Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  He suddenly sucked cool breaths in deep, wheezing gasps, throwing gasoline onto the fire that was raging in his chest. The breaths were forced out again in the form of hoarse screams as he opened his eyes, and suddenly the tunnel of light was gone. He felt the crushing weight of gravity pulling him down onto the uncomfortable gurney he was strapped to, making each of his limbs feel as though an adult elephant had been suspended from them. Mercifully, the masked man leaning over him stopped pumping his hands into his chest.

  "He's back, he's back!" The man screamed, and the other enigmatic figure Emmit had seen from his journey through the tunnel replied, "Good, good, keep an eye on those vitals and keep pressure on that GSW. We have to stop this guy's bleeding, or he won't be back next time." It was a cool and collected female voice.

  "This bandage is almost soaked through," the man said, a tinge of worry in his voice.

  "Then you need to apply more pressure, double up and use more tape if you need to. Is the wound sucking?"

  "No, I think it went in and out without hitting the lungs."

  "How's that airway?"

  "Clear, but I was about to give him the oxygen mask and change out the saline."

  "Go ahead, but make sure his airway stays clear, and make sure you keep pressure on him. We may end up needing to perform needle thoracostomy if he needs decompressed, so make sure his ribs are clean."

  Emmit listened to this exchange in a half doze, his head lolling with the swaying of the ambulance as it shot through the city streets with the sirens screaming like horror movie divas. He felt his head gently lifted, and then gloved hands slipped an oxygen mask over his mouth. The cool air puffed lightly against his lips and nose.

  "Did that security guard rough him up a little?" Asked the male paramedic, ripping out a fresh strip of medical tape and applying it to Emmit's bare chest. He placed his hand over the pumping bullet wound and leaned his body weight on it. Emmit groaned under the mask, trying to lift his hands to shove the man off. He was too weak and too exhausted, both mentally and physically. He had no choice but to lay there and take the pain.

  The lady paramedic now: "Not that I know of, the reporting officer said this guy went for his gun and the security guard dropped him with one shot. No hand-to-hand violence necessary."

  Emmit watched through half-lidded eyes as the male paramedic leaned over him, furrowing his brow as he stared at Emmit's face.

  "It looks like... I could have sworn..."

  The male paramedic was stammering, blinking as if trying to clear debris from his eyes.

  "Spit it out, James."

  "I could have sworn this guy had a big cut on his cheek, I mean a deep one. But now, I don't see anything. It's like it disappeared, Kate, I swear it..."

  Kate joined him. Emmit went on half-listening, caught in a torturous limbo between life and death as the two spoke about him as if he weren’t there at all. She leaned down and clicked on a small flashlight, training the beam on the cheek that Roy had marked with his obsidian blade.

  "There's no cut here," she said flatly. "You're just paranoid. There's a line, maybe an old cut, could be just a little bump from collapsing. He's fine, James. You're doing fine. He'll be in surgery in no time."

  The last thing Emmit heard before he slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep was James sighing as he rubbed a cold wetness up and down both sides of his rib cage, and then grumbling "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, my friend."

  Chapter 13: Revelation

  Emmit Mills came out of his coma after four touch-and-go days in the ICU. He'd endured hours of emergency surgery to close the ragged crater left by the .9mm round (which, fortunately, had gone in just under his breastbone and right back out again without fragmenting or hitting his spine). The operation had come complete with the use of a long, large bore needle device that had been inserted between his ribs to suction out blood, air, and other nastiness that didn't belong in his abdomen. He'd also suffered near-fatal blood loss, a partially collapsed lung, a tear in his esophagus, a fractured sternum, and bruising on nearly all the soft and sensitive parts that kept him alive.

  But he was, in fact, alive.

  Coming out of the coma had felt like trying to wake up after swallowing a bottle or two of strong sleeping pills. He felt more like a car crash survivor than a gunshot survivor; every muscle ached and throbbed, but most of the pain was concentrated right in the middle of his body. It felt like a road crew had drilled a tunnel through him the way they might hollow out a mountain for a new tunnel, and although he knew the surgeons had stitched the wound up, it still felt like a yawning mineshaft with red hot wind seeping through it.

