Slowly We Rot

by Bryan Smith

  Next came the punch-up at the grocery store. He showed up for the shift with a few beers already under his belt. This wasn’t unusual behavior for the store’s young, minimum wage-earning staff. It was, in fact, a point of twisted pride. But most of his Winn-Dixie pals managed their intake better than Noah, achieving just a mild buzz for the early hours of the shift. The day of the punch-up he came in smelling like a brewery, having made no attempt to disguise his breath. Some customers complained to management and there was a confrontation. Noah decked his supervisor. That was his last day at Winn-Dixie. His father somehow managed to talk the supervisor out of pursuing charges. Noah guessed there was an exchange of money.

  His father was livid. The next few days at home were punctuated by screaming arguments. Noah fled the house in a rage after one of them and soon thereafter crashed the replacement car his father’s insurance had purchased for him. Once again, the car was totaled. This time there would be no avoiding legal trouble. There had been some damage to public property and he hadn’t been able to walk away from the wreck. He was given probation and a suspended sentence on the condition that he complete an eight week in-patient rehab. As an added incentive to stay on the straight and narrow, his father warned Noah he would be kicked out of the house and barred from returning if he ever again caught so much as a whiff of alcohol on his breath.

  And so now he found himself sitting in the waiting room at Discoveries. There were other people in the room with him, more incoming patients sitting quietly with supportive loved ones. Noah was alone. His parents hadn’t accompanied him. They were still too angry. He guessed he could understand that, especially since he was effectively here under coercion and not because it was what he wanted. And his friends from Winn-Dixie weren’t talking to him anymore. So he was on his own, unlike all these other people. He felt lonely and unloved. And now that he was sober, he couldn’t help thinking about Lisa again and wondering how things could have ended the way they did. It was unfair. The universe was conspiring against him. Or so it felt.

  He had tears in his eyes when he was summoned into the intake counselor’s office. The counselor asked him what was wrong as they took their seats, and Noah said, “I fell in love with a girl.”

  The counselor, whose name was Dwight Cook, nodded and said, “It may feel that simple to you, Noah, but in my experience, there are often underlying issues when it comes to addiction, things that go well beyond these obvious trigger episodes. In group, we’ll help you explore these issues. We’ll also introduce you to some new ways of coping with your troubles. You won’t be cured when you leave here. There’s no such thing for addicts. But we’ll do our best to help you discover a better way forward, that much I promise you.”

  Noah nodded. “I’d like that.”

  This was a lie. He’d never wanted a drink more than he did in that moment. The craving for booze only increased throughout his stay at Discoveries. He was shaking from the need for it at times, but he did his best to play the game and say the things he figured the counselors wanted to hear. In group sessions, he shared like everyone else, telling his tales of substance-related woes with the same mix of regret and self-deprecating humor that was the norm for patients at Discoveries. Noah thought he did a good job of acting the part. As far as the counselors and his fellow patients were concerned, he was a guy who’d gained some hard-earned wisdom from his experiences, one with a genuine interest in recovery.

  Lies upon lies.

  Many of his fellow patients, he soon realized, were playing the same game. They made a show of accepting the blatantly false things the others said at face value. After all, they were all in it together. Why not make things easier on each other by glossing over hard things as much as possible? The counselor leading the sessions would usually try to keep things on point and honest, but it was a difficult, close to impossible job. Noah was therefore able to float along in group without much difficulty until his fourth week at the center.

  That was when a new patient saw through his bullshit and, rather than ignoring it like everyone else, called him out on it. As usual, when it was Noah’s turn to share, the subject eventually shifted back around to Lisa. Also as usual, he took care to emphasize how young he was and how he’d been unprepared for such a crippling emotional blow, implying that his substance issues stemmed entirely from this incident and would probably go away for good if he could just finally get over her.

  The mood had been solemn as he talked, which was the norm when someone in group was ostensibly baring their soul, but this time the new patient abruptly laughed out loud after listening to Noah ramble for ten minutes.

  “You know what your real problem is, asshole?”

  The speaker was a rail-thin, hollow-cheeked guy with spiky blond hair who looked like he was somewhere in his mid-twenties. The smile curling the corners of his thin lips conveyed more malice than humor.

  Noah glanced at the group leader, hoping for a rebuke. None was forthcoming. A glint in the counselor’s eyes betrayed intense interest in what the newcomer had to say.

  When Noah didn’t reply after a long moment of tense silence, the new guy said, “I’ll tell you what your problem is. You think you’re different from the rest of us losers. We’re all just regular nobodies, but you…well, you’re just a special little snowflake. In your head, you’re the star of an epic movie based on your amazing fucking life. It’s called narcissistic personality disorder. Look it up. But the truth is there’s nothing special about you.”

  Noah’s face had turned red. His hands were shaking. “Fuck you. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The guy laughed again and shrugged. “Fuck, man. You’re not the first motherfucker to fall for some chick and get dumped. You’re one in a million. And you’re not the star of a movie. Your story is ordinary. You’re just another goddamn lying alcoholic desperately hiding behind his bullshit to avoid the truth. And the truth is that you’re just like me.” He swept his hand in a gesture meant to include the other patients assembled in the little meeting room. “You’re just like the rest of these people, so unless you’re interested in telling the truth for a change, maybe you should shut the fuck up for a while.”

