The Reaper Virus

by Nathan Barnes

  At that moment something smacked into the car right next to me. I hadn’t been that startled since getting attacked in the parking deck. Throwing all caution to the wind I turned on my light to see what manner of death had landed at my side. I squinted to shield my tired eyes from the burning light. Right away I was greeted with the heavenly sight of nylon rope looped around a black mass.

  “Grab it and come on!” Phil shouted from the darkness.

  “Oh thank God!” I yelled in response. By now there had to be some nearby undead getting very excited by this loud, teasing meal. “But is it—”

  “I tied it to the ladder. It’ll hold! Just watch out for the brick when you swing in. It just about knocked me off the rope!”

  All of a sudden I felt like I had been transported back to getting pepper sprayed in the Police Academy. That was the only other time in my life that came to mind where I had no choice in doing something that without a doubt would hurt a lot.

  “Alright just give me a second!” I shouted back.

  I pulled my “cleaning shirt” from where it was looped on the outside of the survival pack. Even though I couldn’t fully see it I knew the Kukri would be coated from recent battle. After a few seconds of wiping I pulled out my belt enough to remove the scabbard. It felt completely and utterly wrong to disarm myself. As wrong as this may have felt, I’d rather have the weapon I just about died to keep safe in the bag. Seconds later I had everything packed tight. I knew that I was being overly cautious, but at the same time I was stalling.

  It only took a moment to untie the rope from the coal anchor. Impulsively I took the end and tied it around both straps and the top handle of my pack. The way I saw it was that if I fell, it would either stop me or slow my descent. Although it was equally possible that it would just snap and I’ll die painfully. It’s always comforting to know that your immediate future will be comprised of painful, exhausting life or painful, terrifying death. Times like these prove I’m a natural optimist.

  I stepped to the steel cusp of the coal car. Reaching along the taut rope I tried to position my hands as Phil had done. While stretching my body out over the edge I looked down upon indistinguishable peril. The simple act of extending along the rope filled my body with throbbing waves of pain. If just pulling on the damn line hurt this bad then I had no idea how my life would last longer than another few minutes. Over-thinking led to uncertainty. If I didn’t step over the edge right then, I probably never would.

  Then suddenly I was flying. I stepped over the ledge and gripped with fervent effort. The pull of gravity attempted to rip me from this lifeline almost as hard as I attempted to hold on. That was when the wall came. It hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced. Force of the impact spun me around the other side of a brick column. I came to a momentary stop when my back slapped against the wall. If it hadn’t been for the cushioning of the survival pack I would have likely been knocked out the second that I bashed into the column.

  Somewhere in the background I could hear Phil yelling out for me to respond. I wanted to yell back, but breath couldn’t find its way to my lungs. It could have been my imagination, but I could swear I heard one of my ribs fully snap. I scraped my right heel against the brick desperate to gain some leverage. This debilitating strain had pushed me over the limit two-fold. The will to fight that had brought me to this unthinkable place began to acquiesce with reality. That reality was that I was less than a second away from giving it all up to the James River.

  Another scrape of my boot found an irregularity in the wall. It was enough to push up and lighten the strain on both arms. I used the slack to loop the rope around my wrist. It hurt like hell, but stabilized me enough to reach up to one of the knots Phil put in the line. Not even a minute before I was ready to give up and join the corpses drifting downstream. Now ascent was possible. I worked out a smile knowing how luck can show itself in the oddest ways. At least I think I smiled… everything hurt too fucking much to be sure.

  Thanks to the slight reprieve I’d been given I was able to get a better hold on the line. I flipped to face the slatternly wall. Ambient cool from the brick felt alarmingly good on my battered knees. Some calculated flailing allowed me to clear the far side of the column and hang directly beneath the ladder. Phil must have heard my struggle. His cries for my attention turned into muffled shouts of encouragement.

