“What’s rightful inheritor?”
“All the earthlings doing the things they ought, without our intercession,” she said. Something upstream caught her attention. “Like her.”
She pointed to an undulation in the water about ten yards from the fallen tree. At first, it was only a momentary dark disturbance in the monochrome surface of the river. Then it appeared again, closer. Kory breathed a low sigh and stared. The otter, fat and sleek, rose and fell once more before sliding halfway out onto the bank. She pointed her cunning white face in their direction, nose twitching so that the beads of water clinging to her whiskers flicked around her.
“Easy,” murmured Curran. Talus stretched her neck and tested the air, but remained seated. They all stood watching each other, otter to humans, until finally the otter made a U-turn and disappeared beneath the surface, apparently finished with the odd upright animals clustered at the maple bridge.
“That’s a Rightful Inheritor,” said Arie. “Let’s cross.”
The bole of the tree was wide enough to put one foot in front of the other, but the wood was slick with moss near the center. Talus capered across, and Kory followed with zero hesitation. “I want you right in front of me,” Arie told Curran. “My balance isn’t so hot anymore.” He did as she said, offering a hand when they reached the midpoint, and Arie was grateful for it. When everyone landed on dry ground, they filled their water bottles and cinched their packs.
They climbed the far bank. A fence ran perpendicular to the river, barbed wire sagging in places but still formidable. Handy and Curran stood on the wire so everyone could clamber over, and at the top of a small rise, they paused. Beyond them was the last stretch of meadowland, bristling with a proliferation of signage. They were standing in a rough triangle of acreage hemmed on either side by the highway and the frontage. The roads converged at a sign that read, “Arcata, Samoa Boulevard.” The exit off-ramp—which the sign’s arrow once pointed to—was now an enormous pit filled with slabs of asphalt, twisted guardrail, and turves of earth and roots.
“Oh my God,” said Renna. “Can you believe this?”
There were stalled and mangled vehicles everywhere. They blocked the highway in both directions and clotted the place where the exit had once narrowed from three directions into a single lane. Whatever had caused the off-ramp explosion had made a hash of nearby cars. Engine parts, gaping tires, and milky nets of safety glass lay everywhere. The concrete overpass was collapsed onto the roadway below.
“We’ll cut across the highway,” said Curran. “If we go up the bank on the other side, we’ll be on the frontage.”
“It’s pretty steep,” said Handy.
“Let’s try,” said Arie.
They picked their way through the mass of vehicles, trying not to look inside. The vast majority held corpses, slumped over steering wheels or leaning against windows. The road was so occluded they were forced to go single-file, sometimes squeezing sideways between cars. Dead center in the grassy median, a big Mercedes sedan was skewed sideways between a jackknifed semi-trailer and the front of a minivan. The driver’s window was down and the driver, a woman in a Chanel suit hung halfway out of the car, face to the door. Her arms dangled as though she’d died trying to crawl out that window. Probably an attorney or someone high up the ladder at the university, Arie thought. She was sorry as hell to see that animals had made serious work of the woman’s hands and forearms. She directed Kory to look the opposite direction as they inched past.
Most of these people, Arie knew, had already been sick when they got behind the wheel. It looked like the worst of the traffic had been leaving Arcata. Students from Humboldt State, perhaps, desperate to drive north or south, all of them trying to outrun a dark passenger that was already making their skin a striking, vibrant pink, and filling their lungs with thick fluid.
Once they were on the far side of the highway, the bank sloping up to the frontage road looked a lot steeper. “Damn,” said Renna, gazing at the top.
“Here goes,” said Curran, securing the rifle on his back. He retreated a few paces and took a running start. He was nearly all the way up before he had to slow down and pick his way along the final three or four feet, grabbing onto bushes and finally throwing a leg over the guardrail at street level. “Not bad,” he called. Talus barked at Curran and then bounded up to the top like a mountain goat and barked back down at the rest of them.
“Sure, make it look easy,” said Renna. She started up, using her walking stick for balance.
“Kory,” said Arie, “let’s you and I go together. I might need your reflexes on the way.” She leaned on her stick, too. Handy brought up the rear. They were nearly at the top when Renna’s bad leg buckled. She threw herself flat against the slope and tried to grab onto the dead grass, but only succeeded in turning herself sideways as she fell.
In the split second it took for Arie to register that Renna was going to bowl her down, Kory yanked Arie hard to the right. Renna tumbled past, still grabbing for purchase. Six feet back, Handy stepped directly into her trajectory, arms spread and knees flexed. She plowed into his right side. He fell to his knees and caught the back of Jaimee Wallace’s fine green coat clutched in a death grip. He had her.
They all stood for a minute, breathing hard. “What’s the damage?” Arie called. “Can she climb?”
Renna was pulling herself around into a sitting position. Handy was bent next to her, speaking too quietly for Arie to hear. He raised one fist in a thumbs-up.
Kory heaved a shaky sigh of relief, and Arie laughed. She pinched each of his cheeks with her two hands. “You can say that again,” she said. “Boy, am I glad I picked you for a climbing partner.”
Handy and Renna rested while Kory and Arie finished the climb. With Handy supporting her, Renna made it, too, by fits and starts. When they neared the top, Curran straddled the guardrail and leaned out to take her hands. Over she came, with Handy right behind, and then they were all standing on the frontage road together.
“What’s the damage?” Arie asked, looking Renna over from head to toe.
“I’ll survive,” she said. “This hurts.” She gingerly touched her chin and winced when her fingertips grazed a nasty scrape there and came away bloody. Her forearms were abraded, too, and there was a small spot of blood seeping through one knee of her jeans.
“We’ll get that patched up,” Arie said. She plucked away a bit of leafy detritus tangled in Renna’s dark curls. “Good as new.”
Renna rolled her eyes at that, but then she started to smile. “Ow,” she winced, touching the undamaged skin along the side of her jaw. “Damn it, Arie, don’t make me laugh.”
Handy had his water bottle. Renna had a long drink and then let him pour some over her wounds. Arie was glad to see they were shallow and would soon scab over. The sooner the better, in the post-antibiotic world.
Kory and Talus were playing tug-of-war with a slender branch, the dog mock growling, Kory laughing and growling back. Curran hushed them, his face somber. His stiff posture made Arie look around at him.
“All right?” she asked.
“Do you hear that?” He swung the rifle off his shoulder and held it in front of him.
They all froze, listening. Off to their left, long rhythmic rolling sounds approached. The gritty sound of wheels on pavement. Suddenly a man appeared, sweeping onto the frontage road. A man on wheels, gliding toward them on a pair of rollerblades.
Perhaps it was the man’s smile, or the flamboyant tilt of head. Maybe it was the brown and white osprey feather jutting from his knit cap or the fact that he was wearing a shin-length black cape but all five of them—including Talus—stood stock-still as he approached, dumbstruck.