The Reaper Virus (23 page)

“We rowed up next to him and she reached out
an oar. He jerked his head around and I saw the black eyes, but it
was too late. The motherfucker grabbed her oar and tipped the
canoe! We both went in. I tried to get to her, but I couldn’t swim
against the current. I shouted and shouted. She never called back.
I swam around, but kept hitting logs and shit that was floating
by.”

His cheeks were the cleanest part on him. The
tears flowing from his puffy brown eyes took the grime with them. I
put my hand on his shoulder and passed him a bottle of water. At
that point, consoling him was all I could do. I wanted him to get
it all out so we could get the hell out of there.

Past us a cluster of five still bodies
floated by as he took a swig of water. Phil’s trembling body calmed
as his voice became more broken. He glanced behind us at the fading
sun. Whether or not he realized the importance of being somewhere
safe at sundown didn’t matter. My anxiousness indicated that some
urgency was required and he seemed to pick up on it. With
considerable effort I forced myself to stand. As I rose, Phil went
on.

“When I got close to shore I saw all of these
torn up looking people at the water’s edge. They saw me and started
scrambling in after me… There wasn’t anything I could do. I just
grabbed onto a log and floated with the river. The cold started to
make me black out. I zoned out for… I don’t even know how long.
Next thing I know I’m near the shore and there’s this branch there,
so I grabbed it. My arms were goin’ numb, so I started hollering. I
have no idea how long I was there, but then you came along.”

I found a dry shirt in my pack and tossed it
to him. My initial intent was for Phil to use the shirt to dry off.
Instead, he removed his wet jacket and the long sleeved thermal
shirt underneath without hesitation to put the dry shirt on. He
tried to stand, but fell back.

“Did any of them get to you while you were in
the water?” I asked while making no attempt to hide my deadly
serious tone.

This seemed to catch him off guard. “Umm…no,
I… I don’t think so.” His teeth were still chattering. Hypothermia
was a concern second only to exposure to the Reaper virus.

“Phil, I’m not sure you understand me.” My
palm drifted over the Kukri’s handle. It occurred to me that this
motion had become instinct. I had no intention of threatening him
with this action, but I’m sure that’s how it came across. “If you
were bitten you need to tell me so we can deal with it.”

I realized that my new friend and I had
entered a slippery slope. Phil didn’t know me or what I had done in
the last couple of days and I didn’t know him. For the time being
we had to trust each other enough from the simple fact we both had
a pulse.

“
Deal
with it?”

“I just want to make sure we’re both healthy
enough to keep moving… that’s all.” My hands moved away from their
defensive positions and became involved in the conversation. I had
to turn this around, otherwise I’d have living enemies to contend
with too. “The world is so ass-backwards that I’m just paranoid.
I’m sorry if I came across as hostile.” In a last effort to repair
this rift I extended an arm to help him up.

“Don’t worry about it.” He took my outreached
arm and soon returned to a wobbly bipedalism. “I’m just glad you
came along when you did. So where are we going?”

My backpack was returned to its proper home
and I took a tired breath. “Hope you like train tracks and are up
for a walk,” I said, knowing that I had lost all ability to sensor
my professional level of sarcasm.

Phil had found a branch that he used to drape
the wet clothing over. He then put it over his shoulder so that the
clothes could drip and dry behind him. “Do I have a choice? Because
I was really hoping you had a car nearby.” As he spoke I began to
think the hostility of a few minutes before would be the last
between us.

I had already started back on my previous
path. A grin worked its way to my mouth as I peered over my
shoulder to respond. “Nope, but you can always try the river
again.”

He let out a laugh. “Nathan, even though we
just met I’m starting to think you’re a bit of a smart ass.”

Phil had fallen a few feet behind. I stopped
long enough for him to hobble up and snickered, “With the long walk
we’ve got, you’ll be pretty confident of that soon enough.”

