“Why didn’t you kill me earlier?” Darren asked me.
“Why didn’t you?” I rebutted.
“I told you already. The gun wasn’t loaded, but yours was, so why didn’t you finish me off like you did her?”
I changed the subject abruptly. “Do you miss her?”
Darren looked over his shoulder at her body, and then to me. “I would like to say that I did, I guess so I sound human, but those moments leading up to her getting shot you made a pretty valid point.”
“Did I?”
“She would have run across some other people before too long and had me killed. I was just the first guy she happened upon that wasn’t mean to her, or so she said.”
“It’s not easy out here all alone, kid.”
“I was just her partner that got his hands dirty so she wouldn’t have too. A modern day Bonnie and Clyde, just minus me being a stone cold killer,” he said. “So I guess it’s better this way.”
I noticed in his speech that he had failed to answer my question. I could tell by the tone in his voice that he was more than aware she was using him, but at least he had someone to face the world with. He may even have had feelings for her, which he knew would go nowhere. I felt sorry for the Kid in some ways, when all he wanted was to be needed by someone and the only person he runs across is the one person that was far more likely to cause him harm than the undead.
“Why do you have a gun if you aren’t going to keep it loaded?” I asked him.
“I do keep it loaded, but when she saw you pull in and she told me we could get your truck, I kind of figured I’d be the one tasked with shooting you if you didn’t do what she said,” he responded, the sincerity in his tone was unmistakable. “So I took the bullets out and put them in my pocket. Like I said earlier, I don’t like guns and the last thing I needed was to accidently shoot someone.”
“So I’d be correct to say you’ve never killed anyone before, huh?”
“Look, it’s not that I can’t, I’m sure if push came to shove I could do it, but just because I haven’t doesn’t mean I’m not worth anything,” he said irritated.
“It was just a question, kid. I wasn’t trying to judge you,” I told him.
“And my name is not
kid
, it’s Darren.”
I looked at him with a half-smile. “My name is Brandon, kid, nice to meet you.” Now I was just being a dick because I could.
There was a few awkward moments of silence unwittingly broken by Darren’s voice. “So, what now?” He asked.
“You can stay here and fight all of them that show up or you can load up with me and see what’s in store as the sun comes up. It’s your choice.” I told him.
He moved to the same side of the pickup as me and rested his arms on the bed rail. “I’m not trying to screw anything up here, but how can you give me a choice to go with you when I held a gun to your head while a crazy bitch was screaming at you, telling me to shoot you, all before she shot at you, and then you popped her?” His words lingered a few seconds. “By the way, how are you still standing after she shot you? I know she hit you, I saw you jerk from the bullet impact.”
“You’re sixteen, Darren. I don’t see anyone else out here offering to help keep you alive and give you at least a fighting chance. I might be a bastard to some, but I still have a heart, for whatever reason,” I told him, still paying close attention to our surroundings, just in case. I faced him and tapped the bullet proof vest I had on. “Her bullet luckily hit this instead of somewhere else,” I added.
“I’d rather not stay here alone.”
“Like I said, that’s your choice. Not mine.” I told him and got in the pickup. Darren walked around to the passenger side and entered, shutting the door. His eyes migrated to the Woman he had been intimate with several times in the past few days, reeling at why he could not bring himself to feel sorry that she was dead. At first he had been traumatized by the experience, although the further he dove into the thought the more he began to realize that it wasn’t so much of her getting shot that had bothered him, like he first thought. He was more concerned about being shot himself, yet he had transferred the feeling on to her.
He looked at me with a question forming. “How is it that you can just shoot her down and have no remorse?”
I took a moment and looked hard at him. If this kid was ever going to make it past this night, he needed to understand how things were. He needed to know the society that we had all grown accustom to was no more. There were no laws anymore, no government at either the federal or state level, no police to chase the bad guys down and lock them up. There was no one to help. No one. If you were going to survive, then you had to become worse than those that planned to do you harm. You couldn’t show mercy and you sure as hell couldn’t expect it from anyone. Your life was in your hands and you’d either fight like hell to keep it or bow down and allow those vermin to take it… there was no in-between.
You were the hunter or the hunted.
“I don’t have to remind you that the world is no longer as it once was. I’m sure you are more than aware of that,” I said and Darren nodded. I took my time in thought to make sure I chose the best words to describe what I was trying to tell him, as the last thing I wanted was for him to think I was some monster, although with me knowing very little about him maybe for him to see me in the light was best until I could be certain he wasn’t going to stab me in the back, literally, if ever he got the chance.
“There’s no one left to protect the innocent. No police, of any kind, and what little military remains is no more concerned about you or your safety than those things out there are. We are all be hunted by the same predator, so we can either become the prey and be torn apart by them or robbed and killed by people like her,” I said as I started the truck. “To put it bluntly. You either kill or be killed, it’s that simple.”
We pulled out onto the highway, yet instead of going back across the overpass and entering the interstate to look for his illusive place of safety, we turned the opposite direction to which he quickly made a remark.
“Where are you going? The interstate is back that way along with that town.”
“There is no town, nor is there any safety. You keep moving and you stay alive. You stop and you die,” I said driving the truck back into town.
“But what if you’re wrong? What if this place really does exist and we don’t even try to see if it’s there or not? You could be killing both of us right now, right here with these choices.” his words stammered quickly from his mouth.
“Have you ever heard that statement that says if it’s too good to be true than usually it is?” I asked him.
“Of course I have.”
