rainbowfic | Folly 15, Milk Bottle 20

Name:

starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends: 28 Days Later Edition
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Summer Carnival, Milk Bottle, Summer Blockbuster), Mosaic (with 28 Days Later), Mural, Glitter (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/patsy-cline), Fingerpainting (because writing everyone in a new setting is HARD.)
Colors: Folly 15 (I'm sure he doesn't bite.), Milk Bottle 20 (Calliope)
Word Count: 14,200ish
Rating: R
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: The Rage virus has hit the US, and it’s every man for each other.
Note: OH MY GOD. THIS WAS SO HARD. AND SO FUN. I think finding that poem early in the second draft saved it, because it helped set a mood for the narrator. More installments forthcoming.

To clear some things up: Sorrell is Corwin’s intended love interest from when I was first drafting this ‘verse in proto-novel form. (This hasn’t changed, she still will be when I get around to writing stuff in order.) I just haven’t gotten around to writing about her much here. Spenser is pretty much the same, but looks the way he does when he’s living rough. Corwin has his normal facial scarring turned up to eleven in this. MARTIN IS NOT DEAD HE IS KICKING AROUND HEALTHY AS ANYTHING AND PROBABLY HAVING FUN. And I think that’s it. Next, the stuff you came here to read.

Every Man For Each Other

Night Job
I woke up just before dawn, to the sound of someone pounding on the rattly motorhome door.

These days, you can’t answer any door without taking a few moments to answer a question:

What kind of pounding is it?

Knocking or banging?

Coming home or smelling blood?

This pounding sounded like knocking, so I grabbed my flashlight and stood by the window, pulling the blinds to the side. Outside was a small, slender figure. Dressed in black; face obscured by a respirator. Standing, as always, like he thinks he’s big. For now, we were safe. And, just as importantly, so was he. I opened the door.

“Welcome back, Martin.”

His voice, under the plastic, was muffled.

“Hey.”

Martin removed his facemask, hair falling down over his eyes, sweaty and dark. He pulled down his sweatshirt hood, took the clip out of his pistol, placed it on the table, and sat down. I smiled. Like I always do. As if smiling might dispel the tension that had crept between us.

“So, what were you up to tonight?”

He shrugged, took a water bottle out of his backpack, and drank about half of it in one go.

“…Nothin’ much. I grabbed a bunch of food and first-aid shit. Picked off a few Infected, so that’s like, five less things to worry about, I guess.”

I ran a hand through his damp hair.

“Good work, kiddo.”

When I think about it, and I rarely do, it occurs to me that Martin is technically young enough to be the son I never had. But, I never wanted to be a mom, and I don’t love him like that. I love him, even now, like a kid brother. A kid brother that spends his nights running through the dark streets, protecting us while we sleep. The little guy really works too hard. And, even after what happened, I still catch myself feeling this intense concern and fondness for him. I still want him to be okay. It’s a good sign. Maybe things will come right again.

I sat next to him. He grabbed a protein bar out of his backpack and started chowing down.

“Yeah, well, I don’t really mind… Also, man, these things really start deteriorating after a while.”

I think, just like everything else.

*****

We’ve had our division of labor for a while now.

I do all of the driving and most of the shooting.

Corwin sits on standby with a stack of maps and a box of colored pencils, making corrections, adjusting for our new world. Drawing legends that point to clean water and gasoline instead of toll-roads and expressways.

Martin works the night shift, doing whatever needs done. What those things are, I’m not sure. Sometimes, I feel like I’d rather trust his judgment than know what he does in the dark. So, I don’t ask. All I know is, we’re safer than we’d be if he stayed in.

And that they’re not really people anymore, anyway. So I can’t fault him for what he might do, or how much he might actually enjoy it. He’s making sure that we, at least, stay people. If he likes it, all the better. Sometimes, you need intrinsic motivation like that.

Besides, when he comes back, he’s small and tired and personable. We shoot the shit for a while, then say goodnight. Martin curls up on the tiny bench with delusions of couchhood. I go back to the hard bed to finish out my last few hours of sleep. As for Corwin, he only knows what’s going on when I climb in next to him, make the mattress shift.

“…Martin back?”

He doesn’t turn around, or even pull down the covers. Just mumbles into the bed and hopes I’ll hear him.

“Yep.”

I sit down next to him, run my hand through his hair. Then over where the hair stops, and the skin turns rubbery and uneven. He isn’t as sensitive there as he used to be, so I can touch him again. And I touch him all I can.

“He okay?”

“Just fine.”

Just fine, like everything between the two of them. I’m the only one who can’t let it go.

“Good.”

Having gotten all the information he needed, Corwin dropped back off to sleep.

I think, like I do every night, that, if this had to happen, at least it waited until we’d already found each other.

Not that I wouldn’t have cut down a whole Rage-frenzied army to get to where he was.

*****

Since he goes to bed with me, but usually sleeps clear through the night, Corwin always wakes up first. Which works out well for him. Before I get behind the wheel and send our house rumbling down the road, he needs a good, still half hour to head to the bathroom with his swabs and gauze and saline and steady hands. To clean and pack his empty eye socket. By the time I’m up and awake, he’s draped over the little armchair, already wearing his dingy white eyepatch, reading one of his old books while Martin snores on the couch. I kiss him on the lips or the head, and tell him it’s time to get going. I take the driver’s seat, and he takes shotgun, with his literal shotgun by his side. Martin just goes on sleeping. He must have a gift.

Usually, he doesn’t get up until the middle of the afternoon. Then spends a few minutes staggering around and swearing, trying make his way to the nearest cupboard with some kind of food in it. Once he’s wolfed something down, he comes to sit on the floor between the front seats, looking even shorter than normal. I like having him there, so I always take my right hand off the wheel and pet his hair for as long as he’ll let me. And he eventually tells me to knock it off, but for those few minutes before he gets too embarrassed to let me continue, I feel him getting more and more relaxed. It’s how I know that, really, he’s just as overwhelmed as the rest of us. That he still needs me.

The way all three of us need each other.

Oral History
Before all this, I taught lessons at a firing range. But, sometimes, I’d feel the urge to pick up a temporary job that took me outside. That’s how I ended up planting trees at the college.

Where I noticed that there was one particular guy who always watched me.

Not in a weird way or anything, more like I was the only one around doing anything interesting. Honestly, he wasn’t wrong. And, since everyone else was boring, I started watching him, too. To be truthful, he wasn’t always all that interesting, either. Usually, I saw him on his smoke break.

What was interesting, was that instead of gravitating to the normal places I always saw people smoking, he’d just pick any old random place far enough from the buildings, and sit down on the ground. Then he’d start smoking, and, typically, doing something else. Just little things, like clicking a pen, or fiddling with his keys, or fidgeting with a kind of intensity not normally associated with fidgeting. That was interesting, too. It seemed like he really enjoyed just existing for the sake of existing.

Other times, I’d actually get a glimpse of his regular life. Once in a while, a grey-haired man would duck out of a door and yell something at him, and then the smoking man would mutter something like “where is that little shit?” then get up to wander around the campus until he found a shorter, darker, younger-looking man who would make a series of aggressive gestures and then hand him something. The second guy was even more interesting, honestly, and I always looked forward to seeing what he’d be doing when the smoking man finally tracked him down.

One time, I saw a hand, that could only have belonged to him, reach down from the branches of a tree and hand the smoking man a dilapidated-looking stack of papers.

Since he usually went inside at the end of these exchanges, I never saw what happened when he got whatever the grey-haired man wanted, and I didn’t really understand the authority chain they obviously had going on. But, it was fun to watch.

Eventually, he complimented me on my good job with the trees. And I learned more in time.

The smoking man’s name was Corwin, and the kid who wandered all over creation with the papers was Martin. They were an assistant professor and a TA respectively, and they worked for the same professor. So basically, what happened was, the professor would yell at Corwin, and Corwin would yell at Martin, and nothing would get done.

What really surprised me, because they looked so antagonistic when I watched them, was that the pair were attached at the hip off the clock. God, I’d never seen two more mismatched people in my entire life. Martin was a prodigy who entered college when he was barely old enough to enter driver’s ed, and he carried himself with all the confidence, ruthlessness, and straight-up pettiness of someone who’d never had to deal with people telling him he was wrong.

