Fair Haven

by Red Lagoe

  She had to get to that quarantine camp soon and know for certain if Marcus was still alive, before she made a terrible mistake with this guy.

  In a few miles, she would know if Marcus had been alive all this time. One thing she was certain about: If she found Marcus alive, he'd have some fucking explaining to do.

  23

  He’s a Rescue

  John stood outside the lobby doors with wet clothes clinging to his body. Twenty minutes sitting in the fourth floor office was not enough time to recuperate, but John was eager to get out of that dreadful building and move on. As the rainfall lightened, a greater feeling of warning seemed to settle on him. There was nobody in sight, except for the dead bodies lying in the street. Their blood had been rinsed away by the heavy rainfall.

  A brindle brown boxer dog trotted along the edge of the parking lot, and the clicking of his nails cut through the sound of the drizzling rain. Its small floppy ears perked up at the sight of John and Melody as they crossed the lot toward the tracks.

  The boxer followed behind, and John kept on guard, looking for signs of infection. Melody knelt down as the pathetic, emaciated dog got closer with his tail nub wiggling. His eyes were frightened, and his short fur was coated in filth.

  "Leave it," he told Melody, but the glare she gave him indicated that she was going to do what she wanted.

  "Hungry?" Melody whispered as the dog gyrated beside her. "Come on."

  She pat her leg for the dog to follow, and he was quick to obey her command.

  John squeezed through the gate to the tracks and knelt down to pull some jerky out of his backpack while Melody pet the dog along his protruding spine. He wiggled, dancing in circles and licking at Melody’s hand as she pet him.

  Melody looked up to John. "You've been limping. Don't think I haven't noticed."

  "Well, I do only have one leg." John smiled.

  "Do you need to rest?"

  "I'll be fine," he said and looked to the dog. "He looks sick."

  Melody scanned the boxer's entire body, feeling his ears for fever, checking for swollen lymph nodes, and palpating his abdomen. She tugged at his skin between his shoulder blades, then opened his mouth and pressed her fingers against his gums.

  "He's a little dehydrated."

  She drizzled some water out of John's camelback and let the dog lap at the stream.

  "Can we keep him?" she asked with a cheesy grin. "Don't bother answering that. I'm letting him follow along no matter what you say."

  John shook his head and laughed, "Not a good idea."

  "I don't care."

  "He could draw attention to us-"

  "Don't care," Melody spoke with the irritation of a teenager.

  "If he causes problems, we'll have to leave him."

  "You're coming with us," she said, like talking to a baby, and the dog shook his tail nub and gyrated in a circle again.

  The tracks led them over the steel rail bridge, and John's pace began to slow. The gravel crunched beneath their feet, and the dog lowered his head to growl into the woods. John and Melody heeded the dog's warning and ducked.

  A lone woman with her black hair hanging in her face, drenched to the core, stumbled between the trees. She tripped over the branches and fell into the mud, struggling to get back to her feet, unaware of John and Melody's presence.

  "Just leave her," John said, sheathing his knife and moving forward. "I'm tired of killing people today," he said. "I mean, how does a person not die after you stab them in the heart, or slice their throat? These people get injured and keep going like the wounds don't bother them.”

  “There's obviously some malfunctioning of the pain receptors along with the neurologic dysfunction."

  "Yeah, but the heart?" John scowled. "Can't live without that."

  "The brain can keep functioning for a few minutes after the heart stops,” Melody said. “Maybe Dr. Carter—though he was stabbed in the heart—maybe his brain kept driving him until it stopped getting oxygen from the blood. The heart got stabbed. He didn't feel it due to the lack of pain reception. His brain kept functioning, because it still had oxygen being delivered from the blood. I wonder if we gave him a few more minutes, for that blood to stop pumping to the brain...if he would have died. Have you shot one in the heart and then waited to see if he died eventually?"

  John looked at her like she was crazy.

  "No...I shot one of them in the heart, but when I saw him getting back to his feet, it was pretty fucking scary. So I shot him again...in the head."

