CHAPTER 10
Are We There Yet
The whoosh of the sliding glass door opening woke all three of them up regardless of where they bedded down for the night. Charlie and Jack got up squinting at the dawn light flooding in from the front window. They saw Mac walk out the door, and off to the side. In the kitchen window over the sink you could just make out her reaching up for something. Then she walked back in, sliding the door closed behind her, and sat back down in her seat at the table, now with her back to the door. She looked almost ill. The lack of sleep had made her face pale and droopy. The purple under her eyes slowly crept further down and had darkened from where it was the day before. She pulled her pack up from off the floor and set it on the table top, unzipping the front pouch, and started rummaging around.
The sound of a door opening from down the hall turned the men’s attention away from Mac. Cara came sleepily out into the living room carrying her boots in her hand and sat down next to Charlie. Jack had put the recliner back down and was trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes. The sound of rustling plastic made them all scrunch their faces, and they turned to Mac. She was pulling out a few indiscernible bags and wrapped packages, along with a fairly large gray tinted water bottle that was full. A large zip locked bag sat directly in front of her. She placed a hand on each side pulling it open, and reached in to take something out, nonchalantly tossing the items into her mouth one by one. They could hear the crunch of it as she chewed. When she looked over to the three of them, they were all staring at her with blank expressions. She looked at each one’s face, and tossed another small piece of whatever it was into her mouth.
“Go on and eat something. We have a few hours of walking to go, especially at your pace,” she said, placing the last of her snack directly on her tongue, then rubbing her hand clean on the other, moving on to the next little package, opening it up the same way. She pulled out a strip of something orange, and placed it between her teeth as she started packing the stuff back up. After realizing that none of them were moving she looked back up at them, the food still dangling from her mouth. Then she put it together, rubbing the space inbetween her eyes roughly.
“In the small pack are the muffins. Just leave one please. Try to only drink a bit of your water, not all, but do drink some.”
She pulled the original plastic bag back out, and walked it over to them. She stood in front of them waiting. The three just stared, and she took a deep breath.
“Put out your hands,” she said, squeezing the bridge of her nose.
When they did she reached into the bag, and went to each one, placing a few almonds in each palm. She sealed the bag back up, and gently slid the pack from next to the recliner out in front of them.
“Eat a muffin too,” she said walking back over to her pack, and putting the nuts back in. She pulled the orange food out of her mouth, and waved it at them. “Some water too. Come on,” she said, starting to lose her patience, tearing a large bite off of the strip in her hand. “And put your damn boots back on.”
The three of them looked at each other uncomfortably. Jack had left his on for the night so he grabbed the smaller backpack and the bat as Cara and Charlie started lacing up their boots. He found the wrapped up muffins, and took one out for each of them, holding his in his mouth, and the other two out in each hand. They reached over and grabbed it from him, and didn’t hesitate to start in on them. None of them ate before going to sleep last night. Their exhaustion was more powerful than their hunger, but now it was hard to ignore. Jack pulled out his water bottle, and saw that, at best, there was a single gulp of water left. Charlie had his on his lap, and Jack could see it was empty. Cara’s was the fullest at about a quarter of the way up the bottle. They all looked at each other, and grew still.
Mac shouldered her pack and turned to them, ready to go, then noticed their bottles. Her jaw clenched as she exhaled. She dropped her pack back down on the table, and made her way over to the stove top. They heard a banging, metal on metal, and then she was off and out the back door again carrying something.
They each got themselves together, shoving the rest of their muffins into their mouths, then crunching on the almonds. It had been two days since those muffins were baked and they were beginning to dry out. Water would be a much needed relief now, and necessary later. They stood up, and moved over into the kitchen looking out at Mac in the backyard. She was tipping over a birdbath. Whatever water was in there she poured it into a black tea kettle. She set the ornate cement basin back on its foot, and started back towards the house. Each one of them stood there and watched as she placed the tea pot back on the burner. She reached down for the dial and turned. A familiar snapping started, then a whoosh, and there was a flame. A gas stove.
In a few moments the kettle’s whistle pierced the quiet and joined the ticking of the old clock. Mac turned the dial off, then reached up and opened a cabinet next to the stove, pulling out three mugs. All three were set on the counter top, each filled equally from the kettle, steam rising from the boiling liquid. The water reached just over half way in each. She then grabbed them all by the handles with one hand, and headed out to the little back deck again, to rest them on top of the railing.
When she got back in, she looked at them. “It’s not going to taste all that great and I’ll tell you now it’s not going to look too clean, but it’s sterile and better than nothing, which is what you have.”
“It’s boiling hot. They need to cool off before they go in those,” she pointed at Cara’s old and reused water bottle. Recycling was a must now. “You pour it in those thin things you’ll just have half melted plastic and a warped bottle. So again, we wait.” She looked into each of their faces again, one at a time, almost matching the swing of the clocks pendulum.
Mac turned back to put her backpack on, Cara walked over to her.
“Is there a place where I can wash up a bit real fast before we go?”
