Darkest Days: A Southern Zombie Tale (28 page)

“I’m sorry.” Father O’Brien placed his hand on the outcast’s shoulder. He opened his mouth to say more but all the words of comfort were lies.

Martin watched from his seat feeling too drained to take a side. Stephanie shook him. “What’re they doing?”

In a tired voice, Martin said “I don’t know.”

Eric, Bryant, and the priest reached down to stand him up. When Bryant reached out and grabbed his arm, the fabric felt both sticky and wet. He looked over at Eric and said, “Doctor, take a look at his arm.”

Eric gingerly tried to fold the cuff back but the blood had congealed forming a painful seal. “Okay, take off your jacket, left arm first.” Daniel obeyed and the left half slid off easily but he paused when he tried to pull his arm through the other sleeve. His face contorted once and he whined, no words only a high pitched wheeze.

Eric turned to Cara. “Will you get a pair of scissors from a third floor office?”

Cara walked away feeling ashamed. The argument made enough sense but it still felt wrong to her. The outbreak could not be viral could it? It acted too fast. Figuring up the length of time since the crisis started, they had been aware that something was going on for only eight hours. The sun would be rising in a few more. She certainly could not think of a disease that acted that quickly.

Cara had not even noticed the walk upstairs, looking around and seeing the third floor office they had recently occupied. She looked out the window down at the street below and her heart jumped. The street was literally packed with the vile creatures. She quickly grabbed the scissors from a small, black desk caddy and hurried down to the second floor. She exited the stairwell and slowed her run as she approached the group. She handed the scissors off to the doctor and made her announcement.

“There are more of them. Their numbers just keep growing. Soon, the sheer weight of their bodies will get them in.” Everyone nodded and started thinking about the inevitable confrontation.

Meanwhile, Eric carefully slid one side of the blades into Daniel’s sleeve. “Don’t move. I’m going to try to cut the fabric away.” He turned his head looking back over his shoulder. “Someone find me some gauze and some alcohol.”

Stephanie stood and called out. “I’ll do it. I’ll check the kitchen first.” The truth was she just wanted some task to occupy her mind. As she turned to go, a warm hand caught her wrist. Her eyes followed the arm all the way back to the shoulder and then up to the face.

Martin gazed up at her. “Why do you have to do it?” His face showed fright that he did not even understand.

“I’m just trying to be helpful.” She gingerly peeled his fingers from her arm.

What really disturbed Martin was that he spent so much of himself trying to save Brother Mark Willis that it felt like his own death when he failed. Now after realizing what he had done for Stephanie, he was suddenly paranoid of losing her also. As long as she lived, there was some kind of proof of his fortitude and altruism, that he was somebody after all.

When she returned, she held a cheap first aid kit in one hand and hydrogen peroxide in the other. She jogged over to the group gathered around Daniel and handed over the contents. “This was in the kitchen. I couldn’t find any alcohol.”

Eric scarcely noticed her. Intent on his work, he did not hear himself say “the peroxide will do”. The doctor sifted through the box for gauze. He found the white fabric and handed it to the priest. He gravely looked into the old man’s eyes and said “There may be a lot of blood. This man’s life depends on you quickly applying pressure. Can you do it?”

The priest nodded. Father O’Brien’s heart increased the speed and force of its rhythmic pumping in anticipation of what would happen next. His hands fumbled while he struggled to control his breathing. His eyes closely followed the shears biting into the fabric, gliding forward, and biting down again. Each time the scissors cut, he heard the signature sound of hundreds of threads snapping in unison.

Daniel’s face twisted into an extreme grimace as he felt skin tugged and stretched as the fabric fought for its hold. The doctor’s fingers peeled back the flap of cotton despite the sharp intake of breath from his patient. The exposed wound was filled with thick coagulated blood and black bits of grime from not being properly cleaned. Before anyone had a chance to observe further details, the Father clasped the gauze over the bleeding flesh. Eric uncapped the peroxide and motioned for the priest to raise a corner of the white web-like fabric. The doctor splashed some peroxide into the ragged hole in the man’s arm. As the bandage was replaced, he poured a little more on directly on the gauze hoping it would soak through. The event proceeded in eerie silence. As soon as a strip of Johnson & Johnson tape held the patch on, Eric broke the uncomfortable, but reverent silence. “Let’s go.” He pierced Daniel with his cold eyes and thought “I don’t give a damn about bedside manner right now. You’re messing with my life too.”

