Hold up. Gangrene? Jump through one of those rifts? No way! Not till I find someone to go with me.
“If you jump through, hopefully, you can tell those who are still left what’s happening here. Maybe they can stop it or contact the ones on the next plane. They pulled something down where we saw the alien on the ground, and those are the ones we need. Oh, and if you do make it through, don’t forget to tell ‘em it was my idea!” he said, chuckling, then closed his eyes and let his head roll to one side.
I gently tucked his legs into the car and closed the door, catching a whiff of his strong stench as I did. I knew that in gangrene infections, body parts had to be removed so it would not spread, but there was no way I could do that. I winced as I thought of chopping off his hands and trying to staunch the blood flow. Can I use fire? Wrap the limbs with wire and pull it tight with a pair of plyers? I was very skilled at reading blueprints, plumbing a line, managing a crew, putting up walls, and paving driveways, but surgery was not my forte, and I was relatively certain I couldn’t saw through a human bone as easily as I could a two-by-four, at least not without throwing up or passing out. For Brian’s sake, as well as my own and possibly the fate of the remaining human race, I hoped I could drive far enough to find someone with medical experience to save his life. With that thought on my mind, I climbed into the car, fired it up, made sure all the windows were down, and resumed our southerly trek.
The days flew by, and we soon made it to Florida. “Welcome to the Sunshine State,” I read from the sign as we passed it. Along the way, I made frequent stops at libraries, drugstores, and hospitals, desperate to keep Brian alive so he could help me. Without the advantage of Wi-Fi and Dr. Google, I had to rely on books and medical journals. I read all I could about his condition, but I wasn’t familiar with all the jargon, and I wasn’t really able to do much to remedy his problem. I could decipher the general prognosis, though, and it wasn’t good: “Left untreated, gangrene can lead to septic conditions that ultimately prove fatal.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him the bad news, but he rarely woke anymore to hear it anyway.
As humans tend to do, especially when seeking some sense of comfort and normalcy, I soon slipped into a daily routine: We just drove a few hours, salvaging on the way what we needed, and I was getting pretty good at that. The largest fuel stations held over 10,000 gallons, and it was an easy matter to raid a hardware store and gather all the tools necessary to lift the valves off. With a hand pump, we were able to fill our car and several ten-gallon cans that we stashed in the remarkably large trunk. We lived on canned vegetables and spaghetti rings, potato chips, peanuts, and jerky, even candy once in a while. We didn’t feel too bad about the junk food, because we were expending a lot of calories just trying to survive, and it was no difficult thing to find toothbrushes and paste to clean our teeth after those processed and sugary feasts.
Very few places had power, but we did encounter a few houses with their solar panels still intact, and some of those freezers were well stocked with foodstuffs that hadn’t yet defrosted or gone bad. We stayed in those places until we consumed any meat that still looked edible. When we did, we made something of a celebration of it, relishing the familiar taste of hotdogs, steak, and burgers, enjoying our makeshift barbecue with grills that still had propane gas in their tanks.
Brian was only conscious for a few hours at a time, though, and I found that I missed his company. I was raised in a large family, and there was always someone around to talk to, always someone to accompany me to the movies or the park or the beach. The stillness and quiet was getting to me, and even though Mr. Wilson was not someone I would normally associate with, he was all I had. Therefore, whenever he spoke, I listened carefully, hanging on every word, desperate for that human interaction. Most of it was gibberish to me, just a bunch of high-wave theories and talk about secure communication protocols with satellites, but he was a reminder of my past life, one I had enjoyed and now knew I’d taken for granted.
It was easier to move around as well. Most of the carnage from the dead attacking the living had faded, and the bodies had decomposed enough that it was possible to go nearly anywhere we desired. The fires were out, the sulfuric scent of the burned dispersed. The stink of death was also coming to an end; the killed profiles softened, their bodies nothing now but bones, with tall grass growing over most of them, Mother Nature’s way to cover up the horror that had occurred.
