This time, I was alone. But I had to do it, because the man would die otherwise. And then I wouldn’t be able to kill him myself.
I took off my backpack, still stained from the long gone blackberries, and started rummaging around. I brought out a tweezers, replaced the backpack on my back, then leaned in closely to the wound on his thigh. I put one hand around it, using my fingers to push down around the wound; it oozed blood, coating my fingers and revealing the glint of metal.
I stuck the tweezers right into the hole, and plucked the bullet out, dropping it to the ground. I took one of Mom’s shirts out of my backpack, tightly wrapping the wound.
I moved on to his arm, doing the same. I had no more fabric at this point, though, so I tore off one of my own sleeves. I took out my water and drizzled some into his open mouth. Then I sat, watching him and waiting for him to wake up.
I practiced thinking about nothing, clearing my mind of all thought as I waited. I tried not to think about what I would do if he died. I tried not to think about my parents. I tried to think about nothing.
Finally, his eyelids fluttered, though they stayed closed. He swallowed.
“You awake?” I asked.
He grunted.
“Okay, listen: I think you’re at risk for infection. Not only do we not know where the bullets came from, but I didn’t sterilize my tweezers when I got the bullets out of you. So, now that you’re awake, I’m going to help you lift your head. Then I’m going to place two pills in your mouth that’ll stop any infections, and then I’ll give you some water. Got it?”
He grunted again, so I took that as a yes. I fumbled in my backpack, looking through all the different bottles, reading their labels and pulling from memory what each of those labels meant. The first one I wanted, ciprofloxacin, was at the bottom. The second, metronidazole, I came across on the way down. This incident was going to put a huge dent into my supply, but what was I using them for? Nothing, at the moment. And, once I’d killed this man, it might not matter to me anymore whether I died from infection or not.
I took the pills out of their containers, then slipped my right hand under his head, gently lifting. “Can you open your mouth for me?” I asked.
He did so, and I placed the pills on his tongue, quickly wiping my hand on my jeans afterwards. I lifted my water to his lips. He took a sip, then lifted his undamaged arm, hand clasping the bottle and chugging more thoroughly. As he drank, his eyes opened.
He pushed the bottle away and coughed. I set his head back down on the asphalt. “You didn’t just poison me, did you?” he asked hoarsely.
“What? No. I just saved your life.”
“Really. And why am I still alive?”
“Do you really think I was going to let someone else kill you?”
“Wait. So you saved my life so that you could kill me yourself?”
“I’m the one who’s going to kill you, and no one is taking that from me. God, you have no idea how I felt, knowing you were slipping away!”
“Like I was evading you.”
“Yes!” How’d he understand that? He didn’t already know me that well, did he? I guess I’d never made my thoughts a secret from him. I always wanted him to know how much I longed to kill him.
“Okay. So you saved my life so you could kill me. Why am I still alive now?”
I snorted, then lifted the gun I’d gotten from one of his attackers; I had set it off to the side in order to tend to him before. I leaned forward and pulled his own gun out of his pocket. I transferred it so I held both guns in one hand before leaning over him and pulling his knife out of his other pocket.
I held them up for him to see. “Does this look fair?” I asked.
“No. It looks like you’re using the situation to your advantage.”
“Exactly. Hardly satisfying.” I replaced his gun and knife where I’d found them. “It won’t be the same to kill you now, with you so injured you can’t even stand, and with one arm useless for the time being. I’m going to have to give you time to heal. Especially considering you’re going to need several more doses of that medicine.”
“And you’ll be giving them to me?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Are we playing nurse and patient, then?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re going to heal me up, get me back to my feet, and then kill me?”
“Pretty much.”
“Huh. Well, I admire your dedication.”
I twisted my mouth at the compliment. “Let’s move to the shelter of the bridge. I don’t think we’ll be walking anywhere for a while.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He used his good arm to push himself into a sitting position, and then I let him place the arm around my shoulders, helping to support his weight as he hopped along on his uninjured leg. Once we reached the bridge, I eased him down against the wall.
“You drank all my water, so I’m going to go get some more. I trust you’ll stay here?” I looked at him seriously.
“We both know I’m not going anywhere. Go ahead. Bring some barbeque chicken back if you happen upon it.”
I smirked. “I’ll get right on that,” I replied, then started off at a quick walk. I kept my new gun in hand. After he was out of sight, I opened the gun’s cartridge and counted the bullets: enough for me not to worry for a while, that was for sure.
I thought back on the change of circumstances. I’d just saved this man’s life, simply so I could kill him when he’d gotten better. It was a little disturbing, honestly. I thought it was understandable, considering he killed my parents. I wanted him whole when I tore him apart. But . . . something about the desire felt off. It clenched a knot in my stomach, and made my heart skip a beat. Something about it was different from when I was going to fulfill a simple kill, a simple life for life exchange, a simple revenge. Something about this new dynamic wasn’t right.
