Post by Admin on May 13, 2016 23:50:01 GMT
I don’t know exactly what time of night it was, but it was sometime early morning. I felt Myra shake me gently awake. Her face was shadowed over in the gas station window’s moonlight. I had gone from some shapeless and easily forgettable dreamscape back to reality in an instant.
Heading northwest along the empty Schelling Road, Myra and I had come to a bone dry gas station near nightfall. Peculiarly named, Final Rest Station, we holed up inside it for the night. Of course there was very little left around. Gas had been siphoned from all reserves by either Black Banner or Red Redemption – both factions made sure a long time ago to claim all the resources they could to make it near impossible to live outside their ranks. Snacks that had once lined the shelves were gone or strewn all catawampus on the tiles, leaving the station little more than a sad skeleton.
It had more room to sleep in than a tent though.
“Danger?” my whisper came hazy and raspy to my own ears.
She shook her head. Quietly, she beckoned me to the grimy window beyond which stretched endless, sloping treetops and their bare, wintery branches. It was hard to emerge from my little pocket of heat in that sleeping bag. It was bracingly cold in the Racetrack, and I could both hear and see my anxious breath puffing into the lifeless and still air.
If it hadn’t been for the faint outline of red in the distance, I wouldn’t have understood why Myra had bothered to wake me. Then I realized.
Pressing my face up against the smudged and neglected glass, my head underneath a peeling poster that advertised an icee special last year, I could see it.
In the valley below. The town we had passed through the very day before was lit up with a hushed but vibrant blaze. Malachi and the runaways’ refuge was… burning.
It took a moment for me to think this one through. Myra already had the board out, unfolded in a patch of floor where the moonlight was the strongest and I could see her letters.
REDS GOT REVENGE?
(We were able to create a makeshift question mark for Myra by drawing one on a blank tile some weeks ago.)
“…Yeah, I guess so,” I said, turning back to the sight again. It was as if the entire town was going up in flames by now. I thought aloud. “Seems simple enough. After the first two Redemption trucks were destroyed, the surviving soldiers must’ve been able to radio back to base – to call in more troops retaliate… But, if they were able to call in reinforcements… the new trucks must’ve picked up the survivors that called in.”
The cold suddenly seemed to intensify in that room, driving its way past my skin. I glanced at Myra and another message had appeared.
PROBABLY
I swerved my gaze back to the window, expecting another wave of nauseating pain. I waited for a knife to sweep into my stomach just as before. I waited for the room to give a little spin. Or at the very least for a lump to float up into my throat. But nothing came.
I watched the nameless town burn from my safe seat by the gas station window and allowed silence to dominate the air.
Could this really be it? Any hope upon hope upon hope I had once held onto couldn’t possibly survive this knowledge. If Leon had been in one of those trucks during Malachi’s ambush and if he’d survived the attack and if he had been kept alive by the remaining red troops and escaped down Schelling Road, then he was undoubtedly right back with another full battalion, locked inside yet another truck. If he was breathing in this moment, then he was right back in one of those fresh vehicles that were dealing double punishment on Malachi and the other disobedient child soldiers in town. Then, inevitably, off to the blood fields with him. And certain death.
People claim they have an inexplicable connection with their loved ones. I had heard stories of people that simply knew when their son or brother or mom or wife was safe or in danger, alive or dead. Intuition and mother’s sense and familial instinct and all that bull shit.
But staring at this uncertain scene from afar, I wished it were true for me. I wished I could just know without a hint of a doubt. Because even now, faced with the 98% chance that Leon was dead or as good as, I simply couldn’t know. And thanks to that cruel string attached to Leon’s casket, I couldn’t force myself through the motions of grief anymore. Not anymore.
At this point, after all the ups and downs this Leon goose chase had given me, I felt like I couldn’t believe anything anymore. Not anymore.
I wish… I could just know. But I can’t. So… this must be it.
After an unknown amount of time had passed, and I just sat by the window in a stupor (much less severe than the one I had slipped into the morning before), I felt Myra’s hand stealthily slip into mine. I believe she was saying, in the morning. In the morning. So I allowed her to guide me away from the red and orange shown in the window and back to my sleeping bag. I got into bed and stared quietly at the nondescript ceiling above.
Morning came, and it scared me just how long my eyes had mindlessly searched the gas station ceiling for a description that never appeared. I didn’t think I had slept, but I couldn’t tell for sure. If I did, the dreams were as blank and grey colored as the ceiling above. I waited until I heard Myra start to stir awake, then I sat up and went about fumbling around in my pack for food or something.
