Safari - 02 (27 page)

24

Consciousness came back to him when, really, Gus was happier in the dark. Wincing and feeling a tightness about his face, he tried to push himself up. Agony lanced up both of his arms, causing his eyes to open wide. Moaning, he rolled over and felt something hard at his back. Both of his arms refused to do anything other than shriek and be slabs of meat. He inspected himself through the melted wreck of his visor. The strap of his bat sheath was still there, and he recognized the weight on his back. He lay on the ground, in a shrinking snow drift. The Nomex was scorched to raw fibers. He did an agonized stomach curl and got to a sitting position. Semi-melted slabs of rubber covered his feet. The Bowie knife remained in one boot, but he didn’t see the Ruger. Above him, pungent evergreen boughs, snapped in places from where they broke his fall, obscured the sun. Smoke filled the sky, but he could see the cliff’s edge where he had fallen. He even saw the deck of his house.

He was below the cliff, just back from the base. Somewhere to the right would be a charred pile of bodies. He still couldn’t move his arms.

Broken,
he realized.
Both fuckin’ arms
.

He struggled to his feet, thankful his legs still worked, but his poor feet tortured him with the squish and pain of broken blisters.

And perhaps worst of all, he badly wanted a drink. Grimacing and grunting in agony, he couldn’t see the house. Not sure if he
wanted
to see the house or if he won the battle, but there were no rats around him, and it was daylight. That was a good sign.

The first step he took on his blistered feet brought a yelp from him. The next one elicited a stifled cry of pain. He squeezed into the forest, the boughs whipping him, lashing his broken arms, and several times he almost blacked out from the pain. The agony triggered dry heaves that drove him to his knees. He wept, mashing his forehead on the cold, wet forest floor. Then, he struggled back to his feet. Firmed up. Pushed on. Pain. The pain was everywhere. He collapsed several times, but got back up and pressed on, whimpering and wishing for death.

He walked until it was night, then plopped down against a tree and tried to sleep. The pain was too great, however, and fended away any real rest. The air was full of smoke, cloying and cough-inducing. The temperature dropped, and he felt every descending degree with violent shivers that rattled his arms and tortured him further. He thought of the captain and wept for his friend who had no doubt been consumed in the blaze. He thought of his shotguns, destroyed as well. But the thing that truly got him weeping in pain and grief and self-pity, the thing that almost pushed him to the absolute fringe of sanity…

Was the thought of his house.

The place he had found so long ago, that had sheltered and protected him against foes, both human and zombie alike, had undoubtedly been razed to the ground. All of the food, the books, the movies, the comfort of hot and cold running water, the furniture, the power, and of course, the stores of precious booze. All gone.

It was a long time until morning, and Gus sat in the near-freezing wilderness and wished for the end.

*

At dawn, he lurched to his feet and staggered through the brush. His feet continued punishing him, and he felt as if he were walking on trapped bubbles of water that sizzled and oozed underneath his flesh when he placed weight on them. Hunger wracked him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. The question begged him why that was, and he answered it with a dry “because I was tryin’ to kill myself at the time. Remember?”

His stomach didn’t care about that.

And Gus wanted a drink. Just a sip. That would glue everything back together. Just one little
sip
.

In places where there was still snow, he dropped to his knees and awkwardly ate mouthfuls of what looked clean. From time to time he looked back, but the trees stopped him from seeing any great distance. He plodded on; his face stung and itched. Twice, he needed to urinate, and both times, he had to go in his pants, moaning when he let go. The feel and burn of urine soaking his genitals tortured him further.

Night came again, and he sat down against a tree, wishing for death. Every movement hurt. His stomach felt as if it were gnawing at his ribs. Snow helped relieve his thirst to some degree, but not entirely. In moments where his body allowed him a moment to think, he thought of how far he’d come, and how easy he had it at times. Nothing compared to this.

Somewhere in the night, amid the freezing cold, something unhinged in his mind. Gus dozed, waking occasionally when he moved in his sleep and set off fire alarms of agony in his broken arms.

