by Ike Hamill
The person in the tattered clothes looked up and Lisa decided that it was a woman. A fraction of a second later, she realized that she knew the woman, or at least had known her at one point.
“Corinna?” Lisa asked.
The woman’s eyes, staring at Lisa, went wide. When Lisa had first met Corinna, she had been just a girl about Ashley’s age. Now the woman was older than Lisa. She stood, swaying on her feet and batting Ashley’s hand away when the young woman tried to steady her.
“Who are you?” Corinna asked.
“It’s Lisa, and this is Ashley. Robby’s daughter?”
When Corinna swayed on her feet again, she didn’t push away Ashley’s support. She even allowed Ashley to guide her over and help her sit down.
“How long?” Corinna asked. “How long has it been?”
Lisa moved to one of the other chairs.
“I don’t have any idea,” Lisa said.
Corinna told her story. The first part of it, they had heard before. For most of the people in the cave, it had just happened. For Corinna, those events had taken place decades before and her memory was a little foggy. Lisa was both fascinated and afraid when Corinna talked about her journey north on the highway. Corinna described the pull of the woods and how she had sung to herself and learned to ignore it.
Ashley looked up at Lisa, but neither of them interrupted.
When she talked about her return to Donnelly, Corinna’s voice grew sad. She had expected that it might be difficult to track down the others. Her mission had begun before they had known where Merle’s bunker was located. All she could do was try to retrace their steps.
“Everything was so old,” Corinna said. “Everything looked like it had been abandoned for years and years. I couldn’t figure it out and I kept counting the days on my fingers. I left, drove south, found the Dianne-monster, found the cave, and came back. But everything was falling down and overgrown. The building where I used to dry wheat had all but collapsed.”
She shook her head.
“I lost a ton of time,” Corinna said, dropping her head. “For a while, I figured that I should do the same thing that everyone else did. I found a deep basement under the old mill, I stocked it with supplies, and I hid. I must have stayed down there for two months and I thought I was going to go crazy. Eventually, I decided that I would rather die up here than live down there. That’s when I found out what had happened to the sun.”
“What happened?” Ashley asked. Her voice was a husky whisper.
“It stopped.”
“Stopped?” Ashley asked.
“It stopped moving in the sky. I came up and found that the sun was up in the sky, just parked there.”
Lisa remembered what Adrian had said. Listening to his story, he had seemed a little crazy. Lisa had only half believed his account. Now, hearing it corroborated from someone hundreds of miles north, it was hard to deny.
“At first, I was so confused that I didn’t know what to do. The plants were the same way. They refused to grow. Some of them just fell over and died. New ones took their places. A new me took my place too. I was a bit crazier, but I was able to survive.”
Corinna’s eyes were focused on something far beyond the walls of the kitchen. The woman was alone even though she was still sitting there, across from them. Her vacant stare sent a chill through Lisa.
“I got the sense that the sun was watching me, but I refused to go back into that old mill. That’s when I started living here. Eventually, I came to an agreement with the sun. If it would just go down at night, I would light the darkness. Eventually, he agreed.”
“The fire?” Ashley asked.
Corinna nodded.
“Until all the gas went bad, I made trips up north, looking for that damn bunker. I found their vehicles, eventually, but I couldn’t find the entrance. They must all be dead, because they never came out. All this time, they never came out.”
“And you don’t know how long it has been?” Lisa asked.
Corinna shook her head. “When the sun doesn’t move in the sky, but you’ve eaten a thousand meals and rested your head a thousand times, how long is that? When all the clocks stop and it’s never night, how can you say how long it has been?”
“Since the sun started moving again, how many nights have passed?” Ashley asked.
“A few dozen?” Corinna said. “I really don’t know.”
Lisa sat back and swallowed. Her mouth was dry and her throat clicked.
“All that time and you haven’t seen anyone else?” Ashley asked.
“I’ve been hearing voices,” Corinna said. “Lately, even more. They yell to me. I thought I was yelling back, but recently I began to think that I had forgotten how to make noise.”
“You’re making noise now,” Ashley said.
Corinna nodded. “Yeah. I thought so.”
“Wait,” Lisa said. “What did these other voices sound like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it a man’s voice? A woman’s? Were they young? Old?”
“Oh,” Corinna said. “A guy’s voice. Couldn’t tell the age.
“When did you hear it last?”
Corinna shrugged. “I’ve lost track of time. It was over by the greenhouse. I remember that.”
“Show us?”
While they walked, Ashley told Corinna a very brief version of what they had experienced on their journey. They had to walk in single file. Corinna had carved out a very narrow path for her routine and only one person could fit at a time. Lisa ducked through a hole in a wall and passed through a tunnel of dense trees.
A path split off and led down to the right.
“That’s where I get my water,” Corinna said.
“All those jars on the porch—what are they for?” Ashley asked.
“That’s part of my arrangement with the sun. It reflects inside those jars and bounces around even when the sun goes down. It allows the sun to feel like it’s still having an influence on the world.”
Ashley moved her head in an exaggerated nod. She clearly thought that Corinna had gone crazy. It was probably true.
