“I’ll be dead in a few hours, Megan. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s true. But you won’t be. You’re alive, and I want you to stay that way. You can make it through this crap, I know you can! The house is fortified, and by yourself there is enough food and water to last a long time.”
Megan could only stare at her husband. The idea of putting a bullet in Dalton’s head was abhorrent, but she knew that he would pull the trigger if she didn’t. That was as much a part of who Dalton was as anything else: once he made up his mind, he followed through to the bitter end. No chance things would be different this time.
Dalton took the towel and wiped away the spittle and sweat from his face, though his lips remained crimson from the blood he’d coughed up. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and Megan resisted the urge to rush to his side to help him. If he wanted to go down to the basement to commit suicide, he could do it by himself.
Megan wondered if the man she had loved since their third date would do more than say goodbye as he left their bedroom, or would realize he couldn’t go through with this and instead profess his endless love to her. It was a selfish thought, and she knew it. All she could think about was how this would affect her and her existence. She wanted Dalton to fight this thing, resist it, so she didn’t have to accept that this was truly the end of their lives together.
Megan watched as Dalton got out of bed and moved toward the door. He looked at her but said nothing. He could see the parade of emotions on her face and likely knew how impossible all of this was for his wife. And that was when it hit her.
Even as Dalton was dying, he was thinking of his wife, which was exactly what she was doing. In the last few hours of his life, he was more concerned with her well-being than his impending demise.
That was when Megan ran to Dalton and slid under his shoulder to help him make it down the stairs without stumbling or falling. She was too short for him to lean on her effectively, but the pained smile on Dalton’s face told her how grateful he was.
Dalton’s last few hours were better than Megan could have hoped for. They talked about everything, cried, and even laughed a few times.
Toward the end, Dalton touched Megan’s cheek with shaking hands as he started to fade. She watched as her husband fought to stay coherent, her face stunned and fearful.
Dalton had avoided telling Megan what to do up to that point, instead sharing the memories they both cherished in an attempt to forget the inevitable, if only for a little while. But as he felt his body shutting down and the pain gripping him so tightly he could barely resist crying out in agony, Dalton knew he had to explain what needed to be done.
“Do it before I turn. Don’t wait long; it probably won’t take more than a minute or so after my heart stops.” Dalton’s eyes were closed as he spoke, and his skin was gray, almost translucent, as the virus’s victory over his body neared completion.
Megan heard the words, and despite the fact that Dalton’s eyelids remained closed, she nodded down at him, knowing that if she said anything, her voice would crack and she would lose control.
She was still considering pulling the trigger on the .357 Magnum not once, but twice. It would be so easy; they would escape this lunacy together. ‘Til death do us part—that was the vow, wasn’t it? But what if she didn’t want death to part them?
Megan remained lost in her thoughts, only half listening to the rattle of Dalton’s breathing, when she realized that the basement was silent. She glanced down at her husband and tried to hold back the flood of tears as she realized he was gone. His chest had stopped rising, and the loud and ragged breathing had cut off. Dalton lay there, his head resting on the garbage bag she had placed beneath him at his request, his eyes closed for the last time.
So when he sprang back up a moment later, Megan felt her heart stop and her bladder let loose. Dalton grabbed his wife’s arms, looking at her with eyes that were dead and unseeing.
Megan didn’t have time to ponder the fact that she had waited too long to do what he had asked. All she knew was that she was going to die on the basement floor as her husband attacked her. As he pulled her close, she prayed the pain would be fleeting.
Before she could scream out or squirm loose, he spoke.
“… make it … to keep fighting!”
It was all Dalton could spit out. He fell back so fast that his skull thumped against the concrete floor, his grip loosening. Later there would be welts where he had grabbed her.
This time there was no doubt that Dalton was truly dead. He was gone and had taken with him everything Megan loved in the world. His last words echoed in her head: he wanted her to keep fighting.
The terror of his death grip on her receded, and her heart rate dropped back to normal. Megan’s head was pounding, but she felt more alert than she had been in a long time. The jolt to her system had cleared her head.
Megan stared at the body of her husband as she stood. She lifted the dead weight of the pistol as she hovered over Dalton’s corpse. She was the only mourner he would ever have.
It was up to her to say goodbye.
Megan reached for the towel and wrapped it around the muzzle as Dalton had instructed her.
What if I wait? The thought slithered through Megan’s head like a serpent, its forked tongue tickling and teasing her. What if I wait to see if he gets back up? I’ll be able to look in his eyes and know for sure.
The thought that Dalton was somehow still in there, inside his ruined body, splashed Megan with irrational hope. She looked at him with love in her heart, wanting to touch him again and wanting him to touch her as well. He’ll look at me and know who I am. He’ll understand what happened and know he’s still my husband.
“No …”
Megan shook her head. She raised the gun and rubbed the towel against her wet forehead.
“I love you so much, Dalton. I would give anything to have you back with me. But I …”
The pain in Megan’s stomach made her double over. A huge knot had formed inside her gut. She moaned and almost fell to her knees, but somehow retained her balance.
