“Yes,” I said. “He is.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Zach announced coldly. “No debates. I don’t want to be here when he decides that we might be around. No more broken windows or signs that we’ve been here. When we forage for food, we take from the backs of the stacks and don’t spill things. Don’t leave any fresh signs of where we’ve gone. With a little luck he’ll head to the east and we won’t ever see him again.”
I didn’t think he was going to give up that easily, but I didn’t say anything else. I knew we were safe enough for the night or the firefly pixies would have warned us. I just hoped that my faith in them was justified.
Chapter Eight – Clues…
There was more smoke in the air when we rose in the morning. It hung over the ranch house like a sullied cloud of despair, vividly reminding us that all was not well. I heard Zach get up early in order to scout the area vigilantly. I got up after he slipped out in order to keep a watch. Kara stirred a little while later, stretching sore muscles from tossing and turning all night. None of us had slept well.
When Zach returned he said that the fires had gone out in the night. He had used a pair of Eddy’s binoculars to ascertain that nothing was left but smoking ruins. I helped Kara pack up some of the fresh vegetables in containers borrowed from Gigi’s kitchen and we readied the bicycles for our departure. Zach rolled his eyes at the vegetables but Kara was unrelenting. “Do you want to take vitamins until we figure out how to grow things again?” she asked him seriously.
Zach shrugged and helped me into the trailer. He leaned over me and said relentlessly, “You feel all right, Sophie? No tears, no fever?”
“I’m fine,” I replied curtly. I only wanted to leave. I liked the ranch house but I still felt like an outsider. I was an interloper in Gigi and Eddy’s home and I always would be. Maybe they weren’t ghosts there but it felt like they were to me. Every time I stepped around a corner I almost expected to see one of them standing there, sternly questioning the presence of a stranger in their home.
Then I spoiled my brusque answer to Zach by shivering. The September morning’s temperature had been a little low in the mid-forties and I didn’t have a coat on. He said a nasty word and went to get a coat for me. After he came back with a red jacket, he tucked it around me and said firmly, “Tell me if you’re tired or you need to stop. I can’t read minds and we need you to act like one of the team.”
I stared back into his face. My father could have told him that that particular method didn’t work well with me. It sounded like manipulation to me. Hadn’t I acted like I cared by not telling them I was bleeding out? Sure I didn’t realize I was nearly bleeding to death, but the horrors that had been behind us seemed to justify my continued silence. I had chosen them over myself. It didn’t seem much more like ‘team’ to me. “I can be a team player,” I gritted.
Kara climbed onto her bicycle and prudently made sure she had enough water in the bottle connected to the frame. Very interesting stuff that. Hah. She was staying out of this one, too. One of these days that tactic was going to backfire on her.
Zach bent closer and kept his eyes on mine as he deliberately adjusted the coat over my body. “I hope so,” he muttered. “If you don’t tell me this time that something’s wrong, I’ll find a house in the hills where we’re safe, and you’ll stay on your cute little butt for a solid month.”
Then he turned and went to get on the bicycle. I stuck my tongue out at his back and Kara choked as she saw the action. She quickly turned and covered her mouth with her hand. Zach turned to look at me suspiciously but I was looking off toward the ocean, as if butter couldn’t melt in my mouth.
The pace was less frantic than the last time we were mobile. I got to hold the map and a loaded crossbow. I also got to look around more. There weren’t any burnt houses and businesses in front of us so we assumed that the man hadn’t passed us as we slept in Gigi and Eddy’s house. When I said something about it a few hours later, Zach said sourly, “If we’re really lucky he’ll have burned himself up by accident, and then he’ll have fallen down a bottomless well.”
We cruised through the town of Port Orford and admired the beach with the impressive Battle Rock dominating the curved bay. A row of colorful boats were lined up on trailers at the dock as if they would soon be launched to go out fishing. The scene was set up as if someone would come walking out of a building ready to do their normal routine. The only problem was that an eighteen wheeler had come straight down the main road, plunged through a low, shrub covered sand hill, and plowed to an abysmal end on the beach. The tractor’s nose was buried in the sand while the trailer had fallen onto its side spilling a load of DVRs and other assorted electrical goods.
