“If he dies, it’s all your fault,” Christine said to Grant.
“Christine, don’t,” Sara said.
“I’m sorry,” Grant said. “I would never hurt either of you.”
“You’re a selfish child!” Christine shot back.
“Enough!” I said, giving Christine a sharp look in my mirror. “Grant isn’t any more to blame than Sara or I. Those things that tried to eat Julio used to be people too. Should they be blamed or should we blame the people that gave them the disease? Shit happens–it happens every damn day–and the last thing we need is to be eaten up with guilt because of it.”
“If he had taken us with him, or not gone at all then–“
“Then you might be okay, or you might not be,” Sara said. “We don’t know. Let’s try to focus on waking Julio. Talk to him.”
I was quiet after that for several minutes while Christine and Grant did their best to coax Julio back into consciousness. I was surprised with myself that I had taken up for Grant like that. I think it might have been less about him, however, and more about me. There had been numerous times when I had been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the death of another person. In the beginning, I had let the guilt of that affect me, but I didn’t anymore. That was not to say that I was cold or indifferent to others. I just knew that for me to survive in this new world, I couldn’t allow room for guilt. There were too many opportunities for it. For instance, when I thought back on losing Jen, I could easily see the mistakes I had made that led to it. Perhaps if I had not insisted that we help Brenda and Hunter get off the roof of the drug store, Jen would have never been shot and would have been better able to defend herself. I could have played it from many angles and found others to which I could have pointed to for blame. The fact was, however, that I did not hurt her. Even though Brian had been the one that committed the act that took her life, I could not place the blame with him either. Canton B was the cause of all bad things in the world. Canton B was to blame.
“I think he’s coming out of it,” Grant said.
“Julio?” Christine said. “Julio, open up your eyes for me.”
I heard him moaning.
“It’s okay,” Christine said. “You’re safe. We’re going someplace safe.”
“They got me good,” Julio said hoarsely.
“No big deal, bro. We’re taking care of you. We just need to get some booze into you.”
“Did you drag me out of there?” Julio said. “Man, that’s three I owe you.”
There was a thick silence for a moment.
Then, softly, Grant said, “You don’t owe me anything.”
CHAPTER 12
As we approached the entrance to the stables, we found that the group that had gathered there that morning had mostly dispersed. There were still five standing out in the road by the gate. Since we planned to stay put for several days, until the end of Christine’s and Sara’s menstruation, I saw no need to be quiet. I put the van into park, and then Grant and I got out and shot the five creatures. Then we lifted the gate away so Christine could pull the van inside. She drove up the house, while Grant and I tried to make sure the gate was secure and able to withstand the press of a crowd.
“Will your fences hold?” he asked, looking around at the property.
“The zombies have gotten in before,” I said. “But I’ve reinforced them since then. They won’t keep the living out, but they should hold up against the undead. In case they don’t, we should make sure we have extra supplies on the upper floors of the house and both barns.”
“I hope Julio’s bites don’t get infected,” Grant said. I could tell he was still bothered by Christine’s accusation.
“I have some antibiotics left in the house,” I said. “I know antibiotics expire, so I don’t know if they’re still good. I only have enough left for one person for about a week.”
He nodded.
“Let’s drive your van on up to the house,” I said. “We can leave your supplies in it.”
We climbed into the red van he had used to crash through my gate, and I had him park it just inside the barn with the office. Then we went to help Julio into the house.
“We’ll put him in the downstairs bedroom for now,” I said. “There’s an open bottle of whisky in the kitchen. Get him started on that, and I’ll go upstairs and get the main medical supplies.”
When I came down with Doctor Barr’s old bag, Julio was sitting up in the bed in his boxers drinking from the bottle. He had bites all over his body, and many of them were bleeding through their bandages. Grant was kneeling next to the bed examining the soft spot just below Julio’s ribcage on his right side. When I got closer, I could see the wound. It was much worse than the others. There was a piece of flesh missing about the size and shape of a chicken egg.
“Bro, this one is a bad one,” Grant said. “Even if we had sutures, I don’t know if I could pull it together. There’s just nothing there.”
“They got me good,” Julio said in a pained voice and took another drink.
“Has he lost much blood?” I said.
“Not enough to lose consciousness or go into shock,” Grant said.
“I don’t see how. Did you see the seat in the van? It was soaked,” Christine said. She was picking up Julio’s clothes from the floor.
“Grant,” I said, “do you want to take a look in here and see if there is anything you can use?”
Grant stood and reached for the bag with bloody hands, “We’ll need antibiotics, more bandages... Do you have any I.V. bags in there?”
I nodded, pulling the bag out of his reach, “Yeah, and tubing, but your hands–.”
“Syringes?”
“Yeah…some,” I said. “Wash your hands first then take a look. There’s a jug of water in the kitchen.”
“Babe,” Grant said, “Go heat some water on the stove. Get it good and hot.”
