Chapter Six

The Peach Grove

Dez shouldered his backpack, shimmied his other arm through the strap, and inhaled deeply when he felt the crossbow compressed between his leather jacket and the pack. He could feel the weight of the books and journals in there, but he’d be damned if he’d get rid of them. Better to be slightly encumbered than bored. Depression could be as lethal a killer as the monsters, and the first step toward depression was boredom. Idle time.

Dez made it a habit to keep his mind occupied. Like now. Yes, he was leaving the thicket of spruce trees in which he’d eaten his pitiful supper of overripe apples and what was left of the squirrel, but he was also scanning the forest for signs of life, be it food or foe. He rummaged through his memories of this area, which were admittedly few. The country between the tiny burgs named Brookston and Battle Ground had been sparsely populated before the bombs. Now the land seemed entirely desolate. If not for his encounter with Gentry and the others, he would have assumed no one was alive in this stretch of countryside.

Descending a hill, Dez furrowed his brow.

The cannibals’ attack had been troubling on a number of levels. Witnessing the brutal slaughter of Rikichi and Kenta had been horrific. Even though he’d seen it happen on numerous occasions, he never got used to seeing people eaten.

Yet nearly as troubling as this were the ramifications of the attack.

Cannibals rarely lived alone. Like some monsters, they favored communities. This was likely because they were lesser monsters and prone to becoming prey themselves. Though fearsome, a cannibal was no match for a vampire, a werewolf, or one of the Children.

Dez smiled ruefully as he reached the bottom of the hill and made his way across a stretch of lowlands. So many horror authors in the old world had written about battles between werewolves and vampires. How would those same writers feel now that their fiction had been vindicated?

Not too wonderful, Dez judged.

He began the slog up the long incline. The October leaves were changing colors rapidly now, the forest a riot of red and yellow and tangerine, with only occasional smatterings of green. From overhead came the fretful twitter of a finch.

Movement to Dez’s right made him whirl and grasp the handle of the Ruger.

A rabbit.

He compressed his lips and cursed his skittishness. Granted, wildlife was plentiful now that most of the humans were gone – the Bastards from Baltimore would have been delighted – but rabbits were still rabbits and never easy to catch. The one that’d just escaped was a plump specimen, worth three or four meals.

Dez paused, unshouldered his pack, and extricated the crossbow. Climbing hills would be awkward with the bow in hand, but he couldn’t afford to let more meals elude him. The squirrel scraps and cidery apples sat uneasily in his stomach, and the prospect of his belly growling all night didn’t do much to cheer him.

Dez repositioned the backpack and continued up the slope.

One thing he hated about being alone was the lack of another opinion. When Susan had been with him, she’d been his voice of reason. He tended to be more capricious than she did, to make decisions on impulse. She’d enjoyed pointing that out, the fact that their roles were inverted, that stereotypically, it was the woman who’d choose a campsite based on a whim, and the man who’d have to point out the flaws in her logic.

But that was his nature. Passionate. Irrational at times.

He often joked to her, not really joking, that he wished the world had ended ten years later, after all the immaturity had been knocked out of him, that he’d gladly trade a slower body for a sounder, more reliable mind.

Of course, that had been seven months ago, and in that seven months he supposed he’d aged the equivalent of ten years.

Being alone in a hostile world tended to do that.

At least the urge to cough he’d experienced the night before had disappeared. Maybe, he mused, his experience with the cannibals had scared the sickness out of him.

Dez’s Achilles tendons began to ache, a product of last night’s terrified flight, but at least he could rest when he wanted to. One of the positive aspects of being companionless.

Dez experienced a rush of guilt, as he always did when such thoughts invaded. But the truth was, there were several advantages to solitary travel. The most profound, of course, was that he was considerably less nervous most of the time. Oh, he still spent moments in mortal terror, but because it was his own skin he was worried about, the constant fear was more manageable.

When Susan had been with him, he’d been perpetually certain he’d fail her. This led to a torturous cycle of doubt, paranoia, and guilt. He knew she deserved a better protector, yet she viewed him as capable of not only providing for their needs, but of fending off the numberless threats to their safety.

Dez hadn’t felt capable. He’d felt hapless and small, uniquely unsuited to the role of protector.

A fear borne out by later events.

Teeth clenched, he continued up the hill. He’d been a reader his whole life, as well as a movie lover, and one thing that had always driven him crazy was the lovelorn hero, the brooding figure unable to let go of his true love, the woman dead or married to someone else.

Now, to his dismay, Dez had become that figure.

