When Gods Fail (8 page)

I placed Paul in my sights. They were at
least 400 meters away. This was an untested rifle. If I missed they
could easily hide and launch some counter attack. Then I wouldn't
be so lucky. My handguns I'd used several times now, and I knew
that they were trustworthy. I slid back from the edge of the peak.
Crouching, I ran towards the mouth of the cave. They would take at
least a few more minutes, pulling those sleds, to get to the
cave.

I slung the rifle over my shoulder, so it
was behind me, and pulled out my two handguns. I double-checked to
make sure bullets were chambered. I raised each gun up to my chest.
Off to the left of the cave entrance, I waited behind a large rock
jutting out from the hill.

Every other second I'd check behind me,
check above me. Two minutes later, I wondered if I'd misjudged
which direction they were headed. I looked behind me, tried to
listen for some sort of dislodged rock falling down the hill. But I
couldn't hear a thing. My heart started to bang against my ribcage.
This is a trap, the voice said. You need to get out and at least
find higher ground. Find a place where you can shoot them from a
long distance, and from where you can hide if anything goes wrong.
Coming this close to them will only put you at risk. Fool.

I was about to turn and find refuge in the
higher ground when the sliding sleds with matching footsteps
crunched on the other side of the rock.

"Leave the sleds here, we'll take the
containers down, then bring them up one by one."

"Why don't you stay here with the sleds.
I'll get the water myself."

I could tell there was some tension in
Bill's voice. I glanced behind me one last time.

"What's been gettin' to you Bill? How can
you fit through that hole? We'll both go."

I heard some containers scrape against the
sleds. It was now or never.

I stepped out. Both arms extended with the
handguns gripped tight. My foot crunched under some rocks and Paul
looked up, startled. I fired into his chest. He looked shocked. I
fired again into his face. The shock switched to nothing as he
collapsed to the floor.

Bill stared at me. Fear crept across his
face, then an infantile acceptance, not of his fate but of me. It
made me pause for a second. But in that second the voice chanted my
doubts down. He just lost a friend. Don't make the same mistake as
you did with the mother. It's not like he didn't try to kill you.
The last cogitation filled me with another second of hesitation
before I pulled the trigger. Right in his stomach. He doubled over.
I fired another shot into the top of his head. He fell over in a
funny position, his ass in the air, before he toppled over to his
side.

It had to be done.

I walked over to Paul. Checked his pulse.
Nothing. Tapped his eyeballs. Nothing. Same with Bill. His face was
nice, kind, like a child's. With one hand I covered his face with
his shirt. It exposed his belly, but that was better than seeing
his face. I followed their trail for a few meters then stopped and
waited. Just to see if someone else was with or following them.
When I was certain there was no one. I walked back to their bodies.
All I could hear was my heart beating. All I could taste was blood
in my mouth. I tongued my gums. Blood flowed. It tasted metallic.
Good.

One by one I searched them for anything
worth keeping, rolled them on to a sled, dragged them to the edge
of the hill, and tipped them over. I hid the sleds above the cave,
partially covering them with ash and rocks.

I picked up a few containers and tied them
to my backpack before walking back to the shack. My heart had
slowed down and I felt elated, like an invincible ghost. This holy
feeling worried me.

*

Jenny sat in the same place as when I'd
left. I saw her and an anger grew inside me. I didn't care about
the previous night. I wanted to see some appreciation for the other
things I had done for her.

Don't be too firm.

I walked up to her and placed my hand on her
shoulder. The same dress, it even had my smell on it. It was
probably better not to tell her what had happened.

The look on Bill's face flashed across my
mind again. I felt weak. I felt more human.

"Change," I said to her, shaking her softly
with my hand.

Her stolid look shook me out of my spell,
and I lumbered outside to take a piss. When I came back inside she
hadn't moved. "Is there a toilet here? You said you rarely went
out."

