by Megan Duncan
Chapter 12
We then started the long walk through the hot New Mexico desert, to the one place we thought we might find salvation and safety. I glanced back at the Bronco, before it went out of sight and vowed that someday I would return for my father’s car. It had taken us so far along on our journey and a small part of me felt like I was leaving something behind.
Norah and Carter chatted animatedly about what they each thought was going on in the world. “More like what was going wrong in the world,” I mumbled under my breath.
He showed her his demon dictionary and when she expressed her agreement that the knowledge he had collected was in her words “genius”, they became quick nerd buddies. Carter encouraged her to tell him everything she knew about the demon at the city hall building, any detail she knew that we didn’t already have.
As I walked behind them, half listening to their conversation and half admiring Max’s butt in front of me, I wondered pointlessly how Norah was able to write in Carter’s book and walk at the same time. She had apparently acquired a large amount of information that Carter deemed important as well as details on other demons we had not yet encountered. She spoke of how she survived when all hell broke loose, literally. Her tale was not much different than our own. When the rest of the world panicked, turning to crime, looting and worse, we chose to lay low and not let hysteria and fear take control. We watched the world around us crumble through the windows of our home, and now we were walking through the rubble.
Taya was walking with Judy trying her best to comfort the younger girl. If I were to have to guess I would have said she was only a couple years younger than Taya, maybe twelve or thirteen. The young girl, whose name we learned was Savannah, quickly warmed up to Taya. They chatted about their favorite TV shows and what teenage heart-throb they thought was the most swoon-worthy.
Judy took on the role of mother hen, making sure we took breaks regularly and drank water while also trying to conserve it. Her calm demeanor was comforting but also a little unsettling. I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about her, but that may have had something to do with her crazy husband. I later told myself that I would have to look past that since she was, of course, going to be living with us on the base. She obviously didn’t share the same insane tendencies as he did, otherwise she wouldn’t have escaped with us. Or did she do that because she knew if she had stayed she would have been long dead by now.
I felt someone watching me and looked up to see Judy looking at me. I felt a bit embarrassed to think I was just having paranoid ramblings in my head about her and gave her a polite smile. She returned it and I could tell it was sincere.
I watched her for a moment longer as she wiped sweat from her brow and saw the bandage on her forearm completely exposed. She had removed her button down blouse and tied it around her waist making the full extent of the damage easy to see. Seeing that made all the doubts I had about her disappear. I didn’t even want to imagine the trauma that she had to have gone through, having had her husband slash open her arm to feed her blood to some talking demon from hell.
Finding it hard to look away I walked a little quicker to catch up with Max who was even farther ahead. “You look really flushed. We should take a break.”
“I’m fine, Abs, we should keep going.”
“We’re never going to make it if we all pass out from heat stroke.” He gave in then and we all walked off the road to find some small bit of shade in the sparse vegetation.
Carter made rounds as we all sat panting and resting, making sure everyone was doing okay. “Everyone doing alright? We can do this. We are just walking, this ain’t nothin’.”
“You sound like you are getting us ready for the big game, coach,” Max teased.
“Hey, whatever works,” I added.
Carter was right, we needed to stay motivated. Just focusing on the goal, getting to the military base. We were on the home stretch now.
Carter paced back and forth a moment, obviously anxious to make it to the base, but also to keep his muscles warm as he had much more endurance than the rest of his. I suppose he could finally prove to Max now how useful track and field was.
I saw Taya sitting under the shade of a large bush with Savannah, both of them rubbing their feet. Their flushed faces glistened with perspiration as they continually chatted about ridiculous topics, obviously both making every effort to avoid talking about anything serious. I decided I could use a distraction as well and joined them.
The sand under the tree was cool on our feet and was a welcome relief from the miles of walking we had done. I tried to rest while placing my head on my bag and listening to the calming sound of the girls chatting. That, coupled with the familiar weight of my shotgun resting across my chest, let me think I might almost be able to fall asleep. Although tempting, I knew it would only be a bad idea, cause when I woke up I would only be more tired than before I went to sleep.
“Abby, may I speak with you?” Judy asked. The sound of her voice startled me a bit and I nearly jumped up.
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?” I asked trying to collect myself.
She ushered me out of earshot of the girls and led me over to another large bush where Max and Carter stood waiting.
“What’s going on?” I asked starting to grow concerned.
