Wasting Away (13 page)

“Is
it safe?” the girl asked.

I
scrunched my shoulders and told her that I didn’t know. I placed my hand firmly
around the knob and turned it again, cracking the door an inch or so. I saw
grey fingers curl around the edge of the door. The sweet smell of death hit my
nose and I was repelled backward as the door swung fully open. The blackened
outline of a person swayed in the doorway, shrouded in moonlight from an open
window from within the apartment.

Gaunt,
tragic features revealed themselves; sunken shoulders and a sickly bending head
unraveled before me as the shape realized I was there. With a gaseous release,
the figure launched itself at me, knocking me back into the hallway. I tripped
and fell hard onto my side. I turned and the fire extinguisher slammed against my
chest from the impact of the corpse. I gasped for breath as the creature clawed
at me, snarling with thick lengths of spit and blood coursing from its mouth.

In
a panic, I positioned the extinguisher between the corpse and myself, trying to
use leverage to push the thing away. Globs of rancid phlegm hit my chest through
a wound in the creature’s cheek. I turned my face away to keep the rotten bits
from getting into my mouth. I felt a tug at my waist. Suddenly the head
exploded. A cascade of bone and tissue sprayed across the hallway to my side,
and over my head.

I
lay there, trying to catch my breath as the girl stood above me. A deep,
rasping moan sounded out from somewhere outside as the girl extended her hand
to help me up.

“We
might want to get into the apartment now,” she said.

“That
was quick thinking on her part,” Mary said.

“She
didn’t even bat an eye,” I replied. “It was like she had been doing this
forever.”

Brown
stains covered the walls; handprints crisscrossed along in abstract patterns,
weaving and winding into the type of art that only the dead could make. Empty
water bottles and spent cans of food littered the floor.

“Food!”
the girl exclaimed as she tossed open the cupboard doors in excitement.

I
heard the sound of a drawer being open and the clank of utensils knocking
together.

Before
I could get to her, she had already started to open a can of peaches, twisting
the opener as quickly as her hands would allow. In the next breath, she was
slurping down the juice and wrestling out a half of a peach with her index
finger.

“Want
some?” she asked, her voice muffled by the food in her mouth.

I
smiled.

“I’m
sorry, it’s just been so long since I’ve had anything to eat,” she apologized.

“We
should find something to put the food in and get moving to another apartment,”
I said as I surveyed the mess. Something glistened on the floor next to the
wall. A splattering of blood clung vicariously to the ceiling in a circular
pattern, the thin trail of a drop that never fell.

“Right,”
she replied with a swallow.

“He
shot himself,” I said as I picked up the revolver from the floor.

“What?”
she asked - her mouth full from another bite.

“There’s
a bullet hole in the ceiling right in the middle of a splatter. And here,” I
pointed to a dried pool of brown gore on the floor, “it looks like he bled
out.”

“He
killed himself?”

“Or
tried to,” I replied. “Poor bastard must have missed the mark.”

Other
than the disgust that covered the apartment, it was decorated like any other
home; an entertainment center with a couch and chairs facing it, family
pictures depicting what looked like a camping trip. Various knick knacks were
scattered about from where the body had knocked them from their rightful
places.

In
the bedroom closet I found several suitcases and a duffle bag filled with gym
clothes. I tossed the track pants and running shoes aside and brought the bag
into the kitchen. The girl was just finishing off the remainder of peaches from
the can as I sat the bag on the kitchen table. She looked up at me with a smile
as she placed the can in the sink.

“He
was pretty well stocked up on food,” she said as she pulled the cans out of the
cupboard and placed them into the bag.

“It
looks like it,” I replied. “We’ll just take what we can carry. If worse comes
to worse, we can always come back for more.”

“So
what’s your plan?” she asked.

I
stuffed the can opener into my pocket. “I was thinking we could sit it out for
a few days. It would be nice to sleep in a bed for a change. Hell, it would be
nice to just sleep without worrying about something coming out of the shadows
to eat me.”

“Do
you think there’s anything else we’ll need from here?”

I
shook my head. “I have just about everything I could want on me. While you’re
getting the food situated, I’m going to go check out the other apartments.
Unless you want to come along so you can save my ass again.”

She
laughed. “You’re a big boy; I think you’ve got it covered. Just shoot them
before they tackle you and you should be fine.”

The
hallway was eerily quiet as I walked around the body and sidestepped the gore
that saturated the carpet. The corpse vaguely resembled the man I had seen in
the picture, despite that half of his skull was gone. The dried wound on his
face told a different story; he tried to put a bullet through his brain and
missed, blowing a chunk out of his face. He bled to death on the floor of his
apartment. The prospect hit a little too close to home and I shook off the
image to investigate the other apartments.

After
checking the clip in my pistol, I tried the door to the next apartment over. I
was taken aback to find it open.

Inside,
it was as quiet as the rest of the building, but in better shape than the
previous apartment. Furniture upholstered in flower print fabric, stationed
around an old radio from what I assumed was the early 1940’s. In a vase on top
of an antique end table were more flowers, dusty plastic, sitting on a doily. 

It
reminded me of something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It was only missing
a ruby cheeked kid playing with an old truck in the living room. The smell of
potpourri hung leisurely in the air like it was bereft of what had happened out
in the real world. And the flower patterns that covered the couch and curtains
only made the tragedy of the dead all that more depressing.

