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

  Again, I swung hard, connecting with a corpse to my left. The branch hit at the base of its neck, urging out cracking sounds, muffled by rot. I stood upon the fallen thing, placing my foot on its chest and stabbed at it. The skin tore. It issued a faint wheeze and I pushed the branch down through its eye. I used all my weight and twisted until it stopped moving.

  Lurching low through the wood and brush and thick air, I crouched and threw the branch up in front of myself, blocking a wild swing. I held firm and kicked out, sending the body over backwards. It skidded on moist leaves, and scurried to right itself. I stomped on its face and broke away its jaw. Tongue lapping along crooked teeth, it still tried to gnash out at me. I held it down with the arch of my foot and brought the branch down like a spear, impaling it through the throat, and removing its head with a twist.

  It writhed on the ground, expending what energy it had left. The head rolled along a small decline, gathering twigs and leaves upon the thick that covered its face.

  Others wound through the trees. Bending, twisting things shrouded in the shadows of the canopy. Hallow cries rose up in laced warning as they neared. I could smell them in the air, growing and building as they tried to surround me.

  A lump rose up in my throat and I swallowed it down hard. The hairs stood upon the back of my neck as they moved forward and tore through the brush. There seemed to be more than I imagined at the creek.

  There I stood, smeared in dirt, nude, and panting. I hefted the club over my head and waited for them to come.

  One after the other they fell. Cracks echoed through the trees along with muffled snaps as I swung at them. The hazy blur of decay tore through. I lost my reason as I beat at them, pummeling them with all I had.

  As the final body fell, I dry heaved. The muscles tightened in my stomach and my face went hot. I panted, gazing through watery eyes, watching the cold morning air release from my mouth. Bits of fallout clung to my beard. I dropped the branch to my side and fell to my knees.

  It was so quiet. I felt lost among the scattered bodies, alone in the fleeting hate. I could see the wind move through the branches above me, but there wasn’t a single sound. I stood and looked down at myself; saw the dirt that was encrusted on my body. I saw what I was in the filtered light. I was desperate. I was cold. I was hopelessly alone.

  Slowly, I straggled back to the water, back to where they had first surrounded me. I let my body sink into the cold creek and watched as the dirt loosened and drifted from my skin. I let the rushing water take away the tension and leave me like the filth that had gone before it. In that moment of peace, I imagined ridding the world of the disgust that had befallen it. I played with the idea of destroying every corpse that wandered my way. I laughed proudly as I thought of these things.

  “Had you lost yourself?” Mary asked. “Had the things you saw finally been too much for you?”

  “In a way, yes,” I said. “But in another way, I felt free. It was as if by confronting them, I had gained something. I had faced my fears and won. I had become something new.”

  “Liberated,” she clarified.

  “Very much so,” I agreed.

  It was then that I realized what I had to do, why I had been retracing my steps. I was heading home. Guilt had been gnawing at me for so long that it had been impossible to see it until that point. I didn’t want to just remedy the world of the dead. There was one body, in particular, that I was obligated to. I was going back for my wife.

  Among them for so long, a few weeks at the most, but it felt like forever, I had been getting myself ready. I couldn’t leave her like that. I couldn’t let myself move on until I knew she had truly passed. Her face haunted my nightmares. Her screams plagued my waking hours. She was all that I could think about.

  “Life is all how you look at it,” Mary said. “Maybe that’s all you needed to push you forward, to push you into making a decision.”

  “That’s exactly what it was,” I said. “I had been riddled with guilt for so long that I was projecting it on my wife rather than on myself. I know it sounds sick, but I needed to lay her to rest. I needed to know that she was truly gone. I owed it to myself just as much as I owed it to her.”

  “I think it’s romantic.”

  I laughed. “In a way, I suppose it was.”

  “I’ve always been amazed at what love will make us do. We search most of our lives for that one person who compliments us in every way and once we find them, we can’t let them go.”

  “My wife and I had our arguments,” I said. “We had our ups and downs like everyone else. But when it came down to it, I loved her with everything I had. At the end of the day, we had each other. That’s where the guilt came from. It festered inside until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It grew in volume like a screaming child until I paid it the attention it deserved.”

  A look of realization struck her face. “Is that what you’ve been trying to get at all this time?” she asked. “We owe it to each other to save ourselves from this death?”

  I nodded. “How can we allow someone to fall victim to this without at least trying to save them from it? Isn’t it our responsibility to save someone when they can’t save themselves? And I’m not speaking from a religious perspective either; I’m talking about granting people some dignity, giving them rest when they can’t bring themselves to sleep.”

  “When you kill them, that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You’re helping them on their way. You’re allowing them rest.”

  “It wasn’t that way at first,” I said. “In the beginning, it was all about survival. I killed them before they tried to kill me. That was all. But now, I have realized there’s a greater good to be done. The dead deserve respect. They deserve to pass into whatever lies beyond. They deserve dignity.”

