by T. S. Ward
“Stoners,” I say into the radio. “On account of ‘em being real hungry.”
He’s quiet for so long I think he’s given up, and then, cautiously, “I take it you’re not too mad.”
“That’s a dangerous assumption to make, Benjamin Daniels.”
“Mad. Just… bored.”
“Correct. Come on over and claim your prize. Nevermind the crowd. They just want my autograph.” I tell him where to find me. I want to tell him that the prize is both a swift kick to the nards and a small amount of forgiveness, but I don’t.
I miss him. I miss humans.
“You’re still pissed though.”
“Still pissed.”
“What if I have a gift?”
“What kind of gift?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer.
I lie still on the floor, listening to the garbled moans of the stoners outside, down on the street, trying to listen for footsteps so he won’t startle me when he finds his way.
I try to remember why I was pissed in the first place.
Was it all the disappearing? Was it the being gone so long when he did? Was it because he was so adamant about getting out of the city just in time for bombs to be dropped, when he was there in the hospital when this all started, when he knew that the bombs were coming and he was supposed to shoot innocent civilians—oh. Right. That.
But the thing about it all is, we’re alive.
And I can’t guarantee we would still be alive if he didn’t do what he did, or if he had told me straight up. I can’t guarantee that we continue to be alive at all—it’s more of a righteous indignation that’s pissing me off more than anything.
Once upon a time a crotchety old lady couldn’t count my change properly and a soldier paid for a three-dollar coffee in twenty-dollar bills. One for her and one for me. Keep the change.
It’s another few minutes before I hear soft footfalls out in the hall, before the turn of the knob confirms it’s him. I’m still lying on the floor when he walks over.
He sits down next to me and starts pulling shit out of his bag, lights up the little camp stove, and pours some water into a small pot. Neither of us says anything until he hands me a mug and I’m forced to sit up the moment I smell what it is.
“Coffee?” It must be Christmas. Surely.
“Just for you.”
“Is it my birthday or something?” It’s boiling hot but it burns so good.
He glances up as he opens a little packet of honey, carefully, like it’s a bomb or a sleeping baby, and dumps every last drop into his own mug of tea.
He shrugs. “Something. I found one jar of instant and a single pack of honey. Just one. In some old diner that was ransacked.”
“See, what I don’t get is why you always go off alone on these missions.” This coffee is so, so, so good.
“Because you talk too much,” he says with a smile, but it’s weak, and it fades. “And you’re the one who told me to fuck off.”
Not at the start. “And yet here you are.”
“You asked me to come up.”
“Which is it? Did I say stay away or not?”
He raises an eyebrow. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“You know, all I do is shout into the void. You just respond with whatever you think is right.”
He looks me in the eye, something sly sitting there. “No, I don’t think so. You just like having me around, whether I piss you off like that or not. But I’ll tell you what. You find me a jar of honey and I’ll stick around a little more.”
“You’ll have to stick around to know if I do or not.”
“Do you like your coffee or what?”
I respond with a middle finger held up and the mug at my lips, hiding the smile that fights to show itself. The coffee reminds me of the hospital café. It reminds me of him showing up at the right time. Reminds me of my uncle, my father, that I haven’t found my brother and sister yet.
“You’ve got that sour look on your face again,” Soldier says.
I look into my coffee, or what’s left of it. Swirl it around. “Yeah. Just thinking about your survivor’s guilt. How I’m your charity card out of guilt. Do you just plan on waving my name around at the pearly gates when you get there, see if they’ll let you into the club?”
“How am I meant to do that when you won’t even tell me your name?” He says it quietly.
“The dead are not buried with their names,” I say. “Their names live on in those who knew them living, or else are given newly carved in stone to their graves. But never with them. What remains cannot be contained within an earthly name.”
He looks at me with some curiosity in the squint of his eyes. “Should I call you Prophet instead?”
“Prophets are earthly,” I say, swallowing the rest of the coffee. “Ghosts are not.”
He packs up the boiler and runs a rag through the mugs before packing them away too. He packs everything, slings his pack on his shoulder, and his rifle on the other. He kneels down on a knee in front of me and starts to say something, but I snort, laughing.
“What are you gonna do, propose?”
He shrugs. “Find me enough honey and I might just.”
“Sure. What’s the magic number then?”
He tilts his head. “Well, they are rarer than buttons, so… three?”
“Buttons?” I laugh. “So I leave the third one behind, then.”
“Sure. Goodnight, Ghost.”
He stands up and starts toward the door, and there’s this panic that rises up in me, seeing him headed for the door. This fear that I won’t see him in the morning. I don’t give a shit about anything suddenly. I just don’t want to be alone. Ever.
“Where are you going?” I say, standing.
“What, you want me to stay?”
I hesitate, but then I’m nodding, teeth clamped down on my tongue. The sharp prick of tears in my eyes. Why are you like this? You fool. You goddamn fucking fool.
“Alright,” he says, “I’ll stay.”
Day Eighty-Five
He’s back, and it’s like he never left. Two weeks gone. I’m still pissed, still on edge about it all, still wary about the secrets he keeps, still worrying that he’ll take off again. And it’s like none of that matters as soon as I hear his voice. As soon as I see him.
