by Eli Nixon
Chapter 14
"IT'S IRRESPONSIBLE. Idiotic. This isn't about you and your heroic delusions, Ray. It's about all of us. It's about staying alive. How are we supposed to fucking do that if you keep forcing us to wait while you try to save everyone you meet? Huh? Fucking answer me that. What about us? Don't we matter?"
Rivet was pacing in front of me, shouting and twisting his earring. Now and then he paused and illustrated a point by shaking a finger at me, then went back to wearing a groove in the beige carpet. I sat on the padded armrest of a paisley sofa and watched him, trying to work in an explanation, but Rivet never paused long enough to get a sentence out. Mr. Dinkins reclined on the sofa beside me, his head propped up on a pillow, breathing shallowly but steadily. I checked his pulse every few minutes, making sure he didn't slip away under the heavy sedatives. On my other side, close at hand on the small end table, was the epinephrine syringe I'd grabbed in the pharmacy. I'd already unwrapped it so it would be ready at the first sign of respiratory failure.
"It's naive more than anything," Rivet continued berating me. Titan scooted out of the way of his stomping feet. He ignored the cat. "You know as well as I do that you never check to see if the fucking zombie is okay. Think for once in your life. That's all I'm asking. Think. Use that chickenshit brain. Hell, we planned for this, didn't we? What about all the times we talked about killing zombies for real? Don't remember saving the psycho war vets in there anywhere, do you? We grew up ready for this. We're living it, Ray. Dream come fucking true."
We'd gone overboard after getting back to the abandoned house where we'd left our food. Way overboard. But it was deserved. We'd all agreed on that. I was swinging low on a handful of oxys, the bite of my shoulder dulled to a slow, manageable throb. I couldn't even feel the gash on my chest unless I took an extra deep breath, but narcotics had a pleasurable way of dissuading you from deep breathing. For the first time since that morning, I felt in control. It was hard to believe that all of this had started just a few hours ago. It seemed like a lifetime since I'd woken up in my own bed to the sound of Rivet shouting downstairs.
Rivet had gone the other way, speedballing Adderall and Percocet. His movements were becoming more erratic as the amphetamines soaked into his blood, punctuating his anger with spots of pure rage. The sun had set, and candlelight gave a demonic cast to his face. I didn't get why he was so pissed, why trying to help someone offended him so much. It was getting on my nerves more than a little bit. He wouldn't shut up about it, just kept ranting, repeating himself, pushing himself into my face and then going back to pacing.
I glanced down at Mr. Dinkins. Felt the pulse, faint but present, in his neck. Maybe Rivet was right. Why did I want to keep this guy alive so badly that I'd put my best friends in danger to do it? Was it merely a buried impulse of humanity, loyalty to a fellow member of the tribe? No...tribalism was a tenet to which I'd never ascribed. I'd always been a loner. Born ten thousand years earlier, I would have been tribeless. Outcast. Doomed to a lonely death without the protection afforded by numbers. In the earliest days, mankind had grown into a tribal society by sheer necessity, and even in the emotionally disconnected modern world, our actions were still dictated by the need to gather, to coalesce, to share. Was that the way of man, or something vestigial our DNA hadn't yet learned how to cast off? Was communalism the emotional equivalent of a tailbone? It certainly seemed like it.
So why was it impossible for me to let Mr. Dinkins die? Not mercy—it would have been much easier to simply slit his throat and leave him. Perhaps that would have been an even greater mercy than dragging him into the bleak and unknown future that faced us. I had no answers. Maybe in a past life I could have found a reason, but not now. Now, action and thought were dictated by the chemicals within me, chemicals that held me in an even tighter grip than they ever had, because I couldn't escape them even if I wanted to. They were now as vital as water and breath. The heartland had turned me into a junkie, and the junk had, in turn, kept me chained to the heartland. Hell, it seemed, was the only escape.
Jennie poked her head into the flickering living room, then seemed to remember something and disappeared again. She'd volunteered to get everyone dinner, but it had already been thirty minutes. It didn't matter much. I doubted anyone was hungry. I think she'd gotten into the Valium, so I didn't harbor much hope for a decent meal anyway.
"Are you even fucking listening to me?" Rivet asked. He snapped his fingers at the bridge of my nose, then favored my cheek with a light, echoing slap. It was the last straw. I lunged off the sofa and hurled him against the wall.
"What the hell is your problem with me, Rivet?" I roared, moving forward to pin his chest with my elbow. My fist flew into the drywall beside his head, knocking a framed picture of horses to the floor. "You're not my goddamn girlfriend. You're not my dad. You're not. My fucking. Mom." I punched the wall again, deepening the depression my fist had left on the first blow. Blood pounded behind my skull, making my vision pulse. "I don't have to answer to you, get it? If you don't like what I do, leave. I'm not stopping you."
Rivet's anger drained from him in a visible rush. He stared at me, wide-eyed, face pale behind the black blotches that crowded my vision. "It's me, Ray. It's me. Jesus, what's gotten into you?"
"What's gotten into me?" I repeated. "What's gotten into me is you crowding my balls for the last half hour. What's gotten into me is the blood all over your fucking shirt. What's gotten into me is the pile of human bodies we left in the middle of River. What's gotten into me is everybody I've ever known turning into a goddamn cannibal in front of my eyes. What's gotten into me is I'll never be able to be sober again. For life. Forever, Rivet. Do you get that? Because every time I close my eyes, there's something waiting for me. Because every time the stupid fucking party starts to end, I start to lose my mind, and one of these times, it won't be enough, and I won't be fast enough to stop it, and I'm going to turn into one of them. What's gotten into me is there's a guillotine hanging over all of our heads, and it's never, ever going away.
"Is that enough for you, Rivet? You're having a great time now, a grand old time, aren't you? All the drugs in the world, waiting for us to seize them. But what's going to happen in a week? In a month? In a year? What happens when there aren't any more pharmacies. Are you going to laugh when you chop my head off like you did to that little boy? You gonna high-five Jennie and make a Christ-fucking pun when my blood's soaking into your shirt? You're talking to me about survival, but you're still thinking about this like a fucking junkie. This is forever. And Mr. Dinkins over there, well he just might be the last living human we ever meet. So excuse me for trying to hold onto that. Life just got a lot more rare."
I glared at him a moment longer, then shoved away and stomped back to the sofa to check Dinkins's pulse. It was stronger. Rivet was still standing against the wall, watching me like I might transform into a rattlesnake and sink my fangs into his hand. I guess we all had a right to be suspicious when someone started acting crazy. Was this our destiny? Paranoia, constantly looking over our shoulders, waiting for our best friends to start eating us?
I listened to Mr. Dinkins breathe awhile longer, then stood up. "I'm going to bed," I announced to no one in particular, then took a candle and made my way deeper into the strange house to find a bedroom.