by Ryan Sova
Heragald answered, “Yes, as long as it does not interfere with your duties here.”
Atonick responded, “I haven’t heard much about your family since we left. How are they doing?”
Nephal answered, “I haven’t heard much either. After all, it’s easy for me to send her letters but much more difficult the other way around. We have tried though, every letter that I sent, I would make an educated guess as to where I might be if she sent a return letter. It took us nine and a half months, but I finally got one. In the letter she sent, she told me that we have a healthy baby boy named Joseph and filled me in on everything that has happened with the farm since I left.”
Heragald responded with a gentleness in her voice, “A long time ago, I had a non-magic user husband. I know what you are going through Nephal. I’ve been there. At least now that you are in Bragsdale and not moving from town to town, you should be able to send letters back and forth more easily with your loved ones.”
Atonick responded with a curious look on his face, “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to your husband?”
Heragald answered, “I outlived him, same as with my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It’s the curse of a long life, I suppose, to outlive everyone you love.”
Although Heragald didn’t say much more after this, Nephal could tell that this subject still weighed heavily on her mind. Suddenly she looked very unhappy, though not in an angry sort of way. After a long moment of silence, Heragald spoke, “It’s getting late boys. You should think about getting some sleep.”
Heragald then got up and left. The three wished her a good night as she went. Once she was finally gone, Atonick commented, “She’s right. I think that we should all get some sleep. Tomorrow morning will be here before you know it and we have a long day ahead of us.”
Atonick, Eliak, and Nephal then left the inn and returned to the palace. Once they had reached the upper levels of the palace, Atonick addressed Nephal and Eliak, “Both of you, check your rooms and make sure that you have your robes for tomorrow.”
Nephal and Eliak left for their rooms. The castle was dark at this hour but had enough magical light for one to be able to easily find their way around. The light was provided by glass balls that lined the upper hallways and emitted a soft white light.
Nephal reached his door and entered the room. His room had a similar light that was affixed to the ceiling. The light in Nephal’s room glowed brightly the moment that he entered his room, filling the room with light. Nephal quickly found his robes neatly laid out on his bed. They looked identical to Atonick’s robes except that they had no symbols embroidered on them. They were just plain black robes.
Nephal immediately returned to report back to Atonick who was still standing out in the hall. Once he had reached Atonick, he spoke, “I have all of my robes Atonick.”
Eliak returned at almost the same time as Nephal and spoke immediately following Nephal, “I have all of my robes too. Tell me, why don’t I get any with the fancy symbols like what you have on yours?”
Atonick responded, “Because you haven’t earned them yet.”
There was a slight pause, then Atonick continued, “I have just verified and the alarms in your rooms have been set for tomorrow morning. They will go off at an hour before dawn. That is when you will get up and head to the dining hall for breakfast. After breakfast, you will follow me to one of the magical study rooms where we will begin with your first lesson.”
Nephal asked, “How will we turn this alarm off when it goes off in the morning?”
Atonick answered, “Just get up and it will turn off on its own. Try laying back down though and it will go off again.”
Eliak then added, “And how do we turn off the bright light in our room?”
Atonick answered, “Just lay down in your bed and it will turn off on its own. And if you ever have to get up in the middle of the night, it will turn back on the moment that you get out of bed.”
Eliak smiled and said, “I like enchanted bedrooms!”
Atonick responded, “I’m glad. Now you both should get your robes put away and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning will be the start of your first day as sorcerers.”
CHAPTER 14
It was still dark outside when Garry woke up. Garry sat up at the picnic table and looked around. There was currently no one at the rest stop.
Garry stood up and stretched. He felt much better now than he did when he first fell asleep. His throat was still a bit raw, but other than that, his symptoms seemed to have gone away. Now that Garry was up, awake, and feeling better, he noticed that he felt very hungry and thirsty now. Garry approached his car and grabbed a bottle of water, a loaf of bread, a butter knife, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of grape flavored jelly from his car. Then he headed back to the picnic table to prepare his sandwiches. As he sat down at the table, Garry wished that he had also brought some plates with him as well, but unfortunately that thought had not occurred to Garry when he left his apartment. Back then he was only expecting to go stay at a hotel, not live out of a car while on the run from police.
Garry tried to push the thought of how unsanitary the picnic table was out of his head as he laid his bread slices out on the table and started preparing his sandwiches. Due to how hungry he was, Garry prepared a total of three sandwiches then laid them on top of each other in a stack. He then grabbed his bottle of water and started drinking. By the time he had set the bottle back down almost two-thirds of the bottle had been emptied. Knowing that this first bottle of water was not going to satisfy his thirst, Garry returned to the car to retrieve a second bottle. Once Garry had returned with his second bottle, he started consuming his sandwiches.
While Garry was eating, he reflected on the dreams that he had been recently experiencing. The next time that I fall asleep, Nephal will have his first lesson in magic, and by extension, so will I.
