by Alia Hess
She shut the book as Trav sat on his bedroll. He pulled off his shirt and leaned against the wall. “You don’t need to close that book every time I come by. I’m not going to read it. Promise.”
“It’s just my travel journal. Pretty boring.” She slipped the notebook back into her pack.
“Oh? Stuff about me in there?”
“Maybe…”
Trav smiled, then laid down, pulling his cloak over him. His ragged blanket hung over the large front window, obstructing the view and only allowing a slice of moonlight into the dusty, cluttered building. The moon’s silver-white glow played on Trav’s bare shoulders, his skin nearly the same color. Owl turned and blew out the candle.
The building’s ceiling was a dull almost-white. Cracked and yellowed light panels sagged between the water-warped ceiling tiles. Owl turned on her side. Trav was sitting upright on his bedroll, hatchet in hand, looking out the window. She sat up. Only one side of the blanket hung from the dusty pane, offering an outside view. Early morning sun streamed into the room, setting dust motes aglow.
“What’s going on?” She stretched her sore arms.
Trav put a finger to his lips, frowning. His attention went back to the window, and she shifted to better see beyond the dangling blanket. Things moved around outside. Canine-like creatures with mangy reddish fur and pointed ears balanced on stilt-like legs. Long, narrow muzzles stripped of flesh pushed through the trash and debris. Hooked teeth protruded from hollows in the ends of their snouts.
Owl’s eyes widened. “What the hell are those?”
“Trashdogs.” He gripped the hatchet tighter.
One creature picked up a plastic lid from the ground and mouthed it. A tattered grocery bag drifted by and the other trashdog snapped at it, ripping it to ribbons with its muzzle.
“They eat plastic?” Owl reached for her machete, the weapon a comforting weight in her hand.
“Yeah. Stay still.”
“Do they eat people?”
“Do you want to find out? Stay still!”
The other side of Trav’s blanket fell from the window into a heap on the floor. Instantly, the trashdogs looked toward the building. Owl’s breath caught in her throat.
“Shit.” Trav put a hand to his mouth.
“They can’t get in here, can they?” Her heartbeat pounded in her temple as the creatures loped toward the window. Could she even swing the machete quickly enough to disable one of them before it sank those long teeth into her throat—or Trav’s? The front door was mostly metal, with small glass panes set in one side, but rust laced the jamb and hinges. The window offered even worse defense.
The trashdogs disappeared as they moved closer to the building. Owl sat frozen—as helpful and necessary as the broken postcard racks—as equipped for this world as a whars.
One creature jumped up against the glass. Owl flinched, adrenaline surging through her. The window rattled as the trashdog scraped its narrow feet against the pane, then a thud shook the door.
Trav sprang from his bedroll. He paused, looking at the creature beating against the window.
Get up! Help him! The machete trembled in her hand.
THUD.
For a split second, daylight and a trashdog’s head appeared through the buckling door before it moved back into place.
THUD. THUD.
The trashdog at the window jumped down to join its companion.
Trav ran to the door, pressing his back against it. “Get something heavy to bar the door!”
His raised voice startled her to her feet. A bookcase leaned against one wall. THUD. There was no time for the crutch. She deviated around debris, limping to the bookshelf and tipping it forward. Moldering books, knickknacks, and shelf pieces spilled onto the floor. Her leg protested as she dragged the heavy bookcase toward the entrance. THUD. A loud bang filled the room and Trav’s body jerked forward as the door gave way, metal bits tinkling across the floor. He pushed against it, veins standing out on his straining arms, but the door didn’t close. A trashdog’s hard muzzle protruded through the crack. It snapped and snarled, putrid saliva flipping from its filthy jowls.
The trashdog sunk its teeth into the back of Trav’s leg and he cried out. Owl pushed the bookcase upright, then hobbled painfully to Trav’s side and punched the creature between its yellow eyes. With a snort, it jerked its head back. They leaned against the door, pushing it back in place. A revolting odor lingered in the room—the sour of rotting meat and garbage. Owl gripped the bookcase again, hauling it the rest of the way to the broken door. Trav groaned, helping her pull it in place.