The supply level was getting too low for comfort. Breakfast would probably have to be something off the floor that was hopefully still closed. There has to be something like Bugles or Doritoes lying around.
A moment after thinking this, I was vaguely proud of myself. I was thinking of something other than Leon. Hurt like hell, but forgetting lost ones was something I would be doing for the rest of my remaining life. Suck it up.
I turned to see my mute companion sitting cross legged on top of her sleeping bag, noisily opening a bag of Bugles that seemed to be in blessedly sealed condition. I set up a small and surprisingly easy smile on my face before I spoke.
“So, where did you find those?”
She looked up at me just as the bag finally gave in and snapped open, spilling two or three bugles on the tiled floor. She quickly attended to these fallen friends, snatching them back up within five seconds, and then returned her eyes back to me. My fixed smile didn’t falter yet.
Stretching over and pulling the scrabble within reach, she arranged her answer.
HALF HIDDEN UNDER THE SHELF BY THE DOOR
As she spelled this, she threw an identical Bugle bag to me. I felt like she had thrown food in my face at least once or twice before. Was it a habit with her?
“Thanks,” I said. I opened my own, which did seem rather firmly sealed. I didn’t spill any though. She spoke again.
HOW DO YOU FEEL
“Okay,” I said. Then with a tight chuckle. “Somehow.”
END OF THE ROAD?
“...Yes. I, um, I think we need to stop… looking,” I admitted aloud. I never felt so terribly wrong and regrettably right in saying something before, so it was only natural that the words came out extremely awkward and choppy. “We’re never going to be able to find him. I thought we could… But we can’t.”
And then my eyes dropped to the Bugles because I couldn’t deal with her looking at me anymore. But I had to say it again.
“He has to be gone. I can’t go on, thinking there’s a chance anymore. Even if… even if there is one…”
THERE ISNT A CHANCE
YOU SAID IT
HE ISNT OUT THERE
Looking at those words made me want to cry. Shit, if I ever wanted to cry, it was now, now, now, now. I wanted to be a child. I wanted to be able to pout and wail and half whimper, half stammer about how much I didn’t like change and how much I wanted to go back. But my grieving had passed before it had even started. And by now, it was as if we were talking about someone entirely different from the brother who had been thrown in the back of a bright red truck like luggage and driven out of my sight almost a week ago. Myra and I were entertaining the idea of Leon, not Leon himself.
“Yeah. I wish I could believe that-“
Myra swooped down on me faster than a hawk. Her hand smacked my left cheek like a fly swatter. I let the stinging ring on my skin like that for a few seconds before I turned my head to look back at her now stern-as-hell eyes.
“I think I know what that’s for.”
She sunk back behind the board and quickly rapped out another two lines.
THEN STOP GOING BACK ON YOURSELF
COMMIT TO AN ANSWER
“Leon’s dead,” I said in the exact same tone as before.
Myra shook her head, spelling something as I said it.
SPELL IT
I stared at it a moment before anger started to fume up inside me. Who the hell did she think she was, slapping me around and ordering me to do this and that? Dr. Fuckingphil?! I could believe whatever I wanted! What if I wanted to secretly think Leon was just fine, out there somewhere? I had a right to my own damn thoughts, didn’t I? Or had the factions blown that away too?!
Somehow keeping myself from lashing out at Myra for being such a bossy bitch, I heatedly plucked each of the letters I needed from the expanse of scrabble tiles and plinked them into place beside one another. Slowly, but surely, the ten letters laid themselves out in a sloppy little line.
“There,” I spat, pressing the final D into place with a huff. “Are you satisfied?”
I sat back and read my own handiwork.
LEON IS DEAD
I promptly burst into tears.
This was the last and only time, I knew, that I would or could bring myself to cry over Leon’s unmarked, unknown grave.
“Leon’s dead. Leon’s dead. Leon’s dead,” I repeated in a deep sob as Myra’s shoulder volunteered to act as a cradle to my hanging head. My bag of Bugles lay to the side, neglected and forgotten. Because right now, all I could do was cry and cry.
Soon enough, my racking sobs soon abated to the point that I could talk without hiccupping like the child inside me I thought was long gone. But I didn’t bother to speak for a while. Just a while longer, we sat together, as the great weight I had been forced to carry for the past week lifted off my shoulders, gradually becoming as light as a feather.
My subsiding sniveling was the only thing I could hear in the room until another sound rose into existence. Although the voices gradually approached us, it seemed to spring up on the two of us like a trap. People were approaching the gas station fast.
