What Survives of Us (Colorado Chapters Book 1) (13 page)

After breakfast, Naomi washed up, made sure they both used the bathroom, and got the animals loaded.  Then, without indulging in a last walk through the house, without so much as pausing on the threshold, she drove them away from Christmas Eves and Easter egg hunts, lazy summer days and cozy, crisp fall nights, away from Scott, away from home.  She refused to even glance in the rearview mirror as they pulled out into the deserted street and headed towards Cresta Road.

It felt strange to be driving after so long.  Macy was quiet beside her, gazing out the passenger side window, taking in the changes.  Trash blew everywhere, and vehicles were abandoned alongside the road.  They had to drive around a minivan that was angled across the street, driver’s door open, a man’s bloated body tumbled out to rest upside down on the pavement, legs still trapped inside.

“Macy,” Naomi said quietly, “Climb in back with the animals and try not to look.  You don’t need these pictures in your head, honey.”

Macy complied with clumsy haste, and Naomi could hear her sniffling.  She wished she could stop to comfort her, but they needed to keep moving.  The empty streets had the hair on Naomi’s nape prickling; the city was so silent, she was afraid their truck could be heard for miles.

When they hit Highway 24, Naomi’s heart hit her shoes.  As far as she could see in both directions, vehicles were backed up, abandoned.  She sat there, staring at the cars, trucks and SUVs, trying to take it in, trying to adapt, and failing completely.

She’d seen it so clearly – they would drive up Highway 24, make it to the cabin, hunker down and wait for Piper.  Her simple plan – laughably simple, she could see that now – had kept her putting one foot in front of the other.  Now, she felt as if her lifeline had been severed.

Had she really thought she could pull this off without Scott?  Who was she kidding?  She was an overweight, middle-aged, sheltered housewife.  A Martha-Stewart-wanna-be who gave cookies to soldiers.  It was a miracle she’d kept herself and Macy alive this long – if Scott hadn’t been prepared, they would have starved to death by now.  Naomi leaned her head on the steering wheel and tried to keep her breath from hitching into sobs.

A soft thump on the seat beside her made her turn her head.  Ares had jumped from the back seat and was sitting, staring at her.  When their eyes met, he meowed a loud, grating, obnoxious meow, then jumped to the dashboard and stared out at the vehicles blocking their path.  He meowed again, even louder, and Naomi surprised herself with a snort of laughter.

Sympathy would certainly have dissolved her into tears.  Ares’ imperial impatience was just what she needed.  “Alright then, your highness.  As you command.  Hang on, honey, this could get interesting.”

She eased the truck forward, weaving between vehicles, getting out once to put an abandoned car in neutral and roll it out of the way.  They made it across 24, and Naomi started revising her plan out loud, more for her sake than for Macy’s.

“We’ll head up through Old Colorado City and see if this breaks up after Manitou Springs.  If it doesn’t, we’ll head for the Garden of the Gods and take Rampart Range Road.”  She swallowed hard, thinking about the sometimes precarious dirt road with its spectacular views and precipitous shoulders.  “I’ve never driven it – Daddy always did – but we’ll just take our time.”

The main thoroughfare through Old Colorado City was clogged as well, and many of the tourist-attracting shops had clearly been looted, some of them burned.  Naomi stuck to the side streets and wove them through the quaint residential neighborhoods, heading constantly west.  She ended up on El Paso Boulevard, then slowed as they reached the point where the street once again intersected with Highway 24, crossing underneath it.

Still completely impassable.  Naomi put the truck in park but left it running, considering her choices.  Looked like her best option was to take Garden Drive and head for the Garden of the Gods.  Rampart Range Road twisted up into the mountains just inside the park boundaries.  She was reaching to put the truck in reverse when a thump and flash of movement on the passenger side of the truck made her shriek and jerk back against the driver’s side door.

A woman was plastered to the window, staring in at Macy.  Her face was filthy and scuffed, her hair matted and too dirty to reveal color.  Incongruously, what looked like hefty diamond studs winked at her earlobes, and her perfect teeth were straight and white between her chapped, parted lips.  She called over her shoulder, never taking her eyes from Macy.

