He’d considered going out. He’d thought about scavenging at the neighbour’s house for something he could eat. Visions of bread and sliced turkey had danced in his mind’s eye. Then he’d remembered his wife, shambling around in the street and collapsed in tears.
Even the hunger couldn’t drive him to leave his sanctuary. This house would be his tomb and he knew it. The deep plum carpet and the awful floral wallpaper were destined to be the last things he saw.
He thought that maybe he should just end it all. It was a thought that came more and more frequently as his mind became consumed by the hunger. It was all he could think about, even when he tried to distract himself.
That day he had decided he would do it. He was going to end his misery and torment. Charles all but crawled up the stairs, using his hands to aid him. He couldn’t remember feeling so weak, even when he’d had a particularly nasty viral infection back in March. When he gained the top of the stairs, he turned and limped across the landing to the master bedroom. He paused to pick up the photograph of himself and his wife as young lovers, the one that stood on his night table.
He smiled sadly, tracing his fingers over the guilt frame and whispered, “Soon, my love.” He placed the photograph back and made his way to the chest of drawers across the room. His intent was to select one of his work ties, one that felt good and strong, and then stand on the stool, which he would drag over from the dressing table. He would fasten the tie to the ceiling fan, place it round his neck and step right off.
His hands lingered over the drawer handle but he thought to himself that it would be nice to have one last reminder of his wife before he embraced oblivion. The smell of her clothes may just set his jangling nerves to rest. He tugged open the top drawer and pulled out her favourite, peach coloured, cashmere sweater. Charles buried his face in the softness and breathed it in, tears escaping his eyes.
“I love you so much, my dear,” he said under his breath. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t treat you well enough. I should have let you have that new dishwasher, and those shoes you adored so much. I’m so sorry.”
He pulled his face from the jumper with determination coursing through him. However, he noticed something that stopped him in his tracks. The glint of a golden wrapper had caught his eye. How could he have never realised that his wife kept a small, secret stash of chocolates hidden in her drawer? She’d always seemed to be on an endless diet. Although she’d been skinny as a rake, she’d never been happy with her weight. He barely stopped to think about it, he just dove at the glorious, shining lifeline. The chocolate bar was opened within seconds and he devoured it ravenously.
“Oh, Jem! You’ve saved me,” he beamed. “Maybe I wasn’t meant to die after all.”
Greedily, he pulled more clothes from the drawer, hunting for anything else that he could consume. Yet there was nothing else to be found. When the drawer was empty and clothes were strewn around the floor at his feet, he still refused to believe there wasn’t more. He yanked the drawer out of the frame, tipping it upside down and discarding it.
“That can’t be it!” Charles cried. “It just can’t be.”
He opened the next drawer and the one below it and the one below that. Turfing clothes out as he went and coming up empty handed.
“Oh, perhaps the rest is hidden in the closet!” He exclaimed. “Of course. The closet!”
Charles was possessed by the idea and it made him crazy. Had he been thinking rationally, he would have told himself that the closet would never contain hidden food, but in that moment, anything seemed possible. Charles approached the huge, carved oak wardrobe and threw the doors open wide. He proceeded to seize armfuls of clothing and throw them onto the bed. When nothing materialised from them, he began kicking the shoes out of the bottom.
Charles found nothing. His last hope was too look on top of the wardrobe.
“Oh, Jem, I know that you must have something for me...” he said, losing steam and just about the last of his hope. He reached up and ran his hand unseeingly along the wood. His hand knocked against something and he heard it slide away. It had felt like a small box, a small box that could contain chocolates. His hands groped for it again and when he retrieved it, he smiled broadly.
“Oh, I knew it!” He had never been so happy.
The box was plain and black, tied with a cream coloured ribbon. He tore the ribbon clean off and ripped the lid from the box. Inside, concealing the boxes contents, was a card.
He laughed, presuming it to be an index of the different kinds of glistening, mouth-watering chocolates. “I don’t care what flavours they are!” He snorted, picking out the card.
He stopped in his tracks when he did actually read it. The writing was his wife’s elegant cursive, and it said:
Charles,
This is to be my final birthday gift to you. I want a divorce. Happy Birthday,
Jemima.
He stood, speechless.
The card dropped from his fingers and fluttered to the ground. He recovered himself just enough to look into the box. There were no chocolates, just a finely woven, chestnut coloured tie.
He took it from the box, his mouth hanging open as the length of it unravelled. The irony was not lost on him, but his feelings seemed to have been erased. Complete numbness flooded over his body, along with an eerie calm.
Silently, he draped the tie around his neck and clumsily knotted it. He caught sight of his reflection in the mirror on the dressing table, as he leaned down to pick up the stool. It was indeed a fine tie. Charles found the last ounce of strength in his body and used it to haul himself up onto the stool, reach above his head and tie another knot. He made sure it was good and tight.
With one final deep breath, he closed his eyes and kicked away the stool. It tipped over and skittered away from his dangling legs, as the tie bit into the skin of his throat. Whilst he was choking for breath, an instinct kicked in and he began thrashing and struggling. The tie held firm. There was no way to escape and catch a breath. His face was turning purple and his legs kicked out wildly. In one final spasm, his foot knocked a delicate wooden jewellery box from the dressing table. It spilled open and its contents came pouring out as his body fell still. His eyes came to rest on three more shining, golden packets, before glazing over and seeing no more.
