Destiny Nowhere

by Matthew Hollis Damon

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I say. The damn fool was going to get himself killed for some crazy honor debt. I feel sick. I want to tell him not to do this, but self-preservation overcomes self-righteousness, and I just cling to the hope that he can beat Doyle.

  Hasbro must’ve read my expression because he grins hugely. “I’m not gonna die. This motherfucker got another thing comin’.”

  He squeezes my shoulders one last time, smiles, and tells me not to worry.

  Which doesn’t stop me from worrying.

  Then Hasbro steps away, grabs hold of the nearest platform hanging out above the empty space, and begins to make his way toward the center.

  I look around for Charisse and see her nearby, leaning on a railing and watching Hasbro climb.

  Doyle stands at the edge of the rope course, taking it all in. If he’s intimidated by the height or the fight, he doesn’t show it. He looks like a general, studying the terrain for advantages. And when he steps onto the course, he does so confidently.

  Chapter 64: Now

  The tension in the mall is palpable as Doyle and Hasbro maneuver around the course. They stay on opposite sides, moving around, getting used to the ropes and walkways.

  It’s so quiet all you can hear are the ropes creaking, as if no one in the audience wants to be the one to break the silence. Or maybe the tension is as electric for each onlooker as it is for me.

  Even Mav stands on the top level, gripping the railing so stiffly that his stress is evident. His drink is nowhere in sight, and I see him chewing on his mustache, probably wondering what he will do if Hasbro wins. Mav catches me watching and gives me a nod, almost respectful, with no sign of hostility or mocking.

  I’d never thought to ask how Hasbro had become a lieutenant in this army, but it’s obvious Mav chooses his people carefully. He can’t exactly kill Hasbro without revealing what a scumbag he is and losing the loyalty and trust of his men. So he’s stuck.

  Doyle keeps trying to angle in at Hasbro from underneath. I’m not sure why Doyle wants the low ground, but he’s got something up his sleeve. And Hasbro at least senses it, because he keeps moving around and down to stay on Doyle’s level.

  I can still smell that motor oil in the air, like a mechanic smells. It distracts me, until I notice that it’s coming from my shirt. I sniff and then see the grime on my shoulders where Hasbro had grabbed me. I suddenly realize he must’ve oiled his body up. You couldn’t tell, looking at his dark skin. He’d wiped his hands off on me, when he gripped my shoulders, so they wouldn’t be slippery. Clever.

  After what seems like endless dodging and feinting and getting used to the course, they finally close in on each other, like some telepathic decision has been made.

  Hasbro moves along a rope webbing contraption, and Doyle shuffles across a metal balance beam, holding the rope leads above him. At five feet apart, they stop, neither one sure how to attack the other.

  Hasbro throws a kick in the air, with no chance of it connecting. Testing Doyle’s defenses. Doyle doesn’t flinch, knowing it’s out of range.

  Then, in a lightning fast motion, Hasbro reaches up and grabs a lead, swinging his entire weight toward Doyle in a Tarzan leap.

  His double-kick lunges right for Doyle, but Doyle steps nimbly out of range. After Hasbro reaches the apex of his swing, Doyle shoves Hasbro’s outstretched leg, sending him spinning off kilter in the air. Hasbro grabs the webbing to steady himself.

  A huge cheer echoes through the building as the tense silence is broken and the crowd goes wild and begins shouting. You almost expect a UFC announcer to start yammering about the moves and strategies of the combatants.

  Doyle lunges toward Hasbro, but quickly pulls back. Hasbro tenses like he hasn’t gotten his balance yet, and I know Doyle is just testing his reactions.

  Hasbro scurries off the webbing and onto a rafter, holding the top rope lead above him so he can come at Doyle from a different angle. Doyle evades, weaving away along the web, but as soon as Hasbro moves onto the web, Doyle changes direction like a killer spider and rushes forward in a straight shot down a plank. Grabbing an overhead beam with both hands, Doyle hoists his body and kicks Hasbro square in the chest with both feet.

  Hasbro’s body topples off the beam and into empty space, arms flailing. He drops in slow motion as my life flashes before my eyes. Charisse grabs my hand in a death grip where she’s materialized beside me at some point.

