I look at him crookedly.
“A man doesn’t care where he goes out. He may th-think he does. Y-You know, a nice warm bed, surrounded by your friends and family. That’s how it used to be a long time ago, before all—all this,” Roland says, motioning to the empty world. “That’s not how it goes a-anymore.” He leans over and starts coughing. Flecks of blood spatter his weakly-curled fist. “I’m going, I’m moving on. It don’t matter if I do it right here or beneath some pretty t-tree. The f-fact is, I’m goin’.”
I bend down and scoop him up. His blood soaks me. He groans softly in pain. “I’m not letting you die here, Roland.”
“Th-thanks, Jack.”
From the warehouse, Lilly scavenges some mangy blankets. They’re hole-ridden, smelly, and old, but we lay them down in the truck bed regardless. Roland sits against the wheel well, his head lolling, blood dribbling down his chin with nearly every ragged breath he takes. Lilly swipes it away with a rag.
“I’ll stay with him,” I tell her. “You get on inside the cab.”
“You sure?”
I nod. She hands me the rag, already soaked with Roland’s blood.
As Abby walks past, toward the driver’s side door—the one that has left a pretty gnarly gash in my forehead—I say, “We need to get rolling. Zombies will be coming.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it.”
She gets in. Lilly lingers and runs a hand through Roland’s hair. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“Don’t b-be sorry, girl,” Roland replies, mustering up a smile. “I’m l-living on borrowed time anyway.”
Lilly looks like she’s about to cry. She turns her head away and gets into the truck. The engine starts up like a coughing fit from a dying man.
I sit across from Roland in the truck bed. The air is chilly.
“You don’t wanna go inside?”
“Nah, nah,” he says, waving a hand, then using the same hand to stifle his own coughing fit. “Let the girls stay warm. Y-you and me, we can handle the cold.”
“That we can,” I say.
The truck pulls out of the parking lot, swerving around the dead bodies in the road. I look behind us at them as they get smaller and smaller. Far off in the distance, I think I see the golden gleam of many eyes coming this way. Zombies. These, too, get smaller, until they wink out of existence, swallowed up by the black.
“Hey, Jack?” Roland says. I can barely hear his voice over the whipping wind. “I got just one request.”
“Anything,” I say.
“You got anymore Cola?”
Smiling, I nod and dig through a canvas bag for the extra cans from the vending machine I’ve stuffed inside. I pull out a diet soda and then a lemonade, shove them back inside, then finally grab a Coke. I slide over next to Roland. On the wind, I can smell death clinging to him, taking him over little by little. Soon that smell will be all that’s left. My heart sinks lower with the thought.
I pop the tab of the Coke. No air hisses out of it, no bubbles froth from the opening. Slowly, I raise the can to Roland’s blood-lined lips. He sips carefully.
Abby’s not going too fast; I don’t think the truck is capable of hitting speeds past forty, but even if it could, the roads are too dangerous to be going at that speed.
The years of bad weather, the snows, the rains, the sweltering hot summer days, have cracked and chipped at the asphalt. Potholes have become canyons, yellow and white lines have become ghostly apparitions. There’s litter all over, too—I’m not talking McDonald’s cups and bags of chips, but fallen trees, rusted, forgotten cars, shriveled, meatless corpses of animal and man. One bad hit, and the axles will snap, the frame will bust, and we’re back to square one, hiking the however many hundreds of miles to Woodhaven.
Not to mention this place is apparently booby trap country. Those dead fellows back at the warehouse—the place I can just barely see over the horizon, its dark outline and T-post crossing light—have probably rigged up a few of the roads to blow, and why not? It’s smart thinking on their part. A person or zombie trips the trap, and they’re instantly warned about intruders.
“Thank you,” Roland says. “Tha—that hit the spot.”
We hit a stretch of road that is rougher than normal. Roland groans loudly, grabs his stomach in pain. More blood leaks from the wound. His clothes are soaked, so heavy with red they look like they weigh an extra twenty pounds. I’m left wondering if that’s possible. Do we really have that much blood inside of us? It seems never-ending, that he’ll bleed and bleed, and soon the world will be awash with a new crimson sea.
