The Dead & Dying

“I know baby.” she whispered. “I know…. ”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CARL

God, I’m cold. I reckon this is what it must feel like if someone drained all the blood out of a body and replaced it with ice water. It’s a chill that goes deeper than just the skin: a cold that seems to radiate from somewhere inside the marrow of my bones and I know that even if I had a mound of blankets it would never be enough.

And it doesn’t help that I’m sweating like it was uncle’s day at the whorehouse either. My hair is plastered to my head and the drops trickle down my forehead, roll into my eyes, and sting like a mother fucker.

Outside, the wind is howling through the trees like a pissed off demon. Must be a storm on the way. I wonder if I’ll still be alive by the time the rain actually starts to fall. God, I hope so….

I used to love watching thunderstorms. I’d stand on the back porch and watch the distant clouds flicker with lightning; and there’s this smell carried on the breeze right before it rains, a smell that lets you know everything will be fresh and clean soon and all of the ugliness will be washed away; I would stand out there breathing that smell in and count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the boom of thunder.

I hope I can hold out. I know that I don’t have much time left, that my body can’t just bleed indefinitely… but I’d love to hear the patter of rain on a roof one last time. I’d like to close my eyes, listen to the sound of the storm outside, and drift off to sleep like I did when I was a kid.

That sounds so good right now. I’m tired beyond belief: tired of the pain flaring through my side, tired of the cold, tired of the ghosts that haunt my memories and remind me of everything I’ve lost. I just want to lay my head down and let it all be dissolve away.

But I have that option, don’t I? I’ve got my pistol and, like a bad stereotype, a single round left. I can’t imagine it would hurt for long… probably no more than it would take for my heart to beat once. And could it be any worse than what I’m feeling now? A flash of pain in exchange for an eternity of release… is that really such a bad deal?

But I really wanna hear that rain, ya know? Just once more. If I can hold out until the first drops start splattering against the windows, if I can catch a glimpse of the pines as they bend to the power of the wind while thunder rumbles and lightning bathes the world in electric blue… if I can just hang on that long then maybe.

Shit, what was I thinking about before? Something to do with Doc, I think. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was it. But what? It’s getting hard to concentrate, hard to keep stringing these words together in my head. Wonder if this is how Grandpa Jackson felt when his mind first started to go? Confused, mentally exhausted to the point that thought seems to almost take on a physical weight, more than a tad bit scared because there’s these gaping holes where memory ought to be. It’s so dang frustrating, like trying to remember a song lyric that’s right on the tip of your tongue. But for the life of me I can’t remember what I was thinking about just five minutes ago. Only that it was something to do with me and Doc.

Instead, I find myself thinking back to a time before I met the man. It was right after everything went to pot and most people still had hope that it would all blow over quickly, that the military would step in and stop this insanity before it could spread any further. Thing was, until that time came you still had to run. You still had to find somewhere safe to hide until the helicopters flew over and broadcasted that it was safe to go back to your homes now, safe to go back to your lives.

Me, I knew better. I knew that once something like this started there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. You might’ve as well tried to hold the wind in your hands as my father used to say. So I tried to step right into the role I always thought I was born to play.

  Very early on, I met up with this woman and her little boy. Somehow, we’d all ended up in the same patch of forest at the same time, not too far from the interstate, and I knew, I just knew, that this would be my one big chance. I’d lead them through the ruins of civilization, would protect them from marauders and the throngs of undead that were sure to come; perhaps, in time, the woman would come to love me and we’d steal tender moments whenever we could; I would teach the kid how to stay alive, how to survive in this new world, and there would come a day when he would shyly call me dad and Monica would smile over his shoulder as I tussled Jason’s hair and laughed.

But first, I had to lead them through the maze of trees we’d found ourselves in. And, in my own defense, I thought I was doing pretty good in the beginning. I channeled every action hero I’d ever admired, every bad ass who’d slaughtered the undead in the name of all that’s righteous and pure.

I was Bruce Campbell, Woody Harrelson, and Ving Rhames all rolled into one. When I walked, I adopted this little swagger that (I hoped) let Monica and her son know that as long as I was with them everything would be right as rain; I spoke only in short phrases that could’ve been lifted right from the script of any low-budget fright flick and sometimes motioned for them to stop as if I heard something out of place in the forest. But, truth be told, more often than not I was just doing it for dramatic effect.

See, back then it all still seemed almost like some kind of game. Despite seeing a man I’d known all my life turned into a human torch, it had the feeling of a dream that you were sure to wake from soon: a dream where you could be anyone you chose and no one would ever call you on it. I could be the devil-may-care Zombie Killer Elite and who was to say that wasn’t who I truly was inside?

Funny thing about reality though is the way it has of keeping you in check. In this instance, it happened when I’d left Monica and the boy in a clearing to scout out the way ahead. Truth be told, I just had to take a dump so bad my stomach felt like I was about to give birth to a fire-baby. But that’s not really the kinda thing a hero tells the damsel in distress, ya know?

So I walked about fifty or sixty yards out into the forest, made good and sure that I was well outta sight, dropped my trousers, and squatted down beneath this big oak tree.

In my past life I’d always kept a book or magazine within arm’s reach of the toilet. If, for some reason, I found myself without suitable material, I’d reach for a shampoo bottle and start reading the information on the back of it. Anything to give me something to actually do but sit and listen to the sounds of my own waste. Out there in the woods, though, I didn’t have anything to distract me; so I just kinda looked around, taking in the way the sunlight dappled through the canopy of leaves overhead, trying to remember what those little blue flowers that crept up all over the damn place were called, that sorta thing.

I was studying this tree that somehow had an old tire stuck on a limb about halfway up the trunk, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Snapping my head to the side, I saw this little girl in a pink dress come staggering out of the bushes.

As far as I could tell there weren’t any obvious injuries on her: no cuts or lacerations, no burns or bite marks or shards of bone jutting out through the skin. The front of her dress had been splattered with blood… but somehow I knew it wasn’t hers.

So I just kinda squatted there for a minute, watching this thing that had once been somebody’s daughter while my heart pounded in my chest like a racehorse on steroids. Without taking my eyes from her, I slowly reached to the ground and felt around in the cool moss for the pistol I’d laid by my side.

She’d been pretty in life and probably would have grown up to break plenty of hearts: she had this flowing blond hair that perfectly framed her round face and, though her skin was as pale as the face of the moon now, I could imagine the glow that must have radiated from her smile as she played with her friends in the park.

I felt this cold hand grip my heart and squeeze it so tightly that little flares of pain shot up my arm. I couldn’t think about who she had been before. I couldn’t even really think of her as a she if I was smart. Sure, she might be just kinda lumbering around now like she was in some sort of daze but she hadn’t caught sight of me yet.

I’d seen how fast those things could move. I’d witnessed how vicious and relentless they could be, how single minded their pursuit of violence was. The moment those vacant eyes noticed me squatting beneath that old tree, she would be all over me like a wild dog on a chained goat.

“She’s not a kid anymore.” I tried to tell myself as I raised my pistol. “She’s not even human.”

Still, my hand was trembling so bad that I was hard pressed to keep the side of her head within the sights.