by Ike Hamill
“Lisa!” Ashley shouted, darting forward.
There was no time for Ashley to catch her. Lisa slammed down. Her hands, still reaching for the girl, failed to do anything to stop her fall. Lisa’s face hit the damp dirt hard. She released a gagging growl and then sanity snapped back into place.
“What happened? Why didn’t you rest, like I said?”
Ashley knelt and gently pulled Lisa back up. The violent urges had passed. Lisa was relieved to find that her hands didn’t try to strangle the life out of Ashley. Instead, she put a dirty hand against Ashley’s cheek.
“It’s not safe,” Lisa said. Her tears started to fall again.
“What’s not safe?”
“Any of us.”
By dawn, the insanity of the previous day had nearly passed. Lisa still felt a spark of guilt, but didn’t fan it back into flames. She allowed it to die out and thought of nothing but the day’s work.
“From the map, today should be easy. We’re cruising right through the valley and we won’t have any real hills at all until tomorrow,” Ashley said.
Lisa nodded. They were eating a breakfast of barely ripe apples that Ashley had found. With enough water, they stayed down, but Lisa’s stomach churned them around and around.
“I don’t like this place much,” Ashley said. “The whole time I was out foraging, I felt like I was being watched. I almost didn’t want to light the fire this morning. I thought it might be best for us to just hit the road.”
“It’s fine,” Lisa said. “We’ll be fine.”
While Lisa sat and finished her breakfast, Ashley did most of the work to pack everything up. Guilt began to rise and Lisa chewed faster. She swallowed and tried to remember precisely what had happened the day before. She could try to do everything equitably with Ashley, but there was darkness down that path. They weren’t equal—Ashley was roughly a thousand years younger. She was more energetic, agile, and recovered faster. Lisa needed to conserve herself or she would end up slowing them both down.
A voice whispered to her, “Unless I walk away.”
That was a stupid idea. Ashley had already proven that her first instinct would be to hunt Lisa down.
The voice had an answer, “Unless I relieve her of her burden first.”
Lisa shook away the thought. It seemed easy to do, sitting in the morning light, away from the woods. Those thoughts seemed almost absurd now.
“You ready?” Ashley asked.
“Definitely,” Lisa said. When she stood, she realized that her thighs weren’t nearly as sore as she remembered. It was completely possible that she was actually adjusting to riding bikes. Back at home, when they got there, Romie would be thrilled at this information. So many times, Romie had attempted to get Lisa to ride with her. Lisa always had the same excuse—she would bike when Romie would sit down and weed the garden.
They rode in silence for a long time. It was the same rhythm of the previous day and the one before that. Uphill, downhill, and cursing whenever they had to slow down to get around an impediment. The hand-painted symbols on the signs didn’t mean anything anymore. The world had continued eroding and nobody had been around to make note of it. The next time that anyone tried to drive down to the Outpost, they were going to have a long, hard trip.
“What is it?” Ashley asked.
“What is what?”
“You were smiling. I haven’t seen you smile in days.”
“I was thinking about your brother and sister… and Romie, and Brad, and your father. For the first time in a long time, I was casually thinking of what they’ll look like to my tired eyes, you know? I actually believe that we’re going to see them again, and that was such a happy thought that it made me smile.”
“I thought you had decided to be pessimistic.”
“I had. That’s the other reason I was smiling. It doesn’t matter how pessimistic I try to be—I will always hope for the best.”
They rode so long that Lisa lost track of the days. Their trip north was tracked by Ashley on a book of maps. Each time they stopped, Ashley would mumble to herself about which exit they had passed last and how many miles they had ridden. Lisa only knew that they were in New York. It was the state of their destination, but that meant little. Depending on the route they would end up taking, they would have to travel more than two-hundred miles to cross the state. At one point, that kind of trip would have only been a mild inconvenience. On a bicycle, each mile had to be paid for with endless pedaling. Lisa was grinding away the last of her body. She only hoped that she had enough stamina remaining to accompany Ashley all the way to the end.
Ashley closed her map with a big sigh.
“Hard days coming,” Ashley said.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“At some point, we’re going to be within striking distance of Donnelly. Then we can ditch all this gear and just ride the bikes, you know?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Rather not what?”
“Even if you think we’re only a day away, I’d rather keep the gear. There’s no telling what we’re going to find when we make it back there. We might regret leaving all our camping equipment.”
“Oh,” Ashley said. The single syllable sounded so sad. It conveyed the feeling that Ashley was putting back on the burden of the journey.
“We can, if you want,” Lisa said. “I’m sure that we can find new gear if we have to.”
“No, you’re right. It’s more efficient if we carry our stuff. Even at the Outpost, when we had buildings that we knew were somewhat maintained, we ended up using our gear.”
“Besides, that will make it even sweeter when we don’t need it,” Lisa said. She didn’t voice the flip side of that coin—that they would still have the gear when they needed it to travel back to Gladstone. Picturing the reunion with their family, it always happened in Gladstone.
