Well, I amended the statement to myself. The Mickey Mouse ears were sitting in my former bedroom. I doubted I would ever see them again or my room for that matter. Blinking back tears that sprang to my eyes I held back a sniffle. Of course, Zach heard me and turned his head questioningly back at me.
I shook my head trying to indicate that everything was all right. Although he kept looking back at me, I didn’t let anything else show. We stopped for lunch just after we crossed the Smith River. The highway had veered away from alongside the beaches and roamed through pasturage land. We even found a small herd of buffalo. There were five all told, grazing on the land as if nothing was out of place.
Zach stared at them for a long time. “I’ve never seen a buffalo before,” he said, at last. “How are they going to survive?”
“The same way we will,” Kara said definitely. They both looked at me strangely when I deliberately opened the gate to the pasture that the buffalo were in, and blocked it so that it would stay open.
I shrugged. “They can’t stay in there forever.”
After we resumed our travels, I can honestly say we didn’t see anything else strange. There had been a lot of pastures along that stretch of highway, in between the road and the ocean but it slowly changed back into pine and scrub, stunted by the fierce Pacific winds. We passed a prison, a large sprawling place with warnings placed strategically along the highway, but hey, I didn’t know where we were going to pick up a hitchhiker. There was the occasional building interspersed by the occasional sign, but it seemed as empty as the rest of the world.
I suppose I should have known that was a cue for something different to happen. That was beginning to be a pattern. Just when everything calmed down, surprise.
My legs were beginning to cramp from being bent over and I couldn’t shift enough to make them comfortable in the little trailer that was never meant to carry a full grown adult. So I said to Zach, “Can we please stop, before my legs rot and fall off?”
Surprisingly he let the bike glide to a stop without argument. I jerked frantically as one leg came back awake. I was trying not to embarrass myself overly. Unfortunately, I did fall out of the trailer onto a grassy shoulder and laid there groaning until the pins and needles in the leg stopped being painful. I looked up and grasped that Zach and Kara weren’t paying attention to me at all.
Then I turned toward the outskirts of what I assumed was Crescent City. The road had split into a four lane, two lanes going in each direction. The skies were blue with a sporadic cloud to liven things up. A wind was blowing from the north and the temperature was around seventy-five degrees. Other than being cramped in the back of our little convoy I was relatively happy. The term ‘relative’ being relative, of course.
Then I saw what they were looking at with awe-stricken eyes. There was a bulletin board. It was a big one, facing the south bound highway. Whatever it had on it before was indeterminable. Now it was painted white. The paint cans were still on the little walkway at the base of the sign. As a matter of fact, there was a ladder still propped against the supports of the billboard. But the really interesting part was that over the white paint was a set of large, hand painted red letters. It announced in block lettering: YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
“Well, there you go,” I said, inanely. That familiar bad feeling washed over me and I nearly bent over to be sick because of it. This time it wasn’t merely a bad feeling. A wave of images appeared in my head and nearly overwhelmed me. I blinked them away and almost groaned with the pain.
Zach and Kara turned to me as if they were both performing the movement in complete synchronization. I stared at the sign and then at them, while I was still rubbing my leg, swallowing to contain the instant nausea I felt. I motioned at the sign. Below the huge red letters was another message: Mile marker 47.
“See, what were we worried about?” I supposed contemplatively. “We’re not alone.” Then I giggled and it sounded half-hysterical even to me.
Chapter Ten – What Next?
Who’d a thunk that a billboard would cause such a ruckus? Who would have thought that I would be the paranoid one? I mean, I was the one who didn’t want to be alone. So here was a sign that said, ‘You are not alone!’ I should have been cheering and doing a little jig of happiness. Heck, I could even see dried handprints on the ladder from where the person had climbed down after painting the red words. And btw, I didn’t think red was a good color choice. It sent a message and I thought I was the only one getting the message. Couldn’t anyone but me sense a possible Freudian slip there?
“It’s another thirty miles or so,” Zach said, pointing at the map.
“It’ll be dark,” I said. “And I want a bike.”
“So we go tomorrow,” Kara added positively. “Full daylight. No shadows.”
“They’ll see us coming a mile away,” I protested.
Zach sighed. “So we’ll go in the dark, then.”
“Then we don’t know what’s waiting for us,” I stated gloomily. I took the map from Zach and spread it out flat on the highway. One of my feet held down the corner so it wouldn’t blow away. Then I jabbed with my index finger. “Look, there’s nothing there.”
“There’s the Redwood National Forest,” Kara said as she looked down at the map. She pointed to something about a quarter inch away from the approximate area. “There’s a small town right there.”
Zach crossed his arms over his chest and grimly surveyed my face. “What are you afraid of, Sophie?”
I ground my teeth together. I knew I had stuck my tongue out at him before in a fit of childish pique and now I wanted to say sarcastically, ‘Well, duh,’ to him as if we were both twelve years old. Instead I gathered my thoughts and carefully answered. “The last time I got excited about seeing someone else, it didn’t go well for me.” That was okay. It sounded very adult like. But I spoiled it when I added, “Do I need to mention the one we don’t talk about? The one you buried? The one whose head got left on a grill to terrorize us?”
