by Trevor Zaple
“We should have tried to rescue the others,” she said, her voice uneven. Richard rolled his eyes.
“That would have been a train wreck,” he replied dismissively. “By the time we herded everyone along we would have all been shot”.
“They’re human beings,” she spat, her fury peaking. Richard took a step back.
“I never said they weren’t,” he replied, mystified. She glared at him, and Richard had to look away uncomfortably.
“You don’t herd human beings,” she continued, her voice angry but no longer as sharp. “Just like you shouldn’t leave human beings behind so they can be repeatedly raped, and probably murdered afterwards”.
Richard clenched his jaw. “We couldn’t have saved them,” he replied, trying like mad to keep his voice calm and even. “If we had tried, we would have all ended up dead”.
“We could have at least tried,” she said, contempt dripping from her lips. There were tears beginning to form in her eyes, but she blinked them away angrily. “We could have tried to get some of them to come along, instead of just abandoning them. You probably would have abandoned me, if I hadn’t come right when I did”.
Richard didn’t reply to this; it was a true enough statement, after all. He had been prepared to leap down into the parking lot without her.
“Samantha,” he began heavily, but she cut him off with a quick shake of her head.
“Fuck you,” she said, with heat. “We need to keep moving”.
Richard wanted to scream at her; he wanted to shout about how they were both alive and it was thanks to him, she should be grateful that she was still breathing and not being gang-raped above a former second-rate coke bar. He would have done it, opened his mouth and crashed the silence with pure human rage, but she walked away from him briskly and he had to scramble to catch up.
They walked along the river quickly. Samantha was keeping up a very wide stride and Richard was expending a great deal of energy trying to keep up. He wanted to shout at her about this, but his rage had withered into a sullenness and he didn’t want to get into another blowout argument about it. The trail eventually came out onto a street and Samantha took that direction without waiting to see what Richard was thinking. They emerged back out into a residential part of town; old, expensive-looking houses loomed over them, the shadows they were casting deepened by the now-setting sun. As it had been for most of their journey through the city, there was no movement besides their own.
They walked south until the street they were on bridged over a railway line. Samantha took her bearings and suggested shortly that they take the rail line east for a while until she found a specific path; she intimated that she knew the area well. Richard, not wanting to stir up any further explosions, assented to letting her lead.
The railway cut through a wasteland of brush and unkempt growth; nature formed a low wall on either side of the tracks and Richard kept starting at movement within it, although it would invariably be a squirrel or some other small animal. He was very tense, he realized, and was grateful now for the weight of the gun in his right hand. The idea of trying to find more people was starting to take on dark, ludicrous undertones. Eventually Samantha found what she had been looking for, a well-worn path that lead through the woods on either side. She waved him on to the right and soon Richard was distracted by their new direction.
The path led through similar woods for only a short while and then they emerged out into the back fields of a large high school. Richard immediately increased his grip on his pistol, paranoid about who might be holed up within such a large building. They skirted around the east side of the school and found no one, however; the windows were smashed but there were no corpses, for which Richard was profoundly grateful. There was a parking lot on the eastern edge of the school’s property and Richard followed Samantha as they crossed it, curving inward so that they were eventually in front of the school. The name of the institution had been forcefully torn down from where it had stretched across the front; a scrawl of black spraypaint reading “MANY THINGS HAVE FALLEN ONLY TO RISE HIGHER” ran across the brick just under there. Richard did not have time to wonder over this as Samantha was already crossing the street and heading into another cozy residential section.
The houses here were as silent as any other but they were all intact. There were plywood boards nailed across the windows and doors of some of them, but the exposed windows and doors were still whole. The street curved around a few times and the sun disappeared behind the peaks of the roofs beside them. The twilight hour had begun and Richard wondered when Samantha was planning on stopping for rest, food, and shelter.
He didn’t have to wonder long; seemingly at random, Samantha picked a house and headed up the empty driveway as though it had been her home for years. Richard followed behind at a distance, somewhat apprehensive. He couldn’t seem to shake the idea that this would be breaking and entering, like robbing a tomb. He hoped fervently that the lack of cars in the driveway meant that the owners had shown the common decency to die somewhere else.
Samantha approached the porch (fenced in with a checkered pattern that reminded Richard for some reason of a Japanese shogun’s residence), climbed the wooden steps and tried the front door. It was locked, but Samantha seemed unperturbed.
“You could shoot the lock,” she suggested, and rolled her eyes when she saw his hesitation.
“Fine, then,” she continued sardonically, “I’ll go see if there are any other entrances that are unlocked”. She didn’t wait around for him to reply and Richard found himself alone on a strange porch, in a strange neighbourhood. He looked around, his gaze nervous and jumpy. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything; he wasn’t sure if that was a reassurance or not. Suddenly there was a dragging sound from within the house and he did jump, two feet in the air. He very nearly put the force of his finger down on the trigger of the gun when he landed but managed to keep it stiff with a great deal of effort.
A moment later Samantha’s face appeared on the other side of the front door. She quickly unlocked it and flung it open. She leaned against the doorframe and looked at him, her expression and body language a gigantic challenge.
