Tainted Mind

by T J Christian

  Chris is barely at the door when Harvey begins to back away. He jerked his arm from the Tainted’s mouth, leaving a sizable chunk of skin between its teeth. The gun comes back up; this time he intends to shoot it instead of hit it. Chris is directly in the line of fire. Grabbing the doorjamb, he swings himself to the left and out of the line of fire. His feet, slick with blood, slide out from under him, taking him to the floor in a heap and knocking the breath out of him.

  The shotgun fires. Half of Bob’s head disintegrates in a mixture of blood and gore. Chris cries out in pain as his lower legs takes some of the shotgun’s pellets. The pain is like a half-dozen pinpricks at first, then goes numb. Dropping the machete, he reaches down and holds his leg.

  In the front yard, everything has gone quiet. The Tainted, now truly dead, slumps to the ground. Harvey’s eyes lock onto Chris. The shotgun rises, coming to bear on him. He tries to crawl away, but it’s as if moving his leg reignites the nerves. He cries out and reaches down to hold it again, but the added pressure of his hands doesn’t help.

  The shotgun—Harvey should have fired it by now, but he has yet to pull the trigger. Then Chris sees the reason—Karen’s ax protrudes from the top of his head. Both eyes roll upward where there’s almost nothing showing but white in the left, and red in the right. His bowels let loose and the pungent aroma of piss and shit permeates the air, mixing with the coppery odor of blood and gunpowder.

  Harvey slumps to the ground, lands on his knees, crumples forward, and comes to rest, lying across Bob’s twice dead body. Karen stands there shaking. Tears pour from her red-rimmed eyes. She blinks, focuses on Chris, and then runs to him.

  “Oh, God,” she says, gabbing his face in her hands and kissing him repeatedly. “I thought he’d shot you. I thought you were dead.”

  “Dead…no,” he says, pushing her hair away from her face so he can see her fully. “Shot…yes.”

  Shock fills her eyes. “Shot? Where?”

  “My leg.”

  She looks down. There are three tiny holes seeping blood. “Oh, fuck,” she says, pushing to her feet and then rushing into the house.

  As she leaves, Jack and the other man approach, stopping in front of the porch and examining the bloodbath in front of them. “Jack,” Chris says, voice low and anxious. Both men turn toward him. He nods toward Quincy’s body. “Can you please get his body out of here before she gets back?”

  Without hesitation, they grab Quincy’s lifeless arms and legs and carry him around the edge of the house and toward the back. Just as they disappear around the corner, Karen comes back, taking care not to slip. “Here,” she says and grams him under the arm to help him up. She guides him to the bench in front of the window and begins digging through a plastic box full of gauze and yellowing tape. She checks his leg, and he winces in pain—she’s not very tender about it as she examines it with poking and prodding fingers.

  “Good,” she says. “Looks like three of them are through and through the muscle…”

  The sentence trails off and he knows there’s more. “But?” he asks.

  “But…” she agrees, pinching another hole that doesn’t seem to have an exit. Biting her lip, she applies more pressure, pressing deep into the tissue and making Chris cry out in pain. “Damn it,” she says, obvious disappointment in her voice.

  “What?” he asks, feeling tears of his own starting to flow. That hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

  “The fourth one is imbedded in your leg.” She meets his eyes, genuine concern in her eyes. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to have to dig it out.”

  “Okay,” Chris says, voice tinged with confusion. “Dig it out, though? That sounds fucking painful.”

  She continues to press and pinch. “If we don’t get it out, you can get an infection.”

  Now he understands. Infection is one of the last things he wants.

  “Damn it,” she says, throwing her hands up in exasperation. She looks at Chris, a considerable amount of concern on her face.

  Jack and the other man return. Chris holds his hand out to Cowboy and introduces himself. “Thanks for your help.”

  Cowboy shrugs. “We really didn’t have much to do with it.” He tilts his head toward Karen. “She’s the one you should thank.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she mumbles. Her gaze has moved to the portion of the porch where her grandfather had been just minutes before. “I didn’t do a damn thing. I didn’t do enough.”