In an instant, we withdrew from each other and scrambled behind a nearby shelving unit. I was peering around the side, trying to catch a peek of the nearing voices but couldn’t see them yet. I could tell there were many of them. Several talkers.
“—you sure about that?” one distant, muffled voice said, skeptically.
“Shut the hell up. They got what they wanted. By now the bustards are gone.” A sharp and cynical female voice snapped.
“Then why are you looking over your shoulder?” the first voice.
“Come on, let’s just get see what’s in there and tend to Fred. We need to do it now,” Another softer voice.
Whoever they were, they were coming in. As my dread devolved into an intense fear, I could recognize that familiar, cynical cadence among the rest. It had to be, could only be, Tomoe.
Immediately, I whirled around and saw the place I had noted as a possible hiding spot earlier. A long row of cabinets, many hanging agape, sat at the back of the store.
I got Myra’s attention and pointed to the cabinets. She got it. Quickly and stealthily, we made our way to them. In a rush of quick thinking, I opened one cabinet and hastily bundled up my sleeping bag and pack into a ball, tossing them safely inside. Fortunately for us, this whole back wall of the store was lined in cabinets, most of which were devoid of space killing materials. The only things remaining within them were pipes and boxes of straws and trash bags.
Myra stashed her own various affects into one unit, closed it up, and then proceeded to stuff herself uncomfortably into another. I did the same, finding an empty nook to stowaway. All the while, the voices became closer and closer, threatening to enter the store and spot the two of us at any moment.
Within a dozen seconds, we were each scrunched up in tight but secure cubbyholes. I clicked the doors closed with myself tucked inside, effectively making me all but blind to what was going on in the store. The only thing I held in my hands was my trusty glock.
Just as I heard my cabinet click and I breathed a sigh of relief at our concealed conditions, there was the sound of the mysterious troop barging in, barely muffled by the thin cabinet door - we could hear everything going on out there. The clomping footsteps of several people swarmed into the gas station store, accompanied by their rushed voices and heavy tones, mingling together until all I could make out was the general buzz of agitated activity.
“Get Fred on that counter!”
“What? You think we can treat him here?! A gas station?”
“Show me a hospital within 30 miles and we’ll fly there.”
“Come on, need to operate quickly if we’re going to save any part of his forearm!”
I could almost hear my consistently fast heartbeat over the sounds of the scurrying people in the store. Since I first heard their voices, I could tell these people weren’t from a faction of any kind. They sounded far too young and... different. These blokes were almost certainly Malachi’s group, although I couldn’t hear Malachi among the voices. But for a very distinct reason from my gut, I didn’t dare leave the cubby and only listened intently, safely hidden from sight. As did Myra.
“You’re not Eraldo! None of us are at all prepared to perform surgery of any kind!”
“These bandages are soaked through.”
“Jesus, if I had known he was bleeding that badly-“
“I’ve watched Eraldo work. I think we just need to-“
“We need more bandages! Find something, Clyde!”
“Where are we supposed to find enough bandages to cover that hole?”
“Just get something from around this place that can just f-ing help!”
A set of feet detached itself from the crowd of other footsteps and drew nearer to my hiding place than any other. It was enough for me withdraw my breath and clutch the handgun closer to my chest. I heard a pause, then the footsteps continued beyond my cabinet for a few yards past where my head lay. The unseen guy, presumably Clyde, rustled around with something in a cabinet two or three units away from my own.
There were scuffles coming from where the front counter was, then a painful, shrill cry sent blood pulsing through my ears.
“Damnit, hold him down!”
“Come on, Clyde, we need something here!”
“I got some napkins!”
“Fantastic scavenging, Clyde.”
“Well what the hell else is there around?”
“Hold him DOWN! I need to be able to get a clear look at where the shrapnel is embedded.”
So this continued on for an unmeasurable amount of time. The sounds of an amateur operation on poor Fred dragged on for what seemed like an hour. His cries, half drowned in a stupor of pain, carried straight to my cabinet, nearly driving me insane until at long, long last, his voice died off and stopped altogether. Everything soon became silent as death in the station, and I could feel their collective exhaustion through the cabinet doors. A contagious, sickened feeling blanketing the entire room in its heavy desperation.
I could relate. Yes. But I still refused to emerge. Something told me, we weren’t welcome here. Something told me it was a horrible idea to reveal ourselves to them. Just because they weren’t the factions didn’t mean they were going to accept our intrusion a second time.
After what seemed like an unnaturally long amount of time, someone spoke, causing me to jump again. It was the cynical, female voice, the one I was almost certain was Tomoe.
