I placed a cautious hand on the trembling man, and turned him around so that we were eye-to-eye. “Do you see what you’re doing to your family? Why don’t you give it a rest for a while?”
I could see it in his eyes. Tears rimmed the outlines of the lower section of his lids. Benny was losing it…and was going to get someone killed.
There is a book about aliens invading earth, and they even made movies from it. One scene kept playing in my head. The one where the man gave shelter to the protagonist and his daughter, and then slowly started losing it, almost giving up their position to the Invaders. And I felt myself searching for a metal pipe, something quiet, to mimic that vignette.
But I couldn’t kill Benny. The only men I’ve killed were named Charlie, and they lived in a completely different country.
***
The nights passed slowly after that. Benny was a persistent little guy, and after a week, I’d had it. He was going to have it his way, and I didn’t have it in me to blow the man’s brains out or let him get them killed.
After the infection hit it was hard to keep track of the days. They didn’t matter, anyhow. All I know is that we left on some night, taking my brand new GMC Sierra. I knew that this was a mistake, but I’d had enough. Death would be better than hearing his bickering and moaning. He was worse than any child I’d ever encountered. I left Donut behind, not wanting the poor old boy to die because of his daddy’s big heart. He was left with enough food and water, more so than we had. Besides, they say that animals will survive much longer than humans, especially in an apocalyptic setting.
In hindsight, maybe I should have just sent them on their way that first day. But I’m a generous man, as my grandfather was.
The military installation Benny spoke of took us right through the heart of a city whose name is of no importance—which coincidentally is where this story started, because we actually passed the Benny Family’s condo.
Among the many things Benny wasn’t prepared for were survivors. And I’m not talking about the friendly ones that want nothing more than to put a smile on your face. No, I’m talking about the mean ones, those that are loaded with fully-automatic weapons and are completely desperate, hungry, and as rabid as the Infected. Ironically, they were the very same ones Benny had wished to meet at the fucking installation.
“Who’s that?” Jenna said. Marissa slept on the tiled floor next to her, only a few ads of an old newspaper giving them any bedding.
My eyes darted open when I heard the engine outside revving. The drop-down ceiling cast sight into a different galaxy as my eyes fought to adjust to the darkness. Benny was already making his way into a standing position on the opposite side of his wife.
“Don’t, Benny,” I whispered. “We don’t know who these people are. Get down.”
“It’s a military vehicle. They’re probably looking for gas. I’ll let them in.”
“No, don’t.” I reached out.
“Hey,” he shouted, waving his hands. “We’re inside!”
Fuckin’ Benny, I swear.
I had one of my pistols, a Sig Saur P250 .45 ACP, ready for action. And I needed it, because just like I would’ve, the soldiers opened fire, saving the questions for when Benny’s body fell to the floor, blood dripping out of countless holes, forming a lake of bad intentions. But he only received the business end of my shoulder as I tackled him—an action I still find myself questioning.
“Oops. Sorry about your husband, Mrs. Benny,” I could’ve said. Man, the thought wets my parched mouth. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
But by the time the soldiers and I had stopped firing, little Marissa had started crying (obviously), and that’s the only thing that made them stop.
“You alive in there?” one of them shouted.
“Don’t say a fucking…”
“Yeah, there are four of us: two men, my wife, and my daughter.”
For a brief moment I had a sparkle of hope when one of them said, “None of you infected?”
“No,” I yelled out.
“Good,” a deep, creepy voice said, then laughed the laugh only a truly evil person could—just like the movies.
I looked at that son of a bitch, Benny, and said, “You just got us all killed.” Worst of all, he mentioned the word “woman.” I shook my head in disbelief. That’s just not something someone says to the people who opened fire on you at first sight.
There was just so much wrong with that situation. You don’t go out into the streets and open fire for one zombie that’s inside a store, especially if he’s waving around and screaming at you. No, these people knew he was alive when they fired, which couldn’t mean anything good, as far as I was concerned.
And I was right…
“What?” Benny looked at me quizzically then revealed himself again. “We were looking…”
There was another gunshot, the bullet hitting the wall beside him. He jumped. I took aim from behind the counter, just out of sight.
“We’ve got grenades,” the Creep said. “Throw out your weapons and we’ll think about letting you live.”
Shit! Sometimes we have to choose our battles. That night I did. It was flight, for the time being—until I could find a way to fix Benny’s fuck-up.
The smile on that soldier’s face when he disarmed me brought about a piece of me I thought I left back in ‘Nam. There was nothing I could do but be taken prisoner. You see, when there are no rules, there are no rules. The balance shifts once the bounds are broken, as it has so many times in the past. Anarchy has its perks when you’re on the right side—which we weren’t on, thanks to Benny.
I’m sure you’re sighing as I had at that moment. Well, at the time, I swear I could see God laughing at the test he’d given me—which, deep down, was the real reason I left with Benny and his family. I’ve done things, terrible things, back in ‘Nam, and this, I felt, was a form of redemption for all the blood that’s on my hands.
Those soldiers spared no expense at making the next few days of our lives nothing short of miserable. We weren’t fed, starved like neglected and unwanted cattle. And what they did to Jenna…it truly is a shame to know just how low some men will go. They killed her soul the night they took her innocence.
