by Dulaney, C.
There had been no lights on inside the house when it had first come into view. Only the large spotlights lit up the night. They were set up along the roof of the building and powered by one of the three generators located in the maintenance shed. As they drew closer to the mansion, a few of the upstairs windows suddenly brightened, then a few of the downstairs windows, until finally the large front door was thrown open and Nancy came running off the ridiculously oversized porch.
Mia smacked Jake’s arm again and grinned from ear to ear. He laughed loudly, more out of sheer relief than anything else, and met his grandma halfway. He dropped his rifle on the grass of the front lawn and hugged her, picking her up off of her feet and swinging her around in a slow circle. Mia came trotting up behind them as Michael and John stepped out onto the porch.
“Hey, got some for me?” Mia asked the older woman.
Nancy tried to speak but only managed a few whiny “Oh’s.” Jake set her down and let Mia have her turn at squeezing the old woman half to death. None of them seemed to notice it was still raining, until John’s big voice bellowed from the porch.
“Hey, even chickens got enough sense to come in out of the rain!” He waved a big hand towards himself, motioning for the three to come onto the porch.
The two soaked travelers shook themselves like wet dogs and stomped up the steps. Jake and Mia were bent over, stripping off their water-logged boots, when Nancy realized they were missing someone.
“Wait…where’s Kasey?”
The two paused to stare at each other.
“She’ll be along.” Mia straightened up and faced Michael.
“You got a radio?”
“Yeah, in the study. Why?” he asked.
“You got anybody manning it?”
Michael shook his head. “No, but that’s easily fixed.” He turned and hurried inside.
John tilted his head and motioned for them to follow, shutting and re-locking the door once everyone was inside, then took them directly to the study in the right wing of the house.
“I never thought about turning this damn thing on,” Michael was muttering to himself when the others rushed in. He fiddled with the dials on the black desktop radio, getting nothing but static on all the channels. “She’s got a walkie with her?” he looked up and asked Mia, who stood in front of the desk with her arms crossed, dripping water all over the hardwood floor.
“Yeah, she’s supposed to let us know when she’s within range. She should be using channel seven.”
Michael fiddled some more with the radio, turning through all the channels three times before finally stopping on seven and leaving it there.
Nothing.
“She must not be close enough yet?” he offered.
“No, that thing reaches for at least fifty miles. She’d be in range all the way back in Blueville,” John said.
The same worried, pissed off look spread across all their faces. Worried because of the obvious. Pissed off because none of this should have happened to begin with. Not just the clusterfuck back at the prison, but the whole dead-coming-back-from-the-dead thing. Loved ones killed, cities burned, civilizations crushed, and a hundred other disasters that could be attributed to that single event on the first of October.
“How the hell did the three of you get separated to begin with?” Michael asked after a long pause to study the radio again.
His voice took on an accusatory tone, and this had John and Nancy turning to face Jake. Why they were looking at Jake like he’d just farted in church, Mia didn’t know. She had been there as well, along the side of the road when Kasey had decided to ride out on her own, and they weren’t shooting her condemning, burn-the-witch looks. They were zeroing in on Jake, maybe because he was the man who’d been traveling with two women, so that left him in charge.
Yeah right, maybe in some sort of sexist, chauvinistic alternate reality, she thought, then spoke up before Jake had a chance to let loose on them.
“Things happened out there, and that’s just the way it worked out. We drove in, she’s riding. Later, after we get out of these wet clothes, shower, and get something to eat, maybe we’ll tell you the story. Frankly, I’m tired, worried about Kase, and I don’t give a flying fuck what you think happened. Let’s keep our eye on the ball, people.” Then she strode out of the study, not having a clue where she was going, but not letting that ruin her exit. Jake was grinding his jaw, wanting to add a little more where Mia left off. The others’ raised hands stopped him.
