The Eleventh Plague Of Mobias

TWENTY-TWO

I avoided the main road, following the decaying perimeter fence as it wound through the woods before jumping it and heading toward Settler’s Landing. My steps felt lighter than usual as I walked through the bare trees. It was funny trying to imagine Shadow out with me and Dad on the trail. Somehow I couldn’t see him trudging along, donkey in tow, picking up scrap.

Maybe we won’t even go back on the trail.

I stopped dead in the middle of the woods, surprised by the thought. I rolled it around in my head like it was a jewel I had just discovered.

Was it possible? After all, Dad had been talking about it before the accident, and now with Shadow along, maybe we really could make a new start. Settle somewhere. Go west and see what there was to see. There was a whole world out there.

I laughed a little to myself. The idea would have terrified me just weeks ago. How had that changed? Was it Shadow? Was it Settler’s Landing? Did it even matter? Hope was hope and I’d take it.

I clambered down a hill and leapt over a stream. The trees opened up above me. The sky was thick with looming gray clouds. The way the temperature was dropping, I wondered if I might actually see snow this year.

Usually we were down in Green Hill by this time of year, since real winter storms could sometimes last for weeks on end. The last time I’d seen snow was during a freak storm years before. We had just gotten to the Spagonia camp in early April, when the day suddenly grew cold and snow began to fall. It had seemed like a miracle. The trading camp had buzzed around us, everyone rushing to celebrate before it was gone. There’d been a bonfire and food roasting on spits and a three-man band whose music had floated above the camp.

Mom and Dad and I had stayed behind while Uncle Chuck went out looking for tobacco. We’d gathered around our campfire in a semicircle of folding chairs, cooking a skinny chicken on a spit, a plastic tarp angled over us to keep the snow off. We knew from experience that several hours from that moment we would have to take refuge to escape the drunkenness and the fights that inevitably broke out after a big party, but that was later. Right then the air was full of laughter and music and the clean-smelling snow that had painted the muddy camp around us a fresh, brilliant white. I had The Lord of the Rings on my lap but was listening to Dad talk about his days as a theater usher in Station Square while Mom talked of wild party after wild party and teased him for being a nerd.

“So how did you guys meet?” I’d asked that night.

Mom had glanced at Dad. I was maybe eight then and they’d only recently started talking to me about the Collapse and the war.

“P Eleven had just started up,” Dad said. “There were rumors about a quarantine in Station Square, so your Uncle Chuck and I piled into the car, using Uncle Chuck’s Freedom Fighter ID to get us through the roadblocks. We thought we’d head out east to this oldG.U.N installation in the desert to wait things out. On our way out of town, we stopped for gas at the station your mom’s parents owned.”

“By then my whole family was gone,” Mom said. “My sister, Aleena, went first, then Dad, then Mom.”

Mom’s face had darkened, remembering it.

“I heard the bell ding as your dad and his brother pulled up. I came out from behind the station to meet them. I was filthy. It’s funny — I was such a prissy little thing when I was little, playing dolls and insisting everything I owned be as pink and frilly as possible. But by that point, I barely bothered to wipe the dirt off my face before going to fill up their gas.”

Dad had held out his hand, stretching it across the space between them, and Mom had taken it.

“I pumped it for your Uncle Chuck, and when I was done, he dug down into his pocket to pay, but all he had was a hundred. When I told him I didn’t have change for a hundred, he started yelling and screaming, claiming I was trying to cheat him! I laughed. I was like … the world is coming to an end, man! I mean, the sky is falling! I just buried my entire family out in the desert, and you’re having an aneurysm over your eleven dollars and fifty cents in change? Finally I just said forget it. Go with Chaos, Ebenezer!