Lost and Found
Chapter Three: The Sojourner
For long moments there was no sound other than the idling of the motorcycle engine. Then it was drowned out by the sounds of choked sobs, as Miriam cried openly, unable to adjust to this new situation, to cope with the perpetually changing face of reality. Seconds ago, she had resigned herself to certain death – even if the gang had planned on keeping her alive, there was no way she could have survived descending into the dungeon of her past a second time – and she needed time to recover from that. Had she taken complete leave of her senses, she could have wept for an eternity; but her thoughts quickly turned towards the man who had saved her life by risking his own. She dried her tears as best she could, attempted to gather her scattered wits.
Her hair, which had been liberated from the tight ponytail that she typically wore it in, now fell loosely over her shoulders and in her face. Even though her shirt covered every inch of her skin save for that below her knees, the nun still felt naked, exposed. She knew she had to ward off the mounting sense of panic that would soon follow if she remained this unclothed. She found the overalls, draped loosely over the seat of the motorcycle, and put them on. That done, she looked about the hallway, unsure of what to do next.
First things first: the headlights from the bike had to be put out. Twin beams of light shone through a hole located on the far end of the hall, broadcasting their presence as clearly as if they were trails of campfire smoke. Miriam reached up over the bars of the bike, fiddled with the controls until they shut off. The idling of the motorcycle engine was not loud, so she let it be. She made her way back to Alex. He was bleeding out onto the floor, the dusty carpet absorbing the wine-colored liquid like the throat of a parched man.
She got down on her knees, crept as close to him as she could dare – now, even now, her cowardice knew no bounds – and examined the wound. The flesh in the center of the stump was shredded and hung in raw strips, probably from when he had forcibly removed the bullet that had struck him. Why? Why did you do that for me? she thought, her eyes spilling over again. But the sight of fresh blood dripping out of the wound quickly reminded her that there were more important things to focus on right now.
The thought occurred to her that she should really try to get herself and Alex out of here before trying anything with his injury – what if the other Shadows discovered their location, or the unconscious Shadow laying just a few feels away woke up? – but the bleeding was heavy, and she doubted he would survive if they left the mansion now. She could only hope and pray that they would be left alone.
Please, Lord. He saved my life. Let me do this one thing for him.
Miriam knew how to treat most any kind of injury – after all, praying and singing weren't the only disciplines nuns were expected to master – but the first-aid kit had been lost back where she had first found Alex. As things stood right now, the only thing she could really do for him was to stanch the flow of blood. Otherwise, he would most certainly be lost.
She needed to find some material to serve as a dressing for the wound, along with some means of cutting away at it. She cast a reluctant glance back at the head Shadow, who was still dead to the world, and approached his prone body. He still held his knife in one outstretched palm.
"With God, all things are possible," the nun murmured to herself, and then she seized the knife. To her immense relief, the Shadow didn't stir, and she stumbled away as quickly as she could.
Now to resolve the second problem. What kind of material could she use that would be thick enough to dress the wound, and yet also give her a clean cut? The Shadow's clothes were surprisingly thin, as were the robes Alex was draped in. The leather suit he wore might have been useful, but she didn't trust herself to cut pieces of it away without also slicing his skin. Her own clothes were out of the question –
Or are they? Miriam looked down at her overalls, which were of a sturdy material. Two large pockets had been sewn on the front. Without hesitation, she began to cut away at them with the knife. The first came off easily enough in her hand. When she started in on the second, however, a piece of paper fell out of it, drifted to the floor. She picked it up.
"My map," she said slowly, not realizing its significance at first. Then she uttered a soft hallelujah and held it tightly against her chest. Without the city map, she realized, she and Alex would have been hopelessly lost, unable to return to the sanctuary of the church.
Miriam finished cutting off the rest of the material, then pressed it against Alex's wound, ignoring the shiver that traveled up her spine as she did so. It held fast, thanks to the adhesive properties of the blood, but she was going to need something to tie it off with. Once more, she was at a loss. After wracking her brain a few moments longer, she settled on removing both of her suspenders, which she then wrapped tightly around the aggrieved area. While she knew this meant giving up the use of her overalls – and subsequently, a return to the relative vulnerability of the white shirt – there was simply no help for it. When she was satisfied that her impromptu dressings would hold, she began to consider transportation. Her gaze automatically went to the motorcycle, which still sat there idling, as stolid and patient a presence as any of the beasts of burden that wandered this planet.
