Adrian stared in awe, slack jawed and wide-eyed. The steel of the weapon he was holding was cold, bone-chillingly cold. I am holding a gun he thought, without any feeling any emotion at all. Then, alarm. I am holding… a fucking gun.
It was surprisingly heavy, he had almost dropped it when the tapes grip gave way. His ring finger was resting snugly on the trigger. Adrian pulled it off like it was hot. While recalculating his handle on the contraption, he was able to decipher that it's safety was on.
The gun looked sleek and was colored black. It's grip was smooth, except for two symmetrical strips on either side that felt like metal Velcro. Adrian didn't dare to finger many of the components of it. He treated it like a sleeping wolf that might bite at the wrong poke or prod.
But a fucking gun! He had found a gun. Surely George nor Heather knew of its existence, Adrian didn't believe he would be left in this room otherwise. As he did when he was a teenager fearing his parents, Adrian stole a sideways glance at the door to his room. Still closed. But I'm sitting here with half of the room torn apart. And if George is as watchful as I think he is, he's gonna notice all of the dust that's been blown around. At that moment the lightbulb in his lamp flickered with an electric tinkling noise before becoming bright with life. The bible lying open on the table, slightly over its edge as a result of Adrian’s panic-induced shakedown of the room cast long shadows on the floor.
Adrian wasn't unaccustomed to light. He had had the generator at the Croteau's, and enjoyed a couple of evenings a week with a lamp in the attic and a book to read. The Croteau's had coffee, too, that had set the mood for these evenings. His last pot had been half of a year ago. Still, seeing this lamp come alive provided the small flutter in his heart that he always felt when electricity was around. A feeling of relief. This lamp could produce a hidden fantasy world for him if he let himself get absorbed by it.
And so, shaking his head of these fantasies, Adrian began to reorganize the room. The legs of tables and his one chair were brought back to rest in the grooves that time and gravity had embedded them in, while he quickly erased the fresh prints they made with his hands. It was not that long of a while before Adrian thought of his gun wound, but not before he had most of the room had set back to the nearest replica that his imagination could recreate.
It didn't hurt much, which was at first a sign of relief. But as he slid out of his trousers, there was a great sensation on the leg opposite that of the wound. As his jeans came off of his waist, leaving him to stand only in boxer shorts, he greatly felt them leave his waist on that side. He palmed it, but it felt normal. It was his healthy leg, as normal as it had been. He palmed his other leg, the wounded one…
And felt nothing. There was a momentary shock reaction from the pain he had expected. Then, a microscopic burst of relief before the terrifying realization of his numbed leg came flooding in with the harsh truth.
I can't feel my leg. It's gone numb. He was seized with a tidal wave of worries that crashed and froze, solidifying inside of him as each breath became a strained pull. After a series of attempts to rally his own bravery that only failed, Adrian slipped down the side of his boxers, exposing his hip that now featured a hole in it in one brisk movement.
Blood. Blood had stuck to his boxers and had been running for some time. A wide, smeared trail covered half of his thigh.
Adrian did not have a weak stomach, but he was not accustomed to seeing so much blood as he had been seeing this week. First Kevin, now this… it had been a lot. Too much. Adrian hobbled to the nearby trash bin that laid by the T.V. stand and began to retch. Maybe he wasn’t able to produce anything, or maybe his stomach was too empty, but the bout of gagging passed. He was able to limp to the bathroom when he recovered, and remove the top of the toilet bowls tank and begin to clean the blood, after fully removing his boxers, off of his thigh. He was careful not to get any of the water in the wound itself, which he covered with a tightly folded face cloth he had found on the vanity. Its white material quickly became blood-red. As he sat awkwardly on the open tank of the toilet while leaning on his good leg for support, the water rolled off of his bad leg and began to turn the rest of its source from inside of the tank from crystal clear to a murky red-pink color. A lot of water dripped on to the floor, ran down the rest of his leg and splashed on the toilet. It cleaned up reasonably well with one of the two towels he had been left with. On the back of the bathroom door he saw a robe made of comfortable looking material. The power has been on for ten minutes and George hasn't come back. I think he and Heather might plan to leave me in here.
He finished cleaning up, changed out of his dirty clothes and put on the robe. It felt like heaven, and allowed his leg to breathe. Adrian gently prodded around the numbed area of his wound (which was now sporting thicker and longer blue veins than before) and found the area to be about as wide as the palm of his hand, with the cauterized bullet hole being the center. None of this was helping lower the war-mongering pace of his heart, but knowing the full description of his ailments let him feel some slight return of control. After making sure the bathroom was customer-ready as it was before, except for one towel that now hung over the shower rod, Adrian walked back into the bedroom area...
