“That’s none of your business, is it? It’s my agenda, and, even if you’re tagging along, it’s still my agenda. Be careful. I might just kill you out of annoyance at this rate.”
I blew my bangs out of my face. It wasn’t like I wanted to come along. But I couldn’t just let him walk free, either.
We fell into silence. What did end up being on the agenda involved washing some more at the stream, bathroom breaks, and what seemed like random circle walking, though I knew he was probably just checking that the area was safe. I gave him some space after he made the comment about my presence being annoying, but I was always a short stone’s throw away from him. He cooked some more meat and let me have some. He cleaned the knife. We did some more circle walking. We settled back in at the fire.
“The meat’ll only be good for another twelve hours or so,” I remarked, leaning against the trunk of a tree and watching him.
“You don’t blink much, do you?” he asked, glancing at me before looking back up at the canopy. Staring.
“Are we moving on tomorrow? Going somewhere else?”
“Why? You need to tell someone goodbye?” He was still staring at the canopy.
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. I told you, I ain’t sharing my agenda with you. You’ll just have to wait till tomorrow and see. Or you can run off and do something else. Let me go. Live your life.”
“I don’t have a life. My parents were my life.”
“That’s sad. But, you know what? Life is about exploration. You could always move on, explore other towns, visit a few shopping malls, try to skip the border. You don’t have to focus on this vendetta you have against your parents’ killer.” He didn’t look away from the canopy.
“Is that what you’re going to do?” I asked, jumping on the suggestions.
“Maybe. It’s none of your business, remember?”
I paused, still watching him. “What do you think about when you do all that staring?” I asked.
“Well, what do you think about when you do all your staring?”
He’d noticed me watching him. Good. “I think about how satisfying it’ll be to kill you.”
“Really. Huh.”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“I think about the world. About how Mexico won’t help us, and how China is still trying to suck away all our resources without involving us. I think about God, and about my family, and about all the different places I’ve been.”
“You had a family?”
“None of your business. But, mostly, I think about nothing.”
“How can you possibly think about nothing?”
He lifted his head from the tree base to look at me; he smiled. “With practice.”
~ * ~
After a while, I fell asleep sitting up against the tree and, when I woke, it was the pale dark of dawn. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust.
There he was, lying against a trunk on the other side of the clearing, arm thrown over his eyes. It was the same spot he had been sitting when I’d fallen asleep last night.
I quietly groaned as I realized my stupidity in this situation. Had I really allowed myself to fall asleep first? He could have been waiting for that, and simply walked away from me. I never would have seen him again, and I would never have achieved my revenge.
Maybe I was just as stupid as he said I was.
I watched him some more, studying the way he lay on his back, only slightly tilted to the side. A finger twitched. The rest of his body lay perfectly straight, boots parted by half a foot. His knife glinted from his pocket.
My heart sped as I considered the knife. It was in the perfect position for me to slide it out without him noticing. And then I could slit his throat.
I crept to my feet and edged closer to him, carefully placing my shoes along the leaf-strewn ground. I moved as little as possible, only as much as I needed to crouch down beside him.
My heart pounded. His chest moved up and down in deep, rhythmic movements. My fingers encircled the handle of his knife, and I slowly pulled it out. I shifted it in my grip, and my heart sped even further. Then, I plunged it at his throat.
A hand snatched my wrist, even as I was centimeters away from breaking skin.
My heart burst.
I yanked at my hand, trying to free it, but he wouldn’t let go, arm still over his eyes. His fingers were cool and rough against my skin.
“How’d you know I was here?” I couldn’t help demanding, though I wasn’t pleased at the whine that crept into my voice.
“You’re breathing loudly. I told you I was a light sleeper.”
His words filled me with anger, and that anger boiled over as he pulled his arm from his face and grinned at me mockingly.
His hand was still clamped onto my wrist, but I stood and kicked my shoe into his ribs as hard as I could.
“Ouch!” he screeched, releasing my wrist and jumping to his feet.
I still held the knife, and immediately lunged at his gut. His hand interfered, and the blade scraped into flesh right before he secured his grip around my knuckles. He squeezed until I dropped the knife to the ground.
He picked it up, regarding me. “You’re deadlier than I thought,” he said, shaking the handle at me. He pocketed it before wiping his bleeding arm off on his shirt; the crimson smeared on the fabric. “God, this is going to need a wrap.” He leaned over to the tree trunk and reached into his open backpack, bringing out the rag I’d seen before; he swathed it around his arm, tying a tight knot at the top.
He sighed, shouldering the pack. “I guess this means I should kill you now,” he murmured, pursing his lips as he looked at me.
I stood there, waiting, feeling the danger in his words.
He rolled his eyes toward the sky. “Good grief,” he exclaimed, then started in the direction I now associated with the stream.
I walked after him. “So you’re not going to kill me?”
