by A. Rosaria
“Yeah, after killing his zombie friend, he rammed it into his chest. He hasn‘t turn yet, or shown signs of it.”
“Guess he‘s like us then.”
Sarah shook her head. “He‘s not like us. He told me so himself. It is only a temporally cure. When it wears off, he will turn eventually.”
“They had a cure while the world died around them?” He looked at her with stone cold eyes etched in a granite face. “They had a cure and didn‘t share it?” Ralph glared at the RV. “Kept it all to themselves?”
He must be thinking about his family, about his sister, Gina. A sweet, cute girl she only met once. A kid full of life, who was dead now. If there had been a cure, both of their families would still be complete. No, it was not meant to be. As Blondie had told her, there never would have been enough for everybody.
“They got the cure too late and had only small amounts available, not enough to save everyone. He told me they are now looking for a permanent cure.”
“If they are looking for a cure, aren‘t they supposed to be the good guys?”
“How many good guys kidnap people and collect body parts for samples?”
“Body parts?”
“I heard them talking about needing them for research or something.”
Ralph told her about the group he found who had their camp razed. Only one girl, Brenda, was left alive. Men raided their camp, killing them indiscriminately, gathering the bodies, and chopping them up before loading them up for transportation.
“Could it be the same guys?” Ralph asked.
“If they are, then they certainly are not good guys.”
There was more to the story. Ralph mentioned a retard who was with him when he found the campsite. Cute how he called him a man-child, but a retard is a retard, or special if you wanted to be politically correct. No, she liked to keep it simple and call him what he is.
“Please tell me everything.”
He told her how he had walked to the town, and got ambushed by a pair of men—one of them being Skip. After they let him go, he went into a shelter beneath the hospital and almost got killed by the zombies hiding there. He escaped the hospital, saved Skip from an ambush, and killed a man. Was that why he had asked her that question about killing? Was he the one having problems with it? He continued his story about getting the medicine from a pet store. How he botched that, and if not for Skip, he would be dead right now. However, Skip was bitten while saving him, but Ralph said he gave him penicillin. Skip must be resistant or immune for the penicillin to work, because it didn‘t kill a viral infection, only a bacterial one. He left Skip in Brenda‘s care. Sarah didn‘t like the smile on Ralph‘s face when he mentioned her.
“How did you get the bike?”
He told her how. It amazed her he was able to survive all that in such a short time without breaking down into a pathetic heap of traumatic depression. She hoped it wouldn‘t affect him later—like soldiers returning from war. Maybe it was different, because unlike in the military this was not a situation one put himself in willingly. Sure it‘s traumatic like a warzone, for it is one, a war between the dead and the living, but you couldn‘t feel guilty about it, because you didn‘t volunteer for it nor did you deserve it.
Ralph told her Brenda and Skip were a part of a larger group and that Brenda asked him to join them. A larger group might increase their survival chances, but it also attracted a lot more attention, and so many strangers banded together created other kinds of problems. It was easier just the two of them, but it was clear Ralph wanted to join. He had come back to get her on her feet so that the two of them could return to Brenda and check on Skip. Whatever her reservations might be, she had to agree with him about this. For now, it was better in numbers. But before they did, they had to do something about their current situation first.
“Blondie—”
“Doesn‘t he have a name?”
“Probably, but I can‘t remember and besides Blondie stuck. I can‘t possibly call him something else.”
“It sounds like a name you would give a pet parrot.”
A parrot was a fitting description for the blond, slender man who liked to talk, well less now, but when she was bedridden, he couldn‘t seem to stop yapping. He wasn‘t a pet, or at least not one you could turn your back on. The moment you closed your eyes, he would rip your throat open or stab you in the back. No, he was no pet of hers.
“Blondie hinted at something behind all this. Wherever his base is, it must not be far from here. I tried to ask him about it, but he just kept being vague and not really answering my questions.”
Ralph was looking at her bloodied hand. “Only talk?”
“Well I had to be persuasive; he wasn‘t that forthcoming.”
“Sarah? Did you torture him?”
No, not again. That look of doubt was all over his face. The same look he gave her when Jake got what he deserved. Who gave him the right to judge her? She had no choice; both times were not her choice. They were things set in motion by others. It was Jake who locked himself up; it was Blondie who tried to use her. The principal took out Jake, and Blondie got her.
“Don‘t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I just drowned a little puppy for kicks.”
“It‘s not something I think is good for you to do.”
Why was he being high and mighty with her? They both where screwed up. Any sane person would be after what they went through. Did she have to torture Blondie? Most likely not. Like everything people did, it was a choice. She could have refrained from doing it, but not doing so could have led to their deaths later on.
“That man inside there is no puppy. He is a mean thing that bites, and who knows what he would have done to me if he had his way. It certainly would be much worse than anything I‘ve done to him. I didn‘t ask for this. I didn‘t ask for them to come here. I would rather be lying down, delirious with fever, on that mattress in the RV, waiting for you, than have what happened happen. Neither did I ask for the world to become like it did. I asked for none of this, but yet it is what it is, and I have to live with that. Who are you to tell me what is right?”
