SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Just like when we play,” she said, huffing. “Blank slate, okay? No feelings.”

She set him on the gravel of an open-air square—Court of the Lions—glancing about as swallows flitted above. “I’ll draw it away,” she explained, winded as she placed her heavy knife onto his palm. “Get in that room and go silent, play hide-and-seek. Can you? For me?”

Tears rimmed his lids as she removed the pistol from her belt. Hands quivering as she checked the clip. The way she kept glancing at the tiled roofs frightened him. She noticed his tears and bent over. “Quiet as a mouse in the grass at night. I need to know you can.”

He stared at the gun. The weapon scared him more than the blade, but not as much as the moribund. The undying ones often called to him as he slept, with their dreams of insatiable hunger. He sensed them while passing buildings at day, their thoughts like tendrils seeking emotion, reaching out from their hiding places. Unquenchable. Thankfully unable to brave the streets when the sun shined.

“Hey!” She gripped his shoulders roughly. “Can you?”

He bit his lip. “I—I’ll try.”

“Good. It’ll have no idea you’re there. It’ll hunt me. Okay? Go inside and hide.”

She kissed his forehead and shooed him toward the room. He stared as she rushed around the court’s central basin, the slapping of her sneakers dying away as she slipped beneath the arches and disappeared.

The night sky opened, an emptiness threatening to swallow him whole. He backed into the low-ceilinged chamber, passing geometric patterns woven into the threshold—one tick, two—set the knife down, and curled into a ball beneath the ring of lion statues, hugged his knees, and shut his eyes. Surrounded by marble, his tears turned cold on his cheeks. Hers, the only voice he knew.

Silent as a mouse .

He forced himself to slide deeper into the shadows. Went inward and cleared his mind, purging all thought as she had asked. Anything, for Jeanie.

Blank slate. They’ll never know you’re there.

Rennie had spent one birthday and nearly another here, in the Red Castle, where she told him emirs had once kept their harems and sultans ruled. The cities from before were mostly forgotten. Ruined places passed on the highways, stories told to him at bedtime—Nantes, Toulouse, Madrid. Only her. Jeanie. Her voice. Her warmth.

This was his world, she often told him. Her world—the Seattle across the ocean—died long ago. Her America, where all had been green and happy and grand, with shining buildings reaching to the heavens, moving cars and bustling traffic, schools and laughter, football games, Internet and barbecues. Before the fires, the blizzard, and the undying.

Pulling into a tighter ball, he briefly remembered the warmth of her lips on his forehead. Quickly, he pressed the memory aside, to slip away, into darkness. He went cold, blank slate, like she asked. Close down. Feel nothing.

Go silent .

Go dead.

Rennie’s eyes shot open at the sound of wheezing in the doorway. Although he had been taught to wait, to feel her touch before stirring, he risked a peek.

A figure panted in the threshold, its shoulders rising and falling in the gloom. From it, he sensed nothing. A terrible emptiness. No emotion. No…

“Mama?” he asked, his voice quaking.

“Thank God,” she gasped, and stepped forward. Slick gore covered her face and shoulders. Her T-shirt had been ripped in half, exposing a shoulder and a stained bra. Gun shaking in one hand, she reached out with the other to pull him up. She led them quickly toward the gardens, fingers entwined. “We go,” she said, breathless. “Now.”

As they hurried through the courtyards, she limped. Thrilled she had returned, he said nothing as they reached the gardens, fearful of upsetting her. She had not been angry with him for a long time. Their time in the Alhambra had made her softer. He loved it when they played hide-and-seek in the palace’s halls and chambers, tag in the Palace of Carlos V.

Inside their small room she wiped his face clean, then hers, lit a candle, and knelt, packing quickly. Two sleeping bags lay on a mattress covered with books, beside a tiny table and desk. He cried as he watched her. There wasn’t enough space in their backpacks for all of his toys. He did not want to leave them. Who would protect them, once he had gone?

“The thing wasn’t a loner,” she told him. “They’ll know where we are. More will follow.”

Eventually, she stopped rolling her sleeping bag and inhaled deeply. Her hands shook. “The Alhambra is not safe. Granada is not safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he blubbered.

“Good.”

“Where will we go?”

She shed her shirt, donned another, and kept packing. In the candlelight, deep scratches scored her back, red stains blossoming in her fresh blouse. “Farther into Spain. We’ll find a highway and head south like before. Someplace warmer. Someplace they don’t like. A small town. As defendable as the Alhambra and with clean water.”

“But I don’t want to leave!” he blurted.

“We’ll find someplace safe, okay? Somewhere you can—”

Her hands fell onto her lap and she cried, an uncontrolled sobbing that rattled her body, scaring him. Frightened, he went to her, arms out, hugging her like she would him.

“So sorry,” she muttered. “My fault.”

After a few moments, she squeezed back. “We’ll find a town with a bullring,” she said, and smoothed his shoulder-length hair. “You’ll like that. They have them in southern Spain. In Andalucía.”

“A bullring? Like in my book? The bull who won’t fight? The one who smells flowers?”

In the flickering light, she smiled warmly and wiped away his tears. “Like Ferdinand, yes. But you’re going to have to listen until we get there, okay? Keep listening until we find a new home. You’ll have to be patient. Think you can do that?”

He nodded and knelt, wanting to make her happy, filling his small pack with his clothes. “Will I see a bull?”

She placed a hand on his small shoulder and squeezed. Her flesh stuck to his, coated in moribund blood. “We’ll keep walking. Look for survivors. Like we always do.”

“Moving on?”

Her smile, sweet. Even with sadness in her gaze. “Yes, Rennie. On and on.”

After securing the door, she pulled her small watercolor painting from the wall, the old one of Paris’s Left Bank, with its sad clown dancing before the Seine, and slid the frayed canvas into her bag.

Grabbing the candle, she reached for her tattered tour book of Spain. She always kept it within arm’s reach, and studied its maps often. She loved books. He did, too. Loved listening to her voice when she read to him at night.

“Sleep now,” she said, and leaned back. “We have a few hours until dawn. At the first hint of sun I’ll wake you.”

“You and me?”

She smiled as she set the pistol on her lap. “Always. Now get some rest, kiddo. We have a lot of walking ahead of us.”

Parched and beaten by the midday sun, Jeanie paused on the cracked highway and gripped Rennie’s shoulder harder than she should have. More black silt blew in a gust before settling on the road. With each step she grew more anxious about their dwindling water supply—they were down to two bottles—and worried over how badly she had miscalculated the number of miles between towns.

Epic fail , she thought. My fault.

They had ambled down the southbound lanes of the A45 for a day and a half, after their bicycle’s tires gave out on the A92. Rennie liked bike travel better—as Jeanie pedaled he rode on the pannier, gripping her waist, smiling into the wind. Now two toes poked from his right tennis shoe. The left one was frayed badly at the tip and heel, close to losing its battle.