The Argument We Had Over Two Backpacks

     Allen panicked when he saw my bag. He ran to me in the living room shouting "no," over and over again. He started telling me how dangerous it would be, and how he couldn't protect me.
I told him I would be protecting him, too. I told him that we would take care of one another.
He backed away from me, begging me not to follow him, he was angry and scared. I had really set him off. He began shouting about everything that had happened to him, all of the injuries, and the people who had been killed.

I shouted back, which caught me off guard, that if i didn't know what I was getting into, I wouldn't be following him, and that it was because I knew how dangerous it would be that I couldn't let him go by himself!

He changed tactics on me then, trying to appeal to my life. He asked who would take care of Otis, and my home?

I replied quickly, because I had seen this coming. My house was on a vacation rental site, and my neighbor would take care of it, and The bakery had already agreed to hire me back if I came back.

He seemed stumped, he wasn't sure what he could say to get me to change my mind. So, instead, he forbade me to come with him. He said he would sneak away, and I'd never be able to follow him.

I got boastful, and laughed. Then I said something a bit hurtful, I think. I told him that was unlikely, because I had been able to follow him so far. I told him that I knew about his workouts under the bridge. I told him that I had seen him fall, and seen him curse, and seen him get back up. I told him that was why I had suggested walks, to get his legs in shape.

He was dazed. He didn't know I had followed him, he was embarrassed that I had seen him out there. Then he got quiet, and thoughtful, and looked down for a bit. We stood in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then he asked me if I meant it. If I was really going to follow him.

I didn't expect it, but I kissed him then, and he knew I would follow him anywhere.

How The man, The Dog and I Began To Prepare

     After the morning I saw Allen under the bridge, I felt like our relationship had changed. I mean, not from his perspective. He obviously didn't know I had followed him, but I think I had started to see him differently. Before that night, he had been broken, and tragic in a way. But afterwards, I could only see his determination, he was powerful and vital. It was a surprising change, really. I knew what it meant, though; Allen was not going to stay. As scared as he was, as full of regret, he would never let those people down.

     We started running at nights after that. I suggested that walking might be good for him, and I thought we could take Otis. He liked the idea, but soon walking became jogging became running. It was good for all of us, Otis was losing weight, I was feeling fitter, and Allen was more confident. it wasn't long before I felt him getting ready to leave. He wandered off during the days, and started coming back with money and gear. He was stowing it in my little garage, keeping it where he thought I wouldn't see. I think he was afraid to hurt my feelings. But I already knew I couldn't let him go by himself. I just couldn't do that to him. So, I started ordering things from the internet. I din't know what I would need, really, but I started looking through the things he was hiding, and started ordering from Amazon. I got some things for Otis, too. I wasn't going to leave my dog behind, he was too good for that. We spent a few weeks running, and the last two weeks secretly supplying ourselves. He didn't think I knew, but I did. Finally, I decided to let him know.

     It was about three weeks into march, and Allen had been living with me for almost eight weeks. Eight weeks of getting to know the walking contradiction that was Allen Bishop. It was eight weeks before Allen knew how I felt. The day he walked into the garage and found not one, but two backpacks ready to go.

The Night I Found The Man Under That Bridge Again.

     I looked all over the house for Allen that morning, but I didn't find him. I had to go to work, so I showered quickly and left. The sun was barely up when I left, and the grass was soaked. It was freezing cold, and Allen was somewhere out there. I was just going to have to find him later. Obviously he didn't want to be bothered.
     When I came home that night, Allen had reappeared, and was cooking dinner. He was standing in the kitchen, wearing one of my aprons and looking ridiculous. He smiled at me awkwardly, and went back to his cooking. I didn't ask him where he had been, because I didn't want to upset him again. But his shoes were muddy up the sides, so I assumed he had been at the creek. He didn't seem interested in talking abut it, and defected all of my questions. He was suddenly very interested in the bakery, as if I wouldn't notice that he was deflecting.
     It went on like that for a week. I'd wake up in the morning, and he'd be gone, and I'd come home and he'd be back, making dinner. It was a nice routine, honestly. After a week, however, I decided to see where he was really going. So, I woke up earlier than usual, and followed him to the creek. He stood in the shallow water without his shoes on, and I watched him. He was right under the bridge where I had found him initially, almost a month earlier. He stood quietly for a long time, reflecting on the place where i had found his broken body. Then, as if it was some ritual, he spat on the spot, and climbed the bridge. He hung from a pipe under the bridge, and began to do pull-ups. He was about ten feet in the air, holding himself above maybe two feet of moonlit water, with his frail legs dangling beneath him. He must have done a hundred pushups before he stopped, and to my surprise, dropped himself from the pipe, straight down. He landed with a thud, and his legs crumpled under him. He collapsed into the water, and I watched as he pulled himself back up, angry at himself for not being able to manage the fall. He started running in place in the water, splashing all around himself in a frenzy, and yelling at himself to be stronger. I watched him work out for about a half an hour, until the sun began to creep up, and I realized I had to go to work. I ran home, showered and dashed off for work.
     I spent the whole day at work thinking about him. He had been so determined, and so strong, but so frail at the same time. I couldn't understand what drove him, but I admired it. He was magnificent, really. I wish now that I had told him that more often.

