After the Bite (10 page)

“Abdullah,” Jasim said. “My beautiful Abdullah. This is my punishment.”

“No,” McCready said. “This is a tragedy. Nothing more.” Jasim sobbed.

“Guys, I can
’t hold them much longer,” Tate said.

“Come on, Jasim. We need to leave.”

“Leave me here,” Jasim said.”

“We don
’t leave men behind,” McCready said.

“Just let me die with my son.”

“No,” McCready said. Jasim looked at him. “You live, damn it. You live and you keep him in your heart and you let him live, too. On your feet.”

Tate kept firing. He was in the kitchen now.

“He must be buried,” Jasim said.

“He will be,” Tate said. He took something from his pack and knelt down, and McCready saw that the hovel and the street beyond were packed with people with vacant eyes. And then he saw Tate stand up with a remote in his hand.

“Let’s move!” McCready said. Jasim placed the boy’s body down and the two moved toward the back door. Tate followed. They exited the hovel and Tate pressed the button, but nothing happened.

“What
’s wrong?” McCready said.

“No fucking clue,” Tate said. The people were pouring out of the hovel. Tate turned to McCready. “Get out of here,” he said.

McCready didn’t have time to speak. Tate rushed toward the hovel, through the mass that began biting him and scratching him, and inside. A moment later the hovel exploded, and bits of bone and stone and blood rained down.

Only a few of the things remained, and McCready and Jasim took care of them. In the first kisses of sunlight the smoke cleared, and where the hovel once was only a mound of dirt
remained.

The sky grew brighter as the two men walked along the river. They got to the spot McCready had been shown, a very discreet little
place where the river expanded into what was almost a little pond before slimming down and continuing on its way. The two men sat at the bank of the river and said nothing, and after a while, when the sun was up over the distant mountains, McCready heard the sound.

The chopper grew deafening as it dropped down. The door opened, and the soldiers inside looked out.

“You all that’s left?” one of them said.

“Yeah,” McCready said. He stood up, and Jasim did as well.

McCready climbed inside, and then turned around and extended his hand to Jasim. Jasim only looked at it.

“Come with us,” McCready said.

“It is not my place,” Jasim said. McCready offered him a smile.

“Of course it is,” McCready said. “You
’re my brother.”

After a moment, Jasim took McCready
’s hand, and McCready pulled him into the chopper. The door shut, and the helicopter lifted off the ground and turned toward the rising sun.

Concrete Nightmare

The gigantic blue drum of the cement truck rotated
slowly. There was a slight scratching sound emitting from inside, and with every rotation the company logo was brightly displayed. It was a small castle tower with weathered bricks and above it sat the words WATCHTOWER. Below the tower it read CONCRETE CO. The font made the letters look like rocks, and the colors contrasted well with the liquid blue of the drum.

It was a nice day for Robert
Young and his crew as they worked. With rakes in hand they slopped the concrete into place, and evening fell as they neared the end of the driveway they were laying.

Robert threw
his rake down outside the plot of concrete and reached for the skimmer. As he grabbed the bar, out of the corner of his eye he noticed a jogger. It was a young man in a loose-fitting brown T-shirt with big white letters splayed out on the front, reading “FNP” in a gritty Papyrus. Robert raised an eyebrow, then returned to his work.

“Ready, Boss?”
Robert said. He motioned with his hand to one of his co-workers, a skinny man with unkempt stubble and a wife beater clinging to his sweat. Kessler walked over, tossing a cigarette into a section of driveway they had yet to fill with concrete. He nodded and strafed over to the other side of the skimmer, taking it in tow, and moved it away from him.

“Hold it
Kessler, just a sec.” Robert nearly fell over trying to get over a large rock that was partially submerged in the concrete. He dropped the skimmer and grabbed the rock. He heaved it out of the way. Some of the excess concrete shot off in different directions as it made a crunchy
THUD
on the gravel just between some of the rebars. “Hey, Kessler. Take the sledgehammer and bust that bad boy up. We can’t have some lump in the pour.”

