Michael Smith - Rivers

That had been the last time she had seen anybody from her family, the buses driving in different directions, and she had been pushed onto one, separated from anyone that she knew. The woman at the high school gym where they were delivered five hours later told her that it’d take some time but we’ll find them but Mariposa could tell by the sound of her voice that there were too many people asking the same question.

She felt it again now. Heard the screams and the gunfire and the roar of a confused, desperate crowd.

Cohen leaned on the steering wheel and interrupted her thoughts.

“What?” she asked.

“I ain’t real enthusiastic about Charlie with the rain and the sky looking the way they look.”

They drove carefully, passing the fallen neighborhoods, navigating the telephone poles and roofs and debris scattered across the four-lane running parallel to the water. They moved on until they came to the Grand Casino parking lot, and when Cohen saw what was there, he stopped. He told Mariposa to get out and go and tell them to back up.

“You see something?” she asked.

“We’re not turning in here. Just go tell them.”

She got out and did as he’d asked and returned to the Jeep. The vehicles backed up until Cohen waved and then he stopped. He got out and called for Evan.

“What is it?” Evan asked.

“Something your little brother doesn’t need to see. Something nobody needs to see. Keep everybody back here.”

“But what is it?”

“A bunch of bodies.”

“Dammit. New ones?”

“It looks like it from here. Keep everybody where they are.”

Evan walked back to the trucks. Cohen took one of the pistols out of his coat pocket and he started walking toward the parking lot and Mariposa came up beside him.

“Go on back there with them,” he said.

“I don’t want to,” she answered.

“You don’t want to come up here, either.”

“I wanna see.”

He stopped arguing and walked on and they crossed the front lawn of the Grand Casino. There were giant holes here and there in the lawn with big piles of dirt next to them. One palm tree stood though several had fallen and a thick black electrical wire weaved across the lawn like a sleeping snake. They walked to the circular driveway where limousines once delivered well-dressed patrons and then they came to the parking lot where the bodies lay in awkward positions like castaway dolls.

It had been a massacre. Bodies scattered across asphalt. Mariposa gasped and Cohen said stand here and he moved out among them. He had seen some of them before at Charlie’s truck. There was the fat man with the poker chips. Next to him lay the old man with the sign, now splattered in dark red. Twenty or so bodies in all, some of them with closed eyes, others with open eyes staring at the sky and taking in the rain. The blood had washed from them and out into wide circles on the pavement, thin rain-mixed blood that spread in abstract, almost artful shapes. He noticed the holes in their chests and arms and heads. The bewildered looks on some of their faces as if they had posed for a sudden, brutal death. Then separated from these men were two of Charlie’s muscle, barrel-chested men in their black shirts and black pants, their strong arms and thick thighs no longer the sign of strength. Their weapons were gone and their laced black boots taken from their feet. Cohen stepped over them. Around them.

He stopped and looked up and down the road. All gray and getting darker and the rain kept anything from appearing clearly.

Thunder roared across the choppy Gulf waters and the lightning remained as the wind was beginning to push the waves. He looked again at the parking lot where the bodies lay and he realized that there were very willing and capable men out there. Probably not far away. Maybe even watching. Men who would take whatever they found from whoever had it and it seemed that everyone had already had enough of that.

“You know any of them?” Mariposa asked.

“I’ve seen most. Those two in the black over there are Charlie’s. Some of these others were Charlie’s customers.”

“Rain makes it look like they’re still bleeding. Are they?”

Cohen shook his head. “Nah. That part’s over.”

“We better go,” she said and her eyes seemed nervous. “I don’t like this.”

“I know.”

There wasn’t enough gasoline to get to the Line. Maybe not enough gasoline to get halfway to the Line, depending on what roads and bridges were available. He looked across the street and counted one, two skeletons of gas stations. He looked back in the direction they had come from and he wondered how many miles had been lost in the gasoline used to burn the trailers.

Nadine and Evan walked up and Nadine said, “I told Kris to stay in the truck with the baby and Brisco. She’s a little freaked out over this shit.”

“So am I,” Evan said.

“How many is it?”

“A lot,” Mariposa said. “I wouldn’t walk over there.”

“I ain’t walking over there. I can see it from right here. Aggie and Ava are the only dead people I ever laid eyes on up close and that’s how I plan to keep it.”

There was more thunder and more lightning and they were hunched underneath their hoods, looking at one another with bent necks. A truck door slammed and Kris came toward them.

“Where’s the baby?” Nadine asked.

“Asleep on the seat,” she said. “So I’m guessing no gas.”

“No gas. No nothing. I’d siphon the gas for the trucks together if I had something to siphon with, but I don’t.”

“Well, I don’t like standing here. It’s a goshdamn graveyard,” Kris said.

“We better hide out,” Nadine said. “We got food and stuff. We can wait.”

“Hide out and wait for what?” Evan asked.

“Hell I don’t know but there’s plenty of vacancy. All we need is half a hotel. Not even half. A quarter.”

“I ain’t waiting down here no longer,” said Kris. “My stomach hurts. My back hurts. My legs hurt.”

“Hiding out doesn’t get us gasoline,” Cohen said and then he motioned toward the sky. “And you all know what’s coming.”

“Hiding don’t get us gas but it don’t get us killed by whoever did that. And there ain’t been a storm yet to lift and carry this bunch.”

“We didn’t leave out there to go hide somewhere else,” Kris said. “We left to get back to the world.”

“Won’t do no good if we ain’t alive when we get there,” Nadine answered.

“You don’t know we won’t be.”

“You don’t, neither.”

“Don’t nobody know,” said Evan. “But I got the keys to one truck and I ain’t hiding out and waiting on a miracle.”

“Me neither,” said Kris.

“You ain’t got the keys,” Nadine said and she reached into her pocket and pulled out the keys to the truck she and Kris were riding in.

“That ain’t yours,” Kris said. “It’s ours.”

“I know whose it is. But my half says we hole up for a little while.”

“My half don’t want to have a baby in the middle of goddamn nowhere.” The two women had inched closer to one another as they spoke, Nadine a head taller than Kris and the fingers cut off from her gloves and she looked like something that might hide in an alley and jump on you. But Kris, in all her roundness, bellied up to the taller woman and she squeezed her hands in tight, hard fists.

“I guess you forgot about the baby,” Mariposa said.

“I ain’t forgot about nothing.”

“It’s gotta see a doctor or somebody.”

“I know what it needs.”

“Not this,” Evan said.

The thunder came again and momentarily silenced them. They all looked at one another. Looked around at the trucks. Looked around at the weather.