II.
The days are gray
and cold, the sun nothing more than a hazy disk hiding behind a veil of clouds.
Wind howls through broken windows and abandoned buildings and bangs rusty signs
against brick walls. At night, I sometimes think I hear people whispering and
sobbing, phantom voices that flee deeper into the ruins upon investigation. I
try to ignore these ghosts. I toss and turn on a mattress I hauled through the
shattered window of a department store, willing sleep to come yet dreading the
nightmares it brings.
Home is now a
derelict library, row after row of kindling sorted by Dewey Decimal. I keep the truly useful books, the ones which
give me a slight advantage in a world no longer under our control. First Aid. Field guides. Survival training
manuals. I rip, crumple, and burn all
the others, destroying the very things I once treasured almost as much as life
itself.
I don’t cry
anymore, being too numb. Numb from the cold,
numb from wave after wave of atrocities and grief. Numb from exhaustion and
hunger and the pit that sucks emotion into a swirling vortex deep within the
remnants of my soul. I scavenge. I write in this journal. I shuffle through another day lacking meaning
or depth. I survive, but I don’t truly
live.
The dogs have
been getting bolder lately. They pace outside the doors with teeth bared and
heads lowered, their backs spiny with bristled fur. I pretend not to hear the
growls and sniffs as I go about my business and try to ignore paws scratching
at the glass. Eventually they turn on each other, yips and barks and guttural
snarls as they tumble through the snow and snap their jaws. The victor drags
its fallen enemy off into the shadows, defending the meal from the string of
curs that follow. But they come back.
They always come back.
Earlier today, I
carried in the carcass of a Doberman, its body draped limply across my arms.
Starvation had shrinkwrapped its skin around the skeleton and it ribs stood in
sharp relief, the curved bones growing progressively shorter, drawing the eye
to the hollow arch where a stomach once had been. It weighed less than a stack
of books. I didn’t even get winded as I carried it up the flight of stairs
leading to the mezzanine.
A rope and pulley
looted from a hardware store lifted its rear haunches off the ground, just high
enough for me to pull the blade across its gangly throat. The blood steamed as
it streamed into the bucket below, pattering like the memory of rain before
splashing wetly as it filled. When no more drips plinked down, I left the
carcass swinging above a sheet of plastic and hauled the bucket to the little
office which serves as my work area.
I keep the door
closed and the window open. The floor is
always dusted with dingy snow and my breath escapes in plumes. Swaddled in so many layers of clothing that I
can barely bend my arms, I begin the process. It’s slow and tedious, but I’ve
managed to turn it into an assembly line of death, minimizing the amount of
time I have to spend in the frigid room.
Along one wall, I
store my supplies. There’s a pile of
bayonets liberated from a military surplus store down the street , sawed off
broom handles, and plastic recycling bins pulled off sidewalks.
Some of the pails
already have broom handles jutting out of them, held upright from melted snow
that I allowed to freeze. With the
bucket of blood on the floor, I took one of the bayonets and plunged its blade
into the thick liquid before carefully setting it aside. Then I moved on to
ones I’d previously done this to, adding layer after layer of frozen blood
until the red ice is so thick that the double-edged blades can no longer be
seen.
At this point, I
lash the bayonet to the top of the broom handle and lug the contraption back
downstairs. I stand in the doorway until I’ve mentally counted to five hundred,
watching for the slightest sign of movement.
When I feel it’s safe, I open the door and shuffle out into the snow,
plant the bucket in a drift, and hurry back inside, my skin already cold and
tingly despite the amount of clothes swaddling me.
These things
litter the outside of the library, a garden of bloodcicles blooming red in a
world that seems stripped of color. When the dogs return, some will catch the
scent of blood, the tang indicative of food.
Their pink tongues lap the frozen blood, growing more numb with each
lick. Anesthetized by the cold, they don’t so much as yelp when they finally
reach the secret center and the razor-sharp blade shreds their tongues to
ribbons. Eventually, the dogs topple over, panting shallowly until they bleed
out and breathe no more.
The smart ones,
however, don’t fall for this little trick.
They’re the ones I need to watch, the ones who return day after day as I
try to pick them off from a second-story window, wasting precious
ammunition. The one-eyed husky seems to
have a sixth sense about this, prancing out of danger as my bullet harmlessly
kicks up a little cloud of snow. It’s
become personal between me and him, a dance that can only end with one of us
still alive. Of this I’m certain.
What I do to
these dogs… it would have broken Paige’s heart.
But I don’t think
about Paige anymore. I don’t think about April.
It’s easier.
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