Fire Birds (4 page)

I looked at the floor. I hadn’t intended on doing that, but I could see that I had treated her that way.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She turned back to the window.

“Grant and I have been together for about a month. It’s not really that long, but in this new world, it’s a very long time. He’s been good to me. We–“

“Stop,” I said. “I don’t want to know about Grant or his niceties or how grateful you’ve been to him. All I want to know is what you’re going to do.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It would be a lie to tell you that I don’t care about him at all. I do. I care about him a lot. He’s been a good friend…he’s…he’s been more than a friend. If you don’t want me around anymore, then I’ll go back to him.”

“And if I do want you to stay? What about this Grant guy and your other two friends?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I brought them up here. I convinced them that life would be better here. I guess I’ll go talk to them. Maybe Grant will understand the situation.”

“No matter how nice this guy is, he’s not going to understand,” I said. “If you want to stay, then please stay. Don’t go back; no good can come from it.”

“They’ll think something happened to me.”

“Let them,” I said. “Would you rather they think you died or abandoned them?”

“But they’re still my friends,” she said. “Maybe they could live here too.”

“Sara, I can appreciate where you’re coming from, and I would welcome some help around here, but this is going to be trouble.”

“It will be okay,” she said. “I’ll go talk with them and explain. They know about you. I told them all about you and this place. Grant will understand. He knows how I felt about you…still feel about you. He has been so sweet about it.”

“I’m sure he has,” I said.

She turned away.

I absent-mindedly picked up my to-do list from the table and looked at it. I wasn’t reading it or even thinking about it. It was just something to occupy my shaking hands. I sighed and wadded up the paper.

“I’ve got things to do,” I said. “When you make up your mind, you’ll know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I love you. I never tried to hurt you.”

I sighed again and rubbed my eyes, “Hell, I know, Sara, but…but you’re here. You came back to me just like I imagined you would. I’ve been so damned empty.”

She took a step toward me but hesitated.

“I waited for you to come back all this time,” I continued, “and then when you do, you lay this on me. How do you expect me to react? How would you react?”

“I don’t know,” she said, staring down at her feet.

I pushed my chair out, went to her, and wrapped my arms around her. Her hands slipped around my waist. We just stood there and held each other for a while.

“I want you to stay with me,” I whispered.

She hugged me tighter. “I want to stay with you, but I can’t just abandon them…I can’t leave him without talking to him first.”

“Let’s go then,” I said.

“Go?”

“Yeah. If you’re going back to talk to him, I’m going too. I’m not going to lose you again.”

By 2 p.m., Sara was maneuvering down a narrow, winding gravel road. We were deep in the woods. I kept catching glimpses of Kentucky Lake through the trees off to the left.

“How did you find this place?” I said.

“My family stayed here one weekend every summer,” she said. “My dad’s boss owned it.”

We had spent some of the drive over catching up, but we kept the conversation superficial. Once we got near the state park, we both got quiet. I suppose we were both playing out scenarios in our head about what might happen when we got to the cabin.

The road wound around a hill then up. Eventually, it let out in a clearing on a bluff overlooking the lake. The cabin didn’t look like I imagined it would. I pictured one of those rustic hunting cabins they have in movies. This was a small house with vinyl siding. Out front were some lawn chairs and a fire pit. There was a red van there, too.

“Great view of the lake from here,” I said.

She parked the truck away from the house. The door opened on the cabin, and a Latino man stepped out with a shotgun.

“Is that him?”

“No,” she said. “That’s Julio.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t look much like a Grant.”

She squeezed my hand and looked at me intently. “Just sit in the truck for now, okay? I’ll go in and talk to him.”

I nodded. She got out. I watched her walk up and say something to Julio. They stood out front and talked. Their voices were muffled, and I couldn’t understand what they were saying. She gestured toward me a few times, and Julio kept glancing out at me. Then the two of them went inside.

It had taken us a little more than an hour to drive out to the cabin, and I was tired of sitting, so when they went inside, I got out and stood by the truck. To be honest, it was kind of emasculating hanging around outside while Sara went in to do the job; but it was her job to do, so I tried not to think about it.

Then the door opened and Sara came out again with Julio and another young woman. The couple stopped near the entrance, and Sara walked out to me.

“Grant is down by the lake fishing,” she said. “Christine said he was upset that I left by myself. He was going to go out looking for me, but they talked him into waiting a while to give me some time.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked, eager to leave. “Do you want to load up your stuff?”

“They are both okay with coming back to Clayfield with us. They’re not very happy about how this is going to change things. They told me they would break the news to Grant, but I’d rather tell him myself; I owe him that much.”

I looked up at the couple and waved. They frowned at me, but Christine lifted her hand. Christine had not bothered with maintaining her pre-apocalypse hairstyle. Her hair had been raven black before, and the remnants of that color still took up about four inches on the ends. The rest of her hair was blonde, giving her hair a stark two-tone. She had a few small tattoos on her arms–a skull and a Celtic cross.

“Christine is going to walk me down to where he is. You should probably wait here.”

I watched the two women walk away to my right on a path that led into the woods and toward the lake. Julio stared at me from beside the fire pit. He was shorter than me, but he was built like a tank. He was completely clean-shaven, including his head, which looked polished. I was impressed that he had managed to keep up with the cue ball look after all this time. He was wearing a black muscle shirt, which showed off not only his physique but also a dragon tattoo on his left arm that capped his shoulder and wrapped down to his elbow. He looked like he was in his early 30s.

