Dying to Live

by Kim Paffenroth

  "I held on to him, and he and I fell on the ground. I don't know how, he was a lot bigger than me, but I kept slamming his head into the pavement. I didn't know to do that, of course—I hadn't heard anything about the outbreak yet, or that you had to bash them in the head, but I just did it for some reason."

  "Another lucky break for Zoey," Jack said softly. "You got to hold on to that."

  Frank nodded. "It was, or he probably would've bitten me too, and then we all would be dead, wandering around out there. When he finally stopped struggling, I went to Mary. I took my shirt off and wrapped her arm, then I took my belt and put on a tourniquet. I had no idea if it was the right way to do it. I hadn't had first aid since we learned it in eighth grade, and then they always told us never to apply a tourniquet unless a limb had been amputated; but the blood was gushing out so badly, with an extra surge with each heartbeat, that I just did it anyway.

  "Mary was woozy, but we started toward the hospital. When we got near, I could see more people like the man who'd attacked her. Crazy, snarling people, with hospital personnel and cops fighting with them. And blood everywhere—on them, on the people fighting them, in big puddles on the sidewalk. I'd never seen anything like it. I thought maybe it was some kind of riot or civil war or mass outbreak of insanity, and we should just go inside and wait for things to calm down, and then I could get Mary to the hospital or doctor. So we went into our apartment building."

  Being next to the hospital, Frank and his wife were practically at the epicenter of the expanding pandemonium and despair. They watched the television and learned about the plague and the bites. And, of course, Frank's poor wife saw what it meant for her, and what it meant for their baby.

  Frank's voice kept getting quieter as he told his story. "She looked at me, pleading, but still in complete control of herself, unlike me. ‘Please, whatever you do, don't take off the tourniquet!' I remembered you were supposed to loosen it every few minutes, and never leave it on for hours at a time, or the limb would die and have to be amputated, but I didn't see a choice at that point. I didn't have any idea what to do."

  That's when he had started building the barricade on the stairs. It gave him something to do, to feel useful, like he was accomplishing something in the face of all this madness and pain. He still thought he might be able to get his wife out the fire escape and take her to a hospital somewhere, even if the one next to their building was overrun. Frank shook his head sadly. "I didn't want to have to fight any more of them. I had no guns or weapons in the apartment. I only found the shotgun later in one of the other apartments. I fell asleep next to Mary on the couch. I hope that I kissed her then, that last night, but I don't remember if I did or not, I was so exhausted.

  "When I woke up, I didn't see her. I went to the kitchen. She was sitting at the little table there. She'd made coffee." He looked up, fighting back the tears even as he smiled grimly. "Isn't that funny? I guess she'd gone all those months of being pregnant without it, she really wanted some. And on the table, next to her coffee, was the biggest, sharpest knife we had, with the handle pointed away from her. She was really pale, sweaty, and she was having trouble breathing. ‘You're going to have to deliver our baby,' she whispered.

  "I still hadn't caught on to what she meant. She wasn't due for two weeks. She pushed the knife toward me, and she talked really slow, over-pronouncing each word. ‘Frank, you need to deliver it now, before it turns into… before it dies.' I finally got what she was asking. I told her I couldn't just cut her open while she was still alive. I couldn't do that. God, it was too horrible. A person can't just do that."

  He stopped a minute before continuing. "Oh God, she was always the decisive one, the logical one. She was so weak from the loss of blood, she was swaying slightly, but she still seemed to be considering what I'd said, and coming up with a solution. ‘You're right,' she whispered. ‘I understand. But, so we're clear—you promise me that if I die, you'll do anything to save our baby?' I told her of course I would. She nodded, really slowly. Then she snatched up the knife, and jerked it across her throat.

  "A stream of blood shot up from her neck, a fountain, so much blood, all the way up the wall; then, as she slumped forward, it gushed out onto the table. I screamed and tried to stop it, but it was obvious she was going to be gone in just a few seconds.

  "I held her as she went limp. We were both covered in blood, all hot and sticky, with that metallic smell everywhere. I tried to focus, though, so I picked up the knife. If I didn't know how to apply a tourniquet, how was I going to perform a C-section with a kitchen knife? I was shaking wildly, but I tried cutting her across the belly. I was so nervous and scared I barely broke the skin.

  "I screamed like a girl when she grabbed my wrist and lunged for my neck."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Frank was shaking as he continued. "We were both covered in her blood, so my hand slipped out of her grasp and I staggered back. She tried to come at me again, but the floor was covered with blood, and she slipped and fell. She was growling and moaning. I didn't know what to do. She got to her feet and took a step toward me. But then she stopped.

  "She kind of looked up, sort of swaying where she was standing. And sniffing. She was sniffing at the air. Then she looked down at her belly. She put her hands on it, kind of rubbing or patting it, and she gave a low growl, kind of like purring. She'd lost interest in trying to eat me. I had no idea why, at first."

  As if what we'd heard already wasn't bad enough, I could unfortunately now guess what was coming. "Oh, no, she didn't," I whispered. But there was no more closing the box. We were going to see it through to the end.

