by Wise, A. R.
“God damn it, Red!” Porter’s rage intensified, and he walked halfway across the road. He stopped, and then nearly fell backward, shocked by his own anger. Red was pointing the shotgun at him, the barrel wavering in his unsteady grip. Porter knew it was only a matter of time before his intensifying rage compelled him to attack his brother – to spread the disease the way the rest of the infected did. He couldn’t deny the growing desire to ‘help’.
“Red,” said Porter as he took a step away.
“Yeah?” asked his brother, the gun still leveled.
“I’m sorry, for everything. I love you so much – always have. I know we used to fight, and I’m sorry.”
Red forced a smile, and said, “We fought like brothers.”
Porter nodded, and took another step back. He smiled as the tears dripped from his chin, compelled both by disease and despair. “Yeah, like brothers. Always like brothers.”
“Porter, wait,” said Red, but Porter refused. He turned and fled into the corn field as Red yelled after him, “I love you.”
Day Three – 12:41 am
Red’s despair buckled him. He dropped to his knees in the street as his brother disappeared behind the stalks of dead corn.
“Red, come on,” said June as she hurried to his side. She pulled at his arm, but he refused to stand. “I know you’re upset, but we’ve got to move. We can’t stay here. We don’t know how long before he comes back. Red, get up.”
“We can’t…” Red tried to compose himself, but failed.
“Yes we can,” said June as she continued to pull at his arm. “Come on.”
“No, we can’t leave,” said Red as he forced himself to stand. He pulled away from her, and blinked hard to clear the tears. He let out a huff of a breath, and then said, “We need to stay here for the night.”
“What?” she asked. “Are you nuts? We’ve got to get as far from here as we can. You heard Porter. Like he said, he’ll come back for us when he changes. We need to be as far from…”
“No,” said Red. “We need the supplies. It’d be dumb to leave. If Porter was here – if he was normal, he’d agree. We have to protect the supplies, and they’re scattered all over the place.”
“But he’s going to come back looking for us.”
“We can find a place to hide from him,” he said. “And if he finds us, then…” He raised the shotgun to emphasize the backup plan.
“You’ll shoot him?” she asked skeptically.
“Or you will. Point is, we need those supplies, and we don’t have time to get them now. From what we’ve seen, this disease affects people quick. He’ll come back here looking for us. If we can find a spot to hide for now, then we can wait until he leaves, and then get our stuff and get out of here.”
“Where are you planning to hide?”
“Maybe there’s an attic, or a crawlspace. We can ask the guy inside.”
“The insane guy?” she asked.
Red wiped tears on his sleeve. He was trying hard to focus on anything other than Porter. “What makes you think he’s insane?”
“He was hiding in his own garbage,” said June. “If he’s not nuts, then he’s damn close.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is we need someplace to hide, and he’ll know where to find one.” Red headed for the house, but June stopped him.
“Are you okay?” She tried to ask with compassion, but sounded leery instead.
“No.” He moved past her, focused on the immediate task at hand – doing his best to mimic how Porter would act.
Red almost climbed over the car to enter the house through the sizeable hole in the front, but then chose the door instead. He climbed over debris, and yelled for the owner, “Hey, buddy, where are you?” He squinted to see through the haze created by the headlights and the car exhaust.
“Get outta my damn house,” said the man, although Red couldn’t see him. He sounded far off.
Red didn’t want to cross the bodies stacked in the hall. There was too much blood, which meant a chance at contracting the disease. He shouted, his voice challenged by the running automobile stuck halfway through the living room, “We need a place to hide.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“You should hide too. The…”
“I said get out!”
June came in behind Red, crunching her way through the mess on the floor. “Come on. There’s a loft in the barn. We can hide there.”
“We can’t leave him. What if Porter comes looking for us?”
“That guy hid from us all night. He’ll be fine.”
Red nodded in agreement, and then motioned to the running car stuck halfway in the house. “We need to shut that off before it starts a fire.”
“How?” she asked. “Everything’s covered in blood.”
Red used the butt of his shotgun to bang on the driver’s side window. The first strike didn’t do it, but his second managed to shatter the glass. He peered inside at the wreck of a human being Porter had left behind. The man’s face was a grotesque mash of blood, teeth, and bone. Red cringed as he reached inside and carefully turned the car off. He pocketed the keys.
“Let’s go around and get the keys to all the cars,” said Red.
“Good idea, but we need to hurry. Porter’ll be back any second.”
They hurried to each of the vehicles that’d descended upon the farmhouse, and collected the keys. The only vehicle that was still in good shape was a Subaru Outback parked outside of the bedroom window.
They absconded to the barn. June led the way, pointing to the loft. “There, look.”
There was a water reservoir on a trailer parked under the loft, and various farm equipment strewn about with the same care as the garbage inside the house. The loft didn’t look much cleaner than the ground.
“We can climb up on this,” said June as she started to mount the reservoir.
