by J. D. Demers
The question caused my stomach to drop. When Judy and I would talk about our families, we always avoided the subject of who may have survived. I avoided thinking about if they were alive or dead as much as possible. However, Judy bringing them up at the time seemed okay, even if it did make my heart ache.
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I would like to think that they did, but…” I had a hard time talking about it. I had needed to discuss that kind of stuff with someone like Judy, but I had been stuck with Fish most of the time. He wasn’t the type to dive into personal feelings.
“My mom was sick… like the rest. I’d like to think she made it, but I know better.” I felt the tears forming in my eyes, but I did my best to suppress them. I didn’t need her to tell me to keep going, the rest just came out naturally.
“My dad was with her at the hospital, so I’m not sure about him, either. But Trinity, my sister, was at home. Maybe she found a way to survive? My parents owned a house out in the sticks, well away from any populated area. There shouldn’t be too many zombies or scabs near her.” I stopped talking when I realized that tears were rolling down my cheeks. I hadn’t cried since the day I took off Dave’s head. Maybe it was something that I needed.
Judy rubbed my arm in an attempt to comfort me. It felt nice… warm. How could I have been such a big baby? I guess I wasn’t as hardened as I thought I was.
“You never know, hun. Maybe she is alive. Perhaps one day you will find out.” She said in a gentle tone. I looked into her eyes and saw they were bloodshot from crying. Here she was, hurt and traumatized, and she was comforting me. But I will admit that I needed it.
I heard Fish come back in the house and something heavy hit the tile floor. He moved to the kitchen, where I heard the sound of glass clinking against glass.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Judy, as I wiped the tears from my face. I got up and went into the living room. Fish was sitting on the couch with his feet raised up on the recliner. I walked around to get a better view and ask if everything was alright, but instead I sucked in my breath.
Fish was covered with red and black sludge. I could see the sledgehammer lying by the sliding glass door, coated with the same goo. He was still breathing heavy. His head turned and he looked at me briefly, before he turned back to face the blank TV. He took a long drink out of one of the bottles of vodka that had been in the pantry.
I didn’t know what to say. I decided that not saying anything was better than bringing up the conversation of Judy’s predicament. Just as I turned around to go back to the master bedroom, however, he spoke.
“It will happen soon, Christian,” he said, then took another swig. “I hope you have the stomach for it.”
He was being an asshole like usual, but he had a point. If Judy did change, I wouldn’t have a choice but to kill her. I looked in the room and watched her. She moved around a little, like she was uncomfortable or had an itch on an unreachable location on her back.
I made my way back into the bedroom and sat down next to her. I noticed Boomer had moved and was laying on the floor now. I thought that maybe the bed was too warm for him.
“How are you feeling?” I asked as tenderly as possible.
“Not so well, Hun,” she replied. She was sniffling a little, and would cough here and there. I remembered I had those same symptoms before I passed out on the couch the day that I was bit. I hoped that her body was fighting it off like mine had.
“Do you need anything?” I inquired.
“Water. Can I have some water please?” I complied and gave her some out of the bottle I used to clean her wound.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. She shook her head no.
“You know,” she said between short breaths, “my husband was a good man. I want you to know that. He may have become a monster, but in life, he was caring and a great provider.”
“I believe you,” was all I could say. I thought she was going to pass out soon.
“My son was a good boy too. He didn’t want to… didn’t want to kill his father.” Her voice was getting raspier, and I would see her go into a mild convulsion here and there. She was getting worse. I didn’t remember going through that.
“I just… want… someone to… remember them,” she squeaked out. Her head was twisting side to side, and I noticed her hands were gnarled, like she had arthritis. I also saw that her skin was becoming veiny. Slowly, the veins started to spider web around her neck from beneath her hair. She was changing…
“Judy!” I said. “Judy, stay with me!” But she was fading fast. One of her hands gripped the side of her face as her eyes rolled back into her head.
