Waiting to Die (Book 2): Wasting Away

by Richard M. Cochran

  “I understand what you’re saying, don’t get me wrong, but I would take all that bullshit over this, any day.”

  “We have a chance, Mary,” I said. “We have a chance to make right what was so wrong. Whether we like it or not, this isn’t going to go away. But, if we’re lucky, we can make real change happen. We’ve been given a second chance and I intend to do something about it, even if I have to look the other way while I do it.”

  “All of those things are still out there,” she said. “All that information is still available. What’s to say it won’t happen again? Do you think that whoever’s left won’t try to get it all up and running again?”

  “By the time that happens, we’ll all be dead,” I replied. “All I can do is inform people, show them that there is another way. What they do with it is their business. At least I’ll know that I tried.”

  Chapter 14

  I was on a familiar stretch of road, just miles away from where I had started. I saw the ditch I had hidden in when the military truck had picked me up. I saw the chaos and destruction. Bullet casings littered the road. A soft wind played at the treetops. I was finally home.

  “What was it like, returning to the place it had all began?” Mary asked.

  “It was like living it all over again,” I replied. “So much had changed; I had to look for the old landmarks to really get a sense of it.”

  The dead were so sparse that I wondered where they could have gone. A few stragglers were here and there along the streets. Emaciated husks in the gutter, some of the first ones to fall when the living took up arms, or at least that’s what I assume.

  And there was our house.

  The grass was yellow with splotches of dirt, dry and dead, marking the yard. The hedges were brown, burnt by the sun, and drained by the parched ground. I looked up toward the second story and saw the window that I had escaped through, still open. The front door was closed, but I could see faint light coming through the small window on top.

  A knot rose in my throat. All through my journey, I had expected to find it the same way. I had hoped that I could just come back and find nothing had changed. With everything I had been through, I had hoped to start fresh, to find the source of my suffering and be done with it.

  I pulled the pistol and made my way up the steps. It was so quiet inside. The pictures of my wife and I hung askew on the walls. Smears of blood, old and weathered, wound up along the paint, lines where fingers had dragged, where someone had steadied themselves before moving on.

  Working my way through the living room, toward the kitchen, I sidestepped an arm chair that had been knocked over. In mid stride, I stopped and looked down at it. I put it back where it had been, situated under the mantle, next to an antique reading lamp. I thought about the hours I had spent there, reading the newspaper or flipping through old novels. I let out a sigh and went into the kitchen.

  There was old fruit in a basket on the counter, withered and rotten. A dried swatch of brown smeared along the edge of the door where one of them had gotten through. There was a cool breeze wafting through a broken window above the sink. It was nothing more than fading memories of what had been.

  I sidestepped the pot and teabags I had dropped when I came out to check on my wife so long ago. The water had evaporated, but the image was still there. There was a faint pang of memory, an emotion of guilt and sadness.

  I went into the yard and saw the place where she had died, but nothing remained. She had gone away like everything else.

  I wrestled with the feelings as I sat down at the base of the stairs and wept. I don’t know why I thought she would still be there. As if she would silently wait for me to return.

  “And you never found her?” Mary asked.

  “No, not then,” I replied.

  “It wasn’t about laying her to rest, was it?”

  I looked up at her and shook my head. “I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for not being able to forgive her before.”

  She looked at me with a confused expression.

  “When I said that it took so long for us to have a child, I should have said that I couldn’t have a child.”

  “What?”

  “I couldn’t get her pregnant, I wasn’t able. I didn’t know it at the time, but I finally went in and had myself checked.”

  “But you said she was pregnant.”

  “We had our problems, like I said. I was away so much with work that I didn’t pay her the attention that she needed. She found that attention with another man.”

  Mary placed her hand over her face. “How did you find out?”

  “She told me,” I replied. “She was in tears after she came back from a doctor’s appointment. I thought the worst. I thought maybe she had miscarried. I thought that maybe they had told her it wasn’t possible to conceive. But it was worse than that. She had been seeing a guy that she met at the gym. Some nobody she had only seen a few times. It was just an affair, some small tryst because I wasn’t around enough.”

  “She didn’t …”

  “I can’t blame her,” I said. “I was working something like sixty hours a week. By the time I got home from work I was too tired to even think straight, let alone pay her the attention that she deserved, that anyone deserves.”

  “It still doesn’t make it right,” Mary said.

  “No it doesn’t, but I couldn’t put all the blame on her. What you said earlier about everyone needing to be loved, that it was human nature, you were totally right. Life is all about love. We search so desperately for someone who compliments us that sometimes we make a mistake and look for someone who ‘completes’ us. I think that’s what happened. She needed more than I could ever offer. She looked to me as a lover, as a friend, as someone to spend her life with. But me, I looked at her as someone to make my life complete. It was all a part of my never ending dream of having a wife, a car, a beautiful house: all trophies, symbols of a successful life. I was looking at it in the wrong way.”

