The Plague Runner

by Burgy, P. J.

  “You know, you don’t have to do that," he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Pretend to like me.”

  “I’m not.”

  He snorted and made his way to the far wall, turning to push his back against it, and then slid down onto his rear to the floor. Knees bent, he wrapped his thick arms around them. “I’m not an idiot, Kara.”

  “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have gotten us both out of Salvation.”

  “You need me. You said it yourself.”

  She sat up, looking at him. “Yeah, I do. I need you. You need me too, don’t you? We need each other. Motives, right? But, heck, I also like you. You’re, I don’t know, not as bad as you think you are, or whatever pity trip you’re about to lay on me.”

  He snorted again. “Pity?”

  “It won’t work. I care, Rusty-my-man, but it stops there. I have no pity.” She felt his eyes move across her face and she locked onto him. His expression became unreadable and she felt an anxious twinge in her guts as he leaned back into the wall and cleared his throat again.

  His demeanor had changed right then, after she’d spoken, and she thought she saw the glimmer of something predatory in his gaze.

  “I do," he said.

  “Have pity on me then, will yah?” she said. “I’ve gotta be up in a few hours, and unless you want to carry me on your back the rest of the way so I can nap…”

  “She let him in.”

  “Let who in?”

  “I was half dead from a long watch overnight, and while I was in bed, she let him in. A drifter. He asked for help and she let him in. I said it was a bad idea, but she did it anyway, and her parents didn’t think it would hurt things to have another adult male in the house to help with watches, security," he said. “Her brother was only thirteen, and her parents babied him so much. Drove me crazy before the world ended and drove me crazy after things went to Hell. But she let in the drifter and I met him, heard him play guitar for a while after we had dinner, before lights out and quiet time. He could play so well. I was jealous of him. They were all having so much fun, but I couldn't stay with them. I had the night watch again, and the next morning he’d locked himself up in his room. Wouldn't answer.”

  She listened, watching his face. His eyes moved across the wall behind her, absent again, as though in a trance. He swallowed, laughed softly.

  “Didn’t think anything of it until that afternoon when I woke up and he was still in there. I left our room, the one she and I shared, we were together, and I went to his room, knocked, asked him if he were up. No answer. So we break in and he’s sick. He’s got the Black Fever. He’s gagging, unable to move, burning up. His eyes, I saw his eyes.” He reached up to touch his own face. “We knew we had to get him out of there before he contaminated us all, or before he turned, if he turned, into one of those things. We knew it could happen. Saw it a few times. We didn’t want to shoot him; it would have made a mess. More to clean up. More risks. We couldn’t just leave him in there. So, me’n’her dad, we suit up and drag him outside to throw him out back. It sounds horrible, I know. We threw him outside to die alone in the street. No one should have to die that way.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “Better him than us. He was already gone anyway. Breathing, but just barely," he said. “And she’s crying the whole time, and runs to hide in our room. I clean off and I try to calm her down, but she won’t. She’s screaming and crying. Then, I finally get her to open the door and she shows me her eyes.”

  “Oh no.”

  “She’d laid down with him while I was on watch. She didn’t really tell me why. I was going to head the same way she was, the way he had,” he went on. “I’d been handed a death sentence and I tried to get them to shoot me, shoot her, make it fast, but they wouldn’t. They strapped her down, strapped me down too, and I remember less and less of what happened next. I remember the burning in my brain, feeling like I was drowning, starving, on fire, dying. I remember seeing her die. I remember her parents’ faces, her brother. I don’t remember their names. I don’t.”

  He looked up at her and their eyes met.

  “I woke up in the kitchen, hungry, sick, but different somehow. My body felt lighter. I felt like I was falling, on edge, like when you wake up from a bad dream but you can’t remember what it was. Just that you had this nightmare and you’re awake now, and your heart is pounding and you can’t catch your breath. It didn’t stop. It never stopped.” He closed his eyes, lowered his head, ran his fingers through his hair. “I wanted. I wanted to eat. I wanted air. I wanted to run. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to scream. I wanted everything, all at once, and I just, I just fell over on the kitchen floor and screamed, I think. I didn’t know what sound came out of me. I got up, and walked, walked like I was walking for the first time, but better. We’d boarded up the windows in the kitchen, but not the living room. I got there and I had to stop. The world was loud and bright, I could smell blood, I could taste it, and everything hurt, so I hid. I hid until it was dark. Maybe I slept? I don’t know. Night came. I thought maybe it wasn’t night since I could see better, but it was. I went upstairs and found their bodies. I saw her, dead, strapped to a bed, rotten. I could smell it. Smell her. I didn’t want her. Nothing did. No flies on her. But there were flies. In the next room. I smelled something I wanted, in the next room. I found them. Her parents. The Wailers had gotten to them. Torn them apart. Ate them. They didn’t leave much. In the next room, her brother’s room, the door was, was busted in, and he was there, dead, eaten. But, I didn’t see any Wailers. The doors were all closed downstairs. I was the only one left alive in the house. And I felt so hungry, and the smell of their bodies…”

  He made a gagging sound, but nothing came out of him. He was struggling, trying to catch his breath. She saw him roll his shoulders, shaking off the tremor in his throat.

