Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  He pulled to a rough stop at the gate and put the truck in neutral, letting it idle noisily as he climbed out. “Give me a second,” he said, reaching into the bed to pull out the bolt cutters. “This won’t take long.”

  Cole peered through the dirt-streaked windshield and asked, “Is this Lou’s place?”

  The wind pushed against his back as Keel rounded the front of the truck and cut free the padlock that kept the gate chained to the fence. “Yeah, but we aren’t stopping for tea and cookies…we’re just passing through.”

  “I always wondered where he kept the plane,” Cole murmured, watching Keel climb back into the truck.

  “You have a plane?” Jin asked, staring into the trees as they slowly crossed the property line.

  “A few, actually,” Keel answered. “But as you can imagine, they don’t go out much this time of year.”

  Jin said nothing, but Keel glanced over at the man, buried up to the neck in his thick winter coat. There was an unnerving quiet about the Asian that bothered him. He didn’t like quiet people. Quiet people had secrets, and secrets these days usually led to someone getting dead. Keel quite liked not being dead, especially after his last encounter with a handful of bullets. He kept an eye on Jin as they drove through Lou’s woods, and several minutes later, when they popped out of the trees, the man himself was standing on the front porch of the hangar office, a thermos in his hand, and a colorful checkered scarf wrapped around his neck.

  “Well,” Keel said, slowing the truck. “I guess we won’t be sneaking by.”

  “Will he stop us?” Cole asked, chewing on his thumbnail like it was a tootsie roll.

  He put the truck in park and nodded at Lou, who responded by raising his open thermos at him, then taking a sip. “I don’t know, guess we’re about to find out.”

  Lou stepped off the front step and sauntered toward them, but stopped twice to fix his scarf. The wait, which should have been less than ten seconds, seemed to take ten minutes, and each of them in the truck was beyond jumpy and anxious. But the older man smiled and rested his elbow inside Keel’s window when he did finally make it to them.

  “This cold is a bitch on my artificial hip, boys. Could have crawled across the yard faster,” he laughed.

  “Sorry to hear that, Lou,” Keel said, showing off his teeth when he smiled. Lou liked it when people smiled. He said a good smile could fix almost anything, but Keel begged to differ. A smooth drink, an easy woman, and a Harley could fix most of his problems. Smiles weren’t rated at the top of his list. In fact, he didn’t care much for them at all. Since the beginning of time, people had been hiding their pain and plenty of evil intentions behind the right grin.

  “Ain’t your fault this old man is falling apart, son,” Lou chuckled. He peered over Keel and looked at his passengers. “Who do you have here?”

  After clearing his throat, Keel introduced Lou to Cole and Jin. “Just passing through,” he added.

  “Seems you went the long way around. I’m assuming there’s a legitimate reason for that,” Lou said with a wink.

  “You’d be correct,” Keel answered with a nervous laugh. “Actually, I was hoping you might keep this on the down-low.”

  For a few seconds, Lou looked between Keel and the tree line they’d just emerged from. “Are you running from something, boys? Because if so, I shouldn’t have to point out the obvious, but them there tracks can probably be seen from space.”

  Keel’s stomach bottomed out. During the messy trek through the mud and snow, he didn’t think once about their tracks. “Well, after we hit the road, that shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

  “And if they come this way, what should I tell them?” Lou pressed, staring at the hood of the truck.

  Keel thought long and hard, because he wasn’t sure exactly what answer he should give. Lou was a decent man, but he had been swayed in the wrong direction by the Ark, just like Keel had. Unlike Keel, however, Lou wasn’t as easily replaceable. The plague had left a massive shortage in pilots. This was an advantage the older man used well, which was how he came to the current arrangements he had, living off-site, away from the prying eyes and rules of the Ark leaders. A lot had changed in the short time since Amanda’s death, sure, but Fern was still around, and Fern was a force to be reckoned with.

  “Well, Lou. I suppose you’ll tell them whatever you feel is right, won’t you?” he finally said, trying not to gulp in front of the man.

