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Card 17: The Star

I awoke to the sound of rain.

Only a heavy downpour could make a sound like that. Rain bouncing off the roof, bouncing off the boarded-up skylight . . . The noise was loud, yet somehow peaceful.

I was in bed, I realized, but I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. And there was something wrapped around my leg. I didn’t much feel like sitting up and reaching for whatever mysterious thing it might be, so instead I closed my eyes and my half-awake mind puzzled over it. When I knew it was gauze, that my leg had been wrapped in several layers of gauze, the fog lifted. Images and sounds, the memories of them, came into my brain. The firecrackers, the smoke. The yelling, the doors slamming. The gang members and the fleeing neighbors.

I’m ashamed to admit this, but I thought of Max before I thought of Zeke. I felt like I was looking at a photograph, one with no emotions attached to it - the look of surprise on Max’s face, the way that he fell. Was he dead? Or was he, too, recovering in a bed somewhere?

And then I thought of Zeke. The way he’d looked at me, at the bar. I had gotten the impression that his outlook on life was similar to my own. I had gotten the impression that I was making a new friend, someone who could (possibly) become more than a friend.

Zeke was dead, I reminded myself. Zeke was dead, and I felt . . . did I feel anything? Sadness? Shock? No. All I felt, at that moment, was peaceful. Serene. Had I been given painkillers? Did I take some pills, for the pain (caused by my injury), before falling asleep? I didn’t know, or didn’t remember.

The rain landed on the roof, and the sound was beautiful. The pool wasn’t too far from my bed, and I imagined myself floating on my back, buoyed by the calm water. Lying in bed, so serene, I felt like I was already floating.

I opened my eyes, and Ario was sitting in a chair which had been pulled up next to my bed. That chair had not been there before, and I suddenly had a very vivid memory of the day I’d woken up in a school which had been turned into a military hospital.

“There you are,” he said. “We were wondering when you’d wake up.”

“How long was I out?” I asked, throat dry.

“About a day and a half.”

“I’m not in any pain. Why -”

“The doctor gave you some painkillers. Lots of them.”

“We have a doctor in this neighborhood?”

“We do now,” Ario replied. “She showed up about a week ago. She was living downtown with a bunch of other folks, in an office building, but they kept getting crap from some gang.”

“Imagine that.”

“Yeah.”

For a moment, Ario, the bright and inquisitive Wolf who’d been a college student when the world fell, looked up at the ceiling, as the rain intensified.

Julia came into the room holding a paper bag.

“In case you weren’t keeping score,” she said, smiling, “That was the second time Gunnar had to carry you home after you got injured.” Her eyes were bright with amusement.

“Hey,” Ario protested. “This time, I was there. Gunnar had your shoulders, I had your feet.”

As the memory of that returned to me, I looked around, wondering where the others were.

“Gunnar and Rex are out, with the doctor, getting bandages and stuff,” Julia explained, before I could ask.

“Second time someone’s had to do that for me,” I pointed out.

Julia laughed. Though it was August, the air in the room with the pool was cool. Julia, a slender Greyhound, was wearing a thick sweater, as was her way.

Ario helped me sit up, and I looked at the bandage.

“Some of our neighbors left yesterday,” Julia said, then. “They just - took off. Just my opinion, but I think more left than we know about. Anyway, the Rabbits down the block left a few of these behind.”

She handed me the paper bag, and inside was a bottle of Coke.

Grateful for the caffeine, I remembered I had questions.

“Max? The Beagle?”

“Dead,” Ario replied, abruptly. He turned and looked toward the pool before I could read his expression. “The doctor checked his pulse.”

I felt as though I were levitating above the bed, and, in a sudden flash of insight, I knew there was something Ario needed to tell me. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to. I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to say that he could tell me anything, even if it was something bad, and things would be okay. Things would work out the way they were meant to. I didn’t, of course. I knew I only felt that way because of the painkillers.

And besides, Zeke was dead. The Bear and his gang were still - I assumed - out there. We were almost out of food. The world was still a mess. How could anyone say that things were okay, or would be okay?

And, as well, the gang violence had disrupted our plan.

Shit, I thought. The plan.

Ario and Nat had come up with a plan for exploring the rest of the city. We needed to look for food, and we needed to look for other folks. We wanted to see how folks were living, out there in the city’s many neighborhoods - all of which we’d lost touch with. The six of us had been all ready to set out - but the latest round of gang violence had disrupted everything.

“Hey,” I said. “Obviously, the plan got messed up. I assume we’re going to try again? When are we leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” Julia answered. “Depending on the rain. But we’re going out to explore - not you. You won’t be able to walk for some time.”