“David?  There’s a little girl…”  Her shaking hand rose to touch the window, stroking.  “Oh, she’s so beautiful.  I want the little girl, David…”

“Get down on the floor, Macy!”  Naomi lunged across the seat, popped open the glovebox, and grabbed Scott’s handgun.  She pointed it at the woman’s face through the glass, astonished that her hand was rock steady.  “Get away from us.  Get away now!”

The woman glanced at the gun, grimaced, and backed up a step, then two, still craning to see Macy.  Her hands wrung
desperately against her chest.  Naomi could see that her fingernails had once been carefully manicured, and an intricate wedding ring graced the fourth finger of her grimy left hand.

“David,” she called again.  “Don’t hurt the little girl.  I want her.”

Naomi’s gaze flew out the front windshield and all the air left her lungs.  A half dozen men, armed with a motley assortment of weapons – two guns that she could see, a shovel, an axe, a baseball bat – were advancing slowly on the truck. Movement in the rear view mirror caught her eye; they were behind her, too.  She’d driven right into an ambush.

She’d read a book once about fear, about the many and varied reactions people were prone to when faced with mortal danger.  “Fight, flight or freeze,” the author had said, just about summed it up.  Naomi had always figured she’d be a freezer, one of those unfortunates who just locked up, couldn’t move, couldn’t act.  How wrong she’d been.

It felt like she had all the time in the world. She set the gun down on the seat beside her, put the truck in drive and floored it.  The men’s faces were almost comical with surprise – they obviously hadn’t expected her to act so quickly – and they dove this way and that as she bore down on them.  One of the men fell, and she didn’t even hesitate, barreling right over his legs, distantly hearing him scream.

She shot under Highway 24 and kept right on going.  A shotgun boomed behind her, once, twice, and the truck jerked hard to the right.  Naomi wrestled it back to the middle of the street and screeched through the curves in the road, intent only on putting some distance between them.

She didn’t let up on the gas until the road she was on intersected with Manitou Avenue, which was congested with vehicles.  This time, she didn’t bother with finesse, ramming and screeching through until she was climbing up a steep hill into the warren-like residential area of Manitou Springs.  She wove randomly down streets until she saw what she was looking for.  She jerked the wheel and they careened up the steep driveway towards a house that wasn’t visible from the street.  Naomi drove right off the driveway, circled around behind the house, and shut the engine off.  The silence was sudden and absolute.

Naomi spun around.  “Baby, are you okay?  Macy?  Answer me!” 

Macy was huddled on the floor behind the passenger seat, head down on her knees, arms over her head.  She looked up at her mother’s sharp command, and her face was bone white.  Naomi sucked in a breath and reached to haul her daughter’s shaking body into her lap.

“It’s okay, we’re okay, it’s okay,” she crooned, rocking them both, comforting them both.  The dogs scrambled into the front seat and pressed as close as they could get, adding their shaking to the mix.  Ares, however, seemed more irritated than frightened.  He yowled angrily from the back seat, hissed at Hades for show, then settled down to groom his ruffled fur.

Naomi shushed Macy gently and rolled down the window.  She listened, straining, and heard a distant, buzzing sound.  A small motor – a dirt bike?  A scooter?  The sound ebbed and flowed, strengthened and faded – they were looking for her.  Naomi transferred Macy to the passenger seat beside her.

“Stay here, honey.  I’ll be right back.”

Hades slid out to shadow her, and they inspected the back of the truck.  The window of the cab was broken, and the rear passenger side tire was shredded.  The driver’s side tire had taken a hit, too, and was slowly deflating.  They wouldn’t be going on in this truck – she had one spare tire, but not two.  She had torn up the lawn when she’d driven off the driveway – she needed to see if that was visible from the road, or if they’d left any other signs of their passage. 

Hades’ head was up, his nose sampling the soft breeze; he was utterly silent, utterly alert.  What she wouldn’t give, for his superior senses right about now.  Hades stopped to look at her, and as soon as his eyes met hers, Naomi’s perspective shifted.

She staggered.  Smells, so many smells, some of them accompanied by impressions – hot engine, burning tires, danger; her, Macy, horrible cat, wonderful Persephone, home; death, everywhere death, some old, some fresh, all of it sad, so sad…

“What the hell?”  Naomi breathed.  She blinked, shook her head, and the sensation dissipated as suddenly as it had begun.  Naomi ran her hands over her face, scrubbed, and clutched at her hair for a moment.  “Holy shit, Hades, what was that?”

