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Chapter 8: Strength

“Well,” I said, looking around the room. “This is it.”

“This ain’t bad,” Gunnar said. He, too, was looking at everything. “You made it sound like it was smaller.”

“Yeah? There’s a joke in there, somewhere.”

“Something about size isn’t everything?” Gunnar’s amusement showed in his eyes. The stocky Pit Bull started walking around the space, checking it out.

“You and Rex took shelter here for - how long?” he asked.

“About three months,” I replied.

“It ain’t bad at all,” Gunnar said. “But - there’s no generator, right? So you didn’t have hot water, or heat? That musta been rough.”

“Yeah, February especially - but we got by.”

The big Pit Bull with the light brown fur peered into the bathroom.

“And you flushed the toilet with a bucket of water.” Gunnar was smiling, amused again. “That sounds like too much work. I think I woulda just pissed off the roof.”

“We did, a few times,” I admitted. “But, you know, we were trying not to draw attention to ourselves.”

Just then, Rex came through the door.

“The building seems empty,” the Great Dane said, frowning. “Those Rabbits who were on the second floor are gone. And everything - every floor - feels really quiet.”

“No generator,” Gunnar pointed out, again. “Folks who were squatting here probably moved on to better spaces. Just like you two did.”

I wasn’t, of course, going to argue with that. Rex and I had moved into Gunnar’s place primarily because of Gunnar himself - he’d become a friend, and so had Ario, the college student who’d also moved in. It certainly didn’t hurt that Gunnar’s place had a generator, and thus hot water and lights.

And yet . . .

I had felt a pang, moving out of this place - this office where Rex and I had been taking shelter. Yes, we’d used buckets of water to flush the toilet. And, sure, we hadn’t had heat in February. But it had been our space, and it had been a space where we’d been safe from all the craziness going on in the city. Because we’d made this space our own, it had been tough to leave it.

Then again, on the other hand, it wasn’t like Rex and I had moved out and gone on to something worse.

What we had at Gunnar’s place was pretty good, and we both knew it.

None of us knew how long the world was going to stay the way it was. A little while? A long time? Forever? Would things ever return to the way they were before the bombings that had happened in January? No one knew. But Rex and I had stumbled, quite by accident, into a friendship with Gunnar, and that had led to our moving in with him. And Ario was there, as well. And who knew, Julia might even move in someday. Whether or not the world stayed chaotic and uncertain, we knew that our little group had a good place where we could try and survive what seemed like (and felt like) the end of the world.

Rex and I both looked around, at what had been our sanctuary, and then we followed Gunnar out the door. I still had the key. I locked the door behind me, and the three of us made our way down the stairs and then out to the sidewalk.

Outside, a young Tiger was on the corner, using a can of spray paint to cover an old phone booth in an unintelligible design. Standing next to him, two beefy Mastiffs glanced at us, as we approached.

“What’s up, dogs?” The young Tiger asked. He looked at Gunnar, then at Rex. “Whatcha doing with this human?”

He glared at me, and I wondered if he was looking to start trouble.

The Tiger didn’t look very fierce, or strong. In fact, he looked like he wouldn’t top a hundred pounds while dressed in wet clothes. But he didn’t need to look fierce or strong, did he? With those two Mastiffs protecting him.

As well, part of the Tiger’s left ear was missing, and the scar on his cheek was bright enough to see through the fur. It was possible that he was no stranger to violence.

“He’s cool,” Gunnar said, lowering his voice an octave. “We’re cool, and you’re cool, and we’re just passing through. Right?” He turned his eyes from the Tiger to the Mastiffs.

“He’s a cool human?” the Tiger asked, pouring scorn into the word human. “How do you know he wasn’t an Insurgent? Shit . . .” He spat on the cracked sidewalk. “Might even still be one.”

“He used to fight Insurgents,” Rex said, calmly. He positioned himself almost but not quite in front of me. “He -”

“Is that so?” The Tiger interrupted. “Shit, that might even be worse!” He turned towards one of the Mastiffs. “Charlie? Do ya think that’s worse?”

“What do you mean?” Charlie looked puzzled.

“If he was an Insurgent, that’d be bad, right? But if he used to fight them, and they were still around to fuck up the world, well, shit - if this human failed to stop the Insurgents, and they went on to blow up everything, wouldn’t that be worse than being one? Wouldn’t that make everything his fault?”

“Hey, we don’t want any trouble,” I said, somehow able to speak before Rex and Gunnar - both of whom had been getting ready to jump in.

I positioned myself next to Rex, while bracing myself for whatever may come next. Looking at the Tiger, I couldn’t read his expression - I couldn’t tell what he wanted. Was he just messing around?

“No one here wants any trouble,” the Tiger said, an edge in his voice. He was, at that point, looking directly at me. “And there won’t be none, nope, no trouble at all, if you ain’t of those Insurgents.”

I thought about reminding the Tiger that the remaining Insurgents no longer called themselves that. They’d scattered to the winds, after the bombings. Those who were in the city had, apparently, all joined gangs.

I also thought about letting things escalate into a fight, which surprised me. I hadn’t felt that way in a very long time. The Tiger was leaning forward, but he radiated contempt - not anger. It didn’t seem like he really wanted a fight. So, again, I wondered - was he just messing around? Or - more likely - was he just someone who didn’t like humans?

Was he someone who blamed all humans for what the Insurgents had done? If so, he certainly would not be the only anthro to feel that way.

