There was more smoke in the air when we rose in the morning. It hung over the ranch house like a sullied cloud of despair, vividly reminding us that all was not well. I heard Zach get up early in order to scout the area vigilantly. I got up after he slipped out in order to keep a watch. Kara stirred a little while later, stretching sore muscles from tossing and turning all night. None of us had slept well.
When Zach returned he said that the fires had gone out in the night. He had used a pair of Eddy’s binoculars to ascertain that nothing was left but smoking ruins. I helped Kara pack up some of the fresh vegetables in containers borrowed from Gigi’s kitchen, and we readied the bicycles for our departure. Zach rolled his eyes at the vegetables, but Kara was unrelenting. “Do you want to take vitamins until we figure out how to grow things again?” she asked him seriously.
Zach shrugged and helped me into the trailer. He leaned over me and said relentlessly, “You feel all right, Sophie? No tears, no fever?”
“I’m fine,” I replied curtly. I only wanted to leave. I liked the ranch house, but I still felt like an outsider. I was an interloper in Gigi and Eddy’s home, and I always would be. They may not have been ghosts roaming through their house, but if felt like it to me. Every time I stepped around a corner, I expected to see one of them standing there sternly questioning the presence of a stranger in their home.
Then I spoiled my brusque answer to Zach by shivering. The September morning’s temperature had been a little low in the mid-forties, and I didn’t have a coat on. He said a nasty word and went to get a coat for me. After he came back with a red jacket, he tucked it around me and said firmly, “Tell me if you’re tired or you need to stop. I can’t read minds, and we need you to act like one of the team.”
I stared back into his face. My father could have told him that that particular method didn’t work well with me. It sounded like manipulation to me. Hadn’t I acted like I cared by not telling them I was bleeding out? Sure, I didn’t realize I was nearly bleeding to death, but the horrors that had been behind us seemed to justify my continued silence. I had chosen them over myself. To me, it didn’t get more team than that. “I can be a team player,” I gritted.
Kara climbed onto her bicycle and prudently made sure she had enough water in the bottle attached to the frame. Very interesting stuff that. Hah. She was staying out of this one, too. One of these days that tactic was going to backfire on her.
Zach bent closer and kept his eyes on mine as he deliberately adjusted the coat over my body. “I hope so,” he muttered. “If you don’t tell me this time that something’s wrong, I’ll find a house in the hills where we’re safe, and you’ll stay on your cute little butt for a solid month.”
Then he turned and went to get on the bicycle. I stuck my tongue out at his back, and Kara choked as she saw the action. She quickly turned and covered her mouth with her hand. Zach turned to look at me suspiciously, but I was looking off toward the ocean, as if butter couldn’t melt in my mouth.
The pace was less frantic than the last time we were mobile. I got to hold the map and a loaded crossbow. I also got to look around more. There weren’t any burnt houses or businesses in front of us, so we assumed that the man hadn’t passed us as we slept in Gigi and Eddy’s house. When I said something about it a few hours later, Zach said sourly, “If we’re really lucky he’ll have burned himself up by accident, and then he’ll have fallen down a bottomless well.”
We cruised through the town of Port Orford and admired the beach with the impressive Battle Rock dominating the curved bay. Colorful boats on trailers were lined up in a row at the dock as if they would soon be launched to go out fishing. The scene was set up as if someone would come walking out of a building ready to do their normal routine. The only problem was that an eighteen-wheeler had come straight down the main road, plunged through a low, shrub-covered sand hill, and plowed to an abysmal end on the beach. The tractor’s nose was buried in the sand while the trailer had fallen onto its side spilling a load of DVRs and other assorted electrical goods.
We stopped to eat lunch at Battle Rock City Park which overlooked the beautiful sands before us. I ate cautiously with Zach was eying me as if he could see through me like an X-ray. I wasn’t about to admit that just riding in the trailer made me as tired as a dog on a hot summer day, and I wasn’t particularly hungry. As soon as Kara finished a sandwich made with slightly stale bread we’d found at a bakery earlier, she thoroughly checked my shoulder wound. I didn’t need to look up to know that she was giving Zach a nod of approval.
We continued out of Port Orford, and I think Zach nearly died pulling me on the highway that went up and around a tiny mountain called Humbug. The highway twisted and curved about the state park that held the large outcropping of earth. After a little bit, I offered to get out and walk, but Zach shot me a look of outrage that made me sit very still. So I shrugged to myself. Even Kara gave up and walked up a couple of the hills, calling merrily to Zach to give up the ghost. Finally, I managed to get him to stop and rest while I strolled up the last part of the hills. I was tired, but I didn’t want to be the cause of him having wrenched muscles.
Team player. I wanted to yell at him. That was the pot calling the kettle black. I got back in the trailer on the downside and let Zach catch his breath. Kara was coasting cheerfully beside us. The sun was off to the west and starting its final descent. The afternoon temperature was in the low seventies, and the winds had died away. I couldn’t smell any smoke, and for a single moment, I almost felt…alive again.
The realization of the moment shook me to the core.
It wasn’t right to feel that way. I should still be in mourning for my parents and for all the others who had vanished seemingly in an instant. I shouldn’t feel normal because it wasn’t right to do so. I should be crying instead, and I suddenly missed my father quite dreadfully.
I tucked my head into the side of the trailer using the red jacket as a pillow and fell asleep with trails of tears running down my cheeks.