“We’re going to need to keep this fire going and boil some water for drinking once the burgers are cooked. Your momma doesn’t trust the water supply, and I’m inclined to agree with her.”
“You think whatever started all this is in the water?”
“I don’t know about that. But all this death, and God knows what else, is soaking into the soil as we speak…just, its better safe than sorry, you know?”
I am inclined to agree as well.
There is sizzling now. Juices flowing. Aromas in the air. It feels normal. It smells normal. It sounds normal. Birds are still calling from the tree line, evidence speaking to their oblivious nature. The world keeps spinning while we keep dying. That’d make a doozy of a song, it's probably already been done, but if not, someone should get on it when all of this blows over.
The backdoor swings open causing the loose bottom window shade to slap hard against the wood, as Momma and Bethany rush out to join us by the pit.
“We have the menus finished for the week.” Momma kisses me on the cheek before sheltering herself beneath Lee’s arm.
“Hope you like canned chili.” Bethany gags.
“Well, it’s better than starving now isn’t it.” Lee says, pulling momma in tighter.
Bethany rolls her eyes and frowns at the fire.
“This food smells delicious; I sure hope they lost their sense of smell along with their minds.” Momma laughs. But it's not a joke. We're all quietly hoping for the same thing.
They being the shambling harbingers of the apocalypse.
They being the ill-tempered monsters that have us roasting our food over a square cut out of old chain link.
Lee stills my momma’s ponderings with a kiss on the forehead and a less than convincing string of bullshit. “We’re far enough out. They aren’t going to hike ten miles of country side to gnaw at your neck, that’s my job.” He nuzzles into her throat with an animated growl, snatching her up by the waist.
We laugh.
Fond feelings.
The food.
The great outdoors.
One big happy family (and Lee).
It all feels so…
…normal…
…almost.
***
We finish out the evening with tuna fish sandwiches. Slices of soggy tomato line the plate. A side dish of sorts.
We bathe ourselves with a lukewarm pot of fire-brazed tap water.
I don’t feel clean. I feel wet. And sticky.
Once again, we bed down in the living room. The heavy silence keeps my eyelids light. I stare up. Into nothingness. The scarce breathing and the shifting of positions I hear from the right and the left, lets me know that I am not alone in my plight.
As my body finally begins to relent, my nerve endings are shocked to life by what sounds like a tornado alarm. It is distant, but nonetheless distinct…effective…
…it chills the bones…
Then there is a hail of gunfire, again, distant. Like fire crackers.
:::pop::: :::pop::: :::pop::: :::pop:::
Another long and sleepless night lay ahead.
12
I manage to scratch out two hours of sleep (maybe), mostly in 15 to 30 minute intervals. I feel no worse than I had the previous morning, so I count it progress. Life has sort of become a perpetual haze, bouncing from one cloud to the next, hoping to stick the landing, and not fall victim to the gap that lay between.
The sun has risen.
We are breathing.
We’d stuck the landing.
A peek through the living room curtains and a blurry-eyed survey of the backyard, reveals Lee working the fire pit, shirt off, multi-colored headband in place. It occurs to me that he is a hairy man. Very hairy. Not just the beard. It is the bushel of curly Q’s across his chest and down his navel, and his arms, how have I not noticed it before? Both arms look to have been rolled in soot. Perhaps it is the glistening. The miniature bubbles of sweat that clings with uncertainty to the end of each midnight black fiber.
Momma must have heard my shuffling from the kitchen. “Spam and eggs, sweetie, how’s that sound?”
“More inviting than an empty belly I suppose.”
“Nothing like a little darkness to make one see the light,” she quips, kissing the top of my head as she bustles past into the backyard, a stack of disposable plates in tow.
I stagger to my bedroom to brush my teeth with dry bristles and saliva (don’t use any water unless it’s been boiled, Momma's orders). While I'm there, I switch my wrinkled sleep wear for some dirty jeans and one of the last clean plaid button downs left hanging in my closet. Worse comes to worse, and I'll have to find a rock and a scrub board cause I’m running out of clothes.
