The Plague Runner

by Burgy, P. J.

  When she stood up and searched for him, she saw that he had wedged himself between some boxes and a tall, worn out wooden work-desk. He had crammed himself in there pretty good and was hugging his knees, staring out at her with his black eyes. She felt a cold chill run up along her spine. He wasn't feral, he wasn't hunting her like earlier. This was different and yet oddly familiar. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know, but I need to.” His husky reply.

  “Are you hungry again?” she asked.

  “No. Please. Just go. Please.”

  She had seen this before, but hadn’t expected it at all from Russell. She saw him trying to tuck in further and remembered the time she’d seen the Wailer nestled up in that nook, breathing hard and doing something akin to sleep. And there was Russell, breathing hard, staring at her with half closed black eyes, making angry little grunting sounds in the back of his throat. He was nodding off, waking up, nodding off again, covering his face with his hands.

  “Wow.”

  “Kara.” He managed to speak, his tone very obviously agitated.

  “Okay, okay.” She backed away and then exited through the door, sparing one last glance at the man curled up in the corner. His eyes were closed.

  “Kara.”

  Her eyes opened, and she pulled herself up onto her elbow. She’d been lying on her side on the floor, hiding under the desk to stay out of the direct sun. The warmth had been nice, but she knew better than to stay out too long. She turned her attention toward the figure in all black standing above her, the motorcycle helmet gleaming in the light.

  She was glad to see that the black pants she’d nabbed for him fit well. She stretched, working the kinks out of her spine, and pulled herself up to her feet. Rubbing at her lower back, she yawned and checked the window.

  “We only have about five hours of sun left. I can’t believe I slept that long,” she muttered.

  “Five hours is enough time to get to a safe place for the night," he said, his face obscured completely by the tinted visor. He waited for her to arrive at his side before he pointed down the street. He was covered from head to toe, not a bit of him visible. “We can reach the mall before evening.”

  “Mall?” She tilted her head.

  “Big collection of stores. The wild ones roam around in there during the day, but I know a place we can go to stay out of their way. It's a safe place to spend the night.” He began to walk down the street and she followed after him, keeping pace easily with his long stride.

  “I’ll take your word for it, Russ,” she stated.

  The hot sun beat down on them both, but Russell seemed unaffected despite his all black ensemble and the motorcycle helmet. He just kept plugging along, walking fast and looking around. As they traveled into the city, the buildings grew closer together and taller. Grass had been steadily reclaiming the roads and there were huge cracks and fissures in the asphalt. Further ahead, a sinkhole had formed in the middle of the street and the husks of thousands of cars had been left to rot and rust, the windows broken, the tires flat.

  Deeper and deeper they went, passing broken old shops and the ruins of banks and churches. she jumped over a large crack in the concrete and he merely skirted around it. It had been over an hour, maybe two hours of walking, Kara watching the sky or checking out their surroundings.

  It was quiet save for a crow that called out from somewhere not too far away. He spun his head toward the direction of the sound, and she wondered briefly if he’d been about to go hunt down and eat the bird. He kept moving forward though, losing interest in the crow when it went silent.

  They went on and on until they came to a very abrupt stop, Russell being the one to freeze. The road they were taking appeared to disintegrate, just thirty or so feet ahead. The sink hole had to be twenty feet wide, and Kara wasn’t sure how long it was until they were right up on top of it. Something below the surface of the street had caved in years ago and flooded, the fissure stretching from as far as she could see to either side. She was surprised to see that the water didn’t look too deep; four feet, maybe five, no visible current, and easily crossed.

  “Well, shoot. Don’t wanna get my sneakers wet.” She laughed. She swung around to offer a smile to Russell but he was still standing behind her, hands at his sides, not moving. “Russ?”

  “We have to find a place to cross," he said. “We came from King St. It has to end by King St.”

  He began to walk to the right.

  “Russ, we can cross this easy. Where are you going?” she called after him.

  He did not reply.

  “We’re wasting time going around. We can cross this. The water isn’t even moving. Russell?” She raised her voice and watched him walk further away from her. Groaning, she chased after him. “Russ. This thing could run all the way to King St. Don’t tell me you’re hydrophobic like the rest of them.”

  “I am!” He whirled around and Kara was face to face with her reflection in his visor. “I cannot cross that. I literally cannot.”

  “You’re afraid?” she asked him and he straightened up.

  “Yes, I am petrified. I can’t do it. So we will go around.”

  “If I get you across-” she began.

  “No.” He began to stalk off to the right again, hurdling over a car blocking the sidewalk just to avoid getting too close to the fissure. The road to the left of the fissure was getting thinner and thinner, the cement crumbling into the water. The building to the right of him was getting closer and closer until there was less than twenty feet of viable ground ahead of him. It was there that he stopped.

  She followed after, pausing when he did. She had expected him to back up and turn around when the road tapered off and disappeared before him, but he didn’t. He didn’t move at all for a few long seconds. “Russell, we’ve got to cross. No choice.”

  Slowly, he began to crouch down, his gloved hands grasping the top of his helmet as he lowered himself into a ball. Unsure of what she was seeing, she found herself speechless.

