During the days, Geronimo traveled along the abandoned roads of America. He started his journey in Chicago where he was born and he once thought that he would die there too. Then, the night changed everything.
Geronimo followed i80 through the wide plains and fields of Illinois and Indiana. Then, he kept going, until he ran into interstate 69 in Michigan. Then, he followed that road to Canada, as indicated in his tattered map. Along the way, he moved from rest stop to house, house to rest stop. He traveled across the country and was on a quest to find out what it was that brought civilization to its knees.
Now, America limped along in pockets, here and there.
16
He Saw Something Special Between Them
Geronimo met Mark and Justine on route 69, walking on a highway that cut right through the belly of Michigan. This was the road that would take him to Port Huron and over the bridge into Canada. He ran into them somewhere east of the City of Lansing.
When Geronimo first saw them, he could tell that Mark and Justine loved each other. As soon as he spotted them. She wore a red hooded sweater and he wore sunglasses. Then, he saw something small and gentle between them. It wasn't a child.
He had not seen something like that in a long time. He saw them holding hands.
Geronimo saw them up ahead and caught up to them. Mark wore a black jacket and jeans. He sported black sunglasses even though there was an overcast sky. He said that his eyes were sensitive to the light and Justine wore a red-hooded sweater, blue jeans and gym shoes.
Red was Geronimo's favorite colors, until the night had changed that.
When Geronimo caught up to them, he immediately started talking to them because he had not spoken to anyone in weeks. Soon, he found out that they were friendly and kind. After a mile of walking together, he learned that they were also heading east to Canada. But, they weren't going to Toronto, not at first.
In all, Geronimo got along with the couple. He knew that they posed no threat, and nor he to them. As they hiked throughout the morning, they all got to know each other better.
By noon, Mark and Justine needed to rest and eat. But, Geronimo wanted to continue.
"Aren't you hungry, Geronimo?" Asked Mark.
But Geronimo starved himself during the day. He had made his stomach small and could wait until he reached the next rest stop. It was always better to eat at night, anyways.
But Mark and Justine could not wait to reach the next shelter to eat. Unlike him, they liked to camp in the middle of the day and take a break from hiking. They liked spending time in the daylight. Sometimes they liked to camp in the middle of an empty field. It was those times when they felt the world was some what normal.
"The rest stop is only an hour away, Geronimo" said Mark. "It's right over the bend in the highway. Don't worry, we won't let anything happen to you."
Eventually, Mark and Justine convinced him to take a detour, not too far off of route 69.
They walked off the road to find a place to setup camp.
"It'll be just for a little while, Geronimo." said Justine with her soft emerald eyes. How could he say say no?
Then, Mark promised Geronimo that they would camp for a couple of hours. That was all. So, Geronimo gave them, two hours. Before Geronimo diverted from the road, he made sure they understood that he would stay with for only two hours and no more.
As all three of them left Route 69, Geronimo set the alarm on his gold watch for two p.m. It was about noon, now. In two hours he would be gone, with or without them.
17
Through A Field Of Dead Corn
MARK LED GERONIMO AND JUSTINE THROUGH A FIELD OF DEAD CORN, WHERE MORE THAN HALF THE FIELD WAS DRY, PARTLY FALLEN AND WHITE AS BONE. Part of the field looked as if the color and moisture were sucked right out of the stalk. Geronimo ran his fingers over the long brittle leaves, as he walked. Most of what he touched turned to nothing. He noticed several mound of white dust along the way. But said nothing.
Geronimo and Justine walked together, as they followed Mark who was a couple yards ahead. Together, they walked toward the other end of the field, enjoying each others company.
Part of the way, Geronimo stopped. Underneath the overcast sky, he looked at the dead field of corn and was amazed. He had never seen anything like this. He wondered if the land looked worse the farther he went east. He took a long sweeping gaze at the field and he couldn't help but think how eventually everything on this earth would lose it's color, even the people. Justine also stopped walking a couple steps ahead and waited for him.
"Come on Geronimo." she called to him.
"Look at this place."
"Let's get going, Geronimo."
"Look at this place, Justine. This land once fed people. Now this land is dead."
She looked around and saw a once fruitful field, dying before her eyes.
"I know. Lets go."
"Do you think that you guys will ever have kids in a place like this? Look at it."
"Don't say that."
"No. Who wants to what to live around here. Who would want to raise a family in this world?"
Justine raised her left eyebrow. She was surprised at his question and she took her time to answer it. Since the world had turned upside down, the thought of having kids had never crossed her mind. It was not because of the night. She knew that the night held nothing but death.
Something else happened to Justine, before the world was turned, upside down. Justine knew that she wasn't going to have a child because she had cancer. Before the fall, Justine had been living with breast cancer for the last four years. With all the radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the doctors told her that a child was more than likely out of the question.
