The Dead Circle (14 page)

“We’re just here to pick up some food. There’s plenty for everyone. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Sarah is a good liar. To everyone but herself that is. She is definitely afraid.

Thump.

Only thirty feet from the door to the employees’ area, Sarah notices a large panel of one-way glass that she figures the security guard must sit behind watching for shoplifters.
Are Coscto security guards armed?

When she reaches the door, she puts her back up to the wall next to it like she sees cops do in movies. She spots Chris coming down the aisle to her right.

THUMP.

The sound of something hitting the door just inches from her face causes her to make a small involuntary squeak. Chris reaches the other side of the door and holds his stick at shoulder-height ready to swing.

“We don’t want to hurt you. We’re going to open the door OK?” Sarah is starting to sound almost as scared as she is. Leaning against the wall gives her a chance to look at the hinges directly next to her ear. The door opens out towards her. It doesn’t appear to have a lock.
Why doesn’t whoever is behind the door just turn the handle?

THUMP.

For a moment, she wonders why they didn’t just run away. There was no reason to investigate the sound. No reason to put themselves at risk. Except they have more supplies to get. Or maybe this might be a survivor who can help them, someone who knows what’s going on.

She knows their options are fairly limited now. So, using hand signals to warn Chris, she silently counts down from five and pulls the door open, tucking behind it as a shield.

Out stumbles the completely naked form of Tom Middleton, Assistant Manager. He’s forty-five, overweight and balding. Two dark stripes of curly hair crawl up his large pimply back like a vine and blend into the back of his comb-over. His hands and forehead have been cut, presumably the source of the messy spatters of blood smeared all over the inside of the door.  He had obviously been running into the door over and over for hours.

‘Tom, Assistant Manager’, completely ignores them and starts walking towards the exit of the store. Without thinking, Sarah steps out from behind the door and stands next to Chris. They look to each other as if the other one should have a plan for this. Neither of them do.

‘Tom’ gets a few steps away from the office and his leg abruptly kicks out, hitting a display of coffee. The enormous cans are sent clanging everywhere. There is a distinct cracking noise as one of ‘Tom’s’ toes snaps from the impact. One of the containers rolls across the cement floor and stops at Sarah’s feet. The former Assistant Manager who had eyes on becoming the Manager Manager makes no sign that he is in pain or that he is even aware that he has injured himself as he heads for the exit. He continues to completely ignore Chris and Sarah.

“Wait! Hey… uh… Sir?” Sarah doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t have a lot of context for naked men dancing through Costco. But something in the back of her head makes her feel like she should do
something
. “Hey wait! Stop!”

Chris, not entirely sure what to do either, jogs ahead and tries to catch up with him.

“Chris, be careful! Don’t touch him! He could be infectious!”

He looks back at his wife and gives her a ‘what am I supposed to do here?’ look. He steps in front of ‘Tom’ and tries to slow him down.

“Hey buddy. Where you going? Are you OK?”

‘Tom’ advances closer to Chris who keeps backing up, trying to keep some distance between them. Chris raises his hockey stick and attempts to stop his momentum with the blade. ‘Tom’ walks right into it and keeps pushing. Chris has to plant his feet and lean into the stick to stop him. The man ceases, but he keeps dumbly trying to push his way to the door.

Chris becomes increasingly conscious of the man’s nakedness, the hair nestled on the shelf created by the protrusion of his gut. His uncircumcised penis dangles ever so slightly to the left. Chris feels a sensation he could only describe as ‘icked out.’ His arms flail wildly and Chris is almost grazed by a bloody hand.  He grimaces but is able to keep the stick on the man’s chest, preventing him from getting closer.

“No offense buddy, I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want a hug. At least until you put some pants on.”

Sarah catches up and stands next to Chris. She stares into the naked man’s eyes. His pupils are missing, his eyes are just blank white orbs streaked with red veins.

“I think his eyes rolled up! That’s why they’re all white.”

