Dante and I were performing the incredibly riveting task of starting a fire. He’d insisted we do it the manual way this time, instead of using his lighter, since he wanted me to learn how. We were sitting in an area he’d cleared off in front of city hall, each with our own separate set of sticks. The plan was to start two fires so that we could heat more water at once. Dante had several plastic tubs of rainwater to boil, and I was new to rubbing sticks together, so we were going to be here awhile.

  “So is there any place here you haven’t gone in?” I asked.

  “Oh I’m sure there is, but that list is pretty short. I probably missed some houses, but I don’t know which ones. I don’t go in the general store though. Surprised you came out alright.” Dante pulled a sucker out of his pocket, took off the blue wrapper, and stuck it in his mouth. I’d noticed that he was always putting stuff in his mouth like a toddler. Cigarettes, suckers, toothpicks, and occasionally his dirty fingernails.

  “Why do you say that?” My skin got that visceral feeling of being cold and hot at the same time.

  “Well, last time I went in there, I saw a demon.”

  Dante was quiet for a long time after that, and I was too scared to ask any more.

  “Just don’t go in there again, okay?” He looked at me with those hardened eyes.

  “Yeah, sure. I won’t,” I promised. “Is there anywhere else I shouldn’t go?”

  “I mean, it’d be safer if you stuck with me, just to be honest.” He didn’t look up since his sticks were finally smoking.

  I didn’t say anything else, deciding to let whichever of us pick a new subject at some point. I was a little afraid to find out what would happen if I tried to leave him. But if I stayed, how long did I have? He was treating me well, helping me out in every way. I just couldn’t shake the idea that he was hiding something. I couldn’t believe that there were truly no other people here either. Nor could I get over Dante telling me there was a demon in the general store, one that somehow didn’t kill me.

  I decided, as we began the long process of boiling the rainwater, that I would go exploring. I’d find some kind of weapon, and go look around. To assuage Dante’s fears, I’d leave a note.

  #

  DANTE, I’M GOING FOR A WALK. I WILL BE BACK AROUND NOON. I TOOK A HAMMER WITH ME. - RAT

  I’d left early, having very carefully gotten up while Dante was asleep. The town was bathed in an orange light from the sun rising. It made me feel, once again, like I was in a completely different situation. It was easy to feel that way when I was outside and alone. I could go back to pretending as though I was going on a walk with my dad to my grandma’s house for breakfast.

  My mom and dad had an arrangement. My mom would have several hours to herself in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays, and my dad and I would go find things to do. Mostly, we went to his mom’s house to eat breakfast and fix whatever was broken at the time. My dad always wound up taking apart some appliance or unclogging a pipe, my grandma nervously watching. When he was done, she’d try to give her money, but he’d kiss her on the cheek and refuse. We’d hug, and then my dad and I would wander around town until noon.

  I didn’t have a way of keeping time, so I planned on just seeing how high the sun was in the sky. The hammer I had in my hand was old, but solid. It had a thick wooden handle and a slightly rusty head.

  As I had before, I simply walked in the middle of the pavement, staring at the buildings around me. A department store called Cindy’s, with mannequins bearing colorful outfits, caught my eye. Everything was caked in dust. Across from it was a butcher shop. What remained of the meat had fallen in heaps, a mixture of packaging, bones, and who knew what else. The shop was called Bruno’s, and apparently it had been around since 1894.

  In between some of the buildings, I saw something moving. The muscles in my neck tensed. My muscles seemed to tense for nothing though, as it turned out to be a sheep. I was surprised to see that there was actually a large number of sheep.

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  “How you guys are just chilling here, I have no idea,” I remarked.

  I kept walking, only to realize that sounds of shuffling had followed me. I turned around. Around a hundred sheep had come out into the open, and stood behind me expectantly. Since I’d stopped, some of them came around and got in front of me on the road. I was surrounded. Cautiously, I began to walk forward. The sheep in front immediately moved to get behind me. Every time I stopped and turned around, I’d get surrounded again. I felt anxious, but I had to admit their eyes looked sort of sweet.

  I heard a guttural scream. The sheep bleated and ran around me, far down the road. My heart raced. The scream had come from the direction of city hall. Did something happen to Dante?

  I ran toward the brick building, yelling his name. My eyes widened when one of the white doors was flung open. Dante, with a tear-stained face, covered in sweat, met my eyes. The bright morning sun showed off just how many holes were in his threadbare shirt.

  “I thought you were going to kill yourself,” he panted. “I just, I thought you were a cool guy and this happens all the time and I just didn’t want to lose another one–” his body shook violently, his face a mess of tears and snot.

  “People keep getting taken from me.”

  I walked toward him, climbing the stairs. I wasn’t sure if I should hug him, so I opted to sit on the steps and pat the ground beside me.

  He sat down, his reddened eyes fixed on the stairs below us.

  “Every once in a while, I’m reminded that God is punishing me. I got here because I hurt people, so every person that comes here, I get attached to, or a lot of them anyway. But they always leave. They don’t want to be here, or they don’t want to be around me, and then they’re just gone. They never come back. It’s one after the other, over and over.”

  “I want to live,” I said after a while. I didn’t want to say that I’d never leave him, because that might be a lie.

  “And I think you’re plenty alright. You literally started helping me the second we met...after we got past the me-watching-you-pee thing.” I turned the hammer in my hands.

  He laughed half-heartedly.

  I wasn’t sure how to say that he was coming on too strong. Obviously, the stress of me not being around was genuine. It was still hard to fully grasp that he had been alone on and off for so long. Even in the worst case scenario, if he’d killed the people who’d “left,” he probably still regretted it for the lack of company. It reminded me of dogs who look sad after they bite their owner.

  “I just want to know what’s here, that’s all. I didn’t think it would make you this upset.” A white lie. I had figured there would be a reaction, just not like this.

  “I was going to take you around eventually,” he said, his voice hoarse as he used his shirt to wipe snot off his face.

  The word “eventually” left me with questions that I kept to myself.

  “Oh? Like a tour?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. Well, I won’t go off on my own until after that. How does that sound?” I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth.

  “Okay,” he paused, “I have to plan it out a little, and then we’ll go in a few days. It’ll take awhile for me to show you everything. That’ll probably take weeks, I’m guessing.”

  Good, that would buy me time.

  “Sick.” I stood up. He looked concerned that I was even standing up.

  “I gotta piss. Do you need to watch?” I half-joked.

  “Rat.” His eyes were really bloodshot.

  Goodness.

  “I won’t watch.”

  #

  He did, in fact, stand about twenty feet away while I peed on a small crepe myrtle. I could feel his stare on my back.

  The good thing about this tour was that it would hopefully give me lots of ideas for hiding places for if or when the time to ditch him came. It felt mean. If he turned out to be genuinely decent and just very traumatized, I understood. I just wasn’t willing to risk being in a situation where I wasn’t allowed out of his sight forever. That was no way to live, and one of the most truthful things I’d told Dante was that I wanted to live.

  Maybe I could try to negotiate some rules in the meantime. He had to give some wiggle room, right? I figured that if possible, we should try to find some watches. That way I could set up a system of ‘if I don’t come back by X, you can panic.’ If he wasn’t some serial killer, and just an ordinary guy, it’d do him magnitudes of good to learn to trust again.

  I had a thought that made me feel a little sick. It would be more concerning, much more, if Dante was gone for too long.