“’Chelle, I recken’ Eric would skin me if he found out that I told you this, so it don’t go nowhere ‘cept between you and me . . . OK?”
Michelle sat up straight and spun her body ninety degrees in the seat. “What?”
“Oh no, I ain’t saying jack until I get your promise.”
“I promise.”
“You promise what?” Andy grinned as he looked briefly towards her.
Michelle huffed out the answer “I promise that whatever you’re about to say stays between you and me.”
“Fair enough, ‘cause I know you’re a lady of her word.”
After a dozen odd seconds of total quiet, Michelle said, “WELL . . .”
Andy barked out a quick laugh as he replied. “Sorry, just testing you. Anyway, where was I . . . oh yeah, I remember. Michelle, would it surprise you to learn that my nephew, a handsome young lad that goes by the name of Eric, has been in love with you since the fourth grade.”
Michelle’s fluttering heart and instant blush immediately gave away her loss of self control. “Yeah, right.”
“Uh-huh . . . well, I imagine that I could spend several days trying to convince you, but we’re a little short on time for that. At least right now. However, being that I’m an incurable romantic at heart, I’m going to do you a favor and give you an example. Do you remember your junior year in college? Your dance team was performing at the regional championships in Seattle.”
“I remember . . . why?”
“And you did a solo performance on stage that was broadcast on national TV.”
“Yeah, and I fell and sprained my ankle on national TV. Thanks for reminding me.”
“But when you got back to your hotel room, what did you find?”
She stopped, staring intently at Andy as she answered. “There was a huge bouquet of flowers. Really huge. But . . . I thought they were from my mom.”
“Nope. They were from Eric.”
“So what are you trying to say, that Eric’s been in love with me since fourth grade because he sent me flowers on the night I crashed and burned on national TV?”
“Not quite. What I’m saying is that Eric delivered the flowers. In person.”
“Huh? But he was all the way across the country at college in Tennessee.”
Andy shook his head. “Nope. When he found out you were going to do a solo, he managed to catch a flight all the way out there, and then somehow managed to get tickets for an event that had been sold out for weeks. He was in the audience, Michelle. As a matter of fact there’s a picture of you doing one of your leaps . . . somewhere before you tanked it anyhow,” he teased, “and that picture was taken by Eric that night. He keeps it in a field guide about western birds in his bookcase. I’ve seen it. And then, even though you didn’t perform until after 11:00 PM, he somehow managed to track down a flower shop that was open that late. I happen to know that he waited inside your hotel room with flowers until 3:00 AM. That was his last cut off to make his return flight.”
Michelle’s heart and mind were both racing, trying to recall with clarity that night in Seattle. “But . . . I didn’t get back to the hotel until about 5:00 AM. The ER where they took me was packed and I sat in the waiting room for hours.”
Andy raised his eyebrows and half smiled. “Well, now you know.”
Michelle opened her mouth to press for more when Sam’s voice came over the radio. “Is anybody else a little perplexed by the lack of scenery?”
“It’s spring in North Dakota. There is no scenery,” Michelle replied.
“I hear that, but what I’m actually talking about is cars. We haven’t seen a single moving vehicle besides ours since Fort Hammer.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, “maybe there are layers of roadblocks everywhere. Thompson seems to think that we’re the last people left in the world. I think he’s been watching too much television.”
Andy held out his hand and Michelle gave him the radio. “I think you’re both wrong. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet we see another car right about . . . now.” Andy nodded forward and indicated a distant car approaching. Michelle took back the radio and let Sam know about its approach.
“It’s, um, silver or white . . . I can’t really tell yet. OK, it’s a white car, midsized, looks like it’s approaching at normal highway speed in the correct lane. No swerving. Any suggestions? Should we let them go past or try to flag them down?” she said.
After a short delay Sam came back with, “If you can figure out a way to talk to them without breaking any of Andy’s contamination rules, I’d say we go for it. If they don’t want stop, then we should just let them go past.”
