by Rob Horner
“Sure, I’m sure,” Caitlin replied. Then, to Jessica, “Don’t worry. I don’t have any family locally, so I gotta stick with someone. Might as well be the big, strong man with his own car.”
“Every girls’ dream, am I right?” Tina yelled from the backseat.
Buck smiled at the byplay. “I don’t need to go inside; got the keys in my pocket,” he said, waving as the silver Town & Country pulled away.
“Yeah, but you want to anyway.”
Buck smiled down at the short woman, sweat-matted curly hair about the level of his chest. “You know? I think I do.”
* * * * *
There was always noise in the Arbor Crest Apartments, even at two in the morning. Neighbors held volume competitions across common hallways, one television playing America’s Got Talent while another blared through an episode of SportsCenter. If the noise didn’t come from TVs, it came from groups of young men, mostly black, who hung around cars with jacked back tires and over-sized subwoofers popping out of their hatchbacks. But Brandon had no beef with them, so they left him alone.
It didn’t hurt that he looked like a football player from the back—six-four with meter-wide shoulders made of solid muscle and strong enough to get a four-hundred-pound diabetic off the floor and back onto a hospital stretcher. His easy-going manner and soft features belied his size; in South Carolina parlance, Brandon was easy on the eyes and sweet as a gallon of tea, so of course he played for the wrong team.
Most nights there was noise.
Not tonight.
And after the past few hours in the emergency department, the silence screamed in Brandon’s head.
The parking lots weren’t empty of cars, just people—no youths hanging out drinking beer from wrinkled paper bags, no stereos blaring deep bass and vulgar lyrics, no couples making out in plain view of their friends, no ambulances hitting the apartments where the chronically ill lived from one month to the next, juggling food and medication costs…
It was eerie and Brandon didn’t like it.
Jessica dropped him off at the entrance to the community. His building was one of the closest, just across a two-row parking lot. He stopped on the first-floor landing, looking out over the rows of parked cars, the closed-for-the-night swimming pool, the rusted swing set on the playground where more dogs pooped than kids played.
If he heard a scream, or a husband yelling at his wife, or kids hollering at each other over some perceived slight, he’d have felt better.
But it was just him and the quiet.
Brandon climbed the stairs to the third floor where he shared an apartment with his boyfriend, Russell. Brandon should’ve been home around seven-thirty, eight at the latest. He’d sent Russell a text when the hospital went into lockdown but hadn’t had a chance to communicate with him since.
He must be worried sick, Brandon thought with a surge of guilt.
Right on top of that came a burning rush of shame, though it was hard to describe why. Here he was feeling guilty over not telling his boyfriend what was happening, while other people were fighting and dying—friends and co-workers as well as innocent patients and their family members. He’d seen some crazy shit over the past few hours, certainly crazier than anything he’d ever imagined. Which was saying something, considering he was a liberal gay man living in Yee Haw Bang Bang, South Carolina.
Russell would understand.
Brandon took the last half-flight two stairs at a time.
Each landing off this stairwell featured four doors. With three floors, that made twelve small apartments per building. If he remembered the layout accurately, there were a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom on each side. He turned right off the stairs to the first door, apartment 131-J. They had a two-bedroom, but not because they slept separately. The second room was used for storage space and a resistance band workout machine.
Russell worked a nine to five as a building inspector, a job Brandon envied. How cool of a gig was that? He had an office, but he was rarely in it. Instead, he drove all over the county, checking out buildings at various phases during their construction. How many hot and sweaty construction workers did he see? Envy tried to turn to jealousy, as it always did, but Brandon pushed it down. Russell was always waiting for him at home; he had no reason to suspect him of anything.
Because of the type of renters in the apartments, they were fixed with automatically-locking doors, like a hotel room. Unlike a hotel, there were no keycards. Residents had to learn quickly to always have a key on them or risk being locked out.
Pulling his keychain out of his pocket—wishing he’d had a chance to grab his car rather than grabbing a ride with Jessica—Brandon unlocked the door and stepped into the tiny kitchen area. The lights were on; Russell must have been waiting up for him.
As far as he knew, the layouts for the apartments were similar across the whole complex—kitchen which opened onto a combination living and dining area. Master bedroom to one side, with a private bath, then a second bath and more bedrooms on the other side. The floors were carpeted everywhere but the kitchen and bathrooms, something soft and durable, probably cheap, but it was new when they moved in.
The smell hit as the door closed behind him.
Copper and crap, the acrid burn of recent vomit.
It was the hospital all over again, but it was here, in his home!
“Russell?”
A low moan answered his call, following immediately by a sound like the grunt a person makes when he’s trying desperately to complete his hundredth sit-up, that push of air as the stomach muscles contract and squeeze and the elbows touch the knees.
The living room was clear, just a couch, a loveseat, the television, and a little computer desk with their PC powered off and the screen dark.
The blip of a hallway to the right was dark, and no lights came out of the second bedroom or the bathroom.
The moan came again, prolonged and rising through the octaves until it was a muted scream of pain. Another sound followed, a rip as of fabric being torn.
The smell grew stronger.
