Dying to Live

by Roxy De Winter

  “We couldn’t drive without the lights on. We think that that, combined with the fire and the noise back in Caliente, must have drawn them all out.”

  Xin tried to blink away the confusion of her short-lived nap. She couldn’t quite remember closing her eyes, but she couldn’t have been out for long at all. One minute the guys had been leaning over a map that Andy had produced, talking about the best route to Washington DC and the next, she was opening her eyes here in the next town. Panaca was barely a fifteen-minute drive from Caliente. She recalled hearing this in a conversation she had listened in on at the bar.

  “Xin, are you alright? You look... Scared,” Pete questioned her. Her hands rose to the side of her face to twine nervously into her hair. The missing length still caught her unawares as she curled and uncurled her hands in the tangle.

  “I can’t make sense of it,” Xin murmured.

  “Make sense of what?” Pete frowned.

  “It’s still... here,” Xin said, and then she shook her head. “Well, no. It isn’t, but it’s in my head somehow.”

  “What is?” Lucy asked from the front of the typhoon.

  “Whatever it was. The alien,” Xin said, closing her eyes.

  Pete leaned forwards in his seat opposite her. “What do you mean, Xin? In your head, how?”

  “I wasn’t even tired,” Xin sighed, opening her eyes and looking into his. Concern was etched there on his face, along with the confusion of what she was saying. “I don’t think I fell asleep. I think it wanted me to hear it.”

  “You mean... like, it spoke to you?” Lucy asked, glancing at Frank, who looked up from the bodies he was rolling the vehicle over and then quickly back.

  “I don’t know. I told you, it doesn’t really speak and it is hard to describe, but it’s telling us to hurry. We need to get there quicker.”

  Andy pulled his gun back into the car and dropped onto a seat looking taken aback. “Alien?” He asked.

  “I guess we forgot to mention that, huh?” Frank said from up front, putting his foot down a little and finally breaking free from the last of the throng. “They’re real, before you ask.”

  Andy shut his mouth quickly, then opened it again, “...And they use mind control?”

  Nobody answered him right away, they all looked to Xin.

  “I don’t know if it is mind control. I think if it wanted to, it probably could control my mind, but this feels less invasive. It’s like it’s just... trying to help? I’m not sure. We just need to hurry,” Xin said.

  “So, would I be right in thinking that this... Alien, is the reason we’re going to Washington?” Andy asked.

  “That’s right,” Pete nodded. “But we don’t know what will be waiting there, or exactly whereabouts in Washington it will be.”

  “That sounds...” Andy floundered for a word.

  “It doesn’t sound like the world’s best plan, I know,” Xin smiled at him. Andy laughed, his face brightening as he momentarily forgot about his loss, before lapsing back as the memory re-entered his thoughts.

  “I’m not judging anyway,” He told her, holding his hands up innocently.

  “I’m sure you weren’t, it didn’t sound that way. Don’t worry,” Xin smiled again.

  “Well, however it sounds, it’s not a bad plan,” Lucy chimed in. “It’s definitely something to work with. Besides, if Xin is right maybe we’ll know where to head by the time we get closer.”

  “What do you mean?” Xin asked her.

  “Well, the... let’s call them dreams for want of a better word. You said the alien has something to do with them and that it’s helping us. Maybe it will show you where to go before then,” Lucy shrugged.

  “Maybe,” Xin considered. “Although, I’m not altogether comfortable with the idea. It doesn’t feel threatening but I don’t like how much focus there is on me, even if it is useful. I’m constantly wondering why. It leaves me with such a migraine too,” she added, rubbing her head.

  “Well, even normal dreams aren’t a walk in the park anymore. Not for me anyway,” Harry put in, sitting down from the gun port where he had been watching for stragglers. “Most nights they’re nightmares. The only good dreams I have are the ones where I wake up before I have to see myself die.”

  Pete looked uncomfortable with the new topic of conversation, which was strange considering that he was usually fine with talking about anything at all. Xin noticed this. She was reminded of the look on his face as they’d left the bathroom back at the base. That had also happened directly after a conversation about a dream she’d had.

