by Silas Vale
Saythe nodded and took one of the birds from the rope, picking at it curiously before he took a bite of the meat. His eyes lit up and he began tearing away at the small animal ravenously.
Erile set his bag down and began to rifle through it, pulling what looked like a smartphone from his bag. It was practically all screen, however, as even the back of the device was a glass display.
Aisling was somewhat startled as she noticed the device in his hand. "Holy shit." She said after a second. "Is that a phone? Oh my God- do you have cell service? Does anything work?" Something like a phone would be a huge advantage. And if they had cell service…
They could see if the rest of the world had fallen into the same despair.
Or she could try to contact her mother and father, or see if there were any safe zones nearby, or get information on horde movements. She finished off the bird she was eating, tossing the carcass into the fire to get rid of the remains. "How the hell- God, it's just one thing after another with you." She laughed slightly, shaking her head. "Good grief."
Erile chuckled a bit, but shook his head.
"I'm sorry. This phone's from about two-hundred years in the future; even if cell towers were still up and running, they wouldn't carry any signal this thing can use. I just wanted to play some music."
Music… It was a thing that most people had stopped thinking about in those days.
But as he pressed a button, a sweet, sing-songy melody began to play in the air. It was odd, most likely because it was modeled to the tastes of the future, but… it was still nice to listen to.
A wave of nostalgia passed over her. It had been a very long time since she'd listened to any music.
She smiled slightly, spending a moment to just listen to the music. It was kind of weird, but… Nice. It was music, and that was all that mattered. She glanced towards her son. "… Saythe, could you go grab the backpacks from downstairs?" She raised an eyebrow, gesturing towards the trap door as she took her second bird. It was strange how such mundane things become so important when one didn’t get to experience them anymore.
Like music, food, and hugs. Weird.
Saythe, having finished his birds, smiled and got up. He staggered toward the hatch and then proceeded down the stairs, and Erile and Aisling could hear him rummaging around for their stuff.
Erile, in the meantime, reclined as much as he could while sitting on a log chair. He pulled a bottle of water from his bag and opened it, drinking about half in one fell swoop.
"It's funny. I do this kind of thing for fun, go out into the wilderness and survive off the land. I guess it's life and death for you two."
He sounded sad as he said it. Almost remorseful.
"Yeah. This is how it's been his whole life." She sighed, glancing to the trap door after a moment or two. "… You saved our lives." She glanced back towards him, furrowing her brows slightly as she looked him up and down. "I… That horde would've killed us. Whether they got in and ate us alive, or whether they waited us out until we starved to death in that hunk of fucking metal. There would've been no avoiding it."
She bit the inside of her lip. "… So really, is there anything I can do to repay you?"
She left the question open-ended. She was somewhat curious over what his answer would be this time.
Erile put a thumb to his lip and stood, beginning to pace about the fire. He seemed to truly be thinking hard about that question this time; he knew that she meant anything, so of course, he would be taking the easy card, right?
Well… Erile was a bit of an odd one.
So he stopped to look at her and put his hand up into the air, kneeling so he was on an even eye-level with her.
He had a mirth-filled ferocity in his eyes as he spoke the following words.
"High-five."
A high five.
A high five.
She stared at him for a moment before groaning, and then buried her face in her hands. What?
After a moment, she ran her hands down her face and looked up at him. "A high five? Really? Out of all the things you could've asked for?" She furrowed her brows for a second. "Every other guy who I would've asked that question to would've wanted me to bang him. That's just… How it goes these days. Every guy we manage to stumble upon either dies right away or turns out to be a sleazebag and is just being nice so he can get into my pants and get his rocks off." She huffed, seeming almost annoyed as she glared at him.
"… So why don't you do the same thing?" She asked inquisitively, the anger leaving her eyes to be replaced with a calm curiosity. "Why are you the only good one in the world? Why?"