But there were advantages. God help him, there were.

Gone was the insecurity over his inability to protect Susan. Gone was the need to scrounge up enough food and fresh water for two people.

Gone was the belief that his story would have a happy ending.

Oh yeah? a voice asked. If that’s the case, if you’re so fucking resigned, what are you doing now? Why are you trying to make it to the Four Winds Bar?

Dez sighed, scanned the approaching ridge. He had no answer to these questions, at least none he wanted to admit. His Achilles throbbing, his chest burning from the exertion of scaling the precipitous rise, he crested the incline, gazed down the other side, and beheld what had to be the peach grove that Gentry had mentioned.

This both pleased and alarmed him.

On one hand, he was excited to eat fruit other than apples, which he’d been devouring for several weeks. On the other, it meant that Gentry knew this area better than Dez had believed, which meant the cannibals’ base was close enough that Dez was in danger.

Images of Stomper and Paul strobed through his head. Rikichi’s wails. Kenta’s futile attempts to stave off the archer’s killing knife stroke.

Ghastly.

So block them out, he told himself.

The advice was about as effective as it always was. Dez had been wary of doctors since childhood – considering what his mom had gone through, he figured his mistrust could be forgiven – so he’d never undergone an examination for what his ex-wife claimed were rampant obsessive thoughts.

Deep down, he knew it was a problem.

Frustratingly, it had grown worse in the past few months. It seemed to Dez that spending so much time alone would have decreased the self-flagellation and the suffocating guilt. If he wasn’t in contact with anyone, how could he wrong someone and wallow in guilt over it?

Apparently he needed no new issues; the old ones simply grew more corrosive in his isolation. The bad decisions he’d made with Susan. His wife and son. The manner in which he’d spoken to his father. His failure with his little brother. Most of all, the things he hadn’t said and done.

Dez ground his molars and trudged down the leaf-strewn hill. He knew he shouldn’t mistreat his teeth the way he was. He often woke with a headache from grinding them so incessantly. If and when they wore down to nubs, there’d be no dentist around to fit him with crowns. He supposed he could rustle up a set of dentures from somewhere, but the prospect of wearing a dead man’s teeth didn’t particularly excite him.

Remember the look of Joey’s teeth?

Dez moaned. He shook his head, trying to rid his mind of Joey’s bloated corpse, his little brother having succumbed to drug abuse and depression, and Dez discovering him, realizing he might have prevented it had he only paid more attention, had he not been so wrapped up in his career, trying to start a family.

Joey was your family. Joey and your dad.

I know that.

And you abandoned them.

I didn’t—

Not in any dramatic way. There was no falling out. But you saw them less and less as you went through your twenties. Barely saw them at all by the time you reached your thirties.

I’m sorry!

But the slithery, sadistic voice broke in: Sorry doesn’t cut it, Dez. They’re both dead, and maybe they didn’t have to be.

Dez turned and spat, his whole body shaking.

He reached the bottom of the hill and moved into the peach grove. He eyed the shriveled twists dangling from the yellow-leafed trees, the desiccated brown peach corpses dotting the grass.

Fuck.

If he knew more about botany he’d be able to identify the type of peaches growing here, but whatever they were, they were decidedly not edible anymore. He thought of Gentry and wondered if this were some sort of final insult from beyond the grave.

He should have known there’d be nothing here to eat. Other than corn, what grew in October? Before the world ended, Dez hadn’t exactly been the agricultural sort. Now, it seemed, he was paying for that ignorance.

His stomach rumbled.

Dez winced, pressed a hand to his belly. Maybe there’d be rabbits or squirrels nearby. Deer that used the overripe fruit for foraging. Maybe…

…maybe there was an old man watching him from the far end of the row.

Dez froze and stared at the old man.

In contrast to Gentry, this wasn’t a guy who looked old because he didn’t take care of himself. No, this was a senior citizen, certainly over seventy.

Instinctively, Dez moved his fingers toward the Ruger.

“No need for that,” the old man said. The voice was scratchy but friendly enough. The man stood thirty yards away, his plaid shirt a combination of mustard yellow and navy blue. The man wore blue jeans, quite faded, and had a longish white growth of beard. Though the man’s general appearance was a bit ragged, in this terrible new world he was an exemplar of good grooming.

This should have reassured Dez, but its effect was the opposite. True, if the man were wild and unkempt like Gentry had been, it meant he was desperate to survive. Desperation made people do hideous things.

But the ones who didn’t look desperate were almost certainly monsters.