As for Corwin, I wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing within five miles of a university in the first place. He seemed like someone who should have been around a hundred years ago, pressing flowers, or photographing snowflakes, or sketching things he saw through a microscope. But, he was here now, and he was trying to teach physics to a bunch of ungrateful little snots. Because he didn’t fit in anywhere, and this was just the place he’d gotten stuck.

It seemed like no one appreciated him for what he was, so I decided I would.

He was never much of a conversationalist, but the man had so much pathos that it would have been harder not to befriend him.

And falling in love with him was just as easy.

If pretty damn embarrassing. He was a full decade and a half my junior. Only in his upper twenties, young enough to still be something of a tabula rasa. And I’d decided a long time ago that I didn’t have much use for men, period, let alone ones that were barely men at all.

But, unfinished as he was, something about him fascinated me.

He was just so thoughtful and self-possessed. He was preoccupied with small details, and driven to understand everything. I could have listened to him forever, even if he wasn’t great at talking. Because I got the idea that there was something different right behind his eyes. Something I’d never seen before, and couldn’t explain, but knew had been there right alongside us this whole time, a largely-ignored tangent in the human story that would complete the picture, lock it into place.

He was special, because I saw in him a whole other way of being ordinary.

And he liked me back. Said I was a good listener. That he liked how I concentrated when I buried the roots. That I knew how to touch him without invading his space to do it, as if I’d cracked some secret code.

It was a weird relationship, but we were happy. Are happy I think the heart of it is, we make each other feel heard. And we had an interesting time discovering that. We did a lot of talking, or at least as much as he could manage. We also did a whole lot of nothing, too, but it was pretty great nothing. And, through Corwin, Martin found himself attached to both of us, which no one particularly minded. He was a third wheel, but it’s not like any of us hadn’t heard of a tricycle. The way he communicated and conducted himself took a little getting used to, but, once I got accustomed to his unpredictable, occasionally caustic personality, I came to care about him a great deal. He wasn’t malicious. He was just terribly funny, in his own way, and a little too used to being on top. Young and stupid; too smart for his own damn good. I tried, very gently, to knock him down a peg.

We went on like this for a while, and it was perfect.

Then, about two years into it, we started hearing about strange things happening in Britain. Riots, but not riots. Twitching limbs, gnashing teeth, people being torn apart.

They said it was a virus. Called it “Rage,” too worn-out to be anything but brutally literal. The nation was quarantined, and then fell. It was horrible, but it was over. One for the history books.

When Corwin and I started joking-not-joking about getting married, we heard about another outbreak. This one spread to mainland Europe.

That’s when it all started going to hell. There was no turning it around.

The world was holding its breath.

And then we started hearing about possible cases in the United States. At first, we all assumed they were just rumors. Then that started looking less and less likely.

You know shit’s bad when people are crossing their fingers and hoping it’s Ebola.

Still, it was far enough away that we were all still going through the motions. What they don’t tell you about the End of the World, is that it isn’t some singular event. It comes a little at a time. Like sitting inside during the longest blizzard, watching as the cancellation announcement list scrolling across your TV screen lengthens until you realize they’re just listing everything.

My boss took off, and I found myself unemployed. People were plundering the firing range for ammo. Corwin was teaching alone, in a nearly-empty lecture hall, covered in chalk dust and white at the knuckles. Martin was stern and serene as a monk, meditating, silently praying to the CDC.

If prayer works, they didn’t hear him.

The evacuations started getting more frequent. Closing in around our city. Proving themselves futile. It’s hard to evacuate from a disaster that can be everywhere at once.

And I’ll never forget that man charging up my driveway. They way he looked. Just like on the news, but worse in person.

In person, he didn’t look like a monster.

In person, you can see that it really is a sickness.

God, those strangled noises. As much pain as Rage. I had to shoot him. I had to. It was self-defense.

And he needed to be put down.

That, it turned out, was the first day of the rest of my life.

Before I know it, I’m hijacking a motorhome, gun on a strange temple, red-faced and spitting, marching someone I’d never met to his death.

It had to be done.

My responsibility wasn’t to him.

It was to my lover, collapsed and smoldering in the back seat of my truck. And his sidekick, no matter what he had done or would go on to do in our uncertain future. And myself. The only Me I’ve got.

People who think “every man for himself” sounds too ruthless are underestimating what we’re willing to do for each other.

Supply Run
Corwin and Martin, bless their hearts, still talk about their jobs and their classes like they’re going back at the end of the summer. This never-ending summer in which we‘ve found ourselves.

“Oh, that guy? Man, he was stupid.”

Corwin started laughing, and I wanted to ask which guy they meant, but I also wanted to keep listening to the conversation as-is. Martin made a hateful little snorting noise.

“Tell me about it. I tutored him.”

Martin knows how to put air quotes around a word without using his hands. In this case, “tutored” either meant “sold him test answers” or “tried to tutor him for real and failed miserably.” Corwin stared dreamily into space for a while.

“…Huh. Wonder what happened to him?”

Neither of them said anything after that. Sometimes, they do remember: school’s out forever. I’d never plant another tree on that campus. Corwin was probably the last person I’d ever teach how to shoot.

But, you make the best of things. Martin was especially good at that.

“Stop!”

I slammed on the breaks, not knowing if I was getting ready to cap a few Infected, or yell at the little fucker for screwing around. I was out for blood either way.

“Martin, what in god’s name!?”

He flinched, and I felt a bit satisfied with myself. It takes some doing, making him flinch does.

“Jeeze, take it down a notch… I was just gonna say there’s a store over there.”

Martin pointed out the passenger side window, right past Corwin’s head.

“It’s probably picked clean by now.”

“No, look! The windows in the sliding doors aren’t busted out, and there isn’t any trash blowing around the parking lot. If people have been here, they didn’t, like, ransack the place, so there’s probably something.”

I guess it couldn’t hurt.

“Corwin?”

He shrugged.

“I could stand to stretch my legs, yeah.”

It was decided: finding it un-ransacked, we’d ransack it ourselves.

*****

Inside, it smelled like all the other stores. By which I mean, we had to tie bandanas over our faces; to keep out the stench of old milk and rotten fruit. Rows and rows of green meat, fuzzy and unrecognizable. The freezer section was a museum display of soggy, moldy cardboard. So we kept to the middle isles, looking for dried-out things, things in plastic, things in cans. Martin was filling his backpack with dozens of rattling bottles; OTC meds and multivitamins. Corwin, needing a break more than anything else, was sitting on the customer service desk, smoking some cigarettes he’d taken out of the locked shelf behind him, which he’d apparently opened with a can of fruit cocktail. There was broken glass everywhere. I sat down beside him.

“…Didn’t you quit?”

A shrug.

“I didn’t quit. I just… Well, there stopped being stores.”

“Well, you should quit now. You need to be able to run.”

He scoffed at me, flicked his butt on the ground, and got started on another one.

“I’ve never been able to run! I trip over my own feet…” He reached down and grabbed the can off the floor. “…You wanna help me open this?”

I was just about to find the housewares isle and fetch us a can opener, when I heard a shot ring out from somewhere on the other side of the store. I leapt to my feet and started running. Corwin followed. And, like he said, tripped over his own feet. I was crouching down to help him up when Martin backed into me, stumbled, and fell on his ass. He was still shooting. I ducked and covered my ears.

“For Christ’s sake, be careful!”

“We got bigger problems, alright!?”

Martin was shooting at a bloody woman-not-woman in a flowered dress. A clumsy, messy, bang-bang snarl-snarl bleed-bleed deal, his legs still draped over my back. Eventually, she stopped moving long enough for Martin to get her square between the eyes, and she hit the tiles. Still panting, he slipped the pistol back in the holster.

“You guys okay?”

I nodded.

“Anyone get sprayed?”

Corwin shook his head. Though, if anyone had, Martin would have cut them down by now, so it was a pretty pointless question.

Then we all decided we had enough. In more ways than one.

Time to go.

On the way out, I heard Corwin mutter something.

“Well, I hope your Spam and Tylenol was worth it.”

Highwayman
One night, we decided to turn in when it was barely dusk. It hadn’t been a good day. No Infected, no real difficulties of any kind, but it was just one of those days. We were road-weary and at each other’s throats. My gas foot was wearing out.

So I took my foot off the pedal. We could drive more tomorrow.

And then the banging started.

This time, it was banging, and the person doing the banging was out for blood.

But not in the way we all feared.

