by J. Thorn
“We should go back.”
Maya looked over at Gerald, finding his watery eyes fixed on hers.
“They blew up the damn base.” The response had come out of Maya’s mouth before she’d even thought about it. “You’re joking, right?”
“Do I fucking look like I’m joking?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Maya saw Aiden’s body stiffen. He took a deep breath and stared at the road ahead, listening just like Laura was. Maya took a deep breath.
“Look, I know emotions are raw right now, but there’s nothing to go back to. We’ve got to keep moving and—”
“And what?” Gerald asked, interrupting Maya. “Just forget about her?”
Maya closed her eyes only long enough to take another breath. In that moment, she saw Cameron’s smiling face. Maya had come to like her. In fact, they had become friends.
“I’m hurting, too. But we’ve got our kids to think about now.”
“Don’t you say that. Don’t you lie to me. You didn’t give a shit about her. You’ve got to be loving the fact that I’m in pain. Does that feel good, Maya? Are you enjoying this?”
Maya gripped the wheel tighter, sweat making her palms clammy.
“You’re the one who left her to die while you ran off to kidnap our kids.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it would’ve been better if you had never made it out of that dome.” Gerald leaned back and snickered. “Maybe you should have—”
“Shut up!” Laura said, putting her arms up as if to block them out. “Both of you.”
Maya had almost forgotten the kids were between them, the old wounds caused by Gerald having reopened. They’d fallen back into their old ways without regard for what was most important. Laura and Aiden were old enough now to better understand why people split up, but hearing their parents argue like this was not helping anyone.
Everyone is on edge. Best to find a place to stop and regroup.
Another mile up the road, Maya saw a sign for a rest stop. It warned her that there wouldn’t be another one for twenty miles. With the air clear of ships and aliens, she turned off.
“Why are we stopping?” Gerald asked.
“So that everyone can get some fresh air and so that we can chat with Reno and John and figure out where we’re going.”
Maya pulled to the end of the parking lot and drove up over the curb and into the grass. There were scattered trees lining the edge of the rest area, and she pulled the truck into them so they’d be out of view from the road with some cover above. Maya parked the truck and climbed out. She walked to a concrete picnic table and sat on top of it.
As Reno and John opened the doors of their own truck, Reno already held his arms out in a question. “Why are we stopping?”
“We’ve gotten far enough away from the base and the sky is clear.” Maya looked up as if to confirm what she had just said. “I figured we could regroup and figure out exactly where we’re going.”
The kids walked over and joined Maya near the picnic table. Aiden sat on the bench while Laura leaned against a tree with her arms crossed.
Gerald had remained in the truck. Reno glanced at him, then back to Maya. He nodded at Gerald with his chin. Maya shook her head as Reno and John walked over to the picnic table.
“We need to figure out where we’re going,” Maya said.
“I don’t know where to go.” Reno turned to John, inviting his opinion.
“Yeah, those guys back at the base made it seem like there weren’t a lot of options. And there certainly isn’t much left of Nashville.”
Maya sighed. “Well, we can’t keep driving down the highway. It’s not safe, especially not at night. We need to—”
A light hit Maya in the face, blinding her. She raised her hands as the kids cried out. Maya tried to look up, but the light was too bright.
“We’re humans. Not a threat.”
She waited, hoping her eyes would adjust quickly so that she could see who was on the other side of that light. Whoever was holding it turned it off. Through the blotches in her vision, she saw the silhouette of a woman standing in the darkness halfway between Maya’s group and the rest area buildings. The woman was pointing something at them, but then she lowered her arm.
“Get out here, y’all. We’ve got other survivors.”
37
“We only stopped here to regroup.” Maya thought the African-American woman was probably sixty years old and she spoke with a deep, fluid Louisiana drawl. Maya’s eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to notice much else about her. “We don’t want any trouble.”
Six or seven people walked through the shadows from the travel center. They surrounded the woman and stared at Maya. The woman still hadn’t responded, and Maya hadn’t been paying attention to her truck when she heard the door open. Then she heard the click of a gun and saw Gerald aiming at the woman. Three of the people with her raised their own firearms, their weapons ranging from pistols to semi-automatic rifles.
“Back the fuck down, lady. I’m military.”
Maya lifted her hands in the air before stomping over to Gerald.
“Stop it. Put down the damn gun. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
He looked back at her, a darkness in his eyes. He tilted his head.
“Yeah? And would that be such a bad thing for you? No more custody complications.”
Maya shook her head. Without replying, she grabbed Gerald’s wrist and lowered his arm. A single tear came from one eye and he let loose with a sarcastic chuckle, but he didn’t fight her on it.
“Think of the behavior you’re modeling right now.”
At first, Gerald snarled and spun away from Maya, but a moment later he lowered his head, and when she put a soft hand on his shoulder, he turned around and stepped into her arms.
