Mike nodded, unsure what else to do or say.
Jeff nodded back. “I know how it sounds. But I brought it up because maybe it will happen again. Sounds pretty lame in the light of day, I know. But, well. It's something to consider.” He stood from the rock. “I guess I better get in if I'm going.” He nodded once more and then looked at Mike. “I'm not a nut.”
Mike sighed. “I know. That makes what you said even more troubling.”
Jeff nodded once more and then turned back to the water. A second later, he walked off without another word, leaving Mike alone and wondering.
~
The evening meal was one of the best Mike could remember in a long time. Venison, beef, asparagus, rice and biscuits.
“How did you manage to make rice, or real biscuits,” Patty asked Jan.
“Really,” Kate chimed in.
“Bisquick, and a really big pot,” Janet Dove said.
“Bisquick, duh,” Kate said looking at Patty.
“Where did you find all these huge pots though, Janet?” Kate asked.
“The restaurant, Katie,” Janet said.
“And the Bisquick. We didn't even think of Bisquick,” Patty said.
“Oh, they have cases of the stuff over to the little store,” Janet said. “And flour too. You know, their store room is all concrete block. No rats like those others. I thought you knew,” She said.
“Nope,” Kate said, “You're the best, Jan. This is really good.”
“Absolutely,” said Patty.
“You bet.”
“Best I ever had.” And many other similar compliments flooded the air. Janet Dove flushed but continued to smile. “Thank you,” she said, “Thank you.”
~
After dinner, several of the people in the camp helped to do the dishes and clean up, including some of the visitors. The evening was warm, and everyone sat around one of the larger fires drinking coffee and talking low, watching the light fade from the day.
~Across The field~
She came awake in the dark. The boy pressed tightly against her side, his cold seeping into her own.
At first her vision had suffered horribly, but as time wore on, it had changed. Her eyes had changed. She knew that because she had seen them reflected in a shop window a few miles back as she had been traveling alone. Before the boy.
The glass had been reflecting only the yellow-blue of the moon until she had stepped in front of it and then it had scared her so badly she had nearly run screaming at what she saw. What does the monster see when it looks in the mirror?
At that time she had still remembered who she had once been, had an idea of what she looked like stored in her head. When she stepped in front of the Moon-shiny glass, that picture flew away.
She had stopped, her knees buckling at the sudden urge to reverse and run away. She had actually taken two scrambling steps backward before she realized the thing in the glass - the Monster that has seemed about to pounce upon her - was nothing more than a reflection of her own radically changed self.
Her body had been reduced to skin and bone. The skin had stretched tight, illuminating the bones beneath it. Causing ridges and valleys where she had never seen any.
Her skin had peeled away from her face in a few places, and the bone showed through yellow-white, gleaming in the moonlight. Her black hair was a ruined mass of black. Stringy, tangled, plastered to her head like a helmet in places. But it was her eyes that had caused her to stare the longest.
They were silver slits in the moonlight, but as she looked closer, she saw that the irises were bright red, no longer the dull orbs they had become after she had died. She had seen those eyes reflected back from the water of the harbor in New York when she had started this journey. She had gone for water. She had to have water to survive; every living thing did. She had not yet realized that she was no longer a living thing.
The moon had been bright that night, reflecting off the trash strewn water. A drowned cat had floated by and transfixed her. She had been torn between vomiting and reaching into the water and retrieving the cat... bringing it to her mouth... tasting it. But the moment had passed, and she had shook herself, come back to herself. And that was when she had seen her eyes reflected in the harbor water.
She was only hours dead then. She had been running from a group of men, and she had run right into the arms of someone else. Some thing else. She never saw him... her... whatever it had been. Its teeth had found her neck; the blood had spurted, and she had spiraled down into darkness.
When she had come to, she had thought maybe she had dreamed it. Maybe he had not killed her and left her for dead. But the sticky blood that coated her neck and clothes said otherwise. Later, as she wandered the dying city, she realized her heart was not beating. Her blood was no longer coursing through her veins. She had wandered, wondering her fate, and had found herself at the harbor.
She had bent to bring the water in her cupped hands to her dry, cracked lips, and she had seen her eyes. Dull, colorless marbles in her head, barely reflecting light at all. And she had known - known she was dead. Not that all of the other things had not already told her, but that her mind had finally clicked over, taken the information it had shoved to the corners of her cloudy thoughts and thrown it out into the conscious.
She had shaken it off, scooped the water to her mouth, swallowed and then gagged, vomiting the water back up.
That had been her glimpse of her old eyes. These eyes were not those eyes. There was nothing dead about these eyes. These eyes were alive, bright, reflective, hungry, intelligent... Predatory, she told herself.
Now she focused on the moon above, the moon that had never meant much of anything to the old Donita. Now it talked to her, pulled something inside of her, spoke to her very being.
She sat quietly, the boy beside her, and scented the air. Animals had been here. A dog... A rat... Something else traveling by had wondered about her deadness but decided against tasting her, warned by some instinct. The dog worried her the most. She could tell from the scent that he had lingered. She would have to deal with the dog if it came back again.
