by Russ Melrose
I got up from the couch and went into the hallway and turned the cooler off, and by the time I had come back to the couch, Alex's eyes were closed and he was mumbling incoherently. After a while, the mumbling turned into a soft, plaintive moan. It was strange to see my brother so physically weak and vulnerable. Alex had always been so strong and vibrant. If my brother suffered from any vulnerability, it was emotional, stemming from our fractured childhood. But I had never seen him like this before. The few times he had been sick growing up, he still was active and energetic.
I told myself the fever and chills could have been consistent with the flu. I even recalled a time as a child when I had the flu and drifted in and out of consciousness, never quite sure whether I was awake or dreaming.
*****
The heat was absolutely stifling in the house, and even though it was early in the evening, the temperature outside still had to be well into the 90s. A moist filming of sweat covered my face and arms, and the pungent odor from Alex's body pervaded the room. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Not so much because of the size of the room or my proximity to my sick brother, but more from the thick suffocating odor permeating the room. I looked at Alex and realized it had been a while since I'd last seen him move. He was lying sideways in the chair with his head resting comfortably on the biceps of his handcuffed arm and the armrest. His knees were pinned to his chest and his free arm cradled his legs. He seemed so peaceful, so still, I couldn't help but wonder if my brother was dead.
I felt a little panicked and wasn't sure what I should do. Reports over the last day or so had been so sketchy, I couldn't remember any mention of the infected dying at the height of their viral symptoms. Did some of them die? I couldn't help but think that dying might be the best outcome for my brother. Alex didn't want to turn into some kind of monster and this way he wouldn't. But was I being selfish? I knew I didn't want to even think about shooting my brother if he turned, even if that's what he wanted. And what would I do with his body if Alex were dead? I couldn't take his body with me and I seriously doubted that any funeral homes were going around collecting the bodies of the infected who had died. But why was I even thinking about how to dispose of my brother's body? I didn't really know whether my brother was dead or not.
I decided to watch him as closely as I could to see if I could detect even the slightest hint of breath entering or leaving his body. But I saw no sign of movement from my brother.
I needed to slow down my thoughts. My mind was rambling in a dozen different directions at once. The only thing I was clear on was that I had to know with absolute certainty whether Alex was still alive or not. I could check his pulse, but the way he was situated in the chair, his wrists weren't exactly accessible. The right side of his neck was exposed, so I knew I could check his carotid artery for a pulse. But I was wary of touching him. I didn't know if I might get infected by simply touching him.
I called his name once softly, virtually whispering his name across the room, but Alex didn't respond. After giving it some thought, I headed to the linen closet in the hallway and found a wash cloth with enough thickness for me to feel safe. Then I went back into the living room and stood in front of the leather chair that held my brother. His mottled, grayish-white skin seemed to have thinned or tightened in some way because I could see the subtle outline of veins and arteries just beneath the surface of his skin. The weave of arteries and veins fed from his neck into his face and skull, making my brother look like a ghostly illustration from an anatomy book. And with his body positioned in a fetal curl, he looked utterly vulnerable. Leaning close to him, I still couldn't detect any semblance of breath coming from his chest or mouth.
I placed the tips of my index and middle fingers in the center of the wash cloth and placed them in the area of Alex's carotid artery. I gently pressed down and searched for even the slightest tremor of a pulse, but I couldn't feel a thing. The only thing I could feel was the intense heat from Alex's fever penetrating through the wash cloth. I pressed my fingers more firmly into the artery and closed my eyes and focused all my attention on the tips of my fingers. And then I felt it—just the slightest hint of a pulse, barely perceptible. And then I felt it again. Alex's pulse was weak, but it was still there.
I relaxed momentarily but kept my fingers pressed against his carotid artery. I wanted the tangible reminder that Alex was still alive, still with me. And while I felt relieved, I was still concerned. Alex was so weak, I wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on with his fever so high.
