Human Element

by AJ Powers

  The chair squeaked and groaned as Aaran leaned back, placing his hands behind his head. “Actually, feeling pretty okay, too.”

  “Good…”

  Aaran thought for sure she was about to slip out of consciousness when her eyes slowly opened. It seemed she was in a grueling staring contest with the drop ceiling above as she woke up. She scooted back and pushed herself up so that her back was leaning against the arm of the couch. “Hey, look, I just sorry, erm, wanted to say sorry for everything back at the store...I just—”

  “There’s no need to apologize, Hadas.”

  She shrugged, still fighting off the embarrassment that someone had witnessed her in such a weak and exposed state. Though, she felt somewhat comforted by the fact that if someone was going to witness it, that it had been Aaran. “I-I-I think I’ve just been in such a ‘do or die’ mentality since everything happened, I guess I’ve never really mourned over my parents’ deaths.” Hadas’s eyes glistened in the soft glow of the LED lantern sitting on the desk, but she did not cry. Her words came slowly as she worked through her drunkenness, but she clearly knew what she wanted to say. “I dunno, Aaran. I guess…I guess it not only made me realize that they aren’t coming back, but it made me wonder why the hell we should carry on like this. What the hell is the point of living life like this, ya know?”

  Hadas wanted answers to the same questions that went through Aaran’s head at least ten times a day. Just “surviving” was the cop-out answer he always pitched to himself—somedays, he bought into it, other days, not so much—but as he tried to think of a better reply, he asked himself, Is ‘just surviving’ really surviving? Of course, physically speaking, the answer to the question was yes, but life was so much more than the physical realm. For the past several months, Aaran had felt like his life had no purpose. Running, hiding, and scavenging did not strike him as a true calling in life, yet that’s all he had been doing over the last year. It was his full-time job, and frankly, one that he was ready to retire from. Though admittedly, the endeavor was slightly more fulfilling with someone by his side.

  Hearing her questions, though, brought a little relief to Aaran’s weary soul. It was nice to know that beneath the thick skin and superhuman levels of sarcasm, Hadas was just a scared, now-orphaned individual like him. Someone wanting to throw in the towel, yet finding enough motivation to wake up and carry on every day. It was comforting to know that he wasn’t alone, that someone else was walking through the same fire as him. And if for no other reason, that gave him some added motivation to fight another day, even when he wasn’t feeling it.

  “I wish I had a good answer to that, but I don’t,” Aaran replied. “It’s a question I ask myself all the time, but I am no closer to finding the answer than I was the first time the thought went through my head.” Foolishly or wisely, Aaran stole another sip of the vodka, making a funny face before continuing. “But despite never having a real answer to the question, I remind myself of one very important fact that has kept me going all this time… Because I’m here.”

  Hadas nodded her head. “Yeah. I’ve thought that, too.”

  “The way I see it, if my story was finished—if our stories were finished—we wouldn’t be here anymore. We’d either be dead or one of them. So, I may not know why, but I do know that despite some pretty close calls, especially ever since I met you,” he added with a grin, “I’ve made it this far, and there’s got to be a reason for that. So as long as I am breathing, I have a reason to fight.”

  Hadas closed her eyes and pressed back into the couch. “Thanks, Aaran. I needed to hear that today.” She lay silently for a moment before adding, “And, uhm, I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner, but thanks for having my back at the trailer park. I owe you one.”

  “Anytime, Hadas. Whether you like it or not, I think we might be a team now,” Aaran said with a chuckle.

  “Well…I must confess, and this might just be the alcohol talking, but I’m actually…” Her voice trailed off as her eyelids got too heavy to support. Her head fell slightly off to the side, toward the back of the couch, and she let out a sluggish sigh. And like that, she was out cold, leaving Aaran with a “to be continued”.

  “Not cool,” he grumbled under his breath.

  Chapter 20

  “Well, this place is a real hole,” Hadas said derisively as she took in her surroundings.