  Darkness is obscenely insidious in nature. A stray moan from another driftwood reaper worked through the babbling waves. It was impossible to tell just how high I was above the river. All I could think of was how much I did not want to get any closer. Above me I could see Phil’s outline against the dreary sky. The shadow gave the appearance of him being like a tumor attached to the wall’s silhouette. Even closer sat the ringed shape that must be the lowest rung of the ladder.

  I pulled and pulled until my left hand found the rope’s next knot. Both boots hit the wall and found a tiptoe tread. Before the world went and ended I always had interest in rappelling. The obligations of family and work never gave me enough of an opportunity to explore this interest. Now, here I was “rappelling” like my life literally depended on it. With the improved stance I was able to unravel my right hand and gain a better hold on the ghetto rigging.

  Outside I fought and strained harder than ever, but inside I was pretty sure I had lost it. Every thought laughed at me for being so out of shape. The lovely combination of vomit, fasting and forced exercise I’d been subjected to over the last few days had already taken my belt in a notch. I saw voluntary exercise and healthy eating in my future if I lived past the next few minutes.

  “Fuck!” I cursed aloud as my lower foot slipped. My left knee smacked against an unusually rough patch of mortar. I winced, knowing that my skin had just been pierced with lapidarian precision. The dirty Dickies brand pants, worn thin already, became snagged for a gut wrenching second. It didn’t occur to me at the time that yanking away from the pain would tear the pant leg, but I couldn’t care less. Any feeling of the fabric rip was lost to the cold and pain.

  Phil had heard my distress. “Are you alright?” He hollered down. Even though I hadn’t been able to say a word back to him since I swung over in kamikaze-fashion he still knew I was there. “Nathan, man, come on!”

  “I’m…” the words choked their way out at last. “I’m here! I just hate rope climbs!”

  “Jesus Christ, man! You had me scared!” Phil shouted down. Not long ago we were implementing such caution in conversation. It’s funny how adrenaline and peril negate volume concerns. As precarious as our current place may have been, we were safer from the infected there than we’d been anywhere else. “Just keep climbing. The ladder is like four or five feet up.”

  My heart sank. Four or five feet of vertical rope are the fat man’s equivalent to a mile. “Got it…” I doubt he could even hear my winded words over the roar of the water. Hell, the pounding of my heart was so loud, I could barely hear them. “I think one of my ribs is broken… I can barely breathe.”

  In the darkness above I heard Phil say, “You’ll be okay. I’ll see if I can get lower to help pull you up when you get higher.”

  “Don’t do anything that will knock you off.” Neither pain nor exertion could conceal the seriousness of these words. I gulped at the cold air and finished, “If you hear me fall just keep going.”

  “Nathan, just shut the fuck up and climb already!” His tone was ripe with implications of eye rolling.

  “Fine! Damn it!” I shouted back over what I swear was a chuckle from Phil. Then I pulled and strained. My feet kicked against the slippery brick and inched higher each time. Another knot found my grip. Then another knot in the rope filled my soul with relief. My old gym teachers would be so proud…

  I could see the ladder getting closer. Phil’s outline grew larger. The darkness still skewed perspective enough to prevent me from knowing if I’d live. After clearing another knot I was convinced it couldn’t be much farther. I released my right hand and started
to feel up along the wall. Desperately I patted around seeking the security of a rebar handle. Before I could return my grip to the rope a hand shot down and grabbed a hold of my wrist. The shadow above me was Phil reaching down from the ladder. Little did I know he had been patting his hand around for mine just as I had been searching for the bottom step.

  Night vision adapted enough for me to see his contorted reach downward. Soon we both matched a firm hold of the other. The last foot was quickly cleared with a burst of adrenaline and Phil’s help. He didn’t let go until I had both hands cemented to the ladder. “I’m good! Climb up!” I shouted.

  He let go and scaled up the wall. Every cell in my body seethed with anguish and lactic acid. I rose to each metal step anxiously. All I really wanted was to be on a horizontal surface. If there were somehow undead waiting on top of that bridge, I’d still end up falling asleep right away. The edge grew closer by the second. Time skewed from anticipation of reaching the approaching summit.

