The River
W e’re rowing as fast as we can, but the bullets keep raining down.
“Faster!” Constance shouts.
And we do. The Mushroomers, me, and everyone, we row as fast as we can.
“We need to reach the other side of the river!” I shout.
The bullets don’t stop, and a few Mushroomers begin to drop into the river.
“But I have something to say!” the March shouts against the noise. “You have to listen to me.”
“We know. We know.” Tom ducks behind him, using the March as a shield. “You are Patient 14. You know where the Six Keys are. You probably know what this war is about, but you can’t remember.”
“It’s not that,” the March argues.
The rest of his words are eaten by the noise from the bullets and our panic.
I row harder, staring at Constance next to me. “Don’t give up,” I tell her. “We can do it.”
She grits her teeth and does her best to row with her small hands. “Yes, we can do it. Family!”
The March crawls next to me, the cap with the screws still stuck to his head. “Alice, listen to me!”
“Not now, March. We’re trying to survive.”
“But this is important.”
“Just not now!” I scream at him, watching the edge of the river come closer. It’s only a minute or two and we can reach it. Then, we should escape in cars or something.
“I can’t believe every police force in the world is against us,” Tom says. “We’re doomed.”
“We’ll have to count on the people who believe in us,” I tell him. “Surely, not everyone believes the news. I trust there are those who are going to help us.”
“Alice!” The March loses it. “You have to listen to me.”
“What?” I yell at him.
But then another boat crushes into us. The March falls back.
I grip him tightly and pull him back inside before he falls off the edge. Then I row away. The boat that has just hit us is full of dead Mushroomers; they didn’t make it.
“Are we going to die, Alice?” the Mushroomers in my boat ask.
“As I said,” I tell them. “We’re not going to die. Once we reach the edge of the river we’ll find help. I trust in the kindness of people.”
But those words are sucked back into my mouth when I see those who await us on the bank of the river. Hundreds of individuals await us with baseball bats and chainsaws and other unusual weapons, ready to take us down. It’s as if they’re zombies. Human zombies who have had their brains washed.
“I can’t believe this,” Tom says from behind. “We have nowhere to go. We’re doomed.”
Constance points at the two individuals leading those who want us killed by the shore. It’s Waltraud Wagner and Thomas Ogier; Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Waltraud, even though she is heavy, is riding upon a boosted board and ramming a baseball bat against her flappy hands. She is pretending to be one of the normal crowd.
“What are we going to do, Alice?” Constance stops rowing. “We can’t go to shore. We can’t stay here.”
I have no words to say. No excuses to give. No lies to make up. I just pull her closer, among a couple of other innocent Mushroomers and say. “We need to have faith. We’ll work it out. Just like a family.”
I speak the words without having the slightest idea of what to do. I’m just like any mother who needs to reassure her kids that everything is going to be alright. Solutions should come later.
“Hey Alice!” says Constance, staring back at the asylum in the distance. “There is something you should know.”
“What is it, Constance?”
“You need to know who the Dude is.”