Chapter 3

2243

There was a strange sound outside. A rhythmic scraping and scuffling. It caught Sam's attention because usually their home was silent. The only other things that made sounds were living things, and he hadn't known his mother to make sounds like that.

He stood on his toes to peer out the window. The wind was kicking up a cloud of dust in front of their house. Through the haze, a figure staggered toward him. It was a human, like Sam and his mom. He had only ever seen a few other people. They almost never came by, and he had rarely left the vicinity of the house.

He watched the figure carefully. He knew that other things weren't supposed to come near the house. He would get his mother if it got nearer. As it walked closer, he realized there was something strange about the person. It made strange sounds, like it was sick, and there was something very wrong with its skin.

Sam slid away from the window and went to his mother, who was asleep. "Mom."

Her eyes opened to narrow slits. "What, sweetie?"

"Something's outside."

She sat up immediately. "What's outside?"

"A man."

There was another sick sound outside. It had suddenly gotten very close. The person pushed open the front door. Sam's mother's eyes widened and she leapt for her rifle on the rack on the wall. The sick person screeched and jumped for the closest target: Sam. There was no doubt in his mind that if the person reached him, bad things would happen.

He darted behind the couch just as the man dove for him. Sam felt the man's fingers brush his shirt as he barely missed him. He heard the man's growl behind him suddenly cut short at the sound of a heavy impact. He cautiously looked out from behind the couch. The person was lying on the floor, unmoving. He had a patch of blood on his crushed skull that matched the one on the butt of his mother's gun.

Slowly he stood, backing away from the body. He felt have sure that it would suddenly spring up to chase him again. "Why did he do that?" he asked his mother, his voice trembling.

"It's a ghoul," she said softly, setting the gun down. "That's just how they are. They can't help it." She picked up the skeletal corpse without much difficulty and lifted it over her shoulder. "Open the door for me?"

He went and held the door while she carried the body through.

"Go inside and latch it behind me," she continued. "Don't move until I get back."

He nodded and quickly went back inside. He hurried to the window to watch her go. She faded into the dust, moving slowly under the weight of the corpse, then disappeared. A few minutes later, she came forth again, this time by herself. Sam went to open the door again. His mother entered without saying anything. She solemnly went to the rifle on the floor and began wiping the blood away.

"Why didn't you shoot him?" Sam asked.

"There wasn't time to load," she replied. "We don't keep guns loaded in the house," she reminded him. "That keeps us both safe."

"I know," he assured her. He came to kneel on the floor beside her. "But...maybe you should keep one loaded."

"No, Sam."

"Mom, I'm old enough. I'll be careful," he assured her. Sam did not like guns. They scared him. But right now he was even more scared of what had just happened. He always knew he'd have to use them regularly eventually—all adults did. They were the lesser of many evils.

His mother seemed to be thinking. "What if another one came?" Sam prodded. "When you're not here?"

She sat for a moment longer, then got up. She went to a shelf on the wall and picked up a box of .22 caliber bullets, then came and handed both the bullets and the gun to her son. "Alright. Show me how good you are, then. If you think you're ready, go prove it."

He looked up at her questioningly as he took them.

"You remember how I showed you?" she asked.

Sam nodded, recognizing this as one of her tests. She rarely missed an opportunity to give him a lesson on anything. He pressed the bullets into the magazine, going slowly enough to be sure that he wouldn't make a mistake. When he finished, his mother nodded in satisfaction and pointed to an empty tin can on the shelf. He collected the target and went to go practice.

"You be careful with that, Sam. It's not like your pellet gun."

He nodded.

Outside, he gripped the rifle with all the reverence and importance he imagined was appropriate for those who frequently used them. His mother was right—it was heavy and unwieldy compared to his pellet gun. It made him nervous. He didn't like shooting, especially at things that were alive. He wished everything would just stay away so he wouldn't have to.

He closed his eyes, thinking of the detectives and superheroes in his comic books. They were never afraid or hesitant. They always knew who the bad guys were, and they knew how to deal with them.