  “I wanted to eat. I wanted to eat them. I threw up and it, it was like the sick ones. I had the Black Fever, but I wasn’t drowning or weak, or lightheaded. I was on fire, but I wasn’t dying. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, and-”

  He was looking at his hands, curling his fingers into fists. He looked up at her again, his dark eyes piercing the shadows. She held his gaze, feeling her throat go dry.

  “I screamed. I screamed because I was one of those things.” His lips moved wordlessly for a few seconds. “I don’t know how long I stayed in the house. Those first few weeks, months, I don’t remember a whole lot about them. My head’s all screwed up. I don’t know who was who, or what I was doing. I hid during the day, came out at night. I hunted the animals while there were still a lot of them, back in the first few years after the state of emergency was called.”

  “Wait. Russ. How old are you?”

  “That was thirty years ago, I think,” he replied and then shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess sixty? Sixty-five?”

  “No...” She stared at his face in the moonlight.

  “The plague slows aging. Faster healing. Less deterioration, after the damage is done. It reverses, I guess. Makes them stronger, faster. But it can’t fix what it did to the brain,” he told her. “No, whatever burns away never comes back, and what’s left is ruined.”

  “Russ.”

  He sniffed, forcing a strange smile.

  “Do I detect the sweet, sentimental sound of pity in your voice, Kara?”

  “No. Just.” She swallowed, studying him. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I was five when they got into our fort town,” she said. “That was a long time ago, before the fort walls were so high and fortified. We didn’t have the guns either. I don’t remember much, but I do remember my mother pushing me under the sink and shutting the door, telling me to stay put and not make a noise, not move until help came. That no matter what I heard, to stay there. I heard them get into our house. I heard them wailing and screaming and shrieking. That’s all I could hear for the longest time,
until I heard them… eating. Help didn’t come for three days, and when it did, I was nearly dead from dehydration. I was rescued by a man named Renshen Bui. I don’t remember a lot, but I remember seeing my mother’s body. She was in the kitchen with her skull smashed in, and she’d been next to my dad. He’d been dead for days and she’d been eating him.”

  “How did she get Infected?”

  “I don’t know. But I was the only survivor.” She shrugged. “It was a smaller fort, so maybe around a hundred people died, but it wasn’t even a contest. They were fish in a bucket. Those things got in and no one had anywhere to run. There was nowhere to hide.”

  He shook his head. “Someone hid. She lived.”

  “A kid. A single, tiny kid. Someone small enough to be hidden away. If my mother hadn’t thrown me under that sink, do you think I would have known better? Those things would’ve killed me. I only stayed under there because I was scared of those things. But I was scared of being in the dark too. I was so scared. I wanted to run,” she said.

  “But you didn’t run. And now you do.”

  A few moments passed before she replied. “Yeah.”

  “So you’re still scared. Are you running from them, or from the dark place under the sink?” he asked her, eyes traveling across her face.

  “I’m not that little girl anymore. I’m not scared.”

  “Aren’t you?” He tilted his head.

  “No, I’m not scared of anything,”

  “You were scared when I found you hiding from the Infected that first time I met you. You were scared when they found you the second time. Scared when we were running together, through burning Salvation, side by side. Scared when I carried you up the chain earlier," he said. “You were scared when you found me in the dark.”

  “I wasn’t scared. I was… surprised. Concerned. Worried.” She shook her head, eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t scared at all.”

  “You’re scared right now.”

  “I’m not. You’re misreading me.”

  “I can smell it.”

  “Okay, that’s weird. And, it’s not fear you’re smelling.” She exhaled, rolling her eyes, unable to stand his intense stare. “Discomfort? Ah, maybe it’s yourself? I don’t know. It’s not fear and it’s not me.”

  He chuckled and she frowned.

  “I’m sorry.” He clicked his tongue. “I didn’t mean to upset you. My social skills are severely lacking. Don’t be angry with me. Please.”

  “Just don’t point out what smells are coming off of me and we’re good, Rusty,” she muttered, turning to look at him again. He was smiling and she fought off the urge to smile back at him. Instead, she maintained her stoic expression, eyes narrowed. “How can you apologize and smile at the same time? Look at you. You aren’t sorry.”

  Russell coughed, trying to hide his smile.

  “I’m sorry. I’m happy. I can’t help it.”

  “Why are you so damn happy all of a sudden?” She sighed and moved to lie down on her side facing him. She watched as he copied her. The shadows hid his face briefly until he moved, shimmied his body, twisted about like a worm into the moonlight. “Talk about mood swings.”

  “I don’t know. But I am. And I like it," he said.

  “Well, I’m going to try to sleep again.” She pulled her vest toward herself, planning on using it as a pillow again. “I don’t know if you want to get a few winks in or not.”

  “I could try.”

  She closed her eyes.

  After a few seconds, she opened her eyes again. As she expected, he was looking at her, curled up on his side. She furrowed her brow as he made a sound in the back of his throat at her. “Do you dream, Russell?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What about?”

