Three Weeks on the Road Ch. 20

"Happy Birthday, Daddy." Jessie woke me with a kiss on the cheek.

"Hey."

"How are you feeling?"

I sat up, winced, stretched, winced again. "Like I went ten rounds with a cement mixer." I rolled my neck, rotated my arms, worked the stiffness out of my upper body and then stood, nearly fell over. New aches and pains had taken up residence in my bones and muscles and I wasn't prepared for that.

"You're an old man," my lover said with a giggle.

I flipped her the bird. "It's not the years, it's the mileage."

"Ok, Indy."

I relieved myself - yup, pissing blood - and checked out my torso in the mirror after tenderly shrugging my shirt off. I looked like an alien I was so many different colors. Purple and red and yellow mostly. The reds were a wild variety of shades, and the yellows were sickly. My face wasn't too bad. Not a lot better, but I'd protected it enough I didn't look like I'd made out with a meatgrinder.

I changed clothes and Jessie changed my bandages and we woke McKenna. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead," Jessie above, perched above her on all fours.

The little programmer blinked, stretched, groaned. "Still tired."

"Time to get some grub and some coffee. We've got a forest to see today. And some mountains I think."

"Must we?"

"Might as well," I told her. "It's on the way home."

Granby was a tourist trap on a bay, struggling to decide if it was a marina or a quaint woodsy village, and failing at everything except disrupting a pristine view. They should've just leaned into the tourist trap, it would feel so falsely forced then.

We pushed through crowds of people, waited ages for coffee and donuts, then packed up and started driving again. The roads were thin and winding, cut along ridges, climbing up and down valleys, the homes getting poorer and poorer the farther we got from the town. Eventually, the woods took over completely, only the occasionally trailer or shack appearing deep between the trees. It was beautiful. Pristine. Even with the other cars climbing into the Rockies with us, it felt undisturbed.

The mountains were close, like if you got out and started walking, just over that ridge and another one over there, you'd be able to reach up and touch the peak.

It was wildly beautiful.

We traded off driving responsibilities. My body was still tired, still knitting itself back together, so the girls took some of the time behind the wheel, navigating the tight roads and tight turns with skill, weaving the big vehicle up the steep roads from one lookout point to another. Higher and higher we climbed across and through and up the mountains. The lookouts got more and more epic further we drove, our field of view getting father and deeper. The views stretched for miles out and what felt like miles down, green living trees and brown dead ones carpeting the rising and falling landscape.

It felt like a single step would take us irrevocably into that wilderness. More than any park we'd visited, the Rockies felt close and accessible.

"Are you sure you want a picture taken?" McKenna asked as Jessie and I nuzzled noses against a picturesque rock restraining wall overlooking trees growing up from the base of a cliff.

"Why wouldn't we?" Jessie seemed confused.

"Cuz Gary looks like a worn out punching bag?"

"Still want to remember that I was here with him."

The shutter clicked on Jessie's cellphone, once, then twice more in quick succession. "Picture with you guys?"

I grinned. "You can only make me look better."

We ate lunch at the rest stop high up in the mountains. Half observatory, half gift shop and cafeteria, it provided McKenna a perfect opportunity to load up on candy. We munched on grilled cheese and hot chocolate, and I asked her how she stayed so small.

"Squats. Deadlifts. Lunges. Lots of them. Makes me nice and round in some places, nice and slim in others." She batted her eyes at us. "You should try it, Jess."

"Daddy likes me just the way I am. Besides, no amount of squats will give me tits like yours. That's what I'd really want."

I pulled Jessie against me and kissed her hair. "Don't change. I think you're hot."

"Daddy thinks I'm hot." She giggled and made cat ears with her hands and took another bite of her sandwich.

This far up in the mountains there was snow on the ground and at a stop-off overlooking a deep valley and frigid lake, we took the opportunity to have a brief snowball fight. I won, of course, superior skill with projectiles overriding my lack of mobility due to injury. It was funny to watch the girls dodge snowballs, laugh at the impacts, and then hustle back to the truck for hot chocolate.

