by Julia Shupe
Sam screamed.
Jeremy swerved, tottered, and nearly fell.
Skidding to a stop, he dropped his bike in the center of the right-hand lane of westbound I-30 and rushed to the boy’s side. Sweat bloomed across his forehead and dampened his palms. He was as furious as he was frightened. Furious with Seth, but mostly furious with himself. Seth had lied. Lied with an easy smile and gentle words. Just that morning the boy had said he was fine. He’d said that he could go on. That very same day, just a few hours earlier, he’d convinced Jeremy that his leg hurt only a little, that mostly he was just tired because he hadn’t slept well the night before.
Jeremy’s jaw was tight with anger. Lies after lies on top of more lies. But it wasn’t so much about the lies, was it? Wasn’t it more that Jeremy had believed them? Jeremy was the adult and the responsible member of this expedition, and the truth of the matter was that he’d failed his small charges. Like a fool, he’d miscalculated the severity of the low-grade fever that had begun to burn just two days prior. At Seth’s urging, he’d given him several aspirin from the bottle he’d pilfered at the Supercenter, but had then stupidly allowed the three of them to press on.
He’d been wrong.
He should have known it was more serious than that. No more than twenty-four hours prior, he’d changed the dressing himself, and even then had begun to wonder at the strange webbing of red and blue veins that spidered from the edges of the wound in zigzagging patterns. Even then, the flesh had appeared too moist. It had been too puffy, its temperature too warm to the touch. He’d cleansed it thoroughly, had even been able to squeeze a bit of puss from the corner, but the insufficiency of the scab had concerned him. That scab should have closed over the top of the wound by now. It hadn’t. Jeremy should have called for another day of mandatory rest. He didn’t.
He could kick himself, he scolded bitterly. He should have been wiser to Seth’s deception. He’d trusted the boy to speak up if he needed rest, depended on the limited reasoning abilities of a child to make an adult decision. But in the end it had boiled down to one thing—and one thing only. For Sam, Seth had tried to sacrifice himself, and that had been Jeremy’s true mistake in all of this.
Ever since Seth had changed Sam’s disk, he’d become obsessed with the perpetual countdown of the meter at her belly. He’d check it in the morning, at breakfast, and at sundown. After she’d eaten. After she’d peed. If she felt tired. Hungry. Sleepy. It was ridiculous. Jeremy was sure that Sam had tolerated it for much the same reasons he had himself. Clearly it meant a lot to Seth. Clearly she meant a lot to him. He would scrunch his forehead, purse his lips, gently lift the corner of her shirt, afraid to glimpse the neon glow of the numbers, yet more afraid not to. He’d pace, shake his head, and mutter about time and how many miles he thought they’d gone. At first Jeremy thought his preoccupation with it was cute and he figured that Sam must’ve thought so too. Why else would she have condoned behavior from him that she considered intrusive from most others? Maybe she deeply cared for him too, Jeremy thought with pride. Maybe she knew how badly he needed the distraction. Or maybe, like Jeremy, she sensed how frightened Seth was at the prospect of losing something that had become so precious.
The truth was that Seth had finally found another family. Against all conceivable odds a boy who had come to live alone in the sheltered confines of a long-deserted Walmart, had once again found a place he belonged. In a world ravaged by an extinction level event, he’d reconnected with people, and with them, found unity and renewed purpose. For a child who had somehow survived within the walls of a darkened store while his mother lay dead and decaying in one of its nearby supply rooms, this second chance meant everything. This surrogate family was his present and his future, and he clung to it with desperate hands. He, who had lost a father and a mother, who had learned lessons of love and loss at such a tender age, was damn determined to keep this family together.
So day after day he’d pretended at health as he watched the percentage on her meter decline, and Jeremy now regretted having shown him the damn disks in the first place. It was too much of a burden to bear, too stressful for a boy who’d already known more than his fair share of loss. This entire situation was on Jeremy—he knew—and the guilt was tearing him apart.
