Humanity

by J. D. Knutson

  “If I can shoot you right now, that makes me a threat,” I pointed out. “So, if you can still fire that gun, then why aren’t I dead yet? Are you just waiting till you convince me to kill you, and then you’ll kill me?”

  “No, because I need you right now. You have the medical knowledge, you’re giving me my medicine. And if there isn’t any food around here I can shoot. . .”

  “So you can’t shoot me right now. Therefore I can’t kill you right now, because it would be an unfair advantage.”

  “So I wait till you’re done with the medication. I don’t really need you to hunt for me; I’d do fine on my own.” He nodded at the dead bodies inviting scavengers.

  “So you wait till you’re done with the medication. And then you shoot me under the presumption that, because you don’t need me anymore, I am then a threat.”

  “Precisely. So you should consider shooting me at that point. We’ll have ourselves a little standoff. Agreed?”

  I hesitated.

  “Or is there something else?” he asked. “Maybe you don’t really want to kill me.”

  “Oh, I want to kill you,” I replied fervently.

  “Are you sure? Or are you enjoying the excuse to put it off? Perhaps you like the hunt. The feel of having your vengeance just beyond your reach, ready and waiting for you to claim it. After all, when I’m dead, you’ll just have to get on with your life. You’ll have nothing else to focus on other than letting go of the death of your parents. And, as you’ve previously pointed out, you don’t want to do that.”

  “Okay, new plan,” I said, pulling out my gun and pointing it at him with both hands. “I kill you now.”

  He shrugged, laying back down and closing his eyes. “Go for it. I’ll be happy to have it over with. Though it’s been nice to have something to look forward to, even if it is my death. When you travel alone, there isn’t much.”

  I watched him, gun ready. Emotion rolled through me in waves. My parents’ faces, how it would feel to have the moment over: success, elation, then emptiness. Nothing but dark emptiness, perhaps for the rest of my life. As Gideon said, nothing to look forward to.

  He was right.

  I sighed, shoving my gun back into my belt and laying down a few feet away from him.

  “I live to breathe another day.” He chuckled.

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  “For the record, Candace, when I killed your parents, I didn’t know I was splitting a family. If I had known that, it might have been enough to convince me to starve to death, rather than steal that meat.”

  “You know, we might have shared it with you. All the death might have been completely unnecessary.”

  “Might being the key word. Highly unlikely. There were twenty of you in that group, to start, and that suggests there might have been more waiting back wherever you’d set up headquarters. Even once you were down to seven, there still would have been others wanting a piece of that doe, and then you only had the one single doe. I took my best-odds opportunity. I don’t kill for no reason – I needed that meat, and I saw only one way I could get it.”

  “But you might have decided to starve if you’d known you’d split a family,” I stated, unconvinced.

  “I might have mentioned this to you before . . . I had a family, once. Families hold a special place in my heart.”

  Would him having had a family really make him second guess his decision to kill a part of one?

  “What was your family like?”

  “Pretty much like yours. My dad. My mom. We also had an aunt who traveled with us; she was only about ten years older than me, had been with my mom since their parents’ deaths before that. I think I was nine when my mom was killed. My dad and aunt didn’t live much longer. I think my mom’s passing made them lose a bit of the drive to live.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “What do you mean? There’s nothing left to the story. They were dead.”

  “No, I mean, what happened to you?”

  Gideon shifted against the ground. “I scavenged on my own for a while, then found someone to help me along until I was old enough to really do some damage as a loner. Ten’s a bit young to fire a gun that can do any harm.”

  His telling me about his family felt like he was opening up, but he now seemed to be getting tense again.

  “Who helped you?” I asked.

  “None of your business,” he replied.

  He was closed again. Him telling me more would have been too personal, I guess.

  I thought about everything he’d said. “So your mom grew up in a family, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Uh, yeah, I think he did.”

  “Both my parents, too. I guess people who grow up in a family must value them more, or something. Then they’re more likely to start their own.”

  “You think the idea of a family gets passed along.”

  I shrugged. “Why else haven’t they become extinct? Even with the United States completely broken and beyond saving, families still exist amidst all the violence and suffering.”

  “Honestly? You’re right, but it’s completely idiotic. Not only are you bringing up a family in a world where that family is bound to be hurt and torn apart, but you are also giving yourself more reason to be weak. Families are a source of weakness. Love is weakness. Like how your life is completely falling apart because your parents are dead. If you hadn’t always known life as it existed from within a family, you would have learned how to survive without a family a long time ago.”

  “Gideon, that’s so . . . negative.”

  “Is there any reason for me not to be negative?”

  “No. It’s just that . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m going to sleep.”

  “Fine. Goodnight.”

  I rolled over and waited for Gideon’s breathing to deepen. When it did, I stayed up thinking. In a way, he was right. But, then again, he was also wrong. Love might have been a weakness, but it was also a driving force. For those eighteen years that I had been part of a family, I had something to live for each and every day. Now, that was gone. How could anyone stand that? Love, families . . . those were something to live for. Gideon had nothing to live for, not since his family was taken from him eighteen years ago. And all I was living for was the moment – whenever in the future that might be – the moment I killed Gideon.