  "Are you sure you got him in the heart? You didn't miss?"

  "I considered that at first—that maybe I missed. Look, I'm not so arrogant as to say that I don't miss, but...Fuck it. I don't miss."

  John walked alongside Melody, trying to take each step lightly as his prosthesis rubbed against his raw skin. Sharp pains shot through his knee, across his thigh, and into his hip with each step. The dog weaved back and forth on the tracks sniffing the ground.

  "There's got to be people—experts—working on this somewhere," she said. "CDC or something. Maybe they've got something set up at the quarantine areas."

  John's heart became heavy and his words came out with reluctance, "What if they find a cure? All those people that I've put down. What if I shot them before they could seek treatment?"

  Melody turned to him and stopped walking. "Those people...there's no cure for them. The extreme neurologic dysfunction indicates that the brain is too far gone. This is going to sound really shitty of me, but once you're symptomatic of a disease like rabies, there's no hope. If you have symptoms, you're good as dead. This disease is a hundred times worse. It transmits and presents so quickly, even a post-exposure treatment—if there was one—would be impossible to administer in time. There was nothing that could have been done for those people. That, I'm sure of."

  "A vaccine though?" John asked, with hope in his voice.

  “If this is a lyssavirus like rabies, then yeah. A vaccine is theoretically possible.”

  John, Melody, and the dog continued a casual pace along the tracks until they came to an aggregate of infected blocking their path, forcing them to go through the woods.

  While high-stepping through the mud and fallen branches, an infected man appeared ahead of them between the trees. Clothed in a three-piece suit that was coated in a layer of mud, the man tripped over branches as he traipsed along.

  John crouched down. Melody pointed out another up ahead. An obese girl—possibly a teenager—slathered in mud. A third from the left, then a fourth appeared behind them as well. Along with the movement of bodies from the highway, and the mass of infected on the tracks, they were surrounded on all sides.

  With four of the infected close by, and dozens more in the distance, Melody patted her thigh to have the dog follow closely as she and John snuck through the woods. The obese girl spotted their quick movements first and lunged toward them with a moan. With that sound, the others turned their attention.

  The dog growled but kept up with John and Melody, while they prepared to fight. John pulled his knife from the sheath and was ready to take on the obese girl up ahead, while Melody readied her bat above her shoulder for the man in the suit. The four infected scrambled toward them from all directions, tripping and falling in a chaotic shuffle toward the sound of the fat infected girl's moans.

  Then a sound more terrifying than any of it made Melody's heart stop. The dog barked. Then he barked again.

  All four of the infected maintained their direction, eager to get to the dog, while Melody and John tried to slip away. She called to him while running, but the dog stayed behind, barking at the infected and luring them closer.

  “Come on,” she whispered to him, but he fell farther behind.

  John tugged at her sleeve to keep moving.

  The mass of sick people on the tracks heard the commotion and seconds later, their bodies staggered off the tracks and seeped between the trees, after the sound of the dog barking.

  Joh
n crouched down, grabbing Melody by the wrist to get her to hide with him near some thorny bushes.

  “I don’t think they see us,” John said.

  The boxer gained at least twenty yards and let out a low toned bark again. All of the infected—the four from the woods and the horde from the tracks—were heading toward the scrawny thing.

  The dog took off, chased down by the horde. He zoomed between the trees as bodies flung themselves toward him. Many kept a slow, stumbling pace, and others sped forward in short sprints before tripping over fallen logs.

  A chaotic scramble of people swarmed toward the dog like he was a discount TV in a Black Friday sale. The infected from the highway were roused, rattling the fence between them and the woods.

  "He'll be OK," John whispered.

  John tugged on Melody's tee shirt sleeve to follow him, and they snuck away from the infected, unseen.

  Melody's eyes flooded with tears as they made their way back out to the tracks, free of the infected, heading toward the quarantine camp. Guilt lay heavy on her heart for giving up on that dog so easily.

