Evilution

Chapter 22

By the light of an overcast dawn, which had risen too soon and roused the others from their sleep, they gathered their backpacks, cut the twine from the trees packed up the tarp. Though their stomachs grumbled and their bodies ached they continued pushing through the tangled foliage that bunched at their ankles as they traveled north uncertain of what they were looking for or what they might find. Travis estimated at least another two long miles through the foliage and porous earth, dipping into shallow valleys and over creeks that carved through the forest to the ocean. He mentioned nothing of this morning's close encounter with the undead kind and when Zahra asked if he was hanging in there he replied he hadn't slept well at all.

They moved as if in a funeral march, stuck in their own groggy haze of sleep and Travis tried not to think about the coffee sitting in his cupboard at home. His dulled senses blocked the outside world from coming in. From the woods around his aperture of sight, sound came in all the familiar noises of dawn in the wilderness—long sharp cries of seafaring birds, the pulsing clicks of tireless insects, and the infinite crush of high tides thrashing at the island shore. Nothing of this was noticed by Travis as he was not conscientious of impractical matters, only of the doleful laments of the living dead. They were evidently a team within the vicinity of danger at all times.

Travis saw the dew collected on the fronds, pure and clear like little glass beads and felt the pulse of thirst in his parched throat. His tongue now felt rough like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth, which reminded him of the way he had felt in the spring of his thirteenth year, when he was struck with the flu that kept him out of school for a week and a half. There had been long nights during that siege when he had awakened from disorienting dreams, like someone had pressed his thoughts in a vise causing distorted colors and abstract shapes of nightmares he could not remember, and he felt too weak to reach for the glass of water on his nightstand. He remembered feeling wet and sticky like he did this morning, and with the stench of fever on his skin and permeating his bed sheets, helplessly he had laid parched and full of terrors on the inside. All these years later, he felt the same way.

His eyes kept wandering to the white spray that exploded into the air from morning tides battering its waves against the rocks and the ocean water the shade of mint tea. He willed himself to swallow and when he did he felt the fever in his throat again.

The minutes passed and the deep blue sky lightened to a powdery celeste blue. Behemoth clouds sparkled like balls of snow flanked a stormy horizon. From shore, a loon lifted its piercing cry into the morning fog.

He watched a drew drop form at the tip of a frond and before it fell he stuck out his tongue and caught it in his mouth. The droplet landed like liquid silk across his rough taste buds. A few more and he nearly felt content. Content? No, that still didn't describe how he felt. Not by a long shot. There was no denying his guilty emotions, that he had slept alongside Zahra last night, her body pressed against his when he felt that stirring, tightening sensation swelling between his legs to betray his loyalty to Rebecca.

He thought again of the nightmare that fueled him awake. They had been coming more frequently, barreling over him like a runaway freight train that he could not brake. No amount of pills or whiskey could mollify his restless dreams and when he awoke he felt as though he had not slept at all. Travis believed little of dream interpretation, but he felt himself questioning, wanting to question the potential, for perhaps Rebecca was trying to communicate with him. Would she be angry at him?

He had been unable to explain his feelings to Zahra and the distress he felt was as conspicuous in his expression as a red emergency light during their department's fire drills. Zahra, who had observed his countenance, met him in stride.