thing.”
He led us through the streets, keeping an eye out for the Hatchet Clans. About a block from his apartment I saw someone standing in the street. It was a girl. And she looked normal. She stood there, seeing us, and did not move, did not speak. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer. I motioned the others to hang back.
“Well don’t dirty her up too much, Nash,” Sean said.
As I got closer I saw that she was probably around college age, nineteen or twenty, no more than that, girl- next-door pretty with high cheekbones and big blue eyes, a honey-blonde ponytail down the middle of her back. She was dirty and ragged, but you couldn’t get around the fact that she was very stunning.
I held my hands out. “I’m normal,” I said. “So are they. It’s okay. Really.”
Her eyes were glacial, emotionless. When I got up close to her she came alive and there was a knife in her hand. I wrestled with her for it while Sean laughed and Specs panicked. Finally, I pinned her and it wasn’t easy: she was strong, determined.
“Knock it off,” I told her. “Nobody’s going to hurt you! Nobody’s going to kill you or beat you or rape you!”
“Speak for yourself,” Sean said.
“Shut up,” I told him.
I could see in the girl’s eyes she wanted to believe me, but there was doubt and who could blame her?
“I’m gonna let you up now,” I said. “You wanna run away, go ahead. We’re not coming after you. You wanna come with us, that’s fine. We have shelter and food.”
She gave me a hard look. “And what will that cost me?”
“Not a damn thing. You have my word.”
I let her up and she ran off, stopped, watched us. We just went on our way and paid no attention to her, but we knew she was following us.
“Well?” I finally said, turning around.
“My name’s Janie,” she said, offering me a sliver of smile.
13
We hung around for a few more weeks. I’m not sure why. I needed to go west. That’s what The Shape wanted. But I was in no hurry then. That didn’t come until later. Life in Cleveland wasn’t exactly fun and games, but I liked being with Sean. I’d never met a guy who was more resourceful. He knew where everything was. He had stashes of food, survival gear, and weapons all over the city. Later I learned all that stuff had been hidden away by the Cleveland chapter of the Hell’s Angels who’d been friends of his. They’d been preparing for war.
The city was full of Scabs. There were some street gangs you had to watch for and the Hatchet Clans, of course. Night was a bad time with the rats and mutants and the Children. The Red Rains came and went. I found a nice piece of equipment at a scientific supply house: a solar-powered Geiger Counter. It was to come in very handy. Whenever the Children showed, the radiation count skyrocketed so it was a pretty decent early warning device. I came to the conclusion that the Red Rains were not just blood, rendered meat, and acid, but were charged with fallout, too. I took readings on a puddle of the stuff and it was hot.
During those weeks I got to know Janie real well.
She didn’t seem to trust Sean or Specs. She clung to me. She was always at my side, a sweet and wonderful girl. She was almost twenty years younger than me and for some reason, she took to me and fell in love with me. I figured in the old world, she wouldn’t have looked twice at me even if I’d been her own age, but it was a new world with a whole new set of expectations and priorities and Janie had changed with it. She’d been in her freshman year of college-pre-med at Ohio State-when the world ended. Back in high school, I learned, she had been an honor roll student and class president, civic-minded and caring…gone to church, volunteered at the local children’s hospital, collected coats for the needy in the winter and canned food for the elderly in the summer.
When the bombs fell, she’d made her way back home with some other students to Painesville, Ohio, and pretty much watched her friends and family die. She left for Cleveland a month ago and the Hatchet Clans had gotten her friends, leaving her stranded in the city.
She’d been through it like everyone else. Regardless, she was a real peach in every way who wore her heart on her sleeve.
We all liked her. We all felt protective of her…even Sean, despite himself. We all, I think, envied the fact that she had survived the end of the world with morals and ethics intact. But for all that we could not be like her. The world was a jungle now and only the strong and the vicious survived. Janie just didn’t get that. That’s why we had to keep an eye on her. That heart of hers was too big for its own good and there were too many things out there that would take a bite out of it.
Towards the end of our stay in Cleveland, The Shape started whispering in my head again. This time it wasn’t about us going west. It wanted something else, but as usual it was vague about what it wanted. All I knew is that it wanted an offering. In the back of my mind I knew exactly what that meant, but it was too horrible to consider.
So I told the others about The Shape.
Janie didn’t seem surprised at all. She accepted what I told her. But Sean thought I was fucking nuts, hearing voices in my head and all. Specs liked the idea of an offering, of course.
“It wants a sacrifice, Nash,” he said. “And we better give it one.”
“A sacrifice?” Sean said. “Like what? You mean like a human sacrifice?”
“Exactly.”
“You are one crazy bastard, little brother. But what the hell? Let’s go get some old ragbag and offer him up.”
Janie said nothing. Nothing at all. She didn’t have to; I could see the disappointment in her eyes. It was barbaric and wrong. She knew it and I knew it, but we went ahead anyway.
Specs was excited at the idea. Like I told you, he was into all that new age shit, crystals and astrology and you name it. He had read lots of books about witchcraft and Satanism and all that high, happy horseshit, so it all came natural to him. We grabbed some old man, some ragbag, tied and gagged him, then dragged him into a vacant lot one night and tied him to a tree. We piled wood all around him in a big heap and then we lit him up. Specs said it was expiation, that we had to make a burnt offering and that would keep The Shape happy and on our side.
It was horrible.
The old man died screaming, lit up like a candle. I saw his eyes actually boil out of his head and his skin superheat like wax and run off the skeleton and into the flames. When he was smoldering I told The Shape to come and get him. That was the first time it ever appeared to us, took on physical form. It took our offering…absorbed it…but somehow I knew it wasn’t what it wanted.
It wanted something living, not something burnt.
It was angry at what had been offered.
It wanted another.
Two days later, Specs got sick.
14
We’d just come back from scouting out some vehicles to get us out of the city and Specs had been acting funny all day. He wasn’t saying much. After we’d settled in, he came over to me.
“I got something, Nash,” he said. “I got something real bad.”
“You’re just tired,” I told him.
“I been coughing for three days.”
And he had been. I think we were all aware that something was going on, but maybe we justified it in our
