by Astor Penn
This time nothing will stop me; I twist and whirl my arm around so forcefully he has to let go. I smack him in the face, and we all come to a halt. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Raven grin.
“You idiots!” I screech, not caring if anyone in the woods, hazmats or scavengers, hears me. “We’re dead! It doesn’t matter if they follow us or not! Without those supplies, we’re as good as dead anyway!”
Everyone instinctively looks to Poppy—except Raven, I notice. The little girl looks no more upset than she usually is. She’s faced with death every day I’m just not sure if she realizes it or not.
“We couldn’t risk anyone getting too close,” Bryant sounds like he’s trying to reason. Trying. “We don’t know if they’re carrying.”
“Bryant, you let us into your group. You didn’t know if we were carrying.”
“It was too late to stop you, unfortunately.” His voice is cold, and it’s an abrupt reminder that even if Bryant may be at heart a good man, there really are no good men left. If he hadn’t already been forced on top of us, breathing the same air (possibly contaminated air), he would have left us for dead. Just like anyone else. He just wouldn’t have driven the stake through our hearts first.
I take a step backward. Behind me, I sense Raven more than feel her, hovering there, backing me up. She could lean forward, and maybe I would feel her hot breath or even take her hand, but she doesn’t and I don’t. But I know we’re still together in this, for now.
I think.
“C’mon, Raven.” We step together side by side. “We’ve got no reason to stay with you. I think it’s best we part ways now.”
If I notice that she tenses by my side, her fist pulled taut with something in it, I don’t say or think much of anything. If she hurts Aaron I won’t mind; the other two I doubt she would or need to hurt.
“Wait a second.” Aaron holds up his hands. “Look, we fed and sheltered you when you didn’t have much. Now we have nothing, and you at least have enough water to get us through a couple days. You’ll help us into the next area where we can look for supplies. You owe us.”
Gripping the straps of my backpack, I grit my teeth. “I owe you nothing.”
Aaron takes a step toward me; Raven takes a step in front of me. Oddly enough, it’s the second action that holds my attention.
“Hold up, Aaron. If they want to leave us, we can’t stop them.” It’s trying how Bryant has to play the martyred hero. Really trying. “But, Brie. You should think about it. We’ll be safer together for the moment, I think, and you don’t really even have enough for the two of you.”
“So three more won’t do either.”
Bryant’s smile is strained. “We won’t take any of your food. Or water, if you like. Let’s just stick together for the moment. We must be on the outskirts of residential areas. It won’t be for long.”
I’m quiet. And torn. Because Poppy keeps looking at me, and she’s got no mother or father, just an emotionally manipulative surrogate, and somehow I’m the appointed decision-maker for both myself and Raven.
“You don’t need us,” Raven says. Every time she speaks, Bryant and Aaron startle. “Why are you so desperate for us to stay? We won’t offer much protection.”
“It’ll be enough if all of us are together.” It’s vague. It’s illogical. It’s most definitely dangerous.
“I guess we won’t stop you if you follow us,” I say instead. Stupid. This is really stupid if what they believe is right: if they’re targeting our group, then surely staying together is a liability.
“You couldn’t if you tried.” The words are barely out of Aaron’s mouth before Raven springs forward, to twist wire around his joined hands. She kicks him in the back of the knees; he crashes into dirt. Low and humble.
“Get off me!” He jerks in her hold, but the wire just cuts into his wrists, unseemly bound together in the first place. It’s a trap; the more he struggles, the tighter the wire becomes. I don’t move, just watch, but Bryant looks about ready to attack. Raven drags Aaron bodily back, the cuts on his wrist bleeding freely now.
“Don’t ever think that I can’t or won’t hurt you.” Her grip tightens, her throat strains in tension. She really does want to hurt him.
She doesn’t, and when she releases his hands, she steps into a dance. Twirls around him twisting her hands, and the wire prison that was wrapped around him several times is suddenly gone. Immediately he stands, taking a step toward her, his face red. Even before Bryant stops him, he stops himself. He lets out a heavy breath and holds up a hand.
