This Dying World: The End Begins (30 page)

I saw her beige jacket.  It was the same coat that had protected her on the first night, cotton still hanging from the hole that had been bitten away from her sleeve.  The front had become slick with glistening red.  I saw her grandmother’s wedding ring on her hand as it passed my face gripping my Glock.  I suddenly noticed she had cut her hair short.  She actually allowed herself bangs for the first time in her life.  Her jaws were clenched, facial muscles tightened.

A burnt and blistered face appeared in the painting with its cracked yellowed teeth sinking deep into Abby’s throat.

My body reacted without thinking.  I grabbed the pistol from her hand and shot the thing between the eyes.  Searing hot gunpowder peppered our faces with tiny burning pinpricks.  The ejected shell bounced off my forehead as it flew by.  I heard Lexi scream something from above us between, but I wasn’t paying her much attention.

With a strength I didn’t know I had, I launched us both into the rig.  I slammed the door, locking it and every other one that could give the monsters a way in.  I searched frantically for anything that could help Abby.  Blood pumped in streams from her throat, gathering into a deepening pool on the floor.  I dropped down beside her, resting her head on my lap.  My hand pressed tightly on the wound trying to stop the flow.  With every beat of her heart more of her life spurted between my fingers.

The tears building up blurred my vision terribly and stung my eyes like acid.  I begged any supreme being out there to stop this, to spare my Abby.  Just let me see something in that looted and hollow ambulance that would save her.  I prayed that the bullet that had nearly killed me was still there, and I had never really woken up.  This was just another nightmare and I would wake up soon with Abby and Katie and Lexi and Jane standing over me happy and alive.

Her chilled hand came to my cheek, and pulled my gaze to her.  She was smiling.  Her fingers ran across my cheek in the gentlest of caresses, and I understood.

There was nothing I could do.  This was not a nightmare.  I would not wake up from this.  She was dying, and nothing in our known world could stop it.

I had a million words that I could not say.  She moved her mouth, but the damage to her throat left her with no voice.  She simply wiped my tears away.

Abby never stopped smiling.

She pointed at the gun I had tossed onto the squad bench, and then put her finger under her throat pointing upwards.  She closed her eyes and nodded.  I tried to kiss her, but she put two fingers to my lips and shook her head.  She knew she was infected.

The flow of blood was lessening, and the pressure from her pulse under my fingers was almost undetectable.  I held her cold hand tightly with my free hand and gently rocked her.  I couldn’t breathe.  If I had a heartbeat, I didn’t feel it.

Her body cooled and her muscles relaxed.  Her eyelids grew heavy, and a single tear left the corner of her eye.  It ran across her pale cheek, flowing around her ear and finally got lost in her hair.  She tried to speak again, but her sweet voice would never be heard in this world again.  She dipped her finger into the pool of her own blood, and started writing on the wall.

“
Tel K mmy luvs her.  luv u alws.  gdby
”

She took two quick gulps of air, and her chest deflated.  Her heart was no longer strong enough to pump blood from the bite wound.  I watched her brown eyes flutter and slowly close.

They never opened again.

Chapter Forty-Two

Abby was gone.

I was alone.

I shook her.  I begged her to wake up.  It was fruitless, but my heart would not let me accept that the love of my life was gone.  I knew what she would be if she did wake up, but for a brief moment I didn’t care.  In the end though, I could not and would not let that happen.

I was colder than I had ever remembered being in my life.  The ache in my hand would not stop, regardless of how much I massaged it.  I felt as dead as the mindless fucks outside.  My face was wet with uncontrollable tears, but I was not crying.  My eyes would just not stop.  It was as if my body mourned, but my soul could not feel it.

I slid out from under my wife, gently laying her sleeping head down onto the floor.  I lifted the top from the squad bench, pulling a clean white sheet and a pillow from it before returning to my beautiful spouse.

I sat again, putting the pillow on my lap before resting her head on it.  Her hair was thick with drying blood.  When I drew the sheet over her lifeless body, I felt the emotions trying to break through.  I looked at her face one last time.

She still smiled.  Her smile was radiant and infectious.  Even then, when she lay lifeless on my lap, her smile was telling me I shouldn’t cry.  She was okay, and I shouldn’t be sad.

It didn’t work.

