He frowned. “Liddie, I’m not sure I get what kind of answer you’re looking for from me here.”
“We’ve travelled halfway across the country already. This is so far from anything else that I’ve ever done that I don’t have even the tiniest inkling what comes after that.”
“I guess I don’t either. This isn’t exactly common for either of us here. I don’t know. Maybe…find a place where I can resume something that looks like the way my life was before?”
“You can’t have your life from before. It’s gone. Just like mine. It’s not coming back.”
“Liddie, is that what this is about? Are you having regrets that you did this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. No. No, not regrets. I’m just scared.”
“I’m scared, too, if that means anything.”
Liddie nodded. She was silent for a long time, then she abruptly stood up. “Guess maybe it’s time to get some sleep. The earlier we wake up, the earlier we can start off for Laramie.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” he said. “I’ll put out the fire.”
She just nodded and went back to the van. Edward couldn’t help but think he had missed something vital in that conversation, but he didn’t know what.
Chapter Thirty
A dim part of his mind, one that was fading quickly, could still recognize the smell coming in from the open window. Brats, burning on a grill. But those words no longer had much meaning to him, and the smell was nothing more than a distraction. Other scents on the air concerned him more. Through the window he clearly caught something new, something completely unfamiliar yet so enticing at the same time, a shifting and swirling odor of honey. It was everywhere. He should have been able to detect it before, but “before” no longer had any meaning. No before and no later, just now.
The window wasn’t the only place where the scent came from. He looked around and saw something else in the room with him, something familiar in shape and thick with the sweet scent. His mind had no name for it anymore. It was just a form that moved and acted like he did. He felt an attachment to it, an urge not to leave it. He didn’t know why, nor did he care. He just knew that was the way things were.
He milled around the room, occasionally bumping into things that he no longer had names for, and the other form did the same. The sweetness from outside urged them both to join it, but they couldn’t figure out how so they just continued shambling here and there.
He soon became aware of one more odor, but this was oh so much different. This one was foreign and meaty, and it filled him with an urge to rip and shred. The other form had to notice it as well, but neither of them could find it. The smell seemed to come from behind a door, but neither of them knew how to use a door handle. So they continued that way for a long time, shambling and walking into the door and then shambling some more.
The light outside had changed by the time the door finally opened. He stood on the far side of the room from it, not even looking, but as soon as the door opened just a crack the smell grew stronger. He turned to it, and a small thing darted out and toward another door. He wasn’t fast enough to catch it, and the other form missed it as well. It went through the door, shutting the door behind it, and he could hear it babbling, saying things he couldn’t understand. Eventually the noise stopped, and there was no more scent. He shambled about some more, not concerned with the fact that he hadn’t done anything other than that all day.
Time passed. He didn’t understand that, nor was he capable of wanting to. Sometimes that small thing would come back, and he would try to catch it again, but it was always too fast. It felt familiar somehow, much in the same way the other form shambling around the room did, but this thing didn’t have the honey scent and therefore it was not something he couldn’t try eating. He was aware sometimes of hunger, and when it got truly bad he couldn’t move quite as much. Many times it got so bad he fell to the floor, unable to pull himself back up. The first time this happened, he was there for a very long time before the meat appeared in front of him. The meat was putrid and rotting, and he didn’t know how it had come to be right where he needed it, but it was enough to restore some of this strength.
The food continued coming, but only when he was at his weakest. Eventually he saw the small scampering thing place it there in front of him, then scamper away to some hiding place. He didn’t know why it did this, nor did he care. He just accepted it.
The small scampering thing didn’t stay small. He was unaware of years passing, but the thing was always there, always growing. Sometimes it would stay in the room long enough to talk to him, speaking words that meant nothing, leaving only when he tried to kill it. It began to look more and more like the other form in the room, despite its ragged clothing and skinny body. Or maybe it was because of the ragged clothing and skinny body, since the form had wasted away to little more. Somewhere in his head there was a part of him that still felt more for this thing than just the lust to rip it apart and eat its flesh, but even on the rare occasions where that part of him surfaced it didn’t stay long.
He wasn’t aware enough to realize the moment when everything was different. The time came when he was too weak to move, and the thing came in and left meat for him and the other, but it didn’t leave. As he ate and regained his strength, he heard that the sounds it made this time were so much different than normal. Crying, the old him would have known it as, but now he couldn’t recognize it. It left the door it normally used open wide and sat down on the floor between him and the other, and it had something in each hand. He didn’t know what to call them anymore, but Edward’s mind, now coming up from its dreaming memory, recognized them both. His daughter, now a young woman after having stayed with them for so long, had a bottle of whiskey in one hand in one hand and a razor blade in the other.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, or at least that was what he thought she said through the tears. “I’ve tried. I really did. All these years I thought you might come back. Shows just how fucking stupid I am.”
