Dying to Live

by Roxy De Winter

  Jeremiah spluttered as he tried to suck in a breath. Winded by the blow, he was incapable of vocalising his pain. The horse had broken free of the buggy and suddenly bolted, leaving him laid in the dirt with rain pelting down into his face. It sent shooting pains throughout his entire being when he coughed and it hurt just to breathe. The taste of iron filled his mouth and when he coughed some more, red liquid sprayed from between his lips.

  “JEREMIAH!” Ruth called.

  She had come back for him.

  She’s okay, was the last thought to reach him through the pain. He tried to express himself to her but no words came, just frothing, bubbling blood and a choked gargle.

  “Jeremiah! Please, God...” She wailed and then fell, sobbing to her knees beside him. Ruth took his head in her lap and placed a hand on her dying husband’s chest. Somehow, through his pain, he managed to move his hand and take hers. She watched as his eyes rolled backwards into his head, the whites flickering at her through his twitching eyelids. His body shook violently and then fell completely still. She sobbed for her husband, clutching the hand on hers, which was slick with blood, while her neighbours’ screams became background noise.

  Only a brief moment of mourning had passed, before the hand tightened on hers again. Her eyes opened. Her vision being blurred as it was with tears, permitted her to think that maybe she had been mistaken and he wasn’t dead.

  “Oh my...” She was cut off by a sound that left her husband’s lips but didn’t sound like him. The slippery blood on her hand allowed her to pull it quickly away from him, but the head in her lap was quicker than she was. Ruth’s husband sunk his teeth into the folds of her dress. The material tore as she yanked herself away and tumbled over. Her milky thighs were now inches from his gritted teeth and he dragged himself closer.

  Ruth’s will evaporated quickly and hopelessness overwhelmed her. She covered her face with her hands and cried.

  “I don’t care anymore!” She spluttered through her sobs and looked up into the sky. “Why, Lord? Why did you abandon us? We’re your...”

  Ruth felt the fingernails clawing down her leg and sobbed again. “We served your will, lived by your word...”

  At that moment, Jeremiah’s hands locked around her shoulders and he bit down on her throat. Ruth did not scream. In a strange moment of acceptance, she embraced her husband. The small, plain woman, who had lived the life that she thought God wanted, wrapped her arms around the man she had married and accepted her fate. She expected no heaven, but welcomed the comfort of knowing she was leaving hell.

  28.

  ‘We drove solidly through the night, stopping for nothing. The sun was beginning to rise when Lucy started getting fidgety for a pee break. At that point, I was forced to accept that I needed a break from driving too. We’d made it to the Utah state line in less than thirty minutes, although, in the dark it would have been easy to miss the indicators that it was there at all. We’d had a hold up in Cedar City, where we’d had to skirt around a few burnt out car wrecks. Other than that, it had been mostly plain sailing on the open road. I’d never been to Utah before, and during the drive through, I reflected on how painfully and monotonously boring the scenery was. Everything looked the same, field after field, stretching on forever beside the road. It had taken a little over six hours to make it from Panaca, Nevada, through the whole of Utah, to the Colorado state line. So far, we had avoided the majority of civilization. Most of the urban areas were upstate, but we were getting nervous about the best route to take from here on in. Interstate 70 was the obvious choice. This would take us all the way, from where we were, almost directly to Washington. However, we were unsure how safe it would be to take a route that led straight through Denver, a major city. Harry had also started to get himself worked up, after he saw The Centre for Disease Control on the map up in Fort Collins. He thought that it would be worth a stop off and that more people would be there. The conversation was shut down quickly but left an uncomfortable atmosphere in its wake.’

  “No,” Xin said firmly, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “But it makes sense!” Harry threw back heatedly.

  “We decided what our best chance was, Harry.” Pete put in calmly, trying to sooth the rising tensions. “We all decided together that we should follow Patient X.”

