by Morris, Jacy
Many nights, in the dark of the theater, listening to the bangings of the dead outside, she had toyed with the idea of killing herself. But every time she placed her hand on the cold metal of her revolver, Amanda's face popped into her head. She had thought being a lesbian was tough before the world had ended. Little had she known how tough it could actually be when it seemed that no one left in the world was of the same sexual orientation. Given enough time, and limited options, she thought that she could swing Amanda over to her side... but then there was the problem of Rudy.
Chloe had seen the way Rudy looked at her in those first few weeks, poor clueless Rudy, eyeing her the way a German shepherd eyes a rib-eye. Little did he know that she had zero interest in him, perhaps less than zero. At first, she hadn't even had much interest in Amanda. To be honest, she was somewhat ditzy and a little too bubbly for Chloe. When they had arrived at the coliseum, Chloe thought she was finally saved. Here were thousands of people. One of them was bound to share her same proclivities. But that spark of hope flared for merely an instant, replaced by a full-fledged flight from the Coliseum, potential partners dying left and right in this brave new world. Now the only women left were Joan, Clara, Amanda, and Katie... and none of them were like her.
Clara was pure hetero-hell. That girl seemed like the type that would give it up to the first dick that came along. Hell, she had probably already slept with a couple of the men for all she knew. Not Rudy, but the others seemed like good hetero-bait.
The doctor, Joan, was a fucking robot as far as Chloe could tell. She had a plain body, nothing spectacular, but there was something about her that just screamed hands-off. When Joan got older, if any of them ever actually managed to pull off the trick of getting older, she would be a cat lady. Did those things eat cats? Were there still cats out there? Didn't matter. Joan would find a way.
Katie was clearly a psychopath, and all that left was Amanda. Sweet, innocent Amanda. Of course, that was the problem. Somehow, despite his grotesque appearance, Amanda seemed to be falling for Rudy, the way sweet, innocent girls did, signing on the dotted line with the first piece of Y-chromosome flesh that smiled at them. Perhaps she wasn't falling for him in that "Oh, do me now!" sense, but the attraction was there nonetheless. Whether that relationship would stagnate into a purely platonic interest wasn't a chance that Chloe was willing to take. Life in a dead world was hard enough. Life in a dead world with no one to spend it with... that was something that she simply couldn't stand, and she wasn't about to let Rudy of all people come between herself and the possibility of something more.
So she sat in the darkness, playing out the scenarios. Could she do it? Could she kill this man for no other reason than because she wanted Amanda for herself? Physically, she knew she could. But this was murder.
She laughed a little bit, putting her hands to her mouth and biting the side of her palm to stifle the noise. Murder. What a funny concept. Was it even a thing anymore? Murder was an old word, a word that belonged to the world that used to exist, the one with rules, laws, and clocks that told you when it was time to get up. Murder wasn't the problem.
The real problem came in the form of consequences, those annoying little repercussions that seemed to come back and haunt them all at the wrong time. Look at Katie for instance. There she had been, doing the right thing, gunning down Brian and his little monster as soon as he had taken a chunk out of her. It was the right thing to do. They all knew it. But it didn't matter. To the rest of the group, Katie was like their own personal Jeffrey Dahmer, a killer in their midst. They turned their head rather than look at her, but you know what? They kept her around because she had the guts to do what none of them could do. It wasn't all those men with their muscles and their commanding voices that did what needed to be done... it was Katie, poor fucked up Katie who pulled the trigger when the call arrived.
Chloe sighed in the tent. She was just killing time, delaying the inevitable. Of course, she could kill Rudy. The consequences only existed if she got caught. Katie sat up in the tent. She pulled her plain, refugee center T-shirt off and balled it up in her hands. She hoped the simple cotton fabric was thick enough to stifle Rudy's breathing.
She leaned forward and placed the shirt over Rudy's face, and then she put all of her weight over it. She expected some resistance, but there was none. She felt the muscles of her face quicken, pulling her lips into a smile. No one would ever know.
