A human apart from me, I mean.
The Nahx has been creating a little hoard, it seems. Is he planning to keep me here forever? My eyes fall on the knife block. The paring knife looks pretty sharp. If I had some kind of a holster, I could keep it on me. As it is, weapons are hard to conceal in men’s pajamas. Socks, maybe. I could keep one in my sock.
There’s a faint noise behind me, and I spin without thinking, knife raised in my good hand, in as close to a defensive posture as I can get.
It’s only him, the Nahx, August. I recognize him by the scrappy state of his armor plates, the dirt, the scuffs, the star-shaped scar on his shoulder. He doesn’t seem to react to my knife apart from tilting his head slowly to the side. He slips his rifle from his shoulder and sets it on the breakfast bar.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” I say. “Unless you’d like to be filleted.”
Before I can blink, he has plucked the knife out of my grip, as easily as if I handed it to him as a gift. I step back as he lays his palm on the butcher block. Raising the knife above his head, he slams it down into the back of his hand.
“No!” I slap my hand over my mouth.
There’s a loud ping as the blade snaps in two. He shows it to me before tossing it away.
Edging back, I watch him reach out. He points to the joint in his armor over his wrist, bending his hand up and down to show me the plates opening and closing. He points to his elbow and the scar on his shoulder. Weak spots.
Now I’m cornered against the counter as he steps forward. I reach for the knife block again, but he gets there before me, shoving it hard onto the floor, where it crashes and slides away. One long, sharp knife remains in his hand. He flips it over, holding the handle end out to me. I don’t move, but he nods encouragingly, extending the knife, inviting me to take it.
I snatch it from his hand and hold it out, aimed at his throat. He flicks his head back a couple of times and steps forward.
“Don’t come any closer,” I say.
He takes another small step, until his neck is pressed against the tip of the blade. I feel it click between the plates. If I gave a hard push, it would go right through his throat. I want to. After everything I’ve seen these monsters do, I really want to. And I think he’s daring me.
I pull the knife back, clutching it to my chest. “There’s only one killer here.”
He hisses abruptly and strides out of the kitchen, across the living room, and out the door into the hallway. After his footsteps recede I notice he’s left his rifle.
Awkwardly tying a dish towel around my waist, I fashion a kind of holster for the knife, which I tuck into place. I can’t know when he’ll come back for his rifle, but in the meantime I can get a close look at it. Like him, it’s a dull gray metallic color. It even smells a bit like he does, vaguely chemical and smoky, like charcoal. It’s much heavier than any rifle I’ve ever held, so heavy it would be unwieldy for all but the strongest human soldier to carry. But the Nahx are very strong. We know that.
For months I’ve wanted to get a close look at a live dart. The only ones I’ve ever seen are spent—and they are completely empty, without a trace of the toxin left to study, according to one video I saw. Awkwardly, because of my bandaged arm, I prop the rifle on the breakfast bar and try a few switches and levers. As I flick something, a loud whine begins and a second later a dart thunks into a cupboard door.
I limp forward to inspect it, but hear him pounding back up the hallway. He mustn’t have been very far away. Turning back to the front door, I’m so surprised by his speed across the living room that I accidentally fire the rifle at him. He snatches the dart right out of the air and hurls it across the room. His hands slash through the air as he lunges at me.
Break BREAK.
I recognize that one. And he points at me as I stumble backward, sliding his thumb across his throat.
Kill you. Break you.
“Don’t!” I fling the rifle across the floor, sliding down to crouch in the corner, my good arm curled up protectively.
He stops moving, becoming still, apart from his breathing. After a moment where I stare at him from under my elbow, burning with the rage of being so scared of him that I can barely move, he raises his hands, palms forward, shaking his head. He bends down slowly, retrieving the rifle and slinging it over his back.
Dropping to one knee, he makes some signs. Break I see again, and he points at me, raising one hand like a half shrug.
Break you?
“No, I’m not hurt.” I’m trembling though, and fighting not to. It’s withdrawal, I tell myself. Cold, tremors, nausea. Maybe it’s the lingering infection. I don’t think I was this scared yesterday. But I was drugged then.
The Nahx pats his rifle. Hurt you, he signs firmly, a warning, not a threat.
“I won’t touch it again. I just wanted to know how the darts work.”
He tilts his head to the side again, retrieving the rifle. With a click, one of the darts pops out. He holds it out.
I’ve never actually seen a veterinarian tranquilizer dart in real life, but this one looks a bit like the ones I’ve seen in nature documentaries. Like a futuristic version of one, and maybe it’s blood rushing in my ears, but it seems to hum.
Touch. No. Hurt you. Kill you.
“Okay. I won’t.” I’m surprised how many of his signs I seem to know already. They’re intuitive, and I vaguely remember him talking to me while I was half conscious. I guess I absorbed some of it.
He slaps his palm on his chest and stands, holding his hand down for me.
“I don’t need help.”
He steps back as I struggle to stand. Then we face each other, him towering over me, me small, helpless, addled by drugs, bent with pain. I don’t think it would be much of a fight if it came to that. I have the little knife—that’s something. And I have my hate, my fear, my rage.
“Are you still using that rifle? Is that where you go in the day? Off to find survivors and kill them?”
He shakes his head. I want him to go away now, so I can suffer in peace. My head is on fire, throbbing so hard that I’m seeing stars. But I try to think like a soldier, or a survivor, try to ignore the pain and ignore how scared I am. I have to . . . make him care about me? Isn’t that how it goes in the movies? But that’s not really my style. And it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway.
“Why do you carry the rifle around if you’re not using it?”
He huffs a little breath, like he’s thinking about it. Look good.
I snort back a laugh, choking on the thought of how very human that is. So like a man to want to be armed for fashion reasons. But as he moves to leave me, my mind trips on another thought. I don’t think he said his rifle “looks good”; I think he said it “looks right,” as though to the outside world he needs to still look like the rest of them.
“August?”
He turns in the doorway.
“Are there . . . others . . . like you? Outside?”
He nods. You stay. Hurt you.