My Dead World (17 page)

It was a massacre. As we slowly walked further from the SUV it became clear there were no infected around, leaving us to guess the answer to the one vital question – where did they go?

Pool house man died. The last of his body gave into decay and he ceased to exist. He was still in the shed, his head had separated from his body.  His neck was long strands of decomposing tendons. A part of his jaw had snapped off and his skull had a small crack. Cade guessed his demise was caused by oxygen hitting the brain, beginning that decomposition process and ending pool house man’s undead reign.

Of all the horrible things that happened, the end of pool house man was hopeful. A plague of undead realistically wouldn’t last that long. The worst part would be when the infected were still agile, still alive in a sense, and moving.

We retrieved the small RV from Big Bear and were able to grab the radios. Anything else salvageable had to wait. Cade couldn’t be gone too long from his patients.

When we returned, we parked the small RV on the side, freshened it up and moved Lisa and Boswick inside. My father didn’t want to leave his wife’s side, but Cade cautioned him it wasn’t safe. For my sake and my daughters, my father sat outside the RV door.

Cade sedated Boswick and Lisa. He said Lisa asked if it were possible to give her an IV drip of Jack Daniels. She kept her spirits, still unaware that she was infected.

Boswick on the other hand knew. He tried to put on a brave front but his fever grew worse and for confirmation that he was infected all he had to do was look down at his blackening arms.

He argued with Lev, and didn’t want to take any fever medication or pain relief.

Lev called him an “old stubborn bastard”. Like his dad he was putting on a tough front. I saw through it, Lev was broken. His father was his world and he was losing him.

We … were losing.

Lisa and Boswick wouldn’t be around much longer. The difference between caring for them and caring for Paul, was that we knew what we were dealing with.

Cade took a brief nap after eating a measly dinner while Edi was a trooper and held the medical post.  I wanted him to sleep more because I knew he’d be up all night. He wanted to take watch while keeping an eye on his patients. Lev stated he would keep watch, setting himself up on the roof of the RV.

Before the sun set completely we had put up sixteen more spikes as a secondary line of defense on the fence. The barbed wire was finished and I was confident that even if an infected tried to climb over, they’d get entangled.

Finally, the girls had fallen asleep. Hannah slept on the couch, my girls in their bed. Even though my father, Cade and Lev were awake, it was quiet. I wanted to play with the radio. I didn’t. Worried that the sound of the radio noise would wake the camp, I put the radio on my agenda for the next day.

After checking on the girls, I grabbed a very much needed and deserved drink to enjoy on the porch. Just as I settled, my satellite phone rang. It sounded so loud and caused me to jump from my skin. Knowing it was Bobby, I answered it on the first ring.

Oddly, the call had a lot of static. It didn’t make it impossible to hear, but it was odd.

I was able to tell him all that had happened.

He sounded upset but not as emotional as I thought he would be over Lisa. More than likely, Bobby had become desensitized about it all.

“Once the blood dries, it’s fine. The virus only lives on a surface for twenty-four hours. At least that’s what we found,” Bobby said. “Niles, what … what are you guys going to do about Lisa and Boswick?”

“The only thing we can do,” I answered. “We’re gonna wait. We want all the time we can get before we don’t have a choice. It’s heartbreaking. Dad is a mess even though he’s trying not to show it.”

“Just watch him.”

“I will. What about you?”

“It’s bad out here. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. This will be a dead station.”

“Are you headed this way?” I asked.

“I’m gonna try. But in order to get there, I have to go through a city. I’m gonna go through home. That way if I get stuck, I’ll make it to your house or dad’s and wait it out there.”

“We are so removed, Bobby. No news, nothing. We don’t even know what’s going on. We just know what we’re fighting here. We did get the radio system from Big Bear. I’ll see if I can pick up anything.”

“That’s good. Really good. Listen …” Bobby said. “If you hear anything at all, any chatter about The Green, you need to ….”

Silence.

The call went dead.

I looked to see if he was still there but the connection was lost. Immediately I tried to call him back, but after a single ring it went to this weird tone.

