by SD Tanner
By unspoken consensus, they agreed the conversation was over.
Gears looked at his watch again and said, ‘It’s been 45 minutes.’
Like Pax, he was starting to get bored with standing around and his body was beginning to ache with the unused adrenalin. Usually they spent the day moving from one crisis to the next. Their heads were constantly on the go until they collapsed into sleep, physically and mentally exhausted, and he thought they were going slightly mad with the fatigue and constant adrenalin. When the world ended so abruptly, they’d survived one hour and then one day at a time and they were still functioning with the same mind-set. That approach became a pattern and it blinded them to any other way of thinking. He believed they needed to change how they were living, but he wasn’t sure to what or how.
Suddenly Pax declared almost proudly, ‘I need to take a dump.’
Gears replied sternly, ‘Ya ain’t doin’ that, Pax.’
Gears tone seemed to encourage Pax and he said, almost gleefully, ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’ To needle Gears even further, he added, ‘I’m not prepared to die needin’ to take a dump.’
He knew Pax would do a lot to annoy Gears and said firmly, ‘Pax, you’re so full of shit holding onto one more load won’t make any difference.’
Pax dug his heels in and said, ‘I draw the line at bein’ told when I can unload.’
Even though he’d never been one, Gears bellowed in his best drill sergeant voice, ‘Ya in the army now, boy. Ya unload when Uncle Sam says ya can.’
Pax walked over to the corner of the basement as if to make good on his threat and said mildly, ‘Doan bring up the past, Gears. Uncle Sam got bit by a zombie.’
He knew Pax was just bored and amusing himself by trying to wind up Gears. They’d played this game since the day they met over 30 years ago. He grinned at both of them and said, ‘I don’t think we’re gonna die down here tonight.’
Gears agreed and said, ‘It’s been over an hour now.’
Seeming to have forgotten about his threat, Pax added, ‘We finally got lucky.’
Gears shoulders slumped and walking to the basement wall, he eased himself down onto his haunches. He thought Gears looked as tired as he felt. He relaxed his own shoulders, pulling his head from side to side to work out the stiffness and then he hunkered down near Gears. Pax shrugged and did the same. Above them, the noise continued, but they’d grown used to it now.
Pax yawned and asked, ‘Whatdaya think happened to Gears’ puddy tat?’
Yawning back at Pax, he said, ‘Guess we’ll find out in the morning.’
Gears didn’t sound too confident, but added optimistically, ‘She survived that alley, and maybe she’ll survive this too.’
Looking confused, Pax asked, ‘How the hell did she survive that alley?’
The question rolled around his mind. He did want to talk about the woman, but he was thirsty, hungry and overwhelmingly tired. He knew they should have kept a closer eye on the woman. There was a good chance their lack of attention had gotten her killed tonight and that didn’t make him feel good.
Gears replied, ‘I dunno, and it don’t change the fact that we shoulda looked out for her better than we did. I dunno what’s happened to us. We were good soldiers. We trained other guys to be good soldiers, and now we can’t even watch out for one person who needed us….’ Gears trailed off, seemingly lost for words.
He knew how he felt. They’d always taken pride in their ability to take care of themselves and others, but they seemed to have lost their way. The world ended and so did everything they stood for and it didn’t make sense to him. There was no reason they should have changed what they believed was right and good, but he was too tired to think about it anymore and asked, ‘Who wants first watch?’
Pax yawned and said, ‘I’ll take it.’
With that, he made himself as comfortable as he could sitting on the cold hard floor and closed his eyes.
He was jarred awake by something landing on his head. Looking at his watch, he saw it was 7.00am. Staring up, he saw Gears and Pax were throwing down the junk they piled onto the stairs earlier that night. The house was now utterly silent. He thought Gears still looked pretty tired and watched as he flattened himself to the wall, with his gun ready, and opened the basement door. As the door opened, a body tumbled onto the landing. Gears looked down and, in a single fluid motion, pointed his gun at the body now lying at his feet. The woman looked up at Gears, and smiling, she squeaked, ‘Ip?’
