The Dark Roads (9 page)

"What if you make it worse?"

Richie, who was close to shouting at the woman, said nothing for a moment. He took a deep breath, let it out, and then took another.

He was getting too worked up. He needed to calm down. He didn't like being in the darkness of the basement storage room without his friends. He could barely hear them moving up there, which was a good thing. They were surely doing what they needed to do. He knew that they were covering each other and covering him. It would be fine. He just had to deal with the woman.

"What's your name?" Richie asked her.

"Amanda."

"Well, Amanda, whatever we do is going to be better than doing nothing. Once my friends get down here we're gonna try to save your man," Richie explained, "Now tell me what happened."

"You didn't tell me your name," she sniffed.

"I'm Richie. My friends are Elvis and Buddy."

"Really?" Amanda asked, noticing the odd nature of their names.

"Yeah," Richie said, involuntarily smiling a little, "But we're not in a band."

***

"Could you have taken longer?" Richie asked without turning toward his friends as they returned.

"Fuck off," Buddy said mildly as he began laying bandages and medicines out on the floor, "There was blood
everywhere.
I can't believe we didn't notice all of it."

"It's all clean, Richie. And I found the book we wanted," Elvis told him, holding a small pamphlet for his inspection as he knelt down.

"Thanks, little brother. Does that door lock?"

"It's locked. We almost closed the front doors, but the King here made a good point. If anybody was looking and saw something different, they'd want to check it out."

"Nice."

"Yeah. What's up with our friends?"

Amanda had stepped out of the way of the man, who she said was Alek, as she'd been telling Richie about their problems on that night. Richie had already cut his shirt away and had been looking at his bullet wound by lantern light.

Richie introduced them all without ceremony as he began unrolling a large roll of gauze from the first aid kit and drenched the material with a bottle of peroxide. He held the dark brown container up and aimed the mouth of it toward the gaping hole in Alek's left shoulder.

"He might wake up in a second," Richie guessed, "I need you guys to hold his arms. Amanda, stay where he can see you as soon as his eyes open. I don't want him to freak out on us."

"Gunshot?" Buddy asked.

Amanda nodded as she crouched down and put her face less than a foot from the wounded man's visage. Buddy and Elvis each took one of his arms, being gentle on the wounded side.

"Did it go through?"

"There's a hole in both sides, so I think so. Get ready. This is going to frigging hurt and he might try to jump."

Everyone did as Richie said. When the peroxide hit the entrance of the injury, just north of his shoulder blade, the man moaned without waking. By the time the liquid had flooded the area, turned to a light pink color, and spilled from the other side, he was awake and nearly screaming.

His arms strained to pull away at first, but Amanda's constant flow of reassurance calmed him. He barely knew what was going on, was in an incredible amount of pain, was bleeding profusely, but still trusted her and was able to absorb all of it. That proved, to Richie anyway, that they were more than just acquaintances.

Richie wiped away the fluids with a roll of paper towels and had Elvis hold the wounded arm up so that he could bandage it. First he pressed a wad of the soaked gauze into the wound, actually penetrating the entrance and exit wounds, before taping a square of the stuff over either side to secure the wads. Then he began to wrap the rest of it around and around the area, finally taping it all at the collar bone.

Alek had been conscious up to the point when Richie had pressed the material into the entry wound. He'd passed out with this new agony, revealing that it was even worse than the pain that had roused him.

Elvis and Buddy propped the injured man against the wall again, instead of laying him down, at Richie's urging. They needed to try and keep the bleeding to a minimum, which meant keeping the shoulder higher than the heart. At least Richie thought that would be the case.

"Is he gonna be okay?" Elvis asked.

"I don't know, man. I don't know," Richie answered.

After all, he wasn't a doctor, as he'd already admitted.

***

Richie told Amanda to begin at the beginning. When she started telling them about the night so far, Buddy stopped her.

"Uh-uh. He said 'The Beginning'," Buddy clarified.

Elvis was paying attention to the conversation, but his eyes kept straying toward the broken man whose bandage was already turning pink at the thickest spots. Elvis had been the one holding the wounded arm throughout the bandaging and his hands were tinged with the same rust color as most of Alek’s upper body. He was slowly cleaning the blood off with his sweat drenched bandana as Amanda talked.

"We lived in Wyoming," she began, "Not too far from Montana. No kids. Not many friends because we lived out in the country. If I wasn't so stubborn we'd have come north long before we did. Alek kept saying that we should, but I didn't want to leave our home."

Her voice had taken on a jerky monotone that Richie understood, but didn't really like. Regrets could be so painful that you had to separate the emotion from them or you'd drive yourself crazy. He could relate, but that didn't mean he had to enjoy it.

"We've been walking for months. We were living in our basement before that, but the food and water were running out. I finally gave in and we left. Alek said that we had to get as far north as we could. He said we'd go to Santa's damned workshop if we could have found it. I don't know if he was right or not.

"This place was full of supplies, so we stayed for the last couple of days to rest. We were just going to check out the area for another place and come back tonight, but we ran into some of those... people."

"What people?" Richie asked, although he had a fairly good idea as to what the answer was going to be.

"We think they're cannibals," she said, tears welling in her eyes, "I think they wanted to eat us."

Elvis looked up sharply, but looked back at Alek after a few seconds. He knew about the cannibals. They all did.

