“Hey,” replied Ben.
“Don’t see many folks anymore,” the man said. A slight southern accent? Ben wasn’t sure.
“We don’t either,” said Ben. Like for the last six years, he thought.
“Name’s Frederick.”
“I’m Lila. This is Ben, and this is Katie.” Katie had inched out from Lila, but was still pinching her nose. “And that’s Ralph,” she said. Ralph was sitting right next to Katie, ready to protect her.
“Heard of you,” said Frederick. “Not for a long time. Thought you were dead.”
Six years after we disappeared from the scene, our exploits were still remembered. It wasn’t like anything we did was monumental. Maybe it was just unusual to find people at that time who fought to live and fought for others. So many had given up. I know we offered hope to many that it was still possible to survive the apocalypse that had ravaged the world. Maybe that hope had reached further than we thought.
“Not dead,” Ben answered. “We just got away from it all.”
“Fire drive you out? Saw the smoke. Could smell it.”
“It did,” answered Lila. “It was time to leave anyway. We’re heading southwest, toward the Gulf.”
“Wouldn’t suggest it.” He spat again, and Ben could see his brown teeth.
“Why?”
“It’s not there, ‘least not the way it used to be.”
Ben was about to respond when Frederick said, “Mind if I sit? Leg acts up.”
“Of course,” said Lila.
He walked over to a bench, currently occupied by what was left of a skeleton of a woman wearing a faded and torn flowered dress. He picked her up gently, many of the bones clattering to the ground, and laid what remained of her down next to the bench, then he sat down in her spot and motioned for Lila to sit beside him.
“Saw your limp,” said Frederick. “Figured you could use a rest too.”
She sat, trying hard to ignore the smell. Ben sat down in the street in front of them, Katie in his lap. Ralph had relaxed and was now exploring.
“Do you have a last name?” asked Ben, more as a conversation opener than actual curiosity.
“Do I need one anymore?”
I liked him. In the old days he might have been considered on the fringe of society. Now we all were. There was only the fringe. Or, we were the society. The line had been obscured.
“You were from up north somewhere, if I heard the story right.”
“Massachusetts,” answered Ben. “How about you?”
“Nashville.”
“What were you singing when we saw you?” asked Lila. “It was pretty.”
“Annie’s Song, by John Denver. Always had a soft spot for that song. Had a dog named Annie.”
Ben and Lila looked at each other, each shrugging their shoulders.
“Never heard the song?” he asked.
“Never heard of John Denver,” answered Ben.
Frederick just shook his head.
“What was your job before all of …?” Lila motioned around her.
“Homeless. I was one of those guys with a shopping cart.” He laughed—it was more of a cackle. “Who would have thought that I’d be the one most prepared for this?”
“What did you mean that the Gulf coast isn’t there?” asked Ben.
“Earthquake did it. Rearranged things. A lot of things. Had a lot of time to see for myself. Florida’s under water. Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, all of ‘em, lost their coastline. Have a new coastline, but it’s now cliffs and broken land. No beaches. Suppose some beaches will eventually form, but not like what used to be there.”
“And Florida is gone?”
“Oh yeah. It was so low, the water just washed over it.”
“What about the rest of the country?” asked Lila.
“Pretty beat up. Cities flattened—that’s not such a bad thing, considering—mountains, crevasses, you name it.”
“I saw a lot of that when I had to walk from Washington,” said Ben.
Frederick’s eyes grew wide and he withdrew into the bench. “When were you there?” It was a hoarse whisper.
“Six years ago,” answered Ben. He cocked his head. “Why?”
Frederick relaxed. “Oh, six years ago. That’s okay. You didn’t hear?”
“We haven’t heard anything. We’ve been off the grid for the last six years. We haven’t left our home. You’re the first person other than us that Katie has ever met.”
“Then pull up a chair, boys and girls, ‘cuz you’ve got a lot to learn.” He was about to spit, but realized that Lila was on one side of him, the remains of the woman on the other, and Ben and Katie in front of him. He stood up, walked a few paces, then spat out his tobacco. He used his finger to clean out what was left in his gums, wiped his hands on his pants, then sat down again.
“Bout two, maybe three years ago, the plague hit. I call it the plague—heard others use that term too—but I don’t know what it was. Disease of some kind. Places that had large established communities got hit hard. A big one outside Atlanta completely wiped out, Charlotte the same. Don’t know about northern cities.”
“And Washington?” asked Ben.
“Gone.”
Ben felt dizzy. His months imprisoned there had been some of the worst of his life, mainly because he was separated from Lila while she was pregnant with Katie. But he had managed to make some friends. Dan and Gordon, friends he and Lila had met earlier along the trail, had decided to stay there. Colonel—now President—Jeffries was doing a good job trying to rebuild the government. Even Brian, who saved Ben on his way out of the city, when three assholes were about to kill him. All gone? It was all too much to absorb.
“You don’t know what the disease was?” asked Lila.
