Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“Nick, it’s okay,” she calls out and I watch as the closet door opens and a small boy steps out, looking at me with large, terrified eyes. Walking over to the ropes that are holding her wrists, I slash them and let the mom work on the daughter as I turn back to the man on the floor. His eyes are opening and I’m standing over him.
Pinning his arms to the floor with my knees, I listen to him groan and squirm before I hold the bat over the man’s moving lips. He’s mumbling something, trying to curse me or plead with me. It doesn’t matter. I hold the bat over his lips and flick it, listening to him scream as his rotten gums release most of his putrid teeth. Blood pours out of the corners of the man’s mouth as I hold out my bladed stump and sink it into the flesh of his throat. The man’s eyes widen as he feels the blade slipping into his flesh. He tries to scream, but I’ve savaged too much of his throat so only a shrieking gurgle escapes him. I watch him as he dies, the life bleeding out of him while he twitches and swallows, trying to hold onto what little shreds of life he has left.
I look down at the man, feeling nothing but gratitude that he’s gone. He wasn’t worth the life inside of him. I suddenly realize that I have an audience. Turning, I see the woman holding her girl, sobbing but staring at me with a horrified look in her eyes.
“Are there any others?” I ask her.
She shakes her head.
“Good.” I stand up and grab my machete, sheathing it before I grab the man’s right arm and drag him out of the room, leaving a bloody smear across the carpet as I take him from their sight. They don’t need this. They don’t need to see this monster anymore. As for him, I have my own plans.
I wanted to bury the girl for the woman, but there was no way of bringing her to listen to me. She was hunched over the girl when I last left her, trying to give her CPR. She has no idea what she’s doing. If she had any idea what was going on, then she wouldn’t be giving a dead girl CPR. I had heard the crack, barely seeing it. I had been so focused on the man. I needed to kill the man. Sitting on the porch, I look out over the dead yard and try to imagine how beautiful of a view this place must have had. Holding a bottle of water up to my lips, I feel my hands still trembling. I’m still not used to killing people, I guess. I’m not sure that I like that. It had been so easy. I can’t shake that feeling. It was like killing a goat or a kitten. It almost hadn’t been a fight. I try not to think about it. What I’m thinking about most is that I should approach the woman and offer to bury the girl. If Lexi or Val had died in my presence while I was forced to sit by and watch, I would have been mortified. I would have been broken on an elemental level. Then, left with burying my sweet, beloved child… that would have been too much. I can hear them talking inside. They’re coming toward me.
Standing up, I take a walk out into the yard, not wanting to eavesdrop on whatever conversation they’re going to have near me. I make sure that I’m not running off the porch. I meander, wander, slowly across the lawn, looking out over the town, wondering if there are any dark secrets still out there to be stumbled upon. To the north of here, there’s an entire city, smoldering into ash because of me. Maybe I should do the honors of burning this worthless spot on the map into history and oblivion. No. That’s not my purpose. My destiny is south of here. I turn to walk back toward the house. They’re done bickering.
Walking back to the house, the woman is wearing clothes that look too big for her, but even so she appears more or less physically fit, in an odd, bone-thin kind of way. The man hadn’t been that much of a fight. How did he get the drop on her? I suppose I couldn’t blame her. A man took my hand off with a fake trash bag full of cans. Who am I to judge? She looks at me with her bright blue eyes. Her blonde hair is a mess, but she’s still got a face that would win over the hardest man. Her eyes are teary and all red. The door closes behind her. I can see the boy through the screen, staring at me with eyes filled with curious interest.
“She’s resting upstairs on the bed,” the woman says, wrapping her arms around her chest, almost as if she’s hugging herself. After the announcement her countenance changes and she appears so frail, so weak. I feel like if I punch her, I would break her—shatter her into a thousand little pieces. She looks at the ground while she speaks to me, but most importantly, what strikes me about her comment is how truly fucked up it really is. The girl is dead. I heard her skull crack. If anything, she’s in a coma, waiting to die. I look at her and wonder if she’s entirely there. “I want to thank you for saving us,” she says softly, almost a whisper of a breath. I look at her with cold, unappreciative eyes. I don’t know how to feel about this. Did I just save one useless soul only to have her die later on in the wasteland?
“Where’s your husband?” I ask her bluntly.
“He was in the National Guard,” she sniffs. I don’t like where this is going. “He was deployed when the military took over and called up all the reserves. He was sent to Detroit to try and stop the uprisings on the local campuses or something. Damn college kids. Anyways, just before the power went out, I watched his unit get overrun on television. I waited for weeks, but there was no word. He’s gone. I’ve been on my own ever since. Trying the best I can.”