To see the gun, lying on the floor where he had left it. Such a foolish thing to do, but he had nearly forgotten it during his third panic of the day. Not inclined to think lightly of the situation or go easy on himself, Adrian gave another boyish look toward the wooden door that imprisoned him as he reapplied the tape to the gun, hiding it securely back where he had found it.
And then it dropped. The heavy thunk it produced was so sudden that Adrian jumped. He put a shaky hand on his pitifully mistreated heart and checked the drawers again. The gun lay square in the middle of its cubby, the words “SPRINGFIELD ARMORY” were written across its side, a strip of black tape dangling directly above it. What if I kept it on me? I would be safe then.
Adrian tried to imagine himself, gun wound on one leg and an actual gun on the other. Tucked in to his jeans, or something. He didn't have a holster for it like Heather was wearing. Already he could see his unnatural walking gait from a third-person perspective as he tried to suppress both his nerves and the uncanny bulge protruding from his waist, under his shirt. George would immediately point and say, “what have you got there, friend?” and Adrian would sputter, “I… uh… it's…”
So Adrian put the hand gun within the box spring of the bed. It took a little maneuvering, but he was able to lay down, rip off a proportionate section of the dust cover, and stuff the handgun on top of one of the supporting beams. There it balanced, but to add reinforcement against his doubts he took the old piece of tape from the drawers of the T.V. stand and fumbled it on top of the gun, this time taping it down instead of up. Adrian even went back to grope about and discover the second piece of tape that was stuck further under, just to keep himself reassured that the gun would stay where he intended it to.
All of the while he was reliving the shock, excitement and dismay of having found the thing. As much as he knew it wouldn't be a part of his character, Adrian couldn't help imagining himself if he had had this weapon before hand.
He saw himself amidst depleted shelves, in a classic cowboy standoff with the old man from Reggie’s. Adrian wouldn't have had the strength to shoot someone, let alone a lonely old man, but even the striking figure he'd impose would be a hidden trick card up his sleeve. Maybe he could have walked away from Reggie’s instead of hobbled.
He saw himself in the burnt up shack on the Pacific Coast Highway, back against the main door like a soldier waiting to breach. The two men would walk in unaware and unprepared, to Adrian’s advantage. But even here, comfortably inside of a hotel room, a day and some miles away he could not see himself pulling the trigger. Instantly he was brought back to Kevin's ragdoll-body as it spun out from his defensive strike. His act of violence. The guilt inside of him rolled back and doubled down. How could I do that, to a human or animal? How? And Adrian, unable to answer, began to sob in his nearly reconstructed room.
---
It was a long while before anything stirred. For an hour Adrian had sulked and cried, mentally telling the universe just how unfair this all was for him and pleading to it for help. When no one answered him, and when the begging began to tell that it would not heal him, Adrian had stopped spent another hour thinking. Thinking about his crazy week. Has it been a week? Doing some mental math he discovered it had only been three full days, with the sun (as he saw it out of his window) currently making its move to the western side of the sky on this fourth day.
Three days? That's… absurd. And it was. In these three days, Adrian had experienced more trials and difficulties than he had in the entire previous eight months combined, save the drive over. Only, then it hadn't seemed so easy. In the moment, and in ways he could barely fathom now that he was passed them, simply entering the wide open door of the Croteau's and making sure it was safe had been stressful. It had been its own impossible task. In hindsight, Adrian didn't think he felt any different now than he did then.
Which was not relieving anything from Adrian, but did provide a feeling of progress, a feeling that he had kept himself above water this entire time. That he had been surviving.
Adrian also thought about his current predicament. He knew Heather would not, could not be on his side. But there was possibilities that he could find a friend inside of George. Wasn't there? He had seemed indifferent enough, and jumped on the opportunity to have Adrian as an ally. Even when he had kicked a considerable number of potential survivors to the curb…
And why was that? Why Adrian over sixteen others? Heather had said that George thought he saw something in Adrian, or possessed a talent or otherwise had some value. Was it his previous hotel knowledge? Admittedly Adrian had come in here with little else beside the clothes on his back. Or maybe it was something in Adrian’s story that attracted George's attention. Not everyone gets shot and mended by the same human, or decides to take care of an animal they had hurt. Not in these days, Adrian knew most people were different now. Maybe George did, too, and thought he had found a fresh apple among a bushel of rotten ones?
