Dead Weight

by Casamassina, Matt

  “Oh my God, are you OK?” he asked and moved to her.

  When she flinched away, he stopped, tossed his weapon on the nearest bed, raised his hands and stared at the ground before her feet. She seemed oblivious to her nakedness, but he wasn’t, so he balled up a sheet and tossed it her way while he trained his eyes on some invisible object to her side.

  “Ma’am, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m one of the good guys, I swear,” he said. “The men who did this to you are dead.” After a moment, he added, “It’s over.”

  She didn’t respond as she wrapped herself up.

  “I’m gonna get you out of here. My name’s Zephyr, by the way.” She nodded but made no reply to this. After he surveyed the area, he noted, “I was told there’s another person here.”

  “That’d be me,” a girl’s voice said and a hand waved out to him from behind the same oven.

  “Show yourself, please.”

  “You think we’re going to get the jump on you?” the voice asked.

  “Please just do as I say.”

  A slender figure rose and turned to him, one hand still cuffed to the oven. Long, straight, brunette hair fell over her shoulders as she considered him. She was still dressed in a tank top and shorts, which was a good sign. On her face she wore a peppering of light freckles. She was, even in the dim light, unmistakably beautiful, but he had no time to dwell on it.

  “We good?” she asked, waving her free hand as proof that she wasn’t concealing anything.

  “Yeah. All good. Let me get you guys out of here.”

  Naturally, Dick, presently a corpse, had the keys to their cuffs, so Zephyr spent the next five minutes digging through the blood-soaked pants of the man he’d just killed. With a shotgun, too. His face was a cavity of skull and blood. When he finally returned to the girls, his hands were painted red and still shaking. You figuratively and literally have blood on your hands, Zeph, he thought, and there was nothing humorous about it. He wanted to wash them, to scrub them.

  “Got it,” he said as he un-cuffed the woman, who thanked him, tried to stand, then nearly fell over.

  So he led her to one of the beds and when she refused it he realized that he’d inadvertently guided her back to the scene of the crimes against her. Good job, Zeph. Really considerate there. He apologized and sat her in a nearby rocking chair instead. She asked for water.

  “There are two of us,” the younger girl said and pointed to her own cuffs, but he ignored her. Instead, he retrieved a couple bottles for them, realized he didn’t know their names, and asked for them.

  “Sarah,” the older woman said.

  “I’m Aurora,” responded the other. “I’m sorry, but can I please get out of these?”

  “Yeah, sorry.” He unlocked the cuffs and tossed them to the ground as she stood and stretched. Fully erect, he was struck by how tall she was. She had a good half-inch on him.

  Sarah shot to her feet, her eyes wide. “How many did you kill?”

  “Four men.”

  The woman considered his response, exhaled and seemed on the verge of crying. “That’s… good.”

  “I hope they suffered,” Aurora added.

  “Yeah, well, most of them did.”

  “The Mexican?”

  “Was his name Juan?” Zephyr asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the scumbag.”

  “Then, yes. He suffered worst of all, I think.”

  “Good for him,” she said, adding, “Not like any of them were good, but he was definitely the most rotten of the litter.” She studied him a moment. “How old are you?”

  “Why? Seventeen. I think? I guess I could be eighteen now. We need to get you two out of here.”

  “Thank you for… what you did,” Aurora said. And she really was stunning. He didn’t want to think about what these dead men might have done to her if he hadn’t arrived when he did. What they likely had already done to her companion.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said. “I’ve got a little girl waiting on me and we need to go pick her up.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Can’t. They’ve been holding my brother prisoner and I have to go get him.”

  “Where is he now?” Zephyr asked. Were there more prisoners here? His hand tightened on his weapon.

  The older woman shook her head. “I think he’s at the city limit. They were putting men in buses out there before they took me.”