It’s only because he’s another person. Another living human, and that’s how my batteries are charged. Social interaction.
Not because I’m a fool. Because I’d act the same with anyone else who showed up. Not because it’s him and I’m letting my own issues brand his name into my skin. Totally not because of that.
It’s because we’re the last two people on earth.
We’re hiking up the back roads before the sun is up, which has me cranky, groggy, and slow moving. I haven’t stretched or exercised for a week and I know I’m going to regret it.
Soldier walks well ahead of me.
He’s on constant guard. Always scanning and searching the shadows and the holes where threats can hide. Checking every corner and every window we pass. Even now, out of the little town, he’s still searching the trees. Maybe more, even if it’s subtle.
The longer we walk, though, the less he seems to be paying attention.
I stop occasionally.
I slow down, lag behind a little more. Normally, I can keep up. Normally, I’ve been doing my physio exercises. But the last week was rough enough as it was and I sure as hell wasn’t about to ruin whatever comfort I’d managed to find. Except that now I’m paying for it in the pain shot through my spine, in the swelling that’s numbing my leg into a limp.
Every time it happens, it terrifies me.
It terrifies me that I’ll be left paralyzed permanently. That I’ll be left helpless and defenseless. Soldier’s goddamn charity case—and it adds to the worry I have, about him disappearing. That I’ll be left completely alone, immobilized.
Soldier hasn’t looked back all day. It’s almost offensively minimal. And now he’s
well ahead, so far that I can hold my fingers up and squash him between them without a trace. I do that. I smirk a little. Bastard.
I come to a full stop then, stumbling. My lip curls into a snarl from the pain, hand pressed against the small of my back where it’s all swollen and soft and numb. I test the numbness of my thigh with my other hand. Pressure, sure. A little tingling. A sharp spike up my heel when any weight rests on it.
Maybe I don’t know when to stop running my mouth, but I sure as hell know when it’s time to rest.
I’m about to whistle to Soldier when a misshapen, lumpy stoner comes stumbling out of the trees, a hell of a lot closer to me than him, even though it’s spotted him.
Whistling now would only draw its attention to me.
I bite my tongue and shake my head, fighting back an annoyed groan, and start limping forward again. Hell. Goddamn it—my leg is bad, my back is bad, the muscles all going tight and numb.
But I can make it. I’m good enough for that. I can get past it well enough to get Soldier’s attention. I can do that.
The stoner is slow moving, just a sleepwalker with muscle decay and a few cancerous growths in the joints. Stiff and atrophied. Its feet are only under it through a somewhat functional muscle memory. It’s slow, but I know not to underestimate it. The thing could know fucking karate for all I know.
I give it a wide berth. Draw my knife as I pass.
I shuffle a little faster than it, as fast as I can manage, sticking to the side of the road. Too close to the trees. But I’m almost there, almost close enough to Soldier, and I swear to god this man is walking faster and faster and—
A noise immediately next to me startles me, makes me curse and jump back. I lose my footing. Another stoner lurches out of the bushes and smacks into me blindly, grabbing at me.
I can’t catch my weight on my numb leg.
The stoner is heavy. It knocks me back too quickly, forces me to the ground. I land with a short shout to alert Soldier.
Not panicking. Not yet. Not yet.
I don’t hear him say anything. Don’t hear him running back to me.
I force the knife up through the roof of the lurcher’s mouth with a grunt. Saliva and blood drip over my hands as it wheezes its last breath and collapses. This sucker is fucking heavy, a hell of a lot bigger than me, and the other one—it’s on the ground, dragging itself over to my legs.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I kick a leg up at its jaw as I roll the dead one to the side, but it grabs me. Nails dig into my pant leg. I struggle to get myself up while kicking at it, wrenching my knife loose from the skull of the other.
It falls. There’s pressure on my numb leg.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
A gunshot deafens me. It echoes up and down the empty road.
The lurcher collapses dead. Real dead.
“What the fuck! Goddamn bullshit!” I kick it again for good measure, try to move, and immediately give up.
I lie back on the pavement, staring up at the sky, breathing hard.
Soldier is standing over me then. His eyes are scanning the woods up and down, brows lowered. “Get up. We gotta go.”
I laugh at the prime fuckery this all is. “Yep. Gettin’ up. Any moment now.”
“I’m not joking, Ghost,” he says. He doesn’t look at me, and thank god for that, because there are tears pricking at my eyes and I don’t need his pity right now. I don’t need to be ruining my badass troubled kid persona. “We’re going to have every damn dead asshole for miles coming our way.”
“Bet,” I say.
“Ghost.”
I close my eyes, muttering, “I can’t get up.”
“What’s that?”
“I said I can’t get up!” I shout it, and all of my frustration and anger comes out with those words. Sharp, tearing apart my throat.
“Sure you can,” he says, the naïve bastard, reaching down to grab my hands. He hauls me up against my protests, through the pain that makes me screech and cling to him.
“Ghost. What’s…?”
