by Kirby Howell
Cars dotted the highway, their paint scoured off and dead tumbleweeds caught underneath them. Their windows were fogged with death, and despite my effort not to look, my eyes were drawn to the blurred images of the still forms inside. I tried to concentrate on the dark road ahead of us instead.
The sand stung our faces, making visibility poor and forward progress painfully slow. I pulled my bandana as wide as it would go across my face and tried to keep the bill of my hat down, but my eyes were still exposed. They began to ache and water.
We were descending into the valley when the wind let up slightly. I pulled the bandana from around my neck, shook out the sand driven into its folds, and tried to find a clean part to dab my tender eyes with. I heard a muffled cry behind us, and then JR hollered for us to stop.
I twisted around in my saddle. In the dim glow of light from the nearby wagon, I saw Sam’s horse, struggling in the deep sand, its saddle empty. Sam was on the ground, moaning and clutching her ankle. Grey and Ben leaped from their horses and moved Sam away as Josh grabbed the horse’s loose reins. I yelled ahead to Shad and pulled Snicket around to head back to the wagon. I slid down from Snicket in time to see Grey gently pulling Sam’s shoe off.
“Is she okay?” Ben asked.
Grey tenderly pressed on different parts of Sam’s ankle and said, “It’s not broken, just twisted.”
She winced as he continued to examine her ankle. He frowned and said, “She needs to go back.”
“I’m fine! I can still ride!” Sam insisted. She tried to stand, but instantly crumpled to the ground. “I just need a second. Let me try again.”
Grey shook his head. “You won’t be able to use the stirrup if you can’t put any pressure on your ankle, and you can’t ride with just one stirrup.”
“Yes, you can. I’ve seen Autumn do it,” Sam insisted. All heads swiveled toward me. Grey raised his eyebrows. I was saved from having to describe the sidesaddle technique I’d adopted for the dance when Ben spoke up.
“She can ride with me.”
I spun, shocked. “We can’t spare anyone to send back with her,” he said. “We have to keep moving.” He looked at Sam. “That okay with you? You can ride with someone else, if you’re not comfortable...” Ben’s voice trailed off, but Sam eagerly nodded. He leaned forward, took her hand and pulled her up.
Half an hour later, the winds and stinging sand returned full force. The horses and riders struggled forward on roads completely engulfed by moving sand and nearly impossible to follow. Shad had a compass and knew roughly which direction to head, so everyone followed him.
The horses’ hooves kept sinking into sand dunes, and while they’d become somewhat used to the sandstorms over the past several months in Hoover, this was different. Out here in the middle of nowhere, the wind actually seemed like it was trying to push us back home. It screamed and pelted us with shards of sand, like needles against our skin. The horses pranced sideways when the wind shrieked particularly loud, and thrashed and whinnied in terror when they sank into a loose patch of sand. How long could we go on like this?
I didn’t know how much further it was to Las Vegas, and though visibility was practically nothing, I braved a face full of sand to glance up every few minutes, watching for the beam of light shooting from the top of the Egyptian. The settlement in Vegas turned the light on at night to let travelers know life was there. I hoped I’d see it soon. I hoped it would mean they were all alive.
A shout from behind made me turn around. We were stopping again. Shad rode back to the group. He looked angry, and though I couldn’t hear his words through the wind, it looked like he didn’t agree we should be stopping again so soon. His voice got louder when he saw JR pull a tarp from the wagon bed and begin setting up a windscreen.
I dismounted and watched as the signs of a temporary camp grew around us. JR had the windscreen up, and Josh and Kathy passed around food. Shad stared northwest to where the lights of Las Vegas would normally be lighting the sky, but the clouds of dust obscured any sign of an approaching city.
I was eager to press on, too, but I had to admit I could use a break.
“How long are we staying here?” I asked Ben.
“An hour or so, to give the horses a rest,” he answered.
I glanced over at Shad, who was still staring into the distance.
“Do you think he’s okay?” I asked, looking back at Ben. “I’ve never seen Shad act like this before.”
“He’ll be okay. He’s just freaked out. I am, too.” Ben shook his head and looked at the ground. “This morning, before Rissi left for the field trip, she showed me the new outfit you helped her find. I was shocked at how much she’s grown in the last year. Then she left for school. If I had known that might have been the last time –”
“You’ll see her again, Ben,” I interrupted forcefully. “Don’t think like that.”
He nodded.
“What was it like, riding with her?” I asked, watching Kathy help settle Sam onto the ground behind the windscreen. She was pathetically thin and small. She looked weak.
“Not as bad as you’d think. We didn’t talk much, but she seemed nice.”
“Nice?” I stared at him.
“We were the new people once, too, remember?”
“Why are you defending her?” I rubbed my dry eyes, growing irritated with this conversation.
“Don’t be so hard on her,” Ben said, pushing his glasses up so he could rub his own eyes. “She’s trying to be tough. She keeps refusing any help.”
“Sounds like she’s trying to impress someone,” I said dryly.
“Sounds like someone I know,” he said, pointedly.
I glared at him.
