by Russ Melrose
I could hear her turn in her seat. "Yes, Jake. I'll find us a home to stay in."
A few moments later, Sarah took a left and not long after that a right and I could tell from the incline of the truck that we were headed up the mountain. There was a final left and then she slowed, and a minute later she stopped.
I noticed the bat on the floor in the back as they were about to help me out of the truck, but I didn't grab it. Sarah had already taken the backpacks to the back of the house before she'd come back for me. Sarah handed the bat to Becky. Then she slowly and carefully helped me out of the truck.
I knelt at the back door, my forehead propped against the door for support. I felt the pins lift into place and I turned the tension wrench as I had so many times before. Sarah had her hands on my shoulders for support and she rubbed my back. Becky was next to me and she kept whispering to me that I was going to be okay. She spoke to me in the same way she often spoke to Ralphy.
I scratched the door loudly and waited, but there were no sounds. And then I opened the door and we went in. Sarah made me sit on the floor in the kitchen and Becky stayed with me while Sarah took the bat and scouted out the house.
I leaned my head back against a kitchen cabinet. Becky held my right arm with one hand and rubbed the upper part of my arm with the other. I felt a lot of pain and could barely breathe, but I knew we were going to be all right.
Epilogue
Dark shadows and shimmering light played across the surface of the creek as the morning sun filtered through the trees. A light, buoyant breeze gently lifted the leaves. Becky turned to watch her back cast, then used a three-quarter forward cast with a tight loop to throw the line into the stream. The fly landed just in front of the beaver dam in relatively still water. Becky was a natural when it came to fly fishing. By the third day she'd mastered the casting motion. She couldn't wait to go fishing every morning, every evening too. There were three spots along the creek we used for fishing and the beaver dam was where we often had the best luck. Sarah and I sat on two lawn chairs twenty feet away in the shade of a poplar tree, watching Becky fish.
It had been nearly three weeks since we'd left the Salt Lake Valley. We spent three days at the house Sarah had picked out before we left for the cabin. I needed time to recuperate and Sarah helped nurse me back to health. The concussion was relatively minor but the neck and throat injuries were more serious. After a few days I was able to swallow and eat something other than liquids, though it still hurt to swallow. My voice wasn't much more than a rough whisper, and Sarah let me know my voice might stay that way. She suspected I'd suffered nerve damage to my vocal cords from the neck trauma, something she called vocal fold paresis.
Sarah was more worried about my mental state. A dark shroud of despondency lingered over me like a morning fog that refused to burn away. Feelings of despair came and went without warning. The source of my malaise came from those rapturous seconds I'd spent outside my body during the time the Swimmer was strangling me. I couldn't forget the incredible feeling of lightness and warmth I'd experienced, yet I couldn't recapture it either. Not even close. The memory of the feeling—faded as it was—rendered the pain and suffering of this world more acute.
Even though I still wasn't myself by the third day, I knew we had to get out of the valley. We were pressing our luck as it was. Sarah resisted, saying I needed more time to recover, but eventually she relented and we left for the cabin.
We skirted the upper edges of the East Bench and used the homes highest up for cover. We were extremely careful and none of the infected spotted us. Since we weren't scaling any fences, it only took us an hour to get to East Millcreek Canyon, then we mirrored the canyon road from above. I had precious little energy and we had to keep stopping so I could rest. I felt embarrassed by my weakened state, but Sarah and Becky were patient and supportive.
The mountains themselves were quite safe. The sprawling Wasatch Range was essentially an infected-free zone. And the mountains were as serene and beautiful as ever.
During the second day, I had a bit of a breakdown. I sat on a boulder and started laughing hysterically—or at least I tried. Not much came out, just a muffled sound like abortive hiccups, and my throat hurt like crazy from the effort. I'm sure my face must have been quite the sight—a paradoxical mix of failed laughter and pain. Sarah and Becky were bewildered, even a little frightened, but there was nothing to worry about. I was laughing at the folly of my life. I'd spent my entire adult life living in fear, or at least being driven by it. And I only realized it now because the fears were gone. They'd vanished back in the parking lot when I'd had my intimate brush with death; they'd slipped away like a summer breeze.
It took us two and a half days to get to the cabin, and we were all exhausted by the time we arrived, no one more than me. But just a few days at the cabin helped revive us. Even I felt reborn.
The cabin offered us a safe haven from the madness. And at times, we were so dissociated from the craziness, so removed from it, it was difficult to imagine that what we'd experienced had actually been real. It belonged to a world we were no longer a part of.
The cabin and the woods and the mountains were our world now. The cabin wasn't luxurious, but it was functional. There was a small living room with a wood burning stove, a bedroom with two twin beds, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. A few years back, Alex and I had run a PVC pipe from the stream to the cabin for water. We even had a sewage tank. The cabin had always been a labor of love for us, and it took us several summers of work and a good chunk of money to get the cabin where we wanted it.
