Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  He drifted to sleep while jumping fences—Angie close behind.

  5

  Angie

  Liam woke up exhausted. When he did sleep, he’d had horrible dreams of zombies, lots of running, and pulling the trigger on a gun that would never fire as he was overwhelmed by plague victims.

  The actual gunfire, speeding cars, and screams from nearby houses insured his slumber was sporadic all through the night. He also heard a big explosion nearby but was unable to pull himself out of his comfy sofa cushions to check it out. He was glad to get things moving at the first sign of light outside.

  He went to Grandma's door and found her already up and sitting in a comfortable chair.

  “I'm an early riser.” She never complained. “Two houses behind us blew up last night and burned to the ground. I watched to make sure the fire didn't spread.”

  “Did you get any sleep?” he asked while peeking out her window.

  “Oh, I got enough. I slept most of yesterday.” It was true enough, but not really a straight answer. Nothing could be done now. “I made you some eggs and bacon. Have to get rid of it.”

  He wasn't a morning person or a breakfast person, but he took the time to shovel down the home-cooked meal.

  “Sorry for eating so fast. I just want to get up there and get it over with.”

  “I understand. I can make you plenty more if you're still hungry.”

  “No Grandma, but thanks. You stay here, and I'll be right back. Shouldn't be that hard to find Angie's keys up there.”

  She gave him a little salute and watched him walk away. She said she would conserve her energy and stay in her chair to wait for him. “Be careful,” she added.

  “The zombie from up there has already come down,” he replied, then paused. He looked back and said, “Sorry, I meant no disrespect.” He hurried to the front of her flat, through the access door to Angie's stairwell, and up the steep flight. The door at the top was already open, giving him access to the upstairs living area. He stepped around a puddle on the dim landing.

  The room was shadowy because the drapes were thick and dark. He didn't have his flashlight with him. The floor was covered with debris, so he had trouble moving to a window to let in some light. When he finally did pull back the curtains, he was stunned.

  Blood. Lots of blood.

  There were piles of clothes scattered on the floor, along with sofa pillows, a tablecloth, and smatterings of shoes, purses, and other accessories. It appeared as if Angie's entire wardrobe had spilled out onto her floor, and got drenched with blood.

  He shuddered to think of Angie bleeding so bad, knowing she was still walking around somewhere outside. It didn't seem possible any disease process could produce such horrible results.

  Is she really dead?

  He'd read books with many different definitions of zombies. Some were back-from-the-dead “undead.” Some were the recently deceased; they reanimated while still warm but remained clinically dead. Some were alive but infected with something that made them as good as dead. Would the people walking around his neighborhood fit into any of those neat boxes?

  He still had a job to do in the apartment, and he began working his way around the edges of the room where the blood was absent, and some semblance of order remained. He could still detect some of the personality of the woman who, until recently, was someone he admired.

  He found a picture of Angie with her granddaughter—a bubbly blonde with her arms slung around her grandma, giving her a big hug. He picked up the simple desk frame to get a better look in the low light, deliberately turning away from the central part of the room with all the gore on the floor. He wasn't without feelings, but true empathy didn't come naturally to him. However, the events of the last twenty-four hours had awakened something urgent inside him—he suddenly, desperately, wanted to know if the girl in the picture was safe.

  He took a deep breath, then resumed his circuit of the main living area. He tried to think where the normally organized woman would put her car keys in her home. His keys were always in his pocket or on his nightstand, so he thought to check the bedroom, but turned up nothing.

  He walked back out the bedroom door and noticed Angie's cat was hiding amongst some of the clothing on the floor. Not in the middle of the room, but near the edge of the cyclone of destruction. The little guy was probably scared to death. He moved to kick off some of the clothes that were on top of it—and saw with horror that the cat was not only dead but lying in a pool of blood with most of its insides ripped out.

  He threw up.

  Standing there trying to recover, he noticed the keys hung on a hook right next to the doorframe on the way out of the apartment. If he’d thought to look when he came through the door, he could have avoided this whole mess.

  He grabbed the keys from the hook and rushed out the door toward the stairs. Then …

  Marty heard the sound of someone falling down the stairs. It had been a scarce twenty-four hours since the last person fell down those stairs, so there was no mistaking the sound this time.

  Liam had gone up into Angie's apartment to retrieve the car keys, but she hadn't considered whatever made Angie sick could have still been up there, waiting to pounce. Maybe it was something simply floating around in the air as a pathogen. What had she done? What kind of caretaker was she?

  The front room's door was wide open to the stairwell. If Liam was now sick, he could come right through, and it would all be over for her. She felt paralyzed with indecision. Try to close the door? Do nothing? She hated that it was such a dumb mistake.

  She knew she couldn't just sit and wait to die, so she repeated the previous day's motions—pushing herself out of her chair, grabbing her walker, and trundling through her house until she found herself once again near the door to her neighbor's home. She was certain Liam was lying just around the corner.

  Putting on a brave face, she looked out; she wanted to see Liam before she shut the door on him forever.

