The Reaper Virus (27 page)

“Do you know why they are drawn to the bus?”
I asked, assuming Phil had answers. I was certain he had heard me
yet he did not respond. “Come on man, what is going on?”

He sighed and spoke like he was delivering a
cancer diagnosis. “Just… just watch it closely for a little
while.”

I stared at the bus unblinking. All I saw
were rotting hands slapping and pounding against metal. It all
looked like an exercise in undead logic until I saw it… a
flashlight. “Are there
people
in that
fucking thing?!” I gasped.

“Yeah…a lot of them I think. Every once in a
while I’ve seen that flashlight move around. The way it moves… it’s
definitely someone that’s still alive.”

I rubbed both eyes, painfully reminding
myself that there was still a gash on my forehead. Seeing the
condemned bus filled my heart with guilt. It was all reminiscent of
the people I left behind at Headquarters. Now it made sense why
Phil was so hesitant in acknowledging the situation on the
paralleling bridge – he knew the truth of the situation. “You know
we can’t do anything for them… right?” I felt like a monster for
even saying it out loud.

Standing up, he looked eastward towards the
city. I could barely hear his response, “I know, but we get to
think about that until we can get off this fucking bridge.”

It took me a second to process what he had
said. I hadn’t even considered this. Now that I was aware of what
was going on next to us I’d have to listen to it until sunrise.
Moving off of the bridge would be suicide. Looking down the track
in the direction of home, I was shaken by not even being able to
discern the end of the bridge through the unforgiving darkness.
Maybe this was punishment for leaving all my coworkers behind. If I
wanted to live through the night I’d have to listen to doom falling
on a group of people I didn’t even know. This ordeal had shown on
multiple occasions that karma was a sadistic bitch when it wanted
to be.

Silence fell over us again. There wasn’t
anything that could be said. Pain kept me from moving. Phil
apparently fared better than I did as he paced around the area. The
crunching that came from his nervous steps became a pleasant
distraction from the pending horror to the west. It also gave me
some solace in knowing that we would hear any reapers approaching
us long before they’d be able to strike.

“Hey, Phil, we should rest, man. I hurt like
hell and need some sleep. We’re as safe here as we’re ever going to
be. God only knows what is coming tomorrow. Why don’t you settle in
and take a load off?”

He sat down a few feet down the steel rail
and again scratched at his ankle. He spoke in words that were
hollow. I fear the situation may be close to cracking him. “You’re
right. I’ll try to nap.”

The only thing that we could hear was the
flowing water and eager banging. It didn’t take more than a few
minutes to enjoy the grip of sleep.

* * *

0145 hours:

Something stirred me from an uncomfortable
sleep. There was a rustling sound nearby. I thought for a second it
was made by my own shaking in the frigid air, but that wasn’t it at
all. My eyes remained closed. Effort shifted to my ears. Hearing
was probably the only thing about me not reduced at that moment.
The cold numbed my body enough to put the ever-present pain to the
back of my mind. I tried to hold still and listened intently.

It was gravel. Something was disturbing the
gravel, but that wasn’t everything. I could hear a person going
through an array of sounds. There were moans. Then there were…
sobs? Panic set in. Immediately I assumed the undead were upon us.
Adrenaline burst into my system and forced my shivering body into
motion.

I threw my arm out and located the survival
pack nestled safely to the right and within seconds had the Kukri
returned to its proper home in my fist. My left hand found one of
the small LED flashlights in the front pocket. A full body flash of
pain was ignored to put me back on my feet. Panic overcame logical
caution as I turned the light on.

The light was blinding. This weak beam of
light was brighter than the sun. Our eyes had lived in darkness
long enough to make this light painfully foreign. I tried to see
through eyelids squeezed into a squint. Anticipating attack, I
swung to the east. The white beam illuminated about a hundred feet
of empty paralleling tracks. Relieved, but still panicking, I
flipped around to check over Phil on the western side. Again there
was nothing in sight. Then it dawned on me. There were only two
things on this bridge… and I was one of them.

