by Steven Novak
When he finally spoke, he seemed annoyed. “What are you waiting for?”
I was confused. “What?”
“Target practice. Won’t get any better if you don’t shoot.”
My confusion disappeared, replaced with excitement. We’d spent so much time running and hiding. I hadn’t shot Pointycrunch in days. I missed him. He missed me. I lifted him from my shoulder and retrieved an arrow from the sack strapped to my back. When I had everything I needed, I moved to the front of the car, extended my arms over the hood, and took aim. Reality set in quickly. I was overanxious. The gimps were further away than I thought, further than anything I’d shot. There was no way I could hit them, not from that distance. Pointycrunch was disappointed. We were both disappointed.
I relaxed my grip. “They’re too far.”
Blueeyes’ response was predictable. “No, they’re not.”
“I’ve never hit anything that far away.”
“Exactly.”
I wanted to shoot Blueeyes and cursed him under my breath. He was wrong. They were way too far.
“Were losing light, Megan.”
I really wanted to shoot him.
When I realized we weren’t going anywhere until I tried, I relented. Closing one eye, I focused on the tallest and slowest of the group. It was a man, dead flesh peeling from a crumpled skull, wisps of gray hair whipping in the breeze. One of his arms was hanging from his torso. His shoulder was an open wound, useless. With his back to me, I noticed that his neck was twisted at an awkward angle, nearly bent backward. It had to be broken. He was a mess. He was also moving away from me.
My shoulders slumped. “I’ll never hit him from here.”
“Bow can shoot twice that far. Trust me, I made it. Stop thinking. Do it.”
I shook my head, gritted my teeth, and huffed. I wanted to stomp my feet. The look on Blueeyes’ face wasn’t helping matters: so self-assured, as if I was silly for doubting him. The muscles in my back tightened. I readjusted my grip and pulled the bowstring back as far as I could, so far I felt it in my shoulder. I followed the movement of the gimp, the shuffling of his feet, the bobbing of his skull.
Blueeyes was watching, moving closer. I could feel him over my shoulder, lining up the shot from behind me, breath on my neck. “Shoot where he’s going to be, not where he is.”
I steadied my arms, held my breath, and fired. The arrow connected with the gimp’s upper back, jerked him forward, and tossed him to the mud. I missed his head by at least a foot.
I was amazed I hit him at all. “Damn it.”
“Watch the language.”
Damn it.
Blueeyes handed me another arrow. “Try again.”
With the first gimp slow to get up, I turned my attention to another. I’m not sure if it was a man or woman. I suppose it didn’t matter. It wasn’t either anymore. Whatever it was, it was dressed in a trench coat, bottom frayed and faded, filth a decade old. I lifted Pointycrunch and readied myself.
Blueeyes’ hand fell to my shoulder and slid across my bicep to my elbow. His fingers made adjustments. “Keep your arm straighter.”
With his other hand he lifted my head. “Chin up.”
My arm was strained, shoulder throbbing. Both of Blueeyes’ hands fell to my waist, fingers pinched. My back straightened. His voice lowered to a whisper. The inflection was something I’d never heard from him, almost encouraging. “Ignore the distance. Distance doesn’t matter. Ugly son of a bitch might as well be five feet away, standing right in front of you. All you have to do is reach out and touch it. Just touch its head. If you don’t, you’re done for. It won’t give you a second chance, Megan. If you miss…you’re dead.”
I released the arrow. It sliced through air, through flesh, skull, and eye. The gimp fell.
Blueeyes handed me another. “Hit the rest and I’ll be impressed.” He wasn’t smiling. He never smiled.
Still, it felt like he was smiling.
I dispatched the next three gimps with ease, a single shot for each. One of my arrows entered through one ear and exited the other. I was especially proud of that. By the time the gimp I’d hit in the shoulder was back on his feet, I dropped him to the mud. Blueeyes was already standing, tightening the straps of his backpack, heading in the opposite direction. Only one gimp remained, a woman with her back to me. She looked slightly fresher than the rest, long dark hair, blotchy skin mostly intact. I watched her move, the way she shuffled, the gait of her step. I was so anxious for her to turn, so proud of myself for what I’d done that I didn’t notice her clothes or the specific tint of her hair. I should have noticed. I certainly wasn’t paying attention to the bracelet dangling from her arm. The details were lost, meaningless. In that moment she wasn’t even a her. She wasn’t a gimp and she wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t scared of her and she couldn’t hurt me. She was unimportant, a thing. She was target practice. I wanted to kill her.
