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.He watched it out of curiosity and hoped Anne was okay.Though she was clearly mad, she didn’t deserve a bad ending.Jess’s mind strayed for longer than he should have let it.The light reminded him of fire pits while camping with his family many years ago.A lot of people found fire to be hypnotizing but amid the darkness it was especially so.It was only a minute - maybe a little longer but he shouldn’t have stayed so long.Right about when he started thinking that he should continue his pilgrimage something hit him in the head and he lost consciousness.Chapter 9“God – how much did I drink last night?” Jess thought.He woke with a throbbing headache and a parched mouth.Wherever he was, his surroundings were swirling around him too quickly to make anything out.It was dark – that much he knew.Vague voices could be heard floating to him like inaudible echoes of conversation on the wind.He was sitting against something hard with his arms tied behind his back.He felt with his hands the stump of long, coarse pole in the middle of a dimly lit room.He was unable to move anything but his feet and his head and fingers, but he could still feel.He discovered that another length of rope kept him still across his waist as well.He was sure he must have been indoors.It was very dark.There was no air movement.He couldn’t see much and most of what was visible was very close.A rectangular form that looked like a window was a few yards away and seemed to indicate that night had blanketed the sky.No light came from any direction.There was a smell of livestock that made him certain that he was in a barn.“Orson?”There was nothing.The watch was gone.There was no other device that Orson could have transferred into to stay with him.Things finally began to settle and he started to think that he was alone - that the voices he thought he had heard were the remnants of a dream.It was quiet and everything seemed still.He always imagined that a barn would be full of animals as seen through a cut-section of Noah’s Ark, but nothing visibly resembling that could be seen in the shadows of this place apart from a certain smell that made him think of hay and horse shit.There seemed to be no way to pull himself free from his binds.He wasn’t sure why he was being held here but he feared was that he was next on a menu for starving monsters that once could have been considered human.How many movies have been made where people in extreme dire straits resorted to middle age barbarism or cannibalism in the name of survival?It felt like hours had passed.His knee burned.It was excruciating to be held still like this when the only way to relieve the pain was to move his knee to another position.He growled and cursed, trying to force himself from the ropes that held his arms tied behind his back.As his vision acclimatized to the lack of light he noticed that indeed the barn was empty and that the same familiar thin dusting of ash covered everything.There was also now a faint gust of wind that tickled his face coming from somewhere, even though there appeared to be no open door in sight.His eyes frantically searched for something in the dark, be it either some source of light or a familiar shape.Nothing changed.He was sure that half a day must have slipped by.He eventually started nodding off, struggling to fight the inviting wrappings of sleep when he caught sight of movement somewhere on the other side of the barn.Jess wondered if perhaps he had missed seeing the still form of an animal that was perhaps sleeping on its side.But the forms crawled forward from the shadows tentatively, and with more sly movements than he thought was possible from ordinary livestock.One moving form became two, then three.They came forward into the dimness at the same languid pace.They were human, for sure, but they appeared to come forward in such a way that he wasn’t sure if they were the monstrous types of humans he had seen recently or more survivors looking to stay that way.It wasn’t until one of them spoke that he permitted himself a long inhalation of breath.“I’m going to ask you some questions,” came a deep voice.Jess momentarily relaxed his limbs that were tensed hard against the constraining ropes.“If you’re smart,” the man continued, “you’ll answer them without much fuss.If you can manage that, you just may get out of here without any trouble.So it’s all up to you, you see.”There was a period of silence and Jess wasn’t quite sure if he had just been asked a question that he should respond to or whether silence was the better option.“Where were you going?”The voice was coarse and gruff like the person had either chewed glass or smoked for most of his life.“I was just trying to get away from the madness in the city.”He decided not to tell them anything about his family until he could determine what their intentions were.The fact that he was tied up and was now being interrogated didn’t exactly put him at ease.“What city? Toronto? What did you see there?”“People,” he said.“I saw sick people.People who shouldn’t have been walking, but they were.They were monsters more than people, crawling around like hungry, starving dogs.You must have seen them!”“Where did you get that jacket?”Jess had to focus to figure out what jacket he was wearing in the dark.He had been working when the accident happened.He was wearing his work jacket with insignias on both arms and on his chest.“It’s mine,” Jess said.“You work for that company?”“I’m a subway driver.”“I thought they drove themselves now.”“Well, I used to be a subway driver.”One of the privileged.Ride the Bucket.”Jess realized what he was up against now.People rarely were pleased with the idea of others making a living off their tax dollars.The man thankfully continued on his previous course of questions: “There was no military around?”“Not that I saw, and I had walked about five kilometres through the heart of that city to get out.Can you people untie me? I’m not going to cause any trouble.Did you drag me away from Toronto? Where are we?”“Quiet!”“Can you people untie me…”A hand came out and slapped him in the face.The three dark forms seemed to come together and there was whispering among them.Large doors at the far end of the barn were rattling heavily, presumably by the strength of the wind outside.His wrists were beginning to burn from the subtle movements of the rope.“Are you hurt at all? Do you have any scratches or bites?”“No, I’m fine.”One of the people came even closer.It was the speaker.Despite his advancing proximity, all Jess saw was a nose, faintly shining eyes and curls of long hair behind his head.“Lucky for you we didn’t find anything in our inspection while you were resting.” The deep-voiced shadowed man turned back to the other two forms with him.“Cut him free but tie his hands back up.We’ll grab some food at the main house.”Jess was freed momentarily, yanked to his feet and then re-bound at the wrists with what felt like soft plastic – perhaps the kind of thing they used to make skipping ropes.There was a man behind him, guiding his forward movement with hands on his shoulder.At least they didn’t seem interested in hurting him.The barn doors opened and he was pushed out into the cool open air of what appeared to be mid-day.The sky was filled with so many grey clouds that the sun was still completely masked yet there was enough dull light present to deem that it wasn’t quite the middle of the night as he had thought.They went across an opening between the barn and a house [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]