“Bye, Aleisha,” I whisper. I jam the shovel into the earth, wiping away the sweat beading my forehead. “I’m sorry we didn’t get here in time.” Sorrow makes my throat tight. Even though she caused Frederico nothing but heartache, I’d have given anything to save her.
Frederico never comes out. I consider going in to get him, but the truth is that I’m a big chicken. I’ve never seen him drunk before. I’m in new territory with my oldest friend, and I have no idea what to do.
“How’s your shoulder?” Alvarez asks.
“It’s okay, thanks. You did a good job stitching me up.”
In truth, the wound hurts like a motherfucker and the stitches look like they were put in by a dyslexic kindergartener, but I’m not going to complain.
“You should take the vodka with you,” he says. “Use it to keep the wound clean.”
I shake my head. “Even if I can carry the bottle, I can’t have alcohol around my friend.”
Alvarez gazes at me, saying nothing for a long minute. “You know why he drank, don’t you?”
I look away. I do know. Deep down, I know. I’m too upset about his lost sobriety to put it into words.
“She had to be put down,” Alvarez says. “He loves her and wanted to be the one to do it. It had to be him. That’s why he turned to the bottle.”
I focus on my dirty, bloody shoes. Alvarez is right. It was Frederico’s last act of love for Aleisha, but he may have paid for it with his soul.
“I wish he’d let me do it,” I whisper. “I would have done it for him.”
Alvarez, though young, wears an expression of understanding that makes me think he’s older than his years.
“My dad fell off the wagon when I was ten,” he says.
“What happened?” I swallow, mouth dry, not sure I want to hear the answer.
“Lost his job. Couldn’t afford our rent. We had to downsize into a two-bedroom apartment in a shitty part of town. Beat himself up over it every night, until he couldn’t take it anymore. That’s when he turned to the bottle.”
“What happened then? I mean, after he lost his sobriety?”
“Got caught pissing in public in a grocery store parking lot. Had to register as a sex offender for it.” Alvarez sighs. It’s a sad sound. “He got sober again after that, but he’s carried around that label ever since.”
Our eyes meet. I want to say something wise, something comforting, but I’ve got nothing.
After that, Alvarez and I return inside. On the way in, we step over the bodies of three zombies we had to kill before digging Aleisha’s grave. They’d been drawn by with the racket made during Frederico’s breakdown.
We find my friend in the far corner by the walk-in freezer, knees pulled up to his chest. A bottle of cooking sherry is in his hand. He is in the process of sucking it down like it’s the elixir of life.
Something in me snaps. I stride over to him and yank the bottle out of his hand. “This stops now!” I overturn the bottle, letting the sherry sluice onto the floor.
I expect him to rage. Or maybe cry. Maybe both.
What I don’t expect is for him to turn glassy eyes up at me. Those eyes, cradling infinite pain, roll up into his head. He collapses at my feet.
“Frederico?” I drop to my knees and give him a rough shake. “Frederico!”
Alvarez, surprisingly calm, checks his pulse. “Unconscious,” he pronounces.
“Fuuuuck.” I draw the word out in frustration.
Stalking to the sink, I turn the cold handle. To my surprise, water sputters out. I grab a frying pan out of the sink—probably one of those Frederico threw in his fit—and fill it with water. I dump it unceremoniously on his head.
Nothing happens.
“Shit-shit-shit.” I stare down at his unconscious form. What am I supposed to do? Just sit here until he wakes up? While Carter is stuck in the dorm cafeteria, waiting for me?
“You could put him in the jeep outside,” Alvarez says. “There’s a long stretch of open road through the forest. You can probably drive a little way without worry of attracting a horde of zombies.”
I consider this. “Where’s the next military checkpoint?”
“The town of Scotia. Or at least, that’s where it was.” He shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s there anymore.” That haunted look comes back into his eyes.
“I’ll take the car.” It’s my best option, considering the circumstances, even though cars have been nothing but trouble. I glare sadly at Frederico’s still form. “Will you help me move him?”