He could be like them.

With pretended confidence he couldn't quite fool himself with, he stalked down the path away from the house. Large boulders and outcroppings hid it from view from the rest of the wasteland. Dust whipped up into his face as he came out on the other side. Holding up his newly-acquired gun, he looked left and right. There was nothing in sight that might try to sneak up and get him. The body was nowhere nearby that he could see, either.

He lowered the gun slowly, still suspicious. He squinted in the billowing dust as he looked out at the featureless landscape. He had been away from the house a few times to go into town, but never alone, and never far. A part of him wanted to keep walking, and wished he could wander the wastes on his own without fear. Another, larger part of him, was terrified by the very thought and would not even consider it.

He turned to go back to the house, then stopped when something caught his eye. Far off in the distance, he could see a figure walking. Sam stumbled in his hurry to scramble behind a rock, then felt foolish for doing so. Surely they wouldn't have seen him from so far away.

He peered over the rock and watched with wide eyes as the figure approached. It was coming toward him from an angle. He hoped it would just pass by. As it came closer, he could see that it was a human like he and his mother, not like the thing they'd killed earlier. Regardless, it was coming straight for him. He hunched down behind the rock, clutching his rifle so hard it hurt. Things from the wastes weren't supposed to come to their house.

The person he watched stumbled as he walked. He looked tired, but that didn't make sam any less nervous. He knew he should go and tell his mother again, but it was too late now. The man would see him if he moved. So he stayed, frozen on the spot.

The man looked up at the boulders, then seemed to spot the path between them. His eyes glided over the place where Sam hid, then, after a pause, moved back to him and widened in surprise. The man saw him.

Sam panicked.

He lifted the gun and shot, haphazardly. He did not have great accuracy even when he wasn't terrified. The man jumped wildly as the bullet flew by, and ran in the other direction. Sam stood up and fired again, and missed. He didn't care whether he hit the man or not, so long as he left.

He lowered the gun, breathing hard as he watched the man sprint back into the clouds of dust, looking over his shoulder once or twice. He heard his mother coming down the path behind him with equally hurried steps.

"Sam?" she called. "What are you doing out here? Go shoot in the back." Then she rounded the corner and saw the man retreating into the wastes. "What happened?" she asked, her voice now edged with concern and ire.

"There was another person. I scared him away." He ground his teeth anxiously.

"Are you hurt?" his mother asked, kneeling next to him and looking him over.

He shook his head. "He didn't see me." He handed her the gun, glad to let her have the responsibility of holding it.

She gave him a strange look, then gazed out at the man in the distance. "He didn't see you? What was he doing?"

"Nothing," he said, unsure how to respond. "Just...walking."

She turned back to him. "He was just walking?"

He nodded. "Toward the house."

"Well what did you shoot at him for?"

Now it was his turn to look puzzled. "No one's supposed to be near the house, except us. And he was going to see me. I was scared."

His mother's eyebrows pulled down in a decidedly concerned and disapproving way. "Well Sam, you don't just shoot at people because you're afraid of them," she said with a humorless laugh.

"Why not?"

"You don't shoot at other people unless they're trying to hurt you," she replied in a hard tone.

"We shoot animals that aren't hurting us," he reasoned. She gaped at him, and he shuffled uncomfortably. He sensed he was digging himself into a hole, but he still didn't know what had made her so upset.

"Animals are different than people, Sam! That man is a person like you and me! How would you feel if somebody shot at one of us?"

He was horrified at the idea that she thought he might not know the difference between her and others. "But I wouldn't shoot at you," he protested desperately, "only other people!"

The look on her face was so disappointed, so miserable, he wished he could take back everything he'd done to make it appear. He couldn't remember her ever having looked like that. This was not an expression that said he was in trouble. It was far beyond that. He'd made her feel something terrible.

"I'm sorry," he said, not caring what he was apologizing for.

She stared at him. The seconds passed. Slowly, she turned and trudged back down the path. "Come inside," she said. "I need to have a talk with you.