I pray that her husband isn’t like me, wandering the wasteland, trying to get to his loved ones, only to find that she’s headed off. “I suppose you haven’t heard,” I say to her. “Someone burnt down Detroit. The entire city’s a grave. If he did die there, then the bastards who killed him are long dead. I promise you that.”
She looks at me and I’m not sure she knows how to take what I’ve told her. I know that she understands that I have firsthand experience with Detroit and we leave it at that. “We were passing through when he ambushed us,” she says calmly, gesturing to the burning pyre where the cannibal is, as if it’s all a part of some movie that she’d seen. “He was a freak. Some kind of monster. He had us strip down and then locked us in his closet, dungeon sort of thing. He kept us there for days, torturing us. He used up everything we had, mocking us. Every day, he would just sit on that bed and watch us in his closet, touching himself. He was demented. Some sort of horrible deviant. I begged for him not to hurt the children. I just wanted him to let the children go. I suppose that was all some childish dream of my own.”
“The world doesn’t take kindly to dreams anymore,” I say, watching the boy behind the door, just staring at me. That boy was going to grow up mean and callous, if he even got the chance to grow up. I watch him and wonder what kind of life he’s going to live.
“How did you find us?” she asks me. Suddenly she bows her head and shies away from the question. “I’m sorry, that’s really none of my business. I didn’t mean to be so rude.”
“I saw the town and an old friend of mine said I should check it out,” I tell her anyways, ignoring her supplicant attitude. “She said that there might be something in this town worth finding. I found you two and that’s been it. She must have been looking out for you.”
“My God,” she looks at me with genuine shock on her face. “It’s like a miracle. Is she nearby?”
“No,” I shrug. “She’s was always one to save people’s lives. She saved mine a bunch. She was great like that.” I suddenly feel dark and sad talking about her.
“She sounds incredible,” the woman says, suddenly quieter. “What happened to her?” It must be my tone, because she picked up immediately that Lindsay isn’t around anymore. I look at her, into those big blue eyes and I wonder what kind of hells she’s experienced and yet she still has the capacity to feel sympathy. God, I would hate that.
“Those fanatics in Atlanta killed her,” I answer. “So I killed them all.”
She’s silent for a moment, looking out over the town with me, silently pondering what I just told her. She looks at them for a moment before finally breaking the silence. “It’s nice to know Nick and Rayne will be able to play again, thanks to you,” she says softly, with a smile on her lips. I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about, but it’s weird enough for me to feel suddenly uncomfortable around her. “Thank you,” she says.
The woman bursts into tears, rushing from the porch and into the house, brushing past the kid. His name is Nick, I think. I’m trying not to feel for these people. I can’t get entangled in their lives and they can’t get wrapped up in mine. There’s too much at stake. As she disappears inside the cannibal’s house, the boy comes out and stands near me. Without a word or a thought, I reach down to the dusty chair I was sitting in and hand him the baseball bat I used to kill the cannibal with.
“Don’t be afraid anymore,” I tell him, putting the bat in his hands.
He takes the bat and looks at it. There’s bloodstains on the pale wood and I hope that they stay there forever. He keeps his gaze on that bat when I leave the boy and head for the hill, looking at the gas station below when I hear the woman coming after me. I hear her footsteps on the hardening earth and refuse to look back at her.
“Wait,” she calls after me. “Wait, hold on a second.”
I keep walking.
“Wait, god damn it!” she calls, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. I look at her with cold, merciless eyes. I can’t do it. I know what she’s going to try and say, but I can’t do it. I can’t do it for a lot of reasons. I can’t take a kid with me and another beautiful woman or a woman of any kind. I can’t replace the friend that I just lost and I’m not willing to. I lost Lindsay because I’m a terrible person to be around. Bad things happen to me and I’m not willing to inflict that on anyone else. I look into her eyes and know that she needs help. She needs something to help her move or she isn’t going to survive. “Where are you going?” she asks.
“To Florida,” I answer.
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” she says to me, looking away, afraid of what I might say to her. “But I was wondering if you might let us tag along. We’ll keep to ourselves. I’ll gather our own food. All we need is a little help from a decent sort of person. You seem like a decent sort of person.”
“No,” I shake my head.
