Bitty Bang - "Boomtown" - Pt IV
When Lance finished the last journal entry, he carefully closed the book and looked around. “Wow,” he said quietly.
“But why didn’t they just leave?” Chris wanted to know.
Lance shrugged. “No clue. Too far out? Maybe they quarantined themselves? You read the same thing I did. The doctor never said.”
“So what do we do now? The girl, Gracie, led us here. Why?”Chris asked as he stood, stretching his back. He looked around the dimly lit room and slowly took in each set of remains one at a time. There were three, plus the good doctor hunched over at his desk. An idea occurred to him and he spun around to face Lance. “We’re supposed to bury them,” he said suddenly. “She wants us to give them the proper burial that the doctor hadn’t been able to.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Chris thought back to the day’s events, first the barest hints that the girl was watching him, then when he first saw her, then when Lance saw her and she led them here. What else could it be? “Yeah, I am. She led us here, Lance. Why else would she do that? The doctor said in one of his entries that he’d created a cemetery out back. What if we did that? Put these poor people to rest?”
Chris knew what Lance was thinking as he looked around the room. Knew he thought Chris was insane and had completely gone over the deep end. There were four bodies, four holes that they would have to dig in the dark. Maybe he had gone insane.
Finally, Lance let out a long sigh and Chris relaxed. “Fine, we’ll do it,” Lance relented. “We can wrap them in their bedding to carry them out, but what we’re going to dig with the doctor here, I have no clue.” He shook his head. “Seriously, Chris, the things I do for you.”
Chris couldn’t help grinning. “Yeah, but you love me,” he pointed out helpfully.
Lance pretended to think about it and made a face. “Yeah, I do. But don’t tell anyone.” He paused a moment, looking once more at the remains and looked thoughtful. “We need to get moving. Look around and see if you can find something that we can use for a shovel or something like it.”
Chris went to the second door and jiggled the handle. To his surprise, it turned in his hand and the door opened into the doctor’s back yard. He swung his flashlight around, but it was over grown with tall grass and shrubbery. Further back, some ghostly shadows stood up out of the grass. He shivered. God only knows what they would find out there.
Next to the back door, they found the dried, brittle remains of two spades. The handles were long gone, but the heads were still solid enough. Chris thought that if they knelt on their hands and knees, they might be able to use these to dig the holes they needed. It was going to be hell on their backs and his knees, though.
He looked at Lance in the dark. “Let’s get to work.”
The field behind the doctor’s house was as overgrown as it had been right outside the back door. Chris discovered the ghostly shadows that the moonlight and their flashlight beams bounced off were actually make shift wooden crosses spiked into the ground as grave markers. Chris lost count of the times he banged his foot into something or tripped or grabbed onto Lance so that he wouldn’t fall. The field was deadly in the dark, he decided, but finally they found a plot large enough off to the side and they knelt and started to dig.
For the longest time, the only sounds were the two of them breathing hard and scooping the dirt out. Once in a while, one of them would mutter an angry curse as he scraped his knuckles or bumped into a rock in the soil. Chris’s arms started burning, his knees throbbing and his back was on fire. Occasionally, he took a quick break to take a drink of water from one of the bottles Lance was carrying around. Once, he took more Tylenol during a water break after Lance had insisted on it, but he always went back to digging. Two holes down, two to go. Lance had finished his second and started the remaining hole and Chris went over to join him. He was sure that both of them were covered in sweat and smears of dirt.
When Chris finally stood up, the last spadeful of dirt tossed aside, his arms had gone numb from the exertions. “And to think, we get to do this all over again, just in reverse. What fun,” he grumbled as he wiped the back of his arm across his forehead.
“This was your idea, Chris.”
He took a drink of water, and shook his head and shook his head as he screwed the cap back on. “No, it was Gracie’s idea. We just went along with it. So, how are we going move them?”