She pointed at some small bags. I looked
them over. "Well no more wasting bags. From now on you go outside
and do your business, got it?"

Her look was sharp. Empathy rose inside me.
I walked over to her. She needed some kind of focus, then she would
be able to get over this. "Listen. I don't know what your problem
is, but I'm not your enemy."

Another sneer.

I looked around the shack again. It needed
cleaning. Rearranging. "I ran into Bill and Paul."

No reaction from her.

"I think they ran into Big Lee and your
father. I finished them off, but I couldn't find your family." I
clasped my hand around her shoulder. She nodded slowly. I leaned in
to hug her. She stayed stiff. "Sorry," I whispered in her ear.

I pulled back.

"I said change, didn't I?" I said in the
softest voice I could manage.

She got up and pulled out another dress. It
was white with flowers, though still dirty. She stared at me
blankly for a few seconds before I got the message. I walked away
and started to arrange the cans in an orderly manner. After a
minute I turned to take her in. The dress fell casually on her
breasts, her hips. It grabbed all the air from my lungs. Everything
in me wanted to take her one more time. It wouldn't matter would
it? As far as I was concerned it didn't. No one else in the world
but the two of us. Be nicer, I thought.

I counted the ammunition remaining. I would
need more. I decided that tomorrow I would head out to Bill and
Paul's place to fish for some ammunition. I perked up trying to
remember if there was anyone else with them. They hadn't mentioned
any, had they?

I paused my planning to take Jenny's curves
in; it filled me with raw energy. She was beautiful, and she was
mine. New world, I reminded myself. There was nothing that mattered
but survival. And in the most basic sense we were the last hope for
the human race. Pure and simple. She would come to understand that
with age. Her eyes moved around the shack and rested on the place
we slept the previous night.

The light peeking through the shack was
turning sepia. Another gorgeous sunset. I wanted to enjoy it with
her.

"Listen," I said and strode over to her. She
sat on the chair with that grim look on her face. I remembered that
she was probably a teenager and still liable to fall into moods.
Sooner or later she would come around. I rested on my haunches, my
face next to her knees. "Are you thinking about your family?"

She nodded her head, some tears poured down
her cheek. I almost smiled. It wasn't something wrong with me. She
obviously was going through a tumultuous time. I took her hands in
mine and leaned forward to hug her as she shook.

"I'm sorry. But I got the men who killed
them."

"Are you certain they're dead?" She leaned
back to take in my face. Again she studied me, like she was looking
to poke through my mind.

I nodded, suppressing a smirk. "Before I
killed one he said as much."

"You didn't say that before."

"Sorry. They're dead." It was better I said
it now and wait for her to get over the loss. I glanced her over.
Her cleavage peaked through the top of her dress.

She cried for a few more minutes. Let her
face rest on my chest. I felt like it was the best that I could get
out of her. I took her hand, led her outside, and sat us down on a
rock with a vista of the land that was ours.

The sky had managed to outdo itself this
time. It bled orange, red and amber, over a sheet of cracked glass,
each separate pane a slightly different color.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

She looked at me, curious, then nodded her
head and rested her head on my shoulder. Her hand came down on my
other side. I felt calm and collected as the panes in the east
slowly turned dark purple then black and spread to the west. When
it was done an evil blackness came over the land, and I felt cold.
I held her closer, and she hugged me back. We went back inside, and
I made us food. After dinner, I laid out some other clothes for a
makeshift bed and lay beside her.

"We'll have to get some work done. You're
going to have to help. All right?" I said.

She nodded her head and buried it in my
chest. I pulled her tight, felt her curves with my hands.

"How did you kill those two men?" she
asked.

The question seemed out of place. Her voice
was filled with a certain hunger I couldn't quite understand. "I
shot them."

She looked me in my eye then studied my
face. It was an uncomfortable feeling. "How do you feel?"

I shrugged. I could still see Bill's face.
Feel his presence in the room. I could feel Big Lee's words in the
room too. Please... Don't. Why burden her with that? "Nothing. They
were bad men."

