Journal (12 page)

I
asked what happened to him and had to bend down close to hear his answer.  In
that position, mere inches from his face, that sweet, almost metallic odor of
fresh blood crawled up my nose, filled my lungs, and turned my stomach.  Death
has its own smell, and I was well familiar with it.

He
whispered that he and three others were traveling through the town of Turnbull “late
last night” and were attacked by a larger group of both men and women.  There was
a confusing, running fight, and he was sure the others in his party were killed,
but he somehow escaped.  He made it to where I found him and had been laying
there ever since.

About
that moment, I heard Anna call out to me.  “Let’s go Alan, we can’t stay
exposed like this.”  As she said these words to me, she leaned forward, pushed
her arms out, with palms up, clearly angry about my delay.

I
stood up at the sound of her voice, and the man’s hand reached out and grabbed
my ankle.  He somehow gathered enough breath to say, “Please, don’t leave me
like this.”

I
kneeled back down, rubbed his shoulder a bit and told him that I was sorry, but
there was nothing I could do for him.  I really was sorry, too.  It was a
terrible way to die.  I couldn’t help but project my fate to his.

I
watched as a tear rolled down his cheek and cut its way through a smear of blood. 
He said, “Please mister, I don’t want to feel them eating me.”

A
chill ran its way up my spine and spread across the back of my neck.  Ah shit,
I thought.  He wants me to kill him.

I
am ashamed to say, the selfish bastard that I am, my first thoughts after that
were about me, not him
.  Why does he have to put this burden on me?  I don’t
want to be the one.  He has no right to ask me to do such a thing.  This isn’t
my fault; it’s not my problem, so why should I be the one to fix it. 
I told
myself, I should have just walked on by like Anna said.

“…
We have truly evolved as human beings when we can see beyond the limits of our
own needs and instead embrace the suffering of others.”  Claire Huston August
2051

Claire
Huston was at work again, and I calm cars and truckstifed down and told myself to quit my
whining.  A man was suffering here, and I had it within my power to stop it. 
Isn’t that the moral, human thing to do?  Wouldn’t that be the better act?  The
sacrifice of my silly desires would be miniscule compared to what he is
surrendering.  This man is dying, and he knows it.  That’s bad enough, that and
the pain.  But he also knows that before he is at rest, his flesh will be
plucked from him one bit at a time.  The knowledge of that must be beyond
horrible.  Wouldn’t I want him to do the same thing for me, if the positions
were reversed?

I
once more glanced back at Anna and saw her start toward me, hard heeling it all
the way.

Another
one of those big ugly birds made tight little circles overhead.  It cast no
shadow as it passed.  It was as if it were a dead thing itself.

I
removed my pack, pulled out the little .22, and loaded it.  It was the only way
I could think of.  I certainly wasn’t going to strangle him.  I wanted his
misery and my misery to end quickly.

The
entire time I was doing this, the man was watching me and crying.  And well, I
guess I was crying, too.  It embarrasses me a little to write that.  A man’s
not supposed to cry, right?  We’re supposed to do the hard things while
gritting our teeth and bearing up.  But there I was, going about fixing his
death and bawling like a little kid.

It
was about then that Anna reached me.  “Are you crazy,” she said.  “If someone
sees us ….”  She stopped talking when she saw my face, saw the man, saw his
wounds, and saw what I was going to do.  I heard her say something at that
point, however I have no recollection now of what it was.  Since she moved up
next to me, though, I think it must have been a gentle thing.  I also remember
feeling better that she was there, standing next to me.  It was as if she were
taking possession of some of the pain I was experiencing.

I
put the muzzle of the rifle behind his ear and told him softly that everything
would be all right, and the pain would soon be over.

He
looked up at me again with his one eye, pale blue, rimmed in red and said,
“Wait.  Wait.  Please.  My name is Michael Bass.  I was a husband, and a father,
and … and maybe a good man.  Remember me.  That’s the worst thing, nobody to
remember.”

My
hand shook after he said it.  I wonder what I would say in his place.  His was
a good and sad thing to hear.

After
that, he nodded his head.

I
promised I would never forget him, how could I, and tried to squeeze the
trigger.  My finger wouldn’t move.  It seemed frozen, without nerve.  My brain
and muscle refused to coordinate.  They defied my conscious will.  A terrible
several seconds ticked by.

Anna
was there, however, and she put her hand on my hand and her finger over mine.  I
felt her warmth on my skin and something else I can’t put a name to.  Tears let
loose.  I pulled the trigger.  I did it.  But she gave me the strength.  She
shared my suffering.   I wo the Author

After,
I checked his pulse to make sure he was dead, briefly rested my hand on his
forehead and gently closed his eyes.  I grabbed up my pack, and Anna and I
walked away with our bodies touching, Gabriel’s eyes on us, and the vultures
moving in for their meal.

When
we joined Gabriel, I repeated to them what Michael Bass had told me about
Turnbull.  As I said the words, it didn’t even seem like they were mine.  It
was as if they were coming from a speaker mounted right behind my head.  I also
got this weird sensation that the world had somehow shrunk to the point that it
was no bigger than the sweep of my fingertips.  The only people alive in the entire
universe were the three of us right there.  I can only attribute this to the
experience I’d just had.  At that moment, though, Anna reached out and took
hold of my ring and little fingers with her index finger and thumb.  She just
hung on for a couple of seconds, that’s all, and then let go.  I don’t know
why, but that simple gesture somehow brought everything back into perspective. 
I hope I’m not losing my mind.

By
agreement we decided that we had to find a place to hide right away, as in
immediately.  We were only a couple of miles now from Turnbull, and there was
no way to know if the people who attacked Michael Bass weren’t right up the
road and headed our way.  The .22 wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough.  We had
to consider the possibility.