  An eternal few seconds later Phil disappeared over the edge. I hopped up the next three steps and collapsed over the top. In my haste, I had neglected to think about what I might land on above. A few feet separated the edge and first row of rail ties. My body dead weighted over just far enough for the steel rail to knock against my already battered ribs.

  The last thing I remembered was the sight of Phil grabbing hold of my shoulders and pulling me past the beam. We both fell into the safely neighboring boxes of the train tracks. I felt absurdly comfortable lying atop a railroad bridge. Who would have ever imagined that an inch on the map of infinite parallel metal lines could feel like heaven?

  I slipped out of my backpack. Blindly, I rifled through it and found an opened bottle of Gatorade. My vision was blurred and the pain blended with exhaustion. The gloomy sky swirled above. Any background noise was drowned out by the furious pounding of my heart.

  “Are you alright?” a voice panted somewhere next to me.

  My lips moved, but no words came out. The tracks felt soft and welcoming. None of this felt real.

  Phil repeated loud enough to penetrate my fog. “Are you alright?” I think I mumbled something. “NATHAN!” His volume was just short of shouting now.

  I closed my eyes and saw Sarah. She took me in her arms and gave me a tender kiss. The welcoming softness of her wavy brown hair tickled my cheek as joy returned to my heart. I felt the kids tapping my side trying to get me to pay attention to them instead of to Mommy. “Do you hear me?” Maddox was saying. “Look at me!” Calise laughed.

  Reaching his arm over the railroad tie that separated us Phil wildly tapped my leg. “Come on, Nathan! Do you hear me? Look at me!” he pleaded.

  Both my eyes were closed. Beneath my eyelids a soothing brightness showed me the smiling faces of those I love… then that light subsided and it was all black.

  Chapter 19

  Desperate Measures

  Day Ten.

  November 19th – 0020 hours:

  The haze kept me from being sure about whether my eyes were opened or closed. My brain started to compile shapes out of the darkened nonsense that filled my view. I debated the reality of my situation… that was, until awareness of the pain returned.

  “Am I dead?” I groaned. The only thing I could be sure of was how uncomfortable our resting place was and how every bit of me throbbed with pain.

  “For a little while there… I think you were.” Phil said, his tone jubilant. I found this to be alarming, only because it acted as a testament to my level of injury. Not to mention it felts like I hadn’t heard someone sound “happy” in ages.

  “Where are we? What time is it?” Even saying the words made my chest ache. I felt the bottle of Gatorade still at my side. I downed the remainder so fast you’d think I was drinking directly from the Fountain of Youth. My throat and chest enjoyed immediate relief from the re-hydrating effects of the sugary sports drink, but it became apparent that any relief experienced in my current condition just paved the way for other areas of discomfort. At that moment I was keenly aware of how cold the air felt.

  Glints of yellow light were flashing at irregular intervals from somewhere upriver, and the illumination aided my returning vision. Memories of our situation began to pop back into my subconscious as Phil replied, “We’re safe at the moment on the train bridge and if your watch is correct, the last I checked it was just past midnight.” I noticed a hint of embarrassment clouding his concern during one of the light bursts. “Sorry… I had been checking on you pretty often. Nothing would wake you up! I seriously thought you were going to die. After a little while I couldn’t take it and passed out too. I woke up about forty-five minutes ago and checked on you. While I was looking for a pulse I saw your watch and didn’t think you would mind.”

  His embarrassment disappeared when I let out a small, agonizing chuckle. “Don’t worry,” my voice became less raspy with each word. “I would have done the same thing. What the hell is that flashing light?”

  An unmoving metal track rubbed up against my filthy hair. The toe of my boot hit the other rail bending my knees to put me in an odd fetal position. This coarse box made by wooden ties and steel rails had become like a cot to my battered person. I only moved my neck enough to see Phil. Above there was no moon, no stars. The only thing that looked down upon this world now was a bleak blanket of clouds deserving of hell.

