41
ATTICUS & (THAIS)
“Nah, I don’t know anything about the raiders in the East,” Mark said with his mouth full; he sat on the bottom step of the back porch, eating fish and salad with his dirty fingers.
“This is the first time I’ve left Colorado since The Fever”—he stopped, held up his finger and backtracked—“No, I take that back; I mean technically I’ve been to Wyoming a few times on supply runs, but this here”—he chewed, swallowed, pointed at the ground—“traveling all the way over into these parts, it’s my first time.”
I listened meticulously.
One lie. One tiny lie. The more you talk, the more you explain, the easier it becomes to forget everything you said. A string of lies is weak like a brittle thread, Mr. Mark Porter.
Thais sat close to me on the top step, spearing a plastic fork with a missing tooth into her salad; our thighs were touching. I made sure she stayed close. And while I listened to Mark go on and on, scarfing down his food, I also watched Mark with the eyes of a stalking predator. Look at her once in a way I don’t like, and you’re dead.
“I’m surprised you made it as far as you did,” I pointed out. I took a bite, chewed slowly, swallowed slowly. “Did you go through Topeka? Jefferson City?”
Mark shook his head. “No way. I’ve stayed away from the bigger cities—like I said, I stay off the roads. My father told me not to worry about Abner, that I was crazy to make the trip.”
“Your father sounds like a wise man,” I said, and took another bite.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Mark agreed, and his face grew dark. “I’ve seen some messed up shit out there.” He shook his head again, more pronounced.
“What have you seen?” Thais spoke up.
I instantly disliked her talking to the stranger—it might’ve given Mark ideas—but I said nothing. I was still testing him, and what better way was there than with her?
“Well, I passed through one town, just outside of Hill City, Kansas, and the smell”—Mark visibly shuddered—“it was really bad. Everybody was dead in the street, scattered around like toys in a front yard—they’d been shot.”
“That doesn’t sound so unusual,” I said.
Mark looked at me sidelong—apparently, he wasn’t finished.
“They were all missing their hands,” he said. “Men, women, children, every single one of them—sixty or so people—gunned down in the street and relieved of their hands.” He dug his fingers into his salad. “Ain’t never seen no shit like that—heard it was the work of some fanatical religious cult.”
(I looked down nervously into my food. These were the types of stories I’d heard all my life about the Outside world. Were they true, after all?)
“How have you managed to stay alive so long in Colorado?” I asked.
“Denver is thriving,” Mark answered. “We get attacked every now and then—mostly by crazies. But it’s not easy getting into Denver. There’s a process”—he laughed softly—“Kind of like joining one of those fancy resorts, only you don’t have to be rich to get in, you just have to possess some kind of skill”—he pointed at Thais, and then me—“skills are as good as alcohol and cigarettes and—.” He stopped.
“And what?” I prompted. Women? Just look at her…just once in this moment, and it’s over.
Mark didn’t look at Thais.
“And drugs,” he answered with a quickness that disappointed me. “Hallucinogens and heavy-duty pain-killer stuff mostly. Can’t find it much anymore. But in Denver”— he leaned forward, looked around as if to make sure no one else was listening, then continued in a lowered voice—“we’ve got a few people who know their stuff when it comes to wild plants and herbs and shit like that; they produce some killer drugs in Denver."
Thais looked as if she were about to say something, but I interrupted her.
“You said mostly crazies,” I went back to something Mark had said before. “Who else has Denver been attacked by?” I placed my hand on Thais’ thigh and patted it.
She lowered her head, probably realizing the mistake she had almost made: she knew her way around wild plants and herbs, but this stranger did not need to know that.
“A few times, larger groups have come,” Mark said. “They had horses and guns, and didn’t lack determination, but it’ll take a lot more to overrun Denver, that’s for sure. This is good fish. I really appreciate it.” He continued to shovel food into his mouth until his plate was clean. He even licked it afterwards.
Mark hung around well into late afternoon. He and I talked about many things: Denver’s military and government and population; Mark’s job as a supply runner; Mark’s family and his dying father and his dead mother; more about the horrific things Mark had seen along the way to Indiana; about Mark’s plan to journey back to Colorado—we spoke little of me, and absolutely nothing of Thais.
“Hell yes,” Mark said, reaching over to dig inside his bag. “If you’ve got smokes to trade, then take your pick. But I have to keep my axe and my bowie knife. They’re the only weapons I got.” He unzipped the front of his bulky backpack and rummaged inside.
“I only have a few left,” I said about the cigarettes, “but I’ll trade one for that bottle of baby oil. Then another for the bar of soap.”
“Sure thing,” Mark said right away.
He pulled the bar of soap out first and set it on the ground next to his boots.
“I’ve used the soap,” Mark warned, and placed the trial-size bottle of baby oil next to the soap bar. “Just so you know.”
I nodded.
“And I’ll trade you another cigarette for that first-aid kit.”
