“Switch me spots,” I tell Greg coldly. I’m not interested in arguing. He’s ill and I’m the only one with the strength to keep going. I don’t realize how harsh my voice is until the words have escaped me, and I immediately feel terrible for having spoken so harshly too him. I look at the back of his head as his shoulders slump and I feel bad, but I don’t say anything. I don’t have much to say to my traveling companions anymore. I don’t have much to say to anyone anymore. I step outside and stretch, confident that we’re alone.
We’re close enough to the city on the horizon that someone with a pair of binoculars might catch sight of us, but I’m not overly scared. Even if they have a sniper rifle, they couldn’t hit us, yet. Turning around, I look at the bed of the truck that used to be stocked with everything we could have possibly needed to make our travel the most comfortable and well supplied as possible. Now, we hardly have a thing. Torn bags, broken boxes, scraps and pieces of the bounty we once held onto. I hang my head, feeling sick to my stomach at the destruction of everything we once had. How did everything turn out so terribly?
Grabbing the gas can, I haul it out of the back of the truck, feeling that it’s halfway empty. We’re going to be in trouble if we don’t find our destination soon. I suppose that I should be worried, but I think that we’ve experienced a whole lot worse than having to walk. Looking back toward the truck, I’m not sure if Greg would even be able to walk. I need to check on him, no matter what he says. I need to make sure that he’s safe. I need to make sure that he’s not worse off than he’s willing to tell me.
Lifting the tank and pouring every last drop into the gas tank, I think over what it was my father said. I think about his last words, the map that I’ve committed to memory, burning it into my brain as I look at the gas container. I’m not sure if I have faith anymore in getting there. I think about the name Jason over and over again. I think about how impossible it seems to get to him. How can we even possibly hope to make it to him when we’ve done so terribly thus far? I look at the carnage in our wake and I can’t help but feel the despair sinking in. I’ve done a terrible job with all of this. I’ve done so horribly that I can hardly stand it. I want to scream and pull my hair out. I want to throw this stupid gas tank out into the dust and crumple to my knees and cry for the rest of my days. I want to just give in to all of it. I want to surrender. But I can’t. The dead are watching, holding their infernal gaze to our actions and I feel sick just thinking about how I’ve failed them. I keep pouring, keep hoping that there’s something better on the horizon for us.
I can picture Jason’s location on the map in my mind. I can see the X as clear as I can see the can in my hands, but that X is so vague, so completely unclear that I can’t help but want to scream at the obscurity of it. There’s no pinpoint, exact location on the map, just an X. We don’t have an address, a street name, or anything to go on. We just have a location to the north and west of Dayton. I feel sick thinking about how much there is out there and how little we have to work with. I try to remember what my father said about Jason. I try to remember what he’d tried to tell us, but so much has happened in the past few days that I can hardly keep everything straight in my mind. The past week or so has been nothing but death, slaughter, dust, and horrors. I can hardly remember how we got here; let alone what spurred us on. I look to the north, wishing that I had binoculars with me.
It doesn’t matter what my father said; we’re practically here. We’ve found Dayton. We’re here. It’s just a matter of finding the right place, the right house. I’m not sure what we’re looking for just yet, but it’ll show itself. We’ll find it. I’m certain that all of this has not been in vain. It can’t be. I finish pouring the gas in and listen as the front door of the truck opens. Greg slowly climbs out and starts to make his way around the front of the truck, keeping his hand on the hood to make himself stable. I watch him as I toss the empty gas can back into the bed of the truck. It lands on a large duffle bag, muffling the impact. I wince at the sound and watch as Greg rounds the front of the truck.
He looks like death. I feel nauseated at the sight of him, wondering how sick he truly is. As he hobbles toward the passenger door, I watch as he collapses, slipping from the hood and sending up shoots of dust as he hits the ground.