  They were standing in the middle of an intersection on Main Street on the west side of Hamilton. Though everywhere they went was a ghost town, Hamilton seemed to display an extraordinary amount of “For Lease” signs on buildings that should have been condemned decades ago. Of the sixteen storefronts in the strip mall off to their right, only four appeared to have been open at the time of the takeover—and one of them was the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Hadas wasn’t wrong—it wasn’t the best area—but having lived the first thirteen years of his life there, Aaran was obliged to come to the town’s defense.

  “Hey, it’s not all bad.”

  She gave him a look of incredulity.

  “Seriously. When I lived here, it was a bit more...”

  “Not dilapidated?” Hadas finished his thought.

  Aaran chuckled. “Yeah, it was definitely less dilapidated.”

  A gust of wind came in from the east and blew the light dusting of snow that had been accumulating over the past half hour. It was a little early for snowfall, but Aaran remembered trick-or-treating on his birthday in the snow a time or two. So having some flurries a few weeks before Thanksgiving wasn’t terribly unheard of for the area.

  “So, how much further to your friend’s place?” Hadas asked, bouncing on her toes to combat the icy breeze blowing across them.

  “It’s a bit of a hike still, but…” Aaran turned his hand over and looked at his watch, “as long as we don’t dilly-dally for too long, we should be able to get there before nightfall.”

  “Well, I’ve got some dallying to do in that dollar store over there,” she said and pointed to one of the only signs left in the strip mall. “My phone has been acting a bit schizo since its tumble down the stairs, so I want to see if maybe we’ll get lucky finding a backup in there.”

  “That’s fine with me, so long as we stop in the shoe store on the other end. Otherwise, I won’t be able to walk much longer.”

  “Deal,” Hadas said, giving a simple nod.

  Stopping at the dollar store first, Aaran covered Hadas as she opened the door and stepped inside. Aaran doubted that a place as rundown as this strip mall was connected to the Nebula, but even if it was, the lack of Sentinel presence after their lengthy—and noisy—stay at Frontier Freddy’s put a few holes in Aaran’s theory that the Nebula was actively monitoring every single system connected to it. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that it couldn’t access security cameras and other devices if it were so inclined, but without a valid reason, it wouldn’t waste the processor and memory usage to view and analyze each and every camera—or at least, that was Aaran’s revised theory on the matter, anyway.

  He walked inside just behind Hadas, and shuddered when he stepped out of the frigid temperatures. It wasn’t much warmer in the dark, decrepit, thrift store, but at least he was no longer being attacked by the wind. Aaran gave his feet a couple of stomps, knocking off the loose snow that had clung to his boots, as if tracking snow all around the store would produce dirty looks from management.

  Hadas walked over to some light switches next to a manager’s office. Nothing. All the more reason not to worry about a channel-surfing AI stumbling across their location by happenstance. She turned on her flashlight and began exploring the store, antique shopping for smart phones. Aaran walked around the large Christmas displays at the front of the store and moseyed around with no real objective in mind.

  His first stop was the small grocery section in the back-left corner of the store. Having topped off his food stores yesterday with his dried meat supplies, he didn’t find much reason to stick around the section for very long. He swiped a ja
r of glazed pecans and headed over to the health and beauty aisles. He went straight for the pain meds and grabbed a couple of bottles of ibuprofen. He immediately cracked one open and downed a few capsules with some water. More than his throbbing feet, Aaran was still shaking off the slight hangover from the vodka last night.

  After pulling some bandages and gauze off the shelf, Aaran walked to the other side of the aisle and found some heat wraps. He really didn’t have the room in his pack for them, but he took them anyway. With as sore as his muscles had been the past few days and as cold as it was getting outside, he was confident they would be put to good use before long.

  As he strolled down the aisle, Aaran spotted the holy grail of the day. His eyes welled up with joy when he saw BLISTER CREAM written in bright, blue letters across a foil package. At eight dollars a pack inside a dollar store, he assumed it had to be effective and was already dreaming about the relief it, along with a fresh pair of boots, would bring him.

