The Dark Roads (21 page)

Buddy tried not to think at all, letting his thoughts slide into the night without consideration. He and Elvis had spent so much time together in their former lives, more than Richie had spent with either of them, and there was a void that could never be filled traveling in the dead man's place.

His own mortality did not concern him. As far as Buddy was concerned, they were all a blink away from death, but Elvis was meant to be different. Buddy would've rather been the one to pass on. Who knew, though? Maybe his time would come sooner than later. Oddly enough, he was comforted by the thought.

The night, as it always had, wore on. Time was checked. Worries were had. Conversations were left in the dust that lay alongside the asphalt. They shuffled through the night on the way to the countless ones that would proceed from it.

Watson Lake, YT (Root Cellar)

June 30, 2021

7:12 AM  214*F (Surface)

"We're going to be in trouble soon," Amanda said without raising her eyes from the pouches of dehydrated food.

Buddy nodded without saying anything in response. Amanda had all of their supplies laid out on the basement floor, the meals standing on their wide bottoms in neat rows of five. He counted twenty. There were five people traveling in their little group, and they'd been unable to restock their food stuffs for the last two weeks. There had been service stations along the way, but no bigger stores that would provide them with anything of use.

Amanda pulled three packs to the side and began stowing the rest equally among the packs. Her mouth was set in concentration as if she might be able to find a way to multiply the food by the sheer force of her will.

"Richie," Buddy finally said, "How far?"

The floor where Richie sat was covered in loose sheets of the atlas he'd been carrying along with a small booklet describing the main route to Alaska. He looked up to Buddy with his good eye, the other covered by a makeshift patch, and shook his head.

"Give me a few minutes. I need to check the legends."

Dylan and Abby were in the process of laying out sleeping bags and setting their water to cool. Water was still easy enough to get as they wandered by lakes on a regular basis, but water alone wouldn't keep them alive. Richie had heard once that a person could live for quite a while without food if they had enough to drink, but living wasn't the only thing they had to do. Even if they tried to stretch the meal packs by rationing, the five of them would progressively grow weaker, no matter their level of hydration.

There hadn't been any rats to speak of recently, either. That was something of concern. Why had they been so plentiful south of them and so sparse in the north? Was it because there hadn't really been that many of the things this far north to start with, or had they been killed off somehow? Richie and Buddy had discussed various theories on the lack of rodents in the north and had decided on their previous elimination being the most likely explanation. It wasn't a satisfying idea.

"If I have to guess a distance," Richie admitted, "We're about 600 miles away."

"Shit," Buddy replied.

"Yeah."

"How long will that take us?"

"One hell of a lot longer than we have supplies for," Amanda interjected, "We need to figure something out."

Buddy ignored her. Richie agreed with her. Dylan and Abby walked over to where they were sitting and took a seat of their own. No one spoke for a moment, allowing Richie time to do the math in his head.

"Since we've been getting a couple of more hours at night lately," he began, "we can get up to twenty miles a night, give or take. I think we could make it to the border in thirty-five days."

"We could ration the food. Split one pouch between everybody," Dylan suggested.

"If we do that, we're not making twenty miles a day," Amanda argued, "We're malnourished as it is. If we start eating even less..."

"Yeah," Richie agreed, winking his one good eye at Abby. The girl giggled at his gesture.

At least somebody gets some enjoyment from my mutilated face, he thought.

"Well, we've listed our problems out. Got any solutions?" Buddy asked.

Each of them, including Abby, shook their head.

Richie looked around the group at the long faces, but could glean nothing from them. He missed Elvis, who always seemed to spit out an incredibly unique idea when they needed it the most. He was gone, though, and wouldn't be providing resolutions for their daily problems anymore.

They'd been taking food for granted. Richie knew that, but didn't dare say it aloud. There had always been food, at least enough to keep them alive and moving, therefore there should always be food. It was a dangerous way to think, but they hadn't known that at the time. He'd thought of their supplies as a constantly replenishing thing that they just had to work a little to find. Recently, though, working to gather food was proving to be a fruitless task.

"We need to eat while we can," Richie said with finality.

"One pack each," Buddy allowed, "But we can't keep that up. Day after tomorrow we go down to half a pouch each. We need to stretch it."

Amanda looked as if she were ready to debate the matter, as she'd done with Dylan, but seemed to reconsider. She said nothing, knowing that Buddy was right.

