by Mark Tufo
Whatever was left of my mom in her debilitated brain was dying.
I stopped shoveling to wipe stinging sweat out of my eyes. Dad stopped too, and copied me. His eyes might have been stinging, or maybe they weren’t. I picked up a few water bottles I’d laid on the ground and handed one to Dad. I drank half of mine. He drank all of his, and we went back to work.
It took us most of the night to finish.
When we laid our shovels down, I tried to get Dad to sit and stay in the chair he used for watching the twins’ graves. He wouldn’t. He wanted to stay by my side. Maybe something down in the core of his brain was healthy enough to understand I was the last of his children. Maybe he wanted to protect me.
Dad followed me through the kitchen and into the living room. Addy moved silently out of our way.
As soon as Dad saw Levi, his face twisted and his mouth fell open and he wailed again, louder, more painful than when that dead goon under the dining room table had been burning his fingers with the lighter.
Dad fell to his knees beside Levi. He petted Levi gently, like a puppy.
I knelt beside Levi, rolled him on his back, and wedged my hands beneath his body. I strained to lift him. If Levi hadn’t been so thin, I’d have had to drag him. In my mind, that would have been too degrading.
Neither Mom nor Dad did anything to help. They didn’t stop me either, though Mom’s sobbing grew more intense.
I gingerly carried Levi’s body through the kitchen and out the back door. I crossed the dead lawn and laid him beside the hole nearest his two dead brothers. Mom and Dad followed me out, both getting down on their knees beside Levi’s lifeless body. I climbed down into the hole, lifted Levi again, and gently placed him in the bottom of the grave.
Addy stayed in the kitchen doorway, allowing my family its private moment burying their firstborn son.
As I was climbing out of Levi’s grave, Mom climbed in and lay down beside his body. She held him and sobbed. Dad’s tears flowed silently down his cheeks as he stared into the pit containing his wife and dead son.
“Mom,” I said, “You need to get out. I need to bury Levi.”
Mom didn’t acknowledge.
“Mom, please.”
Nothing but tears.
I let her cry. I gave her some time.
Looking for the right words with which to proceed, I said, “None of this is your fault.”
Fault, even if they understood it, didn’t matter. Grief consumed my parents. Still, it was a funeral, things needed to be said. “I don’t know if there’s a Heaven or Hell. You guys believe in that. I hope you’re right, and I hope Mason, Caden, and Levi are in Heaven. I hope all the bad people in Houston are in Hell, and I hope they suffer. But I sometimes wonder if Hell isn’t just down there anymore. I think maybe the world is turning into Hell too, and good people like you and Dad were accidentally left here by God, suffering, though you don’t deserve it.”
I sat down on the edge of the grave. I was tired, more from the burden of everyone’s pain than anything I’d been through that day. My legs dangled into the pit as the weight of what I was doing bore down on me. Those first shovels of dirt on Levi’s face were going to be hard.
I let Mom and Dad cry a little longer before I said, “You guys took me to church because you thought that’s what good parents were supposed to do for their kids. And when I told you I didn’t believe in any of that stuff you let me stay home on Sunday while the rest of you went. Mom, I know you believe in that church stuff with all your heart, but I never thanked you for not making me feel bad because I didn’t.”
Mom shuddered, and she buried her face in Levi’s bloody shoulder.
“We never had any money, but I know you guys always did your best for us. Mason, Caden, and Levi, they always appreciated that you were good parents. They loved you. And if it wasn’t for that damn Brisbane flu, I’ll bet they’d have grown up to be successful, good people. I think Caden would have been a doctor.” I looked at Dad. “Don’t you?”
Of course, Dad said nothing.
“Maybe Mason would have been a lawyer. And Levi, he was so smart, I’ll bet he’d have had started his own Internet company or something. I’ll bet he’d have been a billionaire one day.”
I took a look at both my parents. Maybe they understood what I was saying, maybe they didn’t. I like to think they did.
The next part was a lot harder than I expected it to be. “I reached out and put a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to suffer anymore, Dad.” I looked down at Mom. “You don’t deserve to live in Hell.”
I got to my feet and walked over to the porch where I’d left the shotgun after I’d reloaded it.
Addy had seated herself on the back steps by then. She looked at me when I picked up the gun, no judgment in her eyes.
Mom stayed in the grave with Levi. Dad watched me until I came over to take his hand. “C’mon.”
He got up.
I led him away from Levi’s grave and stood him up at the foot of the empty grave on the far end of the row. I turned him to face the hole. “Close your eyes, Dad.”
He didn’t respond. He just stood where I’d left him. “I love you, Dad.” I raised the shotgun, aimed the weapon between his shoulder blades, and I pulled the trigger.
