Pox (3 page)

There was no relief in sight.

The purges, the troubles, the searches to survive,
became difficult for both of them. Forgetfulness, bad hygiene,
suspicion, depression, all vied to take over their lives. At first,
it appeared normal to Caitrin. She too was guilty of those same
emotions and errors in judgment.

Konnor in particular became more withdrawn. He talked
of getting out of the city. Caitrin agreed, and pushed for a move
far into the suburbs, far distant from the city center. It made
sense to her. It also made sense that such a move would be good for
Konnor, too. It would help to take his mind off of whatever it was
that was eating at him.

The planning and the gathering of the necessary
supplies for such a move took all of their time. They hauled it all
into the former store that had became their residence. Then began
the exhausting work of moving it to the new home they had chosen,
far from downtown.

It was the firearms that finally convinced Caitrin
that things were getting serious. Konnor had them stacked in a
corner, complete with ammunition boxes. She didn’t want anything to
do with them, but he finally convinced her otherwise.

She picked out a double-barreled shotgun that caught
her fancy. That surprised her at the time.

It wasn’t long before she began carrying it
everywhere she journeyed in the abandoned city. She added an ammo
belt strung over shoulder to opposite waist. She began to feel more
and more like a soldier of fortune, but she knew better than to
believe it. She’d never fired a firearm of any kind.

She thought the reason the double-barreled shotgun
stood out for her was because she had seen them in movies. That,
and it looked simple to operate. Two shells in, close the breach,
pull the triggers. She’d give herself bonus points if she was ever
called upon to use it and actually hit what she might aim at.

Following a few practice rounds that would have woke
the dead were there any within hearing distance, she knew she
couldn’t miss at close range with lead shot. When she got home that
day, she shortened the barrels. The increased maneuverability
impressed her so much, she went out and fired a few more rounds to
convince herself she hadn’t made a mistake.

From that, she knew as long as she pulled the rifle
tight into her shoulder and leaned into it, that she’d be able to
hit whatever she crossed paths with, as long as it was in front of
her.

Initially, Caitrin had believed that the stress and
fatigue from the search for a new place and their subsequent move
was beginning to affect Konnor’s judgment. She allowed him to sleep
late and stay home for a couple of days. Even that didn’t improve
his outlook or his attitude.

He remained withdrawn and incapable of expressing
emotion. He stopped doing what they both did when they became
frustrated. He could no longer laugh with her. He became unable to
concentrate and couldn’t remember even the simplest things she
asked him to do. Eventually, she couldn’t get him out of bed, no
matter what she tried.

She even resorted to cooking breakfast, naked, in
front of the stove.

Caitrin couldn’t ignore any longer what had been
staring her in the face. When she finally recognized Konnor’s
symptoms for what they were, she panicked. Even though he hadn’t
been delusional or hallucinating, she knew from her psychology
courses that Konnor was becoming schizophrenic.

Further, she knew she had no treatment for him.

She began to grow concerned for her future. Without
Konnor, she would have been much worse off, and she knew it. He had
contributed so much to her survival and her emotional well-being.
Now all that was threatening to unravel because she could do
nothing for him.

With winter coming on, she didn’t think she’d be able
to survive on her own.

Caitrin didn’t want to contemplate what it would be
like living with a crazy person. That was especially so when the
craziness already in their lives because of the purges was almost
more than they could handle together.

If he was going around the bend, she’d have to deal
with it.

If only she knew how.

It took a week for Caitrin to convince Konnor that
she should be allowed to make the daily excursions into the city.
She’d need at least that much time to gather up the remaining items
they would need. She was able to convince him to allow her to start
with two days a week, on Monday and Thursday.

He almost refused to let her do it.

She’d get up first thing in the morning, fix herself
a quick bite to eat, and then dress for the day. She hid the fact
that she was a woman by wearing bulky clothes. Her jeans were
loose. She tucked the cuffs into the expensive hiking boots she had
obtained during a smash-and-grab at an outdoor store’s window
display.

She considered strapping down her breasts, and
decided against it. A sports bra would have to do. Overtop of that
went a t-shirt and a regular shirt. She added an oversize hoodie.
Under that, a ball cap covered the long hair she kept in a bun
whenever she went outside. She checked herself in the mirror each
time before she left, as if she might have missed something.

She never did.

On her way out the door, she added the shotgun and
the ammo belt. From the belt on her jeans she hung a small k-bar
with a handle just big enough to fit her hand.

As hard as it had been for Caitrin to convince Konnor
to let her go, he never seemed to notice her disappearance on those
twice-weekly excursions. She stopped saying good-bye in fear that
it would set him off on one of the ever-increasing rants that he
was beginning to subject her to. She couldn’t take the yelling and
screaming. All she wanted to do when he started in on her was to
escape to the isolation of the outside world.

After a while, she began enjoying the silence and the
solitude.

As her treks got longer, she’d often be gone all day,
almost into darkness. She wouldn’t allow herself to be out in the
night. At the end of the day, often as late as twilight, she’d
arrive home, exhausted, feet sore and back aching from the weight
of the huge pack she toted.

She knew she was using those two days as an escape
from her developing problems with Konnor. She spent the time
thinking, and she didn’t like the one question she kept asking
herself. What was she going to do without Konnor to help her exist
within the confines of the deserted city?

Despite her worries, she enjoyed being out of
Konnor’s way. She got to examine parts of the city that she barely
knew existed. She was most cheerful when she passed through the
city’s parks with their huge shade trees and picnic tables. Some of
them even had barbecues. It reminded her of what was missing, but
she soon chased those thoughts out of her head.