Woman thinks: There is the man who is so strong. I saw his mind worry the night long. No need to worry I did think, but he did not seem to hear me think. I did think hard to speak loud and true. They did not hear me. They had no clue. I wonder what else these men cannot do.
CHAPTER THREE: From the light a future comes (Gears)
‘I think she likes you,’ Pax declared with a wink.
Ignoring Pax, he looked around the kitchen. Holstering his gun, he helped the woman to her feet, feeling both relieved and confused to see her alive. Last night he slept badly worrying about her. As she lurched to her feet in front of him, she squeaked again, ‘Ip?’
She struck him as being innocent and almost childlike and smiling warmly at her, he said, ‘Good mornin’, Ip.’ Then he looked her over for any obvious signs of injury.
Cocking her head at him, she spun on her heel and ran out into the now destroyed kitchen. Following her out, he thought the kitchen looked like a tornado had been through it. There was debris strewn across the floor, doors torn from cupboards, curtains from windows and there was glass everywhere.
Pax surveyed the destruction and quipped, ‘Ip really knows how to throw a party.’
Woman thinks: The men are safe I owed them that. Their kindness to me was given back, but now their hunger drives me too. Why wait here when there is no reason to? I want to eat. I want to wander. I want my freedom for much longer.
He heard TL shout, ‘Check this out!’
Looking over to where TL was crouching, he saw the body of a hunter lying under the kitchen table and it wasn’t moving. Looking around for more corpses, he saw six dead hunters and not one of them was moving. Hunkering down next to TL, they both studied the hunter and he asked, ‘Can ya tell what killed ‘em?’
Shaking his head, TL said, ‘No. I can’t see any injuries.’
It didn’t make any sense. Hunters only stopped moving once they starved to death. As far as he knew, they only starved to death when they could no longer hunt and to stop them hunting you had to destroy the brain stem.
He heard Pax crunch through the debris in the hallway and he said, ‘The two we killed last night are still here, but they ain’t movin’ either.’
As he stood up, he absentmindedly rubbed the scar on his face. He couldn’t work out how this happened and asked, ‘Do ya think Ip killed ‘em?’
Shaking his head, TL said, ‘I suppose she might have, but I don’t see how.’
He couldn’t see how either and replied, ‘She was the only person out here last night.’
Ip, as he’d named her, was standing by the broken door leading out to the garden. The men regarded her curiously, but she wasn’t paying any attention to them. They watched as she sighed and fidgeted with the bandage on her arm.
Seeing her bandage, TL said, ‘I should change that bandage before we move out.’
Once TL changed her bandage, they decided to head straight back to the trucks. They were thirsty, hungry and almost unarmed. Wanting to travel as short a distance as possible to get to the trucks, they took a different route to the one that brought them to the house. Along the way, they saw a few stores that must have once provided basic services and supplies to the local houses. Ip had been content to walk beside him, but on seeing the stores, he heard her squeak happily and she took off running towards them.
He thought she demonstrated very little sense in the face of obvious danger and he shouted to her, ‘Ip! Get back here!’
Pax laugh
ed at him as he ran after her and shouted, ‘Is ya puddy tat bein’ naughty?’
TL ran after him and asked, ‘What’s the problem, Gears?’
Pointing towards Ip, as she ran through a broken glass door of one of the stores, he said grimly, ‘That’s the problem.’
He and TL ran up to the broken door Ip had just run through, and peering into the gloomy interior, he could hear growling and hissing coming from inside the store. Drawing their guns, they prepared to enter the store, when Ip suddenly appeared in front of them holding two bottles of water. She pushed the bottles into their free hands and abruptly turned and ran back into the shop. For the next few minutes, they continued to hear a hunter growling in the store, while Ip threw food, drink and anything else she found through the broken door.
Looking down at the box of tampons that landed at his feet, he was confused, but not by the box of tampons. He didn’t understand what was going on. The hunter was agitated by Ip’s presence in the store, but making no move to attack her. Ip was more interested in finding something to eat and drink and wasn’t paying any attention to the hunter. He figured that was how she got through the alley and survived the hunters in the house last night, but it didn’t explain the dead hunters they’d found in the house that morning.