With the gun’s thunder echo rumbling through the neighborhood, my father collapsed into his grave.
Feeling the hollow again, the same one I felt when I saw Levi’s body on the living room floor, I walked back to Levi’s grave and looked down at Mom. In her eyes, I saw that she understood what I’d just done. I hoped she wouldn’t hate me for it.
She pulled Levi close, kissed his cheek, and held him so tight I thought she might not let go.
When she was done, she stood up and she looked up at me. “This is Hell, Christian.” She reached over, took the barrel of my shotgun, and raised it until it was pointed at her face. “Don’t let this haunt you. Don’t make this world a deeper Hell than it is. I hope you find whatever piece is missing from your soul that keeps you from being happy. I hope one day you learn how to love.”
“I already know, Mom. I love you and Dad, and Levi, and…”
She shook her head. “I know you think you do. But that’s okay. I know in your way, you feel something for us. I know you’d do anything for your family. I always knew it. In your own way, you’re stronger than we are. You’re able to do for us what we don’t have the strength to ask of you. It’s like Dr. Rajan said, you’re different. Maybe you were born at just the right time. Maybe the rest of us should have lived sooner so we never would have had to see what a wicked place the world has become. This world is for you, Christian, not for me, not for Dad, not for Levi or the twins.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
Through her tears, she smiled at me. “I’ll always love you, Christian.” She looked down at my brother and said, “Levi always needed me in a way you couldn’t understand. I’m going to go with him to Heaven.” She knelt down and then leaned over on an elbow as she closed her eyes. “Leave us together, please.” She lay down, pulled Levi tight to her breast, and closed her eyes. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy—”
Bang!
I looked down into the grave, hoping the one shot had killed her. I watched for movement, a breath, a twitch, but saw none of that. At least I hadn’t prolonged her suffering.
Chapter 183
The sun was up by the time Addy and me finished filling in the graves and building the crosses. I’d hammered each into the ground and was sitting in Dad’s plastic chair, staring at the memory of my family. My shotgun was reloaded again and laying across my lap. My pistol was tucked in my waistband. My shovel was on the ground between my chair and Addy’s.
Through the ordeal, she’d said nothing except a word or two necessary for us to work together in finishing the task.
“What will you do?” I asked.
“That’s not the question you want to ask me,” she replied.
Addy turned in her chair to look at me. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Why are you being evasive?”
“I’m not,” she answered. “I don’t honestly believe you need anyone’s approval for what you do. If there’s a question, it’s whether you believe you’re a monster for what you did.”
She was right about that, too. “I don’t have a label for what I am.”
“Do you think you did the right thing?”
I nodded. I did a brutal, terrible thing, the kind of thing I’d been raised to believe that only a monster could do. But the world those morals belonged to was dead and its rules needed to die with it. I did what I did because I believed it was the most merciful thing I could for my parents. It was the right thing. It was the loving thing. “I do.”
Addy reached across the gap between us and she took my hand. “I’ll never judge you for doing what you think is right.”
Never?
“I wish I was as strong as you.” She squeezed my hand for emphasis.
“You are,” I told her. “In your way you’re stronger than me.”
She shrugged.
I put my other hand over hers and turned to look at her. “Back to the first question.”
She almost smiled, and said, “We should stay together. I think Oklahoma is a bad idea.”
A noise from inside the house alerted us both to the presence of another intruder.
I stood up and put my shotgun to my shoulder, but left the barrel pointing down as I turned.
Whoever was in the house walked into the kitchen. I heard a gasp, and I recognized the sound. It was Oscar.
A moment later, he came out through the kitchen door and saw me.
“What happened?” he asked, pointing back inside.
“I don’t know.” That was the truth in some ways. I didn’t know any of the details about what had occurred before my return. “When I got home, Levi was dead.”
Oscar pointed at the carnage in the kitchen. “They killed him?”
“In the living room,” I confirmed.
“Your mom and dad, too?” Oscar asked.
I had the urge to look away to hide behind a lie, but I wasn’t going to. Maybe I’d tell him what had happened but it wasn’t the time. “I killed those three in the kitchen.” I nodded back toward the fresh graves. “That’s Mom, Dad, Levi.”
Oscar shook his head in disbelief. “Why?”
“Why’d those guys come here?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter now.”
Oscar pointed at Addy. “Who’s she?”
“Addy,” I told him. “She helped me get back home.”
“Is that your Jeep out front?” Oscar asked.
Addy nodded.
Oscar refocused on me as he motioned at the graves behind me. “What are you gonna do? Now, I mean.”
“You still want to go down to your uncles’ in Mexico?”
“Yeah.” Oscar almost smiled but it evaporated quickly.
