In shock, I only vaguely remember everyone saying their final goodbyes to Samara, John and Mark as I sat in the truck. Indigo told me later that Samara had bounced back quickly from her ordeal and had told her to thank me.
As wrapped up in my own little ball of misery as I was, I barely registered the others getting into the cargo hold of the truck. Finally, Sonny climbed into the driver’s seat and handed me my pistol and parka. I put on the parka mechanically and slipped the revolver into my pocket as Indigo, true to her word, climbed in and settled next to me.
She didn’t say anything, just handed me a rag for my cheek and then put her hands in her lap. Looking in the one remaining mirror on the passenger side of the cab, she said to Sonny,
“You should be able to go straight back.”
“Okay,” he said, putting the truck in reverse and gently pressing down on the gas pedal. He made it on the first try and turned the truck around in the gas station’s lot, stopping at the exit before glancing at me.
“The freeway is to the right?” I knew he was trying to distract me and I was grateful.
“Yep. Left would take us back to the bridge, and we don’t want to go there,” I said. “Beyond that, I’m going to be fairly useless. Luke and his atlas are what I relied upon for navigation.”
“It’s a good thing he left this up here then,” Indigo said, holding up the battered road atlas Luke had taken from Walmart, on the day that seemed so long ago.
God, has it really only been two weeks since we left Fort Carter? I asked myself. It seemed like a year.
“Excellent,” Sonny said, and pulled the truck to a stop. He quickly perused the atlas before heading off.
We reached the on-ramp in quick time but to my surprise, Sonny passed it and turned under the freeway at the next cross street, then kept barreling up highway 140 as fast as he dared push the truck through the icy night.
The truck cab was cold given the lack of side windows. I had been prepared for this, of course, having driven like that during the day, but at night it was accentuated by the plunging temperatures. I zipped up the bottom part of my parka hood to cover my lower face and found myself wishing that I had some ski goggles to help keep the wind off my eyes.
“This road will lead back to the freeway and allow us to avoid a big semi-circular loop up by Fitchburg and Leominster,” Sonny said. “We’ll get on the 2 just past Leominster, and take it to 202, which will take us up to Concord, New Hampshire. From there we can take I-93 north to where we are headed.”
“Looks like you don’t need a navigator after all. I was thinking we should dump the truck sometime before we get too close to Drake Mountain,” I said. “We don’t want to make it too easy for the Chinese to track us when they find the truck.”
“Good thinking,” he replied. “There’s a town I remember being about 10 miles before Lincoln, where we turn off to head for the ski lodge, Compton or Campton, something like that. We can find a place to hide the truck there.”
“Campton,” Indigo said, shining a light on the atlas in her hand and looking at the interstate 93 corridor through New Hampshire. “How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”
“If my memory is right, and we don’t run into any more trouble, I think we should get to Campton inside of four hours.”
“I’m not sure how realistic an expectation of not running into trouble is,” I said. “Concord is a decent-sized town, so we should probably plan on there being a Chinese military presence based there. That means they could be in the area.”
“You’re probably right. We probably shouldn’t count on getting to Campton until well after daybreak. Damn, it’s cold riding up here,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “I should have told you I was still too weak to drive.”
“It’s colder now than it was this morning,” I acknowledged. “But at least you have gloves. I drove without them today and my fingers are still feel freezer burned.”
“They aren't turning black or anything are they?” Indigo asked with real concern in her voice. “My Uncle Joe got frostbite in his foot a few years back and they had to cut off three of his toes.”
“No, nothing like that,” I said, smiling.
Their small talk had managed to put what had just happened with Chen to the back of my mind and I thanked fate, or karma, or whatever the hell had helped me to find these people.
“This weather should give us an advantage though, right?” Indigo asked. “Being cold and all, China is a warm place, right? So these Chinese soldiers won’t be used to the cold.”
“Not really,” Sonny told her. “China is a big country, and it has all of the same climate bands that the United States does. While soldiers from South China might not be acclimatized to the cold, those coming from Manchuria will find that the weather is very similar to home at this time of year.”
“Oh,” Indigo said, her teeth chattering.
I shuffled closer to her for warmth, unable to work up the courage to put my arm around her.
“Sonny, I was sure glad to see your girlfriend today.”
“Huian hasn’t been my girlfriend for a long time now,” Sonny replied. “I wasn’t all that happy to see her because it meant that she was putting herself at risk for us.”
“If she hadn’t showed up when she did, we would have been screwed,” I said.
“We still might be screwed. When that decimated patrol is located, the search for us will heat up big time. It was foolish of her to come to our rescue, if what she says about her and her group...”
“The Shadow Cloaked Seven,” I said, making my voice as ominous as possible.
“Yes, them,” he said, apparently missing the joke. “If what she says about them and what they are trying to do is true, then, as much as I hate to say it, they are much more important than we are in the scheme of things.”
We rode on in silence as the headlights, miraculously still working after all the punishment the truck had received, illuminated the tiny snowflakes that began drifting down from the night sky.
