I didn’t know what to say. I imagined that small girl in the middle of the desert road, dusty wind whipping her long black hair around full, dark eyes. I pictured her calmly not moving as soldiers with huge guns surrounded and shouted at her, holding to her purpose, saving their lives, risking her own for the invaders. The image, that idea shattered my reality for a second.
I was reeling, and he knew it. He stopped and looked back at me, tipped his sunglasses to read my face.
“Like I said, we’re not all savages.”
Then he kept walking forward.
“You had to see more savagery in the Iraq war, though,” I said.
“Of course I saw savagery. An entire country of savagery and desperation. If you push people far enough, they can lose all humanity.”
“Then how is this a surprise to you? How can you think this could be any different?”
“Breaking point is a choice. Giving up is a choice. I met a man in Iraq, our terp.”
“What’s a terp?”
“Interpreter. He was an Iraqi, grew up surrounded by terrorists and murderers and savages. They found out he was working with us; it was a risk he chose to take. They slaughtered his entire family. In front of him. They burned his home, his life. They let him live just to suffer, knowing there was nothing he could really do to them. He could have gone mad. Maybe he should have. It would have been easiest. Yet there he was with us, making the choice to help us, because he believed things could be different. He believed his people could be more.”
He stopped for a moment, his gaze growing long in front of him, falling into the memories.
“I used to ask him,” he continued, “why he kept doing it, why he would pay such a price. He could have pursued revenge; he could have killed himself; he could have fled. He would say to me, ‘I am not one of these animals. I know we are better than this.’ I never really understood all he said at the time. But his words make more and more sense every day.”
“What happened to him?”
“IED. He died in my arms waiting for the MEDEVAC.”
And there was no response to that. A window had cracked open to his past, to his quest. He was fleshing out in front of my eyes. Was this my same stoic savior? Was this the man I had followed across all of these desolate lands? I never thought all of this lurked inside him. I could swim in his new depths.
The trees became thinner as we pressed on; sunlight broke in deeper and spread across us. Then the forest dissolved behind us, and we were back out in the open. It was comforting to see the circumference of our route, yet it was unnerving to be exposed again. There was no winning in this place.
The child broke our silence. It started as fussing; he struggled against the carrier. Then he succumbed immediately, fully embracing the fit, throwing every ounce of his miniature strength into being heard. The piercing cry ruptured the sky, set my skin on fire. His little limbs flailed as his face scrunched down and turned red.
Then I saw it, down the hill and in the distance, a figure hobbling through the grass. Then another staggering behind it. And another hurrying to them.
“There, there,” I whispered, gesturing down the hill. As I pointed, they turned to the sound of the baby shrieking. Another two emerged in the distance to join them. “Shit, it’s almost a horde. Fuck, he’s going to attract them all. Give him to me. Give him to me!”
I frantically stripped the small body from his chest and wrapped it tightly against me. He was already marching down the hill towards the group below, the baby carrier bobbing empty with his steps. He had his sword ready in one hand and the gun in the other.
I didn’t bother to watch. I had seen him slaughter savages countless days in countless places. I looked down to soothe this damned infant who was steadily beckoning our demise. He was already calmer in my arms. He nuzzled against my chest, quivering his head and letting his open lips brush my skin. The little fucker was hungry.
With him cradled in one arm, I spun my pack around and dropped to my knees. Keeping my eyes scanning around us and checking his progress, with one hand, I dumped some formula into the one bottle we had, splashed in water from my canteen, shook it quickly, and plugged the child. His whimpers instantly dissolved into ravenous suckling, and I felt that familiar victory in figuring out what the hell a child wanted.
I replaced my pack and looked up to see him striding back up the hill to us. Blood dripped from his sword, and his gun was snuggled back in its holster. Behind him, a pile of pieces lay still and strewn over the ground.
“I think we can agree that it is your turn,” he said as he wiped his blade in the grass.
I didn’t reply; I merely allowed him to strap the baby carrier to my chest. I finally looked into his eyes, for the first time in days, when he nestled the child against me. I could feel the desperation in my own expression, the plea for him to not make me endure this. He met my eyes from behind his sunglasses and paused for a moment. He half-smiled in the necessity of it, brushed my cheek until he pushed my chin up, then resumed leading us wherever the hell we were going.
I breathed in, breathed out, just focused on walking, and tried to ignore the tiny body moving against me, setting my nerves ablaze.
Too familiar.
Too painful.
I dropped my arms away from the infant, almost held them back, arched my back as I walked. I looked up and tried to focus on the sky. The sun was retreating, shredding the blue sky, turning the trees and the grass red and purple. The wilderness was still beautiful. This was no bombed-out apocalypse. I remembered learning about the picturesque and the sublime in college literature. Not until moments like these did I truly understand how terrifying beauty could be.
Each step I took weakened my resolve; each step had my posture softening and my arms draping. The cells in my body were addicts, traitors to habits forged in two children. My shoulders needed to round protectively; my hand needed to huddle reassuringly. The memories in my flesh betrayed every attempt to fight the ones hammering in my scarred brain.