Caitrin used a city map to mark out the areas she had
already explored, and made notes of where she might return where
the pickings turned out to be good. On foot, it was slow going.
She’d tried using a bicycle, but ditched that idea when the heavy
pack she carried got the better of her. She had tipped over, and in
her clumsiness, knocked herself out when she was dumped on the
ground by the off-center weight of the pack.

Hell, even a kid knows how to ride a bike
, she
told herself on the way down.

When she came to, she looked around, embarrassed that
anyone might have seen her, until she remembered she was all alone.
She laughed at her clumsiness, but she walked home rubbing both her
head and her ass, and added her bruised ego into the mix for good
measure. Later, when she looked herself over, naked, in the mirror,
she saw the huge bruise where the shotgun had dug into her rib
cage.

As Konnor’s condition worsened, she began to dread
coming home at all. She never knew what mood he’d be in. She knew
she was becoming the sole provider when she realized that Konnor
had stopped going anywhere. More and more, his paranoia was
inserting itself into their relationship and turning it into a
nightmare for both of them.

She was slowly coming to realize that she would have
to do something about life with Konnor. She just didn’t know
what.

It was one of the shortcuts that she took on the two
days she went out into the world. At first, it was only an eerie
feeling that overtook Caitrin when she passed through one of her
regular neighborhoods on her scavenger hunts. It wasn’t the entire
neighborhood, but only one small area of it.

At first she couldn’t explain the feeling. As the
days and weeks passed and she became more self-assured, she decided
that someone must be watching her. When the realization finally
struck home, she began paying more attention to her surroundings
when she trudged through the small cul-de-sac.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary. In fact, it
almost looked like every other street she traversed. Almost.
Something wasn’t quite right about this one, though. Her mind was
already made up about that.

Caitrin thought she might start to avoid the area,
and then thought better of it. If she was going to become paranoid
now, in a city that she was certain was pretty much deserted, she
might as well throw in the towel, stay home, and join Konnor in his
crazy fantasies.

She couldn’t allow herself do that.

Then it struck her.

She stopped. She looked around.

Overhead, the sun was in just the right position to
shine through the front windows of all of the homes in the
cul-de-sac. In turn, she examined each of them from where she
stood.

Nothing looked to be out of the ordinary. However, at
first glance, in what seemed to be a random pattern, the curtains
in some of the houses were closed. In others, they were open. If
memory served her right, in almost every other neighborhood she
traveled through, the curtains on almost all of the houses had been
left open. People wanted to be witness to the proceedings going on
in their neighborhoods. With the curtains closed, they couldn’t do
that.

It was a small thing, she knew. And maybe she was
starting to join Konnor in his madness. But she didn’t think
so.

Caitrin shook her head, unable to believe what she
had allowed to run through her mind. She resolved to shut it out.
She took a step and her foot slipped off the curb. Unbalanced by
the heavy load of the huge backpack, she tripped, stumbled and the
off-balanced weight sent her careening onto a lawn.

On her way down, a corner of a curtain moved. Or did
it? She thought it did. Did it really? She couldn’t be sure.

Shock moved through her body and she stiffened,
stunned, although not by the weight of the pack on top of her. She
stayed where she fell and tried not to move.

She wanted to turn her head towards the window, but
she couldn’t. The huge weight of the pack prevented her from
getting up. She managed to untangle her arms from the straps. As
she did, she pushed the pack away and got up.

She couldn’t force herself to move beyond that.

Silently, she screamed,
Don’t look, don’t look,
don’t look
.

Caitrin made a show of preparing herself to pick up
the heavy pack. She adjusted the shotgun across her chest. She took
time to position herself over the pack. Finally, she kneeled down
and shoved her arms through the straps. It was all she could do to
stand up. She leaned forward and used her legs to lift the full
weight off the ground.

In doing so, she rotated her body to permit her to
look in the direction of the window. She wasn’t obvious about it.
She pretended to concentrate on the pack. But she managed a quick
look.

She almost went down to the ground a second time.

Caitrin knew she couldn’t allow herself to give any
sign. Her first instinct after picking up the heavy pack was to
flee as fast as she could. She might have, too, if her knees
weren’t trembling so bad she could barely walk with the heavy
weight.

For a split second, she contemplated dumping the pack
and taking off.

Her breathing quickened into a pant. Nervous sweat
ran down her back. She didn’t drop the pack and take off as fast as
her feet would let her. She made that decision in an instant. That
she didn’t was a tribute to her resolve.

She forced herself to put one foot in front of the
other and walk out of the cul-de-sac and away from the house. What
she had seen already burned itself into her brain. She had to keep
on telling herself
Don’t turn around. Don’t look back
.

There’d be plenty of time to do that.

That someone else was left in the city came as a
surprise, although it probably shouldn’t have. She’d been naive to
think she and Konnor could have been the only ones who chose to
hide out and remain behind. During the long walk home, Caitrin
considered her options.

A third person would mean an opportunity to come
together with her and with Konnor to help keep them all alive. That
is, if Konnor didn’t go completely over the deep end. She’d have to
take time to assess his condition. Even as she considered doing
that, she knew she would have problems with him.

Finally, she admitted to herself what she had been
afraid of doing all along. She would have to ditch Konnor, one way
or the other.

When, not if, it came to a choice of sharing a place
with a madman or one with an unknown, she thought she should be
able to make the decision easily. After all, she was a woman. And a
woman, these days at least, must be in short supply.

When the time came, Caitrin knew she’d do what she
had to do to survive.

Her decision for preservation made, she unlocked the
door, glad to be home and anxious to greet Konnor. She had to tell
him what she saw.

Caitrin heard the screaming through the door even
before she opened it. She changed her mind and tried to set the
pack down just as Konnor opened it. He greeted her with a punch to
the face that knocked her backwards down the steps. Konnor fell on
top of her and kept punching.