“People got sick and died,” Frederick responded. “Don’t care what name they give it. Died fast, too, from what I heard.”
“So some people survived?” asked Lila.
“Here and there. Didn’t let them get too close to me. Some of it I heard from a couple of queers I ran into. Nice guys.”
“Nick and Jason?”
“That’s them. Hey,” he leaned toward Lila, the stench making her pull back, “I don’t judge people’s lifestyles. ‘Course, there ain’t many people left to judge. Ha! And those that are left sure don’t have a lifestyle anymore.” He gave a cackle, finding himself funny.
Ben looked at Lila. “They’re still alive.”
“I would have thought,” began Lila, “that if disease was going to spread, it would have been right after the event, not four or five years later.”
“There was some of that, too, early on. But they nipped it quick. This was something different. Even your friends there, as smart as they were, didn’t know what it was. They figured it mighta started from one of those research labs. Maybe someone found something and let it out by mistake. Like that Ebola shit.” He looked at Katie. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” said Ben, smiling.
“Anyways,” Frederick continued. “The cities are prob’ly okay now, but I steer clear. Suggest you might want to, as well.”
“Good advice,” said Lila. “I guess we’re going to have to change our plans.”
“Hard to b’lieve the earthquake went that far west,” said Frederick, “but it did.”
“Nick told us that it was actually three quakes,” explained Ben. “First the west coast …” He momentarily thought of his brother, a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, most likely dead from the initial event. There hadn’t been many people left alive to experience the earthquakes. “Then the Midwest, then finally here in the east. So I guess the whole country looks like that.”
“Have you heard of any communities not affected by the plague?” asked Lila.
“I’m sure there’s some. None I’ve run across. Heard a rumor coupla times—once from your friends, once from someone else I met a few months ago. Maybe it’s just a rumor though. You know how they get started. Anyways, heard tell o
f a pretty big community spread out in Yellowstone. Really tryin’ to make it work is what I heard.”
Lila looked at Ben. “If it’s true, something like that could be ideal. Contact with others, but with our own space.” She turned to face Frederick. “If you had to guess, how accurate do you think the story is?”
He shrugged. “It’s all a crapshoot these days. What can you believe. Story about you two is that you rid the country of about a hundred or hundred-fifty vermin. How accurate is that?” Ben knew he was fishing for information. The guy was lonely and needed a new story to tell the next people he encountered.
“I get your point,” answered Ben. Frederick looked disappointed at the lack of information, so Ben felt he had to follow up. “Nowhere near that many. It just seemed like it to us.”
Now that Frederick was mildly appeased, he offered more information. “Your friends there, Nick and Jason, I think they were convinced it existed, if that means anything.”
It did.
“Has any power come back on?” asked Ben.
“From where?” responded Frederick incredulously. “Mighta had a chance after the apocalypse, depending on if there was anyone smart enough left to get it going. But then the earthquake—or quakes, as you say—hit. I ‘spect that destroyed the power grid. Then the plague hit the cities. If anything was going on, that’s where it woulda been happening. Maybe somewhere someone’s got some makeshift power going. You ask me? That’s all we’re ever going to have.”
The sun was starting to sink below the line of hills, so they felt it was time to move on and find a place to stay for the night. They had had enough of Frederick’s smell. Besides, they knew he wouldn’t want to camp with them. He had spent much of his life alone. He wouldn’t want to change that now.
“We should be off,” said Lila, thankfully moving away from the odor. “Thank you so much for the information.”
“My pleasure. Thanks for the company.” He glanced at Lila’s rifle on her backpack. “From the stories I hear, you can use that pretty well.” He pointed to the eye patch. “Still good with it?”
“Had to make some adjustments, but yeah, I am,” she answered. Ben liked her strategy. If Frederick spread the news that he had seen them, better it be known that they were still capable of defending themselves.
“Reason I asked is that you might need it. Gangs of marauders here and there. Three, four in a group. Sometimes as many as six. Pretty much leave me alone these days. Take what they need from my wagon, then go. Don’t think they’d be as accommodating to you.” He was speaking directly to Lila, the implication clear.
“Thanks,” said Ben. “We’ll keep our eyes open.”
“Somethin’ else. Heard another rumor. Another group out west—not Yellowstone, someplace else—somethin’ bad goin’ on.”
“Bad in what way?”
“Don’t know. It’s all just rumors. Everything to me is just rumors. They say it’s evil—the worst kind of evil. Never met anyone who knows any more than that, but folks are scared. Maybe nothin’ to it. Just thought I’d tell you.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” said Ben. “We’ll ask people if we see any. You take care.”
“Always do.” He limped off, with the tinkling in his wagon and his odor both lingering.
Yellowstone. It would take us many months to get there, but there was something hopeful about it. I knew Lila felt the same way. We’d never get there by winter, though, so we’d have to find a place along the way to hunker down. Were we up for the trip? And what if the rumor of the community was unfounded. Could we deal with the disappointment? We had no choice really. It seemed our best option. Yellowstone it was.