  The ticking of the idling engine was the only sound Keel paid much attention to as he waited for Lou’s reply. With his window rolled down, his thick trench coat, triple-lined with layers of cotton and polyester fill, was doing nothing to keep the cold out.

  “I tell you what, Keel,” Lou said, clearing his throat, and pushing off the truck. “I think I’ll go inside and take me a nap, maybe read me a book tonight. If someone else happens to pass by, I’ll be just as surprised as them to find the front gate wide open.” He winked then turned around, taking his time walking back to the front stoop. Lou didn’t glance back before he went indoors, but he did hold up his thermos in silent farewell.

  “Hot damn,” Keel muttered, slowly pulling away from the building and onto the paved road that led to the front gate. “I think lady luck is on our side today.”

  JIN

  It had been entirely too easy. They were on the highway and heading back down the mountain with no resistance, no armed guards, no roadblock, in a matter of minutes after leaving Lou’s place. The sun had fallen long before then, but a heavy moon lit up the land with a bluish surreal tint, as if they were lost in a black and white film. Almost instantly, they hit open, unobstructed road. But he couldn’t relax like the other two had. Keel talked to Cole, Cole talked to Jin, but he ignored the chatter. It was pointless, the small talk, because around the next bend, or on the other side of the next valley, something would be waiting for them, if not a person, then nature, or a blown tire. There was always something. And there was no such thing as luck. Life had proven to him otherwise over the last two disastrous years.

  So, with each turn the truck made, or with each new passing of an abandoned building, Jin’s body tensed, waiting for what was inevitably coming. And yet, as they closed the gap in a handful of hours, reaching beyond the point where Keel had found them, his stomach churned a bit less, and his mind became slightly calmer, because the truck was still running, and there was no sign of life outside the random bird in the air, a deer bolting across a meadow in the moonlight, and something smallish and furry scurrying away from the headlight beams and off the highway, into the safety of a hollowed-out tree.

  When Jin had to direct Keel where to go, and the lodge became a mere handful of miles away, he had less doubts about whether they would make it, and more so if they should. He didn’t know enough about the man driving the truck, nor what his intentions were, other than that he seemed happy enough to be free of the Ark, but for how long? And why? Why now?

  “Wait,” he barked, sudden panic overwhelming his senses. “Stop the truck.”

  Cole glanced at him. “How come? We’re almost there.”

  “Pull over,” Jin ordered a second time.

  Keel gave him a look that could melt the remainder of the snow on the ground, but did as told. He stopped the truck in the center of the road, put it in park and casually draped his arm over the steering wheel. “What’s up, man, need to take a piss?”

  Jin considered his words carefully before voicing them. “We can walk from here.”

  Cole balked at him. “What? At night? Are you insane? You remember the wolves, right?”

  Jin let his unfazed glare fall on the boy, and Cole snapped his mouth shut. “Yes. And I remember that only one survived.”

  “Just spit it out, man, whatever it is you want to ask me,” Keel snapped. He turned the cab light on, shrouding them all in a yellow light the color of dull straw. He raised his eyebrows at Jin, waiting.

  “I don’t give out trust
for free,” he said. Simple and to the point, Jin wasn’t expecting Keel to push for a more detailed explanation, but he did.

  “And you don’t trust me. What is it you think I’m going to do?” Keel pressed, tapping his thumb against the wheel. “I can’t exactly drag you all back to the Ark by myself, now can I?”

  “You could return there and tell them where we are,” Jin said, staring out the dirty windshield. Where the light beamed out from the front of the truck, the air was full of tiny flying things like bugs and dust. He watched the swirls of stuff fly about, and wondered how much of that shit he’d unknowingly inhaled during his four decades of life.

  “I’m not going back there,” Keel said, shaking his head.

  Jin turned to look at him, and studied his features, watching for a twitch, or another telltale sign of deceit. He found none. “If you were unhappy there, why not just leave?”

  Cole made a snorting sound. “You don’t just leave the Ark.”

