Slowly We Rot

by Bryan Smith

  Once he’d finished eating and had packed away the leftover meat, he took a western novel from his pack and spent a bit of time reading by the fire. The reading didn’t work its usual magic, however, and he stopped after getting through just a single chapter. Somehow reading about outlaws and avenging gunslingers had lost some of its appeal. His reaction to the book was so adverse, in fact, that he considered tossing it on the fire, and all the rest of the books from his pack along with it.

  In the end, however, he packed the book away, attributing the destructive impulse to some of his recent experiences. It was something he thought he might regret later. After all, the act of burning books had some pretty uncomfortable historical connotations. He didn’t want to do anything that’d put him in the same company as Nazis and murderous religious zealots.

  In the absence of any other way of whiling away his time, Noah decided it was time to turn in for the night. He’d gone many hours without drinking, his longest stretch of sober time since leaving Henryetta, and he did feel much better than he had in some time, especially with a decent meal inside him. But the reality was he was less than half a day removed from the worst episode of alcoholic misery in his life. The need was dimmer than usual, but it was still inside him. His hands trembled and there were occasional tremors in other parts of his body. He didn’t need a medical professional to tell him these were symptoms of withdrawal. It was going to be a long time before he was truly recovered, if that ever happened. What he needed more than anything else was a long night of rest with no trace of poison circulating in his system.

  Noah grabbed his pack and pulled it into the tent with him. Leaving the tent’s flaps open so he could see by firelight, he opened the pack and took out his sleeping bag. Thanks to his longstanding habit of unplanned passing out, it’d been quite a while since he’d used it. He shook the bag out, pulled off his shoes, and climbed inside it. Using his pack as a pillow, he turned on his side and began to drift asleep almost right away, only becoming truly aware of how utterly exhausted he was as he stretched out on the ground. He felt like he could sleep for days, maybe even weeks.

  He was in the beginning stages of a dream about Lisa when a sound from outside the tent dragged him back to the waking world. The first thing he felt as this happened was annoyance. In the dream, Lisa was with him on a California beach, a radiant smile on her face as they walked hand-in-hand and barefoot in the sand. She looked beautiful in a little white dress. It was sunset and the horizon out over the water was breathtaking, the sky awash in a variety of brilliant hues.

  The next thing he felt was terror.

  Noah had removed his utility belt prior to getting in the sleeping bag. He groped for it now as he woke, endeavoring not to make a sound as his hand found the grip of the .357 and drew it from the holster. By contrast, the person outside his tent was making no attempt at stealth. Far from it, in fact. Whoever was out there was singing “Seven Drunken Nights”, a traditional Irish drinking song. Noah knew it because Lisa had introduced him to the song a lifetime ago.

  But this was not Lisa. This was a male voice. After listening a few moments, Noah thought it was one he recognized, but he knew he must be wrong about that. There was no way the person he was thinking of was outside his tent tonight. Mostly because he was no longer among the living.

  Noah crawled out of the sleeping bag, peered through the open flaps of the tent, and saw a man sitting on a log by the fire. His back was to Noah so he couldn’t see his face, but the general shape of him seemed familiar. Though he was seated, it was clear he was tall and lanky. What really clinched it, though, was the spiky blond hair, which looked just as it had all those years ago.

  The singing went on for a while, with Noah’s visitor making most of his way through the song before abruptly falling silent. He turned his head in Noah’s direction, just far enough for a partial glimpse of his face. The glimpse was further proof of what he already knew.

  Luke Garraty chuckled. “Hey, douchebag. You gonna gawk at me all night, or are you gonna come out here and have a drink with me?”

  Noah stared at the apparition by the campfire a while longer, unsure of what to do or say. He hesitated long enough that Luke grew tired of waiting for him and resumed singing, starting the same song again from the beginning. He bobbed his head in time to the rhythm he was belting out and swayed a bit on the log. The log appeared to shift beneath him, as if bearing an actual physical weight. That wasn’t possible, of course, so Noah accepted it as part of the hallucination he was obviously having.