That wasn’t going to stop me, though. This man had killed my parents, and I was going to make him pay for it.
A cluster of buildings sat at an exit half a mile away, and I began walking toward the nearest one. I glanced around as I went, looking for any small pools that might have filled at the last rainfall. None were visible, which didn’t bode well for what I might find at the exit.
As for the request, it was doubtful that I would find any food at all, much less barbeque chicken. We were traveling on an interstate freeway, and the stores closest to it would have been the first to be raided for sustenance.
I climbed the exit ramp, and then headed for my target building – one with large flower pots on either side of the door. If those had no water in them, I’d have to resort to checking outdoor ashtrays, which was definitely not my preferred source of rainwater.
Both the flower pots and the ashtrays were dry. I looked around, trying to come up with a solution. Water wasn’t generally scarce, especially considering we were in Oregon. However, this was the one time of the year when it didn’t rain. We really should have been traveling by a stream, that considered. Maybe the man had been doing that all along, and knew where one close by was. . .
If I was waiting to kill him until after he healed, I was going to have to ask him his name. I had kind of been avoiding it, and he hadn’t asked me mine, either. A name just made him even more human. But I couldn’t keep referring to him as “the man” in my head.
I guess the best way to kill someone was to really know them. Maybe that’s what I was doing. Knowing exactly who he was would make it easier to kill him, wouldn’t it? Okay, I suppose that point was arguable. . . Or not. At the same time, I wanted a label for him. I wanted to identify him, and hate him all the more for it.
I trudged back to the bridge, empty water bottle in hand.
“Nothing?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s your name?”
He arched an eyebrow. “None – ”
“If you say ‘none of your business’ and refuse to give me an an
swer, then I’m going to kick you in the ribs. And this time it’s going to hurt a lot more, on account of your injury. Then, if you don’t tell me, I’m going to kick you in your thigh. Then - ”
“Gideon.”
“Thank you.”
We were silent for a moment. I stared at him.
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Ahem.”
“What?”
“I thought you were big on civilized conversation.”
“And?”
“What is your name?” he asked pointedly.
“Oh.” I was hoping he wouldn’t care. “Candace.”
“Huh.” He nodded. “You look like a Candace. Skinny. Pretty. Conceited. Annoying.”
I scowled. “You don’t know where there’s a stream, do you? Because we should have been following one, considering we’re not getting much rain lately.”
“Shouldn’t you know your geography a little better?”
“Dad always handled the geography.”
He nodded. “The nearest stream is about ten miles that way.” He pointed back in the direction we’d come. “It’s the same one we were visiting before; we parted with it yesterday.” He reached into his backpack, pulling out a bottle. “I assume you don’t want to leave me for long enough to double back, so, here.” He offered the bottle to me. “You’re out because I drank yours, so you can have mine.”
I furrowed my brows at him, perplexed. “Is it poisoned?”
“Why would I waste good water on poisoning you when I have a loaded gun at my side?”
He was right; he wasn’t going to poison me. It was just that . . . “You said you’d kill me as soon as I became a threat. Drinking your water leaves us with no water while you are immobile, thereby causing me to be a threat to your life.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I think it does.” I took a drink.
“No.”
I sighed, rolling my eyes before sitting down a few feet away from him, against the same stone wall he was leaning against.
We were silent for thirty minutes.
“Twenty questions?” I asked.
“Do we really have to play that again?”
“Is that your first question?”
“No. I don’t have any questions for you.”
“Well, I have one. Why does giving me your water not threaten your life?”
“For one thing, I am currently reliant on you for survival. That medicine you have? I have no clue what it is, or how often to take it. I rely on you for that information. I could kill you for it, sure, but I would be just as helpless as before. I’d probably even die of an overdose.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“There’s a storm coming.”
“What?” I glanced toward the sky. “I see absolutely no clouds. The sky’s a perfect blue.”
“Stand up and walk over to this side of the bridge.” He pointed right. “Then look as far as you can to the West.”
I did as he suggested. Sure enough, there was a little line of darkness gathering.
“How’d you know that was coming? It couldn’t have been visible for longer than the last ten minutes.”
“I could smell it.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I thought you said you were twenty-eight.” Only old people could smell rain.
“I did. What? Am I too young for you?” He leered at me.
“Whatever.” I sat down again.
We didn’t speak.
After another hour I gave him more medicine.
Three hours later, I heard thunder.
Then the rain started to beat on the bridge above our heads, pouring down the sides. Gideon started rifling through his backpack, bringing out several bottles and lining them up between us. He tilted his head at me, asking me without speaking.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, balancing each of them in my arms and taking them all to where the bridge’s shelter ended. I took each of their lids off, then placed them within the stream of water. I followed this with my own bottles, then returned to sit beside him.
“You’re two inches closer to me than you were before,” he noted.
I scooted a little further away. “There. Happy?”
