The Scene

Jack

I'm back in the bathroom. Back in this windowless tomb that is the only comfort I can find after I close the door, lock it, and lay on the cold tile floor.

I got out of the bathroom a few days ago. The infected part of me telling to stay put and Grave telling me to come out, eat, and prepare. Prepare to leave the apartment because we are running low on food. You'll never make it. You're pathetic. You are going to die.

Grave told me that he lives in one of the buildings nearby and that it got over run by the dead. That's what he calls them. That was when he found me. He said that he had a family that he watched die. He said he left them without hesitating the second he realized saving them would have meant all of them dying.

Quick, calculated, emotion-free decisions are what will save us, he says. Most of the time you will only have a moment to decide and it is better to calculate and pull the trigger then hesitate for even a moment. Even if that means pulling the trigger on the person you love the most. Do it. Survive. And deal with it later.

He is still sure I am not infected. But fear grips me. I can feel that black stink beneath the surface. I can hear a voice calling my name, tapping his foot and holding my coat for me.  I can smell the stink. It is overwhelming and all the time. It is me, but Grave thinks it’s all these dead.

I just stopped writing to search the web for updates. More and more places aren't updating their sites. One place says government test gone wrong. Another says the virus came from infected birds. One place said that a terrorist group has claimed responsibility. The associated video link shows a bearded man in a cave with a flag behind him. It sounds like it’s just the US and quarantine efforts have been expansive. All these sites say that the president is still alive and meeting with advisers on how to proceed. They recommend heading north to the cold but list protected safe zones. They say these things only seem to be driven by killing and can not survive the cold.

I asked Grave what he thought. He said I'm only worried about that front door and preparing you to handle what's on the other side of it.

I had left this bathroom 3 days ago. I did it because Grave said we are going to have to leave to gather food. He asked if I wanted to live. I told him I thought so. He said I'd have to do better.

He said that the only them that stopped them was destroying the brain. The internet confirmed that. So he showed me how he had killed them. He showed me how to walk around quietly and sneak up on them. He showed me how to stab them in the brain and kill them quietly. He said he couldn't tell if they heard well but knew they saw well enough. I kept telling him that I'm weak and infected. I'd never killed anything. He said it was my life or what was left of theirs. Right now, he said, survival is as good as it gets. You're parents are dead, you're family, you're friends... they're dead. Once we get to the cold it will be about more than surviving. Until then think fast, pull the trigger and never hesitate.

After he said that I went and looked out a crack in boards of one of the windows. I realized I hadn't looked outside. I was so content to let the infection overrun me I didn't even think about it.

What I saw is what made me crawl back into this bathroom.

I saw this old man walk out his front door. He looked sickly and hungry but not infected. He started throwing up and dry heaving. It is the smell. It wasn't the blackness that came up. So I assumed he wasn't infected. He was walking into the street. He was saying something. Crying for help. No. Food. He was hungry. I started panicking. Should I save him? Yell to him? I couldn't open my mouth. You fucking loser. My stomach tightened. Go save him! Do it! You can’t do it. You’re pathetic. You infected gutter of shit. I could feel the darkness crawling inside. Tensing me up. I heaved. I told Grave to come over.

Oh no, I said. Oh God, no. God please, no.

I saw one of the dead. It wondered out from the other side of the street. The man turned to her. It? And started pleading with it. Asking for food. She was naked. Completely naked and young. Maybe late teens early 20s and disturbingly tight and perky. The rain had left a clean shine on her and I remember thinking she may have just gotten out of the shower.  Then I saw her face and her chest. The only stain on her body was the blood being soaked off her mouth. Her neck. Her chest. The deep redness of it was thinning out. She looked so clean. I remember thinking about the juxtaposition of that blood running down her body and the clear clean perfect looking skin just beside it. And she kept marching towards him. Go save him! What is wrong with you? Look at how weak you are. Look at how pathetic you are. You can’t even muster the courage to save that man. Just go back into the bathroom and die. Just go…

We can’t save him. Too risky. We go out. The dead see us. They could swarm us. We don’t know how many are out there. He means nothing.

Grave sounded so sure. My weakness was appeased. I was relieved.

I couldn’t close my eyes. It was pouring rain. The dead sort of stumbled on to him and they both fell to the ground. The old man didn’t brace for the awkward tumble. He just folded. His head smacked the concrete and the dead fell onto its back. The dead rose up. Possessed. It crawled onto the unconscious old man and buried its teeth into his neck. It pulled away, jaw still engaged, and took part of the old man’s neck with it. A flap of skin aching to stay connected stretched off and blood flooded out of the wound. Not in spurts or squirts but a flood.

The dead readjusted herself. Calculated. I don’t even think I blinked. This dead thing then started slowly pushing its hands down on this old man’s soft stomach. It was a gradual pressure led by her nails.  Finally it punctured. I remember thinking how easy it seemed for this lifeless weak dead looking woman to get underneath the surface. Surprised at how corporeal and soft that stomach was. How permeable and vulnerable its, my skin really is. And then heaping fistfuls of innards were shoveled into its mouth. I threw up. It gorged and binged like it had not eaten in days. Parts of this old man’s insides fell off the heaping handfuls back onto him like the food that hits your mouth and falls down from oversized spoonfuls. Rain came down hard onto the scene and spread the thinned blood in every direction from the old man.

He killed him with the bite on the neck and now he’s feasting. That black gaze of emptiness doesn’t look satiated does it? Grave asked.  

It ate and then threw much of it back up. Ate and threw up. Blackness intermingled with flesh.

I fell to my knees. Wept and remember thinking this isn’t possible. This isn’t possible. And as the thought transformed into a whispered repeated mantra I found myself closing the bathroom door. As I did I saw Grave writing things down in a notebook. His eyes skated over to me and then back down. He started talking to himself. I thought maybe he was infected. Then I thought about me being infected. And then I felt the blackness crawl up from my heart. As I started passing out I heard Grave say that tomorrow we will have to kill somebody.