Two Alive

by Jonez, Jeremiah W.

  The old man’s words came from Miles’ lips like they were his own now. It was a creed, a discipline that the old man taught the boys to ensure they survived this world. Everybody dies, except us. Do whatever it takes to survive because everyone will die eventually, but the boys wouldn’t if they were smart and made smart decisions. Carrying a bleeding man through the woods with lurkers all about would get all three of them killed.

  The infected must’ve been close to keep popping up left and right. Even if there were only a few stragglers, it wasn’t worth the risk. Not to even mention how the old man strictly forbid them from getting too close to big groups. From their clothes and the weapons they had, Miles could assume their group was at least fifteen people or more. The fact they had a doctor made the numbers upwards of twenty or more. It was what the old man had taught him. Miles couldn’t learn much but he did learn and hold onto everything the old man taught. He’d be dead if he didn’t.

  Miles wiped the blade of his knife against Danny’s pants and pulled out his phone. “I can… I can make it quick though. Before a lurker or a runner finds you.”

  Danny closed his eyes and blinked away the tears as he nodded.

  Cheap Thrills by Sia started to play in Miles’ ears. Danny continued to whimper but as Miles knelt down next to him, he whispered again, “I’ll make it quick. I swear.”

  Elsewhere, in the woods, Antonio was getting closer to the screaming and saw that boy from earlier had caught his knee in a bear trap. The teeth of the snare were biting into the boy’s leg and blood was starting to gush from the punctures. The boy tried prying the trap open but the springs weren’t allowing it.

  Antonio laughed as he got closer, “Man. That shit got you. You done!”

  “Help me! Please!” The boy was screaming and pleading.

  “Yo, you getting’ hella loud bruh. You gon call hella lurkers here.” Antonio dropped down to a squat while he examined the boy’s predicament from afar.

  “You… you could’ve helped us back there! You coulda stopped them! You could have helped us!”

  “Man I don’t know you or them people that died. I didn’t have to help any of y’all.”

  “They were gonna kill us!”

  “Then you should have killed them first bruh. That one chick shot that dude, you shoulda shot that other dude and yo dad coulda shot the other one.”

  The trap snapped back closed and bit deeper into the boy’s knee after another failed attempt to open it. “Damn it! He wasn’t my dad! He was my friend! They all were! I didn’t want anyone to die!”

  “Well… people still ended up dead. That’s just how it be sometimes. Everybody dies except us.”

  Three lurkers stumbled out of the woods looking lost and disjointed. They were growling and slobbing, covered in wounds and scars from who knows what kind of trauma. Antonio stood up ready to take them on—three freaks weren’t anything he couldn’t handle—but then three more infected were emerging from the trees behind them.

  “Oh shit.” Antonio put his knife away and started to back up slowly.

  “Wait! You gotta help me!” The boy cried out.

  Antonio looked at the boy and the small group of slow moving monsters. They were moving very slowly and judging by the shape most of them were in, the lurkers must have been infected a long time ago. More than half of them had muscles that were starting to deteriorate and bones showing. Still, Antonio weighed his options and didn’t like his fighting chances with so many of them and how long it might take to open the trap.

  “You on your own man. You could probably make a run for it. Them traps ain’t that heavy and they ain’t movin’ that fast.” Antonio continued to back away.

  “What? No! You have to help me!” The boy was screaming and the monsters were moving towards the sound. When he saw this, he tried crawling to get away from them.

  “I don’t have to do anything. You’d be in the same shit if I wasn’t even out here… then what would you do.”

  Antonio turned and started to jog away with the boy cursing him as he left. Antonio didn’t look back. In fact, he had already forgotten about the boy. Whether he lived or died, wasn’t Antonio’s responsibility.

