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rainbowfic2015-10-08 11:09 pm
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-10-08 11:09 pm
Prism 4, Folly 3, Admin Yellow 14
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends/Universe B: 28 Days Later Edition
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Rainbow color for October), Mosaic (with 28 Days Later)
Characters: Corwin (POV), Sorrell, more friendly strangers.
Colors: Prism 4 (green), Folly 3 (They can’t possibly hit us at this range.), Admin Yellow 14 (I don’t particularly like killing people, but I’m very good at it.)
Word Count: 2,600ish
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Not everything you meet in the woods is evil.
Note: “Summer Blockbuster” is dovetailing awesomely in to “Halloween Horror Flick,” if I do say so!
You’re Never Out of the Woods
We usually do this when we find a storm drain, but there are no storm drains where we’ve found ourselves, so the woods will have to do.
It’s just one more weird thing about today, I guess.
Normally, it’s Sorrell who empties out the toilet. I guess she figures that it’s her motorhome, if it’s anyone’s, so it’s her problem. But, I’d just gotten over some food poisoning I’d picked up eating from a jar, so I figured this time was my responsibility. I let the little rubber tube flop out of the hatch, listened for the first few wet splatters, and took some time to meditate on how this had apparently been going on so long that things were starting to go bad. Things fall apart; no longer shall we eat out of glass. Goodbye plastic; the end is extremely fucking nigh.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that really drive it home: no one is going to take the damn world and put it back the way it was. Everyone who could is otherwise occupied.
Snarling and spitting blood; rotting in the ground. Eating out of cans and shitting in a bucket.
One of the most intelligent, driven people in the world is lashed to a chainlink fence, quietly decomposing. Mind frozen in mid-loss, the brain that held it turning liquid and falling away. A once-neon cord, fading in the sun.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, literally everything to shit at one point or another.
Maybe it’s just the smell getting to me.
I walked a few yards away and ducked behind a tree. Far enough to fade the stench, still close enough to dart inside if I had to. Not that I would. You don’t really see Infected out so far these days. Just their dry bones. A tattered shirt waving from a branch.
Going on what they leave behind, there isn’t much difference between them and us.
We’re both dying out.
But, the paranoia never dies. Any muffled snap could be the last thing you hear. You spend countless minutes in silent horror, trying to make sure, really sure, that the breathing you’re hearing is all your own.
It’s not that hard to tell. There’s a difference. Before the bullet shattered his skull, he was aspirating blood and vomit. You heard the whole thing.
I tried not to worry. Out in the woods, it was easy to convince yourself that any breaking or rustling you hear is just some deer or bird. Who doesn’t know what I am, or what happened out in my concrete world, or why every sound they make terrifies me. And the only breathing I hear is mine. It’s quiet and just barely obstructed; leftover soot from my other life, when I was a young professor, yanking down my tie and smoking on the quad.
Then the snaps got louder, and another set of lungs joined mine, sounding like they’d carried their body quite a long way. The shape emerging from the bushes was human. And yeah, Infected don’t usually come out here, but I wasn’t really sure if anyone not infected would be just wandering around the woods like that.
Movements normal, no godawful sounds. He got closer. I squinted at his face. Eyes okay.
This wasn’t an Infected. It was just a teenager. And, in the old world, I wouldn’t think twice about his presence here. The little squirt probably just wanted to play with a BB gun, or drink a can of his dad’s beer without getting yelled at. But, this wasn’t that world, so I kind of wondered what the hell he was doing.
Even though he wasn’t Infected, I was still bracing myself to bolt. The last time we ran into a stranger, he tried to carjack us. The stranger before that smashed our window with a wrench and tried to electrocute us.
Then again, both of those guys turned out to be pretty alright, so I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do.
Confusing as the old one, this new world was.
I stood there trying to figure out what to do, and was getting my mouth and brain on the same page so I could yell for Sorrell. Then a bullet almost hit my foot. Another whizzed past my head, on the side where I didn’t see so well. The crazy thing was, nobody had a gun. At least, nobody I could see.
I bolted after all. Or, at least I started. I tripped over a log, fell in a puddle, and panicked all over again because I thought I’d just pitched myself into shit-water. But, it was just typical nasty ditch juice, so I was probably okay.
Sorrell stepped around from the front of the motorhome, gun at the ready. I glanced at the gun, noticed it was Martin’s. Or mine, I guess.
