Humanity (10 page)

“Yeah. I think we should take tomorrow
off. You need a day for your healing to catch up with those extra miles we just
put on your body. Anyone following us shouldn’t be able to track us since we
walked along the water, so it should be perfectly safe to stay here an extra
day.”

“I’m not going to argue with that just
now,” he replied, eyes still closed.

I looked around us, still kneeling beside
him. The forest was quiet, except for the wind exhaling through the trees. “Is
it okay if we wait to get food till tomorrow?” I asked.

He opened his eyes again, looking at me.
“Yes. I don’t think you should be wandering off on your own, after what happened.”

I scratched my neck. “It’s no big deal.
That’s just what happens.”

“That is
not
no big deal, Candace. It’s not happening again, not while I’m
around.”

“It still happened when I was with my
parents. They protected me, but they couldn’t
always
be with me. You can’t always be with me, either.”

“Well, the only reason I’m ever leaving
your side again is if you send me away.”

I laughed lightly.

“I’m serious.”

“You might be serious now, but you
can’t
always be with me. You’ll get
irritated with me eventually, and need some air.”

“If I do, I want you to go straight up a
tree and wait for me.”

“I can’t make any promises, Gideon. This
is the world we live in, and that’s what happens sometimes. Look.” I fished
around in my backpack and brought out a bottle. “See? I even have medicine for
it. To prevent pregnancy. I take one every time.” I twisted my mouth. “Well,
except this time, since nothing had happened yet before you got there.”

Gideon’s hand wrapped around the bottle,
around my hand, as he squinted at the label in the darkness. “I guess it’s good
you have that, but it makes me sad you need it.”

“Most girls
don’t
have it. Though I think most of them kill the baby after it
comes anyway.” An image came to mind: a grandmother twisting the newborn’s head
until the neck broke, still leaning over the new mother as she did so. The baby
hadn’t even gotten to take its first breath. I shoved the memory away.

“Horrible,” Gideon muttered, looking
away; he hadn’t let go of my hand, though.

I hurriedly transferred the bottle to the
hand Gideon wasn’t holding, then stuffed it back in my bag. “Well, what did you
think happens? It’s pretty obvious
something
does; there aren’t very many kids around, are there?”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t know; it’s that
I try not to think about it. I used to be around that sort of thing often
enough, and it’s one of the reasons I like to stick to myself now. I don’t
want
to see that sort of thing. I do see
rape from time to time – always shoot the varmint right in the head – but
mostly because men wait until they have a secluded victim.”

“Well, I guess that’s a nice way of life.
My parents and I stuck to ourselves a lot, too, but there are benefits to
forming a group with others.” Forming a group meant there was more safety in
staying in one place for a longer time. Staying in that same place for an
extended time meant the opportunity to grow – fruits, vegetables, maybe even
some beans. . .

“I don’t like vegetables enough to try
it.”

A corner of my mouth lifted; I laid down
beside him, his hand still around mine. I wondered when he’d let go. It was
strange, feeling so much proximity to him in one day.

One of my fingers twitched in his hand. I
turned my head to look at him. It was only when I did that I realized his chest
was moving up and down in deep, even movements, matching the sound of his
breathing. His face was so relaxed, so childlike because of the freckles.

His grip hadn’t loosened, and I didn’t
want to wake him. I settled in beside him, trying to give him as much space as
possible without taking my hand back. Then I closed my eyes, controlled my
breath, and practiced thinking about nothing until I also fell asleep.

Chapter 10

When I awoke, Gideon was no longer
holding my hand. He’d rolled away from me, onto his side, at some point in the
night, and that’s where he still rested, his breaths still deep and even.

I knew healing took extra energy and
sleep, so I was careful not to make too much noise as I sat up and crawled to
the waterside. I took a few sips of the water, then rose to my feet and slipped
into the woods, just deep enough for a restroom break.

Gideon was up when I returned.

“Was I too loud?” I asked.

He gave me a small smile. “No. I just got
too hungry.”

“Hungry enough for me to go hunting for
us?”

“Not quite. I haven’t forgotten our
conversation last night.”

“Then what are our options? Because you
are definitely not going hunting today.”

He carefully pushed himself back to lean
against one of the two trees that made the little space where we’d slept. “I
was thinking that if we sit still for as long as possible, food might find us.
We
are
by water, after all.” He
nodded towards the stream.

I settled against the tree opposite his;
there were only a few feet between us, and this was because each of us had our
legs pulled up. Our campground was, indeed, small. “It’s worth a try. But if it
takes too long, we’ll be left with two options.”

