by Steve Kuhn
Nick told Seth, “Not yet. It’s not exactly our call to make.”
Ashing his cigarette on the floor, Seth retorted, “I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about whose ‘call’ it is. The dude’s a fuckin’ liar, and that makes him a threat.”
Nick finally turned to face me and said, “Take your hand off of your gun, Dext. You’re not the problem. It’s your guy, Boyd. How’d you all come to meet him anyway?”
I dropped my hand and told them the short version. They both nodded as I went along, as if to say they had heard it all before. When I was through, Seth told Nick, “See! Same thing Boyd said.”
I asked them both, “So, what?”
Nick butted out his smoke and leaned in slightly to say, “That kid’s a fuckin’ liar. We asked him about his story, and he told us the same thing he told you. Problem is, his eyes were floating to the right the whole time, and he taps his foot. Don’t let that stutterin’ shit fool ya, man. I mean, his stutter is legit, but you gotta look past it.”
Seth picked up for Nick, saying, “And he wrings his hands. Kid’s got so many tells, I could gamble his Goddamn underwear off him if we were playin’ Hold’em. Somethin’ about him is off, dude. We just don’t know what it is, yet.”
I knew shopping day wasn’t going to go well one way or another. It never did. We never got to finish that conversation, but I hope we can before Seth loses his shit and does something over the top.
A loud thump against the frosted glass left us staring at the silhouettes of at least two bernies scratching and clawing to get in. We hopped out of our seats just as Don keyed the mic on the little, pink walkie-talkie in my pocket. It made a single vibration, which I felt immediately.
Don made it a point to key the mic without saying anything just in case we were in a precarious position. Wouldn’t want someone on the other end blabbing away if we were hiding quietly. It didn’t really matter in this instance, so I keyed up and said to Don, “How bad is it?”
I was more than a little surprised to hear Lilly on the other end saying, “There’s about eight. They were gonna just pass by, but you guys were probably too loud. Can you get to the door on the left? It’s clear over there.”
There were exits on both sides. I keyed the mic and told her, “Yep. We’re comin’ out.”
We jumped to it and popped open the door on the left. I squinted in the sun and, to my horror, my eyes adjusted to the sight of another ten or more dragging their stinky asses right to us. Nick shoved us back inside and slammed the door shut. I keyed the mic and frantically said, “What was that about, Lilly?”
She came back with, “Shit! Sorry, guys. My left. You’re still clear on the other side. Move yer butts!”
She was right. It was completely clear on the other side, and we ran our sorry asses back to the tower in a hurry. When we got up there, Lilly apologized again, but I told her it was an honest mistake. We both just learned a lesson about being very specific. (And no one died, so I call that a win.) I ruffled her hair proudly, and she went back to keeping watch with a huge grin on her face.
Boyd had been calling on the radio and sending a distress signal on some other channels all day, so hopefully something comes back soon. If we don’t hear anything by tonight, we’re gonna give it up. We’re moving out tomorrow, but I’ll be keeping a much closer eye on Boyd and Seth.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out what Kylee passed me earlier. It was the picture that she had been carrying around all this time of her and Don—except Don was torn away, and she stood there alone in her wedding dress.
Entry 149
I tried to take a nap, but that was pretty much the worst idea ever. I woke up to muffled shouts and some sort of scuffling going on outside, so I rubbed my eyes and groggily moved to the door to see what the commotion was about. Everyone was out there, and it was bordering on pandemonium.
Seth had Boyd pinned to the railing so hard that Boyd’s top half was hanging precariously over the fifty-foot drop to the asphalt below. I would have expected Kylee or Don to at least be making an attempt to break it up, but the opposite was true. In fact, Kylee had her pistol drawn, and it was placed firmly against Boyd’s forehead. She shouted at him, “You fucking knew? And you just let it go? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Boyd could be seen glancing over his shoulder to the impending doom below, then to Kylee. He was terrified and rightfully so. Being on the wrong side of Seth was bad enough. Add Kylee’s temper to that mix and you could pretty much kiss your ass good-bye.
