Doom was dead. I kept hoping for some ridiculous real-life plot twist that would make it not so, but nothing changed.
Introductions were made, excuses were made, and then we were on our way. I was grateful to Mouse and Nemesis for asking questions directly; none of us wanted to admit we didn’t know the name of the little boy and his father when we once lived in the same apartment building. We now know that the father and son are both named Daniel, but the father goes by Dan and the son is called Danny. Danny was really sweet and well behaved for a five year old. He was small for his age and talked with a slight lisp. He also had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. If life were normal he’d probably be the poster child for some child-centered clothing line. But life was not normal and he was without his mom and had a dad who was practically catatonic.
The only thing that was off-putting about Danny was the scratching. The kid had a few bug bites and he was constantly scratching, scratching, scratching. His father weakly said, “Danny, don’t scratch, you’ll get infected.” But Danny didn’t seem to hear him. I don’t think he realized he was doing it. He even scratched at the bites in his sleep.
But that was all I could absorb on that trip. Margaret started droning on and on about who she is and what she’s all about as if Mouse and Nemesis really wanted to know. We were happy to let her prattle on because it meant we didn’t have to talk or interact with each other. In a way I was grateful that Margaret could not recognize exhaustion and grief. I could sum the whole hour-long dialogue into two sentences: “Can’t you tell how much you’re boring me?” from the others and “No, so I’ll proceed” from Margaret.
Margaret managed to put Jesse and Danny back to sleep. Ghost drove in silence up front while Houston and I remained in the back in case Mouse or Nemesis needed us. We were awake and we were together but by the faraway glazed look we all shared, our minds were definitely somewhere else. I noticed that we tended to turn inwards when something terrible happened that was out of our control.
I was trying to wrap my head around the reason why Doom offed himself. I understand how tough it gets when the past comes surging up despite my best efforts to lock it into my subconscious. Did Doom lose that battle? Did the things in his head lead him so far off the path of sanity that he could no longer see a clear way ahead?
I didn’t know how the others felt, but Doom’s death scared me. Was this where we were headed? Was this what would happen if we let the Parasites take over? Doom’s mind is…was…more fragile than most, but we were all feeling the buzz and we often obeyed the impulses from the microbes before even thinking about it. Could they ultimately turn us into something that we hated so much we would decide to end it all? I thought we were tougher than that. We once lived a life where pain was more familiar than peace, so I didn’t think one of us would give up once we were safe and cared for in a domed community. Things could never be the same, but we were able to build up a semblance of normalcy, and that made life more bearable. The Parasites had been living rent-free in our heads for at least two months, so what made them so agitated now? Were they the new version of a Russian “sleeper cell”? Did they suddenly wake up and take over? Or would they chip away at our brains bit by bit until we went crazy and gave in to them?
At least Doom killed himself in a way that guaranteed he’d never come back. I couldn’t help but admire him for having the guts to do that. But I knew no one else would call him brave for ending it the way he did. He didn’t die from the bite of the undead or a car accident. He didn’t lose a long battle with cancer. He lost a battle with himself.
Jesse’s voice snapped me out of my reverie. I don’t know when she woke up, but she was energetically climbing into the front seat. She started peppering Ghost with questions like, “Where are we going? “and “Are we there yet?”
These were good questions. We were all in such a state of stupor, none of us thought to ask where Ghost was driving. I was especially surprised that Margaret didn’t demand to know and give her input. She must have been too occupied with what she thought was a captive audience.
Ghost let the car roll to a gentle stop and killed the engine. He turned around to face us. “We’re going to Doom’s cottage up in the mountains.”
Jesse’s face lit up at the mention of Doom’s domicile. “Wait, Doom has a cottage? Why didn’t he say so before? Is it a vacation cottage? Will it be like that Heidi story with goats and cheese and…”
Ghost grinned and interrupted Jesse’s ramblings before she went too deep into fairy tale-land. “Don’t forget, Doom came from a long line of paranoid lunatics. His family have a cabin up in the Appalachian mountains that they were going to retreat to in case the ice caps melted, or peak fuel caused irreparable chaos, or the government came to get their guns…”
“Or the zombie apocalypse,” Nemesis finished.
“Oddly enough, that was the one scenario they didn’t prepare for, according to Doom,” Ghost said with a slight smirk. “It doesn’t matter. It’s off the grid, up high, and fully stocked. We’ll be like the Swiss Family Robinson.”
“Yeah, if Chuck Norris was the head of the family,” added Nemesis.
“But how do you know where it is?” Mouse asked. “He told me about it a couple of weeks ago. He said that we could get the gang back together and hide out there when things went bad again. The problem was, he wouldn’t tell me the location. He was all cloak-and-dagger about it, giving me clues and riddles that didn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, you should see the brainteasers and enigmas that he wrote down,” Nemesis said while pulling a folded up sheet of paper out from her back pocket. “Like what does he mean when he says, ‘The first coordinate is the number of times that Houston and I stood watch at the Mclean Refugee Center...”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ghost said reassuringly. “He wanted to pretend he was a top spy and normally I would humor him, but this was too important. I made him write down the coordinates right when I last saw him. It was something his father had the whole family memorize in case they got separated. He wanted them to find it by themselves on the map. I guess he spent so much time composing those riddles, he couldn’t help but give it to you and hope you would figure it out.”
“But, Ghost, how are we going to know how to get there?” Jesse asked eagerly. “We don’t have smartphones or tablets, so we don’t have Google Maps.” She squinted her eyes in concentration and asked, “How did people know what roads to take before Google Maps were made?”
“They used maps.”
“No, I said before Google Maps!”
“They used…oh, never mind. I’ll explain it to you later. Jesse, do you mind switching seats with your sister? I could use KC’s help navigating.”
Jesse looked disappointed and slunk back to her seat. I buckled myself in as Ghost started the engine up again. I was so out of it that I didn’t even notice that the sun was coming up. There was enough light to read by so I told Ghost that if I was going to be the designated Navi-guessor, I needed him to hand over the map. He did so a bit reluctantly and with a sheepish look on his face.
It was a printout from Google Maps.