*
Alvarez and I spend twenty minutes scavenging supplies before setting ourselves to the task of moving Frederico. It takes us another fifteen minutes to haul him outside and get him strapped into the jeep. It’s been humming away quietly all this time. Two zombies have wandered into the parking lot, which I dispatch with the shovel we used to bury Aleisha. Alvarez watches me in silence.
“You’re going to make it,” he says after I’ve bludgeoned the second zombie to death. “You’re insane and tough.”
I hold the shovel out to him. It’s soiled with sticky blood and bits of hair and dirt. “Take it,” I say. “It’s quieter than a gun.”
He takes it solemnly. “Bye, Kate. Good luck.”
“Good luck, Alvarez.” I take a moment to memorize his face, knowing it’s unlikely I’ll ever see him again. “Nice knowing you.” I give him a quick hug.
With that, we go our separate ways. Alvarez disappears back into the forest, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. He holds the shovel in the opposite hand, using it as a walking stick.
I get into the driver’s seat of the jeep and pull out onto the deserted road, heading north with my drunk, unconscious friend.
Chapter 45
Out of Gas
As Alvarez predicted, the road north of Laytonville is a lonely one. It narrows to two lanes. Oak trees have completely disappeared, replaced by tall pine trees. I drive with the windows down, using the cold air to keep me awake.
We’re barely a mile gone from Rod’s Roadhouse when the jeep gives a wicked cough. Alarmed, I look down at the dashboard—and find the gas light on.
“Fuck!” I slam one hand against the steering wheel. “Fuck it all, can’t we catch a break?” I’d been so busy fretting over my unconscious friend that I hadn’t thought to check the fuel gage.
The car makes it another half mile, coughs two more times, lurches, and then dies. I sit there in silence, listening to the soft click and hiss of the dead engine. What am I going to do?
I will not cry, I tell myself resolutely. I’ve cried enough already. Feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to help anything.
I mull over my options, realizing there isn’t much I can do. I can’t carry Frederico, and I can’t leave him here. The only thing I can do is wait for him to wake up.
Afraid to stay inside the car and be exposed, I retreat a short distance into the woods and deposit a trash bag of food I’d scavenged from Rod’s Roadhouse. Then I get Frederico’s limp form out of the car. Looping my hands under his armpits and around his chest, I drag him into the woods. It’s slowgoing, but I manage. I drop him onto the ground and roll him onto his side. He emits a soft snore.
Exhaustion swells within me. Every ache in my body makes itself known. My tired, blistered feet. The bullet wound in my shoulder. The achy knee from my early fall. Exhausted, sore arms. Stiff back. Even just the short ride in the car was enough to make my leg muscles tighten up. Patches of rash from the poison oak have started to pop up on my arms.
It’s 6:30. We’ve been on the move and awake for almost thirty-three hours. And we still have a long way to go.
I decide to sleep for thirty minutes. It will give me a much-needed boost and hopefully be long enough for Frederico to wake up from his stupor.
I set the alarm on my watch. Then I curl up on my side, pressing my back against Frederico’s, and close my eyes.
I’m yanked from the depths of a dreamless slumber by
the sound of someone throwing up. I bolt upright, breathing hard, unaware of where I am or what’s going on. Drool and pine needles stick to my cheek.
It all comes crashing back: Aleisha, Alvarez, the stupid out-of-gas jeep, Frederico . . .
Frederico.
I turn to find my friend sitting up on his knees. His back is hunched as bits of vomit stream from his mouth. He heaves two more times, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You should have left me behind,” he says, not looking at me. “I’m not worth your effort.”
“Bullshit,” I reply. “You’re my best friend. I’d never leave you behind.”
“What happened to the soldier?”
“Went south. To Ukiah.”
Silence. I don’t want to fill it with useless epithets. Instead I stay quiet, waiting for to him to speak.
He sips on his hydration straw, rinses his mouth out with water, then takes several long drinks. Finally, he lifts his head and turns haunted eyes on me. “What did you do with her body?”
