be lost on board the Resilience. We should keep both of the boats, he says. We don’t know what we’re up against in the South do we? A man from the North and a man from the East.

I want to ask about the strong currents, waterspout alley, and the fact we’re heading right for it. But there’s no time. Russell is up right away, following Clint back up into the rain. Hold on a moment, says Ernest. He stands at last from his chair and walks to the corner of the room where shelves are lined with gear and barrels. He fetches a rain suit and tosses it to Russell. Standing at the stairs, Russell looks at him and just nods. He can’t say thanks. We haven’t shown them our worth yet. And that’s the way of things. Nothing comes for free. But he puts on the plastic suit anyway and heads out into the rain. Come on, Russell calls, and I know he’s saying it to me. There’re more here, hold on, Ernest says, and he walks back over and tosses Dusty and me dirty plastic rain suits of our own. They’ll be too big I think, but they’ll keep the saltwater welts off. Then he disappears up into the rain, leaving us alone. Complete trust. Dusty and I look at each other, and Voley stands at attention, ready to chase after everyone who went up the stairs.

My body screams at me that it’s starving, and I wonder if Dusty is thinking about food too, with how worn his face looks. But it’s something else. I can get that radio to work. If he has batteries, I can get it to work, he says as he pulls on his plastic suit. I believe him for some reason. Ernest’s optimism is contagious. He’d acted sure we’re going to be okay without ever saying it. It was just the tone of his voice. And I saw it filling Russell up. We’re so close to Leadville. And it’s starting to infect me too. Do you think that recording is still going? I ask. Dusty tells me that in Utah there was never anything coming over the radio. I spent days listening, he says. But nothing ever came on. But who knows he says? And then he gets up and leads Voley up into the rain.

I pause and look around the room. The warmth is with me again, against all odds. We’re still going. I pull over my plastic suit and I’m struck blind by a memory. My mom. I feel like I can remember her for a second. It’s strange, because I know I don’t have any memories of her. I was too little when she died. It’s like the flooding memory is just a feeling. Family. But it’s produced a face I feel like I recognize. It’s still there, deep in my mind. The idea of her love. That I had a mom once.

I see her there very plainly. She’s warm and right next to me and gently touching my hair. I love you, she says. And then I shut it off, or it shuts down on its own, because it’s all made up. Delirium from hunger and fatigue. You have to stop cracking, I tell myself. I climb the stairs into the cold again. I know I’ve been slipping, ever since I met Dusty. I haven’t told Russell, but he’s guessed it. I know he has. And the problem is that he’s cracking too. We’re both getting too soft when there’s nothing to prove we’re any closer to hope than we’ve been in years. It’s all an illusion, I have to remind myself. And then I help get what’s needed off the boat and we tie it up nice and strong and Ernest calls the other member of his crew in from the wheelhouse and we eat more fish than I thought were even alive in the great brown sea.

Days start to slip by, nearly a week. It’s the longest time we’ve had company since the Sea Queen.

Russell is up in the wheelhouse as usual with Ernest and his men. Dusty and I are under the deck tinkering with radio again. It’s the same thing—no life, when all of a sudden, static erupts out of a speaker. I got it! shouts Dusty. Voley chases his tail in a circle and barks, like he’s congratulating him, kicking bad batteries that roll across the planking. No one above hears us and no one comes down.

We move in close and bump into each other. It’s the first time we’ve touched since we were under the tent on the boat together. I move back but we still huddle close and listen in. The radio is crackling, in and out, but I can’t help but feel like someone is suddenly going to start talking. But nothing happens. It’s just static. But at least it’s on. We wait forever and nothing comes. Finally Dusty says he wants to conserve the batteries. These were the last ones I had to check—there are no more, he says. I think about the tent we left on the bank of Blue City island. Batteries in there, brand new. But all that has probably been blown in a mudslide to the bottom of the ocean with our canoe by now. Dusty shuts it off.

I look around the room. We’ve got a couple bunks that we sleep in, tucked in the corner. Ernest and Russell have taken to each other with great enthusiasm, discussing Leadville and poring over the map. Looking for the best path in through the Rockies so we’re not grounded on shoals. Ernest was upset he’d overlooked so much good gear on the face eater boats. We weren’t intending to slow down for anything, he’d said. But a map and a radio and a gun was a big oversight. He was quite upset about it when we brought it aboard and showed him.

