by T. S. Ward
I take the lead this time. People in the trees be damned. Whether Soldier is stressing about it or not, I know this trail better than he does, and it gives him less opportunity to keep trying to say shit to me.
He tries, anyway, whether I answer or not.
“Talk to me, Ghost,” he says.
“You can’t ignore me the rest of the way,” he says.
“Alright. You win. I give up. You’re on your own soon as we’re out of here,” he says.
I’ve been on my own the whole time, I want to tell him, and it sure as hell doesn’t seem like you have been.
It’s occurred to me in the last few hours that his radio is military issue, that it won’t be connecting to random people, that he’s probably telling the truth. That it’s sentimental more than anything. I can’t even think of a reason why he would be traveling with me and an army group. Why they would hide in the trees.
I can’t think why they’d take out banshees quietly, or let the pigs go in the middle of the night, in the dark. Why they would tiptoe around us like that.
The questions I have pile up, and as soon as we’re out of the woods—both figuratively and literally—I’m going to grill him.
Do you know they’re actually military? Do you know them? Do they know you? Are they following you? Are you following them? What do they want with you? What do they want with me? What are they doing sneaking around instead of confronting us? Why did you follow me out of the hospital? Why did you come back for me? Why are you here? Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, whaaaaaa—
It’s all shit I should have asked already.
It’s all shit I should know if I’m travelling with a stranger. A goddamn stranger. You got in his fucking truck, idiot! Not once, either, no, it had to be twice. You had to be stupid twice, and now look at you—hiking through the fucking parks with an army tail.
I think keeping my mouth shut for this long just sends all the idiocy that would normally spill off my tongue straight up into my brain instead. I can’t stop thinking. Can’t stop yelling at myself in my own head, itching to start spouting it out loud.
“Ghost.” Soldier’s voice is a fly buzzing past.
I ignore him, keep walking, eyes barely seeing the trail as it comes.
“Ghost!”
He grabs my elbow and spins me around, stopping me dead. I glare up at him, teeth clamped down and out of breath from the non-stop hiking. There’s no air between us at all.
“You can be angry. That’s fine. I know, I should have told you, but please, do not be reckless. Don’t be reckless.” He waves a hand to the side when he sees me raise an eyebrow at that. “Look. It’s probably where your banshees came from.”
I look, and nearly jump out of my skin when I see the open space and the torn-up tents. My hand shoots to my knife. But no movement greets us. There’s nothing. Just empty tents. Kids toys are scattered across the bare dirt.
It makes me think of Sadie. It makes me panic. It makes me forget everything in my head immediately.
I grab Soldier’s arm. “There’s kids. Ben, there are kids.”
He nods and looks me over for a second, frowning. “I’m not sure there’s anyone left, that’s… Here. Stay here. I’ll go check. Just stay put.”
I stand and wait and watch. He searches the tents, and I can feel my heart fluttering viciously against my chest.
It occurs to me then that Sadie and Adam might have been forced to go on foot, too. That maybe they came through here, met some others, and camped out. What if these banshees are them? What if they’re hurt? What if these kids got scared, took off into the woods, and got lost? They could be out there, starving, dying to exposure, and we’re just going to walk right on by.
One of those kids could be Sadie.
She wouldn’t know how to survive like this. She never spent weeks in the woods with Dad and Grandpa and Eli.
Soldier stumbles back from one of the tents, cursing quietly, bringing his hand up to his nose and mouth. He looks at me like he’s about to be sick.
What if it’s her?
What if it’s Sadie?
I start walking forward, slowly, and then faster. Running by the time I meet Soldier just before the tent.
He grabs me and fights to hold me back, to keep me from seeing. “What the fuck are you doing? You don’t want to see that. You don’t want to see that, Ghost, what the hell are you doing?”
I can hardly breathe for the panic. I’m clutching his arm when I wheeze out her name. “Sadie.”
“It’s not Sadie,” he insists. He ducks his head so I’m looking at him and not past him at the tent. He pushes the hair back from my face. “She looks like you, doesn’t she? Same hair, small as hell? It’s not her.”
I dig the photograph out of my pocket. “You sure?”
He looks at it, hands it back, and nods. “I’m sure.”
“Just some kid then? Someone’s dead kid? That’s not any better. That’s not any better at all.” I’m shaking my head, backing away, but then he’s got this look on his face that stops me.
He just saw a dead kid.
He just saw something no one should ever have to see and I can see the cracks in him, I can see that gut feeling flushing through him. He’s washed out. He’s shaking. He’s doubling over, hands on his knees, so I put a tentative hand on his shoulder.
I sit with him when he collapses.
I put my arm around him as he tries to catch his breath.
We don’t say anything. Even when we get up and keep walking, we don’t say anything at all.
Day Sixty-Three
I still haven’t confronted him. I haven’t had the nerve to, after that. Neither of us has really had the stomach for much of anything since. So we hike, and we don’t speak, and I notice something along the way:
Solder withdraws into himself more and more when I’m not blabbering.