Wondering at it, while fixing up the last of his mess he had made, was doing him no good. He fingered the numb area underneath of his robe after putting back in the last drawer. The bleeding had stopped during his staunching of the wound, but the lack of feeling remained. He poked the skin around his wound, giving it a wide berth of two or three inches and could only feel the sensation of it on his fingertip.
Suddenly, there was a fast and heavy rapping at the door. Adrian covered himself, as he heard a thunk, clack, click as the door finally swung out and open.
George was in the doorway beyond the swing of the door, looking in watchfully like a hawk. Each hand was planted firmly on a hip, the left was purposefully placed to avoid the gun and holster that George was now wearing, the very same that Heather had been before.
“Ah… that is much better with the light on, yes?” George said casually as he stepped inside.
“I brought you your things from your car, Kevin is resting in the room beside mine. We've used it before as an infirmary. Poor fellow, what a trial he is going through.” George set down Adrian’s possessions at the front of the room. “You cleaned up, too. A lot less dust in here. Why are you in a robe?”
Adrian didn't reply. The casual tone failed to soothe the spiked nerves George had generated with his presence. George glimpsed in the bathroom as he walked by on his way to Adrian. A momentary swivel that was done with calculated swiftness. Please don’t get suspicious. He was consciously aware of where the gun was located, and both wanted to do his best to cover it more and draw as little attention to it as possible.
“That towel is stained and wet. Are you still bleeding?” his tone still had an insane tinge of normalcy in it, as if this chat would soon lead in to a debate about last night's football game.
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“Yes. I've gone numb,” and Adrian placed his palm over the bullet hole, over top of the robe, “Here. My leg is going numb.”
George gave a thoughtful “hmmm” that, to his credit, legitimately carried a note of worry.
“And the robe relieves the pressure on the wound, yes.” he added thoughtfully. Adrian began nodding his head, but stopped to properly listen to George as he began again.
“How have you been treating it, since… when did you say this happened?”
“It happened two days ago. I… I haven't been treating it. I don't know how to treat it.” Adrian replied.
“I thought as much,” and he sighed, “I can help you, Adrian. I am a doctor, you know.”
“You told me that. But, how? Does a veterinarian get trained to take care of bullet holes?” Adrian asked.
George barked back with laughter. “Good one. Yes,” and then as his smile faded, “yes, they do teach that at veterinarian school. They also, however, teach it during the sixteen weeks you spend training to be a military medic.”
George popping Adrian’s eyes open wide was quickly becoming a trend. Everything he said seemed to come out of left field, so to speak. Where luck had been taunting him, it now seemed to be teasing him. Before, it kept him above the line of sanity and survival, carefully swooping in when Adrian dipped too low. Now, it was opening previously hidden doors that could lead him out. So why does this moment feel so… bad? There was gloom within Adrian. But he couldn't locate and cut off its source.
“You're… a combat medic? Like, in the wars and stuff? But you said you had been head veterinarian-"
“And I had been,” George cut in, “after I was a combat medic. What do you think happens to the veterans, Adrian? They get put back into storage until next Remembrance Day?”
A joke, Adrian was certain. But neither of them laughed, George only smiled wolfishly and sighed when the humor seemed to only go one way.
“You'll want that story, too, I imagine. Listen well, you have chatted me down to the wires today.” Adrian took in air, readying a defense for himself. Actually, none of this was on my agenda today…
But he let out his breath wordlessly as he saw the sparkle in George's eye, the slight twist of the end of his lips. Jokes. We're just two people joking. Somehow the thought didn't take him off edge.
“My father was a businessman, an oil tycoon. Truth be told, the Barnes family was an extremely wealthy family. I had several homes and vacation homes growing up. Cars purchased for me before I was sixteen. But me and my father did not see eye to eye, we constantly argued from the time I was a teenager and he an aging man with a legacy. Naturally, he thought, I would step in and fill his wealthy, self-appreciating shoes. Only I had different thoughts. Thoughts like “why put his shoes on, when mine fit damn well enough?”. So at the age of twenty-six, on the long track to becoming an established businessman, I turned tail and ran. I devoted my youth to America, I served for her. Six good years of my life. And when I was done I lost the taste for fighting, but I kept the love for defending. For mending. For healing.” George looked stern but distant, and after a span of time he flinched, snapping out of his daze.
“Plus I've always loved animals. Heather, too. She grew up on a horse farm, should get her to tell you all about that later. Anyway, Adrian. Let's get you downstairs, I have a running shower in my room you can use. And then I will take a look and see if your wound is healing.”
---
When George had first said he had a “running shower”, Adrian hadn't acknowledged it. The words simply blew right by him. As he was led down stairs, still dressed in a bathrobe, George made sure he understood with vivid discussion.