  Hasbro’s hand catches a rope on the lowest tier of the rope course, and he jerks to a halt, hanging forty feet above the ground. Doyle scurries toward him, like a hungry spider on a web, closing the forty feet of distance between them rapidly.

  Flailing about, Hasbro catches another rope with his free hand, pulling himself up just as Doyle advances. Hasbro tries scurrying back, but Doyle starts kicking him hard, in the stomach, legs, back, even a near miss to the face.

  Hasbro heaves himself up one level, and now he stands above Doyle. I remember Doyle angling for the low ground earlier, and realize this was a bad position. I want to call out to Hasbro, but I don’t want to distract him.

  Charisse holds my hand with her body pressing against mine, and she’s trembling against me. Mav might very well have her killed for this show of loyalty to me. I appreciate her risk and step behind her, wrapping my arms around her protectively.

  Doyle swings up and seizes Hasbro’s ankle, and he yanks with all his weight, trying to jerk it sideways. But his hand slips cleanly and unexpectedly off the grease on Hasbro’s body, causing Doyle to swing out of control, bashing against a metal pole as he hangs from one flimsy rope with his other arm.

  Hasbro lets go of the ropes, dropping straight down onto Doyle with both feet, using gravity and his weight to stomp onto Doyle’s head with a sickening thunk.

  As Doyle releases his hold on the rope, Hasbro’s falling body seizes the very same lead Doyle was holding, and he swings gracefully to a beam.

  Doyle’s body plummets like a rag doll through the air, unconscious or dead, until it whacks against the hard tile below. There’s no splash, and no blood at first, although it begins slowly leaking from somewhere as I stare at Doyle’s body, half-expecting him to stand up anyway.

  Hasbro looks at me and nods. I smile at him, nervously, wondering what now.

  Charisse squeezes my hands tighter, leaning her beautiful body into mine. “I hope he lets us go,” she whispers.

  All eyes in this atrium swing to Mav as a tense silence descends.

  The odd smirk on his face seems lopsided and out of place.

  I take my hands away from Charisse, and I begin clapping into the silence. I raise my hands toward Hasbro, clapping louder, and Charisse joins me.

  Another person takes up the clapping, and then another, until the arena surges with cheers and shouts and celebration.

  Hasbro manages a weary smile and throws his arms up to salute all of the onlookers, most of whom are standing on higher levels than he. Then he makes his way to the edge of the rope course and vaults over the fence to solid ground.

  Cheering and clapping follows him as he walks to the defunct escalators and climbs them.

  Mav motions for silence, and a hush falls. “Today, we will mourn the death of Captain Doyle Hunniker, but we will celebrate the triumph of love which we have just witnessed.”

  This doesn’t feel authentic. I smell a trap behind Mav’s fake gameshow façade, and it worries me.

  “Sam,” Mav continues, looking at me. “I want to congratulate you. I’m actually impressed with the fact that you fought long and tenaciously to get the girl, and that you won. My word is my bond, and I will send you on your way without further trouble. Even though you tried to kill me, I hope this will squash any bad blood between us and you will accept my blessing.”

  Cheers go up from the onlookers, but I know he’s just Richard Dawson in The Running Man, about to throw our corpses into the lake the first chance he gets. In truth, it’s possible he’s being honest. But have you ever h
ated someone so much that you just lose all perspective on them so much that everything they do or say pisses you off?

  Mav continues, “Lieutenant Middleton, I have a new opening for a captain in my army, and I’d like to offer you the position, after witnessing your fine prowess here today.”

  Hasbro waves to the crowd as they cheer again. He yells something, but his words are lost in the tumult, and he turns away from the crowd and makes his way straight to me, opening his arms wide. “Haahaaaa!” He laughs. “Oh man, that was some crazy shit, but we did it, man.”

  “You did it, Hasbro. I didn’t do shit.”

  “What I tell you, Sam? Dirty’s the only way to fight, and I mean dirty. That motherfucker slipped the fuck off me cuz I oiled my body up with gun oil. Haaaaaa!”

  I throw my arms around him and hug his smelly, oil-covered body in a bear hug, a deep laugh tearing from my gut. “I don’t have any words. I love you, man. Thank you.”