  The others continued the conversation, comparing their stories and bringing Andy up to speed with exactly what the alien had to do with things, whilst Pete leaned back, focusing very hard on the roof of their vehicle. Xin didn’t follow the conversation for very long after that.

  She was watching Pete. There was definitely something on his mind and she wanted to ask him what it was, but maybe it was something he wouldn’t want to discuss in front of the whole group. As she watched him, his gaze dropped from the roof. His eyes paused on the way to their intended destination, capturing Xin’s scrutiny. He cocked his head at her with his brow slightly furrowed, silently questioning what was wrong. Xin looked purposefully at the others sat around them in the truck, then back to him. He understood her meaning and shrugged. Maybe the others should know.

  “So, what is it?” Xin asked him quietly. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Who says anything is bothering me?” He smiled, but even he could feel how forced it was, and Xin wasn’t fooled.

  “Oh, come off it. It has been twice now that you have acted strangely when dreams have been mentioned,” Xin told him, noticing that the others had broken off their conversation and were now looking at them. “I caught the expression on your face when I told you about my dream, and then again just now. You’re a terrible liar.”

  Pete didn’t want to deny it, and he couldn’t. He knew he hadn’t really been acting like himself recently, so the others were bound to notice it eventually. He hadn’t been able to feel at ease and it wasn’t because of the zombies they were battling daily, or the trip they were taking. It was since he had discovered that he and Xin had experienced the same dream. A dream he had continued to have every night since then. Every time dreams were mentioned from that point onwards, he viewed them with a different significance and it worried him.

  “You’re right, I’m sorry,” Pete apologised, rubbing a hand through his overgrown flaxen curls.

  “S’up?” Frank questioned, watching through the rear-view mirror.

  “I just think there may be more to the dreams we’re experiencing recently. I know it sounds...” He hesitated. “Well, I guess it doesn’t sound as crazy as it should, considering everything else we believe...” Pete was fumbling for words that didn’t want to come. “Not that I’m saying that... Wow, I’m really not doing a good job of this.”

  “Pete, just take a breath. Think about what you want to say and then explain it to us,” Xin told him patiently.

  He did as he was told, but it didn’t help him untangle the knotted twine of thoughts in his head.

  “I don’t know what I mean. I don’t know what any of it means. I just know that... I believe that you and I had the same dream. I don’t think that could have happened by coincidence.” Pete divulged this with one exhaling breath. Xin’s eyes widened in surprise. Pete considered that her widened eyes were reminiscent of a deer, startled in the headlights of oncoming traffic. He hoped that the aftermath of his revelation wouldn’t deliver quite the same impact. After all, if those dreams did have a prophetic meaning of some kind, it was surely the same death sentence as the car hurtling at the deer.

  Harry visibly shrunk in his seat, worry chiselled onto his features.

  “But, I die in every single one of my dreams,” He gulped. “They surely aren’t anything more than a subconscious expression of our anxieties... Right?”

  Nobody had chance to do more
than look in his direction before Lucy chimed in.

  “What was the dream?”

  “Well, it’s different every night...” Harry started.

  “Not yours, Harry.” She looked apologetically at him but her face also had a serious edge to it. “The dream you guys shared.”

  “Well, all that Xin mentioned about hers was that something was wrong with the sky and she woke up feeling helpless. So I don’t know for sure,” Pete felt a little embarrassed. “But in mine you were... all there.” He tried not to glance at Harry as he said this. Harry hadn’t been there, but the guy didn’t need any more reasons to worry about his mortality so he kept this detail to himself. “You were all fixated on the sky. I was trying to get your attention and make you look away or acknowledge me, but you wouldn’t. When I finally looked at the sky, I woke up. I had that same feeling afterwards, though. This insane sense of doom and gloom, that everything was ending.”

  Lucy’s face maintained the straight edge of gravity, as she turned in her seat to focus better on Xin.

  “What about yours?” she asked.