  “Hey,” Chris says, trying to get her attention. After a few long seconds, she finally looks at him, allowing herself to be hugged. “You did all you could. This was all this guy’s fault.” He nods toward Harvey’s body.

  Karen sniffles, wipes her eyes, and pushes away. She looks at Cowboy, then Jack, “Thanks for moving him…I don’t think I could have looked at him like that.”

  Jack touches her arm but remains silent. He’s not sure what to say.

  Trying to direct everyone’s thoughts elsewhere, Cowboy points at Chris’s leg and asks, “So, what happened?”

  “I caught a few pellets from the shotgun blast.”

  “Yeah,” Karen says, then looks at the two men that aren’t injured. “I’m going to need your help with something.”

  Jack and Cowboy share a confused look.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cowboy finds a canvas stretcher in a building that was once a military surplus store. He could have spent hours looking around, but Karen and Chris needed him to get back as soon as possible. He’d definitely come back before he left town, though—there might not be much room on his horse for a lot of additional supplies, but now that Harvey and Bob are gone, they have two extra horses.

  Tossing the stretcher to the ground he shouts toward the back of the building, “Jack! I found one.”

  Jack pops his head out of an interior room, eyes wide with excitement. “Dude! I could live here!”

  “I know…me too. But we’ve got to get back and help Karen with Chris, so come on.”

  He tosses a satchel into the center of the stretcher. It contains several medical instruments they found at an old clinic a couple of buildings away.

  Jack approaches, grabs one end of the stretcher, and together, he and Cowboy head back.

  “You think he’ll survive?” Jack asks. They’re not sure what Chris and Karen have witnessed before, but they’ve seen enough over the years to know even the smallest injury can lead to death.

  “He’s young,” says Cowboy, as if that were an answer. If he was being honest with himself, he’d admit he really didn’t know. Chris’s survival was more up to luck now than anything else. If he can keep it clean, that alone will help eliminate the chances of infection from setting in.

  They rush back to the death house—that’s what Cowboy had named it. He hadn’t said it out loud, but that’s exactly what it was, a death house. More so than any other house on this street or in this town. Somehow, this was different—they could have avoided this.

  It doesn’t take long to get back. Leaving the stretcher in the living room, he grabs the bag and brings it to Karen who stands beside the dining table, roughly tying a tourniquet around Chris’s lower leg. Jack had found a liquor store that hadn’t been completely stripped of inventory and brought back several bottles of wine and other, stronger stuff. They were sure fermented alcohol kept its potency over time and Chris would need it. He had already emptied one wine bottle and was working on another.

  “Hey, Babe…not so tight,” he slurs.

  “Shut up and let me work.”

  “Oooh…feisty.”

  “Looks like you’ve got this under control,” says Jack, backing out of the room.

  Karen turns to him. “Uh-uh! Get back in here. I need the two of you to hold him down. He’s drunk, but it’s still going to hurt like hell.”

  Jack looks to Cowboy for help—all he can do is shrug.

  Karen fishes around in the bag o
f surgical implements he’d found and pulls out one that’s about eight inches long. It reminds Cowboy of scissors, but instead of blades, the ends are flat with slight ridges made to grab and hold.

  “What…what are you going to do with those?” Chris asks, smiling and taking another pull at the wine bottle.

  Karen snatches it away and pours some over the tool. She also sloshes some on his injured leg, causing Chris to cry out.

  “Damn,” he howls. “What you do that for?”

  Karen ignores him, looks to Jack and Cowboy and says, “Help me tie his legs down.”

  A rope lies coiled on the floor. Cowboy retrieves it and tosses across the table to Jack. They run it over Chris’s lower body several times, making sure it’s tight, but not tight enough he’ll lose circulation.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to hit him over the head?”

