Savages

by Christina Bergling

  “I don’t know. Something about how it seemed like it perished before everywhere else we’ve been.”

  “And that’s a lot of places now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Yeah. The guts always know. Not the head, not the heart, the guts. Trust the guts.”

  “My guts say we’re not far enough away yet.”

  “Concur,” he said. The child whimpered and grunted into his chest. “Sorry, little man, we’ve got to get a little farther into the middle of nowhere.”

  The fields we began to traverse used to be farmlands. Fading crop lines barely remained between vegetation run wild. When we were far enough from the town that our hackles lay back down, we stopped on the rich soil, among the floppy leaves. I turned him around by the pack and gently slid my hands into the carrier to scoop out the small body. He didn’t ask me to; he didn’t force the responsibility on me. He watched me for a moment as I wrapped the babe up in my arms and sat on the ground with him. Then he set to mix up the formula.

  “I can’t shake that town,” I said. “I can always shake the town by the time it’s out of sight.” These used to be thoughts that were locked and restrained in my head.

  “There’s something different about this country, this direction. All of them have been horrible, equally horrible in different ways.”

  “Somehow this one just feels different.”

  “Yeah. We’re running out of options though. Can’t go farther north than we’ve been; we wouldn’t survive the winters nomadic like this. Going south wasn’t worth trying; we couldn’t push through that infestation to make it to Central or South America. Who knows what they are even like. East was stripped clean; the savages were just desperate. West is what we have. Maybe different will give us something.”

  I knew what he had in mind. He had never voiced it; he had never voiced much of anything before that tiny cry shook what remained of the world around us. I didn’t see how we would find answers or proof or hope in a place that seemed even more bleak and lost than all the scorched places before it. To me, it felt like we were just descending deeper into hell, winding our way toward the end. I could look at the child without wanting to shear my skin and run away as screaming, bloody bones. I could look at him without a wild hate blooming in my stomach. Yet I still believed that this infant would get us killed, that we were just going to die off eventually just like all the others.

  “Everything comes to an end. None of us can escape that. Sometimes you have to enjoy the ride to the bottom because that’s all you have.” Dante’s voice quoted his father to me in what I once thought were my darkest hours.

  I didn’t give the child back either. I didn’t rush for liberation. Enjoy the ride to the bottom because that’s all you have. I attempted to slip on this mindset that never quite stuck in my previous life as I strapped on the baby carrier. The child burrowed into the flesh on my chest and was lulled instantly by the warmth. Once he was completely asleep, I let my lips graze the soft fuzz of his hair; I let my free hand press into his back. Shallow thoughts of my boys washed up around my ankles. How even in this filthy land, all new babies had that same smell. How all tiny wrinkled fingers looked grotesque and would be terrifying only if they were life-sized. How being preferred by a baby made me feel significant somehow.

  I caught myself each time I felt personalization or affection flicker for the infant. My survivalist took diligent notes, but I attempted to breathe and just follow. Cautiously. I attempted to squeeze whatever fraction of non-misery I could before it ended up getting me killed.

  As we lay down in our next camp, I pulled the baby in close to me. I didn’t fight it; I didn’t make him wiggle laboriously across the dirt. The child’s small body closer to me brought him closer to me as well. He still kept his armed hand across the child; the sword now rested on my leg, comforting and annoying at the same time. We slept entangled, the three of us, one mass of limbs and body heat. And the child slept soundly through the night.

  When I awoke, he was still softly snoring beside us, his arm heavy over the baby and against my leg. However, the child was looking at me, really looking at me. He was changing daily, just as I remembered waking up to a new baby each morning with both of my boys. His eyes were beginning to track; he was starting to see more and more of this ugly world.

  I looked back at him calmly. My heart pounded in my chest at the connection. My resolve wavered as emotions stirred and welled harder. Breathe. Breathe. He reached up sloppily and bumped my nose with his tiny fist. I couldn’t help but half-chuckle. The sound was foreign in my throat; I almost choked on it. The ridiculously mundane undermined the conflict swimming within me.