“...so after we got those rusted pipes replaced, I managed to rig the system up again. Limited use. The Wandering Shepherd has a private well to use in case of severe droughts and what have you, but as you might imagine it has been faithfully low. We take one shower each every two weeks, timed for five minutes. But even now that we're just three people,limiting ourselves as we have has only helped the drain marginally. Every week there is less and less water, and have you noticed that rain has become even more of a rarity? Even so, the temperature this summer was much cooler. Why do you think that is Adrian?”
Adrian had been engrossed in George's story, a simple telling of the remedy of plumbing problems now seemed to be able to captivate him. He shook his head, momentarily pulling back in clarity.
“Umm… I don't know. I hadn't noticed, honestly. I can only think that the bombings are to blame, all of the… the chemicals, I guess, affecting the air. The atmosphere. I don't know.” and he honestly didn't, or had even thought about it. Adrian had been hermited for months, after all.
“Yes, I suspect that, too. Remember last year? The record amount of rainfall we had?” George paused, shook his head, “I forget, you are from West Virginia, not California. Of course you wouldn't know.”
“I heard, actually. It was big on the news for a day last autumn, I remember. There was so much rain they worried about flooding.”
“And is that not just devilishly humorous? Every year we're pleading for the sun to go away, not the rain.”
Adrian didn't see the humor in that fact, and let the conversation die as they arrived at George's front door. George pulled his room key, which was attached to a retractable string that was attached to his hip. He dunked it in to the door’s reader and opened it, pushing in to reveal a room that was certainly more shabby than Adrian’s. All of the furniture that made up the room could be counted on one hand, and Adrian thought that George might only possess a dozen or so items, total. Adrian immediately saw a bed with unmade sheets, a small square table with a desk lamp, and a rolling computer chair with armrests and leather back. As they moved inward, Adrian noticed a mechanical pencil neatly lined up to be parallel with a closed, brown notebook on the table. George's window, which should be portraying a view of the parking lot Adrian had stopped in, was darkened out by a large sheet of plywood that had been painted black and nailed to the frame.
“The pressure dies quickly, and it is slow to build back up. That is why we limit ourselves to five minutes. I would not drink the water, not until it has been boiled and deemed safe.” Adrian suddenly remembered the water, now back in his room, and the parched throat he possessed. He wished he brought some water with him, but now he would have to wait.
“Anything else, or should I let you get to it?” George asked.
“No, I have things covered. Thank you, George.”
“Alright. I will be over there, writing.” and with that George turned around and walked to his table, sat, and began to write. Adrian turned about and went in to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
This bathroom was similar to his own, of course. The only difference of any interest was the safety rail placed diagonally above the bathtub, and a vertical one beside the toilet. He eyed the shower anxiously, now fully realizing what was about to happen. I haven't showered since… since West Virginia.
He had gotten accustomed to sponge baths with room temperature water. They were humiliating at first, despite the necessity and lack of people to observe. Adrian would be naked and huddled in a bathtub, holding a sponge in one hand, a bar of soap in the other and a bottle of water nearby.
This shower was pristine porcelain and chrome. It was clean, and on closer inspection as Adrian began to (literally) disrobe, he could see that despite bi-weekly use there were no dried water stains anywhere. A white towel was hung on the shower rod.
He couldn't wait, the anticipation was growing. The robe fell to his ankles, and as the fabric grazed his injury a mulled stab of pain reminded him of something important.
“George,” Adrian asked timidly after prying the door open a crack, “I need a favor.”
“Yes?” the reply was neutral sounding enough, Adrian ventured on.
“I can't get this wet… my uh, my wound. In my bag upstairs I have a couple of bandages. Would you grab them for me?” Adrian tried not to sound as helpless as he thought he was appearing. George didn't reply at first, but Adrian could hear the scuffing of chair legs.
“Hold on, I can do you one better.”
Adrian heard the sound of footsteps grow, pass in front of him, and then fade as they distanced themselves from him. There was a click from George's door as it closed shut. I could search his room now, the thought was so sudden he questioned if it was really his. It wouldn't be right, to rifle through another man's belongings. Although, George really hadn't refrained from gathering his things up in his car. My stolen car, but the point still stands. No doubt George searched his bookbag to make sure Adrian was as harmless as he said he was.
Before Adrian could turn these thoughts away, he had heard another, more distant click. A muffled vibration sound came from the bathroom wall opposite of the door, the one against the next room over. Adrian hobbled over and put his ear to it.