Red followed, but then paused when he saw the writing on the side of the plastic reservoir. “Hey, look. There’s instructions on how much bleach to use to purify the water.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” said June, uninterested.
Red glanced back towards the house, recalling the fact they found bleach the day before. “Did Porter write this?”
June hesitated, but then nodded. “Yeah. He said it might be dirty water, and that it needed to be purified. Come on, stop wasting time. Help me get up there.”
“Did he write this for us?”
“He said it was for whoever found it.” June stood precariously atop the curved reservoir, balancing as she reached up to the loft. She started to push aside tools and rusted chunks of metal to get a good handhold.
Red scowled as he contemplated his brother’s act. He traced the letters with his finger, and glanced back at the house. “Do you think he was planning on…” He didn’t finish the thought.
“Planning on what?” she asked.
“Nothing. Never mind.” He got on the reservoir, and then helped her clear away a spot on the loft’s edge so that she could climb up.
Once up, she reached down for him. “Here, take my hand.”
“It’s okay, I can get up on my own.” Red easily hoisted himself up and sat beside her. There wasn’t much room. The loft’s space had long ago been filled with farm implements, old signs, and bizarre collectables. Everything was dulled by a layer of dust and cobwebs.
Red and June began moving junk aside, piling it where they could and creating a wall at the edge of the loft to prevent others from guessing anyone could hide there. Eventually they carved a meager dent, enough space to sit beside one another. It was uncomfortable, but safe. They left a hole in the wall of garbage to see through, so they could spy on the garage and what little of the driveway they could see from their vantage.
June slid her hand into his, squeezed, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I know how much you loved him.”
Red appreciated her kindness, but still
rejected it. He let go of her hand and said, “Not now.”
“Okay.” Their conversation ended, and she began shifting to get comfortable. She rolled up the blanket, and set it against a lawnmower chassis to use as a pillow. “Want to try and lay down?”
“No, I’m fine. You should try to get…”
Red was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the gravel driveway. He tensed, but tried to stay silent while readying the shotgun. It was too dark to see June, but he knew she’d heard the footsteps too. She was as quiet and stiff as a corpse beside him.
Porter’s unmistakable growl called out, “Anyone here?”
Red gazed through the mess of garbage and at the barn’s entrance. The muted glow of the aurora borealis was broken by a thick, approaching shade. Gravel crunched with each slow step his brother took.
“I can help you.” Porter stood at the entrance of the barn, peering in. “You here, Red?”
Porter went into the barn, and then looked up at the loft. Red’s finger was on the trigger, the barrel aimed down at his brother, ready to do what he had to.
Porter’s gaze drifted to a different part of the barn. He pulled aside a rusted gas station sign. It clattered to the ground, as loud as thunder.
“Come on out, Red. Let me help. It’s better this way, I promise. You’ll feel better if you let me help you.”
Porter continued to search the barn, but was hindered by the piles of junk that littered the place. He finally gave up, and went back out to the driveway. A flash of green reflected off a blade in his hand.
They listened to his footsteps crunching through the gravel, growing distant until he went into the house. June breathed a sigh of relief, and then whispered, “What’re we going to do?”
“Stay here for now. Wait until he leaves.”
“What if he comes back?”
“If he finds us, I’ll shoot him.”
“Are you sure you can?”
Red misunderstood her concern. “Yeah, the shotgun’s loaded, and I’ve got more shells in my pocket.”
“No, I mean can you do it? Can you shoot your brother?”
Red considered it, and said, “If he makes me, I will.”
“How long are we going to wait here?”
“Until we’re sure he’s gone.”
“What if he doesn’t leave?” she asked. “What if he stays all night?”
“If he’s not gone by morning, then we’ll figure something out.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his whisper harshened by frustration. “We’ll figure it out.”
Their quiet conversation was interrupted by a scream from inside the house. It was quick and loud, and the following silence was terrifying. Red knew it wasn’t Porter’s scream, which meant his brother had found the man hiding inside. The stranger was likely a victim now, stabbed and infected by Porter.
Red felt guilty for not trying to save the home owner, but he also had an odd sense of relief that Porter wasn’t the one screaming in pain. If the little, dirty man had killed Porter, Red would’ve been devastated. Even though Porter was dangerous, Red didn’t want him to die.
June and Red waited in silence, listening as Porter searched the area. They heard him leave the house, circle the barn, and then come back to the driveway.
“Red,” shouted Porter into the fields surrounding the house, “let me help you.”
Red stayed silent, his shotgun aimed at the open barn door, waiting for his brother to come back in. He never did. Eventually, Porter was joined by the short, fat home owner, and they walked to the road, out of Red’s sight.
After a long, tense wait, June asked, “Should we leave?”
“No,” said Red. “Let’s wait until the sun comes up, and then we’ll get out of here.”
“Do you really think it’s safe to be out in the daylight?”
He considered it, and said, “I don’t think it’ll ever be safe again.”
