(Book 2)What Remains

by Barnes, Nathan

  When I cleared the door it was the smell that hit me first. Stagnant rot permeated the musty store. I’d entered a malodorous mass of air that was pungent enough to trounce the rest of my senses for several seconds. I gagged, then regained my composure. A stink that powerful couldn’t have been from rotten food; there was something dead in the store. Reanimated corpses didn’t even smell like that, the virus probably stalled decomposition long enough for it to spread to other hosts. Ripe corpses, that hadn’t been polluted by the infection, would still do as nature intended. Since the air inside had to be fifteen to twenty degrees warmer than the outdoors it made sense that a body could still create such an odor.

  I looked at the door to see Maddox pan his head back and forth as he kept watch. Having him out with me was terrifying. Although, I wouldn’t have ventured inside the store if someone hadn’t been there to watch my back. Since Calise shouldn’t be alone, I knew it had to be him. I was as furious with myself for allowing it, as I was proud of him for rising to the task.

  Stock was knocked into the isles. Much of what I could see was in total disarray. All things considered, though, the store hadn’t been looted. Randall’s suggestion to stop here was a good one. Everywhere I looked there were items worth taking: a six-pack of meal replacement shakes for dieting, mixed nuts, batteries. The bag quickly filled with goodies to the point that I needed to hold off on more to save space for prescription drugs.

  The pharmacy counter occupied a rear corner of the store on my right side. A skylight, the light I’d seen from the doorway, glowed off center towards that area. My flashlight beam danced along the floor as I quickened my pace in fear of our remaining time. I continued to seek supplies while expecting to see the mystery decomposer that was the source of the noxious odor choking my airways.

  Something caught my eye on a shelf to my left. I turned the light at it to see a tiny stuffed lion. An unavoidable smile grew at the thought of a little girl that would happily give the plushy animal a home. I tossed a bag of cheese puffs out of the backpack to make room for it. The bag crinkled on impact with the tile making me cringe. I looked down at it and noticed spots dotting the speckled floor that I assumed came from a bag of instant rice that scattered when dropped.

  I hopped the counter to the narrow isle behind that backed up to a wall shelf of controlled substances. On the other side the first thing I did was check my watch. In seventy-five seconds I needed to call Sarah, which I intended do from the counter to keep noise from reaching outside. I craned my neck over to make sure Maddox was at his post; he was, so I got to work.

  As I scanned the drug names I would have killed to have a pharmacist there, or Google. I smirked thinking about how many times after the world ended I found myself longing for a Google search. I kept it simple by looking for the medicine names I recognized in tablet form, anything else was assumed to have gone bad. Ciprofloxacin, Augmentin, Amoxicillin, Percocet, anything that looked familiar from my injury-ridden past. Two of each, at least, went into the bag. I didn’t stop until I could barely zip the thing up.

  When I slung it onto my back, I just about fell over from the suddenly uneven weight that was added to my frame. It was a good haul. My feet cleared the counter again then crunched down on more grains of rice. It struck me as odd, odd enough that I murmured, “Rice… of all things.”

  I moved the flashlight beam along the dirty floor to see that the grains were everywhere. Specks of white dotted around every floor tile then grew more abundant closer to the corner opposite to the pharmacy. I crouched to investigate, and discovered the abominable truth. It was not grains of rice, it was maggots.

  Chapter 23 – Malevolence

  The vile revelation shocked me so much that it sent me reeling back into a shelf. My bulging pack knocked a row of boxed macaroni and cheese over like dominoes. I looked up at the skylight to see that the white dots even reached the ceiling, the walls, and a support column near the center.

  I didn’t want to know. Wherever they came from, I didn’t want to know. However, I had to know. Curiosity was destined to become my Achilles heel. I slowly stepped towards the corner, every inch bringing another gag. Beneath my boot there was a slew of tiny pops as the horrible decomposers flattened in droves.

