His foot came down on a twig. The “snap!” filled his ears and he crouched, peering into the gloom with a desperate need that transcended sight. It felt as if a frantic power drove out of his eyes, propelled by his terror, demanding the mist be cloven so he could see.
Obediently, it seemed, the dry fog suddenly fell open before him. Pupils dilated, Gordon saw that he was less than two meters from the window … his own face reflected, wide-eyed and wild haired … and saw, superimposed on his own image, a vacant, skeletal, death mask — a hooded skull grinning in welcome.
Gordon crouched, hypnotized, as a superstitious thrill coursed up his spine. He was unable to bring his weapon to bear, unable to cause his larynx to make sound. The haze swirled as he listened for proof that he had really gone mad — wishing with all his might that the death’s head was an illusion.
“Alas, poor Gordon!” The sepulchral image overlay his reflection and seemed to shimmer a greeting. Never, in all these awful years, had Death — owner of the world — manifested to him as a specter. Gordon’s numbed mind could think of nothing but to attend the Elsinorian figure’s bidding. He waited, unable to take his gaze away, or even to move. The skull and his face … his face and the skull.… The thing had captured him without a fight, and now seemed content to grin about it.
At last it was something as mundane as a monkey reflex that came to Gordon’s aid.
No matter how mesmerizing, how terrifying, no unchanging sight can keep a man riveted forever. Not when it seemed that nothing at all was happening, nothing changing. Where courage and education failed him, where his nervous system had let him down, boredom finally took command.
His breath exhaled. He heard it whistle between his teeth. Without willing them to, Gordon felt his eyes turn slightly from the visage of Death.
A part of him noted that the window was set in a door. The handle lay before him. To the left, another window. To the right … to the right was the hood.
The… hood …
The hood of a jeep.
The hood of an abandoned, rusted jeep that lay in a faint rut in the forest gully…
He blinked at the hood of the abandoned, rusted jeep with ancient U.S. government markings, and the skeleton of a poor, dead, civil servant within, skull pressed against the passenger-side window, facing Gordon.
The strangled sigh he let out felt almost ectoplasmic, the relief and embarrassment were so palpable. Gordon straightened up and it felt like unwinding from a fetal position — like being born.
“Oh. Oh Lordie,” he said, just to hear his own voice. Moving his arms and legs, he paced a long circle around the vehicle, obsessively glancing at its dead occupant, coming to terms with its reality. He breathed deeply as his pulse settled and the roar in his ears gradually ebbed.
Finally, he sat down on the forest floor with his back against the cool door on the jeep’s left side. Trembling, he used both hands as he put the revolver back on safety and slid it into its holster. Then he pulled out his canteen and drank in slow, full swallows. Gordon wished he had something stronger, but water right now tasted as sweet as life.
Night was full, the cold, bone-chilling. Still, Gordon spent a few moments putting off the obvious. He would never find the bandits’ roost now, having followed a false clue so far into a pitch dark wilderness. The jeep, at least, offered some form of shelter, better than anything else around.
He hauled himself up and placed his hand on the door lever, calling up motions that had once been second nature to two hundred million of his countrymen and which, after a stubborn moment, forced the latch to give. The door let out a loud screech as he pulled hard and forced it open. He slid onto the cracked vinyl of the seat and inspected the interior.
The jeep was one of those reversed, driver-on-the-right types the post office had used back in the once-upon-a-time of before the Doomwar. The dead mailman — what was left of him — was slumped over on the far side. Gordon avoided looking at the skeleton for the moment.
The storage area of the truck was nearly full with canvas sacks. The smell of old paper filled the small cabin at least as much as the faded odor of the mummified remains.
With a hopeful oath, Gordon snatched up a metal flask from the shift well. It sloshed! To have held liquid for sixteen years or more it had to be well sealed. Gordon swore as he twisted and pried at the cap. He pounded it against the door frame, then attacked it again.
Frustration made his eyes tear, but at last he felt the cap give. Soon he was rewarded with a slow, rough turning, and then the heady, distantly familiar aroma of whiskey.
Maybe I’ve been a good boy after all.
Maybe there is indeed a God.
He took a mouthful and coughed as the warming fire streamed down. Two more small swallows and he fell tack against the seat, breathing almost a sigh.
He wasn’t ready yet to face removing the jacket draped over the skeleton’s narrow shoulders. Gordon grabbed sacks — bearing the imprint us. postal service — and piled them about himself. Leaving a narrow opening in the door to let in fresh mountain air, he burrowed under the makeshift blankets with his bottle.
At last he looked over at his host, contemplating the dead civil servant’s American flag shoulder patch. He unscrewed the flask and this time raised the container toward the hooded garment.
“Believe it or not, Mr. Postman, I always thought you folks gave good and honest service. Oh, people used you as whipping boys a lot, but I know what a tough job you all had. I was proud of you, even before the war.
“But this, Mr. Mailman” — he lifted the flask — “this goes beyond anything I’d come to expect! I consider my taxes very well spent.” He drank to the postman, coughing a little but relishing the warm glow.
He settled deeper into the mail sacks and looked at the leather jacket, ribs serating its sides, arms hanging loosely at odd angles. Lying still, Gordon felt a sad poignancy-something like homesickness. The jeep, the symbolic, faithful letter carrier, the flag patch… they recalled comfort, innocence, cooperation, an easy life that allowed millions of men and women to relax, to smile or argue as they chose, to be tolerant with one another — and to hope to be better people with the passage of time.
Gordon had been ready, today, to kill and to be killed. Now he was glad that had been averted. They had called him “Mr. Rabbit” and left him to die. But it was his privilege, without their ever knowing it, to call the bandits “countrymen,” and let them have their lives.
Gordon allowed sleep to come and welcomed back optimism — foolish anachronism that it might be. He lay in a blanket of his own honor, and spent the rest of the night dreaming of parallel worlds.
2
Snow and soot covered the ancient tree’s broken branches and seared bark. It wasn’t dead, not quite yet Here and there tiny shoots of green struggled to emerge, but they weren’t doing well. The end was near.
A shadow loomed, and a creature settled onto the drifts, an oldt wounded thing of the skies, as near death as the tree.
Pinions drooping, it laboriously began building a nest — a place of dying. Stick by stick, it pecked among the ruined wood on the ground, piling the bits higher until it was clear that it was not a nest at all.
It was a pyre.
The bloody, dying thing settled in atop the kindling, and crooned soft music unlike anything ever heard before. A glow began to build, surrounding the beast soon in a rich purple lambience. Blue flames burst forth.
And the tree seemed to respond. Aged, ruined branches curled forward toward the heat, like an old man warming his hands. Snow shivered and fell, the green patches grew and began to fill the air with a fragrance of renewal.