“He knows his momma,” Dante said. “He’ll always know his momma. Everything about you, your skin, your smell, the way you move, your voice is safe for him. He knows exactly the place to be. Used to be my place, little man; you better enjoy it.”
As Dante’s words rocked around my skull, the child cooed and nuzzled his face into the skin of my chest. I only looked back up and let the hot tears carve canyons down the dirt on my face.
“Mom! Mom, look!” Jordi’s small voice. “Look! I hold Eli. I hold the head. I good big brother.” His smile practically cracked his cheeks open.
The memories were comforting knives in my heart. I wanted to close my eyes and lose myself in them, but I didn’t think I could survive it. Every sound, every gesture, everything about this child sent ripples into waves out of my past crashing down on me.
The smell guided me back to the moment. I knew it well.
“Hand me one of those diapers,” I said.
“Only a few left. We need to raid again.”
I crouched to the ground, and he stood over us, his calf against my back, weapon in hand.
I unwrapped the diaper to the both passive and potent stench of newborn shit. The loose, unnaturally colored pile was smeared all over his tiny butt. I remembered tracking how many times my boys shit and peed, counting, evaluating color and volume, filing it in on the hospital-provided sheet.
I swabbed him with the backside of the diaper the best I could, wiping the castoff on my hands low on my pants. I cinched the tabs tight around his waist and replaced him on my chest. Before we started out again, I dug a small hole with our camp shovel and buried the diaper, just like I did with my own tampons and we did with our shit.
Must never leave a trail.
“How long do you think to the next town?” I asked.
“Can’t be too far, probably camp tonight and find one sometime tomorrow.”
“Then hope for the best.”
“We can always improvise.
People survived without disposables for thousands of years.”
He started the fire then took the child from me as we ate from our prepper reserves. He looked at me differently with this baby between us. Perhaps he remembered the mother he fantasized his dead wife would be. Perhaps my past dripping all over me made me seem more whole, finally not vacant. Perhaps one tiny innocent made humanity seem possible again.
And I looked at him differently with the infant in his lap, cuddled up on his thigh as he ate above him. I tried not to look affectionately at the paternal shape on him. I tried to resist all the rosy images of Dante with our boys, the way fatherhood made me love him more, the way it added a whole other person to him. Jordi stumbled on the hardwood floor, crashing to his little knees. His face contorted in soundless anguish—failure, pain, and fear twisted in muted tiny features. Dante took a couple jogging steps to his side and crouched down on the floor beside him. He pressed his large hand into the small back and leaned down to his son. I could not hear what he whispered to Jordi, but Jordi stopped, looked at him with wide and understanding eyes, wrapped his hand around Dante’s finger, and stood to try to walk again.
I fought the memories resurrected by looking at him and this child in the present, desperately trying to prevent the two from connecting, but my guts knew it was too late.
I wanted to believe it. Something withered deep within me wanted to think that this was okay, that this could work. I wanted to look upon the child and feel only the warm swell of mother in my chest. I wanted to fill that void in his life, be a little family, start over. That foolish part of me would get me killed; those dreams would only eat my soul.
That night, in the darkness, I heard the baby scoot softly across the dirt. I felt his tiny hand and cheek rooting out my flesh. As my nerves began to arch and writhe, I breathed deeply. I let the pain spread over and dissolve into me. Not Jordi, not Eli, I wrapped my arms around this child, gave him the only warmth, comfort, and protection I could offer. Alone in the dark, where no one could see. For my Jordi and my Eli, I did not shy away this time.
When dawn broke, the baby was still breathing sweetly into my chest. My shoulder and hip ached from remaining immobile on my side for so long, just as they always whined when I slept beside my boys for those precious hours strung together. The weight in the baby’s breathing made it worth it, the way his toothless mouth hung open, top lip protruding forward.
He was almost smiling when he reached down and gathered the child. Without a word, he strapped the babe on, and we resumed formation.
7
The next town materialized nearly as he predicted as the midday sun beat down on us. This one was not as charming and seemingly preserved as the last; this one clearly bore the scars of demise. All of the outlying buildings had burned to the ground; nothing but figments of foundations remained. Grass had started to reclaim the streets and lots, as if civilization had never beaten it back in the first place.
We walked in deeper cautiously. Every nerve, hair, and fiber of my being stood on edge. Instincts shrieked retreat and avoidance, but we could not risk neglecting some forgotten pocket of diapers or formula. Not now.
A rotting corpse stood nailed to a cross in front of what remained of the church, its arms spread in crucifixion homage to the plain, crossed white boards. Its bare skull hung to the side, the mouth agape in frozen horror. Flesh slumped and pulled toward the ground. All the blood drained and rotted long ago—if they didn’t fucking drink it. They had gotten to human sacrifice. Just when I thought there were no more horrors.
Forfeit just enough lives, and God will take it all back. Commit enough atrocities in His name, and He will just make it all stop. As if a deity would be so easily swayed from purpose and punishment.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I breathed. “When does it stop getting more horrible?”
