“You don’t have anything to do with it!” the woman cries. “We all know—but you don’t. You haven’t lived in the shadow of this mountain. You do not understand.”
Tasha feels the crowd behind her shiver, as if they were on the edge of unleashing a wail. “Heather goes near the mountain. She’s fine. No monsters at all.”
“Heather?” the woman sneers. “The one with the crazy father who died on the mountain? It’s because of her that we all stay away! She’s the last person you should be talking to. She’s already nuts.”
“She’s not nuts,” Tasha says, severely.
“Bullshit. She says she went up the mountain, but she walks like this?” The woman acts out a limp, staggering around. “How’s she supposed to get up the mountain? She’s a liar. Don’t believe a word she says.”
Tasha glances around. The people from her city look confused, but everyone else looks uneasy, like these are things they’ve been whispering about for years. She locks eyes with a man who stands beside Kevin. He shrugs.
“We’ve all heard things about the mountain,” he says. “But they’re only stories. You know, the kind parents tell to keep their children in the house. Johnny went up the mountain and was never seen again. That kind of thing.”
“They aren’t just stories!” the woman cries again. “You know they aren’t.”
“And Heather?” Tasha presses.
The man shrugs again. “Every village has its idi—” he sees Tasha’s expression, catches himself—“someone eccentric, right? That’s all it is.”
Tasha grits her teeth. Maybe she goes there to get away from all of you. Then she stops and stills herself. They are all terrified, she thinks. They are all dancing on the edge of so much. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the keys to the ambulance, then drops them on the ground in front of the woman. “Take the ambulance and go. The last thing I want is for people to stay here and sink into despair.”
The woman stares at her. “You’re not serious.”
“Do I look like I’m making a joke?” Tasha turns to face the crowd. “Anyone can leave here,” she says. “You can take the ambulance right now and go. Try to find another place that maybe hasn’t been hit as hard. Send help our way if you can.” She turns back to the woman. “If you don’t want to stay, then I want you to go.”
The woman looks, briefly, hurt by this, but again her anger flares. She bends and grabs the keys. She shouts. “Anyone who wants to come—get in.”
The woman throws open the driver’s door and climbs inside. She turns the key, and the engine rumbles to life. The man who was standing beside her runs around to the passenger side, then gets in. And suddenly other people are scrambling into the back, tossing a few of Tasha’s carefully gathered boxes out onto the ground to make room. The woman in the driver’s seat yells, “Stop! We might need that!” Then she looks straight at Tasha. “Fuck you!” she shouts, and she rams the pedal to the floor.
People scream and jump out of the way just in time as the ambulance speeds down the street and around the corner, out of sight.
Tasha turns to Annie. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Annie brushes at the grime on her pants.
“What happened?”
Annie shrugs. “You heard her. I confronted them trying to break in—they ran, and I chased them to the square. Then she pulled the knife.”
Tasha nods. Her hands tremble, even as she continues to hold them tight in fists. The crowd is slowly dispersing around them.
How many, she wonders, already regret that they didn’t jump in the ambulance too? “Where’s Elyse?”
Annie runs a hand through her hair. “Back at the house. I was just out doing a final walk around the mall.”
“Don’t walk around alone anymore,” Tasha says, thinking of the crowd. A beast gone back to slumber.
“Me?” Annie says, incredulous. “Tasha, she was yelling at you.”
She’s already turning away, heading back to the house. “I’ll be fine,” she says, and Annie doesn’t answer.
The next morning they’re awoken by Elyse, who starts coughing so hard when she gets out of bed that she falls over.
Tasha is on her feet right away. Annie reaches for the towels they’ve stacked by the nightstand just for this. She lays them over the mattress, mounts the pillows, and covers them with a towel too.
“I’m sorry,” Elyse rasps, as she climbs onto the bed and lies face down over the pillows.
“Don’t be silly,” Tasha says.
Annie starts counting, and with each beat Tasha slaps Elyse’s back, working up and down her ribs, dislodging the buildup in her lungs bit by bit.
As Elyse coughs mucus out onto the towel, Annie swaps one towel for another. She doesn’t stop counting.
Eventually, Tasha’s efforts start Elyse coughing in earnest, and she eases off and steps back from the bed, raising an arm to wipe the sweat from her forehead.
After she’s coughed herself out, Elyse lies silent on the mattress for a few minutes. Then she turns over, sits up, and reaches for her shirt. “Thank you,” she says. Annie gathers up the filthy towels.
Tasha thinks about Elyse every time the wind rises, kicking up dust and debris. Once upon a time Elyse had wanted to be a doctor too. The new drug she was taking, the surgery—these were going to help her climb a mountain.
If help doesn’t come, Elyse will be lucky if she lives out the year.
“Let’s have another session tonight,” Tasha says as they all start to get ready for the day.
Elyse shrugs. Already she’s trying to put it behind them. “I should be good now,” she says. “I’ll help Annie in the pharmacy. I won’t be a bother, I promise.”
“You’re not a bother, Elyse.” It’s what Tasha says every time. It’s what she says to everybody.
Elyse shrugs at this, too, and goes out the bedroom door.
The people who took the ambulance don’t come back. Tasha tries to forget them, tries to focus on the city. They keep stockpiling all the food they can find. They build greenhouses, make garden plots, plant as many little seed packets as they can. The days are long and unrelenting.
There is no news. Sometime after the knife incident, others break into the strip mall in the night, steal gas and food, and drive away from the city.
Even though there is very little rain, the grass grows high, vines climb over the houses, and weeds fill the road. But the bean, pepper, potato, and tomato plants they grow yield vegetables that are stunted and unappetizing—if they yield anything at all. Tasha goes from one greenhouse to the next, adding fertilizer collected from the garden centres. Nothing works. The vegetables do not get bigger, and they all taste the same—bland, with a faint tang of metal, of burning.
We’re all going to starve, the woman had said. Celeste, Tasha had found out later. She had lived in the mountain city all her life. Her words run on repeat through Tasha’s head while she tries to sleep.
We’re all going to starve.
We’re all going to starve.
“How much do we have in the supply rooms?” It’s late summer and Tasha has begun to ask this question once a day at least. She and Annie are sprawled on a mattress on the floor of their makeshift clinic—a little store in the strip mall that used to be a butcher shop. They’ve dedicated one of the generators to keeping its fridges running, to safeguard the medications they’ve scrounged.