A Depraved Blessing

by D. C. Clemens

  Almost as soon as the bus, which was the lead one, finished its U-turn, I heard the windows to our left side shatter in a procession. It forced me and everyone else to duck. The bus swerved and the driver shouted a curse, but he kept the bus under his control and surged it to its utmost gear. Except for the shattered windows, the vehicle did not appear to have suffered any worse damage. My immediate reaction was to ensure I had escaped unscathed. I combed for any trace of blood and waited for any pain that might arise in reference to any wound, but in not finding anything amiss, I investigated if anyone else had undergone any type of grievance. Orins was to my left and I asked him if he was hurt. All the color had left his face and moved into his eyes, for they were boiling in orange flame.

  “Orins, what is it?” I asked, practically shouting it in my alarm.

  He feverishly began pulling out something from his left shoulder, followed by another and then by several more. I perceived others around me were doing the same.

  Neves, who was standing behind me, gripped his son’s arm. Virtually shouting in his own right, though he was trembling too much to make it one, he asked, “Orins, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

  Orins’ head slowly revolved to meet his father’s. I don’t think he wanted to look at him, but how could he deny him the right? Orins’ eyes had already lost much of the fire they possessed and were now sunken and sullen. Neves and I next became aware of what he was holding. Between his fingers was an inch-long, clear needle, its tip stained in blood. I gulped down a lump of gathered saliva when I noticed several more needles were still impaled on his upper arm and neck, with some others resting on the floor. Orins’ face was one of pure agony when I beheld it next.

  “Oh, fuck,” said Yitro, who was behind Orins. “In just a few minutes-”

  Someone at the back of the bus, easily discernible above the mumblings, yelled, “Stop the bus! They’re infected! Get them off!”

  The bus complied with this panicked outburst by braking into a bumpy stop.

  The soldier next opened the door, stood from his seat, and said, “All right, whoever was struck by even one needle, get off now! If you don’t, you will be endangering the non-infected in a few minutes! I also need someone who can drive a bus to meet me up here!”

  Half the people started shouting and the other half remained silent. I partook with the silent. The second bus passed us, but I could not tell what its condition was.

  “I-I have to go, Dad,” said Orins. “I-I feel it’s s-starting to hurt.”

  Neves was at a loss. Before he could muster a reply, though I doubt he would have said anything for a long while, the people around us were becoming more hostile in their attempt to force anyone with the unfortunate mark off the bus. How quickly a person could be treated as a horrible monster; how quickly we could become those monsters.

  Orins, now with tears streaming down his face, turned to me and said, “Roym, tell Liz she’s been the best sister a brother could ask for. Tell her I’m sorry I didn’t get to let her plan my grand wedding.” He then clasped his father’s shoulders and started to say “Dad-”

  Bodies were being pressed into us, which made us push the people in front of us. The chaos in the bus ascended. The pushing escalated into shoving, then intensified into ramming, but it all came to a stop with a gunshot. The soldier had fired a bullet out the fragmented window. In the quiet, we could hear was the remote battle persisting in the background.

  “Enough!” the warrior bellowed. “Everyone out! Those who aren’t infected can go back in!” Everyone stayed staring at him. “Move! Or I fucking swear to the Spirits I’ll start shooting everyone who doesn’t!”

  No one gambled to test his assertion. Most who were standing were forced to exit. The indistinct echoes of battle fumed in the air as we stood outside the bus door. Only the ones who were fortune enough to have escaped our enemy’s vengeful strike were allowed to return back inside, to tempt destiny once again. Neves and I stayed with Orins for as long as we could push it. His veins were already becoming more pronounced, swelling darkly all across his skin. I could basically see his blood being pumped through his frame, and I sometimes thought I could hear and see his heart beating within his chest. It was impossible for him to hide the pain he felt. In the tears he released, coming from a combination of both his physical and emotional ache, I saw a small trace of blood come out with them. Others who shared in the repulsive corruption were also going through the same signs, making it easier to separate them from those uninfected. Time was remorseless to our farewell.

  “Dad,” Orins was barely able to say. He grappled with the impurity that sought to overtake him so that he may last a few moments more, knowing it would prevail in the end. “Dad, please tell Mom I died a hero or something. Just don’t tell her… I… I died like this.”

  His father embraced his weakening son, who fell readily in his arms. Neves had tears carving a river into his cheeks when he whispered something in his son’s ear. I could not hear what it was, and I didn’t try to listen.

  “Who can drive the bus?” I heard the soldier ask.

  He had gone outside, but he was inquiring inside the vehicle in question. I noticed for the first time that his face and hands were displaying the symptoms of the curse.

  “I can,” I heard a man inside the bus reply, seeing him stand up through the window. He did not look especially confident.

  “Then get on the driver’s seat and leave now!” the soldier demanded with an increasingly unsteady voice. “Go back where we came from. They still might be able to get you out of here.” The soldier hastily turned his face from the bus and even from those who shared in his woe.

