“Good question.”
“Yeah.”
They drank until the evening turned red, until their senses became screwed, and the conversation got weird.
“Y’know something,” Gus slurred, holding onto his bottle of Captain Morgan by the neck. “I’ve been up here for practically two fuckin’ years. Two fuckin’ years. Nobody to talk to. This’s been good for me. Really good. Thanks for droppin’ by.” He broke into a giggle then, which Scott joined.
“You talk a lot,” Scott said.
“Do I?”
“Yeah, I mean…” Scott shook his head. “Movies I watched always has the guy all grim and silent and moody like. You haven’t shut up since we met.”
They both chuckled.
“Sorry, man.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I guess I’d be… Nah, I wouldn’t. I’d be the quiet one. Hell, I
am
the quiet one. When I was with the others, I was, anyway.”
“Hmm. Well, you’re here now.”
“Don’t know how long I can stay, though,” Scott said, still nursing his whiskey.
“Huh? Why? You just got here.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what? C’mon now, I saved your ass down there.”
“Yeah, I know, and I appreciate everything, but…”
Gus looked over at his drinking partner and gestured
what?
“That fucker is still out there.”
“Who? Oh, okay, I get it.”
“Yeah,” Scott said quietly and took a sip of whiskey. He shivered, and Gus didn’t know if it was from the booze or the dropping temperature.
“I’m gonna find him. Before he hurts anyone else. And make him pay.”
“Make him pay,” Gus repeated. “You sound like Charles Bronson.”
“Who?”
“Action star from the seventies. Starred in a flick called
Death Wish
.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I hadn’t either, but whoever owned this place from… from before had a whole library of movies on digital.”
“Yeah? That’s cool, man. So why are we out here gettin’ smashed when we could be in there watchin’ movies? It’s startin’ to freeze out here.”
Gus suppressed a rising lump of gas in his throat. “It’s peaceful out here, man. Look.” He swept his arm toward the darkening city.
“It’s peaceful cuz everyone’s fuckin’ frozen to something. Even the dead are fuckin’ frozen to something. Shit, if I were a dead-head right now, I’d be sayin’, ‘
Christ,
it’s fuckin’ cold out here.’”
Gus laughed.
“It’s cold out here,” Scott directed at Gus with a smile.
“You’re sayin’ it’s cold?”
“I think I can use my toes as piano keys.”
“Oh. That’s not kosher. All right. Gimme that.” Gus held out his hand for the bottle of whiskey.
Scott hesitated. “I’m kinda attached to this brand now.”
“I can see that, but gimme anyway.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t lose it.”
“You won’t, eh?”
“You talk a lot for a freezin’ guy. A
quiet
freezin’ guy.”
Scott shrugged and handed over the Crown Royal bottle, which Gus took and immediately threw over the railing.
“Whoops,” Gus said as straight-faced as he could under the circumstances. “Got some bad news for ya.”
“You lost my bottle?”
“Yeah.” Gus shrugged. “Slipped outta my hands. Sorry.”
“I see. I see you managed to hold on to the rum there.”
Gus regarded his bottle for moment, startled, and baseball-pitched that one over the railing.
“Lost that one too, eh?” Scott asked sardonically.
“Yep.”
“I’d call that a drinking problem.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Gus helped the man up. Scott slung an arm around his shoulders. “I got lots in the house.”
“How much you got?” Scott asked.
“Gobs ’n’ gobs.”
“Not sure if that’s a good thing.”
“If it isn’t, I don’t wanna know the bad.”
“What if you run out?”
“Just go get more.”
“More? Where?”
Gus stopped and wheeled around, taking a hopping Scott with him. He pointed to Annapolis. “Down there. Don’t worry about it. When you get all mended up, I’ll show you if you want.”
“Not so keen on that idea.”
“The booze helps.”
They continued their banter all the way back into the house. Gus helped the wounded man get down the steps to the den below. He deposited him in the recliner and went to get more booze. He brought back two new bottles of Crown Royal and Captain Morgan. He then queued up a movie from the terabyte unit to watch on the wide-screen TV.
Death Wish
.
Scott woke up with a black blanket thrown over him and his half-empty bottle of Crown Royal in his lap. He smacked his lips and grimaced, feeling the gummy residue from a night of heavy drinking. His bladder urged him to take immediate action. The den was dark, lit only by a shaft of light from the stairs behind him, and he sniffed dry, cold air. He’d passed out in the recliner, which he thought wasn’t a bad thing since the chair kept his foot somewhat elevated. He remembered reading somewhere that keeping a twisted ankle elevated was a good thing. He arched his back in a stretch and looked around the dark room.
Death Wish
. There was something about a rape in the story, but he couldn’t recall exactly. They had watched that movie and then
Death Wish 2
. Gus had even suggested watching the 2025 remakes of them, but Scott didn’t need to see them. Instead, they’d opted on, of all things, some travel documentaries called
Rick Steves’ Europe
. For the rest of the evening, they had watched images of a Europe they would never see and didn’t even have any idea if it still existed. They marvelled at old world destinations of Venice, which had been completely given in to the sea in 2022, and Sicily, drawing sounds of wonder from two very drunk men.
Scott didn’t know exactly when he’d passed out, only that he did, and that he woke up in the recliner in a dark room, facing a dark TV screen.
“Gus?” He looked around. No Gus. “Hey, Gus!”
Then, he spotted a plastic water jug on the floor next to the recliner. He leaned over the armrest and picked up the jug, which had a note stuck on it. The jug was full of water, and he downed a third of it before stopping to gasp for air. The ink on the note had smeared, and the paragraph left there was unreadable except for “or so,” at the very end, along with Gus’s signature.
