There came the sound of rummaging in the back. I looked back at her and saw her pulling several small books out of a bag. Craning my neck further, I saw titles like Junie B. Jones, Olivia, Charlotte’s Web, and the like. “Some of those are pretty good,” he said. “You may enjoy them.”
Lizzy reached forward into the front seat and actually patted him on the shoulder, which floored me. “Thank you, Jake,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Welcome,” he replied. He turned off the front dome light and then reached back and turned hers on for her. “You go ahead and leave the light on. Doesn’t bother me.”
“Where…” I struggled to find words. “Where did you get a bunch of kid’s books?”
“Picked them up a few towns back.” He glanced in my direction; looked back out the front windshield. He started up the engine, put it into first, and gave a short rap on the horn to let Billy know he was ready to go.
“Jake.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you, Jake.”
He shifted into second as we got onto the road.
“Welcome.”
When we finally stopped for the night, it was only a little further up the 15. Billy found a spot that he liked the look of and pulled off the road. He led us away for a good distance; less than a mile but far enough that anyone passing by would miss us in the dark. The men both had their own tents that they set up outside. When Jake was finished with his, he came back to the truck and offered to let us take it. Sleeping out in a tent felt a little too exposed for me so I thanked him but said we’d stay in the truck. I would get over this inhibition later on, certainly, but at this point, I wasn’t very long out of civilization.
The next morning when I woke up, it took me several moments to remember that we weren’t with James or his gang anymore. I’m struggling to find the words to describe what this was like; when you’re in a situation like that, you don’t awake every morning in a terrified state. No matter what kind of situation you’re in, you only have so much energy. Being terrified takes a lot of energy, so you don’t stay in that state indefinitely. Eventually, you wear out. You simply get too exhausted to be scared. The state that you go to after you wear yourself out being scared is the state that I woke up in every morning. Exhausted, numb, impending sense of doom, hopelessness. You walk around on eggshells all day feeling this way. If someone close by moves too quickly, the deadened feelings flare up inside you instantly into a kind of electric panic but then subside back to the low thrum quickly if nothing actually happens.
Waking up in that truck was like a shock of cold water. The absence of danger was as shocking and electrifying to me that morning as any present danger I’d encountered previously.
I lifted the back of my seat out of a reclined position, stretched my neck a bit, and looked in the back seat.
I came up off the seat and must have rotated in midair because I came back down on my knees facing the rear of the cab. Elizabeth was gone. I grabbed my rifle and slammed into the passenger side door trying to open it. I had to fumble with the handle before I could operate it properly. I finally got the door opened and jumped out of the truck. I was barefoot. I remember the rocks on the ground hurt and that I didn’t care.
I ran around the front of the truck and stopped immediately when I saw Elizabeth, Billy, and Jake sitting around a smoking campfire. All three of them turned to look at me, all wearing the same wide-eyed, confused expression.
“Mom?” Lizzy asked.
I felt a sharp throbbing pain in my right hand along the ring finger. I lifted it up to look at it and saw an angry, white crease along the back of the nail. I must have folded it back when I was fighting with the door handle.
Billy came over with a wool-lined denim jacket and offered it to me. “Put some shoes on,” he suggested. “It’s chilly out this morning.”
I was distracted then by an incredibly savory smell coming from the fire. “Oh… oh my God,” I said. “What do I smell? What is that?” The smell was making me salivate; it was so good that I had forgotten to be pissed at Lizzy for scaring me half to death.
“Sausage!” Billy said in his best homemaker voice.
“Sausage? Where did you find sausage??”
“Freeze-dried sausage!!”
I only stood there, alternating my gaze between him and the fire. I think he actually shocked me stupid.
His shoulders slumped a little, and he finally said, “Look, go put some shoes on. You’re going to hurt yourself.” He returned to his spot at the fire. “I have some coffee brewed up. We’ll save some for you when you get back.”
“You have… coffee?”
“Well, we have it for now,” he said. “We’ll run out at some point, of course. That doesn’t mean we have to live like a bunch of savages right now, though, does it?”
I didn’t even bother to tie my shoes. I just pulled them on and rushed back to the fire. Lizzy was opening up a chair for me to sit in, humming to herself and chewing at the same time. I had just finished pulling on the jacket when a metal plate was thrust in front of me with a little pile of crumbled sausage and some crackers. “I’ve got a fork or something here in the Kitchen bin,” Billy muttered, digging in a plastic container. He turned back to me to hold out a fork and saw that my plate was empty. He stared at the empty plate and then looked up at me. “More?”
“Yes, please,” I said through a mouthful. I wiped my eyes, which were watering because my tongue was stinging from where I had bit it when James attacked me.
He took the plate and offered me a cup filled with black coffee. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t have any creamer or sugar.”
“I don’t care, this is amazing,” I said and meant it. I never would have done black coffee once upon a time, but the smell of this stuff alone perked me up. I felt a panicked urge to gulp it down and had to restrain myself from burning my mouth. Thinking of this, I felt an unhappy twinge in my bladder. I handed the cup back to Billy. “I have to go take care of some business,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said, taking the cup back. “Bushes and such over there,” he gestured to a thick patch on the other side of the trucks.
When I came back to my spot by the fire there was another plate of food and my coffee, now cooled down a bit. I dug in, going slower now and taking the time to savor it.
“Be a nice day today,” said Billy happily. “Clear sky. Beautiful weather.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“We were discussing that before you woke up,” Jake said.
“We’re going shopping for a new car, Mom,” Lizzy interrupted.
“New car?”
“Yeah, it’s probably a good idea to find you a vehicle,” Billy said. “We need to get you started on gear and supplies and the truck and van are just about filled to capacity carrying all of Jake’s and my crap to begin with. If we find something really good, we might could hook up some kind of trailer to whatever we get you. There was no ball hitch on either of ours.”
“What about gas?” I asked.
“No worries. We have ways.”
I thought about all that for a minute. Something about taking the extra time to locate a suitable vehicle, fuel it (however that was done), and load it full of supplies that had yet to be acquired seemed off to me.
“How far is your place from here, Billy? How long will it take to get there?”
“Well, the town I’m closest to is Jackson. From here I’m guessing that’s about a ten-hour drive? Maybe less—but that was how long it took before. Who knows what road conditions are on the way? I suppose we’ll either get there tomorrow or the next day.”
“And how are we set for food and water?”