"Have you killed men before?" she asked.

Your Family.

"No," I lied.

Again she scrutinized my face. Could she
tell in the small pauses, the fact that I took a nanosecond more to
think, that I was lying? No, she was too young.

"They were our only neighbors," she
said.

"How can you be certain?" I said, trying to
change the direction of the conversation.

"Pa said so. He said there was no one around
for miles."

"Well we can't be certain, there is a lot of
exploring to do," I said.

I had the plan in my head. Each day pick a
direction and walk. I had to find soft soil. I had to find a way to
live. The rations around us wouldn't last more than a year, if we
were lucky. I wanted to find a place that was well hidden, better
protected. I also wanted to find people.

"And you killed them. The only other
people." She finally held eye contact with me for a few seconds
before she shifted her gaze somewhere behind me.

What was she getting at? I wanted to dig
into her mind. Now. Now. Now. "What are you trying to say?" I
nudged her. "That I shouldn't have defended myself?"

"You were defending yourself?" she asked.
Her voice strained with doubt.

"Yes. Do you think they gave your family a
chance?"

"One man can't kill two people unless he
surprises them."

She stayed silent. I did too.

"I did." My voice cracked as I said it.

She moved her body away from me. Though it
was only a few inches, the distance scared me. As if I was on the
edge of a cliff, wind whipping on my back. How could I possibly get
to her? Did she know the lie about her family? Could she sense the
killer inside me? This wasn't fair. She had to be on my side. We
were the only two people left. We had nothing but each other. Why
didn't she see that?

"Listen," I waited for her to look at me.
"Could you please tell me what's going on with you?"

She looked at me. "I don't know," she
said.

"Please understand that I am trying to help.
Would you rather I leave?"

Nothing. But her eyes seemed to jump at the
thought.

"Is that it? What will you do? Who will
protect you? You think the next men that find you will to be nice
to you?" I drew in some air. "We are the only people around, so we
need to stick together." I looked for her hands. "I know the land
looks daunting, but there's hope. We have a chance to make
something here. Sooner or later we'll find people and we can build
something together. Do you understand?"

She didn't reply.

The next day, using the hills as cover, I
took her to Bill and Paul's container. The walk took a few hours. I
went inside first, searched everything. They had dug out several
different chambers for themselves. I grabbed as much ammunition as
I could, gave a load to Jenny and headed back. It took a few days
going back and forth to clear their place out of everything useful.
Their food doubled our rations. They had kerosene lanterns,
batteries, radios, grenades, a machine gun with several belts,
tripwires, oil, generators, filters, knives, acetylene torch, steel
beams, other survival items, and books; books on survival, on
growing, on surviving a nuclear holocaust. I wondered if this
literature was based on actual knowledge.

When we transferred everything, I made
another decision to move to the cave. The shack was too small.
Jenny seemed all right with the move, if a little recalcitrant.
Every time I said something, she would listen, do a task but stayed
away from looking at me or speaking a word.

I let her be. She needed to mourn her
family. And now, more than ever, I felt a strong connection to her,
as if we were finally a couple.

*

"I'm going to burn down their place
tomorrow. We got everything we wanted from it," I said.

We were sleeping together in the cave. I'd
managed to cover the entrance so that it was hidden. I'd glued
rocks on a metal sheet for a door. Someone might have found it if
they looked closely, but for the most part the concealment was
perfect. The cave was now home. And I hoped that being away from
the shack would help her forget her family quicker. I threw the
blanket away as well. Better to eliminate the evidence of that
night.

"Why?" she asked.

Her words startled me. Spoken softly, they
broke her silent cocoon like a sledgehammer. I could smell her
clothes, her sex. I wanted her, but I didn't want her to contradict
me, or ask too many questions. "What do you mean?"

"I mean didn't you say you wanted to build
something in the world? How can you do that if you're burning
things down?" she said.