  The flashlight beam revealed a wide aisle of greeting cards then a single lane past it backing up to the wall. There were so many of them radiating outward that I imagined seeing every surface pulsing from the squirming mass. I couldn’t bring myself to keep the light on one spot long enough to see if they were even moving. The temperature was warm enough for them to live but not warm enough for them to thrive. It all indicated that this expanse of fly larvae probably began its spread a week before I came across them.

  Tears streamed from my eyes as the rotting smell thickened. In twenty seconds I needed to check in. Maddox’s shadow was still in place at the door. If my curiosity insisted on punishing me then this was the time to do it. I crossed my right arm, Kukri and all, over my face to shelter it from the fetid air. My left hand trembled, directing the flashlight past the end of the wall of get well cards.

  I froze. The beam from the tiny flashlight shone on a pale mound of flesh. I vomited up what was left of my heart-shaped PB&J sandwich then tried to focus beyond the tears that clogged my vision. Another item was added to the arsenal of sights that was certain to haunt my subconscious for all the days to come. It dawned on me that the maggots didn’t originate from one decomposing body. There were seven of them. What was worse than their number was the fact they were stripped of their clothing. Seven naked bodies piled up like a repulsive offering to the insects.

  “What the fuck…” I said out loud as my mind processed the scene.

  “Daddy? Are you okay?” Maddox asked in a loud whisper from the door. “Do you need my help?”

  “NO!” I barked back, nearly choking on the bile in my throat. “Don’t come inside! I’m radioing in now. We’re done here.”

  The transmit button was compressed for half a second when my body seized from yet another loathsome realization. “The bodies aren’t big enough.” I said quietly, unable to find the divide between my thoughts and voice. “They’re just kids.” My mind became a cyclonic mess trying to justify what I’d come to know. If Sarah tried to talk back to after the mic-click then I was too catatonic to respond.

  It felt like the scraps of my soul had been torn away. Seeing such evil, such malevolence, hollowed out the inkling of hope that remained in me. We are what remained of the rapture; bearing witness to the pharmacy tomb convinced me of that. If a human really did this then maybe the Reaper virus didn’t bring about the apocalypse - it forced a sanctified cleansing.

  A shuffle of feet at the door broke my trance. Mere seconds had passed between my brief radio attempt and the unknown disturbance, yet it felt like I’d been frozen in my thoughts for hours. I spun to face the back entrance, seeing the unobstructed rectangular glow of the open door.

  My heart stopped. Maddox wasn’t in the doorway where he was supposed to be. “Maddox!” I yelled, not caring one bit about the volume of my voice. No response. I sprinted to the door kicking all sorts of spilled products out of the way.

  “MADDOX! I’m coming, Monkey. Just answer me, PLEASE!”

  The brightness of the outdoors flashed over me with an unanticipated jolt of pain. I fell to all fours, completely disoriented from the knock I had apparently taken. My left hand rubbed a throbbing spot on the back of my head then returned with a shine of blood saturating my glove. Nothing made sense; I had been struck on the head and my son was gone. This was worse than any night terror.

  “MADDOX!” I shouted, my vision blurry. An adjacent shadow materialized as focus returned. I strained to process what I saw, and then it was so clear. My stomach sank and confused rage boiled up.

  Maddox was there, frozen in place because of the man, the uninfected man, who was holding him. A skinny, bizarre looking, stranger had my son plastered against his right side with a hand over his
mouth. His left hand clutched a dirty baseball bat, the same item I assumed was used against the back of my head. Maddox’s eyes were wide as he struggled to breathe past the over-sized ski glove that blocked everything up to his nose. No expression was on the man’s face; he stared at me, unblinking, like his next move was yet to be decided.

  I rose unsteadily to my feet. “Let him go.”

  The only change was a minuscule cock of his head, as if I was a riddle that had been posed.

  Worried that my curt demand would escalate things, I tried to ease up and reason with him. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. We didn’t think anyone was here. I’ll leave the backpack of supplies. Just let him go and you’ll never see us again. You have my word.”

  He remained expressionless then broke his silence with a single word. “Supplies?”

