Page 191 of The End of the World As We Know It
And finally, the German—Otto Wampler. Not German at all, apparently, but Swiss? Leaf didn’t know much about the rest of the world and didn’t care, as none of it would ever be accessible to him, here, in this place and this time. Wampler was small and sharp, like a human kidney stone. Both trapper and trader, he wasn’t always in town, often out there, alone. A bit feral, Leaf had heard, though he’d never encountered the man before.
“Where we headed?” the German asked, his English strong, but his accent apple-crisp. “Besidessouth.And what are we to do there?”
“Telluride,” May said. “What we are to do there is an act of faith, an act of correction. Evil is reborn and we are to end it.” Her scouts, led by Brightfeather, found that a new group had set up shop in Telluride—dark-hearted souls gathering to protect someone at their center. A leader they call John Low. “These people, this Cult of Low, they’re gathering power. Stockpiling ammunition. Killing local folks, and”—here she seemed truly rattled for a moment, and when something rattled May, well, Leaf knew that should have the same effect on him tenfold—“eating them. To take their power, their life-force—the way of old, dark, forgotten spirits. So we will lay waste to this cult by removing John Low from its center. Because if we don’t, I have seen it, the way his poison, his darkness, will flow to us, will corrupt us.”
They all glanced at one another; their faces painted by the orange light of the fire. Only one who didn’t seem worried was Brightfeather, who held the same look he always had: the empty look of a long, dark, broken highway.
In the distance rose the mad whinny of a screech owl. The horses shifted uncomfortably at the sound, snorting and stomping. Like they knew what was to come. Like they could sense it on the wind.
Morning came and with it, a breakfast of creamed einkorn and sweetened withsuikerstroop—beet sugar syrup. Empurpled the gruel, red asblood. They ate fast and headed out, all of them on horses that were theirs, excepting Leaf, whose horse—a skewbald ride called Gremlin—came from May’s own stable in the old Walmart Supercenter at the middle of town.
The day was bright, with the sun on the snow washing everything out. Made it hard to see, almost. But Brightfeather knew where they were going, and the horses were glad to follow the beast that was his black mustang.
May explained that the trip to Telluride would not be a direct one—though it would’ve been nice and easy to follow the old roads from the Spur Highway, west of town. But that way was plagued by guards, she said. So they’d come in from the northeast, where there was no road. Otto said, “I know the way, yes. South through Ouray. Then onto the trails, past the Camp Bird Mine, around Mendota Peak. Two days ride, maybe three if there’s weather. We will eat good on the way. Especially with this one’s eye, yes?” He laughed and reached across the gap between horses to clap Leaf on the shoulder.
Leaf did not know if Otto was mocking him or complimenting him, so he just laughed along nervously and nodded.
South down 550, the highway gone underneath the mounds of drifting snow. As they clopped through the valley, closing in on the mountain town of Ouray, Cin Haber dropped her horse back to walk alongside Leaf. She had the look of a porcelain teapot about her—Leaf knew the woman had to be of soft feeling, but something about her seemed hard, too. She unwound the scarf from her face, and Leaf saw her rounded, pillow-fat cheekbones were pink from the wind.
“I know your father a little,” she said. Her voice was chirpy, like a twittering bird. “Good man, good man. He speaks well of you.”
Leaf wasn’t sure how true that was, but he hoped it to be so. He offered an awkward, stiff smile. “Okay.”
“You ever shoot someone before, young man?”
He chewed a lip.
“I shot at a Ravager a year ago. Little more than a year, I guess. Late fall. I shot over his head on purpose—just a warning shot, and I didn’t have to shoot a second time—he got the message.” Ravagers with their skull masks and their bone-rattle armor. Strange folk. “He turned around, went back into the canyon lands.
“My only advice is, don’t flinch,” Cin said. He saw her face shift into something sad, then. The kind of face adults make when they’re trying to put on good spirits, but fail to make it believable.