“Just keep your distance, alright?”
I trailed behind him the rest of the day, not saying a word. He fed me again, but we ate in silence. When we were done eating, he got up and walked away without comment. I followed, noting that we were finally leaving the area behind. We were leaving behind the city in which he had shot my parents in cold blood.
We were also leaving Alice, but I knew Alice would do just fine without me.
We left the dense foliage we had been in for the last few days, climbing down cement road blockers to reach what had once been a very busy freeway; four lanes reached in either direction. Weeds fought their war against the asphalt, breaking through in clumps.
The man chose to walk in the dead center.
I followed.
We walked.
That night, he simply left the street and laid in the grassy ditch nearby. I followed him, though this time I made sure he fell asleep before me. As I waited, I wondered whether there was a bigger risk of him leaving after I fell asleep, or leaving before I woke. Was there a way for me to fall asleep after him, and also wake before him? We had no form of alarm to alert me to the need to rise. It seemed hopeless.
The next morning, however, I distinguished the rustle of grass under his feet as he stood. My mind immediately snapped into focus, and I jumped to my feet, afraid of losing track of him if I didn’t move quickly enough. Could I train myself to be aware of his movements at all times?
If I could, my advantage would greatly increase. Right now we abided by a careful understanding: he wouldn’t kill me until I was a threat, and, at that point, one of us would kill the other. He was already at such a great advantage, any more that I could gain gave me more than just a little hope.
We kept walking.
I tried not to think about my parents, instead thinking about the different points in the man’s body that I could shoot – which ones would cause instant death, and which would draw out the pain, causing him to truly suffer before he finally died.
Around noon, he veered off t
he road, walking instead to a set of bushes lining the street. He touched one, and then put something in his mouth. He looked over his shoulder at me.
“Blackberries,” he called.
I was about five yards away from him, and I ran that short distance to the bushes. The deer yesterday had been so long ago that it almost felt as if it had never existed.
That single word was all he said, all he had said since I’d almost killed him the day before. We ate. The berries were thick on the bush, plentiful. I ate as many as I possibly could without bursting.
He took his pack off his back and unzipped it, then began plucking the berries off the bush and dropping them in. I followed his example, knowing well enough that we might not find so many berries again. Indeed, we might not find so much of any food again for a long time.
Finally, he zipped the pack and shouldered it. He plucked a few more berries, shoving them into his mouth. “Ready?” he asked me.
I raised both eyebrows at him. “Are you waiting for me?”
“Not if you don’t get a move on, I’m not,” he said roughly, turning back to the road, away from me, and quickly returning to his usual pace.
I hurriedly grabbed a couple more handfuls, zipped my backpack, then jogged to catch up with him. He was so weird.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twenty-eight,” he answered.
I waited.
He was silent.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how old I am?”
“Why would I?”
“Because that’s how civilized conversation works.”
“I hate to remind you of this, but we’re not in civilized society right now, so whether the conversation is civilized hardly matters.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.
I flushed. “Well, we’re doing a lot of walking. It gets boring. Maybe not for you, since you have so much practice at thinking about nothing, but I’m bored.” Mostly, I was tired of silence.
“Well, what would entertain you? You could go do whatever it is, instead of coming with me.”
“Where are we going, anyway?”
“I am going somewhere that should be of no consequence to you.”
“It is of consequence to me.”
“It shouldn’t be. You need to let things go. As I already pointed out, we don’t live in civilized society. I killed your parents out of a basic need for survival. End of story. Move on.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not happening.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to be doing something else right now? As you pointed out, you’re bored.”
“Not so bored I’m going to let you live.” I sighed. “Look, my parents and I used to play games when we were walking long distances. Sometimes we would see who could find the most letters from the alphabet in the signs we passed. Other times, if there were a lot of cars around, we’d see how many states we could find listed on the license plates.” I nodded at a mossy car parked in the ditch that we were passing, probably left there after it ran out of gas – cars became useless to everyone once the government could no longer provide fuel. “More than either of those, though, we would play ‘I Spy.’”
“You don’t say.”
I grimaced. “Here, I’ll start. I spy something blue.”
“The sky.”
“See? Easy. Okay, your turn.”
He chuckled, as if I had said something funny. “I spy something dirty.”
“Everything’s dirty. You’re supposed to stick with colors.”
“Fine. I spy something brown.”
I gave him a look. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because dirt is brown.”
“Ah. How about that?” He grinned.
I sighed. “I spy something grey.”
“The clouds?”
“No.”
“The buildings?”
“Which building?”
“Let’s go back to thinking about nothing.” He massaged a temple with one hand.
“How about twenty questions?”
“Okay, I’ll start: why are you following me?”
I made a face. “That’s too easy. I’m going to kill you, remember?”
“Oh, I forgot. Okay, how about this: if you’re following me, and I know you’re going to kill me the first opportunity you get, then how are you going to get a weapon?”