Though, maybe we should. It wasn’t like this was the first time.

He wasn’t Infected. He was just a man. Meaning, he had a reason to want to kill us. And the dexterity to break one of our fucking windows with a wrench.

Martin crashed through the door before I could tell him to be careful, so I had to crash right after him.

Not that he couldn’t handle himself. He fired a few warning shots, and when the man didn’t stop trying to break enough window to crawl through, he sent another shot flying right past him.

The stranger, as they usually do, had a weapon of his own. Only this time, I’d never seen anything like it. There was a flash, and what could have only been a goddamn thunderclap, and then Martin wobbled a few steps backward, twitching and vibrating erratically. There was a smoking hole in the left arm of his pullover. Something in his hand contracted, and he shot at the other man again, completely by accident, missing him by a narrow margin, scaring him half to death.

While the stranger still shaken-up, Martin regained control and pistol-whipped him, hard, across the side of the head. That staggered him, and he crumpled to the ground, screaming “we can strike a deal, we can strike a deal,” over and over again. Martin was pulling back the gun for another blow, but I thought the first one was already as step over the line, so I had to try and stop him.

“Martin, that’s enough!”

“He’s gonna kill us, Sorrell! Kill us! Dead!”

“I understand. But holding him at gunpoint, or trying to scare him a little… That’s one thing. This is…”

The man on the ground wasn’t trying to bargain with us anymore. In fact, he wasn’t doing much of anything, so I finally got a good look at him. Shoulder-length, sort of dishwater-blonde hair, now stuck to his face and neck with blood on one side. Big glasses, jumpsuit like mechanics wear in cartoons. I couldn’t really figure out what kind of person he was, because I’d never really seen a combination of attributes like that before. Then he propped himself up on his elbows and puked.

Martin pinned him, and pressed the muzzle of the gun to the back of his head.

I understood being a little freaked-out by the sound of someone vomiting. Nowadays, it usually means they’re Infected, and that you have to act quickly before they rip you apart, or make you join them. By now, it’s almost Pavlovian. But this guy obviously wasn’t infected. He was talking.

He probably just wanted a fucking can of Spam.

“Martin, chill! You probably just gave him a concussion.”

Now that he was restrained, I could start talking, see what he was all about.

“Hello.”

His hair was directing the blood from his wound right into his mouth, so he had to spit before he answered me.

“Oh, now you fuckin’ say hi? Jesus Christ!”

I knelt down, so I could make real eye-contact with him.

“I don’t like greeting people who try to kill me and my friends.”

“I was only gonna kill someone if they, like, tried to kill me.”

There was something crazy and intense behind those eyes, but I held steady.

“…Fair enough. So, what’s this “deal” you were talking about.”

I nodded at Martin, trying to signal that he could loosen up a little, but he didn’t budge. Which I guess was okay, but I was worried this guy would vomit again and drown in it, and that it would be our fault. Still plastered to the asphalt, the stranger explained himself.

“Well, I live in, like, a real safe place, and if you guys agree to share what you have, I’ll let you stay there… Oww…”

He stopped talking to clutch his head. I wanted to help him. But, I couldn’t. Not until I knew he could be trusted, and, realistically, I might never know.

“Okay, we’ll look into it. But you have to ride in our vehicle, and Martin will have the gun on you the whole time. Got it?”

“Why-”

“Because it’s safer that way. Think about what you would do.”

“…Gotcha.”

Martin slid off his back, but kept the gun pointed at his head. I helped him to his feet, smiling.

“So, what’s your name?”

He leaned over to spit more blood.

“Spenser.”

“I’m Sorrell. Alright. We need to get going.”

*****

I drove. Spenser called out directions. Martin held the gun, wincing in pain from, I assumed, having his shoulder locked in one position for too long. As for Corwin, he sat around looking confused and slightly traumatized. Waking up to screaming and gunshots outside your window, then watching your friends come back inside with a blood-covered stranger will do that to a person.

What did it to me, was make me deal with Spenser throwing up on the carpet no less than three times. He complained a lot about being dizzy, and I wanted to tell him to go lie down, but he was the only one who knew where we were going.

We were, apparently, going to a junkyard. Gravel lot full of old cars, high chain-link fence. Spenser told us to stop, then hopped out and staggered over to the gate. He pulled something that looked like a garage door opener out of his pocket, and pressed a button, but nothing opened until he opened it himself. He motioned for me to pull in, and once we were, he closed the gate and pressed the little button again. We were all standing around, stretching our legs. Spenser gestured towards the fence.

“Heh. Electrified it myself. Pretty nice, right?”

We all nodded, just trying to be polite. Martin winced again. Spenser tilted his head inquisitively, then stumbled on his feet a bit, from what had apparently been too great a shift in his center of gravity for his bruised head to handle.

“…You alright, guy?”

Martin’s face had no expression, but in a way that looked very intentional. There was some weird tension just under the surface.

“Fine.”

Spenser wasn’t convinced.

“Take off your sweatshirt.”

“…No. That’s stupid.”

And just like that, there was another physical scuffle. But, Spenser finally managed to peel off the offending sweatshirt, and throw it to the ground. Then he inhaled through his teeth and let out a sort of breathy mumble.

“…Shit.”

He held his head and stumbled again. We all looked where he was looking.

Martin’s left upper arm was a damned mess, raw and swollen. A bunch of crispy, ragged red-blackness, rimmed by yellowish flesh that already looked dried-out and dead. Corwin and I had to look away. Martin seemed mostly unaffected. Just angry.

“Give me my jacket back, you stupid tool!”

Spenser ignored his request.

“…You’re gonna need a fasciotomy, dude.”

The word sounded familiar, but I didn’t remember exactly what kind of -otomy that was. Martin seemed a little more certain.

“Well, who the hell is gonna do that!?”

Spenser took a moment to turn around and throw up again before he answered.

“I will.”

Martin shook his head.

“The hell you aren’t!”

“Don’t worry. I’ve done it before. Left-handed.”

I watched as Spenser pulled up his sleeve, showing off a huge, white, gnarled scar on his forearm. Martin tried to keep refusing, but I think he realized he was going to pass out from pain eventually, and Spenser would take the opportunity and do it anyway. Plus, he probably wanted to keep that arm.

“If you gotta.”

Martin sighed. Spenser gave this sort of gentle smirk, trying to lighten the mood.

“…I do gotta.”

Spenser rubbed his temples for a while, trying to steady himself, then whipped out a pocket knife, held his hand in front of Martin’s face, and told him to bite down.

All of a sudden, I remembered what a fasciotomy was. He took the little knife, and carved into Martin’s arm. Deep. Right down to the red muscle, the shining white tendons. Everything glistening in the headlights. I was a little surprised, at how much effort it took, and how little time. It was over before I knew it, and the two of them pulled away from each other, panting, soaked in sweat, sticky with blood. I told Corwin to go get me the first aid kit, and he vanished into the motorhome.

I looked at the two remaining men, backlit and glowing against the dingy coal-grey night, eerie. One of them so rattled in the head he still looked queasy, the older blood already brown and flaky in his hair, fresh pink-and-purple tooth marks on the back of his hand. The other charred and bleeding. Both of them starting to smile at each other through the pain. Ready to be friends.

Corwin came back outside with the kit. I studied his mangled face.

My god, what people these days can forgive.

Sanctuary
Spenser laid low for a while, after that blow to the head. At first, I worried his brain was busted, and he needed a doctor. A doctor who, by the way, would be either dead or no longer practicing. These days, “needs a doctor” is a byword for “screwed.” So you end up resorting to things like, I don’t know, letting a crazy man with a head injury split your arm clean open so the pressure can’t destroy it from the inside.

But, he wasn’t screwed. He was just resting, and eventually, he came out of his room, volatile and cheerful, hair still crusted with blood. Then I finally got to learn a little bit about who he was.

He’d been holed up in this same junkyard for a while. Since before the first reports of Rage stateside, actually, because he worked there and didn’t have anywhere else to live. He often spoke with concern about two co-workers of his. A man who kept spiders and liked punching people in the gut. A small, dark woman with deft hands and shining eyes, who he loved, even if he couldn’t get the nerve to fess up.

More rarely, he spoke with sorrow about a third. A man who was meek but steadfast. Distant but empathetic. Not quite a friend, but, as Spenser put it, always “there for me when I did stupid shit.”

