Decaying Humanity (6 page)

    Marc chuckled before starting his story again. “As I was saying, that night he goes to sleep in the bunk house. I wake up to screamin’ and he’s on top of Alice, but not in the good way. He never looked like he was turning into one of them, but when everyone went to sleep, bam! Alice was tore up and she was bleedin’ bad. Carl just up and put an icepick through the man’s head. There I was, frozen in the corner like a coward and then, pow, the man’s head sprayed blood like high pressure oil. It sprayed Carl good and dripped all over Alice. Carl starts cleaning himself and another man started trying to help Alice, but she was already dead. We saw Carl wipe off all the blood and there he stood, white man with stained red rashy looking spots. We didn’t have much time to discuss it, but we managed to put Carl outside, right here where we sit now.”

    “What happened next?” Harvey asked, utterly absorbed into the story.

    “Well Carl is begging us to let him in, that he won’t turn. We just tell him we are praying for him and if he don’t turn, we’ll let him back in. We leave one to watch him and I head back to find Alice chowing down on the infected man’s corpse. I was terrified she would cough or spray me if I attacked her. So I tried to lure her out, but damn it, she was so focused on feeding. It took forever and we gathered up and waited. When she finally finished she came staggering out. We took some of them big brooms and pushed her over the side of the pier.”

    “Could you tell if she was a regular zombie or one of those spreaders?” I asked.

    “Hell if I know. She hit the water and disappeared. As for Carl, we took turns watching him, and he looked fine. We talked about letting him back in, but I demanded we wait one full night. So when Carl finally fell asleep the next night, it was like boom! He fell asleep, snored for a couple minutes like he used to and then you could just hear that last breath. Two minutes later he’s biting at the door and trying to claw his way in. We slid the ramp out, knocked him off the entryway. He sloshed around for a long time, looking up and reaching for us. He got too far out and then all of a sudden a big wave just took him under and swept him away.”

    “What type of virus waits until you fall asleep to kick in?” I asked.    

    “Beats me. I think that spreader was walking away cause it only had one purpose in life ... to infect,” Marc said dramatically.

    At this point I was waiting for him to take a flashlight and put it under his chin and woo at us like a ghost. Unfortunately, this was a true story.

    Marc and his people were really good folks, but they were set on not accepting anyone else onto the pier. I could understand and honestly Harvey and I had talked about it and we weren’t ready to join a group either. They had an abundance of fish and had devised a way to boil water and make the sea water drinkable. They had grown bored of seafood and had offered us a trade of fish for any fuel source, food, weapons, or other things. The sun was beginning to set and we told him that we had supplies we needed to gather to trade, but we needed a place to sleep.

    “I like you guys already, but you can’t come past this door. If it’s better than any other arrangement, you are welcome to sleep up here on the entryway tonight. I hope you understand. We lost two people the last time we opened the door,” Marc said.

    We had thought about sleeping in the car, but we were still worried a zombie could smash through while we were asleep. Or worse, someone could just walk up and shoot us. At least this spot would be somewhat better, for the night. So we went back to the car, brought a few pouches of grits, a couple scoops of vanilla protein powder in an old soda bottle, and even carried a handful of dune grass and a loose plank from the stairs to the beach. We returned just as night was starting to creep across the sand, chilling the beach sand underfoot. As we approached we were welcomed immediately by the outstretched plank. It seemed like an overly generous trade on their end. We both ate a large plate of grilled fish and were promised a breakfast of the same for our trade. A tall twelve-year-old girl named Megan looked inside the bottle with excitement. “Is that … dessert?” she asked an older man.

    “I suppose it is,” he responded.

    The food was amazingly fresh. It was smothered in some kind of dry seasoning. It was better than food I had eaten before the collapse. I asked Marc about the small restaurant on the pier and he told us the dry seasoning was one of the few things that survived without refrigeration.

    We sat on the outside of an oceanfront pier fortress, eating grilled fish, while sharing a small space overhanging white frothy waves.