“Well, we can’t stay here, that’s for damn sure.”
“…And where do you suggest we go now?” asked skeptical voice.
There was a pause. Then, confirming my gut instinct to remain hidden, she said with a quiet intensity that made me utterly freeze in my cramped space, “We have to find a way to make them pay. We have to find them. Especially the ones who spied on us after the ambush.”
“You think… you think the two travelers were sent in by Reds? They were actually spying on us before they made a final move?” the softer voice, now cracked up with weariness. “Malachi… Jacob… they’re all dead because…”
“Wake up, Catt,” Tomoe’s voice said icily. “Sometimes, when we let rats go on their merry way… or when we don’t swat shit covered cockroaches and flies… or when worst of all, we feed the vermin from our hands, they come back and use our mercy against us.”
The numbness of her statement sunk into the room with another moment of silence. Perhaps the me from months or weeks ago would’ve burst out of hiding and tried to right the wrongs and tell them we weren’t to blame. But fortunately, Leon was right. I had grown. And by now I knew how to make a simple decision and keep my life because of it (besides the fact that if I hadn’t made that stupid decision and put myself between Myra and that soldier in the city Walmart, she wouldn’t be here)(sometimes stupidity is rewarded).
“We need to rest. I feel light headed,” another voice broke the silence, followed by pockets of murmured agreement from others.
“Alright, we’ll rest here for an hour, then move on,” Tomoe said, as if she were the leader now. Sure sounded like it. “We need to keep to this road. With any luck, we’ll catch up to the spies since they were undoubtedly ditched by their employers. They’re probably still waiting in vain for an extraction truck somewhere on Schelling Road. And if it’s a possibility for payback, we can’t afford to let it slip past us.”
There was a pause in her run down, and for an unrealistic and terrifying moment, I believed Tomoe was staring straight at my safety cupboard. But then she spoke again and my crazed, imminent danger dissipated.
“Anyone opposed?” she asked everyone as an afterthought. The battered and greatly diminished group didn’t utter a peep. Some were probably already asleep. In any case, it seemed everyone in this gas station accepted Tomoe’s claims as undisputed truth.
In the resulting silence that indicated a sleeping band of beaten rebels, I ran through what this meant for Myra and I.
If it really turned out the way I thought it would, they would all set off in an hour or two, leaving us scotch free. They would search for us on this road and, if they proved as grudge motivated as they seemed, go as far as possible before the mountains gave way to the blood fields. And when they wouldn’t find us anywhere, that would be that, right? They would give up chase and go somewhere else.
Yes, yes. They would look. They would go down this road… leaving us behind in the gas station. If they would just leave, everything would be fine.
As of now, Myra and I kept safely tucked away as the troop slept around the store. The dreamy ambience of deep breathing and the occasional snore almost lulled me to sleep in the cupboard. Almost.
From time to time, there was the sound of a sleeper being awoken by the sting of recent memories, returning to attack them in the form of light dreams. There would be sound of one of them snapping awake, even calling out softly from the depths of their nightmare. But each time, sound would return to its sleepy equilibrium, indicating the woken dreamer had quieted and drifted back to sleep.
The mere idea of an uninterruptable sneeze or cough escaping either me or Myra was enough to paralyze me. My legs and back ached from my uncomfortable position. I wanted out of this endless quiet game. The anticipation of the group getting up and leaving – and me emerging like a restless ground hog from miserable hiding – was enough to send chills down my spine. Could we truly make it for an hour without any sound, any giveaway, any indication to them of our presence in here?
For a good amount of time (I still didn’t dare to open the cabinet a crack to check the time on my old fashioned watch), it continued in this quiet and subtly nerve-wracking manner. No one made a sound.
I heard another run of the mill sleeper come awake with a light and decidedly feminine gasp. I expected said girl to just take another few breaths, realize where she was, then go reluctantly back to the comfort and fear of restless sleep.
I could hear, however, this one get up slowly from the floor and walk around the store. What was she doing? Walking off the dream or looking for something to eat or…
I could sense the walker drawing close then moving away from my hiding spot, then passing over Myra’s spot like an unsuspecting, circling hawk. A pause in her footsteps. Everything else was still completely silent. Everyone in the troop should’ve been sleeping off the hour. So what was this one doing up and around?
Get back to bed. Go back to sleep. Stop looking around. There’s nothing to see here!
But the walker didn’t heed my mental warning and instead seemed to draw even closer to the long line of cabinets on the back wall. I could hear the way too close sounds of the girl doing… something. It took me a moment. Then there was the familiar clack of a tiny, wooden tile being picked up from the floor of the store, and I knew.
