by Logan Keys
Since I arrived, the stony-eyed leader’s been taking in stragglers, feeding them, clothing them, giving them a second chance.
Lotte’s Motto: Purpose. Everyone has one. If you slack, you leave, but if you do your part, at least you don’t have to fend off the monsters outside the gates. And do our part, we must.
Jansen’s silver head is now a speck amongst our shack houses, some of them nice, others dilapidated with tarps for roofing. Jansen. The things he’s seen. I avoid most nights around the bonfire when he’s in a nostalgic mood, because it hurts to picture the span of a lifetime. To hear him moan about the past, it’s like my ears are bleeding with regret. Aren’t we all sad enough? Why spread it like jam on dry toast?
Seeing grey hair on anyone is like seeing a ghost. Older people live by the grace of the young—the “brutal youths” as we’ve decided to call them—who roam the open, chasing prey of any kind. Because out there, nothing but those who can run fast enough stays warm and breathing. Arthritis-ridden prey never lives long enough to tell the tale, be it animal or human.
I keep a roving eye out past the metal-and-wood barrier, which was patched together with anything they could find. But it’s sturdy, welded together perfectly, and it’s formidable. It’d better be. This gate’s the only thing keeping Ironwood … just that … iron and wood, away from the wilds.
Nature grips our construct, corrupting it by inches, and we guards have a front row seat. Between the sprawling, vulgar vines that choke the appendages of the old civilization, hints of the land of the free and the home of the extra brave remain hidden in clumps.
The United States of America is in ruin. Her once bawdy curves have been slovenly whittled away by bad weather and rampant foliage, making the world as flat as we’d once assumed it was. The name, “America,” spaced apart in four syllables, died an insignificant death offstage, replaced by a new moniker: The Wilds.
And that’s where this place and I have our greatest understanding. When everything changed, I became grown. When everything went to hell, I became strong. And when there was no chance of us returning to what we’d once known, I became wild.
I stay and help the townsfolk because I owe my life to one of their originals. I stay, too, for other, less honorable reasons, ones I don’t like to think about but wind up thinking about all day. Even now, the thought makes me glow under my shirt.
My rifle hangs from my new shoulder strap. After breaking my last one out on survey, this one’s clean and stark compared to my old canvas jacket. Everything about me is worn; I look ages older than I am, but I’m happy for it around the extra men we’ve added to our numbers this month. And even though I let myself stay dirty, their eyes still stick to my parts. But what can you do? Brutal youths are never in short supply. Women and girls, most certainly, are.
For a while, stragglers were on the rise, then petered off, and for that I blow a sigh of relief. We’re far outnumbered, and men mean tension.
They mean lust.
Women mean something to lust after.
Lotte follows a code: If she thinks you won’t leave well enough alone, then it’s out the gate for you.
If she thinks you’ll hurt another innocent in the Wilds anyway, then she’ll line you up, and Joseph will put a bullet in your heart between puffs of his cigarette.
Youths might be brutal, but Lotte is an iron woman as tough as the gates she erected.
I scan the horizon out of habit. I’m no eagle eye, and I’d rather find empty vessels scratching at the fence than anything that might cause a rift in the tinderbox town.
Peter’s chain-smoking on his end of the fence-line, his current vice since we’ve run clean out of booze. Or rather, Lotte doesn’t allow it inside the gate anymore. So, it’s smoke-smoke-smoke, and chew. He nods to me, then turns to face his watch. Not like we get close and personal. His wife hates me, and he smokes as much as he can up here because his ears get nagged off at home. That woman is a bur under a saddle pad. I swear she’d make even a brutal youth run for the hills.
Layla’s on her end trying to figure out how to load her gun. She’s gonna blow a foot off. Funny thing about Layla—she’s got eyes like a hawk, and this is what keeps her on the fence. If there’s smoke, or birds disturbed—I swear it, even miles off—she points, jumping up and down. If she’s needed to shoot something, though, then we’ve got trouble.
