Rowan Steele - The Dying Light

The blood and brain and bone that marred that shape.

Cassandra couldn’t hold her reaction back. The vomit spilled from her mouth fast, the force almost overtaking her.

She didn’t try to fight it. She just let the heaves come and gave what little her mostly empty stomach had to offer.

Later—it could have been minutes, it could have been much longer—she thought the heaving had subsided enough that she could move.

She stood, her legs wobbly, but she recovered quickly.

She looked back at the younger man, and then, without looking at Jack, she walked toward the bikes.

“How far do you think it is?” Jack asked.

Cassandra looked at him, then looked toward the horizon where the sun was just beginning to reveal itself.

“I’m not completely sure, but I think eight miles, maybe ten,” she finally said.

She was somewhat ashamed that she couldn’t be more sure. This had been her idea, and they had gone through a lot to get here, but she didn’t know the way as well as should have.

She almost always traveled the interstate and barely had any memory of these back roads. She regretted not paying better attention, but there was no way to fix that now.

“These bikes are on their last legs,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Cassandra said, “we may as well walk. It will probably be harder to pedal anyway.”

There was no way she would risk taking the road, and she suspected Jack felt same. Which meant they’d have to traverse the back roads and paths. And though they were flat, or flatter than a lot of the surrounding area, they were covered with twigs and rocks, all manner of obstructions that could easily upend their balance. Who knew when they’d find get to town, or for that matter, what shape it would be in when they got there. It seemed foolish to risk injury on the bikes if they didn’t have to.

“Let’s ditch them deeper into the woods in case anyone happens to come by,” Jack said.

Cassandra nodded and then began walking. Jack followed behind her, adjusting some of the leaves and underbrush, she assumed to hide their tracks. When he stepped back, he looked at the spot and appeared to be satisfied.

If Cassandra hadn’t known they had been there, she wouldn’t have thought anything was out of place.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

Cassandra followed him quietly and discarded her bike in the woods.

Then, without word, they began to walk.

As she suspected, they kept off the road, and followed along the wooded path going west.

They walked for an hour, maybe two, in silence. Cassandra still wasn’t used to the disquieting feeling of not knowing precisely what time it was. She’d spent so much of her life watching the clock that doing it now was a reflex, a habit, one that she wasn’t happy to have to involuntarily break.

She knew it was stupid to focus on time when the world had fallen apart, when a person, or what used to be a person could be waiting around the corner ready to attack her. But the enormity of what was happening in the world was too much for her to contemplate.

They passed a pebble that lay atop the gravel path, and Cassandra kicked it, the explosion of frustration one she wasn’t sure the source of.

Or rather didn’t want to acknowledge the source of.

Instead she kicked the pebble down the road once, took a few steps to catch up with it, and kicked it again.

The urge to kick it yet another time, to cry, scream, came over her.

But she couldn’t give into them. What had happened was her fault; she wouldn’t compound the mistake by crying about it.

“You want to talk about it?”

She shifted her gaze over and looked at Jack who walked face forward, his profile showing no emotion.

She scoffed, a feeling of anger bubbling up inside of her, but she did her best to bite it back.

“He speaks,” she said sarcastically.

It wasn’t fair to direct this anger at Jack. He’d tried to warn her, and she hadn’t listened. The consequences of that were her fault and not his, but she couldn’t stop herself from being angry.

Though, she knew she was mostly angry at herself.

Still, it was easier to blame him, easier to hold onto the anger of him asking that question.

“Well…?” Jack said.

“Well what?” she responded tightly.

“You want to talk about it?”

“What the hell do you think?”

She knew she was being unfair, but she hated his question.

She hated everything.

Her feet hurt. She was filthy. And more than anything she wanted to get away from here. She kept hoping she would open her eyes in the morning and she’d realize that this was all some kind of twisted dream.

But that wouldn’t happen. She had to come to grips with fact, and talking to Jack, Jack, of all people, about her feelings was not going to help her do that.

“You don’t want to talk? Fine. Listen,” he said.

She looked over at him again, again feeling that anger surge.

“You did what you had to do. You’ll probably have to do it again. Don’t waste any more time thinking about it. The world as you knew it is gone. So kill or die. Those are your choices.”

He spoke so matter-of-factly that Cassandra found herself looking over at him again and then turning back to the road to maneuver her way around a branch that had pushed through the dirt.

“Is that your version of soothing away a murder?” she said.

“You know full well that wasn’t murder, Cassandra.”

In that moment, her anger had the corners of her vision starting to blur.

How dare he? How do he speak so calmly, try to tell her how to feel? Tell her what and was not murder. She had taken a man’s life. She had to deal with that.

“I think I should be the judge of that,” she said.

It was such a bland statement, so mild in comparison to what she was feeling. But it was the best she could muster. It was a surprise to her that she could muster anything at all.

“No, you shouldn’t,” he said.

She wanted to respond, wanted to yell, but she didn’t. Instead, she kept walking. She had employed the same tactic before, but then it had only been designed to leave space for Jack to speak.

And now…now she didn’t want Jack to speak. Didn’t want to think about this at all.

“Whatever you say, Jack,” she said.

“Are you trying to deflect?” he asked.

She obviously was, and he obviously had no intention to allow her to. So, as she looked at him, she came to a realization.

Jack wanted to know what she was thinking, so why not tell him? She was tempted to wonder what the worst was that could happen, given all that had happened already, but she wasn’t bold enough to tempt fate that way. In these few short days, she had already learned the error in saying that things could never get worse. They always could, and she wouldn’t do anything to make that happen any more quickly.

“I’m not deflecting. I just don’t want to discuss this.”

“I don’t want to either, but sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to. Sometimes, the world leaves us with no choice,” he said.

Cassandra understood clearly what he was saying without actually saying it, but that didn’t help her. And given how surly she was feeling, she had no desire to pretend she understood.

“Thanks for the wisdom, Jack. I will treasure your words forever.”

Cassandra kept her eyes on the gravelly dirt, partially to keep an eye out for obstructions and also partially because she couldn’t bring herself to look up.

But then she was looking directly at Jack.

She hadn’t even noticed that he had moved, and didn’t notice until she stopped, or rather was stopped by his hands on her forearm.