by Milam, Khel
She laughed a little. “That’s because villains are always intellectually honest. It’s what makes them villains, not that they do bad things. Superman did plenty of bad things.”
“You think there’s no difference between Lex Luthor and Superman?”
“No. I don’t. I think dividing the world into Lex Luthors and Supermans is just a game we play so that we don’t have to take responsibility for our actions. So that we can still feel good about ourselves when we do bad things. Actions are good and bad, not people.”
“Yeah, well, I like my chances a whole hell of a lot better with Superman, than I do with Lex Luthor.” He shook his head again. “I don’t even know why the hell I’m arguing with a person who thinks things are exactly the same as before the world went to shit.”
“If Superman kills a million people to stop Lex Luthor from blowing up the world, he’s still killed a million people. And that’s still bad.”
He closed his eyes, inhaling slowly through his nose. “It’s not like he’d be murdering’em or something. It’d just happen. It’d just be one of those things. There’s a big difference between killing somebody as collateral damage and killing’em ’cause you’re a dick.”
“I don’t know. I think if you were one of the one’s that’s dead, you might disagree. The world has pretty much already ended at that point, as far as you’re concerned. So I’m not sure it would be much of a consolation knowing it wasn’t personal. That it was ‘just one of those things.’”
“Shit happens. If killing a million people saves a billion, it’s worth it. If you could’ve sacrificed a million people to stop this, you’d have done it in a heartbeat.”
“Would I’ve?” She looked up at him, meeting his gaze full on. “And if it didn’t work?”
“Doesn’t matter. You still got to try.”
“You’re okay with killing a million people, just because you hope it might save the world?”
He glanced away then shrugged. “Why not? If you do nothing, they’re dead anyway.”
“You don’t know that. You’re still alive. I’m still alive. They might still be alive, too.”
“The odds are against’em.”
“Low odds are better than no odds.”
“Yeah, well, you’d have to be a real dick to say there’s a chance you might live, so fuck everybody else.”
“But at least if all you do is refuse to be sacrificed for them, you’re not condemning them to death. You’re just saying that we’re all in the same boat, and that the only person who gets to decide if you get tossed overboard, is you.” She lifted the turkey and began walking away.
“Who the hell’s talking about sacrificing people? You got to play the hand you’re dealt. Life’s not fair.”
She stopped and turned back towards him. “People are unfair, not life. Call it whatever you want, but condemning someone to die in the hope that you won’t have to is just trying to bribe fate. It’s no different than slitting someone’s throat over an altar in the hope that the gods will favor you in exchange.”
Looking skyward, he shook his head. “Bribing fate? Slitting throats? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What else do you call letting someone die so that you can live?”
“I call it making hard choices.”
“How hard is it to do something that helps you?”
“Really fucking hard. Especially when you don’t want to do it, but you have to ’cause you don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice. You just convince yourself you don’t so you can pretend you aren’t doing something bad. Because you’re a good person and good people don’t do bad things. Unless they have to. Whatever that means.”
“It means you have a damn good reason.”
“It’s funny how good reasons never seem so good when you’re the one the bad thing’s being done to.” She turned around, walking away from him once more with the sun behind her and her shadow running ahead of her on the ground.
He glared at her back, his mouth pressed tight in a narrow, rigid line, and threw his hand up after her. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?”
5
She and the dogs curved through the oaks onto a bank beside a stream flowing quick and shallow into a still pool before rushing on its way. Beside the pool, two ancient live oaks, gnarled and weathered and stained by countless floods, stood arching away from each other, framing the sheer cliff on the far side of the stream. And behind them, the trees stood out in sharp relief against the aqua-gold sky, their shadows stretching out over the sand towards the water and their leaves rustling in the warm breeze.
The dogs trotted over to the pool and began lapping up the water with large, rhythmic gulps. She set the turkey down and slipped off her backpack and arched her shoulders, rolling them back and stretching each arm over her head, pushing hard against the air as if it was a great weight.
Favoring his ankle, he entered the clearing behind the three of them, stopping to watch as she wedged the turkey into the lowest crook of one of the giant oaks. He let his bags fall to the ground and examined his palms, wincing as he worked them open and closed.
She climbed the oak closest to her, and half a dozen feet off the ground, braced herself against its giant trunk and fastened one side of a sleeping-hammock to it. Then she hopped down and pulled the other end up the second tree.
He flung off the crossbow and flopped to the ground and lie back, shooing away, every so often, the no-see-ums and mosquitoes swirling around him as he gazed up at the sky. The full moon, so out of place against the blue, was bright and all that was left of the clouds was a peach-colored, paper-thin band sinking into the horizon.
He sat up and yanked a soda bottle and a can of beans from one of his bags. He gulped down half the bottle in a single go and pried open the can, scooping out its contents with his fingers, the juice running down his chin and staining his hands.
Twigs and small branches began raining down on the bank from above, and the dogs, protesting, jumped up from where they were lying between the oaks.
