Against The Darkness (Cimmerian Moon) (6 page)

I catch a cry
in my throat.

Shayla reaches
out for Mia’s and my hands. “C’mon, we’re going to pray before we go to bed.”

We let her
lead us to where Ms. Burgess, MJ and Wade are.

“We’re going
to pray for everyone,” Shayla says. “We need closure.”

“But—“

“Ms. B,”
Shayla says interrupting her. “Please, let us do this.”

Ms. Burgess
closes her mouth and hangs her head.

“Ian. I know
you can hear me,” Shayla says. “I’d like for you to join us.”

I hold my
breath, wondering if he will even come out of his shelter to join our prayer
circle. We don’t have to wait long. He comes out and saunters our way and sits.
We hold each other’s hands and bow our heads and listen as Shayla prays for
everyone in the band. That they make it home safely and for those that didn’t,
that their souls find peace. When she is done everyone has tears in their eyes.

“Let’s get
some sleep,” Ms. Burgess says. “We’ll be leaving here in the morning.”

I get to my
feet with Mia helping me. As I start to leave, Ian pulls on my shirt. “Sin,
wait.”

“Yes?”

Mia waits for
me, but I give a nod, telling her to go on without me.

Ian shuffles
on his feet and glances at the ground. “I’m sorry for…you know…what I said
before. About you being half…”

I could revel
in his apology, make him sweat it out, but I stop him because, frankly, I can’t
stand how long this apology is taking. “Forget about it.”

He lets out a
relieved breath. “Great. I didn’t mean any of that stuff. I was upset and maybe
a little scar…nervous.”

“It’s fine. We’re
all scared.”

“I didn’t say
scared. I said nervous. And well, yeah, it’s pretty easy being nervous when
monster aliens are trying to kill the only girl that I ever loved.”

He can be an
asshole sometimes, but he loves Mia almost as much as I do and he did save her.
“Thanks for bringing her back to me. I don’t think I could bear to lose her.
Without her or my mom…”

“I wouldn’t
have left without her.”

I look into
his eyes. “I know.”

April 17
^th
, 2012: Day 26

We leave the
third morning. The wind whips through the trees, pushing on us so hard I feel
as though I would blow away from one of the forceful gusts. I can’t help
thinking that this is some kind of sign to get us up and on our way. To make us
leave this area.

We left our
little shelters up to be used by any other travelers coming that way. We even
talk about how if everyone did what we had done, there would be shelters dotted
around the world. That maybe the human race would survive and maybe the aliens
hadn’t figured on us having compassion for each other. They might not know the
motto “do onto others as you would want done onto you”.

Since we aren’t
moving with a large group anymore, we use the freeway as our guide. We follow
it up through Gainesville, which used to be a well-populated area, but now
there’s no one there. But as the wooded areas by the freeways become sparse we’re
forced to move away all together. No one objects, as long as we have our map
and my compass we know which way is home.

If there is a
need to go through a residential area we take the long way around, figuring the
lizards would be patrolling those areas, looking for people who could be caught
trying to scavenge for food. There are no more scouting details, as there’s no
need. With just the seven of us, we’re able to cover more ground than before. By
late in the day, we make it to Dahonega, which seems to be nothing more than campgrounds
and wooded areas.

And more
people. Small bands of them.

My thought at
seeing more people than we had since we started for home is that they’re doing
much the same thing we are, staying out of sight and trying to live off the
grid.

Not surprisingly,
most of the people we run into are making the old camp grounds their homes. Old
cabins are a lot better than sleeping outside, but I think they’re also a place
where the aliens can easily trap a person. I wouldn’t mind sleeping on a cot,
but the idea of being in a building with only one way out makes me extremely
claustrophobic.

I like the
idea of meeting up with survivors. We’re able to get more intel on what the
aliens have been doing, where they have been and how to avoid them, but staying
with others seems to also make me nervous. It seems the more people that are
around, the more the ships are overhead. My only guess is that the congregation
of humans alerts the aliens and they’re marking this area on their “go get ’em”
map. So far I’ve had pretty good luck with not seeing any of them up close and
personal and I want to keep it that way.

I’m not the
only person who gets high-strung when we stay around other people for more than
an hour. We meet up with a family from North Carolina, a father, mother and
three small children. They are nice enough. We trade a couple cans of food for
some more bottled water. The father, Addison, strongly suggests that we stay
with them through one of the paths.

