Wandering Highway

by Ike Warren

  "It's later that I thought. We need to find some shelter out of this weather." Allan said.

  "Well there's a lot of buildings around here. Take your pick." Jennifer waved her hand in front of her suggesting any one of the many stores and food establishments that lined the highway.

  "I don't know if any of those places are going to be safe. They've got two things that are in high demand right now. Food and money. I don't want to be there when someone decides to take either of those." He looked around and saw an underpass about a half mile from the Wal-Mart. "There's a bridge crossing over the highway up there." He pointed. "Let’s head that way."

  They walked along the north service road that looked over the once busy highway that was now congested with only foot traffic and stalled cars. The rain was falling heavily and they put their hands above their heads to shield their faces from the pounding rain. When they reached the bridge Allan read the green highway sign that said MacArthur Blvd in big white letters. They crossed down the grassy median and carefully worked their way up the concrete retaining wall. The abutment between the bridge and the retaining wall was narrow and the surface had an oily reside that felt slimy but at least it was dry. They tucked their bodies into the top corner of the bridge and each struggled to find positions that were comfortable. The confined space was a stark change from the wide open views of the parking lots and highways from earlier in the day and being there in the enclosed area gave both of them an odd sense of security. They had no weapon other than a long screwdriver but at least the shelter provided them some semblance of protection, even if it was only imaginary.

  Allan struggled to hold his backpack close to him. The gallon jug of punch inside made the bag round like a ball and it constantly seemed like it wanted to roll away from him down the sloped retaining wall. Finally he grew tired of fighting with the bag and he unzipped it and pulled out the bottle contained inside. He unscrewed the lid to the bottle of orange punch and took a big gulp and then he handed it to Jennifer who did the same. They sat there for a few minutes enjoying the sweet nectar until their bellies were filled and then he placed the bottle back into his backpack. He placed the bag in his lap and hooked his right arm around one of the straps and held it snug against his body. With his other hand he reached out to Jennifer who was using her backpack as a pillow and he found her arm and held it tight. As the sky grew dark when the sun cast its final rays of sunlight on that awful day they saw another group of people walk up the embankment on the other side of the bridge. There were three of them, a man and woman and a young child. When they reached the top they huddled close to one another just as Allan and Jennifer were doing and Allan wondered where their new neighbors had come from and where they might be headed. Total darkness crept over them in a way that they had never experienced. The rain clouds above hid the moon and stars and there were no street lights or car lights or anything that might have the possibility of creating illumination. The complete absence of light was terrifying to everyone in the city that night.

  ----

  There was a whimper in the darkness and Allan's eyes sprung open. Still in a sleepy daze, the events of the day before were momentarily forgotten.

  Where am I?

  Suddenly it all came rushing back to him in a flurry of horror.

  What was that sound?

  He felt around in the darkness and found Jennifer's arm.

  It was trembling.

  "What's wrong?" He leaned in close in an effort to get a glimpse of her face but it was invisible in the darkness.

  "I'm sorry." She wept.

  "Sorry for what?"

  "Sorry for getting us into this."

  "This is not your fault."

  "It is too. Who was the one who wanted to go on this trip? I should have told you that we could stay home and not made you drive in the rain."

  "Well we're here now and the only thing we can do about it is lay here and try and get some rest."

  "I miss Samantha. I wish we were with her now."

  "I miss her too." The words cast a veil of frozen silence between them. Their thoughts drifted between memories of Samantha. Little things that they had ordinarily taken for granted like her smile, her playful laugh, or the way she mispronounced words sometimes. Allan remembered the way that she would sometimes enter the living room where they sat watching TV. She would stand there in the hall doorway with a goofy smile on her face, waiting for one of her parents to acknowledge her and then she would take off in a sprint and jump into the lap of the first one who would look her way. It had become a long established game and Allan and Jennifer found themselves in competition with one another as to who could acknowledge Samantha first. Many times it would just be Allan sitting in the living room deeply focused on whatever was on the television at the moment. Samantha would stand in the hallway waiting to be seen, and even though he saw her out of the corner of his eye it was as if the television pleaded with him not to look to her. Moments would pass and Samantha would make silly grunting noises as if she were trying to clear her throat but the television, oh how the television pulled at him to not look away. He could see her looking at him hopefully waiting in anticipation for the moment that he would turn to her and she could spring into action but there were times that he would not look to her, and in the corner of his eye he could see her frown and turn and walk away. The image tore at him in the dark place under the bridge for although he could not remember what was on the television that was so important he could still see her so clearly walking away into the shadows of the hallway. If only he could call out to his daughter now he would say "I see you!" and she would turn and come darting across the room and joyfully leap into his lap and he could hold her safe in the horrible dark night and apologize for having ever ignored her.

  ----

  There was a loud crack in the night. Allan jolted awake and banged his head against a bridge beam above him and he spread his arms and legs wide against the oily concrete surface to stabilize himself.

  "Was that thunder?" Jennifer's voice asked beside him in the darkness.

