Revenence (Novella 2): Dead Tired

by M. E. Betts

  "That's right, you filthy animals" Adrian sneered. "Ride 'em to death. Whatever y'all touch turns to shit."

  He rode past an outlying subdivision and approached what appeared to be a small downtown, one which, like many in semi-rural Americana, had lived through its heyday in the first half of the twentieth century. As he approached a bend in the road, obscuring what lay beyond, he began to smell smoke.

  Just before he rounded the curve, he heard a deafening explosion from up the street ahead, past a row of three-story, brick-facaded downtown buildings. Debris could be heard raining back down onto the asphalt and surrounding area. He engaged the brake, resisting the urge to press it all the way down. He skidded to a stop, curving his bike in an inward spiral to help slow its forward momentum. He advanced past the buildings to his left, taking caution to go only as far as he had to in order to see what the situation was up the road.

  Moments later, the source of the blast came into Adrian's field of vision. A blackened car frame sat on the side of the road about fifty yards ahead, flames filling its insides and licking out the windows and hood. Several other nearby cars were on fire. Adrian saw half of a writhing human figure in the road to his left, torn at the torso. As he approached it, he saw that it was clearly already undead before the explosion, being in a visibly advanced state of decay.

  Adrian heard the sound of sizzling from one of the burning cars, now about forty yards ahead. Wasting no time, he ducked into an alleyway to his right. From the street behind him, he heard another explosion. He braked and dismounted, crouching behind a dumpster to shield himself from any possible detritus.

  After a few moments, he re-mounted his motorcycle and edged out toward the street once again, turning his head to the right and surveying the situation before he pulled out of the alleyway.

  He found that the road to the west was one massive inferno, an intersection clogged with the flaming wreckage of a few dozen cars. They had, from the looks of them, met their collective demise in a mass pile-up months before. The air was opaque with black smoke, billowing up past the rooftops and into the sky.

  He started to turn back the other way, preparing to travel the opposite direction down the alley in search of another way out of town, when he caught a brief glimpse of something that made him change his mind.

  Although he couldn't discern any real details, it was clearly a sadist's motorcycle as the group traveled down a stretch of the slightly winding highway that brought them briefly into Adrian's line of sight. They now had their headlights on in the fading light, and he heard their engines once again over the crackling and hissing of the fire. He looked more intently, hoping to see more, when the smoke cloud, still puffing and enlarging, obscured the narrow gap through which Adrian had been able to see the road ahead.

  Adrian sat idling for a moment, deliberating. The brief human form he had seen on the motorcycle appeared to have been some distance away, at least a half-mile.

  "Better get to chasin'," he said in a low but boisterous growl, his eyes gleaming and his teeth gritted as he turned right, accelerating until he was speeding toward the flaming crossroads. Just before entering the smoke, he drew in a deep lungful of air. He held his breath as he navigated through the smoky intersection, leaning down low over his handlebars where he was afforded just enough visibility to make his way through the narrow gaps here and there between cars.

  Although he made quick progress, it still took longer than he would have liked. He was slightly more than halfway across when he was forced to draw in another breath, his reflexes having taken over against his will. He gulped down a quick breath, choking it off, and hurried westward.

  Even though it was less than thirty seconds later when he emerged from the black cloud into relatively fresh air, it felt as if he were holding his breath for several minutes. Having cleared the obstacle of the smoke, he began to notice the merciless searing of burnt flesh on the bridge of his nose and the tops of his cheeks and ears, although he hadn't noticed when it happened.

  He drove as far forward as he could before slowing and then stopping his motorcycle, switching off the ignition. He gasped for breath, his chest heaving as his lungs tried to flush out the smoke with clean air. He intended to continue after a short time, to resume his pursuit of the targets ahead.

  His body, however, had other plans, and he passed out thoroughly and without warning. He slid down from the seat of his motorcycle and onto the asphalt as the enlarged, reddened sun sank lower in the west.

