by Ben Stevens
She’s going to turn... Oh dear God, she’s going to turn for sure...
Should he wait till she groaned and sat back up again, looking at her husband with that confused, hungry expression? Maybe when she hissed and sprayed saliva in his direction, Parker would find it easier to pull that trigger...
But even to see Carrie like that...
Parker’s parents had already passed away, before the plague had struck. He was an only child and he had no relatives living near him. So he’d been spared the torment of seeing any family members being consumed by the virus. Besides which, it had struck his small town (and, Parker suspected, so many others like it) almost like an afterthought; people started coughing and then those that could had tried to flee.
That was it. There’d been none of the rioting, screaming, and general chaos and lawlessness that had afflicted the big cities that had been broadcast hour-in and hour-out by every TV station until the very last one of these stations had finally closed down.
(The very last thing broadcast had been a short speech by the President, in which he’d basically reiterated what everybody who was still alive – and watching – knew already. That this was pretty much the end of mankind, and may God help us all.)
...She’s going to turn...
Parker realized that he’d already stood up from his chair beside the bed. Really, he’d not been aware of doing any such thing. An entirely automatic action. Along with the gun being placed back inside the pocket of his light jacket. His wife continuing to sleep, her breathing shallow and irregular, the fever-sweat again glistening on her face. Illuminated by the gentle light of the lamp.
Parker bent down and kissed her forehead. He was crying again.
He was still crying when he walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out of the small house.
He started walking, leaving behind the school and the house that had come with his job. Still crying. Walking, walking...
Keep walking, you fucking coward. Don’t ever stop...
Some hours later Parker found a store that had been broken into and there was still some beer left in the cooler – which was still working.
Would miracles never cease?
Parker drank until he passed out.
Maybe some things would get him while he was unconscious.
Maybe they wouldn’t.
Who gave a fuck.
Parker drank a full three glasses of red wine, while waiting for the she-thing to regain consciousness. He stood up from his chair, walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the beach on the opposite side of the road and the ocean. Sun was starting to set, now. A spectacular view. Parker staring out at it from the living-room of a multi-million dollar penthouse owned by someone who had clearly once been an international model.
Memories of George the security guard were uncomfortably stirred, as Parker stared back at the thing who was sat tied to the chair with her head slumped down by her chest. Because Parker was attempting to see past the ragged mane of hair and the boils and all the rest of it to see how this woman had once appeared.
But then – he hardly needed to. After all, she was right there in genuine human form on the front cover of that magazine that was on the glass-topped coffee table. Pouting, breathtakingly beautiful. No more than twenty-five.
But she’d become a thing like so many others, and now Parker had her tied to one of the brushed metal chairs having previously knocked her out with a large statue of a classical nude made from some sort of green stone. Waiting for her to wake up, so that he could attempt to talk to her...
What the fuck are you doing, pal? Should have just left this apartment the second you smelt that a thing was inside of it.
There was a large, hard-cover atlas on one of the shelves, along with a few other expensive-looking books. Parker got the atlas and shoved it inside his rucksack. He’d need to look at it...
After.
A groan – Parker turned his head to see the thing starting to move her head. To look up and then see him. She hissed, straining against the cut-up curtain strips keeping her tied to the chair but nothing was of any use. No matter how she tried she wouldn’t be able to get to Parker to tear out his throat with her teeth that still displayed the umpteen thousand dollars of dental work she’d received back when she’d been a top-flight international model earning...
Well, for argument’s sake, thought Parker, let’s say umpteen thousands of dollars a day...
‘Hey,’ said Parker to the model who was now a thing. ‘What’s up?’
Parker had cleaned the area on the model’s forehead where he’d struck her with the lamp. But things didn’t bleed much anyway and so now there was just an ugly tear in the dull, grey skin that was festooned with boils.