Then it happened.
Her fingers started digging into her cheek. She didn’t scream in pain. Her back arched, like a bolt of electricity went through her body. Her fingers kept plowing into her face, clawing away skin. Blood dripped from the deep gouges. Her eyes came back, but they were not the same. Her once red bloodshot eyes were being taken over with purple tracers. Her jaw twisted, and a guttural noise came from her throat.
“Judy!” I cried again. But she wasn’t listening. Her mouth was open, as if in a silent scream. I heard Boomer growling on the other side of the bed.
Judy’s head snapped toward me, and then whipped in the direction of Boomer. Before I knew it, I was standing and had moved back a couple of paces. She tried to rip her right arm free, but the handcuffs were holding tight.
Judy was no longer the sweet woman I had come to know over the last few days. A demon was inside of her. Dark red blood formed around her mouth, and she growled like a hungry lion. She tugged on her arm trying to get it free, and snarled at me while she did it. She was a caged animal.
My heart sank as I raised my Glock. I tried to pull the trigger, but couldn’t. She was a sweet woman. Maybe I just had gotten to know her, but from what I did know, she didn’t deserve that. No one deserved that. I lowered my gun, and looked to the ground.
There will be a time in your life when you will have to do the wrong thing for the right reason. Just know that when you do, you will have to carry that burden with you. But remember to carry it with pride, because it takes a strong man to make that kind of decision and live with it.
I don’t know why that thought came into my head. Hell, I didn’t remember why my father had told me that years before. But I think I know now. He knew that one day I may be in a situation where I had to do something bad, but also right.
I raised my head. I could hear Boomer next to me now, snarling. But I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see the bed, or the walls. All I saw was the shell of a woman I had barely known, but cared deeply about.
I raised my gun, letting it track her head as it bobbed back and forth, looking at me with hungry eyes.
“Goodbye, Judy,” I whispered, and pulled the trigger.
My shot was true. Brain matter spurted out from the back of her skull, spraying the floor outside of the bedroom.
I looked up and saw Fish standing there. His gun was in one hand and the bottle of vodka in the other. His .45 wasn’t raised, but held loosely at his side. Dangling off his pinky from his hand holding his gun, were the handcuff keys. He tossed them on the bed, turned around, and headed back into the living room. It appeared he was leaving the dirty work for me.
I guess I deserved it. After all, he had warned me. He was going to do it himself but I had stopped him. The guilt was left for me to carry.
Looking back, I knew it had to be done. The guilt wasn’t only due to the fact that I had to kill her myself.
But there was another feeling that crept up inside of me. I was alone. Not physically, but emotionally. Keeping the secret that I was immune put me in a private little room by myself. The situation with Judy confirmed that I was resistant, and everyone else, as far as I knew, was subject to infection.
I shook those thoughts off and looked at Judy’s body. It was dangling from the foot of the bed by her arm.
First, I dragged her corpse outside to
the front of the house and left it in the yard. Next, I did the same with the scab that Fish had killed. I wasn’t sure if scabs came back as zombies or healed again and were still scabs, but I wasn’t going to take either chance. I felt cold-hearted as I put an end to the both of the bodies, ensuring that they would never rise again.
I didn’t shed a tear for Judy, and that made me mad. I should have. For some reason, emotions had started to abandon me. I didn’t like what I was turning into. I hated myself for those feelings, and made a silent promise that no matter how bad things got, I would try to hang on to my humanity.
Fish stayed on the couch the whole time, drinking the vodka and staring off into nothingness. I went back into the house and decided to join him.
First, I went to the bedroom and grabbed what was left of the rum, and started drinking straight from the bottle. I sat on the love seat, staring into empty space. Boomer trotted in the room and snuggled up on my mattress.
“Wasn’t easy, was it, kid?” he asked after a moment of silence.
“No,” I said, and looked down. I could tell he was drunk, or at least, on the verge of being drunk. The vodka bottle was over half empty, and his demeanor was odd.