  She hadn't even considered the possibility he simply fell down the stairs by accident, but that appeared to be what happened. She could see the blood on the bottom of his sneakers. He was knocked out, but breathing normally in the early morning light within the foyer.

  With that realization, all the strength she felt drained out of her. It was a profound relief to be sure, but now she was an empty, weak shell, as all that nervous energy dissipated. She needed to sit down. She managed to make one quick detour to grab a comforter from her sofa, walk it back to Liam, and drape it as best she could over him. She didn't want him to catch a cold from a draft on the open floor.

  She scraped her way to the sofa, turned around, and plopped onto the cushion. Her slight frame scarcely made a dent in the fabric. She let go of her walker, letting it stand by her feet.

  I'm not even half the woman I used to be.

  It was a common refrain in her mind lately. She knew her days were numbered. The years left to her were probably less than the fingers on one hand. She no longer played the denial games of her younger self—she only spoke the most brutal and honest truths to herself.

  “Oh, Liam. I'm so sorry your mom and dad left you here with me. I'm sure they're thinking the same thing right about now. They thought they were doing me a favor by putting you in my care. Giving me someone extra to help around the house. Someone to talk to. Someone to care for. Everyone needs that.” She sighed deeply with exhaustion in both body and spirit.

  “If you were with your parents right now, I would probably just sit in my chair until the end.”

  Looking at the crucifix on her wall, she wondered seriously if that was the attitude she should take. Her Christian upbringing taught her to care for those less fortunate, stay strong in body and soul, and enter the Kingdom of Heaven after a life well-lived. Nothing could have prepared her for this situation. Plague. Chaos. Sick people. What does the Bible say about surviving the end of the world? Sure, Revelation was replete with end-of-world imagery, but it was no guidebook for h
ow to endure it.

  Was it suicide to knowingly stay put, acknowledging survival in the coming storm was impossible? Just cower in the disintegrating neighborhood until the food and water run out. Then the end would be quick.

  Isn't it also certain death for a woman my age to go into the storm?

  Even several minutes of prayer brought her no closer to an answer.

  She weighed her chances of staying in the house by herself, sending Liam out without her. She could survive for a week or two under the best of conditions. She had plenty of food, thanks to her well-prepared grandson—Liam's father—but she knew it was only a matter of time before hungry and less prepared neighbors began scavenging. It wouldn't be hard to take from the oldest lady on the block. That says nothing about thieves or brigands from beyond the neighborhood. Sick people like Angie would also ensure she could never leave again. Staying or going, being on her own was certain death.

  Thinking of Liam passed out on the floor in the next room also gave her more to worry about. If they went out into the city, she would be slowing him down to the point she would surely endanger him. She couldn't even manage him here in the house. What would she do when people, plague, and the sick made life difficult for them? There was absolutely nothing she could contribute.

  I can't even shout anymore.

  Tired, she stared off into space for an indeterminate amount of time before she heard Liam stirring.

  That brought her back to the present and the question she still couldn't answer.

  Liam was lying on the floor at the base of Angie's stairs when he came to. Grandma had tossed a little blanket on him, or at least he assumed it was her, though she was nowhere to be seen. From his position on the floor, he was looking up the stairs. His headache let him know the full story of his rapid descent.

  Yep, I'm that guy.

  He slowly sat up, anticipating a pounding headache. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as he feared. He remotely considered everything that could have happened on his way down—broken bones, broken neck, even death—and felt pretty fortunate. He wondered if dialing 911 would reach a live person anymore.

  He tried to make his way to the first riser so he could sit in an upright position and take stock. Next, he stood to test his legs. He felt a little dizzy, a little achy in his noggin and along much of his right side, but overall he was fit for duty.

  I got the keys!

  He moved back into Grandma's house to find her sitting on the big sofa. She looked very tired when he first saw her, but when she saw him, she flashed a big smile. The warmth returned to her demeanor.

  “I'm so sorry, Liam, I shouldn't have sent you up there. I wasn't thinking about your safety.”

  “Don't worry, Grandma. It was my fault I slipped on ... something and tumbled down the stairs.” He looked away from her as he remembered what he saw upstairs.

  “Do you want to know what I found up in Angie's apartment? Besides the car keys?”

  “Oh, I guess so, since you made the effort to go up.”

  “Well, there's a lot of blood. And tons of her clothes were in the middle of her living room. And her cat ... was no longer alive. But mainly … blood. I couldn't tell if it was hers. It was kind of gross, which is why I ran out and fell.”

  She nodded solemnly, “Were there any clues as to how she got sick?”

  “Dunno. How do people normally get this plague? Sneezing? Coughing? Sharing germs?” He hesitated for fear of voicing the one method he hoped would never prove true. The most common fictional method for people to become zombies—biting.

  “Um, Grandma, did Angie look like she'd been bitten by anything? Maybe her cat?”

  Or maybe a human ...

  “I'm afraid Angie was so bloody; I really didn't see any one place where she might have been bitten. She was just covered all over.”

  He hadn’t been looking for bite marks on his walk home. Now he couldn't even remember the color clothing the yoga girl was wearing, much less if she had bite marks on her. The adrenaline rush and confusion had clouded his memory. He remembered the bloody look of her eyes, and it matched the blood-drenched stare Angie gave him.

