Barren Fields (29 page)

Everyone climbs in or on the truck and they begin driving slowly up the road calling out clicking and kissing noises to the herd at the creek. At first it seems the animals are too tired to follow anymore, but the horses at least decide they want to return to some type of non-dangerous human companionship and walk out of the tree line to follow the truck. Cows wander out of the trees behind the horses, and the unusual exodus parade makes its way north to find a home that will keep them safe for the next week or two while the remaining infected die out.

Chapter 25

Purgatory

It has been three days since I set off the sirens. Isaac is alive but won’t ever look like his former self again. The swelling on his face from the beating Jeremiah gave him has subsided somewhat, but there are two open cuts that will heal badly. He has a cut on his forehead and one on his cheek just below his left eye, and I don’t have anything to stitch them closed. Luckily I had a tube of triple antibiotic ointment in my pocket and lubed up his wounds. Hopefully that prevents him from getting an infection.

Arthur left the usual setup of firearms and ammunition on the tower for a normal defense but no medical supplies. I’m happy he thought to put a week’s supply of food up here this time. Isaac and I can stretch the food to last a long time with just the two of us. When our big attack happened last winter we weren’t prepared to be stuck on top of the tower over night, and as terrified as we were with the surrounding horde, we were still hungry and thirsty.

I think I am deaf now. I no longer hear the tone of the siren, all I hear is a constant ringing. Or maybe the constant ringing is the siren, I’m not really sure. Isaac and I will both have permanent hearing loss to some degree, if not complete, once we make it off the tower. I would like to speak with him but hearing each other’s voices right now would be like doing sign language to each other in the dark. Neither of us had a pen when we made it up here and none were in the supplies, so we aren’t able to write messages either. All we can do is sit and wait.

It started raining yesterday, and what I was thankful for then I am irritated at now. I doubt there is anything a human could experience that they aren’t able to complain about in one form or another. This beautiful rain allowed us to refill our water bottles and is dropping through the barred hole in the storage containers top to accumulating inside on the floor ensuring that we won’t die of thirst. But I am not thirsty now and have little fear of dehydration at the moment, so the continued downpour is only acting as an irritant to me.

The infected are dying off in mass like my father said they would, but that is creating another problem for us. The bodies that fall dead are piling on top of each other. We are twenty-three feet in the air on top of the third storage container on this stack, but the infected are almost able to climb onto the lip of the second stacked container. The dead must be piled eight or nine feet deep now for the running and stumbling swarm to reach that high.

The burning moat is extinguished and lost below the infected, and I no longer see a standing structure on the ranch besides the one we are on. The main house partially collapsed yesterday, and I can see the tilted roof being occasionally scrambled on by an infected. I don’t know if the infected tore at the house to knock it down because someone was hiding in it or if it was just the relentless pressure of all the bodies crushing against it that made it cave in. I was sorry to see it go. All of the kid’s toys were in the attic playroom.

I am sure my family is alive and well out there somewhere. With nothing to do but think these last three days, I have entertained every possible horrific outcome that could have befallen them. The uncertainty and helplessness of my current situation nearly drove me mad the first two days, but now I am feeling better. I have hope on my side that they are still alive. They were headed to a safe location before the swarms entered this area, so I have that small comfort.

Isaac has no optimistic thoughts to keep him from devolving in to sadness and depression. His people left the ranch for safety but only went to the farm next door. We were never able to fortify that property as well as this one, so everyone that went there to escape Jeremiah’s wrath is dead. Isaac has lost everything. Every remaining member of his family has been killed, either by the infected, or by his own brother. I still can’t believe Jeremiah was immune to this disease like I am. I wonder how long he knew?

Jeremiah must have gone completely insane at some point. In this twisted world none of us were able to see it. I thought it was just religious extremism driving his motivations. I wonder if we’ll ever know for sure what happened to him.

*

It has been five days now. Isaac just woke me up to point out the infected are finally able to climb onto the wide ledge of the second storage container below the one we are on. The containers are each eight feet wide and ours is placed in the center of the two below us, so there is a four foot ledge on each side for the infected to climb on.

The height that the infected are at now means the ones that are still running are doing so on probably fifty thousand bodies or more. The swirling mass of stumbling infected never seems to decrease in size. As far as I can see, from tree line to tree line, there are runners doing their best to maneuver over the bodies of their fallen brethren. For two hundred yards to our front and sides the bodies of the dead must now be twelve feet deep based on the level the runners are standing compared to us. Behind us it is the same thing out to seventy-five yards. Any future archeologist that digs at this site will have a hell of a time figuring out why so many people came here to die.

Another two days of bodies dropping in these numbers and the infected will be level with the top of the second storage containers. At that point the pressure of all their bodies against this empty container will crush it. We will be ripped apart if we stay on the outside, but we will have some hope for survival on the inside if we can stay in a pocket that isn’t completely crushed.

*

It’s the evening of the sixth day. The flow of infected onto the property has increased. They are arriving faster and dying faster than they were before. Now it seems once the masses reach us, they run around for only an hour or two and then collapse into the heap below them. Before morning, the dead will most likely be piled to sixteen and a half feet enabling the infected to exert all of their pressure on the sides of our metal island of solitude.