Hades looked away, and his ears pricked.  The buzzing sound was growing louder.  Naomi retreated back behind the house with Hades at her side, listening until the sound grew faint again.  Then she slipped and slid as fast as she could down the driveway, smoothed some loose gravel and dirt over the fresh skid marks marring the tarmac, and puffed back to the truck and Macy.

Macy was sleeping with Persephone in her arms.  Seeing her so still and pale made Naomi’s heart stutter in sudden terror, but Persephone lifted her head, and a wave of comfort and reassurance washed over her.  Naomi leaned against the side of the truck, taking deep breath after deep breath.

They would hide here for the rest of the day, maybe overnight, to rest and regroup.  Naomi needed to think through their options, plan, maybe scout out the area, maybe look for another vehicle.  She looked down at Hades, who was still scrutinizing their surroundings, and felt an echo of that bizarre, shared perception.  She stroked his beautiful, blocky head and choked on a sound that was part hysterical giggle, part sob.  Apparently, she also needed to give serious consideration to the possibility she was losing her mind.

Grace woke to a sky flushed deep, rosy pink and the lilting cacophony of the dawn chorus.  Stretching in her warm sleeping bag, she sorted the birds out by the songs her grandmother had taught her:  Chickadee, Meadowlark, Red-winged Blackbird.  Snug and comfortable, she drifted between sleep and dream-like memories for a while, reliving cool early mornings in the garden with her grandma, picking beans or peas before the day’s heat descended while grandma whistled her lessons:  Sparrow, Goldfinch, and Grace’s favorite, Robin, with his rain song.

Grandma had been gone for a few years now, her farm long since sold, and Grace was strangely glad about that.  This way, she could keep those sweet and simple memories intact, separate from all the other memories she had to process and make sense of now.  She couldn’t think of her mother or Wayne, or little Benji, without remembering the horror of watching each of them drown slowly in their own blood, gurgling, clutching, gasping.  Someday, she hoped, she’d be able to remember the sweetness, and forget those dark days.

A soft clatter made her turn her head.  Quinn was crouched by the smoldering remains of their fire, coaxing it into life.  They were camped in the shelter of a circular Cottonwood grove, and through the trees, she could see the horses picketed on the grassy slope that rose from the creek bed, both of them contentedly cropping grass.  Quinn had already been down to the creek; his hair was damp, his face freshly washed, and he had filled a stock pot with water.  Grace watched his practiced movements, marveling again at how different he seemed out here on the trail.

They had been riding for two days.  After their disastrous trip into Limon, they had decided to take the horses cross-country, rather than risk the give-away noise of a vehicle.  Grace had resisted the idea at first – she had been riding since she was small, but they were talking about a 100 mile trip, after all.  Quinn had been unusually insistent.

“I’ve camped along the Big Sandy all my life,” he had said quietly.  “We’ll be safer if we stay away from people.”  He had looked up into her eyes then, a rare gesture for him.  All the Harris boys had inherited their father’s thickly-lashed gray eyes, and for a moment, Grace was disoriented by how William-like his gaze was.  Confident.  Sure.   “Please Gracie.  I know what I’m doing.  I can keep us safe.”

They had spent a day preparing their scavenged food for travel – Grace had come up with some surprisingly edible “travel cakes” using beans, rice, eggs and various spices, and Quinn had cracked the remaining precious eggs into a chilled thermos, explaining that raw eggs would keep longer than boiled ones.  As the day wore on and their preparations progressed, Grace was aware of a subtle shift in the balance of power between them. 

Before, she had thought of Quinn as a little brother – helpful, but dependent on her for direction and reassurance.  It reminded her of Benji, the way he just needed to be near her sometimes.  He would haul whatever he was working on into her vicinity, then return to tinkering with a little motor, or repairing a piece of tack without saying a word.  That day, however, he had been downright chatty, talking about why they should take this or that, or leave this or that behind.  The closer they came to departure, the more excited he got, and the more terrified Grace felt.

She’d done her best to reason away her fear; she wasn’t an indoor girl, after all.  She’d grown up playing and working on
her mother’s ranch, and had camped out on numerous occasions.  Those occasions, though, had included a ridiculous abundance of food – s’mores and hobo pies, popcorn popped over an open fire and rich with butter, and more than sufficient bottled water.  By contrast, they were taking off with scanty, hobbled-together provisions for at least 6 days of steady riding, and just enough water to get them through their first day.  Too heavy for the horses to carry more, Quinn had explained. 

