66
THAIS
Lying together on the roof of the grocery store, Atticus and I looked up at the sky, we watched the dark clouds drift slowly overhead, and felt the last few drops of rain sprinkle our faces. I listened to the water beneath us churn and swish and move debris around, but now with a lighter hand as the angry river had finally calmed. Birds flew over, their tiny black wings flapping amid the gray clouds. The wailing of a cat I could hear in the distance, probably stuck in a tree or on a rooftop just as Atticus and I were.
The sun was setting, and it covered the flooded landscape in an eerie gray-red light that looked more post-apocalyptic than a peaceful, approaching nightfall.
Only when it was time to leave at dawn the next morning did either of us have the energy to discuss how it should be done.
“Nothing in sight to float on,” Atticus noted, looking out at the water all around us.
“Maybe it’s not too deep to walk through,” I said, standing next to him. I pointed at a cluster of trees and an overturned dumpster and determined: “Waist-deep at the most,” judging the height of the water around the items.
“It’s what’s under the water that worries me,” Atticus said.
“But we can’t stay on this roof. We have to keep moving.”
He squeezed my hand.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice trailing as he succumbed to the harsh reality. “Stay close to me.”
“Always.”
I was right about the water being waist-deep; unfortunately, it was only waist-deep for Atticus though—it went up to my breasts. Atticus tried to talk me into riding him piggyback, and when I refused I did so with anger and disbelief.
“Your ribs are fractured,” I scolded, my eyebrows drawn together harshly. “Atticus, I’m perfectly capable of moving through this water just as you are, so stop sacrificing yourself to lay cloaks over the puddles in front of me. If I step in shit, let me step in shit; if I fall and get my dress dirty, let it be dirty; if I break a leg, let me figure out how to walk on it rather than be pampered and carried.” I regretted the tone of my voice after I’d said everything I’d wanted to say, but I did not regret the words. Until I saw the hurt look on his face, and then I regretted the words. Very much so.
I reached out and touched his arm; water dripped from my used-to-be-white sleeve.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You did mean it,” he said; he touched my cheek with the back of his fingers. “And it’s okay, really; I understand. And you’re right: I shouldn’t treat you like a child or a damsel in distress or a privileged princess. You are who you are, and I should respect that.” He leaned in closer. “But I am who I am, too, and wanting to protect you, to make life easier for you however I can, to sacrifice myself for you, to choose to step in the shit ahead of you, to keep your dress from getting dirty, and to break my leg in place of yours—I will never stop, Thais. I will never just stop being who I am.” He kissed my forehead, and leaned upright, grimacing from the pain in his ribs. “I don’t do the things I do for you because I believe you can’t do them yourself. I do them because I want to. It’s up to you whether or not it makes you feel like a child, or a damsel in distress—I don’t think of you as either.”
I narrowed my eyes to keep from smiling.
“What about a privileged princess?”
Atticus shrugged, took my hand and pushed through the murky, debris-filled water again. “Well, you’re my privileged princess—as privileged as you can be in our situation—so take it however you want.”
I finally smiled.
It seemed like hours we made our way through the filthy water—thankfully unscathed by the debris, and the invisible dangers beneath it—and when I noticed the water level drop from my breasts to my waist, and then eventually to my knees, we knew that dry land was near.
“There,” Atticus said, pointing ahead. “A paved road.”
Exhausted from the overuse of our muscles pushing through the water for so long, by the time we made it to the road on the horizon we couldn’t walk another minute. We slept in the back of a semi-trailer after I’d re-dressed Atticus’ wounds—(Atticus had carried our few supplies wrapped tightly in his beautician’s smock tied around his neck to keep it dry, but there wasn’t clean water to rinse the river from the wounds.) And after our much-needed rest, we woke while the sun still blazed in the sky, and we pressed on.
Another day passed.
And another.
And another.
We lost track of the number of days we walked, and hadn’t the slightest idea where we were, or even if we were heading in the right direction, until finally, a road sign jutted from the grass out ahead and we were relieved to know we’d been going the right way all along. Keeping to the woods beyond the shoulder, but keeping the highway in sight, we continued southwest until the woods abandoned the highway and we were forced to abandon it, too, so we would not be out in the open.
