After Days (The After Days Trilogy) (24 page)

His eyes widened slightly at my skillful evasion, but his face still told me he was overconfident. Stupidly he tried the same move again, this time I ducked his fist and rabbit punched him in the side before quickly moving away again. He winced and rubbed his side, I hadn’t inflicted any real damage but now he was taking me seriously.

Chen sneered at me and raised his fists as
he came at me again, more carefully this time. I waited as he slowly closed the gap between us. I wasn’t quick enough to evade his next punch but it only glanced off my chin. Too late though, I realised it was a feint and the second punch, the real one, collected me in the stomach. Breath whooshed from my mouth and nostrils and I doubled over as he deftly moved out of my reach. I heard shocked gasps from my group.

His retr
eat was probably unnecessary as right then I was in no condition to counter. He took the opportunity to gloat, raising his hands and nodding his head like a victorious prize fighter. The audience was unappreciative. I regained my breath quickly while he strutted, but remained doubled over in an attempt to stoke his over confidence. It worked.

Without warning he stopped his prancing and took two steps before launching a vicious roundhouse kick at my head. I rolled under the kick, but not quite fast enough to evade it completely. His heel grazed my cheek, right on the crusted over wound, but didn’t halt
my momentum. My roll continued and I punched him hard in the groin as I rolled under him. He fell to the floor swearing and holding his jewels.

Dazed from the blow to my cheek, I climbed to my hands and knees as warm blood flowed down my face. I watched him warily as he also struggled to rise. Score one-all, I told myself. I made it to my feet as he struggled to his knees. I waited.

“Attack him Isaac!” yelled Sonny.

Even though it felt wrong, I knew Sonny was right, I had to take advantage of him while he was down. Hadn’t he done the same to me? I thought of him holding the gun against Indigo’s forehead and channeled the rage. I rushed forward and aimed a kick at his head.

Perhaps not quite as incapacitated as I thought, he grabbed my foot mid-air and twisted it viciously. I groaned in pain but allowed myself to fall the way he twisted, avoiding any injury.

Unfortunately I fell hard and the side of my head smacked against the cold concrete of the garage. I know it sounds cliché but I saw stars. I struggled again to rise and to my horror, saw that Chen had now made it to his feet. Worse, his eyes screamed murder.

I was in pain, the agony of my cheek cutting through the concussed fog in my brain. He waited again, seeming to enjoy my drunken struggle to get to my feet. He knew he had me. As soon as I made it upright he danced around me, just out of my reach. He bounced on the balls of his feet, and pushed his head forward as though daring me to hit him. I jabbed at him.

The blow felt too sluggish, I knew the second I launched it. The spry, smirking gangbanger, seemingly recovered from the blow to his balls, ducked under it easily and rabbit punched my ribs. It sent fresh ripples of pain through me and I teetered a little. Once again he had skipped out of my reach without pressing his advantage. I didn’t fall; I knew if I did, it was over.

He came for me again, and I knew this was it. The steely look in his eyes made it clear he was going to finish it. I just managed to dodge the first punch, and when the follow up to my ribs came, I sidestepped it and trapped his arm under my own. He tried to disengage but I had him pinned. Chen rained blows on the top of my head with his free hand. Luckily I have a hard head. Sonny’s words echoed in my mind.
Any means
.

While he was trapped against me, distracted, trying to bash my brains in, I grabbed his jewels through his jeans and twisted them savagely. Yeah, I know it’s not noble, but this was a fight for my life. He was not going to stop until I was dead. He had already shown that he wouldn’t show me any mercy,
if I was to prevail, I couldn’t show him any.

Chen screamed and while he was preoccupied with the agony of his abused nether regions, I encircled his neck with my arm, getting him in a classic headlock. I then fell backwards, letting my weight pull him down. We hit the floor hard, with me taking the brunt of the impact. Winded yet again, I held on. Held on for dear life, as they say.
My
dear life.

He ended up on top of me, his back against me. I quickly used my other hand to lock my arm in place and squeezed harder. He began to elbow me, frantically trying to dislodge me. He got me a few good blows and I gasped in pain, but I held on. Pulling my headlock tighter and tighter, squeezing the life out of him.