  Armies of doctors, surgeons, pretty young nurses and anesthesiologists had turned his hospital room into Grand Central Terminal. Each time the heavy door whooshed open Emmit caught sight of a golden twinkle out in the busy hallway, shining in the sterile white hospital lights like a precious gemstone. It was coming from the badge pinned to the chest of the police officer who guarded his room 24/7, one of two men who each took 12-hour shifts.

  Better watch me close, he thought dismally, absently sucking ice water through a straw and then wincing at the way it ached and strained down his newly repaired throat. I'll tie this gown shut and hitchhike back to my— oh, that's right. I don't have a home anymore.

  He had almost laughed at the solemn demeanor of the doctors as they paid their semi-hourly visits. Didn't they know that his life was over, even if he still had a pulse? He was breathing, that much was true. They had saved his life, that was also true. But his life as he knew it was still dead and buried. Once he had recovered enough to be taken off the various tubes and machines wired to his broken body, he'd be taken to jail.

  I'll be off the street I suppose.

  The last visit from Dr. Fuches had been fifteen or so minutes before, and as was his new routine, Emmit had simply lain in bed like a corpse and listened to the soft-spoken man talk, giving him the occasional "mmhmm" to let him know he was paying attention. Emmit liked Dr. Fuches; he was the only physician who didn't seem to be judging him every time he looked at him. Emmit knew he deserved the judgment, no matter how noble his motives may have been, but it didn't make it any easier to take.

  Dr. Fuches had come in with his laptop under his arm and white coattails trailing, sat on the edge of the hospital bed and gone over the usual agenda. He asked him how he felt, checked his bandages and his drainage tube, listened to his heart and his breathing. This time had been a little different, however, and Emmit suspected it had been the dejected look on his face that had inspired the thoughtful doctor to strike up a heart-to-heart conversation.

  "You're very lucky to be alive, Mr. Mills," he said with a small, tilted smile. His dark brown eyes were soft, and his jet-black hair was styled, but only slightly. Emmit liked that about him too. It seemed to imply that he was too busy to waste a lot of time on his looks.

  Emmit forced a pained grimace that served as a smile, pushing his glasses back up onto his nose after checking for the hundredth time that day to make sure they were unbroken. The weather outside his window was a perfect match for his mood.

  The summer heat had been busy building severe thunderstorms all day, and now that the blazing sun was setting and the suffocating air was cooling, they were being born into a sky painted with brushstrokes of black, purple, and otherworldly green. Fat drops of rain were pattering against the glass, and Emmit felt immeasurable gratitude to see something other than fucking snow.

  "You were dead, you know? That bullet, it narrowly missed several vital organs. Any one of them, if damaged, would have been the end, my friend."

  Dead.

  It was incredible, impossible to believe, but it was the only explanation that made any sense to him. The walking corpses, the strange way time had moved, the lack of any living thing other than criminals like himself. It went against everything he held to be true, but Emmit believed that once his heart had stopped, he had been cast into the bowels of Hell itself
.

  If not Hell, then at least some plane of an afterlife, some nightmare creation designed by a vengeful deity unknown to religion. A harsh and diabolical prison built to punish the wicked with every form of pain imaginable; hunger, cold, fear of the dead and of dying. Animals weren't wicked, they were incapable of evil acts because… well, they were just dumb innocent animals. But people; people had motives, intent, malice. People deserved to go to Hell. And the second he had decided to walk into that bank with the motive and intent to take money from the innocent, he had called the gaze of that all-knowing executioner God onto himself.

  Thunder rumbled outside, bringing with it driving sheets of rain that pelted the windows and changed the fading sun into an eerie wavering spotlight as it shone into his room. There were two chairs for visitors just in front of the window that were sitting empty, save for the curled remains of some mindless magazine. They appeared to be crawling with worms as the rivulets of rain were reflected onto their ugly green cushions.