Well, he thought with a frown, his judgment may have been off, but his reflexes surely weren’t. The moment the boy had fallen, he’d dropped his bike and rushed to his side, and here he now was, teeth clenched as he leaned over and peered into Seth’s slackened face. Gently he straightened the boy’s crumpled body and laid a hand across his forehead. Shit. The intensity of the heat that radiated from so small a human being was frightening and juxtaposed with the numbing chill that was beginning to freeze Jeremy from the inside out. He wasn’t prepared for something like this. Not medically. Not emotionally. Inside he began to panic.
Fear clenched his stomach. Icebound and cemented in place, he began to realize that every second counted dearly. What would he do? Where would they go? For Seth to have collapsed, for his body to have reacted in such an alarming way—it could only mean one thing. The infection must have already spread to his blood, a lethal passenger that hitchhiked along the vast system of tributaries to spoil the body in its entirety. For all Jeremy knew, it was carrying infection to his heart at this very moment. Had Jeremy the resources to deal with this? Had he the required medicines, supplies, and shelter? His eyes darted to Sam. Forget the supplies. Had he the time? His gaze fell to the glow at her side and he stiffened. So many miles yet to travel and only one disk left to get them there. She met his gaze, hands clenched at her sides, eyes circles of blue framed in white.
“Carp? What is it? What’s wrong with him?”
Jeremy became aware of pain in his fists where his fingernails had burrowed into the fleshy part of his palms. He needed to act. Now. Yet he remained motionless and impotent, crouched over the ailing child in a posture of genuflection. He had antibiotics left—yes—but something this severe could drain their reserves in a matter of days. Was he prepared for that? He loved Seth, had curiously grown to think of him as a son in a short amount of time, but at some point this commitment might carry him too far from the one he’d made to Sam.
“Dad,” Sam pressed. “What’s wrong with him?”
A voice began to whisper from the back of his mind. A familiar and trustworthy voice—the voice of his father.
Pull the trigger, it whispered.
The trigger?
Yes, he thought. The mental trigger.
Jeremy sucked in a breath. He’d nearly forgotten. Time and time again, and from a young age, Jeremy’s father had counseled him about the importance of creating a mental image that could be called upon to elicit action. It could be anything really. A conceptualization of a favorite place, or the gilded and smiling image of someone special—anything one could use to activate oneself from a state of paralysis. In life-and-death situations, at times most crucial and vital, people often find themselves unable to move. And for this, Liam had suggested a trigger. It was a common practice of the Navy SEAL’s, something he’d picked while working for the government. During long excursions across the dark barren seas, Liam had studied their habits and tried to make note of survival techniques that worked.
Jeremy floundered. What was his trigger? Over the years it had changed many times as things often do. As a child, for a time, it had been his favorite transformer figure. The one he kept hidden beneath his pillow and clutched during thunderstorms. After that, a familiar squirrel that lived in the old rotted oak on the side of the mountain. But what had it been after that? He couldn’t recall. And what was it now? His breath caught in his throat, his hands frozen in mid-air.
“Carp,” Sam hissed. “What’s wrong with you?” He felt the air move as she dropped to her knees beside him. “Dad, what’s going on?” She set her cool fingers to his wrist. Her voice trembled with fear. “You’re scaring me, Dad. Snap out of it. Come on. We have to help him.”
&
nbsp; He could hear the rising panic in her voice yet still he couldn’t move. Suddenly the entire mission seemed insurmountable. What the hell was he thinking? Travel by bike across the entire United States? This hair-brained plan could cost them their very lives. He dropped his gaze to Seth. Hell, the boy had probably paid that price already.
His daughter’s fingers fluttered against his arm.
“Dad. Please. We need to help him. You’re just tired. That’s all. Your mind is sleepy and you can’t focus. Dad, you’re fuzzy. Fuzzy like you say I sometimes get. You just need to pull the trigger.”
She slapped his arm.
“Dad, pull the trigger.”
Flinching he realized that he couldn’t remember the trigger. He searched his mind for the image that could flip the switch from frozen to fight or flight, failed, and panicked anew. He didn’t have a trigger anymore. That was the issue at its core. He’d held it together for so long, concentrated on Sam, the disks, Meghan, and Peter’s leg. For so many months he’d put himself last, acted as the strong one, lifted others up and pushed his own thoughts and fears deep into his belly. But now it was just the three of them and those fears swelled and threatened to choke him. He’d reached the end of his rope. He had no trigger and now he was going to lose someone else he loved.
