by James Harden
No answer.
“How many!?”
“Too many,” he says quietly. “Too many.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The smile finally disappears from his face. He nods his head and I don’t see any fear in his eyes. “Can you feel that?” he asks.
And now I am certain he has no fear and no worry or concern about what happens next.
“Feel what?”
“That is the loss of innocence. The loss of your humanity. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Maria says.
“You can’t ignore me. You neither, pretty girl. You can’t ignore me because you know I’m right. Who do you think Marko is going to kill first? Who do you think he’s going to eat first? You think those pathetic spears will help you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “These spears will help a whole lot.”
And then I lose all self-control and maybe I really am losing my humanity. I stab Gabe with my spear, stab him right through the shoulder joint. I am completely and totally surprised at how easily the blade, the knife slides through his joint. How easily it glides through the ligaments and tendons, through cartilage, through gristle. I am surprised at how quickly I lost all self-control and attacked him.
He muffles a scream of pain. Veins in his neck bulge and his face turns red. “He might kill you last,” he says with a steady voice. “You might have to watch all your friends die. Maybe he’ll feed them to you. I’ve seen him do this. He likes to do this…”
Maria puts her hands over her mouth.
“He’s just trying to scare us,” I say.
“No. Not trying to scare. I am telling you the truth. But you’re right. I shouldn’t scare you anymore than you already are. You’re all dead anyway. No point in scaring dead men and dead girls.”
“Where would Marko go?” Kenji asks, seemingly the only one who is keeping a level head. “Where does he hide? Has he been here before? Where does he go?”
“He hasn’t been here since the world ended,” Gabe answers freely, like he knows there’s no point in lying because there’s no way in hell he’s getting out of this room alive. “He sent me in to check it out. I was supposed to…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Like it matters, you’ll never see him coming. No one ever sees him coming. There are others who visit this town. They live nearby, probably in another shitty town that has become overrun and isolated. Sometimes they raid the shops and the grocery stores for supplies. They never stay long and they never take much. Too many dead people. Too scared of the walls and the Desert King. But I’m pretty sure they’re looking for a permanent way in. Like rats. Like roaches. They’re not all bad people, but they’re all desperate. They’ve been doing what’s necessary for a long time. For months. I was going to help Marko take them all. We were going to have so much fun. Already taken a few. But if Marko doesn’t get you, if the Desert King doesn’t hang you, these people will take you. Or shoot you dead. I’ve seen them in action all over these parts. They’ll shoot you just for being alive, just for breathing. Marko has taken a few of them. He gets them when they’re out on the road. When they’re vulnerable. They’re starting to crack, starting to jump at shadows, starting to suspect their own. This is the perfect town for Marko. Before I came here, Marko told me that Kingswood has always been a busy little town. Even before the Oz virus. Lot of transients. Backpackers. Tourists. FIFO workers. Plenty of fish. Even now, after the end of the world, after everyone died, this place is still busy. Like people are just drawn here. This is a special place. A sacred place.”
Kenji has had enough and he says, “I’ve had enough of this. I say we kill him right now.”
And for some reason I hesitate. I don’t know why I hesitate, but I do. I should not be hesitating at a time like this. I need to be ruthless and cold blooded. I need to be a killer.
And Gabe still appears to be completely unafraid. He still appears to be completely insane.
Kenji looks at me and at Maria. I think he looks at us, to us, for confirmation, for a sign, for an acknowledgment, so he knows that what he’s about to do is the right thing. And in this moment where Kenji looks at Maria and I, Gabe wrestles free from Kenji and lunges at me. And this pathetic and desperate attack makes it easier for us to kill him, for Kenji to defend us by sliding his spear through Gabe’s neck. And I can’t help but think it was like Gabe wanted to die, wanted us to kill him, because he knew it would be quick and relatively painless, he knew it would be a far better death than whatever Marko the Maniac had in store for him.
Chapter 11
Never trust the living.
You can trust the dead. They are predictable. They are the only constant. The dead, the infected, they will attack you, come for you. They will try and bite you.
There are no games. There are no lies.
The living on the other hand…
They will lie.
Cheat.
Steal.
They will betray you.
Never trust the living…
I should get this tattooed on my forehead so I am reminded every time I look in a mirror. Wait, how often do I look in a mirror these days? OK, maybe I should get it tattooed on the inside of my wrist. Or on the back of my hand. Both hands in case someone (Marko) tries to chop off one of my hands.
“Are you OK?” Maria asks me.
“Yeah. I think so.”
Physically, I’m fine. But on the inside, I am more than worried that I’m getting numb to all of this. I’m getting worried because today I’ve killed three men, and I just witnessed another man die right in front of me. And if Kenji didn’t do the deed… I would’ve. The only thing we’ve got going for us, the only redeeming factor is that it was all in self-defense, it was all in the heat of the moment. And I guess you could say it was justified, I guess you could say it was killing for the right reasons.
But I see no end to this. I don’t see the killing and the death stopping anytime soon.
