by T. S. Ward
He laughs. “Least you’ll transition into this easier than the rest of us.”
“I swear I’d be normal if I wasn’t so goddamn bored all the time. So I doubt there’s any truth to that. I’m just halfway closer to completely losing it.”
I manage to get myself on my feet with some forced effort, and start walking towards the stairs.
I talk the whole time I’m walking up them, not even sure if he’s hearing me. “You know, I ain’t seen any of this shit. You could be lying to me about all of it. But I’ve got nothing against living like a homeless squatter stealing shit to live, avoiding taxes and stupid ass fines for continuing to be alive. Nothing against living free and freely living and just talking for no reason other than to hide the fact that I ain’t got no idea what the hell is going on, and I’m a little uneasy about this whole situation. And ho-ly shit am I tired.”
—
I haven’t slept in a proper bed in a year and eight days. Hospital beds are uncomfortable as all hell. But this one feels like a cloud, and whoever lived here had blackout curtains that have kept the morning light out so well I’m certain I’ve slept well into the next day.
The computer screensaver on the desk tells me otherwise.
It’s one in the afternoon.
There isn’t a single sound in the house.
I exercise before anything else, before I go out into the hall and find the bathroom and make myself at home like some little parasite. And the water pressure in the shower—absolutely living.
When I go looking for Soldier, I don’t find him. I assume he’s gone back for his truck.
Eventually, the sun goes down, and I go through his kitchen, find something to eat, and pace around the house until it’s well into the night.
He doesn’t come back. I’m not sure if or when he will.
After a while, I go back to sleep.
Day Nine
This time when I wake up, I hear faint sounds. Smell something cooking. I get up slowly and look at the computer. It’s seven thirty in the morning, which makes me groan, but then a stray thought makes me question if it’s actually Soldier down there or not.
I stretch quickly. Go downstairs, light footed.
“Thought you might have taken off,” Soldier says when I peer into the kitchen from the stairs.
I shrug and sit at the table. “Thought you got sick of me.”
“Unfortunately not,” he says. He pulls plates out of a cupboard and sets a couple mugs on the counter next to them. There’s an electric kettle going. “But I did go grab some parts from a friend’s shop and go back to the truck. You don’t mind instant coffee, do you? It’s all Sarem had here.”
“Roommate or something?”
He nods in response.
“Any coffee is good coffee. Except for that twenty-dollar hot compost water.”
“Which you didn’t drink and left in my truck.”
He doesn’t say anything else as he finishes cooking whatever it is he’s got going on. He makes himself a tea and adds some honey to it, stirs it around the mug with a light clink.
“So did you fix it?” I ask, and then frown as he turns to me.
There’s what looks like blood splatter staining his shirt, a bit smeared across his jaw. You’ve really done it now, Ghost! An actual murderer!
Even though I don’t say anything, he sees the look on my face.
“Even if I could have, there were groups siphoning the gas from every car along the way. Shooting each other for it. I barely made it to the truck let alone back here. But we can go around the neighbourhood and see what’s here and who’s here and figure it out from there.”
I nod slowly as he sets a plate and a mug in front of me and goes back for his. “By barely got away, you mean…?”
“I mean I didn’t feel like dying today,” he says quietly, sitting opposite me. “And if I did, who would be here to cook you such a damn fine omelette?”
I take a sip of the coffee even though my stomach is turning. I know what he means. I don’t know if that means killed or seriously injured, but I’m not about to ask any more questions.
“Wasn’t my first choice,” he says, hand hesitant on his fork. “You okay with that?”
Living seems like a reasonable choice to make, even if it makes this omelette taste a little funny. “I’m still here, aren’t I? Eating your damn omelette.”
He stares at me for a second, and then scoots his chair back, drops his head into his hands, and breathes out through his fingers. “I think I really lucked out with you, you know that, right?”
“Says the king in his castle.”
“You don’t believe me.”
I shake my head. “You’re gonna realize it pretty soon. Everyone does.”
“You’re going to realize that you’re worth a little more than what other people think of—”
“I know what I’m worth,” I bite back, bite off some more omelette. It is good, actually. “I also know what every single person I’ve ever met thinks of me and whether you do or not right now, you will. Without fail. Every time. Every single person for the last twenty-three years.”
He starts to eat. Drinks his tea. “Prove it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, absolutely.”
“Any time now,” he hums.
He looks at me over the rim of his mug, but all I can see is that smear of blood on his cheekbone, and it makes me think of my dad. It makes me think of my uncle putting a bullet in him, in his own brother, and it makes me sick because he could have done it any time in the past year. It didn’t have to be yesterday or the day before or last week.
How the hell long had my grandpa been in the woods?
There was a point during the last week where I thought about going back there, seeing if they’d all just gone hunting in the bush. I didn’t. Because something about walking into the woods made me uneasy.
“Ghost? You’re looking like it’s all hitting you at once.”
I don’t think it will until I see what Soldier’s been talking about.
I stand up, go to the front door, pull the lock. Soldier gets up and warns me not to, but I open it. I practically run outside into the street and then stand there for a second before turning around.
