She

I have been keeping records for the past 3 years. Since we first found this house abandoned. This is what will most likely be the last of my records. My hope had been to pass these to our children and them to theirs, for the future I believed was bright. I thought it would be like a dark, distance history they would learn from, but not fully comprehend. As the holocaust, or the civil war had been to me. Now I only hope they will be left here, to warn someone, anyone and not taken or destroyed. But I suspect the future for them and for me will be filled with ashes.

She was lying in the woods, her long dark hair cascading away from her head over the dried brown and tan leaves. She was almost dead, pale, in a way that seemed unnatural for her. As though if we had met her before she would have been a different color altogether. She was lying there and we stared at her for maybe longer than we should have. At her hair, white-blue lips, eyes shut, the fur coat she wore, the purple shirt underneath and her black leather boots which reached her knee. She was not skinny, one might describe her as curvaceous or fat even, yet, she had the look of someone who had recently lost of a lot of weight. someone starving, the way her face fell in around her cheek bones and eyes. Those eyes surrounded by blue-violet shadows. Tattoos on her chest peeked through her coat and shirt.
No one trusted her at first. How could we? Human decency seems the first to go in disasters, and it seems to never quite come back as people adjust to living with out it. With out anything.
When she finally woke up she said nothing, only looked around like an animal. Her eyes darted from face to face and wall to wall. Her look of panic on her face, her hands in hand cuffs. She had sat straight up in the bed, her fur coat laid next to her, wearing that purple tank top she wore that was such a dark, deep shade of purple, that made her skin look all the more pale, all the more unreal, her tattoos black and blue and raised. The color of her eyes was shocking. At least they shocked me. They were darker than her hair and seemed to dark for her skin, they were black, solid black. Haunting, one might describe them- searching that room, searching our faces- as haunting. The way they stood out against her skin, inside the blue-green-violet bruises of her eye lids. someone told her that she should drink water and handed her a glass and she did. She looked at them and looked at the glass and then drank it. All of it, faster than i could believe.
And then she asked for food. Before asking where she was, or who we were. Before telling us who she was. Before asking why she was hand cuffed. She said so simply “I'm hungry, am I allowed to eat?” her voice was low, and quite, barely audible, scratchy. It seemed without substance, as though it were coming from a ghost, with no lungs or stomach to fully push it out. In another time, if we hadn’t known that she was starving and dying, it might have been sensual, as well. If it had been louder, maybe, or more substantial,  it could have been the breathy voice of a singer or an actress.
The 3 of us who watched her in that attic room all nodded our heads saying “Of course, of course you can eat”. The 3 of us, but not the person sitting in the corner, not Sal. Sal had been watching her so close and no emotion showed on his face as he said “What’s your name?”
She rolled her head to face that corner, like a drunk, like someone possessed. Her and Sal made eye contact. “Do we still have names?” she whispered.

Winter was ending, but it was still cold. It felt like it had gone on forever, and surely it must have. It was a chilled, crisp morning as we talked about what to do. Seven of us (All but Jude who sat with her upstairs, watching her)  sitting on the front porch watching the tall, yellow grass blowing in the eastern breeze, and the darkness of the pine trees beyond. Sal was clear when he said he wanted her to remain in handcuffs, to remain upstairs, with someone always watching her, “At least until we know more”. Rue and Max stood behind him, both leaned against the railing. Sal’s shaved head and strangely pale skin had a vague glow in the morning light. The look on Rue’s face was one of unease, even distress. But I couldn’t tell why. Sal said “what if she’s part of a group? What if she communicates with them somehow? They could come for her.  We can’t run that risk”
I think all of us tensed at the word “group”, not the word itself, but what Sal meant by saying it.
Rue shook her head. “Yes, but how do we know they won’t come looking for her now?”

We asked her if she was with others. She said she traveled alone. We asked her how long she’d been alone and she said she didn’t know. “Months, it has to be months.”.  We asked her if she saw others, if she saw cannibals. “Of course” she said. we asked her how she stayed hidden and she said “The trees”. We asked her where she’d come from, she had looked at us for a while and then said “Before all this I lived in LA. But I that was a long time ago.”
She liked jokes. Ironic ones, she liked telling them and hearing them. When she laughed her gray-white cheeks would turn pink and lavender and her lips red. She’d ask for one of us to get her cigarettes from her coat pocket (she seemed to have many packs, the cigarettes all brown with age) and she’d smoke with her handcuffs on. She would look at the ceiling and then squint just before laughing- holding her cigarette away from her body for a second. She’d laugh when we’d follow her to the bathroom. To my initial embarrassment she seemed to have no shame surrounding this. She’d laugh harder if someone seemed uncomfortable.