Despite her fear, she finds herself musing that perhaps the most ‘human’ part of a body is the eyes. Eyes convey so much thought and emotion. They tell truths that can’t be as easily faked as words or even actions. Sarah remembers the line in ‘Jaws’ about sharks having ‘dead eyes, doll’s eyes.’ She knows that somehow it is possible to discern consciousness, intelligence, mood, even good or malicious intent purely by looking into a creature’s pupils. When something dies, that intangible light is extinguished. It’s both indescribable and unmistakable. Without pupils, the incredible conduit of information is completely cut off. Looking into the whiteness where ‘Tom’s’ eyes should be sends a chill down her spine. There’s just nothing.

“Are you in there man?” Chris grunts, struggling to keep him back with the stick.

“He’s not. Let him go.”

“But he might just be sick. I don’t think he’s trying to hurt us. What if we-”  

“Let’s just let him go. We can’t help him.”

“How do you know that? We’re not doctors. Maybe he can be cured?”

“I just know OK? I can feel it. Maybe a doctor could help, but what could
we
do? Let him go.”

Chris steps back and to the side, lowering his stick. ‘Tom’ continues his journey through the door and out into the parking lot. He’s headed off in the direction of the circle and in a moment he is gone.

She nods to him as if to say ‘thank you for listening to me and not doing anything stupid.’ Chris lowers his hockey stick.  

“Nice guy. Quiet. Touch of the zombie.”

Sarah can’t contain a grim giggle. “Let’s hurry up and get the fuck out of here.”

“Agreed. Let’s get this stuff onto the truck. I didn’t find much for weapons. Is there a gun section here?”

Sarah laughs. “In Costco? You think they sell twelve-packs of handguns? If you want an arsenal, you need to go to Walmart.”

***

“My leg hurts.”

Mikey sat by the fire precariously balancing a marshmallow on a stick. Sarah was amazed that this meal hadn’t fallen into the fire yet, like his last two, but Mikey refused to accept her help. He was going to cook his own dessert.

“Should we go home tomorrow and get you some Tylenol?”

“No, no. It’s OK. It just hurts.”

“Tomorrow morning, when there is more light, you have to let me take off the bandage and look at it.”

“But it stings!”

“I know. But you have to. I check it tomorrow or we go home. Understood?”

“Fine.”

Five nights in the woods with Mikey had been almost as much fun for Sarah as it had been for him. They hiked for miles then followed a stream down to a pond and attempted to fish. They were woefully unsuccessful, but Mikey was undeterred. He did catch a huge bullfrog and paraded it around like he was holding the Stanley Cup. When he returned it to the pond, Mikey marked the spot where it had ducked under some mud and decomposing leaves with a pile of rocks. He wanted to remember where he was so they could visit the frog next time they went camping.

Mikey and Sarah had long chats about life. He was remarkably astute and intuitive for his young age. She assumed he would never understand some of the things she told him about her life, but she found him surprisingly easy to open up to. She told him about the pressure she felt to get into college and told him about her teenage boy troubles—at least the parts that were PG-13—and to her surprise he understood more than she expected him to. He listened to her dilemmas and didn’t try to solve them, he just nodded and empathized. He had a natural wisdom and she realized that Mikey had at least a toe in adulthood too. Sarah was proud of him and thought he was going to grow up to be a great guy someday. They sat in front of the fire for a while in silence. Each deep in their own thoughts, but both enjoying the experience immensely.  

Sarah found herself refreshed by being out in the wilderness. After thinking about it for a while, she thought that she wasn’t so much ‘outside’ as she was inside the woods, inside nature.
Perhaps nature is the real environment and that all of the buildings that people created were really the ‘outside.’
Then after contemplating this for a while, she laughed out loud. She sounded like a stoner but she was only high on fresh air and burnt marshmallows.

It wasn’t until the next morning that the trip turned sour. Mikey didn’t seem quite himself when he woke up. When he helped her pack up their little tent, he seemed groggy and distant.

“Are you OK? You seem a little off this morning?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah I feel kinda spinny.”