“Why the fuck not?” Tears are brimming in her eyes. “My daughter is injured, asshole. My son and I aren’t going to make it without anyone watching out for us—helping us with her. Don’t you give a shit? You gave a shit enough to burst in there and kill that fucker, so why won’t you give a shit now? Huh?”
I look at her in silence for a moment while she looks away, letting the tears run down her cheeks. There’s no way that I could keep going if I lost Lexi or Val. I can honestly sympathize with her, but there’s no way I’m doing this again. There’s no way that I’m taking her with me. “That town down there is completely abandoned,” I tell her. “So this is what you’re going to do: You’re going to go to the residential areas and search for a car then search the house for keys. Then you’re going to get in that car and drive north, stay out of towns or cities and don’t be afraid to drive off the roads and into the fields. You’re going to keep heading north until you find a town called Dayton in Ohio, you got that?”
“Why?” She looks at me with a suspicious expression.
“Because if I make it to Florida and if I find the people I’m looking for, then I’m heading back to Dayton with a lot of people,” I tell her. “Look for a farmhouse north of Dayton, two stories with a greenhouse in the back. There’s a cellar and there will be bodies on the lawn. The house should be empty. If it’s the right house, look through it. You’ll know if it’s the right farmhouse.”
“How will I know?” she asks.
“You just will,” I tell her. “Trust me.” I look down at the truck and let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Follow me,” I tell her, and head down the hill.
She follows me back to the truck and I’m afraid that she’s going to pass out when I give her a ten gallon container of gas, ten gallons of water, and enough MREs to get her to Dayton and be well fed if she’s smart. She looks at me as if I’m Jesus Christ and she hugs me. I can feel her body against mine and it’s unsettling. As she pulls away, I look at her and feel shame inside of me. It feels wrong to be hugging someone who isn’t Lindsay. Before I hop into the cab, I tell her to find a car again and to look for a house north of Dayton.
“I hope you make it,” she says to me as I slip the keys into the ignition and turn them.
“If I don’t,” I tell her, “just wait. Someone will come.” There’s something about the look in her eyes that tells me she isn’t going to go. I want her to, I hope that she sees reason and actually goes, but I don’t know, it’s just that look that makes me feel like I’ve wasted my time. She’s going to do whatever the hell she wants.
As I drive away from her and Nick, I know without a doubt that it was Lindsay who brought me to this place. I have no doubt that it was she who was trying to show me that doing a little good and sticking my neck out didn’t always have to end terribly. I want to believe her, but I’m not sure if Lindsay is right. That woman will probably get stopped somewhere along the way and raped before someone kills her. She’s pretty enough that they might keep her around until she’s too much trouble. Or she might just get taken out by Zombies who don’t give a damn about intentions or dreams. I leave them in the distance, looking back every few minutes as they tear into their first MRE. Part of me feels fantastic about leaving them behind, but a small, hidden part is saddened to see them go.
I have absolutely no idea where I am. Without a map, I’m driving blind. I want to stick to the 77, but there’s no way of finding that without wasting copious amounts of fuel. As of right now, I’m sticking to the roads heading south and that’s as well as I can guess. I don’t like driving blind, but options are as plentiful as friends at the moment.
The road doesn’t keep track of time and it feels like an eternity that I’ve been driving. I feel like everything is starting to mesh together and look identical. All the roads, the hills, the desolation, it’s all just one scene playing over and over in a loop. It reminds me of the old days, when I was walking. I don’t envy the past and I sure as hell don’t wish for the good old days back. I like the rumble of the engine and the sound of things zipping by, vanishing into the distance. Who cares about the dust trail or others seeing me, I just want to get to Florida. I pull off at another gas station and let the truck idle for a moment before I kill the engine. I wait for a moment, listening the best I can from inside the cab, waiting for someone to come charging out at me to try and take the truck. I’m being reckless, but I need a map.
Leaning over, I open the glove box, just to make sure that there isn’t one hiding in there. All I find is a manual, a flare gun, and a small medical kit. There’s nothing in the way of navigation in here. I look spitefully at the dead military grade GPS navigator. Fuck that thing. I push open the door and cautiously step out into the world, looking around and expecting a killer to be lurking around every corner.
I hear nothing but the breeze as the drifts of dust slither across the road and concrete. The world isn’t as wet here, isn’t as soft. I don’t think the storm actually made it this far south. When I enter the store, I smile at the sight of forgotten hats with the word ‘Florida’ pasted across them and a dozen stained shirts lying about, still on their hangers with slogans about how wonderful Florida is written across their chests. I’ve made it. I’m in Florida. I smile and shake my head.