Kessler moved a bit awkwardly through the cement to the sledge hammer that was strewn out to the side, almost into the neighbor
’s yard. He lifted it up and carried it to the tossed rock. With a few good heaves, he was able to reduce it to several small chunks, good for helping to stabilize the concrete. He tossed the sledge hammer away and wiped his face with the slightly yellowed wife beater, then moved back to the skimmer.

“Good, good. Let
’s finish flattening this out. Ready, Kessler?” Robert bent and grabbed the metal bar with both hands.

“Yeah, Rob. Ready.” Kessler grabbed the other end of the skimmer, and together they pulled it along. The thick concrete proved tricky to skim, but it began to take shape as Robert and Kessler moved the metal bar toward the street. The little chunks of gravel peeked out still, but that would be handled once they got this section poured. The truck sat in idle, rumbling
quietly. The driver, Ellis, smoked himself a cigarette, sitting partly in and partly out of the vehicle.

Robert stood up once their supply
of concrete on the ground had run dry, and swirled his finger. The truck rumbled louder and the drum spun faster. Robert pointed at the ground, lifting his hand up and down, and the chute lowered. Cement cascaded down and made a good sized pile that flowed over the rubble and the rebar supports. When he was satisfied, Robert signaled for Ellis to kill the flow.

After raking the concrete for a moment, Robert
and Kessler got into position, and together they began evening out the cement.

Another worker
, Jessup, came around from the back of the house. He had been on break, talking over some things with the owner, who walked with him toward the driveway.

“Guys, I gotta go for now. Daughter’s got volleyball practice. I should only be gone an hour or so. If I miss you, Robert, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, we
’ll be here in the morning, ‘round nine.”

“Good deal,” the owner
said. “See you all later. Good work so far. Looks nice!”

“No problem,” Robert said. He nodded with a smile, and looked back at the progress they
’d made so far. The owner of the house got into his car and took off down the street.

“You have the time?” Kessler asked Robert.

“Yeah, it is…” Robert looked at his beat-up old watch, and then back at Kessler. “Half after six.”

“So, we got an hour,” Kessler said, whipping out a cigarette. “We should be able to get this part done. You think?” He took a long
, deep drag after lighting up.

“Yeah, there should be no issue,” Robert
said. He found himself leaning more of his weight on his right foot, relaxing as he stood there. As if breaking a magic spell, he snapped into life and went back to work. He and Jessup worked to flatten out the rest of what Ellis had poured.

They
started pouring more concrete on the driveway. Kessler worked beside Robert for a few minutes, the concrete sucking at their boots, raking the chute since it was starting to clog. Kessler began to slow down. Then he stopped.

“You okay, Boss?” Robert asked him. Kessler
’s head was tilted downward. He wasn’t even looking at the chute, and then he dropped the rake in the new pile of concrete with a
PLOP
!

“Frank?” Jessup said. He squinted from a few feet away, taking short drags from his current cigarette. “Man, you okay?” Kessler turned to Robert with a
strange expression on his face. His eyes were different; they seemed the same, but they weren’t right, like they were focused on something far away even as they looked straight at Robert.

“Kessler? Something wrong?” Robert eyed him like one would eye a madman. Then Kessler
’s mouth formed a scowl, and he lurched forward. Robert dropped his rake, and his first instinct told him to bolt, but he did make the attempt. He was standing in nearly two feet of wet, thick concrete. His right foot turned as well as could be expected, but he slipped in the concrete and fell backward as Kessler toppled down on him. It all was a blur.

“Fuck, Kessler! What are you doing
?” Jessup said. Kessler didn’t respond or even pay Jessup any mind, and Robert was regaining his bearings, but was moaning a bit from the pain he felt upon landing. His back had hit a rebar, as well as a small chunk of rock from the old driveway. Kessler’s weight pressed him down onto both.

“Get the fuck off me!” Robert s
aid. He wriggled around, trying to get up out of the wet cement, and Jessup had rushed up to help. Robert punched, trying to hit Kessler, but was too disoriented to make a connection. Ellis was not aware of the goings on outside the cab, and was leaning on his fist, listening to the radio. The drum spun slowly on.

