When I wake up, the dream is the only thing real. I raise my head into the night air and realize she’s gone. And then, I see Maze, softly breathing. It’s something like relief and sadness that I feel. And when I hear the noises, somewhere up on the coast, I nudge her.
“Maze—we fell asleep. Maze.”
She shakes her head, alarmed all at once, and sits up.
“Shit,” she says. I wait for her, half in the dream, expecting something about what I’ve done. That I betrayed her. Like the dream means I’ve moved on from her, and I didn’t wait for her to realize she really does love me. But the noises reach us again, louder, from the forest behind, and the dream evaporates all at once.
“Did you hear that?” I say.
“Yeah. Get up.”
We stand, my leg aching as the last shreds of Gala’s naked body slide away from my mind, as real as the dead beach around us. I remember how I learned to position my foot, testing it again.
“Two of them,” Maze says in alarm. “Do you see?”
“Yeah,” I whisper back, crouching back down despite the plain beach, nothing to hide ourselves.
“If they see us, you run, okay?” I say again.
“If they see us, we kill them. Together. Don’t get scared on me now.” She forces a smile.
And then, when the shadows march, loud stumbling footfalls echoing out through the trees every few moments, we can tell they’re just passing through. That they don’t see us at all.
The dark bodies walk and walk until they’re directly in front of us, way up at the tree line. And then, they pause. Their heads are visible now, faint black ovals that turn. And neither of us say a word when the two black shadows are turned so that there’s no doubting what’s happened—that they’re looking directly at us on the beach. Alone and unarmed.
“Just two. They look wounded,” Maze says, her voice cinching in anticipation. Our last stand. “Grab rocks.” And then she crouches, just next to me, hands digging for something sharp, something dangerous. Her head stays straight, watching the wobbling figures make their first move. A slow step, and then two, instead of along the coast and parallel to us, down—directly toward us.
“Here they come,” she whispers. But then, just when they’ve entered the edge of the beach, they stop.
“I don’t think they’re—” I say, but I’m cut off by the call, loud and piercing from the tangled shadows. It’s a strange throat noise, almost impossible to understand. Then it comes again. I think for a moment there’s a word, something I understand, but there’s nothing. And then, when I’m convinced it’s the Nefandus language, some strange death command, the shadows start again, doubling their pace. But one of the shadows stops the other one, hanging on it almost, and then, when they’ve come halfway down the beach, we know. The strange throat noise comes again, and it’s still nothing we can understand. And soaked in blood, hanging from the stronger one, is Gala. Garren is walking her down. And it’s without words that we take in the horrible sight. The smashed neck of Garren, his adam’s apple poking out horribly in the wrong direction, entirely destroyed. And Gala, her breasts soaking wet with red. Her head flat, her eyes closed. Garren gets close enough to us and tries to talk, but his hand grabs at his throat in pain. And I know—his throat is broken. Impossible to look at. And Gala’s cheek is ripped wide open, part of it hanging off. All of her beauty, the impossible beauty from my dream, eviscerated by the ruined flesh, the work of the red men. Dark holes riddle her side, just above and under her breast, caked blood that shines even in the dim light of the moon. The blood runs in lines, all through her pants and washing her stomach in red film. Garren stops ten feet away and shakes his head, pointing at his throat. He can’t talk, I want to tell Maze. He can’t talk. And she’s dying. But nothing comes out. And it’s the clearest thing in the world to me—we can’t do anything for either of them. And just when Maze gets the courage to move in, to somehow try to help, we hear the new noise—more footsteps, just behind the grove they came out of up on the tree line, and I know they’re being followed. When my eyes go to the noise, and Maze stops before she gets to them, the quick shadows stream into view, blacking the distance between the sets of tree trunks. At least three of them. And then, they stand, in plain view, tall and skinny, long spears in their hands, looking down at us. A holler goes up into the night, some kind of signal. As if they’d need more to take us all down, and three isn’t enough. But it must be just the opposite, because all at once, they start down, jogging toward us. Their hands lift their spears, preparation for a running stab. I hear something, Maze slapping something. I look for a moment and I see it—she’s hitting the shotgun, where it dangles from Garren’s right arm, tied somehow to him. Tangled. A throat noise comes out of Garren, he shakes his head. I understand it at once—it’s dead. Out of ammo. The gun’s useless.
When the distance is all but gone, and Garren makes his last grunt, he turns his body, his face to me, Gala’s body wrapped up in his arms, putting everything he has into protecting her with his back. Maze fumbles with the cord tying the shotgun to Garren’s arm, almost pulling him down, until he finally does fall, right on top of Gala, and she rips away the shotgun. It’s the only thing I can think of to rush forward, paying attention to my leg so I don’t trip, and throw one of the rocks in my hand. The rock hits the first red body somewhere on his stomach, stopping him for just a moment, but then he yells and raises his arm again. The other two Nefandus reach him and he charges forward again.
