Alone No More (11 page)

I came back to the first floor and made my way up the wide stairs to the second floor. It was bitterly cold going up the stairs. I realized there was a, um. A big window open in the stairwell letting the cold in. I shut it when I walked past it. The upstairs was a single long hallway with a handful of rooms off of it. All of the doors were shut, and the hallways smelled like death. 

This house had really nice hardwood floors. They were stained a dark cherry color, and for all I know, they might’ve actually been cherry. They were old, worn, and they’ve been scuffed up by years of dragging feet, but the color was still rich. Almost like a patina on silver.

The hallway was covered in giant piles of dog shit. Huge piles of dried up brown nuggets. Big nuggets. Looked like fucking kielbasa. Everywhere. Wall to wall poop. I actually had to laugh that a dog had shit that much in the same place when the doors were wide open the whole time. Getting through the hallway was actually a pain in the ass. Only way to make it anywhere was to tip-toe in between the landmines of poop. I knocked on all the doors, one by one, and the only door that had a response was the one with the biggest piles of shit in front of it. The floor and door looked like someone had attacked it with a garden rake. Scratches on the door all the way up past the knob.

When I gave the door a rap or two there was that insistent rattling again. The tell tale bumping of something trying to get through the door at me. I could hear a few quiet scrapes as nails were drawn down the wood of the door, attempting to scratch at me from the other side. That sound makes my bladder weak. I sighed, leveled the shotgun off at what I guessed was neck height, and blasted a hole in the door. I was actually hit in the face by a few shards of flying wood which stung like a bitch. I think I got a sliver in my cheek of all places.

I leaned over and looked inside the room through my new fist sized peephole. Getting up off the floor was an elderly woman. She was clearly dead, though not in the permanent sense that would make me feel good about it. My shotgun blast had hit her in the chest and cleanly took her arm off. She was shakily pulling herself to her feet and I decided to get in the room and kill her with the sword. The door was locked, so I drew the sword and booted the fucking thing in. 

The old lady zombie had just steadied herself using the bed to make a lunge at me when I gave the sword a good swing and embedded it in her eyebrow. She went down in a heap. It took me a few seconds of see-sawing to get the blade out of the lady’s head. It stank in that room. There was a huge pile of crusty shit in the center of the bed, and right next to that was another dead body. This one was dead-dead though. The body was an old man’s. Very frail and thin. What was left of him looked at least 80 years old. He was holding a handgun, a small snub nosed .38. The old guy’s melon was busted out the top and he had a finger sized hole in his chin. It was surrounded by a grey halo from the gun powder. Pretty clear suicide. He had been bitten multiple times all over his arms and legs, but the bites were pretty superficial. Most of them had barely broken the skin. 

False teeth.

I grabbed up the pistol, slipped it into the cargo pocket of my pants, and searched through the small bed stand drawers. I found a box of ammo for the pistol. It had 12 bullets in it. The pistol itself held 6, and had 5 left in it. I was pretty excited. That’s when I heard this weird clicking noise coming from the hall. Tick-tack-tick-tack-tick-tack. It was getting closer faster.

I got the shotgun ready and went to the hall. Just as I got to the doorway I froze. Not five feet away was the biggest motherfucking dog I have ever seen. I don’t know what breed it was, but it was a beast. I think it was part Dane, part Rottweiler, part pony, because it looked huge, and it looked mean. You know when a dog curls its lip when it growls? And you know that primal growl they can let loose when they’re feeling scared, or territorial? It was doing both.

It was then I put two and two together. All this dog shit in the hallway. The open doors. The dead cattle and horses. The scratches going up the bedroom door.

The dog had gone feral when its masters died. It lunged at me. I don’t know why but I didn’t try and shoot it. I half assed and missed a butt stroke with the shotgun which was completely useless of me. Fucking dog hit me like an all-pro linebacker and took me out at the hips. The inside of my left thigh exploded in pain as it sank its teeth into the meat just below my balls. The dog landed on top of me, fully engaged with the meat of my leg and started shaking on me. I can’t even begin to tell you the agony I was in.

