Posted on October 23, 2007

Part 44

The two of them didn’t talk as they explored the town. Hope bounced along behind while Elliot and Evajean looked for anything that might help them get their stalled journey going again. A moderate rain had kicked up, extinguishing most of the fires beyond the still raging church. Elliot also had a hunch–one he didn’t tell Evajean about–that the force that had killed the crazies had also snuffed out much of the flames.

Evajean had eventually come to with Elliot still sitting in the middle of a vast circle of bodies, radiating out though the whole of Nahom. She’d blinked at him, coughed a few times, and asked what happened, shock overcoming her as she noticed the wreckage of crazies. He comforted her as best he could but his careful recounting of the events over the prior minutes pushed Evajean toward hysteria. Eventually she told him to stop, that she had the gist of it and didn’t need to know the details, not now.

At the present, however, picking their way over bodies that thinned out as they got further from the epicenter of… whatever it was that had happened, they each focused on this new search, hunting for options to prevent having to walk all the way to Colorado. Nahom had supplies: canned goods, tools, and guns. But without something to carry it all in, they’d only be able to take a minimum, perhaps not enough to make it out of the mountains–or even just back to the road.

Evajean insisted they split up to make better time. Elliot was against the idea initially but when he realized the separation was only to allow her time to collect herself, he went along with it. She took Hope and headed around to the buildings on the opposite side of the church from where they’d spent most of their time.

As he wandered through another house, this one slightly larger than the cottage they’d stayed in, he finally allowed himself the opportunity to go over everything that had happened since the crazies had first come down the hill to interrupt the funeral. It’s still Evajean, he told himself. Whatever all the rest of that was, it’s still her. But he wasn’t so sure and that made him queasy. She’d been sick–not for long, true, but there was no doubt it had been the same sickness that’d claimed so many. And then she’d found the box, or the box had found her.

That was all secondary, however. The display in the circle, her strange words and the sudden death of all those crazies; those images kept driving through his mind. He recalled the look of calm power on her face as she’d given her speech to the woman in red, and the power that’d come from the box as she held it high.

Her words.

He couldn’t even remember all of them now. They were lost in the terror of that moment. But he had heard her call this the waypoint–she’d told the crazies to leave it–and that word, when examined in the light of this series of coincidences, consumed his focus.

Elliot pushed bags of flour and cornmeal around in a cabinet, but he wasn’t paying attention to them. His mind was gathering and sifting.

The only two people left in what felt like a very large chunk of Virginia happened to be across the street from each other. They happened to be run off the road, separated, and yet each found the same mountain town, a town so small and isolated it might not be on any but the most detailed maps. And that town was full of living, breathing, uninfected people who had somehow managed to find Elliot when he’d been some distance away, a captive of the crazies.

It was all so much. How had he and Evajean found Nahom? Was Nahom the waypoint Evajean had spoken of? The waypoint of what?

Elliot wished for a moment that he’d been more into that conspiracy theory stuff, piecing together explanations comprised of alien abductions, Masons, reptilian royal families, and Scientologists. If his mind had more experience doing that kind of thing–finding hidden connections–he might be able to solve this. But the simple fact was that it overwhelmed him, the disparate facts and situations blurred in his thoughts by the emotions–love, loss, terror–they were constantly buffeted by. You’re not smart enough, he thought. Clarine could have done it, she had that kind of quick mind, but you’re just not smart enough to force the fragments into a whole.

The trouble was, because he couldn’t figure it out, Elliot was starting to distrust her. She’d told the folks of Nahom he was out there, sent them out to find him. She’d spent hours with them before he arrived, hours she might used to plan. Was it all, then, just a show for his benefit? Had she arranged this? That was crazy, he knew, but the thoughts wouldn’t go away.

She was calling from outside, shouting to him. “Elliot!” he heard from some distance. He put down the can of pears he been turning absently in his hand and came out onto the porch. She ran toward him, waving her arms. She was smiling though, even laughing, so he waited for her to come to him.

“Elliot,” she said when she was close enough to not have to shout, “you’re not going– It’s– God, Elliot, they have a truck! I found a truck!” She was panting, grinning, and her face flushed. “It works,” she continued, slightly calmed down, “and there’s gas. There were keys in it and I tried and it worked!”

The dog bounded clumsily to her side, out of breath, its tongue flopping out the side of its mouth. “But how are we–” he started, but she cut him off, waving her hands in excitement.

“That’s the best part. There’s a road. Right back there. It’s wide enough for the truck and I bet that’s what it’s for because there are tread marks. I think we can get out of here!”

The dog barked and happily attacked her foot. Evajean giggled.