He clears his throat. “If you speak to him again, be wary but cordial.”
My rabbit slips through my fingers and plops on my plate. “Cordial? You want me to be nice to him? Since when?”
“Since the wraiths outnumber us again.”
“I don’t know that they outnumber us.” I say doubtfully.
“Since the Colonists walk these woods.”
I drop my meat again, this time intentionally. “They’ve been here? Near you?”
He watches me calmly. “Not near enough to see, but near enough for me to hear. Do not worry for me.”
“Crenshaw—“
“I said do no worry, Athena. I have shrouded my home. I will remain unseen.”
“Shrouded it with what? A spell?”
He frowns at me, looking at me like I’ve gone mad. “With camouflage.”
“Right, sorry.”
Sometimes I forget that Crenshaw’s crazy is selective. He’ll be telling me one minute to burn sage to ward off evil spirits and the next he’ll be asking if I remember the football Thanksgiving episode of Friends. It’s hit or miss. More often miss.
Eventually I say goodbye to Master Gandalf and carefully pick my way out of his neck of the woods. I’m full of good food, sedated by whatever incense he was burning in that hut and my day is only half done. Now the hard part. I have to climb to the top of one of my buildings and get fresh water.
This is dangerous for two—wait, no three… I guess actually four—it’s dangerous for a whole lot of reasons, let’s just go with that. Colonists, zombies, Lost Boys, bears. Yes! I have seen a bear before and I cannot tell you how scary that was. He was huge and hungry and fast. I only got away because I climb way better than he could. I ended up sleeping in an unfamiliar building out on the fire escape until he got bored or hungry and finally left.
I decide to minimize my danger factor since I’m already tired from Elmer Fuddin’ it after that rabbit and I go to my closest water source. It’s five blocks away and to the south, the opposite direction of Ryan’s home. At least I know I’m walking away from one threat I’d like to hide from. The walk there shows me how flooded the world really is. It’s one thing to see it from up high and it’s another entirely to get down in it. Every corner I round seems to bring me nearly face to face with a Risen. I’m able to carefully avoid them, eventually going to the rooftops to do so, but that’s dangerous and kind of lazy on my part. I just want to get my water and go home when what I should be doing is putting them down and eliminating the problem for Future Joss. Making Future Joss’s life easier with less zombies to face on a daily basis. But that’s Future Joss’s issue and right now Present Joss isn’t feeling it.
Selfishness, especially my own, is what makes this place so hard to survive.
When I get to the building I have a choice to make. Go inside and take the stairs or climb the fire escape. The fire escape of course sounds like the better option because I won’t have to be inside a building that for all I know could be crawling with Risen. It’s the smart choice on paper. But when you look at the situation more closely, mainly at the bolts securing the fire escape to the building, you see the flaws in the plan. It’s been many moons, many winters, many rain storms since this thing was deemed safe by the local fire inspector and I know for a fact that it’s hanging on by a thread. As I stand here on the sidewalk examining it, feeling more exposed by the second, I see the structure shift in the wind. I’m not setting foot on that.
Inside it is.
My skin crawls at the thought and I have to take several deep breaths to psyche myself up for this. Once I’m inside, I’m all stealth and speed. I don’t need to be a hero here. I’m not looking to hunt zombies tonight and help decrease the surplus population, no matter how much Future Joss will bitch about it. What I need to do is get in and get out without contact – living or otherwise.
But what I need, what I want and what I get have rarely lined up.
That Cabbage Patch Doll with the blood in her blond hair? I wanted a brunette.
I also wanted my parents to live past New Years.
Do you see the pattern here?
What I see is a Risen at the end of the hall by the door to the stairs. The only door to the stairs.
“Great.” I mutter, pulling out the ASP with my left hand and unsheathing my knife with my right.
I’m right handed and my preferred weapon here is the ASP. So why am I holding it in my weak hand? Because it doesn’t need me to be strong. Not really. It doesn’t need me to be accurate either. All it needs is a target and a little momentum and that thing will crush bone under its steel tip like it’s nothin’. Like cracking a walnut. Ryan was right to be jealous. This thing is amazing and I sleep with it like a toddler with a teddy bear.
A brisk breeze flutters through the smashed door behind me and carries down the hall. Almost instantly the hunchback female with a serious skin condition is aware of me. She begins the slow shamble down the long hall toward me and I think about waiting for her, making her come to me and maybe even drawing her out into the street before engaging her. But the day is waning, light will be scarce soon and I’m not about to be caught out in the wild after hours.
I move down the hall slowly, checking doors as I go and keeping my eyes on her progress. When my beauty queen with the gray skin sloughing off her bones moans into range, I kneel down and swing out, aiming for her shin. It cracks, breaking the bone and dropping her to the ground. Once she’s down, I quickly kick her over on her side, making her temple more accessible. I could have hit her in the head when she was up, but it wouldn’t have ended her and it would only have either made a mess of her face or been a waste of energy. The top of the human skull, the only section I have clean access to in this tight hallway, is incredibly strong. The temple and the face, not as much.
She grabs at my leg, clawing at the denim and moaning. Her big dead eyes are looking right at me and it’s that more than anything else that gives me chills. How is she looking at me with those things? What does she even see?
“Nothing.” I growl, growing angry at her constant moaning and greedy hands. “You don’t see anything.”
I swing the ASP down hard, making contact with her cheek bone. It explodes in a rush of black and gray. A tooth pops out of her mouth and skitters across the floor behind me. I bring the baton down again, this time closer to her ear and I must catch the temple a little because she stops moving. But I don’t. I keep swinging the baton because I can. Because I want her gone. I want all semblance of a human face to be beaten into the floor and stripped from this body because it’s not real anymore. It’s not human and it shouldn’t look like one. No one should come through here, see her finally, perfectly, wholly dead and think how sad it is.
When my arm grows tired and I’m sufficiently grossed out by the softness of what I’m now beating, I stop. I’m breathing heavy and I’m tired. I’m tired of a lot of things. I need to get upstairs, get my water and get home. I’ll clean myself up and watch a movie, something I haven’t done in a week. Not since Ryan rode the bike. I don’t know why I haven’t, but tonight for some reason I really desperately want to.
I take off at a sprint, ignoring the rest of the doors in the hallway. I don’t have enough time, patience or daylight to mind them all. It’s risky but not as risky as being out at night. This building is only six stories. I’m rounding the corner on the stairs heading up to the fifth floor, breathing deep and even, searching for my calm again, when I trip. I fly forward, my momentum thrusting me up the stairs and onto the fifth floor landing. I watch with horrified interest as my ASP, my greatest, most loyal friend, flies down the hall without me.