Apophis (6 page)

“Thanks,” I said, taking the gloves and stiffly shoving my frozen hands back inside them.

“I suppose I should be the one thanking you.”

My head snapped up at the tenor of her voice.  It was low and velvety, the kind of low burr that always made me weak in the knees.  I didn’t know what it was about women with lower register voices, but their hypnotic element always ensnared me.  It wasn’t fair.  God was most definitely punishing me with this girl’s voice for every wicked thing I’d ever done.

I stared at her and she stared back, her face emotionless.  It was like a game of chicken, neither of us looking away. I found myself once again staring at her mouth.  Her lips were generous, thick and soft.  It was the kind of mouth celebrities spend a fortune on trying to achieve.
 The carefully manicured eyebrows. The gentle slope of her well-proportioned nose. It was too much perfection to be contained on one face.

When my father spoke again, we both finally broke our staring contest.  “What the hell were you doing in a car?  It’s idiotic using one of these things.  You just attract attention to yourself.”  He kicked at the useless tire of the SUV.

The salt-and-pepper man grimaced.  His head looked like it was still bleeding from a nasty gash across his forehead.  “I guess I underestimated the weather and how much gas it would take to go cross-country.  We’re kind of stranded.  I’m hoping you can help us.”  He leaned against the hood of his car.  It looked like it was taking all of his efforts to stay standing up. 

“I’m sorry,” my father started.  I didn’t think he sounded truly apologetic – it was just force of habit.  “We can’t help you.  We’ve got to worry about ourselves.”

“I know how to get to Eden,” the man wheezed.

My father stilled.  “Say that again.”

“The rumors are true.  Eden exists,” the man said, still coughing.  “And I’ll take you there and get you inside if you’ll help us.”

My father’s icy blue eyes narrowed in suspicion.  “How do I know you’re not just making this up so we don’t leave you two for dead?”

“The company I own received government contracts to retrofit an underground facility,” the man revealed. “When the government realized what was happening to the earth’s climate, they reopened an old, underground bunker from World War II.  Roosevelt had had it commissioned as part of the Manhattan Project as a precaution to nuclear warfare.  My company was responsible for turning it into a living space,” he continued. “And as reward for our secrecy, there was a lottery for spaces inside.”

“Where is it?” my father demanded.

The other man shook his head.  “If I tell you, you’ll just leave us or kill us.  But I can take you there.”

My father always played it safe.  That had been his job at the bank for thirty-some years – to weigh the pros and cons, to analyze the risk involved in trusting others.  He’d kept our family stationary while the rest of the planet scrambled over one another to gobble up the world’s remaining resources.  He wasn’t a risk-taker.  But now, with seemingly nothing left to lose, he was hesitating.  My father seemed to actually be mulling over this man’s story.

I looked over at the man and the younger woman.  I didn’t trust them.  I didn’t trust anyone.  I’d heard of Eden, but we’d all thought it was a legend like alligators in the sewers.  It seemed too calculating, too cruel, that our government would have created such a place and then left the majority of us to fend for ourselves.  I thought this man must be trying to take advantage of my father’s current desperate mindset.

“Ok.”

I was sure I’d misheard my dad.

“You’re not serious,” I blurted out. “Dad, we don’t know them,” I said, waving my hands at my sides.

“Samantha.” My father’s tone let me know this wasn’t up for discussion.  I wasn’t used to him making decisions for me.  Ever since he’d shaken me awake when bandits raided our home, he’d taken on the sole leadership role. I was an adult; shouldn’t I have some say about if we allied ourselves with these strangers? 

“That cut looks pretty bad,” my grandmother observed, sidling up next to the salt-and-pepper man.  “Mind if I take a look at it?”  She removed the first-aid kit from her backpack.  It wasn’t much – a few Band-Aids, cotton balls, and iodine.  If any of us got seriously injured, we’d be in trouble. 

She dipped a cotton ball into the iodine and began to rub away at the blood that had dried on the man’s forehead. “What happened?” she asked him.

The man winced as she continued to dab at the open wound. “We’d just run out of gas,” he said.  “I was planning on ditching the car and walking until we found some gasoline or another car with gas in the tank, but just as I was opening the door, those two men attacked us.  They both had crowbars and started bashing the car, breaking the windows and hitting the side panels.”

“They hit you with a crowbar?” my grandma gasped.

“No.  I think the car door clipped me in the head when I was trying to get out and they slammed it shut on me.”

My grandma nodded sagely.  “Well, it’s certainly a good thing we came along when we did.”

The man breathed out deeply.  “That’s for sure.  I’m Jerry West,” he introduced himself.  “And this is my daughter, Nora.”

“Rosemary Poulsen, but you just call me Rosie,” my grandma said with a wink.  “That tall drink of water over there is my son, Brandon, and that’s my granddaughter, Samantha.”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” the man said with a brief smile and a cough.

“I wonder how those men found you,” my dad thought out loud.  “We’re in the middle of nowhere.  Usually bandits stick to the cities where there’s more resources.”

“Maybe the cities are drying up, too,” I suggested.  “Maybe they’re widening their territories because they’re getting more desperate.”

“We should get moving,” my dad said, frowning.  I think he realized the truth and gravity of my words.  “I don’t know what you’ve got packed in your car, but you’ll probably need to downsize. Everything you need for survival can be carried on your back.”

“Nora,” Mr. West called to his daughter as my grandma finished patching up his head, “go start downsizing.”

“Sam, go help her,” my grandma urged me.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” she said pointedly.

I rolled my eyes, but did what she said.  I walked around the vehicle to the rear where the girl was tugging on the straps of an oversized hiking pack.  The backpack looked swollen from over-packing.  I was surprised the zippers hadn’t burst.  She made frustrated noises as she yanked and pulled without result.

