“We did the right thing, right?” she asked. “We could still go back for him.”
“We did the right thing,” I said. “It feels like the wrong thing, but you were right. We couldn’t have helped him. He wouldn’t have left his wife.”
She was silent for a long time. She put her face in her hands and rubbed her fingers against her forehead. “It doesn’t feel like the right thing. It feels like we just murdered an old man.”
“Maybe he was already dead. Maybe we’re already dead. I don’t know if there is a right answer.”
“I hated philosophy class. Did I tell you that? I hated it. Medicine was a science. Cause, effect. Philosophy was all gray areas. I hated that. I want a clear answer. I want a defined path to follow.” Ren stood up and grabbed a stick to stab into the low flames of the campfire. She stoked the embers and added another chunk of wood. “We did the right thing, right? It was my idea. You were going to help him. You were going to stay with him, weren’t you? Like you did for the guy in Indiana.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. The old rules of humanity don’t necessarily apply to us anymore. We have to make our decisions based on the needs of self-preservation, now. That guy—he was pretty far gone.”
“How long until we break with reality like that? Is that our destiny?” Ren circled the fire to get out of the smoke. She ended up on the opposite side of it from me. In the light of the flames, she looked demonic. The shadows flitted across her face giving her low key-lighting like a horror movie villain.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think we’ll be okay.”
“Because we have each other?”
“And Fester.” The cat was still on my chest.
“What happens if I die? What happens if you die? What then? Twist, there’s a hell of a lot less people out here than I thought there would be. New York was a city of more than eight million people. Almost all of them died. Do you know what that was like?”
“It was like you’ve been hearing a rock concert your whole life, and suddenly that concert ended. Now, there is only deafening silence.”
Ren folded her arms across her chest. “Yes. Exactly. I was worried about myself last winter. It got so lonely that I was sleeping sometimes twenty hours a day. I’d wake up, eat a cracker, put more wood on the fire, and go back to sleep. At one point, I figured that I was dead and just didn’t know it, a full Cotard delusion. I started losing touch with reality. Is that going to be us someday?”
I got out of the hammock, much to the displeasure of the cat. I walked to the edge of the fire opposite Ren. “Yes. It might be.” I wasn’t going to lie to her. “I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I don’t know what five years from now holds. I certainly can’t look ahead to twenty years from now, or forty, or sixty. Who knows anything? All I know is that we’re still alive and relatively sane.”
“And that has to be good enough for now, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Yes.”
Ren wiped the kernel of a tear from her eye with her fingers. “I hate this, man. I hate this whole situation. It’s bullshit.”
“Me, too. But, what other choice do we have? As long as we stay alive, we have the chance to make something of our lives. If we stop living, then that’s it. Game over.”
We were silent again. We stared at the flames, smelled the burning wood. Eventually, Ren spoke. “We did the right thing, right?”
“We did.”
“Even if the right thing was the wrong thing?”
“Even if.”
Ren sat down in the folding chair. “I hate this world.”
We did not eat that night. Fester did. But, he was just a cat and understood little of the gravity of what Ren and I had just done to King Francis.
Eventually, we retired to the RV. We went through our ablutions and nightly rituals. We pulled the curtains, just in case. I went to the back bunk. Ren went to her bunk. I lay in the queen-sized bed and stared at the sky through the screen of the roof vent, my hands folded behind my head. I felt small and insignificant. The entire scene with the King of New America replayed over and over in my brain. If there were any positives about meeting King Francis, it was only that any thoughts of Bigfoot had been pushed out of my brain. I had other, more important things to fear at the moment, insanity being foremost among them.
An hour or so after we’d retired, I felt the Greyhawk shift and rock slightly. Ren was climbing down from her bunk. I heard a knock on the narrow door to the rear bunk. “Yeah?”
Ren opened the door. Her eyes were puffy again. She was clutching one of her pillows to her chest. “Can I—I mean…do you mind if I sleep with you tonight? In your bed?” She buried her face in her hands. “Christ, I sound like a child.”
“No. Yes. I mean, yes you can sleep in here, and no you don’t sound like a child.” I moved over and made room in the bed for her.
Ren slipped into the sheets with me and lay on her back. She pulled the sheets to her chin. “I was just out there thinking about being alone again. I don’t think I could do it, you know. If I was alone again—like, if you died or disappeared or something--I think I’d probably just swallow a bullet. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to be alone ever again, even in that bed, if just for tonight.”
“I understand,” I said.
Ren reached over and patted my hand. Her hand was so small compared to mine. Her fingers closed around my fingers. “Be here when we wake up, please. I don’t think I can keep living in this world without you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
She rolled over to face away from me. I lay on my side looking at her for a long time, at least an hour. Her breathing shifted into the slow, rhythmic breaths of sleep. Her body relaxed. I eventually laid my head down on my own pillows and stared at the vent in the ceiling.
I felt strange, though. Different. Was I falling in love with Renata?
Was I already in love with her and just hadn’t realized it?
