After three weeks inside, the water was nearly gone, and Sam was feeling the effects of a lower dosage of medication. She felt jumpy, and paranoid, although it doesn’t really count as paranoia if people really are out to get you. She wondered what her neighbors were doing…she hadn’t heard any screams in the night from people in the actual building, but she hadn’t had visitors come over with a hot pot of soup either. Neighborly indeed, she muttered to herself, folding the air mattress over itself to squeeze out the last few gallons of water into the bathtub.
No one likes you, and your family has already given you up as dead; they’re probably dead too, her brain piped up, as it did more and more these days. You’re a skinny little nothing and even your brain hates you.
Nope, said Sam aloud, louder than she’d intended, my family is safe in California, and I should be thankful for that.
How do you know? Brain snarked back, ruthless and efficient.
Because San Francisco is small and easy to defend.
Not from the south.
Shaddup.
Fine. I’ll be quiet for a while, and then you’ll see how truly alone you are.
Maybe, Sam mused, eyeing the bathtub and counting out days of water in her head, I’ll visit the neighbors.
The apartment building was shaped like an angular horseshoe, with all the doors to apartments facing inward, towards a pathetic and dog-shit dotted lawn. Sam lived in the second-to-the-left apartment on the third floor, her front door facing north and back patio facing south. When she’d watched downtown go up in flames, she had done so from her private deck, a shoe-box sized affair with several dead plants crowding the space, a small camp chair and little else. She remembered seeing the light of a candle or flashlight from the corner apartment next door, but only for a moment, as if the man who lived there had suddenly remembered how bad an idea it was to advertise one’s position.
She hadn’t heard a peep from the neighbors to the west, and suspected that most of the occupants of the building had fled to the proverbial higher ground, or never made it home alive. Still, she knew the Corner Apartment Man was still here, if only because there was a pile of human waste in the alleyway below his balcony in a similar fashion to hers. At that moment she promised herself to find a better way of dealing with her leavings; if it was that obvious to herself, surely it would be obvious to Them.
Sam dressed as civil as possible for someone who had gone 3 weeks without a trip to the laundry room, slipped her sharpened but mostly-for-looks pocket knife into the front pocket of her jeans, and grabbed a can of minestrone soup (a peace offering, and a valuable one at that). A shadow moved across the living room wall, across from the window, and she ducked and flipped open her knife in what she hoped looked like a practiced move. There was nothing, however, at the window.
You’re three stories up, idiot, her brain cackled, but jump headfirst and you’ll probably die a clean death. Think about it.
Sam nearly forgot her mission…. but crouching down, she was at the perfect height to see the bathtub, half-empty at best.
Shut the fuck up, brain. Or I’ll take a full dose, schedule be damned. That seemed to quiet him down, for the moment.
Sam grabbed her keys out of habit, although she had not left the apartment for three weeks and change, and locked the door behind her. The Corner Apartment Man’s door was just a few yards down the way, but she saw no point in leaving her food and water to be pillaged. She crept along the wall, cursing herself immediately for wearing cute rather than comfortable shoes. She wouldn’t make than mistake again.
When she got to the door, her mind went blissfully, horribly blank. What the hell would she say? What would she do if he just turned her away…or more likely, attacked her, took her keys, and left her bleeding on the floor? Before she could think of a plausible answer, she heard the (relatively) deafening sound of the deadbolt being turned, and when she looked up, (why in all the gods names had she been staring at her feet?), the muzzle of a shiny black pistol was trained on her head.
“Oh good” Sam said tonelessly, “I see you do in fact have a gun.”
“What do you want.” Corner Apartment Man said, equally toneless.
“Uh…. nothing. Err…. something. I…”
“Spit it out.”
“Can…can I come in?”
Corner Apartment Man looked her up and down.
“Drop the keys and the knife. Bring the soup.”
“How do you know I’m….”
“Carrying a knife? Those are skinny jeans. Nice to look at, but…”
Sam barely contained what she thought might have been a laugh. She had never stared a gun in the face, and she was pretty sure she was near hysterical.
Corner Apartment man lowered his voice, which Sam knew from childhood to be far more dangerous than raising a voice. “Are you going to drop the shiny metal bits or what?”
Keys and knife hit the pavement.
“Come in.”
Corner Apartment Man nudged the door open just slightly more, walking backwards and keeping his gun trained on Sam. She followed him, feeling like a world-class moron (unarmed save for soup, good call, whispered her brain—and for once they agreed on something) Sam might have totally given herself over to the afore-mentioned hysterics, until she saw the Corner Apartment Man’s apartment.
She tried to focus on the gun; really she did, but…the books! Every single available wall was a bookshelf, and the books weren’t just there for show, she could tell right away that Corner Apartment Man was the type who would never own and keep a book he hadn’t read, personally, until they were dog-eared. The bookcases extended to just below the ceiling, leaving a foot or so gap of bare wall—except it wasn’t bare, the walls below the ceiling were festooned with ritual blades, antique guns, and weapons of every make and model of the imagination. She could even see the bare spot wherein resided, she was sure, the gun he carried now, the gun he kept trained on her as he guided her expertly to a plush yet threadbare armchair in the middle of the living room, facing the bay windows that looked west and south.
Sam realized she was gripping the arms of the chair with what could be described as animalistic fervor. She was, after all, on a too-low dose of meds, sitting in a strange apartment with a strange man, with a gun trained on her head. She decided after a moment of silence to practice her DBT skills, namely to Describe.
Corner Apartment Man was tall, say 6’3” or 4”, and built like a semi. No no no, that wasn’t descriptive, it was metaphorical, her wise mind chastised her. He was built like someone who eats a full steak dinner and skips dessert. NO NO, she slapped herself in the face (mentally), he was built solid and strong, with wide shoulders, a stomach so flat that tensed as he was it seemed to curve inward. He wore a plain white t-shirt, denim slacks (they seemed too nice and neat to deign to be called ‘jeans’) a hip holster that Sam only assumed matched the gun in his hands. He also wore workman’s boots, another holster which held a knife flat against his thigh, and a plain leather bracelet. The bracelet was thick, about two inches wide, and seemed to be stitched expertly to his wrist. She wondered why a man who seemed by all surroundings to take nothing lightly wore jewelry.
Corner Apartment Man’s entire body was fixated not on her, but on the gun. You could tell in the way her held the weapon, he knew what he was doing. ‘never underestimate the gun’ he would tell her later…but that was later. This was now, and all Sam could think about, besides the keys laying helpless and defenseless on the concrete pathway from his apartment to hers, was how if he pulled the trigger now, she would be nothing but thankful. Anything would be better than sitting in silence, waiting, just waiting, for it to happen.
“Where did you come from?”
“I’m…”
“Did anyone follow you here?”
“No….”
“Shut up! Show me ‘three’ with your fingers in three different ways.”
He’s crazier than you are, said her brain, reasonably.
Shut it! Sam hissed inside her head. When Corner Apartment Man held his silence, she figured he was serious. Sam held up pointer, middle, and ring finger. Then two thumbs and pointer. Then pinky, ring and middle. She folded her hands and placed them deliberately in her lap.
“Good. You seem to have cognitive abilities beyond the Infected. You can take direction and solve simple problems. That’s…good.”
Corner Apartment Man lowered his gun and holstered it. Sam let loose with a sigh louder and deeper than any she could recall. Then he said something completely, utterly unexpected.
“Would you like a glass of water?”
“OH FUCK YES!”
Kindling: Xibal, Sam and Tom 