“You know, I was one of the first in Afghanistan. I put down a lot of towelheads. Seven tours before I retired.” He was rambling, and at first I thought it was humorous to see him like this, but then I started feeling bad for him as he continued. I knew it was time for him to unload, so I sat there and listened as Fish’s wall finally came crumbling down.
“Twenty-two years I gave to my country. That’s what it’s all about, right? Serve, be proud, and kill the enemy.” He took another drink. “They say you see their ghosts when you sleep. Bullshit. I never saw a ghost… and I made plenty of ‘em.” He turned and glared at me. “Not all deserved it, either.”
“I know,” was all I could manage to say. I really didn’t know and I couldn’t relate to him. I was a pogue, sitting in the relative safety of my camp, not out in the mud. Dave knew though...
“You know what I did, boy?” he asked.
“No,” I said cautiously.
“Operator. Sniper,” he told me. “One shot, one kill. It’s all bullshit.” I knew he was drunk now. I was probably better off just being quiet, but I wasn’t that smart.
“Yeah, they used to make us say that when we were at the range,” I said.
“Bah, what do you know? Sure, you guys said it like it was a cadence. We fucking lived it.” He took another long drink and tossed the empty bottle on the floor. Thankfully, it didn’t shatter, but just rolled against the wall. Boomer raised his head, startled.
We sat there in silence for a little bit. I didn’t want to say anything else to make the situation worse. I was hoping he would drift off to sleep, but he didn’t.
“When I retired, I never wanted to see a gun again. I saw so many kids armed to the teeth over there. I didn’t want them anywhere near my son.” He rubbed his hand over his head. “Just a revolver. That’s all I had. Locked away from my boy.”
“My boy…” he trailed off for a moment. “He was gonna be quarterback next season, you know that? Such a smart kid. Now…” He turned and looked at me, stopping in mid-sentence. No longer did he have that stern, angry glare. His eyes betrayed his hurt, his remorse.
“We tried the hospital. ‘No more patients’ they said. Don’t even get me started on the FEMA camp. She held him. My Becky held him in her arms and watched him die in his own bed.”
Anger started to boil up in him again, and tears started to form around the rims of his eyes.
“I told her to let him lay in peace!” he said, raising his voice. “But she couldn’t. She held him for hours. She was so excited when he started moving again. She called to me, and I made it in the room just as Nolan… bit… into her. He was ravaging her, tearing into her side like some insane beast!”
He stopped, sniffled, and looked around the room like there was a jury judging him.
“What could I do? I threw him off of her, but he kept coming. My boy! What could I do?” He started to calm down again, lowered his voice, and talked between sobs.
“I locked him in the room. He kept banging on the door until it started to give way. What fucking choice did I have?” he asked the ghostly panel. “I- I got my gun. I told him to stop, but he just kept coming down the hallway. I- I… I had to. I tried to just wound him. I tried to make him stop, but he just kept coming. I didn’t have a choice! I only had one bullet left.”
He didn’t finish the rest of the story, and he didn’t have to. I knew he put his own son down to save his wife. He just didn’t know she was already dead.
Ironically, his story bared similarity with what happened between me and Dave. I had wondered how so many zombies had risen, when it seemed only around half of the population had actually gotten sick. That explained why there was so many of the dead walking around. Not everyone got sick, but most were probably naive and fell victim. By all accounts, I should have been one of them.
“I tried to fix her. I patched her up. But she got sick anyway. That’s when the radio told us what was happening.” He wiped the tears from his eyes, but didn’t notice that he had spread the black sludge across his face in the process. He drew a heavy snort to clear out his nose. Then, oddly, he straightened his face. It no longer looked sad or angry, it was just blank.