  ***

  Miles was sitting in the perch of the treehouse that he, the old man and Antonio built two years ago. Someone had already constructed the playhouse long before the world went to shit, but the old man had them add to it and reinforce it. It was a perfect hideaway. High in the trees, hidden behind branches and shrubbery, the treehouse had three medium-size rooms that provided plenty of space for the three of them. They used steel and aluminum sheets that they bolted around the house and covered the whole thing with mud and dirt to give it an earthy look and to better hide the structure. There was a ladder nailed into the tree used to scale the eighteen-foot sentinel, but the old man had them tear it down and instead used a pulley system to get up and down.

  Then a nest was built and used for a look out, where Miles was sitting now. He was watching the sun fade on the horizon and keeping watch over Antonio, who was cooking his deer over a spit, forty meters away.

  Miles rocked back and forth in his perch, with Kendrick Lamar’s Humble playing in his head. He liked the song but it was a nervous rocking that kept him moving in the tree as he watched the smoke wafting in the distance. He was hoping Antonio hurried up, especially after all the ruckus they had earlier. The old man never let them cook anything right next to the treehouse for fear of someone seeing the smoke and finding the place. But when Miles said he wasn’t going to wait with Antonio while he cooked his deer, he went up into the tree and chose to keep watch instead and had been uneasy since he got in his nest. Never separate if you can avoid it, the old man would say. Miles felt bad leaving Antonio, but also wasn’t going to wait for that deer to cook.

  A whistle came from below and Miles opened his eyes, unaware he had even closed them. When he looked down he saw Antonio there, holding what looked like a platter of cut meats. “Send down the elevator,” he called and Miles immediately shushed him.

  The small boy went to work, climbing back inside the house and unknotting the cord that kept the “elevator” pulled up and under the treehouse. Without his armor on, Miles was a skinny little guy with long limbs. He put on his gloves and lowered the swing down slowly until Antonio was able to get inside. Looking down through a small hole, Miles watched him climb aboard and started the difficult task of pulling his brother back up to the top.

  “You gotta pull too!” Miles called out as he fought with the rope and pulled with all his might. The lift was raising two feet at a time.

  Antonio laughed, “You got it Miles! Strong arm that shit! Ha haah!”

  “You gotta help! C’moooonn!” Miles complained, struggling to grip the rope he was pulling. There was another rope in the cart with Antonio but he was holding his platter and not helping to lift himself up. “You too heavy!” Miles said.

  Antonio continued that annoying, obnoxious laugh that Miles felt was too loud and boisterous. “Aite, aite. Did you even untie the counterweight?”

  Miles paused and looked behind him at the rope to a large boulder hanging on the opposite side of the treehouse. He always forgot to free up that rope which helped with pulling up the carriage and made it almost effortless. He wrapped his cord around the hook and went to free the boulder. When it was loose, the rock fell and the elevator shot up almost all the way to the top when the giant stone hit the ground below. Antonio nearly lost his platter from the lifts sudden swift climb. He was close enough now to pull himself up and came climbing through the bottom opening to the main room of the treehouse. He sat his platter down on the front table and went to help his brother pull the lifts cord and tying it back up.

  Antonio continued laughing, “Man, you always forget--”

  Miles shushed him and put up his hand calling for quiet. The two brothers stood motionless as they started to hear the faint sounds of feet pounding the ground below. They carefully moved to the window
s and saw half a dozen infected runners, sprinting under the treehouse and moving quickly through the woods.

  “Damn!” Antonio whispered, “Hella strikers down there!”

  Strikers, sprinters, fiends. They were the type of infected that moved twice as fast as the average lurker that moved in slow motion almost like the movie zombies. Fiends were fast and if you weren’t faster, then you’d end up dead in a heartbeat. Especially if there was a hive of them.

  “Damn,” Antonio backed away from the window and went to the table to eat his deer meat.

  “You got lucky. If you messed around down there any longer they woulda got you,” Miles whispered, trying to keep his voice down.

  “Well, it’s a good thing I got back up here in time.” Antonio bit into a big chuck of meat.

  “And you was hella loud too.”

  “Well they didn’t get me, so it’s nothin’.”

  “It’s cuz you was cookin’ that deer. They probably smelled it and was comin’ to get you.”

