by Kuhn, Steve
Last night was spent living like cattle in a filthy barn, hungry and depressed. The dead wandered in on two occasions, but Cutty kept them at bay quietly. We’d burn the bodies, but we have no way of making fire at the moment. I’m sure I could probably figure out a way, but it just doesn’t seem worth it. The calories that I’d burn in the process of gathering the materials, constructing some sort of friction device, and then working up the spark would better be spent looking for actual food. Those bodies will simply have to rot, period.
We gathered at the front of the barn and chatted about the next move. Murphy suggested, “There’s gotta be deer around here, but we may be better off goin’ after some smaller game. If we plan on staying here another night or two, I can put up some traps as well.”
Cutty told him, “No tellin’ how many be in da woods, though. Don’t want you goin’ out on ya own. You gon’ need ta be lookin’ out fo’ food, but you ain’t da only one huntin’ in dese woods, ya heard?”
Murphy grunted. He was clearly frustrated, but Cutty was right. It would be too easy to get involved tracking game and lose sight of the fact that there are bernies lurkin’ around. The smell of decay doesn’t really jump out at us like it used to. I remember a time when I could tell if there was a geek within twenty paces, but nowadays it’s just another smell in the background like car exhaust or shitty Chinese food at the mall. Matter of fact, some of these geeks lately are so decayed that the maggots and bacteria are through with them. As we’ve moved into the somewhat drier climates of the middle states, they’ve been a little different. Many of the ones out here are like cured, dried meat. Bottom line is that Murphy needs another pair of eyes if he’s hunting.
JC stated flatly, “Who’s going with Murphy then?”
I suggested that JC go, but he shot it down immediately, saying, “Not leaving Lilly.”
That left me and Cutty. I offered to go with Murphy. I’ve always liked Murphy’s company over JC’s anyway.
Cutty said, “Aigh’t den. Y’all two get goin’. We hungry den a muhfucka out dis bitch.”
Lilly tugged on JC’s shirt and motioned for him to bend down. He knelt beside her, and she leaned in to whisper something in his ear. His face went slightly pale, and he swallowed hard as he tried to process what she told him and how to explain it to us. He failed, saying, “She, uhhh… I mean, her ummmm… She’s…”
Murphy snapped, “Spit it out, boy.”
Lilly huffed at JC’s stammering and announced, “My suzie hurts.”
Ummmmm… what?
We all just stared blankly at one another until she repeated a little more urgently, “My suzie hurts. It burns.”
JC blushed and shrugged at us, clearly at a loss. I don’t think any of us were really prepared to deal with any lady parts. That would easily have been Dana or Rebecca’s department, but neither of those were an option right then, obviously.
I said to the guys, “Murphy should have a look.”
He instantly protested, saying, “Absolutely not. I’m not that kind of doctor.”
Cutty argued, “Yeah, but you da only one with any sorta trainin’ on dat shit. You da only one we got right now.”
Lilly squirmed uncomfortably and whimpered as she tugged at her junk, leaving us all feeling equally as helpless. Murphy scowled at the rest of us before dropping his bow to the ground. “Goddammit, fine,” he huffed.
JC took off his shirt and laid it on the ground. I couldn’t help but notice his ribs were clearly visible beneath the skin. I told him, “Yo, you don’t look too good, man. We gotta get you fed.”
He scoffed and told me, “It ain’t me I’m worried about. You two just make sure you catch something today.”
Murphy asked him, “When’s the last time you ate? I know we’ve been making sure everyone gets a fair share of what we had up ’til now.”
JC simply gestured to Lilly. Seems he’d been giving nearly every portion of his own to her. We left it at that.
Lilly sat down on the shirt, and Murphy uneasily helped her wiggle out of her pants. Lilly told him firmly, “Don’t touch it!”
Murphy peeked down to have a look as the rest of us sort of stood there uncomfortably, dumbfounded. He moved to touch the area, and Lilly squealed, “No! No! Don’t touch it please! It hurts.” She started to cry at the thought of it.
Murphy calmly explained, “Lilly, I know it hurts, honey, but I have to get a good look at it to see what’s wrong. Try and just look at the sky and relax. I’ll be quick.”