Everyone calls Ernest’s other crewmate Clemmy. So I do too, if I have to get his attention. He is quiet, and acts like Ernest, but with fewer words. I can tell he’s battling something inside, some kind of loss. Just like Clint. Russell thinks they lost something in the gale. Maybe their families. But I wouldn’t dare ask Clemmy. And I don’t like to talk to Clint at all.

I’m still trying to prevent the feelings of bonding, but it’s become very hard. The crew is filling a void of some kind that I shouldn’t need filled. Dusty has had more trouble than me. I can tell he doesn’t like Clint at all. He thinks there’s something going on with him. I think it might have to do with Clint always looking at me. Like he’s attracted to me. Russell said something to him once, when we were trading shifts steering the motor boat. Every day we have to go down and get on it so that it doesn’t get dragged sideways against the swells and slow the Resilience down.

It had been my shift. I was climbing down the rope ladder and Russell saw Clint watching me. I couldn’t quite make out their exchange. But when I turned back to look, I could tell as clear as day what was happening. It was over his stares. Russell was tearing into him. I saw Ernest walk over and I almost panicked. I didn’t have a gun on me. I didn’t know where Ernest’s loyalties would fall. But Ernest went up and ripped right into Clint, just like Russell had been doing. He seems to understand something—they both seem to understand something that I don’t. It’s not that I think he’s evil, or strange, but that he’s attracted to me. I’m sure I’ve felt it before from men. But I can’t be so sure that I doubt Russell’s judgment over mine. At least with Clint. I think about Dusty, and how Russell never shows that same sentiment. And there’s something about Voley—the way he acts around Clint. He won’t just go up to him, looking for attention, the way he does with the rest of us. For some reason, he keeps his distance. But when all of us are together, it’s often Clint that Voley watches.

I’m looking at our bunks when Russell comes down the stairs. He hasn’t coughed in days. He’s rejuvenated by the fish. That’s what he says it is, anyway. And he says he can’t wait to start running again. As soon as we hit land. Leadville. I’m going to run every day. And that’s what he’s come down to talk to us about.

“According to Clemmy, we’re going to be there tomorrow. Leadville. You hear me Tan?” he says. He holds his smile for a long time and looks at me, and then, he just rushes in. Years of struggle are in his hug. He’s brimming with it. I feel it flow through me. I think of all of our long shots, and the terrible and endless moving, just to make it through each day. All of it finally coming to an end. He pushes me back and kisses my forehead. Then he lets go and turns to Dusty.

We still haven’t told Dusty about what happened on Blue City. I don’t think he’d try to turn us around anymore if he knew, but neither of us will tell him. And we don’t talk about it either, it’s just an unspoken decision, a psychic understanding between Russell and me. It has to be kept secret. Our own ugly secret.

Russell extends his hand, out toward the boy who tried to kill him. He keeps it hanging until Dusty finally takes it. It’s like Dusty has somehow started to let the optimism of Leadville get to him too. They shake hands. Both of them smiling, and Dusty starts to laugh. He’s laughing for the first time, and I hear the beautiful sound and drink it in—it’s relief. I want to squeeze him, and to take him to the bunk. But I can’t. It’s all too overwhelming. And I think for a moment of a startling insight about our drastic turn of fortune—the man above, Ernest, must be Poseidon himself. He has to be.

Russell once told me the story of the Old Gods. They could come down from their great mountain, even though theirs wasn’t covered in rain. And they could appear as people. They could help whomever they saw fit. It was some sort of divine justice. If you made good choices, you were taken care of. But Russell never said he believed in that—it was just how those stories went. But somehow, in this moment of happiness, I think about it, and it makes sense. I half believe in it. We’re being repaid for all the months we’ve gone without sinking to the worst levels of human behavior. We’ve kept some sense of right and wrong, and that’s the veneer, and everything it’s built around. And now, this ship, this crew, it’s all here to reward us for how we’ve endured everything—the rain, the wet, the cold, the empty driving force that compels us to live despite the hanging question that we don’t know what for. Even if we got to Leadville, what would it be for?

