by James Harden
Chapter 3
The pharmacy is in stark contrast to the hardware store. The doors and windows are intact and boarded up. The front door is completely boarded up. Looks like the townspeople understood how valuable this place was, so they took every precaution in protecting it.
The barricade appears to be constructed from several giant sized pieces of ply wood. All of them are nailed together and reinforced. From the looks of it, it appears that a whole bunch of wooden shelves and metal shelves have been pushed up against the front door. But a few of these had been dragged to the side, creating a small pathway, a small entryway, big enough for a person to slip through.
“This part here, it looks like it’s been moved out of the way,” I say, thinking out loud.
“Yeah,” Maria says. “Looks like it’s been done recently.”
“What makes you say it’s been done recently?”
“Well, it doesn’t look like the barricade has been destroyed. It actually looks to be in pretty good condition. Whoever built this thing really knew what they were doing. I mean, it’s still standing. The barricade out in the street has been destroyed, but this one’s still good.” She takes a step closer. “It looks like someone has carefully pushed this out of the way, so they can put it back later.”
Kenji agrees. “It’s almost as if someone has been inside.” He pauses, thinks it over. “Or maybe someone had been hiding inside, and they went outside.”
And then someone answers our question about the barricade and whether or not it was broken.
An old man says, “Actually, I just went outside to see what the damn noise was.”
We take a step back, towards the street, spears aimed at the doorway.
“Would you come inside before the damn zombies see you,” the old man says.
I look at Kenji. “What do you think?”
Kenji moves forward, spear at the ready. “Stay alert.”
He then moves inside. Maria and I follow him. We keep a tight grip on our spears, even though in the small confines of the pharmacy, and the even smaller confines between each row of shelves, and all the furniture that had been dragged into the store to be used as part of the barricade, I’m getting the feeling it’ll be quite difficult to use these spears if we need to.
The old man is hiding towards the back of the store. He appears to be small and frail. He’s hiding behind a counter top where people used to collect their prescriptions from. He’s half hiding behind a shelf. He is keeping his distance. Can’t blame him.
“Was that you people making all that damn noise?” he asks. “You’re going to rile them up, you know?”
“No, that wasn’t us,” Maria answers quickly. “That was someone else.”
“Damn motorbike. Gonna have the whole town on top of us.”
“The person on the motorbike has actually herded the infected out of town,” I say. “So for the moment, the streets are clear.”
“You don’t say?” The old man seems to be impressed. But then he waves his hands above his head, like he’s swatting away a bunch of invisible flies. “Won’t last. They’ll be back. They always come back.”
“What happened here?” Kenji asks. “With the barricade… the walls…”
He shakes his head like he doesn’t want to answer, like he doesn’t want to talk about how the town fell and how many people died. “I’ve lost track of how long we’ve been hiding in here. Months. Feels like years. It’s funny how quickly you lose track of time. How quickly you forget what normal is.”
The old man remains behind the shelf and the counter top. Refusing to come any closer. We remain near the entrance. It’s almost as if we’re waiting for the old man to invite us in. Old habits die hard, I guess.
“They could’ve saved everyone,” he says quietly. “They built the walls. A castle. They built them so quickly. In the blink of an eye. They could’ve saved everyone. But they didn’t.”
“How’d you get stuck out here?” I ask
“I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you were on the outer when those walls went up, it was almost impossible to get inside. Initially they told us there was a waiting period. That they had to set up a quarantine station. We all believed them. I think we believed them because it gave us hope. It pushed us forward. Anyway, we got busy. I helped build the barricade. I was part of the …” he pauses, searching for the right words. “Organizing committee. I guess that’s what you would call us. We all decided that a perimeter, a barricade was the best course of action. We decided to get the remaining people together in the middle of the town so we could protect everyone. The military, or whoever it was, they had built those walls in the middle of town, right? They basically dropped them in overnight. And like I said, some people were allowed sanctuary, most were not. So we figured if they built walls, then maybe that was the best way to defend ourselves. So we built our own walls. Thought maybe if we proved to them we could help, that we had stopped the virus from getting in... thought maybe they’d let us in sooner.”
He lowers his head. “When the barricade failed, we panicked. Everyone panicked. It was total chaos. We thought we could protect everyone. We thought having everyone together would make us stronger, thought we’d be able to defend the barricade. But we just weren’t prepared for how crazy and how strong the virus makes a person. We weren’t prepared for what came out of that dust storm, out of the desert. How could anyone be prepared for that. In the end, having everyone together, it just made it easier for the virus to spread. We had put all the food, all the potential hosts for the virus in one place. We had doomed ourselves from the beginning.”
He takes a small half step forward. “I managed to make it inside here. Hid out the back for a while. There’s a secure room for the medication. I must’ve stayed in there a week. Maybe longer. No food. No water. Nearly lost my damn mind.”
“How’d you get all these barricades set up with the infected right there, right outside?” Kenji asks, wanting to know the specifics of it all.
