by A. J. Brown
I realized as I stashed the drugs away that I wasn’t ready to die. I was getting meds to try and fight off the sickness. I didn’t think it would work, but I had to try, right? I needed to live. What if Bobby and Jeanette were still out there? What if they were looking for me? It had been extremely foolish of me to leave the safety of the house, but maybe…maybe if I could make it back with the meds, things might be okay. And even if I died, at least I would have Humphrey there to comfort me.
The sneeze was as sudden as the longing for my little stuffed traveling partner was. Snot and phlegm shot out of my mouth and nose. I inhaled deeply, and several more sneezes came. I tried to stifle them, but still, there was a noise with each sneeze. After the fit subsided, I heard the shuffling feet from outside the pharmacy door. I scanned the back part of the area for anything that could keep me from firing either of my guns. Sure, I could have used old Ox’s butt again, but swinging the shotgun with the arm as stiff as it was didn’t seem feasible.
What I found was a broom. That’s all. It was an old wooden variety, the bristles well worn. I grabbed it and broke the broom head off on one of the counters. It made a loud crack that seemed to echo in the room. By the time I looked up, the little girl stood in front of the half door. She groaned or growled or mumbled. I don’t know, but she sounded angry.
“Hey there, little girl,” I said. She looked to be eight, maybe nine. I thought of Humphrey, of the voice I heard the day before. That girl had sounded about the same age as the one in front of me.
She growled and bumped against the door hard. She reached a stiff arm out that seemed to creak when she moved it.
Deep breaths wheezed in my chest, and that tickle came back in my nose. I stepped forward, the broom handle raised over my head. My scratchy throat only got worse as I swallowed hard.
The girl tried to break through the door, the one arm outstretched with blood crusted under the nails. Her eyes were cataract white and seemed to glow in the gray of the building.
“I’m sorry.” I swung the handle down on her head as hard as I could. She stumbled back. If she had been alive, it would have dazed her and knocked her to the ground. She was far from alive, and though it seemed to daze her, she stumbled forward, a howl in her throat and black blood oozing down the center of her forehead. Again, I swung the handle, knocking her back. Then I opened the half door before she could step forward again.
I was vaguely aware of the pain in my shoulder but not enough to lessen the force of the blows. The next swing was like a baseball bat, coming across and catching her in the side of the head. She toppled to the floor. I brought a boot down on her throat. Still, her jaws chomped at me. A moment later, the jagged end of the broomstick jutted from one eye socket, and she moved no more.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated.
My breaths came in wheezing gasps, and my eyes itched. A sneeze came, and snot bubbled from my nose. I wiped it on the shirt, went back to the pharmacy, and grabbed my pack and old Ox. I scrounged about a little more back there, found a shoulder brace and arm sling among the braces and crutches. I pulled it from the packaging and tucked it in the center pouch of the bag.
Out in the store, I pilfered the few remaining water bottles. There were some chips and, holy cow, a can of Beanie Weenies. I drank down one full bottle of water, let the coolness of it relieve the scratch in my throat and quench my thirst.
I caught a glimpse of the dead girl, and my heart began to ache not only for her but for my little stuffed buddy and the girl in my head that owned her. That guilt resurfaced, and I thought of Bobby. Would I have left Bobby alone in an unfamiliar house with the dead walking around outside while I went off to die? No. Never. But I had left Humphrey, my traveling companion those few weeks. I hated myself. In my mind, I could hear her—because that’s what she was, a girl—crying. I could feel her fear as the dead surrounded the house and threatened to bust down the door. And I hadn’t bothered locking up, so getting in wouldn’t be all that hard for a rotter that managed to make it up the steps.
Before leaving the pharmacy, I checked behind the counters. There had to be—and there was—a weapon. It was nothing more than a steel bar that someone had placed back there, something you would use for leverage on a lug wrench, but it was sturdy and hard and would probably only take one shot to take out any of the dead if they got too close.
