by C.L. Bevill
Chapter 10
What Next?
Who’d a thunk that a billboard would cause such a ruckus? Who would have thought that I would be the paranoid one? I mean, I was the one who didn’t want to be alone. So here was a sign that said “YOU ARE NOT ALONE!” I should have been cheering and doing a little jig of happiness. Heck, I could even see dried handprints on the ladder from where the person had climbed down after painting the red words. And by the way, I didn’t think red was a good color choice. It sent a message, and I thought I was the only one getting the message. Couldn’t anyone but me sense a possible Freudian slip there?
“It’s another thirty miles or so,” Zach said, pointing at the map.
“It’ll be dark,” I said. “And I want a bike.”
“So we go tomorrow,” Kara added positively. “Full daylight. No shadows.”
“They’ll see us coming a mile away,” I protested.
Zach sighed. “So we’ll go in the dark then.”
“Then we don’t know what’s waiting for us,” I stated gloomily. I took the map from Zach and spread it out flat on the highway. I stood on one corner so it wouldn’t blow away. Then I jabbed with my index finger. “Look, there’s nothing there.”
“There’s the Redwood National Forest,” Kara said as she looked down at the map. She pointed to something about a quarter inch away from the approximate area. “There’s a small town right there.”
Zach crossed his arms over his chest and grimly surveyed my face. “What are you afraid of, Sophie?”
I ground my teeth together. I knew I had stuck my tongue out at him before in a fit of childish pique and now I wanted to say sarcastically, “Well, duh,” to him as if we were both twelve years old. Instead, I gathered my thoughts and carefully answered. “The last time I got excited about seeing someone else, it didn’t go well for me.” That was okay. It sounded very adult-like. But I spoiled it when I added, “Do I need to mention the one we don’t talk about?
What about the one you buried? The one whose head got left on a grill to terrorize us?”
There was an instantaneous flash of something in Zach’s chocolate brown eyes. Was that guilt I saw? Whoa. What did he have to feel guilty about? “Not everyone’s a psychopath, Sophie,” he said deliberately.
“How do you know that that message,” I poked my finger in the direction of the sign, “isn’t from him? How do you know he didn’t pass us one night and get ahead of us? How do you know he isn’t setting a big fat, el sicko trap for us so that we can all be tied to the ground together?”
Kara shuddered. “Surely he was too injured to do that,” she said. “He was burned badly, and he fell dozens of feet down that bluff. There was blood.”
“If it was him burning up the towns behind us,” I said, fighting to keep a level of calm in my voice, “then he couldn’t have been quite as bad as we initially thought.”
Zach looked at the sign again. He studied it, seeking some kind of answer. “I don’t think he could have gotten in front of us. I don’t think it’s him at all. It’s someone else, like the man who left the note.”
We had told Kara about the note from J to Marie, and she nodded her head hopefully. I could see by looking at them that they both wanted to see other people. They still had hope in their souls. But I, I who had been touched by something incredibly evil, was too wary to be hopeful. I had learned that Kara and Zach were trustworthy, but because of Zach’s statement about my weight loss, I was hard pressed to trust them implicitly.
The firefly pixies trusted them with me. Me? I was learning that I had become neurotic over the course of a month or so. The next thing that would happen would be that I would start seeing pink elephants dancing in the moonlight. Then again, with all the new creatures, who knew what I would see.
“There are others out there,” Zach said with a sense of optimism that made my insides twist. “Kara, you, me, J, and him.” He waved at the sign. “There’s someone else, too. It’s more than probable. This person is reaching out to us. Or maybe not to us, to anyone who’s still around.”
“Okay,” Kara said. “Scenario one. It’s someone new who is reaching out to survivors like us. Subset A. He or she is harmless and just wants to be friends. Subset B. He or she wants to control other people or even to hurt them.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” I said wryly.
Kara sighed. “Scenario two. The whackjob did get in front of us, and it’s a trap. Why warn us then?”
“Why did he leave the skull on the grill?” I couldn’t help asking, and I was instantly sorry when Kara winced. I didn’t want to be the one to bring up the fact that we were existing in a world without police, without security, and without the safety we had taken for granted…before.
Zach was staring at me again. Those dark brown eyes were like a laser-guided weapon, locked on my features, blasting right down into the deepest depths of my soul. I didn’t like it. It seemed like he could read my thoughts and knew every one of my fears. “I can go ahead,” he offered, and I knew he was talking only to me. “I can go and check it out. I’ll sneak in, and then when it’s safe, I’ll come back and get you. If it’s him, then we’re out of here. We’ll head east for a while and then back down south. If it’s not him, then I’ll see what they’re like.”
I cast a longing look toward the ocean. Where we were standing was about two or three miles away from the actual sand of the beach. There was an odd feeling in me that made it so I didn’t want to go any further away. I liked the coast. I liked being here. We were here and here was where the firefly pixies lived.
