by Steven Novak
The rest of the day was quiet. We walked the same as we’d walked so many times before. We didn’t talk about Andrew, didn’t talk about anything. Blueeyes ignored me. I kept close and kept my mouth shut. I wanted to say something. I really did. I had questions, so many questions, nothing but questions. I wanted to know if he was telling the truth. I wanted to know if he was alive, if he was dead. I wanted to know about his family, his daughter. I wanted to know what he was. His shoulder had already stopped bleeding, the limp in his leg disappeared. There were times when my mouth opened, when something vaguely resembling a sound emerged. As a cover, I coughed. At one point I was coughing every thirty seconds.
Blueeyes stopped, turned, and looked down at me. “Are you getting sick?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He knew. I could see it in his eyes.
I think he knew.
When night approached, we took shelter in the lower level of an apartment complex on the outskirts of the first town we’d come across. It wasn’t much: dark and damp, tucked away. There were no whispers, not a single pair of white eyes. Outside, nothing howled. It was perfect. As I nibbled at a bit of food we’d scavenged earlier in the day, I watched my friend with different eyes than I had before. He was still Blueeyes, still the man who’d rescued me, introduced me to Pointycrunch, and taught me to shoot. He was still my friend. At least, that’s what I told myself. At the same time, he was different. I didn’t want him to be different, but he was. For better or worse. There was no denying it.
Andrew popped into my head. “Why did they change like that?”
“Who?”
“Andrew…the biters.”
Blueeyes grunted the way he always grunted when he didn’t want to talk. “A monster with good intentions is still a monster.”
“Yeah, bu—”
“Can’t change what we are, Megan.”
I didn’t like that answer or the questions it created. It took me a while to speak up again, and I spent the next few minutes awkwardly coughing before I worked up the nerve. “What are you?”
He didn’t like the question. “I don’t know.”
“Are you a monster?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t like the answer, so I changed the subject. “What was she like?”
I think he liked that question even less. “Who?”
“Your daughter.”
Blueeyes groaned and shook his head, eyes moving to the floor. When he finally looked up, he’d stopped breathing, blinking. For a moment he didn’t move. In that instant I felt like he was judging me, rethinking the choices he’d made, his reasons for saving me.
He looked away again. “She was the only decent thing I ever did.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Every day.”
I thought of Mother, of Father, of dimples and strong hands. “Will you tell me about her?”
Blueeyes didn’t want to answer. He wanted me to shut up. I’m still not sure why he did. He was uncomfortable, squirming in his seat, scratching a phantom itch somewhere deep in his beard. “She was quiet…maybe a little shy. So smart, though. God damn was she smart. I’m still not sure where she got that from. Wasn’t from me.”
There it was again, that expression on his face. I had noticed it in the bunker with Andrew. For the briefest moment he wasn’t Blueeyes. He was someone else, somewhere else, reconnecting with ghosts. Outside, thunder cracked. The clouds began to weep.
For some reason, I already knew the answer to my next question. I had known it in the bunker. There was a reason he’d saved me. There was a reason he’d gone through everything to keep me safe, and a reason he always would.
“What was her name?”
Blueeyes looked right at me, into me, and through me. When he spoke, his voice was stern, every word emphasized, every pause extended. “No more, Megans.”
I was right.
14.
Sleep came easily. I’d never slept so well. No matter what happened, I knew Blueeyes was there. If I was hurt, he would heal me. If I was lost, he would find me. If I was in trouble, he would rescue me. I didn’t care what he had said in the bunker, what he told Andrew. It didn’t matter. If he was a monster, he was my monster.
I slept so well I didn’t dream.
In the morning we packed our gear and took to the road. While the cloud cover remained, the rain slowed to a drizzle. I didn’t hate the rain. I hated storms, but never the rain. Everything smelled cleaner in the rain, fresher. It felt good on my face, a light tickle, a soft caress. I hoped it would never stop drizzling.
