by L. ROY AIKEN
“He’s coming around!” I hear someone say. “Think we can bring him back for good this time?”
I feel a stinging on my face. My head is knocked back and forth. I can’t do anything about this so I let myself fall. Back where there’s no “here.” I don’t want to be here. There’s nothing here. No one here. They’re gone. My people. Gone.
(They got sick.)
(Who?) (Everybody.)
(Sibyl and Jack didn’t get sick.)
My chest hurts. As with the stinging on my face, I let go and try to fall backwards into the Great White Nothing. I can’t fall as far, though. The pain in my chest. The hands again, moving me.
“Derek? Derek, are you there?”
A woman’s voice. Not Claire. Giselle?
(Giselle was pretty.)
No.
“I don’t know how much longer we can justify this.” A man’s voice. “If he doesn’t come around soon….”
“Look, I know I prob’ly put too much painkiller in him but the way I see it he’s got a better chance of healin’ those cracked ribs if he stays out. You wanted to see how we could learn to take care of people with the hospitals out. Here you go, first case!”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to duck out of here fast. He’s gonna slow us down.”
“Brandon an’ me can get ‘im in the back of my truck in less’n a minute!”
“All right, then. He’s your dog, Charlie Brown.” I sense him leaving the—room? It’s warm but dark. I can’t focus my eyes yet but I can tell it’s dark.
“Mr. Derek Samuel Grace of Colorado Springs. You in there? You hear me?”
I don’t know how to make words. I sound like one of them. (Who?) Those people with the bloody bibs all the way down their fronts….
“You’re tryin’, I see it! Come on, baby, I know you can do it!”
Derek. Mr. Grace. Derek Samuel Grace.
That’s me!
“Hey.”
“Is that what I thought it was?” She’s so happy, I couldn’t bear to disappoint her….
“Who—?”
“Who?” she says.
“Who’re you?”
“Me? I’m Krystal! Krystal with a ‘K’!”
“Krys….”
“Yes, some people call me that. I prefer ‘Krystal,’ though.”
“’Kay, Krys….”
I’m aware of her shouting after me as I fall back again. It’s different this time, though. Now I just want to sleep.
It feels good so I’m going with it.
I awaken to a pounding headache and the sensation of being drowned. Someone is trying to pour water down my throat.
“It’s a miracle he ain’t died from dehydration. If I knew how to set up a drip, I would!” the woman says.
“Well, he’s still here,” says another woman. “He’s swallowing.”
Gulping and gasping is more like it. I find myself scrambling out of the Nothing trying to breathe. The inevitable gulp brings the water down the wrong pipe and now I see green and purple bursts in the Nothing as I try and cough it out.
“Oops. Looks like he aspirated that one.”
“Ass-per-what?”
“I thought you said you went to nursing school!”
“I went to community college to become a medical assistant!”
“Don’t matter, the terminology’s the same!”
“You mean all those silly-assed spellin’ words and shit we had to learn? God, I felt like I was in fourth grade again!”
“And still flunkin’ out!”
“Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you hook him up to a drip!”
“Because I didn’t go to school at all! And I still know what ‘aspirate’ means!”
The pain in my chest is bad enough with my coughing. Now I feel a weight pushing in on my middle. The white overcomes the burst of color with each push.
“What are you doing?”
“Chest compressions! I’m trying to push the water out!”
“Chest compressions on a man with cracked ribs? That’s it, move over! God! Just ‘cause you know a buncha words don’t mean you know shit!”
Water comes up, hot from my lungs. I instinctively gulp it down, along with some air. My hands find the surface I’m on, push.
“He’s trying to push himself up!”
“Well, it’s probably better for him if he’s swallowing water. C’mon, help me with him here.”
“He looks like he’s doing fine on his own.”
“Look at his arms shaking! He hasn’t eaten solid food in a week! C’mon, help him up!”
I feel their fingers stabbing into my armpits. My eyes are open but all I see are shapes moving against a dark background. I look towards the voices, blink, shake my—no. I can’t shake my head. Skull hurting.
The first thing I see is the glass with the water in it. On a metal table. It’s a little higher than my bed.
“Oh, no!” A shape swoops into my field of vision. A young, heavyset woman takes the glass in one hand while wheeling the table back with her other. “You’re too weak to hold anything on your own. Let me hold the glass while you’re sitting up. Hannah, you think you can get him some food?”
“Like what? He’s gonna need it mashed up until he remembers how to digest it.”
“Bring ‘im that beef jerky we got! He can learn how to work his jaw again and get what he needs from the juices.”
“Huh!” I look across my bed (I’m on a smallish, single bed) towards the door where a dirty-blonde young woman scowls at me before leaving. “Better rest up!” she says. “Mr. Evans gonna put you to work as soon as you can stand!” She turns and is gone.
“What? Oh!” The young woman with me is broad shouldered, somewhat heavyset. She has a pleasant face, though. She smiles as she sees me focus on her. “Here you go,” she says, holding the cup to my lips. “Very gentle-like. Sip, don’t gulp. You’re not quite out of the woods. If you can’t hold anything down I don’t know what I can do for you.”
