Before he could get to his feet, they were on him. Four, five, six…then too many to count, hands plunging in, heads darting forward. His hands could be seen moving under the pile of rotting corpses, flailing about in a futile mix of desperation and agony. He screamed once - a pitiful, wailing, heart-breakingly painful scream. As it ended, his face appeared between the backs of two ghouls that were bent over his now open torso, streams of intestines spilling out from his body. Hands moved forward surprisingly fast to grasp them and pull them this way and that: dogs fighting over scraps at a table. His face was agonized, his eyes pleading. He mouthed the request I knew was coming.
In response, I raised my gun hand, pain still shooting up my arm into my shoulder. I aimed carefully at his head.
And then, remembering the deception and the hate; the death and the inhumanity, I dropped my arm to my side once more.
Even in his pain, his eyes narrowed in anger one last time, and he was gone, covered in writhing gray bodies, blood seeping between their twitching feet.
I stood on the ledge, and I looked down at the grounds. Four feet below me, hands clambered for my flesh, deadened rotting arms reaching up from the ground, from a nightmare of hellish proportions. Hundreds of creatures packed the grassy yard, an undulating carpet of decayed flesh and grinding jaws unrelieved by anything living. I looked back to the roof. The mass of creatures from the stairwell had moved past the remains of Fred’s body, leaving a mass of wet, red flesh open to the light of day as they approached me slowly. What used to be Fred was a carpet of gore. Their dead, dirty feet moved past his corpse, tracking blood across the stones.
Their eyes, as always, were red and hungry. Their mouths, as always, moved in anticipation of their next feeding. Their legs, as always, shuffled forward slowly but surely, death an inevitable companion to their inexorable approach.
Again, my last film came to mind. This time, the fight scene choreography would avail me little. But in the end, I thought, why fight your own identity? Why battle against who you are-who you were, perhaps, meant to be? In the public mind’s eye-at least, what was left of the public-I was never to be, could never be, exonerated of this crime. The television and radio, the internet and the email; everything that had so efficiently broadcast my guilt, were no more.
From above me, the sound of helicopter rotor blades and from the corner of my eye, a flash of color descended and was gone again. I thought I heard voices, but I was beyond that, beyond their help. I looked down at my hand and I laughed. Go figure, I thought, remembering Maria’s final gift to me before her death; recognizing the humor of my condition despite all odds. A last minute reprieve at the knowing hands of a dead wife, and you die in the end regardless.
I raised my gun hand for the last time, speaking with an unsuppressed glee the line that had made me who I was today and firing steadily as the gun spat my defiance to the last.
“Eat me, mother-fuckers!” I shouted each time the gun spoke, noting with a detached amusement the incredible irony of the situation, but beyond caring. The gun fired too many times to count; heads exploded before me, gray and red mist coloring the clear air. But still they came. There were always more.
As the last shot left the chamber, I looked bemusedly at the gun as if it were a funny thing. Suddenly, the gates to heaven opened, and a rope ladder-the self-same rope ladder that had plucked us from the maws of hell on the rooftop in Long Island-fell to my feet. The voice of God spoke to me.
God sounded like Kate.
“Come on. They’re almost here! Move!”
My vision blurred and my head swam but I somehow managed to wrap the rope of the last rung around my good arm. A gentle tug from the heavens and an anxious voice yelling to be heard over the rotor blades came close to snapping me out of my reverie as I was pulled toward the edge.
The hungry bastards had reached my perch, and were grasping for me in earnest. Dead paws with rotting skin falling from their bones clutched at my clothing, my face, my hair. I realized I hadn’t left a bullet in my gun for myself. I must not have intended to die today.
And I fell off the ledge, flailing into space and away from my adoring fans.
I had lost a lot of blood, and don’t know how I managed to reach the cabin. But I did. Kate was there, her face flashing in front of mine, tending to my shoulder, which was numb. I was in and out of consciousness, sounds and sights meant little to me. Light and darkness played across my mind. Sounds that I barely recognized. Reassuring tones from Kate for a short time, confused and excited words from Hartliss. In bits and pieces I could piece together what happened next.
A trail of smoke and a flash of light. A shuddering sound from the main rotor compartment and a sickening lurch. A shout of confusion and a cry of dismay. Kate’s face above my own, worry streaking her beautiful visage. Hartliss’s anxious words, his weakened tone, his confused shouting.
In the haze of pain and confusion, the voice spoke once more.
Ironic, isn’t it, that she would go to all that trouble of inoculating you, and this is how you die?
But this time, it was detached and resigned. It wasn’t angry or bitter, or even mocking. It was simply stating a fact drawn from our shared memories of where it all began. It was in this moment that I realized that this voice, this detached and haunting presence, wasn’t the malevolent conscience trying to take me over from within that I had imagined. It wasn’t an alter-ego, nor was it an insanity-induced figment of my own schizophrenia. It was the nagging, persistent voice of my own self-doubt.
Suddenly, a dizzying and rapid loss of height, and Kate was gone, disappearing into the lack of gravity and direction. I hit the bulkhead, and my world was again pain and darkness. I gave in to the blanket of peaceful black and ignored the world.
Chapter 32
I opened my eyes. Or my eyes opened of their own accord. One or the other.
I was staring at white; nothing but unrelieved white. It was the white of a blank computer screen or of a newly painted picket fence. Turning my head to the side slowly, I realized there was no pain. Given what I had been through, this seemed unusual.
My head felt fuzzy and disoriented, like it was packed in cotton. My tongue was covered in fur, and my hands and feet moved substantially slower than I asked them to. And that’s why it took me so long to realize where I was.
Rather grungy white walls, complete with a low, stained white ceiling surrounded my narrow bed. Off-white sheets covered a lumpy mattress and a thin pillow, and a door with a small inset window stood to one side of the tiny room. The smell of mildew permeated the small space.
A nightstand stood next to my bed, a plastic cup full of pills neatly arranged next to a full glass of water. I turned, putting my feet on the floor and standing up, bracing myself against the frame of the bed to keep from collapsing in disorientation.
Something wasn’t right here.
I carefully felt my shoulder and examined my hand, expecting a sharp stab of pain. Nothing; no pain, no bite wound.
I rolled up my sleeve, exposing my bicep. I tore at my pant leg, searching my thigh. My heart started beating faster. The blood that was pounding in my aching and swollen head was a kettledrum in an empty room. No wounds, no blood, no scars.
This couldn’t be. Panic shot through my body and adrenalin chased away the daze. Where were Kate and Hartliss? Where the fuck was I? The room that my mind told me I recognized was familiar, but it was also impossible. I moved to the wall housing the window, set far above my head. I reached for the sill, but it was too high. I needed to know where I was. I needed to know that this wasn’t possible.
Moving to the door, my hand paused above the handle.
Or did I? Did I really want to know the answer to this question? My hand hovered above the handle as my mind paused and the kettledrums quickened their pace. If what I had been through-or what I had imagined-had taught me anything, it’s that knowledge for the sake of knowledge isn’t always the safest thing.
But it didn’t matter. I had to know. I had to see for myself.
I put my hand on the stainless steel knob of the door to the hallway, and turned it slowly, walking once again into a world that I didn’t know.
THE END