Sara nodded and left the room. I was angry that she would just obey like that without correcting him for calling her “babe,” but that moment wasn’t a tactful time to express my thoughts on the matter.
“Pull the stuff out so I can see it at least,” Grant said to me.
I pulled the items out and put them on the desk by the door.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked him. “Have you had experience with this?”
He shrugged, “I’ve patched up some people, but nothing like this. I’m not a doctor, bro, but no one else in the house is either.”
Julio spoke up, “Jus’ do the bes’ you can, and God will do the res’, man.”
Grant looked over his should at Julio. “Dude…you’re a poet.”
Julio raised a fist, did his best to grin, and winked.
“Yeah, but I don’t have any of the premixed fluid for the I.V...Do you know how to mix it? Isn’t it dangerous to mix it wrong?”
“I’ve got some of my old textbooks in the van,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ll need the I.V.s. If Julio stays conscious, I can get fluids in him. It wouldn’t be as effective, but...” He shrugged.
I was dubious.
“I’ll go see if Sara needs help,” I said.
I found Sara sitting in one of the kitchen chairs holding a can of Budweiser and staring at a blue enamel stockpot that was on the stovetop. The flames from the gas range danced beneath the pot.
“It’ll never boil if you keep watching it,” I said.
She gave me a patronizing smile that faded quickly.
“How do you feel?” I asked, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Can I get you some of the pain pills?”
“I’ve felt better,” she said, putting her hand on mine. “But I’ve felt worse. We can save the pain killers for Julio.”
“He’s almost polished off that bottle,” I replied. “I don’t think he feels a thing. Besides, I have first aid kits in every room in the house. I put some ibuprofen in all of them. There’s plenty.”
She nodded, “Sure. Get me some.”
I
opened the cabinet under the sink then dug around in the first aid bag. I handed her two of the caplets, and she downed them with a swallow of warm beer.
“So you’re a beer drinker now?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, dryly. “I’m a regular lush.”
I went over to window and looked out toward the road. There was a lone zombie female stumbling around near the mailbox.
“Thanks for going,” she said. “I’m sorry for all the trouble with Grant. He’s really nice, but sometimes he’s impulsive and–“
“We’ll work things out,” I said.
“I’ll talk with him about the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing,” she said. “It’s just habit with him.”
“It’s more than habit,” I said.
“I’ll talk to him.”
I nodded and turned back to the window. “Well, I expect the crowd to start showing up tonight or tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll be under siege for several days. We’ll all have plenty of time to talk until they leave. There’ll be plenty of things to keep us busy too. Maybe, now that I have some extra hands, I can finally keep that garden clean.”
“I’m amazed you’ve done as much as you have.”
Christine walked in with Julio’s clothes. She stopped and looked back and forth between me and Sara.
“Do you have somewhere I can pitch these?” she said, holding out the clothes to me, but looking at Sara.
“I have a burn barrel behind one of the barns,” I said. “Just throw them out the back door for now.”
“Okay,” she said. “Sara, Grant needs that water.”
Sara nodded as if she was being awakened from a trance, stood, took another swallow of beer, and removed the pot from the stove with oven mitts.
“Turn the stove off for me,” she said over her shoulder as the two of them went to the bedroom.
I turned the knob to kill the gas. The big propane tank next to the house was getting low. I had been checking the gauge every week, and it had gotten down to 10% the last time I’d looked. It wouldn’t last much longer. All of the things that made life easy were slowly going away.
I walked up to the doorway of the bedroom. “Do you need anything?” I asked. “Do you need help or would I be in the way?”
“Probably in the way,” Grant said, as he wiped off his hands. “Sara can help me. You and Christine can wait outside.”
“Why Sara?” Christine said. “She doesn’t know any more about first aid than I do. I’m staying in here with Julio.”
Grant sighed, “Whatever.”
Sara and I went outside. It was hot in the house, and I wanted to check the cistern and the perimeter fences. She was quiet and distant.
“You okay?” I said as we went out the back door.
She nodded and picked up Julio’s bloody clothes that were in a pile next to the back steps.
“No big deal.”
“Want to talk about it?”
She shrugged, “I’m going to put these in the burn barrel.”
I stopped at the cistern between the barns. I wanted to show her what I had set up. She and I had procured the tank from Founder’s Farm and Hardware store a few months before, and we’d had many discussions about the different ways we could set it up. I lingered there until she came back from behind the barn.
“Is this the same tank?” she said.
“Yeah,” I grinned, proudly. “What do you think? I rigged up these gutters so that all the rain from the barns’ roofs would empty into it.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were going to bury it,” she said. “How will you keep the water from freezing in the winter?”
“Too much work for just me,” I said. “I tried to berm it on the north side, but I don’t know if that will make any difference. Maybe now that all of you are here, we can bury one...maybe an above-ground bury–pile dirt on it. We’ll still have to use gravity to get the water out.”
