by Ray Wallace
Thomas still couldn’t get his head around that one. A guy who was genuinely grateful he’d been murdered. Was there a more poignant testament to the extent to which the world had been turned on its head?
Not wanting to spend any more time on that subject, Thomas asked Ron and Tanya about what they’d been up to since the last time he saw them.
“We lost track of you in all that madness,” said Ron. “I don’t know if we turned back... you know, became human again... before or after you.”
“Must have been before. I was alone when I came out of it. The snakes were all but dissolved.”
“There were still plenty of the bastards slithering around when we came to. The first thing we did was find a car and some clothes and get the hell out of there. Sorry we didn’t wait around for you. If we’d known…”
“It’s alright,” said Thomas with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure I would have done the same thing. Especially as disoriented as I was afterward.”
“Even still. A soldier never leaves his comrades behind. Trust me when I tell you this, it won’t happen again.”
“I appreciate that.” Thomas only hoped it was a promise he’d be able to keep.
“Anyway, we found a house a few streets over and stayed there. The following day we went door to door for a while, trying to find other survivors. Nothing. What we did find was a gun shop a few blocks away and so we did a little stockpiling. Then we gathered up some food and clothes and headed over here where we could keep that damned pipeline to Hell in sight. Of course, we saw what was going on across the street, the people going in and out of the building. We decided to hang back, though. Things looked a little too vulnerable over there. And I’ve got a weird feeling that a crowd might attract whatever appears out of that hole next. Because, sure as shit, there’s gonna be something else.”
They spent the afternoon up there, talking occasionally, trying to ignore the omnipresent moaning sound, keeping themselves as hydrated as they could. Eventually the sounds of the undead began to diminish and the group on the roof walked over to to watch them fall over one by one. A good number of them were across the street, clawing at the glass of the Wal-Mart windows. It seemed like a minor miracle that none of them had managed to gain entrance.
“Hurricane country,” said Tanya. “Strengthened glass. It’s obviously up to code.”
An hour later, there were no more zombies wandering about. As the sun crawled toward the other horizon and the day’s heat finally started to subside, Thomas and his companions descended from the roof and went in through the back door of the auto repair shop, past the generator Ron and Tanya had scored for themselves. There was a collection of rations inside, cans of soup and pasta which they heated on a portable propane stove. Another hour and they were done eating, went outside to walk among the rapidly deteriorating corpses, zombie and mutilated survivor alike, before heading over to the Wal-Mart to see how the people there had fared.
“How easily we adapt,” muttered Thomas as they crossed the sprawling parking lot before the megastore. Zombies. Bugs. Bloodstorms. Disintegrating bodies. Already he was used to it. The world had been folded inside out and within five days he and his companions had, for the most part, accepted it. He didn’t even need a drink. Well, maybe just one beer or a shot of something a little stronger would be nice. But he didn’t need it. Or the meds. Maybe he hadn’t needed them all along. Just crutches to help him cope with the pressures of a rather humdrum and ordinary existence. Nothing very ordinary about it now though. He seemed to have fallen into a basic reaction mode, not thinking about things too much, just responding to the threats that came his way and moving past them as well as he could. Maybe that was the difference. He wasn’t overthinking things. Or maybe he was in an ongoing state of shock. Maybe the reality of the situation hadn’t fully set in, was so overwhelming that it couldn’t fully set in. It was all so surreal. Dreamlike. Or, to put it more accurately, nightmarelike. He was quite sure that a large part of his psyche was operating under the assumption that all of this was, in fact, a dream no matter what he told himself. It was how his subconscious was able to cope so easily let alone at all. How all of them could. Because none of this was possible, after all. And the impossible couldn’t really hurt you now could it?
“Could it?”
“What did you say?”
He looked to his left and saw Gerald there, staring at him, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud I guess.”
The other man gave a little chuckle. “One of the first signs of insanity, my friend.”
For some reason Thomas found himself laughing too even though Gerald’s words were more frightening than humorous.
Then they were there, walking past the generators, up to the closed sliding glass doors of the store’s entrance. A few men stood just inside, various types of firearms held in their hands—a rifle here, a shotgun there, a shiny little pistol over there. One of them stepped forward and pulled on the door, granting them entrance. It was Mr. Government Conspiracy—Frank, he had said his name was Frank earlier in the day—who gave Thomas a pat on the shoulder like they were old friends and said, “It’s good to see someone make it back.”
“How many?” asked Ron from where he stood just behind Thomas.
Frank gave him a questioning squint, glanced back at Thomas who nodded as if to say, “It’s alright, he’s with me.” Then the other guy shrugged, said, “About half who went out there.”
“And how many is that?” Ron again.
“Twenty. Twenty-five people.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, that’s right. A damned catastrophe, is what it is.”
“Another one,” said Dana.
“Not to worry,” Gerald said. “They’ll be back.”
“Well, I sure hope so,” said Frank. And there it was again, that easy acceptance of the way things worked now. Thomas shook his head in wonder and headed off deeper into the building.
