by Rob Horner
That was the understatement of the century, Jesse thought. A broken back made sense, considering how the man’s legs were splayed. But what could the something else have been? Jesse was afraid to look, afraid he’d see bites all over the guy’s back. But he needed to know. Was this guy going to go crazy, too?
You were bitten and you didn’t go crazy.
Yeah, but the day was still young.
“I don’t think Ray is still around,” Jesse said. “There’s a short guy out there, red shirt, bite marks all over him—”
“Sounds like Bo,” the man said. “He’s a short shit, but he’s married to a supermodel. Heh. Size really isn’t everything.”
Jesse withheld telling the man about how Bo was acting.
“I need to look at your back,” he said, “see if I can stop the bleeding.”
“Name’s Mark,” the guy whispered.
“Jesse.”
“A good name. I’d put ‘er there, but I think I’ll fall over if I do. Prolly won’t get back up, neither.”
Mark twisted his head and the movement almost toppled him forward.
Jesse put a stabilizing hand out against the man’s chest and said, “Lean forward. I won’t let you fall.”
“If you say so,” Mark replied.
Jesse waited until he felt the weight against his hand increase, then he slowly drew it back, guiding Mark forward.
The door between the lobby and the locker room shook again, a violent pull rattling the aluminum door in its frame. The door continued to hold.
So much for those monster movies making it look like the undead got super strength.
There was enough light in the little room to see the spreading mess of red covering Mark’s lower back. His shirt was adhered to his skin, forming a makeshift bandage. Through the material Jesse noted a strange shifting in the bones of the man’s spine, like they didn’t line up properly. It was enough to send a swell of nausea through him, though he suppressed it harshly. He didn’t have any right to act like a baby with this man so badly injured and needing attention.
Gingerly, Jesse put a hand on Mark’s back at the level of his shoulder blades. “Can you feel that?” he asked.
“Yeah. Think I’m hurt lower, though.” He coughed.
Jesse walked his fingers down the man’s spine, slipping from vertebra to vertebra. The shift happened around the level of the last rib, though he had no idea what number vertebra that was. The spine just…slipped away…sinking deep into the skin of Mark’s back.
The door to the locker room rattled in its frame again, reminding Jesse that the man outside didn’t seem any stronger than a guy his size should be. Which begged the question, how big was this Ray guy? The level of strength required to literally crush a man’s spine…
Jesse teased the tail of Mark’s shirt away from the skin. It came easily; the blood hadn’t had time to dry. Mark made no sound as the shirt came up, exposing a back covered in bite marks.
Jesus, the guy must have a mouth like a shovel!
Bone was visible at the level where the spine was crushed, the shattered edges of a vertebra jutting out from the skin. More rips and tears moved to either side, as though Ray used the opening as an easy place to grip with his teeth and pull, peeling Mark’s back like an orange. The blood came mostly from the right, the side nearest Jesse. It wasn’t arterial—no spray—but it sheeted from somewhere deep inside the man’s back. The wound gaped deeper on the right side, like Ray found a delicacy in there and drove his face in.
Is that a kidney in there?
Nausea threatened again, and Jesse hastily let the shirt go. The cloth hung heavily, so saturated with blood that it stayed where it fell. Pushing gently, Jesse guided Mark’s upper body back against the locker.
Mark’s eyes were closed, and he wasn’t breathing.
“Mark?”
Nervelessly, Jesse felt for a pulse in the guy’s throat and couldn’t find one.
Hastily, Jesse got to his feet, not wanting to be too close to the body in case it…came back.
There weren’t any of the black lines, and the guy wasn’t acting crazy.
Was it too much of a stretch to believe there could be others who didn’t catch the crazy? Did that make him immune?
Once you accepted that someone could die and still be capable of running around, trying to bite other people, was it such a crazy thought?
It’s like I’m stuck in an episode of The Walking Dead.
With shaking fingers, Jesse fumbled his smartphone out of his pocket. Steve had indeed sent a message, and it was its arrival notification which brought—Bo?—the man charging at him out of the parts locker. The lock was a simple three-number Masterlock, and Jesse got the combination right on the first attempt. Inside locker 27 were a hanging dress shirt with a pre-knotted tie wrapped around the collar, a pressed and folded pair of slacks, and a plastic bag bearing an image of a cowboy with a bandana pulled across his mouth and the words Rick’s Stick ‘Em Up written in bloated, cartoony letters below it. There were three boxes in the bag. Two of the boxes were ammunition, some knock-off brand with a green stripe and .380 ACP Centerfire emblazoned in the stripe. The third box held a beautiful Walther PK380 short barrel pistol and a single eight-round magazine. The black polymer grip fit perfectly in his hand as he withdrew it from the box, and the Cerakote finish gave the barrel a dull sheen like scrubbed steel, even in the uneven fluorescent lighting.
Loading the magazine brought home the question which taunted him just a few minutes before.
Could he shoot another person?
