"I can see more clearly, now," Richie told him before turning to catch up with the others, "Let's go."
Chapter 8
Beaver Creek, YT
July 29, 2021
4:11 AM 81*F
None of them could sleep once they'd gone to the trouble of setting up camp under the service station. All of them were nervous and excited by the fact that they were so few miles from their destination. Amanda had been the one to dole out the morning meal, smiling as each of them received a full food pack. Everyone was starving and it would be good for them to find sleep with a full stomach.
Buddy and Richie sat on the bottom step of the stairwell that led to the surface, their knees touching in the narrow space, reminding Richie sadly of a long ago night when he'd sat with Elvis in just the same way.
Buddy was continuing to badger Richie about the existence of their strange guardian angel. The man or woman had rescued them from a difficult situation and Buddy had become quite curious about such a person. Richie, however, refused to comment. He had an idea as to the person's identity, but could very easily be dead wrong.
"If it's a friend, we need to talk to him."
"Buddy, we don't even know who it is. Might be a woman just as easily as it might be a man."
"Is it a woman?"
"Probably not."
"So that means that we need to talk to him."
"If he wants to talk," Richie said tiredly, "Then he'll come to us. If not, we should leave well enough alone."
"We're not done talking about this, eye-patch."
"Says you."
"We're two miles away, Richie," Buddy said softly, "We're almost there."
"Surreal, isn't it?"
The two men who'd traveled so many miles together could only look at each other for that moment. They were both taken aback by the fact that they'd come this far, but also very sad.
"Elvis should be here, man."
Richie looked away from Buddy, suddenly fighting tears, and nodded. Buddy was definitely right on that one. Elvis should've been with them, but he wasn't. He'd been stolen from them by circumstance and their own versions of personal failure. Both men believed that they could have done something more to save their friend. To them it wasn't an idea, or guilt. It was a stone cold fact in their minds. Their friend would be with them if either Richie or Buddy had made one move differently.
Men, when faced with the idea that they have succeeded in only part of their own notion of victory, will ultimately defeat themselves with the guilt left over from the things they cannot change.
King the cat came to them, hoping to be stroked or have his ears scratched. Richie leaned down, provided him with a good scratching, and swallowed his tears. His vision was more easily blurred by the damned crying these days and he refused to partake. Buddy chose to mimic his friend, scratching King behind the ears for a moment. His tears flowed freely and openly, the salty streams cutting through his resolve.
"Elvis and Benny," Buddy said in a choked voice, "Alek and the Dundels."
Richie looked up at him with a widening eye and then away again. Buddy didn't notice.
"We're still here, though," Buddy said as he put a hand on Richie's shoulder, "No matter what happened on the way, we're still here."
"And we're with you," Amanda said, kneeling down in front of them, "And I love both of you."
"I love you, too," Richie told her.
"Me too," Buddy said, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand, "I love both of you."
"What about those two?" Richie asked with a grin.
Buddy and Amanda turned toward their two companions, both snoring loudly. They smiled in unison.
"Why not?"
***
Canada- U.S. Border
July 29, 2021
9:53 PM 76*F
The sign was badly faded, but legible from two hundred feet away. The area around it was hilly, but not much different than the entrance of any other state they'd been through. The sun had taken its toll, as it was known to do, on everything.
This sign, though, was different than any the group had passed. This one meant that they'd found the place they'd started out looking for. It meant that no matter how far they had to go to find a place to be, it would be their place. It would be the last place they had to discover.
Richie watched the sign as he got closer, wondering if it would blur and disappear leaving him in a dream world from which he'd never escape. The thought made little sense, but it was the one going through his mind either way. Buddy didn't comment on the thing, keeping to himself the feelings that coursed through him the moment it appeared. Amanda smiled a little, thought of Alek and the life that they should've had together, and kept moving. Dylan saw the sign as a way for him to pay back the debt he owed these people, felt that he would be able to find some way to repay them in this new place. Abby, being a child, continued petting the cat she held in her arms.
The goal, one that had been born more than a year before, was in sight. Nothing could ruin this moment for them.
"Stop," a voice croaked from behind them, "That's far enough."
They almost ignored the voice, so close to where they wanted to be, but the sound of a gun being cocked held them, suddenly. Richie, who wasn't surprised at all, turned around first.
"Hello, Mr. Dundel," Richie said before he'd even seen the man fully, "I wondered when you'd be showing up."
"Dundel?" Buddy asked, "Dundel's dead."
"No," the follower said, aiming his pistol at the center of Richie's chest, "I ain't dead."
The man was still tall, but he slumped badly at the shoulders. One of his legs was wrapped in a dirt and blood covered bandage. Eyes that had once regarded them with so much life were buried in scar tissue, almost nonexistent in the space that had once been the man's face. Dundel had been caught out in the daylight and had paid dearly for it. The question that came to Richie and Buddy was an obvious one. How had he survived?
