Waiting to Die (Book 2): Wasting Away

  “It’s not your fault,” I breathed.

  I gathered myself and stood, wiping the tears from my eyes. I caught a glimpse of the child and turned away. She looked like she had been laid out for a funeral, her arms at her sides, her eyes staring off at some unknowable source, gazing into eternity.

  Breathing deeply, I tried to contain myself as Mary guided me out of the apartment.

  “I’ve seen so much and yet there are times when it all comes rushing in. No matter how cold I try to be, how little the dead mean to me, I still think of them as what they once were,” I stammered.

  “I don’t know how anyone could think differently,” she replied quietly. “She was just a child. She didn’t ask for this.”

  “Yeah, none of them did,” I replied, leaning over the railing of the balcony. “And neither did I.”

  Mary led the way down the stairs and went to the courtyard between the buildings. We sat in the shade beneath a tree. I stared at my hands and tried to tuck them deeper into my lap. I thought about what they had done and what they would continue to do.

  “There was nothing left of that little girl,” she said, breaking the silence. “Everything she had been died a long time ago.”

  “It doesn’t make it any easier.”

  She touched my leg. “It never will be,” she replied. “For as long as this continues, you’ll look at them and try to remain strong, but you have a good heart. It’s only natural for you to look at them they way they were. I wouldn’t be sitting here with you now if you didn’t.”

  I glanced over at her.

  “I came with you because you’re not cold and heartless,” she continued. “That was what made me think that you were the one to save me. In a way, you saved me from myself. If it hadn’t been for you, your passion, your drive, I would be starving to death right now or worse. Maybe that earthquake would have brought my apartment down on top of me. Maybe I would have hung on and died slowly beneath the rubble. There’s no telling.

  From here on out, you’re going to have to put your feelings aside. You need that anger you felt back when this began. You have to stop looking at them as anything but the abominations that they are.”

  “That’s easier said than done,” I replied. “It’s not any different than the way life was before. I saw children brutally murdered by psychopaths and child molesters. Every night on the news, it was the same thing; good people being hurt by bad people. And now, I see the same thing, except the new terror is the undead.”

  “Before, I had thought that there was something left inside of them, that there was some glimmer of who they once were,” she said. “But now, after being out here with them, I know that I was wrong. What I thought was a glimpse of humanity in their eyes was nothing more than a ruse. It’s trickery. They retain only enough of their former self to get the better of our emotions. It’s like the story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, once they’ve drawn you in, they’ll kill you quickly and they won’t leave a scrap behind.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said in agreement. “But I’ll never get used to what I have to do. There will never be a time when I’m comfortable with it.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “All you have to do is keep on fighting. Keep fighting for us and I’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth.”

  We sat there in silence for a while longer. Mary held my hand, running her finger against my skin. It was the silence that I needed. Just being quiet and holding her hand made the emotions numb. But every time the image of the dead girl came to my mind, I thought of what she might have been. I saw her playing under the very same tree where we were sitting. I saw a lingering smile on her face as she ran in the grass without a care in the world.

  Those were the thoughts that haunted me. It wasn’t killing the corpse; it was imagining its humanity.

  I thought back to the old woman behind the gas station, I thought of my wife. I considered how their eyes pleaded with me to end their suffering. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some small remnant left, some tiny spark of consciousness behind the mask of death.

  No matter what Mary said, she didn’t truly know what it was like being among the dead. I had seen things that would scar my mind forever. I saw them tear at the living with such frenzy, such bloodlust that it would always haunt my dreams.

  What kept replaying in my mind was that I survived when so many had fallen. In a way, it was as if they had been saved and I was meant to suffer.

  Maybe this is Hell, I thought, and I am meant to pay for my sins.

  Chapter 24

  A dirt devil swirled through the driveway past the parking lot, scattering fallen leaves along the asphalt. I caught the stench of the dead that played in the air and closed my eyes to the sting.

  The wind kicked up again and caught in the trees as I pulled the generator along a narrow path in front of the office and placed it next to the truck. The electrical box next to the gate opened easily enough and I twisted the wires around to fit them securely to the leads. After priming some fuel into the carburetor, I pulled the cord on the side of the generator and it hummed to life.

  I looked over to Mary, sitting in the passenger’s seat, staring out at the gnarl of hands that threaded through the gate.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “No,” she said.

  I switched over the power on the front panel and the gate began to slide open, dragging every few feet as it pulled corpses along with it. The dead erupted in screams and howls. Their moaning was excited and tense as they flooded through the small gap between the gate and the block wall.

  I ran to the truck and jumped inside, slamming the door behind me.

  With my hands gripping the steering wheel, I revved the engine. I stared off at the mob that leaked through the gate, their faces but a smear of angst and hate, and I clenched my jaw tight.

  The tires barked out as power hit the rear end.

  I waited until there was a small gap in between the mass of bodies. My foot eased off of the gas pedal and the truck jumped forward. The truck fishtailed and jerked back into place when we hit the first row of bodies.