His anguish pierces me. “Alvarez and I buried her behind the bar.”
“Thank you.” He closes his eyes, a few tears leaking down his cheeks. “I . . .” He stops, swallows. “I couldn’t bear to look at her. To see what I’d done to her—”
“You did right by her,” I interrupt. “I know it was awful, but you did right.”
He says nothing. I try to think of something comforting to say, but come up empty. What words of comfort are there for a parent who’s lost a child?
“I hope Brandon is safe,” he says, speaking of his son on military deployment. “I hope I die so I never have to look him in the eye and tell him how I failed his sister.” He makes eye contact again. “I feel dead. I lost Aleisha and lost my sobriety.”
At a loss for words, I reach out and take his hand. There’s nothing I can say to patch up the hole in his heart.
That’s when I noticed the long shadows and the chill rising from the ground. I lift my wrist, thinking the alarm must be about ready to go off—and see that it’s 7:45.
“Oh, shit!” I jump to my feet, wondering why it didn’t go off. Another look shows me the alarm did go off—almost forty minutes ago. I slept right through the beeping.
“What’s wrong?” Frederico asks.
“It’s almost eight,” I say. “We need to get back on the road and get in more miles before dark. Without our headlamps, we won’t be able to go very fast once the sun goes down.”
I see the skepticism in his face and raise my hand to forestall him. “I got ahold of Carter. He’s alive with a few friends. They’re holed up in the dorm lounge.”
Emotions churn over his countenance. I see surprise, relief, resentment, and then sadness. I understand it all.
“Help me find him,” I say. “Please? I can’t make this run without you.”
He nods and awkwardly gets to his feet. There is soreness and stiffness in every movement.
“Inventory?” I say to him.
“My IT band is being an asshole. Always is on anything over fifty miles. And I’m hungover. You?”
“Knee hurts like a son of a bitch. I could use a clean pair of socks.” Though I don’t say it, my arms feel like lead, my shoulders ache from the pack straps, and my legs feel like jelly. The chafing from my sports bra is a bright throb. The poison oak patches have spread in the past hour. And of course the gunshot wound hurts like a son-of-bitch.
I don’t bother listing the complaints, just as I know he’s holding back from me. You can’t run as far as we have without hurting like hell. Part of ultras is running through pain and running despite pain.
“I got a little food.” I gesture to the garbage bag I brought from Rod’s Roadhouse.
“No time,” Frederico replies. “We can’t burn daylight eating. Besides, I don’t feel like eating.”
I nod in understanding, relieved he’s agreed to get moving again. We’ve already lost enough time.
I hurry to the car, grimacing at the stiffness of my body from the short rest. I swing my good arm and rotate my torso as I walk, trying to loosen things up.
For all that I was too afraid to sleep exposed in the jeep, we’re alone on the road. I spot a stream of iridescent liquid running out from beneath the car. It’s made a small pool next to the front passenger tire.
A lightbulb goes off in my head. I didn’t take a car with an empty gas tank. I took a car with a leaky gas tank. We’re lucky the damn thing didn’t explode.
I step up to the car and rummage through the glove compartment, hoping to find a flashlight. Some good rifling doesn’t produce a much-needed flashlight, but I do find a handful of condoms, a wad of McDonald’s napkins, and a melted Snickers bar.
“Carter loves Snickers,” I say as Frederico comes out of the forest to stand beside me. “I used to buy him a Snickers bar for every A he got on his report cards. He insisted I keep up the tradition through his senior year.”
“You should save that for Carter,” Frederico says.
“Save what?”
“The Snickers bar.”
“It’s so . . .” I turn the bar over in my hands. “Melted.”
He shrugs. “It’s still a Snickers bar.”
He has a point. I tuck the lumpy chocolate bar into my pack, imagining Carter’s face when I deliver it to him in Arcata.
“I gotta take a leak.” Frederico moves stiffly to the far side of the car.
I resist the urge to ask him if he’s okay. It’s a stupid question, and besides, it doesn’t matter how he feels. It doesn’t matter how either of us feels. We have to move. Staying stationary is not an option.
