7

The vehicle that Tomás 'acquired' for us had exceeded everyone’s expectations. In the abandoned driveway of a neighbouring villa, the silver behemoth stared back at me as I choked out gushes of excitement.

“T-This… You… Man, we’re gonna be riding in style!” As we moved the gas cans over from the Todd’s house to fill up the beast, I took another sneaky peek along the side of the dusty-yet-powerful RV. The windows were tinted black, and it had massive wheels that could pop a Lost’s skull open just by coming into contact with the hardened rubber.

After the kids had moved all of our gear into our new motor home, our driver Alisha was pulling away just as I scrambled upwards into the electronic door. Plenty of battery power left, it seemed… I hadn’t taken a look at the interior yet, but everyone else was still glancing around in complete awe for the past ten minutes.

I couldn’t believe how luxurious it was. There were two leather couches in the middle, a small modern kitchen and a sparkling bathroom all spaciously residing in the central area. With the bunk beds in the back and the elongated sofas, there was enough room to sleep twelve adults, never mind the small kids.

Despite the exterior looking so unkempt and dirty, the inside was almost spotless and untouched. If I had to guess from the littered bottles of water and doodled-on road maps, the last people to drive this thing were survivors like us, only a little over a month ago. Sadly, they hadn’t returned or left any notice of coming back… finders keepers, I shrugged to myself.

“Hey, hey, hey!! Check it out, Danny-boy!” I heard the toilet door click open, and Tomás came sauntering out as he fanned some ‘sensitive’ magazines in front of my face. “Looks like the last guy that lived here was a total player! We’ve hit the jackpot… Which do you want a loan of first, Barely Legal Teens or Sexy Asian Slu-“

Snatching the indecent materials out of his eager hands, I hid them behind my back as the three blonde girls on the couch glanced over awkwardly before returning to their gloomy silence. “Dude, not in front of the kids! Jeez, read the atmosphere… Beth almost killed Joyce back there, she’s been shaken up ever since.”

As he raised his hands in defeat, I didn’t expect much sympathy from the musician anyway. Whenever things got too real for him, he would put on the same act as though he didn’t care in the slightest. It was his way of coping… but I was more worried about the children we’d rescued than the adults at that moment.

We were on the road for about half an hour, and the sun was already setting ahead of the dusty trail. All around us, there was nothing but unforgiving desert and faded tufts of tall grass. Even the fallen bodies of the dried-up Lost began to blend in with the road, which would almost be invisible if it weren’t for the bloodstains on their corpses…

Anna was apprehensive about engaging with the rest of us, clinging onto Beth and Stacie as though they were the only ones that she could trust. Once I had described our encounter with her parents and the fact that they could be staying at a place they called ‘Patch’, she seemed to ease up a little with the promise of finding them again.

With a whisper of a thank-you, I left her alone as I could tell that she was uncomfortable with talking to strangers… especially after what she’d just been through.

Setting myself down in the passenger seat, I watched Alisha massage her arm painfully as she tried to focus on the darkening scenery ahead. “Hey, ‘Lish. Are you sure that you're okay to drive? You took a pretty nasty fall back there…”

Her eyes narrowed casually at me, like I already knew the answer. She would never admit to it, even on the verge of losing consciousness. “I’ll pull through, once we find some better supplies… Thanks, though. I'm just thinking over what Stacie said back there.”

Just after we'd taken off in our new mode of transport, we asked the kids about how they had ended up in the Todd’s house. However, we didn’t exactly get the answer that we’d been hoping for, mostly due to Stacie’s condition.

She had suffered from the same illness that had taken Tomás' eye, only she had both of them removed to save herself from becoming Lost. The two had bonded over the mutual hardship; the little girl's sunglasses still adorned the musician's head as he sat down next to her.

“I couldn’t see the man that everyone called Vinnie,” the student uttered as though she’d done something wrong, “but he was really nice! He promised us that Miss Flynn would be okay, and that she would find us once everyone was safe again. He drove us to some kind of funny town, with lots and lots of friendly people to take care of us!”

We all raised our eyebrows at this, as though the idea of a non-violent community out here in the sticks was absurd at best. Stacie lowered her head, as her story took a turn for the worse.

