The After/Life (The After/Life Odyssey) (9 page)

Chapter I

As I made my way to the car, I still wasn’t sure if I had hit it. Two months of life in the outside world made me a real sharpshooter. Most of my exploits were limited to hunting mutated rodents for survival and fighting off an occasional gang of strange creatures who were humans… once. Not any more though…

My shadow crept long before me. The bright desert sun reflected from the slender body of the car. I couldn’t see inside. I could, however, see the crack in the windshield. So I did not miss after all… Still, to be on the safe side, I pulled out my gun and took it off safety. The other gun was hanging from a holster on my hip. There was silence but my time outside taught me to hear through it - the sound of sand cracking under my boots, my slow, controlled breathing and something else (was it music?) coming from inside the car. I had the urge to move faster but restrained and kept the same measured pace. As I came closer, there was no mistaking the sound I could hear. It was indeed music, an old blues record. A wave of memories from before… I had to stop to regain the sense of time and place. A second later I moved on…was very close now. In spite of the blinding sun, I was starting to make out the shape of the driver sitting motionless behind the wheel. He seemed dead alright… Just three more meters to go… Suddenly, the door sprung open and a creature jumped out. I was about to pull the trigger when I saw that it was a dog. It took two steps towards me, then sat down and started to make quiet growling sounds. As I took another step forward, the growling became louder and the dog bared its long sharp teeth. I brought up the gun and aimed. Just another offspring of the dead world, just another beast that needs to be put down…except it wasn’t… The dog looked quite normal, if anything at all could look normal out here. And so there I was, standing in the scorching heat of the sun, the dog lying next to the car with the sounds of music providing the surrealistic soundtrack to our strange standoff. Several times I aimed my gun…still couldn’t make myself pull the trigger - a surprising development, considering… Then, I started to talk. The sound of my own voice startled me as I realized how long it had been since I last spoke.

“OK, dog, what we have here is a situation.”

The dog looked up intently, as if surprised to hear a human voice.

“Yes, buddy, I am talking to you. What we have here is a situation where you are standing, well lying, in the way of something that I need. You see, dog, I have been roaming these wastelands for, let me count, seventy one days now and I came to a conclusion… Are you still listening?”

The growling had somehow subsided and I took a slight step forward, holding my eyes locked on the dog.

“So, yes, I can see that you are listening. As I said, during these very long and challenging two months I learned one simple truth - that simple truth is that you cannot get anywhere on foot. Not that I know if there is anywhere left to get to in this fucked up world of ours. But I don’t have much choice, do I? After all, a whole lot of people had to die for me to be here today and I just can’t turn around and go back, can I?”

The dog seemed to be listening, its eyes studying me quizzically. I took another step forward.

“So, all I can do now is move on. This isn’t much like the odyssey I first set out on - after all, this is the real fucking life. And life, as you found out today, and, perhaps, as you knew even before meeting me is a cruel bitch… no offence to your mother.”

Another step forward and I was standing next to the car. The dog was looking at me, ears sharpened, still growling quietly. I holstered my gun and sat down cross legged. The dog barked once and was quiet again.

“Now, my thank-god-you’re-not-a-mutant four legged friend, in a situation where you cannot get anywhere on foot and no means of public transportation are working, you need to look for an alternative. The car you are sitting next to is that alternative. And I need it. In fact, I need it so much that I had to kill your previous owner to get it. I am not very proud of what I did but something tells me that he wouldn’t just give it to me and I couldn’t hitchhike either because I believe it is, sadly, an extinct tradition now.”

I reached out for my pack - the dog tensed noticeably. My movements were slow so as not to waste the results of my diplomatic effort. A quick shuffle through my few belongings revealed what I was looking for. I took out a black plastic bag and extracted a small piece of dried meat. The dog stood up when it saw the food.

“OK, dog, I don’t know what abomination this meat came from but it’s definitely edible. After all, I’ve been eating this for some time now and, well, I still don’t have a sixth toe growing on my foot. So fetch.”

I threw the meat to the dog. It caught it in the air and gobbled it. Another piece followed. Five minutes later, the dog was chewing happily. It had successfully devoured about half of my supplies. I slowly got up, took a step forward and reached out to pat the dog. There was some growling but the dog was obviously too busy eating and I was able to pat its rugged head.

“There you go. Good boy. So we are friends now.”

The dog swallowed the last piece of meat and licked my hand. I smiled. For a second, I was taken back to my first day in the School and Mr. Z, the school cat - my companion on my first tour of a place that would become my home for too long…

The door of the car was open - I looked in and met the unseeing stare of the dead driver. The bullet had hit him squarely in the chest. The man showed no traces of mutation, the first human that looked normal in this god annihilated land (and I killed him). I quickly searched him and found a whole arsenal of weapons and ammunition – the man was definitely not a pacifist. The music kept streaming from a strange device planted next to the car panel. I switched it off. I looked at the driver’s face - tanned and covered with thick stubble, he looked like an outlaw from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. His unseeing eyes were looking up into the sky he could no longer see – an expression of melancholy forever imprinted on the death mask.
  I shivered. Forcing myself to calm down, I reached for the driver’s door, opened it and pushed the corpse out. It rolled down a small sand dune and came to rest at the bottom - unseeing eyes fixed on the sky – looking for a meaning or a rain cloud, perhaps (neither is there to find, old buddy). I got behind the wheel and almost cried out – it was my reflection in the mirror…for a second I thought it was him – the dead guy, back for a last round of applause… Looking closer, I started to recognize myself – Nad Raven under the layers of stubble and tan. It was me – then again, it was not. There was significantly more white in my hair and a long horizontal scar crossed my right cheek – a souvenir from a particularly nasty encounter I had during one of the first days outside. The changes didn’t stop there - there was something in the eyes – something predatory…

“Hey, boy, jump in. It’s about fucking time we hit the road before I go crazy studying myself.”

The dog obeyed – a second later it was sitting on the back seat, its tongue out, eyes flashing merrily. It was ready to go... So was I...

To be continued...

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Also by Vardan Partamyan:

I
, the Provocateur

http://www.amazon.com/I-the-Provocateur-ebook/dp/B00D8K7SOU