Decaying Humanity (11 page)

    Then my body went cold, my legs felt weak, and a wave of panic rushed across me like needles. Out of the corner of my eye, only steps away, was the shape of a hunched over humanoid. I turned my head as it turned towards me and we locked eyes. In its hands were the broken remains of a second hunter, its mouth dripping with gore. Its face grew into a narrow toothy smile as it threw the man’s corpse to the ground. I couldn’t outrun it and even if I could, I had nowhere to go. I knew I couldn’t escape a creature with nearly unlimited endurance.

    A combination of fear and bad footing sent me sailing into the dirt on my chest. I rolled over onto my back and reached for my machete. The runner had stood up and started to move in my direction … that is, until Harvey came racing past him, nearly running right into it. Harvey’s face scrunched into a terrified flinch, like he was about to get hit with a baseball.

    My hand was on my machete when it leapt onto Harvey’s back, knocking his face solidly into the sand. It was screaming and wrapped its ragged decaying fingers around his neck. I pulled myself up and moved over to strike. It ceased its attack and snapped its head at me, staring at me with bloodshot eyes. Then Harvey found the strength to roll away. As he rolled, the creature held tight and went with him. Harvey was on his back with this monster underneath him, flailing and screaming a far too human screech. It only took a second and it did a complete reversal, putting Harvey back on the ground. I came in with an underhanded swing. The creature raised its arm and absorbed the blade halfway into its wrist. It leapt off of Harvey and pinned me to ground, the blade still dangling from its arm. I could feel the pressure of its fingers pressing against my shirt before it raised its head, jaw open wide.

    Just then, a silver blade flashed through the air and sank into the side of its neck. The strike caused it to roll to the side, wailing and screeching. Its legs jerked and kicked up clouds of sand as it fought to regain control of its body. I crawled over and yanked the machete out of his wrist and swung down, spouting profanity. My first strikes missed the vitals and just sent clotted blood sputtering out. Harvey had joined in and together we managed to hack off its head. The body continued to jitter about, rolling and flailing in the sand. I just thought to myself, “
Why can’t you follow the rules? Decapitation means you stop moving.
”

    Harvey extended his hand to help me up and I gladly took it. “I can’t believe we actually killed a …” I started. I let go of his hand and fell back onto the sand. My eyes burned as tears started to well up.

    “What’s wrong with you?” Harvey asked.

    I couldn’t speak; my mouth had grown dry. I pointed at Harvey’s inner shoulder, which revealed a nasty bleeding bite. We all handle things in our own way. At that moment I handled the situation by crying like a child.

    Harvey touched the wound and held up his fingers coated in his own blood. He looked utterly defeated.

    “God … dammit.”

    “This is your fault!” Harvey shouted at Shay. She had managed to reach the truck before it cruised into the ocean. She saw the commotion and had floored it into reverse, but returned too late.

    “I’m sorry. I told you guys not to follow me,” she said defensively.

    “I should have, but Jim ran after you and I couldn’t let him go alone,” he said.

    Shay sighed, trying not to fight with him. “We need to get that wound treated.”

    “Treated?” he yelled. “Why bother, in a couple hours I’ll be a walking corpse.”

    “We haven’t seen a bite actually turn anyone yet,” I responded.

    “That’s, the first fucking rule of zombies!” Harvey yelled.

    I looked over at the runner. It was still jerking about, occasionally twitching. “That thing is proof that nothing is following the rules. Sit in the truck, man, we’ll make some bandages. Don’t lose hope, you still have a chance,” I said.

    He stormed into the passenger side of the truck and slammed the door. I could hear angry mumblings that accused us of all manner of wrong doings. I would have tried to reason with him, but I couldn’t imagine what he was going through.

    I followed Shay over to the second hunter, only a few feet from the path. She pulled his shirt off, revealing his shredded chest. The shirt was mostly covered in blood, but there were a few strips that were clean, well, at least cleaner. She took my machete and cut them into strips.

    “We can wash them in the ocean water. I think that will help clean the wound.”

    “Are you sure?” I asked.

    “Did you know that I went to medical school after high school?”

    “Oh, well that makes me feel better,” I replied.

“I dropped out in the first week.”

“I take it back then.”

    “I couldn’t do the needles and seeing blood made me sick. It’s funny how much we have all changed, huh?”

“You could say that again.”

    “I’m sorry about Harvey. It’s all my fault. I just wanted you guys to stay there and I could have got the truck. I don’t know, it was stupid,” she said while rinsing the shreds of cloth.

    “It wasn’t stupid, who knows how we would have gotten home. I couldn’t let you go out there alone. I wanted to protect you, but I let my friend get hurt in the process. What do you think his chances are?”

    “We have to worry about his bleeding right now. As for the infection, I don’t know. We need to get back to Todd.”

    Harvey staggered up to us holding his shoulder. Blood was still oozing from his wound and in his left hand was a small green pouch.