  He came out of the tent and approached the campfire. The disappointment he felt when the illusory version of his old rehab friend failed to vanish was mild. That would happen soon enough. He just had to be patient. In the meantime, he figured this was some troubled part of his mind wanting to have a conversation with him. There was nothing to do but accept it on its own terms and go with it.

  “You’re dead. You know that, right?”

  Luke snickered. “Of course I know that. I’m a fucking ghost, man. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “I’d say you’re more like a voice in my head I’ve somehow externalized. And for some reason my fucked-up brain picked your image as an avatar for that voice.”

  Luke laughed and took a swig from a pint bottle. “You keep telling yourself that, brother, but deep down you know the truth. I ain’t no voice in your head. I’m all that remains of a human being you killed by leaving for dead a long time ago. In other words, a fucking ghost.”

  Noah turned from the fire to look squarely at the hallucination. “You were already dead. It couldn’t have been more obvious.”

  “Maybe you should have checked for a pulse.”

  “Maybe you should go fuck yourself.”

  Luke smirked. “Snappy comeback. I’m impressed.”

  “And while you’re fucking yourself, maybe you should go ahead and fuck off, too. I’m tired and need to sleep.”

  Luke took another swig from the pint bottle. After that he shook the bottle and arched an eyebrow. “Have a drink with me, man. Just one. You owe me that much.”

  “You’re not real, so I owe you shit. Which, by the way, means that bottle isn’t real either. And that’s a good thing, because I’m done drinking.”

  Luke snorted and helped himself to yet another gulp of ghost whiskey. “Yeah, right. Since when?”

  “This morning.”

  “Shit, you’ll be back on the sauce in no time. You know I’m right.”

  Before Noah could reply to that, he was distracted by a sound of something moving out in the darkness beyond the campfire. He caught a glimpse of a low-to-the-ground shape pushing through the tall grass. In a moment, he discerned the pointed ears and long snout of a coyote. Remembering the gun in his hand, he raised it and squeezed off a warning shot. The boom of the high-caliber gun was immense in the lonely patch of field. It sent the animal scurrying back into the darkness, hopefully not to return.

  Luke whooped in drunken delight. “Whoa, brother. That’s some serious artillery you’re packing there!”

  Noah pointed the gun at the apparition and fired again.

  Luke’s familiar smirk was immediately back in place. “You’re forgetting I’m a ghost and therefore impervious to bullets. It’s one of the few perks of being a spook, really.”

  Noah sighed. “You’re not a ghost.”

  “Am, too. Come on, man.” He waved the bottle at Noah. “Have a drink with me. Just one. You do that, I’ll leave you alone and never bother you again, I promise. And hey, what harm could it do? You said it yourself, this here bottle’s not real. So what’s the big deal?”

  Noah eyed the bottle with some trepidation, wondering if maybe it wasn’t part of the hallucination. Maybe it was the one bottle he’d somehow unknowingly missed during the purge earlier in the day. And maybe the whole point of this delusion was a mental construct designed to get him to drink it, his addiction’s most devious ruse thus far.

  He took the bott
le from the apparition.

  Luke grinned. “Attaboy.”

  The weight and feel of the bottle in his hand seemed real enough to Noah. Also adding to an impression of realism was the way the edges of the label were curling outward as the old glue separated from the glass. The smell of cheap, inferior whiskey was just as convincing.

  Noah reared an arm back and flung the bottle out into the night.

  Luke frowned. “You asshole.”

  Noah nodded. “That I am.”

  He started back toward the tent.

  “Hold on, man.” Luke shot to his feet and gripped Noah by an arm. “I’m not done with you just yet. Remember that first group meeting at Discoveries? Remember what I told you back then?”

  Noah grunted. “How could I forget?”

