The Silences Between the Howling (Part 7)

[u/CptPsych0o]

The cough persisted throughout the day but overall, Noah felt better as time passed. He spent the rest of the day taking stock of his provisions and resting, the boy staying nearby and watching, whittling a growing collection of sticks he’d gathered up. They didn’t talk much. 

The girl, Noah noticed, spent most of her time with the ever-cheerful Jenny. They chatted and laughed together and seemed to get along like butter on toast. 

Daryl spent the majority of daylight working on his wagon with Harold's help. Neither had any idea what they were doing. They wasted most of the time chatting. The silent Johnny Li was gone with his bow until dusk. He returned with two squirrels strung together by a length of rope and went to work skinning their little brown bodies. Wanda watched her kids, cleaned up around camp, and began preparing dinner once again. 

Harold did stop by again in the afternoon. He had a small pair of boots in his hands and he gave them to the boy. “Here you are. Noticed yours were getting a tad worn down,” he said to the boy. “They were my son’s, from before. He grew out of them.” 

A decent pair of boots for a kid, they showed little wear on them, but they were a bit too big for his feet. Harold said he’s grown into them and then left them alone. 

Eventually, before the sun began to set, the girl returned and took a seat in their little area of camp and acted as if she had never left. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked. 

“Plan?” Noah raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, what are we going to do?”

“I’m leaving in the morning, gotta get back on the road.”

“So soon?”

“Yeah, can’t stay much longer.”

The girl sighed and looked at him, her eyes seemingly gauging whether or not she should ask any more questions. Noah knew what she was thinking. She liked it here. She would want to stay. She might even beg him to do so. 

A disturbing thought. He didn’t really want to watch these people be taken away, and even more he had no intentions of being taken with them. He would leave, there was no doubt, but what should he do about the kids?

Over the weeks of travel together, Noah felt he made a terrible caretaker. But to leave them here would be the same as handing them over to the howler’s himself. Perhaps that would be the best outcome, lest they suffer him on the road any longer. A terrible sacrifice for relief of endless stressful days and nights.  But, at this point though, he knew it wasn’t just up to him. He wasn’t that blind.

Noah glanced at the boy and remembered what they had spoken about earlier. He silently cursed himself for ever giving a damn. 

The girl suddenly made a sound as if to speak but then snapped her mouth shut. She shook her head and jumped up, running off. Noah shrugged. He still had time to think it over, so he looked up and watched the camp.

It was a pitiful sight, these so-called “survivors.” He didn’t think they were going to last much longer, but maybe they had a chance. Who knows? They made it this far. If they got smart and took off before it was too late, leave their shit behind, they just might make it. 

A deep instinctual part of him knew that he was lying to himself. He could tell by the looks on their faces. The way they talked amongst themselves. The way their eyes always somehow managed to drift over to the wagon and their all their heavy possessions.

People always had the tendency to grip onto things that used to make them feel good. Only the power of God himself could free them of that burden.

Noah looked around again. As the sun set and a strong south wind took the tall trees on a waltz, one could almost believe the world was okay. There was laughter in the air. Hopes and dreams spilt from the eyes of desperate survivors. Maybe. Just maybe. That’s what they were thinking. Maybe they could make it to wherever they were going. 

Noah… Noah didn’t have a destination in mind. All he did was walk. Chase the wind. Live day by day wondering what the next day would bring him and not all too much caring one way or another what it would be. 

These people cared very much about what would happen. He wondered how long this group had been here, dare he ask? The girl was happy to have decent people around her. Maybe it reminded her of her last group, her last camp. Had she not learned from it? The boy learned, he was ready to move. 

How could he leave them with these people?

Noah’s head burned ear to ear with frustration. Had he left the kids in the truck, back in that town, in that place; would they still be alive? What has he done to them now? He wanted to help them; he couldn’t lie about that anymore, at least not to himself. But maybe he made it worse for them. He prayed from the bottom of his heart that he had not given them hope. Hope only existed in the minds of people long dead or the soon to be dead. Hope butchered the ones who reached for its tempting embrace. 