“You’re the best man I’ve ever known. I will always love you, Dalton.”
As she pulled the trigger, Megan swore she saw her husband’s eyes opening. The gun kicked, and the towel covering the barrel shredded away as the bullet traveled at a tremendous velocity and blasted a hole the size of a dime in Dalton’s forehead. Megan blinked as she fired, and when her eyes opened again, she saw that Dalton’s eyes were still closed.
Megan avoided looking at the mess splattered across the garbage bags underneath Dalton’s head. Instead, she grabbed a couple of extra trash bags they’d brought down and laid them on top of him. She unwound the towel from the gun and dropped it beside the body, trying to be as clinical and removed from the situation as possible.
It isn’t Dalton; it’s just his corpse. She repeated that over and over in her head in a vain attempt to drown out the part of her mind that wanted to believe that if Dalton had come back, he would have recognized and loved her still.
Megan’s thoughts bounced against one another, tormenting her until she raised an arm to her mouth and bit down, hard. The torment inside her head disappeared with a muffled scream as the coppery taste of blood filled Megan’s mouth. She kept screaming as she stumbled up the steps.
Somehow, Megan managed to hold onto the gun all the way to the bedroom. Later, she would contemplate using it on herself again, but always at the back of her mind was her husband’s dying wish. She kept the weapon close, telling herself it was there, just in case.
Megan, Part 2
There was plenty of noise outside. Beyond the reinforced doors and boarded-up windows, she heard them. The infected had come to the neighborhood in force. Megan could hear the moaning and, every now and then, a scream.
Sometimes they were close. So close that they seemed to be right outside the window. And when Megan heard them that close, it wasn’t the moaning that bothered her. It was
something far worse. She tried hard to pretend she didn’t hear it, but it burrowed down beneath the thick layer of blankets and pillows with which she had shrouded herself. It burrowed through her ears and down into her soul.
It was the sound of them eating.
That was when Megan realized there were far worse ways to go than suicide or being forced to starve to death as you waited in the darkness, alone.
The fear that those things might discover her hiding place opened up a black and shriveled-up part of Megan. The idea of them breaking in and tearing through the house, which would force her to pull the trigger again, held her in thrall for days at a time.
But they never came for her.
One particular memory of those dark days stuck in Megan’s mind. It must have been a couple of weeks after everything had fallen apart. A giant crash echoed up and down the street as several gunshots were fired. Megan refused to look past the blinds and see what was transpiring outside.
She did sit up in bed and then froze, staring at her shuttered window, wanting to go to it, wanting to do something to help whoever was out there.
Megan was terrible at categorizing guns or the report that occurred when any was fired, but the shots sounded like they had come from a rifle. After the first few shots, a different weapon discharged and sounded similar to the handgun sitting on her nightstand.
The gunfire had snapped Megan out of her paralysis for a moment, but even as her heart raced and she had to steady her breathing to avoid hyperventilating, she could feel lethargy creeping back in. She shivered inside the sweat-drenched nightshirt she’d been wearing for days as she pushed her feet over the edge of the bed and stood up, her legs aching in protest.
Megan hovered near the window but refused to pull the shade to look out onto her sun-drenched street. The monsters out there were not coming for her this time, so she could drown in her sheets and pillows once again.
As the gunshots played out and the screams began, Megan stared at the .357 Magnum. What amount of energy would it take to burst through the front door and rush to the aid of the people out there? Wouldn’t trying to help be better than burying herself alive once again?
But in the end, all Megan did was stand next to her bedroom window and listen to the cries of agony, the sounds of pleading, and the ripping and tearing that always came at the end of the attacks. She listened and let her mind create images of what was going on outside, because she couldn’t bear bending the blinds to know for sure.
There were more crashing noises, and the gunshots subsided. The moans and screams grew frantic, an opera of voices covering every octave. Megan wanted to close them off but couldn’t. She couldn’t react at all—to help or to hide. She knew this was her punishment for letting Dalton die … and for participating in his death.
That was when Megan started to scream.
It took her a few moments to realize what she was doing. She was screaming into a pillow she had managed to pull off the bed.
Even as she screamed, Megan had a moment of clarity. The only thing to hope for was that it would go quickly for whoever was being attacked. For the next few minutes, all she heard was an increase in moans as her muffled screams were drowned out. More and more of the infected joined their brethren to take down the survivors.
Later, Megan realized then that her screams had stopped and her throat was a ragged mess. She had ripped it raw. She remained standing, holding her pillow with quiet desperation, as the undead tended to their needs outside.
At that point, someone must have broken free of the house in which they’d been hiding and got out to the yard, and perhaps even the street. He was shouting for someone, but Megan couldn’t make out a name over the cries of the reanimated. Several more shots rang out, and the screaming began again. It was a deep wailing at first—definitely a man—but toward the end, it grew shrill and high pitched.
