Much like the human body would kill a virus once it entered the bloodstream. She found that ironic.
One pull of the trigger, a split-second, and then everything would switch off like a light.
She placed the gun in her mouth and closed her eyes. The oil on the barrel tasted terrible. She pushed the barrel against the roof of her mouth.
One pull and everything would go away.
She stayed that way for several seconds, finger on the trigger.
She should at least leave the guy a key first. She wasn’t a monster, after all.
But that’s not what the jury thought, was it? No, she’d been portrayed as a monster by the D.A. while the real monster sat across from her in his best suit. A monster wearing human skin.
No, she was no monster.
Lilly removed the gun from her mouth, spitting in an attempt to eliminate the taste of the gun oil from her mouth. It didn’t work, so she grabbed another Slim Jim to try and cover it up. It worked a little.
She wondered if Dan was asleep in his room. Probably not; it wasn’t even dark yet. She didn’t want to talk, but that’s all he wanted to do. Preachers, priests, pastors…they were all the same in that regard.
But were they all like the man who’d sat across from her in the courtroom that day?
Lilly tucked the pistol into her back pocket. Along with the pillow, she gathered up the blanket off of the couch and made her way down to Dan’s room.
She slept outside his door that night.
Thankfully, she had no dreams.
Chapter Nineteen
Lilly awoke outside Dan’s room, her back stiff from the night she’d spent on the cold hard floor. She lifted her head, glancing toward the narrow window set within the door.
There Dan stood, watching her.
He waved and smiled.
She frowned. Knowing him, he’d make a big deal out of it. He might even view it as weakness on her part. It could prompt him to make his move and take her out finally. And today, of all days, she needed his help to refill the water.
“Morning,” he said, his voice muffled by the door.
She got to her feet, stretching out her stiff back. The joints crackled and the pressure dissipated. At thirty-eight, she could feel forty coming on strong. If that even mattered; she very much doubted she’d make it to forty at all.
She reached into her pocket and retrieved the keys. “You’re going to help me get water today,” she said. “You try anything, and I’ll shoot you. I swear to God.”
“You should swear on something you believe in,” Dan said. “Makes it more convincing.”
Lilly frowned again. “Just know that I’ll shoot you if I need to.”
“Point taken.”
She put the key into the door and hesitated. Was she ready to let him out? Her dry throat reminded her that she had to be ready. She needed that damn water.
She twisted the knob and opened the door as Dan backed up, allowing the door to swing open.
“Let’s go,” she said, motioning with the pistol as she backed away to put some distance between them.
“As you wish,” Dan said. He exited the room and headed down the hallway. “We have to start the fire first.”
Lilly followed behind him, pistol in hand.
* * *
As it turned out, Dan used an old school contraption to get his water. Two buckets, attached to a length of wood that he hoisted upon his shoulders. Low-tech but effective. Only the simplest of mechanisms could be counted on in the post-virus world.
“Now once we get outside, you’re gonna want to be on the lookout for any rogue carriers,” Dan said. He stood at the front door, stick and empty buckets in hand. “Not as many of them these days, but it don’t mean they’re not out there.”
“I know how it works,” Lilly said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Suit yourself.” Dan pushed the door open and stepped outside.
Lilly smelled the unmistakable odor of human filth and death as it wafted in. “Jesus, where’s that stink coming from?”
“The pen,” Dan said.
“The what?”
“The pen. That’s where I keep them.”
As if on cue, a high-pitched scream erupted from the arena across the school grounds. More followed, a discordant assembly of monsters.
Lilly furrowed her brow. “What do you mean, ‘them’?”
“The carriers.”
She raised the pistol. “I knew it. What kind of sick and twisted shit are you up to here?”
Dan raised his free hand in a stop gesture. “Whoa, settle down now. Don’t you do anything with that pistol that I’m gonna regret.”
Lilly glanced toward the arena. “You keep them in there?”
Dan nodded.
“What are you doing with them?”
Dan took a step toward the arena. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”
Lilly thrust the pistol toward him. “No way. I’m not going near that shit.”
Dan paused, sighing. “At some point, you’re gonna have to learn to trust me.”
Lilly remained silent.
Dan turned and took a step toward the arena.
“What are you doing?” Lilly asked.
“Follow me or shoot me. Just make a decision and get it over with.”
Lilly hesitated for a moment as she watched Dan head toward the arena.
With a frustrated huff, she trotted after him, the pistol clutched in her hand.
* * *
Dan stood on top of the observation booth, overlooking the arena. The previous tenants (God bless their souls) had built a makeshift ladder leading up to the top of the booth, presumably to give them a high perch for a lookout. A three-story drop awaited anyone who wasn’t smart enough to hang on, but heights had never bothered Dan. As if to prove it, he’d spent more than his fair share of hours up here watching the carriers, lost in thought.
Lilly, on the other hand, wouldn’t even consider getting on the ladder.
He didn’t blame her; most people didn’t like heights. And as untrusting as she was, she probably thought he’d push her off the ladder once she got to the top.
