“Why?” he asked Uriah.
Let the interrogation begin.
He kept his sword up and at the ready as he paced around Uriah. Uriah remained on his knees before him as he took long steps and kept his head down, Uriah always in his sights.
“Why what?” Uriah asked.
“Why did you approach us? Why did you take the kid?”
“Why not?” He laughed. “What possible reason would there be to just watch you and your little whore march on past with that little morsel?”
He tensed twice as Uriah spoke. Subtly, but I saw his hackles rise. His rhythmic pace hesitated. He breathed out as he forced his shoulders back down and resumed his steady circling.
“How many of you are there?”
“Me? Just the one.”
“No. The savages.”
“Savages. Such a stupid word for it. Haven’t you noticed? This whole country is what you call ‘savages’. You think you’re so much better than me, so much more evolved.” His tone turned from mocking to bitter. “Holding onto a world that’s dead and gone. I’m a survivor, my friend.”
Not for long, my friend. I was ready for him to die, and I knew his patience was wearing thinner each time Uriah spoke, but I also knew he would milk Uriah until he was dry of any viable information. Anything to know. Anything to help us survive.
“I really did come from San Francisco,” Uriah continued. “After it all went to shit, I did drift and scavenge and scrape. I was barely surviving when I found them. When they found me. A horde of them here in the middle, picking off the wanderers. They didn’t speak, but they saw what I was, knew I was one of them. Then living became much easier.”
Maybe he was telling us this because he knew he was going to die. Maybe he was telling us because we were the only other ones with language. Maybe he just liked to hear himself talk.
“What did you give me?” He ignored the answers, filed them away in his mind, and pressed on questioning Uriah.
“Little of this, little of that. Not everything from the old world is completely lost.”
“Have you seen any others like us? Killed any others like us?”
“Of course. Been killing them since it all fell. Just waited for stupid survivors to come through. They were always looking for the answer, always wanting a friend.”
“How recently? Where?”
Uriah fell momentarily silent with a smug smirk painted across his weathered face. He stepped forward and snatched Uriah by the neck, pressing hard until I could hear Uriah’s breathing struggle.
“Tell me!” he yelled as his composure wavered.
“It’s been years, my friend. You are all dead.”
Uriah looked sideways up at him, twisting his neck in the grip until he could look into his eyes. He tossed Uriah back and stepped away.
“Do others talk?” he continued.
“Wouldn’t you want to know? But you’re like me, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
He looked past him, focused on me again. He leaned to the side, arching over on his knees to burrow his eyes into me another time. He tried to rape me with his eye contact, tried to pry into me, that sideways smile still painted hauntingly on his lips.
“Saw right through me all along,” Uriah said. “We always know our own. Deep down, at your core, you know what you are, what we all are. We could make tons of delicious little babies together.” He licked his lips disturbingly.
He stepped in front of Uriah and blocked his view of us until Uriah looked back up at him.
“They eat their own young,” I breathed, clutching Xavier closer.
“Why would you eat your own children?” he asked Uriah, disgust betraying him and creeping out into his tone. “You’re just going to die out.”
“Just like you. Just like everyone else. You ever think this whole mess is just Mother Nature finally saying enough to her viral infection of humanity? Open your eyes. She should have made God wear a rubber.”
What the fuck was he saying anymore? Savage insanity was pouring through his practiced charm with his mask ripped aside and his true nature exposed.
“And now you think I sound crazy,” he laughed. “Which you’ll turn into another justification for executing me.”
Laughter swelled up in him until he doubled over in chuckles. We both stopped and just watched him cackling to himself. When his snickers finally faded, he straightened up again and brushed the tears from his dirty cheeks.
“Will you be any less savage after you do this?” Uriah said to him, giving him that slicing look he had been reserving for me. “The only difference is what you tell yourself. The only difference has always been what we tell ourselves.”
He just kept talking. And talking. He never stopped talking, and I was tired of listening. I bounced anxiously, waiting for him to just fucking do it already.
