Lost and Found (11 page)

"Did you give them some hay?" I asked her.

"Yeah and water too. They'll be busy for a while."

Connor had found a gallon of water in a nearby shed just before we settled down for
the evening, but the horses would drink that in no time. Water was our number one
priority. Any time we stopped, we searched for it. Fortunately, many people had stocked
up on jugs and water bottles in their haste to evacuate and since those people didn't
get far, supplies were easy to find. At least at first.

***

We dismounted the horses and stood next to each other - shoulder to shoulder on the
hot pavement in awe. After six or so hours on the road, two short breaks for the horses
and a meager lunch of olives, crackers and applesauce packets, we made it just inside
the town of San Pasqual. We planned on making it to the border of Escondido before
night fell, but standing on the highway with Connor holding his horse reins, and me
holding Foxy's, we knew that wasn't going to happen.

The highway was gone. A huge circular hole at least half a mile wide replaced it.
The crater was full of blasted chunks of concrete, asphalt, glass and twisted metal
- cars. We stood in silence a few feet from the drop off looking at the blast zone
until the horses got anxious and pulled on their leads.

"What the hell did this?" Connor asked.

"I-I don't know," I answered.

"It's amazing," Kris said under her breath. Both Connor and I shot curious glances
in her direction. "Well, I mean, it is. I don't think a normal explosion did this,
do you?" She stared, unblinking at the destruction and then jumped back, startling
Foxy.

Her hands flew up to her mouth and her eyes widened. "Oh no," she gasped.

"What?" I reached out to grip her shoulder, but she shook me off and pointed a shaky
finger directly below us. I followed it, looking at the blocks of busted-up road,
bumpers and blown out tires until my eyes found what she was pointing at.

Bodies.
Or what was left of them. Buried beneath the rubble were hundreds, thousands of dead
people. A strangled sound came out of my mouth and just before my knees buckled, I
felt Connor's arm slide around my waist.

"I think we've seen enough, ladies," he said quietly. His other arm was draped protectively
around Kris's sagging shoulders. As he turned us away from the crater, I followed
the inside curve of it back up toward the road with my eyes and caught the image of
an infant carrier lying on its side covered in black dust. It wasn't empty.

I purged the watery remains of my lunch all over Connor's brand new boots.

It took us two hours to find a way around the crater. Eventually we had to double
back and knock down a few property fences to make a wide berth back and around. Dusty,
thirsty and frazzled, we decided to camp early. After finding the highway again and
following the road back uphill we stopped at a nursery and let the horses loose to
graze over the overgrown plants.

"There're some houses across the street. I'll bring back whatever water I can." Connor
walked off, looking eager to be on his own legs again. It took several trips but he
brought back enough water to fill one of plastic bins we found. As the horses drank,
we wandered around the grounds until we saw enough. Most of the foliage was dead,
but some of it had grown wild in places creating a secret garden, just for us.

"I'm not hungry," I said, as Connor handed me a small plate of food. My appetite was
lost hours before, when I realized there were too many bodies in the wreckage of the
crater to all be from the cars. They must have been gathered there at that spot for
a reason when something awful happened.

"Riley, this is just the beginning. You can't
not
eat after you see something disturbing or you won't eat at all on this suicide mission
of yours," Connor grumbled.

I snatched the plate away from him and made sure he saw how angry I was at his comment.
The campfire shadows danced across his face as he leaned away from me.

"I know that," I snapped. "Something was wrong back there. Seeing all those bodies
under that debris…don’t you get it? Those people were taken out on purpose. Excuse
me if that thought makes my stomach lurch."

He raised his hands up in surrender but said nothing. Kris pushed her food around
on her plate but no matter how much she rearranged it, she wasn't fooling anyone.
She hadn't eaten a morsel either.

"Sorry," I said quietly.

I stared into the flames till my eyes stung, trying to remember a time when my heart
didn't ache for my children or when I actually felt safe. My mind was blank. Something
wet hit my cheek and slid down onto my shoulder with a plop. I recoiled from it and
turned in time to see Connor bite down on his lower lip. He was trying not to laugh
out loud.

"What the hell was that?" With a nimble flick of the wrist, something flew off Connor's
flat camping spoon and lodged in my hair. "Connor!"

