I changed direction and walked the opposite way, where, as far as I remembered from the days of my Soviet-era childhood, stood a small village complete with a railway station. I'd visited it a couple of times then, or rather, visited their tiny grocery shop. Although it was a longer distance than the town, I still hoped I'd make it before dark. I had lied one last time in my life, thus hoping to relieve Alex from the unsavory burden of my burial: as I'd figured out, he still intended to pay me the last honors with all the proper trimmings, despite my absolute disapproval of the idea.
When I arrived, the sun had nearly set. I cast a habitual glance at my wrist to find out how long it had taken me to get there, and remembered I didn't have the watch any more. I didn't have time to explore the area properly, only to find a shelter for the night. The flashlight and gun at the ready, I entered the nine-storey block of flats closest to me, and walked upstairs, trying all doors on my way. One on the third floor wasn't locked. I entered the apartment and gave it a quick look-over: a one-bed flat, abandoned a long time ago. Nobody inside, only old furniture and other stuff, all covered with a thick layer of dust.
I acted out of habit that I'd acquired in those past months. Using the butt of my gun, I broke the large mirror in the hall and placed the bigger shards outside the front door: that way I'd hear them crunch underfoot should anyone approach my shelter. I kept a large piece in case I could see my face had I wanted to.
I locked and barred the door. Not happy with the result, I also barricaded it with some furniture. Then I entered the bedroom, collapsed on the bed and slept well. The day, endless and torturous, had come to an end.
XIII
I might have slept a good twenty-four hours: without the watch, time became an abstract idea disconnected from reality. I'd had nightmares, trying to escape someone, being shot at, drowning, hiding under a car that suddenly caved in to squash me — in other words, I'd spent the night dying in many various ways and couldn't get out into the world of the living. When I forced my eyes open, the room was almost dark. I scrambled to my feet, my whole body aching, approached the window and pushed the old curtain aside. Judging by the sun's setting light, it was late afternoon — but of which day? I felt so ill I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that I'd slept for two or even three days. My illness alternated between fever and chills so bad that I had to rummage the flat in search for extra blankets and then lie under them, my teeth clattering; then fever would hit again and I'd throw all the blankets off the bed and lie on it in my underwear sweating like a pig. At times I fell into some sort of blissful semiconscious state when I managed to grab a few hours of restless sleep.
I can't really tell how much time I spent swaying in the sticky mist, part inane nightmares, part feverish wakeness. Then one morning I definitely felt better. I estimated my stay in the apartment as two to three days, although I had nothing to check this estimation against. At some point, I even regretted having given Alex my watch. A quick search through wardrobes and bedside tables produced an electronic alarm clock without a battery.
The wound had virtually stopped itching: for the first few days, it itched so much I had to fight off the desire to pull off the bandage and claw the wound raw until it stopped. I only managed to resist it, after enormous inner struggle, because I realized that I couldn't bandage the leg back as well as Alex had done it.
I remembered the medication he'd forced on me, opened the first-aid kit and gave myself a Promedol shot. As I'd never administered injections before, I did a poor job of it, but it didn't make me feel any worse. I had my reservations about the efficiency of Promedol for the zombie virus, but my inner control freak got the better of me: any medications that had to be taken as prescribed added an element of order to my existence.
Please mind that I'd stopped taking any drugs decades before the outbreak, and it hadn't really affected my physical health. If anything, after quitting all medicine, I wasn't sick as often or as serious as before, and the proverbial doctors' nightmare — complications — never added to my ills. Contrary to popular belief, if you stop using medication, you keep on living a normal healthy life, instead of dying from the first case of blocked nose. This useful drug-free habit had seen me safely through the first months of the outbreak. Naturally, from time to time I'd popped into an abandoned chemist's and helped myself to some vitamins (that proved absolutely useless) and plasters (now that was truly useful stuff), but after about a year all the old medications had expired and new batches simply didn't exist.
I always tended to believe that the efficiency of most medication, even when officially branded as highly beneficial, is based on the placebo effect. The entire pharmacological industry seemed to function thanks to some sort of voodoo phenomenon, when a patient is given something — a drug — that must help him. The industry's job is to build in its consumers a deep and unshaken conviction that a particular drug works. The patient takes it and gets better, mainly thanks to his own faith in the drug's properties.
When the Internet was still on, I remember seeing a site dedicated to revealing the superstitions behind modern medical practices. It listed all human reliefs regarding illnesses and their treatment, and covered the history of medicine, as well as a description of various shamanistic rituals, folk remedies, and hypnosis, to name just a few.
Reading their brief history of medicine, from the stone age until today, had sobered me: I realized that even the most progressive treatment methods of today would one day be rejected as erroneous and even barbaric. Had it not already happened many times? Although not likely to happen again — we didn't have civilization any more, let alone medicine — it should have saved humanity by creating an effective vaccine. I think I even remember seeing it on TV — apparently, they had indeed made a vaccine, but by then, they didn't have the time to convince the population that it worked.