I claimed theirs several nights after…
I negotiated my wrist through one of the ropes that bound me, and then freed the other. All of this had been a culmination from days worth of hard, clandestine work. It was an endurance of patience and pain, and keeping that nosey bastard, Benny, out of my plans. If he found out what I was doing, he’d surely be attempting the same thing. And that would only get us caught…killed.
But it paid off, for the most part. There was only a minor hiccup in the execution.
I dropped to the ground and scanned the room I’d been forced to memorize over the days of Jenna’s rape and all of our starvation. Just as I’d measured in my head, the door out was eight-and-a-half paces away. The closet to the immediate right was as barren as I’d expected it to be. Bastards. They were clever, and it should have been their team I was on—until they went mad.
I guess the decimation of all known civilization—or what I had assumed was—will do that to a person.
Just as I put my hand on the knob, that idiot, you-know-who, said something behind the duct tape. And he didn’t say it quietly.
“Hhhlllpphh nneeee,” he cried, and then repeated.
My eyes had adjusted to the dark the moment they turned the lights off. Jenna and Marissa were still asleep, thankfully. Stability. If everyone got all riled up, my entire plan would have gone further down the shitter than we already were.
“Benny,” I said, “you need to listen and listen good. Stay quiet.”
Well, he didn’t, and for the first time since I’d met the man, I had a moment of clarity, a release only comparable to an orgasm, less anything sexual. As my fist collided with his sternum, I felt like a new man, different…younger. It invigorated me, drove me more into the state of what I was preparing
to do.
We were going to survive this.
Or at least I was.
With Benny unconscious, still dangling next to his family, I proceeded down the hall. I knew by the moon’s position in the sky that it was early in the morning. That was the last thing I saw before I shut the door. There were three other doors—the room I exited was the last in the center: the master bedroom. I passed the doors on both sides, and then the one to the left—which I assumed was the bathroom—and entered the living room. But my attention was past the dining room and into the kitchen. Two things hindered further unplanned movement. One was sprawled out on the floor, a bottle tipped over, staining the floor with wasted wine—I was never a fan of alcohol abuse. The other had his forehead resting between crossed arms on the kitchen table.
They were killed without a problem. It was when I entered the first room that I heard Benny coming to. He was a resilient son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. I hurried in the room and to the bed to kill its occupant, slitting his throat with the same kitchen knife that ended his comrades’ tour of insanity. Each time, I felt the pressure of the skin parting, heard the blood seep out, felt their last breaths. I took in each of the little popping sounds of dripping plasma. I could taste their pain, a thirty-two ounce serving of food saved for the gods. And I savored every bit of it, because Jenna couldn’t. What they did to her, I feel, completely justified my actions.
There is no humor in actions like that, only justice, revenge. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t smirk as I left their corpses.
But when I left for the room directly across from this one, Benny was at it again, only this time he was flailing around, some part of his body constantly colliding with the wall. I guess I pissed him off with the whole punch thing. I still don’t know why he didn’t just listen to me, and as you might well have guessed, little Benny’s actions caused a ruckus to stir about in the room I now stood in front of.
I swear that man was trying to get us all killed.
I can only imagine what it looked like from the walls’ perspective. The occupant of the room opened the door with such force that I felt a trickle stream down my leg. In a situation just as this, it was a safe bet that whoever was inside would be armed. After all, it was very early in the morning. They should rightfully be paranoid, assuming the Infected had broken into their gated compound. But the Infected hadn’t, and they must’ve known. The door opened to reveal a man in tightie-whities. The look on his face was priceless. Seeing me, a man bloodied and bruised, beaten by him and his friends because of a man named Benny, standing there, in front of him with a bloody knife, wearing the same wardrobe as he, only keeping appropriate composure. And then there was a rustling from behind him, which scared me doubly.
“What is it?” another person asked. To my surprise it was the other soldier. I was going to be in a fight with twice what I bargained for.
But the man in the doorway didn’t get a chance to answer his boyfriend. I swiped at his throat, going four-for-four. And when the next body came into sight, though only a silhouette, I attacked, ending its life. I never cared for don’t-ask-don’t-tell, but I never wanted to express it like that. In a time before, I thought, I’d have taken each of these heroes out for a drink. It helped me cope with having just killed five men—I’m still human. A lot of emotions were going through me at that moment.
And one thought I still have yet to shake.
Part of me, a very small but still existing part, is grateful that it wasn’t me being raped. I don’t know if I could handle that sort of violation. They say you learn something every day, and I learned two things that day. One was that I had a new-found appreciation for any and all rape victims—as for the following days, I saw the after-effects of such a devastating and cruel act. The second, well, I’m not so proud of that one. I learned just what type of person I really am. Though I have only expressed this thought externally this one time, it has to be a defining trait of my personality.
It’s a very depressing thought, and I made sure to thank Benny every time that I saw fit—which was a lot. Something like that should never be forgotten. But mind this, it was never said in front of either of the girls. To them I was a gentleman, their savior, and I needed that more than anything else at that time. Because out there, in infected territories, you need something to keep you stable, or else you lose it all.
