by T M Edwards
Noon turned into afternoon, and the searing pain in my calves receded into a dull ache. The ache eventually became a sort of numbness, and I stumbled on, too tired to feel either emotion or pain.
Day 30. October 16th.
Autumn was deeply settled in. The nights were cold, and the days were cool.
Yesterday I had passed from Arkansas to Oklahoma. I had raided the first convience store I saw to find a more detailed map for my new state. If my math wasn’t completely off, I had walked a little over a hundred miles. Only twelve times that number to go.
I felt like I’d been walking my entire life. That’s all I had ever done, was walk. My comfortable life, with electricity and running water, and computers...it seemed like a former lifetime. I’d died and come back as this person who just walked, pushing a squeaky grocery store cart along endless miles of highway. Born into a world without a single other person, except for the voices on the radio that just repeated their message, over and over and over. Sometimes i just turned on the radio and listened. I didn’t know how they were broadcasting this far, but somehow they were. They were my only reassurance that maybe somebody out there was still alive. Unless the people had all died and the broadcast was just playing on an endless, automatic loop. Wouldn’t that just be the most hilarious irony? If I walked all that way, just to find everybody dead or gone?
I might as well keep walking, either way. I had nothing to go home to, except dwindling supplies of food and water, and loneliness.
So I walked. I walked until I had blisters on top of blisters, until there were holes in my socks. I walked until I stumbled and fell, and slept where I hit the ground. I was too tired to think or feel, which was probably a very good thing.
Day 35. October 21st
I crawled out of my tent, which I had set up in the median, to a cloudy dawn. At least the clouds were high, and didn’t look like they were threatening imminent rain. I should probably check that pickup truck before I moved on, see if it had any….
Wait. Truck? There wasn’t a truck there last night. I scrubbed my eyes with my hands. Am I finally going crazy? Am I hallucinating? I pushed myself to my feet, and stared in shock.
Then I registered the young man that stood, leaning back against the dusty red metal, with his arms crossed and one leg propped up behind him.
That’s it. I’m just flat-out seeing things now.
As I stood blinking and hesitating, the young man grinned and stepped forward. “Hey, sorry to startle you.” He held out a hand, and I shook it. “Didn’t know if you were one of those that’s barely hanging on, or like me.” He stepped back and crossed his arms again, and watched me. “You’re not gonna freak out on me, are you? Because the last guy did that, and it wasn’t pretty.”
I swallowed hard, and managed to find my voice. “I...I’m not going to freak out.”
The young man smiled again. “Good.”
“Who...who are you?”
He ran a hand through his sandy hair, and laughed. “Oh, sorry. I’m Sam.”
“Deidre.”
Sam nodded. “Nice to meet you, Deidre.”
Still not quite awake, for a few moments I couldn’t figure out what to do besides stare at Sam, in his jeans that were a size too big, and a t-shirt that was dark gray and had what looked like bleach spots on it. His eyes were a shade that could have been either gray or blue. “I...um...nice to meet you.”
Sam gestured at my cart, which I’d set next to the tent. “So, you headed anywhere in particular?”
“Yeah, I...um, Vegas. There’s a broadcast…” Sam surprised me by nodding along.
“Yup. I heard it too.”
My heart started to beat a little faster. “Is that where you’re going?”
Sam nodded again. “Yep.”
“I don’t suppose…”
There was that grin again. What was with this guy? Nobody could be this happy during the freaking apocalypse. “Why do you think I stopped?”
I found myself unable to figure out what I should say as Sam quickly took down my tent, packed it effortlessly into the bag (how in the world…), and then pulled the cart with all of my stuff in it, over to his truck, where he lowered the tailgate and in one effortless movement, picked the entire thing up and set it on the truck bed. I could see that the other space on the bed was occupied by at least a half-dozen large gas cans. Sam took a bungee cord and secured the cart.
“Well?” he prompted, as I just stood and watched him in silence. “Ready?”
Without a word, I walked around the back of the truck, and climbed into the passenger seat. The interior was worn, like the outside, but clean and well-maintained. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a little bracelet of plastic beads that looked like it had been made by a child. Clipped to the bottom of the driver’s side visor was a photo of Sam holding a little girl that looked like she was about five or six years old.
I closed my door, and without waiting for me to buckle my seatbelt, Sam started the truck and put it into drive.
“So,” he asked after a few moments. “Where are you coming from?”
When I told him, his eyes widened and he whistled. “You walked all that way? That’s brave.”
I managed a small, humorless laugh. “I only walked the last hundred miles or so. I drove until my car ran out of gas.”
“Still, that’s impressive.”
I shrugged. “It was better than sitting in my house and waiting to die.”
