Survival Song

If Neil Josten was going to die, it wasn’t going to be today. This thought was what kept him moving forward for the past eight years. The constant thrum of “not today” in the back of his mind. 

So what if he was trapped in an empty storage closet on the third floor of an overrun office building? He’d find a way out, even if death itself was currently pounding on his only escape. That was a promise he could make. If not to himself, then to his mother. He looked at the high ceiling and sent a quiet prayer to whatever God was listening. He wasn't picky nor was he was ever a pious man, but he supposed that no one was these days. Just the thought of religion catapulted him back to a time when the only thing he had to fear was his father's fists. Now there was so much more.

“Not today.” Would God answer?

Neil reached into a pocket on his duffel bag and fished out a carton of cigarettes. Nearly empty. He didn't smoke, they belonged to his mother. After shaking one out and putting it in between his chapped lips, he decided that remaining calm was useless. So fucking useless. The tiny box barely made a noise when it hit the metal door and fell against the floor. 

Just minutes earlier, Mary had been alive. This was all Riko’s fault. Every terrible, little thing that has happened to him since the outbreak has been because of the Moriyamas and their creepy cult. They were the ones who chased Neil and Mary into the city. They were the ones who couldn't-wouldn't leave them alone. Mary had gotten overpowered trying to get them into a secure building, which proved to be not very secure after all. But they were inside, weren’t they? The worst part, he thought, was that he didn't even have time to end her before she could turn. All he could do was watch her be devoured while she begged him to “Just fucking run!”.

So on the list of things that Neil Josten was, you can add COWARD in big capital letters. Maybe it could go under RUNAWAY and above KILLER.

At this point it’d been a little over eight years since the geeks-zombies, biters, deadbeats, whatever the fuck you wanted to call them-showed up. Since then, there’d been no cure and no hope for one either. That really didn't matter to him though. Maybe there would've been one, if the Ravens didn’t blow up the CDC in Atlanta during the second year. Sure, the loot they got from the place was useful, medicine, food, fuel, but really? Torching the place? Tetsuji claimed it was a distraction. Create a big enough bonfire, drive enough geeks into it, make a clean escape. Neil still remembered the look on the scientists face as he begged for his life. Neil thought he could see the look on his own face as he shot the pleading man. It wasn’t his fault, was it? He was just following orders, like the good little soldier Nathaniel was.

That night seemed so distant and yet so close at the same time. He shook it from his memory. He was not Nathaniel anymore and it didn’t matter how fucking far the Moriyamas chased him, because he would escape. This room was completely devoid of any useful materials other than a pair of dull scissors and packages of staples.

"Great. I’ll staple a hoard to dea-” Gunshots rang from outside. Maybe it wasn’t the hoard Neil needed to worry about. Maybe it was whatever militia that was fighting their way into the building that would bring his doom. “Fuck.”

Bang. Bang. Bang. 

If they’re looting, they’ll check this closet. If they’re looking for him, they’ll check this closet. No matter what, they’ll check this closet. Neil pulled his flashlight out of his pocket and ran it’s light along the taller areas of the room.

Bang.

A vent. If he could squeeze through the vent-

Bang. Bang. 

He scrambled up the metal shelves and began to unscrew the nails with the pair of scissors he’d found.

Bang. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck-

The first screw fell to the floor.

The door swung open, and on the other side stood a man and a woman. The man in the front yelled something that didn’t quite register in Neil’s head. The only thing he could focus on was the fact that the second screw was halfway out. They probably could shoot him before he got all of them off, sure, but would they be willing to risk the bullets on one straggler?

Maybe. Not today. Not fucking today. The man climbed the shelves and pulled Neil away from the vent, “Dude, stop!”

Looking at his face this close, Neil realized that this wasn’t a man at all. He was what he guessed to be someone around his age. He was bigger than Neil though, probably a result of not growing up on canned beans and rotten fruit found on the side of the road. His skin was dark and his hair stood in impossible spikes. Neil noted that he didn’t have a tattoo on his face, which meant he probably wasn’t one of Riko’s. Reflexively, Neil reached a hand to where his own tattoo once sat. “What?”

“I said, we need to get out of here.”

If Neil was wrong about this boy, if he was here to bring him back to the Moriyamas, then so be it. He’d rather escape from the Moriyamas again than be stuck in an over infected city. And with his mother gone, he didn’t have much of a choice, considering she had been making choices for the both of them since the very beginning. She'd never be in this mess. She didn't have the chance to be.

“We’re getting out of here?” He asked.

