Prospero's Half-Life (13 page)

“
Do you want a drink?” he asked Samantha diffidently. She
looked at him for a moment before nodding slowly.

“
Sure, I don’t know what would be here that we could mix
anything with, though”. Richard shrugged and set about trying to
find something to mix a proper drink with. Samantha continued
pulling apart her cupboards to pull out all of the canned
goods.

It only took
Richard a few minutes to find something, in the end. There was a
door between the foyer and the living room that opened onto a
pantry, and that pantry was absolutely stuffed with two-litre
plastic bottles of Diet Coke. He took one of the bottles from the
front and brought it back into the kitchen. He placed it down on
the counter and began rummaging through the cupboards to try and
find glasses. While he did this Samantha pulled open the freezer to
check out the food contained therein. There was a burst of cold air
from behind him and Richard realized that the power was still
working.

“
Why bother working in the dark?” he asked himself jovially,
and flipped on some nearby light switches. The kitchen flared into
light. Samantha pulled away from the freezer and stared out of the
kitchen window, obviously nervous. Richard caught her train of
thought and quickly shut the lights off. He followed her gaze out
onto the street but there was no movement in the rapidly darkening
outside world.

“
Did you see anything?” he whispered. She shook her head slowly
but kept watching the street outside the window.

“
I just don’t want them to spot this place,” she whispered in
return. “I don’t think they could have followed us all the way out
here, but...” she trailed off.

“
You can never be too careful,” he finished, and she nodded.
“Let’s go back into the living room, then,” he suggested. “No one
will be able to see us from the street”. She nodded and grabbed a
long knife out of the block beside the kitchen sink. Richard curled
his fingers around the grip of his pistol and they moved out into
the living room.

The couches in
the living room were beige leather and quite comfortable. They sat
in silence for some time, watching the sun go down behind the woods
that were part of the house’s backyard. Eventually Richard screwed
up his courage and went out through the patio door to watch it more
closely. The patio door slid open easily; it was the point of
egress that Samantha had found to unlock the house for them.

Outside there
was a deck that stood over the actual backyard, which came out of
what must have been the basement. The deck was in bad condition,
with several rotting boards and missing parts to the railing. The
patio furniture seemed quite new, however. There were a number of
small children’s toys scattered around the deck, which made Richard
feel sad in a very vague, indefinite way. He placed his hands on a
part of the railing that seemed sturdy and peered out into the
backyard. There was a thick tangle of forest at the edge of the
sloping property that seemed to cut away back into the ravine;
Richard was amazed at how long the strip of wilderness in the
middle of the city really was. The sun glittered here and there
through the woods but was nearly vanished below the point of being
able to see; the night clouds were gathering in overhead and the
hum of the cicadas would be starting up soon.

He looked to
the right and saw a neighbouring house through a light strip of
bush. They also had a deck, similar to the one on ‘their’ house,
but coming off of the ground floor instead. There was nothing of
interest there, no movement of any sort, and he turned his
attention back to the woods. There were a couple of squirrels
chattering, hidden in the maze of branches, but beyond that Richard
saw nothing. He stretched his neck, turning it this way and that,
trying to work out a knot that had formed at some point during
their panicked flight from the bar.

There was a
creaking footstep on the deck behind him and a second later
Samantha was beside him, holding a couple of beer cans.
Condensation had formed on them; she must have fished them out of
the fridge, he decided.

“
The rest of the house seems empty, but I found these,” she
said, handing him one. He took it gladly, seeing that it was a much
larger can than normal; it was one of the type commonly referred to
as a “king can”, and the label identified it as Steamwhistle beer –
or, a pilsner, as the can specified. The can was already open, and
Richard nodded contentedly. Maybe Samantha was coming around, after
all. He took a long gulp and smacked his lips appreciatively. The
stuff was pretty good, after all. Whomever had lived there had, at
the very least, decent taste in beer.

