In an instant of inspiration, Richie looked at her hair. The tresses were still fairly short, like his own, though none of them had been able to cut their hair recently. It was enough for Richie to know that he was still in the real world, though, not poking around the dream with his dead friends.
He observed the rise and fall of Amanda's chest, seeing that she hadn't joined them in the afterlife. Richie let out a sigh of relief. He was aware that the danger hadn't passed, but was also relieved that it hadn't already taken her away from them.
Where's Buddy?
"At camp, hopefully," Richie answered.
What if he came looking for you?
That was a new thought, one that had occurred in the first week of their being held prisoner, but hadn't come up in the last few days. Buddy wouldn't have stood a chance at finding them at the lair in which they'd been held, but he might now that Richie was on the road again.
He nodded, not seeing his dead friend on the side of the road, but knowing that Elvis was in his mind. It was a good point. They would have to be on the lookout for Buddy and whoever he might've gotten to come with him.
"The night is real," Richie whispered as he sat up, not really needing the words to keep him grounded, but feeling their comfort, anyway.
He struggled to pull Amanda's limp form from the dirt and back onto his shoulders. He tried the fireman's carry, draping her across his upper back to distribute the burden, and found it a bit more comfortable. Richie took a few experimental steps and chose to keep the form for at least a few miles.
"You guys ready?" Richie asked all of his companions.
Too many voices answered.
Chapter 2
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
2:38 AM 74*
Silence was his companion, though the noise in his head was much louder than anything could have been to his ears. Richie thought of all those nights spent walking, the ones that had come and gone on their way to Alaska. He and the others had deemed the place a kind of promised land, one that would hold their salvation.
The actual arrival had proven more dangerous and difficult than any of their group had ever imagined, but the journey wasn’t exactly a moonlight stroll.
It kinda’ was.
“True,” Richie muttered.
He thought of those first days. They'd made so many early mistakes that it was almost astonishing that any of them had found their way from Florida at all.
Buddy was the least marked by the walk, with only a single scar to show for all of those protracted miles. Elvis and Benny had given the most, one laying in a shallow grave far from home and the other mummified by the sun in the middle of a major highway. Richie was pacing about somewhere in the middle, physically and mentally altered in a very fundamental way by the experiences he'd suffered.
Still okay, Richie? Elvis asked him.
"You worry too much, King. I'm fine," Richie answered with some effort, "How are you?"
I'm okay. I miss Buddy a lot, but I'm okay.
"He misses you too, little brother. I'd miss you again if your voice wasn't part of my crazy now."
Yeah. I can't help that. Benny left, though. He didn't like your yelling.
"That's okay, man. Fuck him if he can't take a joke."
How's Amanda?
"Alive, I think. She's alive for now. Anyone else in there with you? I'm not going to get a surprise visit from any other dead guys, am I?"
Looks like just me and Benny, for now.
"Great. You're good enough company for the likes of me, until she wakes up. Maybe I'll go sane again."
Don't think so, Richie.
"Yeah. Neither do I."
What did you eat? Elvis asked after a minute of silence.
Richie scanned the horizon ahead of him, thought about another rest, and decided to keep going. He was tired, sure, but the night was still young enough and he could push on for another couple of hours before sunrise. No one could stop him from doing that. Anyone who might have been chasing him was dead by now, either killed outright or badly wounded to the point of burning out for good. Richie shrugged his shoulders to adjust Amanda's weight as he walked.
Richie?
He thought about the days before their journey had started, pondered his own actions through a kind of mental magnifying glass. Richie wondered how smart all of it had been. They'd just taken off, walking north with little more than the clothes on their backs, and had never really looked back.
Richie came up with their plan of action, one that was agreed upon by all four of them at the onset of things, but managed to get two of their four killed, whether by domestic or foreign circumstances. He didn't feel like the best decisions had been made.
If something had come across his radar a bit sooner, Benny would've lived and kept going with them. If Richie had placed a bullet in just the right spot, maybe Elvis wouldn't be a phantom floating around in his mind with nothing but idle chatter and questions to throw his way.
How'd you live for so long, Richie? How're you alive now? They weren’t feeding you, were they?
Richie let his thoughts drift again, ignoring the voice of his friend. He went back to the first night. All of them were standing around his dining room table with heat on the brain, waiting for Richie to tell them what to do next. He smiled, but didn't let the expression touch his eyes.
<><><>
Miami, FL
June 21, 2020
11:10 PM 102*
"Buddy, will you hit the air conditioning? It's like a fucking oven in here," Benny said, grating on every nerve in the place.
"It's on full blast, Benny. Relax, man," Richie told him as he dropped the Atlas onto the center of the tabletop.
"That sucks," Benny admitted, leaning against the counter's edge and swigging a beer that had gone warm way too quickly.
