by Brian Keene
My stomach cramped again, forcing me to bend over far enough that the tip of my nose touched the cold concrete floor. The dry heaves came next, followed by more burps. I guess my body wasn’t satisfied with that, because then the gas started coming out the other end. At that point, I was beyond caring. I lay there shaking and moaning in my own filth and stink, and waited for the tempest to subside. I thought about what I’d just done—killing Krantz. The magnitude of my actions was unshakeable. I thought about the sound his head had made when I squashed it with Eisenhower’s bronze bust. I wondered if I’d ever be able to forget that sound.
I wrapped my arms around myself and lay down on the floor, curling into the fetal position. I was soaked with my own puke and cold and hungry and miserable, and I felt like crying, but that would have been a waste of valuable fluids. The remorse weighed heavily on me. I told myself that Krantz had left me no choice. No choice at all. If I hadn’t killed him, then Drew and I would be dead by now. Certainly I would be, at least, and that was reason enough to do what I’d done. It was pure survival. Nothing else. You do what you have to do to stay alive.
I repeated this to myself over and over again, but it didn’t really help. I’d done a lot of bad things in my life, but they all paled in comparison to committing murder. I’d just killed someone. Not someone who was already dead, but a living, breathing human being. That topped the bill of the list of things I’d done wrong in my life.
Thinking about those wrongs made me think about Alyssa, my ex-wife, which brought new pangs to my stomach—not of hunger and revulsion, but of guilt and regret. I lay there, wishing I could die and hating myself for fighting it when I’d had the opportunity to do so just moments before.
THREE
When I was five years old, my parents took my little sister and me on vacation to Virginia Beach. The hotel had a nice, outdoor swimming pool, and on our way from the hotel room down to the beach, as we were walking by the pool, I reached out and pushed my little sister in. It wasn’t a malicious act. There was no forethought. No planning. I don’t know why I did it then and I still don’t know today. She was just a toddler. She could barely walk, let alone swim. My father jumped in and pulled her out before the hotel’s lifeguard could even react. My sister was okay. She cried and sputtered and coughed water. I cried and sputtered and spent the rest of that day grounded in the hotel room, with a sore bottom, unable to watch TV or read comic books or do anything but wither under the angry, reproachful glare of my father. Looking back on it now, I suspect there were other emotions in his eyes other than just anger. I think he was scared—frightened by what his little boy had just done. Him and my mother both were. When her and my sister got back from the beach, they made me apologize. The next day, it was like nothing had ever happened, but I was aware, even at the age of five, that they watched me a little more carefully.
That’s the first bad thing I remember doing.
I did other bad things as a kid. I shoplifted a pack of bubble gum cards once. I cheated on a Social Studies test. I boxed Tom Schoen’s ears so hard in shop class that he had to miss a few days of school because of persistent ringing in them. I wasn’t some juvenile delinquent, nor was I a bully, but I did have a tendency, even back then, to put myself and my own needs first above others. I’d wanted the gum cards but didn’t have the money to buy them, so I’d justified my actions by telling myself that it was only once, and I didn’t get caught so it was okay. My mantra was always “Do whatever you have to do to survive.” That’s something that carried over into adulthood, though I never recognized that flaw in myself until after my wife had left me and I started going to counseling.
I met Alyssa when both of us were fresh out of college and working third shift together at the local convenience store. We used to laugh about that. She’d majored in secondary education at West Virginia University and I’d been a business major at North Carolina State—and yet we’d both ended up back here, working the graveyard shift in a convenience store because there weren’t any other jobs to be found. After a few weeks of working with her, I didn’t care. Alyssa was amazing. She was totally unlike any girl I’d ever met, even the ones from college. She was smart and clever and funny and an absolute knock-out. I’d always done okay when it came to women. I mean, I certainly wasn’t a virgin by any means. I’d had my fair share of girlfriends in high school and college. But I’d never been with a girl as beautiful as Alyssa was. And when we started dating, it was wild and weird and scary. I fell for her. Hard.
Alyssa suffered from chronic depression. As a result, she took a lot of antidepressants. I didn’t know much about the disease, at least, not then. I was young and stupid and concerned mostly with my own feelings and emotions. I simplified her condition in my mind, chalking her depression up to “She’s unhappy. I can make her happy.” So I tried. I tried like hell. I did everything I could think of. I bought her flowers not just on Valentine’s Day or her birthday, but in the middle of the week, not for any special occasion, but just because I loved her. I left her notes inside books she was reading. I took her on surprise picnics. Showed her things and places from my childhood and involved her in my life. I was nice to her friends and her parents. I called every night, just to tell her that I loved her. I made her laugh. Made her smile. Made her feel safe and wanted and important. And when the depression didn’t go away, I told myself it was because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to make her happy. It was my own insecurities talking, but again, I didn’t know that at the time. Another problem was that the anti-depressants impacted our sex life. Alyssa wasn’t in the mood very often, and on the rare occasions when she was, the medication prevented her from achieving orgasm. It was frustrating for her, but looking back, I was more concerned for my own feelings. I took it personally. I was the reason she couldn’t enjoy sex. It was me, not the meds. I wasn’t good enough. She told me again and again that this wasn’t so, that it wasn’t me, that it was just the antidepressants, but deep down inside, I never believed her.
