Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

“Perhaps one of many,” she said.

Steve stood next to us, said, “Holy shit. What happened to the sky?”

“We were just contemplating that,” Grace said.

We shopped around for food and found some fruit growing on a strange-looking little tree. Steve tasted it, pronounced it sour as dog urine (I don’t know if this evaluation was from personal experience or not), and we passed on it.

We walked along the beach, looking for other foods, a dead fish maybe, and then I saw her.

Reba.

She lay on the shore on her back.

We ran to her.

She wasn’t looking good.

Her face was puffed out from the water, and her hair was pushed down over her eyes.

“She’s dead,” Steve said.

I knelt down and put my arm behind her head and lifted her to a sitting position.

When I did, she coughed, and water projectile-vomited from her lungs. It went all over her legs. She coughed some more, opened her eyes, and tried to focus.

She almost smiled.

She tried to speak, but when she did, no words came out. Only water.

I picked her up and carried her inland, set her down so her back was against a tree.

“You don’t look much like the Little Mermaid,” I said.

“Don’t feel much like her either,” she said.

“We thought you were gone,” Steve said.

Reba actually smiled this time. “Not yet. This is it? This is all of us?”

“Homer made a pretty good float,” Grace said, “but I think he was dead before the bus reached the surface. He was at the back. The mess came in through the window there, smothered him.”

Reba stared off at the water, said, “My God. What’s happened to the sky?”

We looked at what we had already seen, but now, there was a portion of the sky actually dipping into the water. That piece moved when the water moved.

We sat there for awhile, and while Steve stayed with Reba, Grace and I went down the shoreline looking for something to eat. We finally did find a dead fish or two, chose the one that was in the best condition, and carried it back. It wasn’t a large fish, but it was something. We tore it open with our fingers and shared the cold innards among us. Had I not been starved, it would have been disgusting.

It wasn’t much, however, and Grace and I walked back to the dog-urine fruit, which was shaped somewhat like a large golden pear, and took a few from the limbs.

We brought them back and had dog-urine fruit for dessert. It really wasn’t so bad once you got past the smell. And the taste.

Reba, being in as bad a shape as she was, wasn’t able to go on. We decided to stay a night on the beach, but did manage to help her back to the low-hanging boughs where we had spent the night before.

It was very nice under there. Cozy.

Walking back I saw something I had overlooked before, floating up between some rocks.

My backpack.

I went over and got it. Inside was my journal. A few loose pages had come out of it and had washed up on the shore. I gathered them, and while Reba rested, I spread them out on the beach and let them dry.

We spent the night under the tree boughs, and in spite of everything, or perhaps because of it, we all slept deeply.

“I don’t remember much,” Reba said.

We were under the tree boughs, and it was daylight outside. I was pretty certain time had been working consistently over the last few days, because they had felt exactly like days. My inner clock seemed happy with the timing.

Still, for all I knew, we could have been sleeping for days before the light came.

We had meant to move on the very next daylight, but we hadn’t. We decided to let Reba regain her strength. It wasn’t like we knew where we were going, anyway. Or if we should go. Or if it mattered if we did go.

“All I know was the bus came up, I was clinging to it,” Reba said, continuing her tale, “and I think I saw you in the water,” she said, indicating me.

“You did. I dove after you. But couldn’t find you.”

“I lost my hold on the bus,” Reba said. “It came to me that it was taking me down, and I knew it was best if I didn’t hang on, but I don’t know if I let go, or the force of the water pulled me loose. But I came loose. “Still, I was too weak to swim, and I just knew I was a goner. Then I was lifted up.”

“Ed,” I said.

“Yeah. He surfaced, and as he did, he brought me up. I rode on his back for a moment. Long enough to get my breath. Then he dove again.

“I was sucked under. I thought, well, this is it. I blacked out, came awake as I surfaced again, got a gulp of air. Then, guess what? I blacked out again. Next time I woke up you were standing over me, Jack. And, believe me, that was a pretty sight… What’s the plan now?”

“We kind of loosely thought we should go along the beach a ways, just to see what’s about. Then cut inland toward the bridge. We don’t know why, but-”

“Why not?” Grace said.

“Yeah,” Reba said. “Why not?”

We abandoned the idea of walking along the shore. It had seemed like a good idea at first. Dead fish could be collected. We might even find a way to fish for fresh ones.

But, now that we had learned to eat the dog-urine fruit, we decided to break it open and let it dry, pack it in my pack, along with my de-sodded writing goods, and carry it as food.

We wanted to go straight for the bridge.

Another thing. We thought it might be the safest place.

The night before, while sitting out on the beach, a star had fallen from the sky and landed in the water, washing a large wave nearly all the way to our sleeping tree.

The next night, we had seen the moon sag.

And that morning, much of the blue sky on the horizon was hanging low and being washed and moved by the water. The sun was almost in the wet itself.

“I get the feeling,” Grace said, “that those who put this whole thing together aren’t home anymore.”

“Or they’ve lost interest,” Steve said.

The jungle was dense, but we found a trail, an animal trail, I presumed, and we went along it as fast as we could go. It was strange. We had no idea where we were actually going, but we were damn well getting there fast.

I suppose I could say the bridge was our goal. And being as how I had become very goal oriented, because staying in any one place on the drive-in world soon led to depression, it gave me a feeling of motion and accomplishment.

We stopped several times to rest. We found plenty of water in nice gurgling pools, and there was a lot of the dog-urine fruit. We kept our dried fruit and ate the fresh stuff, and when night fell, we slept beneath trees. That is, until one night we heard a cry from the island forest so frightening that we took to the trees after that.

I thought of the trees as Tarzan trees. They were large with broad limbs, and there were enough smaller limbs about, coated thick in leaves, you could find natural hammocks to sleep in.

I felt good about this, until I thought our screaming predator might be able to climb trees.

In our nice tree hammocks, twenty to thirty feet off the ground, Steve and Grace tucked up in a bundle of limbs above us, Reba and I talked about all that had happened, about all that had been before the drive-in, about what we would do if we ever escaped this world and returned to our own.

We even discussed the idea of staying where we were.

The island was beautiful, and if we could find something better to eat than the dog-urine fruit-fish maybe-we could stay here for a long time. Maybe forever. Eventually, Reba said, either she or Grace would become pregnant, no matter how careful we were, and there would be children.

It was a thought.

A nice island.

Cool winds. Lots of water.