When The Light Goes Out (24 page)

I just
cared
too much.

Sometimes I could almost hate having emotions; I really should have been caring about nothing but myself. "I I"

"You need to find Ian." I looked over at Malachi who really did look tired, and much older than he did when I first met him, maybe two days before. One day. I didn't know. I was losing track of time. "I understand."

"Thank you."

I turned to walk away, deciding to do so before I chickened out, but a whistle caught my attention. I barely got my head twisted to look back before I had to pivot my entire body to catch the gun that had been thrown at me.

"Be safe."

Easier said than done.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I remember when climbing on top of the monkey bars was nearly the coolest thing a small school kid could possibly do. You'd have to climb to the highest rung, reach up, and pull all your body weight until finally you could get your legs up there. As it turned out the only thing cooler than climbing up was jumping off when the adults yelled at you about how dangerous it was.

I remember when children of the opposite gender had cooties, and touching them was like getting AIDS or some other equally terrible disease (given it was an
extremely
poor comparison, but being children, who could fault?) The only way to fend off the dreaded cooties was to cross your fingers and get your "cootie shots." Of course the only way to get them was to administer them yourself.

Back then thumb wars were all the rage. If you were the thumb war champion everyone was your friend. Even if they were only your friends so they could learn your techniques and use them against you. I guess even children that young were backstabbers, really.

Numbers was a pretty cool game too.

You got points if you were a boy who could doubledutch. Things were so easy back then.

I never expected that nearly a lifetime later I'd wind up traveling the deserted, if not zombie infested streets of town trying to find a missing friend. I never expected that my brother would be one of the first to go, and I wouldn't even
want
to follow immediately after him.

I wouldn't have expected cootie shots to be completely useless in such a situation.

But goddamn it there I was, walking down the deserted, and occasionally zombie infested streets, cautiously calling out for Ian, because I wasn't very sure whether zombies could hear or not. Even more, I didn't know if they'd follow the noises that they did hear, given they could. Part of me was positive that they could because I'd seen them sneaking around. I could see heads poking out of doors, or windows, or alleys when I spoke.

I couldn't find Ian. I just couldn't.

And I couldn't figure out where he could possibly be hiding.

"Ian!" I called out as I got a tighter grip on the scooter handle I had, making sure that the gun was still safely in my pocket. I only had six bullets, given Malachi reloaded them for me.

Scooter handle bars don't need reloading. I was saving the gun.

"Ian! It's me! Come out! Please, it's not safe here!"

I neglected to inform the boy that I didn't have any refills. If I used my six shots I was royally fuck (and that was the polite way to put it.) I didn't really want to get into details. I didn't want to sit there considering exactly how the walking dead would devour my convulsing, bleeding, still half living body. Really, who wants to think about how it would feel to get flesh torn from muscle, muscle torn from bone.

I didn't.

The
sound
of it was enough to make me sick, and I'd heard that sound more than enough since the entire damned invasion started. I'm not even sure how it could be called an invasion, since it was our own people. An invasion was when an outside force came in to cause damage. At the very least the disease would be considered the invader, not the zombies themselves.

Another thing I probably shouldn't have dwelt on.

Maybe if I'd been paying just a little more attention to the world around me I wouldn't have been tackled to the ground. I wouldn't have had my forehead pounded against the pavement repeatedly. I say that seriously too. Whatever it was that slammed into me from behind sat on my back, grabbed the hair on the back of my head and repeatedly slammed my face against the floor.

It was painful.

I felt the skin break.

I actually
felt
the skin tear. Jesus it
hurt.

I felt the blood begin to seep, and started panicking as the world started to go black around the edges. I couldn't help but think that I'd be completely shocked if I had
any
brain cells left after the assault. I would have been shocked if I was capable of any form of coherent thought.

"G" My voice cracked along with my forehead. "Get ofoff." I said it as if the damned thing would listen to me. Which, of course, it didn't, instead it upped the intensity with which it slammed my head. With it came a pain that I wasn't entirely used to, and didn't think I could survive.

Must've been what a concussion feels like.

It took everything in me to reinforce my grip on the metal piece, and raise my arm, quite awkwardly to smack the creature. It took a good couple of smacks, each stealing a large bit of energy, before the creature finally let go of me. Well, it didn't really let go of me, it was more like its grip loosened and it tipped a bit to the side.

Thankfully that was more than enough for me to be able to twist my body, and knock it off of me all together.

Everything had a double as I turned my head to the side, looking at the horrid creature that had just been on me. Even to my questionable vision it looked as though it used to be a girl. Wearing a relatively short skirt, and a bra. The shirt was missing except for one chunk hanging over her shoulder. But, maybe that was just a flap of skin.

I couldn't be sure.

I did know however, that a large section of muscle was missing from her inner thigh, and her shoulder. I could see right down to the bone in both places, and felt the bile rising in my throat. Even more when she started moving, and the muscles surrounding the open wounds shifted.