Ben took a long gulp of water from his canteen. He passed it to me, and said, “Look, I really could care less about who comes with us at this point. I just want to get there.”
I drank from Ben’s canteen and handed it back, feeling guilty for arguing and angry I couldn’t let it go.
I walked away without saying anything and tied Snicket to a scraggly mesquite tree in the protection of the windscreen, then retreated from the group into the darkness. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, and the wind was dying down a little. I found myself leaning against the side of the supply wagon, staring out into the darkness toward what I guessed was the direction of Los Angeles.
I suddenly missed home more than anything. I felt small out here in the middle of nowhere. Adrift, cut loose... lost. A year ago, I had been struck immobile by these desperate feelings, but now they were like familiar faces. I saw my old self before The Plague and remembered I was a fairly social person. I always enjoyed meeting new people and joining clubs and going to dances. Now, I was practically a recluse.
No wonder I felt lost. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. What would my parents think of me now? What would Sarah think when I got back to LA to rescue her? Would she even still want to be friends when she realized how much I’d changed?
I ducked around the side of the wagon so I was hidden from the group and dug the cell phone from my pocket.
“Message Sent,” glowed on the bright screen. I sucked in a breath. Somewhere between here and Hoover, there had been a signal strong enough to send my two pending text messages to Sarah. And if she still had her phone with her and was close to a working tower, she would get it. I wondered if she could be reading my messages right now.
I heard footsteps behind me, and I hid my phone just as a terrific crash sounded from the back of the wagon. I jumped, whirling around.
It was Grey, lowering the tailgate. He glanced at me, then threw back the tarp covering the supplies.
“You startled me,” I said, turning slightly away from him so I could slip my phone back in my pocket.
“My apologies,” Grey said curtly and began digging through the supplies. He looked more irate than I’d ever seen him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He barely glanced up as he opened another box
and said flatly, “We’re talking again?” He flung the tarp back further and began shoving boxes around.
“When did I say we weren’t?”
“You made it pretty clear how you felt back at the med center.”
“I didn’t mean I was never going to speak to you again.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Grey said pointedly.
I stepped back, unsure what to say next. Grey had never spoken to me like this. Granted, we hadn’t known each other for that long, but even in high-stress situations, he’d always been calm.
“I just, I just thought you looked upset,” I stammered.
He dropped the bag he was searching through and stared at me again. “Yes. Yes, I think I am.”
I studied him for a moment. His normally calm expression was now pinched and panicked. He flipped the lid off another box with enough force to send it sailing over the side of the wagon and into the dirt.
Good sense and the constant company of my recurring dream told me to leave him alone, but I was curious what could have happened to upset him so much.
“Okay then. You’re upset. Why?”
He unearthed a large box of Band-Aids, sighed heavily and looked around the wagon bed almost desperately. “I can’t find any aspirin. I know I packed it in one of these boxes. I also can’t find a lot of the other stuff. Medical supplies we’ll definitely need in Vegas.”
He shuffled around another box and muttered, “Who packed this wagon? It’s a mess.”
My face burned. “I did,” I said curtly and stepped up onto the tire and leaned in to look. “Lydia and I didn’t miss any boxes,” I insisted, emphasizing her name so he wouldn’t completely blame me. “It’s got to be in here.” I lifted the lid of the nearest box.
“I already looked in that one,” he snapped.
“Well, Spock, why don’t you just beam yourself back to the Starship Enterprise and pick some up?” I threw back at him before I could bite my tongue.
He stared at me, expressionless, for a moment, then said, “I can’t risk going to get more. If someone here realized I was gone, or if I ran into someone back at Hoover, I wouldn’t be able to explain.” His voice was short.
“Fine. Bad idea,” I muttered.
“I know I packed aspirin. These people depend on me, and they’re going to think I forgot. I know I put it in here!” He raked his fingers through his short hair in frustration.
Still stinging from his comments, I didn’t open my mouth again.
“It’s almost as if...” his voice trailed off while he counted the boxes. “As if someone purposely took those boxes.”
“We put all the boxes in the wagon. Maybe you just forgot to pack the aspirin in the boxes,” I said, supremely irritated he kept blaming me when I’d done him a favor by packing the wagon for him after he’d stood me up.
“I don’t forget things,” he snapped, eyes flashing.
“Yeah? You’re also not supposed to get pissed off. It’s not ‘constructive’,” I snapped back.
“Certainly was easier to get stuff done,” Grey muttered.
“What’s up with you? All those years repressing your emotions and you’ve just now sprung a leak? Must be quite a shock to find out you’re a jerk.”
He glared at me, his blue eyes turning to electric ice, chilling me all the way down to my stomach.
“I guess that’s what you’d expect. Oh wait,” he paused, staring down at me, his voice dangerously soft, “You don’t expect anything from me anymore.”
My knees felt weak, and I hardened my face to avoid crying in front of him. I let go of the wagon and dropped to the ground.
There was only silence from the wagon, then Grey cursed under his breath and dropped the container of Band-Aids back into the box at his feet. It broke open, and the wind sprayed the paper-wrapped bandages around the wagon bed like confetti. He stared at it for a moment, then jumped to the ground and strode away from me into the darkness.