The girl had found a scrabble piece lying on the floor.
Heading northwest along the empty Schelling Road, Myra and I had come to a bone dry gas station near nightfall. Peculiarly named, Final Rest Station, we holed up inside it for the night. Of course there was very little left around. Gas had been siphoned from all reserves by either Black Banner or Red Redemption – both factions made sure a long time ago to claim all the resources they could to make it near impossible to live outside their ranks. Snacks that had once lined the shelves were gone or strewn all catawampus on the tiles, leaving the station little more than a sad skeleton.
It had more room to sleep in than a tent though.
“Danger?” my whisper came hazy and raspy to my own ears.
She shook her head. Quietly, she beckoned me to the grimy window beyond which stretched endless, sloping treetops and their bare, wintery branches. It was hard to emerge from my little pocket of heat in that sleeping bag. It was bracingly cold in the Racetrack, and I could both hear and see my anxious breath puffing into the lifeless and still air.
If it hadn’t been for the faint outline of red in the distance, I wouldn’t have understood why Myra had bothered to wake me. Then I realized.
Pressing my face up against the smudged and neglected glass, my head underneath a peeling poster that advertised an icee special last year, I could see it.
In the valley below. The town we had passed through the very day before was lit up with a hushed but vibrant blaze. Malachi and the runaways’ refuge was… burning.
It took a moment for me to think this one through. Myra already had the board out, unfolded in a patch of floor where the moonlight was the strongest and I could see her letters.
REDS GOT REVENGE?
(We were able to create a makeshift question mark for Myra by drawing one on a blank tile some weeks ago.)
“…Yeah, I guess so,” I said, turning back to the sight again. It was as if the entire town was going up in flames by now. I thought aloud. “Seems simple enough. After the first two Redemption trucks were destroyed, the surviving soldiers must’ve been able to radio back to base – to call in more troops retaliate… But, if they were able to call in reinforcements… the new trucks must’ve picked up the survivors that called in.”
The cold suddenly seemed to intensify in that room, driving its way past my skin. I glanced at Myra and another message had appeared.
PROBABLY
I swerved my gaze back to the window, expecting another wave of nauseating pain. I waited for a knife to sweep into my stomach just as before. I waited for the room to give a little spin. Or at the very least for a lump to float up into my throat. But nothing came.
I watched the nameless town burn from my safe seat by the gas station window and allowed silence to dominate the air.
Could this really be it? Any hope upon hope upon hope I had once held onto couldn’t possibly survive this knowledge. If Leon had been in one of those trucks during Malachi’s ambush and if he’d survived the attack and if he had been kept alive by the remaining red troops and escaped down Schelling Road, then he was undoubtedly right back with another full battalion, locked inside yet another truck. If he was breathing in this moment, then he was right back in one of those fresh vehicles that were dealing double punishment on Malachi and the other disobedient child soldiers in town. Then, inevitably, off to the blood fields with him. And certain death.
People claim they have an inexplicable connection with their loved ones. I had heard stories of people that simply knew when their son or brother or mom or wife was safe or in danger, alive or dead. Intuition and mother’s sense and familial instinct and all that bull shit.
But staring at this uncertain scene from afar, I wished it were true for me. I wished I could just know without a hint of a doubt. Because even now, faced with the 98% chance that Leon was dead or as good as, I simply couldn’t know. And thanks to that cruel string attached to Leon’s casket, I couldn’t force myself through the motions of grief anymore. Not anymore.
At this point, after all the ups and downs this Leon goose chase had given me, I felt like I couldn’t believe anything anymore. Not anymore.
I wish… I could just know. But I can’t. So… this must be it.
After an unknown amount of time had passed, and I just sat by the window in a stupor (much less severe than the one I had slipped into the morning before), I felt Myra’s hand stealthily slip into mine. I believe she was saying, in the morning. In the morning. So I allowed her to guide me away from the red and orange shown in the window and back to my sleeping bag. I got into bed and stared quietly at the nondescript ceiling above.
Morning came, and it scared me just how long my eyes had mindlessly searched the gas station ceiling for a description that never appeared. I didn’t think I had slept, but I couldn’t tell for sure. If I did, the dreams were as blank and grey colored as the ceiling above. I waited until I heard Myra start to stir awake, then I sat up and went about fumbling around in my pack for food or something.
The supply level was getting too low for comfort. Breakfast would probably have to be something off the floor that was hopefully still closed. There has to be something like Bugles or Doritoes lying around.