It’s all empty.
This whole suburban little cookie cutter place. There are no undead, infected, flesh eating monsters diving through windows. No idiots siphoning gas.
I throw my hands out as I turn and meet Soldier’s eyes.
“Where?” I shout at him, “Where is it all? I don’t see shit. I don’t see what everyone’s losing their shit over, so where the fuck is it?”
He walks out into the road slowly, arms crossed over his chest. “Keep shouting, I’m sure something will turn up.”
“It’s just a goddamn infection!” I say.
The curtains twitch in the window of a house down the road. A manicured front lawn looks scraggly and unkempt now.
“It’s just some stupid infection and everyone’s lost their shit and started killing each other. What the fuck is that about, Soldier?”
“Keep your voice down,” he says. He holds a hand up as the other moves toward his waist.
I think I’m losing my shit.
“That’s what Eli said right before he tried to kill me a second time. You gonna do the same? Go on. Get it over with.”
A strangled, gurgling sound makes me jump and look behind me. There’s someone stumbling out from between two houses, arms slack and pustules coating the skin. Rotting skin. All red and raw and loose. Quite literally looking like the undead.
I stand there, frozen, while the person drags one foot against the grass and limps toward me, arm outstretched. The whites of the eyes yellowed. A corpse. Literally a corpse.
A gooey chunk of skin slides off their shoulder. I nearly vomit.
“Don’t be stupid, Ghost,” Soldier snaps, “Move!”
I back up as he puts himself between me and that person, blood rushing from my he
ad to make me dizzy as I watch helplessly. Soldier forces a knife up under their chin. The lifeless body drops heavily to the ground.
I turn and run. Rush back into the house, into the bathroom, and collapse to my knees on the cold tile as that damn omelette comes back up. I heave, cough.
“What the fuck?” I slam my palms against the floor. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!”
Soldier comes down the hall. There’s blood on his hand, up his forearm. My stomach churns again and I slam the door shut, fumble the lock, and lean over the toilet again as I retch up some bile.
This is some stupid shit. This is some goddamn stupid shit.
Here’s a thought that smacks me up the back of the head:
Eli said my dad got bit. Said he killed him. And if the infected are undead, if they look like that person looked right before Soldier drove a knife through their skull—I see them as my father.
In my head, I replay it.
I see my father standing there with his skin all loose and greasy and sloughing off. See him with dead eyes all yellow and red, see him dragging his foot behind him and missing a shoe. I see Eli taking him out with that knife and suddenly I am pissed to all hell.
All these goddamn idiots spread this shit. All these bastards who fled the city for what, solitude in rural areas with every other person on the highways? Good fucking luck. Good fucking luck to them.
Of course, it’s my father, my grandfather, who take the hit. Of course, it’s my dumbass uncle who lived. He probably forced them into it to save his own ass.
After a while I splash my face with cold water and rinse my mouth straight from the tap.
I almost died once. I learned how to walk again.
I can face this head on and come out perfectly okay.
A small lapse. A small panic. Not again. Never again.
It is what it is. It is what it is. It is what it is.
—
Soldier hasn’t said a word to me since, other than to direct me with packing. There’s a hiking pack in one of his roommate’s rooms. Some clothes I doubt they’ll come back for.
I pack light. As light as I can. But Soldier insists that we split the survival supplies, just in case we get separated. So now there’s food and extra water weighing me down. A first aid kit. It isn’t a dumb idea. I don’t argue. I just don’t want to risk reinjuring my spine.
When I’m done packing and get the bag onto my shoulders, I turn to find Soldier holding out a knife in a leather holster.
“What’s this?”
“You said you don’t like guns,” he says, hooking it onto my belt loop before I can protest. “It’s not a gun, but just in case you need it.”
I rest a hand on the handle. “Alright.”
He hesitates. “You good?”
“I’m good.”
“You can stay here,” he says as he moves to the door, “I can come back for you.”
I shake my head, move past him, and open the door.
That thing is still lying on the lawn across the street, but I ignore it. It’s in the past. This is how we live now. Moving on and moving forward. No going back. No focussing on the shit that’ll bog me down. Just like walking home that night on day one. One foot in front of the other.
Soldier follows me out into the street. I go straight to the house where I saw the curtain twitch and stomp up onto the porch, start banging on the door.
“Easy,” Soldier says, scanning the street. “Where there’s one there’s bound to be more.”
I keep banging, louder, but there’s no answer. After a while I go to the window, try to peer in through the curtains.
“Hey!” I shout, knocking on the glass, “Answer the door before I break your windows!”
“Is that necessary?” Soldier mutters.
“Oh, one hundred percent,” I tell him.
I see the curtain twitch, lift my elbow up like I’m about to smash the glass, and then the locks start jangling frantically.
An older woman, shorter than I am, peeks through a crack in the door. She hisses quietly at us, “What do you want?”
“Hiya,” I say sweetly, and she glares at me. “My friend here had his truck break down, and I have to get home to my little sister—”
“I don’t have anything for you,” she says, starting to close the door.