“Hey,” Cade approached. “I take it that was Bobby.”

“Yeah. The call dropped. No satellite signal.”

“It will find another to connect to. Give it time. Did he say anything?”

“He’s leaving to come here, day after tomorrow.” I set down the phone. “He started telling me that when I’m listening on the radio to see if I hear anything about something called The Green.”

“The Green?”

“Yeah. I wonder if it’s a new virus or something. He sounded like he was warning me.”

“You’ll have to ask him again when you speak to him.”

Not that I wouldn’t anyhow. I nodded politely to the suggestion and was about to pick up the phone and try once more when in the distance, a male voice called out, “help!”

I jumped to my feet.

The voice was in the distance, calling out and echoing through the hills.

“Help. Oh, God, help me!”

Where was it coming from? We all were trying to figure it out. I saw Lev stand on the roof of the RV. My father rushed by me into the cabin and returned with both rifles. He handed me one and Cade pulled out the pistol.

“There. I see him. Fuck!” Lev shouted pointing.

If the driveway was the north portion of the property, the scream came from the east. The same side as my garden. The same side where my father’s property met Big Bear’s.

Cade took off with my father. Edi, Manny, Bill and his son raced to the front of the cabin.

“What’s going on?” Manny asked.

“Mommy?” Addy called from the cabin.

I spun to Edi and Manny. “Go inside with the kids, please.”

They both moved as fast as they could to get inside the cabin.

Bill senior asked. “Who is that?”

“I don’t know. Can you get Billy inside?” I asked. “Just until …”

“Incoming.” Lev announced and climbed down from the RV.

Incoming? I wondered.

“Help!”

Rifle in hand, I ran to join the others and I saw what Lev meant.

The east side of the property was always a sore spot for my father. During the early quarrel years between him and Boswick, he used to complain that he could see the cabins on top of the hill and if he could see them, they could see us.

Edi even commented the other day that she could always see the light of our cabin from her spot at Big Bear.

It didn’t send warning flags off to me at all. I didn’t even think about it until that very moment.

All the lights were on.

In a dark world, we were more than just a beacon of light, we were a calling card.

Running down the hillside of the Big Bear property to our campsite was a young man. I couldn’t make out his age, but he was thin. His voice sounded young. He ran as fast as he could toward us and like the pied piper of death, he led a pack of infected.

“What is he doing?” Cade asked.

“Trying to get help,” I said.

“Raise that rifle,” My father instructed me.

I looked around, Lev, Cade and my father were all ready.

“It’s dark,” I said. “I can’t see enough not to hit him.”

“Wait until they’re close enough,” My father instructed. “There’s four of us, we can take them out.”

Did we really want to? Being a firing squad was going to be more of an attraction then a lit cabin. What choice did we have?

There was nothing we could do for the young man, but wait. He ran our way, looking back at those who pursued him, all while screaming for help.

Lev spoke softly, as if speaking his thoughts out loud. “Just veer right. Veer right, we’ll get them.”

If I yelled out those instructions, would the infected hear? Would they understand through their rage filled pursuit?

Fuck it
, I thought. When I could clearly see the young man, the infected hot on his heels, there had to be at least twenty of them. I hollered out. “Go to the front.”

He didn’t listen. Our property, our cabin was his salvation and the only thing between him and death was that fence.

Did he not see the barbed wire?

His hands slammed against the chain link and his fingers gripped with desperation as his eyes locked on mine. “Help me.”

“Go to the front,” I said.

He tried to climb. He made it half way up.

“You won’t make it over. Go to the front!”

It was too late. The infected slammed into the fence with such a force it was as if they didn’t even see it.

The young man screamed as the infected grabbed on to his legs.

My father was focused and didn’t hesitate.

Shoot. Pull back hammer. Shoot.

With precision he took out the infected one at a time.

Lev shot. Cade shot. My ears rang from the close gunfire. So much so they started to hurt.

Did they not see the man kicking and pushing the infected from him? In their way they were helping him by taking out the infected.

