I loved how cold the vodka was and loved its paradoxical nature. Despite its icy coolness, it warmed my insides from my gullet all the way down to my stomach. And I knew it wouldn't take long before it would begin to numb my mind too, and I was okay with that. Because even if it was just for a while, I needed to forget about Alex and the Petersons and my former fifth-grade students and what had happened or might have happened to them, everyone else for that matter. And I figured two vodka martinis would do the trick. I rarely drank alcohol and had little tolerance for it. A few beers on the weekend with Alex were about as bawdy as I'd get. I had always been a lightweight when it came to drinking and knew my limitations intimately. I knew I might get a little silly from two vodka martinis, but I wouldn't get drunk. And I definitely didn't want a repeat of my drunken episode at the condo.
Near the end of my first martini, I became self-congratulatory. I lauded myself for how well I had acclimated to the dysfunctional, post-apocalyptic world we now lived in. After all, I knew how to skulk through neighborhood backyards and evade the mindless hordes of infected. And through practice and self-diligence, I had become a master of breaking and entering and a scavenger to boot. I had even devised a clever set of rules for survival in a world dominated by the infected. I followed each rule I'd created with exactitude and meticulousness. I did it because I wanted to stay alive, and I did it because it was in my nature. I'd definitely found my niche in the post-apocalyptic world. I was a survivor.
I noticed the flickering of the first star of the evening to the south, though it could have been a planet reflecting the sun's light. I didn't really know. Somewhere along the way my sips had become small gulps and I had quite the little buzz going. I was feeling pretty wonderful and enjoying myself immensely. I was a little light headed too. The only thing I lamented was the nearly empty second vodka martini mug. I plucked the last surviving olive from the bottom of the mug, popped it into my mouth and let it languish there for a while. Margo was singing about her "Misguided Angel." He was her bad boy, heart of gold lover. She described him as a blend of Gabriel and Lucifer. And she'd love him till the day she died, or so she said. And I couldn't help but think that most of us were indeed a blend of Gabriel and Lucifer. Light and darkness. I knew I was.
And a familiar thought came back to me again like a bad penny. I thought about the moment at Alex's house when I turned and reached for the gun and shot my brother. It was a scene that rewound itself over and over again in my mind, playing endlessly. And a voice within me kept asking the same question that had tormented me ever since that quicksilver moment. Had I shot my brother out of a need for self-preservation? Was it that cold and simple? I could remember being aware that the gun was behind me. But I couldn't recall having had a thought that led me to reach for the gun and use it. Everything seemed to be awareness and instinct. The one thing I was painfully aware of was that Alex didn't factor into my thinking when I reached for the Glock. Not in any way. And that was the source of the pervasive guilt I had been feeling since that day. My shooting of Alex was impersonal. And while it was easy for me to rationalize that Alex wasn't really Alex, but some ghoulish aberration, it didn't alter why I shot him. What drove me that day was fear. I was deathly afraid of what might happen to me and I acted out of a deeply-rooted need to survive, to preserve my life. Alex didn't really factor into the equation. His being infected didn't factor into it either. My only concern was for myself. I may have acted out of instinct, but how can you separate instinct out from who you are. And I speculated to myself in my sudden alcohol-induced clarity, that the instinct to survive was rooted in the darkness of self. I kept telling myself that my actions that day were instinctual as if that might help justify what I'd done. I kept telling myself that I didn't really choose to shoot Alex. It was an instinctual reaction. And how do you control an instinctual reaction? You can't. But the dark voice inside me would have none of it.
I went into the kitchen and fixed myself another vodka martini. What would one more drink hurt? I stood in the darkness of the kitchen and reminded myself to sip my drink, make it last. And I wondered if I'd have another dream about Alex tonight.