Then she was there. Without warning, the tent flap was drawn back and Amanda was there with a flashlight, blinding her with the beam of light, and then illuminating Chloe's crime.
Shit, she thought, and it was all going so well.
Chapter 10: A Waste of Pork and Beans
Chloe stood at the edge of the Burnside Bridge, watching with one eye as the smoldering city appeared in the orange glow of the sunrise. The other eye was swollen shut. It throbbed with heat as blood flooded the capillaries broken by Katie's flashlight. She swiped her tongue across the jags of her broken front teeth. She didn't know why they had bothered pulling the girl off of her. They were only delaying the inevitable. She knew where her actions would land her... six-feet-deep... not that anyone was taking the time to bury people anymore. Looking down at the Willamette River, she figured she might wind up more than six-feet-deep.
She wanted to look at the people standing behind her and muster up some form of remorse, but she couldn't. She simply didn't feel it. She never had. Emotions were alien to her for the most part. Desire, lust, hate... these were the emotions she was familiar with. The world had always been hers to do with as she pleased. A smile, a shimmy of her curves, and things just seemed to fall in place for her. Need an A on that test? It's easy to get. Forgot your purse at home? A smile and a wink and some poor sap would pick up the check.
But the effectiveness of those tricks were gone. She had taken her chance and exposed herself in the process. They stood behind her now, judging, trying to rationalize what they were going to do to her. She knew she would pay in some way; she just didn't know how bad it would be.
She spun around and made eye contact with them. She wouldn't shrink away now. She wasn't shy about what she did. Chloe looked at Amanda first. She kicked herself for not having seen it on her own. Amanda was no sweet innocent. None of them were. Chloe had fooled herself into thinking that's what she was, but the girl wouldn't have made it this far if she weren't a killer just like Chloe. She only wished that the girl had finished the job. Amanda tucked her hands in her pockets and kept her head down.
The military man appeared, a stern look on his face. He was going to be no help. Chloe already knew that. She could see it in the set of his stubble-covered jaw. He stared at her, his hands folded across his chest, the other survivors arranged in a semi-circle to prevent Chloe from running anywhere. Guards stood on cars around them, rifles at the ready, looking anywhere but at the dead girl standing on the bridge.
"So what's it going to be?" she asked, the letter S in "what's" coming out as a brief but sharp whistle due to her newly broken teeth. "Death by firing squad? A 21 gun salute to the girl that tried to hurry nature along?"
"Hurry nature along?" Amanda yelled incredulously.
Sergeant Tejada's crisp voice cut through the morning air, as he said, "Your fate's not up to us to decide. Besides. We don't have the bullets to waste. No. I'll let your people decide."
Chloe felt the pit of her stomach drop, as if she were falling from a great height. A thousand images of torture and death leaped through her mind. She just wanted it to end. The soldiers had been her best opportunity for that, but they were taking the high road. Of course they were. That's all they were good for, sitting off on the sidelines while everyone else crawled over each other, kicking and screaming to stay alive.
Her former survivor friends gathered in a semi-circle, occasionally looking back over their shoulders at her. She would have run, but she knew that she wouldn't make it more than a couple of feet. The soldiers on the cars might not be looking at h
er now, but she was under no illusion that they would just let her run straight down the Burnside Bridge and into the city.
Chloe waited, becoming impatient, as the survivors argued about what they were going to do with her. She heard the words "kill her" coming from Amanda's mouth. Her skin was flushed, and Chloe could see the rage running through her blood. She almost wished they would listen to her and put a bullet through her head. Quick and easy, that would be a good way to go.
"What's taking so long?" she yelled. They didn't even stop to listen to her. "I'm not a murderer!" she yelled loud enough to force them to listen to her. "Don't I get a trial or something? You can't just decide my fate like that. He's still alive, for however long it's going to take him to die. Hell, I was probably doing the guy a favor."
