by Burgy, P. J.
“Where did you go just now?” she asked him.
“Out,” he replied.
“Okay,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”
He shrugged.
“How have you survived this long out here?”
Russell did not answer right away, and she felt that he might not at all. But then, he nodded a little and tilted his head. “I’m good at getting away. I’m fast. I know this city like the back of my hand. I know every alley, every street. I never let myself get backed into a corner. I always have an out. But, most of all, I’m smart. I don’t take risks.”
“You took a pretty big risk saving me tonight,” she stated.
“I went against my better judgment, yes,” he told her. “There were only two of them. If you’d been horded, you’d have been as good as dead. I wouldn’t have been able to pull you out of that.”
“Why did you save me?” she asked.
He did not reply.
She studied his gas mask. “You all alone out here?”
He nodded.
“Earlier, you asked me if I thought a fort would be safer.” She stared at his visor. “I hate forts. They’re death traps.”
“Ah.”
“You don’t care.” She smiled and then lied back down on her side. “I get it. Look, I’m going to try to sleep, I guess. I’ll leave you in the morning.”
“Leave the city?”
“Sure.”
“You’re a liar,” he muttered.
“And after tomorrow, I’m no longer your problem.”
“I’ll never understand. I just won’t,” he said.
She laughed a little, though she didn’t feel it in her heart. Her eyes closed and she tried to get comfortable on his saggy, crunchy couch. She tried to think about calming images, like the grasses swaying in the breeze and the sun rising in the east. She thought of Ash, and holding his hand, walking through Pleasant Tree and talking about their future, before he’d become Mayor, before he’d ruined it all by growing roots in that death trap. She thought of the open gate door, and the twisted bodies.
She slept.
The smell of his apartment hadn’t improved by the time she woke up, but she figured that she’d almost grown numb to the burning in her sinuses. She sat up and rifled through her bag, acutely aware of the fact that Russell was sitting on his bed and watching her.
“Did you sleep?” she asked him.
When he didn’t answer, Kara resigned herself to the loss and took a drink of water. She ate a ration in front of him, watching his visor. He waited silently for her to finish her meal while she chewed her food and stared at him, furrowing her brows as she tried to figure out his strange behavior. Standing up and swinging her backpack onto her shoulders, she saw him move to stand as well. He walked her to the door.
He followed her down to the big, heavy metal door to the street, not a word exchanged between the two along the way. Kara felt his gaze as he pushed open the door and held it for her, and in the light of the early morning she was able to get the faintest glimpse of his eyes behind the dark visor, just barely visible. He turned his head toward the outside world along the alley way, and nodded.
“From here, go right. Keep going down that way. When you see the trash can with the big blue circle on it, make a left. Go through the next two intersections. At the third, make a left. That’s the main drag. Keep going until you reach the car wall. I’m sure you can climb it. You’ll know your way back from there,” he said to her.
“Trash can with the big blue circle. Got it,” Kara smirked. She reached down to her hip and unclasped her mask from her belt. She placed it on her face, pulling the straps and fastening them under her ponytail.
“I know you aren’t going that way,” he said. “But you should.”
“Look, Russ.” She took a few steps away, standing in the alley. She placed her hands on her hips. “I appreciate what you did, I really do. You saved my life. But I came here for a reason. Good luck, and be safe. Don’t take any more risks, okay?”
“I certainly won’t,” he replied, “Didn’t seem to make a difference anyway.”
She smiled at him from behind her mask, though she realized that he would not have seen it. Instead, she offered him a weak wave and turned away in the opposite direction that he had suggested. She glanced back to see that he was watching her walk away. Making a left, she went down the next alley, heading back to the main drag to make a right.
