by Travis Smith
The cottage he’d lit on fire lay in a ruined pile of soggy ash and rubble. The entire roof had managed to catch before the storm had blown in to put it out. Every wall was crumbled and blackened. The windows and door were gone. All that remained was a low wall of blackened clay that represented the perimeter of the building. How many corpses were in there? How many had blindly followed the crowd into the burning building and died trying to pursue their prey? Patrick wondered if somehow the lurkers had known what they were doing, had walked willingly into the flames to end their suffering and misery. The idea was preposterous. He’d observed them and interacted with them enough to know without doubt that they were mindless predators, and even their basic survival instincts vanished when their eyes were on prey.
Patrick approached the house where he’d lost his sack. He’d feel much more secure with the larger knife back in his possession. Vaguely hoping that no one had tampered with his knife or shears, he advanced slowly toward his bag, keeping a watchful eye on the cottage door nearby. The door was pushed to, but it was still slightly open. He could see nothing beyond the dark crack.
As he stooped to retrieve his satchel, there was a thump at the door directly in front of his face, and it swung open minutely. Patrick struggled to stifle a shriek and fell back upon his rump, his heart pounding painfully in his chest and making it difficult to fully catch his breath. He managed to grab his bag and fling the smaller kitchen knife at the door as he fell. He looked up just in time to see the mangy cat ducking back inside as the knife bounced off the door.
Patrick jumped to his feet, furious at the stray for scaring him yet again. He consciously struggled to keep from kicking in the door and smashing the thing into a bloody pulp and screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. He pushed open the door somewhat forcefully and made a point to look around the room before engaging the feline. No one appeared to be inside.
He looked down and saw the mangy black cat sitting in the middle of the den staring at him. Its bright eyes were astonishing in their awareness, but Patrick was unwilling to accept their beauty. “You fucker!” he called through gritted teeth as quietly as he could manage. He slung his pack down at the cat, who vanished between Patrick’s legs and out the door in an instant. He snatched up his bag and stormed back out the front door, but the cat was already fleeing behind the houses across the dusty street.
6
Patrick made it to the cornfields just as the sun reached its zenith. He trundled through the stalks and felt his hope gradually blackening and withering—just like the fields—into dismay. The ground was as dry as ever before. It was as though the torrential rain slipped straight through the soil and left nary a drop to be absorbed. Patrick combed the fields extensively, searching for any sign of growth or repair, but the corn seemed to be blacker and dryer than ever before. He felt his hope wink out at last. He’d been through so much recently; he’d had to witness and perform unspeakable acts just to stay alive, and now he was forced to sit by and watch as the cursed earth refused to give him any sustenance. Was this the end? Would life be permitted to limp on into the future anywhere? Would he have more luck travelling out of Onton? Or would he merely be wasting more energy and rations only to find a whole new batch of horrors in the next town south?
He grew faint and sat down hard, closing his eyes. So much he’d endured and accomplished, only to be punished by starvation. How much longer could he last on his current supplies? He could raid more houses for jarred foods, but most families didn’t store food long-term. And everything that wasn’t thusly stored had long since spoiled and rotted. He wasn’t even sure how much water he had left. He generally kept buckets and jars outside to collect rainwater, but the last storm had been so violent that nearly every container had been blown over or whisked away. And there was no telling when the next rain would come!
A small stream that opened into a larger river flowed southward past the opposite end of Onton. Patrick had painstakingly avoided bathing in or drinking from that stream since the incident. He had no clue how the disease was transmitted, but he wasn’t prepared to risk it while he still had a drop of water left in his possession. For all he knew, the poison could have seeped into the earth and grown into the crops, had there been any. Most likely it was that very poison in the sinister black vial that had killed off every seed in the city. If his luck maintained its current course, he thought he may be forced to take those risks he’d hoped he’d never have to. When things reached the worst, he would have to choose to sit back and slowly die or to take the necessary risks to live by drinking the groundwater and moving on to another city.
7
Patrick made it back home without incident and without stopping to loot any houses along the way. He was still a little squeamish about going back into unfamiliar cottages, especially when the lurkers were behaving so out of the ordinary.
He sat in his kitchen and morosely took inventory of his dwindling food supplies. There was still enough edible food and water to last him a couple days, but what then? Could he steel himself enough to take his own life? Anything would be better than wandering aimlessly until his body literally decomposed around his semi-functional brain. Even now, even after all he’d been through in the recent days, Patrick’s will to live remained strong. He was desperate, terrified, alone, and at the end of his rope, but how could he prepare himself to die by his own hand? He wasn’t so sure he could bring himself to do it, despite the far less favorable alternative options. Maybe he could throw together a raft and float down the stream until he found some place less barren …
A scratching upon the outside of his cottage snapped Patrick out of his muse. How had they seen him come in? He was always so careful about entering undetected. Surely these things weren’t crafty enough to track their prey, to merely hide out in the shadows and watch the one remaining living person moving about. He crawled on his hands and knees to his bag that he’d placed in the corner. Drawing his knife (the garden shears had proven near useless in combat), he steeled himself to stand up and look out the window. What would he do if there were hordes of them surrounding the house? He’d barricaded it so that there was only one way in or out, and if enough of those things piled and pushed hard enough…well, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about food any longer.