It’s not like in the movies. It took forever for him to stop struggling and even when he did I wasn’t game to let go. It wasn’t until Sonny came over and patted my head and told me that I could let go now, that I slowly relaxed my hold.

Luke was there too and helped me out from under Chen’s body. I couldn’t look at him. While I had won, I didn’t feel victorious, in fact I felt like shit. I took two steps to the wall and unloaded the contents of my stomach. We heard a clatter and then the doors to the garage were reefed open. We turned in time to see Zhou running into the night,
Samara falling to her knees in relief, her hands near the discarded knife.

Sonny patted my shoulder. “You did what you had to do Isaac. You don’t need to feel any remorse, as you said, it was him or you.”

I didn’t say anything; I walked back to the truck, past the others. I shook Indigo off when she reached out to me, ignoring the hurt in her eyes as I continued to the cab. I climbed in and held my head in my hands. I ached all over but nothing hurt like what I was feeling. Killing a man with my bare hands was a million times worse than the feelings I had experienced when I had to shoot one. More real somehow, more raw.

I barely heard the others getting into the back of the truck. I was wrapped up in my own little ball of misery. Finally Sonny climbed into the driver’s seat. He handed me my pistol and parka. I put on the parka mechanically and slipped the revolver into my pocket as Indigo, true to her word, climbed in and settled next to me. She didn’t say anything, just handed me a rag for my cheek and then put her hands in her lap.

              Looking in the one remaining mirror on the passenger side of the cab, she said to Sonny, “You should be able to go straight back.”

“Okay, I'll rely on your directions,” he said, putting the truck into reverse and gently pressing down on the gas pedal. He made it first try and turned the truck around in the gas station's lot, stopping at the exit before glancing at me.

“The freeway is to the right?” I knew he was trying to distract me and I was grateful.

             
“Yep. Left would take us back to the bridge, and we don’t want to go there,” I said. “Beyond that I'm going to be fairly useless, Luke and his atlas are what I relied upon for navigation.”

             
“It's a good thing that Luke left this up here then,” Indigo said, holding up the battered road atlas that Luke had taken from the Walmart, on that day that seemed so long before. God, has it really only been two weeks since we left Fort Carter? I asked myself, it seemed like a year. Sonny turned right and we hit the road.

             
I hadn't realized how close to the freeway we had been, the on-ramp was literally just around the bend past the gas station. To my surprise, Sonny went under the freeway and didn't get on. We kept barreling up highway 140 as fast as he dared push the truck through the icy night.

The truck cab was cold given the lack of side windows. I had been prepared for this, of course, having driven like that during the day, but at night it was accentuated by the plunging temperatures. I zipped up the bottom part of my parka hood to cover my lower face, and found myself wishing that I had some ski goggles to help keep the wind off my eyes.

              “This road will lead back to the freeway, and allow us to avoid a big semi-circular loop up by Fitchburg and Leominster,” Sonny explained. “We'll get on the 2 just past Leominster, and take it to 202, which will take us up to Concord, New Hampshire. From there we can take I-93 north to where we are headed.”

             
“Looks like you don’t need a navigator after all. I was thinking we should dump the truck sometime before we get too close to Drake Mountain,” I said. “Don't want to make it too easy for the Chinese to find us when they find the truck.”

             
“Good thinking,” he replied. “There's a town I remember being about ten miles before Lincoln, where we turn off to head for the Ski lodge, Compton or Campton, something like that. We can find a place to hide the truck there.”

             
“Campton,” Indigo said, shining a light on the atlas in her hand and looking at the interstate 93 corridor through New Hampshire. “How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

             
“If my memory is right, and we don't run into any more trouble, I think we should get to Campton inside of four hours.”

             
“I'm not sure how realistic of an expectation not running into trouble is,” I said. “Concord is a decent sized town, and we should plan on there being a Chinese military presence in the area.”

             
“You're probably right,” Sonny laughed. “We probably shouldn't count on getting to Campton until well after daybreak.” He was grinning as he spoke so I couldn't tell how serious he was being. “Damn its cold riding up here,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “I should have told you I was still too weak to drive.”

             
“It's colder now than it was this morning,” I acknowledged. “But at least you have gloves, I drove without them today and my fingers still feel freezer burned.”