Pax was grabbing food off the ground and he grinned up at him and said, ‘Ip’s a game changer.’
‘Whatdaya mean?’ He asked.
TL was drinking the water Ip handed to him earlier and observed thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think the hunters can hurt her.’
Grinning as he opened a PowerBar, Pax said, ‘But maybe she can hurt them.’
Taking a long deep pull on his bottle of water, he reflected on this change in dynamic and, continuing to watch Ip, he said distractedly, ‘Interestin’.’
Having raided the store, Ip was now standing with them, alternating between eating a long life muffin and drinking from a soda bottle. He glanced past Ip into the doorway of the shop and saw the outline of the hunter inside. Its head was vibrating manically and he heard it snorting sharply. None of what happened since they met Ip made any sense. It was if the rules changed and, for the first time since the world ended, they changed in their favor.
TL was stuffing some health bars into his pockets and he said, ‘Let’s move.’
He agreed with TL. Even though they were virtually blind, sometimes hunters attacked in daylight. He thought they could probably take this one down, but considered it an unnecessary engagement with a dangerous enemy. As they turned to leave, the hunter suddenly launched itself out of the shop at them. Before the hunter reached them, or they could react, Ip stepped between them and the hunter. Snarling, she reached out and pressed her palm to its face. On contact with her hand, the hunter instantly dropped to the ground, fell into a crumpled heap and didn’t move again. It was completely dead.
Ip speaks: Foolish bald one do you not see. You will cause no harm to my protective three. They will hold safe while with me. I touch you once you die so easily. You bald ones have no harm in you. Hunting you makes me foolish too.
Pax shouted in his ear, ‘What the hell?’
Feeling a sudden thrill of elation and sounding equally as surprised as Pax, he roared, ‘That was hardcore!’
Looking at Ip in shock, he could barely process or believe what he just witnessed. She barely touched the hunter, but it dropped down completely dead and he didn’t know how that could have happened.
Sounding equally as stunned, TL asked, ‘What the hell did she just do?’
Looking at TL, he said bluntly, ‘She touched it with her hand and it dropped dead. Instantly.’
Pax drawled, ‘Nice work.’ Suddenly looking slightly alarmed, he asked, ‘Ya doan think she can kill us that way, do ya?’
That didn’t seem likely to him. He grabbed her hand when he pulled her up off the basement landing earlier that morning. TL touched her when he bandaged her wrist. Shaking his head, he said, ‘No, but I think she’s a hell of a weapon against hunters.’
To emphasize his point, he walked up to Ip and took her hand and she looked up at him as if waiting to see what he would do next. He smiled at her and she smiled back at him. Letting go of her hand, he turned to Pax and said, ‘Not harmful to humans.’
He mused thoughtfully, ‘If the hunters know she can kill ‘em so easily, maybe they avoid havin’ any contact with her.’
Nodding in agreement, TL said, ‘That explains how she got through the alley. It also explains why the hunters didn’t attack us last night.’
He thought about last night and how they should be dead and said, ‘She musta killed the ones we found in the kitchen to protect us.’
Pax regarded Ip with more than a little respect and said, ‘She’s my new best friend.’
He thought to date the hunters owned the game. The best they could do was avoid them, but Pax was right. Ip changed the game. Watching her intently, she briefly eyed him back, before seeming to lose interest and continued to eat her muffin. He thought her ability to kill hunters was probably less interesting to her than it was to them. To them hunters were lethal and effective killers, but to her they were probably just a minor annoyance. She could kill them as easily as he could swat a fly. He wanted to spend more time thinking about the implications of what he’d just learned, but they weren’t safe where they were. They were out of ammo and they needed to get back to their trucks.
Turning to his brothers, he said, ‘We gotta go.’
Pax and TL nodded and started walking with him and Ip fell into pace next to him. He turned his head toward her, caught her eye, leaned in and said, ‘Stay close to me. Ya might be a hardcore hunter killer, but ya no good against the living.’
