“Fidget,” Eve called.

  “Yes, Eve?”

  “Were you thinking about food?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Wow, can you read my mind? Maybe I don’t need to talk.”

  “Want to try it?” Eve asked.

  “What?”

  “Not talking.”

  “But if I didn’t talk, who would I ask for food?”

  The Great Dane let loose a timely sigh, and while there was no way to tell if he was exhausted by the beagle’s reasoning or not, it was a safe bet.

  “Hey, Eve?”

  “Yes, Fidget.”

  “I want food.”

  “I’m sure you do, Fidget,” she said. She stiffened up and struck the pose of a formal waiter. “Is there anything in particular monsieur would like?”

  Fidget’s tail wagged at her performance and his nose twitched frantically as he searched the air for an answer. Suddenly both the tail and the nose stopped, and Fidget’s head cocked to one side. “I smell Chinese food.”

  Sasquatch sighed again and dropped to the ground.

  Eve laughed at first, but then her own nose began to twitch. “I smell Chinese food, too.” She looked around but couldn’t locate the source of the aroma. “Do you think you can find it, Fidget?”

  “Do I?” The tail and nose fired back up, and the beagle led them through River City in search of a meal that Eve hadn’t had in years.

  She had been here before, but the city had grown tremendously since her last visit. The change produced an odd feeling that she couldn’t quite place at first. It soon dawned on her that it was the first time in years that a place she knew had changed due to progress instead of disaster. It should have been a good feeling, but she wasn’t sure how to process it.

  Some of the places she had wandered to more than once were making improvements over time. Minimal electricity. Crude plumbing. But nothing like River City. And Chinese food? Maybe normal was coming back faster than she thought.

  Fidget howled when he located the restaurant. It was two stories above the water line and had been carved out of two old apartment units. But only intuition told her that. The interior was well lit and through the windows, it looked exactly how a Chinese restaurant was supposed to look.

  The smell brought back a flood of memories as Eve opened the door. Then, she realized it had a door. Not a passageway. Not a flap. Not a tarp. A glass door.

  She had been wandering the wasteland for years now and had developed several theories about the world around her. The first question most people asked themselves once they had adjusted to the idea that the internet wasn’t coming back was, did people deserve it? Many said yes. Others didn’t have an answer. She remained undecided on the issue and focused on the world as it was. But, as she began to visit towns more than once, she had become convinced that the end of the world was still in progress. The bombs had just been the beginning, and though humanity was still around, it certainly didn’t have the skills, or disposition, to come back from the brink.

  But as she ate, with chopsticks no less, she began to reconsider everything she had decided. It was all good news, really. And it was important to keep an open mind. And the food was delicious. But its impact was unexpected and further reaching than she could have imagined.

  What was a post-apocalyptic nomadic warrior to do if the world returned to normal? Ever since the fall of Alasis, she had found fewer and fewer people in need of her help. Which of course was a good thing, and she shouldn’t complain about that. People were helping themselves. But her skills were in less demand. It wasn’t that Alasis was the only evil in the new world. Far from it. But it had been so well organized that no one had a chance to ever catch their breath. Now not only were people able to prepare for trouble, they even had leisure time.

  The dogs devoured their meals with a focus she hadn’t seen since their time together. It was even enough to keep Fidget quiet. Mostly. It was good Chinese food, not magic Chinese food.

  They finished everything and complimented the owners several times. Anytime she had been given a meal, she had been appreciative and said thank you, but this was the first time in a while she complimented the taste and the decor and the experience and the chopsticks. It was an odd thought, remembering that food could be so much more than sustenance.

  The trio left the restaurant and strolled the walkways between the towers, with Fidget keeping very much to the middle of the walkway and his tail soundly between his legs for balance.

  Music pulsed behind the glass windows that once held office space and people came and went full of spirits both high and fine.

  Eve stopped in the middle of one of the walkways and rested her elbows on the rail. They were several stories up, and the path swayed gently in a warm summer breeze.

  “What are you thinking about, Eve?” Fidget asked from the middle of the bridge.

  Everything. That was the answer, but she didn’t tell the dog that.

  A town square floated beneath them. It was an intersection filled with floating platforms, vendors and more people getting along than she had seen in years. She stared in awe as people moved about in general harmony. She marveled at the fact that they had places to go. It was an odd thing to realize.

  Fidget had grown braver and wormed his way to the edge of the bridge and looked over. His tail started wagging. “Hey, there’s the boat guy.”

  Eve searched the crowd and spotted the mastiff first. Blue stayed close to the captain’s heel as he made his way through the crowd. Maybe this guy Mike actually had it figured out. Life on the river seemed to be a nice balance between settled and restless. Who knew? With things changing so fast, maybe a life on the river was in her future as well.

  If civilization was truly making a comeback, it would be a front row seat to its birth. And if things went sideways, you could always just pull up the anchor and float away.

