The next thing she remembered was someone shaking her. Mouth parched and head swimming, she tried to fling her arms out and ward off whoever was there. She tried to stab them with the knife her grandfather had left with her, but it was no longer in her hand.
From far, far away, as if hearing it through a pool of water, her grandfather’s voice says, “Karen! Karen! It’s me. You’re okay.”
Cool water touched her lips and she opened her mouth to receive more. Too much! She choked, sputtered, and coughed. Forcing her weighted eyes open, she tried to focus on her grandfather.
“Pa-paw?” she said weakly—the single word burning her throat.
He’d found some antibiotics at a neighboring home and, forcing them down her throat, she struggled to swallow them.
She survived that night and the following days as her body finally rid itself of the illness which plagued her. She was lucky. In the aftermath of her sickness, grandfather thought it best that they remain in town. “There’s food here for years, enough medicine to help cure just about anything, and there’s a water tower on the north edge of town…hopefully, we’ll be able to find a way to use it to our advantage.”
For the next few years, they rid the town of as many of the dead as possible. To begin, they scouted every building, using spray paint to mark each establishment with a number representing the amount of dead trapped inside. The drug store was the worst, and her grandfather found that out the hard way—and almost lost his life.
When he tried to enter the store, two of the dead set right on him. The hoe hadn’t been an ideal choice of weapon as there was little room to wield it. He swung it at the first body, driving the blade deep into the thing’s soft skull. It went down in a heap near the doorway. The second one used to be a woman. She leaped at him, almost knocking him to the ground. He scrambled across the threshold and back outside. She followed, stumbled over the one with the hoe still stuck in its skull, and fell on grandfather’s legs.
Kicking with all his might, he pushed her away, grabbed the hoe’s handle, and wrenched it free. Using it as a ram, he pressed the flat of the blade against her chest and forced her back into the drugstore. When it was clear, he slammed the door shut, making sure the latch held because, just as the door obscured his view, several more dead lumbered from the back of the store and into the main aisle.
They scouted the building several weeks later and discovered that there had been ten bodies inside. Grandfather had killed one, leaving the other nine. If he would have made it further in, he would have never made it out again.
She sprayed a large number 9 on the door and the two of them never again gave another thought about trying to clear the store. It was just too much for the two of them to handle.
* * *
Since hearing the first shotgun blast, the town remained quiet, but Karen couldn’t help but think the worst. What would she do if she arrived home to find him dead? Or worse yet, find that one creature had injured him and now he was poisoned. Would she be able to do what they need when the time comes? They’d had the discussion frequently, and she knew what she needed to do—what he wanted her to do. But agreeing to it and following through were two different things. Could she really kill her grandfather?
Hopefully, it won’t come to that. As her legs pump and her feet slap the ground like a human metronome, she tries to dispel the bad thoughts. In rhythm to her body, she chants, “Every…thing’s…okay. Every…thing’s…okay.”
She rounds the corner of one street onto the one where their house sits—she slows immediately. In the middle of the road is a freshly decapitated corpse. It wasn’t there when she left. She slows, looking down at it as she passes. Those aren’t shotgun injuries. A shotgun might decapitate someone, but those are cuts.
She pauses in the middle of the street. The house is right there before her and lying on the edge of the street is the mangled remains of a mailbox. It’s shredded and littered with holes. This was the recipient of the gunshot blast she’d heard as, like the decapitated body, it hadn’t been there when she left earlier.
If her grandfather’s not alone, then more than likely, they have already seen her. But even so, she wonders if she should sneak around back and slide through one of the basement windows. She keeps them unlocked just in case something happens (such as the house being overrun by the dead) and the two of them have to leave.
She’s wasted too much time already. If she was going to sneak in, she shouldn’t have come pounding down the road like a bat out of hell. Setting her shoulders, she removes the climber's ax from the loop at her waist and starts toward the front door.
A sound causes her to pause at the front step and she cocks her head to the side to listen. Was that laughter?
* * *
Killing the undead is not a clean activity. Hacking them with a machete is about as personal as a person can get and with each swing, black body fluids, puss, leathery skin, and a slew of other types of nastiness flies—avoiding this unpleasantness is almost impossible. As Chris now stands witness. Noticing his state, Quincy asks if he’d like to wash up.
Leading him deeper into the house, Quincy escorts him to a bathroom. There’s no electricity (that’s become a distant memory), but dim light filters through smoky glass set high above the shower stall. Another window, set in the wall opposite the sink, faces a small alley that runs between this house and the next.
Quincy strikes a match and presses the flame to a couple of candles. Flickering light adds minimal illumination to the small room, but it’s better than nothing. Expecting a pail of rainwater and a washcloth, Chris stands in awe as Quincy reaches past him and turns the shower handle. Water, crystal clear water, streams from the shower nozzle.
“What the hell?” Chris can’t believe what he’s seeing.
“A year ago, this would have been hot. But we’ve since used up all the portable propane bottles in town…at least, all the ones we’ve been able to find. It should be plenty warm though.”