  “Grandma, do you think we should leave? This disease seems real bad.”

  She told him about the message on her answering machine, “It said to seek safer areas. The message didn't say to hunker down and wait for authorities. It didn't say the army was coming to help. It didn't even suggest order would ever be restored. And then those tornado sirens blasted for an unusually long time as if to amplify the severity of the warning. The hour-long blast was a big shout to get out, Liam.”

  She paused to let that sink in.

  “The phones are dead. Radio only loops the president's message. I don't think help is coming, and it's going to keep getting worse in the neighborhood if we stay here. Yesterday they were robbing garages. Tomorrow they're going to start robbing homes.”

  He knew she was right, even though he really wanted to stick things out in the safety of the house. Going back out into the growing chaos wasn't something he relished. But his embarrassment on the steps proved even his own home could become a deathtrap. He considered whether just breathing the same air up in Angie's apartment had exposed him to whatever made her sick.

  “Grandma, I was packing last night, so most everything is ready. I was really hoping we'd wake up and things would be getting back to normal, and we wouldn't have to go anywhere, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen.”

  The sounds of the neighborhood had begun picking up as the sun rose and hadn't slowed down once it was well in the air. First, it was just distant gunfire and squealing tires, the same as most of the night. Then it started to increase in frequency and volume as if it were getting closer. Some gunshots seemed very close. And the screams. Those were picking up as well. Just getting to Angie's car could be a challenge if things got much worse.

  “OK, Grandma.” He reassured himself. “I feel OK. We have to get our stuff and get out of here.”

  He grabbed the backpack he prepared and staged it by the front door. His most precious items were the two handguns. One he carried in a holster inside the belt and waistband of his pants. The other, along with the ammo, he stuffed into his pack. He would have to carry everything because Grandma wasn't able to lift anything but her walking cane.

  He took a minute to consider his plan. First, he had to find Angie and make sure he wasn't going to accidentally let the sick nurse back into the flat. Then he would run out of the house, cut across several yards, and emerge on the street where her car was parked—avoiding other sick people or criminals as needed. A quick run to the front seat, shove the keys in the ignition, and then a high-speed return to pick up his fare.

  Sounded easy. But he knew any dumb mistake would put him in the role of that guy again. It was something that made him double his efforts to think of everything that could go wrong with his plan.

  I'm sure I'm missing something.

  Liam looked out every window in Grandma's flat and Angie was nowhere to be found. He could think of several places she could be hiding, but he hoped she decided to move on to find other humans to attack. A twinge of guilt followed the thought.

  Rather than overthink things, he let Grandma know he was going to run out the back door and that she should shut the door behind him. He would be running for the car.

  “Good luck, Liam. I'll be praying for you.”

  He knew she would. “Thanks, Grandma. I'll take all the help I can get!”

  And with that, he opened the door, walked out, and Grandma closed it. He was quickly over the fence into the next yard. And the next. And the next. In a couple of minutes, he was in the last yard, ready to jump the final fence before the run down the street toward the car. His brain started running a little slideshow in his head, showing all the ways he could fail. Tripping. Ambushes. Gunfire. Getting run over. His heartbeat was revving to keep pace with the images in his head. No matter what he did to settle himself, he couldn't push
them away.

  He knew he had self-doubts about his abilities, just like anyone would, but he was haunted by his recent mishaps as “the guy who blows it.” More images spun up in his mind, fueled by every zombie book and movie he'd ever consumed. Would he get out onto the street and trip and break his ankle, to be easily hunted down by a sick person? Would he be the guy trying to start the car over and over, only to have a zombie pull him out through the window, or have one of the marauders in the area put a bullet in him just to get his working car?

  And P.S., if I die, Grandma dies, too.

  He had a vivid vision of Grandma standing in her kitchen where he last saw her. She was still there looking out the back, waiting. The vision faded, and he was glad because his next thought was that Angie was somehow in the house with her.

  It was too much to digest, and he had to sit down in a bed of flowers to give himself some cover while he kept his heart rate from exploding, and his brain from panicking. Nothing like this had ever happened to him.

  So many things can go wrong!

  He could see the car, and it didn't look like anything was going on in the immediate area. Now was his chance, if he could settle himself. He tried thinking of something peaceful—the lake where he spent a lot of time as a child—but that only reminded him of another incident where he almost drowned. So he focused on the moment and studied one of the yellow wildflowers nearby. He ignored everything else for several minutes until his heart rate was back to normal. When he was ready, he willed himself to stay in the moment.

  He was up and over the final fence, and he felt strong as he topped it. He landed well and sprinted for the car. The hundred-yard dash took much longer than he remembered in grade school gym class, and his awareness was crystal clear as he sprinted. There were wisps of smoke drifting from the two burned-out houses behind Grandma's, and the air was foul with the smell of burnt wood and synthetic housing materials. There was a very slight breeze. The position of the sun indicated time was moving closer to late morning. The neighborhood was fairly quiet just then; gunshots and screams were ebbing low.