“There are ten of us, now,” Ario said. He looked at me, and I could see a hint of pride and a glimmer of - was it hope? He smiled, and he sat up straight, suddenly alert and enthused. “Myself and Nat, Rex and Julia. Ramses and Selene are coming with us. And do you remember those two Bulldogs? They were living above that boarded-up laundromat. Jasmin’s coming, she used to go to Selene’s a lot, you might remember her. And there’s a Deer named Taggert - he’s young, and I’ve only met him once or twice, but Ramses vouched for him.”

“Gunnar isn’t going?” I asked.

“Gunnar is going to stay here with you,” Ario explained. “And the doctor’s going to stay here, too, sleeping on the couch. Both of them will be here to keep an eye on you.”

“Is my injury serious?”

“We don’t think so?” Intended as a statement, Ario’s reply instead came out as a question. “The doctor will explain when she gets here.”

“Where’s Nat?” I asked, then, after another mysterious flash of insight.

Ario looked surprised, then uncomfortable.

“She’s over at Selene’s,” he replied, quietly.

“Just tell him,” Julia said, gently. “I’m going back to my book. I’ll be on the couch if anyone needs me - but please don’t need me. It’s a really good book.”

She left, and Ario and I looked at each other.

“Nat doesn’t want to be here right now.” Ario said the words as though they hurt. Then he cleared his throat and he began to speak in a firmer, clearer tone. “She doesn’t want to be around you. It’s just - the thing is - she thinks you did the right thing. When you shot and killed Max - she’s glad you did it, but she’s not glad you had to do it. Does that make sense? Shit. I have all these thoughts in my brain, I have all this stuff I want to say, and . . .”

“There’s no rush, take your time,” I said, and Ario smiled and nodded.

Again, the rain picked up velocity. Again, Ario glanced up at the ceiling.

“We don’t have cops anymore,” he said, quietly. “Or - I don’t know - the courts, and lawyers, and all that stuff. So we couldn’t just, you know, call the cops. We couldn’t call the cops and say, hey, there’s this gang . . .”

“The world’s changed,” I said, stating the obvious.

“The world’s changed,” Ario agreed. “And that means we have to defend ourselves?” Again, he turned a statement into a question. He looked at me, possibly hoping that I had an answer. “We have to defend ourselves when someone like Max comes around. We can’t call the cops because we don’t have cops anymore. So Nat thinks you did the right thing.”

“I did the right thing,” I said. “I think - I don’t know, but I think - that Max enjoyed hurting folks - especially humans. And I wonder - how long would that have gone on? How many folks would he have hurt? And would things have evolved, at some point? Would he have just started killing folks? Max did kill that Lion, just because she stood up to him. So, I did the right thing . . . but I did it for the wrong reason.”

“Oh?”

“I wasn’t thinking rationally. I wasn’t thinking about how Max needed to be stopped - and what would be the best way to do that? No, I killed him because I wanted to. Because he killed Zeke.”

Ario looked surprised, then sad.

“Is that why you killed those two gang members?” he asked. “You didn’t have to. You could’ve tried to wound them, maybe shot them in the leg, or something. Right? Nat was really upset about that.”

“I suppose so. I wasn’t thinking, I was doing. In the heat of the moment, killing them felt like the right thing to do. In the army, I was trained to act on instinct - but I was also trained to see all the possible options, no matter what was going on around me. I should’ve seen that hurting them was an option. Probably the best option.”

“Seven gods.”

“Might as well be honest about it.”

“You didn’t have to kill them.” Ario said the words slowly. “Well. That’s why Nat doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be around you. She feels like Max had to be stopped, but . . . But you didn’t have to kill those other two.”

I still felt as though I were floating, but I had begun to feel like I was floating away from Ario. Away from Nat. Away from the others.

“I did the right thing, too,” Ario said, his voice so low I almost did not hear the words. “When I led everyone away. When I pretended that we were leaving you.”

“That was a smart thing to do,” I said. “You completely snuck up on those assholes. They thought you were gone, not coming back - and that gave you a chance to flank them, take them by surprise. It was genius.”

“Yeah, but - I had to leave you behind. And I knew you could die. Shit, I thought there was a pretty good chance you would die. And I did it anyway. Because I had to.” His voice cracked, and he looked troubled. “It was the right thing to do. I knew it then, and I know it now. But I hate that I had to do it. I hate that the world is the way it is now.”

For a moment, he looked like a boy, rather than an adult male. Then he pulled himself together, regaining the composure and calmness which were among his defining characteristics.

“Seven gods,” Ario said with a sigh. “I have to admit, I’m struggling with this. I know I did what I had to do, but I’m having a hard time making peace with it. And - yeah - I’m having a hard time accepting that killing Max was the only way to stop him.”

I never told him this, but I was glad he was struggling. I’ll admit that now, as I write in this battered old notebook. But I never told him.

