Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“They’re mindless,” I say, pulling myself up slowly and painfully. “They eat each other.”
“Had you stuck around a little while longer, you would have seen them run from that courtyard,” she says with a smile still across her face.
“You like all this,” I accuse. “You get off on it.”
“Maybe,” she shrugs. “I just think it’s worth it sometimes.”
“You nearly killed me,” I hiss angrily. How can she be so reckless?
“Sorry about that.” Her face contorts into a mask of concern. I’m not sure if it’s genuine or real, but I’ll take it. She pulls her pack off of her shoulder and tips it upside down. I watch four cans drop down onto the floor. I smile as I reach down and pick one up and read SPAM written across it. God, I’ve never been so happy and excited to see Spam before. “Want to share?” she asks with a flirtatious look across her face that makes me feel uncomfortable and wrong again. I think she’s messing with me.
I reach down and look at the others. One is a kids’ noodle soup, another is corn, and the last one is refried beans. I put them back down and look at her with the Spam still in my hands. “Fine, but we’re eating this one.”
She smiles and nods, jumping up onto her feet in a flash and stretching out her hand to help me up. I take her hand gratefully and am surprised by the grace and ease with which she helps me up. She walks toward one of the counters and grabs an old can, and stuffs it with paper and pieces of wood from another can. I watch as she reaches for my bag and begins rummaging through it with familiarity. I realize she’s done this before. Somehow I’m not surprised. She produces the lighter that I took off of Cal and lights a piece of paper and stuffs it into the can.
I stare at her with impressed surprise. She looks at me and smiles again. “I’m not eating that shit cold,” she says to me.
“Fine by me,” I answer.
“How did you know how to do this?” I ask her, looking at my arm with confusion and interest now that I hadn’t felt before. It was strange to think that I had never asked this simple question, since it was fairly important, after all, she clearly wasn’t a doctor. What did a woman who worked as a glorified waitress and gym rat know about amputation? I look at the studs in my arm and the metal bars and already notice it scabbing and healing in its own sort of malnourished way.
“I used to watch a lot of TV,” she answers, strapping on her various knives and weapons that she so lovingly hides across her lithe body. “I was super-addicted to Doctor House and I was really into reading between shifts. I used to read these old Civil War books and I watched a lot of documentaries on the Civil War. You know that Ken Burns one that’s like a billion hours long? Yeah, watched it twice.”
“Seriously?” I smile. I don’t know why she always messes with me. Why can’t she give me a real answer?
“Seriously,” she nods, slinging the quiver over her head and shoulder.
What? I crinkle my brow and stare at her in disbelief. “You’re lying,” I accuse.
“Nope,” she smiles.
“Jesus Christ,” I laugh a little hysterically for a moment, but she doesn’t seem to mind, thankfully. I’m allowed my few precious moments of insanity. I think Lindsay embraced insanity a long time ago and never came back to the world of normal people. There was something about her that thrived in the chaos of this world that continually threatens to break me. I’m not the kind of person that she is. I want to be, but I don’t have it in me. Part of me thinks that I spend too much time in my head. Lindsay never talks about moral dilemmas, not that I ever do, but I doubt she sits around and thinks about her moral corrosion.
For four days, I have watched Lindsay go out and scavenge and explore and for four days, I have sat here, by the window, waiting for her to return. I feel like a dog, being left at the house while its owners go to work every day. She goes out for hours by herself, tearing the town apart slowly. She’s found food and various other things, but nothing substantial enough for me to feel like it’s worth it. We should be walking. We should be putting the horizon behind us and making for Florida. If she wants to go with me, then we need to start going. After all, there can’t be much left of Blanchester to discover. I’ve been patient, but I can no longer keep silent about it.
“How much of the town is left to explore?” I ask her while she tests her bow.
“Not much,” she answers. “I’m going out to look for things we might need on the road.”
“I think we have enough,” I tell her from across the room.
“You still need to mend and you can never have too much,” she lectures me. I feel my cheeks flush and my temper flare.
“You’re a hoarder,” I accuse her.
“You’re a far-sighted fucktard,” she fires back.
I look at her without any interest in hearing whatever else she has to say. She’s not a woman who can take a criticism and brush it off. She’s the kind of woman that takes a criticism as an insult and escalates so quickly that it becomes an argument. For the murderous temper that I carry, hers is so much worse. I’m afraid to get on her bad side, in fear of what she might do to me. I wonder how many women and men have been beaten by her because they crossed her.