What he could hear now was just a better, clearer version of the muffled vibrating noise, identifiably a voice but the words themselves were lost between the walls. The penetrating, rhythmic thuds of footsteps, growing closer, further, closer, and then further again. Adrian could gather that George was now walking back from the room next door.
George entered his own room again, rapped twice on the bathroom door, and stuck one hand inside. There was a palm-sized, white, thin package between his index and middle fingers.
It’s from the infirmary, he thought as he made to grab the bandage George had brought.
“It’s waterproof, and it’s the last I have. Do not let the adhesive get wet, we will need to reapply it when I am done inspecting your injury.”
“Yes. Thank you, George. For everything.” Adrian felt his own sincerity as a pang bounced off the walls of his heart. When had he last been so grateful?
“Don’t mention it.” George’s tone was expressionless.
Adrian took the bandage, unwrapped it and placed it on his wound. It stung, with great intensity. Most of the skin around his hip was warm to the touch, but the morbid fact that pain was returning must be a good sign, he hoped.
Fully naked, Adrian unevenly worked his way into the tub. He stood up, facing the shower head and faucet, the two taps. On a small, built-in ledge on the wall was a plastic wrapped, square bar of soap. He opened it, placing the wrapper on the floor outside of the tub. As he looked up, he saw himself in the mirror that was above the vanity on the adjacent wall.
There certainly was grime on him. Dirt and dried stains of blood crowned his forehead and cheeks. A beard was beginning to grow in, setting shadows to the lower portion of his face. His torso was sparsely lined with new, healing, and old scars. Some he must of got during one of his recent falls, but he didn't remember how he got them by appearance.
His shoulder that he had crashed into the side view mirror of a car was bruised, but already beginning to yellow around its edge. Adrian thought he looked like shit. Like someone who had the hell kicked out of them.
No longer wanting to look at his reflection and perhaps in anticipation of the sight, Adrian turned, pulled the shower curtain to divide himself away from the rest of the room, and reached for the faucets.
---
It was a little more than cold water slowly falling down and out through the shower head, but the great feeling of nostalgia for this kind of thing made it comfortable. Enjoyable. For a few, small seconds Adrian could close his eyes and envision that outside of this curtain was normalcy. Structure. Society. That he was back in West Virginia, even, in his own shower.
The soap was vanilla scented, and he scrubbed everywhere vigorously, all of the while protecting his bandaged area as best as he could. Even with the caution and holding the bar for assistance, he had to sit down on the side of the tub for the last two minutes. It turned out to be a treat, as the hot water kicked in just then. He adjusted the knobs until he found a warmer setting and let the water soak him, running in streams across the back of his head until George knocked on the door.
“Time is up, Adrian. Please turn the water off.” the foreboding words Adrian had been willfully ignoring the existence of this entire time. The shower was a wet paradise that he didn't want to end. There is no way that that was five minutes… four and a half, maybe, he stubbornly thought. But he did shut the water off as requested, enjoyed the last of its warmth as it ran around his feet, and watched it disappear down the drain with a rumbling gurgle. Adrian double-palmed the top of his head and flung the excess water in to the tub. An old habit that was going to die hard, it seemed.
He wasn't quite ready to leave yet. The floor of the bathtub was still warm, the air trapped behind the curtain still steamy and moist. The drain gave a secondary gurgle based from deeper within its system, perhaps reminding Adrian that this was goodbye. He sighed in response, and told himself that now was the time to get up. Now he had to move on from the comfort he was in.
But he couldn't. Even knowing that, gradually, his seat would get colder, the warmth would disappear and that his ass would ache before long. Showering after eight months of going without had been a euphoric experience, or maybe something more than that. It had been an awakening, a swapping of his rusty, dirty body with a clean, new one. Everything inside of him felt much the same, depression reverberated in his every heartbeat, confusion and anger lay ready to attack any thought the flowed innocently by. But damn his body felt better. And he was enjoying how it felt. He slowly bent his arms up and down to feel how smoothly his limbs bent and how soft his skin felt, twisted his neck until he heard a satisfying crunch as the gases left their joints.
Adrian grabbed the towel that was hanging on the shower rod. It, too, was warm and the material was fluffier than the towel Adrian had used earlier. As he draped it over his head, he could smell its scent. He was pretty certain that his own towel didn't smell, but this one smelled like vanilla. Like the soap. The towel felt excellent as he rubbed it therapeutically against his head.
As he heard a noise, he stopped. When he heard it definitively he froze.
“Adrian, are you coming out anytime soon?” came the unmistakable voice of Alyssa Haines.