Tainted Souls

by T J Christian

  Zak nods. "If I can, sure."

  She looks down at Chris who is still out cold on the mattress in the living room. Standing, she turns to Zak. "What do you need me to do?"

  "I need you to help me move a body."

  He leads her to the bedroom at the end of the hall. Opening the door, the body on the floor and the crib on the far side under the window are on full display. He waits for the inevitable questions.

  Instead, Audrey takes a position between the body's legs and asks, "Where we taking him?"

  Zak smiles. He's only known Audrey for a few minutes, but already, he likes her.

  Grabbing the body's arms, he says, "Out the back and through the neighbor’s yard. There's an old dumpster two houses down on that street."

  "Okay," she says, picking up the legs.

  "Let me know when you need a break."

  * * *

  Zak needed a break before Audrey. He chalked it off to him having to walk backwards the entire way, but still, her resilience impresses him. Together, they mostly dragged him through the house and out the back. When they reached the dumpster, they were both too weak to lift the body high enough to put inside. Instead, they took it into the closest house that Zak knew was empty.

  When they returned, Zak went straight to Chris's side to see if he was awake. He wasn't conscious and moaned in his sleep. Zak took that as a good sign. Any sign of life was a good thing. The problem was, if he died, they'd have to worry about him turning and rising as a Tainted.

  "We're going to have to sleep in shifts," Zak said over his shoulder to Audrey. When she didn't answer, he turned to look. She wasn't there.

  "Audrey?" he calls, standing and moving toward the hallway. He knows where to find her.

  "I'm in here," she said, answering from the back bedroom.

  He enters and stands quietly behind her, expecting at any moment, a barrage of questions.

  The questions never come. Instead, she states, "I've seen this before."

  Confused, he steps up beside her, looks down into the crib where the Tainted baby reaches up for them.

  "What?" he asks.

  Her head jerks towards him as if she hadn't heard him approach. He smiles inwardly. He bases his life on his ability to sneak around as quietly as possible. He hadn't even been trying just now.

  She eyes him cautiously then turns back to the crib. Reaching into the crib, she touches several of the vines attached to the baby. "These...I've seen something like this before...but a lot more extensive."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We have a grove near where I live..." She stops, swallows, and starts again, correcting herself. "Where I lived, in the grove, there are these grassy mounds...about fifteen of them. Our teachers took us to the edge of the grove for one of our lessons on the dead and how they interact with nature. Anyway, she told us that those mounds were the dead...that they'd wondered into the grove and with no external stimuli to keep them going, they just stopped. After a time, our teacher said they entered a state of hibernation and fell to the ground. More time passed and nature took them back. That's how they described it: nature taking them back."

  He didn’t understand half of what she was saying but he caught the drift. "What were they trying to teach you?" If he was understanding, what she described was familiar to Zak—he hadn’t personally seen anything like it, but he'd heard about it.

  "It was a warning…A lesson to always be on the lookout. Even though they appear dead, they’re only asleep. If you get too close or make enough noise, they'll wake and attack. Since they’re camouflaged by nature, they can get to you before you even know what's happening."

  "Where I once lived, they talked about a place like this to the north. I never saw it, but it sounds exactly like what you just described. Only..."

  He trails off, thinking.

  "What?" she presses.

  "That place is much larger. They told me it had hundreds of Tainted."

  "Tainted?"

  Zak nods toward the other end of the house. "That's what Chris calls them...well, actually, his dad named them."

  "So, who are you? Why are you giving those men supplies? And who is that in there?” She cocks a thumb toward the other end of the house. “Is that Chris?"

  "Come on," he says, walking away from the room. "I've got a lot to tell you."

  * * *

  "So, you ready to run away?"

  They sat on the floor in the living room. Chris lay between them and remained unconscious through the duration of Zak's narration about his life and what he knew about Chris and Karen.