  Xin was still looking at Pete, contemplating what this could mean. It took her a moment to reply.

  “I can’t be any more specific than what Pete’s already said,” She replied. “I’ve had the dream a couple of times and disregarded it. I thought it was just a normal dream. When I wake up, all I remember is that I was staring into the sky and something wasn’t right. I never remember what it was that was wrong or what it was that I was seeing,” She concluded, brow furrowed with confusion.

  “Huh...” Lucy frowned, her cheek pressed against the seat she was craning around.

  “So... What?” Frank asked, trying to keep his eyes on the road. “What could it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Pete shrugged. He was concerned, though, and it was a feeling that nagged at him. “But if this being is communicating with Xin at times when she isn’t fully conscious, who knows how far its influence can reach.”

  Following their discussion, the minutes ticked away in thoughtful silence. The car ploughed through the darkness, occasionally illuminating a distant figure staggering at the sight of the headlights. The car was past them long before any of them could actually catch up.

  The silence stretched out, but Lucy still peered around from her seat, thoughtful and observing. No conclusions immediately struck them but every so often, someone would open their mouth to speak, then reconsider and shut it again.

  After a while, Lucy spoke up quietly.

  “I’ve had the dream too...”

  27.

  ‘Those who lived simple lives, the God-fearing people whose commitment and dedication to God had never once wavered, expected to be spared. They believed that God blesses those who are humble and that the meek would inherit the earth. I believed that too. The truth divided my community straight through the middle when the plague began. When God’s punishment came, it turned out that even the pure and righteous would not be spared. The bishop told us that if we were without sin, we need not fear. That those who were claimed by his wrath were wicked and being rightfully purged from this earth. He insisted that we had but to trust in God’s plan. A rift formed between those who agreed with this, and those who questioned what sin could justify the loss of so many upstanding members within our community. I’m Jeremiah, and the truth is that even the devoutness of the Amish could not save us.’

  “Jeremiah, I really think we should go and pray with the others,” his wife urged him, as she laid a plate down at the table in front of him. He barely even glanced down at the mashed potato and beef that she had slaved away to prepare for him.

  “We aren’t welcome there,” He told her. He looked up and saw the unease on her face, before tucking into the food she had presented. “They want to shun us for believing that Isaac Fishers wife and children never sinned a day in their lives. We don’t need to repent for believing that our merciful God wouldn’t take unshooldich kinner.”

  “Those innocent children, and Isaac’s wife for that matter, are seated at God’s side now. We shouldn’t argue over why,” Ruth told him. She hated to argue, but she also hated their exclusion from the community. She smoothed down her plain, ankle length dress, just to occupy her hands as she stood there.

  “Ruth, Isaac’s family aren’t seated in heaven. They’re clawing around in his barn, whilst he’s laid up in bed nursing the bite wounds they gave him.” Jeremiah chewed up a mouthful of the overdone beef. “It’s a good job he had the sense put them there when they got back from the market. He said they fell out of the buggy and decided to attack each other.”

  “Those animals aren’t Miriam and the kids! And well you know it!” She said testily. “You heard Isaac, he said he saw Betsy die with his own eyes.”

  “Well, it seems that God sent her back, since she latched onto his arm not long after that,” He retorted. “Tell me this, Ruth. If she’s in heaven, then what in hell is possessing her body?”

  “You mind your language, Jeremiah. The devil sends his demons. This is all his work. God would not do this to our community. We’re good folk,” she rebuked. “We need to pray.”

  “Well, go and pray then, woman. Don’t expect me to come along and repent with you, though. I’m beginning to think that everything we were taught was wrong anyway.” Jeremiah dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

  “I hope that you can be forgiven for this, Jeremiah,” she said dramatically, before storming from their modest kitchen.

  He heard the front door slam behind her as she left, and heard the patter of her feet over the porch before they hit the dirt beyond. Jeremiah hoped that her prayers would save her from this pestilence. He knew that if they didn’t, her teachings would prevent her from defending herself. Most of his neighbours and friends were doomed by their own passivity and he knew that.