Sam seized his arm. Her fingers circled his wrist and squeezed. “Carp,” she said forcefully. “You said we had to persevere.” Voice cracking, she let loose a sob. “Dad, please. Look at Seth. Look at his face. He’s gray. What do we need to do? You have to tell me what to do.” She slapped his arm again and pulled on his sleeve. “Carp. Pull the trigger. Now!”
Images flashed across his mind. A trigger. He just needed a new one. That was all. He’d seen so much violence, so much death these past few months. Hell, these past few years. The fire. Seth’s dead mother. The men who’d murdered his wife. Peter’s rotting leg and Sam fainting at the side of the road in a puddle of insulin-induced sweat. Susan.
He blinked. Susan.
Unbidden, her image rose from the blackness in his mind, found shape, and brightened. Her smooth blond hair, her athletic build, her bright blue eyes that always shone with love—she was his trigger now. She was the spark that could ignite fire in his heart—always had been. Hers was the voice that whispered and advised. It was her gentle and familiar hands that pushed him ever forward.
He would persevere for their daughter. Yes. And never allow another person he loved to suffer such a horrifying fate. Never again would he make those same mistakes. Never again would he miscalculate so profoundly.
A shudder ran through him. The image of Susan’s face was like coming home to a warm hearth on a cold winter’s night. And her image had saved him once before, had it not? She was one of the first triggers he’d had as a boy. Wasn’t it fitting that she also be his last? Even now he remembered the setting so clear. He focused hard on the image in his mind, on the broad smile that dimpled her cheeks, on the widow’s peak at the top of her forehead that cast her hair about her face in perfect falls, on the smattering of small moles that formed a lop-sided star at the corner of her left eye. His throat pinched tight. God how she hated those moles. Always had. Funny that she’d always considered them flaws while Jeremy found them distinctive and unique. With a sudden pang of longing he remembered how she’d always tried to cover them with her hair. Self-consciously she’d hold a hand to her face or turn her head to the side for photographs. He tried to focus on the first time he’d kissed her, on the day they’d agreed they were officially “married” despite the lack of ceremony and proper paperwork. He thought next of the day she’d given birth to their child. She’d given him everything—a reason to soldier on and a family to protect.
Susan! he thought with a tearing in his gut.
Over and over his mind screamed her name. His trigger was Susan. The images swept across his eyes like a silent film. They warmed him, chilled him, cut him clear to the bone. They were all wrapped up in the one person he’d loved all his life.
Susan.
Recognition fractured the ice that had settled into the spaces between joints. Understanding loosened the stiffness in muscles that had frozen with fear. Awareness suddenly broke the paralysis, and with a snap he lifted his head and met Sam’s tearful gaze.
“I’m here.”
Once more he dropped his eyes to Seth’s crumpled body. The spell broken, he swept the frail boy in his arms, positioned him against his chest, and ran to his bike. Righting it, and tossing his leg over the frame, he called out the first order.
“Follow me,” he demanded of Sam. “First we have to find shelter.”
He pedaled hard and fast for the nearest exit, Sam hovering close to the left of his rear wheel, and he realized with sudden surprise that they’d made it clear to Fort Worth, Texas. Proudly he peered down at the small boy crumpled against the handlebars. Despite Seth’s weakened state, they’d actually covered a respectable distance in a short amount of time. Perceptive as a hawk, his eyes scanned the road and landed on an old Exxon gas station and adjoining 7-Eleven just off Exit 55 in Mesquite. Though the door was shattered and open to the elements they didn’t have time to be picky. He pulled up to the store in a skid, a cloud of dust and sand billowing behind. The bike fell to the ground with a clatter as he awkwardly negotiated Seth through the entrance.
