by Morris, Jacy
The smell was strong, almost like a cured meat. Joan and Clara stood and looked at her doubtfully.
"You're not going to eat that, are you?" Joan asked.
"Hey, food is food right?" she said. With no silverware, she stuck her fingers in the meat. It spread nicely and she hooked her fingers and scooped some of the paste into her mouth. It had a vaguely gamy flavor hidden underneath more salt than any one person needed. Altogether, it wasn't bad, like ground up Vienna sausages. She tried to hand the small can to the others, but they turned their noses up at it.
If they got hungry enough, they would eat it. But they were still a few days away from that.
Without ceremony, the door was yanked open, spilling bright electric light onto them.
"Alright, get on out of there," the bull-necked man said.
They stepped into a wide open kitchen, the floor set in black and white tiles. The two men stood back and looked at them.
"What do you want?" Katie said, still holding the can of meat spread in her hands.
"We want to know who in your group kicks the most ass," the bull-necked man said.
Clara's only response was a confused, "What?"
"We want you to do something for us, and then we'll let you go on your way. It's not a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination, but we're in some dire straits here, and we just do this ourselves."
The words were ominous. Whatever these men wanted, it was going to mean that they would have to head out somewhere, into the dead, and do some sort of task. Katie didn't like the sound of it.
"The way I see it, right now we need each other."
"We wouldn't need shit if you assholes hadn't shot up our SUV in the first place," Clara said.
The bull-necked man gave the man in the FBI hat a dirty look, an "I told you so" look. "Yeah, we're sorry about that. But look at it this way. Maybe it was fate."
"Fate didn't have shit to do with it. It was a trigger-happy dumbass looking to shoot anything that moved," Clara continued. "And who the hell are you to lock us up?"
Katie let Clara take the lead. Well, there was no "let" about it. Clara was going to do what she was going to do, but Katie was all too happy to keep quiet. She looked at the situation through survivor eyes. They were standing in a kitchen... with men... with those men were guns. It didn't take a math wizard to do the calculations on that. They were only a few quick bursts of fire from things going drastically wrong.
"That was for our protection as much as yours," the bull-necked man droned on. "I know if some dumbass opened up on me like that, my first instinct would be to kill them." The FBI man's face went red at the word dumbass. "We just wanted you to cool down a bit, so you could actually listen to what we have to say without thinking about ramming a shovel in our face."
It made sense, but Katie could still sense Clara trying to choke down her witty comebacks. She decided to jump in. "So what do you want from us?"
The bull-necked man looked at her, his ruddy face seeming impossibly pink underneath the kitchen's fluorescent lights. "I need to show you something."
They followed the man through the mansion. The FBI man, chastened and embarrassed, followed along behind him, a rifle held low in his hands. They trekked across the glossy wooden floors until they hit a large, ornate staircase that led up through the middle of the house, creating a symmetrical divide where the eastern part of the house was a mirror image of the west part of the house.
The floor of the stairwell was furnished with a black carpet shot through by golden threads to create a swirling design punctuated by fleur-de-lis. Up the stairs they went.
"Is this your house?" Joan asked the man.
"No. We just found it... at a time when we needed it. It's got a good view of everything around here, and a generator out back for electricity. The treeline is a little close, but from the second floor, you can see a long way. Only one way in for vehicles, and as soon as you turned on that road, we knew you were on your way up."
"Any idea what happened to the original owners?" Katie asked.
"Most likely dead," the FBI man said, "but no one was here when we got here. Place seemed like it had been closed up for a while."
"This place got a wine cellar?" Joan asked.
The bull-necked man stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to regard Joan. "We ain't had the time to look yet, but I'll put it on my to-do list."
They walked through the hallway, admiring the little touches here and there. An antique table in the corner, an expensive and intricate-looking vase perched on top of it. Paintings, expensive and unique, hung perfectly on the walls. Crown molding that in itself was a work of art.