And, when it was Spenser’s turn to be there for him, he arrived with a tire iron and a brick. As quick and painless a death as you can give without a gun. Quicker, at any rate, than injury and starvation. Than blood pouring from both ends of the body and every hole in the face. It couldn’t be helped.

There are worse ways to see your friends than with their brains splattered on the concrete. Spenser knew this.

Really, I didn’t know what I thought about him. He was by turns caring and unstable. Either good-natured and jovial, or so turbulent and almost-feral that I kind of understood how Martin took him for Infected. Filthy and scarred and a little too stringy to really look okay, but under that, he seemed like someone I would have found handsome in my younger days.

Mostly, he was friendly, and just wacky enough to amuse me by his existence alone, so I decided I liked him well enough. I especially appreciated how candid he could be about our situation.

*****

One night, early dusk, I was sitting with him on the roof of the main building. He was shooting the shit as usual. Drinking whiskey out of the bottle, talking about his projects. His fence. God, the kid was so proud of that friggin’ fence.

“Yeah, even before all this, I had an interest in shock weapons, as kind of, like a hobby thing or whatever… I mean, there’s gun nuts, and I guess I was a gun nut for that shit, right? But, Jesus, did that ever come in fuckin’ handy. Quick, bloodless kill, y’know? You can defend yourself without worrying about infectin’ yourself. So I thought, hey, why not just make the fence into one big cattle prod, right?”

I looked down at the fence. It didn’t look like it could kill me, but when the air turned humid, it sang like a substation. Just inside of it, Martin was wasting ammo, shooting bottles off the roof of a rusted-out car. But, he needed to practice and stay sharp, especially after his arm took him out of commission for a while, so I guess some waste was justified. Now, I wasn’t sure if pistol-twirling was exactly what he needed to work on, but the little guy was having fun, so I couldn’t get worked up about it. People don’t have enough fun these days.

Then I saw something moving in the distance. Spenser took another sip of booze, stood up on the roof, and pointed.

“Oh shit, there’s one now! Sorrell… Sorrell, look!”

It was an Infected. His gleaming orange vest made me think he used to be a crossing guard, once upon a time. He probably smelled Martin, wanting to destroy him.

But, he didn’t get that far. He hit the fence, and there was a noise like a giant bug zapper. Then he dropped down on the scraggly grass, either smoking or steaming. Martin jumped about three feet in the air and fell flat on his butt. Spenser, laughing hysterically, clenched his fists and almost threw himself off the roof in a fit of drunken glee.

Then he sat back down beside me, still laughing.

“…Yeah, it’s kinda sick that this is my main form of entertainment, I guess.”

Neither of us said anything for a while. I patted him on the back.

“Everything is sick these days, buddy.”

“Exactly! I mean, like, there’s nothin’ fun to do anymore. And you can look at these people and… Well, I don’t even know if ‘people’ is the right word, anymore… But that’s the point! You can tell they want to be dead. You can just tell. So, I mean, when I‘m watchin‘ ‘em run at my fuckin‘ fence, at least someone‘s having a good time.”

What could I say? The kid was gonna make it.

*****

For the first time since all this shit went down, I think the three of us were content. Or at least, as content as people are in their regular lives, which suited us just fine. Regular life had been taken from us, and we wanted to get it back, not trade it in for something better. The generator- Spenser’s other pride and joy, second only to the fence- kept the junkyard lobby and the apartment above it running, like a home. We could watch movies on the television. Corwin could read all night, in the light of a bedside lamp. A light so familiar that the lack of it kept me awake even more than the fear of the Infected. Martin and Spenser played the same five video games over and over again and got so fired up that they almost came to blows on several occasions.

Sometimes, an Infected would hit the fence and start to stink after a few days, but that was the biggest problem we ran up against. When the buzzards inevitably came, Martin and I would sit on the roof, shooting them down before they could drip virus-laden blood over our little compound. That, too, was almost fun. I’d never really liked skeet-shooting much, but there was something about the camaraderie and long sunny afternoons that made me almost look forward to it, even if the stench could get a bit much.

Spenser worked on his projects, an endless array of tasers and plasma channels and terrifying melee weapons, and ate all our Spam.

He built a Tesla coil, and every night, he would mesmerize us by standing off to the side and tossing rusty old car parts over it, us cheering at the stretching bolts the way you’d cheer at fireworks.

I almost considered figuring out how to make actual fireworks, but then I remembered that I’d never really trust Martin around explosives again.

Make no mistake, things weren’t perfect.

Namely, Spenser told us, not thinking anything of it, that he’d started the whole highwayman routine because he’d already picked the local stores clean. Far enough out that it took less time to wait for a car to drive by and poach it than it did to try to find supplies on his own.

It was obvious that we couldn’t stay here forever.

But, we could at least stay here for now.

Exile
Throughout the two weeks we spent hanging around there, I kept dropping hints. That it was hard to find food. That catching water in buckets and tarps wasn’t working as well as he thought it was.

But, no, Spenser was in his Place. He had the food he managed to find, and all his weapons, and his television, and his generator. And that goddamn fence, which I was getting really tired of hearing about. I couldn’t find a way to convince him that a fence couldn’t protect people who were starving inside it.

Martin was mostly on my side, and stomped around the property, seething internally, itching the now-scabby patch on his arm.

Corwin was oblivious, which is his specialty. He spent all day folded up on the couch in weird positions, head buried in a book he‘d already read five times, barely noticing the outside world.

I was about to just pick us up and take off. Tell Spenser he was welcome to come, but didn’t have to.

Spenser himself, of course, was optimistic. The way stupid people always are.

And he was stupid, the way kids always are. Worse yet, he was only in his middle twenties, bullheaded in that way you get when you think you aren’t a kid anymore, but aren’t old enough to stop being stupid like one.

Honestly, part of what was so appealing about Corwin was that, even though he should have been well in to it when we met, he never seemed to haven gone through that phase. You could just tell the guy came out fully-formed, knowing he was doomed. And not only was he powerless to stop it, but he’d probably unknowingly engineer it himself.

Not even seeing Doom finally coming with his own two eyes seemed to be able to convince Spenser.

Until, that is, Doom staggered right up to his doorstep, dripping blood.

*****

It was a pretty average night. Corwin was trying to watch a movie, squinting in a sort of headachy way. Martin and Spenser were huddled around a ratty old board game, arguing loudly and colorfully, giving Corwin the headache. I was taking up the coffee table with gun maintenance, everyone else drinking their coffee off the floor.

Then the lights dimmed, strobed, and failed. Corwin, who’d been having enough trouble getting through his movie, stormed out of the room swearing under his breath; son of a bitch!

Martin and Spenser went downstairs to check things out.

The generator, lifeblood of the house, the television, the fucking fence, had blown.

This was a major pain in the ass, and a catastrophic nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless. If that was all we had to deal with, we probably would have been okay.

Then Martin ran back upstairs to tell me what caused it to overload.

It was the fence.

Which was, for lack of a better word, being stormed.

The Infected had found us, and bounced off the fence, one by one and all together, until our miniature power grid couldn’t take it. Bloody, run-down, charred-and-steaming bodies littered the perimeter. Stacked so high in some places that their brethren were running up and over them, falling down on the other side.

Shit.

I told Martin to get back down there and do what he could. Going on the sound of swearing and the weird bug-zapper noises, Spenser had already gotten started. I got up on the roof and started sniping, taking care to only pick off the Infected that weren’t within splatter distance of someone still human.

What happened next, I hadn’t prepared for.

I’d expected Corwin to stay inside, to wait things out. Keep himself, and his lack of physical strength and depth perception, out of harm’s way.

Instead, while the Infected were busy trying to get to Martin or Spenser, he darted past them and into the motorhome. Then, with horrible, clumsy, lurching movements, backed over a whole clump of Infected, and barreled through the fence, smashing the chainlink.

I was astounded.

Partly because that was actually pretty clever, and partly because this was the first time he’d ever operated a vehicle.

He rolled down a window and called out to us.

“Come on!”

Martin and Spenser ran, still firing. I, with the help of the rainspout, flung myself off the roof. Before I knew it, we were all inside, sweaty, panting, and lit up with adrenaline, but alive.

Corwin tried to smile, and handed me my keys.

*****

On the ride to wherever we’d end up next, no one said much of anything. Not even Spenser, who spent about two straight hours staring at nothing, clearly shell-shocked. Mourning the loss of his shitty little citadel, his television, and his beloved fence.