I reached for the gun.

I couldn't beat her brains in with my head not so firmly placed on my shoulders.

I suppose I was lucky that her movements were faulty and slow. It gave me time to steady my hand, cock the gun, and steady my hand some more. I suppose I was
very
lucky that the bullet hit the real zombie instead of the ghost my eyes saw, and the lady went down. But my head was still aching, and my vision was still wavering.

I was barely able to crawl to the nearest solid surface, but after a few moments I did manage. Everything ached, and I could only hope that Ian heard the gun shot, and came running. Pray that no more zombies showed up.

I wasn't ready to die.

"Jesus Excel, how many times are you going to say that?" Isn't talking to yourself one of the first signs of insanity? Guess I was really getting there.

Losing it little by little. With every brain cell.

Regardless, I
wasn't
ready to die. "Okay."

I leaned my head back against the solid surface I'd found (not entirely sure what it was, mind.) I knew I needed to gather myself. My thoughts. I needed to calm down,
really
calm down. The only problem was figuring out how to.

"Okay."

I didn't know how to. I
didn't.
I only wished that I had some semblance of an idea in the fucked up head on my shoulders. I only wished that I hadn't decided to run off half cocked. Wished that someone would save me.

"Okay."

Maybe it was a childhood issue. The idea that someone was always going to come and help, it happened in all the movies. There was always the hero who came, and pulled the struggling victim out of the fire, storm, nuclear explosion, or whatever other disaster they'd gotten themselves involved in. The people always survived.

Just another way that Hollywood lied to me, I suppose. "Okay, I can do this."

Even though I most definitely couldn't. "I can do this."

Like
The Little Engine That Could
.

But stupider.

"I
know
I can do this."

But I only knew it in my head.

My heart was a completely different story.

My heart was telling me that I couldn't even see straight. That leaving the safest position I had would be like signing my will. It would jinx me. It told me that I wasn't ready to die. That I just wasn't. It told me
all
that, even though the logic part of life was my brains job.

Turns out, my brain was stubborn. "Stupid brain."

And I didn't mean it in a nice way either. On any normal occasion I would have thumped my head a few times, this time I was sure it would knock me out – and that was a chance I

couldn't take. There were far too many chances that I
couldn't take
so long as rabid dead people were running around the city.

I stood, a shaky movement at best but my feet were flat on the floor, and my back was straight against the wall. Gate. It was a gate. I could hook my fingers in the wire quite easily, and was only slightly grateful for the handhold. I was most definitely on my feet, but I couldn't swear to how long it would last.

My walking was jerky and halting, but I wasn't shamed by it. Everything had a twin or two and I could feel the liquid swishing in my eyes. I could barely stand up straight, let alone walk normally. My body had the sensation of spinning around in circles on a swing set over and over again until stomach contents and floor got a rapid introduction.

Yes, that
is
speaking from experience.

It had been years since I'd even been close enough to look at a swing set, let alone spin on it, but the feeling was so real. So there. Before I could make heads or tails of the situation bile was rising in my throat and I barely got a tight enough grip to keep me from going face first into sticky stomach acid, and chunks of half digested food I simply didn't recall eating.

Green. Slimy.

Kind of frothy,

Looking at it made my stomach churn all over again.

All I could think about was how bad I wanted a piece of gum. Preferably not the minty kind.

Mint and vomit. Ick.

"Okay."

There were deep breathes to be had then, as I felt the liquid part of what was on the floor soaking into the knees of my pants. It was an uncomfortable feeling, one I couldn't change until I was sure I was capable of standing on my own two feet. Case and point, I wasn't. I wasn't able to just stand up and walk away, as much as I hoped. As much as I wanted to.

"Okay. So I
can't
do this."

The first step is admitting you have a problem, I suppose. My problem was that I was stranded without really being stranded. I was stuck. I couldn't do anything. At the very least I

couldn't do anything until I knew that my head would take the trip
with
me. "Ian.." I didn't even bother yelling. "..Ian, showing up right now would be great."

Given my luck, unless Ian was suddenly a zombie with long blond hair, he didn't show up. And I suddenly had another problem to take care of. Maybe they were attracted to the smell of gun powder. I don't know. I don't even care to know in all honesty. I just wanted her to hobble off, back to wherever she came from. I didn't want to deal with it.

I didn't want to deal with the dead. With death.

Didn't want to do the Reapers job for him. I didn't want to.

But there's that wonderfully fine line between want and need. Need was what I had hovering over my head.

The choice to live, or be eaten. I raised the gun.

"Steady." I whispered the word to myself as I level my arm. Leaning against the gate, I pulled up one knee to rest it on, barely aware of the fact that my
own
foul smelling liquid was gathering on the nice material there.

"..Steady.." I tried holding my breath, to see if it would make my arm stop shaking. When it didn't I switched tactics. Choosing to instead lock my arm in place at the elbow, hoping that the new idea would work better.