Charlotte shoots up on the bed next to me, swearing. “I’ts okay. I got you, baby.”
I writhe and flop as Charlotte yanks open a drawer in the rickety bedside table, digging fervently.
“Is she okay?”
Benji’s gentle voice startles me. His small body shimmers in my teary vision, one foot still outside the threshold, ready to bolt.
Charlotte’s reply is stern as she pulls out a
A creaky step indicated he’s coming closer. “But I can–”
“Go away!” My scream comes out in a shrill panic. Several thumps thunder away from the room, down the step. The door squeaks open. For all I know, I’ve scared him into the woods.
I don’t care. Not right now. Maybe later.
Charlotte leaves only long enough to check on our ward. The day finally warms, the pressure in the air eases. My cries fade into soft whimpers as I come back to my senses as Charlotte cradles my cheek and runs her thumb over my forehead. “Ready to sit up?”
I nod slowly and she takes my arms, slowly helping me up on the mattress before wiping the sweat from my brows. Then she starts looking for my renegade leg. It’s tangled in the blankets and she has to carefully pick strings from the joint.
“Thanks.” I take the old prosthetic, investigating the suction cup. No holes or new tears. Same goes for the liner and sock. Good.
It’s rubber, something I can’t recreate. So I have to be careful.
“You should probably raid a few clinics soon.” Charlotte works at righting the blanket. “You’re out of back-ups.”
“After we deal with the kid.” I try to roll the liner up, wincing at the still tender flesh. The scar just below my knee, protests with every tiny movement.
“I got you.” She makes it quick, and I bite my lip, fighting another scream. I’m panting when she’s done.
She gently wraps the leg in bandages today, making my leg fit in the socket more securely and padding the areas where my skin would otherwise rub and blister. “We don’t know how long he’ll be here. And you know legs are in short supply.”
“Guess I’ll have to work fast.”
This leg was not made for me but it’s better the crutches Mother insisted on. A peg leg would clearly expose me. I’ve had three legs so far, of varying sizes, and Charlotte’s right. They never last forever.
This particular model was made for a man who was very overweight. I know this because I had to untangle the lurcher from my fence and jam screwdriver in his head. Good timing, my older one was starting to crack and rust despite my best efforts. I have to wear loose trousers to cover the obvious size difference, but at least this one is sturdy and it connects to my stump pretty well.
“We can talk about this more after we find the kid.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
She nods and stands. “I can go–”
“No.” I smile but I know it’s not fooling her. “I need to move the leg or it’ll get stiff.”
Charlotte nods sadly and kisses my forehead. “I’ll go make breakfast for everyone.”
It takes a while to get down the steps, but Charlotte keeps her thoughts to herself. Our arrangement only works if we trust each other to know when to stop.
The kid isn’t with Marigold this time I check the coop out of desperation but Penelope just clucks her disapproval at my tardiness.
“Great…” I groan, grabbing a rusty old pick axe off the wall and heading down the path to our property. Part of me wants to ride Marigold out, but I meant what I said to Charlotte. Walking isn’t fun, but the pain will be a lot worse later if I won’t stretch the muscle.
As I get closer to the front gate, it becomes more overgrown and harder to pick out, as intended. The earth is dry and cracked under layers of weeds that rob the soil of nutrients and making Marigold’s hoof prints hard to find.
Unfortunately, the security measure also makes it harder to check if he went this way. I’m mostly heading this direction out of hope, praying I won’t need to break the kids head with the pick axe.
As I near the front gate, I hear something. Hard to pick out at first.
Then it’s more apparent. A loud squeak of old wire groaning under a heaving weight, accompanied by a continuous moan. I stop and let my head hang for a minute. There’s a curve in the path up ahead. This is, again, intentional. It makes people who stumble on my fence less likely to pick up on the path.
That curve may also be the last moment I can cling to ignorance. Maybe he tried to climb it and got caught… but how would he have died? Only one way to find out.
I slowly walk around the turn and nearly sag in relief. “You really need to stop wandering around.”
“Like you care.” He doesn’t turn around. Just continues to sit on a dry, old stump, tossing stones at the gate. It takes me a minute to realize they’re familiar. Despite all the free rocks laying around, these are the same ones that fell from his pocket at the hotel. Smooth like river rock, unlike the jagged stones laying about the gate.
Our gate is just another salvage fence, this section formed with barbed wire looped around two car doors in a way that looks more complicated than it really is. The misleading wire wraps and overlaps both of the doors, scratching them in several places where the rains have rusted and fused. A simple tug in the right spot and the doors open as a single part, the illusion is lost.
Of course, none of that matters to the lurcher tangled in the barbed wire.. It was old when it passed, likely from the first wave of infection. This is even more apparent when it gnashes its gummy mouth, the old dentures snapping out of time with the movements in an ugly, wet, staccato.
“Kid, you–”
“Benji!” He screams, startling me and Gramps. I halt my walk, my amputated leg hanging mid march. His name echoes through the woods for a shallow moment, dying in the trees quickly. But its corpse hangs around, the weight oppressive.
“I’ve been called anything but my name since they dropped me off.” He chucks another stone. This one bounces off the zombie. It grunts, as though offended by the injustice. “Only Jonathan bothered to call us by our true names, and he got a licking every time they caught him.”
I wince but he doesn’t even look at me.
“You don’t care.” He tosses another rock, this one pings off a car door before landing next to my feet. “So it doesn’t matter if you call me by my name.”
I pick up a stone, running my thumb over the smooth surface before sitting on the ground next to the stump. There is nothing I can say. I’ve dealt with it all, people messing up my name left and right, despite knowing me for years.
And no one in my circle is trying to erase my past.
I hold up the stone in my flat palm, grunting out the only thing I can think to say. “Why do you carry these?”
Benji looks down, and gently takes the stone from my hand, his tentative fingers tickling my palm before he pockets it. It clicks against its comrades. “It’s a hobby.”
I’ve never seen someone collect rocks but as hobbies go, it’s pretty harmless.
“What’s your plan for later?”
He tilts his head and watches me for a moment. “What do you mean?”
I blink, a little confused he'd miss the obvious. But he is just a kid. “Well, that front pocket isn’t made for heavy loads. It’s going to rip if you keep loading it.”
“I don’t keep them forever.” His blink mirrors my own. “I skip them.”
“Skip… huh?” Is he speaking in tongues?