“Oh my god,” I scream, thinking it must be Russell. The face eater hears me and turns, blood drool flopping from his mouth, his gun momentarily out of reach on the bed. I see the lifeless body beneath him is not Russell. Dusty raises his rifle and shoots but all I hear is a click. Something’s wrong, his gun is jammed or out of ammo. The face eater pauses, finally understanding it must react to us or die, and it reaches for the rifle on the bed. I raise my pistol and fire, the recoil rocking me. My shot is higher than it should have been. I see a beam of light shoot through a tiny hole where I missed in the far wall. The face eater raises his gun and fixes aim on Dusty just as Marvolo reaches him. The dog’s leap is as high as the man’s neck. His jaw latches on and brings the man down in one snarling thump. Marvolo growls and shakes, over and over, while the man’s arms flail around, at first trying to peel the dog away, and then just in random moans of futility and death. Blood spits from his neck and pools around the feet of the hospital bed. Marvolo releases the man at Dusty’s command and he comes back to us. Good boy, Dusty says, but then he silences all of us to listen for movement or scuffle. Where is everyone? I whisper, looking around the empty infirmary. He doesn’t answer me because more footsteps drift through the tarp, and more noises of a struggle, and then more gunshots that sound like they’re ahead on the left. Come on, Dusty finally says, and he slowly starts toward the far exit of the infirmary. I keep the same pace as him, listening closely to the rain, listening for a break in it, any sound that might mean more face eaters coming from behind us. We have no idea how many there are, but I get the feeling this isn’t an ordinary attack. The numbers are too high. What do they want so badly here?
We enter another narrow blue hallway. Nothing in front or behind us. I keep looking outside through the tarp, expecting to see a shadow streak past, someone running by, but no one passes. Marvolo wants to run ahead, but Dusty keeps him back. Take it easy boy, he says. We work our way down to the end of the hall where it breaks into a new large room. Dusty looks back at me, steeled to ice, and asks if I’m ready. I nod yes because I know Russell is somewhere on the other side.
Rifle pointing the way, Dusty leads into the room. I follow behind him with both hands on my pistol, aiming at eye level. I wonder how many bullets I have left in the chamber, but I don’t ask. I don’t want to give away our position in case one of the face eaters is in here. The room is another large supply tent with shelves and boxes and crates, but there’s a fire going in the middle. It’s centered beneath a tin pipe that lets the smoke out through the ceiling. It’s really warm and I want to stop moving here.
“No one’s here,” Dusty says. Almost at the same time as he says this, we hear more gunshots. They’re coming from the next room over. We run into the hallway and as we reach it, I hear a terrible, pained moaning. Then I feel something. It’s a hand tugging on my ankle. I almost trip but I slip out of the thing’s grasp. It’s a downed face eater. Downed but not dead. It’s slugging along on the floor, in its death throes, but with enough energy still to come after us.
“Fucker!” I say, recoiling in anger and fright. I take aim, about ready to shoot, when Dusty pushes my hands down. No, he says. Don’t waste ammo. Then I have to look away, because Dusty steps forward and stomps down, squashing the face eater’s head with his boot. I hear a sickening crunch, and then the spilling of guts and blood. I open my eyes to see the cracked remains of the man’s head. They’re on something, he says, but I don’t get what he means. It’s some kind of drug, he says. It makes sense now—how else could that one have kept coming, it’s lower half already blown away.
We move into the tunnel, waiting for more noise, then proceed into another large room. There are two bodies on the floor, both covered in blood, stark against the blue plastic floor of the tent.
“Fuck,” Dusty says. I think I recognize the faces of the bodies. They look like the nurses I saw who talked to me about Russell’s condition. But where’s Russell? I ask Dusty and he ignores me. He’s focused on moving into the next room, like if we stop for too long we’ll die. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a clip. Here, he says. Then he checks his own ammo. I look around at the empty room we’re in. No fire here. In the infirmary, the face eater had stopped to feed on the patient. Here, it looks like they killed and moved on, shooting the nurses but not stopping to feed on them. It’s like Dusty understands my thoughts because he says that some are hungrier than others. Some want to collect and store. Some can’t help but eat right away.