It hadn’t been a problem in the Army, though most of the firefights he’d been in involved massive quantities of bullets exchanged with faceless enemies across a street in a war-torn and rubble-strewn Afghan village. In circumstances like that, when the bullets stopped flying and the dust settled, it wasn’t easy to determine who hit what, and that was a good thing. While the soldiers celebrated and bragged, they were still able to sleep at night because of the uncertainty. Did he think he’d killed a few of the enemy? Yes. But he wasn’t absolutely sure. That kept his conscience clear.
This would be different.
These weren’t enemy soldiers fighting for a different flag or a different religion. They were Americans, driven mad by circumstance or by some weird, rapid-acting kind of rabies. Maybe they were already dead, like in the zombie movies, but he didn’t really believe that. Not yet.
Ragan died and came back.
Had she, though? The medical people certainly believed she’d died. They’d started CPR. But no one called time of death. There was no toe tag and grief-filled ride to the morgue, no harried looking doctor offering his condolences after “they’d done all they could.”
What if they’d gotten her back, and she only went crazy after her heart started beating again?
Now, with a job to do and a loaded pistol that would make doing it a lot easier, Jesse wondered.
Something heavy banged against the door, startling him. A twinge of discomfort raced through his bladder, reminding him that he still needed to pee.
He hoped the door would hold long enough for him to deal with this problem.
And if it didn’t, he might find out sooner rather than later how capable he was of shooting another person.
* * * * *
“Well, you certainly don’t look like the raving cannibal type,” a man said as he came into the room. He was dressed in dark gray hospital scrubs and had a stethoscope slung around his neck. There was a name tag on his chest, but the letters were so many meaningless scribbles to her. The ability to read was gone, though whether from the head injury or the transformation, Kim didn’t know.
She was being patient.
“I’m Dr. Watson. But please, no Sherlock jokes; I’ve heard them all.” He said this with an easy and practiced laugh, just a line he probably delivered a hundred times a day. Kim plastered a smile on her features in response. Only the right side moved.
The doctor’
s demeanor changed with her attempted smile. He went from jovial and lighthearted to deadpan serious and moved from the door to the side of the bed in as little time. “Oh my God,” he said, fingers beginning to probe around her eye. “What happened to you?” He had a square jaw dark with stubble. Something about his mouth moving arrested her eyes. She found it hard to look away. A part of her wanted to mirror his motions with her own, almost as though their lips were locked in a passionate kiss. Only the right side of her face moved but, lost in the fog of become, it didn’t raise any alarm.
The hardest part was trying to hide her desire to make him become. He could become. Somehow, she knew.
He became more concerned as her mouth moved.
“Are you trying to speak? Is that it?”
Her mouth moved but no sound came out.
“This is important. If you’re unable to talk, but can understand me, nod your head.”
And because something in his voice sounded sincere, or because something in her mind drove her to acquiesce so he’d cut her free, Kim nodded, all the while keeping her eyes locked on his mouth.
* * * * *
Jesse loaded the Walther’s magazine, inserted it, and racked the slide, loading a round into the chamber. Then he ejected the magazine and replaced the top bullet, giving himself a full load. The rest of the ammunition from the box went into his pants pockets. He placed the large flashlight into the plastic bag with the remaining box of ammunition and tied the bag’s handles through one of his belt loops, leaving his hands free.
A part of him, the part inside his head where the world remained sunny and dead things didn’t try to eat the living, snickered at his precautions. Look at the big man! First, he screams like a little girl and next he’s dressing himself up like a boy pretending to be a man going to war.
The voice didn’t have a lot of power. Too much had happened in the past eighteen or twenty hours for him to be able to shame himself that easily.
Maybe the dead weren’t walking, but they sure were trying to crawl.
Bathroom back to locker room, and Mark was still there, propped against the wall. He wasn’t trying to get up.
There hadn’t been a slam on the door for several minutes, at least not while he was tending to nature. Jesse didn’t know whether to be relieved by that or not. If the door shook, he would know where the short guy was, though being that close might make it difficult to get out.
Suck it up, pussy. Open it and get it over with.
Still he waited, through One Mississippi then Two Mississippi.
He went on three.
* * * * *
Back to the CT room, still strapped to the table.
Kim could have wept with frustration if she wasn’t beyond weeping.
She had to be patient. Had to bide her time. They couldn’t keep her tied down forever.
They won’t, a little voice said, somewhere below hearing and beyond thought.
Where was it coming from? It wasn’t her internal voice.
They will unstrap you to put you on the CT table. Let them. Don’t fight, not right away. Wait until they leave the room to run the test.
The voice had wisdom. It counseled patience.
Kim listened.
“I’m sorry, miss, but an injury like that…well, it makes sense that you might have violent outbursts,” the doctor said when he left the room to order the CT. “Don’t worry, we’ll give you a mild sedative, then take those off when we get the scan.”
They’d given her something, a clear, viscous fluid introduced into her IV. It wouldn’t affect her, but she let them think it had.
It went exactly as the voice said it would.
The nurses were different, and there was a different doctor waiting for her. They had no idea what she’d become.
But they were going to find out.
The doctor was smart. He didn’t come out of the control room to examine her. Maybe he’d compared notes with the one whose nose she broke.
