Yonder

Chapter Four

            Felix and Echo shared a can of mandarin oranges for the rest of the walk until their legs got tired and they just stopped in the middle of an empty highway.

            “We’ll sleep on the side of the road,” Echo insisted. “I doubt any infected will be wandering up the highway just because.” Felix nodded and dropped his backpack and got another bottle of water from Echo’s. She placed her backpack down as well but picked up the hunting bow and kept the quiver on. “I think I’m gunna go test this out and see if I can find us some real dinner in that little patch of woods. Good idea?”

            Felix mindlessly nodded. Echo huffed and tip-toed into the woods; when she came back the sun was almost ready to set. She had caught one squirrel and one wild rabbit. Felix clapped his hands but then stopped, frowning. “I didn’t think to grab matches,” he said.

            Echo shrugged and reached into the back pocket of her pants. “Well, I guess I’ll have to see if this lighter has any juice left in it.” Nothing seemed to bother her and it actually worried Felix but he was glad Echo didn’t get mad with him.

           

            It was an hour later before the two made actual conversation for the night.  

            “Echo,” Felix stuttered.

            “Yes, my little man?” The woman replied, tossing the skins of the animals into the middle of the highway.

            “Where-… Where are your parents?”

            “Mine?” Echo asked as if the question didn’t even faze her.

            “Yeah,” At first, Felix didn’t think he would actually get an answer out of her, but then-.

            “Well,” Echo began, “I don’t know, really. They’re probably dead.”

            There was a long silence in the night.

            “Why?” Felix, being the young curious child asked. Now that he’d gotten Echo to even mention them, he had to push on.

            “You remember how I told you I was your babysitter right?”

            Felix nodded.

            “Well, when those Birds came and… attacked… your… um… parents… first thing I did was pack a small bag, pick you up and we went… This was summertime, way back when. My priority was you…”

            “But weren’t you around my age, now?” Felix wondered. “Why didn’t you go home to your parents?”

            Echo shrugged. “You and I were neighbors. When I ran out of your house, the door to mine was wide open. I ran in but no one was home… There was a bowl of bananas with strange little insects and mold all over them and two were unpeeled and half-eaten on the table… The spots looked normal like how brown spots are supposed to look on bananas… but they smelled disgusting… So I got out of there as fast as possible and ran as far as I could…”

            Felix studied Echo’s expression for a moment. “Those were your parents in my house? They were the Birds?”

            Echo nodded. “So I left before things got worse to protect you.”

            “But… But you could have gone around and told people not to eat bananas or other fruits and foods that had those spots!”

            “I wasn’t thinking about our town at the time, okay? And what was the use? Even if I stopped it in our neighborhood, what about every other house in the entire country?”

            Felix wasn’t one for fighting and neither was Echo. They both quite talking and Echo almost fell asleep before Felix spoke up again.

            “How come we haven’t found any people in the ten years after this crazy mold-ocalypse?”

            Echo rolled over so her back was facing the boy.

            “Come on,” Felix moaned. “You have to at least give me that… You haven’t told me anything-”

            “We did find people,” Echo sighed, but she didn’t turn around. “A few people actually, but this was early on after America figured out most of its population was being taken out by a silly bacteria imported from god knows where.”

            “Why didn’t we stay with them? We could have already been protected by a big group of people or something!”

            “Not really… The most of them wanted to kill you. A couple wanted to help raise you… But I wasn’t able to figure out who was who, so to protect you, I hid the both of us until you were old enough.”

            “Am I old enough now?”

            Echo shrugged. “We’re going to find people now, aren’t we?”

            “I guess so,” Felix suspected that’s as much as he would get out of Echo. He turned his back to her as well. “Thanks,” the boy muttered. He heard rustling behind him. A figure rolled over and hugged him with a peck on the cheek. Felix jumped but relaxed. When she released, the world became cold. It was always cold, but he never realized it until he felt the warmth of another human.

            “You’re very welcome, my little man,” Echo laughed, pinching Felix’s cheeks. “I loved and lost for you so you better thank me every day for the rest of your life!”

            Felix brushed off Echo’s hand and turned back around as she rolled back into her spot. He frowned. “What’s love?”

            Echo froze, just staring blankly at Felix.       

            “Echo?” The boy asked, yawning. “What’s love mean? You’ve never said that word before.”

            Echo unfroze. “Well… If you can tell me how to spell it, then I’ll tell you!” Then she rolled over one last time and fell asleep.

            When Felix woke up, he spent the following two days trying to figure out how to spell something he didn’t know he would have to feel to understand.