  He stirred at the sound of my unpracticed laughter, stretching noisily then looking over at us.

  “When I lost my babies, I wanted to die,” I said abruptly. “I tried to lay there and slowly just waste away, wait for the next to come along and open me up. Dante dragged me along, managed to keep me fed and hidden. I couldn’t look at him for weeks; he looked so like our babies. Then when I lost him, when he took that bullet for me, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill myself and face them on the other side, couldn’t forfeit the life he had died to give me. I waited, just waited for someone to do it for me, for it to just fucking end. But I found you instead. I got saved instead of slaughtered.”

  Then I stood and left them both lazing in the dirt as I wandered off to piss in a bush.

  We were still meandering through farm country, though it hardly looked like farms and manicured crops anymore. The plants that grew unencumbered and naturally for however long now towered above us. Sunlight blinked between the stalks; the leaves brushed at our faces and rolled off against our shoulders and arms. It was not unlike the forest, yet this contracted environment felt comforting after that last town.

  He had the child on his chest and moved to walk behind me to allow me to part our way through the plants. He shielded the babe, and I lifted my cutlass between leaves. As we pressed on, the crops began to thin. We could see the wide world around us again with only clumps of stalks randomly peppering the sprawling fields.

  Without the pressuring leaves, he stepped around me, returned just in front of me and to the side.

  “Switch?” he said.

  I did not answer. I simply stopped walking and lowered my pack to the dirt. He turned to face me, reaching down into the carrier to extract the infant. His arms moved slowly along the sides, hands curling under the tiny body, making sure to collect the thin legs left dangling out. He was getting better at juggling the child, learning to anticipate the bobblehead and account for the inept little limbs.

  He looked down when he interacted with the child, the only time he was not surveying and multitasking while he was awake. The baby stole instances of his sole attention. I would have thought such a feat was impossible; I didn’t think anything could take him off mission.

  Cradling the infant in his forearm, he looped the carrier over his head and handed it to me. I donned it quickly, tightening the straps and bringing the canvas closer to me. The child’s eyes were open when he poured him into the pouch. He made actual eye contact with me for just a second, and I thought he might have smiled, but I knew newborns didn’t genuinely smile.

  Liberated from wearing the babe, he swung his sword through the air, loosened his arms. Then we set onward yet again. We moved into a large chunk of surviving stalks and plants, greenery coming in around us again.

  The figure emerged from the shadows in broad daylight, just appeared from between the stalks without a rustle. My heart leapt into my chest as I lost my breath. One hand wrapped around the small body against me; the other raised the cutlass in front of us.

  He was between the stranger and us in an instant, shoulders raised, gun pointed directly at him. The stranger simply looked past, large glassy eyes fixated on me. Then they drifted down and noticed the bundle cleaved to my body. His eyes grew wider still and flashed. His mouth
fell open eagerly. He dropped his arms and leaned forward at us. Until the muzzle of the gun met his sweaty forehead.

  “A baby,” he rasped. He almost lunged, eyes agleam.

  Words. He had said fucking words. We all stopped.

  8

  Our mouths both fell agape in the following silence. The stranger’s eyes finally abandoned the child to fixate on the more pressing matters against his skull. And we froze there in the echo of speech for a long moment.

  “What the fuck did you just say?” he finally said, gun unwavering.

  “Ah yes,” he replied, raising his hands in official surrender. “They don’t talk, do they? How long has it been since you talked to another person? Forgive me, my voice is a bit out of practice. Not all that safe to talk to oneself on the road. I’m sure you know.”

  His eyes slid to the side as he spoke; continually found a home on the back of the child. For all his words, he could not keep his eyes off the babe, like a teenager confronted with an ample and exposed bosom.

  It still seemed surreal to hear another voice. Our brains were fumbling around it.

  “He fucking talks,” I finally breathed.

