by Red Lagoe
Melody stepped onto her porch into the world of chaos and uncertainty, and her eyes were blinded by the flood of sunshine. Her filthy tank top clung to her body as beads of sweat rolled between her breasts and absorbed into the cotton tank on her belly. Her wavy, dirty blond hair, tangled from days of sweat, hung over her shoulders. Stray strands clung to the sweat on her neck. As her vision adjusted, she looked toward her neighbor, who had stopped in the center of the cul-de-sac, holding an enormous knife in his grasp, staring back at Melody with curiosity in his eyes. His rifle poked out of the second story window within the hands of the pretty brunette.
The autumn air was warm, with an aroma of refuse and death that seemed to grab hold of Melody's tongue, despite her mouth being covered by the surgical mask. The man held up his hand, signaling to Melody to stay indoors, but she was far too intrigued with the condition of the woman.
"Ma'am?" He approached the bleeding woman with his knife held near his hip. The sunlight gleamed on the massive blade. That's a knife—Melody quoted the crocodile movie with an Australian accent in her head, and wanted to laugh aloud. Instead, she remained quietly terrified about what was going to happen.
The lady in the sundress held onto her neck as her bright red blood squeezed between her fingers, traversed her chest, and seeped into the fabric of her dress.
"What the hell happened?" he asked.
She stopped five feet from the neighbor with panic in her large doe eyes. She didn't seem to have the symptoms. She was conscious, non-aggressive, and responsive. There might have been hope for her still if Melody could act quickly enough. She adjusted the strap of her medical bag on her shoulder, but halted on the top step of her porch with her baseball bat in hand. Her pulse pounded between her ears and her gut became sickened with fear, wondering if she had any business treating a human being.
The neighbor and the woman were standing face to face in the street. He looked to Melody again and held his hand up, warning her to stay back.
"Go," she whispered under her breath as her feet remained glued to the top step.
She jolted herself forward, taking the impossible steps down to the sidewalk. She cut through the thick air toward the woman in the street. Each step forward felt as though it was about to be the end of her existence. The infected could come out of any corner. Merely being outdoors was certain to bring death falling out of the sky like a cartoon anvil, but she breathed through her fear and approached anyway.
The neighbor's eyes were filled with questions as Melody neared, but before either of them could speak to each other, the bleeding woman began to wobble. The lady's eyes relaxed, she released her hands from her neck, and let her arms dangle. With a lifeless stare, she allowed herself to bleed out.
Melody couldn't let this happen. She dropped her bat, dug through her bag for supplies, fumbling over gauze and sutures, as the woman collapsed to her knees.
Melody stepped toward the woman to help, but the neighbor stopped her. He held his arm in front of Melody, and his black tee shirt sleeve barely stretched over his bicep, exposing the edge of tattoos beneath.
Melody tried to push by him. "What are you doing-"
"It's too late," he interrupted, holding her back, and she believed him.
This disease worked quickly, and she had seen it before when people were attacked in the street. Some of them turned within moments of contact. News reports early on were unsure of the incubation period, but most people became aggressive within a matter of hours. At first, they didn't know if the virus spread by contact or if it had been airborne, but it was becoming apparent that saliva played a role. They didn't know much of anything about it. It was clear that it was fast, and once a person was symptomatic, it was all over.
A massive amount of blood still poured from her.
Melody stayed behind her neighbor as the bleeding woman, still upright on her knees, began to tremble. Her eyes shifted to the right, then drifted back to center; back and forth. Nystagmus—the same symptom of neurological dysfunction seen in Milo, the cat.
Those deadened brown eyes repeated the motion again and again, then the woman collapsed forward onto her hands and knees, and vomited splatters of bile and blood onto the sidewalk.
"Lady," the neighbor said to Melody with irritation in his voice, "you need to go inside."
Lady? Considering the situation, she allowed his chauvinistic tone to slide for the moment. Melody moved back a couple of steps, dropped the medical supplies, and picked up the baseball bat.
Her mind pin-balled around for a second about her husband's well-being, and whether or not she was about to die. She smoothed the surgical mask over her mouth and nose and gripped the bat within her gloved palms.
Her heart pounded harder as her neighbor approached the woman with his knife at the ready. She couldn't believe this guy was going to get close to her without a mask or something to protect himself from infection.
"You shouldn't-" Melody's words barely escaped her as the infected woman became still and tense.
The woman remained motionless, as stiff as a coffee table, and her brown hair hung over her face, drenched in blood.
Her neighbor took one step closer, crouching with his knife ready. This guy was nuts.
A shot whizzed by Melody's ear and dust kicked up from the bullet's impact on the pavement. Melody ducked while the neighbor shot a glare toward his window, holding his hand up to tell the brunette to stop firing.
The woman in the sundress looked up with dilated pupils, and her head bobbled like a dashboard ornament. She opened her mouth and released the incoherent moan of a stroke victim. A string of drool splashed to the pavement, as she fixed her eyes on the man in front of her. Then she lunged toward him with an inhuman snarl. With a swift arc of his arm, he drove his knife into her temple, stopping her in an instant.
