Decaying Humanity (5 page)

While eating seems to lock in and become highly distracted.

Sheet delayed the attack, possibly driven by sight and sound combined. I don’t believe the sheet would have kept him safe, but may have bought him some time.

    “Any good notes?” Harvey asked. We had returned inside and continued to watch John out the window.

    “I’d call it a success. He still isn’t showing signs of infection, though.”

    Two hours had passed since he was bit and we sat him upright in the chair. He had lost his energy to resist. While I tried to note any changes, so far, little had happened. We had the discussion that we were basing too much on movies. It was hard not to. Bites might not even cause infection, but it was hard to get that movie rule out of our heads.

    He was extremely fatigued and had vomited on himself once. It was difficult to tell if he was starting to show signs of turning, or simply suffering from heat exhaustion. I looked down at my watch, which read 2:34. Harvey and I had made the decision that we should vacate the home for a night or so, just to make sure that his threats weren’t valid. I think we could survive a couple zombies but a truckload of shotgun toting lunatics is another story. We were also taking a gamble that they would wait until nightfall.

    We spent the next hour loading up Harvey’s station wagon with all the supplies we could gather. We had filled jugs of water and still had enough food loaded to last three weeks. Leaving seemed like a bad idea, but staying might be even worse.

    We pigged out on the food we couldn’t transport and left a small amount in the cupboard to lead them to believe that we left without taking our food. I raised my wrist, 4:48. Harvey and I were still force feeding ourselves the remaining potted meats and canned chicken salad. I had expected more zombies—waves of them clawing at the doors. Instead, at least so far, they were a rarity.

    I stepped out to check on John one last time. He struggled to raise his head to look at me; his eyes had become bloodshot. He was drenched in sweat, but it could have been from the terrible sun bearing down on him. His skin was pale and his pupils had become as narrow as pen tips. Harvey stepped up beside me, a duffle bag on his back.

    “Anything?” he asked.

    “Maybe, it’s hard to tell. He could be turning, or simply dying.”

    “Well, we better go. What do we do with him?” Harvey questioned.

    “I was hoping he’d be a brain-dead zombie by now. I don’t want to leave him to tell his friends about us and we aren’t taking him with us. I think we only have one choice,” I said.

    All of the terrible things we had done to this man hadn’t fazed me. I really didn’t feel guilty, something that surprised me. Simply executing him on the front lawn was the next step of evil. I juggled the options in my head and had difficulty deciding on the right choice. We couldn’t take him with us; even if he was restrained I didn’t want a zombie in my backseat. Leaving him was even worse because if his people did show up he would tell them everything. If we didn’t take him out he would turn and possibly kill innocent people. As we discussed his fate he barely moved.

    “We have to finish this. Paper, rock, scissors?” I asked Harvey.

    “No way, I lost the first one and had to kill that zombie. That means from here on out, we take turns.”

    I cringed at the thought of murder. So, this is what I have become. The guilt and potted meats began to whirlwind in my stomach as I looked down at John. “Do you have any last words?”

    He summoned all his strength, raised his head and glared at me. “Fuck you.”

    We took the side roads and back roads whenever possible. I swear when we pulled out of the trailer park and rounded the corner I saw a black truck in the rear view mirror. I had to shake that idea out of my head; it was probably just me being paranoid. We had discussed where we wanted to go, where we could take shelter and live out the next couple of days until we looked at moving back into our home. I had never been a very sentimental guy and the idea of losing a lot of my stuff didn’t bother me as much as the thought of getting shot.

    From what little zombie action we had seen, it looked like shelter was our top priority. They could track you from a good distance, so sleeping outside would be too risky. We had gone over a couple of options and the first one seemed too optimistic. Except, at this point we could benefit from some fresh air and a break from being locked in the trailer. So we drove over the bridge and headed to the beach.

    Why the beach? Well, we grew up there and maybe we could find food and a shack, or even a building on the pier. It would be very defensible and there would be the chance of renewable food sources. During the drive, we realized that the trailer park had been blessed—many homes had been vandalized, burned down, and the streets were littered with immobile vehicles. Many had been slammed to the shoulder as if a bulldozer had cleared a path in the roads.

    We passed quite a few wandering zombies on our drive. We purposely dodged them as we weaved in and out of the lanes. As we drove past them they perked up and reached for the car. Each one we saw was already walking towards us, heads cocked in half interest. It really appeared that they would investigate sounds, but didn’t necessarily associate a driving car with people inside. We passed about eight of the undead on our four-mile journey, three of which had grouped together near a wrecked jeep.

    We pulled up to the Oceanview beachfront and the sign had black spray paint along the bottom that read “Thieves will be shot.” Along the left side were nice rich-people condos with garages. There was only two other cars in the parking lot and we pulled up next to them. I stared at the parking meter with the red EXPIRED flag.