“I guess someone left something unlocked after all,” she drawled. “Are you coming in or are you just going to sleep out on this porch all night?” Richard glared at her and wanted to spit out a witty response, but none were coming to him. He pushed his way inside and tried to ignore Samantha’s derisive little chuckle as he did so.
ELEVEN
The interior of the house was nice, Richard decided; that was the sort of adjective you used to describe the sort of décor one found in the depths of well-appointed neighbourhoods. There were fairly opulent-looking mirrors hung on the wall, art hanging in the right places, and a clean, open sense to the foyer that was helped by the rough-edged tiles that formed the floor. He looked around at the rooms he could see from the foyer – the living room and the kitchen – with real appreciation.
“This place is pretty nice,” he said aloud, because he felt that he needed to say something. “Nice” was the only word that was coming to mind; there was an overall blandness of effect that could only be described as such. Samantha shrugged, and walked into the kitchen. Richard followed her, hoping that they would discover some food in the cupboards that would add some diversity to their supplies.
The kitchen was small but it looked well-used. Samantha looked through the cupboards and began pulling out various canned goods; there seemed to be a preponderance of tomato-based spaghetti cans, which Richard wasn’t wild about but could live with. He contented himself with looking idly through some of the drawers and other cupboards while she looked through the leftover foodstuffs. He discovered that this particular kitchen was stuffed with kitchen implements, many of which he could not have named a purpose to even to save his own life. He marvelled over them for a moment before becoming completely bored with them. In one of the other cupboards he discovered a rather dense stock of liq
uor. He thought about making a drink and that brought his mind back to the situation they had found themselves in earlier. He thought of Mark’s eyes boring into him as he mixed a rye and cola and shuddered. Maybe later he told himself, and shut the cupboard firmly.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked Samantha diffidently. She looked at him for a moment before nodding slowly.
“Sure, I don’t know what would be here that we could mix anything with, though”. Richard shrugged and set about trying to find something to mix a proper drink with. Samantha continued pulling apart her cupboards to pull out all of the canned goods.
It only took Richard a few minutes to find something, in the end. There was a door between the foyer and the living room that opened onto a pantry, and that pantry was absolutely stuffed with two-litre plastic bottles of Diet Coke. He took one of the bottles from the front and brought it back into the kitchen. He placed it down on the counter and began rummaging through the cupboards to try and find glasses. While he did this Samantha pulled open the freezer to check out the food contained therein. There was a burst of cold air from behind him and Richard realized that the power was still working.
“Why bother working in the dark?” he asked himself jovially, and flipped on some nearby light switches. The kitchen flared into light. Samantha pulled away from the freezer and stared out of the kitchen window, obviously nervous. Richard caught her train of thought and quickly shut the lights off. He followed her gaze out onto the street but there was no movement in the rapidly darkening outside world.
“Did you see anything?” he whispered. She shook her head slowly but kept watching the street outside the window.
“I just don’t want them to spot this place,” she whispered in return. “I don’t think they could have followed us all the way out here, but...” she trailed off.
“You can never be too careful,” he finished, and she nodded. “Let’s go back into the living room, then,” he suggested. “No one will be able to see us from the street”. She nodded and grabbed a long knife out of the block beside the kitchen sink. Richard curled his fingers around the grip of his pistol and they moved out into the living room.
The couches in the living room were beige leather and quite comfortable. They sat in silence for some time, watching the sun go down behind the woods that were part of the house’s backyard. Eventually Richard screwed up his courage and went out through the patio door to watch it more closely. The patio door slid open easily; it was the point of egress that Samantha had found to unlock the house for them.
Outside there was a deck that stood over the actual backyard, which came out of what must have been the basement. The deck was in bad condition, with several rotting boards and missing parts to the railing. The patio furniture seemed quite new, however. There were a number of small children’s toys scattered around the deck, which made Richard feel sad in a very vague, indefinite way. He placed his hands on a part of the railing that seemed sturdy and peered out into the backyard. There was a thick tangle of forest at the edge of the sloping property that seemed to cut away back into the ravine; Richard was amazed at how long the strip of wilderness in the middle of the city really was. The sun glittered here and there through the woods but was nearly vanished below the point of being able to see; the night clouds were gathering in overhead and the hum of the cicadas would be starting up soon.
He looked to the right and saw a neighbouring house through a light strip of bush. They also had a deck, similar to the one on ‘their’ house, but coming off of the ground floor instead. There was nothing of interest there, no movement of any sort, and he turned his attention back to the woods. There were a couple of squirrels chattering, hidden in the maze of branches, but beyond that Richard saw nothing. He stretched his neck, turning it this way and that, trying to work out a knot that had formed at some point during their panicked flight from the bar.
There was a creaking footstep on the deck behind him and a second later Samantha was beside him, holding a couple of beer cans. Condensation had formed on them; she must have fished them out of the fridge, he decided.
“The rest of the house seems empty, but I found these,” she said, handing him one. He took it gladly, seeing that it was a much larger can than normal; it was one of the type commonly referred to as a “king can”, and the label identified it as Steamwhistle beer – or, a pilsner, as the can specified. The can was already open, and Richard nodded contentedly. Maybe Samantha was coming around, after all. He took a long gulp and smacked his lips appreciatively. The stuff was pretty good, after all. Whomever had lived there had, at the very least, decent taste in beer.
