Two for the Road

[Genesis]

M'name's Genesis. My sister Exodus likes t' make up stories 'bout our parents an' where we come from, but I know the truth.

Most of it, anyway.

Mom died giving birth to Exodus, so it's jus' been the two of us for six years. An' before that it was jus' me 'n mom. She protected me from Cutters, Chosen hunters, an' now I protect Exodus.

Not from Cutters. She ain't Chosen. I hide her from Cleansers an' others who'll murder anyone who ain't quite 'norm.'

Exodus an' me, we ain't got th' same daddy, but we're family. My daddy died th' week I was born - gone with all the others in th' outbreak. Mom said it was the Chinese or the North Koreans who poisoned th' water and spread the virus, but I don't know much 'bout that. No one does. Jus' boil th' hell outta yer water afore you drink it. No one knows if its still makin' us sick or not, but we all do it anyway. I don't need to, I'm Chosen, but I do it for Exodus. She ain't, an' she's got the mutie gene, but she ain't sick yet so I boil the fuck outta that water.

Her daddy was some biker runnin' with a gang outta Charlotte town. He raped mom behind some old gas station that was growing tomatoes on the roof. She'd put me inna dumpster t' hide me, but I saw. We jus' kept movin' on after that.

Been movin' on since I got my red flower when I was eleven. The Cutters are allus lookin' for Chosen who're ripe, an' mom wanted t' keep me safe from their farms. I dun't know 'xactly what they do with us, but I don't want t' find out, neither. She heard 'bout the City, up north, an' that they've got pure water there, an' a cure for the virus.

I don't know 'bout that, but it was mom's last wish for me t' take baby Exodus t' th' City. So we've been walkin' and travelin' for years, not stayin' in one place too long. Seen a lot of stuff, seen a lotta cities all burnt out an' creepy, but ain't found The City.

Been travelin' up an' old road for a while now, an' Exodus is tired. Her limp makes us slow, but I can't carry her all the time, especially since she's six and gettin' big. Had to hide from a group of bikers a bit ago, their engines throwin' out a big chokin' cloud of black smoke behind them. Saw a sign - Ne o City, 15 miles.

I dun't really think this mysterious City exists, it'll prolly just be another dead end. But as long as there's some food and water, and a place to rest, we'll prolly stay a while. Jus' a while. Then we'll hafta get on the road again.

There's no place safe anymore, not for us, not for anyone.

[Exodus]

"My feet hurt." Exodus dragged her feet on the rough asphalt, and finally stopped, her older sister walking on ahead.

Leaning against a car, she dramatically wiped at her forehead. "An' I'm hungry."

"Fine," said Gen, who turned back and dug into her backpack. "Jus' a short rest though. Gotta keep movin'." She tossed Exodus a twinkie, and the six year old ripped it open with practiced movements.

They sat on the trunk of the car, looking up the road at the direction they were headed. All the cars were headed the other direction, and there were a lot of them. Some had bones in them. There were bones on the road too, and bits of clothes, and the girls were careful to step around them.

"Why're all the cars here?" Exodus asked for the millionth time.

"I don't know."

"I do."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." She munched on the twinkie, thinking. "There're monsters up where we're goin'."

"Could be."

"But," Exodus continued cheerfully, "There're monsters behind us too. So th' cars jus' stopped and all the people runned away 'cause they had no where t' go."

"Mmmhmm."

Exodus poked her sister, who was obviously not listening. "The bikers might come for the gas, right?"

"They prolly already did, Ex. A long time ago."

"Mebbe. Mebbe not." Exodus crumpled up her wrapper and carefully poked it into a hole in the metal of the car. A bug crawled out and onto her finger, and she giggled.

Gen got up, "Ready?"

"Yeah," and she squirmed down off the trunk, carefully putting the bug back on the car. Exodus stretched her left leg a bit, it was twisted and made walking difficult. Gen told her to tell people it was from an accident, but it was a mutie thing. Her toes were all webbed too, under her scuffed up shoes.

She liked to pretend she was turning into a mermaid, sometimes.

Gen was already walking off up the road, and she had to scurry to catch up.