  Jeremiah put his fork down, his appetite gone. He rose from the table, leaving his plate abandoned on the naked wood. There was no longer any part of him that wanted to pray. He had looked in on Isaac himself and seen what his own family had done to him. Those good people, whom he had known all his life, and the kids he’d watched grow up, were all warped now. But by what? He no longer had an explanation.

  A ghastly scream pierced the air. It came from outside and was followed by an unnatural silence. Then he heard his name, shrieked fearfully alongside calls for help. Jeremiah didn’t even pause to put on his hat. He ran through their plain living room and outside onto the porch.

  Ruth had made it halfway down the lane, just past the Troyer’s house.

  “Hilf mich! Jeremiah, hilf mich!” She wailed, scrambling backwards on the ground. Ruth was desperately backing away from a reaching figure. Her feet kept getting caught up in the length of her dress and her white covering was lopsided on her head. “HELP!” She called indignantly.

  Jeremiah recovered himself quickly and rushed swiftly to her side. He grabbed at the shoulders of the man who was lurching nearer to his wife. Ruth’s screams caught the attention of a horse drawn buggy at the end of the lane and its driver jumped out to assist. As Jeremiah pulled the man away from his wife, he realised that it was Isaac. He had been hard to recognise from behind, wearing merely his one piece undergarments, with his bald head on show.

  “Isaac, what is wrong with you? What are you...” His words became a scream of pain, as the man sunk his teeth into the flesh between Jeremiah’s thumb and index finger. “Let go of me!” He howled, trying to shove his attacker away. Hot, sticky blood trickled over his hand but the teeth did not yield. “GET OFF!”

  The driver of the buggy made it to the top of the lane, but Jeremiah didn’t look up. Isaac still clung to his hand.

  “Isaac, you let that man go! Violence is not tolerated in this community.” The voice rang out, clearly that of the bishop. “I was coming to see you and...”

  He stopped speaking when Isaac swung his head around to face him, taking Jeremiahs index finger clean off and clutching it between his
teeth. Horror washed over the bishop’s features and it was surprising that he wasn’t sick. Jeremiah clenched his teeth against the pain and Ruth gasped, her hands flurrying up to her mouth.

  “Jeremiah...” Ruth’s voice was a mere whisper as she crawled towards him.

  “Run, Ruth!” Her husband instructed firmly. “Just run. Go to the phone and get help.” His hand was gushing blood, which dripped in steady droplets onto the dry dirt. Ruth did as he bade and bolted for the communal phone. The bishop still stood speechless. Isaac was no longer occupied with the finger and levelled his gaze at him.

  “We have to restrain him!” Jeremiah told the bishop urgently. The man looked panic-stricken and then turned tail. He ran blindly into the cornfield on the left hand side of the lane and disappeared into the stalks. This seemed to entice Isaac who, instead of turning on Jeremiah, lumbered off after the bishop.

  Jeremiah sighed with relief and stumbled towards the end of the lane. He hoped he could make it to the horse and buggy and then ride after his wife. His wound poured a trail behind him and he felt faint, but he staggered onward down the road. Screams chorused back to him from beyond the field and he turned his head towards it, praying that none of them were Ruth. He couldn’t see anything through the corn and knew better than to beat his way through it. Instead, he carried on in the direction of the buggy. The horse was becoming visibly agitated by the noises, snorting and stamping its feet in the dirt, kicking up clouds of dry dust.

  “Easy... Easy,” he soothed weakly as he drew closer. His strength left him as he reached out to touch the distressed horse. His legs buckled beneath him. He collapsed at the animal’s feet as the first drops of rain fell, accompanied by a sudden clash of thunder. The combination of events startled the horse, which reared upwards. It became a towering giant as it loomed above him. The metal shoes on its hooves glistened briefly, before he saw them come crashing down upon him. A hoof struck him agonisingly on the shoulder and he rolled involuntarily onto his back in pain. His eyes were squeezed shut, so he didn’t see the hooves coming a second time. Another clap of thunder rang out as the second blow rained down on his stomach.