32.
‘We knew it had been too easy so far, so we knew that it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The supplies we had managed to scavenge in Fruita had our spirits high and the journey seemed to be going well. That feeling stayed with us, as we cruised the canyon roads and took in beautiful mountain views and snow topped peaks. Sporadically, we would sail past the site of a collision or take to the westbound roads to bypass a blockage, but sticking to the interstate kept us out of the most populated areas and let us bypass most of the surrounding towns. Reality truly set in when we got to The Eisenhower Tunnel. We hadn’t anticipated running into problems before we hit Denver, which was the first big city of our road trip. The journey there should have taken around four hours, but we lost an extra three at the tunnel. The two lanes heading eastbound for almost two miles were pitch-black, plunged into darkness when the power had cut out. There were cars blocking our way forward, but using the glare of our headlights we could put most of them into neutral and push them aside to clear a path. Others that were bigger or more seriously damaged, had to be pushed out of the way with the truck and took forever to move. Thankfully, the number of undead was not as high as we expected. We assumed that many of them had wandered in the direction of the daylight that filtered in at both ends of the tunnel, in search of live pray. There were still enough of them that we needed to be on guard, and the occasional car contained a trapped soul that had to be dispatched, but we made it through eventually and needless to say, we were all relieved to get on our way again’
It had been agreed by all, that Andy needn’t take the wheel again when they left Fruita. As a result, it was Pete sat in the driver’s seat as they put The Eisenhower Tunnel
in their rear-view mirror. Andy had taken the affront on his driving with humour and grace. He and Frank were dealing card games on top of one of the boxes in the back. The cards weren’t the only novelty they had added to their haul. Xin had taken the liberty of pocketing a few thick notebooks. She was sat beside Pete in the front of the truck and had set to work diarising some of their experiences and conclusions. Documenting everything gave her something to do with the endless hours. She also hoped that once it was down on paper her mind might escape the overdrive it seemed to be stuck in. She was slugging her way through the refreshed memories of Bao and couldn’t find the words to write down his role in the story. She doodled distractedly in the margins as she contemplated the loss.
“Xin?” Pete took his eyes from the road to look at her. “Did you hear me?”
“No, sorry. I think I zoned out for a moment.” She shook her head in an effort to clear her mind.
“Oh, I asked what you were drawing...” Pete looked concerned. “Although, it looked more like you were trying to engrave it into every page of the book.”
Xin looked down at the page. The black ink was thick and dark. The lines had been drawn over and over. She ran her finger tips over the shape, feeling the grooves the pen had made.
“I... I didn’t even realise I was doing this,” Xin frowned.
“What is it?” Lucy asked from the back seats.
“Just a shape with five sides... A pentagon,” she mumbled back, still tracing the lines.
“Of all the things to draw, that’s pretty random,” Lucy said.
“Yeah...” Xin agreed.
Pete kept looking over at her as they drove, wondering if this was another strange occurrence or just a thoughtless scribble.
The dashboard’s display informed Pete that it was approaching 3.30pm and that the early October afternoon temperature was declining already. The sky that had been clear and bright that morning was now heavy with brooding clouds.
“Looks like rain,” Frank murmured when he looked up from his hand of cards to glance through the windshield. “My mum always said, ‘red sky in a morning is a shepherd’s warning.’ I Guess we’re going to pay for that beautiful sunrise.”
“Yeah, there could be a storm coming,” Pete said, hoping that he was wrong.
“Great... We’re practically homeless at the moment, seeing as we don’t actually know if our homes exist anymore. We were cooped up in the cabin every day and now we’re cooped up in the car instead, and when we’re not, we’re fighting plague ridden meat sacks, and as if that wasn’t enough, now it’s going to chuck it down too... Perfect!” Lucy ranted. She kicked a box in frustration, which woke Harry up. “Sorry,” she added.
“C’mon, we’re doing alright,” Frank said comfortingly. He reached out absently and rubbed her back to soothe her, still focused on the cards in his hand.
Lucy sighed, “I know. I shouldn’t complain.” She said nothing more about it, instead she rested her head on his shoulder and looked at his cards.
“Drop that one,” She pointed. “And pick up that six.”
“Thanks, Doll.” Frank played the move and smiled at her. She scrunched her eyes up and managed a smile too when he gave her a cheeky kiss.
“You’re gonna need her help if you want to actually win a game,” Andy taunted through a mouthful of crisps.
By the time the first raindrops hit the windows, Lucy had her own hand of cards and they had started to place bets of mostly cigarettes and candy.
They were beginning to touch on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado and the roads were gridlocked. Pete thought it strange that he managed to pick his way through so easily, as though a path had been cleared before they got there. The rain worsened until it was hammering on the vehicle. It limited visibility and made the roads slick. They were merely crawling along and finding their way through gaps in the end-to-end wall of cars.
