Nine Meals

by Mike Kilroy

  Bray pointed the pistol at her as she pressed her back as far as she could into the corner. She held up her hands and they shook. “I was kind to you. I took care of your wound.”

  Bray lowered the gun and slipped it into his pocket. Halle took a deep breath and flashed a relieved smile. “Just go.”

  He stared at Halle and figured she didn’t deserve to die. She was kind and cared for him when others wouldn’t. She cleaned and bandaged his terrible wound, made sure it was treated and gave him antibiotics to stave off infection.

  She had her misgivings about Coe, but perhaps was too afraid to do anything about it. She had seen what he had done to others. She had seen what life was like out there, with no support, with no food or water or defense. Bray wondered if he would have turned a blind eye, too, to the suffering of others and to the hypocrisy if he lived here longer.

  Bray, though, concluded none of those things matter. Virtue didn’t matter now. Neither did good intentions. As a cop, he understood the way things were. Criminals were caught most of the time for one reason: Eye witnesses.

  As soon as he left, she would alert Coe’s men and they would come after him. Most likely, they would find him and then he’d have a battle on his hands. He couldn’t afford a battle now.

  He had a far more important one to wage against his wife’s killer, one that demanded his full attention and probably every weapon he had in his arsenal.

  No. She’s gotta go.

  He pulled the knife out of the holster and walked slowly toward Halle, whose relief morphed into terror. She pled for her life. “Blackburn, don’t do this. Just lock me in here. It’ll be hours before anyone finds me.”

  He caught his reflection in the steel of the blade. A person he scarcely recognized stared back at him, face thin and wispy, old and tired, and buried under straggly whiskers.

  But no longer frail. It was no longer a face he loathed, no longer emaciated, peaked, shriveled and starved.

  It was a face of determination, of strength, of resolve, a face that knew hard things had to be done and was no longer afraid to do them.

  He kind of liked the new Paul Bray.

  Bray shook his head. “Sorry, doc.” He jammed the knife blade into her neck. She quickly slumped to her knees and then toppled to her side. “My name is Paul. Paul Bray and I did you a solid. You don’t have to worry about living for the hell of it anymore.”

  Bray cleaned the knife on her shirt and holstered it. He closed the door behind him and took a deep, satisfied breath.

  Walter greeted him with a smile. “Wow, I pegged you right. You are a rat-bastard.”

  Bray smirked as he pulled the knife from his holster and slipped it quickly into Walter’s heart. As rotund as he was, it probably was going to explode soon anyway. The world was no place for people like Walter, getting others to do his bidding.

  Walter’s lips quivered as he grabbed at his chest, the blood oozing between his fat fingers. “Wh … Why?” he mouthed.

  Bray pushed Walter and the round man fell to his back. His head cracked off the floor.

  “I don’t like you,” Bray said as she dropped the butter knife on Walter’s chest and then backtracked into the room and set the serrated knife carefully near Halle’s right hand.

  As he left, he stopped and hovered over Walter, the last gasp of the oaf’s life exhaling through his lips. “Thanks, though. They’ll think it was you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Little Hope

  Bray watched the house burn, the long fingers of the flames reaching high into the moonless sky.

  His prey had escaped, but he had wounded them terribly. They were exposed now, on the run, out here in this perdition with everyone else.

  Let’s see how they like it.

  The flames were hot on his back and he peered down at the graves—four of them—dug into the hard ground. One was fresh, the dirt still in clumps and rounded into a mound.

  At least he buried her.

  Bray sat in front of Maggie’s makeshift tomb and wept. They were tears of pain. But some were of joy. He had a chance to say goodbye to Maggie, at least.

  He grabbed a splintered piece of wood that had blown out from the house after the explosion and pounded it into the ground to mark her plot. It was a silly gesture, but one he felt he needed to make. She deserved more than just a hole in the ground.

  His enemies wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Bray had lost them for now, but he had a good idea where they were going.

  He grabbed the map out of his pocket and held it up to the bright light of the fire that raged behind him. It was Maris’ map. He liked Maris, but she was like everyone else. She betrayed him and she paid the price.

  Everyone pays the price eventually in this world. No one is unsullied. All have a blemish, a stain on their soul.

  Some more than others.

  The man he sought to kill certainly had a few, the murder of his wife being one of them.

  He wondered if Halcyon was real, or just a myth. He figured it was probably just a story Maris had clung to like a favorite blanket—or a lover—on a cold night, something comforting and warm, something that gave hope because hope was more elusive now than food or water or compassion.

  It didn’t matter much, anyway. They would be dead long before they reached Colorado. Bray would see to that.

  He would track them all the way there, though, if he had to. His quest for vengeance was all he had left.

  ***

  Bray didn’t hesitate. Two shots. Two kills.

  The third man trembled, his pants becoming wet with urine down the pleat.

  “Don’t kill me.” The man, disheveled—wasn’t everyone these days?—pled. His voice cracked with fear.

  Bray didn’t want to waste a bullet on him.

  He stabbed him in the neck instead.

  Bray left all three in the road and climbed into the car, an old, generic model of a Ford sedan. It was a gas guzzler, but that hardly mattered now. He supposed what kind of car it was didn’t matter much, either, as long as it was running.