  Antonio hit the table with his hand and let out a exaggerated big sigh, “Man, I’m in the house. I’m already here. They didn’t get me. They wasn’t gon get me. Even if they came after me while I was down there I woulda figured it out and got away.”

  Miles waited a few beats, “You shouldn’t have been cookin’ that deer in the first place. The old man woulda told you not to cook it.”

  “Oh my gooodddd! The old man ain’t here!”

  Miles went silent and started rocking back and forth and pulled out his phone. He started tapping it repeatedly with one hand and twiddling the fingers of his other hand. He was whispering something to himself and Antonio rolled his eyes before getting up to go calm Miles down.

  “Miles, it’s ok. Chill. Just chill.” Antonio took him by the shoulders and started rubbing him. “It’s coo bruh. Just chill.”

  Miles started to slow down his breathing and he put his phone back in his pocket. When he was finally calm, he went to sit at the table and Antonio joined him and even offered him some of the meat.

  “It’s good though. And I ain’t started to change so it ain’t infected or nothin’.” Antonio held out the piece of meat on a fork. “And I left some of that shit out there too so them fiends probably went lookin’ for that.”

  Miles took the meat on the fork. “We’re running out of food.”

  “What we get from them people?”

  “Three assault rifles, four pistols, one clip each for a total of a hundred and twenty bullets. Three knifes, two pairs of pants, three pairs of shoes and boots. A belt, radio, and a map to their shelter.” Miles went through a recounting of all the items that they took from the people that they ran into. Besides a jar of pickles that the brothers greedily scarfed down, those people didn’t have any food on them.

  “You turned that radio off right?” Antonio took another bite of venison.

  “Yeah. We need more food.”

  “We got a deer right here. Eat up. This’ll last us for at least a week if we ration it right.”

  “Well you ain’t doin’ that. You eatin’ all of it.” Miles hung his head, “You didn’t even pray over it.”

  Antonio sucked his teeth and bowed his head for a moment. The old man had taught him better than that. When he was done, he looked up at Miles with a “you happy?” expression and went back to eating.

  “We should go check out those people shelter.” Miles said.

  “Nope.”

  “That man said they lived in a Costco. There might be… there might be a lot of food there.”

  “Don’t matter. We ain’t goin’. The old man wouldn’t and you know that.”

  Miles lifted his head. “But we need food. And he’d say we should at least go check it out. We don’t have to get too close. We just gotta check it out. Maybe we can figure out a way to get in and out.”

  “Don’t take stupid chances,” Antonio said, repeating something the old man would often say.

  Miles hung his head again, “But… but it’s so close. The man said it was close. If it’s, if it’s… if it’s so close we have to go check it out. Know your surroundings.” Miles quoted the old man back to his brother, who let out a disgruntled moan.

  “Aite, aite. Damn. You wasn’t gon let it go either.” Antonio bit into another chunk of meat, “You right though. We should go check it out.”

  Miles looked at the piece of meat in his hands and against his better judgement and what the old man would say, he took a bite of the venison. It was good. As the evening turned to night and the brothers finished their meal, they went through their stock hold and counted the rations and the weapons. Antonio counted it twice like the old man said and Miles counted it three times because he was compelled to. He would no doubt go through everything a fourth time before he went to bed, just for good measure.

  The cans of beans, peas, corn and diced tomatoes, sliced carrots, green beans and spaghetti and meatballs were all on their last legs. Applesauce was still in abundance but it wouldn’t be enough for long. Food was scarce but their weapons cache seemed to be growing every day. Two shotguns, five automatic rifles, eight pistols, three long range rifles, a shitload of knives and blades and boxes of ammo with a few grenades they found. At least they’d be able to protect themselves while they starved to death.

  Miles went to Antonio’s room and pulled open the curtain that was his door. He regretted it when he caught Antonio masturbating by candlelight to a porno magazine. He threw a pillow at Miles while he tried to cover up.