“Also, it keeps the flies out of the house,” Corinna said. She turned and kept walking.
Lisa smelled the earthy potency of the greenhouse before they even reached it. The thick, dark soil and rich life came on the wind. When Corinna ducked through the doorway, a little flock of birds took flight and darted through one of the broken panels farther down. Chickens came running toward them. Corinna took something from her pocket and scattered it for the clucking birds.
“I keep them safe from the foxes and raccoons and they let me steal eggs sometimes,” Corinna said.
“How do you keep the animals away?” Ashley asked.
Corinna tapped the side of her head and laid a finger across her lips. Ashley nodded her head in an exaggerated way again.
Corinna led them to the far end of the greenhouse. They passed between rows and rows of vegetables and a thick patch of strawberries. Lisa reached out and touched a stalk of corn that was so tall that the top was bent over against the glass. Lisa felt an ache in her chest, thinking about her garden at home. For the first time, she realized that all the strains of tomatoes that she had perfected over the years were gone. The butternut squash that was resistant to beetles might come back if the seeds in the cellar were still good, but what were the odds of that? So many of the hybrids that she had cultivated over the years would never grow again from seed. They had to be cloned to be any good. Corinna’s garden looked healthy enough, and it certainly appeared productive, but Lisa’s plants were like her children and her children were certainly dead.
“It was over here,” Corinna said. She was whispering now as she stood by a window that had been replaced with plastic sheeting. Through the translucent sheet, Lisa could see the shadow of chickenwire on the other side.
“Someone yelled to me. I thought I answered, but maybe not,” Corinna said.
Ashley was already duc
king under a planting table, trying to make her way over to the door. When she reached it, she tugged on the handle to no avail. The thing was sealed shut.
“How do we get out there?” Ashley asked.
Corinna shook her head. “Oh, no. That’s the sun’s territory. We don’t go out there.”
Ashley glanced to Lisa for help.
“Corinna, the sun is back to normal now. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now?” Lisa asked.
Corinna went to a table of seedlings, scattered in tiny jars, waiting to grow large enough to be culled and then planted. She brushed her hand over the little leaves. It was something that Lisa had shown Corinna a long time ago. Starting seedlings indoors was okay as long as they were introduced to a little stress now and then. They had to be prepared for the wind and rain slowly. Bending their little stalks with a light brush of the hand would help them build their plant muscles.
“If we make the sun mad again and it stops moving…” Corinna started.
“We won’t,” Ashley said. “I promise.”
Corinna gave Ashley a skeptical look. To Corinna, they must have seemed like time travelers, coming out of a forgotten past. In her time all by herself, Corinna had gone a little crazy and invented her own mythology about how the world worked. In a way, it would have been surprising if she hadn’t.
“When you go out into the sun’s territory it stops moving?” Lisa asked.
Corinna turned to her and reached out. Lisa forced herself not to shrink away from her.
“Yes,” Corinna said. “Have you seen it too?”
“Not personally,” Lisa said, “but down at the cave, Adrian got caught outside when the sun stopped moving. He lived a long time alone before he was reunited with the group. They’re back now. They all just moved outside again.”
“Yes?” Corinna asked.
Lisa decided to stick with the truth, but maybe stretch it a little to help Corinna break out of her mythology.
“Yes. That was what Ashley was telling you earlier. When we arrived, they had a guard posted beyond the line to see if it was safe.”
Corinna took this in, turning it over in her head. It was clear that she wanted to believe.
“I have a thought about the other voice that you heard,” Lisa said.
Corinna looked at her with wide eyes.
“You remember how Ashley said that Tim left us in Pennsylvania? I believe that was him that you heard out in the sun’s territory. That’s why we want to go look.”
“Oh,” Corinna said, looking down at her plants again. She hugged her torn shirt around herself tight and rocked a little. “That could be bad.”
“Let’s go find him,” Lisa suggested.
Corinna looked frightened by the idea.
“Or Ashley and Penny will go find him. You and I will go back to your house, okay?” Lisa asked.
It took several moments for Corinna to process the idea and consider it from every angle, mumbling the whole time.
“Yes. Better get him out of the sun’s territory. Yes,” Corinna said.
Chapter 109: Ashley
Rain was just starting to fall. Ashley huddled over the scrap of paper that Corinna had drawn for her. A drop of water had already muddled some of the lines.
“If we get lost, we’ll go out to the street, make it back to the park, and circle around from there,” Ashley told the dog.
Penny didn’t look concerned, at least not about that. The dog wanted to run off and chase scents, but Ashley had a length of rope looped around her neck. Corinna had warned them not to stray from the map. She had said there were traps, and the look in her eyes had been deadly serious.
The neighborhood was a maze of trails cut through the overhanging bushes and trees. So far, they had passed the birdbath, the stone wall, and the jungle gym. Those were the landmarks that Corinna had indicated amongst her squiggling lines. Once they got to the wild grapes, they would be outside of Corinna’s territory and into the sun’s territory.
Ashley glanced up and peered between the branches and leaves at the clouds overhead. It was beginning to rain harder. She hadn’t seen rain like that since they were beyond the Outpost.