“Point taken,” he says, and I think we might all die of shock that he’s dropping it. When he notices how bad his wrists are, he winces and massages them, accepting cloth torn from Bryant’s shirt to bandage them. “Look, this is why we should stick together for now. You’re clearly a decent ally to have in a pinch. I didn’t mean to say you were harmless damsels or anything.”
Standoff. It’s still Raven and I glaring him down, Bryant innocently checking his cuts, and Poppy staying behind them.
“He’s right. You can both take care of yourselves, and those are the kind of people we want watching our backs. Just for a little while longer.”
“Please.” It’s the first time Poppy’s spoken up, and possibly the first time I’ve heard her ask for anything.
Raven rolls her eyes. “She already said yes.”
Somehow, at some time within the last few hours, Raven and I have become a united front, of which I seem to call the shots. Which is ridiculous. Raven is the strong one. She should be driving us. I said yes, now she says yes, and when we glance at each other, we move together, turn, and run.
When we pick up our jog, it’s Raven and I in the front, staggered, with the lot of them following. Swift and silent. It’s impressive how far we make it as a group traveling with a kid without any kind of breaks. In the end, it’s me who needs to stop for breath and water. I even share the latter.
Raven sticks close to me. Aaron sticks close to Bryant. Poppy likes to try her chances and hover in the middle, cautiously eying us. Is she afraid we’ll leave? Or is she still trying to make friends?
I don’t need friends anymore. It finally occurs to me that a twelve-year-old probably does. The next time Poppy tries to sit with me, I tell myself I’ll allow it. Before we move on, I offer her the last of my protein bars. She can’t say the words, she’s so grateful.
I jerk away before she gets too emotional. So much for opening myself up to the girl.
Chapter 6
WE MAKE the next town before it’s dark but decide to wait until morning to venture farther into it. It was clearly an affluent town before, carefully built to evoke the days of old with a wooden bridge as a gate and even an old mill wheel in the water just upstream, still spinning and creaking eerily. The old mill house stands next to it on our side of the river, so with great caution we investigate for inhabitants, or recent signs of habitation.
We find nothing except for a few rats. Good enough to spend the night in. More than good enough.
“Just like a hotel,” Bryant cheerfully declares.
“With dirty concrete floors and rat droppings for our bed,” Aaron replies, still massaging his wrists like a nervous habit. It makes me grin just a little.
“It’s a roof,” I say, smiling. It’s been many weeks since I’ve slept under a roof. “In the early days, when I scavenged residences, I sometimes stayed the night. I stopped after the next looter rolled through and put a gun to my head, though.”
Everyone quietly faces me; Poppy even looks upset on my behalf, and I’m a total stranger who’s had less than sympathetic thoughts about her well-being.
“I like to think of those days as the early days, but really, it was only a few months ago when everything stopped. Like we hit pause somewhere,” Bryant muses, sitting on the floor so Poppy can use him as a pillow again. The air is so stale our skin itches. Aaron’s arm’s already red from scratching, but no one minds. Raven strolls aro
und, poking through a few remaining items: a wheelbarrow with loose hay, a gutted engine of some kind, a Bible stuffed under a slanting shelf.
“How long since the broadcasts went off air?” Aaron asks, sitting close to Poppy and Bryant. Leaving plenty of room between them and us, as the lines have been drawn.
“Maybe a month ago, if you mean those emergency radio messages they used to send out. I think they assume anyone who is going to come in willingly would have done so by now.” Bryant turns to us. “Used to carry a radio. Ditched it when we got paranoid that they might be able to track us with it.”
“The things we’ve given up.”
“The things we’ve learned.” Bryant smiles. From his wrist he removes a thick leather cuff and from his pocket, a thick but short blade. It’s wider and more menacing than mine, but I feel no fear when I see it. Maybe because it’s Bryant, full-time worrier and mother.
He chips into the leather with the blade. “It’s been one hundred and twenty-six days since they raised the red flag and called it a national emergency. It’s been one hundred and eleven days since I’ve been on the road.”