We stopped to eat lunch at Battle Rock City Park and overlooked the beautiful sands before us. I ate cautiously with Zach was eying me carefully as if he could see through me like an X-ray. I wasn’t about to admit that just riding in the trailer made me as tired as a dog on a hot summer day and I wasn’t particularly hungry. But as soon as Kara finished a sandwich made with slightly stale bread we’d found at a bakery earlier, she thoroughly checked my shoulder wound. I didn’t need to look up to know that she was giving Zach a nod of approval.
We continued out of Port Orford and I think Zach nearly died pulling me up the highway that went up and around a tiny mountain called Humbug. The highway twisted and curved about the state park that held the large outcropping of earth. After a little bit, I offered to get out and walk, but Zach shot me a look of outrage that made me sit very still. So I shrugged to myself. Even Kara gave up and walked up a couple of the hills, calling merrily to Zach to give up the ghost. Finally, I managed to get him to stop and rest while I strolled up the last part of the hills. I was tired but I didn’t want to be the cause of him having wrenched muscles.
Team player. I wanted to yell at him. That was the pot calling the kettle black. I got back in the trailer on the downside and let Zach catch some of his breath back. Kara was coasting cheerfully beside us. The sun was off to the west and starting its final descent. The afternoon temperature was in the low seventies and the winds had died away. I couldn’t smell any smoke and for a single moment I almost felt…alive again.
The realization of the moment shook me to the core.
It wasn’t right to feel that way. I should still feel in mourning for my parents, and for all the others who had vanished seemingly in an instant. I shouldn’t feel normal because it wasn’t right to do so. I should be crying instead and I suddenly missed my father quite dreadfully.
I tucked my head into the side of the trailer using the red jacket as a pillow and fell asleep with trails of tears still running down my cheeks.
♦
Groggily I perceived that someone was talking about me. “…Not running another fever?”
“No,” came a female voice. “No, she’s just tired. Poor little girl.”
“Little girl,” the male voice repeated thoughtfully. “How old do you think she is?”
“Sixteen? Seventeen?” There was a pause. “You didn’t think about that?”
“No.” The answer was short and gruff.
“Well, you should.” There was a sigh. “Oh, lord, I feel like a den mother.”
“What do you mean by that?”
There was an amused huff of air. “You’re a smart kid, Zach. You can figure it out. How the heck old are you, anyway?”
“I’m twenty-one,” he said mildly, apparently surprised by the question.
“Going on fifty-six,” Kara laughed. “Don’t sweat it, sweetie. I’m sure all will work out.” She made another noise that could mean anything and then added, “As these things usually do.”
“Seriously,” Zach said off to the side somewhere. “Is she all right?”
“I think so,” Kara affirmed solemnly.
I yawned so hard my jaw popped. When I opened my eyes they were both in front of me. I was in bed again. I had been so tired I hadn’t felt Zach carrying m
e into another empty house. I turned my head and saw a broad window overlooking the sea. The sun was starting to dip into the sea with accents of brilliant orange and effervescent purple. The other direction was a broad window overlooking a windblown, seaside forest. “Nice house,” I said quietly. This was someone’s rich, coastal retreat. It had silk sheets and so much glass that a maid would have had the shakes simply looking at it.
“Sophie,” Zach said knelt beside the bed and looked me in the face. I blinked tiredly at him. “How do you feel?”
“Really tired,” I replied honestly. “It’s hard to keep my eyes open. Can I have some water?”
Kara got me a glass and let me sip it while I was propped against the pillows. “Nothing’s popped loose, right?” she said. “You were crying; were you in pain, hon?”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I carefully rotated the injured shoulder. It didn’t feel worse, just a little sore. I was simply bone tired and my body was trying to catch up. “Don’t worry, guys,” I whispered as my eyes started to close again. “I think I’m okay. I’ll do better tomorrow.”