  This was Noah’s introduction to Luke Garraty. The two of them would later bond and get into some trouble together post-rehab, but that was in the future, one more bitterly dark twist his life would take before the end of the world.

  After another uncomfortable silence, someone else cleared their throat and started talking, sharing a story of misery Noah would not remember later. Still stunned, he sat in his chair and stared across the circle at Luke, who stared right back at him and grinned in his unconcerned, cocky way.

  Four weeks later, Noah was discharged.

  Later that same day, he had his first post-rehab drink.

  17 .

  Noah was still lost in thoughts of the past when the sound coming from somewhere nearby finally registered, a moment of awareness that happened just in time to save his life. His head swiveled left and right before tilting upward. By then the dead thing had nearly managed to scale the median. It was teetering at the top and was on the verge of toppling over and landing on top of Noah.

  Just as the creature was tilting forward, Noah shoved himself away from the median and rolled out into the empty highway. The zombie fell over and landed with a soft thud next to Noah’s backpack, which was propped against the median. The rifle, however, was pinned beneath the zombie on the asphalt. But Noah wasn’t worried. He had other weapons within reach, including the holstered revolver at his hip and the hunting knife on his utility belt.

  He didn’t immediately act to kill the thing, instead brooding for a moment over the narrowness of yet another close call. His thoughts had been far away, but he should have detected the thing’s approach anyway. Zombies weren’t capable of stealth, which meant this one must have been somewhere nearby all along. Yet this creature could not have emerged from one of the many old cars. The people in them had di
ed several years ago. Noah guessed this thing had been dead less than a year, maybe only a few months.

  The zombie lifted its head and stared up at Noah in the usual dumb dead thing way, with nothing in its slack expression but the hunger driving it. It tried standing up, failing a few times before succeeding. When the dead thing took its first staggering step forward, Noah’s hand first drifted to the revolver. The gun would be the quickest means of eliminating the threat. His fingers brushed the weapon’s handle and lingered there a moment without closing around it. After another moment’s hesitation, an impulse made him take the big hunting knife from its sheath instead.

  He rushed at the dead thing, brushed aside the hand that made a weak attempt to grab his wrist, and slammed the thick blade deep into its temple. There was a squirt of dark blood and the zombie went rigid as the blade pierced its brain. When Noah yanked the knife out, it toppled limply to the ground. There were no death spasms or bowel evacuation, as there might have been with a freshly killed human being. It was perfectly still, evincing not even the slightest hint of recent animation. It was as if he’d cut the strings of a puppet.

  Noah sheathed the knife and frowned as he gave the thing he’d just killed a closer examination. Its flesh had been in a relatively early stage of decomposition, more like what the dead things had looked like at the outset of the plague. Other things also pointed to a more recent death. Like Noah, this dead thing had been wearing rugged clothes. A utility belt much like Noah’s own was strapped around its waist. It’d been stripped of gear. The conclusion was obvious. This was a person who’d been surviving out in the world for a long time. Noah’s mood turned somber as he realized that here was someone who had been much like him. The only difference was that this guy’s luck had finally run out.

  Noah’s brain taunted him with unsettling images of a future that seemed all too possible. He saw himself flat on his back, a newly vanquished dead thing staring sightlessly up at the sky while some other guy (or girl) sat hunched over him and wondered who he’d been when he was alive. This scenario sent a shiver of dread through him. It was too vivid, almost more like a precognitive glimpse of his real future than a product of imagination.

  A need to personalize the dead man gripped him and he knelt next to the corpse to search its pockets. He didn’t expect the search to turn up anything. In the absence of even a rudimentary post-fall civilization, there wouldn’t have been any need to carry around money or ID. Money was worthless and notifying next of kin in the event of death wasn’t possible. So Noah was surprised to find a worn leather wallet in a rear pocket.

  He opened the wallet to examine its contents. A few faded dollar bills were in the billfold. Noah initially found this puzzling, but supposed the man might have held onto the currency for reasons that had nothing to do with practicality. Maybe he’d kept them as a tangible reminder of the way things once were. The bills were all singles. Noah pulled one out and stared at the familiar green-tinged rendering of George Washington. He decided to keep the bill and pushed the rest back inside the billfold. The wallet also contained an Indiana driver’s license, a social security card, some credit cards, and pictures of a good-looking young woman who must have been the man’s wife or girlfriend.

  Noah pulled the driver’s license from its plastic slot and frowned at an image of a smiling young man who looked far too happy to be having his picture taken at the DMV. The photo conveyed a strong sense of someone who was good-natured and probably had lots of friends. His name had been Patrick Brasher and he’d been twenty-five around the time of the apocalypse. The same age Noah was now.