We all look at it. Bryant has the face of a gentleman underneath his matted beard and the hands of a gentle civilian, now missing a few fingernails. Aaron has uneven hair and a patchy shaving job and bandaged wrists. Poppy just doesn’t look twelve at all, and Raven is all lethal beauty.
“You’re tallying up the days?” I take a step closer because we never sat down. Raven and I aren’t going to get comfortable. “Can I see?”
Before I can turn it over, I feel the grooves in the thick leather. There are so many of them, he’s running out of space on the back of it. Such small, delicate cuts, easy enough to count although he clearly doesn’t need to. He has the number memorized. This is documentation for later, when the worst days have come to past, and people will wonder how we did it. How long did we survive in the wilderness, how did we do it, how long did we think it would be before we could live again in safe times?
The answer probably varies from person to person, but I believe never. Never will things be the same, and even if people survive, will they ever thrive? Enough to spend time on rewriting histories? It seems such a luxury now to think about anything other than what I’m going to have to do to get my next meal.
“It’s impressive.” I hand the bracelet back. “A good idea to number the days. I forget that it’s really not been that long since I could ride the subway wherever I wanted or head to a twenty-four hour diner to eat anything I craved.”
“I miss watching television,” Poppy says mournfully. “I know it’s stupid, because I don’t even have my mom or dad anymore to watch it with me, and I miss them so much more, but—”
Her lip wobbles and automatically everyone turns in to her, as if trying to shield her from things that have already happened.
“It’s easier to miss the silly things,” I say. “I know.”
After all, I don’t even have certainty they’re dead. It doesn’t matter; I mourn the loss of them either way, and the deepest sorrow is that I will most certainly never know.
Glancing at Raven cautiously, I slowly take a seat on the ground that’s as dirty as that we’d be lying on outside. I’ve been manically clutching and checking my backpack all day, now that I’m the only one left with anything. Chewing my lip, I see nothing but Poppy’s sharp cheekbones and Raven’s clavicles poking out of her shirt.
“Look, I really don’t have much left to eat, but I have enough we could all eat a little of something tonight. Tomorrow we’ll surely find something in town, right?”
What we have is my last can of Spam, a can of pears, and half a bag of peanuts. My last stores. On my own, this would have lasted me at least a week. It’s so difficult giving it up that I hardly eat my own share.
“No one’s allergic, right?” Bryant jokes when he opens the little package of nuts, the kind you’d get at a sports game. Designed for one person, now a feast for five.
“You’ll be sure to give me CPR if I am, right?” Aaron laughs, the sight of food warming even his dreary attitude.
We share everything, but if Poppy gets a little more protein than the rest of us, no one says a word. Meanwhile I try to force Raven to take more, but she nibbles slowly through her portion of meat. Everything is served cold, of course, for danger of starting a fire in the little wooden shed, and while it’s not cold, it’s getting colder. By the end of dinner, we’ve drawn up into a tighter circle, minus Raven, ever hanging back, quite literally behind my back, which seems to be her new habit.
“Anyone know any campfire songs?” Aaron jokes.
“Pipe down and go to sleep. I’ll take the first watch.” Bryant stands and stretches, joints popping, which earns teasing from both Poppy and Aaron. Waving them off, he takes a few steps, then jumps to grab hold of a rafter in the ceiling and pull himself up into a little perch with a window. I imagine there’s a decent vantage point up there of the town, but it’s hardly ideal if anything were to come bursting through our front door.
In lieu of Bryant, Poppy curls up next to Aaron, but not after casting curious looks at me, as if gauging what my reaction would be if she tried cuddling with me. Best if she doesn’t, and she seems to figure that out too. Aaron at least welcomes her with an arm around her shoulders, keeping the chill off her.
I fall asleep leaning against one of the wood columns, splinters threatening to dig into my lower back. It smells like piss and mildew, but the howling wind is outside tonight, and we’re inside. Inside a relic from a past life, one both haunting me and comforting me. If anyone else feels strange about sleeping indoors, it’s not apparent. Aaron snores atrociously just minutes later, and I already hear the first of Poppy’s sleep talking.