  They listened quietly. Suddenly three small flashes flickered in the distance. A couple of seconds later they heard three loud bangs to accompany the flashes. It was gunfire coming from the direction of one of the restaurants in front of the Wal-Mart store. The faint sound of a woman screaming echoed in the distance. "Why are they shooting?" Jennifer pleaded.

  "They are after the food and money and," Allan stopped mid-sentence. He was going to say, "and there is nothing to stop them." but he was afraid for what that might mean, for them and especially for Jennifer if it should come to be that he ever wasn't around to protect her.

  Chapter 6: Eastbound

  It was early morning and the rising sun cast its orange beams of light across their faces. The dark clouds from the day before had cleared and turned into little white puffs of cotton. Allan stretched his legs and his body slid a little ways down the concrete embankment causing both of the shirts that he was wearing to roll up on his back. He lay there basking in the sun for a moment, pondering if he should wake Jennifer or let her rest for a bit longer before they set off on the long day ahead of them.

  "Well are you just going to lay there?" Jennifer was already sitting upright in the corner of the bridge above him.

  Allan turned to her. "How long have you been awake?"

  "Most of the night. I didn't sleep much." She would often say that back at home when Samantha cried a lot at night when she was a little baby. It always made Allan feel guilty for having slept. He balanced himself on the slope of the oily concrete surface. Sharp pain shot up from his feet and he fell back down.

  "What's wrong?" Jennifer asked.

  Allan winced as he clutched at his feet.

  "What is it babe?" She repeated.

  He untied his shoes and slipped them off. Despite carefully placing them beside him, one of the shoes slipped and slid all the way down the embankment and landed in the grassy area down beside the roadway. H
e peeled back his socks to reveal open blisters on the heels of each foot. The commotion of the day before had kept him from noticing the constant rubbing of his shoes against his feet.

  He looked up at Jennifer. "So much for these fancy new Sketchers."

  She looked at him confused.

  "They are brand new. I never got a chance to break them in." He said as he carefully slid his socks back around his heels and grabbed the lone shoe that was still beside him. Jennifer stood up and offered him a hand and he hobbled to his feet and winced again as they made their way down the concrete slope. They reached the bottom where he sat in the grass and tied his shoes.

  "Where's your backpack?" Jennifer asked.

  Allan looked up to the corner of the bridge where they had slept but he did not see it either. He stood up and looked around the grassy area on the ground. It was nowhere to be found.

  "It must have slid down the embankment last night." Allan buried his face in his hands. "Someone must have picked it up down here and walked off with it." He didn't want to contemplate the alternative, which was that someone could have walked up the side of the bridge and taken it out of his arms as he slept.

  "What are we going to do for food?" Jennifer's frustration swelled when she remembered the cans of chili that were inside the backpack. She wasn't mad at him for losing the pack. She was mad at the whole situation. She was mad about the long walk ahead of them in North Dallas, if that was good or bad she didn't know, blisters on her husband’s feet, no food or water, and being 8 months pregnant in the middle of it all.

  "You should be more worried about that orange punch.”

  “Why?”

  “Rule of three's." He said.

  "What in the hell are you talking about?" Now she was mad at him.

  The agitation in her voice caught him by surprise. "Ah, well, it's some kind of survival lingo. I'm trying to remember how it goes. Three minutes without water, three days without shelter.... wait, that's not right. It's three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without the companionship of my beautiful wife." He grinned at the last part in an attempt to lighten the mood. She glared at him.

  "Basically what that rule is supposed to do is help you prioritize, and in our case that orange punch is more important than food." He finished.

  "I am hungry. I am not thirsty." Jennifer stated. Allan shook his head. There’s no getting through her barrier this morning. He thought.

  He surrendered. "I'll find food for us somewhere."

  People were starting to fill the highway again. The bodies crawled out of roadside ditches and drainage culverts and gathered on the highway, all of them walking in seemingly random directions.

  "Which way do we go?" Jennifer asked.

  "We head east." He grabbed her hand and his feet took painful steps forward. Surprisingly, after a few hundred yards the pain began to diminish as his tired and torn feet became numb again to the pain. They had walked for an hour when they came upon a commotion on the highway. A mass of people had formed a circular human shield around two men who were fighting with one another. Allan drew near to see what was happening despite Jennifer tugging him to not get involved.

  "Don't stop. Just keep going." She said but Allan was already infatuated with the fight. The fighter's bodies were rolling and scooting around on pavement and the scene reminded Allan of a mixed martial arts fight that he would sometimes catch on TV. One of the men had a deep cut above his eye and blood had run down and covered his face in streaks of red goo. He was struggling to gain a grip on his opponent and for a split second Allan thought the blood soaked fighters eyes met with his and it was if the man was trying to plead with Allan, "Make this stop." The other fighter was wearing dress pants but the top half of what was probably once a business suit had been discarded and now only a white blood stained undershirt remained. In that moment the fighter with the dress pants gained a dominant position atop the bloody faced man, threw him down on the pavement and straddled him. Fists rained down in a fury and the other man reached up to block the blows but he could not stop the ferocious attack.

  Jennifer leaned close to one of the bystanders, "Why are they fighting?"

  "Something about a bottle of water." The bystander replied still fixated on the fight. "I think one of them tried to take water from the other."

  More vicious blows.