The nurses were both male, like the flight crew members. Kim didn’t compare them in terms of attractiveness. The part of her mind which made those connections no longer had any say in how she acted or responded. She was become. There were only become, those who could become, and those who could not. Become like her had a duty to create more become or to kill those who could not become.
That’s right. But you must be smart about it. You remember being smart, don’t you? Stay quiet. Don’t let on that you’re different. It won’t matter as long as they don’t check your vital signs.
“Wow,” one of the nurses said, “poor lady. Don’t worry, we’ll get you through this as gently and as fast as we can.”
“You must have a powerful headache,” the other added. “But don’t you fret. I’m sure the doctors will get you set up as soon as they get you back.”
Their accents were as different as their builds and faces, and neither mattered.
“Why’s she in four points?” the first one asked.
“Report says she wigged out on the flight crew what brought her in. Head injury like that, it’s no surprise.”
“Chart says she got two of Ativan and five of Haldol before coming down. Think it’s safe to unstrap her?”
“Not like we got a choice. But yeah, I think she’s fine. You put that much in me and I’d be seeing little pink elephants.”
“Might let Regina braid your hair?”
“Hell,” the second one said, “I’d let her braid anything she wanted to.”
“Regardless of medicine?”
“I’d want to be awake for the whole thing. Wouldn’t you?”
The words were meaningless babble in two different voices. Both could become; nothing else mattered.
“All right, miss. We’re going to unstrap you and move you over to the CT table.”
“But don’t worry,” the second voice jumped in, “as soon as you’re on it, we’ll use the big Velcro strap to keep you nice and snug.”
No. Once you’re moved, you strike. Don’t let them strap you down again.
The doctor’s voice meant nothing. The nurses’ voices meant nothing. Yet this voice in her head had power. It could command.
Kim didn’t question it or the authority it possessed. She was become. She would obey.
The straps came off her ankles first, both nurses working in tandem, well-trained and efficient.
They moved to her hands, no longer talking to her but over her, planning the move.
“Make sure the draw sheet is supporting her head.”
“I know. I know.”
“Worry about the feet last.”
“You think this is my first rodeo?”
Her hands were freed. Nurse number one gently moved them both onto her chest.
Get ready.
They counted to three and lifted.
Now.
* * * * *
Jesse unlocked the little thumb knob, twisted the handle, and shoved. The door pushed out easily.
And there he was. All five-six of him but hunched over his lurching, stomping good leg while his bad leg lagged behind, so he looked five-three or five-four. He’d been shambling away but turned back as soon as he heard the door unlock. Despite the limp pin, his pivot was smooth. If the leg hurt, he wasn’t letting it slow him.
He was five feet away.
“Bo!” Jesse shouted, hoping to surprise the man by using his name.
The small man with the tapestry of black vines crisscrossing his arms and neck didn’t show any response. His good leg came forward, followed by the bad. Stomp-slide.
“Bo, my name’s Jesse.” He raised the Walther and aimed at the center of the man’s body. “You need to back away. You hear me?”
If Bo heard, he gave no indication. Stomp-slide.
Jesse resisted the urge to back away, not wanting to be trapped in the small locker room. “Stop right there! I’m warning you!”
Bo lifted his good leg to step forward and Jesse lowered the gun, firing it into
the planted right leg. The noise was deafening. The bullet tore through muscle and bone in a fleeting instant, then buried itself in the floor. The short man’s leg wobbled, like the shot destabilized it momentarily. But the man didn’t fall.
He didn’t scream.
And Jesse had to back away.
Stomp-slide.
He didn’t have a choice. God help him, there wasn’t any choice.
He raised the pistol and fired again, point blank and center mass.
Stomp-slide.
Strong arms came out at him, hands open and grasping.
Stifling a scream, Jesse tried to back away again but found he had nowhere to go. The lockers were at his back and his feet were tangled up in the straggling legs of the man on the ground. He flailed, and somehow managed to prevent the monstrosity from securing a grip on his arms.
His face.
He was so close now that Jesse could see the larger black vines diminishing, tapering into smaller lines like tunneling worms which dug into the corners of the man’s eyes.
In the zombie movies, they always shoot for the head.
The short man started to raise his foot again, readying a final lunge and there was nowhere for Jesse to go, nowhere to run to.
Stomp.
He raised the pistol a third time.
Have to shoot him in the head.
Slide.
He pulled the trigger.
Chapter 6
The body fell against him and Jesse thought This is it, man. It’s over. Like Bill Paxton in Aliens, Game over, man. Game over.
But the arms didn’t grab, and the weight only lay against him for a second before the body slid to the side.
Close to panic and struggling to keep hold of his nerves, Jesse stepped sideways enough to get clear of the dead man—the two dead men—then sank down to the floor, his back against the corner of the room.
The shot to the right leg hadn’t slowed the man down. Maybe the only reason the left leg did was because something was fundamentally twisted and broken. Maybe if the bullet had destroyed the bone, it might have worked. It wouldn’t have stopped him though. Jesse could easily picture the Bo-thing dragging himself across the floor like a soldier trying to belly-crawl under a roll of barbed wire while machine guns fired above him.