by Sam Sisavath
So death wasn’t anything new to Will, even if he didn’t exactly remember any of the details of the last time it had come for him.
This time, though, he remembered every second of it in excruciating detail.
The bullet chopped into his side, just above the waist. It was a through-and-through, which was the good news. The bad news was the ground exploding and clumps of dirt and grass cascading all around him like waterfalls.
Will continued squeezing the trigger on the M4A1. The magazine burned through half of its load in a matter of seconds, and the carbine felt lighter in his hands with every passing heartbeat as a result.
It was a Ford Bronco, maybe ten years old by the looks of its paint job and well-worn front grill, and Will aimed for the front windshield. He stitched it from forty meters away and kept firing as it kept coming. The truck’s entire front windshield crumpled under the volley, and the driver jerked on the steering wheel as bullets slammed into him.
The truck made a sharp (too sharp) turn and spun, sending the two men in hazmat suits in the back flying across the air as if they had been shot out of a cannon. It helped that the two idiots were too busy shooting at him to hold on to the vehicle. One of the men landed on the ground a split second before the truck came tumbling over and crushed him into the dirt as if he were an ant. The truck continued rolling until it finally smashed into a meter-deep ditch that cut across the farmland, depositing window fragments and pieces of sheared metal into the surrounding grass.
Will quickly searched out and found the other man who had been tossed from the truck. He lay twenty-five meters away and looked unconscious.
He didn’t have a lot of time to take in the wreckage before the air was filled with new gunfire and the land erupted with dirt and grass again.
The three men who had been chasing him from the hill were coming, but they were still a good fifty meters away. They were also running and shooting at the same time, which from experience Will knew wasn’t exactly the best way to hit a target—even one that was standing still the way he was.
He calmly ejected the spent magazine and slipped in a new one, then flicked the fire selector to semi-auto. He willed his breathing to slow down, pushing aside the adrenaline keeping him upright despite the flow of blood pouring out of him.
Lara could deal with that later.
He took a deep breath and shot the closest man in the chest. The man looked as if someone had tied a rope around his neck and had suddenly yanked on it. One second he was on his feet, running full-speed, and the next he was lying in the thick grass, unmoving.
Will swiveled, and as he took aim on another target, a bullet came dangerously close to scalping him. He flinched and shot the second man, aiming for the chest, but got him in the hip instead. The man stumbled and went into a crouch. Will blinked sweat out of his eyes, then shot the man again, this time getting him in the chest. The man toppled forward and into the tall blades of grass.
The third man had reached the overturned Bronco and he dived behind it for cover.
Will turned and resumed jogging back toward the barn, ignoring the scorching pain from his right side. He put a hand down there, hoping to slow the bleeding at least just a little bit. He shouldn’t have bothered, because his hand was soaked with gushing blood almost immediately. What didn’t cover up his hand poured out behind him. He was probably leaving a wet, bloody trail that even a blind man could follow.
The third guy found his courage and leaned out far enough to take a shot at him. A bullet buzzed past his head, but Will ignored it and kept jogging. The guy shot again, but the bullet landed well off target this time.
Someone needs target practice, he thought, chuckling to himself. Or did he?
Will slowed down until he was just walking now. Briskly. Maybe. It felt like a brisk walking pace, but he could have been just imagining that part. Just like he was probably making up the sudden reemergence of pain from that piece of glass he had pulled out of his leg two days ago.
Phantom pain. That’s all it is.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
He couldn’t hear any more shooting behind him. Maybe the guy had given up? Or maybe he was waiting to get closer so he could put a bullet in the back of Will’s head. Either/or. Will just didn’t feel like running anymore. This brisk walking pace was good enough. Probably.
The burnt orange barn with the stashed Ford F-150 was visible in the distance, still about half a kilometer away. It looked like a tiny red dot under the clear, bright sky.
The sun was very high up today, raining heat mercilessly down on him. God, it was hot all of a sudden. Will blinked once, twice, and for a moment almost lost his bearing against sunspots forming and bursting repeatedly in his line of sight.
He reached into his pack and pulled out the first bottle his fingers groped. He didn’t bother reading the label. He twisted off the cap with some effort, swaying a bit, and shook two pills into his mouth.
He paused for a second, then gulped down two more.
Better safe than sorry, right?
He snapped the cap back on the bottle and shoved it into one of the empty pockets on his cargo pants. He had a feeling he’d need it again pretty soon anyway. Easier access and all that.
His vision started to blur, and he thought he could hear the sound of water dripping against the grass. Like rain on a rooftop. He wasn’t even moving that fast anymore, and he still kept expecting the third guy to finally catch up and shoot him in the back of the head from point blank range.
Any moment now, buddy. Any moment now…
How far had he walked, anyway? Ten meters? Twenty? Fifty? It felt like half a day.
Surely, he was almost at the barn?
