Harmonic: Resonance (21 page)

I felt a tug at my shirt and opened my eyes. The light was bright and amplified by the return of burning pain throughout my body, as if I had awoken in a pit of fire. I couldn’t tell how much time had elapsed—
weeks or perhaps only seconds? Had I lost consciousness?

Through the blur, I saw Haley, leaning in through the windowless frame, pulling at my shirt, tugging at my arm, and trying to pull me free. I wrapped my hand around the jagged frame, and before I had time to process the pain, I pulled with all the strength I could find. A dull
clunk
came from behind my left ear, followed by equal sensations of relief and pain, but the former was quickly consumed by the latter. Images of Powell’s severed arm flashed through my mind as I screamed and pulled, shuffling on my good leg and reefing with all the power that remained in my good arm. The clamp around my left side squeezed, biting down on my elbow, digging in, and stabbing electrically charged slivers through muscle and bone. Haley wrapped her arms around mine and pulled, and with one last combined effort, my arm slipped from under Sean.

We curled up together against the wreckage of our truck, the remnants of our world, and wept.

37 | Held together by sticks and string

If we had not gone to find the others, Sean and Sarah might still be alive. Powell would be. We would have been safe in the house, but for how long? The creatures from the camp would be upon us soon enough, and then all our efforts to survive would be for nothing. Neither Gary’s guns nor Randall’s God were enough to inspire hope of a future with mankind still in it. Haley and I had survived the wreck, but even if we could somehow make it home, it seemed unlikely we would make it long beyond the next manifestation.

The house was a long way off, a day’s drive, a week or more to walk. To crawl home would be an impossible task. We had survived only to delay the inevitable, but we would most likely die before the worst of it, before Hell opened its gates to our world, pouring its demons out to feast on mankind. We would surely starve before
they
could feed.

I took stock of what food we had and cursed myself for not having collected everything during my climb, but the truth of it was that I had carried all that I could. What we had would sustain us both for up to four days, but for each of those days, we would burn more calories than we would consume.

We shared a bottle of water and made a meal of a handful of almonds and a can of vegetable soup, stabbed open with the multi-tool knife and served cold. Haley made no attempt to communicate. If she still had her notepad, it remained tucked away in her pocket. Part of me wanted to wash the blood from her face, hold her, and coax her out from wherever she had gone, but we could not waste the water, and neither she nor I could afford to shed the numbing armor of denial. If we managed to make it home, then perhaps she could make the transition from denial to acceptance, although,
I
had not yet accepted the death of my
own
father, or at least the finality of it.

My father’s words came back to me, and I put my idle hands to work, removing my boot to check on my foot and ankle. Under the dressing, my ankle was purple and swollen and looked no better than it had before. I still couldn’t put any weight on it, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that the pain was all in my mind or that our survival depended on it. I re-wrapped the foot and sent Haley to look for a few large, strong sticks I could use to fashion a crutch and splint, while I collected what scraps and supplies were left in and around the truck. The last thing I collected was the rifle. I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to pry Powell’s fingers from the strap of the rifle; instead, I turned away, ran my fingers along the stock until I found the clip, and removed the strap, leaving
it
and what remained of Powell behind.

I busied myself, fumbling to cut sections of sleeping bag and lengths of parachute cord while I waited for Haley to return. I tied a long length of cord to the rifle stock to replace the shoulder strap and tied shorter lengths to the fabric holster of the 1911 to attach it to my belt loop and thigh. The handgun was ready and loaded, with the safety off. The only people I could trust were dead or very far away, and I would no longer risk Haley’s life, or my own, hoping people were inherently good.

Haley returned as I was trying to tie a section of the sleeping bag around my ankle. She dropped the bundle of sticks and branches, crouched down, and took the cord. As she wrapped the cord around my leg, I added sticks to each side in an effort to emulate the splint Powell had made for Owen back at the house. The resulting cast would probably do more harm than good, but it was all I could think of beyond a makeshift crutch. After wrapping my elbow, we worked together to make the crutch, tying two of the longer branches together and cinching a smaller Y-shaped branch at one end to fit under my arm. She helped me up to standing. The crutch was strong enough to hold my weight but impossible to hold in my left hand with the arm wrapped and slung. Trial and error led to the crutch being fastened to my belt loop and the “Y” section under my arm being secured with a loop of cord over my shoulder.

I strained to reach down for the pack, but Haley rushed to intercept the shoulder strap, slipped her arm through, and hoisted it onto her back. It must have weighed almost a third of her own weight, but she gave no indication of complaint. As we began our descent along the high road, she helped to steady me and swung the crutch for each step until I grew accustomed to the necessary motion and was able to struggle on unaided.

Haley remained by my side, but her mind was far away, offering little more than the occasional glance over at me, or back the way we had come. I managed to get her attention and asked her to look at the map, to check for circled sections of road, marked as
vehicles unchecked
, as much for the hope of finding a working vehicle, as to stop her mind from returning to the crash. I still had the use of my right foot for the pedals and my right arm to steer. If we could find a vehicle that worked, I could get us home.

***

By the time we reached the first obstruction, the painkillers had metabolized in my system and were working to normalize the pain, clipping the sharp, high peaks to somewhere below my new threshold for pain. Even with the codeine, I felt every agonizing step, but without it, I would not have made it much farther.

Having seen the corpse in the driver’s seat of the first vehicle, I directed Haley to the other two and asked her to check them for anything of value. Once she was beyond sight of the corpse, I pulled open the door. It opened like an airlock, belching hot, putrid air, instantly overwhelming my senses. I turned away and pulled the neckline of my shirt over my mouth and nose, but even that wasn’t enough to filter out the sharp smell of rancid meat. I leaned in again and turned the key, but like its well-dressed owner, the car was long since dead.