  Suddenly his morose pondering was torn away by a violent flashback, one that was so potent that it was almost a physical impact.

  Emmit saw the thing he had initially thought to be another "survivor" when he had first arrived in Hell, the ghastly image of it forcing its way into his brain like some sort of mind rape. He saw the tattered blue business suit it had died in, its patchy hair clinging tenuously to its mummy's skin. Its one faded eye, locked on him, craving him. The flesh of its lips ripping apart, stretching and snapping. The grating rasp of its voice, calling him out as the criminal he was.

  He nearly leapt off the bed, startling Dr. Fuches and plucking every traumatized nerve ending he had. He screamed through gritted teeth, arching his back and pounding his fist into the mattress as the monitors around him beeped angrily.

  Dr. Fuches launched to his feet, gently placing one brown hand on Emmit's chest and easing him back down onto the bed.

  "Is your pain bad?" He asked, with such sincere concern in his eyes that Emmit felt that he might come to love the man as his brother, love him for the selfless way he could care for a degenerate like himself.

  "Only when I move," Emmit whispered. "The scream wasn't from the pain, it was from... a memory, I suppose."

  Dr. Fuches eyed him warily, then finally relaxed enough to sit back down once he was certain that Emmit hadn't sprung any leaks.

  "Some PTSD is to be expected," he said matter-of-factly, patting Emmit gently on the shoulder. "You went through quite a traumatic experience. Not many people get to die and come back, you know."

  Emmit arched his eyebrows, nodding enthusiastically.

  "Definitely lucky to be alive," he said, raising one shaking hand to rub at his cheek. It was surreal to feel no wound there, no lacerated flesh, no scarring, no pain. It was as if it had never happened, and yet faintly, under the heavy blanket of confusion and mental misery, he could still feel it burning. And hadn't the paramedic seen it too, watching it fade as the afterlife reluctantly released its hold on him?

  "It was also incredibly lucky that you had the EMS team that you did, even though James is still in his training period. They began CPR as soon as they arrived at your side, and they were able to revive you in about... oh, a minute or so."

  Emmit whipped his head toward Dr. Fuches so fast that his glasses fell down to hang in front of his mouth.

  "Say that again?" He asked dubiously, his words muffled by the hanging frames. Dr. Fuches smiled warmly.

  "I know, it's hard to comprehend. But they noted that you were clinically dead for around 52 seconds, I just rounded up. You see? Lucky to be alive. When your brain is deprived of oxygen, it doesn't take long for things to go very, very wrong."

  52 seconds?

  "It just... it felt like... weeks."

  52 seconds.

  His memories returned to his brief friendship with Tim , better known as The Reverend, and the only pleasant experience he'd really had while being dead. Standing outside on watch and craning his neck to look at the shifting night sky, watching the death of a star. Something no living person could ever hope to see. Time really hadn't played by the rules in that place, and if it had been Hell or some version of it, it made perfect sense. Even now, while alive, his agony made the seconds tick by like years. An afterlife of punishment for damned souls had probably been designed to build upon those very same principles.

  Roy slicing his cheek. Poke impaling the Rev, murdering him as he watched helplessly. Pup's mutilated legs. The cloying stench of the living dead. The roar of the swarming Megahorde. The taste and slimy consistency of human flesh being ground up in his mouth. All of it came flooding back in a rush, and Emmit went a little bit insane for a few moments. He tried to comprehend how nearly a month's worth of horror and violence could be compacted into a single minute here on Earth, but it was like grasping at flowing water. His brain simply couldn't connect those dots.

  He felt utterly lost; lost in time, lost in life, lost in every sense of the word. All it took was one more glance at the empty chairs beneath the window, holding nothing but that old magazine, and the tears came and refused to stop. Despite his best efforts, he had joined the living dead after all.

  Not even death could stop the pain now. I know what's waiting for me.

  "That's alright, Emmit," Dr. Fuches said compassionately, rising to leave after grasping Emmit's hand and giving it a quick, gentle shake. "I'll let you rest now. You call me or one of the nurses if you need anything, okay?"