‘Sorry about the – well, hurt,’ continued Parker haltingly, awkwardly pointing up at his own forehead. He felt ridiculous, and sighed and shook his head as the thing made desperate but ultimately futile attempts to break free of her bonds.
‘Look,’ continued Parker desperately, ‘I knocked you out and then tied you to a chair because – well, because I need some information from you... That is, that I need to know how you... How you...’
Suddenly feeling all but overcome, again questioning just what the hell he was doing, Parker sat back down in the chair he’d positioned facing the thing’s own.
‘I need to know what you feel – what you think,’ said Parker then, his voice almost instinctively lowering as he stared into the thing’s sullen, red-flecked eyes. ‘Because you do think, and you do feel. I know that, now. I’ve learnt that. So it’s pointless to try and pretend otherwise.’
The last eight words were spoken virtually in a rebuke, as the thing again snarled and hissed at him, saliva spaying out almost in a mist. The breath was foul beyond description; but Parker, who’d had it breathed in his face any number of times already, was well-used to it.
‘Your name,’ persisted Parker. ‘What’s your name?’
More snarling. Naked hunger showing in the burning red eyes. Had she been in this apartment ever since she’d died, never leaving it in...
Well – years.
Parker grabbed at the magazine. Held it up so that it was directly in front of the thing’s face.
‘You see that – you see it? Just who do you think that is, eh?’
The thing barely glanced at the front cover before raising her bulging, red-flecked eyes at Parker as she continued to strain at the cut strips of curtain keeping her tied to the chair...
And then she suddenly ceased struggling. Her eyes lost their manic, starving glare as they instead slowly drifted to stare straight ahead at the cover of the magazine Parker was continuing to hold in front of its – her – face.
The hideous, grey-skinned creature with the boils and the ragged mane of blonde hair (the fringe a little stained with blood from where Parker had struck her forehead with the statue) now stared as though captivated at the sparkling, glossy image of health and beauty that had once been her...
Parker took a deep breath. Realized that he’d been getting a bit too impassioned.
‘Yeah,’ he said steadily. ‘You recognize that woman. So, your name – what was it...?’
The eyes drifted back up to Parker and he was surprised to see the hurt that was in them. Some sort of deep despair registering somewhere in that putrefied brain.
‘Sshhhnnnaaaame...’ hissed the thing in a low voice, spittle running down her chin. ‘Sscchhhhmmmy... schnaaaame...’
‘Yeah,’ said Parker again. He’d gotten pretty good at interpreting ‘thing-speak’. Had heard it often enough, anyway. ‘Your name – do you remember it?’
He was attempting to keep his thoughts entirely dispassionate. You couldn’t start feeling sorry for things; just had to treat them with cold, clinical efficiency, never hesitating even for a single damn second if it was necessary to put a bullet through one’s head.
But this thing was looking so damn dejected. Her eyes alternately
looking at the cover and then back at Parker, as though seeking...
Support of some kind?
A...
A kind word...?
Parker shook his head. His thoughts were getting ridiculous. Yet it was becoming ever-clearer each time he encountered a thing that the spitting, hissing, snarling and all the rest of it only served to disguise the fact that these creatures could still feel.
This he’d witnessed already. The red-haired thing who’d allowed him to remove the keys from George’s bloodied corpse... The two elderly things who’d shuffled into church while he’d been sat next to Father Sullivan, had occupied a pew just a couple of rows behind, and then had begun to pray...
‘It’s you!’ Parker suddenly heard himself yell, stabbing the picture of the model on the cover of the magazine with his finger. ‘It’s you.’
‘Scchhyou... schmmmeee...’ rasped the thing, her red-flecked gaze again becoming almost abstract as she stared at the picture.
‘So – your name?’ asked Parker, again taking a deep breath while attempting to obtain some sense of dispassionate, steel-like calm.
No answer – although the thing’s bitten, bloody lips (which had once comprised part of a mouth which X-million men would have fantasised about kissing) were moving, silently forming...
Words?