She eased her tension a bit, and Murphy took a quick peek before sighing heavily. He looked up at us and said, “Looks like a yeast infection, and it’s bad. Sanitation ain’t what it used to be, but we gotta get this sorted out before it gets worse.”
Before I could wrap my head around the fact that Lilly needed medicine for her vajay-jay, I heard the unmistakable click-clack of a shotgun.
“All right, you sick fucks. Stand up slowly, and back away from that little girl so I can see the look on your rapist faces when I shoot your dicks off.”
A man in his late forties stood behind us carrying his short, sawed-off shotgun in a most peculiar manner. He had it wedged against his right hip, finger on the trigger, with the muzzle laid across his opposite forearm. His left hand was gone altogether. Instead, it was a modern-day, prosthetic hook—not the sharp kind, but more like the rounded edged ones that can pinch shit or whatever. His hook was pinching the stub of a lit cigar that kept his face mostly hidden from our view with its smoke.
We backed off with arms outstretched as Murphy got to his feet, leaving Lilly exposed. She covered herself up and jumped to her own feet, pulling up her pants. Murphy started to say, “Hey, hey, mister… this ain’t what it looks like—”
The man cut him off and snapped, “Get your asses over there. I’ma enjoy this.”
Cutty told him, “Eeeeeasy, mista. Dat girl wit’ us. We was tendin’ to her—”
Again, he cut us off. “Shut up, jig. She ain’t with you anymore. I done had about enough of you people and that bitch, Bianca. Y’all gone too far this time. Now step aside.”
He motioned for Lilly to approach him, but she clung to JC for dear life. She told him, “Please don’t hurt them, mister. They’re my friends.”
The man stepped forward out of the cloud of cigar smoke and told Lilly, “Don’t nobody be needin’ friends like that, darlin’. You come on over now, and I’ll make sure they never touch you again.”
Lilly said, “You don’t like Bianca either, huh? She killed our dog, and she took all our stuff. I hate her. She even took my dinosaur.”
The man turned his attention to JC with, “Start explaining, and don’t mince words with me, ya hear? Get to the point.”
JC laid it on the table. “This is Lilly. I’m JC. That’s Murphy, Dext, and Cutty. We had a run in with Bianca and her people. They robbed us of everything, killed one of our own, and threatened to kill Lilly here. She needs medicine for her umm… privates… and we all need food. We can handle ourselves if you worried about us being a burden.”
The man brought the cigar up to his mouth before returning his hooked arm to level the shotgun again. He spoke around the smoking stub, saying, “You’re a burden already. If you could handle yourselves, you wouldn’t be asking me for help now, would ya? But I s’pose I could spare some things if you’d be willing to do something for me.”
Cutty spoke up, saying, “Nuh-uh. We done played dis game one too many times, mista. Last time we had ta do a favor, we ended up losin’ mo’ den we gained.”
The man simply cradled his shotgun across his chest and replied, “Suit yourselves,” as he turned around and began to walk off into the woods.
I called out to stop him, saying, “Hey! Why don’t you tell us what you want first? Then we’ll decide.”
He turned around and told us, “Take a moment to gather your things. We’ll discuss it over lunch. There’s somebody you need to meet.”
As we began to break camp,
Murphy asked the guy, “What’s your name?”
The man smirked and held up his prosthetic. “Hook.”
Go fuckin’ figure…
Pirates and a dude named Hook.
I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.
Entry 110
Hook’s a bit of a talker. He chattered away the entire time we hoofed it through the sparse woods for what seemed like an eternity. He regaled us with tales of his former days as an old-school marine and made it a point to be as graphic as possible while he explained the loss of his arm from the elbow down to an IED. “These hajis put those half-assed things everywhere. Sum’bitches didn’t care about anything. Welp, we hit the top o’ that ridge, and I seen a little kid, maybe ten or eleven years old, and he’s layin’ there sorta propped up on a rock. I ain’t gonna leave no kid behind if I think he’s injured, towel-head or otherwise, so I made my approach to check his status. That was when I blacked out. I came to in the back o’ the Hummer with bits and pieces of me spread all over the place.”
