The Seven Habits

He just barely bumped up against her cart with his and this crazy whore’s all over him. Scratching his face to beat all hell, kicking him in the nads over and over. He wasn’t the only one, either. Seemed like if she wasn’t fuckin’ them, she was flying off the handle and beatin’ a fucker down. Yellin’ all this fucked up shit, too. Like all her words were getting mixed up.”

He was obviously relishing this, and I was a captive audience.

“Your kill ass I’ll. She actually said that, can you believe that shit? First I thought it mighta been because she’d done gone postal on those fuckers. But it just got worse and worse. Got to the point where nothin’ coming out of that dick suckin’ mouth made any sense. Crazy fuckin’ bitch, my man. You’re better off without her. Damn psycho.”

And there it was. I’d expected four since I’d already had half of it accounted for anyways. But Steel just comes along and dumps number five and six right into my lap. Uncontrollable rage, muddled thinking. It’s like their rational minds are already shutting down, you know? As if they’re devolving into creatures of pure, primal instinct.

“You want I should take care of this little problem of yours? Special rate, seeing as I know you and all.”

I can’t remember exactly what I told the dude. I felt all breathless and shaky, like I’d popped too much speed or something. It was somethin’ about how this was personal… that kinda shit. That it was something I had to do myself but I’d keep him in mind if anything ever came up in the future. And he kinda laughed, only there wasn’t any real joy in it.

“But there is somethin’ I may need your help with, though.” I tell him.

He just stands there with his thumbs hooked in his waistband with this thin little smile stretched across that face of his.

And me? I’ve already checked off numbers one through six, man. I’m thinkin’ that maybe I don’t wanna wait around for that seventh sign, ya know? Besides, by then it’d be too late.

“I’m gonna need a gun.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

She must have retreated into the safety of sleep at some point during the night; Ocean remembered squeezing her eyes shut as if she could somehow force the memories of what she’d seen out of her mind. When she opened them again, she was facing the brick wall near the section that served as her bedroom. She could hear Gauge and Levi talking softly, their voices nothing more than a rhythmic lull occasionally punctuated by laughter.

Judging from the crackle and pop of burning wood, they were probably in the kitchen, most likely preparing breakfast. That she hadn’t been yanked from her dreamless slumber by rough hands and furious accusations let her know that Gauge had no clue she’d opened the forbidden door. What she’d seen on the other side was still her little secret, a mystery that she’d have to unravel on her own.

Or just forget about, she thought. You can just pretend it never happened. You didn’t sneak into that room, you didn’t see anything. You couldn’t sleep so you took a walk. Down the south tunnel, yes, but you didn’t stop at that door. You didn’t open it. You took your walk and came right back to bed. Would they be able to tell? Would they see the deception written across her face as clearly as the writing on the metallic signs bolted to the walls in the tunnels? Would they know somehow?

Ocean watched the light from the hearth flicker and dance across the wall, trying to keep her breathing as steady as possible. It was best to pretend she was still asleep, that would buy her a little time, at least. Maybe she could actually convince herself that it really hadn’t been anything more than a bizarre nightmare.

Maybe by the time the great chamber filled with the aromas of cooking food, the events of the previous night would already have started to fade. She’d rub her eyes as if they still felt gritty from sleep, eat her breakfast and go about her daily chores, just like she always did. She’d chew some of the food into a pulpy mush which she’d then feed to Baby. She’d clean any messes the infant may have made during the night, and tidy up her sleeping area. It would be just another day underground.

You can’t just pretend that it never happened, part of her mind insisted. You can’t!

A memory of her father flashed through Ocean’s mind. He’d taken an old piece of rope from the trunk of one of the cars and tied a white piece of cloth in the very center. Then he’d used a charred two-by-four like a pencil, scratching dark lines of soot against the pavement. Her father had made two different lines, each one parallel to the other but spaced far enough apart that she could have laid between them.

Next, he’d told her to take one end of the rope and he took the other. Each of them stood behind one of the lines, facing one other, with the rope taut between them. The white cloth was centered almost directly between the lines. Ocean remembered her mother rolling her eyes from the other side of the clearing.

“This is called tug-o-war,” her father had explained with a smile. “It’s a game I used to play when I was your age, honey.”

To Ocean, a new game was almost as much of a treat as the squares of dark food her father sometimes found, the kind that seemed to melt into sweetness upon her tongue. She’d jumped up and down, and wanted to clap her hands but, since she didn’t know the rules yet, she was afraid that dropping the rope might mean that she would lose. Instead, she chose to nod her head.

“You pull on your end of the rope, and I pull on mine. The first person who gets the flag over their line wins. Got it?”

Her father grunted and groaned as his face screwed up into an exaggerated grimace, and Ocean had pulled on her end of the rope so hard that she would have went tumbling backward if he’d suddenly let go. The heels of her shoes dug into the concrete and, even though she now realized her father hadn’t been pulling with all of his strength, her eyes were focused on that little white flag. She watched it inch toward her father’s line and set her jaw in grim determination as she edged it back toward her own. For close to ten minutes, the white strip of fabric shifted, back and forth, between the two. Finally, he let her win.

Now, so many years later, she knew exactly how that white flag would have felt, if it could. To be pulled in two opposite directions with the fate of the game hanging in the balance; to know that, sooner or later, one side would exert more force, destined to win out over the other. The only difference was, this wasn’t some silly little game her father had taught her. This was real. This was life.

A shuffling sound behind her made Ocean’s breath catch in her throat and, despite her attempts to feign sleep, her body stiffened.

Corduroy, she thought. It’s him.

At first, the burned man had been nothing more than an oddity. The fact that he didn’t eat meat was enough to make him stick out like a human in a pack of rotters. But he also had these fits, which Gauge called seizures. He would collapse to the ground or slump over the table, his eyes would roll back in their sockets so that only the whites were visible. Every muscle in his body would twitch and jerk so violently that his head and shoulders lurched and flopped.

One time, during a particularly violent storm, Ocean had seen one of the undead walk through a pool of water as lightning sizzled through the air and struck the street. The way Corduroy moved when in the grip of these seizures was very similar to the jerky dance that rotter had performed.

Over time, his curiosity had deepened into something far more sinister. Ocean noticed the way his good eye seemed to follow her no matter where she went. If she was rocking Baby, he was watching. When she came out of the bathroom, he was watching—always with a stare that seemed as cold and hard as the brick floor beneath their feet.

Soon, he began trying to approach her… but only when she was alone. He’d glance over his shoulder almost nervously, as if half expecting to see Levi or Gauge creeping up behind him. There was something sneaky and furtive about the way he walked toward her, something that always made her immediately dart away to the company of others, a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

It was natural that her reaction to the sound behind her was the skin on the back of her neck to feel as if it