We eventually found and holed up in a warehouse in the industrial district just outside the heart of the city. From here we could see the fences of the military outpost. But it wasn’t an outpost at all—it was a fucking strip mall, with poorly erected mounds of sandbags and toppled machinery. It was built in such haste that they hadn’t even had the chance to think of a way out. The more I think about, and put myself in that situation, I can see how it happened.
It’s unfortunate, but almost everybody knows a Benny. They might not share the same name, but they share the same traits.
And true to his manner, just being alive at that point wasn’t good enough for him. No, now he wanted to exact revenge on those that he’d misplaced his faith in, possibly hitching a ride on my ego. I still don’t know if he acted this way to restore some confidence in his mentally-shattered spouse and daughter, or a horrible attempt at fooling himself. I’ve seen this routine before, just not as serious.
He really was going to get someone killed.
Just like a child that couldn’t let a sleeping dog lie.
We’d all barricaded the lower floor of the warehouse we found not soon after leaving the empty “outpost.” But our activities drew the undead to us. It was inevitable, I guess. For the first day, we had no problems. Benny’s attitude was stable enough to keep a grasp on what needed to be done. But with time comes impatience, and it caught up with him on the second day, the day we ate the last of our food. It had rained the day before, so water wasn’t an issue—which was a bright fucking ray of light, if you ask me.
But guess what…
“We’re all gonna die up here,” he shouted, either in a dream or in a daze, I couldn’t tell. It was dark, early. “We’re all gonna die.” He practically cried.
My eyes opened when I heard the constant splashing of his nasty-ass feet in our drinking water. I mean, sipping water from the floor was bad enough, not to mention unsanitary. But to top off that sundae with foot cheese and abused skin, possibly a renegade hair or two, it drove me mad, like clocks to Hook.
“Benny.” I approached his general direction. “Benny, what the fuck are you talkin’ about, man? We’re fine up here. Everything’s kosher, man, chill out. You’re gonna wake Jenna and Marissa.”
“They’re dead,” he said.
What a thing to say about the last of his family, who was sleeping soundly just meters away. But, having not thought of it at the time, I was dealing with the last bit of his sanity. It finally happened, just weeks after everything went to shit. Benny’s mind reverted to a primitive state that night, working on such limited function that reasoning was an impossibility—one that we couldn’t afford.
I went to put my hand on him, bring him back home so-to-speak. That small action, a gesture meant for nothing short of prosperity, drove him to the brink and beyond.
“Get your fucking hand off me,” he swiped my hand away. “We’re all gonna die up here. We’ll run out of food.” He began pacing around. “I…I have to save my family…it’s up to me.”
“Benny…”
“No, no, no, I get it. I’ll…I’ll be right back.”
No, I couldn’t let that idiot go wandering about in that sort of mood by himself. I held back, creeping in the shadows, listening. He spoke to himself in a way that only a lunatic could, saying things that no man should say, especially about himself. I won’t repeat what he said exactly, but let’s just say the man’s self-esteem was clinically alarming. He answered questions a tone deeper than that which asked. It was part demonic, part nightmare, wholly unrealistic as far as I was concerned. And yet, I had to follow the man that was obvio
usly intent on leaving this structure, exposing us all to those that wanted nothing more than to tear the flesh off our living bodies and jam it down their decaying throats. I was going for more “part nightmare” at this point. Everything I’d seen in the movies had led me to this point, and every point that I’d encountered before. There were countless signs that predicted this outcome.
This man, Benny, truly did fear the unknown. He’d said he was a network technician in his pre-apocalyptic life, his days planned far in advance. But now, when you didn’t know when your next meal was or even if you were going to get one, nothing could be planned. I can almost see how that would drive someone with his demeanor to the state he was in now.
I still wonder if he knew that it was a mistake coming out here.
Had I not “prepared” myself as a child, I very well could have been Benny. I’m sure the military training has something to do with it, too. Just a little.
A man can only take so much, some of us less than others.
Benny made for the bottom level and headed for one of the barricaded windows. It was a smaller window, which would only allow limited access to the outside world, or more importantly, giving the outside world access to us. I thought, only briefly, of letting that idiot out and then sealing the aperture with what he’d already started to remove. But then the thought of him actually making it back came to mind. And that would surely lead packs of infected to what had to be the last of the living. If I were lucky he’d die out there, but as you’ve probably guessed, I’m not that lucky.
“Benny,” I said as deep as I could, grabbing a piece of wood off the floor, “Don’t do it. I’m not kidding.” I ran up to him, done reasoning with a man that couldn’t be reasoned with.
I caught up to him and turned the man around.
Then everything went black…
That son of a bitch pulled a fast one on yours truly. I’m sure all my war buddies got a kick out that from wherever it is their souls rest. From what I can gather—since I would not inquire—he’d had some sort of blunt object in his grip, concealing it in the darkness, waiting for when I’d momentarily lost it. Maybe he wasn’t as gone as I’d previously thought. Maybe he’d put on that show as a way to lure me into a trap because he knew I’d refuse to let him leave this place.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night... Page 9