I wanted to kill her so badly.
The moment she turned, my shoulders dropped. Pointycrunch slipped from my fingers, fell to the dirt. Something inside twisted, lurched. A lump of awful, balled and congealed, wedged itself in my throat, refusing to budge. Everything went numb. Everything turned fuzzy. I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, I was crying. Suddenly, I was running. I was running to her.
Blueeyes yelled, screamed. I don’t know what he said, didn’t care. I could hear him behind me, chasing, boots splashing in the mud. I hopped over a fallen garbage can, through a bit of broken fence, arms pumping, chest heaving. I was less than thirty feet away when she saw me. The lump in my throat erupted, spewed from my mouth as an incoherent gurgle. Our eyes met. She recognized me. I swore she recognized me. I could see it in her eyes. Behind the milky overcast there was something. I saw it, felt it. When the tears from my eyes hit my lips, I tasted it. Her arms raised, fingers twiddling. When she opened her mouth her dimples came to life.
Those dimples.
Blueeyes snagged my shirt and held tight. My feet took to the air, suddenly above my head. When I hit the ground, I hit hard. The fall knocked the wind from my lungs and opened a gash on the back of my head. Blueeyes was on top of me instantly, struggling to contain my flailing limbs and screaming for me to stop fighting. I wanted him off, wanted him away. I balled my hand into a fist and punched his stupid face. I kicked him in the chest so hard I hoped I broke his ribs. I clawed his cheek with my fingers, jabbed my thumb in his eye.
“No! Get off me! Get off!”
When he pinned my arm to the mud, I bit his hand and tasted blood.
“Stop it! God damn it, Megan!”
“No!” When the bite didn’t bother him, I kicked his groin. “Let me go!”
No matter what I did or how hard I struggled, Blueeyes refused to let go. He was massive and strong, a tower of flesh fighting back, moving with me, always a step ahead. He held my arms, hands full of my clothes. After pinning my legs he maneuvered himself up my body. When he reached my chest I was done for. That’s when I saw her over his shoulder, hands reaching for his back, mouth open and head cocked. She was coming to help me.
I truly believed she’d come to help.
Blueeyes sensed her presence the same way he sensed everything. While maintaining his position on my chest he retrieved his knife, turned to face her, and drove the blade into her chest. I screamed so loud I felt it in my chest, in my arms and legs and eyes. I felt it in my heart. When Blueeyes lunged at her again I lunged too, snagged his arm, squeezed and pulled. Instead of connecting with her head, he hit her shoulder.
“Damn it, Megan!”
When he tried again, I did the same. The knife slid into her side, black blood spitting from the wound. Blueeyes knocked me to the ground and stood from my chest. I locked my arms around his midsection. Hanging from his back, I rammed my head into his spine, scratching anything exposed. When he stumbled backward and landed on top of me, something in my chest cracked. I couldn’t breathe. When she came at him again, Blueeyes kicked her in the stomach, knoc
king her to the mud. He tried to stand, but I was still holding on, refusing to let go. I didn’t care that I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter that something was broken in my chest. I couldn’t let him hurt her. With my legs around his waist, I climbed his back, coiled my arms around his neck, and squeezed. When I dug my elbow into the open wound on his shoulder, he growled.
Blueeyes wanted to hit me. I could tell he wanted to hit me. He probably wanted to kill me. He was cursing, arms flailing, desperately trying to shake me loose and coming up empty. His fingers went for mine, peeling them from the flesh of his neck. By this time she was back on her feet. I could hear her moaning, swiping at Blueeyes, clawing his jacket with filthy digits. The instant Blueeyes pried me loose I was airborne, weightless, flying over his shoulder. The ground smacked me harder this time. I bit my tongue, tasted blood. My shoulder popped. My left side went numb. Everything blurred, flashed black, then came back again. Blueeyes was above me, struggling to keep her from removing a chunk of his neck with her teeth. One of his hands slid down his side, reaching for a second knife strapped to his leg.
