Weavers Book I: The Cutters

Tip #16: Don't Get Cocky

"You know," Ryan says, staring at the carnage and then continuing down the street as if nothing happened. "The streets aren't safe. Every time we're on them, it's an open invitation for danger."
"What're you saying?" I ask, dragging my hand through my hair in a pitiful attempt to clear it out of my eyes.
"We should get to the hunting store, and stay there. I know the place. If it's not cleared out already, there should be food, weapons, shelter. Everything we need."
"Emphasis on 'if'," I say, rocking back and forth on my feet. The adrenaline of battle hasn't fully left my system, and I feel like my very bones are vibrating. "I mean, how do we know there's still anything there?"
"We're heading there anyway," Ryan says. "I say if it's available, we should stay. If and only if."
"Fine," I say, seeing the look in his eyes. There's no reasoning with him. He's made up his mind. I'm lucky I got him to compromise. He's done. We're all done. Done running, done fighting, done scrambling to survive.
But I'm not holding out any hopes. I make a bet (with myself, of course— I don't want to crush Ryan's hopes) that John and Harry's halieutics shop is already shelled. We're months into the apocalypse. It's a miracle that we find anything that hasn't been looted.
Months into the apocalypse. Wow. Sometimes it feels like it's only been hours, other days, a million years. Was it yesterday that I was screaming at Daniel Cliffstaff to fuck off, because he's a useless dick that doesn't mean anything, or was it in 2000 B.C.?
Yes, that's my last memory before shit broke loose. Of going off on Danny because he called me a bitch. I remember trudging home, dejected because I had to tell my parents that I got a suspension— again. But I got home and my mom was packing her bags. She said Daddy had an accident in the lab, and she was going to pick him up.
She picked him up, alright, and made it all the way home before Dad went flip. He beat her to death in her car, in the driveway, while I watched.
He starved to death. He couldn't for the life of him figure out how to get out of the car. What would I have done, anyway? Killed him. A joke. I'd be dead. It was luck that he got stuck. It was luck my mom didn't take me with her to go to the lab.
Those of us who survive the apocalypse aren't skilled, or special, or chosen by God.
We're just lucky. And luck is no reason to be cocky.
Trashy looks at me. Ryan is a block ahead.
"Shake out of it, Mr. Tiddles. We gotta get gone."
"Yeah," I say, shaking out of my trance and following him. No time for daydreams. No time for flashbacks. We've got things to do, people to (not) see, and zombies to kill.
This is the apocalypse, people. We've gotta get it done.
****
I lost my mental bet. John and Harry's quaint little hunting store really is stocked. I guess it's too obscure. Just another little shop on a little street in a big city. I guess some people walked past it, brushing it off because they thought it was another useless store.
Their loss. It has everything you'd need. Guns, clothes, backpacks, tents. It feels like all of my bad luck has conspired to give me a taste of good luck.
I don't like it. I don't like it when things are easy. It's the calm before a storm, and in the apocalypse? Everything is a storm. Any stroke of good luck will soon turn into a massive surge of deadly bullshit.
But at least Ryan is happy. He's running around like a kid in a candy store, showing us around and pointing to all the things that he remembers from before. Trashy follows relatively sullenly. He makes the occasional useless comment, but he's drained. The whole situation with his father really fucked him up.
I think of him beating the grandpa Weeve up like that. Was it adrenaline? Or was he really losing it for a second?
Was he losing it, or is he already long gone?
I hate Dr. Weinstein for making me wonder. Trashy is a good kid, a good person. He's certainly better than me. He's batshit nuts, but he's amazing in his own ways. He's my brother.
I'll stick with him. Even if he is a Weaver. We'll go crazy together. I'll protect him.
Even if it kills us both.
So far, most of the Weeves we've seen have been easy. It's been easy. You might be wondering, how can I say that this is easy? We're in the damned apocalypse, for fucks sake. Nothing is easy.
But that's the best word. It's been easy. Too easy.
Does that mean it never gets harder? Does it mean that we've already mastered this video game? So far the only real speed bump we've hit is Ollie and his crew. Are the real Weeves just as useless as the ones we've seen? Are we to the max level?
Can we fix this broken world? Or is it stuck like this?
Is it even possible to find a cure? Everyone who could do anything is gone. Blown away. Blown away by the disease, blown away like Eiden's guts by the RPG...
Ryan's leg is almost completely healed. I can tell. His pants are rolled up, exposing the scar in his leg. I remember pulling the bullet out. His jacket got soaked with blood, but he refused to take it off. It's his security blanket. Him and Trashy are asleep, crashed across two "outdoor mattresses," as if there is such a thing. Outdoor mattress. I call bullshit. Mattresses are a human creation. There's nothing "outdoor" about them.
Humans are pathetic. Thinking they can go brave the outdoors. Thinking they can survive in the wild. And then bringing a king sized bed with them.
So much for surviving alone.
It's like us now. We're living off of human scraps. If it came to hunting for our food with sharpened sticks and fur clothes, we'd be useless.
Humans are useless. We go to school, we get taught 9+10, we learn how to read and write, we learn how to be civilized. Well, look at where civility has gotten us. Living on outdoor mattresses. Eating stale beef jerky (before today, I didn't even know jerky could be stale) and drinking pond water. Civility did jack shit for us. School might as well have been teaching kids with cancer how to braid their hair.
Humans always try to put themselves on top. But we'll always be second place. Second place to disease, to death, to dreams. Second to everything that matters. I guess that means we never mattered. The earth was here before us, and from the looks of it, it'll be here after us, too.
All we can do is try, but really, we live to die. We live to shit in the dirt and then rot in that dirt.
And here we are. Dying. Dying in dirt. Dirt infested with worms. The worms that would usually eat your corpse got impatient, and now they're eating you alive.
What a waste.
My eyes close and I slip into uneasy rest.
****
I hear the voices before I'm fully awake.
"They're asleep," I hear someone— Ryan?— say.
"Nice," I hear another familiar voice say. I must be dreaming. It sounds like Ollie. I hear the sound of a high-five. "No unease? They don't suspect?"
"No," says Maybe-Ryan. "Now hurry. They sleep light."
I must be dreaming. Ollie's not here. Ryan isn't friends with him. But I sit up.
This dream is too vivid. I want to wake up. But even as I pinch my arm and feel the pain, the sound of voices doesn't fade. Now I hear footsteps, coming closer. And then a loud thud.
"Hey! What the flapjacks with corn syrup?" I hear Trashy yell. "Hey! It's the freak child! Ryan! Get away from him!"
"Knock him out," Ollie says dismissively. He's not important. But he's good for leverage."
I hear a long silence and then a piercing wail. Then more long silence.
"She's in there," Ryan says.
Wake up, damnit. Wake up, Moura. It's just a dream. Just a dream?" I curl up into the fetal position, but not before grabbing my machete and hiding it close to my shirt.
They might catch me, but they won't catch me by surprise.