“Really? Come here.”

Sarah put her hand on his forehead. He was burning up. She was surprised how obvious and unnervingly hot a real fever is. She remembered checking herself for a fever plenty of times trying to convince her mother she was too sick to go to school but it never felt like this. This felt serious. She winced and her stomach involuntarily clenched.

Sarah sat him down and removed the make-shift bandage from his leg. What she saw made her light-headed. It looked raw and hot. Pus oozed from the gash which was obviously infected. All of the happy ideas Sarah had been thinking about that morning disappeared in a puff of smoke. Her ideas about spending more time in nature, her nagging fear that Tommy was ignoring her in English class and her despair about her fucking history paper that was due next week all dropped away and were replaced with a singular purpose.

“OK. We’re going home.”

She expected him to protest, to remind her that they weren’t supposed to go home until tomorrow, but he just nodded. That scared her more than the infection itself.

They had five miles of trail to walk before they could get back to her car.

***

Chris and Sarah load the truck with as many supplies as it can hold. They got everything on their ‘shopping list’ and added any fresh food that hadn’t gone bad. They found some bread, cake, fruits and vegetables that looked like they hadn’t spoiled yet. They knew that in a matter of days, anything that wasn’t pre-packaged would be very difficult to come by. They might not have access to fresh produce, dairy and meat for a long time. Even in the era of bio-engineered, packaged and preserved everything, without freezers and refrigerators, their food options were going to be very limited, especially in a city. They were facing a world without cheese, without real cream in their coffee, without fresh vegetables, without hamburgers. Chris spent a moment staring sadly at the huge refrigerated cases filled with steaks that had already started to rot.

With all of their supplies tied down, they wind their way back through the streets of Detroit.

“So, you know how we’ve been talking about this in terms of survivors and… I dunno,
not
survivors?”

Chris nods. “I don’t like the term, but I don’t know what else to call them. I mean the infected obviously aren’t dead.”

“Well that’s the thing. I think they are.”

“They can’t be. At least not yet. We just passed our friend from Costco marching down the street. It might be fatal eventually, but you’re not dead if you’re walking around. Not really.”

Sarah pauses for a second, trying to form her thought. “When I saw his eyes, I knew he was dead. I could just feel it.”

Chris starts to say something but Sarah cuts him off.

“OK, I know that’s not scientific. So let’s look at it that way. I mean, he felt no pain, he had no response stimulus. No sense of self-preservation. I didn’t see any kind of real consciousness there.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but I don’t think he’s human anymore. My gut says he’s moving, but he’s not alive.”

“So you’re actually talking literal zombie. Come on Sarah. That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing.”

“Well yes and no. There obviously aren’t zombies in the ‘Day of the Dead’ sense, but I just remembered something that Mikey told me once.”

“Mikey?” Chris gives Sarah a look. She almost never talked about him and he had learned early in their relationship not to bring him up.

“Yeah. When he was little, he was obsessed with bugs and insects.”

“I remember you told me. The grosser the better.”

“He once cornered me for almost an hour and described in great gory detail about some types of parasites that can infect insects and literally turn them into zombie kinda things. They can control their behavior and even make them move after they’re dead. It was the dancing that made me remember. The spasms. Mikey said the insects did that after they got infected. They’d spin in circles endlessly or just twitch over and over. Like something was pulling random levers in their brains.”

“That’s nuts.”

“Yeah, it happens to bees and ants I think. Maybe roaches. I don’t really remember much except for the story Mikey told me about this parasitic fungus that takes over carpenter ants. It infects the poor bastards and uses chemicals to literally control their minds. It forces an ant to act all crazy, leaving its colony and using its pincers to grab onto the underside of a leaf and just hang there forever. Once it dies, the fungus spreads all over the ant’s body and starts shooting spores out to infect the other ants.”

“That’s fucking creepy.”

“Yeah, that’s why a little boy would be so excited about it. Point is, whether it’s larvae or a fungus or whatever, there is such a thing as a parasite that causes behavior like this.”