“Hey,” I said from the truck.

“’S’up,” he said, giving his head a little jerk backward, sort of a reverse nod.

“Julio, right?”

“Julio.”

“Good to meet you,” I said.

He didn’t reply.

After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “So you’re him.”

“I suppose,” I said, nodding.

“You suppose,” he said. He sounded disgusted.

“Sara and I knew each other from before,” I said.

“Yeah, man. She talked about you a lot. She talked like you were a superman or something.”

“She said that? Well, I–“

“You don’t look like no superman to me, man.”

“I never claimed to be,” I said.

“Grant’s a cool dude, man,” Julio said. “He’s my boy. He saved my life twice. This is going to mess him up.”

“I know that,” I replied. “I wish it didn’t have to be that way.”

I heard some movement in the woods off to my left, and looked that direction, putting my hand on the butt of my pistol. Julio heard it too and lifted his shotgun. A young man, not much more than a kid, came over the rise of a hill and stumbled out of the woods. He had thick, wavy, dark hair that was down on his collar. He was carrying a fishing rod and tackle box, and there was a big revolver holstered on his hip.

“Whoa, Julio, watch the gun, bro.”

Julio lowered the shotgun, and the newcomer looked at me.

“Who’s this?” he said.

“Him,” Julio replied. “Sara’s boyfriend, man.”

“Oh,” he said, “him.”

He was tall, but not lanky; there was plenty of muscle there too. He would have fit in on any NBA team. I was sure he could don a chiton and be mistaken for a Greek god. Yet there was something about him that gave him a boyish look and made him seem smaller than he really was. It wasn’t just his face, which looked fresh and innocent, but it was also the way he carried himself. I felt like I had the upper had with him, even though I knew he could easily kick my ass. That might have been it: I knew he could kick my ass, but he didn’t know it. Perhaps it was a matter of confidence.

He stood at the edge of the clearing and looked back and forth between me and Julio.

“Has he come for her?” he said. Then he looked at me, “Have you?”

“Sara wants to talk to you,” I said. “She has gone down by the lake to find you.”

“I heard the truck come back, so I came up here as fast as I could.”

He put his fishing rod and tackle box on the ground, then came toward me. It startled me, and I didn’t know what to expect. He put his hand out. Hesitantly, I reached out and took it. His hand swallowed mine up. His grip was firm, and he looked me in the eye.

“It’s good to meet you,” he said, politely. “My name is Grant. I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m happy to see you survived. I’m sure Sara is happy about it as well.”

“Thank you,” I said, unsure what to say. I was stunned. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this guy was so nice that he would understand.

I started to extricate myself from the handshake, but he gripped me a little harder.

“Now, there’s something you should know,” he said with a stern but friendly expression and in a tone reserved for 1950s TV dads admonishing their children. “Sara and I...we’re together now. She’s cried for you, and now she’s moved on. I hope there won’t be any hard feelings over that.”

“Me too,” I said. He didn’t seem too bright, and his mild posturing lacked substance. He wasn’t really a man; he was just pretending to be one.

He released my hand and maintained eye contact for a moment under the brief and mistaken presumption that he had successfully pissed out his territory. Then he went back to the edge of the woods to retrieve his fishing gear.

“I’m going to put this away then I’ll go find the girls,” he said.

I looked over at Julio, and he was staring at me. I couldn’t read him; it was as if he was looking right through me. Grant took his fishing supplies into the house then came out again.

“Did they go down the path?” he asked.

Julio nodded but didn’t take his eyes off me.

“If they come back up the other way tell them to wait for me. I’ll try to catch up with them.” At that, he took off in a jog following the same path Sara and Christine had taken.

“Sara said you all might come back with us to Clayfield,” I said.

Julio shrugged, “We’re still working it out, you know?”

“There are more infected in Clayfield than here,” I said, “But there are more supplies…more food.”

He nodded.

We stood there–me by the truck, he by the house–for a long time without another word. I leaned on the truck a while. I walked around pretending to look at nature for a while. I squatted down and dug little rocks out of the ground with a stick. Julio remained planted the whole time.

Finally, Sara appeared, returning up the path. She was crying. When she got in the clearing, she went over to Julio. She said something to him in a low voice, gave him a quick hug, then went into the house. After a couple of minutes, she came out carrying a duffle bag.

“We can go now,” she said, tossing the bag into the back of the truck. “You drive.”

She didn’t say anything for several miles. She just stared out of her window, crying softly. I held her hand, but I didn’t press her for information. I didn’t like seeing her like that.

After a while, she said, “I’m sorry. He’s a sweet guy, and I really hated hurting him like that.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I don’t want you to feel forced into anything. Are you sure about this?”

“Completely,” she sniffed.

“Do you expect them to come to Clayfield eventually?”

She shook her head, “I don’t know.”

We didn’t see any infected people near the lake. Once we’d traveled several minutes they began to appear next to the road or in yards and fields. Seeing them off the road was tricky, because the weeds and grass had grown so tall and because often they would be standing perfectly still.

We crossed over into Grace County after 4 p.m. It was another fifteen minutes before we got close to Clayfield. I could see the top of the water tower and the courthouse spire sticking up over the trees in the distance. I turned off on a side road that would take me toward the stables.