Behind the passenger seat was a pack of bottled water and a briefcase. I worked my way around the car, pulled open the back door and thumbed the latches on the case. Inside, there was more money than I had ever seen, and all in large denomination bills. I looked again at the driver, a bank manager perhaps, or drug dealer? I closed the briefcase and dragged the pack of water out and onto the road. Inside the trunk was a suitcase, filled with expensive looking suits, shoes, and shiny trinkets, now nothing more than sparkling junk. I poured the suitcase out and set it on the road, extended the handle, and placed the pack of water inside before zipping it up.

The second vehicle was unoccupied, void of supplies, and the keys were nowhere to be found. I thought on the possibility of hotwiring the car, but without the knowledge or skill, I would be relying on luck, which seemed to be in short supply. Even for an electrician’s daughter, the odds on figuring out how to hotwire the vehicle were slim; the odds on the car being dead were high. Trial and error only works when the correct answer offers a reward.

I rejoined Haley at the third vehicle as she climbed out from the back seat. “Did you find anything?” I asked.

She shook her head and looked down at the ground. I moved closer and put my arm around her. She wrapped her arms around my midsection and held on tight, while I fought not to flinch at the miscellaneous pains shooting through my body like fireworks in my blood. I held her while she wept, and then we cried together.

Judging by my need for more painkillers, it had been three or four hours of labored walking before we reached the next point of interest on the map. The car was unoccupied and pulled over to the side of the road, and the keys were still in the ignition. I opened the door and perched sideways on the seat, leaving my splinted leg and tied-on crutch outside while I leaned around the steering wheel and turned the key.

In the dead silence of our desolate world, the roar was unexpected. The engine came to life on the first turn, and the instrument panel lit up showing more than half a tank of fuel. I pulled the release for the trunk, climbed out with the car left running, hobbled around to the back, and lifted the suitcase into the trunk. Haley tugged at the back of my shirt, and when I turned, she was pointing at the car.

“What is it?”

She continued to point and edged around to the passenger side. The back passenger-side tire was flat, and a glance at the other three revealed the spare had already been used. It was not our good luck that had left a working vehicle half-full of fuel for us to find. It was the poor luck of its previous owner, who must have continued on foot to the camp after a second blown tire. My heart sank.
How far could we get on three wheels?
The answer to that question came as quickly as it was asked.
Farther than on three legs.

“We’ll drive it until we find another car that works or another wheel to replace that one,” I said and pulled the jack from its compartment, before replacing the carpeted panel, and stowing all but a few bottles of water, painkillers, and the 1911 still strapped to my thigh.

I had to slide the driver seat all the way back to allow room for my splinted leg and turn my body in the seat to reach the pedals with my right foot, my left knee pressed against the door. We made our way down the hill—my foot feathering the brake, and my one good arm fighting the wheel to keep the car going straight against its will. The car seemed desperate to turn off the road, pull over, or plummet over the cliff to spare itself the long limp home, and at the first major obstruction, I had to brake completely to turn the wheel enough to go around. The car made its own efforts to arc back around as we passed. When I slowed to straighten the wheel, the tire flapped, and as the vehicle rocked, there came the intermittent sounds of scraping metal.

The vehicles we passed were beyond salvage and marked on the map as
checked
. I passed a note to Haley, asking her to watch out for another vehicle like ours, or at least one that looked to have the same size tires and bolt pattern. The task was more to keep her mind busy and in the car with me instead of returning to the floor under the passenger dash of the truck. There were few cars on the road like ours. Most of the crashed or abandoned vehicles were minivans, trucks, and suburbans, vehicles big enough to transport whole families and their remaining worldly possessions to the resettlement and registration camps—to the feeding pits. We took what little gas, food, and water the vehicles held, and I tried to start those with keys, but even the older vehicles, which had proven more resilient against the electrical phenomenon, would not start.

Fighting the car’s limb deficit, amplified by my own, shortened the effectiveness of the painkillers to a mere two hours according to the dashboard clock. I pulled over at the next wreckage to medicate and sent Haley to check for supplies.

***

I opened my eyes to Haley, knocking on the glass and gesturing for me to get out and follow her. I turned off the engine, opened the door, and climbed out to an array of forgotten pain, while Haley stood waiting with my makeshift crutch. She moved the crutch along, directing my steps, and not making eye contact long enough for me to ask where she was taking me.

Behind a wrecked minivan was a car, newer than our own, but in worse condition. She pointed at the wheel and at the note I had given to her with the tire size written on it under a crude sketch of the bolt pattern. She had found a suitable donor for the replacement of our own car’s severed limb.

“Are the keys in it?” I asked.

Haley nodded, and ran to retrieve them.

I unlocked the trunk, pulled up the panel, and unfastened the spare. As I tried to lift the tire, pain wrapped my torso, a pair of skeletal hands beneath my skin, squeezing my lungs, and I had to stop. I leaned on the crutch, trying to catch my breath, waiting for the pain to recede. Haley climbed over the rear fender and into the trunk and took hold of the tire. She fixed her wet stare on me, begging me not to give up, pleading for me to try again, and all without saying a single word. Had she not been there, I would have crawled onto the back seat and slept. For better or worse, had she not been there, I would have already taken the easy way out back at the truck. We pulled together, lifting and dragging the wheel up and over. It dropped to the road, wobbled, and threatened to roll away, but Haley dropped down in its path, stopping the wheel and restarting my heart.