Justine remained quiet, looking at Geronimo. She didn't want to talk about that part of her life, not yet.
Her cancer had gone into remission in last year, before the night became the terror. Without medical treatment, it was only a matter of time before the cancer came back. However, this was a part of her past that Mark and her held back from Geronimo. And she did not want to bring it up now.
Finally she answered, "Yes. I do."
"Really? Do you really think so."
"Yeah, of course I do." She tried to sound as hopeful as she could. "Now, come on. Lets go."
"Tell me why you think so."
Justine looked at the dry ground to look for an answer. Then, she looked at Geronimo and did the best that she could.
"Because we have to fill up this world up with hope…with children that know something other than the night. There is still more to this world than death, Geronimo."
"And what's that?"
"Love, Geronimo. We shall love every child, like we love you. Geronimo. And every child must know that the sun also shines at night."
Geronimo smiled when she said that. It was sweet. And he liked her even more. Her red sweater stood out against pale field. It was such a sweet color of red, the shade of a red rose. Then, she walked toward him and grab his hand.
"Come Geronimo, lets go."
Justine led him through the field of dead corn and they caught up with Mark at the edge of field of dead corn where there was a forest made of long trees, at least six stories high. They stepped inside and climbed over fallen branches and dry leaves. However, they did not go too deep. Mark told them that he did not want to go to far. He wanted to just far enough to make sure that no one could spot them from route 69.
Finally, the three of them settled on a place between two trees. They slid their backpacks off their shoulders and dropped them to the ground. Soon, they built a fire with some dead branches. As the flames warmed them, they went into their backpacks laying on the ground and pulled out some bottles of water, cans of beans and and a narrow tin of sausages for lunch.
Everything was going fine.
18
The Sun Also Shines At night
As Mark stoked the fire, Justine pulled out a small glass vile filled with pot and handed it to
Mark.
Then, Mark rolled the weed into a joint and lit it with one hand. Then, Mark and Justine offered Geronimo the first hit.
Geronimo took the joint and inhaled it. A few seconds later, he started to cough. The couple looked at each other and laughed. Then Geronimo laughed and he could not stop laughing. For the first time in months, he felt like he were sitting around and relaxing with friends and the world felt somewhat normal.
Since Lansing Michigan, Geronimo had gotten along well with them and he liked hearing about their lives before the world had turned upside down. Around the campfire, the couple told Geronimo more about their lives. And he was happy to listen. For a while, Mark and Justine kept Geronimo entertained. They distracted him from the worries of the world, just like television used to do.
Back then, Justine was a grade school teacher and Mark was an audio video technician at the local public aquarium in Chicago.
Justine was from Europe and Mark was from the U.S. He worked on a film in Poland and they had fallen in love. But they settled in Chicago to start their life together. The jobs they held during the day was the kind that they needed to pay the rent. But at night, they were something else. They worked during the day and they lived at night to make art. She was a short story writer and he was a cinematographer.
Justine told Geronimo that during the night, she worked on her passion project. It was a children's book that she wanted to publish. She was sure that it would be a big hit when it hit the market. She decided that she would self publish, promote and market the book herself. If the children's book did well, then they could quit their jobs and do their art full-time.
"So, what's the book about?" asked Geronimo.
"Cancer." Mark jumped in, "What you think Geronimo? Kinda of heavy for children's book."
"Yeah. But it's my project," said Justine to Mark.
"So, what's it called?" Asked Geronimo
"I don't know yet. I'm waiting to finish it first. And maybe someday the title will come to me."
Mark stayed quiet. He hated hearing about her project because he knew the truth that only they shared.
Before the world was turned upside down, There were cases of cancer increasing throughout the population.
After the doctor diagnosed the lump on her right breast, the treatments started. Mark drove her to the hospital every week for treatment at a renowned hospital in Milwaukee. For the first couple of months, Justine cried the whole way to the hospital. She kept asking God why he punished her.
Her children's book was more than an outlet for her creativity. It was a way for her to deal with the fact that she had cancer and that she could not have any children. But, it meant that she could help children deal with parents who had cancer in a fun and hopeful way. During her treatment, she started a journal and the idea just came to her. In the waiting room, she many saw children with their parents. Looking at the children, she knew that the cancer affected the children, just as much as the adults. The idea for the book came to her in that moment.
Parents with cancer needed a good way to help children understand what was happening to them. She knew that it was a heavy subject for a children's book and every publisher she submitted it to, rejected it. But, that would not stop her bring her vision to life.
Even though, she could no longer conceive a child, she hoped that she could create something else, something that would last long after she was gone.
