The Mule had moved an iron barrel with a large, square hole cut in one side to the center of the room, and lit a fire inside it. It made the room feel luxuriously warm after coming in from the cold outside. The light coming through the high windows at each end of the peaked roof combined with the flickering light of the fire to create a shifting illumination that was enough to see by, but seemed dim after the brightness of the sun on the snow.
When she entered, the Mule was sawing through a large log that he had up on two sawhorses, cutting it down to a manageable length for splitting and adding to his pile of firewood. He must not have heard her enter over the rasping rhythm of the saw, though she found it hard to believe that he didn’t see the change in the light as she opened and closed the door. Nevertheless, he continued at his work, turned three-quarters of the way away from her.
Stopping briefly behind him, she was startled by the change in the pudgy boy she had met in the carpet warehouse several weeks ago. She noticed that his waist was more slender, and his shoulders seemed broader. The protruding belly was gone, now descending with only a mild bulge before it hit the waistband of his jeans. The heavy pack he had been carrying combined with the way he had been pushing himself recently had brought about a physical change that she would not have thought possible.
He wasn’t skinny, and his muscles weren’t defined—they never would be. He was built heavy. But she could see the muscles in his forearms ripple as he pulled at the saw, and could see them sliding under his thick skin as he pushed it back for the next stroke. He had always been large and tall, but he was no longer soft. Now he was built more like an offensive lineman—a creature of strength and sudden power, blasting through wood that would have taken other men several more strokes to part.
These thoughts unsettled her—not that he was changing, but that she had noticed. She frowned, turning to go. Just then he finished his cut and the newly shorn section of log dropped to the floor. Bending to pick it up, he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and stood, turning to her.
“What’s up?” he asked. She noticed the way he casually hefted the section of log and set it on a nearby stump, ready for splitting, as if it didn’t weigh anything.
She was flustered, bothered by noticing these things. This was not what she wanted.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Never mind.” She turned and walked away, back into the bright sun of the outdoors. Behind her she heard the axe thump into the wood with a solid crunch, and heard the newly split log rattle as its fell to the floor in separate pieces. She could imagine him looking after her, his broad shoulders shrugging in confusion at her abrupt departure, and the picture made her frown even deeper. This was not something she had time for.
From the diary of the Mule:
This waiting around is worse than the chaos right after the Fall, or the days of walking and hiding after we all first got together. Now it’s just sitting, alone with our thoughts. I wouldn’t be surprised if we all go mad and kill each other, leaving a bloody mess for some other survivor to stumble across when spring finally comes.
Each of us has found our own thing to do, some more useful than others. Bait obsesses over our food, for some reason, though I’m sure there’s enough there for months. Beast broods, sometimes coming out of his funk to tell us all how we should be out hunting down the monsters. It’s annoying, and most of us avoid him. The Professor just kind of sits and thinks in his room. It’s disturbing, really. If there were a betting pool, I’d pick him to be the one that loses his marbles first.
Coyote is the only one who hasn’t gravitated to just one thing. I see her exercising a lot, running up and down the hills outside when the weather is nice, or up and down the stairs inside when it isn’t—doing sit-ups, pushups, even hanging from the rafters doing pull-ups. I asked her once, why she worked out, now that we were safe. Her answer was “to be ready.” In its own psycho way, her answer made sense. The world is a terrible place, and our time here isn’t going to last forever. Eventually we’ll have to leave. Then all of us will need to be ready.
For myself, I first tried to make myself useful by boarding up the windows and doors, and making sure we’re safe. Then I sort of took charge of our firewood supply. We go through it pretty fast, so it’s a lot of work to keep ahead of it, and… Well that’s not the real reason. Don’t tell any of the asshole jocks I used to sneer at in high school, but I just like the physical activity. My pants are looser now, and my arms are bigger, I think. I feel like I can keep going a lot longer now than I could when we first arrived. Just a few months ago I would have done anything to avoid going outside and getting sweaty. Now, it just feels right.
Each day, I work as hard as I can, for as long as I can. I know we’ve got enough wood now, but it’s not as if there was something else I should be doing. I’m not just keeping up the wood supply. I’m training. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to be one of those gym-posers, working out while I stare at myself in the mirror just to see how big I can get. This is training for the way life is now. Life is running, fighting, and hiding, it seems like, interspersed with the occasional breaks for sleeping and scavenging food. And I intend to keep living.
It’s funny, really. Before the Fall I was kind of a loser. I didn’t do much, mostly sat around at home playing whichever video game I was into at the moment or fiddling around on my computer. I guess maybe I was depressed, looking back at myself now. I was just kind of existing.
Now, I don’t know. I almost feel guilty about it, but I’ve got to be honest (because, well, it’s a journal, right? No point in lying to myself.) I feel better now. Most of the people I know are dead. My parents, my house, my school, and my friends are pretty much all gone too. All the time I spent with video games and computers that I had hoped might develop into some sort of career for me one day—well it turns out that was about the biggest waste of time I can think of. But, still, I think I’m happier. I’d say I feel like I have a purpose, but working out by splitting firewood can’t really be looked at as a life-purpose, can it?
