The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story)

by Joseph Turkot

  After we get you fixed up. Just relax, breathe, okay? He says this while coming back to me and he puts his hand down with pressure on my wound. Voley’s okay, he says. Just his leg. Second time he’s taken one in the leg. Actually, that’s two for both of you now, right? There ought to be some kind of award for that. Surviving two slugs. You and Voley both. He says it a few more times, how great it is that we’ve come through it, but he overdoes it like he’s not convinced I’m going to live through this. I ask him if I’m going to die. He tells me no. I’ve had much worse, he says. And then I hear the footsteps, lumbering and loud. Poseidon himself with the cure.

  He sets down a first aid box and out spill a bunch of pill bottles and gauze and tape. Russell tells me the bullet went clean through me. He starts to put bandages in me and tells Ernest to get to work on Voley. Ernest asks if there are pliers because Voley’s wound has floaters inside the muscle. I listen to all this and stare up at Russell like he’s a ghost and that I’m imagining everything. Russell says he doesn’t know about any pliers, and we’ll have to take care of that later. Just plug it up. Stop the bleeding. There’s one more somewhere around here, he says. One more what? Ernest asks. Another face eater, Russell says.

  As he finishes fixing me up he starts to tell Ernest about the basements of the town. There’s a smell that brought me down there, he says. Oxidized oil. Leftover stores of fuel in the basements that started to open up on their own, seep out and no one knew about them. Kept the stove going that way.

  It hits me—I smelled it all along too. Smelled it when we first got into the apartment. Smelled it here. But we never saw a basement door. I want to ask him about it but he just keeps going on so I listen. He says he’s been out at night and counted four, none of them the woman. Where the hell is he then? asks Ernest. I don’t know, Russell replies. But gunfire here will probably draw him.

  All I want to do is get Russell’s story—What happened to you? I ask again. But Russell still doesn’t reply. He finishes putting gauze in me and walks off because he says there’s water nearby. And then I lean up on my elbows high enough to see Voley. He’s stopped whining, and his thigh is wrapped in gauze too. He tries to walk but can’t. He sits back down and looks at me like it’s a big pain in the ass to have more metal in him. But it’s worse this time. He can’t even walk. And my own pain comes back to me and I lie back down, not ready to try to stand up again. Then Russell storms back and tells me I have to get up and he’ll help. Stand up, he says. He extends both his hands and pulls me up. A lightning pain shoots through my side and to my head and fingers. Then it disappears, but a throbbing replaces it. I look down and see the red soaking through the bandages already. Drink, Russell says. He hands me some pills and then gives some to Ernest. I watch Ernest try to force Voley to take them but he won’t. Going to need something to put on these, Ernest says. Then he starts gathering up all the guns. Three pistols and the rifle. Russell tells us it’s time to get upstairs. I lean on him and as we start to walk and it becomes clear to me that Russell hasn’t survived by getting around quickly. He’s barely walking as he supports me and his bad leg. Ernest walks ahead of us and bends down and lifts Voley up, bundling him in his arms. At first Voley whines because his thigh is upset, but then he settles down. Russell tells them to stay close. I tell him I can walk on my own now I think, because I feel like I’m supporting him more than he is me. I ask him about his leg and he tells me it’s fine. I ask if he’s taking the pills, the ones he’s giving me and Voley. He doesn’t answer. I ask if the infection is back but I already know. It’s the same leg. Instead of staying on his leg he asks me about Dusty. At this Ernest stops and turns too. For a moment they’re both paused, waiting, wondering about their crewmate. I just shake my head a little bit and look down. I don’t have any words for them. Not yet. And then, without a sigh even, we keep going.

  We get to the stair case and go slowly up. Ernest puts Voley down at the top and comes back to help us both up. And then we just keep going. Like Russell knows this place and where to go so that we’ll survive, whatever the hell there is left to survive. Maybe it’s the gunshots, or the hunger, or the cold, or the last snow walker. Are you sure it wasn’t her? I ask. The other person you saw? Russell says he’s positive. It was an old man. Do you have no idea where he is? Ernest asks. Russell says no, and that it was two days ago he saw him. I’ve been ready to leave this place, Russell says. I’ve been waiting to. And sadness hits his voice. Leg wouldn’t let me, he admits. And I know he’s right. He wouldn’t have made it a mile. And we’d have found him like Clemmy. More likely never at all. And I put it out of my mind now anyway, because we’re alive.

