“Look at that.” I nudged him smiling. “Indoor plumbing.”
The area around the restrooms was overgrown, but the main road provided a small walkway. We surveyed the area. There were no other structures. We did find a few picnic tables rotting away, but nothing we could use.
“Guess we are sleeping in the bathrooms,” Brayson shrugged.
“Our very own private rooms,” I mumbled.
Using a pine branch with short needles, I brushed out the cobwebs and swept the floor of my new home. Then we filled the buckets with more creek water and my fingers froze as I did my best to scrub the sink and toilet. Brayson started unloading boxes from the truck.
The boxes contained mostly canned food, so we split them up equally to not use all the space in a single room. Brayson silently handed me a sleeping bag and Vorie’s winter clothes. I hugged them to my chest and cried once I walked into my room.
She never got to wear them and now she never would.
I stacked the farming books she’d given me on a box I’d designated as my shelf. Then I unrolled the sleeping bag. The room felt smaller with everything in there, but it would have to do.
We started a fire in one of the metal trashcans and set a pot to boil of rice with canned chicken. The sun was beginning to set. We scooted closer to the fire while clutching our flashlights as the food finished cooking.
“Next time we should start this earlier,” I yawned. “I didn’t realize how much longer it takes to cook over an open fire.”
“Now we know,” Brayson said stoically. “I’m sure we’ll learn a lot of things as we go.” A high pitched almost screeching yip sounded from off in the distance.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered as I grabbed his shirt sleeve. We shined our flashlights into the woods, but nothing moved.
“Probably just a wild animal,” he concluded.
“Can we work on learning how to shoot the gun tomorrow?” I giggled nervously.
*
I was exhausted as I climbed into my sleeping bag for the night. It’d been two days since I’d gotten any real sleep. It’s amazing how things can change in such a short period of time. A week ago, I was in the realm celebrating Genie’s end of service at Dives. Alister had whisked me away for a moment. The details of his face and those bright green eyes staring at me on the pier of his manifestation…
Yeah, but that night at Dives was the night Vorie died, I reminded myself. Not the greatest memory to have at all.
I drifted in and out of sleep having nightmares of the monster who’d almost got me as a child and instead killed my friend. Part of me wished I would have turned around to watch him burn. The fire in my dreams kept dying out. I woke up with my teeth chattering.
The floor was so cold I could feel it in my bones. I flicked on my flashlight and pushed open the metal door, cringing at the loud noise it made. It was the middle of the night and I didn’t want to wake Brayson up. He hadn’t slept well the past few days either.
I grabbed my sleeping bag and dragged it to the truck, tripping on a root in the dark. As soon as I climbed into the cab, I heard Brayson’s snores coming from the driver side. He’d leaned the bucket seat as far back as it would go and didn’t stir once as I pushed my seat back too.
*
I opened the door and the cool morning air slapped me in the face. Groaning as I untangled myself from the sleeping bag, I slowly climbed out of the truck. The sun was peeking through the trees. I heard little chirps of music notes all around me. It was jarring, and I unconsciously reached up to turn my earbuds off. My hand lingered on my knotted hair as I remembered I’d left them behind.
I spun around in circles trying to find where the music was coming from. A movement on one of the branches above caught my eye. There were birds! Chirping, singing little birds fluttering on top of the trees in the early morning light.
“Brayson, do you hear this?” I reached across the inside of the cab and shook him. “Wake up dude and listen.” His eyes came into focus as he strained to hear the sound. A smile briefly lit up his face before being replaced with a pained expression.
“They are just birds.” He pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin and turned away from me.
“Have you ever seen a bird before?” I stared hard at his back willing him to get up.
“Yes,” he mumbled. “There are seagulls on the beach sometimes.”
“You’ve been to the beach before?” I kept probing him.
“Yeah. I took Vorie a few times,” he said quietly. Sadness tainted with jealousy washed over me. I didn’t know Vorie had seen the beach.
“Close the door Fawn. It’s cold.”
“Are you going to sleep all day?” I crossed my arms.
“Why not?” Brayson sighed. “It’s not like we have anything better to do.”
I slammed the door as loudly as I could and made my way down to the creek with a bucket.
Chapter 3
∞
My plan was to carry some water back up to my room, but when I saw the crystal-clear flowing stream, I left the bucket on the bank. The water was freezing as I splashed handfuls of it onto my face to wash the sleep from my eyes. Then I got the bright idea to strip naked and bathe in the cool water. It wasn’t the smartest plan I ever had.
The birds and bugs danced on the water’s edge. I stood shivering in the creek as I washed the dried blood from my arm. The wound from where I cut out my tracker was scabbing over. It was a small price to pay so that those jerks would never find me.
After squealing and screaming as I hurriedly finished washing the rest of my body, I climbed on top of a large rock and sat in the sun to dry. My teeth were chattering but the bath was invigorating. After pulling my wet hair into a bun and getting dressed, I filled the bucket of water to carry back to the truck.
“Go away,” Brayson moaned as I opened the driver side door. He got a handful of cold creek water splashed in his face.
“What the hell?” he screamed as he bolted upright.
“I miss her too.” I readied another handful of water and he scooted back against the center console. “But this isn’t living and Vorie would want us to live. We’ll see her again, I can promise you that, but I can’t let you mope around for the rest of your life. Listen to the birds, man. Wake up. We’ve got work to do. Real work.”
Brayson put his arm over his face as I splashed more water on him. “Fine. I’m up. You’re an ass.”
“Eh,” I shrugged. “I don’t mean to be.”
*
We spent the morning making oatmeal over the fire and cutting down tiny aspen trees. Brayson worked to fix the trees into small cots to get us up off the concrete floors at night. They weren’t pretty, but they held our weight.
In the afternoon, we walked a short distance down the road to a clearing in the trees.
“There’s twenty bullets in this box,” Brayson counted. “We can each practice with four and that leaves us twelve for an emergency.” A dark cloud passed over the sun. “If the mafia comes, they’ll bring more than twelve people.”
I shook my head. “If the mafia comes, we wouldn’t be able to shoot them all anyway. Don’t worry about that, they won’t find us with no trackers, and the great thing about the wild is there are no other people around.” It took a lot of tinkering, but we finally figured out how to load the magazine.