Elvis watched him from one of the kitchen chairs, wondering if Benny would calm down. It would be a nice change of pace if he actually did. Benny was way too excitable these days, way too anxious for Elvis' comfort. Richie and Buddy would've said the same if asked, but no one questioned either of them.
The three at the table took advantage of Benny's silence as they paged through the book of maps. Elvis, who had been crying off and on for days since the loss of his mother, spilled tears onto the laminated paper before wiping them away, absently. He was becoming accustomed to the presence of sadness.
"Alaska," Richie announced, "It's the northernmost civilized location. We could try for the top of Canada, but there wouldn't be much in the way of shelter there."
"Okay, but I'm bunking with Elvis. You get Benny the Dick over there."
"How many times, Buddy? How many times do I have to tell you I hate that frigging name?"
Buddy looked at him with the makings of a grin on his lips. His coke-bottles were fogging in their frames due to the heat, and had to be removed for cleaning just as they were staring each other down.
Richie found himself between the two men, unsure of when he'd stood in the first place, and raised a palm to both Buddy and Benny. He let his eyes cut back and forth between them, hoping that they wouldn't start fighting in the middle of Buddy’s apartment. Elvis watched serenely, waiting for a time when someone would want him to speak.
"Dude. Enough," Richie said, nodding to Buddy, “It’s too hot for that shit.”
"Sorry," Buddy said to Richie, "Just trying to lighten the mood. At least I agreed with you."
"That's true," Elvis said, "He agreed."
Richie's grin betrayed his stern tone. When all four of them were together, the banter could be frustrating, overwhelming, and hilarious. Buddy was always goading one of them, finding weak spots in the walls people build around their insecurities and nudging at them lightly. He was never the type to break through them completely, but he very much enjoyed seeing how far he could push before someone took offense and lost their cool. He never did this to Elvis, which was more of a clue as to how sensitive Buddy actually was
to his friends' emotions. Benny, however, was always fair game.
"Can we get back to this whole living through the next year thing? It's kind of a priority for me," Richie offered.
"Where to, captain?" Benny asked, leaning back in his chair, the front two legs of the seat lifting from the floor.
"Quit killing my chair, man. That stuff costs, you know," Buddy scolded.
"Aren't we getting ready to venture out into the great unknown since the whole world's started dying off?"
Elvis chuckled at Benny's question, turned his eyes to Richie, and shrugged. The look on Richie's face must've relayed what he was thinking, because Elvis laughed out loud for the first time that day, his grief held at bay by the happiness that he'd always felt when with his friends. He missed his mother quite badly, kept trying to put her death out of his mind, but with those that loved him close at hand, things were a little easier and a lot less depressing.
"Good point. Screw it," Buddy replied.
"We need to get moving, soon. The heat's getting worse during the nights now, which means that daytime is going to be canceled for good. None of the thermometers that used to record all of that are even still working. I have no idea what the temp is like when the sun's fully out, now. You guys?"
All of them indicated that they were in the same box as Richie. No one wanted to go outside in order to find out. A lot of people had died in the last few weeks, most of them victims of incredibly advanced sunstroke. There were rumors that some were being burnt by the sun to the point of incapacitation. Few beings were venturing out before dark these days.
"I know it's hotter here than it is in Georgia. That probably has to do with how far south we are, with the whole equator thing, so I'm thinking that we need to go north. If the nights are this bad now, then they're going to get worse with time."
"That's not what the reports are saying," Benny added.
"Yeah," Buddy seemed to agree, "They also weren't talking about all of that extra cancer that seems to be going around. Everybody's sick now and it isn’t with the chicken pox."
"I'm just saying that we don't really know if it's going to get worse, or if everything's gonna turn around," Benny argued.
Elvis watched the two men, his face without expression, until they quieted. Richie mimicked his actions, his eyes moving between Benny and Buddy.
"Are you guys done? Good," Richie started again, settling his gaze on Benny, "If you look at what's going on outside, man, you can see it. Elvis' mom died in a week. She went out into the sun, picked up some of that cancer that Buddy's talking about, and died in record time."
No one said anything about that. Elvis nodded, his eyes leaking steadily again, and stared at the atlas. His mom, the woman who'd always taken care of him, had gone in such a short time that the young man hadn't completely accepted her absence in his life. Like his friends, she'd been there for him as far back as he could remember.
He knew that she wouldn't be coming back, but there was a piece of him that kept expecting to hear her shout to him from the confines of his home, her voice relaying that it was time for dinner if he wanted any. It was heart breaking to look at the condo in which they'd always lived, so Elvis had taken to staying with Buddy since her death.
"I say we go to Alaska," Richie told them again, earning a snort from Benny, "It's as far north as we can get and still have a crack at civilization. There should be passage all the way there on highways, so we won't have to become boy scouts just to find our way there. Shelter shouldn't be too hard, either. We're going to need places to keep out of the daylight. That makes sticking to paved roads an even smarter idea."
"Wandering around in the woods and looking for gingerbread houses doesn't really appeal to me either," Buddy muttered.