Chuckling, Pax said, ‘True story.’
He was annoyed with himself for losing track of her in the house. He thought he’d been careless by forgetting to watch the most vulnerable person in their group. He hadn’t felt good about that. Hardcore hunter killer or not, he considered Ip to be his responsibility and he wouldn’t let her down again.
As they walked, TL said, ‘We should get that generator from the basement.’
He didn’t know why TL would want a generator, it wasn’t like they lived anywhere. Figuring he must have a reason, he asked, ‘Why?’
TL said, ‘We’re not doing well, Gears. We’re running about without a plan. I think we’re so damned tired we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s time we holed up somewhere safe and sorted out what we’re gonna do.’
He thought, that’s true. He was already tired before the end of the world came along. Having injured himself four years ago, it had taken multiple surgeries to put his face back together. When he lost his face, he lost his direction and he fell out of pace with himself. It wasn’t a great way to live and he didn’t know how to become sure-footed again.
Replying honestly, he said, ‘I agree. I’m lost. I dunno what I’m doin’ anymore. I don’t think I knew what I was doin’ before the world ended. I feel like I’ve jus’ been existin’ for years now.’
When TL and Pax didn’t speak, he continued, ‘Ya start out in life thinkin’ ya know how it works. Ya got big plans. Ya gonna be somethin’ to somebody and you’re gonna make a difference. What ya do is gonna count and then life just grinds ya down. Nothin’ turns out quite the way ya thought it would. People ain’t what ya thought they would be. But ya keep goin’, until one day it all catches up with ya. Ya look around and ya think, what the hell happened to everythin’ I believed in, everythin’ I stood for, everythin’ I was gonna do.’
Pax looked at him dubiously and said, ‘Gears, ya sound kinda depressed. Ya thinkin’ too hard. Live life in the moment, bro’.’
He shook his head at Pax. He thought Pax was wrong, he’d learned the hard way you can only live life in the moment for so long before it catches up with you. He tried that right alongside Pax for decades, and then one day it caught up with him. He said patiently for once, ‘You’re wrong, Pax. You’re jus’ immature for you
r age.’
Chuckling, Pax said, ‘Way to kill my buzz, ya asshole.’
Grinning, he replied plainly, ‘I’m not tryin’ to ruin your day. What I’m tryin’ say, is I want back what I had. I wanna know what I’m doin’ and why. I wanna believe in somethin’ again. I don’t wanna jus’ exist waitin’ until somethin’ kills me.’
‘Is that what we’re doing, Gears?’ TL asked. ‘Just existing until something bigger and stronger than us kills us? ‘Cos that’s no way to live.’
He nodded at TL and said, ‘Now you’re gettin’ it. If ya don’t have a reason to live, you’re not livin’, you’re just existin’ and that’s what I was doin’ before the world ended. I wanna have purpose again. I wanna mission. Ya know somethin’ worth doin’. I don’t wanna jus’ keep existin’ from one pointless moment to the next.’
Pax looked at him dubiously and said, ‘But, Gears, I think that’s all life is. One pointless moment to the next. What the hell did ya think life was about?’
‘I thought we were supposed to do somethin’ useful while we we’re on this earth,’ he replied blandly. ‘I don’t think we’re s’posed to just take up space and resources.’
Shrugging, TL said, ‘How many people do anything but take up space and resources?’
Rolling his eyes at TL, he said, ‘We’re not lemmings, TL. Just ‘cos everyone else is sittin’ around doin’ fuck all and callin’ it a life, don’t mean we should.’
‘I think ya have a God complex, Gears,’ Pax grumbled. ‘And you’re fuckin’ ungrateful. Ya should jus’ be happy you’re alive.’
‘Ya can be as rude as like, Pax,’ he replied steadily. ‘But I wanna do more than just exist. I wanna live a life I can enjoy, and I enjoy my life best when I’m goin’ somewhere I wanna go and doin’ somethin’ I believe is worth doin’. I’m not you. I can’t just bump along on the bottom and call it a good time.’
TL said, ‘Okay, I can get on board with that, but what do you want to do?’