Megan tried to pretend she couldn’t hear what happened next, but there was little doubt the man was being torn limb from limb. It sounded so close that she imagined the man making it to her front yard before her rotting neighbors pulled him down, swarming over his warm body. As his clothes were ripped away, the moans turned to hisses and squeals of delight as the creatures tore into their prize. Long after she believed the victim had mercifully ceased feeling any pain, one last scream rose above the sounds of eating. It was the cry of someone who no longer cared to be saved, but who was drowning in a pain that overwhelmed all else.
Then the scream cut off. A sound like a wet branch snapping and then a short gurgle marked the end of the man who died on Megan’s lawn.
That was all Megan could take. She felt her knees give out as she collapsed to the bedroom floor. Curling up in a ball, she began to hum. It was what she did as a child to drown out people she didn’t want to listen to. As she curled even tighter and smashed the pillow over her eyes, Megan remembered her favorite rhyme.
Ms. Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black with silver buttons, buttons, buttons …
Megan repeated the rhyme over and over in her head to blot out the feeding noises as she crawled underneath her bed. The chant continued as the monsters that had been riled up by the introduction of new flesh continued their aimless wandering long after their feast was over. Megan didn’t realize she was sucking her thumb until it grew sore a few hours later.
Over the next day and a half, the creatures drifted away and Megan faded in and out of a fitful sleep. Each time she woke up, she would repeat the rhyme to avoid hearing them crashing around outside, searching for more food.
Megan was finally able to crawl out from underneath the bed, stiff and aching, two days after the attack.
She stared at the window for another day, teased by the idea of sneaking a peak outside. Nothing out there could be as bad as she had imagined, could it? She had to know if the cold creep of insanity tugging at her could be pushed back or if she should just embrace it, wrap it around her body like a warm winter coat and drift into oblivion. Megan got close enough to touch the wispy material of her thin drapes. The fabric rippled gently in response to her touch, but she could go no farther.
For the next few days, as Megan stared at the pattern the wallpaper border made around the room, she thought of Dalton a great deal. He was the only one of the dead who didn’t whisper to her, telling her to let go, to give up this charade of living. The others would tell her that all she had to do was open the front door and step outside and all the lies would be over.
But Dalton never tried to speak to her like her dead neighbors did. The man who had died on the lawn, as well as the woman he had been with, came to her the most. The pain was fleeting, they said. It was just the body’s way of resisting its passage into the new existence they had all embraced. It was only a pain of transition, of shifting to a better existence.
She tried to ignore them, but as the hours ticked by and daylight faded into night, the strain of the words wore on her as her eyes drifted from the wallpaper to the gun on her nightstand.
Not yet. I made a promise to you, Dalton. Not yet …
***
Dalton ran into the room and pulled her off the bed. “Come on, hun, we have to leave!”
Megan was thrilled to see him again and knew he had come back to whisk her away.
“I have something to show you.”
Dalton pulled her out of the bedroom and down the steps. Megan nearly tripped as she tried to keep up with her excited spouse. She managed to avoid a fall as they landed in the foyer.
Dalton pulled his wife toward the front door. Megan resisted, but he smiled and gently shook his head. “I have something to show you.”
Megan looked at the door and saw that the boards Dalton had nailed over it were gone. Dalton put his hand on the knob, and before Megan could protest, he pulled the door open.
Megan tried to scream and clawed at the hand wrapped around her wrist. She shook her head, pleading with Dalton.
Glancing outside, she saw the dark sh
apes of the dead. She stopped struggling and noticed that none of the stiff forms was moving forward, coming toward them.
Megan had never seen one of the walking corpses with her own eyes before. She had seen them on television, but had been hidden away in the house since the beginning, with curtains drawn and eyes firmly shut to what was going on outside.
The dead people on Megan’s lawn did not react like the crazed monsters she had been expecting. Instead, they stood silently, swaying back and forth, staring at her and Dalton in the doorway of their house, as if waiting for them to do something.
As they looked upon her, their eyes did not hide the emptiness behind them. There was no life there, no comprehension.
“I have something to show you,” Dalton repeated and put his hand on Megan’s shoulder as he pulled her out onto the porch. Megan looked in her husband’s eyes, and her resistance faded.
The bright sun hit Megan’s face, nearly blinding her. Even with her limited vision, she could see the huge crowd that had gathered for them. As the two living people moved forward, the sea of rotting flesh stepped back to allow them to pass.
Megan smiled as she realized they were being allowed to leave! With that jubilant revelation, she noticed something about the stiffened corpses all around her.
These diseased creatures were not moaning.
They were as silent as she was. Although they stared at Megan, there was no hunger in their eyes. They didn’t reach out to touch or pull at her; they seemed to have no desire to violate her at all.
After a few minutes of trudging on blood-soaked grass, Dalton spoke again. “Almost there,” he beamed at her as he looked back and grinned, his teeth dazzling in the sunlight.
Megan couldn’t tell how long they walked before the crowd ahead parted, revealing an opening. Not a large one, just a small circle of space free of the dead. Megan could see something on the ground, a bundle of some sort. But since Dalton was in front of her, leading the way, she couldn’t make out what it was.
The Dark Trilogy Page 56