Parker’s brow creased with confusion, and he very nearly leant down to put his right ear close to the thing’s mouth (so to perhaps hear something) before he got a grip on himself.
‘Shit,’ he said. Then, louder – ‘Shit!’
He was losing his mind. He’d already been pretty badly bitten by a thing only recently and now – what? He’d been about to give this ex-model the chance to bite off one of his ears?
Parker walked out of the living-room and along the landing. Looked in several rooms till he found the luxurious bathroom. There were several mirrors, including one stood on some sort of ‘vanity desk’ next to the sink, a dust-covered cup still containing an encrusted tube of toothpaste and a brush.
Picking up this mirror, Parker stomped back along the hallway and into the living room. He went into the kitchen area, finding a large, sharp knife in one of the drawers below the marble breakfast bar. Carrying this, he went over to the thing and cut the strips of curtain he’d used to tie one of her arms to the chair.
It flopped free – and into the claw-like hand Parker pushed the oval mirror, having first wiped its surface relatively clean with the sleeve of his jacket.
‘There,’ said Parker then, for some reason finding it hard to catch his breath. As though he’d just made some immense physical effort, and not just walked to one of the rooms along the landing in order to find a mirror.
‘There,’ he repeated. ‘Look at yourself now, and look at how you were – before.’
With that, he put the magazine on her lap. The she-thing looked at him, her gaze now registering nothing except a certain amount of confusion twinned with...
Suspicion?
But slowly – very slowly – she raised the mirror up towards her face. Held it barely a foot away. She gazed with her reddened eyes at her reflection for some time. Absolute silence in the room. Some sense of impending dread welling in Parker’s chest. He again checked the bonds securing the thing’s waist and legs and other arm but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t any fear that she might suddenly manage to get free and attack him.
No. This strange feeling of dread, or whatever the hell it was, was far more complex than just any plain old feeling of fear concerning his own safety.
He felt that he’d...
...just done something wrong. That was it. Terribly wrong. Made a really fucking bad call and the memory of it was going to come back and haunt him just as that memory of how he’d abandoned Carrie did.
But what, exactly, have I done that’s so bad?
...The she-thing let the hand holding the mirror flop slowly towards the floor. Then her fingers (the nails long, cracked and filthy) slowly relinquished their grip on the item and it fell onto the deep, cream-colored carpet.
Her hand moved back up towards her lap, now taking the copy of the magazine and lifting it towards her once-beautiful blue eyes. They gazed at how she’d once appeared, back in those long-gone days when she’d flown around the world first-class on modelling assignments, preened and primped and pampered by a team of stylists, photographers, assistants and god knows who else paid to indulge her every caprice and to get her looking as beautiful as possible...
And now the first tear fell from one of her eyes. Her lips moved but this time she voiced what was almost a sob. Then she looked at Parker as another tear fell from her other eye. Parker momentarily cut his own gaze to the floor, as though shamed. The she-thing now appeared as wretched as any person Parker had ever seen. He’d made her darkened mind finally grasp the fact that she’d once been one of the most beautiful women on the planet – and she’d finally seen the way she appeared now...
So – well done and congrats., buddy-boy. You’ve been shown, once again, that things aren’t just those hissing, spitting creatures of nightmare that want to rip your throat out with their splintery teeth. They also have feelings and emotions and memories, if sufficiently ‘provoked’ into recalling them. And you just sufficiently ‘provoked’ a thing into doing just that – and now she’s crying, and making it appear as though things can also get themselves one severe case of the blues to boot...
So – you happy, now? Objective achieved, so to speak?
‘Look,’ Parker began, barely able to meet the thing’s flat, despairing gaze. ‘I’m sorry, I...’
‘Schhhkill... me...’ hissed the thing, quietly.
‘Wha – what?’ stammered Parker, his brain reluctantly interpreting her request just a second or so after she made it.