Back out on the porch, it occurred to me how reclusive I'd become in the post-apocalyptic world. My only relationships were with a coterie of illusory ghosts—Alex and the people whose homes I now stayed in. They really weren't ghosts though. It's just that their homes and their belongings offered up shadowy traces of who they were. And I could feel their presence even though I knew they weren't really there. But I did feel a kind of kinship with them. They were like family now. And while I visited Julia Courtney's blog daily, I never posted or communicated with anyone. I kept my distance. I hadn't seen a human being in weeks and wasn't bothered by it at all. Even before the world fell apart, I had become a bit of a recluse. The only relationships I had were with my brother and an annual influx of ten year olds from Beacon Heights Elementary. And they were always temporary. I loved the kids, but I also loved that every year they came and went. Eventually, it was as if they never existed. I also steered clear of creating relationships with the other teachers or the administrators at Beacon Heights. I was quite the loner.
Minnie Riperton was serenading me with her sexually provocative rendition of "Inside My Love." I didn't mind. It was beautiful. And Minnie fit right in. She was a ghost too. She died of cancer way back in 1979 at the age of 31. She may have only been here for a few years, but her music kept her essence alive and well. I took a generous sip of the martini and let its essence suffuse me with its golden warmth. And then I thought about Jessie. I blamed the sudden reminiscence on Minnie. Normally, I kept my memories of Jessica Hartley neatly tucked away in the nether regions of my subconscious. No need to resurrect old wounds. But Minnie just wouldn't leave well enough alone. While we're here the whole world is turning, we should be one, fulfilling our yearning. And there was no one I had ever yearned to be one with more than Jessie. Jessie of the bright red hair and freckles and the silky soft skin. Petite and lovely. But my yearning for Jessie had less to do with her loveliness and more to do with the way in which she accepted me without reservation. I even felt comfortable enough with Jessie to open up to her in a way I couldn't with anyone else, including Alex. Jessie was bright and articulate and lovely, but there was a part of me that couldn't understand what it was she saw in me. I suspected she was out of my league, though she didn't seem to think so. But some people can't stand happiness. It's too much of a burden for them, makes them feel uncomfortable. So I found a way to sabotage the relationship. A wild college party and a more-than-willing drunken co-ed. And then, of course, there was one of Jessie's friends who just happened to be at the party. She outed me the very next day. I made a feeble attempt to get Jessie back, but she'd have none of it. And who could blame her?
I took another sip of the martini and felt myself glow inside. And then I had a sudden epiphany. Nothing really profound. I realized that memories are a lot like ghosts, they don't really exist anywhere except in our minds. Like Alex and Jessie. Nothing more than shadowy traces. They weren't here anymore, but I kept them alive and well in my mind. For I was in love with ghosts. Memories and ghosts.
Chapter 5 – The Swimmer
I used Audrey's room for my lookout perch. It offered the best view of the street as it stretched northward. I stood six feet back from the window and inched my binoculars up from their resting spot on my chest up to my eyes. There were three of them across the street hunched down beside some white azalea bushes, their attention focused up the street. With the morning sun directly in their eyes, there was little chance they'd see me. It's why I always chose houses that faced west and why I always conducted my lookout just after the sun had risen above the Wasatch Mountains to the east. But there was something off about this threesome, something that didn't quite track.
The infected never stood around waiting for their prey. They could never stand still, and stealth was never their strong suit. Two of them were likely from the fi
rst generation of infected. They stood on either side of a young male. They were both middle-aged, a man and a woman. They had dark dusty-gray, emaciated faces, and their skin was puckered and deeply furrowed. The male wore a tattered dirty-white shirt and a skinny black tie that was twisted over his shoulder. His shirt was untucked and stippled by a spattering of dried dark brown blood. He teetered side to side with his arms held up like a wrestler about to engage an opponent. The female on the other side looked as if she had been through the wars. She was naked with dirt smeared over much of her body. She had a deep crescent-shaped gash on her upper thigh, blackish from where the blood had congealed. It looked like her infection had come from a bite on her forearm where you could see the perfect shape of crusted bite marks. It also appeared as if she had been recently struck in the face as there was a spidery web of thin raspberry veins rising into her gray cheek just below her puffy left eye. And like the middle-aged male, she couldn't stand still. She constantly shifted her feet like someone needing to urinate, and her head was tilted awkwardly to the side and shook with a palsied movement.
