Zephyr released the talk button and waited for Ross to say something. He didn’t, so the boy continued.
“Wait, no long-winded explanation for me? Some total bullshit to chew on? Have I hit the lottery?” The question was rhetorical and he didn’t wait for a reply. “Speaking of the lottery, I gotta say, it’s been like Black Friday with all these empty houses in this great, hunt-happy town of ours. One huge fucking gun shop, old man. No blanks either. Just all kinds of rifles, every last one preloaded with bullets that put more than tiny holes in screen doors. Gun racks in the living rooms of some of these places, can you believe it?”
No hesitation this time. “Bring it, you little shit. You think you can threaten me?” Cold now. Defiant. Hard. “Please. You couldn’t shoot a picture, let alone a gun. Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s a good one,” Zephyr said, ignoring him. “I guess we’ll just have to see how good my aim really is. I have to agree with what you said earlier, though, about those long-range rifles. I’ve been looking at your shitty house using one of the scopes and the thing is awesome. Now, I’m no expert, but it seems easy enough. You just line up the crosshairs and pull the trigger, right? I feel like even I can do that.”
“That’s funny,” Ross said. “I guess we’re both housesitting tonight. I’m here watching this big ol’ ritzy mansion burn itself out. Now that it’s good and dark outside, she’s a beauty of a sight, if I do say so. You should come on by, get you some marshmallows, and we’ll roast ’em up while we watch.”
The cheerful old facade had returned, but Zephyr detected anger underneath. He knew his words had been received and at least some doubt about his intentions and his resources seeded.
“You get used to that burning, asshole, because there’s plenty of it where you’re going,” he said, and replied no more.
It was all a sham, of course. Zephyr only thought to investigate for weapons of any kind after he’d made the bluff. He searched the house, now blanketed in darkness – he was too frightened to turn on any lights, dim or otherwise – and came away empty-handed. So he found a bed and lay there listening to the occasional comment or vague threat from Ross. “You ain’t sleeping, boy,” and “You know, if you come at me, it’s not gonna end well for you,” and “I just love driving around this here city at night,” and so on. No more long diatribes – only enough to let Zephyr know he was still there, still awake, still looking for him.
The boy turned down the volume on the walkie so that the interruptions were nearly inaudible and stared into the blackness. He thought again of the disappearances, of his parents and his girlfriend, of all the crashed cars and vacant buildings. He missed his family with desperation. He wondered how much safer he’d be now if he’d only explored the highway that first day instead of holing up at home.
Eventually, he stood and then shuffled into the surrounding blackness, his arms outstretched, his feet ready for contact with whatever waited unseen. The bathroom was adjacent to the master bedroom, itself tucked away in the rear of the house. He flipped the light. It was dim, but it tickled his eyes anyway and he shielded them with his forearm before his vision adjusted and he squinted into the room. It was small. A single sink and a thin wall mirror that stretched from his torso up.
“Jesus, man,” he whispered. “You’ve looked… better.”
And he had. A brown v-neck sweater clung to his frame. Some worn jeans. He’d donned them both in the early morning — and was it really just this morning? It seemed like a lifetime ago. His dark, thick hair, now noticeably dirtier and greasier than normal, hung at shoulder length. He might’ve been a hipster who forewent a shower if not for his face. Pale skin, bloodshot eyes, bags underneath. Coupled with the neglected hair, he looked more like a stylish drug addict than he wanted to admit. It aged him up a couple years, at the very least.
He longed for a phone. Just to give it another try— maybe something had finally changed, maybe someone would answer now. There it was again: the old, steady hope, still refusing to die. He flipped off the light and lay back on the bed, determined to wait, to bide his time, and to move only after he felt confident that Ross had finally turned in for the night.
