by Nick Cole
I am going.
I am at the door.
I am unclean and cause misery.
“He wouldn’t leave her,” bellows Cal through wet runny tears. “He kept right by her side, hissing and raging at me. But he would not leave her.”
Through the tears, I hear this once strong, silent man begin to ask if the unknown can be known.
“I never seen anything like that in all my years of a world I learned long ago I would never understand. But he wouldn’t leave her. He just stood there... waiting for me to shoot him.” And Cal begins to cry even harder. And I realize I am not brave enough to hear his tears. Their ache is soul deep.
I am going.
I am at the door.
I am unclean and cause misery.
“Let me finish,” wails the frail old man who is still my hero. “Please let me finish and be done with this forever.”
“No Mistah Cal, everything gonna be alright,” comforts the nurse. “We put those things away for now.”
“No, come back here, boy!” And the iron of the ranger I once knew is back. The ranger who pulled me off that drifting boat that would have, in time, come to rest on the zombie-infested beaches of the North Shore Casinos.
“What Cal? What is it you want to tell me?”
For a moment he is lost. He cannot remember what it was he was going to say, as though the sudden appearance of who he is now has distracted him.
“What happened next?” I prompt. “By the river that day. That last day of summer.”
Then Cal remembers.
“Can they love each other? Do you know that, boy? Do you know if they can do that?”
I didn’t have an answer. Who could?
He stops there, as if to make sure I’m following him. But that isn’t it. That’s not the end.
“I pulled the trigger and he went down,” wails Cal into the nurse.
And as he sobs into her chest, this is what I hear.
“The last one was the worst. He loved her. All those zombies, all those years, they’d become nothing more than animals, less than even, and the last of them turned on me in the end. I was glad they were the last. He loved her. He wouldn’t leave her,” he sobs over and over into his nurse.
“No, Mistah Cal...” she murmurs. “No, honey...”
When I read the official report, I learn that Cal went back to his truck, filled out the paperwork, and got a camera and a can of gasoline.”
The last two zombies had no identification. Just some personal effects.
The yellowing paper of the official report reads:
Female, one diamond ring, left ring finger.
Male, one battered army compass, worn around the neck.
The nurse glares at me until I leave. As I go, I can her singing.
“Everything’s gonna be alright.”
I hear Cal crying.
In the hall, I wait until he stops. I need that. I need to know that he will forget, and that sometimes, forgetting is not such a curse.
But I will not forget them.
I will remember, even if I did not know who they were.
Historical Artist’s Note: Redemption Song by Bob Marley.
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