We carefully walk into the next room, Marvolo leading in front. I don’t see anyone, but then I hear Marvolo yelp, a high-pitched squeal. My heart sinks. I think he’s walked right into a gunshot, but there was no noise. Then Marvolo runs back, lifting one of his paws up as he comes, retreating behind me. Dusty is furious and runs into the center of the room. As he swings around, looking for what hurt Marvolo, a face eater lunges from the side of the room. I charge in but can’t take a shot because they’re too close to each other. The face eater is on him. It doesn’t have a gun but it’s trying to force its head down to Dusty’s neck, working its mouth to bite down right on his neck muscles and veins. I raise the pistol again but I can’t shoot. I look at Marvolo and tell him to help, but he just whimpers in response. He’s scared and his paw hurts. Then I remember my knife. Dusty falls to the floor, the face eater on top of him, when I finally get the blade out and the handle in my fist. I switch the gun to my left hand and run forward with the knife in my right. The man’s back is a giant raised hump in front of me, pushing down on Dusty, trying to take his life. I can’t tell from the noises if he’s already bitten him, but I raise my hand and slam down hard. The knife slices into the man’s back muscle. I pull it out and wait for the face eater to fall over but he doesn’t. Dusty! I yell. The face eater is losing strength but still pushing in to bite him. Marvolo comes up behind me and bites the face eater’s left calf, tearing through the dirty plastic suit wrapped around his leg. But the face eater doesn’t even moan or cry out in pain. It’s like he’s on some kind of drug too. I don’t know what else to do but stab down again. The knife hits the back again and probably the spine because it doesn’t sink in so easily this time. The face eater finally takes notice of me and turns around to look at my face. I point my pistol at his mouth but I don’t fire—Dusty is right below him and I don’t know if it will go through his head and into Dusty. It’s enough time for Dusty to make a move. He jumps up and shoves into the face eater. They fall together into a shelf, crashing, spilling bottles and cans in a loud rattle. Marvolo starts barking and I look at him—with a fright, I realize he’s not barking at us—he’s looking down the hallway and his hair’s on end. More are coming.
I get my gun ready and watch Dusty struggle against the face eater, waiting for a clear shot. Get back, I yell, but Dusty doesn’t listen. He keeps trying to overpower the man, who finally seems to be losing some of his strength. Get off him Dusty! I say. Dusty finally gets it. He rolls away, kicking into the man to create as much distance as possible. Then I have a shot and I pull the trigger. Russell taught me to aim for center mass. Forget head shots. I hit the man squarely in his chest. He finally catches on that he’s dead and falls to the ground and doesn’t move anymore. I put my knife into my pocket and help Dusty up from the floor.
We have to keep moving he says when he’s back on his feet. I look at his face, his beautiful eyes, and thank god that he isn’t bleeding from his neck like I thought I’d see. Marvolo is still barking at the hallway and we hear a gunshot. Marvolo yelps again, this time much louder than last, like he’s in real pain. I feel my chest cave in as the he falls to the ground under his own weight. He starts whining and can’t get back up. Mother fuckers, Dusty roars. He runs forward and I yell at him to stop. Wait for them, I say. And he knows I’m right. He moves to the side, out of sight of the hallway. But Marvolo is lying there in the open, in view of the hall, unable to push himself away. He circles around with his good legs, but can’t raise his body enough to get
away.
