by Justin Clay
The water feels deliciously cool against my submerged feet, and I revel in this moment of bliss. The sunlight warms my face as I look up to the blue sky filled with white cloud passing ever so slowly by. June had laid down yesterday for a long time discovering odd shaped clouds and naming the things we saw in them. It’s the little things you have to enjoy to keep some level of sanity, I suppose.
June had told me she saw these beautiful flowers beneath the hill and she wanted to go and find some to keep. So I let her go. That had been some time ago, and the worrying about her is just settling in. Shouldn’t she be back by now?
I quickly remove my feet from the water and dry them against the grass before replacing my boots. I string them up and grab my backpack and bow and arrows. I approach the edge of the hill where I had saw her travel, and start to call her name. Nothing…
I look downward to the valley below, where the river from the lake I just had my feet in runs like a snake coiling about foresting trees beyond. The trees are obscuring my view. I need to get closer; so, I go with my gut and begin the descent.
I watch a flock of birds erupt overhead when I hear a powerful gunshot in the distance, hidden from view. Oh no, June, I think to myself as I’m scanning the rocky terrain around me for my sister. I find her footprints but I couldn’t find anything else beyond them and they lead me straight the edge of a rapid river. She wouldn’t dare cross this — not only does it look too deep, it’s much too fast for her fragile body to get across. Not to mention the mossy boulders cobbling across the river are shiny and slick —there’s no way —
Then I hear her scream my name. I look up, and perched precariously on one the larger rocks amidst the river is my sister. How the hell did she get all the way up there? June…
“I’m coming for you!” I yell. “Don’t move! I’m coming!”
I can barely see her flushed face from this angle, but I abandon my senses and begin to maneuver my way to her rock to rock. Skipping along them is fairly easy enough until I get to a boulder against the one where June is pressing herself against tightly is too far to get to by jumping. I’ll have to swim.
Swallowing, I jump into the water, feeling its icy temperate consume my skin and my teeth are already chattering by the time I manage to start moving my arms outward. Swimming against the push of the river is not easy, but I somehow manage, grappling for the moss growing on the boulder before. My hands smack against the smooth boulder, running off and I’m knocked back by the force of the River; I’ve angered Her now. This isn’t good.
Come on! Grab it Rian! I scream as I lunge my arm out, hoping, praying and I snatch a handful of the greenery, pulling myself upward. The freshwater sloshes into my mouth and ears relentlessly, and spluttering, I roll myself onto the boulder at last.
Removing the soppy wet hair hanging in my face, I look to see June is peering at me, her reddened eyes desperate. “Rian!” she pipes. “Help me!”
“I’m coming!” I yell, and throw myself up the boulder, climbing along its nooks with the moss keeping my grip until I reach her and let go.
“June! What the — How the hell did you get up here!?” I bark, furious.
“I — I don’t know!” June cries over the roar of the river. “I — I thought I saw some of those flowers up here — ”
“And you thought to get them! That’s crazy! If we get out of this alive, don’t EVER do this again! Do you hear me!?”
“I’m sorry Rian,” she tells me, sobbing and I sigh. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“I’m trying to figure that out,” I tell her, looking beyond us. The river curves here then there and continues on straight, and I’m wondering where it will end…Because it has to at some point and at this altitude there has to be waterfall, and a calmer body of water below that…But can we survive the fall?
“There’s no way we’ll push against the force of the river to get to dry land,” I say to and I’m not exactly sure why, since it’s not helping the situation, but I do anyway. “So we’re going to trust that the river leads us to somewhere calmer that we can swim out of.”
“We’ll be okay?”
“I don’t know, Rian,” I say, not wanting to lie to her in could be last moments. “But I think we will be.”
“I trust you Rian,” she tells me and my heart sinks. For June’s sake, I hope this works.
“Okay, whatever you do, once we get in the water,” I tell her, “don’t let go!”
“Okay, I promise.”
“Good, now see if you get down to that rock, just there…”
June nods, and moves her way nimbly down to the boulder and I’m quite impressed. She’s a lot better at this than I am apparently. I shimmy my way down the boulder, and reach the other one. I tell June to hold on to me and she does so, before we enter the river.
Again the water is ice cold and sinks into my bones. Holding onto June, and keeping her afloat is not the most easy task. June is coughing up water, and wavering. She’s panicking. I tell her to not fight it. The river rushes us around bend after bend, until I feel myself getting sick. A patch of hair slaps itself onto my face and blow out from my lips so I can see again. But it’s all too much to take in. The sights are too blurry.
We’re moving way too quickly now. We have to be approaching a waterfall. And when the river throws us around — that is exactly what I see. The river drops off about ten feet from us just along a dangerously large boulder, out of sight.
“J-J — June don’t look!” I tell her and watch her wince her eyes closed as suddenly, the back of my body collides into the rock and my head rolls back hitting something hard. I cry out in pain, and gulp in a mouthful of water doing so. Then there’s weightlessness so abrupt, I gasp. We’re falling and when we hit the water below I know no more.