We leave the storage shed and the corpse of Gabe behind. We don’t bother looking through his stuff to see if there’s anything useful. Once we realized Gabe was working with Marko, the storage shed did not feel safe at all. So we left in a hurry and now we’re moving through the town.
Kenji once again reminds us to be careful. “Stay alert,” he whispers. “We know Marko has herded most of the infected out of here. But there’s probably one or two hanging around. And who knows, maybe he’s got more scouts working for him.”
Kenji is reminding us so we don’t get complacent, so we focus on the here and now, so we don’t get distracted by what we just did. I say ‘we’, even though it was Kenji who killed Gabe. I say ‘we’ because we are complicit, because if Kenji was unable or unwilling to kill Gabe, I would’ve done it and I’m pretty sure Maria would’ve done it as well. As soon as Gabe confessed to being a scout for Marko, we all knew he had to die. We all knew he deserved to die.
So Kenji reminds us to be careful, reminds us to be on the lookout for the infected. Says there could be one or two left behind. Or more, I think to myself. Trapped in one of these shops. In a house. Hiding and waiting in the shadows. Ready to attack. Ready and willing to spread the Oz virus.
“So what the hell are we supposed to do now?” Maria whispers.
Good question. We have no vehicle yet. No way out of town. No way of escaping from Marko. We need an exit strategy.
“Should we go and check Marko’s work truck again?” she asks. “We didn’t actually check to see if the keys were there, or if we could hotwire it.”
“I think we should get back to the others first,” Kenji says. “Talk it over. It’s too risky to check the car now. Marko could be back any second. We’re running out of time. So we might need to split up again. Search for another car. There seem to be plenty of parked cars around town. Or at the very least, we could search for a new hiding spot. Some place where we won’t be found by anyone or anything.”
“I don’t th
ink such a place exists,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s a long shot,” he continues. “So that means eventually we’ll need to find a suitable car. And if we split up, we’ll be able to cover more ground. It’s risky moving around at night like this because we can’t really see if anything or anyone is sneaking up on us. But I don’t like the idea of moving around during the day either. It is apparent that, apart from the people behind the walls, we’re not alone here. So during the day we’re too exposed.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I’m saying we have a slight advantage at night. Even though it doesn’t feel like it. And I’m saying that we might need to split up because we’re running out of time. I know no one wants to do this, and I know it’s scary at night, but we’ve got no choice.”
I can tell Kenji is weighing up the pros and cons in his head. Weighing up the risk and the reward.
“I hate moving around at night,” Maria says. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
And as soon as she says, ‘I can’t see a damn thing’, Kenji grabs us both and pushes us against a shop window. He then drags us into the small alcove of the shop’s entryway. We crouch down, making ourselves as small as possible. We remain quiet for a long time.
Kenji’s eyes are fixed on something down the road. I’m not entirely sure what’s got him so spooked, but I need to see it.
I tap Kenji on the shoulder. “Let me see.”
He moves over a little bit so I can take a look. I inch my way forward so I can see around the doorway. Off in the distance, I see dark shapes moving up and down the street. Some are moving away from us. Some are moving towards us.
“Infected?” I whisper.
“No,” Kenji answers.
“How can you tell?”
“No sound. Plus, they’re moving slowly and carefully. Moving with purpose. With a plan.”
“Plan?” Maria asks. “What plan?”
“They’re hunting. Scavenging.”
I get chills and I feel the all too familiar surge of adrenalin. My mouth goes dry. “What do we do?” I croak.
“Not sure,” Kenji answers, eyes focused on the people moving towards us.
Up ahead, I see some of the hunters moving between pieces of rubble and parked cars.
“Are these people from behind the walls?” Maria asks.
“Maybe.”
“Or they could be the scavengers Gabe warned us about,” I say.
“Either way, we need to assume they’re hostile,” Kenji says. “We need to avoid them at all costs.”
Never trust the living…
“So what the hell are we going to do?” Maria asks, getting desperate, wanting to hide and disappear. She pushes gently against the door to the shop, trying to open it. The door is locked. “We could hide in here,” she says. “But we’d be making a lot of noise breaking in.”
“Too much noise,” Kenji says.
I tug on Kenji’s shirt. “We need to move back. Back the way we came.”
“Back?” Maria says. “I’m not going back. Ivan is that way. Marko is that way.”
“We don’t know that. They could be anywhere.”
I said this, trying to ease her fears, trying to convince her that moving back down the street is not anymore dangerous than staying here and hoping these hunters pass us by. But when I said, they could be anywhere… I just ended up making Maria even more scared than she already was. I must admit, I scared myself as well. So much so that I actually looked over my shoulder just to make sure Marko and Ivan weren’t hiding behind us, in the shop, in the window, watching us.
Come on, Rebecca. Snap out of it, you’re scaring yourself. Fear will cloud your judgement. Fear will cause you to do stupid shit. To crawl into a ball and freeze up.
Fear will cause you to panic.
And panic will get you killed.
