"I didn't say that I didn't almost get my ass thoroughly handed to me. I just said I was cool."
"He was." Elvis agreed, his long hair flapping in the fan's wind.
"Yeah. I wonder if she made it."
Richie smiled a little, just a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth, when he thought of that beautiful girl. She'd really been something that day. He didn't give Buddy's statement anything to continue on, decided that if she'd survived that he still wouldn't ever see the girl again, so it didn't really matter. In his mind Alejandra was fine as paint and walking her way to any old place she might want to get to. His smile became a full one.
They left the mine long after the sun fell away from them, leaving its day's work etched on the world. Richie saw that the plants were almost completely gone in the state of Tennessee and thought it likely that the vegetation was gone from everywhere else, too. Staying above ground was impossible with the heat of the day now. They hadn’t expected things to get that bad in such short time.
One of the best things about going north was the time in which the sun had possession of the earth. It had been longer and more intense in Florida, which meant that existence there, even at night, was probably an impossible idea now that the day had gotten even less friendly.
They'd been on the road for more than two months, and had come a long way on foot. They'd only lost one man in their struggle, which was a sad thing, but still good in a way. The three of them were managing well enough without their absent friend, though it wasn't easy to forget him. Richie felt responsible for Benny's death. It wasn't something to debate. He'd not said as much to his friends about it, but the loss of Benny hurt enough either way.
<><><>
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
3:26 AM 79*
The two travelers made a nest out of cardboard and packing blankets. It was comfortable enough to sleep on for the day, especially considering how little both of them had rested lately. Amanda was on her side, a position that she'd always found to be the most comfortable one when laying on their rough mattresses. Richie was in the same posture, turned to face the opposite direction.
"You haven't asked me about how I lived through it," Amanda said in a low voice, almost a whisper in the night.
"No."
"Do you want to know?"
"You can tell it if you have to. I won't make you."
"It was bad."
Richie didn't move toward her, didn't respond to her remark. If she wanted to talk about what happened, she would. If not, she wouldn't. Things were simple on that side of things.
Bet she tells the truth about it, Benny said, choosing not to stay quiet for Amanda's turn.
You should tell her the rest, Richie.
He won't do that, Elvis. He's too chickenshit.
Richie ain't chickenshit. You know that.
Well, he might not be when it comes to risking his ass, but he is when it comes to telling her what really happened back there.
Richie resisted the urge to advise his compatriots to shut up, knowing that it wouldn't help anyway, as he waited for Amanda to begin. He hoped that no one else in this dead and lonely world had to deal with the things he was fighting through. Life was already hard enough without listening to dead people critique your behavior. Richie could only pray to a barely existent deity that this would end at some point, that his mind would either be fully repaired or fully broken. He didn't believe that his prayer would be answered.
"They took me to a different room as soon as we got there. You remember that, right?"
Richie nodded before realizing that she probably couldn't see him. Amanda must've felt the motion somehow, because she continued.
"They let me wash, but I had to do it in front of them. It reminded me of that time with Bail. The ones that weren't all the way gone yet said... things, but the other ones just watched. I honestly didn't even care. The water felt so good and I drank some of it. They'd been pretty stingy with the water until then, you know? None of them grabbed me while I was cleaning up, though. That much surprised me."
He felt her turn over to face where he was laying. Richie turned too, knowing that she wanted him to. It was dark enough to ensure that he couldn't see her eyes, which was a relief to him. Richie listened.
"They fed me. It was out of a can that first day, so I knew that I wasn't eating their meat. After that it was in a bowl, but there was still nothing cooked, nothing that I thought was..."
"They didn't make you eat one of us," he said for her, earning a sharp nod in return.
"I had to do things, for them. None of them raped me, but I still had to do things that I didn't want to do. I didn't want them to eat me, Richie. I didn't want to eat anyone."
He'd expected tears from her, or a thickening of the voice, but he got neither. He heard that flat, emotionless way of speaking that Amanda had a way of adopting. He envied her that ability to push things away. At the same time, he wished for some kind of expression. If she didn't let the pain out, then it would never leave her. She moved her body closer to his.
"Will you hold me?" she asked after a while.
Richie nodded again and she was turning into him. His free arm was around her and her head snaked over the arm he was laying his own head against. He felt Amanda shaking, her chest racking with the sobs that she needed to emit. He was grateful for the small outlet of her pain.
He held her tightly to him, her voice gone from his ears now, and waited for both of them to fall into sleep. Her words had been lifeless, but not meaningless to him. Richie understood what it was to be forced into doing things that shouldn't be done, things that would have been judged harshly in the old world.
As sleep came, a little at a time, Richie listened for Elvis, for Benny, but heard neither of them. He held Amanda tighter to him, glad to comfort her and terribly sad that she needed comforting.