The dead continued to float past us. Having
another living person in my presence should have made me feel more
at ease. Instead I found myself more anxious than before.
Internally, I was bottling it all up under the guise of stress.
After all, I had just pulled a person out of a river from certain
death. It was understandable that I would be feeling uneasy
afterwards.

We walked for another twenty minutes with
only light conversation punctuating the silence. Exhaustion has a
way of keeping conversation to a minimum. I was also concerned
about anything finding us, but this seemed like less of an issue
the more we traveled.

Our current section of track was in the
middle of nowhere. Wilderness flanked us on all sides. The land
around the parallel train tracks began to thin. Water was now on
both sides as the passage turned into a sort of land bridge. My
tension eased knowing that the landscape would prevent anything
from sneaking up on us.

The tree line thinned as the rails started to
bend with the curvature of the James River. Rounding the curve I
saw something in the distance. Phil nearly tripped as I stopped
abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” His face was stricken with
paranoia.

I pointed dead ahead. With the thinning tree
cover the towering trestle bridge revealed itself on the landscape.
The bridge had been my goal. The rail line that went over the
bridge served the CSX freight line and Amtrak. It ran all the way
to the far end of town – exactly where I wanted to go. Of course
this was all assuming we could even get up to it.

The bridge wasn’t what drew my attention. A
few hundred feet from where we stood, the southern track wasn’t
clear. A mammoth freight engine faced us. It was completely still
and trailed by an endless parade of coal cars. The northern track,
which bordered the far tree line, remained barren.

Phil knelt down and fussed with his right
ankle. I had been walking closer to the water on his other side and
couldn’t tell what he was fiddling with. He obviously picked up on
my hesitation.

“So what? We’re on train tracks… what’s wrong
with seeing a train?”

“The president shut down all interstate
travel when the virus started hitting major cities.” As I spoke he
raised an eyebrow in curiosity. He stopped fiddling with his leg
and rolled his pants back down. I went on, “I don’t think they
would leave a perfectly good train filled with miles of coal just
sitting here.”

His expression went from curious to concern.
“No. I guess that doesn’t make much sense.”

“Not at all…. Something is very wrong here,”
I said and slowly started closing the gap between us and the
motionless metal monster.

1610 hours:

We cautiously crept up to the blue and yellow marvel
of machinery. The locomotive was daunting in its eerie stillness.
Normally something like that was viewed from far away or while in a
moving car. I had forgotten how awe-inspiring one could be up
close. While we approached, I scrupulously examined the area around
the engine. Something caught my eye and I halted my approach. That
of course concerned my already jumpy companion.

“What? What is it?” Phil asked in a painfully
loud whisper. Rather than doing anything more to advertise our
position I held a finger to my lips, requesting his silence.
Embarrassment flushed over Phil’s face as he mouthed “
sorry”.

I returned my right hand to the scabbard
comfortingly affixed to my side and pulled the blade free. Phil had
yet to see this weapon removed in the short time we had known each
other. Considering that it was impossible for him to not know I had
the Kukri on my person, I was sure he’d taken a look. We’d been
fortunate enough for it to remain on my side until now.

He took a respectful step backwards as I
removed my beloved killing tool. Since his eyes were focused on the
blade I decided to use it to motion to what drew my concern. I
pointed it towards the lower left side of the front of the
engine’s, to the gore caked in multiple streaks along the base
plates.

All it took to convince Phil to stay put was
a light point at the ground. I crept around the side expecting to
see a pile of bodies. Much to my delight, as far as I could see
there wasn’t anything but more gravel and the occasional branch.
The streaks of horror looked more like impact marks than anything.
I had no interest in examining them more closely though. I
cautiously knelt down to see under the giant metal serpent.

My overactive imagination placed a legless
zombie beneath the train ready to devour my flesh. Once again I was
relieved. It was comforting that my imagination could still be
proven wrong in this newly unimaginable world. I took a few
cautionary steps away and waved over to Phil. “Come on over!” I
said at a normal volume. “The train looks abando—”

A loud slap cut my sentence short. It
startled me so badly that I nearly fell down the gravel embankment.
Phil looked as if he would turn and run. We waited to see what had
given us both minor heart attacks.