I flipped the light downwards to where Phil
had been resting. He threw up his arm to shield himself from the
blinding beam. Panning the flashlight down I saw that he sat up
with one knee tucked to his chest. Phil’s other leg was stretched
out with the pant leg rolled up. I could see the oval-shaped wound
on his inflamed ankle. Blackened septicemic veins radiated from the
opening. His skin was discolored and moist looking. I should have
known this is what he had been fussing with all this time. I think
I did know - I just didn’t want to be forced to act on it.

“It’s not what it looks like!” he shouted and
jumped to unsteady feet. Even in the low light I could see the
dilated pupils. Sweat ran down his brow. Phil wiped his face with
the shirt I had given him. When his arm rose to do this I saw more
black lines spider webbing around exposed skin.

Everything about this made my heart sink.
Even from safety, this evil could reach me. “What do you think it
looks like, Phil?” I shouted at my unfortunate friend. “You were
bitten
. You were bitten and now you’re
infected! What did you think was going to happen?! Did you think
you were immune and I’d never know?”

He rubbed his head. “You don’t know that I’ll
become one of them… once we get back to your house, maybe I can get
patched up!”

“You will
NEVER
get
back to my house!” I hollered back at him. South of us the noise on
the bridge increased. Our presence had been noticed by both the
living and the dead. Phil’s face was ripe with betrayal. He opened
his mouth to speak and I cut him off. “I’m sorry this has happened
to you… really, I am.
But you can’t stay with
me
.”

Tears rolled down his face. “No! You don’t
know that! We should—”

“
WE
will do nothing.
There is NO
we
. If you come with me then
you
WILL
turn. I won’t let you stop me
from getting to my family.”

Rage bubbled through Phil’s panic. “What the
fuck am I going to do then? I won’t become one of them, I know it!”
He took a step towards me. I responded by stepping backward over
the railroad beam. I stood in the area between the parallel tracks,
in the center of the bridge, one hand keeping the flashlight
focused on this new threat. My right hand unconsciously moved the
Kukri to be level with the bottom of my ribs, pointed outward in a
defensive stance. Phil noticed this and looked offended. “What are
you going to do, Nathan?! Are you going to kill me or
something?”

Inside I trembled. Outside I was remarkably
stern. “No, Phil. I’m not going to kill you. Those fucking
things
already did that.” He shook his
head like a child denying wrongdoing. “You can’t come with me.”
Both his hands went up in protest. The light revealed black veins
going straight to the fingertips of his left hand. My next words
were some of the most unflinching I’d ever spoken. “Walk – the –
other – way…
NOW
.”

His disposition changed completely. I had
seen this many times over the years in mentally unstable subjects.
The man I pulled from the river, the man I traveled with for what
seems like forever, the man who saved my life – this man existed no
longer. A deranged and broken human being now stood before me. Phil
looked at the tracks and shook his head. In an odd calm he said,
“You think I killed her… you’ve never trusted me because you think
I KILLED HER.”

I was completely thrown off guard. What in
God’s name was he saying? “Phil… I don’t… I don’t know what the
fuck you are saying, man. Just walk away!” This is madness. I felt
like I needed to pinch myself to wake up from this nightmare, but
the next moment made it clear that I’d never emerge from this bad
dream.

Phil jumped at me. He threw his body towards
me with both arms out like a bear hug. I’ll never know what this
man, still as a living man, was trying to accomplish. The lunging
advance came to an abrupt halt at the end of my blade. Still
extended from my midsection at a ninety degree angle, the Kukri
pierced Phil. He let out a startled gasp and just stood there. We
both just stood there in shock.

This weapon had kept me alive by eliminating
the walking dead. I realized that it wasn’t my destiny to become a
police officer, because the thought of taking a human life was too
much. Now, when I looked down and saw the worn metal inserted into
the body of another person, the blade protruding from a point of
oozing life, the horror of my actions began to set in. I yanked the
Kukri free and in the white light saw several inches of it coated
thickly in blood.