Still, I figured if I hung in there, things would work out. I loved her, after all. It would get better in time. We moved in together, and began to argue about little things, same as what happens in all relationships at a certain point. We squabbled over money, mostly. I’d begin working at the hotel by then, and Alyssa had gotten an office job. She made more money than I did, and between the two of us, we did alright, but things were still tight. We wanted to save enough to get married, but we never seemed able to do so, because there were always other things I thought we needed—a flat-screen television, a trip to Cancun, a new truck when the transmission burned out in mine. I began hiding little purchases from her. I’d go out to a bar after work and hide the receipt. I’d buy a new video game or DVD and tell her someone gave it to me. Little lies, told with the best of intentions. I wanted to please her more than anything. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to stop worrying about finances. But because I was a self-centered prick, I didn’t want those concerns to impact my own happiness. I didn’t want to go without the things I needed, be they something as trivial as a video game or something as monumental as Alyssa’s love. So I lied in order to please her and keep her, and each time she found out about it, Alyssa pulled away a little bit more. The emotional distance between us grew wider. Back then, I told myself it was her depression, but I know now that it was because of me and my actions.
I grew close to Hannah, a girl who worked the hotel’s registration desk Monday through Friday. She was just a friend, but Alyssa resented the time I spent with her, and I resented Alyssa’s resentment. It wasn’t like I was having an affair or anything. All Hannah and I ever did was talk. Eventually, I found myself telling her things and sharing things with her that, for one reason or another, I couldn’t share with Alyssa. We began hanging out together, always in a group, with other friends, but sitting aside one another, laughing together, having fun. Alyssa confronted me about it, and I protested once more, assuring her that there was nothing going
on. I told her she was being paranoid and jealous, and in my mind, I believed that to be so, because I hadn’t realized I was entering into an emotional affair with Hannah. I honestly saw her as just a friend—someone who could be emotionally intimate with me in ways that Alyssa could not. I didn’t want to lose Alyssa. I loved her. But she couldn’t give me what I needed, so I sought it elsewhere, and where was the harm in that? You do what you have to do to survive.
Despite our problems, Alyssa and I got married and ended up buying a little house. My friendship with Hannah waxed and waned. When Alyssa and I were having problems, Hannah always seemed to be there, ready to step up and open herself to me emotionally. We flirted somewhat, and joked about sex once or twice, but I never slept with her. I never even considered it until eight years later when Alyssa told me that she wanted a divorce. I remember that day so clearly. I’d come home from work, surprised to find Alyssa already home, as well. I gave her the customary hug and a peck on the forehead, but she felt distant and stiff. By then, I was used to that reaction from her, so I simply walked away and sat down on the couch. I had turned on a video game and was just getting ready to play when I realized that she was standing next to me. I noticed then that she’d been crying. Without a word, she sat down next to me and began to talk, and the things she told me about myself and about our marriage were the most awful things I have ever heard, because they were true. They were all true. I’d just never realized them until then. I was a self-centered, immature asshole who had lied to her and treated her like shit and had been engaged in an emotional affair with a co-worker for the entire eight years of our marriage. The worst part, she said, was that she knew I had the best of intentions. She knew I didn’t mean to hurt her. I was just too selfish to realize that my efforts not to hurt her were doing even more damage.
I pleaded with her. I promised Alyssa that I could change. I promised we could go to a counselor together. I wept and begged and swore. Each time I reached for her hand, Alyssa flinched and pulled farther away. We went on like that all evening, until there was nothing left to say. She wanted me out by the end of the month. She’d already contacted a lawyer and paid a deposit (her parents had lent her the money). At least we didn’t have any kids. Hell, we didn’t even have a dog or a cat to fight over. There was just us, and soon enough, there wouldn’t even be that anymore.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her, as she walked me to the door.
“I’m doing what I have to do to survive, Pete. Isn’t that what you always say? Do what you have to do to survive?”
I couldn’t respond to her because there was nothing I could say. Alyssa was right. Many times since then, I’d played the conversation back in my head, searching for things I could have said, different words or promises that might have changed the outcome, but there are none. I know that now.
Things are how they are. It is what it is. You do what you have to do to survive. And if the situation changes, and life throws you a curveball, then you’d better well fucking adapt.
Adapt or die.
Things didn’t work out with Hannah. Distraught over the divorce and riding an emotional rollercoaster, I’d shown up drunk at her apartment, crying in the rain. She’d invited me inside and dried me off, and when I told her what had happened, she’d done her best to console me. We ended up having sex. I can’t call it making love, because it was anything but that. It was just sex. I lay there in the darkness after it was over, shivering and thinking about Alyssa. Her words, her accusations—her truths—echoed in my head. I turned over, looked at Hannah, and told her it had been a mistake. Then I got dressed while she sat there in the bed, a sheet wrapped around her breasts, staring at me with hurt and confusion. She asked me to stay, and I told her that I couldn’t. I told her we’d talk about it more later, but we never did. I went out of my way to avoid her at work. I stopped taking her phone calls and blocked her email address. Two weeks later, she quit the Pocahontas. I don’t know what happened to her after that. I’d like to think she found someone who treated her the way she deserved, and that she was happy, if even for a brief while before the world ended—but I just don’t know.