Chapter 5
They made it another three miles before finally settling down for the night in a secluded copse of trees. Heeding Frederick’s warning about the marauders, they decided to hold off building a fire, eating some leftover fish from the night before.
Ben watched as Katie ate her meal seemingly without a care in the world. He marveled at her adaptability, but at the same time felt a touch of sadness. The world that he grew up in was far from perfect, but he wished Katie could have experienced it. She would be starting first grade. They would have done their school shopping, picking out clothes, crayons, and other supplies. In some ways that life seemed so long ago, but when he watched Katie, it brought it all back as if it was yesterday. A lump formed in his throat.
“She’ll be fine.”
Ben turned to look at Lila. How did she know what he was thinking?
“Don’t you ever wish …” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Sometimes, but it does us no good to wish for the past. Katie never experienced it, so she doesn’t miss it. Look at her.” Katie had her head on a sleeping Ralph’s belly. She yawned. “She’s happy. For us, it’s all been too surreal. For her, it’s the most natural thing in the world. If we try to impose our memories on her—even if just in our own minds—we’re not being fair to her. And it just makes us sad. This is the life we’ve been handed. At times it’s sucked,” she fingered her patch, “and at times it’s been beautiful. No different from our old life in that respect. We accepted that this is how it is a long time ago. Let’s not get sad about it now.”
“Maybe it’s just the fact that we’re on the move again,” said Ben. “It brings back memories.”
Lila leaned over and put a blanket over the now passed out Katie, then snuggled in close to Ben. “Let’s think about where we’re going. Even if the Yellowstone community doesn’t exist, it might be a good place to settle back down. Similar to where we were, but different.”
They fell asleep in each other’s arms.
*****
They were on the road early the next morning, buoyed by the knowledge that for much of Tennessee they would be able to mostly avoid towns. There was still a lot of wilderness. They stuck to the small back roads, following the compass that Ben had finally mastered a few years earlier, making sure they were maintaining a northwesterly direction.
They came across small towns from time to time, but most were heavily overgrown. The earthquake had caused cracks in much of the concrete, and over the years weeds, grasses, and flowers had grown tall, oftentimes obscuring storefronts and houses—or what was left of them after the earthquakes and fires. It was as if nature had suddenly been freed from its concrete prison and was celebrating that freedom to the extreme.
Suddenly they weren’t wary of encountering towns. Ben remembered pictures he had seen of hidden pyramids in Mexico and Central America, overgrown to the point where people could pass right by without seeing them.
The thriving vegetation served another purpose. Skeletons were hidden from view, the reminders of the past disappearing altogether. Occasionally they would find towns that had less growth, such as the one in which they met Frederick, but those were rare. America was slowly returning to its wild roots, and Ben couldn’t be happier.
Wildlife was abundant and not a day went by when they didn’t see deer, bears, rabbits, and raccoons, not to mention farm animals—herds of wild cattle and sheep, and the occasional horse. Birds of all colors and sizes flew by all day long. There were times when they felt they were on a different planet from the one they once occupied.
But then there were the dogs. A threat right after the cataclysmic events of so many years ago, dog packs were even more prevalent now. For the most part they kept their distance, but Ben and Lila knew that they could attack at any time. To his credit, Ralph stayed close to Katie, always on guard.
The going was sometimes tough. As Ben remembered from his grueling walk from Washington to Fontana Lake, the terrain was uneven, often forcing them to go miles out of their way to find level ground or to avoid great cracks in the earth. But as long as they kept bearing northwest, they knew they’d be fine. They took frequent breaks, mostly to allow Katie to rest her short legs. But Ben knew that Lila also appreciated the breaks to give her ankle some comfort. Late in the day her limp wou
ld became slightly more pronounced, but she pushed on without complaint.
Lila was amazing. The ankle was one thing, but it was her damaged eye that must have bothered her more. I knew that she had become accepting of her loss of vision, but it must have been so frustrating for her. She spent a lot of time turning her head to the right to try to get a full view. Lila would never want me to feel sorry for her, but sometimes I couldn’t help it.
They walked another two days before encountering their first problem. They went through numerous towns, each time marveling at how little they resembled anything familiar. Then they realized that the route to Yellowstone would take them through the open spaces of the Midwest. The miles and miles of concrete that was the east coast was a thing of the past.
When trouble came, it was in the form of one of the marauding gangs they had been warned about. Ben had shot a wild turkey and they were making camp for the night. They took a chance on a fire in order to cook the turkey. Bigger than they needed, the bird would provide meals for several days. It was close to being ready, with the aroma filling the air, when they heard a rustling in the bushes. Ralph stood in front of Katie and growled menacingly in the direction of the sound.
“Hello the fire,” came a voice. “I’m friendly. Can I come in?”
“With your arms spread,” answered Ben. He and Lila both had a bad feeling. Lila inched her rifle close to her and slipped her pistol onto her lap.
Eden Lost (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 2) Page 3