  Would it really have felt any different if we’d never had a family in the first place?

  Maybe. We wouldn’t have known what it felt like to have lost it.

  But I also wouldn’t have known that this world had anything good left in it to offer. The world had fallen apart. Violence and darkness had taken over. Even then, humanity still had something to offer.

  I would just need to figure out how to take a piece of that for myself, even though my parents were gone.

  After I killed Gideon.

  ~ * ~

  The next morning, while Gideon still slept, I stripped off my heavier top shirt, leaving both it and my gun resting on my backpack. I carefully placed the backpack at the far edge of the shelter the bridge provided, as far away from Gideon as possible, with the shirt lying on top to hide the fact that the gun was there. I felt safe enough to leave the gun behind, safe enough to assume I wouldn’t need to shoot anyone, safe enough to assume I wouldn’t need to use it on Gideon. But I wouldn’t put it above him to rifle through my stuff if it was within his reach, if he woke while I was still gone. And I especially didn’t want him realizing I’d left the gun.

  Because it wasn’t as if I’d be able to hold it while I was gone anyway.

  He wouldn’t be able to get to my stuff if it wasn’t within his reach, since his leg was too injured to use, so therefore I thought it fine to leave behind. I got tired of carrying it around everywhere. Leaving it made me feel light, free, without the extra weight it provided.

  I slipped to the top of the bridge wit
h a rag and a bottle of rainwater. There was a group of trees a few yards from the bridge, and I wanted this opportunity to clean myself a little. I’d barely done any of this since my parents’ deaths, not wanting Gideon to slip away while I was gone. Now, he would be unable to do so.

  Secluded in the trees, I stripped myself bare, then rubbed my skin with the wet washcloth. It wasn’t very thorough, but thorough cleaning was rare anyway. At least I was able to get the majority of the grime and residue.

  I redressed and went back to the bridge.

  “Why do you have prenatal pills?” was Gideon’s greeting. He was sitting with my bag in his lap, exactly in the location I had left the bag. My shirt was lying beside him, and he was rifling through the bag, looking at different pill bottles.

  Anger and frustration raged in me, and I rushed at him.

  “Whoa, not so fast!” he started, pointing my own gun at me.

  “How did you get over here?” I furiously demanded, fists clenched.

  “A man with two working limbs can do a lot with ten minutes,” he informed me. “You shouldn’t have underestimated me.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, you’ve got my gun. Can I have my stuff back?” I shivered in the morning air.

  He tossed my shirt at me, and I immediately pulled it over my head.

  “Now the rest of my things.”

  “Which ones are my medication?”

  “I’m not telling you. You can’t kill me for not saying, because then you’ll just kill yourself.”

  “True.” He replaced the prenatals in the bag, then tossed it to me, grinning. “I shot us some breakfast while you were gone,” he informed me, gesturing to the decomposing bodies. A furry mass lay nearby.

  “A wolf?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I hate wolf meat.”

  “That’s unfortunate for you. Care to cook it up for us?”

  “Care to loan me some matches?”

  “Naw. Why don’t you first go get some firewood? Then I’ll light it.”

  He didn’t trust me with the matches. I could probably burn him till he gave me a gun, or till he fainted from the pain.

  I stormed away. I didn’t want to do what he suggested, but, as usual, I was hungry, and the faster we got a fire going, the faster I could eat.

  The faster we could eat. I twisted my mouth bitterly, looking up at the branches of the trees above me. Getting firewood would be so much easier with that knife of his. However, since he obviously wouldn’t be loaning it to me . . .

  I jumped for the nearest branch, grabbing hold of it and using all my weight as I swung back and forth. The branch was thick, sturdy, and I was too light to break it with my weight alone. I swung until I gained enough height to wrap my legs around it, then I hoisted myself up and looked above my head at other potential branches. I climbed the tree till I met the middle branches, which were thinner. I used my weight to make them buckle, and then I twisted them and pulled them free, dropping them to the ground.

  I definitely would be keeping that knife for myself after I killed Gideon. It would be the perfect memento.

  It took a total of forty-five minutes to get enough wood for a fire, and then I had to lug it all back to the bridge.

  “Took you long enough. I’m starving.”

  “Good. I hope you’re enjoying that feeling.” I stacked the branches in a teepee formation. “Match?”

  He leaned forward toward the wood, slipping a little matchbox out of his pocket and lighting one. He tossed it onto the wood. His precision surprised me; the match struck just right, and the wood took the flame.

  “Now for the meat?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows at me.

  “Maybe I should pick up one of these branches and use it to kill you.”

  “That’ll only work if I can’t shoot you first.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I tried not to keep the discouraged note out of my voice as I turned and did what he said: I brought back the wolf carcass. I had to set it in front of him so he could carve at it with the knife. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t rest while he did this because he only had one hand, and needed me to hold the hide just right while he cut into it.