“Only advice is,don’t miss,” Brightfeather said from just ahead of them.
“That won’t be his problem, though,” Cin said with some clarity. And Leaf knew she wasn’t wrong. Leaf hit what he aimed at. As long as he could make himself pull the trigger.
The snow on the streets of Ouray mounded over dead men, dead women, dead children. The snow covered them, mostly, but still in places the blood showed through, frozen now, frozen pink. Some were still in the houses, or in the Elk Lodge barroom. Each, slaughtered. Dozens of bodies, shot, cut, some with knives still in their chests or hatchets stuck in their skulls like they were nothing better than stumps. All of it, horrifying, and Leaf wanted to throw up, but knew he had to keep it down, because if he showed weakness here, they’d leave him behind, tell him to head home. He couldn’t abide that. He wanted to be here. Wanted to do the right thing. A small voice inside him told him,This is you proving yourself, growing up a little bit, doing the real work.Maybe if he hung tight and stayed true, he could go back to town, his head high. Maybe May would keep him close. Give him work. He could be like Brightfeather. Be in her orbit, keeping her safe—which meant keeping the people of Grand Junction safe.
But it was hard to keep that dream in mind now. His guts wanted out. He had to keep swallowing them down, down, down, pushing them into the cauldron of his stomach. Roiling, searing, like a belly full of bad vinegar.
They moved onto the lobby of a hotel toward the southern end of Ouray. Place called the Beaumont. No dead people here, but there was a message slashed into the old Victorian wallpaper behind the desk: a crooked smiley face, and above that, the words:
JOHN LOW LIVES
May said it was clear who did this. And that, horrible as it was, she was glad they were seeing it. Because it told them in no uncertain terms who it was they were dealing with—and more importantly,whythey had to go to Telluride. “Dog or man goes rabid; your choices narrow only to two. You kill him before he bites, or you let yourself be bitten and take his disease unto you.”
At that, she told them to each find rooms in the hotel. They’d stay here for the night, then move on.
Leaf’s room was a messy, unkempt thing. Full of dust and spiders. But it offered a bed, and though it had no blankets, he could easily unfurl his bedroll there and sleep on the mattress. Springs tried to poke through, but it was better than the lumps of the earth, and certainly an improvement over trying to clear snow and rest on the cold ground. Exhausted, he still had to chase sleep for a while, pursuing it through fields of blood, through meadows of the dead.
Over time, he managed. And over time, he dreamed.
He was again in a different life, a different world. He’d seen many televisions before, but never once lit up like it was now, a wide box of light showing dazzling displays of cars—not dead and defunct, but rip-tearing down a smooth, unbothered strip of asphalt—and he satin front of that box with some kind of control device in his hand, a thing with buttons and jiggle sticks on it. Like he was making those cars go, somehow. Music blasted, filling the room: a band he’d never heard before, not on a record or on some previously discovered cassette, but one his dream mind called Glimdrop. A golden retriever bounded into the room behind a couple friends of his. The dog—my dog, he realized—was Goldie. His friends were Naseem and Jace. They were laughing, eating some kind of crunchy orange snack, their fingers dusted with the stuff. It felt so normal. So nice. Less like a dream and more like Leaf was standing in the doorway to another world, watching. But then he woke, and the door closed. That world went away.
The way to Telluride was a hard row to hoe, and over the next two days they left the road and hit the trails, heading west out of Ouray. Through the valley and then up around a peak. A snow squall hit them on the first day and slowed their journey. Otto helped flush game, and Leaf shot it—rabbits, mostly.
Cin said during their first dinner, “You know rabbits don’t have enough fat on them? You try to live on rabbit, you’ll still starve. Helluva thing, that. You can eat and eat and eat and still die from starvation.”
May countered with: “It’s not starvation like you think of it. But your body will still break down when it doesn’t get what it needs. Balance is everything, inside and out. But for now, the rabbits will do.”
