Guest Thank you!
Your boy carl again.
Don't look back.
Just keep walking.
Don't look back.
Just keep walking.
Don't look.
Keep walking.
They're doing fine on their own so I let go, keep a pace ahead, a pace faster, get further away, keep distance, don't care, don't feel, no time to be sad, no time to be anything... just like last before only I'll do it right this time.
"Carl."
Can't look back.
"Slow down."
Gotta keep walking.
"Stop!"
Crap, he sounds pissed — I stop.
"We... we needa stick together," Dad says, saying his words that are just words nothing else. I'm sick of them. I can hear them both grunting, breathing, hurting. Don't look back. "We gotta find a place," he's saying, "get food, supplies."
Don't look back.
"Hey…"
His hand touches my shoulder.
"We're gonna be—"
I do look now. Can't help it. I look back and I see the way one of Dad's eyes are sealed shut and the other is so red I don't believe he's not blind. I see he's torn off his sleeve and has tied it around the flesh wound on his thigh. I see that his arm is cut, and his chin, too, and his mouth is so swollen he makes sound when he breathes. Oliver's in a bad way, too; hair soaked in sweat and blood coming from the gash on his right temple. Blood has dried over blood that has already dried, and the skin around it is swollen and still bleeding. The bruise stretches across his eyebrow and all the way down that side of his face. There's another, right across his shoulder where that guy smacked him with the rifle butt. Blood from the wound on his stomach is wetting his T-shirt and flannel, and his right shoe is dark red instead of blue. The rest of him is covered in dirt and grass stains. It's in his wounds, too.
I look for too long. They are bent and busted people. Both of them. Busted is my father and Bent is Oliver holding on to him – bent all over the place like thorns; I'll get all cut up if I get too close.
Bent looks away and Busted's hand slips from my shoulder, and I shut down and go on auto-pilot.
Keep walking.
Don't look back.
The sun is setting and I come back to manual when the scenery starts to change. Tall trees surround the road and a train line has appeared alongside it, powerlines overhead. I see an old barbeque shack up ahead and my feet veer towards it, leaving the road for grass. Dad and Oliver follow. They're too loud. How can anyone think straight when bent and busted thorns don't stop trying to tear you apart? I tell them to shut up in my head but they don't hear me.
The parking lot is littered with abandoned motor bikes and syphoned cars and empty beer bottles and old papers. The building is small and everything that isn't made of stone is painted green. A wooden banister runs across the front and I follow it to the door. Dad draws his gun and Oliver uses his inhaler. His chest sounds like a lawnmower. Don't care. He takes out his machete, and now that he's ready, Dad opens the door with a creak.
"Wait outside. Okay?" he whispers. "Keep watch."
"You keep watch," I retort. "You can barely stand. I'm not gonna let you go in there alone."
"Excuse me?" Dad hisses. I don't mean to look at Oliver for back up. He doesn't look back. Doesn't even notice. He stands back, eyes down, arms all folded up like he's trying to disappear. Fine, I think. I'll pretend you don't exist. Maybe then you'll leave me alone. Maybe then none of today would have ever happened and I would still have a sister and a home. . .
"We've done this before," I growl. "I'm gonna help you clear it. You should just let me do it myself."
Dad grits his teeth, swallows the blood in his mouth, and says, "Let's go."
I'm sweating. We enter the bar and check it through. The first thing I notice is the large mound of chairs and furniture stacked up across the middle of the bar, a room over.
"Kitchen's clear," Dad says. I go into the bar and they follow me. We smell it before we see it, then we hear it. Just one. It emerges through the archway, leaving the shadows, then gets caught behind the wall of stacked chairs between us. He's been here a while. Behind him is a full shelf.
'Joe Jr's
HOT SAUCE!
$3.33'
"That might be all that's left," Dad says.
Oliver coughs. I look away quickly, gritting my teeth while I glare down the corpse and pick up my gun. "I can get it from here."
"No," Dad croaks, "it's weak. I'll draw it out."
