I stand in his doorway, and it is understood one of us will
die.
There is no shame in this, and he will bear no anger for my
attempt on his life. It’s the nature of our world, of the course that humanity
has driven its fatalistic history; we’ve arrived at this point in time, where I
stand on the threshold of another man’s property and beg him for his shelter.
We operate under our guises: mine of pity, his of hospitality.
There is no one with me as I greet him. The street is empty
of people and filled with dead cars. Hulking and useless, they wait for owners that
will never return. I hate absolutes, but this is fact. The sun wanes behind
suffocating clouds. Murders of crows fill the bare trees that lilt along the
sidewalks.
He welcomes me inside with a sweep of his arm, a tepid smile
on his skeletal face. Hands of white knuckles grip the door open for me. A worn
place with flaking baby blue paint, cracked walkway and a dirty welcome mat, I
glance behind me as I enter the house. One can never be too sure.
There are brown stains on the floor as I walk into his
living room. In a past life, I would have known them to be the muddy boot
stains of children, running rampant through the house of their vigilant father,
this solemn man guiding me to our destiny. But I know better. They are not mud
stains.
We sit down in what remains of his living room, he to the
reading chair at the way we came, and I to a ragged love seat––pads murky and
springs jutting up. An empty fireplace with a stained plaster mantelpiece gapes
its black maw. It looks cold. A dusty picture frame leans atop the fireplace. A
long crack runs the length of it.
His hands settle into his lap, calm and methodically they
rest, as if catching their breath for the coming battle. Well practiced, this man, I think. He sighs deeply and begins the
pleasantries. “How is it out there? You can set down your heavy pack if you’d
like. It looks heavy.”
“Yes,” I say and weigh out my words as he has done for me,
selecting the ones most suited to draw him out. “It’s bad out there. Not many
folks are likely to accept strangers anymore. The last town I came from was
burnt to the ground. Looked to be like some work of the Convicts.” At this he
nods understandingly. The Convicts are well known for their chaos but not
survivors.
“I was lucky to have made it this far. Just missed a roving
band when I came down your street. How’ve you avoided them?” I leave the
question hanging in the air, keeping my mouth parted, as though I may speak at
any moment. I slowly ease it shut.
“They come through here often,” he says. “They killed the
people across the street just the other week.” He scratches at his forehead
where there are thin, long scabs. “It was their kid that blew their cover. But
I’m glad that she got it over with. For them. Kids are realistic. People too, I
guess.” He looks up at me warily then continues.
“You been in any groups? I hear there were some caravans
heading out towards the Family’s Estate. You hear any of that?”
I unzip my backpack and pull out a cracker I’d saved
yesterday, pilfered from the hands of a dying woman. I munch the cracker
greedily and think of her last words. His eyes take in the cracker, and a
single bead of sweat forms and drips down his cheek. I drag the zipper
cautiously, to not excite him, an ominous soundtrack for our battle. He fidgets
as I seal it. He’s a smart man. His hands never move from his lap, but I can
see the veins pulsing.
I clear my throat and swallow the dry flakes. “I’m headed
toward the Estate. It’s one of the only places this side of the mountains
that’ll take people in. Or so I thought. I’m glad you prove otherwise.” I grin
and take another big bite.
His smiles weakly and nods vigorously to make up for it.
“Sure thing, whatever I can do to help, really. Just glad to talk to another
person after so long.”
“Yeah,” I say, “It’s been a bit lonesome for me as well. But
the path of the righteous is surely a trial for a reason, no?” I chuckle.
He doesn’t, and he wipes his palms against his pants and
leaves large streaks behind. I stare for a moment too long, and I regret it,
because it ends the charade––our farce of humanity; in my mind, as I move for
my knife, I know that my humanity has been gone for a long time, and I hope
that his has been better, more lasting, more permanent. What a ludicrous
notion.
I charge him with my knife drawn, screaming for no reason
other than to clear my head of the screams within. He is quiet––having steeled
himself, and he meets me head on, and I admire this. He wipes his hands once more
on his stomach. A quick sweep from him throws my lunge off target. He does not
allow any separation and grips my knife hand.
He is stronger than I am, though his build is significantly
smaller, and we tumble over the back of my couch. We hit the floor and grapple
over the knife in my hand. His head is tucked under my chin, and I maneuver to
bite him, but he keeps away from my jaws. The taste of the cracker is still
there.
The knife flies from my hand and slides into an empty corner
of the room with an empty umbrella rack far from us. I push his face away and land a heavy punch
that sends him sprawling onto the living room coffee table, which doesn’t break
and shucks him off toward his reading chair at the opposite end of the corner
where the knife lays. Laughing, I pick the knife up.
I swing it from side to side in front of him, and his face
is horrified. I have beaten him at his own game. He, who thought to slay me in
his own home, will meet his demise. A
fitting end for his treachery, I think. I take step forward, and he
flinches. I roar with victory and run at him. A gun blasts.
I glare at him. How?
What has he done to me? I drop to my knees, his face coming toward me, not
smug, but intensely worn like the cushions I had rested on not moments ago. His
brow seems heavy, and he walks up to me, knife in hand––from where I have no
idea. I feel my knife drop away. He whispers something in my ear, slashes my
throat, and lays me down against the stained hardwood floors. My bowels loosen.
I stare at him, life flowing out of me in gushing red tides,
but he is not looking at me. He is hugging a small child, wrapped up in the
largest snow jacket I have ever seen. It looks like a snowman, rotund and
removed from nature and plopped onto small stubby feet. I have not seen a child
in years. They are shaking and rejoicing in my death.
The gun, smoking and obscene, drops from the snowchild’s
hands, and the maw of the barrel looms upon me. They pull my backpack apart,
and I lament the loss of my goods, but they throw it all at me, heaping it on
my numb body, until they come across a flashlight I took from the dying
woman–who’s crackers have only just settled in my stomach.
My eyelids droop as the snowchild weeps, arms encasing the
flashlight. I feel warm, then cold, and warm again. I shiver. Poor child, in love with a flashlight. I
would do anything to give this child more flashlights if that will make it stop
crying. Maybe my humanity is not so
gone.
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