She couldn’t remember the last time they had hugged, let alone shown any kind of affection towards one another. Maya gripped the back of his shirt, feeling the pain caught between them and letting him have a few seconds. After Gerald slowly pulled away, Maya turned her focus back to the woman and the rest stop group as Reno stepped forward with John at his side.
“I’m sorry about this,” Reno said. “We’ve had a rough night and barely escaped an alien attack at Fort Campbell. We’re going to be on our way now.”
As Maya motioned to her friends and family to get back into the trucks, she heard other footsteps. When she turned around, the woman had cut the distance between them in half.
“Not so fast.”
Now that she was closer, Maya believed the woman to be in her late sixties, maybe pushing seventy. The senior wore a dark gray T-shirt under an open flannel shirt. Maya shook her head at her, not sure what was coming.
“Please, let us be on our way.”
The woman looked at Reno and John, who hadn’t said much since Gerald had come out of the truck with the gun. Then she turned and looked at Aiden and Laura before shaking her own head at Maya.
“Not until you let me feed those kids.”
Relaxing, Maya smiled.
The woman returned her expression with a warm, wide grin. She waved Maya and their group toward the rest stop building.
“Come on inside.”
The woman then turned her back, even though Gerald had been pointing a gun at them a few minutes earlier. Now, he looked at Maya and shrugged.
Maya glanced over to Reno and John, who were staring at her, waiting to follow her lead. Laura had moved, but Aiden gave Maya his best “C’mon, Mom” look, which she knew meant he was hungry.
Without saying another word, Maya followed the woman and the rest of the group through the grass and toward the travel center.
Five candles illuminated the foyer along with a couple of battery-powered lights. Maya noticed two generators sitting in the corner, as well as three portable spotlights. The woman went behind a desk and grabbed a cardboard box. She then came over to Maya.
“May I offer something to your children?”
Maya lo
oked inside the box and saw it was filled with junk food—mostly chips and candy bars.
Maya nodded. “Thank you.”
The woman went to the kids and let them each pick from the box.
Maya looked around, checking for threats but seeing none. This travel area and rest stop looked exactly like the hundreds of others she’d been in over the years. While traveling, she’d never given these places a second thought, usually scurrying to and from their restrooms before getting back onto the highway. But now, she saw the well-worn facility in a new way. As these people had already realized, the place could be transformed into a bunker.
“We raided the vending machines as soon as we got here.” The woman had spoken the obvious, but Maya didn’t want to be rude, so she didn’t interrupt. “Luckily, no one else had yet. It’s not the most nutritious stuff, but it’s better than nothing.”
After the kids had each grabbed a couple of things, the woman returned to Maya. She put the box in front of her, but Maya waved it away. She had lost her appetite when the realization of what had happened to all those people at the base—and Cameron—had hit her. She couldn’t think of eating now, especially not a sugar-filled treat.
“Suit yourself.” The woman handed the box to one of the men behind her who walked it over to Gerald, Reno, and John. The woman then stuck out her hand to Maya.
“Donna.”
Maya looked at the woman’s hand before reaching out to shake it. “I’m Maya.”
“Nice to meet you, Maya.”
Donna then looked past Maya, who turned to see what had caught the woman’s attention. Gerald had gone to a corner by himself and was sitting on the floor with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his arms—looking straight ahead at the wall across the room while the rest of the people introduced themselves to one another.
“I don’t mind if you all stay here until the sun comes up,” Donna said. “But you’re going to have to keep him under control.”
“I understand. He lost someone very dear to him tonight when Fort Campbell went down.”
“I’d like to hear about what happened there.”
Reno walked up with his hands on his hips. He looked at Gerald, then to Maya. “That was some outburst back there.”
“Yeah, well, he’s hurting.”
“Still, isn’t that why you divorced him?”
Maya turned on Reno, her cheeks flushed and a knot forming in her stomach. As if he could read her face, Reno stepped back and put his hands on top of his head, drawing in a deep breath.
“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.”
“Why don’t you fill Donna here in on what happened at Fort Campbell and mind your own damn business?”
Without giving Reno the chance to respond, Maya walked over to Gerald, leaving Reno and Donna standing in an awkward silence. She sat on the floor next to her ex-husband.
“I’m sorry about losing my cool out there.”
Gerald had spoken without taking his eyes off the wall.
“It’s all right. I know you’re upset. Cameron and I had become close, so I can sort of understand what you’re going through.”
“Yeah, well, I had no right to blame that on you. It wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It was his.”
Gerald twisted around and pointed at Reno, whose back was turned as he spoke with Donna.
“If he had only been more patient and allowed us to have a discussion as a group instead of insisting on leaving tonight, then we might all—”
“Then we might all be dead,” Maya said, cutting him off. “We’d have been stuck inside one of those buildings that blew up.”
“I had a plan. It would have kept our family alive.”
“We can’t change what happened. Protecting them now is all that matters to me. And I know we can only do that if we stick together. You’re hurting, I get it, but you’ve got to do your best to move on so we can stay focused and do what’s right for our kids.”
