by Jeff Olah
Seconds earlier he was sitting on the beach with his wife and son watching the ocean pull the packed sand from under his feet. Justin played in the shallow shore break searching for sand crabs and perfectly shaped shells as April waded in the knee-deep water. They laughed as if the day would never end and although he knew this was less a memory than a dream, he wanted to stay.
Mason smiled as April pulled her hand from her pocket and withdrew his ring. It was still attached to the drawstring from his destroyed hooded sweatshirt, although now it glowed in the midday sun. She smiled back at him as she looped it around her neck and let it come to rest over her heart. Blowing him a kiss, she turned to Justin and held his hand.
Before being pulled back, his father-in-law appeared in the distance and joined his wife and son in the slow-moving white water. They stood beside one another, facing the warm afternoon sun and speaking quietly.
As the rising tide began to claw at the shore, gradually taking more of them with each pass, they simply waved at Mason and smiled. It was now. They came to send him back and although he liked this place, he knew it wasn’t his time.
Flat on his back, he felt no pain. The muted faces standing over him appeared to want something. Who these people were, and why they were staring at him had yet to make sense. He could hear their questions, although at the moment he was having trouble arranging the order of their words.
“Do you know do you who are?” The words were wrong and attempting to make sense of them added to the confusion. Turning toward the face that spoke, the haze now fading, Mason coughed.
Something sat in his throat, thick and acrid, challenging his every breath.
“Hear you can me?” Still not right, although he at least understood the intent.
Mason nodded, now able to bring into focus the four individuals standing around what he gathered to be his bed.
“You know your name do?” It was Sean. His words were still disorganized as they entered his mind, although he remembered the boy and that he was supposed to be protecting him, but that was all.
Mason coughed once again and with this attempt he was able to clear the obstruction, although forming words seemed doubtful.
Sean wiped the sweat from Mason’s forehead and turning to the others he said, “He’s still burning up. I need more time.”
The woman to the left, it was Savannah. Her name, her face, and in particular her thick auburn locks pulled at something deep inside. He knew her, although only bits and pieces. “Mason do you know who I am?”
He nodded, the spoken word now beginning to make sense.
The others, he remembered who they were, but not much more. The other woman, her name was Megan. She stood next to a man. Clean shaven, thick brown hair and built like a truck. The man’s name escaped him as something more powerful filled his mind.
The bond he shared with this man; was it friendship or was this person something much more significant? Mason wasn’t sure, although it somehow felt like family, possibly a brother. He knew he loved this man, although not much more.
Attempting to speak, Mason was successful, but could only manage three short words. “Who am I?”
The young boy leaned in. Sean spoke slowly and quietly. “Your name is Mason Thomas.”
He now remembered.
Sean continued. “A terrible infection has destroyed the world.”
This also sounded familiar.
“While you were not bitten, you were badly wounded. You were attacked by an infected person and sustained many deep lacerations. It has been six weeks since your injury and I believe you are on the road to recovery. I have you restrained at the moment for your own good and although I haven’t been able to isolate and eradicate the infection within you, I believe I will.”
He didn’t quite understand what this meant, although it sounded like he needed help.
“Mason, I need more time. I will fix this. There are others coming here who can help. I would like to have your consent to put you back under. You may not remember any of this when you wake next, although you will be in a much better place.”
Mason’s head began to ache and although he was unable to make sense of most of what he was being told, he felt the need to agree.
Sean gripped Mason’s right hand. “This may take days or weeks, maybe even months. But I will bring you back.”
The pain now rapidly accelerating, Mason closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose.
“Your temperature is beginning to climb,” Sean said. “So I need to do this, right now. Are you ready?”
Mason slowly nodded.
244
Six Months Later…
It was cold, probably winter. He wasn’t sure. The air was crisp and the room mostly dark, save for the single sliver of light sliding in through the double doors. Running his tongue along the roof of his mouth brought a hint of something cool, possibly mint. Sitting forward, he gripped the sides of the bed and waited for the pain.
Swinging his legs over the right side of the bed, he again braced himself for the agony that was sure to follow, but it never did. He found it curious waking in what looked to be a hospital bed with no real sign of injury.
His last memory, after the blue sports car gave up somewhere outside of the city, was crossing the short depression at the side of the road and looking for a place to rest. How that became this was a bit cloudy at best, although with each passing second more of what was hidden could be seen.
Attempting to put his thoughts into their proper places, Mason pushed himself off the bed. His weight shifting to the left, he stumbled but quickly recovered. “Oh yeah.” Peering down along his left side, he spotted the familiar injury. Making what now constituted a fist, he was surprised to see that all three fingers of his left hand were still functional. The jagged scar was about what he’d expected it to look like and without the benefit of a real world plastic surgeon, he was pleasantly satisfied.
“Better than nothing.”
