I fell to my knees, bowed my head, and waited for the inevitable.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I lifted my head, stood, took a few steps, and knew I was alone. The creature had gone.
My consciousness unraveled. When I awoke, I was in a hospital.
They
I am sated. No one remains alive who kidnapped and tortured my offspring. As is customary with my kind, I have restored the balance of the debt.
And yet, I can still hear her screams. You ignored her sentience and dissected her. You thought to benefit from what you could learn from her physiology.
Ah, deluded ones. Has it ever been so with you? Are you truly a species lost in rapacity and greed?
I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt now that my rage is spent, but my kindred, alas, are not. They are on their way now in response to the screams. Not my offspring's screams, but mine.
I released the anguish of my soul, and they heard me.
And now they are coming. Not just for a small team of people, but for all of you. They have judged you unworthy.
They are many, and you cannot see them. They are bringing the large, fanged, cat-like creatures that accompany our kind into battle. These, too, will be invisible to you.
Your first indication of invasion will be the corpses. They will increase rapidly. You may try to oppose them, but your efforts will be futile. Some of you may try to hide, but they will find you. Their object is to bring about your extinction.
They will succeed.
I do not think that I will participate in the extermination. I have had enough of killing. I will go home to my other offspring and hope that time heals my wounds.
I was only a tourist.
You have no one to blame but yourselves.
To Be the Walking Wounded
Morgen Knight
Editor: Life is more than a biologic process. Living requires passion and when that fades, life fades with it.
After the chainsaw bit into the man’s leg and he didn’t scream, I let my held breath go. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding it until it burst out in a disappointed huff. I wanted to hear him scream, I wanted to enjoy his pain. Jonah lifted the teeth of the chainsaw to the man’s left arm, but the rest of us had pretty much lost interest. If the man hadn’t screamed at a leg, there was nothing that would get him to. I guess we should have known by the pustular splotches and the gauntness, but you always hope. At least, I do. While Jonah carved up the man, the rest of us filed back into the vacant hotel. You could still hear the whiny roar of the chainsaw, but it was dulled. Lily had the TV on, a large, flat screen moved down into the cavernous lobby. The TV’s cords snaking away in a series of connections that, oddly, made me think of a railroad line in the 1800s, and how any sort of life outside the world of your small town would be reliant on what that line brought. Using the remote in her lap, she flipped rapidly through the familiar channels. Many were snowy, or the black screen simply read NO SIGNAL along the bottom. The hotel had a satellite feed. The channels that still broadcast played movies or reruns. All of the cable news channels were off air, so I guess not everything is lost. But there is always a cloud beneath the silver lining.
The only channels that were real, the only that still felt alive, were the few public broadcasting stations we could get. I’d always skipped over them before, or programmed them out. PBS? Who wants to watch old British sitcoms? It was like PBS had become British TV’s version of Florida. But since The Spread, it’s become the only place real people—local people, more importantly, those trying—can be seen or heard. It isn’t always broadcasting a live feed, but there were a few seemingly regular shows, all of them half insane. Shit, the FCC would have put a lid on super-fucking-fast, before. One night, a couple of guys had smoked weed and drank and cried, finishing with a friendly game of Russian roulette. Another night, some half-naked woman had hosted a mock baking show, only she was making ridiculous stuff—Cow Pie Cake, Crow Intestine Stew. She pretend to taste it (or maybe not so pretend), and gave it a good Campbell’s Soup mmmm after each.
“I’m going upstairs,” I said.
“Do you mind if I come with you?” Cora asked, her eyes hopeful and sad. But that isn’t saying much. The only people without sad eyes anymore are the dead and the Wounded.
“You can do what you want.”
We took the elevator up. My room had a stunning view of the city. The buildings and trees and maze of streets. Sometimes I sit and look at a bluer sky than I ever remember seeing before. Or rain clouds, their freight descending onto filthiness, cleansing us all for a time. And I think about how, after we’re gone, the clouds will continue to form, rain will continue to fall, rivers will swell and birds will sing, our absence going unnoticed. When my mind turns down these back alleys, I have to burn myself, usually with a cigarette. To make sure.