There was an instantaneous flash of something in Zach’s chocolate brown eyes. Was that guilt I saw? Whoa. What did he have to feel guilty about? “Not everyone’s a psychopath, Sophie,” he said deliberately.
“How do you know that that message,” I poked my finger in the direction of the sign, “isn’t from him? How do you know he didn’t pass us one night and get ahead of us? How do you know he isn’t setting a big, fat, el sicko trap for us so that we can all be tied to the ground together?”
Kara shuddered. “Surely he was too injured to do that,” she said. “He was burned badly and he fell dozens of feet down that bluff. There was blood.”
“If it was him burning up the towns behind us,” I said, fighting to keep a level of calm in my voice. “Then he couldn’t have been quite as bad as we initially thought.”
Zach looked at the sign again. He studied it, seeking some kind of answer. “I don’t think he could have gotten in front of us. I don’t think it’s him at all. It’s someone else, like the man who left the note.”
We had told Kara about the note from J to Marie and she nodded her head hopefully. I could see by looking at them that they both wanted to see other people. They still had hope in their souls. But I, I who had been touched by something incredibly evil, was too wary to be hopeful. I had learned that Kara and Zach were trustworthy but because of Zach’s statement about my weight loss, I was hard pressed to trust them implicitly.
The firefly pixies trusted them with me. Me? I was learning that I had become neurotic over the course of a month or so. The next thing that would happen would be that I would start seeing pink elephants dancing in the moonlight. Then again, with all the new creatures, who knew what I would see.
“There are others out there,” Zach said with a sense of optimism that made my insides twist. “Kara, you, I, J, and him.” He waved at the sign. “There’s someone else, too. It’s more than probable. This person is reaching out to us. Or maybe not to us, to anyone who’s still around.�
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“Okay,” Kara said. “Scenario one. It’s someone new who is reaching out to survivors like us. Subset A. He or she is harmless and just wants to be friends. Subset B. He or she wants to control other people or even to hurt them.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” I said wryly.
Kara sighed. “Scenario two. The whackjob did get in front of us and it’s a trap. Why warn us then?”
“Why did he leave the skull on the grill?” I couldn’t help asking and I was instantly sorry when Kara winced. I didn’t want to be the one to bring up the fact that we were existing in a world without police, without security, and without the safety we had taken for granted…before.
Zach was staring at me again. Those dark brown eyes were like a laser guided weapon, locked on my features, blasting right down into the deepest depths of my soul. I didn’t like it. It seemed like he could read my thoughts and knew every one of my fears. “I can go ahead,” he offered, and I knew he was talking only to me. “I can go and check it out. I’ll sneak in and then when it’s safe, I’ll come back and get you. If it’s him, then we’re out of here. We’ll head east for a while and then back down south. If it’s not him, then I’ll see what they’re like.”
I cast a longing look toward the ocean. Where we were standing was about two or three miles away from the actual sand of the beach. There was an odd feeling in me that made it so that I didn’t want to go any further away. I liked the coast. I liked being here. We were here and here was where the firefly pixies lived.
I didn’t want to play devil’s advocate. It made me sound just as paranoid as I felt. But I got the impression that Zach and Kara were expecting a last bastion of civilization from some unknown group of people. There would be more of us and ta-da, we’d have a fun little group that got along great and everything ran as smooth as could be. If the message wasn’t from him, the burned man, then it was from someone else.
And we didn’t know someone else. Furthermore, we couldn’t trust someone else. Why put ourselves in danger if we didn’t have to do that?
“When will you go, Zach?” I asked him, an insidious thought forming in my head. I didn’t even want to think the thoughts that were forming a plan inside my brain. “We should think about this and make certain it’s as safe as possible for you.”
Zach examined me with his piercing eyes. I kept my face as blank as possible. Did he realize what I was thinking about? Could he read my features? Did he know the level of obstinacy that I was capable of maintaining? Even Kara was aware that something was up, as she looked from Zach to me and then back to Zach again.
“I could use a break,” Kara said suddenly, trying to break the ice that had formed like a rapidly moving glacier. “I could stop at a hospital and get another shot of that steroid that helps out my knees. I’ve been pushing it a little too much.”
“And I’m tired,” I announced suddenly. I was tired. I wasn’t lying about that. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find that my father was snoring beside me in his sleeping bag. I wanted to climb that stupid mountain because I knew in my heart that I would never be climbing one again. I wanted to go to sleep and get these disturbing thoughts out of my head. I wanted those feelings of dread that were assailing me to go away and never come back. If only I had made Dad not go…
Well, crud, I said silently. Why do I have to keep thinking about that? But I was well and truly tired. It was going to be weeks before I was up to a reasonable strength again. I needed to get on a bicycle and start working on building myself up. I needed to take vitamins and focus on protein.
I needed to protect someone else besides myself for a change. The question I asked myself while Zach was making up his mind whether or not I was playing him was could I do what had occurred to me to do?
Zach nodded curtly and inadvertently answered my silent question as well. I could do it, provided I listened to that little inner voice that was telling me something oh, so very important.
