Reset

“Well… they were married on December 20.”

“What year?”

Nora’s reply was only a glance.

“Wait. Wait. The same year they told her I died?” Jason’s voice cracked. “How is that possible? How did she meet him, decide she was in love and get married so fast after she heard of my death. When did she mourn me? Unless…”

Nora nodded. “Keep going. You’ll get there.”

“No. No way. Not Melissa. She was a good Christian woman.”

Nora held up three fingers.

“What’s that?”

“Three months. Three months from death to I do. Just sayin’.”

Jason groaned. “This is still fresh for me. It’s only been two weeks since I saw them.”

“A barren world puts mental processing on fast forward. Maybe not the emotions so much. Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” Jason stood.

“Where are you going? You’re not gonna waste any more food are you?’

“No, I’m getting our map. I want to talk about the virus theories again.”

He slipped away from the patio and into the house.

There were other items Nora found, but she would save them for another day, another evening when they needed things to talk about. For the moment, she gathered the crumbs to make room for the map. Even if it wasn’t ‘scientific’, Jason’s smash and spread virus demonstration made sense, and Nora was curious to look at the map as a whole.

TWENTY-NINE – SURPRISE

DAY FIVE AR

A flicker of light caused John to immediately wake up and open his eyes. He shut them when he felt the pain. It was all encompassing. There wasn’t a spot on his body that didn’t hurt.

Emotionally he was crushed. Even thinking about Meredith and Grant caused a physical pain in his chest.

It had to be morning. Although he couldn’t feel the heat of the sun, he knew he had to still be on that road. His mouth was dry. His arm and legs burned, the slightest movement caused a pain to shoot up his back and through his abdomen. He probably had been knifed.

His friends were gone, his supplies diminished. For all he knew, John believed he was probably fatally injured and would die at any moment.  Gutted and left to die on a highway.

Why didn’t they finish him off?

He didn’t have any strength, none at all, he was completely drained. But did he want to lay there, rotting in the sun, a carnivore feast for the animals to enjoy?

No. John decided, sick or not, in pain or not, he was going to try to move. He wanted to try to get up and wander off to die with dignity. Just like his dog did years before.

John moved his fingers to grip the ground.

He paused in shock.

He groaned out a ‘huh’ in confusion and opened his eyes.

It was bright, but not daylight bright. Where was he? He turned his head to the right. A burning shot up his neck. When he did, he not only saw an open window, he saw Meredith.

She rushed over to him.

“Oh my God. You’re awake. I didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”

His eyesight was blurry, but he could clearly see Meredith. Her face was swollen and bruised, her left eye complete shut. Her lips twice their normal size and crusted over with fresh scabs.

John was immediately overcome with emotions. At first he couldn’t speak. He huffed out breaths and his eyes welled with tears. “You… you’re alive.”

Meredith grabbed his hand and moved closer. “So are you. You had me worried. You’ve been out an entire day.”

“Where… Where…”

Meredith turned her head and shouted. “Rusty. Come quick. He’s awake.”

It took John aback. ‘Rusty?’ he thought, and then against his will, he passed out again.

<><><><>

Home.

How many times did he have to stop on the side of the road to vomit? How many times did Malcolm black out on the drive? Passing a sign that said it was three hundred miles to Denver, and then in the next second, it was only two hundred. He had ingested nearly every ibuprofen, every antibiotic pill and used the entire tube of ointment.

He wasn’t any better, in fact, Malcolm knew he was worse. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that the farther north he drove the less overgrown everything was.

Nature hadn’t claimed that area, which meant to Malcolm that people had lived there longer. Of course it could have been a hallucination. He had plenty of those.

The best one he had was the old Spanish man with the straw hat, parked on the side of the road with a camper. Malcolm even slowed down for that one so he could read the hallucinatory sign that the man held.

‘Last stop for corn fuel before Salvation.’

He figured that sign was his sign he was dying soon.

After waving to the man, Malcolm picked up speed again. He was close to home.

His house was on a large lot of land. Malcolm had purchased it not long before the explosion in New York. It was a private home, with a road that was gated. It was once a government testing site for new aircraft, and Malcolm snatched it up for a steal and built his own home right on the land.

The gate was closed and surprisingly not overgrown. He paused the buggy to open it, pulled through, closed it again and drove up the driveway.