Jacob's Odyssey (The Berne Project Book 1) (38 page)

I could hear her turn in her seat. "Yes, Jake. I'll find us a home to stay in."

A few moments later, Sarah took a left and not long after that a right and I could tell from the incline of the truck that we were headed up the mountain. There was a final left and then she slowed, and a minute later she stopped.

I noticed the bat on the floor in the back as they were about to help me out of the truck, but I didn't grab it. Sarah did and handed it to Becky. And then she slowly and carefully helped me out of the truck. Sarah had already taken all the backpacks to the back of the house before coming back for me.

I knelt at the back door, my forehead propped against the door for support. I felt the pins lift into place and I turned the tension wrench as I had so many times before. Sarah had her hands on my shoulders for support and she rubbed my back. Becky was next to me and she kept whispering to me that I was going to be okay. She spoke to me in the same way she often spoke to Ralphy.

I scratched the door loudly and waited. But there were no sounds. And then I opened the door and we went in. Sarah made me sit on the floor in the kitchen and Becky stayed with me while Sarah took the bat and scouted out the house.

I leaned my head back against a kitchen cabinet. Becky held my right arm with one hand and rubbed the upper part of my arm with the other. I felt a lot of pain and could barely breathe, but I knew we were going to be all right.

Dark shadows and brilliant light played across the surface of the creek as the morning sun filtered through the trees. A light, buoyant breeze gently lifted the leaves. Becky turned to watch her back cast, then used a three-quarter forward cast with a tight loop to throw the line into the stream. The fly landed just in front of the beaver dam in relatively still water. Becky was a natural when it came to fly fishing. By the third day she had mastered the casting motion and the basics. She couldn't wait to go fishing every morning, every evening too. There were three spots along the creek we used for fishing and the beaver dam was where we often had the best luck. Sarah and I sat on two lawn chairs twenty feet away in the shade of a poplar tree, watching Becky fish.

It had been nearly three weeks since we'd left the Salt Lake Valley. We spent three days at the house Sarah had picked out before we left for the cabin. I needed the time to recuperate, and Sarah helped nurse me back to health. The concussion was relatively minor but the neck and throat injuries were more serious. After a few days I was able to swallow and eat something other than liquids, though it still hurt to swallow. My voice wasn't much more than a rough whisper, and Sarah let me know my voice might stay that way. She suspected I'd suffered nerve damage to my vocal cords from the neck trauma, something she called vocal fold paresis.

But it wasn't the physical injuries that had Sarah worried. She was more concerned about my mental state, and for good reason. A dark shroud of despondency lingered over me like a morning fog that refused to burn away. Feelings of despair would come and go without warning. The source of my malaise came from those rapturous seconds I'd spent outside my body during the time the Swimmer was strangling me. I couldn't forget the incredible feeling of lightness and warmth I'd experienced, yet I couldn't recapture the essence of the feelings either. And the memory of the feeling, faded as it was, rendered the pain and suffering of this world more acute.

Even though I still wasn't myself by the third day, I knew we had to get out of the valley. We were pressing our luck as it was. Sarah resisted, saying I needed more time to recover, but in the end she relented and we left for the cabin.

We skirted the upper edges of the East Bench and used the homes for cover. We were extremely careful and none of the infected spotted us. Since we weren't scaling any fences, it only took us an hour to get to East Millcreek Canyon, then we mirrored the canyon road from above. I had precious little energy and we had to keep stopping so I could rest. I felt embarrassed by my weakened state, but Sarah and Becky were patient and supportive.

The mountains themselves were quite safe. The sprawling Wasatch Range was essentially an infected-free zone. And the mountains were as serene and beautiful as ever.

During the second day, I had a bit of a breakdown. I sat down on a boulder and started laughing hysterically—or at least I tried. Not much came out, just a muffled sound like abortive hiccups, and my throat hurt like crazy from the effort. And I'm sure my face must have been quite the sight—a paradoxical mix of failed laughter and pain. Sarah and Becky were bewildered, even a little frightened. But there was nothing to worry about. I was simply laughing at the folly of my life. I'd spent my entire adult life living in fear, or at least being driven by it. And I only realized it now because the fears were gone. They'd vanished back in the parking lot when I'd had my intimate brush with death. They'd slipped quietly away like a summer breeze.

It took us two and a half days to get to the cabin, and we were all exhausted by the time we arrived, no one more than me. But just a few days at the cabin helped revive us. Even I felt reborn.

The cabin offered us a safe haven from the madness. And at times, we were so dissociated from the craziness, so removed from it, it was difficult to imagine that what we'd experienced had actually been real. It seemed to belong to a whole other world we were no longer a part of.

The cabin and the woods and the mountains were our world now. The cabin wasn't luxurious, but it was functional. There was a small living room with a wood burning stove, a bedroom with two twin beds, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. A few years back, Alex and I had run a PVC pipe from the stream to the cabin for water. We even had a sewage tank. The cabin had always been a labor of love for us, and it took us several summers of work and a good chunk of money to get the cabin where we wanted it.

The underground bunker was well stocked. It was about forty feet from the cabin amongst a copse of trees. A large rock hid the lock to the trap door. Sarah and I inventoried the food and figured there was about two months worth of canned food there. But Alex and I had stored more than food there. The bunker was where we kept all our fishing gear. And Alex kept one of his rifles in the bunker, a Savage 30-06. So we had a weapon if the need arose. And there was also a crossbow Alex had purchased several years ago but never used. I decided if we ran into any infected, the crossbow would be a better choice than the rifle because of the noise factor. It would work for hunting too. Becky and I practiced with the crossbow every day. She was enthusiastic, just as she had been with the fishing. Sarah showed no interest.