I looked at Addy. “You want to go to Mexico?”
“Anywhere is better than here,” she answered.
I turned back to Oscar. “I can leave today. Nothing is keeping me here.”
The End
About the Author
Follow the adventures of Christian Black in the followup to Black Virus, Black Rust!
Stuff I Usually Say at the End
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Other Books by Bobby Adair
Black Rust (NEW) Bobby’s newest adventure series. Currently available in print, and audiobook available in late Fall of 2016.
Slow Burn series, Books 1-9 (Complete) A best-selling post-apocalyptic adventure series. Also available in audiobook and print.
The Last Survivors series, Books 1-6 (1-5 complete as of June 2016) A futuristic post-apocalyptic tale with a Game of Thrones medieval feel. Collaboration with author T.W. Piperbrook. Also available in audiobook and print.
Ebola K trilogy, Books 1-3 (Complete) Another bestseller. What happens when a pandemic takes over the world? An American college student finds himself in Uganda and in the midst of a sinister terrorist plot to weaponize Ebola. Also available in audiobook and print.
Dusty’s Diary: One Angry Man’s Post-Apocalyptic Story A short-story read by Bobby that he used to blow off steam after the seriousness of writing Ebola K. A little raunchy and rough around the edges, Dusty finds himself stuck in a bunker after the zombie apocalypse.
* * *
Text copyright © 2016, Bobby L. Adair & Beezle Media, LLC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Next: Afterburn by Scott Nicholson
Chapter 185
Crows lined the crumbling and contaminated road that led to Stonewall.
As Rachel Wheeler approached, they lifted one by one against the hazy October sky. A muted lime-green aurora shimmered behind the clouds as if the black birds were swimming against a frothy tide. The hardwood trees on the surrounding Appalachian slopes were gone to gold and scarlet, and the strange light hinted at the gray winter waiting ahead.
One of the crows turned, and its eyes flashed with fire. A blood-chilling caw cracked the brittle air. Rachel slid her machete from its canvas sheath, but the crow veered wildly and then rejoined the broken formation heading south toward the distant city of mutants.
DeVontay Jones chuckled behind her. “What were you going to do with that blade? Make us some chicken pot pie?”
She replaced her machete and glowered at him. “Better than hoping you could shoot it down.”
DeVontay touched his left eye and wiggled the glass prosthetic. “You got that right. My depth perception is for the birds.”
“That wasn’t funny even before Doomsday. Now it’s just sad.”
“You didn’t marry me for my wit.”
“We’re not married yet, remember. All the priests seem to be either dead or Zap.”
DeVontay shouldered his M16 and caught up with her so they could walk side by side. He took her slim right hand with his left and gave it a squeeze. “Living in sin is okay with me.”
Rachel squinted up at the hidden sun and whatever force, if any, lay beyond it. “I’m not sure sin exists anymore. Maybe we paid that debt.”
Grass poked up through cracks in the highway, bent under the weight of yellow seeds. Waist-high weeds grew along the shoulders in alternating bands of briars, goldenrod, and tiny periwinkle flowers. Here and there were gravel turnouts that led up to blank and brooding houses, but neither Rachel nor DeVontay were inclined to stop and explore them. Experience suggested such places were more
likely to harbor danger than supplies.
Not that the open road was much safer, but at least their options were more appealing—fight or flight rather than fight or die.
“I thought you were done with that philosophical stuff,” DeVontay said.
“I’m done with asking why, but not with wondering what’s next.” Rachel scanned the surrounding vegetation and shook her hand free of his grip. She wanted to be able to shoot if necessary. And it was often necessary, given what roamed the forests these days.
“Maybe nobody’s left. People, I mean.”
“I can’t believe that,” Rachel said. “If we’ve lasted this long, then others must have made it, too.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got a bunker.”
“Franklin’s surviving on his own. He can’t be the only one.”
“Your grandpa spends too much time alone up in that compound of his. He’s probably getting cabin fever with no one to dismember but himself.”
DeVontay shrugged his rifle strap down his arm and brought the weapon across his chest. They were coming up on a Honda sedan, which bore a thick coat of grime on its windows and blue paint. They had passed the same car plenty of times in the last five years, but it was wise to avoid complacency. You never knew what surprises lurked in this ever-changing world.
“See anything?” Rachel said as she subconsciously drifted to the opposite side of the road. The sedan had bottomed out in a ditch, and the corpses inside had long ago gone to bone. Those unlucky travelers had endured the solar storms with their windows down, so their flesh had both rotted fast and been raided by scavengers. But at least they hadn’t been collected by the Zaps.
DeVontay poked the barrel of his rifle through the open window. “Just like before. Never noticed this guy wore a wedding ring, though.”