Riding The Apocalypse

by Frank Ignagni III

  “I’ll make sure he does, and thanks for taking the first shift. You need anything while you are up there?” I asked.

  “Nope, I got my smokes. There’s enough moonlight to see the fence, and I got a flashlight if I hear anything funny. If I see anything, I will come get ya.”

  I headed to my office to get another chair, and the bottle of Buffalo Trace I had in my desk. Max came back with the tape and car covers, and Buell and I went to work. Max headed to the vending machines, while Emily sat in the waiting room trying to fix herself in the reflection of the TV.

  “Max, grab some extra sodas, will ya?”

  “No problem, Buell, I’ll get the popcorn too.”

  Chapter 11

  “No, I am going to do it.”

  On the television, I watched Red approach Andy, who was sanding the deck of an old boat on the beach in Zihuatanejo. I held the tumbler with two fingers of Buffalo Trace in one hand, and Emily’s hand in the other. Her hand felt warm on my skin, and her head, nestled on my chest, felt even warmer. I embraced this moment of pure contentment. I started to drift to sleep.

  “I need to go, Rem,” a voice said softly in my ear.

  I thought I was dreaming for a moment until I heard Emily say it again.

  “What? Why?” I asked snapping upright.

  Emily and I sat together on the couch, and I noticed we were the only ones still awake in the room. Buell was asleep on chair cushions laid along the counter, and Max was on the roof keeping watch. Ed had left to go sleep in a customer’s Escalade shortly after Boggs got the shit beat out of him in the movie.

  Her eyes started to tear, she pulled her sleeve up to the elbow then sat straight up. “I am so sorry,” Emily whimpered, “it happened when I picked up my mom to bring her to the office. It was Mr. Hanson, her mailman. I tried to get away, but he bit me as I pushed off.”

  I was mortified. A chill ran down my spine, and I felt my neck tighten. My mind began to race as I considered the consequences of what I was seeing. The bite was faint, but you could see the imprint clearly. The wound had a slight curve and the teeth marks were not deep, but definitive. The skin had indeed been broken, and dried blood congealed around the wound just below the elbow.

  I stroked her hair while I peered down at her arm. The wound looked red and swollen as I studied it closer. No wonder her hand was so warm, she was feverish.

  “But you don’t know for sure,” I said, not actually believing my own words.

  “I can feel it, Remy. I have a fever. I feel it coursing through me. I know I have to go now, Remy. I just wanted to tell you about the vaccine, and tell you I loved you one more time, and say I am sorry,” she said softly.

  I was at a loss for words. All I could do was feel anger at Dr. Evans and that fucking senator. How could they do this? Why would they do this?

  “Damn it, Emily, why did you leave me on Sunday?” I shouted before I could stop myself.

  Buell immediately woke, twisted, then fell off the counter. He ricocheted off the cushion-less chairs below him, then hit the coffee table, and rolled off onto the floor, taking a few issues of Popular Mechanics along for the ride.

  “What the!” Buell cried.

  “I wanted to get my mom, Rem, and I…I…just needed to talk to Michael. I knew there was something going on with him, Remy. I suspected something, and I wanted to know if I was right.”

  I shook my head and lowered it into my hands, covering my face.

  Letting go of Emily seemed to change her sorrow to rage as she sat up straight and screamed at me. “And anyway, you didn’t even ask me to stay! You just told me something from a fucking app about traffic!” Emily got up and left the customer lounge, running into my private office.

  I felt like such an asshole: she was right.

  What is it about us guys that we feel the need to keep our space? She had wanted me to be vulnerable, to need her, to want her to stay, and I pushed her out the door. She had been standing buck naked in my bedroom, and I told her to leave, alone. Damn it, she was right.

  “Dude, you are going to go get—”

  “I’m going, Buell,” I said as I headed to my office.