“I thought you were almost empty,” she said. “There’s still a lot of water in here. It’s almost full.”
“That’s from the rain last night,” I said. “These roofs will catch something like half a gallon per square foot for every inch of rain that falls. Together the two roofs are over three thousand square feet...so around fifteen hundred gallons per inch of rain.”
“I had no idea,” she said, obviously impressed.
“Yeah,” I said. “Neither did I at first. I read about it. I just pour a jug or two of bleach into it every couple of weeks or so. But just to be safe, I boil the stuff I’m going to drink.”
“Grant has a chart for how much bleach to add to the water for drinking,” she said.
“So he says,” I said.
We were both quiet for a moment.
“Do you think Julio is in good hands?” I said.
She shrugged, “As good as we have. Grant’s had some med school for his degree.”
“Did he finish?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He was still in school. He was there on a basketball scholarship and was only going to do doing the chiropractor thing as a backup.”
I didn’t reply to that, because everything I could think to say would have sounded bad.
“Come on,” I said finally. “Let’s go check the fences.”
We walked the perimeter of the property to make sure the fences were secure. When we returned to the house half an hour later, Julio was dead.
CHAPTER 13
The four of us stood around the bed, looking down at Julio’s lifeless body. Christine sobbed softly, both hands over her mouth. There was a heavy tension in the room. No one spoke. It felt like if a single word were spoken, it would be the spark that would ignite an explosion of emotion. I finally broke the silence with a whisper.
“We need to get him out of the house.”
Sara and Grant looked at me, then at Christine. I expected her to erupt, but she was surprisingly calm.
“We’ll bury him,” she said. “He was Catholic. He would want a Christian burial.”
“He’ll turn,” I said. “You know that.”
She glowered at me, “He’s stronger than that. He’s stronger than you.”
Sara went over to her and put her arm around her.
“He’ll turn,” I said, pulling my 9mm. “We need to get him out of the house and make sure the brain is destroyed.”
Christine pulled a snub-nosed revolver and pointed it at me.
“Fuck you,” she said. “We’re burying him.”
Sara gently pushed Christine’s arm down so that the gun was pointed at the floor.
“We don’t have time for a funeral,” I replied. “He’ll turn soon. We need to get him on the other side of the fence before that happens.”
“He drank all that whisky,” Christine said.
“I don’t know if that even matters once a person is gone,” I replied. “We need to take precautions.”
“I’ll do it,” Grant said softly. “I’ll bury him.”
He stepped forward and wrapped the bed’s quilt over Julio’s body.
“Grab the quilt by his feet,” he said to me. “Help me carry him out.”
The two of us lifted the wrapped corpse off the bed as if we were carrying a rolled carpet. Christine stayed in the bedroom, but Sara walked ahead of us and held the back door open.
“Tell Christine we’ll let her know when we’re ready,” Grant said to Sara.
Once we were outside, Sara went back to be with Christine.
“What happened?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Grant replied. “One minute he was talking to me, and then it was like he went to sleep. I couldn’t get him to come out of it. Christine hates me.”
“She’s upset,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could.”
He didn’t say anything to that. He just swallowed hard, trying to hold back tears.
“Let’s put him down,” I said. “I need to rest.”
We set the
body down in the driveway between the house and barns.
“Do you have a shovel?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“There are several in the front stall in the barn on the left,” I said.
He walked away. I turned and looked out toward the road. There were four zombies out by the gate. They were arriving. There were probably others gathering at different spots around the perimeter fence. We weren’t going to be able to dig a hole on the outside of the fence without getting bothered. When Grant returned with two spades, I pointed to the road.
“We can’t bury him on the property,” I said. “And it isn’t safe to be on the other side of the fence right now.”
“Why can’t we bury him here?”
“What if he turns?” I said.
“He’ll be buried.”
“Yeah, but–“
“Dude, he’s not going to dig himself out.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “We need to shoot him or burn him before.”
Grant shook his head, “Christine would freak. It’s my fault he died, and I’m not going to desecrate his body.”
“We can’t make exceptions for our friends.”
“He drank enough liquor to kill the virus.”
I sighed, “Give me a shovel. Let’s go dig a hole.”
Even with the rain from the night before, the heavy clay soil was still very hard once we dug down farther than a foot. We dug in silence near the back pasture, but still in the yard. Grant was afraid the horse would step in the disturbed soil and break a leg, so we stayed out of the pasture. It took every bit of an hour to dig a hole that was waist deep and big enough to accommodate the body. We were both dripping wet from sweat, and streaked with dirt and mud. I sat on the edge of the grave to rest.
“It’s not deep enough,” I said. “But to get it deeper, we’d need a backhoe.”
“Do you have any lime?” he said. “That’ll help with the smell.”
“I have a bag of lime in the barn, but I want to save it for the garden,” I said. “The whole world smells like a dead body anyway. I just want to be sure he’s deep enough that he can’t get out.”
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