And I realize—surely it’s for this. A sense of family. Community. Love. Being here for each other. And all the armor that’s helped us survive, as we reach the doorstep of Leadville, is thrown out the window. We’re heading towards something other than Leadville—we’re heading toward being real live people again. I kneel down next to Voley as Russell tells Dusty he’s proud of him for sticking with us. He doesn’t go into anything more detailed than that. He just goes quiet and looks at us both. Then he reveals it, what he’s really been holding back from us. You ready to see it? he says. And we’re completely ruined because we get it—they’ve spotted land, there’s land up there and no one’s told us. We’re down here toying with the radio, and the reality of the dream is in their vision above. I can’t get mad though, I just run up the stairs past him. He laughs. So does Dusty, but he’s chasing at my heels. And Voley somehow gets there first.

There it is—the vast range of the Rocky Mountains. I don’t have to ask. Everywhere in front of us are the spiking tops and vast tabletops of the mountain range. Many of them appear high above the water, and it looks like the rain sea is much lower than it was in Wyoming. I can’t be sure until we’re closer, but I think there’s more land than I’ve seen since Indianapolis. Ernest comes out of the wheelhouse and into the rain. It’s so much colder than it’s ever been. The water slaps my face, but I don’t pay it any attention. I can’t. The view has paralyzed me more than any freezing water could. And I throw my arms around Dusty in a fit of joy, and Ernest smiles. He’s smoking his pipe. He’s a man of endless fish and tobacco. Poseidon himself. He smiles and tells us what we know—Over that pass, somewhere back there—and he points to nothing I can see—is Leadville.

Russell has had plenty of time to work over Ernest. And Ernest is sold on Leadville now too. Both of them have given up the idea that it’s not raining there, because we’re too close now for that to be true. But it doesn’t matter. The sight of these mountains is enough to squash the last doubts. The matter of the face eaters—whether they had been coming or going from Leadville, is no longer debated. It’s a downer, a remnant of the hopeless past. The lawless, reckless life of gloom. Ernest and Russell are on the same page, and they’ll have none of it anymore. Dusty turns to me, apprehensive because Russell has come up behind us. And somehow, my love of Russell has changed. And his love of me is completely clear to me for the first time: He puts his hand on my shoulder. And his other goes to Dusty’s. He understands.

I look back at him, and he’s smiling, even while I’m wrapped around Dusty. Clint and Clemmy come up. I catch Clint’s glance but look away—I can’t think of him now. I can think of nothing other than these gorgeous mountains. All of them ours.

“Here’s how it’s going to go,” says Ernest. He explains that if there is no Leadville, if it’s all bullshit, then we’ll make our own Leadville. There’re enough fish to be had in this sea. And we’ll build up a nice place to live in the mountains. Nothing will stop this man.

Alright, that’s enough, says Russell. Your turn on the boat. We’ve got to keep going. No time to slow down.

I know it’s my turn on the motor boat. I slip off of Dusty and go to the stern. I pull the rope to get it close and climb down the ladder and hop in. Then the Resilience’s motor starts up and I’m dragged along from the back, seeing only the butt of the ship. I keep her straight. Dusty appears over the rail of the stern. He wants me to pull the boat up close to the stern. He has something to tell me. The mountains start to come into wide view around the edges of the ship, spreading out like arms to welcome us. I turn the motor on and pull up. He jumps right down into the boat. We rock and almost catch a wall of water and I ask him what the hell he’s doing. But it’s obvious because he pushes into me and the wheel, grabs me hard, and presses in with his mouth. We kiss and it lasts forever and I can only think that I love him. And I’m sorry for everything, though I can’t say it out loud. I lit the spark again with my hug, but the fire had been waiting. And it’s okay now. Everything is okay.

We push against each other and I feel his body close against mine. I feel him and how warm he is, even though the rain is colder than I’ve ever felt it before. And then he’s gone—that fast, he climbs back up the boat. Unseen. I’ve let love live. And part of me still knows I will regret it. That the Gods aren’t real. That the logic we’ve always clung to made more sense than this fantasy we’ve all fallen into. A trap. Something too good to be true. I fall behind the wheel, and it’s impossible to let the negativity stay. I have a full belly, relatively dry clothes, new friends, Voley, Russell—who is my entire family—and a boy I’m in love with. And I haven’t seen a living face eater in over a week.

