by Zachery Nims
Chapter 17: On the Road
Source: Journal
Name: Mark Boggs
My seat hummed a sweet lullaby to the engine’s vibrations, purring my body into a slumber. I was half awake or half asleep, day tripping in between worlds that played tricks on my putty like mind.
Silvia was driving the diesel-powered car and I glanced over at her from time to time trying to make sense of the emotions that gripped at me. Some civil war was being waged inside, that my mind wasn’t capable of dealing with. Sally grabbed my cold hands and blew hard to warm them up. I hadn’t noticed but they were shaking profusely and soft purples and blues painted my palms. She was rubbing them in between hers, a trick that I taught her to keep her own hands warm when she was younger. Her small little fingers turned so white in the winter.
Silvia looked over and her hand lashed out at the heater like a viper cranking it up to full blast. “My god! I’m sorry. I… I didn’t even notice. I was lost in…” she trailed off.
“Thought… yeah…” I said understanding exactly what she meant. The heat slipped through my collar and sleeves, sliding along my legs, caressing my bare skin with warmth.
Within the hour Bell and Sally were asleep in the back. “Gothamsreckoning,” I said smiling for some reason, like some sick joke had been played on me that I just now understood.
“I know…” she said sighing. “Believe me, I didn’t pick the name. It just… found me… Kind of fitting now though don’t you think?” she said.
“Yeah, it has the whole vigilante ring to it,” I replied. “So you were Gothamsreckoning all along,” I said shaking my head.
“I wanted to tell you… I didn’t know if… I guess I’ve grown a little guarded,” she said stumbling around like a shy teenager. I began laughing out loud. “What?” she said flinging her hair from her eyes so she could see me fully.
“You know you were supposed to be my big payday… Well, now that that’s out… how much does revolting against the government pay?” I said. She looked at me and smiled. She then turned back to the road and focused.
Bell began coughing and wheezing a bit in the back seat and Silvia’s eyes flared with concern. It only lasted a second but I could see the motherly instinct take hold. I didn’t want to pry but I had to know. “Where’s Bell’s father?”
Silvia turned sharply to look in Bell’s direction only to find her deep in sleep. Her shoulders relaxed a bit and she talked soft, “I had been on the run for so long. It felt like a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. Trust was a fairytale that rich parents read to warm plump children on cold nights. I was trained and molded to survive, to hide among the places that society had left to rot and die in the shadows. I built my empire in the darkness, waiting for a moment to be able to present myself… I remember I used to watch the movie Terminator 2 and think of myself as John Connor leading the revolution. It gave me hope when I was deceived; it gave me strength when I was tortured. I learned to stop trusting people, to turn off emotions, to die inside… that’s when I found Bell.”
Silvia looked back again to make sure she was still sleeping. “She was so tiny and innocent. A perfect baby girl wrapped in a rich white woven blanket with a pink floral trim.” Silvia’s eyes began to water. “This perfect little angel was everything I had never known. She sat silent and wide-eyed and innocent. Her eyes were filled with life and hope. I envied her. For a moment I hated her… mainly because she made me hate myself. Blood stained dumpsters and broken glass surrounded this perfect baby girl and for a second I thought... leave her. I mean, I wasn’t but a child myself and I was so cold and calculated that here sat life in front of me and I was thinking about what a helpless burden she would be. A burden... Can you believe that?” I sat motionless knowing that it was a rhetorical question.
Silvia began crying and I rubbed her back trying to comfort her. She cleared her throat and began again. “I turned to leave and then it happened. She laughed. Right then and there something changed in me. I knew I couldn’t leave her there. I knew that I couldn’t let that darkness engulf her. I promised myself that I would raise her to believe in fairytales and prince charming, the grass on the other side of the hill and heaven. I had let myself die inside and I didn’t want the same fate for that innocent little child.” She began smiling now. “Then the funniest thing happened. She saved me. Her belief in the just and good revived me. She breathed life back into chambers that I had forgotten and locked away. She was my key to salvation. I am nothing without her. I don’t want to remember what my life was like before her. I don’t know what happened to her mother and father but I saw the blood. There is still a sick part of me that is thankful for what happened to the parents. Some selfish part of me that lives in the last bits of darkness left in my soul... the part that is a survivor and will survive whether I want it to or not.”
She wasn’t sick. She was human. I knew of the selfish demons that plagued us all and mine was delighted in the fact that she had never had a husband. This woman just poured her soul out to me and I was only concerned with the idea that she had never had a child with another man and maybe even hadn’t been in love before. I knew it was sick but something about being the only man in a woman’s life was comforting. I shook my head bringing myself back to the moment at hand.
There was nothing I could say that would help her in this situation. I just sat silent, consumed with my own thoughts. She was so strong. I could see strength coursing through her veins.
The car hit a bump on the road and we swerved just enough to wake Bell up. “Mom, are we almost there?” She said.
“A couple more hours honey.” She rubbed her eyes and climbed over the center console and into my lap. She was wearing Minnie Mouse pajamas that draped off of her wrists like a sorcerer’s cloak. I instinctively put her under my seatbelt and wrapped my arms around her for protection. Bell placed her arms under my own so that it looked like mine were her abnormally large arms and then began going, “RAWRRRR,” like some sort of dinosaur waving them back and forth.
