Innocence Ends

by Robinson, Nikolas P.

  Hewitt steps through the door just as the light sweeps over a man sprawled out on the plastic-covered sofa. They sweep their lights over the same man multiple times before he registers this presence.

  Hewitt visibly starts as he realizes the man is there and that his wide-open eyes are staring directly at them without blinking. The massive wound on his neck isn’t as obvious right away when everything is already red.

  It’s clear to all of them that the man isn’t breathing before they get very close and with the extent of the damage to his throat, it comes as no surprise to any of them.

  Violating the silence of the trailer, they hear the sound of thumping and scratching as it arises from their left, down a darkened hallway.

  Cautiously Miles takes the lead down the hall, hefting the fire axe in preparation.

  It isn’t difficult to locate the source of the increasingly frantic noise. The cheap door rattles against the frame, ever so slightly bulging near the center as each new thud occurs. A substantially more sturdy wooden chair braces the door closed.

  No one is eager to remove the obstruction, likely put in place by the dead man in the living room sometime before he died from his injury. There is no shock and no surprise, they all know what they are going to find behind that door. The only thing up in the air is who it might be lurking there and struggling to get out. It’s sure to be a spouse, a child, or a parent of the dead man in the living room, someone he would have had in his home close enough to injure him and not be killed immediately in response.

  The smell is awful with the door shut, it becomes progressively more potent as they approach; a miasma consisting of waste and sickness seems to pervade the air all around them. It is the odor of a new sort of death, one even Miles isn’t inured to.

  When Miles kicks the chair out of the way and the door comes crashing open, he is almost too sickened by the sight and smell to swing the axe down at the neck of the bloated, naked, old woman who burst through the open space, falling to the ground without the door to support her. Hesitation aside, when the swing does connect, it hits true and the spine at the base of her skull is severed with a crunch that makes Hewitt cringe.

  None of them will forget that sound combined with the scent, even if they live longer lives than any of them believe to be likely in the present surroundings.

  Everyone is relieved to be back out in the rain once they finish clearing the house. The smell only seemed to get worse the longer they spent inside until it felt like it would never go away, following them the rest of their days. It was the sort of thing that seemed like it might contaminate them, seeping into their pores to remain with them.

  The next couple of properties they explore are comparatively uneventful.

  It isn’t until the final house before they are expecting to approach the rear of Gale’s property that they are greeted with the same terrible odor. Miles holds up his hand to stop them, concerned that they are picking up the scent as far away as the line of trees before the lawn begins.

  Peering through the night, he can see that one window on the main floor is shattered, but that doesn’t explain the smell being so potent at this distance.

  Crouching down, Miles begins to skirt alongside the foliage, attempting to obtain a different view of the home.

  Taking his cue, the others shrink down as best they can manage.

  Abraham’s voice erupts in a sound somewhere between a scream and a grunt as he tries to muffle the noise with his hand immediately as it begins.

  Hewitt switches on his flashlight, swinging it toward Abraham, only to see an emaciated, infected man gripping his friend’s pant leg and ripping into the side of his shin with broken, gnashing teeth. The flesh of Abraham’s leg is abraded as the teeth graze against bone and slide along the surface.

  It’s a sight only available for a moment before the thicker end of a baseball bat hammers into the thing’s head, dislodging it from Abraham’s leg.

  Another downward blow follows the first, like a piston descending, stopping the man dead just as Miles makes it back from his interrupted search around the perimeter.

  They rush into the house with less caution than they would have exhibited only minutes earlier and they lay Abraham down on a loveseat in the living room.

  Miles begins examining his friend’s wound while Hewitt and Mariah sweep the house for any remaining danger, disregarding the earlier insistence that there would be no splitting up.

  Tears in his eyes, Abraham knows what the injury means.

  They all know.

  Gale had made it clear, perfectly clear, what the outcome would be with this sort of direct exposure.

  The bite itself isn’t bad, bone stopped the teeth from digging too deeply. Miles figures his friend may not even have a limp while they finish out their mission, but the damaged denim and broken skin foretold something much worse than a limp.

  Hewitt and Mariah return to the den just as Miles is finished bandaging the wound.

  There is no time for commiseration.

  They are almost where they need to be.

  They arrive at Gale’s house with no further excitement and nothing appears to have been touched.

  The other three change into warmer, dry clothing from their luggage while Miles digs through his SUV.

  Even Abraham looks happier when he returns to the dining room seeing the firearms laid out on the table, almost happy enough to push the thoughts of the infection surely coursing through his veins from his mind.

  40

  Abraham began college immediately out of high school, choosing not to travel far from home, content to remain close to his family.