  Corpses were tossed into the air. Body parts exploded from the impact, arms and legs tossed about by the momentum. A cadaver skidded up along the hood and glanced off the side before it tumbled to the parking lot like a ragdoll.

  From the squealing tires, a slick yelp sounded as bodies were flattened in the wake of the truck. Grizzly meat shredded up from the wheel wells and clung to the bed. I swerved through the tangle of creatures, looking for open gaps in the crowd where I could gain speed.

  I hit another group head on, sending bodies in every direction. Rot peeled along the paint, leaving crimson smears in the dents they left behind. A corpse moaned next to me, wedged against the window and the side mirror at an unnatural angle before it broke free and fell beneath the truck. The bloody print of its face remained on the glass and I hit the wipers to smear it away.

  The remnants of a child stared us down and suddenly became lost beneath the hood. A swatch of blue fabric clung to the fender as a whirl of motion swallowed the corpse. I slowed the truck and bounced over a legless cadaver that pulled itself along the road.

  All that remained were stragglers as I swerved from one side of the road to the other, trying to miss them to keep the damage to the truck at a minimum. I clipped another body as I steered away from a parked car. Its head hit the windshield with a hollow crack, sending out circular lines were its skull concaved the glass.

  From the rearview mirror, broken, writhing bodies came into view, dragging themselves along on torn and battered stumps.

  Mary screamed, “Look out!”

  Another mob of creatures closed in on the pickup, a tight knot of deformed faces and swaying limbs. I tried to swerve, but it was too late, I hit the crowd head on. There came a steady drumming from the floor pan as limbs shattered along the undercarriage and tossed out fleshly debris in our wake.

  By the time we ma
de the next corner, the truck was knocking badly. A cloud of smoke coughed up from the hood and the engine stuttered and died.

  “Shit, get out!” I yelled, reaching between the seats, feeling for my pack.

  I snagged my pack by the strap and pulled it free. I tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I threw my arm against it as Mary jumped out of the passenger’s side.

  “Damn it,” I muttered as I scooted to the other side of the truck.

  A corpse slapped against the driver’s door and dragged its teeth along the window.

  Out on the pavement, I grabbed Mary’s arm and we began to run. The dead were far enough behind, but there were more bodies converging from all around. I had seen them do this so many times before. They seep from the shadows, seemingly coming out of the cracks in the asphalt. They were surrounding us as I heard Mary cry out. A child had come up from behind and was holding Mary’s arm as it barred its teeth. Inches away from breaking skin, I pulled the pistol from my side and fired a shot, point blank at the creature’s forehead. It flew backwards and slapped the road with the back of its mangled head. The sound was of ripe fruit hitting a brick wall.

  I turned as another corpse neared. A sullen, eyeless face greeted me as its mouth went wide. I dodged the ghoul as it came for my neck. Stepping behind it as it searched the air with shredded hands; I placed the pistol at the back of its head and managed a clean shot that sent it to its knees before it fell into a heap at my feet.

  Mary struggled with a cadaver and I grabbed it by the hair and threw it to the ground.

  “Run!” I shouted as I placed my foot on the back of its neck and pressed down with all my weight. There came a shudder from the body as its neck broke. One of its arms flailed wildly at its side before falling slack.

  We wound through a parking garage and over the side of a retaining wall at the other end. I could hear Mary breathing heavily as we scaled over the side and down a small hillside that divided the garage from another property. Bodies poured over the edge behind us and toppled down the hill as we hit the chain link fence to a small distribution center. Stacks of pallets made a maze through the yard and we took to the outer fence to keep our bearings.

  The dead gnashed at the links, threaded their fingers through the gaps and rocked the fence back and forth. We fled to the north end of the yard and found a large flatbed truck parked in a small loading area.

  “Get in,” I said.

  I pulled myself up into the truck while Mary went around to the passenger’s side.

  “We’re in luck,” I said excitedly as I pulled the ignition keys from the visor.

  “Can you drive this thing?” she asked.

  “I can sure as hell try,” I answered, clicking over the ignition. The diesel truck hummed to life and smoke bellowed out of the stacks as I shifted into gear. “Keep your fingers crossed,” I said offhandedly as I released the clutch.

  The truck lumbered forward and I placed the bumper against the gate. The fence creaked as I tore through, and the truck plowed out onto the road, dragging a length of gate behind. The truck stuttered as I shifted into the next gear and gained a little speed as I nursed the throttle.

  Through the rearview mirror, the dead scattered out from the intersection we had bypassed on our way into the distribution center, becoming small and harmless as we sped away.

  “It worked,” Mary breathed.

  I let out a nervous laugh and nodded my head.

  For the most part, the road ahead was clear. A few abandoned cars were parked along the sides, but there was ample room to get through.

  “We left everything behind,” Mary said as she looked over her shoulder out the rear window.

  “We’ll be fine,” I told her. “We can stop somewhere once we get far enough away from the city.”

