Benny, unlikely as it was, was kneeling at Elvis' side and speaking to him in a kind voice that was so out of character for him that Richie didn't at first believe his eyes or ears. It was working, though. Elvis had relaxed noticeably since Benny started soothing him.
More prodding from Richie got Elvis to give over the possession of his foot, giving the others a chance to see and treat the new wound. The skin on the ball of his foot was an angry red, blistering before their eyes, and it took Richie by surprise with its severity. He'd glimpsed it at first and knew that the burn hadn't been this bad only a minute ago. Buddy looked to Richie unable to speak. His eyes were white circles in the gloom of the falling night.
"It's okay, little brother. I just have to put this cream on it. This stuff will help with the pain."
Elvis nodded, his racking moans slowing.
"Here it comes, kid," Buddy told him from the opposite side of where Benny still crouched.
Richie was as gentle as he could be with the thick medicine, but Elvis still shrieked at the touch. None of them was immune to the sounds of pain. Benny and Buddy cringed outwardly as Richie grimaced inwardly. The same question was on all of their minds, trying to get out. Benny would've normally been the one to let it fly, but Elvis beat him to the punch. His words came out shakily.
"What if I jumped in?" he asked them, earning only silence.
<><><>
After Elvis had gone to sleep, aided by a few of the painkillers Buddy had stowed in his pack, the other three men in the group sat together talking. They'd found a house near the water with a partially underground basement and were able to spread out in the luxurious space. Even with all of the area available, the four of them had set their respective bedding close together. The sound of Elvis' snoring was a welcome background to their talk.
"I've never seen anything like that," Benny offered, shaving a callus on his thumb with his pocketknife.
"Neither have I," Richie said.
"How did you know, then? I mean you're smart and all, but how could you possibly know something like that?" Buddy asked as he wiped his glasses clean with a bandanna he'd come up with out of nowhere.
“Where did you get that thing?”
Buddy squinted at Richie, trying to look cocky and failing badly.
“Found a bunch of them in a drawer. There are enough for everybody to carry one.”
"Nice,” Richie said before answering the original question, “There was no wind. You can't have whitecaps without wind, can you?"
"I don't think so," Benny said, uncertainly, “I only understood because of Elvis’ foot.”
"I'm just glad you saw something that maybe stopped him from diving in."
"Yeah," Richie agreed, running both hands through his hair, "So am I."
"He's not going to be able to walk for a while." Buddy told them, "We're probably going to have to hunker down for a while and let him heal a little."
"We can't," Richie said, "If the ocean's boiling now, what happens next? We can't stay in the south, at least not this far south."
"What the fuck do you want to do, Richie? Carry him?" Benny asked with a look of befuddlement growing on his face, "We're trying to walk a thousand miles away."
"Way more than that," Buddy corrected with a small grin.
"Bite me, Buddy."
"We wrap his foot in a ton of gauze and he walks. Elvis knows what's at stake here."
"He's not going to be able to keep up!" Benny shouted, causing their sleeping friend to stir.
"We'll go slow. As long as we're going, covering some type of ground, we might get ahead of this thing."
"Are you seriously talking about trying to stay ahead of the sun? Are you crazy?" Benny asked, calmer now, though not by much.
Richie glared at his comrade, thinking of things he'd like to say to him and discarding all of them. Buddy was silent. Whether it was in agreement of Benny's stance or not, Richie couldn't know.
He didn't care, one way or the other. All Richie could say at the moment was that he knew this was the way to go. Theirs was the only route to survival in this world gone bad. He clenched his teeth against the scathing remarks that wanted to come, instead choosing to let logical thoughts find their way back to him. The stress of running for your life was bad enough. He didn't need Benny's opinions and objections on the matter, too.
They laid down soon after the conversation had been cut short. Benny turned away from all of them in order to have his own bit of privacy during slumber. Buddy, ever the talented sleeper, was out like a light. Richie couldn't find the doorway to his dreamland, his eyes opening and closing periodically in the darkness of their current squat. His vision was slow in adjusting to the gloom, but he was starting to make out the shapes of random objects that had been left behind in their temporary home.
He stood from his sleeping bag to step away from the others. An old internal voice told him that it was time to go to the bathroom, but it was wrong. He hadn't drunk enough water to hydrate his body properly in days. There was no way he actually felt the need to urinate. The thought was just a timeworn habit trying to rear its head.
Instead of going through obsolete motions, Richie walked quietly through the place, making a game of figuring out what the barely visible shapes in the room actually were. This one was a well-used bundle of shoes. That one was a string and handle that had been broken out of a lawnmower. Over in the corner was a garden rake. As he guessed their true names, Richie knelt down to check the things out, to verify whether he was correct, or not. One item, something he'd thought was a bookmark at first glance, proved to be a treasure.
