Now What?

by SJlikeslists

When Roger had to leave Jericho, what could he do other than keep walking?

Now What?

This is for Martha (because she asked for a look at Roger after he was exiled from Jericho).

He doesn't know how to do this.

He should, but he doesn't. It is, after all, just walking. He has done it before - more of it than he ever dreamed he would do back in the life that he used to live. He walked for hours, days, weeks at a time, and it never felt the way that it does now. He knows what is different, but he also knows that he can't change it. It was different - walking when he had something that he was walking toward. He did not think twice about the walking back when he was walking home to Emily.

That, then, is the crux of the matter. He had a purpose then; he had a drive. He had enough motivation to keep himself walking and to keep the others walking with him. There was a piece of him that never listened to the discouragement and the hunger and the exhaustion. There was a piece of him that drove out any and all thoughts of sitting down and giving up and letting go of the compulsion to try. That piece was the piece that wanted to be with Emily so badly that nothing else could stand in the way of the attempt.

Everything was so much easier when he was walking home to her. He should not find it surprising that he does not do nearly as well when he is going in the wrong direction. There is no reason, now, really to keep trying. There is nothing left to try for, no goal to reach, and no reminders of what he will be rewarded with when he gets there. He is not going anywhere. There is nowhere left to go. He is leaving her behind, and every step he takes is just one step further away from where he wants to be. Is it any wonder that he does not know why it is that he is still walking?

It was easier with the others as well.

He knows that now, and it is not just because of the safety that was provided by being in a large group instead of on his own. He told stories to keep them walking, or so they thought. Telling them the stories kept him walking just as much. He had needed them. He had needed to say the words out loud. He had needed to know that she was real and that they had memories and plans. He had needed the reassurance of others listening to his stories to remind him that she was not just a figment of his imagination that he had conjured to keep himself from giving up and going mad.

He caught himself telling about New Year's Eve yesterday. At least, he thinks that it was yesterday. He is not the best with time right now, so he can't be certain that that was when it was. But, he knows that he was talking out loud. He knows that he was telling a story about Emily to the trees, and he knows that he should care. He knows that he should not make so much noise. He knows that he is an easy target. That is why he left the road in the first place, but it felt so good to say the words out loud that it had not even registered that he was doing something that he should not until he found himself waiting for the laughter of the others at the end (only to realize that the others were not there).

He was on his own. He was going away from Emily; he was not coming home to her (sometimes, he wondered if he had ever really been home to her). Had he? Had he become a leader of sorts? Had he been responsible for the lives of others? Had he involved himself in other people so deeply that he had shot Gray Anderson when he could not make the man listen to what he was saying? Who was he?

He didn't know.

He used to know the answer to that question. Even in the darkest moments of trying to make his way back to Jericho, he had thought he had known. Now, when he asked himself, there was nothing left to answer. He had just wanted to come home to Emily. That had been all he thought of, dreamed of, and planned to make happen for so long that when he finally made it there he had been a little lost by the ending of his purpose. He had looked around and realized that he had made it, but he had made himself responsible for the others as he did so. They had no homes in Jericho. They had no Emily to reach. They only had him and his stories of the place and people where he had promised them that they would be safe.

Then, they weren't, and he could not just leave it like that. He could not turn his head and pretend that it was not his problem. And it had all blown up in his face.

He could not quite trace out the lines between the dots to figure out where it all went wrong, but he was thinking that it did not really matter. He was not sure that much of anything mattered any longer, but his feet keep going most of the time (even though he could not quite determine how or why).

Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. He kept going through the motions even though he knew now that motions were all they were. He was not really going anywhere. He could try to give himself a new motive. He could try to convince himself that there was something else worth going toward, but he could not think of anything that was important enough to stave off the melancholy and the tiredness and the headache from not eating and not drinking enough water and the desire to curl up on the ground and let everything be forgotten. He kept walking - not because he had any desire to keep walking, but because, at this point, it was what his feet knew how to do. And they kept going even if his mind did not.