After several days, we began to develop something of a routine. Besides the fishing and the crossbow practice, we worked with Becky on her schooling. Sarah was excellent in math and science; I handled English and history, not that history seemed all that important anymore. And for exercise, each morning we would take a twenty minute climb up the mountain. We'd found a spot that offered a spectacular, sweeping view. We would eat breakfast there and enjoy the vista. I'd use my binoculars to check out Victory Highway which stretched north and south about a mile out from the cabin. The cabin itself was camouflaged from the highway by the woods, and we were also a good hundred yards from the dirt road that branched off the highway. The cabin was essentially invisible.

I'd check every day to see if there were any stragglers headed our way. Park City was located eight miles north of us and Heber City about nine miles south. We were pinched in between. But I'd yet to see any infected.

To the north we also had a view of Jordanelle Reservoir and Burt's Gas and Go not far from the entrance to the reservoir. Seeing Burt's place gave me an idea. Alex and I frequented Burt's for gas and snacks for many years and had formed a good relationship with Burt. From our perch, I could see Burt's Jeep Cherokee parked on the side. The jeep had been his pride and joy and he worked to keep the Cherokee in tip-top shape. My idea was to borrow Burt's jeep since he didn't seem to be using it. I knew there was always the possibility we might need transportation at some point.

The next day after our morning climb, we hiked to Burt's place. I made Sarah and Becky stay on the other side of Victory Highway behind some trees while I crossed the road. And I was glad I did. I found Burt behind the cash register with two bullet holes in him, one in his chest, the other in his head. I figured he'd been dead quite some time since his body no longer reeked of death. I didn't know what to do with him. I felt bad leaving his body there, but I didn't see any real alternative, so I left him where he was.

The store had been pretty well cleaned out. I found his keys in his trouser pocket. I grabbed everything I could find that I thought might be useful and packed it in the Cherokee, including some tools he had in the adjacent garage and a half-filled gas can.

The Cherokee groaned and warbled a few seconds before starting. It had been around five weeks since the virus hit and the battery was weak. I crossed the highway and picked up Sarah and Becky, and then I let the car run for about ten minutes to build the battery up before we took off. And then we had transportation.

We had pretty much everything we needed, but we knew we'd have to plan for the winter and find more food sources. Besides the stream, the reservoir was stocked with fish, but the reservoir would be the last option since it was out in the open. I knew I'd have to become a hunter too, something I'd always done my best to avoid. Despite my aversion, I knew how to hunt. Alex had been a dedicated hunter and I'd picked up a lot from him, even if I'd never used it. There was plenty of game in the nearby mountains and I had no doubt we would get by.

The despair I'd felt had all but dissipated. The first few days after the parking lot drama, the despondency hit me like aftershocks. Sarah and Becky coddled me during my recovery and saw to my every need. The attention they lavished on me soothed my soul.

Sarah reached over and touched my hand. Our fingers intertwined and we held hands lightly, arms and hands suspended between the two chairs. I glanced at Sarah and she gave me her quiet, contented smile, as if everything were right in the world. She had healed well and her face had returned to normal.

Holding hands had become as natural as breathing for us, even if it had been awkward and fumbling at first. We sought out each other's hands whenever we were close. Becky would often smile and giggle at our new found intimacy.

A solitary green leaf floated past us on its way down the stream, and I thought about the incessant movement of life and how you could never really capture a moment in your mind. There were no stills in a person's life like you get with a photograph. Life's moments were fleeting and gossamer-like, fragile, and as such, difficult to define in terms of truth or reality. We spend our lives giving life's moments meaning, defining them in our minds, creating personal truths based on them. Yet those truths were nothing more than perceptions and they were often tainted. And whether our self-imagined truths were real or not didn't matter, for we clung to them like vines to a trellis, refusing to let go. Lukas Melzer knew that. He counted on it.

As for me, I had never exactly done a very good job of defining the moments of my life. Of course, the view was clearer now in retrospect. I had spent my entire life living in the shadows of the past I'd created. And I'd allowed those shadows to define me, limit me, and hold me in their prison. I had managed to construct a story about myself in which I could never be happy. I could never be happy because I didn't believe I deserved to be happy. I'd spent my life on a self-directed fool's errand, never giving myself the chance to see the beauty all around me—Eden, I suppose you could call it. The possibility of it had always been there if I'd only opened my eyes.

I caught glimpses of it now.

I felt the silky texture of Sarah's fingers gently brush against mine, and I could feel her essence and all that sprung forth from it, all the intricacies that when cobbled together made Sarah who she was. I had always known about her inner strength and intelligence, and of course, her stubbornness. And I'd known about her dedication to Becky. But in the past few weeks, Sarah had begun to reveal more of herself—as had I—and new pieces were added to the mosaic every day. We confided in each other about our painful pasts and our innermost secrets and held nothing back.

And I learned that when it came to relationships, Sarah was every bit as artless as I was.

Becky got a momentary tug on her line but lost it and stamped her foot in frustration. She cocked her head and gave me an exasperated look. I smiled and shrugged with a fisherman's empathy. Becky reeled the line in and cast it out again, as determined as ever.

I smiled because I realized I loved Sarah and Becky every bit as much as I loved Alex.

A flirty morning breeze rifled through the trees, rustling the leaves before disappearing. I listened to the stream gurgle softly as the water trickled over the rocks, and I let myself get lost in the ambient sounds. I thought about Alex, or maybe I sensed his presence. I'd had the same feeling several times since we'd arrived at the cabin. It was as if his presence were as real as the stream and the woods surrounding us. And there were even times I swore I could hear his laughter woven into the wind. I knew I'd lost my brother for a time, but he was with me again, even if it was just in my mind.

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