I didn’t fire a single shot. I was too busy begging in my mind for the man to make it to the barbed wire.

Suddenly, I ceased to hear clear voices, I didn’t hear the man or the scream he must have made as they pulled him from the fence.

Everything was muffled beneath a blood rushing, ringing in my ears.

The infected had him.

Four of them and they viciously pulled at him.

“Niles!” I heard the call of my name. From who, I didn’t know. It was buried beneath a buzz. I was terrified, the young man broke free from the infected, stumbled to his feet and grabbed on to the fence.

His gut was ripped open and blood poured from his neck. A large gaping bite mark was on the side of his face.

Again and for the last time, he stared at me. Calling out to me with his terrified eyes.

“Niles!” my name was shouted again. “Don’t just stand there. Do something.”

Do something. Do something. The words reverberated in my head.

The young man’s fingers barely held on to the metal of the fence as the infected pulled at him. His mouth opened in an attempt to scream. Through the commotion, gunshots and sounds of the infected, barely audible to me, the young man cried out, “save me.”

He looked to me, not the others, for help.

“Save me.”

He wanted and needed my help.

In that moment, I made a painful decision I would carry with me the rest of my life. I would save him. There was only one way to do so. Only one way to help him and free him.

I lifted my rifle, took aim, and fired a single shot into his forehead.

He fell to the ground and the infected pounced on him.

That one shot was my first of the night and also my last.

I was done.

Useless.

Lev, Cade and my father had things under control. I knew and saw that.

Rifle still in hand, I turned and walked back to the cabin.

There was no long periods of sleep for me, none. No matter how hard I tried to rest, every time I dozed off I dreamt of the young man at the fence. They were intense dreams, reliving the moment, causing me to wake up. When I did, I had only been asleep fifteen minutes.

I’d get up, down a double shot and try to sleep again.

In the dreams I knew him. He wasn’t a stranger running for his life and looking to me. The young man at the fence was many young men of the same age. Nineteen or twenty, barely time to live and learn. He was every young man I worked with, every young man I served a sandwich to. He could have been my child.

In each dream I knew his name. I would say to him, “I’m sorry, Jeremy.” or “I’m sorry, Josh.”

Just before I pressed the trigger.

When it really happened, why didn’t I say it? Why didn’t I just tell him I was sorry?

Perhaps because I wasn’t and that bothered me the most.

Unlike my father, Cade and Lev who were shooting violent infected, I shot a young man who was alive. He was that person whose injuries would kill him before the virus did.

Doing that finished me off for the night. I didn’t wander off and cry, I just wandered into the cabin.

I justified my action of putting the bullet in him. Justified it as the only right thing to do.

He was going to die. He would be torn apart. If we did kill every infected that had him, the young man would still die before we went beyond the fence and got to him.

His suffering ended in an instant, instead of a few hours or minutes where he’d bleed out. Or worse, get torn apart, inch by inch, feeling every layer of skin ripped from him.

I spared him.

But was I right?

What ate at me the most was the fact that I believed I was.

There was no wrongdoing.

What the hell was the matter with me?

I was numb. Perhaps it was the amount of alcohol I consumed in the moments and hours thereafter. I sipped on Lisa’s bourbon stash, while peering out the window at the men.

The kids all woke up. It wasn’t for long, within an hour after things calmed they went back to sleep. I still sipped.

Watched and sipped while Lev used a flashlight to count the bodies and when doing so, said names.

“That’s George Stevens. Gina Lang. I think … that’s, yeah, that Craig.”

Names.

Attaching an identity to each infected gave them sort of a momentary memoriam.

Lev said he counted twenty-three, then cleared his throat and added, “Not including the kid.”

The kid.

Did Lev need to call him a kid?

It was a new person Lev didn’t know. He saw him at the camp with his girlfriend. Lev was pretty sure the girlfriend chomped on his leg.

All of the bodies of the infected were still beyond the fence. We had a plan to wear as much protective clothing as possible and drag the bodies as far from the fence as possible.