902902902

Jake had suggested New Bern. He had said something about Eric Green and Heather Lisinski - how they would be able to help him. He knew better than that. They would not be in the position to do any such thing. Eric was to New Bern what the people he had led to Jericho were - outsiders, more mouths to try to feed, an unwanted addition to a list of problems that was already far too long. Eric Green would be in no position to offer him assistance, and why should he anyway? There were not friends. They were nodding acquaintances at best. He was someone that Emily knew (just like the majority of the town). He had not been too keen to be best buddies with the brother of Emily's ex, so he had not put much effort into conversations that went much beyond the weather and the necessity of road repairs in town.

Heather was from New Bern, he knew, but she might not be in any position to help him either. Besides, he did not want to see Heather. Heather was a part of a life that went with Emily, and he did not have that life any more. He was not sure that he had any life any more. He certainly would not if he kept on the way that he was going - with no plan, no destination, and nothing that he really wanted that he could actually have.

Why was he still walking?

He was sure that he did not know. He had not been at one point. Had that been two days ago or three? He had tripped over something. At least, he thought he had. It could be that his legs had merely given out on him. He had been walking, and then he had been face down on the ground. He was sure that something should have been stinging - his hands or his knees or even his ribs from the impact of the fall, but he could not feel any of those things any more than he could remember the fall itself. He did not know how long he had remained there with his face in the dirt and no intention of bothering to move before he found himself walking again with no idea of how he had gotten there. He still did not now; he still could not make himself care enough to try to put his jumbled thoughts together. It might just be that his legs were so used to walking that they could not stop themselves. It might be problematic if he ever definitively decided that he wanted to go down and stay down, but his legs could not go on forever - they would eventually give out for good.

He didn't know where he was.

It was not anywhere near Jericho, and he had not started off in the right direction for New Bern. Other than that, he did not have a clue. He was not a backwoodsman. He was not even much in the way of a hiker - in his previous existence at least. The blocks of walking to get himself around during his childhood on sidewalks and city streets were not the same thing as tramping through the woods. He had been a long range planner all of his days, but that was the first piece of who he thought he was that had fallen prey to the bombs. He, for the longest time in the aftermath, had had no plan but making it to Emily, and now that plan was gone.

Emily was gone (or she would be soon). He knew that because he was someone who was never coming back - and he knew how Emily dealt with those. He would be relegated to the not to be spoken of stash of memories where she kept everyone and everything that she had ever had to mourn. He would be tucked in the back of her mind where she could pretend that she never thought of him; he would be keeping Chris company in the space reserved for those who had left her behind.

He should not do any more thinking about Emily. He should not think of trips taken or promises made or dreams of children who were never going to be. It was easier to tell himself that than to actually make himself do it. In the same way that his feet insisted that they keep walking, his mind insisted on conjuring thoughts of Emily to combat his wish to stop. It was not the same. It did not work the same way, but that did not stop them from coming. It did not keep his legs from standing or his arms from moving the brush out of his face or his feet from stepping even when he was very nearly certain that he had not told any of his limbs to do any of those things.

He could not decide whether it was counterproductive that the thoughts that his mind kept bringing forward from the habit of trying to keep him moving just made him less motivated (from his knowledge of not being able to go back) or really, contra wise, quite helpful for breaking himself and his stubborn determination to keep going (even over his own objections) enough to allow him to quit.

It might not matter in the end - what with the sporadic manner in which he was eating. Decisions about continuing to keep moving would eventually be taken out of his hands. He had not been a quitter once upon a time. He thought that that was maybe one of the things that the bombs had not managed to change. He stumbled upon streams often enough, and he kept drinking from them (questionable cleanliness and potential health risks being something which had long ceased to even register with him). It was a wonder that he had not gotten sick yet. Although, it might be that he had and he simply had not realized. There were a lot of things, he suspected, that were escaping his notice. He had no real way of knowing how long the blood had been one of them.