To sum it up, the medical superstitions Internet site came to the conclusion that the process of taking a medication is in fact a religious ritual performed by the patient who has faith in the drug's efficiency — and no more than that. The site also listed side effects of the most popular over-the-counter medications. The site creators appealed to their readers, asking them to stop buying drugs and send them the money they thus saved to support their project. In return, they offered a side-effect free online healing ritual that, unlike conventional drugs, didn't affect your liver, or kidneys, or whatever it was, I couldn't remember any more.
The idea had seemed funny to me at the time. They had a guestbook page where all those brave enough to have chosen their ritual over drugs, could vote whether it "helped" or "did not help". I was amazed and pleased to discover that the amount of "helped" answers overweighed the "did not help" ones by a hundredfold. Whatever you say, the site owners must have made some good money on their idea... although I don't think they're still alive.
I did feel much worse soon after the shot, which only strengthened my conviction that all medicine is bad for you. You might say it was caused by infection that was devouring me, and not by an innocent over-the-counter drug. But you were not there, and in any case, no one was going to speak to me as I lay here in my bed alone.
I was overcome by a weakness so strong I couldn't move a limb. All I could do was stay in bed and stare at the ceiling. And stare I did, as I rewound and replayed over and over again the events of the day I'd gotten the blasted bite.
Funnily enough, I didn't think about myself. I kept wondering about my enemies and whatever had possessed them to send me to a torturous death not befitting a human. No, correction: I wondered how I could kill them. I just couldn't get over the fact of me killing them. As I already said, I'd never killed anyone before — as zombies didn't count, really. I always thought that, having committed a murder, a man sort of mutated, if you know what I mean. Man — like most other species, though, particularly predators — has this built-in mental mechanism that does not allow him to kill his kind. Whether it's mere biology or whether there're higher spiritual matter
s at work here, I really don't know. If there is a force or a mechanism that does not allow us to kill ourselves — as in my case — it equally might not let us kill others.
When this mechanism breaks down, just like many other instinctive mechanisms do when they succumb to society's pressure and discipline, man becomes capable of killing his own kind. And following the act of murder, he turns into something else — something alien, different from what he could have been had he not committed the crime. And it's not even the very fact of breaking the moral law that alienates him — I couldn't care less about morals at the time — but the very destruction of this killing barrier. He may not even kill anyone in his lifetime, but his inner readiness to do so marks him as alien from the rest of us, not better or worse, just that some part of his mental makeup is now damaged. He is now a defective man, sort of human factory seconds. Even that isn't good or bad on its own, seeing as there weren't that many mentally sound folk before the pandemic, and now they're practically extinct. He is alien, there's no other word for it. I used to think that a man like that had to have his own mentality, different from ours, a warped vision that allowed him to take other people's lives and remain at peace with himself. Really a lot like a Martian whose inner logic and whose feelings were far beyond our human comprehension.
Before the epidemic, I'd never given much thought to classifying myself within this little scheme. I had much better things to do with my time and honestly, couldn't care less. But having witnessed terrible things, I thought about it more often. I've been lucky in that I didn't have to kill anyone in the whole last year (I did wound a few looters but now I tend to believe they've survived). I flattered myself, enjoying the idea of being incapable of killing anyone. Then in a matter of minutes I turned into a murderer — a defective and perverted creature, according to my own theory. Naturally, I hadn't plotted the crime in cold blood; it was an accident any way you looked at it and in any case, the first shot wasn't my fault, the gun went off on its own — and as for the older one, I was defending myself, otherwise he'd have pulled out his own gun and shot me on the spot. But all this couldn't contradict the facts: I had the blood of two people on my hands, metaphorically as well as literally.
And so, what was I feeling now after the fact? — Nothing! No regret, no repentance, not even joy of seeing the fruit of my revenge. Plain friggin' nothing. I'd felt stronger for that hare I'd hurt.
Was it indeed possible that killing zombies — who were ex humans, after all, and even, to a degree, fellow humanoids — tended to dampen one's feelings over time? When you use human-like shapes as target practice, even if those shapes are little more than silhouettes, empty shells, abandoned vessels, whatever you call them, they still bleed, just like living human beings, as you damage their internal organs and destroy their bodies. They even die if you damage their brain or whatever they have instead.
You must get used to it because afterwards, you can easily turn from zombie to human targets. Had I really become so shallow-hearted I hadn't even noticed crossing the invisible line that divided normal people from murderers? Or could I still be normal, and the whole killing was nothing other than a tragic accident? I was racking my brains for clues as to which side I was still on.
From thus speculating on the fate of the dead convicts — by then I was dead sure they'd been ex Hospitallers — my thought drifted to my own future. I had to think well what I was going to do with myself. I couldn't easily forget the words of the younger one and his promise to tie me to a tree and watch as I was turning into a zombie, slowly and surely. I kept thinking about it: not about the tree, of course, but about the transformation that awaited me. So now I had to decide how I was going to meet my own death.