  24

  Battling Conscience

  Marcus figured Kayla would be safe enough under the bridge for the time being. He could sneak away from her while she slept and run to the quarantine zone to seek out Melody—if she was even alive. He would find a way to get some supplies and get the hell out of town before Kayla could catch up to him and give him hell.

  His heart rate intensified as he shifted his body out from under her head, trying not to wake her. He laid her head gently down on the ground, ready to make a break for it.

  Her hair, dirty and soaking wet, was blood red against the gravel.

  As he backed away, Kayla opened her eyes and stretched. Marcus plastered a charming smile on his face and held his hand out to her.

  She looked up to him with stars in her eyes and accepted his hand, like he was some damn knight in shining armor. Stupid girl.

  Kayla picked up her busted chair leg and stepped back onto the soggy trail while the downpour eased to a light rain. Marcus was torn about the way she looked at him with such admiration. Melody never looked at him like that, not even in the beginning.

  Though it was still raining, they moved forward with the wet gravel crunching beneath Marcus's shoes. He kept a watchful eye on the woods to his left and the city to the right. Kayla kept her delicate feet in the tall grasses close to the trees, trying to avoid the rocks and jumping at every noise that she heard coming from the woods.

  After another mile of travel, they were only halfway to the school, and Marcus grew irritated with his situation. Two hours had passed since they left the lab, and at that rate, they'd be dead in no time.

  They approached a bend in the tracks and could see numerous figures a hundred yards ahead in the gray, drizzling mist. The silhouetted bodies traipsed along in the haze before them, and Marcus and Kayla crouched down to make a decision about where to go.

  "Should we go through the woods?" Kayla asked.

  "See that?" Marcus pointed to two of the infected that were deep in the wooded area.

  They would have to get off the tracks. With the highway and an unknown number of infected in the woods—and possibly nowhere to escape to—Marcus opted to go on the other side of the eight foot fence, along the backs of the buildings facing Jackson Street. The thick shrubbery and weeds along the fence could obscure them from the horde on the tracks, but they would need to be careful not to expose themselves to the infected that were wandering the streets.

  After squeezing through an opening in the fence, Kayla rushed up to the body of a woman in an olive green jumper—it was head first in the bushes. A pair of slip-on black flats were falling off of her dead feet.

  "Keep up," Marcus demanded.

  "Hold on," Kayla whispered, and she bent over to slide the shoes from the woman.

  The size nine shoes were far too big for Kayla. She was unable to pick up her feet without the shoes falling off, so she scuffed them along the gravel to catch up with Marcus, who had to decide whether or not to stop for this girl any more.

  They crossed onto the broken pavement behind Hank's Auto.

  Out front, a thin man in gray coveralls circled the lot. Tyler Marshall—Hank's son who had taken over the business. The same kid that couldn't get beer for the post-track meet bonfire. He had stayed put in Fair Haven and worked at the garage after high school. Melody always brought her car to him when there was an issue, even when they lived out in Madison. She claimed it was because she trusted him not to rip her off, but Marcus wondered if there was something more. It's not like Marcus never strayed from time to time, but never with the same person. He never got personal.

  Tyler continued to circle to the right, dragging his left foot, with his eyes focused on the ground beneath his feet. Marcus could never prove anything was ever going on between Melody and Tyler, but Melody seemed far too comfortable around him.

  Marcus felt a hint of relief when he saw Tyler staggering in circles outside the shop. He felt the corners of his mouth try to pull up in a smile, but he forced them down. At least he didn't have to worry about that asshole any more.

  They moved along the back of a small apartment complex, and a large horde of the infected were in the parking lot out front. Most of the infected were unaware of the others—staggering around without cause.

  Marcus, with what felt like a cement block in his throat, shuffled from the apartments to the next building, the Thrift Safe Storage Units, keeping a watchful eye on the infected, hoping to not be seen.