  “Why not?” Jin wondered. “There was one guard at the tower. Just one. That doesn’t seem unmanageable.”

  “It’s not about one guard,” Keel said with a hollow laugh. “You see, you get a job at the Ark. You earn a place and then you’re inducted into their dirty work. Once you feel like you belong there, you realize you won’t survive out here on your own. That might sound like bullshit, but you try surviving a winter all by your lonesome – no food source, no running water – that’s hell for most of us.”

  “I did it,” Jin said. Until Riley fell into his woods, he’d been doing just that, surviving on his own. And he’d done fine. The first winter was tough, but he’d prepared for the longer days and colder nights. The summer was far worse.

  As an owl screeched in flight not far from where they idled on the road, Keel sneered at him over Cole’s bowed head. “Okay, what do you want, a fucking medal? Most of us need something eventually. The Ark provides.”

  “Then why leave?” Jin asked again.

  Keel scratched at his beard, and then rolled his eyes back to the open road. “I don’t think you’d understand.”

  “Maybe not.”

  After stretching his neck till it released a series of popping sounds, Keel glanced back at him. “Well, why aren’t you still out on the road, perfecting your loner status? Why are you with this kid, risking it all for medicine that’s not even for you?”

  Jin frowned at him. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “And so is this,” Keel said, gesturing out at the road. “Leaving the Ark was the right thing for me to do. I’m not going back there,” he added, licking his lips. “Never.”

  Jin nodded once, understanding, but still not trusting. With the fingers of his right hand tightly gripped around the door handle, he stared at the stardust floating through the night air, struggling with what to do. Lead Keel to the group, to Riley, in her delicate and ill state, or send him away into the night to fend for himself.

  “Look. I won’t be butt-hurt if you don’t invite me over for pie, but make up your mind…I’m wasting gas just sitting here.”

  Jin nodded, shifted in his seat, and then let go of the handle. “Drive.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  RILEY

  The moon lit the entire room with a dull light that was bright enough to read by, and also bright enough to see the shadows that shifted nervously in the corners. I watched them, bored. It’s what my world had become, those ghosts of my past, and there was nothing I could do if they chose to follow me. So, we watched each other. Someone who could have been Fin, someone who could have been Winchester, and a woman that I didn’t recognize, twisted in odd shapes against the walls, afraid to come out of the corners and into the center of the room. Afraid of me, maybe. When one of the faces took on a striking resemblance to Jay, I sat upright in the bed, startling Zoey awake and causing Drake to groan and turn onto his side.

  After a quick glance, I confirmed that he was still asleep, and rubbed Zoey’s face till she buried it back into the covers. The dog had gotten used to the visitors too, and only seemed to care about them half the time. Somehow, she’d been able to block them out. She was lucky.

  He was there, leaning with one shoulder against the wall, hiding from me in plain sight. Jay. Adrenaline flooded through my body and every limb and muscle began to tremble, but not from fear. Jay was dead, gutted and rotting in his camper somewhere under the heavy branches of a pine tree full of snow. He wasn’t really standing in my room, rubbing at a crack in the wall with his finger, staring at his feet, or picking at one of the holes in his body. But he was. He was there.

  “Go away,” I whispered, making the dog stir again. “Go back to wherever you came from.”

  Though he didn’t turn around, he heard me, I could tell. His hand dropped limply to his side and he cocked his head, waiting for me to speak again. The long and stringy strands of his dirty blonde hair covered most of his face, but I knew what it looked like, I didn’t need to see it again.

  “Leave.” From under several layers of blankets, I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, willing the shake in my body to stop before my teeth began to chatter. Still, Jay stood in his corner, ten feet away, his head tilted, his face downcast, listening to me. “I don’t want you here,” I whispered.

  Drake rolled again, and his arm reached out where my body should have been, and he bolted off his pillow. “Riley?” he mumbled, feeling around the bed. When his hand struck my side, he scooted next to me and dropped his chin on my shoulder. “I thought you weren’t here,” he mumbled.