“We’re not saying anything, sweetie. We’re just wondering what happened, that’s all. You’re here, you’re safe, and knowing Kasey the way I do, she’ll be along soon.” Nancy looked at the two men to her left, who nodded their agreement, then looked back to her grandson. “C’mon, I’ll take you and Mia upstairs, let you get settled in and cleaned up. Then I’ll fix you both something to eat, okay?” She walked closer and took Jake’s hand.
His narrowed eyes moved from his grandma to the men standing behind her, then he let himself be led away. Before they stepped through the door, he squeezed Nancy’s hand and turned back to Michael.
“Have your man on the roof tune his radio to seven. Then you do the same with that walkie on your hip.” He pointed to the desktop radio before continuing. “That one might be broke.”
Jake held Michael’s gaze for a long moment before disappearing around the door. Michael and John just looked at each other in silence for a minute, wanting to make sure Jake was out of earshot, before the big man finally spoke up.
“The walkies are on seven.”
“I know, but do you want to be the one to tell him that?” Michael hissed, jerking his thumb at the study door. “She’s on horseback, so that probably means she’s going cross-country. What do you think?”
“Yeah, she’ll stay away from the roads. Which means it wouldn’t do us no good to drive out there looking for her.” John rubbed his chin. “Could go out on foot?”
“That’s stupid and you know it, John. No, we’ll wait by the radio. I’ll call up and let Jonah know what’s going on, tell him to let us know the second he sees her. Maybe I’ll put Abby and Troy up there with him, help keep watch.”
Jonah had been the guard on the roof who’d alerted them to Jake and Mia’s arrival. He was still there, watching for deadheads, waiting to be relieved by Troy, one of the men he’d had with him on the wall back at the prison. The other two men, Todd and Eric, were about as worthless as tits on a boar hog and were asleep in their rooms. If Michael could have his way, those two would be gone before the month’s end. It wasn’t up to him though, and this wasn’t a dictatorship. At least they were good for grunt work; the concrete wall was a good example of that.
“Alright. I’m gonna run for something to drink. Be right back,” John said, leaving Michael to sit anxiously by the radio.
Come on Kasey, he thought. Let us know you’re alive.
* * *
The longer I rode in the rain, the colder I got. The colder I got, the more depressed I became. Some part of my mind told me that this was all caused by hunger, thirst, and loneliness. The deeper I rode into the forest, the paranoia I had started feeling a few miles back slowly settled itself deeper into my guts, working and pawing away at whatever intestinal fortitude I had left until eventually I was not only hungry, cold, and thirsty, but jumpy as a jackrabbit and seeing imaginary deadheads behind every tree I passed. Sleep deprivation, intense hunger, and a childish fear of the dark will do that to a person, especially if it all comes together in the midst of a thunderstorm.
Daisy, however, only seemed mildly annoyed with the weather, and continued on at her slow and steady pace. Even though I trusted her to get us out of those woods unharmed, I couldn’t doze off in the saddle without getting us both lost. She didn’t know where we were going, and I was only half-sure we were still traveling in the right direction. Several times I caught myself thinking, Things could be worse. We could be fighting off runners with only ten rifle shells and nowher
e to run. Each time that entered my mind, I clamped down on it quickly, as if even the faintest thought could bring something forth, cause things to get worse.
I wasn’t sure of the time; I’d lost my watch somewhere while riding for my life the day before. I couldn’t tell the time by the stars for two reasons: one, it was cloudy, and two, I never could navigate that way. I chuckled to myself, thinking of all the time I’d wasted during my life, learning things like Genetics, when what I really should have been learning was outdoor survival and star-navigational-type things.
Oh Kasey, you’re such a slacker. I laughed again, except this time I wasn’t just laughing in my own head.
That turned out to be a good thing, because I had been falling asleep in the saddle. My outburst jerked me awake and kept me from sliding off. I shook my head, trying to clear it, then rubbed my wet face and stretched my neck.
“Stay awake, goddamnit. Go to sleep and you’re dead.”
