No Man's Land

Chapter 4

She sat crying pink dress stained from mascara laced tears clutching her face scrunched in pain from hours of crying over another ruined dinner his arms wrapped around her shoulders as her painful cries echoed though the dimly lit room again he would leave again he has to go but for what she thought why now why again why is this happening future, what future? Don't cry, baby, its ok, I love you. I hate you. You don't mean that. How could you, don't you love me? I have to do this. Come to bed, we can't ruin the last night.

        Ken's eyes fluttered as a warm glow broke him away from a dream's grip. Dawn's light pierced the broken blinds of the lobby windows. Dust floating in the path of the beam shone and drifted like ember of a fire, dancing through the air. Humidity covered him like a warm, oppressive blanket. Rising like the dead from a long slumber, he pressed his palm to the back of his neck to relive the pain of a long day and night. He looked around. Beth was nowhere to be seen, just a dead fire and an empty room. Bolting from the couch and grabbing the emergency kit with haste he quickly makes it for the door. I don't want to be alone, he thought, not here. He entered the boiling hot street, heat swimming all around him. He was blinded by the sun's full introduction to his eyes. He frantically looked around for some sign of Beth. I need her, he thought to himself, I barely made it a full day, I'll never make it back without her. Running through puddles, splashing black, grime upon him, he made it to the part of the street where he almost died. With a great sigh of relief, he saw Beth kneeling by the carcasses of the two Leather Skin hounds. She heard his approach and raised her head to meet his eyes, unsmiling. He saw what she was doing as she lowered her head. She continued her monotonous process of carving meat out of the body of the beast.

        "Looking for something," she mutters to him, deep in her work of peeling back oily, scaly skin. Confused by her question he felt around his waist to find a vacant knife pouch.

        "When did you take my knife?" He stated, gruffly, annoyed by her theft.

        "I've never seen someone so exhausted in my life. Literally had to turn you over to get it and yah' didn't even raise an eye lid. What kind of soldier are you? No sense of awareness. Could've killed you or taken everything you had and you wouldn't know no difference. You're going to die out here." She smirked to herself. She chuckled slightly under her breath as she ripped the stomach open, spilling the contents onto the dampened street.

       "It was a long day ok, you try almost dying twice and not passing out," Ken stated, insulted. She took the flesh she peeled off the carcass and placed it in a bulging, dripping satchel on her side. "Is it any good?" He asked motioning to the hound's carcass.

        "If you close your eyes and think about chicken or steak, you get past the oily taste. You'll never get past the smell though. Doesn't leave your nostrils for a week, but hey, it's one of three things you can eat out here, and we've ran out of canned food and people already." He saw the concerned expression on his face at her comment and she smirked again. "Kidding," She said flatly, "get a sense of humor, but I guess they beat that out of you at boot camp."

        "They didn't beat anything out of me, I just don't have time to be the butt of jokes. Now can I have the knife back?" She wiped the knife quickly back and forth against the side of her pants and out stretched her arm, handing him the hilt. He slid it back into the pouch swiftly. He remembered that something else was missing from his person as he reached for his empty holster.

        "I have it, found it near the big guy behind me" She stated, patting the bulge jutting from her side, "and I'm not giving it back. Well, not at the moment. I know you didn't try to murder me in the night or anything, but I still had a weapon then. I'm not going to give someone a gun I barely trust. I've been out here long enough not to be that foolish."

        "Then you're no better than any raider you compared me to, taking my property. I'm not going to kill you and I'm not interested in anything you have, I just want to get home," He said with a tinge of pleading desperation.

        "I'm sure you won't but words don't always mean actions. I've seen what this place does to people who would've never killed me or taken my things. War. Death. Hunger. Pain. It changes people. It changed me and I won't let it kill me neither." She rose from the body on the ground clutching her spear tight to her side. He saw her fully in the light for the first time. Matted, short brown hair. Frail and tall. Blood and dust smeared across her tattered clothing and worn flesh. She looked less like a skeleton against the day and more like a breathing corpse. A zombie, kept alive by the forceful will of survival and necessity. "But I can't in good conscience leave you out here to die like some lost mutt. I'll tell yah' what fly boy, I'll hold onto the gun and you can hold onto the knife and whatever else you have on you. In exchange for this small vote of confidence and trust, you can tag along with me. I think last night before you slipped into some sleep rant about blonde hair or whatever you mentioned you were heading east to the war front. My...group...is east too. I can take you as far as our settlement but you can't stay or come back once you get there. I know you're not a raider, you're just some bumbling jack ass, but we can't feed any more mouths. Does that sound like a fair deal or do we have to fight over the gun now and let you get almost hurt again?" He thought to himself momentarily. He was uneasy about the idea of not having his gun, and it being in the hands of some untrained, crazed woman. He also knew, however, that at the next nightfall he'd probably be in the belly of one of those beasts she gutted.

        "Deal." He said reluctantly, "But I'm going to give you the same spiel you gave me last night. If I find that gun pointed at me in any scenario, I won't hesitate."

        "Deal."

        Together they gathered up their belongings and started moving away from the town along the broken asphalt of the highway. The air was heavy and hot, filled with the fiery tinge of the wastes. They passed in silence the blackened fields of ruined farms. Barns either burned by hellfire or left to wither against the unrelenting sun in a new found desert. Fences once holding back cattle only kept in the dry husks of their bodies. Countless carcasses littered the fields, forgotten, starved, and left rotting. He thought about their desperation. The chaos that erupted around them, oblivious to the carnage. They certainly must have felt some sort of animalistic fear to the sights and sounds but certainly had no concept of the scale of the event. The people died and many of them must have too. The ones that were left behind stayed in their pens like the good animals they were, waiting for their next feeding. Except it never came. No more grain as they starved slowly. The air grew hotter and corrosive to their lungs. They must have watched their fellow beasts fall, only knowing they need to eat but no way of feeding themselves. They stood as long as they could until they succumbed to the elements and starvation. One by one they must have died. Then the final one of their legs dropped into the dry dirt and the bovine heaved its final breath. Cattle are always led to slaughter, born to die no matter what. He didn't like the thought. It made him sick. He tried to push it from his mind. Skulls, horns, and leathery skin.

        "So," He said to Beth, "you know how I ended up in the town, crashing and all, but how did you end up so far from your people?"

        "Scavenging. A lot of the places around here are picked clean. After the first wave of fire bombings from the Leather Skins, people panicked and looted. Then the big ones came blowing up most of the thickly settled places. So you have to travel far and look hard to find anything. I had a truck and drove to the town to comb through." She paused, taking a deep breath, growing tired from the heat and sweating, "but the damned thing must have sprung a leak. Ran out of fuel a mile from the town."

        "Nothing in the shop to fix it with?"

        "No. Place was striped. Everything of use was gone and besides there was no fuel to replace the stuff I lost anyways. Place was dry. Then I heard the sound of the hounds. I hid for a while in the old motel. Then it rained and you came along, I think you know the rest."

        "How did you even know anything was happening out there?"

        "Trust me, both you and them were making plenty of frightful noises to hear through the rain," she mused, laughing to herself. He grinned, letting it slide this time.

        "You really put yourself in danger there. I could have been just as dangerous as one of those things."

        "I'm not a shoot first, ask questions later type of gal. You have to be cold out here but you still have to be human."