Mark pursed his lips contemplatively.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’ll need something more than one cigarette for that.”
“What’s left inside?” I asked. “Open it.”
Mark fished inside the backpack for the first-aid kit. It was small enough to fit in his hand, but packed so full that the zipper holding the material together was close to bursting. He removed each item from the little bag and laid it on the ground for me to see.
“Is that iodine?” Thais asked, hopeful.
Mark nodded, taking the two-ounce bottle into his dirty fingers. “Yeah, and it’s practically full. I’ve only had to use it once.”
He set it back down, then took up a larger bottle, white with black lettering, and a radiation symbol on the front with a red X over it.
“These still have five years left before they expire.”
He tossed the bottle and I caught it, looked at it, read the label, tossed it back.
“I’m not interested in those,” I said. “I don’t plan on being anywhere where anti-radiation tablets are needed.”
“Not going east, huh?” Mark said, setting the bottle back on the ground.
I didn’t answer.
I stood from the top step and descended the remaining three so I could get a better look at the items in the fading sunlight. On the grass were several useful things: little squares of gauze in a plastic baggie, half a roll of dressing tape, an unopened tube of lip balm, a surgical face mask, six Band-Aids, individually sealed packets of alcohol squares, white latex rubber gloves, and a pair of tweezers. The only thing Mark didn’t remove from the kit was a pill bottle with the label scratched off.
“What’s this?” I reached down and plucked the bottle from the bag, turned it at an angle, trying to get an idea.
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
I peered in a little closer, too, and saw a single capsule inside packed beneath a cotton ball.
Mark took the pill bottle from Atticus’ hand, fitting it carefully between his thumb and index finger as if it was made of glass, and inside was the last remaining symbol of hope in the world.
“That, my friend,” Mark said grimly, “is a last resort. And there’s nothing you have that I’d trade for it. Sorry.” He dropped the bottle inside his backpack.
“But what is it?” I asked.
“A way out,” Atticus said. “Something else we don’t need.”
I glanced down at the man’s backpack where the bottle, which held something so much more than a capsule, was hidden. A suicide pill? I shuddered.
“They make them in Denver,” Mark said. “That’s the first thing they gave me when I set out. Hell, I don’t ever plan to have to use it—no one ever plans to have to use it—but if I need it, I know where it is. I’ll be damned if I let some savage fiend cut on me while I’m still alive. I’ve heard stories—haven’t seen one yet, but I’m here to tell yah, they scare me more than any asshole with a gun. Shoot me or beat me to death, I don’t give a shit, but if I have a choice: eaten alive or take myself out, you can bet your ass I’ll take myself out.”
“But how would you get to it,” I spoke up, “if it’s in your backpack? By the time they got you in a position you’d have to use it, you probably wouldn’t be able to.”
(I smiled inwardly. That’s my girl.)
Mark chewed pensively on the inside of his cheek. “Well,” he said, and bent over to put the items back inside the kit, “I have it if I need it. Let’s just hope I never need it.”
After the sun had almost fallen, bathing the landscape in indigo and fading heat, Atticus asked me to go inside and bring back five cigarettes, one small bottle of Crown Royal whiskey, and one plastic rain poncho. Atticus traded these items for one tiny bottle of baby oil, a small used bar of soap, the entire first-aid kit minus Mark Porter’s last remaining symbol of hope in the world, and a hairbrush. Mark had argued that his items were worth more than what Atticus was willing to trade for them, but Atticus reminded him about the meal he’d been given and so Mark couldn’t complain.
Mark Porter strapped on his backpack and prepared to leave.
“Thanks for the food,” he told us.
He lingered for a moment, and then, scratching his head he said, “I don’t guess you’d mind if I hung around until the morning?”
“No,” Atticus said instantly. “You should be on your way.”
Mark nodded slowly, afterwards his eyes skirted me.
ATTICUS & (THAIS)
I saw it when he looked at her. And I felt it. And inside me I felt the tick in my brain, the short in the wire that fed my violent retribution. But I kept it in check. For a little while. I didn’t want to kill another man in front of Thais if I didn’t have to.
“Again, I’m sorry I scared you in the woods,” Mark told her with a kind, apologetic smile.
Maybe I had been wrong about the short glance…?
“Apology accepted,” she said.
Awkward silence ensued.
“Welp,” Mark announced, “I guess I’ll be on my way then.” He looked over at me. “Do you happen to know which way is west?”
“Go inside and lock the door,” I whispered against Thais’ ear.
(I nodded, glimpsing Atticus’ eyes full of something dark I could not name, and then I disappeared inside the cabin.)
“I’ll show you the easiest path out,” I offered as I descended the steps.
“Great, thanks.” Mark beamed, adjusting his backpack.
(With a heavy heart, I watched from the window as Atticus and Mark Porter went over the moonlit grass and vanished in the blackness of the trees.)