A moment after thinking this, I was vaguely proud of myself. I was thinking of something other than Leon. Hurt like hell, but forgetting lost ones was something I would be doing for the rest of my remaining life. Suck it up.
I turned to see my mute companion sitting cross legged on top of her sleeping bag, noisily opening a bag of Bugles that seemed to be in blessedly sealed condition. I set up a small and surprisingly easy smile on my face before I spoke.
“So, where did you find those?”
She looked up at me just as the bag finally gave in and snapped open, spilling two or three bugles on the tiled floor. She quickly attended to these fallen friends, snatching them back up within five seconds, and then returned her eyes back to me. My fixed smile didn’t falter yet.
Stretching over and pulling the scrabble within reach, she arranged her answer.
HALF HIDDEN UNDER THE SHELF BY THE DOOR
As she spelled this, she threw an identical Bugle bag to me. I felt like she had thrown food in my face at least once or twice before. Was it a habit with her?
“Thanks,” I said. I opened my own, which did seem rather firmly sealed. I didn’t spill any though. She spoke again.
HOW DO YOU FEEL
“Okay,” I said. Then with a tight chuckle. “Somehow.”
END OF THE ROAD?
“...Yes. I, um, I think we need to stop… looking,” I admitted aloud. I never felt so terribly wrong and regrettably right in saying something before, so it was only natural that the words came out extremely awkward and choppy. “We’re never going to be able to find him. I thought we could… But we can’t.”
And then my eyes dropped to the Bugles because I couldn’t deal with her looking at me anymore. But I had to say it again.
“He has to be gone. I can’t go on, thinking there’s a chance anymore. Even if… even if there is one…”
THERE ISNT A CHANCE
YOU SAID IT
HE ISNT OUT THERE
Looking at those words made me want to cry. Shit, if I ever wanted to cry, it was now, now, now, now. I wanted to be a child. I wanted to be able to pout and wail and half whimper, half stammer about how much I didn’t like change and how much I wanted to go back. But my grieving had passed before it had even started. And by now, it was as if we were talking about someone entirely different from the brother who had been thrown in the back of a bright red truck like luggage and driven out of my sight almost a week ago. Myra and I were entertaining the idea of Leon, not Leon himself.
“Yeah. I wish I could believe that-“
Myra swooped down on me faster than a hawk. Her hand smacked my left cheek like a fly swatter. I let the stinging ring on my skin like that for a few seconds before I turned my head to look back at her now stern-as-hell eyes.
“I think I know what that’s for.”
She sunk back behind the board and quickly rapped out another two lines.
THEN STOP GOING BACK ON YOURSELF
COMMIT TO AN ANSWER
“Leon’s dead,” I said in the exact same tone as before.
Myra shook her head, spelling something as I said it.
SPELL IT
I stared at it a moment before anger started to fume up inside me. Who the hell did she think she was, slapping me around and ordering me to do this and that? Dr. Fuckingphil?! I could believe whatever I wanted! What if I wanted to secretly think Leon was just fine, out there somewhere? I had a right to my own damn thoughts, didn’t I? Or had the factions blown that away too?!
Somehow keeping myself from lashing out at Myra for being such a bossy bitch, I heatedly plucked each of the letters I needed from the expanse of scrabble tiles and plinked them into place beside one another. Slowly, but surely, the ten letters laid themselves out in a sloppy little line.
“There,” I spat, pressing the final D into place with a huff. “Are you satisfied?”
I sat back and read my own handiwork.
LEON IS DEAD
I promptly burst into tears.
This was the last and only time, I knew, that I would or could bring myself to cry over Leon’s unmarked, unknown grave.
“Leon’s dead. Leon’s dead. Leon’s dead,” I repeated in a deep sob as Myra’s shoulder volunteered to act as a cradle to my hanging head. My bag of Bugles lay to the side, neglected and forgotten. Because right now, all I could do was cry and cry.
Soon enough, my racking sobs soon abated to the point that I could talk without hiccupping like the child inside me I thought was long gone. But I didn’t bother to speak for a while. Just a while longer, we sat together, as the great weight I had been forced to carry for the past week lifted off my shoulders, gradually becoming as light as a feather.
My subsiding sniveling was the only thing I could hear in the room until another sound rose into existence. Although the voices gradually approached us, it seemed to spring up on the two of us like a trap. People were approaching the gas station fast.
In an instant, we withdrew from each other and scrambled behind a nearby shelving unit. I was peering around the side, trying to catch a peek of the nearing voices but couldn’t see them yet. I could tell there were many of them. Several talkers.
