After Darkness Fell (29 page)

But as I thought about this, I realized what else it could mean, and this strange feeling of warmth made me happier and more relieved than I’d been in a long time. We’d be free again, and would no longer have to live in fear and darkness. I knew at that moment that living in fear and darkness is the same thing as death.

Still holding her hand, I turned back to Gresch and Shaw. A soft wave of sadness drifted through my soul, but my heart fluttered with excitement at that same moment.

“Where exactly is this place?” I asked in a soft voice.

According to Shaw and Gresch, the new settlement sat in a wooded valley about a hundred miles north, half an hour south of Jamestown, New York.

Fields and I spent our final day on my grandparents’ farm packing the van. I’d wanted to take the Silverado, but we had too much to bring along with us. This trip had to be practical, not sentimental. I didn’t want to leave any of the guns or ammo, so I bundled up the guns in blankets and piled them next to the six metal ammo canisters I’d shoved in a neat row in the back. The clothing we’d accumulated in the last few months filled up the rest of the available space. I’d put as much of the food with us as I could fit in two large coolers. Shaw and Gresch told us there would be provisions where we were going, but anything we could bring would help the situation.

This, of course, brought everything into a frightening prospective. We were leaving the farm for good this time and would probably never be back to see it again.

The reality of it hit me hard, and I immediately zoned out. For the longest time I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at the knickknacks my grandparents had collected over the years, when I was a boy. When I was finally able to pull my eyes away from the walls and shelves, I found my gaze fixed on the old gas stove. Then I noticed the peeling cabinets, the overhead light, and finally the kitchen table.

We’d all sat there—Fields, Uncle Joe, Reed and me—talking, laughing, eating, drinking and enjoying each other’s company the short time we’d had together. When we’d first come into this house, Fields, Reed and I had sat at this table while Uncle Joe told me my mother had died. Later that night, after I’d visited her fresh grave, he fixed cold cuts for all of us and put coffee, beer and whiskey on the table. Just a few short weeks later, he came in for breakfast one morning, sat down at the head of this table and began spilling his food and slurring his words. Not long after that, he couldn’t remember his own name. Then he was gone.

Years before, I’d sat at this same table with my mother many times. Mom was young and beautiful back then, always smiling and happy. Whenever we visited my grandparents, she acted like a little girl. It was strange—one of those many childhood mysteries I never really understood until I grew up and figured it out logically. But it will always remain among my fondest and clearest memories.

As I struggled through these shadows of the past, I sensed Fields nearby. Then I smelled her hair and her perfume, and everything else vanished. She pressed against me, and her touch made me return instantly. Her face drew closer and I could feel tendrils of her hair gently touching my arm. Her breath singed my flesh when she whispered, “Everything will be okay.”

That ended my nostalgia. Fields had brought me back to the present, where I belonged, and I knew right then that we had to go forward with this.

The memories would come with us. The only problem with that was that the bad ones came right along with the good.

Leaving would be much harder this time than when I first arrived and learned that my childhood home next door had been burned to the ground. When we left this time, I’d be bringing along the afternoons I’d spent with Uncle Joe those few short weeks before he’d died. I’d be bringing along the days we’d spent with Reed. That cold afternoon when we’d buried Uncle Joe. That cold afternoon when we’d buried Reed. That horrible episode that started the morning I’d sensed someone wandering around outside.

Once I finally decided to start moving again, I followed Fields through the kitchen and out of the house. I closed the back door, but didn’t lock or bolt it. I forced myself to turn away and not look back or even take a moment to say good-bye. For us, the future lay in a different place. There was no sense looking back at all the things that had once been a large part of me, the things we’d be leaving behind. I took her hand and we went down the walk, climbed the steps to the gravel drive and ascended the hill. We walked over to the buckeye tree and stood there a few moments, staring at the three graves. I closed my eyes, thought of my mother, my uncle, and Reed, and somehow sensed that they’d be watching over us, no matter where we ended up.

The van sat outside the garage, packed and ready. We climbed in and buckled up. Just as I reached for the ignition key, I found myself staring at the garage door. Inside, Uncle Joe’s beloved Silverado sat in its stall in the dark, where it would stay, possibly forever. The memories slammed through me again, and I lowered my head.

Fields touched my arm. “You okay?”

“I really don’t want to leave the truck.” My voice sounded like it belonged to a child.

“I know.”

“I’d love to take it with us.”

“We can’t.”

“I know. I still want to.”

Fields squeezed my arm. “Just let it go, babe.”

“This is ... really hard for me.”

“I know. I liked it, too.”

“That truck ...” A lump formed in my throat. “It ... saved our lives.”

Fields was silent for several moments. Then she gently stroked my arm. “This van got us out of a few scrapes too, remember?”

Once again, she was right. The truck had served its purpose. Not only for Uncle Joe, but also for us. I turned to her and put my hand over hers. “Thanks, baby. I needed that.”

She smiled, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’re welcome. Now let’s get out of here before we both change our minds. Harry Shaw’s still waiting for us down near the main road.”

I fired up the ignition, backed up and turned the van away from the garage. Then, as we crept down the gravel drive, I forced myself to ignore the tall square shape of the two-story house on our left and then the huge gray presence of the barn looming straight ahead.