  “Yes, I talk,” the stranger confirmed again, smirking. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The child there took me a bit off guard. I could see how my reaction was unnerving.” He paused and waited for our reply, leaning his head forward and turning his ear toward us. “And you’re not hearing a word I’m saying because I’m the only speaking person you’ve seen in who knows how long. You can see that I’m not one of them. Now do you mind with the gun there? My name is Uriah. My hands are empty. Let’s just talk.”

  He slowly lowered the gun out of Uriah’s face but kept a concentrated grip on it. He took a step back beside me, looking to me then the child before examining the stranger again.

  “So talk,” he said. “How are you the only one we have seen who can talk? Are there other survivors?”

  “A couple,” Uriah replied, standing more comfortably.

  He shifted his weight from side to side. His eyes moved between the two of us yet always dropped, always lingered on the swaddled shape of the child. I felt my arms rise around tighter, holding the baby more protectively against my body. I wanted to turn my back to Uriah; I wanted to shield the infant from his very sight.

  “We die off so quickly, as you know,” he continued. The more he spoke, the more animated he became. “I started with a large group, running, scavenging. One by one, though. One of us got injured, cut real bad, infected. I left them a few days ago, continuing on to see if I could find something.”

  We no longer knew how to have conversations. We stood quietly in his fading words until Uriah began to fidget awkwardly.

  He looked to me for some signal, but I had only doubt. I knew this was what he had been searching for; this is what he had dragged me over this forsaken land for—another survivor, one of “us.” He kept his excitement carefully subdued. I could read it behind his eyes, but the rest was cold and unaffected. He wanted my consent for something, but I could only stare back at him as the wind licked my face and the child cooed at my skin.

  “I haven’t seen a child…since it happened,” Uriah said.

  “They died quickly,” I said.

  That shut him up. For a minute.

  “Well, I don’t really know where we go from here, my friends,” he started again. “Haven’t met any others.”

  “Let’s make camp,” he said, still looking at me, gauging my reaction, then turning to Uriah. “Camp with us tonight.”

  I tried to not let my face respond. Follow. Follow. Follow.

  By the time we settled down for the night, the sun was setting and stealing the light away from us. He had led us, as he always did, to the perfect spot. I remained in my place as Uriah trailed me. I felt his presence scratching at my back. I couldn’t round my shoulders around the child enough, couldn’t grip my cutlass tight enough.

  The small flames threw twisted shadows on our faces as we scraped soft food out of prepper cans. I felt Uriah’s eyes on me as I took unenthused bites, as I put the dirty bottle near the fire to warm the formula mixed with the last of our water, as I held the child close as he ate. The audience made me uncomfortable. I would rather stand up and slit his throat than have him continue to stare at me, at the child.

  Yet as my skin crawled under his gaze, I also studied Uriah out of the corner of my eye. He was long and lanky. His legs folded up beside him as he sat on a low rock, which somehow reminded me of a spider. His hair had clearly been growing unkempt for some time now. It dangled in brown strings from his scalp. He had been hacking back his beard though, leaving tufts of fluffy stubble across his face, aside from a bald spot of shiny flesh on his neck. I could tell he had been attractive in the last world. The symmetry in his features was still apparent from beneath the dirt. He had wide eyes and a straight nose with thin lips always moving beneath. His mouth unnerved me the most. Something about the way he smiled and talked out of the side of those thin lips.

  His clothing was like all our clothing, just the tattered remnants. Stains blotted out any original color. Tearing and fraying betrayed any style. It was all just fabric; it was all just covering. He kept himself well covered though. Torn pants to his worn shoes, ratting cuffs to his dirty wrists. A few surviving buttons managed to hold his shirt sloppily together. Even through this threadbare mess, I could tell he had been very composed, very manicured once upon a time.

  “What happened where you were?” Uriah asked as he ate our food.