When I hit the floor I lost the shotgun. I was half twisted up when the dog hit me and I had to drop the gun to prevent my head from smashing into the floor. At least I did that right. Once I got some semblance of balance back I started punching the dog in the nose but all that did was cause him to bite me again, punching a whole new set of teeth marks into the meat of my leg. He had his front legs pinning my lower half to the floor and I could barely move.

Big fucking dog Mr. Journal. I got my right leg free and kicked him in the gut. He let go for a second. That bought me enough time to draw the Sig from the holster, but it also caused him to bite the shit out of my right foot. When he latched on he turned sideways and I emptied the Sig into his side, right at the spot where I thought the heart was. It wasn’t until the pistol’s magazine was half dry that I felt his jaws loosen some, and he didn’t flop to the floor until the gun clicked empty with the slide locked back. He still had my foot his jaws when he went down, and my ankle twisted almost 90 degrees from his weight falling awkwardly. I remember screaming out and kicking my foot free.

I reloaded and just sat there, breathing hard, pistol aimed at the empty hall. I had a feeling there would be a second dog, but none came. Once I cleared my head I cut my pants open with my hunting knife, the one my uncle made. 

My leg is messed up bad Mr. Journal. Bad. There are at least 8 puncture wounds half an inch deep or more. When the fucking dog shook me his canines tore the flesh of my inner thigh pretty good, and there are rips in the leg an inch long leading from the bite holes he was holding me at when he did it. The bleeding wasn’t too bad surprisingly. I mean it was bad, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t bleeding out. My CLS training kicked in and I realized I was about 3 inches at most from having my femoral artery severed. 

Three inches higher and the last thing the world hears from me is that I had diarrhea. 

The fucking indignity. I am now out my favorite pair of pants. Had to cut the leg all the way down to the cuff to get at the wound. Insult and injury. Having a rough go of things Mr. Journal.

I had my small first aid kit in the hunting vest I wear, which a good decision. I had enough Bacitracin, bandages and tape to get a reasonably good field dressing on there. I couldn’t bend my right leg up to get a good look at my foot right then though. It hurt far too much to try and balance myself at the moment. In a terribly ironic moment I had to pull myself to my feet using only one leg whilst damn near face planting in the corpse of the old lady. Unreal. I am really starting to feel like the punch line to some cosmic fucking joke.

I emptied the shotgun of shells and started using it as a makeshift crutch. Every time I had to move any muscles in my left leg it was like putting a blowtorch to it. Oh my God it hurt. My right foot was painful as well, but not that all that bad. Turns out there were a couple of really bitching bruises where the teeth had hit bone in my boot. No punctures though.

I steadied myself against the wall every step or two. I think it took me almost 5 minutes to make it back to the stairs. I was all kinds of excited that I hadn’t fallen, so as you can probably see coming Mr. Journal, I ate shit going down the stairs. I think I had 3 or 4 steps left to get to the first floor when I had a sharp stabbing pain hit my left thigh and I stiffened up. My foot missed a step, and in complete slow motion, I teetered forward, arms swinging wildly to and fro like that coyote from the cartoons, and I smashed face first into those nice cherry stained floors. I blacked out for a few seconds from the pain. It wasn’t another concussion thankfully, just the swooning stars of having to choke down the throbbing from my foot and leg.

I got myself up and hobbled all the way out the back door. It was then I had a fit with myself over leaving the fucking back door open. First time ever. Shows you what even a simple mistake can do nowadays. The margin for error now is razor thin.

What the fuck ever man. 

I almost went teapot over kettle again when I was going down the back porch steps. Luckily they had handrails on both sides. I had to toss the shotgun on the ground to catch myself, but that’s better than putting my face into the freezing cold gravel of the driveway. I already split my chin open in June and I don’t want an instant replay of that bullshit.

I wound up nudging the shotgun along with my bad foot until I got it back to the truck. I nearly went down for the count when I bent over to pick it up, but I used the truck as a leaning post and got upright just as the stars filled my vision. The drive back here was a fucking joke. I couldn’t get my left leg bent and into the cab so I had to drive with the door open. My foot was sticking out into the road, but I didn’t fucking care. I don’t even remember the drive back to be honest. Today when I looked out the window the Tundra was practically rammed into the side of Hall E. Must’ve really wanted to avoid walking. Don’t know how I got the door open to get in it was parked so close.