“Why is it so quiet?” Xin wondered aloud. “We’re heading into what was once a heavily populated area, the roads are jammed from so many people trying to flee. So, where are they all?”
“Maybe they all wandered off?” Harry offered as explanation.
“I don’t think so. Do you see that?” Pete pointed through his side window. Xin strained out of her seat to get a look. Through the water streaming down the window, all she could make out were a few blurry heaps on the ground.
“Bodies?” She asked. “Could they have been killed during the evacuation?”
“Perhaps, but as you pointed out, it’s too quiet and it’s unlikely that everyone was killed,” Pete said.
“What’s that up ahead?” Andy asked, drawing their attention back to the road. “I think something just moved.”
He put his cards down and got up to stand behind the front seats. He peered between them and when the windscreen wiper briefly cleared their view, they could see two men. They were trying to move a van at a junction up ahead and appeared to be arguing.
“Well... that’s not what I was expecting,” Andy announced.
“What’s up?” Frank questioned, getting up to have a look as well. Then he noticed the men they were all gawping at. “Is this good news or bad?”
“Who knows? But it’s going to slow us down,” Xin sighed.
“We have to stop. We should see if they need help,” Harry insisted.
“Well, if they’re taking the turn off, it probably means that there isn’t a way through on the interstate anyway,” Pete speculated. “They most likely cleared the path we’ve been taking.”
“In that case, it looks like our options are limited. There’s no way forward, and we can’t go back, who knows how long that could take?” Xin sounded frustrated.
As they drew closer, the two men noticed their arrival. They looked startled and hastened to stand between the newcomers and their own vehicles. They were soaked by the rain and an ominous rumble of thunder seemed to echo their expressions. The older of the two was a tired looking Muslim man. His beige, ankle-length kaftan was stuck to him and had turned see through, making his trousers underneath visible. The other man wore an unhappy frown and a sopping navy blue suit and tie. Neither had immediately reached for their weapons, but their hands hovered readily by them.
A bright, white flash of lightning illuminated the sky and the pause between it and the subsequent crash of thunder was fraught with tension. Pete had cut the engine but nobody knew quite what to do.
“It looks like that guy is saying something,” Andy pointed. Sure enough, the man in the suit’s mouth was moving and it looked like he was shouting something.
“He must realise that, between the storm and the bulletproof glass windows, we can’t hear him.” Lucy said.
“I’ll go out and talk to them,” Pete decided, unclipping his seatbelt. “You lot stay in here.”
“You’re going alone?” Xin asked with wide eyes.
“I don’t think they want to hurt us and I’ll be wearing my armour. Besides, it’s raining,” he smiled at her. “No point in us all getting wet.”
“If it looks like they’re going to try anything, just give us a nod,” Frank said to him.
Pete agreed as he hastily pulled his bulletproof vest back on. Opening his door and stepping out into the downpour, he hunched over against the rain. Frank picked up an assault rifle and hopped over into Pete’s seat, prepared for the worst but hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
Xin held her breath as she watched Pete approach the two men with his hands held up passively. The suited man looked like he was shouting again and the older man was stooping wearily. He looked tired and miserable, as though his back was paining him. Pete was shaking his head now. He pointed back to their truck and the man followed his gesture.
“He’s asking how many of us there are,” Andy said.
“How’d you know that?” Harry asked. Him and Lucy had both joined Andy to watch.
“Some bits are easy to lip read,” Andy shrugged. “Now he’s asking if they need any help.”
> The man in the suit was pointing down the turn off, and then he gestured at the car they had been trying to move. Finally, he nodded at an ambulance parked in front of a family estate car with a roof rack. The car had a light on inside it, leading them to presume it was the one of theirs.
“He’s coming back,” Xin noticed. Pete jogged over to the car through the torrential rain and Frank hurried back over the seat to make room for him. The door flew open and slammed quickly behind Pete.
“Brrrrr, it got cold out,” He shivered, turning the keys to fire up the engine up and put on the heater.
“Yeah, yeah, that sucks. But, anyway... What did they say?” Lucy dismissed, eager to know what was happening.
“There are nine of them in their group. A few of them are only kids,” he explained. “A couple of them are sick, so they’re trying to get to the mall which is just down the off-ramp. They’re hoping to find antibiotics for them.”
“Are they crazy? The mall will be swimming with zombies,” Frank said incredulously. “People are bound to have snuck in to do some looting whilst everyone else was evacuating.”
“That’s why they want our help.”
“No way,” Xin said bluntly. “We don’t have time for that. Not to mention, it could get us all killed.”
“Well, before you say no, hear me out. We aren’t going to be able to get any further this way. Those people are local and they said the city is real bad. They said that if we help them make it safely into the mall, they will give us directions for quicker route that will save us from getting lost or turning round and going back for miles.”
“We have a map, why do we need their help?” Xin asked.
“Even if we could find our own way, we could use some more substantial medical provisions for ourselves. You never know what could happen and it wouldn’t hurt to be equipped to deal with it, just in case. It’s the only thing that we don’t have and the mall would be great for picking up anything we need. Besides, these people could die doing this on their own... Isn’t that why we’re doing this to begin with? To save people?”
Dying to Live Page 30