  Karen gives Jack a cross look and Cowboy can’t help but let out a little snicker. He looks away quickly, not knowing how she will take humor—after all, Harvey had just killed her grandfather—not even an hour ago.

  She has no reaction. Actually, she doesn’t show any reaction. Cowboy can’t imagine how she must be feeling. Hopefully, Chris’s distractions are helping her numb the pain of emotions.

  She can’t stay distracted forever, though.

  * * *

  “You both ready?” she asks. Jack and Cowboy share a look but say nothing, just take their position on either side of Chris. Forceps in hand, she leans over the wound. Thankfully, Chris seems to hover just on the verge of consciousness—however, she’s sure what she’s about to do will wake him right up.

  “Here we go…hold his shoulders.”

  * * *

  Jack wasn’t sure what to expect, but this certainly wasn’t it. He expected Karen to gently slide the forceps into Chris’s leg, grab the tiny ball of lead, and then ease it out. But no, she shoves it into the small hole as if she’s trying to push it all the way through. Eyes fluttering between waking and sleeping, Chris attempts to jolt up as if a bolt of electricity had just passed through his body.

  “Hold him,” Karen shouts, eyeing him with exasperation. She pushes the forceps in another half-inch. There’s a muffled but noticeable tick as metal strikes metal. “There it is,” she says, twisting the tool then spreading her fingers slightly. Another push, another quarter inch, and her fingers close. “Got it,” she says with an audible exhale.

  On the table, Chris continues to struggle, but Jack and Cowboy have no trouble keeping him flat on his back. Chris sighs with relief as Karen removes the forceps. He breathes easier until Karen pours wine on the open wound. He cries out once, then his head falls to the table, the pain driving him back into unconsciousness.

  Jack relaxes and says, “Fuck…that hurt to watch.”

  “Well, it’s over now,” Karen says, checking Chris by placing a hand to his head and then rubbing his hair. Jack has no context for their relationship, but he can see the concern in her eyes. Old feelings begin to surface—feelings he’s suppressed for years. It’s so overwhelming he excuses himself and walks outside.

  Bob and Harvey’s bodies still lie in the front yard. To keep himself busy and to help occupy his mind, he grabs Harvey’s stiffening legs and drags him toward the street.

  “You okay?”

  It’s Karen. She followed him outside and now stands on an unbloodied spot on the porch. The question is directed at Jack, but she’s looking down at the thickening blood beside her foot—probably remembering where her grandfather had been just a little while ago.

  Jack lets Harvey’s legs fall. He stands there, watching her for a few seconds. “The question is…are you?”

  Before she can answer, Cowboy appears in the doorway. “Want some help?”

  “Sure,” says Jack, reaching down and picking Harvey’s legs back up. Cowboy grabs his arms and together, they take the body several houses down the street and dump it in an old, rusted dumpster. Bob’s body is treated with a little more respect. They take it and place it next to Quincy’s in the back yard of the house behind where he and Karen had, until recently, called home.

  Jack returns via the back door and finds that Chris is still out. Moving to the front, he finds Karen sitting on the porch bench, eyes still drawn to the stained floorboards.

  “You never answered my question,” says Jack.

  “Hmm?” she says, barely looking up.

  “Are you okay?”

  Cowboy walks around from the side of the house and takes a seat on the porch, directly in front of Karen. He too eyes all the blood and seems to stay focused on his own thoughts.

  “I’m trying to convince myself everything that happened was for the best.”

  Poker Jack has nothing to say to that—it’s something she must deal with on her own.

  She continues, revealing something he’d not known. “He was sick…did you know that?”

  Jack shakes his head.

  “Yeah, he just told me about a week ago. He made Chris promise to take care of him…to keep him from coming back as one of the Tainted.”

  “Tainted?” This from Cowboy. Jack hadn’t heard the term before either.

  “The dead,” she says. “The ones that still walk…it’s what Chris called them. The name kind of stuck with Paw-…” her voice cracks when she tries saying his name.