“Whether you plunge that blade through my heart to eat me or to righteously defend your family, you still plunge that blade through my heart,” Uriah continued. “My blood wets the ground just the same; I die just the same. And as I’m rotting, none of your reasons will matter; none of them will change that you killed me.”
He stopped, paused for an instant for emphasis. He looked at me out of the side of his eye to spill that crooked smile in my direction; then he shot his eyes back up to him. He slowed and dropped his voice.
“Like a savage.”
The next sound was his head hitting the dirt. It made a heavy and satisfying thud. As his skull rolled across the ground, the sideways grin was still plastered across his lips, and his greasy hair spun out around it before settling to the soil. His inanimate body followed separately, toppling forward from the knees. His arms dragged lifelessly behind and splayed out over the earth. I felt satisfaction at his severed head falling, at his quiet body collapsing. I felt reprieve when it was finally silent again. The mother tigress flared in me.
He stood unmoving over the body for a long time. His sword hung in one hand as he lowered his head to his chest. I watched his shoulders rise and fall with heavy breath, but otherwise, he was frozen. Xavier nestled hard under my chin, the fatigue of his fight winning over him.
I waited, savoring the resolve, appreciating the win. The truth was revealed; the threat was neutralized. I felt relief, but I knew he did not share that sentiment. I knew something much more significant had been ripped from him. Uriah had amputated the hope from the back of his mind. I wanted to place my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, yet at the same time, I felt slightly justified in his regret. He had discarded me and trusted this stranger so easily; he had ignored every instinct I had. His decisions had led us here.
“You thought I was one of them,” I finally said softly. “You thought I was going to kill the one other person left like you.”
“He had me fooled,” he replied simply.
“He told you what you wanted to believe.”
“Yes.”
“What was he? He wasn’t like the rest.”
“An evolved savage.”
“Like us.”
“No. He used his intelligence to enable the savage. We use it to avoid it. You are the only one left like me.”
“None of us are like you anymore. I was going to kill him, bash his skull in with that rock.”
“I did kill him. Killing is not what makes us savage.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t justification our only difference? Like he said.”
“You loved Xavier today. You weren’t going to eat a human child. Nothing is more human than motherhood.”
“Nothing is more savage and base than motherhood.”
“It’s dawn. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Leave this fucker to rot.”
Those were the last words we said. The crumpled body and head faded with each step into another traumatic memory; his great hope spun away in the wind. He didn’t speak for hours. There were only the sounds of our footsteps and the child’s cooing. I kept Xavier; I didn’t even ask. I found my hand still pressing into his tiny
back; I found my shoulders still rounding him into my body. We just followed him silently. I wanted to console him, tell him it would be all right, but I didn’t think it would be.
He had deflated in front of me. His shoulders slumped as his arms just dangled from his body. His head bobbed side to side as it fell forward and hung to the mercy of his steps. I recognized what defeated looked like, what betrayed looked like, what regret looked like. I knew the horrible gnawing sensation that was pressing on his chest. I knew the weight that was now packed into his legs and how heavy his head had suddenly become. I knew how embarrassing it was to endanger your family.
This was the wrong time to think about wanting to press my skin into his, but as always, I thought it just the same.
We put miles between us and Uriah’s remains. No matter how far we made it, it was still painted all over us in his blood splattered on our clothes, in our slouched forms. He took us at an accelerated pace. I felt him trying to outrun the mistake, trying to forget the freshly cemented memory. We didn’t stop to eat; we didn’t stop to rest. I mixed formula and swigged off the water as we moved. I knew this is what he needed, so I powered through as my exhausted muscles threw pain flares.
It wasn’t even dark when they attacked us. The sun had just begun to flirt with the horizon when they materialized from the distant trees. There were so many of them, more than my brain could initially wrap around. Their dark shapes poured out from between the narrow trunks. They didn’t stagger; they didn’t crawl; they didn’t sprint. They marched to us smoothly and with purpose.