  Russell tells us where food is. Dry food, he says. He disappears and Ernest stays by me and I think of the smell again, and how I can smell it now. The oil. I start to imagine that if I’d tracked it down, figured out that it was fuel down in the basement, that we wouldn’t have had to start a real fire. We could have relit the stove. Dusty and I would have been safe. No smoke. No one to come in after us. How could I have been so stupid? I smelled it and I never even said anything. Didn’t tell Dusty, or Ernest, or anyone. And I want to kill myself for a second because it seems like everything comes back to the smell, and the fuel, and that attack in the apartment. And that I could have prevented it all.

  Hey, says Ernest, as if he knows what I’m sinking into, and he wants to draw me out of it. We’re moving pretty fast. Think we’ll make it back to the Resilience by noon tomorrow? He says it and looks at me with a straight face. He holds his expression and doesn’t even crack a smile. And then it hits me, he’s alive. Russell is alive. And somehow, Voley and I are going to make it. We have to. I ignore the gunshots, and the infections that might come, and the last snow walker, and think of this enormous man in front of me. And then I laugh, so loud and long and he has to put his hand over my mouth. Hey, he says. It wasn’t supposed to be a joke. But then his serious face disappears and he laughs until he coughs. No more laughing, okay? he says after he’s done his fit, and then he takes his hand away from my mouth after I nod. He looks toward the door that leads to the way we came up, to the metal staircase and the first floor. One of the pistols finds its way into his hand and he starts to test the safety and then he releases the clip and studies it. We should have enough to deal with one guy, he says. And then, all at once, I realize that he’s been shot too, and hasn’t shown a single sign of it. Ernest, I say. You were shot too. He looks at me and his smile returns. It’s a good thing they wanted to know all about the real Leadville, he tells me and winks. He says they wanted to get as much out of him as possible so they kept him alive. Fed him the antibiotics. Even gave him pain pills. And then he lifts up his shirt and turns. On his side, almost like where I imagine my own gunshot is, he has a red disgusting mess of gauze. And then he tells me not to get any ideas because he’s been shot three times before, and this is his fourth, so he’s got me beat by two. And he says that the bullet is still in him, like it is in Voley, but that it takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose. I look at him puzzled, wondering what the hell he’s talking about. It’s an old expression, he tells me. Teddy Roosevelt. Do you know him? I tell him no, and then I ask if a bull moose is real. Sure is. Or was, he tells me. And then it lights up in my head that I’ve seen a fox. I tell him with so much enthusiasm that the lightning pain returns and Voley looks over, his eyes sleepy and glassed. You did? he says. Are you sure? I tell him I’m positive. And then he looks out to the far window, the only one in this room. Outside is the decaying white gloom of twilight. Who knows what else is out there then, he says. But you know what, I’d rather it be that way than the other way around, you know? All empty, with mountains as pretty and big as they are?

  The clap of returning footsteps, slow and long, tell us Russell is back. He’s dragging a small plastic bag. Then he sits down in front of us. We need to get one story higher, he says. Just in case the old man comes home. I want a view. And then, with a groan from every one of us, each
at a different volume and speed, we rise and start moving again. We pass through another room and climb another staircase, and then walk into a room that opens up with wide windows looking out at the cooling tower on one side and the white desert between the apartments and the nuke buildings on the other. A perfect view of everything. We’ll see him coming from here, Russell says. I’ll get the stove after we eat. I want you to tell me everything that happened, I ask for the third time. Eat, is all he says.

  I watch him dump out the contents of the plastic bag. What the hell is this? I ask. Dog food, he says. He runs his hand through my hair and smiles.