“Greg,” I shout, rushing over to his side as I throw his arm over my shoulder and haul him up to his feet. His face is as pale as a ghost and his skin is coated in dust and ash, but his clammy complexion is impossible to miss. He’s sick, very sick. I can’t believe that I’ve let him go this far without intervening. I look at him as his delirious eyes roll in their sockets, vanishing under his lids. I’m afraid that I’m too late. Safety has been such a scarce resource lately that I realize I should have tended to his leg at the farmhouse. Whatever relatively short-lived safety we had should have been put to use making sure that he survived. I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach as I think it, but Noah had always been a lost cause. Noah wasn’t going to make it. Now I’ve put Greg’s life at stake because I was trying to save everyone. Coldness wraps around me and I realize that I might have damned my boyfriend to save a dead man.
Chapter Two
I wrap my fingers around the handle of the truck’s door and pull it open. The smears of blood and gore that covered the side of the truck have now gathered a thick crust of dust and ashes, making it look like a long, filthy scab covering the exterior of the truck. I feel the crusted-over blood and grime under my fingers but no longer flinch at the thought of them. I open the door and help Greg into the passenger seat, praying to whatever’s left of God that he spares my boyfriend. I can’t believe that I’ve let him get this far gone. I’m such a fool. I’m such a monster.
“Hang on, babe,” I say to him, feeling the panic gathering size in the back of my throat. Lexi and Charlie are still asleep, thank God, and Greg is as silent as a crypt. I look at him as I lay him back into the seat, reclining it as I feel his forehead. Beyond the caked dust and grime, he’s burning up and covered in sweat that has given him a crusty mask of filth. He looks at me with his lost, confused eyes and I try to keep him with me.
“Val?” he says with a weak, worried sounding voice. I don’t blame him; he has to be terrified by what’s happening. He’s been trying so hard to keep his fear hidden by trying to be as useful as possible. He’s been driving nonstop since Noah died. At first, I thought that it was the adrenaline fueling his resourcefulness, but now I know that it’s fear. My boyfriend has been sitting behind that steering wheel, thinking that he’s going to drop dead at any moment and trying to be as useful to us as he can before his end meets him. I admire that, but I also hate him for it. Why would he be so stupid? Why would he so foolishly throw his life away like that? He’s so much more valuable alive. We need him, now more than ever. “Val, it’s bad, isn’t it?” he says in a shaking voice that’s trying its hardest to sound brave.
“You’re going to be okay,” I assure him nervously. I look at him with a soft, lying smile on my lips. Looking down at his pants, I find them tucked into his boots. I grab his leg, looking at the dark blotch where the blood has dried, soaking through his sock and pant leg. I unlace his boots, nervous about what I’m going to find. I don’t want to look at something and know that it’s fatal. I want to see some hope in my boyfriend’s leg. I’m tired of all the desperation and failure. I want to have something to work on other than driving around uselessly.
Slipping his pant leg from the unlaced boot, I watch as Greg winces with the cloth brushing over his wound. It’s not a good sign. Before I pull the pant leg all the way up, I can smell the stench of rot, putrefaction, and infection. It’s a horrid, sickly smell that makes me want to throw up at the scent of it. It’s not just the horrid odor, but the terror of what it means. The odds of having my boyfriend survive this are slipping through my fingers helplessly. I want to scream. I want to throw up because of all of it.
The wound is something that looks like it belongs in a horror movie. I’m look
ing at white flesh filled with yellow and dark discolorations. There’s green flesh, blackened skin, and the red flesh exposed by the bite is covered with white infection. The flap of skin is completely dead, decaying as I gently touch it. All around the wound, the skin is reddened and inflamed with the infection. I’m sure that the soft breeze in the air is enough to agitate Greg if he wasn’t in such shock. Pulling back the piece of flesh torn free from the bite, I watch as a rivulet of stinking, grotesque puss roils out of the wound, dripping onto the seat as I step back in disgust. It drips down his leg, a most horrifying color that makes me want to throw up again. I need to drain the wound. I need to cut free the necrotic flesh. There’s so much that I need to do right now, but all I can do is stare down at the blackened veins and the infection.