The boy said, “That’s the plan.” 

“How?”

“She’s pulling the van around.” The girl knocked some staples off of a shelf. "This place was a mistake. Nothing but biters for miles."

“She?”

“Dan.” Neil gave a confused look. The girl did not elaborate. “Are you coming or not?”

“Why are you taking me with you. Why not just leave me here to die?” Why was he receiving mercy now? Why at all? He couldn’t help but think this was a cruel joke. A way for the world to make him feel ashamed for all the evil things he’d done to survive.

The boy said, “Truth? We were looting and saw you come into this building. Figured you’d need a hand...or two.”

“I don’t think I’m the type of person you’d want to travel with.” Neil admitted. 

“I don’t think anyone is these days. Tell me...”

Neil was not his given name, but it was safer to become Neil than leave a trail and be Nathaniel. “Neil. My name is Neil.”

“Neil. Are you up for living through another day?”

Yes. Yes he was.

-

Dan was not a man, despite Neil’s previous conception of her. When she stopped the van in the back alley of the building, she hit two geeks. Dan said something along the lines of, “Matt! What the fuck! I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here!”. They all clambered into the back in a disorganized fashion.

“Take that exit!" Matt pointed at a far-off road sign and Dan sped off. "No, not that-Allison, the map!”

And the girl who’s name was Allison shouted, “That road is blocked take the-”

“This one- here!” he shouted. The van sped onto the highway and away from the city. If Neil had his way, he would've set the whole thing on fire. Put Mary out of her misery. But nothing was going his way today.

When the road became clearer and they all stopped yelling instructions at each other, Matt sat down next to Neil.

“We’re heading to Palmetto, you ever hear of it?”

“No.” Yes. 

“Okay, well.” Matt then went on to explain Palmetto. All he'd heard about it was that it was a sanctuary. A sort of safe-haven for the wayward souls of the apocalypse. According to Matt, it was that, and so much more. A gated community that someone had put reinforced at the beginning stages of the outbreak. They had water, electricity, food. It sounded like a dream. It sounded like Castle Evermore.

“Are you part of a larger group?” 

“No. I’m not part of any group.”

“Well, you weren’t traveling alone. We saw that. I’m sorry about that woman you were with.”

“If it helps,” Allison added from somewhere in the back, she was fiddling with a radio that was giving her nothing but static, “we shot her. She didn’t turn.” 

“Allison!”

After a moment of silence Neil said, “Thank you.” And he meant it. He really did.

The van was silent before Dan asked Neil if he’d been in a group before. "You couldn't have made it this far on your own. Just the two of you? A woman and a kid? You must've been holed up somewhere."

“I was with others. I...it's complicated.” When it became clear he wasn’t going to explain any further, everyone fell back into comfortable silence. Matt and his map. Allison and her radio. Dan and her driving. 

He fell asleep a bit after they passed a road sign for some rest stop. It was completely accidental. He didn't mean to sleep, he'd been avoiding it for days.

When Neil dreamed, he dreamed of men. His father was one of them. Tetsuji another. They held him down and pressed ink to his skin. Riko laughed. Mary cried. Kevin was there too. Of course he was. As long as Riko was near, Kevin was too. And Riko was always near. 

Riko smiled a wicked smile as he followed his brother in throwing molotovs into a rival settlement. Neil thought he saw an eleven year old him smile as well. But he couldn't recall that night, at least not properly. Sure, the screams came to him, clear as anything, but the rest was doused in fire. Burning. Burning. Gone.

It was fuzzy, in the way that dreams often were, and the next thing Neil knew, it was his mother dragging him out of bed. His duffel. The gate. A gun. A man, not the ones that held him down. He was probably innocent. Blood.

Then, just her. She screamed at him to run. He tried but he couldn’t. His feet were stuck to the ground and she cried, “Nathaniel, why did you do it? Why?”

She said, “It’s all your fault.”

She said, "Stop!"

The man who he called “Father” and “Sir” told him, “Hold still, it will be over soon enough.”

Neil jolted awake. It didn't matter how fast he was, the past would catch up to him.

The sky had turned dark, and the van approached a gate. Matt said they had walls, and Neil believed that to be an understatement. Palmetto was a fucking empire compared to the six years of camping in forests and cars that usually ended in combustion.

“What the hell?” 

“I know, right?” Matt laughed, “Wymack found me half-dead about four years ago. Brought me here. We’re small but it works. You’ll have to go through inspection.”

“Wymack?”

Dan said, “We like to think of ourselves as a democracy here. He’s the not-officially-elected mayor.”

