by T. S. Ward
Soldier doesn’t say anything, but the radio stays open and I hear noises through it. Voices. I pull the thing from my hip and go to press the button, but then stop.
A light flashes in one of the windows. A flashlight.
I give a quick salute, hoping it’s Soldier trying to get my attention, just so he knows I saw, and then I dip out of sight. There’s a wooden fence that I stick to, moving low and slow.
I keep close to available cover as I come up on the buildings.
“…know I heard something…” the radio says, “…check it out… careful now…”
“Shit,” I mutter.
There’s no movement or vehicles that I can see as I cut across the parking lot toward the alley. I stop behind a dumpster.
Whoever it is, they aren’t military. At least there’s that. I know damn well they wouldn’t make a sound if they were moving through a building like that. More than likely it’s whoever those kids are with.
Flashbacks to John Ezra and his men burn in my mind. Hiding in the rubble from them, Soldier giving himself up, what they would have done to me at that camp if I hadn’t killed three of them.
I stretch quickly. I can’t be too prepared, especially if I have to fight them off the way I fought off Ezra’s men. That hard. That desperately. And I will, for Soldier.
They do anything to him, I’ll—well. He said it best, in that fever dream. I’ll burn the whole damn world to the dirt.
“Macon! In here,” the voices say, “Got someone. He’s armed.”
Another voice. “A’ight. We don’t want anyone getting hurt, now, do we? Let’s all drop the guns. What’s your name? How many are you?”
Soldier sounds tense. “I’m alone.”
“I see that radio you’ve got there. Who’s that broadcasting to?”
I climb up on top of the dumpster to reach the fire escape without pulling the ladder. Any noise could get him killed. Even the radio is risky, but I need to know what’s going on. I move as quietly up the narrow steps as I can.
The window Soldier’s light was in is open, but the escape also connects to another one. That’s my way in.
“Simon, grab his radio—ge—h—easy, easy, we mean no harm. Hey, whoever’s listening. Please, stand down. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re just trying to survive—”
I switch the radio off and stay pressed to the building, taking a deep breath as I peek through the window. All clear. Office building. Vents through the walls, wheelie chairs, heavy objects—these idiots won’t know what hit them.
I shimmy the window open as carefully as I can, trying not to look down at the ground as I slip over the railing and onto the ledge, and lower myself into the dark room.
All I really need is a distraction, but I’ve been carrying something around in my bag ever since Soldier first laid out his army supplies, and I’ve been itching to pull the pin. Literally. Looking around this room, I’m thinking I might need to sacrifice his honey to make this work.
Which will only make it all the more spectacular, really.
I’ll really have to find that bee farm, to make it up to him.
A doorway leads into the next room to the immediate left of the window, and a vent on the same wall in the opposite corner that’s just big enough for me to crawl through.
Hopefully it’s protected enough on the other side that I can.
I get to work, moving quickly, thinking fast. I can hear voices still trying to talk through the radio in the next room. I work backwards. From the door knob, to a shelf, to a desk covered in papers. Just a distraction, nothing magical.
The screws on the vent come off easily with a twist of my knife, and I catch them in my palms as they fall. The other side is poorly attached, thank fuck—I worm my hand under to catch the top two screws as I push them out from the back.
A metal aproned desk sits directly between me and them, the door to the right, cracked open still.
I leave my bag on the ground first, and then worm into the room, careful and slow. Incredibly careful. Unspooling the line as I go. Praying that the metal doesn’t pop as it warps under my touch.
Luckily, out of everything, they don’t hear me.
I sit under the level of the desk, fishing line in hand, opening the jar of honey in my jacket to muffle the noise. I push the smoke grenade into the honey, pulling a face as it squeezes out onto my hands. I have to sit there for another minute trying to clean it off so I can tie the damn line around it.
I peer through the cracks and the shelves as best as I can while I do that.
Soldier is by the window, still holding his pistol, not answering anything they say to him. Two men and a woman. I heard Macon and Simon, but not her name. If this works, it’ll be Soldier’s honey grenade as a barrier as he escapes out the window.
I set the honey on the ground, worm halfway back into the vent, loosen the line on the honey. I crawl all the way back, slip my bag back on, tightening the straps as I take a breath. The honey tips over, and then it starts rolling.
Sounds of confusion reach my ears as I hurry back to the window and climb out onto the fire escape again, leaning back to make sure everything’s going as it should. There’s a thud as a stapler is pulled off a desk and lands in a waste basket.
The door opens and I pull back as two shadows fall over the window.
I turn as I count silently, tapping Soldier through the window as someone starts shouting grenade!
The sound of it is louder than I expected. Nearly deafening. And then Soldier is slipping through the window, smoke spilling out both windows.
“Go!” Soldier says, and our feet barely touch the fire escape on the way down.
We hit the ground, jumping from the dumpster, stumbling and barely getting our feet under us. And then we’re bolting without looking back.
We’re half an hour out of town when we finally stop, but I’m not even sure if they bothered to try chasing us. They might not have meant harm, but John Ezra said he didn’t, either.