  She sniffles and wipes the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I think this was better. He was in such pain these last few days. If it wouldn’t have been today, then it could have been tomorrow or the next. I don’t think he was going to last much longer.”

  They fall silent as if an unspoken agreement has passed between them—an agreement that silence is not the best form of communication.

  There’s a scrape at the front door and they all lift their heads to see Chris standing there, his injured leg raised a few inches off the floor. “My legth weallwy hurths,” he slurs, leaning against the doorjamb for support.

  Jack, Cowboy, and Karen all burst out laughing at the same time.

  It’s something they all needed.

  * * *

  Using the same rope they’d used to tie Chris down to the table, Jack and Cowboy lash the horses to an old trailer. The rubber tires are dry-rotted and shred away within a few feet of them getting it rolling. On the trailer are two caskets—one for Bob, the other for Quincy. Chris did what he could to help, but after only two days, there’s no way he could do much in the way of physical labor. At least he was walking now, albeit slowly.

  “Did you find a good spot,” Chris asks.

  Jack answers, “Yes, there’s an old sand and gravel place just south of town. We dug as deep and wide as we could, but we’ll have to cover them with rock, mostly.”

  “Thanks,” Chris says, voice low. “I wish I could have helped.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cowboy says, clicking at the horses to get them moving. He looks between their bodies to make sure the rope is still holding. “You just would have got in the way,” he adds, throwing a grin Chris’s way.

  “Well, thanks anyway. Karen and I are really in your debt.”

  “Uh-uh…don't even talk like that. That military surplus store is a goldmine and we appreciate you letting us scavenge for supplies.”

  Chris waves him off. “It’s not ours to give…you two help yourself. We’ll never get use out of it all.”

  Jack approaches Chris, who’s falling behind. “Here, why don’t you ride the rest of the way?” He helps Chris onto the back of the trailer. There’s just enough room between the caskets for him to sit.

  Next stop—pick up Karen at the old Colonial house she loves so much.

  * * *

  Karen was waiting for them on the porch. Chris watches her glide through the waste-high weeds that have taken over what would once have been an elaborately kept yard. It’s as if she moves in slow motion. Her yellow dress is bright and flawless—almost as if she’d just taken it off the store rack. She’d washed and brushed her hai
r, pulling it up around her ears in tight little ringlets decorated with tiny wildflowers the same color as the dress. Her blue eyes mirrored the sky, bright and hopeful.

  She stops in front of Chris and smiles sheepishly. “You can close your mouth now.”

  Chris closes his mouth. She is already beautiful, but today there’s something different. He looks closer and realizes what it is—she’s wearing makeup. Her cheeks are rosy-pink, eyes lined with black, lashes that appear twice as long as normal, and her lips—those kissable, sweet lips are candy apple red.

  He slides off the trailer. She takes his hands and kisses him lightly on the lips. “You act like you’ve never seen me before.”

  “I haven’t,” he admits. “At least…not like this.”

  “If you two want to go back inside for a bit, Cowboy and I don’t mind waiting.”

  Karen gasps and Chris chokes on a ball of laughter.

  “Sorry guys,” she says. Then, more seriously, she looks from Jack to Cowboy and says, “I really appreciate what you’ve done…what you’re doing.” She reaches up and runs a hand across the closest casket. “It’s nice to know there’s still good in this world.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Cowboy says, looking away.

  “Here,” says Jack, taking her hand and helping her onto the back of the trailer.

  “What about me,” Chris asks, watching Jack walk away toward the horses at the front of the trailer.

  “You’re a big boy,” Jack says without a look back.

  Cowboy and Karen laugh, but Karen’s is all Chris hears. Her laughter is high and sweet—like birds singing. He could get used to hearing that laughter.

  Karen holds out her hand. “Here you go, Crip,” she says, helping him climb up.

  “I see how it’s going to be,” Chris says. “Picking on the cripple?”

  “We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think you could take it.”

  He kisses her. She tastes of mint—something that’s rare these days.