The enormity of what he had been witnessing in his dreams finally hit him. I am a sorcerer. And not just any sorcerer mind you, I am a powerful sorcerer. Soon, I will finally have a weapon at my disposal that I can use against the undead, and that weapon is magic!
All this time of waiting, wondering, and now it finally made perfect sense. Garry finally understood what his purpose was. He still didn’t know exactly how he was going to stop the undead, but now with the ancient power of sorcery on his side his task didn’t seem quite as impossible anymore. For the first time since learning the horrible truth about these creatures, Garry finally had hope.
But having hope at becoming a great and powerful sorcerer wasn’t enough, at least not yet, for none of that power was real yet for Garry. As he was thinking, Garry soon realized that he still needed to learn magic and learn it well before he would be able to do anything aside from run and hide. I can’t rely on any supernatural powers to save me just yet. I am going to need time if I want to learn magic, which means that I am going to have to stay hidden until I finally have the power to fight back.
As Garry was eating his food, he decided that he was now feeling well enough again to drive. Garry was not certain as to what time it was, but it looked like it was sometime in the early morning hours well before dawn. Once Garry had finished with his sandwiches he walked back to his car, turned on his computer to review his Google Maps directions, then got back on the interstate.
As it was still another nineteen hours before he would reach his final destination, Garry decided that he would stop somewhere for the night once he had reached Wyoming. Garry planned on using up the rest of his stored gas and disposing of the empty containers before finally stopping to rest. This way he could actually sleep in his car without getting sick again.
Now that Garry was back on the road, he could see what time it was. His clock showed the current time as 3:32 AM. Garry realized as he was looking at the time, though, that he was in a different time zone now. So based on the time zone that he was currently in, it was actually only 2:32 AM. Garry was grateful for this. Driving
at this time of morning would make for a very peaceful ride as there would be very little traffic on the road.
The last time that Garry had refueled his car was when he had first pulled into the Wright City Rest Stop before falling asleep and getting sick. So Garry still had a full tank of gas as he began with today’s journey. It would be hours before he would need to stop again and refill his tank. Garry calmly drove during the long car ride, quietly pondering his predicament.
He thought about how long he would last on the cash that he had been able to take with him. The combined sum of his money after adding together his checking account, savings account, and retirement check was six-thousand-one hundred and forty-one dollars. Since combining all of this money into his checking account, Garry had booked a motel for six days. What the motel had failed to do, however, was charge this expense to his account prior to when Garry drained his bank accounts and fled. This meant that Garry had essentially been able to stay at a motel for a few hours free of charge. If the day ever came where Garry would be exonerated from these false allegations, he would find the charge for his six-day motel visit on his checking account along with an accompanying overdraft fee. These, however, were trivial concerns at the moment due to his current predicament.
Thus far, since going on the run, Garry had only had two expenses, his Lowes shopping, and his gas stop. Garry had spent one-hundred-seventy-four dollars and seventy-seven cents at Lowes and he had spent one-hundred-thirty-six dollars and sixty-eight cents at the gas station. Garry did some math in his head while he was driving and determined that he still had about five-thousand-eight-hundred and twenty-nine dollars left currently.
After calculating how much money he had left, Garry pondered how long he could feasibly stay on the run with the money that he still had left. As he was thinking about this, he realized that there were several factors to consider. Where would he go to get food? How far would he travel each day? What would he do about lodging?
Garry considered each of these questions separately. As for food, he had two options. He could either order out or he could buy his food at a grocery store. The biggest problem with ordering out was that this would get expensive fast. Even if he only went to fast food restaurants, this would cost Garry an average of around eight to twelve dollars a meal. Just one month of this would cost Garry anywhere from seven-hundred and twenty dollars to one-thousand and eighty dollars. Add Garry’s other expenses to this and he would be broke in just one to two months.
Periodically stopping at a grocery store was a much better idea financially. Garry could buy all the food that he needed in bulk and for only a fraction of the price that he would pay at any restaurant. What Garry worried about when he considered this idea was that any grocery store that he could possibly go to was loaded with cameras. So if police ever reviewed the footage of a store that he visited using facial recognition software, they would find him. This at first made Garry hesitate about using grocery stores but, as he thought about it more, he realized that no matter where he went, he was not going to escape from cameras.
After a significant amount of thought on this subject, Garry decided that once he reached Utah, he would stop worrying about being filmed on camera. There were several reasons for this decision. First, Garry realized that no matter what he did (aside from camping out in the woods somewhere), he was going to be filmed on camera. Second, as Garry considered the risks involved with being videotaped, he determined that there was only a slight chance investigators would find him. This was due to the vast number of possible locations of where he could be. In order to effectively find him, investigators would need to regularly pull surveillance footage from every business in every city within the United States. Even with facial recognition technology, Garry reasoned that investigators would not have the kind of time to perform surveillance on such a large scale.
