CHAPTER EIGHT
"Nashville was leveled by an atomic bomb about a week after the virus hit. No one survived." Pausing, Kathy sighed quietly. "The virus was particularly bad there, hardly leaving anyone alive, and the government thought they could contain the spread to other cities by blowing up the whole city.”
When I'd spoken to Jessica on the phone, it had been just about a week after the virus had hit. I recalled how our conversation had been cut short by the phone service suddenly going out, and I wondered if she and Ebony had died right then. Right at that second, before I'd even left my apartment, before I'd even taken a single step in my nearly two-year journey to reunite with them.
Surprisingly, I didn't feel much of anything. So, it turned out they were dead. So, it turned out that my journey of nearly two years had all been for nothing. That was life. Sometimes, skating collisions happened. Sometimes, people died during an apocalypse and their loved ones didn't even know it. Contrary to feeling any sort of strong emotion, I just felt the distinct lack of it, and if my chest had been hollowed out and filled with air.
With my heartbeat now having slowed, I stood, still holding my coffee mug, and just kind of addressed the group at large. "I'm going to go finish my coffee in my tent right now. Please don't anyone follow me."
Accidentally dumping her coffee in the dirt, Tracy leaped up. "No, I'll go with you. I'll just sit with you in case you-"
"No, Tracy, please. I just...I just need to go sit in the tent by myself now. Someone just please let me know when it's time to tear the tents down and leave. I'll go to Helena now, and I won't ever try to escape. I have nowhere else to go now. Nowhere else I need to get to."
Leaving numerous expressions of surprise and confusion in my wake, I began walking over to the tents, almost immediately hearing Tracy burst into tears, choking out a few sobs before speaking.
"It was her sisters...she thought they were still alive down in Nashville. She's been trying to get to them for almost two years."
My knee-jerk reaction was to backtrack and comfort crying Tracy, telling her that it was all fine, that I really felt nothing. However, by the time she'd finished speaking, I was already nearly to the tents, and my legs were suddenly feeling leaden, like maybe they wouldn't carry me back to the log circle. I really just wanted to sit down.
In the tent, I sipped my coffee, thinking that I really should have expected something like this. An atomic bomb hadn't specifically crossed my mind, but I'd realized full well that there were a million different ways for people to not survive an apocalypse. I'd known that Jessica and Ebony could get sick, or get murdered, or get turned into Huskers by Huskers.
I'd known all that in my head. However, I'd never really let my heart believe that they were anything other than fine and well, surviving in Nashville somehow, maybe with the help of a group of other survivors. In order to keep going every day, in order to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other at times, I just hadn't been able to allow myself to think otherwise.
Sometimes it had seemed similar to Olympic training to me, the way I'd kept my eyes on the prize, not allowing myself to expect anything less than gold. This time, though, I'd lost something a little more important than a golden disc.
I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard about Nashville during my travels, but then again, I kind of could. I'd only rarely had contact with other travelers, and even then, they'd all been heading south from the north, like me, or had been traveling west to east, or east to west.
Many of them, I hadn't told I was heading to Nashville, not fully trusting most people and not wanting to be followed. As far as the people that I had told about my ultimate destination, if any of them had heard about Nashville, they hadn't told me, and it was possible that like me, none of my fellow travelers had known. It wasn't like there had been any television, radio, or internet service at the time Nashville had been blown up.
I should have been crying. I knew it. I felt strange that I wasn't. I felt somehow disrespectful to my sisters. But, sipping my coffee while trying to cry, I found that I just couldn't. I thought that maybe Blaine was right. Maybe I really was an ice queen, because I truly felt nothing. Nothing more than a sense of having been hollowed out inside somehow.