  I beheld Neves still despairingly holding on to his trembling offspring. I didn’t want to do it, but I could see the new driver take his allotted seat, so I clenched Neves’ arm and urged him somberly, “We have to go.”

  Neves looked miserably into my brother-in-law’s blood filled eyes, which only made his own fill with heavier grief.

  “Go!” Orins cried, roughly removing his father’s grasp from his arms. “Mom can’t lose you too!”

  I led the distraught father back to the bus to begin the new leg of our failing journey to escape, hating having to be the one to part the son and father in their last words together. It was impossible not to imagine myself and Dayce in their position. The door closed seconds after we stepped into the vehicle and we began moving in that instant. Not once did Neves look back, he would not have been able to continue if he had. The bus looked so empty and desolate compared to how it was before. Only half the people remained, giving Neves and me enough room to sit in the back. Bervin came and squatted next to his friend’s seat and tried his best to comfort him, no matter how much in vain that seemed.

  Excluding the few whispers of prayer and support, everyone kept to themselves. I couldn’t help stealing a look behind me. I scrutinized the forsaken, knowing any one of them could have very well been me. Why wasn’t it me instead of Orins? Why wasn’t it another world instead of ours? The group behind us became smaller and hazier. When they were hardly visible in the line separating sky from ground, I saw a man, who appeared to be our former driver, lift his gun to his head and, after a short salute, his body collapsed to the ground. The vague pop of the gunshot wasn’t too clear from where we were, but I could feel everyone simultaneously shiver when the soldier’s body fell. I looked away after that.

  The only noise I heard for the next few minutes was the rushing of the wind thrusting through the broken windows. It was here I recalled that we had not taken Orins’ pack. This recollection made me habitually look at mine. Sticking to the strap of my upper left shoulder was the delicate glimmer of a needle half-filled with a dark purplish color. I fervently plucked it and tossed it out the window.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Stationary

  My view was of the brown seat in front of me, but that’s not where my contemplations lied. I was absent within the past I hardly remembered, the
present I did not fathom, and the future I could not foresee. My mentor, my once potential father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and tens of millions around the world were lost, and I had yet to see our enemy. Even with our world collapsing before our eyes, they preserved their enigmatic status. The sky would have been a more realistic adversary to wage war against. The only entities we were permitted to see were their malevolent ships looming arrogantly by our cities. Never before had I imagined something could be so dominant and be so invisible at the same time. It was as if their shadows alone held mass.

  My overwhelmed mind did not realize the bus was coming to a stop until it had become completely stationary. I observed that a few soldiers on the road had caused our halt with a makeshift checkpoint.

  “Keep it still,” I heard a soldier say to the driver as she eyeballed the damage to our transport. Given the reduced state of the windows, I had no trouble hearing her. “Where’s the private? What happened?” She looked young, but did not sound as though she was.

  “We were attacked,” our driver answered. “A lot of us had to stay behind, including the private.” The soldier bit her lower lip when he gave his explanation, but that was the only emotion she expressed, the rest of her face remaining stoic. “He told us to go back to the gated community.”

  “You can’t go back. Most of our evac sites are being attacked, including the site up the road.”

  “Then where do we go?”

  After taking a short pause, she advised, “Get on the side of the street and stay with us for now. Maybe we can still get a bird for you.”

  The driver did as requested. It was eerily calm considering the forays stirring on either side of us. I felt as if we were wedged between two noxious realms, each guarded by a sentry of Mistress Death. No one could relax, but no one tried to exit the bus or move about, as we desired to be ready to leave should another crisis occur. It was here I wondered what had happened to the second bus. I never did find out. Every few minutes the silence would be splintered by distant gunfire, a far off explosion, or the buzzing of a passing helicopter. The wait was worse for Neves, as I was certain he was perpetually reliving what had transpired. He was quiet, like everyone else, his eyes incessantly boring into the floor, but I also sensed an inner intenseness roasting within him. I was sure the first time his daughter and wife set their eyes to him, they would not recognize him as the same person.

  A substantial hour had slipped away before we heard the soldier again. She informed us that a chopper was going to arrive to take us away from this timeless agony.

  “Where would it drop us off?” our driver asked the female warrior. “Arora?”

  “No,” she replied. “This one is going to Meltmore. Sorry, but only a few of our birds can make it straight to Arora. Just be glad we could get anything for you, a lot of Evac Zones were attacked and many airships either didn’t make it or won’t be able to return.”

  I examined the map from the pack I was able to save. Meltmore lied at the edge of the desert three hundred miles away, making it just halfway to the city we wished to encounter. Still, I did not allow myself to become too discouraged. The region appeared sparsely populated and I was almost certain the personnel there would try to reunite us with our families after we arrived, or so I and the other men would demand. It was ten minutes later when the small cargo helicopter arrived. The sound of the twin propellers served to remind me that our enemy could also be listening to the hovering bastion and callously wait for us to board again before forcing us down, if they did indeed take pleasure in ripping away sanguinity beneath our feet. There were women and children aboard when we entered, but there was still ample room for the new arrivals. The occasional turbulence, adult chatter, and the spontaneous high-pitched squealing of some of the children were not enough to foil my overpowering fatigue. I was asleep as soon as I sat down on one of the corner chairs fixed against the wall.