  I took an old frontage road that ran the length of the freeway and drove north onto the next off ramp, heading the wrong way to opposing traffic. The other side was jammed with cars, but the southbound side was totally clear.

  The traffic jam on the other side was continuous. Car doors hung open, exposing weathered interiors. Luggage was strewn across the highway, clothes sticking out like parched tongues against the hot asphalt. Children’s toys lay scattered and abandoned, forgotten when the dead came to pick the road clean.

  Beside an old Chevy, a body was being eaten by crows. The birds picked between scraps of clothing that whipped in the wind - a castaway’s funeral in the hot desert sun.

  Mary diverted her eyes from the scene and tightened her face as if she were about to cry.

  “We’ll be away from this in no time,” I said, trying to comfort her.

  She wiped her eyes. “It’s not the death,” she began, “it’s the thought that nothing will ever be the same again.”

  I slowly nodded my head. “That’s what gets me too. It’s not that we’re alone, it’s the fact that we’ll always be alone.”

  “I can handle being with one person the rest of my life,” she said. “But we’ll never be able to share who we are with anyone else. We’ll never have those quirky neighbors down the street that come over unannounced. We’ll never go to the movies together or go out to dinner.”

  “We’ll never have a proper honeymoon,” I said, offhandedly.

  “Hell, we’ll never even have the chance to get married,” she replied with a small laugh.

  “We can always pretend,” I said. “Really, isn’t that what marriage is anyway?”

  “I suppose it is.” She adjusted herself in the seat and stared out the window. “Most of the marriages I knew of were just make-believe, people going through the motions because that’s what they were taught to do.”

  “I can’t argue.”

  She shook her head and looked over at me. “What’s funny is that in the short time I’ve known you, I’ve had more meaningful conversations than in the years I was married. It’s kind of sad.”

  “That’s the way it usually goes,” I replied. “I think couples eventually run out of things to say.”

  “We have to promise each other that we’ll try to never get bored.”

  “That’s pretty hard to do,” I said, rubbing my chin.

  “But if we keep trying, if we refuse to give up on each other, maybe we can beat the odds.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a quick nod. “I promise to do my part.”

  “See? There we go, that’s a start. Now we just have to keep that in mind if we ever piss each other off.”

  I laughed. “If that ever happens and we do piss each other off, we have to remember to compromise.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that,” she said. “If we ever get into a heated argument, we should just go with my opinion because I’m a woman and I’ll hate you forever if you don’t.” She grinned.

  I winked at her. “Agreed,” I said.

  Chapter 26

  I pulled the truck off the road, along the ditch, and set the parking brake once we were clear of the pavement.

  “So that’s it, huh?” Mary asked, looking across the compound.

  “Yeah,” I replied, “there isn’t much to it. From what I remember, there are a few outbuildings and dormitories to the rear. Besides that, there’s the airstrip and the bunkers at the other end.”

  “What’s that there?” Mary asked, pointing to a large metal building in the distance, just past the hangers.

  “I think it’s a warehouse,” I said, “probably just storage.”

  Her eyes lit up. “That’s where we should start,” she said with confidence.

  I looked at her, puzzled. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well if there’s any documentation, that’s where it will be,” she answered.

  “You sound pretty positive about that.”

  “It just goes to figure that when they transferred everything to computers, they had to store the paper files somewhere.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Then, the warehouse, it is.”

  We made our way through t
he ditch. Tall, yellow grass scraped our legs and crunched beneath our feet as we wound toward the fence. A sweet smell came up from our footfalls of long dead grass and the raw earth below.

  I bent down at the fence and cupped my hands. “You first,” I said.

  Mary placed her foot in my hands and stepped up, grabbing the top portion of the fence where there was a break in the razor wire. With a few kicks, she was over and I started up behind her.

  The outer parameter of the base was covered in gravel, extending to patches of grass and weeds.

  “Why is the grass so green?” she asked, stepping in a lush patch.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  As if in reply, we heard a sound in the distance, a shudder below the ground. With a droning whiz, the sprinklers came on in the middle of the field.

  My eyes flashed wide. “There’s power!”

  Mary began to laugh as she ran for the sprinklers. Her hair whipped behind her as she spread her arms, embracing the cool spray. She twirled in place, gathering momentum and fell to the ground. There was joy on her face as she sat there in the grass. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile like that - the first time I had seen the look of absolute happiness cross her face.

  She held her hands up over her head as if in surrender and stared up at the blue sky. I couldn’t help but to watch her - the carefree movements of a woman saved.

  I caught a glimpse of movement across the compound, just a speck of dark along one of the outbuildings. I strained my eyes, glaring through the fine mist that danced around me. A few dozen corpses staggered along through the foggy outline of spray in the distance.

  “Mary, we have to go!”

  She followed my gaze and stood quickly when she realized we weren’t alone. I took her hand and we passed through the last row of sprinklers toward the warehouse, breaking into a jog once we hit the sidewalk. The dead moaned, their voices growing in volume as they neared. We cut between a set of buildings and started to run.