To my surprise, Sam chuckled. “Don’t blame you.”
Like it was just THAT easy.
“So...what about you?”
“Just this side of Nashville. Had a little goat farm out there. Lucky, too. If I didn’t have the farm, I wouldn’t have had all that gas just laying around when I heard the broadcast from Vegas.”
“A goat farm sounds...interesting.” Sounds like a lot of hard, gross work, to be honest.
“It’s nothing if not that.”
“Do you think you’ve got enough gas to get all the way out there?”
“Dunno. At least I’ll get us closer than we were though, right?”
I couldn’t argue with that. Every hundred miles I got to ride in a vehicle was a hundred miles I didn’t have to walk.
I sighed deeply and sank back into the seat. My blisters were throbbing, and it was like my legs had gotten the memo that they didn’t have to walk anymore, and they were so sore that they almost made me want to cry.
You do realize you just got into a car with a strange man, right? He could be a serial killer or something. Who the heck smiles that much while the world is ending?
I stole a glance at the young man beside me. I don’t know. But I was probably going to die anyway.
Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?
I’m tired. Leave me alone. At least if he shoots me or something, it’ll be over quicker than a slow death by starvation. Or turning into one large blister.
The sun continued to rise as I rode down the interstate with a strange man in his truck. The miles melted by. When we stopped at a convenience store, Sam checked a few abandoned cars for gas while I went inside to see if I could find anything useful. After a visit to the very nasty and smelly bathroom, I emerged and walked the small aisles. The shelves here had been picked over quite a bit, but I was still able to find some bottled water and even a couple bags of jelly beans. I returned to the truck with my findings, and tossed Sam a bag of the candy. He grinned and gave me a mock salute, then climbed back into the driver’s seat. I did the same on my side, and we were back on the road again.
As he drove, we talked. Not about this quiet apocalypse. No, he wanted to know about my city, my family, my life. I wasn’t normally one to share personal stories with a stranger, but this felt normal, somehow. I even managed to answer his questions truthfully, without letting on about my severe anxiety and depression.
Afterward, he told me about himself. He was twenty eight, just a little older than me. He’d gone into the army when he t
urned eighteen, and was out at twenty four. He went on about the exotic locations that he’d seen, the interesting posts where he’d been stationed. Yet, I noticed that he didn’t smile quite as much while he talked about his military career.
“Who’s she?” I asked, indicating the little girl.
Sam reached up to touch the photograph gently. “She’s my daughter.” There was deep sadness in his voice as his fingertips brushed the paper.
“Is she…”
“I was never married to her mother. I didn’t even know Caroline was pregnant until I got home. By then, Isla was nearly a month old. Caroline had moved to Seattle, and I was fresh out of the military and didn’t have money for a lawyer.”
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed.
“I’ve only seen her five times, but I called her as often as her mother would let me. I sent Caroline money every month, because I didn’t want my daughter to ever want for anything.”
Even as the next question came out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have asked. “Do you...know what happened to her? After?”
Sam shook his head. All traces of his smiles were gone. “The last I heard from Caroline, they were headed for Seattle to stay with her uncle. I don’t know if they made it. The phones went down the next day.”
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
Sam glanced at me. “Thank you.”
Are you satisfied yet? He’s not a serial killer.
So he says. I got the distinct impression that my pessimist voice was pouting.
Day 36. October 22nd
Sam had insisted I sleep in the truck and keep the keys with me, which was a decidedly non-psychopath move. He had taken my tent, and set it up a few dozen feet away.
The little clock on the radio said it was just a few minutes past midnight when I startled awake and bolted upright because of a loud noise in the darkness.
I looked around frantically, trying to find the source. In the moonlight I could see the tent, and waited for Sam to emerge as confirmation that he’d heard the sound, too.
Instead, as I watched, the wall of the tent moved as if it had been kicked. It looked like Sam was thrashing around inside.
The sound pierced the stillness again. It was unmistakable this time. It was Sam, and he was screaming. I watched in horror, feeling my anxiety instantly top out at a level that had me shaking and feeling breathless.
Oh, god. Please don’t tell me he’s going to become like everybody else. I can’t watch another person practically kill themselves out of fear. I just can’t.
There was another scream, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to know what was happening. I threw open the driver’s door, and ran from the truck to the tent. Reaching out with trembling hands, I pulled the zipper up and across. I had been right--Sam was writhing in my sleeping bag, and looked like he was having some sort of massive nightmare. As I watched, he cried out again, and kicked out so violently that his foot connected with my ankle with such force that I couldn’t suppress my own exclamation of pain.