    “Do you have a quarter?” I asked jokingly. Harvey didn’t seem amused. We exited the car and glanced at the other vehicles; they didn’t seem to be damaged, so maybe there were people here. I looked over at Harvey who was holding the shotgun with both hands.

    “Might want to holster that, I don’t want people to think we are hostile,” I lectured while pushing down on the barrel of his gun. He nodded and slung it across his back and put his hand on the machete grip attached to his belt. Everything in our car was stuffed into two duffle bags and covered up in the back. It was a difficult choice we discussed on the drive over. Splitting up was a terrible idea and we couldn’t drive it up the stairs to the beach, so this would just have to do.

    Some of the condos had been boarded up and some had their blinds bent from overly pulling them down to look outside. I had an uneasy feeling of being exposed around so many darkened windows. I should have been envious of their defensible homes; but at least for now, I had grown tired of being locked inside. We came to the small wooden walkway that cut through the initial wall of dunes and beach grass. We passed the small shower area that blasted you with cold water after a long day at the beach. I had memories of spending all day playing in the waves; my mother calling me back to eat some orange peanut butter crackers and drink a sweating can of soda from the cooler. My thoughts drifted to my parents and my childhood. There was a flash of John crumpled on his side, lying in our yard. I pictured my mother looking at me with hurt eyes,
how could you?
I shook the thoughts away,
I had to, he was going to kill us,
I told myself.

    Under the showers was a single sun-cracked flip flop. There was a small streak of blood with a shred of white cloth snagged onto the wooden railing. Those wooden railings were old and had some pretty intimidating splinters. I could only imagine that someone got severely jabbed while running. Even though I was
rough
with John, I wasn’t a monster. I truly hoped this person made it to safety.

    The breeze was cool and salty. The temperature had dropped dramatically as dark clouds started to form in the distance. We exited the walkway and arrived at the beach. There wasn’t really much to say about it at first glance. There were no zombies catching a tan and the lifeguard chair was vacant. There were no boats in the water and the cawing of seagulls which normally assaulted your ears, had vanished. The sound of the waves crashing against the beach was normally relaxing, but I couldn’t shake my anxiety. As we continued to scan the beach it was clear this section was abandoned. We started walking towards the pier hoping to find anything of use. There were some blankets wedged in the thin fencing at the edge of the dunes, but all the discarded beach bags had been picked clean. We weren’t the first people to scavenge.

    As we continued we could see a dark wooden pier reaching out long into the ocean. In the distance it looked completely undamaged; the small snack shack that hovered midway still seemed to be intact.

    “What do you think we’ll find?” I asked trying to make conversation.

    “People,” he said without really looking up.

    I had thought about the possibility of people taking shelter in all forms of places. People scared me more than zombies, they’re so unpredictable. Would they just start shooting at us, take us in, or maybe strike up a conversation? I thought about doing a quest in my online game. “
Bring us five gallons of gas and you can stay with us forever,”
they would say. Except this wasn’t a game and we didn’t have any extra lives.

    As we got closer we could tell the pier was … inhabited. There were about twenty or more fishing poles attached to the railings. The beachside entrance had been heavily damaged. The nice gradual ramp from the beach to the twenty foot high pier had been broken and disassembled in the middle. Now it looked like an ancient drawbridge. The entrance was boarded up with planks and old shipping pallets. This barricade wrapped around the front and covered parts of the sides. To my knowledge (which is still mostly rooted in fiction) no zombie could climb the sides. The gap was also too large to jump over.

    At this point I believed I was being watched. I wanted to show a sign of peace. The only thing that came to mind was holding my arms up like “
don’t shoot!
” I held up my arms as we continued to move closer. I nudged Harvey in the side to do the same as he kept nervously reaching for the shotgun at his back. He rolled his eyes and put his hands up, but only halfway, parallel to his shoulders.

    “What do you want, Stranger?” someone shouted from behind the barrier. His accent sounded local, but came across stern. I hadn’t even really thought about what we wanted. What did I really expect to happen? The idea of a group was scarier than running with a single partner. Harvey and I had done just fine by ourselves, for the most part. A group just … complicated things.

    “We were attacked and had to leave our home. We are looking for shelter and supplies, Sir,” Harvey shouted back, raising his arms a little higher.

    “Everybody been attacked by the dead, we ain’t really got room,” the man responded from inside.

    “We weren’t attacked by zombies. We had two people break in with shotguns. They split our door right in half and came in shooting at us.”

    There was a slight pause before the man spoke again. “What happened to them?”

    Harvey kept his left hand up and reached to his back and grabbed the shotgun in the middle. He raised it above his head. “We defended our home, but the other one got away. Then we found out they were part of a gang and they might come back tonight to retaliate. We had no choice, but to leave,” Harvey said.

    He was doing a very good job telling the truth, while leaving out the dirty parts. We had come around and were now standing at the edge of the destroyed walkway. It was a good ten foot gap and the pier was three or four feet higher at the entrance than where we were standing. Upon further inspection, the climb to get to the entrance was boarded up with long jagged nails sticking out all over the place. They had a pretty strong defense, something I had to admire.