A bullet almost grazed her loose-for-once hair, and embedded itself in the side of the motorhome. You think some weird things when shit gets intense, and I thought about how it would have at least been consistent if it had gone through a window.
The kid took a few steps back, pushed up his glasses, and muttered something into a walkie-talkie.
“They’re… Normal. Over.”
A crackly voice from god-knows-where: “Kittrell, get down!”
The kid crouched on the forest floor. Another bullet barely missed Sorrell. Then, silence. The kid looked at Sorrell.
“...Don’t worry. If he wanted you dead, believe me, you would be. He just wants you to put down your gun.”
Sorrell, hesitantly, sat the gun at her feet. But I saw how her right hand seemed to hold itself away from the rest of her body. She hadn’t really put the gun down. Not in her mind. She’d still save me, if it came to that.
For a while, no one said anything. The kid stood back up. After about five minutes, I got concerned that this situation had ended without telling any of us, and we’d just stand here indefinitely, waiting for a conclusion that wasn’t coming. Then I heard more snapping and soft footsteps. These were a lot quieter, like the one making them knew what he was doing, but I could still tell they were getting closer. The kid shrugged and muttered under his breath.
“That’s my brother. Sorry.”
I was about to say, “for what,” but then I remembered that this was probably the same person who was shooting at us.
And then I knew that for a fact, because when he finally popped out of the bushes, he was lugging a sniper rifle over his shoulder. Young guy, probably still young enough that, if things had gone differently, I might have had to grade one of his papers. Dark hair, tall, looked like he could probably run for a while, but not like he could take a punch. Actually, he looked like one of those guys who could take a punch, better than anyone, but it always surprised you. Speaking as a guy who can’t take a punch, believe me, it’s two different categories.
And it looked like I was about to know for sure, because Sorrell was coiled up and ready to pounce.
“We’re at close-range now, buddyboy.”
They stared at each other, and just when I was pretty sure I was going to have to watch a fistfight, Mr. Probably-Could-Take-a-Punch cracked up laughing.
“...Sorry. It’s just, yeah. Can’t be too careful.”
I don’t know how we keep finding these people. But at least they always let us live long enough to figure out that they’re decent-enough folks. Sorrell relaxed.
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. You know… Same here.”
The kid stood next to his brother, who cleared his throat harshly.
“...Okay, then. I’m Milo, that’s Kit. Want to come up to our house for a while?”
Eventually, Sorrell nodded. But when she picked up the gun, I could tell she wasn’t just putting it away.
*****
The walk back into the woods was long and exhausting, but it turned out that we weren’t being lead into some kind of trap. These were just regular kids. Or what passed for regular kids these days. They were occupying one of those cabins that people would rent when they wanted to camp but didn’t have any actual camping stuff. Two windows, bad insulation, a wood stove, bunk beds. We all sat on the concrete floor. Except for Milo, who was trying to make a bunch of cans and packets into a home-cooked meal. Sorrell and I listened patiently while Kit told a bunch of long, rambling stories. About how they got to where they were, hitchhiking sometimes, but mostly on foot. Shaken down by highwaymen, pursued by Infected, cold and hungry and exposed. They eventually figured out how to sleep in trees without falling down.
I said it was probably an old genetic memory. Something our ancestors knew back when whole families perched in the branches, bark under their hands and sun on their coarse fur. Not knowing how it was going to end. That it was how close we stayed to those wise old roots that left us vulnerable to the unstoppable.
I thought about this for a while. Kit changed the subject to how excited he was that his brother was teaching him how to shoot. Then to Milo’s twenty-second birthday two weeks before, and how they didn’t know what kind of party they could have, so they sat up on the roof telling scary stories all night, Milo never letting go of his gun.
I was about to ask what the point of it was. How they could even still feel any new fear, on top of the fear that filled them up and became such a part of their lives that it seemed to vanish.
But then, Milo wandered over, ladled out big bowls of whatever-it-was, and finally sat down. We talked about what he wanted to talk about.
I realized that fear was my own.
*****
“So, you guys headed for the coast?”
Milo was stacking up the bowls in a mudsink. I wondered why. They didn’t have running water. Sorrell shook her head.
“We’re not headed anywhere.”
He thought about that for a while. Like he couldn’t even imagine it, like, even holed up here in the woods, he was racing toward something. I knew his kind.