I sip, holding my hand up to get her to pull the glass back. I want to feel this cool water in my mouth, soaking the cracked sandpaper that took the place of healthy flesh.
I hold up my hand again and nod. She brings the glass to my mouth.
I’m grateful for the water on my stomach while I’m chewing the small bites I’ve taken from the jerky stick. I take sips while I chew. I can feel the lights coming on throughout my body with all I take in. Salt, fat, and protein. It’s exactly what I need right now.
Hannah leaves after it’s clear I won’t choke to death. In the end I’m one jerky stick and done. I manage to say as much.
“Yeah, comin’ back fast now, aren’t you! You know your name?”
“Derek Grace. I was on my way—my kids….”
Krystal puts her hand to my arm. “Okay, okay! Look, I don’t want to upset you but you’ve been out for some time now.”
I draw a breath, remember the breathing exercises I did to steady my nerves, get my inner game where it needs to be. I also have to steady myself physically where I sit on the edge of the bed. My feet are touching the floor but I know I can’t trust my legs to hold my weight. I’ll need more than a few jerky sticks to do that. After a few breaths, once I’m more or less centered: “How long?”
“You crashed on Saturday. Today is Wednesday.”
“Huh.”
“Which is long enough if you’ve been too out of it to eat, with just a little to drink.”
“Where are we?”
“East Natalia High School. In the nurse’s office.”
“Natalia? We made it to the middle of the state?”
“Just about. You made it, anyway. Your pilot wasn’t so lucky.”
“What happened?”
“We saw your plane comin’ down on I-70. Your tires blew out and the plane spun around hard into the drainage off the side of the road. It bashed in where the pilot was, pretty much killin’ him right there. We had to climb over him to pull you out. Tw
o of our people were workin’ on pulling your luggage out when the fuel tank exploded. We didn’t have much time to hang around. You could tell the noise was bringin’ the...people over, so we threw you in the back of the truck and got the hell outta there.”
I resist the urge to scoot back, lean against the wall where the bed is set. “It started Friday evening in Kansas City. Is that when it started here?”
“There were stories of strange shit happenin’ at County Hospital as far back as last Tuesday. People gettin’ out of their beds, all weirded out like they had rabies and tryin’ to bite people. This guy I used to date who works there, he swears CDC showed up and was talkin’ to the head guys in their offices but they didn’t stay long—they had other places to go. Cody’s a bit of a bullshitter so it was all just background noise to me.”
Krystal seems focused on a fold in the crumpled sheet on my bed. Looking off into the distance at the same time: “So many people starting gettin’ sick last week, though. I think they had it under control until—until they didn’t. They didn’t even get around to pickin’ up the dead on Friday like they said they were going to do. By that point the ones that had already died were out walkin’ around, with what’s left of their own people drippin’ down the front of their pajamas or whatever.”
I have a feeling she’s waiting on me to ask the obvious. I’ll have to, eventually. “I know Natalia’s by the Interstate, but it seems weird you got all these fatalities before it really set into the big city.
“Lot of trucks stop around here. We’ve got an airfield, too. We’re not all that remote. Who knows? Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. I gotta get back on my feet. How are we for food and water? Why are we here in a high school, anyway? What happened where you live?”
Krystal shakes her head slowly. “You really don’t want to be in the neighborhoods.”
“What happened to your people?”
Krystal looks up at me. “My dad shot my mom as she was coming back. Then he shot himself.”
“Shit.”
“Pretty much what I said. Yeah.”
“So what are we doing here? I mean, aside from you don’t want to stay in the family home anymore. Who’s this Mr. Evans?”
Krystal brightens. “He was a major in the Army! He was somethin’ of a figure in the church, although I stopped going when I got old enough. He’s got some smart boys. Two of them survived the Flu. His sister’s boy Keith makes up the third leg of the three-legged stool, like he likes to say. As soon as things started going bad he and his boys started putting down the ones roaming the neighborhood. Got everyone that was left and moved us out here. It’s kinda off the beaten path, though we had to spend a couple of days puttin’ down former teachers and office staff—turns out dead people like to come back to where they were used to going. Anyway, we got all we need here. We got rooms for everybody and beds and the cafeteria was working until a couple of days ago. But Mr. Evans made sure we were ready for that.”
“So what’s this about Mr. Evans putting me to work?”
“Mr. Evans is trying to build a community. He says everybody has to pull their weight. Tell you the truth he was a little put-out we rescued you. We can only build our community with people we know.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Grace,” booms a male voice from the door. “We’ll do the Christian thing. But as I’m sure you and your pilot friend figured out, resources are scarce. I’d rather feed only those people who are working to feed all of us.”
“Mr. Evans, I presume,” I say.
“You go by Derek, right?”
“What do I call you?”
“I go by ‘Mr. Evans.’ I think it’s good we have a little respect for people in charge.”
“Then I’m Mr. Grace.”
“Funny name for a guy wearing a granny gown, don’tcha think?”
I look down. I hadn’t realized. I look at Krystal. She shrugs as if to say, It was all we had.