  Audrey remains silent, looking down at the unconscious stranger with a growing intensity. Zak watches her with just as much curiosity. She's different, he'll give her that. There's intelligence behind her eyes that expands beyond anything he's ever seen in someone so young—he recognized it in the way she speaks too. In the short while she's been here, she's never once got upset or hysterical about the situations surrounding her. She studies each question before answering and taking in to account the way she treated Chris's wound; he believes she's been around medicine before. She definitely knows what she's doing with a bandage.

  "Why would I run away?" She finally asks. "I need your help, remember?"

  Yes, he remembers, now that she's mentioned it again.

  "What am I helping with?"

  Again, that drawn-out pause as she contemplates the question. Maybe it's not necessarily the question she's thinking about, maybe it's how she wants to answer that she's thinking about. Either way, he'll probably never know. He just hopes that, if they are ever in a situation that needs quick thinking and quicker action, that she doesn't take this much time. If that happens, they might both end up dead.

  "You mentioned his girl, Karen?"

  "Yes..." he says, hoping to prompt her along a little quicker.

  "Will he be going after her?"

  "Undoubtedly. Why?"

  "Will you be helping him?"

  Now it's his turn to think. Will he be helping Chris? Probably. But what if Chris doesn't want his help?

  He keeps his answer neutral. "If he wants me to, I guess I will."

  "What if I ask you?"

  "Ask me what? To go after Karen?"

  Audrey shakes her head. "No...I need you to help me rescue my mom."

  "Your mom?" he asks.

  She nods. "She was the older lady. They decided not to kill her like they did with all the other older women of my group."

  "Why? What's so special about your mom?"

  "She's a doctor."

  * * *

  "Where's Karen?"

  Zak's head pops up, stirring awake and trying to focus through the room's gloom. The candle he'd lit earlier still shines, but its light is still glim—as if the very night were sucking the light through the walls.

  It's the third night after Chris took the blow to the head and Zak was supposed to be on watch. Audrey is asleep in the other room. He debates going and waking her, but he's not sure how long Chris will remain conscious.

  Zak doesn't beat around the bush by using misdirection when answering Chris. Chris needs to rise from this funk and if thoughts of rescuing Karen can help with that, then so be it.

  "They took her," Zak reveals.

  Chris tries to rise from the mattress but almost immediately falls back down, hand to his forehead. His eyes roll back and Zak’s afraid he might slip back into unconsciousness.

  Chris fights against it, remaining conscious, but groggy. His eyes clear and he focuses on Zak again. "We've got to go after her," he says, voice weak.

  "Yes...and we will," Zak assures him. I've already started gathering supplies we'll need."

  "Then we've got to go."

  Zak puts a hand on Chris's chest. "We're not going anywhere until you can stand up without stumbling or feinting."

  "But," Chris says, trying to argue—not with Zak, but with himself, realizing he's in no shape to travel. "They'll kill her."

  Zak shakes
his head. "They're not going to kill her, Chris."

  "But, they'll do...they'll...," he can't complete the sentence.

  "You can't worry about that, you have to rest," Zak says, gently poking Chris's chest. "There's absolutely nothing you can do about it right now."

  He expels as breath. "How long have I been out?"

  "This is the third night. You've been in and out of consciousness, but this is the first time you've spent more than a minute awake." He smiles, "And the first time you've said anything coherent."

  Chris reaches for his head, rubs his fingers around his temples. "Damn, my head hurts."

  Zak nods, "It should...you took a huge blow. Someone hit you so hard they broke your skull...I could feel tiny pieces of bone moving under your skin."

  "Damn. Well, I'm glad I was out of it right after. This headache is like something I've never had before." Chris remembers something else. Glancing around the room, he asks, "Did I see a girl?"

  Zak nods. "Audrey...she's sleeping now. We've been taking turns watching you."

  "Taking turns..." Chris asks, then stops himself as the answer comes to him.

  "Yeah...always at the ready," Zak says, holding up his boot knife—the razor-edged blade glimmers with candlelight.

  "Who is she? I saw that Highwaymen cut her loose and hand her over to you."