  “Well, that shit still applies. Your whole problem is your grandiose vision of yourself in the scheme of things. You keep telling yourself stories, inventing this epic myth. The Story of Noah, you could call it. And I get it, man. I really do. Because what else do you have but the lies you’ve told yourself to keep getting by? But it’s time to let go of all that shit and get in touch with the real you.”

  “All right. I’ll play. Who am I, really?”

  Luke’s expression had turned somber. “You’re nothing but an ordinary, flawed guy who’s in way over his head. You didn’t survive the end of the world because you were special. That’s your daddy’s doing. And you’ve survived as long as you have out here in the world through sheer luck. But your luck is about to run out, Noah. You need to go home.”

  Noah frowned at the hand gripping his arm. As with the bottle, the pressure against his flesh felt real enough, but the apparition’s fingers were like slivers of ice. He pried them loose and moved back another few steps. “I told you, I’m tired. I know I’m no hero, for fuck’s sake. And I’m not interested in resolving whatever fucked-up thing inside me you’re supposed to represent.”

  “Wrong again, buddy. I’m a ghost. How many times do I have to say it? And I’m not the first one you’ve talked to out on the lonesome highway. Am I, Noah?”

  That stopped Noah in his tracks. He turned to face the apparition squarely again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean you’ve been talking to ghosts for a while now.”

  Noah’s heart started beating faster. “No. You’re wrong. I’m talking to myself. That’s all I’ve ever been doing. Because I’m crazy.”

  The set of Luke’s features shifted, his eyes thinning to slits as the edges of his mouth turned sharply upward, rising higher than should have been possible. For the first time, Noah thought maybe, just maybe, there was something real lurking behind the apparition’s Luke mask. Something inhuman, not of the natural world. As soon as the thought occurred to him, Luke’s face morphed again, the planes and contours he recognized changing and rearranging. The face it was becoming was also one he recognized.

  The apparition now wore the face of Shane. The shape and texture of its body changed, too, its skin inscribed now with the tattoos Noah remembered from that night in Hell’s Lost Mile. There was additional tattooing now. His entire neck was covered in ink. Most of the tattoos were depictions of various kinds of serpents. The thing spoke in Shane’s voice as it said, “You should turn back now. You don’t want to go to Ventura. You don’t want to see what’s waiting there for you.”

  Noah was afraid again. The gun felt too heavy in his hand and was sliding from his fingers. “Go away.”

  “Go home, Noah. Spare yourself this heartache.”

  “Fuck you,” Noah said, anger rising up inside him despite his fear. “Seriously, just fuck off out of here. I’m tired of your shit. Don’t you have caves to slither through somewhere or whatever that crazy shit was you said?”

  A strange thing happened next. The Shane-thing’s expression changed, appearing to convey immense sorrow. “I have to go now, Noah. Time grows short. Heed the warning you’ve been given.”

  And then it was gone. Vanished. As if it’d never been there at all.

  Noah stared at the empty space the apparition had occupied a while longer, his head buzzing with the upsetting insinuations the thing had made in its various forms. He sort of wished he had that bottle of cheap whiskey back, but his resolve returned in the next instant, anger accompanying it.

  He entered the tent and crawled back inside the sleeping bag. The level of agitation tearing at him was intense enough he feared he wouldn’t be able to sleep again for hours. But he was wrong about that. Now that he was in a prone position again, exhaustion overtook him. His sleep was fitful and his dreams were tortured by images of things he didn’t want to see.

  But that night was the last time he ever talked to ghosts.

  He rose early the next morning and began the last part of his journey.

  PART IV: JOURNEY’S END

  50.

  Long ago,

  On the eve of apocalypse…

  Strange things were happening out there in the world as summer gave way to fall. That much was clear to anyone paying even a little attention. Even Noah, who had largely ignored current events over the course of a long year fraught with struggle and upheaval on the personal front, knew something was seriously amiss. Lately his father had been keeping the big TV in the den tuned to his favorite cable news outlet on a seemingly permanent basis, usually with the sound jacked up loud enough to hear through the entire house.

