Slowly We Rot (7 page)

          “Where is she?”

          Melanie shook her
head.  “She’s gone.”

          “What the fuck does
that mean?”  Noah held up his phone and thrust it at her.  “She sent me a
hundred fucking messages yesterday, all of them begging me to contact her, and
all you can say is ‘She’s gone’?  You’re gonna have to do better than that. 
I’m not leaving until I know what the fuck’s going on.”

          Melanie scowled at
him.  “Her parents were killed in an accident yesterday.  Okay?  She had to go
home.”

          Noah felt like the
world was about to give way beneath him.  “I have to talk to her.  I have
to…help her.  I’m her boyfriend, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

          Melanie shook her
head.  “You can’t help her, Noah.”

          “When do you think
she’ll be back?”

          “I don’t know.  She
might not come back at all.”

          Before he could say
anything to that, Melanie closed the door in his face.  He heard the lock turn
again.  After staring in shock at the door a few moments, he banged on it so
loudly that an angry neighbor popped out next door and threatened to call the
police if he didn’t stop.

          Noah gave up and went
back to the dorm.  He spent the rest of the day trying every possible way he
could think of to contact Lisa, starting with an attempt to pull up her
Facebook page.  Here, though, was another shock.  The page had been
deactivated.  After that, he tried calling her again.  The call went straight
to voicemail.  Several more calls throughout the day met with the same result. 
He didn’t know it at the time, but hearing her voicemail message was the last
time he would hear her voice.  After that, he tried contacting mutual
acquaintances for information, but no one would talk to him.

          He hit the same
unyielding brick wall no matter what he tried.

          Days passed with no
word from Lisa.  Her friends remained utterly uncommunicative.  Eventually, he
came to understand the painful truth.  It was as Melanie had said that first
day.  She was gone and she wasn’t coming back.  He’d probably never see her
again.

          And he’d probably never
know why.

          Some other guys in Noah’s
dorm noticed his abject despondency and took pity on him.  They got him drunk. 
They bought him as much booze as he wanted and he wanted a lot.  Noah never
attended another class at the University of Memphis.  He returned home in
December in shame and despair.

11
.

Noah woke early the next day and
spent several hours preparing for his departure.  The only backpack he had on
hand was an old-fashioned one with a large external aluminum frame.  He loaded
it with an array of things, including a pup tent, a sleeping bag, food
supplies, extra clothes, some of the old western paperbacks from his cache, an
old road atlas, and as much extra ammunition for the rifle and the two handguns
he’d also be bringing with him as he could cram into it.  The rest of his gear,
which included, among other things, two large canteens and a hunting knife,
would be stored on a sturdy utility belt.

          After a fierce bit of
internal debate, he reopened the pack and shifted things around as best he
could to make room for two fifth bottles of Maker’s Mark.  He also bundled up
about a pound of weed and stored that in the pack, too.  The wisdom of taking
these things with him was iffy at best, but it was going to be a long trip. 
Something to take the edge off now and then seemed necessary.

          When he was done with
his preparations, Noah carried the pack out to the porch and leaned it against
the rail.  After strapping on the utility belt, he went back inside to fetch
the rifle.  He took a final look around at the cabin’s interior, thinking back
on the lonely years he’d spent here.  Despite his pride in the survival skills
he’d developed during his time in this place, he was surprised to realize how
little he would actually miss it.  There were no good memories here.  This was
a desolate place, a hermit’s sad refuge.

          Back out on the porch,
he leaned the rifle against the rail next to the backpack and took a seat on
the top step.  After squinting out at the bright sunlight for a moment, he took
the revolver from the holster on his utility belt and set it next to him on the
porch.  Then he dug into his hip pocket and took out the only picture he had
left of Lisa Thomas.

          This picture was from
one of those photo booth strips.  Like every other young couple who’d ever sat
in one of those booths together, he and Lisa had mugged for the camera.  Only
in this picture, the one at the bottom of the strip, had Lisa’s expression been
somewhat normal.  It showed her smirking and looking every bit as beautiful as
he remembered.  She looked sexy and mischievous, precisely as he remembered
her.  He stared at the seven-year-old image and wondered how much she might
have changed in their long time apart, assuming she was still alive.

          Noah wasn’t deluding
himself on that count.  He knew she was almost certainly dead, but he couldn’t
help speculating.  If she had somehow survived the apocalypse, it was likely
she had spent the years since then locked in a desperate, never-ending struggle
to stay alive.  She would be a harder, tougher person now, but that probably
would have been true even if the old world hadn’t ended.  The unexpected death
of her parents had to have been devastating, had likely crushed her innocence
in one fell swoop.  It was something he'd thought about ceaselessly in the
first several months after slouching back home from school in defeat.  He’d
yearned desperately to hold and comfort her, to be her shoulder to lean on in
her time of need.

          Looking back on it now,
the idea of being strong for her was ridiculous.  He hadn’t been capable of
inner strength back then at all.  More likely, he would have made things worse,
dragging her down with his neediness.  The other thing about looking back from
this distance of years was the cynicism he felt now, which made it difficult to
keep seeing the whole period as some kind of sweeping romantic tragedy.  He now
wondered if the story about her parents dying was some kind of carefully
engineered ruse.  There had been something too neat in the almost surgically
precise way she’d been entirely cut off from him.  His gut feeling was that
Lisa’s parents hadn’t died at all, not back then, anyway.  Instead, maybe they’d
gotten together with some of her closest friends at the university and had
worked out a way to more forcefully intervene.  She’d been called back home,
and Noah had been walled off from her in the most ruthlessly efficient way
imaginable.