That girl had some real trust issues.
She wasn’t planning on killing him, though. She would have already done it by now. Sure, she needed a strong back to help out, but she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer who’d put a bullet in his head once she was done with him. He just knew it. He had that knack, after all, that gift from God he liked to call character assessment.
“Come back down,” Lilly called up to him. “I told you I’m not going up there.”
Dan took a final look at the arena grounds. Where he’d only a week or so ago seen hundreds of carriers milling around alive (but not well), he now found half of them either dead or dying. Maybe a third of the remainder still wandered about, shambling like empty, hungry husks, waiting to be dispatched by God’s grace.
But what bothered him more than anything, were the cocoons.
Hundreds of grayish-white, spongy masses now lay scattered about the arena field.
“Come on!” Lilly yelled from the ground.
“Hold your horses!” Dan yelled. “Nobody likes a nag!”
Turning away from the disconcerting scene before him, Dan headed back down the ladder, trying hard to shake the bad feeling he was getting.
Chapter Twenty
After descending from the observation booth overlooking the arena, Dan started the fire. He’d gotten pretty good at it over the past year or so. He worked in silence, focused on the task at hand while Lilly sat on the ground, watching him. After a half-hour of caring for the tiny flame, it began to take hold on the larger logs.
“That should do it,” Dan said, heading toward his bucket-and-stick contraption. “Let’s get some water.”
Parting waist-high weeds and saplings gone to root, they walked the short distance to the creek, Dan in the lead and Lilly picking up the rear, always pointing the pistol at h
is back. They passed the arena on the trip, the horrific smell hanging in the air like a rotten blanket.
Another hundred yards and the creek appeared.
“Water’s nice and clear,” Dan said. He removed the buckets and headed down the sloping bank of the creek. He filled both buckets, carried them back up and attached them to the wooden pole. Squatting, he placed the pole across his shoulders and gave a mighty heave before resuming a standing position.
“Try to keep up,” he said, heading back toward the school.
Lilly followed.
“Why do you keep them?” she asked.
“A calling, I suppose.”
“Exactly what is a calling?” Lilly asked. “You said yourself that God didn’t talk to you. So how did He convince you to collect carriers and store them away?”
“I wouldn’t call it storage. They’re not things. Quarantine is a better word.”
“Semantics, Dan. Answer the question.”
“In there, they can’t hurt anybody.”
“They can’t hurt anybody if they’re dead too, you know.”
“It ain’t my place to play executioner.”
“What makes it execution? It’s a mercy killing. Euthanasia.”
“God will take ‘em when he sees fit.”
Lilly laughed. “What a cop out.”
“Call it what you want.”
“They’re suffering, you know. You’d be doing them a favor.”
“Maybe,” Dan said. “Or maybe they’re so far gone they really have no idea what’s going on.”
“I think you just don’t have the balls to shoot them. You’re too squeamish.”
“And you do?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good for you then. We all gotta do what we think is right.”
“In an unjust world, you sometimes have to take justice upon yourself.”
“Killing those pitiful creatures ain’t justice,” Dan said. “They’re not guilty of anything. All they did was come down with a nasty virus. Once the bug got inside them, they were absolved of all the bad things they did.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. But what about the guilty? There are a hell of a lot of bastards running around out there now. People who know better and choose not to. World’s full of them.”
“The Bible says ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot’ Exodus twenty-one, twenty-four.”
Lilly huffed. “Yeah, well it also says to turn the other cheek. Reconcile that.”
“I’m more of an Old Testament kind of guy, I suppose.”
“At least you’re not making excuses for cherry-picking.”
“Everybody does that,” Dan said.
“So much for the Bible being the immutable word of God.”
“We’re flawed at the core. It’s human nature. Everybody but the most pompous of all blowhards knows there’s logic flaws in that book. I think that’s why He did it.”
“Did what?”
“I think that’s why God gave us an imperfect set of instructions. It matches our own imperfection. A perfectly congruent book would just blow our little minds. We need the discrepancies before we can even approach it.”
“Have you ever considered how many wars have been fought over all those little discrepancies? Or how many so-called witches were murdered because some idiot actually believed that horse shit?”
“Exodus, twenty-two eighteen,” Dan said. “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’” He paused. “That one’s a real downer.”
Lilly huffed. “A downer? Tell that to the thousands of witches who got burned at the stake.”
They approached the fire which had now grown to an appreciable size during their absence. A ring of rocks contained the blaze while a metal grate lay over top of the flames. Dan removed the plastic lids from the metal buckets and placed them upon the metal gratings.
Dan backed away from the fire, stretching out his back muscles. “Once the water boils for five or ten minutes, we’ll dump these and do it all over again,” he said.
“How many trips will it take to fill all the coolers?” Lilly asked.
“A dozen or so. We’re gonna be at this for most of the day.”
“Then sit your ass down and keep your eyes peeled for deadheads,” Lilly said. “I’m not ready to become dinner just yet.”