Michelle and Andy both agreed with Sam’s evaluation, and as the car approached closer Andy flashed his lights and slowed down. They watched as the other vehicle wobbled a bit, as if the other driver was trying to decide if evasive action was going to be required. Andy slowed down even further, pulling slightly off the road before coming to a complete stop. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Sam and Thompson pulled off about one hundred yards back. The white car likewise had pulled to the side about 150 yards in front of them.
After a solid minute with no obvious reaction, Andy turned toward Michelle and said, “Do we still have that wire coat hanger in the backseat?”
“Yep.”
“See if you can rig up some kind of white flag. Maybe use a napkin or paper towel.”
Michelle twisted around, half climbing over the center console to reach the coat hanger. After untwisting the wire, she rolled out a three section length of paper towels, folding the first one over several times for strength before poking the improvised flagpole through.
“My window or yours?” she asked.
“Let’s do mine,” Andy replied.
Bending the bottom of the wire into a shape more easily grasped, Andy lowered his window all the way down and slowly moved the truck forward, stopping again when the distance was cut in half. He raised the makeshift flag up and gave it a gentle wave. Michelle picked up the binoculars and peered through the windshield, giving a brief chuckle a few seconds later.
“What?” Andy said.
“They’re doing the same thing . . . looking at us with binoculars that is.”
“How many do you see?”
“I can see two people in the front,” Michelle answered, “and at least another person in the back, probably more than one.”
“Can you see any guns?”
“No, but I doubt I’d see anything smaller than a bazooka at this range.”
Michelle put down the binoculars and updated Sam. While she was doing so, Andy asked her to have Sam stay put. Waving the flag again, Andy drove another fifty feet. This time the white car responded, creeping forward slowly. One more wave of the flag accompanied by another shift in position brought them opposite of the car. Almost the full width of the highway spanned between them as they pondered their next move.
“Should we get out?” Andy asked.
“I don’t think so. Try yelling something,” Michelle answered.
Andy kept the big truck idling in drive with his foot on the brake as he withdrew the white flag. Taking his other hand off of the steering wheel, he moved them both out the window to show that he was unarmed.
“HELLO,” he yelled.
The driver of the white car, a middle-aged man with curly blond hair rolled his window down about half way. Andy repeated his greeting.
“Hello. We don’t want any trouble,” came the response.
“Well you’re not going to get any from us,” Andy said. “My name is Andy. This here’s Michelle. The truck behind us has a couple more of our friends in.”
“I’m Daniel.” He paused for a moment, turning his head toward somebody in the back seat before continuing. “The other people with me are some friends.” His voice seemed very guarded to both Andy and Michelle.
“Daniel, yours is the first car we’ve seen in quite a w
hile.”
The curly, blond headed man gave a short sarcastic laugh as he answered. “Well, we had just the opposite problem. We’ve been surrounded by a sea of cars for several days. The whole interstate system is a parking lot.”
“That would explain why we haven’t seen any cars,” Michelle whispered.
“So I guess it’s moving again, now that you’re up here?” Andy asked.
A small commotion of hand signals and shifting bodies were visible as some sort of discussion was taking place between the occupants of the white car. Finally, Daniel shook his head slightly and said, “No. It’s not going anywhere. We were fortunate enough to get caught near the upper end of it. Our car was out of gas and there were a lot of crazy things happening. Sick things. We left the car and took off cross country. Since then we’ve been camping at night and moving north in the day. And trying to avoid those things. About two hours ago we came across another little road and found this car. It was abandoned, I swear. So we drove until we found another road, and that road led us up to this one we’re on now. Do you know where this road goes to?”
Andy nodded his head and said, “If you keep heading west, this road will dead end at highway 403. From there, north goes to Canada and south goes . . . well, not to Canada. From what I hear though, heading north you’ll run into the same gridlock that you were stuck in earlier. South I don’t know anything about, although I’d imagine it would be very similar. If you head north, there’s a little town called Fort Hammer not too far up the road. The town itself is not safe, but there’s a school that might have some type of emergency aid station at it. Just be careful if you go there, you might not be welcome.”