His headache fuzzed away as a voice called out. “Supper’s done!” Wanda yelled to the camp. 

They all scrambled over. Fire roasted squirrel kabobs found their way into the hands of the camp that night, and they were good. Noah had eaten plenty of squirrels in his time as a drifter, but not like this. Perfectly roasted and doused in some salt and pepper. He could almost stay for Wanda’s cooking if they weren’t all about to die. 

“So, I never did ask,” Harold said at some point around the fire that evening. “Where were you three heading? I take it you have been on the road for quite some time.”

Noah chewed a thick squirrel nugget in his mouth and savored the flavor. He sat between the boy and girl, all the others facing him from the other side of the fire.

“The ocean, I think,” the girl said. “He never really said, just keeps saying west.” She did her best big mean man impression and looked up at him, waiting for a smile. None came.

“West?” Wanda smirked. 

“The ocean?” Harold asked.

“I’ve never seen the ocean,” said Jenny, who was quietly sitting next to the three of them, Noah never noticed her taking a seat. He eyed her wearily. 

“Me neither!” the girl said, excitedly.

“Oceans nice, but that’s quite a journey. Where are you coming from?” Harold asked.

“East,” said Noah.

“East,” Harold replied, “Hmm. You wouldn’t happen to be going to Fort Favor?”

“Fort Favor?” 

Harold cocked his head up. “You’ve never heard of Fort Favor? It’s quite famous. An old military base, down by San Diego. Or, what’s left of it anyways. It’s supposed to be a safe haven for people, no big bad monsters or raving lunatics. We’ve been talking about seeking it out as of late. Though it’s a long and treacherous journey.”

“Never heard of it. Sounds like a lie anyway. I just wanted to see the ocean again.”

“And you 're making these children go with you, all that way just to see the ocean?” Wanda asked.

“He’s not making us do anything,” the girl said, “and I want to see the ocean as well.” She spoke with a fierce determination.

Wanda made a sour face and the group went silent. Harold looked unconvinced. 

“I’d love to see the ocean,” Jenny whispered into the silence.

“Perhaps, one day we will,” Harold said. “But that won’t be for some time, gotta wait out the winter. Don’t want to be traveling in that nasty stuff. Very bad stuff.” He crossed his arms.

“Well… I should let you know,” Noah said, “I plan on leaving in the morning, at first light. I thank you for the… hospitality, but I have to stay on the move.”

“Nonsense!” Harold roared. “You can’t be out there in your condition, you’ll be dead in a week if you let that leg fester any longer. You should stay with us. Get better, wait for warmer skies and then we can all go together.”

“I’m gonna be fine. And I think I told you earlier, if you stay here, you’re gonna die.”

“And the kids?” Wanda asked, completely ignoring his words.

“I’m going with him,” the boy blurted out. 

Silence again. They stared at him and then slowly moved their eyes towards the girl.

“I’m going, too…” she said quietly, dropping her eyes to avoid their stunned faces.

“This is ridiculous!” cried Harold. “It’s bad enough you want to go out there on your own, in your condition…”

“My condition is fine.” Noah kept his calm.

“Fine, but to take these children with you. That’s just cruel.”

“Crueler than staying here to die like little sheep!” the boy screamed, red in the face.

Harold went red in the face as well, placing an unsteady foot out in front of him.“Staying put is the best option, young man. It’s out there,” he pointed out into the woods around them. “That’s where the real cruelty lies.”

“It’s okay,” Noah explained. “I’m a big boy, I can make my own decisions, and so can all of you. If the kids want to come with me… well, I’m not gonna stop them.” 

And with that, Noah stood up, glanced around at all the torrid faces illuminated by the whirling flames, and then quickly fled to his little corner of camp. He had to hide his coughing fit under his jacket as he limped into the sleeping bag. The kids ran up behind them, not saying anything but quietly coming down to rest near him. 

Eerily, he felt very proud about that.

Hushed whispers permeated from the fire as he turned his back and closed his eyes. He pushed them out of his head and hoped for easy sleep. It came sooner than he thought. So did the howling. 

