#year of

Sometimes, when he stopped and tried to take a deep breath of fresh air, that smell almost knocked him off his feet. The decay of the world didn’t help now, either. That earthy mix of death and wet earth–petrichor, Sarah said once–sometimes made him gag. But he wasn’t sure if that knee jerk reaction came from the smell or from the memories of Sarah. Whatever it was, he tried not to breathe too deeply. Deep breaths only brought misery and an ache in his chest that he couldn’t shake. 

The death didn’t stop. The desert painted with the limbs of his brothers, torn apart by the roadside bombs that sought to inflict the most damage, emotional and physical. The bodies no longer looked like bodies. They were simply puzzle pieces that no one could ever stitch back together. Closed coffins awaited them on their return home. Now it was no different. The floral nightmare bloomed from the broken and decaying bodies, tethering them to the rest of the infected. The broken bodies were traps for the living. The dead weren’t buried anymore. They far outnumbered the living. 

At the beginning of the outbreak, he clubbed an old lady over the head with a wrench, the sickening crack of her skull reverberating in his mind. Moments later, he coldly instructed Tommy to run over another, two-thirds of longtime neighbors dead at his hands. He could still see the viscera dripping from the wrench, Sarah’s tears shining in the amber light as they slunk down her cheeks. He’d been in hell before, but a part of him began to die that night, made worse by the shot that took everything from him. 

Everything after that point had been in the service of keeping him and Tommy alive. Tommy had been almost worthless that first night, showing restraint when he shouldn’t, wanting to help other people, showing up late and standing there in the dewy grass with the rifle in his hand while his baby girl bled out into the dirt. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. From the ground they came and to the ground they’d return. 

He just wished it took him instead of her. Only he knew better. In the quiet nights in the forest, while he was on watch for the first shift while Tommy slept, he tried to imagine Sarah in this world. He tried to imagine her shooting creatures that still eerily looked like people. He tried to imagine her hands covered in blood like his and Tommy’s were, but he couldn’t. Sarah was just too innocent, too kind. If the infected hadn't gotten her, her open and trusting nature would have. He would’ve lost her no matter what. 

The thought didn’t make it any easier. 

Nothing was “easy” in the former sense of the word. But inhabiting that space where the monstrous became the norm was almost too easy. It felt too familiar, like it was a skin he slipped into when he no longer wanted to remember. 

The first time he doused himself with someone else’s blood and came staggering out onto the leaf covered, cracked pavement he almost forgot who he was. He didn’t recognize who he had become, like he was outside his body and looking in. He didn’t even flinch when he stuck the muzzle of his gun into the soft skin of the person’s chin, the gun sinking easily between the space of the jaw. He pulled the trigger without blinking. When he returned to the camp he and Tommy set up, he didn’t say a word. He just unloaded the supplies he’d collected and said he’d go again in the morning. 

He ignored the fear in Tommy’s wide brown eyes. 

The next morning, he returned to that road and repeated the process, coming back with more food, more water, and more bullets to refresh their depleted stash. 

“What are you doing?” Tommy asked quietly as Joel ate some of the food he’d recovered. 

“Protectin’ you,” he replied shortly, glancing at him cooly. 

“You think I need protectin’?” Joel didn’t answer. “I asked you a question, Joel. Do you think I need protectin’?” 

“I think you need somethin’. I don’t see you goin’ out there. If you’re not gonna step up, then I will.” 

“I don’t need your help.” 

“Then why are you here, Tommy?” 

He watched his brother struggle for words. 

“To save you from yourself.” 

Joel chuckled dryly. “I don’t need savin’.”

And he didn’t. Definitely not from Tommy, and he wasn’t planning on saving himself. The violence made it easy to ignore himself and the pain he carried on his tired shoulders. He could compartmentalize the need to survive. He could push it away and keep it far away from the part of him that wanted to–no needed to–die. He could inhabit this person who was no longer himself.