I look back at Evans. “Make ‘em feel guilty, make ‘em feel small. Standard Cult Initiation 101. Is that what they’re teaching you desk jockeys in the Army now?”
A shadow passes over his face. He’s not used to backtalk, but he’s too polished to show irritation. “I’m just having a little fun with you, but if you’re clearly the sensitive type—”
“Just let me get my clothes and I’ll leave you to your community organizing. I just want to get home to my family. That’s all.” I slide off the bed and force myself to stand (one hand towards the mattress to catch me). “As soon as I get strength to walk, I’m walking.”
“Take your time, Mr. Grace,” he says. “We’ll look after you.” He pushes himself up from the doorjamb. “There’s really no point in being in a hurry. Given the amount of time you’ve lost it’s safe to say your family is long gone now. That ship has sailed.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“With respect, Mr. Grace, you haven’t seen what we’ve seen these last four or five days. Law enforcement and public safety infrastructure are non-operative. Those people who died get up. They’re phenomenally strong, and what they do to any living thing, from a grown man to a litter of puppies, is beyond rational description. They have us on strength and force of terror. They outnumber us. That you have to destroy a particular part of their brain to even stop them makes them a formidable enemy.”
“Sounds like nothing’s changed since I've been out,” I say. “Anything new at all going on?”
“We’ve got a lot of shell-shocked survivors out there who look at the end of the world as license to raise hell and hurt people, shoot them for fun. The other day my boys came across some yahoos who’d shot someone walking along the state road. They’d taken his legs out so the dead could catch and eat him alive. Then they’d shoot the deaders. Just a game to them! We knew those young men, too. They weren’t from the best of families, but they weren’t trash, either. At least not ‘til this happened.
“You go walking alone into the open country that’s the kind of thing you’ll be walking into. I’m sorry, you might have misheard things and we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I’ll accept responsibility for that. You just get well and we’ll talk later. Think about what I said.”
I nod and smile. “Will do, Mr. Evans. Thanks.”
He spends another moment looking me over. Finally he turns and leaves. I wait one more moment before falling back to the bed.
Krystal glances towards the door before coming over to straighten me out. “Set me against the wall,” I tell her. “I want another strip of jerky and some water.”
“All that dick-waving give you an appetite?”
“The quicker I get my strength back I can get out your hair, your food supply, whatever.”
“All right, calm down!” She brings me the jerky and the water. “Glad to see you taking an interest in things. Think you’ll be able to go to the bathroom by yourself soon?”
“Show me where the toilet is.”
“This day just keeps getting better,” says Krystal.
I wish I could say the same. I need my clothes, my strength, and to get as far away from here as I can. But my head is pounding and my joints are on fire. I’ve got gauze wrapping my chest to keep my busted ribs in place. What I need to happen won’t happen today.
The hell of it is I’m at the mercy of strangers for my safety. I can only hope Mr. Evans and his boys are as good as they think they are. And that when the time comes I’m good enough to get by them.
12
Krystal swears it’s for old times’ sake and good luck when she pulls me to her, her hands cupping either side of my face as she kisses me square on the lips before leaving me. “Been doin’ it every night since you got here,” she says. “People gotta know they’re loved in this life. Otherwise it ain’t no point. See, you came around, didn’t you?”
She’s smiling like it’s the cutest thing. I smile back, I hope not too crookedly. Because I feel cheated. Tricked back into this life, where I�
�m no good at all to the people who’d really loved and depended on me. That Evans bastard knew he had a solid blade to stick in my guts when he told me of the time I’d lost. It’s five days since everything’s gone to shit and here I am holed up in a high school nurse’s office somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Weak, hurting, and tired. At the mercy of total strangers.
On top of that I have no clothes. This big-woman’s granny gown would break any man’s spirit. The medicinal stink of the perfume worn by its previous owner is sharp in my nose. At least I’m not wearing the adult diaper anymore. Nope, I get to be naked under this thing. Jesus!
Krystal leaves me with the extra bag of beef jerky she was able to sneak away. I’m getting steadier with the water glass. Getting steadier. It’s the only thing I can do, so I do it. Until I can stand it no more, and then back to bed.
I wake up feeling better. I can stand for longer periods of time as the burning leaves my joints. Krystal brings me orange juice. It’s warm, but not yet turned. “When did you lose power?” I ask.
“Not until yesterday morning, actually. We were doing good until just before you came out of it. So we’re not in trouble. Not yet. We’re gonna need to make a run sometime soon, get some more canned goods. I think some of the boys are going out today, come to think of it. Sooner the better, I say.”
“I need to get some clothes,” I say.
“You willing to go get ‘em yourself?”
“Give me directions. Better yet, can I have the clothes I crashed in?”
“Right here in this bag, hon. I even managed to wash the underwear. Dry cleaner’s closed, so the rest won’t be lookin’ so hot. Also got your wallet and keys, for what good they’ll do ya.”
I take the bag. My things look small and alien. But they’re mine. What I was.
“If you’re lucky, Dr. Hearn might have a look at you. See how well I did taking care of you.”
“Eeew!” says Hannah, shuddering.
I look at Krystal. Krystal shrugs. “Dr. Hearn freaks some people out.”