We’re short a few tonight. Most are out on survey.
To the east of my position is the one person I’m avoiding: Joe. I’m not so much as looking in his direction. I’ve been doing that for weeks, and even though ignoring him makes it worse. It’s never better, either.
“Hey! Hey! It’s Cutter!”
Layla’s bouncing up and down, pointing into the failing light to the west.
I can’t see him yet, but she tells me all I need to know.
“He’s running,” she calls. “Fast.”
Chapter Six
Dallas
Cutter died so quickly that his wife hardly made it before he took his final breath. Angelique, a tall and stately Australian, smelled of horse sweat, and she held the crop loosely in her hand as if ready to swat the thing who murdered her husband. She loved Cutter dearly—that much was apparent by their constant hand holding and starry eyes—and even though she was almost a head taller, we’d all heard them crying out in passion when passing Joseph’s cottage. Joe, most of all, despised the love his brother had found in the beautiful equestrian; his own petite wife held no such passion, and he’d been listening to Cutter and Angelique go at it for a year now.
“My darling, no.”
She’s not even crying. No doubt Angie’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever met. Aside from Cara and myself, and Lotte, of course.
She grips his hand tightly with her larger ones, and he fades … fades … then goes.
I sense Joe moving behind the group, restless, helpless. I wonder if he loves his brother even so, or if he’s secretly glad to see the happy couple finally face the ugly parts of this life.
Bitterness is a poison cup you drink from but hope the other person dies.
And Joe’s been bitter with Cutter for far longer than the end of the world. They probably fought the day the younger was born. Cutter had been the golden child, while Joe needed to be better, smarter, faster. If only he was like his brother … or so his mother had told him.
Then Cutter had married the love of his life, found her right here in the settlement. What are the odds your soul mate wanders through the gate?
I look over at Joe and think: It’s not so impossible.
So easy to be jealous of them with their perfect everything, and their untouched bubble of joy; even through our worst influenza, when the snows came once, then twice, then three times last year without warning.
It’s hot now, but it won’t keep. In the morning, the sand bites more than the frost, as the frozen fingers of chill claw their way into the lungs at the start of each day.
With a long sigh, I drag my eyes away from Joe and instead look at Cara, who’s just arrived. Her large brown eyes are wide; she looks surprised by the commotion, but even more surprised by Cutter’s wound.
Cutter wasn’t killed by a zombie.
His throat’s been ripped clean out.
Chapter Seven
Tommy
Day one on the ship, I’m dehydrated. Day two, hunger burns my guts, making my head ache. By day three, I need to search for some food, something besides raw flour. Doesn’t matter what it is; starving feels too much like the flu.
This ship’s the Authority’s cargo. I’d found the rope that Crystal and Phillip had used as stowaways to sneak off and got us on board, before sneaking down below. I moved some things around and hid us inside a pocket of boxes.
Marilyn is tiny, curled up in the same spot I’d placed her—a pale, porcelain figure with blonde hair.
The “what ifs” are there, of course, waiting; reminding me that wherever you go, there you are. What if I should
’ve left her there? What if Crystal would have been a better person to look out for her?
But Rubber Man had said it was my job. Besides, if Crystal failed, I couldn’t just leave her there to be eaten.
Now, looking at her in the dim light, I say, “I’m sorry in advance if I screw this up.”
When I approach the front where the goods are stowed to search for food, my foot lands in water. “What the─”
The liquid’s at my ankles and rising.
Hunger fades beneath panic.
We’re sinking.
Something bangs deep in the hull, and the ship lurches to the side. Cargo goes flying, and I go with it. We’ve struck something, and now we’re being shoved forward in an irregular rhythm. More water spits into the room through the door’s seal.
I crawl over to examine Marilyn’s sleeping face. She’s wedged between two boxes, but unharmed. With a giant shove, I move them and check her limbs. Nothing seems broken. Her head has a small gash, but it’s not bleeding much.