The changes in environment were drastic. Snow-covered peaks and valleys fogged by clouds mingled with sparse, rocky fields blasted with chilling winds gave way after a short drive to thick, luscious pine forests and far warmer temps. And everything was accessible - far more than Yellowstone, it felt like if you crossed that stream, or took two steps off that path, you'd be alone on another mountain. The park felt close and immediate and I loved it. I couldn't see myself living in Colorado with all the hippies and the busybodies, but maybe Wyoming. Maybe if this world kept going to shit I'd find myself a nice quiet corner of the mountains and let it all burn down and explode off in the distance.

"Can you stop at the next pull-off that has a restroom?"Jessie asked sweetly, interrupting my musings of relocation.

"Sure. I could stand to stretch my legs a little bit too."

The next cluster of brown restrooms was down in the sunny, summery valley between ridges, and I parked in the deserted lot and got out with the girls. I rolled my neck and glanced around at the wild environment. I'd been white-knuckling it through a couple of mountain turns that looked barely big enough to allow the SUV, much less the campers and trucks that kept trying to pass me, and my shoulders were knotted up with tension and my legs felt like I needed a run. I was too sore for that, but I could take a nice little nature walk whole Jessie was in the bathroom. I locked the SUV, beeped it a couple times in confirmation. We were alone at this out-of-the-way stop, I could go for a brief walk, leave the girls with the vehicle.

"I'm just gonna take that path for a couple hundred yards while you're in there," I told Jessie "I just need to stretch my legs a bit, those turns are killer."

"Can I come with you?" McKenna piped up.

I shrugged. "Sure. Jess, you want us to stay here until you're out?"

She rolled her eyes and looked around. "Seriously? I'm good. Security provided by Sig Sauer."She lifted the hem of her shirt to show me the butt of her Three Twenty.

"That's my girl. I'll be back in five."

"Aye aye captain."

I headed for the treeline and McKenna followed. Pine needles smooshed softly under feet as we walked among the thick trunks the site smelling richly of fragrant sap, shifting shadows sliding across the forest floor as the pines rustled softly in the slight breeze. I looked over at my walking companion. "No quickies today. I'm damn sore."

She laughed quietly. "Not why I'm here. I just need some... Sympathy. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around yesterday. Around everything."

"That'll happen."

"How long did it take you to deal with it? To get back to... Normal?"

"I was in the hospital for a long time going crazy. Thought I'd lose my arm. Thought about living life as an amputee. Thought about getting locked up a lot. Thought about dying and all the people who'd died around me. I... Had a lot more to work through. The actual shooting people I was pretty cool with though."

"You're not normal." Her voice was mirthful and I let the insult slide.

"You gotta change the way you look at it. You think you did something shameful and wrong as a last resort. I think you did something good and noble and made the world a better place. Even if all you did was wing that guy kicking me, he's gonna think twice about going to a riot and having a good time. You gotta change your thinking about it, otherwise it'll eat you up."

"You don't sound eaten up."

I sighed. Not the restful walk I'd hoped for. But McKenna needed reassurance more than I needed a quiet stroll.

"Quick story. When I was a freshman in college, my... this...acquaintance... of mine, ummm, how do I say this. Something bad was going to happen to her. Totally bad, she'd done nothing to deserve it. Me and a friend...we couldn't stand to see her suffer, so we did something about it." I paused, tried to regulate my breathing. I'd fought to keep this memory down just as hard as my desire to wake up next to Tori. Now that Mike was dead, I was the only one alive who knew all the ugly details. "I carried the knowledge of what we did for a long time. Felt like shit about it. But eventually, I realized that the good we did outweighed the bad we did to a bad person. You choose, Mickey. You choose if you're going to believe breaking the law to survive, so that other, better people can survive is something to regret. Can't say it'll be easy, but you're in charge. You make the rules for you. As long as you don't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it, no one has the right to stop you."

She snickered. "When did you become such a...pirate."

"I've always been an ethical anarchist." I shrugged. "I'm selfish about who controls me."

"I don't think I can ever get there, I'm sorry."

I stopped, turned her to face me. Saw the indecision and vulnerability in her eyes. "If you can't accept it, eventually time will blunt it. It will seem like it happened to someone else, a bad dream, a blackout drunk. Eventually, you'll get some distance." I leaned down and kissed her forehead. "C'mon, let's go find Jessie."