  “So the child wasn’t yours.”

  “No, and that’s why she was crying. She was ashamed, absolutely terrified to tell me.”

  “But she did tell you.”

  I feigned a smile. “Yes, she did. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever heard. She let it all out. She told me everything, how it was a few nights of passion while I was away at work. How she meant to stop it sooner. She’d even thought about leaving me rather than facing me with the truth.”

  “So really, you went to find her for closure,” Mary said. “You wanted more to forgive her than to put her to rest.”

  I nodded slowly. “I would have raised the child as my own,” I replied. “I would have loved that baby to the ends of the earth just because I knew it was a part of her. I would have tried.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “Not really,” I said. “I also went back to end it. I would have found her and put her to rest and then done what I couldn’t manage to do before the convoy found me. I would have ended my life.”

  “But what about all the talk of making the world better?” she asked. “Would you have given that up?”

  “I’m just one man,” I said. “I’m one man among millions of dead men. I mean, how many people are left anyway? What would it matter?”

  She stood and gazed at me through tear filled eyes. Slowly, she came to me and knelt down. She took me in her arms and touched my face. “You matter to me,” she said in a whisper.

  I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. I could feel her heart pumping through her ribs. And with every breath she took, I could feel her relax in my embrace.

  She led me into her room and we lay on the bed and held each other that way. Two desolate figures in time spared the throws of death.

  “And how did you come to find me?” she whispered in my ear.

  I lay my cheek against hers and said, “Because you were the one I was truly looking for.”

  She nestled her lips into my neck and kissed me there. A w
ave ran through my body. Excitement, fear, and hope; it all stood out along her lips.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’ll go with you and be damned those who might stand in our way.”

  Chapter 15

  “There are less of them today,” Mary said, watching the dead through the window.

  “We could always just send the radio out and leave it attached to the battery,” I said. “We could let them just enjoy the music as we get away.”

  “No,” she replied. “I would feel better if they just wandered off on their own. I still don’t like the idea of being out there with them.”

  “I understand,” I said. “We’ll wait until you give the word.”

  She let her lips crest at the side of her mouth in a subtle smile. “Thank you.”

  “It’s fine, I’m in no hurry,” I said.

  She looked through the window in thought. “There’s something I need to tell you before we go any farther.”

  With a questioning look, I said, “You can tell me anything.”

  That first morning, I watched the news with my husband, Henry. We sat in this very room and watched it all unfold. The first reports were coming in about the hospital on the other side of town. They seemed to believe that’s where it started, but I’m not so sure.

  When I saw the footage from the news chopper, all of those people pouring out through the emergency room, all I could think about was ants. In life, in death, that’s what it looked like. Then the camera zoomed in and I saw them for the first time. There was something wrong with them, I could tell from the very start. Their eyes were blank, empty. Their souls were gone and yet, the body was allowed to continue.

  Henry was silent. He stared at the television, working his hands into a ball in his lap. I had never seen him that way before, something had loosened in his mind, came uncoiled. As the television flashed from scene to scene, carnage unfurling, blood staining the streets, Henry became panicked.

  “I have to get out of here,” he said.

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “I’ll … I’ll get help,” he stammered. “It’s not safe. I’ll get help and I’ll come back for you.”

  “You can’t leave me here,” I pleaded. “What if they get in?”

  He took his keys from the hook next to the door. “You’ll be safe, just keep the door locked. Don’t let anyone in. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “But, Henry …”

  He was gone. He had left me there. I could see it in his eyes. I could see that he was lying. He had no intention of coming back for me.

  I sat on the couch in shock. The man I married, the man I had shared my life with was leaving me behind. In that moment, everything became clear. I never really knew him at all.

  For the first few days, I thought that I had been wrong, that he would come stammering through the door at any moment, ready to whisk me away. But as time went on, I thought back on our marriage. I thought of how it always seemed to be about him and his needs, rarely ever mine. I eventually realized that I was on my own. No matter how much I tried to find faith in him, it wouldn’t come. I knew him too well.

  You see, we had been married for eight years at that time. We went through the motions, having breakfast together out of habit, showing up at church on Sunday morning, putting on a happy face. But we were growing apart, slowly. We put a little more distance between each other every day.

  Often, Henry came home from work drunk. He would throw himself into the shower, grab something to eat out of the fridge, and pass out in his chair while watching television. It was a bland life, void of any real meaning. In a way, getting used to the dead was the easiest thing I could have ever done. They’re predictable, they have a routine. They are as reliable as anything in my life before.