“N-no…s-sh—” I opened my mouth, squeaked. He couldn’t hear me. I could barely hear myself. My voice was gone, lungs empty, chest on fire. Blueeyes retrieved his blade when she latched onto his arm and bit down. He snarled, nostrils flared, eyes wide. He was going to kill her. He was going to kill her again.
My mouth exploded. “She’s my mother!”
Blueeyes paused, knife in the air, Mother gnawing on his forearm, blood seeping from the corners of her mouth. Instead of stabbing her, he cracked the butt of the weapon against her jaw. The blow knocked her loose, broken teeth spilling from her lips. His foot connected with her knee, shattering bone and bending it backward. She fell forward, face first into the mud, moaning the entire time. Blueeyes dropped his weight onto her back, knee to her spine. He snagged a handful of hair, mashed her further into the filth. When he looked at me, he was panting, covered in sweat, Mother flailing beneath him. He seemed furious. He was disappointed. He was sad. Mother’s head twisted sideways, caked in mud. Her eyes moved to me, stayed there. When she reached for me, I reached back.
“Megan, don’t…”
Her fingers brushed mine, gently violent, distant but familiar—so achingly familiar.
“It’s not your mother.”
I ignored Blueeyes. I didn’t care what he thought, cared even less about what he had to say. It was her. It had to be her. I wanted it to be her so badly that it didn’t matter that it wasn’t, not anymore. The instant our hands met, she grabbed my wrist, twisted, and pulled, held so tight I felt it pop. Her mouth opened, screamed, snapped at my fingers. Blueeyes stomped her forearm with his boot. I heard the bones break, an awful snap I’ll never forget. She barely noticed. When he stomped again, she finally let go.
Blueeyes pressed his elbow to the back of her head and shoved her face to the mud, muffling her moans. He looked at me, at my quivering lips, at the tears in my eyes. “Walk away, Megan.”
The thing I once called Mother wiggled her head free for the briefest of moments, long enough to growl. Her face was coated in filth, eyes wild, decaying fingers clawing at dirt. That’s when I noticed her cheeks, sunken and gray, skin blotched and peeling. Her features had changed so much. Her dimples were gone, swallowed by receding flesh, erased. She wasn’t my mother. My mother was dead. My mother died on the side of the road, shivering and alone with whatever disease had eaten her insides. My mother wasn’t coming back.
Nothing ever comes back, even when it does.
“Megan…go.” Blueeyes’ voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. “Grab your things and head for the road. Don’t turn around. Don’t look back. I’ll meet you there.”
I knew what he was going to do and why he wanted me to walk away. I knew it and I didn’t try to stop him. It was difficult to stand, more difficult to walk. My back was throbbing, shoulder on fire. Everything hurt. Everything was torn, ripped to pieces and scattered in the dirt. I was broken inside and out. I’d walked less than twenty feet when I heard the knife break her skull and pierce her brain. She stopped moaning.
It was over.
Blueeyes stayed close to me for the remainder of the day. We didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything to say. I watched the sun and the clouds, staring through tear-soaked eyes. When the moon emerged, I watched it, too. The sky was clear that night, the clearest I’d seen in years, so clear I could see the stars. Mother once said the stars weren’t really there, that they were light fifty years old, ghosts. I hated when she told me that. I didn’t like that at all.
Blueeyes found a suitable shelter shortly after the sun disappeared and everything went black. It was a large building, high ceilings, with broken furniture littering the floor. Hanging in the center of the room was a massive glass structure, hundreds of delicately carved bits dangling from the underside and shimmering in the moonlight. The steel holding the whole thing together was weathered and bent, barely hanging on and coated in a layer of dust a decade thick. I imagined what it must have looked like before I was born, probably beautiful. I didn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense. It seemed silly for something so elaborate to exist without a purpose, to create something so lavish and let it rot away. I hated it.