He’s most comfortable when I’m oversharing. So maybe I won’t get anything out of him at all if I’m not being a damn loud mouth. Or maybe I’ll just talk myself into distraction for another two months until he offers me some random tidbit like this one time I got high and broke my lifelong high-score of veganism.
Hell. It might be worth it if he can top that.
We come to the end of the trail, come to an empty highway, and I stop there. Turn back to face him.
“We go the wrong way?” He asks.
“We’re out of the woods, idiot,” I tell him. I point up the road. “I’m going that way. Where are you going?”
He looks up and down the highway. It really does look like he’s considering his options, like he might take himself up on his own offer and split. Then there’s a small twitch at the corner of his lip and I don’t know if he knows I’ve noticed. But I do.
“Reckon there’s a lot of supplies to be had in the big city up there.”
“So we’re going our separate ways but in the same direction. Huh. Alright. You stick to your side of the highway, I’ll stick to mine.”
I start backing away, crossing the divide, and make a dramatic show of stepping over the line. And he smiles, but it doesn’t hit right, because I’m trying to soften him up again. I’m trying to get him comfortable enough to talk to me, to maybe give me a good enough answer to all my questions. But. Still. There’s an underlying need to not have this whole thing be a fuck up.
He’s the only person I’ve got right now. One who’s been damn good to me this entire time. And he might just be the only person I’ve got until I get to my brother and sister.
We came this far, just us, and it was far better than the rest of my life. So there’s that, too. There’s my desperate ass needing human interaction in a bit more of a friendly form than my family ever offered, and my thoughts always drifting to something a little more.
Here I am, attaching myself like a leech to the first person who’ll stick out all the annoying parts of me, and I’m still lost and terrified about it all.
“What’ll it cost to
cross that line?” Soldier calls over to me. He’s standing dangerously close if he wants to play that game.
Don’t be an idiot, Ghost— “The truth.”
“The truth,” he says, laughing softly. He tilts his chin up to look at the sky for a moment. “So I tell you the truth and you’ll, what, determine your opinion of that truth? Which means you’ll say it isn’t the truth. Is that right?”
I tilt my head to the side. “You know, this strange thing happens when you don’t lie, ever, at all. You know when people are lying, because it feels wrong. So just tell me convincingly enough. Maybe I’ll let it slide.”
He stares straight ahead for a while. Mulls something over in his mind, with his lip caught in his teeth. When he finally starts talking, he doesn’t cross the line.
“They gave us shoot to kill orders. By the end of the day. The day we left.”
“Excuse me?”
“We were being overrun,” he continues. “The military, the cities. They couldn’t tell who was infected and who wasn’t. Especially in the hospitals, so they… we were told shoot to kill. No witnesses. No survivors. I couldn’t do it. I know I’m not the only one, but—I couldn’t. You don’t fire on civilians. You don’t fire on the unarmed. You only fire when there is a perceivable threat—and not even that. When you are being fired on. And no one in that place was a threat. Innocents.”
“What the fuck,” I whisper. I don’t even mean to say it out loud, but I’m hardly processing what I’m hearing.
He looks at me, eyes shining. “You’re the reason I left. I mean, I might have, still, even without seeing you everyday. Even if you walked right on by and never said a word to me. You just… gave me the push I needed.”
I shake my head. My brain isn’t responding correctly. “You probably would have stayed, knocked a few rounds off.”
“Is that what you think of me?” He asks quietly. His voice breaks. He sounds absolutely fucking shattered.
“At your friends, not the patients, idiot,” I say, but the tone of the joke falls off. He frowns. I shrug. “Bad joke. Sorry. So. You left. Why’d you come back for me? Did they go through with it?”
He goes quiet for a while again, looking down at his boots. “They did. And I… you stuck with me. I don’t know. Something about you. Annoyed the hell out of me in such a short amount of time that no one’s been able to do before.”
“I said be convincing, Soldier.”
“Half a joke,” he says. He’s being careful not to cross that center line, as if it’s an actual physical barrier more than an honorary one. “You want the real reason. Not the why you. The why at all.”
“Good way to put it. Don’t think I don’t want to hear the why me, though.”
He looks back over his shoulder to scan the woods, double checking that no undead ramblers are coming at us. No military friends. Then he starts talking again.
“Week after I left, someone contacted me. Must have lost a lot of people to give a shit at that point, but… They gave me an ultimatum. Go back and have my record wiped, follow my orders from there, or die when the bombs fell. Way I saw it, I could just leave. But that still didn’t sit right with me, especially when I was on my way out of town with supplies and came across your place.”
I’m cold, suddenly. Despite the sun burning through my jacket.
He knew about the bombs.
Somehow, that feels worse than shooting up a hospital—the entire fucking city, full of more sick and more injured and just plain innocent, kids, unaware pets, retirement homes, the homeless. Everyone who couldn’t help themselves.
He knew.
He knew, and we could have done something. Could have saved just one—won’t make what you’re feeling any better.
