Part 7: Hunkering Down
She insists they push on to the safe house. She can barely keep her head up when they're moving, and Savannah goes down as fast and as hard as Sarah had the day before. Seeing Savannah in the same pain seems to have re-ignited Sarah's misery, and she crawls into the back seat, lies down and spoons Savannah up beside her.
"We should stop," he says again.
"It'll be worse if we do and then we have to move again," she says. "Just get us somewhere we can be for awhile."
"But Savannah..."
"We'll manage. It'll be over soon." This last, she croons into Savannah's ear. "It'll be over soon. Just hang in, okay? It'll be over soon..."
He tunes out the sounds of their sickness, and drives. He is prepared to pull the cop card if they get pulled over, but at last, the fates are with them, and the road is clear. He makes good time, and gets them to the safe house just before sunset. It's a trailer, a little small for three of them, but it's isolated, desert as far as the eye can see, and he supposes that's what they need right now, especially with only one of them---him---in his right mind at the moment.
He takes in some bags, comes back out again and finds both back doors open, one head leaning out of each of them. Sarah is only dry heaves, thank goodness, but Savannah has spent their little trip suffering, and he's happy to get them inside. Happier still that Sarah makes it indoors under her own power and snarls when he suggests she take another turn with the IV. She resists too his suggestion that they hook Savannah up. The girl has only thrown up twice, although she is weak and miserable.
There are two beds and a couch. He picks the bigger bed, peels both of them down to their underclothes and tucks them into it together. They sleep.
--
He heats a microwave dinner and tucks himself in with the laptop and the stack of movies from the video store. The first one has Will Smith in it, and the robots kill the people. The second one is called Transformers. He remembers John Henry had a toy with this name. In a novel variation on the theme, the robots in this one are killing factions of other robots.
He loses track of time somewhere around the third DVD, and in the haze of the laptop's glow, he sees Sarah behind him, dressed again in the tank top and capris. She's holding a cup of tea and looking much improved.
"Do you get it now?"
She's calm when she asks him, but he senses the edge underneath her question.
"I mean, is this helping you?" she gently prods, nodding at the flickering images on the laptop. "Do you see?"
He folds down the screen, scoots over, motions for her to sit. "You don't watch one of them take out a whole SWAT team without getting it, Sarah. You don't survive that kind of thing and not see."
"Okay. But yet, you still seem to think we can live our lives. Go about our business. How are you not understanding..."
"How is that you're not? I got a message too, Sarah. Last night, while you were out. And do you know what your son sent that boy back to tell me? He told me God is not as far away as I think he is."
"I don't believe in God."
"But you believe in Savannah. You believe she is an innocence worth saving. You believe there is value to this life of ours, and don't shake your head at me, because if you didn't believe it, you wouldn't fight so hard to save us. There is God in that too."
She closes her eyes, brings the mug to her face. She doesn't drink, but lets the steam caress her cheeks.
"Okay," she says. "There is God in that too. But damn it, Ellison, you can't just go off, and..." She puts the mugs down, twists her hands, tries to stop fidgeting. "I'm trying to be patient, I am. But there is so much at stake here, and I'm not used to doing this with people."
"People matter."
"That's for me to work on. Look, you see how this has been for me, right? Just me. Just John."
"And Charley."
"He died."
"And Derek."
"Betrayed me. And then died. I'll ask you again. Do you see how this has been for me? I can't let people in. I can't. As much for their protection as for mine."
"It's different now, though. You, here. Him, there. You don't need to protect him."
"No. I have someone new to protect. It never ends. Just like them."
"That's very pessimistic."
"That's reality. That's how it's been for me ever since the day Kyle Reese walked into my life and changed it forever. That's *life,* Ellison. And I can't just put that aside, for you, for her, and pretend it isn't there."
"Why not?"
She shakes her head. "You don't get it. You don't." She runs her fingers through his pile of DVDs. "Find me one good one," she says. "Find me one who isn't bad. Find me one who doesn't spend the whole movie blowing things up and going after all the people."
