Wasting Away (5 page)

I
couldn’t see any of them anywhere. With a type of dexterity that I didn’t know
I had, I jumped from the overhang and onto the roof of the porch before leaping
to the ground below in a graceful roll.

Up
on my feet, I gathered myself and ran. I didn’t dare look back. I just kept
running and prayed they weren’t following me.

“What
was hanging from the creature’s mouth?” Mary asked; her eyes wide.

I
shook my head and closed my eyes tightly.

“You
don’t have to say.”

“I’m
sorry,” I said. “I just can’t.”

“It’s
fine.” Her expression changed to worry. “Only tell me what you want. Some
things are better off forgotten.”

Chapter 5

Throughout
the neighborhood, I could hear shrill cries and screams. Half eaten limbs lay
strewn in the street. Women were attacked by children. There were men being eaten
by their wives. Rabid and diseased things crossed my path. At that moment, I
knew what Hell looked like.

I
saw a figure coming at me, weaving through the fallout. He held his hand high
above his head. Something glistened in the sun.

Old
man Anderson ran at me with a hammer, but I dodged him at the last second, more
out of luck than dexterity. He yowled at me to die as he swung.

“What
the fuck is the matter with you?” I asked him as I moved out of the way.

He
stopped mid-swing. “You’re not one of them?” he asked, breathing hard.

“No,
I’m not one of them,” I said, stepping back.

As
if a switch had clicked inside his head, Mr. Anderson withdrew and ran past me,
his attention diverted to one of the dead attacking a young woman a little
farther down the street.

It
was as if everyone had lost their mind. I watched Anderson for a moment as he
launched himself on the thing that was attacking the girl. I watched for only a
second before I turned and fled. It was hard to see him that way. He was a
docile man, kept his yard perfectly trimmed and his wife’s roses watered. He
didn’t look like the type who would snap like that.

I
fled, horrified at what the world had become. I saw enough murder in those
first few hours to keep my nightmares vivid for the rest of my life. Everywhere
I turned led to death. And from every death the bodies rose.

Tired,
sore, and covered in sweat, I continued on. There were voices in the wind,
carried by gentle gusts that also brought the iron stench of freshly spilled
blood. Terrible cries and belching rasps of pain tore through the evening air,
dry shrieks and violent pleas for help.

The
wailing of the living was cut short by the screaming of the dead. I watched
them take after a man and knock him to the ground. They weren’t fast, but what
they lacked in speed, they made up for in perseverance. They didn’t know
fatigue or wear. They were predators, plain and simple. They were hunting us
down to rip us clean.

Six
of them converged on that man. They clawed at him as he dropped. They milked
the blood from his shuddering body and tore into chest, recklessly. His cries
evolved into a whimpering gurgle as blood flooded his mouth.

I
stared in shock. Once the man lay still, the creatures rose and walked off as
if they had become bored, passive with their expired prey. Within a few minutes
the man rose. His body shook and jerked as he stood. Entrails released and
dangled down toward his feet. Blood pumped out through his wounds as the last
beats of his heart vanished. Eyes wide, the man shambled off, restricted by the
loss of muscle on his left leg. He stumbled, swayed, and moved forward,
sniffing the air.

From
an overgrown ditch beside the road, I watched as the dead wandered by, unaware
that I was only a few feet away. I shook violently as they passed, closing my
eyes, trying to make the nightmare stop. I stayed that way for a long time as
more of them filled the streets.

Eventually,
when they thinned out, I rose slowly and hurried through the grass. My jaw was
tense as I clenched my teeth, holding back the urge to cry out.

I
ducked down again when I heard someone scream. From the neighborhood beyond, a child
emerged, trancelike and lucid. She wore a red ribbon in her hair that cascaded
down along her back where it had begun to unravel. She turned in place and
screamed for her mother. Two clean lines emerged upon her face from where the
tears had washed away the dirt. I begged her to shut up in my prayers. I begged
as the dead heard her too. I begged every second they devoured her while she
sobbed and screamed. I begged with all that I was worth.

And
in an instant, they were gone. They left the quivering, torn flesh of the child
to degrade and reemerge in the middle of the road.

“There
was nothing you could do?” Mary asked. “You couldn’t have helped her?”

I
shook my head. “I was so afraid …”

She
let out a breath and touched her hand to her mouth. “It’s so hard to imagine.”

“I
see it every day when I close my eyes.”

I
saw this over and again. I watched from afar as the dead hunted down the living
and ate at them until they returned to life in death.

I
kept quiet and sobbed in the growth at the side of the road until the sun crept
up on the horizon, merging with folds of smoke and ash, congealing along the
sky. I had been there all night, too frightened to move, too afraid to even
run.

Explosions
erupted from far off through the city as sirens wailed and people cried in despair.
I could see the flames rise in the distance across the cityscape, licking the
morning clouds. The pounding of guns coursed through the air, followed by the
snap of single shots, mimicking fireworks and breaking, brittle bones.

The
lecherous things howled with the breaking dawn, growing louder as if competing
for supremacy against the sounds of rapid fire. I heard terror and anguish
washed away by snarling screams. I wept as death took all that was around me.

I
squeezed in through some brush amongst trees and into an illegal dump site. I
threw debris over myself to guard against prying eyes. I felt at the small of
my back for the pistol and grasped the grip in my hand. From under the garbage,
I drew the weapon closer and placed it in my mouth. I could feel the tension of
the trigger, the cold of the steel, and the coarseness of the grip as my finger
tightened.

