She repeated the chorus and I sang with her and so did a couple of the others. We sang softly so our voices didn’t carry very far in the black air – I don’t think.
It was a catchy song. Kind of uplifting, and at the same time sad.
Sahalia seemed to have a talent for picking the right songs for the right moments. That’s something I could never do.
I thought about that for a while as we walked. I thought about Sahalia. She had changed a lot since I had known her. A lot of change, it seemed to me, in a short amount of time. Maybe I had changed, too. That was certainly possible. But I liked this Sahalia much better than I had liked the old one.
‘How much farther?’ Max or Batiste or Ulysses would still ask every so often.
‘A while,’ Niko would still say.
After that happened, like, maybe 50 more times, Sahalia hissed, ‘Niko.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘Behind us,’ she whispered.
There was a little dot of light behind us. Maybe a quarter mile away.
Someone else was on the road.
‘Keep an eye on them, okay?’ Niko asked.
But then, maybe 10 minutes later, we saw another group of travellers ahead of us. They came off the highway and down to our road.
They had 3 flashlights and were shining them all around. Not very inconspicuous. Kind of stupid.
But they seemed to be moving quickly and soon they were quite a ways ahead of us.
‘Who are they?’ Max whispered.
‘They’re travellers,’ Niko answered. ‘Just like us.’
I looked at Sahalia and we smiled.
‘They’re trying to get to the airport. Just like us,’ Niko repeated.
I cannot say how far we walked, that last march. If we had been closer to the highway, I could have calculated it with the mile markers. I imagine we could walk a mile in 30–40 minutes.
When we left Mario’s, it was 8:32 a.m. We stopped for protein shakes and water at 11:15. Then we walked again until 1:30.
Maybe 5 miles?
Well, let’s say 5 miles +/? 2 miles from Mario’s we saw a light in the distance. Much brighter than the emergency lights on the side of the highway. This one was shining in a circle, spinning its head around, like a lighthouse light.
It was a beacon.
‘What is that?’ Max asked. ‘Are we there? Is that the airport? Are we there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Niko said.
We picked up the pace.
Sahalia smiled at me. A big, real smile.
Batiste squeezed my hand.
We could hear a man’s voice on a loudspeaker. We couldn’t make out the words, but you could hear that it was some kind of a message, because the cadence repeated.
As we drew closer, we saw people gathered around the light. They stood a ways apart from one another, in small groups. Some groups were just couples and some groups had as many as 8–10 people. Most of them wore layers and face masks. There were a few people raving and acting dodgy – they must have been type AB.
We made our way up to the group. Slowly, edging forward. Niko had Sahalia push Max. I guess he wanted his hands free in case we needed to fight. He was probably wishing he still had our gun, but I didn’t say anything.
No one moved towards us or anything.
The other people looked as ragged and filthy as we had before Mario’s. We definitely looked the best out of everyone. Relatively clean, with the two cool orange Army face masks (no one else had those).
I felt like if Mario could have seen us, he would have been proud.
The message came on again: ‘You have reached an assembly point for the emergency evacuation of the Four Points area. Remain here until the next bus arrives. Buses will arrive every hour on the hour.’
I was so dazed, hearing that.
We had made it.
Sahalia let out a big whoop of joy. She hugged me and kissed me right on the mouth!
Ulysses went to Max and hugged him and they cried together, and Batiste was hugging me from behind as Sahalia, now with her arm draped around my shoulders, gave another big whoop!
The other people joined in with her. Maybe it took her elation to set them off, but suddenly everyone was laughing, crying, hugging one another, where before Sahalia had made that sound, they were reserved and defensive.
And then I saw Niko. He had sunk down to his knees and had his face his hands.
I went over to him.