Geronimo could tell that Justine was still so proud of her book project by the way she spoke about it. She even had a prototype of her book in her bag. She pulled her book out from a brown leather journal. It was one of the few things she kept from the old world. The white pages were folded in half. She slid it out and handed it to Geronimo. It wasn't anything more than twenty-five pages, stapled together. The first page, the title page, was blank. He flipped through the rest and he looked at most of it. Then, he asked.
"It's a children's book, right?
"Yeah?"
"Why aren't there's any pictures?"
Justine looked at Mark and caught Mark laughing at Geronimo's comment. Geronimo was right. The manuscript contained, one or two hand-written lines on every page. The only thing missing from her book were the colorful drawings that should have accompanied each line of text.
"I just didn't get to that part yet."
"Why?"
"Well, I had a friend who was an artist. We worked on it for a bit...then..."
For a moment, Justine glanced at Mark and he looked at her.
"Then what?" Asked Geronimo.
'One night, he just disappeared and he never came back. That's all."
"Oh. Sorry."
"What you saying sorry for. It's not your fault. Don't worry. One day, I'll finish it, if it's the last thing I do. And..."
"Wait." Geronimo interrupted.
Geronimo thought her book was a good idea. But, he knew that her book project was out of date.
"Don't you think, that ...there are worst things out there than cancer, right now?"
Geronimo knew that nowadays, people were not living long enough to die from cancer. The night had become our enemy. It was the night that now every man, woman and child feared, not cancer.
"Don't you think that children today have bigger things to worry about, than cancer. It is the night that they have to understand, so they don't fear it? Isn't that what were facing, now. Isn't that why we're heading to Canada."
Mark laughed. "I think the kids got a point."
Justine stayed quiet and gave Mark a sarcastic smirk.
"Well, it's my project." said Justine. "I don't know. Yeah. I just want to finish it. I need to finish it the way I first thought of it."
"That's cool. Maybe later you can change. It can evolve. That's all I'm saying."
"I know."
Geronimo gave her back the white pages and she slid them back into her journal. Then she stuffed the book back into the bottom of her bag.
There was a break in the conversation and Geronimo took that opportunity to change the subject. He wanted to ask them a question that he had wanted to ask, ever since he met them.
19
Feed Him To The Night
"Guys? Do you think that there's something else happening out there."
"What do you mean?" asked Justine.
"I mean in addition to the night."
"Well, what else is there? Isn't the night enough? I can't imagine anything else that out there. I don't even want to think about it."
"I mean like other people."
"Well, Yeah," said Mark. "Everywhere we go there are bound to be some people who are just bad people. They're nuts. You just have to look out for them. That's all. But it's been like that forever…way before the night came."
"You're definitely right about that. Mark. But, I'm not talking about bad people."
"So what do you mean?"
"I mean that I met a few people who just weren't right to me. But, I don't mean crazy, either."
Geronimo was really talking about his mother. But, he didn't want to speak about her, not yet. Maybe later. In the past, something happened to Geronimo that he never forgot. And he wondered, if it had anything to do with the night.
Before Geronimo fled Chicago, his mother Diane started acting different toward him. She was no longer the neglectful mother that she had been for close to three years. She was different. But, Geronimo did not know why. But, she started to act more motherly toward him, as if she were concerned about everywhere he went.
After a while, she started to make sure that Geronimo ate more than three times a day. He felt like she were trying to fatten him up. However, his mother's concern for him did not feel right.
Geronimo didn't know why. But he knew that her intentions where not coming from a motherly place.
One time, she locked herself up in the apartment. Geronimo heard her drawing in her sketchbook for hours. He thought that she was thinking of a new mural design.
A day later, Geronimo found her
sketchbook on the couch of the living room. He picked it up and looked through the pages. It was harmless.
Out of nowhere, his mother appeared and smacked the book out of his hands.
She yelled at him, "What do you think you're doing? Damn it, Geronimo! You little...!"
But, it was too late. He saw everything that she wrote. Inside the sketchbook, there were no drawings or colorful designs.
"Nothing!"
Then, she slapped him across the face, snatched her book back and stormed away. She held her sketchbook close to her chest, until she slid it underneath the bed.
But, it was too late. He saw everything that she had written in her book, everything that she wrote over and over, on every square inch, of every page. He read the words scrawled over the several pages, even in places where the pen had lost ink. It looked like something a mad woman had written.
There was one sentence, she wrote over and over.
FEED HIM TO THE NIGHT. It read. FEED HIM TO THE NIGHT. FEED HIM TO THE NIGHT.
His mother placed the sketchbook back in her room and returned dot the living room. This time, she cursed at him. Then, she grabbed him by the arm and dug her nails into his flesh. She pulled him to the front door and pushed him out and locked the door. He banged on the door hoping that she would let him back in the house.
"What are you doing, mom? It's going to be dark soon."
She did not answer him.
"Mom, let me back in!"
She remained quiet, hoping that the night would take him away.
Purge of the Vampires Page 9