“Elected none the less.”

“Okay...and an inspection?” It was this part that freaked him out. A stranger poking and prodding at him.

“It's just a precaution. Everyone gets one after heading back through those gates. We can go together after we unload the stuff, yeah?”

“I-” Neil wasn’t in a position to argue. “Yeah."

“Great. Now help me out with these boxes. Canned peaches." He pulled it out of a box and smiled," Haven’t had these in a while.” 

-

They were heading through the town. Various porch lights were flicked on. 

“Tell me more about Palmetto.” He said.

“Well, there’s me and Dan, we live in that blue house over there,” Neil nodded at the house. It seemed too big for just two people but that didn’t matter, did it? “Allison and Renee are somewhere around here.” Neil knew Allison now, she shot his mother, after all, but not Renee. “Renee is really cool. I think you’ll like her.” 

“There are others, of course. It’s no use explaining all this to you, right? You’ll probably forget it all anyway and besides, you’ll be able to put names and faces together later.” 

“Later?”

“You’re gonna get a formal introduction and everything. Hey, maybe you’ll even become a fox!”

“A fox?”

“It’s what we citizens of Palmetto call ourselves. Unless you’d rather become a Trojan. They’re a small community to the west. But I think you’d fit in with us more.”

Neil smirked, “How can you possibly know that? You just met me!”

“Something about you tells me you’re a fighter, Neil. A survivor. Dan thinks so too. And forgive me, I hate to speak ill of the Trojans but frankly, they’re too diplomatic. Too grey. Switzerland. How many people have you killed?”

A strange question, really. No one had ever asked him just how much blood was on his hands, only if it was on his hands at all. “I don’t know. I've lost count.” Saying that you've killed and knowing that you've killed are two separate things. Admission of it made it real. Knowing that you've watched souls leave bodies. Knowing that you're the reason they left in the first place. Only knowing it, never tasting the words on his tongue-now he knew they were bitter and wanted nothing more than to spit them out onto the asphalt-was easy. He could just flip a switch and try to forget about the things he'd done later. There was no trying to forget about it now that it was out there. In the air around them, choking him like the smoke of an eternally burning flame. One that he himself started.

“My point exactly. Every fox has done something terrible. We've all got some sob story...some sobbier than others. We’re not so different.”

“Okay, first of all, that's not even a word. Second, who’ve you killed?” Neil doubted that Matt had ever killed anyone. He was the type to save people. He saved him, after all.

“It’s not who I killed,” he said, a new shade of darkness in his voice, “it’s who I didn’t.” This was obviously a conversation for another time.

“Wow. Um,” so maybe Matt was a little hardcore. More shades of grey than he originally believed. Most of those shades seemed to be leaning toward the blacker end of the color scale. Searching for something to take their minds off of tragedy, Neil pointed to a small blonde boy sulking on some porch steps. “Who pissed in his cheerios?” 

Matt laughed and it seemed like the sadness between them had passed. That was what it was like. Sad and then happy. No time to sulk in this new world. “That’s Aaron. He’s in that house with Katelyn, Nicky, and Erik. He has a brother. Lives down the street by himself."

“Cool.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a dick though."

"Aaron or the brother?"

"...Yes."

-

Abby Winfield asked too many questions but she also sent Matt out of the room when Neil refused to remove his shirt, so he couldn’t hold too much against her. If she was anything it was understanding. One of her spare bedrooms was turned into a sort of nurses office. Cabinets of medicine and gauze lined the walls. 

She told him to take deep breaths that he didn’t know how to properly release.

His entire life felt like one deep breath he didn't know how to properly release. Cliche, right?

She didn’t ask him about the various scars on his chest and back, she said she'd seen a lot of those in her day. Both before and after the world ended. She did, however, ask about the scar on his face. He told her it was from a childhood incident, because it was. He didn't want to tell her anymore. The fact that he had once been branded was shameful and he'd rather not relive it.

Abby finally came to the bite around his leg. The one he anticipated the most. He lied, “A dog bit me.”

“I haven’t seen any dogs in a while.”

“It was before an outbreak. A chihuahua, can you believe that? Bastard.”

She didn’t argue. Just eyed the mark some more.

“My head is killing me. Do you have any ibuprofen?” 

When his inspection was done, he slipped his shirt back on and dry-swallowed the pill. She believed him. Oh, how he thanked God that Abby Winfield believed him. Not a pious man, my ass.

Neil Josten was still going to die. The ache in his chest and pounding in his head were only proof that he was still alive, and that his death would not be today.