by D. J. Molles
“Did anyone leave?”
“Some of them wanted to. But they went by consensus, and they’re staying. So I told them they were free to go, and free to stay, but if they chose to stay, they had to contribute. And I told them we didn’t need scavengers and woodcutters right now. We need fighters.”
“Fifteen ain’t bad. I can work with that.” Lee nodded and looked at Angela. “Good work. You don’t give yourself enough credit, but people listen when you talk. You should have more faith in yourself.”
That tired smile again. She tilted her head as she looked at him. Like you might to change your perspective so you can decipher the image in an optical illusion.
Lee sighed lightly through his nose. “You’re giving me that look.”
“What look?”
“Like you’re about to ask me questions… about me.”
She made an amused sound. “Captain Harden. The man who can put himself in danger and fight all the bad guys, but utterly terrified of having an honest conversation with someone.”
He looked away from her, didn’t want to see her eyes, because he felt that they could surmise things that he was intentionally leaving unsaid. The blank wall of the office was a safer place for his gaze to wander. She was something strange, something different. Something he was not accustomed to. Unlike so many other people in his life, she could be both a chink in his armor and the patch welded over the holes. Because he cared about what she thought, oddly enough. And if he told her the truth… well, she would either side with him, and then the relief of the stress of secrecy would strengthen him, her support would strengthen him, and he would be more focused. Or she would revile him.
There was a part of him that resented both her and himself for this. Her, because he had never allowed another person to factor so heavily into his thought processes. And himself for letting it happen. He’d never intentionally given this type of power to her. It was something that had happened under his nose, without his knowledge. The heart was a traitorous thing, and often operated in secret.
“What’s going on with you?” she said, her voice quiet.
The quiet was worse to him than if she’d been demanding. The quiet suggested she could understand, that he could tell her things he did not want to tell her. But that was just a trap. Wasn’t it? He hated how secrets degraded willpower over time, particularly with people you cared about. He’d been so long without anyone that he cared about that his previous, quiet, solitary life had been easy to maintain. But now he’d gone and fucked that up, hadn’t he?
“What do you mean?” he said, lamely.
She chuffed. “Oh, Lee… what a stupid question.”
He stayed silent.
“Ever since you came back…” she started, then stopped. “I don’t know. I thought that we had an understanding.” She didn’t seem to like the words that she’d chosen, and scrambled for better ones. “What happened in here, when you were gone… I did some things I never would have thought I was capable of doing. Not good things. Things that still wake me up at night. And I thought to myself, if anyone ever understands that, it’s gonna be Lee. And I could see it in your eyes when you came back. I could see you’d had to do some things, too. But I thought that we were going to be able to… to…”
“Talk about it?” Lee said, and didn’t like the near-sarcastic edge to his voice.
Angela glanced at him and he could tell that he’d made her feel foolish when she was only trying to be open with him. She pressed her lips together and looked elsewhere. “Is that such a ridiculous thought?” she said with a little bitterness creeping into her voice. “That we could actually talk about something? Rather than sitting in silence?” She laughed suddenly. “No. You’re right. That is ridiculous. What the hell was I thinking? It’s not like we’re in some normal relationship. We’re in this. Whatever this is.”
“Angela…”
“What is this, then?” Her hands supplicated, palms up. “What are we doing? We’re together but we’re not. You sleep in my house, but we never talk about anything. I worry about you when you’re away from me, but when you’re here it’s like you’re not. So tell me what this is.”
Lee wanted to fight this line of questions but didn’t have the energy for it. He just felt that empty feeling of knowing a conversation was going down paths he didn’t want it to. He looked at her, hoping that she would not expect an immediate answer. But she only sat there and waited for his response. Her question was earnest, not rhetorical.
“I don’t know what this is.” He shook his head and the silence stretched. “I wish I knew. I’m in the same boat as you, Angela. I really am. I’ve never been here before. Even before all this shit went down, it’d been a long time since I’d had a relationship with anyone. And now this? I mean… how are we supposed to be? I don’t know how this works any more than you do. I know that I worried about you when I was gone. I worried about you, and I can’t explain how relieved I was when I saw that you were okay.” He rubbed his face and beard. “I care about you. More than I wish I did.”
Angela planted her hands on her knees, and remained pensive.
Lee felt like he was empty of high-minded words. All he had left was the truth, take it or leave it. “What do you want me to say, Angela? That I love you? Yeah, I guess I do. I don’t know what else to call it. I’ve tried to find another word. Because how does that shape out for you, Angela? Have you ever thought about that?”
She looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that everything about this is fucked up. You already lost your husband—I was the one that killed him. And then there’s me. And how likely do you actually think it is that both of us make it out of this? Everyone around me keeps dying, Angela”—you said it yourself in my dream: “Everyone around you dies.”—“and I’ve come damn near close more times than I care to count. So how’s that shape up for us, huh? I’ll tell you how it shapes up. More heartache. More loss. And I can’t afford any more of that. I don’t think you can, either.”