For the most part, the day was uneventful. We walked, and we walked some more. The road was empty, quiet. When we stopped, I listened to the rain on the cement, pattering sheets of steel in a nearby garbage heap. I thought of Father and remembered the way he sometimes watched the rain, the quiet content on his face. We never talked about it. He never told me he loved it. I liked to imagine she did.
It was midday when we passed the remains of a howler attack. There were four bodies, too mauled to identify. There might have been five. One of them was a woman, I think. There was a dress, anyway. The flower pattern reminded me of something I’d seen Mother wear. I didn’t like that. The rain had spread the blood across the street, rivers and lakes of watery crimson extending thirty feet in every direction. There was so much of it: watered down life, washing away. I I’d seen so much blood in my life, so many variations. I was becoming accustomed to it.
“Megan, come on.” Blueeyes hadn’t stopped to look. He was further down the road, annoyed that I wasn’t keeping pace.
Instead of going around the blood, I walked through.
I kept my mouth shut that night. We were in gimp territory and had spent the latter part of the day moving from hiding place to hiding place, doing our best to remain unnoticed. Our shelter wasn’t much of a shelter at all. The house was empty and the walls upright, but the place was falling apart, warped wood and rusted nails, half a door that wouldn’t close until kicked. It was the best we could find, certainly better than black streets filled with the walking dead. The gimps were everywhere, always moaning, shuffling feet. They weren’t quiet, constantly knocking over and running into things. Blueeyes said I should try to sleep. I told him I’d rather stay awake. Sleeping would have been impossible, not with the sounds coming from outside. It went on all night, dusty bones grinding, rotted teeth snapping against rotted teeth. It never stopped. I was becoming accustomed to that, too. The moment the sun rose we were gone.
A few hours into the day, I spotted someone ahead of us, maybe a mile away, too far to discern any real detail. I pointed. “Look.”
Blueeyes nodded, gaze already focused on the distant figure. “ I see it.”
“Do we need to turn around?”
He didn’t respond, didn’t look away, assessing the situation. “No. Keep your head down, keep walking.”
The person ahead of us was moving significantly slower than us. In no time at all, we closed the distance. It was a man, short, baggy pants with a camouflage print, covered in filth. This shirt was short-sleeved, very thin; he must have been freezing. He seemed to be pushing a cart, metal bars and wobbly wheels, rusted welds barely holding together. Every time it hit a crack in the pavement, the cart wobbled to the right. He struggled to get it straight again.
We were a hundred feet away when Blueeyes stepped in front of me and retrieved his machete, holding it at his side. “Stay behind me.”
We moved to the opposite side of the road and Blueeyes nudged me to the dirt. As we neared the man, I could hear him mumbling to himself, incoherent nonsense into the mass of gray facial hair devouring his face. He was old, wrinkled skin like abused leather, discolored and bruised. Whatever he was pushing in his cart was covered with a tarp, tied with rope, and knotted at the top. When we passed, he didn’t look up. If he saw us at all he didn’t let on. I noticed his hands, red, covered in blisters extending halfway up his arms. They w
ouldn’t stop shaking.
His voice was as unsteady as his arms. “Assholes…all of them ruinedeverything…sonsofbitches…cocksucking bitches….stealmyshit…never stealmyshit again.”
At the time I didn’t know what any of it meant. I’m not sure he knew, either.
I tugged Blueeyes’ jacket lightly. “What’s wrong with him?”
He swatted my hand. “Quiet.”
The old man never acknowledged our presence, continuing instead to babble into this chin, cursing his cart, his shoes, and at one point, the sun. I listened to him for another ten minutes, peeking over my shoulder, stealing glances. Eventually, he disappeared, sinking below the horizon, swallowed by the road.
I tugged Blueeyes’ jacket, stiffer this time. “What was wrong with him?”
“Nothing.”
“What about his hands, those sores?”
Blueeyes returned his machete to its sheath and sighed. “He’s sick. We’re all sick.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted. It was the only one he gave.
