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What’s really important here, what makes me heave a shaky sigh of relief, is that he’s alive. He’s unhurt.
Or is he?
I’ve been in my home for over a week. I have no way of knowing when this message was written. Was it before or after the confrontation I saw two days ago? I can’t know, not with certainty. So it means nothing. And it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t mean anything anyway. He’s not my concern. What I need to worry about right now is not some vague message scrawled out in brick dust, something that will wash away with the first heavy rain. My worries are more substantial and far more urgent.
I put the message out of my mind, get my head in the game and move on.
Three hours later, Crenshaw and I have lunch. It’s a mangy little rabbit that ran me all over hell and back, but I got him in the end. Crenshaw, in a very rare show of friendship, asks me to stay and eat with him. He has a system for smoking the meat, making it not only delicious but also keeping a low profile while cooking. Even though I’m worried he’ll get a visit from one of the Lost Boys while I’m here, I take the chance for a shot at a good, hot meal. Also, and I keep this to myself, I don’t mind the idea of the company so much either.
“You look as a true warrior, Athena.” he says, pulling his robe more tightly around himself as he leans down to stoke the fire. It’s a real robe, like a bathrobe. There are sailboats on it. Blue ones.
My hands and clothes are soaked in blood from killing and ski
“Really? I was thinking I needed a bath.”
He snorts at me. “Your generation is obsessed with cleanliness. Do you think even the Kings and Queens in medieval court were so thoroughly bathed? I assure you, they were not.”
“I don’t know, Cren.” I say doubtfully, looking down at myself. “I think I’ve gone beyond royalty filth and moved into cavewoman status.”
“It’s good for you.”
I smile and take a seat at his table. “You’re the doctor.”
He ignores me as he cooks and I enjoy the feeling of not being alone but being left alone. It’s a strangely wonderful sensation. It’s cozy here in this earth and mud hut that’s he built. It’s small, my leg is pressing against his cot tucked in the far corner, and it’s incredibly dark inside, but it fits him. Outside this sparse living quarter is his real home; his garden. It’s all hidden deep in the brush and trees of the park but it’s expansive as well. If he asked me to go out and get him something from it, I wouldn’t know where to begin. It all looks like a jungle to me but to him it’s perfectly clear.
He brings me a plate with my smoked rabbit on it and sits across from me.
“Have you seen your friend lately?” he asks casually.
I stiffen. “I don’t have friends, remember?”
“Athena.”
I groan. “Don’t do that. Don’t scold me. I talked to him once. It’s no big deal and it’s not a friendship.”
He chews thoughtfully. “If you speak to him again—“
“I’m never going to see him again.” I interrupt. I immediately wish I hadn’t. Crenshaw stares down his nose at me and I cave. “I’m sorry, please continue.”
He clears his throat. “If you speak to him again, be wary but cordial.”
My rabbit slips through my fingers and plops on my plate. “Cordial? You want me to be nice to him? Since when?”
“Since the wraiths outnumber us again.”
“I don’t know that they outnumber us.” I say doubtfully.
“Since the Colonists walk these woods.”
I drop my meat again, this time intentionally. “They’ve been here? Near you?”
He watches me calmly. “Not near enough to see, but near enough for me to hear. Do not worry for me.”
“Crenshaw—“
“I said do no worry, Athena. I have shrouded my home. I will remain unseen.”
“Shrouded it with what? A spell?”
He frowns at me, looking at me like I’ve gone mad. “With camouflage.”
“Right, sorry.”
Sometimes I forget that Crenshaw’s crazy is selective. He’ll be telling me one minute to burn sage to ward off evil spirits and the next he’ll be asking if I remember the football Thanksgiving episode of Friends. It’s hit or miss. More often miss.
Eventually I say goodbye to Master Gandalf and carefully pick my way out of his neck of the woods. I’m full of good food, sedated by whatever incense he was burning in that hut and my day is only half done. Now the hard part. I have to climb to the top of one of my buildings and get fresh water.
This is dangerous for two—wait, no three… I guess actually four—it’s dangerous for a whole lot of reasons, let’s just go with that. Colonists, zombies, Lost Boys, bears. Yes! I have seen a bear before and I ca
I decide to minimize my danger factor since I’m already tired from Elmer Fuddin’ it after that rabbit and I go to my closest water source. It’s five blocks away and to the south, the opposite direction of Ryan’s home. At least I know I’m walking away from one threat I’d like to hide from. The walk there shows me how flooded the world really is. It’s one thing to see it from up high and it’s another entirely to get down in it. Every corner I round seems to bring me nearly face to face with a Risen. I’m able to carefully avoid them, eventually going to the rooftops to do so, but that’s dangerous and kind of lazy on my part. I just want to get my water and go home when what I should be doing is putting them down and eliminating the problem for Future Joss. Making Future Joss’s life easier with less zombies to face on a daily basis. But that’s Future Joss’s issue and right now Present Joss isn’t feeling it.
Selfishness, especially my own, is what makes this place so hard to survive.
When I get to the building I have a choice to make. Go inside and take the stairs or climb the fire escape. The fire escape of course sounds like the better option because I won’t have to be inside a building that for all I know could be crawling with Risen. It’s the smart choice on paper. But when you look at the situation more closely, mainly at the bolts securing the fire escape to the building, you see the flaws in the plan. It’s been many moons, many winters, many rain storms since this thing was deemed safe by the local fire inspector and I know for a fact that it’s hanging on by a thread. As I stand here on the sidewalk examining it, feeling more exposed by the second, I see the structure shift in the wind. I’m not setting foot on that.
Inside it is.
My skin crawls at the thought and I have to take several deep breaths to psyche myself up for this. Once I’m inside, I’m all stealth and speed. I don’t need to be a hero here. I’m not looking to hunt zombies tonight and help decrease the surplus population, no matter how much Future Joss will bitch about it. What I need to do is get in and get out without contact – living or otherwise.
But what I need, what I want and what I get have rarely lined up.
That Cabbage Patch Doll with the blood in her blond hair? I wanted a brunette.
I also wanted my parents to live past New Years.
Do you see the pattern here?
What I see is a Risen at the end of the hall by the door to the stairs. The only door to the stairs.
“Great.” I mutter, pulling out the ASP with my left hand and unsheathing my knife with my right.
I’m right handed and my preferred weapon here is the ASP. So why am I holding it in my weak hand? Because it doesn’t need me to be strong. Not really. It doesn’t need me to be accurate either. All it needs is a target and a little momentum and that thing will crush bone under its steel tip like it’s nothin’. Like cracking a walnut. Ryan was right to be jealous. This thing is amazing and I sleep with it like a toddler with a teddy bear.