If this doesn’t wake her up, I’m not sure what will. She’s been living off air, like myself, and we’re going to drown in here.
During my frantic imaginings, the door bursts open from the pressure, and brackish water fills the lower deck, burning my eyes and nostrils as I’m beat back into the boat’s other side.
The monster in me rises, and I let him through just enough to fight my way back to Marilyn. I lift Sleeping Beauty, and my Special strength gets us through the gallons of water rushing in like a tidal wave. We’re forced out the door and down the hall, tumbling, with my arm hooked around her skinny waist. We flow toward the hole in the side, edges ragged and ready to slice us up. I try to shield her, and am rewarded with a deep cut along my back and my leg in the process. The ship’s been gutted, and as we flow out, I wrap Marilyn with my arms and legs.
I expect to be leagues under the sea of a sinking ship. But a few arm strokes later, we reach the surface, where it’s relatively calm and the shore is visible in the distance. Towing Marilyn, I pray she’s not swallowed too much water. Beneath my hand, her chest is still, and I worry I’ve only brought her along to kill her.
We wash up onto land, and I drag her by the arms farther up the beach, and place my ear at her mouth. Like I feared, there’s no breath.
I pinch her cheeks together, crinkling her pink lips into an “O” shape. She’s not breathing.
I growl in frustration. “I don’t think so. I didn’t risk life and limb to have you keel over on me now, Princess. Come on!”
After crisscrossing my hands over her chest, like they taught us in boot, I press and count.
“One. Two. Three.”
Then breathe into her mouth.
And again.
And again.
Nothing.
“Come on, dammit!”
I sit back with my hands on my knees, when the coughing begins. Actually, gags and coughs.
She lurches up and, like a whale with a blowhole, spouts water into my face—vomitus stuff, salty and warm.
I rinse my face, then watch as the girl, who’d so long been a mystery to me, comes alive.
The brightest of blue flashes, then disappears, and once again, she lies limp on the sand as if she never moved.
After wondering if I’m waterlogged and seeing things, I start to pump on her chest again.
Like magic, the blue sprouts out of the pale skin to stab at me once more. Her eyes are misted over by an under-verse of stars, little dots of brightness in the piercing azure. I shake my head before I regain my focus. Impossible. Water runs from the corners of her mouth, until she shifts onto her side in another coughing fit. Half the ocean is being forced out onto the sand beneath her.
She’s so tiny … how she held that much of the Pacific is a mystery.
While she’s doing this, I take in the surroundings. Seaweed winds around familiar buildings, although worn and more aquatic; the shore’s halfway into the city, but it’s still recognizable. We’re much farther inside the gulf than seems possible.
A whisper interrupts me.
“Whuh … what … who?”
Marilyn’s found her voice. Unused for a year, it cracks before smoothing out into something feminine again. “Who are you?”
She leans over, hunched and confused. The animation in her face … the actual, real, live person staring back at me … I’m stunned by the revelation that she’s awake. And so different from what I’d pictured.
When I don’t speak, she sits ramrod straight. “Who are you?” she demands with such authority, I immediately huff a breath she can’t hear over the waves.
A voice of such rich control has come from her, making me smile. Accented, too. I lean back on my heels and laugh in surprise—a deep belly laugh that has me shouting with joy into the beachscape.
“What’s so funny?” She’s now certain a crazy man’s with her.
And she’d be right.
“Nothing.” I sigh and wipe my eyes. “I could ask you the same thing. But the fact that we’re sitting here, free, speaking to one another where we are … it’s all too much. I guess I’m just happy, is all.”
I choke out more laughter, trying with my fist to stifle the craziness spilling onto this poor young woman. We’re free! And she’s alive. I’m alive.
Her silvery eyebrows raise before she cuts me a look of suspicion. So much I’d pictured about her, but not this. She’s poised, not fragile or fearful, and very direct. In fact, her open gaze narrows while she waits for explanation.
