Crowded Yet Desolate: A Zombie Novel
Page 22
Albert turned to leave. “Let it go, Ryan. Just let it go.”
How could he? It was the answer that had haunted his mind since the morning he left his beloved wife. He sprinted ahead of Albert and blocked his path from the kitchen.
“How could I know?” Albert demanded, his face red with exasperation. “Knowing implies that I have proof of some sort, or at least an argument to form, but I have nothing, nothing at all. For every piece of proof and conjecture that I have, I have another going against it. All I have is the seed of an idea, an idea so vile”–he raised his hands to his mouth–“So vile that I would rather have lived in ignorance. . . . Just live in ignorance, Ryan. Now please, excuse me.”
“Tell me on thing,” Ryan said. Albert waited. “Were you right about us, about us all being infected?”
Albert dropped his gaze, giving Ryan his answer, but then looked up and nodded. Ryan knew this would be all he got from Albert, but Albert, not one to push through, waited, and then walked past Ryan when he stepped aside. Albert’s voice was pleading, desperate, his eyes were haggard and tired, but none of these were what made Ryan move. It was his words. What could make Albert wish he had never known to begin with?
An inner war soon began in Ryan. He thought of his earlier ignorance, about how he had failed to realize that these monsters were zombies. How much more survivable did this plague seem when he was deluded and foolish? So perhaps it was best to do as Albert said and live in ignorance. Yet how many hours had he contemplated the cause of Deborah’s death? How many hours did he beg an empty sky for the truth, for some clue, for anything to either absolve him of blame or pinpoint himself as the cause? Anything but this not knowing! The longer the war continued inside him the more certain he became that Albert was completely certain of the truth. In his mind, Ryan built up great confrontations between himself and Albert, in front of the group, alone behind the cabin, he pestering and outsmarting Albert with wordplay until Albert was forced to give him the answer. Knowing these daydreams never happened the way he imagined, he could not make himself do it.
Yet in time it appeared that he did not need Albert. With no great revelation, no shocking confrontation with the truth, the truth slowly revealed itself to him. At no point could he pinpoint the exact answer, and how exactly he came to it he did not know. It was just as likely to Ryan that in his sleep he had overheard Albert whispering the truth Cam, and that his subconscious had absorbed it, as it was likely that his mind had finally solved the puzzled with simple logic. The same way Albert had. Like Deja Vu for an answer he never knew.
The answer was firmly established somewhere in his mind, yet still hiding, in his subconscious, his conscious fighting to dig it up to his everyday thoughts. He began to have terrible nightmares of Deborah, Deborah at the concert, Deborah the last time he saw her. Your wife. Your love, Deborah. At the concert. No she wasn’t. Then where was she? You know exactly where she was.
He felt un-loved, betrayed, like nothing in his life mattered. But still his conscious mind did not know why.
Then his dreams took an even more sinister turn. In a preschool. Jaden. Mike. Some unspeakable and unthinkable evil. His mind hated what it knew and threw the answer deeper, further down into his subconscious.
He lived in this war, in this divided ignorance, until the moment finally came when he no longer thought he knew, but knew he knew. Out in front of house on a cold, crisp morning in the advanced months of the year, he glanced at Molly and was struck by a sudden revelation.
“Your eyes,” he said.
She was smiling, and her mood was good. “Yes, I have eyes. Two of them. But what about them?”
“They’re . . .” The words couldn’t form. “I thought they were blue.”
She gave him a puzzled look, pushing her lower lip out. “No. I wish. But no, I got stuck with hazel. My eyes have always been hazel.”
She walked towards him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He had unknowingly backed himself against the house, and he was crouched forward, his elbow on his knees–deeply breathing, almost hyperventilating. He had thought the days where he had panic attacks were over, but here he was having one, and there was not even a dead body in sight.
He was far from okay. Everything was far from okay.
“You’re eyes,” he repeated. “They’re beautiful. Breathtaking even. But no, they’re not blue. Never blue.”
She crouched down on one knee and looked up into his face. Her awkward smile was attempting to hide her concern; she was torn between staying to help and going to find someone who actually could.
“Thank you, Ryan,” she said, nodding her head sympathetically. “I’ll be right back, okay? Will you be okay by yourself for just a second?”
Ryan tried to speak, to say that he would be fine, but he could not muster the lie. Instead, he nodded his head, and tried to find the balance between panic and serenity as she walked away.
It was clear to Ryan that she did not understand the significance of her eye color. How could she? It meant something only to Ryan. His mind, so desperate to hide the truth, had allowed his guilt to project his love for Deborah onto Molly. But Ryan had fought his mind’s defense. Now he wished he hadn’t.
Ryan, in the sudden change of her eye color–or rather in how he perceived their color–saw the secret his mind had so desperately tried to hide–the secret to the failure of his marriage, to the loss of an innocent’s innocence, and to the doom of humanity.
The End
Table of Contents
Copyright © 2015 by Lee Dunter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22