“What the hell?” He raised his arms above his head and squinted up at her, ducking and fending off the debris falling on him. Then he bent over sharply, cursing and rubbing his eyes.
She climbed down and gathered up the wood and the dogs settled back under the trees.
He looked up at the hammock, slurping the last dregs from the can. “If the dead don’t kill you, the fall will.” He tossed the can into the woods and licked the juice from his fingers and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pulled up his knees, wrapping his arms around them, and watched as she began scooping a pit out of the sand. He downed the rest of the soda and threw the empty bottle after the can. “You won’t get it lit. Wood’s too wet.”
Her hands continued shoveling.
“The cat ran off again.”
“He’ll be back.” The hole dug, she sat back and went through her pack. She pulled out a book and the bow case and a second pair of leather boots, and boxes of plastic baggies, aluminum foil, and hand wipes.
He watched each item as it was produced with a sort of befuddled fascination. “You got to be kidding me. You carry around all that crap, but you don’t have any food?”
“I have food.” She was wiping away the worst of the turkey’s blood staining her hands, arms, and chest. “It’s in the tree.”
“And you’d be shit out of luck if you’d missed.” Reaching out for the book, he read the title aloud: “Light in August.” He thumbed through it without interest and tossed it aside and grasped for the bow case.
She pulled the case to her beyond his reach.
“It was dumb to pack it up. What if you’d needed it?”
She shrugged. “I can’t shoot with my arms full, so whether I needed it or not was moot.”
Several more objects emerged from her pack—a bag filled with white packets and bits of something dark, a salt shaker, a bottle of lemon juice, a bar of so
ap.
He stared at the assemblage and grabbed the lemon juice, snorting.
In the pit, around one of the white packets, she arranged the branches and twigs and struck two small, black pieces of metal together over them. The packet caught fire instantly.
He scowled at the flames as they grew stronger, his eyes filled with a jealous sort of embarrassment.
She regarded him from across the fire for a moment and pulled another packet from the bag, handing it, and the metal fire-starters, to him.
He waved them away.
“Go ahead. Take them.”
“You need’em more than I do.”
“I have more.”
Looking away, he snatched them from her and shoved them into one of his bags. Then he wrestled another soda out of the bag and limped sullenly off to the stream and wedged it between two rocks in the water.
She spread the turkey on its back over the sand and unrolled a knife from the leather boots and made an opening several inches below its breast. Sliding her hand into the cavity with a kind of measured gentleness, she removed the entrails and placed them on a square of foil beside the bird.
He walked back from the stream and stood over her. “You’re supposed to pluck it first.”
“Are you?” She stood up and brushed him aside and carried the foil to the water, letting the viscera slide off into the swift current draining from the pool then she rinsed the foil clean, washing her hands with soap before returning to the fire.
Picking up the knife, she cut vents on each side of the turkey’s breastbone then rocked the knife slowly back and forth under the skin of its breasts and its back and its thighs.
The dogs sat at attention a short distance away, their eyes following her hands as they moved over the bird, their ears pricking at the crack of its wings and drumsticks as she wrenched them from the carcass. And with a well-mannered sort of dignity, each accepted the thigh offered to it.
He frowned. “You just wasted at least two days worth of food.”
“They have to eat.” She wrapped the wings in foil and set them aside.
“That’s what that crap you just threw in the creek was for.”
“That ‘crap’ wasn’t good for them.” She carved the breasts from the carcass and poured the lemon juice over them.
“Dogs’ve eaten that shit for millions of years.”
“They’ve only been around for twenty thousand.” She rubbed the breast-meat with salt and sealed it in foil and placed it in the pit.
“Yeah, whatever. That stuff was dog food before there was dog food. And they liked it just fine.”
“The lungs, gallbladder, and pancreas are inedible. And the liver, kidneys, bladder, spleen, and intestines are the body’s sewage system.” She placed the gore-covered knife onto the carcass and stood up. “Would you want to eat that?”
“If I was hungry enough.”
“Even if I had given it to them, it wouldn’t even have been enough food for one of them.” She carried the tiny abattoir to the stream and knelt down beside the water and sent it chasing after the entrails. She then rewashed the knife and her hands with the soap.
She unlaced her boots, still damp from the rain, and turned them inside-out, laying them in the sunlight still hot and bright by the water.
He was still lying there propped on his elbows on the sand watching her from across the bank. “You knew about this place?”
“I had a good idea it would be here.” She was working the soap into a lather over her jeans. “Or at least something like it.”
“Why?”
“It’s the kind of thing people let each other know about.” She focused on the soap in her hand as she rubbed it into the fabric of her bathing suit, and with her back to him, she washed her arms and her chest and her neck, closing her eyes to wash her face and the velvet fuzz covering her head.
He continued to stare at her with a strange, almost subterranean intensity from where he sat several feet away, his gaze never straying from her as she bathed.
The soap bubbles ran off her skin, coalescing into islands on the surface of the still waters of the pool. She splashed herself with water, her back still to him.
