by Marlin Grail
Will parked us on damp soil beside a lake. Unable to sleep, I have the simple luxury to open my eyes and see the mirroring water. But every time I look back within our seating arrangement, I whisper, “Poor Lissie.”
In the past, I was always told—no matter what—the true danger a woman has to always be on the lookout for is men.
It’s fortunate for her and me when it comes to the three men we live with practically 24/7. Not once have I had the concern that any of them would advance on me in an offensive and non-consensual way.
Why can’t some men just refuse to revert to caveman-like behavior? Is it truly more challenging to avoid than surviving as is?
It sure seemed the case for the man who had to be put down by Gary. As I turn my head to her once again, I’m lightened by seeing her cradled in Gary’s sleeping but protective arms.
I for one am truly okay if these three men are the only ones I’ll ever be able to trust again.
I couldn’t even trust my ex-husband. It’s why I denounced him as my former love. Funny thing hearing Alex bring him up today.
Reconciled so long ago to the past between him and I, I couldn’t even recall if we made up through letters or by phone. For a while, however, I could only picture the minuses to his personality.
After I learned what happened tonight, there’s another plus to add to his tallies of pros.
He wasn’t someone who’d ever attempt rape on somebody. He never tried it on me. That doesn’t sink the memory I have of him.
“Janice…” I hear Gary’s tired voice. I suppose my continuous swiveling on my seat woke him. “Have you gone to sleep at all?”
In an untroubled tone, I tell him, “Don’t worry about me. Be here for Lissie and yourself tonight.”
Gary doesn’t mistake my request as a suggestion. He returns to leaning his head on the middle seat above Lissie.
It’s surreal—now that I think about it. This man, but a person away from me, killed five people tonight. Yet I don’t see him any differently since before he added to his kill count. I know it didn’t come without justification.
It just reminds me a killer can still remain a safe person.
I’ve known why I always felt right about him. From the moment he and Ashton found me, I knew he would guide us to a better place. He would even bring out my own self-healing.
Most importantly, he would chisel a new way of how I could see my own son.
I feel the suffocation in my heart begin to pump away. I have to work to keep myself in control. Perhaps I’ll allow that for me physically, but I will never let go of the emotional throbbing I feel about my sweet, sweet, stupid, boy.
The signs were there from his early youth.
I remember this one time when me and his father were at a parent-teacher conference. That teacher has to be gone by this point. Though I was a young mom during the time, her words encouraged me to try and catch up to her age of maturity.
***
“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Edna, but Brent cannot be recommended for next school year at this private institution.”
My son’s homeroom teacher had apparently grown tired from our myriad reasons for excusing his unruly behavior.
“He doesn’t show exemplary, or even the considered average of, traits and qualities. There’s been numerous times he’s broken school policies, caused learning disruptions, and has had several outbursts that resulted in fights with the other children.”
I threw myself back in the pit to battle her accusations, though neither me nor his father had the backing support to defend what our son was emerging as. “H-he just isn’t seeing the bigger picture. Please, wouldn’t a transition to a different homeroom and classes help?”
Her scowl only became more defined. “We’ve tried that! Time and time again, I’ve received phone calls from several parents enraged that their son went home with tears because of the physical brutality he put on them!”
His father, my husband at the time, seemed to find that wrong on the surface, but he secretively appeared proud to hear his son could show brutal masculinity. We used to argue about it all the time. Our son was completely different around us. He was a nice boy at home, but in public, with others, he exhibited a less refined status.
His father spoke at this point, only taking the opportunity to skulk about the dreams he had for our son. “I’ll take the fall for this. I’ve been meaning to get Brent enrolled in martial arts, but I didn’t know if he could handle it.”
He wanted a lineage for his company. He wanted a son—not with noble traits, or compassion for others. He wanted someone who I couldn’t be proud of.
The teacher evidently found his input very alarming, using it to only further her reasoning to kick out our son. “Perhaps you should consider a different schooling alternative, one where you could keep your child on the path you clearly don’t mind him going down.”
I couldn’t pluck out any more excuses, and we were dismissed to leave the premises. Our son kept his crossed arms close to his chest as we walked to the car. We had to pass by uniformed staff all the way down to the indoor parking garage. I felt disdain in their judgmental glares.
I didn’t know how to not take this punishment on my shoulders.
Meanwhile, his father kept asking him coldly why he couldn’t behave. “You know something?” he asked, raising his voice. “I’m glad to see you can be a dragon, but you don’t know control yet. You need to learn to hide it, son, so you can take your real enemies by surprise.”
I didn’t agree with most of what his fatherly teachings were, and it led us down the road of divorce. He ended up betraying me for someone else that could agree with what he thought a true “winner” did to reap their rewards.
But this was the point when the consideration of a different path came to my mind.
“He shouldn’t be hurting anyone!” I argued, gradually pulling our son closer to my side than his. “He should be treating his peers with the same respect he’d want in return.”
