“Must be a pretty slim book,” Rebecca said.
“No,” Walter said. “But it’s old, like me.”
Neither one of them spoke for a while after that. So many things had come about that Walter also didn’t know where to begin. Or rather, he did. He didn’t want to have to do it. They still hadn’t crossed the point of no return, and while this in between was nice, it was deteriorating quickly. They could camp out here until morning, or until the storm broke, as long as the shield held. He had already tried to call the police but to no avail. There would be no help coming, not for them. A couple of snowplows had driven by, but he didn’t figure they would make heads or tails of the situation. A plow driver’s first concern was the road immediately ahead of them, and not what freaky light shows might be happening on the sides of the road. A plow driver that paid too much attention to the oddities of the roads, rather than the roads themselves is likely to run over a mailbox or two, or run straight into the metal guards that hang over each edge of the highways, meant to keep cars from driving over into the steep hills below.
No, the boys and girls in the trucks were good, which meant they wouldn’t pay old Walt any attention, not when the snow was failing this thick and deep.
Walter stood up.
His vision blurred slightly, followed by an onset of darkness, known as a head rush. He wished he had more coffee, but the cold small last drops were all that was left in his Stewarts cup. Rodney used to have a coffee maker in this stop, but like most things Rodney tried to do, it broke within a few weeks and hadn’t been used since. A spider web was constructed inside the pot as the small creatures waited out the cold like everyone else.
By this point, he had planned on being home, either reading quietly or watching TV. It didn’t matter which, since both hurt his eyes and allowed him to forget about the quietness of the house for a while.
He hadn’t planned on getting involved in all of this, but he was here to stay. He looked down at Rebecca.
“Something tells me I might be the least interesting person at this rest stop,” he said, walking over to his desk.
“It’s not bad to be uninteresting,” she said.
“Oh, I’m plenty interesting,” he said, reaching into his desk. “I just don’t have lights running through my veins like you and your friends.”
“They aren’t my friends.”
“Course they are.”
“They want to kill me.”
“Oh no, Rebecca,” Walter said. “They don’t want to kill you. They think that they have to survive. I have seen bad people over the years, and your friends out there with the little light show that are glowing under their skins, they aren’t bad. And that’s what makes them dangerous.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” Walter said. “I doubt I’ll be able to convince you to sacrifice yourself for them, and I doubt I’d be able to convince them to spare your life. So for now, we do nothing. We could try and make it to the car, but the tall girl, pregnant or not, would shut us down, and that’s assuming your buddy who’s shoving her head into the field didn’t get to us first, or that your brother with his feeling, or whatever you called it, would be the one to grab us.
“So, no, Becca, this doesn’t look like something we can fight our way out of. Even if I was able to get the shotgun out of my car, I seriously doubt any of your friends would give me the time to shoot it.”
“They aren’t going to like your answer.”
“They already know my answer,” Walter said. “That’s why they haven’t destroyed my truck, that’s why they haven’t taken any one of the nearby plow drivers hostage. They know that you’re not going to die, and truly, at the end of the day, none of these people here want to kill you. You were their friend only a few days ago, and while rage is a good motivator, it is bad at providing a sustaining foundation. I’ve seen many people over the years, angry about this or that. The second they act out on that anger, they make their lives inexorably worse. And they knew that that would happen. They know that they’ll make it worse, and yet they do it anyway.
“I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. I only warn you that your friends out there don’t want to hurt you.”
And Walter hoped that was true. He had known hundreds of people over the years through AA, and even more through all of the books he read. He felt like he could read those kids out there, and at the end of the day, that’s all they were, a bunch of scared kids who didn’t want to die, like almost everyone else. He could almost pity them, and Becca had been right. Had he not heard their stories, then perhaps he too could find a way to hate them.
But now he couldn’t, and there was a cost for that.
He walked over and grabbed his jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“Not I,” Walter said, “We.”
“What do you mean?”
“We deserve to let them know what’s going to happen.”
“I thought you said that they already knew.”
“They do, trust me. But we can at least give them some peace of mind.”
Walter headed toward the door but stopped at the opening. His hand felt cold on the doorknob, colder than he would have liked. There wasn’t any easy way out of this situation, or if there was, it was hidden too well for him to get a grip on either side. More people would die, and it wasn’t his job to say which. He couldn’t get Becca to do anything that she didn’t want