“Russell?” Brandon called again, moving through the living room to the door of the master bedroom.
The overhead light was on, the ceiling fan spinning lazily. The covers were thrown back and there was—is that puke or blood?—something puddled on the floor by the bed. The beige carpet hid some of the color, though the splash pattern was consistent with vomit.
“You okay, Russell?”
The smell was a wall of offense, hanging thick as a fog. Brandon forced himself to breathe through his mouth, knowing he couldn’t really taste the stench.
But damn, it was awful.
He saw Russell as soon as he entered the room. A part of him, anyway. One pale leg extended back into the bedroom from the bathroom.
Concern overrode caution.
Brandon moved through the bedroom to the adjoining bath.
Russell lay on the floor, head and one arm draped around the toilet bowl, the rest of his body extending back to the bed, like he’d crawled as far as he could, and this was all he could manage. He wore workout shorts and nothing else, but the backs were stained an ugly brown. He’d shit himself, and more evidence ran over his upper thighs and onto the floor between his legs. The smell in the bathroom was worse than anything Brandon had ever experienced. Not even the sick patients in the hospital were as bad; Russell’s stink had fermented in the enclosed space.
But this wasn’t a patient. This was Russell, his Russell. And there wasn’t anything, stink, stank, or stunk, that would keep Brandon from taking care of his man. Being a CNA in an emergency department inoculated him against all but the nastiest sights and smells. He reached the bathroom and tried to ease Russell off the toilet and onto his side.
Russell flopped onto the floor, unconscious but breathing. The pulse at his neck was weak but steady. His skin was clammy with sweat but didn’t have the cold undertone which spoke to a fever recently broken. He’d thrown up multiple times, if th
e interior of the toilet and the bathtub were any indication, pale green bile laced with swimming streaks of vibrant red. The blood scared him; every person who’d come in sick and turned crazy had the blood in their vomit. He’d be a fool to think Russell was going to be any different.
But it was possible, right? Regular C.Diff. infections often caused bloody vomit and stools; nothing said Russell had the same thing as everyone else.
It was wishful thinking, magical thinking, but Brandon couldn’t help it.
He wanted Russell to be okay. He needed him to be all right.
Still, in case he was crazy like the others, maybe Brandon could do something to protect himself. Not a gun, of course. No way would he own one of those things. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to use the one he picked up in the hospital, and that was with crazy-squared jumping out of the shadows and biting people.
So no, no guns. But they had a baseball bat.
Brandon retrieved the bat, as well as a few garbage bags, rolls of paper towels, and industrial strength toilet cleaner. He found Lysol hand wipes as well, which should do for Russell’s mouth. Then, setting the bat in a corner of the bathroom, he began cleaning his partner, the toilet, the tub, and the floor.
It was something to do.
Chapter 9
Tina’s sprawling home in rural Cherokee County, up near the northern border of what might still be Gaffney, was Jessica’s last stop. The men were out of the car, and it was just her and the nurse practitioner.
“You can always stay with us,” Tina said.
Jessica smiled. The offer was well-intended, and she was thankful for it, but it wouldn’t do to run away from her fears. “I need to go home, see if Johnny’s okay.”
“Why do you put up with him?” Tina asked.
It was perhaps the worst-kept secret in the hospital that Jessica lived with an abusive man. She had no one to blame but herself. She could have tried to hide the bruises better, maybe worn more makeup. In the sad tradition of abused women all over the world, she had no reason to give why she stayed with him. All the other women could talk big, say how they wouldn’t take it, call the police, or go stay in a shelter. They weren’t in her situation, and this was one of those times where no one knows what it’s like until they’ve lived it.
All the old excuses came to mind.
He’s a good man most of the time.
I know he loves me; he just has a hard time showing it.
He’s never broken a bone.
It was all bullshit. She wasn’t a battered woman because she’d been a battered daughter. She wasn’t raised with a pedophile father. There was just something about Johnny that cried out for help, and she saw it as her place to help him. She could fix him, change him, and no one else would ever see that potential like she did.
Jessica didn’t answer Tina’s question. She’d learned over the years that it was better not to engage. No one believed her reasonings, and she didn’t need to hear anymore Ra-ra, girl power slogans or canned suggestions. Just let her live her life and trust that she wouldn’t let it go too far.
That’s why she had the gun and the permit to carry.
Ironically, it was Johnny’s abusive nature that both prompted her to buy the weapon and persuaded the nice Concealed Carry teacher to give her a fast-track permit. Showing up with a day-old shiner was a great way to get a good ol’ boy ready to help.
Johnny had no idea about the weapon. Not that it mattered. Officer Tim confiscated it as evidence in Lisa’s murder. Jessica couldn’t be mad at the policeman, not after all that he did for them, saving everyone’s ass more than once in the frantic madness of the ER followed by the dark dash to freedom. Brandon said he was taken by the…
“Tina? Do you think those were zombies?”
The blond nurse practitioner gave a sigh as though her friend had intentionally changed the subject. “I don’t know, Jess. If we have to call them something, then ‘zombies’ works as well as anything else. At least until we know more.”
