by J. B. Beatty
Kristin was my first too-young-to-die death. While I could rationalize Grandpa’s death and make all kinds of sense of it, I was never able to wrap Kristin’s death into a package that made any kind of sense to me. In the end, it made me angry. I just couldn’t say at what. I thought of her the morning I tried to commit suicide. She wasn’t the reason, but she was in my lowlights reel.
As horrible as it was to lose Kristin, I can only think that it would be a million times worse to lose Maggie. And this is despite becoming somewhat calloused to the whole death thing now that my entire family—along with most of our society—had died in a variety of gory ways. While I feel plenty safe if I’m out shopping with RIP, there’s a part of me that will always regard Maggie as my lifeline.
36→ONLY TO BE HAD FROM THE DRUGGISTS
The door shudders every time they throw their ravenous bodies against it. They are hungry. We are afraid.
We’ve slid a desk against it, so it should hold. For now. But it’s the only door in or out, which means that Justin and I are trapped.
This was supposed to be a quick shopping trip into Reed City. Originally, RIP was going to make the trip with me, but Justin insisted that only he would be able to find the right drugs for Maggie’s chemo. I think, though, that the real reason is that Justin is getting cabin fever. And it hasn’t even started snowing yet at the fortress, beyond a light dusting some mornings.
Justin’s good with a gun, but he’s not RIP good.
We come in from the east along Three Mile Road. The plan was to avoid the thickest part of town where we would likely run into zombies—which Justin still refers to as “flu victims.” The hospital lies on the northwest corner of the city. The plan: avoid population encounters as much as possible by driving around the south end of town, then working our way to the north by sticking as closely as we could to the fields along the freeway. Looking at the aerial maps from our friends at Google, it looked like we could zip up 220th Avenue the mile-plus to the hospital.
The first hitch came on 220th, when we spotted a barricade in the distance along the road. We stopped immediately, and with binoculars were unable to see anyone manning it. But why invite trouble? We turned around and once we went south enough to be out of sight, we drove into a farmer’s field and followed the hint of a road farther to the west, turning north once we found a decent option. That route took us into someone’s backyard, across Four Mile Road, and through a rough patch of something that might have been a jeep trail in a past life. Eventually we crunched over an old fence and pulled to the edge of the Cancer Center parking lot. The building looked deserted.
We surveyed the outside and saw no problems. We approached on foot to find the few service entrance doors locked. Finally, we opted not to use the crow bar and instead see if the main doors opened. We went around the front, keeping an eye out for trouble, or whoever might have been manning that barricade. The doors slid wide as if they were open for business.
Safety off, I started moving even more slowly. “This way,” indicated Justin. We moved past the lobby and through a door into a corridor. My shoes stuck to the tiles like they do at a movie theater that hasn’t been cleaned well. Blood. We followed a trail of it, as if someone has been dragged. And it wasn’t six weeks old. It looked fresh, yesterday fresh. Upended chairs littered the corridor. Beyond them, at least two bodies torn to pieces and scattered. Recently.
“Be ready,” I whispered to Justin. He nodded. Then he checked a directory on the wall. He pointed ahead and we made our way farther. He opened a door on the left and motioned me in. So far, so good, but the cabinets were already open and pill bottles scattered.
“Hopefully they were just looking for pain killers,” he said. “Morphine, oxycontin. But the stuff we need still has to be here somewhere.” But after 20 minutes of increasingly frustrated searching, he turned to me and said, “Fuck. Fucking Fuck Fuck. It’s all gone.”
“Maybe it’s in another place.”
“No. This is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Exactly where it was. The shelves are labeled for it. Some of the empty boxes for it are here. Dammit.” And then he stepped out into the hallway again, slamming the door behind him. He left his backpack behind. I picked it up and I heard him yell. It might have been my name, but it turned into something else with a horrific twist. Quickly I opened the door. He was already running away to my left. To the right, four zombies charging hard.
I pointed my weapon and pulled the trigger, but the safety—which I was sure I had flipped off—was somehow on. I must have absently-mindedly been fiddling with it. I started running, messing with my gun and trying to gauge their speed and whether I had time to stop, turn and start firing.
“In here!” yelled Justin. I followed him into a room where he was already pushing a desk toward the door. I held the door shut, turned a lock and helped him push the desk up against it.
And that brought us to where we are now. The zombies are throwing themselves at the door and the walls next to the door. They scream and the cry is not human at all; an intense, guttural wailing assaults our ears. The cacophony sounds as if it is growing, as if more have heard their cries and joined them.
“This is not good,” I say.
“No shit,” he says, panting. “Shoot them through the door.”
“It’s a metal door; I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Then shoot them through the wall.”
“With the size of that crowd out there, I’m not sure poking holes in the wall is a good idea.” I try to catch my breath. We all know about the fight or flight response. For me right now, it’s the frozen response. I hear the tumult outside the door, growing more and more loud and threatening to swallow us both. I can’t do anything: my limbs, my brain, my will, everything is paralyzed.
“How the hell do we get out of here?” he says.
I turn to Justin. “Where’s your gun?”
