The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

“Why?” I asked.

Her eyes jerked open. “Because that’s where Janna is going.”

“Not to be a smart ass, but why would we do that?”

“Because William is there… he escaped… and left me to die… That bitch Janna picked me up. I should’ve died out there…” She said.

“You are wery much delling us William is alive?”

“For now… Probably.”

“What do you mean for now?” I asked.

“He has one of our phones. Everyone is going to be looking for him. He’ll die; Avery will die; Sam will die; and my Tom has already died,” she said as she began to sob.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “How did he die?”

Because of the pain medication Tish’s face up until that point was expressionless, almost comatose even. When I asked how Tom died, the muscles in her jaws flexed as her hatred for me swelled. Through grinding teeth, she yelled, “Why do you care? You don’t care…” She pointed the pistol at me. It shook. I honestly thought she was going to shoot me, and I was frozen in place, waiting for what I hoped was a quick death.

“Please, Dish. Do nod do dad. We will dake de nodebook. Who is id dad you are needing us do dake id do?” Aadesh pleaded, his hands on his heart.

“I don’t know who he is. I wasn’t good enough to know who the leaders are. I had to just sit back and take orders.” Her eyes nearly closed as whatever assortment of emmotions swelled inside her. “All I ever wanted to do is bring honor to my family and people.”

“Okay. Give me de gun, den, Dish? We will be daking care of dis, okay,” Aadesh said, extending his hand for her to give him the gun.

“NO!” She screamed. “You don’t know where to take the note!”

“Dell me where to dake id, Dish. I will dake id--”

She waved the gun at both of us this time.

She stood up. Even with the potent amount of pain medication coursing through her body, it still wasn’t enough. She cried out in pain as she stood. Her nostrils flared, a long tendril of snot hanging from one of them. “I hate you, and I hate what you represent. I should kill you right now,” she said, her hand shaking uncontrollably as she retrained the gun on me once again. “You’ll die, though. It's only a matter of time,” she said, tired sobs.

A half-smile formed on her lips as she closed her eyes. She used her left hand to steady herself against the table, raised the gun to her head, and pulled the trigger in one quick and efficient motion. Her soon to be lifeless body fell to the floor; a large portion of the right side of her head gone, as a result. She took two weak breaths and died there, just a couple feet away.

***

I tried to read over what Tish had written, but I couldn’t focus. I threw the notebook on the table, grabbed the bottle of water, and thirstily finished it. Aadesh and I hadn’t said a word to one another since deciding what to do with Tish’s body. It was probably better that way. He saw me take the pill bottle Tish had left behind and looked at me with utter disgust. I hadn’t yet taken a single one of the pills because of that, but it was only a matter of time.

Having finished reading the note as best as I could, I slid it across the table, towards him. “Well?”

“Well, what?” I asked, rubbing my temples.

“Well, whad do we do?”

“I don’t fucking know, Aadesh,” I told him, wiping the sweat from my face with the sleeve of my flannel shirt. “It’s not like we have a whole hell of a lot of options.”

Aadesh angrily picked up the notebook and shook it. “Our friends are alive!”

“You heard what she said. If they have those bastards after them, they probably aren’t now.”

“So we sday here, den?”

“You want to take the note Tish wrote to our enemy in Fairbanks?” I asked, a sarcastic laugh followed.

“No… I wand do look for our friends.”

“Come on, man, Fairbanks isn’t safe. If the Order has the base, they also have the town. There aren’t any Sniffers here. We’re safe here.”

“Nowhere is safe. Dish gave direcdions do a wehicle we can used do drive to Fairbanks. I say we dake id and leave.”

“I’m not going. Our friends are already dead. We have food, electricity, and everything else we need here to last for a long time.”

Aadesh flicked his chin towards the bottle. “You have dem. I guess dad is all you need.”

“I’m losing my sanity right now, talking about this goddamn shit,” I said. I stood up and angrily pushed the chair under the table.

“I do nod know who you are,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

“This is who I’ve always been, an addict and an asshole. You could ask my parents if they weren’t most certainly dead. They’d tell you.”

He sighed deeply. “Your drugs are hidden behind the udder medical supplies in Miley’s office. Dake dose pills; dake all of dem for all de shid I give. I will be leaving soon.”

I threw a plastic bag full of pill bottles on the table and opened the water bottle I had gotten while I was up. I took one of the pills Tish had left behind and sat back down at the table. From the look on Aadesh’s face, I think he was under the impression that I wouldn’t retrieve my drug stash after he told me where they were, that I would just magically change my mind about things. I was in the wrong frame of mind for that.

But I knew he was going to chase after William, and I also knew he was going to have to take the van from the garage to go look for the vehicle Tish wrote about in the note. I didn’t want to have to