He let his laugh out and Kris joined him as I picked the instant mashed potatoes out
of my hair. "I can't believe you!" I squealed. The wet flakes stuck to my strands
like glue. "I'll never get this out!" Another plop landed on my arm. "Oh, that's
it
!" I said with feigned shock.

Using my fingers, I scooped the small heap of potatoes off my plate and threw the
entire handful at Connor's face. His laugh silenced immediately. I thought he was
angry and my smile faltered as I sat still, waiting for a string of curse words or
something equally upsetting to fly out of his mouth. Even Kris had fallen silent in
nervous anticipation of what Connor was going to do. I barely had a chance to stand
before he was up and launching himself at me. With a wicked grin, he tackled me into
the dirt and began rubbing his face across mine in an attempt to kiss mashed potatoes
all over my mouth.

Kris dropped her own uneaten plate of food to the ground as she laughed at the spectacle
before her of the two of us wrestling noisily around her feet - covered in food. It
was almost worth waking up with dried flakes of the instant stuff caked in my hair.

***

"Day two, are you ready?"
I whispered in Foxy's ear as Kris adjusted the tandem saddle. The trusting mare blinked
slowly at me.

"Feels good," Kris said at my shoulder. I watched as she tugged at the straps then
hooked her foot in one of the stirrups and swung her leg up and over the saddle like
a pro. I still had to bounce a bit before I could raise myself up onto the horse.
My body was not as young and limber as it used to be.

Once on top of the horse, Connor handed Kris her backpack and tickled my knee. "Looks
like you got all of dinner out of your hair," he laughed.

I playfully kicked at him as he skittered away and I watched his muscles ripple as
he lifted himself up onto Sunny. The horse took a step backwards, adjusting herself
with his weight and snorted loudly, which was her routine. She was not a morning horse.

"Ready?" I asked Connor as he wiggled around in his saddle.

"Yep. Lead the way, trail master," he joked.

"Ha ha, very funny," I quipped back.

I had one of his long sleeve tops on over my tank to shield the early morning breeze
from my skin. But less than an hour after we left the nursery, I had to pull the sleeves
up. An hour after that and I removed it completely. By noon, I would have preferred
to strip down naked but a sunburn on my breasts was less appealing than sweating through
my clothes.

"Let's stop here," I said, turning sideways to glance at Connor.

He was off his horse before Kris and I even made it to the shoulder of the road. There
were less and less grassy areas to walk the horses since we were nearing the center
of Escondido. It was high noon and we were hot and thirsty.

Kris and I dismounted and led Foxy off to the side of the road under the shade of
a large pepper tree. While the horses nibbled at the grass, searching for goodies,
Kris pulled out two apples to give them as treats.

"You know, you keep giving those apples to the horses and we won't have any for ourselves,"
Connor said. He plopped down in the shade with his pack in between his knees as he
rummaged around for his water canteen. The front of his shirt was soaked in a V-shaped
sweat pattern.

"We should look for citrus trees now that we're in the City again. Maybe we'll get
lucky and find a yard with an orange tree or something." I sat down heavily next to
Connor and let him brush his fingers across my cheek before sipping from my own water
canteen.

"Lemme see that for a minute." Connor gestured to the map that Kris pulled out of
her pack. After she handed it over to him, she fell back onto the dry grass with a
mouthful of granola clusters.

"Why couldn't we hole up somewhere by the beach," she complained in between swallows.
"At least then we'd have the ocean to go to when it got hot."

"Suggestion noted," I laughed. It wasn't that bad of an idea, actually, but most of
the shoreline was heavily developed which meant we risked running into living people
we couldn't trust and dead people we couldn't flee.

Connor was ignoring us. He was busy studying the map with interest. "So, if we turn
off the main road here and follow this for a few miles, it will take us straight to
Highway 15. We can follow that north for a while."

"I thought the idea was to stay off the freeway for as long as possible?" I asked.

"Well, look," he pointed to the map, "We'll save a lot of miles taking this section
of highway north. We can always leave it for a frontage road when the horses need
a break, too."

"Okay. So, where should we stop tonight?"

The two of us mulled over the map until we picked our spot. We'd most likely be camping
out beneath the stars again, just west of central Escondido. That second day was the
hardest to get back on the horses after lunch. Two nights of little sleep had strained
us all, even the horses were more nervous than usual.