Mac slung the last strap over her shoulder and turned to her, no expression in her face. Cara was about to ask again as she looked at her waiting for an answer, but then she noticed the state of her. She was still covered in dirt; her face still streaked with the same lines of mud, though some of the thick parts had scraped off on their own when they dried. Her fingernails were black. A look of embarrassment washed over Cara’s face. She immediately realized what a stupid question that was.
“You just watched me dump the last drops of water from a bird bath outside for you to drink…” She let that sit there for a moment, then turned back to the door and walked out to the backyard, leaving the three of them to their own devices for a bit.
“Jesus Christ,” Cara said putting her hand to her forehead. “I don’t know why I asked that!”
“It’s fine, Cara,” Jack said with a comforting smile. “It’s been a while since we’ve all been on an overnight.”
“No shit!” she said still feeling some humiliation. “I can’t even blame her for being so pissed. We’re like a bunch of fucking children out here all of the sudden.”
“Alright,” Jack said patting her on the shoulder. “I’m going to go grab the waters. We can fill up and get started.” He walked out to the little back deck and went for the mugs. The frost on the ground was a subtle warning that even though the days could reach almost sixty degrees, the nights could still kill you or make you sick. He grabbed the mugs by their handles, not as skillfully as Mac though. He had to do two in one hand, and the last one in the other. He turned to face the house, and noticed the flood light from last night was solar powered. Mac must’ve turned it off. It made him realize she purposefully turned it on when they got there last night.
He scanned the yard for her and noticed off to the side, by the treeline that marked the property, there was an oblong mound, like the one he had seen the day before, but with no bright blue tarp flashing through in spots. The moss on top of some of the stones and the way the ones on the ground had sunken in, showed it was old. The shallow oblong hole dug ne
xt to it had a pile of rocks at the head, waiting, looked only a little less weathered… and the hole was empty. Mac was walking over to it from out of the woodline, and tossed another stone just a bit smaller than a bowling ball onto the pile. She walked a few feet in and looked back down at the ground for more.
Jack headed back in with a little more understanding of this house and Mac, but a whole lot more questions, none of which he figured he would ever speak of.
“Bottles?” he asked, holding up the mugs for them to see.
They each took a mug and began the laborious task of filling their reused water bottles from a mug. Each watched carefully as they allowed a trickle to slowly enter the mouth of the bottle, spilling as little as possible. By the time they were done, each was filled almost half way with water. Water and sediment. A few unidentified black flecks sunk to the bottom with some other small debris. Not one of them said a word about it, but they all knew they were thinking the same thing: They were spoiled, and this is what they needed to live, so they couldn’t and wouldn’t complain.
Jack set the three empty mugs in a line against the side of the sink, noticing the one in front said: “Mom to Be” in a swirling dark purple font underneath a graphic of flowers. He stared at it for a quick second, caught off guard by the reminder. Then he turned and put the backpack on again, busying himself to try and block all of the thoughts that flooded into his brain, the feelings rising up in his stomach and chest.
The sound of the back door sliding open alerted them all that Mac was back in.
“Are we good here?” she asked closing and locking the door behind her.
The three of them nodded their heads, and stood waiting further instructions.
“Then let’s get going. I want to be there before lunch.” She walked over to the front door and opened it wide, gesturing for them to clear out.
They stood in the overgrowth of the front yard around the path, and watched as Mac closed the door. She twisted the knob to make sure it was locked, then pulled the key out of her pants pocket, and placed it back above the door jam. She turned and walked past them, and they were off again.
They followed the road for a few miles before she led them off it and back into the forest. Charlie was sore and exhausted, but he pushed himself to stay much closer than he did the day before. He owed Mac that much, though she still didn’t seem to give them a second thought or a look back.
The forest floor was thick with layers of pine needles, leaves, and sticks. The thawing of the past season’s ice and snow left it soft and spongy in spots, but it still rustled and squished underfoot in others. Sticks still snapped if you stepped on them, and every sound around them kept them alert. As the ground began to rise little by little, their breathing grew heavier, and their pace inevitably slowed, but they pushed onward, upward. At one point they were trudging up a particularly steep spot when they all stopped dead at the sound of rustling leaves and snarling. Even Mac. They gripped their weapons, whipping their heads around looking for the source. Mac, hands at her sides, just walked off to the left, and began back down the hill a bit. You could see it as clear as day now. Wedged under a fallen log, half buried under brown leaves, was a man. He was once a man. It held its head up out of a perfectly formed indentation in the ground matching the body shape from the chest up. One arm moved clumsily around from the elbow down to the wrist where the hand danced. The other still laid lifelessly beneath its body. The half of its face that had laid against the earth had been eaten away by the insects in the soil. A few pieces of debris had stuck to the exposed skull. A small centipede wiggled from the empty eye socket and down its cheek, then neck. The other side of the face with its milky white eye rolled ever so slightly as it looked towards them, but never the large, black pupils never focused. The knit cap that sat askew on its rotting head was still covered in a bit of frost. The rest of the body glittered with a thin layer of its own. It was wedged under the heavy log from beneath the shoulder blades and down. The straps of a pack could be seen still over its shoulders.