12
I have to admit, I don’t remember much of the drive until we hit the freeway just outside of Leominster. I remember talking to both Sonny and Indigo, but the specifics of our conversations are not as clear as many of my other memories from that period.
I was probably in a state of shock. Probably? I was definitely in a state of shock. I vaguely remember Indigo pulling a first aid kit out of the glove box and cleaning the wound on my cheek. Even the sting of the alcohol she used did not seem to cut through the fog in my brain.
One thing that did rattle around my brain was the knowledge I had just killed another person with my bare hands and, although I know there had been no choice, it was still something that weighed heavily on me.
If things went to plan we would reach our destination, but it was hard to care when I couldn’t get the sounds of Chen choking to death out of my head. My hands shook for a long time afterwards. It was definitely not like the movies, where the hero would by now be cuddled up with the girl of his dreams. Well, the girl of my dreams was beside me, and we were kind of cuddled up, but more through the need to keep warm than anything else.
After a while, the shock began to wear off and I even got a couple of hours of fitful sleep. When I awoke again, Indigo was drowsing and I found my thoughts drifting hopefully toward the future. The prospect of getting to the safe haven and settling down into some sort of normalcy was exciting for me, and I began to fantasize about how it might go down and what it might be like there.
Of course, things could never go back to normal. Normal was gone; hell on earth was normal now. I guess I had one advantage over the others. My normal had already changed forever before the Chinese released the Pyongyang Flu virus. By the time the adults started dying, I had already become accustomed to adapting to new situations.
Despite the fact the heater was blazing, the lack of windows made certain the cab of the truck was like a refrigerator. As much as I wanted to kee
p Indigo snuggled against me, by the time we got to the freeway, I was leaning forward in the passenger seat, my hands cupped around the heating vent on my side. The snow was falling heavier the further north we travelled, and I began fearing it would make us easy to track from the air.
It’s funny how the same fears which had plagued me while we were walking through the woods after losing Sarah would return to unsettle me as we drove north nearly two weeks later. I thought of Sarah, who’d made sure we all had fun during her last night on earth. Such a waste.
From her, my mind drifted to the others we had lost, Arthur and Karen, and those we had left behind, John, Samara, and Mark. The last three were still alive when we left them, and I hoped they were still okay, but regret at leaving them still ate at me even though, before the confrontation with Chen, I thought I had come to grips with that choice. A fresh wave of anger at the Chinese washed over me.
“Are you all right?” Indigo said, leaning forward beside me. I guess she had noticed my clenched jaw. “You seem down. Is everything okay?”
“Nothing is okay!” I snapped, instantly regretting my tone. None of this was her fault. “Sorry, it’s just that everything sucks, and by everything, I mean everything.”
“Oh, come on now,” she replied. “When life gives you lemons, what do you do?”
“Throw them away.”
I had never liked that dumb saying.
“No, you don't, you make lemonade,” she said. “If you throw them away, you end up with nothing. At least with the lemonade you have something.”
“What if life doesn’t give you any sugar to make your damn lemonade?” I said, probably a bit more gruffly than I meant to. “Then you’re just going to have a glass of sour lemon juice.”
“Wow,” said Indigo. “I wish Luke was here to say something profound from a video game and make you feel better.”
“He does have a knack for doing that, doesn't he?” I said, finally cracking a smile.
“Hey, you have a Chinese guy here, words of wisdom can flow from my mouth too, you know,” Sonny joined in. “Lao Tzu ... Confucius ... fortune cookies, pick your poison. What’s bothering you, Isaac?”
I took a second to think about it.
“Sadness over the ones we lost, I guess ... and also Samara, Mark, and John ... oh, and not to mention killing someone with my bare hands. That about sums it up, I think.”
“Look, I know it doesn’t help, but you said it back at the garage. Chen wasn’t going to quit until one of you was dead, and I, for one, am glad you came through.”
“Me, too,” said Indigo, as her hand found mine. Sonny glanced at us, and I felt myself blush before he quickly looked back to the road.
“Alright, how about this for words of wisdom then ... ‘Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break,’” Sonny said.
We were all watching the road. The headlights lit up the snow as it drifted to the ground and I was thankful that it wasn’t me driving. Luckily, it wasn’t too thick on the road though.
“Who said that? Confucius or Lao Tzu?” Indigo asked.
“Neither one,” Sonny laughed. “It’s from Shakespeare. It means that you should talk about what’s eating you up inside before it consumes you.”
I told them about Sarah then. Both of them had heard me talk of her before, Indigo more so than Sonny because I had told her of Sarah’s death during one of our long conversations, but this time, I told the whole story. From the first time Luke and I had seen her, held captive by the looters, until she had been killed by the pack of feral dogs.
I don’t know whether it was the stress of what had happened earlier, or whether it was just plain exhaustion, but by the time I had gotten to the dog attack, I was on the verge of tears, and they started to flow as I described our group tending to her in front of the fire.
“None of that was your fault,” Indigo said, putting her arm around my shoulder. “I know it hurts to lose people, especially those people you feel responsible for. But sometimes, especially now, bad things happen, and it’s not your fault.”