Chapter 7
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
9:16 PM 102*
Buddy knelt by his pack, shoving gear into it slowly, taking his time on the task. He knew that he was getting ready a bit early, but couldn't help his impatience. The heat pressed down on the building above him, a reminder that the sun hadn't fully set. His traveling companion followed in Buddy's motions, but spoke against his urge to get going.
He was on his third trip in the third direction taken through the state. Richie had engaged a small group to join him in the task of finding medical supplies, but hadn’t specified where they would be headed. Buddy had searched north for a few days and then directly west for a week. As the time grew longer, he had to look further along the roads. He knew how quickly Richie could travel from personal experience.
"Buddy, we need to wait a little while," the trekker said, "It's still hot out there."
"I know," he replied, slowing his motions even more.
They were steadily journeying to the southwest and would continue for another two days. If Richie didn’t turn up on this outing, the two travelers would return to the camp they’d been occupying, gather more supplies, and go east for two weeks. After that, there would have to be some sort of closure, because they couldn’t continue looking for their friend forever. Buddy would have to accept that Richie was gone.
His angst at waiting for the world to cool only increased with the ticking hands of the watch his companion was carrying. The brutally high-strung side of him wanted to grab the thing and sling it against the wall of their shelter. He held back, knowing that it would accomplish nothing other than showing the aggravation that was already obvious. They would need the watch, anyway. It was an important item to have with them.
He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to wait. Buddy wanted to act.
The revolver he'd been carrying felt heavier than it normally did in his hand. He'd oiled the thing, cleaned the barrel and the chambers, and checked its sights the day before. He was a man who had been in great distress during the time it had taken to get from Miami to
Alaska, simply due to the fact that he couldn't properly take care of his equipment. Buddy liked to keep the machines working, what few machines were left in this godforsaken place, and he was obsessive about his weapons now that the traveling had mostly ceased.
He checked the loads in the pistol, making sure that they were full and ready. Once that was done, he stowed the gun in his pack and reached for the other. This one felt much heavier, more dangerous than his small caliber weapon. He knew from personal use and watching the others with it that the weapon was more dangerous. He stowed that one quickly, without taking the time to inspect it. That machine was working fine. It was too simple a function not to.
"We'll give it another two hours. Then we leave."
"Okay," the other agreed.
"We should eat first."
<><><>
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
11:19 PM 87*
They drank pickle juice as they walked. It was vinegary, even more so than when the dills had been fresh, and wonderful. They hadn't had much in the way of hydration and the liquid was ambrosia to their dry throats. Richie, who was never one to pass on something that resembled a vegetable, had already eaten most of the pickles. The crackers were packed in a satchel rigged from one of the moving blankets they'd slept on during the day. The .38 was shoved into the waistband of his shorts, held against the small of his sweating back.
"I don't know what's worse," Amanda commented, "Your pickle breath, or my pickle breath. I don't even like them."
"Beggars can't be choosers," Richie said with a grin.
"True. What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?"
"Are you really doing one of those?"
"Yep. I crave idiotic small talk."
"Unfortunately, I have more of a list to consider these days."
She waited, watching Richie as he considered. She opened her mouth to comment, twice, but he noticed and held up a finger to halt her.
"Do you remember those snack cakes that the gas stations used to stock? They were like fifty-cents apiece. It was one of those."
"Which one?" Amanda asked with a note of disbelief in her voice.
"The brownies. They were similar to biting of the end of a sugar flavored tennis shoe."
Her laugh interrupted their walk, making the woman double over and hold her stomach. It wasn't the polite laugh that most people would have given to the teller of a bad joke, or even a good one. This was more a bellow of offense toward someone who's just told an excessive untruth. Richie watched the woman with tight lips.
That's not the worst thing, Richie, and you know it, Benny spoke up.
It ain't, said the ghost of the King.
"You can't expect me to believe that, Richie!" Amanda shouted, serious now, standing straight, "Tell the truth!"
Tell the truth, Richie.
You gotta tell her, Richie.
"Tell me, Richie. Stop hiding from it!"
Amanda’s glower was one of extreme distaste. She wasn’t trying to hide any type of disgust now.
“You ate something much worse than a damned snack cake!”
He fell to his knees, the shards of cracked pavement cutting into his skin. Richie put both palms to his temples, pressing as if the action could quiet the dead and the living, alike. He couldn't understand Amanda's outrage, was petrified by her reaction.
The voices were now chanting, not as Elvis or Benny would have, but with the voices of everybody that had been left behind on the dark roads he'd traveled. It was so much more than anyone could've taken, but Richie was exponentially more compromised by it.
He'd looked into the malevolent star presiding over the carcass of his world and lost an eye for his trouble. The eye, though an extreme forfeiture, wasn't the worst of it. His mind, the tool he'd always used to keep moving through life, had been scorched by the sun's radiance and cauterized by its heat.
"Stop it! Just stop it, Richie! It's time to tell the truth!"
Amanda's screams were like an ice pick stabbing through the center of his being. No more could be tolerated. Nothing more could be allowed to find its way inside.
