The embankment sat on about a forty-five degree angle; it would take some work, but she thought she could crawl to the top. She did not know what to do about the bicycle, however. There was no way she could move it up the hill to the roadway. Absent the bike, she did not know how she would get home.
She was in a bit of trouble here. She had some water in her pack, enough for a day or so. No food, but without water, she would die of thirst long before her hunger became an issue. Her best bet, much as she hated to admit it, would be to rest for the day, spend the night at the bottom of this hill, and test the ankle the next morning. It was a warm enough day, and although it would be an uncomfortably chilly night, exposure would not be a concern. Bears and bobcats were endemic in the area, but the odds that she would see one were low. Not zero, of course, but it would be an extraordinary stroke of bad luck stacked on top of her bad luck to have crashed in the first place.
Before committing to an overnight stay, however, she wanted to try one more attempt at resuming her journey. The prospect of spending the night here was not particularly appealing. Her absence would soon raise alarms back at Promise. Jack would be beside himself with worry. And for all their conflict, it would devastate Norah. She struggled with the fear of abandonment. It was something she had dealt with all her life up until the moment of the Pulse. And when her grandmother had died in the train crash that day, everyone she had known and trusted was gone. Even after their worst fights, she would do something to ensure that Lucy was still in her corner. After this past conflict, she had left Norah a note under her pillow telling her she loved her.
Lucy crawled across the embankment toward the bike, keeping the weight off her ankle, now swollen to the size of a baseball. She looped her arm in between the spokes of the front tire and turned toward the base of the hill. The bike was fairly lightweight, and with some elbow grease, she could tow it to the top of the embankment. There, she would decide whether to press on home today.
But for all of her willpower, her mental fortitude, her body simply was not able to perform. It was impossible to keep her purchase without bracing herself with her feet. That sent waves of excruciating pain radiating from her ankle. She wanted to gut it out, but she simply could not. She made it about a third of the way up the hill before she had to stop. She rolled onto her back, covered in sweat, grime, and mud. It had taken her the better part of an hour just to make it that far, every inch cloaked in agony.
The pain in her head had faded to a dull throb. Absently, she scraped blood that had dried around the wound and sighed. If she had just trusted Norah, she wouldn’t have been in this mess. When was she going to learn? When would she be able to accept that Norah was no longer a child, particularly in a world that now cut childhoods short?
As the afternoon wound on, her eyelids grew heavy with fatigue. The sun beating down on her felt good. Warm but not too hot. She retrieved the gun and the bottle of water from her pack and settled in for the afternoon, hoping the ankle would magically heal itself in the next hour or two.
She napped.
It was closing in on dark when she woke up again. She was surprised she’d slept for so long. Perhaps the smack to the head had been more serious than she initially realized. She felt a little better, more clearheaded, but the ankle was still useless. Given her positioning on the hill, with her ankle angled below her heart, the swelling had persisted. Attempts to put any weight on it were met with angry barking.
She had a little water in her pack, which had landed near her. She unscrewed the cap and allowed herself two swallows. Not knowing how long she would be here, she wanted it to last until tomorrow. By then, she would probably be able to put on enough weight to make it up the hill with the bicycle in tow. At dusk, biting flies emerged and left Lucy’s arms and legs pockmarked with red welts. As night fell, the forest flanking either side of the narrow roadway came to life with croaking frogs and hooting owls.
The skies were clear and full of stars. It was her favorite thing about their new world. Absent the light pollution that had been one of the scourges of their pre-Pulse world, the night sky had become an astronomical wonderland. On nights that sleep escaped her, a clear, starry night was just the thing to drain away the stress and anxiety of the day. Eventually, the strain of the day caught up to her and she nodded off once more.
She slept poorly, the strong chill in the air and pain in her ankle waking her every little while. The hours crept by slowly. Of course, there was no way to get comfortable. It didn’t get too cold, but it was definitely chilly. In the bottom of night, her body trembled, her teeth rattling together as her body fought off the chill. As dawn approached, her eyes were heavy with grit and exhaustion. She finally fell asleep just as the sun broke over the horizon, sliding into a deep sleep for the first time that night, but the clopping sound of approaching hooves woke her a few minutes later. Disoriented and confused, it took her a minute to remember where she was. Then a spike of pain in her ankle brought it all rushing back.
She held her breath, pressing her body against the embankment, willing them to pass her by. She tried to edge her way farther down the hill, hoping it would provide her greater cover, but the swishing of her movements through the grass were too loud to risk it. She froze again, but the hoofbeats above her had slowed.
Shit.
Indistinct chatter.
There were at least two of them.
Well, it was a good run, Luce.
If this was the end for her, she hoped they’d make it quick. She wouldn’t beg for her life. If they were ungentlemanly, however, she wouldn’t go quietly. If circumstances dictated it, biting their nuts off would be her last conscious act on this Earth.
The hoofbeats came to a complete stop, paired with the relaxed whinnying of two horses. This was followed by the distinct sound of boots hitting the ground and the slow saunter of her potential executioner. She rolled onto her side, curling her legs up under her, and propped herself up on an elbow. Two faces gazed down on her, one of an older woman and the second, rippling with acne, belonging to a teenage boy a little older than Norah.