“I don’t think that the sun’s territory is going to be very sunny,” she said to Penny. With a gentle pressure on the rope, they continued.
Up ahead, across a yard that was overgrown with a raspberry thicket, Ashley saw the grape vines. There was a path that led straight to it, but the map told her to take a different route.
With a sigh, Ashley rolled her eyes and followed the map. It was silly, but Corinna’s weird superstition had been contagious. She was actually beginning to believe that going straight across could be dangerous.
Penny followed dutifully and they struggled through the thorns and eventually found their way around. Looking back across the way, Penny narrowed her eyes and managed to see something hidden in the bushes. She couldn’t tell what the box was, but stretched from it was a thin wire that extended across the path she had nearly taken.
“That must be Corinna’s trap,” she told Penny. Of course, it was equally likely that there was nothing in the box except some weird fantasy that Corinna had imagined.
Ashley turned back to the grapes and found where they had overgrown an iron gate. The other side was the sun’s territory and, according to the map, they would find the other side of the greenhouse. Ashley put her shoulder to the rusty iron and pushed the gate open enough to squeeze through.
When they did, Ashley blinked, surprised by the sun. She looked up and saw sunlight peeking between the clouds. A chill ran down her back and she shook it off, mad at herself. She closed the gate.
“There aren’t supposed to be any traps out here, but you be careful,” she told Penny. “Now, where’s Tim?”
It almost looked like Penny understood her. At the sound of Tim’s name, her ears went up and then her nose hit the ground.
“Tim?” Ashley yelled. She didn’t like how small her voice sounded, but she ignored it and yelled again. “Hello? Tim?”
She followed Penny northeast and saw the reflection of the sunlight off of the greenhouse glass. They had found the other side.
“Tim?” she yelled.
Ahead, Penny was sniffing around a puddle. The sun went behind another cloud.
Ashley saw a footprint and ran to it. It was larger than her own foot. Penny ran and Ashley chased.
From a distance, Ashley saw a tent. Her heart dropped when she realized that it wasn’t Tim’s. She slowed to a walk, wondering how cautious she should be. Corinna was still in her head, whispering about the dangers of roaming around in the sun’s territory.
Penny was still trotting in that direction. Her enthusiasm hadn’t been stifled.
“Wait,” Ashley said to herself. “He left his tent in Pennsylvania. Maybe he got a new…”
She didn’t get a chance to finish the thought. Penny began to run and the tent jiggled as someone unzipped it from the inside. As soon as he stepped out through the flap, Penny knew it was him. Then, she was running too.
“Tim!” she shouted.
He stood straight up, startled.
“Ashley? Penny!” he called.
A giant smile broke across Ashley’s face as she watched him run to the dog and drop to his knees. Their reunion was still frantic when Ashley arrived.
“You came!” Ashley said. “Wait, did you beat us here?”
Tim looked up, smiling as the dog licked his face.
“I don’t know—how long have you been here?”
“We just got here today.”
Tim laughed. “Then, yes, I beat you here. I kept thinking I had to go faster to catch you. It took me a day or two to realize that I was being dumb, and then I tried to find you guys, but you were long gone.”
“So you didn’t go insane?” Ashley asked.
“No! Not at all,” Tim said. “I mean, better safe than sorry, but I think I was just having a bad day, you know? Then, I spun that into worry that I might
do something that I couldn’t control. It was a terrible feeling so I decided… Well, you know.”
“I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Where is Lisa?” Tim asked. Suddenly, he forgot his reunion with Penny and stood up, concerned.
“She’s with Corinna,” Ashley said.
Tim’s eyes went wide.
“Corinna is here? I thought this place was deserted.”
“Yup,” Ashley nodded. “She has been living alone here for a long, long time.”
“She was…” It took Tim a moment to find the right words. “Was she outside in it the whole time?”
Ashley nodded. “Just about. She’s pretty old.”
Tim sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “Is she as pissed off as Adrian?”
Ashley frowned. “Maybe not pissed off, but definitely a little…” She trailed off, not wanting to be unkind.
“Let me get my pack and let’s find them,” Tim said.
He disappeared into the flap, not bothering to wipe off his feet. Ashley immediately guessed that he was going to be ditching the tent. Penny followed him in and the two emerged seconds later with Tim dragging his pack. One hand always found the top of the dog’s head. She was pressed against his leg. They both wore the same smile.
“Corinna has been living here the whole time?” Tim asked. “I’ve been searching all of Donnelly, area by area. I can’t believe I didn’t see her.”
Big fat drops of rain began to fall as Ashley pulled the scrawled map from her pocket.
“You’ll believe it when you see her territory,” Ashley said. She showed him the map.
“Hello! We’re coming back,” Ashley said.
Tim was holding Penny’s leash as they came around to the path up to the front porch.
Ashley saw the curiosity on Tim’s face as he looked at all the hanging jars of water.
“Hello?” Ashley yelled again. Her thoughts returned to Tim—the look in his eyes back when he had been crazy. Ashley practically ran up the steps, regretting leaving Lisa alone with Corinna. She had seemed so old and harmless…
“In here,” Lisa called.