  He was jerked back into alert wakefulness after a period of dreamless sleep, alarmed to find himself enveloped in the dark of night. An oversized, scarred tom cat walked up and down the length of Adrian's body, rubbing its face onto his pant leg and duster as it went. The relaxed cheek flapped open so that the sides of its teeth were what pressed against Adrian, leaving him marked with its scent.

  "Brrr-owww," it purred as Adrian stirred, rising slowly to his feet. He looked down, noting the frayed end of a plastic package containing a beef snack stick protruding from his pocket. It was the result of the cat's attempt to extract the stick. He removed the wrapper and threw the processed meat snack to the cat, whose purring rose in volume as it feasted.

  "You did me a favor, wakin' me up," he told the cat, "although you might've done it a little sooner." He checked his watch for the time. It was almost ten o'clock, the watch face told him in wavy, blurred lines that resulted from his sleep deprivation. Now that his body had tasted rest, it wished desperately for more.

  From a faraway place in his mind, he knew that he was still far too exhausted to drive. He felt, though, that he had no choice. He had to get to Celia, but his heart sank as he realized he had been unconscious for around an hour and a half, which meant that Celia was already well beyond the Texas border, and likely very close to Amarillo.

  "I bid you adieu," Adrian told the feline, "dark be damned."

  As he started his motorcycle and began westward with the sounds of low-burning fire still crackling behind him, he noticed that the back sides of his fingers had also suffered some degree of burning. He lamented that he had set himself back an hour and a half, not to mention the bodily harm which he had caused by trying to save a minor amount of time, rather than investing a few minutes into a detour.

  He was able to do sixty miles per hour for most of the next forty miles leading to Texola, only having to slow down twice near travel stops, where he had to carefully navigate narrow spaces between abandoned cars. He had been on the road for just over 45 minutes when he began to notice the houses getting closer together, and he reached a sign, illuminated in his headlights, that told him he had reached the town of Texola.

  He scowled, profoundly resentful of the fact that he would be going all the way to Amarillo. In the beginning, back in Kentucky, he didn't imagine the chase would continue outside of the state. As it was currently, he figured that if he faced no major obstacles, he should reach Amarillo by around one o'clock in the morning. He tried to focus on the fact that he was in the home stretch, and that he would be near his daughter soon. For the time being, he tried to disregard the fact that it would happen later, rather than sooner.

  To distract himself, and to keep himself awake, he focused on his seared nerves, rustled into a continual state of distress by the wind as he drove. Even his eyes burned. He reached up, touching his brow bone, and discovered that parts of his eyebrows had been singed away. He wasn't sure how he would do it, but he knew that he had to be sharper, more alert, and avoid making any more mistakes.

  He drove on for several minutes before it occurred to him to wonder how much smoke he had inhaled, and how much harm it had caused. He cogitated over the matter for a few moments longer, then shrugged his shoulders.

  "Don't matter," he said, his tone brisk, "it's already done. I done fucked up."

  Just can't fuck up again, he concluded internally, gripping the handles more tightly and fixing his dusky, intense gaze on the road far ahead, into the darkness past his hi-beams.
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  "No more fuck-ups," said Christopher from the left, startling Adrian with his sudden presence, "sounds like a solid enough plan."

  Adrian shook his head. "It's not that easy, though. I don't feel like I'm in my right mind."

  "I can help you there," Christopher said, "you're not. You're beyond exhausted, and that's just for starters. Maybe you should pull over, get some rest."

  "No," Adrian said, "no time."

  Christopher laughed. "What are you planning on doing? Getting there at one in the morning with barely any sleep over the past four days, suffering from smoke inhalation, dehydration and maybe a concussion for good measure? And just, what? Waltz in there like Rambo and shoot up the place before scooping up your daughter and riding off into the sunrise?"

  "What would you have me do?" Adrian asked, his teeth gritted and his gaze ahead. "Hmm? Pull over and take a nap at the nearest Best Western while Celia's being...being...." He broke off into a round of sobs, his throat left aching.

  Christopher was quiet for many seconds, until Adrian glanced leftward to lock gazes with him.

