The Half Blind Raven and the Last Winter Wolf

  Chapter 2: Strangers Brought in from the Cold

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  Kenny Brown

  I didn’t deserve it. I knew I didn’t. After all the time I’d spend killing, and cutting up bodies, what mercy did I deserve? I kept telling myself I could make something of myself, and that I could make up for it, but I didn’t really believe that entirely. I was having a moment where I truly didn’t believe it when they called my name.

  “Kenny Brown, it’s your turn. Please stand up and come with me.” a man said. He moved out of the doorway and a woman walked out through the space left. She looked as if she had been crying. The other one that had come before her had looked the same.

  Whoever the stranger was, he must have been doing something. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was branding them or something. Maybe the city was more like a cult. The man himself looked like a cop, only dressed in army green instead of navy blue. I’d seen a few people dressed like him. They always carried assault rifles, hatchets, and pistols. I had to assume they were the police force of the small city I was trying to join. I got up and went to follow the cop as he walked through a reinforced door to the interview and interrogation room.

  “So what did you do to her?” I asked.

  “Nothing. She just talked with BB. Sometimes it gets emotional when people talk with him.“

  “So that’s all this is? It’s a talk?”

  “That’s part of the processing procedures. We need to know who you are before we give you citizenship here.”

  I felt sick to my stomach, knowing exactly who I was. I didn’t want them to know. If they did, I’d be as good as dead. I knew it.

  “What if I’m no one good?”

  “Are any of us?” the guard said with complete seriousness.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Talk to Byron, and you’ll understand. He’ll be in in a few. Take a seat, pour yourself some tea, and settle in.” the guard said before opening a door for me. My legs carried me in and I found myself in what looked like an office.

  “Wait, what if…” I tried to ask, but the guard had closed the door and stopped listening.

  Quietly, I pulled out a chair. The wheels ran smoothly over the flat, mostly even carpeting. The room was quite comfortable for an office. Whoever had built it had done their best to make it not seem like an interrogation room.

  My hand trembled as I picked up the coffee pot filled with tea. All the coffee in the city had been used up long before, so tea was what we all were left with. What I wouldn’t give for a cup of the stuff to quell my nerves. Something to make the guilt go away. God, I still remembered them all and all of their faces. I prayed that I wouldn’t see them if I survived what I was about to go through.

  The tea poured into my mouth as the cup tilted against my lips. Its taste was pleasantly bitter. It was some sort of herbal concoction.

  As I was drinking it, the door on the other side of the room opened. A man walked in with a file and a briefcase. He wore thin glasses and a faded brown suit that looked like it belonged in the seventies. He himself was a man somewhere in the range of his thirties. Not much older than me. He could have been my brother.

  “I’m sorry for the delay. I had to use the restroom. How are you doing today?”

  “I’m alright.”

  “That’s good. Are you feeling comfortable?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Good. Are you okay with me asking a few more questions?”

  “That’s fine.” I said with a sigh.

  “Alright then. What is your full name, including your middle name?”

  “Kenneth Carson Brown.”

  “Can I call you Kenny? You’re listed as being a Kenny in the files.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you. When were you born, Kenny?”

  “May 25th, 2011.”

  “Happy birthday. Where were you born?”

  “Lakeside Medical Center in Norton, Wisconsin.”

  “Mother and father?”

  “Both dead.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Mary and Douglas Brown. Do you want my mom’s maiden name? I don’t remember it, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s fine. What did you do for employment before all of this?”

  “I worked as a mechanic at my uncle’s shop in town.”

  “No college?”

  “No. It wasn’t for me.”

  “Would you consider yourself proficient as a mechanic?”

  “No, not really. I was just barely getting the hang of it when everything happened.”

  “I see. Do you have any illnesses or allergies that the town should be aware of?”

  “That’s an odd question. I don’t think I’d be here if I did.”

  “You’d be surprised. Not everyone in this town survived purely off of their own skill. Some people survived because of luck and others because of family.”

  “Having family is having luck.”

  “Perhaps. Well, that’s all done. Now it’s time for the difficult part of this process. I’ll just come out and ask. What have you done in order to survive?”

  “What do you mean?” I questioned, but I knew what he meant. I just didn’t want to answer.