I shake my head. “Can’t move, I said.”
“Can’t walk?”
“Obviously, dickweed.”
“Alright,” he huffs, and then his arms are under my knees and around my shoulders, lifting me from the pavement. “Where are you hurt? What happened?”
I close my eyes and try to breathe through it, try to not be so damn self conscious, with an arm wrapped around his neck and my forehead pressed to his shoulder.
I don’t want to talk about me. “Something wrong with you? Leaving me in the dust like that, not catching those sleepwalkers, not pestering me. You’re off your game.”
“Thanks for noticing,” he says, “But I need to know what’s wrong with you.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with me.”
“Says you, being carried.”
“Says you, not paying attention.”
He’s quiet, picking up the pace now. “Alright. Okay, Ghost. I’m not fucking around. I’m not joking. What’s going on? Did they bite you, scratch you? Did you twist an ankle? Did you not eat enough? I need to know how to help you.”
“Well, you can’t help me so why—” I shut up when he holds me a little tighter to him. It fucking hurts, though I’m sure he doesn’t mean for it to. I bite my tongue. Squeeze my eyes shut as the sharpness of it draws tears onto my cheeks. “I’ve got a shit ton of metal holding my spine together. They broke most of my ribs. Fractured my skull in two different places. Ruptured my spleen. But it’s my back that’s fucked up. I don’t exercise, I don’t stretch, my spine swells and my leg goes numb and I can’t… fuck.”
He’s quiet, staring straight ahead. “That’s what your uncle did?”
I nod. There’s a lump in my throat.
“Should have shot him when I had the chance.”
—
An hour later.
It’s an hour later, and there’s a house and a farm in front of us. No signs of life.
“Thank the lord,” I grumble.
“Hopefully no one’s home,” Soldier says.
I sit on the porch against the siding of the house while he goes in to check, and take the opportunity to stretch like I should have. Most of the feeling is back in my leg, but my back seizes up no matter how I move and makes it incredibly difficult to do much of anything.
There’s blood on my pant leg. I see it, stretching forward, trying to touch my toes. A small speck of blood, torn fabric.
My skin feels like a cat scratch.
Halfway up the shin, just below the knee. It feels like heat. Like warmth, seared into the surface, spreading out. Just starting to hurt now that I’m not walking, now that I’m not focused on the rest of my pain.
Fighting stiffness, I reach down and tug my pant leg up, holding my breath as I look.
It’s tiny. Barely there. Just a small crescent shape.
“Hey.” Soldier makes me flinch. “It’s all clear. Come in, come get some rest.”
I shake my head. I’m quiet, quieter than I’ve ever been. “No, I think I’ll stay out here.”
“Come on. It’s not safe out here.”
“Wouldn’t be safe for you if I did go in,” I say. “Only fair.”
He’s silent for a minute, before he breathes out, “Where?”
I wave a hand to my leg. “Couldn’t feel it until now.”
“That doesn’t look like teeth to me.”
“Doesn’t have to be, reasonably. I mean, we’ve seen people with nothing more than scratches who have turned. It’s not like a bite is the only way to fucking die, Ben, and I—fuck. Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck!” I slam the side of my fist against my leg, over and over and over.
Soldier crouches down, grabs my hands, pulling me into him. He wraps his arms around me and stands, walking me into the house. “I’m not in any danger. Thanks for the concern, spooks, but it’s unwarranted. If it’s bad, we deal with it.”
“Don’t. Do not—I swear to god, Benjamin
Daniels—” It’s impossible to fight him. I am exhausted, sore and aching. I give in.
Warmth rushes under the surface of my skin the longer I’m standing upright, and in a matter of seconds, everything is fading between darkness and flashes of the inside of the house.
I can’t keep my eyes open.
“I’m tired,” I mumble.
“Then rest.”
—
It takes hours before anything starts to happen beyond tired.
A fever. Fever dreams.
I can’t discern night from day then, so I lose count for a while, and at the time, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except this incredible, consuming fear that I am dying and the belief deep in the fabric of my being that I do not want to die.
—
The world comes by in flashes. I am seeing things. Hearing things. Things that aren’t there, people that aren’t there. I’m not even sure if Soldier is there half the time.
It starts with shadows in a dark room, like sleep paralysis demons lurking around, flickering in and out of existence. They stand near the door, or near me, way too close for comfort.
I can feel my heart trying to burst from my body. This oppressive heat deep in my skin. It feels like hands burning through me, searing the flesh. My forehead, my neck, my shoulders, my arms.
—
I blink slideshows of a room.
Every time I open my eyes it’s different. There’s a shadow there, and then there’s one there, and then there’s a second one there, and then Soldier is here and he’s gone and then he’s back again.
—
A strange light hits my eyes. It blurs everything. And then there’s someone else—several someone’s. They fade in and out, morph into each other, phase through the others over and over and blur their words together. Familiar and unfamiliar. Family and strangers.
“Of course you’d die to something this stupid,” one of them says.
My brother or my father or my uncle or my sister or my mother or my grandfather—I don’t know which one.
“You survived all that shit for it to come to this?”