We had not seen anything or anyone for days, and I started to relax and sleep more, waking later and later each day. My traveling companion, however, did not sleep so well, for his health was quickly deteriorating. When he did doze off, he whimpered in pain. As much as he loved his cigarettes, and as many as we had, he seldom smoked anymore, and when roused from sleep, he insisted on copious amounts of water. The gangrene had spread to his arms, a sign that the poison had infiltrated his bloodstream and infected his body. He gobbled up Motrin and aspirin like candy, and when I took stronger medicine from drugstores for him, he went through them rapidly as well. He remained in the back seat, covered in blankets and pillows from a department store we looted.
I never really liked the man, and I didn’t respect him. He lived his life in a less-than-admirable way, and his personality was sorely lacking in the common social graces. He was also a bit of a fraud, a greedy, falsely entitled man who cheated the Veteran’s Administration to have his needs met at the great expense and sacrifice of those more deserving, but he was my only human companion in that new, empty world. I found myself talking to him as I drove, even though he was not awake. I worried about his arms, beet red and dead almost all the way up to his armpits. Often, I thought I heard him asking me to pull over, and I stopped the car along the roadside, only to discover that it was my lonely imagination talking. I missed everything too, longed for the life I once had, as trivial and mundane as it often seemed. I missed going to the movies with my wife, cooking with her and having our children over on the weekends. I missed my father and my mother, my siblings. “Damn you!” I cursed, raising a fist to the sky as dusk began to settle on the day. “Damn you for taking it all from us!”
A few miles off the highway, I came upon an apparently vacant house, with no signs of bloodshed, no broken windows, and no shattered doors. I hoped we would find some empty beds and canned goods there, and I felt no guilt in my plan to squat in the home for a day or two, since the former owners clearly weren’t around. I half-carried, half-pushed Brian up the stairs that led to the front door, then turned the knob. I was happy to find the place unlocked, and it did appear to be entirely deserted, so we would have it all to ourselves.
I found a bedroom and placed my infected sidekick on a quilt-covered bad, then found an extra blanket on a nearby glider chair and tucked it in around his ailing body. As I tried to make him as comfortable as I could, I noted that he’d stained his pants again. I stripped him of that filthy, urine- and pus-soaked clothing and throwing it out the window, then gently cleaned him up. His arms were now swollen to double their normal size, red and painful. As I applied a washcloth, his diseased skin broke under the stress of the infection, and greenish-yellow fluid oozed out, nearly knocking me unconscious with its noxious, awful death stink, the reek of rotting flesh. Every time I moved him, he cried out in agony, and small tears appeared in his flesh, leaking out more blood and fluid.
Once he quieted, I returned to the car to fetch the supplies I could not live without. Around my waist, I holstered a .45 and attached a military-grade knife. I also brought in the shotgun, plenty of ammo, a few gallons of water, and my trusty bag of dried food.
I sat down in an easy chair and pulled out my revolver. Maybe it’s time, I thought, wondering if Brian deserved the justice of ending it all. I knew he wasn’t going to get any better, that there was no silver lining to his cloud, and I had reached the end of my meager skills in caring for him. I could bear to see him linger like that, suffering such terrible pain day and night. Hoping against hope, I had tried to find others,
maybe a doctor or nurse with medical training, but we were not that lucky; the only physicians I did find were dead and rotting in hospital hallways. I yearned to put him out of both of our misery, but I feared ending him, only to meet him again as one of those nightmarish things. I hadn’t seen any revived dead or rifts for a long time, and I thought maybe Brian’s would be a clean death, but in the end, I just could not do it, and I put the revolver back in its holster again.
Near nightfall, I sat on the end of his bed in that small house, looking at him. I will do it tomorrow, I decided, after a long drive. We’ll find another spot, a nice spot for him, and I’ll lay him there and rescue him with a bullet to the head. A tear filled my eye as I imagined it, as I thought of pulling the trigger. I’d stopped Dennis from killing the man more than once, but now Dennis and his lovely wife were gone, like everyone else good and decent in the world, and Brian Wilson was my only link to my old life, my normal life. In many ways, firing that gun at him would be like administering the death blow to any final, thin shred of hope I still had.