I step aside. Dad picks up an axe from the table. From that same table, I pick up a note. It reads: 'Please do what I couldn't – Joe Jr.' Oliver's trying to read it over my shoulder. I tilt the paper, hear a small, "Thanks, man," and I shake my head and flip the paper upside down.
"Stay back." Dad yanks a chair out, and it brings a whole section of the barrier down with it. He steps back to let Joe Jr. through, and when Dad's axe comes down through his skull, he isn't strong enough to put him down. I pick up my gun, aim it at its skull. "Don't! I've—" I pull the trigger, and they both collapse. Dad wrenches his axe out, swings around, and screams at me. "I said not to!"
I scream back, "You couldn't do it with the axe!"
"I had it! Every bullet counts. We'd'a needed that one later." He cools down. "See what you both can find. Let's move on."
Again, I look at Oliver like I always do. I look at him like he'll think what to do into my head for me, like he might fix this, fix everything, even though he is just as bent and busted as the rest of us. I might burst into tears, so I kick a chair across the floor and march into the back room.
The corn cobs are dry and rotten, which sucks big time, but the potato chips are good, as are the two jars of pickles I find, and the tinned plumb tomatoes and small jars of pesto Oliver found. We'll eat weird. But we'll eat.
Leaving the hot sauce, we go find Dad.
"Kitchen wasn't empty after all. My haul..." He dumps bottles of water and crackers into a shoulder bag. "You?"
I empty my arms into the bag. "I win." And I don't care that my voice broke, or that I can feel the skin around my mouth peeling, or that my hair feels like an unwashed frying pan when I touch it. I don't care that Oliver found as much as me or that he's wheezing again or that back there when we got into the kitchen he whispered that he was sorry and I cried for minutes before I could stop. All I care about is that Dad knows I found food with or without his help. With or without both of their help.
We leave the bar.
"Hey."
I've been thinking back to around the time Daryl and Michonne brought back a weirdo stray from a candy store, how me and the same weirdo stray started becoming weirdo strays together, and we'd talk without talking and turn imaginary together.
"Hey."
We pass some tracks at the crossroad, heading into a suburb; one of those that are through-roads between towns with white panel walls and no fences and small front porches with swing chairs and solar lights in the ground. Big trees cover the area well — if it had a fence, it would be a good place to settle.
I'm done settling.
"Hey." Finally, I stop and turn to my dad, who has become a human broken record. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. He looks at the house and adds, "That one's as good as any."
The door is ajar, already broken into. We file in, weapons drawn, eyes and ears open. I head into the next room along while they go and check the kitchen and dining area. The couch is turned over and old trash is strewn across the floor. It's a mess, but empty.
As I head down the hallway, aiming to check the back door. Dad calls out to me. I tell him, "I got it, all the doors down here're open."
"Jus' stop!"
Exhausted, I turn around... then I slam my arm against the wall. "HEY, ASSHOLE!" I rattle the whole house, shake the air, cause an earthquake, and we are the only ones left to see it. "HEY, SHITFACE!"
Again. Harder.
"HEY, ASS—"
"Watch your mouth!"
"Are you kidding me?" I ask. "If there was one of them down there, they would've come out."
Dad's lip twitches. I ignore him and go upstairs. I'm followed, but at least not by Dad. All the rooms are empty, like I said, so I go into the first bedroom on the right. It must have been a teenager's room before, with posters on the walls and clothes hung up and music stacked in racks. There's a fireplace and a bookshelf and a ukulele and a skateboard. A guitar hero. A record player. An Xbox 360. A polaroid camera, and a telescope. The bed is in an alcove, through another doorway. It's cool.
While I look through some games, I see my reflection in the plasma TV screen and get this dizzy nostalgic headache, because I don't fit here, no matter how much I smile. I can see it.
Have to keep going.
Can't look back.
Oliver stops outside the bedroom door. He wants to come in, but I push the videogames off the stand, and while they clatter to the floor, I rip the cables out from behind the TV and take them downstairs.
It's getting dark. To make sure the house is secure, I tie the cable between the front door and the curtain hook. Still, Dad's getting Oliver to help him shove the couch against the door.
"I tied the door shut," I complain.
"We don't need to take any chances," Dad grunts.
