Time passed in a haze, each new day indistinguishable from any preceding day. Days accrued into weeks and then after a while it seemed as if enough time had gone by that he must have been where he was for months, maybe even years. In truth he was having trouble being sure of anything at all, the passage of time being the least of it. On occasion a slice of uncomfortable reality would cut through the mental fog he existed in, inducing a state of paralyzing anxiety. But the fog always encroached again in time to pull him back from the brink of total mental collapse. The foggy condition persisted even during daylight hours. He performed the dreary menial work his captors required of him in a kind of trance. This was possible because the work was so simplistic. His thoughts were always far away, focused on things in the distant, lost past while his hands worked with the stiff but efficient precision of a robot. Mostly he was again preoccupied with memories of Lisa Thomas. It was strange. She was the reason for the long trek westward, yet Noah at some point had relegated thoughts of her to some dark, rarely examined corner of his mind.
