Limping through the woods together. They blend and mesh chaotically and I wonder if we’re lost. But the high-towered church appears by the way, and as we cross the mangled path leading to it. I can almost hear Care ask, “Is that...?”
I nod and we carry on, leaving it behind.
My calf and foot still feel on fire from the flash grenade’s blast. Care pulls us ahead as I point the way, half-deaf, leaning on her shoulder. The chilly forest is still a barrage of faint images imposing on themselves in neverending cascade.
Sirens come and go. We ignore them and trek ever ahead, toward the sound of vehicles humming through the ringing. A highway of cars like blurry comets, two lanes on either side of a thin grass median. The traffic is sparse but endless. Every second, a car shoots by, gone as fast as it came, a trail of ghosts behind it.
I say we have to cross, and think she doesn’t hear. But she’s just afraid. I am too.
I let her go and push through brambles to the asphalt. Chill crosswinds whoosh to and fro, lifting at my greasy locks. Another car zooms by and steals our breath. Care appears beside me, threads her fingers between mine. I wonder if two or three tons of steel and glass striking at a hundred miles-an-hour would be as clean a death as an explosion. Or a sniper shot. But I push the thought away.
We bolt across the lanes, hand in hand. Instinct stops us halfway as a giant dark bullet roars in front of us. We pant and look at each other, almost laugh and cry. A flashing silver blur, and a few more behind us. We can’t stay. We can’t go back. We move to the median, surrounded by currents of rushing metal death.
“You didn’t have to come for me,” Care says in the drowning buzz.
“That’s exactly what I had to do,” I yell. “We’re almost there.”
We book it across the road, inches from destruction, and land on a grass hill skirted at the bottom by a drainage rut filled with small, white stones. We crawl up and see a dingy gas station surrounded by potholes and cargo trucks, not a soul in sight. My knees give out.
“You can barely stand!” she cries, pulling me up.
“I can make it.”
We limp together toward an eighteen-wheeler parked in the corner, as dead as the others. We pound on the cab to no answer. I desperately rap along its sides with the palm of my hand.
“Come on! This has to be it!” I shout. “He told me! He told me...!”
Suddenly the driver’s door pops open. A thick, hairy arm bids us closer and I hobble over, one step at a time. One step. Two steps...
“Hey, little ones,” a throaty voice says. “Where ya coming from?” The man inside is lanky and stringy. Big, ripped hands, forearms and calves interspaced by thin ankles and wrists, a long neck and jutting Adam’s apple, wide, crooked teeth. His hair is falling greasy curls of dirt blond bronzed by further highlights, parted around his eyes, which change in the light, turning green, brown, hazel, blue, evading any sure color.
“Coming from the picnic party,” I say. “We wanna go home.”
“And where’s home?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“Hmph. You don’t look so good.” He fetches a glance of Care. “Well, get in. Here on out, no more walking for you.”
He disappears in the back of the cab and we look at each other curiously, crawl inside over the driver’s seat. There’s an empty particle board table topped with faux wood in the back, with meat and cheese sandwiches sitting on paper plates, a locked suitcase behind them. We walk over and find we’re able to stand, putting the suitcase beside me.
“Ham and cheese,” a younger voice says from the driver’s seat. His head pops from around, pale and blue-eyed, veiny and blond. “Hope you’re not vegetarian...”
We sit. Care finds her appetite quickly and chows down.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Just a friendly truck driver. Don’t worry. I’ve driven a million times. I can handle it,” he affirms, as if calming my fears.
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere but here, you said.” The truck starts up with a thundering groan of the engine.
I sigh and slump into the corner of the bench. Something feels almost comfortable for once.
I blink and see Care, her hands grasping a sandwich, her lips covered with breadcrumbs. I blink again, a little darker, a little sleepier, and see a light smile on her face.
It’s all just a dream.