They passed many doors, most of them closed, and stopped outside another closed door. The man hesitated and then reached for the doorknob. Katie felt a sense of anticipation, and as the man swung the door open, she knew that they were coming to the heart of the situation. This was why they were still alive; this was why they hadn't been killed.
A lamp glowed dimly on a nightstand in a large bedroom. A bed, an antique fancy thing like you would see in an old black and white film from the '20s, dominated the room. It had a pink satin skirt around it, and on top of the mattress, lying on the bed was a child, a damp rag held to his head by a woman with the eyes of a crow, beady black orbs ringed by dark circles. She had a mouth like a slash, as if none had existed there before, and someone had taken a butcher knife and slid it through the skin to make a stark line.
"That's my boy," the bull-necked man said.
"So?" Katie.
The bull-necked man clenched his jaw, while Clara and Joan cursed Katie's adroitness silently in their heads. "So that's why you're here," the man said.
"Let me guess. You want us to risk our lives and go on some sort of mission to save your boy."
The man smiled. "That's exactly what I want."
They were silent a bit, the mother of the boy, looking up at them with bleak expectation on her face.
Katie sighed. "You might as well lay it on us before we say no."
The man just grunted and said, "What makes you think you have a choice?"
"There's a always a choice," Clara said.
The man's face became red, even redder than it had been. "Let's step outside."
They backed out of the room. The man closed the door gently and then led them down the hallway, rage boiling inside of him. Katie could sense it growing in him, and she knew that she shouldn't poke the bear anymore than she already had.
At the top of the staircase, the man stopped, causing them all to pile up on top of each other. He turned and swung an open hand at Katie's face. The sting of the slap echoed through the empty halls of the mansion, rocking Katie's head to the side. Her hand went to her face automatically, and then he stood in front of her, his finger in her face, pointing, rage spewing from his lips as he spoke. "Get this fucking straight. There are two things in this world I care about, my wife and that boy. Now that boy, he's sick. He's sick as fuck, and he needs something that we don't have, and you fuckers are going to get it for me."
"And what if we don't?" she asked, her cheek pulsing as the blood redistributed itself throughout her cheek.
"Then you're going to wait, all of you. And when my boy dies, I'm going to take it out on you. On all of you."
If it were just Katie, she would put him to the task. She didn't like being hit, and the man across from her was a dead man as far as she was concerned.
"What's wrong with your boy?" Joan asked.
The bull-necked man quieted suddenly, either unable or unwilling to say. The man in the FBI hat had no such problem. "He got bit."
The bull-necked man looked at the man in the FBI hat and said, "Shut up, J.B."
"A bite?" Joan asked. "By one of those things?"
The bull-necked man gave J.B. a look that said he was going to punch his lights out. "Yeah. We were on the run, scavenging from house to house when it happened. I took my eyes off the boy for a second, just one second,
and then... well. You know."
"How long ago was this?" Clara asked.
"About three days," the man replied. Katie was shocked at how he could say it with a straight face.
"Three days? This is bullshit," Katie scoffed.
"No. It's true," the man said. "How long would you say it's been, J.B.?"
J.B.'s answer was quick, and firm. "At least three days, if not more." J.B. shrugged when they looked at him. "Time's weird anymore. Am I right?"
He was right. Time was weird. But it couldn't be that weird, not weird to the point that this man's son could be surviving a bite from the dead longer than any of them had ever heard of.
"Can I see the boy?" Joan asked.
"Why? You a doctor?" the bull-necked man asked.
"Yes, actually. My name is Joan, and I am a doctor," she stated, exasperation and impatience mixed equally in her voice.
"Well, shit. Why didn't you say so?" The bull-necked man led the others back down the hallway, into the bedroom. They had almost forgotten about Katie who still stood on the stairs, wondering if there were any weapons nearby.
J.B. leaned backwards at the doorway to the bedroom and said, "Are you coming?"