As I had before, I hugged close to the buildings on the way out. In the parking lot, blocking my way to the road, stood an emaciated rotter. Skin hung off his body as if he had been a huge man at one time and had lost a full person’s worth of weight. His head was bald, and he held that blue/gray tint of a person who had asphyxiated. His jaw hung slack, and the steps he took were nothing more than toe drags along the ground. There were deep grooves along his face where he had been scratched. I ran toward him, my knee and ankle no longer hurting like they did a day earlier, my pack heavy on my shoulders.
His skull ruptured with a loud CRACK, and he collapsed to the ground. Very little blood spilled from the gash in his head. Later on, I would think about that slight bit of sludge that leaked from the wound and wonder how long he had been dead. I would wonder about the longevity of the deads’ afterlife and if all the living had to do was wait them out until they finally rotted away.
That was a subject to think about for later, and if there was going to be a later, I had to hurry. The mass of dead seemed to have grown since going into the pharmacy. How many were there now? Forty? Fifty? A hundred? I always thought one was one too many. In this case, I faced a horde of shambling, stumbling zombies and if they… The good thing about being alive during this…this…apocalypse is you could run a lot faster than they could. Even on a bum leg. Many of them turned to me, their groans loud. I could hear the hunger in them. So many dead voices all at once. It was like cattle being led out to the pasture. It was as if they knew a meal stood before them, and they wanted it. And they were still pretty fast.
I ran, and I didn’t break the one rule you always see getting broke in horror movies: looking back. No, I ran straight ahead, passed a car where a woman reached out for me. Her head cocked to one side when I hit her. She slumped against the car. I didn’t wait to see if she fell or if she was dead. At the road, I darted across the overpass.
Being sick didn’t help me though. My breaths came in sharp bursts and sounded like weak whistles in my chest. I reached the long, dirt drive and turned. That’s when I looked back. I had thought there were maybe a hundred of the dead behind me. I thought wrong. They seemed to come from everywhere, as if someone rang the dinner bell and I was the main course. And unlike me, they weren’t slowing down.
I ran up the road and wished I were young again. In the yard, I saw a rotter in all its glory come from around the corner of the house. She was an older lady, her hair somewhat blue and gray and matted, not one tooth in her mouth. Blood caked along her chin and the front of her moomoo. I didn’t bother with the steel bar. The bullet split her skull, and she crumpled.
I took the steps two by two and reached the door. For a moment, I thought the handle wouldn’t work, and at first, it didn’t. Then I realized I turned it the wrong way. Looking back, I could see them on the road. Some of them had already reached the dirt driveway.
The door came open, and I hurried inside. I slammed it, locked the knob, and dropped my pack to the floor. I ran to the couch, pushed it in front of the door.
Then I grabbed Humphrey…
You came back, she said. Always a she. Never, ever a he.
“Yes, I came back. I told you I would.”
I thought you were lying.
Tears touched the corners of my eyes, and I pulled the bear from my chest. “I was.”
She said nothing.
“But I came back. And I promise, I’ll never leave you behind again.”
It was all in my head, but Humphrey felt warm. Or maybe it was me. A fever had taken hold by then, and the weakness of being sick settled into my muscles and bones, and I could fe
el the rattle of death in my chest.
The thump on the steps outside brought me from the embrace of a stuffed animal. I looked to the door and hoped it would hold against the horde outside. I grabbed the pack and the shotgun, and Humphrey and took them up the stairs. I ran back and moved the coffee table and a couple of nice chairs in front of the stairwell, even pulling them up the first couple of steps for good measure.
At the top of the steps, I looked around, saw nothing I could use to barricade that portion of the floor.
I’m scared, Humphrey said in her small voice.
“Me too.”
In the boy’s room, I closed the door and set Humphrey on the bed. The dresser went back in front of the door, and I moved the stuff from off the end table next to the bed. My guns—I only had three of them; the others lay near my truck off the ramp heading out of town—went onto it, loaded and ready. I cracked Ox open. Two shells. Maybe one of them would be for me.
