Michael Smith - Rivers

“I ain’t staying here,” Evan said to everyone. “Simple as that.”

“Me neither,” said Kris.

“Fine.”

“Thank God,” Cohen said as the thunder gave a long, bellowing roar.

“There ain’t nothing to thank Him for yet,” Nadine said with a cautious air. “But we’d all better hope there is before it’s over with.”

“Look down there,” Mariposa said and she pointed east along the highway. Far off in the distance, there was a white dot.

“What is it?” Evan said.

“A headlight. Gotta be,” said Kris. “Can we please get the hell outta here?”

“Go get in,” Cohen said and the women hurried back to the vehicles, but Cohen grabbed Evan by the coat and said, “Come with me.” Across the highway were two gas stations and though there was likely no chance, Cohen didn’t want to leave without finding out.

“Run over to that one and try every pump,” he said to Evan. Evan hurried across the road. The only things left standing at the stations were the pumps, as the buildings that once sold cold beer and lotto tickets and wooden-tipped cigars were long gone. Cohen had eight pumps to check and there was nothing. Evan had six and there was nothing. They ran back to the vehicles. Cohen looked east and the white dot remained. He told Evan to keep his headlights off. No way they can see us if we don’t show ourselves. Then he told Nadine the same thing and he hurried to the Jeep. Mariposa had it cranked and he put it into first gear.

It was several miles east to Highway 49 and impossible to do anything but drive methodically against the weather and around the debris. The makeshift cover did little to protect Cohen and Mariposa and they were both drenched. She had brought her knees up to her chest and made herself a ball that her big coat could cover and Cohen leaned forward as if the slight difference in his posture might make things more visible. It’d be nice to have the damn windshield, he almost said to Mariposa but he’d already made one comment about their last ride together and decided to let that be. He had told her to keep watch on the white dot ahead, and sometimes it was there and sometimes not, and she reported when it came and went.

At Highway 49 the entire intersection was underwater. The harbor, once home to a battleship that crawled with elementary school children and sightseers, had pushed inland, and a small lake covered the intersection and the highway had become a canal. They had to backtrack through the crumbled remains of downtown Gulfport, the fallen historical buildings and the landmarks and the bumpy stone-paved streets. They finally made their way back around to 49 and turned north.

Away from the beachfront and old downtown were miles and miles of concrete. Vast, empty parking lots in front of superstores without their glass doors, busted by bricks or tire irons or crowbars. Strip malls and bank branches. Restaurants and gas stations. An abundance of pawnshops and liquor stores and video stores for adults only, the only kinds of stores that had prospered in the months leading up to the declaration of the Line. Here and there metal frames were exposed through roofs and telephone and electrical poles had crashed across storefronts and across the six lanes. Trash everywhere. Graffiti everywhere. Abandoned cars on the roadsides and in the parking lots. Giant steel poles that supported billboards stood straight without the advertisements. An abandoned National Guard outpost was situated in the parking lot between two strip malls, cinder-block painted black, thick glass riddled with bullet holes, a head-high chain-link fence with barbed wire wrapping the top. One of many like it that had been erected across the coastal region in the year before the declaration of the Line.

It was vigilant driving. As if some elaborate obstacle course had been set up for a school of stunt drivers. Cohen led, weaving around bigger traps, bouncing over smaller ones, one eye on what was in the road and one eye everywhere else. He was expecting to see Charlie’s truck or the men who had apparently ambushed it, though he had no idea what to do if either appeared.

It took over half an hour to reach the north side of Gulfport and the thunderstorm was heavy. Six lanes became four. Corporate concrete gave way to locally owned concrete. Fewer stores and more apartment buildings that stood like very old men with their third and fourth floors missing. Up ahead Cohen saw something broad and white blocking the road and it was two trailers of eighteen-wheelers, end to end, turned on their sides. Cohen pulled up to them. There was room to get around on either side but he noticed one of the back doors lying open. The trucks pulled up behind him and stopped.

“What are you doing?” Mariposa yelled, no other way to communicate now.

He couldn’t help but think of her, her splintered head in his lap, underneath a rig much like this one.

“Cohen?” she said and she reached over and grabbed his arm.

He shook his head and looked at her and said, “I gotta see what’s in there.”

He climbed out and waved to the others to wait and he bent over and walked through the storm. He held his hand on the pistol inside his coat as he moved toward the back end of the trailer, where the open door was a rectangle of dark. But he didn’t go any farther. Even through the driving rain and wind, he could smell whatever was inside so he hurried back to the Jeep and they drove around. A half mile up the road, Mariposa pointed and said, “Look right there.”

It was a truck on the roadside. The truck that the other women had driven away in as soon as Aggie had been tied up. The back window had been busted out and both doors were open and it sat on cinder blocks, the four tires gone. Cohen paused but didn’t fully stop and Mariposa said, “What do you think that smell was?”

“Something that’s been in there a while,” he said.

Evan honked and waved and Cohen stopped. Evan pulled up beside him and said, “We gotta get out of this storm. The damn truck is wobbling and I don’t wanna be sitting in it no more.”

“All right,” Cohen answered. “We’ll find a spot to pull over. Backside of one of these buildings somewhere. Follow close.”

Most of the superstores were behind them and there wasn’t room to hide behind the smaller buildings and gas stations leading out of town, but when they reached the outer limits of Gulfport, there remained, mostly intact, a larger than usual strip mall that had housed a supermarket on one end and a furniture outlet on the other end. In between was what looked like a kid’s store, with the faded face of a giraffe on the facade. Cohen pulled into the parking lot and they followed him. He told Evan and Nadine to wait a minute and then he drove up close to the storefronts, looking in the windows and doors. Then he moved behind and there were no other vehicles there. The metal door of a loading bay was raised at the back end of the grocery store and he stopped and climbed the steps and he looked in and around. Wooden pallets and animal droppings scattered across the concrete floor and little else. No sign of people. He came back out and drove the Jeep to the front and told them it was all right. They followed him to the back of the grocery store and parked close to the building.

The women and the baby and Brisco got out of the weather and Evan and Cohen unloaded the gas stove and pots and cans of food. Cohen grabbed a bag of clothes as he and Mariposa were soaked through.

“Why don’t you leave that Jeep and get in with us?” Evan asked as they stood in the stockroom of the grocery store. Their voices echoed some in the big empty space.

“Because me and that Jeep been through it and wherever I go, it goes.”

“You’re gonna drown driving it.”