“So, you think that what we’ve heard and felt…that there are ghosts, or apparitions here?” I asked him.
“It makes sense if you think about it. I mean, all these people died, probably billions if it’s still spreading across the world, and it happened so fast. There was no closure. For anyone.” He turned around so that his whole body was facing me. “If you believe in stuff like this I guess.”
“Well, I’m a Stephen King fan, I believe in almost anything.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say and I grinned shyly. Connor laughed.
It did make sense, with so many people dying, of the same thing, the same illness, and dying so quickly. There would be millions of people who didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. If a spirit was ever to have a reason for unfinished business, this would surely qualify.
“What do we do now?” I sat there, with the question hanging in the air, knowing neither of us knew how to answer it.
“I have no idea. Keep living, I guess,” he replied.
***
I sat on the floor with my legs crossed, as I gazed out the window. Being twenty stories up in the air was dizzying at first, but the longer I stared down at the streets and the smaller buildings around us, the less my vertigo threatened to take control of my body. The view would have been magnificent on a clear day if the layer of smoke drifting on top of the air like smog didn’t filter out a good portion of the sunlight. We could smell it inside too. The faint wisp of smoky air was everywhere.
Connor came up behind me and tapped something gently on the back of my arm. I looked over my shoulder to see him leaning forward, holding out a green apple. I took it from him and nodded a thank you. I had packed the fresh fruit I picked off the neighborhood trees before heading into the city. A small bag of apples was one of the things I dumped out of my pack the night before to share. It seemed fair, considering Connor was sharing everything of his, with not only me but my dog as well.
He perplexed me most of the time. He had been through a disaster, lost his friends and probably everyone he knew overseas, dealt with a handful of dead people from the hotel and seen the swarm of sick overrun the airport. Yet, he smiled, all the time. He laughed just as much as he blinked. His attitude was contagious but I was beginning to think it was a show. No one could possibly be as balanced as he portrayed himself and still be human.
Be careful, that nagging inner voice said to me, and rather than push it aside, I listened to it. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, I felt the opposite actually. I trusted him as if I’d known him half my life, but for some reason it seemed too early to share my story. I felt, even though he had shared a great deal of his, that my story should stay private. I wasn’t ready to talk about my children…or their father. We had been divorced for two years but were still close. We tried hard to make life normal for our children and I was sad to have lost him, but devastated with my daughter and son. It seemed the right thing to do, to move on and find others and survive, but I knew in my heart, that part of me would never recover. I would never be able to smile or laugh without their faces flooding my memory. I didn’t think I’d ever understand why I didn’t die with them, like I should have.
As I sat at the window, eating my crunchy green apple, I wondered again about where to go. It would be unsafe, in more ways than one to stay in the city. I considered traveling north, to L.A. but the stilled traffic up there had to be bad. The illness took people quickly, but it didn’t stop them from jumping in their cars and driving off only to die behind the wheel a few hours later. Going north would be a bad idea.
That left two choices, go east into the mountains and the rest of the country, or travel the short distance south to the Mexican border.
“Connor, do you speak Spanish by any chance?” It was random and caught him off guard.
“Uh,” he choked down a mouthful of apple. “Not really.” He shook his head, “Why? You planning a trip down south?”
“It was a thought. But I don’t speak Spanish either.” I sighed heavily.
He bit his apple, and I watched as his jaw muscles flexed effortlessly and when he ran his tongue innocently over his lower lip, I blushed and looked away from him. What was it about this guy?
“East it is then,” I said aloud to no one in particular.
“East? Is that where you want to go?” He looked at me, still chewing. I tried not to watch his jaw.
“Why not? I think it would take a really long time to get to L.A. especially if we’d have to walk some of it.” I continued, “And going south across the border would be a mess too. Even if we did find people there, we might not be able to communicate and that could be dangerous.” I considered for a moment.
“There’s a resort-type lodge up in the Laguna Mountains, called the Big Laguna Hideaway. Have you heard of it?” I asked, forgetting for a moment that Connor wasn’t from California.
He shook his head no, so I went on to explain. “Ok, so it’s a lodge more than a resort. I’ve never actually been there but when it was built the owners made a point of advertising its eco-friendly design all over the County.”
“Still not following you.” He said. He licked his lower lip again and I looked away. Jesus, Riley…knock it off!
A pleasant sort of anxiousness came over me as I remembered pictures I had seen of the place tucked away in the mountains. “It’s an eco-friendly mountain resort. It runs completely on solar power.” I looked at him, and watched as what I said registered.
“Completely solar operated?” He asked with a hint of excitement in his voice.
“Yes, and it would have its own water supply too, probably welled.” I shifted around so I was facing him. “There’s one problem, well, not a problem but it could potentially be.”
“What’s that?” He got up and walked to my side of the room, fruit still in hand. Zoey stretched from her napping place on top of the sofa when he sat down.
“Well, it gets cold enough up there for snow. Every year portions of the highway are closed down due to ice and snow conditions.” I watched him ponder over what I had said.
