William Rose - The Dead & Dying

And maybe this made us reckless. In fact, I’m sure it did. Why else would we would have begun an impromptu game of tag that had us running through the drifts like a wolf and hare in some nature documentary? Under any other circumstances we would have known better; we would have thought of consequences, of survival. But on this particular day, all of that seemed so far away. So distant and somehow, as strange as it may sound, unimportant.

By the time we’d both been it several times, we were panting and out of breath. We stood there with our hands on our thighs, grinning at one another like a couple of happy idiots, not concerned with the film of sweat that had formed beneath all those clothes.

“Ya know,” Carl gasped, “when we get to that little church, I think I’d like to…. ”

His voice trailed off and he fidgeted before me. He seemed slightly uncomfortable, as if his clothes had suddenly become two sized too small, and I couldn’t tell if he was blushing or if the redness in his cheeks was just from exertion and the chill of the air.

“Like to what?” I teased. “Repent all your worldly sins? Finally confess that there’s something out there bigger than …”

“I think I’d like to marry you.”

There were only a handful of times in my short life when I can honestly say that I was speechless. But this was one of them.

“Now, you don’t have to give me an answer right away.” he stammered. “You can think on it a spell. But I’ve never felt as right as I do when I’m with you. Never felt as whole.”

“Yes.” I whispered as a grin crept across my face. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

I threw myself into his arms and we kissed, slow and deeply. It was crazy: here we were, in a world where we didn’t know where our next meal would come from, where the cities and institutions of civilization had crumbled into ruin, where the dead walked the earth. And I had just been proposed to.

“Come on.” I urged as I pulled his coat. “Let’s get moving. I want to get to that church as quick as we can.”

Within fifteen minutes of walking, however, a coldness had seeped into my body like none I’d ever experienced. I glanced over at Carl and saw that his teeth were chattering as well, his lips light blue, and that he was hugging himself as tightly as he’d embraced me after the proposal.

When he spoke, his words were stuttered and punctuated with the loud clacking of molars hitting against one another.

“S-sweat d-dr-drying. C-c-cooling b-body temperatures.”

I felt like there was an arctic tundra somewhere within my torso, somewhere so deep that no amount of clothing could ever thaw the glaciers that were forming there. Their cold radiated outward, causing chills to creep along my flesh as my body trembled.

“N-need shelter.”

Every step I took seemed to require more energy than the last and my arms had begun to feel like they were being pricked by millions of tiny thorns.

“R-reckon it was pretty s-st-stupid to r-run… around l-like that.”

It was weird, but I’d never felt so tired in my whole life. Almost as if every ounce of energy had suddenly been sapped from body, crystallized on the freezing surface of my skin, and then shattered into microscopic shards. I wanted nothing more than to just lay down in the snow for a little bit, maybe to take a little nap. I was positive it would be warmer down there in the drifts, that after a little sleep I’d be able to trudge onward. Nothing in the world had ever sounded better.

“H-hang in there, sw-sweetie. S-see? There’s a b-barn up a-ahead. Hang in th-there.”

The barn he referred to looked so far away, so distant, that I couldn’t imagine having the energy to pull my exhausted body all that way. I’d started to yawn and my legs felt as if they had been tied down with weights.

“Just let me sleep.” I whispered. “Just for a few minutes, baby. Sleep… .”

Carl wrapped his arm around me, hooked it under my arm pit, and pulled upward to keep me from slumping to the ground.

“D-Damn it, girl, we’re almost th-there. It’s not as far… as it l-looks. You just keep r-right on walking. You can d-do it, Josie.”

With Carl’s constant stream of encouragement the red structure in the distance gradually grew larger. Before long we were able to make out a little white house near it that had previously blended in with the snow.

“Almost there.”

One wall of the house had been almost entirely obliterated: the jagged hole was like a dark mouth grinning at the barren landscape. Just within the darkness, I could make out the tail end of a truck that had apparently smashed its way into the structure.

Now that we were closer, I actually began to believe the little pep talk that had been a constant prattle from Carl’s mouth. I really could do it…. I thought of the hay that was surely piled up in the barn, how warm and toasty it would be when I burrowed my way into it, how I would finally be able to rest.

“C-can you walk on your own?” Carl asked.

His voice was low and grave and I nodded my reply as I followed his line of sight. There were footprints in the snow, leading up to the little door on the side of the barn. He released me from his arm and drew the little pistol from his waistband, flicking the safety off with his thumb.

Rotters? Or other refugees like ourselves simply looking for shelter? Impossible to tell from simple tracks. But what we did know was that these footprints were relatively fresh. Maybe an hour old at the most.

The sound of our own feet crunching in the snow suddenly seemed like the pounding of a kettle drum. With nothing more than a glance, we’d both slipped into what Doc had always called survival mode. Our steps were slow and deliberate, our movements limited to just the basic necessities. Sounds seemed sharper now, the biting tang of dried sweat wafting from our bodies all that more pungent: all of our senses had kicked into overdrive and the iciness of my skin seemed less important as adrenaline coursed through my veins like liquid fire.

I was holding a baseball bat and had it raised beside my head, ready to swing at a moment’s notice.

Close enough to the barn now that we could hear a shuffling sound from inside. Feet against floorboards. We listened for a moment, then Carl looked at me and held up one hand as if he were giving the peace sign.

I nodded. Definitely no more than two in there. Any more and the noise would’ve been less furtive.

Carl glanced toward the side of the door, communicating with his eyes, and I slid into position beside it.

Lowering the bat, I touched the knob with one hand so lightly that there wasn’t even the slightest rattle. Carl had dropped to one knee directly in front of the door and had his pistol leveled in front of him.

He stared straight ahead as we listened to the sounds from within. Finally, he nodded. Nothing more really than just a dip of the chin.

I flung the door open and immediately raised the bat in one fluid motion, ready for anything that might come charging through the entrance.

Instead, we heard voices from within, quickly followed by the unmistakable sound of shotguns being shucked.

“What the fuck?”

Carl quickly stood, raising his palms in front of him to show he meant no harm.

“Human.” he called out. “Humans here. Don’t shoot!”

He walked slowly through the doorway, keeping his hands raised as if he were a prisoner and I fell into line behind him.

“We don’t mean no harm. We just need a place to rest for a spell. To get warm. Then we’ll be moving on.”

Our original assessment had been correct: there were two men in the barn, both pointing shotguns in our direction. They seemed skittish, which was understandable as we had just burst into their refuge.