Two days later, Lisa began to see names that seemed familiar. There was a faded sign that had fallen into tree and was supported there. It read, “Hurricane, 2 mi.” An old guy named Richard had a farm in Hurricane, or at least he used to. Some people preferred to keep a little distance between themselves and Donnelly proper—Richard was one of those.
“You hear that?” Ashley asked.
“No. What?”
Ashley’s brakes squeaked as she pulled to a stop. Lisa stopped alongside her. Penny jumped out of the back and padded over to the side of the road. It was crumbling down to the edge of a lake. The dog waded in to drink and that was the only thing that Lisa could hear.
“There!” Ashley said. She pointed across the lake.
As soon as she saw them, Lisa could hear them too. It was a band of horses, running through a field on the other side of the lake. The low rumble of their hooves carried on the breeze. All their heads came up at once and the horses stopped. One shook its head. Frightened or frustrated—it was hard to tell which at their distance.
Then, bouncing and kicking, the horse ran off. The rest of the herd ran too, disappearing up into the woods.
“Wow,” Ashley whispered.
“Richard had horses,” Lisa said.
“Huh?”
“You remember Richard? He had a farm near here, I think.”
Penny trailed muddy footprints as she climbed back up to the road surface and walked to her trailer. She looked at the two women, perhaps wondering if they were going to continue on or stop for a while. Penny must have decided it was time to move on. She climbed into the trailer with a grunt and put her head down.
“We’re almost…” Ashley started to say.
“I don’t want to know,” Lisa said.
They pedaled on and Lisa’s resolve weakened. She kept thinking that it would be best to be surprised when they finally climbed the hill that led to Main Street. If she counted down the miles, it would be slow torture. But it was torture anyway. They were almost there. Every time they rounded a corner, she expected to see the long hill that led up town. It was so clear in her head. A
fraid to see a sign, or something that she might recognize, Lisa kept her eyes down. She focused only on a spot that was a few paces beyond her front wheel.
They rode that way forever.
“Look,” Ashley said.
“No.”
“Aunt Lisa, there’s a fire.”
A flash of fear made her break her rule. She looked up. It was only a thin line of black smoke, rising up in the still air near the horizon.
“That’s nothing,” Lisa said. She had been afraid that there was a forest fire marching toward them.
“It could be a cook fire though.”
“Oh,” Lisa said. The idea hadn’t occurred to her.
Then, Ashley was stopping again. Lisa heard the squeak of the brakes behind her and she glanced around to look.
With the map and a compass, Ashley was trying to put her finger on the source of the smoke.
“That’s Little Pond there, and this must be Arrowsic Road. So that fire is… It’s in Donnelly! Come on!”
Ashley’s enthusiasm persevered, but her acceleration with the heavy bike was incredibly slow. The giant smile on her face never faltered as her legs struggled to get the thing moving. Lisa chuckled at the sight and then fell in behind Ashley as she continued to gain speed.
“Do you think they’re burning brush?” Ashley asked. “Maybe they’re having a cookout. That fire could be in the park. Maybe they’re having a giant cookout and there is a ton of food.”
Lisa thought the idea was absurd, but her stomach woke up at the thought. Since they had left, there had been few really good meals. The fish that Ashley and Tim had caught was good. The elk that they had cooked at the observatory came to mind. Ashley was a wizard at foraging up an entire meal of odd things, even when it seemed like there was nothing to be found in the woods.
Lisa’s stomach craved one thing. She could picture it so well. A full shish kabob of vegetables, fresh from the garden, and soaked with a cherry vinaigrette. It was one of her favorite late-summer meals. Back in Gladstone, she would cook up enough of them for second helpings at dinner and still have enough for lunch the next day. The smokey onions would be sweet and the roasted peppers would still have just a little crunch.
It was an absurd vision though. She might never get to enjoy that again—it was a silly thing to fixate on.
Lisa struggled to keep up. Ashley was still gaining speed, pulling the bike and trailer along with all the strength of her young will. Lisa pulled in right behind her and drafted as they rolled down a hill and started up the next. Lisa was panting and her legs burning as Ashley continued at a crazy pace.
Focused only on Ashley’s back, trying to keep up, Lisa totally missed the fact that they were climbing the last hill into Donnelly. She didn’t even notice until it flattened out and they were passing the big white steeple of the church. It was still standing—that alone was amazing. So many of the tall buildings had succumbed over the years. Lisa’s mouth hung open as she watched it go by. Her sore neck made her snap back forward.
“It is at the park,” Ashley shouted. “The smoke is from the park.”
This time, there was no way she could keep up with Ashley’s sprint. The girl rode so fast that she even stopped trying to steer around the potholes. The bike rattled and the trailer bounced. Penny barked, but even that didn’t slow Ashley down.
The young woman got smaller and smaller as she pulled away.
Lisa could smell the fire as she turned onto Gates Street and headed toward the west side of the park. It didn’t smell like a campfire. It didn’t even smell like a brush fire. There was a weird acid to the smoke.
Way ahead, Ashley turned and disappeared behind a brick building at the corner of the park.
“Ashley!” Lisa yelled. It was too late.