  "Listen, Adrian," he said, "you have better odds of helping Celia if you get there a little late, than you do if you get there never. That's all I'm saying."

  "Maybe if it was your child--" Adrian broke off, realizing he had said the wrong thing. After all, he had no idea what had happened to Christopher's wife and young son after zombies had begun to roam the Earth. Based off of the sudden absence of sound from the Honda, Adrian feared that Christopher had once again vanished. A quick glance to his left confirmed it, as he was met with only the grassy Texas desert staring back at him, the occasional flash of heat lightning illuminating the horizon just enough to render the landscape visible.

  "Alright," Adrian said to himself with forced non-chalance, "that's fine. This is my hell, I'll go through it alone." He patted the handlebar of the motorcycle beneath him. "Just you 'n me, ol' girl."

  He rode on for many minutes, becoming progressively more drowsy until eventually, he was on the cusp of falling asleep. He jerked his consciousness back at the last second, and as he surveyed his surroundings, he was momentarily confused. Was he in Afghanistan? What had he been doing before nearly dozing off?

  He felt and heard the familiar rumble of the motorcycle beneath him, and a bright burst of heat lightning exposed to his view the sight of an emaciated, leathery corpse sprawled on its back in the bed of a Chevy pick-up. The wind whistled through a hole in its skull, and a revolver lay just beyond its fingertips. Its nose and eyes had been picked away by meat-eating scavengers, along with chunks of flesh here and there.

  "Now I remember where I am," Adrian mumbled, recalling his location and objective, "and it's not Kansas."

  It didn't take long before his eyelids started to droop again, though he managed to ride on in a slack-jawed, trance-like state. He sat astride the motorcycle, his body stiff from riding, yet exhausted. His muscles and eyes screamed for respite, and he could no longer deny them. His chin dropped down to his chest, and his eyes rolled slightly upward as his lids closed.

  Just as he was slipping away, Adrian felt the sharp sting of a slap on his right cheek. He opened his eyes and saw that the strike had come from his own left hand, which was still raised, but it was followed by Christopher's voice.

  "Seeing as you're dead-set on this," he said, "I can get us through it. But I need you to keep your eyes open--that's all you need to do. Think you can handle it?"

  "We'll see," Adrian said, his voice bleary. "Let's do this thing."

  He settled comfortably into the back seat of his mind with Christopher at the wheel.

  So I'll just keep my eyes open, then, he said internally. He envisioned himself in th back seat of the car his father had driven when he was a child. It was a blue 1975 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme which his father had driven until the early 1990s, at which time it had gone into semi-retirement.

  Adrian felt the cool beige leather seat against his cheek as he gazed out the window at the darkened landscape speeding by. He could make out just the tops of the various tall grasses catching the low light as they waved in the brisk wind. Staring out the window, he grew more and more relaxed until he began to fall asleep.

  The deafening sound of a nearby blast brought him back. He saw his hand putting his shotgun into its holster, although in his mind it was Christopher's hand and not his own.

  "You were closing your eyes," Christopher said, clicking his tongue. "You close your eyes, I can't see. I can't see, I can't drive the motorcycle. I guess that pus-bag back there had good timing, huh? The same shotgun blast that took it out also woke your ass up, at the last second."

  "I'll try harder," Adrian promised.

  "We could always just pull over and sleep," Christopher pointed out. "Maybe we should."

  "No," Adrian said abruptly. "No, I'll try harder."

  Christopher sighed as Adrian settled again into the back seat. "Whatever you say, man. But for God's sake, prop those eyelids open, if you have to."

  Adrian's mind wandered as the miles began to add up, and they inched closer to Amarillo. Somehow, though, he managed to keep his eyes open. After several miles, he began to dream, though even in his sleeping state, he constantly reminded himself not to let his eyelids close. In his dreaming trance, he barely even blinked, his eyes glossed-over and vacant.

  While Christopher remained awake in his stead, Adrian was in an interior world made partially of old memories. He walked through a neighborhood in which he had walked in real life as a teenager. It was the neighborhood in which his cousin's best friend had lived, in a historical, affluent part of St. Louis.