Maya stood up and brushed off her pants, blowing a wisp of hair from her face before looking down at Gerald.
“I’ll leave you to mourn, but we don’t have much time.”
Gerald scoffed, then looked at the wall again, shaking his head. Then he looked back up at Maya.
“We can’t trust Reno. You know it, and I know it.”
Maya walked away, feeling that knot in her stomach turning into doubt.
38
After her conversation with Gerald, Maya slid out a back door. She took a deep breath as the cool night air chilled the sweat on her brow. Ten feet from the door, a picnic table sat under a tree. She plopped down and put her elbows on the table, then ran her hands over her face.
Her mounting stress only made her sweat more. Her kids were her top priority, and they were supposed to be Gerald’s, as well. But she wasn’t sure if she could count on him, given his mental state. She knew that losing Cameron wasn’t easy for him. It hadn’t been easy for her, either, as she had become close to the woman. Hell, Cameron had probably become her best friend. But now she was gone, and she had died in the act of saving Maya’s life.
That thought overwhelmed her, and she let out a deep sigh.
Maya also thought that at least some of Gerald’s anger stemmed from him being wrong about Fort Campbell. Had they taken his advice and stayed there, they’d all likely be dead. And Maya had rubbed that fact into his face. She’d only been trying to knock some sense into him, but in hindsight, maybe it hadn’t been the best way to do so.
But through it all, Maya had to make the decision as to what they’d do next and where they’d go. All Reno had suggested was that they leave Fort Campbell, but he’d had no plan as to what they would do after. Of course, he’d mentioned looking for another military base or stronghold. But as they discovered at Fort Campbell, that didn’t guarantee anything.
What am I going to do?
Maya shook her head at the question, and was staring into the inky blackness when the back door opened. She turned around to see Reno walking toward her. Maya looked down at the table, to where someone with a knife had scratched “suck it” in the wood. Maya gazed at the carving, running her finger along the jagged lines instead of acknowledging Reno’s presence.
But by the time the door eased shut, Reno stood next to the picnic table with his hands in his pockets.
So much for a few minutes to myself.
“Hey.”
Maya looked up and only nodded at Reno as a response. Then she turned away from him again.
“How are you doing?”
“We’re alive, so I’m good.”
Without asking for permission, Reno took a seat across from her at the picnic table. He clasped his hands together and waited for her to finally look up at him. When she did, he was staring at her.
“I meant after all of that in there.” Reno used his chin to point at the rest stop.
“He’s upset, and rightfully so. He lost someone he loved.”
“And someone who he left behind when he went to that base in the first place.”
“He thought he was doing the right thing.”
Reno raised an eyebrow. “But do you?”
“That’s not my place to judge.”
Reno clenched one of his fists and sighed before responding. “He’s made some terrible decisions, Maya. He went and took your kids from your mom. He left his girlfriend behind, helpless and alone. And he fought us on staying at Fort Campbell. Think about what would have happened if we would have stayed.”
Maya shrugged. “What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know how we trust him at this point.”
Maya scoffed. “I’m not going there.”
“Why not? Do you trust him?”
Maya considered the question. It was true that Gerald had gotten her into this situation in the first place. If he hadn’t gone and taken the kids from Maya’s mother’s house, then they would never have ended up in the middle o
f Nowhere, Kentucky.
But, on the flip side, Maya might not have found Reno again. When he’d hurt his ankle and begged Maya to leave him behind, it had been before Maya had realized her kids weren’t at her mother’s. That was one positive that had come out of a terrible situation, and he probably wasn’t thinking about that. But Maya wasn’t going to bother bringing it up.
“I know that he wouldn’t purposely do anything to hurt our kids.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Look, I know what you’re implying, but that isn’t an option.”
Reno stood. He turned his back to Maya and put his hands on his waist. Then he turned around and shook his head.
“He’s going to do something stupid. He’s coming unhinged. You know it. I know it. It’s not safe to have him around.”
Maya lowered her voice. “He’s the father of my children. I’ve already removed him from their everyday lives once. They’ll never forgive me if I do that again.”
“Yeah, well, they might not get the chance to if you allow him to stay with us. Because I’m telling you now, he’s going to do something stupid.”
Before Maya could respond, Reno walked back over to the door. She didn’t stop him, and he didn’t turn around again before going inside.
39
After a few minutes of solitude, Maya stood up to go back inside the rest stop. The confrontations with Gerald and Reno, though different in tone, had only been more bullshit on top of everything else that had happened within the past several hours. She hoped to go inside and get some rest now, and sleep on her next big decision.
When she re-entered the building, Donna was standing in the middle of the room with Reno and Gerald on either side of her. Everyone else stood nearby or sat on the ground against the wall. Laura and Aiden were lying down on blankets on the far side of the room.
All eyes fell on Maya as she walked back inside.