Another slapping sound, but it was quieter
than the first. Then another… trailed by another. It hit me that
the sound was being made by flesh on glass. I jogged over to where
Phil stood paralyzed with fear.

He pointed a shaky finger at the windows of
where the conductor would have sat. A disfigured face was pressed
against the spot that was formerly the engineer’s privileged view.
Smeared next to it was a hand. Then another hand flopped onto the
opposite side. Fluids, which I couldn’t even begin to identify,
trailed from the dead flesh as rotting epidermal layers stuck to
the spot.

“What should we do?” Phil asked
hesitantly.

“Nothing,” I said shrugging. “He looks like
he’s trapped in there. As long as we move on and he doesn’t make
too much noise, then I want nothing to do with him.”

This seemed like a moot point to me and I
expected my companion to accept this without question. Instead he
looked bothered by my cold tone. “What if he’s hurt? Shouldn’t we
help him?”

“
Help him?
” I
snorted. Phil was visibly bothered. I should have just let it be,
but frankly I was too damn tired. “How are you planning on doing
that? Will you
cure
him? Will you somehow
make him un-undead?”

Phil stammered a rebuttal to no avail. I had
gone way too far. It was easy to forget that I wasn’t the only one
suffering. The man did lose his girlfriend and nearly died.
Suffering was now the regular state of things. Not accepting that
fact was an endorsement on your own death.

Once again I find myself trying to repair a
“friendship” that had just begun. At the very least, I didn’t have
to pretend to be sorry.

“Phil, I’m sorry. In the last couple of days
I’ve been attacked by these things,
attacked
these things, watched as they consumed
friends, and ran helplessly as they consume this city. There is no
helping what cannot be helped. My optimism died the moment the dead
walked.”

“No, no. Don’t be sorry, because you’re
right. Things are different now and I need to get that through my
thick skull. The train conductor is better off caged up in there
anyways. At least he can’t hurt anyone.” I found Phil’s tone to be
somewhat odd. It seemed like he was conceding, but didn’t believe a
word I said.

“Well, he may be able to stay put, but we
can’t. The bridge is up ahead.” I glanced back and noticed the
cloudy sky changing to reflect the waning light. The conductor
tried to get our attention with his pathetic groans. “The train
line we need to get to is on the bridge.”

“All the way up there?” Phil said while
hinting at the dread I shared.

The bridge looked even more menacing with
every inch we drew closer. I had no idea how we would get up to it,
but knew it was probably the only safe place we could spend the
night.

“You better believe it. We’ll get up there
one way or another. I’m sure there’s got to be a ladder or
something. I doubt the rail lines were too worried about people
climbing up with this entire area being fenced off. Hopefully there
is a maintenance ladder.”

He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

I adjusted my grip on the Kukri. “That’s the
spirit. Let’s go with ‘fuck it all’ and just wing it.”

Phil and I shared a short, yet subdued laugh.
We started walking once again. The safest course would be to remain
in the center of the tracks, to the right of the never ending
train. This gave us a few feet of cushioning from the train and
provided for the most escape routes. When we reached the bridge
we’d have to find a way to cross under and get to the other side.
That was the plan at least.

After a few minutes of cautious walking we
noticed more gore marks on the train. This beast had quite a story
behind it. I imagined it plowing through undead crowds until its
conductor joined their ranks, but it was a history that lay
unrecorded now. Who knew what had truly happened?

During the seconds I spent lost in thought, I
nearly tripped over a severed arm. Phil pushed me aside in the last
second and it took extreme effort to stop from falling over
altogether. I looked down at the pile of flesh and was astonished
more by my lack of reaction. The mangled arm was removed to include
part of the upper body. A ragged scapula protruded from the
discolored mass of human. I glanced over and saw Phil looking the
other way. It was relieving to know we both hadn’t become
completely desensitized.