Sudden Independents (7 page)

He poked at the fire and Catherine stirred again, folding her arms together against the cool night air. Scout dusted off his hands on his pants and unhooked the sleeping bag from his motorbike. He zipped it open like a blanket and covered Catherine, who snuggled under with a contented smile.

Then Hunter started snoring like a chainsaw ripping through a forest. Scout groaned, cringing with each thunderous inhalation, and within moments, tension throbbed between his shoulder blades. He snatched up the water bottles and scampered out of earshot.

His eyes adjusted away from the fire, picking a path down to the stream he’d located earlier for fresh water. The shimmering stars reflected off the creek, causing a phosphorescent band that laced over the plains. Scout dipped the bottles into the flow and waited for the gurgling to cease. He retrieved the iodine from his pocket and added a couple drops into each bottle. Then he screwed the lids tightly and leaned back on his hands for a little stargazing.

Scout couldn’t remember what the starry sky looked like before the plague. In the middle of the city, he thought there were only a couple hundred stars total because all you saw were the brightest ones. The first time he looked into the night sky after the power winked out, he saw billions of stars sparkling from every direction in the thick soup of space.

Tonight, he thought about how lucky he was with a billion possibilities shining back at him, even if he wasn’t sure that God was up there watching his back.

“There you are,” Catherine said behind him.

Scout flopped on the grassy bank as if he’d just been hooked out of the stream. He sat back up after controlling the initial surprise, but he still had difficulty catching his breath.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. What’re you doing?”

Scout pulled in a deep breath through his nose before speaking. “Just sitting here, looking at the stars. You can join me if you want.”

She sat close beside him. It was nice. Her presence radiated a warm energy that refreshed his sleepy mind.

He smiled at her. “Was it tough being on your own?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you, being all alone for as long as you were. I have a hard time just being out by myself for a week. Then I get back to town around people again and it’s hard adjusting to them and all the noise.”

“I wasn’t alone, silly. My tree was with me the whole time, and there was a family of robins upstairs, and a squirrel would come by to chat. The wind brought me news from around the world and when the raindrops fell, I listened to them patter about all the neat places they had visited.” She smiled into the night sky. “The stars are really pretty, aren’t they?”

“Uh, yeah.” Scout worried that she’d bonked her head when Hunter flipped the bike. He locked onto an eerie feeling though; maybe she wasn’t making her story up. And then he remembered she was a little kid. Of course she was making it up.

Another question crossed his mind. “So was Hunter the first person you ever met?” Scout gave himself a mental pat on the back. She couldn’t avoid that one with a vague answer.

The corners of her mouth dropped and she brought her knees to her chest and wrapped them up in her arms. “No. I’ve known lots of people, but that was long ago in a different time and place. Those people have all passed on. I was a much different person then with a very different life.”

Scout crinkled his brow. “Catherine, you don’t sound like a six-year-old girl.”

“Well who said I was six? It’s not appropriate to talk about a girl’s age, you know.”

The night breeze rolled through the prairie grass and broke upon their backs. Then the wind disappeared again, leaving behind the steady sound of the creek.

“I guess I’m confused,” Scout said. “It’s not every day we come across someone your, uh… size out in the middle of nowhere. Were you traveling with your friends when you got separated?”

“No, we were separated ages ago.” She stood and regarded the sky. “But I have new friends now.”

Scout nodded and rose up beside her. He decided to put the questions away; someone in town would get her to talk and crack open the answers. “That’s right, you have us,” he said simply. “Let’s get back to the fire. I should check on Hunter, and you need more sleep.”

She hugged him. “I love you, Scout.”

Her affection caught him off guard. He offered her an awkward pat on the back.

She released him without a struggle and cocked her head at an angle as though measuring him for a new winter coat.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You really don’t believe anymore?”

Scout crossed his arms, feeling exposed. “I don’t know what to believe in.”

Catherine bent down and collected the water bottles. “I’ll just have to fix that, won’t I?”

“What are you talking about?”

Catherine smiled. “Let’s go check on Hunter.” She skipped ahead, leaving him standing there befuddled.

Along the way Scout gathered more sizable sticks under the branches of slumbering elm trees to feed the fire’s hunger back at camp. When he added them, the coals brightened and soon the flames popped and snapped over the new wood. Hunter hadn’t budged from the spot where he’d landed.

“He was making a funny noise earlier,” Catherine said. “That’s what woke me up.”

“Yeah, funny’s one way to put it.”

She knelt and placed her hand on Hunter’s head. Scout smiled at her concern. Maybe she was feeling for his temperature.

“I think I got his arm set right,” Scout said, consoling any fears she might possess. “Now it’s just going to take time for him to heal.”

Catherine laid her hands on the splint. “You did very well.”

Scout rushed forward in a surge of panic. “Be careful, you might mess up the set.”

“Don’t worry, silly. I’m just going to heal him so you believe again.”

She seemed careful about not moving or placing any pressure on Hunter’s arm and that decreased Scout’s anxiety. He shook his head. Catherine was laying hands like an evangelist performing miracle nonsense. He plunked his tired bottom by the fire and felt the crush of drowsiness the moment he was settled.

