by Wood, Rick
Gus had to keep his resolve.
Had to smile. Talk. Be nice.
“What’s the matter?” he said cutely – or, at least, as cute as his gruff voice was able. “Come on, I know you’re enjoying it.”
Snap. Grasp. Snarl.
“Are you listening to the music? Are you?”
Groan. Moan. Glare.
“Is it nice?”
A bigger snarl, a desperate grasp, a guttural moan.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Gus said, turning away from the infected and marching to the other wall of the confined basement.
He leant his head against the damp brick.
How much longer was he going to give this?
How much longer did he have in him?
How much more could he hold back the progress of the group?
He started to give in. To understand why Desert resented him. To comprehend why they were so impatient.
This was getting ridiculous.
Pointless.
Absurd.
And they had less than a day and a half to go.
28 HOURS
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gus could feel their eyes on him, but he did not return their look. He merely sauntered into the kitchen and paused over the sink, dropping his head, closing his eyes.
He needed to get a grip on himself.
He needed to decide what the hell he was doing.
Reading to a zombie?
Playing music to a zombie?
And worst of all, getting annoyed with that zombie for not responding?
Jesus…
He huffed. Turned the tap but no water came out.
He knew that.
He knew no water would come out.
So why was he turning the tap?
“You okay?”
Gus thought that was Desert’s voice, but he could be wrong.
“Fine,” he grunted.
“You two best friends yet?”
His fists tightened around the edge of the sink, his body shaking, until he lifted his fist and exploded it into the cupboard, smashing a hole in the wood.
As if it wasn’t shitty enough, he had to put up with taunts.
He turned toward them to find their expectant stares turning cautious. Or were they worried? Or full of trepidation?
Who really gives a crap anymore?
“You got something to say,” Gus grunted, “then say it.”
Desert sighed and forced a patronising, reluctant smile to her lips.
“You don’t want me to say what I have to say.”
“No, I want you to say it. I just want you to put up with what happens to you afterwards, too.”
Desert bowed her head. Shook it. Turned to Whizzo who sat over her shoulder, his hands in tufts of his hair and looking as exasperated as he ever had.
“You’re a liability,” Desert said. “You’re losing it.”
Gus shrugged.
“And so what if I am?”
“Don’t you think we have a few pressing issues to deal with?”
Gus shook his head and began his march out of the room.
“I’m not putting up with this shit,” he declared.
“Then now what?” Desert said, her voice weakening under her forced confidence. “Continue to bury your head in the sand as World War Three begins?”
Gus let out a sinister, sarcastic chuckle, pausing in the doorway.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he said. “The world has already gone to shit.”
“Then that’s it, is it? The world’s gone and there’s nothing worth doing?”
“I am doing something.”
“Singing songs with a zombie isn’t something.”
Gus charged forward, grabbed Desert by the throat and kept charging until he reached the wall. He pinned her to it, ignoring her pathetic attempts to batter down his arm, watching her be completely helpless to his strength, relieving the aggression he’d been harnessing – this would shut her up. This would silence her. This would show her who you don’t fuck with.
“I am getting sick of your whining,” Gus said, his face an inch from Desert’s, his warm, putrid breath blowing all over her face. “I am getting sick of your moaning. I am getting sick of your general shit. You want to go fight them without me, be my fucking guest. Either way, shut the hell up.”
Gus threw her to her knees and stood back.
Desert grabbed her throat, stroking it, choking on air. Whizzo was immediately at her side, an arm around her. He helped her onto her back and leant her against the wall.
He looked up at Gus, who was still red-faced, fists clenched, panting – his wrathful eyes weakening as he began to see what he had done.
“You really are a prick,” Whizzo said.
Gus closed his eyes and dropped his head.
Maybe if he kept them closed, he wouldn’t have done that.
Stupid, stupid man.
The remaining few in the world who would still talk to him and this was what he did.
He turned to leave.
Sadie was in the doorway.
He stepped forward and she flinched back.
She looked scared, and that gave him a pain in his chest and a twist in his gut he was not expecting.
“Sadie…” he said, stepping forward again, to find her back away once more. “Sadie, I am not going to hurt you.”
She shook her head and ran to Desert’s side, where she crouched next to Whizzo, tucking her arms around Desert’s waist.
“Maybe you should go back to your friend in the basement,” Desert finally spoke, her voice hoarse as it gradually returned. “That’s who you care most about. Isn’t it?”
Gus didn’t answer.
He simply took his cue to leave the room and return to the zombie below – the creature that would not care whether he read it a book or strangled it to death.
To the only monster in this house worse than him.