"I haven't watched them all yet. But there is the difference between me and you, I guess."
"What's that?"
"I know he's here. Somewhere in all this badness, the good one is here. Go back to bed, okay? I want you better in the morning. We have work to do."
"Find me one, James."
She's already sleeping again before it hits him that for the first time since all of this happened, she has called him by his Christian name. God is not so far away, after all.
--
He wakes Savannah at sun-up, makes her drink, makes her wash. But she is soft and slack in his arms, and he carries her back to bed, his heart easing a little when Sarah, only half-awake, subconsciously reaches and pulls her close. They are bonding, all of them are. And he to Sarah most of all, in spite of---or perhaps because of--her prickly shell.
They sleep the sleep of the dead for much of the day and into the evening, and he dozes off himself while keeping up his vigil. He's padded the sheets with stolen towels from the hotel. He changes them out as they sweat away the fever. He's changed Savannah's shirt already. He is not certain Sarah would accept such intimacies, so he leaves her.
He watches so many videos that his eyes are bloodshot and sticky when he finally burns out and shuts down. He knows that computer effects cannot convey the horror, but he needs an image to hold in his head, in his dreams, the way Sarah does. He needs her to understand that he's in this too, that he has a stake in this even without a history like hers. And he needs that greater horror in his mind to blunt the trauma of what they will need to do to Savannah to toughen her up for this. For every image of destruction, for every movie death that might someday be real, for every better, for every worse, he reminds himself: there is God in this too.
The sun sets, then rises again on their second day in the desert, and she's back. He comes in from his shower---an outside hook-up, attached to the side of the trailer---and finds her dressed again, actually sipping the tea this time, and going through his large, black bag. Making an inventory.
"Savannah?" he says.
"Woke her. Fed her. Put her back to bed."
"And you?"
"Taking stock. Can we...can we talk about this now? About what we have to do? Zeira Corp..."
"Taken care of. Your buddy Cameron is cooling in the trunk."
"She's not my buddy. And...wait, when did this happen?"
"Parting gift from your son, courtesy of Edward."
"Oh."
"And also told me, by the way, that you knew our next step. That you had a lead already."
"What? Oh, right, Danny Dyson. You heard about that?"
"I can get myself caught up."
"That'll be my job. Priority one, for you, is going to be disappearing. Can you wrap up things with Zeira Corp? Get your hands on Weaver's cash?"
He thinks about this for a minute. "Well, for all intents and purposes, I've already gone private sector. We can funnel Weaver's cash into a shell corporation and make me its employee. I can draw salary."
"As James Ellison or as James Johnson?"
"Those passports have a middle name?"
"Right. James Edward. Edward is my brother's name."
"Great. Eddie Johnson, your new chief of security. Money goes in through wireless transfer. From there, I can direct it. We need to keep as much of it liquid as we can. Gold is fairly portable."
"Are you serious?"
"This is not a vacation, Ellison. Get used to this."
So she is back to last names. Well, fine. Two can play at this. "And speaking of which," he says. "Call me James. Ellison is not the name on my passport."
"Good point. We'll have to start working on our cover story, with Savannah. She'll have to know what to say if we run into people."
"Okay..."
"As close to the truth as we can, I think. Until she learns to lie better."
He winces. "Must she learn that?"
"I can see you still need to watch more movies."
"I can see you've thought about this a lot more than I have."
"And don't you forget it." She arches her back, pops her knuckles. "Wow. Tired already. I suck."
"We're all allowed an off-day. You know, it might help if you ate something."
She makes a face.
"I'll make you dinner. Pancakes?"
"One thing you have to learn about my household, James. I make the pancakes. I *always* make the pancakes."
"French toast than. With raspberry compote."
She bites back a laugh. "Compote?"
"Fresher than jam. Full of antioxidants."
"Bite me."
"And there's that sunny mood that makes this so much easier. One piece, or two?"