“The cold doesn’t bother me. I guess our biggest problem would be having enough food.” He settled deeply into the cushions and continued eating. He was chewing the apple down to the core, and for some reason I found it extremely sexy. “We have plenty here to take with us, but how would we get it there?”
“I left my Jeep on the outskirts of the City. If we could find something here to drive we could try and leave downtown by the streets and back-track parallel with the freeway. The roads are congested mostly around downtown and the major interchanges. We could probably drive more freely once we hit East County.” I was excited now, just a little, at the prospect of having a plan. Now we just had to put it in motion.
We sat quiet for a while, chewing our apples and as I nibbled around the core, I bit a seed off and tried to discreetly spit it out of my mouth into my hand. Instead, it stuck to my lip. I definitely could not eat an apple as sexy as Connor.
“Let’s do it,” he said, oblivious to my apple seed incident.
“Let’s do it,” I repeated. “I’m tired of the warm weather anyway.” We smiled at each other. A plan. We had a plan. Now we had to get out of the city with our supplies and drive the hour and a half up into the mountains. It felt good to know where we were headed, but it wasn’t the most forgiving of places to venture into alone.
As if to further support our decision to move on, something across town exploded. Looking into the distance we could see more smoke rising up from where the airport was. It was still burning, which meant the fire had probably spread past the tarmac.
***
As I pulled the covers up around my ears, I listened to the quiet of the hotel suite and wondered if Connor was asleep yet. I let my mind drift a bit, thinking about Connor, the trip out to the mountains and without warning, a memory I had with my kids at the Zoo from the summer before blazed through my mind. I fell asleep as I had every night sin
ce the day my children died, with my eyes swollen and my pillow damp.
CHAPTER FIVE
The lace curtains moved away from the window, then settled back against the frame, and this happened over and over as if the window itself was breathing and the curtains were being expelled to freedom with each breath, only to be sucked back in a second later. My gaze followed the curtains for what seemed like hours until they just stopped, suddenly. The air had stilled in the room, and I was aware of the warmth of the new day working its way through the coldness. I watched as the sun rays hit the window glass, making bright prisms sparkle like giant diamonds. The light filtered through the lacey fabric, casting an intricate pattern on the floor, full of swirls and different sized circles. My daughter was an early morning person and now that I awoke in her room, I understood why. Her view of dawn was glorious. The carpet fibers lit up inch by inch as the rays of sunlight crept over them and devoured the shadows.
I watched, wide eyed and alert, as the sunshine slithered up the side of her bed, and I could see the pinks and yellows of her quilted blanket. I didn’t dare blink as the light moved up and over our toes, showing our matching red nail polish. Her bare feet touched at the ankles, and were tucked up neatly against the side of my right foot and I focused on her chipped and uneven polish for a moment. I finally blinked. The blonde hairs on her skin glittered as the sun swallowed us up, legs first. I couldn’t see above her shins, because I had covered her with a fleece Winnie the Pooh blanket. The overwhelming urge to see her knees came over me, so I shifted until the blanket moved, exposing her right knobby knee with the bruise from her last tree climbing adventure. I couldn’t smile, but it somehow made me happy to see that bruise.
I felt the warmth of daylight as it hit my right arm, and rushed over my shoulder, exploding into my face, causing my eyes to water. I closed them for only a moment and in that instant I saw her big and round, bright blue eyes, her small, perfectly puckered red lips that rested below her little button nose, the curve of her jaw line that led to her slightly big ears, and all her blonde hair that curled at the ends. I could see her freckles and could count each one…she had four on her face and one on the top of her right ear. I saw all of this and held onto it before I opened my eyes. That girl was gone. I wanted to remember her face, the face she had before death took her from me.
When I opened my eyes the sun had filled the room and it was all there for me to see. I was looking at her stomach, where her arm rested and her little hand lay still inside mine. She had a freckle on that hand too. I didn’t want to look at her face just yet so I kept staring at her arm, willing it to move on its own, but it didn’t of course. At some point I realized I couldn’t feel my own left arm, which was tucked under her head, or most of my left side for that matter. And I didn’t care. I had cuddled up next to her during the night when the hallucinations started, and held her in my arms while I sang Into the West by Annie Lennox, over and over, like I used to do when she was a baby. I sang to her, even when her fevered body stopped seizing. When her shallow and uneven breathing quit, I was still singing to her, gently and methodically rocking her back in forth in my arms.
Her very last minute was peaceful. Her chest rose slightly and then fell slowly and I felt the hot air of her last breath tickle my cheek as I whispered to her…The ships are here now, baby. They are taking you home. I held onto her, my first born child, my only daughter, until the new day reminded me that my family suffered these awful and horrible deaths and I was somehow kept alive to see it happen. It was my own personal Hell. So I stayed next to her, my beautiful daughter, and cried. I cried until my heart broke and I thought that for sure would kill me, but it didn’t.