She had raised her voice and was trembling. She didn‘t mean to. She wanted to stay cool and tell him calmly how things were, in the same context, but not like this, not full of emotion. It was him who brought this out of her. He stirred her. He, the unlikely guy, the guy who disappeared in a crowd. He, who was always alone, if not for his buddy, poor fat Tommy. How she wished he was alive—another thing she did not ask for. Was she to blame that it felt good when Jake got what he deserved? Jake, whose fault it was so many died, including Tommy?
Ralph touched her hand. She wanted to pull back, but he held on, not letting her go. He pulled her closer and hugged her. He smelled of blood, gut, and gunpowder. He smelled filthy, but right now there was no other place she wanted to be. He held her tightly and said three words in her ear in a soft whisper, I am sorry. Before he let her go, he kissed her cheek.
“Let‘s forget what I said. You are right. It‘s not my place. God knows I have commit more wrongs than you by now. No matter what I do, it feels as if death is following me.”
“Death follows us all. Don‘t put the blame of that on yourself; the blame for that might very well be inside the RV.”
She wanted to leave now. The emotional outburst had exhausted her. It would be better if they left everything behind and went somewhere safe, just the two of them. Like the abandoned construction site Ralph told her about. But she knew she couldn‘t. They both couldn‘t. She knew that Ralph also knew this. They might be different in a lot of ways, but in this they were quite similar. They had to figure out what this was all about.
She moved closer to him and spoke quietly to eliminate any chance that a single word carried over to the RV. “I want to follow him and find out where his people are holed up. Then, I want to get some answers from them.”
“The two of us can‘t take a whole base by
ourselves.”
“I agree, but maybe you can get that other group to come along with us.”
“I don‘t know about that. Brenda might want to, but I haven‘t met the others.”
That girl again. How could he have such a high opinion of her in such a short time? Maybe it wasn‘t the right idea after all, maybe something else, maybe the two of them could do it alone. She looked doubtful at him, about to call it off.
“Okay, okay,” Ralph said, “I‘ll try to convince them.”
“Go back to your girlfriend and convince her then, and I‘ll make Blondie show me the way to his base.”
Ralph frowned at her. She raised her hands in submission. “I won‘t torture him again, I promise.”
“No, that‘s not it. Brenda is not my girlfriend. She‘s just fifteen.”
“Oh, okay, so you don‘t mind me torturing him then, that‘s cool,” she said, smiling.
“I didn‘t say that.”
She laughed. Only fifteen, well that changed things. However, the age was just right for some. However, if Ralph thought her too young, that was fine by her. She should be ashamed of thinking like that. It was no way for a lady to think or behave. Guess she wasn‘t a lady then. She couldn‘t help it. There came a point where she could not deny that she liked him, and it was time she put a claim on him before someone else stole him away. And it was silly to drag things out when any moment could be their last. She followed him to his bike.
As Ralph got on, he said, “I might make it to the camp before darkness sets in. I will return as soon as I can, by tomorrow. You take care of yourself.”
When he stopped talking, she leaned in and kissed his lips softly. She felt her face burn up, like the heat of her lips cooked her skin. Blushing, she backed away. He looked at her wide-eyed, then he smiled. They looked at each other a last time, and he waved goodbye and left.
She watched him disappear behind the hill and kept standing there for a long while with a smile etched on her face, a genuinely happy one. She touched her lips. There was still hope in this world.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sarah pushed Blondie, making him stagger forward. He‘d been dragging his feet, slowing them down. Deep down he probably knew what would happen.
“Where are we going?”
Sarah didn‘t answer him and pushed him again.
“What are you going do to me?”
Was that fear she heard reverberate in his voice, or a ploy to make her overconfident and slip, creating an opportunity for him to make his move? It really didn‘t matter, because she already set herself to fail in whatever he assumed she would do. She nudged him forward again.
They had been moving for nearly thirty minutes, going in the direction from which Blondie and his now dead friend had arrived with their van. At first, she had hoped that she could predict where to go when his reactions betraying him, but he was unreadable. Not that it really mattered. Only one thing was left for her to do. She led him off the road, down into the barren land of yellow grass and every so often a shriveled bush. The vegetation was sparse, the critters hidden, only coming out near evening. She didn‘t mind the landscape. The way the sun was low, coloring the horizon red, it was breathtaking. It gave the usual colorless surrounding a new kind of contrast that added depth to it all. Sarah enjoyed the sight while she led Blondie farther and farther away from the road. Going off-road apparently was the one thing Blondie didn‘t expect. He started fidgeting at his clothes, his bound hands preventing him from scratching himself. Maybe he was allergic to the grass or he was just nervous. She didn‘t care.
The veil of the sky shifted from light blue to a darker, transparent veil, showing a sliver of stars. It promised to be a night full of stars, a thing people watched lying on their backs in the tall grass next to someone they loved. A sight to behold, take in, and remember the beauty of existence. Not everything was zombies and death. There was still beauty. The universe didn‘t revolve around them. They were just ants in that bigger thing called existence.
“What do you want? Whatever it is, just ask and you‘ll get it.”