An image shot past my vision. I saw myself as a child escaping the barn after Uncle Joe found me playing in the hayloft. I forced the humorous memory away and focused on taking the van down the drive, past the front of the barn. I didn’t start breathing normally until I saw the truck sitting at the bottom of the hill, where Shaw waited for us.

“Where’s Gresch?” I asked. “He didn’t go on ahead, did he?”

“He might have. They didn’t tell me what they were doing. It doesn’t matter, does it?”

Once again, she was right. It didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was that our lives were being given a new beginning. I knew that something like that didn’t happen very often. When it did, the only sensible thing to do was to look straight ahead.

“No. It doesn’t matter at all.”

Shaw pulled onto the deserted road and we followed him up the hill and away from my childhood home—the only place in the world that would continue to hold so many memories of my life.

***

It was a quiet, relaxing trip. Beside me, Fields sat staring at the road ahead. She didn’t say much, but I could tell that, like me, she was excited and a little nervous about starting all over again. She began the trip with her trusty .45 in her lap, but once we got onto I-79 and went a few miles without encountering another soul on the road, she placed it on the floor between her feet.

A major step, of course, and one that made me wonder once again about our future. I was pleased there
was
a future, and this in itself told me we were doing the right thing by leaving. Shaw and Gresch had been right—how much longer could Fields and I go on living like two escaped prisoners? How long would it be before I went out to get the truck and one of Simon’s thugs or someone else picked me off as soon as I left the house? Or when I opened the garage door? Or when I pulled out onto the road?

How long would it be before someone began shooting at the windows while we ate supper? Or while we slept?

Our only option was to find others just like us and begin living like normal human beings again.

So what if society was brought down again in the next few decades? So what if the new Powers That Be turned stupid again and let history repeat itself? That was what humans did, wasn’t it? They worked hard to improve the situation and then sat back while someone else came along and destroyed it. Eventually someone else would come along and try to fix things again, but the process would repeat itself, and things would end up destroyed again. Man’s legacy would never change. He would always destroy things when he tried fixing them.

And who was I to argue?

“Something funny?” Fields asked. “You’re smiling.”

“I was just wondering how long it’ll take before the next big one comes along to end this one. If we’ll be around to see it happen.”

“Kind of cynical, but I see your point.”

“I should say we’ve earned the right to be cynical, wouldn’t you?”

“I just hope that if it happens again, we won’t be around to see it. I can’t possibly go through this again.”

“If it takes another fifty years, we might see it, but I’ll be ninety and you’ll be in your eighties. We probably won’t care about too much about anything by then.”

Fields laughed. “We’ll make a good team. You can ask me what’s going on and if I’m still capable of understanding it, I’ll tell you what I think.”

“Sounds like a plan to me, but something tells me I won’t even want to know at that point in my life.”

She sat back. “Why worry about it? Whatever happens will happen—with or without our help.”

I went silent and stayed that way for a few minutes. My thoughts began spinning again.

“What’s on your mind now?” she asked.

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“We didn’t have a very easy time living on my grandparents’ farm, did we?”

“No. We didn’t. But it was home, and we made the best of it.”

“And you were there.”

“What are you getting at?”

“We were constantly looking over our shoulders, listening and expecting the worst, but for some reason, it just didn’t seem that bad. I think it was because you were there with me.”

She placed her hand on my thigh. She smiled at me, and I could see a glint of tears forming in her eyes.

I placed my hand over hers. “I just wish Reed could be here with us. I would’ve loved to see his reaction to all this.”

“He’d be happy for us.”

The image made me grin, and I felt tears of my own gathering in my eyes. “He really would.”

“I’ll never stop trying to guess who his friend was,” she said.

Once again my vision of him came back, and I found myself wondering if it had actually been him, or if I’d just been dreaming. “He seemed very happy the last time I saw him.”

“He probably was. From what you told me, he’s been watching out for both of us all along. We were his friends. We shared his last days with him. It’ll stay that way until we actually do see him again.”

“I’m almost positive he was with me when I started looking for you.”

“Since you survived, I’d say he probably helped more than both of us will ever know.”

She was right. Whenever I thought of what happened that night, I knew I hadn’t been alone. I realized now that I hadn’t been alone from the time I left the house.

She patted my thigh and settled back in her seat. A few minutes later she said, “I’ve always hated moving, you know.”

“So do I, but this different.”

“It’s like moving to another world.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Aren’t you intimidated?”

“I’m looking at it as a kind of second chance.”

“I just hope we all take life a little more seriously this time around.”

“We will or we won’t. There isn’t any other option.”

At around four o’clock, we climbed a hill. When we reached the top and I saw the magnificent sight, my foot slammed down onto the brake pedal.

A cluster of giant wind turbines spun madly at the top of the hill just a few miles in the distance. There must have been thirty or forty of them in a long line. The sight took my breath away.

“I never expected to see anything like that again.”

Fields turned to me. “Is your heart racing, too?”

“It’s about to take off.”

She took my hand. “I know this sounds stupid, but I’m ... well, I’m scared.”

“Me, too, but even so, my foot wants to press down on the gas.”

“Maybe it’s your subconscious trying to take over, since you’re obviously not capable of doing it right now.”

I thought it could be Reed trying to help me make the decision again.

Reed? Is that you
?

Do it,
came the quick reply.
Do it for your mom and your uncle. Do it for Fields. Most of all, do it for yourself
.