  Adrian had been spending the weekend with his cousin, Jeremy, in the July preceding his senior year. Jeremy and his friend, Billy, had obtained some high-grade marijuana, and the three teens had smoked it in the woods beside the creek after sundown. It was in the form of badly-rolled joints, but it had nonetheless left Adrian and his two companions feeling as if they were seeing the neighborhood from the sky as they spent the next couple of hours walking the quiet, tidy streets. They didn't talk much or cause a ruckus, because they were too inundated. They walked quietly, observing the healthy, green lawns and careful landscaping from a perspective to which they were unaccustomed, until they retired back to the home of their host before midnight. Upon their return, they had raided the refrigerator and settled in for the evening.

  In Adrian's dream, he and the other two young men walked those streets in the well-maintained St. Louis suburb, but in this version, they also searched for something in the yards and mailboxes. As Adrian followed behind the other two, he forgot what the item was.

  "What is it we're looking for, again?" he asked.

  "Glue," his cousin's friend said in a whisper over his shoulder.

  Adrian made a face. "You don't want to huff glue, do you?"

  His cousin scoffed. "Adrian, don't be stupid."

  The two refused to elaborate any further to Adrian as to what the purpose of the hunt was. The dream continued, drawn-out and monotonous, while Adrian kept his lids all but propped open and Christopher navigated.

  After some time, the visuals of the dream dissolved away, and for a moment, Adrian saw only black, becoming oddly disembodied. In the darkness, there appeared a road map with sharp crease marks. It was the map of the southwest which he had been using. Adrian internally focused on the map, his gaze zooming in on the stretch between Texola and Amarillo, his present location. He fell deeper into his trance-like state, ensnared by the tedious, relentless visual of the map.

  The image continued for what felt like days while Adrian remained uncomfortably disembodied, until he couldn't stand to look at it any longer. The sheer monotony was beginning to give him a headache. He squeezed his eyes closed, but after just moments, he stopped squeezing and relaxed, relinquishing himself to sleep.

  He awoke to a pair of hands coming in close to him, seemingly coming from someone to his rear as he lay on his back on a table. A
lthough he couldn't see the face that went with the hands, he could see that they belonged to a man with dark skin, and that they tended to a long, painful gash Adrian could feel running across his forehead.

  "Christopher?" Adrian muttered, confused as to where and when he was.

  "You're awake," said an unfamiliar voice. "Who's Christopher? Was there someone else with you?"

  Adrian's eyes darted around the room, mostly the ceiling and upper walls. It was too dark to discern much about his environment, but he could see from the dim glow visible through a window that the sun was rising.

  "No," he said, his voice hoarse. A cough rattled through him, bringing the extent of his bodily trauma into sharp focus as he was jarred. His head throbbed, and the gash on his forehead pulsated with extra blood flow due to coughing. His torso ached, especially his ribs, and the muscles in his limbs felt intolerably tender upon trying to raise himself up, causing him to lie back down. "No," he continued, "I was alone. Listen, where am I? And with all due respect, may I ask who you are?"

  "Hold on a second," the unnamed man said. Adrian smelled alcohol, cringing as a cotton ball dripping with the fluid was applied to the deep cut above his brow bone. "Sorry," he told Adrian, "but it had to be done. Now let's see if we can sit you up, then we'll talk."

  He braced Adrian from beneath the arms, helping him rise to a seated position against the wall. Adrian's night vision had developed slightly, and now that he was elevated, he could see that they were in some sort of warehouse. The only windows were well above head height, and the ceiling appeared to be around thirty feet from the floor.

  Adrian winced as he settled himself, trying to recall what had caused the trauma he was experiencing throughout his body. The memory eluded him, so he leaned back against the wall and steadied his breath until he could think more coherently.

  "Okay," Adrian panted, addressing the man in front of him, a male who appeared to be roughly the same age as he himself. He wore a thick, canvas mechanic jumpsuit, and a black 'do-rag on his head with a pair of mirrored sunglasses pushed up onto his crown.