  “How did you get here today? What have you done in order to keep breathing?”

  Breaths came in and out strained and slow. He needed an answer, but I didn’t want to give one. BB nodded his head.

  “What’s your actual name?”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Byron, Byron Bryant.”

  “Do I need to tell you what I’ve done? Is there any way around it?”

  “No. It’s a requirement so that we know who we’re dealing with. I’m afraid you must answer the question.”

  “I can’t. I know what you’ll do if I do answer you.”

  “Do you think we’re unforgiving?”

  “You’re civilized people.”

  “We are here, but all of us came from outside these walls. We’ve all sinned. There’s not an innocent soul among this populace.”

  “What do you want me to say then?”

  “I want the truth.”

  “Then tell me what you’ve done. I want your truth!” I yelled.

  Byron held up his hand. I looked back to see the guard staring at us both. He was telling him to stand down.

  “You want to know what I’ve done?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I said, trying to avoid my fate.

  Byron took off his glasses slowly and placed them on the table. He looked at me with crisp green eyes, though I wondered if he could see me clearly.

  “I once had three children and a wife. In the beginning, we hid in the subway tunnels to escape the fallout. The only problem was that those tunnels were not watertight. We were flooded out within days. Forced into the fallout before it had faded. Do you know what radiation sickness looks like in a three year old girl? Do you know what it's like to watch your youngest die, well you, the provider, can do nothing? That’s not the worst of it either. That’s not my sin. My sin was that I left my son behind. When my youngest died, it might as well have killed him. He was the middle child, and she was his best friend.” Byron said before taking a breath. After a few seconds, he went on again.

  “With her gone, he gave up. He stopped doing anything. One day, when we were trying to get away from scavengers, I dropped him. The stress was too much, and I didn’t even try to pick him back up. I kept my last daughter and my wife running while he laid there on the ground. The scavengers didn’t even stop for him. They trampled him down and kept on after us. My last sight of my son was watching his head break under a boot.

  He said as he sighed and gulped down a swallow of tea.

  “From then on, I did whatever I needed to do to protect what I had left. I killed innocents and killers alike. Anyone who came upon us. I did that for months. There were at least a dozen people. Men, women, even a teenager once. Not an old one either. She was barely older than being a kid. You want to know why I stopped?”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “A scout from here shot me in the hand before I could shoot her.” Byron said, holding out his hand for me to see. Two of his fingers were missing.

  “I thought they were going to kill me then, but they didn’t. They didn’t kill any of us. They offered us a chance for forgiveness. We were invited to join this place, just as you’re being invited now. I told them my story then, and they still let me and my family in. Just as I told my story, you must also tell yours. I promise, we will forgive you.”

  My eyes focused on his green irises and I breathed in and out violently. I gulped down spit and cowardice. It was quite a while before I spoke again.

  “My uncle, two of his employees, and I were in a group together. We didn’t have much in the way of food, so we went to robbing people.”

  “At first we got plenty of food, but eventually everyone started to run dry. We kept catching couples or singles with nothing. We’d bag their heads and let them go. That was at first at least. Once the hunger started to sink in and we started to feel weak, my uncle made a decision for the rest of us. The next person would be the meal if they didn’t have the meal.”

  Byron nodded as if to say to keep going.

  “Eventually we did come upon another person. They had no food, but they weren’t starving. They still had plenty of meat on their bones. I distracted him while my uncle pushed him to the ground and smashed his skull in. He was dead in an instant, but it wasn’t over then. One of my uncle's employees was a hunter. He knew how to gut deer, so taught us how to gut people based on the same knowledge. We ate the meat, cooked it inside a burger place, and left whatever we couldn’t eat for the birds. None of us spoke of it. We were full, and didn’t feel weak anymore.”

  “At first we thought it was going to be the only time, but it wasn’t. It took weeks for us to reach the point where we needed to do it again, but we did reach that point eventually. We killed a couple. Two queers. The first one was quick, but the second put up a fight. I still have a scar on my arm from him. We ate them too, and at that point we decided we wouldn’t stop until we found something else. We were already damned anyway.”

  There were tears falling down my face at that point, and sweat running down my head. I kept looking at Byron’s eyes and then away, trying to see any emotion in them. There was none. He was listening without judging, but he wasn’t forgiving me either.