Angela’s mouth came open to argue, but then it froze, and after a moment it snapped shut again. Her expression went from reproachful to… almost placid. If not for the hard edge of it. An edge that had not been there months ago.
Lee shook his head and swore. “And this is why I don’t talk.” He looked right at her and waited until she returned the eye contact. “Angela, you’re a good person. You are. Things have been tough for you, maybe a little tougher than some other people around here. But inside, you’re still good. And I think everyone around here knows that, and that’s why they trust you.”
He stood up from the desk, for no other reason than to put distance and meaning into the words he had to say. He didn’t want to say them, but they needed to be said. “You think that you want to be in my head, but you don’t. I promise you, Angela. You don’t. I’m not a good person.”
Her face screwed up. “Because I’m too fragile to handle it?”
“You think I don’t want to tell you?” He felt his anger level rising. He was trying to keep himself level, but she just kept pressing. “You think I like keeping shit to myself? I don’t. It wears on me. But what I have to say, no one wants to hear, I promise you that. And I made my peace with that a long time ago. Because it’s not my job to make my voice heard and be understood as a person. It’s not my job to be happy and cheerful and friendly and appreciate the fucking beauty of the world around me.” He shook his head. “No. It’s my job to do all the ugly shit that needs to be done so that all the other people can go on about their lives with some semblance of normalcy. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m good at.”
Angela raised her own voice in turn. “What are you even talking about? What’d you do?”
“Do you really want to be a part of that, Angela?”
“Lee!” She came off the desk. “What’d you do?”
He just stared back at her.
Her eyes narrowed. “Julia told me that you were hiding something. She to
ld me and I didn’t believe her because she’s been acting so weird. But you are hiding something from us.” She looked suspicious. “Where’d you go all those mornings? What’d you do?”
“This… this…”
“Tell me!”
And Lee wasn’t sure why he said it. Maybe just to watch her jump, to see her react, the base desire to prove himself right: You’re not ready for this. You don’t understand men like me. You don’t understand having to do bad things for the greater good. You don’t understand how negatives can turn into positives. How cold-blooded murder is sometimes the best and only option.
“I killed them, Angela,” he said, his voice dropping back down again.
She paused for a long second. Processing. Computing. “Who?”
Even though she knew. She had to know.
Deadpan, Lee said the names like any old list on a piece of scrap paper: “Arnie. Kyle. Connor. Zeke. Jody.” He took a breath. Let it out. “I killed them.”
She was still looking at him, like she was trying to turn what he was saying into something acceptable, something that fit her worldview. But it would not. Lee saw things from a very different perspective than her. And there were miles and miles to cross before the two vantage points converged.
“I don’t…” she started, then stopped. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand, Angela,” Lee said tiredly. He found the exhaustion coming back over him in waves. Did it feel good to have the truth out? No. It felt like he was vulnerable. It felt like he had taken that little chink in his armor and pried it open until it was a big, obvious gash. He felt weakened. Foolish. But he went on. Might as well get the whole thing out. No use telling half truths when the full truth was just a few more words away.
And miles and miles more between them.
“I went out, every morning that the trials were held. I waited under a tree, because I knew the road they were going to take. I made sure it was far enough that no one in Camp Ryder would hear the gunshots, but close enough that I could get back quickly. And I waited for them. And when they came walking up the road, I gunned them down. Killed them. And then I left their bodies there. And the infected ate them.”
Angela placed her hand over her mouth, but otherwise her face was still. She did not cry out, or show any other form of outward emotion. Still, though… Lee could feel the anger in her. The resentment. The disbelief. Possibly even disgust—and that hurt him the worst. Even sitting there, hardhearted as he’d become, that still struck him.
He shook his head. “I told you…”
She held up her finger with a jerk. The cords in her neck were standing out, but her skin was oddly bloodless. She looked around the room, then finally came back to him for a moment. “I don’t believe this.”
Lee grabbed his rifle off the wall and shook his head. He went to his bedroll and stood there, aimlessly. “What do you want me to say, Angela? This entire time, I just don’t know what you want from me. You say you want the truth, but every time you get it, you spit it right back out. I told you not to pry, and you kept prying.”
She looked aghast. “This isn’t about me! This is about you killing… unarmed people!”
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
You’re damn mighty good at burning those bridges, aren’t you, bud? His father’s voice echoing in his mind. Gotta be the loner. Gotta carry all the groceries at once. Can’t let nobody else help. Always got something to prove. You never could. Your damn pride, son. Your damn pride is gonna leave you a bitter old man and it ain’t gonna keep you warm at night, I promise you that.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded. “We’d already kicked them out! It doesn’t… It doesn’t… I don’t understand.”