“How?” Chris whispers, that one word encompassing the very definition of wonder—the last shower he had was back when the world just started turning to shit. Before his family fled to Homestead by the Snake River. At the time, he’d barely been a teenager. Maybe even not that old—it was beginning to be more difficult to remember the time before.
“Gravity.”
Chris looks at him, eyebrows raised in confusion.
“The water is gravity fed. I tapped into the water tower back when we…” he pauses. It’s a brief pause, but Chris notices it. “…when I first moved here.”
Either Quincy lost someone close and can’t seem to let go—or he’s not alone. Chris isn’t for sure which, but he’s certain he’ll find out soon. Friendly as the older man may seem, it’s still an unfriendly world and he has to stay on the lookout.
Quincy opens a cabinet and removes a folded towel and a washcloth—both have seen better days. “They’re a little thin, but they work just fine.”
“Thanks,” Chris says, setting his backpack beside the toilet, then taking the items, he tosses the washcloth into the shower then drapes the towel over the shower rod. He reaches in and lets the water splash over his open palm. He can’t help but laugh. “Really, Quincy. Thank you. I never thought I’d ever take a proper bath again! Not in an actual shower, anyway.”
Quincy waves him off, “I can’t have you sitting on my clean furniture looking like that can I?” He turns to leave but pauses before shutting the door. “When you’re done, if you’re interested, I’ll show you what I’ve done to make this place a little more comfortable…then dinner?”
“That sounds good,” Chris says, realizing his stomach is growling. Hunger is the way of life sometimes so it often goes unnoticed or ignored.
Quincy shuts the door, leaving Chris on his own. He unzips the backpack’s main compartment and reaches in for a fresh set of clothes but stops, noticing just how much goop covers his arms. And not all of it’s from the Tainted he’d just killed. He ha
sn’t had a proper bath in probably a month. On his aimless journey, he’d pause from time to time to wash up in a creek or pond, but he never could bring himself to completely immerse himself and get clean. Part of the reason is the constant voice of his father warning him against staying out of the water. As if to enforce that old warning, the events he’d witnessed at Homestead before fleeing were reason enough to stay out of the water. The thought sends a shiver up his spine.
He strips out of his clothes, tosses them one by one into the corner behind the door, and steps over the tub’s edge and into the heavy stream of water. Quincy was right, hot water would have been better, but this wasn’t bad at all—not cold by any means, but any colder and he’d have trouble adjusting.
He leans forward, allowing the water to strike him on the top of his head. Weeks of dirt, grime, and no telling what else washes away. The water pooling at his feet is grey with it all. He turns around and lets the water massage his neck and cascade down his back.
Once the water at his feet clears, he grabs the washcloth to scrub the remaining grime away. Then he notices something on the edge of the tub. He picks it up with long-lost wonder—as if he’d just reunited with an old childhood friend.
He places the object just under his nose and breathes in. Flowers—honeysuckle maybe—fills his nostrils. He closes his eyes, taking in the soap’s aroma. He’s seen plenty around in towns he’d passed through and homes he borrowed for an evening or two, but with his fear of open water, he never saw a reason to make room for it in his backpack. There were other things more essential than soap.
But standing here with cascading water flowing down his back, and a rich foam lather forming between his hands, he wonders if he’d been wrong not to carry it with him. The euphoric feeling of it, the aromatic fragrance—it seems to open his mind in new ways. In a world of death and destruction, where every corner could hide danger, it’s funny how a single bar of soap could bring about feelings of joy—that maybe life really is worth living.
He washes his stringy hair twice, and once he’s rinsed, he reluctantly turns off the water. Even if he doesn’t get to use the shower again before he leaves, maybe he’ll gain enough knowledge from Quincy to learn to replicate it elsewhere—that is, if he ever decides to settle in one place.
He slides back the curtain, steps out, then towels off. Once he dries his hair, when he lowers the towel, a shape outside the window catches his eyes.
Remy!
* * *
Forgoing the direct approach, Karen quietly backs away from the porch and cuts along the beaten trail that passes through the front yard. It leads to the alley between the houses.
Curious…she can hear the shower running. She works the days in her head, counting them off on her fingers—today isn’t shower day. They had plenty of water—at least it seemed that way—but they opted to ration it just as they would anything else in case of some unforeseen event occurs. So, this must be a stranger and there can be only two reasons he (or she) is using the shower. They’ve killed grandfather and are taking advantage of their home’s comforts. Or grandfather is allowing him or her to use it.
Based on the laughter she heard just moments ago, she leans toward the latter scenario. The laugh seemed to contain genuine excitement—maybe even glee. It was a happy laugh; she was ninety-nine percent sure of that.
Easing forward, she rounds the corner and into the alley. There are three windows here. Inside the closest is the living room. The far one, a double window, is the back bedroom—her room. The single, smaller window in the center is the bathroom window. She moves toward it, her feet whisper-quiet on the worn dirt path.
It never occurs to her to be discreet. Something like this has never happened before and her curiosity is too strong—she has to see. She peers inside, eyes on the drawn shower curtain, waiting for however is beyond it to appear.
The water shuts off. A hand grabs the curtain, slides it back. Karen’s eyes widen with curiosity and awe. It’s a young man—he appears to be just a few years older than herself. And he’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen.