In the morning, it took him a long time to get to his feet. He trudged through the forest, feeling like a zombie himself. Perhaps the virus had finally gotten to him and he was crossing over. Maybe one of the rats had bitten him before he got away. He sure as hell
felt
like eating someone.
Anyone
.

Then, he saw the rooftops. Most of Gus’s consciousness had retreated deep inside his head to escape his punished state, but on some level, he recognized what the structures were. Gus limped into the backyard of a white house with a dark, satin green roof. Hard snow covered half of the yellow grass like a tablecloth pulled back. He plodded around the patch because if he stepped in any more snow and fell, he knew he would not get up again. He walked around to the front of the house, where a long driveway led to the street.

He believed he had walked a very long way, perhaps all of ten kilometers, through forest right up into the edge of Annapolis.

What were a few more feet?

With a short yelp, he pushed away from the house, heading to the wet pavement just at the end of the driveway. The driveway was long, with snow pulling back on either side of it and revealing more yellow grass. A line of young trees lay to the left, while the front lawn was an inverted image of the backyard. He focused on placing one throbbing, squishy foot ahead of the other. He didn’t care anymore. He was too tired to care. He just wanted…

Falling.

Hitting pavement and bouncing all too hard.

Gus lay on his back, blinking slowly, taking in the gray sky. He heard noise to his right and turned his head. A roadblock was set up in the middle of the street. Police in riot gear and black body armor stood with their backs to him, and he could hear them shouting. From beyond the wooden beams of the barricade, a wave of bodies approached. The police commenced firing, unleashing hell and raining spent red cartridges on the pavement. They fired round after round, the reports of their guns sounding like dreamy firecrackers submerged in a fishbowl. The deadheads reached the line and smashed through it. The zombies swarmed the police, forcing them to the ground and devouring them, only visible for seconds before other gimps pushed by.

Tammy appeared—Tammy with her black eyes and pallid face, wearing only jeans and a T-shirt. She saw him, and her arms came up. Gus panted in exhausted fear. She came right at him, through the throngs of other dead things fighting with the cops. Heads exploded, but not Tammy’s. She bent over him, her long dark hair fluttering around his head. Her mouth, covered in black-headed skin tags, opened, and maggots spilled out, falling from teeth eroded into moist shards. Closer she came, until their noses were almost touching, and she hissed and he screamed back….

“Well,
Jesus
,” a man’s voice declared.

Gus finally, mercifully, passed out.

25

They took care of him.

They entered the room when he was awake and didn’t ask any questions. The big man looked strangely familiar, and the woman seemed to be the guy’s wife. Two children, probably their kids, peeked in at him from the doorway. Gus didn’t talk; he wasn’t in the right frame of health to talk.

But he was getting better.

His dreams were sometimes turned over by short movies of reality. The couple kept him drugged. That much was obvious, even to him. An IV was hooked into his arm. They had straightened his arms a while ago, an experience that had yanked him beneath consciousness once more. When he had awakened, his arms were straight and white. No, the casts were white. At the end of the bed, poking up from red and white blankets that didn’t itch and looked and felt wonderful, were his bare feet. They looked like pink slabs of meat that had been dropped from a very high place.

The people spoke to him, but their words came too fast for him to understand, and their voices were loud enough to make his head pound—like fog horns, only sped up. More drugs, marooning him somewhere on a median of dark awareness and vibrant oblivion. Colors exploded, then went black. Exploded again. Then black. No pain at all.

The captain even appeared at one point, all puffed up in his bright livery, grinning as if he’d been laid multiple times in the last forty-eight hours.

“You made it,” Gus rasped, feeling so very glad to see the old sailor, and a little ashamed for having left him on the sofa back in the house.

“I did,” the captain replied, beaming at him. “You’re doing well, I see.”

“Better. Look. I’m sorry about leaving you back at the––”

The captain
tsked
and tweaked one end of his moustache. “Don’t mind that. It all worked out, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“You did the right thing.” The captain bent forward ever so slightly. “I saw
everything
. And as God above as my witness… you kicked ass back at the ranch. Blew the ranch to hell in fact, but pay no mind to that. None at all. You’re in a better place now.”