Ario, I believed, was having an easier time than some of us with accepting how things had changed. He could accept it and face it. He’d be able to make the hard decisions that this new world would call for. But I did not want him to become more like me. Able to kill, for example, and not feel remorse or regret. If each hard decision, each difficult choice, were to come with a struggle, well, that would probably mean he was holding on to the better parts of his nature.

For a time, there was silence. Ario gazed at the pool. I stared at the bottle in my hands, as I thought about all the things that were gone.

**

The doctor was an elderly Terrier. Her voice was low and raspy. She appeared, and talked, as though she were in her sixties (if not older), but she walked with the confidence and ease typical of someone in their twenties.

Her name was Rachel, and she arrived with Rex and Gunnar. All three of them were carrying large paper bags. After the doctor greeted me, she began removing the bandages covering the gunshot wound on my leg.

“Let’s take a look at this,” she said.

Gunnar, the big Pit Bull, shook rainwater off his fur. Rex, however, grabbed a towel and ran it over his face and arms. The tall Great Dane looked worried, as he watched Rachel remove the bandages. Julia, holding her book, came back into the room. She positioned herself next to Rex, and put an arm around his waist.

Ario told me that he had to leave, to take care of some things.

“We might leave tomorrow,” he said. “The plan might actually happen, depending on the weather. I’ll come back this evening, to let everyone know.”

He glanced at Rex and Julia, who both assured him that they were ready to go, whenever. And then, with another glance at me, Ario went out into the heat and stillness of the fallen city.

“He’s really been amazing,” Rex said, referring to Ario. “No surprise, after all that craziness with the gang, we were all depressed and shaken up. And worried. Worried about you. Worried about what the gang might do next. And - um -” He looked embarrassed, for a moment. “We mostly thought about you, of course, but we thought about the plan, too. We didn’t know what was going to happen. Were we still going, were we not going? And Ario just - he just rallied all of us. Told us you were going to be okay, told us the plan was still on . . . Ario went all over the neighborhood yesterday, trying to talk to folks. Most of them hid inside, with the doors locked, and they wouldn’t talk to anybody. He wanted everyone to get together, so we could talk about the gang, but -”

“But a lot of folks left,” Julia interrupted.

“Yeah,” Rex said, with a nod. “A lot of folks left, without a word - we don’t know where they went.”

“Everyone in your little group was pretty shaken up,” Rachel said, as she poked and prodded at my injury. “And so was everyone else in this neighborhood. But your friend Ario talked about hope. He said that, sure, things are messed up now - but they don’t have to be messed up in the future.”

Ario was struggling to make peace with the decision he had to make, during the fight with the gang. And yet, in spite of his inner turmoil, he had - how had Rex put it? - he had rallied everyone. He had forged ahead, making sure that the plan was still on. Would I have been able to do that? I wondered.

The doctor, Rachel, began putting a fresh bandage on my leg.

“So,” she said, looking at me, commanding my attention. “You were sleeping when they brought me to you. So you and I, we have not yet had a chance to talk about your injury.” Finished taping up the gauze, she nodded, satisfied. “Well, the bullet went through, as you know. And it missed the bone. So far, there’s no infection. Is there damage to some of the nerves, damage to some of the soft tissue?” She shrugged. “Probably. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if we still had hospitals, with all their wondrous technology. An x-ray would be nice. But as someone wise and beautiful once sang, you can’t always get what you want. We’ll have to keep a very close eye on that leg. If we’re lucky, it’ll heal more or less the way it should, and you’ll be walking normally someday. Yes? But if we’re not lucky . . .”

“There is a clinic that we used to go to,” Rex informed Rachel. “It has a generator. We haven’t been there in some time.”

“Might be worth checking out,” Rachel said. She glanced at the bandages, then looked at me. “You won’t be able to walk for some time, but maybe we can find a way to get you to this clinic - where, maybe, I can take a closer look.” She sighed. “The wound looks okay now, but who knows? As I said, there is probably some damage in there I can’t see. And there’s always the danger of infection, yes?”

Some time later, the pain returned. Rachel gave me a shot - apparently, a high dose of something powerful. I felt warmth, then numbness, and, gradually, I once again began to feel as though I were levitating. As I drifted off to sleep, I was aware that Ario was in the next room, telling the others about the updated plan. The soft, muted hum of conversation was comforting, a gentle river flowing nearby.

Hopefully, they’d leave soon, to explore the city. They’d find other folks, and they’d find food. They wouldn’t run into anyone dangerous. Hopefully.

Falling asleep, I realized that I wasn’t worried about my friends. Surely, the painkillers had something to do with that. And yet . . . I was (on some level) able to think rationally. I thought about Ario, keeping everyone focused on the plan.

Ario, with his inner struggle and his doubts.

With him leading them, my friends would be alright. I felt certain of it.