“—you sure about that?” one distant, muffled voice said, skeptically.
“Shut the hell up. They got what they wanted. By now the bustards are gone.” A sharp and cynical female voice snapped.
“Then why are you looking over your shoulder?” the first voice.
“Come on, let’s just get see what’s in there and tend to Fred. We need to do it now,” Another softer voice.
Whoever they were, they were coming in. As my dread devolved into an intense fear, I could recognize that familiar, cynical cadence among the rest. It had to be, could only be, Tomoe.
Immediately, I whirled around and saw the place I had noted as a possible hiding spot earlier. A long row of cabinets, many hanging agape, sat at the back of the store.
I got Myra’s attention and pointed to the cabinets. She got it. Quickly and stealthily, we made our way to them. In a rush of quick thinking, I opened one cabinet and hastily bundled up my sleeping bag and pack into a ball, tossing them safely inside. Fortunately for us, this whole back wall of the store was lined in cabinets, most of which were devoid of space killing materials. The only things remaining within them were pipes and boxes of straws and trash bags.
Myra stashed her own various affects into one unit, closed it up, and then proceeded to stuff herself uncomfortably into another. I did the same, finding an empty nook to stowaway. All the while, the voices became closer and closer, threatening to enter the store and spot the two of us at any moment.
Within a dozen seconds, we were each scrunched up in tight but secure cubbyholes. I clicked the doors closed with myself tucked inside, effectively making me all but blind to what was going on in the store. The only thing I held in my hands was my trusty glock.
Just as I heard my cabinet click and I breathed a sigh of relief at our concealed conditions, there was the sound of the mysterious troop barging in, barely muffled by the thin cabinet door - we could hear everything going on out there. The clomping footsteps of several people swarmed into the gas station store, accompanied by their rushed voices and heavy tones, mingling together until all I could make out was the general buzz of agitated activity.
“Get Fred on that counter!”
“What? You think we can treat him here?! A gas station?”
“Show me a hospital within 30 miles and we’ll fly there.”
“Come on, need to operate quickly if we’re going to save any part of his forearm!”
I could almost hear my consistently fast heartbeat over the sounds of the scurrying people in the store. Since I first heard their voices, I could tell these people weren’t from a faction of any kind. They sounded far too young and... different. These blokes were almost certainly Malachi’s group, although I couldn’t hear Malachi among the voices. But for a very distinct reason from my gut, I didn’t dare leave the cubby and only listened intently, safely hidden from sight. As did Myra.
“You’re not Eraldo! None of us are at all prepared to perform surgery of any kind!”
“These bandages are soaked through.”
“Jesus, if I had known he was bleeding that badly-“
“I’ve watched Eraldo work. I think we just need to-“
“We need more bandages! Find something, Clyde!”
“Where are we supposed to find enough bandages to cover that hole?”
“Just get something from around this place that can just f-ing help!”
A set of feet detached itself from the crowd of other footsteps and drew nearer to my hiding place than any other. It was enough for me withdraw my breath and clutch the handgun closer to my chest. I heard a pause, then the footsteps continued beyond my cabinet for a few yards past where my head lay. The unseen guy, presumably Clyde, rustled around with something in a cabinet two or three units away from my own.
There were scuffles coming from where the front counter was, then a painful, shrill cry sent blood pulsing through my ears.
“Damnit, hold him down!”
“Come on, Clyde, we need something here!”
“I got some napkins!”
“Fantastic scavenging, Clyde.”
“Well what the hell else is there around?”
“Hold him DOWN! I need to be able to get a clear look at where the shrapnel is embedded.”
So this continued on for an unmeasurable amount of time. The sounds of an amateur operation on poor Fred dragged on for what seemed like an hour. His cries, half drowned in a stupor of pain, carried straight to my cabinet, nearly driving me insane until at long, long last, his voice died off and stopped altogether. Everything soon became silent as death in the station, and I could feel their collective exhaustion through the cabinet doors. A contagious, sickened feeling blanketing the entire room in its heavy desperation.
I could relate. Yes. But I still refused to emerge. Something told me, we weren’t welcome here. Something told me it was a horrible idea to reveal ourselves to them. Just because they weren’t the factions didn’t mean they were going to accept our intrusion a second time.
After what seemed like an unnaturally long amount of time, someone spoke, causing me to jump again. It was the cynical, female voice, the one I was almost certain was Tomoe.
“Well, we can’t stay here, that’s for damn sure.”
“…And where do you suggest we go now?” asked skeptical voice.