Chapter 14

We have the slowest, happiest dinner. I could eat fish for every day of my life. And the face eater body bait is all used up, but Ernest is recycling fish for more bait. Clemmy is the best fisher in Montana, Ernest says as we carefully suck the flavor out of every morsel. I’m sitting next to Dusty. Voley is under the table, waiting patiently for his scraps. Everything is warm under the deck. Ernest says we have enough fuel to keep the stove going for two more weeks, and that’s much more time than we’ll need. By tomorrow, he thinks, we’ll have Leadville in our sights. Russell talks more about the map, and how they’ve used it to figure out the mountain range, figure out exactly where we are in relation to the town. But there’s more to do, and they go up to the wheelhouse to discuss tomorrow’s plan in case we have find a spit to land on before reaching our real destination. Clemmy follows them up. Clint remains with us at the table, long after we’ve finished eating. It’s like he senses we want to be alone and he doesn’t like it. It’s giving him trouble, seeing us together. But he knows better than to say anything now. Not after the way Russell came at him earlier. We wait, in case he wants to talk, to say anything at all.

“Seems a bit too good to be true, doesn’t it?” he says. I want to kick him. He’s a downer, and he’s become more irritating to be around. Even Ernest seems to have noticed it. I’ve heard them arguing twice since the time Russell came at him. I almost thought I overheard something about the drug storage containers, but I can’t be sure. My paranoid imagination can still flare up, even at heaven’s doorstep. Still, I have visions of him sneaking into that stash when no one’s around and taking a pinch of it. Eating it, getting a touch of the crazed mind. Not the full thing.

He waits for us to say something. Dusty does it first: I’m going to mess with the radio. Then he just stands up and leaves the table. It’s your shift isn’t it? I ask him. I know it is and he does too. In another ten minutes, Ernest will come down and holler if he’s not out on the motorboat, keeping her in a straight line.

The shifts have become worse. They’re much harder, mainly because it’s grown so cold so suddenly—the rain and the wind. And with the wind, it’s also been the swells. The boat has to be manned every time the Resilience moves forward, otherwise it will hold her up in the sea, and knock into her. It could split her hull if we’re not careful, says Ernest.

Clint fidgets at my silent request that he leave. But he continues to stare at me with his pale blue eyes. They’re looking right through me—looking for something that I don’t have for him. I can’t tell what it is. And it’s not time to start making accusations the night before we get to Leadville. I can’t mess things up. He’ll be easier to deal with on land. That’s what I tell myself. And there always has to be something, doesn’t there? I say to myself as he still sits, refusing to take his shift. One person, one thing. Always something. And now it’s this asshole.

Clint looks at Dusty, who’s huddled on the floor by the radio. I hear it clicking on and I hear the static start up. Voley has stayed next to me, and even nudged up against me under the table. The last thing I like doing anymore is turning my back to Clint, but with Voley here, I know I’m okay. Voley’s leg is as good as it was before he was shot, just like my arm. At least we’re both acting that way. And I know he would protect me if anything happened. He would strike Clint dead in a heartbeat. And Voley licks my hand. Like he’s letting me know that what I’m thinking is accurate. Then Clint slides his chair back and sighs. He stands and heads up the stairs.

I remind Dusty how much I really don’t like him. Voley and I crowd around the radio, and Dusty just nods because he knows. I’ve told him a few times already. And Dusty doesn’t like Clint either. But we’re all stuck together. And he’s one of Ernest’s men. And Ernest is the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time. I lay my head in his lap, and then start to fall asleep. I think about how even my dreams have started to change. They are no longer the shapeless, dark nightmares of South Dakota and Wyoming and Utah. In my dreams now I see us all growing old together somehow. It’s too much to dwell on while I’m awake. I get too fearful. But in the dreams it’s all so natural and expected. Like it’s the usual way things go. And I want to go there now. The white noise carries me away.

