Innocence - 5/26

A short while after eating, only Tony, Annita, and I remained in the camp. Marcos had tried to argue that Kat should stay, but Alex wasn’t leaving Rachel off the scavenging team for another day. All it took was one reminder of their deal for Marcos to let it go. Even Kat was now being expected to contribute for my sake. Her smile while walking off with a skipping Rachel, however, put me at ease. I’d owe her too by the end of this, and I am fine with that.

“Are you feeling ok, Tony?” I ask.

His expression shifts slightly, as if he is reassessing himself.

“Arms just a little pinched. Can use it if I need to, just wanted a day off.”

“Right. Well, thanks for helping Marcos back then, looking for Lan and all,” I say. I think about apologizing for making him see a corpse, but we had seen so many today alone that it was pointless.

“It’s fine,” was all he offered.

“Speaking of helping us,” I start to ask, pausing to figure out my own question. All I can come up with is, “Why?”

“Ah right, you all think we were monsters or something. Thieves and murderers and all,” Annitta responds. I am not sure I am supposed to answer this honestly, but I am in too deep to not at least try.

I nod my head, remembering the rumor of this group simply executing people for not being useful.

“Look, we already talked to Marcos about all this. We did what we had to do, nothing more, nothing less,” she says.

“And killing people?”

“Only when we had to,” Tony says, no hint of regret in his voice.

“But we had heard…”

“A rumor,” Annitta responds, “And a bad faith one at that.”

“And the whole gun thing before?” I ask, still lost.

“Would you rather starve while not being able to move, or get shot?” Tony asks.

If he had asked me this question before, I would not have cared, the outcome was the same. But now, after experiencing even a couple of days with less food, I understand the answer. They had offered someone an out. Someone who took it. Maybe they would have done the same to me if I had chosen differently. I didn’t need to know the details.

“And bringing me along?” I say, changing my line of questioning.

“You got lucky, that’s all,” Tony says, lounging back onto the pleasantly clear ground we had found to sit on.

“How so?”

“Bunch of reasons really. First off, Marcos is really handy, so we wanted him to come along,” Tony starts.

“And he is hot. Felt like ages since I’ve seen a guy like that,” Annitta adds. I didn’t disagree with her, but wasn’t happy that it was one of her reasons.

“Sure, hot, anyway,” Tony continues, “Useful guy with medical skills, but too much baggage for us. Then we come back, and almost all that baggage is removed.”

“All but you,” Annitta adds.

“Yup. So we take a vote, do we want a better medic and some dead weight, or stay as we are,” Tony says.

“And you voted to bring me? That seems…”

“Seems dumb, it is. It’s why none of us voted for it.”

“We made a mistake when searching your hideout, came back to bite us,” Annitta throws in.

It took me a minute to even have a guess as to what they were talking about. Then it dawned on me. There was only one person who genuinely seemed happy with this setup, who wasn’t hiding their pain behind jokes. One who hadn’t been seen with the group before.

“Rachel,” I reply.

“Yup. Normally, she hides while we interact with people, but we brought her in because of the rain,” Annitta says.

“And she wanted me to come?”

“More of didn’t think it was right to leave anyone behind. It's a lot harder to steal or hurt someone in front of a kid who thinks you are a good person,” Annitta says, staring coldly at me, all hints of joking wiped from her expression.

I’m alive on the whims of a seven-year-old.

I don’t respond, with Tony finally pitching back in.

“Like I said, lucky.”

Part of me wanted to know why they went along with Rachel’s plans, instead of just lying to her about why we stayed. But Annitta’s eyes told me it was best not to push what luck I still had any further.

“Which means, at least for now, you are one of us. You follow Alex’s orders, you don’t make a fuss, and especially don’t say anything bad to Rachel about us. Truth or otherwise,” Tony orders.

I didn’t need to respond to him; there was no other option for me, and we all knew it. Eventually, the hostile air dissipated. They had explained my place in this group, unstable as it may be, and that was all there was to say on the matter.

“So, how did you all meet then?” I ask, still curious about them but trying to stray away from our current circumstances.

They took turns telling parts of the story, adding additional anecdotes here and there in their previous joking manner. Like in their introductions, they described a bit of their lives on the day of The Big One, all from a similar area on the east side of the city.

When the quake hit, water had flooded the area, trapping them and around seven others in the same section of a high-rise building, which barely remained standing. Once they heard help wasn’t coming, everyone set out into the water to try and escape, of which these five were the only survivors. Tony had carried Rachel the whole time. From there, it was survival much as I had known through others' stories.

“Any idea why Rachel likes Kat so much?” I ask as they finish.

“No clue, they both hit it off the minute we got in there. Expected her to be unresponsive from Lucie’s recon. Might remind her of someone, for all we know.” Tony says.

“Screwed us over good though,” Annitta adds almost jokingly, not nearly as hostile as before.

Unless Kat started talking to us, we may never know what connected the two, but it seemed important to both of them. Now it was just as important for me to keep alive. Not that I could do much, but I would have to make sure that those two remained safe.

Am I being selfish again?

It didn’t matter. Selfish or not, keeping two people happy until the world ended seemed like a net positive I could aim for. One step toward paying back the debts I owed. I mentally updated the goal that had dragged me out of the collapsing building.

Stay alive, keep them happy.

Now all I had to do was figure out how to pay everyone else back, and just from how he looked today, Marcos should be my top priority.

Marcos deserved to be happy for himself. He deserved a lot more than that actually. I needed to talk to him and cheer him up

Is that the only reason you want to talk to him?