  "Yes. She did. She realized there was other prey in the room, much closer than I was. Her fingers went into the gash I'd made in her belly, and she started ripping it open. She peeled the skin back, but then she really had to strain and claw to pull the muscles apart. Blood was gushing up around her hands in thick streams. She was reaching around inside, and then she started pulling out stuff in gobs and flinging it on the floor.

  "Finally, her head went back as she got both her hands in there and dug around till she got a hold of our baby. She gave this horrible, animal howl as she ripped it out of herself. Then she was holding it, looking at it, with her mouth hanging open. Its tiny arms and legs were moving as she growled and raised it up to her mouth to eat it.

  "I was frozen. I admit it. It wasn't just that I didn't know what to do anymore. I just couldn't think at all. All I could do was watch. But then I heard it cry. Not loud. Kind of just a little squeal, sort of like a kitten would make. And that jolted me out of it.

  "I lunged at Mary. I grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, to keep her from biting the baby. I was going to stab her under the chin with the knife, but we both slipped in the blood again. As we fell, her head smashed into the corner of the stove. And it was over. She didn't move anymore.

  "I looked around. I'd never seen anything like it. I don't think anyone ever had. The kitchen looked like one of those posters some anti-abortion person would hold up in front of a clinic—blood and fluids and stuff splattered all over. I cut the chord and got Zoey out of there. We were so lucky the water was still running at that point, so I could clean her off. I looked at her, to make sure she wasn't—you know, one of them. She looked fine. But what's going to happen to her? The first thing she saw in the world was her father killing her mother. That isn't right. That can't be good for you."

  By this point, both Jack and I were sitting next to him, rubbing his shoulders. "It's okay," Jack said. "You did what you had to. You saved your daughter. Your wife understands. She's happy with what you did for Zoey. It's going to be okay."

  Frank looked at me. I think he'd figured out Jack was the optimistic one, and now he wanted a more sober opinion. I never liked being the bad cop, and especially not in this situation. "What do you think?" he asked me. "I can see that you know there's something wrong with what happened. Tell me the truth."

  "There's somethin
g wrong with all of us," I said softly, "with everything around us. You can't put the guilt for all that on yourself. I don't even think it's a matter of guilt and innocence anymore. It's a matter of just trying to keep beautiful things alive in an ugly world. And you did that with Zoey. I don't know what else anyone could ask of you at this point."

  He shook himself out of it a little, but only to feel guilty about the present rather than the past. "I should be with her. I shouldn't be here drunk. Take me to her."

  Jack and I took him to the little room, where we'd left Sarah with little Zoey. Sarah cocked an eyebrow and shook her head at us, with her mock, motherly chastising that she often heaped on us men. We tucked Frank in next to his baby. And although I felt something much more like resignation than optimism, I did feel happy that we had Zoey and Frank here with us. Even though the events Frank had described were ultimately unexplainable and nearly unendurable, the beauty of his daughter and his love for her were as real and as powerful as any of the horrors around us. We would help him to see that, if nothing else.

  * * * * *

  The following weeks were for Frank what the preceding had been for me. I knew that Jack and Milton had agreed not to mention the initiation rite to him right away, so he'd have time to adjust to the community. He actually made friends fairly easily and quickly. It probably helped that Jack and I never told anyone what he had told us that night. We just let him ease into a spot in museum lore: the mysterious man who'd lived the longest in the city of the dead, all the while caring for an infant child.

  I don't suppose you ever get over something like Frank had been through, but he definitely seemed to pick up around other people, especially the others who had small children. It's a little embarrassing, but unlike me, Frank actually seemed to like other people's children. He also seemed very much to enjoy working for the community, and whenever he wasn't with Zoey, he was always doing something to help others.

  Zoey took to everyone, and of course, everyone loved her. I had never seen such a happy infant, as though her disposition were designed to be the opposite of the horrific events that had surrounded her entrance into this veil of tears. She took her first steps as I watched. She played with other babies for the first time in her life. I think Tanya knew that Popcorn would not tolerate any perceived threat to the attention she showed him, so she didn't dote on the baby particularly, but Sarah had no such qualms and was with Zoey constantly. It seemed to brighten her up immensely, and I was glad for her. Jack was maybe a little less so, but he was more than good-natured enough to make it into a joke: he said if he kept doing Sarah like he had been, she'd soon have one of her own.

  The Fourth of July came, and Milton again snuck out, as he had told me he had at Christmas, to try to make things a little special for us. Just some noisemakers and sparklers from a party store, but it certainly brightened up the sultry, summer night. And our garden had yielded some small watermelons for us to share that evening. Even the dead seemed just lazy and not so belligerent under the hot and dry skies. Most days, Milton would just go out and shoo them away from our gates and into the cool shadows of the park across the street, rather than sending out people to try and kill them. It was shaping up to be a good summer, all things considered.

  But we knew there would soon be another mission outside the compound to check out the smoke I had seen when we got the helicopter. Evidence of more survivors immediately raised Jack's feelings of responsibility—he had to help them as he had helped all the people he'd already brought into the community. And, as with so many other things, there was the overwhelming power of curiosity; once you knew there were survivors just a few miles away, you had to see who and what they were.