I continued to monitor his pulse when it suddenly vanished. My first thought was that I must have been mistaken. I must have somehow lost his pulse. I repositioned the wash cloth and searched desperately for his pulse, but I couldn't find it. No matter how hard I pressed my fingers into the area of his carotid artery, I felt nothing. And just like that, Alex was gone.
My brother was dead and I was struggling to understand how I felt about it. I kept my fingers and the wash cloth pressed against Alex's neck, hoping for a miracle. I felt deflated and numbed and completely worn out. And just as I was about to remove my fingers and the wash cloth, I thought I felt a slight vibration strum through Alex's artery. At first, I thought it was nothing more than wishful imagination, but then I felt another vibration. Then the pulses came more frequently and settled into a normal rhythm, and I suddenly felt energized and thrilled by the feel of my brother's blood pulsing through his arterial vessel. I could actually feel the movement of life within him and it excited me. I felt an incredible sense of relief knowing my brother was still alive. But just as quickly as my mood had shifted, Alex's pulse quickened and I could feel the blood in his artery thumping wildly against the tips of my fingers.
His head suddenly twitched sideways and I jerked my hand away from his neck and took a step back, the wash cloth falling silently to the floor. His head twitched again and his shoulders shivered in a short-lived spasm. Then Alex seemed to relax and I could hear a subtle exhalation of breath like a muffled hiss escape from his mouth. He was quiet for several seconds before his body suddenly stretched ramrod straight and began convulsing wildly. His legs had stretched out onto the floor and the heels of his boots kept jabbing at the oak surface, and the way my brother's body quivered with such intensity made him appear as if he were being given electroshock therapy. I had no idea what I should do for him or how to help him.
Saliva oozed from the corners of his mouth as his convulsing finally subsided into a subdued trembling. And while I felt some relief that the worst of it seemed over, a shadow of realization crossed my mind. My brother was turning. There was a part of my mind that had somehow managed to delude myself into thinking that my brother was different from all the other infected out there. No doubt I had been in denial as to what was going to happen. I had not wanted to face this moment because of what it meant for me and for Alex. And even now as his body stopped trembling and he relaxed momentarily, I stubbornly noted to myself that he hadn't actually turned yet, but then he opened his eyes.
Alex's eyes were red-rimmed and jaundiced, having taken on a sickly yellow cast, and his pupils were no bigger than a pinhead. A flicker of dull awareness registered in Alex's eyes and he looked toward me, letting out a deep, reverberating moan that echoed through the room and had me instinctively moving backwards. The sound penetrated my being and my chest contracted in fear. I managed to move slowly backwards when Alex suddenly lunged from the chair and took a swipe with his free hand at my face. He snapped back toward the radiator and stared uncomprehending at the handcuffs. I had ducked my head out of the way and stumbled backwards, tripping over my feet and landing hard with my tailbone on the end of the coffee table. I hit the edge of the table with such force, it threw the other end of the table up in the air like a teeter totter. The Glock 17 catapulted past me as I slid off the coffee table and onto the wood floor. The keys and the Ziploc bag tumbled onto my chest.
Alex reached toward me with his free hand, a desperate guttural moan rising from
deep within him. The handcuffs kept him at bay, and he didn't seem to be able to make the mental connection that he was tethered to the radiator. But after his third or fourth swipe in my direction, he looked back at his handcuffed hand. He tugged instinctively at the handcuffs with his free hand before he finally began using both hands. Each tug at the handcuffs increased in intensity. And Alex kept looking back at me and moaning fretfully as if he were afraid I would leave. Then the rusted water pipe began to groan and creak from Alex's efforts. Alex had no doubt maintained some of his considerable strength.