902902902

He was not even sure why it was that he had eventually noticed that his sleeve was wet. He thinks he had been wiping his face with his arm and had smeared something into his eyes. He thinks. He is not sure. He was not really paying attention. He had not been paying attention to anything really for what felt like quite some time. He had let his mind drift into the blackness of a lack of coherent thought - it was a place where he sometimes thought of Emily, but he, mostly, thought of nothing at all. What he knows for sure is that he found himself standing still staring at his arm as he held it in front of his face trying to process what the dark splotch spreading across the fabric was. He lost track of the time he stood like that before he gave name to what it was. It was blood. It was, apparently, his blood.

He was bleeding, and he was bleeding rather heavily. He stood there for another length of unregarded time before he decided that he should check to see why. He thought that if there was blood, then there should probably be pain. There was not. His arm felt numb, but he knew that that could not be right. If his arm were really numb, he would not be holding it out in front of himself the way that he was. He would not have done whatever it was that he had done with it that had managed to draw his attention to the fact that he was bleeding in the first place. As he pondered the lack of sensory input coming from his arm, he became conscious of the fact that he was not actually feeling anything. He did not feel any of his limbs or an ache in any of his muscles, and he wondered why that was. Before, when he was walking home to Emily, he had felt muscle strain and tiredness. He had noticed blisters on his feet and pain in his back. He had chosen to ignore those things; they had been easily overshadowed by his purpose, but he still remembered actually feeling each and every one of them.

Then, as quickly as the realization that he was feeling nothing washed across him, the lack of feeling disappeared. It was as if drawing attention to the fact that he was feeling nothing had disintegrated whatever it was that was keeping him from feeling anything. He was feeling everything at once (and he could not claim that it was a much appreciated wakeup call). He was feeling the exhaustion and burning in the muscles in his legs. He was feeling the ache in his back and the drooping of his shoulders. He was feeling the soreness in his arms and the sting that seemed to be originating from the center of the blob of dark liquid that was still seeping outward as he watched. His arm dropped to his side - he was suddenly unable to hold it up in front of him any longer.

He gingerly seated himself on the ground despite the jolt that shot through his mind as he did. He did not think he had intentionally allowed himself to sit down since his journey had started. There was a part of him that revolted against the idea of being still - it was the same part of him that had kept his feet moving forward even when he had mentally checked out of concerning himself with the situation. He was not in that daze any longer. Awareness of what he was doing had snapped back to him along with the awareness of all of his aches and pains. He also realized that he was thirsty, and his hand on the arm that was not seeping blood rummaged around and found the canteen that he had been carrying since he left town. It was nearly full; he must have come across some sort of water source at some point recently (he might have snapped out of his daze for the moment, but thinking backward still got him nothing but fuzziness). It was either that, or he had not bothered to take a drink in a long while. He did not think, however, that that was the case. He was thirsty, but his mouth and throat did not have the qualities that he had come to associate with having gone without water for too long during the long trek back to Jericho. It was not a priority to try to figure it out. The blood was a more pressing concern.

He worked himself out of his jacket (knowing that he would never get the sleeve pushed far enough up his arm with the two layers that were underneath it in the way) while the return of his ability to recognize what he was feeling hindered the process. He was finally successful in his task and tried to push up the sweater and long sleeve shirt that he remembered putting on previous to adding it days or weeks or whenever it was ago hoping all the while that it would work. Raising his arms above his head to try to peel off the sweater seemed like more than he wanted to attempt to handle in his current state.

Had he been this tired all along, or had it settled in on him in the aftermath of sitting down?

The sleeves pushed up leaving a trail of intensified stinging in their wake. He stared at the spot where the pain was coming from and tried to figure out what it was exactly that he was seeing. It looked rather like the skin had been scraped back which would explain both the stinging and the way that his sleeve had sort of tried to stick (although that could have just been due to the stickiness or some clotting) to his arm as he had moved it.

He had no idea what had happened. He might have caught it on something or scraped it pulling it along something rough, but he really could not remember either. He would have thought that something like that would have been enough to garner his attention. Clearly, it had not. First aide was not really one of his best skills. He did not know much more about what to do with open wounds than that they were supposed to be clean and that you probably wanted them to stop bleeding. He had helped with things here and there along the road when he had been with the others, but that had mostly been trying to use some common sense and doing what Jessica told him more than applying any actual knowledge.

