Undead 02 The Undead Haze (5 page)

“Oh, you’re awake.”

He looked at me kindly and patted the blankets that covered my shoulder.

After a cough that sent a stream of snot spinning end over end from my nose, I sat up and shifted away from him. How embarrassing. Fainting for no reason. Almost as though he read my mind, he said, “You must’ve exhausted yourself running down here. Between that, being sick, and the food you’re eating, I’m surprised you were willing to leave the building.”

“I—” I coughed again and said, “I can take care of myself.”

That
sounded stupid.

“No doubt. But all this indicates differently.” He gestured at the vending machine crap that littered the room.

It
was
bad. The mountain of discarded wrappers growing in the corners threatened to topple and spread across the floor. I was sure my phlegm bucket smelled...ripe. Memories of my minimalist, clean apartment brought more shame.

“Right,” I agreed and dropped the subject. I hadn’t spoken to another person in so long I forgot how to be mean. Wallowing in self-pity softened me up. Even
looking
at another living human was strange.

“My name is Buford.”

“Cyrus,” I replied, a sinking feeling coming over me. This situation was a little too familiar. Meeting another survivor. Going on an awful adventure. Never turned out well, in my experience.

“Nice to meet you. I have some soup heating up. If you stop eating these chips and Nyquil, you’ll be better in no time.”

Once he mentioned soup, I smelled it wafting through the open office door. “Heating it?”

“I started a small fire. The ceiling’s huge, and the concrete platform it’s on reduces the chance of a fire hazard. Nowhere closed off outside to do it.”

“All right.” Silence engulfed us while I shrugged some blankets off. “How long was I out?”

“At least an hour. I had some time on my hands so I looked around while you were asleep. Found these on the body down the hall.”

He fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a set of jingling keys. “I think they belong to the truck outside.”

Maybe if I had any shred of masculinity left, I would’ve found those keys and left long ago. Just to be difficult, I asked, “What makes you think that?”

“The truck outside is a Toyota. There’s a Toyota key on here. The body had a janitor’s uniform on. It was probably his truck.” Before I could come up with another remark, he stood up. “I’ll go get that soup. We’ll split it and talk about what we’re going to do.”

What we’re going to do?
I didn’t need his guidance. I needed to establish that before the kid thought he was going to be my savior.

After the soup.

The soup was beef and barley, and it tasted better than anything I’d eaten since I first arrived in the Rainier building. Buford even had two sporks.

As we ate he told me he had been traveling with a couple up until a few days ago. The woman was very pregnant, and they decided to leave the convenience store they’d been living in to find somewhere safer to hole up.

“I met them while scavenging inside a supermarket. Most stores are barren, but I look anyway. Even one can of tuna means having enough energy to outrun them. It was awkward at first. That moment when you aren’t sure if someone is a threat or a friend.”

“They’re all threats,” I said. I didn’t know where his story was going, but I knew it would end badly for someone.

Buford’s dark eyes flashed. “That’s harsh.”

“I’m alive because I treat people like threats.”

“I’m alive because I don’t.”

He stared me down, a callous defiance in the look that seemed familiar. “As I was saying, we ended up talking and decided to travel together. Their names were Claire and Don, and they seemed trustworthy enough. Maybe a bit weak, but how could I walk away from a woman that far along?”

“Easy. Just do it.”

I was pushing his buttons. One more snarky comment and I might have a fight on my hands. “She must’ve gotten knocked up right when the apocalypse started. Who does that?”

“She was raped. It was shocking how easily she told me. It’s a fact of life for some survivors. Claire was working a late shift at the local ER when an outbreak started two rooms down. The whole town went crazy. It was day fucking one of the apocalypse and they all lost it. She was trying to walk home when it happened.”

That
was harsh. The raw depravity I’d witnessed since I’d stepped out into the undead world knew no limits. I never thought the first day of chaos would be enough for the inherent evil within people to surface with that much fervor.

