Tabula Rasa(20)

I know that’s extremely strange, but it was like I couldn’t quite believe these were real things that functioned, and I had to test them all out just to make sure the world still worked. It was like... if every sink and toilet worked, grocery stores and malls still existed. That’s just the leap my brain made. Even seeing all the lights off the interstate and going through a drive-thru, I still felt the need to test the reality of every modern convenience I came upon. Just to be sure.

When I got outside, Shannon gave me another of those assessing cold stares. He’d obviously heard all the flushing and running water. Before I knew what was happening, he’d swiftly spun me around and pressed me against the brick wall outside. He patted me down.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said after a moment.

“W-what was that about?”

“Making sure you didn’t make a weapon or have a cell phone.”

“Make a weapon out of what?” And as if some dinky rest stop bathroom weapon was going to have any effect against someone like him. I wasn’t that suicidal.

“You were in there a while, and then there was all the flushing and faucets. I thought you might be masking some activity you didn’t want me to know about like making a weapon or calling for help.”

The more he worried I was going to kill him or call for help, the more I worried that maybe I really needed to be considering those options.

He kept a brisk pace back to the SUV while I stumbled along—like I’d just learned to walk last week—trying to keep up with him.

“Where the hell would I have gotten a cell phone?” I asked when I reached the passenger door, already out of breath. As if Trevor would have let me have one. Yeah, we had electricity. We could have kept one charged, but that would have completely defeated his end-of-the-world charade.

“There could have been one in the tower when we went up for shoes. I should have gone in with you and watched, but you were already so skittish, and I was more concerned with getting you out of the park undetected.”

“In the reality I was living in, cell phones no longer functioned, and even if they did, the cell phone companies would have all collapsed, preventing service from being provided. And the battery would have died anyway. So, no, I didn’t have a cell phone.”

“Right,” he said, looking almost human in his momentary embarrassment. “I can’t believe how elaborate his scam was.”

The way he said it, it seemed like some part of him respected or was impressed with the effort. Like professional admiration or something.

The SUV beeped and unlocked, and I got into the passenger side still a little shaken from the way Shannon had just flipped to that laser-focused place again. It was the same place he’d gone to when he was cutting Trevor up into small, barely recognizable pieces, and ideally I wanted him to spend as little time in that place while he was around me as possible.

More driving in silence while I stared out the window.

By this point, I was seriously contemplating trying to find a phone or make a weapon. How could I not? He kept putting the ideas in my head. If he’d just act like a normal person for five minutes, I might not be so paranoid.

What was I doing? I should have let him call the shooting in—back when it still looked like self-defense instead of like he was trying to cover crime tracks. Maybe I should have just let the police get involved and deal with the fall out and awfulness of being plastered all over the news some more and trying to cope with memory loss in the spotlight. Was my choice going to end up being... go to the police or die? Framed that way, I’d made the most foolish of all possible choices.

I’d just been so overwhelmed and didn’t want to go to the police or doctors or face a million questions and poking and prodding. I was terrified someone would finally come forward claiming to be someone close to me—someone else who might spin lies about my life that I had no choice but to go along with. I hadn’t thought about what asking Shannon not to make me face the world meant would happen next. Nor had I realized how quickly he’d spring into action and start hacking up a body like it was nothing. I mean... who did that?

What did they say about snakes? They’re more scared of you than you are of them? Shannon seemed in that category, like something had rattled him out of whatever in his world passed for comfortable. Now that it had happened, he saw me as a potential threat. And the last thing I wanted was for someone like Shannon to see me as a threat. So I sat very still and silent, hoping in another of his laser-focus moments, he’d somehow forget my existence so I could slip away quietly.





Chapter Four





He drove a few hours before stopping at a run-down motel off a small, barely marked exit. Half of the neon-lit vacancy sign was burned out, but the point still got across.

I swear every single thing Shannon did was like the lead-up to the climax of a horror movie. Nothing was normal. It was all weird or paranoid or terrifying. I wasn’t sure I wanted Shannon to continue being my tour guide for life outside the park. During the drive, he hadn’t made conversation, and he hadn’t turned on the radio. And though, by the second hour on the road, I’d desperately wanted to turn on the radio, I didn’t make a move for it because I had no idea what he’d do in response.

He’d taken me through a drive-thru where I could have screamed for help but didn’t, then he’d treated me like a criminal at the rest stop. I just didn’t know what to expect from him. And I wasn’t sure knowing would be better anyway. It was Trevor all over again, just in slightly different packaging and without a colorful apocalyptic back story.