  Having no more room for anything else, Aaran decided to join Hadas. He spotted her flashlight skimming across a wall on the opposite side of the store and headed her way.

  “Have any luck?” he asked when he came up behind her.

  She sighed and shook her head. “No. Of course not. Not even six months before those jerkweeds took over the world, you couldn’t walk into a store like this without seeing a thousand phones crammed into one of these bargain bins,” she said as she kicked the wire shelf in front of her. “Since then, I’ve not found a single, freakin’ one. You’d think I would at least find one in an old house, but I still haven’t. Have you?”

  Aaran shrugged. “Honestly, couldn’t tell ya. They were never on my list of must-haves. I’d always found them just slightly above worthless beforehand. I just assumed they were more than worthless now. That is, until you showed me what they can do.”

  Another frustrated sigh escaped her lips and she ran her fingers through her hair. “Well, I need to find another one soon, because this one…” her voice trailed off as she looked down at the phone she’d just pulled out of her pocket. She tapped the display button several times before pressing and holding the power button down. A second later, the screen exploded white and the intro animation played. “See? This stupid thing keeps shutting off, and as you can see,” she said, pointing to the battery icon on the top right, “it’s got more than half the battery left.” She shoved it back into her jacket pocket with an extra oomph of authority. “Stupid piece of crap!”

  “Well, if we’re going to have any luck finding technological relics, we’ve come to the right town.”

  Hadas’s shoulders lowered slightly and her pissed-off expression momentarily faded. She chuckled and smiled. “Yeah, I think you’re right about that.”

  “Seriously. I bet the first house we walk into, we’ll find a desk drawer full of these things.”

  Her chuckles evolved into laughter, and the two of them had a much-needed, lighthearted moment while they perused the rest of the store. They slowly made their way to the front, ensuring that they weren’t about to leave something valuable behind.

  Hadas opened the door and started to walk out when Aaran stopped her and furrowed his brow. “Hey! Ladies first, remember?” He showed her a teasing smile and started to walk through.

  Hadas laughed again and slugged him on the shoulder, giving him a push back inside.

  “Ow!” Aaran feigned as he rubbed his shoulder before reaching over her head to hold the door open.

  “Awww, such a gentleman,” she said as she grabbed the handle of her Tavor.

  As they left the dollar store behind and headed to the shoe store, Aaran’s longing for a pair of new hiking boots grew with each step. He could almost imagine the sheer comfort he was about to experience as they walked to the other end of the shopping center to fetch his boots.

  It took them longer to walk down to the store than for Aaran to find a new pair of boots he liked. He wasn’t concerned with how they looked, and no damns were given about the price tag tied to the laces. He just needed something that fit right and actually had some arch support. He tried them out in the store for a few minutes, stomping and stamping his feet in every possible way to see how they held up. They were a momentous success.

  With a grin of relief, Aaran sat down on a bench and removed his upgraded boots so he could slather his feet with the blister ointment he’d gotten at the dollar store. The relief was immediate, but not quite as significant as he had hoped for. But now that he had some new shoes, the blisters would heal eventually—provided they stop moving long enough for his feet to rest.

  Aaran grabbed a pair of tube socks he had lifted from one of the racks at the back of the store and put them on before lacing up his shoes. He was just finishing a double knot when he heard heels clicking off the store’s vinyl flooring. He looked up just as Hadas came around the aisle.

  “So, what’d’ya think? Ready to take me out for a night on the town?”

  Aaran’s jaw hung slack as Hadas stood just in front of him sporting a pair of black, high heeled leather boots that went up past her knees. She stood there with one hand on her hip and the other in her hair, making her best effort to accentuate every possible curve her body had to offer. She made a kissy face toward Aaran before licking her lips.

  “Uhm, well, uh…I uh…” Aaran couldn’t string together a coherent thought.