I stared after him, frozen with shock. What had just happened? How had that happened? When I first met him, Grey had appeared strange, because he was always so calm when others were angry or upset. At first, I thought he was just disconnected because of The Plague, like a lot of people were, but then I learned it was the practice of eradicating emotions that he learned from The University. The University, his “observing only” space community believed that by squashing out certain emotions, they could be a more productive society. Grey managed to live this way for more than three hundred years, only allowing himself the simplest of pleasures to satisfy the human need inside of him: enjoying a horseback ride, watching a sunset. And then he met me. He abandoned the idea of the Emotional Eradication Act when he desperately kissed me in the basement of Hollywood High School. That had been only a handful of months ago. I remembered my words when he tried to explain everything to me, “Are you saying I broke you?”
Had I really broken him? Was he breaking even more now? I had never seen him angry. Never heard of others seeing him angry. It was frightening to see him snap. Like he was suddenly a different person.
I steadied myself against the wagon. Every part of me sagged with fatigue. Even my red hair, blown loose by the relentless wind, hung lifeless around my shoulders, stiff with dust and sand. I was so tired. My knees weakened, and I slid down to the ground, eyes stinging with sudden moisture. I let my head drop to rest on my knees.
It wasn’t long before a body settled next to me and a heavy arm draped across my shoulders. I didn’t look up. I knew it was Shad. His voice was low, and he said, “You look about how I feel.”
I let out a huff resembling laughter.
“I know it’s frustrating to keep stopping like this. You have no idea how many times I’ve considered taking off and letting Thunder run as hard as he can toward Vegas. I’d be there in less than an hour at the speed he gallops.” He paused for a while, then said, “You know we’re all going to get through this, right?” he asked.
I tried to nod into my arms.
“No matter what happens. We all have each other. We’re gonna find Connie and Rissi, and they’re going to be okay.”
I nodded into my arms again, not wanting to tell him Grey weighed on my mind almost as heavily as Connie and Rissi. And I couldn’t tell him about Sarah, not without explaining how I’d retrieved my cell phone from Los Angeles. So I kept my face buried in my arms and let him gently stroke the dirty hair tumbling down my back.
“You know, you really need to get over whatever it is he did.”
“What?” I said, and lifted my head, staring up at him in shock.
“Don’t let my devastatingly good looks fool you,” he said. “I’m a pretty sharp guy, Miss Winters. You love Grey. He loves you. And whatever you’re doing to each other now is making you both miserable.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Maybe not. But I’d be willing to bet money it’d be a lot easier for you to deal with all this crap if Grey were here with you, not huffing and puffing over there, sitting on a rock all by himself.” He pointed at Grey in the distance, who was indeed sitting on a rock with his back to everyone.
Shad went on. “You’re going to wake up one day, and you’re gonna realize he’s moved on. He’ll quit trying to win you back. And you’ll regret it. And if there’s anything The Plague taught me, it’s that there isn’t time for regret anymore.”
Shad stroked my hair gently, collecting it in a mass of knots down my back as he spoke.
“He’ll quit riding by the greenhouses on the off chance he might see you; he’ll quit asking Connie how you are; he’ll quit spending his nights riding that deranged horse of his down to the dam. He’ll move in with some chick, who used to be a showgirl at the Colosseum, become mayor of Hoover, and instigate a bi-weekly parade in his honor where the female citizens will wrestle with each other in a big pool of –”
“Shad,” I interrupted. He stopped and looked at me. “I’m all better,” I said. “You can stop now.”
“Point taken, Shad,” I interrupted again. “But it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“Pfft. Nah.”
“You really have no idea.”
“Eh, you’re just being a girl. Overanalyzing. Lemme ask you this – do you love him?”
His question was so abrupt and basic, it startled me. I stared at Grey’s far off figure. “I thought I did,” I answered.
He nodded, then said slowly, “Seems to me you still do. But hey, what do I know about love, right?”
I chuckled and wiped my cheeks, surprised to see mud from my tears mixing with the dirt on my face.
“You look disgusting,” Shad said, cringing and leaning away from me. “No wonder Grey ran away. You’re turning into an ogre.”
I laughed and tried to clean off my face, but my dirty bandana only seemed to be making it worse.
“Here, Ogre, I have some clean shirt left just for you,” Shad said, offering me his mostly clean shirttail.
We were silent for a few minutes and then I said, “Do you really want to be mayor of Hoover, Shad?”
He raised an eyebrow. “How did you know I was talking about myself?”
“The Colosseum showgirl,” I responded, and he smiled. “How are you doing? With Connie and all?”
His smile faded, and he looked off into the direct of Vegas. “Doing my best, I suppose. Be a whole lot better when we find her safe and sound.”
“Yeah,” I said, picturing her and Rissi, healthy, and waving and smiling at us as we entered Vegas.
“You eaten?” he asked.
I shook my head, and he stood, pulling me to my feet. We walked over to the rest of the group, standing among the horses behind the windscreen. Sam was sitting on the ground, her back up against the mesquite tree with her foot propped up on a saddle. She looked up when we appeared.