When I wake up, Dusty’s asleep. It’s dark in the cabin because the stove is on low. It’s still hot, but no one else is down here with us. Voley is asleep nearby on one of the bunks, curled tightly into a ball. And I think I’m dreaming when I hear a voice I don’t recognize, but it’s not a dream—it’s coming through the white noise. The radio. It’s someone talking on the radio. At first, I don’t even wake Dusty up, the shock is too much. I listen, my brain on fire for every syllable:

…everything out. If you’ve come this way, we’ve moved south. Again, do not approach the area surrounding Leadville, Colorado. This is Leadville. We’re reporting one last time. The New Fort Saint Vrain Power Plant has exploded. Don’t approach the city limits. The radiation is everywhere. Repeat, radiation everywhere. We’ve moved everything out. If you’ve come this way, we’ve moved…

And then, as magically as the voice has come on, it cuts out, returning into the static from where it came. I wake up Dusty immediately and tell him and we sit patiently in silence waiting for it to come back on. He starts to get impatient, as if I’m making it up, or that I was dreaming. But I insist—I wasn’t dreaming. Someone came on and said not to go to Leadville. I’m in disbelief. We’re at the doorstep. How could someone tell us not to come in?

We have to tell Russell, I say. Listen, Dusty says. He pulls me in close. He just wants to go back to sleep. Lying next to me. Underneath the pattering deck roof above us, in the warmth. Voley opens his eyes and looks over, half concerned and half upset we’ve disrupted his peaceful sleep. But Dusty can’t tell me not to. He doesn’t have the heart because he senses something in my voice, that I must not be lying. He asks me, Are you sure you want to bring it up? You know what it will do to them.

I think about it. Russell will be upset. And he’ll probably believe me, but he won’t care. He’ll just make sure we keep heading in the same direction. I don’t know anything about radiation. I don’t know how dangerous it is. And I haven’t made up my mind if it’s important enough to bring it up. I ask Dusty what he knows.

I only know that it’s one of the main ways people used to get their power. But it was way before I was born. I’ve never seen a power plant in all my life. Only heard about them. But what about radiation? I ask. What’s so important about it? Dusty has no idea. He’s never heard it talked about. He says there was a great dam, a wonder of the world, it was said, somewhere to the south. And they got their power in the old days right from the running water itself. Like magic. But he’s never heard much about radiation. Nothing to make him pause about going to Leadville. Keep it on, I say. You hear me? Keep listening. Wait for it to come back.

Where are you going? he asks. I don’t want to tell him. He already knows anyway. I have to ask Russell about radiation—what it means. I don’t have to tell him why I’m asking. What are you going to say? Dusty calls as I ascend the stairs. I ignore him.

The rain feels like frozen daggers as I come out onto the deck. It’s freezing outside. I half want to stop and peer out into the horizon and look for ice, but it’s too dark, visibility has dropped to near nothing. And the swells that I could barely feel below deck at the center of the ship drop my gut out from under me as I enter the wheelhouse. Despite the cold and the rising wind and seas, Ernest and Russell look positively delighted to see me. By morning we’ll be on the outskirts of the town, Ernest says. Russell nods. He’s holding Ernest’s pipe. They’ve been celebrating. I think I see a bottle of liquor, but Ernest moves so he’s blocking the view. What is it Tanner? asks Russell, immediately losing his smile. He knows me too well.

I ask him what he knows about radiation. They both can tell the question has come out of left field and they want to know why I’m asking. I heard Dusty mention it, I pretend, something about how they used to get power in the old days. They either used big dams, or they used radiation. But he doesn’t know anything more about it. I thought maybe you remembered…

Russell knows I’m lying. Ernest doesn’t, and he starts to tell me a story about a place somewhere in Russia. Across the world. He says a funny word—Pripyat. An old story about a ghost town. It was the radiation that did it. He tells me all these details that don’t make sense. The only word I get is exposure. I know it all too well. And he says roentgen, and it has to do with the invisible exposure. He says you can’t see it. A silent killer. Russell sees the color draining from my face, but Ernest still hasn’t made the connection yet. He’s still buying my story—the random curiosity. Russell hands him his pipe back and tells him he needs to tell me something. Then he ushers me out into the ice rain. It stings and his words cut right through me with it. What the hell’s going on? he says. He can’t play around when we’re this close to Leadville, and I know I have to tell him. I explain everything I heard. The transmission that came through, the warning, not to go to Leadville. The radiation. Russell runs right past me, like I’m a ghost all of a sudden, right down the steps to the deck below. I chase after him.