“I left it in the other room.”
“Good one.” I look around. No windows. No other door. Above, there is a vent. It looks big enough for a human to squeeze into. Justin sees me looking. He says, “No fucking way, cracker.”
“Racism? Really? Now?”
“I am not going in there. I do not do tiny spaces. I do not squeeze into things. I do not go anywhere small. I will die first. And that death will be motherfucking happy compared to me climbing into a tiny little hole in the ceiling.”
“Claustrophobic much? You sound like you might have a mild case.”
“Fuck you. I do. So fuck you.”
“Do you see another way out?”
“I see a perfectly fine way for you to squeeze out. Then you come back some other way and rescue me.”
“With my gun that I didn’t forget in the other room like you so stupidly did.”
“Dude, I had a job here—to find the drugs. Your job, if you recall, is just to be my bodyguard. So do it. Hurry up and save my black ass. Because in a few minutes those fucking flu-deranged monsters are going to chew through the wall and eat us for dessert.”
“Be kind. My friend says they’re victims.”
He glares at me.
I look at the door, which is reverberating louder as more of the semi-dead ones bash themselves against it. And I can see the wall vibrating as well. Jesus.
We have to move a file cabinet underneath the vent for me to reach it. I use a chair to get on top of the cabinet. Removing the vent cover is easy. I put my rifle in the duct ahead of me, jamming all my extra ammo clips in my pockets. I leave my backpack with Justin. Then I manage to pull my weak body up into the duct, pushing off from the cabinet. I choose to go right, away from the center of the building where we had been. We need to position ourselves closer to an emergency exit. I start moving in an awkward crawl that is more of a flat-bellied scootch. I bang my head. Twice. But I know I need to keep any kind of a noise to a minimum. To attract attention is to attract death.
The duct quivers. With every inch I pull forward, I hear it cr
eak and imagine I feel the metal bending. Maybe I’m not imagining. The duct can’t have been put together with the purpose of supporting my weight. I can feel it get more solid, more supported, and then weaken again. That must be where it passed over a wall that gives it support. Or where it is supported from above, perhaps. I can hear the swarm of zombies almost as loud as when I was trapped with Justin. I should be thankful—that’s probably the only thing that’s covering up the noises I am making in the duct.
The light shines toward me. I am above the vent in the adjoining room. It is empty, but it is not far enough away from the room where Justin is. With the size of the zombie swarm, I need to come out several rooms away in order to give myself time to step out into the hallway, aim, and fire. But I also know the vent cover will not provide my body enough support as I pass over it. I carefully extend the rifle and set it down on the far side of the opening. And then I reach across with my arms, putting half of my weight on my hands. I creep in that direction, forced to keep my head low, and try to keep my toes on the far edges of the duct, where there is an overhang that might support me past the vent as long as I don’t slip. Twenty inches of progress later and I am suspended over the vent doing a plank. And I hate doing planks. I hate core strength and the overwhelming insinuation by our culture that I need core strength to thrive in any sport, in any outfit, and in any act of life-saving courage. Core strength blows.
Though I could use some now.
Sure enough, just as I am ranting inside my head against anyone on earth who claims to be a fitness guru, my foot slips and crashes through the vent. The metallic grill bounces off the floor below while I hang on for my life. I am supported by the duct from the waist up, but I don’t have a good grip on the smooth aluminum. My other leg slips as well, and I slide a couple inches closer to the abyss.
Below me, the door smashes open—just about when I was wondering whether the zombies might be able to open the door if they heard the crashing noises that I caused. The primal scream of rage and hunger shakes me completely. I don’t know how, but suddenly my arms find new purpose and I make a frenzied push deeper into the duct. I feel hands grab my leg, my shoe. It gives me an adrenalin rush and I pull my legs free and into the duct.
They got my shoe, fuckers.
I pull my way along to the next room, and soon I am staring at its vent. The room is dark below me, but I hear no sound. I would like to keep going and get another couple of rooms away before I drop down to zombie level.
I hear Justin shouting, “Arvy, hurry! They’re getting through!!” And I realize that my chances of getting smoothly over this vent are about as good as the last one. So I pull my rifle alongside me until I am basically laying on top of it. And I reach forward and put my fingers through the grate to get a good grip on it. Once I have it, I push downward. It detaches easily. I have to angle it so I can pull it up into the duct with me; I can’t afford to have it come crashing down.
Once it’s in, I push it farther along away from me. Then I pull myself over the vent, ending up in a freaking plank position again. God, I hate fitness. Then I carefully let my legs dangle into the darkness. When no one eats them, I start to carefully ease my body downward, knowing full well that I don’t have the strength to do this smoothly, and at some point I will inevitably crash to the floor. I don’t even have full use of my hands, since my right hand is keeping a tenuous grasp on my rifle. And while I would love to hit the ground firing, the fact is I choose to put the safety on, because dollars to donuts (as my grandpa used to say) I will blow my own head off if I fall from the ceiling with the rifle not on safety.