  He folded the wallet and tucked it back inside the dead man’s pocket. It was time to get moving again. He’d lingered too long here already. He pulled the backpack on, fastened the straps, grabbed his rifle, and started walking again. His head was on a swivel the entire time as he threaded his way through another stretch of stalled traffic, more alert than ever now for signs of zombie activity.

  The stalled traffic in the westward lanes didn’t extend as far out of the city as the jammed traffic on the city’s eastern side. The reason why soon became apparent. Noah first glimpsed the large mass of twisted, blackened wreckage after just a couple more miles of walking. From the looks of it, a massive explosion had taken out dozens of vehicles, effectively ending any hope of escape in this direction, at least for anyone using the interstate. He studied the wreckage as he got closer, determining that a tanker truck in the midst of it had jackknifed and exploded. There was little left of the vehicle, just some twisted shards in a shape suggestive of a tanker. Less obvious was whether the truck had been the cause of the destruction or had simply been collateral damage in a larger catastrophe. Either way, it seemed clear a chain reaction of explosive events had occurred. The road itself was scorched black for at least a half mile.

  Noah’s mood again turned somber as he imagined the suffering that had taken place that day. He could almost hear the anguished screams and cries of the dying in his head. An overwhelming smell of burning flesh and gasoline must have choked the air. It seemed likely that similar scenes of devastation had played out in countless other cities across the country, hell, across the globe. All of it happening while he was safely tucked away in the family’s mountain cabin.

  He was relieved when he reached the end of the stretch of blackened wreckage. As he moved past it, the depressingly vivid impressions of the long ago calamity began to drift apart. He resisted an impulse to glance back for a last look. The road ahead now was wide open on both sides and devoid of all but the occasional rusting automotive relic. There were no zombies as far as the eye could see, nor were there any obvious places where a lurking dead thing might leap out and take him by surprise.

  There would be a lot more open road between here and Chattanooga. It would take at least a few days to cover it. A western novel was tucked in a back pocket of Noah’s jeans. He took it out and flipped through the old, yellowed pages until he reached the third chapter.

  As he kept walking, he took another glance around to confirm the road was clear of zombies and other potential threats.

  And then he began to read.

  18 .

  Noah walked down the interstate and read western novels all the rest of that day and all the following day without incident. At times he passed through areas where the highway narrowed to two lanes on each side and was bordered by woods. No dead things emerged from the thickets to give him trouble. Aside from the insects that occasionally buzzed around his head, the only living things he encountered were birds perched on road signs and power lines and a dog that came out onto the highway, got a look at Noah, and promptly dashed back into the woods.

  For a time, a big black vulture seemed to track him from high overheard, its long wings describing countless circles in the sky. This was mildly unnerving. It made Noah wonder if the bird of prey knew something he didn’t. Maybe it saw him as future carrion and was waiting for him to die. After hours of this, Noah was sufficiently bothered to take a shot at the thing with his rifle. The shot missed, but it was a near enough thing to spook the vulture and send it on its way.

  Noah read three western novels during this time. The old paperbacks were short, nearly all of them under one-hundred and fifty pages. At the rate he was burning through them, he would exhaust his supply of fresh reading material sooner than he’d like. He hoped he’d be able to acquire some more books along the way, because the reading made the relentless grind of the long journey easier to bear. It kept him from being driven insane by his persistent doubts and fears about what he was doing.

  The reading also distracted him from how empty the world was. Since leaving the mountain behind he’d encountered just two zombies and no living people. The scarcity of zombies wasn’t a bad thing, obviously, but it did heighten a growing perception of being the only person left on the planet. He doubted this was true, but it sure felt that way a lot of the time. It was depressing.

  The atlas told him the next town al
ong the way was a place called Crossville, population slightly north of ten-thousand as of the 2000 census. Noah was sure the current number of living souls in the plainly-named town was roughly around zero. In its heyday, however, he figured it had possibly been just large enough to warrant the presence of at least one bookstore. Noah decided he’d check the place out when he got there. The time had come for a good foraging expedition anyway.

  Crossville was still some twenty miles distant down I-40 when Noah made this decision, far enough that he figured he wouldn’t get there until sometime the next day. In the meantime, he would read another book and keep trying not to think about the many things troubling him.

  He had gone another few miles when he began to perceive a road anomaly in the distance. At first he thought this was an optical illusion, the heat and brilliance of the sun colluding with dips and rises in the road to create a hazy impression of something wrong. Sometimes the impression would fade and leave him convinced he was seeing things, which was possibly a side effect of road weariness. But after another few miles he began to understand that the way the anomaly would sometimes seem to disappear was the real illusion. There was something seriously amiss about the road another several miles distant.

  Within about another hour he’d drawn close enough to the anomaly to discern its basic nature. It was a huge hole in the earth, a very wide one that encompassed all lanes of traffic and a fair amount of the surrounding territory. This puzzled Noah. To his knowledge, this part of Tennessee had never been prone to earthquakes of a magnitude that would cause damage this severe. That left very few obvious possibilities. If forced to guess, however, he’d put his money on a detonation of some kind, one packing even more devastating force than the tanker explosion outside Knoxville.