Our pace apparently wasn’t quick enough for him, because his short legs stormed off for the car.
We weren’t abusive. He had a nice home, and loving parents, but he couldn’t foresee just how consequential the world can be if you take it for granted.
He was then bumped into by a mother and her stroller. I could quickly identify what the stroller meant to me. It meant a baby. An innocent, wonderful joy that couldn’t harm anyone.
Our son wasn’t old or mature enough to see that. He pushed over the stroller out of anger because it blocked his access to the car.
Finally, I had lost my patience, or maybe rather my sympathy, for him.
While the mother shrieked in fear for her infant, I bubbled over with anger. My son stood below me, but at this moment I felt like I was abused by him. So I fought back.
I raised a hand up high, and made it apparent he was about to receive a physical consequence. The slap he got wasn’t the end of it, however.
His father swooped in, picking him off of the ground, holding onto him like one would for something they adored. Their eyes faced each other without misconception, seeing themselves fully.
“What did I just tell you?”
My focus then switched. I gnawed my fingers with fervent hope that the baby wasn’t hurt. The mother’s knees dug into the pavement of the parking garage as she struggled to unravel the fabric covering her baby.
Fortunately, the baby shrilled, indicating it was still alive.
The concern then was if the baby was physically hurt. The mother curled her arms around her wonderful bundle, likely the lightest but most important weight she was to ever hold tightly in her life.
As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any signs of physical trauma done to the baby. Like I could imagine myself in this situation, once she assessed her child was safe, her eyes flared up with fierceness directed solely towards me.
I couldn’t say or express anything that would defend my boy. All I could do was express guilt a
nd beg for forgiveness.
That forgiveness never showed up.
All me and my son’s father received was major penalties, ones that his father couldn’t persuade to be dismissed or pay damages instead.
Our son was too emotionally revolting.
We all cleaned the stain through long-term consequence. My boy was sentenced to a youth detention center, where we would receive custody of him again after we could show that, not only did he learn to do better, but so did his parents.
***
The only time I ever hit him was for that incident, but the baby’s mother saw one time as enough to convict both his father and me as people unfit to teach our son about living in the modern world.
Maybe we were.
I can relate Gary and my boy together, because I’m sure that Gary is exactly what my ex-husband saw the potential of his son becoming like. The only thing different was he’d be living in society, working up the corporate ladder, for himself.
He would survive this world—the past one—as long as others got stomped into the ground during the process.
Gary has helped me better understand exactly what my ex-husband wanted to see flourish in our boy. What I wanted too. I know it now, but I still believe it can’t be taught.
We believed what we both wanted couldn’t exist in the same child. Compassionate yet ruthless. Respectful yet deadly. A leader and a follower.
Gary is how he is, and he doesn’t need to be forced to treat us with the respect he does. It’s interesting how I feel I’m re-living a pre-existing argument I already had.
If only you were around during that time, Gary. Then, possibly me and him would’ve came eye-to-eye on what was best for our son.
The night sky looks the same—I remember this time—when I received that phone call from the law about the incident earlier that day. The shock and fear. The helplessness.
The guilt.
It’s quiet tonight. No undead surrounding us, or haze passing through. Though, my heart dances with the sharp edges of the anxiety I feel whenever I think about anything pre-dating this world.
I lived decades onward not knowing myself, except only to instinctually feel when someone was in need of help with their lives. It kept me forgetting what age I was, and how long it had been since…where he went.
I guess it doesn’t matter what age someone’s at for them to still feel the turmoil from something that happened so long ago.
I choose to let the reflecting water’s image paint across my mind, while I drift off to sleep for another day. One I know that will need my help, so I can say it will be an uplifting one.
Just like the voice I carry every day for everyone here.
Chapter XXXIV
(Gary)
I’m awoken by my alarm clock, sharp and nasty snaps from undead shoving their teeth at my side’s windows.
Will proceeds to rise from his seat, snorting and sniffling by the second. A morning stretch of limited mobility appears from Ashton, then followed by Janice. It seems like I can hear Lissie’s consciousness activate, but she purposefully chooses to keep her eyes shut. Instead, only faintly moaning through her breathing, and reassuring herself that I’m still holding on.
It’s a new day, but it’s apparent to me we’re dazed and incoherent to our decisions right now. We would stay parked here for days if we could, with the assorted bags on the floor mats taking care of us for a while.
Fortunately, Will is thinking like I am.
We both understand staying in one spot is too risky, especially in the harmful circumstance we’re toppled by countless undead. I believe, at this moment, we’re both flashing worrisome images of coming across more people in our weakened states.
“Where to, Gary?” Will wonders out loud, starting the truck without hesitation.
All of the land I’ve traveled since the beginning, and none of it is relevant, however, because change happens. The land I knew was once safe is unlikely to have stayed friendly.
I stick out my left index finger, my arm prickly from being stiff and asleep under Lissie’s body. “Consult the map.”