The horrible fact is that we don’t have the supplies that I need to take care of this infection. It’s spread so far and it’s done so much damage that I’m not going to be able to deal with this unless we find better supplies. I try to remember what I’ve got in my pack still. I have some cloth wraps, a few bandages, a little alcohol, and a blade to cut through the necrotic flesh. I can work with that, but it’s not going to do anything if I don’t get a hold of some medication—powerful medication—and soon, nothing I do is going to matter. Greg isn’t going to survive if we keep at it like this. I look up at his face, he’s craning his neck, trying to see what’s happening with his leg, but I don’t let him get a good look. I don’t want him to panic at the sight of it all.
I can sew this wound up all I want. I can carve away the rotting flesh and Greg can have a truly nasty scar that will be with him forever, but without a thorough cleaning and antibiotics, Greg isn’t going to survive. At the very least, we’re going to lose his leg, but at the very worst, he’s going to die. Right now, I’m looking at a worst-case scenario. I’m holding onto hope but there’s nothing I can do right now, nothing effective at least. Right now, I can only work with the crude instruments that I still have with me. I take a deep breath and look up at Greg.
“This is going to hurt a lot,” I tell him with a worried tone in my voice, regardless of how I’m trying to stand bravely before him with bad news.
“Am I going to keep it?” he asks me nervously.
“I don’t know, babe,” I tell him, deciding that honesty is the best approach. I look at him with compassion and terror mingling together as one. “I’m going to try to clean the wound the best I can, but it’s going to hurt a lot. Do you want something to bite down on?”
“I don’t know.” His face is a mask of worry and I hope that the adrenaline and the terror of his condition will keep him sedated. I look at him with fear, hoping that he’s fine after all of this. I need him. I need him to stay here with me. I can’t stand losing him. “Tell me if you need anything,” I say to him as I reach behind my back and unsheathe my knife.
I know that there are several things that I need to do, but first things first. The infection is eating away at his leg and it's leaving a lake of puss in his fat, swollen leg. I grab his calf and the very touch of my fingers on the skin of the leg causes him to twist and squirm in agony. I don’t watch his face. I keep my eyes on his leg that is already roiling and gushing puss, more than I thought a leg could hold. Glancing back, I see that Lexi and Charlie are still asleep as Greg’s fingers turn white, gripping his armrest and the console as tightly as possible while he grits his teeth in torment. Watching the puss rushing out of his leg, I decide that we need to get rid of the strap of flesh still hanging onto his leg. It’s lost. If I sew that festering piece of flesh back onto his leg, he’s going to die. While Greg twists, snorting through his nostrils to try and regulate the pain, I lift up the piece of flesh, watching to see if he even notices.
The pain is too much. It’s a sea that he’s been thrown into and he can’t even tell that I’m holding the chunk of flesh. Picking my knife up off the floor of the truck, I look at the puddle of puss and resist the urge to vomit as I grip the handle. Greg’s eyes are on the ceiling of the truck while he grinds his teeth and tries to growl his way through the agonizing pain. He won’t grow accustomed to it. You can’t grow accustomed to that kind of suffering. I look at him and feel the rotting, stinking chunk of skin and muscle between my fingers and the knife in the other hand. I don’t even look as I flick my wrist, slicing off the chunk of flesh and tossing it out the truck. He doesn’t even see me moving. His eyes are quivering as his lips twist up in a snarl. I need to carve away the rotten, necrotic flesh, but that’ll have to wait for something a little cleaner to work with. Glancing at the base where the chunk of flesh was removed, I see that it isn’t even bleeding.
Reaching up for his waist, I grab his belt and pull it free from his belt loops. He glances at me, but the agony is too much for him to speak just yet. Right now, he’s still in too much pain. Wrapping the belt around his leg just below the knee, I pull it as tightly as possible, cutting off as much circulation as I can. I don’t want the infection getting through the veins and arteries of his leg. He’s on a timetable now. If I don’t find a way to save the leg soon, he’s definitely going to lose it. That’s what it has come down to.