“Ah… Well, what I’ve been hearing is… Kit? How ‘bout you tell them? You’re the one I got it from.”
Kit was lying on the bottom bunk, reading a book he’d probably read about eighteen times.
“...Huh. Oh. Well, I don’t know if it’s true. But last time I went hitchhiking for supplies and stuff, the guy who picked me up kept talking about this town or whatever. Like, a real town. A new one.”
I looked over at Sorrell.
“...That’s twice.”
She shrugged.
“We’ve heard about it too, is what he’s saying.”
Milo looked confused.
“But that’s not where you’re going?”
Here we go again.
“Well, like your brother said. We don’t know if it’s true.”
Satchel had also brushed her off, but it was with an almost cheerful, well-as-long-as-we’re-driving-anyway wave of the hand. Milo was different. He tensed up, turned away from the plastic sink.
“Well, no shit, but you guys can like, drive anywhere. You can go find out for yourselves.”
I don’t know what else was said, because I was tired and stopped paying attention. Kit put down his book. Milo dragged a pair of musty sleeping bags out from under the bed, let the lantern go out.
*****
I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling kind of lopsided and dented from sleeping on the floor. Milo… Well, for all I knew, he hadn’t gone to bed at all. He was sitting by the stove, trying to read a dilapidated book by the light of the coals. I stood up, stretched, and mumbled:
“...Where the hell do you guys piss?”
Milo pointed at the door.
“Woods.”
I walked outside. I pissed in the woods.
Once inside, I planned to just crawl back in my sleeping bag, but Milo stopped me.
“If you’re just driving around aimlessly or some shit, you should drive us to the coast.”
I didn’t know how I felt about the rumors, but honestly, I wasn’t adverse. Martin was dead. Spenser was… Well, who the hell knows? (He’s probably dead, too.) Two wasn’t enough. I glanced at Milo. He looked exhausted.
Two wasn’t enough.
“Sorrell’s the one doing the driving. Ask her.”
He shook his head.
“I already did, remember?”
Truth be told, I didn’t. But I guess that’s what he was trying to do.
“You just didn’t approach it from the the right angle. If you asked to tag along with us, be an extra pair of hands, whatever… I mean, she’s done it before. And that was when we had a really good scout and gunman with us. Now she just has… Me. I mean, look at me. I’m useless out there.”
I laughed, tried to make it sound like a joke. But honestly, I wanted him to start sizing me up. The scars, and the patch over the burned-out crater of my eye. My build, like one of those people who wake up from a ten-year coma with all their muscles gone. The way I sniffled constantly because of all the crap funnelled into my nose from the empty socket. How badly I needed someone to pick up my slack before I got both of us killed. But, he didn’t even look at me. I thought of Satchel again, how he dragged his brother around in the bed of his truck. Same “no such thing as a useless person” horseshit. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not one I need.
I need someone to notice that I’m pretty well fucked.
But, maybe it wasn’t like that. Maybe he just figured that I’d made it this far.
If not in one piece.
*****
“I think we should take them with us.”
All the wrestling with the sticky sleeping bag zipper, its metallic scraping, my cursing, had woken Sorrell. Maybe only halfway, but enough for me to at least talk at her. She rolled over. Her sleeping bag made that repulsive squeaky nylon sound.
“How come?”
Because maybe I want to see it for myself, too.
“They want to. And it’s hard with just the two of us.”
She was more awake than she had been, and we were both staring up at the rafters. Milo was already asleep on the top bunk. The coals were burning down.
“They’re just trying to catch a ride to some place they’ve only heard of, I don’t know… About seventh-hand by now.”
“Well, maybe, but it’s not like we haven’t been going nowhere. Let’s just go nowhere in a different direction, and with some help…”
Sorrell was falling asleep again.
“They’re two little boys. They can’t help with shit.”
I remember her saying something like that before.
“Well, the older one isn’t much younger than Martin… Was.”
Old as he’d ever get.
“Martin was different.”
“I know. He didn’t really need us. They might.”
The bag squeaked again.
“I’ll sleep on it, okay?”
“Sure. Goodnight.”
*****
And I guess she must have slept on it, because, after breakfast, we packed our things.
All four of us.
I don’t know what the truth is. And I don’t know what we’ll find.
