Page 50 of Hero

Eventually I go back into the house and walk up the stairs to check the bedroom. Rina is sound asleep, resting her head on her dad’s shoulder.

Zed is sound asleep too, one of his arms wrapped around the girl.

The same tenderness I experienced earlier tightens, rises in my chest. I gaze down at them for a long time.

I’m utterly exhausted and am tempted by the second twin bed in the room, but I restrain the impulse.

I take position in the hallway outside the room at the top of the stairs. It’s the only route for an attacker to get to us. I stay on guard until more than half the night is over.

I’d stay awake until dawn the way Zed did last night, but eventually I can barely keep my eyes open. So I wake him up in the wee hours so we can switch off.

He smiles at me groggily as he opens his eyes.

It’s been a long day and an even longer night, but it ended okay.

7

The next morning,we get going shortly after the sun rises.

It’s a lot colder than it was the day before, so we pull coats out from our packed clothes. So far, the skies are partly cloudy, but there isn’t any rain. Hopefully it will stay that way.

We were able to make about three-fourths of our trip in the pickup, but we still have at least three or four more days of walking, since with Rina and our cart of belongings, we can’t sustain a very fast pace.

If it starts to rain or sleet, we’ll get slowed down even more.

The day passes with an exhausted, dreary kind of sameness. I try to keep up an optimistic chatter with Rina, but even she seems to be running out of rambles about the friends she hopes to meet and the nice house she hopes we’ll find. I try to think of more books to summarize for her, but the storytelling is tiring and mentally taxing, so I can’t keep it up for long stretches of time.

Much of the afternoon passes in silence with Rina dozing on top of the cart and Zed and I focusing on walking as fast as we can.

The one bit of luck we’ve had is in avoiding settlements and other travelers. We only twice encounter other people, and both times are harmless passers-by who pull out their guns the way we do but courteously give us wide berth.

Otherwise, it’s only us on the roads.

We find an old farmhouse to spend the next night in, and the following day passes in much the same way. That night, we’re in the middle of a long stretch of wooded hills, and there are no houses or building structures to be found. So we have no choice except to camp.

Being in the middle of nowhere, there’s not much chance of anyone coming across us—accidentally or on purpose. So our main source of danger will be hungry predators in the woods.

At least animals don’t kill just to kill.

Zed is tense and on guard—as he’s been ever since we left the cabin—but he makes an effort to chat with Rina and get her laughing. We have a decent evening around a campfire and then put Rina to bed in our small tent.

I could probably fall asleep if I lie down, but I don’t want to yet. I undo my french braids and brush out my hair because I haven’t done that since we left the cabin.

Zed is sitting on the ground, leaning against the thick trunk of an old oak. He’s got his gun ready next to his right hand, and his eyes are moving over the deep shadows of the woods around us.

Maybe he can see more than I can. I can’t see anything at all in the dark.

“What do you think?” I ask, still brushing out my hair with the hairbrush I’ve had since I was in college. It’s held up pretty well considering. “It seems to me that tomorrow we might be getting into the region Mack and Rachel and them were talking about.”

“Yeah. We don’t have exact mileage, and the map they drew might not be perfectly accurate, but that’s what it seems to me too.”

“I know you’ll say I always have to worry about something, but I can’t help thinking, what if they don’t welcome us in? People have gotten defensive and territorial. They don’t respond well to strangers.”

“I thought about that too. But the folks we met were certainly friendly, and if even some are like them, we should be okay.” Zed shakes his head, staring out into the woods. “We’ll just have to take it as it comes. We’ll figure something out either way.”

“Do you have any ideas? About figuring something out if they don’t want to take us into their community?”

“We’ll try a different one. It sounded like there were several distinct settlements in the area.”

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