Lance was quiet as he went back into the infirmary and looked at the remains. “I still think we can try using their blankets to carry them out. There’s not a lot left to them, so it should work out all right.” He studied the first bed again and then began folding the blankets up and around the remains, creating a loose cocoon. Then, he picked up the corners of one end of the material delicately and waited as Chris did the same at the other end. Walking slowly, they went to one of the first shallow graves they’d dug and gently laid the remains inside. They repeated this process for each of the bodies in the infirmary until only the doctor’s remained.
Chris stared at where the doctor was slumped over the desk and chewed the cuticles of his thumbnail. “How do we move him?” Chris asked.
Lance swung the flashlight around the room, stopping only when he found a coal bucket by the stove. “That.”
Chris tried to hide the horror that he felt about Lance’s suggestion, but apparently didn’t quite succeed.
“Chris, it doesn’t make any difference what we do, the remains are going to crumble as soon as we touch them. There’s no easy way to clean him up no matter what. Slide the body as carefully as we can into the bucket and then we’ll ... Hell, I don’t know. Spill them into the hole, I guess. Or maybe dig part of it a little deeper and bury him bucket and all. Do you have a better idea?”
“No way. Look, Lance, there’s got to be another sheet around here somewhere that we can use. Like you said, he’s going to spill anyway, but it would probably easier for all of us if we could just find another blanket or sheet or something. We could use one of those curtains if we really had to.”
There was a cabinet on the long wall before the beds and Lance went to it, opening its door gently. God only knows what he would find inside. Chris stood next to Lance and could feel the tension rolling off him as he directed his flashlight’s beam inside. Dusty apothecary bottles lined one shelf, along with some old medical volumes. Tin plates and some other dishes were on the next one down. The spare bedding was on the shelf below that. Lance picked out a sheet carefully and unfolded it. Chris couldn’t help but feel relieved when he saw that it was mostly intact, if a little worn and threadbare.
Their first attempt resulted in them spilling one of the doctor’s legs all over the floor and a frantic scramble to find as many bones as they could. After that, Lance and Chris very carefully transferred the rest of the bones and his clothing to the sheet as best as they could. There was no way they could make sure that every bone was in its exactly right spot, but they could at least try to make sure he wasn’t buried for all eternity with his ass up by his head.
While Chris waited for Lance to get the last of the bones onto the sheet, he stared out the back window, watching as the sun just barely started to touch the abandoned roof tops and tips of tall grass in the field behind the infirmary. If he weren’t so tired, it would probably be quite pretty the way everything seemed touched by fire.
He sighed and tiredly rubbed a hand over his face.
“What’s up?” Lance asked quietly from where he still crouched on the floor by the doctor’s bones.
Chris waved a hand at the window before turning around. “Sun’s coming up. We still need to get some sleep and see if we can figure out a way out of this place; otherwise in seventy years, someone may be burying us out back, too.”
Lance stood, wincing as he stretched, and brushed his hands off on his jeans before crossing over to Chris. Chris watched tiredly as Lance crossed the room and let himself be wrapped in a hug for a moment before pulling back.
“Let’s get the good doctor taken care of so we can fill all the holes in and see if we can catch some shut eye, huh? We can try to figure out something later,” he suggested quietly, wondering if he sounded as tired as he suddenly felt. He picked up his corners of the sheet and then waited for Lance to do the same. Together they carried the body out to the last of the shallow graves they’d dug earlier that night.
Chris stared at the four bodies with their makeshift cocoons in them. The old bedding was a stark contrast to the dark, damp soil even in the dim light given off by the flashlights. In one hand, Chris held his spade head again and he knelt down and slowly began pulling the dirt back of the body. Bit by bit, the dirt covered up the fragile fabric until finally there was nothing left but a thin blanket of soil. He did this again for the next shallow grave and he could hear Lance working hard behind him on the other two.
It felt like forever to Chris before they were finally done. He had no clue how much time had gone by, but the sun was up, though still low in the sky, casting low shadows on the small mounds of damp earth. Chris stood, stretched and watched as Lance did the same.
“We should try and get some sleep,” Chris told him. “You wanna see if we can find that house again?”