“You don’t like being a goon, do you?” Cora asked. She was standing over by the window I’d broken out, a large pane as tall as me, so I could breathe fresh air. On occasion a bird had wondered in.
“Killing people, you mean?” We called it being a goon, or gooning, for the same reason people called killing their animals “putting them to sleep.”
“They’re already dead. Gooning is a mercy,” she said defensively.
“Maybe. But it’s hard to see that when Jonah is choppin a guy’s legs off, blood sprayin on the apron and face mask he’s wearin. He looked like a horror movie villain.” And what did they hope to happen? They hoped their Wounded would scream, show them life, maybe—in the best circumstance—make them feel horrible for what they were doing.
Cora laughed wryly. “He did, yeah.” The sound of her laugh almost yanked me across the room to smack her, and it was good to feel that pulse of rage. I feasted on it. “It isn’t like you haven’t done it.”
“I know,” I said.
“And he didn’t feel it. You saw that, right? The Wounded don’t feel anything.” She had turned away from the window.
“I know,” I said again. We had found the man during a grocery and gas run—the world was an open market these days, as long as you didn’t want anything fresh—and it had been Jonah’s idea to lug him back. Cheap entertainment, I guess. The man had been dressed for church, as my mother’d say, sitting on a bus bench. A red splotch had been visible on his throat, running down beneath the collar. Blue thread webbed through it. As far as I know, the red splotches are the beginning, and then they grow—no scrubbing, cutting, digging or acid acted as a deterrent—and by the time the blue covers most of you, you’re gone. Lights out, no one home. I don’t know from where Jonah came up with a chainsaw. Funny what you find lying around these days.
Cora I’ve known since college. Ryan, Lily and Jonah had been passing acquaintances until the Spread began. Each of us had grown up around Kansas City, so banding together to head home made sense. There had been more in our group, then. The roads had been clogged in some places and ghostly voids in others. It wasn’t an epic journey from Rolla, but the state of the world hadn’t made it easier.
“I haven’t been feeling myself,” Cora said absently. This wasn’t an uncommon statement from her. The sad part is that one day, I fear it’ll be truth. She was short and slender with a plain face. She’d never been a great beauty, and the stress of everything had worn her down hard. She had premature age-lines and an acquired haggardness that made me think of those barflies you used to be able to find on a barstool on a Tuesday morning. Small tits but the thickest head of hair with the most serious curls that I’ve ever seen.
“I’m sure you’re fine.”
“But what if I’m not? What if it’s starting in me?”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up about dying? If you want to die so bad, there’s the window. I’m sure you’ll feel the ground at the bottom.” I loved the way my heart boomed, how my body got hot when I grew angry. I loved that I felt something. It was the same for all of us. Yo
u know that the day you fail to feel anything, you’re dead. Of course, by then you won’t give a fuck.
The splotches came out of nowhere. There was a news story here and there, but I’d never heard of it until it was all anyone was talking about. Three weeks, that’s how long it took. What grabbed my attention was how empty my classes had become, how quiet my dorm remained, like I lived in a library. People started wearing masks and drinking only bottled water, but it was too late. I heard some scientist blab on about what was causing it, something viral. He’d given it some long and complicated name, assuring the viewing public that a cure was within reach. And that was the last anyone had heard from him. He probably didn’t give a shit after a while.
Because that’s what this outbreak does. That science fuck had a great way of making it sound unremarkable, something easy to oppose, but all in all, everyone just gives up. The splotches appear on the skin as little red sores. I don’t know what occurs within, but I know that the splotches are an outward sign of inward corruption. You begin to lose interest in things. As it progresses, the splotches gain a gelatinous meniscus, and you begin to lose physical sensation. By the time the blue had you, people don’t seem to feel a thing and they don’t care…about anything. People simply sit down and starve to death, the eerie redness spreading over your skin, blue webs riddling your insides. They sit and breathe and, at some point, no matter how you threaten them, beg them or hurt them, they barely if ever respond, their empty eyes unfocused. Day after day they die of hunger, shuffling around occasionally to find water, the urge to drink the very last thing to go.
