Palimpsest (Book 1): Feral

by P. J. Post

  The arguing families from earlier this morning have been devoured by the steady onslaught of new bodies.

  I nod at her and she nods back.

  “I’m too sexy for the apocalypse,” I sing as I pull out my .45, trying to break the tension.

  “We’ll see about that,” she says. I don’t know how, but I think that’s a grin I’m sensing under her scarf.

  “Let’s go,” I say, serious now. “Stay close.”

  We step into the morning sun and it immediately gets warmer.

  We keep our weapons visible. We’re not trying to hurt anyone, just keeping honest people honest.

  I resist taking her by the hand, settling for frequent glances over my shoulder as we head into the mob.

  Goddamned feral kid.

  She walks like a girl too.

  §§§§§

  The old supply drop-zones and guarded evacuation routes are almost a mile north of here, back across the river. Carlos thought we were avoiding the larger, more dangerous crowds of refugees by heading south, but for some reason, people are still walking through this neighborhood — adding to the growing congestion.

  I’m guessing a rumor has spread, and it’s redirecting refugees away from the riverfront and through this part of town. And another something, maybe a related something, has stopped traffic up the street. The flow of bodies is backing up, and the shouting and cursing is getting loud and angry.

  There’s lots of ways to die in a crowd.

  And this mob is becoming more unpredictable than usual.

  I glance back and decide to take the chance and reach for her hand. She pulls away but then she relaxes and holds on tight, letting me pull her close, and into the mob. Her touch reminds me that I’m doing something good for a change. Her hand is rough and I can’t help but imagine how smooth it must have been before — lotions and moisturizers lined up along the vanity behind the sink, next to a blow dryer, perfumes, makeup and hair brushes.

  I bet she was a girly-girl.

  She’s sugar and spice and everything nice, everything this new world can never be — and a reminder of everything we lost.

  The mob stinks of sweat, piss and spoiling meat.

  It’s sickening. And as it comes to life, it flexes its muscles, closing in and pressing against us — people move back and forth like waves of wet writhing flesh, jostling us like flotsam caught in a tidal pool.

  I push the feral girl in front of me so I can better protect her, but hands are everywhere, pushing and shoving, reaching out to touch us or grab our packs. Arms erupt from the wall of tattered clothes ahead of us, taking hold of Feral’s shoulder. She jerks around, twisting away from me as the hands pull at her.

  I lean forward, stumbling over legs and grab onto her backpack, using it to keep my feet. If I lose my balance and go down, she’ll be gone.

  Reality is disjointed, like the world is on a million pogo-sticks bouncing out of rhythm.

  I climb up Feral’s pack and brace myself against her shoulder while I get my legs back, reorienting myself as I stumble after her. And then I realize that the monstrous hand clutching at her coat is under mine. I feel the knuckles. It’s rough and scabbed over, but the strength is still there.

  I take hold of the hand’s index finger and wrench it up. I feel the bones snap as it bends back at an unnatural angle. I keep pushing on it, peeling it away from her coat and then bring the butt of my .45 down like a hammer on the wrist. A howl of pain answers and Feral breaks free.

  Like some sadistic game of Marco Polo, answering screams begin to erupt from within the mob — deep inside the beast. Women can be raped, children abducted and belongings stolen without anyone even seeing it. The road is always littered with the dead after a mob like this disperses.

  I pull Feral to me as we push ahead.

  “Hold your gun up,” I shout into her ear as I wrap one arm around her stomach.

  I feel her lean back into me, or perhaps I imagine it.

  She raises her gun and I level mine over her shoulder. The people directly in front of us push backward, trying to avoid our weapons as we create our own wave. I’m glad because I don’t want to shoot anyone, not today.

  I can see the roof lines of the remaining houses across the street getting closer as the crowd continues to thicken. Another wave of refugees must have pushed onto the block because the crowd suddenly surges forward in one great stumbling leap.

  I hear shouts and screams as people get shoved into one another and lose their balance.

  Guns go off.

  Feral spins and even as she tries to hold on, our hands separate — her fingers grasp at empty air as she begins to go down.

  I hear her scream.

  She screams like a girl.

  Some heavy woman in a long maroon housecoat falls between us, forcing us further apart.

  By the time the woman hits the pavement, I can barely see Feral through the crowd — there are several people between us now.

  The crowd is pushing back against the surge, and we’re caught in a pulsing tsunami of refugees.

  I try to step over Housecoat Woman but end up falling short. The feel of compressing flesh under my foot is sickening but I have no choice — Feral is being carried further away every time the mob spasms.

  Heads to my right begin to dip as people trip over one another and go down. The crowd ahead pushes backward into the void, forcing more people to fall and trip. The path is a landslide of derelicts, suitcases — and wounded screams.

  And then the wall of people to my right falls as one, like a building collapsing — a woven mat of secondhand clothes and writhing limbs.

  I see her now through the opening, being dragged upstream by a different current.

  How did she get so far away?

  I’m terrified of her getting knocked off her feet. She’s so small…once she hits the street…

  Adrenaline rushes through my veins and I can feel myself starting to shake.

