The Long Dark

by Billy Farmer

  The only thing that kept me alive was the rough ice on which the big truck traveled. It had to make shooting difficult at best. With enough shots, though, he was going to kill me or disable the front loader. It was just a matter of when.

  Something caught my eye in the bucket. The rifle was resting on the top edge of the bucket, and it looked like Aadesh was trying to shoot at the truck. I saw a flash of the muzzle and then another. I thought to myself, he has about six or seven shots before we die. More shots were fired in our direction, one of which hit the steering wheel. Another nicked my chin. A searing pain engulfed me, and I felt something wet flowing down my neck and chest. I veered the loader to the right, trying to get out of the line of fire. Apparently, me swerving like I did gave Aadesh a perfect shot. Or a lucky one, depending on how you choose to look at it. He shot at least five shots in its direction. The truck veered hard to the left and disappeared into the night. “Holy shit!”

  Aadesh stood up in the bucket, firing at least two more shots in the direction of the speeding truck. He pointed in the direction of where the truck last was and mimed that it had crashed through the ice, which made me veer even further to the right, while also decreasing my speed by half. We were lucky we didn’t suffer that same fate.

  I needed to wrap my chin up, so I brought the loader to a stop. I cut the main lights and turned on the lamp I had brought with me. I then lowered the bucket to the ground so I could check on Aadesh. He was quickly around the cab and looking up at me.

  “Are you sure it is being safe to stop here?”

  He must've seen the blood on my face because he ran quickly to the bucket and retrieved some bandages we had managed to requisition from the first aid room. I took the bandages and applied one of the medium sized ones to my chin. I'd live, but I was going to have a nice scar once it healed. Assuming I lived long enough, that was.

  After applying the bandage, I ventured a look at Aadesh standing just below the cab. He was violently shaking. “Are you alright, bro?” I asked.

  “Yes. I believe I just killed at least two people.”

  “You saved us. Hell of a shot.”

  "I stopped using the scope." He pulled his hood away from his head.

  I smiled. “Good call.” He had a perfect, bloody ring the exact size of the diameter of the scope around his left eye.

  "Upon my initial shod, da bidch nearly knocked me oud. I believed I was going to fall out of de bucked."

  "I saw you fall. I hoped for the best, though." I patted him on the shoulder. "Wait until I tell Sam what you did. He's going to shit his pants."

  “I’m not sure I feel comfortable dalking about killing humans, bud Sam will wery much be shidding.”

  “Until we can reach the authorities, we have to do what we have to do… ya know?”

  “Yes, that seems to be de case.”

  I heard a groaning coming from just behind the front wheels. The less smart of the two Sniffers, the one who had climbed on the right fender, had gotten caught in the tight space where the front half and the back half of the loader pivots. His left arm was gone and it looked like he had been sucked into the space just below the axle that connects the transmission and the front transfer case. He was in agony. Aadesh walked close to him, put the barrel of his rifle close to his head, and pulled the trigger. The Sniffer was out of his agony.

  I looked at Aadesh. He looked at me. “Id’s eider us or dem. I choose us, bro,” he said.

  Not sure what to say, I said, “Let’s go find our friends.”

  Aadesh nodded.

  Chapter 8

  Growing up, there was no time for make-believe. There was reality, and then there was Mom’s version of hard reality. There was nothing in between at my house. “Wait until you grow up, you little sonofabitch. You’re going to be on welfare and have a bunch of snot-nosed kids running around.”

  That was mom’s go-to saying when she thought I was questioning her lack of success in life. How dare I wonder why we didn’t have food on Friday? Was it such a bad thing, wondering why I had two shirts and one pair of jeans to last most of the school year? Little Jimmy had a sleeping bag and curtains in his room, not to mention fucking Legos. Actually, more Legos than a kid could put together in a lifetime. “I guess his mom is better than me, ain’t she? You can’t go back over there. They’re putting crazy shit in your head.”

  God forbid I wanted Legos. I can remember my friend brought his laser tag setup to my house one day. “Mom, see what Bobby has. Can I have one?”

  “You’re too damn old for stupid toys, you little bastard. You can’t be a kid all your life.” Hell, I would’ve been happy being a kid until I was nine, but I guess that was too much to ask.

  When I started hanging out with Avery in the sixth grade, he offered a refuge, or, well, his parents did. We were the odd couple. His parents were well off, and my parents, well, weren’t. Most parents who lived in a neighborhood like theirs would’ve been leery about their son hanging out with someone from the trailer park. Maybe what made the difference was that our trailer park was called Palm Villa? That sounds like a nice place, right? It wasn’t. They never judged me for living there. They treated me, to my mom’s dismay, just like one of their own.

  I was introduced to Star Wars, Star Trek, and all kinds of shows with the word Star in them. I wasn’t entirely receptive to begin with. “What the fuck is the hairy dude, and how the hell do they understand what he’s saying?” I’d ask. Besides having a dirty mouth, I didn’t have much of an imagination about things, that was for sure, but I loved it there. I even came to appreciate science fiction, even if I didn’t always understand it or relate to it in some apparent way.