  He froze there, close to the ground. His panting breaths were growing louder, faster, his fingers curled, his body bent, shoulders hunching. He was trying to get as small as he could. A soft little melody reached her ears as he began to hum.

  “Come on, stand up, back up.” She came up behind him.

  “I can’t move. I can’t move," he said, voice airy, panicked.

  “You can, come on.” She gripped his shoulder.

  “I can’t,” he told her.

  She watched him as he heaved, heard his frantic breathing. He was shaking like a leaf, frozen to the spot in terror. She searched for answers, lips parted. Then, she squeezed his shoulder. “Close your eyes, Russ.”

  He made a noise at her, a soft keening. The sound disturbed her, for it was a strange pitch and warbling, almost a cry. It was the very subdued wail of a mindless Infected. When he did it again, she gave his shoulder another squeeze and ducked down beside him. She couldn’t see his face behind the visor, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

  She spoke directly to him. “Close your eyes. Are your eyes closed?”

  He nodded.

  “There isn’t any water next to you,” she told him.

  “I can smell it. There is.”

  She stared at him, brows knit. She went to his side and grabbed his upper arm, pulling at him. He was too strong. There was no way she could yank him up and move him herself. Exhaling in frustration, she stood up straight and looked around, desperately searching for an answer on the streets behind and across from them. “It’s just a puddle, Russ. We’re going to back up, okay? It’s just a puddle. Come on.”

  He didn’t move so she ducked down again and, very carefully, did her best to place herself over his shoulders and back, her hands on his upper arms. She stayed there, hunched over him, until she heard his breathing stabilize.

  “Okay.” He began to stand. “Okay.”

  “Keep your eyes closed. Step backward. Turn around.” She helped him
along, gripping his arms the entire time. She kept a careful eye behind herself as she walked him back along the path he’d taken and then, when they’d reach a wide enough section of the undamaged road, she stopped their shambling procession. “Okay. You’re good.”

  The switch back was instantaneous, Russell rolling his shoulders and searching the road ahead of them once more. His visor once again faced her. “So, what do we do now?”

  She chewed on her bottom lip, glancing around while she contemplated the options. She happened to see the busted open store front to their left and indicated toward it with her hand. As if fortune had smiled upon them, destiny deciding to give them a break, she pointed toward the ruins of a large hardware store. The sign had long fallen to the ground and smashed to pieces. “We look for what I hope they have.”

  “And what is that?” he asked.

  When they laid the 32 foot aluminum ladder on the street outside of the store, she could tell that he was not about to rally behind her idea. Even behind the visor, she felt like she knew what his expression would be, because she heard it in his voice.

  “No," he said.

  “Do you have any better ideas, or do you want to hike down the other way?” she asked him. When he didn’t respond, she sighed and pointed back to the store. “There are planks of wood, flat, big. I can make a bridge. We can cross it together.”

  “No," he said again.

  “I’ll fashion us a canoe out of one of these trees and we can paddle our way down. Dammit, Russell, come on.” She spun in a circle toward the hardware store, stepping in and crunching the broken glass under her sneakers. “We don’t have a lot of options here.”

  It didn’t take long to get the ladder to lay across the rift, even without his help. The annoyance on her face was plainly readable as she sent him frequent scowls, the daggers from her eyes bouncing off of his tinted visor.

  She had to place the wooden boards carefully. The boards were flat, about three foot by three foot, and had not been intended to be used in such a way. Neither was the ladder for that matter and Kara winced as she reached the middle of her little bridge, feeling it creak and bend. That three hundred pound rating didn’t refer to walking across the damn thing, just up it. She wondered how much Russell weighed, craning her neck to look back at him as he paced the concrete like a caged animal. One-eighty? Two hundred? She couldn’t go over with him, not at the same time. She couldn’t hold his arm and pull him along while his eyes were closed.

  She reached the other side, the panels set up on the ladder, her bridge completed. Placing her hands on her hips, she called out to him. “You’re going to have to run across, Russ.”

  “What?” He stopped his pacing, faced her, and stood fixed like a statue.

  “You’re going to have to just run it, Russ,” she said again, and then shrugged. “I’m sorry. You can do it though. You can.”

  “No, no, I can’t.” He began to pace again.

  She checked the sun, cringing at how much time they were losing. She brought her gaze back down to Russell and narrowed her eyes, nose crinkling as she came to stand in front of her bridge. Taking a few steps back, then a few more, she planted both of her feet down and held her hands out, arms open. “Come on. Yeah. Just run across. Just focus on me and run across.”

  He looked like he might’ve been about to make a sprint across to her, but then stopped and paced. He did it again, another fake-out as he changed his mind. His end of the bridge drew him in and then pushed him back. This went on for a few minutes and Kara finally sat on the concrete, head down and hand over her face. Watching him agonize over crossing was giving her a headache.

  A skittering sound got her attention and she saw something moving from the corner of her eye. She whipped around and saw the gray, furry little body and big puffy tail of a squirrel only a few feet behind her, on top of a rusted car. The creature was nervously sniffing, its black eyes wide and its movements twitchy. She turned around again to see that he was preparing to try for a run again. She pointed behind her. “Can you catch that?”