Erile sat down in front of her, with his palm resting against his cheek. His aquamarine eyes seemed to bore into her purple ones, and that was a rare thing. Not many people could manage to look Aisling Grace in the eyes, especially not in the dead quiet after she asked them such a question.
And yet he seemed calm, and still so full of life.
"Aisling, you've got a son in there." He said, nodding toward the trapdoor. Indeed, Saythe could be heard as he threw the packs on and then nearly fell over from their weight. He looked back up to her, and there was a kindness in his eyes that no one in the world showed anyone anymore.
"And I heard how you spoke about Shaun. You still love that man, even after all these years. And I strongly believe that you'll be able to see him again." Erile took her hand in his own, but… It was different from how most guys did it. Where everyone else was rough and starved for the attention, Erile's hands were… Smooth. Gentle. Caring.
He stood, looking down to her where she sat, and smiled. "I'm not in the business of making widows, Ms. Aisling. And I don't intend to stay in the Auranis for any longer than I need to. So if I got you pregnant because I decided I wanted to take advantage of you offering anything I wanted, well… How much of an asshole would I be?"
He turned around, and walked over to tend to the fire.
"Plus, there are bugs everywhere. That's gross."
Aisling furrowed her brows as she looked at him for a moment longer. No one was ever… So logical. All anyone ever wanted was a quickie, and then they could leave and bugger off to leave her to fend for herself. They didn't care about protection, or whether or not they knocked her up. It was why she’d never been with anyone else after Shaun.
She sighed, reaching up to run a hand through her messy orange hair. She glanced towards the ground, a strange sort of emotion tugging at her heart.
It wasn't… Romantic. No. Not at all. It was more just… Caring. A platonic sort of love, if anything.
"… Thank you." She murmured after a moment, moving her hands to pull her hair back into a ponytail. "I don't think anyone's ever been as kind as you. Or as… Logical, I suppose." She tilted her head to the side as she studied him.
She stuck her hand out.
"High five me."
And then he did.
He was an absolute dork, because after he high-fived her, he brought his fist back against his body in that nerdy sort of 'Yes!' exclamation. He laughed a bit and then walked around, beginning to throw snow onto the fire.
Saythe managed to stagger back up the stairs with the bags, and Aisling had to catch him before he fell down the flight.
"So where are we headed?" Erile asked, and his use of 'we' didn't go over Saythe's head. He looked to his mom, a huge, knowing smile touching at his lips, before he said, "I told you so."
Aisling smiled ever so slightly, heaving her pack up onto her back and adjusting it as she slung her bow across her shoulder. "We've been traveling through the forests on the border. We're going to keep heading East, and we're in Ontario right now." She shifted somewhat. "My mom had a house around New York." She looked towards Erile, and furrowed her brows slightly. "… Luckily it's kind of out of the way and not too close to the city."
New York… It would be a death trap.
"We should be able to safely get to her house and see if she's still there. Where she lived wasn't super dense
ly populated, and I imagine most of the hordes will be in the city itself." She sighed. "… If not, we're planning on jacking a boat and sailing out to one of the Maritimes." She shrugged. "Or just… To Europe. Anywhere away from the hellhole that's the mainland."
Erile nodded solemnly. "I doubt you've had any contact with anywhere other than… Well, this isn't the FNA yet. So America and Canada. But the pathogen is solely centered in these countries. The rest of the world… It's completely uninfected."
The hardest part was escaping. Boats were rare. Planes didn't run. Nothing was as it used to be.
Aisling’s breath constricted in her throat. Her heart beat slowed and her eyes widened as she stared at Erile, taking in what he’d said.
The pathogen was only present in the United States and Canada.
That… That was huge news. That meant that the rest of the world was safe. They wouldn’t be alone when they got out of the hell they were trapped in.
There would be other kids for Saythe to play with.
"But if you're set to go to New York, then I'll follow you. You need someone willing to blow himself up on occasion."
She nodded, not really taking in what he’d said, because now there was hope. Now there was a goal, even if her parents weren’t in New York.
