by Morris, Jacy
As he turned around. He saw Joan standing at the hole in the roof, a grim look on her face. He said nothing. Nothing had to be said. Bad news was the order of the day... and there was always room for seconds.
****
"I don't believe it!" Mort yelled. Lou could hear the hurt in his voice. "It ain't happening! He just needs some rest."
Clara went to put a reassuring hand on his arm, but Mort just slapped it away. His face was one of rage and anger. Joan had broken the news to him as gently as possible, but Mort wasn't having any of it.
"Why are you lying?" he yelled, his eyes watering. "Why would you say that?"
"I'm not making it up, Mort. He's burning up. He's infected."
"You can't possibly know that. Did you run a test? How do we know it's not just the flu?" Mort reasoned.
Joan sighed. "Even if I could run a test I don't know what to look for, but just look at him."
Mort turned to look at Blake. He sat on the floor against the side of the stairs. Dark circles ringed his closed eyes, and his chest rose and fell, hitching with each breath. Sweat poured from his body, and he looked off, like milk that had been left out to long.
The tears finally fell from Mort's eyes. "This can't be happening," he said as he squatted down. He reached over Blake's body and gently unfolded the bloody towel around his hand. "Fuck," was all he said.
"It doesn't appear to be any sort of infection that I know," Joan said. "I think he's going to turn."
At that moment, Blake roused, blinking his eyes and looking around the room. Everyone was there, looking back at him. "What's going on? Why is everybody looking at me?"
There was an awkward pause, and then Joan, who had been delivering bad news for years decided that it was up to her to tell him. He focused on her lips as she spoke. "You're infected. That bite from that polar bear, there must have been some sort of infection in the bear's mouth, and now you have it."
"Is that why I feel like shit?" Blake joked. No one else laughed except for him, a weak strangled thing that contained no real humor. He swallowed, his Adam's apple jumping in his throat. He spoke with the air of a junkie away on a trip, "Can we still cut it off?"
Joan squatted down next to him and pointed at the red lines snaking up his arm. She spoke so that he could read her lips, saying, "The time to do that is past. See those lines?"
"Yeah?" he said.
"That's the infection. We'd have to cut off your whole arm, and you've already lost plenty of blood. I'm sorry. Whatever it is has moves faster than anything I've ever seen."
"Well... shit," he said. Blake looked around the room, his head wobbling as if it weren't quite attached enough. "I'm sorry you guys. I really am."
"You don't got to be sorry, man," Mort said. "You don't got to be sorry."
"I wanted to see that beach, too." Blake leaned his head back against the wall, and his head turned sideways. He looked like a man who was thinking of far-off things. "You think I'll be able to hear in heaven?" He pointed lazily at the sky with his good hand.
Joan didn't know anything about heaven. She had never been religious, but seeing the shape the world was in, she doubted even more that such a place existed. But that wasn't going to help Blake. "Yeah, I'm sure you will."
He hadn't been reading her lips, so he just continued, "I always thought heaven was like this place where you would be the best version of yourself. Like, your grandpa would be like 25 when you got there, and you wouldn't know him at first until he introduced himself. Wouldn't that be something?"
Blake wasn't looking at anyone in particular. He wasn't looking for a response. He was just rambling now. "I think he's a bit delirious," Joan said.
"It don't matter," Mort said. "Just let 'em talk. He ain't got a whole lot of time now."
Before their very eyes, Blake seemed to shrivel. He knew it was happening, and he continued his rambling speech. "I'm thinking about myself. What version of myself will I be when I get to heaven? Will I be the man I am now? I feel like who I am now is the best version of me, but then I think about how I can't hear, and I think, well, then maybe I want to be the second best version of myself. Maybe I want to be the guy that could hear, but was kind of an asshole. You know I had kids out there? Did I ever tell any of y'all that?"
Blake looked around the room, his eyes gleaming with fever. "Yeah, buddy. Met me a girl when we were both young. So stupid. We didn't get along too good. She liked to drink. I liked to drink. So we ended it, but not before we had a couple of kids."
Blake stopped talking, his eyes in the distance, his head bobbing like the head of a cobra. "I always said I'd stick around. I'd stay in the picture, be the greatest distant dad those kids could have asked for. But I didn't."
Blake turned to Mort. Mort picked his hand up and held it. Tears fell from Blake's eyes. "I'm afraid, man," Blake said, looking Mort in the eyes.
"I know, brother," he said reassuringly, patting Blake's hand.
"I'm afraid I'm going to be standing up at them gates, and they're going to be standing there too, yelling at me. And I'm not going to be able to hear what they say, and that's going to keep me from getting in there, man. Then I'm going straight down."
Mort squeezed Blake's hand, and he became quieter, despondent. His eyes were unseeing, and he had nothing else left to say. Sadness permeated the room, and the only sound was that of the dead ones outside, still hammering, still trying to find a way inside.
Mort got it now. He understood why Lou hadn't killed the woman upstairs. He understood that Blake was someone, Blake was a human being, and he was experiencing his last moments on earth. The other side of that experience, death, was an unknown. Blake was standing on that precipice, trying to see inside the swirling mists of death, wondering how things were going to go. It would be wrong to rob the man of any second of his time on earth because no one knew what was on the other side.
