William Rose - The Dead & Dying

I spun around, expecting to see a rotting face glaring back. But there was only a rope swinging back on forth with tassels on one end. A rope which lead up through a small hole in the ceiling.

“We hafta go now”

I began to run toward the door, but the boy was still fighting like two cats in a sack. He squirmed and flailed and kicked and bit down so hard I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming as blood trickled down my hand.

“Damn it, Jason, stop it! I’m here to help!”

His hands grabbed onto the rope and he tried to pull himself free even as I was trying to move forward. Overhead I heard the bell toll, a low bong sound that seemed to ring out and waver in the silence.

Silence . The tape had stopped completely.

Jason pulled again, trying to wrestle himself from my grasp, and again the bell above chimed.

“Jason, no!”

Down the street, I saw them stream out of the electronics store. Corpse after corpse stumbled and tripped in their haste and it seemed like they just kept right on coming. The street filled with their mangled limbs and twisted flesh, the freshies leading the charge at a full-blown run.

There was no way we could make it to the forest now. Before we were even halfway there the freshies would bring us down like a bobcat on a rabbit. And the horde continued to draw closer even as the boy kept struggling and that old iron bell rang and rang, tolling out our doom.

“We probably could’ve went with them for a spell.” Carl admitted as we walked. “They’re heading to Florida, we’re going for West Virginia. Right along the way, you might say.”

“Then why didn’t we?”

I was cold and tired and thought of the heater in the Hummer blasting out warm air as Doc and Sadie raced southward. The soft, comfortable seats….

“I turned it over in my head. I really did. But I was afraid when we finally got to West-By-God it would be too easy just to keep right on truckin’.

I felt annoyed and grouchy and wanted to snap at Carl, to lash out at him with my words. But I had to keep reminding myself that this was my choice. He hadn’t forced me to come with him. I’d kind of argued my way into his plans just so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. Just to have more time with him. So I really didn’t have any other option but to play by his rules.

“Where exactly are we going?”

Carl searched through his pockets and brought out a pack of cigarettes which, as it turned out, were empty. He crumpled the pack into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder.

Old habits die hard and I had to chew on my bottom lip to keep from launching into a lecture about litter and how we’re the custodians of this planet. But we weren’t. Not anymore. Trash carelessly tossed aside were the least of our worries now.

“Not far from where I grew up. A little town called Brighton. Probably all grown over by now.”

He was still fumbling through his pockets as he spoke, but I got the impression it was just a ruse. That he knew his hands would turn up empty but welcomed the distraction anyway.

“Can’t believe I’ve got no more smokes. Doesn’t that just beat the devil?”

“What’s in Brighton, Carl?”

I tried to ask the question as innocently as possible, as if I were simply making conversation to pass the time. But I had this feeling that whatever laid in that little town among the hills and valleys of the Mountain State would be the key that would unlock the secrets of Carl’s sadness.

He sighed and his voice dropped to no more than a whisper. I had to strain to hear him through the earmuffs he’d liberated from a freshy two days earlier, but it was important to me to catch every word.

“There’s this little church I want to go to.”

I laughed and shook my head in an attempt to keep the conversation light, to keep it flowing.

“You? Going to church? If you’ve found God, Carl, there’s plenty of churches around here. It is part of the Bible belt you know.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t the same one which caused my heart to flutter with hope and chased the cold out of my chest. This was a sad, knowing smile that never really touched his eyes.

“It’s a little more complicated than that, sweetie.”

“So tell me. Lord knows, we’ve got nothing but time.”

Carl stopped, turned to face me, and took both of my hands in his; his eyes locked onto mine, his gaze steady and unfaltering.

“It took the end of the world for me to find someone who made me realize it wasn’t such a bad place after all. And I want to tell you everything. And I mean everything .”

Carl gave my hands a little squeeze and pulled me to him; he was now so close I could feel the warmth of his breath and see my own reflection in his tired eyes. And the woman I saw there was smiling: a soft, serene smile that would have looked more at home on a painting of the Virgin Mary than that odd, angular face. But I knew the smile was genuine, could feel it radiating with the heat of a thousand suns from deep within my soul.

“But, sweetie, I’ve got to get it right in my head first.”

“But I can help, I can …”

“You do help.” he said. “More than you’ll ever know.”

For a minute we stood there, simply looking into each other’s eyes, and that bleak and comfortless wasteland of snow just seemed to melt away. The freshies, the rotters, the refugees who picked through cruel relics of a world that no longer was: none of that mattered. Just this man, his hands, his eyes, his voice and breath….

“When we get to that little church,” he finally said, “assuming it’s still standing that is, we’ll sit a spell on the pews. And I’ll tell you all of it. Each and every detail.”

Carl’s eyes shimmered, but he made no move to blink away the tears forming there; he didn’t look away or fidget or give any indication that he felt even the least bit threatened by this display of emotion. He held my gaze and made a promise without uttering a word.

And then, seeming as if he were moving in slow motion, Carl leaned forward; our lips touched in a brief, sweet kiss. It was the type of kiss I had always thought existed only in movies. The kind that reaches into the very core of your being and finds a small, warm spot to call home. Then we collapsed into one another’s arms, each of us holding the other as if we could somehow anchor ourselves to this particular place. This specific time. And cherish it for infinity.

Maybe it was the lingering effects of that kiss. Or perhaps it was simply that after days of cloudy skies that looked as if they were wrapped in dirty cotton, the sun was finally shining again. Whatever the cause almost two days later, Carl and I were romping through the fields like excited children.

We’d spent the better part of an hour playing in the snow: making angels in the drifts, lobbing loosely packed balls at one another as we darted to and fro, our laughter seeming surreal in the quiet of the Illinois winter. At one point, Carl even constructed what he referred to as a snow rotter : it was basically your typical snowman but was missing one eye and the branch that served as its left arm had been purposefully mangled. As a finishing touch, he’d punched in the side of the face that lacked an eye, giving the giant snowball a caved-in look.

The entire time I’d been with him, I’d never seen him so happy and carefree. That haunted expression had temporarily vanished, giving way to eyes that sparkled and a smile that touched every inch of his face with its warmth and light. For a while, we were able to forget the death and destructions that lay out there; we could pretend that the world had simply continued on like it always had, that we would be returning to our jobs and bills, perhaps taking in a movie or snuggling on the couch as we listened to a Leonard Cohen CD by candlelight.