  She wondered if that was the boatman’s plan as he made his way through the crowded commons of River City. Eve stood up as she took note of the others in the crowd. Five men were pushing their way through the crowd of people behind the boatman. She could see their trail like a pack of raptors moving through high grass as they made their way toward Mike.

  Fidget couldn’t smell what was happening but knew something was going on. The beagle stared at her face. “What’s the matter, Eve?”

  “It’s those men from Hannibal. The ones that wanted on the boat. They’re here and it looks like they’re after Mike.”

  Fidget stood up, the height all but forgotten. “We have to help him.”

  The dog was right. But what could she do from up here? Shouting wouldn’t do any good. He wouldn’t hear over the crowd below. She reached for her gun. Shooting at his feet would get his attention and possibly warn him of danger. It would also certainly scare everyone, cause a panic and test the understanding of the River City authorities, so she left it holstered.

  “We’ve got to get down there,” Eve said to the dogs, and began to make her way across the bridge while keeping an eye on the situation below.

  Mike reached the edge of the crowd just ahead of his pursuers and turned down a floating side street. That wasn’t good. Free of the confinement of the crowd, the gang could jump him without interference.

  Two members of the entourage reached the edge of the crowd and Eve stopped and leaned over the rail of the bridge. The first man began to charge, and Eve drew a deep breath to shout her warning. She worried that he wouldn’t hear her. It turned out that it wasn’t even necessary.

  Mike apparently anticipated the charge and stepped to one side as the man caught up to him. He grabbed the thug by the neck and sent him sliding on his face across the unfinished surface of the wooden deck.

  The others rushed in as the boatman and his dog turned to take them all on.

  She watched out of concern at first, but the concern soon gave way to fascination as the man and the dog moved together in what, from this angle, looked like a beautifully choreographed performance.

  The Champ’s men fell to the dock, plowed through debris and regained their footing to attack over and over. Their recoveries slowed over time and she could only imagine the number of splinters they were collecting with each fall to the deck.

  Soon they stopped getting back up altogether and came to rest in broken crates and the other debris that their failed ambush had created. Two of the three had hit the water and were making absolutely no effort to climb out as long as that big dog stood above them growling. They just clung to the edge of the dock and refused to look at the man and his dog.

  Mike turned his back to them and looked back to the edge of the crowd. The Champ stood there with an outstretched finger.

  She couldn’t hear it from here, but Eve could guess there was speech behind that finger. The fighter became quite animated as his threats and hand gestures got broader and, more than likely, more graphic.

  Mike made no such gestures. He said something to the dog, and the mastiff laid down next to him. Mike took a few steps away from the dog and the Champ raced forward.

  She’d never seen the brawler fight but knew of the man’s reputation. Toughest Bastard in the Wasteland was an impossible title to back up. Since the end of the world, everyone had either had to toughen up or fade away, and many once-gentle folks had been surprised to discover just how tough they were once they were forced to raise their fists in self-defense. The world had proven to be full of tough bastards, so it took more than a little marketing for someone to make a claim like Toughest Bastard in the Wasteland stick. More than a few had tried.

  However, from everything she had heard, Brazen Douglas had been able to back up the claim in the ring of the burgeoning circuit that had formed between towns and territories. He traveled from village to settlement and town to hovel challenging each population’s toughest man. As far as Eve knew, his claim that he was undefeated wasn’t just a tagline. He’d earned the nickname the Bare-knuckled Bastard with a string of victories. And as he and the boatman met on the floating street below, she discovered that his other nickname was just as apt. The One-Punch Punk wasn’t just pre-fight smack talk. As the two came together, Brazen leapt into the air and drew back his mighty right in what had been billed as his superman punch. He soared toward Mike with a scream that even she could hear high up on the walkway.

  The next sound she heard was the crack of a lightning right hand across Brazen’s face and the Champ hitting the boardwalk.

  The Bare-knuckled Bastard’s flight ended with a headfirst crash on the ground. After that, the man didn’t stand. He didn’t move. The Champ just lay there as the boatman walked away and called to the mastiff, who obediently sprang to his side.

  12

  Immediately following the end of the world, the sun disappeared and the sky was dark for two weeks, blacked out by the sudden exchange of mistakes between nations. For those two weeks, everyone watched the sky, not knowing when or if the sun would ever return.

  At the beginning of the third week, the soot began to clear, and a brown haze settled over the wasteland. The sun didn’t fully shine for another month. When it finally happened, it was the first time in generations that people truly appreciated the sunrise, and they greeted each one with a reverence previously reserved only for passing funeral processions.

  Sunsets, however, were met with much more skepticism. When they watched the sun go away in the evening, people could no longer say with 100 percent certainty that it would be back in the morning. They were pretty sure, but since the sun had pulled its great disappearing act once, who was to say it wouldn’t try that shit again. What once seemed a foregone conclusion enjoyed by retired couples and those on vacation was now a daily reminder that shit could go really wrong at any moment and on any scale.