  “We didn’t exactly discuss these kinds of options, did we? How do we know that the CDC isn’t exactly where they’d take him?” Harry was as close to angry as any of them had ever seen him.

  “Because why else would we have been told about Project Seahorse?” Xin was losing her patience and trying to keep herself under control, but her response was still hurled back at him irritably.

  “We were hardly told about it! We don’t even know what it is!” Harry was now curling his hands into fists, holding tight to the sides of his jeans.

  “But we know it’s something, and it’s important,” Lucy said.

  “Even if it is, there may be people still at the CDC who can help us...” Harry was losing steam as he realised that he couldn’t win the argument, but the anger was still simmering within him. He knew he was outnumbered, but he was an officer of the law, people were supposed to listen to him. He wondered when his rank had lost all meaning. It seemed they would follow Xin into the pits of hell if she asked them to, but what credentials had they seen? What proof did they have of her skills? The CDC could house survivors who were REAL scientists. “What makes us so sure of how capable Xin is? How do we know that she can make anything better on her own?” He looked around at the others.

  Xin was unimpressed with his attitude but she tried not to take offence, it was a lot of trust that they were placing in her.

  “I would trust Xin with my life,” Pete told him sternly. “You don’t have to feel the same way, but we aren’t going anywhere that we haven’t all agreed on.”

  “We don’t have time to go anywhere else,” Xin said, her anger dissipating somewhat at Pete’s kind words. “The longer we take, the lower our chances of success are. I just know it. I don’t know why, I just know it’s true. If we got to the CDC and it was abandoned, we would have wasted precious time.”

  “But what if it wasn’t abandoned?” Harry frowned. He wasn’t sure that they weren’t missing his point.

  “Did you see the small towns back there?” Pete questioned. “Even Pioche and Ely had succumbed, and they’re small towns in the middle of nowhere. Don’t you think that the cities will all be decimated too?”

  Harry sighed. He wanted to point out that they were much closer to where the outbreak had occurred, but didn’t see the point. Instead, he just shook his head in defeat and looked away.

  “Then we keep going as we were,” Frank nodded to himself.

  The quiet that followed was awkward to say the least. Harry sat sullenly, watching the darkness outside of the window. His eyes focused solely on that, refusing to look at anybody. On the opposite bench, Xin didn’t want to look at him either. She studied Pete instead. He was picking at his fingernails, unaware of her curious wonderings about what he had said. Did he really trust her with his life? She supposed that he must. From the start, he had followed her and he continued to do so despite the inevitable dangers.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can wait before I pee myself,” Lucy said after a while. “I really need to pee.”

  “There aren’t any stops just yet,” Frank laughed. “Maybe it won’t feel so bad if you stop saying pee.”

  “At this point, I don’t care.” She said, ignoring his last remark. She could not appreciate humour in her current situation. “And I can find a bush or something.” Her eyebrows rose and she shook her head in a gesture that clearly said: ‘Duh’.

  Frank couldn’t help but laugh some more.

  He looked at her with amusement. “Who knew your bladder could make you so tetchy?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Shut up and pull over, Frank.”

  “Look, the Colorado sign is just up here, so there
’ll be some kind of area we can pull in at. Hold on for five more seconds.”

  “Five... four... three...” She chanted patronisingly.

  “Hold on, hold on!” Frank spoke over her with good-humoured panic. “Don’t piss in my car!”

  “FRANK! You’re disgusting.” She playfully hit his arm as he pulled over in front of the sign. She was already out of the car when she yelled back, “And it’s not your car!”

  “Wanna bet?” He mumbled to himself, as he shut the engine off and stroked the wheel fondly. “We’re gonna need to fill the tank up soon,” He told the others. “Hundred miles or so.”

  Andy had been asleep for the past few hours and awoke when the vehicle stopped. He was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when he told Frank that he didn’t mind taking a turn at driving.

  “I’m fine, don’t worry about it,” Frank told him with a shrug. He was growing pretty attached to the monstrous hunk of metal and wasn’t ready to give up the driver seat until he really had to.