  “I honestly wasn’t sure I could beat him. But I’ll be damned if I was gonna let his punk ass toss you off the ropes!” Hasbro pulls Charisse into the hug. “And you, pretty little lady, you better take care of this man. He been through some kinda hell over you.”

  Charisse has tears in her eyes, and she kisses me firmly on the mouth, right there, nestled in Hasbro’s smelly, greasy body.

  Seena materializes out of the crowd. “Oh my God, Sam!” she squeals, yanking me away from Hasbro and Charisse and kissing my face profusely. “I can’t believe you made it. I prayed for you, and just never gave up hope that one day I would see you again.”

  “Oh Seena, I’m so glad you made it, too! I’m sorry about Ma’Sheea.”

  “That’s not your fault, Sam. You risked your life and ran into the middle of all those zombies to save us. Oh my God, I’m gonna cry.” She takes a deep breath and wipes tears from her eyes. “What you did is just so beautiful.”

  Charisse is looking at me with something akin to wonder. “You’re like some kind of legend,” she says. “And after all that shit talking you did about yourself. Was that just some act to get me into bed?” She smiles devilishly, and I’m high on all this love.

  The cheering in The Canyon has amplified so much now, and I know the soldiers are cheering for Charisse and I just as much as for Hasbro. I’m also not afraid of Mav anymore. He has no choice but to let us go.

  I look up at him, and he actually seems to be smiling for us. And it might even be sincere. It’s not like a cheeseball Mister Miyagi smile; more like a subtle Mona Lisa kinda smirk. But I wonder if he is actually touched by this love story, and forgives losing his Captain of the Guard.

  Hasbro tells me, “Don’t worry ‘bout Mav; he ain’t gonna do shit. I’ma take a detail of men I trust and get you two outta here to somewhere safe.”

  “He will try to hunt us down,” Charisse says.

  Hasbro shrugs. “He might. You gotta keep ya heads down. And go far. He ain’t gonna track you to Florida, which would be a good place to be right about now.”

  Epilogue:

  Hasbro took us out in a convoy with his most trusted men. Johnny was there, and I was so happy to see him again I hugged him. Hasbro had Johnny follow us in a reinforced conversion van which he was bequeathing from Mav to us as a wedding present. It had a bed and fridge in the back, plus more food, water, guns, and tools than we could need, and 80 gallons of gas.

  “You sure you wanna stay here?” I’d asked Hasbro in the SUV we were riding in.

  “Yeah, I’m still huntin’ around, tryin’ to find my family and my people. Now that we got Infinity USA Mall, we can start to rebuild this town. Mav’s crazy, but he kinda a genius for bein’ able to organize ay-one so well.”

  “I hate that guy,” I said. “He’s a total fucking creep. Can’t believe anyone follows some wimpy little yuppie tool like him.”

  Hasbro gave me a look. “Oh Sam, you talkin’ out yo’ ass now. Mav is a lot of things, but he ain’t weak. The last leader they had here who was protectin’ the mall was a big fuckin’ black guy, straight-up gangsta. Mav challenged him to a fight, threw him right off the rafters in less than a minute. I’m talkin’ some Bruce Lee jujitsu shit.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Hasbro shook his head. “Dude’s no joke. Aybody saw that and was like ‘oh fuck, this dude in charge now and nobody gonna fuck wit it.’”

  I shook my head, having a hard time believing this. In psychology, projection is when you make assumptions about someone else that have nothing to do with them and reveal something about yourself and your own subconscious.

  Obviously, I was projecting onto Mav. Maybe I was the douchey pervert weakling who liked to make cheesy gameshow host jokes and pause dramatically during my lectures, looking off into space to act self-important. Maybe I had been all image in my former life, trying to cover up the inadequacy I felt as a grown man who had no life, who’d never left my hometown, or my childhood.

  It had been an image I hated, an image of what I thought an adult was supposed to be. Somehow, it took all of this to make me grow up and become a man I could respect. None of that mattered now to me, because…

  Charisse had curled up against me in the backseat for the whole drive, and she couldn’t stop caressing my face, kissing me, and telling me how much she loved me. Which was a crazy 180 from the girl I’d first seen in Infinity Mall. It didn’t entirely make sense to me, but I guess it’s like Pretty Woman, except I’m not rich. Or good looking. And there’s a zombie apocalypse going on.