  I followed the river for days, sleeping in the trees when I felt safe enough, tending to the welts and stretching away the pain that had become just another part of life.

  I found a sewer entrance along a canal. The metal gate was locked, but I had enough room to wedge myself through the bars. I remember the darkness most of all. The dank smell was like an afterthought to the cold blackness. I struggled to find my way, squishing through muck that sent up the nastiest smells. I could feel it seeping into my shoes and traveling up the calf of my leg.

  I can only imagine wading through shit to be worse. For all I knew, that was exactly what it was. I tried to think of something else while I wandered. I imagined soft clouds and long rows of pillow-top mattresses, even though my nose refused to believe.

  Most of the time, I thought of my wife. I wondered if I could really do it, if I could take away what remained of her. I decided that I would have to, that this was what I had been searching for since the beginning.

  I came out of the sewers through a manhole. I was filthy and covered in waste. What I noticed immediately was that the dead didn’t pay attention to me. Not even in the slightest. Covered in God knows what, I was like a leper to the hordes of walking dead that filled every corner of the city. I had come up in the middle of downtown.

  Whether it covered my scent or the dead were simply repulsed by human waste, I didn’t know. I was just happy that they weren’t drawn to me. I had been running for so long that when they finally let me be, I didn’t know what to do.

  “So you’ve walked with the dead?” Mary asked with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Not with them,” I said, “near them.”

  As wonderful as it was to not watch my back, the stench was incredible, and I knew I had to eventually wash the stuff off. The fear of infection was greater than my need to be undetected.

  “I can imagine it wouldn’t be much fun walking around smelling like that,” she said, tightening her face in disgust.

  I smiled. “No it wasn’t.”

  I walked to the ocean. Maybe four or five miles from where I popped my head out of the sewers, I could hear the waves, the deep, rushing roar of the ocean breaking. I could even smell the salt ove
r the shit that covered me.

  Far down the beach, I saw a woman emerge from an overflow pipe. She was the tiniest dot on the horizon, stumbling along in the sand. I could tell she wasn’t one of them. The way she walked, the fluidity of her movements, she was alive.

  I quickly waded into the water when I heard gunfire. Stray pops sounded out along one of the streets as the woman struggled along the beach toward a stairway that led up to the boardwalk. There was an old man and a young girl, firing shots at the corpses.

  And that’s when I noticed the dead.

  Bodies were working their way out of the current, emerging from the waves. Black and slick, they gurgled and moaned as they came from the sea. At that moment, I realized how closely they resembled me. We could have been one and the same.

  And then the fires erupted.

  All along the board walk, bodies ignited – the hideous black ones along with fresher corpses meandered along, completely unaware that they were slowly being devoured by flame. Several eruptions later, half the beach was on fire. Walking torches blinded by the skin that melted across their eyes. Lapping fire cleansed the foul things, burning them to husks. It was almost beautiful until I realized the group of survivors had gone.

  I might have screamed, but I’m not sure.

  They were gone as quickly as they had come. As I washed the filth from my eyes, all that remained was the burning mob of creatures, cackling through scorched mouths. The flaming bonfire of the dead ignited others that got too close. One after the other until it was nothing more than a raging, moving mass of flame.

  I could have cried. My heart was deflated. But then I saw the new wave of corpses coming from the ocean.

  A rush rose through me and I scraped off the last bit of sewage from my face. As the dead neared, I looked to the shoreline at the houses along the beach and I ran. Once I hit the boardwalk, I kept going. I felt possessed by fear as I watched more of them straggle from between the buildings. They were everywhere.

  “Did you go back into the sewers?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied. “But I should have. If there had been time to pull the manhole before they were on me, I probably would have.

  The dead swarm. They come out of places you wouldn’t think they could. Beneath cars, from behind shrubs, seemingly out of the cracks in the cement. They are ruthless and unfaltering. They’ll never stop until they have you.”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t make me want to go out there with you,” she said, flatly.

  “But that’s the point, isn’t it?”

  She looked at me questioningly.

  “No matter how many there are, no matter how close they get, you have to keep running. Any given place is only as safe as the weakest lock, the faultiest door.”

  “You’re saying that no matter where we go, we’ll have to keep running?” she asked. “You need a better sales pitch.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I suppose I do. But it’s better than starving to death.”

  She nodded; a hint of shame crossed her face when she looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean …”

  “No, you’re right.” She looked up at me. “But it’s over, isn’t it?”

  “In a way,” I said.

  “In a way?” she repeated. “Look around you. Just from what I’ve seen through that window, I can see that. Why can’t you?”

  I let out a sigh. “There have been many times when I thought about quitting. Really, it’s pointless to keep running from them. I know that. But somewhere inside me, I keep thinking that this will end some day. I keep believing that I’ll wake up from this and have my old life back. My wife will be next to me in bed and she’ll wake up too and we can get on with our lives.”

