Prospero's Half-Life (12 page)

“
GO!” he screamed and sprinted across the street into the
parking lot waiting on the other side. He skidded to a halt on the
other side to make sure that Samantha was following, and when he
ascertained that she was he pushed forward and kept going. They ran
for the other side and halfway down the lot they saw another
alleyway leading off to the left and took it. They ran across the
street into another parking lot, this one paved with rough dirt and
featuring a couple of overturned, badly dented black vans. They
ducked behind one of these vans and put their backs to it. Neither
of them spoke; they were listening intently, trying to listen for
their pursuers over the rhythmic thudding of their own
hearts.

Richard saw
that a street lead out of the parking lot directly across from
them; from what he could see the street lead downward towards the
ravine that cut through this part of town. He put the gun on the
knee and tried to get his breathing under control. There was a
stitch growing slowly in his side.

“
We make for the ravine,” he panted and Samantha nodded, her
face a deep scowl. He looked at her, trying to gauge her, but she
refused to look at him. He shrugged internally; there was no time
to sort it out now. He pushed himself back to his feet and darted
forward, trying to make as much distance as he could out in the
open before anyone could catch their position. Samantha followed
behind him, glancing back the way they had come with nervous eyes.
They hit the slope downward and picked up speed; Richard stumbled
here and there as he tried to dodge around debris and felt himself
starting to get out of control. They passed by the burned-out
remains of a skate shop and the crack of a rifle shattered the air
behind them. Richard ducked instinctively as he continued running,
although he had no idea where the bullet may have gone. It hadn’t
hit either Samantha or himself, and beyond that he didn’t
care.

The street
they ran on ended in a T-junction. A narrow walking bridge led off
of the end, crossing over a wide stretch of highway and then
disappearing into a forested area on the other side. They took it
without thinking; Samantha merged in behind Richard and they ran
across the foot bridge single-file, their footsteps echoing
metallically in the still summer air. Halfway through Richard saw
the Brock Tower rising at the end of the valley, the only man-made
structure he could see over the trees. They plunged into the woods
on the other side and stopped to catch their breath.

Richard stared
wildly across the bridge they had just crossed, his newfound gun
pointed to cover the path. They crouched, panting and heaving, and
waited for the inevitable. It didn’t come. When five minutes had
passed and no one appeared to be following them, they got up and
made their way further into the mass of dense trees.

The going was
rough but Richard was thankful for it. As the trees closed in
behind his back he felt himself relaxing; it would be very hard for
their pursuers to fire into the woods with any accuracy, and if
they tried to follow them their passing through the bed of leaves
and dried twigs would alert them easily. He let the gun fall to his
side and made a mental note to keep an eye out for a holster, or
something he could jury-rig to keep it strapped at his side. It was
heavy, and he thought that having to carry it like this for an
extended period of time would be hellish.

Samantha
didn’t say anything as they were picking their way through the
woods, and she still avoided looking at him. Richard felt himself
beginning to get seriously annoyed by her behaviour; he was sore
all over, still covered in tiny fragments of broken glass, and
hadn’t he just rescued them from a deadly situation? He thought he
had; the last half-hour was coming up as a blur in his
recollection, but the fact that they had made it out seemed to
speak to something vaguely heroic that he had accomplished. He
grimaced at her. It wasn’t like he was asking her to fellate him
out of gratitude, or anything. Just a simple conversation would go
over just fine. There was nothing, though. She stared straight
ahead as they walked and refused to budge from her wall of
silence.

Eventually
they came out of the dense woods onto an official trail of some
kind. It lead away south, so they took it; or, rather, Richard took
it and Samantha followed him sullenly. The rush of the nearby river
began filling their ears and after another half-hour of walking
they began to see it rushing by to their right at a rapid pace.
They slowed down along the edge of the river and eventually stopped
next to a large rock that had been placed deliberately by the edge
of the trail. Richard stretched and took in the area. Besides the
rush of the river and the chirping of birds in the trees, they
seemed to be surrounded by silence.

“
Do you know where we are?” Richard asked. Samantha
shrugged.

“
I don’t know,” she muttered. “I might have an idea, but we’ll
have to keep going this way for a while before I can figure out if
I’m right”.

“
Well, as long as we’re away from those others”. He chuckled, a
little ruefully. “Maybe we should be avoiding other people, instead
of trying to find them”.

“
We should have tried to rescue the others,” she said, her
voice uneven. Richard rolled his eyes.

“
That would have been a train wreck,” he replied dismissively.
“By the time we herded everyone along we would have all been
shot”.

“
They’re human beings,” she spat, her fury peaking. Richard
took a step back.

“
I never said they weren’t,” he replied, mystified. She glared
at him, and Richard had to look away uncomfortably.

“
You don’t
herd
human beings,” she continued, her voice angry but no longer as
sharp. “Just like you shouldn’t leave human beings behind so they
can be repeatedly raped, and probably murdered
afterwards”.

Richard
clenched his jaw. “We couldn’t have saved them,” he replied, trying
like mad to keep his voice calm and even. “If we had tried, we
would have all ended up dead”.

“
We could have at least
tried
,” she said, contempt dripping
from her lips. There were tears beginning to form in her eyes, but
she blinked them away angrily. “We could have tried to get some of
them to come along, instead of just abandoning them. You probably
would have abandoned me, if I hadn’t come right when I
did”.

Richard didn’t
reply to this; it was a true enough statement, after all. He had
been prepared to leap down into the parking lot without her.

“
Samantha,” he began heavily, but she cut him off with a quick
shake of her head.

“
Fuck you,” she said, with heat. “We need to keep
moving”.