For days and days we walked, and for days we did not eat, and for days we hardly drank as the sky felt it had given the land enough rain already.
“I…can’t…go any farther, Atticus.”
I lay in the backseat of an old sedan, barely able to raise my head from the leather, much less force the rest of my body into motion. My muscles ached and had grown so weak they felt like mush underneath my skin; the bones in my feet hurt so much I thought they might crumble if I took another step; I saw black floaties in my vision, like tiny bacteria moving around under a microscope; my lips were dry and cracked and my skin felt like crepe paper and my stomach was so empty it churned and made awful noises as though trying to eat itself. But most of all, I was just tired, so utterly exhausted that even the thought of walking another mile made me feel like death would almost be a more viable option.
ATTICUS
I sat beside Thais, with her legs stretched across the seat and my lap; I stroked her arm with my hand, and I gazed out the car’s windshield glazed over by a filmy layer of dirt. The air was humid, and the sun still blazed in the sky—it had been for days—which made travel that much more unbearable. Or, maybe, that heat boiling inside my head, causing the rest of my skin to prickle, wasn’t the weather, but a fever raging inside of me.
I couldn’t bear to tell Thais because it would worry her, but the stab wound on my thigh didn’t feel so good. When Thais wasn’t looking, I would take double the dosage of penicillin.
Another day passed, but we didn’t walk far: less than three miles before we needed to rest again. And still, there was no food to be found, but we managed to find water, leftover from the last rain in a ditch just off a dirt road. Stagnant. Filthy. Bugs floated drunkenly above it and skittered along the surface. And we had no way to sterilize it. But it was all the water we had, and it was drink and risk getting sick, or don’t drink and risk death without it.
And so we drank straight from the hole, gulping the water from our cupped hands as if we’d never known what the heavenly liquid felt like in our mouths.
We fell next to one another after we’d had our fill, the sun blazing down on us, but we couldn’t move to find shade.
“Are we going to die?” Thais asked, though I got the feeling that what she really had wanted to say was: “If we stay here, we’re going to die.”
“No, we’re not going to die.” I answered; my eyes were closed, my breathing unsteady, my body sweating as it tried to burn off the fever. But what I had really wanted to say was: “You won’t, but I just might.”
The sky opened up again in the night and stirred us from our sleep. Grateful for the clean water and slightly cooler air the rain brought with it, we woke with weak smiles on our faces, and we just lay there, looking up at the nighttime sky as the rain fell on us in heavy torrents and gave us some relief.
Thais let the rain fill up the small toy bucket, and we drank until it was empty. And she filled it up again, instructed me to drop my pants, and she cleaned my wounds.
“This one feels too…tight,” Thais said as she pressed her fingers carefully around the wound on my thigh.
I swallowed nervously, and hoped she wouldn’t notice the extent of the infection.
THAIS
I peered in closer, unable to see just how red and inflamed the skin was in the darkness, but enough I could tell it was getting infected.
I looked up at him, his face still very much swollen from his injuries, but he opened both eyes now at least.
“This one doesn’t look good, Atticus.”
He shrugged it off. “It feels all right. No different than the others.”
I didn’t believe him for a moment, but then I gave in, confident the penicillin would do its job.
“Well, we still need to find some kind of antiseptic,” I said, “before it gets worse.”
And that night, when we came upon a small mechanic’s garage with an old rusted truck parked outside, I was blessed once again with just what I needed, this time to pack his wounds and help keep them clean.
“Hold still,” I instructed.
ATTICUS
I sat on the oil-stained concrete floor of the garage with my back against the wall. I wasn’t looking forward to Thais packing the holes where the knife had gone in with balled-up spider webs she’d gathered from the garage. But she knew what she was doing and that was enough to convince me.
I hissed through my teeth when she packed the infected wound on my thigh.
I watched her, admiring her.
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
Sensing his eyes on me as I worked on his wounds, I raised my head.
“What?” I asked, half-smiling.
“Nothing.” Atticus’ lips turned up on one side.
I blinked.
“Tell me,” I insisted.
He looked down at my hands as they prodded the wound.
“You just amaze me, is all,” he said.
My blush deepened. I dropped my eyes to keep from seeing his, and went back to work.