Then why was the goddamn red dot still a tiny red dot in the distance?
Every other second he expected to hear gunshots. Or the familiar drone of a pursuing vehicle. Did they only have one truck in the entire town? Probably not. He remembered seeing those five-tons. What other vehicles were in the town? Maybe not that many. He remembered the empty streets, people walking around. Like that couple with those two kids…
Back to the Stone Age. The only thing missing are horses and carriages. Yee haw.
The red dot in the distance started jumping from left to right, then right to left. Or was that him? When did he stop moving in a straight line?
It wasn’t long before he heard voices. At first he thought he was muttering to himself. That was a bad sign. Talking to yourself was not good, especially after you’d been shot.
But then he noticed the sound was coming from behind him.
Finally caught up, huh, buddy? Good for you. Good for you…
But the voice sounded familiar and female, and he distinctively remembered the third guy being male. A big guy. Kind of fat. Definitely not female.
Lara?
What the hell was Lara doing all the way out here? She was supposed to be on Song Island, safe and sound. He did a lot to get her there, because he cared for her. Hell, he loved her. Had he told her that before he left the island? God, he hoped he had. It would suck if she didn’t know how he felt.
She probably hated his guts by now. He didn’t blame her. He should have called her days ago. He should have waited for Gaby to come back with the radio and called her. She would have understood.
Lara…
The voice was insistent and calling his name. And it was getting closer.
Lara, for God’s sake, what are you doing out here? It’s not safe.
He couldn’t put his thoughts into words, because when he opened his mouth, only haggard breathing came out.
And it was painful. And difficult.
And really, really painful.
So he stopped trying.
But the voice persisted, and soon Will felt something against his left arm. He tried to lift his rifle to fight back, but it was too hard, and he surrendered. Something warm and soft pushed against him, and Will looked over, but he couldn’t see much of anything through th
e sheets of sweat covering his eyes.
Or was that blood?
God, he hoped he wasn’t bleeding from the head. That would really suck.
“Jesus, you’re dying,” the familiar female voice (Not Lara) said.
Will grunted. He wasn’t certain if he had successfully formed words with his sounds, but he must have, because the familiar female voice chuckled next to him.
“You’re such a dick,” it said.
*
He was walking.
Then he was inside a building.
Then he was inside a vehicle.
Then he was moving again, but this time it was more like floating.
No, riding.
Riding in a vehicle.
Clouds passed by above his head, outside an open car window. Bright, white clouds. When he was a kid, his mother (Charlie to her friends) used to tell him that if he stared long enough, the clouds would magically transform into whatever he was thinking at the time. When he got older, he realized it was just his imagination at work. But he still loved his mom anyway. She was a beautiful woman, kind and generous, and he never heard her say a bad word about anyone.
“You’re still alive?” a voice said.
There was a lyrical quality to the voice that he appreciated, as if it were reaching down from the clouds floating above him.
“God, how are you still alive?” the voice asked. “You must have lost at least two pints of blood out there. What are you, 200 pounds? You lose any more and you’re never going to wake up. Can you hear me? No, of course not. Just keep staring at those clouds.”
He wished the voice would shut up, because it was ruining what was, up to that point, a perfectly good staring-at-clouds moment. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to indulge in such pointlessness that getting interrupted made him feel cheated. These eleven months had been one battle after another, and he was tired of fighting. So goddamn tired.
“Oh, shit,” the voice said. “You’re bleeding again!”
Oh, so that’s what that dripping sound was. I thought someone had left a faucet running.
He closed his eyes and the clouds disappeared. He might have also rolled off the seat and landed on the floor, hitting his head against the door, but that could have just been his imagination.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
*
The second time Will opened his eyes, it was to the rhythmic plop-plop-plop of rainwater. He was lying on the front passenger seat of the Ford F-150, reclined back as far as it would go. He was shirtless, and there was fresh gauze wrapped around his midsection. The throbbing pain felt like a sledgehammer pounding his brain in tune to the plop-plop-plop of the rain outside.
He groped along the side of the seat, found the lever, and pulled it. The seat lifted him up into a semi-sitting position. He stared out the bullet-riddled windshield and into a muggy, dark-gray world, sheets of rain falling over a familiar opening.
He was back in Fredo’s auto body shop in the city of Harvest, in one of its garage ports. For a moment, he was alarmed that it was nightfall. With some effort, he was able to lift his hand until he could see his watch: 5:11 p.m.
Why is it so dark?
“I can’t believe you’re still alive,” a voice said.
Will looked over at Zoe, sitting in the driver’s seat, watching him with curious eyes. Her white doctor’s coat, covered in dried blood, was thrown over the headrest, and he thought she looked odd in just a T-shirt and pants.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she said.
“Am I?” His voice was labored and quiet. Was he whispering?
“You lost at least two liters of blood back there. Probably closer to three. But all it did was knock you out for half a day. What are you, the Terminator?”