“Wow…”
the girl exhaled.

“I
know, right?” I turned to face her. “It’s just like grandma’s house.”

“I
don’t know about you, but this a lot nicer than
my
grandma’s house,” she said.

She
dropped the bag on the floor by the entry and moved toward the couch. The
springs beneath the cushion made a faint squeak as she sat down. She kicked her
feet up onto the coffee table and let out a sigh. “Now this is what I’m talking
about.”

I
shut the door and moved the bag of canned goods into the kitchen. From the
partition, I said, “This is as good a place as any to settle down for a while.”
I began to unpack the supplies, placing them in neat rows on top of the
counter.

I
opened a long cabinet in the kitchen. “I’ll be…” I said in awe.

“What
is it?”

“A
hell of a lot of food,” I replied. “I think we started with the wrong
apartment.” There were five shelves brimming with glass jars full of fruit and
vegetables. I let out a laugh. “At least we’ll eat well.”

“So
how long has it been since you’ve seen someone?” she asked, walking toward the
kitchen.

I
thought about the question, “I really don’t know; time tended to blend after it
began. The last person I spoke to was my wife. I saw a woman at the beach the
other day. There was an old man and a young girl too.”

She
looked at me. “What happened to them?”

“They
got away before I could get to them. I turned to clean myself off in the waves
and they were gone.”I paused and thought. “I don’t even know how long I’ve been
out there,” I said.

“A
few months, maybe more,” she replied.

“It
seems so much longer than that.”

“Yeah,”
she said, “being hunted really puts time into perspective. So you didn’t see
which way they went? Maybe we could try to find them.”

I
shook my head as I sorted through the mason jars. “No, I tried to look for
them, but the dead were everywhere. I was lucky to get away with my life.”

I
found some candles in a drawer and placed them on the coffee table. The light
brought out the features of her face. I wondered how someone so young managed
to survive. Stray smears of dirt did little to take away her beauty. A sloping
nose and refined cheek bones outlined the curl of her lips.

“So
what’s your story?” I asked. “How did you wind up on top of that water tower?”

“I
lived at an encampment about ten miles from here with a handful of people. It
was one of those convenience store gas stations, but it was under construction
so there was a fence around it,” she said, fidgeting with the trim of the
countertop. “Things were getting pretty desperate. We ran out of food a couple
of days ago and decided we had to leave. That’s when the dead got in…” she
trailed off in thought. “Mike, the guy we sort of looked up to was trying to
get out of the front gate and got bit. The dead were able to get past him as
the rest of us tried to push the gate closed. There were just too many of them…
There had to be hundreds pushing the first row in tighter as we strained to get
the gate closed. It was just too much for us.” Tears welled up in her eyes as
she tried to explain.

“It’s
okay, you don’t have to finish,” I told her.

“No,
its fine,” she wiped her face on the sleeve of her shirt, cleaning a strip of
dirt away from the side of her mouth. “I don’t mind, it’s good to get it out,”
she continued. “A couple of us ran to the rear of the gas station. Most of the
dead had moved up front when they realized that there was an opening in the
gate. I jumped the fence and got to the top to help Tammy up when one of those
things rushed her. The look on her face … it was like she was pleading with me.
Her eyes were so big … Her hand slipped out of mine and a bunch of those
fuckers got her and tackled her to the ground,” she sobbed the words.

I
touched her shoulder. “Just stop there.”

She
hugged me, burying her head in my chest. “I can’t get her screams out of my
head.”

“It’s
okay,” I brushed her hair out of her face and held her tight.

She
took a deep breath and backed away from me. “I’m sorry. Tammy was my sister.”
She wiped her eyes. “We had been through so much together. To see her taken
away like that after we had survived so much … She just kept screaming my name
over and over again. The last thing my sister ever said was my name.”

The
girl wore a far off expression, staring blankly at the wall of pictures from
the couch. Her silence was unnerving and made me think of my own past. No
matter how much I didn’t want to remember, the images came like a relentless
flood.

“I
had been enjoying the day with my wife in the back yard,” I said as I stood
next to the couch. “We knew that there were problems in the city with looting
and riots, but we lived in a gated community so we didn’t think it would get to
us. You see shit happening on television and it’s like a million miles away;
that it’s just some bullshit the media put out for ratings,” Constance looked
up at me as I spoke. “I went into the house to make some tea. I filled the pot in
the sink and took down the box of tea bags from the cupboard when I heard her
scream. Her voice was shrill like she was vomiting the sound. My skin crawled
when I heard it. It was a sound that I would soon become accustomed to.

The
rest of my memories are just flashes. It’s like snapshots from some morbid
slideshow. They play over and over again with the same terrible ending.

I
ran from the back door to find some man standing over her. He was hunched over
like a marionette, wavering in place with his head in her stomach.

I
must have yelled out because, in a flash, he whipped his head around and stared
at me. His eyes were clouded over and blood was smeared across his face,” I
told her flatly. “I could see something in the creature’s mouth, just an
outline of something that resembled a turkey neck. At least that’s what my mind
perceived it as at the time.”

“What
was it?” Constance asked with a pleading expression.

“I
didn’t know it at the time, or maybe I did, but refused to consciously
acknowledge it, but my wife was pregnant,” I replied blankly.