When we enter the dry warmth, Voley and Dusty are sitting by the radio. The batteries are starting to go, Dusty says. They’re the last of them too. I know he’s not lying because he’s looked high and low for more, and even asked Ernest if there might be anymore stored somewhere. Ernest had said he didn’t think so, but that it didn’t matter because they’re no good for anything anyway. There’s nothing coming over the air. But I heard it.

Russell goes right up to the radio and says, Where did it go? Dusty looks up and says he hasn’t heard anything come back on. He’s decided to back me up, I can tell. Did you hear it too? he asks. Dusty looks at me for guidance and that’s enough for Russell. He knows it was only me who heard. We wait in painful static for another five minutes. Finally we hear footsteps coming down the stairs. It’s Ernest. He’s known all along. He was playing it cool. He doesn’t know what it is, but he knows something is wrong. He looks at us, all huddled like addicts over the white noise. Well? he says. Someone going to give me a clue?

I tell him everything I told Russell. Maybe you were dreaming, says Russell. He’s reaching now. Part of him already believes me. I wasn’t, I say. And that’s all there is to it. I can’t say anything else. I have no evidence.

Ernest looks like he’s deep in thought. But then his face lights again. He’s come to some kind of conclusion. Clemmy ran charts on the power grids, all up and down the mountain zone stations. He worked on them for a long time. I bet he knows. Ernest disappears and in another minute he comes back with Clemmy. Clemmy’s already been partially filled in, and he has a straight-faced verdict for us.

No nuclear reactors in Colorado. That’s all he says. And he’s written me off that fast. I like Clemmy, but I want to smack him right now. Because now everyone’s written me off. That fast. There was one, he suddenly goes on. Called…and he stretches out into a long, paused thought. Finally he comes back with a name that sets off a bomb in my head. He says, Fort Saint—and before he finishes, I finish the sentence with him—Vrain.

How’d you know that? Russell says, seriously alarmed for the first time since I told him what I heard. I say it’s what they said on the radio. Impossible, Clemmy chimes in. It was decommissioned a long time ago. Taken apart, all the nuclear components cut apart and buried. Trust me, I used to work—and I can’t stand it so I cut him off. I just heard it. And it’s clear. It’s the word that he forgot. Was it New Fort Saint Vrain? I ask. Clemmy looks confused. Was new a part of the name of the power plant? I repeat. No, says Clemmy. Just Fort Saint Vrain. Everything stops dead.

How much spent fuel did they bury? asks Ernest. Clemmy thinks again, and then he says he has no idea. But could they have built a new plant? Russell asks, and he’s turned to Clemmy now too for answers. I don’t see how, not with the rain, he says. But I just checked the power grids on a computer. I don’t know anything about how the plants work. What’s going on? Someone going to tell me what the broadcast really said? Clemmy asks. Ernest repeats my story for him. Impossible, he says. I heard it, I say. And then, the radio crackles loudly. My spirit jumps because the white noise has disappeared, and it’s a clear line of static now, ready for a voice to come in. Only it doesn’t. Nothing comes. And instead, the radio dies completely. No more juice.

What if it was before the rain? I ask Russell. And only he gets what I mean at first. We’ve always thought of Leadville as Ernest’s Rainless Land. The place above the waterline where it doesn’t rain. No, Russell finally says. Can’t be. And I think about the legend, and if it had been true, and the city had existed for a time without rain, they might have built another power plant. Something with this radiation in it. Something that will kill us all. We have to turn back, I say. Russell looks away from me. It’s too much to ask. He loves me, and he knows I’m serious, but with every ounce of his being he’s denying me. He lets Ernest handle it for him. Even if that’s what you heard, it has to have come from someone, right? It can’t mean that we really can’t go there, Ernest says.

“It was a fucking loop,” I say. I tell them the voice repeated itself. I’m sure it did. I heard it start over. It was no one. A phantom. A recording, nothing more. Leftover. They’ve moved south, I say again, for the third time. That’s what the recording said. No one says anything. They don’t know what to say. It’s the most absurd possibility. The only exposure we have to deal with is the wet cold rain and the mindless face eaters. Anything beyond that is unfathomable to anyone. And not at the doorstep of salvation. Russell says all that in his glare, and he means to tell me he can’t let it go. Not when we’ve come this far. But he comes up with a compromise.

