“You can’t go back,” I tell him. I’m familiar with his thoughts. “This will just be a bad memory when we’re out of here, like a war.”
Before I finish speaking, the car jolts and I slam on the brakes, thinking I’ve hit something. The jeep slows and the car jolts again, this time nearly toppling over, two wheels rising off the ground. In my peripheral, I see a flash of gray, and blinking, I catch a glimpse passing in front of the jeep.
“Ryan!” Ehren shouts, but it’s too late. A deafening shockwave rattles the frame of the vehicle and we sit, helplessly constrained behind seatbelts, as the car flips onto its side, glass pelting our faces from the exploding windows.
Alexis screams and my vision blurs, nearing unconsciousness. I flail slightly as I feel my frame being pulled from the vehicle. I feel a burning across my skin, inflicted by the sensation of tiny daggers carving into my chest. I can hear Alexis crying, and I can hear Ehren shouting.
Things come into focus for a moment, and I see Ehren standing between Alexis and Lindsay and three female creatures.
“Don’t you fucking touch them!” he shouts with a fire in his lungs, brandishing my machete in one hand and wielding his knife in the other.
One of the monsters inches closer and he swings, swiftly cutting into her chest. She howls in pain and retreats back. I stumble slowly behind him, shaking my head as Alexis helps me to my feet. We step back slowly, and the three creatures move forward. The scene is still spinning behind my eyes, and I blink rapidly, trying to clear the foggy picture.
“Ryan,” Ehren mutters. “Now would be a good time for you to go apeshit on these things.”
“Ehren, I can’t see straight. Don’t let them touch the girls. They want the girls.”
One of the attackers makes the mistake of inching closer to Ehren, who strikes cleanly, severing the creature’s ear. This sends the other two into a violent rage, and they make for Ehren as he swings once more, sinking the machete into the neck of the leader. She bellows fiercely and continues charging, overpowering and knocking him onto his back. Brown soil flies through the air on impact.
Ehren and the leader struggle on the ground as she attempts to drive her teeth into his throat. I shake my head profusely, let out a raspy growl, and move forward, grasping the handle of the machete and kicking downward with my heel. The leader’s body falls limp beside Ehren as the other two inch backward in fear.
I jump slightly as Lindsay and Alexis lunge past me toward the monster still clutching its severed ear. Alexis spears the beast, knocking it off balance. Lindsay screams and runs through the monster’s chest, twisting Ehren’s knife deep into its sternum before it bursts into nothing.
Lindsay shouts, falling to her knees, staring at her blood-covered hands.
The remaining vamp glances at us before sprinting away into the tall grass behind us. I move beside Lex and kneel down, placing my hand on her shoulder, softly kissing the top of her head.
“I am strong,” she says.
“Yes, you are.”
Ehren pulls Lindsay to her feet. “You okay?”
“No,” she mutters, wiping the blood from his blade and handing it back to him.
“Come on; we need to keep moving.”
She just stands still, staring at the pile of ash beneath her. “We’re going to die, Ehren. They’re all dead.”
“We’re not going to die here,” he says.
Ehren and I collect what little we can from the rolled jeep, grabbing our gear and as much food and water as we can carry. Lex just stares down the highway, keeping watch and pacing. Lindsay remains steady, no longer crying. She’s still clutching Ehren’s knife, so I hand him the pistol with all the remaining cartridges.
“Is she all right?”
“It’s her first kill,” I explain. “It always takes some time to recover.”
“Yeah.”
“Ryan?” he asks with a somber look. “What do we do if this has gone beyond the quarantine? What if the world is overrun?”
I look hard at him, throwing my pack over my shoulder, eyes squinting in the bright sun. “We just endure. It’s all we can do. We endure, and we kill anything that tries to stop us.”
“And what if everyone we love is dead? What’s the point in enduring?”
“Ehren, you can’t think like that, all right? Don’t think like that. We need to carry on as if everyone else is going to carry on living. That’s all we can do.”
My first fear at the overrun quarantine barrier is that Lindsay will snap. We just stop and stare at the charred remains of bone, plastic, and metal. Ehren drops slowly to his knees, hands gripping his pack tightly. There are hundreds of corpses, incinerated and piled a few hundred feet from the barrier. Some of the bodies are smaller than the rest.