  With each pound of fists came the sound of knuckles striking facial bones. After a few seconds the man trapped underneath fell limp and just as Allan had seen so many times when a fighter was knocked out in a mixed martial arts fight, someone from the crowd jumped in and tackled the attacker to get him off the defeated fighter. The man who stopped the fight was tall and was wearing a wife beater shirt and his dark skin cast deep shadows into his muscular frame and Allan thought how he actually looked like he could be a referee in a professional fight. As the victorious fighter stood up the referee positioned himself between him and the other fighter who lay helpless on the ground in order to prevent further attacks. The winning fighter looked at the referee confused as he contemplated what had just happened and he wondered if the person who had jumped out of the crowd and tackled him was now a new opponent.

  "He's had enough!" The dark skinned referee shouted and the fighter that he had tackled relaxed his stance after realizing that the new man from the crowd was not a threat. Allan half expected to see him raise both of his arms up and run around the circle of bystanders in a victory dance as he had seen so many times on TV. Instead the winning fighter simply looked around at the crowed that had formed around him with a blank stare of stock on his face. During the fight he was a ferrous animal but now, standing before the crowd the shame of what had just happened cast over him. Yesterday he was a businessman or a salesman or any number of professions where one might wear a business suit, but today he was a vicious fighter, enraged over a bottle of water.

  In a move that surprised everyone he knelt down close to the dark skinned referee and asked, "Is he ok?"

  The referee reached down and checked for a pulse at the neck of the defeated man's neck and then looked up, "He's not ok man. He's dead."

  The victorious fighter leapt to his feed in disbelief. Stunned silence filled the crowd. Terror poured over the winning fighter as the reality of everything sunk in. Moments ago he was a vicious fighter, now he was a murderer. It felt to him that the crowd was no longer looking at him. They were all looking down on him with judgment in their eyes.

  "I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't mean to kill him. He stole my water. Oh God! Please forgive me!" The man waited, praying for something to take the horrible moment away, someone to step in and console him and tell him, "It's ok. You are forgiven."

  The crowd did not respond. No one was there to console him. He realized that the only thing that could take the moment away was to flee. In a panic the man bolted, stumbling and pushing his way out of the crowd. He ran down the highway embankment and crossed the access road and ran out of sight.

  Jennifer turned to Allan with tears in her eyes, "He just killed that man." She said in disbelief. "Isn't someone going to do something?"

  There would be no justice for the killer that day. No police to summon. Everyone knew that but no one could accept it. Why didn't I listen to Jennifer when she told me not to stop and watch the fight? Allan asked himself. We would have been further down the road and would have never known of this horrible thing.

  Allan put his arm around his wife and guided her away from the crowd and as they took their first steps away something on the ground made a popping noise under Allan's foot. It was a plastic bottle half full of water. Realizing the importance of the item Allan reached down and thought how before yesterday he would not dare touch the bottle. Crime scene evidence. He thought, yet now the water inside it seemed more important than anything else and so he reached down and placed the souvenir of the death fight into Jennifer’s backpack. He placed his arm
back around Jennifer and they walked eastward into the growing heat of the day.

  They walked for two more hours and the moisture on the road surface from the rains of the day before was beginning to vaporize and the air was becoming thick and humid. Allan heard the faint sound of wheezing coming from Jennifer earlier in the day but he ignored it and pressed on. She had always had a mild case of asthma but it never affected her daily life except on one eventful occasion.

  Eight years ago Allan and Jennifer were driving down to Galveston Texas the day after their wedding and as they drove she felt her airways become more and more constricted as the elevation dropped closer to the moist air at sea level. By the time they arrived at their hotel by the beachside she had an obvious wheeze when she breathed that caused her to feel faint from just walking up the stairs to reach the front lobby of the hotel. She was miserable. Their attempt to enjoy a romantic walk down the beach at sunset was a struggle that had to be cut short. She ended up staying inside the hotel the entire time and although Allan said he wasn’t upset she knew that her asthma attack had disappointed him. They went to a pharmacy and despite finding some asthma relief pills that were supposed to help with mild cases of asthma the wheezing stayed with her during their entire trip and they ended up cutting their honeymoon short. The only thing that finally relieved her asthma was her prescription medicated mist and getting into the dryer air back home. The wheezing on their honeymoon was the same wheezing that Allan could hear coming from her lungs now. He was contemplating whether he should address it somehow and ask her how she was feeling or whether to just try to ignore it and press on when Jennifer stopped, breathless and red faced, "I need to rest."

  They walked to a small grove of trees in the grassy median on the side of the road and Jennifer knelt down in the shade. She reached into her purse and took out the medicated mist and squeezed off a squirt into her mouth. As they rested under the shade the medicine slowly worked its way down into her lungs and her breathing became easier. They rested under the trees for longer than they wanted, both of them feeling like they were delaying too much, but it was just too hot outside to force their bodies to get up and walk again. They drank the water from the bottle that Allan had placed in Jennifer’s backpack from back at the fight-crime scene but it was not enough water to quench their thirst. Finally when Allan felt that they could linger no longer he stood up and helped Jennifer to her feet and they pressed on.