"They didn't say anything when they were walking toward us," Amanda continued, "That's what tipped Alek off, I think. He grabbed my shoulder and turned me back this way and told me to run. As soon as we started running they started shooting at us and chasing. I didn't even know Alek was shot until we were almost back here."

"How many?" Buddy asked, "And how did you outrun them."

"Eight or ten, I think. We didn't outrun them. We got around a curve and got behind some cars. Alek saw a trunk that was open and we got in. We waited in there for a while, until I didn't hear anyone anymore. We came back here and he managed to get down the stairs before he passed out," she said, looking at her husband, "He was so strong."

"He'd better be strong," Richie said, "He lost a lot of blood from the sound of it."

"How far away from here were you when you hid?" Buddy asked her, "Do you know how long it took to get here?"

"An hour? Maybe a little less."

"That's not good," Buddy said, his eyes meeting Richie's, "That means they aren't too far away."

Richie checked the time before saying anything. He motioned toward the packs and Elvis went to work unpacking.

"Won't make any difference," Richie told his friend, "Sunrise should be happening now. Unless they have the world's biggest sunbrella, they aren't coming today."

"Does it stay cool down here?" Elvis asked the woman.

"As cool as it is right now," she answered.

"How hot is it, Richie?"

When Richie checked his thermometer, he was astonished. He hadn't really noticed the ambient temperature of the basement due to all of the excitement. When he looked up at his friends, there were tears in his eyes. The thermo hadn't read less than eighty-degrees underground in a very long time.

"It's seventy-eight," he said, quietly.

"Fuck you," Buddy said, reaching for the thermometer and reading it himself.

"Yeah," Richie said, grinning, "Fuck me."

"It's cooler," Elvis whispered as a smile sprouted on his lips.

"Thank God," Richie said, covering his face with the palms of his blood stained hands.

***

They ate leftovers from the night before, opening the re-sealable dehydration bags with matching grimaces, and offered some to Amanda. She took the food and ate without speaking.

She thanked them in a way that no words could equal by offering some of the food that she and Alek had been living on. All three men were near tears as they tasted the tablespoon of powdered peanut butter, trying to remember when they'd last enjoyed such sweetness.

"Jesus!" Buddy exclaimed, "That's so good. Where did you find it?"

"We had a box of packets at home. Alek packed it as a treat."

"I hope he wakes up soon. I wanna thank him," Elvis said, licking his spoon so clean that it shone in the dimly lit basement.

Richie volunteered to take the first watch. No one argued it and everyone else in the basement was asleep in moments. Richie watched over them, his weapon pointed at nothing and aimed at everything. He thought about the most wonderful number in the world. Seventy-eight.

He'd held to the idea that going north as far as they could would save them from the ever-increasing heat, but it was a hard notion to keep hold of when there wasn't hard evidence to support it. This, however, this chink in the armor that the world seemed to be trapped inside of, was so uplifting that he thought he might weep.

Wouldn't it be a sight for his friends when they woke. Richie would be lying on the ground, clutching the thermometer that had given him such terrible news in the last few months, and crying like a baby. He would have to control himself instead.

The real questions would come soon, though. Was it just the insulation of the basement that had caused this? Was the atmosphere actually cooler once they went outside? Was it a one-time thing, or would it be lasting? Was the world really less miserable at the end of these miles of travel?

He didn't know the answers, hadn't actually looked at the thermometer that night above ground, but they would all soon find out.

When Elvis woke to relieve him of his shift, they barely spoke. Elvis was still half asleep and Richie was too lost in his own thoughts to let anything intrude.

When Richie laid down to sleep he did it with a tired mind. It wasn't long before he crossed the line between the real world and the one where dreams take you away. His dreams were filled with falling snow.

***

Alek took his last breath some time during Richie's slumber. There was no last word or moment for the man. He simply ceased to exist. There were tears for him from Amanda, and a sadness felt by everyone in the room, but there wasn't anything to be done for the man.

They laid him down on the blanket upon which he'd slept so many days away, and carried him to the surface once the land fell under the shadow of night. Buddy and Richie put his body in a place where there would be no shade to stop the angry sun and walked off a little way to let Amanda have a last minute with her husband. They would keep heading north and she would go with them.

They walked. They walked. They walked.

The scenery didn't change a great deal as they made their way down the straight stretch of road that would lead them to Alaska. Small buildings cropped up here and there, but there was nothing they needed inside of the structures just yet.

Their little group was the only living thing for miles, as far as they could see. No man-eating men roamed this area. More of them were sure to arrive, but for the moment they were safe.

Miles would fall behind them on this night with minimal conversation. Death was unremitting and they'd all learned how to handle it in their own ways, but Alek’s passing was still a blow to their resolve.

Richie, Buddy, and Elvis were strangers to the dead man, but had given their effort toward saving his life and had failed. That failure would hang over them as they traveled.

What if it had been one of
them
who'd been wounded? Would they be able to do anything more for one of their own than they'd been able to do for Alek? Would they try harder and find some other way if it was Buddy on Death's doorstep? Or Richie? Or Elvis?

We couldn't have done anything more than what we did, Richie thought, He'd lost too much blood already.

Who knows where the bullet really was? thought Buddy, He was probably dead before he knew it.

This sucks, Elvis said to himself, This really sucks.

They walked.