Her hand reached over and shook the boy from twilight. The night was young. They needed to hunt.
~The Camp~
The fire burned hot but low, the heat feeling good as the temperature of the air dropped. The fires were still many, meat spread upon drying racks before the smoke and flame. A small group had been sitting, watching the stars come out, when one by one nearly all of the others had come to sit and watch with them.
Quiet conversations passed back and forth between them. But it seemed as though there were other things on everyone’s minds, and the conversations began to die down after a short time. Mike broke the silence that had held for a few moments.
“So, Bob,” Mike began. “I... I don't want to put you on the spot, but after you left today we all, several of us anyway, talked a little bit about what we're going to do, and that led to what you and Janet had talked about, and I didn't really feel I knew enough about what it is you want to do, and really I didn't feel it was my place to explain it. So... I thought...” Mike finished.
“Sure,” Bob agreed. “What is it you want to know?”
“Well,” Lilly said. “Pretty much all of it, Bob. At least me. I don't know what it is you want to do, and I'd like to.”
“Same here, Bob,” Ronnie said.
“Us as well,” Jeff Simmons said.
Bob nodded, ”Okay then,” he said. “What we really want to do is start the world over, but leave all the bad stuff out. I know that sounds like a pipe dream, and I've realized that, because that's what it mostly is, a pipe dream. There is no way to leave all that stuff out. Some of it is built into who we are, you know?” He paused.
“So now that this has happened, and the opportunity to really do something is here, I've had to revise my ideas. And I may have to revise them again. I think where I'm at is this, we, Janet and I, speak about the Nation, but it isn't really ab
out that anymore either. It has been a long dream of some native people to go back to the land. To become, again, the people we used to be. But the reality of that life is a different thing. That romantic ideal is a long way from the life we would have to live.”
“So it's a compromise. Back to the land? Certainly. But we are not Quakers, or Amish, we'll use whatever modern advantages we can find or put our hands on that will help us. Certainly horsepower in the form of vehicles to at least get us to where we're going. After that? Will we need them?” he shrugged, “And how would we get fuel? No. I think we use them to get us back to where we want to be, and that might be it. It's probably going to be horses after that, so, somewhere between here and there we are going to have to get horses, and not just a few, a good sized herd. Maybe fifty, a hundred would be better. Seed? We'll bring all we can get. I don't know if anyone here has ever seen Indian corn, the stuff that sustained my people, but it was very small, sometimes no bigger than my index finger, and not much bigger around either. Generally it was bigger, but not much. Modern corn? Vast improvement. I guess you get my drift. We're thinking of taking every advantage we can with us. But, we're thinking back to the land too. No canned goods, although we'll certainly take more than enough to survive on until we have our own crops, animals, like that. It isn't going to be an easy life, that's for sure, but we are going to do it.” He paused and the silence held for a few minutes as what he had said settled in and everyone thought it over.
“Where were you thinking of to do it?” David asked.
Bob nodded as though he had expected the question, “I'm looking at a huge area of what was forever wild lands. Encompasses quite a lot of the middle of the old country, stretches south, north, east and west. Several million acres, mountains, valleys, and a lot of it is the same as it was when this country was settled. Never been touched. There have been expeditions back into it a few times, but no one has lived there since natives lived there.”
He borrowed the map that Mike had shown Jeff earlier, pulled a black grease pencil from his pocket and circled the area.
“Take us a few weeks of steady travel to get close to it. Then there's a lot of preparations to make. And, well, we don't know what to expect on the way. Who we may meet, who might want to come,” Bob said.
Susan looked at Sandy, then whispered something in her ear. She nodded. “We want to go,” Susan said and Sandy nodded again.
“So do we,” Tim said. He was holding Annie's hands.
“We really do,” Annie said.
“Then you will,” Bob said looking at Mike.
“It's your call, Tim,” Patty said.
“But what about you,” Tim asked Patty.
“I... I want to talk it over with Ronnie. It sounds good,” she looked from Ronnie to Kate to Mike, tears threatening in her eyes.
“I asked Bob,” Mike said, “not to force anyone to decide - we have lots of time for that - but to see what it is. I... I for one am impressed. But this isn't something I can decide alone. Kate comes first on my list of things that make up my world. We'll talk it over, same as all of us will, I guess,” Mike finished. Patty looked grateful.
“If you don't mind, we'd like to think about it also. I guess that's taking for granted you'd let us in if we decided we wanted to come,” Jeff said.
“And we would. You're welcome,” Janet Dove said.
“I know we've been thinking along the same lines,” Sharon said. “I know we've kind of crashed in on you. You've been so kind to us. It's appreciated.”
Bob nodded.
The light was rapidly bleeding from the sky as the conversations broke up and people began to drift away.
“Did you get a room at the motel?” Mike asked Jeff.
“Jessica and... Lilly?” He asked looking at Lilly where she sat with Tom.
Mike nodded, as did Lilly and Tom. Lilly smiled.
“She took care of that today, so we will be sleeping on real beds tonight, I guess.”
“Oh, you'll love it,” Mike said. “After the ground? Absolutely recommended. Best night's sleep I've had Well, I was just thinking of another night, but it's the best night in awhile, that's for sure.”