  Zak doesn't answer right away. How much should he tell him right now? Chris's mind is already going dark places with his concern over Karen—telling him about Elgin's expected plans concerning Audrey would just confirm everything Chris is thinking about Karen. He decides there's nothing he can do about that. It's a cruel world and there are cruel people here. He'd heard stories about the old days, before the outbreak, when law and order kept the peace and caused the lawless to remain in the shadows. Law and order are gone now, a thing of the past, and unless one group can stand up to another and restore peace, then the evil in the world is guaranteed to increase.

  The Highwaymen are prime examples.

  It was different when Zak was a child. The elders were a peaceful group back then, but at some point, those with alternate agendas began to infiltrate—they turned the Highwaymen, perverted them. Zak thinks of the word Chris's dad used to describe the risen dead—Tainted. It wasn't quite the same, but the word applied to what they are—Tainted souls.

  Zak takes a deep breath and begins telling Chris about Elgin and the plans for the women they captured. He also told him that Elgin's plans for Audrey were the same—but it was up to Zak to do the deed. Finally, he tells him about Audrey's mother—the doctor. He concludes with, "She's been helping her mother and has picked up a lot of knowledge. It's because of Audrey you're still alive."

  Silence fills the air, magnified by the gloomy room and making it appear much darker than it really was.

  "Karen mentioned a baby..."

  Even though he expected this to come up eventually, it still sent a shiver through his spine. He never thought he'd need to explain himself about this but should have expected it as well—when you allow people to get close, they will eventually discover your secrets.

  "I promised Audrey I'd explain it—but I’ll only do it once. When you feel better and can walk without falling over, I'll take you to it and explain myself."

  "Fair enough," Chris says. "Would you answer just one question? It'll ease my mind."

  Zak nods, but says, "If I can."

  "Were your intentions with the baby evil?"

  Zak ponders the question. From a certain point of view, his actions could have indeed been deemed evil. He admits, "I had no evil intentions with it...but they weren't exactly good either."

  "What then?"

  "I'm really not sure?"

  "Curiosity," says a tiny voice standing behind them. Audrey yawns and stretches, hands reaching for the ceiling, her slender arms white as a ghost.

  Zak hadn't heard her approach—which was a bad thing. Too many times recently he's let someone get the better of him. Being around people is compromising everything he'd taught himself to survive on his own.

  "What?" Zak asks.

  She lowers her arm and steps into the room. Kneeling beside Chris, she puts the back of her palm to his head. "No fever...that's good."

  Zak tries again. "What did you say a minute ago?"

  She turns to him, her eyes far away and still dreamy—as if she's still half-asleep. "Oh, the answer to his question is curiosity. He was curious about the dead—I'm the same way. In fact, if I'd been his shoes," She pushes against Chris's head, making him turn so she can examine the bandaging. "More than likely, I would have done the same thing."

  Both Chris and Zak are speechless.

  Zak watches as Audrey changes the bandage, he fills the time by explaining more about the baby. Audrey hit the nail right on the head with that single word.

  Curiosity. That's exactly it. But there's more to it. "Audrey summarized most of my feelings with one word, but there's a little more to it."

  "I thought you were going to wait to explain," observes Chris.

  "There's not much more to tell. Yes, I was curious...especially the way the vines attached themselves to it. But more than that," he pauses, lowering his gaze to the floor. "I couldn't bring myself to kill a child...even if it's already dead."

  Compassion cracking his voice, Chris says, "Karen would relate to that." Their most recent encounter with a child had been back at Martinville, not long after he and Karen had met.

  Finishing with the bandage, Audrey helps Chris to a sitting position.

  "Is the room supposed to swim like this?"

  Still holding his shoulders, Audrey says, "Give it a minute and it should pass. If it doesn't, we'll lay you back down."

  A few heartbeats later, Chris announces with a heavy exhalation of breath, "Whew...that was wild. But it's easing up now." He lets out another breath. "Damn. I feel better, but I really just want to lay back down."

