by Tony Urban
“What if he turns into a zombie?” Someone in the crowd shouted. A flurry of murmurs followed.
Doc waved his hands in a ‘keep calm’ gesture. “I understand your fear. Your worries. And I share them. If just one of the infected dead should gain access to the Ark it could - likely would - mean the end for us all. That’s why we’ve taken precautions. This patient is not being housed in the clinic. He’s confined to a portion of the research lab where he is, I assure you, no threat.”
The chorus of murmurs slowed, then ceased. Wim couldn’t understand how they could so easily be manipulated by the man at the microphone. How did so many sheep fall under the care of this wolf?
“Yet even though we are safe, this situation could have gone dramatically different. I understand that Mr. Wagner threatened one of our own with a firearm. Harvey?”
Harvey aka Hal, stood. “That’s true, Doc. I told him that boy was dangerous and he showed me his gun and I knew I didn’t have no choice in the matter.”
Doc nodded and Hal sat. “And when they reached the gates, Mr. Wagner forced his way inside and stole the recreational vehicle belonging to Vincent Dufresne.”
Vince nodded, but didn’t speak. It didn’t matter though, Wim thought, because this wasn’t a trial, it was an inquisition.
“Mr. Wagner, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Wim considered staying silent, but as he stared into the angry and confused faces that filled the room, which peered back at him accusingly, he felt it only fair to explain himself rather than let Doc’s version of events muddy their thinking.
“I do and I’ll keep it short. Two men with whom I’ve gone on countless supply runs died yesterday. Why, Caleb was ripped in half and despite that he still came back as a zombie. I had to put him down, along with Clark and the two zombies that killed and turned them in the first place. It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen terrible things out there nor was it the first time I’ve had to use my gun to put an end to suffering. Because that’s what it is. Suffering.”
He’d hoped to find compassion in the crowd but saw none.
“And after that, while I made my way back here with the food and grain we’d all risked our lives to gather, I came upon the boy. Yes, he was sick. Yes, he might be dying. But yesterday, he was alive. And as far as I’m concerned, life still matters. Maybe it even matters more now than ever before because there’s so little of it left. But I made a choice to try to save a life and no matter what anyone here tries to say, nothing will convince me that it was the wrong choice.”
Whispers and hushed conversations spread through the crowd like a fire. Wim thought he might have won them over, or at least made them think. Maybe Doc sensed it too because he was quick to speak up.
“No one is doubting that your heart was in the right place, Mr. Wagner. But as you well know, these are dangerous days we are living through. And if we want to live, we must protect our home here at the Ark. That is why we have these walls. Why we have our rules.”
The voices stopped and all eyes were trained on Doc. Wim knew he’d lost.
“We are a community of rules. And we cannot allow anyone to flaunt them with impunity.” Doc glared at Wim. “Yes, Mr. Wagner life matters. Our lives matter. And your foolhardy attempts at being a hero put every man, woman, and child here at risk.”
Wim caught sight of Ramey, her face panicked. She went to stand and Doc somehow sensed it. He stared her down. “No one is above the rules.”
Ramey slumped back into her seat.
“That’s why the council has decided that, as punishment for his reckless actions, his use of force against Ark residents, and his wanton disregard for the safety of this community, Wim Wagner must spend one week in the box”
The murmurs, louder now, returned and that time Ramey did jump to her feet.
“A week! That’s too long!” She looked from her father to Wim. Back and forth. “Dad, he’ll die!”
Wim wanted to tell her not to argue, not to get involved, but before he could do so much as nod his head in her direction, three members of the security force grabbed him by the arms and shoulders. Wim was bigger than each of them, but three against one wasn’t much of a fight. Not that he intended to fight them anyway. Doing so would only make things worse, if worse was possible.
“Mr. Wagner brought this on himself. The decision has been made and it is final.”
As the three men dragged him toward the rear exit, Buck whispered in his ear. “Yyyy- You done it now. Gggg- Glad I ain’t you.”
