By Amelie Johnson
I have nobody to blame but myself for bringing home that blasted opossum.
Last week, I gazed down at it, sprawled wounded and unmoving in a cratered building.
My conscience wouldn’t let me leave it.
So I brought it home.
Playing nursemen for the criminal cyborg started fine. Collin and I bandaged it, charged its port, and kept it watered. Soon, the opossum didn’t need direct care, content to sleep in the sun to recharge its solar-powered armor. Then, with its regained energy, it proceeded to investigate and disorder everything in the house.
Today, upon returning from the nearest water reservoir with our jugs, I threw open the pantry door to get some snake jerky and spooked the sneaky beast. It left… a mess. Of its bodily defense mechanisms. All over the shelf.
Then I checked our backup stock. Gone.
I glare at the menace. It blinks back at me with huge eyes, one black and beady, the other shiny with a green robotic lens. “I’m watching you,” I tell it, fingering the tranquilizer gun at my hip. “I know it was you that ate all the hardtack.”
Not that hardtack is particularly appetizing in the desert, but I can’t have some half-mechanical rodent filching our grub. I spent too long grinding mesquite pods and mixing in precious water to make us biscuits. Sadly, they didn’t turn out like the ones we remembered Mom making years ago. Mine cemented into bricks more like the ancient fare of sailors and pioneers.
I’ve never claimed to be a good cook. The apocalypse isn’t an ideal training ground for culinary art. But at least the batch would keep. Or it had been ready to keep. Did the cyborg beast even have a digestive system?
“Nasty rodent,” I mutter.
“It’s a marsupial, actually,” my younger brother says.
I round on Collin. “It’s a nuisance.”
Collin shrugs. “He might keep away some of the other critters.”
“Brave of you to call them critters.”
Collin crouches next to the opossum, brushing a finger over the fur sprouting between its implants. “He’s also diurnal, probably from whatever modifications he’s got. He can hunt with us! Won’t keep us up at night.”
I grunt, slinging my rifle across my back. “Daylight’s waning. Going to check the store.”
“I’ll go with,” Collin says, picking up the opossum and perching it on his shoulder.
I stare at him. “You are not taking that thing with us.”
Collin returns my stare. “He’ll get lonely, Zeb.”
I snort. “If he wants the company of the turbo rats, he’s welcome to it. But I’m not giving him another chance to steal food.”
“He might also chomp the ticks,” Collin counters as he follows me out the door. “And he could help us retrieve small things, so we could train him to climb for those…”
The opossum snuffles and gives a toothy yawn. I roll my eyes and tighten my mask.
Besides new drifts of sand across the roads and buildings, the town offers the same echoes it did on my scavenging trip last week. Billows of yellow dust cloak the sun, but heat still radiates from the jagged asphalt and surrounding dunes.
Sweat crawls down my shoulder blades. It’s too hot to be out. I was hoping the jerky and hardtack would last us through the temperature uptick, but Collin’s pet has forced us to forage early.
If God smiles on our hunting endeavor, maybe the aroma of salty human won’t draw every mutant beast in the area.
I adjust my rifle, sweeping my gaze across the road. Faint pattering and clicking waft from the distance. It’s still too bright out for the turbo rats, but if the dust clouds shroud the sun further, it won’t be long before their hunger overcomes their caution.
Ahead of me, Collin climbs a pile of detritus settled beside the abandoned convenience store. The opossum clings to his shirt, plated nails digging into his shoulder.
Intelligent creature, I’ll give it that. But not smart enough to survive alone, apparently.
At some point, I’ll have to seriously reconsider the softness of my heart. It doesn’t serve a guy well out here.
Behind me, something skitters.
“Zeb!” Collin’s call has me scrambling up to him.
In a minute, I’m overlooking the parking lot, boots activating to stabilize me an inch above the pile. I pinch my lips together. “That’s not good.”
The ground is boiling. Black bodies tumble over each other in their eagerness to get as close as they can. Glowing ruby eyes leer up at us, beseeching us to come down and play.
Guess the sun’s dim enough.
“Blast it all,” I mutter.
The rats swarm the base of our lookout.
We’re never getting into that store.
I snatch my rifle from my back and cock it, peering through the scope. Collin’s charge gun whines.
The opossum growls. I jerk, nearly losing my hold on my rifle. “Collin…”
The opossum leaps off Collin’s shoulder. It races down the pile, its claws extending into needle-sharp weapons. Its growl grows to a roar.
Rats squeal.
Teeth snap.
Rat innards spatter the ground.
And Collin and I are safe.
The opossum trots back up to us, nails retracting. It plants itself by my side, cybernetic eye whirring under its wiggling ears.
I stare at it. “I forgive you.”
Collin bursts out laughing. “And you thought he’d get in the way.”
Usually, I’d laser him with a look. This time, though, I just shake my head and clap him on the back. “In this case, I’m glad he did.” I nod toward the convenience store. “And cleared the way.”
Collin kneels and scratches our opossum around his shoulders. “Ready to rethink my idea about training him to help?”
“As long as we lock up the pantry when we get home.” I allow myself to grin at the rodent.
Sorry. Marsupial.
Maybe some softness of heart in the desert isn’t such a bad thing after all.
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I love a good possum story! Thanks for sharing.
Loved this!!
So fun and quirky! Love the details.