[Bear Rachkle]

Once upon a time, this was New Jersey.

Michael "Bear" Rachkle stoked a fire in a deep pot-hole, recessed into a long-useless roadway. In the distance, a turnpike sagged in disrepair, it's demise hastened along by sporadic fires and the occasional gunfire that had been present to some degree or another for most of his life.

"Get some."

It was just a muttering as the shaved-head man arranged a string of skinned rats along a length of rebar, preparing to angle it like a spit across the glowing coals. It was a phrase he'd picked up through osmosis from his dad, back when he was just a tawny-headed kid in Michigan.

That world seemed like a fantasy. This...this was real. What he learned in the woods of the Upper Peninsula was just a training run for the real thing. Only, it didn't exactly turn out like it should have.

Bear spat as he squatted, wiping his brow as it accumulated sweat from the cooking fire. He paused, eyes darting fast up to the horizon to scan. It was a habit. Always watch for silhouettes on the horizon. Something of his father's demi-ancient training in the Marine Corps had found its way into him. But he'd never been a Marine at all. Even if he did, what did it matter now?

America was dead. The work of the vengeful Lord, sowing havoc across the face of Creation. His dad may not have known everything, but he knew enough that this day would soon come.

As he waited for his rats to cook, Bear fished a worn Gideon's New Testament bible from a pocket on his combat vest. The spine on the little book was permanently creased so that the bible fell open with little resistance on the book of Revelations.

[Genesis]

Exodus was limpin' more, and I slowed down. I was anxious to find somewhere to stop for th' night, but the freeway seemed t' be unending. We'd slept in an old car th' night before, and we could do it again, but a bed would be better.

"C'mon Ex," I called, and then stopped, my hand shooting out towards her and wavin' her into silence. She knew better than t' talk, and came up to my side quiet like a mouse. I smelled smoke. Not exhaust smoke, but fire smoke.

An' meat. Ex whimpered quietly, huggin' my waist, her thick puff of hair pushing against my arm.

It wasn't dark enough to see a light from a fire, but it wasn't easy pickin' out the plume of smoke, neither. Finally I saw it, ahead of us, an' on the road.

"Maybe they'll share," whispered Ex, and I didn't have an answer. Mebbe they would.

"C'mon," I said, takin' her hand and pulling her forward. "Can't rightly go around, an' I don't want t' come up on them in full dark."

[Exodus]

The meat smell was faint, but strong enough to make Exodus' mouth water. Twinkies were okay, but meat was delicious! They didn't get a lot of it, and it was a treat when they did.

She was sure that the mysterious fire in the road would be a nice family cooking up some birds, or maybe a rabbit! And they'd share, and she'd get to play with the kids, and maybe they'd find a nice place to stay the night.

But when they came up on the fire that wasn't how it was at all. She clung to her sister's hand as they approached the man, Gen calling out before they got too close.

"Hey, we don't want any trouble mister. Jus' passin' by." They walked slowly, a car or two between them and the fire, eyes peeled for signs of trouble.

[Bear Rachkle]

Bear's jawline set as he saw the two black girls coming up on his rat spit. He rose slowly to his feet, adjusting the strap that ran from his shoulder to his side, which tethered his AR-15 carbine to him, resting comfortably against his chest.

"Then pass by that way."

He spoke slowly, and didn't make any aggressive move. He simply kept his eyes on them. Inwardly he scoffed. Some things didn't change. The world could end, and civilization could come to a fiery end in the face of the second coming of Jesus, and freeloading blacks would still come around looking for a hand-out.

The Aryan Brigades had mobilized years ago, when the outbreak first began. They'd said from the beginning that it was the blacks that brought the disease out of Africa. Even though he knew there was no truth at all to it, he went along anyway. He'd built his entire life around the ideas of the virtue of the White Race, and the sanctity of White Christendom. He knew, as his father did, that these were the foundations of America, and they stood as a beacon for everything noble in the world.

So what was one lie in the face of overwhelming truths? He'd looked the other way, picked up his rifle, and joined the cause.

Still, he'd nursed doubts. Nurtured by the insanity of this place, they grew like maggots in his belly. The very sight of the symbol of his hypocrisy was having an effect on his apetite, and suddenly he didn't care for his rats.