There was a pause. Then, confirming my gut instinct to remain hidden, she said with a quiet intensity that made me utterly freeze in my cramped space, “We have to find a way to make them pay. We have to find them. Especially the ones who spied on us after the ambush.”
“You think… you think the two travelers were sent in by Reds? They were actually spying on us before they made a final move?” the softer voice, now cracked up with weariness. “Malachi… Jacob… they’re all dead because…”
“Wake up, Catt,” Tomoe’s voice said icily. “Sometimes, when we let rats go on their merry way… or when we don’t swat shit covered cockroaches and flies… or when worst of all, we feed the vermin from our hands, they come back and use our mercy against us.”
The numbness of her statement sunk into the room with another moment of silence. Perhaps the me from months or weeks ago would’ve burst out of hiding and tried to right the wrongs and tell them we weren’t to blame. But fortunately, Leon was right. I had grown. And by now I knew how to make a simple decision and keep my life because of it (besides the fact that if I hadn’t made that stupid decision and put myself between Myra and that soldier in the city Walmart, she wouldn’t be here)(sometimes stupidity is rewarded).
“We need to rest. I feel light headed,” another voice broke the silence, followed by pockets of murmured agreement from others.
“Alright, we’ll rest here for an hour, then move on,” Tomoe said, as if she were the leader now. Sure sounded like it. “We need to keep to this road. With any luck, we’ll catch up to the spies since they were undoubtedly ditched by their employers. They’re probably still waiting in vain for an extraction truck somewhere on Schelling Road. And if it’s a possibility for payback, we can’t afford to let it slip past us.”
There was a pause in her run down, and for an unrealistic and terrifying moment, I believed Tomoe was staring straight at my safety cupboard. But then she spoke again and my crazed, imminent danger dissipated.
“Anyone opposed?” she asked everyone as an afterthought. The battered and greatly diminished group didn’t utter a peep. Some were probably already asleep. In any case, it seemed everyone in this gas station accepted Tomoe’s claims as undisputed truth.
In the resulting silence that indicated a sleeping band of beaten rebels, I ran through what this meant for Myra and I.
If it really turned out the way I thought it would, they would all set off in an hour or two, leaving us scotch free. They would search for us on this road and, if they proved as grudge motivated as they seemed, go as far as possible before the mountains gave way to the blood fields. And when they wouldn’t find us anywhere, that would be that, right? They would give up chase and go somewhere else.
Yes, yes. They would look. They would go down this road… leaving us behind in the gas station. If they would just leave, everything would be fine.
As of now, Myra and I kept safely tucked away as the troop slept around the store. The dreamy ambience of deep breathing and the occasional snore almost lulled me to sleep in the cupboard. Almost.
From time to time, there was the sound of a sleeper being awoken by the sting of recent memories, returning to attack them in the form of light dreams. There would be sound of one of them snapping awake, even calling out softly from the depths of their nightmare. But each time, sound would return to its sleepy equilibrium, indicating the woken dreamer had quieted and drifted back to sleep.
The mere idea of an uninterruptable sneeze or cough escaping either me or Myra was enough to paralyze me. My legs and back ached from my uncomfortable position. I wanted out of this endless quiet game. The anticipation of the group getting up and leaving – and me emerging like a restless ground hog from miserable hiding – was enough to send chills down my spine. Could we truly make it for an hour without any sound, any giveaway, any indication to them of our presence in here?
For a good amount of time (I still didn’t dare to open the cabinet a crack to check the time on my old fashioned watch), it continued in this quiet and subtly nerve-wracking manner. No one made a sound.
I heard another run of the mill sleeper come awake with a light and decidedly feminine gasp. I expected said girl to just take another few breaths, realize where she was, then go reluctantly back to the comfort and fear of restless sleep.
I could hear, however, this one get up slowly from the floor and walk around the store. What was she doing? Walking off the dream or looking for something to eat or…
I could sense the walker drawing close then moving away from my hiding spot, then passing over Myra’s spot like an unsuspecting, circling hawk. A pause in her footsteps. Everything else was still completely silent. Everyone in the troop should’ve been sleeping off the hour. So what was this one doing up and around?
Get back to bed. Go back to sleep. Stop looking around. There’s nothing to see here!
But the walker didn’t heed my mental warning and instead seemed to draw even closer to the long line of cabinets on the back wall. I could hear the way too close sounds of the girl doing… something. It took me a moment. Then there was the familiar clack of a tiny, wooden tile being picked up from the floor of the store, and I knew.
The girl had found a scrabble piece lying on the floor.