They thought.
As my heart began to pound and the adrenaline began to surge through my veins, I saw him snap back into himself. Combat training at its best. His head lost its weight and settled back into its correct placement. His shoulders rolled up and back. His arms stirred and began speaking with his weapons. He sidelined his failure, separated from it, and simply went to work.
There were too many for him to handle alone. I could not spectate as I had been able to since that fateful day we found Xavier. I would have to fight—with a baby strapped to my chest. I would have to defend myself and kill with an infant vulnerable over my heart. I felt a wave of something familiar rage up over me; it pounded in my eyes. I hadn’t felt genuine, body-shaking fear since my last boy had died.
“You can’t think,” he had said to me in the desert. “You can’t think about what you’re going to do, if you’re going to die, that they might injure you. You can’t think about the families they used to have. You can’t think about the people they used to be. You can’t think about what your family would think of you. You cannot think. The training is in your bones, in your muscle memory. That is your sanity. Don’t think; just do.”
I took the risk of closing my eyes and breathed in deeply. Then I lifted my cutlass and my gun and chased after him.
10
I had closed my eyes again and was listening to the sound of my own panting. My heartbeat was thumping in my skull, almost causing my teeth to bump against each other. The only other sound was that of cooling combat, rasping death moans, dripping blood. I dropped my head back and looked at the sky first. Twilight was painting the clouds as light was starting to wane. Another long breath before I pulled my head up and turned my eyes to him.
The swarm littered the ground in pieces and bloody fragments. He was studying one severed head. He crouched down and leaned closer, eyes squinted and head cocked to the side. Then he popped up horrified and hurried to the next closest corpse. Then again and again. Confused, I stepped forward to the first head. Something on the neck caught my eye. I leaned closer to see a familiar welted and shiny scar that looked just like a Z.
He finally stopped and stood among the mangled corpses, weapon still raised in his hand, and closed his eyes.
“They have the same scar. They have the same fucking scar,” he said. “He was one of them. He was their fucking scout. How could I not see it?”
As the adrenaline faded from my head, I felt my own body again. Something warm and wet was on my stomach. I looked down into the carrier. Xavier lay still against me, eyes closed as if he were sleeping. Blood poured down my pants. My body only said, not mine.
I released my weapon from my fingertips, but I did not even hear it drop to the dirt. I reached up with a quivering, vacant hand and gently touched his face. Nothing. He did not move. I could already feel him growing colder.
“He’s not moving. Xavier’s not moving.”
I felt a familiar panic flare over me. It radiated through my limbs. I suddenly felt trapped, suffocated with this tiny corpse strapped to me. Eli’s empty eyes just like mine staring up at me.
“Dante, he’s dead. Dante, our baby’s dead. Eli! Eli!”
I dissolved into a blur of flailing and shrieks. My mind seized with memory. His tiny face was green. I didn’t know how a child of his color could be green. I had never seen such a horrifying shade of green. He wrestled with his discomfort, whimpering and groping for me. Even though I had him cuddled tightly to my chest, he did not feel me. He was desperately searching for me, crying for the comfort I was supposed to be able to give him. His tiny limbs trembled, and his body shone with a thin veil of sweat. He started to shake harder. Another seizure was coming. The tears were already in my eyes. My arms ached in helplessness, cried in paralysis. I sobbed as I clutched him to me. I wiped the foam slipping from his petite mouth. Then he stopped. But he did not move again. He went limp in my arms, and his little mouth hung open.
At some point, he pushed through and managed to strip Xavier from my chest. He was cradling the small body when I resurfaced sobbing in the dirt. He was just looking at me. There was no expression on his face; it was all hidden behind those goddamn sunglasses. He was a statue watching me flounder on the bottom.