“What?” Kate asked.
“Well, the night I was first with you. Everything had happened, things looked so bad, and there you were. It was my first good night's sleep since it all happened,” Mike finished quietly.
“Oh,” she said, “that's so nice. It was like that for me as well. Just to know someone cared... about me.”
“It was like that for all of us, I think,” Jeff said.
“It was for me,” Ronnie agreed.
“Yeah,” Patty agreed, her eyes on Kate.
“This is such a changed world,” Bob said. ”Since when have you sat around and had a conversation that was this true or personal?”
“I can't recall,” Arlene said, “Probably, if I'm honest, never.”
“Me either,” Tom said. He sat with one arm around Lilly's shoulders.
“I do now, with Tom, with others, but I never did, not even with my close girlfriends,” Lilly said.
“That's what I mean. It's a changed world, and I for one am glad for it.”
A few minutes later Tom and Lilly and Kate and Mike got up to leave for the night's first post. They made their goodbyes and left the others.
“...Now, what about crops, and what about domesticated animals? I mean, why can't we have our own herds?” Jeff asked Bob as Mike and Kate were walking away.
“Well, I thought about that too,” Bob began.
~Kate's journal~
I am in an actual room with privacy and a candle for light. It's almost like the world is normal.
Mike and I did early posts and then came back here and spent some alone time.
It was nice, and it was needed. Bob spoke more in depth about his ideas than I've ever heard him speak before. I almost said yes on the spot, but I want to talk it over with Mike, and we still haven't done that either.
I've also grown really close to Patty, I wouldn't like to be without her. But it's really Mike. I won't even kid myself. He helps me to be me, a real part of me, that is the only way I know to explain it. I love him. Maybe we made our child tonight. Just maybe. I hope so.
We met some good people today. I don't know if they will join up, so to speak, but I hope so, and I hope there will be others.
Things we know: The days are about 26 hours now, give or take a few minutes. That means the Earth is turning slower, so we weigh more than we used to. I cant tell any difference. But Tim, who pointed it out, swears that he can.
Most animals survived, whereas most people did not. The stupidity factor Mike calls it, and I agree. C.B. radios are being used by a lot of people. We can hear more than we can talk to. But Bob says with a bigger antenna we can both hear more and talk more. I know there are still good people in the world worth talking to, so maybe once we're settled, it will be worth the bigger antenna.
~
I clicked on my MP3 player, chose the play list I wanted, clicked it down to the bottom of my screen and then clicked up Gimp and loaded the graphic I wanted to work on. My mind wasn't on it though. I stared at the screen for something like ten minutes before I gave up and closed down the graphic, pushed away from the desk and listened to the song that was currently playing - Solution Six, by somebody new that I had never heard of - while I decided what it was I really wanted to be doing.
The graphic was a small logo for one of my clients. It was done, but like everything else I did, I would play with it long past the time I needed to. It seemed like everything in my life was like that. I was constantly fussing with it. It was never really done, finished, complete. It wasn't life; it was me. I could tell myself it was because I wasn't satisfied with my life, that I felt it wasn't complete, but that did nothing at all to solve the problem.
I could know, and did know, that what I missed was a relationship. Sharing myself with more than just the girl in the electronics section at
Walmart where I bought whatever computer supplies I needed. And what did that amount to? A smiled, Hello, how are you, a quick, reserved, superficial conversation, Oh, the blank CD sleeves are two aisles over. Another superficial smile and a thank you. Those were the types of relationships I had.
Relationships? Did I really consider those to be relationships? I did. After all, I knew her name, Becky. Becky N. Sometimes I wondered what the N stood for. And sometimes I even thought about a conversation that had nothing to do with electronic needs.
Pathetic, I told myself. I must have had better relationships than that. Oh, the pizza kid. I almost knew his name... Johnny or Tommy something.
I needed relationships. I was missing life. It was going by, and I was stuck watching it pass by the glass like a lonely man riding the bus, watching the world slide by stop after stop, day upon day.
Anyway, I knew all of that. I knew what bothered me, drove me, and it was useless. It was useless because I wasn't willing to do anything about it. I remember thinking, in fact, that it would take something drastic to take me from the kind of life I had built for myself and into the kind of life I really wanted. And that was also part of the problem. I didn't know what kind of life I did want. And I didn't want to invest any actual thinking into it.
So there I was, staring at my monitor again, watching the little red sound graphic jump up and down to the music. A blues piece. Catchy, but not exactly uplifting. Still it held my attention with its murky lyrics, but was probably dragging me right into my own blues at the same time. Weren't blues supposed to take away the blues? It never worked that way for me. It only reinforced my own blues. I needed a real life, I remember thinking.
The furnace kicked on, and a few seconds later I felt the heat along with the slight metallic odor that the new furnace had come with. The furnace guy who put it in, call me Rocky, he'd said, had told me the smell would go away. So far it hadn't. Maybe by next spring, I thought. In any case, it decided me. I needed to get out of the house, go for a ride, do something, anything but sit around and stare at my monitor.
America The Dead (Book 2): The Road To Somewhere Page 5