Eventually sleep claimed me, but I thought about that question until it did.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Wedge
The next day, Ren wanted to drive the RV. She guided us south to Columbus, Georgia. We explored that city. Neither of us said anything about the previous day. It just hung in the air between us, a massive elephant in the room, but neither of us dared verbalize any thoughts. It was as if we both just decided to let the day be forgotten.
In Columbus, we raided a bookstore because Ren didn’t like my taste in reading material. She got some books that I considered “too girly” or “too popular” for my tastes, mainly mass-market paperbacks like Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult, but she also picked up some things that I recommended that she hadn’t read, yet. Stuff like L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. We left with four canvas sacks of books loaded to the hilt. “This will keep me busy for at least a couple of years,” Ren said as she stored them in the corner of her bunk.
We scavenged through a Sam’s Club, through a few odd shops, and through the remnants of two grocery stores, both picked nearly clean before the Flu ended. Judging from the settled dust, I could tell that no one had been in the stores in well over a year.
Ren scooped canned goods into bags. “It’s a good thing I really like corned beef hash.”
“You say that now. See if you can continue to say it as it becomes a daily food source.”
“I want more peaches.” Ren blew the dust from some cans of beans. “We should find an orchard.”
“We should,” I said.
“We should also find a place to live near an orchard. Walking distance. And then we should plant our own peach trees.”
“Probably a smart plan.” I carried some boxes of plastic-sealed Wet-wipes to the RV. Even if they were dry, they could be revived with a little water. Wet-wipes were always good to have around.
“Twist, what time of year do you think it is? September?�
�
I shrugged. “Probably early-to-mid September, sure.” I glanced over my shoulder at Ren. “Why?”
“I’m getting tired of being on the road.”
I was, too. “We’re in the South. We could stop anytime. I had planned on going to Madisonville, Louisiana, but I guess it doesn’t matter too much where we stop. Where do you want to go?”
Ren raised her eyebrows. A mischievous smile lit on her lips. “I got a place to go. Not to settle, mind you. But, I’ve got a place to go.”
The place ended up being Panama City Beach, Florida. As we cruised into town, Ren at the wheel, she said, “I came here on Spring Break during my sophomore year. Busted my ass working two jobs for most of the year to save up for it. It was a lot of fun, but afterward I wished I’d just kept the money and stayed home.”
I’d only ever seen Spring Break beach parties on MTV. “Was it everything television said it would be?”
“Worse. Much, much worse. Everybody was bombed out of their gourds for a solid week. Vomit everywhere. Used condoms on the streets. Drunkards pissing in alleys. It was just gross. So much drama, too! I went down with a couple of girlfriends, and by the end of the week we were barely speaking to each other.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It had its moments,” said Ren. She guided the RV carefully through town while I rode shotgun. The town was battered. In the past year, at least one, but more likely multiple hurricanes had rolled through the area, maybe not direct hits, but damage had been done. Windows smashed, trees downed, and debris scattered everywhere.
“Looks like someone fought a war here.” Ren gave a low whistle.
“It did. Mother Nature’s side won.”
The roads were choked with debris and damage. We had to park the RV in the shade of a tall building, and then hike to the shore. The clean sea breeze coming off the ocean helped to chase the musty mold smells coming from the windows of the apartments and office buildings and homes in the vicinity. It chased away the lingering sewage and death smell, too. Stray dogs scampered around the city, most had returned to at least a semi-feral state where they wouldn’t approach us, but they respected us enough to stay away from us.
The Gulf of Mexico loomed at the end of the street. At first, it looked like nothing. The sun reflected hard from its surface and made the water look like it was full of floating gemstones. The closer we got, the more the blue-green colors surfaced in the distance. Up close, the water was spectacular, a hazy crystal blue and so clear! Being from Wisconsin, I was used to the dark, black-blue colored water of the lakes. This water was worthy of romance novel descriptions. The size of it was impressive. Gentle waves were coasting in from the gulf in two-foot swells, breaking into foamy whitecaps near the shore. The beach was clean and empty. Everything that usually pollutes beaches (specifically, other people) was absent. If there had been lifeguard stands, they were gone, stripped clean by storms. If there had been tacky beach furniture, it was also gone, blown to god-knows-where. Once we cleared the final edge of buildings, there was nothing but the water, the sand, and the sea air, a heady mixture of salt and clean breezes from far off the shore. It filled my senses, and I let it.
We walked to the beach, stopping at the edge to peel off shoes and socks. The sand was hot, almost too hot. I curled it in my toes and raked the top layer off to find the cooler, damp sand beneath. The texture of the sand was incredible, light and powdery. It was not the coarse sand I knew from the beaches on Lake Michigan or Lake Mendota back in Wisconsin. This stuff was sand from a fairy tale. If Ren had told me that she was done traveling, and she wanted to stay on that beach, I would have agreed wholeheartedly.
“We should have brought chairs,” I said. “Or a blanket. The sand is too hot to sit on.”
“We should have brought towels,” said Ren. She strode toward the water. At the tidal edge, she set down her backpack and her gun belt. I watched as she slipped out of her t-shirt and shorts, and then peeled her sports bra over her head. She ran to the water in only a pair of black cotton shorts, splashing for the first few steps and then diving into the first wave that rose to meet her. She disappeared under water for several seconds, but then popped up shaking her head, water spraying everywhere. She called to me. “You coming or what?”