A young twenty-something male stood between them. He held his arms spread out in front of them, holding them back as if they were a pair of overly eager children ready to run out on a playground. He displayed a control over the other two I'd never seen before. And he hardly looked infected. I adjusted the zoom to get a closer look. His skin was whitish gray but not tightly drawn at all. And there was only a faint hint of veins and arteries beneath his smooth ash-white skin. He was tall and lean, built like a swimmer. His hair was whisker short. He wore a long pair of khaki shorts that rode down on his hips and covered his knees. He also wore tennis shoes without socks. His eyes weren't jaundiced at all. He had sharp bluish-green eyes and a long slender nose with tightly drawn nostrils. Dark patches of dried blood teared down from the corners of his mouth and trailed down onto his bare chest. His arms were long and slender with sharply-defined lean muscles and tightly corded veins.
I had never seen an infected quite like him. His eyes were intensely focused yet his physical demeanor calm. He displayed a patience the infected simply didn't have. From the moment they turned, the infected were relentlessly frenetic and incapable of stillness or inertia. They might move slowly at times, but they never stopped moving, and their flight or fight response mechanism was in constant overdrive. They were ravenously hungry and insatiable, and their demeanor was like that of a rabid dog. And other than some ancient, instinctual drive to feed, they had no discernible cognitive abilities. But this young male seemed cool and calculating and he was obviously in command of the other two, something I'd never seen before.
Just then I heard a brief, somewhat muted scraping sound, and then I heard it again, repeating every second or so. Keeping an eye on the threesome, I moved meticulously to my left toward the girl's bed to get an angled view up the street. He was about a half block away, shuffling slowly down the street, a slender man with tousled dark hair in his mid-to-late thirties, wearing striped pajamas and a single bedroom slipper on his left foot. He had the other slipper in his right hand and held it up in the air in much the same way Audrey had held up the Bratz doll in the picture. He seemed fascinated by the slipper. His face had a pasty light gray complexion and was frozen in a display of perplexity as though he had forgotten what the slipper was for and the answer was beyond him. The skin on his forehead was pinched together, forming vertical worry lines just above the bridge of his nose, and his mouth was wide open and his jaw slack.
The man was obviously infected and probably midway through the second stage, although there were no bite marks or scratches visible. And just as he ran his free hand through his hair, a terrible piercing scream rippled through the morning calm, followed by a shrill, high-pitched quavering sound that was anything but human. It was the young male. I'd never heard a sound like that come from someone infected before or anyone else for that matter. But the man in his pajamas never broke his shuffling stride, and his attention remained focused on the slipper he held in his right hand. He was studying it diligently when the young, infected male speared into him, lifting him right out of his slipper and into the air. The man landed harshly on the asphalt, his pajama shirt riding up onto his chest with the young male all over him. The Swimmer tore savagely into the man's throat, causing small geysers of bright red blood to sprinkle onto the pavement.
The middle-aged male arrived next and bit right through the man's pajamas and into the flesh of his inner thigh. The female trailed behind, loping awkwardly across the street, favoring her injured leg. When she arrived, she landed heavily on her knees and buried her teeth into the man's bared stomach, fiercely twisting her head back and forth, tearing into the man's skin and stomach lining. The man never changed his expression. He seemed as puzzled as ever but had somehow managed to hold onto the enigmatic slipper which he continued to hold up in the air.
This was the first time I'd actually witnessed an attack and feeding. I'd seen them on the internet many times, but they never quite seemed real. They had always seemed distant and had little to do with me. But this was close. Just a hair's breadth away. And I found I couldn't breathe or move. I stood pinioned to the floor and watched them tear the man apart as if they were a pack of animals feeding. I couldn't look away. I was mesmerized and fearful at the same time.
