Savages

by Christina Bergling

  “Since we’re just sitting here, putting it all out there, can I ask you something?” I finally said.

  “Sure.” He kept his eyes closed, warming in the sun like a lizard.

  “Why did you save me? I get your whole moral code thing, but you never saw anyone else who needed help?”

  “You know, by that point, most were past help. In one way or another. But no. It was you. Something about you. I had seen that look of surrender and defeat, that invitation to death a thousand fucking times in too many places. They had all just given up—just died or turned without a fight. I couldn’t stand it again.”

  Something in me. What could there have possibly been in me? I was nothing but failure and a solicitation for death. I was an empty shell, a hollow corpse. There was nothing in me that day.

  “And why did you keep me? Train me? Save me over and over?”

  “I told you before; when you save a life, you’re responsible for it.”

  “That seems a little backwards. Shouldn’t I owe you for saving me?”

  “No. Saving you did enough. I would have cracked up as the only one all this time. Uriah would have eaten my ass or something.”

  “And the battle buddy is redeemed.”

  “My ribs still hurt like hell. Let’s call it breaking even.”

  Without another word, he took my hand and interlaced it with his. Then he set the entanglement of digits calmly on his chest. I could feel his heartbeat thumping faintly against my skin. Those forgotten nerves webbing my hand together sang out in tactile memory. “Mommy! Mommy! Hold hands!” How the small hand wrapped around my index finger. Dante's fingers parting mine and digging into the top of my hand as he clutched me close and thrust into me. “I love you... I love you...”

  I closed my eyes to try to keep another tear from plummeting onto his face. I pushed the air out of my lungs methodically until Dante’s voice was no longer in my ears. Then I looked out and let myself feel Marcus’s hand against mine again. I permitted it to feel good and reassuring.

  As I stared out in front of me, Amber Lynn materialized out of the heat wavering in the air. Her long blonde hair twirled in wind that wasn’t blowing. She rubbed her hand over a bump that was never given the time to grow. Dante clawed up and unearthed himself from the sand under which I had hastily and sloppily buried him. The dirt fell away and vanished from him as he stood.

  They didn’t shamble like the dead; they didn’t walk like the living. They were just beside us, all around us. Amber Lynn appeared on one side of us and slowly and gently lowered herself to a seat on the ground. Dante squatted quickly, letting himself drop to the other side of us. They crouched down, got comfortable, settled in for a front row seat. Close enough to breathe on us, if they were breathing.

  Amber Lynn wrapped her arms protectively around her imagined belly and looked forlornly at his head so comfortable on my thigh. She reached forward to touch his face then retracted, replaced her palm on her stomach. Dante dug his elbows into his knees, pressed his chin heavy on balled up fists. He stared at our hands wound together. I turned my head sideways and leaned toward him, but he only fixated on where my fingers tangled Marcus.

  Behind them, a sea of memories from our entire past lives swelled high enough to blot out the sun.

  Marcus stirred to sit up. I pressed my hands into his back to help guide him. Amber Lynn and Dante stood and parted, moved to allow him to stand. As Marcus hobbled awkwardly around the rock, Amber Lynn trailed him, her blonde hair waving like a flag behind her. Dante remained with me but refused to look at me. With Marcus out of sight, I moved in front of Dante, begged his eyes. He simply continued to stare down at my hands in my lap and slightly rock from side to side. I pressed my hand to my mouth in an attempt not to cry.

  Marcus appeared and half-smiled at me as he ran his hand along the side of the rock for support. Amber Lynn continued to haunt his steps. She closed her eyes as she inhaled at the back of his neck. He did not see her; he did not feel her. He was alone in the camp with me while I was crowded by our dead. I turned away from Dante and stood, rubbing the impression Marcus' head had left in my leg.

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  He nodded as he eased back down to the ground, folding his hands behind his head. Amber Lynn encircled her arms protectively around her belly again. She knelt down beside him gracefully, staring at his face wide eyed now that he was not using me as a pillow, not touching me. She only took a second to shoot me a look from the sharp corner of her blue eye.