The woman chuckled but this gave Lucy no comfort. These days people would smile just as soon as they would kill you. She nudged the boy and gestured toward Lucy’s bicycle.
“You look like you could use a hand.”
The boy commandeered the bike while Lucy and the woman rode the horses. They headed west with the rising sun at their backs. The horse was sweet and calm, the ride smooth. Lucy was just able to get her injured foot into the stirrup, which kept it relatively stable. It hurt like a mother and was impossible to stand on, but it would resolve with time and rest. Assuming she lived long enough.
“Where you from?” asked the woman.
They had turned off the main road and were crossing a clear-cut tract of land that had been in the early stages of development. A pair of bulldozers bracketed each side of the worksite. A backhoe lay on its side. It looked as though it had been in the middle of excavation when the Pulse hit. In the intervening years, the hole it had been digging had widened and tipped the large machine over.
On the far side of the tract, they entered a chilly tree line ensconced with light fog. There seemed to be a trail the boy was following, but Lucy would be damned if she could find it. She really did not know where they were. They were traveling north now. She shivered in the chill.
She wondered what was happening back home. There was likely a search party out looking for her. The problem was that even when you weren’t far from home, you were gone. The haystack was just too big. They would look for a day, maybe two, but in the absence of any actionable intelligence, they would have to hope that Lucy found her way home on her own. Taking the secondary route had been a mistake.
“Near the river. About ten miles from where you found me.”
It was a way to answer her question without answering it.
The woman didn’t inquire any further. Which was fine with Lucy, who spent much of the trip in a
sleepy haze, maintaining just enough awareness to keep her balance on the horse. It wasn’t a deep sleep, but by the time they reached their destination hours later, she felt a bit more refreshed. It was late afternoon; they had been on the road for several hours.
They had been traveling through a deep wood, along a trail that was only wide enough for them to ride single file. The woods thinned out as they approached a desolate four-lane highway. There weren’t many vehicles abandoned here, suggesting it had been a low-traffic route even before the Pulse. Ahead, just to the right, was a large warehouse surrounded by a long stretch of perimeter fencing. An access road connected the main road and the warehouse entrance.
If these people planned to kill her, she hoped they would get on with it. Given how tired she was, even execution seemed preferable to waiting in exhaustion-cloaked darkness. But the woman showed her no malice. There seemed to be no imminent threat to Lucy’s life. A sentinel at the perimeter gate waved them through. The woman seemed to be trusted enough to bring in a stranger without further inquiry.
“My name is Beatrice, by the way,” she said.
She was a tall woman, about fifty years old. She was quite striking. Her auburn hair was tied in a long braid hanging all the way down her back.
“Lucy.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Lucy nodded as they entered the outskirts of the warehouse complex. The large building at the center was bracketed by three smaller buildings. A number of ghost trailers were still parked at the loading docks, the same spot they’d been sitting for five years. It was always weird to see a snapshot of the Time Before. It whipsawed you right back to a world that no longer existed. And although you’d become used to this new world, it was hard to see the way things used to be. For all its flaws and blemishes, life had been a hell of a lot easier back then.
They stabled the horses at a trailer that had been retrofitted as equine accommodations. Beatrice directed one of the stable hands to fetch a pair of crutches. Lucy sat with the woman on the edge of the loading dock while they waited for the crutches. Lucy kept her leg up on the dock to rest it. It was fiery with pain. The place was quiet but humming with activity.
“We use the trailers for lodging, medical, that kind of thing,” she said. “We’ll set you up in the medical trailer, get that ankle checked out.”
“Thanks,” Lucy replied. “What is this place?”
“We call it Westerberg.”
The name rang a bell for Lucy, but she could not recall why. It gnawed at her while Beatrice accompanied her to the medical trailer. It was primitive but well stocked. She was impressed with their setup. Beatrice helped her into the bed and set two pillows underneath Lucy’s outstretched leg. The relief was immediate. While it had kept her off her feet, the long ride in the saddle had done little for her recovery. The ankle was now swollen larger than a baseball, and the slightest movement triggered waves of pain.
Unless they gave her one of their horses, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Ideally, they would have simply escorted her home, but this wasn’t an ideal world. That would have exposed them to unnecessary danger; on the flip side, Lucy would have to reveal the location of Promise to strangers. If nothing else, Promise did not deserve to suffer for her own run of bad luck.
The sun dropped behind the warehouses, enveloping this side of the complex in shade. A cool breeze was blowing, and it nudged her into her first true sleep in more than thirty hours. She slept.
She woke to the sound of her name.
Over and over.
She wanted to sleep, but the call was persistent.
Persistent and familiar.
A man’s voice. A familiar voice.
This jarred her awake as her brain sorted through its voiceprint database, anxious to make a match.
She opened her eyes.
Staring back at her was a face she had not seen in five years.
Not since those frightening days immediately following the Pulse.
A broad smile spread across the man’s face like a spring sunrise.
It was Tim Whitaker.
14
Tim Whitaker.