  Zephyr flinched. He felt as though he’d been struck by lightning. Now his heart was beating faster than it had during any of the gun battles and he just wanted to disappear. Should he tell her? Could he tell her? It was his fault. After all, he didn’t stop it. If only Ben hadn’t lost his mind. You don’t put this on him now— not when he died saving you, he thought. You didn’t do a damned thing and you know it. It was true, and he accepted the responsibility of it, heavy as it was. Still, this poor lady had suffered enough already. Did she really need to know this now? Right now? As much as he wished the answer was different, he knew that it wasn’t in him.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry,” he began and something in his voice gave him away.

  “What?”

  “What’s wrong?” Aurora asked.

  “When we got here, we were ambushed by men in a bus,” he said as he struggled to catch his breath. “They shot and killed two of my friends. So we rammed into them, and then the bus caught fire and…” He shook his head. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was close enough, and the result was the same. Sarah cupped her mouth as tears streamed down her cheeks and then she slid back to the floor.

  “I’m so sorry. So, so, sorry,” he said and he meant every word. “They were trying to kill us and we just — all we did was defend ourselves. We didn’t know.” And all at once he hated himself for allowing it to happen. The reality of his actions, or inactions as it were, lay directly before him: a brutalized woman whose only connection to the world had burned to ashes, all thanks to him. He wiped his eyes and nose on his shirt.

  “Aw, God, this… wasn’t what I wanted,” he said.

  He started away—he’d done enough damage already—when he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder.

  “No, don’t go, Zephyr,” the younger girl whispered, her voice soft and genuine for the first time since they’d met. There was nothing judgmental in her tone. “Sarah, he’s right,” she continued. “There’s no way he could’ve known. He came here and saved us. He saved us. He’s not like them.”

  The other woman cried on, but after a while, her sobs subsided some, and then some more until finally she only sat, her face cradled in her hands.

  Zephyr struggled for the right words. “Excuse me, ma’am — miss, what was his name?” he finally asked.

  She looked up at him, eyes puffy. “Robert,” she said and hesitated. “His name is Robert Weskler.”

  He nodded. “Robert Weskler,” he repeated. “I swear, I won’t ever forget it.” It wasn’t much, but his promise was genuine, and he saw that the truth of it registered on her face.

  The woman rose to her feet again, a meticulous and painful undertaking by the look of it. Still wrapped in a bed sheet, she straightened, cupped his cheek in one hand and said, “It’s OK. It’s not your fault, honey.” It was so unexpected—the antithesis to what he supposed she might say or do—that he found himself at a loss for words.

  “You keep saying we. Who exactly is we, other than this little girl?” Aurora asked.

  The question caught Zephyr off guard and resurfaced painful memories, but he ignored them.

  “Yeah, her name is Jordan. Up until a couple days ago, there were five of us, including her,” he began. “We lost two, Merrick and Brad, at the… buses.” He glanced in Sarah’s direction and was thankful that she seemed lost in her own thoughts. “Brad had a twin brother named Ben, who came with me tonight, but he’s dead now, too.” All dead, except for him and Jordan. All dead. All of them. “Ben was the one who you should be thanking. He’s the one who took out most of the slavers.”

 
“The slavers?” Aurora asked, her eyebrow raised.

  “Yeah, these…” he searched for the right word. “Savages. That’s what we’ve been calling them.”

  “I guess it’s as good a name as any.” She surveyed the scene and then focused on Sarah, who sat and stared in quiet oblivion. “Let’s get her some clothes and then get the hell out of here, huh?”

  When he was sure everybody was done shopping, the boy doubled back to the slavers’ final living space, checked for any spare weapons and didn’t find any. Instead, he wheeled one of the oversized generators to the parking lot, where the girls waited for him, they loaded it into the car, and drove away.

  When he finally flung open the front door to the house, he found it static, so he called for the girl and when no answer came he sprinted up the stairs to the bedrooms. The search seemed to slow and stretch with every step until Zephyr thought time might freeze and then change direction. He barged through the first bedroom door and as it swung inward on its hinges he saw Jordan jolt awake from her resting spot. He scooped the little girl up, held her and felt hot tears on his cheek.