I didn’t want to play devil’s advocate. It made me sound just as paranoid as I felt. But I got the impression that Zach and Kara were expecting a last bastion of civilization from some unknown group of people. There would be more of us, and ta-da, we’d have a fun little group that got along great and everything ran as smooth as could be. If the message wasn’t from him, the Burned Man, then it was from someone else.
And we didn’t know someone else. Furthermore, we couldn’t trust someone else. Why put ourselves in danger if we didn’t have to do that?
“When will you go, Zach?” I asked him, an insidious thought forming in my head. I didn’t even want to think the thoughts that were forming a plan inside my brain. “We should think about this and make certain it’s as safe as possible for you.”
Zach examined me with his piercing eyes. I kept my face as blank as possible. Did he realize what I was thinking about? Could he read my features? Did he know the level of obstinacy that I was capable of maintaining? Even Kara was aware that something was up as she looked from Zach to me and then back to Zach again.
“I could use a break,” Kara said suddenly, trying to break the ice that had formed like a rapidly moving glacier. “I could stop at a hospital and get another shot of that steroid that helps out my knees. I’ve been pushing it a little too much.”
“And I’m tired,” I announced suddenly. I was tired. I wasn’t lying about that. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find that my father was snoring beside me in his sleeping bag. I wanted to climb that stupid mountain because I knew in my heart that I would never be climbing one again. I wanted to go to sleep and get these disturbing thoughts out of my head. I wanted those feelings of dread that were assailing me to go away and never come back. If only I had made Dad not go…
Well, crud, I said silently. Why do I have to keep thinking about that? But I was well and truly tired. It was going to be weeks before I was up to a reasonable strength again. I needed to get on a bicycle and start working on building myself up. I needed to take vitamins and focus on protein.
I needed to protect someone else besides myself for a change. While Zach was making up his mind whether or not I was playing him, I asked myself the question, could I do what had occurred to me to do?
Zach nodded curtly, and inadvertently answered my silent question, as well. I could do it, provided I listened to that little inner voice that was telling me something
oh so very important.
We got back in our respective seats and continued into Crescent City. It was the largest city I’d been in since Springfield, and everything was about the same. There were the intermittent vehicles that had crashed into whatever as their particular drivers had vanished into nothingness, leaving no one to steer and empty clothing. One building had burned to the ground; the cause was unknown. But it was an isolated burn, and nothing around it was impacted. There weren’t any more signs indicating a mysterious survivor who wanted to make contact with others.
We found some yellow pages in a house and located an orthopedic clinic for Kara. There was a hospital with the correct offices right off Highway 101. She got what she needed and then some for future use. By the time we were done with that, we found a place to scrounge for dinner and then we were on the southern side of the city. Just before the road started to climb into some hills, we found a secluded house set between the highway and the beach.
Not without a small amount of amusement, I noticed that Zach had conveniently forgotten to stop to look for a bicycle for me. Perhaps he thought I hadn’t noticed or that I was extra tired. Or maybe he thought I was caving a little.
Hah! Zach didn’t know me! The seclusion of the house was going to work out very well for my budding plans. I checked in the garage and found a tricycle for a toddler. Zach followed after me and couldn’t resist a snort when he saw the small three-wheeler. I feigned complete innocence as I turned to look at him.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, playing at ingenuousness, as well.
“Weapons,” I answered honestly.
“We’ve got the crossbows,” he said. “Knives, too. It’s enough.”
I didn’t agree. There was an axe in the garage that I took inside. Kara gave me a sideways glance, but I didn’t care to let her in on my plan. The previous occupant had left a collection of firearms that weren’t good for anything except paperweights. But he also had a few daggers on the wall of his small den. They were sharp, so I took them.
Then I found a bed and went to sleep, waiting for Kara to wake me up for dinner. When I came around, Zach was sitting beside the bed in an armchair. I nearly jumped, but I relaxed myself in time. His eyes rested on me attentively. For a moment I thought that perhaps he had stroked my cheek right over the place where the firefly pixie had marked me, but I might have been dreaming.
Again, I was concerned that he could read me all too easily. I said, “Hi.”
His lips quirked. “Hi. Kara’s got some food ready. Chili today. With crackers. There’s some cheese that had stayed cold enough, too.”
“I’ll start doing my fair share soon,” I said half groggily. More than sooner was what I said on the inside.
Zach folded his hands across his lap. “Neither of us expects you to act like you’re a 100 percent, Sophie. You’re barely well enough to ride in the trailer.”
“I’m okay,” I protested. I was well enough to put together a sneaky plan. Even though I had just woken up, I was ready to put a little flea in Zach’s ear. “I think we should stay here for a few days. We should consider what’s going to happen next. We could go back up to where 101 intersected with 199. We go up 199 until we can cross over the Klamath Mountains and then head back down a parallel road. We come down to where the road cuts back over to the coast near Eureka. Then we can head back up 101 to see what’s going on with the mile marker.” It came out sleepy but well planned.