I lunge forward, stop it with a foot and a hand, and push my way in as she stumbles back.
“Goddamn it, Ghost,” Soldier groans.
“Listen, lady. Sadie’s eight years old. Benjamin here, he’s a veteran. We just need a car, or some gas, or a little understanding and compassion, that’s all.”
“I said I don’t have anything for you!” The woman picks up a baseball bat from a corner at the base of the stairs.
“You usually put your Christmas lights up November first, huh? You that kind of person, or do you respect your veterans?” I walk toward what I assume is the garage door. Faint sound comes from the other side. “I noticed your fancy short grass outside so I’m assuming there’s a lawnmower in here, maybe a fancy ass car.”
“Don’t open that door!”
Soldier catches the baseball bat as she swings it. “I think we can be a little nicer to the living, Ghost.”
“Never said I was Casper.”
I turn the knob on the door. There’s music playing in the dark, almost loud, and the smell of exhaust fumes. I freeze, look to the old woman as she shakes her head and walks backward toward the stairs, running from the reality of this.
“Something wrong, Ghost?” Soldier murmurs.
I peek out into the garage, reach for the light switch and flip it on, and immediately shut the door. I back away. “Well. On the bright side, she’s got a car, but uh. Um. It’s dead. He’s dead.”
He leans around me, cracks open the door, and holds the back of his hand to his nose. “Jesus Christ.”
It isn’t the last of it we see in this little suburbia, but it’s the last car, and we’ve both lost our stomachs for siphoning any gas from anything by the end of the day. So, we start walking.
Right into the dark.
Day Twelve
Soldier has a fire going when I wake up.
There haven’t been any more infected lumbering around in this stretch of woods since we set up camp to scout the little plaza strip up the road, but Soldier’s rules. No fires at night. And he does some sort of witchcraft with the pit dug into the ground that makes the smoke minimal. So we don’t attract any idiots—living or dead.
I unzip my tent and sit there like a slug in my sleeping bag, the drawstring pulled around my head. “Have I mentioned I hate this?”
“Several times, yes,” he says, coming over with a cup. “That’s the last of it. Better hope you find some today.”
“It took how many days to turn you into a looter?”
He sits down on a log just outside my tent, forearms resting on his knees. “How many days did it take you to force your way into an old lady’s house to steal her car?”
“Would it surprise you if it wasn’t the first time?”
To be honest, it wasn’t. I might have been thirteen doing whatever the hell my dad and his brother said, but it practically played out the same, except for the moaning and groaning driver. At least the cop shop coffee was better than the compost hospital water.
“You know what? It doesn’t,” Soldier says. “But I’m also not letting anything surprise me about you.”
I almost spill my coffee trying to drink it. “Why the fuck not?”
“Because you keep coming out with shit and everything you say is surprising. But if it makes you feel any better, it isn’t working.” He scratches his chin, leans back, and looks at me over his shoulder.
“Oh, good, because I’ve got a real good one brewing and I cannot wait to see the look on your face.” I set the coffee down, zip up the tent again, worm out of the sleeping bag, and put on some new clothes. I make my way out of the tent, grab the coffee again, and drain it
. “Seriously. One thing I’m not joking about and it’s gonna be killer—Soldier?”
He’s nowhere to be seen. Probably off taking a piss or something. Maybe. His tent’s open, at least. I spend the next twenty minutes packing everything up, putting out the fire, and grabbing a trail bar as I sit on the log and wait. And wait.
Eventually, I pack all our stuff under a bush and a branch of evergreen and stretch before starting out to the plaza.
I don’t see him on the way there, which slightly worries me, but I’m sure he would have said something if he’d noticed anything dangerous. Still, I pause at the treeline and search for any sort of movement around me.
Nothing. A ghost town. A ghost town for a Ghost.
There’s a bait and tackle shop I have my eye on.
I cross the street quickly and quietly and test the door. It isn’t locked, but I’m still wary about an alarm. Wary about undead residents as much as living ones.
I move silently, carefully, find the aisle I need with ease and pocket a roll of some fishing line along with a handful of small hook weights. It’s all I really needed, but I take my time moving through the aisles, looking for anything else that might prove useful.
There’s an axe resting across a shelf. All the knives have been cleared out, but there’s one axe, all shiny and new. I figure Soldier can use it, if I’ve got his knife. For firewood, or for infected.
Next stop is the grocery store.
There’s half a hope that Soldier will be there already, and half a hope that he isn’t, and a whole ass hope that I can do what I’m planning before he does get there and have it go down swimmingly.
If there’s one thing I managed to figure out I’m good at, it’s cause and effect. Chain reactions. Even though I have a real good eye for it, I don’t have the foresight of my actions.
The grocery store has been ransacked. The only things left are bags of chips, ice cream, and the bland shit in the health food aisle, along with mystery cans that are littered throughout the store—things with labels torn off so you don’t know what’s inside. A few cans of whipped cream. Even some goddamn fireworks.