    “I’m sorry to hear that, but we don’t really take people any more. Not after what happened with the last one,” he said with a hint of upset.

    “Can we get closer? I don’t want to shout anymore and we might be able to help each other out,” Harvey shouted.

    “How can we do that?” the man questioned.

    “We could trade and if not supplies, then we could trade information.”

    I could make out the shape of multiple individuals behind the barricade and they were discussing Harvey’s offer. A minute went by and then he called out to us again.

    “Okay, we will let you up to the door, we can discuss a trade. Just leave your weapons on the ground there.”

    “No,” I called out instinctually. I hadn’t said a word this whole time and was impressed at Harvey’s speech, but the idea of being defenseless made me call out without thinking.

    “We’ve been through a lot and my friend Jim here is worried we could be put in danger. How about I unload the weapon and he holds the ammo. We would really like to trade with you, but as you can imagine, disarming ourselves these days feels like suicide.”

    There was another delay as they talked amongst themselves. The door swung open and a long wide plank was carried out. They locked it into some sort of notch and the plank extended all the way to our feet. The man stepped out and waved at us with an out-of-place cheerful smile. He wore a dark green silk button up shirt with pictures of trout and fishing lines on it and carpenter khakis. He had windswept auburn hair and a tanned but freckled face. As he waved, you could see his hands were dry and calloused from hard work. “I don’t blame you for the weapon thing. I know y’all won’t try anything. My friends are a little jumpy nowadays,” he said while nodding towards his armed associates.

    The plank looked like two square pillars tied together with gratuitous amounts of twine and fishing line. Harvey went first and I waited for him to get up before going myself. As I balanced my way up the walkway, I could hear Harvey starting a conversation. I reached the small entryway area and saw Harvey and the man shaking hands. The man extended his arm to help me on the last step. He then banged on the door and I could hear someone say, “Pull it in.” The plank began to rise from the sand and slid underneath the closed door.

    “That is some fancy bridge,” I said without thinking.

    “Yeah, I used to spend all my time working as a carpenter and relaxing as a fisherman. When I heard the world was going up in flames it only made sense that I make my final stand out here on the water. So, you boys looking to trade?”

    “Well that and we haven’t spoken to anyone that wasn’t a raving murderer in days,” Harvey said. “I figured if you didn’t want to trade we could at least trade information.”

    The man started laughing and put his hand on my shoulder. He shook his head still laughing.

    “You trust stories from fishermen? This really is the end of the world,” he exclaimed. We all sat down in the entryway, dangling our legs over the salty water below and discussed what we knew with a man named Marc.

    “What about the condos?” I asked.

    “Oh, them? We sent someone to see if they needed help or whatnot and they turned us away. They don’t come out much. They kept telling us they didn’t want no trouble. For the most part they are older couples anyways.”

    “So you just left them?” I asked.

    “What should I do? Drag them out of their homes to live on an old pier? I offered my help, but I ain’t gonna force anyone to do anything they don’t want to,” Marc replied.

    “I wasn’t accusing you of misdoing, I just…”

    “You’re fine, no harm. So, tell me your story.”

    So we explained what we had seen, the people killing each other, the zombie. We manufactured a slightly different story about the intruder that he came in bleeding from a bite. We had told Marc that we had disarmed the man, but noticed he was bitten. We kept him restrained to see if he would turn or survive. We said that he broke loose, but was too weak to get far and by the time we found him; he was food for the neighborhood zombie. We told him that we had killed the zombie with a machete to the brain.

    “Good thing it wasn’t a spreader,” he said.

    “A what?” Harvey asked.

    “Y’know the zombies that spread the disease,” he said, looking at us like we clearly missed something important. We both had a confused look.

    “See, there are zombies that bite you and eat you. Then there are the ones that just try to infect you. Those ones cough up a shotgun blast of mucous and other stuff. We call ‘em spreaders cause, well you get it.”

    “Wait, how did you see these, or when, or wait, tell me more,” I rambled.

    “Okay, so they are the reason we don’t really have an open door policy any more. There were eight of us and we sees this man, screaming and running from a zombie. The funny thing is it was walking
away
from him. We scoop him up and bring him inside. He was covered in what looked like blood spatter, but as Carl cleans him up his skin is all stained from the liquid. It was like his skin soaked it up. Well, we checked him real good for bites or scratches and he looks fit as can be. Also his stained skin cleared up real fast. We aren’t sure if bites or scratches turn you, but I seen it in that one movie,” he explained.

    “
Invasion of the Undead 3
?” I asked.

    He cracked a smile, “Yeah, that’s the one. My favorite was
Attack of the Technodead
.”

    “Ugh, the one where the zombies got jetpacks? My friend, you have an interesting taste in movies,” I responded.