Lance shook his head. “Nah. What if we just found a stable wall and leaned against that? Hell, a flat spot in the shade would work right now,” he answered around a yawn.
Chris shook his head. “I think I remember passing something that looked like a church not too far from here. I bet the benches would be better than the ground. Let’s see if we can find that.”
It was closer than Chris remembered it being - only back up the side street and down a block or so. He was relieved to see that it had withstood time pretty well, too. Both of the tall, arched windows were still intact and the building still stood straight and, hopefully, solid. The steps leading up to the entry were firm and the door opened easily.
Inside was as eerie as the rest of the town. Both sides of the church were filled with several narrow rows of pews while a third section of longer pews went down the center of the church. A small organ was against the back wall and a raised pulpit stood at the opposite end of the church. Four lights still hung from the ceiling. Everything seemed solid and Chris ventured further in.
They walked slowly up one of the aisles and chose a pew. Lance dusted it off with a sweatshirt he pulled out of the backpack, then stuffed it back in and exchanged it for the first aide kit before sitting on the freshly dusted pew.
“We should check that leg of yours before we try to sleep. Who knows what our adventure last night may have done to it,” he explained as he petted the seat next to him.
Chris knew it would be pointless to argue and sat next to Lance, then thrust his ankle into Lance’s lap. He winced as Lance slowly peeled the band aides away, but was relieved to see that they’d done their job and the deep scratches were clean, if a little tender. His sprain, however, was incredibly tender now that he was sitting still and not preoccupied with burying bodies.
“Is there any Tylenol left?” He waited a moment as Lance shook a couple of tablets into his palm, took the water Lance offered him and then mumbled, “Thanks.”
After Lance had re-bandaged his ankle, they both stretched out on the bench on their sides with their heads barely touching on the lumpy pillow Lance had made out of the backpack.
Chris studied Lance for a moment. There was no way that he was comfortable, he couldn’t possibly be. He was stretched out on the hard bench after a night spent digging and refilling holes in order to satisfy a ghost. His clothing was filthy, and dark smudges of dirt were smeared across his forehead and right cheek bone. The dark circles under his eyes from exhaustion weren’t dirt, though, and Chris was pretty sure he probably didn’t look any better than Lance did. As grubby and sore and tired as they were, Lance still looked pretty appealing and he curled up on the other end of the bench, head to head. He smiled and held on when Lance reached out a hand to him. Within moments, Lance’s breathing had softened and evened out and Chris quickly slipped into sleep not long after.
When Chris woke up, it was to a dry mouth and a growling stomach. He had no idea how long he’d slept. He groaned and sat up, then walked carefully to the church’s front door. Some of the old floor boards had creaked on their way in and he didn’t want to wake Lance if he could help it. He went down the steps and out onto the street, looking both ways out of habit before walking into it. The sun had shifted around, changing the angles of the shadows the buildings cast off. All of his abused, aching muscles, and especially his ankle, had tightened while he’d slept and the hard bench hadn’t helped. He wondered if Lance had any Tylenol left in that bag of his and was about to go check when Lance wrapped his arms around Chris from behind and linked his fingers together over Chris’s stomach.
“What’s up?” Lance mumbled tiredly against Chris’s shoulder.
“Nothing, was just looking around.” Chris paused, listening to the wind as it blew down the dusty street. He thought he heard something else hidden in the wind, but wasn’t sure. “Do you hear that?” he asked.
“What?” Lance replied a moment later. “I don’t hear anything.”
Chris shook his head and turned around without breaking the hold Lance had on him and kissed Lance gently before pulling free. “Got any Tylenol left?” he asked as he started digging around the bag Lance had slung over one shoulder.
“Front pocket,” Lance answered as he waived his hand at the bag. “There’s still some water left, too.”
Chris found the bottle and opened it, shaking a few tablets into his hand. “Do you need some?” he asked, looking up at Lance. “What?”
Now it was Lance’s turn to look distant. “Thought I heard something. And yeah, please.”
