Questions & Answers

319 days until extinction.

Jackson could barely move after their rifle encounter, but he forced himself his feet refusing to look weak in front of the woman who had just gotten shot yet still managed to fend off whoever had been shooting at them. It was a brief walk to where the man had been posted up, Harper tried to get there first to cover up the body however it was not the first time Jackson had seen a dead body.

“He looks familiar.”

“What?” Harper looked up at him, the curiosity across her face plain at how unbothered he seemed.

“I’m pretty sure he worked at the garage I took my car to one time…he was nice. Didn’t overcharge me.”

Harper dug through the man’s pockets as Jackson spoke, pocketing the handful of ammunition that was left alongside a tiny packet of chewing tobacco.

“Well, he’s dead now.” Harper stood up, picking up the rifle and slinging it over her shoulder.

They walked in silence the rest of that day and as they set up camp there was an awkward tension in the air. It was the quietest Jackson had ever been since Harper met him yet it was an uncomfortable silence, one of heavy thinking and deeper questions. She didn’t exactly enjoy such deep questions, but she enjoyed the tension even less.

“Speak your peace, Jackson.” She said suddenly while heating up some of the vegetable broth they had prepared for the trip.

“Huh?”

“You’re lost in your own head. It’s going to get you killed if you aren’t careful, so speak your peace.”

He hesitated for a moment before asking, “have you ever killed someone you know?”

It was not the question she had been expecting, and it posed more of her own. So as she poured the broth into the pair of travel cups she replied, “I'll answer your question, if you answer some of my own. Is that fair?”

Jackson nodded, and she sipped at the broth slowly.

“I have. It was when I was enlisted. I was an MP, military police. I was involved in a lot of investigations into reported criminal offenses by enlisted officers. Not all of those investigations ended pleasantly.”

Another question clearly lingered in his mind but Harper quickly asked her own.

“Who exactly are you, Jackson?”

He looked at her confused.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you seemed completely unbothered by a lot of what just went down. And the way you reacted to the dead body leads me to believe it’s not the first time you’ve seen one. So I ask again, who exactly are you?”

Staring at Harper he let out a heavy sigh, hanging his head slightly.

“My father is…well let’s just say he isn’t exactly a legitimate businessman.”

“Drugs?”

“Probably. I honestly don’t know the specifics and I don’t want to know.” Letting his head fall into his hands Jackson pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes in hopes the tears of anger and frustration would not fall.

“Makes sense why you’d abandon all the comforts of home so willingly.” Harper finished the broth and set her cup down, pushing the other in front of Jackson. “Drink, it’ll ease your muscle aches tomorrow.”

He obeyed without objection, the liquid near scalding his throat yet somehow soothing the bubbling anxiety and dread in his stomach.

“It’s your question.” Harper said, bringing Jackson back from the past he was getting lost in.

Taking a moment Jackson looked directly into Harper’s eye. “Will you teach me to kill like you?”

Another question that took her aback, but was slightly less surprising now that she knew the world he came from. She let the words hang in the air, letting the gravity of what he had asked linger, making sure he felt the weight of each word before responding.

“No.” She raised a hand to halt the protest he was about to raise. “Let me clarify. I can’t teach you to kill like me. My dad was a survivalist and raised me to be one too, the military honed that instinct to a razor’s edge so that killing was second nature. To teach to that takes a lifetime, and we don’t even have a year.”

He looked at her quizzically.

“I’ll teach you what I can. The rest you’ll have to either sink or swim.”

Silence fell again until Harper broke it with her next question.

“Who is you want to kill?”

The look Jackson gave her told her he was hesitant to share, she suspected he was considering lying but debating if he could do so convincingly or not. In the end he told her the truth.

“My father.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? He’s a piece of shit.”

Harper shrugged, “lots of people are pieces of shits. Guy from the garage just shot at us, what was he?”

“He was…I don’t know! Why do you even care you’ve killed countless people what’s one more?”

A heavy silence fell and Jackson realized immediately that he had overstepped.

“You’re not wrong. I’ve killed a lot of people. Difference there is I was a soldier, and orders are orders.”

Jackson hesitated on calling her out on that, he suspected even she did not fully believe that, everyone had a choice in the end. But as he had no other avenues of accomplishing his tasks he did not want to make her feel any additional disdain for him.

“So I’ll ask again. Why do you want to kill your father?”

Jackson pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them as tightly as he could.

“For…everything,” taking a slow breath he continued, and with each word his tone grew angrier. “For this god damned farce of a life I have. Everything in it chosen for me, and the only thing that brings me joy he derides; unless of course he can somehow use it to show up some business associate. For making me a part of some contest I never asked to be part of! For moving me and my mother all across America, never setting down roots or making real, lasting friends. For all the god damned nights I fell asleep hearing her sobbing in the living room because he wasn’t coming home. And then for all the things I heard the nights he did.”

Another silence fell, this one less tense but heavy with the feelings Jackson had exposed. Harper sat observing this young man she has spent the past several days with and gave him a nod of understanding. She could see not just the anger in his eyes but the pain of years of trauma, and she knew she could do something to help.

“Okay, I’ll help you kill your father.”