"What I wouldn't give for a cheeseburger," Dylan said before adding water to five pouches of dehydrated food.

***

Richie was thinking more and more about the cannibals. The "Feeders", as they'd begun exclusively calling them, had been an obvious danger from the very beginning, but Richie had accepted them without much contemplation. They were there. That was all.

Now, however, it was different in his mind. He thought about their past luck with finding food. Supplies had just been in their path without much consideration, though now that was changing. Had the people who'd resorted to feeding on their fellow man had a different kind of luck in that department? Had it been much harder for them to find food than it had been for Richie, Buddy, and their group? Were they just driven so crazy by hunger that resorting to cannibalism had seemed a necessity to them? Questions. There were always questions.

Richie supposed that there were just some people who wanted the meat that couldn't be obtained by killing rats, if they'd even thought of or come in contact with the animals that had been such bountiful fair in his own experience. It was also possible that they had been mentally unstable from the start, ready to do things in order to survive without worrying on morality. The thought was a disturbing one but a definite possibility.

He was in the dark, now, laying on his back with the pocket watch held loosely against his collar bone by the fingers of his right hand. Richie hadn't felt so compelled by the dream in recent weeks. His mind was clearer than it had been since the confrontation he'd had with the sun. The skin around his left eye had healed well, wasn't so painful to the touch as it had been, but the scar would always be there. The burned eye was dead and black in the socket, something he'd never heard of happening to anyone before, and was useless to him now. Half blind, however, was preferable to being completely sightless. He tried not to complain.

The strange thing about the condition, to Richie at least, was the ghost of vision that crept into his brain from time to time. He would be walking along with his group, looking at the road ahead or something that decorated the side of it, and would somehow see two things at once. His good eye would register the actual scene before him. The empty eye would see the world as it had once been, a tree on the side of the road that bore lovely green foliage to his left and a sparsely littered waste land to his right. It was unnerving.

He'd mentioned the thing to Buddy once, without thinking much of it, and Buddy had chuckled. His friend wasn't cruel, but the sound of the laugh had been similar to cruelty before he explained himself.

"I know it's not funny, one-eye, but I have to admit that I'm jealous."

"Of what?"

"Of being able to see anything that hasn't been burned to shit by the ever loving sun."

"I'm not really
seeing
it, Buddy. My mind is playing tricks on me," Richie explained defensively.

"Want my glasses?" Buddy asked, pulling the things off and showing him the spider web damage in one of the lenses, "It's kind of the same thing. You get to see some crazy version of a live tree and I get to see like twenty dead ones on one side. I'll trade you."

"Only if you take a good long look at the day, dick," Richie mumbled with a grin.

"Good point," Buddy said, "It's like losing a hand, though."

"How so?"

"Haven't you ever heard about a person who loses a limb going bat shit because the hand that's gone won't stop itching? Imagine always having an itch that you can't scratch."

"That would suck."

"It would, but you are in luck, my friend. Your shit doesn't itch too much."

Richie stared up at the ceiling, trying not to think about amputees and cannibals. The two seemed to be too easily integrated into the same thought.

If you had to pick a limb to chop off for dinner, which one would you choose? Richie's dark thoughts taunted.

***

The day gave way to dusk at 7:15 p.m. and complete darkness covered the earth within thirty minutes. Richie and his group were awake long before the sun fell to sleep, but they were careful not to leave their hide until well after dark. Two hours after sunset, they emerged from the cellar as quietly as they could, one man exiting a few minutes before the others to clear the area. No threats were in the vicinity, as far as any of them knew, so they began their walk, moving in the direction that would lead them into Alaska within two months if all went well.

The man watching them, a quiet and pleasant man in the world before the night became their time to wake, didn't follow them immediately. He waited for them to get into their pace, to find the comfort in their journey as they did each night, before tracing their steps along the side of the highway. He made very little noise as he traveled.

He had no one to talk to, so that wasn't a risk, and he wasn't in the habit of conversing with himself or any voices that might have been rambling inside of his head. His silence was one of choice and necessity. He didn't want any of them to know that he was there until he was ready to reveal himself.