When we finally found a good place to stop, I got out of the driver’s seat, and asked him if he wanted a hug. He didn’t say anything. I hugged him anyway. He was all tendons and ribs, and held onto me for dear life. Scared. The way kids always are.

Martin crossed the parking lot, ducked into the abandoned gas station for supplies, and spent the rest of the night cleaning the back bumper and window with bleach. When he finally came inside, his black clothes were splattered with red-brown fading.

It looked, for all the world, like blood.

Road Trip
Even if the nearby stores were depleted, and the goddamn fence wasn’t all that special, there was something to be said for being settled in one place.

That something was, when you drove off for the day, there was somewhere to go back to.

As things are now, we just drive. Well, mostly, I drive. Corwin reads, or rolls down the window to pick off an Infected once in a blue moon. Martin, still exhausted from his nightly scouting, sleeps. Sometimes, Spenser drives, and I get to take a break. Do some of the reading, or shooting, or sleeping myself.

But, usually, he just horses around. Which was helpful in its own way. He can be very cheering.

Though, right now, he was mostly being worrying. Having discovered that he could open our front door, such as it is, and sit with his feet hanging out, he refuses to ride any other way. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, if he could sit still for more than five seconds at a time. Spenser is always in motion, constantly telling wild stories with wilder gestures. Sitting in the open door, he nearly throws himself out on the highway every half hour or so. It drove me nuts, because I knew that, not for lack of trying, I wasn’t a callous person. I couldn’t chalk it up to a loss and keep driving. No, I’d slam on the breaks, screech this goddamn boat all the way around, and go back for him. Even if he was broken. Even if he was dead. We hadn’t known each other very long, but he’d somehow become one of the people I feel responsible for.

“Spense, maybe you should finish your story inside.”

He bent backwards to look at me, hanging on the door frame.

“Nah, man, I’m cool! So anyway, this one time, my friend Tyler…”

Martin couldn’t sleep through this sort of back-and-forth, to say nothing of the roar of wind rushing through the opening. He staggered to his feet, started rummaging around for food, and gave Spenser the what-for.

“…Close the goddamn door, asswipe!”

Spenser bent in the other direction.

“Yeah, well, why!? You ain‘t the boss, dude!”

He had to go and pick the worst possible thing anyone could ever say to Martin. Who is a man of little authority, but god help you if you undermine what he’s convinced himself he has.

“So you don’t fall out, you big dumb son of a bitch!”

That said, Martin grabbed Spenser by the collar, yanked him inside, and slammed the door.

*****

For all his annoying behavior, Spenser was probably more useful than any of us.

Unlike Martin he wasn’t a night-owl.

He was a straight-up insomniac.

So what usually happened was, him and Martin would run around all night, clearing the area of Infected, scouring it for supplies.

Then Martin would slouch inside and crawl into bed, while Spenser performed checks and maintenance on the motorhome. It wasn’t mine originally, so I wasn’t sure how it was supposed to run, but I was pretty sure it was the smoothest it had ever been in its life.

If Corwin and I wanted to stay curled up together for a little while longer, Spenser would take the early driving shift for me.

I liked having him around. He was a hard worker, and amusing to watch in pretty much every situation he found himself in.

But, I also worried about him. I saw the circles under his eyes, and the grind of his teeth, and knew that he wasn’t a limitless font of energy. It was more like he needed to sleep and couldn’t. Something in his brain wouldn’t let him sit down and shut up. All he could do was work and rant and goof off. Click his pens, bounce his legs, scribble things in dirty notebooks.

He had something wrong with him. That much was obvious. But, he wouldn’t own up to it.

Come to think of it, I’m not really sure he knew what it was.

All he could do was try and use it to his advantage.

I realized that this new world belonged to people like him.

*****

“Sorrell, come look at this.”

I woke up in the dark. Corwin was calling me from the bathroom.

“What is it, kiddo?”

He was about an inch from the mirror, trying to give his remaining eye a decent view of its dead brother.

“I just wanted to make sure this looks normal.”

He pointed at his empty eye socket. I nudged him towards the light, and, gently as I could, put two fingers on his scarred face, pulling the lid, or what was left of it, back, so I could get a good look.

Not long after all this started, we had a little accident. It’s a long story, but it ended with Corwin burned from scalp to shoulder, his left eye cooked away. Healing took a while, but by now, he was mostly alright. We were mostly alright. (Mostly.) The hole in his face sometimes ran like a snotty nose, and accumulated the same sort of gunk as a badly-healed ear piercing, but in larger quantities. If he didn’t clean it for a day or two, the interior could get a little sore. Longer, and he’d usually develop a sinus infection. Then we’d have to go out looking for antibiotics, which is damn near impossible. Apparently, they’re one of the first things to run out when the shit hits the fan. But, he was usually pretty fastidious, so that wasn’t a big problem.

Today, the socket did indeed look normal. Or at least, like it just needed some extra swabbing out.

“Yeah, it seems okay… It’s been humid lately, so it might just be wetter because everything is. You gonna be alright?”

He blinked a few times, on one side, at least, trying to wash away the glare of the bathroom lights.

“Yeah. I think so.”

Having verified things with me, he got down to the cleaning.

Then Martin came back, Spenser trailing behind him.

He took off his mask, and looked at us for a little too long.

A few months ago, I would have tried to read his face, but I was done with that now.

I’d long since quit trying to figure out what he’s feeling.

What We Left Behind
Spenser was driving. I was sitting at the “table,” in the “kitchen,” putting up my feet. Corwin and I were playing cards, and I was kicking his ass. He’s better with numbers, but I’m quicker, and he knows it.

Then the brakes slammed and squealed. The deck went flying. Martin woke up, and looked around blearily. As for me, I was getting sick of the whole thing where we couldn’t have one goddamn second of peace.

“…The hell is goin’ on up there!?”

Spenser was already hurtling out of his seat.

“Man, I ain’t got shit to do, I’m, like, tyin’ myself in knots over here! And then I looked out the window, and…” He started laughing at what wasn’t even a joke yet. “And I was like, damn, that’s a good sign!”

He grinned and pointed at the window. I looked where he was pointing.

PUBLIC LIBRARY

Okay, so maybe that was worth slamming on the breaks for.

*****

Martin, who had a hell of an arm on him for someone his size, opened the library with a can of apple pie filling. Of which we have many, because Corwin and Spenser both have some bizarre fetish for eating the stuff right out of the can with a spoon. This has caused everything from several near-fistfights, to a two-man reinvention of the barter system.

We descended on the stacks in pretty much the way you’d expect from people who hadn’t seen novelty in weeks or months. Grabbing whatever looked interesting, and some stuff that only looked like it might be interesting, just in case. Hauling out books by the armful. Raiding the CD and DVD collections. Martin was trying to make off with an entire computer, but hell if I knew what he was going to use it for. Spenser got caught up in the moment and kicked over one of those metal carts where they put books that need to be shelved.

That stupid asshole nearly got us killed.

Three Infected charged in through the broken glass door.

Corwin had the good sense to lock himself in the bathroom.

Martin usually has good sense, but sometimes, when he was angry, it left him. Before even beginning to take meaningful action, he yelled something that was unintelligible save for a few incidences of “fuck,” and “idiot,” somehow shoved Spenser to the ground, and kicked him in the stomach. The he got to shooting, but not before waving the gun menacingly at Spenser for a few seconds.

I’d been pretty stupid, too. Having left my guns in the car, I was the defenseless one for once. So I had to get creative.

I yelled at Martin, don’t move, and told him to trust me.

The last Infected standing lunged at him.

I body-slammed the shelf, crushing the poor bastard, whoever he used to be.

Martin had a look I didn’t see on him often: he was obviously, unabashedly impressed by another person.

“…You’re brutal.”

I reached over and messed up his hair, which he hated, but I could never help myself.

“I try!”

Corwin must have heard the coast was clear, because he stumbled out of the bathroom, carrying all the brown paper towels, two of those giant rolls of institutional toilet paper, and the limp bag of soap from the dispenser. He had to close the door with his foot. Actually, I wasn’t sure why he closed it at all. Old habits, I guess.

“I figured we’d need this stuff, and since I was in there anyway… Well, yeah.”

My god, he was learning to think on his feet.