At least I don't have to think too much about this one... The nun had no idea how to drive a motorcycle – she'd never operated any kind of moving vehicle in her lifetime – but she supposed today was the day she was going to have to learn, for both hers and Alex's sake. She walked up to the motorcycle, which was of a dark purplish hue; the word "Angelina" was printed in large green letters down one side.
"Well, Angelina, let's hope you can get us out of this mess," she said with a wan smile, and then she shook her head in mortification. I'm talking to a motorcycle! I really must be losing it.
She began to lug Angelina to where Alex was lying. It was tough going, as Angelina was of a considerable size, but eventually she had the bike positioned parallel to his body. Now came the hardest part of all: after all, it wasn't like Alex was going to get up and set himself down in the motorcycle's side car.
She took an enormous breath, inhaling deeply through both her mouth and nostrils, then knelt down over Alex's body, wrapped her arms around his neck, and began to pull him into a sitting position. She kept both eyes tightly shut as she did so, but she shuddered and very nearly dropped him when she felt his head fall lifelessly against her bosom.
– No! Dammit, get a hold of yourself! He's out cold. He can't do anything to you.
She expended a titanic amount of energy hauling him up and into the bike's side car, positioning him so that he wouldn't fall out once they got moving. The bike's size worked in her favor: the side car was large enough that it easily contained most of his body, save for his arm and legs. When she had accomplished her task, her entire body ached in protest – an understandable reaction, really, as Alex had to have outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, and the monastery had never exactly prioritized physical activities.
At long last she clambered onto the bike herself, flattened the map out between the handle bars. She began to timidly poke at the controls, praying to God that she wouldn't accidentally hit the switch that controlled the horn – and then, that she wouldn't crash within five minutes of getting the damn thing to move.
She didn't hit the horn, and she didn't crash. Desperation and need had turned out to be excellent teachers, as she eventually learned to differentiate between the throttle, brakes, and clutch; forced herself to maintain a stable balance; and figured out how to read a map while driving (this was much harder than it sounded). All in all, she thought she had done rather well for herself.
Now she was back at the chapel, and she set Alex down on one of the wooden pews, where she had also laid out a new set of medical supplies. When she began to remove his dressings, however, she received a nasty shock.
Alex's wound had completely healed over. The only evidence that there had ever even been an injury to begin with was the faint scar overlaying the crisscrossed patterns of older, deeper scars – scars originally framing what had once been a large tract of horribly damaged flesh.
It also doesn't explain why I'm not dead from blood loss. Those words rang through her head just then, an ominous echo that left her momentarily breathless. For the first time, it occurred to her that she had far more reason to fear Alex than any of the sadistic youths that had pursued them thus far. What manner of man healed so quickly and completely from what could have easily been a fatal wound – or had the strength and speed to evade over a score of motorcycles – or could dodge bullets, for God's sake?
The instinct to run away suddenly took hold of her, but she realized how ridiculous that was. After all, she had been prepared to give her freedom – indeed, her very life – to save him. Knowing that he was exceptional in certain areas wasn't going to change that... even if some of those areas did openly defy the designs of nature. She gingerly peeled off the rest of the blood-soaked cloth, then froze when she caught sight of his face.
He was staring at her.
"W-when did you...?" she started to stammer, but her voice trailed off when Alex suddenly shut his eyes tightly and turned his head – almost comically so, except that she simply wasn't capable of laughing at anything right now.
"Sorry, sorry," he said, a blush spreading over his cheeks. "I didn't see – anything I wasn't supposed to – "
Miriam didn't need to look down at herself to remember that she was clothed only in a white shirt. "I'm sorry," she returned, even though she didn't know what exactly she had to be sorry for. "I had to use some of my clothes to patch you up."
He kept his eyes closed. She could have told him to stop with that, but she realized that the gesture actually made her feel better. "Where are we?" he asked.
"We're at the chapel," she said. "I drove us here with that boy's motorcycle."
For a long time he said nothing, as though struggling to absorb everything that had happened that day. "You saved my life," he finally said, incredulity coloring his voice.
