It was getting cold. Doug rubbed his hands together and blew on them to keep warm. There was a brisk edge to the wind and he knew what that meant. It wasn't just the night or the wind or even the higher altitude... Winter was coming. It was going to get colder and start snowing and he was never going to get to Las Vegas before the snow tied everything down.
It didn't help that he had to take Lucy back. He looked at her sleeping form, lying next to him curled in her sleeping bag. There was no way he could, in good conscience, leave her there. He sure wasn't about to let her tag along with him. I have to head back, he though irritably, at least until I run into the rescue party. That there was a rescue party was simply a given. As soon as he had spotted Lucy, he had realized that there was a search party out there. Not only was Kerry a manipulative bitch, she was devious too. Send anyone else chasing after him, and no one would give a damn. Sending Lucy though... He almost smiled. He carefully wrapped his own sleeping bag around her, noting as he did that she had huge dark circles rimming her eyes. He hadn't seen anyone look that tired since he and Carol had gone to Mark's apartment with their arms loaded with next to useless medical supplies.
Mark hadn't just been tired, he had been out of his mind with worry for Rachel. Doug had taken one look at the little girl lying on her bed, shivering and coughing , and he had known she wasn't going to make it. Deep down, he had a feeling that Mark had known too, but that hadn't stopped the man from spending the next three days doing everything he could to save her. It hadn't helped, not at all. Doug had barely been able to think about Mark, and Rachel, and especially Carol since the summer started. Not for very long, and not without reaching for a bottle. Now though, with the better part of a fifth of scotch warming him, he realized that the memories weren't going to go away.
It had been oppressively hot in Mark's apartment. The power had gone off within hours of their arrival, and Mark had been too worried to take care of anything other than Rachel. He had died within hours of the little girl. By the time it happened, Doug had expected it, but he had been in a near frenzy over Carol. Carol had been sick, as sick as Mark if not worse, but she had lingered on for several more days. She had been coherent and awake until the end, not like Mark who had lapsed into a peaceful coma. Oddly though, as he looked out over the vast line of wrecked and stalled, feeling drunk and depressed beyond belief, it wasn't Carol that haunted his thoughts.
It was Mark. There were times, times not so long ago, that Doug had considered Mark to be the only stable force in his life. Oh certainly there were people who were pretty consistent about their behavior. Even now, Kerry could be counted on to be the female version of an officious prick. Peter Benton had always consistently been a smug bastard. Mark though, was always there to tell him what to do. Or even better, what not to do. He felt rudderless now, as though he had been cast off into the sea and was now nothing more than a piece of driftwood.
How would Mark have handled this mess, he wondered. Better than me, that was for certain. The fact that Mark probably wouldn't have wanted to live without his daughter, or in a post plague world, rose up in Doug's thoughts, but he forced the notion away. Mark would have stopped tolerating the drinking back in Chicago. Mark wouldn't have let the situation with Kerry escalate to the point of a suicide attempt. Mark certainly wouldn't have tolerated Kerry inducing Lucy to chase after him. Then again, he thought, Mark wouldn't exactly have approved of my taking off to begin with. Mark would have stopped him. Mark would have talked to him in that grim, serious way that Mark had. Likely it would have been full of soft spoken advise about what Carol would have wanted. If it had come from Mark, he was starting to think he might have listened. If Mark had said, " Don't go," he wouldn't have gone. But it had Kerry, and he had been angry. Angry enough, despite everything that happened afterward, to not give her the satisfaction. It had been easier to leave, even though he had regretted it the second he walked off the porch.
He didn't want to be there, on a ruined highway, surrounded by the corpses of what was now a dead civilization. He wanted to head back. Part of him was so touched by Lucy and her earnest, dogged attempts to turn him around all evening, he had wanted to just grab her and start walking back. He was too embarrassed to act on it.
All day, as he went farther and farther west, he had felt increasingly bad about his decision. The wrecked cars had slowed him down, but he hadn't stopped until he'd found the tricked out roadster. The dead man inside was disturbing, from his sequined leather jacket to what remained of his Elvis like pompadour. Of course, the really disturbing thing was the dead wolf in the man's arms. There were paw prints all around the car. It was as if a pack of wolves had waited for the man to get thirsty and desperate. It was creepy and the more he had thought about it, the worse he felt. The wolves had waited for the man. While he wasn't an avid watcher of Animal Planet, he knew that was unusual behavior. It was unnatural behavior and he shuddered to think about what the man had done to warrant such a punishment. That it was a punishment, he had no doubt. The fact that there was beer cans and liquor bottles was something he took as a very bad sign. But isn't this what you wanted, a voice in his head chimed, a voice that was suspiciously Mark-like in tone, didn't you expect this? You planned on dying. Did you think it was going to be neat and clean? After everything?