Samantha opened hers with a loud snick and gave him a mocking little salute before she took a sip of it. She grimaced slightly, let it sit on her taste buds for a moment, and then swallowed it with a shrug.
“It’s not bad,” she admitted, and turned to look out in the same direction that Richard had been looking in.
“This would have been a really pretty view, any other time,” she noted sadly, and Richard nodded. There wasn’t much to say to that. She was right on that score. He took another deep gulp of the beer and went back to trying to work out the knot in his neck.
“Let me get that for you,” she murmured, and he acquiesced. Her fingers were on his shoulders moments later, pressing deeply into his flesh and working it with no small amount of skill. There was some slight pain as she began but soon there was a feeling flowing through him like liquid cotton candy; gossamer tendrils radiating out into his tired, tense muscles. He smiled dreamily and leaned forward slightly. His head swam a little, and he began to chuckle, but then his head continued to swim, growing stronger every second. Something was wrong. His knees began to buckle and it was a plank of wood that lay just in front of them that prevented him from collapsing to the deck. His stomach was turning to jelly; the palms that now gripped the deck railing with white knuckles were growing clammy, sweaty. Samantha’s fingers continued to dig into his muscles but there was now a vicious overtone to her massage. He tried to buck his shoulders, to turn around and fight her off, but there was no help for it. His strength was running down and he barely had the energy to stand. Finally his knees gave out, and he sank bonelessly to the deck. His eyes were very heavy; the signal to close them and shut down seemed to be the strongest one left in his brain. Reset button he thought aimlessly, and stared up at Samantha’s neutral expression. She was staring down at him as he gave up fighting to stay awake. Her face was the last conscious thing he focused on before closing his eyes and letting the overwhelming darkness wash over him like the night tide.
When he awoke it was to full daylight. He was stretched out on the couch in the living room, the leather hot and clammy against the skin of his stubbly cheek. He stared around lazily without making any movement, unsure of what was going on, or even of where he was. His mind seemed to be stuffed full of wet cotton and thoughts were having a very hard time getting started in that environment. His muscles felt like lead weights as well, and he was loathe to attempt to move them. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his mind and figure out where he had ended up. Samantha would know, where did she get off to?
He suddenly remembered the moments before he blacked out and the locks on his muscles seemed to vanish instantly. He rose into a sitting position and grimaced. His muscles were already protesting, screaming about their mistreatment and threatening to just walk off the job entirely. He tried to ignore them but there was little help for it. He hung his head dully and when he looked up again he saw the note that had been taped to the patio door.
He rose slowly, trying to step gingerly around the worst of his pains, and made his way to the patio door. Samantha had closed and locked it at some point. Frowning sourly, he reached forward and tore the scrap of lined note paper from its position on the glass. He turned and collapsed onto the couch to read it.
“Dear Richard,” it read, “You are the most infuriating person I’ve ever met in my entire life. You have moments
where you seem to act like a thoughtful, compassionate human being but it seems to me more and more that you are, in reality, a gigantic asshole. Your number one goal is to look out for number one. I know for a fact that if I hadn’t gone jumping through that window when I did you would have left without me. You would have, because when it comes right down to it you feel that the only person whose rights matter are yours. You’re selfish. You didn’t think for one minute about the people that you were leaving behind. You saw that there was a situation where people would get raped and killed, and you ran for the hills. Worse, you let me let you drag me with you. Against my better judgement. We could have stayed. We should have tried to help them. But you were more interested in saving yourself and as much of your stuff as you could possibly get away with. I’m sure you thought of me as more baggage, baggage you could fuck, sure, but baggage that you would have to drag along anyway. So we’re through. I’ve gone back to see if I can rescue those women, because they deserve to live a life where they aren’t treated like the chattel of the person with the biggest weapon around. I took the gun, I’m sure you can find another one. I also took the knapsack, obviously, but there’s food all over the place. I’m sorry I had to drug you, but I needed to get away without an argument. If you want to be a good person with a sense of compassion, come on back and help me. Otherwise, fuck yourself. I hope you make the right decision.
We could have had something if you weren’t such a dick.
Samantha”
He stared at it for a while, read it over again a few times, and then crumpled it up and threw it with violent force into a corner of the room. He then let loose a powerful torrent of profanity that echoed off the uncaring walls of the empty house. After he fell back into the couch, panting, he caught his breath and went in search of something to eat.
The fridge in the kitchen was a lost cause. The power was on but everything inside had spoiled a while ago. The freezer was better; he pulled out a pack of bacon, some frozen hashbrown patties, and a loaf of bread that he found near the back of the bottom drawer. He thawed everything in the microwave beside the stove, and then proceeded to cook himself breakfast. As he waited for everything to finish he took a look around to gauge how much food Samantha had left him when she walked out of his life. There were a number of canned foods around, thankfully, but they were mostly the tomato-pasta variety. He sighed and decided to deal with it after breakfast.