“I really haven’t felt myself,” Cora said finally. She stood there, pouting.
“I really don’t give a fuck,” I said, but the rancor was out of me. I was drinking from one of the many bottles sitting around. This one was scotch, top-shelf stuff. Sometimes I felt bad about how I talked to her, how all of us talked to one another, but not often. Only when I was on the verge of drunk. We fucked with each other for the same reason we hurt the Wounded. Because it relieved stress, because we were afraid, because it was exquisite to feel something and to know that you’re feeling it. Even if it is only disgust.
“Just look at me, will you? Tell me if you see a red spot.” She began taking off her clothes.
“You’re probably just depressed. It’s hard to feel much when you’re depressed. It’s easy to confuse.”
Cora was shaking her head. “I take pills for that.” She pushed her pants down, shirt already off. Cora never wore underwear. “Sometimes too many,” she added dryly.
I checked her with all the sensuality of a prison strip-search. Lift this, open that, bend over and spread ’em. Her skin was tanned and freckled but otherwise unblemished. I told her so. When she grabbed at me, sliding a hand into my shorts with a smile, I snatched her wrist and squeezed until she cried out. “Don’t touch me.”
“You’re a prick, you know that? Don’t you want to live a little?”
This time I did slap her, a satisfying backhand.
***
Seth was the first in our vagabond group to get infected. Maybe some people are immune, maybe not. I do know that there were a bunch of people that got it at first, but then it slowed down. Weeks passed and you’d think you were in the clear until one morning there might be a splotch on your thigh or cheek or lower back. After that, you were fucked, the progression always the same, even if the pace varied. I’ve seen some hold on for a month, others seem to give within days.
This…infection steals your will to live and any joy you get from living it.
I thought Seth would beat it. I kept this hope secret, afraid that whispering it might doom us all. But Seth had always been the most alive, the crazy one. He could be so loud it grated on your nerves. He had the endless energy of a kid riding a sugar tsunami. And he was weird, but in the Adult Swim late-night kinda way. I remembered thinking that there was no possibility he’d fall. That much energy can’t be snuffed out. But, you know, there was this one moment, not long after he’d told us he was infected, laughing at his luck. “It sucks dying at the end of the world, when I don’t have to wait in line to get into the movie theater anymore,” he had said smiling, laughing, a warm beer in each hand. But he’d looked at me, and it was only for a brief second, a skipping glance. And I remember seeing beneath that laughter to the utter terror of a condemned man strapped to the electric chair. The look only lingered for a moment, barely there at all. I convinced myself that I hadn’t seen it, that I’d imagined it.
Two days later, we found Seth with his wrists opened up into nasty vertical gashes. The blood around him was dry. His mouth appeared on the verge of his signature smile.
It had been Seth that had always said: “Don’t you want to live a little?” After he’d become one of the Wounded, there had been a sense of urgency about the question. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow you die.
But it had also become something of an accusation. Seth was only the first of many, and in some ways the hardest. More fell. Others deserted, which became the proper form. No one wants to watch you descend. No one wants to open the bathroom door and see the body of someone they know, lying prone and lifeless, pale tendons white in the sunlight.
Don’t you want to live a little? No, I wanted to live a lot. At least, I thought I did. I know it’s a strange thing to be unsure about. But things can happen to you that change you. Tragedies that pierce a soul, making it bleed-out within, leaving behind a hollow shell. I don’t sleep much anymore. I like the night, late night, when the city is almost gone. I’ll sit at the edge of my broken window, feet dangling out over a fatal, multi-story fall, and look at the buildings and think—really think—about the world and life and everything I’ve ever known. I know I’m not infected, but…I think in a way I am, just a different strain. One that wiggles into your brain first, because…less and less do I see a point to any of it. Wanting to live is easy. What’s harder is having something to live for. The world used to be full of reasons, or at least adequate distractions. But that world is ending in silence, whimpers and suicidal shotgun blasts. It seems that the only reason to live is to die.
