Waiting to Die (Book 2): Wasting Away Read online

  I went upstairs into the master bedroom and shuffled through the closet. In the back, behind a row of dresses, I found an old pair of boots, aged, but hardly worn. They looked to have fared better than the hiking shoes I was wearing. I took a pair of socks from the top drawer of the dresser and slipped them on. The boots felt snug against my feet, still needing to be broken in. Their age would help with that.

  In the master bath, I sorted through the medicine cabinet. A half of a bottle of Tylenol sat on the bottom shelf. I helped myself to a couple and swallowed them dry. I closed the mirror and the image of another man stared back at me. Squinting, I looked into his eyes, wondering who he was. There was so much grey in his hair and streaked through his beard. It was hard to tell what I had become.

  There were new lines at the edges of my eyes, deep and sun burnt. My lips were dry and cracked. The knots of hair about my head joined others where dirt and grime merged. Shallow, sunken cheeks gave way to protruding bone. I tried to smile them away.

  In the closet, I found a small gym bag with drawstrings. I took it with me as I grabbed another pair of socks and tucked them into my pack.

  I packed away some food in the gym bag, cinched the top tight, and fastened it to the bottom of my pack. I glanced over my shoulder before I left to see that everything was in order, just the way it had been when I entered for the first time. Besides where I had brushed away the dust, everything was in place. It was as if the family had just left, escorted away by the military during the first evacuations. I looked back at the pictures on the wall one last time and closed the door.

  Keeping low, I wandered through the back yard and out through the gate beside the garage. With a subtle click, the fastener released and I was out, keeping close to the fences that separated the properties. When they noticed me, I would change direction to another street or alley. Sometimes, I crossed through yards to get out of their line of sight. Out of eyeshot, they would continue in the direction they last saw me and wander aimlessly until they found something of better interest.

  It went this way for hours. I would jump a fence or hide behind a parked car long enough to let them pass by and continue on my way.

  I wandered through a group of warehouses and past an extension bridge that supported a pedestrian walkway above the freeway. The neighborhood on the other side changed dramatically as I traveled deeper into the poorer areas. Boarded up windows graced the façade of many of the homes. There were run down tenements and crack houses, abandoned buildings with char marks along their roofs. Graffiti peeled along the walls. I could still hear the echoes of children crying in the apartments above.

  Before this all began, this portion of the city was set aside for low income housing. This is where the poor were tucked away so as not to be seen by those commuting to white collar jobs within the city’s center. This was the place where eyes were diverted and car doors were locked for fear of assault. This is where I used to spend my weekends volunteering at the shelter when I was able.

  I had always thought that places like this couldn’t exist in a fat America. I believed that there was no way that poverty could fester in a land so rich and resourceful. One day, on my way to work, I saw a woman sifting through the garbage behind one of the grocery stores while her children played at her heels. I slowed my car and took the next off ramp. I drove through the street and into the parking lot where the woman was. I pulled up next to her and rolled down my window. One of the children saw what I had in my hand and came running. There was a thin layer of dirt on the child’s face like the film that covered everything in that place. The little girl held out her hand and I placed the money into her palm. The mother looked at me with vacant eyes and cocked her head slightly. I told her to take it and buy something to eat. She nodded and I drove away.

  That encounter lingered in my mind for days. I couldn’t get the images to go away. There was this nagging guilt that ate away at me. When my wife asked me what was wrong I told her I was going to volunteer, I told her what I had seen and that I had to do something about it. To see those children playing in the waste at their mother’s feet, to see the look of desperate times engraved on their tiny faces – it was more than I could handle.

  From then on, I spent as much of my free time as I could to help out in that very same neighborhood. It did little to ease my mind. It wasn’t a duty, it was an obligation. When I had been given so much in life, it was hard for me to sit idle and watch others suffer.

  And then, after so much time, I returned to the very same spot and looked at the run down grocery store. I gazed past the cracked stucco at the dumpster I had seen years ago, turned over on end in the back toward the alley. Sprouts of grass and weeds darted up through the cracks in the asphalt, creating zigzag patterns along the parking lot of green and gold and rusty brown.

  As I made my way through the wreckage on the street, I saw a child. She was not much older than the girl I had given money to so long ago. This poor, broken thing swayed at the corner of the parking lot. Her eyes were as white as frost. Her stare was graven and empty. For a moment, I thought it was the same child I had seen before, but as I drew closer, it was nothing more than a projection of my imagination.

  I gazed at the girl for a long time, watching her waver in place, her glare fixated toward the road as if she had lost something in a dream. While I watched her there, I could hear the vibration before I felt it. This low, humming sound turned through the air. I froze in place and turned slowly. Along the off ramp, only a few hundred yards away, I saw the frenzy of movement building like a wave of insects upon a heap of garbage. As I stood still, I could see the arms dart out from the moving mass. And then I heard the howling cries.