Weeds, grasses, and of course the familiar fungi had begun their slow invasion of the space. Dry leaves crunched beneath their feet as he and Sam moved toward the back of the store. There, they spread out a blanket and set Seth gently atop it. And there, Jeremy peered at his ashen complexion, slackened jaw, and sweaty head. Sam was a bundle of nerves. Afraid even to touch him, she rocked on her heels, hands fluttering against her thighs. Her voice was at least an octave higher than normal, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
“What should we do? she heaved. “Is he going to die? Dad, why would he do this? Why wouldn’t he tell us he was this sick?”
“Sam, he’ll be fine. We just have to—“
“Is he dying? He’s dying right?” She leaned over him, touched her cheek to his, and peered up at Jeremy with shining eyes. “We don’t even know what his temperature is. What if he doesn’t wake up at all? If he’s in a coma then we won’t be able to get him to eat or drink anything right? What happens then?”
Jeremy’s eyes traveled over his daughter’s stricken face. It wasn’t healthy for her to get this worked up. Her eyes were moving rapidly, the pupils constricted.
“Sam. You need to calm down. I’m telling you, he’ll be fine—“
“Dad, have you ever really thought about what would happen to a person if they fell into a coma now? I mean, what if he remains unconscious for a week? Have you ever considered what you would do? For him? Or for me if I did? Dad, it’s a death sentence. Think about it. There are no IV’s. No intravenous fluids or feeding tubes. It would be a slow starvation, a slow dehydration. Dad, this could happen to me as much as it could happen to Seth. What if we can’t wake him up?”
She was beginning to work herself into a mild hysteria; the cadence of her speech faster as her frenzied mind shaped the images. The tempo of her rocking increased to match the measure and meter of her tumbling words. Jeremy set Seth’s limp arm back down on his chest and traded it for Sam’s clammy hand. Lightly he squeezed.
“Sam.”
“We can’t lose him, Dad. First Mom, then Peter. We can’t.”
“Sam. That’s enough.”
He clenched his teeth. This wasn’t working. Her face was red, her hands balled into fists. He seized her shoulders and shook.
“Sam, that’s enough! Look at me. Now.”
He rarely raised his voice to her and the effect was instantaneous. She met his gaze and held it, chin firm and challenging before she crumpled in defeat.
“Sam, if you want to help him, then get me a bottle of water from your pack and pour a bit of it onto a clean cloth.”
Immediately she scuttled for the pack, happy at la
st to finally be set to task.
“The water from the Caddie River,” he clarified, “not the fresh water.”
Some handful of days prior—he wasn’t sure how many at this point—they’d made it to the Caddie River, a smaller waterway fed by even smaller tributaries. The water there, when boiled, was clean enough for bathing and washing clothes, and they’d refilled their bottles accordingly before leaving. They were rationing their drinking water very carefully now, scouting for additional bottles at each stop along the way. Jeremy hoped this Exxon might contain a few well-hidden treasures of its own. At least here he could check for bottles that had fallen behind shelves or small packets of travel-sized medications that may have slipped between the counters.
Sam scooted back to him on hands and knees. She poured the river water onto a semi-clean shirt and stared stupidly at Jeremy, waiting impatiently for his next instruction. He reached out and pushed a lock of hair behind her ears. God, how he hated to see her this way. There had been too much loss in her young life thus far, too much forfeiture of happiness, and far too much pain. He mustn’t lose Seth. That would be the last straw.
“Thanks Pike.” His tone was patient, instructional. “Now, the first thing we need to do is cool him down a bit, but we’ll need more rags and more water to do it. I’ll take anything we’ve got: clothes, socks, old rags, anything.”
While she rummaged through the backpack he tore the T-shirt from Seth’s chest. The garment was drenched with a sour-smelling fever-sweat. The hemming of the shirt, damp and frayed at the bottom, gave easily to his insistent fingers and ripping cleanly from the base to the band of thicker fabric that circled the neck. He was burning up and Jeremy had no means of properly gauging his temperature. Sam was right. They were out of their depth here. She pushed random pieces of clothing into his hands and together they soaked and packed the cool cloth against Seth’s skin. They tucked it beneath his neck and armpits, and draped it across his forehead and eyes. Sam poured a bit of water across his neck and laid wet socks along each side of his throat.