  Looking back at it now, there was this odd duality that existed at the time: Mom's notion of reality, what life was going to be no matter how hard you tried or strived; and the world of make-believe, the world that mom couldn’t ever imagine for herself, much less for her children. Even with Avery's disability, his parents never told him what he couldn't do. They focused instead on what he could do, which was anything he wanted, even following the trailer park kid around the world drilling for oil.

  Some of that optimism rubbed off on me. I suppose that’s some of why I left Indiana to begin with. I wanted to find the world I could create, not the world that was predetermined for me. Sure, I struggled with old ghosts, had bouts of being a terrible person, and sometimes just plain sucking at life, but I finally found who I wanted to become once I settled into a normal life in East Texas.

  Having Avery there only sweetened the pot. He was my best friend, and I loved him more than I did my own brother. The circumstances that led him to Texas weren’t good ones. Under different conditions, Avery and I would’ve parted ways after high school. He would’ve become a hugely successful tech guy, and I would’ve stayed the normal guy I had always been. But life has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into the lives of good people – even good people who happened to be as wealthy as Avery’s parents. It had to do with his sister and dad, but that’s another story I’ll save for another time.

  So, life in Texas had been going well. Hell, I’d almost go as far as saying I finally had life figured out. I was even beginning to understand the demons that haunted me. But there I was in Barrow, feeling like I was back at Avery’s watching Star Wars again for the first time: Like I was grappling with two different worlds all over again. Except for this time, the world did seem to be intractable and preordained: just like mom always said it would be, but with a huge fucking twist.

  Avery rubbed his bitten hand, oblivious to everything around him except the dead body on the floor, and the dire uncertainties inextricably linked to it. The body was exacting a psychological toll on Avery, and it needed to be moved away from him as quickly as possible.

  I placed my hand on his shoulder. He flinched, looked up at me, and diverted his attention back to the body. “You’re going to be okay, bud, I promise.”

  Never taking his eyes off the Gray, he nodded abs
ently.

  “Titouan.” I flicked my chin towards the guy on the floor, insinuating that I needed help moving his body.

  He thought about it for a second before walking over to the body. We drug it over to the corner of the building, as far away from Avery as the square footage allowed. I grabbed one of the other tarps still lying on the floor and began covering the body with it.

  “Should we?”

  “Should we what?”

  “Should we, you know… stab him in the head?”

  Fifteen hours ago, I would’ve laughed. Fifteen hours later and almost anything seemed possible. “I don’t know.” I rubbed my cold, glove-less hands together, trying to create enough heat so I could feel my fingers - so I could feel good about something. “Tish should have a knife in her bag. See if she’ll let you use it.”

  By the look on his face, I think he thought I was going to do it. He brought it up, though. If he wanted to do it, I wouldn’t stop him, but I didn’t want any part of it. He nodded that he'd take care of it. I nodded in return and walked over to where Tish worked on Sam.

  From my vantage point, it was hard to see just how severe his injury was, but considering it needed several stitches, it was safe to say it was bad enough. The Gray had to be strong as hell to puncture through three layers of clothing like he did and still do that much damage. I would’ve asked Tish how bad it was, but it didn’t seem like very good bedside manner to do so.

  In between stitches, Tish wiped her eyes with her coat sleeve. She was a mess. We were all stressed and scared but Tish seemed to be most affected. “You got a second, Tish?”

  She nodded and said, “Almost finished.” She wrapped the bandage around Sam’s leg, wiped her face, and walked over to where I waited.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She gave me an odd look. “You expect me to be?”

  “I just wanted to say sorry about Tom. If I could’ve done something, I --”

  She interrupted me before I could finish. “Can we just drop it?”

  She and Tom had become very good friends during her short time at the Patch. There were rumors they were more than friends, but then everyone was sleeping with everyone according to the rumor mill. Either way, the point was they were close.

  “Yeah,” I said, a little hurt by the exchange.

  She walked away.

  Sam gave me a questioning look as I walked towards him. Ignoring the look, I asked him how he was.

  “Son, that gray fucker done some damage, but I think I might be able to walk with a stiff-ass leg. If we have-ta run, ‘ough, I’m screwed.”

  “I’ve seen worse. Suck it up,” I said.

  "I can still outrun you, Bubba."

  “Seriously, are you okay?”

  He knew I wasn’t talking about his leg. “Them Grays… none of ‘is seems real. Almost too much, ya know?” He shook his head closed his eyes.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. "Yeah, I know. We're tough sonofvabitches, though."

  For an instant, I saw the old Sam. He opened his eyes, half smiled, and said, “Cept ‘em two,” flicking his chin towards Avery and Titouan.

  I laughed, thinking about the absurdity of what I was getting ready to say. “It took a damn apocalypse for it to happen, but those two seem to have bonded over it.”

  He shook his head and lay back, trying to relax his leg as best as possible. Finally, he said, “We’ll see how long it lasts. Remind Tit about ‘em generators and see how close ‘ey are.”

  “You’re probably right about that.”