This, I do know:
We’re not going nowhere anymore.
starphotographsStory: Corwin and Friends/Universe B: 28 Days Later Edition
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Rainbow color for October), Mosaic (with 28 Days Later)
Characters: Corwin (POV), Sorrell, more friendly strangers.
Colors: Prism 4 (green), Folly 3 (They can’t possibly hit us at this range.), Admin Yellow 14 (I don’t particularly like killing people, but I’m very good at it.)
Word Count: 2,600ish
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Not everything you meet in the woods is evil.
Note: “Summer Blockbuster” is dovetailing awesomely in to “Halloween Horror Flick,” if I do say so!
We usually do this when we find a storm drain, but there are no storm drains where we’ve found ourselves, so the woods will have to do.
It’s just one more weird thing about today, I guess.
Normally, it’s Sorrell who empties out the toilet. I guess she figures that it’s her motorhome, if it’s anyone’s, so it’s her problem. But, I’d just gotten over some food poisoning I’d picked up eating from a jar, so I figured this time was my responsibility. I let the little rubber tube flop out of the hatch, listened for the first few wet splatters, and took some time to meditate on how this had apparently been going on so long that things were starting to go bad. Things fall apart; no longer shall we eat out of glass. Goodbye plastic; the end is extremely fucking nigh.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that really drive it home: no one is going to take the damn world and put it back the way it was. Everyone who could is otherwise occupied.
Snarling and spitting blood; rotting in the ground. Eating out of cans and shitting in a bucket.
One of the most intelligent, driven people in the world is lashed to a chainlink fence, quietly decomposing. Mind frozen in mid-loss, the brain that held it turning liquid and falling away. A once-neon cord, fading in the sun.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, literally everything to shit at one point or another.
Maybe it’s just the smell getting to me.
I walked a few yards away and ducked behind a tree. Far enough to fade the stench, still close enough to dart inside if I had to. Not that I would. You don’t really see Infected out so far these days. Just their dry bones. A tattered shirt waving from a branch.
Going on what they leave behind, there isn’t much difference between them and us.
We’re both dying out.
But, the paranoia never dies. Any muffled snap could be the last thing you hear. You spend countless minutes in silent horror, trying to make sure, really sure, that the breathing you’re hearing is all your own.
It’s not that hard to tell. There’s a difference. Before the bullet shattered his skull, he was aspirating blood and vomit. You heard the whole thing.
I tried not to worry. Out in the woods, it was easy to convince yourself that any breaking or rustling you hear is just some deer or bird. Who doesn’t know what I am, or what happened out in my concrete world, or why every sound they make terrifies me. And the only breathing I hear is mine. It’s quiet and just barely obstructed; leftover soot from my other life, when I was a young professor, yanking down my tie and smoking on the quad.
Then the snaps got louder, and another set of lungs joined mine, sounding like they’d carried their body quite a long way. The shape emerging from the bushes was human. And yeah, Infected don’t usually come out here, but I wasn’t really sure if anyone not infected would be just wandering around the woods like that.
Movements normal, no godawful sounds. He got closer. I squinted at his face. Eyes okay.
This wasn’t an Infected. It was just a teenager. And, in the old world, I wouldn’t think twice about his presence here. The little squirt probably just wanted to play with a BB gun, or drink a can of his dad’s beer without getting yelled at. But, this wasn’t that world, so I kind of wondered what the hell he was doing.
Even though he wasn’t Infected, I was still bracing myself to bolt. The last time we ran into a stranger, he tried to carjack us. The stranger before that smashed our window with a wrench and tried to electrocute us.
Then again, both of those guys turned out to be pretty alright, so I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do.
Confusing as the old one, this new world was.
I stood there trying to figure out what to do, and was getting my mouth and brain on the same page so I could yell for Sorrell. Then a bullet almost hit my foot. Another whizzed past my head, on the side where I didn’t see so well. The crazy thing was, nobody had a gun. At least, nobody I could see.
I bolted after all. Or, at least I started. I tripped over a log, fell in a puddle, and panicked all over again because I thought I’d just pitched myself into shit-water. But, it was just typical nasty ditch juice, so I was probably okay.
Sorrell stepped around from the front of the motorhome, gun at the ready. I glanced at the gun, noticed it was Martin’s. Or mine, I guess.