"And you saved mine," she told him. "You're all better now," she added, trying to sound nonchalant.
He cracked one eye open, cautiously looked over at the stump, whereupon both of his eyes widened in shock. "H-how did that happen?" he cried, and Miriam realized that he was even more frightened than her at this development. He pulled himself into a sitting position so that he could get a better look at the wound, perhaps to convince himself that he wasn't seeing things.
"I don't know. Perhaps it was a miracle from God. ...After all, you've done so many miraculous things today," she said, referring to their earlier escape from the gang. "Were you an acrobat in the past, do you think? Some of the stunts you pulled off, they were..." She almost said "inhuman," but at the last second she settled for: "Amazing."
"I don't know," he confessed, still looking at his stump, clearly disturbed. Miriam tried to divert his attention away from it.
"It really was a miracle, you know," she said quietly. "At least, when that Shadow shot at you. For the bullet to hit you in that exact spot..." She closed her eyes, shook her head slowly. "You really took a risk when you did that."
He was silent for long moments, his expression still uneasy, but for a different reason now. Then: "That wasn't a miracle. I planned it that way."
She gaped at him. "Planned it? But how – "
"I don't know," he said. "I saw the bullet coming, and I – I just knew how to move so it would hit me there." He looked away, seeming to intuit the nun's sudden fear. "I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have said that."
"It's all right," she said. The atmosphere, which was already tense, had now graduated to frightening. She didn't like it – nor did she like being ruled by her fear, as had been the case for so many years now, and especially for the last few days. "You're a mess, you know," she said suddenly, indignantly. She put her hands on her hips, her eyes scanning over his body as though she were a disapproving mother. "Why don't you scoot downstairs and get yourself cleaned up." It wasn't a question, but rather a command.
"You're going to let me stay with you?" he said in a tone of immense surprise.
She continued to glare at him. "You think I was wandering around in the city for my health?"
"Well, no," he said after a moment, "but after everything you've learned about me... aren't you afraid?"
"Yes," she admitted, letting her arms fall against her sides. "But you're afraid too. I can't abandon you." She smiled just then; she just wasn't capable of acting like any of the other nuns. "You can stay as long as you want."
Alex bent his head, but he couldn't hide the cocktail of emotions – fear, hope, sadness, gratitude – that defined his features just then. "Thank you," he said at last.
"You don't have to thank me," she said. "Just get downstairs and use the shower. I have running water, so you're in luck."
"Water? You have water?" He looked more concerned than grateful.
"Yes," she said, confused. "This hill taps into the same reserve of water that the rest of the city does. And the entire church operates off of a generator for power, not the city's power plants." She stopped then, as something suddenly occurred to her. "The plants. Are they – ?" She was ashamed to admit that she hadn't devoted a thought to them since the onset of the disaster.
"They're gone," he said simply.
"Gone? But how?"
"I have no idea. Whoever caused this to happen must have also stolen the plants, somehow." She could sense what his next question was going to be. "What happened to this city? What is this city? Did terrorists..."
"I don't think anyone knows," she said. "I saw it when it happened, though. There was an enormous beam of light, and then the city... just wasn't there anymore. This is July," she said, by way of answering his other question. "Though it's more like Lost July now, I suppose."
"July..." He looked off into the distance, as though the name might have held some significance to him. At length, he turned back to her. "You said you had water?" She nodded. "You haven't been drinking it, have you?"
"No, I've just been using it to clean," Miriam said. She looked at him, concerned. "What's wrong with the water?"
"I guess it's all right to bathe in," he said, more to himself than to her. "But you can't drink it. I tried doing that earlier, and I..." He looked a little embarrassed. "...Um, I threw up. Somehow, the city's water supply has been – tainted."
Miriam was sobered by this knowledge: after all, if she hadn't stocked her home with bottled water for the Sunday school kids to drink before Lost July (for that was what she was starting to think of this incident as now), she might well have depended on the water that came from the tap to quench her thirst. In the same instant, she decided that since Alex had shared such a vital piece of information with her, she might as well offer up what she knew in return.