She giggled and smiled looking up at me to see if I thought she was funny as well. My lips curled up and that was all she needed. She then turned my hand over and started singing little songs while dancing her fingers down the cracks in my rough palms.
My conscience weaved in out of reality as I looked out the window. “Your hands are rough compared to my mom’s... I bet...” her voice faded out and the trees blurred into a barrage of pastels. Dull yellows, warm reds, and amber oranges brushed against my window. I don’t know how long I was out but when I came to, Bell was sleeping, her head resting against my chest, rising and falling with each breath.
I had been sweating profusely but luckily Bell was dry. She looked like an angel cuddled up on my lap. “She likes you a lot,” Silvia said, her voice a mouse like whisper. “I have never seen her take to someone so freely. You are her shining knight.” Silvia paused for a long while but I could tell something wanted to escape her throat. “You know... That night that you rescued her.” She stopped again, but continued to force more out. “That was where I found her. Somehow she knows it... She sneaks off there sometimes. If you wouldn’t have been there...” She could barely speak at this point and I could hear her getting choked up but she pushed it back down. “I never got to thank you for what you did,” she said.
“I thought your thanks was the torture.” I said. She laughed out loud at that one.
“Oh gosh...” she let out a relieved sigh. “I remember thinking how funny you were even on the verge of being beaten to death. I’m glad you hunted me.” Right then her focus changed. “Shoot, running really low on gas. Let’s get off the highway and refuel.”
She took the next exit and traveled a quarter of a mile down a dirt road surrounded by thick woods. The car kicked up dust in its wake that spun around in turbine like dust devils. She turned the engine off and we went
to work on getting the fuel cans out of the trunk.
Silvia was pouring the third five-gallon drum into the tank when I heard something off in the woods. It startled me so much that I grabbed Bell by the waist, picking her up and placing her safely on the opposite side of my body. I crouched down and moved my focus in and out of the depths of the brush. Then I saw it out in the distance, an enormous buck, its antlers glistening in the sun as it strode through the thick woods like a king. I placed my hand over Bell’s mouth and I pointed the direction of the animal out to her. She struggled at first but then went tense when her eyes locked onto it. She was mesmerized and I could feel her heartbeat racing with excitement.
I had forgotten the wonder that animals brought at that age. It had been so long since I myself had seen a wild animal. “What is it doing?” Bell said as quiet as she could. The buck spun his head in our direction and perked its ears up at attention. It waited for a while and then dipped its head down. Just then a beautiful doe came out from behind him as if she was given the all-clear signal, followed by a fawn. “It’s a family!” Bell was getting so excited that she could hardly contain herself. “Can we pet them?” I shook my head no. I pointed at my eyes and signaled for her just to watch. I was almost at her height and was able to speak to Bell on a more intimate level.
“When I was your age, they used to keep wild animals in Zoos and Aquariums. We took babies just like that one from their mother and father and raised them in cages twice the size of our car. We didn’t know the things that we know now.” Bell looked up at me with her big pupils. They looked like portals that were open for impression.
“What do we know now?” She asked.
“That animals are meant to be free just as we are. That they are more like us than we ever used to give them credit for. They are meant to have families, love, grow old, roam, and dream.” Bell turned back to the family and watched but with a smile on her face now.
I had to give it to Charles, VEG really did change the face of the earth for more than just people. He made augmented reality so realistic that Zoos and Aquariums could stay open without imprisoning animals. Once films like Black Fish, The Cove, and other controversial documentaries came out about the mistreatment of animals the people rallied for their freedom.
Charles took it upon himself to revolutionize Zoos and Aquariums. He saw that the animals were mistreated and lonely. That they lived sad existences, and even if they wanted to give up and die we kept them alive with medicine, force-feeding them to make sure they paid off what they were worth in entertainment value.
He teamed up with the best robotics specialists and engineers in the world to create life-like renditions of every animal you could think of that children could interact with. He used architectural programs to put kids swimming underwater with a school of whales or dolphins, flying with eagles, and running with cheetahs. Museums became so interactive and fun that they saw more profit than they had ever had with actual animals. There wasn’t food or medical expenses other than for animal rehabilitation. They brought back the true animal lover employees again and we took another “giant leap for mankind.”
People could still pay to go down and swim with the whales in Central America, but they were in natural habitats that the whales chose for introduction. They knew that their kin would be exposed to humans at some point, so they wanted to teach them who we are at an early age.
The difference with these introduction environments was the animal has the choice to visit. They are free. There was no coaxing or enticing with food to domesticate. It was their choice, and some people would spend months down in Central America without seeing a single whale.
Charles had the ability to see our potential greatness. He always quoted Stephen Hawking’s ideas on Aliens in interviews. Every time he freed captive animals, rehabilitating them into the wild, he would say, “If aliens ever come down to earth, we only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.” Then he goes on to say, “How can we expect aliens to treat us with compassion when we treat animals that we feel are inferior like this?”
VROOOMMMMMMM the car roared as its engine started. The family of deer jumped with fright, all running in the same direction at lightning speed. “Mom!” Bell turned around screaming. Silvia hopped out of the car oblivious to the moment we just had.
“Time to get going,” she said slapping the roof of the muscle car. Bell sighed and grabbed me by the hand, guiding me to the car. She was obedient, the complete opposite of her mother. I loved them both.