“I’m sure an opportunity will present itself.” My eyes skirted my surroundings. Maybe if I just found a really heavy rock. . .
“Yes, you’re pretty sure of yourself. But I’m sure that I’m never going near anywhere that might have a weapon. Simply out of self preservation. Those buildings over there?” He pointed. “They might be empty, already looted through years ago. But they might also have ammo. Knives. Maybe even arching equipment, if one’s a sporting center. You could go over there right now and check it out. But you won’t, because then you’d lose track of me. I could go over there right now and check it out. But I won’t, because then you might get a weapon. So how is your plan ever going to work out?”
“Something will come up.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something might happen. I can stay with you for as long as it takes. Do I get to ask any questions?”
“Sure, go for it.”
“What is your greatest weakness?”
“Chicken legs thickly slathered in spicy barbeque sauce, with hot, buttery rolls, and a side of corn on the cob.”
“Stop it. You’re making me hungry.”
“You asked. I was just being honest.”
“What is the easiest way for me to kill you?”
“A game of twenty questions.”
“If I offered you a huge plate of barbeque chicken right now, would you agree to exchange me your gun for the chicken?”
“Ah, a man’s last meal.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a difficult one, but I think the answer is I’d keep my gun, shoot you with it, and then enjoy the chicken.”
“But you said you wouldn’t kill me unless I was a threat.”
“If you had barbeque chicken on your person right now, then you would be a threat to my sanity.”
“Hmm. Would you kill me for a single leg of chicken?”
“Unquestionably.”
“Where are we going right now?”
“None of your business.”
“But this is twenty questions. You have to tell the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth. It’s none of your business.”
And so it went, day after day. We didn’t always play the games I suggested, since he preferred to think about nothing, but we did talk a lot. In fact, I had to do a lot of visualization to keep in mind that he was the man who murdered my parents in cold blood. What with knowing his favorite color was turquoise, and his favorite flavor of ice cream was cotton candy, he was actually starting to seem like a real person.
“Restroom break,” I told him, about five days later, as we passed the arch of a stone bridge.
He didn’t stop walking, just gave me a little wave with his back to me.
I rolled my eyes and rushed to the privacy the bridge provided, quickly pulling down my pants. It had been yesterday morning that I realized I was no longer afraid of him disappearing when I was asleep. He didn’t want me to know, but he liked having me around. He wasn’t going to end that before he had to.
Gunfire sounded, and I tensed at the sound, listening. Definitely more than one gun.
I rushed to pull my pants back on, fumbling with the button as I leaned around the edge of the bridge, hoping to see what was happening.
The man, my current traveling companion, was being shot; I watched his body crumple to the ground.
Chapter 4
No! He was mine! It was my right to kill him, and I’d been waiting for the opportunity for over a week! Thinking about the moment I would take his life was the thought that energized my every step, my every movement, my every bre
ath, and these people were taking it from me!
I rushed forward, light on my feet, already aware that there were three of them, and they each had their back turned to me as they approached my fallen comrade; they hadn’t known I was with him.
The nearest one to me was a man, and I ran at him, closing in and then propelling my leg upward and into his groin. He yelped, loosening his grip on his gun long enough for me to shove his elbow forward and grab the gun from his slack hand. Then I spun the gun on his two companions, shooting one in the head and the other in the neck. The owner of my new gun grabbed at my shoulder, tightening his grip so that I couldn’t struggle free. But he was too late: I turned the gun onto its owner, and aimed right between the eyes.
As the life left his eyes, his grip on me loosened, and he fell to the ground, where the other two already lay.
But my comrade lay there, too, and there was a lot of blood.
“No, no, no!” I muttered, running to him and falling to my knees beside him. I hurriedly turned him over. This took some effort, since he was so big, but I managed it.
He’d already passed out from blood loss, but there was definitely a pulse in his neck. I hurriedly observed the bullet wounds: one in his arm, another in the opposite leg, and a third that had just grazed his ribcage.
Those people hadn’t been trying to kill him, mostly just immobilize him.
I shoved that observation away, instead puzzling through what I needed to do to save his life. First, stop loss of blood.
I tore off one of his sleeves, momentarily noting the fabric still wrapped around the place where I had scratched him six days ago, before wrapping the sleeve just below his shoulder and tying a snug knot. I tore his other sleeve as well, tying this one to his thigh. The wound at his side would do okay with just the fabric surrounding it; it was just a surface wound.
This wasn’t the first time I’d had to remove bullets from a live person in order to save them. I had done this with Dad, when we’d been out hunting without Mom; Mom had stayed behind that time, at our commune of the season. Dad had gotten shot by someone trying to steal from him. That time, I’d also killed the offender before setting Dad right. It helped that he’d still been conscious at the time, and was able to guide me through the steps.
Humanity Page 3