"A few hours after the city's destruction – at least, I think it was a few hours; it didn't feel like too much time had passed – I went to the sand steamer station." She stopped then, suddenly dreaded what she had to say next. "There were... a lot of people there. Hundreds, actually. They were fighting to board a sand steamer. I think most of them managed to escape on it, but..." She didn't finish her sentence. If she thought about it too much, the results would be every bit as dire as whenever she allowed herself to dwell on the Bad Days.
Alex put his head in his hand. He said nothing, but the nun could tell that he was trying to keep himself from unleashing some great emotion. She bowed her own head, held back tears so as not to inadvertently push him over the edge.
"We can only hope that the federal government will send us some kind of aid," Miriam continued slowly. "After all, I think that the steamer could have only carried a third of this city's population. As for the rest..." Her eyes traveled morosely along the length of the chapel's hardwood floor. "They're either still somewhere in this city, or they're – " here she stumbled, as the image of the deceased citizens remained seared in her consciousness – "in the station."
Alex kept his face covered, implicitly understanding what she meant by that. "There's no way to leave the city on foot?" he said after a moment, his voice slightly shaking with the effort of hiding his grief.
"It's impossible. July is surrounded by hundreds of iles of sand, and even if someone had enough supplies to last them the journey, the constant sand storms make traveling extremely hazardous. The only way in and out is by taking a sand steamer."
"Then I guess we have no choice but to wait," he said, still in that clipped tone of voice. "And in the meantime, we keep looking for survivors."
"You're... the only person I've seen in over a week," Miriam admitted. "I... I don't think many people survived."
She instantly regretted saying anything. A deluge of tears coursed down Alex's cheeks, and his shoulders heaved with silent sobs. "I'm sorry," she said. "Why... why don't you clean up and rest for a while. We can talk more tomorrow."
He didn't respond for several seconds, but finally he said slowly, reluctantly, "All right," and he got to his feet. She walked ahead of him and lifted up the door that led down into her home. He shuffled listlessly down the stairs.
"The bathroom is the first door on your right," she called down after him. "I'll go turn on the generator for you."
She was extremely careful not to follow him downstairs until she heard the firm snick of the bathroom door closing.
"We're going to need more ammunition," Alex said.
About six days had passed since that fateful meeting. The two survivors had taken an inventory of all the supplies that Miriam had stockpiled down in her home, with plans to carefully ration out the remaining food and bottled water for the next few weeks. They never used the generator unless they needed to bathe (which was sparingly), or to make coffee (which was more than sparingly, much to Miriam's shame). As for bedding, there was only the one simple mattress; but Alex seemed perfectly content with sleeping on the carpeted floor, despite Miriam's protests.
During those days, they talked. In lieu of imparting any details about his life before July, he'd asked several questions about hers. Miriam noticed that he never asked her about what her life had been like before the monastery. She didn't know if it was because he sensed she didn't want to talk about it – he seemed to read her better than she could read herself, a quality she had never known a human being to possess – or because his interest simply didn't go back that far.
"The nuns who took care of me were rather... dour," Miriam had confessed during one of these talks. They sat together in darkness, like baby sandworms that had not yet emerged from their underground cocoons. "No sense of humor. So I think you can guess how I got mine." Alex smiled weakly at that, though of course she couldn't see it. "But laughter wasn't the only thing I was deprived of. I never stepped foot outside of the monastery once I started living there, so my only means of escape was by reading books. Mostly fantasy novels from old Earth," she added at the last. "It's not much fun reading about endless desert, I don't think."
She supposed she should have been frightened, sitting there in the dark with him; but instead she felt safe, as though nothing could touch her, though of course she herself could not touch him. And ever since he had begun living here with her, her night terrors had completely ceased. There was an element of divine Mystery in that, she knew, and the nun never questioned it.
But now, this morning, she felt anything but secure. She watched with worried eyes as Alex padded into the bathroom, shut the door behind him. When he emerged a few minutes later, he was no longer wearing the large gray sweatshirt and pants that had served as his night clothes, but the black leather suit she had first found him in. "Why do you need ammunition?" she asked.
"Because that gang might discover this place, and I'd rather be armed if it comes to that," he replied. He thought for a moment. "We'll need some fuel for the generator before too long, too."
"Where will you find that?"