PART 3 THE BEGINNING
26
THE HUCKLE’S FARM
I AM DRIFTING OR at least I think I am. There’s a light. It’s not very bright, but it’s enough to awaken me. It’s difficult to put my thoughts together. I don’t know where I am, but I do know the darkness is receding. Feeling is returning to my limbs; I can feel life in them again. I’m alive again. My eyes flutter open and I shut them.
The dim ceiling above me is swirling; it’s nauseating. I can hear sounds, distant but they’re there. I think it’s voices…talking maybe. With I eyes still closed, I realize it’s a radio playing. It’s music. An actual song is playing…It’s been so long since I’ve heard any music. I don’t remember the last time, actually…It must have been before…all of this.
But it’s not any song from present times. It’s an older song by the sound of the woman’s soulful singing. It’s an old jazzy tune. I try to open my eyes again, and this time my surroundings are more stable. I’m in a bedroom, I think. The walls are a light green and the bed I’m in has white and mint green covers. I look down and see that I’m in different clothes; well it’s not really clothes so much as a silky undergarment. A long slip. But it’s not too revealing, not that I have that much to reveal anyhow. I pick up the cover and swing my leg over until I’m sitting upright on the edge of the bed.
There’s a window just beside my bed, and I’m staring through it, to the rural land outside, aglow by the rising sun. So it’s morning…How long have I been asleep? Wait…How did I get here? What happened…I try to remember, but there’s…nothing. I sigh, decide I might as well get up. Standing, I notice someone has laid out my clothes on a wooden rocking chair furnished with a matching green pillow. Whoever it was even cleaned my boots…they almost look brand new. Who was this?
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” I hear a woman’s voice speak, and I turn to see this small lady with grayish blonde hair pulled back, wearing a simple blue dress. A dress…Haven’t seen one of those either in awhile. What’s going on? Am I dead? Was the end of the world just all a bad dream? Please, say it so.
The lady is smiling warmly at me, her dimpled cheeks rosy with color. “I washed your clothes and lai
d them out there for you, but I’m sure you already noticed that…You must have been on quite the journey from the looks of them, and when Lucas brought you in…Poor thing; you were so weary looking, but now…You seem much better; how are you feeling?”
So much information all at once, it’s hard to process. “Good, thank you,” I tell her as kindly as I can, but I feel like I’m not sincere enough. She doesn’t take any mind, and in fact grins even more.
“No, need to thank us, dear,” she says, revealing such white teeth. “In times like these, we have to take care of one another…Especially, you young folk; you’re our future…We need you to live…Oh sorry, I don’t mean to go on so; you must be famished…I have breakfast ready downstairs, whenever you’re ready…Well, I’ll leave you to get dressed.”
“Um, I’m sorry,” I say, and she stops to look at me curiously.
“Yes, dear?”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I say. “But who are you? And where is my sister, June? She’s a small girl with golden hair and — ”
“No need to fret, hun,” she says, waving a hand, sensing my sudden panic. “Your sister, she’s just fine…She’s actually downstairs eating as we speak…And oh goodness me! I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself, what manners…My name is Mary Huckle, and you’re in our home…My husband, Hayes, he runs the farm we have here, and our son, Lucas helps.”
“But…What about the Infected? How do you keep going on with a normal life?”
“Oh…The Infected, well, we deal with them when we must,” she tells me becoming serious. “But we haven’t had much problem with them, being all the way in north Idaho…And we are thankful for that…It’s our farm that has kept us going, kept us alive.”
“I see,” I tell her. “That’s great…It’s a great thing your family is doing…And thank you…Thank you for saving me, and my sister.”
“Oh, don’t thank me dear,” she says. “You’ll have the chance when you see Lucas soon enough; he’s the one that pulled you out of the river, just about three miles from here.”
Once I’m dressed in my own clothes, I feel a little bit more like myself again. I take a moment to look around the bedroom, taking in what I can of their life here. The chest of drawers and small polished tables here are covered with many framed pictures of people I’ve never seen. There’s a girl in a great deal of them that reminds me of the lady I just spoke to, Mary; they have the same fair hair and blue eyes, and then I see a picture of them together standing in front of what looks to be the front of this house.
The house is a two-story building that’s quite quaint and painted a warm tan color on its wooden walls and shingled with black roofing. The windows have a faint red bordering about the panes. I wonder if she’s their daughter. She has to be. But Mary didn’t speak of her. I wonder if she…if she is dead. What if this had been her room, while she was living? I shake my head, incredulous; what am I thinking?
There are trophies on the tables too — beauty pageant trophies. She must have competed them, and a great deal of them are first place. She is quite pretty. Leagues ahead of me, but that doesn’t take much really. I gently touch some of them, the pictures, thinking. There’s a stuffed bear, an old yellowed thing that’s somehow still smiling and has both eyes intact. It reminds of the elephant my sister had; she had lost it when we left Colorado somewhere.