“I am?” Gus whispered.

“You surely are,” the captain assured him and inspected the room, nodding. The old sailor became quiet for a moment, content to just wear his smile and watch Gus recover. “Don’t worry about a thing, my chap. I’ve taken care of everything.”

“You have?” Weaker now, but fighting to stay.

“I have,” the foppish officer said confidently. “The very least I could do… for a friend.”

Gus tried to say something, but he flew backward, and the captain disappeared. He didn’t feel troubled by the old sailor’s departure. In fact, he felt pretty good.

The more time he spent there, in that bed, in that place, the more comfortable he felt.

And his sleep was the best of the last two years.

*

“You awake?”

“…Mmmuuh?”

“I asked if you were awake.”

Drawn out sigh. “Yeah.”

“How do you feel?”

“Stoned.”

A deep chuckle. Pure and nice to hear. “That’s good. Good to hear. We’re going to keep you that way for a while, okay? Just so you know.”

“In… bad shape… am I?”

Silence. “Just between you and me?”

“Yeah.”

“You were fucked up.”

Gus chuckled.

“But you’re in good hands now. Maggie’s a general practitioner and an ER vet. She knows how to patch people together.”

“I… needed… patchin’?”

“Buddy, you needed superglue and the hand of God..

That didn’t sound so good.

“You remember anything?”

Gus shook his head. “Thirsty.”

“Oh, just a sec. Here.”

Water. As it hit his lips, he felt it restore life into him. The lip of the glass disappeared once the water stopped flowing. “Thank… you.”

“You’re welcome. Found you on the road on the other side of Wolfville. Shit. Thought you were dead. Damn lucky if you ask me. Maggie peeled all that shit off you, set your arms, rehydrated you, treated your burns and your feet. Hell, you looked like a piece of steak flipped off someone’s barbeque and rolled around in shit. I mean,
shit
, I’ve seen corpses that looked more alive than you.”

“Nice.” Weariness tugged at him.

A pause. “No offense. You’re with us now. When you’re ready, in better shape, we’ll talk again. See about things.”

“Talk,” Gus exhaled.

And slept.

*

The sun had just started slipping into evening. Gus sat on an old kitchen chair and looked north, toward mountains that appeared hunched over at the top, like old men huddling. The valley stretched far and away from his chair in the clearing, and clumps of green trees speckled the edges of yellow fields. He absently clicked the casts on his forearms, a habit he’d gotten into to take away the sometimes maddening urge to scratch at the healing skin inside them. The casts would be coming off soon, according to Maggie. She’d done as good a job with him as he could ever have expected or hoped for, with the supplies the group had, and for that, Gus owed them a lot. There wasn’t anything she could do about the burns to his face and hands, but Gus could live with that. The scars gave him character.

He shook his head at a mosquito buzzing near his ear. The sky was starting to turn pink. He heard a car engine and turned his head to see Adam’s beat-up, red, four-door sedan. Seeing him returning from his road trip––the same silver-haired Adam Gus had taken several shots at in Annapolis––made him feel relieved. Whenever any of them left the farm area, Gus felt he should go as well, but he was always held back by his healing wounds. That would change soon, and he’d go along on those trips when asked. Adam was a good man with a sense of humor. Not all of the twenty-two people living on the farm shared that trait. They knew Gus was the one responsible for the destruction of Annapolis. They also knew why, and while they allowed him to stay while he healed, the jury was still out on whether or not they would let him stay once he was on his feet again. Adam and Maggie knew there was strength in numbers and were sold on the idea. Gus figured that was a start, even though he was divided on the matter himself. The things he’d done in Annapolis had left an invisible brand on his conscience, and he wasn’t certain he deserved any of the goodwill they had shown him. Ever since Maggie had taken him off the drugs and he got his senses back, he wondered if he ever would.

They’d done so much for him in the last few months.