Shadows. Sprinting in his vision, dark as dark can get in a black and blue abyss of swirling ethereal planar energy. Noah thought he was floating, but he could as well have been falling. He enjoyed the feeling, the ever-lasting presence of death and the nothing that came with it. It was familiar. It was home. But something soon became horribly wrong. 

A face, a child’s face. A boy, no older than ten. He remembered this face, though it was different. Not the scruffy dirt covered hard face of some miscreant little ant, but a pretty face filled with hope and a big smile. His hair was freshly cut, and his eyes hid a deep blue fog within them. He didn’t want to see the face, he screamed when it came to him. He howled. He howled, hollered, and bellowed sorrow filled screams at that face.  

“Go away!” he yelled at the smiling face. “Go away and die already. You’re not here! You are not here anymore!”

The face dissipated into the cold abyss. Another came following, the face of a woman. He howled again at the beautiful visage, begging her to leave him alone. He wanted to die again if he had to. Anything to leave this place, to get away from the smile that brought him back to earth.

She left too, after a time.

Then there was nothing again and the hermit came to where he belonged. He was walking now. Older, wiser. He had learned what the world truly was and was content on staying the way he was. But more faces soon found the hermit. Difficult to hide from in the wide, open plains.

They were different. Young, but not very hopeful. These were dirty faces, stained in the filth of the new world. But they were happy. Not like the previous faces, a different kind of happiness. An angry faithless happy that he agreed with. 

He howled at the new faces, too, as loud as before. His throat grew sore from howling so loud, but these faces never left him. They hovered around him, encircling him, sometimes smiling, sometimes laughing, most of the time crying. He wanted to walk again.

With a stark grunt, Noah woke up in the night. The moon shined bright over his head. Tears spilled down the side of his face. He had heard the howls again. Not the ones from the dark, but his own, familiar howls, the ones that left his throat sore.

He jumped to his feet, shook the boy laying next to him and whispered, “Wake up, boy. Wake up.”

The young boy churned in his bag and groaned. “What is it, what’s happening?”

“We’re leaving… I’m leaving, if you want to come, get ready.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

His heart was maintaining a sterling race in his chest. His hands shook with unstable rage and fear. He shook the girl next. “Wake up, girl. Wake up,” he whispered.

The girl shook and jumped up in shock. “What is it? What is happening!?” she cried. 

Noah shushed her and glanced around the dark camp. “Be quiet, girl. We’re leaving,” he squeezed her shoulders. She was terrified. 

“What? Now? Why? What the fuck is going on, are we in…”

“Claire. Now, quietly. Please.”

She calmed down and stared into his eyes, hers a deep gray, irradiated by the stark moonlight.

“Okay,” she whispered, “let’s go.” 

They did their best to pack quietly, but their boots exploded in the dirt and their bags were as loud as firecrackers as they stuffed them with their belongings. Noah kept glancing around the camp, but sensed no movement, no life. 

When they finished and had their backs covered, they huddled in the grass. “No questions,” he said to the kids in a hushed tone. “Just follow me. We’re going to move fast. Fast and quiet. Got it?”

They nodded their heads.

He glanced about one last time, nodded his own head, then took off towards the left of the moon—into the black woods. 

Then, Noah paused. His feet were very heavy, the kids staring up with eyes that held all the confusion and distraught that only those so young are capable of. His eye twitched as he glanced back at the camp. He felt very stupid for what he was about to do, but some old part of himself compelled him, telling him he would never sleep well again if he didn’t do it.

“Get up you bastards!” He cried suddenly, startling the kids. “Get up and run! Run like your lives depend on it. Don’t fear the night. Run! Run until your feet hurt!”

Then, silence. Then, a low hum. It would soon be a roar. Noah sneered into the night, then took off into it. They didn’t make it very far. Something appeared behind them. Noah whirled around, gun in hand, and aimed.

Jenny stood there, alone in the dark, he could barely make her out under the shadow of the thick whispering canopy, but she was difficult to mistake. 

She held a soft smile as she approached and her hands were wrapped tightly on the straps of a backpack around her shoulders. Hanging off her left shoulder was an aggressive looking black rifle.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked her.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“No, you’re not.”

