Stranger

Twenty-nine

Valdiva, kneel before the ditch. Bang… rifle bullet chews my brain. Zak pushes me into the ditch with the toe of his boot… Now you’re rat meat…

That scenario played out bright and clear, I can tell you, the moment Michaela stepped out of the repair shop. The others came, too, to form a line behind her. Wood in the fire snapped like pistol shots. Sparks climbed into the night sky. And it seemed all the stars in creation gazed down to see what would happen next.

“What’s it to be then?” I asked her. “You going to give me to the count of ten before you start shooting?”

“Greg…” She sounded pained. “No, nothing like that.”

“Oh?”

“But we do have to decide what’s best for the survival of our group.”

“I’ve been sitting out here thinking through your options.” I spoke to the group as much as to Michaela. “I figure you’ve got three ways to go with this. One: Let me continue staying with you. But I don’t consider that viable. Two: Kick me out. Three: Put a bullet in my head.”

“Greg-”

“After all, if you do exile me I might come back looking for you.”

“Now just you wait one minute, Greg.” Michaela’s eyes flared with anger in the firelight. “This hasn’t been easy for us. But we’ve got to decide what’s right. We’ve had strangers who’ve joined us in the past who have been infected. We’ve woken up in the night with them trying to hack out our brains. See!”

I didn’t anticipate what she’d do next. She lunged forward, grabbed my fingers and pushed them into her hair on top of her head. “Feel that ridge of skin? That’s scar tissue where a sweet little fourteen-year-old girl tried to open up my skull with a wrench. Of course, first of all she was chatty, friendly and perfectly normal-looking, so we had to sit down and talk it through among ourselves. Yes, she was a stranger. Yes, she might be infected. But, no, there were no symptoms. And we weren’t so brutal, Greg, that we decided to turn her away to die of starvation out there. We took her in, fed her, but a week later she went crazy and attacked. Tony, here, had to put three bullets through her back to get her off me. She was like a wildcat.” Michaela spoke fast, angry and hurt all at the same time. A huge glittering tear swelled in her eye before rolling down her cheek. “So, you see, Greg, we didn’t make this decision lightly.”

I took a breath to speak, but Ben held up his hand. “Listen to what they have to say, Greg.”

I nodded. “OK. What’s the verdict?”

Tony said, “We like you as a person-”

“Oh, please…” Sarcasm ran deep in my voice.

Again Ben spoke up. “Greg, hear them out.”

“But if you continue living here among us it’s going to tear our group apart. Some of us won’t be able to accept the uncertainty. That one day you’re going to be our pal-”

“The next our executioner.” This came from Zak. “But we realize that you’d be an asset to us. You’d be able to screen strangers for Jumpy.”

“That’s why we don’t want you to leave.” Michaela looked at me. Her eyes, compassionate and yet…

“You mean,” I said, “I’m like the old-time nuclear deterrent. Can’t live with me, can’t live without me. Well, that fills me with a warm, rosy glow, I can tell you. Many thanks. I feel like a leper.. . a leper with a sack full of marijuana at a dope fiends reunion party.” OK, so that comparison didn’t make a hat full of sense, but I was too angry to speak with any clarity, or logic, come to that.

“So what we’ve decided is,” Michaela pressed on despite my scornful remark, “is that we’re going to stay here for a while. We’ve food to last a week, there’s a fresh water well in the back yard, we’ve got a roof over our heads and there aren’t any hornets close by.”

“Sounds sweet. Go on.”

She continued, “You might not go along with what I’m going to suggest next. You might tell us to go to hell, but we think it’s as fair as it possibly can be under the circumstances.”

“Well?”

“There’s a house about five miles down the road. It’s been burned out, but the garage is still in once piece.”

“You want me to move in there?”

“If you agree… then we can still be of use to each other, but you’d be far enough away to remove this sense of danger that some of us feel when you’re with us.” She paused. “What’s your answer, Greg?”

I looked at the dozen or so faces watching me expectantly in the firelight.

“It stinks,” I told them. “It stinks like a mountain of crap.” Then, sighing, I shook my head. “But until we can figure out something better I’ll go along with it. For now.”

Home is a garage with one window, a lawn mower and an open-topped Jeep so old that the dirt crusting the bottom could be pure Danang delta mud. Zak, Ben and Michaela delivered me to the place the morning after I blew off the stranger’s head. They left me with supplies, my rifle, plenty of ammo and instructions that they would call on me-not the other way ’round, you’ll note.

Zak shook my hand. “Sorry it has to be this way, Greg. But you have to be a walking time bomb.” He smiled in a good-natured way. “We’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t be a stranger.” I meant it, too.

In the back of my mind I still harbored a suspicion they’d quietly leave without telling old Greg Valdiva, the guy with the Twitch that might just turn out fatal- for you.

Ben’s hands shook. I half wondered if he’d offer to camp out here with me, but this was the wrong side of paradise. The house, which had been burned to its foundations, lay at the edge of dark forest that looked sinister enough to be the lair of any number of murderous demons. In a dried-out swimming pool human bones lay in tangled heaps. A place of breathtaking beauty it wasn’t.

After they’d carried my gear into the garage, said some complimentary things about my new home (in the way I suspect parents spoke when depositing their kids in new rooms at college) they climbed onto the bikes and fired them up.

Michaela called me closer to speak to me. She rested her hand on my forearm as she spoke in a low voice so the others wouldn’t hear above the sounds of the Harley motors. “Greg, they’re frightened of you. And this is all new to them. Give them some time to come ’round to the idea of what’s inside you.” She squeezed my arm. “Listen to me; they’re going to realize soon that you’re special, and that they’re going to need you.”

I gave that you-might-be-right-you-might-be-wrong kind of shrug. “Drive carefully, Michaela.” Then I called out to the others, “See you soon, boys.”

Ben saluted and Zak waved his cowboy hat.

As they rode away into the misty morning light I found myself wondering if I’d ever see them again.