Bethany enters and sits on the edge of my bed. My sophomore yearbook lay open in her lap. “I saw him you know, as we were running out of the school, underneath the lockers…d-d…de—” She collapses into sobs, thick smudges of eyeliner collecting in her lashes, onyx tears begin to fall across the faces staring up from the page. Some were smiling awkwardly, others locked in that too-cool-for-school grimace that seems to evolve naturally with age, but more than anything, the expressions are blank, as if they hadn’t yet finished processing the photographers requests to sit still and smile before the bulb flashed and they were immortalized in cheap glossy infamy.
I sink into the bed beside her. Cheap spring mattress. Needs to be flipped. Desperately. I loop an arm across her shoulders. We’ve always been an affectionate family. Hugs and all that jazz, they've always come naturally. Never that rushed awkward pat-on-the-back stuff. Even dad had been a hugger. “I was hoping you hadn’t seen that.”
“Well, I did.” More tears. Quiet tears. The worst kind.
“I’m sorry,” I am.
“It’s okay.” It isn’t. “Did you…see him...you know?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“How was…I mean…” I know what she is trying to get at. I can see the words swimming behind her eyes. Her eyes, searching mine for answers. Restless in their sockets.
I squeeze her shoulder, tighter. “He’s the one that told me where to find you. He was a hero. He went quickly.” Senseless words for a senseless situation.
She cries harder. Little squeaks. Salty eyeliner cuts crop circles on the shoulder of my V-neck sleep shirt. In another time and place, I’d bleach it out and wear it the next night. That place is gone. It is all blood and dust now. No point sweating it. I let her cry as I search the makeup stained faces of my old classmates, spread out across her lap.
Donny Winfield.
Tammy Brewer.
Margerie Pennington.
Alive? Dead? Feeding on the flesh of their family? Forced to shamble the earth in a state of eternal damnation?
I’ve heard about the five stages of grief. I figure that because I’ve started to ask questions that I am somewhere between denial and anger. I figure I’ll hang out there awhile. In the “in-between.” It is comfortable. The denial brings hope. The anger brings resolve. I’ll need both.
When she is done crying (mostly), she turns the pages and finds my picture. She laughs. It is a haggard mucus ridden laugh, still tinged by the hand of loss, but it’ll do in times like these. I laugh too. More so at her reaction than at the poorly angled portrait of me at the center of the page. “You and that hat, same hat every year.”
“If it ain’t broke…”
“It’s shattered.”
“I should change faces every year like you, huh?”
“Now you’re on to something.” She closes the book and taps me on the knee with it before placing it back beneath my nightstand.
“Dance for me.” She pushes me upright and claps her hands together, smiling big now, her makeup smudged beyond repair. The sad clown. It’s been our thing for years. After dad died, when things were rocky at school, or she just needed a vaca from life, she’d have me dance for her.
“You know I’m always up for a dance, but no power, no mu
sic.” Batteries are just a pain in the ass, Momma had said when she’d purchased the electric stereo that had eventually become mine by virtue of the hand-me-down rule.
“I’ll sing a ditty.”
“A ditty?”
“Isn’t that a word you and dad used to use all the time?”
I smile. “Yeah, I suppose we did.”
“So…I’ll sing one for you.”
“What do you know? I need something soaring, you know, epic type.”
She thinks on it, her eyes rolling towards the ceiling, tapping at her chin with an index finger and a nail coated in chipped black polish. “Over the Rainbow, will that work?”
I take a deep bow, she giggles. “It’ll do; at your signal madam.”
13
It sounds like an animal. A wolf perhaps, mourning our tragedies with a full moon howl.
I sit up seconds apart from Lee; his ear is already bent towards the skin-prickling racket.
“What’s that waling? You hear that?”
It sounds more like a howl to me. “I’m up aren’t I?” I sounded more sarcastic than I’d intended. However, two nights with barely any sleep, and with the third looking to be all cloud and no lining, it wears on a guy.