  “Usually? Food. Eating.”

  “Really.”

  “Or about a good book I read. Or a movie I remember.”

  She regarded him with tired eyes. “No bad dreams?”

  “Sometimes...”

  “Do you dream about your past life?” she asked.

  His tone changed. “I suppose those are the bad dreams...”

  “Can you remember any?”

  “None that I want to,” he said.

  “That's okay. I understand.”

  “You do?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

  She yawned. “Absolutely. It may be the sleep deprivation talking, but I feel like... I feel like I get you, Russ. I get you.”

  “You get me.”

  “Yeah, totally. I like you.”

  Again, he echoed her. “You like me.”

  “That's why I'm sure you won't eat me.”

  He pushed himself up, his entire demeanor shifting from content to a vague sterility, a sudden distance growing between them as he stuttered at her. “I... I have to go.”

  “Fuck. I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. Stay.”

  “No. No, I’ll see you in the morning.” He disappeared out into the hall.

  She sighed, laying her head back down on the floor, facing away from the open door and looking to the place Russell had just been. She fell asleep again, if only for a few more hours.

  She found him waiting by the ledge, beside the chain, as she came out from the corridor into the sunlight. It was going to be a warm, beautiful day and the sky was already blue. Kara saw her reflection in the dark visor of his helmet.

  He carried her back down the chain, and he started off into the city with her behind him. For the first few hours, neither spoke.

  Then, out of nowhere, while he paused in front of a fallen, hollowed out tree, he spoke, startling her from a daydream. “Why did you flirt with me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were flirting with me last night," he said.

  “Is that what you think flirting is?” She came up alongside him, wishing that she could see his face under that dark visor. She would settle for his eyes, which she caught a glimpse of when she stepped up to him. “Really?”

  “It would never work between us,” he stated.

  “Oh my god.” She spun on her heel, arms out, and then continued onward. “Please tell me this is the right way, because I'm going to just keep walking.”

  “It is.” He caught up with her in a matter of seconds.

  “I think you're a good man, Russ. I like talking to you,” she said, hands on her sides. “I'm glad that I'm not alone out here. I'll tone it down.”

  “So what's their name?” he asked her.

  They were walking through an intersection and he leapt on top of a car, surveying the land in both directions before jumping down to the ground again.

  “Who?”

  “I see you check your pocket to make sure it's still there. Seen you take it out and look at it a few times too. That pin. It's a medal. Someone gave it to you. I assume they're one of the dead people you're looking for out here," he said.

  “This angel pin was a gift from my father. And the people I'm looking for aren't dead.” She prepared to swerve around the upcoming cars in the road up ahead, and she turned her gaze upward as a flock of birds reacted to their movement, scattering up into the sky.

  “But there is a special someone, isn't there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was their name?”

  “His name is Ash,” she answered.

  The last straggler of the flock, still flapping its wings, was not fast enough. She saw him sprint over, going from car top to car top, jump and grab the bird by its long, slender legs, and pull it down. He broke its neck and allowed it to dangle from his gloved hands as he ran back over to her. “Was he your boyfriend?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you flirted with me when you have a boyfriend.”

  She grunted, stopping dead in her tracks. “Really?”

  “He must be something special to want to march out this far for him, risk your life and all. Risk other peoples' lives,” he said, looming over her and gripping his dead bird like a prize he'd won and
was showing off. ”Gotta be one heck of a man, that's all I'm saying.”

  “Yeah. He means a lot to me.”

  He pointed the bird toward her, shaking it in such a way that it appeared to be nodding at her. “He sounds nice.”

  “Thanks.” She shook her head, stalked passed him, and then continued onward without him.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked her, catching up and then taking the lead once more.

  “I'm starving to death.”

  “Then let's eat this.”

  She heard him behind her, tearing it apart. She turned around. “We'll need to find shelter. I'll have to build a fire.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't eat raw meat, Russ.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  Kara watched the skies as part of the bird cooked over the fire she'd made. The dried leaves and twigs had gone up quickly, but the larger pieces of wood were still damp from the rain the night before. It was a slow burn and had taken some time to grow in size. There wasn't much meat on the bird either, not that it bothered Russell. He'd given her the breast meat, allowing her to clean and gut the animal herself for sanitary reasons.

  She'd grimaced when he'd picked the guts up from the ground and taken them into the shadows to slurp them up. He was in the shadows still, chewing on the legs like they were jerky. She ate the meat and tried to avoid watching him.

  “How'd you get the keys from Simon?” he asked then.

  “I stole them.”

  “From his room?”

  She did not reply.

  “I thought so.”

  “I did what I had to do,” she stated and then took another bite of meat.

  “I understand," he said.

  She chewed, and then swallowed. “Yeah.”

  After a few more hours, Kara found water in the form of a shallow ravine in the road. She used some fabric and a jar she'd found to filter it, and then drank some, looking up at the crumbling buildings. The sky was still bright, and there were many hours left in the day. Behind her, Russell made a gagging sound and began cursing. He had to take a break to clean out his helmet, which was fine by her as she'd needed one herself.