We'd been following a marked path, stones set along either side, and we turned back down the trail, heading for the parking lot. It was warm under the pines, but the shade kept the harshness of the sun from turning the hike into a sauna. The trees rustled gently overhead. I was still brutally sore and stiff and the warm, dreamy temperature and the beautiful scenery had me wanting to nod off.

I turned to McKenna. "Can you drive when we get to the truck?"

I couldn't hear my voice. McKenna didn't turn out reply, as she hadn't heard me. The silence had crept up on me unaware. It was deafening. I could see the soft pine branches shifting, but I couldn't hear them, could see our feet denting the carpet of dead brown needles underfoot but there was no rustle.

I grabbed McKenna, pulled her to a stop. "Can you hear me?" I shouted.

She said something I didn't I hear, then her eyes grew wide and she said something else. After that, she grabbed my hand.

We took off running.

I couldn't hear my breathing, couldn't hear the pounding of my heart. It was like we were sprinting in a vacuum. And for far longer than we'd walked to get here.

I recognized this silence. I'd been warned I might encounter it again.

The branches drooped low over the end of the trail and I pushed through. Not the parking lot. A clearing.

Probably fifty feet in diameter and completely dead inside. The trees were wilted brown on the side that faced the closing, and no grass grew, no weeds, not even a fly or mosquito or hornet danced in the still, oppressively silent air. Even the dirt looked dead, pale and dry.

If I had to guess, it might have something to do with the staircase standing in the center of the circle.

It was stained brown wood, treated with varnish, with a green shag carpet runner down the center. It stood two stories tall with no supports underneath, looking like it had been perfectly laser-cut from a house and dropped into the middle of a state park.

McKenna gripped my hand with all her strength and I made eye contact, saw terror in her eyes. She knew something was wrong here too. I took her hand and moved it to my left shoulder. She tangled her fingers in my shirt, but that didn't hamper my movements as I drew my Sig.

We approached the structure, circled it. It looked benign. Just a staircase. But it's location made it WRONG. McKenna moved in front of me without releasing my shirt. Even without sound, I could tell what she was saying. "What the fuck?"

I held the gun against my chest, pulled out my phone. No cell service. Of course. I pulled up the text program and typed in a sentence, sent it to her out of habit even though it couldn't transmit. "Don't touch."

She took the phone, typed, handed it back. "What is it?"

I didn't want to you're what I was thinking, but I did. "Gas station."

Her head cocked, spilling cocoa hair over her shoulder as she thought, then her eyes widened further and she clenched her jaw, realizing where she'd seen something like this before. Her hand tightened further in my shirt. Another message punched into the phone. "Let's go."

We fled back down the trail we'd come from, feed pounding the fallen pine needles silently. My body ached from the violence yesterday and the violent movement but I pushed through and kept running.

I knew when I saw the low hanging boughs what would happen next but barreled through anyway.

Back into the clearing. This was not possible. I clamped down on the small, scared feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. I was very small and very insignificant in this universe, and I was being shown that very explicitly at this moment.

We circled the clearing, McKenna moving on legs as wooden as mine felt. No other trail led off the clearing. The stairs were exactly the same. We'd run down a straight trail and wound up in the same place. This wasn't possible. I felt lightheaded, and I had a feeling if I could hear anything, my ears would be buzzing.

I thought about Jessie back at the parking lot. Was she looking for us? Would she wander into the woods?

McKenna waved her phone in front of me and I read the message she'd type. "Maybe we should go up and see if we can find a path out?"

I typed "Fuck no. BAD."

She nodded. "I know." Then she ground her teeth and let go of my shirt, stepped away as she dug for something in her purse.

"What?" I mouthed.

A grin forced its way across her face, bravado I knew she wasn't feeling. Hands moved together and she shielded a flame as she tucked a match back into the book she'd ripped it from.

Oh dammit.

McKenna took two more steps and tossed the book onto the wooden stairs. The book caught, and blue flame spread over the structure like it was drenched in gasoline. It didn't smoke, just roiled with curling fire. The carpet and wood blackened as the engulfed staircase burned rapidly. It disintegrated in less than two minutes.

Sound came back as it crashed, all the missing noise barreling back into the clearing so hard we both staggered. It was like getting hit with a bat, and even the dead limbs of the trees around the clearing tossed in the still air.

The petite little programmer stood there watching the pile of charred wood. I think she was expecting it to smoke. I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. "You ok?"