They stood and looked at her, blank expressions on their faces. It was Lou that broke the silence. "I get it. You want a trial. You want due process. You want there to be a small chance for you to get out of this and go your own way. But you lost that opportunity the moment you denied Rudy the same chance."
Chloe turned on the waterworks. It was an instinctual thing, not a true feeling. "He's going to die anyway! What are you waiting for?"
Joan looked at her, an icy glare. You would have thought she had run over her cat. "You don't know that. He could wake up at any moment. He isn't getting worse, so there's always the chance that he's going to get better."
Chloe was losing this fight, and she knew it. Her tears had all the effect of morning dew on a tulip. "It had to be done. If I didn't do it, we would all end up staying here on this bridge. This place is a fucking death trap, and you all know it."
She could see the recognition in their eyes. It even reflected back from the eyes of the military men. To her surprise, Mort was the one to speak, saying, "You don't get to decide that. You don't get to decide who lives and who dies. There's enough of that in this world."
"Oh, but you get to decide? You get to decide that I die, you fucking hypocrites?"
"You're not going to die, Chloe." This time it was Amanda speaking. Chloe looked at her, trying to spin the words around in her head to make sense.
"What are you saying?" she sputtered.
Amanda looked at her, and she knew that it was going to be bad. She had that gleam in her eye, that gleam that spoke of revenge. "We're not going to kill you. We're going to give you a choice."
A choice? This was better than she could have ever hoped for. Relief flooded through her. She dropped to her knees and clasped her hands in front of her as if she were praying. "Oh, thank God. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
Andy, the kid from the movie theater said, "You might want to hear the choice before you thank us."
Chloe looked from the kid to the others, and she waited to hear the rest. Lou wiped a hand across his bald head. "We're not going to kill you, unless you want us to."
"Why would I want you to kill me?" she asked.
"Because your only other choice is to jump off this bridge," Amanda said. It were as if she had hit Chloe across the chest with a baseball bat. Suddenly, Chloe couldn't breathe. She leaned forward, supporting her weight with her arms, as the words sunk in. "There's a chance you can survive," Amanda continued.
"The choice is yours," Lou added, "jump off that bridge or eat a bullet. You decide."
There was really no choice at all. Hate blossomed in Chloe's chest, and she turned off the waterworks. It was decided. The time for games was over. She wiped the tears from her eyes and got to her feet, composing herself.
"It's not much of a choice at all, is it?" she said. "I'll take the bridge."
"I hope you can swim, bitch," Amanda said.
"Like a goddamn fish, little girl. Like a goddamn fish."
"Then get swimming," she said.
Chloe turned around and looked over the edge of the bridge. The green-brown water flowed beneath her, some six-stories below. The world began to spin after a few seconds of looking over. "You ok with this, military man?" Chloe asked, stalling for time.
The Sergeant looked over at her and smiled, a toothy white grin. "It's a hell of a lot nicer than I would have been."
Chloe just nodded, and looked back at the water. She was frozen. She thought back to her time at Garfield Prep School, and all those dives she had taken off the high-dive. 10 meters, that's how high the board was. Looking down from the bridge, it was roughly twice that distance. No matter what she did, this was going to hurt. Tuck your chin. Don't over-rotate. Keep your hands together. Cut through the water. Arch your back and come up.
"Today, Chloe!" Amanda yelled.
She climbed up on the railing and looked into the deep waters. This was nothing. This was no different from the high-dive board at her high school. She was ready. A sharp pain hit her in the shoulder, and without warning, she was tumbling into the river.
As she attempted to right herself, she saw clearly a can of pork and beans falling with her. She knew without having to ask that Amanda had been the one to throw it. For a second, she hung in the air, and then the world became a blur as she spun, falling, the world turning into an incomprehensible blur. She put her arms above her head and attempted to right her spin, hoping that she would be straightened out by the time she hit the surface. She wasn't. The water blasted into her face like a ton of bricks.