I was on the floor on my buttocks, the handcuff keys and Ziploc bag still resting on my chest, and I began to inch myself backwards, using my hands and feet to quietly propel myself away from my brother. Each time he looked back at me, a mix of frenzy and desperate longing in his gaze, I'd stop my movements. I was afraid if I moved too quickly, he would become even more frantic in his efforts to free himself. But it didn't matter how discrete I was, because the water pipe suddenly squealed loudly and surrendered, and a wide fan of water sprayed across the room. Then Alex took one more powerful tug at the handcuffs and they slid easily off the fractured pipe. His effort created a powerful momentum that carried him backwards, off balance, and his broad back slammed hard into the coffee table, splintering the table in half as if it were made of balsa wood.
And then everything began to slow down as if I were in a dream. As Alex clumsily disentangled himself from the wrecked coffee table, I found myself unable to move. I felt my stomach and chest tremble in short, uncontrollable spasms, my legs were wooden, my mouth parched and spitless. I tried to swallow but couldn't. I seemed to have no control over my body. All I could do was watch Alex as he tried to coordinate the movement of his arms and legs. His breathing was a deep guttural rasping. He seemed puzzled and disoriented. And as I watched him separate himself from the wreckage of the coffee table, I came to the realization that I was about to die.
Alex finally managed to right himself on his hands and knees, and then fixed his dull lifeless eyes on me. I hardly recognized him. The light ash-gray skin on his face was drawn tightly inward and was nearly translucent, exposing a network of dark blue veins and crimson arteries that forked upwards from his neck. His jaw was slack and his mouth agape. Whatever minimal level of awareness he possessed was of a primal nature, and his only focus seemed to be on me. He rose determinedly to his feet and stretched his right arm out toward me as if he were trying to reach for me. Then he groaned in anticipation and staggered forward in my direction.
I frantically scurried backwards across the floor as fast as I could, heading for the far wall, jolted out of my fear-based inertia by a powerful will to survive—a will that surprised me with its raw fervency. A surge of adrenaline helped me crab backwards as fast as Alex was moving toward me. But I knew the wall couldn't be too far away and I was quickly running out of room. Just before I hit the wall with the back of my head, my butt connected with the Glock 17 and it scudded across the floor and into the floor board. Instinctively, I reached behind my back and searched for the gun. And as I felt the butt of the gun with my hand, Alex lunged at me. He fell awkwardly and heavily to the floor but was close enough to me to snag the pant leg of my jeans just above the ankle. I tried to pull my leg away but his grip was too powerful, and he began to pull me away from the wall. I lost contact with the gun and repeatedly kicked him in the face as hard as I possibly could. But my blows only postponed what seemed inevitable.
I kicked him one last time with every ounce of strength I could muster and then twisted my head and body around to find the Glock. In one motion, I reached for the gun, spun around, and fired three times into my brother's gray face. The back of his head exploded, sending fragments of bone and brain matter flying through a misty spray of crimson that momentarily hung in the air.
Alex's angled head lay at my feet, his pale yellow eyes staring into nothingness. A trickling of blood seeped from the close-knit entry wounds in his forehead, dripping rhythmically onto the floor. He looked nothing like my brother. I set the gun down next to the Ziploc bag and keys. They had fallen from my chest when I twisted my body to grab the Glock. Alex's hand still gripped my pant leg. I took a surgical mask from the Ziploc bag and used it to pry his fingers from my leg without having to touch him. Then I moved backward till my back rested against the wall. I drew my legs up to my chest and hugged my legs with my arms and began to rock back and forth, and I closed my eyes to shut everything out.
I'm not sure how long I sat there rocking, mesmerized by the movement of my body. I took solace in the movement, in the rhythm of it, in its simplicity. It was as if my body were chanting the same simple prayer again and again, though I had no idea what the words were or what they meant. All I knew was that I felt comforted, and I wanted to prolong that feeling for as long as I could, and I really didn't care that somewhere along the way my consciousness had gotten lost amidst the metronomic movements of my body.