Alexis speaks calmly beside me. “There are children in there. I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense.”
“There’s no sense to be had, Lex. There never is.”
Ehren stirs behind us, standing and walking forward. “Ryan, maybe you should get a gun, a really big gun.”
“I hate guns.”
“That’s just stupid…,” he starts up, but Alexis cuts him off.
“Let it go. He doesn’t use guns.”
“But…”
“Just let it go.”
My brother’s face appears briefly in my head. He’s looking back at me, at my hand held outward, gripping a pistol as I shake. I push the thought aside and focus on our current trouble.
“Listen up,” I say as my thoughts become clear. “Sure as I know anything, I know that there are other people in this world enduring this nightmare, same as us. And sure as I know anything, we’re going to outlast this. We will keep fighting, and we will push our way out of here.”
The three of us stare at the road ahead—a barren cavalcade of the dead amidst the ruins of the old world.
“We weather the storm together,” Lex says, defiantly, taking my hand. “Or we die alone.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re going to die alone,” a voice rings out beside us.
I know it’s Brad before I turn to see him facing me. I know his voice. My insides collapse and expand, and collapse and expand again. His forehead is wrinkled. He’s alone and lifeless in the failing light, standing in the darker shadows beside the vast wall. His eyes are blank, and he stands defiantly with a grin across his face. The creature in front of us hardly resembles the man I once knew: pasty skin stretched wide, matted brown hair pressed against his distorted brow.
“Brad!” Alexis shouts and moves forward, but I grab her arm to stop her.
“That’s not Brad,” I tell her.
“Ryan, I’ve got to hand to it to you,” he jeers, stretching his arms out to the side. “You’re a resilient man. It’s a fortuitous coincidence, finding you among the ruins. I’m kidding, of course. Tracking you has been fun. I knew burning the barn down above you would force you out of the little fortress. You had some close calls. The others almost got you before I could. That would have been a shame. With my new power, you and I can run this anthill.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask as I step sideways to pull Alexis and Lindsay behind me, directly in front of Ehren.
Before Brad responds, my mind moves back to the memory of my brother and me. We’re standing outside the old farmhouse we’d lived in when we were younger. He’s laughing and moving toward me as my hand shakes, gripping my father’s old pistol.
“Don’t…,” I plead in vain. “You’re not yourself,” I tell him. He’s practically choking on the blood of my dead parents.
I hear the gunshot in my mind, and my thoughts return to the present. Brad is speaking still, but his voice is muffled by the fading memory.
He smiles and speaks, taking a step forward. “Don’t make this hard, Ryan. You can’t imagine the power… the freedom… Let me give you a taste. You can live forever with Alexis. We can have everything we’ve ever dreamed of having.”
“Please, Brad, don
’t do this. Let us go. Just let us walk away.” My voice is cracking, and I can feel warm tears careening down my face. “Brad, if you’re in there, I love you. You’re my best friend. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
Brad laughs loudly, and I hear Alexis crying behind me, softly clutching my ribs. “Oh Brad,” she whispers.
He takes another step forward, smirking as we back away. “You humans and your emotions, so insipid and weak. You think what I do is any more awful than what you humans do to us? You think we deserve to die because we’ve become what we are?”
“Ryan,” Ehren intervenes. “What do we do?”
My grip tightens around my machete handle. Sweat pours over my brow, onto my neck and down my shirt. “Take the girls,” I tell him. “Keep heading north. Don’t stop. I’ll catch up with you.”
Lindsay and Lexi protest behind me. “I’m not leaving you!” Alexis yells defiantly.
“Go on,” I say, turning to Alexis. “I’ll catch up with you.”
“You won’t be able to find us,” she counters.
Ehren steps forward toward Brad, holding his knife near his chest. “We’re not leaving you alone, Ryan.”
“Ehren!” I yell, walking to meet him. “Do not challenge him. He’ll kill you.”
Before I finish speaking, Brad charges us, swinging quickly, knocking Ehren backward into the pavement and pushing me backward into the girls.
“Go now!” I scream at them and position myself between Brad and Ehren. I don’t turn, but I hear their pounding footsteps behind me as they flee through the quarantine barricade.
“I don’t want this,” I tell Brad, pleading with him once more to leave. “Don’t make me kill you.”