  My tongue swelled in my mouth and I choked. I gasped as the mass of bodies poured out from the freeway, tumbling like a landslide. There were more of them than I had ever seen before. A giant explosion of death and rot surged over cracked concrete. I turned and found the child glaring at me through dead eyes, closer than before. For a moment, I thought I saw her smile. I thought I saw a glint of broken teeth through dry, parted lips.

  Everything slowed down. The sound of the horde became drowned out by the rhythm of blood, pumping in my ears. It was as if I were under water, listening to the crash of waves upon some distant shore. Panic rose and I felt as though I were rooted to the spot. I leaned forward, but my legs wouldn’t respond. I cried out and clenched my fists. Something grew inside of me as I looked back at the growing wall of rot. There was a simple understanding that if I didn’t move, they would catch me and rip me apart. The idea of being eaten alive is what pushed me forward. As simple as it was, it held more weight than any other source of fear I have ever felt.

  Chapter 3

  I ran.

  With everything I had, I set my feet upon the cold ground and ran as my heart threatened to beat from my chest. The scraping of dead limbs followed closely behind. Even after so much time among them, I had let myself be found. A cold rush spiraled up along my spine as I fled.

  The world unfolded in vivid detail. The sounds of birds in the treetops, the nursing wind, and the dead at my heels – it all popped in my vision. As the adrenalin coursed through me, I ran as fast as my legs would allow.

  As I weaved through the streets past neglected buildings, I noticed her in the third floor window of an apartment building. Panic graced her face as she gazed past me and saw the stumbling horde a few hundred yards away. There was a moment of mercy in her eyes before she pointed toward the door and vanished into the darkness behind the window. A wisp of a face, sorrow at her brow, and then she was gone.

  I heard music, bright and brilliant. It seemed to come from everywhere as it echoed from one building to the next. The sound was familiar, taking me back to a place I had been before. I couldn’t place the location, but the music was lustful and pouting. It shot through the evening air and made the dead moan in timbre. I slipped behind the approach of the complex and peered from the corner as the bodies moved through t
he alleyway at the side of the building toward where the sound saturated the air like rain.

  The door gave behind me and I turned as I drew the pistol from my waist. The woman’s eyes were wide as I aimed at her. I lowered the gun as she let out a gasp and stepped back. I mouthed that I was sorry and she took me by the arm and pulled me in through the doorway. She moved around me and closed the door, quietly latching the locks behind her.

  “Up here,” she said, taking to the stairs.

  I placed the pistol back into my waistband and watched her as she moved upward. Her feet tapped lightly against the wooden stairs, knocking out the slightest rhythm as I followed. There was certainty in her steps, a confidence to her movements.

  She gave me a small nod and cocked her head to the side, pointing the way with her gaze. I looked back at the doorway for a moment and saw the dead move past. They couldn’t see us. Without a second thought, I hurried up to the next landing and nearly ran into the woman as she worked the knob on one of the apartment doors.

  Dust danced through the light that entered the window. Wisps of diamonds and glitter held and parted for the woman as she breezed through the room. She pulled a set of electrical clamps from a car battery that sat on a box on the floor and the music died. Hand over hand, she pulled in a clothes line and removed a small radio that had been fastened there.

  “They try to find the sound,” she said. “It’s not the music as much as it is the noise. The music is for me.” She gave a thoughtful smile and looked away.

  “It was beautiful,” I said.

  “Mozart,” she replied. “The only time I ever get to listen is when I need to distract them.” She motioned out the window.

  I glanced over the edge, down into a crowd of bodies that had gathered. There were over a dozen below the window and the mob that had followed me converged from between the buildings, drawn by the sound.

  I looked at her. There was a certain something in her eyes. It was a fleeting thing, maybe a glint of sorrow and a touch of hope that built as I caught the corner of her stare. There was mystery there, the type of mystery that only comes from those who have lived so long in the hereafter. Purgatory changed people.

  Her hair was an early morning mess of tangles, outlining her face in wisps of frizz. Her skin was fair, showing little of the worry that was set in her eyes. She may have frowned when she looked at me, but it didn’t take away her beauty.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You brought a lot of them,” she commented, looking out the window. “You’ve brought more than I’ve seen in a long time.”

  I glanced over her shoulder and saw the dead coming through the walkways between buildings into the courtyard behind the apartments. They clawed over one another to bridge the gap, scraping rot along the walls as they went.

  “Where did they all come from?” I stuttered.

  “You came from the freeway?”

  “Down the off ramp a mile or so back.”

  “There’s an encampment there,” she explained, “across the freeway. That must be where they spotted you.”

  “There are other people?”

  “No one any good,” she replied. “See there?” She pointed out the window at a thin wisp of smoke coming from a building surrounded by warehouses.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it on my way through,” I said. “How could I have missed it?”

  “It’s easy to miss signs of life when everything else is so dead.”

  “So how do you know that I’m not one of them?” I asked.