  Unconsciously, my posture changed to the offensive. The desperation in the eyes of my son pushed any nauseating pain far away. My grip tightened on the Kukri enough that I’m surprised the wooden grips didn’t crack. “On my back. The bag is full of things I took from your stockpile inside. Take it. All I want is my kid. Then we can walk away from this… all of us can walk away.”

  An attack plan materialized inside my mind while I continued the futile attempt at negotiation. Ire seethed inside me. This bastard had seconds to comply before I was going to rip his throat out. Each second he held my son captive was another second I planned to make him suffer.

  “You saw my stockpile?” A sneer started to show on his otherwise emotionless face.

  This wasn’t a negotiation; he was toying with me. I nodded to answer his question then leaped forward. His baseball bat countered my bladed swing midair. It cracked against my forearm where my makeshift bite-armor was laced on. White-hot pain surged through me and I collapsed into a patch of snow that had been sheltered from melting by the dumpster shadow. Due to the bulging bag attached to my back I rolled immediately to my side. The impact also broke my grip with the Kukri sending it a few feet away in snow that was dotted with my blood. I pawed at the direction it fell knowing that my son’s life depended on me skewering the blade through this monster.

  Maddox’s muffled scream was loud enough to be heard past the nylon glove that covered his mouth. I fought to stay awake through the seething pain and my palpitating heartbeat that had me on the verge of blacking out. When I tried get up the bastard kicked my legs out from under me. He looked unsteady for a split second as Maddox fiercely resisted.

  “You have fight in you, kid,” he said snidely. “I haven’t seen that in at least a week.”

  “LET HIM GO!” I screamed. It took strength that I barely possessed to keep myself from going unconscious. “TOUCH HIM AND I CUT YOU IN HALF!”

  He let out a high-pitch, unsettling giggle. “Time to go inside before the dead ones hear us. It’s not good to make this much noise outside. Say goodbye to your noisy dad.” He dragged Maddox towards me with the baseball bat raised to shoulder-level.

  My hand slapped at the snow for the Kukri, or anything that I might use against him. “Don’t do thi—”

  A gunshot cut off my begging and a new voice entered the chaos.

  “Get away from them!” Sarah screamed. She stood ten feet away, just past the dumpster we’d passed to get to the door. A wisp of smoke came from rifle she held parallel to the ground, pointed at the three of us.

  The horrible man sounded flustered, the first time I’d detected any variance in his tone. “This must be Mom. Kid, I’m glad you’re here but your parents are making me angry.”

  “You have three seconds to get away from them or I will fucking kill you,” Sarah said evenly.

  Again he let out a bizarre giggle. “Kill me? Now how are you going to do that, bitch?”

  I growled after the harsh words were directed at the woman I love, all the while clawing blindly for my weapon. He kicked me in the face, splitting the mostly healed gash on my forehead that I’d received in those first days when I fought my way out of the city. Sarah took two steps towards us with the rifle aimed.

  He seemed delighted by her hostile reaction. “So you’re going to shoot me while I’m holding your precious boy between us? If you had what it takes to actually kill me, why didn’t you do it with that first shot? I could piss on you from here, yet you couldn’t hit me with a bullet. Any bitch that gives a warning shot doesn’t have what it takes to pull the trigger while a person is in the sights. Now go away before I slice you up along with your husband here. The two of you aren’t worthy of my talents.”

  A muzzle flash came at the same moment a spray of red burst from the right side of his head. Maddox broke free and jumped to the spot where I struggled on the ground. The bastard bent over bellowing an angry scream from his crooked lips. Blood flowed over his gloved hand that clutched the spot. He pulled the hand away to see the result of his injury. When his head wasn’t shielded I saw that his ear was gone.

  “I have you, Daddy” Maddox said. “We have to run. Please.”

  The man looked at his blood-soaked glove and stopped yelling. A sinister smile replaced his painful wince. He straightened his back, took a deep wheezing breath, and shifted to face us on the ground. I saw him move past Maddox’s fuzzy head. We struggled together until I was nearly back on my feet.