“I was worried, about Miss and the others… So Vinnie stayed with us, and one day he gave me a walkie talkie to hear your voice. That was the same night, though… that I heard Mr Todd asking me to come with him. He put something over my head and took me away in his car, I don't think anyone heard me screaming. When I woke up, Anna was there with me in that house. That’s all I remember, sorry…”

Alisha had been focused on driving ever since that conversation, but even after half an hour, it was a difficult topic for her to let go. “That ‘Vinnie’… He had no intention of letting those kids die. He betrayed Wayne, but what I don’t understand is the reason why he was so secretive about it. He knew that we were on the kids' side as well, right?”

Mulling over the chain of events myself, it did seem rather suspicious. “He didn’t just betray Wayne… Burkley was working with those bandits to capture Blessing, remember? There was also the way that Bless just let the dude take the bus, without even trying to stop him…”

A sudden buzz brought my attention down to my pocket, where my phone had received another text over the hacked Telos network. It was mysterious contact, who had been watching over us on CCTV cameras and nudging us along Route 66 ever since New York.

I’d been messaging him or her back and forth over the past week, but it was nothing more than navigational details and vague promises of truth. Come to think of it, we’d only started receiving those strange messages right after our encounter with Blessing in Barbados…

Dropping my phone in complete distraction, I barely caught the message as I scrambled to pick it up.

“-ALMOST THERE, DANIEL WALKER? WE’LL BE IN PATCH. BRING FRIENDS.”

Alisha slowed the RV to a stop as she muttered something about taking a short break… stealing a glance at my phone though, she seemed to understand the same part of the message that I was having trouble with.

“What… What does that mean, ‘we’?” Her eyes shot between me and the screen, and my expression told her that I had just figured out the answer.

“It’s Vinnie… This guy, it has to be!! He’s been guiding us to Patch, this whole time because he knew what would happen with Wayne! If he’s rebelling against Burkley and Telos, then does that mean he has something to do with Blessing? Maybe that’s why she let him steal the bus, right in front of her…”

“No!!” Both of us spun around as we caught Beth rising up from her seat, shaking her head desperately. “Miss Blessing had nothing to do with that... She’s a good person! Without her, I would be…”

Putting two and two together, I must have forgotten about the fact that Blessing and Beth shared the same escape helicopter. “Wait, you’re saying… that she was the one who saved you? Beth, that woman’s the reason why you were captured in the first place!!”

Beth’s face puffed up in distaste, a look I was getting used to in the passing months. “That’s… not true! I can tell, she’s nice on the inside!!”

Slamming her fist against the door lever, Beth stumbled out of the RV and after a moment of hesitation, plonked herself down on the bottom step just above the road’s surface. Storm-offs were not her forte, at least not while she was stranded in the middle of a pitch-black desert...

I wasn’t sure about whether to approach her, but Alisha jerked her hand at me and left us alone to chat with the other girls. Climbing over the child, I leaned against the door of the vehicle as we both stared into the shrouding darkness, absorbed in the silence of it all.

Not knowing what to say in these awkward situations, I just opened my mouth and went with my gut. “I was weak, after we lost Millie… and Blessing was right there to fill the void. She was capable, strong, always fascinated with anything that I had to say. When I found out that she’d been using us to get to Telos… No, wait… Damn. I guess I still don’t know what the hell that girl was thinking. She lied to us all, Beth.”

I couldn’t see the little girl’s face, but somehow there was a clear wave of empathy radiating from her.

“…She was scared, Daniel. I saw it when she looked at me from the helicopter. I don’t think she was worried about Telos, or even those bandits who were after her. She was scared that everyone might not like her for what she did. Bad people aren’t like that... There must’ve been a reason why she put us in danger.”

I breathed a sigh, placing my hand on the girl’s shoulder. “…Maybe there was, but that doesn’t matter anymore. She should’ve been able to talk about whatever was bothering her. In the end, we trusted her way more than she trusted us.”

Playing the events over and over in my mind, I was finding it hard to work up any sympathy for Blessing with so many questions unanswered. “I can’t just ignore what happened... how she almost had you taken away, how she watched as Alisha’s students were rounded up and kidnapped. Whatever the intent was, her actions speak louder than words.”