The words are hard to find. Now that so much of this world is dead, I feel like I’m coming alive[20].
Have I lost my mind? Have we all? Maybe. But like Coyote said, when the next thing comes, at least I’ll be ready.
6
For the rest of the winter, she kept to herself. She exercised, she made sure the dog got exercise, and she thought.
She knew the others would be looking to her for direction—when to leave, where to go when they left, and so on. She still did not want this responsibility, but she was resigned to it. She wondered how many other leaders had become what they were simply because no one else stepped forward.
And so what would her decision be? As the snow came less frequently, the drifts that had all but buried the first floor of the lodge began to melt, and bits of green began to be seen on the slopes most exposed to the sun, she felt the time for a decision looming closer.
Where to go was an easy choice, at least in a general sense. They had come from the west, leaving the destruction of Portland and its suburbs behind them. There was nothing for them back there. So, they would go east, for now, continuing to broaden their horizons. Perhaps things were different in other parts of the state, and she still had that “what’s over the next hill” feeling inside her, pushing her to move to new territory. After following the only road available down from the lodge, they would take highway 26 east, heading into central Oregon, and there they would see what they would see.
The bigger question was purpose. She was still stuck between the two poles she had been pondering when they arrived. Was their purpose to hide and survive, or to fight and most likely die? Of course, she had always believed that most of the group would die soon anyhow. Even hiding, they would run up against something nasty soon enough. So dying wasn’t really the sticking point. The question was, should one hide from death, lurking and avoiding it for as long as possible, or should one actively go out and seek death, cha
llenging it, to see if it could get you?
She knew she liked to fight, and she had most definitely never been one to hide. The choice should have been easy for her. Beast’s idea of hunting down the monsters was attractive, and fantasies of this occupied much of her waking thoughts.
But death was… death. It was the end of things. She wasn’t a religious person, and couldn’t comfort herself with the idea that as some monster finished swallowing her bones, her soul would be floating upward to an existence of perpetual bliss. To her, death just seemed like the end. A person ceased, and was no more. Nothing to look forward to there. And this end was coming for her. The only question was, how soon?
She was convinced, without doubt, that if she went out to seek the monsters loose in the world she would soon find one that she could not handle. She was realistic enough, too, to admit that even though she had never wanted the others to follow her, she wouldn’t have lived through the last few encounters if she had been on her own.
So these were the thoughts that occupied her that long winter. They chased each other in circles as she ate, exercised, slept, and ate again. And still, she did not find herself any nearer to a decision.
Inevitably, as seemed to be the way of the world, the decision was again taken from her. It all started with a fine, sunny morning, suddenly broken by horrible screaming.
She was in the kitchen area, sorting through the increasingly tiresome piles of dried food and picking out what she might eat that morning when she heard it. The yelling was muffled, distant, but full of a disturbing terror. It came from downstairs, maybe outside someplace. She ran from the kitchen with the dog at her heels. She saw Beast across the central room, rising from a couch.
“What the fuck?” he yelled, running towards her. She said nothing as she met him at the stairs, turning down and hearing him thundering down behind her. At the bottom of the stairs she saw Bait running out of a hallway that led to the common rooms on the other side of the lodge.
She looked her question at him, and he understood.
“No idea,” he yelled, “But it’s outside, sounds like out front!”
He was right. The screaming was coming from the front of the lodge, maybe somewhere just outside the front door. Here it was louder, and the terror in it was easier to discern. It was a man’s voice, but too muffled to recognize. Was it one of their group, or was it a stranger taking advantage of the improving weather to make his way up the mountain? As she got closer she could almost, but not quite, recognize the words that were being shouted. She could definitely recognize the fear behind the words. Whatever was happening, whoever it was happening to, they all knew they were going to see something terrible as soon as they stepped outside.
But to their credit, none of them hesitated. They all ran straight for the doors—even Bait, who she had had her doubts about since he fell from his place in the circle as they fought the sea-squirrels. As they ran, they prepared their hands by drawing the knives and other weapons that none of them had laid down through this long, peaceful winter. She drew her hunting knife from the sheath on one side of her belt, and unstrapped her hatchet from the other. Beast had his own hunting knife, a huge one, somewhere between a knife and a machete, and Bait had his machete. The dog, always armed, bared its teeth in a snarl.
Bursting out of the front doors of the lodge, they all paused or slowed for a moment at the sight that greeted them. There was a swarming horde of smallish, black creatures headed for the lodge. And the leaders of that swarm were climbing all over the Professor, who must have been caught outside when they arrived. Not taking the time to look more closely at what was coming after them, she sprinted toward the Professor.