He slid off the ground sidling up behind her.
She stiffened, raising her head sharply and squaring her shoulders, staring straight ahead, focused on the space between herself and the water in front of her. And with one motion, she stood and turned to face him.
He reached out and touched her arm.
Stepping back, she glared at his hand and yanked her arm away and stared defiantly up at him.
He looked away from her then nodded at the soap in her hand. “Can I use that?”
For a moment longer she stared at him, her expression softening as she handed him the soap.
His eyes still averted, he took it from her, dropping it almost immediately, wincing and sucking in air. He fell to the ground and plunged his hand into the stream.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you hurt?” She knelt down beside him reaching out for his hand.
He waved her away with a sharp, flicking motion. “It’s fine.”
“Is it blistered?” She forced his hand over revealing his palm. The skin, an angry red color, had been rubbed raw by his bags and was crusted with blood and grime.
He flinched at her touch and tried to pull his hand away.
With unexpected strength, she held it tight. “Are they both like this?”
He looked at his hand and closed it into a ball. His eyes were filled with shame and a vague sort of vulnerability that hardened almost at once into a mask of stubborn defensiveness.
She was silent for a moment, focused inward as if debating some great matter with herself. Then she sighed, staring at his fist. “They’ll have to be cleaned and bandaged so they don’t get infected. You need to take your shirt off.”
“What? Why?”
“We need a cloth to clean them with. And your shirt’s filthy. Every time you touch it, you’ll risk getting bacteria in your wounds.”
His eyes skeptical, he gingerly pulled his shirt over his head and placed it, bunched up, in her outstretched hand.
She submerged the shirt in the stream and with the soap worked it into a lather against itself. She wrung the soapy water from the shirt over his arms and began scrubbing them with it. She rinsed and re-lathered the shirt, and with an efficient, frugal rhythm, she alternated between wringing, scrubbing, rinsing, and lathering until both the shirt and his arms were clean. Her eyes never met his while she worked, only stopping to rest briefly on the water and the soap and his shirt and his skin.
Hands clenched tight and grimacing, he stared at the ground, jerking away from her whenever the soapy water seeped through his fingers onto his palms.
She turned his hands over and pried them open and wrung the water from the shirt over them.
He hissed through his teeth.
She hesitated, staring at his palms, then wrung more water over them and patted them gently until they were clean. “You don’t look like you’ve bathed since the beginning.”
“I’ve bathed.” He grabbed his shirt from her. “But it’s not like hot showers are easy to come by these days, or that I don’t have more important things to worry about, like staying alive and all.”
She stood up, her eyes unconvinced. “Make sure you rinse them off well. And try not to touch anything until we can bandage them.” She hesitated again, gazing at the dirt and grime on his face and chest, then she dove into the pool.
6
Dusk was settling over the bank now. The woods bordering it were already dark. And the air was loud with the sound of cicadas and filled with the warm smell of roasting turkey.
He was sitting cross-legged by the fire with his hands resting palms-up on his knees when she returned.
With water still beading her skin, she knelt beside him and pulled a first aid kit from her backpack and dabbed his hands with alcohol
and ointment and wrapped them in gauze. After repacking the kit, she pulled out a can of bug spray and held it out to him.
“Jesus Christ, every damn thing but food.” He whirled suddenly around, his hand stopping halfway through waving away the can. A deep-throated moaning noise was coming towards them from the woods.
Howling through its clenched jaws, the cat walked up to them with a high-stepped action, dragging a tree rat by the neck over the ground between its front legs. The cat dropped the rat beside her and stared up at her with a sort of recognition-seeking pride and climbed up her chest, head-butting her forehead.
She pressed her forehead firmly against the cat’s then sat back and tossed the rat several feet away.
The cat leaped after it, throwing it in the air and tossing it to the side several times before stopping and gently patting the rat’s limp body with its paw as if trying to coax it back to life. Then the cat jumped on the rat and devoured it.
His eyes were filled with a horrified awe as he watched the cat eating its prey. “Little beast.”
She watched him watch the cat, her expression both proud and protective. “He lived indoors his whole life eating expensive cat food, using a litter box, sleeping on pillows. He’d never even seen a rat before we took to the road.”
“How’d you teach it to hunt?”
“I didn’t. He figured it out on his own. He was already catching his own food a few months after it started.”
“You should stop feeding them, too.” He nodded towards the dogs. “It’ll force them to hunt.” He reached out to pet the mutt, only to snatch his hand back as it growled and tried to bite him. “Then you won’t have to waste anymore food on them.”
“They’d starve.”
“If a cat can hunt, a dog can hunt, too.”
“We bred the ability to hunt out of them.” She glanced over at the dogs. The mastiff was lying on its side on the warm sand beside the mutt that was still gnawing the drumstick it held between its paws. “We left cats alone.” She removed the foil pouches from the fire with a pair of tongs and laid them on the sand to cool.
“People’ve used dogs to hunt forever.”