Afterbirth (4 page)

A voice came through the door.  “Gene, where are you?”

Gene, one of at least three men Nixon had sent after Reid, crawled on his hands and knees, trying to recover his flashlight, which had rolled under a metal shelving unit. He brushed a section of dark hair from in front of his eyes and pulled down the navy blue shirt riding up his torso. Six inches shorter than Reid and less muscular, he didn’t look to be much of a threat.

Reid watched from his hiding place on the other side of the operating room table and waited for the perfect distraction. Gene lay flat on his belly and reached into the darkness. When he knocked the light further away, Reid took his shot.

He grabbed Gene’s ankle and dragged him out into the open.

Gene screamed and kicked to free his leg, but Reid quickly and quietly overpowered him.

“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.”

Reid forced his arm under Gene’s chin and pressed his thick forearm into his windpipe. Gene tried to call for help, but couldn’t get out anything louder than a whisper. He twisted and turned, trying to snake his way out of the hold, but Reid refused to give an inch. His muscles shook as he bent Gene’s head back and the man’s breath became raspy and shallow. Gene clawed at Reid’s arm. Reid steadied the scalpel in his sweat-slick hand and pulled the narrow blade through Gene’s throat.

Blood sheeted over Reid’s hand, soaked Gene’s shirt, and pooled on the floor. Reid dragged Gene’s lifeless body into the scrub room, leaving a crimson path behind him. He picked up the flashlight, turned it off, and waited for the others.

“Gene, where are you?”

“Over here. I heard a door slam this way.”

“Wait, look. Footprints.”

Reid picked up the crowbar.

Two middle-aged men, older than the one he’d killed and both brandishing pistols, walked through the door.

“Shit, Mike. Look.” The bearded man cast his flashlight on the blood trail.

Mike backed away. “Jim, be careful.” His hands trembled, shaking the beam of light as he followed the blood trail.

“Gene, where are you, man?” Jim headed toward the scrub room. “Gene, are you hurt?”

Mike, the more nervous of the two, kept his distance.

“Dammit!” Jim said when he found Gene’s dead body. “Get over here, Mike. Give me a hand.”

Before Mike could answer, Reid grabbed him from behind.

“Drop your gun.” Reid held the crowbar across Mike’s throat.

Jim aimed his weapon at Reid’s head. His dark eyes narrowed, almost daring him. “And if I don’t?”

Reid put his knee in Mike’s back and pulled the crowbar. Mike gasped and tried to pry a finger’s space between his throat and the metal. “I’m not going to say it again.”

Mike struggled for breath.

“You’re not going to kill him,” Jim said. “What would be the point? Then you’re both dead.”

Reid pulled even harder. Mike’s breath came out as a whistle.

“All right, I’ll do it. Let him go.” Jim set down his pistol and Reid let go of the crowbar.

Mike stumbled and grabbed the end of the table. He coughed and held his hand to his throat.

“Get over there.” Reid shoved him toward Jim and picked up both of their weapons. Mike took several, long breaths. His face was red and sweaty. “Pick him up.” Reid pointed at Gene. The men hesitated. “If I fire this gun, it’ll bring on a horde that’ll make you wish I killed you both. I want you all out of here. Every dead body lying around here is a vessel for infection. You brought him in here, you’re taking him out.” He put his finger on the trigger for effect.

Jim looked around the room. “Isn’t there a wheelchair or something?”

Reid nodded. “Probably, but you’re carrying him. Call it insurance that you won’t make any sudden movements.”

Jim struggled to get a hold on the blood-slick corpse.

“Get over there and help,” Reid said to Mike.

The men lifted the body by the hands and feet and carried him like a hammock between them. Gene’s head fell backward and the skin tore at the incision. His neck hyper-extended and his spinal column, the main thing holding his head to his body, cracked.

Mike’s cheeks puffed out and he nearly vomited.

“Put him down,” Jim said. He rolled Gene’s body face-down and picked him back up, taking the strain off the wound. “All right, let’s go.”

Reid kept the flashlight on the men and marched them out in front of him.

“How are we supposed to get him up the ladder?” Jim asked.

“Not my problem.” Reid wiped the snot dripping from his nose, sniffled, and followed the men down the carnage-filled hallway.

“Hold it,” Reid said when they reached the ladder. “I’m going up first. You take your hands off of him and I’ll shoot you dead, you understand me?” He wasn’t about to have to chase them.

He backed onto the ladder and leaned into the cold metal for support as he ascended with his gun aimed at the two men below.