  “C’mon, man,” Andy told him. “Take a break for a while, I won’t ding her up or anything.”

  “I doubt you could if you tried,” Lucy smiled, reappearing at the open door. “This armouring is solid.”She slapped her hand against it for emphasis.

  “Easy there,” Frank cringed. Then sarcastically he added, “Welcome back. Feeling better?”

  “Much,” she sighed happily. “Now, are you guys going to come out and see this incredible sunrise? Stretch your legs, perhaps? ...Or do you just intend to stay cooped up in there?”

  “Oh, you know,” Pete said casually. “Just waiting for Frank to finally decide to let us out.” He laughed.

  “Ah, crap. Sorry.” Frank flustered. He quickly found the button that would lower the ramp and let them out.

  There was a lot of groaning and sighs of relief when they all piled out into the dry, morning air and stretched out their aching limbs. It was still cool, but not unpleasantly so. Lucy had been right about the sunrise. The sun was only just beginning to peek over the horizon and the sky was ablaze with deep lilacs and burning pinks. The clouds hung low and beyond them the dark cerulean of the shrinking night still lingered.

  “I’d forgotten that the world could still be beautiful,” Xin said with wonder. “You could almost forget about everything else that’s happening.”

  “Yeah...” Pete said uncomfortably. “It gives me the creeps to see you all stood gawping up at it, though.”

  Hesitantly, they pulled their eyes away. Harry was maintaining his frosty demeanour and Andy ducked behind some foliage to relieve himself. Frank walked up to the sign they had parked next to. It had to be more than ten feet tall and had been made to look like a big, broken plank of wood. Over the years, tourists had adorned it with stickers and graffiti, but its huge lettering was unmistakable and proclaimed, ‘Welcome to Colorful Colorado’.

  “Seems pretty accurate to me,” Frank said. He was leant against one of the sign’s huge stone supports, which looked like someone had built them from the same rocks that were scattered around the landscape.

  “Yeah, it does,” Lucy agreed. “It makes me think that they got used to a sunrise like this every day.”

  Once everyone had paced off their numbness, Pete suggested that they have something to eat whilst they weren’t moving.

  It hadn’t been long after they’d entered Utah, that Andy had produced bottles of water from one of the boxes he had packed for them. It turned out that they contained quite a supply of food and drink. The canvas bag, they discovered, contained a pilfered crowbar, a hammer, two torches and a long butane lighter with a canister that would supply a few refills. He hadn’t taken any medical supplies, his conscience wouldn’t let him, but he’d taken a stack of cigarettes and Lucy had pocketed a carton gratefully. He’d explained to them his thoughts that the council would have been reluctant to share supplies that their own people needed. He also told them how he thought that there would be an effort to get them to stay. They were obviously well prepared and strong, whilst a lot of the people of Caliente had been sick and old. A side effect of the Nevada Test Site’s activity during the 50’s and 60’s was that the town suffered a very high cancer rate. His mother had told him once of her childhood days, when she would sit outside on the porch with her sister and they would watch huge clouds blow over from the base. His aunt had gotten throat cancer and died before he was born. A part of his heart would always be in Caliente and he hoped that the people who were left there would be safe.

  His reflections had brought back his sadness and he had willed himself to sleep just to forget. The others were left with a sense of guilt that hung in the pits of their stomachs. The attack had been brought on by their presence and the good people who had offered them a roof had paid with their lives.

  The sadness was temporarily forgotten as they tucked into beans and hotdog sausages by the roadside. The sausages were of the canned variety and heated over a small fire they had made, but were still good. They passed the tins of beans around and even Harry seemed to drop his austere behaviour with a belly full of warm food.

  Andy drained the final drips of bean juice from the last can and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “So, I’m driving, right?”