He jabbed his finger in the air at her. “Because loose ends always come back to bite you in the ass, Angela. If I’d put a bullet in Shumate’s head a few months ago, my life would’ve been a helluva lot easier these past few weeks. If we’d gotten rid of Jerry as soon as he started acting up, then we wouldn’t have fifteen more bodies in the ground out back! Every one of those motherfuckers that fought with Jerry should have been executed. Lined up in front of a firing squad and goddamned executed. But everyone wanted to hold a trial. Everyone wanted to feel fucking good about themselves. And they don’t give a shit that all those warm fuzzy feelings are putting them and everybody else in danger. Fine. You people do what you need to do to make yourselves feel better. I’ll keep seeing the world like it really is and do what needs to be done to keep everyone safe. It’s what I’ve always done for civilians, and nothing’s changed. Even at the end of the fucking world, when you think people would take some responsibility for shit, nothing’s changed.”
He sat down and put his back to the wall, rifle over his lap. “Is that what you want to be a part of? I didn’t include you for a reason. People need me and what I do. Society has always needed men with blood on their hands. But they need you, too. They need the good people to lead them. And they need the bloody ones to clear the way. And if you try to help with clearing the way, you’re gonna find out that it changes you. And you’re not going to be the person you were.”
He laid his head back against the cold cement wall and looked up. It felt like lead in his gut. Like killing a friend. Like burning bridges. But that was what needed to happen. People’s survival outweighed Lee’s personal relationships. Angela needed to be away from Lee. For her own good, and for the good of what he was trying to accomplish. He had tried to keep that distance physically, but now he had to put it into words.
“I don’t know what we are,” Lee said quietly. “Or were. But it was foolish, Angela. I killed your husband. Abby hates me. And you yourself are never going to understand what I do and why I do it. And I can’t continue to do what needs to be done if I’m always taking into account what you might think of it.” He looked at her. “You’re going to lead this place. You already are. And you’re going to need men like me to keep doing the things that we do, or this place has shit chance of making it. But neither of us can do what we need to do if we’re together. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She wasn’t meeting his gaze. She apparently preferred to stare at the door. She gave no indication that she had heard anything he had said, but Lee knew that she had. Lee could see it in the set of her mouth. He could almost read it like words on a sign: Fine. If this is the way you want it. But I can’t believe the words that you’re saying.
“You should leave,” he said, like pounding the last nail in the coffin of a loved one.
She crossed her arms over her chest, and Lee almost wanted to tell her to stay, but the words had been spoken and could not be taken back. And they’re for the best. It’s for the best that she leave and not keep trying to attach herself to me. We’re so close to winning the fight, why weaken myself now? This is best. This makes the most sense.
She hesitated at the door and looked over her shoulder, but never quite looked at him. And then whatever she had wanted to say she let die in her mouth and closed the door behind her. And then she was gone. And Lee had managed to make himself alone again.
This is best, he kept telling himself. This is best.
NINE
CAUSE FOR CONCERN
LEE SLEPT IN FITS and starts. His dreams were all of blood and terror and the feeling of being lost. As he wandered, he found a road and began to walk it. To either side, the grass had grown high and was encroaching on the cement. Beyond the grass, the forest stood silent, watching him breathlessly. The trees were barren of leaves, and yet the whole woods was dark and black as a midnight shadow. He feared the woods, but they were all around him. The only safe way was straight ahead. One foot in front of the other on this old and empty road.
He began to run, but mile after mile he was not putting any distance between himself and whatever was in the woods. It was still there, all around him, and one mile of this long, flat road looked just like the next. And the black woods were beginning to la
ugh at him. The trees had faces and they sneered, and the trunks were scarred and slashed as though some huge animal had sharpened its claws on them, and sap that looked like blood trickled out of these marks.
Finally, he could run no more. He stopped and stood. For as far as the eye could see, his path remained the same. And behind him the view stretched, just a mirror image.
“This is only a dream,” he told himself, and he could remember the nightmarish Father Jim coming into his bunker after him, screaming some prayer of damnation over him. That had been so real, but it had been a nightmare. Just like this. “I’m sleeping.”
But his heart would not slow down.
He closed his eyes, trying to picture the office that he knew he was lying in. His bed roll. The desk where only hours ago he had sat and pushed away one of the only people left in the world that cared for him. Pushed her away because that is what’s best. And when he opened his eyes, he did not see the trees anymore.
But he was still on the road.
He could not see the trees, because it was completely dark. He was standing in the middle of the road, in a ring of light, like a spotlight was shining down on him, center stage, all the world a dark, invisible, faceless audience, watching him in rapt silence. He looked up to see the spotlight, but there was only darkness in the sky. Not a single star to give him direction.
When he looked back down, he could see shapes in the gloom just beyond the ring of light in which he stood. Dark silhouettes that did not move and were almost as black as the emptiness beyond them, and he felt more than saw them. There was one directly in front of him. And another to his left. And to his right. And he knew that if he turned, they would be behind him. He got the sensation that there were many of them.
“Go.” His voice was a threadbare croak. “Leave me be.”
