by Travis West
her head. “Before you found the containers of food… did you do what they did… to survive?”
Adam’s silence was the only response they needed. He looked down and tears spilled out onto the dusty floor. He tried to say something, but it came out choked and garbled.
Valerie had been right: Adam had been the danger all along. But maybe he could still be trusted. Valerie decided she might be willing to forgive him for his past transgressions, as long as it meant she didn’t have to be alone again. They were stronger as a group, and she didn’t want to lose that strength. She didn’t want to be weak again. Suddenly it wasn’t so important that Adam was a man, that he was the danger. What mattered was that he was with them, on their side against the rest of the world.
“Well that was a long time ago,” said Alice, trying half-heartedly to smile. “What matters now is getting more food so we don’t starve. So why don’t we just take it from your uncle and the other bad men? If they have so much, we can just take what we need.”
“I wish we could,” Valerie scoffed. “We aren’t strong enough to take on three grown men.”
“Actually,” said Adam, sniffing and looking up from the floor, “We might be.”
“How?” asked Valerie.
Adam shuffled over to the pile of newspapers that served as his bed and grabbed his knapsack from the floor. He held it open to show both the girls what lay inside, tucked away in the bottom of the bag.
“When I ran away,” he explained, “the food wasn’t the only thing I took.”
XII
In the dark, Valerie, Adam and Alice approached the camp. The beach was quiet, lacking even the subtle sounds of the sea. The water sat completely still in the ocean; the waves no longer crashed against the shore. Valerie could almost remember when they still did, but the memory sat just out of reach in her mind.
They hadn’t wanted to bring Alice, but she had insisted, understandably reluctant to be left alone. Valerie had promised herself that if things went bad, then she would save one bullet for Alice. Valerie had enough of an idea of what might happen to her to know that a quick death would be a mercy for the young girl.
The gun that Adam had stolen from his uncle was somewhat familiar to Valerie. Her father had owned a gun, and had shown her the basics of how to use it. The danger had taken the gun when they took her father, though, so she’d never had an opportunity to actually use it. But Adam had no idea how it worked. His uncle had never wanted him to learn, though he never told Adam precisely why.
Adam knew where the three men slept. There were three of the large metal containers, but one was embedded deep in the sand, sticking out diagonally at an awkward angel. That one wasn’t used for sleeping. Adam’s uncle slept alone in one of the other two containers, and the other two man shared the third. Valerie had the gun, so she was to take the two men. Adam was tasked with killing his uncle.
The men had other guns. Adam’s uncle had a pistol and one of the other men always slept with a shotgun under his pillow. Adam had told Valerie which man had the shotgun, so she could go for him first. If she could get into the container without waking the men, she was reasonably certain she could kill them both before they even realized what was happening. She hadn’t thought much about the actual act of killing. She just knew it was something she had to do too survive. She hoped it came naturally to her.
Adam and Valerie separated wordlessly, walking stealthily towards their intended targets, leaving Alice alone, standing at the shoreline. Adam reached his uncle’s container first. There was a large rocked jammed in the entryway to keep the door from closing completely. There was a space left open that was just wide enough for Adam to slip through. He was thankful he didn’t have to open the door open any further, as he knew the metal hinges creaked loudly.
Once inside, Adam could see almost nothing, but the sliver of light from outside just managed to illuminate the boots of a man lying on the floor of the container. Adam’s fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of the knife as he jabbed it once into the neck of his uncle. In and out, severing the ceratoid artery, just as the man himself had taught Adam, as soon as he’d been old enough to hold a knife. Adam felt a warm spray as the blood gushed from his uncle’s neck. It was so dark that he probably couldn’t see, but Adam hoped that somehow his uncle knew who it was that had ended his life. The older man flailed his arms mindlessly as the blood flowed from his body in time with the rapidly slowing beat of his heart.
The gushing had had almost stopped when Adam heard the gunshot.
XIII
The recoil was much stronger than Valerie had anticipated. The gun had nearly jumped out of her hands, but she’d managed to hold onto it. She’d expected a bigger mess. There wasn’t much light in the container, but from what she could see, there was hardly any blood at all.
The bullet had gone right where she had aimed, between the man’s yes. She’d been holding the gun about a foot away from him, so it would have been difficult to miss. Adam had told her that the one with the shotgun under his pillow had long blonde hair, and though she certainly couldn’t tell the colour in the dark, she believed she’d been able to make out which of the two men had longer hair. She hoped she had chosen correctly.
She spun in the dark to where she could make out the silhouette of a man rising from the floor. Her plan had been to shoot the second man immediately after the first, before he knew what was happening, but instead she froze there, the gun still trained on him.
The man put his hands in the air as he stood.
“Wait!” he cried. “Just wait…wait a minute.”
Though she hesitated to take action, in her mind Valerie was still convinced that the man had to die. “You’re a killer,” she said. “You’re the danger and you deserve to die.”
“Whatever you think about me,” the man said, inching towards where his comrade lay dead, “is wrong. I’m not a killer.”
“I’ve seen you,” said Valerie, even though in the dark she could not actually be certain this was the same man she’d seen before. “I watched you murder a little girl.”
“OK,” said the man, still inching sideways towards the pillow under which Valerie knew there lay a shotgun. “OK, I may have done some bad stuff,” he continued, “but we can work this out. I can give you food. I have lots of food.”
“I can kill you,” replied Valerie, “and take all of your food.”
“Yes,” said the man, “but if you kill me and take my food, doesn’t that make you the same as me?”
Valerie considered that. Maybe he was right. These men were evil, but wasn’t she doing what they did, in a way? Killing others to survive? Wasn’t that what the danger did? Momentarily lost in thought, Valerie let the gun lower slightly. That was all the invitation the man needed to lunge towards the shotgun. Valerie fired as soon as she realized the man was making a move, and she hit him before he made it anywhere near the shotgun. The bullet grazed his shoulder, then ricocheted off the walls a few times, disappearing deeper into the cargo container.
The man dropped to the ground, grabbing his shoulder in pain.
“All right,” he said, desperate. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry. Look, I’ll just go. You can have all the food. I’ll just disappear into the night and you’ll never see me ever again.”
“You didn’t show your victims any such mercy,” replied Valerie.
“I will,” he said. “From now on, I will. I’ll be a different person, just let me live.”
Valerie took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them to only a couple of feet. She held the gun up flush to his forehead.
“Please,” he begged. “You don’t have to be like us.”
“Don’t I?” she asked.
*
Valerie walked out of the container and into the moonlight. She could see Adam was safe and standing over by the shore with Alice. Valerie waved to them and motioned for them to come over.
“It’s OK” she said. “It’s safe now. The danger’s
gone.”
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you - Nietzsche
About the Author
Travis West is a writer of YA novels and grammar enthusiast.
He studied English at Dalhousie University before moving to Toronto where he currently resides with his wife and cat.
The cat is named Princess.
When he isn’t writing books, Travis is reading YA novels, watching old horror movies or hunting zombies.
He also occasionally makes websites.
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