Michelle and Andy watched as another exchange took place between the occupants. Daniel rolled down his window the rest of the way and said, “Do you have any food? We’ve got some money, we’d be happy to pay you for it. And Mr. Andy, we could really use some water. We ran out of bottled water last night.”
“It’s just ‘Andy‘ . . . hold on a minute.”
Rolling up his window, Andy and Michelle discussed their options with Sam and Thompson. In the end it was decided to give them all of their remaining water, almost two gallons worth, as well as three drinking straw type disposable water filters that Andy had behind the seat. Each of the filters were good for about fifty gallons. They had refused payment, and after setting the items in the middle of the road, they pulled forward and continued on. A glimpse in the rearview mirror showed Daniel gathering the items up.
Seven minutes later Michelle radioed Sam. “Our turn off is coming up. Do you remember where Walter’s marina is?”
“Yeah, it’s the only thing for miles around up here, I don’t think we could miss it even if Thompson was driving, which he is.”
“We’re going to head up to Andy’s cabin and pick up Samantha and Garrett. We should be back in about ninety minutes or so. See you then.”
“10-4, we’ll wait for you at Walter’s.”
Chapter 41
Andy turned his truck onto the gravel road that edged the southwest corner of Ghost Echo Lake. Several flocks of geese were floating just outside the winter-scarred cattail border of the lake. Michelle knew that the gravel road meandered generally to the north and west for about five miles. Every so often either nature, or some diligent fishermen would create an access point from the gravel to the water. At five miles, the road dead-ended at the remains of a long abandoned single wide trailer. The faded blue aluminum siding still showed the remnants of the trailer’s sorted history. Primarily a bait shop, it had also served as a rental cabin for fishermen and, in its most recent incarnation about four years ago, a meth lab. Neither Michelle nor Eric had been involved in that bust. In any event, the dirt road up to Andy’s cabin cut off the gravel at the three and a half mile mark.
“You’ve been quiet ever since we turned off the pavement. Do you want to share?” Michelle asked Andy.
“Nah . . . just thinking. Same old stuff. Mostly about how much we don’t know.”
“Do you think Samantha has been able to find out anything?”
Andy gave a noncommittal shrug. “I hope so, but I just don’t know. I’m still kicking myself for not grabbing any intel when we were at the school. And to be honest, what we do know scares the tar out of me.”
Michelle let that comment percolate for while as the truck crept up the dirt road, occasionally sliding a little on a muddy patch. Two miles from the gravel put them at the halfway point to the cabin, and Michelle called Andy’s attention to a cow moose and her calf that were standing in the lengthening shadows of an aspen grove. Andy stopped the truck and they watched for a few moments as the calf pranced around its mama in the late afternoon sun.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Andy said.
“I always get a kick out of watching a baby moose. They look like they’re all legs. It’s too bad that Doc’s granddaughter isn’t here right now. I think that Doc said she was supposed to photograph moose and cougar.”
Andy put the truck back in gear and said, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what Doc told us.”
Another mile passed with only the low rumble of the truck’s engine as company. They crested a low rise and began to traverse a series of gently twisting dips in the road, the bottom of each still flowing with trickles of runoff. Michelle started giggling.
“What’s so funny?” Andy questioned.
Michelle pointed backwards at the bottom of the last dip. “Did Eric ever tell you about the humungous keg party he had there?”
“No, I guess he forgot to mention that one.” Andy shook his head as he replied.
“Well, since you spilled the beans on him to me, I guess I can return the favor.”
“Do tell.”
Michelle laughed again and said, “When we were juniors in high school, the guys from the cross country ski team, of which Eric was a member, decided to have a huge Saint Patrick’s Day party. Somehow or other the idea expanded into an early spring camping trip, fishing trip, and party of the century all rolled into one. Everybody in school knew about it, but by the time the rubber hit the road, they only had seven guys. Somehow or other Eric had managed to buy a sixteen gallon keg of green beer, and they stuffed it, along with themselves and all of their camping and fishing stuff, into somebody’s four wheel drive Suburban. Their plan was to cut school and drive up to your cabin for a weekend of nonstop partying. I don’t know where you were, but Eric said you wouldn’t be there.”