I lean forward and tap on the back window, mouthing, ‘Slow down’.
Abby heeds this, but it doesn’t do much good. The road is unforgiving; it doesn’t care about gunshot wounds and dying men.
The best I can do is make Roland as comfortable as possible, which is a monumental task under our current circumstances. I hold him, trying to absorb some of the truck’s vibrations, trying to stabilize him. I keep catching Lilly looking back, turning her head, her sad eyes wet with tears, and it just further breaks my heart.
“Hey, Jack?”
“Yeah, Roland.”
“Do me a favor, would ya?”
“Anything, friend.”
“Don’t bury me. I don’t l-like the idea of being covered in dirt. J-just leave me somewhere nice and—and pretty. Secluded.”
I nod to him. “You got it, partner.”
He smiles, his head lolling once more.
I hate having no control. I hate how I can take a life, but can’t give one.
Roland goes quiet. I hold him, my arm around his narrow, bony shoulders, for the better part of five miles.
I wish I could say he survives. I wish I could say the power of Coca Cola and friendship revitalizes him and pulls the bullet from his body and closes up the bloody wound. I really do. But I can’t. This is real life. I’ve said it before. It was true over fifteen years ago, and it’s still true now, so I’ll say it again: there are no fairytale endings in the wasteland. Sometimes you catch a bullet in the gut and you die without fanfare. Slowly. Painfully. It’s the way life is. The way death is, too.
Roland passed away in my arms at some point. Which point, I don’t know. He didn’t say any last words or beg for God’s mercy. His eyes didn’t go wide as he witnessed the Light of Heaven shining down to welcome him with open arms. He didn’t jitter and kick out his legs like they do in old Looney Tunes cartoons.
He just died.
At one point, his heart was beating, and now it is not. At one point, his lungs took in breath, and now they don’t.
I shed silent tears as I look down on him. His eyes are open. There’s a slight smile on his face. I like to think that maybe he found peace in the end. Something close to it, at least. But I don’t know. No one will ever know but him.
The wind numbs my face, dries the tears. By the time Abby pulls over to the side of the road, somewhere surrounded by trees, rolling hills in the distance, I am soaked with Roland’s blood.
In my head, I’m searching for Norm’s or Darlene’s voice. I need one of them to tell me what to do. In a span of less than twenty-four hours, I’ve lost three companions, one of whom I had to kill myself. Am I like King Midas, but everything I touch dies instead of turns to gold? If I’m not, well then, I’m pretty close to it.
“How is he?” Abby asks, rounding the bed. “Figured I’d stop for a pee break—”
But she sees me sitting next to Roland, sees the blank expression on his face, and she knows.
The passenger’s door creaks open. Lilly brings a hand to her mouth and bows her head. She cries.
“When?” Abby asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “It’s been a while.”
“Why didn’t you tell me to stop?”
I shrug. “What’s the point? He’s dead.”
She nods. “I guess you’re right.”
I climb out of the bed. My clothes squelch with Roland’s soaked blo
od. Lilly needs a shoulder to cry on, even if it’s bloody. I go to her and put my arm around her waist, bring her close to me. She doesn’t balk at the sight of Roland’s blood, though she is stiff at first, unsure if she wants to proceed with this act of comforting, but she eventually softens up and hugs me back.
“Now what?” Abby asks.
“We gotta lay him to rest. Least we could do. I didn’t know him that well, but he was a good guy,” I say.
“We’re always burying people,” Abby says, but it’s not a complaint, just an observation.
And the truth.
As we look for a place for Roland, who is now wrapped up in the ratty blankets from the warehouse and cradled in my arms, I hear running water. I follow the sound, Abby and Lilly coming with me. Through the trees we go.