He doesn’t see her, but reaches to the toilet for a towel—he dries his hair first and Karen can’t take her eyes off his trim body. He’s not overly muscular but is very tone—as if the muscles beneath his skin were snakes, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Her eyes travel down his body, to the light thatch of blond hair in the center of his chest. Still down further, her eyes settle on his navel and the line of hair that leads still further south—to that thing she’s dreamed about.
Even though she’s never seen a real-life naked man before, she is familiar with the idea. In one house she frequents, she found a stack of magazines depicting men and women in various stages of undress. She’s seen how they interact on those pages—how they come together, how they touch each other, how they touch themselves. At the end of each set of photos, they each have facial expressions approaching true bliss. She remembers those pictures now—each of those beautiful people seared into her brain as if she knows them personally.
Then there was that time, taking inspiration from a magnificent redhead with breasts three times larger than Karen’s—she remembers touching herself just like the woman in the magazine. Tentative at first, not knowing exactly what to do. It didn’t take long, however, for her fingers to find all the right spots. That’s when the fire began in her belly. It didn’t hurt, but it surprised her. She’d never felt anything like that before and as her questing fingers moved faster, the burning in her began to spread downward, building and building until she could no longer stifle the cry that sought to escape her throat. Wetness flooded around her fingers as she panted for breath—fingers gently rubbing now as she bathed in the afterglow of orgasm.
She wondered how it felt to have a man inside her instead of just her fingers. What about this man? She wondered if there would ever be a chance that she could feel what the couples in her magazines were feeling.
She realizes that she’s reached up to grab one breast.
She also realizes that the young man in the bathroom is staring at her.
* * *
When Chris first sees her, he has a sudden moment of panic. In that first moment, it was Remy standing outside the window. His heart fluttered with a sudden wave of panic, but it quickly dissipated as he realized there’s no way the bitch could be standing outside. She was dead and gone—so, why couldn’t his mind stop reminding him of her?
Once the shock of seeing Remy’s apparition passed, Chris focuses on the figure outside. Never has he seen anything so beautiful. He lowers the towel but doesn’t exactly cover himself from her view. His nakedness is the farthest thing from his mind.
She’s obviously deep in her own thoughts. Her eyes look right through him as if he’s not even there. Her hand rises, fingers gently brushing her shirt as it passes her stomach. A fold catches on her pinky and as her hand rises, the fabric rises with it, revealing skin as white as a cloud. The fold slides off her finger and the shirt falls back into place, but her hand continues to rise, stopping at her left breast where she cups it gently.
She blinks—eyes focusing on him. Her mouth opens in a silent gasp of surprise and she backs away from the window.
Chris smiles as she stumbles down the alley and toward the rear of the house.
Now, who might this be? He wonders, knowing full well she and Quincy is somehow connected. That’s fine—Quincy has a right to protect whom he sees fit. After all, he’s known Chris all of thirty minutes. That’s not a lot of time to build a trusting relationship. Chris would have done the same thing.
Finishing with the towel, he drapes it over the metal shower rod to dry. He dresses, dons the backpack, gathers his dirty clothes, and exits the bathroom.
Quincy is talking to someone—probably the girl he’d just seen out the window. Sure enough, upon entering the living room, there’s the girl, sitting in a wood-backed chair with her hands between her knees. She looks up at him and smiles, chee
ks turning red. If it wasn’t for the deep shadows and the fact that Quincy’s eyes weren’t what they used to be, the older man would have probably realized that something was going on.
And what is going on? There’s nothing going on and nothing to be ashamed of. They saw each other through the window—that’s it. He wasn’t embarrassed—why should he be? The encounter was completely innocent.
“Ah, Chris,” says Quincy, “I want to apologize for not telling you before, but this is my granddaughter, Karen.”
Chris nods from across the room, “Nice to meet you.”
She smiles, the redness in her cheeks growing noticeably.
Chris addresses Quincy, “And there’s no need to apologize…I’d have done the same thing. You don’t know me…you still don’t.”
“True, true. But I have the feeling you’re okay.”
Chris catches a tone of dread at this last statement—as if Quincy had more to say but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say anything in front of Karen.
“Thank you,” Chris says, meaning it. In a world where there is no trust, he doesn’t know how to feel about being on the receiving end of it. It’s definitely a strange feeling.
Quincy rises from his chair and asks, “So…who wants a tour?”
* * *
To say Chris received an education that afternoon is an understatement. Quincy and Karen had been busy in the time they’d been here. Not only were a majority of the houses clear of the undead, but they took the time to gather provisions from each house and stockpile them throughout the city. If anything went wrong, there were plenty of options for supplies as they left town—no matter what direction.
What surprised Chris most was how Quincy had tapped into the city water tower. It towered over the neighborhood just a few hundred feet from the house. Using plastic pipe and special glue, Quincy ran it straight to the house and tapped into one of the house’s existing water lines. He had to make sure and cap the line from the city’s original source too—otherwise, the tower would supply the entire neighborhood.
Tainted Mind Page 4