  I finally settled the meat into the fire. We sat back to wait.

  “Gideon, what’s your driving force?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last night, you said that family is weakness, that we’re better off learning from the beginning how to live on our own. But families give people something to live for, something to enjoy. There’s a source of happiness in them. Without one, you have to find something else to live for. A driving force. What’s yours?”

  “Survival.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “I believe God sent us to this planet to bide our time, prove to him we’re tough enough to take what he throws at us. Then we die, and it’s over. So what’s my driving force? Survival. I want to survive until I die, and then I can move on from this horrid world.”

  “But the continual existence of families is proof that there’s good in this world. It’s not all bad.”

  “But families don’t last.”

  “How can you focus on simple survival, though? Isn’t that depressing?”

  “I learn not to think about it too much.”

  “You think about nothing.”

  His mouth twitched. “Correct.”

  “Can you teach me how?” One day, I would be alone. If I could be as serene as him about it. . .

  “How to think about nothing? I told you, it just takes practice.”

  I looked down. “All I can think about when I close my eyes is them. And then I think about killing you.”

  He was watching me. I could feel it. “That’ll go away after a while. Their image begins to fade. It’ll help when I’m dead. Force you to move on.”

  “What if there’s nothing to live for when you’re dead? I don’t know if survival will be enough for me.”

  “You’ll learn to let it be enough. Especially when you have a few more bad experiences, and realize that the quiet, alone moments are the best there are. You learn to live for those moments – the moments when you aren’t running for your life, when you aren’t fighting for territory, when you aren’t hungry. You live for the success of survival.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “I don’t know if I can. If you keep holding your parents’ death against me, then you won’t be able to learn how to live happily with simple survival. Not until I’m dead, too.”

  “Well, can you try to teach me, anyway?”

  “Sure. We can start now.”

  “Okay. . . What do I do?”

  “Tilt your head back. Lean it against the wall. Close your eyes. Relax your shoulders. Listen. What do you hear?”

  “The wind.”

  “And?”

  “The trees?”

  “And. . .”

  “The crackling of the fire. The sizzling of the meat.”

  “Okay. Focus on those things. What do you smell?”

  “The burning wood. The meat. The rain from yesterday. Dirt. A hint of death.”

  “Don’t focus on the death. Block that part out.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “That’s hard to do.”

  “Then refocus on the smell and sounds of the wood and meat, and the rain, wind, dirt, and trees.”

  I did what he told me.

  “Relax your shoulders.”

  “I’m trying. It’s hard when I’m doing so much focusing.”

  “Stop scrunching your forehead. Relax. Smell how good the fire smells, and the rain. Listen to the wind. Breathe deeply.”

  I did what he said. He was silent for a few moments.

  “Now, what do you feel?”

  “Peace.” I opened my eyes to look over at him for approval.

  He smiled at me, an echo of that peace on his face. “Exactly. Peace.”

  Chapter 6

  The days trickled by. I gave Gideon his medicine at set
intervals, those intervals traveling further and further from each other. Gideon shot all the scavengers that came near the bodies. The smell got worse and worse, but it wasn’t like I had a shovel, and Gideon was still healing.

  We didn’t talk much, which gave me a lot of time to think about all the scenarios that might take place in which Gideon’s weapons could come into my possession, or the scenarios where I might happen by new weapons. I thought about venturing a little further than just our nearest exit, but the fact that Gideon had gotten my gun from me proved that he was capable of at least some movement when he wanted, and I couldn’t take the risk.

  This was even more important when the medicine was no longer necessary.

  “You going to kill me yet?” Gideon taunted.

  “The moment I get an opportunity, I will,” I told him, arching an eyebrow. “You going to kill me yet?”

  Gideon sat back against the wall some more. “Naw. It would be way too lonely without you, what with me stuck here healing and all.”

  “Yeah, you enjoy that,” I retorted. “If it weren’t for the fact that you’re so ginormous, I would have already strangled you, weapon or no weapon.”

  He grinned. “I guess it’s good that I’m ginormous, then.”

  These were the small exchanges we had. The only other ones came at night, as we laid against the brick wall of the bridge, several feet between us, eyes closed and listening.

  “Anything new tonight?” he asked.

  “Some scuffling,” I murmured, listening hard. “Someone coming this way?”

  “A small animal, I think,” he replied. “We’ll get him in a few minutes. What else?”

  “Just the usual,” I said, relaxing into the now-familiar scents and sounds around me, and allowing them to sweep out all the tension and negativity I’d felt that day. “It’s funny. When we do this, I almost don’t feel like killing you.”

  “That’s a good thing. Killing doesn’t bring peace.”

  “You kill.”

  “I kill when I have to. I never kill when there’s another option.”

  “That’s the real reason I’m still alive, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the real reason I didn’t kill you the very first day we met.”

  “If you could kill the people responsible for your parents’ death, or for your aunt’s death, would you?”