by Q J Martin
“Are you sure?” Randell asked, his eyebrows furrowing in concern.
“I’m ok.”
“Ok, well in that case, it’s time for us to find a place to stay for the night.”
“Where?” Logan sighed. “I doubt there are going to be any hotels open right now, and I’m pretty sure we can count out bed-and-breakfasts.”
Randell looked ahead of them through the trees and smiled. “I’d say that would do nicely. I have a good feeling about that one.” He walked off toward the opening in the trees.
Logan looked at where he was going and saw that they were right on the edge of the backyard of a one-story house. A few of the other houses on the block had fences surrounding the property, but this one didn’t. It looked less kept-up than the rest of them, with weeds over-growing in the flower bed and toys scattered throughout the yard.
Then Logan saw Randell, walking up a flight of stairs that led to the back porch of the house. Logan ran out as quickly as he could to try to intercept him before he would be able to do anything stupid.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Logan hissed at him.
“I’m finding a place for us to stay for the night.” Randell reached out for the door handle and wrapped his fingers around it. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re breaking and entering, if you must know,” Logan said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Randell rolled his eyes. “Really? After that whole big speech I gave you like thirty seconds ago, you’re really going to follow it up with this?”
“With what?” Logan whispered, gesturing for Randell to come down from the porch. “With obeying the law?”
“Look around you. Whoever lived in this house is either Infected, dead, or long gone. And they aren’t coming back. I can tell you that for sure.”
“You can’t. You don’t know that they’re gone.”
Randell twisted the door handle. It turned all the way, and the door swung open. “When was the last time you left the door to your house unlocked during the apocalypse?” he asked.
Randell slipped inside before Logan had the chance to respond.
“Randell!” Logan moaned, grabbing his hair. He walked up to the porch, wanting to follow him, to make sure that he was ok. At the same time, something told him not to trust this house. The fact that Randell picked it out by random did nothing to ease his concerns.
Logan paced back and forth in front of the door, trying to muster up the nerve to go inside. He grabbed his hair and squeezed. “Ugh!” Finally, he grabbed the door and walked inside to join him.
The door Logan walked through opened up to the living room. It was big, spacious, and wide open. There were two couches laid out on the floor, both facing the holo-projector.
Logan walked through the living room and into the hallway. He found Randell in the kitchen, already eating everything that he could get his hands on.
“How do you eat like this and still look thinner?” Logan groaned, slapping the counter.
Randell turned around excitedly. He had crackers stuffed in his mouth. He was barely able to speak. Every word shot out a myriad of crumbs in front of him.
“Welcome!” he said.
Logan rolled his eyes.
“Welcome to my humble, abandoned abode!” Randell exclaimed, wiping off his shirt.
Logan walked up next to Randell and snatched the box of crackers out of his hand. He took a few and threw them back into his mouth. He didn’t talk again until he had finished swallowing his quick snack. “How do you know it’s abandoned?” he asked finally. “Did you look?”
“No,” came Randell’s curt reply.
Logan rolled his eyes and headed down the hallway to make sure they were alone in the house. He walked into one bedroom. Apparently, it was that of a child. There was a crib positioned in the middle of the room, with edu-holos playing to a missing audience.
He walked to the next bedroom, and there was likewise no one there.
Finally, he made it to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway. He took three tentative steps through the doorway and looked around. Yet again, the room was empty. Then he turned and saw a blonde-haired woman crouching behind the door. There was something in her hands. A baseball bat.
Logan slid his gun out and aimed it right at her. “Who are you?” he asked cautiously, cocking the revolver as he spoke.
The woman held her baseball bat higher up in defense, and Logan realized she had her finger around a trigger. He looked at the makeshift weapon and saw that it was indeed a baseball bat. It had two nails sticking out the end of it, and they were each connected to a wire. The wires snaked down the handle and into the wall outlet behind her. There was a button resting beneath her finger. Underneath the woman were the remnants of a hair dryer.
“Hey now,” Logan said, putting up both hands as a gesture of good will. “I’m not here to hurt you. Please, put the bat away. We can talk. Maybe there’s something I can do to help you.”
The woman didn’t relent in holding the bat up in front of her, but her demeanor seemed to soften just a tad.
Logan knelt down on his knee, ignoring the protests of his ribs. He uncocked his revolver, then he placed it softly on the bedroom floor.
The woman lowered her bat, if only a couple inches. Logan’s display of trust didn’t succeed in winning her over for long, however. Out of nowhere, Randell swept through the room. The baseball bat clanked to the ground, and Randell was holding the woman up against the wall by her throat. He held a knife up right next to where his fingers were clenching the life out of her.
“Please, don’t kill me,” she begged. “I can help. I swear—I can help.”
“Randell!” Logan shouted.
“What, man?”
“Let her go.”
“You don’t have any idea who she is,” he spat. “She could just as well slit our throats in our sleep if we give her the chance. I say we kill her quick and be done with it.” Randell pushed the blade in, and the skin of her throat compressed, threatening to split in two around it.