"We're here, sir. Why don't you just come with us? You came all this way," Richie offered, keeping his eye on the man whom they'd believed dead so long ago.
"I'm not here to stay with you, son. I'm here to settle this thing."
"What thing?" Buddy asked, "What's there to settle?"
"You killed my girls and left me for dead, boy. You took a ton of my supplies and left as soon as the sun went down and all I had left was two dead little girls."
"That's not what happened," Richie argued, "We didn't kill your girls."
"I know what you did. I saw their bodies. I still feel that damned sun baking me, burning me, and you're the ones who caused it!"
“You don’t remember?” Buddy asked him, “You saved our friend.”
Dundel shifted the barrel of his gun back and forth, covering both Richie and Buddy. His mind had been made up the moment he'd awakened, covered entirely in dirt outside of his home in Montana with no recollection of how he'd gotten there. The sun had been long set by the time Dundel had begun digging himself out of the dirt he'd been completely covered in. How he'd been buried was still a mystery to him. All he could think was that as a last resort his body had reacted without his mind to control it. He must have scooped the earth out of the hole by hand and fell into it. It was lucky for him, but not for these two.
His girls had been dead lumps on the ground, cooked by the sun. For some reason Dundel couldn't remember how the three of them had been pulled out of the house and into the sun, but the only ones who could've done it were the boys he'd been foolish enough to take in. He'd decided that he would follow and wait, would bide his time until they were on the edge of the place they so wanted to reach. He would take that from them in the same way that they'd taken his girls and his life.
"You wrote us a letter, Mr. Dundel. I still have it. I can show it to you if you'll let me open my pack," Richie told him calmly.
"I didn't write anything for you murderers. You killed my babies and you almost killed me!"
"The sun hurt you,
Dundel. It took something from your mind. I know how that is. We can help you if you'll let us."
"You can't help me, son," Dundel said, his voice calming, "Not unless you can bring back the dead."
Richie could say nothing to that. The man's mind was made up. That much was obvious. Richie could only hope that once the man was focused on him, one of the others could do what needed to be done.
"I just wish your other friend was still alive. I'd take this from him, too."
"Don't you talk about him!" Buddy shouted suddenly, "You don't have any right to talk about him!"
Things happened very quickly then. Dundel, set off by Buddy's recrimination, aimed at him and fired without comment. Before the bullet could pierce Buddy's chest, Dylan jumped past him, taking the shot in his own midsection. Richie raised the coach just as Dundel was setting to fire again, and pulled both triggers. Dundel fired at nearly the same moment, before falling to the ground. Richie, who was waiting for the shot to find his own body, never felt it. Somehow, some way, Dylan had kept moving, throwing himself into the second bullet’s path. The man fell, blood pouring from two wounds that were surely fatal.
Buddy and Amanda fell to their knees beside Dylan. Richie moved toward Dundel, a sadness in his heart for the man that couldn't be expressed. He knelt by the dead man, their follower for such a long time, and closed the lids of his scarred eyes with the fingers of one hand. The others were calling his name, pulling him away from the fallen.
"He's gone, Richie," Amanda cried, holding Dylan's hand in both of her own.
"He got what he wanted," Richie said, looking to Buddy who nodded his agreement, "Dylan thought he owed us something. He doesn't anymore."
The sound of Abby's cries as she lay across Dylan's chest filled the night with sorrow and regret.
“Should we get her?” Buddy asked without looking at any of them.
“Give her a minute,” Richie replied.
They stood, leaving Abby to her grief, and walked to within a few feet of the border between Canada and Alaska. Richie looked into the distance, a tear escaping the cup of his eye, and cleared his throat.
It was a moment of supreme joy and exaltation. It was a moment of great sadness. The emotions all seemed to mix in with one another as they looked down the road at what was to come.
“We need to do right by Dylan,” Richie said, “We need to bury him.”
“Not here,” Buddy said flatly.
Richie nodded his agreement. They would carry him over the border. He would reach Alaska with them as they had all planned.
“Let’s go find a spot, then.”
The two men stepped over the imaginary line between countries at nearly the same time. They had started for this destination from a long ago place and time. They had once been a group of life-long friends, fighting for their lives and those of each other. The journey had stolen some of those lives from them, but hadn’t been able to truly wrench away their spirit.
“This is the dream,” Richie said to himself, “The night is real.”
“What?” Buddy asked.
“Nothing. Let’s get this done.”
Epilogue
When they crossed the border into Alaska, there was little comment. Each of the survivors felt the elation of having accomplished a great feat. Each of them knew that the journey wasn't truly over.
As the group searched for a place, a home to settle into, they found more people to join them. Families and friends, who had all made similar treks, joined them seemingly at random. More hands were found for chores. More eyes were acquired to keep a watch on the night.
Richie, who would never be as whole as he once was, walked with his head down. His emotions were wrought with pitfalls that couldn't be navigated during moments like these. The mixture of pleasure and misery were like a whirlwind in his soul, dragging him between darkness and light.
