by RJ Crayton
The plan was to start walking, with an eye toward finding a car. If they got lucky, they’d spot an abandoned vehicle ready to go and get to her mom tonight. But that meant everything had to go perfectly. And given how this trip had gone so far, it seemed unlikely that even two things in a row would go perfectly — let alone everything.
They left the farmhouse with Elaan feeling the urge to lock it up, like she would her own house. Only this wasn’t her house. It was a temporary stop. Still, it was the first place they’d been since being back uptop that she hadn’t been overcome with dread. The train ride, with Willie leering the entire time, had been a ball of stress.
But here with Josh, even though she maybe shouldn’t have, she’d felt halfway safe. Now they were leaving. For the unknown. For her mother — a woman who had let her believe she was dead. A woman who could turn Josh into a carrier, if her father was wrong about the type of virus she carried.
She and Josh set out walking in the grass on the side of the road, Josh pulling the wagon alongside him. They hoped they looked inconspicuous enough. They hadn’t seen how things worked in the new post-virus world, so they weren’t sure how good communication was. Before the world went haywire, wanted people — terrorists, escaped prisoners, “persons of interest” — were broadcast everywhere. But would the government broadcast their pictures in this post-virus world? Could they? Was there still ready power and communication everywhere?
They suspected communication was less frequent, and their main worry would be running into military patrols.
“Josh,” she said, as they walked beside a cornfield. It had been harvested already and all that remained were brown, dried-out stalks. “Do you think we should go to my mom?”
He didn’t break stride. “Of course,” he said. “I promised Lijah I’d take you there.”
“I know,” she said. “But why? She let me think she was dead. Why does my father think that being with her will be any better than us being on our own? I mean, we survived last night just fine.”
He slowed and turned to her. “Elaan,” he said, “last night, we got really lucky. But in the future we might not. Squatting is very suspect. Anyone can come back to a house and find us and hurt us for being on their property. Where your mother is, I got the impression, she’s supposed to be there. It will be OK for us to be there with her. We won’t have to worry about strangers coming around and asking questions. And if she’s survived there for months, she knows where to get food, and isn’t subsisting on leftover perishables that haven’t hit their expiration date.”
He sighed and quickened his pace, turning his attention back to the road.
Josh was right, Elaan thought.
They walked straight ahead, following the road. There were almost no cars, which Elaan found strange. It wasn’t rush hour, but it was about ten o’clock in the morning and she thought they’d see more vehicles, even in rural Indiana.
“Where do you think people are?”
“Probably staying home, avoiding the virus,” Josh said. “We still don’t know how bad things are. That place we stayed at was deserted. There was no electricity, no TV, no Internet, not even an old newspaper to help us figure out what’s going on now, or even what was going on a month ago.”
He was right. It was weird. “How can the world change so quickly, Josh?”
Shaking his head as he stared into the distance, he said, “I don’t know. I guess it just does. All the death, all the fear of dying. It changes people. More quickly than you’d expect.”
She nodded.
They walked fairly silent for two hours, and Elaan was getting tired. She thought she’d kept in pretty decent shape by working out when she was in the compound, but she wasn’t used to this. Not to the steady walking with the sun beating down on them. It wasn’t that hot, probably only in the mid-sixties, but they baked under the sun.
They’d seen one house on their walk and decided against checking it out. Josh thought it was unlikely to have a vehicle worth doing anything with. They could see an open garage with a tractor in it. However, the fuel mileage on a tractor had to be bad. Not to mention, it would be very conspicuous, and they were hoping to be stealthy.
They were traveling along what appeared to be an old highway, rather than an interstate. They passed a few businesses and service stations, but they were all closed. They saw a few road signs indicating motorists could find more stores if they turned down a different rural route. But they weren’t going to deviate from their route to check for open shops.
Elaan’s breathing was heavy and her legs were already sore. “Josh, we should take a break,” she said.
He blew out and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s find a place to sit,” he said, scanning the area. The grass near the road was fairly high. Whoever was supposed to cut it was probably dead. Up ahead at an intersection with another rural highway, there was gravel on the roadside, instead of tall grass. “Why don’t we sit there and take a meal break?”
They settled the wagon, sat on the ground and opened the duffel. They each took two granola bars and a water bottle. They’d refrained from drinking on the journey, thinking it best to conserve water, but as Elaan guzzled nearly half the bottle in just a few seconds, she wondered if they were making a mistake and dehydrating themselves.
The food was good. But so was the rest. It was nice to just not be moving.
“How you holding up?” Josh asked.
“I’m alright, but it’s tougher than I expected.”
He nodded. “It sounds better in theory, doesn’t it? Actually walking a couple hundred miles is — ummm.”
“Crappy,” she suggested, with a grin.
He shook his head. “Challenging, as my mom used to say. But don’t get down. How about, we check out the next house we can spot from the road to see if there’s a car?”
