Bunker? Militia?
“Juniper Jenkins didn’t mention that as part of our tour,” I said and neither had he in our months working together. Regardless, it offered me a glimpse of what lengths Larry might go to protect what he had built, nothing short of a suicide mission.
“Invite only,” Larry remarked. “Very few people have seen our arsenal or our bunker, so I’d appreciate it if you kept this between us.”
“You think you’d win that sort of standoff?”
Larry shrugged. “Things ain’t like they used to be. The military’s tracking and comms abilities are greatly diminished and they’re so disorganized these days that it might be months before any sort of report got back to the higher ups. Enough time to burn the evidence and come up with a cover story.”
“Shit, man. That’s next level.”
“That’s survival, my young friend.”
Larry plucked an AR-15 from the rack and handed it to me along with several rounds of ammunition. After showing me how to load the magazine and watching as I repeated it back to him, he told me to choose a sidearm too. I went over to a long glass cabinet where the handguns were stored and selected a Glock that was an exact replica of the one I’d buried in the woods. It felt good in my hand, familiar.
While I was getting locked and loaded, Donnie, my shift partner for the night, arrived and did the same. Then we went to the stables to collect the unfortunate goat that was to be used as live bait. The kid was being bottle-fed by one of the younger farmhands who refused to look me in the eye.
“Don’t let him suffer,” she said to me as she reluctantly handed over the rope tethered to its thin neck.
“We won’t,” I assured her. Perhaps I could nab the tiger before it attacked. That was at least one life spared.
As I led the goat outside the gates, I thought about Kitten’s observation as to who I might have been if the world had been a little kinder. A college student? A professional gamer? But what was the point in playing the what-if game? For all I knew, I’d be a worse drug addict than I already was. Or dead.
The goat started bleating almost immediately and its cries became more desperate once we’d tied it to a stake outside the gates, having sensed the danger in being away from its herd and probably thinking itself abandoned. I swallowed any misgivings I might have had and reminded myself that I hadn’t survived the plague this long by being soft. I didn’t begrudge Kitten his clean conscience or his pure soul, but I also didn’t suffer under any delusions that we were the same.
This goat should be easy pickins for any sort of natural predator within range. Rabids weren’t attracted to the sounds and scents of livestock or any other animals for that matter. Only humans triggered their hunting instincts–sweat, shit, piss, blood... Regardless, Donnie and I were both on the lookout for any Rabid activity with the instructions to kill on sight.
Strangely, nothing appeared.
And the damned goat wouldn’t stop crying. Its bleating reminded me of Salome’s baby when she was first born, and then I thought about all the Rabids I’d killed and the noises they’d made as they died. Some of them had sounded like they were begging for their lives, only not in any language I could understand. I’d told myself their minds were a wasteland, but was that only to soothe my own conscience? In truth, I had no idea. Surely, Rabids felt pain too.
The chaos in my head grew louder, so I bit down on the inside of my cheek until it bled. The taste of iron and salt reminded me that I had a job to do.
Get a fucking grip, Cipher.
Eventually, the goat stopped crying, laid down, and passed the fuck out. I envied it for that too. What might it feel like to just… give up? Like my sister had done. Take too many pills and float off into some sweet oblivion…
No, that path was not for me, and besides, people were counting on me. Kitten and the other Assholes needed me, if for nothing else than to keep them alive. But they were safe here in Promised Land, weren’t they? Maybe they didn’t need me so much anymore.
God, I was fucking exhausted. And I really didn’t need this extra time to think. I tried to refocus on my surroundings instead.
The night was still. Crickets buzzed and the tree frogs chirped. I continued to scan at the tree line until my eyes burned and my vision blurred but saw nothing.
No Rabids and no tigers either, which meant I hadn’t had to kill anything… yet.
So, who was I now?
TEN
KITTEN
I was worried about Cipher.
Ever since becoming one of Brother Larry’s guards, he seemed more moody and withdrawn than usual, with dark circles around his eyes and a distant, pensive gaze. He wasn’t smiling or joking around with us during mealtimes, and whenever I tried to draw him out of his shell, he’d wave it off and say he was just tired.
He also seemed to be crushing up more pills than usual to go to sleep, which I only knew because I found him passed out one afternoon with the powder on our nightstand and more of it dusted on his nostrils. Was he snorting them now too?
“Where are you getting the pills?” I asked once he’d woken up and was going about the business of attaching his belts and knives in preparation for his night shift.