  As I talked to Sam, I noticed Titouan and Tish having an animated conversation in the far corner of the building. The knife, I thought. Tish launched an angry look my way. Bastard. He was blaming it on me. He must’ve been persuasive because she dug a folding knife out of her coat pocket and slammed it into his open palm.

  I walked over to Avery. I thought about sitting down next to him, but I wasn’t sure I could get up quickly if I needed to. My legs were killing me. Too many years of eating and partying while also sitting behind a desk. I decided I’d make the best out of my pain and stand in between him and Titouan. No need for Avery seeing what Titouan was about to do. He was already stressed and worried enough.

  Before I had a chance to utter a word, Avery said, “I am freezing.”

  “Do you feel like getting up and walking around? That’ll help.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, dude, you’re not dying. You have a little bite on your hand,” I said, frustrated.

  He looked at me as if I was a complete moron. “A bite is how it normally starts. Besides, I would not be dying in a literal sense. It would be more along the lines of a quasi-state between living and dead – somewhere on the life-death continuum.”

  “Jesus, Avery. Just stop it, okay?”

  Avery had a knack for instantly tuning out things he wasn’t interested in. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t reply. I used the excuse of buttoning up his coat, so I could get close enough to check his temperature and make sure he was okay. He broke his gaze with whatever held his interest and turned his attention to me. “I am scared.” He thumbed towards the not completely out of his sight body. “I could very well turn into one of those.”

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’ll make it to Miley’s, and we’ll figure all this shit out.”

  He scanned my face but didn't offer any kind of Avery-esque reply. Instead, he said, "I need to close my eyes for a few moments."

  "No. No, you're not going to do that," I said, remembering what Tom had said before he had fallen asleep. I looked at everyone, and said, "We leave in fifteen minutes. We can't stay here." I hoped if I could keep him moving nothing would happen to him. When I banged my head when I was a kid, the doctor told my mom not to let me go to sleep for a while. I thought about that for some reason, as if those two things were even remotely related.

  Maybe I was being as irrational as I was relatively sure Avery was being, but it was my job to make sure he was taken care of and protected. That, and if anyone was ready for something like this, it was Miley. I had heard rumors that he was a prepper, even though I never saw much evidence of it, aside from the numerous guns he collected and that were always on display around his office. Even if it wasn’t true, we came to Barrow to see Miley, and that’s what we were going to do. If anyone else had a better plan, I was open to listening. Besides, there hadn’t been any shots fired for a while, and that was our litmus test for leaving.

  “Avery is going to be okay. Why do we have to rush?” Tish asked.

  I pulled her aside, while keeping an eye on Avery, and told her what Tom had said before he turned or whatever happened to him. She told me I was acting crazy.

  “William,” she said in a lowered voice. “Avery thinks he’s turning into a zombie, and you’re allowing him to.” She laughed while shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure, and I can’t believe I’m even saying this out loud, zombies don’t stab people. Christ, William, they’re not even real.” She paused for effect. “You’re making things worse all around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  In her moment of frustration, she blurted out mine and Titouan’s plan to deal with the Gray. Well, mostly Titouan’s. “You seriously told Titouan to stab the guy in the head?”

  “It wasn’t my idea--”

  Not letting me finish throwing Titouan under the bus, she yelled, “There are no fucking zombies.”

  Shit.

  Well, the secret was out of the bag. So much for hiding what Titouan did from Avery. “What’s done is done. I don’t believe he was, you know, a zombie, Tish,” I gave Avery a reassuring glance, “but I refuse to take chances right now.”

  “But you are taking chances… with all our lives, and you’re doing it because of h…” She, for whatever reason, even though she had already inflicted the damage, saw fit to lower her voice as she pulled me a little farther away from Avery. “Because of Avery. Just be honest, William.”

&n
bsp; In a total dick move, I said, “Were you thinking about everyone when you duct taped that woman’s mouth shut back at the house?”

  She shot me a hard stare. I thought she was going to punch me, but she managed to calm herself after a few deep breaths. “There are moments when you sound like Titouan. What I did back there was for us and our sanity.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry,” I told her, putting my hand on her shoulder. She jerked away like I had Ebola or something. And I didn’t blame her, really.

  Gunshots rang off in the distance. These weren’t the single shots we heard earlier. They were fired in rapid succession, from what appeared to be an automatic weapon, and from just down the street from us.

  “That ain’t yer garden-variety feller with a huntin rifle. ‘At’s gotta be military,” Sam said.

  “That’s good, right?” Titouan asked.

  “As long as they’re our guys, it’s great. The way things are goin, though, it might be the damn Japs or Jihadi fellers,” Sam said.

  “There’re probably trucks full of soldiers. It’s got to be safer around them than it is in here,” Titouan said.

  “Assuming we don’t get hit by a stray bullet or an antsy trigger finger,” I said, not feeling nearly as confident as Titouan.

  “I say we go, too,” Tish said.

  “Huh?” I said, not believing what I was hearing, especially considering how adamant she was about not going just a little while earlier.

  “Who else would have weapons like that?”

  Titouan liked what Tish was saying. He was gathering his things.

  “You hear ‘at?” Sam panted.

  A revving engine could be heard, followed by a loud crash. “Yeah.”