THUD.
The window. Owl sucked in deep breaths, then pulled on a weighty metal rack, straining hard until it fell over with a crash, creating a barrier. Safe. Maybe. Trav held the back of his leg and grimaced, blood dripping between his fingers onto the paper-strewn floor.
The last sixty seconds ran through her mind, then flipped back to the beginning and started again. She could have pulled the bookcase to the door as soon as the trashdogs neared the building. She could have stood by Trav’s side, machete in hand, and helped him keep the door shut. She could have done a number of helpful things, but she let the threat do what it would—allowed it—just like always.
The thuds continued, but the bookcase didn’t move. Trav limped toward the room’s far end. Owl grabbed their things and followed him. Something wet ran down her leg. The bandage on her thigh had bloomed red, blood dribbling into her sock.
Trav grunted as he lowered himself onto the floor, his pained breath ruffling the ancient papers and debris. Owl held rags to his leg with shaking hands, trying to staunch the bleeding, and he pressed his face to the ground. Blood’s metallic bouquet replaced the scent of trashdog as the rags against Trav’s leg grew ruddy. The thudding at the entrance eventually stopped, no longer booming through the small building.
“I think the bleeding has stopped enough for me to dress the wound. You hanging in there?” The soaked rags gave a wet smack as Owl dropped them to the floor. Trav’s formerly gray pants obscured his injury. She pulled at the bloody fabric, tearing it further.
“Get my antiseptic bottle.” He grimaced, voice tight. “It’s on my belt. Do you remember? Those things eat garbage. I don’t want the wound getting infected.”
After pawing through their items, she found the small amber bottle. She set it beside her while inspecting his wound. A dozen punctures in a diamond shape oozed blood from his thigh. Owl wiped the blood away and poured antiseptic onto the area. Trav sucked in a breath.
“Hurts. Yeah. This seems familiar,” she said.
“You often have your hands in a man’s pants?”
She uttered a laugh, but it came out as more of a sob.
Trav shifted painfully, trying to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I should have helped you.”
“You did.”
“I mean, I should have done something sooner so you weren’t bitten.”
“I don’t think there was much else you could have done.”
Owl’s mouth pulled down. She finished dressing his wound and collapsed to the floor. Trav’s labored breathing was the only sound.
“You okay?”
He nodded, but his face said otherwise.
She picked out shapes and images in the stained ceiling tile. “So you wanna go take in a play later? Maybe go to a wine tasting?”
Trav chuckled weakly, his already soft voice muffled by his arms. “What the hell is a wine tasting?”
“Um, I think wine is like moonshine. I heard they have it in the East. …Just trying to lighten the mood.”
He turned his head slightly and eyed her. “I think I’d like to go to the doctor.”
Owl laughed. “Yeah, me too.” Something flirty almost left her mouth, but she bit her tongue. Hard. Forcing herself to a stand, she limped painfully to the front, hesitantly peering out the blocked window. Shreds of plastic rolled away on the breeze, the only movement in the grassy
area beyond the building. She eased onto the floor amid a scattering of ancient postcards and rested her head against the wall near a filthy side window. Overgrown bushes outside obscured most of the view, but also offered a wedge of blue sky, clouds drifting slowly across the hemisphere.
Why couldn’t she ever make the right decisions in time? Why did she wait until the last second to do what she wanted all along? She’d had a careful plan to leave Waterton with a caravan, like a sensible person would. Things were arranged in the dresser and pantry, ready to scoop into her pack. Then everything went to shit.
This was no different, story of her life. Only this time, she’d hurt someone innocent with her hesitation.
Trav hobbled to the big front window then over to her. “We should get out of here.”
“I think you should go without me.”