“Kessler!” Jessup grabbed an arm, and Kessler
turned toward him, gnashing his teeth. He bit down, catching a small flap of skin on Jessup’s forearm, and tore it away. Jessup screamed and flew away to the left in pain. Kessler jumped onto Robert, who was still having trouble getting out of the concrete, which felt like it was hardening around him. It was newly poured, so it definitely wasn’t doing anything of the sort, but all the same he couldn’t escape.

In his struggle, Robert felt around the surrounding concrete
and found a piece of rubble. It was a good sized chunk, weighing in at about four pounds, and it was pointed even. He lifted it up and clocked Kessler in the face. It hit his forehead, pierced the skin, missing his eye, but it staggered him. Kessler took a couple wobbly steps backward and fell right under the flow of wet concrete. The pressure helped bring him down, and it began covering him up. It splattered over his twitching body. Jessup regained himself and helped Robert get up from the concrete.

Kessler was a scrawny little guy and could not get out of the concrete. He wasn
’t moving too much anyway; he was in a sort of limbo between consciousness and unconsciousness. Robert was slumped over a bit from the weight of the concrete still clinging to his clothes and skin. He was tired, but he jumped when he realized the concrete was still flowing, and he tried to move the chute. The last load had coated Kessler nicely, and by the time Robert moved the chute away, it was too late. Kessler was completely buried and no longer moving.

Robert looked down at Kessler for a moment,
wondering just what the fuck had happened to his friend. Robert and Jessup stood motionless, silently mourning their friend.

“Robby, let
’s go,” Jessup said. He and Robert bolted to the driver’s side of the cement truck. Ellis killed the flow and climbed down from the cab, looking bewildered.

“When were you gonna tell me to stop pour—”
Ellis said, but stopped when he saw Robert and Jessup covered in blood and cement.

“Damn, you are a couple of pieces of work, men! What in the hell happened?”

Jessup stepped forward, and Robert was glad he could catch his breath while Jessup explained everything. Instead Jessup said, “Wehhhhrr…”

“What happened to your arm, kid?”
Ellis asked. Jessup shot forward and dug into the man’s neck. The force made him fall backward, and he screamed as blood spurted down his chest and arm.

“Oh
my… fuck!” Robert couldn’t take his eyes away as Jessup began eating Ellis. Control returned to him, and he looked up into the cab of the truck, then back at the scene playing out before him.

“Help
… help me!” Ellis flailed around a bit, choking on his own blood as Jessup dug deeper. Robert turned toward his own vehicle, booked it to the driver’s side, and climbed in. Ellis’s screams faded when Robert closed the door and turned up the radio volume. He turned the car on and took one last look at the driveway that should have been a simple job.

The end of the truck was still dripping little bits of concrete
over the hard lump that once had been Robert’s friend. The blue drum still spun, mixing its contents gently. Jessup continued to feed on the corpse of the cement truck driver, who had died quickly, more quickly than seemed possible, two lives gone in two minutes. Robert left the work site full of regret, listening to the news on the radio. He listened for some answers, and as he got some, he decided he should go home to his family and see if they were still alive.

Dead and Gone

The following is a poem
written on a blood-stained scrap of paper, found resting on a park bench one foggy morning by a young woman and young man, as they walked across the dew-covered grass on their way to nowhere, from nowhere, just trying to get by.

Just like everyone else.

Ode to a World Now Dead and Gone

What once was a man,

But is a man no longer?

What doesn
’t kill a man

Is said to make him stronger.

Yet here I stand, and I feel weak.

I am alive, and I am well

And yet my world
is bleak.

I had a family long ago

By now they
’ve turned to dust

The locks we forced upon our doors

Have all begun to rust

Our lights are out, it’s all gone black

And silence fills the airwaves now

Grass sprouts up through sidewalk cracks.

And all I see around me are

Shells of people, monsters now

Some of them look so familiar

As they shuffle all around

I can
’t be caught, but I won’t hide.

I lost all worth fighting for.

I watched their faces as they died.

I could live within the shadows,

R
un until my feet are sore.

But I
’ll just sit here, don’t you get it?

This world don
’t fucking need us anymore.