Radio Silence - Part 15

Melanie sat in the living room in front of the small fire she’d managed to make in the fireplace with the help of a pile of newspapers she found stacked at the back door to be taken out for recycling. She sat cross legged, the rifle lying across her lap. She ran her hands up and down its smooth barrel. It was a nice feeling, cold and hard and smooth. The metal was turning warm from the fire. It was oddly comforting. She heard a noise, a loud bang. It came from the back yard. She stood, holding the rifle up and wishing there had been smaller guns in the house but if there were she hadn’t found any. She tip-toed through to the kitchen, the floor boards creaking in protest at her weight no matter how softly and quietly she moved.

She looked out the small window above the kitchen sink back out into the backyard that was still just a blanket of whiteness. She felt a slight twinge of guilt at sending Joe back out into the blowing snow, but only a slight twinge. She couldn’t see anything out the window. Slowly she ventured to the back door and looked through the glass of the screen door and through the glass panes of the wooden door behind it.

Again she heard a noise. A sharp, loud noise. She hadn’t imagined it at all. What? She wondered.

She eased the door open, squeezing through with the rifle first. In the distance she could see the small, ramshackle barn, just a vague, hulking shape in the never ending whiteness. Was the barn door open she wondered? It looked different, the shape. There was a darker area than before. Was the snow making her eyes play tricks?

Again she heard the noise. The snow distorted the direction the noise was coming from. It sounded close. Was it really close? Her brain was still fuzzy from the whisky earlier. And she’d found some red wine in the pantry as well and had cracked it open to have in front of the fire.

The wine gave her the courage needed to head down the stairs and into the yard again. She moved more confidently. Maybe some animals had got out of the barn, somehow, she tried to tell herself.

She moved through the field, lifting her feet up to get across the snow which soaked into her running shoes almost instantly. She jumped with a yelp when a figure came out of the snow right in front of her. Instinctively she raised the gun and held it, her finger pressing down on the trigger ever so slightly. Then she realized it was just the scarecrow again, the eerily human figure that stood at the border of the neighbouring farm. The one she had fought before.

She laughed, dispelling the nerves that had exploded inside her, putting her on edge. “Mr Crow,” she said, coming up so close to him she could see the patchwork on which two large button eyes were sewn on his burlap sack face. His mouth was drawn into a grin with a simple black marker. His nose was one of those puffy balls you could buy at craft stores. “You gave me a fright. Was it you making that noise?”

And then she heard the familiar sound of snow crunching under the weight of someone’s feet. “No. It was me.”

Before she could do anything someone grabbed her from behind. She screamed and the gun was knocked out of her hands.

“Let me go!” she shouted. She kicked her leg out and back like a mule. Her foot connected with the man’s leg, but he just grunted and held on, his arms wrapping around her waist, holding her arms tightly against her.

“Where is he?” the man growled in her ear. She recognized that voice, didn’t she? She hadn’t heard all that many voices in the last year, so when she heard voices at all, besides her own they stood out.

She was going to ask the obvious question “where is who” but a more pressing one fought its way to the front and spilled out of her mouth. “Frank? Is that you?” But it couldn’t be, could it? That was impossible. Maybe the whiskey and wine had affected her more than she thought.

“Don’t play stupid. You know who I am and you know who I’m asking about,” he said. Melanie could hear the anger plainly in his voice.

“But ….” She stammered searching for the words. “But how are you still alive? You should be dead. Joe threw you into the water!”

With surprise Melanie felt Frank’s arms loosen their tight grip. She threw herself out of his arms, and lunged to the ground, grabbing the chilled gun with frozen fingers. She could make out Frank as a dark shape in the white, his short dark hair stood out like a patch of shadow. But the rest of the clothes he wore were light – light khakis and a pale purple button down shirt.

“You don’t have to do this Melanie. Just tell me where Joe is and I’ll be on my way.” Frank took a step towards her and she backed up instinctively another few feet, increasing the gap between them.

Melanie had the gun pointed at him. Her fingers cold and sore and stiff, she hoped her trigger finger would work. “If I tell you where he is, you're going to hurt him!” she cried.

Frank cocked his head as if considering her suggestion, and held a finger to his lips as if mulling it over. “Well, I will certainly try to hurt him. But seeing as how he failed to hurt me…”

Melanie stared at him. Man the dude was totally crazy after all, she thought. “What are you talking about? Trying to hurt him?”

Frank laughed. “Oh I guess you probably haven’t figured it out yet, have you? Being thrown in the ocean, I kind of figured it out pretty quickly.”

“What, you figured out that you could swim?” Melanie said sarcastically, her mouth twisting into a sneer. She took a step closer. “You know I could just kill you right here. I’m the person with the gun.”

“You’re right. You do have a gun. And I have,” he made a show of patting himself down. “Nothing at all. So it looks like, in the old world, you would definitely have the upper hand. But now, I’m not so sure.”

“What the hell are you talking about man? Frank said you were crazy, and I didn’t really believe him. I mean, I saw you chase him with that knife and everything, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe you were just kidding around sort of. That you weren’t really going to kill him if you had the chance.”

“Oh I would have. But he just beat me to it. Or he would have if this whole end of the world thing hadn’t changed us somehow. Answer me this one question, Melanie,” Frank said, taking yet another step closer to her, yet he didn’t seem concerned at all that she was holding a gun at him.

“Did you feel different when the virus first hit? When everyone else was getting those symptoms and suddenly dying. Did you feel different from them? Feel odd or strange? But then you woke up just like normal. Except your friends and family didn’t?”

Melanie thought back to that time. It felt so long ago but felt just like yesterday. She did remember feeling weird. Not sick like her parents with the coughing and burning lungs, but still not 100% herself. She was getting impatient. “So? What does that have to do with anything? What do you want?”

Frank shook his head, the darkness flecked with large white snowflakes now. Slowly, he was disappearing with the snow. “You know what I want. I want to get revenge on Joe for doing what he did.”

“But he did what he did in self defence!” She said. Why was she suddenly standing up for him? She had been against what he did after all.

Frank shrugged. “Even so. A tooth for a tooth as they say.” He took another step toward her, closing the gap. She stepped back again and ran into the wooden slatted fence that Mr Scarecrow lounged against. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll shoot!” she threatened.

Frank grinned. She could see his white teeth at this distance even in all the white snow that surrounded them. “That’s exactly what I’m wanting you to do, Melanie. I want you to shoot me.”

Melanie stared at him in disbelief, her mouth hanging open. He took another step forward and she did exactly what he wanted.

The shot rang out, but it was strangely muffled by the snow.

~~~~~~

Check out the final part of the story (part 16) below! or also part 1 if you need to go back to the start.