Logan walked up and put his hand on Randell’s shoulder. “Look around you,” he said, as calmly as he could muster “The human race is on its knees, begging, pleading not to die, and you want to stand here and kill the first human we’ve come in contact with?”
Randell looked uneasy. Logan reached for the knife to shove it down from the woman’s throat, but Randell jumped against the contact and threw Logan into the opposite wall. He reared his knife back and charged at Logan.
Chapter X
Logan swerved to the side just seconds before Randell’s knife would have made contact with him. It sunk itself down into the wall. Randell tried to free it, but it was buried deep, and wouldn’t budge.
Logan swung his arm and hit Randell square in the gut. He doubled over in pain. Logan reached up and made his own attempt to tug the knife out of the wall. When it still didn’t come out, he jumped backwards, letting all of his weight fall against the handle. He fell on his back and let out a gasp as pain shot through his ribs. He looked and saw that the knife was in his hand.
He didn’t have long to celebrate that small victory, however, as immediately after that, he felt the jarring jolt of a punch to the face. The knife fell out of his grasp as he attempted, far too late, to deflect the punch. He tasted metal in his mouth. He rolled over and got to his knees, spitting up a glob of blood.
Randell was standing above him. He held his knife in one hand, and he was swinging his other arm, attempting to connect another punch.
Logan reached out and caught his fist in midair. He began to squeeze, and Randell crumpled to the ground, howling in pain. Logan squeezed harder, and harder. He could feel the anger inside him for being betrayed in such a spectacular fashion. Randell had no right to fight him on this. Why were they even fighting? They had never fought like this before. What was this about, really?
Logan began to lessen his grip on Randell’s fist. Randell gasped
again, this time out of relief. Logan knew Randell still had the knife in his hand, and he would have to disarm him before he could fully de-escalate the situation.
Logan watched his face for any sign of what he might do next. Then, from the left, Randell was jabbed in the stomach with the makeshift cattle prod that the woman had made.
He cried out in pain.
Logan looked and saw that the woman was about to press the button on the stick’s handle. He let go of Randell’s fist just a moment before she did so.
Randell bent over, his whole body twisting in a fit of spasms. He clutched his teeth together and scrunched up his face, groaning loudly through gritted teeth.
Logan couldn’t help but worry about his old friend, even though he had attacked him with a knife just moments before. Did this woman want to simply incapacitate him, or was she going to kill him? His concern turned out to be unwarranted, though, as she pressed the button again, and just as soon as it had started, it was over.
Randell’s muscles slowly unclenched.
Logan was watching with particular attention to his hand, and the moment he saw that it had opened enough to allow the knife to slip through, he grabbed it and yanked it out of his grasp.
Unfortunately, Randell tried to close his grip on the weapon, a moment too late.
The knife slid across Randell’s palm. Logan could feel it scraping against the bones of his hand. It made Logan sick.
Blood spurted across the carpet. Randell clutched his injured hand with nearly as much ferocity as Logan had when he caught his punch.
“I’m sorry!” Logan said, frantically. “I didn’t mean for that to happen!”
Logan tried to reach out for him, to offer him his support, just as Randell had done earlier that day after the explosion.
Randell retracted from him, refusing his offer. “Don’t touch me!” he swore. He staggered out of the bedroom, leaving a thick trail of unusually dark blood behind him.
Logan looked back at the woman. She was posed with a sneer on her face and her bat in hand, as if ready for a rematch should Randell choose to seek revenge. “I can’t apologize enough for that,” he said, hoping that her fearsome anger would subside. “It’s wrong for us to break into your home like that, let alone—.”
“It’s not my home,” she said, her face softening somewhat at his kind words.
“It’s not? Whose home is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said bashfully. “I came in here as soon as the fighting started. I just needed a place to lay low.”
Logan nodded thoughtfully. “I understand that.” He stuck his hand out to her.
She flinched at the sight of it, tightening her grip on the handle of the baseball bat.
Logan simply stayed there with his hand out. As long as she didn’t act aggressively towards him, she had nothing to fear from him. That’s what he hoped for. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. My name is Logan. What’s your name?”
She looked wearily at his hand, not eager to accept it. Finally, she shook it. “I—I don’t know what my name is,” she said. She was finally starting to look at ease in his presence.
“You don’t?” Logan asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his bottle of pills.
“No. I woke up three days ago and… I don’t know. I can’t remember anything at all, no matter how hard I try. It seems,” she hesitated, “that I have some form of transient global amnesia, but the problem is that there’s no indication of an inciting incident. There’s no evidence of trauma to the head, or anything else related to the condition.”
“Is that your official diagnosis, doctor?” Logan laughed. He stuck a pill in his mouth and swallowed it, putting the bottle back in his pocket. When she didn’t respond, he realized that she was being serious. “Um… that’s an oddly specific diagnosis for a person with amnesia to make, don’t you think?