Daisy snorted as if to agree with me and quickened her pace. Perhaps she sensed I was in trouble, hypothermia, shock, numb-ass syndrome, who knows. Or maybe she was just sick and tired of the rain too. I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to go to sleep.
Several more miles passed by before I suddenly realized I hadn’t tried calling anyone over the radio for quite some time. How long a time, I wasn’t sure. The trees were starting to blur together, as were the minutes and hours as they ticked by. I looked around and wondered when it had stopped raining.
Christ, I did fall asleep.
That realization scared me.
I rubbed my face again, trying to clear my vision. I looked up at the sky, squinting like it was the middle of the afternoon instead of night. The stars were finally out, all the clouds had moved on, and a cold breeze was blowing in from the north. That sure as hell didn’t help my situation. Sure it was spring, but it was still March in West Virginia. Like I wasn’t freezing already.
I slumped forward trying to pull the radio from my belt, and while my numb hands fumbled around my waist, I noticed the ground Daisy was walking over. It wasn’t covered in dead leaves and twigs. Somewhere in the fog that had settled over my brain, another detail became clear: Her gait had changed. It took several minutes to get the damn radio off my belt. By the time I finally brought it to my mouth, I’d figured out what was going on.
We were on a gravel road.
“Where the hell are we, girl?”
I felt drunk, slow, stupid, unable to put things together in my mind. It had stopped raining, we had left the woods, and I hadn’t noticed either. I couldn’t feel my legs, ass, arms, or my hands. The upside to that was I could no longer feel my injured kidney. The only parts of me that still had a sliver of sensation were my torso and face.
Argh, the radio! Stop thinking about your problems and use the radio you idiot!
“This is Kasey…anybody there?” I was sharply aware of how hoarse my voice sounded. I also realized it was the first time since the rain began that I’d really been aware of anything. Then my eyes fell shut and I slumped over the saddle horn again.
I guess that second of awareness was a freak accident.
“Kasey! Kasey, are you there?” a male voice shouted over and over.
I struggled to right myself in the saddle, to bring the radio back to my mouth. The best I could do was curl my arm up and shove the radio between my cheek and the saddle horn.
“Kasey!” the male voice shouted again. “Where are you?”
“Houston, we have a problem…” I croaked the words out, my mind already wandering and my eyes closing again.
My head tipped as far forward as the saddle horn would let it, until Daisy’s mane tickled my nose. She quickened her pace again, not trotting but damn close. The last lucid thought I had before letting the radio slip to the gravel below and curling both hands tightly around the saddle horn was to hold on and not fall off, no matter what. Then as the cold crept through the rest of my body, my mind filled with thoughts of my last day at work.
October first, Z-day.
* * *
Michael ran through the rooms between the study and the kitchen like a man with a deadhead snapping at his ass, knocking over a small tableside lamp and a porcelain statue of a collie. He tripped, cursed, then stumbled through the long dining room. John was trying to keep up, but what he possessed in strength and size, he lacked in speed and agility. Maneuvering through a maze of overstuffed furniture and high-priced antiques was not a skill he had acquired during his five year sentence at Blueville Correctional. Michael slammed into the swinging kitchen doors two rooms ahead of John, shouting “She’s alive! She’s alive!” so loudly John thought he was in some sort of twisted version of Frankenstein.
“Slow down, Michael! What’s going on?” Nancy said and grabbed the hysterical man by the shoulders to steady him.
Jake and Mia had dropped their roast beef sandwiches and were scrambling to get out of their chairs by the time John finally entered the scene.
“Kasey’s alive, we just heard from her,” he gasped, panting and bent over with his hands on his knees.
“Shit.” Jake nearly knocked his chair over in his haste to get away from the table.
“Go, go,” Mia said after him, her hand on his back, pushing him away as she tried to push her chair back.
“We’re not in shape for that shit, man,” John wheezed next to Michael.