  Bray switched on the radio and heard only static, not that he expected to hear anything else, but he thought he’d give it a try anyway. Just one song, that’s all he really wanted to hear—just one little ditty to make him forget for three or four minutes his lot in this wretched life.

  He couldn’t even get that.

  Bray listened to the static anyway as he drove, weaving around cars that were stalled in the middle of the highway, driving on the shoulder and even in the grassy median if need be to get around them. When his tank ran low, he stopped and climbed under one of the abandoned cars, jamming the blade of his knife into the tank and collecting the gas with a bucket he had found.

  It was enough to get him deep into Ohio before the car wouldn’t run anymore. Soon, no cars would run at all because the gas would eventually go bad.

  It was simple chemistry.

  It was also a simple law of life.

  Nothing lasts forever.

  Forces are constantly working to erode, to wear down, to whittle away everything that is built or constructed or even conceived. The forces show no mercy and don’t discriminate on what they chose to destroy.

  Those forces had carved a new face after The Ejection.

  Bray carved out a new face for himself, too, a smooth one free of the whiskers that helped define him as frail. It was the first time since The Ejection that he felt the true contours of his face and he enjoyed the feeling.

  ***

  Bray stared down at the skull that poked out of the mud. He could see both eye sockets and the smooth crown of it, but little else.

  A shoulder bone also protruded from the muck. The rains had washed away this shallow grave, exposing this poor man—or woman, he couldn’t tell from the skeleton—to the elements. There would be no rest for that soul.

  Bray tried to give that soul some solace. He kicked dirt and mud over the bones until they were no longer visible and patted the
earth down with his boot. It left prints on the muck.

  It won’t be the last bones I bury.

  He walked along, bracing against the chill. It was nearly winter and with winter came even more despair. That was the season when most in the northern climes perished. It wasn’t the biting cold—although that certainly contributed to it—but the lack of food sources that did them in.

  No insects as sustenance to get through another day. No roots or berries to eke out an existence. The only food was animals and if you could not hunt, you died.

  Lucky for Bray he could hunt. There was no shortage of deer or other small game on this journey. He ate well.

  He was starting to look like his old self again.

  He was no closer to his real prey, however, the animal he truly wished to kill. Bray figured they had to come this way if they were indeed heading to Halcyon. The thought that the man who had killed his wife was already dead hit him in these quiet moments in front of his fire, that he would never be able to satiate his desire for vengeance.

  He began to write their names in front of the fire with the splintered edge of a branch: “S-H-E-P” and “T-I-G.” He erased them and began writing them again; his rage swelled with each letter he scratched into the ground.

  Bray heard the sound of rustling from the trees above the crackling of the fire. He grabbed his sidearm and aimed it toward the noise.

  “Don’t shoot,” a female voice rang out, and then he saw her emerge from the trees. Her face was dirty in the firelight, but the innocence of that world before was still written on her soft, young face.

  She was a doe all alone in the wood. How she had survived this long was remarkable to Bray.

  “What are you doing out here?” Bray barked. It started the girl, who stopped her advance, her small hands, red and dry from the cold, held up into the air.

  “I need help.”

  “I can see that. Do you expect to get help from me?”

  She contemplated that question for a long pause. It struck Bray that it never occurred to this girl that those she encountered out here wouldn’t offer her aid. “I hope so,” she finally said through her numb lips that quivered from her shivering.

  “Come here. Get warm.”

  The girl moved as quickly as she could to the fire. She plopped down to the ground and crossed her legs to her chest. She closed her eyes and smiled as she felt the warmth. “Thank you.”

  Bray snickered. The gall of this girl—I like it.

  She finally opened her eyes and stared at the deer meat that still hung over the fire on a makeshift spit, then shifted them to Bray, pleading. Bray nodded and the girl carefully plucked some meat off the skewer with her boney fingers.

  She blew on the cooked flesh, peeking at Bray out of the corners of her eyes and then devoured it.

  Bray tossed her a canteen and she quickly slurped the water from it.

  “What’s your name?” Bray asked.

  “Hope.”

  Bray sniggered. “That’s a lousy name, especially now.”

  “I guess so.” She drank again, water spilling onto her purple coat. Her brown hair was tucked under a knitted purple hat and she pushed some of the strands that had spilled out back under it. “What’s your name?”

  “Doesn’t matter what my name is.”

  She paused again, contemplating that response. She was like a computer, this one, analyzing each statement for ones and zeros—truths and falsehoods. “What should I call you then?”

  “Blackburn.”

  Hope flashed a timid smile and wiped her mouth again. “Thanks for the food and water, Mr. Blackburn.”

  “How did you get out here?”

  “I escaped.”

  “Escaped from where?”

  “Attica.”

  “Where’s Attica?”

  “Not far from here,” she said as she picked off another piece of deer meat and chewed. “It’s a pretty messed up place.”

  “Must have been for you to leave. Looks like you were well fed and taken care of there, so it couldn’t have been that bad.”

  She shook her head as she swallowed the last of her meal. “No, it was pretty bad. I was going to have to do it with an icky man. I was going to be nothing more than an incubator there.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  She was so tiny, so little. She looked much younger.