How I made The Smile Disappear

     After loading Allen up with beer, I was conflicted. He was finally acting happy, and I really didn't want to ruin that. However, I had started the evening with a plan, so I decided to follow through. People used to tell me that I never followed through on things, so I had become set on finishing what I had started. I picked Allen up, set him against one arm of the couch, and he looked at me sadly. I think he knew what I was going to ask.

"What's next, Allen?"

     His grimace returned, and he was quiet again for a long time. It wasn't the comfortable silence we had been sharing for the past two weeks, it felt more like the room was filling with hot water, heat and pressure making every second more uncomfortable. Then Allen spoke, and pulled the drain, and the water rushed out.

"I can't go back. There's no point. I lost everything I had. I can't even face them now. I left Mike, I shot at him, for god's sake. He probably thinks I've turned against him. I just can't do it anymore"

     He had started to cry, and I didn't know what to do. I'm normally pretty good at handling emotional people, my friends always say that I am, anyway. But Allen, this, all of it was so different than any of that stuff. I couldn't get him to call Silas. He was ashamed. He had looked up to silas, and when he allowed himself to get captured like that, and abandoned Mike, he couldn't bear it. He couldn't tell Silas that he had escaped that train station. He cried on me for hours. The facade of the strong man melted away, and I realized what that package had done to him. He had been a kind, normal man, and finding that heart had broken all of that. He was covered in scars, and hid inside himself. I didn't push anymore. I left him alone, and when I woke in the morning, his wheelchair was still sitting next to the couch. He was nowhere to be found.

How I Got the Man to Smile

     He sat in that chair for a week, looking out the window. I mean, he ate, sometimes he would talk, but he was very introverted. He didn't actually tell me the details of the fight on the train. But whenever a train passed through town, I could see him shudder. He'd pull the blanket around himself a little tighter. He was a little bit traumatized. He and Otis got along very well. It seemed like Allen didn't wat to interact with people very much, but otis stayed with him, and they enjoyed each other's company. I guess I have this way about me, bringing in strays.

     I made soup on the second sunday Allen was with me. It's funny the details that stick out, but it was definitely soup. It's very comforting, soup and bread, which is why I made it. I was going to ask Allen about his plans, and I wanted him to feel comfortable. He was hunched over his bowl, dipping the crust of his bread into the broth, and taking large bites from it. That's when I asked him what his next step was. He sighed, and lowered his head. His scraggly hair hung into his bowl of soup, and I realized that comfort food was not going to be enough. He was really broken. Next step was wine. That always makes the truth come out. At least for me, anyway.

     We spent a lot of time together in silence. It was so comfortable, being silent around him. Most times I feel like I have to say something to fill the air, because if there's no sound, then the room feels empty. But with Allen, we never had to talk to make the room feel full and warm. He and otis would sit and read, and I'd browse the internet, and it was just good.

     It was the next friday when I tried wine. I came home from the bakery at about six, and brought food and booze with me. Otis was very excited, of course, because whenever I pick up dinner, I grab him something extra. I told allen we were having a movie night, and he seemed relieved to have something to do. The normalcy of it really warmed him, I think. I got him beer, and got myself a bottle of something white, and we started watching movies. The first thing I did was help him out of his wheelchair, and put him on the couch, which was the first time, besides showers, he had left the chair. We watched two movies, sitting on the couch, dog on the rug, glasses in hand.  He fell asleep, so I gave him a little shake, and he sat bolt upright, ready to defend himself. He saw it was me, and immediately relaxed. He was scary like that sometimes, but it got better with time. Finally, two movies, three hours, half a bottle of wine, and a six-pack of beers later, we let the credits run out. We were close together on the couch, and he was almost smiling, which I hadn't really seen him do the whole time he had been with me. Two weeks without a smile is very sad.