  Marco watched the sun setting over his domain. It looked different from the back of the truck. He wished he was back on his yacht. From the bridge of the Your Mom, he always felt a part of the sunset as its reflection simmered on the top of the water. He felt immersed in it. Almost responsible for it in some way. Like he was in control. Like he was not only Captain of Your Mom but also commander of the entire world. But here, from the shoreline, he felt apart from it and yearned with all of his heart to be back on Your Mom. The river was his home.

  He had kept the secret close to his pirate vest, but the feared Captain Marco was actually Gordon Williams, a boy from Arizona named after a TV cook. A boy who had never seen a natural navigable body of water until well after the end of the world.

  The whole notion of a life on the river had been foreign to him simply because he was so removed from it. He knew little beyond what he had read in Mark Twain’s required reading. He had no idea that the country still shipped commerce on the rivers. Or, they had, until the world ended anyway. Why would they? With trucks and trains, sure. But boats? Boats were so last century. They were old-fashioned. When he learned that great fleets of barges shipped resources and goods around the nation on a network of rivers and canals, it was literally life-changing. With a highway like that, a man could go anywhere.

  Gordon had drifted east after the end of the world, looking for a place with less desert, and found the Mississippi. Even in the early days of the World After, people were using the river to get around. Back then, though, it was mostly people fleeing in one direction or the other. You rarely saw the same boat twice, and if you did, it would have a different group of people on board and a few new blood stains on the hull.

  He had taken to the pirate life in no time. Despite being born in the desert, he took to watercraft as if he’d been born the son of a gun. He stole his first boat, declared himself a pirate, and the Great and Feared Marco was born.

  The truck struck a pothole, and the shock traveled through the bed into his back. He cursed the road. The river was better. That was his home now and he hated leaving it, even for the briefest of times. It was difficult for the boy from the desert to explain to those that had grown up near the banks of any river. There was a romance to the life that he could no longer live without. On the shore you were at the mercy of the river’s power, especially now since the Army Corps of Engineers started pushing up daisies instead of maintaining the levees. The river once more determined its own course with little regard for the people in its path. A little rain in Minnesota could make for a miserable day in Missouri.

  But if you were on the river, you were a part of that power. You were a force of nature free to do as you pleased and let those in your path be damned. On board his yacht, he was in control. On Your Mom, he was truly free.

  It changed the nature of a man entirely. On the road he would be just another raider, indistinguishable from the thousands of desperate men and women who had resorted to petty thievery. A highwayman was nothing. A pirate was legendary. And he vowed to live up to the legend. He was feared, respected and beloved all at once. He had already outlived the world, and now he would see to it that his legacy outlasted him. The Mississippi was his river.

  Or, it had been, until the guns of Elsah and Portage des Sioux had shut off the southern part of the river to him and his crew. For six months, the mortars had denied him access to the southern portion of the country, to the joys of River City and the spoils of Cairo.

  That changed tonight.

  The truck backfired. It wasn’t the best truck. If it didn’t shake itself apart before they reached their destination, he would be surprised. But it was part of the plan. And it was a good plan. A simple plan. Because he was the greatest pirate to ever live, the terror of the waterways, they would never expect him to come from behind. Even if they weren’t that surprised, he was hoping they would be more hesitant to rain fire on their city than they were on the open river.

  The truck shuddered once more as the driver broke right and turned down Cemetery Road toward the riverside town of Elsah.

  It was Vanessa Brissett’s job to watch the river. And she did it better than anyone. She didn’t talk about it much, but the night watch was something she was born to do. Especially on a night like tonight. The sun had set, and it was the dark of the moon. Only starlight danced on the water. She held a powerful spotlight in her hand, but she didn’t need it. Vanessa was in her element.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and reopened them. This was how she engaged her gift. It was the gift that she didn’t talk about. Because she knew they wouldn’t believe her. They might even fear her. Envy would be undeniable. So she kept it quiet but used her gift to defend those that relied on her, those that slept under the protection of her watchful gaze.

  The night vision had been a blessing. Especially as she was tasked with watching the river at night. So easily defined during the day, the muddy river turned to black ink with the setting of the sun. The border between the water and the land and the water and the sky became a puzzle to most, but the longer she stared into the darkness the more she saw.

  Her head twitched as she heard a sploosh. Not a splash. A sploosh. Her sensitive hearing could distinguish between the two. A turtle perhaps. A fish maybe. It could be beneath her feet under the dock or a mile upstream. It was hard to tell, because her gift also included a heightened sense of hearing.

  To many, these qualities would be unexplainable. They would dismiss them as an adaptation to the new world or perhaps as gifts from fate or the gods. But Vanessa knew better. She knew exactly what had happened.

  When the bombs fell, she had taken cover in a half-forgotten fallout shelter that some previous owner had built in her yard. It was only through sheer luck that she had discovered it a few months earlier. She had been mowing the lawn at her new home when the blade found the shelter’s forgotten ventilation pipe. Even when it was buried, the gift was calling to her and she dug with abandon until she uncovered the old structure.

  She was one of the lucky ones that had both heard the warnings and had the means to save herself and her loved ones. Well, her loved one—her cat, Oswald.