          The more he thought
about it, the more convinced he became this was close to the truth.  A part of
him felt like he should be angry about the deception, but he couldn’t muster
the emotion.  This was a different world now, after all.  Hanging onto ancient
grudges was senseless.  But there was more to it than that.  He wasn’t a kid
anymore.  If her parents had acted in the way he suspected, he couldn’t blame
them.  It’d been the right thing to do.

          In addition to the
picture, he had a scrap of envelope that had been stored along with it.  The
envelope was from a package Lisa’s parents had sent her prior to her
disappearance from Noah’s life.  Through some accident of fate, the empty
envelope had wound up among his things.  He’d hung onto the scrap with the
Ventura home address of her parents scrawled across it, thinking he might one
day fly out there and show up at their door.  This had always been unlikely. 
He wasn’t quite that crazy, at least not back then, but the idea had always
been there in the back of his head.  Until the world ended, that is.

          He put the picture back
in his pocket when he heard footsteps crunching through the brush at the tree
line to his right.  Picking up the revolver, he got to his feet and watched
Aubrey and Nick come into the clearing.  Nick had his rifle with him, but it
was slung over his right shoulder.  Aubrey was still wearing the grungy black
dress Noah had seen her in the other day.  There were bits of bramble stuck to
it here and there from the walk through the woods.  She had a smug look on her
sallow face as she came up to the porch.

          “I knew you wouldn’t
fight me on this.  Fighting’s not what you’re all about, is it?”  She laughed
and shook her head.  “No, definitely not.  But running away with your tail
between your legs?  That’s
definitely
like you.”

          Noah shrugged.  “See it
how you want to see it.  I don’t care.”

          Nick nodded at the
revolver.  “The gun’s not necessary, son.  I told you before, I don’t bear you
any ill will.”

          Noah aimed the gun at
the man’s midsection.  “That’s nice.  But I still don’t fucking trust you.”

          Nick stared at him
levelly for a moment, his expression hooded and unreadable.  He then slowly
slipped the rifle off his shoulder, taking care to show he had no intention of
aiming it at Noah, and tossed it aside.  “I’m only interested in seeing this
end peacefully, kid.  And, for the record, I still don’t sanction this.  Left
up to me, you could stay here.”

          Aubrey sneered and kept
her gaze on Noah.  “But it’s not up to him.”  She glanced at the backpack. 
“Looks like you’re all set to go.”

          Noah slipped the
revolver back in its holster, picked up the backpack, and pulled the straps up
over his shoulders.  After tightening and securing them, he grabbed his rifle, stepped
off the porch, and started off in the direction of the road, giving Aubrey and
Nick a wide berth.

          But Aubrey moved
quickly to put herself in his path.  “Hold up, brother.”

          Noah sighed, stopping
in his tracks.  “What now, Aubrey?”

          “Open your pack.  I
want to see what’s in it.”

          Noah shook his head. 
“I’m not doing that.”

          “Do it, unless you want
me to have Nick kill you.”

          Noah glanced at the
ex-soldier, who shook his head and rolled his eyes.  His gaze returned to Aubrey,
whose expression was sullen and hateful.  “I’ll take my chances.”

          He moved to go around
her.

          She hurried to put
herself in front of him again.  “Open the fucking pack.”

          Noah groaned.  “What do
you think I’m carrying?  Gold?”

          “It looks overstuffed. 
I think you’ve got a bunch of shit in there I should have.  The way I see it, you
should be leaving here empty-handed.”

          “I’m done humoring
you.  What I’m carrying with me is mine.  You can’t have it.  You should be
happy, Aubrey.  I’ve handed you the keys to the kingdom.  Enjoy it.”

          He moved to go around
her again, picking up the pace this time.  He’d gotten almost all the way to
the road when he heard her footsteps pelting down the slope after him.  “Noah,
wait!  Please!”

          Against his better
judgment, Noah, hearing the plaintiveness in her voice, stopped walking and
turned around in time to see her come to a panting stop just a few feet away
from him.  Nick hadn’t moved from his position at the top of the slope, which
relieved Noah.  Maybe the guy was sincere about his desire for peace between
them.

          Aubrey had tears in her
eyes as she spoke.  “Don’t go, Noah.  Please.”

          Noah frowned.  “Don’t
go?”  He shook his head.  “Oh, I get it.  You’re fucking with me now.”

          Tears spilled down her
cheeks.  “I was just testing you.  And punishing you, I guess.  But I don’t
want you to go, not really.  Please, Noah, please stay.”

          He stared at her for a
long time, trying to discern whether she was being sincere.  In the end, he
decided it didn’t matter.  He’d been rotting up here on the mountain long
enough, staying alive just for the sheer sake of it, existing with no purpose. 
Well, he had a purpose now, a new course fate had set for him, and he meant to
pursue it as far as he could.  Chances were good he was setting off on a dangerous
fool’s errand, but at least he would be doing something.  He’d be out in the
world again, looking for something lost long ago.

          Noah turned away from
his sister and resumed walking away.

          Aubrey screamed his
name several times, begging him to return.  The sound of it resounded through
the valley below, an endlessly echoing testament to pain.

          Noah kept walking.