22 HOURS
Chapter Thirty-Four
Gus awoke, surprised at his sleep. Though he shouldn’t have been – he was exhausted. He just never thought he’d fall asleep with one of the infected reaching for his face.
He rubbed his eyes. Leant forward. Ran his hands through his greasy hair.
He didn’t want to look at it anymore.
He was tired of the greying facial features. He was sick of the chattering teeth, or at least those that remained. He was fed up, completely, of the scabbed fingers reaching out for him, constantly, so damn constantly.
And he was most tired of being wrong.
Of knowing he had a misguided belief that this could work.
Of hurting those around him with his stubbornness that Donny could be saved.
He lifted The Ever-present. Turned it over. Ran his hands over the dusty edges, feeling the rough corners and the tattered cover.
He could begin it again.
Read it from the first word.
To the final word.
And all through again.
But what would be the point?
He took in a big breath. Held it. Kept holding it.
Then let it go.
“What am I doing…” he muttered.
He stood.
Watched the zombie some more.
It had not changed its stance since the moment he brought it in and tied it to the drain pipe. It had not flinched in his persistent determination to get to him. It had not ceased in its hunger.
And he slowly began to admit the truth to himself.
This is not going to work.
The thought turned his morose, sombre mood to that of anger, wrath, and adrenaline.
He threw the book across the room.
“Why!” he screamed.
He grabbed the infected by the throat.
“Why won’t you just–”
Just what?
What?
What was it this infected ‘just’ had to do?
He let its throat go, but only so he could retract
his fist and lunge it through the stale jaw. It dislocated from the rest of its face, suffering from the gradual decay of its weakening body.
It was still not deterred.
He punched it again, exposing a cheek bone.
And again, bending its nose to the side.
Still, it persisted.
He kicked a nearby box.
Threw the chair across the room, gaining no satisfaction from its collapsing into various pieces of battered wood.
“Argh!” he growled, shouting, his throat growing rough and his voice breaking under his frustration.
Donny…
No!
No, no, no!
Donny had to be saved!
He ran back to the zombie and punched it in the gut.
“Why won’t you feel?”
He swung his elbow against the back of its head.
“Why won’t you react?”
He kicked its leg out. It fell to a crumpled mess on the floor, then pushed itself up and resumed its hungry reaching.
Gus fell to his knees. Tucked his head beneath his hands.
He refused to sob, but sobbed anyway.
Denial left the basement.
Realisation overcame the dark, dank smell of death and damp.
He finally admitted it.
Donny was going to have to die.
BEFORE
Chapter Thirty-Five
The broken springs and wires of the mattress dug into the bones of Gus’s back.
But it was all he deserved.
He flicked through the pages of The Ever-present like it meant something.
He even read a few of the pages aloud, as if his daughter was next to him. Curled into the curve of his arm, her head resting on his chest, falling asleep but refusing to not be awake.
But she wasn’t.
And he no longer felt the pain. He felt numb.
And that made him hate himself even more.
He did not want to lose the pain. He did not want to ignore the agony, or reject the despair – as, if he did that, it would be like they were never alive.
The pain was what kept them fresh; what meant they still lived, and the memory stayed strong.
If he died, no one would ever know his family had once lived.
That was the one thing stopping him from taking the gun he’d left haphazardly on the floor atop a pile of dirty t-shirts and doing what temptation called him to do every damn day.
He would end it at some point.
But he wanted to remember them first.
Of course, there was the possibility of heaven. If zombies could exist, so could God. He could slit his wrists and walk into the afterlife like it was a leisurely Sunday afternoon stroll to the park.
But, knowing his luck, heaven was what he always thought it was – utter shite.
He wouldn’t die and go to an afterlife. No god would be there to take care of him. There’d be no reuniting with his family.
Everything would just stop.
End.
Nada.
Finito.
Done.
And that would be his legacy. The beautiful entry of death and his morbid exit from existence.
He closed his eyes and they were there. His wife’s divine scent lingering over him as her hair brushed against his face. Straddling. Ready to take him to the place only she could.
But he opened his eyes and it was all a lie.
Laney was there. Begging for him to read the book, pulling on his hand, her hands so small against his.
But she wasn’t there.
It was a lie.
There was nothing pulling on his hand. It was just the power of his imagination and the strength of his pain.
He opened the book.
What purpose did this book have now?
Why did he keep it?
Because he hoped to read it to Laney again one day?
So stupid.
It was as if, by letting that book fall out the window or fly onto a fire, he’d be removing all possibility of seeing her eager eyes light up as he read it once more.
This book no longer had a function.
He no longer had a function.
The world was ending and he didn’t care.
He wished himself dead. Wished himself back to his family.
But he knew it was pointless.
All of it was pointless.