As usual, I don’t remember falling asleep or waking up, but when I jolt into consciousness, there’s a lurking presence near me that wasn’t there before. Sometime during sleep, Raven shifted closer to me too, lying on her side curled toward me.
The thing that woke me up was Bryant hopping down from the ledge. He grins at us, pointing over his shoulder at the window. Nodding, I stand and replace him, listening to the sound of him nestle into the pile of Poppy and Aaron. It’s a comforting noise, something that makes me realize I’m smiling.
I stop smiling. I don’t mean to grow attached. I’m still going my own way once I can. But will Raven join me? If she finds her own supplies, will she leave us all? Will I be able to go on alone? It’s only been a matter of some hours, not even really days and certainly not weeks, but already this group has changed me. I feel closer to them than I ever did to most of my schoolmates. It’s terrifying and freeing—my heart wants to swell to let them in, but I feel it only wilting. This will not end well. There will inevitably be heartbreak. We’ll all get caught if we stay together, or maybe we’ll all get infected one day. We’ll drink from the wrong water source or we’ll wander through an area previously occupied by carriers. Even though none of us are currently showing symptoms, someone could still be carrying even now. Whatever the illness is, it must ordinarily spread quickly, or it wouldn’t have destroyed everything in such a small time frame, but I still don’t trust myself or anyone else. It’d be my luck to find the fluke in the normal time line.
No, this won’t end well. I just don’t know if I have the strength to face it on my own anymore. If Raven leaves me, will I stay with the others? Would they even allow it?
Yes. I’m watching over them while they sleep. They’ll let me stay. If I want. The urge to survive is the most powerful of all, though, and with that thought I turn stubbornly to the window and look out.
It’s a beautiful town. It’s a beautiful night. Quiet, nothing to see or hear out there. There’s just enough moon on the water below the mill to see details of restoration in the architecture. The houses and shops are old bones with new flesh painted on; I can see it in the windows, the way the street slants, and the design of one main drag surrounded by water. It looks like the water fl
ows both directions around the town, and the bridge we’re sitting on is the only one I can see from here. The river might as well be a moat.
All night, not a peep.
The next morning little time is spent reflecting on the beauty of the bridge or the little town behind it. We wake up with nothing to eat but all drink a little of the last of the sanitized water. Through the night no sign of life was seen outside, but before any of us take a step into full daylight, we all take out our weapons.
“You have a gun?” Raven asks, so incredulously after a night of silence she may as well have screamed obscenities at us.
“Seriously? You let scavengers rob you of everything you had when you had a gun?” I might as well shout too. Raven has a right to want to smack them; while gunshots are still heard, mostly from hazmats, it seems less common to find enough ammunition to fuel them. Back when ammo was plentiful, people wasted bullets on defending their useless belongings for the sake of nostalgia, or they wasted them on hunting wild game they had no chance of catching when hunger set in. Now there’s not enough around to defend yourself with. Usually.
“We only have six bullets left,” Bryant says quietly. He rubs at the steel muzzle with his sleeve; on the handle I notice the initials WKL. I wonder whose gun it was. “Six bullets wasn’t enough.”
“Six bullets won’t be any great help to us now if we run into trouble inside.” I roll my eyes, twisting my knife between my fingers, but the sudden stiffening of Bryant’s body sets off alarms. Glancing at him sharply, I look for whatever it is he’s hiding, but his face gives nothing else away. Is he withholding something else? Another weapon he doesn’t want to share?
“Worry about yourself, Barbie,” Aaron sneers. His weapon is, of course, the baseball bat he carries around with him. Must have been a jock in his former life.
“Do I get anything?” Poppy asks.
“No,” Bryant and Aaron answer simultaneously. Briefly I consider consoling her by offering her my bag to carry, in case we do need to defend ourselves, but my selfish side is still hesitant to let anyone else touch it, and I worry how much it would slow her down.