He didn’t believe he’d actually scared the old man, who was arrogant, yes, but much as he hated to admit it, smart in his own way. The bastard had outplayed him several times over since they first met. He only needed him distracted, though. So long as Ross believed that he was planning revenge, fantastic. Whether he hunkered down at his house and waited him out, found another place altogether to hatch his own dirty plan, or drove around town looking for him, fine, good, perfect, even. Zephyr thought he could handle any of those scenarios. What he dreaded was the possibility that Ross had seen through his lies and somehow anticipated his exit. If the psycho maneuvered through the pile-ups on the highway and waited for him a few miles out, he’d be in trouble.
He thought about all of this and more for a long time while the mattress warmed beneath his weight. The wind rose and fell, leaves swirling and tickling the window. Jerry had seen another person— the girl in the truck. She was out there somewhere. Were there others? He believed so, yes. Maybe not many, but some. Hiding, like him. Scared, like him. Or maybe they’d taken to the highways in search of answers. If so, he was eager to join them. Time flowed, thoughts spun out of control, his heartbeat slowed and quickened, the pattern repeated.
Two-eighteen in the morning and still no word from Ross. It was time to move, so he turned the talkie off and stuffed it into the backpack with the gun, safety on— blanks or no blanks, better to be careful. A minute later, he was outside, lightning caught in his veins, ready to race if necessary. Darkness spread everywhere, extinguished only in small pockets by flickering street and porch lights. The weather, brisk and breezy, reminded Zephyr of Halloween, still a few weeks out, and under normal circumstances he would have found the climate altogether exhilarating.
He scaled a fence. His palms were still raw from the fast retreat he’d been forced into earlier. A dark backyard with lumpy grass. He kept going. A decrepit brick wall leaned inward. He climbed it and jumped down to the other side. Gravel now. Weeds. He winced at all the noise the rocks made under his feet. The moan of the wind blotted most of it out, but he stopped and looked around anyway. The old railroad tracks ran perpendicular into the night. Just beyond them waited Main Street, wider and more illuminated than he wanted.
He squatted behind a nearby bush and then peeked up and down the street for signs of anything out of the ordinary. Like the entire city vanishing, he thought. That would be pretty out of the ordinary, wouldn’t you say, Zeph? His eyes darted back and forth in search of irregular motion or radiance, like approaching headlights. He stared wide in both directions and studied the geography. Thankfully, blessedly, even, there were none.
He was about to stand again when he heard the sound of grinding rocks behind him.
16
Zephyr spun and saw a figure silhouetted against the darkness. He froze. He wanted to duck for cover, to dive out of the way, to sprint for his life, but his arms and legs ignored all of these impulses. It was not possible. How had Ross found him, let alone secured the jump on him? He flashed through unlikely scenarios at lightning speeds. Had the old man tracked him using his walkie-talkie signal? He’d heard of people doing that before. His hopes disintegrated. He raised his arms into the air, and braced for the worst.
“Sorry,” the silhouette said. “I’m sorry, don’t be mad.” He could barely make out the words over the wind. But it was not Ross.
It was a girl.
Zephyr felt like throwing up. “Get down!” he hissed.
“What?”
He waved her his way. “Over here! Hurry!”
She ran to him, hunched, and sat beside him. Up close, he could see her a little better, although her face was still a mystery. Zephyr thought she was too small to be anything but a kid. His panic gave way to flabbergast. Another living person. He almost touched her in disbelief.
“You were in my backyard and you were…” she said and stopped. “You we—w-were grown up…” She tried to maintain control of herself but it was a losing battle; she was segueing into hysterics. “S-since my mom was gone. So I chase—”
“It’s OK. You scared the heck out of me, but it’s OK,” Zephyr said and without hesitation he embraced her. And when she wept back into his arms, he held on.
After some time, he couldn’t have said how long, he let go of her and she pulled away. She stared at him from the weeds and rock in the cold of night, and when she spoke again her composure had come back.
“Do you know where my mom is? Can you help me find my mom?”