  “I don’t.” She shrugged. “But you don’t seem the type.” She motioned for me to take a seat. “I don’t have much, but what there is, you’re welcome to.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for helping me,” I said. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t seen me.”

  She sat on a worn armchair opposite of the couch and introduced herself as Mary. “I spend most of my time looking out the window,” she said. “I’m either watching for others or praying that the next time I look out, the dead will have gone away. I would have seen you either way.”

  “You’ve been here since the beginning?”

  “Since the very first day,” she replied. “When I heard what was happening, I didn’t know what else to do. There was so much chaos. I stayed here quietly while all the others evacuated. I bided my time. I suppose I should have left with the others, but I couldn’t get myself to go out there with those things.”

  “It wouldn’t have been any better if you had,” I told her. “I’ve been out there a long time and I haven’t come across any encampment that survived.”

  “I heard there was a military base in the High Desert that is still operating. Have you seen anything?”

  “No,” I said. “It fell in the very beginning like all the others. There isn’t much out there. Where did you get the news?”

  She glanced toward the hallway. “I have an old short wave radio in the other room. I heard reports until the power went off,” she said. “So this is really the end, isn’t it?”

  “There’s always some hope,” I answered. “We don’t know much about the dead or even how this thing began. I think they’ll eventually rot away.”

  She looked lost in thought for a moment. “I never paid much attention to religion beyond the Sunday services,” she stated flatly. “I never paid any mind to superstition or prophecy, but with what I’ve seen, it’s hard not to think that this is some sort of retribution. There are more of those things every day. They come from out of nowhere.”

  “You’re right - they’re everywhere.” I sat at the edge of the couch. “They’re absolutely everywhere. Even in the deserts and hills. I’ve seen them in the forests and along the canals. I have seen them wading in the ocean and through the rivers. I see them in my dreams. And in every place I’ve been, they’re always patiently waiting.”

  She frowned. “I had thought of going to the ocean and finding a boat. I’m going to eventually run out of food so I’ve been trying to find a way out of here. But if they’re everywhere, like you say, there’s no point in running.”

  “There are always reasons to live and running is just another part of life now.”

  She feigned a laugh and ran her fingers through the tangles on her head. “Do you know how many people I’ve seen die?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve seen so many, I gave up counting,” she said solemnly. “For every one, I tried to remember their faces. I tried to put some meaning into their lives, tried to keep their images so there would be someone left to remember them. But even the ones who made it through the beginning soon died, trying to escape. They ran and paid a steep price for it. So I stayed here. I locked myself up in this building and came to terms with what my future would become.”

  “Mary, life is precious no matter the outcome,” I said. “Life was a struggle before this ever happened. We fought to survive because death frightens us more than living. There’s always a point to living.”

  “I envy you.” She wiped away a tear, brushing it along her cheek until it was no more. “I feel guilty for breathing when so many have drowned.”

  Looking at her, I realized how emaciated she was. Her skin clung like loose fabric about her bones. What muscle she had was long, knotted where her joints jutted out from the spaces in between. Her eyes were sunken and showed the pain she had endured. I could imagine her heart looked much the same way.

  “What have you been eating?” I asked.

  She gave a small sigh. “Whatever I can find,” she replied.

  “What about water?”

  “I collect rain on the roof and boil it.”

  “But it hasn’t rained in weeks.”

  “Then I stay thirsty.”

  I pulled my canteen from my pack and handed it over to her. Her eyes brightened when she saw it and her lips parted slightly. Her hands shook when she reached for it, uncurling her fingers like brittle twigs, threatening to snap with the weig
ht of rain.

  “Not too fast,” I said. “Drink slowly.”

  She took a sip and the water ran along the corners of her mouth. It coursed along her chin and down her neck. “Thank you,” she said after stifling a cough.

  “I have to get you out of here,” I said.

  “But I can’t.” Her lips curled. “I wouldn’t know how to walk away. I’ve been here for so long,” she stammered as she spoke.

  “You’ll die here, Mary,” I said to her, almost pleading.

  “I could die out there,” she said, glancing toward the window, knotting along the outline of the canteen in her hands.

  “But at least you’ll have tried.”

  She remained silent and took another drink. She leaned back on the chair and looked deep in thought. “Look at me,” she began, “I wouldn’t make it very far.”

  “I’ll go out and find some food,” I replied. “We’ll get you healthy again and then we’ll get away from here.”

  She smiled.

  “However long it takes,” I said.

  “You’re very kind, but it’s too much to ask.”

  “I need to eat too.” I shrugged. “What’re a few more cans of food?”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “You would really risk going back out there for someone you just met?”

  “Really, it’s selfish,” I replied. “I just … I could use the company.”

  She let out a small laugh and grinned.

  “How well do you remember the area?” I asked.

  “Pretty well,” she replied.

  “Good, I’m going to need to know where the nearest market is.”

  Chapter 4