  I’m distantly aware that I’m screaming too — mindless and primal.

  I shove as hard as I can to the left to make enough room to leap over the nearest body, and stumble toward her. My feet sink into people. I feel myself kicking hands and elbows as I try to keep my balance. I have tunnel vision, keeping my eyes fixed on the back of her oversized brown leather coat.

  I see an older man in a sickly, olive-green business suit hanging on to her, holding himself up like a drowning man trying to keep his head above water. He’s too heavy for her and I’m too far away.

  She’s about to be pushed under.

  She looks back to me, finding me in the crowd. I feel her eyes reach out to me, even through her goggles.

  She braces herself against the people in front of her, trying to keep her legs under her.

  The old man is practically climbing her, lost in his panic. She’s rapidly disappearing under a deluge of polyester.

  And then someone stumbles behind the man, rolling into his legs. He loses his balance and leverage, but now he’s hanging from Feral and one hand wraps around her scarf.

  I’m almost there when he pulls her scarf down and slips to her shoulder, but she turns away at the same time.

  As I catch up, I raise my .45 and then slam it across the bridge of his nose as hard as I can.

  Blood sprays as he goes limp, letting go and falling back into the sea of people.

  I grab Feral under her arms and lift her up as hard as I can, trying to get her back on her feet. Pain shoots along my side, but I don’t let it slow me down even as she fights against me. Some detached part of me is thinking about her face, wishing I’d seen how she looks under the scarf.

  She doesn’t glance back, but must know it’s me because she suddenly stops fighting. We move faster once she gets her balance back.

  I keep both arms around her as we get pushed between bodies, buffeted by hands clawing for help. It’s like some awful funhouse show gone horribly wrong — faces stretch, jaws gape, mouths plead and eyes widen and roll lik
e a spooked horse.

  And then screams erupt from behind us as someone opens up with an automatic weapon. The shooter is behind us somewhere, lost in the crowd.

  The all too familiar pop-pop-pop toy-like sounds are nearly drowned out by the answering shrieks and screams. Chaos explodes like fish leaping from a frenzied sea.

  I let the mob push us as we angle nearer and nearer to the far side of the street. I half carry, half shove Feral forward.

  I don’t want to think about her being hit by one of the bullets, but I can’t ignore my own rising panic.

  The crowd pushes us up the street again and I see daylight ahead. I use the opportunity to throw forearms and shoulders indiscriminately into the chests and faces of the people to our left, keeping our way clear, our momentum ever forward.

  I’ll see their faces tonight when I close my eyes, but I won’t let anything happen to Feral. I have to do something good before I die, just one goddamned decent act — and she’s it, whether she wants to be or not.

  And suddenly we’re back on dead grass and dirt. The crowd begins to thin. We don’t stop until we’ve run between the ruins of two more center hall colonials.

  I stare back over a crumbling brick wall.

  The crowd is still violent. The lucky ones are being tossed to the side.

  It’s like fighting a great beast — Jonah fighting his way out of the whale.

  And then I see the guy with the machine gun about the time I hear the pop-pop-pop again. He’s pointing it straight ahead, firing into the backs of the terrified refugees, and then…

  I turn and grab Feral roughly by the shoulder and shove her to the ground beside me. I hear bullets ricocheting off the brick wall of the house behind us.

  I hear her scream again as I scramble over her, desperate to cover her from any strays and flying brick chips. She pushes against me, no doubt terrified of the mob and whoever is shooting, but I hold firm. She stops pushing and clutches at my arms so tightly that it hurts.

  Somewhere along the way, she pulled her scarf back up to cover her face.

  I stare, trying to search through the lens of her goggles. I want to promise her that she’s going to be okay, that I’ll find someplace safe for her, somewhere she can lay her head down at night in peace — but I can’t.

  The whole world is one huge clusterfuck.

  But I can keep her alive today.

  The slap-slap-slap sounds of the ricochets move away leaving only the terrified cries of the mob and the wounded.

  “Are you hit?” I ask between pants.

  She shakes her head.

  “I told you crowds were dangerous,” I say and laugh nervously.

  She looks up. I see myself reflected in her goggles. “Get off, get off me, I can’t breathe,” she says.

  I roll off of her and lay on my back, panting as I try to catch my breath. “Sorry, I was just…”

  “I know what you were doing.” Her tone is flat. She’s sucking air too.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  “No — thank you, really, thanks.” Her voice is uneven, as she tries to get her breathing under control.

  I glance over and she’s staring at me, but I can’t see her eyes through the goggles.

  “Let’s not do that again, deal?” I ask, trying to force a grin.

  “Deal,” she says quietly. “What happened?”

  “I have no idea. This was weirder than usual.”

  “I thought so too.” She peaks over the remains of the brick wall. “Look, they stopped.”

  I take a quick peek as well.

  The mob is still moving forward but people have stopped filling in behind them.

  I can see the forgotten in the street — the dead and the dying.

  I lay back down. I don’t want to see anymore.

  “We literally dodged a bullet,” I say.