A bullet almost grazed her loose-for-once hair, and embedded itself in the side of the motorhome. You think some weird things when shit gets intense, and I thought about how it would have at least been consistent if it had gone through a window.
The kid took a few steps back, pushed up his glasses, and muttered something into a walkie-talkie.
“They’re… Normal. Over.”
A crackly voice from god-knows-where: “Kittrell, get down!”
The kid crouched on the forest floor. Another bullet barely missed Sorrell. Then, silence. The kid looked at Sorrell.
“...Don’t worry. If he wanted you dead, believe me, you would be. He just wants you to put down your gun.”
Sorrell, hesitantly, sat the gun at her feet. But I saw how her right hand seemed to hold itself away from the rest of her body. She hadn’t really put the gun down. Not in her mind. She’d still save me, if it came to that.
For a while, no one said anything. The kid stood back up. After about five minutes, I got concerned that this situation had ended without telling any of us, and we’d just stand here indefinitely, waiting for a conclusion that wasn’t coming. Then I heard more snapping and soft footsteps. These were a lot quieter, like the one making them knew what he was doing, but I could still tell they were getting closer. The kid shrugged and muttered under his breath.
“That’s my brother. Sorry.”
I was about to say, “for what,” but then I remembered that this was probably the same person who was shooting at us.
And then I knew that for a fact, because when he finally popped out of the bushes, he was lugging a sniper rifle over his shoulder. Young guy, probably still young enough that, if things had gone differently, I might have had to grade one of his papers. Dark hair, tall, looked like he could probably run for a while, but not like he could take a punch. Actually, he looked like one of those guys who could take a punch, better than anyone, but it always surprised you. Speaking as a guy who can’t take a punch, believe me, it’s two different categories.
And it looked like I was about to know for sure, because Sorrell was coiled up and ready to pounce.
“We’re at close-range now, buddyboy.”
They stared at each other, and just when I was pretty sure I was going to have to watch a fistfight, Mr. Probably-Could-Take-a-Punch cracked up laughing.
“...Sorry. It’s just, yeah. Can’t be too careful.”
I don’t know how we keep finding these people. But at least they always let us live long enough to figure out that they’re decent-enough folks. Sorrell relaxed.
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. You know… Same here.”
The kid stood next to his brother, who cleared his throat harshly.
“...Okay, then. I’m Milo, that’s Kit. Want to come up to our house for a while?”
Eventually, Sorrell nodded. But when she picked up the gun, I could tell she wasn’t just putting it away.
The walk back into the woods was long and exhausting, but it turned out that we weren’t being lead into some kind of trap. These were just regular kids. Or what passed for regular kids these days. They were occupying one of those cabins that people would rent when they wanted to camp but didn’t have any actual camping stuff. Two windows, bad insulation, a wood stove, bunk beds. We all sat on the concrete floor. Except for Milo, who was trying to make a bunch of cans and packets into a home-cooked meal. Sorrell and I listened patiently while Kit told a bunch of long, rambling stories. About how they got to where they were, hitchhiking sometimes, but mostly on foot. Shaken down by highwaymen, pursued by Infected, cold and hungry and exposed. They eventually figured out how to sleep in trees without falling down.
I said it was probably an old genetic memory. Something our ancestors knew back when whole families perched in the branches, bark under their hands and sun on their coarse fur. Not knowing how it was going to end. That it was how close we stayed to those wise old roots that left us vulnerable to the unstoppable.
I thought about this for a while. Kit changed the subject to how excited he was that his brother was teaching him how to shoot. Then to Milo’s twenty-second birthday two weeks before, and how they didn’t know what kind of party they could have, so they sat up on the roof telling scary stories all night, Milo never letting go of his gun.
I was about to ask what the point of it was. How they could even still feel any new fear, on top of the fear that filled them up and became such a part of their lives that it seemed to vanish.
But then, Milo wandered over, ladled out big bowls of whatever-it-was, and finally sat down. We talked about what he wanted to talk about.
I realized that fear was my own.
“So, you guys headed for the coast?”
Milo was stacking up the bowls in a mudsink. I wondered why. They didn’t have running water. Sorrell shook her head.
“We’re not headed anywhere.”
He thought about that for a while. Like he couldn’t even imagine it, like, even holed up here in the woods, he was racing toward something. I knew his kind.
“Ah… Well, what I’ve been hearing is… Kit? How ‘bout you tell them? You’re the one I got it from.”