Wim ignored him and saw that Phillip had retreated to the exit. As Wim was pulled past him, the cop grinned revealing almost all his oversized teeth.
“That’s a long time with no food or water. I don’t think you can do it, big fella. I think we’ll be pulling a zombie out of that box.”
Wim considered doing the right thing and keeping his mouth shut, but then decided he may as well use his words, especially since they might be some of his last. “Either way, I’ll be sure to look for you first.”
Phillip’s smile faltered and he raised his hand as if to hit him, then seemed to realize there was a roomful of people watching. Instead he leaned close enough for Wim to smell his breath.
“Just know that, after you croak in that hole, it’ll be my shoulder Ramey cries on. That bitch wants me and I’m gonna fuck her raw.”
The others dragged him away and Wim refused to look at anyone as he was shuffled out of the meeting hall, through the expanse of the courtyard, and toward the box.
Chapter Ten
Dr. Ellen Sideris leaned over the boy, who wasn’t a boy at all. “No. I’d estimate his age at sixteen. Perhaps seventeen.”
Doc peered over her shoulder and looked down. The boy was naked, revealing a body that was thin, almost undeveloped. “I would have thought younger. He doesn’t even have pubic hair.”
Sideris used a gloved hand to shift the boy’s penis from side to side. “He shaves them off.”
“You don’t say.” Doc took a closer look and saw she was correct. “Boys do that too now?”
“I’m no expert on adolescent male grooming trends, but this one does.” She pushed a scalpel into the young man’s festering, decayed flesh and sliced hunks of it free from his wounded face. Sideris kept her salt and pepper hair pulled back in a practical bun. She had small, deep-set eyes which were, at best, muddy brown in color. Her face was plain, long, and devoid of emotion, which Doc felt was her best trait aside from her intellect.
“Don’t feel obligated to devote too much of your time on this one,” he said. “He appears beyond saving.”
Sideris glanced up at him but didn’t remove the blade from the boy’s skin. “I’ve always appreciated a challenge.” Her eyes returned to the boy as she trimmed off a quarter-inch thick section of necrotic skin. Blood oozed from the wound, trickled down the contours of his head and neck, then pooled on the metal table upon which he laid.
Doc had met Sideris at a medical conference in Atlanta four years earlier where she was giving a lecture titled, ‘How Extinction Events Benefit the Planet’. What it lacked for in creativity, it made up for in substance. Afterward, he approached her in the hotel lobby and offered to buy her a drink. She requested a gin and over the next four hours they became fast friends. He didn’t reveal his plans that night. That came later, but when it did she became an eager member of the growing cabal.
“What have you been up to in that dungeon of yours?” She asked.
Doc hesitated. It was only a beat, but long enough for her to catch.
“Keeping secrets again, I see.”
Sideris was one of his closest confidants, but he wasn’t willing to divulge his plans just yet and decided to change the subject. “What do you believe happened to him? Was he attacked?”
“By a zombie? Certainly not,” Sideris said. “I suppose this could have occurred in some sort of accident, perhaps being ejected through a car windshield. But the injuries are contained to his face. I’m r
elatively certain someone did this to him.”
“Tragic. It makes you wonder just how bad things have become out there.” Doc lifted one of the boys closed eyelids. The pupil constricted under the room’s bright fluorescents.
“I’ll take him when you’re done.”
She cast a brief dismissive look his way. “If he dies?”
“Dead. Alive. I’m not particular.”
Doc thought she sneered, but pretended not to notice. He motioned to a silver bowl where she’d deposited the patient’s excised flesh. “I assume you have no further use for this?”
Sideris didn’t answer and Doc scooped up the bowl while she took out a suture needle and thread and began closing the wounds. It wasn’t a pretty job. Sideris was no plastic surgeon, but Doc didn’t think it mattered.
Chapter Eleven
Wim had no watch so he had no idea how long he’d been in the box but small cracks that had previously allowed light to spill inside had gone dark so he supposed it was five hours at least. Only 140-some to go he thought.