He paused a moment to chuckle right then. It felt uncomfortable, but it was clear he’d told the story hundreds of times. “I’m tellin’ ya, my arm was spoutin’ blood like a Goddamn fire hose—not to mention I had half a pound of shrapnel all up and down this side of my body… burns, the whole nine yards. Turns out those hajis rigged up that kid for no other reason than to blow me to smithereens.”
He laughed almost boisterously, saying, “Know what I did? I stuck my good arm out the back o’ that Hummer and flipped ol’ haji the bird. You ain’t gonna kill me that easy, ya sum’bitches!”
We kept Lilly in the middle of our group as we walked off of the game trail and further into a more brushy area of the woods. It was here that Lilly said, “Ewww! Something stinks!”
JC and Cutty made stank faces, with Cutty exclaiming, “Oh lawd! Nigga, it smell like skunk out ’dis bitch.”
It was about then that I realized exactly what it was we were smelling. Spread before us was a lush, green plot of land in a small clearing filled with more weed than you could imagine—and I don’t mean weeds like dandelions and shit. I’m talking about weeeeed.
Hook clamped his prosthetic onto one of the first plants and drew his blade with the other, sawing the plant off at the bottom. Murphy grinned and said, “Mother of God…”
JC quipped, “Oh, wonderful. Cheech and Chong here are gonna have a smoke-out while we play ‘Dodge the Dead’ in bumfuck nowhere.”
Hook told JC, “It ain’t about catchin’ a buzz, dickhead. I need my meds. Six years of bullshit painkillers had me addicted to ’em, and I still couldn’t sleep at night. Hajis might notta killed me, but the ol’ body ain’t been the same since, as you mighta noticed. Then I discovered this little lifesaver. I been growin’ my own meds out here in the sticks ever since, and if the law never got me, then these stenches ain’t gonna get me neither.”
He turned to Cutty and said, “You. Start swingin’ them machetes so we can get this done. We need to get back to the others.”
I wanted to interject at the mention of ‘others,’ but I didn’t really get the chance. Hook was apparently a man with a short fuse.
Cutty scoffed and informed Hook, “I ain’t no field nigga, nigga. Cut ya own shit.”
Hook tossed his knife down, sticking it into the ground, and popped up. He stood nose to nose with Cutty, telling him, “I done told you, I’ma open my house to you people and get you the medicine you need for that little girl o’ yours. I done also told you that I can feed your sorry asses, and all you gotta do is one little favor. Now, boy, just what the fuck is your problem?”
Cutty shoved him away and warned him, “I don’t like yo’ tone, an’ I’ma bust yo’ shit, you call me boy one mo’ ’gain.”
Hook stepped into Cutty’s huge frame, tripping him up and sending him to the ground hard. As Cutty was on his way down, Hook grabbed hold of one of Cutty’s machetes, and it unsheathed. In the blink of an eye, he was perched atop Cutty. He had the blade in his good hand at Cutty’s throat, and he had Cutty’s nose firmly pinched in his hook, pulling it painfully.
JC had his bayonet at Hook’s throat before a single word was spoken, and I, too, had my knife drawn. He stood up laughing and offered to help Cutty to his feet, saying, “Yep. I still got it.”
Cutty took the hand and dusted himself off, shooting us a ‘what the fuck’ sort of look.
Murphy asked, “You girls done makin’ out or what? Let’s cut this shit down and get the hell outta here.”
Anyway, Hook made his point. We helped him cut down a few of the plants and began walking again, this time in a slightly different direction. I guess it was another mile or so. We reached the cabin after about the third round of Lilly whining, “Are we there yet?”
We were met at the door by a woman in her thirties, I guess—a real cutie, too. She greeted Hook with, “About damn time, Alex! I was getting worried.” She crossed her arms defensively and shot us a look, snapping, “Who the fuck are you people?”
He passed off a handful of plants, which she accepted without a second thought, and told her, “Alyse, I think these are the people that girl was talking about. Mind bringing her out?”
Alyse eyed us up and huffed, “Hmph! Small world.”
Murphy muttered, “Gettin’ smaller every day.”
She laid the plants inside the door and called out, “Kylee! I think you’re gonna wanna come see this.”