He had gone over the map with her every time she’d expressed doubt or worry, showing her how they could ride along the Big Sandy Creek, which was running full and on the surface, thanks to a wet spring.  The creek roughly paralleled Highway 24, but would keep them out of sight of the road.  People, Quinn insisted, were their biggest problem, and needed to be avoided.  Grace was more worried about dying of starvation.

“You sound like a city girl,” Quinn had teased, in a moment of rare levity for him.  “There’s tons of food out there, even this early in the season.  Why, there’s enough dandelions in the front yard for a week’s worth of salad.”  He put on a thick, local-yokel accent that would have made his mother smack the back of his head for mockery.  “Them’s good eatin’, Gracie!”

She hadn’t been reassured then.  Now, after two days on the trail with him, she was changing her tune.  They hadn’t seen another soul, though they had taken the time to sneak into Mattheson, Simla and Ramah.  Those trips hadn’t yielded any food, but they were still fairly well-provisioned.  Quinn supplemented their supplies constantly with cattail roots and shoots, fish, young thistles, and the dandelions he had teased her about before.  He talked more than she’d ever heard him talk, teaching, instructing, explaining, and for the first time, Grace saw the intelligence William had always insisted was there.

“Almost all wild plants are edible,” he said.  “Some just taste better than others.  Look for new growth – that’s your best bet.  And stay away from mushrooms – they’re just too risky, and they don’t have hardly any nutritional value.”

He’d taught her what to avoid - Larkspur, Death Camas, Water Hemlock – and what plants had medicinal or first-aid value – Burdock and Willow – and he waxed rhapsodic about the many uses of Yucca.  The only time he slipped back into his shy self-consciousness was when Grace complimented him o
n his knowledge and expertise.

“Oh, no.  It’s nothing special.”  He looked down, rubbed at the saddle horn with his thumb.  “I’m not like William.  Or you.  School never made sense to me.  There was so much stuff to remember, and nothing to attach it to.  Plants are easy – they’re part of all this.”  He swept an arm around them, indicating the rustling cottonwoods, the chattering creek, the wind shushing through the swaying, rolling, spring-green grass on the prairie.  “This makes sense.  It all fits together.”

Grace was intrigued.  She knew Quinn had a learning disability, but she had never really thought about what that meant.  She’d always assumed he was mildly mentally retarded, but he sure didn’t seem slow to her now.  “Didn’t you have to memorize all the plants’ names, and what their properties are?  How did you learn all that?”

             
Quinn shrugged.  “I didn’t sit down with a book, if that’s what you mean.  My mom taught me a lot – she was a great gardener.  And I took 4-H classes.  Mr. Baker, he knows everything about every plant you can pick up.  How to make medicine out of it, how to preserve it.  I was supposed to take another class with him next fall.”  Without shame, Quinn wiped tears off his cheeks.  He never tried to stifle the grief when it visited him.  “I hope he made it.  I hope I see him again – he was like me.  No good in school, but really good with outdoor stuff.”

She hadn’t thought much about
thinking
before; she had been glad learning was easy for her, but she had completely taken it for granted.  William used to say her mind was like a computer; she could process a lot of raw data swiftly and easily, organizing, categorizing and discarding until she had honed that data into a working hypothesis.  To her, it felt like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place, each piece revealing more of the picture and hinting at the overall landscape.  Often, when she had collected enough pieces, the whole puzzle would suddenly solve itself, like a painting suddenly sweeping, complete and beautiful, across a screen in her mind.

William had been smart, but not as smart as her, and they had both known it.  Grace had harbored secret doubts about how they’d handle that, if they stayed together.  Now, she’d never know.  And, after the last two days, she was starting to seriously question who was better equipped to move forward in this awful new world – her, with her showy book smarts, or Quinn.  His knowledge seemed to grow right out of the land like one of his beloved plants.

Grace stretched again, and tried to convince her lazy limbs to get up.  She was a little stiff and sore after two solid days of riding, and it felt so good to just lie here, luxuriating in the peace of the moment.  Quinn was sorting through their supplies, and he looked up at her movement.

“Do you want eggs or some of that homemade granola for breakfast?”

Grace sat up and scrubbed her hands over her face.  “How many eggs do we have left?”