When we finally took her handcuffs off, when Sal and Jude finally relented, she already felt comfortable with most of us. Her and Kat had already planned to go on hikes to pick herbs. The two of them growing closer and closer and sharing a bond I didn’t understand. Not really that I didn’t understand, but maybe one I was jealous of. The way she looked at Kat, I wanted her to look at me that way. But, being out here so long, being with so few people, it’s hard to tell what feelings are real and what are a sort of improvisational. Like, being attracted to the only new woman I've seen in the last 2 years.
She had asked me recently when the last time I had sex was and I told her. I had a bold moment and asked her. “I guess it depends on what you call ‘sex’” she had said, matter of factly, not joking, her face twisted for a moment of contemplation. But she never answered.
With her handcuffs off she walked around the house staring at everything. Which only made Sal and Jude more nervous, maybe more angry. She looked at each corner, each window, the furniture and few pieces of art left on the walls from the person who had lived there. She made a comment that she had gone to Elementary school with the painter of a winter scene in that hung in the kitchen. I thought I heard her say “He was always better than us then, but now...”, quickly she had turned around, smiling and asked where the kitchen was.

She told me things in the cities were horrible. She told me that she saw things she never wished to see again. I nodded my head saying “I know”.
She turned toward me in that way that she did, focusing on me with those black eyes. “Oh, do you?”

Max, Tick and I sat on the porch sharing a cigarette and feeling the still heat of a summer which had finally come, although no spring had passed. at the edge of the woods we saw a person emerging, slowly. Not one of us, not anyone we knew. He stood right beyond the trees for a minute and then turned around. As he did so she fell from the trees on top of him, her arms moving swift, everything silent. In what seemed like slow motion we all stood up and walked to the edge of the porch stairs. She stood and turned to face us and from those 40 or 50 feet away we could see the blood dripping off her hands as she walked towards us. The man did not get up.
Sal came running out of the house and everything picked up speed again. He ran out towards her as she calmly walked back to the house.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” he was screaming. “What did you do? Who was that?”
They were face to face about 20 feet in front of the house. In a clear, low voice, but loud enough for us to hear she said “One of them”she continued walking towards the house, leaning over by the porch. She asked Tick to turn the faucet  on the rain barrel for her, which Tick did. She washed her hands and her knife off in the water and then quickly turned it off. She was always careful not to waste water.
Sal had walked out to the body and was now walking, swiftly (but not running) back towards us all standing, dumbly, next to the porch. Behind me I heard the high creak of the screen door and turned to see Rue and Kat coming out.
“I told you we shouldn’t let her out of our fucking sight!” Sal’s face was red and he was yelling again. She looked up at him from where she squatted pulling a shovel out from under the house.
“What happened?” said Rue, in a steady, soft voice. I suddenly remembered how calm Rue was, how sweet her voice had been when we had once, a very long time ago, been in love. Or had been desperate for love and settled with each other.
“She gutted him. She killed that man for no reason.” He turned to her, still kneeling next to the house. “You bitch.” he had said, “What the did you think you were doing?”
“Protecting you. And I'm not going to talk to you in this state, you’re acting insane.”
“I’m acting insane? Me?” he laughed cruelly and loudly. No one else laughed or spoke. “You just cut out a man’s guts, you sliced him open from side to side and you’re calling me insane? I knew I should have killed you”
She was already walking back towards the body. “Where are you going?” He screamed. He turned back towards us “What are you pussies letting her do? She just killed a man. She’s one of them, she’s a god damned cannibal and we let her in”
I felt like for a moment everything in slow motion, again. Everyone stood so still, maybe stopped breathing when he said that.
Rue was the one who started moving again, walking towards Sal, asking him to calm down. The only one close to him right then.
“Don’t you tell me to calm down, Rue! Don’t you tell me what to do while you let her get away with this.”
“Fine” she said firmly. “but don’t tell us what to do. You’re not a leader, you’re a bully. We need to find out what happened and we don’t need you screaming at us and acting as much like a lunatic as her.”
Rue was in front of Sal’s face and Sal turned from her. “Fuck you” he said quietly.
We all walked to the woods where she was standing, leaning on the shovel. The man’s body lay in front of us, his legs bent to the right, his left arm underneath him and his right arm lifted up to his face which was speckled with blood. His mouth was open, as were his eyes. He was wearing faded camouflage pants and a light brown shirt which was now mostly dark blood red and torn. It was hard to say whether or not it was torn beforehand. He had indeed been gutted, as Sal had said. His intestines fallen out to the right side, blood pooling around that side of his body.
Max looked at the body for a minute, blinking, he sniffed the air which smelled like iron and humidity, too sweet and strong. “How did you know he wasn’t from the other house, our neighbor?”
She continued looking down at the body, or the ground around the body. “I knew he wasn’t someone living out here...” she whispered. “I always recognize one of them”
Max walked several feet away and threw up behind a tree.
“I don’t remember him screaming or yelling” I heard myself say.
“He didn’t” she made eye contact with me as she spoke and I felt a chill run through my spine.

