by Steven Novak
“Can we shoot a few?”
“Not yet.”
“How about now?”
“Later.”
“Just one? Can I shoot just one?”
“Once we’re out of town.”
At some point he stopped responding altogether and left me talking to the breeze.
When I finally shot an arrow, it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. It was harder than I thought. My broken finger wasn’t helping. Blueeyes had me aiming at trees. All I hit was air. When I ran through my arrows I collected them and tried again.
After three rounds of failure I’d had enough. “I can’t do this…my finger.”
“Stop complaining. You have four more.”
I couldn’t complain with Blueeyes. He wouldn’t listen to it. With him there were no excuses, no second-guessing. They didn’t serve a purpose, not anymore. They were relics of a bygone world, pointless. You either did or you didn’t, passed or failed. If you failed, you died. The next day my shots were closer, the day after that closer still. The following day I actually hit a tree. Later that night I hit another.
When the sunlight disappeared, we’d talk. Actually, I did most of the talking. Blueeyes listened. It made me feel better; took my mind off my hunger pains and the wail of the howlers outside. Sometimes, I babbled about the weather, about how I was getting better with the bow. I talked about Mother and Father too, about the places we’d been, things we’d seen. I told Blueeyes how beautiful she was, my mother, about her eyes and her dimples. I told him how she would wipe my face clean, how she braided my hair one night and let me braid hers. I told him how she died, how Father buried her on the side of the road, the way her lips felt the last time she kissed my face. After that, I didn’t want to talk about them anymore.
“Do you have a family?”
Blueeyes never answered. He never talked about anything other than surviving or killing, or surviving long enough to kill. He just stared. He watched the sky and the road, always scanning, always alert. For him, everything was practical. Every sentence had a reason to be spoken. There was no small talk, idle chatter. I didn’t care. At some point it stopped mattering. He didn’t need to respond. I was going to ask whether he responded or not.
“Are they gone, your family?”
His head lowered. He turned away from his window, staring at me from across the room. His mouth moved; hesitant lips parted, then closed.
He looked away. “Go to sleep.”
I had him. Even at ten, I knew I had him. He wanted to say something, to talk about something other than monsters and weapons and where we’d find our next meal. If Blueeyes was capable of getting comfortable, he was getting comfortable. I saw it in his eyes, the wrinkles on his forehead, the way his chin touched his neck when his head dropped. I couldn’t stop.
I reworded the question, changed the topic slightly, “What did you do? You know, before the bombs?”
Nothing.
Sitting up, I leaned myself against the leg of a nearby table. “Father didn’t like talking about it either…sometimes, I guess. Once he told me he flew a lot, like a bird, meeting people in other places, staying in big buildings. Mother said he looked handsome in his suit and they kissed.” My voice lowered to a whisper: “I liked seeing them kiss.”
Still nothing.
“Were you ever in a suit? What’s a suit?”
He chuckled; at least, I think he chuckled. I’d never seen Blueeyes chuckle and I wasn’t sure what it looked like. The right side of his lip curled upward for a moment, immediately turned back. When he spoke, he shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. I think he rolled his eyes. I was wearing him down. “Never needed one, I guess…never had the money.”
“What’s money?”
I didn’t know. I still don’t.
“It was just something, paper and coins…just nonsense. We used it to buy things we didn’t need for people who didn’t need them. Made some of us feel better about ourselves…inflated egos, lack of perspective.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t care. I liked the way he said it, liked listening to him talk, feeling like there was someone in the room with me. I didn’t want him to stop.
“Tell me something else.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. If you were never in a suit, what did you do?”
He sighed again and leaned back in his chair and scratched his beard. Outside the howlers moaned. “I guess I didn’t do much…moved from job to job. I washed dishes for a while, little dump outside of town. Had a warehouse job, delivered packages around the holidays. For a year or so I was getting up at four in the morning to vacuum an electronics store, scrubbed the toilets…bloody tampons from the ladies room.”
“What’s a tampon?”
He chuckled again, more noticeably than the last. “Nothing you need to worry about.” His attention moved to the window, the darkening sky: yellow, orange and crimson. “Alex was disappointed in me, had to have been. Can’t say I blame her.”
A name. He said a name. “Who’s Alex?”
“My wife.” And just like that I wasn’t in the room anymore, at least not from his perspective. He was just talking to himself, to the sky, and to his conscience. He was talking to ghosts. His voice transformed to something soft, unfamiliar. “She smiled politely when I brought home those checks…a hundred bucks here, fifty there. She told me it didn’t matter. She never said anything, but I could tell. Three of us crammed into a shitty apartment, thrift store clothes. Wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined. I wasn’t a provider, didn’t take care of them the way I should have. Failure. I didn’t even fight when she finally had enough and took off. I just let them go.”
His face went soft. “I should have fought.”
“Who’s them?”
Soft turned hard. His eyes narrowed, back straightened. I’d asked one too many questions. “Them is no one.” He was done.
Before I could say anything else, Blueeyes stood and headed for a doorway on the opposite side of the room. “Enough for tonight. Go to sleep.”
He didn’t return for twenty minutes.