The underground bunker was well stocked. The bunker was forty feet from the cabin amongst a copse of trees. A large rock hid the lock to the trap door. There was maybe two months of canned food in the bunker. Alex and I also kept our fishing gear there along with one of Alex's rifles, a Savage 30-06. And there was a crossbow Alex had purchased several years ago but never used. I decided if we ran into any infected, the crossbow would be a better choice than the rifle because of the noise factor. It would work for hunting too. Becky and I practiced with the crossbow every day. She was enthusiastic, just as she had been with the fishing.
After several days, we began to develop a routine. Besides the fishing and the crossbow practice, we worked with Becky on her schooling. Sarah was excellent in math and science; I handled English and history. As for exercise, each morning we would take a twenty-minute climb up the mountain. We'd found a spot that offered a spectacular sweeping view. We would eat breakfast there and enjoy the vista. I'd use my binoculars to check out Victory Highway which stretched north and south about a mile out from the cabin. The cabin itself was camouflaged from the highway by the woods, and we were also a good hundred yards from the dirt road that branched off the highway.
Every day I'd check to see if there were any stragglers headed our way. Park City was located eight miles north and Heber City nine miles south. We were pinched in between, but I'd yet to see any infected.
We had pretty much everything we needed, but we knew we'd have to plan for the winter and find more food sources. Besides the stream, a nearby reservoir was stocked with fish, but the reservoir would be the last option since it was out in the open. I knew I'd have to become a hunter too, something I'd always done my best to avoid. Despite my aversion, I knew how to hunt. Alex had been a dedicated hunter and I'd picked up a lot from him even if I'd never used it. There was plenty of game in the mountains and I had no doubt we would get by.
The despair I'd felt had all but dissipated. The first few days after the parking lot drama, the despondency hit me like aftershocks. Sarah and Becky coddled me during my recovery and saw to my every need. The attention they lavished on me soothed my soul.
Sarah reached over and touched my hand. Our fingers intertwined and we held hands lightly, arms and hands suspended between the two chairs. I glanced at Sarah and she gave me her quiet, contented smile, as if everything were right in the world. She had healed well and her face had returned to normal.
Holding hands had become as natural as breathing for us, even if it had been awkward and fumbling at first. Becky would smile and giggle at our new-found intimacy.
A solitary green leaf floated past us on its way down the stream, and I thought about the incessant movement of life and how you could never really capture a moment in your mind. There were no stills in a person's life like you get with a photograph. Life's moments were fleeting and gossamer-like, fragile, and as such, difficult to define in terms of truth or reality. We spend our lives giving life's moments meaning, defining them in our minds, creating personal truths based on them. Yet those truths were nothing more than perceptions and they were often tainted. And whether our self-imagined truths were real or not didn't matter, for we clung to them like vines to a trellis.
As for me, I'd spent my entire life living in the shadows of the past I'd created. And I'd allowed those shadows to define me, limit me, and hold me in their prison. I'd constructed a story about myself in which I could never be happy because I didn't believe I deserved to be happy. I'd spent my life on a self-directed fool's errand, never giving myself the chance to see the beauty all around me—Eden, I suppose you could call it. The possibility of it had always been there if I'd only opened my eyes.
I caught glimpses of it now.
I felt the silky texture of Sarah's fingers gently brush against mine, and I could feel her essence and all that sprung forth from it, all the intricacies that when cobbled together made Sarah who she was. I had always known about her inner strength and intelligence, and of course, her stubbornness. And I'd known about her dedication to Becky. But over the past few weeks, Sarah had begun to reveal more of herself—as had I—and new pieces were added to the mosaic every day.
And I learned when it came to relationships, Sarah was every bit as artless as I was.
Becky got a momentary tug on her line but lost it and stamped her foot in frustration. She cocked her head and gave me an exasperated look. I smiled and shrugged with a fisherman's empathy. Becky reeled the line in and cast it out again, as determined as ever.
I smiled because I realized I loved Sarah and Becky every bit as much as I loved Alex.
A flirty morning breeze rifled through the trees, rustling the leaves before disappearing. I listened to the stream gurgle softly as the water trickled over the rocks, and I let myself get lost in the ambient sounds. I thought about Alex, or maybe I sensed his presence. I'd had the same feeling several times since we'd arrived at the cabin. It was as if his presence were as real as the stream and the woods surrounding us. And there were times I swore I could hear his laughter woven into the wind.
From the Author
I'd like to thank you for reading Jacob's Odyssey. I hope you had a great experience reading my first novel. If you enjoyed the book, please leave an honest review on Amazon. I'd love to hear what you think, even if it’s just a sentence or two. Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed, especially indie authors. You can post a review here. Thanks again!
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