She nodded. "I just wanted to send a smoke signal." Her voice sounded small and lost.

"It's ok."

"I know. I'm... Gary, this is... She turned and wrapped her arms around me and I held her. She wasn't crying, she just needed comforting. She needed presence.

I needed it too. This was fucked up.

The trail didn't lead us back to the clearing. It was far longer than we 'd just run, and my heart about skipped a beat or six when I saw pavement. There was my SUV. There were the little restroom buildings. I sprinted over to the SUV and looked inside.

No Jessie.

Shit.

I shouldered through the doors of the women's restrooms, failed at hiding the Sig I was holding or the look of coldly murderous determination on my face as Jessie looked up from washing her hands. "Gary, what's up? What's wrong?"

I holstered the gun and bearhugged her so tight I had to put her down when she said "Ow."

"Nothing, nothing's wrong. I just...heard a weird noise, came looking for you."

"I didn't hear anything. Maybe the flush sounded weird from outside?"

"Maybe."

We got back in the truck and I pulled out my phone as it dinged. McKenna's texts coming through. I checked the time. Three hours ahead.

McKenna's phone beeped at her and we shared a significant glance in the rearview.

"What?" My lover asked, sensing something going on outside what we'd shared.

"Just a meme I sent her," I evaded.

We spent the next few hours taking pictures at the pulloffs - and ONLY the pulloffs. The girls acted cute and goofy and I trudged along and felt dead tired and dead sore and weirded the fuck out. It was exhausting feeling as beat up as I was, contemplating what if experienced in the past two days, and being hyper-vigilant for my two companions.

I had a feeling that if I told Jessie I was on the lookout for angry sentient staircases or the interdimensional mice that The Hiker said had built them that she'd probably take me to the hospital in Estes Park and not let me leave the neurological wing for a week.

And so I dragged ass along, staring at the wild green-covered mountains, and trying not to wonder what weirdness lay out there. It wasn't at all fun, relaxing, or entertaining.

Estes Park was a beautiful, picturesque town nestled in the Rockies, right at the entrance to the national park. Main Street was a long row of souvenir shops interwoven with bridges crossing a peacefully babbling creek, tourists clogging the sidewalks. I felt like I could relax. We parked the SUV at that night's hotel and wandered the commercial district for a long while. I crammed my face with a burger at the beginning of our walk, and by the end of it, I was hungry again.

"Where do you guys want to eat?" I asked as we stood on Main Street, looking up and down the avenue at the restaurants, windows shining yellow in the blue-gray evening. The mountains towered above us, and the air was getting cool.

"You're the birthday boy, you choose," Jessie said, blowing me a kiss.

"Seems like this town knows a thing or two about Mexican food, let's try one of those restaurants." It was true, for being so far from the border, Estes Park had an inordinate amount of home-grown Mexican restaurants. Not chains, actually restaurants where food was cooked by real people instead of microwaves.

We ate tacos and drank local whiskey at a restaurant at the top of a dizzying flight of stairs on the side of a hill - McKenna and I shared a significant glance before she burst out laughing - and then headed to the hotel. The lobby looked like a rich hunting lodge, everything seemingly carved from stone, a fire in the fireplace beckoning travelers in from the cooling night. We checked in and for the first time on the trip, I got a cart to haul the luggage. I wheeled it slowly down the hall, through elevators, to our room, the girls following along behind.

The room was a close, cozy bedroom with attached bathroom, the carpet short and the same rust color as the bedclothes, the walls and ceiling and woodwork a neutral cream. We put our bags on the bed, not in front of the TV, and I started digging through my duffel bag.

"Whatcha looking for?" McKenna inquired.

I held up the garment. "Swim trunks."

The poolroom was half arcade and seating area, half pool, all of it overlooked by hotel room windows. A few other guests swam or lounged in the water, and all of them avoided eye contact with me as I swam. In addition to my very visible scars, I was a walking bruise, and I had to guess that everyone who saw me vacillated between morbid curiosity and pity.

I didn't care, I just swam.

The cool water felt magnificent against my sore body, and the cut of my arms through the water loosened up tight muscles from my shoulders down through my core. Even the chlorine sting on my cuts felt invigorating. Once more I'd survived violence that could've killed me.