  “If y’all want some privacy here, just lemme know,” Hasbro said.

  I squirmed at the thought, and Charisse laughed. “I think we’ll wait,” she said. “We’ve got a bed in our van, and I’ve got all the time in the world to make it up to Sam.” She kissed me again and slid her hand into places she shouldn’t. I liked it, though, and I didn’t really care if Hasbro or the driver noticed what she was doing. Her smell, the feeling of her soft skin nuzzling my face, her hair. It was like a dream I’d always longed for and somehow I’d found it.

  We left the mall on Route 81 south, knowing Mav would expect us to head for warm weather. Then our convoy cut onto some side roads that Hasbro had his guys clear and headed through Mattydale, then around the city and back to 81 north. If Mav had sent anyone south to look for us, they’d be thrown off.

  “You’ll be safer taking country roads south, for obvious reasons. Find a safe, secluded spot a hundred miles from Syracuse, and hole up for winter. The south will be overrun and hard to reach. I packed you a chainsaw and some tree saws for firewood, as well as bar and chain oil and gas oil mix. You can’t put regular gas in a chainsaw, Sam; you gotta read the gas oil mix bottle carefully. I wrote this shit all down for you.”

  Charisse was kissing me and making it difficult to listen to Hasbro’s words. “I can’t wait to have you all to myself,” she whispered. “I’m going to kiss every inch of your body.”

  “What you really gotta look out for is bandits,” Hasbro cautioned. “There haven’t been too many zombies around lately. Been finding their corpses a lot, so either someone’s killing them, or they die out on their own. Probably good not to use the chainsaw unless you really need it, because bad people and zombies will hear dat shit from miles away.”

  His words stabbed me somewhere deep, and shook me free of Charisse’s spell. “What’d you say?”

  He laughed. “Don’t use the chainsaw, unless you really need it.”

  “No, before that. You said there’s been a lot of dead zombies?” I asked.

  “Yeah. More dead ones than live ones. I think the survivors must be killing most of them off, except most of them don’t have fatal wounds so it’s weird.”

  “This is bad,” I said. “This is very bad.” Army Dave’s story about the Army Ranger rebounded back into my mind. It couldn’t be the survivors killing them off. This city has a population of 650,000. No way did a few thousand survivors kill all of them with no wounds.

  “What’s bad?” Hasbro sai
d.

  “What’s the date today?” I said.

  “November 22nd,” Hasbro said, confused. “What’s it matter?”

  “Tomorrow’s the day.”

  “Would you quit speaking in riddles, Sam? Tomorrow’s what day?”

  I told him the story about the Army Ranger, and then I told him what Officer MacDougal said, about some kind of national disaster alert two weeks before the Shit Went Down. I told him, “If Army trucks come rolling in tomorrow, then it actually means he’s right.”

  “And the US government is responsible for this whole thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh shit. That’s some big shit, right there.”

  Even Charisse had stopped kissing me and was listening.

  The rest of the ride was somber. Hasbro and Naquan the driver talked about how likely or not likely it was the government would do this.

  “I mean, I know they do shit like this,” he said, turning around. “But not shit LIKE THIS! Feel me? This is the most massive genocide in the history of the planet.”

  “Listen, we gotta tell everyone when we get back to Infinity,” Naquan said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “It can’t be true,” Charisse said.

  In the end, our only consensus is that we would know tomorrow.

  Hasbro and Johnny and the other soldiers finally left us at an abandoned truck stop off the Mexico exit and told us to head west on Route 104, and then cut south on country Route 14.

  “I will never forget you,” I told him warmly, hugging him.

  “Sam, you are my brother and I will never forget you so long as I live. I love you, man.” He puts one hand around the back of my head and pulls my forehead against his, our eyes inches apart, looking me straight in the eye. “Thank you for what you did, for Seena, for Ma’Sheea, and all the others you saved. I’m proud to know a man like you. I hope we meet again.”