I really hadn't felt much emotion since the day I'd left the ice rink back in Detroit, pretty much because I just hadn't allowed myself to. I'd known that in order for me to complete my mission to Nashville, I was going to have to be tough as nails, not breaking down and weeping every single time I missed my family. Between Huskers, dangerous men, and my ever-present tendency to become squeamish and panicky, like when I'd accidentally cut my hand with the knife, I knew I already had enough things to deal with on my journey.
Really, one of the only times I could even remember becoming a bit emotional on my journey had been when I'd cut my hand. Although it hadn't been right then, but the day after, when Chris had given me the four-leaf-clover. And there might have been a time or two other than that, but for the most part, I'd remained stoic on my journey, not allowing myself to feel sadness and despair, even though at times, I could feel these emotions bubbling up somewhere just below the surface of my heart.
I'd just set my empty mug on the ground when Nick came inside the tent, ducking to avoid hitting his head.
"Hey. I know you said you want to be alone, but I just wanted to see how you're-"
"I'm completely fine. And thank you. I really just want to be alone for a few more minutes, though."
"Well-"
"Sometimes people just get slashed in the leg at the Olympics, Nick. Or thirty miles away from Nashville or however far we are. You just get stitched up and go back out on the ice. So, that's what I'm going to do. Just give me another minute, and I'll start helping to tear down all the tents."
Nick frowned down at me, then raked a hand through his thick dark hair. "Well, if you need anything, will you please-"
"I'll come get you. I promise. I'm perfectly fine, though, and I'm going to continue to be."
Looking incredibly dubious, Nick raked a hand through his hair again, frowning. "Please come get me if you need anything. Really. Please."
He then left the tent, leaving me to try to make myself cry again, but it was no use. I just couldn't. Honestly, I felt much more like laughing for some reason, because it was kind of funny how I'd wasted nearly two years of my life working toward some pointless goal that hadn't even been possible since day one.
Never reaching full-tilt laughter but making a few quiet snorts, I examined the stitching on my tennis shoes, pulling off a few loose threads that I'd meant to pull off the day before. I'd just finished with this task when I heard Elisa's voice outside the tent.
"It's Elisa, Eva. Can I poke my head in real quick?"
"Sure. Come on in."
She tentatively stuck her face through the flaps, momentarily looking surprised when she saw me, as if she'd expected to see me weeping on the floor, despite the report that Nick had probably just given everyone.
"I just wanted to let you know that Kathy just fried us up some hash-browns to go with our oatmeal...and we've got some dried fruit and walnuts out here to go with our breakfast, too. You want to get in on any of that? I'd be happy to bring you in some breakfast here in the tent."
Getting to my feet, I mustered a smile. "Thank you. But I may as well come out and eat with everyone else. I'm fine...honestly."
When I took my spot next to Tracy, she was still sniffling a little bit, though she hastily wiped her eyes when she saw me. "Hey. How are you feel-"
"Totally fine, here. But how are you?"
She once again wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Well, I didn't just find out that my two sisters are gone, but I'm feeling really sad that you just did. I'm sorry, too, that you had to find out about Nashville how you did. That was my dumb fault."
"No, it wasn't. Now, let's grab some bowls for oatmeal. I'm starving."
As they'd been doing while I'd been speaking to Tracy, everyone pretty much continually stole glances at me during breakfast. I just ignored them, though, trying to keep a neutral, pleasant, not-upset look on my face, which wasn't hard to do at all. After Elisa and Tracy had had a conversation about Tracy washing some clothes in a washer when we got to Helena, because she had no clean clothes left, I jumped in, asking if there were electric dryers in Helena, too, which Elisa said there were.
After breakfast, I helped rinse out the dishes, which would be properly washed with soap later in Helena. Next, I helped take down the tents and do various other chores relating to packing up the campsite. During those chores, a few moaning Huskers shambled into our camp, and I killed two with my backup screwdriver I'd had in my backpack.
After that, our group of fifteen soon finally set out on the crumbling paved road north on foot. Besides Nick and Blaine, no one else in the group had left Helena in a vehicle, because they'd wanted to search for survivors in the deep back country of the area to the west, which is where they'd found Tracy.