Things were quiet the next day. He stopped answering my questions, mumbled responses with gravely breath. Late afternoon we happened across a pack of gimps outside an old shopping center. They were mindlessly roaming the parking lot, pawing at reflections in windows, rotted heads hanging loose. We watched them from a hill behind the twisted steel of a crumpled sign. It was nothing we hadn’t seen before. The creatures were everywhere, a constant threat. They were practically traveling companions. Until Blueeyes told me to get my bow, I wasn’t sure why we’d stopped to look.
“What?”
“Can’t shoot at trees forever. Need a moving target.”
I’d never shot at anything, not intentionally. When the howler was attacking Blueeyes, I didn’t really do the shooting as much as the shooting did me. It just happened, independent of thought. The gimps below seemed so far away, tiny. I’d never shot anything so tiny. I grabbed my bow, hands slippery with sweat. My arms were shaking and wouldn’t stop. If Blueeyes noticed, he didn’t say anything. When I grabbed an arrow, it worsened. The jitters moved through my shoulder and into my chest, affecting my breathing.
They were too far away.
Way too far.
I stood, raised my bow, straightened my back, inhaled, and held my breath. For a moment, I closed my eyes. A part of me wished the gimps wouldn’t be there when I opened them, that I could go back to shooting trees and annoying Blueeyes about letting me shoot trees. It didn’t work. They were still there, foggy eyes staring at nothing in particular, torn flesh flapping in the breeze. They were like the dirt, like the rain or the wind. They were always going to be there. I scanned the group and settled on a particularly large one near the back. One of his legs was bent backward, dragging along the pavement, a trio of dusty bones protruding from an open chest. I named him Oneleg, repeated it in my head. I�
��m not sure why. Despite the distance I could hear him moaning in that soft-sad way all gimps moaned, like starved animals, lonely monsters waiting for something. I was putting him out of his misery. That’s what I told myself.
It was mostly true.
When the wind died, I fired. The arrow bounced off the roof of a car, flipped, spun through an open window. Absolutely none of this happened in the vicinity of Oneleg. A few of the gimps heard the noise, saw the arrow sail into the building, moved in its direction.
Blueeyes handed me another arrow. “Try again.”
I loaded it, aimed, inhaled, and fired. I hit a brick wall. “I’m sorry.”
He handed me another. “Shut up. Try again.”
Fifteen arrows later and I hadn’t hit a thing. Thankfully the gimps hadn’t caught on. I’m not entirely sure what they thought of the random arrows bouncing off everything or if they were even capable of putting it together. Probably not. As long as they didn’t see us or smell us, we were safe. Oneleg continued to limp around without a care in the world, arrows breezing past his head, slamming off garbage cans and crashing through windows. He was mocking me and he didn’t even know it. I swear, I swear I could see a smile on his face. Blueeyes stood, dropped a bundle of arrows to the dirt, unsheathed his machete, and started down the hill. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
He didn’t bother to look at me. “Down there.”
“No. Y-you can’t. There are too many.” There were too many. They were too close together. Even for Blueeyes.
“Guess you better start hitting something.”
They noticed him when he was halfway down the hill. Thirty heads turned in unison, thirty eyes widened, and thirty mouths opened. All at once they snarled. My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I fumbled, slipped, and landed on my rear. By the time I grabbed an arrow, Blueeyes had engaged them. He never stopped moving forward, never paused or hesitated. After killing one he moved to the center of the group, chopping and slicing, kicking them in the chests to keep them at a manageable distance. With every second the mass of hungry monsters thickened. They surrounded him, plodding inward, rotted teeth chomping. My first arrow hit pavement, ricocheted off a wall and landed in the dirt. It was way off target. Even with them crowded together, I hit nothing. A gimp grabbed a handful of Blueeyes’ jacket and pulled it taut against his neck, nearly knocking him off his feet. He removed the monster’s arm from its torso and put a blade through its skull. I reached for another arrow and dropped it. When I finally got it into place, the bowstring slipped through my fingers. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I could barely see Blueeyes. A sea of gimps had swarmed him, an ugly, panting mass of gangrenous limbs. If he was alive, he wouldn’t be for long. I needed to do something.
I didn’t drop the next arrow. My bowstring didn’t slip. My hands didn’t shake. Again, I squared my shoulders. Again, I inhaled and held. When I felt the wind on the back of my neck I listened, really listened, afforded myself the fraction of a second necessary. It tussled my hair, tossed it across my eyes and back again. It moved over the tips of my fingers, into my hands and along my arms, and steadied my muscles. My eyes narrowed, gaze settling on a single head among the masses, wispy dark hair moving the same as mine. When Oneleg moved, so did my arms, anticipating. Suddenly they didn’t seem so far away. They were close, so close I could touch them. It was Oneleg’s hair on my face, not my own.
When I exhaled, I fired.