Zach looked surprised. Maybe he had been expecting a sleepy grunt and demand for food. “You’ve thought about it a lot,” he said.
“You bet,” I snapped. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “If it’s a stranger who painted that sign, then he might not be expecting us from the south. And I’ve thought of something else.”
“Yes?” he asked expectantly.
“If that sign wasn’t painted by him, then whoever’s at the mile marker is a big target for a psychopath.” I looked him fully in the face to let him know I was serious. “We should have burned the sign because there’s a good chance that he’ll see it. We have an obligation to this stranger to warn him or her. That person deserves a warning to be on the watch for him.”
Zach nodded. “I had hoped he would give up.” His face became grim. “I don’t want to have to kill him.”
I crawled out of the bed and adjusted my t-shirt. I had found some clean clothes in the dresser. They had belonged to a woman who was only a little larger in size than I was at the moment. I didn’t want to think about her. I didn’t even want to think about the photographs on the dresser that I had placed facedown before I could see the smiling faces contained therein.
“And if we run into him?” Zach added deliberately. “We’d be going in the right direction. We’d even be giving him a few days to catch up.”
I shrugged. I could do it if I were forced. My desire to protect them would allow me to live with that. I didn’t want to do it. But if it came down to a decision between Zach and Kara and that unnamed man who had attacked me, the selection was simple. If that meant I had to pull the trigger on the crossbow, then I would do it.
I went to the bedroom window. It was a smaller bedroom, and the small window looked out toward the beach a quarter-mile away. The master bedroom had a deck with a decisive view of the Pacific Ocean. It also had two sets of empty pajamas in the king-sized bed. The smaller bedroom had been a guest room, or perhaps a place for their adult children to stay in when they visited. It had been still neatly made and inviting.
Zach stayed seated, and I could feel the heavy weight of his gaze on me. I had some more plans to set into motion, but I wanted something else first. “You knew what I looked like before,” I said without looking at him, and it wasn’t a question. “Before you ever saw me.”
“I wondered,” he started and then stopped. Then he cleared his throat and started again, “I wondered if you’d caught that.”
“You knew,” I said again, refusing to be set off my course.
“You want to know how,” he stated quietly.
I turned, and the glow of the setting sun lit up the room. It wasn’t a large window, but the angle of the sun let the light in completely. There weren’t any shadows for Zach to hide in. “It’s going to sound insane,” he said instead of answering my implicit query.
“What isn’t insane right now?” I asked. “The Loch Ness Monster cavorting in an Oregon reservoir with her two babies? Millions, if not billions, of people vanishing in an instant? A man who wanted to stab me to death before he did what…ate me? Isn’t that what he did to that other poor individual?”
His face was like carved granite. His eyes didn’t flinch from mine. “There were bite marks on the bones,” he confirmed, and his words were on the edge of cracking with horror.
“That was the message he was trying to send by putting the skull on the grill?” I asked not of him exactly.
“I don’t presume to understand how that man thinks,” Zach said carefully.
“Well, presume to understand me then,” I said angrily. “How exactly did you know what I looked like…before?”
His jaw was set. He barely opened his mouth as he answered. “I dreamed about you,” he said, and it held a violent undercurrent of emotion. “Always of you. Every night until the day of the bluff in Bandon.”
“You dreamed of me?” That wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Well, I didn’t know what I had been expecting. “At night? While you were asleep?”
Zach smiled ironically. “Of course at night. While I slept.” His expression changed. It became sadly reminiscent. “You. Always you. I dreamed about you crying. I couldn’t do anything for you. You were wandering. Closer and closer to me, but I couldn’t do anything to help you.” His eyes sank into mine. He took a deep breath, and his muscular chest expanded significantly. “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found you. Or if I had found you too late.”
I was stunned. I stood frozen by the window.
“And there’s more
you should know,” Zach continued on as if I had encouraged him to do so. “It wasn’t just after the change. It was before that, as well. It started months ago. I’m not sure exactly when. Sometime in the spring, I think. I knew you were in some sort of school. I knew that you liked hiking with your father, that sometimes you dreamed of the double chocolate cake your mother liked to make. You know, the one with the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups all cut up on top? You have a favorite top you like to wear. It’s got a naval design on it. It’s blue and white. There was a hat that matched. You worried about the weight in your hips. Sometimes you would dream of doing those thigh exercises that you must have been doing endlessly during the day.” His eyes burned with an intense fire. “How could I have known something like that, if not by some other paranormal way?”
I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to make of his confession. With all of the weirdness that had happened to the world and to us, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. And nothing else seemed to make much sense.
“I was looking for you a long time before the world ever stopped being the way it was,” he finished. Then he surged to his feet and slammed out of the room.