He managed a grin. The truth was, he hurt. Every inch of him, and all he wanted to do was lie back down and go to sleep for a long, long time. But he didn’t, because it was too dark outside and his instincts kept him awake because of it, even if his watch told him it was only because of the rain.
“Do you always carry thread and needle around with you?” she asked.
“It seemed like the thing to do.”
“I tried to suture your wounds, but you were bleeding too much. I’ll have to do it later when you’re stronger. By the way, what happened to your leg?”
“I was in a helicopter crash.”
“What about your left arm?”
“Someone shot me.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah.” He sat up a little bit more. “How long has it been raining?”
“About thirty minutes.”
“We’re back at Fredo’s?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.” She looked conflicted. “And you were bleeding so badly, I wasn’t sure if you would survive anyway. But you did. Just barely.”
Will felt sticky, as if he were sitting in gum. He looked down at his seat, and even in the semidarkness saw that it was covered in blood. His blood. It stuck to his clothes, and his shirt, dark black with blood, was crumpled on the floor at his feet. It had been white when he put it on this morning.
“Do you have another shirt?” she asked.
“I did, but I gave it to Gaby last night.”
“That explains the bloody shirt I found outside.”
He nodded and laid his head back down. “You saved my life.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m a doctor. What the hell was I going to do, let you die out there?”
“There was a third guy…”
“He gave up and ran back to town after you took off.”
“He didn’t try to stop you?”
“I think he was confused. And scared.”
“Good for me, then.”
“Yeah, really good for you. There weren’t that many guys in hazmat suits back in town. Most of them were probably en route, bringing over more people from the other camps. If there had been just one more vehicle back there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Must be my lucky day.”
“Yeah, lucky you.”
She picked up a water bottle and handed it to him. He drank greedily, devouring the whole thing in a couple of gulps.
“It’s rain water,” she said. “I’ll refill it later.” She took the bottle back and continued to watch him. “I can’t figure you out, Will.”
“What’s got you so confounded, doc? I’m not that deep.”
“The fact that you keep fighting, when everyone—or most everyone—has given up. I know you have the island, but instead of going back to it, what do you do? You run over to the camp. Then the town. Why?”
“Know thy enemy.”
“It’s more than that. You want to save people, don’t you?”
“You’re the first one to ever accuse me of that, doc.”
“I doubt that. Maybe you and I are more alike than I thought. We both can’t stand the idea of people who need help not getting it.”
Is that it? Maybe…
He said instead, “Decent working theory, I guess.”
“What you have to realize is that those people back there don’t want your help. They’re perfectly satisfied with where they are. To you that may sound unfathomable, but they’re not like you, Will. They’re not soldiers.” She looked out the windshield, into the pouring rain. “Not everyone can fight forever. Not everyone wants to.”
He watched the rain with her. Slowly, he began to enjoy the melodic plop-plop-plop against the garage roof, the almost calming effect of water cascading to the concrete driveway in front of them.
After a while, he said, “Thanks again, doc.”
“How’s the pain?”
“Like someone’s poking me in the eyeballs with a spear.”
She reached into the back for his pack, unzipped it, rummaged around, and then took out a bottle and read the label. “You don’t have much left. Looks like you might have given all the good stuff to Nate.”
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“Not everything.” He pulled out the pill bottle from his cargo pants pocket and tossed it to her.
She read the label before giving him a concerned look. “How many of these have you taken?”
“Four, I think.”
“Oxycodone. How are you even still awake after four of these?”
“Persistence.”
She smirked. “Well, no more of this.” She shoved it into the pack and opened the pill bottle she had brought out earlier. “Hydrocodone. It’ll stave off the pain for a while and won’t knock you out completely. I assume that’s something you want?”
“Good call.”
She handed him two pills, then opened her door and climbed out. “I’ll go refill the bottle.”
Will popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed, then spent the time watching her sticking the open water bottle out into the rain while doing her best to keep from getting wet. She came back later, shaking the rainwater out of her hair, and handed him the bottle. He drank half of it, even though he wasn’t really thirsty.
“You carried me back to the barn by yourself?” he asked.
“Well, shouldered you, anyway. I don’t think I could have actually carried you. Frankly, I was shocked you were still on your feet after you closed your eyes. I’d never seen anything like that before. It was like your body just knew it had to keep moving, even if the rest of you shut down.”
“I told you I was special.”
“That, or you’re really, really stubborn.”
“That too.”
They exchanged a brief smile.
“Why are you still here?” he asked. “I put a gun to your head and threatened to kill you yesterday.”
She sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m an idiot.”
He chuckled. “No, that’s not it. What’s the real reason?”
She looked out the front windshield at the falling rain. “Maybe I can help you.”
“To do what?”
“Fight the creatures. Or ghouls, as you call them.”
“I thought you said their deal was acceptable, that it was even preferable to how you were living before.”