“But you disinfected it!” Daniel’s eyes widened in panic. “Why do I have to go if it’s been disinfected?”

“It has been hours and sterilizing the wound won’t matter if something’s already coursing through your veins. We’ve still got to quarantine you.” Eric refused to budge.

The priest stepped up at that moment. “Please, don’t struggle.” He spoke with a fatherly sternness (even though he never had children of his own) that mixed empathy and warmth.

Daniel lowered his head and slowly moved his eyes over to his children. The daughter wept openly, but Tommy stoically stared back, only his eyes betraying the turmoil raging inside. The father mouthed one word, “please”. Then the group ushered him toward the stairs. Both of his offspring followed at a respectful distance.

They marched downstairs in solemn silence like a funeral procession. The clacks of soles against stairs reverberated off the walls declaring the temporary presence of people. The jailers with their lone prisoner descended into the kitchen and led the condemned to a closet which was to be his cell.

Daniel bravely stepped forward and turned around to face them. As he peered through the doorway, each member of the party felt his eyes settle on him or her. His bottom lip started to quiver, the last of his strength departing, and he cried out. “I won’t be one of them. I promise I won’t come back. I won’t come back as one of them.”

The door clicked into place muffling his pleas. No one spoke; no one even looked anyone else in the eye. They just silently shuffled upstairs, head downcast, and each combating the demons of guilt.

***

While idly searching an unexplored third floor office, Cara found a ladder leading to a roof access hatch. Climbing up the dingy metal frame, she pushed the top open. Stepping up onto the roof, she could see most of the ruined town over the lip of the building. Nothing moved except the lumbering ocean of the undead. From a distance, the situation looked normal. People strolled around the sidewalk and streets. The kicker was that most people resembled emergency room victims. Then off in the distance coming from the northerly direction of Five Points, she saw headlights. Her face lit up with excitement. She had no idea who it was but she knew that every person alive was hope. She did not have time to intellectualize her transition from curmudgeon to praying for social interaction. For the moment, she thought “Hell is not other people.”

***

Rick sped up, pushing the pedal to the floor. The grill of the truck splattered a walking corpse across the asphalt. The wheels rolled over causing the truck to bounce wildly at such a high speed. The radio still broadcasted that repetitious message of safety. Irritated, he flipped a button and listened to a pre-programmed rock station out of Tuscaloosa. Another creature fell to the chrome bumper and wicked wheels of the S10. The athlete laughed at the satisfying crunch under the body of his truck.

The church loomed ahead, surrounded by an army. He slowed the truck and realized that the strip was too thick with bodies (most of them walking around). Even at full speed, the sea of dead flesh would provide enough resistance to stop him. He hit the brakes and put the truck in reverse. He had just started backing up when several sets of hands began beating on the side of his vehicle. Not realizing the danger, he paused to look around. More hands slapped at the fiberglass sides and before he knew it, the truck rocked in a semi-organized effort. His body was thrown around the driver’s seat as he tried to grab the wheel and hit the gas. His foot missed and pressed the brake pedal causing a flash of sinister red from the other side of the tailgate. The rearview mirror provided a view of dark shapes climbing into the bed and coming toward the back window.

“Holyfuckingshit!” He forced all the syllables into one word. Stomping on the right most pedal, he sent the tires spinning. The traction was not there for a second due to the rocking of the truck, but the rubber tread caught the road and rocketed the ton of metal backwards. A rotting face pressed against the back window as what use to be a man stumbled forward. In seconds, squealing tires propelled him safely away from the mob, except for the two in the back of the truck. Rick hit the brakes and one of the creatures toppled out onto the ground. Rick left the engine running and pushed the gearshift into park. The door swung open and he stepped out with his shotgun in hand. The one in the bed stood to its full height, towering above him. Rick angled the barrel upward and fired. At such a short distance, the intense, focused blast decapitated the marionette-like corpse. Since no heart continued to beat, blood did not erupt like a geyser. Instead, the body slumped over the side, feet still in the truck but the torso hanging over the ground. The whole body was bent at the waist causing some of the blood hidden inside to travel through the maze of arteries and capillaries until a steady stream poured out of the neck making splattering noises on the pavement.