She took another swig of water. “Yeah,” she said. “And do you want me to take wagon duty? I can pull it, too. No need for you to take it all the time.”
Josh eyed the wagon, sipped some water, and shook his head. “It’s pretty easy when we walk alongside the road. I’ve got it for now.”
Elaan nodded. They finished their food quickly, and Josh suggested they take an additional ten minutes to rest and go to the bathroom. She envied the ease Josh would have of going near a tree, whereas she’d have to squat strategically to get it done.
After their break, they started up again. By the time they’d walked another two hours, Elaan was distracted and irritable.
Josh smiled. “So, what’s going on with you?”
She laughed. “Walking to Illinois. You know, same-old, same-old.”
He laughed, too. “Same here,” he said. “What a coincidence.”
She rolled her eyes, and they walked a moment more in silence, before Josh said, “I meant, what was going on in your head. About your mom. Why did you suddenly decide you didn’t want to go?”
Elaan shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m a little mad. I just don’t understand how she could let me think she was dead. How she could let me mourn her and not tell me. She told Lijah, so why not me?”
“I don’t think she did it to hurt you, Elaan. I doubt she thought of it as her telling Lijah and not telling you. She probably would have been happier if Lijah thought she was dead. He might not have hated her so much if he hadn’t known the truth.”
Elaan shifted her backpack slightly. It was cutting into her shoulder. “I doubt that. He seems intent on hating her just because he feels like it.”
Josh shook his head. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I think that if your mother had actually died from the disease, and he took the vaccine to lessen his chances of getting sick, he’d still be unhappy, but he’d mourn. I think he was so angry at your mother because she made him think he needed that vaccine, and she wasn’t really dead. If she had really died, if he had a possibility of getting sick, he wouldn’t hate her. He wouldn’t blame her for her role in his decision to take th
e vaccine. He’s mad because he feels like he’s suffered massive consequences for her deception and she’s suffered no consequences whatsoever. I also think Lijah feels the way the government did. I mean, your dad said they killed Dayton because he was a threat. But I think they also killed him because they were angry. He started all of this. This whole thing started because he brought this disease here and passed it on to so many people. Only, he didn’t die; he was still fine, even though he was responsible for killing millions of people. And nothing had happened to him. Nothing changed for him. He was still healthy and living, even though so many others had suffered.”
Elaan breathed out steadily, the backpack weighing more heavily with every step. “So, Lijah hates Mom because he wants revenge. That simple?”
Josh laughed darkly. “I don’t think revenge is ever simple, Elaan. But he, on some level, wants justice. Or to feel like there had been some kind of cosmic justice. And the funny thing is that there was cosmic justice, because your mom isn’t without suffering. She’s off in hiding somewhere. She’s without her husband and her children. And everything you’ve ever told me about her in the compound suggests that she loves you dearly. That she loved being a wife and mother. But all those things are gone for her now. She’s alone somewhere, pretending she’s not the person she always was, and knowing that she has to spend her life alone because she can make people sick. It’s a type of suffering. Only, I don’t think Lijah wants to see her perspective. He just sees his own pain.”
Elaan stared at him, wondering if he’d somehow managed to earn a psych degree in his first year of college. His analysis of Lijah, of the government seemed so smart, so well thought out. She wondered how he could see things so objectively. She stopped walking, deciding she couldn’t think about this and walk, too.
“You alright?” he asked.
Was she? Who knew? Physically, she was fine. She nodded and started walking again. “It’s just a lot to think about,” she said. They walked in silence for a bit, and Elaan decided to ask the question that was on her mind, but that she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer to. “Do you think I’m being like Lijah, that I’m being unfair to her? Seeking vengeance?”
“I didn’t say that,” Josh said.
“I know you didn’t say it,” she said, feeling defensive. “That’s why I’m asking. I want your opinion. You seem to be more objective about it.”
Josh shrugged, adjusting his hand on the wagon he tugged behind them. “You’re asking the wrong person,” he said. “My mom lied to me, always. From the time I was born until roughly a year ago, almost everything she told me about her job was a lie. She was a spy and I didn’t know it. I guess I was mad at the beginning, but eventually I just realized it hadn’t been my business, and it had been to protect me, to protect our family. Spies have to conceal their identity from the world, and she couldn’t tell a little boy and risk he’d blab to the wrong person. So, eventually I understood it, and I moved on.”
They heard the vroom of an engine and turned their heads. Behind them, they saw a pickup truck ambling toward them. They moved further off the road, tugging the wagon into the high grass, to make sure they didn’t get hit. The driver, a white man wearing a baseball cap, stared cold-eyed right at them but didn’t even slow down, the way passing motorists usually do. He did veer into the other lane a bit to make sure he didn’t accidentally hit them, but he seemed hell-bent on not stopping.