  Then, like a fire hose of rejection being unleashed, Hadas laughed and shook her head. “Oh, I bet you would,” she said as she turned to walk away, an extra bit of sway in her hips.

  Aaran snapped out of his trance and leapt up from the bench he’d been sitting on. In an attempt to save face, he shouted after her, “What? Pfft, whatever, Hadas. Like I told you before—”

  “I know, I know, I’m not your type. And the drool on your chin is totally convincing, too.”

  “What? I’m serious. You’re cute and all, but I’m more into—”

  Aaran wasn’t sure how he was going to finish his sentence, but he didn’t have to. The rumble of an engine chased his thoughts away. He stood frozen, intently listening to confirm that he had heard what he thought he had. Perhaps he’d just imagined it. But when he noticed that Hadas also stood frozen, concern written across her face, he knew the sound was real.

  Hadas fiddled with the ear bud before she angrily shook her head. She pulled the phone out of her pocket and pressed the power button again. “Damn it!” she said through gritted teeth while the phone’s intro once again danced around the screen.

  The engine was close and getting closer by the second. Moments later, they saw it slowly turning into the parking lot, headed straight for them.

  “Hide!” Aaran yelled.

  Chapter 21

  “Over here!” Aaran exclaimed as he darted up the aisle to the stockroom door on the back wall. He pushed the door open and motioned Hadas inside. “Hurry up!” he added, frustrated with Hadas’s awkward movement in the leather boots she had teased him with.

  Aaran shuffled inside after Hadas and quickly latched the metal door just as the truck’s piercing reverse beeps kicked on. The entire doorknob assembly wobbled like a loose tooth when he engaged the handle lock. “Yeah, that’ll keep them out,” he said cynically.

  He turned around and was greeted by a maze of shelves illuminated by the sunlight coming in through the rows of windows running along the top of the back wall. Besides a manager’s desk, a minifridge, and a few metal filing cabinets, there was nothing else other than shelves of shoe boxes. Aaran looked at Hadas who already had one boot off and was tugging at the other when the sudden pressure change in the front of the store caused the metal door to rattle.

  “They’re inside,” Aaran said grimly.

  “There’s got to be a back door,” Hadas said before she took off running through the labyrinth of shelves in search of an escape.

  She swiftly navigated around tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes with only a pair of socks on. Even in the intense moment, A
aran couldn’t help but see the irony of it as he followed her. Seconds later, they approached a door at the far end of the store. The relief at the sight of the exit was short-lived when he heard Hadas quietly growling with frustration.

  “Oh, come on!” she hissed when she pressed down on the handlebar across the door, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  “Son of a bitch!” Aaran gritted out, his cutting words dripping with fear and anger.

  “What now?”

  With nothing but shelves and painted cinderblock walls surrounding them, they had no choice but to turn around. “This way,” Aaran said, heading back to the manager’s area next to the door they’d come in.

  Scuffled footsteps and crashing boxes could be heard on the other side of the wall as the puppets of the Nebula sifted through the store’s inventory. Aaran’s eyes flicked from side to side, praying that he had somehow overlooked the magical door to Narnia when they’d first walked inside, allowing them to escape to a world not quite as grim.

  No joy.

  Aaran’s eyes snapped to the jiggling handle on the door. “Oh, crap,” he whispered.

  Reflexively, Aaran and Hadas swung their guns up and aimed at the door. Waiting silently in a combat-ready stance, Aaran wrapped his finger around the trigger and squeezed until he felt resistance; he had a feeling that things were about to go kinetic.

  Silence. Suffocating, oppressive silence.

  With his cheek glued to the stock of his Scorpion, Aaran glanced over at Hadas. She was breathing nervously, her eye piercing through the middle of the ghost ring sight on her Israeli bullpup. Aaran turned his attention back to the red dot sights on his carbine, and as if seeing a few seconds into the future, his muscles tightened up as he braced for what was coming.