The sheet covered her face, and my emotional barrier splintered into a million sharp fragments.  I cried out loud, slamming my fist against the wall I leaned against.  I shook so violently that I almost dropped my gun.  With one bullet, a bullet I knew I had to fire, I was about to extinguish our lives, our memories.

The slide drew back, a bullet feeding into the chamber.

We met over vomit.

At least that was the story we told people.  The truth was we met at a mutual friend’s party.  It wasn’t much of a party honestly, as no one but our regular group of hard drinkers showed up.  There was plenty of liquor to be had though, so there were no complaints.  After several beers and half a bottle of the vilest liquor out there, Jägermeister, her then boyfriend proved why white carpets and tar colored vomit don’t mix.

We spent an hour trying to clean up the mess.  Maybe it was the liquor in us, but we spilled more about our personal lives to each other than we would our own families.  We lost touch for a time when she left to cart her boyfriend home.

The slide snapped forward with a jerk.

We met again at the same friend’s birthday party.  I saw her immediately as I made my way to the keg in the kitchen.  In a room of dedicated beer drinkers imbibing their favorite brew in plastic solo cups, she leaned against the wall sipping red wine from a crystal wine glass.  She wore a black strapless dress that had everyone looking her way.

Including my girlfriend.

I made my way towards Abby to say hello when my very inebriated and soon-to-be ex-girlfriend stepped between us.  She knocked Abby’s drink to the floor, sending red wine splashing across the hard wood.  The psycho ex then grabbed Abby’s hair, and pulled her in for a very unwelcome kiss.  To top it off she then slapped Abby, calling her a slutty lesbian.

Abby and I didn’t speak for another year.

The weapon was ice in my hand.  Its weight suddenly felt awkward in my grasp.  The barrel pushed into the white sheet, and into the soft spot under her jaw.

It was a get together at our old neighborhood bar for the same friend’s graduation.  He was the first among us to attain his master’s degree.  I had no idea what his field of study was.  I just knew the music was excellent, the bar was open, and the party went all night.

I was three beers in before I saw Abby.  She was with the women of our little clique, sitting on a bar stool next to the pool table.  Two of the women were obviously interested in the guys shooting a round of eight ball, while Abby and another friend laughed with each other.

I noticed that they both had empty wine glasses on the table in front of them.  I watched the foursome for awhile, drinking another beer while I formulated a plan.  When the two women ogling the pool players decided to pounce, I put my spur of the moment semi drunken plan into motion.

I bought three glasses of red wine chancing that it was her wine of choice.  Without a word, I marched right over to where the two women sat.  I set a glass in front of each of them, holding the third.  I locked eyes with Abby, and poured my glass over my own head.

“I’m sorry.  Can we talk?”  I slurred.

Without missing a beat, Abby took the two glasses I had brought them, and dumped those over my head as well.  The crowd around me stopped, mouths agape before erupting with wild laughter.  Abby leaned close so I could hear her over the raucous mob.

“We hate merlot,” she said.  “Now, bring us sangria, and we’ll talk.”  I was wet and confused, and on my way to fill Abby’s order when she grabbed me by the shirt collar and planted the first of many kisses that night on me.

If the crowd was raucous before, it was downright explosive after that.

“How about those drinks?” she smirked as she sat back on her bar stool.

The bartender, who had been watching the whole event unfold, had two glasses of sangria and a high five waiting for me at the bar.  That night ended with Abby and I sitting in my car, watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan in each other’s arms.

We had not been apart since that night.

The weapon kicked.  Superheated gunpowder burned my sinuses.  Her head snapped back gently on the pillow.  The spent casing fell into the thick pool of blood, steaming as the hot brass cooled.

The horror of it was overwhelming.  Her blood permeated my clothes.  My hands and arms were stained with it.  The heavy iron smell of blood mingled with the stale odor of gunpowder inside the ice cold tomb.  Razor sharp talons tore at my sanity, shredding it into bloody ribbons.  My heart raced until my lungs could no longer keep up, and my head started to spin.

The creatures outside drummed against the metal skin incessantly.  My own heartbeat thundered inside my head.  I wanted to escape, to flee from what I had done.  But I was imprisoned in a blood soaked jail with the body of my Abby.  I was guilty of the crime of not killing the man who threatened my family when I had the chance.  The wardens outside my cage would never let me leave, and would enforce my own death sentence with an insatiable undying hunger.