“They lived on the outskirts of town in a farm house surrounded by trees. Don told me about how great they thought it was that they didn’t have to find somewhere to hide because their house was perfect. It was the place characters go to in the movies and books, he said.”

“They ran out of food, didn’t they?” Only a handful of reasons would cause someone to leave their safe haven.

Buford’s forlorn chuckle confirmed I was right. “That’s what happens, isn’t it? Claire wouldn’t leave the house. She was too afraid. That left all the resource foraging to Don. He wouldn’t go too far towards town because he was afraid something would happen to him and Claire would be left alone.”

“A vicious cycle. Especially once they figured out she was pregnant.”

He nodded and fell into silence as he scraped the remaining soup from the bottom of its can. The spoon rattled in the empty container as he set it on the floor. “Yeah, but only for a few months. I guess Claire had some type of realization she needed to do everything she could to make sure the child was born. She said she’d never felt that willful in her life. Don couldn’t do anything but support her.”

“I know that feeling,” I said. “It’s powerful.”

“So do I. When I was a kid, I was picked on and…” Buford rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. He ran his hands over his face and inhaled. “Who am I kidding? It was more than bullying. It was beyond that. It was violent. But I got it in my head I wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. The kids doing it were bigger than me, grades ahead of me, but one day I beat the hell out of the biggest one. That feeling was what carried me through.”

His story was familiar. It sounded too much like my own tale of vicious schoolyard fights. The difference was that mine ended in me drowning another boy. I surfaced from my own sinister memories and found Buford still lost in his own thoughts.

“What happened then? After she decided she wanted to survive?” I asked.

“Oh, right. They decided to try and get to Marysville. It’s a town north of here. Don’s brother was a doctor. She said she’d rather die trying to get to someone who could help them than sit around starving to death. From there they made slow progress moving north, taking refuge wherever seemed safe for up to a week to prevent exertion. She was already having problems when I met them. Pains.”

Buford shuddered. He ran his hands through his coarse, dark hair, pushing it away from his face. His breath came out in a quivering exhale. “It’s hard for me to see people in pain and not do anything about it. I know better than to get involved with people, especially now, but it’s like I can’t stop myself. Growing up, I wanted to be like my sister. No matter how much someone needed help, or who it was, my sister didn’t give a rat’s ass. If she’d been with me when I met Don and Claire, she wouldn’t have stopped to help. That’s how I know she’s alive. She just doesn’t care about people.”

“I’m like her.”

“You think you are,” he said, “but being around you...well, it doesn’t
feel
the same as it would with her. I can tell with her. See it in her eyes. All I see is doubt with you. Struggle.”

Silence. I waited for more from him. He didn’t elaborate and I wasn’t sure what else to say. Either he was unusually perceptive or I was an open book.

I hope it was the former. Based on my recent track record, I knew it was the latter.

“Back to Claire and Don,” I reminded. “This isn’t about us.”

A suspicious look. A knowing look. Fuck. I hated it when people did that. Frank did it the most, though lately every person I’d met saw through me.

“Right, right. They needed to find somewhere to rest. I took them back to the house I’d been staying in. I knew it was secure. I hadn’t seen any undead around when I got there or left. We slept upstairs in rooms across from each other. That night I heard screaming. I ran into their room, expecting to see them getting eaten alive. But it was just her on the bed. Thrashing. Blood was everywhere, soaking
everything
. The baby must’ve died inside her while she was sleeping. Once it came back it began clawing its way out. Her stomach was...it looked...” He brought his hand to his mouth. Pale skin tinged green with an onset of nausea. “...wrong.”

I pictured tiny undead hands whittling away at her uterus. Beef and barley threatened to come back up. I hadn’t seen it and I still felt sick.

“I had a panic attack and ran. I don’t know what happened to them, but I know they’re dead. With that much gore and how Claire was screaming, she had to be.”

“Why didn’t you do anything about Don? Was he hurt?” I asked, curious. Most good Samaritans would’ve tried saving him. Buford didn’t want to see people in pain. Don would’ve been in a hell of a lot of pain.