A moment later: “This is the last of the tape. And the baby wipes. How much penicillin is left?”
Atticus opened the bottle—days ago we’d opened all three and poured the pills into one so there would be less to carry—and he shuffled the pills into the palm of his hand.
As he counted, I noticed right away there were fewer left than there should have been.
“Atticus, there were ninety pills when I found them.” I poked at them in the palm of his hand, and looked up at him suspiciously. “What happened to the rest of them?”
Atticus sighed. “I’ve been taking them.”
“Why?”
He sighed once more. “Just a precaution.”
I examined the puffy, reddened wound again. Then I reached out and touched the inside of my wrist to his forehead, and then both cheeks.
“You’re running fever,” I said with a hint of accusation. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You know why, Thais.”
Resigned, I looked back down at the wound, and went back to mending it, taping down a baby wipe over the top. I was disappointed with Atticus for not telling me, but I couldn’t very well argue his reason—yes, it would have worried me, and it would have been the only thing I could think about, and although there wasn’t anything more I could do than what I had been doing, I still would have carried that extra worry on my back the whole way.
“The penicillin will fight the infection,” I stated, refusing to believe otherwise.
(“It will,” I agreed, refusing to believe otherwise.)
Both of us, I knew deep down, were starting to believe otherwise.
~~~
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
It had been so long since we ate last, that our cheeks were sinking inward, and I could fit my pinky and thumb around my forearm, and there were dark circles under Atticus’ eyes, and neither of us could walk for more than ten minutes without having to stop and catch our breath. And to make matters worse, extreme hunger also brought with it irritability and anger, and so Atticus and I fought about ridiculous things.
And to make matters even worse, hunger made concentration difficult, so Atticus and I fought about ridiculous things we couldn’t even remember.
“I never told the family at the farm I wanted to stay,” I claimed. “I just…said it’d be nice to.”
“That’s basically the same thing,” Atticus shot back. “And you did tell them you were going to stay. I heard you.” (Didn’t I?)
I shook my head vigorously.
“I never said that.”—Or did I?—“But you wanted to stay on the porch with that girl,” I deflected.
“Huh?” Atticus’ eyebrows hardened.
“The dark-haired one,” I accused; I could remember none of the family’s names. “You went out there to talk to her; pretended you were talking to the old man.”
Atticus’ head reared back. “Thais, I was out there talking to him before she came outside.”
“That’s not what I remember.”
“Then your memory is shit,” he said.
(I shook my head and looked at the wooden fence post behind her. Or, maybe my memory is shit…)
“Maybe it is,” I said, looking at the empty field of grass and stars behind him, “but part of me feels like you wanted her.”
“Pffft! I didn’t want her—why do you think she ran into the house, pissed off?”—he pointed at me suddenly—“that reminds me: Why did you tell them we were heading to Shreveport?”
My eyebrows hardened this time.
“I never told them that,” I defended. I thought back, going over every detail of every conversation I’d had with those people, just to make sure; but I was still ninety-nine-percent positive I’d never said anything about Shreveport. “What makes you think that, anyway?”
“Peter Whitman told me in Paducah.”
I paused, still trying to recall. “But I didn’t…I was so careful not to let it slip, I—.”
(I raised my eyes to look at her when she stopped mid-sentence. Why is she looking at me that way?)
“What?” he asked.
“Atticus…” I held a breath in my lungs for a moment; and then let it out slowly, shaking my head with realization and disappointment. “Atticus, it was you who mentioned Shreveport. Not me.”
“What?” He pushed air through his lips, and shook his head. “There’s no way I said—.”
(Oh fuck…)
His shoulders melted into a slump, and his breath came out heavily and noisily. He brought both hands up and pushed his palms over his face.
“It was me,” he admitted with deep shame and regret. “At the table during breakfast the first morning…I…shit, I meant to say we were on our way to Topeka, but I remember now…I said Shreveport.” He shook his head and lowered it. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I insisted. “I could’ve easily made the same mistake.” I moved from the fence post and sat beside him; laid my head on his shoulder. “Besides, I’m as much to blame because at the time not even I’d noticed you’d said it.”
“Doesn’t matter—I shouldn’t have blamed you. I’m such an ass. I was so sure it was you. I’m such an ass.”