  I do not know how long I was restrained to the unconscious notions of my own mind, but when I came to, not much had changed, expect the sunlight was vastly dimmer. It must have been no more than half an hour after my revival when I saw the outskirts of Meltmore, its suntanned buildings becoming larger with our descent. As soon as we disembarked, we were shepherded into an old bus, which was apparently used as a prisoner transport at one time, and which hauled us to a refugee camp. The electrical grid did not work here, but the camp appeared to be well organized and some synthetic lights indicated they had some generators active. The only corporal drawback came in the form of the hot, dusty plain the town was settled on. I doubted my sinuses would enjoy the region much. I heard one of the men in our group ask a soldier, who was standing outside an insurance building they were using as a command center, when we would be transferred to Arora, but he had heard nothing of the kind and told him to check later. We were left with no choice but to wait tolerantly in the solitude of Meltmore.

  It didn’t take long to get acclimated with our new venue. We were assigned two small tents, with Bervin sharing with Neves, while I shared with Yitro. We ate at a designated food tent where I was never so happy to see a bowl of soup. I don’t even remember if it was served hot or cold, or if it tasted good or not. Afterwards, I set off for my cot with the hope of acquiring a restful slumber.

  Maybe it was longer than anything I had experienced lately, but it was definitely not soothing. The uneasy sleep had my eyes constantly reopening to see the tent’s white ceiling. I kept seeing the same soldier saluting over and over again. Each time I saw him, he was closer and more corrupted until I could see the blood running down his eyes like a crimson waterfall. His veins were so dark and swollen that they looked ready to burst. I would be roused awake by the gunshot reverberating in my ears.

  The following day passed without a single word of when we would be given transportation to Arora. There was, however, new updates making their way throughout the camp. The infection continued its annexation, becoming more widespread across the city we left, which forced the military to withdraw from much of their evacuation zones. Injectors were only bolstering their hostilely toward military targets, though I came to hypothesize that their attacks were more of an aspiration to discontinue evacuations rather than seeing them as a legitimate threat.

  “Do you think we should nuke them?” Yitro asked me later that evening. We were finishing up some of our canned rations as we sat on our squat bar stools outside our tent. The sun was setting in front of us and the sky to our backs was adorned with haughty stars taunting our ill luck.

  “We might have no other option if this keeps up,” I replied. “Though I doubt it’ll work.”

  “You think they’re invincible?”

  “Invincible is a strong word. I’m sure if we get a strong enough bomb inside one of those Towers it could disable it, but it’s made of pretty strong material from everything I’ve heard and seen. Not to mention the shielding it must have and the other defenses we don’t even know about.”

  “You sound as if we’ve already lost the war.”

  I was about to say that anyone who considered this a war was fooling themselves. That this was something more akin to a fight between a flightless insect and a fighter jet, and our only hope was if the insect miraculously managed to short circuit the jet. Instead, I looked straight ahead at the setting sun and said, “I just want to get back to my family.” At least the sun knew it was going to come back tomorrow.

  The sun did reappear the next morning, but that was not what woke me and my companion from our sleep. There was a furor coming from outside.

  The first thing I heard distinctly was the sound of a woman’s voice screaming, “He’s not infected!”

  I next heard a man yelling out sharply, “We can’t take that chance!”

  As I emerged from my shelter, with Yitro following close behind, I saw a dozen or so people alongside a tent a few yards down on my side of the row. Once I pushed through as much of the crowd as possible, I saw a boy no older than sixteen convulsing on the ground. Sta
nding over him were two stout men. The less stout of the two was brandishing a pistol.

  A woman, with the same voice as the one who had awakened me, was on her knees behind the two burly men, struggling to force her way between them to get to the boy, but with little success. “Please!” she entreated hysterically, which was difficult to hear clearly amid her sobbing and screams. “He has epilepsy! He can’t control it! Please!”

  The men were not listening to her heart wrenching pleas. The larger man reached down and grabbed the quaking boy by the arm. The gun totting man merely looked on with consent as he kept the woman back, her screams rising in pitch. No one moved. Whether it was the immediate threat of the gun or the fear of the virulent infection foremost in everyone’s minds, no one showed any sign to attempt to stop the ruthless tormentors.

  I muscled my way through the rest of the crowd using the little muscle I had, overtaken by a part of my soul I did not know I possessed, though always hoped I did.

  The irrational being was beginning to drag the youth off to who knows where, when I exclaimed, “Let him go! For Spirit’s sake, he’s obviously not infected!”

  The man released the boy and I saw the other point his firearm at me, each of their eyes flaring with paranoid indignation.

  “This is for our own safety! Just stand back!” growled the unreasonable, shaking the gun he held, making me feel not untroubled.

  He was clearly beyond my reason or his own. I felt drawing out my own weapon would only escalate the situation, so I did the only other action I thought could work. I yelled out, “Yitro!”