  I had a lot of time to think while I was walled up here. I had nothing but time. As I searched through the other apartments for food, it dawned on me that I was just waiting for the end. I would eventually run out of food and then the hunger would come. I knew, from the very start, that I would starve here. Hunger and death would be my salvation.

  I know all about hunger. I know that it starts eating you from the inside out. When I was a little girl, my family was poor. My father worked at the iron ore mines in the northern Midwest. We had nothing but a few clothes and just enough to eat. But we were always at the edge of starving. That’s why I moved to California when I was old enough. I didn’t want that for myself. I didn’t want to be hungry, to go without anymore. I just wanted something better.

  When you told me that you volunteered, that you took time out of your life to help the less privileged, it brought those times back. And while I’ve been stuck here, I thought of how funny it is that sometimes life comes around full circle. I felt that starvation again. I remembered what it was like to be alone and empty.

  But then you came. She smiled at me and tilted her head ever so slightly.

  You came and damned my way of thinking. As you told me all that you had been through, I slowly realized how important it is to live, to continue on even if there isn’t much to look forward to. Life is about companionship, growing accustomed to someone who compliments your own lifestyle. And it seems more apparent now than ever before that anyone who has survived this has been hurled into that very same lifestyle. We are all that remains and our purpose in life is to live.

  As I sat there listening to Mary, I felt a small something at the base of my spine, the smallest vibration through the couch. Everything became quiet, an eerie calm like a moment trapped in time.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked.

  I tried to answer, but was cut short as the floor seemed to fall beneath me. A terrible rumble coursed through the building. A picture fell from the wall and hit the floor, shattering the glass. Dust rained from the ceiling. The living room window shattered. Shards of glass blew inward and scattered along the floor.

  I rose from the couch and my legs were rubbery as I tried to steady myself. Several more pictures fell from the walls, shattering as they hit. The furniture began to move, skidding, knocking along the hardwood.

  “We have to get out of here!” I shouted.

  Mary’s eyes were wide, glazed over in fear. “What is it?!” she asked, her voice shaking.

  “Earthquake!” I yelled.

  I took her by the arm and ran for the door, snagging my pack and tossing it over my shoulder as I fumbled with the lock. There was an explosion outside which jostled the building and another wave coiled beneath us.

  We turned the corner into the hallway as another window shattered, sending glass down along the stairs. As we passed the second floor, the building cocked and the nearest apartment door splintered in its frame. Below, the stairs took on the look of rushing water as they bulged and buckled from the quake. I found footing along the edges where the stairs were secured to the support beams.

  At ground level, the overhead light fixture rattled from the ceiling and came crashing down in front of the main door. I kicked the debris out of the way and unfastened the lock.

  Outside, the street bulged in time with the shocks, cracking asphalt and dislodging manholes as we fled. I could see the dead scattered along the roadway, swaying with the movement of the ground. Their faces still wore the blank stare of death, unfazed by what was happening.

  A few blocks down, I watched as a building popped and cracked at its foundation. It warped along the walls, dislodging an entire section before it toppled over. As it crashed, it took out a group of bodies. In a flash, they were gone - replaced by concrete, brick, and spent water lines that twisted up from the rubble.

  I pulled Mary behind me, gripping her hand tight. I heard a crack and doubled back as a light pole crashed down on an abandoned car a few feet away. The roof of the vehicle twisted and the driver’s side seat exploded through the window. Fragments of glass peppered my face. A cloud of dirt and dust rose from below the wreckage.

  As quickly as it had begun, the quake was over.
We stopped at the odd sensation of calm.

  “It’s stopped.” Mary said.

  I tried to slow my breath, to regain my bearings. “That was too big, there’re going to be aftershocks,” I said. “We have to keep moving.”

  She tugged on my hand. “What about the food?”

  “We can’t go back for it, it’s not safe.”

  She turned, looking back the way we came. “But everything I have is in there, we have to.”

  I pulled her toward me. “Mary, we can’t! You saw it, it was about to fall over as we got out.”

  “But …” Her eyes widened as she looked past me.

  I turned, following her stare.

  A crowd of bodies had gathered at the intersection, spotting us as we stood there in the middle of the ruined street. Uneven rows of corpses staggered closer - an entwined mass of rigid death.

  I tugged at Mary. “Through there!” I shouted, and pulled her behind me through a narrow alleyway between a set of apartment buildings. Flakes of brick were falling from the sides, pummeling our backs with debris.

  Behind, the dead moaned, their voices rising as they spotted us at the other end of the alley. They were wedging themselves in tighter as we gained distance.

  Mary slowed.

  I looked back and saw her panting. “Keep moving.”

  “I can’t,” she said, out of breath.

  “Damn it, you have to!”

  Her knees started to buckle and I could feel her weight in my arms as I caught her. I shook my head. “Come on, Mary, you can’t do this!”