  Bray didn’t think anything could shock him anymore, but this did. It made sense, though. Attractive, healthy young girl, perfect for breeding. She could push out a baby every eighteen months or so for about twenty five years to build a strong, isolated and genetically engineered society honed for survival in this brave new world.

  It was still pretty fucked up.

  “How’d you get out?”

  “Some new people came in the other day. When new people come in, Rhian—that’s the weird woman who runs the place. She has a strange accent—and Ward—he’s a big dude, never smiles, but he watches out for me. I think he’s probably the best one in there, the kindest I guess even though he kind of freaks me out—well, they get distracted and when they get distracted, sometimes some of the girls and boys and I sneak out to look around, only this time I didn’t go back.”

  “That was stupid.”

  Hope cocked her head and her eyes narrowed. “Wh … what?”

  “You won’t make it a week out here. A week might be giving you too much credit. If you had anything of any value, I’d kill you and take it. You’re lucky you’re so pathetic.”

  Hope dug the heels of her converse tennis shoes into the dirt and pushed herself away from the fire—and from Bray. She had a look of terror on her face, which turned a ghostly white. She began to cry and threw her head into her hands.

  Bray rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Hey!” he yelled. Hope continued to hide her face and sob. “Hey!” he yelled more forcefully, and she snapped her head up and halted her weeping. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  Hope scooted back closer to the fire, her eyes still fixed suspiciously on Bray.

  “You said there were new people. How many?”

  “Two. A man and a girl who is not much older than me.”

  Bray smiled, almost giddily. He felt his heart pump faster in his chest. “What did they look like?”

  “The man looked in pretty bad shape. The girl looked pretty good.”

  “Did you get their names?”

  “Someone said them. They were weird names. The dude’s name was Ship or Shrimp or something.”

  “Shep?”

  “Yeah. That’s it. The chick’s name was Twig or Fig.”

  “Tig?”

  “Yeah. You know ‘em?”

  Bray felt euphoria wash over him, a glee he never thought he’d feel again. Fate or chance or sheer will had brought him close to his marks again. He felt if there was a God, He was surely on his side, that this retribution was righteous.

  “Where is this Attica?” Bray asked, trying to contain his excitement.

  “Not far from here. A couple of miles maybe. They’ll never let you in.”

  I don’t want to get in. I’m going to wait for them to come out.

  “I have a job for you,” Bray said. Hope’s eye perked up and she smiled.

  “I’d do anything, as long as you promise to get me away from there.”

  “I will—eventually. But I need you to go back.”

  Hope shook her head and mouthed “no” several times. “I can’t.”

  “It’s just for a little while. I’ll take care of you and you won’t have to stay there forever. I just need you to watch the two new people, Shep and Tig, and tell me when they leave.”

  “But they won’t leave.”

  “They’ll leave. Trust me. They won’t stay there. They’re too fucking goody-two-shoes for that place.”

  “Promise to get me out of there?”

  “I promise.”

  Hope smiled and nodded. “Cool. I’ll do it.”

>   ***

  Hope visited from time to time—whenever she could safely slip out of Attica undetected. Her visits, though, were becoming more and more frequent and occasionally she brought with her some bacon or an apple.

  On this night, it was an apple and Bray chomped into it and savored the juice. There were plenty of small green apples that had fallen off the trees, but those were sour. The rare red ones—that was where it was at. So juicy. So good.

  This one was the juiciest of them all.

  They barely spoke. She just sat with him in the abandoned cabin well hidden among the trees near a small body of water. The cabin was plucked clean when he found it, which made it relatively safe. Anyone who had found it would surely not return.

  Hope sat in front of the fire, the light dancing off her soft features, and Bray wondered if Maggie and he had a daughter, if she would have looked a lot like Hope.

  “Why do you want to kill them so bad?” Hope broke the silence.

  Bray stared at her and then broke the silence again with a bite into his apple.

  Hope pouted. “Okay. Don’t tell me then. Whatever.”

  Bray swallowed his bite of apple and spoke. “The man killed my wife. The girl is guilty by association. I’m not sure what I want to do with her yet.”

  Hope shrugged. “Just kill her.”

  Bray raised an eyebrow at Hope’s comment. She had a scowl on her face as she picked at her fingers and offered an explanation. “She’s mean.”

  “What did she do to you?”

  “Well, nothing really. She’s always off with PADRIG. It’s PADRIG this and PADRIG that. Ugh. It’s so annoying.”

  “That’s no reason to kill her.”

  “It’s no reason not to, either.”

  “Do you have any friends?”

  Hope looked up from her fingers at Bray and smiled. “Just Ward. He kind of looks out for all of us kids, especially me. He’s kinda taken a shine to me but not in an icky, creepy way. I think he wants to help me, you know, deal with my issues and stuff.”

  “We all have issues.” Bray said.

  “I have trouble, you know, controlling myself sometimes. Ward says it’s because I had such a tough childhood and then the sun freaking out and then my parents croaking. He said it kind of messed me up and that I need guidance. But you can give me guidance out here where there are no stupid rules.”