I decide I’d better go, too. I squat on the side of the road. I try to gauge the color of my urine; the darker it is, the more dehydrated I am. Though it’s hard to discern the exact color in the shadows, it’s darker than I’d like.
“I could use a few electrolyte tablets,” Frederico calls to me from the other side of the car. “They’d help with the hangover. My head feels like it’s splitting in half.”
“I think I could eat electrolyte powder straight out of the bottle,” I call back. “Though not for a hangover.”
I straighten gingerly, every muscle in my body screaming.
“What would you rather have right now?” I ask Frederico, pulling my pants up. “A hot tub or electrolytes?”
“Ibuprofen,” he replies. “A whole fucking bottle.”
“Yeah. I hear you there.”
I move toward the front of the car. There’s a slight dip between the asphalt and the dirt. As I scan the highway, my foot hits it at an awkward angle.
I stumble. My ankle rolls, and I go down.
Chapter 46
Suffer Better
As I fall, something pops in my ankle.
“Kate!” Frederico darts around the car to me.
Pain shoots up my ankle. I stagger, catching myself. I take long, gulping breaths, nostrils flaring as I fight back the pain.
Frederico grasps my shoulder, the two of us looking down at the ankle. No doubt it will begin to swell in the next few minutes.
“I think I twisted it.” God, please don’t let it be a sprain. I lean over my good knee. “Goddamn rookie mistake. I know better than to take my eyes off the road. Dammit.”
Frederico touches the side of my face, forcing me to look up at him. “This isn’t the end. Your ankle will swell up. That will act as a natural splint. You can run through this.”
This time I do laugh, though it’s a pained noise. As crazy as it sounds, what he says is true. There are ultrarunners who have finished races with fucked-up ankles. Just not very many of them.
“That’s the sort of thing badass elites do,” I say. “Not normal, middle-of-the-pack runners like me.” This wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so tired. It’s too easy to make mistakes when exhaustion sets in. “Carter doesn’t even need me. Not really.” I rub tiredly at my face. God, my ankle is on fire. “He’s a grown man. I need him, F
rederico.” This is the naked, humiliating truth. “I lost Kyle and he’s all I have left. I’m out here running to Arcata because my son is the only reason I have to live.” Tears well in my eyes.
“Fuck your twisted ankle,” Frederico says ruthlessly. “I lost my daughter. My baby. All I want to do is lie down on the side of the road and die. But I’m going to keep running. You’re going to do the same. Now, move. We’re finishing this run if it kills us.”
I nod, pushing myself upright. He’s right. Despair and self-pity are demons that nearly devoured me when Kyle died. I can’t let that happen again.
“Remember what Kyle used to say when he crewed races for us?” I ask.
“What? The bit about suffering better?”
“Yeah.” I swing my arms, pushing the agony of my ankle into a small part of my brain. “‘Suffer better, babe.’”
Ultrarunners suffer better than most people. That’s what Kyle meant. You can’t take up a sport like ultrarunning if you aren’t good at suffering. It doesn’t matter how much you train; racing long distances hurts. Sometimes, it hurts a little. Usually, it hurts a lot. That’s what happens when you pound the hell out of your body.
Which raises the question: why do something that hurts? On purpose?
It’s a question all long-distance runners get asked. The answers are as varied as the people.
*
“Hey, Mom.” Carter greeted me with a chipper smile at the forty-mile aid station on the Cactus Rose one-hundred-miler. He passed me a baggie of electrolyte tablets. “Guess what?”
“What?” I dug around in my gear bag, looking for some disinfectant wipes. The desert plants had sliced the shit out of my arms and legs, and I wanted to clean the wounds before heading back out.
“You’ve never been any closer to the finish line.”
I pause, raising one eyebrow at my son. “I’ve got another sixty miles to go.”
“Yes, but you’ve still never been closer to the finish line.” He made a goofy face, crossing his eyes and touching his tongue to his nose.
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