He was stumbling in the direction of the lodge, but was soon tripped up by the creatures crawling up his legs, falling heavily to the ground where he struggled, unsuccessfully, to rise again. It was mere moments before she, Beast, Bait and the dog reached the Professor, but those moments seemed like long ones.
Running at him, she got a clear view of what was attacking him. They were thumpers, like the one they had killed in the Dairy Queen so long ago. Small, many-legged things with bristly shells and one silver-tipped, vicious-looking front leg that they used to stab their victims. Back in the Dairy Queen there had only been one, and the group had taken care of it easily enough. Now there were three or four that had caught up to the Professor and were attacking him, followed by a lot more.
She and the dog were the first to reach the Professor. She laid into the forms that were on the Professor, kicking one off of his back as the dog tore at another, busily pounding its weighted arm into the Professor’s knee. Soon Bait and Beast were there as well, and the Professor was free for the moment.
But their problems were not over. They had overcome the vanguard of the force, but the main body was catching up now. More and more thumpers scuttled up to the small group and took a leap at them, attacking without pause or plan. The group could deal with them well enough at the moment as there were only one or two reaching them to attack at a time, and they seemed fairly delicate, reduced to twitching heaps when struck by a hatchet or machete, and almost flying apart when the dog would take one in its jaws and give it a violent shake.
But more were coming, flowing at them, creating a black stain that moved across the ground like a sluggish stream. It was impossible to count how many there were—certainly over a hundred. Enough that the group would be easily overrun when the main body arrived.
“Inside,” she yelled, “Now!”
They all began to back away, preparing to run, but the Professor was barely able to drag himself to his feet, swaying and dizzily limping toward the lodge as he dragged one bloodily damaged leg behind him. He needed to move faster.
“Beast,” she said, pointing at the Professor. He understood immediately and rushed to the Professor, making him cry out as Beast roughly grabbed him and threw him over one shoulder, then headed to the lodge at a jog.
Burdened by the weight of another man, Beast’s pace was still quicker than the horde of thumpers. The rest of the group turned to run back to the lodge with him, but the leading thumpers, seeing their prey about to escape put on a burst of speed, making one or two quick jumps to catch up with their fleeing prey.
Each time a thumper got close enough to attack, one member of the group would be forced to turn and deal with it, lest it land on somebody’s back and start tearing into them. This slowed them all, making their retreat more of a fighting withdrawal. She could see that the group was now moving more slowly than the horde, and the attacks from thumpers that got close enough were becoming more frequent.
Then she heard running footsteps coming from her left, and turned to see the Mule running at them, swinging a large, double-bladed axe from one hand. With a yell, he charged across the front ranks of the horde, swinging the axe in circles and decimating the oncoming wave. Truly, this was something other than the soft, awkward teenager she had met many months ago. This was a creature of power and rage, and the leading edge of the horde broke on him like waves on a cliff. He took them by surprise and was quick enough that none of them were able to jump onto him as he passed, leaving a stream of wounded and damaged thumpers behind him.
He curved back away from the front of the horde, circling around to come at them again. This time, though, the creatures would not be surprised.
“Stop!” she yelled. “It was enough. Come inside.” The Mule’s charge had allowed the others to break off and gain some separation, so that they could all now run to the safety of the lodge. The Mule saw this and understood, turning to run with them.
They made it to the doors perhaps twenty feet ahead of the main horde. Beast continued inside with his burden and the Mule and Bait turned to shove the doors closed, making sure the latches clicked into place. She ran to pick up several pieces of lumber they had stashed next to the door for just this occasion, and handed them to the Mule and Bait as all three set the lumber against the doors, one end on the door handl
es and the other against the steps going up into the lobby, to brace them shut.
Finished, they all stepped back. Were they safe?
They could hear a scrabbling against the heavy wooden doors as the first of the thumpers arrived on the other side. Then, a sudden pounding buzz, that must have been one of the thumpers pounding on the door with its heavy, pointed arm. The first buzz was joined by others—first one, two, three, then enough that they no longer represented individual sounds, but joined into a buzzing cacophony, hugely loud in the closed-in front hall of the lodge.
The group looked at each other nervously, wondering how long the doors could hold up to such an assault. Not long, was the answer. In moments, they saw wood splinters start to fall from one small hole, two, and then several. As the holes increased in size, they could see the arms of the thumpers flashing back and forth, pounding into the door relentlessly as the wood splintered away. It wouldn’t be long before the doors fell apart entirely.
She turned from the doors, jogging up the stairs and into the lodge. Bait, the Mule, and the dog followed. In the lobby, she saw that Beast had laid the Professor out onto the same couch they had laid Bait on when they arrived last fall. He was in better shape than Bait had been, though, as he worked to sit up, eventually managing it with one hand on his head and one on his damaged leg. She could see blood running down that leg, but if he was up and groaning that was good enough. There were bigger things to think about.
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