“Nothing is wrong, so don’t start getting all freaked out,” Carter said, sounding too much like our father. I looked at his face and noticed the sun had started to burn his nose. Coupled with the swollen eye; he was not looking too well. Max, on the other hand, wasn’t burnt at all and was turning a golden brown that I found surprisingly attractive.
“I’m not freaked out.”
“I just thought we should all discuss what the plan is.”
“The plan for what?” I said clearly not understanding what they were getting at. I didn’t understand what more “plan” we needed than to continue walking and get to the military base.
“Abby, we aren’t going to make it to the base tonight. We’re walking too slow. We would have to walk all night long to make it. It’s probably going to be sunset in a couple of hours,” Max said.
“Well, how much farther do you think we have to go?” I asked. It felt like we had already been walking for an eternity.
“Probably another forty miles. We’re going to need to find a place to sleep for the night.”
The thought of having to sleep outside was definitely not something I wanted to have to do.
“Why do we have to stop? We can walk through the night just fine, we just need to follow the road anyway, right?”
“We shouldn’t travel at night, it’s not safe, and I don’t think Savannah can handle much more,” Judy said.
I saw the sincere concern in her eyes and I looked back at Savannah. Judy was right; I didn’t think she could make it much longer. She was thin and frail and I could tell how much more tired she looked than everyone else, but she didn’t complain. Compared to Taya, the two girls looked very similar, but Taya had a hidden strength about her that Savannah did not.
“Ok, what’s the plan?” I asked.
Carter quickly pulled out a map and opened it before us. “If we walk until sunset that should give us another four hours or so and we can get about another twenty miles, so… that should put us somewhere around here,” he said pointing to a location on the map.
“White sands? What’s that?” I asked.
“They are sand dunes. They stretch out for quite a ways. My husband and I hiked them once about ten years ago. We should do our best to make it at least to there before we break for the night. We will have to go off the road for a bit, but it may be a better idea to be secluded than be sleeping near a bunch of abandoned vehicles or areas where demons have places to hide,” Judy said.
“Neither of those sleeping arrangements sound good to me, so you guys decide,” I said. Max and Carter looked at each other and then off into the distance ahead of us as if they could see the white dunes waiting for us. Neith
er of them wanted to say it, but from years of knowing both of them I knew what they were thinking.
“Guess we’re sleeping in the dunes,” I said a little annoyed and immediately stalked off. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I had to accept we weren’t going to make it to the military base until the next day, or the fact that I had to sleep outside in the dark, that was pissing me off.
We rested for about another ten minutes before we headed off again down the road. Not wanting to walk with anyone at the moment, I took the lead and walked at the head of the group. The guys knew me well enough to give me my space when I needed it without me even having to ask. A lesson they learned the hard way a long time ago.
The last few hours of light seemed to go by rather quickly, but I knew no matter how fast it felt that time was going, we were not moving any faster. The sky was holding onto the last rays of light as we neared the dunes.
We had to walk a good way off the highway to get deep enough into the dunes that we felt safe to settle in for the night. Taya was just as unhappy with the idea as I was when I told her what we were doing, maybe even more so.
“What if there are spiders or scorpions out here?” Taya asked sounding extremely whiny.
“They would be the least of our worries at the moment, don’t you think?” I asked. She nodded her agreement, but she looked around at the sands with a watchful eye.
Taya and I sat near a small fire the guys had built, listening to it crackle and hiss as it burned the small bushes they yanked out of the ground.
“Is she sleeping?” I asked Judy as she settled down next to us. As hot as it was during the day the night quickly chilled around us.
“Almost as soon as she laid down. Norah is sitting with her for a while, just in case she wakes up,” Judy said as she stared at the faint figure of Norah in the distance stroking Savannah’s hair.
“What’s wrong with her?” Taya asked in her usual manner of never thinking before she spoke.
“I don’t know. I think she was sick before everything happened, but she won’t talk about it,” Judy said.
“Where is her family?” Taya asked.
“Gone. We found her hiding inside a police station. My guess is she was trying to find help, but the place was empty. I don’t know how long she was there before we found her.” Judy sighed as she accepted the bottle of water we were passing around.
I dug into my bag and pulled out my radio, setting it on the ground in front of me. “What are you doing?” Carter asked, as he approached, dropping a handful of plants he just yanked out of the ground.
