A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
It was pitch black when Atticus rode back to Safe Haven. He left Caliga in the stable, removed his gear, and headed to the bunker, finishing what remained of his second cigar and throwing it into the nearest pond. There was light in some windows of the mansion, probably assistants cleaning. Or maybe some of his former comrades in arms, having a drink under the warm blanket of the tropical night, recalling old memories of rum and sweat, of blood and shrapnel.
He hadn't yet reached the outer stairway when he saw Ericka coming down, visibly startled even in the back light of the lobby.
"Something wrong?" asked Atticus.
"Yeah. I just lost something," she replied, looking around her. "It must have fallen around here, or on the runway."
"This?" Atticus pulled the Zippo from his pocket and gave it to her.
"Yeah! Where was it?"
"Uh...on the plane. It was in your seat."
"Oh, thank you. Very much appreciated."
"How come you have a lighter if you don't smoke?"
"It's a gift. Alkali gave it to me."
Atticus arched an eyebrow.
"Alkali? Alkali Colt?"
"Yeah. He was a guard in the lab. He gave me instructions to escape. I don't know why, but he wanted me to come to you."
Atticus knew why. He knew Colt had seen in her the same thing he'd seen.
"Alkali was my closest man to Skyler. For more than a decade, I've been trying to get my brother away from the NSA, but first, we had to wait for them to let down their guard. We saw in this shit show the perfect chance. Alkali was the paramedic driving the ambulance, which was supposed to take Skyler to the extraction point. But anyway, was that the first time you spoke with him?"
"No, the first time was a few weeks ago. That's when he gave me the lighter. He seemed baffled to see me, like he was seeing a ghost or something, and then he blabbered something I didn't quite catch. I guess it was some kind of metaphor. Or maybe he was just drunk. Anyway," Light gawked at the zippo, holding it in her hands, as though it was a wounded animal, "this is all I have left to remember him. I still can't believe he's gone..."
"Sir!" a soldier yelled from a window. "Conan's calling!"
"I'm coming!" answered Atticus, and then he briefly turned back to Light. "I'm leaving. Your room's on the second floor; go to sleep whenever you want. We'll start construction tomorrow."
"Thank you."
Light watched him climb up the stairs with his calm, yet powerful, stride, each thud on the marble resonating like a full stop. An assertion of himself towards the world around him, a glorious instinct that pushed that impending African night to keep its distance from him. Then he was gone, and she was all alone in the face of the looming dark. She felt weak, and she felt alive because of it. Her senses heightened. She stared off into the distance, trying to figure out the skyline. The point where the white specks met the black earth. She then opened her hand and stared at the Zippo with extreme suspicion, examining every scratch, every notch, anything that could give her the last piece of his personal puzzle. A puzzle that began that day.
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