I didn’t want to tell her how much it bothered me. How much I’d wanted to crawl inside my own skin and stay there. I knew I had to be the strong one in this case, even if it meant taking the brunt of her wrath. “Of course it bothered me. Why would you even think...?
“You’re acting just like you always act.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“That’s the problem.”
“What?”
“Look how you handled that back there.”
“I thought I handled it pretty well.”
“As always, you handled it perfectly.” Her voice trailed off; she turned away and stared at her window. “Nothing is ever a big deal for you. You rushed right over as soon as you heard me. Then you waited for the right moment to kill that man. You even talked to him as though he was a
friend
.”
I was surprised and hurt by her tone. It sounded almost as if she thought I’d
caused
what happened back there. “I talked to him so he’d...”
“I know. You got him to aim the gun at you. I know you. It’s how you work.”
I couldn’t believe she was acting like this. “How I
work
? I didn’t
cause
this, you know.”
“I know.”
“I just did the best I could.”
“You always do. It’s why we’re still alive after all we’ve been through.”
“Then why does it sound like...?
“I don’t know.”
I knew better than argue about this with her. She was still fighting with herself about what happened, trying to make sense of it. But she needed to be reminded that she wasn’t the victim, and hadn’t been helpless. She needed to know that I couldn’t have done this without her help. “I can’t take
all
the credit here, you know. You were the one who distracted him, got him to move his gun.”
“I was about to faint, Moss. I felt woozy and light-headed.”
I didn’t want to tell her how close I’d come to fainting as well. “Well, you certainly moved out of the way at the perfect...”
“I didn’t plan it that way—it just happened. I knew you’d kill him, so I wasn’t too concerned about being shot by that time. All you needed was a second to get at your gun. Once you grabbed the gun, he was as good as dead.”
“However it happened, the main thing was that we survived.”
“Yes. You killed the bad guy. And everything was fine and dandy again, so you came right over and tried to snap me out of it. The danger was over, and it was time to leave.”
“It
was
over.”
“For you, maybe.”
For you, maybe?
I’d been right; she was struggling with the panic.
“It was a much bigger deal for me, Moss. It would have been a much bigger deal for mostly everyone else, too.”
I kept silent.
“You helped me back to the truck. You were sweet and kind, a true gentleman. You held the door open for me, helped me up. You even told me how everything would be just fine.” Her eyes turned cold. “I hate to bring this up, Moss, but everything is
not
fine! Everything is just about as
un
-fine as it can possibly get! The world is gone, society is gone, all the good people we ever knew are gone ... and the people still alive, the ones we still have to deal with, are cold-blooded savages!”
The encounter with the biker had made the nightmare too real, reminding her how death would continue stalking us. Harsh reality had let her have it right in the face, harder than ever, and for the first time, she fully understood what it all meant.
This brought back the conversation I’d had with Reed on the way up here, after I’d killed three young thugs in Cocoa. At that time, Reed couldn’t understand how easily killing had been for me. Reed was a school teacher—a quiet, unassuming man with a wife and kids. For him, death and murder had been something he’d seen only on the news or read about in the papers. By the time we’d hooked up, his wife and kids were dead, and he’d been mugged and nearly run over by a gang of punks. Just hours later, after we’d driven to Cocoa, he found himself standing in someone’s living room, his arm covered in blood and brain matter from one of the thugs I’d killed. He was looking at me as if I was some monster that had crawled out of a nightmare.
I’d tried to tell him that my military training had come into play, that survival was second nature to me. Reed said he understood, but I could tell he didn’t. Only those who had been through something similar could grasp the cold reality of killing someone in self-defense.
In the few short months since Reed’s death, things had gotten much worse. Survival had turned into constant terror—a chilling, merciless horror that followed us everywhere we went. And despite Fields’ contention that it didn’t bother me, I couldn’t shake the nagging fear that we couldn’t go on like this. There were only two of us now, and since Reed was gone, the strange voice he’d often heard, that same voice that had saved our lives more than once, was gone as well. And although my instincts remained basically sharp, there was no way I could make any of this more tolerable—no matter how much I wanted to.
“I can’t help what’s happened,” I told her. “I can only try as hard as I can to make things a little ... well, not as bad.”
“I appreciate it, I really do.”
“I’m sorry if I seem, well,
optimistic.
It’s just that I’m trying to make you feel...”
“It won’t work, Moss. Can’t you see that? It’s too late for anything to be fine or okay. This is something that will never ever happen again.”
“You know that already. You’ve known it for some time. You knew it when we were trying to get out of that the underground facility.”
“Of course I knew it. My head wasn’t in a fog. They even had me assisting in their horrid experiments. I’d have to be comatose to not realize what’s going on, what we’ve been through.”
“Then what’s different now? You and I are a team. Together, we can survive this. We proved it this morning, didn’t we?”
“Yes. This morning, we both killed someone. I stepped out of my shower, toweled myself dry, looked out the front window and saw someone with a gun sneaking around in the front yard. I grabbed a rifle and shot him. Then we had breakfast. Two normal, healthy people sitting at the kitchen table with our eggs and bacon and toast and coffee, while the two bodies lay dead outside.”
“We had no choice.”
“No. We didn’t.”
“Then what’s all this
really
about?”