             
“They aren't turning black or anything are they?” Indigo asked with real concern in her voice. “My Uncle Joe got frostbite in his foot a few years back and they had to cut off three of his toes.”

             
“No, nothing like that,” I said, resting a hand on her arm. Their small talk had managed to put what had just happened with Chen to the back of my mind and I thanked fate, or karma or whatever the hell had helped me to find these people.

             
“This weather should give us an advantage though, right?” Indigo asked. “Being cold and all, China is a warm place, right? So these Chinese soldiers won’t be used to the cold.”

             
“Not really,” Sonny told her. “China is a big country, and it has all of the same climate bands that the United States does. While soldiers from South China might not be acclimatized to the cold, those coming from Manchuria will find that the weather is very similar to home at this time of year.”

             
“Oh,” Indigo said, looking a bit crestfallen.

             
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in closer to me for warmth. “Sonny, I was sure glad to see your girlfriend today.”

             
“Huian hasn't been my girlfriend for a long time now,” Sonny replied. “I was not all that happy to see her because it meant that she was putting herself at risk for us.”

             
“If she hadn't showed up when she did we would have been screwed,” I said.

             
“We still might be screwed. When that decimated patrol is located, the search for us will heat up big time. It was foolish of her to come to our rescue, if what she says about her and her group...”

             
“The Shadow Cloaked Seven,” I said, making my voice as ominous as possible.

             
“Yes, them,” he said, seemingly missing the joke. “If what she says about them and what they are trying to do is true, then as much as I hate to say it, they are much more important than we are in the scheme of things.”

We rode on in silence as the headlights, miraculously still working after all the punishment the truck had received, illuminated the tiny snowflakes that began to drift down from the night sky.

21

I have to admit that I don't remember much of the drive until we hit the freeway just outside of Leominster. I remember talking to both Sonny and Indigo, but the specifics of our conversations are not as clear as many of my other memories from this time period.

Perhaps it’s because I was probably in a state of shock. Probably? I
was
in a state of shock. I vaguely remember Indigo pulling a first aid kit out of the glove box of the truck and cleaning the wound on my cheek, but even the sting of the alcohol she used did not seem to cut through the fog in my brain.

One thing that did rattle around my brain was the knowledge that I had just killed another person with my bare hands and, although I know there had been no alternative, it was still something that weighed heavily on me.

If things went to plan we would soon reach our destination, but it was hard to care when I couldn’t get the sounds of Chen coking to death out of my head. My hands shook for a long time afterwards. It was definitely not like the movies, where the hero would by now be cuddled up with the girl of his dreams. Well the girl of my dreams was beside me, and we were kind of cuddled up, but more through the need to keep warm than anything else.

After a while the shock began wear off and I even got a couple of hour’s fitful sleep. When I awoke again, Indigo was drowsing and I found my thoughts drifting hopefully towards the future. The prospect of getting to the safe haven and settling down into some sort of normalcy was exciting for me, and I began to fantasize about how it might go down.

Looking back I can honestly say that it was just that, a fantasy – the events that took place earlier that evening should have told me that. There could be no going back to any sort of normal, no matter how safe the place we were headed might actually be. Normal was gone, hell on earth was normal now. I guess I had one advantage over the others. My normal had already changed before the Chinese released the infection, and by the time all the adults started dying I had already become accustomed to adapting to new situations.

Despite the fact that the heater was blazing, the lack of windows made certain that the cab of the truck was like a refrigerator. As much as I wanted to keep Indigo snuggled against me, by the time we got to the freeway, I was leaning forward in the passenger seat, my hands cupped around the heating vent on my side. The snow was falling heavier the further north we traveled, and I began fearing that it would make us easy to track from the air.

It's funny how the same fears that plagued me when we were walking through the woods after losing Sarah would return to unsettle me as we drove north nearly two weeks later. I thought of Sarah, sweet innocent Sarah. She had made sure that we all had fun on her last night on earth.

From her my mind drifted to the others that we had lost, Arthur and Karen, and those we had left behind, John,
Samara and Mark. The last three were still alive when we had left them, and I hoped they were still okay, but regret at leaving them still ate at me. Before the confrontation with Chen I had thought that I had come to grips with that choice. A fresh wave of anger at the Chinese washed over me. They had taken everything from us. Our families, our people… even our country. I felt Indigo stir beside me.