  “I will never leave you again, Jordan,” he promised and kissed the side of her head. “I swear.”

  “Never,” she agreed. “Now put me down.” After he finally did, she looked up at him, her eyes pink and tired, and asked, “Who are these people? And where’s Ben?”

  32

  Alpha

  They found his aunt’s worn nightgown abandoned in her sheets and her slippers beside the bed. Zephyr was disappointed by all of this, but he hadn’t expected anything else and was both too tired to brood and too dry to cry. He’d already wasted his supply of tears on Merrick, Brad and Ben, and what did all the tears bring? Not relief from the sorrow that cradled his heart. So he swallowed the lump in his throat and drew in air whenever he felt his eyes grow watery, and then he made a mental list of everything he needed to do so that he and the girls might survive. Water. Food. Guns. Warm clothes. Shelter. A purpose. A plan. To which the question always came: what exactly is your purpose and plan, Zeph?

  Hours stretched into days and then weeks as his life transformed into a monotone blur. The four of them crashed through the formalities of fellowship to become something of a new world family. Perhaps this was out of necessity, the collective desire to find companionship in any form, but Zephyr thought there might be more to it. He was no longer confident that he could trust any man. Not after Ross, Cowboy and his gang, and even Ben to some degree; the twin had transformed in those final hours. Jordan, though? Yes. He trusted her. And Aurora and Sarah? Sure. They had no hidden agendas. He suspected that they returned him their confidence as they wouldn’t any other man. It wasn’t difficult to understand why. He had, after all, saved them from the worst of men at the climax of despair. That made him the exception to the rule.

  They spent long mornings in a lavish estate home they discovered and repurposed. Jordan called it a mansion and Zephyr thought the description was apt. Eight bedrooms, four living rooms, a huge indoor swimming pool and Jacuzzi, a tennis court and even a single-lane underground bowling alley. It was the epitome of American extravagance, and they all adored it. With the generator Zephyr stole and two more since, the house may as well have been back on the grid. The gas was out, so the water was always cold and their cooking options limited, but they could use the microwave, blow-dry their hair, watch what little remained of television, play video games, and even surf the Internet, which wasn’t as finished as he thought.

  It was a crapshoot of broken websites, but it still functioned. Google, Facebook, Twitter, CNN, The Guardian, and dozens of other popular online destinations were all down. Yahoo still seemed to work, but the search results it returned were incomplete and most of the links led to inoperative pages. When he searched for “missing people,” though, he got a few hits. Someone had created a blog called Me, Myself and I and they were posting daily updates about their experiences in West Virginia. The site was offensively ugly, it subscribed to the AOL school of design, but the updates were informative.

  The latest entry read:

  There are more of us left than you think. People are shy, probably because nowadays you’re just as likely to run into a killer as you are a friendly face. But here in Charleston, there are a few hundred of us, at least. If you’re reading this, realize that you’re not alone, and there are some good people left. Stay tough.

  As if to illustrate this point, the visitor ticker at the bottom of the blog indicated that more than nine-thousand people had loaded the entry. Zephyr wondered if the counter considered unique IP addresses or if every refresh of the site added a number to the tally, and he was encouraged when the figure remained unchanged after he reloaded the page multiple times.

  At lunchtime, they usually piled into the Flex and searched the city for signs of life, food, gear, weapons, and new toys for Jordan. As they emerged from a Wal-Mart with armfuls of items one afternoon, a motorcyclist slowed and chatted with them. His name was Scott, he wore his long black hair in a ponytail, and he seemed friendly. He said he was en route to Las Vegas because he’d read online that it was still going strong. Lots of people left and most of the hotels remained undamaged despite some initial fires. Best of all, he said, was that the electricity was still flowing because the city was powered by the Hoover Dam, which was self-sufficient.

  “It’ll keep going for years or maybe even decades, they say,” the rider noted. Zephyr wondered who they were in this case, but he didn’t ask. “You guys should come. It’ll be easy living for sure.”