Tell it! Tell the truth!
What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?
How did you survive?
"How did you live for a month with no food? How did you survive? What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?"
Tell her!
Tell us!
They were all taunting him. Dundel was shouting at him. Bail was laughing. The man in the drug store was demanding that he speak. Benny, Elvis, the feeders that had held him. All of them wanted him to tell his truth.
"I couldn't help it!" Richie finally screamed, "I had to eat! We all had to eat! I would've died if I didn't!"
"If you didn't WHAT?!?"
He saw the barrel of his newly found .38 aiming toward Amanda. He didn't even remember drawing the thing from his waistband, but it was there and it was improbably steady, the sight centering on his friend's chest. Richie's voice changed, the volume dropping at once, and he began to speak.
"One died. That was the first. I watched them, knowing that I couldn't do anything to stop it from happening. I wanted to tell them that we were all going to die like that and be eaten. Why would we want to do the same thing that the feeders were doing? I didn't say anything, though. They might've turned on me."
Richie wiped at a stray tear that had escaped his eye. He scrubbed at his lips with the forearm that wasn't busy with the pointing of a weapon. He tried not to say anymore, but it was all a flood now with no dam to contain its flow. His eye closed as he spoke, shutting out the image of his friend staring at him with so much disgust in her gaze.
"So fuck you. I don't know what you did to stay alive, but I finally did what I had to do. If I hadn't, you'd be dead. Did you ever think of that?" he asked her without want for an answer, "So I got down with them, onto that dirty fucking floor and I ate after I'd watched it for a week without anything in my stomach.
“They were eating. I needed to eat. It was that simple by the end of it. We always wondered how the feeders could do it. Well, now I know. You do what you have to do to survive and you wait to pay for it! You eat because the meat is there and you ignore where it came from so that you can breathe for one more day!
“And I kept eating so that I could live long enough to get out, somehow. I fed when there was food. Right up until the last day,” Richie said, his voice calming as the anger and shame gave way to relief, “We were all on the floor when the group of them came in. The feeders changed their minds, I guess, because they dragged the body toward the door while we were still trying to get to the meat. The door opened and we fought them, but not to get out of that place. We were fighting for the food, for the body because it had been so long since we’d had full bellies.”
The gun wasn’t part of his thoughts, now. It was still held out as if he was planning to use the thing, but Richie was no longer aiming at Amanda. He sniffed hard to clear his nose, but gave up on trying to wipe away the tears that were pouring from his eye.
“The funny thing, even if it’s not really funny to anyone else, is that I didn’t even remember that you were there. I’d been worrying about my own skin for so long that nobody else was on my mind. When I stumbled out of that open door and slammed it shut on all of them, it surprised the hell out of me to see you laying on that table. I grabbed you and pulled you out of there, but it wasn’t something I’d planned, you know?”
Richie opened his eye, letting salt water fall from the lid and onto his dirty cheek, and saw nothing. He was alone. Amanda must have walked away from him as he told his truth.
"Richie?" a man's voice asked from the darkness.
He looked around himself, wondering if the vocalization had come from the inside or the outside of his mind. Richie's finger tightened on the pistol's trigger.
<><><>
His vacant eye was tricking him, again. Richie was seeing the doubling he'd glimpsed on so many occasions b
efore, but it wasn't exactly the same.
"Richie, it's me. It's Buddy, man. Don't shoot."
Was it real? He couldn't know for sure, but everything wanted to point at the option of delusion. Richie had been going crazy for some time, so misconception wasn't a new thing for him, but this was new. He wasn't seeing the world as it was and as it would be, but two people that couldn't be there. Buddy was standing in the center of the road with his hands up in defense, which could have been possible, but Amanda was with him. She'd been with Richie this whole time, in different clothes and with shorter hair. She couldn't have been real, even if Buddy was.
"I've got something for you, brother. I found it after you left and we brought it with us."
Richie couldn't speak. He could only aim the loaded pistol at his friend, this one even closer than Amanda had been, and shake. His tears were coming faster, pushing his open eye toward blindness with every passing moment, but the trigger was being pulled even tighter.
Richie could just shoot him, could shoot Buddy in the chest or the face, and all of the confusion would be over. If he did that, there would be nothing left to tie him to this world, other than Amanda. He could just shoot her, too.
The fuck is wrong with you? Benny asked, that old snicker tapping at the edges of his trapped voice.
It's Buddy, Richie. Why you wanna' shoot Buddy?
Put it down, man. He's going to tell you the truth. Just look at what he's holding.
Don't be chickenshit, Richie.
"I don't... I... Please stop..."
The sight at the end of the .38 blurred as Richie fought for some kind of purchase on the real world. He was frightened, terrified really, and confused beyond any limit that had ever been described. This was something his fried brain had cooked up and he could just turn the gun on himself. That would work. If he took care of himself before anyone could say any more about anything, then all of it could be over.
Walking Back (The Dark Roads Book 2) Page 7