The arrow pierced his skull, passed through cleanly, exploded from the other side. No time for celebration. I grabbed another, fired again, and hit. The next shot was the same. The one after that hit a shoulder. The following attempt corrected the mistake. I didn’t stop. I didn’t notice the pain in my shoulder. My broken finger didn’t exist. With every shot the herd thinned. With every pull of my bowstring, another body fell. Seven headshots later I could see Blueeyes. He was still alive, still swinging, soaked in blood, with chunks of decomposing meat bouncing off his jacket, mucus and blood dripping from his face. When only two gimps remained, we each killed one. Just like that, it was over. I lowered my bow. My arms dropped to my sides, my shoulders slumped. I felt heavy, so wonderfully heavy, all over. When I allowed myself to inhale, the air smelled different. It burned my nostrils, left an aftertaste in my throat: pungent copper, liquefied steel. It was awful, wonderfully awful. For the first time in my life
I was alive.
When I finally looked up, Blueeyes looked back.
Five minutes later, we were on the road again. My traveling companion didn’t bother to congratulate me. He never said good job or threw a thanks my way. I was fine with it. He didn’t need to. Nothing was different between us. Nothing had changed. The road was still there and we still needed to walk it. While I didn’t fully realize it at the time, he was giving me exactly what I needed. There wasn’t room for a good job, not in our world. Good jobs were silly, even for a ten year old. They were outdated. Good jobs were pointless and good jobs would only get us killed. We were too smart for good jobs. We had to be.
That night I slept with my bow at my side. Even gave it a name: Pointycrunch. When I told Blueeyes, he shook his head. When he turned away, I thought I heard him chuckle, couldn’t be sure. Blueeyes rarely chuckled. He might have burped.
The next morning I made Pointycrunch some arrows and tightened his string. He deserved it. While I ate, I kept him on my lap. When we hit the road, I threw him over my shoulder. When we rested, I practiced. When we walked, I practiced as well. I was aiming at things much smaller than before, further away. I was getting better. It was beginning to feel natural. Pointycrunch was becoming an extension of my arm. Where I pointed, he crunched. What I needed him to do, he did, always, without question. I was aiming at the doorknob of an abandoned house at the end of the block when Blueeyes’ hand smacked me in the chest and knocked the air from my lungs.
“Wha—”
The very same hand moved to my mouth. The other reached for his machete. Suddenly, he had me by the arm, dragging me to the trees. When I couldn’t keep up, he lifted me into the air. The moment we reached the tree line, he threw me to the dirt. I was spitting sand from my mouth when I heard it: a truck, a lot of trucks actually. They seemed far away, old engines popping, tired brakes grinding. I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from, but it was getting closer. When I tried to stand, Blueeyes shoved me down. When I attempted to wiggle from his grasp, he shoved me harder. From behind the grayed branches of a dying bush, I watched the road. A massive jeep rolled into view, camouflaged in gray and white, reinforced with bits of scavenged steel, an obscenely large gun mounted to the rear. There were two men standing beside the weapon, bobbing as the truck moved, torsos thickened with body armor, gas masks obscuring their faces. A second jeep followed the first and a pair of trucks after that. Two cars, equally armored, brought up the rear. I’d never seen so many vehicles in one place, at least not ones that worked.
When I spoke I whispered, not that they could have heard me over the noise. “Who are they?”
It took Blueeyes a moment to respond. His attention was on the road, on the small army passing by. “Don’t know.”
“Bloodboots?”
“Maybe.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I’d nearly forgotten about Bloodboots, believed we had put enough distance between us, hoped I’d never see him again.
We watched the vehicles until they vanished into the fog. The moment we couldn’t hear them anymore, Blueeyes stood. He dug into his beard and scratched his chin, never relaxing the grip on his machete. “We can’t go that way.” His eyes moved from the road to the forest behind us. “Have to find another way around.”
I didn’t like the sound of that either.
Blueeyes sensed my unease and strangely tried to reassure me. “It’ll be fine. Still early. We have time.”
I wasn’t particularly crazy about him trying to calm me; it wasn’t like him. Even at ten, I knew he wasn
’t telling me everything. Something was up.
We spent the next hour trudging through the forest. I tried my best to get information from him. He wasn’t having it. When he actually responded, his answers were brief, cryptic. Sometimes he changed the subject. Other times he just told me to shut up. Whatever he knew he was keeping to himself.
The sunlight was waning when we found the road again. The fog had thickened, moist against my face. We were in an industrial area, massive structures for as far as I could see, cracked concrete and rusted steel, ghostly towers swallowed by the mist.
Blueeyes pointed to one of the larger buildings a bit further down, surrounded by a mostly collapsed fence, its four walls basically intact. “There…we’ll stay there tonight.”
I wasn’t sure why he chose it; it didn’t seem particularly inviting. Then again, not much did. It had to be better than a tree in the forest, than another night with the howlers. When Blueeyes began walking in its direction, I followed. We entered through a crack in the exterior where the walls had shifted. While it easily large enough for me, Blueeyes had to contort himself a bit. Once he was through, he helped me inside. The odor hit me immediately. It smelled terrible, old and crusty, rotted. It stank of dead. There was something artificial about the air, unlike anything I’d ever smelled, difficult to describe. Instead of investigating further, I squeezed my nose. The interior of the building was massive, packed with rows of oversized metal drums. Partially collapsed stairs were spread across the hanger and led to the upper levels, crisscrossed with the shadows of a decimated glass roof.