“I’d sneak into the grocery store next door,” he explains. “You can do it out the back, in the docking area. I dragged some of the shelves back into the safe room. Nailed them together, got them ready so it was just a matter of putting them up, fixing them in place and then reinforcing them with the other shelves and the ply wood and other bits of lumber.”
“And you’ve survived all this time on your own?” Kenji asks.
He asks this question with more than a hint of skepticism in his voice.
“The food is lasting longer than I expected. I guess because these streets have been crawling with infected people, no one has been able to loot these stores. And I guess the military have their own supplies behind the walls. Probably enough to last them a lifetime. And I suppose if they run low they can always chopper some more food in. Lucky bastards. They don’t realize how good they’ve got it.”
The old man is shaking his head. There is anger and jealousy in his voice. “What are you doing here?” he asks, his tone changing suddenly, violently. His whole demeanor changing. “Where are you from?”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
“You people from behind the walls?”
“No,” Maria says. “We’re from out of town. We’re from Sydney, actually.”
“Sydney,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “You’re right, that is a hell of a story. You expect me to believe that?”
He takes another small half step forward.
“It’s the truth,” Maria says.
“No, it’s not. You’re from behind the walls, aren’t you? Yeah. You people just sat there. Safe. You watched us die by the thousands. You did nothing to help.”
“We’re not from behind the walls,” Kenji says, trying to calm the old man down.
But the old man doesn’t want to hear it. “You did nothing!”
And suddenly four other men enter the room. They must’ve been hiding out the back. And in the blink of an eye we are outnumbered and the old
man no longer looks so old and he doesn’t look as frail as he did a few minutes ago. The other men start swearing at us and pointing their knives at us, trying to intimidate us. This method of intimidation works on me and Maria. It doesn’t work on Kenji. He is completely unafraid, completely calm.
The old man says, “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”
He walks towards us. In his right hand is one of the largest handheld guns, revolvers, I have ever seen. The gun is pointing at the ground, but he cocks the hammer and this noise is a threat and it does an excellent job of scaring me even more than I already am.
“Don’t try nothing,” he says, gun still pointed at the ground.
And I’m thinking maybe it’s too big and too heavy for him to actually lift and aim and fire. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to shoot us if we all rush him at once. No. That won’t work. There’s four other men with knives and machetes and we’ll be chopped into pieces before we get anywhere near the old man. So I’m sure as hell not going to take that risk.
“You try anything stupid,” he says, reading my mind. “You try and get clever and smart, we’ll kill you. We’ll feed you to the zombies.”
Chapter 4
We drop our homemade spears. We are now completely unarmed.
The old man continues to slowly walk forward. The gun in his hand is still pointed at the ground. It’s almost as if he’s dragging it along.
“This is our store,” he says. “You want access? Then you gotta pay the price. We’ve been living here amongst the dead, living in the shadows of those goddamn walls. We’ve been trapped here for months. We were here when it all went to hell.”
“I know it’s been hard for you,” Kenji says. “But it’s like this all over…”
“Can you shut the hell up? Please, I don’t want to hear your lies. You people make me sick. You were all safe. You could’ve protected us. But you chose to do nothing. You chose to watch us die.”
“Nah… it was worse than death,” says one of the other men. “Worse. We got infected, started eating each other. Parents eating children and vice versa. Seeing that will leave a permanent scar across your mind, your memory. Mess you up. Happened all up and down this street and the next street over. Such a small area. So much death.”
“And all within sight of the walls,” the old man says. “We were forced to make hard decisions. We were forced to turn on each other. We were forced to do things that we never imagined doing, not in our wildest dreams, our wildest nightmares. Things that no man should ever be forced to do.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Kenji says. “But you have to believe us, we are not from behind the walls. We had nothing to do with what happened here.”
“Save it. I already know you’re lying.”
“We are not lying,” Maria says.
The old man ignores Maria. “Put the two girls over there,” he orders one of the men. “You three have messed up big time. Coming into my town. My town. Looking for a free meal. What would possess you to do such a thing? Running low on supplies?”
Maria and I are pushed to the ground. Knives to our throats. Kenji moves to help us but he is immediately grabbed by one of the men and put in a choke hold.
“You think you can take on all four of us?” says the old man. “Stop fighting. You’re already dead.”
“Please don’t do this,” I say. “We had nothing to do with what happened here.”
“I don’t care,” he says. “Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. It doesn’t matter. You lowered your guard. You thought you could waltz in here and take my food and help yourselves to all these medical supplies. What the hell were you thinking? Let’s say I give you some food. And believe me, I’d love to give you some food, some water. Some cans of baked beans. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Let’s say I do this. What happens next?”
One of them men slaps me across the face. “Hey, he’s asking you a question. Answer him.”
The shock of being slapped stuns me and all of a sudden I can’t answer, can’t speak. I can still feel the man’s hand on my face.