*****

We still didn’t know where we were going, if anywhere at all. But now, the journey felt more bearable. Martin and I were watching one of the movies on the bulky computer. Spenser was driving again, singing along tunelessly to one of the zillion nineties rock albums he’d yoinked.

Okay, so it was more bearable for everyone but Corwin. There were too many different noises at once for him to read, so he just went to bed.

But, I figured he could use the rest.

The Last War Memorial
Drive long enough, and you’ll run into one of the blockades that failed to save us. Now just a long line of trucks and bones and dead guns. Sometimes, they’ll have something useful, but mostly, there’s just a bunch of heavy trash.

It wasn’t that long until we came across one, considering. I was just going to drive past it, because, like I said. Trash. But, we hadn’t really been outside the motorhome in about a week. Just driving, and sleeping, and driving some more. Martin sometimes running around in the dark, sometimes fucking with that old computer, but usually just slumped in a corner somewhere, reading a book and messing with one of the bleach-eaten holes in his sweatshirt.

So, I figured it was worth checking out, if only to keep us from wanting to smack each other senseless by bedtime.

We all walked around in the tall grass, stretching, looking for discarded supplies, putting much-needed distance between ourselves and each other.

Of course, I was somewhat less relaxed than the boys were. For one thing, I had to keep yelling at Spenser to not touch any skulls. I wasn’t sure why he was so determined to do this. Then, as soon as I managed to get this through his own skull, Martin called me.

“Sorrell!”

Don’t tell me you’re touching a friggin’ skull, too.

“…For god’s sake, what!?”

“I found a tank!”

Indeed he did. He’d also climbed up to the top of the turret, and while I’m sure this was supposed to make him look more imposing, like he was standing tall, it just made him look smaller than he actually was. But like he’d run you down anyway, so I guess it didn’t matter.

“Very nice!”

He really did look like he was having fun. I wished I had a camera.

“We can take it! It’s open!”

That said, he slipped inside the hull. I went over to the tank and climbed up after him.

“We can’t take the tank, Martin.”

He was sitting in the driver’s seat, now looking slightly disappointed.

“…Why not?”

“Because it’s sinking in the dirt. It wouldn’t start.”

“But I was just about to go look around and find the keys.”

The little guy was pretty brilliant, but when there was a gap in his knowledge, it was usually a humdinger.

“Tanks don’t have keys, Martin.”

He looked at me blankly.

“…You ruin everything, you know that?”

I tried to return that stoic look, but I was holding back laughter.

“Yep. I also know this tank is too small for us, anyway. Think about it, kiddo. All of us in the motor home is cramped enough. This thing barely has room for you.”

“Fine. But think of all the Infected we could take down in this thing.”

Martin idly fiddled with the controls, like he was figuring out how to drive.

“Well, if you want to do that, you can sit on the roof and be the gun turret yourself.”

Then I heard someone walking around on the roof above us. We popped up like prairie dogs, and saw that it was just Spenser. Who was now hanging by his knees from the barrel of the main gun. He waved at us. Then his glasses fell off, and he instinctively tried to snatch them out of the air before they hit the ground. Which made his legs lose grip, and down he went. Flat on his face in the dirt.

The laugh I‘d been holding in escaped.

“…Okay, people are getting silly. C’mon, guys. Let’s go.”

It’s All in the Past
When I’m driving, I have a lot of time to think.

But, I don’t think anything useful, so it‘s kind of a wash.

Mostly, I find myself constantly retracing my steps, doubling back over old ground.

Which is to say, I think a lot about how all this shit began.

*****

Things were a damn sight more violent back then. Maybe it’s because bigger groups of people were getting infected at once, or maybe it was because we weren’t on the road yet, sitting ducks in our little nest. But, for whatever reason, it seemed like every day was a struggle.

A war.

You needed machine guns and grenades and fire.

All of these, I could provide. I could become a razor wire fence around the three of us. An attack dog. And I’d like to say I didn’t know I had it in me, but I’d known all along. Crisis flips your personality like a deck of playing cards, and on the other side of the stubbornness and compassion I carried through life, there was this. I’d walk through Hell for the three of us. Not because it was the right thing to do, but because nothing on this Earth could stop me, self included.

In retrospect, what really amazes me is that, even in the midst of that early chaos, our roles were starting to take shape.

Corwin made plans, puzzled out strategies, and found solutions. He was the brain.

I protected us and made sure we kept fighting the Infected, not each other. I was the heart.

He passed down information and kept me running steady. I pumped him full of the energy he needed to think.

I was jackhammering away in the thick of things. He was quiet inside his skull.

And either of us would fail without the other.

As for Martin… I worried about him.

He was fairing a little too well.

Really, I’d been worried about him from the very beginning. He was just so young. He was overconfident. He was five-foot-six in shoes, and sometimes had trouble taking situations seriously.

But, as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about any of that.

He was a quick study. As much a genius in this new world as he’d been in the old one. Little and compact and zippy. A natural-born opportunist. Uncannily present-focused. Almost fearless.

As he adapted to his new circumstances, I could swear I saw the wheels turning in his mind.

And the viciousness I’d always sensed in him rising to the surface.

I knew he was the only one of us that could make it on his own, and I didn’t like the implications of that.

Still, even if I was starting to get an uneasy feeling about him, I liked having him around. I’d come to care about him a great deal. And though how well-suited he seemed to the situation worried me, I had to admit, he was handy. While Corwin and I were sitting up all night, too edgy to sleep, convinced we each needed to keep watch over the other, Martin stayed up perfecting his shooting, clearing the neighborhood of stray Infected, and assembling Molotov cocktails.

That last thing, I wish he hadn’t done.

*****

Like I said, we needed fire.

A bullet could knock off one Infected.

An inferno could wipe out five or twenty.

Martin, who threw with power and precision, kept us on the high end of that figure, every time.

I remember being very impressed with this. Called him our little flamethrower. He would laugh. And throw his flames. It felt like there was a ring of fire around us at all times, and that was as close to safety as I’d felt since all this went down.

Of course, we were just as close to danger as we were to safety, for the same reason.

Around that time, I was teaching Corwin how to shoot. He’d mostly stayed out of the fray until now, but I wanted him to be able to defend himself. And, admittedly, to be a third set of boots on the ground.

I showed him how to close his left eye and line up the sights. And he started getting pretty good.

God, I wish he hadn’t gotten so much better.

So that was how our little trio organized itself. Me spraying bullets. Martin with his cold little pistol and his bottled-up fire. Corwin doing his best.

Maybe his best wasn’t that great. God, he’d always been so clumsy. Why did I want him out there in the first place?

The funny thing about gasoline is that it’s a liquid. It splashes.

The funny thing about the Infected is, they make the most awful noises. Like they’re always in distress. Like they’re always being strangled. But that did nothing to prepare me for what I heard that day.

Because that sound was coming from a normal human being.

I don’t even know exactly what happened.

We were already on the road by then, in my old truck. Martin threw the bottle, like he’d done a hundred times before. And I don’t know where Corwin was, because I guess I was being a shithead and not keeping a good eye on him. All I know is that he must have been a little too close.

Because, when the second the gaggle of Infected caught fire and started stinking and cooking, I heard him start screaming.

I can’t even describe it, other than to say it was in an octave I didn’t know he could produce, and I couldn’t hear any consonants or vowels in it. All it sounded like was pain. Not the fear of pain that usually makes people scream. Just Pain, on its own. This came from the low parts of the brain. The parts that only know they don’t want to die.

All I could think to do was body-check him into a rain puddle. He was finally silent. I could hear Martin in the background, still shooting.

Me, I’d dropped my gun without thinking. And Corwin wasn’t doing anything at all.

I pulled him out of the dirty water.

My god.

A huge strip of him, from the scalp to almost the collarbone, was red and raw and glistening. The edge had burned off his left ear. Something similar had happened to his eyelid, and the eye was dried-out, destroyed. He was still breathing, but it was shallow, and I could almost hear him gritting his teeth. His remaining eye opened, then fell closed. He tried to scream again, but he didn’t have enough wind.

My head was spinning.

In the end, I screamed for him.

“Martin, get in the car!”

The jackass barely took the time to turn around.

“They’re still all over us! What, you want this situation to get worse!?”

He kept shooting, until the clip was empty. There were two more Infected, coming right for him, still on fire. I beat them off with the butt of a rifle, and, somehow, got us all in the truck.