In a small clearing, a view is offered to us. The sun is coming up, rising over the valley and the legion of trees we’re standing below. Clouds are a purplish-gold swirl. Rays of light stream through them, reflecting on the river that stretches as far as my eyes can see, though it’s blocked off by a partial dam. Rocks at the base are alight with frothy white water. Beyond that, the water is clear, so clear that I can see schools of fish swimming to and fro, zigging and zagging. A frog sits sluggishly on a lily pad. A few bees weave in and out of cattails and reeds, chasing one another.
It’s a very picturesque setting, almost cliché. I think Roland would like it. He told me to leave him somewhere nice and pretty. Given the circumstances, this place exceeds expectations.
“We can’t bury him here,” Abby says.
“He didn’t want buried,” I say. “He said to just leave him somewhere nice.”
“Well, this is nice,” Lilly says. It’s the first words she’s spoken in a long time. “I wouldn’t mind this as my final resting place. I don’t think Roland would, either.”
Slowly, I walk forward, to the edge of the flowing river. I can feel the coolness emanating from it, colder than the temperature, pure. Somewhere in the forest, a bird sings a high-pitched song, and another answers it.
There are two rocks near the water. Each one is nearly as tall as me and sports graffiti and carvings: a heart with C+S 4EVER inside of it, ‘The key to happiness is…,’ and a bevy of other names lost now, proclamations of love, and life advice.
It’s funny, I think, how there are no vulgar words or drawings that I can see. As if the hoodlums who once came here saw the place’s beauty and knew that to mar it would be a sin.
Maybe if I examined the words more closely I’d find something bad etched in the stones, but why bother? Let the dream live on, am I right?
I set Roland down in front of these rocks, lean him up against the left one’s cold surface. The blanket covers his body, but not his face. We have since closed his eyes, and Lilly took it upon herself to clean him up, wipe the blood away, scrub the dirt from his skin. He looks like he’s sleeping.
“So, we just…leave him here?” Abby says.
I nod.
“Okay, that’s fine with me. I’ve buried enough people in my time.” She heads out of the clearing.
Together, Lilly and I stand over Roland at his final resting spot.
“He was a good dude,” Lilly says.
“He was,” I agree. I touch his brow. “Rest well, my friend. I hope to see you again someday.”
“Me too,” Lilly says.
We leave him, at this beautiful place where the water flows endlessly and the birds twitter away.
“Do you think the zombies will get to him?” Lilly asks me as we’re walking back.
Now, I am a realist—almost to a fault. I know how the world works. Fifteen plus years of wasteland living is much harsher than the twenty-odd years I spent in normal society. The zombies sniff out fresh meat as easily as a wolf sniffs out blood and fear. And there are a lot of zombies. Over seven billion people on this planet, over five hundred million on the North American continent alone. Most of these people are long gone, eaten, killed in the riots and the violence that ensued with the collapse of civilization…but a lot of them aren’t. A lot of them are out there, roaming around with human flesh at the forefront of their now-animalistic minds. The zombies always come, and they always find food.
So why wouldn’t they find Roland’s body, sitting up against these two rocks here by the river? Right?
Wrong. There’s something about this place, something magical. It’s untouched by evil, and I think it’ll remain untouched. Because of that, Roland will be able to rest in peace.
“No,” I answer Lilly. “They won’t bother him here.”
16
We drive for most of the day in silence. I stay in the truck bed, the cold wind blowing my hair from my brow. Roland is gone, but the signs of him remain: the blood, the crushed can of Coca-Cola, one of the blankets that covered him. Harsh reminders.
Near sundown, Lilly pulls off of the road, onto an overgrown path that cuts through a stretch of woods. Abby drove most of the day, but around four, she and Lilly switched so Ab could catch some sleep.
She’s still sleeping when Lilly cuts the engine.
“Figured we could light a fire out here,” Lilly says. “Too dark to see the smoke and too covered to see the flames.”
I am bitter cold, my bones are chattering. “I could use a fire and a hot meal. The forest ground will be better than the truck bed, too.”
“What about Abby?” Lilly asks.
I’d tell her to leave her there, but it’s not safe.
I knock on the window, and Abby sluggishly rolls her head to face me, one eyelid peeling open.