She took one last swig from the whiskey bottle, waited for her long-dead parents to come for her, and then, right as their stiff fingers were about to touch her flesh, she put the razor to her carotid artery and pulled it across her skin.
For the first time since the dreams had started, Edward woke screaming. But the memory didn’t fade away with sleep. The memory continued coming back to him even in full wakefulness. He felt Dana’s blood splash his skin and watched her pleading eyes as the light faded from them. She had to be in her late teens by this time, for she had developed an ample bosom just like her mother’s, and that chest stopped rising and falling as she collapsed to the ground. She’d been with them that whole time, never leaving their side, always hoping in her childish way that her parents would come back to her. She’d never left, never tried to rejoin other people. Maybe it had driven her mad. Maybe she had gone nearly feral, no longer even capable of living around anyone that wasn’t part of the walking dead. Or maybe she had just loved them too much to let them finally leave without making sure they had one more meal to keep their strength up.
“No no no no oh God no!” he screamed inside the van. Liddie was next to him, shaking him by the shoulder and telling him to wake up, it was only a dream, but he was already awake and the memory continued.
His fingers went right for the wound at her throat, where they found enough purchase under the skin to rip her throat clear off. Julia didn’t bother trying to pull off pieces but instead dropped to the floor next to their daughter’s body and bit into the face, her teeth popping Dana’s eye before pulling it from the socket and chewing. Dana still had enough life in her to try screaming at that, but all that came from the ruins of her throat was a wet gurgle. They continued eating, gorging themselves until their stomachs distended. And when it was all finally over, they both stood up and walked out the door in the direction of that sickly sweetness that had enticed them for so long. If there had been any part of them that had been aware of what th
ey were doing to their own flesh and blood, it had been unable to surface through their bloodlust.
“No no no no,” Edward continued saying, but it was no longer a scream. He’d been so loud moments earlier that his throat already felt raw, but still he continued to mutter as the tears streamed down his cheek. The memory was so horrible, so overwhelming, that he thought he could still feel Dana’s hot blood covering him. As he came back to himself, however, he realized it was nothing so horrible. Liddie had joined him on his seat, and she clutched him tightly as he rocked and shivered.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”
“No, no it’s not,” Edward said. “I killed her.”
She stopped rocking with him for a moment, then caught herself and joined him again in the gentle movements. “Who? Who did you kill?”
“Dana. I killed my Dana.” He knew that wasn’t technically true, since Dana had really been the one to take her own life, assuring that there was no way she would come back like her parents had, but it was true enough. And saying that he had killed her didn’t even feel as horrible as the truth. Simply killing his only daughter would have been the better option.
“Edward, it was just a dream.”
“No. No it wasn’t. She’s dead. She’s been dead all this time and I ate…” He couldn’t allow himself to finish. It was too much. Everything everyone had been saying about him all this time was true. He was not human. He was a monster, a disgusting thing that had no right to continue existing on this Earth. “Kill me,” he said. “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, you have to kill me now.”
“Edward, no. I won’t.”
“Kill me! I’m nothing! I’m a thing! I can’t…I don’t want to…”
“No,” she said softly. The word was so calm that it brought him back to himself a little, at least enough that he was able to look her in the eye.
“I don’t deserve to live,” he said.
“I won’t kill you, and I won’t let you hurt yourself either,” she said. “Not now, not ever.”
“But I’m a monster.”
“I never believed that, and I never will. That wasn’t you. You had no control over it. But you have control now, and I believe you’re strong enough to face it. You can go on. And I can help you, if you want me to.”
He saw that soft look in her eyes again, the same one he’d seen by the fire. She meant every word of it. She really believed. He didn’t think he’d be able to believe any of that without her.
There was no flutter in his chest this time, no anxious moment of anticipation. He moved his head toward hers, and the angle of his body against hers made the whole act clumsy, but their lips still met. Liddie was too shocked to do anything at first, but as soon as she recovered she pushed back, returning his kiss and gripping him tight to her. With her hands holding him he no longer shivered, and he moved around trying to get into a less awkward position without breaking contact. His hands brushed against her breasts, and although his first instinct was to recoil from the touch and apologize profusely he instead let them hover there, lightly touching them and enjoying the way they rose and fell against his palm. Then his hand went lower, sliding over the swell of her chest and down her stomach. Her own hands began to move lower, but they stopped just above his waist. She pulled away slightly, breaking the kiss, and spoke quietly through gasping breaths.
“Edward, are you sure you’re ready?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t want you doing this if you’re going to regret it later.”
“Later I might regret not doing it.” She nodded. He wondered idly if this was love for her. It might be. He knew it wasn’t for him, not yet, but he thought it quite easy for the day to come when it was. She wasn’t Julia, and she never would be. But she was someone just as wonderful, just as beautiful, just as strong. He didn’t deserve her. A monster like him deserved nothing. And yet somehow she disagreed. She saw the man he had once been and could be again. He pressed his hand harder against her stomach and continued down as they kissed again, and she reached for the zipper of his coveralls.