“Or so,” Scott said to himself, and again felt the need to pee. Gus hadn’t thought of that, he realized, and he would have to climb the steps to get to his room’s bucket. Taking the jug with him, Scott got out of the recliner, left the booze in the chair, and hopped over to the stairs. He paused there, composing himself for the more difficult part, and began hopping up each step. He almost lost his balance twice, and by the time he reached the main level, his left leg burned with exertion, while his chest ached. Each hop made him feel as if he were on the edge of pissing himself, and the sound of water sloshing around in the jug didn’t help. He went through the house, leaning heavily on walls until he made it back to his room and the bucket. If he had any reservations about using it, they went out in a sigh and a hissing splash of urine. He finished up, tapped and zipped, and lay down on the bed. He took another deep drink of water before capping the jug and placing it beside the bed.
He fell asleep immediately.
The sound of someone moving through the house woke him up again, and he pulled himself up to a sitting position.
“Gus?”
The clatter got closer until Gus’s leather-covered frame filled the doorway. He carried two wooden crutches with him, which he tossed onto the bed.
“There you go,” he said and turned to leave.
“Wait!” Scott blurted.
Gus paused in the doorway.
“You got these for me? I mean, thanks, man! Where’d you get them?”
For a moment, he didn’t think Gus was going to answer. The man appeared to space out before shaking his head. “Hospital.”
“You have any trouble?”
Another spaced-out look. “Yeah,” Gus finally muttered.
The expression on his face silenced any further questioning from Scott, and he listened to the receding footsteps and banging of a door. Scott looked at the crutches and picked them up off the bed. They were about an inch shorter than what he needed, so he took a moment to adjust them. He tested them out, fitting the sponge padding into his armpits, and got moving.
These are great
, he thought, although he was still a little uncomfortable around the back and rib area where he had been shot. But he wouldn’t be restricted to the bed anymore, and his mobility had just improved. He swung himself out into the hall and crutched down to the living room. No Gus. He spotted the sliding door to the deck out front. Getting to the window, Scott looked out and saw Gus sitting in a lawn chair, facing the city. Gus raised a bottle to his lips and took a drink of what Scott knew to be rum.
Man likes to drink
, he thought, and considered going out to join him, but he didn’t. Something stopped him.
Hospital
was what Gus had said, with an exhaustion that sounded both mental as well as physical.
Scott watched him for a bit. A solitary figure set against a drop of gray and black under the cold glare of November, singed around the edges by late fall.
In the end, Scott turned away, leaving the man to his internal sorting of things. He didn’t know the guy, and a few good deeds didn’t mean anything. He stood on the crutches, his body somewhat scrunched up, bad leg lifted off the floor and bum ankle wrapped in thick bandages. Scott made his way back to his room and lay down on the bed. He thought of his old life, baking on the nightshift and sleeping half the day away while the world lived on. It had been a lonely existence, but he had gotten used to it. He’d gotten used to the new world, too, and felt it more in tune with wild animals in nature, where every day was a fight for survival. Although he had to admit getting blasted by whiskey was probably a little bit better. And the house certainly was.
Scott studied the high wood beams of the ceiling and relaxed further. How often had he been able to relax out there with Teddy and Lea? Even when it wasn’t his shift, he’d slept with one eye open. With the wall beyond and the location of the house, he felt safe, and that was important. He knew he had been living on something of a wire in the last two years or so. It was bad when people were turning into dead things in the beginning, and there was simply no explanation given. It had affected him more than he let on, as every person he met could potentially be a carrier for the disease, or whatever it was that turned folks.
Civilization had begun breaking down in late 2026 like some great beast harpooned from multiple directions and bleeding profusely. Scott barricaded himself in his apartment for weeks, having already stockpiled a good supply of preserved food. He lasted maybe three weeks in his place before something found out he was up there on the fifth floor and came to investigate. Those were the beginning of the running times for him, where he lived like a rat, scurrying from place to place, eventually making it to a cabin in the hills, away from it all.
He’d stayed there as long as he could, foraging from nearby communities, doing that for long time until he met up with Teddy, and then Lea.
Strength in numbers
, Teddy had said. But Scott thought there was strength in being alone, too.
The set-up Gus had was good. The best Scott had come across. He only wondered if, being alone in all that time, Gus still had all of his marbles or was suffering from some form of cabin fever. Scott hoped for the full marbles. He didn’t want to think about Gus being nuts, but he would be on guard, just in case. There
was
strength in numbers, and he had to admit if Gus hadn’t come along when he did, his fate would have been decided. He would’ve been one of those poor bastards walking around rotting in the summer and freezing in the winter.
Scott closed his eyes. He suddenly wanted a shot of whiskey, but he’d left the bottle downstairs. Weariness seeped into his frame. It was something, to truly relax, to truly let down your guard and not think about what was outside.
If only for a short time.
*
A loud banging woke Scott up. He tensed, listening in wide-eyed fright.
“You fucker! You lousy, cheap-assed cocksucker! Fuck.
Fuck!
Jesus!”
Scott looked around for a weapon, but saw nothing except his crutches.
“Goddammit!” came the voice.
It became quiet then, and Scott heard the muted grumblings of someone that sounded like Gus, but he wasn’t certain, then the clanging of metal.
Footsteps approached. Louder, coming down the hallway. Scott tensed. They slowed as they got closer to the open doorway before finally stopping.
A bald head came around the door, and that simple silent appearance scared the living shit out of Scott.