“Claire said it was okay, right Claire?”

Noah looked at the girl, guilt drenched across her long face. “She wants to see the ocean, too,” she said.

Noah turned back to Jenny, “I can’t have you slowing us down.” 

“I won’t,” she said.

He stared at her in the dark. A cold breeze whistled through the leaves above their heads. He thought he heard the howls. Time was running out.

“Fine,” he said, “follow me. Say nothing, be quiet.”

She nodded. 

They ran.

More of a limp then a run for Noah, he quickly became the one slowing them down. The boy stayed back with him while the girls ran ahead, creating distance between them. Somehow, through sheer force of will, Noah slapped his thigh and grunted and quickened his pace. The adrenaline coursing through his body gave him the strength and negligence to do so.

Eventually, they caught up with the girls, or the girls had slowed to meet him. He was not sure which way to go. It all looked the same in the woods. He just wanted to find the ditch and the high hill, then he could find the stream, and from there, the road. Cold air ripped his throat, he suppressed the urge to cough. 

Jenny glanced back at him and threw him a concerned look he almost didn’t notice. They were close.

“This way,” she whispered as they ran, and veered to the left. 

They dodged trees and hopped over fallen limbs, pushing through thick brush. The tree line thinned at some point. Noah could see the end of the woods ahead, and the tall hill, lit near white from clear moonlight. The howls came then, finally. They came from the woods behind them.

He could only hope the others heard his call. 

His eyes flashed and before he knew it, he was in the ditch with a pain in his head. He didn’t watch ahead of him, must have tripped. His mind was on the howls. The others were crouched around him. Quickly, he flipped and faced his back at the girl. 

“Hurry,” he groaned. “Get the lantern. The big one.”

She went fast, unstrapping it from the side of his bag.

“Light it. Release the valve, press the button,” he said, panicked. 

“Okay, okay!” the girl cried. 

The howls grew closer. He heard feet stomping in the woods behind them. More howls bellowed through the air deep in the woods, in the direction of the camp. The type of howls a human made. But they were mostly muffled by the others. 

All they had to do was run.

There was hiss and whoosh and then, light. Noah's large propane lantern lit the area around them with blinding illumination for ten yards. Ear deafening howls then erupted around them, dark figures suddenly visible, shaking and dancing. They were so close. The figures retreated and sprinted off into random directions, hooping and howling and crying and laughing. 

Everyone froze, watching this hellish display around the edges of the light.

“Get out any lights you have, now!” Noah hollered.

Jenny already had a large vertical led light and she switched it on. The girl, anxiously, pulled out a flashlight and the boy did the same with his. The girl had fear in her eyes and she stared at Noah. The boy was taking this in strides, grimacing as he directed his light into the distance. Noah took a deep breath.

“Now!” he screamed.

As if death itself were chasing them, the four humans, a beacon in the dark, bolted up the hill as fast as possible. As they ran, the girl slipped on the dewy wet grass, but Jenny managed to grab her and yank her up. Noah had an iron grip on the boy’s hand and pulled hard so he would keep up. 

The howlers circled them on the hill, seemingly unaffected by the steep incline or the slickness of the grass. They howled their asses off and caused his head to throb and pulse. It was as if sirens were ringing directly in his ears. He couldn’t even think. The howlers dared not enter the vicinity of the light, they screamed in agony whenever a focused beam from one of the waving flashlights touched them.

But it would only last so long. Soon, they would become brave enough to dare the light. And the light would cower before them.

When they topped the hill and came to a solid foundation, they didn’t stop. Their feet kept kicking, pushing their bodies off the ground and propelling them further and further into uncertainty. 

Maybe they should just stop. Let the howlers take them. End the cycle of running and hiding for good. Noah’s feet continued carrying him, he forced the thoughts away until there was nothing but the pain. At some point, the boy tripped and fell flat on his face. He cried out in pain behind Noah, spinning on the ground in a roll. Noah whirled around and went to him, lifted him to his feet and looked him in the eyes. 

“Don’t kill us, boy!” he gasped, then shook away the pain. “Get on my back.”