We walked until the remains of the sun began to dim. The temperature dropped, so cold I could see my breath, ice crystals in the puddles along the road. Night had arrived when we reached a more congested part of town: slightly taller buildings, abandoned cars littering the road. Everything was boarded, reinforced. Barbwire stretched along the tops of fences, wrapped over doors and looped around windows. There were words painted on anything flat, bright red and massive, none of which I recognized. Blueeyes noticed them, too. His body language changed.
I pointed to one in particular, four words splattered in paint, so large they nearly covered the front of a building. “What’s that say?”
Blueeyes retrieved his shotgun. “It says we shouldn’t be here.”
Another answer I didn’t want.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me to his hip. “Stay close. We need to move quickly.”
Suddenly, we were jogging, darting back and forth, Blueeyes watching the windows on either side. We moved from car to car and lowered, dropped our backs to rusted steel, taking a moment to scanning the surrounding area before moving to the next. When I stood too straight, Blueeyes pushed me down. When I moved too slow, he shoved me forward. Feeling like a burden, I reached for Pointycrunch.
Blueeyes shoved my hand away. “No. You’ll move quicker without it.”
The farther we progressed, the more fortified the buildings became. Huge sheets of steel covered doors, bars covered windows. There was a trench surrounding one house, fifteen feet wide and filled with sludge, jagged metal breaking the surface. Suddenly, the road stopped, blocked with debris, a wall of scavenged wire and steel, warnings scrawled in red. I didn’t need to know what any of it said to understand what it meant.
When Blueeyes moved, I grabbed the leg of his pants and held tight. “We should go back.”
“Can’t go back, gimp territory. Too many of them. Can’t be out here at night. “
Just once I needed him to tell me something I wanted to hear.
Blueeyes took my hand and held tight. “Stay low and keep quiet.”
We crawled through a hole in the wall between a sheet of metal and an old car door. Behind the wall everything looked burnt, charred and gray, colorless. It smelled awful. There were pillars on either side of the road, one every fifteen feet, taut barbwire linking them. In the distance the sky seemed to change from gray to yellow, a hint of red. Something was glowing. I peeked over the hood of a car, staring through the black and hearing only my breath. I saw smoke and black, tiny embers popping in and out of existence, pillowed shades of black. It was fire. It was massive. My heart stopped, then suddenly sped. I didn’t bother to ask Blueeyes what we were looking at, didn’t have the nerve to whisper. The next time we moved, we moved slower, almost crawling. Voices emerged, distant but noticeable, distinctly human. We were barely fifty feet from the glow, crouched behind the remains of a bus, so close we could feel the heat from the fire and hear the crackle of the flames.
“That should be good enough to keep the gimps from making a move. Let’s get the kids in the for the night.” A man’s voice. “Parker and T have watch. Willie and I will douse this thing. You know the drill people, let’s get to it!“
Blueeyes nudged me to my hands and knees, whispering. “Underneath.”
I crawled along the pavement and under the bus, watching as feet moved away from the fire. Blueeyes slid beside me, shotgun at the ready. There were at least thirty pairs of legs, men and women and a little girl in a red dress. I’d never seen a dress before, not in real life. I liked it.
“There’s a little gir—”
Blueeyes’ hand went to my mouth.
At the center of the fire were bodies lumped into a pile four feet high and charred to crisp, stark white teeth visible in the black. Soon after the group dispersed, there was an incredibly loud noise, like an engine, a generator. A pair of legs joined the remaining two, dragging a hose behind it. A spray of water smothered the fire, continued doing so for at least a minute. When the engine died, the water stopped. Black runoff carrying bits of burnt flesh moved across the road and under the bus, splashing against my arms. It smelled sticky, sour, a pungent muck.
Blueeyes removed his hand from my mouth and leaned close. “Whatever happens, you stay here. Do not move until I tell you to move.”
He was going to do something. I didn’t know what, but he was going to do something. “What’re yo—”
His hand returned. “Stop asking questions. Stay here and shut up. Got it?”
I nodded.
The next thing I knew, he was crawling past me, knees splashing, crinkled black flesh clinging to his pants, heading for the feet and the smoky remains of the fire. The moment he was in the open, he stood. Feet spun and jumped, weapons clicked, men screamed.