He stared, facing growing stormy. His nostrils flared and he looked away. “I see. I screw up thinking this place is safe, and you don’t want me around anymore.”
“That’s not it.”
He waved a dismissive hand, limping for the back of the building.
“I’m the screw up.” She flicked a postcard away from her bloody leg and pressed her forehead to the cold window pane. Her breath billowed across the glass.
Fingers dug into her arm, and Trav hauled her to her feet with a swift jerk. She flinched away from him, pushing against the wall.
Trav set his jaw, small lines of pain or anger—maybe both—creasing his eyeblack. “C’mon. I’m leaving and you’re coming with me whether you like it or not. Don’t care what you think of me.”
“I think—” The words were on her tongue, how kind he was, how pleasant his company had been, and how she didn’t want to be a liability, but everything else—all the things she couldn’t say out loud—welled in her mouth and she cast her gaze at her duct taped boots.
“Uh-huh. Get your shit. We’re leaving.”
3 ~ Pity Party ~
No words passed between them as they left the visitors’ center and traveled slowly away from the city ruins. Trav grimaced with each step, his hatchet in hand as he eyed shadows pooled under trees and boulders.
“Take the crutch.” Owl stared ahead, wondering if she’d even said it loud enough for him to hear.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Sweat rolled down Trav’s ashen face, tendons cording in his neck. “You need it.”
“Not as badly as you do.”
He shook his head and continued walking, ignoring the outstretched crutch.
The sun drifted, sliding west and unravelling shadows across the desert dirt. A farmhouse appeared among the sagebrush, swaths of corn stretching to the blue horizon. Holes gaped in the sagging tin roof, birds nests crusted along the gutters.
They deviated from the road, cutting through a garden growing wild with weeds and vegetables. Long grasses whisked at their pants as they reached the threshold. Plants and broken furniture owned the entrance. Owl kicked the debris away, and they walked inside.
Bright light filtered in through small holes in the roof. They stood in a kitchen coated in years of dirt and bird droppings. A galaxy of dust motes drifted lazily in the shafts of light. Trav stopped and leaned against the peeling floral wallpaper. He sighed, sweat running down his strained face.
Owl gripped the brittle back of a vinyl chair, trying to ignore the throbbing in her thigh. “I’ll see if there’s a bed or something.”
She entered a living room with ancient green carpet. Beams from the roof lay on a coffee table and TV set. She swung open a closed door, limping into a bedroom. A large, dusty bed with sun bleached sheets sat in the middle. Nearby was a collapsed wooden dresser with cracked varnish and a colorless wicker chair full of creepy dolls. Dust flew as she beat at the stiff, crepey bedsheets.
She returned to the kitchen; Trav looked like an appropriate furnishing in the broken-down house, still scowling against the wall with a hand to his leg and his eyes shut.
“There’s a bed back there if you want to lay down.”
He opened his eyes with effort. “What about you?”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
Groaning he shambled through the kitchen and disappeared from view. Owl slumped into one of the cracked chairs at the rickety kitchen table. This looked like a grandmother’s house. Some grandmother from Old America, baking cookies in a house decorated in cheery floral wallpaper and vomit-inducing green carpet. She wouldn’t be able to tell which one of these rusty appliances was an oven, even if they were new. Many of the bigger cities used solar-generated electricity, but cooking was normally done with combustion stoves or cobb ovens.
It was incredible any of these houses were left after a hundred and fifty-two years. Did the dry heat preserve them, like slices of fruit left out in the sun? What would be left in ten years? Twenty? Someday all of the Old World would be gone, only concrete foundations and brittle, rusty pipes poking from the earth like ancient weeds.
The thought sunk her stomach like a lead weight. What if she never found out what happened during The Collapse? What if she never knew where those silver drones came from or if anything her grandma had said was true? Would those past generations be sad to know the world no longer mourned their passage and forgot about them completely once all physical evidence was weathered away?
