Nathan Yocum - The Zona

“Lead, my name is Lead.” Lead leaned his shoulder against the wall and forced his legs to hold up his body.

Terence wrapped the remaining steaks in plastic bags and stuffed them into a knapsack. He pilfered a jar of water from the pantry and a trench coat from the bedroom.

“We’re going to the South Storm Boarder.” Terence said, throwing the coat to Lead.

Lead heard the words but did not comprehend them. His concentration was dedicated to holding his body up against the cabin wall. Lead draped the trench coat over his shoulders and pulled his arms through the sleeves. Terence looped Lead’s arm around his neck and pulled him away from the wall. The two hobbled into the furnace heat of the desert.

Lead’s mind took him to a blissful place away from reality. He saw everything from afar, detached, floating in light winds while his body plodded along.

The sun shone warm. Distant lines of smoke gave proof of far away domiciles. Terence dragged Lead to the dry banks of the Colorado River. The river waters cut through the desert brush and layers of baked clay and mud. Terence dropped Lead onto the riverbed clay. He sat and caught his wind and scanned the riverbank for floatable logs.

Lead’s body burned and ached with fever. The wound in his shoulder was puckered and runny. Red lines crawled across his chest, reaching for his heart like demon’s fingers. The coolness of wet clay brought Lead back to reality.

“Where are we going?” He whispered.

“I know a healer not far from here. You need medicine.” Terence held his hand to Lead. “The water’s close.”

Lead took the hand and regained his feet. They stumbled to the river’s edge. The waters shown yellow from shallow mud and the sky reflected like filthy glass. Sun bleached logs stood like teeth and marked high tides lines of favorable days.

Terence tied a rawhide loop around one of the driftwood logs and rolled it into the current. He tied his knapsack to a branch on the dry side and the two waded in. Terence guided Lead’s arm through the hoop.

“Don’t let go of the log,” Terence said.

Terence and Lead drifted towards the deep center of the river. The water was blood warm; it cleansed Lead’s skin and soothed his wound. The edges of Lead’s trench coat floated around him. His mind envisioned fish nipping at his boots.

The two floated south with the current. They passed through a canyon cut by older, stronger waters and glaciers before that. Lead stared at the canyon’s edge, at the silhouettes of boulders and brush. A mountain goat looked down at him, strong and unmoving.

“They’re beautiful because they can live on anything.” Terence said, looking at the same creature. “They lived here before we did, they’ll be here when we’re gone.”

Lead nodded off, the infection tapped his strength. Warm waters embraced him. He awoke coughing and sputtering, having dipped too low. The sun’s placement showed the time to be late afternoon. Terence floated next to him, both hands holding his knapsack over the water.

“Fall asleep again under water and you’ll wake in the Lord’s arms.” Terence said with grin.

“What do you know of the Lord?” Lead said. “You’re a Church deserter. The Church gave you Cain’s Mark. You are a sinner.”

Terence contemplated. The river current crackled. Stunted trees and shrubs at the river’s edge nodded with wind.

“Yes, but my sin wasn’t against God. My sin was against the Church. Church and God ain’t the same thing. From what I know, God’s perfect. The Church makes mistakes.” Terence kicked his feet to straighten the log in the current. “God’s about order, Church is about power, as best as I can figure, to be against one is not to be against the other.”

One of his Lead’s boots scraped against a river stone. He put his other arm through the rawhide loop.

“The word of God comes through the Church. If the Church were wrong, God would smite the Church and find a new hand to do his will,” Lead said.

Terence laughed. “By God! The great contradiction, if the Church is wrong, then God would fix the Church, yeah? But what about free will? God granted us free will; or rather we took free will when we ate from the Tree of Knowledge.”

“How does that fit?” Lead asked.

“Let me ask you, does Jesus sit on God’s right hand?” Terence asked.

“Yes.” Lead replied.

“And what does he do there?” Terence asked.

“He judges the quick and the dead.” Lead said.

“So Jesus, our Lord, judges us when we die, he looks back upon our lives and determines if we are worthy of the glorious afterlife, correct?”

“Yes.”

“But, according to the Church, if a person does wrong, the Lord will intervene through the Church, right?”

“Yes.” Lead replied.

Lead looked away from Terence, back to the canyon walls.

“So we’ve established that God and Jesus judge us for our actions and we’ve established that God interferes with our actions through the Church if we do wrong. So let me ask you, Preacher, why does Jesus judge the quick and the dead if he and his father step in and alter the bad behavior of man?”

“I don’t understand,” Lead said.

“If the Church is right in correcting our actions through the will of God, then why do God and Jesus still judge us in the afterlife? If we are properly controlled and checked by our Lord through the Church, then entrance into heaven should be assured without judgment, right?”

Lead was silent.

“The way I see it, they both can’t be right. Bible says you’ll be judged in the afterlife based on what you do in this life. The Church says its actions are right because God sanctions them and if God didn’t he’d smite them dead. But if God corrected every little wrong we committed in this life, he and his son would have nothing to judge later on.”

Lead looked back to Terence, the old man’s argument made his fearful.

“The Book says the Anti-Christ will speak of blasphemes,” Lead said.

“The Book says a lot of things, but if I were the Anti-Christ I sure as hell wouldn’t be strapped to a log floating down the Colorado fearing the bullet of a man who may or may not be tracking us down this river.” Terence shifted to get a better hold of his knapsack. “Believe me or don’t. Just consider my words, Preacher.”

Lead was silent again. The men continued floating past the remains of homes and the remnants of civilized life.

Lead woke to the stars and navy blue of the early evening sky. Terence was hauling them up a gravel shore. In the distance the winds of the Storm Border whipped trees and cracked stones over boulders.

“Stay put,” Terence said. He untied his knapsack and disappeared into the brush.

Lead lay on his back. He ran his hands over river stones. The waters had cooled his fever. His body was still strange and unbalanced, but the fear that he would die was gone. Lead smiled at the stars. He would live. He would continue on. The sky’s light ebbed and locusts chirped their songs from the brush. Lead lay still. The river stones and his drenched coat soothed his fevered skin. The locusts filled night with their alien callings.

Lead woke on a bed that shifted and rolled with his weight. His eyes scanned a room of white-washed walls and boarded-up windows. Cotton sheets scratched his skin. A lanky, gray-haired stranger stared at him from across the room. His were eyes hidden behind reflective lenses.