The thing paused; and then the muscles in her ruined, once-beautiful face tensing as though with effort, she said more slowly –
‘Kill... me...’
‘Oh shit,’ sighed Parker, as more tears escaped the thing’s eyes. Then her head fell forwards. No longer was she trying to escape the bonds keeping her tied to this chair. No longer did she appear to have any desire to consume Parker’s still-warm flesh. She was unmoving, her eyes staring down into her lap, clearly waiting for Parker to pull out a gun or hit her again, harder, with that green statue of the classical nude or –
Kill me...
Parker suddenly leant forwards and slashed at the cut-up lengths of curtain still keeping her tied to the chair. They fell down to the floor, but still the thing did not move nor even look up.
‘You’re free,’ said Parker, dropping the knife and rubbing a hand across his face. ‘You’re...’
His voice choked.
Free?
That was a sick joke. Least she’d not known who she’d once been, until Parker had rocked up in her luxury penthouse, and for reasons best known to himself had decided to remind her...
Why did you do that?
Don’t know don’t know don’t know don’t know
With these words beating out in his skull Parker fled the living-room, running along the landing and out of the apartment. Hit the internal fire-escape opposite side of the landing, taking the stairs two at a time.
Run again, buddy.
...You’re running again...
Parker followed the road that ran along beside the ocean through the night and into the early morning before he finally decided to take a look at that atlas he’d liberated from the thing’s apartment. When he did, he realized something. Seemed he wasn’t too far away from a stretch of what was basically desert – sand, rocks, cactuses and such – that was a hundred miles wide even if he crossed it at its narrowest point.
But – in crossing this desert, Parker would shave several hundred miles off his journey home. Vaguely, he recalled deliberately skirting this desert for what seemed to be a number of months before, back when he’d been busy getting drunk and crying over the fact that he’d left Carrie dying in bed.
But as wretched as Parker’s mental state had been, then, he’d still circumnavigated this sprawling desert through which cut only a couple of highways, recognizing that entering it would have most likely resulted in his death...
But now he intended to cross it. Was determined to, for it would save him months of travelling time. He was undoubtedly fitter and stronger – physically and mentally – than he’d been back when he’d been desperately trying to flee from the memory of his own cowardice. Getting so drunk at night that often he’d just passed out in the middle of the road – how the hell he’d never fallen prey to a thing, a group of hogs or some hunger-crazed animal was anyone’s guess.
Still, he had to figure out just how he actually intended to cross around one hundred miles of extremely inhospitable territory. Figured the highways (both of them) would frequently be clogged with the rusting, sand-blasted vehicles abandoned by all those poor doomed bastards who’d tried to flee from the virus – only to then discover that it could travel faster than they could, and was probably already waiting for them at their intended destination anyway.
As Parker kept walking – his eyes and ears and that mysterious sixth sense that had sort of been honed by now always, automatically alert to the slightest hint of danger – he considered his options.
...So what with the highways pretty much clogged up, Parker couldn’t drive across the desert. In fact he’d never owned nor even driven a car or motorbike anyway, so it was all pretty much academic. Looked like he’d be walking, as per normal.
But just how to tackle walking across approximately one hundred miles of virtual desert? Vaguely, Parker remembered hearing something about how walking one mile could be the equivalent of walking four in extreme heat. So better perhaps to rest up somewhere shady during the day, away from the highway, and then get back following it at night – but then, didn’t the temperature drop real drastically in desert areas...?
Guess I’m going to find out, anyway.
Also, Parker would have to ensure he brought plenty of water and food, of course. Maybe even have to find some sort of trolley to fill with all his supplies and push it along in front of him. Best shot, on a reasonably flat surface (that was, the highway, skirting around the abandoned cars and such), travelling at night, Parker figured he could manage perhaps ten miles each time. So, assuming he didn’t sprain an ankle or something (he had to remember to budget, supplies-wise, for an emergency, he realized), he’d be through and out of the desert in a little under two weeks.