He had water he could use to try to rinse it off, and it was likely that he would be able to find some more somewhere (since he had apparently managed when he was not altogether there). He just was not so sure that the water in the canteen was the cleanest of options. Although, since he had drunk it without thinking twice, it was probably a little late to be thinking along those lines.

902902902

Now what? The questioned sort of rattled around in the back of his mind. It bounced against his skull and brought itself back to his attention over and over and over again. Now what?

He had rinsed off his arm (which was not much to the liking of his pain receptors); he had registered that he had somehow managed to pull off a strip of skin. He still had no idea how that might have happened.

Now what?

He had no idea where he was. He had no idea how long he had walked or how much ground he had covered in that time. He did not know when last he had eaten or slept. He did not know how he had not managed to fall and break something or be set upon by someone looking for an easy target or died of dehydration during his wandering in a stupor while his brain had taken some sort of a vacation from the reality in which he was existing.

Now what?

Did he keep doing? Did he try to find his way out of the woods that he was in to look for a road with the possibility of signs that would tell him where he was? Did he go looking for other people? Did he want to deal with other people? Did he want to take a chance on other people?

Did he want to remain sitting where he was? Did he want to curl up under the nearest tree and wait for moving on to no longer be an option? He had seen it happen. He knew that it was far easier for the person choosing it than it was for the people who had to watch, and there was no one left to watch him. That was a huge part of the problem.

He did not have skills - not really. He had figured out some things as he went, but a way for him to make a life in the woods devoid of contact with other people had not been one of them. Besides, he knew what type of hunting parties Jericho had been sending out. Other communities had to be doing the same thing. He had never spent much time in the woods, but he knew enough to know that the completely devoid of critters area in which he found himself was not the way that it was supposed to be. If he stayed put, someone might stumble upon him. He still had not decided whether that was a good thing or a bad one.

Now what?

What was it that he wanted? No, he could not have that, so it did not matter. What did he want now? He did not know. That was the problem. The oblivious stupor had maybe been not such a bad thing. It had kept him alive until now (however long that may have been). This actually being aware and thinking thing that he was attempting did not seem to be working out as well. He had survived an emergency landing of a plane. He had survived nuclear bombs going off all around his country. He had survived a seemingly endless (and at times what had felt like a hopeless) trek across hundreds of miles in a world where everything had gone end over end and nothing that he had known before still applied. He had done it all because he had had a goal. He had something that was worth striving to get to again.

Now what?

What did he use in replacement for Emily? He had not been able to think of anything that meant enough. He was fairly certain that his parents were gone. He was just a man who had worked in a bank. He had liked taking planes to get to where he wanted to go. He used electronic devices in almost every aspect of his life. He had thought that it was worth it to struggle through the difficulties of the road to get back to the person he considered home, but he was not sure that there was a place that he fit in the new order of things without her as an anchor and a motivation to keep trying when everything was out of his repertoire of experiences. Did he even want there to be something that he was holding out for that kept him on his feet when that was not where he wanted to be?

Now what?

Now, he got back up and started walking again. That is what he decided. The answer to the question of whether or not he wanted a reason to keep going was yes. It settled upon him like a blanket wrapping around his shoulders on a cold winter's day. He wanted to have a reason. He was sure of that. He did not have one yet. He could not think of anything, but he wanted there to be one. There was only one way to make that happen. He had to keep moving. He had to keep going. He had to find some way to adapt to his new circumstances and survive. Otherwise, he would never find what that reason was. So, his new reason would be to find a reason.