“Let me help.”

She swung her head to look at me.  “I can do it.”

“Let me help,” I insisted again.

“I’ll be fine,” she grunted as she continued to struggle.

I held up my hands and walked away without another word.  I knew I should have tried harder to help her, but I was only going through the motions to satisfy my grandmother.

I walked back to where my grandmother sat in a snow bank.  “That was fast,” she shrewdly commented.

I held up my hands again.  “She said she didn’t need my help.”

My grandma shook her head and muttered something under her breath in Norwegian.  I knew a few scattered phrases.  I’m pretty sure she’d called me stubborn.

My father pulled out his laminated map and laid it out on the hood of the SUV.  He and Mr. West, now freshly bandaged, hovered over the waterproof map.

“I need some directions,” my dad said. 

“I can’t let you have them,” Mr. West countered.

“Give me a state at least,” my father snapped, clearly displeased. “We can’t help you folks if you get us lost and we’re just walking around in a giant circle.  I won’t put my family at risk like that.”

Now it was the other man’s turn to regard my father.  I was glad he had put some conditions in place so we weren’t traveling blind and at this man’s mercy, but I still felt annoyed and uncomfortable that I hadn’t been consulted about my father’s decision to trust them. 

“Idaho.”

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CHAPTER FOUR

We started out at a brisk pace.  I didn’t know if my dad was showing off in front of Jerry and Nora West, but even I was struggling to keep up.  I looked back at my grandmother to see how she was doing.  Her face was passive, but she seemed to be keeping up just fine.

Mr. West walked beside me. “You look like you’re about the same age as my Nora,” he said conversationally.

I made a grunting noise, but didn’t really answer him.  It wasn’t my job to make nice with these people.  We’d saved them from bandits; what more did they want from us?  I didn’t have to tell either of them anything about me. 

I glanced back at the man’s daughter who was trudging a few paces behind us. We did look about the same age, but I wasn’t looking to make a new best friend.  I was just trying to survive the best I could and keep my father and grandmother alive.  She had a pretty face. The eternal cold kept her cheeks flushed; it made her look alive.  Our eyes met briefly, hers aqua-blue and intense, and I quickly looked away, upset with myself for getting caught staring.

“Nora graduated from Smith College. Top 5% of her class.  But she’d never tell you that; she’s far too modest,” he prattled on. “Were you in college before the Frost?”

“No.”

I had had dreams of going to college.  I wasn’t the best student in high school, so I’d imagined I’d spend two years at the local community college before transferring to one of the big state schools in Fargo or Grand Forks.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life exactly, but I’d always thought I’d have time to figure that out once I got to college.  But now all of the nation’s universities were abandoned structures popular with bandits who scavenged the land like vultures preying off of others’ misfortunes and their own sense of entitlement.

“It’s too bad all of this had to happen,” he noted wistfully. “All that work she did in college probably seems like it was for nothing now.  A lot of things feel like they were for nothing, actually.”

I adjusted the strap on my backpack to redistribute its weight.  I didn’t like all of this talking.  I’d fallen into a comfortable routine with my dad and grandma of not really talking until we set up camp for the night.  Even then it was minimal – just talking about our plans for the next day.  It was just safer not to make a lot of noise.

Sensing that I wasn’t going to be a chatty traveling companion, Mr. West quickened his step to walk beside my father.  I couldn’t help smirking.   He wasn’t going to have better luck with my dad.  My dad didn’t waste anything, especially idle chitchat.  He chose his words carefully.

I bent my head when a brisk wind blew through the sparse trees.  God, this was miserable.  I hoped the trip to Eden would be short.  Maybe we would find a car with the keys still in it with gas that hadn’t been siphoned off by bandits.  Maybe we’d stumble across some working snowmobiles or a pack of wild dogs we could harness to a sled.  It was foolish to hope for luxuries like that, but I still let my mind wander to a world where everything wasn’t so difficult and where my legs didn’t feel like 100-pound sandbags trudging through the snowdrifts all day long. 

+++++

After a few more hours of walking, we finally stopped for the evening.  Most nights the moon was so bright overhead that we could have continued traveling, but there was no sense burning ourselves out that quickly.  Instead, we built a fire large enough to cook on and set up our tents. 

Our campsite had grown from two tents to four. It seemed wasteful that the Wests couldn’t share a tent, but I could understand the desire for some semblance of privacy.  I wouldn’t have wanted to share a tent with my dad either.

I had sat back and watched Nora fumble with the various components of her tent when we stopped for the day.  Her brow had been creased as she stared at poles and stakes and the tent, clearly not knowing what to do and stubbornly refusing to ask for help. Eventually her father had come over and helped her finish setting it up.  I hadn’t dared look in the direction of my grandmother.  I knew she’d be giving me her straight-lipped, disappointed look.  It wasn’t that I didn’t consider myself helpful or altruistic, in fact I tended to be a little too forgiving or chivalrous when it came to pretty girls, but the Frost had changed me.  I no longer felt the need to go above and beyond to help strangers.

We had a limited dinner of dried meat and canned goods that evening.  The Wests were able to add to the variety of canned food, but little else.  They hadn’t anticipated needing too many supplies because of their ill-fated plan to drive cross-country to Eden. 

Before my dad retired to his tent for the night I helped him set up a few animal traps in the area around our campsite. They were basically glorified rat traps that couldn’t catch anything bigger than an errant squirrel, but we also set up a few larger snares, hopeful for something a little larger. The Wests couldn’t help out in that department either and I was beginning to wonder what they could help out with besides knowing how to get to Eden, which might not even exist in the first place.