He stopped and stood under the corpse, looking up at it and tilting his head as the child wiggled on him. At the bottom of the cross, below the decayed feet, something appeared scratched into the grain of the wood. The paint peeled back from the lines. I hesitantly stepped forward and reached toward it. Leaning back as far as I could, I let my fingertip trace the shape. It almost looked like a Z.
“Religious horrors are probably the oldest in the book,” he replied. “Hell, they wrote the book.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. I’m only saying horrors are not new to whatever this is.”
“Sounds like you’re making my case for savagery not being new. Shouldn’t God have taught them better?”
“We both know there is no God. We have to choose to be right on our own, save ourselves. God is not the reason. You shouldn’t need a reason to be decent. Good doesn’t count when you’re only good for fear of punishment and damnation. Look how much they all mean it now. Those who are alive aren’t even human anymore. Religion wasn’t meant to answer the big question; it wasn’t the opiate of the masses. Religion was invented to tame the savage. God is not a nosy deity; he was a prophet of behavior modification and manipulation. Rewarded for good, punished for bad. Covers whichever incentive suits your personality type. Brilliant. Jesus wasn’t the son of God; he was just the first mentalist.”
“So you think this happened because God is dead?”
“Nah, but maybe because they figured out no parent is watching.”
“Hey, I thought you swapped your brain for a standard-issue cross tattoo and combat boots.”
“That’s what they thought. They do try to train it out of you, brainwash you depending on your MOS. But you can’t put virile humans in survival situations and not expect them to thrive, adapt, evolve.”
“Do you remember how they ran for the churches when it all started?”
“Yeah and I remember seeing a priest shooting at survivors in the street. Look how well it all worked out for them.”
He gave the faux Jesus one more glance and sauntered away without looking back.
“I don’t want to stay in this town,” I said.
“I know. I feel it, too. One store and we’re out.”
“Is that like saying, ‘I’ll be right back’ in a horror movie?”
“Let’s fucking hope not. Horror movies? Really?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “My husband and I used to love the best of the worst. It was the only genre where something awful could still be awesome.”
“I’ll just have to take your word on that shit.”
“Well what the fuck did you watch? No, wait, let me guess. Blockbuster action flicks. Oh, and historical fiction war movies.”
“Of course. And the romantic comedies shoved down my poor throat every Friday night I was stateside.”
“That’s one way to make a man pray for deployment.”
“You’re telling me. But fuck, she was so cute. She would pop us popcorn, like on the stove and everything. And she would always cry at the end. You know, after they resolve the big miscommunication. I wanted to drink myself unconscious, but damn she was cute. Plus she always made it up to me.”
Our voices bounced around between the remnants. This town was unnervingly quiet. We, for the first time, were not the silent element. Less safe in a more dangerous situation. What the fuck were we doing? The survivalist in me kept throwing up red flags, hazards, and warnings while my suicidal side just kept saying, eh, whatever, come what may…
We continued wandering through overgrown and dilapidated streets. The poor sacrifice in front of the church was not the only one. They had really tried. Crucified civilians plagued the city like 7-11s once did. They all rotted the same on the same perpendicular sticks. My heart sank into the cauldron of my miserable stomach each time.
I thought I saw another Z carved into a lonely wall, another formed from broken fence boards, another scratched onto the leathery skin of a hanging body. They seemed to be everywhere I looked, if I even remembered what letters and the alphabet looked like. The suggestion of cognitive humans was haunting, distr
essing.
“You think they’re warnings rather than sacrifices?” I asked.
“Maybe, but I’m thinking sacrifices. It looks like this place was gone before the hordes started to migrate.”
Good point. There were no bullet holes, no hatch marks in the walls that were still standing. Nature had a foothold far deeper than most of the other places we had seen. It was different, and different was always an extra layer of scary, something to peak the defenses all the higher.
“There are no fucking stores,” I said. “I don’t think there are any stores.”
“No, let’s bug the fuck out of here. Something is not right. We’re not going to find shit here.”
We were deep in what remained of the town, but we stopped dead in our tracks, turned left, and marched until the structures, half walls, and stones faded away behind us again. Every time I blinked, I still saw the crucified figures looming above me. Their twisted and elongated faces stared down at me. I felt the oppressive worry of my survivalist; I felt the heavy nagging stretch out uncomfortably into my limbs. The collapsed and burned-out buildings felt suffocating and menacing until they completely faded from my peripherals. My heart pounded savagely while I tried to pretend it wasn’t behind us. It was under my skin, and I was not sure why.
As the natural world rose up around us and enveloped us in trees and grass, as the evidence of former civilization fell out of sight, my breathing slowed. My heartbeat calmed in my chest. I felt my arms lower back to my sides and my grip loosen on my cutlass. Blood was permitted to flow to my fingertips again. I looked to him and saw his shoulders return to their normal position. He slipped his gun back into its holster and released his clutch on the infant. We resumed default formation with only our minds remaining on edge.
“Why was that so creepy?” I said when the town miniaturized in our hindsight.
“Aside from the rotting human sacrifices?”
“Yes, aside from the obvious.”
Savages Page 5