Though Blake was no longer with them mentally, he was still there, the infection coursing through his brain. What was the moment when he would stop being who he was? The moment he breathed his last breath, a few moments after, or was it sometime before. Was it happening right now, as Blake's eyes still blinked. Was this Blake in front of him now, or was it just the baby stages of the undead taking over his brain and turning him into something mindless.
"Mort?" Blake said.
Mort gave his hand a squeeze in reply. It was the only way they could communicate now, a gentle squeeze of the hand. Joan waved her hand in front of his eyes, and he seemed to see nothing. "What is it, Blake?"
"Mort... if you can hear me. I want it to be you."
Mort's head hung. He had always intended for it to be him. He wouldn't back away from his duty. You had to kill the one's you cared about. He had heard horror stories at the Coliseum, stories of survivors killing the ones they loved... and yet, each one of those people seemed more prepared for the world around them, more well-adjusted, more at peace. Taking care of their own filled the potential void that could be created when death was not given as a gift, but brought about as the result of a random calamity.
Mort imagined in the future that this was how funerals would be. Loved ones would gather around the afflicted person, say their goodbyes, and then they would designate who they wanted to kill them. Rather than it being a chore, it would be a great honor. Mort felt it; he felt that honor. As twisted as it was, he appreciated Blake asking him.
Mort just squeezed his hand. And Blake smiled. They didn't need sight or sound to communicate. They had known each other for only a little while, but it felt like more. Every day in this world felt like a year. Every laugh felt like a reason to live. Every death was an eternity and an opportunity.
Over the next few hours, they huddled in the darkness, sitting and thinking. Sweat rolled down their faces as the afternoon heat became trapped inside the mostly windowless building. Still, they sat in the gloom behind the rattling door that had miraculously held up, and the walls that had withstood the staccato pounding of rott
en fists for an entire day. Blake had lapsed into silence long ago.
Blake's eyes had closed, the useless clouded things, and he had begun to breathe deeply. Mort had never let his hand go. He sat, holding Blake's hand with his right hand, Blake's rifle resting across his lap for when the time came.
He could have shot him already; part of him wanted to, but he remembered the lesson Lou had taught him upstairs by helping a complete stranger. She was hurt, immobile, and incapable of hurting them. Under those circumstances, it was ok to not take actions into your own hands. Blake was in the same shape. Mort was still in awe about how fast the change had happened. Those damn polar bears. Joan said they must have been eating the infected to survive. The thought sent shivers up his spine.
The others reclined around the hallway, sitting on the stairs or the floor, all waiting for the inevitable to happen. They were waiting for that moment when Blake stopped breathing. Then they would wait for that second where he rose, and that's when Mort would shoot him.
The light on the second floor began to dim as the sun went down. The survivors turned on their flashlights, hoping the batteries would last long enough to get them through the night, and then through the tunnels. But first, there was Blake. First, they had to take care of Blake, as he would have taken care of them.
Mort still couldn't believe this was happening. After all they had been through, surviving an explosion inside a dumpster, escaping to the Coliseum, and then fleeing that nightmare as it collapsed around them. In the end, a fucking polar bear had killed Blake. Not the thousands of dead they had seen. Not some random, insane survivor. It was a bear, living off the dead, that had bitten his hand and infected him. It didn't seem fair, but Mort had not known fairness since he was born.
He held the rifle in his hand, Blake's rifle, cocked and loaded. Even if he had survived, Blake wouldn't have been likely to use it again. It was a bolt-action thing, and Blake's hand would have been completely useless. Mort wondered if they could have saved him by cutting off his hand.
The future rose up before Mort. It was gray and confusing to him. He felt as if he were about to set himself spinning in the universe. The others around him were fine, but he hadn't truly come to trust them. They were all sinking in upon themselves. He could see that now.
Katie had been shrinking since this all started. Lou seemed to always be searching for something, the right words, the right actions. Clara and Joan, well, they were just fine. But one day would come where they lost one of the others, and then they too would start shrinking in upon themselves, like worms caught in a sudden bout of summer sunshine after a hard rain.
He knew it was already happening to him. His world was changing. If this had happened a couple of months ago, it wouldn't have been a big deal. As a homeless man, he had never become truly comfortable with those around him. Most of the people around him were junkies, drunks, or mentally ill. The ones that were alright were few and far between, and they were all like him, damaged, untrusting wanderers who were just as likely to disappear in the night as they were to be there in the morning. That's how the homeless survived, picking up stakes whenever they felt like it. "Moving on to greener pastures," he had heard an old man named Clint say one night. Pastures, like they were just livestock looking for a place to graze and be left alone.
But it was happening now. It was happening now when Mort needed people. If he had been left on his own, he would already have been dead a dozen times over. He needed the others. Blake had been that bridge. Though he had lost his hearing, he was still personable and likable, and now it would just be Mort... awkward and uneasy, ready to run at a moment's notice.