As if my sound had broken through his nightmare, Sam gasped loudly and sat up. His hair was in disarray, and his eyes stared into mine--wide, blue, and full of terror.
For a moment we just stared at each other, as Sam took deep gulps of air and the nightmare slowly receded from his eyes. He focused on my face, and ran a trembling hand through his hair.
“Deidre. What…”
“Are you okay?”
Sam reached up to rub his eyes with his fingers. “Yes. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
I sat down cross-legged on the cold grass just outside the tent door. “I don’t care about that. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
He sighed deeply. “It was just a nightmare.”
I fixed him with a raised-eyebrow glare. “Sure it was.”
He caught my sarcastic tone, and gave me a small smile as he shook his head. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
Somebody who’s just having a nightmare wouldn’t half-break my ankle in their sleep.
I didn’t respond, just continued looking at him.
Finally, he sighed loudly and threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. I was hoping to not have to explain this to you yet...or ever, really.”
I felt a small shock go through me as it hit me what he was about to say. That’s why he’s still alive. He’s broken, just like me. All that charming happiness yesterday...it was just a facade.
“There’s not that much to explain. I saw some bad things overseas and now I have bad dreams.”
“Sure.” This time, I managed to make it sound much less sarcastic.
Sam looked at me askance, as if he’d been hoping I would get up and walk away after this revelation. “You really are a strange one, aren’t you?”
At this, I couldn’t help laughing. “There’s a few things I left out of my own story. I’m not exactly all sunshine and roses, myself.”
It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
I looked down and picked at a loose thread on my pants. “Yeah. Before all this happened, I barely ever left my house. It’s not like I have some big, scary event like being in a war zone. It’s just me. I’m just not a brave person.”
Sam fixed me with his eyes that were the pale blue of a winter sky. “Just because your battles are invisible doesn’t mean you don’t have to be brave to win them. If I’ve learned anything in the past seven years, it’s been that sometimes the demons in our head are just as real and just as frightening as anything in the world around us.”
“Demons is a good word for it.” Hey, who’re you calling demon… But I ignored the pessimist voice and kept my eyes focused on the young man in front of me. “I have this theory, you know. I think there’s a reason why we’re the ones that are still walking around instead of cowering in corners.” An image of the pharmacist flashed through my head, and I closed my eyes tightly to try and chase it away.
“Because we’re used to it, you mean?”
I nodded.
Sam chuckled. “Bet nobody ever thought it would be the broken people who would save the world, huh?”
***
The sun was up, though partially hidden by clouds. The truck rumbled along through the outskirts of Albuquerque, in New Mexico. We were making great time. If all went well, and the gas didn’t run out, we’d be in Vegas by the end of tomorrow. Of course, that was a big if. Sam estimated we could be short by nearly a hundred miles. He stopped at every car we saw and checked their tanks for gas, but it was like everyone had just driven until their fuel ran out, because every car was empty. As we got closer to our destination, there were less and less resources of any kind to be found. Many convenience stores had been picked clean. Sam and I had even briefly discussed checking inside some homes to see if we could find anything, but there was still plenty of food and water left in the cart.
My anticipation, and my trepidation, were growing. I had settled into acceptance that I would not reach my destination for many weeks, if I reached it at all. Now, here I was, several hundred miles further than I had been yesterday, and our arrival was imminent. My stomach was tight to the point of nausea, and my heart felt jittery, like it did during times of stress.
And Sam...oh, Sam. How could two people who had only met the day before, forge such a deep bond? It wasn’t a romantic bond, not at all. I’d never even been in a relationship, so I wasn’t sure how a romantic attraction would feel even if I felt it. But no, this just felt like the camaraderie of two people in the same situation who understood the struggles of the other. Even though I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to witness the horror of war, I knew what it was like to be trapped inside your own head, fighting invisible demons, wrestling with things that weren’t even real in the physical sense.
Sam had dropped his facade of bright smiles and constant laughter, and I was glad. Not merely because pretenses of positivity always grated on my nerves, it was also because last night had caused trust to begin to grow between us, an
d having a friend who trusted me enough to be themselves around me was a rare thing. I was so closed off from people, and who wants to bare their soul to someone who never reveals anything of themselves? The irony was found in the fact that everyone around me had known about my struggles, no matter how hard I tried to hide them. The difference was that nobody in my old life understood. Sam...Sam understood. Maybe even more than I did.
As if he’d known I was thinking about him, Sam glanced over at me. “Is your ankle okay?”
I pulled my foot up onto my opposite knee and peeked under the hem. It was swollen, and already a shocking shade of blue and purple. It certainly hadn’t helped that Sam had been sleeping in his work boots. “It’s fine.”