I felt them adjust my body in the bed. I couldn’t bring myself to care much. They tucked me in and then one of them lay down beside me. Lips brushed over my forehead and arms gathered me into a warm embrace.
Then an impenetrable blackness came upon me as I slept.
♦
The next morning I found Zach downstairs with Kara in an immaculate kitchen. Counters were made of black granite and the appliances were stainless steel. The wood cupboards were constructed from red wood and stained appropriately. The floors were marble. Some of the prints on the walls I suspected weren’t really prints. Everything was as clean as if a horde of cleaners had just finished and vanished out the service entrance. I said, “Wow. Are we eating caviar for breakfast?”
Kara grinned. She was cutting vegetables from Gigi’s garden on a butcher block table. She flashed a kitchen knife that looked just as expensive as the rest of the house. “If you want,” she answered seriously and motioned at the pantry door. “They have Beluga and American. I looked.”
“Yuck,” I said. “Have you ever tried caviar? It’s disgusting.”
Kara shook her head sadly. “It’s an acquired taste, kiddo.”
“I could catch some fish,” Zach offered. “The previous owner had a fishing hobby and is pretty well outfitted. The beach is just down the hill and a set of stairs.”
I smiled. Fish sounded about as appealing as caviar. What I really wanted were chili cheese tots from a Sonic restaurant. “Maybe we should put more room in between us and…him, before we linger in one place,” I said carefully.
Zach nodded thoughtfully. He’d changed into another t-shirt and jeans. These fit him a little better and he’d found some hiking boots that were about his size. All of them were on the higher end of expensive and I had to resist the urge to tease him. But for all I knew he was used to high end items. I did know, however, I wasn’t used to teasing someone like him.
So we got ready for another round of them working and me riding. But before that Kara circumspectively put the two small jars of caviar into her backpack. Who knew when we would run into caviar again? Seriously, though, yuck, caviar.
The house was located up a narrow but well kept road that intersected the coastal highway. Zach spent a little time making sure everything was clear. After we were moving it took us about an hour to reach Gold Beach. Crossing the bridge over the Rogue River I called for Zach to stop and pointed out toward the mouth of the river.
Zach slowed to a stop and stared out to sea. “There’s a good one for your notebook,” he said gravely and after a lengthy pause.
I agreed silently. Kara stopped a few feet further up and nearly dropped her bike on its side. “Is that…” she started to say. “Is that…what the heyhey is it?”
It was big. That was the best adjective. Big. It was big and greenish. The rounded head emerged from the water and splashed lustily. The tail emerged from dozens of feet away. The eyes seemed as large as dinner plates and reflected light. A school of some kind of fish was before it, furiously scurrying through the churning seas in order to escape. However, the larger animal reared up and shone luminously in the sunlight and snake-like dove into the middle of the school; its mouth was open and ready to feed. The light made the scales on the beast seem iridescent. The sound of the splash, when it reached us, was as if a Greyhound bus had been dropped into the ocean.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go fishing around here,” I said numbly.
“‘I think we’re going to need a bigger boat,’” Kara announced as if she was in shock. Then she looked to see if either of us had heard her and shook her head. “No one’s ever going to get that one, ever again.”
“A boat?” Zach said. “Who said anything about a boat? I’m not getting on any boat, not with that thing around. It looks like it’s a hundred feet long. What if it thinks humans look tastier than all those fish?”
“Oh, never mind,” Kara said. “It’s not like I’m volunteering to go surfing.”
“Did I tell you about the missing bridge?” I asked distantly, still staring at the ginormous fish/serpent/thing before us.
Zach snapped back into the moment. “What, you think that ate a bridge?” He pointed outward.
“That or his iron deficient cousin,” I decided.
“Let’s get off the bridge,” Zach declared wryly.
We concurred.