  “Look again,” she whispers.

  “What?” I ask and stare back out to the street.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asks.

  Several people dressed in rust-colored coveralls and gray gas masks are pushing carts. That’s how the shooter looked — coveralls and a gas mask. They have companions dressed the same going through the clothing of the bodies, taking anything of value and tossing it into the carts; food, guns, ammunition and tools.

  I hear a woman scream back upstream.

  Two of the coverall people are fighting with her, pulling at her clothes, trying to rip them from her body while another is standing over her, unbuttoning his coveralls.

  My God, they’re going to rape her right out in the middle of the street.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Don’t watch,” I say, reaching out to Feral, but she jerks away from me and aims her pistol with both hands. She pauses long enough to glare at me.

  “Don’t,” I say, laying my hand over the cylinder of her revolver.

  I feel sick again, but the woman isn’t my problem. I can’t save the whole world and if we try, they’ll kill us. There’s too many of them.

  They’ll kill Feral.

  I won’t let that happen.

  But before we can argue about it, another coverall figure steps over to the gang rape.

  They have her coat and blouse off and her pants down around her ankles. The main guy’s coveralls are open as well, pushed down to his waist. He’s not wearing anything underneath. The gas mask looks alien atop his pale shoulders.

  She’s screaming for them to stop, bucking against the arms holding her down. The whole scene is just fucking insane, even for the end of time.

  The new figure suddenly has a gun in his hand and without discussion, pivots and levels it on his comrade, shooting the nearly naked man standing before her in the head. He crumples soundlessly to the street like a discarded puppet. I can see the fountain of blood pumping out of his head from here.

  The other two draw back, but as they turn to run, the new guy shoots them both in the back. They fall forward, their faces bouncing hard off the pavement and then, after a few moments, they stop twitching.

  The new guy steps over the woman, staring down at her just like the other guy did. His head moves like a robot’s, notchy and jerky, like an insect inspecting its prey. She reaches up, like she’s trying to thank him for saving her. He takes her hand and kneels over her and then slides the gas mask off of his face.

  She screams again, jerks her hand free and tries to crawl away without even trying to pull her clothes back on.

  He stands over her, watching her scramble over the biting asphalt street on her hands and knees. I can only imagine the glass and debris that’s slicing through the exposed skin of her hands and knees. He follows her, walking along beside her — toying with her.

  And then he lowers his gun and places it against the back of her head.

  She stops crawling.

  She screams again, but not like she begged before, this time it’s something primal.

  He shoots her.

  Feral cries out, but quickly covers her mouth and ducks back behind the wall.

  The man darts his head in our direction, and cocks it at a funny angle, searching, but I’m not sure he knows we’re here — or at least, not exactly where the sound came from.

  His face is unrecognizable from this distance. Scars, tattoos, deformity — I can’t tell.

  But I know this motherfucker is evil.

  I watch him from behind the ruined house, but I don’t think he see us. After a few moments of studying the nearby houses, he seems satisfied that no one is here, or he doesn’t give a shit and moves on up the road with the carts.

  I hold my finger over my lips and then motion for her to follow me.

  We crawl along behind the wall until we get to the rear of the house. I glance back to the road, but the carts have moved on and I don’t see the scary guy anywhere.

  I managed to keep my sunglasses, but pull them off long enough to wipe the sweat from my eyes.

  She whips the goggles from her face
. Her eyes are wide and intense. “Don’t ever do that again,” she hisses at me.

  “Do what?” I ask defensively.

  “Stop me from shooting…”

  She’s having trouble even speaking right now — she looks…

  “I’m furious, you asshole. I told you, don’t ever touch me!”

  “Fine,” I say and raise my hands, just like before. “But can you be just as pissed at me a few miles from here?”

  She sees my hands trembling, but looks away like she’s refusing to acknowledge my weakness.

  “Don’t patronize me,” she says.

  “I’m not, I’m sorry, but if you’d shot those guys, we’d both be dead now. We need to get the fuck out of here, okay?”

  She glares at me again. And even though she’s still angry, her eyes remind me of why I’m with her. She’s hanging on to something I lost hundreds of miles ago — faith.

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t save everyone, we just can’t,” I say softly. Saying it doesn’t make me feel any better.

  She fiddles with her scarf and then suddenly gives me a weird look. I’m reminded again about her pulling her scarf back up so quickly. She’s probably wondering if I saw anything. She’s being freaky about her face. Or maybe I’m just imagining it.

  We keep our heads down and jump the backyard fence in silence. The next block looks the same, except there are fewer bodies. We cut through houses, quickly searching for anything of use before jumping the next fence, one house at a time, one block at a time as we try to put as much distance between ourselves and the scary Cart People as possible.

  §§§§§

  By mid-morning, we’ve worked our way into a bombed-out but empty neighborhood, one town over. The houses are blackened stumps with twisted cars parked out front. We have to make our way carefully down the street to avoid the rubble and debris. A lot of it is personal possessions, luggage, microwaves, boxes, stuffed animals, broken glassware and furniture, unfortunately, none of it is useful.