  By that point Noah had about a month and a half of total sobriety under his belt. Trying to stay sober required such a concerted effort of will that the deteriorating world situation was, for a while, just a lot of senseless background noise. Sometimes he would walk through the den and glimpse images of people rioting in the streets at various locales throughout the world. Some kind of plague was gathering steam and people were freaking out about it. Authorities in a number of places were cracking down hard on rioters in a desperate effort to quell the rising panic. Judging from the increasingly agitated voices of newscasters, this tactic was backfiring in spectacular fashion.

  Noah would watch a few moments of these reports and then go about his business, figuring it would all blow over soon enough. It was all a lot of sensationalism, the media making it all seem like a bigger deal than it really was. He couldn’t afford to let himself freak out about it like his father, not if he wanted to avoid another relapse. His biggest fear was that another one would be the end for him. He kept picturing himself winding up like Luke Garraty.

  Another factor in his lack of concern over what was going on was a long-overdue waning of his obsession with Lisa Thomas. All he cared about now was the future and all the possibilities that were opening up for him. Abstaining from booze had helped a lot in that regard. It was coming up on a year since the last time he’d seen Lisa and sometimes he still wished for a reunion. Yet he was closer than ever to accepting that he would probably never see her again.

  If nothing else, Luke’s death had taught him that the future was not guaranteed. The time had come to finally let it all go and move on. He was still young. There would be many other opportunities for happiness with someone else. All he had to do was move forward and let it happen.

  Noah’s first inkling his newly awakened hopes for the future might not come to fruition was the afternoon his father came home with a brand new SUV overloaded with various kinds of survivalist gear and provisions. Attached to the rear of the SUV by trailer hitch was a midsized transport wagon loaded with several large steel drums, which Noah’s father informed him were filled with gasoline. His father had dabbled in doomsday prepping for years. The family cabin up in the Smokies had a lot of similar provisions stored there already, so much so that Noah found himself alarmed by the sheer volume of fresh supplies his father brought home that day. It seemed like overkill and he said as much.

  “That’s not what you’ll be thinking six months from now,” his father told him, glancing up from a handwritten checklist of items. “The world will be in total chaos, that�
�s if there’s a world left at all. By then you’ll be grateful I had the foresight to prepare. And you’ll be glad you’re up there away from it all and living in comfort.”

  “But--”

  “But nothing,” his father said, flipping the little black notepad shut. “Listen, Noah, I have to head out to the Smokies and offload this stuff. I’ll drive straight through until I get there. Then I’ll head on back as soon as the job’s done. While I’m gone, you need to keep watch over your mother and sister. Things aren’t as bad here as in the big cities, but that won’t last.”

  He opened the SUV’s rear hatch, took out a rifle and a box of shells, and thrust them at his son, who reluctantly accepted them.

  “Um…what am I supposed to do with this shit?”

  His father slammed the SUV’s hatch shut. “If anyone shady comes around here, you’re to shoot them in the head, no questions asked.”

  Noah frowned. “What? You can’t be serious.”

  The man gripped his son by a shoulder, digging his fingers in so hard Noah couldn’t help wincing. Noah’s father had fixed him with some stern looks in the aftermath of his various alcohol-related mishaps, looks meant to put the fear of God in him, but they all paled in comparison to the one leveled at him now.

  “Son, I’m more serious than I’ve ever been.” Some of the hardness faded from the man’s features and Noah glimpsed a deep well of compassion and sadness lurking beneath the surface. In a way, Noah found this far more disturbing than anything he’d said. “Look, the world you grew up in is going away, probably forever. I hate it. I wish it were otherwise. Given the chance, I think you would’ve gotten past all your troubles. You would have made us all proud eventually. I really believe that.”