Waiting to Die (Book 2): Wasting Away

  “Why didn’t you didn’t stay there?” she asked, shaking her head. “Those places are usually stocked up pretty good, aren’t they?”

  “I couldn’t get in,” I answered. “They’re locked up pretty tight. But if we go back, we could check the base and maybe find a way to get in.”

  She bit her bottom lip and thought for a moment. “I said I would follow you, and I will. If that’s where you think we should go, I’m in. But only if you’re absolutely positive.”

  “I am,” I replied. “Like you said, those places are usually stocked up pretty well. We might be able to wait this thing out.”

  Chapter 22

  That night, we stayed in one of the apartments.

  I emptied the toilet tanks and boiled the water on a propane barbeque outside to use for sponge baths. Mary waited patiently in the shower, using the curtain to hide herself from me as I brought in a bucket of water. The shy look on her face made me smile as she peeked around the corner.

  “Just leave it on the floor,” she said. “No sneak-peak for you.”

  I laughed. “It’s not like we’re going to see each other naked in a few minutes anyway.”

  “Stop trying to ruin the moment,” she said. “I want our first time to be special.”

  “All right,” I replied, sheepishly.

  “Now go get cleaned up,” she said, pulling the curtain against the tile.

  I felt like a kid again. All the anticipation was getting the better of me. I went back outside and boiled a pail of water for myself, thinking about what it was going to be like, making love after all this time.

  Sex changes things. It takes a perfectly good relationship and piles up emotions so you no longer think clearly. I once heard someone say that being in love is just like being sick with the flu. In a way, it’s true. Every woman I’ve loved has had the same effect on me. I get all weird and have silly thoughts. I try to figure out what it is they see in me, why they suddenly find me attractive, why they want to take the next step. I overanalyze the entire situation.

  Eventually it all simmers down and we’re left there in the darkness, trying to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things. We become intimate and let our guard down. That’s the part that scares me. It’s when all the fuzzy feelings subside and you truly find out what you mean to each other. I have ruined perfectly good friendships by being myself.

  I went into another apartment, placed the pail in the tub, and took off my clothes. I used a bar of soap from the sink and scrubbed myself with a washrag. The dirt pooled beneath me, thin trails of black swirled down the drain and everything became clear.

  I hadn’t told Mary about the bunkers because I had never thought we’d make it that far. It seemed that everyone I had come to know would eventually go away. I would put myself out there and they would see who I truly was and be done with me. Whether it was my wife, finding someone else to be with, someone else to comfort her or Constance, just running away when I let out too much of myself, it always seemed to end badly.

  But Mary was different. She had seen me at my worst. I had opened myself up to her and instead of running the other way she embraced me and all of my faults. I had done the same with her. I knew what she had been through with her husband. I knew she held herself back for him, that she was much stronger than he was. She had come out of her shell for me, and I for her.

  And all of the time we spent getting to know each other didn’t taint what we felt. It was leading up to this very moment.

  From the medicine cabinet, I pulled out a shaving kit and trimmed off my beard. The shaving cream was cool against my skin as I ran the razor along my cheek. I could smell the menthol waft up as I rinsed away what remained.

  I found a robe behind the bathroom door and put it on. I glanced at myself in the mirror on the way out and smirked. The image was familiar. I knew this man. He was who I used to be before all this happened. He saw innocence in the world around him. He saw hope for a future. He was ready to start fresh with clean eyes and gaze out upon a new chapter in his life. I finally saw myself in that reflection and my smirk turned into a smile.

  As I went for the door to meet with Mary, something caught my eye on the end table by the couch. It was just a flicker of light, but it made me turn. There sat a set of keys with the Ford emblem on the ring. I remembered the truck in the parking lot and grabbed the ring and placed it in one of the pouches on my pack before I left.

  Mary lay in bed in the other apartment. She wore a negligee with lace trim. Her head rested on her hand and she bit her bottom lip when she saw me enter the room.

  “You look so different,” she said, staring up at me.

  “Without the beard?” I asked.

  She nodded and I stared at her, running my eyes up along the curves of her body.

  A flash of embarrassment edged along her eyes and she looked away. “It’s not too much, is it?” she asked, looking down at the lingerie. “I found it in the dresser.”

  “No,” I stuttered. “It’s perfect.”

  I leaned over her and kissed her cheek. My heart thumped in my chest and a knot formed in my throat. I touched her neck and ran my fingers down to her chest. Her skin glowed in the light that trailed across the bed from the window. The silk parted and fell to the bed, revealing a single breast. Her nipple, pink and probing, stood out from the milk white of her skin. I pulled the negligee away to reveal her other breast and cupped it lightly. The soft flesh of her lips parted and our tongues touched, gleaning from side to side, curious and timid.

  She thrust her hips into mine and wrapped her arms around me. I could feel the heat between her legs and the coursing breath against my neck.

