he started.
He closes his eyes and pictures sitting at a big desk in the station’s holding pen, where Unit 12, his old police unit at Camp Defiance, made its home. He and Tyler and his kid Jonesy and all the other guys in the unit, Cook and Salazar and the rest, laugh at some joke as they pass around a can of warm beer they scrounged up.
Ray just wants to go home. He does not have the stamina to live under constant threat like Anne and Todd. He needs people. He wants to be in a nice, safe place among friends.
Over time, his inability to see amplifies his hearing. Things tramp through the forest all around him. His own footfalls sound loud to his ears, as if he is walking on garbage bags filled with crumpled paper. But standing still is worse than making noise. Standing still is worst of all.
He remembers a dream he had while fighting his infection. A dream of something that happened to him when he was a kid. The dream so real, the actual memory so long ago, he wonders if it actually happened, or if he just dreamed it. In the dream, he shoved Shawn McCrea’s face into a tree while playing a trust game. That’s how he feels now, being led through the forest blinded by mist. At any moment, he is going to get sucker punched.
His father’s voice:
Ray breaks into a run, hands splayed to ward off low-hanging branches. In his mind’s eye, his father is about to hit him. The fog is so blank it is easy to write one’s memories and worst fears onto it. He wants to outrun the old man, but, as in a dream, he cannot move. In his memory, he loves his father too much to leave, so he obeys; he walks meekly to his dad. And gets slapped. It feels good to get it over with. The worst part is the waiting. The cat and mouse game.
The sad thing is, Ray believed him. He believed his father was trying to help him when he got drunk and slapped him around for not being strong enough.
A black shape forms in the mist, coalescing into a gaunt, looming monster. Ray gasps and falls to his knees, his heart galloping in his chest.
It almost feels good to get it over with. As always, the worst part is the waiting.
It registers in his panicked brain that the monster is a tree. Ray curls up at its base, shaking with terror. It is like being back in the storage locker, trapped with his own memories and thoughts. It was his past that drove him back out into the light of day.
Ghostly voices call in the mist. The sound rakes across his already tattered nerves. A motor engine revs before cutting out. Then silence.
He feels light on his face and blinks into the fleeting glare of sunlight winking through the forest canopy above. The fog is dissipating, retreating into shreds and wisps.
The voices shout again, clearer this time.
Ray peers out from behind the tree. A Winnebago sits parked on the shoulder of the highway, a battered state police cruiser next to it. A man with a hunting bow stands guard near two men hunched over the RV’s engine, while a woman sits behind the wheel of the police car. They look as terrified as he feels.
“Hurry up, the fog’s lifting,” the man with the bow says. He wears a tank top and fluorescent blue jogging shorts, exposing hairy, thickly muscled arms and legs.
Shaking, Ray stands, hugging the tree, and considers how to approach them. Should he call out? The alternative is to walk out there nice and calm, hands in the air. Either way, he might get one of those arrows in his ribs. They might think he’s infected. They might not be friendly to strangers.
No choice, then. He will have to call out and see if they’ll welcome him. He is starving for human company, driven by a need to be in the middle of the herd. He made it this far, but he knows any luck he’s had is running out.
Something thrashes in the foliage. Ray drops his pack and draws the steak knife. A pair of Infected, a man and a teenage girl, burst from the bushes snorting, leaves and twigs falling from their hair. Ray crouches, willing himself not to be seen, his body electrified by a shock of adrenaline. The Infected run past his tree, heads wagging, their faces and arms a ghastly patchwork of livid red scratches. The girl snarls, revealing braces black with decaying meat.
An arrow thuds into the man, who falls thrashing in the tall grass just outside the treeline, shrieking like an animal. The bowman notches another arrow and shoots the girl through the hip. She falls, gets up, then falls again, writhing and bleeding on the grass.
More Infected emerge from the woods, drawn to the sound of the cough of the Winnebago’s engine as it tries to start. The woman in the police cruiser screams when she sees them, covering her ears. The man with the bow crosses himself and gets back to work.
Another arrow whistles though the air, flying through a young woman’s throat before piercing a man behind her in the face. The man howls and runs in circles, batting at the arrow flopping around his head; the woman continues to run, coughing blood with each stride, until pitching forward into the grass.
“Right on,” Ray hisses. He feels a strange kinship with the archer wearing the ridiculous shorts. He wants to get into the fight and help. He pictures leaping from behind the tree, joining the pack of Infected running past and cutting their throats one by one with his carving knife.
The fantasy over, he does not move. He clings to the tree, feeling rooted to the spot, watching the Infected close in on the group.
But the truth, again, is there is no fight left in him.
More Infected run across the field behind the survivors. The man with the bow sees them and fires another arrow, which misses. He shakes his head and says something to the men working on the Winnebago, who ignore him. The archer roars at them to move. The man hunched over the engine raises his head, blinking at the Infected rushing at him, and bolts for the police cruiser with the other man at his heels. The group slams the doors just as a man punches the windshield, cobwebbing it. A woman climbs onto the rear of the car, scratching at the back window with her nails as the vehicle growls its way to life.
The car lurches and bangs into the man, knocking him down with a sickening crunch. The woman tumbles off the back and the car roars down the road, trailing a massive cloud of exhaust and a score of screaming Infected.
Ray waits several minutes, picks up his pack and approaches the Winnebago. He spots the problem with the engine, but lacks the tools to fix it. Inside, he finds food and water, a bucket for a sponge bath, shaving kit, and personal knickknacks. The vehicle smells like people, a comforting smell.
He decides to stay the night here. Eat, sleep, shit and maybe try to get cleaned up a little so the Camp Defiance guards don’t shoot him on sight thinking he’s one of the crazies. Ray tries the stove, and permits a brief smile. He is going to eat hot food tonight, and bathe and shave with hot water. By tomorrow, with hope, he will feel human again.
He spots a photo album and opens it. Weddings. Family vacations. Births. He smiles at these highlights of a normal life, but after a while the images become difficult to look at. A proud fisherman with a prize catch. Children building a sandcastle at some beach. An attractive woman smiling flirtatiously at the camera. The photos portray memories too painful to remember, even for a stranger. And yet whoever owned these pictures is going to regret leaving them behind.
The past haunts everyone, even the good stuff. Especially the good stuff.
¦
Ray gets an early start the next morning, setting a brisk pace with his walking stick. He stays on the highway, hoping to find other survivors, but the road is deserted.
He passes an abandoned van resting on flat tires, and peers in through a gaping hole in the windshield. Animals rustle and hiss in a pile of torn luggage and seat stuffing in the back, probably a family of racoons. The