All those vegetables growing wild outside, taking over everything, seemed like a dirty trick, since she spent the majority of her formative years bent over crops in the fields—and griping about the work—but the more Owl traveled, the more she realized that these vacant stretches of world between the pockets of civilization didn’t need help. Things did just fine on their own.
If only she felt the same. Would anyone mourn her passage? What if Trav had killed her? Her parents in Hawthorne still thought she was happily married in Waterton. And Corvin… He’d disappeared twelve ago, not a trace of him since. Would the same happen to her?
If she hadn’t asked Trav to accompany her, he wouldn’t be lying in pain on an Old World bed right now, but without his help, she’d probably be dead. This was twice he’d saved her.
And he thinks I hate him.
The past year was nothing but a series of increasingly stupid, more impulsive actions, and she didn’t need to tack on another by letting Trav think she was inept and ungrateful, or worse, someone like her father.
After dozing off at the wobbly table, she eventually stood and limped outside. The garden held a variety of vegetables, perfect for a soup: asparagus, kale, broccoli, leek, and stick beans. She diced them all and dumped them into Trav’s dented cooking pot, along with some spicy cricket paste. Making the soup was laborious, scrubbing her dirty body in the garden pump’s cold water, more so.
After washing and mending her and Trav’s pants (which he’d left in a heap on the bedroom floor as he napped), she flopped onto the dilapidated couch in the living room, her limbs stiff and heavy. She woke to orange light bobbing in the dim room. Trav sat awkwardly on the carpet, pulling wires from the broken TV. The couch squeaked as she sat up and brushed her hair out of her face.
“You’re right. You do snore.”
She yawned. “How’s your leg?”
“Sore. Yours?”
“Same.”
He continued to untangle the coated copper wires, then stopped and looked up. “Thank you. For washing my pants and mending the hole. Why did you do that?”
“Uh, because they were covered in blood. And had a hole in them. And you were in pain and couldn’t do it yourself.”
“Just out of the goodness of your heart, huh?”
“That so hard to believe? …It’s not a big deal.”
“It is, though. The best I ever get is ignored.”
“You think I hate you.”
He shrugged. “Not sure what else I’m supposed to think when you cringe every time I’m near you.”
She swallowed a hard lump in her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know why you ask me to accompany you. Lesser of two evils?” He held open his hands as though weighing something. “Die in The Bounds? Or put up with the shifty savage long enough to reach safety? Tough choice.”
Owl frowned. “You’re putting words in my mouth. I would never call you that, and that’s not why I have a problem with you touching me.”
“Then what?”
The thud of her heart was the only sound. She dug her fingers into the brittle foam of the couch cushion. “I can’t talk about it. But you want some truth? The only reason I asked you to accompany me was because I thought you looked imposing enough to scare anyone else away who we might come across. And you’d be there in case I injured myself in some other stupid way.”
He nodded, face tight. “Thought so. At least you’re being honest now.”
“But then I realized that I really like your company. I enjoy traveling with you. You’re funny… Nice…”
“Sure.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Your actions don’t jive with what you’re saying. I mean, look at you, balled up on the couch like I’m going to hit you.”
Owl sank into herself, eyes wide.
Trav’s mouth parted, his features softening. “Oh. Look, I’ve never hurt a woman. I would never.”
She pressed her face against the coarse fabric and sniffled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Understandable. I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.” Trav leaned back on one muscular arm; candlelight cast ghastly shadows across his angular face. “Do you want me to keep traveling with you?”
She wiped her eyes. “I don’t want to cause you anymore problems.”
“You’re not.”
“I shouldn’t be out here. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That makes two of us.” Trav set his bundle of wires aside. “Do you want to know why I don’t have a name?”
“What do you mean you don’t have a name? Who doesn’t have a name?”
A sad smile flitted to Trav’s lips. It spoke of resigned acceptance and hinted that the stone of depression inside him must be just as cold and heavy as hers.