After a while a quiet muffled vibration began to echo somewhere in my head, repeating every few seconds. And my rocking fell into rhythm with the vibrations. It felt so natural. And it stayed that way for a short while. But then the vibrations intensified, lost their rhythm, and took on a frenetic cadence. That's when I began hearing the moans and realized the sounds weren't coming from my head. I stopped rocking myself and sat perfectly still, listening. Then I opened my eyes.
The sounds were coming from the area of Alex's picture window. They were slightly muted but were becoming clearer as the moments passed. I got up to investigate, carefully circumventing my brother's body and the pooled blood near his head. I watched every step I took, meticulously avoiding the blood splatter which fanned out from Alex's body in a wide, irregular arc.
The picture window curtains were partially opened, exposing a two-foot wide gap to the outside world. I stood no more than a foot from the window and watched as an infected man rammed his bald head into the window, took two steps back and did it again. And while his steps were awkward and his body stiff, he butted his head into the glass with great ferocity. Blood pulsed out from a two-inch gash at the top of his forehead and channeled down through the features of his face. There was a cloudy, rosy smudge in the glass where he had rammed his head into the picture window again and again. He was a pudgy man with wide shoulders. His face had the same taut appearance as Alex's with arteries and veins in shallow relief behind a thin mask of ash-gray skin. Rivulets of dark blue veins on the top and sides of his head made it appear as if his skull cap were cracked by deep, dark fissures. He had been joined by several other infected who were frantically pounding on the picture window with their fists, moaning and rasping loudly.
Their moans increased in intensity when they saw me standing in front of the window—their shrill cry a wailing grumble filled with desperation and longing. About a dozen of them were gathered at the window, pounding and moaning and pressing against one another. Then two more infected trundled into the front yard, drawn by the strident moaning. They headed for the window where they joined the others. A young woman standing next to the pudgy man began headbutting the window too. She kept slamming her forehead into the window in piston-like thrusts, grunting and screeching with each headbutt.
I stood there in a haze watching them. They didn't seem real to me. It was like one of those moments where you were outside of yourself watching things unfold as if you were disembodied. You were perfectly safe because you weren't really there. It was like watching a movie that had you in it, and while there might be a few dangerous moments, you never really felt threatened because that wasn't the real you in the movie. The real you could never truly be in danger. More than anything, I was mesmerized by them, and I watched them with a childlike curiosity.
They were a motley group—senior citizens, teenagers, children, working adults. Some had bite marks on their arms or necks or legs and some didn't. One boy, maybe twelve, was missing most of his left arm. The ones behind the front line of infected were stretchi
ng their arms out toward me, clamoring to get closer. While most were dressed for summer, there was a slender young man in a blue blazer and loosened mauve tie, his shirt flecked with dried blood. I'd have thought he would have struggled in the early evening heat with the sports coat on, but it didn't seem to bother him. And the heat didn't seem to bother an elderly woman clad in a suffocating beige pant suit. They didn't seem to pay any attention to how hot the early evening July sun was. The only thing they seemed to notice was me. Each pair of wild jaundiced eyes were riveted on me. No doubt, I was the apple of their eye.
I suddenly realized I was standing in water. I was fairly certain the water hadn't been there when I first came to the picture window. But it was there now, and that made me wonder how long I'd been standing in front of the picture window. The water pipe must have been leaking for some time now, and a quarter-inch film of water covered over two-thirds of the living room floor and had found Alex's feet. But it didn't matter, because none of it was real. Not the water, not my brother's diseased dead body, and certainly not the crazed groupies outside.
As the water spread across the floor, a sudden, aberrant sound woke me from my dream. A distinct, short-lived tinkle. The sound of glass cracking. And just like that the moaning stopped for a fleeting moment, then resumed at a feverish pitch. A six-inch vertical crack now dissected the rosy smudge, and then I realized this wasn't some illusory dream I had imagined. The pudgy, infected man was now ramming his head into the window with savage intensity as was the infected woman next to him. The rest of them furiously battered the window with their fists. The picture window began to clatter noisily from the barrage.