“All right, one at a time.” Reid stepped out onto the lobby floor and threw the men a rope. “You can use this to hoist him up.”

“I’ll go first,” said Jim. He tied the rope under Gene’s arms, climbed a few steps, and tugged the body level with the ladder. Mike struggled to keep Gene from sliding left or right. “Ready?”

Mike shrugged.

Reid shined the flashlight down the dimly lit hole. “Nice and slow.”

Jim tugged and blood spilled from Gene’s neck wound, covering Mike. Mike dry-heaved, Gene’s body slipping to the right as he failed to guide it.

“Hold him steady!” Jim shouted.

Mike’s cheeks puffed out and he pressed his lips tight together as he held Gene’s body on-track. Each step covered him in more blood, and by the time Jim pulled Gene’s body onto the lobby floor, there was little visible through the red but the whites of Mike’s eyes and his teeth.

Reid stepped back as Mike surfaced. “Pick him up.” Mike picked up Gene’s feet. “You, too.”

Jim reached for Gene’s hands and when he bent over, Reid shot him in the head. Jim’s body fell on top of Gene’s and blood spilled from his wound.

Mike’s eyes went wide with terror. A dark, wet circle soaked the front of his pants and before he could run, Reid shot him. Three corpses piled on the lobby floor and he was thankful not to have carried a one of them up.

He went to the elevator shaft and pulled up the tail of the rope.

“Let’s see what Nixon thinks about this.”

He rolled Jim, the bearded man, off of the pile and unbuttoned his navy blue shirt. His body was still warm and blood erupted from the thin lines as he carved the word “Keep” into his flesh.

Mike was next. He sliced open his shirt and carved the word “Out” on his chest.

He cut the rope in two equal-length pieces and fashioned a pair of matching nooses which he slipped over the men’s heads and tightened. He dragged the bodies through the main entrance and tossed the long end of the rope over each of two light fixtures, hoisting them up in sequence.

“Keep Out.”

The message was clear. He hoped whoever Nixon sent next would get it.

Frank’s head hit the van’s side window and he jolted awake. Sweat soaked through his flannel shirt and dripped down his sides. Seven months had passed and he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Holly’s skull shattering. Infected and flesh-hungry, there was no coming back from what his daughter had become. He tried to stop it, but the overdose of anti-virus had been toxic and it only made the change come on faster. The paramedic in him knew better, but the father in him refused to think rationally. It was hard not to shoulder at least some of the blame, and even more difficult to forgive Scott Penton for pulling the trigger. Frank imagined so many ways to get back at him, each worse than the last, and all against his grain.

Watching a stranger assassinate his only child had changed him.

He pulled a pack of Pall Mall’s from the center console and pinched a cigarette between his lips. He struck a match and the sulfuric smell reminded him of gunpowder and the filthy bathroom where Holly died. A ruptured aneurysm took his wife, Marjorie, and Scott had shot Holly point blank. He was alone and without purpose. Looking out over the run-down remains of St. Margaret’s cemetery, he wondered how long he had until he was among them. Not interred, as there was no one left to do him that last act of kindness, but deceased and likely left to rot where he fell. Most days, he prayed for that peace.

He reached across the cluttered passenger’s seat and opened the glove compartment. His heartbeat fluttered and he held his hand to his chest, breathing slowly until the dizziness passed. His pacemaker was failing. Having gone through a lead replacement already, he knew the symptoms. He waited for the faintness to pass, and when it did, he grabbed the pistol and the half-used box of ammunition he’d been going for. He thumbed several rounds into the clip and spit on the barrel, buffing the last traces of Billy’s dried blood from the metal.

Sunlight broke through the clouds and blinded him through the windshield. He put on a pair of dark sunglasses, and after a cursory check for undead, stepped out onto the cracked and weed-infested parking lot.

St. Margaret’s, the only cemetery in rural Strandville, was a testament to the town’s age. The oldest headstones marked graves that had been made anonymous by weather and time. Black mold marred the white stone tabs--some of which were intact, the rest broken and ignored. St. Margaret’s cathedral cast its shadow over the left bank of plots. A vestige of hope, many flocked to the church during The Collapse only to be devoured by unholy hordes with no sense of religion or morality. The busted stained glass windows on the ground level testified to the lost stand-off. Bones scattered in front of the church and throughout the cemetery told of those who hadn’t made it.