    “Well this is romantic,” I said and winked at Harvey.

    “Don’t start with me,” he said with a mouthful of food. We both laughed a little and I looked out across the beach. It really was beautiful, the moonlight bouncing off the water lit up the night. I had to be thankful for this at least.

    I had fallen asleep with my back up against a wall of pallets and woke up to the worst back pain ever. After waking up and trying to stretch out, I was greeted with a new plate of food. Harvey had been awake, but didn’t want to move until he finished his plate. Marc came through the door and sat with us. “So, what’s your plan now?” he asked.

    “Well,” I started. “I guess we will head back and see if anyone has visited our house. Then, either way, we probably have to keep moving. Maybe we can find a place to hole up on the main street. There are lots of restaurants, so maybe we can figure something out.”

    “That sounds like a good start. Make sure you come back and visit us; we’ll trade with you anytime. Maybe after some time passes our group will be more willing to open the doors again,” Marc said.

    “By then, we might be ready to join a group,” Harvey said with a mouthful of fish.

    “Wait, what about the other piers? Aren’t there two other big piers on the beach?” I asked.

    “One of them burnt down, not sure by whom, but there isn’t much left of it. The second one, well, we got barely within eyeshot and they started shooting at us. I don’t think the bullets could even reach that far, but we didn’t get any closer to find out,” Marc explained.

    “Well I figured I’d ask.”

    We finished up our meal and said our goodbyes. The rest of the group came to say their farewells, but we could barely make them out through the barricade. We departed the fortified pier and made our way back to the car. There was still no activity on the beach and all was quiet up to the walkway.

    As we turned the corner, we could see the station wagon’s trunk open. There was a single leg extended from the trunk and before I could even say anything, Harvey was bounding towards the vehicle, shotgun in hand. He made it to the trunk and reached in, I could barely see what he was doing when I heard a gunshot ring out from the condos across the street. The dune on the other side of the car spurted up sand 10 feet from my position. I ducked and clung to the car as I scanned the buildings for a shooter. The door to a condo directly across from the car was wide open and an elderly woman was standing in the doorway.

    She was in a long oversized gown with cartoon cows on it. She still held the revolver out, her hands clearly shaking. There was a tussle inside the car and I could hear grunting from Harvey and a second person. I peeked around the car to see that Harvey had drug out an older man with a thinning white comb-over. Harvey pressed the shotgun up against the back of his white checkered shirt. “Alice, don’t shoot,” the man called out.

    She didn’t fire again, but she kept the revolver pointed at us, her arms shaking to hold its weight.

    “Why are you stealing from us?” Harvey asked, jabbing the barrel into his back.

    “I didn’t know anyone was coming back and we don’t have anything left,” said the old man. I walked around to where Harvey was standing and looked in the trunk. We were missing an armload of food. That cut down our supply to two weeks at the most. If he had been faster or earlier, our trunk would be empty. The old man had probably made multiple trips this morning. I gave Harvey a look that said, “
What the hell do we do?
” He seemed to respond with one that said, “
I don’t know.
”

    “Please just let me go, I’m just trying to take care of my wife. We’ve been eating cat food the last four days, and when we ran out of that …,” he trailed off.

    “I don’t want to hurt you, but we need our food just as much as you do.” Harvey said.

    “You still have a lot and we have nothing. We are going to die without some food,” the man pleaded.

    “Want me to shoot them, Alfred?” the old lady cackled out with a shaky voice.

    “No! Get back in the house!” he shouted back, somewhat annoyed. “She couldn’t hit the car if she was three feet away,” he said sadly.

    “Look, we can let you go and you can bring our stuff back. You stole from us and we need it,” Harvey said. The man spun around defiantly and looked him right in the eyes.

    “Son, if I bring back that food, we will starve to death. I have never stolen anything in my life and I am very sorry if I have to start today, but you might as well shoot us both. I can’t and won’t bring it back. So just do it and get it over with if that’s what you are going to do,” he scolded.

