Chapter II

That, then, ended the episode, in Markel's mind. And now that Rocky was really dead they could drive south leisurely. Markel planned to winter on the Gulf Coast, perhaps to build the new home of Phoenix there. So they went south through days yellow and warm in the September sun. Except for the emptiness, it was like being on a vacation tour.

There had not been emptiness like this in the land for three centuries. Nobody walked the farmlands where tractors rusted in the fields, no planes split the sky where birds soared, no car but theirs moved on the highway. They drove through towns that were like bleached bones in the sun. They passed peeling billboards, fading motels, battered, rusting cars, long, immobile freight trains--the scrap from a million dreams. Once they saw a big yellow tomcat prowling the edge of the highway like a lion; he snarled at them as they passed.

"It's awful," said the Earth Mother. "Nothing but birds and cats and trees."

"On the contrary, I think it fitting and just. Give the animals a chance, I say. Man had his chance and he botched it. In ten years the trees will obliterate this man-made ugliness and the land will be clean again."

"So who cares, if there's nobody to see it?"

"Somebody will see it. We and our children. The new race of man, guardians of Phoenix."

"Ain't this new race going to have lights, and towns, and movies, and dancing?"

"Not the kind of music and movies you keep talking about. We'll have no clods sponging up drivel from television sets."

"Yeah? Well, it sounds pretty square to me. I don't know if I want to be the mother of a bunch of squares like that."

Markel groaned, slapping his forehead with his left hand. "Gad! Why do I endure your stupidity day after day? Listen, the world you knew is dead, irrevocably dead. The new world is going to be completely, utterly different from it. Can't you grasp that?"

"You think that's going to be great, don't you? So what'll be so great and different about this new race you keep yakking about?"

"For one thing, they will not drop bombs on each other."

"Anybody that square won't know how to make bombs, or nothing else," she answered, turning on the radio.

That, Markel decided, was the most annoying of her habits, even more so than her constant preening in her hand mirror, or her nasal, off-key singing of popular songs, or her ungrammatical speech. He spent a lot of time trying to correct her grammar but it was a frustrating job. He was able to resign himself to her only by concentrating on his dream. In that he was constant.

They were in the foothills of mountains when the first autumn rain fell. Parking at the side of the road, Markel put up the convertible's top and they sat watching the rain. "It's kind of romantic, ain't it?" the Earth Mother said. "I always liked the rain." The thin rain drifted across the road, past a big barn and a farmhouse, past cornfields and yellow wheat and into wet woods. The Earth Mother leaned closer to him. "Just think, there's nobody here but us."

Autumn chill seeped into the car, but the girl was warm. Markel said, "Yes, only us alive in the vast desolation of the Earth." He looked across her shoulder at the gray, slanting sky and the low black clouds like blurred ink-blots. "But there will be more of us, strong intelligent children, inheritors of the earth, guardians of Phoenix."

"You keep saying that but you never do anything about it."

"The children of Phoenix," said Markel dreamily.

Moving closer, the Earth Mother put fat arms around his neck and breathed like a bellows in his ear. Beyond the wet woods lightning spider-webbed the blotted sky. She kissed him, a fat-lipped kiss, and the rain drummed small on the roof. Markel felt strong and all-powerful. The rain fell harder and the wind blew the sad, wet smell of autumn into the car. She kissed him again, and Markel forgot the ruined world and Phoenix, everything but the drowsy warmth of the car and the fat softness of the Earth Mother. There was no sound but the rain.

The rain fell harder, clanging on the hood, splatting on the windows. It pounded like forgotten battle-drums on the roof, growing louder, blurring into staccato. The staccato slurred into a steady hum. The hum lifted like the far-off buzzing of bees. Or like the growling of a motorcycle.

* * * * *

"Motorcycle!" yelled Markel. The Earth Mother screamed and fell back on the seat, dragging him with her. He pulled loose, sat up, and rolled down the window. Rain needled his face. Under the rain sounds he heard it, distant but unmistakable, the growling of a motorcycle.

He twisted the ignition key. "Motorcycle," he said. He kicked the gas pedal. The convertible jerked forward, sending the Earth Mother rolling to the floor. "Motorcycle." He kicked the car forward again and onto the road where it ground into second gear. "Get up! Don't just lie there, you fat pig! It's a motorcycle!" Another lurch banged the girl's head on the dashboard. She got one arm on the seat, screaming, "I can't hear nothing! You deefed me! I'm deef."