“But you’re my favorite ass.”
Atticus looked over to see me smiling up at him, my cheek pressed against his arm.
(I chuckled, powerless to hold on to my anger with her looking at me like that, doll-faced and playful.)
Suddenly, my head jerked away from his arm, and I sat upright, alert.
“Did you see that?” I stared hard into the field, trying to focus my eyes on the darkness and the shadows.
ATTICUS & (THAIS)
I peered out ahead, squinting, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness.
“I don’t see anything—.”
And then I saw something: a black dot moving through the field, disappearing and reappearing in and out of the shadows cast by a tree here and there.
I grabbed Thais’ hand, and then pulled one-half of the scissors Thais had found, from the smock lying next to us. She grabbed the other half. We stood side-by-side, hands locked, and our improvised knives gripped firmly in the others.
The black dot became larger as the figure moved closer, and when it finally came into view, bathed by the blue moonlight, I blinked back the stun of the discovery, could hardly believe what I was seeing.
“It’s Trick,” she said with disbelief. “The dog from the farm.”
I couldn’t believe it, either. Did this mean, despite using highway signs as a guide, we still went in the wrong direction? And if not, then just how far away had we gotten from the farm?
The dog bounded toward us on long, bony legs, his ears flopping, his tongue hanging from one side of his mouth, tail wagging. Thais bent to welcome him, but I put my arm out in front of her.
“Wait,” I said, holding the scissor’s blade out, ready to use it if forced to.
“Oh, stop it,” Thais said, pushed my hand away, and then she knelt on the grass in front of the dog. She scratched his head with all ten fingers, and rubbed him under the neck, and Trick licked her face and his tail wagged faster, swiping side-to-side so hard it shook his whole back end.
I sat down on the grass again.
“Where have you been boy?” Thais coddled the dog, rubbing his belly. “Yeah, you’re a good boy, Trick. Yeah—he’s a good boy.”
I shook my head and lay down against the grass.
“What do you think this means?” Thais asked. “I really can’t force myself to believe we’re still that close to Lexington—Atticus, I won’t believe that. I won’t.”
“I don’t think we are,” I said. “I’ve heard of dogs traveling across the country to find their owners before.”
“But we aren’t his owners,” Thais pointed out; continuously she scratched the dog’s head, and rubbed his belly when he would lie on his back because he couldn’t decide which he enjoyed more.
“Maybe his owners are dead,” I offered. “Maybe he didn’t have anybody to go home to, so he picked up our trail.”
“Yeah, he’s a gooood boooy, yes he is!” she told the dog in a playful voice, and the dog licked her all over the face.
I sat upright—regretting the swift movement afterwards as pain tore through my sides—stung by a realization.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Maybe we won’t go hungry tonight, after all.”
Thais rose into a tall stand over me, and pushed Trick behind her; she glared down into my face with the fury only a mother protecting her child could possess.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.
“Huh?” I took a second, but soon I realized.
I made a breathy sound, brushing off her assumption. “I don’t mean that,” I reassured her, and stood up.
I reached out a hand, snapped my fingers and said, “Come here, boy!”
The dog came right over to me, tried to lick my face, too, but I gently swatted him down.
“Sit,” I commanded.
Immediately, Trick sat on his haunches, tail wagging back and forth, sweeping the grass.
(I knew then what Atticus meant to do, and I thought it a wonderful idea.)
“But we don’t have anything to tempt him with,” Thais pointed out.
“Still might work,” I said, hoping.
I reached into my pocket, and Trick’s eyes followed the movement of my hand.
With the other hand, I pointed into the field and shouted, “Go! Bring one back!” just like David Doakes had done on the farm.
But the dog did not move; he started to, but half a second before his rear end came off the ground, he stopped, and became still again, his gaze focused on my pocket; drool dripped from one side of his snout in a long, snot-like string that jiggled and dangled as it hung there.
Thais and I shared a worried look.
I tried again.
“Go!” I shouted, and pointed into the field. “Bring one back!”
But still, the dog did not move.
Getting agitated, I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “He might want to reconsider,” I mumbled, “before he becomes the meal.”
“Atticus!”
I was only kidding, and Thais knew as much.
“Let me try.”