“Oh my God,” she muttered.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, bursting into laughter. “Lucy, is that really you?”
She sat up as he leaned in to hug her.
“It’s me,” she said.
Tim Whitaker was a high school English teacher that she, Norah, and her late friend, Manny, had met in the harrowing hours following the Pulse. Single and childless, Tim had stayed at the school with the students whose parents had not collected them. He had offered Lucy’s party refuge in his school while en route to their final destination, the residence of one of Manny’s former coworkers, a troubled woman named Angela.
Westerberg had been the name of Tim’s high school.
Tim had previously been romantically involved with Angela, an entanglement that nearly had cost him his life several days into their new reality. Still hung up on Angela, Tim had come to her house to check on her; what he did not know was that Eric, Angela’s boyfriend, had arranged to kidnap both Lucy and Norah and trade them to a human trafficker named Simon for supplies. In fact, Eric had already dispatched Norah to her captors. Due to her own stubbornness, Lucy had been with Eric on a supply run when Norah was taken. Only good fortune had placed Lucy in the right spot to discover his plot and thwart Eric’s plan to kill Tim. It was, unfortunately, too late for her friend, Manny, whom Eric had murdered in cold blood. It was a stark reminder for Tim of how something from your past could climb out of the hazy yesterdays and still try to bring you down.
The past was not dead, as the saying went. It was not even past.
Lucy had killed Eric herself instead. Then, she and Tim had tracked Norah to Eric’s employer’s hideaway in a local mall; there, she had rescued Norah before he’d been able to sell her into a lifetime of horror. She had invited Tim to return to her farm to live, but he had declined, choosing instead to look after his students at the high school. She had hoped their paths would one day cross again, but so far, they had not.
He pulled a chair up next to her bed and took a seat.
“You made it,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m still kicking,” he replied with a heavy sigh. “Barely. What are you doing here?”
She gave him the Cliff’s Notes version of her adventures, in disbelief that she had found Tim again. She had thought about him often in those early days. As the months and years slipped by, however, she had lost any hope that their paths would cross again.
“And Norah?” he said hopefully. The way he asked was telling. He didn’t want to simply assume that they’d had a happy ending. You never even assumed anyone was still alive. “Is she…?”
“She’s good,” Lucy replied.
“Sixteen now,” she continued, as though just that bit of information would tell Tim all he needed to know about how her putative daughter was doing. Their terrible fight loomed large in her mind. It reminded her of her own drag-out brawls with her mother when she had been Norah’s age. Life was a circle. Everything came back around.
“Wow,” he said softly.
He scoffed.
“Sometimes you forget how much time has gone by,” he said wistfully.
“I know,” she said.
He looked about the same as she remembered. Maybe a little grey around the temple.
“So she’s sixteen, huh?” he said, anxious to change the subject.
“Going on thirty.”
“Yeah, sixteen is a fun age,” he said. “I taught my share of them.”
“An age made even more fun by our dystopian environment.”
“I’m sure.”
“Anyway. Please thank your friends for helping me out,” she said. “The ankle is a real mess. I would’ve been easy pickings out there.”
“Will do,” he said. He stared at her for another moment before slapping his knees in joy. “It is s to see you.”
�
�You too,” she said.
She was thrilled to see him. He was a good man. She hoped he was the same man she’d last seen all those years ago. This world, it had a funny way of changing you. Turning into someone you weren’t. In the name of survival.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“I could eat.”
“Great,” he said. “We can catch up.”
“I really need to get back on the road,” she said. “My folks will be out looking for me. I’ve been gone more than a day.”
“Lucy, you said yourself the ankle was a mess,” he said, wagging a finger at her. “Besides, it’s not safe after dark. We have some bad seeds operating in the area. You don’t want to be on the road too late. We lock the gates at dusk.”
Bad seeds. She wondered if he was referring to their new overlords from the Haven. Or he had his hands full with some other terrible group of people. In every corner of the country, if not the world, stories just like theirs were playing out right now. And they wouldn’t all have happy endings. In fact, not many of them would. It was a kill-or-be-killed world. If she were being honest, she was surprised that Tim had made it.
She worried he wouldn’t have what it took to make it in this world. For his sake, for the sake of most decent people, she had kept hoping the power would return so they wouldn’t sink into barbarism. The things she’d seen these last few years were enough to keep you on a steady diet of antidepressants.
“Look,” he said, “you’ll stay the night, and then if your ankle isn’t up to it tomorrow, I will personally escort you home.”
She wanted to object, but like discretion, prudence was another part of valor. The wise choice was to accept his offer. There was no need to take unnecessary risks. Back home, hope for her was likely at its nadir by now; another night away probably wouldn’t move the needle in any statistically significant direction.
He handed her a pair of crutches leaning against the wall. Using the crutch to steady herself, she hoisted herself off the bed and began the metronomic shuffle of the invalid. He helped her down the ramp connecting the trailer to the loading dock; from there, she was able to manage on her own. Tim led her down the ramp and toward a small office on the edge of the loading dock. In the falling dusk, the windows glowed with lantern light.
American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Page 11