I couldn’t feel my body to stand. I was only aware of the vacancy on my chest, of the pool of blood soaking the front of my clothes, of my paralyzing failure. I rolled to my back in the dirt, rolling on top of my pack, and allowed myself to weep. The sobs crushed my eyelids down and blotted out the clear sky above me. I had no words to say; I had nothing I could do. The only answer was to fall apart among the severed pieces of the savages that put us here.
At some point, I heard his footsteps begin to move away. The retreating sound brought me back to the dirt. He didn’t speak when he turned and began to walk. He didn’t even look back; he knew I would follow, scraping and sobbing behind him. I dragged myself painfully to my feet and trudged.
He carried the body as we walked, keeping all the limbs tucked tightly against him. I knew he was looking for the perfect spot. In a field, he found a large, lonely tree. Wavering grass stretched out on all sides as the tree towered above and looked down on it. It was a landmark; it was special. We moved into the shade of the twisting branches as he surveyed the ground below.
He placed Xavier gently in the grass, very slowly lowering him and ensuring his little arms and legs were properly folded against his body. Then he turned and started digging with the camping shovel we used to bury his diapers. With a tiny mound of soil beside him, he took the swaddling coat and meticulously lined the grave with it. Then he gently placed Xavier in on the coat and wrapped him as he did when he slept between us.
He knelt there for a long moment, hands in the dirt on either side of the hole. Through my own tears, I thought I saw a tear or two trace his cheek. He leaned down and put his lips to the dead infant’s forehead.
“I’m sorry, Xavier. This was my fault, my blindness. Sleep well, little man.”
Then it was just the scrape of shovel and the falling dirt and my growing sobs. I no longer cared for his composure or his moral code. I no longer cared what I owed him. I howled wildly and threw myself at the small pile of earth. I dropped to my knees beside the tiny hole, digging my hands deep into the dirt, raking my nails until I felt the grains press into my nail bed. It couldn’t hurt enough. I watered his bones with my tears, tears for other small corpses lon
g rotting.
Jordi ripped apart by savages as he tried to protect us, buried in a baseball field of what was once a school. Eli wasted away by a disease I could have never imagined, burned for our safety while I couldn’t watch, then scattered into the nearest open field. Dante shot in front of me, stealing my death and giving me this life I didn’t deserve, hastily covered with loose desert sand because I didn’t have the strength to give him a proper burial before dark closed in. And now this tiny square under this isolated tree, burying my last attempt at humanity.
The pain aching in my mind was excruciating. The shredding sensation ripping down my center was too much for me to endure. He had done this to me; he had brought us here. I just needed it to stop. I lashed at him, throwing a fury of wayward blows.
“Why? Why would you make me bury another child? Why would you make me love and feel all this again? Why do you keep me alive for all this suffering?”
He raised his arms to protect his face but allowed me to slam my arms and fists into him. Finally, he caught me by the wrists, whirled me around and restrained me with my arms, wrapping me in a straight jacket of my own body. He did not hold me tightly; he loosely gripped me until the fight dropped out of me.
“He was ours. His is our loss,” he said into my hair.
He released me, and I simply let myself tumble back to the ground. He stumbled away from the small grave, turned away from my crumpled, sobbing body. Again, through my tears, I saw him stagger, the liquid bending the light and distending the world. He placed his hand firmly on the trunk of the tree and cast his eyes up as the branches swayed in the gentle breeze. The sun had abandoned us, and only its fading aftermath illuminated this horrendous scene.
When his back was to me, I slowly reached into my pocket. I took out four green Army figures. They had been with me every day since Jordi’s broken body; they had pressed into my thigh when I lay broken on the sand of the desert. “This one here, with binoculars, that one is Daddy. He’s always looking around. And this one here with the big gun, that’s me. I protect us. This one on his belly is Eli because he doesn’t walk. And this one, Momma, this one holding his gun up, that can be you.” I clenched the tiny men in my hand as Jordi’s voice echoed in the wind. Then one by one, I pressed them into the dirt above Xavier with my fingertip.
Savages Page 8