From the lack of leaves on top of it, it had happened in the winter, after their shedding in autumn. Whether a slip and fall down the hill led to it getting pinned under the heavy weight, or it happened slowly from starvation, other injuries, or hypothermia from being trapped under there, no one could tell how he had died. And it didn’t matter. He died there regardless, and was now starting to thaw out from winter’s freezing temperatures. If it wasn’t for the cold that froze him, he would’ve already been taken care of by the same bugs that ate away his eye and flesh from the one side of his face when he started to thaw. They would’ve kept going into his brain through his ears, nose, mouth, and eye sockets; chewing away the soft matter in its skull until the last synapses that kept firing now after death were eaten away. It would happen eventually now that it was warming up for spring, but why wait. Mac shoved her knife into the empty socket, and the upper body went slack. The head flopped to the side and slid off the blade. She turned and headed back up the hill to the front of the group, and they were walking once more.
It was a fairly uneventful trip from there. The only thing rustling in the underbrush besides them was squirrels or chipmunks, the occasional rabbit. Mac never stopped again and if they needed a rest, they were going to have to wait until they got to their destination, wherever that was. They trudged on until they took out their water and had a gulp, fighting every urge to chug the dirty, but sanitary water. Finally, when the sun was almost directly overhead, they were suddenly on a road. At least it was a road before all this happened. It was mostly dirt with some gravel thrown over it at some point, now leveled into it. There were muddy spots that dotted here and there where there wasn’t enough gravel to hold the melt at bay. Layers of leaves had also started to take over the path from the outsides, creeping towards the middle and meeting at some points. At certain spots you could see the parallel paths from tires that had taken this route enough to wear down the now subtle trenches.
A hundred yards from where they entered lay an enormous fallen tree that had strewn itself across the road entirely, and even more on each side beyond that. As they made their way over it, they saw the tree’s death was not natural. The branches were cut cleanly off almost the whole length of the tree, and when their gazes followed the trunk to its base it was clear it had been chopped down. They were getting close.
A little further up, the road began to curve. They followed the gradual turn until the path behind them disappeared around the corner. Then suddenly, they were at a gate. It was a metal gate, nothing too impressive. Something you would see at the entrance of an enclosed pasture where the livestock would be let in and out. Long, thick, rounded poles of dinged and patinaed metal laid across the entrance, stacked, and evenly placed above the next and connected by a frame with rounded corners. It was a typical gate, save for the chicken wire placed behind it and attached by layers and layers of barbed wire woven between it all. To both sides stood posts as far as one could see, and they were just as heavily layered with barbed wire. Behind it all though, was acres and acres of open land. Land, that didn’t look right anymore in this new world, because the land looked just like it would have in the old one.
There was barely any over growth of long grass save for right along the fences. Though the land sloped up gradually and out of sight, there was still a fairly well worn path, but not from vehicles. It seemed like it most definitely was before. Now it was the same as the old road that took them here. Dirt and gravel, but seemingly worn flat. But by what?
As Charlie and Cara made their way to the gate from behind them, Jack turned to Charlie with a worried look in his eyes. Once Charlie saw what stretched out behind the fences, his brow furrowed in thought. Cara turned to Mac, but was cut off.
“Wait over there,” she said, pointing at a large boulder set off and back to the side of the entrance gate. She shrugged off her pack and went inside it, pulling out a bright orange hunting vest. Then she just walked off following the
tiny space between the fence and the woods until they couldn’t see her anymore.
When she was gone Cara turned to Charlie. “What the fuck is this place?”
“Looks like some kind of compound,” he said, sitting down, and leaning back against the boulder, exhausted.
“Yeah,” Jack said, looking back at him. “But what kind of compound, and how are they going to help us with our food situation?” The three of them looked back and forth at one another. Not a single one of them had an answer to that, but each did share some pretty anxious expressions.
Off to the side Mac appeared again, the vest now gone, and climbed and sat right on top of the boulder looking off and up at the open land. She dug back into her pack and pulled out her smokey gray water bottle, popping the top, and took some hard gulps. Then she dug back in, and pulled a hand full of her almonds out, and dropped the rest of the bag down to them.
“Eat. We’re going to be here a bit.”
They ate the nuts greedily, and drained their water, not even caring about swallowing the last bit that had collected the majority of foreign bodies from the bird bath. They were thirsty, and since Mac didn’t scold them for finishing their water, they figured they were going to have a chance to fill up soon, wherever the hell they were.
After the food was gone, and the water had run out, they sat next to the boulder. The sun was far over head, but its warmth was appreciated and felt amazing. About ten minutes had passed when Jack heard Charlie’s soft snores from his left. Cara had her legs stretched out, and she was rubbing at her calves. Then she leaned back and raised her face to the sun, eyes closed, and took in the warmth. Soon her breathing slowed and steadied, her head lulling a bit to the side as she dozed off too.
Evangeline, Alone. (Book 1): Evangeline, Alone Page 14