It was cold, but not unbearable. Not yet anyway. He debated whether he might have preferred being confined here in the heat of summer versus the cold of winter and decided the latter was for the best. In the summer, he’d have already been desperate for a drink.
Part of him thought it was a bluff. Surely, they knew he could’ve live seven days without so much as a sip of water. He thought there was a fair chance he’d be let out on the morning, a sort of early parole that came with a warning that the next time the punishment would be for real. He didn’t know if he really believed that a possibility, but the thought kept his mind at ease even as the temperatures fell and the cold metal against his back had shifted his skin from numb to a constant, throbbing buzz. He tried to alter his position, to keep himself away from the metal, but the box was too small. It’s barely bigger than a coffin, he thought, then tried to chase away that image.
He drifted to sleep sometime through the night and was awoken in the morning not by the light of day but by an explosive banging against the thin walls. He jolted into a sitting position. He’d been right after all. They were letting him out.
“Rise and shine, Wim, No sleeping on the job.”
It was Phillip’s voice, tight with angry, mocking glee. “Get your forty winks in?”
Wim knew he wasn’t getting out from Phillip’s tone. He thought about going with the silent treatment, then decided that was no fun. “Fifty, actually.”
“Oh yeah? I guess the box is probably a step up from whatever shanty shit hole you grew up in. Did you even have indoor plumbing?”
“We did. Color TV too.”
Phillip gave another smack against the metal siding and the reverberations rang through Wim’s eardrums like thunder.
“You stay awake now. I’m going to get breakfast. Pancakes, grits, and a ham steak. Might eat your helping too while I’m at it.”
Wim felt his belly tighten and give a greedy rumble. Don’t be a traitor, he told it. He’d get through this, if for no other reason than to look Phillip in the face when he got out and act as if he’s just spent a few days in the Ritz Carlton and not a box too small to stand up or turn around in.
Early on the third day, long before the sun had risen, Wim woke with a jolt that sent a searing flash of pain down the left side of his face. He’d been dreaming about zombies, about being attacked. Eaten. And in his barely awake stupor he thought he’d been bit. His hand shot to his cheek and he found wetness and when he drew back his fingers he saw the tips were stained black.
As his bearings returned, he realized he hadn’t been bit, that he was still very much alone inside the box, but he still wasn’t certain how he’d been injured. That answer came as dawn’s first bits of light seeped into the box and Wim saw a thin strip of flesh clinging to the steel wall. He knew that skin was a jigsaw piece that fit perfectly against his face and, coupled with the nonstop shivering, he solved the mystery. His face had frozen to the box through the night and his sudden movement as he escaped his nightmare had ripped the two apart like halves of heavy duty Velcro. He made a mental note to try to keep his exposed flesh to a minimum from here on out.
By the end of the day he’d completely abandoned any remnants of hope that he’d be sprung early. His throat felt like he’d swallowed a mouthful of sandpaper and every time he managed to conjure some spit, it burned like fire when he swallowed it down.
The pain sapped any hunger he’d been harboring. Even if someone had set a double decker hamburger in front of his face, he’d be afraid to eat it. He imagined his throat had shrunk to the size of a drinking straw and couldn’t even imagine trying to get anything down. It wasn’t food he wanted, it was liquid. Any liquid. He hadn’t pissed since early on day two and he knew that, if he did work up the need to go, he’d have to find a way to catch it and consume it. The thought would have nauseated him before but now he prayed for it.
Phillip’s taunts came several times a day and Wim got the feeling the man was never more than a few yards away. He let him talk but had mostly given up on responding. Tempting though it was, he thought it best to conserve his strength,
The muscles in his legs seemed to have locked up and gone limp at the same time. He tried to keep his mind occupied, to think about taking Ramey and leaving the Ark behind for good, but as the hours past, staying positive became an impossible cross to bear.