“I just wanted to see if I could hear it. We are so close we should be able to pick up a signal, right?” I knew it probably looked a little desperate, but I thought the sound of that transmission would relax me.
“Leave her alone dude, if she wants to listen to it let her,” Max added while dumping another pile of bushes onto the ground.
Max sat down crossing his legs and got to work on breaking down the bushes into manageable pieces. As cold as it was, I wanted to shove all the bushes straight into the fire, but I knew we couldn’t let it get too large. Even though it was small, the flames burned through the small, dried twigs much too quickly. However, it emitted a strange aroma unlike any campfire I’d been around before.
Norah sat down by the fire, quietly flipping through the pages of Carter’s book. The silence in the group was growing awkward and I didn’t care if I was the one to break it. Everyone was trying their best to avoid the obvious, but I wanted to know what was really going on.
“How did your husband manage to lock up that demon?” I asked Judy. Everyone gave me a shocked look, but I was only asking what everyone else was too afraid to do themselves.
“I didn’t witness it myself. When they attacked I took all the women and children into a room and we locked ourselves in. My son left us to help his father. We could hear the demons outside, and men’s voices yelling. Then the sounds grew closer, we could tell the demons were inside the building.”
Her eyes were watering then, and I could see that recounting the story was hard for her. I should have, but I didn’t feel bad about making her relive it and she continued, so she must have wanted to get it off her chest. My thought was that perhaps after the death of her son, they never spoke of it, as if it never happened. It was obvious that Judy did not want to pretend that her son was never there or that he did not exist.
“I could hear my son and John shouting. Bullets were flying and slamming into walls and demons alike. When the fighting was over my son came to check on us and that was when it grabbed him. It was lurking in the shadows and snatched him as he opened the door. I’ll never forget the look of complete shock on his face. He managed to drive his knife into its eye before it killed him. I watched my son die and then I watched the demon turn toward us.”
“Damn,” Max said, under his breath.
Judy swallowed hard and continued. “Jerry and Roger showed up then, they unloaded both their weapons into and it still didn’t go down. I could see in their eyes they were going to leave us there. They were going to let the demon have us as they escaped, but then Norah showed up.” Judy looked up at Norah, choking on her words as tears finally poured down her face.
“What happened then?” Taya asked Norah when it was clear Judy couldn’t go on.
“I didn’t want to hide when the demons attacked. I had wanted to help. I grabbed the shovel I used in the garden and shoved it into the demons midsection as hard as I could. I kept stabbing at it again and again. I knew I wasn’t doing enough damage, but I was buying us time. John showed up as the demon bit into my shovel, snapping it in half. He unloaded his rifle into the demon’s body as it lunged for us. It finally fell then, dead in its tracks and landed on the floor like a ton of bricks.”
“So then you all just decided to lock it up then?” I asked.
“No, we thought it was dead. John and Judy were holding their sons body, when I noticed it was still breathing. I regret having ever said anything; I wish I would have just grabbed my broken shovel and jammed it into its neck until I took its head off.” The anger in Norah’s voice seemed uncharacteristic for her. She had the air of a very put together person, even for an apocalypse, but as she described her clear disgust for the demon she wrung her hands around the hem of her shirt until her knuckles were white.
“I shouted that it was still alive, and John turned toward me. The look in his eyes scared me almost as much as the demon. He quickly ordered Roger and Jerry to help him. They tied it up then and dragged it into the basement. We didn’t even see John again for three days. He stayed in the basement with it all day long. I don’t know what he was doing or what happened in those three days, but when he came back up he had it in his head that we had to sacrifice ourselves to the demon in order to discover its weaknesses. He wanted to know who the demon desired most, so he could use them as a pawn to get information. He wanted to avenge his son; he wanted to kill every demon on earth and was willing to do anything to achieve that.”
“I think he was possessed,” Carter said so calmly as if that were a completely normal thing to mention in a conversation. Judy turned her head toward him, clearly shocked, but she didn’t say anything. “I mean, it makes sense doesn’t it? He was locked down there with that demon for three days. If you think about it, the thing was injured; it probably convinced John that feeding it human blood would somehow get it to reveal secrets, when really it was wanting to rebuild its strength.”
“I guess we will never really know,” Norah said as she rubbed the bandage on her arm where John had cut her.
“Are you ok?” I asked pointing to her arm.
She nodded then and said, “I’m going to try and get some sleep.”
“I think I will too,” Judy added.
~