The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [135]
Behind the glass someone moves.
Prayers break out; neighbors join hands. But when somebody reaches for me, I step ahead of everyone, including the kids.
"Noah," say a couple of the older voices, sounding reproachful.
Then a girl, maybe twelve years old, blurts, "Who's that man?"
I'm not seen around town enough to be familiar. But Old Ferris says, "That's Helen's boy," and it is strangely heartening to know that I am still defined by one minuscule accident in biology.
I walk halfway to the apparition and stop.
It's Butcher Jack who emerges from the crowd, winking nervously when he joins me.
"What do you think?" he whispers.
A thousand years of guesses wouldn't find the truth. I say nothing, and we walk together up to the RVs big front door, hesitating an instant before each of us gives the filthy metal a friendly, flat-handed slap.
Jack starts to say, "Hello?"
And the door opens. The violent hiss of compressed gas startles us, and we leap back. I'm so nervous that I am laughing, and that's what the young woman sees when she pops into view.
She sees a giggling fool. To me, she looks twenty, fit and very pretty. Smiling as if it is her natural expression, she jumps to the bottom step and grabs the door handle while leaning out at us. She is lovely and slender with her gold hair worn long and trousers that couldn't be much tighter. It's not that I fall in love. But my first impression is that if I were ten years younger, I would be helplessly, shamelessly infatuated.
"Oh good," she says.
There's an accent to her words - a warm friendly way of speaking that is completely new to me.
"Can you two boys help with grandma?" she asks.
Jack looks at me.
I suppose this could be a trap. A beautiful girl lures ignorant older men into her mobile home, making them her prisoner, abusing them in all sorts of wicked ways. That certainly is worth the risk, I decide. So I lead the way, climbing up into the RV with Jack close behind. The woman says, "Thanks," twice before adding, "My dad hurt his back, and I'm not strong enough to do this alone."
What looks like a giant dirty box from outside proves smaller and less dusty than I expected. I smell people and recent meals and this morning's bathroom business. The "dad" proves to be a wary fellow maybe five years older than me, sitting behind the little table where a happy traveler might eat his meals, watching the countryside roll past. I remember enough to piece together a compelling daydream. This is how millions of people lived. Before. Burning gasoline by the tanker, wandering their world on the smooth happy roads.
Loudly, confidently, the girl announces, "I've got help for us, grandma."
Dad watches the two strangers, thanking us with a little nod as we pass. The old woman is in back, laid out on a bed big enough to sleep two. I can't remember ever seeing a lady of these proportions. She probably began life big, time and too much food making her astonishingly fat. According to the one working scale at my house, I weigh 200 elk-fed pounds. But I wouldn't want this lady standing on my scale. She's that fat. And worse, her smooth round face is drawn around a couple blue eyes that look at me and look at Jack and then look at the blond woman, registering nothing in the process.
She's blind, I guess.
But no, she suddenly asks, "Who are you?"
I start to answer. But the woman says, "I'm May and you're my grandmother."
She says those words instantly, like a reflex. As if she says them a hundred times every day. She's patient enough,