  I understood all that, but I began to wonder if maybe we had enough people here, and we needed to focus on helping them, and building up what we had, rather than trying to find others. We couldn't save or rebuild the whole world, after all. But in the end, this was all neither here nor there, for I knew I would back whatever plan Jack came up with. It wasn't his grandstanding or charisma or even his logic; it was just the gratitude most everyone in the community showed him for saving all of our lives at various times.

  Based on the situations they'd rescued people from previously, Jack wanted to take just a small group: big enough to break through a few besieging zombies if we found survivors barricaded in some building, but not enough to use up extra fuel with more than one vehicle, or to weaken the defenses at the museum. Tanya wanted to go, mostly to kill more zombies, and I wanted to go, both to help Jack, and, I had to admit, to be by Tanya. As kind of an old-school soldier, Jack certainly frowned on the latter motive, but he also understood it was going to be nearly unavoidable in the very small, domestic army he'd assembled here.

  Popcorn wanted to go for a combination of the motives of Tanya and myself—to kill more zombies, and to be near Tanya. If it had seemed like a more dangerous mission, Jack would surely have objected to him coming, but by that time, Popcorn had been on a couple of their raids for food, as well as the raid to the local airport to get fuel for the helicopter.

  As the only pilot, Franny was ineligible for missions until she could train someone else.

  Finally, Frank wanted to go, and Jack welcomed the opportunity to make him feel more a part of the community, even if technically he had not been through the initiation rite.

  We took a smaller vehicle, a jeep that belonged to another person in the museum community. This would be farther than anyone had ever ventured from the museum, so we left early. The plan was to circle way to the north before turning west, avoiding the city proper entirely. We weren't optimistic about finding anything on the first try. We didn't know exactly where we should look, so we'd need to see the smoke again to zero in on them. In the heat of summer, it seemed unlikely that they'd be burning fires all the time, so we hoped that, if we left early enough, their fire from the previous evening's meal would still be smoldering in the early morning light.

  Sure enough, that is what we saw as we weaved between abandoned cars on one of the roads north of town—a barely visible line of white trailing up to a long, faint smudge where a breeze had spread it during the night and early morning.

  I watched Jack's face as he drove us closer to it. He was so laughably easy to read. It was obvious that he thought something was not quite right about the location. When we were close, he turned off the main road, down a side road, and across a field, till we were way out in the middle of the field, next to some scraggly saplings at the base of an electrical tower that rose high above us.

  From here we had a good view for a long ways around, and saw no movement of any kind. I noticed the saplings and the bushes would hide the jeep from view, and that there was a hill between us and the source of the smoke. "Let's park it here and scout around before we go driving up," Jack said, trying to act nonchalant about it; I could tell there was a change of plans by what he said. "They ought to be just over that rise, whoever they are."

  "You don't want them to know that we have a vehicle?" I asked as we got out of the jeep.

  Jack looked at me sideways. "We don't know the situation. I don't want to advertise that we're here until we do. Normal tactical decision."

  I remembered Jack's comments about the anti-tank missiles being better suited for use against other people than against the undead, and I sensed that this was a strategic, and not a tactical decision. But I let it drop in front of the others. We were still pretty far away from whatever it was. It couldn't do any harm to walk over the hill and check it out. There was a stand of trees a hundred feet to our left, and another way off to the right, but otherwise we were in the clear and could see any trouble with plenty of time to react or flee.

  As we walked through the tall grass, I looked back and saw that Jack's parking job had in fact hidden the jeep, as I had thought it would. We came up and over the brow of the next hill and could finally see, maybe a little less than a mile ahead of us, at the top of another, lower hill, the source of the
smoke. It was coming from a large building behind a high, gray wall, several stories tall. The wall also enclosed a water tower and some smaller buildings. The wall was surrounded by two enormous rectangles of cyclone fencing, both topped with razor wire.

  "The regional correctional facility," Jack said. "I saw the signs on the main road as we got close. Our new neighbors."

  * * * * *

  We walked a few more yards downhill toward the prison to get a better view. "The gate must be on the other side," Jack said as he scanned with the binoculars. "I don't see any movement."

  "Nice people being eaten alive, and some bunch of rapists and perverts gets to ride it out in style in a fortress I helped pay for," Tanya said with disgust, absentmindedly chopping at the grass with her machete. I'd never thought of discussing politics with her, as it seemed pretty moot by the time I met her, but I could see she was going to be a little to the right of most of my college professor friends. That didn't seem all that bad to me at this point.

  I heard a whistling sound, then a thwack, and then Jack cried out in pain—an arrow stuck in his left shoulder. Another thwack, and he staggered with a second arrow in his left thigh.

  I raised my pistol, but I could see nothing among the shadows in the trees, and then I felt a shooting pain in my right chest as an arrow hit me.

  "Drop your damn guns," a voice came to us from the shadows.

  "Jack?" I asked, not wanting to be the one to surrender, still scanning the trees for a target.