  “Miles! What the fuck?!” Antonio shouted, pulling up his boxers.

  “I was gonna give you my phone to plug in.” Miles was holding out the device, grappling with whether he should go or stay, “I was, I was gonna give you my phone… and, and I was gonna… I was gonna go say goodnight to the old man before I went to bed.”

  Antonio sighed and went to get the phone from Miles. He was going to yell at him but decided against it, sending his brother away. He shook his head and looked down at the broken phone in his hand. It wasn’t just the cracked screen and the scratches all over it, the phone hadn’t been working for the past four years. But Miles swore up and down he still listened to his music on it. So every night Antonio plugged it into the charger hanging out of the useless outlet in his room and pretended to power up the device for the morning. He wasn’t lighting candles to set some kind of mood for his “personal time,” this treehouse had no electricity and neither did anywhere else for that matter.

  But if it helped Miles go to sleep, then Antonio would play along. Just like how he never went to sleep without saying goodnight to the old man. Antonio slid the sheet back over his doorway and went to blow out his candle before climbing back on top of his mattress, pulling the covers over him as he did.

  “Good night, old man.” Antonio whispered and then closed his eyes.

  Miles went across the front room and past the little couch where he slept most nights. He pulled the curtain open to the next room and entered the old man’s room. There was a small bed of mostly covers, blankets on a futon, with burnt-out candles on the windowsill. Stacks of books and paper maps were piled on the nightstand where the old man put his gun metal black watch that stopped working but he still always wore. The old man’s spare boots were resting on the floor haphazardly in the middle of the room but Miles stepped over them to sit on the old man’s empty bed.

  “We… we ran into some people today. But we didn’t fight them or anything. We just took their stuff after they finished fighting.” Miles spoke softly, lowering his head and rocking back and forth. “We got a map and we were gonna go see their hideout. Is that ok?”

  Silence was the only response in the small empty room, still filled with all the old man’s things.

  “We’ll be careful. I promise. Cross my heart.” The boy did the gesture for good measure. “Ok…ok. Goodnight Johnathan.” Miles stood up and went to the doorway and looked back at the empty bed. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry you died,” the boy whisp
ered and closed the curtain.

  ***

  At the break of dawn, Miles was sitting in his perch watching the sun break through the trees. Antonio always managed to stay sleep through most nights, but Miles never slept any longer than three of four hours at a time. It sometimes left him groggy in the earlier days, but now he was just used to not sleeping that much. When you weren’t sure the next time you closed your eyes they’d be the last, it made it difficult to get a good night’s sleep.

  Not for Antonio though, who came strutting out of his room with a big yawn and stretch as he walked around in his boxer shorts. “Damn, I’m hungry.”

  Miles looked inside and saw his brother, scratching his junk and making his way to the wooden cabinets over the not-working sink. Antonio was tall and lean, covered in ripped muscles he had built through survival. Miles still remembered a flabby Antonio when they went to school together before all of this. Miles gained some muscle definition as well but never was able to put on much weight with it. He wasn’t as comfortable as Antonio, who walked around half naked each morning, flaunting his newfound physique. Nevertheless, Miles was proud of his personal growth. The old man use to tell both of them they were doing a good job of staying in shape. It was necessary in this new world. Then he would tell Antonio to put on some damn clothes.

  When Antonio went to the table and took the half can of applesauce that Miles left for him, he also took another can from the cabinet and popped it open.

  “What are you doin’?” Miles called from his roost.

  Antonio took a spoonful of applesauce to the face, using the same spoon as his younger brother. “Huh? What’s up?”

  “You can’t have a whole can of applesauce.”

  Antonio’s expression was half drowsy, half confused. “What?”

  “You can’t have a whole can. I left you half. I left you half cuz you can’t have a whole can. You gotta have half.”

  “The old man would eat a whole can all the time.”

  “And we ate half.”

  “Well, I’ma eat a whole one.” Antonio slid the half full can across the table, “You can have the rest of that one. We can both have a full can.”