    “That’s not…,” I started.

“Yeah it is, clean me up and we’ll use this Speed Clot.”

    Shay took the cloth and wrung them out and wiped out his wound as best as she could. He handed her the pouch and grabbed a small stick and put it in his mouth. “Fucking karma,” he mumbled. She sprinkled the powder into the wound and it sizzled and popped. There was almost no reaction from Harvey.

    “Does that hurt?” she asked.

    “No … not at all.”

    That scared me. From what we learned from John, a note I never bothered to write down is that Speed Clot, hurt like a bitch. She finished working the bite and smiled at him. He started to smile back and then forced it away.

    “Man, I’m so sorry,” I said.

    “It’s not your fault. I’m pissed and upset and hell. I don’t know what I’m feeling any more. I’ll probably die, or turn, but somehow that really hasn’t set in. I just keep thinking we have to keep fighting. If we fight hard enough, everything will be okay in the end. Only, it doesn’t matter, we will all turn eventually.”

    I searched for a response, but there was nothing I could say. Harvey knew this and slowly walked over to the passenger seat. “I don’t feel like driving,” he remarked. He opened the door and picked up a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and carefully looked it over. It appeared to have been torn in places.

    “Is this you?” Harvey accused while holding the paper out to Shay.

    She took the paper and looked it over, her eyes squinting in disbelief. I leaned in to read the paper with her. In the top center of the page was a crappy photocopied picture. The picture was of a girl in a hospital gown with dark hair exiting a building.

Attn: Military Personnel

Subject: Reacquisition of Infected Individual

Subject: Tiffany Mason has escaped from test site 7. The acquisition and safe return of this individual is priority one. It is believed that she may be infected with an unknown virus. The target is highly contagious, full chemical gear is suggested. Intel suggests that by extracting her…

    The document was ripped below the bottom few lines. I scanned the document, concerned of the obvious similarities. “This is dated two weeks ago,” I said.

    Shay looked up and laughed and then noticed how both of us were staring at her. “What? You don’t really think that’s me, do you?”

    “She looks like you,” Harvey said.

    “She looks like an ink-blot test. There are other people in the world with black hair. Plus that’s not even my name.”

    “Didn’t you leave a hospital almost around that time?” I asked.

    “Yeah, but I told you that the hallway and lobby was flooded with zombies. I had to crawl out the window to escape. What the hell is this, a witch hunt?”

    “No, at this point I couldn’t care less. Considering,” Harvey said.

    I didn’t say anything; I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what it could mean. Could Shay have been patient zero? Did she infect the world? That was nonsense, because the zombie outbreak had started almost a month and a half ago, and that was in other countries. Who was that in the picture and why did the Army want her?

    I drove us home with Shay sitting in the middle and Harvey in the passenger seat. The toolbox had been filled with almost six boxes of ammunition. Harvey had brought a box of shells into the truck before we headed off. He repeatedly loaded a single shell into the shotgun and then ejected it into his hand. It made us both nervous. I didn’t think he was going to shoot us. I was afraid he was going to give up.

    “Harvey,” I started.

    “I’m not going to,” he snapped.

    He held out the picture and put it next to Shay’s head. She swatted his arm away, “Stop it, Harvey.”

    “I don’t know if I trust you anymore. You might be the queen zombie and lay eggs in our brains,” he said with a small chuckle that turned into a cough.

    “Speaking of which, you know that was the storyline in,” I began.

    “
Queen Z from Planet X
!” Shay said, beating me to the title.

    “You know, sometimes I hate you,” I said sarcastically. She just wrinkled her nose at me and stuck out her tongue.

    “Sometimes I hate you both,” Harvey remarked. I was pretty sure he was joking. Pretty sure.

    I pulled the truck into the alleyway that ran along the motel fence and against the adjacent building. I was about to take it around back, when Desmond came rushing outside holding a rifle at us. I quickly rolled the window down and waved at him. He lowered his weapon, clearly confused about the vehicle swap. I turned the key, killing the ignition and stepped out.

    “I’ll ask later bout that, but man, we gotta talk!”

    “It might have to wait. We need to see Todd,” I said as Harvey staggered out of the passenger seat.

    “Is he alright?” Desmond asked.

    He wasn’t alright, anyone could see that. I didn’t know what to do about it. It all seemed so easy and mathematical when it wasn’t actually happening. We had always said if someone got bit,
bam
, the end. When it’s your best friend, I had to hesitate. I just couldn’t imagine having to … kill him. My eyes started to water up thinking about it. I wiped them hard with my sleeve and pulled myself together.

    “I need to see the doc,” Harvey said coming into view.

    “Oh! He was bit,” Desmond said raising the rifle.

    “Wait!” Shay cried out. “We aren’t sure if bites actually turn you. He isn’t a danger to anyone now, so until it becomes an issue we just stay cool.”