Nick blocked my path and put his hand into my chest with a little more force than I was comfortable with. He whispered to me, “Let them handle this.”
I smacked is arm away and told him to get his fucking hands off me. He rolled his eyes with frustration and said again, “Trust me, man. You don’t want any part of what’s goin’ on over there.”
Boyd was trying to speak, but the combination of nervousness and his stutter made it nearly impossible. The kid was as white as a ghost. I shouted for them to stop, and I was promptly ignored.
After a second attempt to calm the shit down, Don spoke up and told me, “He had them on the radio. He had Kilo on the Goddamn radio and tried to hide it from us.”
Seth called over to me, still holding Boyd over the rail, “I told you this kid was fulla shit! Now we’re gonna get to the bottom of it.”
I pleaded with Kylee for a moment of sanity. “Kylee, come on. Let’s talk about it before going off the deep end for Christ’s sake.”
She scoffed. “How many months have we been at this, Dext? Huh? Chasing this Goddamn unit across the country. How many died for it, Dext? How many? And this little shit just fucked it all up!”
Boyd stammered, “You d-d-don’t undersssstand. It’s n-n-not like that.”
Seth threw an elbow across Boyd’s jaw and snapped, “Shut the fuck up,” causing Nick to shake his head at me and say, “I told ya, Dext. Just let them handle it.”
This is where I started to get pissed off—not at any single thing in particular, but just at this whole crapfest in front of me. We were acting like a bunch of savages. I was aware of that, but it didn’t matter for some reason. The boiling in my gut trumped any sense of self-control, and all it took was Nick putting his hand on me one more time.
I spun around and in one motion drew my gun from my waist, leveling it at Nick. I told him coldly, “Put your fuckin’ hands on me one more Goddamn time, Nick, and I swear on everything holy that I will wreck your shit.”
Nick raised his hands and said, “Damn, man. You’re not kiddin’.”
“Not even a little bit.”
He shook his head slightly and told me, “Look, chill out. I’m just tryin’ to keep a bad situation from getting worse. You were asleep the whole time, so you have no idea what’s going on right now.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Seth eying me up and getting antsy. It felt like he was gonna move on me at any moment to get Nick’s back, so I lowered the gun. I may have been angry, but I wasn’t stupid.
“Fine, fuck it. I’ll just sit here and do nothing then.”
Kylee asked Seth, “You know when he’s lying?”
Seth nodded in the affirmative, stone faced and cold. “Mmhmm.”
Kylee lowered her own pistol and holstered it before putting her hand on her hip. She stared at Boyd for a moment, biting her lip before saying, “All right then, Seth. Make him talk.”
Nick chimed in with, “Um, that’s probably not a good ide—” but it was too late.
Seth grinned mischievously before throwing Boyd to the ground. Boyd scrambled backwards on his hands, but only managed to hit the stone wall of the tower. There he sat, cowering.
Seth calmly approached Lilly and asked her nicely, “Lilly, can I borrow a revolver for a minute, please? You know which one the revolver is, right?”
Lilly scoffed like he had insulted her intelligence before telling him, “I got yer back, Jack.” She unzipped the backpack that sat
next to her watch position and passed Seth the proper weapon.
Seth sat cross legged in front of Boyd and emptied the ammo from Lilly’s spare piece. He put a single bullet back into place, spun the cylinder, and quickly snapped it shut. “You a gamblin’ man, Boyd?”
Boyd said nothing.
Nodding to himself, Seth placed the barrel under Boyd’s chin and told Kylee, “Ask away.”
Kylee crossed her arms and said, “Why didn’t you tell us you made contact?”
Seth never took his eyes off Boyd as Boyd sputtered, “I c-couldn’t. I c-can’t…”
Click!
Boyd flinched and started a terrified cry as Seth pulled the trigger for the first time. “Yes. You can, and you will.”
Boyd stared at Seth, wide eyed, and stammered, “You’re c-crazy, man, fuckin’ c-crazy!”
Seth chuckled quietly and replied sarcastically, “I’m crazy? I’m fuckin’ crazy? You don’t know what crazy is, Boyd. You wanna see somethin’ crazy? I’ll show ya fuckin’ crazy.”
