The old world comes a’knockin’ and the Priest learns something new.
The consensus in the group was, if it was possible, to get by Gardnerville without disturbing the natives. One of the cartwheels had started squeaking, the desert night carried the sound a lot farther than we liked. The grease on the engine of an abandoned car took care of that issue, and once the squeak was gone it got a lot quieter. It was quiet enough that we were able to hear the phlegmy coughs and wheezing from the group in town. The sound reminded us that a significant percentage of the remaining humans were still sick or dying from the pandemics they ignored before the collapse. The people left, when they gathered in groups, were like the leper colonies of the apocalypse.
This only made me a little sad. I felt kind of bad for them because I knew how fucking miserable it is to be really sick and now with no doctors or help of any sort available all they could do is suffer and then die painful and unpleasant deaths, but I was only a little sad. I felt the stance I took pre-collapse, reasonable precautions and generally avoiding humans had served me well. It wasn’t like they couldn’t have done it, they just chose not to and didn’t listen to the people who were warning about what was happening, and now they had to pay the price.
The mean part of me wished that all the loud mouth, deniers from before were suffering, but every time I wished that I felt guilty, part of being Catholic I guess.
We made it past Gardnerville in a few hours with no incidents, and the next big hurdle is going to be South Lake Tahoe.
I was feeling a lot stronger, almost recovered from the beating and I think, even though I didn’t want to think this way, that killing people somehow made you stronger.
It was a strange combo feeling, though. I felt stronger but also some sort of hollowness, like the strength had pushed something out and took its place, and the thing that was pushed out was a vital part of being who we used to think we were. It was like a car made entirely of tires, missing the pieces that had identified it as a car, maybe the more you killed, the less human you became and eventually everything that identified you as human was gone.
“Hey Dolly.” I called.
He slowed his pace and dropped back beside me. “Yeah.”
“I need to ask you about killing people and how it makes you feel.”
“Oh, Jesus. Por warned me that you might get all weird and introspective and want to talk about your feelings.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“There’s no way I can explain it to you if you have to ask.”
“Did killing a lot of people make you feel empty inside?”
“Okay, so I guess you’re going to talk about it, despite my obvious distaste for touchy, feely shit.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“Not even a little bit.”
“You seem to have a real hard time letting go of the moral codes that defined a world that no longer exists. Even when that world did exist, there were always people like me. We aren’t bad people, despite what you may have heard or thought, but we didn’t have the same wiring as you people. There were terms for it like sociopath or psychopath or deviants, we were just different. The extent to which that difference manifested itself in your world was largely dependent on where we ended up. There was a serial killer once that used to kidnap people, keep them around for a while and then chop them up and put them in the fridge. One of those people got away, and on the corner, down the street from the house where he was being kept, there was a car accident. An ambulance had pulled up, and police officers were taking statements, and a crowd of onlookers had gathered, the guy that escaped ran up to them pleading for help, the serial killer chased him down, put his arm around his shoulder, and looking apologetic and embarrassed, he told the police that this was his brother and he hadn’t taken his meds and he got kind of anxious and delusional when he missed his dose. Despite the guy pleading for help, the police just smiled and let the killer walk off with his victim. The killer was one of us. If you take that same person and put him in a war, he’s a hero. Regardless of the situation that we’re in, we don’t think about consequences, we just think about the job that needs to be done, and then we do it. We’re heroes or villains depending on what that job is, and we’re born this way, it’s not right or wrong, it just is. You were born the other way, the way most people are born, so you’ll never get used to killing, you’ll always feel bad about losing a part of yourself and there’s nothing I can say or do to help that. You’re not one of us, and you never will be. Por, on the other hand, is a card-carrying member of our little club. And I think the people who are following us are being led by someone who’s like me, and that scares me.”
You rock! 👍🖤