The Unfortunate Master Of The Apocalypse

Chapter 3: Hard Decision

The voices above him went quiet. Ethan watched Nomy come down the stairs toward him, slower than usual, like she needed the extra steps to decide what to say.

“Well?” Ethan closed the notebook.

“We talked about the door. About who would keep watch tonight. Leon assigned three people. You're not among them.” She sat close, but something in her wasn't close at all. “We talked about moving. It isn't safe here anymore. Leon will make an announcement tomorrow.” She paused. “It's been a long day. I'm going to bed. Are you coming?”

He let her pull him up to the sleeping quarters. He didn't ask what situation needed to be decided by four people instead of twelve, because some tired part of him understood that if she wanted him to know more, she would have told him more.

Hours into the night after Ethan laid down on the mattress shared with Nomy, he woke up for the first time to find Nomy turned onto her side facing away from him instead of toward him. A few inches of space nobody else would have noticed. But Ethan did. He lay there staring at the line of her spine and didn't say anything. He didn't sleep afterwards. When morning came he was already awake, and cleaned up distributing rations to the members. They still didn't meet his eyes. Nomy avoided him too. She spent the morning with Leon. Ethan personally took Priya's share and brought it to her. Her leg still looked bad. The only thing still keeping her from screaming her lungs out were the painkillers. They needed to get supplies sooner and faster. Leon later called everyone together once they were done with their morning activities, the useless half of the door dragged clear so people could step over what was left of it. Ethan sat near the back, with Priya who was propped against a crate a few feet off, her leg splinted, her face pale.

“We are no longer safe with the door gone,” Leon said. “We can patch it, but it is not a guarantee that it will keep us safe from every ghoul actively hunting close by.”

Nobody argued. They never really argued with Leon.

“Where do we go now? It would be hard to see any place as secure as here was.” someone asked.

“There's a place people talk about on the roads. A very large settlement that holds enough strong and dependable talents that ghouls won't even think about coming back twice.” Leon glanced at Ethan first then, everyone else, while he let it sit. “Some call it the Asylum. I've talked to two people who claim they've been there. One of them might have even been telling the truth.”

The word moved through the group like something warm. Ethan watched faces lean into it like it was a campfire in the middle of winter.

“And you believe them?” another person asked.

“I don't know. But staying here is a countdown to our deaths.” Leon's eyes swept the crowd and stopped on two people. “We are moving light. No dead weight. Which means Ethan and Priya--,”

The warehouse went so quiet that the slightest drop of pin could be heard.

“If it was just you,” he said to Ethan, his voice flat, “I would have told you last night and given you time to accept it. But it isn't just you. Priya won't be able to walk for weeks, making the rest of us move slowly thereby risking everyone.”

“He means because of me.” Priya's voice came out thin but carried. “Before tonight it would've only been him. I heard people talking. It was going to be Ethan. Just Ethan alone.”

Ethan was standing up, his face going pale at the realisation.

“Wait, what are you--”

“Say it,” Priya said, a color rising in her face that wasn't pain this time. “If his talent hadn't failed, I would be walking out with the rest of you.”

“Priya,” Caroline started.

“Don't.” She looked at Ethan, eyes sharp now instead of teary. “You said you got me. Right to my face. I believed you.”

“I did. For ten seconds.”

“Ten seconds wasn't enough. I know your talent doesn't work right. I know you didn't mean to drop it but knowing doesn't put me back on my feet, does it?”

Words hung in Ethan's throat. He was not sure what the right words were. He spent the last few seconds believing his failure had only cost him his own place here. He hadn't calculated whether it had cost hers.

“We made this group for a reason.” He turned to Leon, because staying inside Priya's anger felt like drowning in something he had earned. “All of us, together, because we could never survive alone. That was the point. Right? Nobody left behind.”

“The point was survival for everyone. That hasn't changed.” Leon didn't raise his voice. “We can't carry whoever costs the most and contributes the least. I’m not sorry at all. I'm only sorry that it came this fast. Everyone here has something to offer unlike you. Look at Priya, she is talented with her awakened weapon mastery skills, but now she's a liability all because of you.”

“Out here, survival's not a group project,” Tram said, not looking up from the pack he was cinching. “It's whatever you can carry and whatever you're willing to do to keep carrying it. Nobody is going to hand it to you.”

Ethan looked at Nomy. She hadn't spoken since the group gathered, and her silence had been the loudest thing in the room.

“Nomy. Say something.” His voice cracked. “You know I'm not useless. My plan about creating a safe haven is not a pipe dream. I promise I'm working towards it. You guys can't leave me now. I still have some use. Tell them that it's worth something.”