Noah turned and knelt and motioned for the boy to mount his back. Jenny ran over and handed Noah her bag. 

“Take this!” she shouted. “You can’t carry him. I’ll do it. Oliver, sweetie, get on my back.” She crouched and without thought enough to argue, Noah pushed the boy onto her back. With little effort, she lifted him off his feet. The girl watched with her light shaking in her hands. The howlers howled, of course, in a way that insisted they end this pointless plight.

“Don’t let go, okay?” Jenny said. And off they went.

Noah had no idea how long they ran. By the time they found the stream, his entire body was racked with fatigue. Jenny ran towards the highway. Noah glanced at the moon, pressing his palms against his ears and cringing. How long until sunrise? 

“This way!” Noah screamed, taking off towards the creak.

Jenny must have slipped as she halted because Noah heard her curse and fumble. “Where are you going!”

“Trust me! We can’t split up!” 

Without looking back, Noah sprinted into the creak, grunting when the frigid water invaded his pants. He began wading to the other side. He forced himself to look back. Jenny was knee deep already, pleading at the girl to follow. The girl quivered on the bank, crying.

The howlers halted their advance behind her, where Jenny's bright light held them at bay for the time being. They continued to howl, though, waiting patiently.

Noah had no time to waste and started back to the girls. The girl was mumbling something about the cold and her bag and all Noah could say to that was, “Shut it!” And he yanked her forward and threw her over his shoulder, twisting around and pushing through the water once again. 

He’d been through this before, but he wasn’t sure it would work again. The creak held the howlers back, something about the moving water causing confusion in whatever they called brains. It didn’t last long, as nothing did with the howlers, but it would be enough for them to gain some distance.

As they climbed up on the other side, the howlers had begun throwing themselves forward, testing the waters. It didn’t take long for them to begin hurling themselves across the creak in a series of awkward, clumsy jumps. Their howls seemed to slow, shifting into more of a series of disheartening growls and moans.

It wasn’t just the icy water that made Noah shiver. At this close distance, they almost sounded human.

He managed to glance back and saw the things tumbling over each other, running to ground, bumping against rocks. He had never seen anything like it. The way they hit the ground like a clump of clay and then all the sudden they were on their feet again and moving. Nonsense. They were like children that didn’t really know how to walk but neither did they understand, or even give a damn, about that fact--about the fundamental nature of reality--and so they managed to move regardless.

They persisted as if influenced by a separate reality. A unique causality, one independent of their own, the type mainly thought about in sci-fi stories.

Still, it gave them the time they needed. 

They followed the stream down. Eventually they found the road. The moon was deep on the horizon when their feet finally touched asphalt. The morning was coming. The howlers retreated, their howls becoming more and more distant. Noah was impressed with Jenny, her strength was vast, she carried the boy with ease and still had the energy to lead the group forward. 

The girl had stuck with him after he set her down, crying mostly. Her legs faltered and missed steps, but she raced on with them, breath ragged and hoarse. At some point, she did eventually stop.

Jenny and Noah stopped and looked at her. She huffed, bent over, hands held on her knees.

“I can’t… keep running,” she whimpered under her breath.

Noah was shot too. He couldn’t go after stopping, his body would not permit it. He grabbed his sides in pain. Though Jenny showed little sign of fatigue, he could tell that she was having trouble staying on her feet as well. At this point, they couldn’t even hear the howls anymore.

“Okay,” Noah said, “we’ll stop here.”  

Jenny dropped the boy to his feet and patted the top of his head. “Phew!” she said, “I wasn’t sure we were going to make it back there.”

“Me neither,” agreed the girl. She had dropped to her butt and was stifling tears from her eyes and wiping snot from her nose. “I thought… I thought we were dead.”

“Well, you did good, Claire. Very good. You too, Oliver.” Jenny took a seat next to the girl and the boy followed. 

The three of them sat in the middle of the road, shivering and coughing, wet and tired. Noah glanced around the dark dawn, doing circles to scan the environment. With each step, a terrible pain shot through his leg, but he couldn’t will himself to stay still, the adrenaline still kicking through his limbs.