  I breathed and tried to ignore the bitchy figment, moving to our packs. Dante trailed me then stepped to place one foot on either side of Marcus’s bag. As I unzipped the backpack between his legs, Dante crossed his arms and shifted side to side as he always did when he was growing impatient. I looked up at him and tried to snag his eye contact. Just look at me already.

  “What are you looking at?” Marcus asked.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  I buried my face back in the pack. I retrieved dehydrated meals and set the two packages on the ground beside me to fish for his canteen.

  “Eating fancy tonight,” he commented.

  “Well it is a vacation day.”

  He chuckled. Amber Lynn looked over to roll her eyes at me. Dante did not react. Our camp suddenly felt overpopulated.

  As I crouched down to prepare the meals, Dante stooped down behind me. I tried to pretend he wasn't there because I knew he truly was not. Yet somehow, I felt his breath on the back of my neck; I felt the heat radiating from his body. I closed my eyes tight, knowing he was cold and breathless in another desert. I felt his hand rise and slide down the center of my back. His familiar combination to my body, the firm pressure sending waves through my nerves. I tried not to gasp; I fought not to jerk. When his fingers abandoned me, I finished collecting dinner and ate surrounded by ghosts. I did not even taste the food.

  That night, as the sun died in the sky, Marcus pulled me close to him in the dirt. The dark tugged a cold blanket over the desert and left the air feeling thin in my lungs. He draped himself around my back, nestled his chin in my shoulder. We pulled the ratty blanket around us. I huddled and shuttered until his body heat spread to me. Exhaustion began to flirt with me; I could feel it pressing on my forehead.

  Dante shifted in the growing darkness and lay down beside me. He arranged himself right alongside us, looking into my eyes as he always did when we went to bed, looking into my eyes for the first time since he had appeared. With that familiar drowsy affection on his face, he took my hand and closed his eyes. The weight of his hand was comforting as it guided me over into sleep’s waiting arms.

  I never saw him again.

  17

  Time became a mirage in the desert, as it always had. As it had when Dante and I stumbled through our blinding grief, as it had when I sought death from three random savages, as it had when he scooped me up from the bloody dirt and began reshaping me. Once we put our feet to trudging again, it dissolved into a blur of walking and sleeping. We took to moving in the dusk and dawn hours, when we could still see but suffer the piercing sun less.

  By gradual degrees, he was healing. His entire side was no longer a nauseating purple, so deep the flesh looked swollen and dead. Green and yellow permeated the bruise and started to make it look like living tissue again. His breath still caught in a noiseless grunt when he moved. For days, I carried his pack like a large pregnant belly, waddling as the two bags neutralized each other, pulling me in both directions. He had resisted, puffed up and insisted he could carry on, but he could not camouflage or deny such a contusion.

  Oh, the irony of forcing him to rest after I had just wanted him to fuck me for so long.

  As we slept each afternoon, huddled in shrinking shade, I lay on my back and pulled him onto my chest, serving as his pillow, offering whatever comfort for the ribs I had broken.

  At one point, it felt like the desert would sprawl out in front of us forever. Windswept sand in every direction. Entire f
orgotten cities could be beneath our boots. I imagined our footsteps falling above Phoenix, Reno, Salt Lake, any of the desert cities I had never seen. Who knew if we were in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California? I was horrendous at geography even when there was geography to know. All that mattered anymore was west. Westward, ho. Who knew if there was anything left after this desert? Who knew if this desert would simply drop off into the ocean? It would be fitting to just perish here, where I ended and where we began.

  Then I saw it in the distance, tall and lonely, thin leaves wavering high in the plain sky. The first palm tree. The first promise of another destination, the first breadcrumb to flee to the next climate. It staked its claim against the desolation, and other vegetation slowly began to amass support behind it. The world changed beneath our feet, one step at a time, until the desert faded away into yet another plaguing memory.