♦
After another hour we stopped at a wide spot in the road and raided a couple of houses for lunch. Kara offered to share Beluga on Ritz Crackers with us, but neither Zach nor I were biting. We counted our blessings based on the smell alone.
“You’re sure that isn’t spoiled?” I asked innocently.
Kara screwed up her face. “You’re spoiling my buzz, kid.”
Zach chuckled. We were sharing sliced Spam on the same package of Ritz Crackers. It was, I’m told, another acquired taste. We had a can of spray cheese and used it liberally. I was also digging into the fresh carrots that Kara had brought with us. Plenty of vitamin A for my eyesight.
An odd thought occurred to me. “Kara, you don’t wear glasses?”
“Nope,” Kara said agreeably, devouring a cracker piled high with fish roe.
“And you’re pretty healthy otherwise, right?”
“Yes,” she said, eying me curiously. “What’s your point?”
“I was just wondering what the odds of three people ending up together who were all basically physically fit.” I considered. “Disregarding your knees and my being sick from the griffin’s scratches.”
Zach was perched on a rock close to me. He leaned back and said, “Nothing wrong with me. The last physical I took had absolutely no downside.”
“And Kara, do you have any problems?” I asked warily.
Kara cocked an eyebrow. “Why don’t you just throw it out, hon? I am middle aged. I should have a few afflictions, right?” She smiled genially. “I don’t. No high blood pressure. No cholesterol issues. I’m a healthy girl.”
“And him,” I said slowly. “He seemed healthy enough. Maybe not mentally healthy, but physically.”
“What are you getting at?” Zach asked brusquely. It was increasingly obvious that he didn’t like to talk about the man who had attacked me.
“I was wondering if the survivors, if that’s the right word for us, are healthy people,” I answered. “I was wondering if that was something we have in common.”
Zach thought about it. “We don’t have enough of a selection of people to make that observation. The three of us. Four,” he corrected with a glance at me, “if you include the wacko. Well, the four of us could be a fluke. And we don’t really know about him. For all we know, he could have a brain tumor the size of an orange in his head.”
I shrugged. “It’s a thought.”
Relenting, Zach added, “It’s possible, Sophie. But truly, what about Kara’s knees? They’ve been rebuilt. That k
ind of negates the healthy people scenario.”
“Maybe,” Kara said interestedly. “The VA doctors used something new on me. It’s all organic materials in my knees. One of the docs said you wouldn’t know it from the original, if I didn’t have the scars to prove it. And I’ve run mini-marathons with them. It’s just when I overdo it, like I did when I walked over the mountains without a break, I pay the price.”
We finished the lunch in a semi-comfortable silence. Zach bent over the map and said, “Shall we try for Brookings?”
“That’s twenty miles with me in the back,” I protested.
Zach looked at me challengingly.
“Well, it’s not like I weigh nothing,” I muttered in dissent.
“You’re barely skin and bones, Sophie,” Zach grated angrily. “I don’t know how much weight you lost while you were sick but it was a lot. You’re not even close to the size you used to be.”
I glanced down at my jeans. They weren’t mine. They were probably Gigi’s and she had been a size four. They hung on my hips. I didn’t have a mirror but I knew I had gotten light. “Bring on the donuts,” I said irately.
Zach produced a candy bar and tossed it in my lap. Then he stalked off.
It was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
Kara was looking interestedly at the sky.
I looked at her for a moment and then at the candy bar. Zach had rounded a corner of the road and disappeared. I sighed loudly and said, “I’m taking a bathroom break, Kara.”
Kara smiled at me knowingly. She waved in the opposite direction that Zach had taken. “There’s a house beyond those trees. Don’t be too long.”
I crossed the road and went in the direction she’d indicated. Across a short field and a dry stream bed was a single story house. It was someone’s beach house, not a hundred feet from the trail that led down to yet another fabulous Oregon seashore. I went up a little hill and then down a set of stairs to the small, yellow house. There weren’t many trees around it, but it had a magnificent view of a set of rocky outcroppings that burst from the bluish green ocean.
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