Day Three – 6:11 am
Despite her insistence that she wouldn’t get any sleep, June eventually managed to doze off. Red stayed up, afraid to sleep and tortured by the loss of his brother. He spent most of the night trying not to cry, and recounting the numerous, foolish fights he’d had with Porter over the course of their lives. He thought about the year after their biggest fight, when Red refused to take any of Porter’s numerous calls.
A lost year he’d never get back.
The sun didn’t announce itself brilliantly. Instead, orange melded with a fading green aurora, and eventually overtook it. Red considered waking June, but chose to let her sleep. However, a nearby rooster had a different plan for the start of her morning. It loudly pronounced the break of day, startling June awake.
She cursed, and sat up while saying, “Wow. I must’ve dozed off. What time is it?”
“I’m not sure. Early.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You can sleep now if you want. I’ll stay up.”
“No, I’ll be okay.”
“Did Porter come back?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
There was a brief silence between them as she shifted to get comfortable in the tight space. “Should we get going?”
He nodded, and gave an unenthusiastic, “Yeah.”
“Give me the gun. I’ll cover you as you get down.”
Red and June traded the shotgun back and forth as they climbed down from the loft, and then down from the top of the reservoir. A light fog hung over the tops of the cornfield across the street. It wasn’t cold, but Red shivered none-the-less, as if his body craved movement. He felt sick to his stomach, and his limbs began to ache in dire need of a stretch.
“Let’s stay close to each other,” said June.
They walked to the wrecked truck and Renault, and inspected the damage. The impact had driven the truck’s backend up onto the planters and into the wall, breaking the window and cracking the siding. Scavenged items from the back of the truck had been scattered around, but there was less of it than Red expected. He looked around quizzically, and then spotted letters scrawled on the siding of the house.
‘I LOVE YOU, RED. KEEP JUNE SAFE. DON’T COME LOOKING FOR ME.’
“What the fuck is this?” asked Red before reading the message out loud.
“Hey, look over here,” said June as she walked towards the back door of the house. “He packed supplies for us.”
Red saw the neatly stacked supplies, and realized what his brother had been planning. “He was going to leave us here.”
June looked as if she was about to argue, but then considered the evidence. She glanced back at the barn where Porter had left a message on the side of the water reservoir. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
Red didn’t know if he should be angry, sad, or appreciative. He picked through the supplies in the cloth grocery bag, and then bitterly turned away. “Porter, you fucker.” He kicked a stone, sending it skittering into the back yard where it collided with a metal piece of junk. Red walked away and stared at the sky, composing himself as he came to grips with his brother’s planned betrayal.
June went to the truck, and began to collect the supplies that’d spilled to the driveway. She found something that interested her, and stuffed it into her pocket.
“He was going to go to Texas by himself,” said Red.
“Looks that way.” She seemed oddly detached, consumed by some other concern. She had her hand on her pocket, hiding something as she stared into space. Whatever she’d discovered vexed her.
“What’s wrong?” asked Red. “What’d you find?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’ll… It’s nothing.”
“What is it?” he pressed.
“I’ll tell you later.” She quickly changed the subject. “Are you mad at him for this?”
“I don’t know if I’m pissed at him, or… I guess sad. Sad that he’
d want to leave us – that he didn’t think he’d need us.”
“I doubt that’s it,” she said. “He wanted to protect you, that’s all. As pissed as I want to be at him right now, I know he just wanted you to be safe. Ever since this started, he’s been trying to keep you safe.”
“And abandoning me here was supposed to keep me safe?”
She nodded. “He didn’t know we were followed. They must’ve surprised him before he could leave. He left us food, and we had plenty of water in the barn. This would’ve been as good a place as any to hide out for a while. Still could be.” She looked expectantly at him, uncertain how he’d respond.
“Well we’re not staying here,” said Red. “What if that dirty little, Danny Devito looking fucker comes back? This is his house. Maybe after they get infected, they wander around for a while and then go home. We don’t know what they do.”
“Fine,” she said. “Then what’s the plan?”
Red looked at her as if she should already know, and then his glare softened. He almost felt ashamed as he said, “We go to Texas. We find Mary and the boys, and make sure they’re safe. At least that’s where I’m going. What about you?”
They looked at each other in silence, neither of them knowing how the other felt.
“Would you leave me here if I said I didn’t want to go?”
He hesitated, but then nodded. “Yeah.”
“Wow, all right. I guess I know my place then.”
Red groaned, and then said, “You can be as pissed off as you like. I’m too tired, and depressed, and fucking hurt to even care right now. Porter’s as good as dead, and his kids, my nephews – they’re out there somewhere. They’re all I’ve got left of him.” He looked off into the distance and added, “They’re all that matter to me now.”
“Hey, asshole, I’m right here.” Her tone was sympathetic, but her words sharp. “I get that you’re upset, but don’t turn into your brother. If we’re going to make it through this, we need to work together. You don’t get to do whatever you think is right like he used to do.”
“He was right,” said Red. “Every time he made a decision to do something, he was right. I wish I was half the man he was.”