Abby died because Adam lived.  Adam lived because I didn’t pull the trigger.  I didn’t pull the trigger because some part of my humanity halted my rage long enough for Abby to calm me.  But Abby was gone, and there was one undeniable truth that I could not escape, no matter how many people would try to convince me otherwise.

Abby’s death was my fault.

With that thought, my body shut down.  My eyes locked onto the bullet hole in the sheet.  Red blossomed around it, growing like a morbid rose opening its petals.  Time passed, until the bloom under Abby’s chin stopped growing.  Colors changed as it dried, from vibrant red to dull rust.

I was so detached from myself that the sudden cold blast of winter air went unnoticed.  Hands grasped at my arms and dragged me from underneath Abby.  I waited for the dead to finish me off, and reunite me with her.

“Come on man, let’s get out of here,” Chris’ voice shook as he pulled my arm over his shoulder.  He brought me to my feet and we made our way across the sticky floor and towards the back door.

We stepped down from the ambulance onto blood soaked fields.  The heavy reek of ammonia hung in the air, no doubt from the massive amount of dissolving brain matter surrounding us.  Whatever bodily fluids that were contained in the mobile corpses had spilled into the snow, turning the ground black with a vile slush.  A ring of bodies surrounded the ambulance.  The immediate area behind the rig had been hastily cleared, the rotten corpses piled to either side.

Friends and family gathered around me.  Rosa wept, burying her face in Joe’s chest.  Joe’s eyes were red and puffy, a steady stream of tears flowing from them.  Anna’s hands were over her face, looking in disbelief at what she knew to be under the sheet.  Mark and Matt hurriedly came to us, trying to help Chris guide me toward the house.

“Let me go,” I rasped.

They looked at each other and thankfully backed away, hovering close enough in case I needed a shoulder to lean on.  With as weak as my legs felt, it was probably a good idea.  I could see that they were struggling to find something to say to comfort me, but there were no words that would ever be right.

I turned, looking back at Abby.  I would never step back into that rig again.  There was nothing in there but gut wrenching grief and pain to haunt me within.  I stuck my head inside, holding the doors slightly open to afford me one last moment of privacy with her.

“Abby,” I whispered as not to be heard by the group outside.  “I made you a promise.  It’s a promise that I can’t keep.  Not anymore.  When you get to where you are going, tell everyone that I probably won’t be joining them.  I don’t think they will let me in.  Please forgive me.”

I pulled my head back outside, resting it on the bright red star of life painted on the door.  I leaned against it gently, until I heard the locking mechanism engage.  With a click, the chapter of Abby and Dan closed forever.

I closed my eyes, letting the cold metal sooth my aching head.  I took a deep cleansing breath.  I opened my eyes as I exhaled, watching the wispy gray cloud of my breath escape.  I took another breath, trying to push the putrid stench surrounding me out of my mind.

I turned towards the group again, and sat on the bumper.  I pulled the pistol from its holster, popping the magazine into my left hand.  I drew the slide back, ejecting the charged round from the chamber.  The group remained silent as I flipped the bullets out of the magazine with my thumb.

Four rounds left.

The gazes of several eyes were on me as I fed the bullets back into the magazine.  I slapped it into place, drawing the slide back to chamber a round.  A quick search through my pockets produced a small napkin.  I went to work scrubbing off the bits of spatter from the weapon.

It needed to be clean.  It needed to fire true.

A glint of orange drew my attention beneath where I sat.  I reached down, and pulled my hammer from the under the muck.  There was no clean snow left nearby, cleaning the hammer was not going to happen.  It wasn’t that important, a hammer didn’t need to be clean to function.  It just needed to be heavy.  I fed the handle through a belt loop before folding my hands and resting my elbows on my knees.

“I’ll understand if some of you don’t want any part in this,” I said without looking up.  “If you want to walk away, now’s the time.  If you try and stop me, well, just don’t.”  I waited for the protests to begin.  I fully expected someone to leave, condemning me for the actions I was ready to take.

I should have known better.  These people were my family, and had been from the moment I arrived.  Every one of them had worked hard to save my life.  They all cared deeply for Abby.  Even Rosa, a stranger to all of us before hell came to this planet, had become like a sister to her.

“We’re with you, man,” Matt spoke up.  “You don’t even need to ask.”

“No one’s walking away from this,” Rosa added.  I looked up to see everyone nodding in agreement.

“Okay then,” I exhaled as I brought myself to my feet.

“Let’s find Adam.”