What I Learned Should Have Scared Me

     I visited Allen in the hospital every day for about a week before he woke up. I think it was the last weekend of January, Saturday, maybe, when I first met Allen. He was understandably startled to find himself in a hospital bed, and started to move frantically. But the pain of all his broken bones stopped him pretty quickly. I was just outside of his room when he woke up, and I rushed in. He was very confused, and asked where he was. I told him everything that I knew, and waited for him to tell his side of the story, but he didn't say anything, really. He told me that his name was Allen Bishop. That's the name he gave me at the time. I'm not sure when he took up the alias, but he waited almost a month before he trusted me with his real name. I told him that I had lied about being his girlfriend, and he said he understood, which I thought was surprising, but he asked me if we could keep it up for awhile. I was  taken aback a little, because I thought he was flirting with me. Then after a second I asked him point blank, how he had wound up under that bridge. He promised to tell me as soon as we got out of the hospital. I don't know what it was about Allen, but he really charmed me. Even though he was a complete mystery, and looked a bit like he may have been in trouble with the mafia, or somali pirates, I felt like I could trust him. So, I did.

     After another week of tests and physical therapy, they let Allen out of the hospital. I took him home in a wheelchair. We had spent the whole week getting to know one another, I would just sit in his room in my time off, and sometimes at night, and we would just talk. He didn't tell me about all of the dangerous business he had been involved in, but usually about who he had been before it had all started. He sounded like a really good guy, he was the outdoors type, and used to make stuff for fun. He was so charming, and even though he could barely move at first, he was all smiles while we talked. As I came to understand it, this was the first time he had really stopped moving for more than a couple of days. When I took him home, I made him take my bed, and I slept on my couch. It was saturday night that I took him home. I'm a baker, so I normally go to sleep early and wake up at about three in the morning, to get the bread proofing, but since it was sunday, I sat up with him. He told me everything he had hesitated to tell me before. Hearing him tell it all, the way he had been chased, the people he had hurt, and the things that he had discovered, I was terrified. He looked as scared as I did, and since he was stuck in a wheelchair, I knew he wasn't going to hurt me. He was just so sad. I guess most people who met Allen after the package arrived at his home thought he was a crazy person, or that he was a bad person, but I just saw him as a wounded spirit. He just needed to stop running awhile. Being as broken as he was helped him with that. He was stuck in that chair for much longer than he would have liked.

The Bloody Man I found By The Tracks.

    Hi everyone. I don't know how to introduce myself on here, because I read through everything, and I haven't been mentioned yet, which is awkward. A friend mentioned me in a comment a bit before Allen, um, before he died. It's weird to me that he's gone now. Anyway, my name is Jess, and as far as anyone can tell, I'm the next person to see Allen after the train station.

     I didn't have anything to do with all this conspiracy stuff before I met Allen. I was a baker's assistant in a small shop in a little town. My whole life was pretty normal, just me, and my dog living in a tiny house three blocks from a small creek. It was really great back there, at home. I would spend my weekends down by that creek with Otis, my dog. He liked to dig around and chase ducks, and I would daydream about finally writing my novel, and learning to paint, and all sorts of things like that. It was idyllic.

     It was on one of these trips that I found Allen under the bridge. The bridge had train track running across it, and we get trains coming through our town pretty regularly. Allen was laying in a flattened cattail plant, and was covered in blood, completely unconscious. There was a huge gash across his face, with blood dried all over. He looked like he had been there since the night before. Barely breathing. I called an ambulance, and told them to hurry, and they did. But that was as much as I told them. I was so interested in this guy, I mean he was a mystery to me, and I wanted to know more. I told the paramedics, when they got there that he was my boyfriend, and that he had gotten drunk and we had a little fight, so he left last night. Then I went on to detail how I had worried about him, and came looking. I didn't mention names, because I didn't know his yet, and instead I turned on the waterworks. They let Otis and I ride in the ambulance. Otis played his part really well, too, sitting there with his head on my knee, looking as worried as I looked sad.

     They took us to the emergency room, and started treating Allen asap. They did tons of x-rays, and basically decided that my boyfriend had probably been hit by a train last night. Apparently, with how many fractures he had, and how much blood he had lost, he was very lucky to be alive. He didn't have any I.D. on him, just three bullets in his coat pocket, and an empty knife holster (holder?) on his leg. I should have taken that as my cue to "break up" with him then and there, but curiosity had a very firm grip, and I was up to my neck in it now. They spent three hours tending to him before they moved him into a room, and told me that I should go home, and wait for a call. So I did. I took Otis home, made a little dinner, sat in my living room watching tv and sharing a bowl of popcorn with my dog.