His head was just starting to loll when a yellow light pulsed underneath Catherine’s hands. Her forehead creased in concentration with sweat beading in the folds and instantly running down the sides of her face. The light crept up her arms like water soaking into a sponge.

Scout scrambled to his feet and rubbed his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real; he’d fallen asleep. What the heck was that light?

The yellow light gradually spread over Catherine and Hunter, completely covering them in a shinning intensity that proved hard to watch for periods longer than a couple seconds. Hunter’s head twisted back and forth and he groaned in his sleep as his feet shook violently. Catherine remained fixed and steady.

Scout became aware of his own breathing, ragged and harsh in the otherwise silent night. He was afraid to move, scared to look, and terrified he was losing his mind.

Then Catherine opened her mouth and the yellow light retreated, sliding off of her and Hunter only to disappear completely down her narrow throat. She closed her mouth and everything went dark, even though Scout heard the fire crackling and assumed—hoped—the stars still hung in the sky.

A moment passed. He finally focused in on Catherine’s dark silhouette kneeling next to Hunter’s prone body on the ground. Scout was struck with indecision: should he tap Catherine on the shoulder and see what’s up, or jump on his bike and ride for his life?

Catherine opened her eyes and the bright yellow light blasted forth, filling the entire area with its blinding radiance, like the sun going supernova, dazzling Scout’s sight once more.

Scout threw up his arms to shield his eyes, and then fell to his knees, disoriented by the overwhelming brilliance that thrummed like a living current all around him. An instant later the yellow light was extinguished by the night.

For a moment Scout saw only yellow spirals and squiggly lines swirling in his vision. The campfire flames rustled from the wind, and smoke filled his nose. Coughing, he waved his hands and crawled clear, relieved as his eyesight slowly returned.

Catherine lay in a heap beside Hunter.

Scout paced back and forth, wishing someone would wake up and explain what just happened. She was only a little girl. No way did yellow light shoot from her eyes like laser beams he’d seen in old comic books. Surely, he’d been dreaming. He lifted his face to the heavens. The stars illuminated the world with new possibilities.

Hunter’s snoring renewed with amplified volume, but Scout tuned it out. He covered Catherine with his sleeping bag, pleased to see her smile rekindled. Dropping beside her, Scout pulled his knees in close to his chest and kept a protective watch as the fire dwindled.

M
olly staggered out of Brittany’s kitchen baffled and enraged. It was impossible. Her own brother betrayed her. She couldn’t care less what everyone else thought about her, but Mark was all she had left in this world.

She walked quickly, surrounded by nightfall and blinded by the red haze of her anger. Her thoughts turned violent, churning, building pressure that required release. She fought the urge to smash something. If she stopped walking it would signal a change of action and then something awful would happen; she just knew it.

Before she realized where her feet carried her, she arrived at Jimmy’s. She visited his house often late at night, fantasizing about knocking on his window and climbing into his arms, but she always chickened out.

Tonight she planned to go all the way after dinner. She had prepared herself to be brave, to walk out with him and finally tell him how she truly felt. Vanessa had ruined that chance.

The last thing Molly wanted was for Jimmy to come home and find her slinking around his yard like some crazy girl. Molly wasn’t crazy. She was alone, and now thanks to Vanessa, her solitude would last an eternity.

Molly balled her hands into fists so tight that her fingers hurt. She definitely didn’t want to smash anything at Jimmy’s. She turned downhill, heading further from town where she could detonate in peace.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy after passing his house. They were perfect for each other, so why was she petrified to tell him? For one thing, she was terrible at handling rejection. She knew she was the most attractive girl in town, by far. She always caught boys following her with their eyes and big appreciative smiles when she wore something tight. Molly usually received several scribbled love letters a month from the ones who bumbled into adolescence.

Jimmy treated her kindly as a friend, but never seemed interested in her like the other boys, and that only stoked Molly’s desire. He was the one for her. He was handsome and mature, all the things a girl could ever want. He was tall and his brown hair framed a gorgeous, intense face. Sometimes she would sneak to the edge of town just to stare at him working in the fields. His shirt stretching against his muscular chest made her dizzy.

He needed her even if he didn’t realize it yet. Like Mark, though, Jimmy relied on Vanessa way too much. Damn her! She cast some sort of magical spell over both of them, bending them to her will and numbing them to Molly’s. Molly hated Vanessa so much; she sometimes found herself plotting Vanessa’s demise. Poison was usually her personal favorite, but right then, Molly wouldn’t mind using a big, heavy shovel upside the head. Then she could dig a hole to hide the body.

Molly’s angry stride came to an unexpected halt with two big sunken steps. She found herself ankle deep in a muddy field surrounded by cabbages.

“Damn it all to hell!”

She was stuck. She tried to free her feet one at a time, gripping with both hands around each knee and pulling, but she became more entrenched the harder she struggled. Meanwhile, she continued to sink and was now up to her shins.

“Let go of me, you stupid mud!”

She ripped one foot out of the earth and then the other, but the muck claimed her shoes. She considered surrendering them to their misfortune and scurrying back to her apartment with whatever dignity she could salvage, but she loved those shoes. Before the plague, Nebraska was a land populated by big footed Neanderthals because it was hard for Hunter to find shoes in her size. She couldn’t afford to lose a pair that fit.