[Genesis]

Ex was lingerin' in the smell of the rats cookin' on the fire, and I tugged her along after me. I didn't like th' look of this guy, and he didn't seem t' like th' look of us, either. I had a big ol' knife stuck in my boot, but his gun trumped that an' I didn't want t' get shot. If he even had bullets for it. Some people didn't, they jus' carried th' guns 'cause it made them look mean.

We circled around slowly, me keepin' an eye on him and him keepin' his eyes on us. Broke down toll booths stretched 'cross th' road a ways beyond him, but th' signs were all too rough an' pocked with bullet holes t' read.

"What's up this road?" piped up Exodus, askin' th' man before I could clap my hand over her mouth. "We been walkin' forever."

[Bear Rachkle]

Bear made a slightly quizzical face at that question, which turned into a thinly amused smirk.

"Not from around here, are you?"

It happened from time to time. Guess word of The City only reached some people.

For some perverse reason, Bear humored them. He kicked the spit of rats over towards them. He knew if they were hungry enough, they'd eat it anyway, dirt be damned. Besides, he couldn't stomach food with his thoughts straying darkly.

"City's that way. I calculate that's why you're in this shithole in the first place right?"

[Exodus]

There weren't any cars between them anymore, so the charred rats were in the open and close enough to...

Exodus wriggled her hand free from her sister's, limping as fast as she could to the big skewer before Gen could yank her back. She crouched beside the meat, using her fingers to pull the hot carcasses off the spit and stuff them into an old Tupperware she kept in her knapsack.

[Genesis]

I bit my lip instead of callin' out at Ex, and turned so's I could watch her an' keep an eye on the skinhead. Skinheads were usually allus trouble. Most of 'em were Cleansers, but sometimes they was jus' people who'd got lice or somethin' and needed to shave their heads.

"A city, y' say?" I tried to look uninterested, but prolly failed. "Jus' any ol' city or..." I paused, a tear prickin' behind my eyeball. I got it t' go away though, without fallin'. "I heard about some City up north, some place where there's water and maybe a cure?"

I didn't want him t' think I was some star-eyed dreamer so I added quickly, "Rumors, 'course, but my mom made me promise t' take m' sister. We been searchin' but we ain't found nothin' like what she said. Dallas was close, but its empty. No one there a'tall anymore."

[Bear Rachkle]

Bear spat off to the side into the dirt as he listened to a spiel he'd heard a hundred times over. Another person heading toward the City. As far as he was concerned, there were two types of people here. People who wanted in, and people who wanted out.

"Lincoln Tunnel's twenty miles up that way. You know Lincoln, right?"

It was more a rhetorical barb than anything. Lincoln, Martin Luther Commie, and Barrack Hussein Obama were practically the Holy Trinity, and he calculated the only three faces they could pick out of a history book.

"I got people at the bridge. Sort of people who pick the wheat from the chaff. Keep things sane here."

He looked at them with an appraising eye. They looked about as affluent as the rats they were picking at.

"Got any barter? The way over ain't cheap."

The reality of it all was that the Aryan Brigades had prostituted themselves when the idea of the great race war had taken a back seat to the virus. Now, they did business with everybody. Whites, blacks, chinks, the beaners, arabs, jews. Chosen and sickos alike were likewise open game. If they could trade for passage over, they'd get a trip. The Aryan Brigades kept the price high to afford a diet of ammunition. They didn't lack for guns, and they used them to keep the shit-licker militias that roamed the wastes to the west and the city to the east, from spreading more than they did.

[Genesis]

I had my doubts about his 'people' and I sure as hell wasn't 'bout to tell him what we had that might be used f' barterin'. Which, granted, ain't much. "We got stuff."

Some people still valued money, but not that useless paper shit. Usually people's outhouses were fulla th' stuff, for wipin'. No, I'm talkin' 'bout gold. We even had some, but like I said, we wasn't about to tell this cracker. I also had a package of brown heroin stuffed into th' bottom of my backpack. I don't use, but lotsa people do, and it was worth more than our lives in some towns.