Turning around to face me, I didn’t expect Beth to be crying. It was probably due to everything that had happened with Joyce and Harold, coupled with us being reunited at long last.

“I… I just want everyone to be happy again…” She uttered, tugging right at my heart strings. Hugging her close, I lifted her back into the RV and carefully set her down on one of the bunk beds as she crawled under the covers. It must have been incredibly tiring, not knowing whether we were out there looking for her these passing weeks.

“M-Mister?” Her voice was squeaky like a mouse, she sounded exhausted as soon as her head hit the pillow. Lifting my face into a comforting smile, it seemed to soothe her as she closed her eyes.

“Yeah, you need something?”

“…What will happen to me, when we find Auntie Lizzie? Will you stay?”

Frozen on the spot, I hadn’t considered the possibility… rather, I didn’t want to. I had convinced myself that I had no family left, in order to stay strong and keep rolling with the punches. If we ever reached our goal, would I return to Scotland? Maybe stay with Tomás and Alisha?

I didn’t want to fool myself, thinking that Elizabeth Boudica would be able to fully take care of Beth, on top of being a resistance leader. If I was to stay with Beth for as long as our world kept turning, would that make me her real guardian?

No matter what, I would avoid the word ‘father’ like wildfire. Beth already had one of those, and he had died protecting her. I was probably making it up in my head, since I never really knew Leo… but I figured he would be happy, with me as a temporary substitute.

“Beth, I promise…” I hesitated, not knowing what I was going to say next. “…When we finally get to Lizzie, everything’s gonna turn out just fine. I’ll make sure of that.”

Tucking her in, she was already nodding off when I turned my back to find Tomás staring at me from the couch, with his ‘reading material’ lying out in the open despite my previous lecture. Having heard every word, he sent a slight grimace my way. “…That was cold, bro. That girl needs some stability in her life… Hell, we all do. Why won’t you let her in?”

Slumping down in the seat beside him, I wasn’t in the mood for another fight. “She’s just a random kid, when it all comes down to it. We’ve been through a lot together, but that doesn’t give me any right to make promises and call her my own.”

As he slowly closed his pornography over, I felt that I had said something wrong from the pained look on his face. “…Belle and I… We were gonna look into adoption, one month after we had our wedding.”

I couldn’t make myself face the musician, instead drawing my eyes back to Beth as I felt him clench his fists against the cushion.

“She had an accident a few years ago, so she couldn’t… well anyway, it was all we could talk about in the days before the Lost came. Having a baby in our lives, moving out to the country, all of that good stuff. I’ve always regretted it, not being a parent soon enough.”

Even after all of this time, I had no idea that Tomás had such aspirations. With a wavering sigh, he couldn’t help but glance over at the three sleeping children as well.

“I’d be a useless dad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just, I could never say that a child wasn’t my own, simply because of where they came from. That’s not a ‘random kid’ in there… you say that she’s not your daughter, but like it or not, you’re her father.”

He promptly left to lie down on one of the bunk beds, and I was stuck with his words swimming around in my empty brain. I knew that I’d accidentally touched a nerve, but he didn’t seem angry in the slightest. If anything, he was disappointed that Beth had asked me to stay with her above anyone else in the room.

My phone buzzed once more, and I almost felt the urge to ignore it before flipping it out of my pocket. If this mysterious sender was Vinnie, then why was he playing dumb? If he was on our side, why not just come out with it instead of hiding behind firewalls and code?

The words pierced my brain, and for a full second I felt completely useless to the sender's power. After that brief moment of confusion, I threw myself towards the RV’s steering wheel with all of the determination I could conjure. There was no time to waste…

Throwing my mobile onto the dashboard, I revved up our monster of a vehicle and tried to cover a few more miles while we were concealed under the night’s shade.

My eyes flitted back to the phone’s dimming screen, but those words were still clearly visible and as urgent as ever. If the cryptic message was true, then I honestly couldn’t tell what the intention behind it was... a friendly warning, or even more likely, a threat.

“-DON’T KEEP US WAITING. HARRY SAYS HI.”