  "Thanks, Doc," Emmit mumbled, carefully rolling onto his uninjured side to watch the storm raging outside. The trees were blowing and thrashing like pom poms, struggling to hold on to their leaves as they swayed and bent in the throes of the violent wind. To Emmit, it was nothing short of beautiful. He felt like he hadn't seen a tree with leaves in years.

  He slept surprisingly well that night, thanks largely to the meds they kept flowing through his veins and the relaxing tap of rain on his window. He was grateful that he didn't have any nightmares, but the dreams he did have were just as painful. They were short, sweet, and to the point; he dreamed of Deacon coming to visit him, crawling into his hospital bed and curling up beside him. He dreamed of holding his son one or two more times before they locked him up and threw away the key, and then he'd quite probably never see him again. Kelly definitely wouldn't bring Deek to a prison for visitation, and he'd be forced to grow up telling the other kids that his real dad (there would almost certainly be a stepdad in the picture) was a deadbeat who was rotting away in jail.

  Emmit was startled when, coming out of those bittersweet dreams, the first thing he saw was a shiny foil balloon tied to the plastic rails running up the right side of his hospital bed. The balloon was emblazoned with Captain America's shield design, and on the back, in huge red comic book letters, it said "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Emmit reached out and plucked at the string as if he'd never seen a balloon before, making it bob and dance in the air.

  On his dinner tray was a card standing on end, hand-illustrated by a child who was talented but hadn't quite refined his craft yet. It was a drawing of Batman, slugging Two-Face right in his bifurcated mouth. Emmit grinned, a warm tingling sensation spreading through his chest. The superheroes were a dead giveaway.

  Deacon had been here.

  Emmit sat up fast enough to irritate his incisions, but his smile was too solid to be corrupted by something as minuscule as a gunshot wound. He was surprised to see that it wasn't morning at all; he'd slept past dawn, snoozed throughout the length of the day and night was now falling again. The second shock came when he looked at the chairs beneath the window, checking them as always, and saw that they were no longer empty.

  Oh my God please don't let me be dreaming, please don't be a dream.

  Kelly and Deek were there, each of them curled uncomfortably between the curved wooden arms and snoring silently. Deek's slack and outstretched hand was loosely clutching a backpack that had been left partially unzipped, various plastic arms and
legs poking out of the zipper. He wore a baggy hoodie that had a picture of a Velociraptor on the front, snarling jaws wide and hooked toe claws upraised. He was drooling a little, his lips moving silently as he slept. Emmit stifled his laughter, wiping his eyes.

  Kelly was not sleeping as peacefully as their son was. Her hair was in the process of falling out of the messy bun she'd tossed it into, and the look on her face was grieved, lined with worry even as she dozed. She wore a plain blue surgical mask, most likely given to her at the front door of the hospital, pulled down to rest under her narrow nose and shining septum ring. She reminded Emmit of Betsy, his first and only victim, in that both of her eyes were puffy and streaked with running makeup trails. He noticed that Kelly wore two mismatched slippers; she'd left in a hurry, and yet still gave Deek enough time to pack a bag of "vital" supplies. No matter how much they had argued leading up to his fateful decision, there was no denying that he couldn't have asked for a better woman to carry his son.

  The impulse to throw himself at them was palpable. He didn't care if he ruptured every stitch and suture he had. He wanted to kiss them both until he couldn't breathe, until his teeth rubbed raw spots into the backs of his lips. But he made himself sit still and just watch them, marvel at his estranged wife and the life they had created together. He had no idea how Kelly would react to what he had done; while she slept, there would be no fighting. While she slept, they could be together again in peace, like the good old days. Even if it was only for a few moments.

  Kelly had always had a knack for reading Emmit's mind, whether for good or for ill, and tonight was no different. She stirred, making a pouty face, and then her eyelids fluttered open. She locked eyes with Emmit, and she somehow wore two expressions at once: happiness and hatred, changing places like a holographic baseball card.