My stomach suddenly growls, alerting me I need to leave. I watch the reddish sunlight speckle the bear a minute before I turn away, walking out of the room. I follow the hallway before it leads to deep green carpet staircase, which eventually takes me to a kitchen where I was hearing the voices. Sitting on the countertop just before I get to the table is a battery-powered radio that I had heard earlier…So I hadn’t imagined it. It isn’t playing anything now. Just outside the kitchen is an oval table and sitting at it is my sister and Mary with a tall skinny man with salt-and pepper hair I take to be Mary’s husband and a boy that’s around my age, his hair dark and tasseled. He looks at me with widened blue eyes: the eyes of his mother.
“Rian!” my sister yells, and jumps from her chair, running. I hug her, picking her up, feeling her warm tiny body against mine. My eyes are clenched shut and I’m crying again. I sit her down.
“You’re alive and safe,” I tell June, joyous.
“Of course I am,” she says. “But thanks to Lucas…Here.”
“Yes, thank you, Lucas,” I tell the tell the boy, the boy who’s wearing a simple white T-shirt. The boy who saved me and my sister’s life. Not being one wanting to be in debt, here we are, forever in this boy’s.
His cheeks blush ever so slight as he smiles, dimples showing like his mother. “Oh, you’re welcome, Rian,” he tells me, and I think that June must have told him my name. “I’m glad I came across you too when I did…Was on a hunting trip with my father; we had run into a bit of trouble, but we managed to get you both out just fine.”
“What happened?” I said.
A line appears along his mouth. “Oh, nothing really…Just some Infected appeared.”
“Lucas, let’s not talk about that at the dinner table,” she tells her son, suddenly very strict.
“I’m sorry mother,” he says, frowning.
“Good, now then…Rian, you need to eat up…You’re skin and bones…We got eggs scrambled, bacon from our last few pigs, and I’ve made biscuits from our remaining supply of wheat. Now go on…Don’t be modest; eat your fill.”
I look to her husband, who has remained incredibly quiet through our conversation, and he seems almost indifferent, but there’s just something in his wrinkled face that makes me think he doesn’t necessarily approve of me “eating my fill.” Regardless, I grab the plate placed at the empty seat, which I suppose is mine, and pile on what I think would be appropriate. Two steaming biscuits, a plop of bright yellow eggs, and two strips of bacon. The smells are truly intoxicating. I dig in.
“Thank you,” I tell them after finishing.
Mr. Huckle tells Lucas he has chores to be done out on the farm right away, and Lucas says he’ll see to them. But it doesn’t seem like he really wants to today. Maybe, other days. But not today. He wants to spend time with me, I think. Or that’s what I can understand from how many times he has looked at me. In fact — I don’t mean to sound full of myself, because I know I’m totally drop dead gorgeous — but he couldn’t take his eyes off of me. I guess sitting directly across from him had something to with it. But if he wasn’t looking at me, he was staring down at his food too intently, as if thinking to himself.
“Hey, Rian?” Lucas asks me standing to his feet.
“Do you want to come with me? Your sister can come to…I can show you around the farm?”
I look to Mr. Huckle and he shrugs. “Sounds fine to me, just so long as you do work Lucas, and treat our guests here kindly.” He smiles at me and my sister, and it’s only then I feel as if he wants us here too.
“Sure, sounds like fun…But June do you want to do that?”
“I think Mrs. Huckle was going to show me more about gardening today,” she says.
“Oh, yes,” she says, happily, “we’ll have our own bit of fun, won’t we June?”
She nods quickly.
Lucas’s face lights up. “Great, it’s settled then! I’ll show you the way.”
“Before you leave, Lucas,” his mother says, “I want you to get our guests’ dishes and yours and put them in the sink, so we can wash them later.”
“You’re able to wash dishes?” I ask Lucas as we’re walking out of his house into a sunlit field. I know asking about such a once commonality sounds silly, but nowadays, such a thing is rare with water being so precious. He nods and explains:
“We have well water here that we use sparingly,” he tells me, “and if we don’t want that…There’s a natural spring up a ways, that I go and collect water from…We can go swimming there if you want sometime.”
“Yes!” I say, very excited. “I haven’t done anything fun in forever…”<
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“Great,” he says. “We’ll do that tomorrow…Since tomorrow’s my day off from chores; we’ll make a day of it…But today, I work.”
Lucas’s life of work on the farm in the morning consists of first feeding the animals. And man, do they have animals. Starting with their house cats named Marbles and Muffins. Marbles is a tabby orange male, who is surprisingly fat, and Muffins is a slender gray female feline that seems a little friendlier than the aloof Marbles. Lucas said Marbles doesn’t really like women so much, and they haven’t been able to figure out why. Marbles earned his nickname by being obsessed with, yes you guessed marbles that Lucas had when he was child, and Muffins, well she liked to er — eat muffins.
