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

“Please,” he said, and tugged at her arm. “Mama?”

“I just want to go home,” she wept.

Her body too heavy, he too weak. Still, he worked his arm under hers. “Please, get up. Put the gun away. You’re scaring me.”

“Scaring you?” She laughed. “You know what happens when we die, right?”

He cringed as he pulled her.

“We turn into them ,” she spat. Her damp hair clung to her face. “Like scorched earth and starvation isn’t bad enough. Or dying of thirst.”

His hands slipped and he fell backward, landing in a stagnant puddle.

“One bullet,” she said, crying as she stared at the pistol. “All this way and only one bullet left. Guess we’ll just have to deal with the cards we’re dealt.”

“Cards? Mama? Please, don’t leave me.”

She forced a crazy smile. Tears rimmed her eyes.

“Happy name day, kiddo,” she said wearily. “Happy New Year. Year five. Five .” She sobbed as she lifted the pistol. “I can’t. Not anymore. So tired.”

“Mama?”

She glanced up, angry, cheeks reddening. “What?” she barked. “What do you need now, Rennie? Do you need me to—”

“The rain.”

“Rain? Do you have any idea what—”

He pointed to the doorway. “It’s stopped, Mama.”

Pain.

Warm blood trickled down the inside of her thigh as she stumbled down the roadway, sun beating on her shoulders and neck, vision blurry, listening to footsteps trailing behind her. Every stride down the highway was harder than the last as they maneuvered around the rusted vehicles. Her limp, bad since Paris, had turned her left foot into a useless stump.

Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, step.

The footfalls behind Jeanie were Death’s. The cowled bitch had been following, waiting for Jeanie to pause, stop, and peek over her shoulder. If she did, if she looked, she was fucked. Death would peel her hood back, revealing a white skull, a skeletal hand would reach out, and Jeanie would float above the highway, away from her body, and—

Pain.

Gritting her teeth, she staggered, barely able to keep her footing. Refusing to give Death any attention, she focused on the road’s cracked surface. On her tennis shoes, and on the cars, skulls and skeletons waiting inside the cabs. Children more often than not. The babes were the worst. Still strapped in car seats. Made her shudder and recall the catacombs in Paris, what she had done in desperation to Rennie, to keep them both alive. She had long suspected something unnatural happened. Uncanny, his ability to hide. Almost like—

Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, pain .

She fell to one knee and her breath went out in a rush. At impact, hot blood poured from her wound and vision went dark at the edges. The sun cooked her back.

How did I get here? And where the hell is—

Antequera.

They had discovered the village, she and Rennie, from the highway outside of town, staring at buildings through her binoculars, starving and beyond thirsty. For the first time they had drunk their own urine that morning, pissing into a T-shirt and squeezing the liquid into their mouths. No food. No water. One bullet.

She remembered standing on the outskirts of Antequera, glancing at the windows, feeling no moribund toying with her thoughts, wondering if the town held a gas station or a convenience store, and when a single pop came out of nowhere, Jeanie sighed and dropped.

They shouted, their Spanish insults unintelligible, yet their meaning clear. Threats and a gunshot. She and the boy were not wanted.

Moving on.

Grimacing, she used pain to focus and wobbled to her feet, refusing to give in. She swayed, nearly toppled, bracing on a guardrail, frowning as she realized she no longer held her backpack. When, she wondered, did she lose their provisions?

Two tin cups, a backpacking stove, their last white gas canister, and her map. Always about the map. At least Rennie knows Andalucía’s highways by heart. But without the map, we may as well lie down and—

She stumbled down the road’s shoulder. From her buttock, the gunshot’s exit wound pounded—large, too, which meant the bastards had hollowed out their tips. When she grew strong enough, when she had healed, she planned to head back there and—

Wait. Rennie? Where’s Rennie?

As she paused, Death leaned close and exhaled—an awful, empty breeze on the back of her neck—Jeanie gasped and doubled her pace.

Slide-slide, step. Slide-slide, step.

Stay awake, damn it. Stay—

“Mom?”

Jeanie smiled when she spotted him, standing down the road. She tried not to imagine what a vision she must be, all bloody and filthy, crazy-eyed and barely able to walk. Rennie, her little boy, maybe the last boy, standing between two overturned trucks, his hazel eyes so concerned, his matted brown hair needing a comb. Round face so pale. When she realized he stood before a roadblock, she frowned. Who would place a roadblock way out here, in the middle of nowhere, where nothing but sunlight held court? Who would stop anyone from—

Pain.

This time he caught her. All of five, groaning against her weight, his head against her chest, pushing at her, refusing to let her fall.

“Mama?”

A smile so innocent, missing his first tooth, fallen out a week ago. Born to such a world, his world. She marveled at the sight of him.

“A town, Mama,” he said, and pointed. “Can you read the sign? Mama?”

She blinked, realized they stood at an off-ramp, and squinted at the road sign. Her legs trembled as he tried to right her. Her boy. She loved him so much.

His world. A terrible place to grow up.

“Mama? What does it say?”

She shook her head and blinked at the white sign. A blue roundabout circumnavigating a town with different highways as little arrows, sprouting away. They stood on the A367 highway. Another exited opposite the city, the A374, west toward Sevilla. The A397 pointed south to Málaga. One arrow headed into town.

Ronda.

Death reached out, tickled her ear, and blood rushed from the wound, drenching her leg.

“Go,” she commanded Rennie. “Leave me.”

As she began her ragged, stumbling turn toward Death, a small hand slid into hers. “Mama? Let me help. I think I hear a bell.”

Together, they took the off-ramp. Limping, dependent on a five-year-old to walk, leaving the broken highway behind and heading into the small Spanish town. As she stumbled, the pain faded away, consciousness slipped, and she realized she could just make out the ringing of a bell in the distance, light, airy. Bong, bong.

“Is that for us?”

She grunted.

“You and me, Mama. Right?” His voice broke. “Always?”

“Moving on,” she muttered, and tumbled, the ground rushing up to meet her. As she fell, she closed her eyes and smiled, awaiting impact. She had made it.

For him.

Ren smirked as he stared into the stairwell, schooled in disappearing into the shadows. The crowbar clanged on the sidewalk as he gripped the security gate and pulled. Metal screeched while the gap spread, protesting years of inactivity. Letting go, he stepped into the light and elbowed his friend in the ribs, hard enough to draw a grunt.

“You first.”

“No way.”