by Ryan King
Chapter 9 – Over the Edge
Bethany fought to breathe. The woman's weight bore down on her chest painfully. She knew the woman had struck her on the side of the head, but there was no pain yet, only numbness. More than the screwdriver on her neck, the waves of claustrophobia nearly made her panic. She fought to relax and push her fear down enough to think.
Unlike Nathan, Bethany did not believe the woman was crazy. Bethany saw the frantic yet dead look in her eyes, a look she had seen many times before. Her own eyes might even have looked that way for a time after losing their first baby. She understood the woman was in some sort of shock. Bethany peered at the other women huddled in a frightened mass and their story became as clear as glass. This understanding helped keep the fear at bay.
Bethany looked up into her captor’s face and saw evidence of abuse. There were thick bruises around her neck and along her face, as well as poorly healed cuts on her scalp. Her nose looked recently broken.
This one was a fighter and had not submitted herself easily. She probably even wanted to die, thought Bethany.
Bethany again held out her hand to Nathan while maintaining eye contact with the woman. She was obviously a victim, and Bethany was sure she could get through to the phantom smiling down at her ghoulishly.
“Please,” said Bethany breathlessly, “do you have any food? My boys and I are so hungry and haven’t eaten for days. Can’t we just share your fire for a while and maybe a little food. There’s no need to hurt us.”
The smile vanished from the woman’s face in an instant and she looked suddenly confused. She leaned up a little, easing the pressure on Bethany’s chest and neck.
For the first time, Bethany felt her head swelling and blood running through her hair where the desperate woman had struck her. The woman leaned back slowly and looked over her shoulder at the huddled women and children around one of the makeshift tents. She pulled the screwdriver away from Bethany’s neck and used it to point back toward the fire.
Conversationally she said, “There’s some beans and franks left, as well as some Spam. It’s actually pretty good. Tastes better than it sounds,” she said with a slight laugh. The woman turned back to Bethany and the crazy look was almost gone from her eyes. She seemed to suddenly comprehend where she was and what she was doing. The woman looked down at the screwdriver in her hand and Bethany’s bloody head and said almost too softly to hear, “Sorry about that.”
Those were the last words she ever spoke. Her head suddenly disappeared in an explosion of bloody mist and shotgun blast. Riveted as they were with the scene between Bethany and the crazy woman, no one noticed David creep up from the woods to about fifteen feet from them both. He waited until the woman pulled the screwdriver away from his mother’s throat before shooting her at close range.
Bethany was stunned and didn’t at first understand what had happened. The woman’s headless corpse still straddled her, unmoving. David, with his smoking shotgun, walked over and placed a foot on the dead woman’s shoulder shoving her rudely off his mother. He then reached down and grasped her arm pulling her up to her shaky feet.
“Mom, are you al-?” David began, but before he could fully get the question out of his mouth Bethany reared back and slapped him full in the face with a wild roundhouse swing. David’s head snapped back both with the force of the blow and the shock of receiving it. He quickly turned back with combined confusion and anger, but before he could get his bearings, Bethany followed up with a left punch full in David’s nose which sent him to his knees with blood pouring down his face.
Nathan raced over and pulled Bethany back, but she was straining, furious with anger. Nathan had never seen his patient and calm wife in such a state. Even while thrashing in Nathan’s arms to get at her son again she screamed at him, “What’s wrong with you? What happened to my son? All you care for is blood!”
Bethany began combing through her hair pulling off her own blood along with pieces of blood, brains, and skull from the dead woman and hurled them at David in wild swings. “Well then here you are!” she screamed. “Blood and more blood and more blood! Are you satisfied?”
Nathan finally succeeded in dragging her away and was on the verge of slapping Bethany if he couldn’t get her to calm down. Who knew what the other women were doing during all of this. Nathan only hoped Joshua was watching out for them. “Bethany, stop it! For God’s sake stop it!”
Bethany’s eyes suddenly focused on Nathan’s with fierce anger. “You’re happy he’s this way! You want him to be a killer! Well congratulations, look at what a wonderful son you’ve raised!” Nathan started to grab her more firmly to shake her, but she planted her palms roughly in his chest and pushed away, wheeling without another word to walk over to the group of frightened women.
Nathan turned back to David, but found him nowhere in sight. Joshua was suddenly in front of him. “He ran that way,” pointing back toward the highway.
“You stay with your mother,” Nathan said roughly and for the first time noticed the incessant barking of the dog. “And shut that damn dog up before it draws more attention,” he added as he took off at a run after David.
Nathan was afraid his son would just keep running and he knew the chances of finding him in the woods at night would be slim, but he soon saw David’s tall muscular form ahead in the dim light with his face against a tree. Nathan slowed to a walk and approached his son cautiously. David was breathing in great gasps of air, Nathan wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t take off again.
“Son,” Nathan began in a quiet voice, “she didn’t mean it. It’s stress and fatigue and months on the road. She didn’t mean it.”
“But she did mean it!” screamed David as he whirled on Nathan with anguish in his face. “Dad, I was in goddamn high school! I had a life! I was going to get a football scholarship and go to college! I didn’t ask for any of this shit!” David suddenly dropped his head and began to sob. “I was happy,” he said softly. “I didn’t know it, but I was happy, and I want it back the way it was.”
Nathan’s heart ached and he suddenly despised himself. Bethany was right, he had at least helped make David this way. David had always been the fierce fighter and competitor, but when the world ended, Nathan turned him into what he needed him to be...and he needed him to help protect them. He did it he thought out of the necessity to simply survive, but had he somehow forgotten that he was dealing with just a boy? His own son?
Nathan walked over and placed his arms around David. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had hugged him and wasn’t sure if David would accept this show of love, but David wildly grasped him, sinking to his knees and began crying all the more.
For the first time since N-Day, Nathan doubted what he was doing. Was survival worth this? Maybe it would have been better to have died months ago, true to themselves. Uncorrupted and unconquered.
Holding his crying and heartbroken son in his arms, Nathan looked up into the clear stars and asked for…well, for anything.