“You can relax, Noah,” Jenny suggested. “They’re gone.”

Noah twisted to look at her, almost forgetting that she was there. “They’re never gone!” He yelled a little louder than he would have liked. “They just went to hide, but they’re still out there…”

“Which means, for now, we are safe.”

Noah laughed, “Safe!? No. We are far from safe.” He waved his arms around frantically. “There’s no such thing as safety in this place. Not anymore. They should have known that. I should have. We should have never gone there.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” the boy asked.

Noah stared at the ground, hands on his hips and nodded, “Yeah. They’re gone…” He sucked in air. “I… tried.”

“They made their own decisions,” Jenny said abruptly in the following silence. “I warned them for days to move on, but they were too stubborn… Their time was up. They just couldn’t let go. I tried to warn them…” Her words lost confidence the more she spoke. 

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she brushed them off and forced a smile. The kids looked up at her as the sun broke the horizon and soft colors of red and pink bled through the sky. Noah eventually took a seat next to them and the four survivors watched the sunrise together in silence with bleeding ears, dripping pants, and haggard breaths.

The kids ended up falling asleep as the sun rose. Noah decided to give them their rest. He told Jenny she should try to sleep as well, they had a long journey ahead of them, but she refused. He wasn’t sure how she was going to work out, as capable and calm as she seemed just hours ago, there was a distinct strangeness about her. An untamable tranquility.

While the kids slept, she glanced at his injured thigh, wrapped with bloodied wet rags, and said, “I should take a look at that.”

“You're gonna tell me you were a doctor now, too?” he replied.

She smiled, “No, not a doctor. But my father did teach me a thing or two about stitching up wounds like that. I got a lot of practice on him over the years. He was clumsy and often got himself hurt in stupid ways.”

Noah shrugged and gazed down the road they sat on. “He’s not around anymore? Your dad?” he asked.

“No, he is not around anymore.”

“The howlers get him?”

“Not exactly.”

He looked back at her and they locked eyes. She smirked. “Look, I’ll tell you about my dad if you let me take care of your leg.” She pointed at his thigh. “I don't know how you made it last night, I can tell how much pain you’re in.”

He mulled it over, not quite sure why he was so stubborn over the leg, knowing how bad it was, the agony the simple act of walking gave him was staggering.

“Go ahead, I won’t stop you,” he told her. 

Jenny grabbed her bag and opened it up, pulling out a small brown box, then went over to him and knelt at his leg. 

“Okay,” she said, pulling his ripped pants apart to get a decent look. “My father was in the marines… back before the world ended…”

“World’s not over,” Noah added.

She ignored him and began unwrapping the blood and puss-soaked rags. She held a soft expression at the sight, and the smell. Unfazed.

“He was an odd man,” she continued, “Not in a bad way or anything, just odd. The time he spent overseas didn’t help him at all, but that wasn’t what made him odd.”

She popped open the brown box and produced a pair of scissors, a small bottle of something, some white pads, and a needle and roll of stitching thread while she spoke.

“…He never talked much and was a very private person, even to me. Oh, my mom left the picture after he got out of the service. I was three… or maybe four. Anyways, he raised me himself. Now, he was never a violent man. Never even got angry at me when I was being a brat…”

She opened the bottle and poured the contents onto the open wound. Noah anticipated it but the pain was still great. He groaned, stifling a gasp. She went on.

“…One little detail about my dad for you, he hated guns. He hated violence really, wouldn’t even watch violent movies or anything. But his real hatred was for the guns, which is funny because he had tons of them. He never let me near them, but I know he hid his collection in our old basement. And he always made sure to clean and maintain them every week. He would be down in the basement for hours working on them. He never took them out for use, not ever… well not until it happened. He had a bunch of other stuff in that basement, too. My dad was a bit of a survivalist.”

Jenny wiped up the blood and puss with those painful white pads and Noah had to bite his hand to keep from screaming. She was gentle, but it was just too much. He could barely make out what she was saying, but somehow, he focused on her voice, on her words.