His voice, while not quite foreign, was also not the one he remembered. It was softer, more pronounced and with a slight southern drawl. He figured it was more a byproduct of whatever medication he was under and had less to do with anything that would be a permanent attribute.
Standing on bare feet and dressed in black sweat pants and a t-shirt, he scanned the opposite side of the room. The low buzz coming from the corner of the room caught his attention, but not before he’d seen her. How could he have not known she was sleeping less than ten feet from his bed?
“Savannah.” He said her name and it felt good, not so loud that she’d awaken, but just enough for him to hear it. For now, he’d let her sleep.
As he stepped gently toward the door, testing the effectiveness of his legs, he noticed two other beds. They were occupied, and although the individuals were unfamiliar to him, Mason felt a bond.
One female and one male, they were bound by the wrists and ankles to their beds and shrouded in clear plastic tents. The series of tubes and monitors running in from behind their beds told him these people were obviously in bad shape, although he felt somehow connected.
One last glance back at her, and then he made his way through the doors and out into what he could only assume was a makeshift hospital. The familiar scent of antiseptic told him that his theory was at least half right. And as he walked to the railing overlooking the atrium, he nearly collapsed.
Dozens more. A sea of motionless bodies was spread out in small groups of six or seven along the first floor. They were draped in white and lying on navy blue cots, only their heads were visible from this angle.
Tending to the infirmed were a small army of men and women wearing bright orange jumpsuits. Also donning protective respirators, they moved quickly from one bed to the next, most lingering less than a few seconds before moving on. He could have taken a guess as to what this meant, although at the moment he preferred to believe it was simply for their own survival.
He also wasn’t quite prepared to un
derstand why there were nearly as many individuals walking the floor with semi-automatic weapons as those who weren’t.
“Mason.”
His name, although he hadn’t heard it spoken from the familiar source in some time, he knew the voice. Turning to see the boy who was now more of a man, Mason again ran warm. Not the blistering heat he seemed to somehow remember, but the warmth you feel the first day of spring. The first day you and your friends walk to the dusty baseball field after school lets out. The warmth of lying in the grass with an old dog on a Sunday afternoon. This felt more than good.
“Sean, hello, I seem to have missed a step or two.”
Mason moved away from the railing and extended his right hand, to which Sean shook his head and threw his arms open. They embraced and as if not believing his own eyes, Sean stepped back and looked Mason up and down. “What do you feel?”
“What do I feel?” Mason asked. “You mean, how do I feel?”
Sean moved around Mason and stopped at his back, lifting his shirt. “Wow, you heal well for an old man. I’m just looking to see if there’s anything out of the ordinary, anything that feels different. You appear to have fully recovered, but I just want to be sure.”
“Fully recovered, from what? I’m having a rough time with my memory. The last thing I remember was falling asleep on the side of the road. How long was I out?”
“Let’s go sit,” Sean said as he led Mason to a sofa overlooking the first floor. “Where to start?”
“How about what’s going on down there?”
“Well, let me go a bit farther back, but I promise we’ll get there. Just a bit of perspective first.”
“Okay.”
Sean melted into the plush leather and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “This place, Harbor Crest, was quickly occupied by friends of my father in the days following the infection. He lost contact with them shortly after they located my mother.”
“Your mother?” Mason said.
“Yes, she’s here.” Unable to hide his joy, Sean’s smile remained as he continued, “They brought her here and began building up the walls that were already in place from when this place sat empty. With each passing week more and more people found this place, although my father was never sure if his people made it here alive, that’s why he never told us to come here until we were out of options. This was a last resort.”
“He must have known something.”
“My dad was already dying. He didn’t have much time and he was desperate. Sending us here was his best mistake. And after everything we’d been through, I believe he saved this place for us. He knew this would be our home when the time was right.”
“So,” Mason said. “Why did I just wake up in a hospital bed?”
“Not really a hospital bed, but thanks for the compliment. It’s just a regular bed that we made work. I’m glad it was to your liking.”
“It seemed to do the trick. I feel like a new man.”
“Yeah,” Sean said. “That’s what sleeping for six months will do for a person.”
“Six months? You have to be kidding.”
“Actually it’s a bit longer. We’ve been waking you up every other week or so, although it was just recently that you started to come around.”
“Come around?”
“Let’s back up. Do you remember coming here or what happened just before?”
“No.”
“Are you sure you want to hear all the gory details?”
“How about the condensed version?”
“Okay, so after leaving the city, you ran out of gas on the highway and began walking. You were attacked by a group of Feeders. That was when we found you. You weren’t bitten, but badly wounded. We believe you became partially infected through the deep lacerations in your back.”
“Partially infected?”
“My best guess is that the transmission is different for those who are bitten. You showed some symptoms, but as far as we can tell, it never fully breached your central nervous system, which is usually where problems begin to occur.”
“Problems?”
“I think you know what I mean.”
“So, again, why am I still here after six months?”