Chris chuckled. “If we’re the only ones in town, what could it be?” He shook out a couple more tablets and passed them and the water to Lance after taking his own.
A moment later, he heard it again. He concentrated and grinned. “Sounds like a truck. Maybe help has finally arrived?”
Lance screwed the cap back on the water bottle and handed it back to Chris, who put it back into the backpack. “Maybe. Let’s go find out.” He started walking down the street, cupping his hand over his eyes as he stared into the bright sunlight. Chris walked slowly next to Lance and tried hard not to favor his tender ankle.
As the vehicle grew closer, the sound got louder. The source of the sound probably hadn’t seen a muffler in a long time. When it finally turned onto the main street, they could see that it was an old, chugging truck with a body full of rust holes and a wooden utility rack in the bed. Chris squinted into the bright sunlight as the old truck rolled to a stop in front of them. JC was grinning widely from where he sat perched happily in the passenger seat. The driver was an old man with a long, white beard and green overalls over a plaid shirt, a dusty baseball cap tugged firmly onto his head. From what Chris could tell, the only hair on his head was under his chin.
Chris chuckled as the truck rolled to a sputtering stop and JC quickly hopped out, enveloping first Chris, then Lance in a hug. The driver climbed out, but hung back after closing his door.
The truck had barely stopped moving when JC quickly hopped out, enveloping first Chris, then Lance in tight hugs. The driver climbed out, but hung back after closing his door.
“We found you!” JC exclaimed triumphantly.
“Yeah. How?” Chris asked.
“Dude. Your phones were still on and so I called the cell company and we tracked the GPS signal from your phones,” JC answered.
Chris looked at Lance. “He thought of that one, you can just tell,” he teased, grinning when Lance chuckled.
JC indicated the man still waiting back by the truck. “Easton said he’d give us a ride back to the garage in town. We can get a tow truck there and have your car towed and with any luck, get it fixed,” JC continued.
“Easton?” Lance echoed. Chris met Lance’s surprised expression.
“As in Easton Mills from Boomtown?” Chris asked as he looked at the old man over JC’s shoulder.
The man looked surprised that he had been recognized as he touched the brim of his hat and nodded. “That’s me,” he answered. “How did you know?”
Chris and Lance shared a look, each of them shrugging. Finally, Chris spoke up. “We found Doctor Singleton’s infirmary. He kept a journal and we read it last night,” he finally answered. “They all thought that you had died.”
Easton nodded, white beard shivering as he did. “I reckon they did, me disappearing in the night and all. But as you can see, I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you ever let any of them know you were alive?” Lance asked gently.
Easton shrugged. “When I left, everyone in my family were already showing signs of being sick. The telegraph office had shut down when the operator got sick. What was I to do? If I’d gone back, I would have gotten sick, too.” Sadness touched his eyes. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d said goodbye to my family,” he finished. He shook his head, as though clearing the memories and opened the door of the truck, then climbed back in. “Come on, we need to get moving. We’re wasting light,” he said finally. He started the truck and its loud exhaust cut off the rest of the conversation.
Lance carried the bag in front of him as he and Chris followed JC back to the truck. There was no way that four adult men were going to fit into the truck’s cab, so he, Chris and JC went around to the rear of the truck. Chris stared dubiously at the rusted bed with gaping holes and flaking bubbles of rust and peeling paint as he waited for JC and Lance to climb in and kick debris out of the way. Before sitting down, Lance reached down and held out a hand, ready to help pull Chris into the back. The wheel wells didn’t look like they’d support much weight, so they each sat on the edge of the truck bed and hung on tightly to the wooden rack above them as they bounced their way back to town.
Chris looked back one last time as Easton’s truck burped and belched its way down the dirt road back to where they’d left the car the day before. If he just squinted, he thought he could see a faint outline of Gracie standing at the edge of the road in the grass. Her hair was braided now, but still over her shoulders, and she’d changed into a simple dress. She was smiling at them, and her hand was raised in a slow waive. Chris smiled and waved back quickly, then gripped the edge of the truck bed again before he fell out.