“Hey,” I say, breathing heavy, doubled over with my hands on my knees. I look up at him. “That one count?”
He’s standing under a street sign. Smiling. “Since you blew it to bits, I’m going to say no. Bad luck, spooks.”
“Oh, whatever.” It doesn’t matter either way, because this is that road, and if we can find a place here—he’ll have his three jars and then some. Enough damn honey to last an apocalypse.
And then what? What comes of that?
You trying to step out of limbo, little Ghost? Little rabid squirrel? Patient close-to-zero?
Day Ninety-Five
We do stay here.
We find a little place, tucked up in some trees, and then the snow starts falling. We aren’t exactly prepared for winter, so Soldier spends a while chopping wood and I hunt in the woods.
There was an undead hunter stumbling around in circles with a compound bow and a whole volley of arrows in the yard, luckily enough. So now hunting will be quiet, even if it’s only been small game so far anyhow. Even if it’s only been setting wire traps with frozen fingers to come back and find them either escaped or being eaten by grunts.
But.
I find that house.
The apiaries have already been prepared for the winter, thankfully, because I sure as hell don’t know how to do that myself. A shed up behind the house is loaded with boxes full of honey, more than I reasonably expected from a hobbyist. More than Soldier will know what to do with or be able to use.
I grab his three jars, wrap them up carefully in clothes so they don’t rattle and break, and shove them to the bottom of my bag. I head back home after that.
Home.
As if that’s what it is. It isn’t like we’re staying here, but the longer we go without hearing any radio chatter, the more at ease we are. And it’s nice.
It’s nice, to have someone to go home to.
Day Ninety-Seven
Soldier comes in stomping snow off his boots on the rug.
>
His nose and his cheeks are reddened from the cold. Snow melts quickly off his beard and mustache and stays stuck to his hat.
The woodstove crackles in front of me. I’m wrapped in a blanket on the floor, one that won’t stay on because of this guitar. It constantly falls out of tune and my fingers aren’t calloused anymore, not to mention it’s been a real long time, but it’s nice, still, to have something to do that isn’t directly related to just survive.
“Got that truck working,” Soldier says. There’s a smear of oil on his cheekbone.
I stop strumming and mute the strings. “I thought you said you couldn’t do it?”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t. I said it would be difficult,” he tells me. He pulls off his coat and his hat and hangs them on the hooks set on the wall beside the door. He kicks his boots off and sets them on the rug. “Had to go up the road a bit. But I found the part I needed.”
I stare into the fire and let the heat flush through me. Thinking about seeing my family again is almost nauseating now. Not because I don’t want to, but because I might actually see them. “So we could drive into Athens.”
“Just in time for Christmas,” he calls back from the kitchen.
There’s silence for a bit, so I start strumming again. Elvis this time. Blue Christmas.
Footsteps creak across the floor.
Soldier sets the kettle on top of the woodstove and crouches down in front of me, jar of honey in hand. I left it on the kitchen table earlier. A little surprise. A little gift.
“Feliz Navidad,” I say.
“How long have you had this?” He asks, a smile warming his cheeks. Or maybe it’s the fire. “You went out two days ago. You got it then?”
I nod, humming, still playing that song.
“Sneaky bastard,” he laughs.
He makes his tea and my coffee in silence, just listening, and then he sits down next to me. He sets our drinks on the ground in front of us, and then fixes the blanket, holding it around both of us. I mess up the song, distracted by his hand on my shoulder.
“I think I would have a blue Christmas without you.”
I laugh, but that hits me right in the gut. “Yeah, you’d probably have been on a beach somewhere, wouldn’t you? Blue skies, blue seas.”
“Oh, no. I’m a winter kind of guy.”
He picks up my coffee as I set the guitar down, holding it out to me, and then crosses his legs at the ankle. Leans back. Sets his hand on the ground behind me to lean on his arm.
“Besides, that’s where everyone else took off to. Thinking that it’ll be easier than somewhere that gets all four seasons.”
“Should have done that ourselves,” I say.
I’m tense. Shivering. Holding the mug close with both hands as I sip the coffee. It warms me enough. As much as the fire, as much as Soldier sitting this close. I’m shivering, but I feel so damn warm.
“No, I prefer this,” he says, quietly.
That seems like it should be an outright lie to me, but it’s in the way he says it. He means it. So I don’t say anything. I just sit there, staring at the fire, sipping my coffee as I watch the way the light flickers orange as it gets darker and darker in the room.
I don’t want to move. I don’t want to leave. But I’m sitting, hovering barely an inch from touching Soldier’s arm, barely an inch from just being right up against him, head on his shoulder.
I want to. But I don’t move.
I dream about it that night.
Day Ninety-Eight
“Ghost, hey.”
Soldier’s voice is quiet, hand on my cheek.
“Hey. Wake up.”
I blink, groaning, turning over.
He’s kneeling next to me in the dark, nudging me, holding his hands out to help me sit up, so I take them despite the cold that hits me outside the blanket.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
“Go? What?” I run my hands over my eyes and through my hair. It’s tangled and in need of brushing, but I hardly give a shit anymore.