“You are the first to come back. We have two others that are showing positive signs, although it’s still early for them. They both came here in the same condition as you, and right now we are in the waiting phase. The ones down on the first floor, all eighty-six of them are in stasis. We’ve had more, but they usually turn within a few weeks.”
Mason turned back toward the room he just exited. “What are you doing for them?”
“Same as you, we’ve given them a very basic transfusion thanks in part to Randy, although we can’t be sure it will work. The fact that we are sitting here talking to one another is a sign that there is hope. We’ll give you a couple of days to readjust, but then I’m going to need your help.”
“Sure, whatever you need.”
“So,” Sean said looking down at his watch. “We started waking you up about six hours ago, and you say you don’t feel any different? Is there anything else?”
“Nope. No headache, no fever as far as I can tell, and although my hand feels weird, there’s no pain.”
“Good. Is there anything else?”
“The others, they all make it out of the city?”
“Yes we did, as a group. Everyone is still here and doing just fine. That includes little Mason.”
“Little Mason?”
“My nephew. Megan and Randy had a healthy baby boy not long after arriving here. The named him Mason. Something about it being good luck and subconsciously helping you pull through. Maybe it worked, who knows. You can see him in the morning. He’s usually the first one awake and if you beat Eleanor to it, you may even get to the chance to feed him.
A tear ran down Mason’s cheek. “Eleanor, how is she?”
“Not too good, but the baby has helped. She doesn’t talk much except to you and little Mason. I have a feeling once she sees you it will be a much better day. You know, she sits in that room every day and reads to you for hours. She is a special lady.”
“I know, and it seems weird, but I feel like I’ve missed her while I was gone.”
Yawning hard, Sean leaned forward, grabbed the railing and stood. “One last thing that I never got the chance to do.”
“Yeah?”
“Say that I am sorry… for two things.”
“What are you talking about, Sean; you don’t owe me any apologies.”
“For your hand, that was all my doing.”
“Hey,” Mason said. “I’m still here because of you, so you have more than made up for it.”
“Thank you, Mason, but I also wanted to apologize for something else. The ring you had around your neck. It was lost sometime after you were attacked and I could never find it again, so I’m sorry—”
“I’m not worried about it; somehow I believe it found its proper home.”
“You are too kind, Mason; I’m certainly glad you’re back, but I’m going to need to get some sleep. But please come wake me if you need anything. Tomorrow is another day and we have a lot more work to do.”
“Ten-four.”
“You know, Mason, I think we’re gonna figure this out some day. As more and more people find this place and we get the help we need, we might just fix the world.”
“One last thing,” Mason said.
Before starting toward his room, Sean paused. “Yeah?”
“Savannah, she’s asleep in there. Is she—”
Sean grinned. “Whatever it is, you can ask her yourself.”
Mason turned and she was there.
With a million different questions and his mind being pulled in more directions than he could count, Mason went blank. She was it, the only thing he could focus on, as if a massive wave pushed through and washed away all his other thoughts.
He exhaled and his heart pounded as she stepped through the double doors and out into
the light. Coming closer he examined her face and in particular, her eyes. They seemed to hold something different, something that wasn’t there the last time he remembered seeing her. “Wow.” Although a massively inadequate description of what seeing her meant, it was the first thing that came to him.
Mason stood and moved to her. She was the same but also again new. Her hair much shorter than he remembered and without a years’ worth of death and destruction to weigh her down, she was beautiful. She was what he needed.
She smiled and so did he.
They met under the steel reinforced plate-glass ceiling that rose forty feet from the floor and then fell into one another. She felt good in his arms and smelled of blue flowers and clean linen. Parting briefly to again look into her eyes, he said, “hello.”
Her smile remained as she shook her head. “Hello yourself.”
“So,” Mason said. “You look nice.”
Quietly she laughed. “That’s it? I’ve slept in that room for the last six months just waiting for you to wake up and that’s all you’ve got, I look nice.”
He knew she was toying with him, although he hadn’t the inclination to respond in kind. His mind was squarely placed on making up for lost time. He’d cheated death one too many times, so had she, they all had. He wouldn’t waste one more day. “Well you do, you look beautiful.”
She pulled away, grabbed his hand and furrowed her brow. “Whoa young man. I think you need to rest a few days and to get your legs back under you before you start throwing around compliments like that. Let’s get you all up to speed before we—”
“I’m not tired.”
“You will be,” Savannah said. “Let’s sit a minute.” She took Mason by the hand and walked him back to the sofa. She waited until he sat and then stretched out and laid in his lap looking up at him.
“Savannah,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this place, if I even deserve to be here, with you.”
“One step at a time, we will get through this. The first month was the worst for us, not knowing how to be and what to do. We all questioned it, but there were no answers to be found. We were all running for so long that we didn’t know any other way. Right now you’re going through the same thing, a bit of culture shock. It will get better and it will get easier, but let’s not rush things.”