  The door was still slightly ajar so I pushed it open gently and closed it behind me. I saw Emily curled up on the chair behind my desk, softly sobbing and holding the sleeve of my leather jacket, which was draped over the chair.

  I just stood there for a moment, not knowing exactly what to say. I replayed those last few moments before she left in my mind as I looked at her coiled up in the chair.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I should have offered to come with you or asked you to come with me. I was confused. I didn’t—”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Remy,” Emily said as she sat up straight and tried to compose herself. “Can you see that now? I am not blaming you for anything, Rem, but it is too late to talk this out. What is done is done. I am leaving, and I need to do it soon before I hurt you all.” She wiped her tears with my jacket and turned her eyes directly to mine.

  “No, fuck it, it does matter. All right, Rem, I am blaming you!” she yelled as she grabbed the leather jacket from the back of my chair and slapped it on the desk in front of me. Papers and a few pens flew into the air as the jacket cracked loudly on the desk.

  I tried to move slowly toward her, but she put her hands up and kicked the desk, propelling the office chair and herself to the back corner of the office.

  “Why couldn’t you ever just come with me? Ever?” she said softly.

  All of a sudden, Emily stopped crying.

  I will never forget the image of Emily in the corner of the office. Sitting in the chair, knees against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, teeth biting the denim of her jeans, with the elbow wound in full view. The wound looked bright red in the light, and was turning black around the edges.

  The wound defined her, it almost seemed to glow. She wasn’t Emily anymore.

  I resisted the urge to go to her and stood there stoically, not moving a muscle. I must have looked like I was waiting at a bus stop. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to handle this. All I could think about as I looked at her injury was that Son of a Bitch Riley. How could he let this happen to her? My beautiful Emily.

  Almost as if Emily read my mind, she spoke. “I know where he is going,” she said, her look void of emotion. “I mean, if he got away, I know where he is going.”

  “How do you—”

  “He told me, Rem. He told me where he was going. He asked me to go with him. I called him when I went to pick up Mom, and he asked me to go. Do you hear me, Rem?” she said with a slightly raised voice. “Michael asked me to go with him,” she said with the emphasis on the word “Michael.”

  Those words cut me deeply. I sank down on the sofa table behind me. I heard the candy dish break as I sat, but I paid it no attention. I just stared at the floor, arms folded across my chest. I could not look at her. I felt so sorry for not being the man she wanted me to be. I felt sorry about a lot of things.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Figure it out, Remy, for once show some initiative,” she said, coughing as she spoke. “He was headed to his late father’s office supply store in Monterey. When he asked me to go with him, he said we would be safe at the store. Michael said there was a loft above the store, it had an independent well, and food—”

  “What’s the name?” I interrupted, starting to understand why she was telling me this.

  “It is called Riley’s Office Supplies and Distribution,” Emily said as she smiled and winced simultaneously. “Babe, I don’t feel good,” she added as she twisted her arm to see the wound’s progress.

  I slowly walked toward Emily and her eyes tracked me. I kneeled down beside her, put my hand on her right knee, and smiled. I tried not to look at her festering arm while again covering the wound with her sleeve, then kissed her forehead.

  “It’s okay, Em, it’s going to be okay.”

  She
knew what I meant. I was going, she knew it and wanted it.

  “I didn’t go with him, you know that now, Rem, right? I could have gone with him, instead I came for you,” Emily said, starting to cry again. “I chose you, Remy,” she said with a tremulous smile.

  “Baby, I know, I know.”

  “I am just so tired now, Rem. I love you, Remy, I don’t want to fight anymore, can we stop?” she pleaded softly.

  “I love you too, Em,” I said, stroking her hair.

  I could feel tears running down my face after she said she chose me, not Senator Asshole.

  Her blue eyes looked darker, almost purple, and her once beautiful skin was graying to a pasty white. I ran my hand over her head, stroked her hair, and watched her die.