“But why didn’t they just leave?” Chris wanted to know.
Lance shrugged. “No clue. Too far out? Maybe they quarantined themselves? You read the same thing I did. The doctor never said.”
“So what do we do now? The girl, Gracie, led us here. Why?”Chris asked as he stood, stretching his back. He looked around the dimly lit room and slowly took in each set of remains one at a time. There were three, plus the good doctor hunched over at his desk. An idea occurred to him and he spun around to face Lance. “We’re supposed to bury them,” he said suddenly. “She wants us to give them the proper burial that the doctor hadn’t been able to.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Chris thought back to the day’s events, first the barest hints that the girl was watching him, then when he first saw her, then when Lance saw her and she led them here. What else could it be? “Yeah, I am. She led us here, Lance. Why else would she do that? The doctor said in one of his entries that he’d created a cemetery out back. What if we did that? Put these poor people to rest?”
Chris knew what Lance was thinking as he looked around the room. Knew he thought Chris was insane and had completely gone over the deep end. There were four bodies, four holes that they would have to dig in the dark. Maybe he had gone insane.
Finally, Lance let out a long sigh and Chris relaxed. “Fine, we’ll do it,” Lance relented. “We can wrap them in their bedding to carry them out, but what we’re going to dig with the doctor here, I have no clue.” He shook his head. “Seriously, Chris, the things I do for you.”
Chris couldn’t help grinning. “Yeah, but you love me,” he pointed out helpfully.
Lance pretended to think about it and made a face. “Yeah, I do. But don’t tell anyone.” He paused a moment, looking once more at the remains and looked thoughtful. “We need to get moving. Look around and see if you can find something that we can use for a shovel or something like it.”
Chris went to the second door and jiggled the handle. To his surprise, it turned in his hand and the door opened into the doctor’s back yard. He swung his flashlight around, but it was over grown with tall grass and shrubbery. Further back, some ghostly shadows stood up out of the grass. He shivered. God only knows what they would find out there.
Next to the back door, they found the dried, brittle remains of two spades. The handles were long gone, but the heads were still solid enough. Chris thought that if they knelt on their hands and knees, they might be able to use these to dig the holes they needed. It was going to be hell on their backs and his knees, though.
He looked at Lance in the dark. “Let’s get to work.”
The field behind the doctor’s house was as overgrown as it had been right outside the back door. Chris discovered the ghostly shadows that the moonlight and their flashlight beams bounced off were actually make shift wooden crosses spiked into the ground as grave markers. Chris lost count of the times he banged his foot into something or tripped or grabbed onto Lance so that he wouldn’t fall. The field was deadly in the dark, he decided, but finally they found a plot large enough off to the side and they knelt and started to dig.
For the longest time, the only sounds were the two of them breathing hard and scooping the dirt out. Once in a while, one of them would mutter an angry curse as he scraped his knuckles or bumped into a rock in the soil. Chris’s arms started burning, his knees throbbing and his back was on fire. Occasionally, he took a quick break to take a drink of water from one of the bottles Lance was carrying around. Once, he took more Tylenol during a water break after Lance had insisted on it, but he always went back to digging. Two holes down, two to go. Lance had finished his second and started the remaining hole and Chris went over to join him. He was sure that both of them were covered in sweat and smears of dirt.
When Chris finally stood up, the last spadeful of dirt tossed aside, his arms had gone numb from the exertions. “And to think, we get to do this all over again, just in reverse. What fun,” he grumbled as he wiped the back of his arm across his forehead.
“This was your idea, Chris.”
He took a drink of water, and shook his head and shook his head as he screwed the cap back on. “No, it was Gracie’s idea. We just went along with it. So, how are we going move them?”