  "Okay," Audrey says, helping him lie back. "Gently now."

  Once he's back on the mattress, he says, "I think it's time for another nap."

  And with that, Chris closes his eyes and drifts away, leaving Zak and Audrey to sit and stare at each other.

  * * *

  Chris sleeps the rest of the night and into the next night before waking again. Audrey's on watch this time and she sits quietly in the darkness.

  "Hello?" Chris whispers.

  A light flares as a match ignites. Audrey's disembodied head seems to float in the darkness.

  "You have matches?" he asks.

  She doesn't speak until she's touched the flame to a nearby candle. She blows out the match, then says, "They're Zak's. He has a million of them."

  Chris felt certain she was kidding about that part. Matches are one of the check-list items he searches for when gathering supplies. More often than not, the matches he finds crumble and fall apart due to excessive moisture and age.

  "How are you feeling?"

  He makes a mental check of himself—his head doesn't hurt near as bad as it did the last time he'd awakened. "I'm feeling good," he says, holding up his hand.

  She takes it and, placing her other hand underneath him, helps him sit up. "I've got to take a piss," he says. "Help me up."

  "Let me grab Zak...I don't want you to lose your balance."

  She stands and hurriedly heads down the hallway before he can say anything else. Then something hits him. He's been out of it for days...

  He looks down at his pants—they aren't the ones he'd been wearing the day he took the blow to the head. He feels his face flush with embarrassment even though he's alone in the room. Being that Audrey was the one studying with her mother, he quickly deduces who'd been taking care of his bodily functions while he was out of it. Of course, he's had nothing to eat since then either, so that might have been a rare occurrence. He snickers quietly, realizing the moment he mentioned needing to take a piss, Audrey had bolted from the room.

  "Feeling better?" Zak asks, entering the room ahead
of Audrey.

  Head turned down, she watches her feet and doesn't make eye contact with him.

  "Yeah...need you to help me up. Gotta take a piss."

  Together, the two helped him up and out the front.

  Outside, pissing into a bush, he closes his eyes and takes in the fresh air. Zak stands behind him, at the ready in case he loses his balance or gets faint. Neither happen and that’s a relief. The headache still resonates within his skull, but it's just a distant annoyance right now. He hasn't felt this good in days.

  Finishing, he zips up and turns back to the house. Zak tries to help him but Chris waves him away. "I've got this."

  The three steps up to the porch give him a moment of unease, not because of the injury, but because his legs have gone several days without use. He doesn't feel faint or nauseous at all now—just a little weak and a lot hungry.

  "Got any of that jerky you're always carrying around? I'm starving."

  As if by magic, two thick strips of dried meat appear in Zak's hand. He passes them over.

  Taking a healthy bite, Chris says between chewing, "You're going to have to let me know how you make this stuff."

  "It's easy," Zak says. "Just need strips of meat, a small enclosure, and hours of smoke." They step into the house and, sounding like an afterthought, adds, "Oh...and a foolproof way to lure the dead away when the smoke draws them toward it."

  "How are you feeling?" Audrey asks from the couch. "Really feeling?" she adds.

  "Great," he says, meaning it. "I made it onto the porch without any help."

  "No swimming vision, nausea?"

  As if to prove it, he shakes his head, grateful that he didn't fall over after moving his head with such vigor. "Nope. Just the hunger and weakness."

  "Good," she says, turning her eyes back to her fidgeting hands, still embarrassed about his peeing statement. "Another day and you might be good to travel."

  "You mean tomorrow?"

  She shakes her head. "I think you need at least one more day." She looks up at him then, the glimmer of candlelight ignites sparks in her eyes while the hard shadows make her look much older than her years. "Head injuries are dangerous. If blood has clotted in your brain, it can affect everything about you...your speech, your ability to walk, communicate. It's not worth the risk." She points towards Zak. "And he's assured me that, unless Karen provokes them to no end, she'll be a little used and beaten up, but she'll be alive. You do her no good if you're a vegetable."