“I used to be a nurse, Moss. I used to
help
people; I assisted daily in
saving
their lives. I wish I could tell you the number of times I saved the lives of patients when their doctors couldn’t be right there when they were needed. Now? I’m
killing
people, for God’s sake.
Killing
them!”
“I know you’re killing them. Believe me, I know. Look at me. I used to be a soldier. It happened twenty years ago. I was just a kid then. Twenty years old and full of myself. In my three-year stint, I killed people, lots of them, but it did something to me, and I promised myself that once I got out, I’d never have to kill anyone again. Now here I am, twenty years later, killing again. But that’s what life has become, and we’ve got to accept it.”
“I know that.”
“We’ve been living like this for several months now. What’s changed?”
“Nothing.”
“I know it’s bad.”
“It’s worse than bad.”
“I know it is. But we’ve been surviving very well under the circumstances. We’ve got a roof over our heads, food...”
“I understand that. I appreciate it, too.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It’s getting to me. It really is.”
“It was the biker, wasn’t it?”
“Among other things, yes. It was the biker. It was also Don, lying dead in his father’s house with a dead cat in his arms. But mostly it was the biker. He had both barrels aimed at my face, Moss. My
face
. And he really wanted to shoot me. I saw the blind rage in his eyes, and if it hadn’t been for the severity of his wound, he would’ve shot me. Right before you came around the corner, he was aiming, ready to shoot ... and then he coughed. If he hadn’t coughed...”
“But he did.”
“It was too close.
Way
too close.” She rubbed her eyes. “It’s getting to me, Moss, and I’m not sure I can handle it anymore.”
“We
have
to handle it. We’ve got no choice.”
She buried her face in her hands and began sobbing quietly again.
I stayed silent for the rest of the ride, struggling with myself to figure out something I could say that would help her.
But what could be said about any of this that would make it more tolerable? How could I possibly make her feel better when we both knew that what had already happened on this miserable day would most likely happen again tomorrow?
It was 4:30 when we reached Bakerstown–Culmerville Road. Before driving down the hill that led to the farm, I pulled into the abandoned garage at the top of the hill and sat in the truck with my window lowered, listening. Fields sat staring at the abandoned two-story house on the side of the hill directly across the road. I forced myself to stop worrying about her, at least for now, and focused on the present issue. I still wondered about that light-blue compact. Although I didn’t see it anywhere, my gut told me it wasn’t too far away.
I spent the next fifteen minutes listening and watching. When I was certain we hadn’t been followed and that there wasn’t anyone else close by, I put the truck back in gear and went down the road, to the bottom of the hill. Before turning off, I stopped again and listened another minute or so. Then, confident everything was as it should be, I took the truck up the long, winding drive.
Fields still stared straight ahead. Her eyes were wet, her face flushed. Her hair was dirty and matted. Thick strands dangled in front of her face. She made no move to push it back or even nudge it away. In fact, as I opened my door and glanced at her, I faced the cold realization that the woman sitting beside me was no longer aware of anything but what was going on in her troubled mind.
This disturbed me, but I fully understood. Fields had been through hell and was seriously wounded. Judging by her glazed eyes and empty look, I could tell she’d ventured much too close to the brink of her own sanity. I’d seen it too many times before. Some never come back. Others do, leaving vital parts of themselves behind. Still others bring much of their trauma back with them and let it dominate them for the rest of their lives.
Fields was a strong person; I was confident she’d survive this and bounce right back. We’d endured other horrors before and would be forced to struggle through many more. If she wanted to handle this by herself, I’d step back and let her. If not, I wouldn’t hesitate to help her.
I climbed down, approached the garage door and got out my keys. Behind me, the passenger door slammed shut. I turned. Fields had already climbed down and was shuffling down the drive. As she neared the stoop that led to the concrete walk, she stopped abruptly and stood quite still, her head lowered. It took me a few moments to realize she was gazing at blood and brain matter from this morning’s battle. After just a few seconds, she straightened and veered left, toward the stoop. She then climbed the step and went down the concrete path leading to the kitchen door.
I climbed back in the truck, pulled into the garage and killed the engine. Grabbing the .357, I climbed back out, then closed and locked the garage door.
Fields was standing a few feet from the kitchen door when I got back to the house. She stood with her back to me, facing the pine trees on the other side of the property.
I opened the screen and unlocked the back door. I waited for her to turn around and join me, but she didn’t move. I went inside and put the .357 on the table. I crossed the kitchen and picked up a flashlight on my way downstairs to the cellar, where the generator was hooked up. I turned it on, went back upstairs and opened the door to the chest cooler, where we kept our ice and cold stuff. I got out two beers and set them on the table. When the power returned, I’d ask if she wanted me to fix dinner. She was probably not hungry, but I thought I’d give her the option anyway. An attempt to return to normalcy seemed a good way of helping her through this.
I was just about to approach the screen door when she came in and stopped in the doorway. I didn’t like the cold expression on her face; she was looking at me as if she was about to break up with me. But I told myself to put my feelings aside. She was going through some heavy stuff; the last thing she needed was for me to make things worse.
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Aren’t you thirsty? We could both use a drink.”
“I need to be alone for a little while.”
I didn’t like any of this but knew better than argue. But I couldn’t forget this morning’s fiasco, when I decided to take a look outside. I’d earned a harsh slap for that decision but knew that wouldn’t work at all in this case.