“Which are?”

“Either I go hunting, or I eat you.”

He laughed. “I think we can save those
two options for later. If no food comes today, we’ll survive and go hunting
together tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure I’ll survive. I’m already
way too hungry. The hunger might go to my head and I might
have
to kill you to make up for it.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Let me get
this straight:
you
are allowed to
make jokes about killing me, but
I’m
not
allowed to make the same exact jokes?”

I could feel my shoulders tense at his words.
“I just don’t like you making insinuations about what I might or might not do.
I’m
not
going to kill you, and I want
you to know that.”

“Understood. But you do seem particularly
sensitive if
I
bring up the subject.”

“It’s a tough subject, okay? I can’t kill
you anymore. I don’t have it in me. Let’s move on.”

“Yes, you don’t have it in you because
you’ve gotten to know me, and you’re too decent of a human being to kill
someone you know so well.”

“It’s hard to hate you, okay?
Congratulations.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Great news.
However, I think we should probably focus on something else; we’re not going to
happen upon any food if we talk all day.”

I put a finger to my lips, indicating I’d
be quiet, and he stopped talking.

We sat.

Three hours later, I got up for another
restroom break and took a drink of water, then settled in again. Gideon didn’t
move.

Another three hours passed.

I sighed. “Look, I have completely used
up my energy for thinking about nothing, and now I can’t stop thinking about
stuff
. I think we need to call it a day
and have a conversation.” My stomach growled.

“Are you sure?” Gideon asked.

I twisted my face. “No. But I’m currently
on a particularly painful memory circuit of my mother’s smile.”

Gideon’s face fell a little at my words.
“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know. You’ve said
that before.”

“But you haven’t forgiven me.”

I looked away, unable to deny it.

He sighed. “How about a story?”

“Sure.”

“Once upon a time, there was an old man
with two sons. One day, after the three men had brought down a large buck
together, one son asked to have his portion of the buck. His father gave it to
him, and then the son went his way, leaving his brother to care for his aging
father. So, while the brother took care of the father night and day, feeding
him and protecting him, the first son went off on his own. He raped women. He
killed and stole from other travelers at his whim. He did what he wanted,
whenever he wanted, and had no one to hold him back.

“After several weeks alone, he couldn’t
find any food. He foraged, and he hunted, but there was nothing. Then, a large,
tall buck walked before him, looking him in the eye as he stood in his path.
The man raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

“His gun was out of bullets. The buck
watched him, then slowly walked off. The man was discouraged, and his stomach
further enunciated that discouragement. He remembered how easily he, his
brother, and his father, had together brought down the first buck. He wondered
if they were still in the same place he had left them; he decided to go and
see. If they were there, he would ask them to let him stay with them again –
they might help him get food, or at least give him more ammunition for his gun.
If they weren’t there, the man would have to simply hope for more fruitful
circumstances for himself.

“So he traveled back to where he had left
them. Not too far from there, he found his brother and father leaning over a
fresh kill; his mouth watered at the thought of how that meat would taste once it
was cooked.”

“Are you just trying to torture me?” I
demanded.

“Shh. I’m not done.”

“You’re a rotten storyteller.”

“You wanted me to distract you. Am I
doing my job?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Then let me continue.”

I sat back against my tree, silent.

“The man fell at his father’s feet,
begging to be taken in once more, and promising to care for his father for as
long as either of them might live.

“The father had missed his son so much,
and could see his son’s starving condition; he scooped the man up into a hug,
eager to welcome him home. The end.”

“Well, how did the brother feel about
that?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “I suppose
the brother would have felt resentful; his dad had just decided to give the
deserter a share of his meat.”

“Well, why didn’t you say that, then?”

“Because that’s not the point.”

“What
is
the point, then?”

“You know, Candace? I think you should
puzzle that out on your own. You can think about it while we quietly wait for
food to come our way. Wasn’t the point for me to give you something else to
think about?”

“But the story doesn’t make any sense – I
thought you said families were weaknesses. Aren’t you completely anti-family?”

“Because families don’t last in the world
we’re currently living in. In my story, a family is reunited.”

“But the father was weakened by his love
for his son.”

“That same father was also strengthened
by the loyalty of his other son. Together, the three of them had strength that
they couldn’t have alone.”

“So now you’re saying families are
strength?”

“Well, let’s just say you’ve allowed me
to view bonds with other humans in a new light.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You changed my view, Candace.”

“How?”

“You allowed me to see that families
aren’t just weakness; they can be strength, too.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, you and I - ”

“I’m not your family,” I told him firmly.