Richard wanted
to scream at her; he wanted to shout about how they were both alive
and it was thanks to him, she should be grateful that she was still
breathing and not being gang-raped above a former second-rate coke
bar. He would have done it, opened his mouth and crashed the
silence with pure human rage, but she walked away from him briskly
and he had to scramble to catch up.

They walked
along the river quickly. Samantha was keeping up a very wide stride
and Richard was expending a great deal of energy trying to keep up.
He wanted to shout at her about this, but his rage had withered
into a sullenness and he didn’t want to get into another blowout
argument about it. The trail eventually came out onto a street and
Samantha took that direction without waiting to see what Richard
was thinking. They emerged back out into a residential part of
town; old, expensive-looking houses loomed over them, the shadows
they were casting deepened by the now-setting sun. As it had been
for most of their journey through the city, there was no movement
besides their own.

They walked
south until the street they were on bridged over a railway line.
Samantha took her bearings and suggested shortly that they take the
rail line east for a while until she found a specific path; she
intimated that she knew the area well. Richard, not wanting to stir
up any further explosions, assented to letting her lead.

The railway cut through a wasteland of brush and unkempt
growth; nature formed a low wall on either side of the tracks and
Richard kept starting at movement within it, although it would
invariably be a squirrel or some other small animal. He was very
tense, he realized, and was grateful now for the weight of the gun
in his right hand. The idea of trying to find
more
people was starting to take on
dark, ludicrous undertones. Eventually Samantha found what she had
been looking for, a well-worn path that lead through the woods on
either side. She waved him on to the right and soon Richard was
distracted by their new direction.

The path led
through similar woods for only a short while and then they emerged
out into the back fields of a large high school. Richard
immediately increased his grip on his pistol, paranoid about who
might be holed up within such a large building. They skirted around
the east side of the school and found no one, however; the windows
were smashed but there were no corpses, for which Richard was
profoundly grateful. There was a parking lot on the eastern edge of
the school’s property and Richard followed Samantha as they crossed
it, curving inward so that they were eventually in front of the
school. The name of the institution had been forcefully torn down
from where it had stretched across the front; a scrawl of black
spraypaint reading “MANY THINGS HAVE FALLEN ONLY TO RISE HIGHER”
ran across the brick just under there. Richard did not have time to
wonder over this as Samantha was already crossing the street and
heading into another cozy residential section.

The houses
here were as silent as any other but they were all intact. There
were plywood boards nailed across the windows and doors of some of
them, but the exposed windows and doors were still whole. The
street curved around a few times and the sun disappeared behind the
peaks of the roofs beside them. The twilight hour had begun and
Richard wondered when Samantha was planning on stopping for rest,
food, and shelter.

He didn’t have
to wonder long; seemingly at random, Samantha picked a house and
headed up the empty driveway as though it had been her home for
years. Richard followed behind at a distance, somewhat
apprehensive. He couldn’t seem to shake the idea that this would be
breaking and entering, like robbing a tomb. He hoped fervently that
the lack of cars in the driveway meant that the owners had shown
the common decency to die somewhere else.

Samantha
approached the porch (fenced in with a checkered pattern that
reminded Richard for some reason of a Japanese shogun’s residence),
climbed the wooden steps and tried the front door. It was locked,
but Samantha seemed unperturbed.

“
You could shoot the lock,” she suggested, and rolled her eyes
when she saw his hesitation.

“
Fine, then,” she continued sardonically, “I’ll go see if there
are any other entrances that are unlocked”. She didn’t wait around
for him to reply and Richard found himself alone on a strange
porch, in a strange neighbourhood. He looked around, his gaze
nervous and jumpy. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything;
he wasn’t sure if that was a reassurance or not. Suddenly there was
a dragging sound from within the house and he
did
jump, two feet in the air. He
very nearly put the force of his finger down on the trigger of the
gun when he landed but managed to keep it stiff with a great deal
of effort.

A moment later
Samantha’s face appeared on the other side of the front door. She
quickly unlocked it and flung it open. She leaned against the
doorframe and looked at him, her expression and body language a
gigantic challenge.

“
I guess someone left something unlocked after all,” she
drawled. “Are you coming in or are you just going to sleep out on
this porch all night?” Richard glared at her and wanted to spit out
a witty response, but none were coming to him. He pushed his way
inside and tried to ignore Samantha’s derisive little chuckle as he
did so.

ELEVEN

The interior
of the house was nice, Richard decided; that was the sort of
adjective you used to describe the sort of décor one found in the
depths of well-appointed neighbourhoods. There were fairly
opulent-looking mirrors hung on the wall, art hanging in the right
places, and a clean, open sense to the foyer that was helped by the
rough-edged tiles that formed the floor. He looked around at the
rooms he could see from the foyer – the living room and the kitchen
– with real appreciation.

“
This place is pretty nice,” he said aloud, because he felt
that he needed to say something. “Nice” was the only word that was
coming to mind; there was an overall blandness of effect that could
only be described as such. Samantha shrugged, and walked into the
kitchen. Richard followed her, hoping that they would discover some
food in the cupboards that would add some diversity to their
supplies.

The kitchen was small but it looked well-used. Samantha looked
through the cupboards and began pulling out various canned goods;
there seemed to be a preponderance of tomato-based spaghetti cans,
which Richard wasn’t wild about but could live with. He contented
himself with looking idly through some of the drawers and other
cupboards while she looked through the leftover foodstuffs. He
discovered that this particular kitchen was stuffed with kitchen
implements, many of which he could not have named a purpose to even
to save his own life. He marvelled over them for a moment before
becoming completely bored with them. In one of the other cupboards
he discovered a rather dense stock of liquor. He thought about
making a drink and that brought his mind back to the situation they
had found themselves in earlier. He thought of Mark’s eyes boring
into him as he mixed a rye and cola and shuddered.
Maybe later
he told
himself, and shut the cupboard firmly.