This decision left Garry with two simple choices as to where to go in order to get food. Eat out exclusively and pay a ridiculous amount in food expenses or save your money and periodically buy food in bulk at a grocery store. Garry would choose the less expensive of these two options.
Garry’s next question was how far he was going to drive every day. This was an easy question to answer. Garry had managed to travel from Richmond, Virginia to Missouri using less than sixty dollars worth in gas. So if he were to travel an equivalent distance every day, he would end up spending about one-thousand-eight-hundred dollars a month. But as Garry thought about it more, he decided that he would not need to travel quite so frequently. He determined that he could save money if he planned on staying in each city he visited for a period of about two days. This would limit his travel time to just two or three days a week, which would, in turn, reduce his monthly gas expense to anywhere between four-hundred and eighty to seven-hundred and twenty dollars a month. Garry would use the higher of the two estimates in calculating his monthly gas expense.
Garry’s last question of what he was going to do about lodging was also a no-brainer. Staying at a motel would be both dangerous and expensive. It would be dangerous because Garry would need to show ID to check into a motel, which would leave each motel he visited with a record of his name and, in addition to this, it would also greatly increase the chances that someone might recognize him and call the authorities on him. This option would also be expensive because even a cheap motel could run him thirty to forty dollars a night. Even though the alternative of sleeping in his car was not ideal, it had the advantage of being both safe and free.
As Garry considered how this choice might affect his personal hygiene, he determined that he could still maintain a somewhat decent hygiene by using truck stop gas stations that are equipped with showers. As for his clothes, Garry would simply have to find a laundromat during the time that he was already planning on staying in each city that he visited.
Once Garry had determined the answer for all of these questions, he returned again to his first question. How long can I afford to keep this up? Garry added all of his known monthly expenses together. He planned for seven-hundred and twenty dollars a month in gas. Then he determined how much he would spend per month on food. In this regard, Garry had plans on living off of the following things: bottled water, canned vegetables, and peanut butter jelly sandwiches. It was not a dietary plan that Garry would have normally chosen for himself, but it would keep him alive and cost him very little in the process.
Garry decided that for his water, he could just refill the empty water bottles from his car whenever he uses a shower station (also in addition to this, many shower stations come with a complimentary bottle of water). The canned vegetables he could buy in four-packs for just under three dollars a pack. He planned on consuming one can per day. The bread he could get for about two dollars a loaf, he planned on going through two loaves per week. The peanut butter and jelly he could get for the combined price of about four dollars and fifty cents which would last him for about one week.
Garry meticulously added these figures together and came up with an approximate expense of forty-eight dollars a month for food. He then added an additional eighty dollars a month for showering. Garry planned on showering at least twice a week (shower stations would cost him ten dollars per visit). Then, Garry added his gas expense of seven-hundred and twenty dollars to this figure which then came to a total monthly expense of eight-hundred and forty-eight dollars (he rounded this figure up to eight-hundred and eighty dollars to account for things such as varying prices and sales taxes as he moved from state to state). Using this monthly average, Garry predicted that he would have money to stay on the run for the next six and a half months. After that, based on his calculations, Garry would have only one-hundred and nine dollars left. This, he planned on using for his other miscellaneous expenses such as laundromat expenses, toothbrush/toothpaste, deodorant, can opener, paper plates, plastic spoons, shower shoes, etc...
By the time that Garry had finally figured all of this out in his head, it was time for him to stop and fill his
gas tank. Garry pulled off the interstate and found an empty parking lot. The sun was just starting to come up when Garry started pouring the gas from his trunk into his gas tank. Once Garry was finished, he put the empty gasoline containers back into his trunk and then entered the interstate once again.
Once Garry had merged onto the interstate, he found his set speed and engaged the cruise control. Garry had planned on having a peaceful ride for at least a few more hours before traffic started to pick up, but then something happened that caught Garry’s attention.
Garry heard a news report on the radio in which his name was mentioned. The news report was concerning a recent shooting that had occurred at a grocery store in Norfolk Virginia where eight people had been killed and forty-five more had been wounded. There were two suspects from this shooting. One of the suspects had been shot and killed at the scene while the other suspect, a man police identified as Garry Henderson, was still at large.
Garry continued to listen on intently. His hands were shaking nervously on the steering wheel of his car and his heart was beating out of his chest. Garry felt a combination of both anger and terror as he continued to listen to the new report that publically identified Garry as a mass murderer.
Throughout the report, the radio anchor gave a thorough description of what Garry looks like and the car that he drives. There were also some other things from the report that caught Garry’s attention though. For instance, Garry had been last seen in Richmond Virginia. So they know that I went to Richmond, Garry realized. The second thing that caught Garry’s attention was not so much what the radio anchor said, but instead, what he didn’t say. The radio anchor gave a detailed description of the car Garry was driving but made no mention of his license plate number. Garry immediately realized what this meant. They know that I switched plates. The only question that remains now is, have they found all of my decoys yet?