The thermometer lay on the table, turned upside down. Richie thought that it may have been hanging on the wall until recently, but that was just more guessing. He picked the thing up, turning it over in his hands to be sure. He couldn't read the numbers on it without light, but he knew that it would provide some use. The glass tube didn't feel broken at all, so the mercury inside was probably fine. It would be a workable tool. He smiled at it, pleased at its appearance, and padded back to his makeshift bed.
Chapter 4
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
2:58 AM 75*
That really hurt.
"I know it did, little brother. Sorry I had to make you walk. We had places to be."
So quit screwing around and tell us what you did to stay alive for the past month. Now that I think of it; how did she stay alive?
Richie looked around, once again aware of the real world. His dead companions wouldn't quit with the questions, so he decided not to talk with them for a moment. He sat up from the spot he'd found at the roadside for himself and the other breathing traveler. Amanda was sprawled out on a picnic table that was barely recognizable as such, and Richie couldn't remember laying her there. He got to his feet, intent on checking his friend’s condition.
"I can't believe he walked on that," Amanda said, her voice sluggish and meek.
Richie jumped back, nearly wetting himself at the sound of her voice. He hadn't realized that the woman had found her way back into his realm. His look of fright was quickly replaced by one of utter happiness. He ran the few steps to Amanda and embraced her. Thin arms wrapped around him weakly, but with purpose.
"I was worried," was all he could manage to get out.
"Yeah. I'm okay, though," she said as he released his hold on her.
Amanda struggled into a sitting position, rubbing her neck with one hand as her legs swung an inch from the ground. She looked at him with sad eyes.
"You've been talking to someone. Was it me?"
Richie shook his head as the reality of what he was going through became obvious. He'd been on some invisible edge of sanity for a very long time, possibly even before he'd been burned. Was it conceivable now that he'd taken that final step rather than clinging to the graceless world of those people who'd dubbed themselves sane?
Absolutely. Richie had caught way more of his limit than was deserved from
the traumatic-experience pool. His physical damages alone would've gotten him social security payments and his choice of handicap parking in the old world.
"Elvis?"
"Yeah. Mostly Elvis."
"They took the watch, didn't they?" Amanda asked him, her lips tightening at the mention of what they'd gone through.
"It's gone."
"Have things been... close? Has it been hard?"
"I just looked at your hair," Richie told her with a humorless grin.
His eye was watering, still filling with the tears of joy he so needed to shed. He blinked, sending the crystalline drop down along his shattered face until it fell from his jaw. He supposed that the water must've hit the dirt, giving it a kind of rain that hadn't come to give life for so long.
"Better Elvis than others, I think," she said with a smile that tore into his soul.
"I think so. He was always good for a laugh."
Still am.
"I'll bet he still is," Amanda said.
See?
The man with so much company on this night closed his eyes, trying to keep a grip on what was real and what wasn't. He heard Amanda's steps and felt her arms wrapping around him, stronger this time. That was real. He heard Benny cursing him for taking all of the available women and heard Elvis telling him to shut up. That was in his head.
But wasn't reality just another thing in his head? Couldn't all of this be part of a crazy dream that he'd had on some long ago night.
"No," he whispered, "I already tried that exit."
Amanda didn't hear him and didn't let go. Before long, Richie hugged her back, telling her that he was here, that he was with her.
<><><>
Amanda went slow, but she managed to travel under her own power. They didn't speak for a while, both getting used to one another again. Richie kept looking over at her, making sure that Amanda was actually alright. He was also proving to himself that she was real.
We're real too, Benny said childishly, just not real out there.
"Shut up," Richie muttered, drawing Amanda's attention.
She raised her eyebrows at him in question. Richie sighed, his exasperation coming to the surface.
"I'm hearing voices, okay? I can't help it. Elvis and Benny are driving me even further on the crazy train and the only way I can get the two of them to quiet down is to talk to them. Frigging bees in my ears," he finished, raising his hands up into the air and dropping them back to his hips, "I know how it seems, but it's not like you didn't know my brains were tapioca a long time ago."
"So talk," Amanda said, "A few stories might make the night go by a little faster. None of them are going to be after us, right?"
"No. They won't be after anyone else, ever. That’s for sure," Richie told her.
"Then talk. There's no harm in it. I knew you were crazy before, but this is a safer kind of crazy than you losing touch with reality. It's also kind of entertaining," she said, white teeth showing in a grin on her dirty face.
"Trust me. You wouldn't be entertained if you were on my side of things."
Don't be mean, Richie.
"I'm not. You just don't... Shit," he said as he ran a palm against his eyes.
Yeah, I do, Elvis said, laughing at his own bad joke.
"Hey," Amanda said, "Hey Richie. It's okay. If you have to talk," Amanda said, her palms turned to the sky, "then talk."
"Okay. Okay. I was talking about the time at the beach. We had to help Elvis along for days because of his foot. That thing took forever to get anywhere near healthy enough to walk on. He was a trooper, though. Elvis was always like that. He didn't really complain about anything, not even having to walk on that mess."
The voices in Richie's mind quieted. They seemed to be listening to his words, to be held back from him by the story he was telling. He kept going, thankful for Amanda and the reprieve she'd given him.