Lance was quiet as he went back into the infirmary and looked at the remains. “I still think we can try using their blankets to carry them out. There’s not a lot left to them, so it should work out all right.” He studied the first bed again and then began folding the blankets up and around the remains, creating a loose cocoon. Then, he picked up the corners of one end of the material delicately and waited as Chris did the same at the other end. Walking slowly, they went to one of the first shallow graves they’d dug and gently laid the remains inside. They repeated this process for each of the bodies in the infirmary until only the doctor’s remained.
Chris stared at where the doctor was slumped over the desk and chewed the cuticles of his thumbnail. “How do we move him?” Chris asked.
Lance swung the flashlight around the room, stopping only when he found a coal bucket by the stove. “That.”
Chris tried to hide the horror that he felt about Lance’s suggestion, but apparently didn’t quite succeed.
“Chris, it doesn’t make any difference what we do, the remains are going to crumble as soon as we touch them. There’s no easy way to clean him up no matter what. Slide the body as carefully as we can into the bucket and then we’ll ... Hell, I don’t know. Spill them into the hole, I guess. Or maybe dig part of it a little deeper and bury him bucket and all. Do you have a better idea?”
“No way. Look, Lance, there’s got to be another sheet around here somewhere that we can use. Like you said, he’s going to spill anyway, but it would probably easier for all of us if we could just find another blanket or sheet or something. We could use one of those curtains if we really had to.”
There was a cabinet on the long wall before the beds and Lance went to it, opening its door gently. God only knows what he would find inside. Chris stood next to Lance and could feel the tension rolling off him as he directed his flashlight’s beam inside. Dusty apothecary bottles lined one shelf, along with some old medical volumes. Tin plates and some other dishes were on the next one down. The spare bedding was on the shelf below that. Lance picked out a sheet carefully and unfolded it. Chris couldn’t help but feel relieved when he saw that it was mostly intact, if a little worn and threadbare.
Their first attempt resulted in them spilling one of the doctor’s legs all over the floor and a frantic scramble to find as many bones as they could. After that, Lance and Chris very carefully transferred the rest of the bones and his clothing to the sheet as best as they could. There was no way they could make sure that every bone was in its exactly right spot, but they could at least try to make sure he wasn’t buried for all eternity with his ass up by his head.
While Chris waited for Lance to get the last of the bones onto the sheet, he stared out the back window, watching as the sun just barely started to touch the abandoned roof tops and tips of tall grass in the field behind the infirmary. If he weren’t so tired, it would probably be quite pretty the way everything seemed touched by fire.
He sighed and tiredly rubbed a hand over his face.
“What’s up?” Lance asked quietly from where he still crouched on the floor by the doctor’s bones.
Chris waved a hand at the window before turning around. “Sun’s coming up. We still need to get some sleep and see if we can figure out a way out of this place; otherwise in seventy years, someone may be burying us out back, too.”
Lance stood, wincing as he stretched, and brushed his hands off on his jeans before crossing over to Chris. Chris watched tiredly as Lance crossed the room and let himself be wrapped in a hug for a moment before pulling back.
“Let’s get the good doctor taken care of so we can fill all the holes in and see if we can catch some shut eye, huh? We can try to figure out something later,” he suggested quietly, wondering if he sounded as tired as he suddenly felt. He picked up his corners of the sheet and then waited for Lance to do the same. Together they carried the body out to the last of the shallow graves they’d dug earlier that night.
Chris stared at the four bodies with their makeshift cocoons in them. The old bedding was a stark contrast to the dark, damp soil even in the dim light given off by the flashlights. In one hand, Chris held his spade head again and he knelt down and slowly began pulling the dirt back of the body. Bit by bit, the dirt covered up the fragile fabric until finally there was nothing left but a thin blanket of soil. He did this again for the next shallow grave and he could hear Lance working hard behind him on the other two.
It felt like forever to Chris before they were finally done. He had no clue how much time had gone by, but the sun was up, though still low in the sky, casting low shadows on the small mounds of damp earth. Chris stood, stretched and watched as Lance did the same.
“We should try and get some sleep,” Chris told him. “You wanna see if we can find that house again?”