  “Is it weird that we haven’t seen anything?” I said as we meandered down a gentle slope.

  “Seen any what?”

  “Any anything. No savages, no nothing.”

  “Maybe. Can’t be too surprised in the desert, you know.”

  “True enough. So we should watch for more now.”

  “The greener it gets.”

  “Will we ever really outrun them?”

  “Maybe,” he said again. “That’s the idea. Find where they end. Find where there is something else.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Me, too.”

  I could taste the salt starting to taint the air. I could feel it creeping into my lungs and giving each breath flavor. I knew the feel of the approaching sea, felt its pull. The fluttering sensation in my chest reminded me of my own childhood, my own small hand hidden in my father’s as he guided me along the beach for the first time and I met the big blue beast that looked large enough to swallow me whole. Something both awe-inspiring and terrifying captivating me.

  We heard it first, the distant, steady frothing of the waves, but after summiting the right hill, the flat blue horizon finally betrayed the land. The water stretched out so far it bent the sky; it curved the world. The angry introduction of waves breaking upon the shore stretched out into tranquility, water that appeared flat enough to walk on. It was the light at the end of a long and horrendous tunnel paved with only graves. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I did not care if that light was buried suffocatingly deep beneath the waves.

  Whatever made it end.

  I had tunnel vision. I did not see the slopes we continued down. I did not notice when foliage forfeited to sand. I felt an exhilaration rising in me as the ocean ahead of us consumed more and more of my sight, became more ominous and real. Whether a pack of savages, a watery grave, or nothing at all greeted us at the shoreline, it would finally be something different. There would be nowhere left to walk or wander, no direction left to explore. One way or another, this would finally be the end. While I felt a pessimistic pressure on my heart, I also swelled with relief. I would let it swallow me whole.

  We finally arrived at the end of our world. Our footsteps sank deep into the sand, different from any desert. Our pace faltered, mired in a new terrain and in awe of the foreground. The sea was all that lay ahead of us. It danced in undulating surf, spoke in the primal lashing tongue of the waves, breathed in the sea gusts against our faces. Finally standing on its precipice, it looked like isolation. This immeasurable monster sprawled out endlessly between us and anything else. We were stranded on our continent with no idea about the rest of the wide world, like the natives generations ago. I stared blankly at the broken-backed ships forever rocking on the shore.

  It was over. Where would we go now?

  I stood watching the spray silently for a long time, letting the sea air tangle my hair, letting the salt water my eyes. I could not discern how I felt. My emotions rolled in my chest to mirror the rocking body of water in which I presently lost my mind. I breathed slow and heavy before finally turning to him.

  He had dropped to the sand beside me. His pack was already stripped from his back and resting on the ground. He slowly contorted himself until he could strip the boots from his feet. He left them arranged on the sand beside the bag, socks stuffed safely within. He eased himself up and began walking barefoot toward the water. Then he stopped at the wet edge of the sand and looked back at me, waited for me. Confused and hesitant, I followed his lead, shed my worn boots, then took tentative, unprotected steps after him. He stretched out his hand and hooked his fingers around mine as we walked toward the sea.

  The wet sand felt different than the dry. It had no heat. It held together and fought more convincingly against our weight. My feet had felt nothing but the inside of my boots for too long. The nerves were baffled by the free air, tantalized by the sandy massage. A small wave collapsed in front of us and raced out thin and fast over the sand. The water met my toes as my skin shrieked happily. He kept my hand in his as we submitted our legs to the ocean, as we felt the tide swell up around our calves and soak the bottoms of our pant legs.

  When the surf played at our knees, he finally stopped his slow march. I looked over at him. I did not recognize his face. He had pushed his sunglasses onto his head, and his eyes squinted against the light bouncing off the ocean. His mouth and nose scrunched up. His other hand played at his chin. He was shifting, moving in unfamiliar ways. Then he let out a long breath, and the chuckle began to pour out of his thin lips.

  “Are you laughing?” I asked incredulously, the movement of the sea causing me to sway.