  Slowly, I went inside of her. The pulling heat, the inviting warmth, I held myself there for fear of finishing too soon. She bit at my lip and ran her fingers through my hair, pulling me closer. Her breasts were firm against my chest, her nipples poking at me playfully. I looked into her eyes and ran my hand along her side until I felt her hip. I pulled her in, thrusting deeper. My skin tingled and I breathed her in; the smell of spice and sweat and lust caught in a single breath.

  Her back arched and her body tensed. She moaned out in pleasure and her legs clenched around my waist. Her chest heaved and she finally relaxed. I leaned in and kissed her neck, tasting her skin and ran my tongue down to her breasts. I was there for a long time, kissing her nipples and suckling along the underside of her breasts.

  She moaned again and pulled me into her once more. I could feel the folds tense between her legs and I came. With driven thrusts, I released inside of her as she held me tightly.

  We held each other as our sweat mingled. She placed her head on my shoulder and breathed deeply and squeezed me tightly against her body. Her leg coursed over my hip and rested at the small of my back.

  We fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  I awoke in the night and slowly slid myself from her embrace. I went to the window and looked down to the street where the dead were moving about in the fog, dense black movement within white mist. Their voices were low as if the night gave them reprieve over the misery of hunger and rot.

  The thought of going to the bunkers made more sense. I wanted to get her away from all of that. I wanted to keep her safely tucked away from the dead. I wanted to be with her, and damn the bodies that crept in the darkness.

  I watched the sun rise and the fog filter away with the coming light of morning. It was as if I were watching dawn for the first time in my life. Something new had grown inside of me. After some time, I realized that I had found a new purpose, a new meaning to my life.

  I returned to bed and lay there next to Mary. I watched her sleep, and this time, I didn’t look away. I watched her chest gently rise and fall with every breath. I took her in and tried to figure out what had changed. We were still the same people in the same situation. At any given moment, we would have to run again, we would be out there amongst them and they would have the upper hand.

  But
then it came to me. I was the one who had changed. My outlook on life had completely turned in on itself. I wasn’t a new man, by any means, but my troubles seemed to vanish. My wife was but a distant memory. Constance’s face blurred in my mind. The strange man in the church with the dead children was but a moment in time, shrouded by the love I felt for Mary.

  There was that word again: love.

  And in all my days, I would never truly understand what it meant. I would never be able to define it. I could grasp at it until my dying days, and yet it would still elude me. It would forever be a wisp of smoke in the morning air, lingering on the breeze, threatening to blow away.

  Mary took a deep breath and opened her eyes - a slight and sleepy look before she smiled at me from the corner of her mouth.

  She smirked. “What are you doing?” she asked with a yawn.

  “I’m watching you sleep,” I said.

  “You sound more confident about it now.”

  I let out a faint laugh. “Yeah, I guess I am.

  “Are we still the same or has everything changed?” she asked.

  “Well,” I began, “the dead are still outside the gates, waiting for us. And the sun is shining. Maybe today’s the day we initiate that change we always talk about and get the hell out of here.”

  “Silly ass, that’s not what I meant.”

  I looked away, shyly. “I know what you meant,” I replied. “We made love. Of course everything is different now. It will never be the same again. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, touching my hand.

  “I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life,” I replied.

  She leaned over to me and kissed me, cradling my cheek in the palm of her hand.

  Chapter 23

  I took out my binoculars and spied along the fence at the horde of corpses that had gathered. There was a wall of rot blocking our way. I thought about every type of scenario that would allow us to escape and none of them looked good.

  “There’re more of them now,” I said over my shoulder to Mary who was behind the manager’s office in the shade. “If we’re going to get out of here, we’re going to have to do it soon.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you need me to do?”

  I climbed down the eucalyptus and slid along the trunk to the ground. Mary followed me to the maintenance room and waited for me to unlock the door.

  “Take these,” I said, handing her a couple of five gallon gas cans. “If I can get that truck in the parking lot running, we’re going to need as much fuel as we can get.”

  I took a hose from one of the shelves and slung it over her shoulder.

  “Got it,” she replied.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “You just put the hose …”

  “I know where to put the hose,” she said with a wink.

  I couldn’t help but to smile. “That’s not what I was getting at.”

  “You swear,” she said, mockingly. “I know how to siphon gas.”

  “I didn’t know,” I replied.

  “I told you I was poor when I was a kid,” she said with a grin. “How do you think we got around on a Saturday night?”

  I laughed. “All right, well have at it then.”

  She took off across the parking lot and I watched the way her hips swayed as she walked. I flashed back to when I first met her and followed her up the stairs into her apartment and smiled to myself. I would never have thought that fantasy would turn out the way it did.

  The dead rattled the gate and brought me back to reality.

  “Assholes,” I spat. “Leave it to you to ruin a perfectly good moment.”

  I took the keys from my pack and unlocked the door to the truck. When I released the lever under the dash, the hood popped open, exposing the engine. It was a newer truck and the compartment was relatively clean. I went back into the cab and placed the key into the ignition. The engine turned over, knocked a few times, and evened out into a dull hum. I noticed the gas gauge read nearly empty, a little under an eighth of a tank.