  But within the crowd, a deteriorating man with torn flesh and blackened wounds turned his gaze toward them. The man with crusty dreadlocks let his heavy shoulder pull him forward, and he stumbled their way.

  "Faster," Kayla insisted with a whisper. Despite her new corpse shoes, every step Kayla took was painful and slow.

  Marcus did as instructed, leaving Kayla limping behind, struggling to keep up.

  "Marcus," she called in a whisper, falling behind. "Not that fast."

  As she called to him, more of their grungy heads turned.

  Marcus could hear the panic in her voice, and he did everything he could to prevent himself from looking back at Kayla while she fell behind. The moaning intensified, and several bodies that were wandering aimlessly leaned in to head toward Kayla's voice.

  Marcus let his conscience run awry for a moment as Kayla lagged. She had told him to go faster. This was his chance to leave the girl. Survival of the fittest at this point. He turned back to look at her and regretted doing so.

  She hobbled with the uncomfortable urgency of a person trying not to piss themselves on the way to the bathroom. The infected man with blackened necrotic skin and gnarly dreadlocks moaned behind her. Her soaking wet clothes clung to her body, and she scuffed her feet like a little girl wearing her Mom's enormous shoes. Marcus felt sorry for the poor girl.

  He hesitated.

  "Fuck," he blurted.

  He ran back to Kayla as the dreadlocked infected man was approaching her from behind with his arm stretched out to grab her. His mouth hung open, allowing a line of drool to cascade from his lower lip, but Marcus got to her first and yanked her by the wrist.

  "Lose those shoes!" he snapped at her. “You’re faster without them.”

  He jogged toward the storage sheds as Kayla stumbled, still clinging to her chair leg. She kicked off the oversized shoes, and her socked feet scraped along the pavement. She could hardly move faster than the infected that were after her.

  More of them poured out of the alleys between the storage rows.

  Upon seeing the size of the incoming crowd, Marcus froze—his mind went blank at the sight of so many infected.

  He was almost surrounded.

  He saw familiar faces—nobody he knew by name—but townspeople that he had seen before. Maybe even some people he went to school with. Some of the infected were fast, sprinting in short spurts that sent them crashing to the ground or into
a wall. Marcus flinched as each one fell, but he remained still. His feet were anchored to the pavement.

  "Go!" Kayla screamed, but Marcus couldn't move. She pulled at his arm.

  A thin man with a maroon tee shirt gained proximity, and Marcus couldn't help but stare at his mangled face.

  Kayla's chair leg smacked against the man's jaw, making him tumble to the side. And with that, Marcus snapped out of his state of shock.

  Kayla screamed. Marcus regained his senses and started seeking shelter. He held her by her hand and ran.

  It wasn't an option, leaving her in this mass of infected. He couldn't let the poor girl be torn apart by those things.

  While running by the open rows of storage alleys of the Thrift Safe Storage Units, Marcus caught a glimpse of a door ajar.

  "Come on!"

  There were four of the infected wandering in the row of storage units that had the open door. All four leaned in, moaning and lumbering toward him together. Marcus pushed on the open door, but it was blocked by a large desk on the inside. He pushed harder, screaming and grunting to get the door open wide enough to squeeze through.

  One of the infected closed in. She was an elderly woman with white hair and varicose veins cluttering her pale legs. Her lilac nightdress soaked through from the rainfall, exposing her braless sagging breasts. She snarled and fell over in an attempt to get at them.

  Even more bodies began to filter into the alleyway, heading toward the commotion. Kayla joined Marcus, shoving against the door with all of her strength.

  The door finally budged and Marcus dove inside, flinging himself on top of the desk on the other side of the door.

  "Get in!" he screamed at her.

  She shifted her body through the crack of the door and onto the desk, wiggling inside as the infected old woman reached them.

  Marcus jabbed Kayla's chair leg at the woman's head, knocking her backwards. Marcus, heart racing and nauseated, leaned across the desk and closed the door behind them, leaving them in the dark once again.