“You’ve been here before.” He’s grinning and taunting me, but I push my brother’s memory from my mind.
I can’t let my emotions affect what I do from here on out. If I let my sorrow get the better of me, Brad will cut me in half or worse, turn me into the same sort of monster he’s become.
“You ready to live with this, Ryan? You ready to live with my death on your hands? Can you see your hands beneath all the blood?”
The blows fall like dominos, one after another, back and forth. He swipes quickly, savagely, and directly. We land a hit, now and again, and after a short while, I stand bloody. Brad’s face is split open, but he appears relatively steady on his feet. I can feel drops of blood and sweat dripping from my chin.
“I knew you’d come back,” he growls. “I knew you’d stop at nothing to be with your beloved Alexis. She makes you weak, Ryan. She always has—just let her go. Join me in immortality, and we will be unstoppable.”
“You know I won’t do that, Brad. You’re going to have to kill me, because I won’t become a monster, and I won’t let whatever you are defile Brad’s body like this.”
He smirks slightly, crouching to grasp a tire iron beneath shards of glass. His shoulders form a shrug, and he points the iron at me, casually twirling it. “Well, I hope you’ve been eating your Wheaties.”
He moves quickly, not any quicker than he was in the past, but much stronger. I counter his movements, deflecting the blows and parrying as quickly as possible. He lands a blow to my shoulder, and I feel my knees buckle in pain. I can’t stall for even the slightest moment, so I roll sideways, dodging a crushing blow and swinging as I move. His hoarse bellow of pain echoes out as the machete slices through his neck, leaving a deep gash.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” he howls, clutching his neck.
He’s let his guard down in the wake of the pain, and I jump on the momentary opening. My blows are quick and sporadic. The assault is unpredictable, and its suddenness forces him off balance. I’ve got him beaten when I plow downward quickly, sweeping his legs from under him. He falls backward, and I force my boot against his neck, preparing to end him.
Something in my mind causes me to hesitate. I falter before driving the blade through his chest. My brother’s pale face surfaces once more, and my hand shakes unsteadily. Brad struggles beneath my boot, but I push down harder, holding him in place.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft,” he laughs, mocking me, the timbre of his voice high-pitched. “Are you thinking about your poor baby brother?”
I push down harder, nearly caving in his throat with the heel of my boot. “Fuck you. I am tired of killing. I’m tired of death. I’m tired of monsters, and I’m tired of watching the people I love suffer because of your kind—your disease.”
He grunts, trying in vain to remove my heel from his neck. “You think humans are immune? You think ridding the world of bloodsuckers will cure death? You think the killing will stop? The hatred? The violence? What’s the difference between your species and our species? Do you even know? Is there any difference? Join me, Ryan. Together, we will live forever. We’ll be gods among men.”
“That’s where you’re all mixed up,” I tell him. “Human beings are capable of goodness, of love and compassion. We are monsters with a capacity for love. That makes us the true gods.”
The creature wearing Brad’s skin flinches for a brief moment. Its eyes widen as my blade swiftly pierces its sternum. It tries to speak, softly stuttering and gasping before slowly withering into ash.
I whisper softly as a soft breeze blows the remains into the darkness.
“I love you, Brad.”
I’m nearly half a mile beyond the abandoned quarantine barricade when I come upon the others, waiting quietly inside an abandoned shuttle bus. Alexis sprints toward me in the dark, and she lunges into my arms, cupping my face in her hands. She smiles through tears and rests her head on my chest.
Lindsay and Ehren approach us, both smiling and nodding toward me. “Everyone all right?” I ask, pulling Alexis closer still.
Ehren nods, and Lindsay and Lex follow suit. “So…,” he starts up, staring into the black horizon. “What’s our course, Cap?”
The moon shows only through the clouds as my fingers clench tightly around the handle of my machete. Lindsay and Ehren remain close behind as we cross the landscape, silently taking stock of the past and what lies ahead.
###
Shane Crash is the author of the bestselling novel, Forest Life. His writing on social issues has been featured in Sojourners and his travel writing has been featured in Vagobond. He can usually be found drinking in a dimly lit pub behind his keyboard, somewhere in the continental US or surrounding areas, though it would be futile to guess at his current residence, as it will likely have changed numerous times.
www.shanecrash.com
@shanecrash
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