What happened next had me standing there with my mouth wide open like a codfish. Seth pointed the revolver at his own temple and without even blinking, pulled the trigger three times.
Click, click, click.
He pointed the gun back at Boyd and said calmly, “Two more chances, Boyd. Feelin’ lucky today? ’Cuz I sure am.”
Boyd held out his hands and said, “All right, all right… I’ll tell…”
I’ll spare you the stuttering and reiterate what he said here in plain text because it took like half an hour for him to get through it. It was shocking, to say the least.
“My name is Sean Boyd, Lance Corporal Sean Boyd, Second Platoon, Third Battalion, First Marine Division… Kilo Company.”
Not surprisingly, there was a gasp from everyone present.
“I’m AWOL. We ran into some shit way back east, and a few of us got separated. We were spread out all over the place, and I never bothered to try and find the others. None of us did. Me and two other guys, Bustamante and Tyson, decided to make a break for home. We scavenged what we could of the remaining gear from our dead and broke west. I was trying to get to Vegas to see if my mom and sister made it to safety there. We’re originally from Reno, ya know? But we got caught up on the road—fuckin’ raiders everywhere, bernies, no food, very little water. We did things, terrible things. If they find me, I’ll be put through the wringer… or worse.”
His voice trailed off, but Kylee pressed him. “What type of things, Boyd? What did you do?”
Boyd hesitated before saying, “We had to rob some people sometimes. We did what we had to do.”
Nick must’ve seen something in Seth that the rest of us didn’t, and he leapt to Seth’s side. With only a fraction of a second to act, Nick shoved the pistol from under Boyd’s chin as Seth squeezed the trigger.
Boom!
The gunshot rang out loudly as the round fired off into the distant sky.
Seth snapped at Nick, “I warned him, dude! I told him if he lied one more time, I was gonna pull the trigger, and he’s fuckin’ lying. You know it, and I know it.”
Boyd went into full-on nervous breakdown mode, sobbing, as he had no doubt seen his life flash before his eyes. He spilled it, saying, “Okay, okay… we killed people, too—a lot of people. I mean, I didn’t, not at first, but Tyson lost it. He couldn’t take it out there on the road, and he became something entirely different. He started shooting random survivors and looting them after. He didn’t even try to talk to them after a while. Then, when Bustamante refused to fire on this older couple, Tyson shot him. He shot Bustamante right in the face. I was scared shitless after that. I did whatever he told me to do.
“Wasn’t long after that, you people came along in that fancy rig. We watched you eating and smiling. We watched you moving through the traffic with that big-ass truck like it was nothing. You were our ticket home.”
My heart sunk into my stomach—Hook, the shot that Kylee took to the chest. Oh, fuck.
Kylee lurched forward and kicked him in his face. Boyd’s head snapped back, and blood shot from his nose and mouth. She shouted at him, “You killed our fucking friend!” She kicked him again in his gut, doubling him over and sending him into a coughing fit. “You wrecked our Hummer!” Now with her fist, she nailed him in the side of the head. “And you fucking shot me, you asshole!”
Don pulled her off of him.
Boyd, trying to catch his breath, told her, “I didn’t, I swear! I s-stopped. Tyson took the shots at you, not me. I c-couldn’t do it anymore. Then he went for the girl. He was about to shoot Lilly to s-s-send you a message. That’s when I shot him. I pulled the t-trigger and emptied everything I had into his back as he lay there, prone, about to k-kill a little k-kid. I couldn’t let him do it.”
We looked at Seth and Nick to confirm Boyd was telling the truth. They both nodded that he was legit.
There was only silence then. No one spoke a word as it all sunk in. It lasted for a while until Boyd spoke, broken and bleeding.
“My n-name is probably on every action r-report they got. Those g-guys know me. If they come here, and they f-find me, and if they hear what I’ve d-done, they’re likely to kill me.”
Nick quipped, “I’d be more worried about what we might do to you.”
Kylee rubbed her face in shock. She ran her hands over her chest where the bullet would have entered, and she was shaking.