We sat and waited. In the meantime, I took an antibiotic and a pain reliever and then pulled the sling and brace from my pack. I slid the shirt off and read the instructions on how to use the brace then slid it up my arm, put the flap over my shoulder, and put the Velcro ends together. The next part went around my chest, where I again connected two Velcro ends, holding my shoulder in place. The pressure of the brace relieved some of the pain and kept my arm from sagging.
With the shirt back on, one sleeve with no arm in it, I pulled a chair to the window. Part of the roof extended out from there. After a moment, I realized that it wasn’t a roof but more of a patio area, a means of escape if I needed it. I longed for a rifle as I watched the dead approach the house.
I sat quietly, watching from that window, all the way up to when the sun began to go down. Some of the dead had turned course and went back up the road. Others stood idly, as if they slept on their feet. I went to the bed, lay down beside Humphrey. My head was in a daze, and the room spun. I reached for a pistol and set it on my chest.
What’s that for? Humphrey asked in her soft child’s voice.
“Just in case,” I said but didn’t tell her in case of what.
I closed my eyes and prepared to die…
Ten Weeks (?) After It All Stared, Give or Take a Few Days
I never liked taking medicine. Waiting out a cold or sweating out a fever seemed natural to me. Drugs didn’t. They were dangerous things, addictive things. That never stopped Jeanette from being on me to take my meds when I really needed to. It was just one of the many things she was good about.
As I lay dying in some kid’s bed in some other family’s house, I heard her talking to me, telling me, “Take your meds, Hank.”
I sat up each time, even as the weight of the sickness pushed hard on my chest and the snot grew thicker in my nasal cavities, and even as I spat up chunky bits of yellow crap and the fever sent me to alternating hot flashes and cold spells. I took the meds. There always seemed to be water nearby, and I didn’t seem to fumble with the caps to the pill bottles. It was like she was there with me in that house, trying to keep me alive.
My breath rattled in my chest and whistled from my mouth. The pain in my head kept me from moving too much. My eyes constantly watered, and I don’t ever recall getting up to go to the bathroom.
“Take your medicine, Hank.”
I opened my eyes, and there she stood, a picture of beauty, an air about her that glowed even in the darkness of the room. She held the pills out to me, the water bottle in the other hand. She smiled and leaned down, gave me a kiss with her angelic lips.
“You can’t die, Hank,” she said.
“Nothing I can do about it,” I said—I think.
Her hands were warm on my face, soft and smooth, and I relished the way they felt. “You have to live, Sweetheart,” she said. “Bobby needs you. He can’t lose us both.”
Those words woke me with a start but not before she started to change. My eyes snapped open, and I stared at the ceiling above me. The room was gray, not dark. The sun cast its rays through opened blinds. I turned my head to one side. The pill bottles sat on the end table, the water bottles nearly empty. Humphrey sat on the pillow next to me, her eyes glassy but somehow holding life in them.
The guns were not on the end table, and the one I had been holding was not on the bed. They all sat on the dresser across the room.
“Humphrey,” I said, my voice scratchy and sounding nothing like it normally did.
She didn’t respond, but I think I saw her pink, sewn-on mouth stretch into a wider smile.
“I’m still alive,” I said. “I didn’t die. I didn’t become…”
And what were the words of my dream? Was that what it was? A dream? They came back to me. Jeanette holding my face in her soft, warm hands and telling me, Bobby needs you. He can’t lose us both.
I sat up. Muscles and bones creaked and popped, and my entire body felt incredibly weak. How long had I been out of it? I didn’t know, but the dream came back. Something was wrong with it. She spoke those words and then…then she changed. Her beautiful, blond hair became brittle; her skin went from white to gray, and her face—her always beautiful face—changed. Her lips cracked, her eyes faded to milky white orbs that sunk back into her skull, and there was blood on her face and she had…
A fear so sudden came over me, and I wanted to bolt from that house and run to Greenville if I had to. Strong and painful and real. I stood but fell down before I could gain my legs.