“She told me to do it. She begged me.” His stone face stared ahead, as if he was watching the scene on the blank TV. “But I couldn’t. I tried, but…”
He closed his eyes. I thought he was done, but then he looked over at me. The jury in the room disappeared and the scene on the TV was gone. There was just Fish and me…
“In the end, kid, it’s better to do it before they change. At least… at least they die as they are, and not some…” He stopped. He didn’t have to say anymore.
Though I told myself I didn’t want to know what his demons were, I was glad he had told me. It was something he needed to get off of his chest. From that point on, he was no longer alone. He was still an asshole, but now he had a friend.
Too bad I still felt alone. I didn’t think my burden could never be shared.
Chapter 16
Returning the Favor
April 19th Morning
The next week went by uneventfully. I say that because I didn’t come close to death. Plenty happened, though. One thing about surviving in the apocalypse was that there was always something to do.
Fish and I never talked about what had happened with Judy or the preceding and intoxicated conversation. I originally didn’t want to know what had hardened him, but now was thankful that I did. He undoubtedly remembered that night and I think it made our relationship easier. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t really change much, but there were certain allowances we started to give each other.
We invited DJ and Jared down to our house. Lt. Campbell and one of his soldiers accompanied them. The Lieutenant didn’t seem like such a bad guy, but he definitely kept his guard up.
We learned a little about the Lieutenant and his group before they came to Palm Bay. He and his men had fought their way out of Miami. Along the way, they picked up Chad and a reverend named Ken. Ken, who they referred to as Preacher, had a couple of orphans with him.
They headed north to try and link up with an Army Battalion out of Jacksonville Florida. By the time they made it to Palm Bay, though, they had lost communication with the other unit. They saw a huge cell phone tower where DJ’s group was starting to build up fortifications. Campbell hoped to use the cell tower as an antenna to contact other surviving military units. Up to that point, they hadn’t had any success.
Jared had little experience with solar panels, but his working knowledge of DC to AC, which I was still trying to grasp, helped us rig up a decent system. That was good, because we were able to get the fans working. It was getting pretty damn hot and humid. We were also able to get enough juice to run the fridge for about half the day. I cannot exp
ress enough how nice it is to have cold water. Jared also told me they had rigged some car alternators into windmills, and drew the specs out for me just in case I wanted to try.
DJ brought materials to strengthen up our truck, but left them for us to mount. Fish had told me he had his own idea for a “cow-catcher” for the front of our new vehicle.
We showed them our set up for our garden, and they seemed impressed. The constant water flow to the plants was ingenious. They had tried planting some vegetables, but bugs or the heat withered them away and the constant watering wasted their reserves. Campbell’s underling, ironically named Private Gardner, took notes.
Campbell found it interesting that Fish was a former Special Forces sniper. He told him they could use a good man like him, but Fish declined, saying this is where his hat was hung. I was intrigued when the LT asked at what rank Fish retired. He was an E8, or Master Sergeant. Basically, the highest rank an enlisted man could go before you were more of an administrator. That still meant Campbell outranked him, but I had a feeling rank didn’t mean anything to Fish.
DJ brought up Fish’s earlier proposal about co-oping on scavenging runs. That was also something Campbell was interested in. They had a large group, but the soldiers were needed for defense. DJ had taken it upon himself to organize most of their food and equipment scouting runs with the civilians from the camp. The LT thought that was best because they knew the lay of the land better. Occasionally, some of the soldiers would accompany them, but mostly that happened only when the situation required more firepower.
This revealed to us their biggest dilemma as well. Though they had thirty one survivors in their camp, most were old, women, or children. Only DJ, Jared, Chad, Jenna, Daniel, Lt. Campbell and his five soldiers were actually capable of handling the zombies. Two thirds of their group was completely reliant on the others for security.
DJ told us Jenna was actually more gifted than half the men. According to him, she knew how to hunt and clean animals, how to fix a car, wasn’t afraid to get dirty, and had a mean right cross. I guess Chad found that out a couple of days after they joined up. Fish remarked that she was probably more capable than I was. Asshole.