Get her son to Europe.
Moving On
Finally, the fire was out, and everything was packed up and ready to go. Erile smiled a reassuring smile, and Saythe smiled back.
"We'll make it in a week, maybe a bit more. We should be fine."
Aisling furrowed her brows and glanced over towards Erile. "… We'll get mom and dad, and then we'll try and get the fuck out of here. If we can at least get to the Maritimes, there should be a bunch of boats there. I hope. There was a ton of fishing in those provinces, so…" She adjusted her bag and pulled a compass from her pocket. She examined it for a second, and then began walking off in one direction.
"Follow me." She glanced back at them. "Stay close. And stay quiet. We want to be able to hear if anything's coming."
Whether it was people, Aurans, or animals… She didn’t particularly want to run into any of them.
They walked along in silence for a little while, Aisling in the lead with Erile and Saythe walking side by side next to her. Every few moments, Saythe took a glance towards the man next to him, awed by all of the cool things he had.
Erile noticed the glances, and smiled a little bit.
"I wish I’d brought some of the cure with me, but I didn’t really intend on coming out in the Auranis."
"The- the cure?" Aisling stopped, furrowing her brows as she turned towards him. "They develop a cure? When? How much longer do we have to wait?" She gripped Erile by the shoulders, her eyes studying his face somewhat frantically. If this would all be over soon, then… All they would have to do was wait it out. And they could do that. They had done it before. A world without zombies… That would be a real shock after so long running from them.
Up close, the cut on her face seemed to be pretty brutal. It almost looked as if someone had purposefully taken the knife and carved it through her cheek. It was deep, but on the plus side, it was healing very nicely. She was lucky it hadn’t gotten infected, especially with a wound of that caliber.
… What kind of things had happened to this woman?
Erile was going to answer her; he was going to tell her that she would be stuck in the brutal, unforgiving wasteland for years to come.
But it was then that an Auran's groan was heard, and then one staggered out from behind the trees.
Saythe cursed, holding up his helo-gun to take the shot, but… He never pulled the trigger. A real gunshot split the air, and the bullet pierced the walker's head in front of them. Gross bits of brain matter spewed from the other side, and then it was still.
Saythe was shaking. His gun was smoking. He had shot it.
Aisling gasped, flinching for a moment before she looked towards the Auran, and then to her son with wide eyes. "… Oh, Saythe-"
She knelt down and wrapped her son up tightly in her arms, hugging him tightly. "Good shot. I- that was fantastic aim kiddo, I'm so proud of you." Praise first. She kissed his forehead, looking down at him with a reassuring smile as she gently reached up to brush his hair away from his face.
After a moment, her brows furrowed. She knew what it was like killing her first Auran. She smashed its face in with a baseball bat until it had stopped moving. The crunch of its barely-decayed skull still echoed in her dreams sometimes. She couldn't sleep for days. Shaun had to pin her down and hold her for three hours before she finally gave into the exhaustion and slept. It was the right thing to do, but… That didn't mean it wasn't awful.
"… You okay?" She asked softly after a second.
Saythe simply stared at the creature he had just killed.
She was about his age.
He turned towards his mother and clung to her tightly, beginning to sob as she comforted him. He didn't want to be in this world. He didn't want to have to kill things. He wanted what his mommy had told him stories about; he wanted peace and school and homework and getting grounded for forgetting to do his chores.
Erile took the body and dragged it out to the woods so Saythe wouldn't have to look at it anymore.
"The best thing you can do is remember they were already dead," Erile said upon returning, his voice calm and comforting. That did help Saythe a little bit, but he responded, "Then she shouldn’t be walking."
"I know, kiddo." Aisling held Saythe tightly in her arms, pressing her lips to the top of his head. "I know it's hard. When we get somewhere safe, I'll show you how to shoot better, okay?" She pressed her eyes shut and held him close. He didn't deserve this. She should've been the one to kill it. She should've been more alert. "… You did her a favor." She pulled away slightly, pressing her hands to her son's cheeks.