“I’ll manage.”
I made a face. Happiness was a meaningless term to most people these days. For me, happiness had been seeing the way Mom and Dad loved each other, and the way they loved me. There was nothing much more than that. Could Gideon possibly be happy? He was alone, and he was a murderer, and I was going to kill him. That didn’t give a person much to be happy about.
I wasn’t happy. I didn’t know if it would ever be possible for me to be happy again, but a good start would be Gideon’s death.
We soundlessly watched the rain fall. The rain made the whole world feel quiet and clean, peaceful. It felt almost like a sanctuary to watch it from under the safety of the bridge.
We watched the water slowly trickle into the bottles, watched as the water level of the bottles rose.
Out of boredom, I took out my new gun, tauntingly locking and unlocking the safety.
“I’m hungry,” Gideon said.
“Too bad.”
“It’s nice to have someone else besides myself to blame for it, though.”
“You’re blaming me for your hunger?”
“You’re currently my caretaker, right?”
“Wanting you alive and wanting you not to be hungry are two very different things.”
“No, they’re not. You want me in my best physical shape so that, when you kill me, you know that it was entirely your victory. Isn’t that why you’re healing me? Therefore, if you take advantage of my situation and starve me, just because you can, then you’re purposefully weakening me while I am unable to fend for myself – unable to do so because of injuries others, not you, gave to me. Therefore, when you kill me, I’ll be weaker than otherwise, and your victory over me will be lessened.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “That’s a pretty good argument for me feeding you. And I’m hungry, too. But there’s a problem.”
“Yes?”
“There’s nothing to eat.”
“The rain’s going to stop soon, and then animals will come out and gather to the renewed water sources. And you have that gun, which you have so nicely demonstrated for me.”
“You want me to go hunt on my own.”
“No, no. Something will be along.”
I didn’t answer this. He seemed to be waiting.
The rain stopped. A few birds took refuge in the bridge’s supports.
“You could have shot those without me,” I pointed out, raising my gun and aiming.
He smiled benignly. “Yes, but then you wouldn’t have targets to practice on for when you kill me. After all, you’ve only shot that gun three times.”
“And I was a perfect shot,” I replied. But I grinned as I pulled the trigger once more.
Chapter 5
Crickets chirped in the darkness. I nudged Gideon with my boot as I stood over him.
“Gideon. Medicine time.”
He groaned as he woke. “It’s the middle of the night. Do I really need to be taking it now?”
“This is the only time we’ll have to wake up for it. The doses get spread further apart until all risk of infection is gone.”
“Mmmnn.” He pushed himself up a bit, then held out his hand for the pills; I handed them to him. He swallowed them, followed with a bit of rainwater. He took a deep breath, running his hand through his hair. “What’s the prognosis on my injuries?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how long till I can walk around like normal again? How long until I have full use of my arm?”
I bit my lip, sitting down to face him. “The damage wasn’t too bad; the wounds were quite clean. Still, it’ll be several months before you’re one hundred percent back to normal again. Then. . . Well, actually, you might not ever feel one hundred percent the same. But that’ll be about as good as it ge
ts.”
He stewed over this. “They weren’t trying to kill me,” he noted, nodding at the bodies still lying in the street; a few scavengers had begun to peck at them after the rainstorm. We would need to either bury them, or move soon, otherwise they’d attract larger animals. Though, as long as they didn’t sneak up on us, that might not be a bad thing. We’d need to eat.
And I didn’t like burying bodies. And I’d have to do it alone, since Gideon was damaged.
“No. I think they were just after something they thought you had, like food or ammo, or something. Of course, the wounds would have been fatal if I hadn’t been here, but they didn’t do that on purpose. Their guns were just too brutal not to get the blood flowing.” We both knew what I meant about the guns being brutal – even if their carriers hadn’t wanted to kill on contact, the guns themselves had been built for death.
There was another silence, filled with the chirping of crickets. “You’re not waiting till I’m a whole man to kill me,” he finally said, informing me.
“Yes, I am.”
“No. Because otherwise you’d be stuck with me for too long.”
“What’s too long when you’re avenging your parents’ death?”
“Can you stand me for that long?”
I smirked in the darkness. “Maybe.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, maybe you should make a compromise. As you said, I might never been one hundred percent of the man I was before.”
My stomach clenched. I had already felt wrong about waiting till he was healed before I killed him. There were a lot of sick people in this world, but I wasn’t one of them. I just wanted to make up for the lives of my parents. The lives he took.
“My shooting arm is still in perfect condition,” he continued. He pulled his gun out of his pocket, raising it to point at me. “I could shoot you right now, no problem. Boom, dead. So why should you wait till I’m healed?”
I didn’t answer him, staring at his silhouette in the dark. It would be to easy to kill him this moment, this second. But then his death would be over. Finished. I’d have to move on.
Humanity Page 4