Monsters didn’t need to worry about surviving.

The old man regarded him in silence. No weapon that Dez could see. No sign of confederates, but that didn’t mean anything. If you weren’t deft at sneaking around, you were either at the top of the food chain or you were dead.

The old man asked, “You a maneater?”

Dez hesitated. “Are you?”

“I own this grove,” the old man said. “A hundred-and-sixty acres in all.”

When Dez didn’t speak, the old man added, “Was over a thousand before I had to sell some off.”

“Am I supposed to feel bad for you? Want me to organize a benefit concert on your behalf?”

Unexpectedly, the old man broke into a grin. “It’d be you and me sitting on my front lawn drinking moonshine and munching on popcorn.”

Though it made him feel pitiful, Dez’s saliva glands responded to the thought of popcorn. He imagined his old life, a movie theater tub, yellow and glistening and wet as hell with all the greasy shit they pumped over it. Half a tub invariably gave him a gut ache, and invariably, he ate it down another couple inches before stopping. Then he’d smuggle the dregs home with him and devour those before bed and wake up at three a.m., dehydrated, the sodium count in his blood approaching toxic levels and his mouth as dry as a blighted cornhusk.

Man, he missed movie theater popcorn.

The old man asked, “You gonna take me up on my offer or aren’t you?”

“I didn’t think you were serious.”

“Hell’s bells, boy. If you want, I can get down on a knee and propose, though it might take a while to get back up again.”

The ease of the man’s voice seemed a bit practiced. Though older, he didn’t look the slightest bit feeble.

Dez chewed the inside of his mouth.

The old man shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Dez watched him turn and disappear into the grove. He supposed that was how the man had appeared so suddenly. One minute cowled by the trees, the next staring at Dez from down the row. So yes, the man was sneaky. But was there anyone alive who wasn’t?

Dez stared at the cleft in the peach row.

Moonshine, the old man had said.

Dez had never tried moonshine, couldn’t recall a time when it had been offered to him. He had little interest in drinking alcohol now, even less in hard liquor. Alcohol dehydrated you, gave you headaches. Made your mind foggy and your body listless. No, moonshine didn’t much appeal to him.

But popcorn did. Was it possible the man had some? How long did popcorn stay good? Two years seemed an impossible amount of time, yet Dez had been surprised before. Only a month ago he’d discovered a cache of condensed soups – celery, broccoli, chicken noodle. He’d feared botulism, but he feared starvation even more. He’d boiled all five cans over a glorious three-day stretch, and he hadn’t been poisoned. If canned soup could keep for two years, maybe popcorn could too.

Or so he told himself.

Regardless, it wasn’t really about popcorn, was it? It was about trusting the man. Though he told himself it was unwise to do so, particularly less than twenty-four hours after he’d nearly been killed, he found himself approaching the shadowy cleft in the trees, ducking beneath a leafless branch, and scanning the grove for signs of the old man. Dez moved through the row, realizing as he did that the grass here was matted, that even though he was crosscutting the rows of peach trees, this was a path of sorts.

After cutting across several rows, Dez caught sight of him. There was a country road about eighty yards distant. The rough path the man was treading took him toward the road, but it kept him safely concealed by the forest. Dez couldn’t tell whether the man was aware he was following. Then again, the man’s very nonchalance could be a ruse.

Huh. Dez had no idea if he could trust him yet, but here he still was, trailing along after him, both of them moving with a casual gait, both of them potentially fatal to the other. Granted, Dez didn’t think of himself as dangerous, but how many people had he killed?

Too goddamned many.

Which meant the man was in as much peril as Dez was.

Still not looking back, the man angled toward the road, and after pausing only perfunctorily, he crossed, the acceleration in his steps subtle but unmistakable.

It gave Dez courage. If the man were afraid of being spotted, that meant he—

The man paused and glanced back at Dez. “If you hurry up we can talk on the way. It’s just up the hill here.”

Scowling, Dez glanced right and left, but the road appeared empty. Which meant exactly nothing. Just because the road was devoid of life didn’t mean the area was.

Echoes of Stomper’s laughter sounded in his brain.

Dez hesitated. “Why are you so keen on getting me back to your house?”

The old man eyed him. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought.” He turned toward the woods.

Just as he was about to disappear, Dez called, “Do you really have popcorn?”

“More than I can eat in a lifetime.”

“How is that possible?”

Instead of answering, the old man waded into the forest across the road, and the underbrush swallowed him.

Dez imagined the salty taste, the spongy texture. Yes, he’d risk death for popcorn.