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I wish I did. My parents are gone, too. Almost everyone is. But we don’t have time to think about that right now. The two of us, we have to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“There’s a really bad man out here and he wants to hurt us.” He waited for her response, but none came. She only nodded. “In a minute, we’re going to run across the street, do you understand? You’re going to hold my hand and run as fast as you’ve ever run. Then we’re going to go into the wash where he can’t get us, OK?”
“OK.”
“Good.”
He surveyed Main Street again. It looked clear. No signs of Ross either way. And although they might be seen as they sprinted across if anybody happened to be looking, the spot was nevertheless as navigable as he could ask for given the circumstances. It was a clear shot across a big road and into the trenches of safety on the other side.
“You ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
“OK.” He reached out for her. “One. Two. Three. Run!”
She gripped his hand hard as their feet led them. She felt tiny— fragile, even. Zephyr moved so fast that by the time they reached the curb on the opposite side, he was practically dragging her. They finally slipped into more overgrown bushes and out of sight from the road. It was done.
“OK, good. Listen, what’s your name?” Zephyr asked.
“Jordan.”
“I’m Zephyr. You can call me Zeph, OK?”
“OK.”
Her face was still a mask in the darkness but he guessed her eyes were still stained with tears. She must’ve been terrified, he thought, but she was a survivor and though he knew almost nothing else about her, he admired that.
“The hard part is over. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we have a long walk ahead of us. Are you up for it?”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to get out of this town and away from the bad man, and then we can try to figure out what’s going on.” He recalled the night after the event as he lay up in his room, alone, tortured. God, how old is she— nine or ten? How is that fair?
“My mom—” she started and he cut her off.
“I know. As soon as we can, we’ll try to find her,” he said, and hated himself for it. He couldn’t leave her here, though. Not without anybody to take care of her and not with Ross on the loose.
“OK.”
“All right. Le—wait, quiet.” He cupped her mouth with one palm. “Don’t move.”
Zephyr cocked his head and listened. The wind hammered on, but there was something else now. The steady hum of an engine. Was that right? Yes. He thought it was. And it was growing louder.
“Stay here. Get down on the ground and don’t make a sound,” he whispered and then crawled back to the bushes.
It was baffling because the street showed no sign of any cars in either direction. Nothing out of place. It was still a midnight ghost town. As dark and motionless as ever. But wait— no, that wasn’t true, he realized with sudden panic. There was a car. A truck, in fact. And it was rolling down Main Street at a leisurely pace. He hadn’t noticed it because its headlights were off.
It had to be Ross, of course. The old bastard was cruising, but not for girls. He was still up and still searching, a truth that astounded and disturbed Zephyr. He realized with a pang of nausea that if he had hesitated by a minute, he’d have crossed Main Street exactly as Ross was rolling down it.
“Stay down!” he hissed at Jordan, despite the fact that she hadn’t budged.
The truck moved down the road at a deliberate pace. He couldn’t see Ross inside, couldn’t distinguish much of anything beyond the vehicle, but he knew he was there, likely peering out the window, maybe even through a night scope. Why not? These streets belonged to him now. He could drive them as he saw fit.
Zephyr felt the old familiar paralysis grip hold. Yet again, Ross had every advantage save one, which was that he didn’t know where Zephyr was, and the boy had no intention of revealing himself. For as much as he wanted revenge, for as much as the old man deserved his due justice, the reality was that if he went up against Ross, he was going to lose and he would lose with his life. So he stayed glued to the ground and veiled behind the bulkiness of branches and shrubs and he watched the tires roll by, the sound of rubber grating pavement. Too afraid to blink and to breathe, he never moved. And only when the truck was too far gone to see did his fear finally give way to relief, and then regret.
Not now, you son of a bitch. But maybe one day we’ll see each other again, he thought. Maybe.
A half hour later, the boy and the girl marched in quiet lockstep across a snaking bike path that paralleled the gully system, leaving Firefly Valley and all of its mysteries to the bad man.