  “But that’s not going to happen,” she said. “The most we can hope for are moments like these, moments when we find someone else and tell our stories while we wait to die - because that’s eventually what’s going to happen. One day, those things out there are going to get the best of us. They’re going to corner us and they’re going to finish us off. You said it, yourself; a place is only as safe as its weakest lock.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  She nodded.

  I laughed through a sigh. “I have to believe in something, no matter how out of touch it sounds, I have to believe that things will change. Out there, as long as you don’t get yourself cornered, you can run forever.”

  “Is that what you do, you run when you’re outside, among them?”

  “Actually, I jog,” I said with a smile.

  “What if I can’t keep up with you?” Her face became suddenly serious.

  “Then I’ll wait.”

  “But, for how long?” she asked.

  “As long as it takes,” I replied.

  She wound her finger around the top of the can and looked back at me. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who waits for anything,” she said. “You’re the kind of person who is either running or getting ready to run. What’s to say that you won’t run from me?”

  “I wouldn’t leave you,” I said.

  Her expression changed suddenly. “Like you wouldn’t leave your wife?”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “It is fair,” she said flatly. “It’s fair to me and my life. I want to know that you’re not going to take off when it gets rough out there. I want to know that you’ll protect me, no matter what.”

  “Listen, Mary. There are no guarantees.” I placed my hands on my knees and leaned forward. “What I’m offering you is a means of escape, a way out. I can’t predict any more than you what will happen once we’re out there. All I can offer is that I’ll do my best, no matter what happens.”

  “I’m still not sold,” she said.

  “So you’d rather stay here and starve?”

  “It seems like a better option than being ripped to pieces,” she replied. “So where did you go after the dead followed you from the ocean?”

  “I tried to find a place to hide.”

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “It was starting to get dark …” I began.

  Chapter 10

  In the beach areas, the roads are narrow. There’s just enough room to get two cars through the alleyways that divide the homes. I fled and ran right into the middle of a horde. They were tightly pressed against each side of the garages and when I turned the corner, I was stuck. Behind me, another mob had gathered, following from the beach. Ahead, there was nothing but a raging mass of deathly faces.

  Thinking as quickly as I could, a leapt up on a trashcan and grabbed a rain gutter that was fastened to the side of the house. I pulled myself up as the downspout shook, slowly releasing from the stucco. When I was high enough, I looked back to a sea of flailing arms. I pulled myself up onto the roof. As I lay on my back, knotting the pain out of my hands, I stared at the sky and the light that diminished past the ledge.

  My entire body screamed from the exertion. When the adrenaline starts to fade, all you’re left with is pulled muscles and this feeling of emptiness. My head was a mess; I couldn’t get my thoughts straight. The world kept spinning around me and I couldn’t get my bearings. And the dead kept moaning down below. It was as if they were begging me to give up, screaming at me to fail.

  In my life before, I had been prone to failure. Maybe I missed a big account or couldn’t manage my credit card debt. I had even felt like a failure when I couldn’t get my wife pregnant. There were all sorts of failures. And I really didn’t mind all that much. That’s what makes the world go ‘round. For every success, there are thousands of failures. Not everyone can win.

  But this was different. I couldn’t give up. I just couldn’t let them get the better of me. I refused to lie there any longer, letting the pain in my body win out. I pushed myself up on all fours, panting through the cramps that settled in my arms. I stood on the roof and looked down at the creatures. They stretched for blocks, as
far as I could see. I ran to the far side of the house and gazed down at a relatively empty street. There were only a handful of them down on the other side and they were moving off to join the others. I waited for a few more minutes until there were only a couple of them and eased my legs off the side of the roof, searching for the railing of the second floor balcony. I felt the rail with the tips of my toes and I swung my body over and let go of the flashing. I hit hard and the impact knocked the wind out of my lungs. It seemed like an eternity until I caught my breath again. I stumbled to my feet and gasped for air. The smell of salt and sea and tepid death came to my nose, forcing me forward.

  I had knocked over a table and was afraid the sound would bring them back. I looked down at the sand in the front yard, only ten or twelve feet below, and leapt. It was probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. I didn’t think about twisting an ankle or breaking a leg, I just threw caution to the wind and jumped. I rolled when I hit and that’s probably what saved me. I was up as soon as I hit the sand. I didn’t look back, I just ran. I ran for everything I was worth as the dead moaned just a block away.

  I picked a direction and zigzagged through the streets, turning as much as I could without straying from my set path. I headed southeast and stayed away from the main roads.

  I could hear them all about me as the sun began to fade into darkness. They were everywhere and I was the thing that didn’t belong in their world. This was a new frontier where death was everywhere and reigned supreme.

  As slow as they were, it was their numbers that brought death so swiftly. The new reason to live became threaded in how fast you could run and how well you could hide.

  Deep in the city, I found another place where the police had stood their ground and the blood was dried brown, staining the concrete. I wondered how many places there were like this. How many barricades had been broken? How many outpost and compounds overrun?