Then I’ll go in first. On the boat. Everyone else will stay back, Russell says. Ernest doesn’t reply. He’s seriously considering it. Clemmy speaks up. I’ll go with you, he says. I feel only partly relieved, because I don’t want it to be Russell. Send Clint, send Clemmy, send Ernest. Not you Russell. But I don’t say it. I’m frozen inside. Tortured. It’s like Russell said used to happen with the Gods. When you weren’t in their favor. They toyed with you. Like a game of chess. Bring you so close, every time, just to screw you in the end.

Dusty’s mom and dad pop into my head. I see their faces briefly. They didn’t deserve to die. And so this is the punishment. The invisible killer. Something we can’t fight back against, and we can’t even be smart enough to avoid. We’re magnetized to Leadville, its pull is way too strong. A giant swell rocks the boat, like we’ve fallen into a trough at a bad angle. Shit, Ernest says. He rushes back up to the wheelhouse. In a moment the ship is gliding up and down like normal again, but I hear a new sound. It’s the whining of the wind that cuts through the ropes above the deck.

There’s a gale coming in, says Clemmy. He follows after Ernest. Finally, alone with Russell, I work on him.

You can’t go, let him go, I say. I plead with him. And he doesn’t say no. He knows he can’t say no that fast. But he’s decided the answer is no. That was an old recording, Tanner. Maybe a hoax to keep the face eaters away. Trust me. We’ll check it out, and then we’ll be back. And we’ll all go in together. But something in me can’t let him. I grab him. Russell they said not to go there! Let’s go south! But the old trick, the one that saved Dusty’s life, doesn’t work twice. It’s me or Leadville in my mind, but to him, I’m just panicking. A scared little girl he’s known all her life. Everything’s going to be okay, I won’t let anything happen to you, he says. Then he looks at Dusty and says, Get that thing working again, you hear me? Whatever you have to do. Dusty nods, even though he knows it’s impossible without new batteries. He starts fiddling with it again anyway. Clint starts walking down the stairs.

“What’s going on?” he asks. The room falls silent again and Clint says that it’s Russell’s turn at the motor boat. And to be careful because the waves are coming in fast and hard now. Russell nods and leaves, checking me one more time, hoping I’ve calmed down. But I haven’t. It’s not me who needs protection. It’s him. He’s the one going in there. I begin a frantic search for more batteries.

Chapter 15

In my dreams I see the snow. It’s falling like angel tears, carpeting everything in white. I haven’t seen white in forever. I’ve only seen brown and sad and gray. But this place is pure. At peace.

But there’s something dark in the distance, eating up the sky. It’s spreading too fast. Like it’s going to consume everything. And now I notice that the sky, what’s being eaten, is actually skin. The dark storm rides high. And then everything in the sky becomes skin. It turns pale, pale white skin, matching the snow beneath it.

Part of me registers that I’ve never seen snow before. How am I seeing it now? And part of me realizes I’m asleep on the bunk, rocking with waves inside the hull of the Resilience. Then the sky transforms—it’s no longer white, and it’s no longer black. It’s red. Bubbling skin. And then the snow disappears. It’s transformed too. The sky is ripping open. Bursting. Great big sores rupturing. And the rain is back. Endless rain. But it’s red. Falling from the punctured flesh. There is no healing for this sky, something in my gut tells me. No antibiotics. No cure. Just endless invisible death. It falls on me until I can’t take it anymore—it’s too hot. Hotter than anything I’ve ever known. It suffocates me, the blood. And then there’s nothing left. The white comes back. The sky is blue. I’ve never seen a blue sky, I think. The blue is gorgeous.

When I finally nudge myself out of my nightmare, there’s a face above me. Blue. But it’s not the sky of my dreams. It’s the blue of someone’s eyes. Clint. He sees that I’m awake and he presses his hand over his mouth, signaling that I should be quiet. I kick my knee up, trying to pound it into his gut, but his body’s positioned so that his weight has me pinned down. I can’t move. Then his hand moves from his own mouth to cover mine because he sees I’m going to scream. I scream into his hand, but no sound escapes. And his other hand starts to work its way down my sweater. He’s pulling it up. And then my pants. I can think of nothing but the face eaters. The madness. I bite like I’m one of them. I taste his blood but he doesn’t even flinch. He’s got my pants down and he’s finding my underwear. I can’t stop him.

Where is everyone? I scream silently. My eyes catch the room for a moment and it’s dark and empty. Not even Voley is here.