They reach Garren together, all of them somehow fixed only on him, aiming for his crumpled back and the body underneath him, when I hear the crack. It’s the crack of bone, somehow the only possible noise for it—and when I see Maze, the shotgun high in the air, swinging it around again, I watch it happen—the explosion of the creature’s skull—a shrill cry and more of the splitting, then a squished in face and it’s flat on the ground. The two other Nefandus stab down, right into the big muscles of Garren’s back. His throat noise tears through the night, a horrible lifeless squeezing sound. A loud wheezing starts and beats through the air, someone struggling to breathe. It must be Garren, but then I realize it’s the one on the ground, still dying. And suddenly, my body barrels straight in, throwing the last of my rocks in a spray that hits the head of one of the red skulls. I put my weight in and tackle him to the ground. Everything in me screams to grab the spear. Grab the spear, grab the spear. Red arms reach up and close in on my neck, fighting and clawing nails into my skin, and I stick my elbows out, barring my neck. A hissing noise comes from the red man’s mouth. In a tantrum he claws and claws into my forearms until it feels like chunks of flesh are ripping away. It takes everything I have to keep both my elbows out, my fists tightly forming a ball in front of my throat, all of my weight leaning down into his chest, my mauled forearms like a beam of steel pressing down. He starts to wriggle, giving up the attempt to choke me, trying to slide out and flip me over. Then I see the spear, his red hand reaching out, fingering along the stones to grab it. I point my elbow out in the moment of distraction and aim directly down, driving everything I have into it, the only weapon left to me, pressing until there is no more eye, and then I hear a cracking again. I think it’s come from the eye socket, that I’ve pressed in hard enough to split through his head, right into his brain, but then I realize it’s come from behind me. Someone still fighting back there. And then, it’s like I want the noise. The cracking of the skull. The claws come back, digging into my face, trying to find my own eyes, and I turn my elbow back and forth, chiseling in, until it comes—just a small popping noise, like something’s come loose inside his head. Then, for a moment, the clawing stops, his red hands go to his own face to try and stop me.
“Move!” a voice comes. A horrible cry of agony sounds from the red face, right with the rushing outward stream of blood from the eye socket, blending into the skin. The command comes again, “Move Wills!”
I see Maze, her body over us, standing, the shotgun coming down. I ro
ll off, diving for the spear. Then, before I can get to my feet, there’s the noise. A thudding, dull sound. No more crunching. Just the slow rhythm of pounding.
When I see the dead bodies around me, it’s hard to tell which is which. Maze stands erect and drops the shotgun to her feet, her own face sprayed with red. And then, as I try to determine if any of the Nefandus are alive, I hear the throat noise, a garbled word I can’t understand. Garren’s new voice. Maze kneels next to him and I stand up, looking down at the side of his back, the half-concealed body of Gala beneath him.
“Garren,” Maze says.
He struggles to breathe, to say anything, but it all comes out in the same choked gasps. I kneel next to them, to Gala’s body pressed underneath the armor of his. I tell Maze to help me roll him off, and when she doesn’t, and stares instead, repeating his name, hoping for the life in him to somehow magically restore, I push. He’s heavy, and I have to dig in and fight the pain of my own body, but then, he just rolls off of her. Gala’s eyes are glazed but wide open. I ask her to talk. Tell me if she’s alive still. So softly I can hardly tell she’s said anything at all, she tells me she’s okay. I’m okay Wills. I tell her to grab my arm. She attempts to hold herself out to me. Then, we struggle until she’s sitting up. Her slimy red chest greases my shirt and my arms. She slowly turns her head to me.
“Is he okay?” she says, wheeling around to see Garren and Maze, to hear the noises funneling up through his broken voice box.
And then, she half falls off of me, toward Garren, and I hold her up so she doesn’t spill over and back onto the beach. She calls his name, Maze silently standing back up, surveying the beach as if she heard something again. More red men stalking us.
“Did you hear something?” I say.
“No,” she says. “But there’ll be more. They’re coming. We can’t stay here.”
And just like that, I know Garren doesn’t mean anything to her. And neither does Gala. That it’s still about the tower somehow. Finding the Ark. When she comes back and kneels again, satisfied there are no footsteps marching in from the high trees, Garren has stopped breathing. His eyes are still open, but the strained breaths and attempted words no longer come out.
“His pocket,” Gala says. “The map.”
I dig in, searching. I find it—a clumped, folded, wet piece of paper. When I start to open it, Gala says don’t. It will rip. Wait till it dries. I tell her okay, and then Maze says we have to leave again. And all at once, she tells me to come. I try to argue that we need to help Gala, that she’s still alive. Maze just bends down to pick up the shotgun and starts to go. After ten seconds, already walking away, she stops and looks back at me.