He pulled the knife from her head and allowed her body to drop to the cement. The quick and calculated motion indicated a level of experience—like the guy had done it a hundred times before.
Melody covered her mouth, containing a squeal, and staggered back. Blood poured out of the hole in the woman's head and was sucked up by the gray porous pavement that seemed to sparkle in the sun.
Melody stared in shock. She had watched him fire shots into the sick ones for days, but never this. She had never witnessed anything like it.
Two more infected people staggered out from behind a house nearby, impeding any sort of a reaction from Melody.
"More," Melody whispered, gripping tighter to her baseball bat.
A fat man, at least 300 pounds, wearing a blue polo and grey sweatpants, waddled a haphazard path toward them. A scrawny man in navy blue coveralls followed close behind, reaching for the fat man in front of him, like a kid trying to tag his friend. Both of them had wounds peppering their bodies. Their eyes were crazed. They were about thirty feet away and speeding toward them.
"Where'd you guys come from?" The neighbor said under his breath, then looked back to the brunette with the rifle in the window.
Melody's breathing intensified. Her neighbor placed his hand on her arm, startling her, and she yanked away from his touch, readying her bat.
He spoke with a kind voice, "I'm John..."
John—That was his name.
She opened her mouth to speak, but there were no words ready to come out. She didn't know if she should tell him her name, respond to his stabbing of a woman in the head, or react to the new incoming menace walking down their street. John was more handsome up close, and only an inch or so taller than her. He must have been about 5'11". His short, dark brown hair was dusted with scattered silvering strands above his ears. At least a few days of scruff grew along his jaw and upper lip, also smattered with silver. John's steel blue eyes stared into hers from under those thick dark brows as he introduced himself. What an odd thing to do while disease-ridden freaks were heading their way. She tried to gain some control of her thoughts as they crashed through her mind.
Less than a se
cond after he introduced himself, he continued, "You need to go inside now and lock the door."
Melody, still speechless, stood mere feet from the dead woman in the sundress. She ignored John's demand to go indoors—fat chance she was going to listen to this guy—and she shifted her gaze toward the two men heading their way. They were closing in.
"Your funeral, sweetheart."
"Sweetheart?" she scolded. First lady, and now sweetheart? She should have left him there alone. She could have made it back to her house if she ran, but she committed to holding her stance, especially now that Rifle John felt the need to be a douchebag.
A shot fired from John's house again, missing the three hundred pound target. He held his hand up to the woman in the window to tell her to stop firing, and she pulled the rifle barrel inside. Why the hell was that woman entrusted with the rifle?
John held his bloody knife out to his side and approached the obese man first. Melody held firm to her bat, panting in preparation of a fight. She shuffled forward, staying within arm's reach behind him.
The large bloody body of the obese man moved toward them with haste, while John stood with a strong and confident stance—like a cowboy ready to lasso a bull. Once within reach of his attacker, he swung his knife with a precise arc toward the man's head, but the bulbous infected beast tripped over his own feet.
Before his knife could impale him, the man fell forward, colliding with John. They crashed to the ground. Pinned beneath the weight of the man, John wriggled to free his legs, but the man tried to bite into his belly. John held him by his hair, trying to keep him from biting. The skinny man in coveralls closed in right behind him.
Melody’s pulse rapid fired through her veins, but she charged in to help him without hesitation. John had managed to plunge his knife into the head of the fat man, but the skinny one had already arrived and collapsed on top of the pile.
John shifted beneath the weight as the small man on top clawed in a frenzy. With his chin drenched in saliva, he ripped into the back of the fat man's neck with his teeth.
"I can't get a clear shot," the brunette screamed from John's window, with the rifle resting on the windowsill.
Melody lifted her bat to her right ear, unsure if the woman in the window was about to accidentally shoot her in the head. Only a couple of seconds had gone by since John fell to the ground, but it felt like time had slowed down.
Her hands sweat inside of her purple gloves as she squeezed her bat harder, and her surgical mask sucked against her lips as she inhaled. For a split second, she recalled tenth grade softball practice. "Clean up!" Coach had yelled to her.
Every fiber of her being screamed not to do it, but she pushed forward, swinging that bat as hard as she could at the head of the small man.
The crunch of his skull against the bat
The little man's brain was so swollen and surrounded with fluid from the infection, that blood and serous fluid splattered from his head onto her. The tiny man’s body flung to the curb, motionless.
John shifted out from under the fat man while she—panicked as hell—ripped off her surgical mask and used it to wipe away the blood from her face. She scanned her body for wounds but found nothing.
Chest heaving with each panting breath, she wondering if some of that blood may have entered an unknown scratch or her eye, causing infection.
John's right pant leg pulled up while getting out from under the fat man, exposing a shiny prosthetic lower limb. That explained the limp. Melody was surprised the guy lasted this long. He got to his feet and began inspecting himself for injuries.
John's black tee shirt had been soaked in blood and drool, and as he was about to pull it from his body, Melody stopped him.
"No! Don't pull that over your face," she urged.
John stopped and heeded her warning. "Fine." Instead, he used his knife to slice the fabric down the front of his chest, and he removed it from his body, exposing more tattoos on his arms and chest.