Kit was lying on the bottom bunk, reading a book he’d probably read about eighteen times.
“...Huh. Oh. Well, I don’t know if it’s true. But last time I went hitchhiking for supplies and stuff, the guy who picked me up kept talking about this town or whatever. Like, a real town. A new one.”
I looked over at Sorrell.
“...That’s twice.”
She shrugged.
“We’ve heard about it too, is what he’s saying.”
Milo looked confused.
“But that’s not where you’re going?”
Here we go again.
“Well, like your brother said. We don’t know if it’s true.”
Satchel had also brushed her off, but it was with an almost cheerful, well-as-long-as-we’re-driving-anyway wave of the hand. Milo was different. He tensed up, turned away from the plastic sink.
“Well, no shit, but you guys can like, drive anywhere. You can go find out for yourselves.”
I don’t know what else was said, because I was tired and stopped paying attention. Kit put down his book. Milo dragged a pair of musty sleeping bags out from under the bed, let the lantern go out.
I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling kind of lopsided and dented from sleeping on the floor. Milo… Well, for all I knew, he hadn’t gone to bed at all. He was sitting by the stove, trying to read a dilapidated book by the light of the coals. I stood up, stretched, and mumbled:
“...Where the hell do you guys piss?”
Milo pointed at the door.
“Woods.”
I walked outside. I pissed in the woods.
Once inside, I planned to just crawl back in my sleeping bag, but Milo stopped me.
“If you’re just driving around aimlessly or some shit, you should drive us to the coast.”
I didn’t know how I felt about the rumors, but honestly, I wasn’t adverse. Martin was dead. Spenser was… Well, who the hell knows? (He’s probably dead, too.) Two wasn’t enough. I glanced at Milo. He looked exhausted.
Two wasn’t enough.
“Sorrell’s the one doing the driving. Ask her.”
He shook his head.
“I already did, remember?”
Truth be told, I didn’t. But I guess that’s what he was trying to do.
“You just didn’t approach it from the the right angle. If you asked to tag along with us, be an extra pair of hands, whatever… I mean, she’s done it before. And that was when we had a really good scout and gunman with us. Now she just has… Me. I mean, look at me. I’m useless out there.”
I laughed, tried to make it sound like a joke. But honestly, I wanted him to start sizing me up. The scars, and the patch over the burned-out crater of my eye. My build, like one of those people who wake up from a ten-year coma with all their muscles gone. The way I sniffled constantly because of all the crap funnelled into my nose from the empty socket. How badly I needed someone to pick up my slack before I got both of us killed. But, he didn’t even look at me. I thought of Satchel again, how he dragged his brother around in the bed of his truck. Same “no such thing as a useless person” horseshit. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not one I need.
I need someone to notice that I’m pretty well fucked.
But, maybe it wasn’t like that. Maybe he just figured that I’d made it this far.
If not in one piece.
“I think we should take them with us.”
All the wrestling with the sticky sleeping bag zipper, its metallic scraping, my cursing, had woken Sorrell. Maybe only halfway, but enough for me to at least talk at her. She rolled over. Her sleeping bag made that repulsive squeaky nylon sound.
“How come?”
Because maybe I want to see it for myself, too.
“They want to. And it’s hard with just the two of us.”
She was more awake than she had been, and we were both staring up at the rafters. Milo was already asleep on the top bunk. The coals were burning down.
“They’re just trying to catch a ride to some place they’ve only heard of, I don’t know… About seventh-hand by now.”
“Well, maybe, but it’s not like we haven’t been going nowhere. Let’s just go nowhere in a different direction, and with some help…”
Sorrell was falling asleep again.
“They’re two little boys. They can’t help with shit.”
I remember her saying something like that before.
“Well, the older one isn’t much younger than Martin… Was.”
Old as he’d ever get.
“Martin was different.”
“I know. He didn’t really need us. They might.”
The bag squeaked again.
“I’ll sleep on it, okay?”
“Sure. Goodnight.”
And I guess she must have slept on it, because, after breakfast, we packed our things.
All four of us.
I don’t know what the truth is. And I don’t know what we’ll find.
This, I do know:
We’re not going nowhere anymore.
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But, so slice-of-lifey and cute. Esp. the part about sleeping in trees. That just warmed my heart. Thank you for posting!
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