It was Lilly that put a stop to the madness. She knelt next to Boyd and said, “Thanks for saving me, Boyd.” She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. Then she turned to Kylee and said, “Boyd saved me twice. He saved me when I got cut, and he saved me before we even met him. I don’t think we should kill Boyd, you guys.”
Seth stood up and looked down at Boyd disgustedly. “Lilly just saved your ass. I’d say you’re even now.”
We left Boyd to his own thoughts, but not before Don told him firmly, “When you get cleaned up, go in there and call them back. We’ll figure out something to tell them so you’re not in trouble, but you will make contact. Got that?”
Boyd nodded and made a move to regain his composure.
I pulled Seth to the side and asked him, “How’d you know the gun wasn’t going to go off when you had it to your own head?”
Seth looked me right in the eyes and said, “I didn’t.”
I was trying to wrap my head around that when Lilly called out, “Um… Guys!” She pointed out into the airfield, and we followed her direction. “Bernies…”
The gunshot must’ve called them in—hundreds. They shambled at first in small groups, but they were coming from everywhere, from all directions.
Nick urged everyone inside and grabbed Boyd by his shirt, dragging him along. Now it’s no longer a question. We need help here, and it’s on Boyd to make it happen.
Entry 150
We were hoping they’d pass. If we waited long enough and kept quiet, there was no reason for them to hang around. We were figuring we’d put Boyd back on the radio and, once we had a plan with whoever was running the show for Kilo, we’d let the dead disperse. This didn’t turn out to be the case, but all’s not lost. Don’t get me wrong, though. There’s still a chance all this will blow up in our faces if Hicks doesn’t come through.
Hicks. That’s the guy’s name. His voice came across the radio with a subtle southern drawl and the coolness of a battle-hardened vet. We could hear it in his inflection and tone. It wasn’t arrogant by any means, but it’s confident. His voice alone let us know he wasn’t one to fuck around and he’d probably rather die on the battlefield than stay ‘safe.’ That was probably why Boyd was scared shitless.
Boyd made a stupid decision. Leaving his unit behind was cowardly, careless, and a whole bunch of other words that start with the letter ‘C,’ but it was also very human. We all get scared. We all do stupid shit. Hell, I got a whole book full of stupid shit we’ve done. I think with the way things are, all bets are off. Rules no longer apply. Sure,
we all have our own set of morals and ethics, what’s left of them, but those lines go gray quickly when society breaks down. There are no checks and balances for anyone anymore—only the ones we choose for ourselves.
I’ve given this a lot of thought. Boyd hasn’t done anything that we haven’t done ourselves. We’ve taken lives, and we’ve taken things that didn’t belong to us. When we did those things, we never really felt good about it. Sometimes the situation has a way of dictating our actions, and it’s like you’re just along for the ride, hoping that when that ride stops you still have all your limbs intact, ya know? Anyway, Boyd has been a solid asset since he hooked up with us. He’s saved our asses and kept watch more than anyone else. He’s pulled his weight, and he’s made up for his transgressions against us, even if you wanna blame him, in part, for Hook’s death. So, I forgive him. I think the others feel the same way now that the heat of the moment has worn off.
We made up a story for him. Way back when we were still in the east, Kilo and Lima were both spread thin. They were evacuating survivor camps like the Haven, clearing townships, cutting paths through the sea of traffic that clogged the main routes, coordinating supply drops; the list goes on and on. Then they got orders to collect specimens and truck them along the westward route to Morofsky’s people at the facility. Then, the vaccination failed and decimated their numbers the night that Fool ended up stranded. Boyd was there for all of that. Is there any wonder why he ran his ass back home?
Well, Fool helped us from beyond the grave today, because his name was able to lend us the credibility with Hicks that we needed. We told Hicks that Boyd was with Fool and he’d been runnin’ with us since we left the cross-huggers. It only took us telling Hicks some of the details we learned from Fool along the way to convince him we were legit. The only people who could throw a wrinkle into that story were Murphy and Alyse, and they died in the facility fire.