He sighed and closed his eyes, allowing the monumental stress he’d endured to flow into his mind. His heart rate quickened as adrenaline began pounding through his bloodstream. Simultaneously exhausted and floored, Patrick used his woe to his advantage. He allowed it to flood his mind and prepare it for the fight that would likely end his life.
But when he peered through the small crack he’d left in the wood blocking the kitchen window, there was no one there. He listened for the scratching and heard it closer to the door, on the wall beside the large table he’d stood against the doorway. He ran to the den window, which had a larger peephole left in it, and looked out. All he could see was a single person walking toward him from across the street. His panic settled painfully into dread. At least before he’d been sure he knew what was happening, but now he was at a total loss. Changing his angle, he tried to see what was at the door. Were they waiting around the corner, just out of sight, preparing to blindside him if he came out? Surely they couldn’t learn or plan with such complexity. The scratching continued, but Patrick could see no one. He could make out the broken legs of the table standing against the wall, but there was no one there.
Slowly he approached the blockade against his door. The scratching intensified, and he registered that it was coming from very low to the ground. That’s why he couldn’t see the source. What could they possibly—?
It dawned on him just before he heard the panicked meow from outside. The cat!
That bastard cat …
Patrick slouched back against the wall and breathed a sigh of short-lived relief. All that internal fuss over a stupid cat. But then he remembered the man walking toward him from across the street. He grit his teeth in
frustration and kicked the wall where the cat was scratching on the other side.
“You’re going to give away my hideout, you stupid cat!” The mewling and scratching only amplified.
He stood back up and looked out the window again. The man was nearing the house now. How many more were in his wake? Patrick backed away and squeezed his knife, trying to decide what to do.
“Go away, you mangy bastard!” The cat began screeching loudly and thumping the wall, as if it were jumping up and down against it. “Why would you come here?” Patrick sighed. “You’ve fared just fine on your own.”
The cat’s screeching turned to hissing, and the scratching stopped. Patrick looked out the window, but it didn’t seem to have run away. The man was still closing in hungrily on the door.
Patrick hurried over and flung the furniture away from his door. He unbolted the makeshift locks, opened the door inward, and deftly kicked the table down to the ground. Wielding his large knife, he stepped out into the fading day, and the cat was through his legs and inside before the table even hit the ground. Patrick stepped forward and drove the blade upward under the man’s chin without hesitation. There was a popping sound like a hot waterskin on a dry day, and thick, hot blood poured down the boy’s hand and arm. He pulled back on the knife just in time for the man to fall forward and land face-first against the side of his house, bending his neck and back awkwardly inward.
Patrick looked around momentarily to ensure that no one else was coming. Satisfied, he grabbed the man’s feet and rolled the corpse over. He then seized two handfuls of brittle hair and lifted the body upright so as not to leave a trail of blood. He hauled the body as quickly as he could across the street, between the houses to the back side, and then four houses down for good measure. There, he left it in the open to rot in the sun like the rest of the bodies that were scattered around the town.
He stormed back across the street and into his door, which he’d ill-advisedly left standing open. The cat was sitting in the middle of the den, staring calmly and blankly with its head cocked to one side.
“You shit!” Patrick said as he hurried into the kitchen. He thought about kicking the animal into the wall, but perhaps it was the amount of pain surrounding him recently that gave him pause and caused him to lean toward peace. “You could have gotten me killed. And now I have to waste this!” He picked up a jar of water and displayed it to the cat, who was still sitting in docile observation.
Patrick unscrewed the lid and began pouring the contents liberally over his bloody hands. Not sure if he had any small cuts that would allow the tainted blood into his own system, he scrubbed his hands spotless with an old cloth. Afterward, he stormed moodily back outside and rinsed the blood off the side of his house. He used enough water to help the pool spread out and seep into the thirsty earth. He wasn’t sure whether they were drawn to the blood of the infected, but it paid to be cautious all the same. He glanced around one last time and assured himself that no one else was watching, then he turned back inside to face the problematic feline.
“Well,” he said, spreading one arm toward the door in a gesture the creature surely wouldn’t understand. “I wasn’t saving you. I was saving my own ass,” he assured the cat grumpily.
The cat meowed softly. The sound was nothing like its previous screeches of woe. It came out squeaky and nearly silent. If Patrick didn’t know better, he’d have described it as humbled.
“I can’t feed you,” he remarked. “I can scarcely feed myself.”
The cat let out a longer, stronger meow that pushed Patrick into a state of delusion that felt almost as though he were having a real conversation for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime.
He swallowed hard and softened his tone. “What do you want? Honestly, just go.”