I’m exhausted right now. All I’ve done today is clean my wound, go in the basement, eat, and type this. I can’t get over this Mr. Journal. Sigh.

I don’t remember much about last night when I got home. I vaguely remember getting into the shower and cleaning myself off. The warm running water hitting the holes in my leg was not soothing, that I recall with distinct clarity. Felt like someone was driving nails into me every time the water hit the wounds, but it had to be done. I washed the wounds out with antibacterial soap, and when I got out of the shower, I must’ve doused it with hydrogen peroxide. I found an empty bottle on the bathroom floor today. That’s about where Adrian’s big old head checked out for the night. 

When I woke up this morning I was laying in the recliner. Otis wasn’t on me either, which is unusual. He was sitting on the shitty dorm couch watching me intently. It was kind of creepy.

The wounds on my thigh were very red when I woke up. Angry, puffy welts that is still very sore to the touch. It was freezing in here when I got up too. I hadn’t refilled the gas tank on the generator in some time and I’d run out. Took me forever to refill the tank in the basement, but I got it done.

I showered after that. Wasn’t thrilled for that, let me tell you. I found something a little disturbing when I cleaned the wound again. A tooth. Lodged pretty frigging deep one of the holes. I felt it as a hard lump just under the skin. Used a pair of tweezers to dig it out. That nearly sent me to the black hole of pain right in the shower. I will say the pain lessened immediately, and that was a relief. Gross to think I left a giant dog tooth in my thigh overnight though.

Washed the wounds again, slathered around the wound with Bacitracin, and got something to eat. I’m kinda pissed I used hydrogen peroxide when I got in the shower right after it happened. I am pretty sure that’s not the best idea for a wound like that. Hope it doesn’t fuck me up. I don’t have much of an appetite, but I know I have to eat. I forced down some canned shit and now here I sit, typing this, letting the air get to it. I think that’s the right thing to do. Bandaging it seems wrong, but the Percocet I took earlier has got me a little wobbly upstairs. 

The pain is bearable at the moment, but I only have three more of the pills. I figure that’ll get me through tonight, and maybe tomorrow, but then I’m on ibuprofen by the handful. I hope that’s enough.

I hope this doesn’t get infected. Even just a regular infection is fucking game-over for me. Wave buh bye to Mr. Ring Mr. Journal. C’est la fucking vie. I took a ballpoint pen and gently drew a circle around the edge of the redness earlier. If the redness spreads out beyond that mark, I need to do something in a hurry. I’ll need to go downtown.

I don’t know what to do right now. I need rest, I need food, and I need water. All the shit at the farmhouse can wait til hell freezes over for all I care. I need to get well.

If these wounds get infected though…..

Well that’s a problem I just can’t think about.

-Adrian

December 7
^th

Very, very, tired Mr. Journal. My leg has swollen up a fair amount since last night. I drew ink boundaries around the redness surrounding the wounds before I went to sleep, and over the course of today the redness has crept about a quarter inch past the ink markings.

I think it’s getting infected. No, no I know it’s getting infected. I’m not running a fever yet though. 

I need antibiotics. Something powerful that will stave off an infection like this. I don’t even know what ones to take. 

I have to go downtown.

Fuck.

-Adrian

December 8
^th

I’m out of Percocet. As it turns out fistfuls of Ibuprofen don’t even begin to put a dent in the pain I’m in. Looking at the bright side, my nausea from the Percs has subsided. I’m sitting in the recliner right now with my leg elevated as high as I can get it. That isn’t very high though, as my wounds are all near my cock. Right in that slab of meat next to your groin Mr. Journal. Feels... Awesome.

The redness is a little further out today than it was yesterday. There’s a clear fluid building up around the deepest wounds, and the fluid is just slightly off from clear. A vague yellowish color to it. I’m starting to feel flush, and my temperature has begun to creep upwards. My handy dandy electronic thermometer tells me I started today at about 99.1 degrees F, and as I write this shortly after dark, I am sitting pretty at 99.7. I’m going through fluids like a fish.