One infected had made it to the barbed wire. Two accidently stabbed themselves with our spikes.

As I watched Lev poke and push that infected from the top of the fence. I wondered if all of us had some sort of internal wall for emotional protection erected in that moment, in preparation for things to come.

Only time would tell if that was correct.

<><><><>

It came as a surprise, but after everyone grabbed a cup of morning coffee, Bill informed us that he was going to take his chances and hit the road in his RV with his son. He had family in Ohio and was going to try to make it there.

I understood. I just wish I knew where else to go. I probably wouldn’t be far behind.

Bobby said to wait it out and I was beginning to wonder if that was the best idea. Were we waiting or sitting ducks?

I gave them some food, a five gallon container of gas and a radio.

I didn’t know Bill and his son very well, but I worried. I urged them to keep in touch, to radio as often as they could. He promised he would.  I held firm to the belief that we would see them again.

The girls, all three of them were working on the mural.

“One drawing only,” Addy explained to Hannah. “Each is a day.”

They got along well. I wasn’t a creative food person, or much of a cook. That was Paul’s job at home and Lisa’s at the cabin. Knowing our apples were just on the verge of spoiling, I sliced up a plate of them and gave them some of Lisa’s homemade caramel for dipping. That seemed to keep them satisfied while they did their art.

I would have to do better for lunch and I wondered if Edi was any good at cooking.

As I contemplated the supplies, I heard the sounds of chopping. Peering out the kitchen window I saw Lev holding a small ax just outside of the RV. He whipped down and cut small branches in half. He was like a machine, swing, cut, toss, pick up, repeat.

Although I joked he pulled out that hammer like Thor, I wondered if somehow he was inspired by him.

The satellite phone rang and I filled with excitement.

“I’ll be back,” I called to the girls and walked out the back door. “Bobby?” As soon as I said his name as I answered the phone, a rush of static hit my ear and I pulled the phone away.

“Connection …. Bad.”

“No shit,” I said.  “Bobby….”

“On my way. Be … soon. Days.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“It’s …ver.”

“What? Repeat that.”

“Over. Beyond control. Stay … put. Firebombing … bad. May … ities”

“Wait, did you say firebombing? Oh, my God. Firebombing what?”

No response. Just static.

I noticed Lev had paused and watched me.

“Bobby?”

“See… soon. Radio …. For Green….” Static.

Gone.

“Fuck. First a virologist, now a mystery message man.” I put the phone in my pocket and walked over toward Lev.

The last I saw Lev he had gone into the RV and never even said anything when Bill and his son left.

“Hey.” I approached him.

“Hey.”

Whap! Toss, pick up.

“How’s Bobby?’

“Oh his way,” I said. “I could barely hear him. So much interference. He said something about firebombing and to stay put. But firebombing what?”

“If I were to guess.” Whap! Toss, pick up. “Cities that are out of control.”

“Should we go after Bill and his son?”

“They’re long gone by now.”

Lev was steady as he continued his task, Whap, toss, pick up.

“So how’s your dad?”

“No better.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. Are you going to check on Lisa?”

“Yeah, I think I’ll pop in.” I moved to the RV.

“Don’t forget the mask.”

My hand reached for it and I paused just before grabbing the paper object. Bobby’s words once again rang in my mind

‘There are those who will get sick and those who will not.’

I took the mask, even though I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get sick. After caring for Paul, cleaning up the mess of blood, getting attacked by him, I of all people should have been sick. Then again, I had thirty days.

After placing on the mask I went inside.

To my surprise, Boswick was sleeping on a fold out bed in the front area. I guess I suspected he’d take the rear bedroom because it was his RV.

“Hey, Mr. Boswick,” I said, pulling the door closed. He looked pale, his skin was drained of all color.

“We must be really special for you guys to be taking chances like this.”

“You are. How are you feeling?”

“Like death. No pun intended.”

I lowered my head a little, not knowing how to respond.

“You know tomorrow is the anniversary of my wife’s death?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I’m gonna … I’m gonna try to hang on until then. Tomorrow’s a good enough day to die as any. I suppose.”