The main street looked familiar when she reached it. She had seen these shops and stores the previous day, and Kara wondered how far she had been set back. When she saw the shop she’d hidden in the night before, it was both a relief and a concern. A relief, because she hadn’t lost too much ground, and a concern because the two Wailer corpses were gone. Two puddles of muck, dried on the splitting black top, were the only signs that the two had died there. That, and the stink. She pondered over the possibility that they’d been dragged away, confused as to why. She studied the damage to the store front, and shivered at the sight of the front door, nearly caved in.
Another hundred yards down the road, as she passed cars and overturned street lights, she heard something from ahead of her, and was overjoyed to see the black and tan, furry body galloping toward her. Trap had made it through the night and was making a beeline for her, tongue lolling and ears flopping. When he reached her, she dropped down and hugged him, rubbing his side, squeezing him close. His tail wagged furiously as he attempted to jump up and knock her over.
“Oh, you lucky little mutt,” she said, giving the sides of his jaw a rub. She gave him some water, shared some of her dried goose meat. The elation that she felt was overpowering and she took a few minutes to just pet his head. When she stood back up and started walking along the street again, Trap resumed trotting by her side.
Kara stared at the wreckage of a Red Brethren rover, peering into the opened hatch and looking at the smashed in roof. The side door had been ripped off the hinges and was about fifteen feet away. The rover was still on all fours, her tires flat, and she’d been torn to pieces from the outside. The intersection she’d found it on was oddly free of other cars, as if the road had been cleared for vehicles at one point.
Trap wouldn’t go near the rover, and she didn’t blame him. While whatever had happened here had played out some time ago, there was still some crusty black bile on the grill. She deduced that the Brethren had run over a few of the things before being swarmed and forced to stop on the side of the street. After that, it was over for them. The door had been pulled off and the Brethren had been pulled out. She continued on, leaving the rover behind.
Another hour in, she found a shoe in the road. It was a child’s shoe, the laces undone. There was no sign of weather damage; it hadn’t been rained on and it didn’t look filthy. Her brows furrowed as she thought. Trap didn’t seem to react when she held the shoe to his face. He tried to bite it, to pull it out of her hand, only to drop it when she wouldn’t play with him. She frowned behind her mask, wishing she’d made an effort to ask Russell if he’d have joined her. He wouldn’t have, but she should have asked. She eyed the little shoe. She left it where she had found it and continued on.
As the sky began to darken, Kara felt a chill run up her spine. The air was growing cooler as the day drifted by, and now that the sun was beginning to dip lower, she became aware of a damp breeze. She looked up, seeing the sky filled with heavy, gray clouds. It was going to rain. The warm sun had baked the earth, and now a storm was coming in, rumbling in the distance. She began to run, sprinting down the street with Trap at her side.
It began to drizzle and she dropped her speed to a walk along the street, looking for a place to hide for the night, little spots appearing on the road top as the rain fell. The rain drops were light, scattered. She felt them soaking into her hair, her bandanna moist. There was some light left in the day, a solid hour before she would begin to get anxious. The red paint on the side of a half collapsed bank to her right spelled out th
e word ‘SALVATION’, with an arrow pointed toward the road. Kara eyed it and then kept on her way, Trap sniffing at the ground nearby. The rusted old cars she passed were pushed up onto the crumbling sidewalk, clearing the road, and the grasses and heartier foliage had grown out of control in huge patches that Kara paused to look at.
She was excited when she saw wild raspberries. They were smaller, and she had to chew through the seeds, but it was a pleasant discovery and an excuse to take a few minutes to rest.
She slowed to a jog as she spotted the closed door on her right. The red brick building looked relatively intact too, a giant, square shaped monolith of windows and fire escapes. A huge apartment building, right at the corner of an intersection. While the fire escapes were beginning to fall apart, some hanging off of the structure, and many of the windows were broken or missing, the place looked secure enough. Kara made her way up the steps to the tall, metal door. There had been an overhang, long gone. It was difficult to pull the door open, Trap standing behind her on the landing with his head tilted. He wasn’t on edge. This place didn’t stink of the Wailers.
