William Rose - The Dead & Dying

Mommy went over and crouched down beside him and started rubbin’ her hand across his back like she does when I’m sick. She was whisperin’ to him, but I was far enough away that I couldn’t really hear her very good. And Carl just kept sayin’ over and over again, “It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”

So I was just kinda lookin’ around, not really knowin’ what to do, and I heard this rustlin’ in the bushes. I remember thinkin’ that maybe it was a deer and I got a little excited ’cause I’d always wanted to see a real live deer and never had.

I turned around to ask Mommy if I could go look at the deer, but she was holding Carl now and his head was buried in her shoulder as she rocked back and forth, pettin’ his hair and still whispering to him. So I thought she wouldn’t mind, not so long as I stayed where she could see me.

I walked over to the bushes as quiet as I could and had almost made it there when the branches started shakin’ and rattlin’. I stopped in my tracks and held my breath and watched the leaves as they moved and for the first time I started getting’ a little afraid.

What if it weren’t a deer in there at all? What if it was a monster? The bushes were big enough that two or three of ’em could probably fit in there and I wouldn’t ever know.

I bit my lip and kept watchin’ the bush, but by now the shakin’ had stopped. I tried to listen real hard. To see if I could hear any monster noises.

“They don’t make no noise.” part of me thought. “Remember? They don’t growl or nothing.”

My heart had started beatin’ really hard and I wanted to turn around and run back to where Mommy and Carl was. But I was afraid. Afraid that if I turned my back the monsters would leap out like a jungle cat.

I thought about yellin’ for help, but what if it wasn’t a monster at all? What if it was just a rabbit or squirrel or somethin’? I had been tryin’ real hard to make Mommy think I wasn’t afraid or nothin’ because I wanted her to be so proud of me.

And besides, I remembered how fast those things were when they were chasin’ us through the house. What if I screamed for help and they jumped out at me? They would have me before Mr. Carl would even be able to pick up his gun.

The bushes rattled again and I knew that whatever was in there wasn’t no rabbit. Anything that could make them shake like that had to be big.

I felt like I was about to throw up and I wished I never woulda walked over to where I was. I shoulda stayed by Mommy and Mr. Carl, stayed where I knew it was safe.

My whole body had started shakin’, just like those bushes, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

Because I knew.

I knew there was a monster in there.

I knew it was waiting for me to make one wrong move.

Waiting to pounce.

The boy. Sometimes I still wake up in a sweat, his voice echoing through my head like a ghost trapped somewhere between the realm of sleep and reality. And the image of him from the nightmare lingers on for a moment: usually he’s crying but sometimes he’s just standing there staring at me; his eyes as hard and cold as two pieces of coal, his teeth clenched in anger, radiating accusations without actually voicing the words.

You killed my mother….

Looking back, I’m sure he hated me and, to be perfectly honest, he had every right to.

You killed me….

How do you say “I’m sorry” for something like that?

I was supposed to be their protector, their shining hero in a world gone to hell; and look what happened. Shit, in the end I couldn’t even keep myself safe, could I? And, despite what Doc always told me, I can’t shake the feeling that I deserve this. Maybe this is what Josie’s karma is really all about: I killed a little boy and his mother and now am paying the price.

“That,” I hear Doc say in my mind, “is so much bullshit…. ”

He was the only one I ever told about the boy. After that, I kind of locked it away in my head. I thought if I pretended it never happened then maybe I would be able to convince myself that it had all been some sort of dream. But, as much as you wish it did, it just really doesn’t work that way.

I still remember the day I told Doc what had happened as clearly as if it were only a week or so ago; but we were actually several months into the infestation by then. Long enough to know that once the corpse’s muscle tissue started breaking down they weren’t quite as fast as the ones freshly dead. Long enough for our society to have collapsed entirely with no hope of it ever rising from its ashes like a silver winged phoenix. By then we knew that we were utterly alone. The military, FEMA, the Red Cross… no one was coming to save us. We only had each other and what meager supplies we could scavenge to see us through.

Fifteen miles out of Bloomburg, the engine started sounding as if one of those damn corpses had crawled up under the hood and was pounding away with a hammer. About the same time, that ’ole temperature gauge started creeping up and threatening to ease its way into the red. Doc eased up off the gas for a fraction of a second as he slammed a fist into the steering wheel, causing the horn to overpower the growl of the engine for the same amount of time it took him to curse. But then both hands were back on the wheel again, gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white as bone.

“Can’t stop now!” he yelled over the sound of the engine. “We’d never stand a chance out there.”

He was right. Though most of the scenery was nothing more than a blur, it was all too obvious that those people out there weren’t bored locals who just up and decided to take a leisurely stroll down the interstate. And this late in the game I didn’t have to actually see them to know what they looked like: I was more than familiar with the festering wounds that even maggots wouldn’t touch; I’d seen bones jutting through flesh, little kids with half their faces looking like the skin had been peeled back, refugees from a burn ward staggering along as bits and pieces dropped off. After a while, your mind kind of goes numb and you really don’t think too hard about that old man with a screwdriver sticking out of what used to be his eye or that pretty young girl dragging her intestines along behind her.

“Bout ten more miles or so and we should be outta the ’burbs.” I yelled back.

Personally, I wasn’t quite so sure the old Chevy would make it another five miles, much less ten. It’d taken quite a beating when we tried to force our way through the downtown district. In the movies, you could always just plow your car through small groups of them and they would go flying and rolling off the hood. In reality, a person – even a dead one – does quite a bit of damage to a vehicle. There’s this thud that you feel all the way in the pit of your stomach and the hood just kind of crumples up. Sometimes they do bounce off the top of the car but more often than not they just kinda disappear a fraction of a second before there’s a bump in the road that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I could tell ’ole Doc was having a hell of a time trying to keep the steering wheel from jerking right out of his grasp but I was only seeing that out of the corner of my eye. Mainly, I was watching the plume of steam that had begun rising from the buckled remains of the grill and cussing myself for talking him into coming this way.

By the time we hit the on-ramp, the notion of just busting our way through anyone or anything that stood in our way had been left with our front bumper back at the corner of Oak and Swanson. So I just braced myself against the window with one arm as Doc swerved in and out of the mangled hunks of metal that used to be cars.