And now here I am, lying next to her, willing myself to look at her face. I force my gaze up her throat, over her chin and her slightly parted lips, which are no longer the color of my favorite rose but an unnatural bluish-grey shade. I ignore the blood that had flowed from her nose, spreading down her cheeks, pooling on the pillow beneath her head. The rusty brown color of it was dry and caked on her skin almost like paint. I couldn’t stop now, so my gaze moved up even further to her eyes, but instead of the deep ocean blue I was used to seeing, her eyes were red, blood red. The scream started low in my gut and came out of my mouth almost strangled. I screamed until I was hoarse. I screamed for my son, who was dead in the room next door, tucked neatly in bed. For the husband I once had, but lost to a broken heart two years before, and for my daughter, now dead and cold in my arms. I screamed and screamed until the wind made the curtains dance again. I screamed until the sunlight started fading from the room and the shadows took me over.
***
My eyes flew open and a mournful groan escaped past my lips as the image of my dead daughter silently faded away to that place in the brain where nightmares hide. I bolted out of bed, my chest heaving with anxiety. My lower lip was trembling and for several seconds I didn’t know where I was. It was dark, still night, but something was wrong. Zoey was barking at the bedroom door, nervously looking from it to me and back at the door again. I blinked back a new wave of tears as I realized I was standing in Connor’s suite. A hollow thumping sound was coming from the other room. It must have been what woke me. I wiped my hands across my eyes and moved past the dog to open the door an inch or so. Solid dark shadows shrouded the room but there was enough moonlight filtering through the windows for me to see Connor moving toward the suite’s front door in long strides. I followed him, as Zoey rushed ahead of us, still barking. We stood, silently, inside the hotel room. I shushed the dog and commanded her to move back. When I squatted beside her, my legs were shaky and unreliable. Connor was looking through the peep-hole on the door when another bang made him jump.
He glanced at me before asking, “Who’s there?”
We heard voices talking before a man answered, “Hey!” He said with some excitement in his voice, “We’re looking for Riley, Connor and…Zoey?” There was more hushed talking behind the door.
Connor moved aside and let me look through the peep-hole. I didn’t recognize the man, and it looked like a young woman was standing beside him. I heard a click behind me and the entryway light washed over us. I blinked at Connor and he looked just as confused as I felt. Then I remembered the notes I’d left, I had led these people here. I didn’t know if I should feel excited or panicked.
“They’ve been to the depot,” I whispered to him.
“Look, we don’t mean any harm we’re just excited to find you. We saw the message on the window at the bus station. We’ve been searching this place for a while. We heard your dog barking, started knocking on doors till we found you.” He paused before asking, “Can we come in?”
Connor had stepped away from the door slightly and was nervously rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. I walked up to him and asked quietly, “What do you think? I put the messages out there to help people find me. I guess I wasn’t thinking about strangers finding us, but they look harmless enough.”
“You can tell that through the peep-hole, can you?” He seemed irritated.
“They know we have a dog,” I reasoned, “They don’t have to stay with us, but we could at least see who they are.”
When he didn’t answer, I told him, “It’s up to you.”
He nodded and went back to the door, “If you have any weapons leave them on the floor.” I pulled Zoey back with me and squatted down so I could put my arm around her and hold onto her collar.
Connor unlatched the security bar and pulled the door open. The man had backed away from the door and peered into the dimly lit suite tentatively.
Connor stuck his hand out. “I’m Connor.”
The man took his hand and a smile broke out on his face, he pumped Connor’s hand up and down and called over his shoulder, “You coming?”
When Connor stepped aside to let the man in, he nodded at me and the growling dog and said, “My name’s Matt.” He gestured behind him, “This is Mariah.”
Mariah slipp
ed inside carefully, her eyes darting around the room. She was obviously on edge. Zoey issued a loud bark, making both of the newcomers jump.
“Zoey, shush,” I told her. I didn’t want to let go of her just yet.
“So if Zoey is the dog, then you must be Riley,” Matt said to me.
“Yes, I’m glad you found us.”
Connor broke the awkward silence that followed by flipping on the kitchen light and pointing to the bar stools that rested beneath the counter top. “Have a seat, are you thirsty?” He asked them.
“Do you have anything warm?” Matt asked. Mariah hesitated to sit down. She was still eyeing the dog wearily from the entryway.
I let go of Zoey and she rushed the newcomers, wagging her tail so vigorously her back legs threatened to lift off the ground. She sniffed at Mariah who seemed to relax when she realized the dog wasn’t going to eat her, feet first. Next, she checked out Matt as Connor turned the coffee maker on. He popped an individual serving of coffee into the machine and watched it brew directly into the mug.
Mariah was about my height, maybe an inch shorter, with shoulder length, curly brown hair and big brown doe eyes. Matt was tall and stocky, also with brown hair and intense, dark eyes.
“This is a nice place.” Matt said. “Is it running off a generator?” He aimed the question at Connor, who was placing the mug in front of him on the counter.
“Yeah.” Connor began fixing another cup of coffee for Mariah. “I was staying here actually when everything…you know. Riley here is a local.” Connor nodded at me. He seemed much more cautious with these two than he was meeting me on the pier. He barely cracked a smile at either of them. I realized that Middle of the Night Connor was not as sexy as Early Morning Connor, and the thought made me stifle a laugh.
I Hope You Find Me Page 6