The cat stood and slowly walked toward the door. For the briefest of moments, Patrick felt a twinge of regret at making the animal leave. It had been a monumental pain in the ass, but already it was better company than none. In the end, though, the cat didn’t leave. When it reached Patrick’s feet, it stretched out its neck, rubbed it against the boy’s ankle, and sat down beside him, gazing out the door as though without a care in the world.
Patrick sighed and stepped back outside for one final look around. He pulled the table back up against the doorframe and closed the door against it.
8
Patrick settled down against the wall across the room from the door. He began wiping his bloody knife off on the damp cloth. He kept stealing glances at the cat, who was lying by the door and watching him keenly. Who was he to deny the poor creature a safe place to stay? Certainly the cat meant him no harm, despite nearly getting him killed twice, ruining his small loot of food, and scaring him half to death on multiple occasions. In any case, the cat was thin enough that it may be dead by morning.
As if reading Patrick’s mind, the cat stood up and walked into the kitchen. It sat back down and glanced at the boy before staring intently at the jars on the countertop.
“I can’t feed you,” Patrick repeated sullenly. “Why don’t you go out and bring me some food that isn’t poisoned!”
The cat looked on uncomprehendingly as Patrick continued to polish his blade. Though it made no sound, its persistence began to irk him. “I have nothing left but old cornmeal!” he yelled, exasperated. “You don’t want that stuff anyway.”
The cat stood and walked over to where he was sitting. It rubbed its head against his outstretched leg and rolled over onto its back to fall asleep. Patrick smiled in spite of himself as he finished his chore.
When he was satisfied, he got up and walked into the kitchen. “Come on then,” he told the cat. He took a jar of bland cornmeal and spooned a few scoops onto the floor in front of the cat, who sniffed it and looked back up at Patrick expectantly. Patrick chuckled at the animal’s predictability. “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”
He reached down to scratch the cat’s head, and it thrust its body upward against the boy’s touch. Patrick frowned. The cat was as eager for love and attention as he himself was. Who knew what kind of trauma it caused a dependent, domesticated creature like this to have its owners suddenly try to kill it. He hoped they wouldn’t have tried anything else …
“But now I’ve wasted about half a meal on you.” He sighed and walked back to the den to sit down. The cat followed him without investigating the food further. It sat beside him and observed as he spoke. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I know there’s enough chaos going on out there.”
The cat gave no response.
“This is the first time I’ve talked to anyone in a long time. I can’t even remember the last real conversation I had before all this.” He reached out his palm, which the cat sniffed briefly before extending its chin to be scratched. “I had to kill my own parents,” he admitted for the first time, a silent tear rolling down his cheek. “It was them or me.”
The cat stopped reveling in his touch for a moment to lock eyes with him. Patrick found the silent look reassuring, and immediately after, the cat crawled into his lap and began to purr and knead his stomach. Patrick smiled and pushed his body away from the wall so he could lie down flat. The cat made its way to the boy’s chest and continued to knead and purr loudly as Patrick told his stories.
“I found a vial in my house the day this happened,” he said, spilling the first of every story he’d wanted to tell since everyone he’d ever known moved on. “It had these strange black spikes coming off each end, like some evil-looking stand…”
The cat eventually curled up and fell asleep on Patrick’s chest. He continued to talk softly to his new companion, who purred eagerly, reassuring the boy that his stories were well received.
The two lay that way until night fell, and they both slipped into a shared and much needed sound sleep.
9
The next morning Patrick awoke stiffly curled into a ball on the hard floor of his den. The cat was nowhere to be found, and when he stood up to investigate, he
noticed the cornmeal on the floor had been eaten in the night. He smiled and called, “Where have you gone?”
The cat trotted gaily around the corner out of the back rooms and meowed in greeting. It extended its head to be scratched before hurrying to the door and standing expectantly.
“Oh,” Patrick said, more crestfallen than he would have dared to imagine he could have been yesterday, “you want to go?”
The cat stared patiently, waiting for Patrick to move the furniture blocking the door and let it on its way.
Resigned, Patrick walked to the window to check the street, secretly hoping there would be someone out there so he could justify trapping his new friend inside with him for the day. There was no one in sight, so the boy bent and offered his palm to the cat. “You won’t stay? I promise not to talk so much…”
The cat twirled and pushed every inch of its spine against the boy’s hand then looked back at the door and meowed.
“So it’s eat and retreat, I see.” He waited a moment longer in hopes that the creature would change its mind and walk over to lie down in the corner, but when no such thing happened, he stood and reluctantly removed the barricade, opened the door, and pushed aside the table. The thin black cat squeezed through and trotted off behind the house without a backward glance.
Patrick spent the remainder of the day brooding and worrying over his lack of food. Twice he sat in silence and ate small portions of the bland cornmeal that had lost all its flavor after repeated ingestion. Part of him was angry at the selfish feline for using him so blatantly and uncaringly, but another part was glad to have spent at least one night in the company of another creature that wasn’t badly tainted. He longed greedily for more company, but he was glad he’d opened his door to the cat all the same.