He could keep talking. Richie had actually realized that he wanted to. Reminiscing about the friendship he'd shared with these men was a pleasurable act, even if it was being done in order to prevent his own mental breakdown. He grinned at that. He'd never been to a psychiatrist, but he thought that he would be doing the same thing on one of their big comfy couches if he had.
"You knew Elvis. That's an advantage you have when hearing about the King. So many people don’t understand what kind of a guy he was. Hell, Benny was a good one, too, as long as you could keep him quiet."
"It sounds like he helped Elvis on the beach," Amanda added.
"He did. There were other things, too, but you never really think about that kind of stuff when someone leaves you in a bad way. Benny basically committed suicide by taking a daylight stroll. When you think about the good things he did, when you talk about them, something like that overshadows. It's the same thing that happens when I draw."
Richie waited for one of his old friends to speak up. When nothing came from their side, he kept going.
"When I sit down with a pen and paper, it's to draw something I see, but not something you see. Whatever I think that my subject should look like, kind of superimposes over the thing that really is. If I see a building with broken windows, I draw them shiny and new. If a car has flat tires, I make them fully inflated whitewalls. It's like that. Only with Benny, it's the other way around. His windows weren’t broken until the end, but we didn’t realize it until things had gone too far."
"It's like that picture you drew of Elvis," Amanda interjected, "You made him the way he was before the sun did all of this. You made him... original."
Richie nodded, letting her know that if she hadn't gotten it completely, she was close enough. He spat onto the asphalt, only a few specks of moisture leaving his lips. They needed water.
"Yeah. Exactly. We kept going up the road, but you know that already. What you don't know is how bad we really were at surviving. It's a wonder we made it through Georgia."
"Do tell," Amanda said.
She watched Richie's face relax, saw the smile beginning to spread across his lips, and did the same. He thought that he was ugly now, scarred and broken, but Richie was beautiful to her. His features hadn't come through all of their plight unscathed, or even whole, but his smile made all of the pain fall away.
His strength was the other thing. Richie had become the most capable man she'd ever known, had learned to combat the mental monsters that never left his side, and was still able to laugh with a little bit of sanity in the sound. Amanda wished that most of the people she'd met could say the same. If there were more Richie's and Buddy's, they would all survive whatever could be thrown at them. A few Elvis' wouldn't be a bad thing either.
She listened to him talk, unconsciously counting her steps as they walked.
<><><>
Orange Lake, FL
July 24, 2020
4:00 AM 99*
The human body can only keep functioning if given three sustainable things. Sleep, though
hard to attain in the heavy heated air of the southeastern United States, was one that they had at least a little of through the past month of walking. Water, while it tasted terrible and gritty, seemed to be plentiful. Food was the problem. Edible substance had proven the hardest thing to find.
They were in a concrete building, another of those things they'd managed to find on a consistent basis as if there was an angel providing for them in spite of their hellish reality. All of them were well past what they would have referred to as starving back when snacks were in the pantry and beer was in the fridge.
Elvis drank water from the jug he'd procured before passing it to Buddy. He was in a lot of pain, the injured foot tasking him more with every step. They'd been helping him, but the man may as well have been walking on smashed raw hamburger. The appendage was not doing well under recent stress.
Sleeping bags lay in a square, providing their seating and sleeping arrangements, as they did on each finished night. Benny, usually one to complain at the mention of their nocturnal tasks, had been silent whil
e rolling each of their sleeping bags out.
They'd eaten the last of their found meals, a large can of pork and beans, two days before. Richie had talked about rationing, but they discounted the idea after minimal debate. Each of the men believed that food would be found long before they could run out. Their current situation had proven those assumptions as wrong.
Even a man of Benny's convictions couldn't have had the energy to mention his aggravations. None of them joked or laughed. None of them seemed even to want the usual talk. The sound of scratching claws in the dark corners of the building, a noise they'd grown used to, was the only sound in the place. Elvis snapped his head toward the clatter, his ears perking up. Richie watched him, noting that he could almost see the other man's mind at work.
Long after meeting Elvis, Richie had taken the time to do some research on his friend's condition. It was widely believed that people with Down's Syndrome were unable to express a complete multitude of emotions through facial movements. He had laughed that off, immediately, as he'd watched the man for years and knew that the opposite was true. To see Elvis' expression and judge his thought or emotion, was a subtle art, but a rewarding one. His companion's face had the same abilities of anyone who hadn't been born with Down's. You just had to look for it.
At that moment, Richie was treated to some of Elvis' subtler countenances. It was like watching someone go through the steps of accepting the death of a loved one in odd order within a few seconds, rather than days or months. First he grinned, very slightly, as if something had occurred to him that gave pleasure. Repulsion followed. Anger was next, though it was the shortest of the transformations, proceeded by a look of utter helplessness. Finally, acceptance and resolve graced his features. He sat up straighter, regarding the others with that last look planted firmly.
Walking Back (The Dark Roads Book 2) Page 4