  “What?” He sounded shaken, distracted.

  “Look. Can you catch that?” She pointed at the squirrel.

  “If you’re asking me if I can catch a squirrel, I’m not a dog-”

  “I’m telling you to go catch that. I want to see if you can.”

  “I can, I have,” he told her.

  “Do you eat them?” She didn’t bother to stand up as it was easier to call to him from her seated position in the middle of the street, just across the watery ravine. He was pacing again, but his visor was definitely aimed at the little creature moving around behind her.

  “I eat them. Where is this going?” He stopped in front of the bridge.

  “Catch it.”

  “You’re asking me to catch a squirrel.” He threw his hands up.

  “I’m telling you to. Go get it.” She turned around to see that the squirrel was on the ground, moving around some tall tufts of grass. “It’s going to get away.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “Just focus on it, and go get it.”

  Russell let out a growl of annoyance, banged his fists into the sides of his helmet, paced back and forth three times, and then pointed his visor in the direction of his prey. He backed up ten feet, twenty feet. He moved like a fluid. She watched and waited.

  He ran, full speed, his body lowered, fingers tracing the concrete under him as he charged toward the bridge. When he jumped the twenty feet, landing on the other side of the fissure in a spot directly beside her, and rushed past her, she let out a cry and fell over.

  She was pulling herself up when she heard the awful, terrible death squeak of the squirrel. She rolled over and around, eyes wide as she saw him behind her, a limp, furry little body dangling from his left, gloved hand.

  “You... you...” she stuttered. “You son of a bitch! You could have jumped that this whole time?! Why did you let me waste a half hour building that stupid bridge?!”

  “Let’s go in somewhere so I can eat this.” He shook the squirrel around, holding it up above his helmet and tilting his head.

  “Russell!” she hissed.

  “Hm?”

  “You, you, could have jumped that. You did jump that!” she stammered.

  “Yeah, I can jump pretty far.” He stood and pointed at a broken looking building down the road from them. The windows were still intact but store front brick wall was missing entirely, the wreckage strewn about on the street in front of the place. “Come on. We have time.”

  “You bastard!” She got to her feet and stormed toward him just as he began to jog over to his chosen location. When she caught up to him she gave him a hard punch in the side. It was like hitting steel with her bare knuckles and she hissed at him again, this time in pain. “Son of a bitch!”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Screw you.”

  She didn’t watch him eat, but she heard it. It sounded slightly worse than the skunk, the bones of the squirrel smaller and crunchier. He was eating the whole thing, bones and all, and Kara heard him slurping on what she imagined had to be its guts.

  Her stomach turned as she faced away from him, looking out into the street while he ate his catch behind her.

  “I would say the worst part is getting fur in your teeth," he said, answering a question that she hadn’t asked.

  “Thank you for sharing,” she muttered.

  “Mm.” He was making more wet sounds, and she visualized him sucking the blood off of his fingers. Russell hummed a merry little tune. “Okay, let’s get going.”

  “Yeah, we’ve burned enough daylight.” She stood. When she spun on her heel to shoot him a dirty look, she was surprised to see that he hadn’t put his helmet back on. He held it at stomach level, his already tousled hair looking particularly disheveled. His black eyes locked onto her, his face ghostly in the shadows. She saw thin streaks of dried resin running from his eyes to his jaw.

  “I wanted to say, than
k you," he said.

  “If it’s for building the bridge you didn’t use, don’t sweat it.” She shrugged. “Come on.”

  He shook his head. “No, listen.”

  She put her hands on her hips expectantly.

  He smiled. “It’s for all of that, earlier.”

  “I said don’t sweat it.” She sniffed, rubbing her nose, and swayed between her feet.

  He put his helmet on, hiding his face. He nodded and then made his way back to the street with Kara right behind him. Soon, they were walking side by side through the city.

  A few breaks were needed in the next four hours. There was the bathroom break, Kara and Russell reconvening after to continue on their way. An hour later, he furiously attempted to dig a rabbit out of a hole in the ground while she watched and shook her head. When he didn’t catch it, she resisted the urge to comment on his failure. She felt the hunger pangs in her stomach too, and kept a watchful eye out for something, anything, she could eat.

  She grew excited when she found edible berries growing from a bush near an abandoned lot and gathered a bunch in her hands, popping them in her mouth as they walked along.

  They stopped one more time after, Kara needing to find something to act as a bucket to gather some water in. He had made his sick noise, stopped, and cursed under his breath. It took him ten minutes to wash the inside of his helmet out in the shade of a torn out dress shop, using one of the dresses on the floor to finish drying the visor. He looked embarrassed when he wiped the vomit from his chin, averting his eyes.

  It was starting to get dark when he led her to a tall building, partly under construction, and pointed at a chain hanging from 100 feet up. It swayed in the breeze, rattling. The chain appeared to be attached to one of the floors high above, the wall missing. She looked up, looked at him, and then looked up again.

  “You have got to be kidding,” she breathed.

  “Nope.” He grabbed the chain. “How’s your climbing?”

  “I’m gonna be honest, Russ, not that good.”