In the city, under Mord’s constant and unyielding instruction, the meaning of words like “killer” and “death” had shifted over time. A killer was someone who killed for reasons other than survival. A killer was deranged and unpredictable, not a person just trying to get through another day. Mord taught us this because he was deranged and unpredictable, because he murdered people without any need or reason but simply because he could not change who he was or what he would become. Once I hit a woman with a rock. We encountered each other while both out scavenging on the same rubble-strewn street on the west side of the city. I had found a smooth piece of metal partially absorbed by a glistening red piece of flesh-like plant. I had no idea if Wick would find it of use, but it seemed likely since I never had seen anything like it before. As I turned a corner holding my prize, I came upon a woman walking. She was about fifty, wiry in the way survivors often are, gray hair hanging in sheets, clothing a patchwork of brown and black. She saw me and smiled. Then she saw what I held and her smile went away. “Give me that. That’s mine.” Maybe she meant, “That’s going to be mine.” I did not wait for her to get close enough to grapple with me; I could not chance that she was a harvester or a bootlegger for organs. I knelt and picked up a rock with my free hand and as she rushed toward me from the middle of the street I threw it at her, catching her in the forehead. She went limp, fell onto her side, breathing heavily. Then she got up and tried again—and I threw another rock, catching her in the head again. This time she staggered back, put her hands on her knees as she hunched down. I could see the bright red pooling from her head to the ground. She sat heavily in the rubble and put a hand to her head, looked up at me as I dropped the third rock I’d picked up. “I just wanted to look at it,” she said, puzzled as she kept putting a hand to her wound then taking it away again. Her eyes began to glaze over. “Just a look is all I wanted.” I didn’t stay to help or hurt her. I left. Did she die? Did I kill her, and if I did, am I a “killer”? – excerpt from Borne, novel in progress
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 01:25:25 +0000
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