I think about what Russell’s taught me about the veneer. How in the end, we’re on a mission to find it again, even though it’s superficial, and disappears with the rain. He used to say that the veneer can get scraped off by a lot of things, and it just happened to be the rain. But it could have been anything. That’s how frail the thing is. But I’ve come to the conclusion that it lives in all things, and it’s not just a thin human construction. It’s alive everywhere, and right here, and in Marvolo on the ground. He’s fighting for his life and I can’t let him die. I won’t let Dusty risk himself, but for some reason, I can take the risk myself. I run out with my pistol pointed down the hall. And there in front of me, with a gun of his own, is another face eater. He takes aim and fires. I feel a searing bolt of pain in my right arm and I drop my gun, doubled over in pain. It’s like my whole arm is on fire. I look at it, the source of the blinding pain, and see a gushing red waterfall of blood. I lay on the ground, looking up, wondering if this is it—after how far I’ve come, I lost it all for a stupid dog. But then the face eater collapses right next to me to the sound of another rifle blast. Dusty got him. He’s on the floor next to me, staring into my eyes, blinking endlessly. Then he starts to move, even though he should be dead, because Dusty hit him in the forehead. His arms stretch out for me, ready to suck me toward him, to his mouth, which has a blistered tongue hanging out between crusted lips. His pupils are as big as his whole eyes, a large well of black emptiness. Dusty’s boot swings into view, kicking relentlessly, pounding the man’s skull against the plastic tarp. Something disgusting sprays into my eyes and I look over again, feeling like I’m about to pass out. The man’s head is a squashed pumpkin. Dusty lifts me up and raises my arm. He takes off his sweater. Through a daze I realize how perfect his skin is and I think for a moment that its silly to notice such a thing with my own death about to occur. But I can’t help it. It’s like he’s a sculpture—his stomach and his chest. I’m delirious. He starts to wrap his sweater around my arm where I’m bleeding and yells at me to keep it up high in the air. Then he tells me to sit down and puts me against the tarp wall on top of a crate. I watch him go to work on Marvolo, carrying him over to me, putting him behind the same crate I’m sitting on. He strips down to his underwear now and wraps his pants around the dog’s leg where it’s bleeding.
“What are we going to do?” I ask, on the cusp of fainting just from the sight of all the blood.
“Wait here,” he says. Then he goes and grabs my gun and puts it in my left hand and tells me to hold it. “Don’t let it go, okay?” he says. But I realize he’s not going to wait with us, because he disappears down the hallway. I try to keep my arm up but it’s so hard to do. The blood feels really warm and it’s running down my arm onto my chest and I wonder if I’m losing all my heat with it. Marvolo is crying on the floor behind me. I watch Dusty’s underwear as he moves away down the hallway. I think about how funny it is that I’m attracted to him as I’m about to die. Why is he leaving us? I ask Marvolo. Where’s he going? But Voley doesn’t reply. He’s more worried than I am because he can’t help anymore. But soon his whimpers die down and he’s softly breathing, not making much of any kind of sound. I remember Dusty’s orders, that I have to keep the gun up in case someone else comes. And then I hear it. Footsteps. It snaps me as close to reality as I can come right now with my arm losing blood like it is. But I realize I barely have any strength. The footsteps aren’t coming from the way that Dusty left us. They’re coming from behind, where the face eaters first started pouring in from the wasteland outside. Be quiet boy, I tell Voley, even though he’s barely making any sounds. I realize that Dusty put us into the corner, positioned on crates blocked by other crates, so we are hard to spot if someone just walks into the room and doesn’t really look around well. I keep my head trained on the sliver of the door that I can see behind us. Then the footsteps grow louder and closer, and I see someone walk into the room. The man moves through the room, keeps going, ignoring the blood and the bodies, right past me and Voley. He’s about to head down after Dusty. The dirty, torn plastic suit he wears tells me he is another face eater. I point the pistol, hoping I have enough energy to nail him squarely in the back, and I pull the trigger. The bang that I think I’ll hear comes out as a click. My clip is empty. I remember the clip Dusty gave me and dig in my pocket for it but I drop it and it clangs on the floor. The face eater turns around and sees me. His jaw drops open and his eyes widen in excitement like he’s found a present. His lips let a disgusting tongue slip past in anticipation of what he thinks he’ll soon taste. I know right away how hungry he is and it wakes me up. I struggle with my bad arm, bending it in lightning pain to pick up the clip and put it in, but it hurts too much and I drop the whole gun. The only thing I can do is go for my knife. But the face eater is charging at me now. He doesn’t have a gun, or any weapon other than his mouth and his outstretched fingers, which want to bring me toward his face. He pushes up to me in his run, so