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I was pushed over and then lifted off the ground. My arm was hoisted across a set of broad shoulders that assisted me down the rickety metal steps while a deep voice muttered every swear word in existence.
“Jackie, is that you?” I asked, unable to focus on the person’s face while the background of trees and swamp were spinning all around us. “Have you been working out?”
“Jackie’s dead, kid. She’s been that way for a long while now,” the deep voice rasped.
“Yeah, I know that. But I still talk to her…” …hiccup… “sometimes.”
“It’s good to know you’re talking to someone these days. Why don’t you try and focus on the people still breathing? Might do you some good.” I couldn’t place his familiar voice.
Then again, I couldn’t place anything, including one foot in front of the other. I stumbled but was held upright and urged to keep moving forward.
“Okay, Jackie. Whatever you say,” I slurred as I was loaded into a vehicle.
I didn’t know if it was a car or a truck. It could have been a school bus for all my inebriated brain knew. All I wanted to do was sleep. My eyes grew heavier and heavier under the weight of my drunkenness. “I love you, Jackie. Always have. Always wiiiiiiiillllllll.”
“Stay out of the damned water park or you’re gonna end up dead too,” the voice said, starting the engine. “Then there will be a lot more people who feel the way you do now. Like they were left behind.”
“Nooooo, they can’t feel that way,” I argued.
“Oh yeah, rock star? Why exactly is that?”
“Because, I’m already dead,” I explained, although the point of making any sense had long passed as I dropped my head against the window and closed my eyes.
“You can try and pretend you’re dead all you want, kid, but you ain’t foolin’ anyone.” I felt the sting of a slap against my cheek and lazily swatted the air in retaliation. “It’s best you start acting that way.”
I woke up in the driver’s seat of my Bronco with my seatbelt fastened feeling as if I’d spent the last several hours standing directly next to the speakers at a death metal concert…during the drum solo.
It was still dark out and I was parked in front of the house I hadn’t lived in for years. “How the fuck did I get here?” I grumbled, starting the engine.
It was the very last place I wanted to be.
I checked the clock. It was ten p.m. I vaguely remembered going to the water park earlier in the day.
Jackie.
The memory of why I went there hit me like a hammer to the heart. The anniversary of her death.
I turned up the radio to drown out the memories that always came when I thought of her. I lit a joint and put the Bronco in drive.
I’d just turned onto the highway, still in a Jackie and alcohol induced daze when I almost didn’t see the RV in the middle of the road.
Or the girl.
She was staring at me as I grew closer and closer with a panicked expression on her face. She was probably wondering why I wasn’t stopping.
She had a good point.
I slammed on the brakes, or at least I thought I did.
My brain was sluggish in sending out the message to my foot. When it finally cooperated, the stop was sudden. The brakes squealed as metal scraped against metal. I yanked on the wheel and my truck turned sideways and started to spin.
I glanced up through the open roof to the stars rotating above me. I wondered if tonight was the night I’d finally be able to stop missing Jackie.
Because there was a real possibility I’d be seeing her again soon.
Chapter Five
Sawyer
The highway grew smaller and smaller until I was sure it was going to just disappear. Smooth tar pavement was now pot hole riddled and mixed with sections of only dirt or rock. My tailbone ached from all the ups and downs.
I passed an exit ramp that looked as if it had been started but never finished. A few feet off the highway the broken pavement turned to dirt with tall weeds growing up through it. Bright yellow barricades, most of them heavily dented, blocked the way off the main road.
Was that the exit?
There was no sign, but I knew I had to be getting close.
I also knew that I was kind of lost.
The town of Outskirts was barely a dot on the old faded map from the glove compartment. It was located at the tip top of the Everglades and smack in the middle of the two Florida coastlines. I’d been driving for two days, but as my eyes grew heavy, my spirit grew with determination.
I pressed on the gas pedal to increase my speed to something above grandma level, but nothing happened.
The only other car on the highway zipped past me and it wasn’t because they were speeding, it was because I was slowing down.
Way down.
The sound of something exploding boomed from under the hood causing me to shriek in surprise. White smoke filled the night air like a mini mushroom cloud.
“No! No! No!” I screamed to no-one as Rusty, who was aptly named, sputtered and coughed.
The dashboard lights switched off all at once and Rusty the truck sadly and dramatically rolled to a stop in the middle of the deserted highway. “Not now. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll keep you in the shade. I’ll wash you every day. I’ll sing to you at night. Please just please don’t stop now.” I promised all of that plus anything else I could think of to keep him alive, but with one last final death rattle, both my heart and my gut sank along with any hope I had of spontaneous revival.
Rusty was no more.
I ground my teeth and pounded my fist on the steering wheel, hissing when the side of my hand vibrated with pain up to my elbow. “Ouch!” I screamed as if he’d actually hit me back.
Hopping out into the road, I kicked the driver’s side door several times which it responded by partially falling from its hinges. Chips of faded paint and rust fell onto the cracked asphalt. With one last grunt of frustration, I turned around to face the dark empty highway. I dropped to the ground and leaned back against the worn front tire, dropping my head between my knees.
“What the hell do I do now?” I muttered as a dark cloud rolled over the stars, turning the night from dim to black.
“What about you Blue? Are you going to give up on me too?” I asked the camper that was hitched to Rusty.
Blue’s metal siding was white on the top and bottom. A faded dove blue stripe ran down the center separating the white. It was thick and horizontal, the same width as the height of the single window.
When I first saw it, I thought my mom had called her Blue because of the stripe. I was wrong. Inside, the walls, the little cabinets above the mattress, the tiny stove, and even the countertops and composting toilet were all baby blue. Even the torn linoleum covering the floors was white and blue checkered.
Everything had started out so great. When I’d rescued Rusty and Blue from storage unit jail I found that it was fully equipped. Blankets, canned food, gallons of water in the storage area in the back that could only be opened from the outside. A full water tank for the mini-bathroom/shower area.
There was a lot of planning and effort to get this ready for me, but for the life of me I still couldn’t figure out how Mom had managed to do it all on her own.
Suddenly the pavement vibrated, warning of an oncoming vehicle. I stood and peered down the black highway in both directions.
Nothing.
However, the echo of an engine cut through the silence, the rumbling growing louder and louder, but still I couldn’t see anything.
By the time the truck became visible it was too late.