Probably was worried they were sick or infected. Elaan sighed. It appeared hitchhiking wasn’t an option either. Not that she’d want to get in a car with a stranger after what happened with Willie. Still, she hadn’t expected the few cars they saw to just whiz by like that. The driver’s face had been angry when he saw them. It was as if he was mad at them for being there. Mad at them for possibly being sick or a danger. Was this what the new world was like? Was it just a big pool of distrust?
Was this a world where those who could get out and about and do things went straight to their destination and stopped for no one?
As Elaan watched the pickup disappear in the distance, Josh said her name. She turned, and noticed he was staring off to the west, where the sun was starting to recede in the sky. “Over there,” he said, pointing.
She squinted into the fading light and saw a large cluster of trees. They’d seen trees before, so she didn’t know why he’d chosen to point those out. But then she noticed something else, something in the trees. A roof line. It was a house. It was out of the way and hard to spot from the road, so passing motorists or pedestrians wouldn’t see it.
“You want to crash for the night?” she asked.
Josh waggled his shoulders. “We’ve still got a couple of hours of daylight, but let’s check the place out. If there’s a car and it’s deserted, we can crash and drive out tomorrow.”
Those were two big IFs, but Elaan was also tired of walking. She wanted one stroke of good luck after everything else.
Chapter 14
It had taken them half an hour to walk from the road to the house. As they got closer, Elaan grew uneasy. Nothing overwhelming or all-encompassing. Just, in the back of her mind, a little voice saying this wasn’t a good idea. The closer they got to the house, the less it appeared deserted.
The grass was trimmed, rather than overgrown, and the windows were fairly clean, rather than dirty like the windows at the previous house.
However, there were no immediate signs of people, either. There were no sounds of people talking, music playing, or anything that might suggest people were home. They stopped a half-dozen or so yards from the front door. Josh set the handle of the wagon down in the grass.
They stood in the yard, examining the house at a distance. Like the place they’d stayed last night, this house was also two levels, but no wraparound porch. Just a set of three steps leading up to the front door, and a small landing with a railing to stand at while you rang the bell. Josh and Elaan stared at the house a long while without speaking. She wondered if he was as apprehensive as she was. Something about the house seemed off, and she wasn’t quite ready to go up and knock. And they were definitely knocking or ringing the bell or both. This was not the type of place they dared break into.
Josh didn’t move toward the house, and the longer they waited, the more ridiculous waiting seemed. “We’ve come all the way over here,” she said. “We should just go up and knock, get it over with.” She started toward the house again, when Josh grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said. “We should put on masks.” It took her a moment to remember the N-95 respirator masks. It’s what people had been wearing when she’d gone into the SPU. The flimsy masks kept large particles from being inhaled, offering some protection against the airborne Helnoan virus. She reached into her backpack, pulled out a mask, and put it on. By the time she’d finished, Josh had his mask on as well.
“OK,” Josh, said. “We’ll go together.”
He took her hand, and they walked the rest of the distance to the house. When they got to the narrow three steps leading to the door, Josh went first.
That was when the front door opened and the barrel of a shotgun appeared.
“Get back,” a male voice called.
A jolt of fear and adrenaline shot through Elaan; she instinctively started to back away. She couldn’t see the face that accompanied the shotgun. He was hidden in shadow inside the house.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Josh said, his voice shaky, as he raised both hands high in the air, as criminals do in police movies. “We just wanted to ask if you had any clean water you could spare.”
“Ain’t no water here you can’t find out in the stream,” the gun’s owner said. Elaan nodded, and then lowered her head. She didn’t want sudden movement to make the man trigger-happy. Though part of her wanted to keep an eye on the gun, in case he started blasting.
“Alright,” Josh said, taking a step to the left so his body was now squarely between the shotgun and Elaan. “We don’t mean any harm. We’re going to
leave. We’re going to back away just the same as we came. Nothing else.”
“Step out from behind him so I can see what you’re doing,” the man said. Elaan sighed and moved next to Josh. “Good,” the man said. “Now, you two leave. Don’t come back or I’ll shoot you both. Understand?”
Elaan nodded. Her instincts were screaming that she should turn and run, but she forced herself to follow Josh’s lead. She kept her eyes on the gun and walked backwards away from the house.
Josh snagged the wagon handle and began pulling it along with them backward. The gunman didn’t flinch, but Elaan wondered if it had been a good idea to grab the wagon. While it had a lot of their food and would have been bad to leave, it wasn’t worth getting shot over.
“We should move quicker,” she whispered.
“I know,” Josh said back. “We can turn around in about ten more feet. Shotguns have a much worse range the further you get. We’ll turn and run on the count of five,” he said. Josh started counting. His pace was slower than Elaan would have liked, but when he hit five, they both turned and sprinted away from the house.
They ran without stopping for several minutes. Josh had taken a bit of an initial lead on Elaan but slowed his pace when he realized he was leaving her behind. When they stopped, they leaned over to catch their breath.