It took all of her strength to yank the door open, years of neglect causing it to stick tight. The musty smell of mold and rotting wood wafted out from the dark recesses of the first floor.
She took out her flashlight, opting for the red bulb first, and shined it around as she stood in the doorway. There was a wide, concrete flight of stairs leading up to a landing, turning right. The oak banister had stood the test of time, as had the stairs, despite the water damage on the vinyl tile floor of the lobby area. The tiles, once a checkerboard pattern, were broken and cracked as the foundation under them warped. Puddles of water shivered and glistened in the red light as trickles of rain from above leaked down through holes in the ceiling. She saw a sinkhole in the lobby floor. There was also a metal door to the right, to the apartments on the ground level.
She went in, Trap following after, and they began moving up the steps. She watched her footing on the wet stairs, and aimed the light up, searching around. At the next floor, the metal door led to a corridor, a line of apartment doors stretching from left to right. A few doors were open, but most of the ones that she could see were closed. Trap was still calm, panting next to her. More puddles on the floor, the carpet worn and the floor rotting and soft under her sneakers.
She made her way down the hall, looking for a closed door. She decided to go to the last apartment on the left, to guarantee a window facing the street. The apartment numbers were still legible on each door she passed. She did a quick check on the open doors, just to be safe, despite Trap trotting merrily along beside her. The open apartments were messy, left in a haphazard state.
She opened the door to the last apartment, glad to see that it was unlocked, and went inside. After Trap had joined her, she shut the door and searched each room. This was a one bedroom, one bathroom flat with a kitchen and a living room. The white light came on next, to give her a better sense of her surroundings. She saw a hole in the floor in the living room, and a hole in the ceiling in the kitchen, water dripping down from both and soaking the moldy rug. Gray, mottled birds had taken up residence in the bedroom and Kara shooed them out through the open window and grimaced at the collection of old nests and egg shells. The birds had left a mess all over the floor and bed covers. She wouldn’t have slept on the bed to begin with, seeing how decrepit it looked, covered in broken pieces of plaster and crooked on the broken bedframe. The dresser drawers had all been pulled out and emptied. Nothing in the closet either.
The paint was peeling away from the walls in every room and the kitchen yielded no rewards in the cabinets. The water damage to the vinyl floor was bad, the tiles warped and sticking up. The rain outside would eventually begin to drip down through the hole above her, and Kara stepped back into the living room, avoiding the hole in the floor. She could see down into the apartment below, and though the hole was just big enough to fall through, the flooring around it wasn’t unstable or threatening to cave. The rats in the apartment scattered as Trap found them and scurried off toward dens chewed and scraped into the walls near the floor. She took off her mask and scowled at the fat little tail that disappeared into a hole in the wall. Trap snapped at the rat den and then looked over to her, proud of himself.
She made her way to the window in the living room, the bottom pane present but the top broken and missing pieces. Bits of glass shimmered on the carpet under the window sill. When she closed the curtains, she noticed an old, dead wasp nest and used her machete to knock it outside, just in case it wasn’t as dead as it appeared. She didn’t dare sit on the spongy, dusty couch or the chewed up love seat. The rats had nests in there as well, judging by the cotton and foam bits strewn about the floor near the furniture. The flat screen TV was on the floor, having falling from where it was mounted to the wall when the fixtures came loose and the plaster broke apart.
It smelled funny, but it was tolerable. After the night she’d spent in Russell’s stinky apartment, with the smell of Wailer spread all over to mask his scent, she’d have spent a hundred nights curled up next to moldy wood and rat feces. She found the driest spot she could and laid down her blankets, her open backpack on the floor nearby. She had some water and ate some food, sharing a little of each with Trap. There was still plenty left in her bag, but she still felt the need to inventory her supplies. Without knowing how much longer she would be in the city, it was difficult to tell if she were in trouble or not. Right now though, she was good.
