To the Well-Organized Mind

Chapter Three

There's nothing so frightening as a pandemic that steals one's very identity and personality. Far better to die than be stripped of our very humanity.

-from Diya Rhee's thesis

*

Those eyes that saved me belong to a man who trudges onward, always four paces behind me. When I get up in the morning, he rolls to his feet several seconds after I do. When I trip on the crumbling ground, he trips immediately after. He is my stalker, my puppy, my Siamese twin attached at the shadow.

So when he tries to follow me when I walk off to empty my bladder for the first time in two days, I finally confront him.

"Listen, Siamese, you keep following me the way you have been and you'll find a knife in your ribs before long."

Maybe my words don't have as much venom as usual. He blinks at me without seeming to register my words. Maybe his very existence is sleepwalking, following after me because I am the only one who can lead his ghost out of the Barrens. His soul has already departed. All that's left is this shambling shell that only knows how to stumble after me.

Shaking my head, I shove on the man's shoulders to make him sit, and then I continue on my way to a slightly more private area to piss into my water bottle. The others, no doubt, would not want to know this. But it's okay if they don't want to drink their own urine; just means less odds on their survival. And since I can't drink their urine myself, I don't give a damn.

A thorny bush that may be hibernating or may just be a dried out husk becomes my backdrop. It doesn't hide as much as it should have, but no one has the energy to study my every move except for my shadow.

He rises when I step away from the bush complete with my warm water bottle. I brush past him without looking at him, without gazing into those life-saving eyes. Better not to individualize these people. Better not to be grateful to any of them or pick favorites.

But he grabs my arm as I go by.

"Fen."

That's all he says, and I can feel his gaze on my head.

Fine. "Nia," I say, and I jerk my arm out of his grasp. I can hear him murmur it after me, and I can see the smile on his face. Or maybe I'm thinking of how Ridge says my name.

*

Tommy didn't have much in the way of supplies. He did have a good collection of matches, pickled beets, and even jerky, though. Not much when you have to divide it eleven ways...but I'll hold onto it a bit longer, and then we won't have to split it as far. No use doling out food to walking corpses—humans who just haven't realized they're already dead.

From my estimate, we have at least four of those. Two old people (they have to be over forty), Sarah's daughter, and a man who is always last in the daily trudge.

If Jaden were here, I'd take bets on who will be the first to go. But every now and then, my conscience reminds me that it's alive. Or maybe I just feel the eyes of my shadow watching me too closely.

*

When we reach the first water hole, I am tempted for a whole five seconds to let the fools drink as much as they've been dreaming about. If I say nothing, just let them trip into an uneven run toward the water, they'll laugh and fall in it and splash it and guzzle it. And then, in a few moments, they'll scream as their insides burn and rupture from the acid.

Five seconds. I could make it back across the Barrens without caring for these people, these people I never wanted to find. No one is expecting me to succeed anyway, not even Dee, who asked me to keep a lookout for her sister.