"The explosion, or whatever it was... when it happened, it fried the engines of all the cars in the city. Or at least, the ones I've encountered. But I bet we can still use the fuel inside of them."
"How do you think the Shadows were able to use those motorcycles, then?" she wondered aloud.
"I don't know. Maybe they were in an underground warehouse?" he ventured. He went up the stairs and outside. Miriam followed him, tugging a large black duffel bag that she had liberated from her closet.
"If you're really going to try to bring back an entire engine, you'll need something to put it in," she said, placing the bag on the ground next to him. Alex thanked her and bent down to take it. "And remember, if you see any other survivors..."
He nodded. "Yeah, I know. They come back here with me." He shouldered the duffel bag, began to walk down the hill.
"May you go with God's blessing," she called after him.
To her surprise, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. He was glaring, but not at her... in fact, his eyes seemed to travel right through her, fixed on some impossibly distant object in the sky. "I don't believe in God," he said. His voice was flat, but it was also tempered by a vein of quiet anger.
She had no idea what to say to that. "...You don't?" she started to reply uncertainly, and then she immediately flushed scarlet, knowing that she sounded stupid. "Is that... something you remember about yourself?"
"No. It's something I decided just now."
"Oh." Miriam continued to feel awkward. She drew closer to him, unconsciously gripping her rosary. "Why not?"
Alex cast a baleful glance down at the ruined city, as though that was all the answer that was needed. "It's preferable to believing in a God cruel enough to let things like this happen."
She bristled. "God isn't cruel."
"Then why allow this?"
"I don't know," Miriam admitted after a moment. "But I believe that wherever there is evil in the world, God uses it to fulfill His good purposes."
Alex didn't look convinced. "If He has the power to do that, then why not prevent evil from happening at all?"
"For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face," she recited. "Now I know in part; but then shall I know fully, even as I also was fully known. ...It's from the Bible," she explained, when Alex looked at her questioningly. "We don't understand why terrible things happen, but someday, when we are ushered into the presence of the Lord, we will understand why it was better for us to have suffered."
"You don't really believe that," he said, and now she was the one to regard him with confusion. "Because I know now that you're better than that. If you really believed what you just said, you wouldn't have tried to help anyone at all. You would've just sat up here in your church, accepting it all as a necessary given, and just being grateful that God valued you enough to keep you alive in His divine plan." The last two words he delivered with unmistakable sarcasm.
Miriam foundered in her response. Was Alex right? Did she really believe that there was no ultimate reason for suffering, that all pain and tragedy would not – with a little time – be redeemed?
After all, what possible justification could there be for what I went through?
"I'm sorry," she said at last. "I wish I had a better answer for you."
He looked as if he wanted to argue some more, but then a resigned expression crept into his face. "No, I'm sorry," he said with a sigh, his shoulders sagging. "I wasn't, you know... trying to attack what you believe. I just – " He bent his head, his teeth gritting with the strain that only unutterable frustration could produce. "I just feel so damn helpless!" Moisture collected underneath his eyelids, but he stopped himself from fully submitting to his emotional pain.
Miriam wanted so badly to put a hand on his shoulder, reassure him that he wasn't alone in his suffering. But she found that even this simple task was beyond her capacity. I'm so weak, she thought, feeling disgusted with herself; but she didn't have time to linger on this train of thought, as Alex was speaking again.
"I'll be back tomorrow," he was saying. "At the latest. I shouldn't have any trouble finding what I need."
"Be careful," she told him.
"I'm more worried about you."
"It's okay," she returned impishly, "I have a gun," and then she was giggling, her pathetic sense of humor somehow inspiring true gaiety in her. Alex, for his part, gave another of his wan smiles.
As she watched him make his way down the hill, Miriam reflected on the week's events for perhaps the hundredth time. She had left the monastery – the place that she had called home for the last ten years – and arrived at July, only to experience its destruction firsthand. She had seen untold numbers of dead innocents, and had almost been killed herself by a group of murderous juveniles. And now she was just finding out that her companion – an amnesiac young man who was frighteningly skilled in both gunplay and athleticism – was an atheist.
She didn't know whether to cry, or keep laughing; and eventually, she turned back and descended into the church basement, where she lost herself in fevered prayers for the rest of the day.