We settled into a much smaller room deeper into the structure and off the beaten path. The door was solid, the lock sturdy. We were safe there. I slid down a wall on the far end, pulled my knees to my chest, and buried my face between them. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep so bad. Didn’t care if I woke. I was surprised when Blueeyes sat beside me, even more when he grabbed my hand.
What happened next surprised me the most.
“I’m sorry, Megan.”
His thumb moved lightly over the top of my hand, back and forth, skin surprisingly soft. He sighed, working up the nerve to speak. “After those things…they did what they did to my little girl…after I realized I wasn’t dead and the moans died down…” His voice was a whisper, breathy and uneven. “I left my little hiding place…went back into the living room.”
He paused, squeezed my hand. “She was still there, still alive. Megan…my little Megan…” His voice cracked, snapped in two. “Those bastards…they ate everything but her head. They turned her into one of them and left her there…screaming.”
I lifted my head and looked at Blueeyes. He was staring at the ceiling, at the shadows and the black, expressionless. I heard him inhale, felt it in the air. When he closed his eyes, I shivered. When he squeezed my hand again, I squeezed back.
“You don’t remember what it was like before all this bullshit, Megan. Be thankful for that. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t this. We were violent, and stupid, and silly, but we were something. We had a chance. There were possibilities. You were born here…nothing to hold on to. There’s nothing tethering you to all the wasted-fucking-potential.
At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. It didn’t matter. I liked having him next to me, talking the way he was talking. I liked listening to him, his voice. I liked the way his hand felt, liked holding it. We remained in that exact position, hand-in-hand, until morning. At some point during the night I drifted off. When I woke a few hours later, Blueeyes was still beside me, staring straight ahead. It was too dark to be certain, but his eyes seemed red and puffy, as if he’d been crying. When he felt me move he looked away. That night he never let go of my hand. Not once. Not for a minute.
It was perfect, the last perfect moment of my life.
16.
Morning arrived the same as always. We gathered our things, bandaged my hand, and took to the road. The clouds moved in quickly, dark and thick, blanketing the sky. By midday the sun was a memory. Despite my injuries we were making good time; hadn’t seen a gimp all day. It was quiet, chilly. The breeze felt good on my face, and the temperature numbed the ache in my hand. Blueeyes said it wasn’t broken, maybe fractured, maybe just sprained. He spent the morning apologizing to me anyway. There was something dif
ferent about him, softer, more approachable. I made a joke about his terrible bandage job and I think he even smiled. As we walked, he would occasionally check on me.
“How you doing back there?”
“Feeling okay?”
“Doing alright, kiddo?”
He’d never called me kiddo before, no one had. I liked it. I started calling myself kiddo in my head, imagined other people saying it to me, shaking hands with someone and introducing myself as kiddo. It was silly. It felt good to be silly.
The farther we walked, the larger the surrounding structures became. One-story houses transformed to two-story buildings. Two-story buildings turned into eight-floor apartments. The forest tapered off, replaced by cracked concrete and weathered blacktop. The road became congested, littered with husks of burnt vehicles, haphazardly constructed roadblocks older than I was.
I poked Blueeyes in the back. “Where are we going?”
“The city.”
I’m not sure why I asked him. I already knew the answer, I just couldn’t believe it. My entire life I’d avoided cities. Father said they were dangerous, overrun with gimps and biters and the sort of people that couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t want to go to the city or anywhere near the city. It felt wrong.
I poked my friend again, tugged on his jacket. “Why?”
“I left something there. It’s important. I need to get it back.”
“What is it?”
“Something important.”
“Why is it so important?”
Blueeyes sighed. “It just is.”
“But why?”
He sighed again. “You ask way too many questions, Megan. Just trust me. I’m guessing Travis and his people don’t make their way into the city too often. The more distance we can put between us and that asshole the better.”
Bloodboots. I kept forgetting about Bloodboots.
I waited a few minutes before bothering Blueeyes again. “I thought the cities were dangerous.”