Lance shook his head. “Nah. What if we just found a stable wall and leaned against that? Hell, a flat spot in the shade would work right now,” he answered around a yawn.
Chris shook his head. “I think I remember passing something that looked like a church not too far from here. I bet the benches would be better than the ground. Let’s see if we can find that.”
It was closer than Chris remembered it being - only back up the side street and down a block or so. He was relieved to see that it had withstood time pretty well, too. Both of the tall, arched windows were still intact and the building still stood straight and, hopefully, solid. The steps leading up to the entry were firm and the door opened easily.
Inside was as eerie as the rest of the town. Both sides of the church were filled with several narrow rows of pews while a third section of longer pews went down the center of the church. A small organ was against the back wall and a raised pulpit stood at the opposite end of the church. Four lights still hung from the ceiling. Everything seemed solid and Chris ventured further in.
They walked slowly up one of the aisles and chose a pew. Lance dusted it off with a sweatshirt he pulled out of the backpack, then stuffed it back in and exchanged it for the first aide kit before sitting on the freshly dusted pew.
“We should check that leg of yours before we try to sleep. Who knows what our adventure last night may have done to it,” he explained as he petted the seat next to him.
Chris knew it would be pointless to argue and sat next to Lance, then thrust his ankle into Lance’s lap. He winced as Lance slowly peeled the band aides away, but was relieved to see that they’d done their job and the deep scratches were clean, if a little tender. His sprain, however, was incredibly tender now that he was sitting still and not preoccupied with burying bodies.
“Is there any Tylenol left?” He waited a moment as Lance shook a couple of tablets into his palm, took the water Lance offered him and then mumbled, “Thanks.”
After Lance had re-bandaged his ankle, they both stretched out on the bench on their sides with their heads barely touching on the lumpy pillow Lance had made out of the backpack.
Chris studied Lance for a moment. There was no way that he was comfortable, he couldn’t possibly be. He was stretched out on the hard bench after a night spent digging and refilling holes in order to satisfy a ghost. His clothing was filthy, and dark smudges of dirt were smeared across his forehead and right cheek bone. The dark circles under his eyes from exhaustion weren’t dirt, though, and Chris was pretty sure he probably didn’t look any better than Lance did. As grubby and sore and tired as they were, Lance still looked pretty appealing and he curled up on the other end of the bench, head to head. He smiled and held on when Lance reached out a hand to him. Within moments, Lance’s breathing had softened and evened out and Chris quickly slipped into sleep not long after.
When Chris woke up, it was to a dry mouth and a growling stomach. He had no idea how long he’d slept. He groaned and sat up, then walked carefully to the church’s front door. Some of the old floor boards had creaked on their way in and he didn’t want to wake Lance if he could help it. He went down the steps and out onto the street, looking both ways out of habit before walking into it. The sun had shifted around, changing the angles of the shadows the buildings cast off. All of his abused, aching muscles, and especially his ankle, had tightened while he’d slept and the hard bench hadn’t helped. He wondered if Lance had any Tylenol left in that bag of his and was about to go check when Lance wrapped his arms around Chris from behind and linked his fingers together over Chris’s stomach.
“What’s up?” Lance mumbled tiredly against Chris’s shoulder.
“Nothing, was just looking around.” Chris paused, listening to the wind as it blew down the dusty street. He thought he heard something else hidden in the wind, but wasn’t sure. “Do you hear that?” he asked.
“What?” Lance replied a moment later. “I don’t hear anything.”
Chris shook his head and turned around without breaking the hold Lance had on him and kissed Lance gently before pulling free. “Got any Tylenol left?” he asked as he started digging around the bag Lance had slung over one shoulder.
“Front pocket,” Lance answered as he waived his hand at the bag. “There’s still some water left, too.”
Chris found the bottle and opened it, shaking a few tablets into his hand. “Do you need some?” he asked, looking up at Lance. “What?”
Now it was Lance’s turn to look distant. “Thought I heard something. And yeah, please.”