"C'mon Exodus," I bit out, and she finished zippin' up her knapsack and ran back over. Her hands was all greasy but I grabbed it tight anyway. "I reckon we'll do okay."

"Yeah," said Ex, "Trolls don't bother us none. We'll just billy goat our way over."

I clamped my hand on her mouth. "She don't mean nothin' mister, she's jus' a kid."

[Bear Rachkle]

He looked at the younger of the two girls and laughed a little.

"You can try it. Long swim. You two know how to swim?"

Nevermind the muck, toxins, and whatever else lurked in the water between the mainland and Long Island. If that didn't do them in, somebody on one side or another with a rifle just might.

Unscrewing his canteen lid, Bear took a couple of quaffs of water as he kicked some dirt over the fire he'd used for cooking.

"Course, you got other bridges miles up north, but then you take your chances with somebody else. Cultists, rape gangs, God knows who holds 'em."

[Exodus]

Exodus scuffed her shoe on a chunk of upturned asphalt. If they had big brothers, like the billy goats in the story, then things would be a lot easier. Probably they would have found the City a long time ago. And there wouldn't be any hiding from gangs and such, either.

She tugged on Gen's hand, ready to move on.

[Genesis]

"Thanks for th' meat, mister, an' the directions." I allowed Ex to pull me along down the road slowly. I didn't really want t' put the skinhead at our backs, but didn't want to hang 'round talkin', neither.

I pulled at Ex's hand, gettin' her to stop tuggin', and we walked under the tolls, further up th' ghost freeway fulla abandoned cars.

[Bear Rachkle]

Bear's jawline tensed as he struggled with his own conflicting emotions.

"Whatever way you take to the city, none's really safe. If you've got the barter, I can at least make sure you get where you're going."

It didn't matter to him up or down if they lived or died, but Bear needed to punch his own ticket back into the city. He'd had his own falling out with the group over their abdication of purpose, and the Colonel had sent him packing. It was his proverbial forty years in the desert, though in actuality it had only been two years. Still an eternity out in the wasteland.

[Genesis]

I squeezed Ex's hand a little harder by accident, and she yelped, and then glared at me. I'd apologize later. "I got th' barter, but I ain't about t' let you rip me off, mister." I was real good at gettin' the knife outta my boot an' into a guy's neck. Or crotch. I switched Ex to the other hand, leavin' my right free in case this skinhead wanted to get cute.

Anyone offerin' to help always wanted som'thin' else. On the other hand, maybe this racist pig really did want t' see me'n Ex safely into th' Promised Land.

Uh huh.

I stopped walkin' and faced him. "Give me a reason I should trust ya. And your name."

[Bear Rachkle]

"My name's Bear."

His face turned slightly into a smile. At least she wasn't some naive sheep.

"And if I wasn't keen on sticking to what I said, I could have everything you got for the price of two bullets."

[Genesis]

It wasn't exactly reassuring that th' fuckin' skinhead was named after a wild animal. "Not ev'ry one likes t' kill from far away."

Ex was tugging on my arm again. "M'name's Gen." I waited, tense, as he gathered up his stuff. "You walk first, Bear."

[Exodus]

Bear? That was kinda an awesome name. Exodus leaned against a car, arm out straight as she pulled as far away from Gen as she could. Her worn out shoes slipped on the gravel and she fell, skinning her knee on the old road.

"Fuck!" she yelled, earning a glare and a hissed threat from her sister. If she had brothers they wouldn't care if she swore.

Exodus scrambled back to her feet, yanking her hand away from Gen and inspecting the scrape on her knee.

[Bear Rachkle]

"I ain't turning my back on you."

Bear looked to the broken roadway they'd be taking.

"Got clearance enough for us to walk side-by-side."

[Genesis]

"Fine by me," I said shortly. I snapped my fingers at Ex and she sighed and scrambled to my side. She slipped a finger into my belt loop, a habit she'd picked up as soon as she was tall enough t' reach them.

I took a deep breath to calm my heart down as Bear walked up, and hitched up my knapsack. There was a moment as we both waited for th' other t' take a step forward, and then we were walking up th' dead highway together.