“Oh. Oh. So I’m the thing that waters down the survivor’s guilt. I see.” I nearly laugh. I can feel the hysteric sound sitting inside my chest. “I’m the one person you could save. You took pity on me. You spent those last few months watching me flounder up and down that hall and you took pity on me, thought, I can’t shoot that poor broken squirrel. And you brought me home. Only to have it all be pointless when you learned the city was about to be wiped off the map so you turned around and made it a double whammy, just knocked that one right out of the park, didn’t you? My saviour.”
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t interrupt me as my discomfort puts on a three act play and I keep saying shit that I know hurts him. That I don’t really mean, because I know I’d probably do the same if I were in his shoes.
I keep spouting more and more shit that’s less coherent, until I’m just swearing, until I punch his arm. I shove him when he turns to me.
“Ghost,” he breathes, “I’m sorry. I just want you to be okay.”
I shake my head. I run the backs of my hands under my eyes and keep walking. “Whatever. Whatever. Whatever.”
Day Sixty-Five
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around all this. Trying to figure out how I feel about it all. About Soldier and how he figures into it.
He never denied going back for me as a way to ease his guilt, but either way, whether he came back for me or for him, I’m fairly certain I’m only alive right now because he did.
Does it matter why?
Or does it matter that now he does it for a reason other than to be self-serving? Or will it always be like that? Will I always be a token of virtue?
I sit in an apartment building, alone, mulling it over and over. I pace up and down the empty halls. It makes me sick to think about, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t sleep. And thinking about that now only makes me think about how Soldier never really sleeps, how he’s closer to this than I am, almost culpable in it.
Hell, the man probably feels culpable in it.
I think I decide then that I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Day Seventy
Give him the benefit of the doubt, and of course the man fucking disappears. There’s a note outside the door when I wake up, held down by a standard radio. His handwriting is neater than I expect it to be.
Ghost—
I’m going for supplies. Channel five. It’s long range. If you need me.
—Soldier
Day Seventy-Seven
As soon as I find a map and figure out how close I am, I decide to leave and start hiking. I’ve exhausted this place for its supplies. Soldier isn’t back. And I’m starting to lose my mind.
I figure something’s happened to him. And then I figure, no, he’s fine, I’ve just screwed it all up. I wasn’t forgiving enough. I wasn’t understanding enough. I wasn’t grateful enough. And then I think fuck that. This shit’s a two-way street.
And then I wonder if his army friends caught up to him.
What would they do, if they did find him?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know shit.
I pack up all my shit, and on my way out of town, I try the radio.
“Soldier?” I try, and then, “Benji?”
No response.
Day Eighty-Four
“Gooood morning little monsters, the skies are clear over Ohio, god is still absent, religion is a sham for the weak, black magic is spreading across the land like a plague, and the dead are as restless as ever. This is your friendly neighbourhood Ghost broadcasting on all frequencies. Don’t forget to take off the tinfoil hat on your way into purgatory, and leave your shoes by the door—you’re in it to stay. This has been the evening radio program with the other end of the undead, your pal the Ghost in your head… come find me.”
The crackle of the broadcast across the street burns out. I’m burned out.
I’ve been alone for too long.
Outside, the night sinks heavy and it reminds me of those nights around the fire with the oppressive darkness and the cold at my back and the heat of the flames in front. Where I could only see so far before the world fell flat.
I am so tired, but here I am, sitting up in the middle of the night with dark ring
s under my eyes.
I don’t want to miss any replies. I don’t want to miss him. It’s not fair. Not fair for him to disappear and not fair for me to care when he does, and I am cursing myself through and through for leaving for the next town.
I grab the rifle and move out onto the balcony, lowering myself to the blanket that’s rolled across the floor.
This darkness is different.
It’s cold enough that I tug my jacket tighter around me, but this dark, it is persistent, and it is full of monsters, and there is no fire to brighten the two-foot diameter around me. I wish there was. I wish I was warm.
The radio breaks its silence.
I startle, twisting to look back into the apartment I’ve commandeered.
“Ghost. Come in.”
He answered. He’s okay. He’s alive.
I stay where I am.
“Hey. I know you’re listening. I know you’re still pissed, but… I’m not the only one who heard your little radio broadcast shit. Answer me. Please.”
Not the only one who heard? If there’s anyone within a mile of this place they sure as hell heard. That’s the point. The speakers on the roof aren’t just a creative art project. It hasn’t been every hour on the hour for no reason. If there are people, they can hear it. They hear it every hour. But all they’ll find are the undead, because they can hear it too.
“Look. You’ve got bogies piling up in the street. Lord knows how many are getting in. Talk to me.”
That’s the point, asshat.
There’s a reason why the damn thing is set up down the road.
I lean into the rail and look down to the other buildings, shuddering at the sight of them all shambling about like a bunch of hungry ass stoners.
That’s the other side of the undead. The stoners versus Ghost.
A small smile tugs at my lips and I slip back into the room, back to the radio nestled against my bag, and flop down on my back on the floor.