Lisa rode as quickly as she could and made the turn a little too fast. Her bike nearly went out from under her when she hit the loose sand and gravel. Barely recovering, Lisa saw Ashley’s bike spilled on the ground ahead. The young woman and the dog were nowhere to be seen.
Lisa coasted to a stop and leaned her bicycle against the brick wall. Before leaving her things behind, she found her knife in the pack that was strapped to the bike’s rack. The handle had chafed at her side while riding, so she had taken it off. Snapping it back onto her belt, she shook out her tired legs and walked toward the column of smoke. It seemed to be coming from down near the pond. Lisa saw Ashley’s trail through the tall grass, but she took the old stone path. It was overgrown, but still gave her better footing than the field.
Cresting the last hill, Lisa steeled herself for what she might see. She almost didn’t want to look. There was an idea floating in the back of her head that they had come all this way just to find their own doom. If that’s what had happened to Ashley, she didn’t want to see it.
The young woman was standing next to the smoking pile of limbs, spinning in a slow circle as she looked around. Penny was sniffing at the edge of the pond a few feet away.
Lisa followed the path until she couldn’t anymore and then broke off to head toward Ashley.
“I don’t know where they went. There are footprints, but I don’t see anyone.”
“How many people?” Lisa asked.
Ashley looked down. “Just one, I think. I’m not sure, but I think the only fresh prints are from one person. Maybe about the same size shoe as me,” she said, lining her foot up near a patch of mud.
Lisa put her hands on her hips and examined the fire. It was a pretty big fire for one person. There were limbs there that would have been pretty difficult to drag alone. It wasn’t impossible though. Ashley could have pulled it off.
The fire pit was big. It looked like it had been used many times. There was even evidence that some of the ashes had washed away, down toward the pond. Lisa tried to think when they had last seen rain.
“There’s another one there,” Ashley said, pointing.
Lisa saw a different pit on the other side of the pond.
“Huh. Why, I wonder?”
“Signal fire, maybe. Could be that they hoped that people like us would see the smoke.”
“This is the wrong place for that,” Lisa said. “There are open areas where you might see the smoke from farther away. I don’t buy it.”
“Well, how should I know?” Ashley asked. Her hands fell and slapped against her sides.
“It’s okay. Let’s focus on tracking the person. They must still be pretty close, right?”
Ashley cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hello?” she yelled.
Lisa cringed. She would rather they find the person rather than the other way around. It was too late, she imagined.
Sniffing along the edge of the pond, Penny began to move north and west. Ashley ran after her.
“Aunt Lisa, over here,” Ashley called. She was pointing down at the ground emphatically. Lisa followed carefully across the sloping terrain to see that Ashley and Penny had found more footprints. There was a worn down patch of grass that led between some shrubs.
“Let’s see where they go,” Ashley said.
Lisa shrugged consent.
They paused at a section of rusted chain link fence. A jagged hole had been cut in the fence and the links were parted like curtains. The road that bordered the park was a mess of fallen trees and rusted old vehicles. Across the patchy pavement, the path up to the house was grooved into the grass. Lisa regarded the place from top to bottom.
The upstairs windows were black rectangles—painted from the inside. A porch wrapped around the whole first floor of the place and it was lit up with glittering glass. Bottles were hung from strings across the entire porch. Even more glass bottles lined the railing. Beyond all that glass, the door and windows of the house were wide open.
Ashley looked to Lisa.
“Yell first,” Lisa said. “We don’t want to show up unannounced.”
Ashley nodded and cupped her hands again. “Hello?”
They waited.
Through the weeds
and trees, Lisa could see enough of the neighboring houses to see how dilapidated they were in contrast. One had a collapsed roof. On the other, all the paint had peeled and the siding had rotted holes in places.
“Hello?” Ashley called again.
Penny pricked her ears and took a hesitant step through the hole in the fence.
“Stay here,” Ashley said to Lisa. She bent down to go through the fence.
“Yeah. Right,” Lisa said, following.
Together, they followed the path to the place. Penny stayed with them. She sensed danger, or just sensed the fear in the women. Either way, the dog’s reticence didn’t inspire much confidence in Lisa.
Ashley pointed to a rotted board on the porch and stepped carefully around it. Lisa followed, accepting a hand from Ashley as she climbed. The jars were everywhere on the porch. Now that they were closer, Lisa could see that they were all filled with clear water. The ones hanging from strings swayed slightly, but were hung far enough apart that they didn’t clink together in the breeze.
“Hello?” Ashley yelled again, startling Lisa.
Inside the place, they heard something clatter to the floor.
Ashley rushed forward before Lisa could catch her shoulder and tell her to be careful.
Penny looked up at Lisa.
“Go ahead,” Lisa said, gesturing to the dog. With permission, Penny ran after Ashley into the dim interior of the place. Lisa waited a moment, hoping to understand what they were facing before she committed herself to the doorway. When she heard Ashley apologizing to someone in there, Lisa went.
Through the clutter of the living room and into the kitchen, Lisa found Ashley kneeling next to a person in rags. Together, they were picking up pieces of a shattered dish from the floor.
“We didn’t mean to startle you. We yelled and yelled, but you didn’t come out,” Ashley said.