Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  Emmit closed the article and let his phone drop heavily to the table, the silence between he and his wife long and heavy.

  "It happened," Kelly said, finally breaking it. Emmit nodded, his eyes locked on hers. She rose from the table, hypnotized and zombie like, and circled to sit on his lap. Her hand found his chest again, where a small circular mound of scar tissue jutted through the cotton of his shirt. She rubbed at it absently. Emmit wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his forehead on her shoulder.

  "I guess I better make sure I'm a good man from now on," he said, running a hand up and down the slight hills and valleys of her spine. He had learned years before to never mention a woman's weight, but he had noticed lately (now that he had the honor and privilege of touching her again) that she'd lost a considerable amount of weight during their separation. Apparently, she hadn't been happy without him at all. That was a pleasant surprise, and a far cry from the mental image he'd often tortured himself with at night while sleeping alone.

  "You are a good man, Emmit," she said, ruffling his hair. "You'd be in jail if you weren't."

  "If that place exists," he said, staring out the window at a cloud of sparrows flocking frantically together across the newly risen run, "if those things exist... then there has to be an opposite, right? A Devil has to have a God. A Hell has to have a Heaven."

  "I'd like to think there's a Heaven," Kelly said, smiling down at him. "A place for our parents, our pets. Sick kids who don't pull through. Somewhere decent for them, where the suffering doesn't exist anymore."

  Emmit gently pulled her mouth down onto his, kissing her long and hard, savoring it. Each kiss was like the first one now; death had given himself and his marriage a new vigor, and everything from the birds and trees outside to the coffee in his cup felt like a miracle.

  "I suppose, for now at least, I'll just have to enjoy the little pieces of Heaven I have here."

  "It won't be Heaven when Deacon can't sleep, from seeing whatever horrible movie you two watch. Neither of you will get any sleep. Is it safe to assume it won't be a zombie movie?"

  Emmit slapped her ass hard enough to make her jump.

  "Too soon," he said in mock-offense. "I'd love it if he stayed awake a little longer. I can't seem to spend enough time with him."

  Kelly stood up, taking him by the hand and pulling him out of his chair. Emmit knew exactly what she wanted from the way she smirked, and the naked, animal heat that radiated from her eyes.

  "Well, while your best pal is at school, you can spend a little extra time with me."

  Emmit winced as he took the first step towards the bedroom, small flares of pain radiating out from the scar on his rib cage and inching through his midsection. Kelly, yet again, would be doing most of the work— but to Emmit, that too, was a little slice of Heaven on Earth.

  The ankle monitor snagged his pants as they dropped to his ankles, and his old anger resurfaced like the brief hint of smoke on the air around Roy’s camp. He hated the damn thing and wasn't sure how he'd get through the next year with it shackled to him.

  The pain of recovery would be slow to disappear, if it ever did; Dr. Fuches had warned him that from now on, he'd be able to predict the weather with his aches and pains. He'd work hard despite the pain, twelve long hours per shift in a sweltering steel mill if they hired him. His record and reputation were forever tarnished, but there was no one to blame for that but himself.

  Then, in a league of their own, were his memories of the winter woods. The Links and their dead faces, gasping mouths and milky eyes, leathery flesh rotting off the bone even as they walked. Pup, who had been someone's son just like Deek was his son, mutilated and carved up like a holiday ham. The sound of his blood draining, because Emmit had allowed it to. Roy, a monster with a pulse, torturing him for a crime he hadn't committed. Poke, a demon if there ever was one, shoving his thumbs into Emmit's eye sockets. The sound of the spear ripping free of Poke's corpse, clenched in Emmit's blood-soaked hand. The sounds and smells of the Megahorde and the hopelessness that swarmed with them. Tim, the horrible sounds of his death, his blood gurgling out to mix with the rivers of it that flowed through the wooden crevices of Roy's meat locker.

  The road ahead would be long, hard, and uphill indeed. In a way, Emmit Mills was still very much walking through a long and winding valley, one that would be both cold and dark at times. He knew that at times it would undoubtedly feel like the sun would never touch his face again, but that was something he had already survived, and was a stronger man for it. This time, however, he wouldn't have to take that walk alone.