"You don't think it'll hold?"
"Carl."
"It's a strong knot!" I argue. "Clove hitch. Shane taught me, remember him?"
Dad looks furious.
"Yeah," he answers, "I remember him. I remember him every day." His head tilts. "There somethin' else you wanna say to me?"
I hold my tongue, then step over and help. I have to do the majority of the shoving, but eventually the couch rolls over against the door and it's secure.
"You alright?" Dad asks; not me – Oliver. He's wheezing so bad he's retching. I toss a plastic bag at him, but Oliver still throws up against the wall. It's not much, but it takes a few minutes for the dry heaving to stop. When it does, Dad lays Oliver across the floor and puts him on his side, yelling at me for staring but I hardly hear him because I convince myself I'm watching him die right now and that there's nothing we can do about it.
"Dammit, Carl. Water! Now!"
I grab the water. Oliver drinks and lies down for a while and Dad tells him he can eat once he keeps the water down for a few minutes. Oliver doesn't complain. Oliver hasn't complained once.
"This'll have to do for the night," Dad says. He removes his holster and sits on the couch, rummaging through our haul.
I set up somewhere to sleep, and when Dad holds out a bag of potato chips to me, I shake my head and ask, "You gonna have some?"
He tells me, "You should eat."
"We should save it," I retort.
Dad limps over, reaching out.
"I don't want any."
This makes him mad. He throws the bag to the floor at my feet, and says, "Eat it..." and I glare at him, wanting him to scream at me, to lash out, but he just walks away and says, "Share with Oliver — and find him something to sleep on." He disappears into the kitchen. I snatch the packet, stuff my hand in, fill my mouth, and throw the rest of the bag at Oliver. He flinches, but otherwise ignores me. I figure he probably doesn't have much of an appetite right now.
"Upstairs," I say eventually. "You can sleep upstairs."
"I'll take the floor," Oliver says, taking more inhaler — at this rate, I don't know how long it'll last. "It's not like I'm not used to it."
"Upstairs," is all I say.
Oliver pulls himself to his feet. I just watch. He's taking too long so I walk away and wait for him at the staircase. When he's in the hallway, I go and wait upstairs, and so forth until he finds me outside the alcove in the bedroom. Dad's in the bathroom. As Oliver enters the bedroom, he looks tired and in pain and like he's trying hard not to throw up or black out. He passes me, into the alcove, and scoops up the comforter. He tries to leave with it, but I step in front of him.
"Jus' sleep up here," I insist.
He frowns at me.
"The house is clear," I add. "We don't need you downstairs."
"What?" He sounds small. "But, we might need to go? I—"
"Then I'll come get you," I say like it's obvious. Oliver swallows. I scoff. "What, you think we'll leave you behind?"
He doesn't day anything, but his eyebrows are all folded up like I was right. My chest crumples up, but it doesn't stop me from stepping in front of him again when he tries to walk past. I get so angry. So angry so I push him back — it amazes me how much better this makes me feel. I do it again, push him, and he trips onto the bed.
"Stay here," I tell him. "You can't come down there."
He glares at me.
"What?" I glare back. "What?!"
"Why are you being like this?" Oliver asks. He stands up, leaning against the door frame now, the dropped comforter all squashed down at his feet. "You're being an asshole," he tells me, whispering. "You can't treat me and your dad like this."
Screw you, I want to scream. Screw you! This is your fault! This is what happens when you do things you're not supposed to! This is what we get!
"Making me stay up here isn't gonna solve your problems, Carl," Oliver hisses, reading my brain. I try to close him out but he's already crawling through my eyelids. "What happened, this morning, and with the prison and everything else — you have to deal with it. All of it. This isn't about you. We're all scared, and going through shit, so quit treating us like you've gotta prove something."
"I know this isn't about me!" I argue, not caring who hears now. "Look at you, Oliver, you're a mess. You almost died today!"
Oliver is panting, trying to say something, but the second he steps forward, his eyes roll to the back of his head and he collapses right into me. "Oh, crap—" I stagger back, attempting to catch him, but we hit the floor. "Agh — Dad! Help!"