The kids cry
and fuss. The mother complains and Addison barks out orders.

An hour into
it and Ms. Burgess makes an excuse as to why we have to veer off and go a
separate direction. When Addison seems not to like that idea and insists that
we all stay together, we all have to help Ms. Burgess out with reasons why we
have to split up. I don’t know if Addison wants to keep us with him because he thinks
he would be saving us or because he needs help with his wife and kids.

I don’t think
we would mind traveling with other people, but we can’t attract attention to
ourselves. That kind of attention—the crying kids in particular—will
get us caught or killed.

Once we
separate from Addison and his family, we move deeper into the hilly area, where
trees are abundant. That’s also where it becomes apparent we aren’t going to
move as fast as we had when we first started. And from viewing the map, the
terrain is not going to get any easier for a while. We still have to skirt
around the National Forest before the land starts to level out again.

By the time it’s
too dark to travel safely, we run into a group of gun-toting men who we don’t
mind staying with. They call themselves “survivalists”. I’ve never heard of the
name before, but Wade has. According to the men, they have been planning for
something like this for years. They’re on their way to a retreat they had set
up years before. We don’t ask if we can go with them and they don’t offer
either. But what they do offer is to let us stay at their camp for the night.
My normal apprehension disappears as they explain all the prepping we would
need to do if we were to make a camp for the night ourselves.

We’d apparently
have to search for rattlesnakes and find an area where bears do not frequent.
We’ve been in these woods for the day and none of us had even bothered to
consider that encountering dangerous animals was even an option. By the time
they are done instructing us on what we would need to do, we wholeheartedly
agree to bunk down with them for the night. The men take turns on watch and
although we’ve offered to help with this, they decline. Which, personally, I’m
grateful for.
We’ve covered about thirty-five miles in one day,
and I can barely hold open my eyes.
The survivalists have guns and
the know-how to keep us alive through the night.

Because of the
dropping temperature, Mia and I huddle together. She’s lying behind me with her
arms sandwiched between us and her hands tucked between her legs. I have my
arms in the same position and my hoodie pulled up to protect my neck and head.
It’s cold, but the survivalist told us we should be glad it’s spring and not in
the dead of winter. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have lasted a day on this journey.
So while the wind whips across me and makes me shiver, I’m thankful for the
heat at my back.

The crunch of
footsteps causes me to open my eyes. Wade stops in front of me and lowers
himself to the ground. “Here, let me help warm you up. I swear I can hear your
bones knocking together from over there.”

The only words
I can get out, as he lies to face me and places his arm on my side is, “I’m
s…so c…c…cold.”

He rubs
vigorously on my top arm. “I know.”

The warmth
from his body begins to slowly penetrate into my clothes and to my skin. I can’t
help but snuggle my face in his chest, wanting to get warmer. “Thank you, this
feels so much better.”

“No problem.”

The chills
begin to subside and his warmth completely envelopes me.

“So is anyone else waiting for you
back home? I mean, besides your mother?” he asks. The warmth from his body
begins to seep into my skin.

“No, my dad went to Japan for
business two days before all this happened. I don’t know if he was able to get
home. I don’t think so though.”

“Oh.” He clears his throat. “What
about a boyfriend?”

“No boyfriend. I don’t have time for
a relationship. I didn’t then, and I definitely don’t now.” My eyes flutter
close, feeling the weight of the day. “What about you? Is your girlfriend
waiting for you?”

“Me?” he says, as though he’s
surprised I asked. “No. I don’t have girl.” And then adds quickly, “It’s a good
thing too. I wouldn’t want her facing something like this alone. It would tear
me up inside.”

“That’s nice…not that it would tear
you up inside but, you know, that if you had one you would be worried and
thinking about her and wanting to protect her, even if you guys weren’t together.”
I don’t know how I get all of that out. My voice is thick and my words sound
jumbled.

“It’s natural. My dad taught us how
to take care of our women.”

It would have been nice if someone
would’ve taught my dad how to take care of women, is the last thought I have
before everything goes dark and sleep claims me.

I think it’s
the best night I’ve had since the invasion began.

But it seems
as though I’ve just fallen asleep when the survivalists are waking us up again.
I crack open my eyes to find the sun hasn’t even risen yet and they’re packing
away all their gear. Wade is up and talking to one of them. He has his map out
and he’s being shown the best route to take out of here. I quick glance behind
me and I see Ian lying next to Mia, at her back and hugging her. But, as if he
can feel me watching him, his eyes pop open and, seeing me watching him with
Mia, he springs to his feet and leaves.