Next to the main sleeping area, just past the thirty or so checkout lines was a collection of lawn chairs in a rough semicircle. Thomas and his companions sat there along with a few others who Thomas had only recently met in passing. Thomas talked about his attempt to leave the town, how there had seemed to be some sort of invisible barrier that had disoriented him and turned him around. Some of the others had similar tales including Ron and Tanya who had tried to leave the area in several different directions.
“My guess is it’s a circle about six or seven miles in diameter,” said Ron. “Maybe there’s a weak point.” He shrugged. “Probably not but it would be worth checking out. Not like we’ve got anything better to do with our time.”
The day went by and night fell. Ron and Tanya returned to the auto shop across the street. Thomas went and stood at the Wal-Mart’s entrance, stared out through the darkness over toward the hole. Nothing stirred there. At midnight the generators were turned off and those still up and about found their beds.
Thomas fell asleep, the last image in his mind before slumber claimed him was that of his wife’s head coming apart.
He did not dream.
CHAPTER 6
Saturday, June 26 to Saturday, July 2 (early morning)
Someone was gently shaking him.
“Thomas? Wake up. I need your help.”
He opened his eyes and saw a figure leaning over him in the near total darkness. Light drifted in through the windows at the front of the building and it was anemic at best.
“Thomas?”
He knew the voice, of course. It was Gerald.
“I’m awake.” The words came out in a barely audible croak. Thomas cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m awake.”
“Good. Come with me. And keep quiet. We don’t want to wake the others.”
A few minutes later found him walking the quiet aisles of that sprawling megastore, Gerald at his side, flashlight in hand. They were both pushing shopping carts, filling them mostly with clothes of all sizes, me
n’s and women’s, and a few gallons of bottled water.
“They’ll be tired, naked,” Gerald was saying in a low tone. “And damned thirsty.”
It wasn’t long before they were pushing their carts as quietly as possible past the checkout lines and out the front doors which they closed behind them. The sun was just peeking over the horizon. The sky was clear. Thomas couldn’t help but wonder how hot the day would be.
“What if something else comes out of there?” Thomas asked. “What if it’s not them? We’ll be in a bad situation for sure.”
“They’ll be there,” said Gerald with conviction. How he could be so certain Thomas didn’t know. Breathing deeply in an attempt to calm the butterflies flitting about his stomach, Thomas followed the other man across the parking lot toward the hole, the metal of his cart jangling over the uneven surface of the pavement.
They stopped the carts about twenty feet from the edge of the opening. The lights and the generators had been turned off and covered with tarps. The silence that claimed the area was disconcerting. There should have been the sounds of traffic, maybe even some birdsong. He was about to say something, anything, to dispel the silence when a sound escaped the opening before them. A voice, Thomas knew. Echoing. Distant. Indecipherable.
Gerald approached the hole, crouched down at the edge, leaned forward on his hands and looked down. The butterflies in Thomas’s stomach had grown to the size of crows.
“See anything?”
Gerald didn’t answer. He seemed intent on his observation. The man’s body language was filled with tension. This did little to alleviate Thomas’s nervousness.
Another cry came out of the hole. This time Thomas could understand what it was saying.
“Deliver us,” it said. A man’s voice. Then that of a woman. “Almost there…”
A minute later the first hand reached out of the surrounding darkness. Gerald scurried over and grasped it firmly in his, helped lift the person upward to solid ground.
A woman. Thomas recognized her from the previous morning in the store. Young. Pretty. Long blonde hair. Completely naked. For a moment Thomas was convinced that she was one of the zombies come to terrorize the living once again. But even though she was quite filthy it was obvious that she was sound of body, that she was quite alive. As Gerald helped her to her feet he turned and called to Thomas: “Some clothes, please. And some water.”
So it went for the next half an hour. Those who had been lost the previous day, struck down and devoured by the zombies, climbed one by one out of that dark circle, returned to the world healthy and whole. Not one of them looked a day over twenty-three even though Thomas knew for a fact that several of them had been significantly older than that when they’d been killed.
Eventually they were all there, all twenty-three who had been struck down the previous day. Some of them wept. Most just took in their surroundings, awestruck, more than a bit overwhelmed by the fact that they had returned from the dead. Once everyone had received clothes and water, Thomas and Gerald led the crowd over to the Wal-Mart where they were reunited with their fellow survivors just as the morning’s heat began to settle in.
*
Nothing else came out of the hole that day. Nothing besides the wisps of steam and the odor that was always there, that is, the smell of eggs gone bad and something fleshier starting to decay. It was funny how quickly Thomas had gotten used to the smell. Just like so many other things recently. Nothing new there.
Julia was on his mind a lot that day. The real Julia, not the thing that had shambled about yesterday wearing Julia’s skin. That hadn’t been her, he was convinced, just a prop used by whatever infernal powers were behind the torment and torture that was happening. She was somewhere else, he was sure of it. Somewhere safe and comfortable. Quite alive. His two beautiful children were there with her waiting for him to come back to them.