***
We all eat together. We do a lot together, hunkered down in the large lobby of the Hyatt Regency. We’re something of a dysfunctional family. We all trust each other, we all need each other, and we all look at each other with the pity of a weak swimmer watching someone’s hands flail and head bob beneath the waves far from shore. Jonah had declared that we’re immune. We’d have to be, right? The population has dwindled down pretty far now—sometimes you actually have to search for any living Wounded—but we have to say things like that. We’re American. We’ve been spoon-fed that in the end, by some miracle or another, we’ll be saved. Something will step in. And if you don’t believe in the future, what the fuck is the point? Don’t you want to live a little?
“You know we’re in a shit storm when no one even really loots shit,” Ryan said, smiling. He was spooning ravioli into his mouth from an open can. A dribble of sauce lay on his scruffy chin.
“Could be we’re what’s left of humanity,” Jonah said. The idea amused him, as did meth. He said that the surest way to know you’re still livin is to snort a line of it. The statement was usually followed by the dramatic destruction of something.
“The TV loses more channels every day,” Lily said.
“Eventually the power will go out,” Cora said.
“Maybe we should try and repopulate,” Jonah said and laughed. He slapped Lily’s wide can; it wasn’t gentle. Lily yelled out then threw her plate at him. It shattered six feet behind Jonah, her food splattering on the floor. “What? It ain’t like we don’t try.” He rolled his pelvis forward, tongue wagging.
We’d all seen Jonah and Lily fuck. We’d all watched each other, and switched, and lived with an openness probably not realized since the sixties. You’ll do a lot in pursuit of living a little. That’s the thing about always feeling alive—you can never be sta
tionary. You always have to push it. Always move ahead one more step. It’s because we get too used to things. It’s the unintended consequences of involuntary adaptability.
“I want a baby,” Lily said, self-absorbed as usual. She was the kind of female I’d always hated. Even a dying world had to revolve around her.
I told her that that was natural. We all want to leave something behind. “But we’re not the last,” I said. “Not yet.”
***
I wasn’t going to ask his name so I called him Shotgun. I don’t sleep well any more. When I do, I always wake up sweaty, arms swinging at some forgotten monster. Cora has cried out more than once because of my unconscious assaults, a hand or fist finding her in my flailing. Shotgun pops up into my dreams like an infrequent sitcom guest that the audience recognizes and cheers for. I saw him as we were driving through North Kansas City, over by the police station. We’d just left my parents’ house. It was the simple home I’d grown up in (if not for grants I wouldn’t have been the first in my family to ever grace a college). What we saw and did there, I won’t talk about. Either you know or it’s none of your business.
Shotgun, who got his name for carrying a sawed-off double-barrel, was such an oddity that Ryan stopped the car. The man was shirtless, black, with white, greasy clown makeup over his face. A big, painted-on red smile and orange teardrops. Ammo belts, full of shotgun shells, crisscrossed his chest. Baggy jeans tucked into black boots, duct tape pulling them tight at his ankles. With the car window down, I’d heard the man whistling as he casually strolled up to the Wounded, put the barrels against their faces, and pulled the trigger. The Wounded’s head would explode as wet and sloppy as something poured from a blender. The blast was loud, echoing down the streets, rolling over the sound of our car’s engine. Ryan had turned the radio down, and in the silence following the blast, came the sweet tune of whistling as Shotgun—Mr. Shotgun to you, punk—sauntered over to the next Wounded he saw, this one sitting in the driver’s seat of a BMW.
Enter the Apocalypse Page 14