“Then why can’t you just accept that?” I asked him. “How hard is it for you to realize that what you and I used to know is gone, not just for a day or even a week, but gone for good and it’s never coming back.” I said. “The life you were leading up until this shit started is dead and gone, not to mention everyone you have ever known is probably dead as well. Stop living in the past and create your own future… if you’re not going to chance, then you’re destined to repeat this shit in a vicious cycle until it kills you.”
He was agitated at me; I could sense that much as he sat there with his arms folded in front of him watching the road. He reminded me of myself when I was a little boy and couldn’t get a toy at the supermarket, so all the way home I would sit there quietly sulking to myself until we got home. I somehow thought in the back of my young mind that if I was quiet enough and ignored my mom, she would change her mind and take me back for that toy. It never happened, not once.
“I know it may not look this way right now, but I am trying to save your life and give you a shot at another day,” I told him.
He remained quiet and wouldn’t even look at me.
I turned down the road that I had taken earlier heading toward my son’s grandparents’ house when I should have been hitting the interstate and doing my best to get us both back to the military base. Kember and Johnny would have made it back quite a while ago, if they hadn’t had any problems and that was what worried me the most. Something in my gut was telling me, screaming to me, that things had not gone as planned. It was a feeling I hated, yet no matter how hard I tried could not shake. It was attached to me like a conjoined twin.
I lit a cigarette and turned the radio on. “What station did you hear that broadcast on?” I asked Darren, who leaned forward and put it on the correct station. There was nothing there but silence, pure unadulterated silence. I left the volume up as we drove in hopes that the so called broadcast, if it even existed, would play again. Only the sound of the rushing wind entertained us as the blueish smoke rose from my cigarette, hit the incoming wind and was disturbed in a violent wake vortex before being sucked out the window and into oblivion.
What if this is all a bunch of bullshit? We’ve heard nothing on the radio this entire time, other than regular music before the remote systems failed and the music stopped altogether.
My mind reminded me and I caught myself checking Darren out through my peripheral vision, as if at any moment he would try something. I’d never patted him down before letting him into the pickup, which meant he could easily have another weapon on him, and this time it
could
be loaded.
“Did you know she was armed?” I asked Darren.
“What?” He responded to my question.
“The woman with you, back there. Did you know that she was armed with that small gun?” I asked in further detail this time around.
He looked at me visibly irritated and hesitated long enough for me to trust him even less than I already did. “I had a feeling she might be, although I never actually saw her with the thirty-eight though.”
His answer was a complete contradiction, because if he’s never seen her with the weapon, like he had said, then how would he know what type of gun it was? More and more I wondered why I had gone back for him. His answers would not change the world. His company would not make me feel any better or silence the loneliness I felt; in fact it made it worse. I had to keep my eye on him now and I already had far more than I could handle alone. I didn’t need any further distractions… I didn’t really need him, so why had I gone back?
Were my morals trying to sneak back into the picture somehow or was it my conscious? Either way, this horny little bastard could easily get me killed, if he didn’t do it himself when I was asleep. I had accomplished nothing by adding him, other than making things harder on me and adding to my already growing list of worries. He was not a resolve by any means. He was part of the growing problem.
Answers were not what I wanted. What I wanted was the real reason he had just lied to me. Was he hiding something? Most people that lie to you usually are and I had to find out the reason.
“I know a place we can go where it’s safe, for the moment anyway,” Darren told me.
I slammed on the brakes. The pickup ground to a swift halt, pulling the rear slightly to the right and throwing Darren forward where he flung his arms outward to keep from crashing into the dashboard. He shot me a look of anger. “What the hell was that for?”
I had already whipped the .9mm out even before we had fully stopped and he’d looked my way with mounting anger. He saw the barrel pointed at him and the momentum of his anger lost its motion and stalled instantly.
“You said you never saw her with the gun, that’s exactly what you just told me, and then in the same sentence you tell me in detail what kind of gun it is. So how is that possible?” I asked him.
He said nothing in defense.
“I didn’t have to come back for your ass and I sure as hell don’t have to take you any further!” I stated. “You’re not my responsibility! Finding my kids are though.” I adjusted myself so that I was facing him better and continued. “So here’s how it’s going to go. You can either come clean with me right here and now – no bullshit, no more lies – or you can get out and try your luck
alone
and
unarmed.
” I cocked the hammer and he pushed hard against his door, as if trying to get away from me without actually running.
“Maybe I was mistaken?” He said. “Maybe I
had
seen the gun once before, but never thought she’d use it, kind of like it was for show or to merely scare someone into submission. She never spoke of using it on anyone or even killing anyone for that matter.” His words came quicker now. “There are a lot of crazy and dangerous people out here and we had to protect ourselves, ya know.”
“Or maybe you’re a liar?” I added. “If I can’t trust you to watch my back if something happens, then you serve me no purpose.”
“I didn’t shoot you,” he reminded me in a defensive manner.
”The gun wasn’t loaded, remember?” I fired back.
“So that’s it, you’re just gonna shoot me and throw me out on the street like a bag of trash?” He asked.
“I want to know why you lied to me after I was nice enough to not only come back, but save you as well?” I asked him. “And to answer your question. No, I’m not going to shoot you, just toss you out near a heard of them and let natural selection define your fate.”
He flipped from being frightened to ungrateful. “Nobody twisted your arm to come back! That’s on you, not me!”
I could see that our conversation was going to get nowhere if we were unable to break the chains that were binding us to this vicious cycle. There were a lot of bad people out there,
real
people that would have no problem killing someone for something as small as a cold coke or maybe a burger. This kid had lied for some unknown reason, but I didn’t see him as a threat, he’d have to do quite a bit more to render that thought to form in my head, but I didn’t trust him and that was the core foundation to any good relationship. Period!