“Wills,” she says. “We have to get the fuck out of here. Come on.”
I pull Gala to her feet. She does everything she can to help me, putting what weight she can on her own legs, leaning sloppily against me, until we’re both upright. My own pain smarts again and I have to push a bit into her until we both nearly fall. And then, it’s like I’m Garren now, helping her limp along the coast, her wounds no longer openly bleeding, just caked and drying streaks running over her bare chest.
“You can’t bring her,” Maze says.
“Fuck her…” Gala says under her breath to me. And I know. She doesn’t want to die. To be sacrificed so that we can survive. And I remember why—she doesn’t believe in what we’re doing. She knows it’s pointless. And she doesn’t want to die for it. I whisper back to her, clinging to her, I won’t leave you. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you behind.
Maze just keeps going, along the dark coast, halfway between the water and the trees, between the bigger rocks, wending through the pebble sand farther and farther away. I want to check the map. To unfold it and find out, but I remember what Gala told me. Wait until it dries. Every once in a while I’m sure I hear noises. Footsteps or voices. But each time it’s just some tremor of the surf, some strange sucking of water through rock, or an animal returning to its home. Or heading out to hunt. I think of the wolves, and how many of them there must be out here. My eyes search as deeply as they can and I try to see the yellow glow. The wolf glare. But there’s nothing but a breeze and Maze’s back. She swings the shotgun every once in a while, from one arm to the other, and stops, waiting for me to catch up to her a little bit. And even though she wants to leave Gala behind, she won’t leave me. She waits until we catch up to about fifteen feet away and then, she just starts walking again. Her head swivels around constantly, occasionally up to the moon. And when we’ve slowed down so much I’m sure Maze will protest again, she just waits for us longer. Without a word, standing still until we catch up again. And it’s when we’re barely moving at all that Gala starts to talk to me. Like though her body is failing her, her mind has somehow been lit again with energy and she’s wide awake. Her voice is smooth, unaffected by the fact that she’s dying.
“He was yelling to us,” she says. “We just couldn’t hear him.”
I think of Garren’s shadow on top of the rock. Stuck, unable to move.
“He hurt his throat?”
“When I found him, he’d killed four of them. A small pack of them. He could whisper, just barely, and part of it I could understand.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
Maze says something from ten feet away but I don’t hear her. When I look up, just for a moment at her, I can tell she needs us to move. Because for the first time, we’ve stopped completely. Like Gala can’t take another step. Not if she wants to talk. It takes everything she has.
“Smashed his neck. On the rail of the boat when we flipped. He was so scared, Wills. Scared he’d never be able to talk again. He didn’t want to go in the water. He was afraid of his throat.”
I think about how he was right—even if he had lived, how deformed his throat had looked. How horrible his voice had sounded. How there was no way he would ever talk normally again.
“But we got out of there—we should have escaped. We should have,” she says.
I think about how they must have met, somewhere in the fog. How she must have fought with him, how she must have been stabbed then. But I don’t ask her how she was hurt—I don’t need to. She stops talking when Maze says it again, this time louder, telling us to come on. Maze’s voice is calm, like she accepts that I won’t leave Gala, but that she needs us to keep going. To put as much distance between us and the dead bodies as possible.
“I think we’ll find another boat,” Gala says.
“Yeah,” I tell her. Every step becomes more work, and I realize it’s because she’s no longer able to help me carry her. Lost all her strength. I want to yell to Maze, tell her to please come help me walk with her, to take turns with me, but I don’t. I know it’s enough that she’s even waiting for me.
“Then we’ll go home, Okay?” Gala says. “Fuck the tower.” And then, she laughs. She tells me it’s all crazy bullshit. That we came out here. That he let it all get to him this much. “Let’s just go home.”
I tell her we’re going home. As soon as it’s daylight, I tell her. We’ll find another boat somewhere. I can open the map, because it will be dry. Then we’ll figure out where we’re going.
For a few more minutes, I think our pace is getting stronger again. Maze waits and walks and waits. She doesn’t have to say anything again because we’re back in rhythm. Moving because somehow Gala’s found energy again. And then, she says it. Like it’s been pulled right from my dream.
“I want you,” she says. “When we get back home.” She laughs to herself. I look at her, her face almost clean of blood from the angle I see it. Pretty in the moonlight. “I’m gross. But when we’re home, it’ll be good. You’ll still want me too?”
Part of me knows she’s delirious. But then I realize—she can read my mind. She’s been able to read it since I first met her. And the hands, my hands on her, were enough for her to know. Know just how badly I wanted her. Every inch of her body. But now I just smile and agree with her, the
sight of her blood-soaked body so horrible suddenly that I have to look away. And it disgusts me, and all I want to do is get her to safety somewhere. But I don’t know where, and I start to think about how useless it really is. How useless pulling her along is and how right Maze is.
WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Page 21