And an irrational part of my mind kept trying to convince me that if I didn't move or breathe, I'd be perfectly safe. It was like one of those paralyzing dreams where you couldn't move a muscle or breathe even though your very life depended on it, all because there seemed to be some kind of irreparable disconnect between your brain and your body. I knew I needed to breathe. I just needed to get my body to go along with the idea. And after a few moments, I forced myself to breathe. I began by inhaling short jabs of air, taking a little more air in with each succeeding breath, anything to get more oxygen into my lungs. But even then I was afraid I was making too much noise and they might hear me.
Out on the street, the man's body began to shake violently as his nervous system went into shock. The female had found the man's intestines and had pulled them out and was now greedily devouring them. Blood dribbled down her chin and her eyes were wide with excitement. The young male, fresh blood dripping from his mouth and chin, was standing now looking down at the man as he bled out. Next to the man's neck and head, a large pool of blood had collected on the pavement and continued to spread outward in a widening circle.
Mercifully, the man stopped shaking before a last expulsion of air left his body and the arm that held his slipper fell to the pavement as his body relaxed. The Swimmer reared his head back, raised his arms up and let out a terrifying howl with the same strident trilling sound as before while his companions continued to feed on the man's carcass.
Then I became aware of the moans. They were coming from up the street. A desperate wailing, rising in intensity, coming closer. I focused the binoculars northward and spotted them about a block and a half away. There were a lot of them, maybe sixty or so. They moved hypnotically, though with great urgency, drawn by the quavering screams. They stumbled relentlessly forward, a ragged army of clumsy marionettes. There didn't appear to be any runners amongst them.
Even from this distance, I could sense the intensity of their insatiable longing. I took a deep breath and did my best to compose myself. I figured I had maybe fifteen minutes before they'd be here.
But before I could move, I was paralyzed by a sudden crazy notion, or more accurately, a visual memory. I suddenly remembered that the young male had sprinted across the street to tackle the man in his pajamas. But I knew that couldn't be. The infected couldn't run full out like that. I still had a slight hangover from the night before and wondered if my mind was slightly off kilter. But I knew I hadn't imagined it. He had run across the street like an athlete, smooth and agile. I was sure of it. I played with the memory for a few moments, then realized I'd better get the hell out of there.
I drew a deep breath and duck
ed down out of sight and made my way out of the bedroom and down the stairs and into the kitchen. My backpack was on the table already packed except for the binoculars, my sunglasses, my Diamondbacks cap, and my miniature baseball bat. I quickly slipped into my hiking shoes and made sure to double knot the laces. I removed the binocular straps from around my neck and wrapped the binoculars and the baseball bat in dish towels and fit them snugly into the backpack with the rest of my things. I slipped my arms into the backpack and tightened the straps so it fit snug against my body. Then I quietly engaged the front buckle. The snugger the fit, the easier it was for me to move fast. I had begun using the dish towels and the tight packing to help muffle any sounds from the backpack.
I tightened the chums on my sunglasses and put my baseball cap on. I tested the bat a few times to make sure it was snug enough but still easy enough to remove if needed. I thought about taking the Glock out but decided against it—only if I had no other choice. I kept it wrapped along with the extra magazine in one of the outer pouches for easy access. I also thought about turning the air conditioner on to mask the sound of opening the back door but decided against it. If I turned it on this early, it would likely be the only air conditioner on in the neighborhood. I didn't know if the infected would notice, but I wasn't going to take any chances. I moved to the back door and pressed my hand against it to hold the door firm within the jamb. Then I turned the doorknob incrementally to minimize any possible sounds. I was hoping they were too preoccupied in their feeding frenzy to pay any attention to any slight non-ambient sounds. Very carefully, I edged the door open just enough to fit my body through and then I stepped out onto the cement porch.
I always felt safer and more confident when I was out in the open in backyards. It had become my realm. A rush of adrenaline raced through my body, jacking up my energy. Amazing how in one moment you can be paralyzed by fear, and in the next be energized by it. I had five more minutes or more before the pack of infected would arrive. On any other day, I would have climbed over the fence to the next house and headed north in the direction of my target area, but with the infected feeding out on the street and the other infected headed this way, I knew I needed to put some distance between us.
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