His scars would remain, both the physical ones on his face and the spiritual ones hidden in his heart. He would always be the leader of his group. He would always be.
Buddy seemed only to need an end to the journey. He was a man who had never been truly strong before the world changed, but his strength would inspire people in a way that he'd never dreamed possible. His determination would be the stuff that builds civilizations. Buddy would become another kind of leader, one who creates and helps others to do the same.
Amanda would continue to be their glue, the strong bond that always held the two men together no matter what the problem. More than that, though, she would become the council for so many who banded together in order to make a life in this new and severe world.
I would get to grow up, at least to the ripe old age of twenty-three, and tell of all the things I was witness to. I’ll never again see the unmarked grave of the man who sacrificed himself for all of us in some way or another, but I’ll always remember him. Dylan did more than save me. In a way, he made me.
I never really knew Elvis, could barely claim to know Richie or Buddy for that matter, but I got to know him through Amanda's stories. She can still be relied on for some fact checking every now and again, though she’s getting older and more tired of my prodding by the day.
Along with that, there's an aging tabby that refuses to leave the area in which I'd like to put my feet. The King lives on.
The End
Author’s Note:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this story even half as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please leave a review on Amazon and Like my page of Facebook, if you don’t mind. It’ll help me to keep the laptop in electricity and such.
Also, if you turn the page just one more time, you’ll get a bonus for all of the hard work you put in reading The Dark Roads.
So I’m changing some stuff. As you’ll likely hear from Elvis if you pick up the next book, I do what I want. You used to see an excerpt from The Story’s Writer here and it was really nice, but I do what I want.
This book is the first in a series of three, unless my crazy tells me that I have to write another for the series. These things do happen. If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the first chapter of Walking Back, a novella that might just answer a few of those pesky questions you’ve got after reading this one.
Wayne Lemmons
April 16, 2016
Other Works by Wayne Lemmons
Walking Back (Book Two of The Dark Roads Series)
The Story’s Writer
An Excerpt From:
Walking Back
Chapter 1
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
12:52 AM 74*
Richie's breath was shallow and labored. He'd been carrying Amanda over one shoulder for almost a mile and the effort was beginning to tax his strength. She was alive, her deep inhalations filling the gaps between his own ragged exhalations, and he took confidence from that. If the sound stopped coming from her partially open lips, Richie might just drop to his knees and give in to the exhaustion that seemed to be wrapping around his body like an overtight ace bandage.
"You're going to be fine," he told the woman, though she was unconscious and was sure to be ignoring his reassurances, "We'll get somewhere soon."
Where you gonna go? the ghost of Elvis whispered into Richie's ear as it had made a habit of doing in recent days.
"Don't know, little brother," Richie replied to his partner in conversation, giving up on waiting for a response from Amanda.
Might be a place up ahead. You can't see it 'cause it's on the wrong side.
"Get bent," he said with a shaky laugh, "Buddy's the one who gives me shit over the eye."
I'm the King. I do what I want, the voice in Richie's mind declared with a guffaw. Richie laughed along with it. The King did have a point, didn't he?
It wasn't overly hot, just yet, but Richie was sweating heavily and wishing that he'd managed to grab some water on his way out of the prison they'd escaped. Amanda couldn't be blamed for their lack of hydration, due to the fact that she'd been knocked out just b
efore Richie had finally made a move on their captors.
He shook his head, the rusty laugh coming out again just before his feet caught up in themselves. It was only with incredible luck that he didn't fall to the dusty pavement, spilling Amanda onto the rocky surface to further her injuries. Somehow he caught his balance and kept moving.
What ya' laughin' about Richie?
"Not much. Just thought about the way I managed to get us out of that place. It reminded me of something."
Elvis said nothing in return. His ghostly traveling companion always went quiet when he knew there was a story to be told. Elvis had always been one of the great listeners when a tale was to be spun.
Richie's laugh sounded again as he thought about the half-smile that smoothed his long gone friend's features when they spent time reminiscing. He would grow impatient if Richie didn't spit something out before too long. No one spoke for a long time. Amanda's breath, thankfully, still sounded out in the darkness.
What about it? Elvis asked, finally growing querulous at his silence.
"Okay," Richie said, "Don't get your panties in a wad."
Your panties are in a wad! Elvis shouted, the words littered with giggles.
Richie smiled his odd looking smile. All of his scars made the expression a mostly unpleasant one, but the people closest to him still remembered that he'd once been handsome. Buddy didn't admit to that, refusing to let a man with one eye claim that he had ever been anything else, but he knew it just the same.
So many scars stood out on Richie's skin, a map of torn and burnt experiences that would not easily be read by the common acquaintance, that he'd stopped looking into mirrors out of simple mercy for his remaining eye.
"You are one ugly dude," Buddy had told him on their most recent walk around their new base camp, "But you're still not as bad as some of the mugs we've got around here."
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