  I turned around and left her lifeless body in the office. As I walked past the front counter in the lobby, Buell was sitting on one of the chairs holding my dad’s gun.

  “You want me to do it?” he asked, a tear running down his cheek. “I will do it for ya, bro, I will,” Buell offered.

  I took the gun and turned back toward the office. “No, I am going to do it.”

  Chapter 12

  Present Day

  Now that you know Emily was infected, I am going to tell you a little about her. I don’t want the last thing you read about Emily to be her dying and turning into a monster. It is hard for me to write this, but I think Emily deserves a better eulogy.

  However, first a small digression to share some happy news. The last few days have been uneventful and depressing as I wrote this part of my story still stuck in this stupid room. But I did make a new friend, my buddy is a little white mouse. He or she (?) runs under the boxes near the corner of the desk once in a while. That little sucker is fast as hell, and I have no idea how he squeezes under the boxes or what the hell he does under there, but I do know I welcome his sporadic visits. He often stops, looks up at me, wiggles his nose, then bolts for the boxes. I call him Speedy, after a favorite boyhood cartoon. Speedy has no sombrero like the Speedy in the show, though he appears just as fast. Anyway, I just saw Speedy so I thought I would give him a cameo, or credit or whatever.

  Back to Em. I remember Emily used to do this thing when we were together in public. As I mentioned before, she was quite the beauty and drew stares from other men, and occasionally women, on a regular basis. If she caught someone looking, she would kiss me, or grab my butt, or anything she thought of to make the voyeur feel stupid. I always knew when she was doing it, but instead of playing along, I would shrug her off and laugh. Maybe I should have just acknowledged the attention she was giving me? Why didn’t I just pat her ass right back? I would kill to be sitting in a Panda Express right now and all of a sudden have Emily’s hand run up my thigh and feel a peck on my cheek, then turn to catch the perv looking back down at his pepper chicken after she busted him gawking at her. Why didn’t I just go with it? I wonder how different things would have turned out if I had been just a little more attentive?

  I guess I could go on second-guessing myself and our relationship until I run out of paper, but what point does that serve? Why torture myself? Honestly, I’m suffering enough at the moment without lamenting the past. I am already listening to footsteps, a fucking maddening drip from somewhere, and monsters pounding at the door at the top of the stairs. Do I honestly need to add more grief? Is daily masturbation to Emily’s image not enough of a tribute to her? Fuck this, it’s time. I am gonna write how it went down. I am thankful for my flask of bourbon.

  Chapter 13

  “I’ll be on the roof.”

  I leaned on the edge of the office desk watching her dead and curled up in the chair. Except she wasn’t dead anymore. Emily’s eyeballs were darting rapidly under her eyelids as she twitched, breathing rapidly, yet quietly.

  I wondered what Emily was dreaming about. Was she dreaming of when we went to Kauai? After three margaritas and superb fish tacos we made love for the first time. Maybe she was dreaming of the rendezvous in San Francisco a month later? By that time the sexual tension and passion had built to a fever pitch, and we made love for the better part of a weekend, only finding time for a Giants game and sourdough bread on Fisherman’s Wharf.

  Or maybe she was having a nightmare.

  I knew as I watched her whatever was good about Emily was gone, and a monster was incubating inside of her. I knew that when she opened her eyes again she would be one of them. I knew all this but still I felt the need to convince myself there was no other way to help her now. Could I shoot her in the head? With the bequeathed gun from my dad, no less.

  Could I possibly do this?

  Her face had turned ghostly white, with no trace of her previously olive European skin. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I assumed they were black as night, and had lost the beautiful blue pigment they once boasted.

  “Remy, she is a monster,” I whispered to myself by way of pep talk.

  Her lithe body had taken on a rigid look, almost skeletal, while still covered in flesh. I fantasized about how she looked naked, mourning the loss of her beautiful body, realizing I would never again hold Emily in the throes of passion.

  “Rem, she is not Emily, she is a fucking monster,” I said aloud.

