emptymouthpiece

Spare Parts

Part Twelve

It took two full days just getting the bunker door cleared and cleaned using ancient solvents and brushes so that it would close and lock. Another full day just taking stock of the first-class suites on the top floor and making a suitable place for the girl to sleep. She made quick work of understanding the stove in one of the least used suite but the concept of electric blenders, mixers, and can openers sent her reeling. Garrett decided to save the toaster and the microwave for another day.

“Those idiots chose to leave all this, we starved half the time, a bad crop away from death for everyone. Pushing dough around on rocks until my hands went numb, getting beat for not doing it fast enough. I’m…I’m glad they’re all dead.” The girl looked guilty at the last utterance but Garrett put a hand on hers. “No, you’re allowed to be angry. Be pissed as hell, you earned it. Even if their original reasons for leaving this place were legitimate, becoming the people they became doesn’t do service to them or the people that lived here so long ago. History judges a people by how they treated the most vulnerable among them, and sadly history is full of awful tales of lives lived like yours.”

“Speaking of the Believers though, I need to go out there tomorrow and make sure the laundry did its job. You had livestock too, chickens and goats. With enough work we could bring them and any necessary tools back here.”

The girl looked worried suddenly and looked at the now sealed bunker door. “What if it didn’t work on all of them? They’d kill you for sure.”

“Well I won’t go at first light that’s for sure. I was thinking of making the journey after dark, lights inside those huts should tell me the story and if there are lights, I’ll snuff them out. I won’t have you living here in fear of them.”

When the girl said nothing in response and kept her eyes on the bunker door Garrett continued, “My Aunt may have raised a coward and a backbiter, but she didn’t raise any fools. I’ll leave and come right back, one way or the other, you have my word there.”

“I know you will. I had no friends there, no kind of life. The way you talk, about killing, about yourself. March, the overseer you hit with the ax. He talked like you do, how he killed and didn’t mind doing it, but he always talked himself up. You always talking like you hate yourself.”

“That overseer was either a braggart…a liar, or a sociopath, which is just a fancy word for saying there was something broken inside his head. Either he was born that way or he saw or did or had something done to him that made him that way. I don’t have any of those excuses. What we did with that laundry, I’ve done it before, more than once. I’ve committed crime on crime, death on death. It should never get easier, or simple. Every murder leaves the world a lesser place, but murder is still necessary. I’ve had to wrestle with that reality and as time goes on, I know that the struggle never gets easier. Still, it happens either way. So, I diminish by necessity. I grow thin and pale and vanish because I just keep killing.”

The girl stopped looking out at the bunker door, she turned with tears running down her face and a tremble in her already stilted voice. “I killed them too, same as you. I gave you the cloth to wrap the plants in, I knew what you were doing. Is there something wrong in my brains then, because I don’t feel like that. Should I?”

“Not at all, those people did nothing but treat you like an unnecessary appendage. They should have taken care of you and for you, instead they used you and were ready to surrender you to the whim of sadists. You haven’t lost sleep for them yet and you have no need to start now. Just…this is the only time you’ll have to wonder or consider this sort of thing. Which is good. It all starts to stack up overtime and thankfully you won’t have to worry about that.”

“You shouldn’t have to worry either though. Not about them anyway.”

Garrett tried on another wan smile to save the night, “Of all my more recent atrocities, trust me, killing everyone you ever knew doesn’t way so heavy on me.”

The palsied girl smiled and laughed if only a little, “Well good, near all of them eared it. I’m Sarah by the way. Maybe knowing my name will stop you from thinking of me just as the loud girl with the shriveled limbs.”

“And I’m Garrett, you can still think of me as the guy who kills people and hates on myself, but now I have a real name instead of a fake one.”

Sarah smiled even wider, “Good, I never pictured you as a Jo. Garrett sounds better.”