I took his hand in my own and he pulled me up behind him, onto the horse’s bare rump. He smelled of sweat and smoke.
With one hiyah! we took off down the moss-covered road. I kept a hand around his chest and turned to look at the bear. She was up, running after us, her giant brown body heaving with the effort.
The boy held onto the cracked leather reins, steering the horse off the main strip and into a wide field. The bear was so close she snapped at the horse’s tail.
“Faster! You have to go faster!” I cried.
The horse picked up its pace, but the bear was still too close, with no sign of tiring. I could feel my legs, slick with sweat, slipping. I clung to the boy, my fingernails digging into his skin. He leaned forward and the wind whipped over us. The bear snapped its vicious jaws again.
I looked over the boy’s shoulder and saw a ravine ahead. It was nearly five feet across, and looked like an old sewage canal, fifteen feet deep. “Watch out!” I cried, but the boy kept on, even faster than before.
“Why don’t you let me do the driving?” he yelled over his shoulder. Behind us, the bear ran at full speed, her dark eyes locked on the horse’s rear.
“Don’t,” I said softly as we sped toward the ravine. If we didn’t make it, the bear would surely maul us alive. We’d be trapped at the bottom of the canal with no place to hide. “Please, don’t.” But the horse was already lifting off, its front legs stretching toward the other side of the cliff.
My stomach rose and fell. For one moment I was weightless, and then there was the hard impact of hooves on ground. I looked out onto the field of marigolds around us. We had made it across.
I turned back one last time, afraid the bear would be upon us, but she’d slipped at the ledge. The last thing I heard was her angry roar as she skidded down the gravelly cliff and landed, hard, in the ravine’s muddy pit.
Chapter Seven
IT WAS A LONG WHILE BEFORE EITHER OF US SPOKE. Now, out of danger, I pushed back on the rear of the horse, trying to get as far away from the boy as possible. He was a strange breed of man, part wild. Not the sophisticated kind who graced the pages of The Great Gatsby. Nor did he seem like the violent men I’d encountered on my first day in the wild. He had saved me, at least. I could only hope it wasn’t for some nefarious purpose.
He wore stained pants, ripped at his knees, and his shoulder-length hair was rolled into dreadlocks. Unlike the gang members, he carried no gun, which was of little consolation; he was as broad and muscular as them. I wasn’t sure what perverse thoughts he was thinking about me, a girl he’d found alone in the woods. I pulled my T-shirt away from my breasts.
“Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work,” I said, straightening up to make myself appear bigger than I was. I eyed the three dead rabbits that were slung over the horse’s neck, their feet bound with twine.
The boy glanced back at me and smiled. Despite his poor hygiene, his teeth were perfect—so straight and white. “And what is it that I’m planning? Really, I’d love to hear.”
We were trotting down a highway now, the metal guardrails barely visible beneath the vines. Off in the distance was a half-crumbled bridge. “You want to have intercourse with me,” I said matter-of-factly.
The boy laughed, a loud, raucous laugh, his hand slapping the horse’s neck. “I want to have intercourse with you?” he repeated, as if he hadn’t heard it right the first time.
“That’s right,” I said more loudly. “And I’ll tell you now, I will not let that happen. Not even if . . .” I searched for the right metaphor.
“. . . I was the last man on earth?” He looked out on the vast, unpopulated landscape and flashed a mischievous grin. His eyes were the pale green of grapes.
“Precisely.” I nodded. I was glad he could at least speak and understand proper English. I wasn’t having nearly as much trouble communicating as I would have imagined.
“Well that’s good,” the boy said. “Because I don’t want to have intercourse with you anyway. You’re not my type.”
I laughed then too, until I realized he wasn’t kidding. He kept his eyes straight ahead as he maneuvered the horse off the highway and onto a moss-covered street, urging it around holes in the pavement.
“What do you mean ‘I’m not your type’?” I asked.
The plague had killed far more females than males. As one of the few women in The New America, especially an educated, civilized woman, I’d always supposed I was every man’s type.
The boy glanced at me once and shrugged. “Eh,” he muttered.
Eh? I was intelligent, I worked hard. I was told I was beautiful. I was Eve, the valedictorian of School. And all he could say was, Eh?
His shoulders shook a little. I looked at his face and realized, for the first time during our ride, that he was teasing me. He was making a joke.