As we walked through the broken streets of south Escondido, I made a point to not
look at the buttoned up houses and to not turn and follow the shrill sound of the
wind as it picked up speed and rushed by our heads carrying the screams of the dead.
Just as I had felt wandering through downtown San Diego so many months before, I knew
something or someone, was watching us carefully.

***

Connor wiggled his toes in the cool night air, rotating his ankles until they popped
softly. It felt good to have his feet out of his boots for a bit. Riley had fallen
asleep almost immediately after she put her head down. Same with Kris. But he couldn't
sleep. Someone was following them, and he wasn't sure if he should tell the girls
or not. So far, the only advantage to taking up the rear on most of their journey
was being able to look behind him without Riley noticing.

The shadowy figure started tailing them the day before. It stood still behind the
darkened windowpanes and blended into the shaded corners of buildings. Never did it
show itself completely, but it was obvious it wanted Connor to know it was there…watching.
Why? What did it want, this bearer of gloom that went everywhere they did?

As he stretched his feet out before him on the sleeping bag, he stared hard into the
darkness of night until the fire died down to only a glow. When he was a kid, he was
never afraid of the dark. One night, after his father drank too much and hit his mum,
he ran off and hid in a drainage ditch that connected their property to the neighbors.
He spent the night inside the rugged tunnel, being careful to keep his backside out
of the trickling water. The smell of wet grass and dank mildew imprinted itself on
his childhood memories and he could still remember it…all these years later. Even
after that night in the ditch, he wasn't afraid of the dark.

But now…now there were things that lingered, waiting for him to close his eyes and
take over his thoughts. He'd wake at night after feeling someone next to him, but
it wouldn't be Riley's touch on his face or her hands pulling at the sheet…it would
be that of a person long dead. A person with a bloodied and sloughed off face or hands
that were rotted to the bone. His mind had become a myriad of nightmares that firmly
attached onto his psyche even during the light of day. And there was not a damn thing
he could do about it.

He peered into the night around him, looking from one unlit structure to the next,
playing a game with himself to see if he could name the items he spotted in the dark.
A row of buildings here, the bed of a truck over there, A few spindly palm trees off
in the distance. A sign that could be for the freeway or a gas station and…

What was that? He bolted upright, startling the horses that were tethered securely
to a tree behind them. He was sure he saw movement. Yes, there it was - a figure walking
down the road. Connor glanced at the fire, nothing but smolders left, and looked back
to the road. This shadow was different. It had substance and…color. The person was
wearing dark pants and a lighter shirt. The apparitions Connor had seen in the dead
of night didn't have as much contrast to them. This figure was a real person. A living
person walking down the streets of Escondido.

He was half-tempted to rouse Riley and point out the person, who apparently hadn't
noticed them huddled under the grove of trees. But he was certain it was a man and
he was quickly blending into the background, shrinking to just a dot in the distance.
By the time she awoke enough to see clearly, the man would be gone.

More survivors, he thought. There are more of us.

That should have made him feel better but it didn't. He was traveling with two women
in a world stripped of laws and protectors. Riley knew he'd lay his life down for
her and even for Kris…but would he be enough to protect her if they came face to face
with what she was searching for.

Mariah was dead. She had to be. Sacrificed by her selfish louse of a brother. The
men that took her didn't want her for a trophy. The men that abducted Kris tried to
break her and when that didn't work; they ripped her nearly to pieces. Too much time
passed for Riley to get the answers she sought, he was sure of it. But now his fears
were coming true - others were out there.

There would be no sleeping for him tonight. Connor rolled onto his side to watch Riley
as she slept. Only the stars lit the sky, so he could just make out the shape of her
face. He didn't need light to see the curve of her lips or how her dark lashes looked
as they rested against her sun-kissed cheekbones. Many nights when he was afraid to
fall asleep and dream about the young son he knew to be dead, he would trace her features
with his eyes, memorizing every inch of her beauty. It was the only thing that allowed
him to smile in the mornings - waking up next to Riley.

Kris sighed in her sleep before turning onto her back. He listened as her breathing
regulated and only then, when he knew them both to be safely and soundly asleep did
he roll over to watch the street again. More men could be out there. And if they were,
Connor would be the first to see them.