My eyes crust open to a dim room and a long-haired orb staring down at me. There’s another black-haired orb right beside it. The bed is dusty and the walls encamped around me are sooty brown and loglike. I’m in a cabin. We’ve abandoned Caleb’s mystical house and some dispatched ourselves here. But what happened on the way here? What had that stupid dream been all about? No, it was another vision. It had to be.
An effusion of orange light spreads through the glassy frames of the cabin. It’s sweltering hot. However, my vision begins to harness fidelity and the two blurry orbs begin to crystallize into existence. Sloan is solicitously sitting in front of me, holding my hand, while his hat rests on his lap. Beads of sweat are blossoming on his face but his eyes are shaking, rigidly fixated on me. He’s sweating more than me it looks like, and it can only be due to the fact that he had to carry me across all that desert to get here. Why is he trying so hard to save me? He doesn’t know me. I’m just a nobody. But then I remember what he said about having no friends. This could actually be a genuine, mellifluous effort on his part.
I groan. Among many variegated things, I feel utterly mortified. Please stop saving me.
There’s a girl beside him. She has a round face and a colony of freckles speckled on it. Her hair is tied in a pigtail and she’s dressed in one of those typical Old Western milkmaid dresses but it’s veneered in a tomato red plaid. I don’t like the look of her, but then again I have an annoying proclivity to judge people too quickly. It only occurs to me now that she’s been holding my ankle the whole time. I don’t know what she did to it, but it doesn’t sting anymore and I don’t see any sign of blood.
The milkmaid girl is looking uncertainly at Sloan and then back at me. Her face relaxes a bit when I get up.
“At last, she rises!” Sloan says. “Ya know, you really have a knack of finding trouble.”
“I don’t do it on purpose. Where are we?”
“On the side of a desert road. If it wasn’t for Bethesda here taking you in, you’d be snake chow.”
I give a nod of thanks to Bethesda the milkmaid girl. “It was stinging and throbbing like hell before. How’d you do it? Are you like a healer or something?”
“Not like, is,” Sloan utters excitedly. “She’s a natural. I tried to get her to heal the scar on the back of Jet’s butt, but it wasn’t able to work though.”
“It can only work on existing injuries. It doesn’t apply so well with old wounds and dead people,” says Bethesda. “Yours only took about five minutes. If it was really severe, like your leg was chopped off, it’d probably be hours.”
“Damn,” I mutter.
“Did you get another vision?” Sloan asks. His body is still, bracing for my response. It seems he’s been leaning toward this question for a while.
“It was a small dream, but it felt like a vision,” I tell Sloan about the black mountain, the crying girl, and the blonde girl. Then I relay to him about the dead body. “I thought it was you, but I couldn’t tell.”
“I died?” Sloan whispers incredulously. “And the blonde girl. Do you think that’s the girl Caleb told you to find?”
“I don’t know Sloan,” I say, trying to choke back the tears again. I curse to myself in Spanish. “I can’t make sense of any of this, and I really want to, but I just can’t. It’s just—It’s just all very frightening ok?”
“So that’s like your thing,” Bethesda says with growing interest. “You’re like a seer.”
“I don’t know if I would call it that—”
“But that’s what it is.”
“Look, it’s involuntary and I’m barely alive to know when it’s happening. But—but—”
“You’re a seer.” Sloan and Bethesda says simultaneously like it’s the most glamorous thing ever. I don’t know why I’m so against the idea. Perhaps it’s because I was raised as a Christian and this is the most unholy title that I could have. Or simply perhaps I don’t enjoy the feeling of being labeled something that makes me writhe inside with fear. Why am I in denial? Accept it you puta!
“You can rest for a while. I need to have a word with Sloan.” Bethesda says. She gives Sloan a look that’s somewhat subverted yet intimate. I almost forget that in all this time that I was unconscious, Sloan has been alone with Bethesda for a while. They could’ve been talking about anything and I wouldn’t have been there to digest it. It seems fishy and a sense of duplicity starts to creep up into my mind.
The two of them leave the room. I wait before I can advance to the door. I notice that they haven’t completely shut it. Is that a sign to tell me that they’re expecting me to listen to their conversation? Or is it reverse psychology and it’s to prevent me to listen to them. Either way, it works, because I end up staying in my bed. Their voices are barely audible, so it just won’t do any good getting up and making all that ruckus just to snoop in on some words. They could just be talking about the weather for all I know. I hate how I’m so fraught with paranoia. It’s exactly what the zombie apocalypse can do to you.
The door groans open and Sloan steps back inside, accompanied by Bethesda. He has his cowboy hat back on.
“There’s a small taco restaurant right across the street if you’re feeling hungry,” Sloan says to me encouragingly. “Bethesda here was just telling how she’s ok with us staying a few extra days if we want.”
Bullshit. But I nod like I understand. It’s better to comply when you don’t have any other reason to go against it. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry. We should probably get going Sloan.”
“To find the girl?” He asks.
“No, to see my mother. And then we hunt for the girl.”
Sloan looks at Bethesda entreatingly. “Any advice?”
“Just watch out for those Eaters. They can be real nasty,” says Bethesda.
“Eaters?” Sloan and I both say.
“The zombies. Eaters? That’s what they’re calling them now. It’s pretty strange, but yeah, they’re called Eaters. Don’t stray for too long and always find an empty path. Other than that, I think you guys should be fine.”
“I would hope so. My mother’s in downtown,” I say.
As we make our way towards the front door, Bethesda hands us a lumpy, tube-like black bag. Guns. A commodity we can’t afford to lose.
“My father was sheriff of Scottsdale and he carried these wherever he went. He doesn’t use them anymore so what do I have to lose.”
“Thanks,” I say earnestly.
“What about you?” Sloan asks.
Bethesda’s grin twirls like poisonous tendrils. “I can take care of myself big boy.”
YUCK.
Sloan takes a silver revolver and wears the bag over his back with the strap clenching his chest. We say our awkward monotone goodbyes to the milkmaid girl and then we hit the road again. There are a bunch of small taco restaurants and cabins in this area and up ahead I can see the gleaming skyline of downtown Phoenix. The orange clouds are scraping under a pale golden sky and I can already hear the sound of snakes hissing. Downtown’s not too far, but it’s a drag to walk by foot, so we end up riding Jet.
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