When night came and the temperatures dropped even further, he understood he was probably going to die. The thought bothered him more than he expected because there were days back on the farm, when he thought death might be a blessing as he’d go into God’s paradise and see his family again. See mama again. On many days, that sounded just fine. But things had changed. Wim didn’t want to die even though the world around him was on the edge of extinction. He wanted to live. He wanted to see what was coming and what remained.
Chapter Twelve
The recent nights had been full of tossing and turning but little sleep. Hal couldn’t stop his mind from churning the events of the last few days repeatedly. Damn, Wim, he thought. This was all his fault. But if that were true, why did Hal feel so guilty?
Wim had threatened him. He knew it by the tone of his voice but he also knew Wim wouldn’t have shot him unless Hal had tried to kill him first and maybe not even then. He worried that maybe he’d made it sound a bigger deal than it was. That it was his recollection that had sent Wim to the box where he might - probably would - die. And damn it, he didn’t want that on his conscience. He liked Wim, even if he was just about as quiet as a monk. He’d often thought the Ark could use more men like Wim and less Phillip’s. And now Wim could - would - die and he’d be responsible. He didn’t like that one bit.
I should tell someone.
But who was there to tell? No one talked to Doc unless he spoke to them first. Phillip? That was a joke. That would be like telling a bear why he should take mercy on a salmon. No, there wasn’t anyone to tell. This bed was made and all that was left was waiting to see how it ended up.
I never should have come here. It was a thought he’d had dozens of times, especially after they got word of the zombie apocalypse that was going down outside their walls. He’d initially been recruited by Doc to head construction, as Hal had overseen building a new wing onto the Cunningham/Miner Research Center. It all sounded good. He’d get to do what he loved, which was build things, and do it in one of the most beautiful damned places in the country. Maybe even the world. Sure, the hippy let’s all live in harmony nonsense they preached got a little on his nerves, but the longer he worked and was away from civilization, the more he realized he didn’t miss it. So, when they asked him to stay on permanently, an affirmative answer came quick.
They got word of the zombies from Phillip and a few other men who had gone to buy supplies. At first Hal found it hard to believe, but the look he saw on the faces of those men was impossible to fake. When the entirety of the Arks population came together for a meeting lat
er that night, Doc informed them that similar results were coming in from all across the globe. He told them that this was the type of cataclysmic event they’d been preparing for and then he said something that still gave Hal chills whenever he allowed himself to think about it.
“The world is over,” Doc told them. “Everything and everyone you knew before is gone. All that remains is the Ark.”
Hal tried again to sleep and even dozed off for a fast hour, but woke himself up coughing around the time the first light of the day began to chase away the dark. He took a few swallows of water from the glass he kept on his nightstand but that didn’t seem to help and, when the second wave hit, he had to lean forward in bed just to catch his breath. As the room slowly brightened, he saw specks of red spittle marring his bedsheets. That’s not good.
Hal wondered if it was 33 years of smoking catching up to him. He hadn’t had a cigarette since arriving at the Ark (they were on a long list of banned items) but he doubted a couple years made up for the previous decades. He thought about going to see Dr. Sideris but, truth be told, that woman gave him the creeps and he wouldn’t trust her to treat a hangnail. Well, if it was the big C, he supposed waiting a few hours, or even days wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference. He flopped back in bed, pulled the blankets over his head to block out the light and tried to fall asleep but sleep wouldn’t come.
Hal’s cough earned him a fair share of askance glances at breakfast that morning. He got so self-conscious about it that he gave up halfway through his scrambled eggs and pushed his plate aside. He wasn’t very hungry anyway.
After leaving the mess hall he made a detour which took him within twenty yards of the box. He’d pocketed a piece of bacon that he couldn’t bring himself to eat and thought maybe he’d be able to sneak it to Wim. Hal had built the box, just as he’d built most of the structures on the Ark and he knew where all the best cracks and crevices were located. But, when he was close enough to see the box, he also saw Phillip sitting Indian-style, a rifle resting in his lap. The man just sat there staring straight ahead. Like a zombie, Hal thought and almost smiled.