Then I fall, hoping for a catlike landing. Instead one foot lands on a wheeled chair or something that moves away quickly. It tangles one foot while the other foot searches for ground and finds it far enough away that my groin feels like it rips open. Then the rest of my body finds the ground at high speed, and somehow I smash my head on my rifle barrel. All I can think is that at any moment a swarm of zombies will charge in and pile on me. Still on the floor, I swing the barrel of my rifle toward the door and scramble to take the safety off. I feel for my extra clips and they are secure.
I hear more noise in the corridor, maybe. It’s honestly hard to tell. I wait for them to burst through but they don’t. So I pull myself to my feet, assessing the damage as I rise. I don’t know what I did to myself there but I don’t think I can run very fast now. I can shoot, though. I stand next to the door, listening, screwing up my courage to pull it open and start firing. I can hear Justin yelling for me, so I know there’s still time to save him.
I am not ready for the impact of the door crashing into me. The zombies behind it have thrown themselves at it and caused it to swing open. My head is hit. I go down. And one is on top of me, pawing, and in the sudden stream of light from the hallway, I can see him struggling to bite my face. My finger is still on the trigger and the barrel is between us. I push with the knowledge that my life depends on getting that barrel pointed at some part of him instead of some part of me. His gnashing teeth come closer.
The explosion is the loudest thing I have ever heard. At first I am not sure who got hit. Then I realize that his brains, his blood, his bone fragments are oozing out of his skull and onto my face. I try to roll him off me as I see others queued up to claim dibs. I roll quickly to my side and bring up the gun, firing repeatedly. Bodies fall, some of them on my legs. I furiously scrabble out from under them, firing at the doorway which keeps filling with zombies.
Finally, I make it to my feet—at about the same time that my clip is empty. I pop it and insert another one—here is where I am glad that Maggie made me drill on this over and over. I keep firing, now that I’m on my feet I’m able to slow down a little and focus on kill shots. I move into the hall, stepping on bodies, some of them moving. Ahead I see a mass of zombies and they’re falling over themselves to get to me. So much for aiming. I start firing fast at whatever seems closest. I find I am retreating, moving back down the hallway, farther away from Justin. I don’t notice his screams anymore. Soon I find my butt against the emergency door. I could escape easily, but I’m not going to leave Justin to die.
I never thought about being a hero before. Good thing, because I would have probably decided that only an idiot would do it. I pop another clip in and start advancing. Unlike me, I know. Something has come over me. Maybe stupidity. I’m starting to see some gaps in the crowd. They are thinning. More than ever are on the ground and they’re still moving. I struggle to stay on my feet as I lurch over them. I need to focus on the ones who are standing. The ones that are still a threat.
I fire a shot down the hallway and I fire again before I realize I am not aiming at anything anymore. They are all down. Plenty of them are still moaning and wailing, but they’re down. I listen for Justin but I don’t hear him. My ears ring with the sound of too many gunshots at close range. I’m not sure if I’m hearing anything anymore. Even the sounds of the dying zombies may just be their echoes in my ears.
I see a hole in the wall ahead. It’s too small for a person to fit through. I look inside and see Justin, backed against the wall, holding his hand in his heads. “Justin,” I say. I can’t even hear myself so I say it again louder: “Justin!”
He looks up. “You don’t have to yell,” he says.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. What took you?”
I look back at the masses of torn bodies writhing on the floor of the hallway. “Traffic.”
We retrieve his gun and our packs. And from the next room, my missing shoe. We look at the hall where the massacre happened. Still movement. We look down another hall that appears to lead to an emergency exit. Unexplored territory. Dangerous. Without a word, we turn around and stroll to the front door.
“What now?” I say as we step into a clear November day and scan the parking lot for movement.
“Well, being as we accomplished not one fucking thing today, I say we head for home and start thinking about a p
lan B. The girl needs her meds.”
In the distance, I see two men with guns who have come toward the Cancer Center, perhaps from the barricade we saw earlier. They must have heard the shots. They stand on the road. One of them gives a half-wave that I don’t quite have the energy to decipher. I nod, but maybe we’re too far away for them to see that. For what it’s worth, they just stand there and don’t shoot us. We walk around the back and climb into our truck. Instead of the road, we drive the way we came in, over the bumpy farmer’s tracks.
“Did you think you were going to die in there?” I ask.
Justin doesn’t answer. He just turns his head away and looks out the window.
A crow flies overhead.
37→THE WHALE
“Y
ou’re looking at me differently,” she says.
“I wasn’t looking at you at all,” I respond, looking up from the book on my lap.
“That’s what I mean.”
“I’m reading a book. It’s hard to gaze upon someone wistfully when you’re trying to read one of the greatest books of all time.”
“What are you reading?”
“Moby Dick, or the Whale.”
“Which is it?”
“Huh?”
“Moby Dick or the whale?”
“It’s both. That’s the whole official title: Moby Dick, or the Whale.”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s about…”
“Fuck that. A whale, right?”
“Yeah, basically.”
Maggie rolls onto her side in the bed and faces me. Homer rolls over as well, and she rubs his belly. Maggie is pale, and the summer glow she had is fading. “So, is it as good as all that? The book?”