I was adamant not to terminate my life by my own means, although I had plenty of both means and opportunity. I could shoot myself with the gun, I could blow my brains out with a grenade of poison myself — as I'd found out, Alex had helpfully packed a generous amount of pills which, when taken together with another particular type of pills (which he'd also packed), could lead to a sure and painless death in your sleep. But I'd already told you why I wasn't going to use any of those. I did save them for later though, in case my suffering, both moral and physical, got the better of me.
As I lay there limply in bed, his question blocked out everything else in my mind. Then I must have been distracted by something as my thoughts evolved a pattern of their own, until I stopped following them and fell into a meditative trance, induced by the slow rhythm of my breathing. It must have lasted quite a time, and when I came back to reality, I saw that the sun had gone down and I lay there in complete darkness. And in the meantime, I'd found the answer to the question that kept tormenting me: it had surfaced from my subconscious and woke me up.
Now I knew the only way to meet my death with some remaining dignity. I should track down and document all the changes the hellish virus would cause in me, slowly killing and transforming me into a dead monstrosity rambling about the woods.
Such departure would be, if not heroic, at least meaningful. By making notes, I could not only help other people should they find them, but hopefully drag out my own conscious existence. It was possible that intellectual effort, however small, could delay my agony as a thinking human being. I think I read somewhere that people who persevered with their intellectual work through their old age, remained lucid and free-thinking for much longer than those of their peers who'd chosen to obey their fate and follow the path of physical and mental degradation. I wasn't sure if it was correct to compare the destructive forces affecting me and those influencing an old boy next door, but I wanted to hope it would work.
The more I thought about it, the more apparent it became to me that this mode of death was perfect for me. There was dignity about it, the only thing that still mattered. Whatever else I'd had, I'd lost on the way.
There was another argument: I'd already kept a diary, the one destroyed by my enemies. It was an easy and enjoyable task that could distract me from fear and a forthcoming physical agony. Nobody knew exactly what you felt when you turned into a zombie, but the general idea was that he suffered a lot of bodily pain. I was too scared to think about it, and writing in a diary could keep me occupied and hopefully dampen the hurt.
I gave it a good think and liked the idea. All other scenarios I'd considered weren't as convincing — apart from suicide, that is. But nothing prevented me from turning to it had the situation become unbearable.
I've noticed many times that our best decisions are usually made without our rational mind's input. Reason is unable to come up with a solution as accurate as the one dictated by intuition which feeds on the deepest layers of the subconscious. Wish I'd listened to it more often in the past. Ironic, isn't it, that the last decision in my lifetime was taken in acceptance of its silent wisdom. Little consolation, but consolation nonetheless.
XIV
Once I'd come to that decision, I cheered up a little and even felt capable of facing a meal. But before I started to put my plan into action I still needed two things: a pen and a notebook. Tons of them had been lying around in Alex's shelter, but there I was too preoccupied with other things, so now I had to waste precious time looking for them.
The decision made me realize something else: the only thing I had left, my last and sole resource, was time itself. Not surprising, really: time is our most treasured possession, and I should have understood it a long time ago. But people underestimate it badly, wasting their lives on mere trinkets. Only now, when I was only a few weeks or days away from my own death, did I come to this epiphany. Way too late: if truth were known, this notion should be drubbed into kids' heads already in the kindergarten.
I worked my way through the flat where I slept but didn't find anything suitable. In one of the walls, I discovered a secret bureau and in it, a laptop. Not holding my breath, I opened it and tried the On button. Nothing. The battery was dead as a dodo. You couldn't even imagine a more useless thing than a laptop tho
se days.
So I had to take apart the barricade by the door and go out. I climbed up a few flights until I found two unlocked apartments. They'd both been looted, and not once, but I was in luck. In one of them I found a large notebook with rounded edges and a silk bookmark, in the other, several pens and felt tip pens which were in the desk drawer. I tried them, but they'd dried out, all of them, apart from a Parker pen. I also found a few pencils and a razor blade to sharpen them. I chose them with the care I normally reserved for weapons, picking office supplies as if my life depended on them. I also hoped to find a clock or a watch that worked, but that would be asking for too much.
When I was about to leave, an object on a shelf caught my attention. It was a small bronze figurine on a pedestal of green stone, depicting an angel. I don't even know why I stopped to have a look at it: possibly, a peculiar light falling on it from the feeble sunray coming through the filthy window attracted my attention.
For a while, I stared at it, silent and unmoving. Then as if something hit me from inside: I'd seen it before! I'd already been here in this flat, in this very position, staring at it just as I was now.
It was a dream I'd had many years ago, long before the epidemic — so long ago that I'd completely forgotten it, but now the sight of the figurine had snagged on something in my mind and forced out a whole bag of memories.
Now I remembered all of the dream, and all of its details, as if I'd seen it last night: it had been a nightmare where our world fell victim of an unknown disease that turned people into murderous monsters. In the dream, I, too, had been infected and became one of them. So the dream had been a warning of the upcoming catastrophe, but at the time I didn't know it, and later I forgot it so hopelessly that even the start of the epidemic didn't allow it to resurface.
Call Me Human: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel Page 12