Rick did not have time to think about that sound, like someone had poured out a lukewarm bottle of water. He was busy facing the second monster that had stood up and limped with a broken leg as it staggered around the truck. Rick stepped back and fired at this one as well. He caused less severe damage, but that body dropped also. He glanced back at the road at the church partly obscured through a row of trees and a few houses in-between and wondered how to gain access. Propping the gun over his shoulder, he bit his lower lip in contemplation. Only two blocks away, a large faction of the mob turned toward him sensing food. Wisely, the lone adolescent decided to think while driving down the road.

***

Daniel felt nauseated. Twice he swallowed vomit back down, but his gorge kept rising. His skin, slick with sweat, tingled and itched. He knew that he had caught something. The doctor had been right. He had felt sick earlier but he chalked it up to abandoning his wife after she became one of those ghouls. Throughout the night, the symptoms grew worse and he accepted reality. He felt feverish and stifled. The closed environment slowly smothered him like a twisted nurse holding a pillow over his face. His wife’s voice danced around his ears. “Don‘t worry dear, it’s a mercy killing.” He gulped in large amounts of air, not knowing that he was hyperventilating. He suddenly transformed into a man clawing at the lid of a coffin, or more accurately a dog scratching at a closed door. His fingernails raked at the wood in front of him over and over until he felt a flood of pain rip through his hand. The man could not see but had a good idea that he had just ripped a fingernail off. If he had a light, he would have seen that he was correct. The top of his finger was dark pink with surfacing blood and the nail that had once protected was lost somewhere in the darkness.

Daniel fell back onto a pile of jackets that he had fashioned into a bed and pulled his hand in close to his body. His mind cried for sleep as if waking up would banish all the horror he had suffered. He muttered not realizing that any sound escaped his throat. “When I wake up, Anne will be downstairs cooking, the kids will be dressed for school,” Briefly, his skin cooled, the chills stopped, and the air seemed fresh. “And the worst thing I will have to deal with is that I’m late for work.”

Then the image of his resurrected wife rampaged into his consciousness. She was not downstairs preparing French toast and a glass of orange juice. She crawled through the darkness seeking warm flesh. Her glassy stare and gnarled fingers searched him out, blindly groping beside him. He shivered as she grew closer. She wanted him, not as a wife wants her husband but as a predator wants prey. His wound burned with the worsening fever and itched uncontrollably. He pictured a bloom of infection seeping through bandages like moss growing fat on a stone.

Daniel began scratching, his nails raking across the skin over and over. Long strings of saliva formed in his mouth and he felt like a drunk who knows that the puke is about to come up. The rancid smelling regurgitation spilled over his chest but he did not notice. His skin itched so badly! Blood welled out as he tore off the bandages. Furious at the infection, he plunged his fingers into the ragged, bloody wound and kept digging. His nails ripped tender living flesh and he smiled. The pain felt better than that insane itchy tingle. He happily enlarged the bite, his fingers ripping through the flesh like he was clawing up handfuls of dirt. He started laughing and suddenly could not stop.

***

The Father watched Martin, filled with the hope that he could counsel him. The young boy was recovering but needed more time. O’Brien knew this and just waited. Martin would seek him out when he was ready to talk. However, he kept in mind that some people carry their trauma for a lifetime, never feeling safe enough to truly confront it. To his left, Bryant and Cara huddled together like people who had mistaken the other for life preservers in the middle of the ocean. Eric and Stephanie traded their disturbing stories of earlier that night. Stephanie left out most of the details and focused on relaying her boyfriend’s death and the aimless wandering. Eric relished each detail and regaled her with the ease of a natural story teller. Tommy quietly looked at Bible stories alone on the floor.