 I
blubbered like a baby as I pushed the gun farther down my throat.

I
cocked the gun as a convoy of military vehicles emerged from the road above me.
I lowered the pistol and looked on in awe as the convoy slowed. People ran from
a building across the street, the dead closing in from behind.

Machine
gun fire snapped as soldiers took aim at the creatures. Bodies fell as legs
buckled and exploded out bone and flesh. Limbs jerked and twisted as a volley
of bullets tore through and rendered them spent.

“Help,”
I whimpered. My voice was drowned out by gunfire.

As
the convoy began to move again, lumbering off over fallen bodies, I rose and
waved my arms. I tore through the grass and up onto the road.

“Hold
it, we have another!” the soldier shouted, extending his arm from the back of
one of the trucks.

I
leapt and caught his hand and he pulled me in, clasping my arm when I’d gotten
close enough. I fell to the floor and whispered hoarsely, “Thank you.”

“Would
you have done it?” she asked. “Would you have killed yourself?”

“Time
changes things,” I said. “Looking back at it now, I wouldn’t have. But at the
time, I had run out of options. I don’t think I would have made it if I hadn’t
been saved.”

Mary
looked down to her feet. “I thought about it too,” she said. “After my husband
left to get help, and didn’t return, I thought about taking my own life.”

I
looked at her through wet eyes. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

She
sighed and forced a smile. “It just seemed like the best choice. I didn’t know
what else to do. Everything was gone …”

“That’s
exactly where I was at the time,” I said. “With everything the way it was, it
felt like the only choice. But now, I’m just numb to the sensation.”

I
sat and stared at the others in the truck. Solemn faces stared out into the
void of nothingness in shock or disbelief over what was happening. The
occasional rattle of machine guns snapped us back when the soldiers fired at
the dead. Each shot was a slap to the face.

A
woman sobbed. A child cried. The truck negotiated over bumps in the road, bumps
that I was certain were bodies. I could hear the squishing sound as the tires
dragged over their limbs. Each obstacle sent a shiver down my spine when I
heard the bones snap and the blood splash out from force.

As
the convoy roared through streets, I saw the dead follow, enraged; driven by
some foreign hatred that I had never seen before. With a quick aim and tap of
the trigger, a soldier would take care of our pursuer only to have another take
its place.

There
was no fear in their eyes as the weapons were drawn, no instinct of survival,
just lustful, hungry eyes.

“Mommy?”
A child wailed. “Mommy, mommy…” she repeated.

I
wanted to reach out to her and tell her everything was going to be all right,
that this was all just a bad dream. I wondered how much of that was to calm
myself, to make my own fears subside. The woman next to her embraced the child,
tucking her head into her chest and stroking her hair out of her face.

“It’s
all right,” the woman said. “Everyone’s in heaven now.”

The
woman’s words struck me hard. How could a Heaven let this happen? How could all
these people die under divinity? Did she believe in the rapture? Did she
believe this was destined?

The
questions played over in my head like a broken record, scratching away at
everything I thought I had known. I had never believed in the Church or its
fear inspired lectures on right and wrong. But with how bad everything had
become, I thought of how these things resembled the tales of demons and
monsters that I had grown up with. I thought of the sermons of Preachers and
Priests, instilling the concept of sin to a child and the turbulence it caused
such a fresh mind. I thought of the sleepless nights growing up, tormented by
concepts of Hell and the Reckoning. I thought of my wife and her demon eyes
when she had changed.

The
soldiers brought us to a base just outside of town. Fences lined the small
compound of tents and generators. A steady hum issued through the darkness,
loping with the sound of the truck’s engine. A single light pole stood at the
center of it all, sending a buttery soft glow over the encampment.

We
were led to a medical tent. An eerie feeling came over me. It was a feeling of
something from another time with its red cross stenciled across the side flaps
of canvas.

I
couldn’t bring myself to look at the others. Their tear stained cheeks, the
fear in their eyes; it was too much to bear. Someone let out a soft cough as
the soldiers opened the tailgate. A whirl of motion played across the camp.
Desert camouflage and beige boots knocked out through the early morning air,
guiding us into this new station of life.

We
stood in line, waiting to be checked by a staff of white clad doctors and
nurses. Some of us were shuffled off to a plastic covered dome at the rear of
the encampment while others were escorted to tents lined in cots.

The
terrible faces I saw, stricken in horror and grief and sickness as they were
taken from their families and led to the dome. All of them had wounds of some
sort. There were small patches of blood-soaked fabric about their shaking bodies.
Some of them were children who cried with rattling voices as their parents
reached out to stop the soldiers from taking them away. They were pushed back
with dull black weapons and leather gloves.

I
kept to myself when we were brought to the sleeping quarters. I tried to drown
out the whimpers and moans by staring off at the edge of the tent, cradling
myself as I lay there on my cot. Grieving mothers moaned with unanswered
questions. Dull voices asked why in somber whispers. Strained cries parted the
night.

In
the darkness, I finally drifted off. The pain in my heart grew; an infected
wound at the edge of releasing. Through the sobbing, I closed my eyes and tried
to wish away the violence and death. I squinted through tears and held myself
tighter as the night filtered through the flap in the tent.