Writing on the Wall

I kick each tub across the roof and watch as one trips and tumbles over the edge. It stuns me for half a second, just long enough to think it’s a bad thing, and then I flip a switch and think it’s the best thing ever. I grab the gutter work and launch it over the edge as well, chuckling when I hear it clatter loudly to the ground. I’m breathing quickly and feeling crazy. I’m so angry, something I haven’t felt in forever. I got a taste of it when Ryan dropped into my world and blew it up, but this is different. This is frustration and rage. It’s pent up for miles and I don’t know what to do with it. What I should do, healthy or not, is stow it. Now is not the time for this.

I drop the other gutter fixture I was holding in my hand and let it fall carelessly to the rough rooftop. Watching the Risen girl come at me, I can’t bring the numb. I can’t find the calm that I strove for on the way up here and barely managed. I need it to do this right, to make sure I survive and keep my head on straight, but it just won’t come. I back up as she stalks me slowly and clumsily. I let her walk me to the brink. The backs of my legs hit the lip that rises above the edge by just a few feet, just enough to trip a person and send them tumbling down to their death. It’s a dangerous feature and I wonder how that ever made it in the pearly white, disinfected, overly sanitized safety net world that existed ten years ago.

Look out! Coffee is hot!

Knives are sharp!

This End Up, numbnuts!

This woman is older than me by at least twenty years and deader by about four. She didn’t make it. All of her warning labels were gone and the world was too much for her to figure out on her own.

Beware: Zombies bite!

I’m not ashamed to say I feel superior to this chick. She has years of experience on me but I survived and she didn’t. She may have had a 401K, a husband and an Audi, but at least I still have a heartbeat. One that’s thrumming wildly in my chest as my breath comes hot, hard and fast into my lungs.

It’s all of these emotions, all these things I’ve forgotten and gotten on without that are now literally bursting through me, seeping from my pores and smothering me from the inside out. There’s so much, too much.

And it’s gotta go somewhere.

When Corporate Kelly makes her big move and lunges for me, I drop down to the ground on my knees and spring forward. I tackled her at the thighs, standing up when I make contact and lifting her bony body onto my shoulder. Then I push on her knees and flip her forward, over my back and over the edge. I send her off the roof face first to kiss the pavement below. And I turn and watch it happen. I wait for the impact and when the smack! echoes back up to me, I throw my arms in the air, signaling a touchdown.

If that move doesn’t get me the Heisman then justice is dead.

I’m still pissed about my water, or lack of, when I get back to my neighborhood. I’ve still got some rabbit, though, and some veggies that I can eat raw instead of boiling. And I still have a home to go back to, so that’s a plus. I haven’t been ratted out yet just as I dared to instill a little faith in humanity again. Of course that’s over now that humanity stole my stuff, mainly my life sustaining resource. But that’s okay, because Ryan’s different and I actually choose to believe that.

It’s then that I decide I need to know if he’s alive.

I make a detour home that takes me longer but it also takes me by the wall. I look at his message for a moment, wondering what to say back. I think of a hundred things that I immediately cast off as stupid, lame, boring, too obscure or too suggestive.

And then it starts to rain. There’s no prelude to it, no soft pitter patter of tiny first drops leading the way. No, it downpours from moment one, soaking me to the bone in a matter of seconds. On the bright side, my rain bucket upstairs will be full in no time and I will have fresh water. On the dark side, the one that seethes inside my soul and throws zombies off rooftops as part of a stress management system, I’m reminded yet again that my adventure was all for nothing. I nearly died multiple times and all for not. It’s not a new thing in my life, I’m just painfully aware of it right now. As I am painfully aware of a lot of things lately.

Finally inspired, I pick up the brick on the ground, cross out a part of his message and write one word of my own. It’s not pretty and it’s not poetic, but it is honest.

Welcome tothe new age blows.

When I wake up in the morning I still can’t find the calm. The numb. The tap out I need in order to be the me that survives. It’s troubling and I blame Ryan. One more thing on the poor guy’s shoulders, I know, but credit where credit is due. This is his fault. I thought about telling him as much last night on the wall.

You gave me the sickness.

I don’t know a lot but I know enough to know that sounds dirty. I don’t know how he’d take it, I’m not sure what types of books he’s been reading, but I doubt it would have been interpreted as I meant it.

I give it another day before I decide I feel enough like myself to be trusted in the outside world. I spend my time indoors watching The Breakfast Club and letting myself laugh audibly. It feels weird but I like it. And when the credits roll I’m still smiling because I noticed something about this movie that I’ve never noticed before, even after countless watchings: I can relate.

I am a brain.

An athlete.

A basket case.

A princess.

A criminal.

And when I step outside and cruise past the wall, expecting to find it washed clean of our small scribblings, I notice something else.

I’m no longer alone.

Put down a Z in your name today.

Bringing you a better world, one kill at a time.

Chapter Nine

I’m scared of spiders. I scream like a girl.

I’m scared of clowns. I’m glad they’re all dead.

What about a crawler clown?

You’re the devil. I’ll have nightmares for months.

I could come stay with you. Keep the clowns away…

Stay away from me, dipshit. I have spiders and I know how to use them.

I’m the King of the Dipshits!

We’re writing almost every day now and I feel like it’s getting dangerous. It’s dangerous for us to develop a routine that the Colonists can track. It’s dangerous to leave these messages in my neighborhood that anyone can see. It’s dangerous to have him sneaking here to write them because eventually someone will see him do it. It’s dangerous to have my back turned, unguarded, as I write stupid things to a guy I’ve only met once and should have walked away from at the start.

But I didn’t and everything has changed because of it.

I’m crouched down under a tree, waiting like a snake in the grass for a bird to leave her nest so I can steal her eggs, when I hear him. His voice rings out, echoing through the park and resonating in my ears. It startles both me and the bird, alerting it to threats in the area and I lose all hope of scoring those eggs today. That boy ca

It’s been a month since the night I met Ryan and I’m surprised that I recognize his voice immediately. He’s in the far side of the park, near where we ran into his friend Bray, and I crane my neck to look for him. What I see first is a tall, thin blond guy a few years older than I am. He’s somewhere in his twenties with a weathered face and sharp eyes. I sink back down low, scurrying silently into a patch of tall grass and ferns. I’m hiding from him. I don’t realize it until I’ve already done it, but I’m glad because his eyes make me nervous. I watch through the patchy green blur of leaves and blades as he moves languidly through the brush, barely rustling it as he walks. Beside him is another unfamiliar face, an older man with dark hair, probably somewhere in his forties. He’s moving with far less care, almost crashing through the grass and chuckling with his head bent down. He’s laughing with Ryan.