The moment was awkward as they both removed each other’s clothes. The van had seemed spacious enough earlier, but now the roof seemed lower as they bumped it taking off their shirts, and the seat felt too small to accommodate both their bodies lying down, even one on top of the other. Yet at the same time the location seemed strangely right. They’d met in one of these vans, and now they were moving to the next level in one. But that was nothing compared to how correct it felt to Edward to touch her smooth bare skin. She was warm, full of life, so much different than anything he had felt for nearly fifty years. Touching her brought home the reality she had been trying to instill in him moments earlier. She was right in that he was different. He wasn’t a lifeless monster. He had blood pumping through his veins just like her.
As they made love the time seemed to have no meaning, just like when he’d walked the planet without any real life in his body, but unlike then he could still attach meaning to the moment. It was not a perfect moment, but he knew it was what they both needed. It was what they both had to have in order to feel truly alive.
They finished with her on top, and with a deep, satisfied breath she gently let herself down to lie over him on the seat. He held her back firmly, enjoying every time her chest pressed against his from her breath. She chuckled softly for no apparent reason.
“Something funny?” he asked.
“No, not something you’d find funny at least.”
“How do you know without trying it on me?”
“Heh. Well, the thought just occurred to me that you’re pretty okay at that for someone who hasn’t practiced in fifty years.”
He chuckled too. “Better yet, think of it this way. You just made love to someone old enough to be your grandfather.”
“Ew, we’re not even going to talk about that. For all intents and purposes in my mind you’re only a few years older. Which is funny, since I’m the one who’s completely exhausted. You look like you could go again.”
He said nothing to that, instead caressing her back and enjoying the way it felt under his hand. She felt a little cold, though. Next time they would need to find themselves a blanket or something.
“Edward?” she asked. “Are you going to be okay? I mean, both about us and about, you know, what you remembered?”
“We’ll deal with any problems as they come up. Right now, are you okay?”
“I…I just feel cold, is all.”
“We should get you dressed again. We can snuggle again after that.”
“No, not yet. Don’t let…let…don’t let go…”
She started shivering against him.
“Liddie? Is something wrong?”
“Edward? Don’t let…Edward?”
“Jesus, Liddie. You’re practically shaking. Are you sure…” He looked into her eyes, knowing instantly that look. She was scared. Terrified, in fact. Somewhere among all the memories that he had recovered since waking up, something about this moment seemed familiar, but his brain wouldn’t let him face it yet.
Her chest heaved several times against him in quick succession, and then stopped.
“Liddie? Liddie, what’s going…” That mental block in his head finally moved, and he realized exactly what was happening. “No, oh God no. Liddie! Wake up! Don’t do this!”
There was nothing really for her to wake up from. Her eyes were still open, staring directly down into his, but they were unfocused, without any inner light. She moved, squirming slightly on top of him, but there was no rhythm or purpose to any of it. Her chest didn’t move, and there was no rhythmic thumping of her heart from behind her breast. But worst of all was the way she smelled, starting off small and barely noticeable but growing quickly.
Edward continued to hold her tight, calling her name softly as the van filled with the scent of honey.
Chapter Thirty One
Edward spent the rest
of the longest night of his life outside under the stars. He hadn’t been able to stay in the van. The pheromones had been so strong that he couldn’t block them out, and they mixed with the scent of lovemaking. He couldn’t stand that right now. He didn’t even bother to put his clothes back on. He simply closed the door of the van behind him, leaving her trapped until he could figure out what had to happen next.
For several hours he tried not to think of anything at all, but eventually he didn’t feel he had any choice but to go back to that horrible moment and try figuring out what had happened.
Edward went to stand next to the van and put a hand against the window. There was still some fog inside the windows from their lovemaking, but enough of it had cleared away that he could see her shape inside the dark van. Every moment he stood there he hoped something would prove that he had been mistaken, that she really wasn’t infected. Infected. That was the only word he could use to describe her right now. He didn’t dare use the Z or the R words.
She barely acknowledged him. She sat on the seat, the very same seat where they had just been loving and caressing each other, but she couldn’t quite get the posture down, like her legs didn’t want to bend and let her rest. She kept trying to rise, bumping her head on the ceiling and forcing her to plop back down. He knocked softly on the window once, hoping to get some sort of reaction to make himself believe she was still in there. She turned her head at the noise, but nothing else.
This was his fault. There was no way to deny that, but he hadn’t quite figured out how yet. Had he maybe bitten her in the heat of the moment? Possibly, although he didn’t remember that. It hadn’t even occurred to him, nor probably her, that something as simple as a love bite could be dangerous from him. He’d heard from numerous doctors that he still carried the Animator Virus, but he’d all but forgotten that his bite would then have the same effect as that of any other zombie.
The Reanimation of Edward Schuett Page 21