The night was as humid and hot as the day, but the wind was picking up, hinting at cooler weather. Neither Sal nor Max ate much of the greens, rice and canned ham we had for dinner.
“We could have captured him, and questioned him, like we did you.” Sal said finally, leaning back in his chair.
She smiled. “Sure you could have.” she said softly. “But we would have had to kill him eventually. And I question if any of you would have had the guts to do so.” I winced at the word “guts”.
“More than that” she went on. “I don’t think we’re safe here. I don’t think we’re safe anymore. He was a scout and they’re going to notice if he doesn’t come back in a day. They would have come looking for him and we would have had to move with him or his dead body. But, they are likely to come eventually, anyway. We need to leave.” she said the last part quietly, and then looked up, the expression on her face had changed to something more serious, her eyes glazing over.
“A scout for who? I’m so tired of your cryptic bullshit, you know that?” Sal looked at her across the table, sneering. “you must think you’re pretty clever, pretty goddamn funny”
“I'm not being funny anymore, Sal”
“He could have been with the government” Lee said. “He could have been searching for survivors.”
“You don’t want the government to find you. You don’t know what they’re doing” Her voice was suddenly emotional, tense, higher pitched. “You don’t want to know. God, can’t you fucking see? No one is coming to save you, they’re coming to further establish power, they’re coming... their only coming for the women.” Her voice lowered again, her eyes unfocused.
“If it’s really the government they would be coming to help us. If they want more power they need people, they need us to rebuild” Max seemed very serious as he spoke. “Whatever happened... however you know these things that you know... maybe it wasn’t the government behind it. We can’t stay here forever, either way, we need some kind of relief. It seems like we have the same chance of dying either way.”
She just shook her head, her eyes closed.
“None of us want to leave.” Rue’s calm voice broke the silence of all of us sitting in some state of anticipation. “We’ve been waiting for so long, some of us were separated from our families. Some of our families went to live in the camps and we couldn’t follow because things were so bad. My children went to a camp and I told them I would follow and then didn’t. I couldn’t go, and if they’re coming now, if the government is coming now I want to take this opportunity.”
She turned, slow, unsteady, reaching out a hand to put on Rue’s. “Rue, I’m sure your children are either dead or... or something much worse.”
Rue stood up and walked away.

In the night she came to my room and woke me up. A thunderstorm had started and the rain was hard rattling the windows. It reminded me of the summer thunder stores in Texas when i was a kid, when I went to stay with my grandparents on their ranch.
She stood over me, a lamp in her hand, her messy hair standing up from the humidity and static in the air. Her skin was wet with sweat (or maybe rain) and she smelled of body odor, and something like blood. She explained that when there was a break in the storm her, Tick and Kat were leaving. That they would not wait to find out who was coming for them. I sat up. It struck me that I didn’t really know her. That I had been advocating for someone who I didn’t know, someone who had murdered a man in such a brutal way. I had let my dick think for me, as many men do sometimes, in trying to keep her with us, trying to keep her happy. There was a chance she wasn’t even attracted to men.
I shook my head. She squatted on the floor and whispered “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you, I don’t want to leave any of you.” She put her free hand on my arm.
“Then why are you leaving?”
She sighed and looked away. “You know why. Listen, I think it will take them at least 3 more days to get here, when that scout doesn’t come back to them. We have time to get out of here, but not much time. You and Rue need to come. You can convince Rue, maybe, if you’re coming, too.”
“I don’t want to be running forever.” I said. “And neither does Rue.”
She nodded and then set down the lamp, I saw the outline of her arm moving behind her, the sway of her breast and then she placed something heavy and cold in my hands. She picked up her lamp, stood up and placed a small box of bullets on my night stand. “It’s not loaded”
I looked at her, holding the pistol in my hands. I rarely held guns.
“When they come shoot Rue in the head. You may want to shoot yourself, too. There’s 6 bullets in the box, one for each of you if you want.”
I sat in the darkness, speechless. She turned and walked out of the room.