We got back on and in our respective seats and continued into Crescent City. It was the largest city I’d been in since Springfield and everything was about the same. There were the intermittent vehicles that had crashed into whatever as their particular drivers had vanished into nothingness, leaving only the clothes they wore behind and no one to steer. One building had burned to the ground; the cause was unknown. But it was an isolated burn and nothing around it was impacted. There weren’t any more signs indicating a mysterious survivor who wanted to make contact with others.
We found a set of yellow pages in a house and then found an orthopedic clinic for Kara. There was a hospital with the correct offices right off highway 101. She got what she needed and then some for future use. By the time we were done with that we found a place to scrounge for dinner, and then we were on the southern side of the city. Just before the road started to climb into some hills, we found a secluded house set in between the highway and the beach.
Not without a small amount of amusement I noticed that Zach had conveniently forgotten to stop to look for a bicycle for me. Perhaps he thought I hadn’t noticed or that I was extra tired. Or maybe he thought I was caving a little.
Hah. Zach didn’t know me. The seclusion of the house was going to work out very well for my budding plans. I checked in the garage and found a tricycle for a toddler. Zach followed after me and couldn’t resist a snort when he saw the small three-wheeler. I feigned complete innocence as I turned to look at him.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, playing at ingenuousness as well.
“Weapons,” I answered honestly.
“We’ve got the crossbows,” he said. “Knives, too. It’s enough.”
I didn’t agree. There was an axe in the garage that I took inside. Kara gave me a sideways glance but I didn’t care to let her in on my plan. The previous occupant had left a collection of firearms that weren’t good for anything except being paperweights. But he also had a few daggers on the wall of his small den. They were sharp so I took them.
Then I found a bed and went to sleep, waiting for Kara to wake me up for dinner. When I came around, Zach was sitting beside the bed in an armchair. I nearly jumped but I relaxed myself in time. His eyes rested on me attentively. For a moment I thought that perhaps he had stroked my cheek, right over the place where the firefly pixie had marked me, but I might have been dreaming.
Again, I was concerned that he could read me all too easily. I said, “Hi.”
His lips quirked. “Hi. Kara’s got some food ready. Chili today. With crackers. There’s some cheese that had stayed cold enough, too.”
“I’ll start doing my fair share soon,” I said, half groggily. More than sooner was what I said on the inside.
Zach folded his hands across his lap. “Neither of us expects you to act like you’re a 100 percent, Sophie. You’re barely well enough to ride in the trailer.”
“I’m okay,” I protested. I was well enough to put together a sneaky plan. Even thought I had just woken up I was ready to put a little flea in Zach’s ear. “I think we should stay here for a few days. We should consider what’s going to happen next. We could go back up to where 101 intersected with 199. We go up 199 until we can cross over the Klamath Mountains, and then head back down a parallel road. We come down to where the road cuts back over to the coast, near Eureka. Then we can head back up 101 to see what’s going on with the mile marker.” It came out sleepy but well planned.
Zach looked surprised. Maybe he had been expecting a sleepy grunt and demand for food. “You’ve thought about it a lot,” he said.
“You bet,” I snapped. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “If it’s a stranger who painted that sign then he might not be expecting us from the south. And I’ve thought of something else.”
“Yes?” he asked expectantly.
“If that sign wasn’t painted by him, then whoever’s at the mile marker is a big target for a psychopath.” I looked him fully in the face to let him know I was serious. “We should have burned the s
ign, because there’s a good chance that he’ll see it. We have an obligation to this stranger to warn him or her. That person deserves a warning to be on the watch for him.”
Zach nodded. “I had hoped he would give up.” His face became grim. “I don’t want to have to kill him.”
I crawled out of the bed and adjusted my t-shirt. I had found some clean clothes in the dresser. It was from a woman who was only a little larger in size than I was at the moment. I didn’t want to think about her. I didn’t even want to think about the photographs on the dresser that I had placed facedown before I could see the smiling faces contained therein.
“And if we run into him?” Zach added deliberately. “We’d be going in the right direction. We’d even be giving him a few days to catch up.”
I shrugged. I could do it if I were forced. My desire to protect them would allow me to live with that. I didn’t want to do it. But if it came down to a decision between Zach and Kara and that unnamed man who had attacked me, the selection was simple. If that meant I had to pull the trigger on the crossbow, then I would do it.
I went to the window of the bedroom. It was a smaller bedroom and the small window looked out toward the beach a quarter mile away. The master bedroom had a deck with a decisive view of the Pacific Ocean. It also had two sets of empty pajamas in the king sized bed. The smaller bedroom had been a guest room or perhaps a place for their adult children to stay in when they visited. It had been still neatly made and inviting.
Zach stayed seated and I could feel the heavy weight of his gaze on me. I had some more plans to set into motion but I wanted something else first. “You knew what I looked like, before,” I said without looking at him and it wasn’t a question. “Before you ever saw me.”
“I wondered,” he started and then stopped. Then he cleared his throat and started again, “I wondered if you’d caught that.”
“You knew,” I said again, refusing to be set off my course.
Sea of Dreams Page 10
