Page 49 of Them

Lane looked away into the horizon, far beyond Washington’s pillar. “I… I d-don’t know,” he stammered. “I really… don’t.” He wasn’t searching for the words because he needed to fabricate them; he was searching for the words because he was truly lost.

They stood there, both quiet and still, until the man from the wasteland asked in that same elemental voice, “Why did you call?”

Lane cleared his throat but didn’t speak. He’s seen this before. Matted drifts of hair, scum seeped into his clothes, soaked gauze, gnarled fingers threatening the trigger, and that disastrous look in his bloodied eyes. It was the madness of someone who’d scraped and scrapped beyond the limit of human grit. Someone from whom everything had been taken, save for their own sorry life. Someone like the man Lane himself once was.

Lane took another step forward, keeping an eye on the man’s impending trigger finger. “Why would you turn back now? Why come all this way just to leave?”

“How do you know how far I came?”

“I don’t, but…” He took another tentative step. “Look at you. You… you need rest. Worse. You need help.”

The stranger stared at him.

“You’ve fought them, haven’t you? You’ve fought them and won. I can tell.”

“How?”

Lane laughed; he couldn’t help it. “Let’s just say it takes one to know one, okay? Besides, there’s no one else to fight now, certainly not each other.” He offered an earnest sigh. “I was hoping we could help one another out, but I’d settle for just being heard out.”

For the first time, the visitor took a breath and seemed to try and compose himself. “I changed my mind. We’re better off on our own.”

“You can’t believe that.”

Starting to back away again. “I’m bad luck, and you seem like a decent person.”

“You’d be surprised.”

The younger man continued down the stairs.

Lane followed, still reaching for the sky. His hands were starting to get heavy. “What makes you think you’re such bad luck?”

“It’s nothing to you.”

“It’s nothing to everyone now, pal. Everything and everywhere.” Lane took several stairs at once, catching up with the broken man. “Nothing’s all that we have left. Nothing’s all that matters to me anymore. Hell, I’d die for it.”

The wanderer shifted the shotgun from one hand to the other, his haggard face draped in shadow as the men moved farther from the lantern. “Then why are you still here? Why haven’t you given up like the rest of them?” There was something softer in his voice now. Something so heretically curious that it could no longer be spat out by the creature he’d tried to become.

“Because…” Lane said, lowering his hands and taking hold of the man’s shoulders. Up close, he could see the man for the child he really was. Beneath the maelstrom of violent paranoia, the man was afraid. “Because I’m not ready either. I’m not ready to give in…”

Lane trailed off, his voice brittle as he searched for a way to translate his soul into the proper vibrations. “I have words that I need someone… that I need you to hear. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever…”

Tears streamed down the wrinkled canyons on L.B.’s cheeks, and the man found himself hugging the stranger. Not just a comforting, performative hug, but actually holding this knot of scarred muscles. It was almost as if the man had blacked out for a second. He saw the old guy start to break down and… his body just… moved.

What am I doing? he wondered. He’d set the shotgun on the ground, out of reach, but the pistol was still tucked in his waistband, where the stranger could easily grab it.

But L.B. wasn’t reaching for the pistol. He was reciprocating. Holding the man too.

And Jesus, it was nice. Like hugging your grandfather. The man hadn’t done that in maybe twenty years.

Then he felt a tickle on his nose and realized he was crying too. Perhaps he had been for quite some time.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” Lane said. “Me too.”

The men held each other at the foot of the White House porch for a wide, stretching moment that felt as nebulous to them as their half decades of isolation. Their visions and phobias poured out of them, dribbling down onto the grimy sandstone path. They sobbed. They wobbled. They muttered questions the other didn’t understand. They met each other’s reddened eyes and began to laugh, cackling like two witches of a coven long since lost. They grasped each other by the shoulders, touched their foreheads together, and began to scream out all the maddening joy and terrible hope writhing within. They expelled their anxieties in the form of spittle and insane tears, two fallen gods lauding their ruined kingdom. Two fading scars. Two boxers who’d done no more than go the distance, but they’d gone it alone. They’d gone so very far, so very alone.

But no longer.