“You can’t think like that.”

“Nila, honey …look at my arms.” He raised them.

Even though bandaged, I could still see the discoloration.

“When I was twenty, it was my day to take my Aunt Mary soup,” Boswick said. “She was sick. I went into the house and found her in the chair. She died watching a game show. Her arms were dangling off the sides of the chair. They looked just like this. Imagine that. A body slowly dying while the mind knows exactly what is happening.”

“Do you think that’s the way it is?” I asked. “Do you think the infected know?”

“I think a part of them do. That’s just my thoughts.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m good.”

I nodded and started to walk toward the back.

“As a matter of fact,” he said.

I stopped.

“Keep an eye on Lev for me, will you? I’m all he has in this world.”

“I promise I will.”  I felt bad, really bad at that moment. For Boswick, for Lev. I walked to the back of the RV. Before I entered the room, I saw my father sleeping in a chair.

Lisa sat up on the bed.

“Shh,” she said. “He needs to rest.”

“Inside voice,” I said. I looked, next to her on the bed was what I believed was Lisa’s medicine. The straw was taped together to make a longer one and instead of extending from a pint, it extended from a fifth. “Did Cade make that for you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Do you want something to eat?” I asked her. “You look better.”

Lisa snickered. “Liar. And no. I wouldn’t be able to hold it down or in. This …” She patted the bottle. “Is the only thing keeping me from throwing up.”

“Really? I wouldn’t think.”

“Don’t want to waste a drop. Obviously, you never had a drinking problem.”

“Not one I’d admit to.” I sat on the edge of the double bed. Lisa inched over as if she were protecting me from her germs. I looked at her face. Her lips were puffy and so were her eyes. The capillary veins were very pronounced as they reached out like webs to her lips and nose.

“How are the girls? How’s Katie?”

“She’s … healthy.”

Lisa exhaled. “I blame myself. This right here is my Karma.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It was no one’s fault. You know Katie. She does what she wants. Remember last summer she left the house at four in the morning because she wanted Chinese food? Good thing you were out on the porch that night or who knows what would have happened.”

“The air conditioning was broke,” Lisa said.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Sore. Very sore and sick. Like my whole body is sick. I can feel the blood moving in my veins and it’s hot. It burns.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “So, do the girls know?”

“They know you’re sick. They’re both very sad and want to see you. They missed you at breakfast.”

“Who cooked?”

“No one really. I gave them apples and some caramel.”

“Oh, Niles, that’s a terrible breakfast.”

“Yeah, well wait until lunch. I have no idea what to make.”

After glancing to my father, Lisa titled her head toward me. “Under the sink, behind the bleach is a folder. I mapped out rations. What we would use each day, how much. Each week is the same. Behind it is another schedule that lessens what we consume. If you are still here in ten weeks, switch up the schedule. It will extend the rations. That’s if your garden doesn’t grow.”

“Why did you hide that?”

“Your father said it was ridiculous. But I was bored and neurotic, so I wrote it all out to make sure we had enough. There aren’t any recipes, but at least you will know to pull out three cans of this, four cans of that.”

I listened to Lisa talk, to how lucid she was. Had it not been for the spots of necrosis all over her, I would have sworn she was going to beat it. Then again, Lisa never showed she had problems. The only indication we had was if she drank more. And by the way she sipped from that fifth, Lisa was hiding a lot of pain.

We chatted a few more minutes and then I had to go. I had the girls to tend to.

“Just know,” I said as I stood. “I really want to hug you right now. Please know this is breaking my heart.”

Lisa sniffled and I could tell she was trying hard not to cry. “It’s breaking mine too. I love you all so much. You, Bobby, the girls. Niles, I could never have my own children. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter if I handpicked her. You have been a daughter to me.”

I had on gloves, I had on a mask and so I sat back down, took hold of Lisa and embraced her.  She needed it and I needed it. “You have been a Godsend to me,” I whispered to her. “We all love you.”

I heard a whimper and I pulled back. “I have to go. I’ll be back.”