Drifters (18 page)

Chapter Thirty Nine

              I woke to the rumbling of a truck. I was lying on the red dirt road I walked earlier in the day with my doppelganger and her husband. I wondered where they were and if they knew what really was going to happen there. The truck rumbled again and my only thought was the sound of freedom, the sound of everlasting relaxation from now on. It was over, Max was gone. Not goanna lie, I remember everything my other self-did to him, but I want to forget such horror. I may be a monster by itself, but what she did was nothing far from a horror movie. There have been moments in my past where I had to let the huger take over as I did in the abandoned mill to take Alex down, but never have I witness what she was capable of. I turned in to a mad woman tearing with my bare hands into his body, laughing as his eyes turned blank, and the blood splattering on the floor, as on walls of the circular arena as well as on my body. I felt my mouth opening wide to every mouthful of Max entrails and his last return to the living world. I knew that if I or she let the brain intact he would return more with the hunger claiming more lives and hungrier for revenge, I saw as she looked in to his eyes, I sensing the smile of her as she said to him, ‘you wanted Sara the drifter and you had here, you wanted Sara the monster and you have me.’ The end of Max could not have been more appropriate more than forty victims overall and done by one man who wanted to blame me for what others did to him. Yet he was right if I had not existed they would not have created him or Alex to take revenge, no, it wasn’t revenge; Marino wanted all but take revenge, he wanted to find a cure, and he did. He did found one, my doppelganger was proof. Why Jeremy did never told me unless he did not know. Why Marino acted so righteous to his actual plan, what did he have to prove? Why not come for me in the first place?

The truck that woke me was from a farmer, he said his name was Gerald. He
said the farm was west from where we were and where he found me. He said he was looking for lost cattle until he came upon a red hair woman unconscious. He asked if I needed help he would gladly bring me to his house so I could rest and get better. You got to love farmers they are always the best for assistance when you are alone stranded and with nowhere to go in a place you don’t know.

“Hey missies are you okay.” He said as I stumbled backwards as I stood and got dizzy.

“Yes, I don’t….” I said as I sat on the floor again and looked at myself, my clothes stained from the red dirt, but not blood soaked as before. Where did I found water to clean myself?

“Last night drizzle was
something wasn’t it not?” Gerald said as that explains the mud and dirt in my clothes. I could still see some patches of blood, but the mud and dirt stuck to my clothes was hiding it.  I put a hand to my head as to remember, but the images of Alex, Max, Jeremy, and my Marino were so vivid I had to scream, and I did, hard and strong. I did not screamed from fear, but to realization that those I really loved were no more.

The farmer moved back as I relentlessly wanted him not to be near me. I felt as if I was
slipping again to the dark crevices of my mind, but I just stumbled forward and blacked out, as the last of the memories were taken away by the monster inside me, the hunger satisfied and laughing at me.

#

“Miss, are you okay what happened to you on the road?” he said as I woke on a bed presumably on the farmers house. I looked up to the ceiling and tried to sit when a woman about 50 years old put her hand on my shoulders moving her head from side to side not letting me sit.

“Missies you better rest
, you still have a fever.” She said as I laid there on the bed thinking what had just happened.

I sick? Impossible, I said in my head as I knew that the hunger did not let me get sick
. I had never felt a fever in me, never had I cough to a virus. I lay in that small bed as several days passed. Some nights I would screamed, I screamed my lungs out as the farmer and his wife would come to the room to see if I was okay, and I was but frustrated. Other nights I would just go deep to a blackness that I thought the hunger was again controlling me, and I was wrong. That blackness was my feelings never uttered to those that now are gone, Marino, Jeremy; even Max.

When my fever went down and I was glad that I was not turned to the monster I am. I felt something was wrong within me, but I let the worry pass and as I did the hunger grew bigger in me.

Every
night I would remember Marino, which had chased me for more than 12 years; now dead after being turned by Max. I would remember Jeremy, my father, gone, and now I know what he wanted all this time, he wanted my forgiveness for what he had done to me.

“Father, I d
o forgive you.” I said one night to the ceiling, remembering what he had done for me and never actually saying goodbye.

“Marino you dumb idiot you should have told what you really wanted, I
still love you,” remembering his last words as I ripped his head off.

“Max I am glad you are gone,” ‘
Miss Sara I’s all part of the plan’ I could hear the words from his torn, glass filled throat.

During my stay and as soon as the fever was
completely gone I help the farmer, thankful for his help and not calling the cops. I would wake in the morning a little dizzy, but would start gathering wood and clean the house. One morning I woke and was vomiting in the bathroom when the farmer’s wife, whose name was Catherine, came in and helped me holding my hair up and rubbing my back in circles. She said something, but I was not paying attention.

He and his wife were good people so when the hunger struck and I had to leave, I did only leaving a note that said thank you.

After my ordeal and out from the farmers house. I found something that really would utter another night creature speechless, but really made me happy now. I was not alone, never to be again. More than three months have passed since the monster inside me dealt with Max twisted dream of revenge.

N
ow again I drift. God knows where I will end. I remembered the forest where I walked to a clearing remembering the tree with its trunk carved with a heart and two letters ‘G’‘C’ and a plus sign. I remembered in my head putting my fingers to the hard bark of the tree tracing each curved carving and a feeling of nostalgia came to me as I left the farmer and his wife, then Catherine’s words came to me as I held my stomach looking down to it and I know that from now on everything was going to change.

My name is Sara Garber, I’m a drifter and soon to be a mother.

About the Author

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, father of three children. He lives in the northern part of the island alone with his dog Canella.

Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:

J.A. Santos

Levittown Lakes

Ramon Morla HN20

Toa Baja, PR, 00949