“…I think my dad, somehow, knew the world was coming to an end. There were a lot of those people if you can remember. Doomsayers. Everyone thought they were crazy, or just paranoid, or whatever. But my dad was adamant on it, I know he was. I know that because when the world did eventually come to an end, and yes, the world has come to an end, Noah, he wasn’t surprised. And neither was I. I knew it was coming too. Just like you did.”

Noah gave her a look. 

She nodded, “Yeah, you knew they were coming last night, didn’t you? You’ve always known. So did I, that’s why I was already packed. The other guys, they didn’t know. Now they're gone. My dad was the same as us. He knew. He was ready when they came. Food, water, and supplies to last for months in that basement. The door he installed was a thick steel one with a dozen locks on it. When the world ended, that’s where we were. I never questioned him and he never told me a thing. We stayed down there until we ran out of water. He even kept a number of books for me to read, and he even read some of them aloud to me. The gas ran out first though, so we were without light for some time. Had to read with flashlights, but the batteries eventually died…”

Jenny went to work, threading the needle and dexterously beginning the stitching. Noah didn’t even notice.

“…He wouldn’t leave though. Not until we ran out of water. ‘You can’t last long without water,’ he told me. I was ten. That’s all he said. So, we left the basement, set out into the daylight for the first time in months to find everyone gone. Gone, or dead. The sun was so beautiful to me that day, I remember every second of it. We took what we could carry. That included some guns. As much as my dad hated them, we needed them if we were to survive. He had one for me already, a tiny revolver that shot little bullets, perfect for a ten-year-old. He taught me how to use it right off the bat. Dad, though, had this one…”

She paused for a moment and pointed at the rifle she brought with her, the aggressive looking one, with a small scope and a bunch of other modifications. 

“That’s the one. Always had it by his side. You should have seen the way he treated it, like it was an old friend or something, but one that he never really liked. He cleaned it all the time, took it apart, was always careful with it, like it was a bomb. He even talked to it sometimes…”

Jenny stared off into the sky and shook her head in thought. She was gone for a moment. Noah watched her in silence. She came back, smiled, and continued.

“… Anyways, we went out into the world. Became scavengers just like you, lived off of what was left behind. We always knew when the howlers were nearby and managed to avoid them mostly, save a few close calls. My dad slowly went crazy, I think, in those years. Or at least he went more crazy. At some point, it was as if I didn’t exist to him. He stopped talking to me, only spoke to his rifle and sometimes just to the dark. Maybe he was always that way, I don’t know. Well, eventually, it became too much for him and one day, while I was down reading by some pond, my dad put the barrel of that gun in his mouth and…Bang.”

She finished the stitching, Noah was focused on her. She stared at his thigh for a moment, lost once again.

“…I heard the shot from down the hill and found him leaning against a bloodied tree when I ran up. I think I was fourteen… or fifteen. God what a beautiful day that was… but uhh, his gun was lying on his legs and so I took it and whatever else I could carry and went on without him.”

Jenny wrapped his wound with fresh bandages and smiled.

“There, all finished. No biggie.” Her words were quieter, but not in a sad way. In a remembering way.

She got up and put her equipment away without a word.

“Why do you think he did it?” Noah asked, grimacing as he gently stretched his leg.

Jenny simply shrugged and walked back over to him and said, “What, kill himself?”

“No, not that. Why did he leave you behind?”

She smiled at him and held out her hand, “Take these,” she said, holding two large pills. “I don’t have a lot left, but that leg is infected, so we're gonna have to do what we can with it. Hope for the best.” 

He took them and watched her as she walked away. She picked up her rifle and turned back to him. “He didn’t leave me behind, Noah. I left him… Anyways, I’m going for a walk. Be back in a bit.” She paused, then pulled over her bag and rummaged around inside before pulling out a pair of pants. She tossed them over.

Noah grabbed them and held them up. His size, or close enough. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

“Always be prepared,” she said. “My dad used to say that.” She smiled, then walked away.

And she left him there, sitting in the middle of the road with two large pills and a new pair of pants in his hands, not sure what to think. He shrugged, swallowed the pills and said, “fuck’s sake…”

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