I think for a moment this is all part of the nightmare, but I know it’s not. It’s something else entirely. It’s a waking nightmare. Quiet, he says softly, groping his way inside—I bite again. Just enough to get his hand off my mouth. And I let out the scream of my life. And then, in startled confusion, his hand slams down on my face again. White light, like the snow. I’m stunned. I wait in terror for someone to save me. But maybe he’s already killed everyone else. It’s just me and him on the ship now.

I hear footsteps. Someone has heard. Clint jumps off my bunk and looks to the stairwell. It’s Ernest. What’s going on? he asks, as if he only half heard the terror in my scream. Clint begins to explain, but Ernest has figured it out all on his own by looking at our faces. I’m afraid he’s in on it, and that he’s going to come in now too to finish me off. And together they’re going to steal the last bits of my soul. He walks up, but instead of going to me he grabs Clint and slams him against the wall. Clint goes to his pocket, like he’s after a weapon, but Ernest punches him squarely in the face.

Remember that you did this to yourself, says Ernest, as he stands over top of Clint. Clint is dazed, his hand feeling his crushed jaw. And then I hear another set of footsteps. I look over, through the dim light. Clint must have turned the stove down because it’s very dark, darker than it’s ever been below deck. But I see enough to know who it is.

Russell.

Ernest just walks away. Russell walks straight for Clint, glancing at me just for a moment to confirm his suspicion. He punches Clint in the face, and then again. I see blood running down from Clint’s eye. And then Russell yanks him to his feet and throws him at the stairs. Up! screams Russell. His foot nails into Clint’s back. Clint stumbles up the stairs. The only other thing I hear is a splash. And that’s it. I lie in terror, waiting for someone to come back to me.

Russell returns. I don’t want to talk about it, and he knows this. He just sits by my bed. Finally, after almost an hour, when I think he’s starting to fall asleep, I say something, just so I know he won’t fall asleep on me. Please don’t go there tomorrow, I say. He perks up just for a moment. He wipes the tear off my cheek in time to catch the next one coming from my other eye. It all starts to come out. Then he holds me tight and says nothing. We cling to each other. The last strips of the veneer.

When I wake up in the morning, Russell’s gone. Dusty and Voley are sitting by the side of my bed, both of them asleep. They’ve been keeping me company all night. I sit up, trying to make sense of everything that happened last night, but I’m so exhausted that I can’t. And I don’t want to.

Ernest suddenly appears at the top of the stairs. But something’s wrong because he disappears back up the moment he sees I’m awake and looking at him. I rush up out of bed, because I know he’s avoiding me, and didn’t mean for me to see him. I know what he’s hiding.

I accidentally kick Voley and he yelps as I jolt out of the bed. Sorry, I mutter, and Dusty’s awake. Tanner, he says softly. Tanner, he shouts again. But I’m gone. I run up the stairs and out into the blurry gray of daytime. Freezing razors slice me. The sea is furious. All around us are mountains. They’ve got us trapped in. More land than I’ve seen since I was little. And it’s just what I feared.

The motorboat is already gone, a disappearing dot heading out into the rain sea between two tables of mountain. Russell! I yell. I do it over and over until it hurts to breathe in the cold air. Ernest walks over to me but doesn’t say anything. Russell! I keep crying. He’s too far away to hear me.

The tears all come again. They’re warm at first but the wind strips them of that in an instant. Ernest stands by me for an eternity as I watch the boat disappear altogether. I hear Dusty and Voley coming up the steps behind me. Ernest finally says something.

They’ll be back before lunchtime.

But it’s strange. It’s the most sure thing I’ve ever known all my life. They won’t be back. And I’ll never see him again.

CONTINUED IN THE SNOW – PART 1

AUTHOR’S MESSAGE TO THE READER

Thanks for reading The Rain. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it, and that you check out my other stories. It would mean a great deal to me if you reviewed this story on Amazon. Reviews are the most important way indie authors like myself find readers. Sign up for the MAILING LIST to know when the next book comes out.

I write in horror, science-fiction, dystopian, and fantasy genres. Check out my ALL MY BOOKS.

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Table of Contents

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Part 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part 3

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part 4

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part 5

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

AUTHOR’S MESSAGE TO THE READER