“Enough for one more meal.”

“Whatever sounds good to you, Quinn – I’m not picky.”  She stood up and headed for the area they’d designated “the bathroom.”  “But maybe we could hold off on the dandelion greens until lunch?  Salad for breakfast just doesn’t hit the spot.”

When she returned, he had the eggs sizzling in the small frying pan they had brought.  “I thought we’d eat up the eggs.  We should be north of Peyton by late afternoon, and we’ll be in the suburbs of the Springs tomorrow.  There’ll be a lot more houses to check for food.”

“Oh, goodie,” Grace muttered.  They both hated searching houses – the intrusion, the fear of meeting another person, and everywhere, the smell of death and the buzz of flies.

“There’s always dandelions,” Quinn said.  He looked around.  “You know, we could stay here for a few days.  Rest.  I could set up some snares, see if I could catch some rabbits.”

He’d stay forever, Grace knew.  He had agreed to go on this journey because they had to do something, but they both knew the likelihood of finding Grace’s father still alive was very low.  Now that she’d seen Quinn in his natural habitat, it was very, very tempting to agree to his suggestion.

“I think we should move on,” she said finally.  “While we still have some provisions.  And while the weather holds.  What was it, Mother’s Day last year that we had snow?  I’d hate to ride out a spring blizzard in that little tent we brought.”

Quinn sighed, but didn’t disagree.  He scraped the cooked eggs onto two blue-speckled camp plates, and handed one to her.  When they had eaten, Grace washed up the dishes they’d used while Quinn re-packed their supplies, then they went together to tack and load the horses. 

Grace’s horse, Buttons, had been Mrs. Harris’, and she was as sweet and steady as her name implied.  Mrs. Harris had adopted her through the Bureau of Land Management years ago,
then had gentled and trained the sturdy little mustang herself.  Quinn had decided on her as a mount for Grace for her sure-footedness and her wind, and Grace was already half in love with the little bay. 

Quinn was riding his father’s big sorrel quarter horse, Koda.  It had broken his heart to leave Mitsy, his own quarter horse, behind, but she had a tendency to spook, and she didn’t get along well with Buttons.  He had considered bringing her along as an extra mount, but had decided against it in the end.  She had been set loose along with William’s horse; Grace liked to imagine they would soon join up with one of the free-ranging herds on the plains.

              When the horses were ready, Quinn checked the campsite one last time, making sure the fire was dead.  Then, they headed out.  They rode without talking for a while, the silence between them filled with the creak of their saddles, the occasional blow or snort from one of the horses, and always, the soft swish of the wind in the prairie grass.  Grace’s body rocked easily with Buttons’ gait, warm and relaxed in the soft morning sun.  Her mind drifted and swayed as well, just as relaxed as her body; she hadn’t felt this safe since the plague started.

             
Ahead of her, Quinn rode with the ease of second-nature.  Grace watched his shoulders shift from side to side with Koda’s movements, and found herself admiring the bulk there, the strength.  His back made her think of the diagrams they’d been studying in anatomy class of the muscle and skeletal systems, and she reviewed as her eyes lazily coasted:  Trapezius.  Posterior Deltoid.  And oh, yum, Latissimus Dorsi.

             
Grace’s spine snapped straight.  Yum?  Had she seriously just thought
yum
?  A deep flush started at her neck and swept up to her hairline.  She pulled her hat low on her forehead, and dropped her head to hide behind the brim, mortified.  Beneath her, Buttons shifted and nickered, picking up on her sudden tension, and Quinn looked back.

             
“Everything okay?”

             
She peeked out from under her hat.  He was twisted to the side to look back at her, and the posture emphasized his heavy pectoral muscles, his tight, lean abdominals, and the solid curve of his bicep.  His hands on the reins looked strong, tanned.  Her body felt loose and tense, and strange, delicious tingles raced along the nape of her neck, down her spine, and settled low, low in her pelvis.  She dropped her head again, hiding the even deeper flush she could feel on her face.

             
“I’m fine,” she strangled out, but he didn’t turn back around.  Instead, he frowned.

             
“Your face is pretty red,” he said.  “Have you been drinking enough water?  If you’re too warm, we can stop and find some shade for a bit.”

             
“I’m fine,” Grace repeated, and fumbled to pull up her canteen.  “I’ll just take a drink.  We can go on.”