Chris chuckled. “If we’re the only ones in town, what could it be?” He shook out a couple more tablets and passed them and the water to Lance after taking his own.
A moment later, he heard it again. He concentrated and grinned. “Sounds like a truck. Maybe help has finally arrived?”
Lance screwed the cap back on the water bottle and handed it back to Chris, who put it back into the backpack. “Maybe. Let’s go find out.” He started walking down the street, cupping his hand over his eyes as he stared into the bright sunlight. Chris walked slowly next to Lance and tried hard not to favor his tender ankle.
As the vehicle grew closer, the sound got louder. The source of the sound probably hadn’t seen a muffler in a long time. When it finally turned onto the main street, they could see that it was an old, chugging truck with a body full of rust holes and a wooden utility rack in the bed. Chris squinted into the bright sunlight as the old truck rolled to a stop in front of them. JC was grinning widely from where he sat perched happily in the passenger seat. The driver was an old man with a long, white beard and green overalls over a plaid shirt, a dusty baseball cap tugged firmly onto his head. From what Chris could tell, the only hair on his head was under his chin.
Chris chuckled as the truck rolled to a sputtering stop and JC quickly hopped out, enveloping first Chris, then Lance in a hug. The driver climbed out, but hung back after closing his door.
The truck had barely stopped moving when JC quickly hopped out, enveloping first Chris, then Lance in tight hugs. The driver climbed out, but hung back after closing his door.
“We found you!” JC exclaimed triumphantly.
“Yeah. How?” Chris asked.
“Dude. Your phones were still on and so I called the cell company and we tracked the GPS signal from your phones,” JC answered.
Chris looked at Lance. “He thought of that one, you can just tell,” he teased, grinning when Lance chuckled.
JC indicated the man still waiting back by the truck. “Easton said he’d give us a ride back to the garage in town. We can get a tow truck there and have your car towed and with any luck, get it fixed,” JC continued.
“Easton?” Lance echoed. Chris met Lance’s surprised expression.
“As in Easton Mills from Boomtown?” Chris asked as he looked at the old man over JC’s shoulder.
The man looked surprised that he had been recognized as he touched the brim of his hat and nodded. “That’s me,” he answered. “How did you know?”
Chris and Lance shared a look, each of them shrugging. Finally, Chris spoke up. “We found Doctor Singleton’s infirmary. He kept a journal and we read it last night,” he finally answered. “They all thought that you had died.”
Easton nodded, white beard shivering as he did. “I reckon they did, me disappearing in the night and all. But as you can see, I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you ever let any of them know you were alive?” Lance asked gently.
Easton shrugged. “When I left, everyone in my family were already showing signs of being sick. The telegraph office had shut down when the operator got sick. What was I to do? If I’d gone back, I would have gotten sick, too.” Sadness touched his eyes. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d said goodbye to my family,” he finished. He shook his head, as though clearing the memories and opened the door of the truck, then climbed back in. “Come on, we need to get moving. We’re wasting light,” he said finally. He started the truck and its loud exhaust cut off the rest of the conversation.
Lance carried the bag in front of him as he and Chris followed JC back to the truck. There was no way that four adult men were going to fit into the truck’s cab, so he, Chris and JC went around to the rear of the truck. Chris stared dubiously at the rusted bed with gaping holes and flaking bubbles of rust and peeling paint as he waited for JC and Lance to climb in and kick debris out of the way. Before sitting down, Lance reached down and held out a hand, ready to help pull Chris into the back. The wheel wells didn’t look like they’d support much weight, so they each sat on the edge of the truck bed and hung on tightly to the wooden rack above them as they bounced their way back to town.
Chris looked back one last time as Easton’s truck burped and belched its way down the dirt road back to where they’d left the car the day before. If he just squinted, he thought he could see a faint outline of Gracie standing at the edge of the road in the grass. Her hair was braided now, but still over her shoulders, and she’d changed into a simple dress. She was smiling at them, and her hand was raised in a slow waive. Chris smiled and waved back quickly, then gripped the edge of the truck bed again before he fell out.