  “How many in total?”

  “What?”

  “How many did you kill?”

  “I… I think twenty. It only ended when my uncle died. We were ambushed and I was the only survivor. I ran, and eventually I guess I got lucky. I found a cache of food in a basement and I stayed there for a while. Years, I think. It was filled to the brim, and I only left about a month ago, after the food ran out. I haven’t eaten in awhile. To be honest, I don’t think I want to anymore. I don’t deserve to. I shouldn’t even be here. You should order that guard to kill me. I deserve to die.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not the first people eater to find their way here. You’re nowhere near the first murderer. Almost all of us here are killers. We acknowledge that, and we try to do better. That’s all we can do. We can’t all kill ourselves. If we did, then what would be left but bones and a barren world?”

  I looked at him with teary eyes. I couldn’t say that humanity deserved to die, but I still believed that I did deserve to.

  “What will you do then?”

  “I’ll offer you a brother’s hug and welcome you to Fort Resilience.”

  “I shouldn’t…”

  “None of us should, but we must go on. Death is the coward’s way out, so let’s be courageous and face our demons together.”

  Byron offered me his arm as he leaned over the table. I leaned into him and cried into his shoulder as he patted my back with a three fingered hand.

  “It’s going to be alright, Kenny. You’ve got a place here.”

  I couldn’t help but keep crying. I couldn’t think. I could only weep. That was all there was left for me to do.

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  A few days passed before they finally ushered us through the gates. It was the three of us together, Beauford, Emma, and myself. We looked to see a crowd gathered before us. Fine people, well groomed and well fed. People who had rebuilt themselves from the ashes of the old world and the death of the new one.

  The mayor of the town gave a speech and called on the crowd to quiet down. He called himself the steward though. The crowd listened to him and calmed itself down. We walked in front of them and towards a podium. We were on display as new citizens for all of the older people who’d been there for a while. It was like a ceremony where we were due to receive trophies for achievements of some grandiose scale. I thought it was all going to go well, but then I heard a scream and watched as a girl ran through the crowd. She swung a knife towards me and I fell backwards, barely avoiding it.

  “BASTARD! I’LL KILL YOU!!” she screamed.

  It wasn’t very long before she was tackled by the guards. Her head hit the ground and she was lights out for a moment. The guards picked her up and held her back, but as soon as she came to she was pushing against them and trying to get back to me.

  “GET RID OF HIM! HE’S A KILLER!” she yelled in addition.

  I started to feel a sense of recognition, and I knew in seconds who it was that I was looking at. I felt the flashes of memory coming to me. I remembered seeing my uncle die, and I remembered seeing him bash her head with a pipe wrench before he did.

  Bile and acid came up from my near empty stomach as I collapsed to the ground again. No one seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t care. They were all focused on the girl, and talking amongst each other. At first I couldn’t hear them, but as my focus came back I started to make out the words.

  “What punishment is she facing?” A red haired woman asked.

  The mayor replied. “That all depends on what the truth ends up being. I can’t say for sure what we will do if she tried to attack someone for no reason.”

  “She didn’t.” I said in interruption as I wiped the puke from my chin.

  The crowd from before all focused on me, as did the guards, the woman, the girl, and the mayor. All eyes were on me, and I could feel the anger building up. Maybe I would die after all.

  “What was that?” the mayor asked.

  I replied. “Everything she said, it’s all true.”

  The mayor looked at me and then back at the woman. She herself was looking at me with the rage of a kicked pitbull.

  The woman screamed. “Get him to the cells and away from my daughter! RIGHT NOW!!”

  And so the guards did as she commanded. She must have held some respect in the community.

  One of the guards whispered. “Bag him.” and a bag was put over my head.

  I played out scenarios in my head for what would come next. I hoped for a bullet, but expected a hanging. Just as I thought that thought, the red haired lady blurted a similar request.

  “I want him dead. It doesn’t matter how. Hang him off the balcony for all I care. Just kill him.”

  The guards walked me away and guided my legs. I was sightless and I couldn’t know what death was to come. I knew I would die though. My story was about to end. It was just as it deserved to end. I didn’t really deserve any better.