I couldn’t let it happen like that. I couldn’t bear it, to go out like that. Like one ofthem. Her weapon should be used for putting down the undead, not for taking a human life.
No, that wasn’t it. I’ll be honest. I just didn’t want to die. Gary had told Marisol once about his days as a doctor, about the dying people he’d seen who would beg and plead for just one more minute of life. I understood those people in a way I could not understand Ayaan or Mael and their willingness to sacrifice everything for what they believed in. The only thing I believed in at that moment with that rifle pointed at me was myself.
My generation was like that, Sarah. Selfish and scared. We convinced ourselves that the world was kind of safe and it made us make bad choices. I’m not so worried about you anymore, or your generation. You will be warriors, strong and fierce.
I reached up and touched the barrel with one finger. She roared at me, literally roared at me like a lion, summoning up the courage to kill me regardless of my wishes. I held the barrel in my hand and I swung it away from me.
“Promise me you'll look after my daughter,” I commanded her.
When I looked at her eyes again she was weeping. She left without another word.
I didn’t follow her, of course. I wouldn’t be going back to Somalia. I wasn’t going anywhere. It was too late for antibiotics, too late for anything. Still. I wasn’t ready to just give up. I sat down on the floor and rubbed my face with my hands and thought about what had happened, and what was going to happen, for a long time.
My leg went numb at one point and I struggled up to a standing posture with much cursing and falling down and a little bit of crying. I kept hoping to shake the numbness off. I fully expected the pins-and-needles feeling you get when your circulation comes back.
Just to have something to do I found a yellow legal pad and a pen and started writing this down. Everything that has happened, as it happened, since I left you behind, Sarah. It took me hours. My leg is still numb. The lights flickered every once in a while and I worried I would be cast into darkness for my last hours. So far I’m good, but, ugh, hold on I threw up blood just now. My body is breaking down.
Please, doctor. Just one more hour. Just one more minute.
Just…
Okay, I’m back, Sarah. I needed to black out there for a while. Now I’m back and I’m feeling a lot better, a little light-headed and forgetful, perhaps. Kind of hungry. Better enough that I can finish this letter even though I’m having a lot of trouble holding the pen now. I have Gary’s head on the table in front of me, watching me as I write. It doesn’t move or anything but it doesn’t need to. He’s in there hating me, hating Ayaan, hating Mael. Blaming everybody for his downfall except himself. He’s just like me, Sarah. Both of us looked death in the face, comforting, appropriate, timely death and both of us said no because we were scared.
You’re probably wondering something, or you would be if you were actually reading this. You’re probably wondering how I can know what he’s thinking. How I could write all those passages from his point of view, describing things I never saw or experienced.
Maybe you think I made it all up.
Or maybe you already know. Maybe you know that the room next door to the dispensary is a critical care ward. A room full of hospital beds and all the emergency medical equipment necessary to keep someone alive until they can be moved to a real hospital.
Equipment like respirators and dialysis machines.
Just one more minute.
David Wellington - Monster Island
END OF MONSTER ISLAND
Monster Island
Postscript