I hold my breath.
There it goes again, like air escaping beneath a door.
“What’s going on?” Momma asks groggily, sitting up behind Lee, and laying her face across his shoulder.
“That noise,” he answers, “listen.” It seems to come hovering into the room with an increased clarity now that we’ve acknowledged its presence.
Not wolf, but woman. Wolves don’t scream (or wale), “Someone help us, please.”
“Oh my.”
“It sounds like it’s probably coming from the road,” I say.
“What can we do?” Momma has her arms around him, a human anchor of sorts; as if doing her best to subvert any bravado he may be hatching.
“Well, we can’t just leave her out there, that wouldn’t be right, would it?”
Lee may be a bit of a limp wrist (dads word), but he’s no cowardly lion, or Tin Man for that matter, I mean, the guy has a heart. Like I said, not a bad guy.
“You don’t know that there’s anything you can do. If those things have gotten to her, I mean, nothing you can really do.”
“Please—somebody—”
“Well, we won’t know unless we try. I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing and listen to her scream. We’ve lost a lot; I don’t really feel like losing my soul too.”
There is that flare for the dramatic again, but when Lee is right, he's right.
Survive or die, true enough.
Nevertheless, we’ve survived, we aren’t in immediate jeopardy. We have the hands available potentially to pull someone else up along with us. What is the point of physically surviving if we lose the other parts? Those things that make us tick, as dad would’ve said. Compassion. Love. Hope. Just to name a few.
“What’s going on, Momma?” Bethany has rolled over against momma’s side, nuzzling, and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. I am momentarily brought to jealousy by her somewhat incoherent mumbling. Ten minute power nap. Medication fuelled coma. I’ll take anything! At this point.
“Nothing, sweetie, go back to sleep.” She combs her hair back with her fingers and cups a hand across her ear. “What’s all this we stuff about?” It is a whisper, yes, but with a knowing edge—an air of defensiveness—attached to it.
AKA: I know you’re not saying what I think you’re saying!
“Well, he’s dealt with these things, two heads are better than one, the buddy system. Old Two-Step is practically an adult by Jewish standards.”
“We’re not Jewish, he’s my son, and certainly isn’t an adult by my standards.” Take away? Blood is thicker than beatnik poetry and obscura art. Momma is usually all sweetness and nice where Lee is concerned, except when it comes to us. The claws come out, and Momma goes from flower child to scorned lioness at the drop of a hat, or in Lee’s case, a poorly turned choice of phrase.
Lee stands, holding his hands out in meek surrender. “Fine, dear, I’m not forcing or even asking anyone to do anything. It was merely a suggestion. Now, I’m going out there to see what all this is about, fair enough?”
I stand up next to him. “Me too.”
“Absolutely not,” Momma clamors to her feet, facing us with clenched fists. She seems to have forgotten about Bethany completely, and sends her rolling across the floor as she rips the support from beneath her sagging head.
“Momma, I’m not asking. If things ever get back to how they ought to be, then you can ground me for this, or whatever you'd like. But I’m going, Lee’s right, this world ain’t no place for boys. Boys die in this world, men lead the way, and they survive. Right now, I’ve got to be a man.”
I heard her sniffle and see the outline of her face as she brushes the tears away. “Lee, if something happens to him, I’ll never...”
“You won’t have to, I’ll be dead, to get to Two-Step, they’ve gotta go through me.”
“What is it, Momma?” Bethany asks, tugging at her nightdress.
“Nothing, honey, you sleep, just lie down and close your eyes.”
I make for the kitchen.
“Where you going, Two-Step?”
“We’ll need weapons.”
***
I fracture the broom handle on the front porch using the heel of my boot and a bit of torque. The point isn’t as fine as Mr. Fitz’s had been, but it’ll make due.
Broomspear 2.0 is born.