“I know. But we are two humans with bonds
to each other, however those bonds came about. I wouldn’t be alive right now if
you hadn’t been with me when I was attacked on the freeway. You’ve been helping
me and taking care of me ever since. Therefore, my interaction with you
strengthens me. Or, at least, it strengthens me now. Ultimately, it might be a
weakness if I become attached to you and you leave me, or are killed.”

“But it strengthens you until that
moment.”

“Yes. It certainly does.”

I rested my chin on my arms, thinking
about what he said. “
Are
you attached
to me?” I asked.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Yes.”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate. “Was that
the point of your story, then? That families aren’t only weakness, but also
strength?”

“No.”

“Then what were you trying to say?”

“How about you think about that, while we
sit here in silence.”

I rolled my eyes, grunting before doing
as he suggested.

A few more hours later, it began to grow
dark.

“I think our attempt at finding food
without moving has failed,” I murmured wryly.

“Well, I guess that’s that, then,” Gideon
replied, shrugging and pushing himself from a sitting position to a laying
position; it caused his legs to almost come in contact with mine.

“That’s it, then? We haven’t eaten all
day.”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t ever not
eaten for one day, Candace.”

“Well, no. But we didn’t try that hard.”

“That’s because today is my rest day, and
I’m not allowing you to leave my sight.”

“We’ve already established that. But I’m
hungry.”

“We’ll do some real hunting in the
morning. Go to sleep.” His eyes were already closed, I could tell.

I wasn’t particularly tired, since we
hadn’t done anything all day. In fact, I was restless, and was fighting the
urge to jump up and wander off while Gideon slept. I watched him sleep. He was
a silent sleeper, and watching him wasn’t entertaining at all – I’d learned
this weeks ago.

I pulled my bracelet out of my sleeve –
the only sleeve remaining after using the other as a bandage for Gideon – and
started fiddling with it, turning it around and around my wrist like I always
did when Gideon was asleep before me. It was the last possession my mother had
given me and, even though I had originally thought it a waste, it was now my
most poignant symbol of her.

A frog croaked.

Gideon’s story still sat in the back of
my head. I hadn’t thought about it the entirety of the elapsed time since he’d
told it, but whenever my thoughts became more intolerable, I pulled it out.

If love wasn’t weakness in the story,
what was it’s purpose? Love as motivation? It had obviously been the motivating
factor when the father had allowed the son to stay with them and share the
meat. The father loved the son so much that it hadn’t mattered what had passed
between them before; what mattered to him was that the son was back.

Love as motivation. Like the way love had
motivated my mother to trade prenatal vitamins for the bracelet I now touched.
Like the way love had motivated my mother and father to be a family together,
and then to keep me when I was born – whether or not they’d had the medication
necessary to stop the pregnancy altogether.

Like the way the loss of that love had
motivated me to follow Gideon, and kill him no matter how long it took.

And yet I could no longer accomplish that
goal. It just wasn’t in me. Did that mean the love for my parents had
diminished? Or that I just wasn’t strong enough?

Yes, I was weak. My emotions toward
Gideon were such a mixed bag at this point. I was so afraid of being alone that
I hadn’t been able to kill him at the carnival. I relied on him more and more
each day. And yet he had killed my
parents
.
That wasn’t forgivable, no matter how much I relied on him.

As Gideon had said, he and I might be
stronger together. But he was also my weakness – a constant reminder that I
couldn’t avenge my parents’ deaths.

~ * ~

“Are you awake?”

“Mmnn.” Someone was touching my wrist; I
could feel the silver of the bracelet moving against my skin. Then the bracelet
was still, the touch gone from my skin.

“You didn’t go to sleep right away, did
you?”

I still hadn’t opened my eyes. “No. I
know your body needed the rest to heal, but it was a little early for me. Why
are you up so soon?”

“My stomach woke me up.” I blinked my
eyes open, lifting my neck to catch sight of him sitting beside me. He looked
like he’d already cleaned up a little. “I stretched my leg out, and it’s
definitely improved since we stopped here.”

I laid my head back down. “Great. Why
were you looking at my bracelet?”

“Just curious. I’ve seen you playing with
it a lot when you can’t sleep.”

“Were you awake last night?”

“I might have been awake enough to
notice, but it isn’t the first time.”

I frowned. I thought it had been my
secret; I had been trying to keep it that way, at least.

“Anyway, I was thinking.” I heard a
zipper, and then the tinkling of an object. “Since you like that sort of thing,
you might want this.” He dangled something in front of my face and I squinted.
“It was my mother’s, but it’s useless to me. Very impractical.”