  After almost four years of studying civil engineering with a minor in materials, Abraham changed tracks and shifted his focus to architecture, having fallen in love with some of the buildings right there on campus. During the summer months, he worked in construction, doing everything from carpentry to bricklaying and concrete, and he applied his education to the practical experience he was dealing with regularly. He realized that he wanted to do more while he was watching those buildings take shape before his eyes, to leave his mark, and repairing infrastructure wasn’t going to be sufficient for him.

  He was going to make a name for himself by designing homes and businesses, not bridges or roadways.

  With his contacts in construction, he believed he could leverage an architecture degree and experience into running his own firm. It was a lofty goal, he knew it, but he believed it was something he could pull off if he played his cards right.

  It took him longer than he wanted, but after only three years working as an apprentice, Abraham finally got his chance. It was as much luck as anything else.

  While he’d been in college, working toward his original plan of a degree in civil engineering, he met the woman of his dreams and it just so happened that, seven years later, she was instrumental in helping him bring his dreams to life.

  Over the Christmas holiday with her family, he was introduced to an uncle who was looking to avoid renewing a lease on the commercial property his business operated from and he wanted to build something to his specifications, somewhere he could guarantee that the infrastructure was suitable for his needs. Abraham felt the man out for details, trying to keep the conversation casual, and spent the rest of the holiday vacation working on a draft for the building.

  The proposal was a hit and the money, in the end, was enough for him to break out on his own. With his wife handling the finances and secretarial work during those early days and Abraham cultivating a network from his connections on the job and former classmates, they began their own contracting and architectural firm.

  The first few years after starting up were a bit rough and taxing, especially with a small child in tow around the office, but once they started making a name for themselves, the work took off.

  The firm grew and they cemented themselves as being the firm businesses and individuals could turn to in order to address issues other architects ref
used to tackle. Abraham’s background in civil engineering and materials made it possible for him to look at problems of logistics and environment from different angles than a lot of his competition, not being mired in traditional forms and solutions. Over time, his work ethic and unwillingness to take home more profit than he needed allowed him to retain loyal staff and undercut his contemporaries in many cases.

  During the early years of running his own business, he and his family lived a fairly spartan lifestyle, though they never had to want for anything. Abraham and his wife agreed that it was best to invest much of what they would have been taking home back into the business.

  By the time he and Ben began their journey to Idaho, Abraham’s firm had contracts all over the United States and Canada, largely commercial interests but also a great many residential projects, being managed mostly by his wife while he and the boy went away on the vacation. His family had moved into a new home only a year before, a home he’d designed as a proof of concept. The years of reinvestment in his company had built them a business that could run itself while Abraham was away, something he was pleased to know, just as he knew his wife was mostly just enjoying the time away from a house full of men.

  His wife regularly teased him that he would be able to retire early if he kept running the business the way he had. That was something he’d never do, and she knew him well enough to know that much too. He loved his work too much and he loved that he had built something with his wife as a partner that could carry on for generations if Ben grew up wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps.

  Ben knew how to read blueprints almost as early as he could read children’s books and the countless hours spent sitting on his father’s lap in the office had embedded the sounds of graphite on paper into his young mind as something integral to happiness.

  41

  The map unfolded, spreads out over the coffee table in Gale’s den. Miles has marked the houses they already secured on their route from the lab to where they’ve been relaxing for the last hour. The blinds are all drawn tight to cut down on any risk of someone seeing the light through the storm still stubbornly carrying on outside.

  “We don’t know whether these locations will remain secure,” Miles suggests as he gestures toward the residences he’s marked off with a red X. “The population out there is moving around a bit, but they still seem to be returning to their respective homes to sleep and so on, at least the ones still human enough to give a shit about that sort of thing.”

  “So, the odds are an even split that we could have problems from the places we believe we’ve already dealt with?” Hewitt asks.

  “As far as the more human among the infected? Yes.”

  “What about the zombies?” Mariah asks.

  Miles thinks for a moment, “I have no fucking clue. Those things are altogether inhuman.”

  “Well, we do have one thing in our favor,” Mariah points out. “The thinking and unthinking amongst our enemies out there are as prone to attack and kill each other was they are any of us.”

  “There is that,” Hewitt replies, trying to look on the bright side and to wrap his head around the fact that this was suddenly the bright side.

  “It’s a small consolation that’s going to be for us once we’re out there again,” Miles says. “I’ve been in the middle of multiple hostile parties who are just as unfriendly toward one another as they were our own forces. It just adds another layer of disorientation to an already confusing situation and makes it imperative that we all remain alert and watch all sides.”

  Mariah sighs, “At least here is some depletion in the numbers, for both sides, because of that conflict. There was previously a population of 1,200 out there, with what 500 homes, give or take a dozen or so? Those are nightmare logistics by anyone’s standards.”

  Abraham adds, “She’s right about that. Out of these 1,200 people, we can only legitimately account for maybe two or three dozen dead. That’s a drop in the bucket unless they’ve thinned out their own numbers quite a bit and, forgive me for saying it, I fucking hope they have been busy doing precisely that.”