“Patience,” he whispered, the image of his family so vivid within his mind. “I will find a way out of this place. Whatever this place might be. And I will find you. I promise. Because I love you. Nothing is ever going to change that. Nothing on Earth and certainly nothing in Hell.” A bit melodramatic, he knew, but saying the words made him feel better, made him feel stronger. And he was going to have to stay strong if he wanted to see this thing all the way through to the end. This much he knew.
The day passed quietly. Everyone was on edge throughout most of it, waiting for something terrible to happen. But nothing did. There was the heat, though, a torment all its own. If anything, it was even hotter than the day before. With his fair skin, Thomas had a nice burn from his stint on the roof despite the sunblock he’d used. He had always been prone to “lobsteritis” as his daughter would refer to it after their occasional trips to the beach. He found some calamine lotion over in the skin care aisle, sighed in relief as he rubbed it onto the affected skin of his arms, neck, and face.
Gerald smiled, showed him his arms which held not the slightest trace of a burn.
“Just part of my regenerative powers, it seems,” he said. “This whole dying and resurrection thing, I’m telling you, you really should give it a whirl.”
“Not just yet, my friend,” said Thomas. “Not just yet.”
“I’m wondering how far it goes. Let’s say I cut off a finger, or an arm, you think it would grow back?”
“Let me know when you’re willing to find out,” Thomas said in jest. “I’ll find the hatchet.”
“Careful, I just might take you up on that offer.”
A little past noon Ron and Tanya showed up. “We’re gonna go test the perimeter in some places,” said Tanya. “Care to join us?”
The close proximity of the hole outside and the presence of so many recently dead people were combining to give Thomas a case of the creeps, though he wouldn’t tell anyone that. It sounded like a good excuse to get away from both for a little while.
“Sure, let me grab a hat and I’ll meet you out front.”
Dressed in a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, tennis shoes, and a Tampa Bay Lightning baseball cap, Thomas soon found himself in the back seat of a Nissan SUV that Ron and Tanya had commandeered somewhere. They headed west, the same direction Thomas had attempted to leave town a few days earlier.
“I already tried this way,” he informed them.
Ron said that they had also. “But you never know, the force field or whatever it is may have weakened.” They discovered that this was not the case. It happened just as it had the other day. Ron was driving along and then there was that weird sense of dislocation and they were immediately headed back the other way. There was also the headache and the nausea and all three of them agreed that this was a terrible way to go about this business.
“Why don’t we take turns?” asked Thomas when he had regained his composure. “Approach the area where we think the perimeter is located, let one of us get out and walk. That way only one of suffers at a time.”
Before they left the area, Ron popped open the back of the SUV and pulled out a couple of wooden posts about three-and-a-half feet tall that had been painted red. There was a whole stack of them back there. He also grabbed a post hole digger and planted the lengths of wood along either side of the road near the invisible field. “Now we’ll know exactly where it is. As long as it doesn’t move.”
They headed back west a little way to the first intersection they came to. Ron turned left and they went north and then west again, came to a stop just before where they believed the invisible field blocked the road there.
“Alright, I’ll go first,” said Ron. As Thomas and Tanya stood outside the SUV and watched, Ron walked along the road in the same direction he’d been driving. Ten steps. Twenty. Twenty-two. That’s when he disappeared. Thomas gasped and Tanya yelled, “Ron!” She started to walk forward as an instant later Ron reappeared facing back toward the SUV. He staggered and fell to one knee, said, “Oh, man, that sucks.” Tanya ran over to him, knelt down and put an arm around his shoulders until he was read
y to stand. He walked a bit unsteadily back to the vehicle and took a seat in the climate controlled interior. Thomas and Tanya planted the posts there. Tanya then drove them a little farther north and it was her turn to play guinea pig. Fifteen minutes later Thomas was up and then the rotation started all over again. After the third rotation they decided to call it quits.
“I think I need to lie down for a while,” said Thomas.
“I know the feeling,” said Ron. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
Thomas couldn’t have agreed more. “Next time I think we should bring more people.”
*
“Okay, everybody listen up!”
It was the following morning and the generators had been running for about half an hour. Thomas sat on the edge of his tiny bed, feeling a bit drowsy and disoriented. He hadn’t slept well. The thought of facing the invisible barrier surrounding the town once again was already turning his stomach.
Ron was standing over at the edge of the communal sleeping area. The skin of his face and his well defined arms—the latter of which were displayed to full effect in the black tank top he wore—was dark with a slightly reddish tint to it. Tanya stood at his side, hands on hips. Thomas scratched at the sensitive skin of his arms as he thought about going off in search of a bottle of Pepto Bismol to calm his stomach.
All present were looking over to where Ron and Tanya were standing.
“With the help of our friend Thomas over there,” said Ron plenty loud enough for everyone to hear, “we spent some time yesterday checking the invisible—What should we call it? Shield? Barrier?—for any signs of weakness, for some way through. As you might well imagine, with only three of us at work we didn’t get to inspect very much of it. Not much at all, really. And I’m fairly certain that if we tested every last inch of it for a way through we wouldn’t be able to find one. But still, we have to try because… well… you never know, now do you? Besides, it’s not like any of us has much else better to do, am I right?”