Ashton, groggy and slow with unraveling our most reliable resource right now, brings up to me, “I don’t suppose you had a summer home in Wyoming?”
His sarcastic remark is in his typically humorous voice, even if he was mumbling the whole way through. That effort doesn’t go unnoticed. I laugh softly, giving him enough time to place the map on the arm rest.
Ashton lands the tip of his fingers down on the crumpled paper, but only to retract them. His eyes contain a glimmer of thought. It spruces up his tired face, and what’s more, it’s clearer what came to his mind when he cups his hands together.
“Gary, didn’t your guitarist get a home out of you in Utah?”
His suggestion is a brilliant one. If only I could trust my guitarist, Kari, didn’t let it become abandoned and unsupervised.
Will jumps in, his gaze sticking to me. “That’s new.”
My vision swerves to all of their faces, including Janice’s. I’m not feeling their looks are hostile, but more curious, and especially hopeful.
“Yes, she was suicidal, and lost all shininess in her life. So I gave her an offer. She said if I gave her my house in Utah, which she loved tremendously, no one had to worry she’d do anything rash.”
I was distressed at the time, because I knew she wasn’t someone that simply said things in the heat of the moment. If she followed through with her actions, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to carry the guilt for the rest of my life.
Will nods with interest to my story, but I feel he’s already committed to the idea of heading towards that place—though he knows nothing about it.
“I don’t mean to sound presumptuous, Gary, but I once saw a tour of your house on television. It was large, and cozy. I’d take it Utah’s version isn’t incompatible for our numbers?”
I respect his cautious words, though I’m not able to mirror it with my response. “I’m sorry, Will, but I can’t trust it. Kari stayed there a few times before going to rehab. She left it without care.”
Ashton flexes his deeper knowledge about my personal life in order to push the decision further. “Come on, Gary. I remember the reason we argued about it was because it was so large. From what I remember as well, it’s relatively hidden from the open.”
I’m not attempting to be troublesome with this, but after what we just clawed our way out of, I’m not trusting we won’t find trouble already settled there.
I’m not prepared when I feel Lissie’s fragile hand rise towards me. Her voice is at a barely perceptible volume. “We…should try.”
It’s as if she’s lucidly dreaming about this conversation, because she lowers the hand back to her stomach, drifting ever slowly back to sleep.
Everyone else’s voice matters to me, but Lissie has the mind-changing loyalty I want her to be able to savor. My decision becomes clear. With a soft stroke to her hair, I say, “Will, get us to the state of Utah. On the road, search for signs that will get us to Perry.”
Chapter XXXV
I’m still with the mindset to not overhype the possibility of us having a new place, but I now realize, especially if Lissie’s consciousness coalesced with mine, Wyoming is no longer a safe state for us.
No matter how far we were to travel away from their positions, C. would likely not stop searching for more land. As a matter of fact, we abandoned his operation. But we wouldn’t have been granted a chance to leave had we asked.
By now, we are classified deserters.
He and his people would spin a reason to search for those deserters, certainly with a plan to severely punish them. C. said he needed me, like he said he needed O.
I’m not special like O., but I recognize how far C. had us go to retrieve just one mortal being.
Will makes the trip concrete when he reverses the truck, which tips over the tenacious undead on to their stomachs. We then speed onto the solid, solitary road, the
beginning of this derelict and speechless journey.
No one here craves any more excitement.
We don’t want to discuss yesterday, or hint about why today will be better if we just take these continuous and nameless roads. Ashton’s making sure, with his examination of the map, along with his compass, that we will flee the state without a peep about why we are doing it.
Small talk comes up here and there, but the question of “Are we still on the route?” has taken precedence over any other vocal action.
Janice has split open her book and buried her face right by the paper, so as to not get motion sickness. I’m permitting myself only a single focus—ensuring I’ll be ready the very instant Lissie wakes up to give her food and water.
When another hour circulates on the truck’s electronic display, the more I see Will repeatedly switch his eyes from the steering wheel to the fuel meter. My brow raises when I notice how much gas has been consumed in these last two days. It gives me validation to bring up all the factors I silently worried would throw us into this situation sooner than wanted.
“Will, how about driving more calmly? Gas will conserve that way. Plus, turning off the air conditioner is known to help too.”
It’s not to be judgmental. It’s to assess the situation and respond to it with a level-headed mentality.
At first, Will apparently finds it offensive because he throws his hands in the air. That along with attitude in his breathy “Huh?”
Ashton quickly says, “It’s true. We’re not meaning it to be vicious and poke at you. Let’s just look for all the ways to conserve, man.”
Will doesn’t argue further. Instead he tilts his head in a quick, jerking, motion, as though trying to pop it. “Well, with less than a 1/8th of a tank left, those methods won’t be enough to get us to Perry, Utah.”
I consider the options at hand. In my basically inaudible speech, I murmur, “Currently in land where dryness is fuel to it. Barely any signs of human development. Relocation would be a possibility, but no sign of vehicles anywhere.”