Corwin was sprawled out in the back seat. I kept checking the rearview, begging him not to go into shock.

Martin took shotgun, and stared straight ahead, not saying anything at all.

I resisted the urge to push him out on the highway.

*****

Clean water became a huge issue. Up until then, we’d just accepted being stinky, because it wasn’t like there was any society to maintain standards for. But now, I had to make sure Corwin got sponged down at least a few times a day. If he got an infection, I didn’t know what we could do about that. All I knew was that I couldn’t lose him. He was my brain. So I had to do my best to keep being his heart.

Not only did he need to be kept clean, but, for the first week and a half or so, he was constantly thirsty, skin pliable and rough, face sunken, sweating until he couldn’t. I’d read about this. His body was just trying to regulate itself, and failing. So he was the kind of dehydrated that could only be fixed with a tube through the arm.

Well, we had to work with what we had.

And, don’t even ask me how, he survived.

Before he could heal, he had to shed a few ragged bits. A layer of skin, a bit more of that ear, what was left of his eye.

As the wounds closed, the tacky red skin finally turning leathery and mottled pink-white, the focus shifted to the goddamn hole in his head. Instead of an eye, he had a pit full of dead cells and mucus, which sometimes backed up into his head and made him turn sickly all over again. I had to learn how to find antibiotics. He had to learn how to keep it clean and cross his fingers.

Then, when that sorted itself out, the skin on his neck tightened, and I had to make a few razor cuts just so he could turn his head.

My hands got bloody, and I apologized.

Martin had apologized months ago, but the fucker got it in his head that it was a once-and-done thing.

It seemed like he was actively refusing to make a big deal out of it. As if he were trying to say, “yeah, well, this is the kind of thing that happens now.”

He didn’t need to say it. I knew it was what he really thought.

And I know accidents happen. They’ve been happening long before all of this. He’d been careless, and that wasn’t excusable, but it’s not like he wanted this to happen any more than Corwin did.

But there was something in the way he’d seemingly brushed it off that bothered me. And I could never look at him quite the same way again.

It was like he thought living in an uncaring world gave him a free pass to be uncaring. Like maybe he thought being uncaring would protect him. Like he was all too willing to not-feel.

He walked around the subject carefully, putting it in the past.

I looked at him in horrified awe.

Oh, Martin. We’ve lost you.

Road Delays
The places that used to be the busiest are the emptiest now.

We’ve hit one of those roads with a whole lot of buildings, and very little else. And I’ve been down these before, but this seems like the longest one yet.

The only activity I’ve seen is some blowing trash, and a few infected that tried to charge us.

For miles, all the stores have been gutted. And now we’re gutted, too.

None of us are really eating. Because I’m carefully metering out the food. So we can eat. That old bullshit paradox.

I’m just fine, because I have to be. I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this. As long as I can keep my eyes on the end of the road, I can imagine myself there, wherever that is. I just know it’s better than here. Because I want it to be, and if it doesn’t exist in my world just yet, it can be anything I want. Just for now. So I pick something worth driving towards.

I’m not really sure about anyone else.

Corwin is trying to convince himself he doesn’t need another round of penicillin, but he’s reverted back to that shivering, head-clutching, short-fused state he always gets in, and spends most of the day in bed. The gauze pads in the bathroom wastecan look stickier, yellower than normal. But I ask, and he says he’s fine.

And Spenser is his old cheerful self, but he’s noticeably worn-out and pale. Then again, the guy’s hardly taken more than a few three-hour naps since I met him, so he’s probably been wearing out for a good, long time. Even so, I’ve noticed his pen-chewing habit getting more aggressive. It’s horrible, but I admit I laughed at him when he gagged himself that one time.

Before I knew it, Martin wasn’t enduring all this like he used to.

It came on very suddenly.

It made me start re-thinking him again.

See, I’d taken it for granted that this was yet another situation where his size would have hidden advantages. That, not having much body to power, he could probably survive on less.

Well, I was wrong. All it meant was that, when he lost a few pounds, it actually showed. And, as his body wore down, so did his defenses. Everything that had been under his skin this whole time was rising to the surface.

His face just looked tired. And angular enough for me to see that he was always clenching his jaw. His clothes hung off him, and weren’t quite what I’d call black anymore, threadbare from too many washes in the sink, eaten-through and disintegrating from the splattered bleach almost a season ago. The tendons in his wrists and neck looked pulled to snapping. I didn’t know how anyone could stay so tense all day without passing out from exhaustion.

Then again, that was probably one of the things he was tensing up against. He wasn’t darting around the way he used to. He didn’t even go on his nighttime patrols anymore. Just sat on the ground in front of the motorhome, with his gun and his thousand-yard stare.

It occurred to me that I had him all wrong.

The dark side I’d seen really was there, but no more than it had ever been. All those callous moments of his… They weren’t him showing some truer, terrible nature he’d been hiding until the right moment.

It was all just him doing the only thing he knew how to do.

The real rotten truth about Martin, is that he can deal with almost any situation, but he only knows one way to do it:

By throwing himself at it, and trying to be the best. Trying to win.

Even when it wasn’t winnable.

Now, with his eyes gone dead, and his body sinking in on itself, I can see the toll winning had taken on him. That he’d really been losing all along.

And that, since the day when the fire threw itself, he had never been the same. But he had to keep acting the same. To let it break him down was to forfeit a game no one else was even playing. He couldn’t bend. It was Martin vs. the world. Or vs. himself. I’m not sure even he knew. All he knew was the new rules and how to exploit them.

I wasn’t about to forgive him. I couldn’t, for one thing, at least not yet. And if you ask me, I didn’t need to. Ever.

But, for the first time since the accident, I started to think it really was okay for me to not want him to hurt. And even though nothing would ever really be the same, I felt that old fondness coming back in a different form. It wasn’t just me going through the motions anymore.

The sun rose on the tenth day driving down that long, dead road.

I stepped outside, sat down next to Martin, and pulled him into my arms. He didn’t resist. He didn’t do much of anything, really. And it seemed like this would be the way someone like him would act before they broke down crying, but he didn’t do that, either. Maybe he was just past that point. I helped him up off the ground.

“Come on, let’s get some rest, okay?”

I opened the door, and lead him back inside.

Rage
Eventually, we got to a place that seemed like it had a lot more infected than normal. Almost overrun. And we decided this was good news.

Our logic was thus:

Things hadn’t been quite as bad for quite as long here. There’d probably still be some supplies.

No way in hell anyone would want to stop in a place like this. There’d definitely still be some supplies.

We weren’t getting them without a fight, but the alternative might be not getting them at all.

So, we got ready to fight.

I grabbed a shotgun, and the rusty old machete, just in case. Then I gave Corwin my rifle; told him to shoot from the windows. Yes, I know you’re tired, I know you’re cold, I know you have a headache. We’ll get you fixed up soon, alright? I love you. Meanwhile, Spenser was loading himself down with all those crazy gadgets and gizmos he’d put together while he was alone behind his fence, flipping a pipe wrench around in his right hand, testing the weight, deciding if it would be worth lugging along.

Martin was obscured by his respirator, already waiting by the door.

We were tired and hungry, stiff from too long on the road, backed into a corner.

And I guess we were all ready.

Time to go to war.

It’s every man for each other.

The one thing you have to remember is that, because they don’t care about themselves, they’re faster than us. Which means we have to be faster than them, and I know that sounds impossible, but it really isn’t. All you have to do is decide you don’t care much more than they do. That you’re willing to wear yourself out.

What is impossible, is knowing what’s going on around you, or even the whole of what you’re doing. Brain trading awareness for speed, you shoot and bludgeon and dodge and hack. If you have people along to help you out, part of what that means is trying to dodge them, too. Twice, Corwin sent bullets whizzing right by my head, and I yelled at him to be more careful, but I couldn’t hear his response, if he even had one. When Spenser got too close, I had to use an Infected as a “human” shield, which actually became a strategy after a while. I’d run, the Infected would chase me, he’d flip a switch and fry them.

I’d mostly lost track of Martin in the thick of everything, but I could hear his gun, so I assumed he was doing alright.

By the time I was all out of shot and had to start swinging the machete, we only had about five Infected to go. We were winning. We’d knock off these last few, and then we’d be able to eat.

We’d be okay.

Three to go.

I heard the sound of snapping plastic. Martin was down. One of the remaining three had ambushed him, put a web of cracks in his facemask. But he picked himself up. And pulled the trigger.