Andy said, “Hmmm, I can’t rightly say. I was in California and Texas a lot when Eric was in high school.”
“Well, as the story was told to me, the weather forecast called for a sunny weekend with highs in the mid-forties, and the guys were just chomping at the bit to go. Except that three of the guys got caught trying to skip out on school. A quick call to their parents from the principle, and they weren’t going anywhere. The remaining four managed to sneak out without getting busted, only to realize that all of their stuff was still in the truck of one of the guys who got busted. Someone, I don’t know who exactly—but my money’s on Eric—managed to get the keys off of the guy in detention and they moved all of their stuff into Eric’s Cherokee. By then it was almost time for school to let out anyhow.” Michelle let out a laugh as she continued, “So by the time the guys actually got to leave Jamestown, it was like 3:00 PM. Of course, the weatherman was wrong . . . and no sooner do they get on the road than it starts snowing. And snowing. And snowing. But you know guys, they never give up . . . and what normally would take them about three and a half hours ended up taking them until almost 9:00 PM. So they finally made it to the dirt road, and of course it’s got a foot of snow on it. But do they stop and turn around? Nooooooo . . .” Michelle stretched out the word for a long count of three, and Andy let loose several chuckles.
Michelle continued, “No. They don’t stop. Eric managed to drive about one and a half miles before he slid off the road and buried his truck up to the axles. Now you would think
that after so much misfortune a normal person would say ‘that’s it, I’ve had enough’ . . . But do these four throw in the towel? Nope. They decide they’ll walk the rest of the way, carrying all their stuff with them, including—get this—the sixteen gallon keg of beer.”
Andy laughed out loud and said, “Testosterone poisoning . . . been there, done that.
“So now,” Michelle giggled, “these guys have been rolling this heavy keg of green beer for another mile or so, and is was almost midnight when they got to the top of the last little dip back there. One of the guys loses his grip and the keg gets away from them, bouncing and rolling down the hill. Somewhere near the bottom it goes off course and takes a sharp left into the woods with all the guys chasing it. Apparently, it made it about one hundred yards off the road before it came to rest at this little rocky overhang.”
“I think I know where you’re talking about,” Andy said.
“Well, the guys finally caught up to it, but they’re so exhausted they decided to set up camp and have the party right there. A couple of the guys hefted the keg about three feet off the ground and set it on a big rock. Somehow, they managed to get a small fire going, and they’re just thinking that their luck has finally changed when the keg starts sliding off of this rock. So now remember, this is the same keg that’s survived a mile of being pushed up and down hills, not to mention a thirty miles per hour, seventy-yard long tumble down the road followed by another hundred yards of crashing through the forest,” Michelle put both of her hands on her face and shook as she laughed with the memory. “Anyhow, this keg slides off of the rock and hits something that punctures it. Well that keg started spinning around like one of those Fourth of July jumping jack fireworks, and it soaked all of the guys with green beer. It even put out their fire.”
Andy stopped the truck as his chest heaved with hilarity, but Michelle wasn’t finished. Managing to quench her own fit of amusement, she said, “So now you’ve got to picture this. These four guys, totally worn out and exhausted. Standing in a foot of green snow and shivering because they’re soaked as well. But do they give up then? No. They decide that they’re going to tilt the keg and pour themselves as many Styrofoam cups of green beer as they can until the keg is dry, then walk the rest of the way and spend the night in your cabin. Eric said they managed to chug about a dozen sixteen ounce cups of beer each over the next forty-five minutes. By then the keg was empty and they were about froze to death.” Michelle slapped the dashboard and said, “But they’re all standing there, looking at each other with these dumb ass expressions on their face, because they’re all still stone cold sober. It turned out that Eric had bought non-alcoholic beer by accident.”
Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey Page 52