He shrugged. “If it traumatized me to see that, could you imagine being him? But he was a brick wall. I want to help people, don’t get me wrong, but there comes a point when you know there’s nothing you can do. I wasn’t sticking around. When I ran out, there were undead coming from their hiding places, drawn out by the noise. The house wasn’t fortified. They would’ve broken in while I was trying to get him to leave.”

“That’s... Smart of you.”

“Thanks, I guess,” he said. “At that point you have to do what you have to do, right? I try to help anyone I can until it puts my own life at risk. That’s where other survivors go wrong. All they think about is helping other people or only helping themselves.” The look in his eyes didn’t match the conviction in his voice.

“Would you have done it differently, if you could go back?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “When I can’t sleep, I think about what I could’ve said to him, if there was anything, to get him moving. If I could’ve hit sense into him. Leaving him was the right thing for
me
, but if I could relive the situation I might do it differently.”

His sentiment and sense of honor made me sick. What was done was done. He was alive, so he did the right thing. Doing it different meant he wouldn’t be.

“Right. Now, where were you planning on going?”

“Farther north.” Excitement flickered in his eyes, and he seemed to grab at this chance to end the story of his previous companions. “To an island my family used to visit.”

I stifled my laugh. Barely. “I didn’t know islands are zombie proof.”

Buford glared. “It’s not even on a map. It’s just a stretch of land with nothing on it but trees and rocky beach. A seaplane would be the best way to get there. Just park on the water right off the coast.”

“You can fly, then?”

“I know enough to get there. But even if I can’t find a plane, it’s possible to take a boat. It’s just dangerous because of the distance and currents.”

“Why didn’t you go there to begin with?”

“I was trying to find my sister,” he told me. “Then I realized she’d have the same idea as me. She’s probably already there for all I know.”

“Finding a person during the apocalypse is impossible,” I chided. “Trust me, I know.”

He shook his head. “I know she’s there. I can feel it.”

Feelings
. I had the same feeling about Blaze all the time—that she was alive somewhere and I could find her. Irrational feelings, but they usually are. Feelings, that is.

“What are
you
doing here? You don’t live here, do you?”

As if on cue, I hacked up a wad of phlegm. I sought out an empty pop bottle to spit it in.

Buford grimaced.

“No. I’m looking for someone, too. I doubt I’m going to find her, but why not try?” I told him.

“You love her?”

Love her? Sociopaths don’t love. They manipulate, throw away, and lie...but love? Not in their vocabulary. Well, not unless they are using the concept to deceive someone.

But there I was again, trapped in the albatross of the title ‘sociopath.’ Telling myself what I should or shouldn’t think based on a self-proclaimed definition I gave myself before
this
.

This
being the experience of seeing the only person who ever understood me die.
This
being the sensation of weakness in the face of an unrelenting force.
This
...

This
being the zombie fucking apocalypse.

I can make the hard choices. I can be a monster who leaves people for dead. A bastard who doesn’t bat an eyelash at the harsh new realities of this crapsack world. I can be a selfish prick.

But that doesn’t make me a sociopath. It makes me something else. Someone without a definition. A product of a life gone bad. A product of the zombie fucking apocalypse.

“Do you love her?” he asked again.

What was that in his voice? I couldn’t read people, so I wasn’t going to start trying now, but I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. It reminded me too much of Blaze. It said,
don’t bother answering. I already know
.

I didn’t like the itchy feeling that started creeping over me right then, either. Like my mind was trying something on for size. The idea was still too foreign for me to even contemplate.

“Is it any of your business?” I snapped. After an uncomfortable silence I said, “I’m here because I got sick after being kidnapped by some crazies for their food supply. Once I’m better I’m heading out again.”

“Two questions: First, how were you kidnapped? And second, what’s your plan?”

“The kidnapping thing was so fucking bizarre I’m still trying to get over it.” I didn’t want to get into recollecting the events too much. I wanted to move on. “Group of genuine cannibals abducted me from a gas station. They have a leader,
Kevin
, who only eats redheads.”