  Phil’s face shifted again towards sorrow. “It’s from the highway bridge over there.” He pointed quickly away from where I faced. “But you don’t want to look over there,” his hand and eyes dropped to our gravel bedding. “I don’t think you’ll like what you see…”

  It was the equivalent of someone teasing me with the claim of a secret, but not following the tease with anything further. The more pressing matter of my physical anguish overcame curiosity. “It doesn’t matter as long as it can’t get to us here.” I tried to sit up and failed. “Can you pass me my bag?”

  Instead of my bag he passed me a power bar. I didn’t question this action and eagerly grabbed the offering. The wrapper had thoughtfully been opened already and thus saved my aching hands. In another yellow flash I saw that Phil was eating one too. “Hope you don’t mind that I went into your stuff… I figured you’d want one if you woke up. I also thought you’d need these.” He set the travel-size bottle of gloriously pain killing liquid-gels on the wooden beam to my left. “You’d probably jack up your insides some more if you downed those with no food.” The words were muffled through chewing.

  I popped the cap and poured some into my hand without worrying about the count. Still chewing the power bar, I added the smooth capsules to the mix. They crunched and broke amongst my rapid bites. A bitter taste overcame the thickly fake peanut butter flavor of the meal bar. The awful combination didn’t deter my consumption. In seconds the mix descended my esophagus to whatever battered innards I had left. We sat in silence for a while. Thoughts of what the last day brought and anxiousness for what the new day would bring stopped any desire I felt to speak. Although I didn’t have a clue what was going through my friend’s mind, it couldn’t be far from my own thought process. After a couple of minutes Phil passed me a bottle of water, one of the last clean bottles in my pack, and encouraged me to sip. I felt some semblance of relief within minutes. The pain killers were doing their job. A moderate sense of humanity felt possible again thanks to the concentrated nutrients I had wolfed down.

  My other senses gradually started to regain functional acuity. I again recognized the never ending drone of the James River beneath us. Then I noticed another droning sound making its way through the water. At first I thought this banging sound was just my imagination.

  Before passing out all I could hear was the pounding of my heart through my temples. It reminded me of the noise complaints we routinely got about the step team practicing inside parking decks. I remembered all the irritated people claiming to be bothered by the erratic percussion of banging fists and rhythmic stomping. I tried to push myself up
to a sitting position. Phil noticed my struggle and extended his arm to help. Evidently curiosity was visible in my expression.

  He looked at me dead on and said, “I’m serious, Nathan, you don’t need to worry about what’s over there…”

  His cautionary words were ignored. Now that I was no longer completely horizontal I saw little reason not to further investigate our predicament. Every muscle was stiff. Each movement caused them to yell out in painful attention-seeking woes. I didn’t bother responding to Phil’s concern. In a few long seconds I was turned enough to look behind us.

  “What the fu…”

  Phil looked the other way. “I told you so,” he said, each word more depressed than the last.

  The Powhite Parkway Bridge was a sea of cars. Twinkling hazard lights were sprinkled around the wide girth of its concrete expanse. Such a large array of blinking lights explained the yellow strobe I’d seen. My guess was that any cars that left headlights on had lost their batteries by now, but all those just with flashers would last another day or two. A traffic jam didn’t horrify me, since I fully expected it. Rather, it was the condensed area near the bridge’s center that churned my stomach.

  It took a moment to make out what was really going on. The railroad bridge was higher up than the highway, giving me a vantage point I’d rather have done without. I could see the Greyhound bus right away. It sat stationary in the middle lane flanked by smaller cars. Something wasn’t right though… something was moving. Then I saw the shapes lit in the yellowed glare. An infected group had amassed all around the bus. I could see a cilia-like wave of arms flapping against its side. They filtered past still bumpers and debris to surround it completely.