“Good fucking riddance!” Jude said in the morning when Rue explained they had left. Sal said nothing. I didn’t mention the gun, or even that she had come to me.
The rain had stopped an hour after she left my bedroom, though the lightening had lingered. Lighting up the sky in the distance over the mountains. I watched it from my window, smoking a cigarette, wondering. I knew she was crazy. I maybe even felt bad for her. I thought if she had stayed I could have protected her from herself. Eventually the lightening stopped, all that was left was the black sky. I remembered that when I was younger the sky glowed pink from city lights. I wondered when the last time I had seen that was.
That morning the rain had started again. But the next day the sun came out and the blue sky was cloudless, the color so intense.
I went swimming with Max and Lee in the creek further down the mountain. The creek was flowing, the water deep and cool. Under our feet were burgundy, green, gray and pink rocks in intense shades. Above our heads the evergreens made a patchy canopy where rays of golden sun light fell through and we could see some of that blue sky I loved so much. The winter had lasted so long. The summer the year before had never stopped raining. I wondered when was it last I had seen the sky like that, when I last saw a truly beautiful summer day.

Two days later Rue, Jude and Max went swimming in the creek. They came back less than 40 minutes later, running across the yard to the house. They said the creek was red and smelled like blood.
“Could it have been iron deposits?” Lee asked
“It wasn’t that shade of red” Rue spoke slowly, she drew in her breath sharp. “It was blood”
The creek came from the northwest side of the mountain where, several miles further up the mountain it met what had once been the highway. Below the road near the creek was the other house we knew about, our neighbors. The house was not visible from the road, but it was large. It was large enough not to be missed if someone had traveled that far and then hiked down the to plateau.

“How do we know she didn’t kill them?” Sal said to me later, when we were alone. “How do we know she’s not going to come back to kill us?”
We sat outside the old barn, staring at the stars coming up in the dusk. The wind picked up a little swaying the woods around us and making the walls of the barn and the limbs of the trees creak and sigh.
“I don’t think she’s a cannibal.” I said.
“But you don’t know” he said. “I know I sound paranoid, but God, 3 months she lived here. It seems a long time for some scheme but it takes a long to build up trust. And she was getting our trust. She sure got Kat and Tick to trust her.” He rubbed his eyes and face. “I’m paranoid for good reason.”
“I didn’t say you were paranoid.”
“No, you didn’t. But I know you trusted her, too.”
I nodded.
The dusk had darkened and all that was left of the sun light was a line of pale pink and purple behind the trees. More and more stars decorated the sky as it turned from pink to purple to black.
“I don’t want to scare the others more, but I’m going to stay up for a night watch tonight. Like we used to do. Can I count on you to do it with me? In case they come back?”
I thought of the pistol in my room. I had placed it under my bed, the bullets as well. It occurred to me that we hadn’t found a gun on her when we found her. That I didn’t know where the pistol had come from. Still I said “I have a pistol, but I haven’t shot a gun in a long time”
If he was surprised about the pistol I could not see in the dark. He grunted and after a moment said “Well, at least you have it. I thought I was the only one with a gun.”
We shook hands, as we had not done in some time, then, as the last of the light disappeared, walked back to the house.

We went out on the roof, where there was a widow’s walk. I had spent a night with her on it once, telling jokes and smoking cigarettes. Now, Sal and I sat in the dark, 2 men with our guns, staring at the land below us. At some point as the night went on we smelled it: the smell of burning evergreens, and something else. Something acrid and chemical.

That was 2 days ago.We have been taking turns doing the night watch and this morning Lee woke everyone up to say that he had seen a fire in the woods on the east side. Now the sky was filled with smoke. We have been talking about what to do on and off all morning and now the evening is coming. And I know they are coming. Already I have seen 2 men, both wearing military style clothing. One in the trees and one behind the barn. We are hiding in the basement but I am sure they have already seen us. I hope to hide these records, but I know I cannot hide myself. I hold my pistol, keeping my eyes on Rue and wait.