Are We There Yet?

"Liam," I pondered, watching the latter haphazardly dissect an insect.  He sat at a makeshift table with several other boys, their heads all bowed together, intently poking and prodding with the most delicate of hands.  

"Its eyes are buggy-funny!" Liam chirped in response, then turned his head to me.  

I smiled at him in the dim light, not being able to get a grasp on our surroundings.  There was Isaac, the troublemaker, Elijah the brainiac, Alex, the clown.  All of them were five or six, all of them were intrigued with the bug we found on our wanderings.  

"What?" Liam said, his assertive tone not unkind.  Seeing that I was reclining on the floor watching the group, he put down his tool and dropped to his knees by me.  I stared at him for a moment, realizing this was someone I loved more than anything.  I knew him unlike anyone else: he was squeamish, intelligent, and had the darkest sense of humor any five-year-old ever sported.  Come to think of it, he reminded me of Arcade.

"Do you think it's true what he says? Do you think I'll be alone forever?"
Liam's big blue eyes widened, and he sat slumped over on the floor, not answering.
"Come on Liam.  You're not going to leave me, are you?  You guys are my friends."
"We....didn't want to leave you," Liam responded in a heartbreaking tone.  
"Yeah!" snapped Isaac from the dissecting table.  "We had to."  The firmness in his tone caused me to blink away tears.
"Why did you have to?"
"He made us go away."  Isaac usually took control of conversations, leaving Liam to scowl.
"Who is he?"
Now the boys all paused from their scientific research and stared at me.  Liam stared as well.  These children had a bond with me, all of them, although I had no idea what it might have been.  Their simple, innocent lack to understand why I asked such obvious questions burned deep throughout the room, and finally it was quiet Elijah who responded, "The man with the white eyes."
"And the axe."
"The fire man."
"Fire....man?"

"I believe she's referring to a pre-War public service career, firemen were workers who put out fires, easily enough.  Though why she's talking about them in her sleep baffles me.  It could just be that she's dreaming in a pre-War book.  From what we've deduced, she read a lot of them."

I looked away from the boys; the voice of Arcade was loud and clear.  Sitting up, the room spun, the children disappearing from view, fading into black, and then the blurry faces of Boone and Arcade were in front of me, both staring intently.

"W...what?" I said, near hysterics,  feeling nothing like I had in the calm, laidback dream.  

"You're okay," Arcade rushed, putting a hand on my head and running it down the side in a comforting pet.  He saw the pain in my eyes and said knowingly, "Liam?"  I nodded, and he pulled forward, embracing me.  Boone stiffened abruptly, and I clutched at Arcade's jacket.  "Liam told me.......he told me they had to leave."
"They?"  Arcade's arms were reassuring, and Boone stood, backing away from us.  My eyes were closed, but I could sense him leave our side to go stand with his eyes on the horizon.
"There were more of them.  Kids. I don't......"
"Don't get upset, here."  Arcade pulled back and put his hands on my knees.  "What we should do is have you write down the dream, to put in our records."  Fumbling around with his pockets, he added, "If you write it in a journal, you're more prone to remember these things.  If nothing else we can use it to piece together your memor--"

"It wasn't a memory," I said in a strained voice, even as Arcade withdrew a weathered pad and pen from his coat.  "It was..."

"Yes?"

"I....was talking to them after whatever happened, happened."

"Whatever happened?"  

"Something tragic.  Something that I didn't want to happen, happened. Because of that man.  The....man with white eyes, the fireman."

"You realize you're not making any sense at all."

"Yes.  Give me the notepad."

"Are you going to be okay? Need anything? Water, cola, vodka?"

"No thank you, dear.  I think writing this is a good idea. It'll make more sense later."

"Ah.  Well in that case, if you don't mind, I'm going to go back to sleep.  Still have plenty of time before sunrise.  Wake me if you need me."  Arcade's bedroll was in such close proximity to mine all he had to do was scoot a foot away and lay back down.  He pulled the covers over his head.  I wrote furiously, scratching noises and the crackling of the fire the only noises for a few minutes.

I was so intent on retelling my.....vision? dream? that I didn't even pay attention to Boone, who stood by the fire grimly, anger shrouding his vision once more.  My head was bowed, my back propped up against a large rock, and I continued to write like a madwoman.  Several minutes and several pages later, after Arcade's soft snoring and babbles of when we get an unexpected result........... that is not useful for our purposes,

…..whatever philosophical debate he was feeling at the moment, Boone spoke up.

"It doesn't look like you were too lonely while I was gone."
"What?" I had no idea what he was talking about; writing consumed my entire being at the moment. I looked up at him, standing with his back to me.
"Arcade is a good guy.  Takes care of you."
"Yes, he's fantastic." I agreed, puzzled as to why Boone sounded so hostile.
"Not like you need anyone else, he's got a way with words and seems to know you so well."
Now his tone irritated me.  "What is there to know?  I've got about three months of memories to go off of.  Before that it's--"
"Memories that you obviously don't want to share."
"You're one to talk, you know that!" I slammed the pad onto the ground beside me, fumbling like an idiot to unwrap myself from the covers, seeing Boone turn toward me as I finally stood and stomped over to him.  
"You tell me your wife's dead, you don't even tell me how, maybe there's a hope and we could go and find her I say, you pitch a fucking fit and tell me not to ever mention it again.  If I have secrets, I'm not the only one, and can you really blame me for confiding them in someone who doesn't seem to hate me every time I breathe the wrong way?! And if you REALLY want to know, I don't know who Liam is, or who anyone is, he's just a little boy that keeps reappearing in my dreams! There, big huge secret is out!"

Rex whimpered from his dream nearby.  Boone rounded on me, as I knew he would.  Even the deathclaws in the vicinity turned tail and fled for want of better company as the sniper's venomous voice rose in pitch. "Okay, yeah.  If that's how it is, I don't blame you for confiding in someone who doesn't hate you.  It's not like I tracked you halfway across the desert, not like I ever wanted to be around you again.  As long as we're having a little family moment here, I killed Carla."

I froze.  If Boone's voice had awoken Arcade, the man opted to continue to feign sleep with a blanket over his head.  The fire snapped.  Reflected in Boone's black eyes, the flames were a bright orange color.  "I didn't have any other choice, I tracked down the party that took her, and there were too many of them. I killed my wife.  Anything else we need to discuss?"

I took a step back.  "Boone, I........"

"Drop it."  He turned his back to me abruptly, and I felt like crawling into a Radscorpion nest.  There's really no way to process something like that, no matter how much you think there is.  There was nothing for me to say, but I risked his temper for one last question: "You're.....not going to get mad and leave again, are you?"

"Of course not," Boone said defensively.  

Sighing, I turned away.  We were only a few miles outside of Goodsprings.  Wondering if this journey was going to prove fruitful, and if it would, what it would even help, I defeatedly clambered back into the sleeping bag.  As Boone refused to sleep, standing guard over the fire, I rolled over into a ball, Arcade pulling his own blanket off his head to offer me an arm.