I don't know what to do, he thought as he slowly got up, leaving behind the bottle he had been nursing all through out the night. He found himself standing on the grassy median, looking up at the sparkling stars, wondering what it was that he was supposed to do. He didn't know what to do anymore, and he was tired of hiding from it. He drank to hide from the plague, he drank to hide from everyone's problems, he drank to hide from the guilt he felt over surviving when Mark and Carol died. He drank to hide from the fact that Carol was gone and he would never hold her again. He drank to hide from his life, and he wasn't sure he could stop drinking. If he went back, to Carter's house, he had to stop drinking. He knew that would be required, and he wasn't sure he could do it. It he went west, he would eventually be killed. That was something he was sure of also. Certainly they needed a doctor on that side, but his dreams told him that his drinking would not be tolerated. Plus, there was the fact that he simply had to take Lucy back, at least to the nearest rescue party. He knew why Kerry had sent her, and it was, he had to admit, a masterful plan. Not only did it force the others out to search for him, it forced him to turn back with the face saving excuse that he couldn't leave Lucy standing by the roadside alone. He sighed heavily. Face saving excuse or not, going back meant admitting he had a problem.
" Doug?" He spun around at the sound of Lucy's voice. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes, generally looking like someone that had just awakened from a fairly bad dream. How she could have a good dream in their present surroundings, he didn't know. His own sleep had been fitful at best. She blinked, and then eyed him carefully. " Doug, what are you doing up? Its two in the morning."
" I couldn't sleep," he admitted. " So I decided to have a drink." She got up, and shook off the various sleeping bags and blankets. "Is that why you drink?"
" Lucy, its two in the morning. I'm really not up for a temperance lecture." He meant to say it forcefully, to shy her off the subject but instead he sounded like he was pleading. She seemed to sense his uneasiness. She walked over to him and stopped when she was right beside him. " That's not what I meant," she said softly. " I'm not saying don't drink. I'm asking why you drink. Are you drinking, right now, because you miss Carol? Or because you can't sleep?"
In the bright moonlight, he could see her brow furrow with concern. Despite the despair he felt, and the fact that her question was intriguing, he was almost moved to laughter at her expression. She looked so worried and concerned, and at the same time, she looked like nothing more than a troubled teenager. He wondered suddenly, if she had been carded a lot going into bars. It was hard to see her as an adult even though he knew she was at least twenty four. She was just so young looking. Even after everything that happened, she still had that youthful enthusiasm and hope. It made him feel ashamed, ashamed because he realized in an instant that he was not drinking because he missed Carol. He drank to numb his feelings, yes, but he mostly drank so he didn't have to think at all. He was hiding from life, and not the fact that Carol was dead. And he didn't want to talk about it at two in the morning in such a creepy place. " Lucy, I'm not in the mood to talk."
She straightened herself up, as if trying to make herself look bigger. " Fine. Maybe you're in the mood to listen. I know you've already gotten the lecture on how this isn't what Carol would have wanted. I'm not going to do it again. I don't care what Carol would have wanted. She's dead. She doesn't get a vote anymore. I want you to turn around. I don't care if you don't go back to Carter's place, or if you don't go to Boulder. You don't belong out west. You are too good of a person to do that. They'll know you aren't really one of them. Do you really want to die, Doug? There's quicker ways than this."
He spun around to face her, his temper suddenly flaring into life. " How would you know anything about it? You don't know me, Lucy. You don't know the things I've done in my life. Did it ever occur to you that I deserve it? That I'm not a very nice person when it come right down to it?"
She crossed her arms. " I didn't say you were a nice person Doug. You can be one self righteous bastard when you think you're right, and you've got a nasty mean streak that you hide with humor but you aren't evil. I know you took care of Carol and Mark, even though you knew they were going to die. I know why you went looking for Kerry that day, and it wasn't that you wanted to make more fun of her. You were worried about her. And I know why you walked into that camp looking for me. It wasn't just because you were suicidal. You cared about what happened to me, to the point that you risked your life. You are a good person. I don't know why you can't see it."
It stopped his protest cold. He didn't know what to say, because he had never really thought about it. Finally he said, at almost a whisper, " I don't feel like a good person." In an odd way, it felt good to admit it, like a weight coming off his shoulders.
Lucy smiled, though he thought he saw tears welling up in her eyes. She tentatively placed her arm around his waist. " Doug, you are a good person, and this is not a place for either of us. Let's leave. Right now. You can ride double behind me." It wasn't a fix to everything that felt broken inside of him, he knew that. It didn't really change any of the problems he had. Yet, the relief he felt in his heart was so enormous, he almost wanted to cry. Instead, he found himself nodding along. " Ok... but only because I know there's a search party out there." She laughed. " Yeah, as if I didn't know that was part of the master plan to send me. Come on, let's just leave everything here and go."