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Atticus’ breathing was shallow, and he was slow to respond. “Yeah, probably.”
A day and a half ago we determined we were in Arkansas, judging the license plates on almost every abandoned car we’d passed on the road, and those we came across still parked underneath carports and inside garages. But whereabouts in Arkansas, or how far south we’d traveled through it, would remain a mystery.
“Atticus?”
“Um-hmm?’ he mumbled, too weak to move his lips, or to open his eyes.
“I know it’s…cruel to say…but…I’m glad the world ended…or I never…would’ve met you.”
(I felt myself smiling, or maybe I was only thinking it.)
“Me too, Thais…me too.”
We wanted to touch each other, to hold hands, to lie beside one another, to hold one another, but we could not move. We slept, and slept, and slept, past the morning, past noontime, through the heat that burned our faces, and the grumbling engine of another truck—or the same one—driving past us on another nearby road.
“Was that a truck?” I thought I’d asked, but I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep.
Hours later, in the early evening before sunset, my eyes pried apart slowly as my mind registered the slimy feel of something against my face, and a smell that was both hot and unpleasant. Opening my eyes the rest of the way, but my mind still trying to wake from dreamland, my vision was blurry, and all I could make out was a dark figure hovering over me, licking my face, nudging me awake with its nose.
“Atticus, it’s Trick,” I spoke weakly. “He found us.”
I heard Atticus moan next to me.
Lifting from the ground, I clenched my eyes and kneaded my back with my fingertips as I tried to relax the stiffened muscles. I felt dizzy and faint, but managed enough strength to sit up straight and be aghast at the dead opossum laying across my lap, its mouth and face bloodied, its stomach torn where its insides protruded.
“Atticus, we have food.”
But Atticus did not move.
I looked over at him, for the first time noticing how far apart we’d slept, and saw that his face was drenched in sweat, and his breathing was choppy, labored.
I tossed the opossum aside and crawled on my hands and knees over to him, ignoring the strange unevenness of the ground beneath me. I placed my hand on his shoulder and shook him. “Atticus, please wake up,” I said calmly at first. “ATTICUS WAKE UP!” The real possibility he could be dying punched me hard in the stomach, sent a panic through me. “ATTICUS! YOU BETTER WAKE UP NOW!” I said angrily.
And he did.
His eyes opened faintly at first, and then all the way. Relief ravaged my body and I nearly lost my balance and fell on top of him.
He reached up weakly and stroked my hair from my face.
“Oh, Atticus”—I kissed the back of his hand, and then his mouth—“you scared me. You scared me…” My chest shuddered.
“I’m all right,” he told me, though I knew that he wasn’t, but I couldn’t think about that right now. Because I could do nothing about it right now.
“Trick found us, and he brought food,” I told him.
“What…did he…catch?”
“Opossum.” I left him and went over to grab the carcass, brought it back to show Atticus. “See?” I gave it a covert sniff to make sure decomposition wasn’t setting in yet.
Atticus scarcely nodded.
“Help me up,” he told me, and reached out his hand.
ATTICUS
Thais helped me up, and I sat upright, swaying as I tried to steady my balance; my eyes filled with spots, and my head felt like it was on fire, and I was drowning in sweat all over my body.
“I don’t…suppose you’re any…good”—I stopped to catch my breath, and wiped sweat from my face; my head was spinning, and so I shut my eyes for a moment—“…any good at…making fire without a lighter?”