Two to go, and he took off the mask and threw it aside, so he could see to shoot. I think I yelled that he could see about getting a new one when we got inside.

One to go.

And the last one doubled over and projectile-vomited blood, in a great, red, messy slosh, right on Martin’s shoes.

He could get new shoes, too. We were almost there.

I cut the last Infected down.

Then I saw Martin touch his lip, rub his eye. Both in disbelief.

What I saw after that, I can’t even describe, even with it burned into my mind.

See, people have this certain facial expression. Not everyone knows about it. You don’t see it often. If you do, you can count on that person not being around much longer.

I think it technically means “well, I guess I’m fucked,” but I’ve always thought the literal translation was something a little different:

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Which makes it that much worse, because, most of the time, no one did a damn thing. Whatever the horror is, it happened without reason or motive. There isn’t anyone to settle a score with, or to ask for a do-over. You just have to watch that person realize it ends here, and that no one can fix it. Not them. Not anyone else.

Then they’re gone, without time to even register what happened.

Glazed over with fear and confusion, silently asking the whole world why it was doing this to him, hands shaking, Martin handed me his pistol. His green eyes were already turning bloodshot. I wanted to reach out and hold him, the way I did that morning, when he was so strained by everything. But, the time for that was over. In a few seconds, he wouldn’t even be Martin anymore.

We’ve really lost you now.

I’m so sorry.

Martin, I forgive you.

Spenser came charging out of nowhere, pushed Martin against the chain-link fence that rimmed the parking lot, bound him there with an extension cord.

The whole thing, from the splatter to this, took about thirty seconds. Martin, or what had been him a minute ago, was already starting to convulse, pulling against the orange cord, rage segueing into Rage.

I knew what I had to do. He’d given me his gun. Given me the job. My eyes were getting wet and blurry. I moved my finger to the trigger.

Corwin, who had been watching the whole thing, barreled out of the motorhome.

“…Just wait!”

Please don’t do this.

“For what!?”

I put my finger back on the trigger; did my best to empty my head. Martin-not-Martin rattled the metal fence.

“We might not have to… I mean…”

Don’t fucking do this.

“What, so you’ll think he’ll just get better!? You think you can share your antibiotics with him, Corwin!?”

“No… I mean… Don’t you remember? Weren’t they trying to fix this? Can we just…”

“…What, leave him here until they find a cure!?”

He’d already been tied there too long. Forced to live like this for too long. I wanted to get it over with.

“I don’t know… It’s just… They…”

He was starting to cry. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to look at Martin. I didn’t want to look at anything. I started lining up the sights again.

“…They were trying to fix it, but that was a long fuckin’ time ago! Do you really think we’d be here now if they could fix it!?”

His voice cracked out something that could have been “but they still might,” before it disintegrated into a bunch of “no” scattered through unintelligible screaming. Between that and the horrible, ripping sounds rising from Martin’s throat, I felt like I was about to lose my mind.

I turned to Spenser.

“Take him.”

We looked at each other for a while. Two yards away, Martin was already throwing up blood, in huge gurgling splashes.

“Should I…”

“…Take him!”

The raw shrillness in my voice was like nails on a chalkboard, even to me. Spenser grabbed Corwin by the arms, lead him off somewhere. Which only made him start crying louder, but with him inside, or across the lot, or wherever he‘d been dragged, it started fading into the background.

I lined up the sights again.

Martin stopped thrashing for a few seconds, and our eyes met.

This is the part where someone might trot out the cliché about how they could see that he really wasn’t in there anymore, and felt at peace with what they were about to do. But, that isn‘t what happened.

I took one look at him, and could tell that he was.

That he didn’t want to be.

And that, not the knowledge that this wasn’t really him, steeled my resolve.

I mouthed, sorry. Not for what I was about to do, but for this whole wretched mess.

Then I pulled the trigger.

I got him right between the eyes. His head snapped back, then lolled forward, dripping yet more blood. The orange cord, burning against his black clothes, held him up against the fence. His final resting place, I guess. Corwin, wherever he was, started screaming.

And it was over.

In my head, I kept saying, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Spenser came up and stood beside me, rubbing his jaw.

“…Um, he hit me.”

I blinked and sniffed, trying not to cry. Telling myself everything Martin must have told himself, again and again.

“This is the kind of thing that happens now.”

After a while, I shrugged, and offered a weak reply.

“I guess he’s upset.”

Then I turned to cross the parking lot and enter the store.

We’d come here for supplies, so we had to get them.

It wasn’t until I’d been inside for a good fifteen minutes that I finally broke down.

In the hardware section, next to the dust masks and respirators, I sat down on the floor and sobbed.

*****

When I finally got back out, pockets and pillowcases jammed with meaningless shit, Spenser came to greet me. A fist-sized ellipse on his jawline was starting to redden and swell, would probably be black and blue by morning.

“…Corwin says he isn’t getting in.”

I understood, and didn’t want to be a jerk, but I was having a hell of a day myself, and just wanted to get back on the road without any more stupid fucking problems.

“Well, what the hell is he going to do, then? Just sit in this parking lot?”

Spenser shrugged.

“I guess so, but I don’t think he has, like plans or what-fuckin’-ever.”

I looked across the lot. Martin was still hanging limply from the fence, as expected. Corwin was sitting on the blacktop a few yards away.

“Well, we have to get him inside, so it looks like we’ve gotta do it ourselves.”

Spenser looked annoyed.

“…He’ll hit me again!”

Jesus, what a fucking wiener you turned out to be. Goddamn worthless gutter-trash.

“Spenser… That’s just a risk we need to take.”

But, as it turned out, Corwin didn’t put up much of a fight. He was depressed, and running a fever, and probably already traumatized. We lifted him up and took him inside. He still wouldn’t look at either of us.

I dropped him on the bed, tossed one of the bottles of antibiotics I’d yanked from the pharmacy next to him, and climbed in the driver’s seat.

Time to keep fucking moving.

Goodnight.
For all I’d tried to hold our little group together, I honestly thought it was my squeezing the trigger that had finally torn us apart. Corwin pulled a few more “not getting back in the car” stunts, and had to be dragged back inside. I was refusing to look anywhere but at the road, gritting every word through my teeth, trying to bite off my history at the moment I awoke that day, to keep things neat.

Spenser seemed like he was getting ready to break free from our orbit, off to find his next ride, another fence to hide behind. But, every day, there he was, waiting in his newfound shotgun position, waiting to get on the road.

Corwin didn’t sit up front with me anymore. Instead, he hung around the bedroom area, looking like a kid who didn’t have anyone to play with.

Which, I guess, is just what he was.

And this, for longer than I care to remember, was how we spent our days. Nobody left. But, we weren’t really together anymore.

So, this is how it ends. With just the three of us, rolling down the same street, essentially tailgating each other, a group no more.

It was easy enough to adjust to, if I looked at it as shifting from being responsible for a quartet, to being responsible for three separate people.

*****

Then there came a night when, unable to sleep, I reached out for Corwin, and he didn’t pull away. He even let me pull him towards me.

It wasn’t some perfect moment. For one thing, I realized he was crying, and I knew I couldn’t make him stop. But, it was something. A few cracks were spackled in that night. Brilliant chalky white and more conspicuous than ever, but no longer threatening to spread and take the whole structure down.

I wanted to tell him it would be okay, but it probably wouldn’t. Nothing had been okay since the first reports came across the Atlantic.

So I just told him I was sorry.

Even I wasn’t sure what kind of “sorry” it was. It could have been “I intentionally broke your nose” sorry, or “I stepped on your foot” sorry, or “I heard your bad news and didn’t know what to say” sorry.

Or, maybe, I’m sorry for your loss.

I figured it could be which ever one he wanted to hear.

But, I never found out which one he thought it was, because he didn’t say anything back. He didn’t even stop crying.

He just rolled over and curled into me. I held him tighter, and we stayed like that for a while. Maybe not as long as we’d have liked. Not as long as we would have in a world where things had gone differently.

In a world where we had time to do something other than prepare.

I ran my fingers through his hair, over the scarred-smooth patch on his scalp. Thought about fire. About things that held together, even when they’ve been worn-out and burned away.

“We have a long drive tomorrow. Get some sleep, okay?”

I love you.

And I’d walk through hell.

Folly 15, Milk Bottle 20

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