He’s not
fooling me one bit. He wants to get back with Mia, but doesn’t know how to ask
her. I could tell Mia he kept her warm as she slept and that would surely send
her back into his arms, but I think it’ll do him some good to suffer a while
longer and have to man-up and ask her back.

The
survivalists let us know they are moving out and suggest we do the same. By my
watch, I only got six hours of sleep, but it was six nightmare-free hours and I’m
feeling more refreshed than I have for a while.

We spend the morning
like the one before. We keep up a steady pace and run into more people. But, as
the day wears into late afternoon and the trees become sparse, so does the
amount of people we encounter. At one point, we start to wonder if we’re the
only ones traveling through this area. We haven’t seen or heard from anyone
else in the last hour. It’s only when we near what used to be an RV park that we
begin to hear light murmurings. Wade stops us with a hand up and places a
finger across his lips, the signal to be quiet. He motions for MJ follow him.

We wait
patiently and watch them as they disappear between the RVs. We have no reason
to fear anyone, but since we don’t know what’s going on I don’t mind that Wade
and MJ check everything out first. They’re not gone for more than a couple of
minutes before they return.

“They’re all
good,” MJ says. “They have some room and offered to let us rest with them for a
little while.”

My feet are
tired and sitting, if only for a couple of minutes, doesn’t sound like a bad
idea. “Do they have any meat?” I ask MJ, as I follow him back to the abandoned
RV.

“I doubt it,”
he says, as he holds open the door for us.

Great. I haven’t
had meat in forever. The crackers just aren’t doing it anymore. This impromptu
diet might be working for Wade, but I can barely keep my sweatpants up.

I enter
through the narrow door and move to a seat in the back, saying my hellos to all
five people I pass. They’ve got a stash of junk food, pop and bottles of water
piled off to one side. The smell of sugar, the really good kind, fills the
cramped space. I settle into a spot, letting everyone else enter behind me. As
they do, I look around. There’s an elderly couple, two middle-aged men, and a
younger woman nursing an infant.

I settle into
a seat and Shayla sits down next to me, on my right. The woman with the baby
catches me staring at her. My first impulse is to turn away, to give her some
privacy, but I don’t want it to appear that I’m freaked out, so I don’t. I
smile. “How old is your baby?”

She peers down
at the infant and then back to me. “Missy will be coming up on three months
this week.”

It must be
hard to travel with an infant. How can she tell her baby to stop crying and be
quiet? She couldn’t. If the baby cried when the aliens were around that would
be capture for all.

“I’m Harry,”
the older man says, yanking me away from my train of thought. “This is my wife
Angel.” He points to an older lady with a warm smile and sad eyes. Then he
points to one of the men. “That’s Jacob.” And then he points to the other man.
“That’s Kevin, his wife Mandy and their daughter Missy.”

Wade, the last
to enter, secures the door and comes to the back. He says, “Excuse me,” as he
steps over everyone’s feet to take a seat on my left, squeezing into a spot
that, in my opinion, isn’t big enough for him. I move over, pressing against
Shayla so he can wiggle next to me.

Shayla peers
around me to him. “Really dude? You couldn’t sit up front?”

Wade’s gaze
flicks from Shayla to me. “MJ and Ian are covering the front.”

Shayla rolls
her eyes and sits back. “Sure.”

One by one, we
all take turns giving our names, with Ms. Burgess going last. “Thank you for
letting us in,” she says after she tells them her name. “I have to admit that
my feet are on fire. The kids keep up a strong pace.”

“Where are ya’ll
headed?” Jacob asks.

“Michigan. We
were on a band trip in Tallahassee when the invasion happened. We’re just
trying to get back home.”

Harry shakes his
head. “That’s dangerous. You alone, traveling with kids that far north.
Dangerous.”

“They’re
trying to get home,” Angel says. She watches us with sad eyes and reaches for
her husband’s hand. “They want to go home to their mothers and fathers.”

“Do they have
mothers and fathers to go home to?” Jacob mutters.

I gasp.

“Don’t you
dare say anything like that in front of these children,” Angel snaps.

I’m not the
only one surprised at what Jacob said. Shayla places her hand on my wrist and
squeezes. It’s something I think each of us has wondered more than once but have
never voiced out loud. Hearing it from Jacob, this stranger, doesn’t feel
right.