Samantha opened hers with a loud
snick
and gave him a mocking little
salute before she took a sip of it. She grimaced slightly, let it
sit on her taste buds for a moment, and then swallowed it with a
shrug.

“
It’s not bad,” she admitted, and turned to look out in the
same direction that Richard had been looking in.

“
This would have been a really pretty view, any other time,”
she noted sadly, and Richard nodded. There wasn’t much to say to
that. She was right on that score. He took another deep gulp of the
beer and went back to trying to work out the knot in his
neck.

“
Let me get that for you,” she murmured, and he acquiesced. Her
fingers were on his shoulders moments later, pressing deeply into
his flesh and working it with no small amount of skill. There was
some slight pain as she began but soon there was a feeling flowing
through him like liquid cotton candy; gossamer tendrils radiating
out into his tired, tense muscles. He smiled dreamily and leaned
forward slightly. His head swam a little, and he began to chuckle,
but then his head continued to swim, growing stronger every second.
Something was wrong. His knees began to buckle and it was a plank
of wood that lay just in front of them that prevented him from
collapsing to the deck. His stomach was turning to jelly; the palms
that now gripped the deck railing with white knuckles were growing
clammy, sweaty. Samantha’s fingers continued to dig into his
muscles but there was now a vicious overtone to her massage. He
tried to buck his shoulders, to turn around and fight her off, but
there was no help for it. His strength was running down and he
barely had the energy to stand. Finally his knees gave out, and he
sank bonelessly to the deck. His eyes were very heavy; the signal
to close them and shut down seemed to be the strongest one left in
his brain.
Reset button
he thought aimlessly, and stared up at Samantha’s
neutral expression. She was staring down at him as he gave up
fighting to stay awake. Her face was the last conscious thing he
focused on before closing his eyes and letting the overwhelming
darkness wash over him like the night tide.

When he awoke
it was to full daylight. He was stretched out on the couch in the
living room, the leather hot and clammy against the skin of his
stubbly cheek. He stared around lazily without making any movement,
unsure of what was going on, or even of where he was. His mind
seemed to be stuffed full of wet cotton and thoughts were having a
very hard time getting started in that environment. His muscles
felt like lead weights as well, and he was loathe to attempt to
move them. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his mind and figure
out where he had ended up. Samantha would know, where did she get
off to?

He suddenly
remembered the moments before he blacked out and the locks on his
muscles seemed to vanish instantly. He rose into a sitting position
and grimaced. His muscles were already protesting, screaming about
their mistreatment and threatening to just walk off the job
entirely. He tried to ignore them but there was little help for it.
He hung his head dully and when he looked up again he saw the note
that had been taped to the patio door.

He rose
slowly, trying to step gingerly around the worst of his pains, and
made his way to the patio door. Samantha had closed and locked it
at some point. Frowning sourly, he reached forward and tore the
scrap of lined note paper from its position on the glass. He turned
and collapsed onto the couch to read it.

“
Dear Richard,” it read, “You are the most infuriating person
I’ve ever met in my entire life. You have moments where you seem to
act like a thoughtful, compassionate human being but it seems to me
more and more that you are, in reality, a gigantic asshole. Your
number one goal is to look out for number one. I know for a fact
that if I hadn’t gone jumping through that window when I did you
would have left without me. You would have, because when it comes
right down to it you feel that the only person whose rights matter
are yours. You’re selfish. You didn’t think for one minute about
the people that you were leaving behind. You saw that there was a
situation where people would get raped and killed, and you ran for
the hills. Worse, you let me let you drag me with you. Against my
better judgement. We could have stayed. We should have tried to
help them. But you were more interested in saving yourself and as
much of your stuff as you could possibly get away with. I’m sure
you thought of me as more baggage, baggage you could fuck, sure,
but baggage that you would have to drag along anyway. So we’re
through. I’ve gone back to see if I can rescue those women, because
they deserve to live a life where they aren’t treated like the
chattel of the person with the biggest weapon around. I took the
gun, I’m sure you can find another one. I also took the knapsack,
obviously, but there’s food all over the place. I’m sorry I had to
drug you, but I needed to get away without an argument. If you want
to be a good person with a sense of compassion, come on back and
help me. Otherwise, fuck yourself. I hope you make the right
decision.

