“…Alex Keener.”
“Makara Angel.”
She lifted her own pack, putting it on her shoulders.
“Come on. If we’re fast enough, I know a place where we can shelter before sundown. Keep an eye out. I can’t look everywhere at once, and raiders can be thick in this area. It’s cold today, so most of the rats will be hiding in their holes. That’s good for us. If we hurry, we might make Oasis tomorrow.”
Makara headed for the mouth of the cave. The raiders would probably be very close by.
I followed her outside.
Chapter 13
By the time we got going, I realized I was hurting more than I thought. Everything ached, especially my stomach, which hadn’t had food in a while. There was little water, too. Makara gave me some of her share. I accepted, even if I didn’t want to. As we walked, I munched on some of my granola, fighting back the urge to down all of them.
Makara was always busy scanning the horizon, ducking at random moments. I had no idea what she was so afraid of. We were clearly the only ones out here on this cold, dismal day.
The clouds were spooky looking – always the color of blood, that cast the whole bare earth in crimson light.
“What kind of name is Makara, anyway?”
“It’s Khmer. It’s the first month of the Cambodian year. I’d like to think it means a new beginning.”
Despite myself, I became interested. “Are you Khmer?”
“On my father’s side. My mother was American, and so am I, for that matter.”
“How are you American? You’re a Wastelander.”
“I was born here, kid. That makes me American.”
We stopped around noon to eat. She handed me some sort of sticky, bread-like substance wrapped in tin foil. It wasn’t bad.
“What’s in this, anyway?” I asked.
“Rice, mostly.”
“It tastes good.”
Makara smirked. “Hunger is the best seasoning. I’d rather have a hearty stew on a day like this.”
We were up again, and walking. We were in the wilderness, nowhere near a city. Makara had taken us far off road, thinking that if we were being followed, it would be harder for her former raid group to track us. Flat plains spread before us. There was a nightmarish beauty to it.
“So, are we anywhere close to L.A.?”
“L.A. is about eighty miles west. Fights, and wars all the time, gangs killing each other over the last bits of stale food that haven’t been snatched up. Not much can survive thirty years. Eventually, L.A. will be completely dead. Not like it was ten years ago, when Raine was alive.”
“Who was Raine?”
She didn’t answer, but kept walking. I shrugged, and didn’t ask again.
Nothing more happened that day. No more words were exchanged. I could tell Makara wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Fine by me – so did I.
We walked the rest of the day without much incident. When the red sky darkened, Makara led us into an old house, decrepit and peeling. Otherwise, it looked like it had weathered the horrors of Ragnarok pretty well. Its structure was intact, and it didn't look like it would be collapsing anytime soon.
We went inside. We ate the last of my granola bars. From Makara’s face, she disliked this even more than the rice bread.
After eating, she got up.
“I need to check something out,” she said.
I shrugged. I got out my blanket and hunkered down in a corner. Just to think two weeks ago, I would be in my warm bed full of hopes and dreams. All of that was gone, now.
The numbness just grew until I burst. I tried to hold back tears, but they came out all the same. I kept thinking of Khloe. When one has no hope, one can’t even cry. But now, I guessed I had hope.
Hope in what?
Makara came back in. I hastily dried my tears.
“We're not being followed…at least from what I can tell…” She stopped short. “What’s wrong?”
I didn't answer her. I couldn't find the words.
“I know things are tough,” she said, in her tough voice. “But you need to buck up.”
How she could even say that, I didn’t know. She had no idea. No idea at all.
I turned toward her. I could see her silhouette by the door.
“You know,” Makara said, “you probably won’t believe me, but we’re a lot alike. That’s part of the reason why I wanted you to come with me. I don’t fit in with the raider types and I don’t fit in with the settler types. If I can get away from the raiding life, I’m willing to risk it.”
“You’re alone, then.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No. But it makes me wonder what you see in me.”
“I see me in you.”
I was about to think she truly was crazy, when she surprised me.
“Like you,” she said, “I was born in a Bunker.”
I just stared at Makara. I didn’t know what to say.
“Wait…really? Which one?”
“Mine…was a bit different. I was in the main government Bunker. The one with President Garland in it. Bunker One.”
Nothing in her voice told me that she was lying. There was nothing I could do to hide my shock.
“Wait…the Bunker One? The Bunker that is one thousand miles away in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado? What happened to it? How did you end up here?”
“That's a long story.”
“Well, we have time.”
“I suppose so,” Makara said, “though I don’t really like to talk about it. Where I’m from, it’s much colder, and darker. They call it sunny California for a reason, huh?”
“Doesn’t seem too sunny to me.”
Makara smiled. “You’re hard to please, then.”
“What happened to Bunker One? How did it fall?”
“Bunker One was huge. It held ten thousand people.”
“Ten…thousand…?” I asked. “How did you feed them all? Where did they fit?”
“The Bunker came from the Cold War era. During the Dark Decade, they expanded it. But none of that matters now, because everyone who lived there is dead. Everyone except me, as far as I know.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Nothing at all, other than…
“That’s what happened to us. People started getting sick, and dying and…turning on each other.”
Makara nodded. I was surprised to see none of this surprised her.
“Did Bunker One fall in the same way?” I asked.
“It fell in a similar way. It was an attack of demons.”
“Demons?”
“They are what they sound like. They’re monsters, from Ragnarok. They’re still very rare around here. You can find them in areas called Blights. You'll know them as soon as you see them, because this weird, purple fungus grows thick on the ground and stinks up the land. All the trees are coated with pink slime. All animals avoid it – except the demon animals, and you will know them because they stink like rotting corpses and have all white eyes.”
When she said “white eyes,” I couldn’t help but think about Chan, and everyone the xenovirus infected in Bunker 108. It was an image I had been trying to push out of my mind all week. But it sounded like it had happened at Bunker One, too. Only, that would have been twelve years ago. If that was the case, then the human strain of the xenovirus was much older than my father had thought.
I remained quiet as Makara continued.
“The monsters attack any living thing on sight,” Makara said. “That’s how unaffected animals turn – they are bitten, and they become part of the Blight.”
“So, you’re telling me these monsters attacked Bunker One?”
“Yes. They're a lot thicker in Colorado, I guess because it's closer to Ragnarok Crater. But now, it's spreading, even as far as here. It's starting to affect everything. I saw my first Blight in this area about a year ago, farther north. There's more of them, now. There have been mysterious deaths, even by Wasteland standards.”