Salt Pillars

Chapter 18

Adriana awoke on the couch in the Veterinarian's house feeling disoriented. She briefly checked in on Stevie, who was sweating and moaning in his sleep. Then she went outside for fresh air. This was the morning that they were supposed to be sending the two boys off to search for survivors in nearby cities, and some people were gathered in town before the sun had even risen. Adriana could see them in the distance as they waved to the riders who rode past her on their way. She watched them for a moment as they disappeared over the horizon then she continued to walk with no specific destination in mind.

She wandering in a trance-like state for some length of time before another biker whizzed past her in their same direction. Only this time it was a girl who rode by, she recognized her from the bunker back when she had threatened Cole with a knife to his neck; her name was Jen.

Adriana waved to her as she past, but Jen was too focused on her mission to notice her and she rode on unabated. It could have been another five minutes or five hours that Adriana continued to walk, since her mind had lost awareness of time. She was pale and her clothes stained brown from Stevie's splattered, dried blood. Although people stared and whispered amongst themselves as she passed, she didn't notice them; they were too insignificant for her to see.

After a while, the crowds disappeared as she receded deeper into the neighborhoods until she was alone at last with the silence. The houses around her became more familiar as she reached a neighborhood block that was unmistakable. She knew it quite well in fact, as part of the street that she had grown up on.

Just around the corner was her childhood friend, Lindsay's home, with the trampoline in her backyard where Lindsay's brother had broken his arm while trying to execute a double back flip. At the time, the intensity of the situation was so extreme, but now she longed for those simple days — days when those kinds of catastrophes where handled by parents, who swept in and drove him to the doctor, and after the dust settled he came back with a casted arm and a cool story.

Adriana rounded the bend where she could see her parent's home at the end of the cul-de-sac. The white trim lining the blue siding was unmistakable from a distance. Why had she come here? In her trance-like state, something deep in her subconscious had steered her in this direction, to this place, to finally face what she had been dreading.

Her knees trembled tempting her legs to buckle. She couldn't face what was inside, but she knew that it was time — time to free herself from the weight of the past and the notion of that world where parents fixed problems, and injured boys got casts instead of coffins.

The exterior of the house looked as it always had, with only slight burns by comparison to some of the surrounding homes and rubble. Adriana lingered in the driveway for a moment, starring up at the second floor window directly above the garage. It was his room — Owen's nursery.

She was twelve when her parents brought Owen home from the hospital. She had waited her entire life to be a big sister, and despite the age gap, her enthusiasm hadn't waned a bit. Although he wasn't exactly what she had expected at first, such a shriveled angry little creature, he began to grow into a tiny human and his little eyes lit up bright with a big cheesy smile whenever she looked at him. Over the following three years, her love for him grew deeper with each stage of development until he was a walking, talking little chatter-box.

She remembered the night when he had caught his first fever, how she sat next to his crib late singing lullabies to him to ease his suffering — how helpless and afraid she felt at the sight of his frail little body.

Now Adriana walked slowly through her parents' home, her childhood home, advancing from room to room as though she was expecting someone to pop out at random and surprise her. The kitchen remained cleaned to perfection as always. Her mother was an expert at maintaining a clean house.