Soldier stands up and walks to the door without answering me. Pale light comes through the windows and turns the place black and blue, catches off the edges of him, and it tells me just how early it is.
He waits by the door while I get up and get my shit together. My jacket, my boots, my bag. He tells me he’s hidden some things under that floorboard in the kitchen, just in case we need to come back, just in case we lose our things. Always thinking ahead. Always just aware. He takes my bag for me.
The truck is running outside, the exhaust pluming up into the air as thick snowflakes fall and melt on the windshield.
I breathe out my own cloud, stomp through the snow, and climb into the truck with much less reluctance knowing that it’s a hell of a lot warmer in it than the house without a fire going.
“Is it your friends?” I mumble, already falling asleep again.
“Heard something,” he says, “Nothing clear. I wanted to get going before we can’t drive this thing through the snow.”
—
I dream about my brother.
It’s less of a dream and more of a memory, from when I was seven and he was fourteen.
We were out doing dumb shit in the woods after Dad and Eli ditched us at camp to hunt, because we were too obnoxious and hyper and would scare the animals off.
“Adam, I’m hungry,” I complained.
He was tossing rocks up into the air, pretending to shoot them like skeets with a stick that vaguely looked like a gun. “Dad and Eli will be back soon.”
“They won’t be!”
“Well, then,” he threw his hands up, exasperated, and started stomping around the place looking for shit. After a while, he dug out some meat from the cooler and a lighter, dragged me over to the fire pit, and showed me how to light it with kindling.
I nearly burned myself doing it.
Adam knelt down in front of me, backed by the fire, with the smell of meat cooking surrounding us. “Listen, Keels. Dad’s not always gonna be around and neither am I. You gotta learn to take care of yourself. Light your own fires. Cook your own shit. One day it’s just gonna be you on your own.”
—
Soldier nudges me awake.
He’s driving slow, windshield wipers going fast against the snow. “We’re here, spooks. Which way do I go now?”
I sit forward, rolling the window down so I can see better.
It’s cold as hell, but I recognize where we are and direct him down a few streets. We have to double back a little, since Crystal’s place is closer to the last town than it is to Athens’ main core.
My stomach is in knots at the thought of seeing them again. I have no idea how they’re going to react. I don’t even know if they’ve thought of me since I disappeared, or if they thought it was an easy out.
“So…” Soldier starts to say, but then he shakes his head and doesn’t continue.
“So what? You got something to say, say it.”
He takes a second, chewing on his words before he says them. “How are you feeling, about this? Seeing your family. Are you excited? Nervous? You haven’t said a word.”
I shrug. “Just don’t expect much.”
“But,” he looks at me, and then looks back at the road. “You’re afraid of something. Worried. I can see that.”
I stare straight ahead for a while, turning to the window when I talk. “It’s not like they’re expecting to see me again. They never thought twice about me for an entire fucking year.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t know them.”
“No, but I know you,” he says, and he reaches out and grabs my hand. “And I’ve been thinking about you every damn day, so, I don’t know, Ghost. Their loss if they don’t.”
I snort a laugh, shaking my head. “Real funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
I pull my hand back and cross my arms over my chest. If I listen closely, I can hear the sound of limbo growing thin, dr
awn out.
“So,” he says again.
“What?”
“This it?” He nods to the house on the right as he pulls up on the shoulder.
There’s a pit in my stomach when I see it. Some lights are on, the generator is rumbling at the side of the house, and steam rises from the chimney. Adam’s car is in the driveway. It’s propped up on blocks, tires missing.
I feel sick.
“Want me to make sure it’s them? That they’re okay?”
I shake my head and sit forward. I start to say something, but then stop, and shake my head again. I crack the door open. “No. No. I have to—I have to. Just… give me five minutes.”
I jump out into the snow and wince when it spills over the tops of my boots. Cold against the ankles.
I walk up to the place in a daze. I haven’t been here since Sadie was born, really. Haven’t spoken to my mother since she gave her up to my dad. I figured I was done on that front for good, that I’d left her in the past.
The door opens when I try it. No lock, nothing, and I figure the first diver to come through here would force it right open.
“Adam?” I call out.
There are shoes piled up by the door in no particular order. Coats hanging on top of other coats. It doesn’t tell me much of who’s here, just that people have been here. Evidence of Sadie, a police coat, various other items in adult sizes.
“Sadie? Adam? Crystal?”
I walk through the house slowly, walk into each room and check everywhere an eight-year-old kid could hide. The living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, every bedroom. There are dishes on the table, cigarettes in an ashtray that still smell like smoke. The place feels lived in. It feels like there’s someone here.
The basement door is cracked open. The light in the stairway is on.
“Hey! Anyone home?” I call down, listening before moving sideways down the stairs. I try to crouch down and look into the room as I go.
He’s sitting in a chair, just in front of the glass doors to the backyard. His hair is long now, down to his shoulders, tucked behind his ears. There’s a gun on the ground. Just sitting there. And he’s leaning crooked in the chair, head drooped forward, one hand hanging limp at his side.