Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

she backed that one up to the same spot as the Fortwo. Number five, a Ford Flex and a Scion xB, two oversized toasters who’d hit head-on and killed their pilots instantly or close to it. The Flex she got to the hill side of the road; the Scion went over the down side to join the TLX in verdant oblivion.

She was pretty tired when she reached the four-car pileup and pondered just going around it. But as she turned and looked behind her, she froze. A family of deer – buck, doe, two little ones – had come down the hill and were browsing on the late-summer greenery by the side of the road. They didn’t seem to notice her, just snacked as they went, seeming utterly at peace in this new, quieter world.

She felt her heart fill at the sight, the natural beauty of it. She’d always been a city girl, granted that sometimes the “cities” were small unincorporated towns. Nature was a novelty or a danger, depending on the circumstances. She’d experienced both in the last week – the novelty of sitting naked on a rock while the sun radiated on her skin, the danger of the dog pack.

But this, this was something else – this was joy at the persistence of life, at the grace and elegance of the delicate yet swift animals. This had been their habitat since before the road was graded through the hills, probably before humans had come over the Bering Strait land bridge fifteen or twenty millennia ago. Now they were walking through it again, undisturbed by road traffic or hunters or any man-made noise and stress.

She must have stood there watching them for fifteen minutes, afraid to spook them by so much as breathing too loud, soaking in the sight as if it was pure happiness. Finally they wandered across the empty highway and down the hill on the other side, grazing and walking until they were out of sight.

She exhaled, and felt the weight of the world drop from her shoulders. She’d been telling herself things would be all right, but hadn’t remotely believed it. Now she more than believed it – she knew, knew the way she knew the sun would rise or a chair would hold her. It was simply the way it was.

Strengthened by the little revelation, she got two of the four wrecks moved to the roadside, sent the other two off the hill and into the brush, and moved on. That left only the eighteen-wheeler on its side farther up. She had no way of shifting it, though – at least no way she could manage with the equipment at hand. She ended up climbing uphill around and past it, mentally adding it to the possible list of future projects. Surely someone in Sayler Beach had a forklift or a bulldozer or … even a big pickup truck might do it.

She reached her own car, and got a good whiff of herself once she was inside and closed the door. Yuck – she not only needed a bath, she’d need to wash the backpack and Lysol the Hyundai’s interior. Too much time around decomposition had given her an odor that could kill a goat. “Well, that’s the price you pay for not dying – you have to smell yourself,” she said ruefully but with humor as she started the car.

Once home, she emptied the backpack, grabbed soap and towel and went straight to the water to wash herself, her clothes and the pack. After, she sat on that same rock in the altogether, relaxing and letting her outfit dry. You had to take the bad with the good in nature, just as you had to with anything else. But this, this moment of freedom and rest, was quite good indeed.

Kelly almost dozed off on the rock, but shook herself, dressed and climbed back up, her muscles creaky from all the exercise, her skin stiff and slightly burnt. She found she wasn’t hungry, having filled up on the snack bars, chips and water. No, she was just exhausted from all that time on the road, not to mention with the raccoon and the late residents of Marin County. It was the most … natural thing in the world to go to bed early again …

13

JOURNAL

… and apparently the most natural thing to sleep for twelve dreamless hours and wake up confused, wishing she’d taken a couple of aspirin before she’d conked out. Come to think, she’d forgotten to take her lithium as well. Yikes.

Kelly tried to sit up, but it took her three attempts, and it hurt. Her legs hurt from the walking. Her arms hurt from carrying that bat eight miles. Her shoulders hurt from the backpack. Her skin hurt because she hadn’t had the good sense to put on sunscreen. Her stomach hurt from not having dinner the day before. None of them hurt very badly, but the cumulative effect was something else.

She was already in the bathroom when her brain finally came online and reminded her there was no running water. Right – derp. To the backyard.

Over the last week, she’d started adjusting to using any convenient place as her outhouse when needed. The Zen farm had pit toilets, and at the store there were plastic bags and the Bog of Eternal Stench to throw them in. But when she was anywhere else, including on the road yesterday, she’d found an appropriate tree or bush to fertilize. Home was the one sticking point – there were plants of various sizes in the back, but she was leery about literally fouling her own nest. More often, she walked next door to the Alvarezes’ backyard.

Today, though, she was aching too much for the longer trip. She got a bottle of water, a washcloth, and grabbed Toni Matchick’s gardening trowel from the back porch. After doing what she needed