  I don’t think he’d made it an inch in our direction before another blast echoed off the brick wall. A spot off-center on his left knee popped with an eruption of fibers and crimson mist. He dropped to his other knee not making a sound. The only sound came from the two infected people that appeared from the far tree line, no doubt drawn by the commotion. It looked like an undead man and a boy around Maddox’s size. Both of them moaned with hungry excitement as they hobbled closer.

  “Go boys! Back to the truck! Maddox, help Daddy get there. I’ll be right behind you.” Sarah instructed.

  Blood pooled at the stranger’s feet, yet he still somehow stood back up. I saw him so clearly as Maddox pushed me to a point of mobility. His position was close enough that if we walked towards safety he could reach for us. Sarah pulled the trigger again, shattering his other knee. Ridiculously defiant, the bastard fell to his decimated kneecaps.

  Sarah sprinted at him, landing the rifle stock against his cheek. Properly motivated at last, he fell to his back. The baseball bat he’d hit me with loudly rolled away. One of the approaching creatures growled with delight. She stepped to the arm that had held Maddox captive, placed her tall boot on his fingers and shifted her weight downward, releasing a sound like compressed bubble wrap.

  Another giggle. After having been shot three times and getting his fingers crushed under a boot, the sick fuck giggled. Sarah lowered the barrel of the rifle against the wrist that protruded from beneath her foot. She looked at us with a fierce glare, which told us to run, so we did to the best of our ability. The moment we were clear I heard the gun discharge again.

  Maddox scooped his machete off the ground, keeping me on my feet as we passed the dumpster. When we moved to round the corner I glanced back to check on Sarah to make sure the dead hadn’t reached her seeing they were still a few seconds away. She had moved to the other side, it looked like she’d stepped on his other hand. She was saying something, though I couldn’t tell what it was over my own sounds of distress.

  We passed to the side with the truck in sight. A final gunshot resonated throughout the open area. At the truck Maddox hollered for his sister. “Calise! Open up, it’s us!” He left me at the tailgate. A flash of a pink sleeve appeared in the cracked driver’s side door. They jumped inside then the rear door opened. Sarah returned and 522 took off with her at the wheel. I fought the urge to sleep as both kids wept, refusing to let go of my midsection.

  Chapter 24 - Wounds

  1315 hours:

  “Who needs a hospital when I have you?” I said to the pretty young nurse who re-bandaged my forehead.

  Calise finished her work then kissed my nose. “I told you I would fix your boo boo.”

  “I wa
s wrong to ever doubt you, baby girl.” She offered me a water bottle to wash down one of the painkillers I’d just stolen.

  After the drugs were in my system, Calise used her sweet little hands to peel the padding off my forearm. It didn’t seem to be broken, thank goodness. The area underneath where the bat hit was a colorfully swollen mess. She rummaged through a supply bag. Something was in her hand as she found her way to the driver’s cab. I tried to tell the headstrong girl not to bother her mommy.

  I heard Calise speak very matter-of-factly until the truck altered course to one side and stopped. The door opened, I heard Sarah step out. I didn’t have the time to panic because she returned in seconds. Satisfied by the mystery transaction, Calise thanked her then was back at my side.

  “Why did we stop?” I asked, sure I had come off as irritable in spite of the tender care.

  “Last year when Maddox accidentally hit me with a stick in the yard, you told me I had to put ice on it for it to get better. And it did get better. Daddy, you hurt your arm and I want it to get better so I got you ice.”

  My eyes became watery as she held up a plastic sandwich bag packed with snow. The exchange moments before made sense then. “You told Mommy that we needed ice for my hurt arm and she found you some snow, huh?”

  “Mmm hmm!” Her hair bobbed along with the cheerful response. I kept the bag against the darkened spot until it melted away. By then the arm was tender, but just like my pint sized medical professional said it would, it felt significantly better.

  Outside of her exchange with Calise, Sarah didn’t say more than a sentence in the time immediately after the pharmacy. She quietly drove while occasionally checking the map open on the seat. There wasn’t much to be said about what we all went through at the pharmacy. As the hour passed my head cleared of the fogginess but not of the horrid flashbacks of the eleven minutes we ended up outside the safety of the truck.