I don’t know what happened to Alyssa either, ultimately. Since becoming trapped in the bunker, I’d tried not to let myself dwell on the possibilities—whether she was still alive somewhere out there, or had instead joined the ranks of the walking dead. In either case, she was gone. Out of reach. In truth, I’d lost her long before the zombies came. Our story was over before this one began. A good friend of mine had told me—shortly after Alyssa and I split up—that divorce was like a death without a corpse, and that I had to grieve and mourn just like I’d have had to do if she’d died.
Thinking too much about Alyssa’s possible fate only led to more heartbreak and frustration. Late at night, I told myself that she’d escaped. I imagined her somewhere else, maybe in a police station or an Army base or maybe on a boat, out to sea and out of the zombies’ reach. I imagined her happy and alive, and maybe missing me. Somehow, that made my sense of loss much more profound.
***
I sat there in the incinerator room, overwhelmed with remorse, battered by my guilty conscience and sick to my stomach over everything from the way I’d treated Alyssa to the murder I’d just committed, and wondered again why I even bothered. What was the point in all this? Why keep struggling, trapped beneath a mountain with a bunch of madmen and slowly starving to death? Why not just end it all right now? Just start the incinerator up and climb inside, or poke my head outside and offer myself up as a snack to the zombies. Not that I’d be much of a meal for them, not with all the weight I’d lost.
I thought about the people we’d lost in the first few days of the siege—folks like Annie Leavell, a very kind, generous and gregarious woman who had worked in one of the Pocahontas’s shops and had passed away from a heart attack on our third day here, and Ryan Burack, a tourist from Wisconsin who’d been staying in the hotel when the shit hit the fan and died our first night in the bunker, passing quietly in his sleep. We never figured out the cause. We hadn’t even known Ryan’s name until we pulled out his wallet after his death. We knew that Annie had a daughter, Chesya, who she’d talked about all the time. It felt wrong, not being able to inform her daughter of her death.
We’d put Annie and Ryan and all the others into the incinerator, because it was the only way to dispose of their bodies. It had been a solemn, if gruesome task. We’d treated them with respect—offered words of peace and mumbled prayers before we sent them on their way, reducing them to ashes. Had they been the lucky ones? Annie had, quite literally, died laughing. At least she’d gone out relatively happy, despite the circumstances. At least she hadn’t died on an empty stomach. Would I be able to say the same? At that point, it seemed like it would be a lot easier just to give up and give in.
But I didn’t. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t have to. It was instinct. Pure, primal instinct. When Chuck and the others knocked on the door a moment later, I forgot all about Alyssa and Annie all of the things that had gone wrong in my life, and went right back to doing what I had to do to survive.
FOUR
“Pete?”
I held my breath. My heart pounded in my throat and I heard my blood rushing through my ears.
“Open up, Pete.”
It was Chuck. I recognized his voice, even through the thick walls. The door clanged as something hard and metallic was rapped against it. The sound repeated once. Twice. Then Chuck called out again.
“We know you’re in there, Pete. Come on out.”
I didn’t say anything. I scrambled to my feet and quietly moved away from the door. I clenched my fists so hard that my fingernails dug deep into my palms.
The knocking returned, this time faster and with more force. It stopped suddenly, followed by a muffled, angry curse.
“Come on, Pete. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can talk about it if you want. I don’t know what Drew told you, but—”
&nbs
p; “Save it, Chuck.” My eyes widened in surprise. I hadn’t meant to speak out loud. Then, deciding the damage had already been done, I continued. “Drew told me exactly what’s going on. Even if he hadn’t, Krantz sure as fuck verified it for me. Have you lost your goddamned mind?”
“Me?” Chuck sounded genuinely offended. “You’re the one whose lost his mind, Pete. You killed Krantz.”
“Only because he would have killed me. It was self defense.”
“That’s not true,” someone else shouted. I couldn’t tell who they were for sure. A male, certainly, but the speaker could have been one of many people.
“Shut up,” Chuck told the other person, loud enough that I could hear him through the door. There was a moment of silence and then Chuck spoke again. His tone had changed, his voice now tinged with anger and annoyance. I was messing up his plans. I wasn’t going along with the group vote. I was making him look bad in front of the others. The thought made me grin.
“Let’s face facts here, Pete. You’re unarmed and alone and trapped in there with no other way out. There’s more of us than there are of you. It’s over. You know that. Face it like a man. Come on out.”
“Fuck you. I’m staying right here.”
“Pete, you—”
“Did I stutter, Chuck? Go fuck yourself.”
“I know it’s not easy, but you need to face facts. None of us likes this. You think we’re animals or something? Of course we aren’t. We didn’t come down here just to turn into cannibals, man. But that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t want it to go down this way. Drew sort of ruined everything by telling you. I swear, we meant to take you in your sleep. You wouldn’t have felt a thing. You wouldn’t have even known.”