As for the Mastiffs, they didn’t appear to be interested in anything other than passing the hours of the day, perhaps by hassling a human who happened to walk by. One of them looked bored, and the other - Charlie - just looked amused.

In other words, I had no reason to hope that things evolved - or, I suppose, devolved - into a fight, and yet, I did feel that urge. I felt it, but I pushed it back down.

Instead of letting things escalate, I stared back at the Tiger, while I made myself calm down. Then I spoke, and I tried to give off a peaceful aura.

“I may be human,” I said, trying not to make my voice cold. “But I would never ally myself with some misguided douchebags who preached hate and separation. But - blame? You want to talk about blame? Sure. It was my fault. But it wasn’t just mine. There were a lot of us - there was a government task force, there was another task force in the army, and all of us, and I mean fucking hundreds of us, we were all charged with bringing down the Insurgency. And we failed, every single one of us. We failed, and now the world’s fucked up. So go ahead and blame us. You should.”

The Tiger had no idea how to respond to that. He just stared at me.

I felt a wave of calmness rush through me. I no longer wanted to fight. And I realized that thoughts of the Insurgency had been the cause of my wanting to fight, earlier.

The young Tiger may have been serious when he had wondered if I was an Insurgent (which might have been the worst thing he could think of to call me), or he may have been joking around. Either way, he’d touched a nerve.

Bad luck, or bad timing, that the human he had tried to mess with was someone who had not only fought against Insurgents, but who had also been taken captive (and tortured) by them.

So, yes, he had touched a nerve.

Lucky for him, I was able to control myself.

Apparently, no one else knew how to respond to the little speech I’d made. Rex and Gunnar had been startled into silence.

One of the Mastiffs looked away, suddenly interested in a broken window across the street. Charlie, however, looked puzzled again.

“Was any of that true?” he asked. “About you trying to bring them terrorists down?”

“Yeah,” I said, simply.

“Like I said,” Gunnar spoke up, “We’re all cool here. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, before the Tiger could speak. The feline glared at him, and Charlie seemed to sense it, even though he was looking at Gunnar. The big Mastiff turned, slightly, towards the Tiger, raising his hands in a shrug as he did so.

“God’s blood, Charlie,” the Tiger said, exasperated. Without another word, he turned his back on us, and he resumed spray painting the phone booth.

Then, as Rex, Gunnar, and I began to walk by, he spun around and said, loudly, “Hey!”

I didn’t slow my pace, but I did turn back to him, somewhat.

“It really was your fault?” he asked, his shoulders slumped. The can of paint was held loosely in his hands. He looked, suddenly, even younger.

“Not just mine,” I repeated. “But, yeah. It was.”

“Bullshit,” Rex said, quietly.

“Yeah,” Gunnar agreed. “Of course.”

The three of us kept walking, leaving the Tiger and his friends behind in the distance.

“I didn’t say it was only my fault,” I protested.

“You weren’t in charge or anything,” Rex pointed out. “Folks in the government were involved, right? So-called experts? With all their money and resources. Blame them, not yourself.”

“Yeah, blame those assholes,” Gunnar added. “Blame all those assholes in the government - in fact, you probably should.” He glanced over at me, as we walked side by side. “Don’t blame yourself. Don’t carry that weight, okay?”

And what could I say to that? Blame does not always arise from logic, and rational thought, and being objective about things that happened. Blame, like guilt, sometimes comes about because of the way you feel, not because of the way you think.

“You know what?” I asked. “I probably shouldn’t have said all of that stuff to that Tiger. But I’m glad I did. It feels kind of cathartic.”

“Ca-what-ic?” Gunnar asked.

“It means -” I tried to explain, “Well, it means - I feel like I got something off my chest. I guess I need to get this feeling out of my system. It’s just that -”

“No guessing about it,” Rex interrupted. “You really shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. Let it go. Get it out of your system, like you said.”

“Okay.” I stopped walking, abruptly, and Gunnar and Rex, startled, skidded to a stop. “The truth is, my unit - in the army - mostly dealt with the lower-level Insurgents. Mostly. We infiltrated, and then busted, those on the bottom of the food chain - the ones who were just given a task and were told to do it. We also dealt with groups associated with the Insurgency - folks who weren’t actually Insurgents, but they were inspired by them to commit acts of terrorism - and sometimes, the Insurgency hired them as freelancers. I was never involved with going after the leaders, the ones in charge, the ones at the top of the food chain. Folks in the government were supposed to take care of that.” I looked at Rex, then at Gunnar. I shrugged, casually. “I know I shouldn’t shoulder any of the blame - for the failure to stop the leaders. Shit, I’m pretty sure that the folks in the government task force only knew who some - but not all - of the Insurgency leaders were. Still, I blame myself. I blame everyone who was involved, at whatever level. It’s not rational, and it’s probably not healthy, but it is how I feel.”

“Okay,” Rex said, simply. “I get that. I understand, I really do.”

“Yeah,” Gunnar said. He gave my shoulder a brief squeeze. “We’ll help you get over it. Don’t worry.”

We started walking again. The buildings of the fallen city (some in ruins, some closed and boarded up, some full of folks and life) surrounded us.

The heat of the July day swirled around us, in all its radiant warmth. I, once again, felt grateful - not only for the friendships I’d found by random chance, but also for the fact that I had not turned away from them, though I could have.