  “I guess so,” Frank said grudgingly, offering a half-hearted smile. “You better not be some crazy driver, kid.”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Frank. We all know you’re the crazy driver,” Lucy teased.

  “I’ve never driven anything this big before,” Andy commented as he hopped up into the front of the vehicle. “Hey... This seat is way comfier than those benches!”

  Lucy stopped with her foot on the step, ready to hoist herself into her usual seat. “Oh... Maybe someone else should take this one for a while then?”

  “Would anyone mind?” Harry asked. “My ass was already killing me by the time we reached Modena.”

  Lucy stepped aside and joined Frank on a bench in the back. Xin suspected that to be the reason she had sacrificed her seat so easily to begin with.

  When everyone had settled into their seats once more and the ramp had ascended behind them, Andy swung the vehicle back onto the road. Pete and Frank set about debating the best route and the girls were happy to leave them to it. Harry didn’t try to mention the CDC again, and for that, they were all grateful.

  29.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have let them out, but I just couldn’t bear to leave them all to starve and waste away. At least I gave them a fighting chance by doing what I did. I had gotten to know them all so well in the past few years and, in a strange way, they had become my family. I felt like I owed it to them. Rather than let them die as prisoners, I wanted them to have that last taste of freedom. I just didn’t think it through. It was a total bloodbath. Aman was the worst. For all of his brilliance, there were equal parts savage. It was watching him lay into poor old Dandy that broke my heart. I didn’t stop to watch for long, though. That’s right, nobody would be surprised to hear that Selena Bruce ran away. I just left them all there to kill or be killed, because I had to know Saman would be okay.’

  Selena raced her car through Langley that day. Vancouver had never had to fear her driving before, but today she was almost blind with panic. She didn’t know how she could have forgotten about them, not even spared them a thought. Selena supposed that the shock of it all had scrambled her mind. After all, she’d never thought to see her frail, elderly neighbour, Doris, naked. And she had seen her all right. Bare as a baby, with her sagging breasts and slack, wrinkled tummy all on display. Everything had been wobbling about all over the place, covered in blood, as she’d charged toward Selena. Doris hadn’t put her teeth in that morning, but she had still gnashed her gums together when Selena had stepped out of her door for work. Selena had a nervous disposition. She had been the same ever since she was a child. People had called her weak her whole life. Doris’s attack, coupled with the terrifying news reports, had kept her holed up in her apartmen
t ever since.

  However, that morning the television and radio stations had both stopped working and she’d begun to panic about what that meant. Not long after, the thought hit her that maybe everyone else had stopped going to work now too. If nobody was going to work, then who was looking after all of those poor, forgotten souls? The horror of the thought had given her courage.

  It was sheer luck that Selena made her destination at all. The journey was a blur in her mind. She abandoned her car in the lot and sprinted to the big gate, fumbling with her keys before eventually jamming the right one into the lock.

  It didn’t seem like there was anyone there other than her and that made her angry.

  “Poor things,” she mumbled to herself and pushed her way through the gate, leaving it hanging open behind her. Selena had never been fit, always more extra weight around her middle than she would have liked, but she sprinted then, as she never had before. Her heart pounded as she wound her way through the complex, before stopping at a set of bars and coming face to face with the big guy.

  “Oh, thank heavens!” She breathed, and clutched her chest. The motion was half relief and half exertion. “Saman, I’m so glad to see you! Don’t worry, I’m going to free you. I just have to let the others out first. If I let you out before them, I know you won’t let me help them.”

  Saman glared at her and she could see his fury, but she ignored it.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll come back, I promise,” Selena called over her shoulder. He roared a thundering disapproval after her, this set off the others around him, who started to call out their indignation too.

  Selena was already running back through the complex. She knew it like the back of her hand. Day in, day out she had done her rounds here. Her job had entailed making sure that everyone’s needs were met. She’d provided their meals and cleaned their living spaces, alongside any other tasks that came up. Selena had found her job rewarding. Though, she hated that any living being should be caged up for life.