On top of that, he was losing perhaps the best relationship he had ever had in his unremarkable life. Someone had actually liked him and trusted him, seen him as human. That was a tough thing to lose. He silently thanked Blake for his acceptance, for saving him when he had been ready to end it all. But he felt a hole forming in his chest, even as Blake opened his eyes.
Blake blinked in the gloom, as if he were a newborn creature, just seeing the world for the first time. Then his eyes, foggy and gray scanned the room. His arms came to life, and he tried to rise up off the ground.
"I'm sorry, Blake," Mort said. He let go of Blake's hand; it wasn't actually Blake's anymore. He aimed the rifle at Blake's head, squeezing the trigger the way he had seen Blake do so many times before. His aim was true, and blood and other matter splattered the wall behind Blake's head, the bullet ripping a hole in the wooden walls of the building. The noise was deafening in the tiny confines of the zoo's offices, but Mort didn't hear it.
Blake's body slid sideways and landed on the ground with a thump. His eyes were still looking at Mort. Blood ran down his forehead, and he looked almost peaceful. Mort watched him, in case he was going to come back again. He wouldn't let that happen.
Chapter 17: Disappearing Into the Sky
Lou sat upstairs with the others, reviewing their options. They agreed with him, a process that had been a whole lot easier than he had expected. With Blake out of the picture, climbing the hills had become a more realistic option, but everyone agreed that they should go through the tunnel.
Mort was sitting downstairs with Blake's body, but Lou tried not to think about him. He didn't know if Mort would make the journey. The look on Mort's face as he had put a bullet through Blake's head had been heartbreaking according to Joan. Lou had seen the look, and he knew it was more than that. It was human-breaking. Lou wasn't sure if Mort would recover, but he would give him the time he needed for now. Tomorrow, they were out of here. The walls simply were not going to hold. The door downstairs was ready to break at any minute, and he intended to give Mort about fifteen minutes alone before he suggested that they move everyone upstairs and barricade the stairwell.
Right now, Joan and Clara were more concerned for the welfare of Mort than anything else, but it was his job as a leader to think of the bigger danger that they were in. Emotionality wasn't part of the equation. If he let himself become emotional, if he let himself think about the unbearable sorrow sitting on the floor downstairs, he wouldn't be able to think. More than that, he might give in to the feeling himself.
Katie spoke up and asked, "When are we leaving?"
Lou watched her as she subconsciously patted her stomach. The gesture tickled something in the back of his mind, but it quickly faded. "I say we leave in the morning. The sun comes up, and we're gone."
"Do you think we're going to make it? I mean, does anybody here think that we're going to make it?" Clara asked.
"Don't talk like that," Joan said.
"Why not? I'm not giving up, I'm just wondering if anybody here actually thinks that the five of us can just walk from here to the coast and still be alive."
"What's the alternative?" Katie asked.
"Maybe we should just find a place, sit down, take a breath, and try and survive."
Lou had nothing to say to that. It was an idea. One that they had all entertained when they had first set out from the movie theater. The reality was that no place was safe when you were talking about the kind of numbers they were talking about. A couple thousand dead, you get one breach in your defenses, and it's all over from there. Then there was the problem of food and water.
The coast solved all those problems. The ocean provided food. There were plenty of streams and rivers that fed into the ocean for water, and the Oregon coast wasn't nearly as populated as the city or even the suburbs. Once you got out of town, it was all forest, hills, and mountains. That's what he had been told at least. He couldn't wait to see that ocean, and in the end, that made up his mind for him.
"If we sit still, we die. Listen to them out there, once they know where you are, it's over. I don't care what place we find in the city. If one finds us, hundreds will find us, and then possibly thousands, and then we're dead, killed by those things, by starving, or by thirst. And I don't know about you, but I'm not keen on dying in any of those ways. I got my heart set on dyi
ng in my sleep somewhere, preferably far from here, and far away from anything that's not living but keeps on walking."
There was no counter-argument. It was decided. They heard his words, and for the first-time, Lou felt like he had done exactly what Zeke would have done... and he hadn't even been trying. He had just been himself. He had said what was in his heart. Maybe that's what being a leader was, saying what's in your heart in a way that others can hear and appreciate.
With everything settled, Lou walked downstairs. He would need Mort's help.
****
Mort sat crumpled on the floor, his eyes glued to Blake's now-rotting corpse. Lou could see that he was in bad shape. His eyes were red from crying, and a thin sliver of drool hung from his lower lip, threatening to reach all the way to his lap.
He squatted down next to Mort, hearing his knees pop. When had that started? Was he actually getting old? He laughed on the inside at the notion. He had a long way to go before he would ever be considered old.
"Hey, Mort." Lou put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but it was like saying hello to a wall. There was zero response from Mort, just that thin string of drool dangling lower and lower. "You in there?" he asked.
Still nothing. This was not good. The last thing he needed was a catatonic dude to carry around. It was bad enough with Katie along for the ride. At least he didn't have to carry around Rudy anymore. But that wasn't fair. Rudy might not have been the most fit person in the group, but he never complained. He struggled to keep up, but he somehow managed it.
"Listen. I need your help. We need to move upstairs and block that stairwell. I don't think that doorway is going to last much longer."