She felt her mouth open, and cold river water rushed into her mouth, the chill of the water sending fire along the exposed nerves of her broken teeth. She arched her back, and opened her eyes, blinking in the murky river, trying to figure out which way was up.
Chloe choked and gagged. She only had one chance. She struck out for what she thought was the surface of the river, adjusting her body to take hold of the current of the river. She kicked and swung her arms, and then she felt something. Hands? What would hands be doing down here?
She had swam the wrong way. The hands grasped her, tangling in her hair, and pulled her downward. She screamed in the depths of the river, and the water rushed in and filled her lungs, but not before she could feel the unseen creatures beneath her begin taking bites out of her body. The water tasted of blood before everything went black.
Chapter 11: The Decision
Andy stared over the side of the bridge. He hadn't been part of the conversation. Didn't want to be in fact. But he had heard how it had all gone down. Still, he hoped that the girl made it out alright. From everything they had seen, there simply weren't that many humans around to be throwing them off of bridges.
He felt conflicted about Chloe's punishment. Not because it wasn't fair. In this day and age, it seemed fair enough. More than fair actually. He was conflicted because the old ways were still a part of him He laughed at the idea of the "old ways." They were antiquated now, virtually non-existent. But still, the girl hadn't killed anyone, and they had sent her off to her death.
With his hands gripping the cold concrete of the bridge, he had waited a full fifteen minutes in the hopes that he would see her come bobbing up on the other side of the bridge, but there was nothing. They had made her jump to her own death. How sick was that? Now, he was at a crossroads.
Should he continue with these people, or should he stay on the bridge. On one hand, the soldiers had more firepower, but on the other hand, they seemed intent on getting themselves killed.
Andy suddenly sensed that he wasn't alone. He leaned back a little bit, pretending to flex the muscles in his back and out of the corner of his eye, he saw "her" standing there... the one that had caused all this. That wasn't completely fair. She had merely caught the one who started all this.
"You see anything?" Amanda asked.
He just shook his head, unsure of whether to sound cheerful or reveal his true gloom about the whole situation. He was new to these people, hardly more than an afterthought to them. The men scared him, almost as bad as the women. No one here had even bothered to get to know him. At the movie theater, it was all "Get me this." or "Where do you keep that?" They just took without offering.
Andy understood. He was doing much the same thing with the group. Just watching, waiting for the shit to hit the fan like it had back at that office building. He couldn't believe he hadn't shit his pants on the fall down from the third floor. What a nightmare that would have been, shitty drawers and no stores around that didn't require him to wade through a sea of the dead.
Maybe it was time to take a little himself, find out if this group of people was worth sticking with. "Are you glad that she's dead?"
He turned to face her, not giving her the easy way out. She bit her lip and continued to look out over the water, avoiding his gaze. "She tried to kill my friend."
"The friend who might die anyway and drag us all along with him," Andy said.
"He's not going to die. I know it. Joan says..."
"Joan says she doesn't know if he's going to wake up or not. For all we know, she was trying not to give us the bad news."
Amanda looked at him, and he saw the hurt there. He saw a girl who had sent another girl, someone she had known for weeks, someone she had fought for life with, to a waterlogged grave. "You don't know shit," she said.
Amanda pushed back from the edge of the bridge and stalked away angrily. Andy looked at the sky. "Nice going, dipshit. The one time someone bothers to talk to you and you treat her like complete shit."
People had never been his strong suit. That's why he had abandoned his life in North Carolina, too many burned bridges, too many people looking to beat his ass, including his own family, wherever the hell they were now. 3,000 miles away, there was probably still a few good old boys who would put a bullet in his ass if he showed up there now.
Now here he was at the end of the world, making friends left and right. He turned around and watched the small camp. The men wanted nothing to do with him. The girls wanted even less.