"As sick as it sounds…" She shook her head. "It's like putting an animal out of their misery. Whatever that virus does… It's not human. It doesn't think. It's just a husk. And I know it looks like a person, and it was, but it isn't anymore. It might be a hard concept to grasp, and it might seem cold, but… That's the truth."
She gently wiped his tears away with her thumbs. "And you know that I'm always going to protect you. No matter what. So if I can, I will make sure that's a one-time occurrence."
Eventually, Saythe was calm enough to keep walking on his own. Erile kept a watchful eye on the tree line, and eventually they stumbled upon a deer carcass.
"Waste of good meat," He muttered, indicating the corpse that was obviously torn apart by Aurans. They couldn't eat any meat that had been contaminated by them; Erile didn't know if that would be enough to turn them, but he knew for sure they wouldn't be risking it.
So they carried on.
The day dragged along slowly, though the sun reaching its peak was a welcome sight during the cold months. Erile didn't seem to be particularly well-dressed for the cold. His suit seemed incredibly thin, and yet… He didn't look cold at all.
Aisling kept trudging along, and after a second glanced to Erile and asked the question that had been bothering her. "… Aren't you cold?" Her cheeks were pink and wind-bitten, and stray strands of orange hair that were pulled free by the wind hung around her face. "You're only wearing a suit, I… You should be freezing. It's freezing out here." She frowned.
This man… He was a complete enigma.
"I have another coat in my bag, I-" She pressed her lips into a thin line. "I could give it to you if you want. You probably need it."
Erile looked to her in confusion, and then in shock. "Oh, I guess I forgot. You guys don't have thermoregulating clothes yet, uh… Here. Take this." He set his pack down on the ground and removed his suit jacket, draping it over Aisling's shoulders. When she put it on, well…
Her entire body began to warm.
"Our clothes adapt to the temperature around us and change in order to suit that. I'm sorry, I completely forgot they won't be inv
ented for a while. Here, have this." He said to Saythe, removing his vest and handing it over.
Saythe put it on and sighed in relief as the cloth began to warm his body.
Erile was left wearing nothing but a light-fitted long-sleeve shirt, but he still seemed to be absolutely fine.
"Better?"
Aisling examined the suit jacket she was wearing, lightly rolling the material in between her fingers with avid curiosity. This was… Incredible. It was so… Warm. She hadn't been this warm in a long time, and it was honestly relieving. She sighed, letting her shoulders sag slightly as she soaked in the heat. "I- this is remarkable." She looked up at him after a moment. "Thank you."
She hummed, glancing around the forest. "We should keep an eye out for shelter. If you guys see anywhere that might be suitable, let me know. Otherwise we might just have to sleep in a tree." There was no way in hell she was risking sleeping on the ground. It was a perfectly good way to get ambushed.
"Let's hope we don't have a run-in with as many Aurans as last time." She sighed. "Although I imagine you killed the majority of the ones in these woods."
Erile chuckled a bit, moving along throughout the snowy banks. It was cold, that much he could tell from the wind and the snow, but his clothing made sure that none of them would freeze that night. Even if they were damned to sleep in a tree.
But it didn't look like that would be the case; because there was a cabin in the distance, and it appeared that there was smoke coming from the chimney.
"Careful. People are worse than Aurans." Saythe said matter-of-factly, and Erile smiled. "Thanks sport. I'll remember that."
He looked toward Aisling inquisitively. "Should we try it?"
"… I don't know." Aisling said nervously. "They could have guns. People usually aren't too welcoming to visitors." She eyed the cabin suspiciously, narrowing her eyes as she knelt down in the snow. "… Or they pretend to be nice and try and kill you in your sleep." She sighed, glancing towards Erile. "Trust me. It happens."
She looked back towards the cabin.
On one hand, a warm cabin, good food, fire…