He dropped the book on the floor, hoping it would one day save someone else’s life.
But it wouldn’t.
It was just a book.
It was not his daughter.
21 HOURS
Chapter Thirty-Six
A shameful trudge up the stairs was to precede what Gus had always refused to give.
An apology.
Even his wife had come to terms with Gus’s lack of requests for forgiveness. It wasn’t that he never felt remorse, but that he could never utter the words I’m sorry, as if there was some kind of weakness in them, as if his stubbornness wouldn’t allow him to feel the shame that those words would bring.
He understood the cautious looks directed his way as he entered the room; though Desert’s look was beyond cautious, even beyond resentful – it was scalding, wrathful, eyes of searing hatred.
Fair enough, he supposed.
In her position he would do more than glare.
He went to apologise then didn’t. It was more difficult than he was prepared to admit. In the end, he gave a huff, closed his eyes, and just came out with it.
“I’m sorry.”
He waited for the words to settle like dust after a bomb, then opened his eyes to find the looks his way had yet to change.
“You were right,” he told Desert. “You were. I get that now. Donny, he… he can’t be saved.”
“Your friend not being friendly with you?” Desert snapped. “Your friend not–”
“Don’t taunt me or I’ll feed you to him.”
Gus sighed as soon as he’d said it. He shouldn’t expect any other reaction. He knew his apology was far from over, and this didn’t help.
“It just… Donny was…”
“We’ve all lost friends, Gus,” Whizzo interjected.
“Donny was more than just a friend. Donny was the one who showed me what it was to live. To care about something again.”
Sadie emerged into the room.
“You both were,” Gus told her.
He gave a weak smile, a hopeful smile that she would approach him. She did, though slowly, and he held out an arm for her. She tucked under the arm and rested her head in the curve beneath his shoulder, then reluctantly placed her arms around his waist.
“I’m sorry, Sadie,” Gus whispered.
Now that was an apology that wasn’t difficult.
Sadie was never someone he’d be content with upsetting, whether directly or indirectly.
She was as good a saviour to him as Donny was.
“So what do we do now?” Desert said, an air of scepticism inevitably remaining.
Gus shrugged and turned to Whizzo.
“Have we got anything we can use?” he asked. “Any ideas?”
Whizzo shook his head.
“How long have we got?”
“I’d estimate at less than a day.”
Gus dropped his head. What a liability he’d been. He’d ruined their chances by remaining on his own useless mission, adamant that the impossible could be done.
“I don’t know what to do,” Gus admitted. “I don’t. Is there anything we actually can do?”
“Bomb the place?” Desert suggested.
Gus flinched, instinctively rejecting the idea in case harm came to Donny. Then he told himself he was going to have to overcome that.
“There’s no way we could find that kind of bomb power in such little time,” Gus said.
“What are we going to do about the thing in the basement?” Whizzo said.
Gus nodded. Yeah, he guessed that thing was going to have to go.
“
Why don’t you do it?” Gus said. “It’ll be good for you to take one down. It’s tied up, you’ll be fine.”
Whizzo looked between Desert and Gus, fearful and wide-eyed.
Desert handed him her large hunter’s knife.
“Okay,” he said, his voice higher pitched than he intended. “Okay, I can do this.”
He stood. Composed himself. Edged warily to the basement, pausing outside the door.
He opened the door and his footsteps were heard tapping down the stairs.
But no snarls. No groans.
Maybe the thing had starved to death already.
Gus stepped toward Desert. In an overwhelming surge of bravery, he held a hand out, offering it to her for the handshake.
She looked at it like he was offering her shit on toast.
“Come on,” Gus urged her. “I’ve admitted I was wrong. Don’t make this any harder.”
“Any harder? Do you realise–”
“I do. Please.”
She sighed. Held a limp hand out and gave a weak handshake.
“Thank you,” Gus said. “Now, any idea on–”
“Guys!” Whizzo’s voice called out.
Gus immediately grabbed a gun from the counter behind him, ready to run to Whizzo’s aid.
“Guys, you might want to come and see this!”
But Whizzo’s voice wasn’t scared, wary or frightened.
It was confused and hopeful.
With an odd glance at one another, Gus, Desert and Sadie ran to the basement and down the stairs.
When they were at Whizzo’s side, they marvelled at a sight that they never thought they’d see.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Stunned, dumb disbelief greeted the sight of a dormant zombie, as placid as a curious child.
Its jaws no longer snapped, its hands no longer reached, and its mouth no longer groaned.
It just stood, idle, as if it didn’t know what to do. Sniffing The Ever-present. Looking around at the room, searching for something but never finding it.
“What the…” Desert’s voice muttered.