  Part 4

  Chapter 14

  I sit patiently watching Russell. The dry bitter taste of the dog food crumbles apart in my mouth and I roll my tongue over it, feeling each piece until it’s sand. I offer some to Voley and he takes it happily. I tell him there’s more where that came from and reach for another small pile of pebbles so that he can eat. He already devoured the first batch in a frenzy, and Ernest and Russell are doing the same to their own piles. As I reach for Voley’s new scoop, my side and my arm hurt at the same time, as if the new wound has reminded the old one that it’s still supposed to hurt. Russell sees me wince and says he’ll get it. Slowly he lurches forward and cuts with his hand another portion for Voley. Voley’s head goes right down to it, licking up the stale grains.

  There’s a lot more of this, Russell says. Two bags in the basement. I ask him what else there is, because as much as I like the dog food, I think maybe he lucked out—that maybe there are cupcakes or candies or some other processed-and-never-dead food that he’s holding back about. He tells me no, this is it. But there’s a whole lot of meat, he says. I look up from my hands, grasping a handful of the brown nuggets, and watch Russell’s eyes, waiting for him to explain. He doesn’t notice and continues to munch. I follow to Ernest’s face, and Ernest is watching Russell the same as me. So she lied? I finally ask. Lied about what? Russell asks. I tell him the red-haired lady’s story—that she and her family weren’t face eaters. As I say it, I remember the horrible idea that I killed good people, because she claimed to be one of the ones fighting the face eaters.

  I tell Russell what she said, that they went after the face eaters. Russell looks at me, and then shifts his gaze to the dark window, and then back on me. What else could it be? he says. And I know what he means. Yes, it’s human flesh stored down there. The same as in Blue City. I see his meaning in his eyes. But I feel like I have to tell him about the fox, because maybe it’s not human meat. Maybe it’s the wild animals. He doesn’t seem to think the conversation is important though because he rises and walks out of the room. It’s cold, he says as he goes, and then his slow limp carries him to darkness. I’m getting the stove, he hollers back. And then we’re alone.

  What’s the difference anyway, it’s just meat now, isn’t it? I say to Ernest. The words just come out, and I realize some kind of change has come into me. Ever since I learned about Dusty, that he would fit into Russell’s idea of being a face eater too. I can’t see everything in black and white anymore. Face eaters and non-Face eaters.

  I look at Ernest, hoping he’ll share in my confusion, but he doesn’t. He smiles and crunches loudly on the dog food, then he asks me, What’s wrong with this? And he’s right. I can’t complain, because even though the food pebbles are rock hard, like ice, and taste like stale dirt, they’re quieting my belly. But then Ernest shows me a small sign, something that means he’s somewhere in-between too, not as clear cut as Russell about the face eaters: He says, If it came to it…Only if it came to it.

  From that I understand. He would, like Dusty guessed, eat people if it meant we’d survive. I start to rationalize it again in my mind. That after all, we’re the same as animals. Muscle is muscle. The only difference is intellectual. But I know, that for Russell, the difference is bigger. It’s something mystical. Something sacred about humans. But it’s starting to make less and less sense to me. Ernest smiles, his admission by so few words clear enough, and he can tell I got it. But he acts like Russell would share his attitude, but I know Russell. He would never do it—he’d rather us die than sink to it. To die nobly somehow, instead of dying their way.

  I hear the clanking of feet moving laboriously over metal rails. It’s Russell coming back with the stove. In one of his hands he has a metal canister of fuel. The stove is the same as we had on the motorboat, the one we took from Blue City. And all at once, without worrying as I have been about the last snow walker that Russell believes is still stalking us, I want the story. I need it.

  I wait only long enough for Russell to sit back down on his hobbled leg and light the pilot. The stove spreads its small sphere of warmth and I push in as close as I can. Voley doesn’t seem to notice, so I nudge him to come closer, and then I remember he can’t move on his own. He doesn’t complain though when I slide him forward. I do it in fits and starts because my side hurts each time I shove, but Russell and Ernest don’t interfere. And then I force the story—What happened? is all I have to mouth. From that he knows, and as much as I want Ernest’s story too, we all want Russell’s now. Russell leans in toward the fire, shifting so that the stove lights each line in his face and each gray hair in his beard. His age is magnified by the flame, and I think that in the last few weeks a few years have changed in his face. With slow deliberateness he speaks, as if he’s recalling the actual steps of what happened to him and Clemmy for the first time. Like he’s pushed it out until now.