Where to begin?
“What’s so funny about any of this?”
Her accent’s the biggest surprise of all. I’d envisioned the most American of sounds from her dainty mouth, maybe a slight twang like some butterscotch silver belle. But to my country mind, she’s as Euro as the day is long.
“Is that English? I mean, like United Kingdom. That accent,” I ask as my brain races to replace this talking, animated version of Marilyn who sounds nothing like the Marilyn I’d pictured.
The old imaginings evaporate. Inexplicably, this new version fits, like I’ve known her for ages.
Stark. Certain.
And all I want to say is: “There you are, just as you’ve been, all along.”
Still, I manage to notch down the insanity.
“And you?” she says dryly. “You sound like a cowboy.”
I chuckle at the way she says “cowboy,” like it’s got extra syllables. The mere mention of my barely-there accent has me unintentionally broadening it.
“Oh, come on now, I don’t. That’s an insult to any real cowboy. Most days, I’m barely able to grab up my twang.” I try right now in my hilarity. “We might be in the perfect place to put it back on, though, Princess.”
She frowns, just now realizing there’s a place involved in this discussion. “Where are we?”
Fear settles on her face, holds it for a frail moment, and my humor bleeds out.
“I’m Thomas. Some call me Tommy—not important. We’ve washed up on shore after escaping from an island. Shipwrecked. That’s a first.”
“Island? Shipwrecked?”
“Okay. How to explain … The Authority brought us to the island as test subjects. Prisoners, more like. Someone came and started a diversion, took the power out. Anyway, we’re free from the Authority, which is all that matters—”
“The Authority?”
“—somehow, we landed here, which isn’t anywhere close to Anthem, but maybe our shipmates turned stiff, I dunno. The outbreak helped. It’s what got us out—"
“Out … break?”
“Is there an echo in here?” I ask, smiling. “By the way, what’s your name? I’ve been wondering for some time, and well … it’s not like I could ask.”
“It’s … um … it’s …” Like a bully, horror removes her small fear, replacing her tension with outright shock.
She blinks, then looks close to tears, and after all the empty moments are gone, total panic explodes thro
ugh her tiny body. “I … I’m … I don’t know.”
Chapter Eight
Dallas
Cutters grave isn’t deep. In fact, it’s not deep enough. We’d waited through the period he would have changed had he been prone to. He won’t become a zombie. I’d never truly been afraid of that. His neck hadn’t been jaggedly chewed, it’d been sliced.
His wife’s still in shock, so much so, she doesn’t even cry. Instead, she’s a shade of bloodless white on the dark bench, and when the Ironwood preacher asks if she’d like to say anything, she quickly shakes her head and goes back to wherever she’s been in her mind. Maybe with her memories of Cutter, back in their bed, driving us all insane with their throes of passion and rapture.
It’s what I’d do. I’d never leave those thoughts, either.
My face grows hot imagining it, and Joe and I share a look.
After they lower Cutter into the grave, I turn to leave, moving alongside with Joe. His face is doing that thing when he’s deep in thought. I don’t blame him.
“We need to hunt.”
“We’ve got meat, Joe.”
“Not enough.”
It’s never enough for him. Joe always wants to hunt. If he could, he’d be out in the Wilds one hundred percent of the time. Just like me.
I sigh. “I’ll get my gun.”
When I head back to the gate, he’s waiting there, watching me like a hawk. My skin prickles as his dark eyes take me in like I’m a tall drink of water, and Joe’s a very thirsty man. We’re hardly outside and he’s tracking me like the hunter he is, his eyes watching my steps, the sway of my hips …
“Stop it,” I say, and with a curse, he turns and shoves the gate harder than it needs.
Shuddering and formidable, the barrier between Ironwood and the rest of America slides closed behind us. We have no protection now, aside from ourselves.
But that’s how we like it.
We both hurry away from Ironwood as if it’d spat us out like bad brine water and, step for step, our strides match as we quicken pace.