“Jesus, Phil! Why did you do that?!” I yelled
at him. He took a step back and placed his trembling hands upon the
wound. Flipping them over, we both saw that they were imbued with
unctuous red. An odd calm overtook his face. He wobbled and stepped
back once again. I had to finish this. “I’m so sorry,” I said, my
words heavy and dreadful, “but now you won’t be like
them
…” The dripping blade rose over my head. In a
second I was going to murder a man.

He opened both eyes wide and stared directly
at me. My heart sank further when I noticed one eye was already
black. A demon was being born right before me. He stepped back
again. The railroad beam caught him at his Achilles tendon and
flipped him backward. Phil fell hard on the side of the tracks. The
impact was so loud I felt my own breath knocked out. There wasn’t
enough of the bridge to fully catch his fall. His head and most of
his shoulders fell over the edge. A loud crack could be heard as
Phil’s neck snapped back. Force from the fall somersaulted him
backwards over the edge… and then he was gone.

In the last second of seeing my friend’s legs
disappear into the abyss I screamed out pointlessly to him. “PHIL!”
This man was dead long before I stabbed him. I collapsed to the
tracks. It didn’t matter that he was already infected – I had just
killed a man. The pounding of my heart drowned out the sound of
Phil impacting the water below.

Behind me the Powhite Bridge became abuzz
with activity. I felt like running to the west and away from this
evil place. No matter what my brain screamed at them my legs would
not move.

Loud splashes turned my head around. I could
barely make out the shapes flipping over the guard rail. From what
I could tell, some of the more interested reapers around the bus
obeyed their unflappable hunger. The ghouls walked towards the
ruckus of my crimes and didn’t stop at the bridge’s end. They
flipped over and joined the River Styx.

Past them the darkness became dotted with
frantic lights. The people in the bus must have noticed the
diverted attention of their executioners. Desperation can make you
believe salvation it possible anywhere. They waved every light
source around. The bus was still heavily guarded by the undead.
Those that remained pounded against the side more incensed than
ever at the strobing lights within.

Tears streamed from my tired eyes. I
collapsed. My face was buried into the gravel. Every stinging pain
collected into the agony of body and soul. We passed the threshold
of too much days ago.

What had I become? I was still so far from
home. The only will to fight remained deep within the form of the
three faces I loved so dear, but how would I face them after this?
I was a murderer… a
monster
. Every moment
I breathed would be that of continued life as a monster among
monsters.

0430 hours:

I awoke from a sleep that I didn’t even remember
entering. The increased sounds from the Powhite Bridge continued
for over an hour. Eventually they simmered down to the boisterous
level of before, which ended a little while before.

First I heard the bending shriek of metal. It
was followed by the shattering of glass. Then the hoard became
uproarious. A combined moan joined the hammering against the bus.
More glass shattering joined the chaos.

Then the screams started. First they were
muffled and I could barely hear them over the clatter of the
zombies. My mind painted a vivid picture. There wasn’t any need to
look. In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to peer past the steel rail.
I put my hands over my ears to try and stop the sounds from
reaching me. Nothing I did would save me. Nothing I did would save
them.

Those people I’d never met or seen were being
ripped from their coffin. A woman punctuated the scurrilous chorus
by releasing her last breaths in a scream. Without seeing I knew
she was being pulled from the bus. My imaginative vigil showed me
the cemented horror on her face as she was dispersed amongst the
writhing congregation.

The time I was subjected to the nefarious
dissonance was grueling. I nestled my face into the railroad
bridge. Gravel met me with coarse acceptance. The nagging pain from
my wounds gave me something to focus on other than my hate.

* * *

0545 hours:

I wasn’t fortunate enough to find sleep
again. Sorrow has an odd way of controlling time. It numbs you to
the true passage of events, even without focusing on a single
horrific event. I was overwhelmed to a point of temporal ambiguity.
The only thing that snapped me out of this state of suspended
animation was a lightening in the sky. Daylight approached.