    He reluctantly lowered his weapon. “Aight, come inside. Like I said, we need to talk.” Desmond pointed at the black truck and cocked his head to the side. “Isn’t that?”

    “It’s a long story,” I said.

    “What do you mean, gone?” Harvey shouted.

    “Well, Todd was out here taking inventory of his medical supplies. He said that he saw some extra supplies in that car outside. I gave him the keys and then I had to help Pablo with one of his jobs.”

    “Then what?”

    “The car took off down the road. Me an’ Pablo just standing here like, what the hell just happened?”

    “Did he say anything before he left?” I asked.

    “No and he took a whole case of food and Harvey’s rucksack.”

    “What? That brings us down to what, one case?” Shay questioned.

    “I hate veterinarians,” Harvey said.

    “Well he didn’t take everything though…,” Desmond said flinching.

    “What did he leave…,” Shay started.

    “I’m a pinball machine!” Peter shouted while bouncing out of his room and ricocheting off of the walls with a
bing, bing
sound effect.

    “You’ve got to be kidding me. I hate kids,” Harvey complained.

    Peter ran into his room and came out draped in a sheet. “Hey guys, watch me, watch me do this, watch me,” he prattled.

    “I noticed Todd didn’t quite … take to Peter, but I never expected this,” Desmond said.

    “Wow,” Shay said. “You know, when he first got here I told him he had cute kids. He corrected me and said kid. He said that his wife hadn’t been faithful and Peter wasn’t really his. He smiled at me and probably lied through his teeth, but he said I love them both the same.”

    “What the hell do we do now?” I asked.

    “Just keep fighting,” Harvey said. “At least I don’t have to put up with him much longer,” he said while rubbing the wound on his shoulder.

    I patted him on the back and he glared at me. We all looked at Peter with a sense of uncertainty as he pranced around covered in a bed sheet. He threw it around him like a scarf and yelled out, “I’m a beauty queen!”

    Peter then grabbed Shay’s arm and tried to drag her to his room. “I have something to show you.”

    “I can’t believe Nikki went with him and left her brother,” Desmond said.

    Pablo said something I couldn’t make out, but I understood the disappointed tone.

    “I can’t believe he stabbed us in the back,” I said and shook my head.

    I stood at the door looking in at Peter and Shay.

    “Lots of dream juice used up,” Peter said while pointing at a medical kit on the floor.

    “What do you mean?” Shay asked.

    “Dad sometimes gave us a drink with some special pills. It helped us sleep when the monsters kept us up all night. He called it dream juice. I’m a ninja spy! I saw him make Nikki one with a whole bunch right after you guys left. She must have needed to sleep real bad because after a few minutes she was out.”

    Shay rooted through the kit and pulled out the darkened bottle and examined the label. She held it up to me. “Some kind of tranquilizers. I guess she didn’t make the choice, he made it for her.”

    “I don’t like medicine; I always use my ninja powers to spit it out when nobody is looking.”

    “Didn’t you used to take medicine, before … all this happened?”

    “I took some, but sometimes I’d spit that out too, it made me feel weird.”

    “Your dad told us that you could stay calm and think better when you took medicine.”

    “I just use my imagination more now. I like to pretend, because there are no monsters in my daydreams. I pretend we live in a mansion with a pool and those monsters outside are the kids in my class. They are all jealous of our pool.”

    “Can I come to your mansion?” Shay asked.

    “You and Jim are already there! You have a son named Piper and we play together,” he said with a huge smile.

    “Peter … Piper?” Shay asked, giving me a half smile. “How did you get this medical kit? I would have thought your dad would have taken it with him.”

    “He did, but I told you I’m a ninja. I wanted to be a ninja doctor so I borrowed it. He said Nikki was sick and he needed to take her to the doctor. He should be back soon,” he said while making a Band-Aid fly through the air like a plane.

    “Honey, about your dad,” Shay started. I flagged her down with my arms and mouthed the word “
no.
”

    “What about Dad?”

    “Oh, just that we will let you know when he gets back,” she said. Shay snapped the medical kit closed and left Peter with the airplane bandage.

    The rest of that day we took inventory of our supplies. The food was low—that bastard had stolen more than half. We didn’t have a lot of time left before we would be completely out. As for ammo, we had actually hit a small jackpot in the truck we had taken. There were numerous boxes that were all nearly full. Shotgun shells, 9 mm rounds, and even some rifle rounds. We counted and in total had raised our ammo from 3 to 112. The medical kit was average, containing some bandages, peroxide, antibiotics, a few pills, and two syringes.

    Shay had taken the supplies and did what she could to treat Harvey’s wound. She cleaned it and reapplied the bandages. Even through her treatment, Harvey never flinched. His lack of pain was unnerving. He looked pale, but that could be from all the blood loss, or it could be … I shuddered at the thought.

    “Jim, you might want to see this,” Desmond said, coming from the pool area.

    I followed Desmond out and he went straight to the gate and pointed at the lock. I saw it and shook my head in disbelief.