She'd been found at the end of a mile-long, narrow dirt road so overgrown with brambles that a vehicle wouldn't have been able to pass, which seemed to be the state of the vast majority of the numerous dirt roads in Kentucky.
Helena was still several miles away, and for the first half-hour or so of walking, I remained feeling perfectly fine, just oddly hollow, in a way that I couldn't quite even articulate, even to myself.
But then, after that half-hour, something strange happened. Instead of feeling hollow, my chest suddenly started to feel very full, as if pressure was building up inside it or something. My chest also started to hurt in a very non-localized sort of way, just kind of aching from shoulder-to-shoulder. If I'd been a few decades older, I might have thought I was having a heart attack or some other medical emergency.
Lagging behind the group, I actually jumped a bit, startled, when the first sob came from my mouth. But almost instantly, stopping dead in my tracks, I covered my mouth with both hands, feeling absolutely positive that the random sneaky sob wasn't going to be the last.
Some kind of a dam was about to break. And when it did, I didn't want any noises I made to attract any Huskers possibly lurking in the forested areas on either side of the road.
When the dam soon broke, everything that had been held inside it manifested in body-shaking sobs and long, low wails, though muffled sobs and wails, because I still had my hands tightly pressed against my mouth. Feeling as if I wouldn't be able to stop even if I bent my entire will toward it, I didn't really care who saw me in the state I was in. I did feel a momentary flash of embarrassment when I heard Tracy's voice in the distance after a half-minute or something.
"Oh my God...back there...look at her!"
I couldn't have lifted my face, saying that I was fine, if my life had depended on it, so I didn't even try. Just kept letting the sobs and wails roll through me, hands on mouth, eyes squeezed shut. Rapid footfalls on the road announced Tracy's arrival, as did her actual voice.
"Just hold on, Eva! I'm coming!"
Soon she had me wrapped in a tight hug, sniffling a little herself. Unlike me, she didn't seem to have a problem feeling and expressing emotion at inappropriate times.
"I'm so sorry, Eva. I'm so sorry you found out your sisters are gone. I bet they loved you an awful lot, and I know you had to love them too, so much to go out to try to find them how you did."
Hands still over my mouth, I could only nod into her shoulder, because for some reason, her kind words had only made me sob harder.
Soon Elisa joined us, putting her arms around me, too, and Kathy even came over shortly after and patted my back a few times, saying in a sincere-sounding voice that she was sorry and it was all going to be okay.
"I'm sorry for saying what I did about Nashville the way I did, too. I didn't know you had family there. I thought you and Tracy were just sharing general info. I'm sorry."
Despite all this comfort, I found I just could not for the life of me stop crying. And, in fact, the more comfort I received, the harder I seemed to cry.
So, after a few minutes, I managed a few words while my shoulders continued to shudder. "I'm sorry. I've just gotta go down the ravine for a second. I just can't stop. Just gotta get it all out of my system."
All three of my female comforters said they understood, and I scrambled down the deep ditch, or ravine, or whatever it would be considered, to the right of the road, still crying. On my way, I didn't even glance over at all the men in the group, who were still a short distance up the road, to see what they were doing or how they were reacting to my sudden group-stopping flood of tears. I was pretty sure they'd all seen a woman cry before.
Once at the bottom of the ditch, I had a seat, re-covered my mouth, and once again just let the sobs and wails roll through me. Feeling as if some living thing was inside me, trying to get out by way of my tears, I didn't even feel exactly like it was me who was doing all the sobbing and wailing. All I knew was that I just could not make it stop.
With images of Jess and Eb flashing through my mind, I cried for I didn't know how long, being sure to keep my wails muffled so that I wouldn't attract Huskers. However, when several minutes went by, at least, I heard twigs and dry leaves crunching somewhere to my left, and I turned my head to look, ready to fight.