“Are you alright?” Indigo said, leaning forward beside me. I guess she had noticed my clenched jaw. “You seem down, is everything okay?”

“Of course everything is not okay,” I said, snappily, instantly regretting my tone. None of this was her fault. “Sorry, it’s just that everything sucks, and by everything I mean everything.”

“Oh come on now,” she replied. “When life gives you lemons, what do you do?”

“Throw them away.” I had never liked that dumb saying.

“No you don't, you make lemonade,” she said. “If you throw them away you end up with nothing. At least with the lemonade you have something to drink.”

“What if life doesn’t give you any sugar to make your damn lemonade?” I said, probably a bit more gruffly than I meant to. “Then you’re just going to have a glass of sour lemon juice.”

“Wow,” said Indigo. “I wish Luke was here to say something profound from a video game and make you feel better.”

“He does have a knack for doing that, doesn't he?” I said, finally cracking a smile.

“Hey, you have a Chinese guy here, words of wisdom can flow from my mouth too, you know,” Sonny joined in, perhaps doing his part to lighten the mood. “Lao Tzu... Confucius... fortune cookies, pick your poison. What's bothering you Isaac?”

I took a second to think about it. “Sadness over the ones we lost I guess…and also Samara, Mark and John…oh, and not to mention killing someone with my bare hands. That about sums it up, I think.”

“Look I know it doesn’t help, but you said it back at the garage, Chen wasn’t going to quit until one of you was dead, and I, for one, am glad you came through.”

“Me too,” said Indigo, as her hand found mine. Sonny glanced at us, and I felt myself blush before he quickly looked back to the road.

“Alright, how about this for words of wisdom then… 'Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break',” Sonny said. We were all watching the road, the headlights lit up the snow as it drifted to the road and I was thankful that it wasn’t me driving. Luckily, it wasn’t too thick on the road though.

“Who said that? Confucius or Lao Tzu?” Indigo asked.

“Neither one,” Sonny replied, “it's from Shakespeare. It means that you should talk about what’s eating you up inside before it consumes you.”

I told them about Sarah then. Both of them had heard me talk of her before of course, Indigo more so than Sonny because I had told her of Sarah's death during one of our long conversations, but this time, I told the whole story.

From the first time Luke and I had seen her, held captive by the looters, until she had been killed by the pack of feral dogs. I don’t know whether it was the stress of what had happened earlier, or whether it was just plain exhaustion, but by the time I had gotten to the dog attack I was on the verge of tears, and they started to flow as I described our group tending to her in front of the fire.

“None of that was your fault,” Indigo said, putting her arm around my shoulder. “I know it hurts to lose people, especially those people that you sort of feel responsible for. But sometimes, especially now, bad things happen, and it's not your fault.” I took my hand away, and she put hers into her lap.

“What about Karen?” I asked her. “I don’t just feel responsible for her, being the leader I was responsible for her, and yet she's dead as well,” I glanced over at Sonny. “Because of my decisions I endangered all of you in the back of the truck and we are lucky that only one of us was killed by the fire from that road block.”

“Everybody in the truck, front and back, knew that we were going to be at risk when we left the Academy,” Sonny said. “Karen more than most, because her boyfriend had just been killed. She told me that she didn't think we were going to make it, and sadly in her case, it turned out to be prophetic.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at me. “Instead of thinking to yourself that your actions cost Karen her life, you need to understand that those same actions saved the lives of the rest of us.”

“But she trusted me to keep her safe, you all did.”

“No, don't you see that's where you're wrong,” Sonny said. “We trusted you to try, nothing more. We accepted the risk when we loaded up into the truck. We could have stayed at the Academy if we chose, but if we had, we’d now be dead at the hands of the Tigers or the Chinese.”

“About that,” I said, running my coat sleeve across my cheeks to dry up the tear tracks that were quickly icing over. “When Chen was trying to get into the Academy, he said you owed him and honor demanded that you uphold your vows to him. You were a Tiger once, right?”

“Not really, but when I first moved to Worcester I befriended a couple of them that were interested in the martial arts. While I was hanging out with them Chen, as their leader, would sometimes give me gifts, and he seemed to think that because of the gifts I now belonged to him. The guy was a complete psycho with little grasp of reality, you saw that for yourself. But he was like that, even before the infection. I finally had to cut ties with the Tiger's that I liked because I couldn't stand the guy.”