“Do you think this is how it happens?” Greg hisses through the pain, closing his mind and trying to find some inner peace to hang onto while he endures this suffering.
“Does what happen?” I feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. What is he talking about? He better not be talking about death. I won’t be able to bear him talking about his own end. I need him to be strong. I need him to be strong for me right now. I need him to be strong while I’m wavering with so much fear.
“Do you think I’m going to turn into one of those things?” he asks me with a calm, steady voice, getting a grip on the pain and managing the best he can. “Do you think it’s like in the movies? You know? Do you think you get bitten and you turn into one of those things?”
I want to tell him that it’s more like you get bitten, get an infection, and die a painful, agonizing death. But they have to come from somewhere, so is it so absolutely crazy and insane that they come from that? They have to come from some sort of cause and right now, I am completely at a loss to figure out where they’re coming from. For all I know, they’ve just popped up out of the earth and now they’re killing survivors like hordes of the undead, but they’re far from walking corpses. Those things are living beings, as far as biology is concerned. The more ambiguous definition of living is still being debated, but those things have blood pumping through their veins and they’re definitely breathing. Maybe they do come from infections. They might have some sort of neurological infection, a fever in the brain, or a toxin in their bloodstream that’s causing them to behave the way they do. It can’t just be some sort of magical coincidence that’s causing them to turn on the living and slaughter them for food. Could it really just be extreme desperation and hunger turning people into feral monsters? I think we would have seen this earlier if that were the case. We would have seen it in impoverished nations out there in the world, back when things were sane—well, saner. We would have seen something like this.
“You watched too many movies,” I tell him with a warm smile, reaching into my jacket pocket where I have what’s left of a roll of cloth from when I was working on my own hands. Wrapping it around the infection, I feel like I’m wasting the bandage wrap, but I’ve got nothing else to do with it.
“Most of them were with you,” Greg grins, trying to make light of the nightmare he’s personally dealing with right now.
“You need a shower,” I say to him, trying to lock away memories of happier times. I don’t want nostalgia right now. I don’t want that poison in my mind at the moment. We need to let go of the past. We need to embrace the present and we need to deal with the world we’re living in right now. There’s no sense in suffering from the loss of a world we’ll never have back. It’s like pining for the good old days when dinosaurs still walked the earth.
“I think we could a
ll use a shower,” Greg chuckles, “and a double bacon cheeseburger.” He leans back his head and chuckles to himself softly, fighting off the delirium that is vying for control of his brain. I look at him and feel a smile spreading across my lips. I don’t even remember what a bacon cheeseburger tastes like. Those days are so far gone that it’s beyond fathoming. “So where do we go from here?” Greg asks me as I pull down his pant leg gently. The whole seat reeks of puss and decay, but it’s not like it’ll linger. With the front windshield gone, it’ll air out quickly.
“Babe, you’re not going to make it if we don’t find something to help you fight the infection,” I tell him bluntly. “I’ve drained the injury, but it needs to be cleaned thoroughly and you’ve got necrotic flesh that needs to be cut away. So you’re going to need some place clean to work with, painkillers, and antibiotics. So until we find those, you’re not in the best of circumstances. But, I think that’s going to be our number one priority right now.”
“Your bedside manner sucks,” Greg grunts at me with a smile on his face. He has that sort of peace that comes with knowing that you’re going to die. I hate the look on his face. He reminds me of a Buddhist monk that’s come to terms with the world and everything in it. It makes me think of surrender and I can’t stand it. “So where do we start looking?”
“I think our best hope is going to be with Jason,” I say to him honestly. “But Lord only knows where he’s at. Dad wasn’t exactly precise on his location, which means that we could be driving all around the outskirts of Dayton looking for God only knows what. So where should we start looking?”
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 84