  He sat properly on the rock, ate as if he were at a table in a fine restaurant. Everything about his posture seemed purposeful. Nothing in his mannerisms was casual. He sat up straight, perched the can on his knees, and slowly spooned the food into his mouth. He even took the time to dab his chin with his shirtsleeve.

  “Power outage for me,” Uriah continued. “Lights, phones, water, everything went. People did okay the first month. Before they started changing. Before the nature came into it. Then it got ugly so quickly. It all just fell apart. And wherever I went, it had fallen apart there, too. What about you, my friend?”

  This motherfucker never stopped talking. All those nights I wished for one other person with the gift of speech, and I wanted to cut out his fucking tongue and feed it to him.

  “Illness swept the base,” he said. He was suddenly quite chatty after months of silent steps and quiet days. “A lot of people died. Those who didn’t were changed. It fell apart fast with so many available weapons and all their training.”

  “What about you?” Uriah looked to me. Yet again. “I never did catch your name.”

  “I haven’t had a name for quite some time,” I replied.

  “Well she’s the cryptic and dark one, isn’t she?” Uriah said to him. “You guys must have really seen it out there.”

  “Blackout, too,” I mumbled.

  He looked over at me, knowing I was lying to Uriah. I remembered the first wave of transient savages breaking upon our town, the way people opened their doors to help them only to be ripped apart where they stood, the way they clawed at our walls and bashed at our windows.

  “What did you do in the past life?” Uriah asked. I was not quite sure how he was managing to eat as he was constantly talking, constantly driving the conversation and questioning us.

  “Army sergeant.”

  “Accountant.” He looked at me again, counting another lie. He may not have known much about my past life or what I did, but he knew I was no accountant. I did not want to give this stranger one shred of truth.

  “And you?” he asked Uriah.

  “Television news anchor.”

  Uriah carefully set his empty can on the dirt beside him and stood. He looked down and took a breath then popped his head up, putting one hand on his stomach and extending the other welcomingly.

  “Good morning, San Francisco,” Uriah bellowed. “It’s a beautiful day on the bay. Let’s go first to Angela with your forecast.” />
  “I lived a good life,” Uriah blathered on. “Money, cars, women, minimal fame. As much fame as a news anchor has in the grocery store. Fuck, grocery stores. What I wouldn’t give for one of those not rotted to shit. Just a nice deli sandwich. Thick cut meat, crusty bread, cheese, dripping with mustard.”

  They both leaned their heads to the side and let their mouths hang as their eyes stretched out into the idea. Even I could feel the rough texture of the bread grating along the roof of my mouth as I bit down and the contents of the sandwich slid around in my hands. My mouth watered, and my stomach protested the can of string beans.

  “You know what I miss?” he said, joining Uriah’s fantasy. “Beer.”

  “There is no need to miss beer, my friend. I happen to have some. I found it in the back office of an empty gas station, stuffed under a desk. Don’t know why I didn’t drink it then. Must have been saving it for now.” Uriah beamed.

  “How convenient,” I mumbled. He shot me a look.

  “Let me see,” Uriah said as he rummaged through his sack. “Oh, I have four even. Do you want one?”

  “Never was one for beer,” I said.

  Yet another lie.

  Uriah tossed him a beer. He plucked it from the air and sat musing at the can for a minute. His eyes wandered away as a smile played at his lips. More memories, more crumbs from that life.

  The two men popped the cans and saluted each other before taking a long and clearly satisfying gulp. He closed his eyes, indulging whatever swelled up at the taste. I envied him that moment of escape. Uriah also threw his head back to fully embrace the beer. He eased up first, and his eyes fell on Uriah’s neck as it undulated in swallows.

  “What is that on your neck?” he asked Uriah, wiping his mouth.

  “Ah, yes.” Uriah reached up and touched the smooth, welted skin hiding under his long hair. “It is just a scar. Battle wound, you know.”

  “It looks kind of like a Z.”

  “Does it? I have never seen it for myself.” He looked up as he fumbled at it with blunt fingertips. “I suppose it does feel that way.”