It's time for another chapter in which our characters struggle for survival.
If you haven't read the prior installments, you can read from the beginning on this PAGE.
Memoirs
From the End of the World
Entry
#21
RC looked up at Isabel, hesitating as she remembered her
wielding that hatchet. She’d only seen
her cut the body down afterwards, but this still raised some doubts in her
mind. Can I trust her?
Then a second thought came.
Can I afford not to trust her?
Turning to look at Alyx, she saw that his hair was matted to
his head. They’d both been sweating in
their sleep. Great as the warmth of the
otherwise horrific home felt, they were no longer accustomed to it. The cold of life on the outside had
officially become their reality.
Apart from his messy appearance, Alyx’s eyes were alert and
seemed to be forging ahead. He arrived
at his conclusion before RC did. “That
sounds good to me,” he whispered as he scrambled to his knees. He peered around the doorframe to get a view
of the hallway. “Is anyone else awake?”
Isabel glanced anxiously at the staircase at the end of the
hallway. “I don’t think so,” she replied
after a few tense moments. “We need to
move fast though. It’ll be dawn soon.”
When RC got to her feet, she noticed the blood in Isabel’s
hair. “Are you all right?”
The girl didn’t meet her eye. “I’ll be all right when we get out of here.”
More questions asserted themselves as RC noted Isabel’s
black eye and the blood embedded in her fingernails. Even so, they hardly had the time for such
questions, and she didn’t need to hear the answers to know that Isabel had a
bad night.
RC took her coat from Isabel and found her backpack still
looped around one of the arms. “It’s here,” she whispered. It must have fallen off too while Spiked Club
made his disgusting advances on her. A
quick survey of contents made it clear that no one had even touched it.
Isabel nodded. “It was
hidden under the coat. Even if they knew
it was there, they would’ve searched through it while you watched. We don’t need the supplies, but they love
making people watch while they take everything from them.”
“I gathered that,” Alyx said bitterly as he pulled on his
extra layers of clothes, which he’d stripped off in the closet to avoid
roasting entirely. “Do you have any idea
what the weather is like now?”
Isabel shook her head.
“No, but I can say it’s more dangerous in here than it is out there.”
No one could argue that point. With that in mind, the three of them tiptoed
out the door, gently closed it behind them, and ventured into the dark. The cold bit back even more sharply than it
had earlier. RC’s hair, which had also
been dampened with sweat, soon froze as they made their way through drifts of
snow.
Between the dark of night and the blowing snow, there was no
hope of seeing where they were going.
They had to stick together. Alyx
gripped RC’s hand, though in the cold it was still hard to feel that
connection. To preserve some warmth, RC
slipped the sleeve of her coat over his, effectively shielding their bare skin
from the wind. On the other side, Isabel
linked her arm through Alyx’s.
As they pushed through the snow, the howling winds in their
ears, RC struggled with more doubts. She
couldn’t forget the tracking device she dug out of Ollie’s back when they first
met. Would Isabel have something
similar, or did the overlords trust their selected goon squad not to abandon
their duties? If she was being tracked,
was her breaking them out a rouse to get to their actual hiding place? Did Gas Can and the others suspect Alyx was
purposely misleading them? Or even if
Isabel was carrying a tracker, maybe she was genuine in her desire to
escape. If that last one were true, RC
didn’t know if she could turn her back on her.
No matter what she told Romero, RC realized she couldn’t be
as cold as she told herself she needed to be.
Alyx was living proof of that.
And the kids. Also, though he
could be a pain, she didn’t want anything bad to happen to Ollie either.
Yet, bringing Isabel home, right though it might ultimately
be, could endanger them all.
If we can even make it back, RC added.
She had no idea which way they were actually going. Survival was primary. They couldn’t possibly make it to the house
now. Finding shelter from the cold and
disguising that shelter from anyone who might follow them had to be top
priority.
At least the monstrous winds were disguising their tracks.
It seemed like they’d been walking forever when Alyx altered
course. The faint light of dawn punched
through the blizzard, turning pitch black to a world of whites and grays. In that faintly visible world, the structure
of an old garage loomed. It was small,
but it would shield them from the worst of the elements.
Soon they were slipping in through a wooden door that didn’t
quite fit right in its rotting frame. A
tiny window let in just enough light to reveal that a few discarded items were
shoved against the back wall. They
scavenged a tarp, which they secured over the door to help block out the cold
air that leaked through. They also found
an old, ratty sleeping bag. Alyx
unzipped it and laid it so it covered all of them when they huddled into the
warmest corner they could find.
RC felt somewhat comforted by the arm that Alyx laid across
her shoulders. It reminded her of their
time in that closet where she felt the tenderness of human companionship that
she’d been missing. However, feeling it
also reminded her of how much she now stood to lose. Some questions of trustworthiness needed to
be addressed before they could move on.
“Isabel,” RC began, “I need to ask you something.”