Frank leaned against the rusted entrance gate and pushed it with all of his diminished strength into the tall grass. The gate gave and opened just enough for his thin frame to fit through sideways. The grass crept into his pant legs and tickled his calves. His foot snagged on a sun-bleached femur and he kicked it away before heading toward the maintenance shed that had recently been broken into.

A broken lock hung from a rusted hinge and the door was ajar.

He made sure the safety was off on his pistol and went inside to look for supplies. A medical kit lay open on a weathered, wooden work bench. It was empty except for a half-used roll of medical tape and a pair of tweezers, both of which Frank pocketed alongside the flask of whisky in his chest pocket.

“What do we have here?” He reached behind an empty oil barrel for a pair of hedge trimmers and a hatchet, which he tucked into his belt. The van was full of assorted supplies, but everywhere he went he foraged for more.

He stepped out of the shed and looked out over the expansive memorial wasteland, settling his gaze on a patch of late-blooming blackeyed susans. He made his way through the knee-high weeds and used the hatchet to cut a large bunch.

Some traditions needed to be held onto.

He followed the trodden foot path to his family’s plot, sat on the grass in front of the makeshift wooden headstone, and split the bunch of flowers in two.
Holly Krieger, 1980-2012. Beloved daughter.
The homemade marker with the epitaph burned into it was the only option to an unmarked grave. He set half of the flowers on her grave and the other half on his wife’s, directly to Holly’s right. Tears rolled down his deeply creased cheeks and dripped onto the grass beneath him. He took a long pull off the flask of whiskey and sighed. With the hatchet at his side and the pistol in his waistband, he felt as at-ease as one could in open air. He spoke to both Holly and his wife as if they could hear him and wondered, when his time came, what was waiting for him in the hereafter. He’d killed Billy, and for that, he believed he’d burn in Hell.

“Frank?”

The sound of his name made him jump. He turned to see John Malkin standing behind him. Red lines shot through the whites of his brown eyes and his dark hair hung in messy curls around his sallow, unshaven face.

“What are you doing here?” Frank wiped the tip of his nose. He hadn’t seen John since before Holly’s funeral when he helped dig the hole she was buried in.

The silver heart promise ring on the chain around his neck glistened in the sunlight. “Visiting April.” He sniffled, having clearly been crying.

Frank held out the flask. “Join me for a drink? I never got the chance to thank you.”

John sat down next to Frank and took a mouthful of whiskey. “You don’t have to thank me. I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the service.”

Holly’s death preceded The Collapse by less than a month and the virus was already spreading by the time of her funeral. Those that would have come to pay their respects were either deceased or terrified and Frank was the only one, other than Father Matthew, the priest who led the standoff at the church, who attended Holly’s services.

“Don’t worry about that. No one did,” he said. “At least she’s at peace.” The familiar lightheadedness settled in and Frank leaned into his right palm to feel grounded.

“Are you all right?” John capped the flask.

Frank took a deep breath and waited for the dying pacemaker to fire. “Ticker’s about ticked out,” he said and sighed when he felt the slight jolt. He took the flask from John and drew another mouthful. “We can’t live forever.”

John lowered his eyes. “Ever think about speeding that up?”

There was an air of confession in the way John spoke and Frank looked him over. A grimy, white bandage stuck out from the cuff of his navy blue hoodie. “Who in what’s left of this world hasn’t? Some days I’d give anything to be with them.” He gestured at his family’s graves. “Lord knows even when that day comes, I won’t get back here.”

“That’s the thing of it. I knew I’d never get back here to April.” John pulled up his sleeve, peeled a length of stained medical tape from the gauze, and unwrapped the bandage. “I couldn’t stand the idea that if I died, I wouldn’t be buried next to her.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

The bandage fell to the ground and John turned his wrist toward Frank. “Think you can fix it?”

Frank examined the gash, which was deeper than he had expected, and sadness set in as he realized how intent the young man was on joining his deceased beloved. Redness surrounded the wound’s edge and it oozed a foul-smelling, yellowish fluid. “I can, but it’s infected.” He looked around the cemetery for another car or truck, wondering how John had gotten there. “Where are you staying?” he asked, hoping to clean him up anywhere other than the back of his cluttered van.

John pointed at the remains of St. Margaret’s. “In the catacomb, beneath the church.”

“Are there others down there?”

John shook his head. “Just me.”

“How about supplies?”

“Some.” John nodded.

Frank said goodbye to his wife and daughter and struggled to get to his feet. He handed John the flask and forced a smile. “Drink up,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”