As the rain picked up outside, water began to pour down into the kitchen through the huge, gaping hole in the ceiling, some bigger leak somewhere else trickling down and reaching her apartment. She gathered it up, filtered it, and filled her bottles. Then, she stripped down, filtered more water, and used it to take a quick bath. Her hair felt stiff in spots that had been covered by the bandanna, her skin sticky and salty. She longed for soap, but knew that in a city of Wailers it was better to keep away from perfumes or strange smells. Instead, now that she had more time and cover, she rubbed her skin with the essential oils she’d brought along in her bag. It smelled of grass and earth, condensed into a thick liquid. While it didn’t make her feel any cleaner, it was better than the smell of sweat.
She washed her clothes in the water, hanging them on the backs of the kitchen chairs to dry. She wished she had done this earlier in the day, since with less than an hour before the sun went down she didn’t want to be caught in the buff when the Wailers came out. It was a risk she was willing to take for the simple fact that her clothing had become unbearable to wear.
Sitting on one of the chairs, she ran her thumb across the metal angel pin that her father had given to her, studying the design and the shape in what was left of the fading daylight. She imagined him at home in Blue Lagoon. She thought of Tengen and Gencho, and wondered if they were thinking of her. She thought of them on the road to the city, tracking her, and shook her head. Her father wouldn't have allowed that, and she knew it. Her brothers would have obeyed him, unlike her. They would be at home, worrying and angry, wondering if she were still alive. She sighed.
With the curtains in the living room closed, she checked on the other windows, made sure those curtains were closed as well, and then took up camp on the living room floor. As it grew darker and darker outside, the shadows swallowed up the apartment with them inside. She curled up on her side, looking at the last slivers of pale light that sneaked through the rips in the curtain. The storm has passed and the skies were clearing. Covering herself with one of her blankets, she began to drift off.
Kara woke to the sound of tires squealing, pulling her out a dream she could barely remember, the memory leaving a sadness lingering in the back of her mind. She sat up, looking toward the window. The moon must have been full and bright, because the light was shining in through the curtains.
Now, she could hear the sound of Wailers outside, screaming, and the roar of an engine. She knew that sound; it was a rover. She cou
ld see Trap in the faint light, sitting up at attention, floppy ears perked as high as they would go.
She stood up and threw on her clothes, finding that they were still slightly damp. It didn’t matter to her, not at the moment. The cool air that had been blowing in gave her a chill when she was dressed, her clothing stealing the heat right out of her skin. She tied her thick hair back, sliding her bandanna on, and fastened her belt. She had everything she needed; if she had to move, she wanted to be ready.
Patting Trap, Kara tilted her head when she heard the rover approaching, the shrieking of the Infected growing louder the closer the vehicle came. She went to the window, her heart skipping a beat.
She peeked through the curtains. The view was that of the side she’d entered from, right down to the ground and across to the buildings on the other side of the street. The intersection in front of her was completely visible, and she caught a bit of blurry motion on the next street over, at the corner. As soon as she’d tried to focus on the source of the motion, it was gone, and she stared instead at where it had been.
The moon was bright enough to make out the shape of the gothic, ancient temple on the corner, old and out of place in the city of glass and metal. The long, round windows were all missing, but she knew that it had been a church. She thought she saw a figure on a ledge, crouched like a gargoyle, but when she narrowed her eyes to focus it was gone.
Her mind had been playing tricks on her, the moonlight twisting the shadows in strange ways. What she knew to be real was the sound of the rover squealing and roaring somewhere nearby, and the Wailers that were probably swarming it. Any rover worth their salt knew to use their UV roof lights to drive off the hordes, but the things would still take chase at a distance.
She squinted, hearing the engine roaring louder and louder, the Wailers getting closer. And then, suddenly, she saw a light from the next street over, moving toward the intersection near the church. The light grew brighter, and in an instant, she found herself unable to breathe when the rover vehicle, flames erupting from its roof, careened into the church and crashed, knocking into the structure, bringing down beams of wood on top of stone rubble. The sound was so loud, it had to have carried for miles.