“No,” I said over and over as I struggled to stand, made it up, and then paced the floor slowly, letting my legs adjust to moving again. With my body weak, I wouldn’t be able to leave that day. I knew that, but I didn’t care. I had to get out of there.
At the window, I looked down at the yard, the street beyond it. The beating of my heart stopped momentarily. What had been a couple dozen rotters when I first arrived at that house was now a swarm of them. They shuffled about aimlessly, but it was clear to me that they knew I was there.
“We’re trapped,” I said.
After watching them for several minutes, I turned back to Humphrey. My boots lay on the floor, my socks tucked into them. The guns lay on the dresser with nowhere near enough ammo to get me out of there in one piece.
“We’re going to have to make a break for it, Humphrey.”
She said nothing.
I sat down on the bed, slipped the socks and boots on, then grabbed one of the guns from the dresser—a nine millimeter with a full clip. I moved the dresser from in front of the door as quietly as possible, but it still sounded too loud in my ears as it scraped across the floor.
With the gun out in front of me, I opened the door. Nothing awaited me. Down the hall, I walked until I reached the bathroom. I relieved my bladder and turned to leave. The bathtub was clean, and there was a bar of soap on a small dish in the corner of it.
There was a small closet next to the entrance. I opened it. Two shelves of neatly folded towels sat there. Above them was a shelf that held washcloths. I took a towel and washcloth and looked at the bathtub. Surely there would be little water, if any, still left in the pipes, but it was worth a try.
I turned one knob. There was a hollow clunk from deep in one of the pipes. A dribble of brownish water fell from the faucet just before it seemed to spit, cough, and clear its proverbial throat. Then a stream of wonderfully clear water spilled from it. It was cool, but I didn’t care—it had been so long since I had a bath, since I smelled like something other than a sweating mass of flesh. I was quick about getting my clothes off, and then, just for peace of mind, I locked the bathroom door.
The soap was Irish Spring. I took in its heady aroma. I would love to say I took a long bath, that I leaned back and let the water fill the tub, that I closed my eyes and just enjoyed the moment. But I can’t say that. No, there wouldn’t be enough water for that, and I knew it. I was quick about washing, rinsing off the suds, and then getting out of the tub before the water completely ran out. I didn’t imagine the water woul
d last long, and I was right—just as I went to shut it off, the steady stream lessoned until it was nothing more than just drops dripping into the tub.
Being clean was one thing—if the dead managed to get me, at least their meal wouldn’t taste so bad—but what I wanted was to get out of that bathroom, check the rest of the house for any means of escape.
I toweled off and got dressed, including putting the shoulder harness back in place. I went back to what was clearly the parents’ room and pulled out another pair of jeans and a shirt and even a pair of underwear. Everything was loose, but I used a belt to hold the pants up and then dug around for some clean socks. Leaving the bedroom, I held the gun out in front of me, ready to take the head off of anyone, dead or alive, that could have been there. Down the hall, I stopped at the top of the steps. The door was closed; the couch still sat in front of it. The chairs and coffee table still lay cluttered at the bottom of the stairs.
Back up the hall and in the young boy’s bedroom, I gathered what little gear I had left. There were still some pain meds and antibiotics. I took an Amoxicillin and followed it with two painkillers. My shoulder still hurt but nothing like before. The swelling had gone down, but still, I knew it had been hurt every time I moved.
I put as much in the pack as I could then went to the baseball bat rack on the wall. There were a few good, wooden Louisville Sluggers, but I opted for a thirty-eight-ounce aluminum bat, the barrel nothing more than a lean, straight pipe. I could swing a bat, I thought, better than I could swing old Ox. It dawned on me that an eight-year-old boy probably couldn’t swing a bat that heavy all that well, but it had been in the rack with others, a collection maybe. I nodded. Definitely a boy’s collection, and one day, if the world hadn’t died, the kid would have been able to swing that bat and probably swing it well.
Before leaving the room, I placed Humphrey in the pack, this time shoving her a little further down and tucking her arms into the bag before zipping up.