"Also true. So we stay on the roads the whole way there."
Benny's laugh rang out in the small apartment, stealing everyone's focus. He swigged the last of his beer and set the empty onto the counter dramatically. His face was filled with awe.
"Are you nuts? How fucking far away is Alaska, Richie? We can't drive there. That means walking so far that we won't have to worry about the sun. The effort to get there'll kill us!"
Will you just up?!? Richie thought but didn't say.
"Benny," Buddy said, "You don't have to go if you don't want to. It's a safe bet that you'll be fried in a month if you don't go with us, considering how much sense you have, but don't come just to keep me company. Richie's got good points and we don't have anything else going on other than waiting to die."
"I say we go where Richie says," Elvis said with a strong voice.
"You know how I feel," Buddy stated, turning back to Richie.
They waited, Richie holding Benny's gaze and almost hoping that their friend would stay behind. If he wasn't going to be part of the solution, he was part of the problem.
"Shit. Okay. I'm in," Benny said, reaching for another beer.
“Thirty Days of Night,” Elvis said, his eyes widening.
“What?” Buddy asked.
Their friend appeared mute, unable to express something that was very important to him. Everyone waited for Elvis to spit it out. He’d stopped looking at them, was focused on the maps.
“It’s that movie we saw,” Elvis whispered, “I can’t remember exactly.”
“The vampire flick?” Benny asked, “Is that the one?”
“Holy shit! Elvis is right!”
Richie looked around at them, waiting for some kind of explanation, but it seemed that all of them had lost the ability to give him anything at all. Buddy looked excited.
“It was about some place in Alaska where the sun stays down for a month. Everybody leaves town and vampires come to eat whoever’s left, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Thirty days of dark,” Richie said, trying the words out.
All of them were smiling. There would be time without the sun in Alaska. It wouldn’t just be the short period between harmful days. They could have real time to live in a place like that. The excitement spread to everyone but Elvis. He was still thinking about something that just wouldn’t latch for him. Finally, with a shrug, he gave it up and looked to Richie and nodded his consent.
Richie nodded. He began to trace their initial route with the tip of his index finger, explaining as he went.
<><><>
Miami, FL
June22, 2020
6:22 PM 115*
Buddy searched the surrounding area for a brick. They'd all thought that the sporting goods store would be open during the early hours of the evening, Richie even going as far as hunting up cash to pay for whatever they would require for the trip ahead. When they'd arrived at the front of the place, however, the four men were greeted with darkness behind the glass front doors. Now the most important thing on their agenda was finding a way inside to pilfer what was required.
"Buddy," Richie beckoned, "What are you even doing?"
"Looking for something to break the glass with. Give me a minute."
"Buddy," Elvis said quietly with a snicker.
"Hold on, man! We have to find a way to break in and I'm not a frigging cat burglar," he said, walking further from them, thinking that there might be something at the side of the building.
"Okay, Buddy," Benny said as the others finally cracked up laughing, "We'll be inside when you're ready."
He finally whirled on them, aggravated by the heat and the distraction of their chiding. This was not the time for joking around, as far as Buddy was concerned, and a scathing remark sat at the edge of his tongue, ready to lash Benny. His glasses were terribly fogged, yet another source of his mounting frustration, but not so badly that he couldn't see Elvis holding the door wide open.
"It just opened," Elvis said between giggles, "Musta' left it unlocked."
"Shit," Buddy cursed, grinning at his lack of the ability to check for the simplest thing first, "Thank God for the frigging King."
"Don't forget it," Elvis said, walking through the pass
age and into the store.
The others followed, Richie holding the door for Buddy and patting his slumping friend on the back as he entered. They were all sweating profusely and the sound of the contact was made louder by the dampness of Buddy's shirtless back.
None of them could've added a garment to their daily wardrobe for too long in heat like this. It was a wonder that they'd made the trip at all, with the day barely ending. Richie thought that the four of them would have to start waiting until after dark had completely consumed the lands before venturing out of doors, but for the moment it was at least feasible that they could use dusk as a starting point.
<><><>
Supplies were easy enough to gather. Each of them had changed into a pair of hiking boots at Richie's suggestion, and were busy with sections of a list that they'd come up with the night before. Each man had at least a few items to look for and they were quick enough about it to meet back at the storefront within the hour. The four of them stood around the massive pile of gear, ticking things off and trying to think of anything else they might need.
"Do you think it's too much?" Buddy asked with crossed arms and a pinched brow.
"Probably," Richie answered honestly, "But we can't be sure of what we can find later on. Better to have it and not need it, right?"
"Think we can get a camel?" Benny asked with a laugh, "Or are we just gonna make Elvis carry everything?"
"Fuck you, Benny," Elvis replied, shocking the others into laughter, as he tore the packaging away from two large tents.
Walking Back (The Dark Roads Book 2) Page 2