She turned and walked towards the bedroom, plotting how she was going to kill their captors. In the bedroom, they crowded around the child. He was in and out of consciousness and seemed delirious. Joan held the boy's hand in her own, looking down at the scabrous bite mark that marred his left hand. The ring of teeth marks were visible, and a chunk of flesh was clearly missing from the boy's hand.
His body was covered in sweat, and the mother, or at least she assumed it was the mother, looked on with worry on her face.
"There's clotting, coagulation, and it looks like it's trying to heal itself. You say this happened a week ago?" Joan asked.
"Yes," the man responded.
Joan held the hand up to the dim light from the lamp, looking at it the way a pawn shop owner might scrutinize a questionable piece of jewelry. "If that's the case, then this is healing rather slowly." Joan looked down at the boy, a searching look on her face. "Has he been like this since he got bit, in and out?"
The mother spoke for the first time and said, "No. He was ok for the first day, just tired. The second day, he was out cold, and we were worried that he was going to... to... you know."
Joan nodded her head.
The mother continued. "The only way we knew he was still with us was because his forehead was burning up. He had a fever, but he wasn't breathing very deeply and he didn't move at all. We thought he was going to die. We know bites cause it, and maybe we should have done something, but he's fighting it. You can see that. He's fighting it."
Joan chewed on her lips. "Does he appear to be getting better?"
"Oh, very much so. He's said a few words."
"Like I said, that's why you're here. If we can get him some sort of medicine, something that will help him fight off the infection, then maybe he'd have a chance. Judging from that lady's arm, it's not like we're asking you to do something you weren't planning on doing anyway." The man waved an arm in Katie's direction, and she covered up the scabbed over wound with her hand. She hadn't been bitten, at least not by one of the dead. Even now, on the palm of her good hand, she could feel the heat pouring from the wound. It had become red, a little bit puffy, and she knew that she needed some sort of antibiotics in the near future.. But she didn't like having the situation pointed out and foisted upon her because then it wasn't her choice, and her life had been full of so many things that weren't her choice. She would rather die now than have anything to do with the bull-necked man. Everything about him angered her. She would kill them all.
Joan said, "You have to know that antibiotics might not work."
The man's eyes became wide and he squinted at Joan, "And you have to know that he's my boy, and we have to try. I would do it myself, but if... if things go bad, then I need to be here."
"Why?" Katie asked.
He looked at her, a look as cold a metal shavings on a shop floor. "I need to be here to see it done right."
They all knew what he was talking about. Katie understood intimately. She had been there for her family. She had seen it done right.
"So you want us to go fetch you some medicine. Is that about right?" Clara asked.
"That sounds 'bout right," the man said.
"Do you mind if we talk among ourselves for a bit?" Clara asked.
The man smiled. "You can step out in the hallway. J.B. will keep an eye on ya."
They filed out into the hallway, and stood talking underneath the vaulted ceiling. Katie felt the eyes of the subjects in the expensive paintings watching over them.
"What do you guys think?" Joan asked.
"I think this is crazy. Why the hell should we risk our lives for this guy? There's only three of them and a sick boy, and I'm getting tired of being told what to do," Katie snapped.
"Listen, I understand, but we may have something special here. We may have an answer for this whole thing. That boy lying on that bed could be the key to a cure." Joan's obvious excitement cooled Katie's rage.
"You really think so?" Clara asked.
Joan held up her hand and began counting off reasons. "Let's look at the facts. He was clearly bitten. No one we've seen has lasted longer than a day after a bite. Hell, when this thing began, some people just became sick with whatever this is. If he has some sort of genetic immunity, in the right hands, they could turn that into a cure. If they can cure it, then there's hope for us all. If getting bitten didn't mean death, we could turn this thing around."
Katie sneered at Joan. "Yeah, but who the hell is going to make a cure? You? You're no scientist, and I'm willing to bet there isn't a single hospital in the country that's still up and running."