Thais snapped her fingers, and Trick reluctantly turned back to her—he was still curious about what I had in my pocket.
Thais reached into the folds of her skirt as if searching inside a pocket, held her hand there, pointed into the field and shouted, “Go! Bring one back!”
Still, the dog did not move.
I tried to hide my grin by chewing on the inside of my cheek harder, but Thais had seen it. She made a face at me that said “Oh, hush!” and then she focused her attention on the dog once more.
“You want a treat?” she asked Trick.
The dog’s ears perked and his tail stopped wagging in an instant. He didn’t blink; he didn’t move; I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.
“Uh huh,” she said with confidence, “that’s the trigger word, isn’t it? You want a treat, boy?”
Trick barked a loud, booming bark.
Thais pointed into the field again. “Go! Bring one back!”
Trick shot up on all four legs, and set off like an arrow into the field; within seconds he was nothing more than a black dot moving in and out of the shadows again.
“So, what now?” I asked, since she was clearly the only one of us who knew what she was doing—I actually loved that about her sometimes.
“I guess we wait,” Thais answered, and sat down on the grass beside me.
And so that’s what we did—we waited. Minutes became hours, and the hours stacked up, and we were starving and thirsty and tired—always so tired—and when we were awoken by the sound of an engine—an actual working engine—in the early, dark hours of the morning, Trick still had not returned with anything for us to eat.
“Stay flat on the ground,” I told Thais, throwing my arm over her back and pressing my body as closely to hers as I could. “And don’t move.”
We were lying on the grass, stomachs and heads down; I bit through the excruciating pain of my fractured ribs pressed against the hard ground, but I did not move, and I barely breathed.
A truck, the shape but a silhouette in the dark moving across the horizon east of the field, bumbled along the dirt road, its headlights bounced around in the darkness, the engine and exhaust sputtered and spit and backfired. After several tense moments, the red glow of the brake lights disappeared over a hill, and the ailing grumble of the engine faded and then it was gone.
“We can’t stay any longer,” I whispered; I rolled onto my back, grimacing with the effort, and then just lay there to catch my breath.
“Then let’s keep moving,” Thais whispered back.
We went another twenty-four hours without food, but we pushed on. Though the only thing we had left anymore to keep us moving was determination.
Another twenty-four hours, and even our determination had given up on us.
THAIS
I tripped over my own feet, and when I hit the ground I just lay there, unable to move; something pointy dug into the small of my back and my arms and legs and my head. Atticus tried to help me up, but he could barely stand, either, and when he reached for my elbow, he fell.
“I can’t…I can’t do this anymore,” I said, my voice strained and weak.
ATTICUS
Physically, I was worse off than Thais: the fractured ribs and broken fingers were draining enough, but the infection in my leg had become debilitating. I lay there beside her, too weak to even open my eyes, almost too weak to breathe on my own. I felt many hard, pointy objects jabbing me everywhere, but I could not move. I heard a crunching sound as Thais adjusted next to me, and something gave me a chill in my heart about wherever we’d fallen, but still, I was too weak to investigate, or even to care.
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
My eyes were getting heavier; I tried to keep them open, but I could not. I could taste blood in my mouth, copper, metallic, but I hadn’t a clue on how it got there. My head ached so terribly I could feel the veins throbbing in my temples. My lips were so dry they stuck together like glue whenever they’d touch, and I had to break them apart when I wanted to speak.
“Do you still…think we’re…in Arkansas?” I asked, watching silver spots dance on the back of my eyelids.
Atticus’ breathing was shallow, and he was slow to respond. “Yeah, probably.”
A day and a half ago we determined we were in Arkansas, judging the license plates on almost every abandoned car we’d passed on the road, and those we came across still parked underneath carports and inside garages. But whereabouts in Arkansas, or how far south we’d traveled through it, would remain a mystery.
“Atticus?”
“Um-hmm?’ he mumbled, too weak to move his lips, or to open his eyes.
“I know it’s…cruel to say…but…I’m glad the world ended…or I never…would’ve met you.”
(I felt myself smiling, or maybe I was only thinking it.)
“Me too, Thais…me too.”
We wanted to touch each other, to hold hands, to lie beside one another, to hold one another, but we could not move. We slept, and slept, and slept, past the morning, past noontime, through the heat that burned our faces, and the grumbling engine of another truck—or the same one—driving past us on another nearby road.
