Bitter vindication
No-one has mentioned Kirk since we got to the warehouse. I keep catching myself listening for his name, ready to turn and snap the speaker’s head off, but it hasn’t come yet. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I keep going over that day in my head. The way the Wolverines disappeared after the shamblers got inside, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. Their great plan of toppling a pile of metal onto our attackers. The broken window and the barricade falling on Dillon. The way they bounced around their targets, taunting them, like it was a game.
There’s not a single person that wasn’t hurt in all of it. Even Nugget was grabbed – she bears a handprint on her arm in vivid purple and blue. She’s sticking closer to Thorpe than usual, so I guess he was the one who freed her.
When I think about it, I get so angry. My chest grows tight and my eyes prickle. I can feel the words queueing up behind my teeth, pushing to get out. I want to shout at someone, I want to ask them, “What were you thinking?”
If Kirk was here, I would have ripped into him already. Probably right after all the injured were dealt with and poor Dillon had passed out from the pain. But he’s not here and I can’t bring myself to blame the other Wolverines as viciously. Kirk was the ringleader, the one who gave them bad ideas and encouraged them to carry them out. I can’t be sorry that he’s gone; everyone’s safer now. In pieces, but safer.
I heard Rico’s name come up earlier, something about him being so wrong.
It wasn’t until I stopped to think about it that I realised it was strange how the shamblers came at Kirk from behind, from the back room. There were no broken entries there; the attack had come from the front. The only place they could have come from was the room where the sick Wolverines had been. Rico and Sean. Now I remember Jersey’s frantic shouts and the surprise on Kirk’s face in a different light.
We thought they’d got rid of the bodies. They can’t have known what would happen, that the Sickness would turn their companions into the danger that stumbles down the streets, mindlessly sniffing out prey. None of us thought to tell them about it; I thought everyone knew.
Dale didn’t see them, but Conroy and Jersey did. Their friends tore Kirk down and ate him. It makes me shudder to think about it – I remember seeing Sax that way, empty and broken, coming at us with hunger. It makes my stomach clench up. Conroy has been quiet since it happened, doing what has been asked of him, trying to make sure that everyone is all right. Jersey has been increasingly snappish; I get the feeling that he’s as wound-up as I am and ready to punch something.
I can’t vent my feelings at them. It wouldn’t be fair. We all have our difficulties to deal with.
If I’m honest, I feel guilty about what happened. Kirk’s viciousness towards the Seekers was my fault after what happened between us. I hated seeing the face I cut every day and wondering when he’d get back at me for it, and now both reminder and threat are gone. That’s a relief to me, and that makes me feel guilty too. It’s ridiculous – he’s a grown man, responsible for his own actions, and he brought that cut on himself. But still. I shouldn’t be relieved he’s dead.
There’s something wrong with the world when all you want is a bad guy so you can feel vindicated in taking everything out on him.
- Category: 09. Compromises,Uncategorized