I covered him with a few more old, tanned blankets and found another room, then opened the windows to let the stench out. I lay down, with darkness all around me, propped the shotgun within arm’s reach against the wall, sipped some water, and opened a bag of nuts. I heard him down the hallway, his every breath now a labor, but somehow, that noise consoled me. Still, it has to be tomorrow. It’s only fair. He’s…too far gone. Yes, I must take his life…tomorrow, I thought as a deep, grave emptiness found me. I was tired in body, mind, and spirit, my own wounds still healing and some forming scars that I knew would never go away. I had never felt so alone in my life, yet the next day, for all I knew, I would literally be the last man on Earth.
The sun came up bright and warm, as if to mock my gray, cold disposition. I checked the house, peered out the window at our car, and looked in on Brian. He must have gotten up during the night, I realized, as there was a fecal mess in the corner of the room, near an opened closet, but there was a lump of flesh in the bed, fast asleep. I had decided to drive around for most of the morning, try one last time to get him to talk, the find a simple two-story house like that one and end his lie there. Rather than burying him, I would leave his body to rot the rest of the way in a stranger’s bed, on a stranger’s sheets, under a stranger’s blankets. I knew firsthand now that apocalyptic funerals portrayed in movies and books were a sham. It would take too much of my energy and time to dig such a hole, like the hole Dennis and I dug for my father before we knew how bad things really were. My construction career gave me a true sense of the physical labor required for such a literal undertaking, and I did not want to expend the energy to do it, did not want to stay in one spot for that long during daylight. It was a different world now, and no one had time for last rites and tombstones.
I carried my supplies, along with a few new ones taken from the house, out to the car. Outside, I scanned the horizon, searching for signs of life, whether other humans, aliens, or the returned dead, but I saw no movement whatsoever. I could not see far, as the house was surrounded by trees, but I was certain things were just as still and quiet as they’d been for days.
Brian was awake when I walked back upstairs, reaching around his bed for a cigarette, patting the mattress with his useless hands that couldn’t even feel anything. He pointed to his lips to indicate that he needed a drink, so I gave him some water, then lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth. In minutes, he was asleep again, with the death stick still burning between his crusty lips. Yes, it’s time. When a man has to rely on someone else for everything, it’s time, I thought as I flicked the butt from his mouth and watched the orange sparks as it bounced on the wooden floor. I no longer cared about fire hazards, and there was no one to put them out or file an insurance claim anyway.
I went downstairs and loaded up the car, then returned for Brian. “I found a place for us, and you’ll be able to stay there. No more moving around,” I whispered in his ear.
He mumbled something in return, but I couldn’t tell if it was a complaint, a thanks, or another of his outlandish theories.
I drove aimlessly, in completely random directs. We entered another small town, another typical one-light speed trap. The Spanish moss blew ever so slightly in the morning breeze among the rows of small brick shops and businesses that lined the main street. I was sure the people who lived in that last house shopped there, that they went to the tiny grocery store for their milk and eggs and butter before they met their bitter end. Something about that sickened me after the relatively good night we had together in their home, and I did not want Brian to meet his end in that town.
I ignored the yield sign as I merged onto the freeway and gunned the engine. I had to go at least a mile or so away, find a fresh location that would be his final resting place. Besides, the driving gave me just a little more time with my last human friend in the world. I wove around the deserted cars and trucks, going nowhere in particular. Soon, I really will be all alone in this vast world, with no living and no dead, I surmised, and I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost passed it.
I didn’t expect to see it, another car actually moving across the road, heading the opposite direction. It was a small four-door, slowly meandering through the wreckage of a lost civilization, and it drove even slower when I neared it.