“Was that a truck?” I thought I’d asked, but I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep.
Hours later, in the early evening before sunset, my eyes pried apart slowly as my mind registered the slimy feel of something against my face, and a smell that was both hot and unpleasant. Opening my eyes the rest of the way, but my mind still trying to wake from dreamland, my vision was blurry, and all I could make out was a dark figure hovering over me, licking my face, nudging me awake with its nose.
“Atticus, it’s Trick,” I spoke weakly. “He found us.”
I heard Atticus moan next to me.
Lifting from the ground, I clenched my eyes and kneaded my back with my fingertips as I tried to relax the stiffened muscles. I felt dizzy and faint, but managed enough strength to sit up straight and be aghast at the dead opossum laying across my lap, its mouth and face bloodied, its stomach torn where its insides protruded.
“Atticus, we have food.”
But Atticus did not move.
I looked over at him, for the first time noticing how far apart we’d slept, and saw that his face was drenched in sweat, and his breathing was choppy, labored.
I tossed the opossum aside and crawled on my hands and knees over to him, ignoring the strange unevenness of the ground beneath me. I placed my hand on his shoulder and shook him. “Atticus, please wake up,” I said calmly at first. “ATTICUS WAKE UP!” The real possibility he could be dying punched me hard in the stomach, sent a panic through me. “ATTICUS! YOU BETTER WAKE UP NOW!” I said angrily.
And he did.
His eyes opened faintly at first, and then all the way. Relief ravaged my body and I nearly lost my balance and fell on top of him.
He reached up weakly and stroked my hair from my face.
“Oh, Atticus”—I kissed the back of his hand, and then his mouth—“you scared me. You scared me…” My chest shuddered.
“I’m all right,” he told me, though I knew that he wasn’t, but I couldn’t think about that right now. Because I could do nothing about it right now.
“Trick found us, and he brought food,” I told him.
“What…did he…catch?”
“Opossum.” I left him and went over to grab the carcass, brought it back to show Atticus. “See?” I gave it a covert sniff to make sure decomposition wasn’t setting in yet.
Atticus scarcely nodded.
“Help me up,” he told me, and reached out his hand.
ATTICUS
Thais helped me up, and I sat upright, swaying as I tried to steady my balance; my eyes filled with spots, and my head felt like it was on fire, and I was drowning in sweat all over my body.
“I don’t…suppose you’re any…good”—I stopped to catch my breath, and wiped sweat from my face; my head was spinning, and so I shut my eyes for a moment—“…any good at…making fire without a lighter?”
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
“What makes you think I’m not?” I joked. I laid the opossum on the ground, and told Atticus to drop his pants so I could look at the infected wound, but instead, I inhaled sharply and froze where I stood.
“Oh…dear God…”
Atticus raised his head slowly. “What is it?” he asked, but as his gaze followed mine, he didn’t need me to tell him.
The ground beneath us was littered with bones—human bones. Bones that still wore the clothes the people had lived and died in; bones separated, smashed to pieces, torn apart; human skulls unattached to their spines, tossed in every direction, marred by bullet wounds and axe fissures and other large, blunt objects. The dead stretched outward in front of us fifty-feet and led to a sloped drop-off. I, eyes wide, horrorstruck, saw the dirt rim of a mass grave with the circumference of a small pond.
“Thais, don’t…”
But I had to. I had to see, to bear witness to the scene of what had once been a place of terrible violence and horrific brutality.
Bones crunched underfoot as I walked over them, unable to step around them there were so many. There was no fear in my heart, only sadness; my mind so fixated on what I was about to see I barely noticed Atticus following closely behind.
I stood at the edge of the mass grave, a deep, deep hole, where at the bottom, hundreds of skeletal remains were scattered like rocks on a hillside. Hundreds of people who once had lives, who had sons and daughters—who were sons and daughters. Hundreds.
I felt Atticus’ hand on my shoulder; I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight.
“Atticus, there are…children.” My fingertips rested on my lips; burning moisture brimmed my eyes.
Atticus took my other hand into his and he squeezed it.