17
Going Nowhere
The walk was as long as the wind was frigid. The two of them traversed the path and then the rocky, weedy terrain of the gully into the night, at first whispering back and forth and then talking outright. Zephyr dominated the conversation. He asked question after question and made dumb jokes, but the girl seldom responded with more than a yes or a no and never laughed. It was understandable.
He’d been loath to make the trip through the ravine in the dead of darkness by himself, and yet he found that it really wasn’t so daunting with company, even a companion as young as Jordan, who was, he confirmed, just ten. Once they had heard what sounded like either a dog or a coyote scrambling by in the surrounding hillsides and they had both halted, but that had been it, and by the time light radiated beyond the mountains again, Firefly Valley was well behind them.
The highway carved through and over the mountains while the gully lay in the valleys between them, a detail that Zephyr had prematurely dismissed. Their path disintegrated into a dirty ravine before the sun took shape and maneuvering through it was a chore— progression slow, yet steady. And while he was thankful that there was no more rain and no deep water to contend with, he worried about how long they might have to walk before their passage intersected once more with the roads.
Jordan’s blonde hair blew around her freckled face and she tucked it behind her ears. Her eyes shone a bright blue and she stood to his chest. Zephyr figured she’d be a heartbreaker by the time she was sixteen, but for now, she was just a kid and a sad, dazed, exhausted one at that. He asked her if she wanted to rest and she shook her head, so they kept on as he lobbed questions at her.
She had dressed for school, made toast and milk and watched cartoons, as was the morning routine, she told him. Then, when she tried to wake her mom, she discovered her missing. Zephyr knew how the story progressed. She tried calling her grandmother and her best friend. She knocked on the doors of some neighborhood homes. She dialed the police. He got that much from her. He didn’t ask about her first night alone because he didn’t want to know. He thought about his own experience and couldn’t fathom how a ten year-old girl could surmount such an ordeal by herself. The remaining details were irrelevant. The situation was devastating, but she had endured and that’s all that mattered.
He glanced at her as she stepped over a jutting rock and was overcome with a potent mixture of sympathy and respect. He was not sure that he would’ve persisted at such a young age.
When they’d gone a li
ttle farther, she asked, “Where are we actually going?”
Zephyr considered it as they walked, and sighed. “That’s a good question,” he said. “For now, we’re just going as far away from town as we can and then we’re going to get on the freeway when we see it. After that, we’ll have to see. I’m hoping we can get a car.”
“Some food, too. I’m hungry,” she said.
He smiled. “For sure. All the food we can find. What sounds good?”
“Um, macaroni and cheese and ice cream.”
Zephyr bust out laughing. It felt good. “All right. We’ll see if we can get that, but we might have to settle for something a little easier.”
“OK, I can eat just about anything at this point,” she said and then paused. “Zephyr, why was that man bad?”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s long gone,” he said and glanced behind himself, prepared for the cruel possibility that Ross might be lingering off in the distance, a rifle at his shoulder. Only empty hillsides, though. “I just saw him hurt someone and he wanted to hurt me after that.”
“Why did he hurt someone?”
“Because he’s a bad man.”
“Did he hurt someone you know?”
“No, just a man we met,” Zephyr said.
“Oh.” She seemed to consider it. “Do you think someone hurt my mom?”
“I don’t think so. I just think she went somewhere, like my mom and dad did. Maybe they’re all there together.”
“Wherever they are, that’s where I want to go,” she said.
He flashed her his best smile. “Me too, kid.”
They walked and talked some more as the day grew older. Zephyr possessed neither a watch nor a phone and had no view of the sun, itself shrouded behind ominous clouds. So as the hours passed on, he discovered that he really had no idea what time it was. It might’ve been breakfast, brunch or lunch. His growling stomach didn’t care. His feet ached, his legs burned and the hillsides stretched on, the ravine they found themselves in the only sign of civilization. He wondered if he’d made a mistake. Maybe he should’ve taken the highway from the start. Too risky. Not with your old friend roaming around, he thought. Just keep going. The gully intersects with the highways eventually— it can’t be long now.
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