The follower walked with a limp, favoring his right leg, but it wasn't always noticeable. He could control the weakness in his knee and ankle quite easily if that was his preference. As with most things on this walk, it didn't matter. He could rest the muscles in his lower leg a bit from time to time. If he really wanted to, the man could rest for the whole night in a freshly dug den and find his quarry still on the same path. They weren't navigating a complicated route.

He adjusted the shoulder straps of his backpack, the contents rustling inside with the sound of crinkling plastic, and gripped the short spade loosely in his right hand as he would've a cane. He reached down to his bandaged calf to be sure that the binding was secure.

Faint blood stains showed through along its length, but he felt none on his fingertips. The man turned his head in either direction slowly to crack the vertebrae in his neck with an audible pop. He breathed deeply to calm the tremors that rolled through his body.

Once he was ready, he followed the group of people along the road.

Rancheria, YT

July 3, 2021

9:42 PM  78*F

A service station, this one bearing a startling resemblance to the truck stop where Amanda had joined their group, loomed in the distance. Buddy had spotted the great hulk and had pointed it out to Richie with a scathing remark about his inability to see things on the left hand side. Richie, who had heard almost every possible version of the term "one-eye" by this time, gave him the finger without retort. Buddy laughed, though without his usual gusto. They'd been on half rations for the past two days and the gnawing in their stomachs had begun to irritate them.

"Can we just hope that there's some kind of food in there?" Amanda begged, "I don't think I can take Buddy's shitty jokes on an empty stomach, anymore."

"At least he's got jokes," Dylan added from behind them, "I can't seem to find any humor on this fucking road tonight."

"That's because you're still new," Richie explained, "If you were a veteran of the group, like myself and old Peggy Sue here, you'd find humor in all sorts of fucked up shit."

"We're going back to the Buddy Holly jokes?" Buddy asked with a roll of the eyes.

"Better than nothing," Abby suddenly added, stealing a laugh from all of them.

"Do you know who Buddy Holly is?" Buddy asked the kid.

"I thought it was you."

"Shit," Buddy said with a wince, "How old are you?"

"Almost ten," she told him with a smile that warned of wisdom beyond her years.

"Yeah. Ten going on twenty-eight," Amanda said with a smirk.

Dylan, whose voice hadn't been put to use nearly as much as the rest of them, laughed heartily at that. The older man shook his head at the girl and put a hand on her shoulder as a father would his daughter.

Richie had noticed the way Dylan treated the child and was impressed by the man. He'd risked his life, and nearly lost it, to get the girl out of the cannibals' camp and seemed to take on the role of a father as easily as Amanda did the role of a mother.

Richie was curious about the possibility of garnering a small family, one made up of complete strangers, in this new world. Would it be possible to find that kind of happiness?

They kept moving at their constant pace toward the truck stop, their hopes not raising as high as they would've even a week earlier.

***

They scattered amongst the aisles of the place with no real enthusiasm. It was obvious to them that they weren't going to find much, if anything, and their mood was a dour one.

Richie was looking for the store room, as was his usual habit. It was obvious that the shelves would be emptied first. They were the first place that anyone would scavenge for supplies, but the store room could be overlooked by average looters. He found a door marked "Private" and twisted the knob. Locked.

He dropped to his knees, his pack on the floor beside him, and fished out the pick set that had aided them for so long. The tension wrench that had come with the kit had been broken in the lock of a cellar that he barely dared to remember, but Buddy had fashioned a replacement from a precision screwdriver.

The new tool actually seemed to function more smoothly, allowing Richie to use his palm rather than just his fingertips. In a moment, the door was swinging open on protesting hinges.

Hunger pains racked his gut as he stood, threatening to make him squat back down to the floor, but Richie fought through them. The doorway invited him, so he entered with a penlight in hand and put his foot down on the first step.

A subtle scratching sound tickled his ears, making him stop dead in his tracks. Richie clicked off the light immediately and listened. More scratching. He grinned before turning back to the door.

"Rats," Richie announced without shouting.

Buddy ran to the doorway, placing both palms on the frame to stop himself from colliding with Richie's unmoving form. They looked at each other and grinned. It may not be much, but it would be meat.

"I'll get the sling," Buddy whispered, "Should we close the door?"

"I think it's fine. They weren't trying to come this way."

"Good enough for me."

"Yeah," Richie said, "I'll check things out in here for now. Going down."