It sounded odd - even with no one else around to hear it. What type of a reason to keep going was the hope that maybe, at some point, he would discover something or be somewhere or do something that would make him happy that he had? It was his reason - that is what type of reason that it was. It was his reason to keep going, and it did not need to make sense - not to any of the people who were not around to ask after it and not even to himself. All that mattered was that it worked, and it did. He was already back up on his feet. His jacket was back around him, and the straps of his pack were resting against his shoulders. He would keep walking. It would not be out of habit or mindless stubbornness this time. He would keep walking because he was making the choice to do so.

902902902

He would be lying if he told himself that he was happy that he was not numb anymore. The whole walking without a destination when you really did not want to be walking thing was not exactly high up on anyone's list of great ways to be spending one's time. It had been easier (in a lot of ways) when he had been on autopilot and letting everything just sort of drift by him without paying it any mind.

Aches were not very pleasant, back pain was not enjoyable, blisters were not fun to deal with, and the constant stinging sensation in his arm was not a wonderful feeling. Being tired all of the time was annoying, and being so hungry that you lost track of the fact that you were hungry was hardly a pleasurable experience. Having to think through when and where (and for how long) to stop and rest and worry over looking for water (and fretting over what sort of things the water might be carrying when you found it) wore on you. Having no source of distraction (and no person to either distract you or to distract yourself with by distracting them) was not a helpful feature of the circumstances.

He honestly could not decide whether being numb for however long it had been had been a hindrance or an actual perk that had kept him moving long enough to get over the original sense of loss that had overtaken him as he left behind the city limits of Jericho.

It was the morning after he "woke up" that he found himself standing on the side of a road. It was gravel, and it did not look particularly well-traveled. It was still a road.

Now what?

Should he head back into the woods? Should he try to follow this path that marked the place where civilization had cut a track through the country side? Did he want people, or did he not? He still was not clear about how he felt about the answer to the last of those questions. He was still feeling kind of let down by people in general (and a little bit by himself). He took the road anyway.

Now what?

He still did not know, but he did know that a woodsman was something that he was not. He picked right because it did not seem to matter which direction he chose - the road had to lead somewhere either way. He kept on walking and considered the possibility of one of the camps. It was a notion that he dismissed before he came to the intersection where the gravel met a blacktop some two or three miles from where he had begun to follow it. He would not go to one of the camps - not if there was any way for him to get around it. Out here, at least, he could depend on his own decisions (good or bad) and his own devices (however paltry in the face of the situation at hand they might prove to be). In a camp, you were dependent on other people's decisions and other people's plans and could do little more than wait for whatever was going to happen to you knowing that very little that you did would change the outcome either way.

That was not what he wanted. He had gotten rather attached to the concept of him trying, and one of the camps would not suit that purpose overly well.

Now what?

He faced the intersection and decided that he would take the blacktop and go left (because it had been right last time, and he might as well change things up a bit). So, he did. He kept walking and waited for the inevitable confrontation with others that would be coming. He may not have encountered anyone on the gravel road, but the paved one was likely to be a different story. He must be close to somewhere. There would be families or patrols or something, and someone would stop him and demand to know what he was up to so close to their property. Of course, he might run into someone of less than scrupulous morals first - in which case he was liable to be shot first with the questions left for never.

He saw a lot of fields, but he glimpsed only one house. It was not far back off the road, but there was no sign of movement anywhere in its vicinity. He might have gone to check it out, but the sight of the broken windows on the front porch told him that it was unlikely that he would find anything useful if it was, in fact, as abandoned as it appeared. Besides, he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched the whole time that the house was in view, and he had spent enough time out in the earlier days of everything going off the rails to recognize when he should listen to his instincts when they told him that something should be left alone.

The blacktop came (rather quickly to his sense of distance and time) to a highway (the number on the sign being one that he could not seem to place). He could already see the convoy approaching in the distance as he came to where the two roads met. It appeared to be military from what he could see in the distance, but it was moving more slowly than he would have expected (or maybe he just had an exaggerated sense of how fast vehicles should move after all of the walking that he had been doing).

Now what?

He could slip far enough away from the road to try to remain unseen. He could stay where he was. He could even move out to the shoulder. Which did he want? He did not know, but he was going to have to make up his mind soon. He was running out of time.