“I know. It sounds crazy. There are just some thing that come naturally to me. Anything involving medicine and science just feels second nature. But if it has to do with myself, my history,” she tapped on her head, “it’s all gone.”
Logan looked her over. Her auburn hair seemed to be ablaze in the light of the sun, yet her cool, azure eyes were like a calm, never-ending sea, ready to put it out. Her distinct features seemed to be in such perfect balance with each other, and Logan couldn’t help but feel like he had seen them before.
With all that had happened, though, it was no surprise that he couldn’t remember when, or where. Even if he had met her, this would certainly not have been the setting, and he was terrible with distinguishing faces outside their usual settings.
He thought it over, contemplating her situation very deeply, before finally saying, “I might be able to help you.”
“Help me how?” she asked him suspiciously.
“Well, I don’t know anything about memory loss or science, but I’m fairly good with a revolver. I could help you survive. Or, rather,” he stopped, looking down at the baseball bat in her hands, “we could help each other. With us working together, I’d say our odds would be at least tripled.”
She thought about his offer, looking over the bat in her hands. “Where are you going to go?” she asked finally.
“Rochester,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. He chided himself for being so open with his information. He couldn’t say for sure that she was worthy of such trust, but for some reason, he just felt like she deserved it. “I have family there that I need to try to find, and hopefully help.”
Her interest seemed to be piqued by the mention of the city, but she quickly covered it up and nodded solemnly. “Ok, I’ll go with you,” she offered.
“If you don’t handcuff your new best friend to this pipe in the bathroom for the night, I’m going to leave, and you’ll never see me again,” Randell called out from down the hallway.
Logan looked at her with helplessness in his eyes, asking silently if she would accept his condition.
“Do I have a choice?” she sighed.
Logan shook his head from side to side. “Not if we want his help. And he’s nearly as useful as I am…” Logan stopped and shrugged. “Nearly.”
“Well,” she huffed, “I’ll do it, under two conditions.”
“Name them.”
“You have to let me keep the bat with me in the bathroom, plugged in, which would be no problem for either of you if your plan is simply to detain me, rather than to abuse me in some fashion.”
“Agreed.”
“And there are some tools in the garage. You have to let me keep a hacksaw by my side. There’s no point in me trying to use it to escape while you’re here. You’ll hear me. But if you guys decide to abandon me, well, then there would be no one left to care whether I cut my way out of those cuffs.”
Logan smirked at her. “I have to say, that’s some smart thinking.”
“I try,” she said, pretending to curtsy.
She unplugged her bat and headed for the hallway.
Logan picked up his revolver and bag and followed close behind her. The bathroom was at the end of the hallway. All Logan had to do was follow the trail of blood. It led them right to it. There was a pile of bloody rags in the corner, and a box of bandages on the sink. There was no trail of blood exiting the bathroom.
“I have to sit in that?” she scoffed, looking at the mess before her.
“I’ll lay down something die for you to sit on,” Logan offered. He scavenged through the closet and found a couple large towels and laid them out by the pipe that Randell had indicated. Then he reached into his bag. He pulled out his handcuffs and wrapped one end around the woman’s wrist, then motioned for her to sit down. He locked the other end around the pipe.
“Don’t forget my saw,” she said. “I’m putting a lot of faith in you right now. The only guarantee I have that you won’t abandon me outright is that you probably don’t want to leave behind a perfectly good pair of handcuffs. I have a feeling that you’ll be needing them again bef
ore all is said and done.”
Logan rose to his feet and nodded. “I’ll get it to you. Don’t worry.”
She sat there on the floor, her bat firmly clutched in her hands.
Logan heard Randell slamming doors in the kitchen. He walked through the living room and found him standing over the sink, staring out the back window. Logan walked up next to him, and looked out, giving more attention to what was out there than he had before. There was a swing set, a little cart, a couple more baseball bats, a few baseballs. It looked like a typical family scene. Nothing stood out, save the fact that this family used to have kids.
“Was that really necessary?” Logan finally asked, breaking the silence between them.
Randell took a deep breath and propped his arms against the sink. “Logan, man. This isn’t the time to be making decisions willy-nilly. If you don’t start acting like we’re dealing with the end of life as we know it, you’re going to get yourself killed, and,” he paused and raised his finger for emphasis, his bandages clear to see, “probably me in the process.”
“You’re right. She could have killed you. She could have killed either of us. Maybe both. But she didn’t.”
“But what would have happened to Elizabeth and the kids if she had?”
Logan sighed. “I know we have to be careful, but she’s a human being. That means she’s on our side.”
“But how do you know what her goals are? What does she want? What’s her long game?”
“I already know the answer to that,” Logan said curtly.
“Oh, do you?”
“I do. It’s survival. As of yesterday, we all have the same goal. We all have the same endgame. Our goal is to keep living in the face of terrible adversity, in the face of overwhelmingly bad odds. She’s going to do anything she has to do to survive, just like we all will.”
“You’ve always taken the high ground, haven’t you? You do the right thing, make the proper choice, be the better man. And then,” he sighed, “then there was me.”