I focus my attention back on the problem at hand. The problem being that there are hunters, strangers in the dark, scavengers, marauders, coming this way. Moving slowly and carefully. Moving with purpose.
“We need to go,” Kenji says. “You’re right. We need to move back. Quietly. Come on.”
We wait a second or two and then we move.
“Stay low,” Kenji whispers. “Stay as close to the shop windows as you can.”
As we run as quietly as possible back down the street, I realize I am holding my breath. And even though it’s dark, even though it’s almost impossible to see anything, I can feel these hunters watching me. I can feel their eyeballs burning into my back. I can feel their guns aimed at my heart and my head.
We round the corner. All we have to do is get to the next street over. All we have to do is move a few blocks away and these people will never know we were here. But Kenji comes to a stop, dragging us over to a large post office mail box. Kenji crouches down. Maria and I follow his lead. Up ahead we see more people. They appear to be huddled around the hood of a car. A small red flashlight illuminates a piece of paper.
A map.
We’re so close to these people we can hear them whispering to each other. Fortunately for us they’re so focused on the map they have no idea we’re there. No idea they’re being watched.
There are two men. One woman.
“This is weird,” one of the men says. “Where are all the damn zombies?”
“Who cares,” the other man says. “They’re gone. That’s all that matters. We need to take advantage. We need to do this tonight. Grab us much stuff as we can carry.”
“Maybe the Desert King killed them all,” the woman says.
“He’s just a man. He can’t kill an entire town of monsters. And why would he? He’s a coward.”
“I didn’t mean single handedly. I mean, maybe he organized an attack or something.”
“If that’s the case, then where are the bodies? This place would be littered with bodies if there was a fight.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” the woman says, thinking it over. “Then maybe they chased someone. Or maybe they chased a group. A group big enough, loud enough and stupid enough for them to follow and chase. We’ve all seen it. When they swarm together, they act as a herd. A mob. A pack. Maybe they chased a group of people out into the desert.”
“Probably. Maybe it was whoever’s been taking our people.”
“Hope so.”
One of the men switches the torch off and folds up the map, stuffing it into his pocket.
“Let’s meet up with the others. The town is indeed empty. We need to organize. We need to get as much stuff as we can. We might not get another chance. If we blow this opportunity, Xavier will kill us.”
“He’ll kill us if we’re lucky.”
Suddenly they begin moving towards us. And once again, we need to hide. We need to hide right now. But there’s no time. No time to talk this through with the others. So I dive for the gutter, sliding under the car parked right in front of the mail box. And as I’m diving and sliding, I’m thinking to myself that this car is illegally parked. And thank god, because without this illegally parked car, we’d be screwed.
Maria and Kenji follow my lead, sliding under the car, cramming up against me, practically on top of me. We freeze and hold our breath.
The scavengers walk slowly. We can only see their boots. They look like army boots. They walk slowly around the corner, disappearing from view.
I breathe a very big sigh of relief.
Kenji motions with his head for us to go. “We need to get as far away from here as possible,” he whispers.
“Hey, what’s this?” one of the men asks.
Damn. They’re still here.
“It looks like a spear,” the woman answers. “A homemade spear.”
“Makes you appreciate these rifles.”
“Yeah. This might come in handy though.”
“So keep it. Finders keepers.”
“Do you even know how to use a spear?”
“How hard could it be?”
Their voices fade awa
y. They seem happy to have found a weapon. So we make our move.
Maria apologizes for leaving her spear behind. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine,” Kenji says. “We can make new spears. Don’t worry about it.”
I guess they’re not the easiest weapon to carry while you’re sneaking around in the dark. Good for killing infected people, good for keeping that distance between you and their teeth, a crucial distance between you and the virus, between certain death. But yeah, not the most compact of weapons. I tighten my grip around my spear and I make sure the electrical tape that Kenji used to secure the knife to the end of the broomstick is still holding firm. And while I’m doing this and thinking about the pros and cons of this weapon, my foot kicks a beer can.
I kick the can off the side walk and into the gutter. The aluminum can clangs against the concrete and the bitumen and it is the loudest noise in the world. And as soon as it happens, gunfire erupts from behind us. The gunshots are deafening, impossibly close. Again, I dive behind the nearest parked car, taking cover. I am immediately showered with broken glass. I cover my head and my face and my ears. A split second later, Maria and Kenji fall on top of me as they dive for cover.
“Are you hit?” Kenji asks. “Are you hurt?”
But there’s no time to check if we’ve been shot. No time to check if we’ve been cut up by broken glass. No time for pain.
More gunfire smashes into the car.
“Run!” Kenji says. “Go! They’re coming!”
Chapter 12
We sprint as fast as we can, cutting diagonally across the road, using the cars on the other side as cover. Bullets continue to zing past, smashing into the metal frames of the cars, shattering glass. I risk a look over my shoulder but it’s impossible to see much in the darkness. Every now and then the flash of a gun barrel lights up the night.
We come to an intersection.
“Which… which way back to the pub?” I ask between breaths. “Left or right?”
“We can’t go back,” Kenji says. “Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