Every unimaginable kind of horror about what happened here went through my mind, but all of them were unjust. I could have allowed myself to believe these people were executed because they had done awful things—they could have been savages—but the bones of dead children among the massacre was evidence those who did the killing might have been the savages. Or cracks. Or a tyrant like William Wolf of Lexington City. Or any number of evil who did, and always had, outweighed the good in this world.
I couldn’t look away.
“This can’t go on,” I said aloud to myself. “This can’t be how the world continues, how life continues…”—my hand fell away from my mouth; I stared into the mass grave, unblinking, picturing the smiling faces of the dead, when they were alive and happy and free—“This can’t be all that’s left.”
“It won’t be,” Atticus whispered.
“No, it won’t.”
After a moment, I said, “Let’s cook this opossum,” and I turned away from the grave, forcing it behind me because I’d break down if I didn’t.
I skinned and gutted the opossum myself, despite never wanting to.
“I’m still here,” Atticus told me as he watched.
I smiled. “Yes, you are,” I said. “You’re too stubborn to die; I know that now.”
Atticus chuckled.
Then he pointed to his festering leg wound. “I don’t know,” he reasoned. “I’m starting to wonder.”
“Ah!” I waved the idea off. “That won’t be what kills you—I know that, too.”
Atticus raised a brow.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.” I reached over and patted Trick on the head; the dog had been sitting patiently beside me, slobbering, waiting to be rewarded with a treat.
“Then what will be what kills me?”
I thought on it a moment, squinting my eyes and pressing my lips together in a hard line on one side. “Hmm,” I said. “I’m going to say old age.”
Atticus laughed under his breath.
“I hope you’re right,” he told me. “Though growing old has its downsides. Are you gonna feed me when I’m too old to lift a spoon? Clean me up when I’m too old control my bowels?”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation. “I’ll be with you until the very end. Don’t ever forget that.”
(I smiled slimly, with an ache in my heart. “I’ll never forget it,” I said.)
I took an hour to get a fire started. And we cooked the opossum on a tree-branch skewer and filled our stomachs with the most amazing meat we’d ever tasted—starvation made anything taste amazing.
Trick got his treat, and he took off in the darkness afterward. Atticus and I were disappointed the dog didn’t stay around to keep us company, and to help us find food, but it was what it was.
Close to nightfall, Atticus wasn’t talking much anymore, and he hadn’t moved from his spot on the ground in hours, and I had a dreadful feeling deep in the pit of my stomach but I tried not to show it, for Atticus’ sake.
Until I couldn’t help it anymore.
“Atticus, you need to stay awake.” I shook his shoulder gently, and his eyelids broke apart.
“I’m awake,” he insisted, but I wasn’t convinced.
Moments later, I had to shake his shoulder again.
“Don’t go to sleep; stay with me, Atticus.”
I heard the grumbling engine of a truck again, and seconds later I saw the white glow of headlights moving over the landscape.
I looked down at Atticus. Back at the truck. Down at Atticus again, my heart and my mind racing. Back at the truck again as it was getting farther away.
What do I do? God, tell me what to do…
The people, whoever they were, could be dangerous; they could be the same people who snuffed out the lives of those we grimly shared a meal around just hours earlier. They could even be someone from Lexington City looking for us. Or from Paducah. Or—
What do I do?!
Or, they could be Atticus’ only chance of survival.
I jumped to my feet and sprinted across the field toward the truck, out of breath within seconds; my legs felt like fifty-pound weights; my lungs and my heart might burst if I went any farther, but I refused to stop.
“WAIT!” I held up my arm high above my head. “PLEASE, WAIT!”
The sun was setting, but there was just enough light left to show me waving frantically in the distance.
“STOP!” My voice rippled sharply over the field.
The truck stopped, the brake lights glowing brighter for a moment.
I fell to my knees, and then fell on my chest; dried grass prickled my face as I lay pressed against it. “Please…wait…” I couldn’t yell anymore. “You…have to…help us.”
Moments later I heard the shuffling of boots moving over the grass. And men’s voices. But I couldn’t make out the words.
A man stood over me, with dark skin and dark eyes; he wore a tattered straw hat, and a curious smile.
“All right, I got you,” the man said, and I felt his gentle hands fit under my arms. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you, girl.”