  “I’m here,” I said, letting his arms go around me.

  He kissed the side of my neck and pulled the blankets up to my chest. “For a second, it felt like you were gone,” he said, sleep drawing his words out into a messy slur. “But I didn’t feel alone,” he added.

  That’s because we aren’t alone, I thought.

  “Come here,” he whispered, pulling me down with him onto the same pillow. He tucked the covers around me, and let Zoey settle by our feet. “Sleep,” he said, kissing the top of my cheek. “You need the rest.”

  “What if I can’t? Rest, I mean?” I watched the shadow in the corner shift, and absorb back into another time, or another place, and stared at the empty space where Jay had been. “What if none of us can ever rest again?”

  “Shh,” Drake cooed, pulling me so close to him that it was hard to breathe. I coughed into the blanket until my lungs gave up, and then settled into the space below his chin, listening to his heart rate slow as he fell back to sleep with one of his legs hooked securely over mine, an arm on my hip, the other tucked under the pillow.

  I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Instead, I watched the room change as the moon slowly made its way across the sky, dragging its glow with it, adjusting the angle of light that poured in from the window. The room dipped in temperature, and I knew one of the corners was occupied again. I couldn’t wait to leave the lodge, and wait till the others had long passed me on the road, so I could throw a match inside the building and let it burn. It was time to let go of my ghosts, to let them move on and leave me be.

  An hour or so after the moon had crossed over the lodge and dipped low in the west, Zoey launched off the bed with so much force that it jolted me awake. She ran to the door and pressed her nose against it, sniffing loudly at the crack. Several times she turned around and whined at me to let her out, and since Drake was happily stuck in the throes of deep sleep, I crawled out of the bed and wrapped myself in a blanket.

  Once in the hall, she stood awkwardly in the dark, waiting for me to catch up. “Didn’t you pee before bed?” I asked her, being careful to keep my voice low and my steps light on the wood floor. She darted down the stairs faster than I could, and was waiting impatiently for me at the kitchen door. When I let her out, she jumped off the porch and into the mush that used to be a snow drift. “Hurry up, will ya? It’s cold out here,” I hissed.

  The tops of the trees along the eastern si
de of the valley were beginning to glow. The black of night had turned a warm blue, and if I stared at the same spot long enough, there were hints of pink. Dawn had come.

  “Well that’s great, Zoey. Looks like you and I are the first up today.” She huffed at me.

  “Not quite.”

  I spun around, startled to hear Connor’s voice in the open doorway. “Jesus,” I blurted, clutching the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  He stepped onto the deck in his socks and shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweats. “I heard you get up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I wasn’t asleep,” he said with a small shrug.

  We watched the colors change behind the tree line for a handful of minutes, waiting for Zoey to do her thing. When she climbed the deck stairs and brushed by my leg, Connor bent to scratch her head.

  “She hasn’t been this happy in weeks,” he said. I nodded, not sure what to say to him, certain he hated me after my confession the night before.

  After following her back inside, Connor closed the door and turned on the small camping burner that had been set up on the counter. “Coffee…or Jin’s miracle tea?” he asked.

  I watched him dump water into a teapot and gestured at the instant grounds next to him. “Coffee. Thanks.”

  “Yep.”

  “How mad at me are you?” I asked, watching him fiddle with miscellaneous items on the counter. He pushed aside a towel, wiped up something sticky, and moved a stack of baby bottle pieces from the strainer to a bowl.

  With a heavy sigh, he finally turned around to look at me. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Liar,” I said, smiling, even if he couldn’t see it in the dim lighting of early morning.

  “I’m not mad at you, Riley…I’m just tired, you know? What’s happened to us…all of us…it’s exhausting.”

  I nodded, struggling with the desire to reach out and touch him. Just holding him would make us both feel better, but I didn’t move. Zoey rushed out of the room and disappeared up the stairs, not bothering to wait, and I stared at Connor’s back as he set two clean mugs next to the burner.