I stopped our car and looked out the window as I reached carefully back beside Brian and picked up the proverbial white flag, the cotton towel I was ready to throw in. I wrapped the soft terrycloth around my hands and reached out to wave it back and forth in surrender, to let them know I came in peace. All the while, with my other hand, I carefully removed my sidearm from its holster and sneakily slid it under my leg. I was sure there were some fellow humans in that vehicle, and as happy as I was to see them, I had no idea who they were or how they would react to us.
Their car stopped as well, then turned into the median and drove across the high grass. As it approached, I saw two young men in the front, around college age. One was wearing glasses and had sandy hair that reminded me of Brian’s, before his was all matted with blood. The driver, on the other hand, was African American, with a much broader frame than his friend’s, his hand so large that it almost swallowed half of the steering wheel he gripped. I could see that they, too, were armed, and I couldn’t fault them for that, but they kept their barrels pointed downward and smiled as they drew near. In fact, the passenger even raised his left hand to offer a lazy attempt at a wave.
“I… We…” we both spoke at once, the driver and I so excited to see other living humans that we stumbled over one another’s words when they parked a few feet over from me.
I shared a laugh with him, excited and pleased. “I really thought we were the only ones left, that the dead got everyone else!” I exclaimed.
“The dead?” the driver said. “You mean those creepy bastards the aliens sicced on us outta those black holes?”
I closed my mouth in an instant. Of course they aren’t aware of what Brian knows. They don’t know the monsters are really our dead predecessors, forcibly pulled back from the afterlife and none too happy about it. “Yeah,” I quickly countered, “we just call ‘em dead because of how they look.” I then made sure to change the subject. “Is it just the two of you? No more?” I asked.
The sandy-haired young man answered, “Almost a dozen in Westbury actually. It’s just a few miles up the highway. You won’t be able to make it much farther south than that, because the ground’s just gone about forty miles ahead.”
“Gone?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah, some nothing but a huge chasm. We aren’t sure what happened, but it must have been bad, maybe some kind of military response. I don’t think it was nukes though. There doesn’t seem to be any fallout, no blast marks. Some of those things are still down there, but they won’t go past the holes.”
The driver pulled his shirt over his nose and looked at me in disgust. “It smells like somebody could use a shower.
You oughtta come join us. We have it all, a little electricity, supplies, and thousands of gallons of gas. We’re near two large megastores. It’ll take years to eat through and use all that up. We’ve got plenty of food and water and beds, as well as a mechanic and a nurse!”
I smiled at the thought; the place sounded like heaven, full of new people to talk to and little worry about the aliens or the dead.
The driver peered into my back seat and pointed at Brian, who was slumped and sleeping there. “That smell… What the hell is wrong with that guy? Is he infected or somethin’? His arms and face are all red and swollen, and he stinks.” He then yelled right into Brian’s window, “Hey, man! You all right?”
I turned my head to look. “Our best guess is that he’s got gangrene in his hands and arms. I’ve got no medical training, but I’ve been giving him whatever medicine we could find, as well as changing his bandages and putting salve on him. I was hoping we could find someone to help. Did you say you have a nurse in your group who might be able to…” I let the words hang there between us.
The other man motioned, and the driver climbed back into his car. “On second thought,” he shouted to me, “I’m afraid we can’t invite you, not with that. We’ve got no idea what he really has or if it’s contagious. He might have some space disease from them,” he said, pointing upward. “If you lose him, you can come to Westbury in a week or so. Clean yourself up the best you can, because if we see you coming in with that pile of germs, we’ll have to shoot you on sight. We’ve got some heavy artillery at our camp, the big guns, so to speak, and we’ll use them if we have to to protect the people there.”
Then, without another word, they sped off.
A week? I thought. I can do a week. I was inspired by the thought of being able to be with other people, of being able to share with them. Misery loves company, right? I mused, and I felt happy for the first time in many days. Seven short days? Easy peasy. A few words echoed in my head though, one of the conditions I didn’t want to face: “If you lose him…”
They came for our dead Page 11