“Was Jack one of the Tigers you used to hang out with?” I asked.

“No, Chen's little brother Jack used to try to get me to teach him Kung Fu all the time, but I always turned him down. There was something a little off about Jack; he was too much like his big brother I think. He just wanted to learn Kung Fu to be able to hurt people, not for self-defense.”

“It just had to be him I killed when Luke and I rescued Indigo,” I said.

I felt some guilt that I had set the whole chain of events in progress when I had accidently killed Chen’s brother, but the alternative… leaving Indigo at their mercy, didn’t bear thinking about.             

“Sad,” Sonny said, shaking his head. “But not very shocking, given his role models.”

“What about him and the people you've had to kill since?” Indigo asked me, I guessed she was playing counselor. “Are their deaths still bothering you too?”

“A little,” I admitted. “But not as much as I expected them too. Not as much as failing to protect Sarah or Karen. I think I can accept that I’ve killed for the right reasons, in self-defense or to protect others and I’m okay with that. It’s just that Chen…well that was different, more personal somehow.”

“As long as it bothers you, at least a little bit, I think you'll be okay,” Sonny said. “It's when you stop feeling anything about killing that you're in trouble.”

“What he said,” replied Indigo, giving my shoulder a squeeze of encouragement. “From my point of view I am glad this Jack guy… and his brother, for that matter, are no longer in the world.”

“Well one good thing came of all of it. I got to meet you.” I said to her, managing to crack a true smile for the first time since we'd left the gas station.

“And that's that,” Sonny said.

“What's what?” Indigo and I both asked at the same time, and my smile grew.

“We just passed the sign that says Welcome to New Hampshire,” Sonny said. “We made it out of Massachusetts at last.”

“Well that's something,” I said. “Thank God for small victories.”

“I agree, perhaps we shouldn't be popping open the champagne just yet,” Sonny said. “But we've made it further than I actually expected us to when we left. If things keep breaking our way, we might just make it to Drake Mountain to see if there really are survivors there.”

“You have champagne?” Indigo asked, teasing.

“Ha-ha,” Sonny said.

“You’re right, there is a long way to go. Not to mention we aren’t 100 percent sure there really is a safe haven waiting for us. We shouldn’t get our hopes up,” I said.

“Since I've met him, Captain Grumpy Pants here has shown that he is pretty down on the whole notion of hope,” Indigo said, motioning toward me with her head.
Captain Grumpy pants
? “Do you have any wise words that might help him overcome his fear of hope, Sonny?”

“I don't know, let me see... how about, 'hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence,' that comes from Lin Yutang.”

“Who's that?” Indigo asked. “I've never heard of him.”

“Lin Yutang was one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century,” Sonny said.

“Well, Ben Franklin, an influential American once said 'he that lives on hope will die fasting.’ It doesn't matter how many roads are made if the people making them are never going to get anywhere,” I said, I was still smiling though, just a little.

“I see that you can make some claim to knowing the profound thoughts of those that have come before, as well,” Sonny said, with a short laugh.

“Not so much,” I replied. “I wrote a report about witticisms from Poor Richard's Almanac in my English class last year though, so I can pull a handful of those out if I need them, but that's about it as far as my famous quoting goes.”

“Ah, well, perhaps someday you'll be able to match my profound wisdom,” Sonny said, smiling. “I'm going to have to slow down, the snow's falling so much harder here. I think there is a rest stop coming up pretty soon now; do you think we should stop to stretch our legs and let those in the back use the facilities?”

“Not just those in the back,” Indigo said. “I could use with a pit stop myself.”

“Yeah, we'll stop,” I said, looking out at the blowing snow. “But we can't stay too long, stretch, use the bathrooms and then we're on the road again.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sonny replied, moving over into the far right lane so that he could exit when it came up. No more than five minutes later he was pulling off.

The rest
stop had a small gravel parking lot, two cinderblock restrooms, and a snow covered picnic area. There were three picnic tables and a covered brick barbecue. Sonny pulled the truck up in the parking lot close to the restrooms. As soon as he turned the engine off, I opened my door and jumped out. I ran around to the back of the truck and pounded the door.