  I’m trying to remember, he says. Then he begins finally, after another pause, by recounting the boat trip into the valley of water between the brown mountains. We hit weather about an hour after we left, he says. By the time we realized how bad it was, we were stuck in the channel. No turning her around. We knew which side the distant white was on—this place—and figured we’d wreck on that side if we could.

  I want to stop him and tell him we came through the same weather, and ask if he saw the waterspouts too, and if they got him, but I hold off, captivated.

  We knew we would split. But it happened a lot worse than we’d hoped, he continues. Close enough, at least, to scramble up the rocks. But Clemmy didn’t get out of the water without ripping apart his leg. Just about all of it on one side. Cut clean through by the reef.

  I want to ask him about his busted leg, because it was completely healed when they left from the Resilience, but I hold off now because it is Clemmy’s leg that is important—and I know right away, before Russell explains the rest, why Clemmy didn’t make it.

  We got what we could, one bag each, but he couldn’t hold his. So I told him to leave it there by the boat. And then, we made up the mountain, because there was nothing left to do. If we’d had a radio, he says, and then trails off. His eyes drift to the darkness of the window again. Ernest’s eyes go to the stove, where his hands uncoil and stretch in the warmth. I want to go find a blanket, or a pole that we can close ourselves in with using a tarp, to seal our body heat, but I don’t dare interrupt the story. And the thought of exploring the black skeleton of the Nuke building terrifies me. Instead I wait, eyes on the flame, for Russell to continue.

  We made it up and into the snow, he says. He held onto me to make it that far. Barely to the edge of the snow. And then we sat down. Looked at the endless white, and tried to figure out what to do. Russell sighs and looks up, into memories he doesn’t want. We camped there, because he convinced me the best thing to do was wait, he goes on. But by the next day, when the weather was still kicking, and we could see it out on the brown, from the mountain, I knew there was no waiting out this weather. I knew the ship wouldn’t follow through that. It looked like a storm that got stuck in place. So I changed his mind. We pushed into the snow.

  I tell Russell how we wanted to go in after him, but we worried about leaving in case he needed to find our original position. He shakes his head like there is no such thing as blame in this. It’s only what happened, as things played out, and no more significan
t than that. And then he continues.

  His leg was bad, he says. But the snow numbed it good. He said he didn’t feel it much at all after a while. We came to it pretty quick that we would both die, or he would. And we sat for a while, and he convinced me. I swear to…Russell says, and then he trails off, uncomfortable with god, the word he wants to use. His eyes go to Ernest. Like he needs Ernest to forgive him, because it was Russell who left Clemmy behind, to die in the snow, wounded and alone. But they just stare at each other and no words are exchanged. No smile or frown, just flickering glow. Ernest finally nods, like he accepts what Russell said, what he did, and accepts the truth that it was Clemmy who convinced Russell to leave him.

  I left him, Russell says. Carrying my bag. I looked back at him a few times. He said he’d go back to the water and wait for the ship. I told him I’d be back to get him. But I didn’t have anything to give him. And he told me to take the stove.

  A silence falls and I imagine Clemmy ripping his clothes off. He changed his mind and turned around. Back into the snow, even if what Russell saw last was him going toward the ocean again. He must have been so numb he could walk, and so scared he didn’t want to die alone. Panicked. Realized how he really was going to freeze long before anyone came. Or that no one would show up. And he changed his mind—wanted to get back to Russell. But I don’t tell Russell about any of this—the last fit, clothes on the ground in the snow, and Ernest doesn’t say it either. I know Russell enough that he feels no guilt, that he didn’t cause Clemmy to die, but I still can’t bring myself to tell him what happened. Russell stops, like he’s done telling his story, but I tell him to go on because we haven’t even heard what happened when he got to Nuke Town yet.