Joan had no answer, and to Katie's surprise, it was Clara who spoke up. "It's a long shot. We know that. But not helping at all means there's a zero-percent chance of there ever being a cure. I can't live with that on my conscience, can you?"
Katie had nothing to say. Logic was not her friend these days.
"Besides, you need antibiotics for that cut on your arm? It's already getting infected. I can see it," Joan said. "We can kill two birds with one stone... unless you'd rather just lose the arm."
Katie had already lost a couple of fingers. She couldn't imagine the pain of losing an arm. She unconsciously clenched and un-clinched her good hand. "What the hell? We all have to die sooner or later."
****
They stood next to a rusted out white Jeep. It belonged to the bull-necked man. His name was Rick. All of the survivors were there, except for Katie, who had fallen ill. She was reclining in one of the posh rooms in the mansion, J.B. keeping watch over her, as Rick still didn't trust that she had been bitten by a dog. "You can never be too careful," he kept saying.
Mort, Lou, Joan, and Clara set about preparing for their trip. Rick, an avid hunter to hear him tell it, supplied them with a couple of rifles. From the maintenance shed behind the house, they pulled out a couple of machetes. The rifles would be handy, but none of them were what they would call marksman, so it felt good to have the machetes on hand.
Rick handed them a sack of food and wished them good luck. They could tell he meant it. Clara sat in the driver seat. She started the car, and the Jeep's engine gurgled to life, chugging loudly as if it would stop at any moment. It was a battleworn machine, 20-years-old at least, dents and bloodstains on its fenders and grill.
Lou and Mort had to climb awkwardly into the back, as it was only a two door vehicle. Lou complained about the visibility through the Jeep's vinyl back windows. "It's like I'm trying to look through a damn condom," he said.
Clara sat in the passenger seat, a hand-drawn map in her lap. A GPS sat mounted uselessly to the Jeep's dashboard. It was little more than a chunk of plastic now. Joan thought about ripping it off the dashboard, as it obstructed her vision slightly, but it wasn't her car.
They sped down
the street, going a dangerous 35 miles-per-hour, Clara calling out directions as Joan swerved around the dead. She felt like a downhill skier on a slalom course, swerving in and out of the moguls, all the while, trying to pay attention to the directions that Clara was giving.
"Man, this is so messed up," Lou said. "We should just turn this thing toward the beach and drive it until it runs out of gas."
"You would do that?" Joan asked. "You would just leave that kid there to die?"
"He's not my kid," Lou said.
"What about Katie?" Joan asked.
No one really said anything as Joan took a hairpin right, barreling down a hill and into the outskirts of a suburb, where they were assured that there was a pharmacy. Whether there was still medicine in it or not, that was a different story.
Their silence about Katie said it all. They were all fairly content with leaving her behind, but the possibility of turning their back on a potential cure kept them from abandoning her. Turning your back on a cure, that was something that none of them wanted on their conscience. If a cure was never found, and life continued like this for twenty years or more, and somehow, through some sort of miracle, they actually managed to survive that long, the last thing they would want would be to wonder what would have happened if they hadn't gone to the pharmacy and helped that kid.
What was that kid's name again? Mort thought. Norman. Who the hell names their kid Norman? No one wanted to leave Norman lying on that bed to die, not if his body held some sort of secret that would help them cure the world.
They were in the suburbs now, a conformist dystopia with cookie-cutter houses, perfectly manicured lawns, and sidewalks so clean you could eat off of them. But that wasn't the case now. Now suburbia was a graveyard. Instead of graves, the dead now occupied full houses. They stumbled through the knee-high grasses, their arms flailing about as they were drawn by the Jeep's rumbling engine. Like moths to a flame, they poured out of the yards, they stumbled up the street. Hanging from a light post, a man in blue, a rope around his neck and the flash of a silver badge, hung kicking and flailing from a light post.