He patted the big man’s broad back and helped him straighten up. Jake had already run from the room, with Mia right behind him, and Nancy was trying to herd him and John back towards the study.
Michael patted the radio on his side. “Hell with that, I’m using this,” he said and brought the radio up to his mouth. “Jonah, you there?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Keep your eyes open, we just heard from Kasey.”
“I know, I was listening. Sounds like she’s in trouble, and not the dead kind,” Jonah said.
They were all aware of his keen observational skills, so no one doubted him when he said something didn’t sound or look right.
“We better get to the study,” Michael said, his breathing suddenly subdued as his nerves went back on high alert. John and Nancy followed him out, this time at a slow walk.
“Kasey, it’s Jake, can you hear me?” Jake’s voice came across over Michael’s walkie.
“He’s on the desktop,” John said. They listened as they walked, but heard no answer from Kasey.
“C’mon, Kasey, answer me,” Jake said again. His voice sounded gentle, like someone coaxing a kid to take their medicine, but Michael didn’t need Jonah’s spidey-sense to catch the edge of fear creeping into his voice.
Mia had her arm around Jake’s shoulders when the other three walked into the study a few moments later. He looked up at the sound of footsteps and dropped the desktop mic, then rushed around the edge of the desk and strode straight past Nancy.
“She’s not answerin’, somethin’s wrong. I’m gonna find her.” Then he snapped his fingers and barked over his shoulder. “Mia!”
“Go on, keep him from doing something stupid,” Nancy said when Mia made no move to follow him. She sighed and did as the older woman said, moving away from the radio and giving Michael his seat back.
John walked to the window and pulled the curtains back. He watched Mia run off the porch, grab Jake, and jerk him around to face her. It seemed to John she was scolding the guy, but he could only catch a few words of what she was saying. He pressed his lips together and let the curtains fall back.
“Kasey, this is Michael. Please respond.”
John walked up behind Nancy, who was standing in front of the desk with her hands folded in front of her mouth. He put his large hands on her shoulders and squeezed.
“Your girl’s alright,” he assured, while Michael continued calling for Kasey.
“Michael,” Jonah broke in, his voice disturbingly empty.
“Yeah, Jonah, go ahead.”
“There’s a rider coming
down the road. Better get somebody out there, she’s about to fall out of the saddle.”
Michael’s head shot up and his eyes met Nancy and John’s. A second later they heard shouts coming from outside, first from Jake, and then from Mia. Michael dropped the mic and ran around the desk, bolting past John and out the door. John patted Nancy’s shoulder before letting go and guiding her outside.
“See, told you your girl was alright.” He smiled to cover his fear and hoped he was comforting the older woman.
“Stop bullshitting me, John, and stand with me on the porch. No sense in me walking all the way out there when that girl’s gonna need a nurse right here,” Nancy said.
John draped his arm around her shoulders. “You got it, darlin’.”
They stayed on the porch and watched the other three run down the gravel road, Jake and Mia yards ahead of Michael. They watched Kasey slide out of her saddle in slow motion and fall onto her back. Thankfully Daisy stopped walking the second her rider hit the gravel, waiting patiently for help. Kasey didn’t move, not an inch. That told Nancy she was unconscious, and deeply so, to not be jerked awake after slamming onto the gravel road. What Nancy was about to find out, was that the reason Kasey didn’t flinch when she hit the road wasn’t because she was passed out cold, but because she was suffering from hypothermia and couldn’t feel a damned thing.
* * *
Are those lights, or am I dead? I remembered thinking at some point as Daisy continued along the gravel road.
I had been fading in and out of consciousness since talking to the male voice on the radio, but so far had been able to force myself to stay at least partially awake by sheer will. Or dumb bull-headedness. Either way, I was still alive, still lucid-ish, and those definitely looked like lights earlier. I couldn’t sit up, couldn’t straighten up in the saddle, couldn’t move anything except my face. And how the hell was having the ability to make stupid faces going to help me out of this mess?