Ryan Westfield - Defending Camp

More creaking. More footsteps.

“Going nuts. Going nuts. Going nuts.”

To distract himself from the hallucinations, Art started humming. Not even a tune. Just a flat nothing of a melody, devoid of anything resembling musical notes.

“Shut the hell up, you moron,” said someone.

Art didn’t recognize the voice. It sounded like it was coming from mere feet away from himself. He saw nothing in the darkness.

He closed his eyes to distract himself from trying to look. He couldn’t tell the difference whether they were open or closed.

“Now the voices are coming,” said Art.

He started humming again.

“Can’t get me. Can’t get me,” said Art, punctuating his insane humming with more words. Just for something to say. Just because.

“Get off that damn humming,” said the voice, its tone harsh and frantic.

The voice was starting to sound real. Very real.

“Are you real?”

“Of course I’m real. Just shut up and listen to me. I don’t have much time.”

“Who are you?” said Art. He was beginning to entertain the possibility that there was a real person in the room speaking to him.

“It’s Janet, idiot. Remember me? I’m in your regiment.”

“Janet… Janet… Don’t know,” said Art.

“I gave you a candy bar once when you were about to pass out from hunger. Remember the raid on that gas station? And you saved my ass by shooting some son of a bitch who’d pulled a knife on me.”

“Oh…” said Art. “Yeah, I know a Janet. Still don’t know if you’re real, though.”

“Knock it off, Art. We’re all going to die. There’s no need to make such a fuss about it just because it’s your time.”

Art hadn’t even been aware that the voice was female. Now he heard it. It was softer, higher-pitched than Sarge’s voice, the last voice he’d been heard before being trapped in this room with a corpse.

“Damn, it smells horrible in here.”

Art mumbled something unintelligible.

Art felt Janet’s hands on him. They were rough, rather than soft. Moisturizers were a thing of the past. Office work, without getting your hands dirty, was also a thing of the past. Janet had been out there with Art and the rest of them, doing whatever Sarge told them to do. They hadn’t had a choice.

“So you’re really real?” said Art. “Unless I’m hallucinating feelings now. Physical feelings, I mean.”

“Of course I’m real, idiot.”

Art heard a knife flicking out and locking into place.

“You’re going to slit my throat or something?”

He said it with the mildest of interest. It didn’t matter much to him.

“Just shut up and let me cut these…”

Art felt the tension as the bindings dug into his wrists. Then the pressure released and suddenly his hands were free. But his arms hung limply at his sides.

He felt like he was Sisyphus, forced to do the same pointless thing over and over again. Only he had it worse than Sisyphus.

When all of Art’s bindings had been cut, he slumped forward onto the floor. Just like before.

Something hard was being pressed against his lips. Then the water started flowing. Janet was holding a bottle of water to his lips as he lay face-up on the floor, trying to get his body to work.

“You’re in rough shape, and it’s not going to get any easier.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to kill Sarge.”

“So go do it. What do you need me for?”

“I need your help.”

“Get someone else. I’m not exactly the most physically fit right now.”

“You’re the only one desperate enough to help me.”

“Seems like everyone’s always trying to get me to kill someone. When do I get to decide anything for myself?”

“When this hellish existence is over. And we both know that’s not going to happen. Your life hasn’t been yours since the EMP. And neither has mine.”

“Why do you want to kill Sarge so much?”

“He killed my brother. And my father… and my husband.”

“The whole family, eh?” Art was too far past the point of normal experiences to feel any sympathy for her words. To him, they were just that, just words.

Janet gave him a vicious slap across the face. It stung terribly.

“You going to help me or not? Because I don’t have any problem ending you right here.”

“Whatever,” muttered Art. “I’ll help you. The other guys wanted me to kill Kor or something insane. I guess I’ll settle for Sarge. They’d be happy about that, I guess. Maybe not as happy if…”

“What in the world are you talking about?” snapped Janet. “Now we don’t have much time. We’ve got to sneak you out of here before morning before they come for you.”

“Why are they coming for me?”

“It doesn’t matter. Forget about that. Because I’m getting you out of here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere where you can get your strength back.”

“Just tell me the plan,” said Art. “I can’t handle all this. Give it to me straight. If you want to kill Sarge, why not just wait for him here with me? I’ll be the bait. Whatever, I don’t care. You do your thing and I do mine. If I get shot, whatever…”

“Sarge is never coming back here, you moron,” said Janet. “This whole place is going under. It’s on suicide mission status.”

“I’m not even going to ask what that is.”

“The point is, Sarge has moved on.”

“Why don’t you just go do this thing yourself? Go shoot Sarge in the head. Shouldn’t be hard.”

“He’s got bodyguards. I need you to take them out.”

“Whatever,” muttered Art.

But he was getting more enthused by the minute. It wasn’t that he liked the plan. He could have cared less about the actual goal or outcome.

But it felt good to have someone telling him what to do again.

He’d been broken of his own will.

And Sarge had been too vague with what he’d wanted. And the rebels had been too unrealistic.

But this plan, it sounded plausible, with clear cut things for Art to do, things for him to accomplish.

“That’s the point of life, I suppose,” muttered Art. “You just need something to do with your time.”

“What are you talking about, you imbecile?”

“Quite the vocabulary, you’ve got.”

“That’s it. We’re getting out of here. Now we’re going to have to be quiet.”

Art felt Janet’s rough hands grabbing him. She pulled him up to the standing position, grunting with exertion.

Art stood there for a moment. His limbs felt like jelly.

He collapsed, falling into a heap on the floor. His head knocked against the floor. Hard.

“Idiot,” muttered Janet. “You’d better hope they didn’t hear that.”

They waited another ten minutes. At that point, Art was getting some feeling back into the parts of him that had gone numb.

“You can stand on your own now?”

“Yeah,” muttered Art.

Janet led him by the hand to the door. She opened it, and light flooded in.

Art’s eyes were overwhelmed. But it was only really the light of a couple candles flickering in what was otherwise nothing but darkness.

They were in the same house Art had been staying all along. He must have never been inside the room he’d been held prisoner before, since he hadn’t recognize it.

It was night. That meant everyone in his regiment would be sleeping.

They were supposed to keep a guard. Sarge’s orders and all. But everyone was so beaten, battered down, and always exhausted, that the whole guard thing had been dispensed with fairly early on in the formation of the unit. Before Sarge would get there in the morning, someone would scramble up and pretend to have been on watch all night, at the ready for anything that might have happened.