“You are on very thin ice,” I tell her calmly. “You need to settle down.”
“No,” she shakes her head and grabs her bag. “You need to. I’m not the one with a missing hand and a bunch of broken ribs.”
“You’re also not the one with two daughters out there,” I remind her as calmly as I can, but I’m a volcano waiting to burst and I can tell that she senses it. I’ve had fun with her these past four days, watching her go when the sun descends beyond the horizon and whittling the days away talking about what we used to like. I can even say that I sort of like her now. She’s got enough spirit and brains in that head of hers to keep me distracted from the realities of this world, but my patience is wearing thin. She has had her fun running through this town, playing pirate and explorer, but the clock is ticking. I have more important things in this world and she knows that. It’s the only reason why when I tell her that my daughters are out there, she receives it as a warning. I’m gearing up to leave and she’s about to miss the boat if she still wants in. Crossing the room, she stands in front of me, her arms crossed and her eyes looking over my face.
“I’m going out to search a few more houses tonight,” she tells me. “I want you to sleep and when I get back, we’ll sleep and go by night.”
“No,” I shake my head. “We go at dawn.”
“The Zombies come out during the day,” she reminds me. “It’s safer to travel at night.”
“Not in the wasteland,” I tell her. “Everyone out there is just like you. They come out at night and if we’re traveling on the road at night, then they’re bound to see our trail. If we travel during the day, they’ll all be asleep.”
“What if they find us during the night?” she presses.
“We make sure we hide real well,” I tell her. “And we avoid any signs of life. No towns, no cities, and we only break away from the rules when we absolutely have to. If we stick to rural communities, we’re more likely to survive.”
She looks at me with a blank face that I can read immediately. She’s thinking it over. It’s one of the few moments where she gets a glimpse into the reality that I am not a helpless, haphazard wandering around the wasteland blindly. I do know what I’m doing and I don’t need her to protect me. “That’s some plan you got,” she says with a shrug. “We’ll see how it works out.”
I watch the sway of her hips as she makes her way to the door and unties the rope. I feel like I’m objectifying her, probably because I am. To be honest, I can’t help it. I watch her step out of the parlor and turn around. I can see her face in the window, but I know that she can only see my silhouette, if she can see anything at all. She looks at me with her dark eyes and I can tell that there are unspoken words hidden behind those closed lips. I try to remind myself that I’m not the only person adjusting to this new system of having someone else in my life.
I watch her crossing the street and see her look back a couple of times, stopping and looking at the door. I’m afraid that she might come back and I haven’t got the slightest idea what to say to her. I’m tired of waiting. I have to get to Florida, with or without her.
When she has gone, I slowly push myself up and walk toward one of the mirrors, looking at the man who stares back at me, not sure who it is anymore. My face is a dark shade of tan that is blistered and dry from my journey. My dark brown hair has grown in long, tangled locks over my head, hiding most of my face. I’ve never had hair this long. I stare at it and immediately start picturing Robinson Crusoe. My facial hair has grown longer than I’ve ever had it and as I stare at my reflection, I can no longer stand it. I open the drawer where Lindsay had shown me a pair of scissors and quickly pull them out. I grab a chunk of my hair between the blades and cut it, letting it fall from my fingers and head. It lands on the counter and I stare at it for a moment. Looking back into my eyes within the mirror, I reach up, selecting another lock and cut it. Then I slice off another and continue. Lock after lock, I continue until I look into the mirror and see a chaotic specimen of this new world. My hair is shorter, uneven, and I don’t give a damn.
Next I go to work on my beard, cutting it shorter and shorter until it’s just a field of hair again. This I know how to do, slowly trimming it a little here and a little there. I’ve been using scissors to trim my facial hair since I decided I liked a short beard back in college. When I am done, I feel like I’m looking at an entirely different man in the mirror. This one is someone who doesn’t look so worn by the elements. Sure, I look battered and bruised by everything, but I look like I have a grip on something, maybe life, maybe survival. Something.
I’ve read every magazine inside this parlor. There are plenty here with girls covered in tattoos, sporting darker, slutty lingerie while they showcased their ink. I never found an appeal in getting tattoos or a piercing. I’m not big into self-mutilation or the art behind all of it. I just never got it. I don’t hate it, but I definitely don’t love it. It’s just sort of a thing that exists in the world with me and I acknowledge it. Other than looking at scantily clad girls, there’s nothing in the magazines for me and they quickly wear out their allure. Every time I look at the girls, I see Lindsay and I toss them aside. I’m going stir crazy.