electrified by finding me that he nearly spills into the crates, but he steadies himself, grabs my shoulder, and drives in to bite my neck. It’s like a second life comes into Voley, or the primal urge to defend a friend, even though we’ve just met, and he lunges from his three good legs and bites down on the face eater’s thigh. I kick with all my might to help him and get the face eater onto the ground so he can make the kill. But the face eater must be on the drug because he just jumps back up, kicking Voley away. He looks around, unsure whether to take on me or the dog first. But he can’t resist me and comes again. Everything starts to flicker and I feel flashes of white numbness swell in and out of my consciousness. But I’m aware enough to see Voley charge in again, this time biting the back of the man’s knee, piercing all the plastic and dirty cloth, shredding the tissue that connects the man’s knee to the muscles that control his legs. He spills to the floor and it’s like Voley won’t let up no matter how hard the man pounds back into the dog. Voley growls and growls, ignoring the pain of the man’s fists, and I use my last ounce of life to jump off the crate and stab my knife into his ribs as far as it will go. I push in and push in deeper, feeling the anger I know Russell would feel if he knew what this man was trying to do to me. Feeling the anger at the things that tear off everything good about what it means to be human. I keep hitting the man with the knife long after he’s dead. I forget to keep my arm up and Dusty’s sweater is soaked through. Voley limps over to me. We’re lying out now, exposed near the edge of the hallway, but I don’t have any energy to get back into hiding, and neither does Voley. He curls up next to me and we lay down together, like it’s all been a game and now it’s time for a nap. I try to keep my arm pointed straight at the ceiling, but it’s impossible. I can’t. It falls down and rests on the ground next to the face eater. I turn my head to look at the man’s face to check his eyes. I thank god that his eyes are not blinking. His pupils are no longer dilated. He’s dead. I look up at the blue ceiling of the tarp and listen to the rain that hasn’t noticed or cared about any of this. I think I hear more gunshots, shouting, and another scuffle. But I can’t be sure. I’m drifting in and out. I fall asleep, wondering if I’m dead.
Chapter 8
Everything is blurry. I can’t tell if I’ve been asleep for a day or an hour. The first thing I see is blue, blue everywhere. But it’s not the beautiful deep blue that Russell says the ocean used to be—before it was all brown. It’s bright, glaring. I realize I’m still inside the tarp city. I remember my arm from the throbbing pain there and look. Gauze is wrapped around so many times that it’s like there’s a bump rising out from where the bullet hit me. There’s a tiny spot of red on the white, a small reminder of how much blood I lost. My emotions return to me as I hear a whimper. It’s Voley. He’s across the room. He has gauze on his leg too, but he’s not whimpering in pain. He wants someone to play with.
Out of the blurriness I see someone walk over to Marvolo and start petting him and he quiets down at the attention. Then the figure turns and comes to
ward me. I notice the warmth now. It’s almost too warm—I turn my neck and see a fire behind my bed, burning in a gray steel oil drum, its smoke rising up through an aluminum chute in the roof. I watch her come toward me and I try to recognize her face but I can’t. I swivel my head around, trying to see if anyone else is here, but the room’s empty. A sinking feeling starts because Russell pops into my head. I wonder if he’s okay, and if Dusty is okay. She comes and stands over me and tells me to lie back down. I sat up and she doesn’t like it.
“Where are they?” I ask. She looks puzzled, like she doesn’t know if I mean the face eaters or one of the good guys. I tell her Russell and Dusty. They’re okay, she says. I listen to the rain hitting the roof and hear a tiny drip inside the room every few seconds. Where are they? I repeat, and I stay sitting up because I don’t feel like I’ve just been shot. I feel warm and fuzzy, like there’s no pain. She must have given me medicine.
“Russell’s back in the infirmary. Dusty is with his dad. They’re surveying the damage.” The word damage rings in my head and I remember all the face eaters. How many had there been? I can’t believe they came in such numbers. And some of them—they acted like they had some kind of superhuman strength. I save my questions and stand up from the bed. The woman, not unattractive, but much older than Russell, tries to tell me again to stay put and lie down. You’re still recovering, she says. But I feel fine and I don’t need to hear a stranger’s advice right now. I need to see Russell and Dusty. Marvolo sees me get up and whines, licking the air, looking longingly at me. I walk over to him and bend my right arm to pet him, forgetting it’s all screwed up, and wince at the painful movement. I steady the arm and use my left instead to let him give me kisses. Good boy, I say. Suit yourself, says the woman behind me, not anger but disappointment in her voice. I ask her which way to the infirmary, but I recognize where I am before she can answer me. I head down the blue tunnel at the end of the room.
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 241