"Shut up! It's a motorcycle!"

"You busted my eardrums! I'm deef!"

The car lurched spasmodically, then stalled. He punched the starter and booted the gas pedal; this time the car bucked so violently that he was thrown backwards. "Motorcycle!" he yelled, feet in the air.

The Earth Mother was rolling on the floor again. "You're trying to kill me! First you deef me then you try to kill me!"

He managed to get his foot back on the accelerator and the car spurted down the road. Markel fought the car grimly and got it under control, making it lurch in smoother leaps. When they finally rolled with reasonable normalcy down the road he looked into the rear-view mirror, but the road was empty. He drove furiously until he heard no sound but the rain. Banging his fist on the steering wheel, he said, "Gad! Am I to be pursued forever across a dead world by a deathless demon on a motorcycle?"

"I'm deef, I'm deef," said the Earth Mother.

* * * * *

When the rain stopped they took to the woods on foot. This time Markel did not try to rationalize the situation; he knew it was Rocky on the motorcycle. Markel's usual self-control was shaken and he needed time to think. He drove the convertible as far into the woods as he could and began throwing things from the back seat.

"Let him follow us in here on that damn motorcycle," he said. He made two packs; in one he put canned food, cooking utensils and some tools; in the other he put extra ammunition, extra shoes, a medicine kit, rope, and several boxes of matches. This latter pack he tied to the Earth Mother's shoulders, fastening it with makeshift straps. Before they left he locked the convertible and covered it with branches and brush. He intended eventually to come back for the books.

That first day in the forest they made very little progress. He got tired of picking the Earth Mother up when she fell, and she complained loudly about their pace. It was different in the woods: there were no ruins to anchor them to the past; the forest was aloof from even the ruined world. "I don't like it here. It's worse than the towns," the Earth Mother said, sprawling against a tree.

"You'll get used to it." Markel yanked a twig from a fallen branch and chewed it. He said softly, "But why doesn't he die? It doesn't make sense. If I were not a rational, intelligent, thinking being, I'd be frightened right now.

"Well, I'm frightened, all right."

Rolling over to face her, he propped himself on his elbow. "You associated with Rocky for a long time. What was he like?"

"He was a slob, like I already told you. A real nowhere slob." She stared up at the leaves. "Sometimes he was okay, but what I couldn't stand was he was so stupid."

"No, no, that's not what I mean. Did he seem different in any way? Physically, for example?"

She sat up angrily. "I don't have to take no insults from you!"

"No, I mean did he seem different in the way he reacted to pain, or injury? You told me he didn't get sick when the plague hit the city."

She didn't answer for a while. "Yeah," she said thoughtfully. "I forgot. Yeah, he did. Once he fell off his motorcycle and gave his head a hit on a brick wall. I thought he was dead; he didn't breathe or nothing. And then just when I was getting real scared, in he walks, looking like nothing happened."

Markel rubbed his chin. "How long was it between the time he fell and the time he returned?"

"About a day, I guess. He just lay there all that time like dead."

Markel's thoughts went tangentially down a dark, twisted path. "Where was Rocky born? What did he do before the bombings? Did he ever say anything about the fall, how he felt, or anything--"

"Take it easy, will you? Like I said, I never seen him before the bombings. He was just there in the town, I guess."

Spitting out the twig, Markel filled his pipe and lapsed into isolated thought.

What it narrowed down to, he decided, was this: when ordinary men died they stayed dead. But Rocky died and recovered from death; therefore Rocky was not an ordinary man. The question, then: what, precisely, was Rocky? Logically, he could be only one of two things: a supernormal man or a supernatural one. Supernormal in that he was revived from death by bodily processes superior to those of normal men; or supernatural like a zombie or a vampire, both of which reputedly defied death. Markel preferred the supernormal theory; he didn't think highly of folk legends. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.

And the "why" of it? Mutation, of course. Furthermore, where else would you find a mutant with superior survival qualities but among the survivors?

Markel tapped out his pipe and told the Earth Mother his theory. She listened, eyes widening. Suddenly she grabbed her hair in both hands. "Ohmygod! A vampire! All that time I stayed with a vampire!"