So,
we moved off into the orchard.  It was so overgrown from years of sitting
unattended that at fifty yards-in we were invisible from the highway.  There, we
stopped again while I checked my map.

Turnbull
wasn’t a big town.  So without a better plan, we decided to bypass it
completely to the east and continue our trek south.  We also figured that it
might be better if we waited until dark to do it.  So, we walked deeper into
the orchard looking for a good place to wait out the sun.

You
know, I have to stop the story here for a second.  As you may have figured out
by now, when I write, I periodically go back and proof read my words before
moving on.  When I do, I sometimes find I have to make a correction or addition
here and there, which is no less the case this time.

In
reading over my last several paragraphs, I feel that I’ve left the impression the
transition from killing Michael Bass, to the continuation of our journey, were
emotionally separate things.  In other words, I killed Mr. Bass, felt bad about
it, and then it was on with the business of the day.  That’s not the case. Not
by any stretch of the imagination.

I
didn’t just leave my feelings about what happened back there on the ground next
to him.  I picked them up and placed them with all the other memories of the
last few days, mostly bad, that weigh me down and are my constant burden wherever
I go.  It is often the case that in quiet moments, those last few minutes
before sleep, or during the endless hours of walking when my thoughts are my company,
I unwrap these objects of discontent, one at a time, and examine them closely
before eventually putting them safely back in their assigned place.  It is no
less the case in the death of Mr. Bass.  I continued to think of him in
background t south along the river6ithe entire day, as I think of him now.

In
fact, as I walked on, these tremendously sad, regretful, depressing feelings I
was experiencing over the events just written, began to fold and swirl and mix
together until they formed an emotion of an entirely different character. 
Anger.  I was infused with it.  I could actually feel it flow out from my
center to the tips of all my extremities.  It burned my face, knotted my
stomach, shook my hands, and overwhelmed me with the want to kill.  Faceless
men became the targets of my rage and were brought down cruelly as I ran among
them, shooting, and stabbing, and clubbing without exhaustion.  They were left begging
at my feet but were granted no mercy by me, until all were done, and I was
done, unable to conjure up any more.

I‘ve
never felt like that before.  I have never needed to kill so wantonly.  The
death of Michael Bass and all the other things that have happened, have changed
me and not for the better, I’m afraid.

OK,
with that off my chest and the record set straight, I’ll try to get back to the
rest of the day’s events.

We
found a small house or shack, stripped bare of anything useful, about a half
mile from the road.  My guess is that it was once occupied by seasonal workers,
but like I said, that’s just a guess.  After watching it for an hour or so to
make sure it was unoccupied and scouting its perimeter, that’s where we hid out
for the remainder of the day.  It’s also where I took the time to think about and
record these events.

April
10, 2054

I’m
writing this on April 10th, though the first part of it concerns the last few
hours of the 9
^th
.  I’ll do the best I can to try to keep dates and
events clear.  Sometimes it’s even confusing to me.

We
finished most the meat and started off about two hours after dark, so I’d
estimate that was around eight o’clock.  At first, we walked east for a couple
of miles and then turned south.  Either two miles wasn’t far enough to avoid
the town of Turnbull, or I guessed the distance we walked wrong, because within
a half hour we encountered a number of houses. 

They
were just your typical tract homes.  You see them everywhere; three bedrooms,
two baths with a garage.  They weren’t so long abandoned that the paint was
peeling or anything, but none of them was in great shape.  The yards were all
pretty well overgrown with weeds and sometimes littered with old furniture,
rotting in the damp Washington weather.  On some, the doors had been kicked in
and were standing open, while others were more or less intact.  Their owners
probably just left them unlocked when they took off or were carted off.  Who
knows?  Most also had a car, layered with dirt, parked in the yard or at least
on the street.  Their dream: a house and a car, long ago given up.

Over
the last few years I’ve been in many such neighborhoods as this and always
found something useful, even when the place had been searched three or four
times.  At first it was kind of an eerie experience knowing that not long
before, families had lived there, maybe invited ea                               atatjch other to a Sunday
barbeque, played touch football in the street, and took turns driving their
kids to school.  I got used to it, though, and now don’t give it much thought. 
I was even tempted to check out a couple of the places while there, except I
could hear dogs in the neighborhood, and I was afraid if they sniffed us out
and made a ruckus, anyone nearby might be moved to investigate.

So
we turned east once more, this time with Gabriel in the lead, carrying the .22 rifle
in the crook of his arm, the cartridges in his pocket.  One of the things I
appreciate about him is that you typically don’t have to ask him to do
anything.  I’ve noticed on more than one occasion, when taking a break for
instance, he’ll position himself so he could view our surroundings and keep
watch.  He will also pitch-in with wood gathering, or shelter building, that
sort of thing, often times being the one to get it started.  He is a good kid. 
I think he has a chance to survive all this.

Another
half hour east and another turn south did the trick.  The land here wasn’t
forested anymore.  It was farm land, so we were passing in and out of orchards,
walking hit and miss on grown over farm equipment roads.  Every once in a while
we’d encounter some critter skittering across our path, maybe a coyote, or fox,
or something, but other than that we didn’t see any other living, breathing
thing.

Sometime
during the next hour, Anna and I ended up walking next to one another.  I guess
she figured it was her turn to ask the questions because she wanted to know
where I was from.  I told her most of what I’ve already written in my first few
paragraphs.  I wasn’t so honest with her when it came to, shall we say, the
personality flaws I’ve admitted to.  I just sort of left that stuff out.  I
don’t know why, I just did.  Later, I told myself that we’ve all changed so
much that who we were isn’t who we are anymore, so I didn’t need to go into all
that.  I don’t really want to consider any other reason for this omission.