“What more is there to know? They die, then they come back to life.”
“There’s been no research that I know of to explain anything like this,” Tina replied. “It doesn’t matter what we think we saw; there has to be a medical explanation.”
Jessica’s hand tightened on the wheel. The roads north of I-85 were barely lit. Tina was a good navigator, warning her well in advance of any turns, but that didn’t make it any easier to see.
“I don’t see centuries of grounded science suddenly being undone by a witch’s curse, do you?” Tina asked. “No lightning strike to Dr. Frankenstein’s lab to bring the monster back to life. No, what we saw has to have a reason. It has to—” she trailed off.
Jessica wasn’t so sure. All the modern zombie television shows and movies played fast and loose with science. They used everything from a bad virus, as in the case of 28 Days Later and World War Z, to an unfortunate combination of a caffeine drink and an unregulated pleasure drug, as in the television series, iZombie. It was only in some fantasy stories where the dead were raised by magic or sorcery. She wasn’t sure, but she let it lie.
“Turn left up here,” Tina said. “Green Park Drive. Mine’s all the way at the end.”
All the way at the end meant a half-mile dead end with only three mailboxes along its entire length.
Jessica whistled. “How much land do you have?”
Tina smiled at her. “It’s about seventeen acres, when you count the stream and the four or five acres of uncut trees.”
“So, big house, lots of land, a stream, and a forest? Sounds like a paradise. Did it come with a unicorn?”
“I can’t complain,” Tina said, laughing. “But it took Bill and I a long time to get to where we could afford it.”
“Do you even get Internet out here?”
“Of course, we do,” Tina laughed. “Rural don’t mean backwoods country.” She adopted a fake Southern accent and pretended to spit tobacco. “AT&T ran fiber optic through here last year.”
Jessica laughed. “Okay, just keep your eyes open. Would hate to run over a skunk in your driveway.”
“That’s a real problem around here,” Tina said.
The driveway was long and winding but ended in a circle in front of the home.
“Try to relax,” Tina said, climbing out of the van. “Tonight was crazy. And I know you’ve got some real worries about the…gun…incident. But try to put them aside. I think the hospital is going to be worrying about a lot of bigger things for a long time.”
“Best thing you’ve said all night,” Jessica replied.
Jessica waited while Tina walked to the door. It took a moment for the door to open, but she didn’t want to leave until her friend was safe.
Finally alone, she began the drive back to the city.
* * * * *
Tina wasn’t kidding about the skunk. More often than not, the night was redolent with the scent of one of the creatures, though never so strong that she worried one was close enough to spray her. Their dogs patrolled the property regularly. And while skunks didn’t fear many animals, believing their powerful scent a strong deterrent, they weren’t stupid creatures. Like many small animals, they preferred to avoid confrontation with large, loud dogs.
Tonight was no exception. There was a tang of sour flowers on the air, but it was faint. Given how far a skunk’s smell can carry on the wind, Tina estimated one of the creatures had sprayed something a few miles away or a few hours before.
The taillights of the minivan receded down Green Park Drive, heading back toward the city, and Tina turned to her front door. She hadn’t had time to grab her purse during the chaos at the hospital, so she was forced to press the doorbell and wait for Bill or one of her sons to let her in.
It was Bill, because of course the boys would be asleep.
The porch light came on first. She could picture him on the other side of the door, peering through the peephole. They never received unplanned visitors out here, and some
one ringing the bell at three in the morning was unheard of. It took only a couple of seconds for him to disable the alarm system and jerk the door open.
“Thank God,” he said, pushing through the screen door. “I’ve been worried sick. You were supposed to be home hours ago. What happened?”
Even as he spoke, he cleared the door, holding it open to allow her to enter.
They embraced inside the door, sharing a quick kiss. These little moments were what kept their relationship strong.
Waiting until he relocked the door, Tina followed Bill into the kitchen. It took far less time than she imagined to tell the story. Really, other than the run through the back corridors, what was there to tell? The hospital went into lockdown over a gun incident, then people started going crazy. No, she hadn’t been hurt, but a lot of others had been.
“I saw something about it on the news,” he said, interrupting her. Other than his initial outburst, Bill wasn’t hysterical. He’d been worried, certainly, but he stayed cool. Tall and dark-haired, Bill was her rock. They’d been together since high school, and Tina couldn’t imagine a life without him. They’d raised two fine young men, one ready to start college in the fall, with the other only a year behind. They’d fought through the hard times, just starting out with him working a construction job while she took nursing classes. Now look at them. He owned the construction company and she was a nurse practitioner with a six-figure job.
“You saw something about the hospital?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, nothing about that. This was more a National News kind of thing. Whole lot of fear-mongering; not a lot of detail—you know the drill.”
Tina sighed. She loved Bill, but he loved nothing more than to rail against the “mainstream media” and their seeming wholesale endorsement of one political party over the other. If it wasn’t the politicization of the media, it was their propensity to take small things and make them a national crisis, though they just as often ignored national problems if it didn’t fit their template or marching orders. Regardless, she’d been through too much tonight to let him go off on a tangent. “What’re they saying happened?”