"Now don't get excited. I did not say he was a vampire."

"A vampire! I lived with a vampire!"

"Gad!" said Markel disgustedly.

* * * * *

For the next few days he was preoccupied, hardly speaking to her as they walked slowly through the forest that lifted into the mountains. The Earth Mother's feet blistered and swelled, her shoulders were rubbed raw by the pack straps, but Markel drove her steadily forward. On the fourth day he shot a pheasant, roasting it that evening while the Earth Mother sat with her feet in a pool. They had camped on a wide ledge backed by a cliff; a thin waterfall splashed down this cliff and pooled on the ledge before sloping down the mountain.

"Look at my feet! I can't walk another step, not one more step!"

Markel poked coals around the mud-covered pheasant. "Put them back in the water. I'm not interested in your fat feet."

"Yeah, you ain't interested in nothing but your lousy Phoenix. I say to hell with your lousy Phoenix, that's what I say! Besides, my feet ain't fat. I been losing weight every day with all this walking."

Markel laughed. "Your feet will be all right in a few days. Come here and eat."

Sullenly, she came to the fire and they ate in silence. Eventually, Markel said, "I suppose it is rather rough on you, at that."

"Rough? I could take that, if you'd only treat me like a human being." She leaned forward eagerly. "Am I so awful you can't even touch me? Am I so fat and stupid?"

He peeled a piece of meat from a drumstick with his fingers.

"Am I? Tell me!"

"Calm down. You'll get hysterical again. Eat your pheasant."

She sat listlessly, her hands in her lap. "All right. But I'm so scared here, it's so lonesome. Nothing but trees, trees."

"You're actually safer here than in the cities. The trees and animals won't hurt you. It's only people you have to be afraid of."

"You think maybe there's some people in a city somewhere, with bright lights and drug stores, lots of people?"

"And movies and television and stupid music, that's what you want, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes, there's a city like that somewhere, ain't there?"

"Isn't there, not ain't there." He stared at her appraisingly. She was a clod, but even a clod, he supposed, could feel sadness and regret for all the lost, familiar things. On a low level, of course. Tossing the drumstick bone into the fire he said, "Why not face facts? There's no city like that."

* * * * *

For days they climbed further into the mountains. On the eighth day they followed a narrow path between pines along a ridge and into a group of weathered houses little more than shacks. A store and a gas station dominated the single street. In the store they found some cans of vegetables and dried packs of cigarettes. A small radio sat on a shelf behind a counter; the Earth Mother switched it on, listened, then turned it off. Smoking a very dry cigarette, Markel stood on the porch, looking down the street.

Suddenly he unslung the M-1, dropped to one knee, and fired. A man in black lurched from the doorway of a shack, took two steps forward, then sagged to his knees. Markel fired again and the man fell face forward in the dust.

Markel walked to the man. It was not Rocky. This was an old man with white hair and whiskers. He wore a black shirt and ragged overalls and he was gaunt. He looked at Markel with surprise and reproach in his eyes; then he died.

"I thought it was Rocky," said the Earth Mother.

"No," said Markel, covering the man's face.

In a shed behind one of the shacks he found a pick and shovel, with which he dug a grave. It took him most of the afternoon in the hot sun. Then he buried the old man, rolling him into the grave with the pick handle.

"We're going back," he said, walking to where the Earth Mother sat on the steps of the store.

"Where? What for?"

"Back to the ledge, to wait for Rocky. We can't spend the rest of our lives running from him, and wasting ammunition on every man wearing black."

They went back then to the waterfall, where Markel could command a slope on three sides and where the cliff protected his back. They settled down to wait for Rocky and they both knew Rocky would find them. Markel waited grimly, because if his theory were correct Rocky was a threat to his dream.

Against the cliff Markel built a crude lean-to and the Earth Mother picked flowers, hanging them around the walls. Markel, working constantly, made several traps for Rocky in the area around the ledge. When he finished these there was nothing to do but wait.

Markel liked it there. Big autumn clouds shadowed the ledge; mist drifted in the green valleys in the mornings and at night the loons called through the wind in the woods. The Earth Mother grew tan in the sun and she sang to herself. Markel sat by the waterfall, cleaning and polishing the M-1. And, inevitably, one morning Rocky came.