Chapter Twenty-One
They worked most of the morning on the task of refilling the coolers with essential clean water; Dan performing the labor while Lilly acted as a gun-toting foreman. Dan observed her as he worked, catching glances here and there. He could tell she hadn’t quite regained her strength, but she had put on a couple of pounds since he’d found her nearly a week and a half ago. The dark circles under her eyes had all but disappeared, and the color had returned to her skin. She’d also taken some time to wash up. Dan took that as a good sign; it meant she still cared enough about herself to try.
Trying meant that hope still existed. And everything about living in these woeful times hinged upon maintaining hope.
After filling the first two coolers, Dan took a seat on the ground, watching as the flames licked at the buckets of freshly-gathered water. The sun shone directly over their heads, heating things up to an uncomfortable level. Sweat beaded on Dan’s forehead and ran down his back in rivulets, soaking his shirt.
“Do you think they’re dying off?” Lilly asked. She kept her eyes on the fire, watching as steam wafted off the buckets, dissipating in the warm air.
“The carriers or people in general?”
“Carriers.”
Dan shrugged. “Some of ‘em, sure.” He paused. “But some of them are changing. It’s like they’re getting smarter.”
Lilly hesitated, peering into the fire. “I’ve seen it too. Like wolf packs on the hunt. None of the maniacal, blitzkrieg stuff they used to do.”
“And something’s keeping them alive for longer than normal,” Dan continued. “So many of ‘em are just hanging on, half-dead.”
Lilly rolled her eyes. “You mean like something supernatural?”
Dan shook his head. “No. But maybe the virus itself. Something about its pathology.”
“Sounds far-fetched.”
This time Dan rolled his eyes. “Any more far-fetched than the entirety of civilization disappearing in the blink of an eye?”
“Touché.” Lilly glanced around. “At least it’s getting a little bit safer to go outside now. Not like the first few years or so.”
“Problem is that for every five carriers that die, one of the smart ones survives. And those smart ones are as dangerous as five of the original issues.”
Lilly turned to him and grinned. “Version 2.0.”
Dan chuckled. He met her eyes, and she hesitated there for just a second.
Then she turned back to the fire again and went silent.
The smile remained on Dan’s face for a few moments longer. He hadn’t seen Lilly smile once before now. The first crack in a hardened exterior.
The fire crackled before them, gobbling up the wood like a hungry beast. Clouds of steam from the near-boiling creek water took to the air, whisked away by the light breeze. Carriers, locked away in Dan’s makeshift quarantine, howled in perpetual agony.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Lilly asked, her eyes still trained on the fire. The smile had disappeared from her face, replaced by sharp frown lines, erasing any evidence that it had ever been there.
Dan took a deep breath, hesitating. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a reply. But was he ready to tell a total stranger his secrets?
It also occurred to him that maybe she wasn’t a stranger anymore. Sure, the nature of their relationship might be a little strange, but he’d known her for going on a week and a half now. Besides, his father had always said that confession was good for the soul.
“If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine,” Lilly said.
Dan hesitated again, swallowing hard. He glanced at Lilly; she’d taken h
er eyes off the fire and now watched him carefully.
Dan took another deep breath.
Might as well go for it, he thought.
“The day my momma and daddy were killed, I ran. My daddy was up there, preaching until his eyes were about to bug out of his head. Red-faced and half-crazy with fire and brimstone on his lips. I pleaded with him to run, but he said his duty was to the church.” He paused, taking another deep breath. “My momma stayed with him, like always. I can still hear them both screaming when I close my eyes. I’ll never forget that sound.”
Silence hung between them, heavy and palpable.
“Wow,” Lilly said, breaking the stillness.
Dan studied her face to see if she was mocking him. But her eyes, those soft eyes set within that hard face, shone true.
“That wasn’t your fault, you know,” Lilly said. “He made his choice. So did your mom.”
“She stayed by his side until the end while their only son deserted them like a coward.”
“It’s called survivor’s guilt,” Lilly said. “You think you should have died that day. You didn’t, so you feel guilty. It happens to soldiers all the time. It’s perfectly common and perfectly normal.”
Dan flashed a weak smile. “It sure doesn’t feel that way.”
“It doesn’t feel good, but you have to remember that it’s not based on any real logic. It wasn’t your fault that your mom and dad chose to die when you opted to live.” She paused. “You know, Dan, sometimes choosing to live is the bravest choice a person can make.”
“You seem to know a lot about psychology,” Dan said. “Don’t tell me you were one of those head-shrinkers way back in the day.”
“Kinda sorta,” Lilly replied. “Would you believe that I used to make a living—a healthy living, mind you—teaching pseudo-psychology to a bunch of executive types? On-site classes, retreats, conventions…you name it. The shit that used to seem so important back then.” She gestured around at the desolate countryside. “Now look at things. What a waste of time it all was.”
Dan shrugged. “It’s all relative. Back then, when the world was different, it was important. Now, not so much. Times change and you change with them.”
Badlands Trilogy (Novella): Redemption In the Badlands Page 5