Melody pulled off her gloves and let them drop to the ground. Trembling, she stood near the dead people on the street and kept her eyes wide open in search for more infected.
John asked if she was alright, but his voice seemed muffled—like talking through a wall. Not knowing how to answer, she remained silent and looked down at the skinny man on the curb that she had murdered.
She crushed his skull with a bat in one blow. Blood had splattered onto her face. John was covered in it too. She considered for a moment that she should have stayed in the attic.
She calmed her thoughts and her heart slowed, while sweat dripped from her forehead and fell from her brow. She did not have any open wounds, and that comforted her enough. If she was infected, there was nothing she could do about it anyway.
"I told you to get inside," John said, placing himself between the dead bodies and Melody, trying to break her gaze. Her eyes met with John's and her teeth began to chatter from what she assumed was shock.
"Hey, you alright?" He reached for Melody's hand.
Her diamond engagement ring rested within his palm and the ring shifted within his hand as he guided her away from the dead. Melody yanked her hand away from the stranger, unable to squeeze any sort of verbal protest out of her lips.
She wondered if Marcus was still alive. She wondered if she was about to get sick and turn into a rabid freak. John picked up her medical bag and Melody kept her right hand gripped on her bat as John followed her back to her house.
"Why are you following me?" she asked upon entering her house, still trembling.
"Cool it, lady. I'm just carrying your bag." He closed the door behind them.
“Yeah, well I’ve got it.”
She stood in the center of her foyer grasping her bat, and trying not to completely lose her mind over what had happened. Melody tried to prepare herself for either turning into an infected monster or beating the hell out of this man if he tried anything stupid.
5
Misattribution of Arousal
She charged into the kitchen to wash up under the faucet. Her nostrils flared and her forehead scowled, hoping she was alright as blood rinsed away from her skin. Tears tried to form in her eyes, but she huffed out her nose like a bull and chanted under her breath, "Survive."
"I don't think its spread through blood," John said.
"I know that!" she snapped.
"So why are you freaking out?" The words slapped her in the face, but she continued splashing water onto her shoulders and neck anyway. She held her head over the sink and allowed the water to pour down her face and neck, soaking into her white tank top.
"I'm not freaking out," she defended. "I'm being cautious. You might want to try it. There was more than just blood that splattered out there. Cerebral fluid, saliva..."
His brow furrowed. "A couple days ago, I got some blood in my eye... and here I am."
Melody wiped her face dry with a dish towel. "You could still be infected with it," she barely muttered the words with water dripping from her hairline. "It could be incubating in your body right now."
"You've seen how fast it works," John said. "I would've been sick by now."
He was right—damn. This disease worked faster than anything anyone had seen before. As she turned to walk away from John, he placed his hand against the center of Melody's back. She stiffened up, on guard, confused about whether to trust him, and then picked her bat up and pulled away, aiming the tip of her bat toward him with warning.
John held his hands up and backed off, laughing as she walked into the living room with the remnant sensation of the warmth of John's hand still penetrating her shirt. His presence somehow gave her conflicting feelings of both security and warning.
He followed behind and stopped next to her as she looked out the bay window. Melody stole a glimpse of his strong arms out of the corner of her eye. A black tattoo of a trident with an eagle adorned his left shoulder. By the looks of it, it was something military-related, she assumed.
She had to r
emind herself that he was likely an asshole.
From her window, she could see the three bodies bleeding onto the pavement. She wanted to escape this reality. She closed her eyes with the childish hope that she would awake from some dream, but opened them to the same view of dead bodies in her neighborhood and a strange, shirtless man in her house.
The image of him cutting his shirt from his body, while sweat and blood dripped to the ground was one she would likely never forget. She turned her back to the window and her arm brushed against his. The sensation of that touch sent a shocking charge through her entire body, and she felt a sudden urge to rip the remaining clothes off his body.
"I'll move their bodies in a minute," he said. "It's starting to reek out there. So I'll have to burn some bodies tonight."
“I’ll help.”
He shot her a strange look before going back into the kitchen to clean up while Melody sat down. The beige walls and matching carpeting reflected the afternoon sunlight as it seeped in through the bay window.
She could hear the water in the kitchen running as John cleaned the blood off of himself over her sink. She scanned her body again for open wounds, any small scrape on her hands could have been an entry point for the infection, but she found nothing. At least she wasn't bitten.
"You been in here all this time?" he called to her from the kitchen.
His voice was intoxicating. Her sudden arousal to this asshole took her by surprise. Melody tried to shake off the shiver that he sent through her body. She needed to be sensible about this, because she could not be attracted to him.
Her sensible, medical-minded self took control. She had experienced a life-threatening situation. When there is a rush of adrenaline, and a sudden spike in heart rate due to a traumatic event, it is possible to become aroused in other ways. Melody rationalized that her insatiable need to pounce on John was nothing more than a simple misattribution of arousal. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that he was incredibly sexy. John reentered the living room like a shirtless, tattooed Roman god, with his denim jeans hanging from his waist, holding a wet towel in his hands.