  Hewitt nods and a moment later so does Miles.

  “We haven’t got ammunition for an all-out assault against that sort of force,” Miles agrees. “We have to be smart about this and employ a bit of strategy.”

  Hewitt replies, “Even as careful as we might be, some of these people can easily slip past us unseen. Some of them probably already have.”

  “Gale said that bit about fear of outsiders and I am pinning some hope on that aspect of the sickness keeping them in familiar locations. I could be wrong, but it’s about all I have to be optimistic about.”

  “That’s a pretty big fucking ‘if’ hanging over our heads, buddy,” Hewitt says.

  “It is,” Mariah adds after a pause.

  “Hey, it’s all we have. It’s the only thing that might be working in our favor to contain the infected here,” Miles responds.

  They all stand in silence for a minute before they continue sorting through firearms and ammunition in defeated silence.

  With the first slight hints of sunrise behind the thick cloud cover, the group gives in to their exhaustion and they decide to sleep in shifts until night.

  The work they have ahead of them, they all agree, is the sort of thing best kept to the shadows.

  As well as they’d tried to clean and treat the wound, Abraham develops a fever while he is sleeping. It’s mild, but it’s disheartening. Intellectually they had known how this would work out but they’d all hoped Abraham would, by some miracle, avoid the infection in a way none of the locals had.

  “I’m ok,” he insists. “Just a little bit warm and there’s a little bit of pressure behind my eyes right now.”

  “We can get you back to Ben,” Mariah suggests, “before we get started on this.”

  “Absolutely not!” he replies.

  “As much as one extra set of eyes and a couple of trigger fingers will help out,” Miles says, as soothing as any of them had heard him be, “It’s ok for you to spend this time with your son.”

  Abraham sighs. “You don’t get it. Ben doesn’t need to see me like this and I don’t want to risk hurting him somehow when this progresses further. None of us know how long I will actually be me.”

  There is no disagreeing with him and Hewitt thinks it all through, realizing that there is no argument to be made. It is a sound decision and they are going to need every possible set of eyes out there.

  Loaded up, no further discussion to be had, they set out into the night.

  Mirroring Miles as best they can, they appear almost professional in their coordination.

  Alley to alley, yard to yard, the four of them keeping to the shadows, they cover a lot of ground quickly.

  Navigating their way along the opposite edge of town from the path they’d taken to get to Gale’s, they run into no real trouble.

  More people are found dead in their homes.

  What’s troubling more than anything is how many of those who should have been dead they’re finding, both indoors and out.

  Unexpectedly for everyone but Miles, the challenge comes in dispatching sleeping people. Feverish and sweating, in the throes of nightmares, they are infected.

  Murdering people in their sleep is something sure to haunt them all.

  Mariah, for a moment, finds herself envious of the fact that Abraham won’t be carrying these memories around with him as long as the rest of them presumably will.

  These thoughts come to her, unbidden, immediately after standing over an elderly woman and driving the blade of a machete through her sternum and into her heart. She wakes momentarily but makes no sound and dies without a fight.

  Some of the sleeping infected put up more of a fight than others, but the only time they need to fire a round is when Miles puts down one of the townsfolk who had turned into a zombie, trapped inside of their home.

  Hewitt stares in horror while Miles stands there with the bar
rel leveled at the thing shuffling towards him. He almost raises his gun when lightning lights up the sky and Miles fires just as the thunder shakes the air.

  Tapping his friend gently on the shoulder, Hewitt gestures applause when Miles looks back at him.

  Miles chuckles quietly, the sound lost in the rain.

  Time is funny for them.

  To Hewitt, it seems like the process of sweeping the new edge of the town has taken forever by the time they work their way back to the route up the hill and to the mine. The whole thing had taken less than two hours.

  There is still plenty of time left for them to continue with the gruesome chore.

  42

  Miles’ plan is still the same, to start from the side of the town nearest the lab and to clear everything moving outward from there. It makes sense to everyone, creating distance between the infected and the one place they desperately want to keep secure.

  It is a blessing that the population had remained unaware that the mine might still be used for something. They want to be sure to minimize any risk of that detail changing, especially with Ben in hiding up there.

  Sweeping the homes becomes a simple routine but far more risky as they reach the point where the streets and houses begin to take on a more traditional city block layout. In these areas, they also have to contend with the emergency powered street lamps that are painting the environment with their haunting, orange-red glow. Moving from home to home is faster, by far, but the chance of being caught out in the open or being heard is substantially increased.

  Miles had warned them that they were going to start feeling greater tension where population density was sure to be higher.

  All of these windows and adjoining lawns filled with shadows could easily be playing host to any number of unseen threats. The same things they utilize to their benefit could easily be turned against them.