It was as if the clouds parted and the sun beamed down upon our ragtag little group for a moment as Kylee emerged from inside the house. She was dressed in civilian clothes with her hair pulled up into a tight bun. She was clean, put together, and in good health. Her hand was healed up, and she looked fed and well rested. She took one look at us through her good eye and burst into tears. Shit, we probably looked like some cheesy, emotional Lifetime movie as we took turns hugging her and smiling through misty eyes.
Kylee took a silent headcount and spoke first, asking Cutty, “Rebecca?”
Cutty sniffled, blinked to clear his vision, and shook his head, leaving Kylee to cover her mouth in shock. She managed to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry—so sorry.”
He shook it off as if to say ‘Now isn’t the time to discuss it’. Alyse told us, “Come inside.”
Hook seconded that with, “Yeah, let’s take this little reunion indoors and see to the kid.”
We went inside and were pleased to find a rather comfortable and well-furnished interior, which contrasted starkly to the fortified exterior, what with the barricaded windows and such. It was safe, though, and Alyse made it a point to keep it that way as she barred the door behind us with a huge six-by-six piece of lumber. She told us unceremoniously, “Leave your weapons here. Go straight back and strip. I’ll bring you hot water and some towels in a bit so you can get cleaned up.”
JC nodded a pleased agreement and told Alyse, “Lilly here has a bit of a… feminine thing… going on down there. Hook says you may be able to help her with that.”
Alyse chuckled slightly at JC’s phrasing and fluttered her eyes at him, saying, “I can take care of that, I think.” She then turned her attention to Hook and said, “Hook? Really, Alex? You’ve been trying to get that name to stick since you lost the damn thing. One of these days you’ll realize how lame it is to make up your own nickname.” Then she winked at JC.
I swear JC must have a tracking beam in his pants that only attracts women. Five minutes and he already had her wrapped. If I wasn’t such a hater, I’d probably ask him for his secret.
I turned to Kylee to tell her about what we’ve been through since we parted ways at the community, but she just gave me a soft smile and said, “Just stop. I can’t even imagine. Go clean up, and we can figure it all out. You look like shit.”
I told her, “I feel like shit. I’m really glad you’re okay, though. You are okay, right?”
She nodded solemnly. It was as if she already knew we left Cotton and the others only to come after her. It was a
nod of silent appreciation, but also one of guilt. With tight lips and tears once again filling her eyes, she left me with nothing else to say.
I have a feeling that it’s going to be another crazy night, but at least this time there’s food, we’re clean, and we’re safe. I wish I could say the same for Cotton and the rest of the community, though. Around this time tomorrow, Bianca and her pirates will be descending on them. That one is on me.
Entry 111
We sat down to the first hot meal in I don’t know how long and didn’t speak a single word until everything on the serving platter was gone. I never thought I’d actually enjoy eating a rabbit until now. It was really good. I sat there stuffing my face greedily, feeling like a million bucks, freshly cleaned up, changed, and in good spirits.
Hook rolled himself a fatty and sat low in his chair as he sparked it up, filling the room with a funky smell of pine and dog shit. He idly blew smoke rings, holding his spliff in his hook. JC somewhat gruffly asked him, “Do you really need to smoke that shit right in front of her?” as he gestured to Lilly.
Hook smirked and shot back, “Do you always tell a man what to do in his own home?”
With tightlipped frustration, JC looked at Lilly then responded with, “When it comes to her, I do whatever needs to be done. And just to be clear, I didn’t tell you to do anything, I just asked.”
Hook blew an enormous cloud of smoke into the air before butting out the spliff on his empty plate. “I can respect that,” he said with a nod.
Alyse began clearing away the dishes. Cutty stood up and began gathering ours to help her out, but she told him, “Sit down, hon. I can handle it.”
Cutty told her politely, “Mama raised a gentleman. Ain’t no reason to do dis stuff alone when otha hands around to help out. Y’all been more than kind to us… and Kylee.”
Alyse waved it off and offered, “Suit yourself. Though, I actually kind of miss taking care of a family. Reminds me of our big Sunday dinners when everyone would get together. Besides, we have good reason to be kind to Kylee. And anyone that’s a friend to her is a friend to us.”