  All at once Emily stopped twitching and her eyes went still, her body slouched slightly.

  I gripped the revolver my dad had left me in my right hand. It felt slick in my palm, my hands were sweating. The handle was worn smooth; how many times had my dad used this? For what? My first thought was to run out of the office, push something in front of the door to block it and get the guys and—

  Shit, I have to do this.

  I raised the gun up to eye level and deliberately sighted the gun on Emily’s forehead. I used the technique Buell taught me to line up the sight; I was no more than six feet away. I pulled the hammer back until it clicked and took one long, deep breath.

  Emily’s eyes opened.

  They were jet black, and the whites of her eyes were bright red, her lips curled in what looked like a faint smile. Emily cocked her head quickly to the side and she looked at me. Her mouth opened, she exhaled—

  I missed.

  The combination of the shaky, sweaty hand and kick of the gun caused my first shot to go high and to the left of the target. How the fuck did I miss her from six feet away?

  I watched the thing that was no longer Emily rise from the chair awkwardly. She did not use her outstretched arms to lift herself, and fell flat on her face as the chair’s wheels served their purpose. Ease of mobility, it had said it right on the box, I remembered. Those fuckin’ wheels were smooth as silk and even on carpet, glided effortlessly. As a result, not-Emily laid flat on her face, not more than three feet in front of me. She moaned loudly as she slowly lifted her head; then, using her arms more efficiently, she began to rise.

  I didn’t miss.

  The shot struck Emily in the back of her head just above her neck. Blood and brain matter sprayed a pizza platter sized opaque circle on the carpet as the bullet traveled through her skull, and exited her face. She did not scream, twitch, or react in any way other than to drop straight down, face buried in the carpet. With the blood and brain-filled halo surrounding her head on the rug, she appeared an angel of death. Subsequently, I emptied my stomach of its contents. I quickly wiped the bile from my lips and gasped for air. The smell of gunpowder overwhelmed me, and my ears were ringing from the gunfire echo in the small office.

  Thankfully, I do not have an image of Emily’s face blown apart, or her expression as she took a bullet to her brain. Looking back, I am glad I missed the first time. It kept the image of a bullet to her face from my consciousness forever. I didn’t look at what was facing down on the carpet.

  “Buell, Max, I’m okay!” I cried, but they were already in the office and had seen the second shot.

  “I was gonna do it, man, shit, I am so sorry,” Buell said, Glock in one hand, and hugging me around my neck with the other. “I don’t know if I could have done t
hat had I been in your shoes,” he added.

  “We are going to take care of this…um... her…Emily,” Max spoke nervously, reaching to his right. He picked up the bottle of bourbon on the sofa table next to the crushed candy dish, and handed it to me while carefully taking the revolver from my shaking hand. “Here, man, it’s not a solution, but go keep busy. Buell and I got this.”

  I watched Buell grab the jacket from the desk and cover Emily’s head with it. “Max, go rip that fucking car cover off the window—”

  “On my way, Buell!” Max shouted as he sprinted out of the office.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Rem, I am serious,” Buell said as he pushed the bottle of Buffalo Trace into my chest and wrapped my other arm around it. “Have a drink, get some air. Go up on the roof, we will meet you up there in a few minutes, brother.”

  Ed was standing in the garage when I entered, with a somber look on his face that was both comforting and supportive.

  “You need anything, Rem?” he said.

  “Naw, man, go back to sleep, you gotta be gone early tomorrow.”

  “Okay, if you need anything, I am in the Escalade,” Ed added.

  I turned to my left and headed out the door as Max came jogging in and made an exaggerated move to avoid me with the car cover in tow. I walked slowly out of the office and did not look back. I walked through the lobby and into the garage. I looked out the window to my left, and looked at Emily’s Vette, the monsters were still milling about the car.

  “I’ll be on the roof.”

  Chapter 14

  Present Day