I followed her lead. I tossed my shirt, guns, and ruck at the spot where she ditched her gear. I emptied the pockets of my cargo shorts, tossing the odds and ends onto my shirt. Then, I ran to the water, splashing into the surf and letting the incoming swells swallow me. I closed my eyes and listened to the rush and surge of the waves crashing over me. It was a new sound, and I reveled in the freshness of it. I tasted the saltwater on my tongue and felt light and clean.
When I surfaced, Ren was standing waist-deep ten yards to my right. She was laughing and turning her back to the waves, letting them crash over her. I sputtered and tried not to stare at her breasts. Believe me, though, I wanted to.
Hers were not the first breasts I’d ever seen. I’d seen Emily’s, of course. Em and I never had sex, but we weren’t exactly prudes, either. I’d seen my fair share of illicit websites, National Geographic magazines, and Health class textbooks, which obviously aren’t the same thing, but all had breasts. I had seen random flashes of breasts when I was near the UW campus during Freakfest. I was no stranger to female bodies, but it had also been a year and a half and change since I’d last seen boobs, and I was still an eighteen year old, red-blooded, American male. I couldn’t not look, but I also tried hard not to look. I think I made it too obvious. I’m sure I made it creepy and awkward, like I tend to make every social situation. I was scanning the sky with Ren standing right in front of me.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s okay, fool. You can look. We’ve come this far together; I think I can trust you with getting an eyeful of the ladies.” I knew I was blushing furiously, but I looked anyhow. Ren continued, “I mean, we’re probably going to have to get used to each other, y’know. We’re not Amish. This is the South. It’s going to be hot.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Besides, it’s not like it’s a big deal, right? Especially since…” She trailed off and shrugged a shoulder at me in a manner that suggested I was supposed to know what she meant.”
“Since what?”
“Since you’re…you know.” One side of her mouth smiled. She made a shrugging motion.
“Since I’m what?”
Her eyebrows knitted together. “You know.”
“I know what?”
She looked exasperated. “Since you’re…gay.”
“I’m what?”
Ren’s eyes went wide. There was the most painful and awkward silence between us. Then Ren clamped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry. Were you not Out yet? I don’t know what you’re waiting for, in that case. It’s okay. Most, if not all, of the anti-LBGT people are dead. Be who you want to be, be who you are. It’s okay. I don’t care.”
“But, I’m not gay.” I meant to say it in a normal tone, but I think it came out slightly panicked and whiny.
Ren’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“I’m not gay. At all. Why would you think I was? I mean, I’ve told you stories about my girlfriend, Emily.”
“I know, but I…” She cringed. “I thought she was like a beard or something. I thought that she was one of those fabled ‘high school girlfriends’ a guy used to keep the bullies at bay until he graduated and could come out in college.”
“I’m not gay!” I sounded too defensive, but I did not care at that point. “Never have been. I mean, it’s not as if I’d be ashamed to admit it if I was, but I’m not. One hundred percent not gay. Totally into the ladies over here.”
“Oh…geez.” Ren half-covered her breasts, and then dropped her hands. “I just…thought--”
“What did you think?”
“Well, you’re really well read for a Midwestern guy.”
What kind of regional racism was that? What did that even me
an? I sputtered, “We do read in Wisconsin, you know.”
“I don’t mean it like that. Just—you’re kind and thoughtful. You haven’t tried to make a pass at me the whole time we’ve been together. I mean, I slept in your bed and you didn’t even try to cop a feel or something. You didn’t even put a hand on my hip. I’m used to guys who…” She bit her lip. “I just…assumed…” She cringed again. “Twist, I am really sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed. I…didn’t mean anything by it.”
I was hurt, really. But, I buried my feelings and waved off her apology. “It’s okay. I’m not, though.”
“Oh.” Ren’s mouth twisted into a half-smile. “I guess I feel slightly more self-conscious now about being topless.”
“What’s done is done,” I said. “I won’t complain.” I tried to smile, but I don’t smile well, and I’m sure it came across like some sort of creeper pervert.
There was a long pause. Ren sank deeper into the water so it rose to her neck. The clarity of the water did not do a good job of hiding her. She licked her lips and looked at me. “Twist?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to have sex with you.”
My eyebrows arched. “What? Where did that come from? Who even brought that up?”
Ren crossed her arms over her chest. She gave me an awkward smile through gritted teeth. “Let’s not talk about it now. Let’s just have fun.”
I was confused and a little perturbed. I’m sure it showed on my face. “Oh-kay.” I fell backward into an approaching wave, but it wasn’t fun anymore. I felt like she just dropped a bomb on me, like there was suddenly a massive wall between us. I stayed underwater for probably too long. I didn’t know what to say to her. My own emotions were in flux. When I finally surfaced, she was next to me.
“Oh, I was worried. You were underwater for a long time.”
The Survivor Journals (Book 2): Long Empty Roads Page 19
