My fists were still clenched. I uncurled them, wincing with pain as I did. The knuckles on both hands were sore and bloody, and the middle finger on my left hand was starting to swell. There were cuts on my hands from George’s teeth. I licked my lips and tasted blood. At first, I thought it was mine, but it wasn’t. I’d bitten that hole in George’s cheek. I spat, wiping my mouth with my forearm. It hurt to breathe. My chest ached. I checked myself thoroughly to make sure George hadn’t stabbed or cut me. Other than the lacerations on my hands, I didn’t seem to be injured, though my shirt was torn.
I looked around for the pocketknife, but couldn’t find it. I assumed it must have been tossed aside during the fight. I got down on my hands and knees, searching for it. I found the weapon lying beneath one of the diesel generators. It had slipped beneath the skid and the plastic sheeting surrounding the unit. I pulled it free, closed the blade and slipped the knife into my pocket. Then I checked the bodies, just to make sure the three of them were dead. George wasn’t breathing, and neither was Jim. In the case of the latter, it was obvious what had killed him, but despite the obvious physical damage to George, I couldn’t believe that my beating alone had killed him. When I rolled him over, I saw that it hadn’t. The back of his head was cracked open and his hair was matted and sticky with fresh blood. He must have hit his head on the concrete when he fell. Clyde was bloodier than both Jim and George. He’d bitten the tip of his tongue off when I’d kicked him in the chin. I looked around for it, but didn’t see it anywhere, so I assumed he swallowed it. Maybe he’d choked on it, or maybe he’d bled to death. I couldn’t be sure—but then again, it didn’t really matter, as long as he was dead and not trying to eat me anymore.
A thought occurred to me then. There was no reason why Chuck and the others had to continue hunting me. If it was food they needed—if they were determined to offset starvation by eating our fellow survivors—then I’d actually done them a favor. Why hadn’t I thought of this before, when I killed Krantz? They could eat him instead. And with the bodies of George, Jim and Clyde, it was like a four-course meal. There would be enough to feed everyone.
I tried freeing my spear from inside of Jim, but it was stuck on something. I didn’t want to consider what might be obstructing it—bone, probably. Maybe one of his ribs? Each time I tugged on the shaft, another gout of blood bubbled out of his mouth. He’d shit and pissed himself in death, and when I jiggled the spear, his body moved, making wet, squelching sounds. The stench was atrocious. Finally, I gave up and retrieved the second spear from where it lay. Then, gripping it in my hand, I stepped over their corpses and peeked around the cul-de-sac wall.
The corridor was empty and quiet. The only sound was the ever-present rumbling of the generators in the power plant. I decided that I was sick of skulking around and hiding. There was no sense in it anymore, given that the others were dead. All I had to do was explain it to Chuck and his followers. I stretched, turning my head from side to side and cracking my joints. Then I walked down the hall, spear in hand. The lights seemed brighter than before, and the corridor seemed even longer. As the adrenalin left my body, my stomach began to ache again.
All of us had begun to suffer the physical, emotional and mental side-effects of starvation. A few of the women had stopped getting their periods. Some of us had gotten weird rashes, or began losing hair. Drew had battled a bad case of diarrhea, which had left him weak and dehydrated until it stopped. I’d suffered from constipation, depression, social withdrawal and insomnia. I don’t know if they were directly related to my lack of food, since the symptoms had first manifested themselves with the divorce. All of us were more irritable, and if the events of the last few hours were any indication, the others were now transitioning from irritability to full-blown psychotic episodes. I’d have to choose my words carefully when I confronted Chuck. I didn’t want to challenge his Alpha Male status. Obviously, it was something that was important to him. I couldn’t be perceived as a threat. But more importantly, I needed to appear reasonable and logical. I needed to persuade him that I no longer needed to die. Indeed, I’d killed so that the rest of them wouldn’t have to. They didn’t need to worry about it. The blood was on my hands, and from it, the others would stay alive a little while longer.
The lights buzzed overhead, the sound faint and ghostly. I clutched my spear tighter. Something moaned behind me. I spun around and gasped, my eyes widening. Clyde stumbled into the corridor, supporting himself with one hand against the wall. His other arm hung limp at his side. He was hunched over, but he lifted his head and stared at me with half-lidded eyes. The blood on his face made his skin seem stark and pale and ghostly. When he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth were bright red.
“I thought I killed you,” I said. My voice seemed to echo down the hall.
“Uck oo, Eet… oer ucker…”
“I can’t understand you, Clyde.”
“Uck oo!” Clyde raised his hand and gave me the finger, relying on universal sign language to communicate for him.
“Listen…” I laid the spear down on the floor and held up my hands. “We don’t have to do this, Clyde. You’re hurt. You’re hurt real bad. Let me go get you some help. You don’t have to kill me. If you guys are determined to resort to cannibalism, then I won’t stand in your way. But it doesn’t have to be me that you eat. We can start with Krantz, Jim and George. Okay?”
Clyde drooled blood.
“Okay?” I asked again.
“Uck oo!”
“Fuck me? No, fuck you, Clyde. You’ve got two choices. You can sit down right here and let me get you some help, or I can finish the fucking job and make sure you’re the first course at dinner tonight. Now, which do you prefer?”
He stared at me, his mouth hanging open, his wounded, bloody tongue lolling from between his lips like a dead fish. He swayed back and forth, and then slumped to the floor with a sigh. It was a slow, laborious process, and he grunted with pain as he pushed his back against the wall. His eyes never left me. They seemed accusatory, angry and distrustful.
“Good,” I said, softening my voice. “That’s good. Now you just stay right there, Clyde. I’ll go work everything out with Chuck and get you some help. Stay calm and don’t move. Just rest. I’ll be back. Okay?”
He didn’t respond, and I wondered if he understood me at all. A string of bloody drool dribbled down his chin. Then Clyde nodded slowly, and I saw a cautious hope in his gaze. The tension seemed to go out of his body. He closed his eyes. His head and shoulders sagged, and his chin drooped against his chest. I stood there for a moment, watching him, making sure that he wouldn’t get back up and claw his way after me after I’d turned my back on him, but he didn’t move. Were it not for the slow rise and fall of his chest, or the occasional twitch of his legs and feet, I’d have thought he was dead. I resisted the urge to prod him with my shoe. In truth, seeing him like that, I felt sorry for Clyde. I didn’t feel guilt. At that point, I was beyond guilt. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe it was a mental defense mechanism—my psyche’s way of shielding me from the crushing totality that I’d murdered three people and injured a fourth. Yes, it had been in self-defense, but at that moment, the facts didn’t matter. Maybe you can’t understand that. Maybe you have to have killed someone to sympathize with how I felt. I pitied Clyde, but I was also secure in the certainty that he’d brought it on himself.