I nodded and took my hand away, and she put hers into her lap.
“What about Karen?” I asked her. “I don’t just feel responsible for her; being the leader, I was responsible for her, and yet she’s dead, as well.” I glanced over at Sonny. “Because of my decisions, I endangered all of you in the back of the truck and we are lucky that only one of us was killed by the fire from that roadblock.”
“Everybody in the truck, front and back, knew that we were going to be at risk when we left the academy,” Sonny said. “Karen more than most, because her boyfriend had just been killed. She told me she didn’t think we were going to make it, and sadly in her case, it turned out to be prophetic.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at me. “Instead of thinking to yourself that your actions cost Karen her life, you need to understand that those same actions saved the lives of the rest of us.”
“But she trusted me to keep her safe, you all did.”
“No, don’t you see? That’s where you’re wrong,” Sonny said. “We trusted you to try, nothing more. We accepted the risk when we loaded up into the truck. We could have stayed at the academy if we chose to, but if we had, we’d now be dead at the hands of the Tigers or the Chinese.”
“About that,” I said, running my coat sleeve across my cheeks to dry up the tear tracks which were quickly icing over. “When Chen was trying to get into the academy, he said you owed him and honor demanded you uphold your vows to him. You were a Tiger once, right?”
“Not really, but when I first moved to Worcester, I befriended a couple of them who were interested in the martial arts. While I was hanging out with them, Chen, as their leader, would sometimes give me gifts, and he seemed to think that because of the gifts I now belonged to him. The guy was a complete psycho with little grasp of reality, you saw that for yourself. But he was like that, even before the Flu. I finally had to cut ties with the Tigers that I liked because I couldn’t stand the guy.”
“Was Jack one of the Tigers you used to hang out with?” I asked.
“No, Chen's little brother Jack used to try to get me to teach him Kung Fu all the time, but I always turned him down. There was something a little off about him; he was too much like his big brother, I think. He just wanted to learn Kung Fu to be able to hurt people, not for self-defense.”
“It just had to be him I killed when Luke and I rescued Indigo,” I said.
I felt some guilt for setting off the whole chain of events when I killed Chen’s brother, but the alternative ... leaving Indigo at their mercy, didn’t bear thinking about.
“Sad,” Sonny said, shaking his head. “But not very shocking, given his role models.”
“What about him and the people you’ve had to kill since?” Indigo asked me; I guessed she was playing counselor. “Are their deaths still bothering you too?”
“A little,” I admitted. “But not as much as I expected them too. Not as much as failing to protect Sarah or Karen. I think I can accept that I’ve killed for the right reasons, in self-defense or to protect others and I’m okay with that. It’s just that Chen ... well, that was different, more personal somehow.”
“As long as it bothers you, at least a little bit, I think you'll be okay,” Sonny said. “It’s when you stop feeling anything about killing that you’re in trouble.”
“What he said,” Indigo agreed, giving my shoulder a squeeze of encouragement. “From my point of view, I’m glad this Jack guy ... and his brother, for that matter, are no longer in the world.”
“Well, one good thing came of all of it. I got to meet you,” I said to her, managing to crack a true smile for the first time since we’d left the gas station.
“And that’s that,” Sonny said.
“What’s what?” Indigo and I both asked at the same time, and my smile grew.
“We just passed the sign that says ‘Welcome to New Hampshire,�
��” Sonny said. “We made it out of Massachusetts at last.”
“Well that’s something,” I said. “Thank God for small victories.”
“I agree, though perhaps we shouldn’t be popping open the champagne just yet,” Sonny said. “But we’ve made it further than I actually expected us to when we left. If things keep breaking our way, we might just make it to Drake Mountain to see if there really are survivors there.”
“You have champagne?” Indigo asked, teasing.
“Ha-ha,” Sonny said.
“You’re right, there’s a long way to go. Not to mention we aren’t 100 percent sure there really is a safe haven waiting for us. We shouldn’t get our hopes up,” I said.
“Since I’ve met him, Captain Grumpy Pants here has shown he is pretty down on the whole notion of hope,” Indigo said, motioning toward me with her head. Captain Grumpy Pants? “Do you have any wise words that might help him overcome his fear of hope, Sonny?”
“I don’t know, let me see ... how about, ‘hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.’ That comes from Lin Yutang.”
“Who’s that?” Indigo asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Lin Yutang was one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century,” Sonny said.
“Well, Ben Franklin, an influential American, once said ‘he that lives on hope will die fasting.’ It doesn’t matter how many roads are made if the people making them are never going to get anywhere,” I said, still smiling though.
“I see that you can make some claim to knowing the profound thoughts of those who have come before, as well,” Sonny said, with a short laugh.
“Not so much,” I replied. “I wrote a report about witticisms from Poor Richard’s Almanac in my English class last year though, so I can pull a handful of those out if I need them, but that’s about it as far as my famous quoting goes.”
The America Falls Series: Books 1-3 : America Falls Box Set 1 Page 24