I walk across the parlor to the back where we have my water supply, her single bottle, and the last few cans of food that we have in our possession. We’ve eaten like kings lately and I don’t regret a thing. I’ve learned that eating what we have while we have it is the only way to ensure that I will ever get it inside of me. Grabbing the prescription painkillers that Lindsay gave me, I take another. I try to take them routinely or the pain gets too overwhelming. I look at her pack and try to decide whether it’s worth rummaging through. Her loot sack is never full of anything, but her actual pack is stuffed to near bursting proportions. Part of me wants to grab it and dump everything on the floor where I can meticulously scour each and every item inside with a detective-like curiosity.
But I decide against it. I’m not like her and I don’t want to start. Instead I pull out my maps and spread them out on the counters and start looking them over. I have a long way to go and I’m not nearly as far as I wanted to be. With my Jeep, I was supposed to be in Florida by now. Right now, I’m nowhere near there. In fact, the more I look at the maps, the more anxious I feel myself getting. I need to put distance between here and myself. I need to start heading south.
I look out the window and debate going now. She’ll catch up with me. She tracked me from Bellbrook, she can track me now. I decide to start packing. I grab the sanitizer, the disinfectant, the gauze, the bottle of antibiotics, the wraps, and painkillers she had shown me. All of it was sitting out on the counter and I grab it, examining each before packing it into my bag. There was no more time to waste here. I needed to move. By the time I have gathered everything up, I decide that it’s probably best to wait until dawn. There is no sense getting out there now and walking the wasteland half exhausted in the heat of the evening.
Dropping my pack, I slump down against the front of the parlor, right next to the door, with the machete lying across my lap. I dream of the girls for the majority of the time. I dream of Florida and the warm, ocean air. In my dream, there are still long grasses and palm trees when I’m walking toward the beach house. I can see the watchman with his rifle perched atop the stairs. When I am walking the world of dreams, I still have my arm. I don’t look at it. I don’t marvel at it. It has always been there. It has never left me.
Before the dream can go too far, I realize that I’m not alone. Turning, I see that Lindsay is there. I see her and at first I don’t comprehend why she is there with me. Deciding that she must have caught up with me, I turn and look at the beach house. The stairs, the watchman, and the beach house are all gone, vanished. The ocean has evaporated. I look around and I realize that I’m in the middle of the wasteland still. Turning, I see Lindsay standing without her pack or her army jacket. She’s standing in her jeans and tank top. She’s looking at me with those dark eyes of hers and I feel something terribly wrong. She reaches for her tank top and I shout for her to stop.
My eyes rip open at the sound of the parlor door opening and I can feel myself panting. My fingers cling to the machete and I turn to see Lindsay standing on the threshold with wide eyes, looking at me with a confused expression. “You planning on killing me, honey?” she asks before smiling.
“Sorry,” I say as she closes the door and instinctively starts to wrap the rope around the handles, locking it shut. She smiles at me and winks.
“I get nightmares too,” she says.
I feel like I’m blushing and try to get rid of my embarrassment. When she’s done with the door, she grabs her loot sack and heads into the parlor where the island counters are waiting for her. I watch her rummaging through her pack, searching for something while I pull myself to my feet. By the time I’m standing, she’s ripped off her quiver and set it next to her bow. As she shrugs off her jacket, I look at her bare shoulders and the soft skin of her back and find myself glaring at her. When she turns around, she’s hiding something behind her back and smiling like a child at Christmas.
“What’s going on?” I ask suspiciously
“I’ve got a present for you,” she giggles.
“Oh God.” I take a step back and feel the wall against my shoulder blades.
Before I can say anything more, she produces something that takes a moment for me to recognize. It’s a tangle of black leather straps and buckles, but what really distinguishes it is the enormous pink cock that’s wobbling out of the mess. I look at the jiggling penis and then look at her eyes as she beams with such pride.
“No thanks,” I say bashfully to her. “I’ve already got one.”
She laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh, ever, but as her body shakes with laughter, so too does the penis and it makes me nervous. She reaches up with her free hand and wraps her fingers delicately around the silicone cock and holds it gently, reverently. That is, until she rips it off the way a farmer might wring a chicken’s head off. I watch with horror as she rips the enormous dildo right out of the harness and my empathizing penis begins to ache beneath my pants in horror. God, I wonder if some asshole with a hard on ever crossed her and she had to do that in real life. It only takes a few seconds for me to realize that I never want her hands near my dick. She really might be able to rip it off.