    Harvey looked at me unsure. We had done so much self-preservation and perhaps this would reduce our food supply but, I couldn’t just sentence them to death. How could we expect people to help us if we ever needed it, if we couldn’t help two old people? “Let him go, I can’t, I mean
we
can’t,” I said.

    Harvey looked somewhat relieved. I think we both needed to do something good to clear our murky conscious.

    “Thank you, we can’t thank you enough for…” he began to say before being cut out by a shrill cry and gagging. Everyone spun around and there it was. Alice was splashed from her face down to her knees in red spotted mucous. A zombie six feet from her already had its back to her and was stumbling our way. It was, or at least had been, a male surfer in his thirties. His black and red swim trunks clung to him tightly. His entire body was spotted with dried bodily fluids. He didn’t look like the others. I had seen some that had eaten their fill and their gut drooped down, but this was different. He looked bloated to the point of exploding. His neck was a massive swollen mess and even as he walked, it rolled up and down like he was swallowing a melon.

    “ALICE!” the man screamed and started to run towards her. She recomposed herself and started shooting at the zombie, which by the way, was between her and us
. Blat, blat, blat
, the gun rang out as one of the bullets whizzed past us and pierced through the bumper of our car. One ricocheted off the pavement and another one sunk into the dunes behind us. The man began to call out her name again, “ALI” was all he got out before
blat, blat, click, click, click
.

    Alfred fell to the ground grabbing his shoulder and the undead monster’s head exploded in a rain of reddish drops. We stood there, dumbfounded, as the older lady continued to pull the trigger at us,
click, click, click
. Alfred was lying on the ground, bleeding from his shoulder. He started to pull himself up. Across from him the lifeless (or unlifeless) body of a spreader was still spurting a narrow stream of red mucous onto the hot pavement. I looked over at Harvey.

    “Are you hit?” I asked.

    “No, but that went to hell fast,” he replied.

    I walked over to help Alfred to his feet, but despite his wound, had already picked himself up and was trotting over to his wife. I shouted “Don’t touch her,” but he ignored me completely and wrapped her in a giant hug. She was crying and I could hear him consoling her. I crept up, keeping my distance, until I could see it all too clearly. They both ceased their embrace to look up at me. Both of them had red patches of blotchy skin that seemed to fade even as I stood there.

    “We need to get inside where it’s safe. Thank you for letting us keep the food,” Alfred said softly.

    “You are both infected,” I said coldly as Harvey stepped up from behind me.

    “What? She wasn’t bit, I’ve seen their blood get on other people and they never turned,” Alfred argued.

    “That’s not blood and it wasn’t a regular zombie,” Harvey informed. “That was a spreader. They cough or sneeze the infection on you. It’s a liquid that apparently gets absorbed into your skin and when you go to sleep you almost immediately turn.”

    “How could you possibly know that? Have you seen it?” He began to accuse.

    “A friend told us.”

    “Oh, well in that case, we are fine. I don’t believe in rumors. Good day, you two. C’mon honey we need to get you cleaned up,” Alfred said while starting to head back towards the door.

    I have had a rough week. I watched a zombie eat an entire person, people tried to kill me; I performed experiments on a man, slept on a pier, and now this. I was basically giving a week’s worth of food to people that now, two minutes after my donation, are going to turn into ravenous killers. I snatched the shotgun out of Harvey’s hands, “Stop!” I shouted.

    It startled both of them and they froze in place. “I am very sorry, but I need that food back.”

    “What are you doing?” Harvey asked stunned.

    “You are infected, I have seen enough to know that. I would like nothing more than for you to walk into your home and live happily ever after. That just isn’t going to happen, though. I really am sorry, but you aren’t going to be yourself in the morning. I feel horrible saying it, but you are already dead and I’m not. I can’t leave those supplies with you.” I hated who I was becoming, but what choice did I have?

    Alice started crying and put her face into Alfred’s unwounded shoulder. He scowled at me something fierce and after a moment of having a staring contest, I didn’t budge. His face grew very solemn.