Richie turned back toward the dark stairwell, clicking the light back into life as he reached the landing, and began to walk the perimeter of the room. There was a smell that he hadn't had in his nose for a while. It was tangy and almost like the urine one expels after drinking soda or beer all day. None of them had drank anything but water for so long that their own piss didn't have an odor anymore. Richie was looking for the source of this when his light happened on an animal that didn't resemble a rat, at all.

"Fuck me," Richie breathed before squatting to his haunches, "Haven't seen one of you in a while."

Buddy was walking down the steps now, his footsteps flooding the basement store room with a scraping sound. Richie looked over his shoulder and in Buddy's direction.

"No rats," Richie told him, still pointing his light at the furry resident of the place.

"Is that a fucking cat?" Buddy blurted out, his astonishment made obvious by his tone.

"I think so. To skinny to be anything else."

"How in the hell is that possible? How's he alive down here?"

"He must be pretty fucking smart," Richie admitted, "Probably has a way in and out that we don't see."

"Are we going to eat it?"

"I don't know, man. Seems like we shouldn't."

"Yeah," Buddy agreed, "But I'm hungry enough."

"Bet he ate all the rats," Richie said sourly.

Buddy patted Richie on one shoulder and grinned at the green eyes reflecting what little light existed in the basement. Richie looked up at him and his own frown disappeared. If given the chance, Richie would've said exactly what Buddy stated next.

"Elvis would've loved it."

Neither man bothered the feline that traipsed around the basement area as they searched it. The expedition, though void of rats, did prove a fruitful one. A few gallons of fresh water were stored on a low shelf near what was likely the station manager's old desk. In the desk itself were their real prizes, one they hadn't been lucky enough to find in any other place. An unopened bag of extraordinarily stale Doritos, the nacho cheese variety, was stowed away in the top right-hand drawer along with three packs of ramen noodles. Richie nearly jumped for joy at such a find.

Later, as they continued on their journey, they passed the bag of flavored tortilla chips around. They each had a few of the chips and smiled as all but Richie licked powdered cheese off of their fingertips. Richie let the cat taste the remnants of his share.

They hadn't beckoned the animal, or tried in any way to take it with them. Buddy thought the thing had surely gone feral after a year or more of living on its own devices, but the cat seemed as needy of their company as they were of it. Richie suggested they call it Elvis, but Buddy balked at the notion. Instead, on Amanda's suggestion, they named it King.

***

The follower was frustrated with their progress. They'd slowed down quite a bit after leaving the gas station and only eighteen miles had been traveled by the time the group stopped at another one to sleep for the day. They'd probably found food, which was counterproductive to what he was planning. They needed to stay hungry, at least a little, to keep up the desperate pace.

He dug his den for the day, one shovel full at a time, hoping that he would manage to get deep enough to be comfortable in the cool soil. It wasn't easy to excavate a perfect tunnel within a couple of hours, but he would manage as he usually did. The follower had found that three feet worth of depth was too little a few weeks back, no matter how much cooler it was this far north, and had spent the day in near agony. Five feet seemed to work fine. He could pull enough dirt over himself to shield from the sun's rays and insulate from the heat for the most part.

Long miles back, he'd had to start digging much earlier in the night and dig much deeper holes. Trial and error had lost many miles for him, had left him far behind the group of travelers. He'd survived all of it, though, and would continue to live through the days. He would follow them until it was time to make himself known. They needed to move faster.

The bandage around his calf badly needed a change. He'd known this through most of the night, but was determined to wait until the next round of darkness. He felt that the leg could wait a while longer without risking an infection, but no longer than one more day. It was always a shame to put a clean white bandage around his wound just before immersing himself in the dirt for such a long period. If the nastiness of the soil wasn't bad enough, the sweating would make it uncomfortable.

He was a contact lens wearer in his old life, the one before all of this, and would sometimes wear a pair of the disposable lenses for months at a time. He compared the bandages to the contacts. New ones always felt awkward and ineffective until they'd worn in for a while. He'd had eye infections due to the long time wear, also a comparison to the dressed wound, but not unless he had worn the things for so long that they were close to falling out anyway. He felt that the two things were incredibly similar.

More digging. The pile of dirt grew tall and fat as he frantically scooped earth from his hole. He would be done and ready to sleep very soon. He would eat when he woke, as long as the bandage hadn't gotten too filthy in his sleep. He might have to attend to that immediately upon waking.