  They thanked him for the offer but declined. Perhaps they would move on, maybe even soon. He wanted to avoid Vegas, though, even if it did offer citywide juice. The prospect of finding more people, especially those lured to the City of Sin, was not as enticing to him as it might have been weeks ago.

  The abundance of bedrooms in the house went unnoticed by Jordan, who asked if she could sleep with Zephyr every night, and he obliged her. The rooms were huge, and he encountered no hurdles when he transported a queen-sized bed from another space into his own. At night, as they lay in the darkness before drifting, they would play a game in which they quizzed each other about their favorite and least favorite things from the world before the event. Zephyr said he missed chili-cheese fries and milkshakes but didn’t miss the Kardashians. Jordan said she missed the Nickelodeon channel and Slurpees, but didn’t miss homework or her mom’s boyfriend, Dave.

  One night as she curled up against him, she asked, “Do you think my mom is in heaven?”

  “Maybe,” he began. How to answer this one? The subject matter always triggered tsunamis of guilt. “I don’t really know, to be honest. But I think yes. With my parents. And with all the other people.”

  He couldn’t see her in the darkness but knew she was considering his response. When she finally spoke, her voice didn’t waver or crack, as he feared. “Can you come back from Heaven? Is it allowed?”

  “I’m not sure, Jord,” he lied. “You and me, though— we’re family now. Together forever, right?”

  “Right,” she agreed. “I just miss her—my mom.”

  “I know, kid.” He wanted to say more. He wanted to tell her that he wished he could bring her back. He wanted to promise her that everything would be like it was. But he didn’t say anything.

  Sarah grew quieter and stayed in her room more. Sometimes when they ate, Zephyr noticed her across the table with a fork full of food dangling in one hand and her eyes staring off into nothingness. When he asked if she was all right, she’d snap back to life, say, “yes, of course,” and then shovel whatever she could find into her mouth. He knew she suffered. When she forgot her bread in the toaster or put her dishes in the trash instead of the kitchen sink, he remembered her that first night, dazed, naked, and covered in torture.

  What made it worse was that he blamed himself. Not just for failing to extract her before the slavers did their worst, but because he most likely had a hand in her brother�
��s death, too. Every day, as she seemed to retreat internally more and more, so grew his guilt, and before long he had trouble meeting her eyes across the dinner table.

  Aurora spent at least an hour every day in the bathroom and always smelled flowery and wonderful. It wasn’t just that she loved conversation— she dominated the dining table with stories and jokes and questions—it was that she lived for engagement. Face-to-face time with eyes that penetrated their targets and picturesque smiles that rendered them speechless. At least, this was her impact on Zephyr, who tried to hold her attention but found his words stupid and awkward by comparison. That she barely noticed his efforts only amplified his growing sense of insignificance. And as a result, he would often excuse himself from dinner early or retreat to another room in the house as soon as she walked in. He knew this kind of behavior was borderline dysfunctional, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “Why’re you so grumpy?” she asked over a late lunch one afternoon and punched him on the arm.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re grumpy, dude.”

  “No, I’m not. Just a little tired,” he said.

  “I’ve seen you tired, and this expression…” She pushed his cheek with a pointed finger. “This expression. Here. Right here. The one I keep touching. It’s grumpiness. And it’s been going on for days. What gives?”

  In a way, her optimism reminded him of the twins, neither of whom gave the event the gravity it deserved. Of course, that was partly true because they hadn’t awakened to discover one or more of their loved ones missing. The difference was that Aurora had, and she was upbeat, anyway. Her mother died when she was seven and her father raised her. She doted on him, and she cried for hours after she realized that the vanishings were not some big hoax and that he wasn’t coming back. Yet, when the sun rose the next day, she wasn’t broken, but energized and committed to finding her place in the aftermath.

  “Nothing gives,” he said, and flashed her his best smile. “Seriously. Is this cranky?”