Lee is armed with an 8” inch kitchen blade. German steel. Hand stamped. An old wedding present from our relatives out west. “I sure wish this thing were longer.” He turns it in his hands, the sliver strands of light leant by the moon above us glint against the surface.
“Yeah, well, I wish water wasn’t wet and that porcupines were made out of cotton balls, but hopes and dreams died about 48 hours ago, so I guess it is what it is.”
“Wow, give the kid a broom handle and he goes all 21st century macho man, you got anymore quips you want to share, Two-Step?”
“My baby, please, please, HEEEEEEEEELP!”
The frantic pleas serve to quell whatever hesitance…hell, call it fear…that may have been creeping around inside my belly. It may be the lack of sleep, exhaustion fueled mania, the kind of stuff psych docs warn their bi-polars about. Anyway, whatever I am feeling, Lee feels it too. We move towards the tree line with an increased urgency biting at our boot heels. Not careless, but not with any sense of caution either. A bit of moonlight works its way through the canopy overhead, lighting our way.
We move,
knees bent,
tac team style,
wincing each time a withered leaf or petrified twig squeals beneath us.
“They’re going to hear us coming,” I crouch down, resting Broomspear 2.0 across my knees. We are about a quarter of the way into the one hundred yards of forest that separates our property from the roadway.
“Yeah, well, it’s risk it or go back. You heard her, there’s a kid. Don’t know about you, but my sleep sucks enough without that on my conscience.”
“And if there’s nothing to be done?”
“I can live with trying and failing. I can’t live with not trying at all.”
The cries have become more disjointed and hysterical in their composure now. No identifiable words. Just a broken petition for intervention.
I know the brush and bramble well, could navigate with my eyes closed; I practically am at this point. I’ve gotten to know these woods through the good times and the bad: branches frozen bare by minimalist winters, leaves withered by heavy handed summers, only to be nurtured by spring, and struck down by fall. These are fat times for the foliage, though lean times aren’t far off, you can feel it on the wind, that chill riding quietly on its back, sneaking in like a thief. Yeah, I know these woods. Lee, well, he doesn’t. The deeper we venture, the more treache
rous the terrain. Branches scratch at our faces and eyes. Dead and dying tree trunks take spite-ridden aim at our kneecaps and shins. I dodge and duck, a trained professional. Lee recoils and falls, cursing beneath his breath. That underlying fear I’ve been carrying, the one about us being less a rescue team and more a casualty list, seems to sprout fresh fruit with each step Lee takes.
We find ourselves, against all odds, on the other side of the woods, on our stomachs, inching towards the threshold. Before us, lies a steep embankment that turns into a drainage ditch clogged with the cast off chaparral of seasons past, and then beyond that, is the two lane farm road.
“Careful now, easy does it.” Lee coaxes as we break the tree line, the earth dropping off beneath our noses.
The scene is straight from the script of some black and white detective picture. A red compact sits framed in a thick pillar of moonlight. On any other night, this would have been counted good fortune, a karmic high five, and an angel on the shoulder.
On this night, it is…
…a broken mirror…
…spilt salt…
…an open umbrella in the living room…
The hood is partially cracked, releasing the white smoke that pours from the mechanically deficient engine block, allowing it to dissipate against a starless sky. A body, male judging by the thick-soled timberland style boots attached at the feet, is sprawled face up near the front bumper. A half dozen of the Rabid have burrowed their way inside his stomach cavity and are tossing the contents to the pavement, while gulping down choice bits of loose flesh. A half dozen more are working their way across the body of the car, emitting that throaty gurgle I’ve come to know so terrifyingly well. They are hunting…I’ve seen it before, with Bethany and the supply closet. They are feeling the body of the car out as if it’s a trail marker written in Braille, while getting nose-to-carbon-fiber with the paint job, they are like blind dogs. Blind is a safe assumption. The pencil beneath my heel. The way they are constantly flaring their nostrils. Blind…but capable. Like bats. Giant bats. They can smell her. They can hear her.
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 6