“What?” she says.
“Rise and shine,” I tell her. “We’re packing it in for the night. Thought you could use some fresh air. Come on, stretch your legs out.”
She sighs like a bored student in class, but she opens the door and gets out. The smell of sleep, bad breath and sweat, cling to her. We all smell, though. That’s a basic fact of the apocalypse. Sure, there are some places with showers and soap and hot water, but most of the survivors—I’d say over ninety percent—don’t have such luxuries. We walk around in clouds of our own stink and filth. Still, we smell like roses compared to the walking dead.
Pretty soon, I don’t smell anything besides the forest, the tree sap, the pine needles, the fragrant leaves covering the ground.
We set up in a ring of pines. I gather some rocks and firewood, place the rocks in a jagged circle, stack the wood, and get a small fire going. The warmth coming from it is heavenly, and we all lean forward with our hands out, orange and yellow light dancing on our faces.
We sit in silence for a while, the sounds of the woods all around us. Sluggish chirps from crickets close to hibernation, hooting owls, wind rustling gnarled branches. A lull in the noise allows me to hear the grumbling of Lilly’s or Abby’s stomach. That’s nothing new. We are always hungry, always scavenging for our next meal. I don’t even know the last time I ate. Jesus, it has to be before I was locked up in that nuclear city. The sugary Coke and lemonade has certainly helped, given me energy, a modest sugar high, but that’s long gone now. I’m exhausted and in need of sustenance.
I stand up, stretch my arms high.
“What are you doing?” Lilly asks.
“Getting us dinner.”
Abby snorts. “What, you gonna call Dominos or something? News flash, Jacky-boy, they went out of business a long time ago, when all their drivers and cooks were trying to eat the customers.”
“Don’t think I get cell reception out here.” I give her a wink. “No, I’m gonna hunt. Find some game.”
Abby tilts her head back and practically brays laughter. She’s ribbing me, poking fun. That’s okay. I love her no matter what, and because of that, I make a mental note to give her the thinnest part of whatever I catch in the forest.
Lilly doesn’t find it funny. Her eyes are alight with possibility—and hunger, a ravenous hunger. Makes me think of the zombies in an odd sort of way. I meet her gaze for a mome
nt, and then she’s back down to Earth, back to her currently worried state.
“Not a good idea,” she says. “The noise of the gunshot will draw unwanted attention up here, don’t you think?”
Of course this is a rhetorical question. I know Lilly well enough to sense that, but I answer anyway.
“I’m not gonna shoot it.”
“Then how are you gonna catch something?” she probes.
I breathe on my dirty nails and wipe them on my even dirtier, bloody jacket, like I’m hot shit. “I have my ways.”
“Jack, you’re not a hunter, dude,” Abby says between fits of laughter. Her eyes are watery and her face is flushed.
“I’m glad I can still make you laugh, Ab,” I tell her, “but I was on the road for years after Haven fell. I didn’t eat much, but I didn’t starve, either.”
“Looks like you were pretty close.” Abby sticks a finger in her mouth and then points it up in the air. “Gotta test the wind here, Jack. Too strong of a gust might blow you back to Chicago.”
Lilly joins in on the laughter. I even let out a few chuckles. Nothing like a good ribbing to lighten the mood, right?
I turn and leave the campfire, heading into the dark woods beyond. As I get farther away, I can still hear them chortling at my expense.
Norm taught me many things during our time on the road. One of these things was how to set a snare to catch rabbits. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the tools needed for the most effective one, but I have enough.
Since the decline of man, wildlife, like Mother Nature, has been going through a revival. No longer do deer have to stray away from the busy highways and roads. No longer do packs of wolves avoid the once big and bustling cities. Certain species’ populations have probably quadrupled since man was all but killed off, unless the disease that turned everyone into mindless monsters somehow affected animals too—I can’t say it hasn’t for sure, but it wouldn’t be all animals, at least. This means that the animal-to-man ratio is even higher than zombie-to-man. Rabbits and deer and raccoon and possum, wild dogs, feral cats, you name it.
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