“Motherfucker! God damn motherfucker!”
“Put your hands in the air!”
“Drop the weapon and get ‘em, asshole!”
Blueeyes’ voice was steady. “I don’t want any trouble.” He lowered his shotgun to the watery concrete.
More feet arrived from every direction, boots splashing. More guns clicked and shifted, anxious screams. In a matter of seconds my friend was surrounded.
“Where’d you come from?”
“How did you get in here, dipshit?”
“Answer him, motherfucker!”
They were screaming all at once, caught off guard, frenzied. Blueeyes remained calm. “Hole in your gate. Saw the fire.”
A single voice emerged from the chatter, more assured than the rest. Whoever he was, he was the leader. “So you just walk right in? That how you think shit works? Looks like you’ve been around long enough, buddy…you know better than that.”
Even more feet arrived, more guns clicked. When I looked behind me, I saw even more on other side of the bus, pairs at both ends. There were too many to handle, even for Blueeyes. I tried to steady my breathing, wrangle my emotions. To keep from screaming I mashed my palm against my mouth, left it there.
“Just want passage. Nothing more.” Blueeyes again, voice unchanging.
“I’ll give you passage motherfuck—”
“Calm the fuck down, Willie!”
“Fuck you, Sam! This asshole comes trotting in here like he owns the place! I ain’t putting up with that shit!”
“You’ll put up with whatever the fuck I tell you to put up with! Now stand the fuck down!”
While they argued, Blueeyes remained quiet. His legs never moved, never retreated or waivered, never once backed down. Looking back on it now, I realize he was assessing the situation the entire time. He knew what he was doing, probably knew how many there were, where they were hiding. He was reading them, studying, watching how they reacted, and planning his next move. They probably thought they had the advantage, figured they could fill him full of holes and toss him in the fire with the rest of the corpses. If they’d known what he really was, they might have understood how wrong they were
.
Tensions settled a bit and the leader of the group spoke up. “You alone, guy?”
Blueeyes took a moment to answer. “No.”
Chaos again. Legs scattered, weapons shifted. A pair of boots charged my friend, feet away, probably pressing a gun to his head. “Where are they, asshole? Where the hell are they?”
“Willie, stand the fuck down!”
“Fuck you! I’m done with this stone-faced fuck!”
“I won’t tell you again, Willie!”
Blueeyes’ finger moved, just his finger motioning behind him, pointing in my direction. Angry heads dropped into view and guns pointed in my direction. The moment they saw me, their expressions changed.
A dark-skinned man near the front of the bus lowered his weapon, both confused and let down. “It’s a kid. It’s just a little kid.” If I’d been anyone else I would have been dead.
The mood around the fire changed drastically after that. When Blueeyes told me to, I crawled from under the bus and stood beside him. He immediately grabbed my hand and held tight.
The leader of the group noticed, lowered his weapon, and ran his hand along the sweaty brown skin of his head. “If it hadn’t been for your daughter there, you’re brains would be splattered along the side of that bus…you know that, right?”
Blueeyes didn’t correct him, just nodded.
He stepped toward us and guns began to lower. “Name’s Sam. That’s Willie, Mark, T, Alan, Parker, Denise, Jersey, Erick, and a bunch of other people that’ll put you down if you decide to get froggy.”
Blueeyes nodded again. “I’m Bob. This is Sue.”
I almost corrected him.
Sam chuckled softly, his gaze moving from Blueeyes to me and back again. “Bob and Sue, huh?” He didn’t believe the names, but didn’t care enough to bring it up. “Okay, Bob and Sue it is.”
I looked past him to the smoking pile of corpses, wet and shimmering. Up close the details became clear: twisted limbs and screaming mouths, empty sockets that once held eyes, everything peeled and red, cooked.
Sam noticed me staring. “Don’t worry, little girl; they were dead long before we torched ‘em. Believe it or not, the smell of burning gimp flesh keeps the live ones away. Don’t know why it works…don’t care. It keeps ‘em away and that shit’s good enough for me. Been two months since we had an attack.” He laughed. “We’re living like the old days around here.”
