Eric stood in shock and then felt ill. His mind buzzed as he slowly understood. He fell to his knees, sick. When the rest of them burst into the room, they saw Eric kneeling on the floor amidst broken glass.
“What happened?” Lucia asked, her face pale.
“It was a mirror,” he said to them blankly.
“But who did you shoot?” Sergio asked.
“Myself.”
The house was empty of Zombies. While the rest of them looted all they could find, Eric stepped quietly into the bathroom, locked the door behind him, and looked at himself in the mirror. Again, he felt as if a stranger were looking at him. Eric had lost all his extra weight. His arms were strong and his face, lean and hawkish. He moved his face first one way and then the other, searching for something to recognize. But his cheekbones were strong and tall, his chin came to a rounded point, like a hammer, and there was even a darkish growth on his face, uneven. It was difficult to see the Eric in his own image.
He was filthy. He reminded himself of a stray dog, dangerous and starving, like the ones he had seen devouring the putrid remains of Zombies. Eric searched and found a razor and a bar of soap. In a bedroom, he found a new pair of clean jeans and underwear and a long-sleeved but light shirt that advertised the Tunbridge World’s Fair. Since 1867, it said.
With a pair of scissors he found in a drawer, Eric sheared his long hair. Then he shaved his face, painfully, in the mirror. When he was done, he walked down to the river with soap and shampoo and scrubbed himself, the soapy water running dark and gray from his body. He scrubbed until his skin was raw and sore.
The others didn’t bother him during the process, although Lucia came to him after he was done with a pair of scissors. Wordlessly, Eric allowed her to trim his hair, fix the garish cuts he had made. Her lithe fingers were tender as they worked. After she finished, Eric said thank you and gave her an abashed smile. She smiled back, a look of pity on her face, Eric thought.
Later that night, after they had eaten fresh fish caught by Sergio with a side of beans and rice, Eric sat down next to Birdie who was breaking in a new box of crayons.
“I’m sorry, Birdie,” he said.
“I know,” she said, without looking at him.
“I’ll be more careful,” he said.
“Okay.”
Eric sat down and looked at the campfire. The reflection of the flames in the river stretched across the water in long, red lines. Eric stared at it for a long time.
The next day they came to Samuel Morey Bridge.
It was a simple steel frame bridge, an arc of green across the river.
There were guards on their side of the bridge, a man and a woman, each holding dark assault rifles.
From a distance, they took turns watching the guards with the binoculars. The guards paced back and forth, sometimes sitting on the hood of a red truck, sometimes talking, sometimes pointing their guns playfully over the river.
“We’ll have to find another way across the river,” Lucia said. Sergio said something in Spanish, but Lucia shook her head. “We have to get across.”
They were in the midst of making plans when the Land Rover sped up to the bridge.
Doyle came to a screeching halt. The two guards had their assault rifles pointed at him. They were shouting for him to stop and get out of the truck. Carl Doyle, looking immense, even from this distance, pulled himself out of the Land Rover.
The shooting began almost immediately.
The first guard died instantly. Doyle shot him in the face. The other guard, the woman, cried out in pain, shot in the stomach. She lurched over and fell face down. Doyle walked over and shot her in the back of the head. Twice.
When he got back in the Land Rover and drove over the bridge, he ran over both bodies, mangling them, and leaving long, red tire tracks on the bridge.
“How did he survive?” Sergio cried. “How does he keep surviving? Why doesn’t he die and leave us alone?”
“I don’t know,” Eric said.
“It’s because he’s crazy,” Lucia said. They looked at her. “That’s what they say. God protects crazy people and drunks.”
They were silent, walking north along the river. After the gunfight, the bridge was clear, but Eric insisted they avoid it. “They were guards for someone,” he explained. “If we’re found anywhere near that massacre, they’ll blame us for it. We need to get away from this bridge.” They had been walking for a while now, and were tired and upset. It was horrible to think of Doyle still out there, still following them.
They came then to a bend in the river. There was a tiny shack there, and, as Eric had hoped, it was a boathouse. Creeping inside quietly, they found several aluminum canoes. They put them in the water, and, after careful testing, they climbed inside two: Eric and Birdie in one, Sergio and Lucia in another.
Side by side, they paddled the canoes into the river.
It was late afternoon. The sun was hot and orange on the horizon. The air over the water was cool, and, as they paddled to the other side, Eric saw a kingfisher skimming over the water, hunting. In the midst of the river, there was a feeling of safety mixed with the danger of exposure. It was easy to spot canoes on the river. But they continued north all the same, and did not land until it was getting too dark to see. They landed at a park where a bridge had once been. Only the stone piers were left. They climbed up the bank, dragging the canoes behind them. The four of them stood watching the river.
“I’ve never been in a canoe before,” Sergio said. He smiled. “It was cool.”
For some reason, that made Eric laugh. Lucia soon joined him, and Sergio himself a second later. Only Birdie didn’t laugh.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” she said. “It was cool.”
That really made them laugh.
After consulting Eric’s tattered map, they decided it was time to stop moving north. Now they turned east, with the goal of the White Mountain National Forest in mind. Thinking of the dead guards, they hit route 25, also called the Moosilauke Highway, and stayed well away from it. But it was difficult. The terrain had swelled around them and soon mountains rose up steep where hills had been. Not great blue and white monsters like they saw on the horizon, but big, green furry ones, with rocks bursting from them like earthy muscles.
Near Benton State Forest, Sergio, with his binoculars, called down from the tree he had climbed, “It’s Doyle! He’s behind us!” He pointed toward the highway and Eric strained his eyes. He saw a glint of sunshine light like fire from Doyle’s windshield, and then the unmistakable square shape of the Rover coming toward them.
“Damn it,” Eric swore as the four of them huddled together. Eric looked at them, these three faces that were so important to him now. Lucia’s sharp, beautiful face; Sergio’s round face with his anxious eyes; Birdie’s calm, mysterious face. For an instant, he was filled with love for them all, a hot feeling that he could feel blush his face. He swallowed it down and cleared his throat.