  “What else is there to do?”

  He met my eyes uncomposed, raw. His face was loose as so many expressions painted over it. I reached up and pressed my palm to his stubbled cheek. He half-smiled and kept shifting back and forth until I dropped my arm back to my side. I retrieved my hand from his, sighed, and let my eyes wander off into the bobbing distance. All these miles, all these years, to be standing knee deep in the pitching ocean, listening to the shattered hulls of floundering vessels ever smashing against the shore.

  “What are we going to do now?” I finally said.

  He stopped moving. He fell still, only shifted by the will of the sea, and I could hear him breathing deliberately over the roar of the surf. He was thinking; he was wrestling within his own brain. I saw the contest shift in his brow, in the clenching of his forearms as he moved his hands. I stood beside him and waited. He gazed out upon the waves for a long time, long enough for me to question if he ever intended on answering me. Then he snapped out of it. He turned and looked me so dead and hard in the eyes that I felt my chest flinch.

  “Well, that’s settled,” he said softly. “We’ve looked. I’ve dragged you all over this country looking for survivors, real survivors. We both know how that went. There is no one here. All I brought us was more death, more pain. I led us here, through all this shit. Now I’ll let you decide. We can go back, go up into the mountains, find some place remote enough, and live. Stop moving like I know you’ve wanted. Or we can take to the water, keep looking, find out if the whole world is like this.”

  His words left my mouth agape. Had he just forfeited the fight? Had he just said we could settle? Had he just left the decision to me? None of this aligned with anything I expected to find when we reached the sea. I thought of Xavier plucked from a filthy closet and placed into the ground. I thought of Uriah and the other Z-branded savages rotting in appropriate pieces. I thought of the crucified sacrifices in the haunted town. I thought of Marcus plummeting off the edge of a half-collapsed building. I thought of the mirage of the city and bombed out appearance of my mistake. I thought of the red dirt in the desert congealing in my tears and my blood as I waited to die. I thought of Marcus crouching down to gather me up and set my boots on this path. I felt every single step to this moment in each cell of my body. Every tear, every drop of blood, every price so painfully paid. My head throbbed; my heart pounded. He stepped forward and guided me into his chest.

  With his heartbeat in my ear, I pictured us in a
cabin in the mountains. The Rockies. I knew that is where he would go, back to his motherland. I had never been into the heart of the Rockies, but I pictured the purple mountain majesty all around. I saw snowcapped peaks and furry pine trees. I envisioned the small cabin he would meticulously construct for us hidden away. We would be miles above and away from any remains of society. He would find a spot that took treachery to climb to, that was easily fortified, that had a defensive vantage point. We would dig into the dirt and pummel it until it was viable, planting a garden and crops, working the land together. Our bug out bags would be fully stocked and stashed in a corner out of sight. He would look foreign without that growth on his back; his hands would look empty without a sword in them. He would look at me and see only me. Maybe a child would toddle between us. Secluded and safe.

  The vision was pleasant. As amiable and inviting as all the happy memories that threatened to kill me. That wasn’t us; that wasn’t this life.

  Could he really live not knowing? Could we live as the last two real people on Earth? Would we ever be granted such a fantasy in this savage world?

  I bit down into my lip and closed my eyes. I wanted it. I wanted that life as much as I wanted the one I had lost. I pressed the top of my skull against his chest and softly shook my head. I couldn't have the past or the future; neither existed anymore. I felt my body tensing in conflict; I felt my breathing restrict. Tears threatened my eyes, but he kept his hands calmly on my shoulders. I focused on his touch; I focused on him and this odd marine moment. I concentrated on the shape of his chest against my forehead and controlled my breathing. Then I skidded my face up his shirt and turned my eyes to his. I pressed myself into him and rested my chin on his collarbone.

  “Tell me about this boat idea,” I said into his neck.

  We stared out at the sea, he and I, as it bobbed out onto the horizon and spilled into seeming infinity.