We could have
had something if you weren’t such a dick.

Samantha”

He stared at
it for a while, read it over again a few times, and then crumpled
it up and threw it with violent force into a corner of the room. He
then let loose a powerful torrent of profanity that echoed off the
uncaring walls of the empty house. After he fell back into the
couch, panting, he caught his breath and went in search of
something to eat.

The fridge in
the kitchen was a lost cause. The power was on but everything
inside had spoiled a while ago. The freezer was better; he pulled
out a pack of bacon, some frozen hashbrown patties, and a loaf of
bread that he found near the back of the bottom drawer. He thawed
everything in the microwave beside the stove, and then proceeded to
cook himself breakfast. As he waited for everything to finish he
took a look around to gauge how much food Samantha had left him
when she walked out of his life. There were a number of canned
foods around, thankfully, but they were mostly the tomato-pasta
variety. He sighed and decided to deal with it after breakfast.

He scavenged a
plate from a cupboard and brought his breakfast out to the glass
table in the living room. He sat and ate mechanically, not really
tasting any of it. He kept replaying the salient points in
Samantha’s letter repeatedly in his head. He chewed on her
characterization of him as an uncaring, craven asshole. It couldn’t
possibly be true, he assured himself. He was simply a rational,
self-interested individual. Reasonable people would have seen that
there was no help for those women. Rational actors would have
weighed the options and chosen to save themselves; those other
women made the choice to be there, after all. He nodded over the
final few bites on his plate. That was it, in the end. They made
their choice, they had to act on their own, or live with the
consequences. He wasn’t beholden to anyone. He owed those women
nothing.

With this
carefully constructed perspective kept firmly in mind, he began to
search the house for the supplies that he thought would be
necessary for the continuation of his journey. As he did so, he
realized that he no longer really had a destination for “his
journey”. He and Samantha had been planning on walking up to the
Brock campus, and climbing the tower. As he made his way down the
stairs into the house’s basement, he decided that the original goal
was as good as any. Even if he didn’t find anyone on the campus, he
would be able to see the entire region from the top of the tower.
It would allow him to see if there were any large-scale gatherings
of people, some sort of survivor’s camp that he might have
otherwise missed.

The basement was obviously the more lived-in area of the
house, and was littered with expensive consumer electronics that,
until just recently, would have been worth several thousand
dollars. He fingered it with a wry expression and then realized
that, since Samantha had left her messenger bag behind, he was now
in possession of her tablet.
THAT
tablet, he amended ruefully in his mind. She had
been so insistent on taking it with her, and then had left it
behind in the end. He poked around some of the goods in the
basement and ended up finding one just like it.

He also found
a tall backpack that had originally been meant to hold a full
laptop and accessories. He checked the inside of the backpack and
decided that it would suit his purposes. He also found a pair of
flashlights similar to those that Samantha had absconded with. He
put them into his newfound knapsack but avoided taking any of the
other electronics with him.

He returned
upstairs and packed every last canned good that he could find into
the knapsack, as well as some clothing that he had found in the
dresser of an upstairs bedroom. One of the men who had lived in the
house before the plague had feet that were similarly sized to his,
so he took an extra pair of running shoes as well. He found a
blanket in a linen closet and folded it up as small as he could; he
figured that there would be a use for it at some point. He emptied
out the messenger bag and divided the contents into things that he
would pack and things that he would leave behind in the house. He
wavered on Samantha’s tablet and ended up packing it; he couldn’t
find it in himself to throw the thing away, despite its apparent
uselessness and the way that Samantha had left him.