“It is.” Her eyes were wet,but her voice was steady. “It is worth everything. That's why it has to be you who builds it and you can't do that with us.”

“What?”

“You’re the only one who can. I believe that more than I've ever believed anything.” She took his hands, and he let her even though every part of him wanted to pull away.

“Nomy, we won't survive out there.” Ethan looked at her. His eyes burned as tears filled them. If he could get through to her then he could get to the rest. She could convince them too.

“You survived things that should have broken you. You'll survive this too.” Her voice broke, finally. “None of this is easy. I don't get a version of today where I keep everyone I care about. Nobody's giving me that option. I have to put myself first.” She stopped then started again. “Not because I want to. Because if I don't, there's no version of this where I'm alive to see you again.”

He waited for her to take it back. She didn't. But she didn't look away either. And something in her face was still fighting itself, still looking for a version of this where she got to stay. He had only one weapon left in his arsenal. A last resort if his previous method of convincing didn't work, this should. He looked her in the eye.

“Do you love me?”

Nomy didn't answer. Instead she reached into her bag and pulled out a small knife.

Ethan recognised it on sight. She had carried it since before he met her, the one she sharpened every third night out of habit more than needed. She pressed it into his palm and closed his fingers around it herself, like she didn't trust him to take it on his own, like she had already rehearsed this and knew exactly how long he would hesitate.

Her thumb ran once over his knuckles, same as always, and he hated how much that one small thing still worked on him. “You will need it. Out here, with Priya who can't run. You need something that works every single time you pick it up, that isn't your talent,”

“Nomy,”

“Don't you dare tell me you don't need it, because I've watched you try to survive only on hope. Hope won't save you and fight for you.”

He closed his hand around the handle. It was still warm.

“Did you ever love me?” He was looking at the knife, not at her. His grip tightened. If she had loved him, she wouldn't be leaving. She wouldn't be discarding him like this. Like he was nothing. He had been nothing before her. With her, he had started to believe he could be something. Now she was leaving him as he had always been. He looked up. Her eyes were red.

“I need you to tell me. Did you ever love me? Or was I just some tool to pass the time?”

“Ethan don't.”

“Answer me!” Ethan was breathing hard as he took a step forward.

“Okay, that's enough.” Leon pulled Nomy back toward the group, her face buried against his shoulder, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. Ethan watched them leave; he didn't notice Tram had come up, arms crossed, watching with a null expression. He didn't have a sneer this time.

“For what it's worth,” he said, “this was never personal. You're both going to have to get a lot harder to survive out here. I hope you've got it in you. I mean that.”

Ethan didn't know if he should be angry with Tram. Nomy had claimed all of it. He looked at the rest of the members. They were already packing. He met their looks of pity. They knew he would never survive no matter how he tried. His life was on a countdown. His and Priya's. He turned to look at her. She was staring at nothing in particular. Her gaze was empty. She too had accepted her fate. Ethan knew there was no point in fighting. They had already made up their minds and made their choice. Tram shrugged and went back to helping the members pack.

The packing took less than an hour. Ethan sat beside Priya as he watched the group move around him, letting the trust he had built with them fade away with every passing moment. Everyone knew about this and he was just the last to find out. He had been a fool to think that they would have his back like he always had theirs. His foolishness now had cost him everything. He watched them leave one by one including Nomy. Leon was the last person to go through the broken doorway. He paused, looked back at the warehouse while he avoided looking at Ethan directly. Ethan wished he would look at him so he would be the last person he saw before leaving but Leon didn't. He walked out without giving Ethan a look of pity at least like the rest of the members.

Ethan was still sitting down on the crate he had counted supplies, the only usefulness the group had thought of him. His hand was on his lap gripping Nomy's knife hard. He thought about it for a moment. How easy it would be to end it here, on his own terms, instead of waiting for a ghoul to do it for him. The knife was sharp. It would be fast. He would not have to watch Priya die or live long enough to fail her again.

His fingers tightened on the handle.

And then they loosened. Not because he finally decided to live. No, he hadn't decided anything. His hands were too heavy to lift, and somewhere under the exhaustion and the grief, a smaller, older part of him refused to let go. The same part that kept trying, even when it never seemed to work. He reached over and took Priya's wrist and she turned to look at him.

“What do we do now?” she said.

“I don't know.” He replied. For a moment he thought he heard something, like a sound carried in the wind, too far off to place. A scream, maybe. Or a ghoul. He didn't know if it was real. At the same time he didn't care. What he knew was that he and Priya were still alive. And that it was only a matter of time before whatever was making that sound be it real or fake, came to find them.