Blondie‘s whine broke her reverie. As nice as the universe might be, no matter how big it was or how much it dwarfed her and everything around her, the reality was that she was on Earth and left to deal with the misery in this world. She‘d dream another day, look at the stars, and maybe she would do this with Ralph. He would understand her; he was a deep one, always had been, unlike her. It took an apocalypse to open her eyes and make her really see.
She pushed Blondie forward.
“You could join us. You‘ll never lack for anything again.”
Sarah chuckled at that. Like he would allow her to join them after she killed his friend, and captured and tortured him.
“Whatever you and your friend think, we are not the bad guys here. We are just trying to survive and create a new world, a better world. Join us.”
She didn‘t answer him. She wanted him to sweat, to think no one was listening, that he was alone, all alone with a crazy bitch.
“With your help, we could make a cure, save humanity, give some rest to those in the shelters across the country. Your blood could save lives.”
How much of her blood would he have taken? He probably would have drained her and cut her into pieces to be bottled and examined. She had no plans in becoming someone‘s research to save humanity. Humanity was nothing to her if she was dead.
Soon, it would be dark. She stopped and looked around. This was a place as good as any other, no point going farther. Blondie kept walking, not realizing she had stopped until he was a couple of feet away. Sarah hoped he would take this opportunity to run away. It would make it easier on her. He didn‘t run. Instead, he turned around. The cool mask he had on when she took him out the RV and told him they were going for a walk had disappeared completely. He looked downright haggard with his eyes moving wildly about. She held the gun pointed at his gut. Just one squeeze and he would fall and crumble into a sad piece of shit suffering before death would release him.
“Why did you stop?”
She loved seeing him squirm. She bet he was now wishing he had run toward the setting sun instead of standing here at gunpoint. Most people clung to life. The more certain they were that they would lose it, the harder they held on. A brave man might face the gun pointed at him, expecting to die and being ready for it, but eventually nerves would rattle even the bravest. Or maybe it was an act to get her to lower her guard, to make her ease down so he could take advantage and get to her. Pay her back for Raspy. The way he had acted in his grief told her this was not a man who would take lightly what happened to his friend; some blow back was to be expected. Sarah understood this. Had Blondie killed Ralph, she would bide her time as well, but she certainly wouldn‘t forget it. Maybe this was a redeeming quality for Blondie, making him not that horrible of a person if he could cherish a friendship. She smiled and loved the effect that smile had on him. He looked at her in confusion. Guess one would not expect the one shooting you to be smiling at you.
“Look, let bygones be bygones. Let me go and I won‘t interfere with you anymore.”
A lie, a bold faced lie. To prove he was a liar, she lowered her gun as if what he said had an effect on her, like she would really let him go. And there it was, missed if she had blinked, him looking at her with total focus and intent. Sarah backed away, raising the gun. It was time to end this.
“Turn around.”
“You don‘t have to do this.”
But she did. She gripped the gun tighter and gestured with it for him to turn.
“We can talk this out.”
No, they couldn‘t. She knew it and he certainly knew it. She had seen it in his eyes—a murderous intent. The death of his friend was still too fresh to reason with him. She hadn‘t set out to kill Raspy, but Blondie didn‘t know this, nor did it matter because she didn‘t care that Raspy had died. She was fine with it. It was a justifiable killing for what they intended to do with her.
“Turn around or I‘ll shoot you right here and right now.”
His face clouded over, all pretenses lost. He looked straight at her and mumbled while he turned around. “Murderous bitch.”
“I thought you would understand. I thought you would agree once we got you back to our base, that you would eventually join our ranks, but you‘ve turned into a wild animal, just like most of the other survivors. Cut off from any order, you run wild like animals, doing whatever you need to do to survive, not minding the consequences. You are the worst kind of monster, worse than these zombies you are running from. We offered you a helping hand, and what do you do? Spit in our faces and kill my best friend.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you already told me all about that. Poor, poor, little Richard, your own good friend that put a gun on me and shot at me. Nice friend you got there. So I smacked him with a wrench and he died. He had it coming. It‘s not me who chose this. It was you guys who came in my RV and wanted to take me away, not give me any say in it, to play whatever sick games you had planned for me. Not this time, not with me. Now get on your knees.”
The sun, now only a tip of light on the horizon, sent red stripes through the sky in a last-ditch effort to keep some light in this world before darkness set behind her. She could feel its presence pushing against her back and inside, purging the light. Soon, she would be left in darkness with only the light of the stars to guide her. She would manage finding her way back, because by dawn she would have to set out again. After Ralph had left, she went over the contents of the wreck once more and found something tucked into the driver‘s seat, which made her change her plans somewhat.
Blondie still stood, not complying. Sarah kicked him behind the knee of his injured leg. He buckled onto his knees with a cry of pain.
“You fucking monster,” Blondie said between clenched teeth.
“Listen, Blondie, this is it.”
“Please, at least call me by my name if you are going to do it.”
“Anton, you listen well. I don‘t need you anymore. I had planned to let you go and follow you, but I found the map with the location of your base marked on it. It was all I needed to know. Bye.”