  I watched Mary from across the lot. She concentrated her efforts on the older vehicles that didn’t have the security block inside the tank inlet.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said under my breath, “she has done this before.”

  After turning off the ignition, I went back to the maintenance room and scoured around for supplies. In the back corner, I found a generator on wheels, covered with a painter’s tarp. Between a set of ladders, I grabbed a few extension cords from a hook and laid them over the generator before pushing it out of the room. A hazy cloud of dust came from the wheels as I carted it out.

  As I was cutting off the plug on one of the cords, Mary came up behind me. “There wasn’t much gas in the cars,” she said, “but I was able to fill up both cans.”

  “That should be enough to get us out of here,” I replied, splicing the wires to expose the ends.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Well, if this goes the way I’ve planned, I should be able to get enough power to the motor over there to open the gate.”

  “Not a bad idea,” she said. “So you’ll start the engine, run back to the truck, and we’ll plow through the dead. I like it.”

  “That’s if everything works. I’m no electrician,” I admitted.

  “I have confidence in you,” she said with a quick nod.

  I wound the cords along the curb line, taking my time to unravel every foot. They came up about sixty feet short of where the truck needed to be to get enough momentum to make it through.

  “What are we going to do?” Mary asked.

  “You’re going to have to go it alone,” I said.

  “Are you crazy?” She made a face. “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” I began to explain. “I’ll cross through the yard and jump the fence where we came in before. You just make it through the crowd and pick me up on the side of the strip mall.”

  “Bullshit!” she exclaimed. “You’re not leaving me to fend for myself. Either we do this together or not at all.”

  I took a deep breath and surveyed the length of extension cord. “We need more room than that,” I said, staring at the gap between the generator and the truck.

  “Well, Mr. Fix-it, you’d better figure something out because I’m not driving through a few hundred rabid cannibals alone.”

  “All right,” I said. “You take the apartments on the far end and I’ll check the ones over here. Look for extension cords or wire. If you happen to find anything else we might be able to use, stick it in the bed of the truck.”

  “Food, water, that kind of stuff?” she asked.

  “Hell, grenades, antiaircraft rockets, anything that might be handy.”

  “Smartass,” she chuckled.

  We divided the master keys on the ring I found in the office, and I gave her a wink before starting up the stairs to the first row of apartments.

  The first door I came to was marked with the letter A. I took a deep breath as I inserted the key and turned the deadbolt. The door scraped the jam as I pushed it in.

  A simple couch with a blanket thrown over the back sat against the wall, positioned in front of an old television. A few magazines lay on the coffee table next to a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray.

  Something caught the corner of my eye.

  There was a silhouette in the doorway of the back bedroom, shrouded in full sunlight, drowning out the figure. I blinked a few times to make sure what I was seeing was real. The child stayed perfectly still as I waited at the front door.

  “Hello?” I stammered, catching myself, mid-sentence, but it was too late.

  The child lumbered forward. Her shoulders hung slack and her back was hunched over as she made small steps toward me, dragging her left foot every other pace. I stepped back and withdrew the pistol. She lurched closer, her shoulders rising in step as she favored her gimp leg.

  When she got
close, I pushed her back and she stumbled. She came at me again, mouth wide, and I shoved her to the floor. She hit with a loud thump and sat up, staring at me. The look in her milk white eyes seemed to question me. They asked me why I would hurt a child. They pleaded with me as she wavered there. A rattle came to my throat as I held back a sob.

  She sat on the floor with her legs extended out in front of her. Her nightgown was hiked up her leg and I saw the bite mark against grey skin. Purple at the edges, and deep black at the center, it oozed as she placed her hands on the floor and rose.

  “Goddamn it,” I whispered. “God damn you, why?”

  The pistol shook in my hand as I aimed at her. The barrel flickered in the light as my finger tensed on the trigger. I waited as she staggered closer. There was a small flash in the dimly lit room and she fell over backwards. Her head bounced against the floor when she hit. I bit at the inside of my mouth before clenching my teeth.

  I moaned softly.

  As I looked at the spray of waste that slowly seeped into the carpet, my stomach lurched. A thick knot formed in my throat and I heaved. On my hands and knees, I continued to vomit. My eyes watered as I placed my head on the floor. I released it all in that moment.

  And my head swam with the hate and pain that had been building. I thought of what the dead suffered. I thought of what little they knew of that suffering. I thought of the torrent of slaughter that had swept over everything and I felt helpless.

  “Oh my God, are you all right?” Mary asked from the doorway.

  I looked her way and nodded my head before wiping the bile from my lips.

  She looked at the child and let out a gasp. For a moment, it sounded like she was clearing her throat. She stood there quietly and finally leaned down next to me, putting her arms around my shoulders. She nestled her head against mine and ran her hand along my face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.