“OK, you don’t want to answer?” the old man taunts. “You’ve gone mute all of a sudden? It’s OK, I understand. Most of the time, fear will make people freeze. They say there’s the fight or flight response. But there’s a third response and it’s way more popular. People just freeze. They crawl up into a ball and they give up. Like a deer caught in the headlights. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I give you some food and send you on your merry way. But that’s not the end of it, is it? Because you’ll be back. And then you’ll be back again and again. And again. Looking for a handout, looking for a free meal. You’ll eat me out of house and home like a bunch of rats. Can’t have rats. Not unless you want to starve. Don’t know about you people, but I really don’t want to starve. I’d rather get bit. Rather get infected and turn into a mindless zombie than starve to death. It’d be less painful. Way less painful.”
“We could’ve worked something out,” Kenji says. He says this with a level voice. His face is cold and emotionless.
“Excuse me? Are you actually trying to bargain with me right now?”
“No. I’m just telling you that we could’ve worked something out. I would’ve let you live. I would’ve spared your life.”
The old man starts laughing and he raises his hand held cannon, putting to bed my doubts about whether or not he could actually lift the damn thing.
He points the gun right at Kenji and pulls the trigger. And nothing happens. The hammer makes the world’s largest ‘click’, the world’s loudest ‘snap’. But there’s no gunshot because the gun is not loaded.
And the old man says, “BOOM! You’re dead.”
Kenji does not flinch. He doesn’t even blink. He keeps his cold gaze on the old man. Maybe he knew the gun wasn’t loaded. I don’t know how he would know that, but maybe he knew.
It’s the only explanation…
And then all of a sudden Kenji kicks one of our homemade spears that we’d dropped on the ground because we had been ordered to drop them on the ground, he kicks it right at the old man. And the broomstick of the spear smashes into the bridge of the old man’s nose. Kenji then flips the guy who had been holding him in what I thought was an iron tight choke hold, flips him over his back, slamming him onto the floor. He then immediately breaks his arm and then he breaks his other arm.
The weird thing is, the guy doesn’t scream. And it is so, so weird. He’s just had both his arms broken, but he doesn’t scream, he kind of moans in pain and I think he starts begging for his life. Maybe the old man was right. Presented with death, sometimes people will freeze more often than not. This guy has. He has completely frozen. Then again, having both your arms broken in a matter of seconds would not be the most pleasant feeling.
Anyway, the other three men advance on Kenji, they leave Maria and I on the floor. They turn their backs on us because they think we’re not a threat. They think we’re just little girls who haven’t been hardened by everything that has happened to us, to everyone.
Kenji holds the men at bay. He holds his own against three men armed with knives.
The old man is doubled over, blood pouring from his face and his nose.
I get to my feet quickly.
And there’s absolutely no time to think. No time to weigh up whether or not I should take a man’s life.
Or three lives.
I grab a spear.
I stab them, one after the other. I do my very best to aim for their hearts. I don’t miss. The first two men fall instantly. But they don’t die instantly. It takes about thirty seconds. Maybe a bit less. The last guy actually turned around to face me. But he was too slow. Much too slow. I looked into his eyes as the knife slid inside, as life left his body. A look of surprise frozen on his face. A face I will never forget.
The old man is still doubled over. There’s blood everywhere. He is swearing and talking to himself. Gun in his hand. Loose bullets in the other hand.
He is
trying to load the gun.
“Come into my town,” he says to himself. “My town! No respect. You’re part of the problem. You would’ve killed me. You would’ve killed the last of us.”
“I’m sorry this has happened to you,” Kenji says. “I’m sorry you couldn’t cope.”
“The hell did you say to me, boy?”
But Kenji doesn’t answer the old man, doesn’t repeat himself. And before the old man can load his hand held cannon, Kenji takes a knife that one of the other men had dropped, and then he takes the old man’s life.
Chapter 5
The color has drained from Maria’s face. She is in complete and utter shock and so am I.
The man with the two broken arms has passed out. I’m pretty sure he is still alive, but he is completely unconscious.
“What do we do with him?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper, barely audible over my panicked breathing and my racing heart.
“Leave him,” Kenji says. “He’s not a threat to anyone.”
The pharmacy falls silent. And then Maria says, “We should probably kill him. No point in letting him live.”
Sometimes I think Maria is not fit for this world and this life. Sometimes I think she is not strong enough. And then there’s other times where I know, deep down, I know she is stronger than any of us. She is a survivor. And she might just be right. No, not might be right, she is right.
“I can’t believe how quickly it all happened,” I say, changing the subject for the moment. I change the subject because I don’t feel like making the decision on whether or not to execute someone right just this second. And even though I just killed three men, stabbed them all in the heart, there’s something different about executing someone who is completely defenseless. “I reacted,” I say, trying to rationalize why I had done what I had done. And how I had done it. “I didn’t think things through. There was no time. I killed three men in the blink of an eye because it had to be done.”
I imagine the man in the gas mask applauding me, clapping his hands, encouraging me to keep going, welcoming me once again to the new world.