Isaac used a chocolate chunk from the food supplies to write the first words from him since our exile up here.
Should we shut off the siren?
he asked.

No, the infected should all come here to die. Save any survivors left out there,
was my reply and our only conversation ended.

We transferred our remaining supplies into the container along with our firearms and ammunition. We haven’t fired many shots in the last few days, only here and there when a particularly enterprising infected person would make an extra effort to get up here by climbing. We don’t want the crafty ones showing the others how to get to us. I think the siren is disorienting the infected when they arrive, either that, or their advanced stages of starvation are preventing them from targeting me and Isaac directly. We know they see us up here, but once they arrive they get caught up in a circular death march around the tower. The slow rotation of bodies reminds me of an insane prison scene I remember from a movie. I think it was called
The Four Feathers.
I’m happy to be up here away from the crowd below.

*

I had to tie up Isaac. He turned off the siren in the middle of the night. There wasn’t much change in my ringing ears to notice anything, but there was a definite pressure change in the container and it caused me to wake up. I think he is claustrophobic and being trapped in here finally made him snap. Or maybe he still has some hearing left and is just tired of the constant headache the sound must be giving him the way it’s giving me. Whatever the reason, he disconnected the siren, and it has to stay on.

I’ve come to peace with the fact I won’t be seeing my family again. I will die here with my last friend surrounded by the bodies of the diseased and those that betrayed us.

*

I was wrong about the ability of the infected to crush the shipping container we are in. There isn’t a way for the feet of the infected to make purchase on the bodies below them in equal measure, so there will never be enough constant pressure on all sides. At least they won’t be able to crush the container.

I woke up to the ground rumbling like an earthquake but it was just our personal sarcophagus being shifted by the horde outside. Every so often, the infected on one side has a better footing than the other, and the container moves. I lifted the barred door at the top and climbed out to see how the landscape looked.

It is the same field of moving bodies, all pressed together, running around and around the tower with the song of the siren. The tops of some of their heads are just at the edge I am standing on, so I’ll have to start locking the door when we’re inside. I don’t want it pulled open once the infected are finally able to climb on top.

I untied Isaac today to make sure he could move around. He hasn’t made an attempt to turn off the siren but looks at it constantly as he moves past it. His pacing exercise takes him the length of this place. I wish we could speak to each other. I can only imagine the suffering he has been feeling with all of his losses.

*

I’m not sure how many days it has been, nine, maybe ten. I haven’t been tying up Isaac anymore. I had to let him free to keep him from getting hurt. The container started rotating and shifting a few days ago, making it feel like we are in a ship’s cargo hold. Apparently the rotating mass of infected finally moved us off the tower, and we are sliding around on top of the bodies. Rotating and bouncing all day and night, stopping only when we dip into a soft spot making the container stick for a moment before it lurches violently forward again.

We’ll be out of water soon. We collected as much as we could, but once the container started shifting, the remaining water on the floor got contaminated with our waste when our ammo can toilets tipped over. I should have seen that coming and secured them or locked them closed.

I don’t know which is more oppressive, the heat or the stench. The temperature must be a hundred-ten degrees in this thing. Isaac and I are just in t-shirts and underwear now and are either covered in flies or mosquitoes, depending on the time of day. The smell of the rotting bodies outside helps to hide the stench of our own waste and our own motion sickness induced vomit.

Neither of us can sleep, even though we both desperately need it. There isn’t a way to rest. The movement of the container has us roll against the walls anytime we try.

*

We unlocked the door and are climbing to the roof now. The container stopped moving for longer intervals, so I wanted to see why. I also need to know why we haven’t been covered and buried by the infected yet. They should have been on top of us several days ago.

I’m not sure what I see when I first make it outside. Even with the heavy cloud cover the day is too bright for my eyes to adjust and focus properly. Spending days inside our dark, spinning room has also disoriented me, and I can’t determine which direction I am facing.

Once my eyes adjust I see the horrifying landscape. There are still thousands of infected surrounding us, but they don’t stretch off into the distance the way they once did. Beyond our container, out to twenty or thirty yards, are the infected that are still circling and trying to move it. Beyond that initial perimeter is just a scattering of single infected people hunched over or crawling in the process of dying. There are still enough infected around us to keep us spinning but the container must have wedged itself against something below their feet. It is probably the broken hulk of one of the buildings preventing them from getting it in motion again.

Isaac waves to me and climbs back below to get something, and I continue looking around trying to figure out exactly where on the property we are. The tree line is buried as deeply as everything else has been, so nothing looks familiar. Finally I see a dip, a curve, and a space between the trees that I recognize, and while I can hardly believe it, we are most likely stuck against the remains of the main ranch house.

Isaac starts throwing guns and boxes of ammo up to the roof. I lay down and lean into the hole to have him hand them up to me.

*

We take our time loading the magazines and getting our guns ready. There isn’t a need to rush. With the siren still hooked up and probably blaring the infected aren’t going anywhere, and there are not enough of them anymore to pile up to where they could climb and get us unless we started shooting at only one spot.

When we are both ready I nod to him and let him take the first shot. My hands are shaking badly from the effects of our ordeal, so I don’t even try aiming for my shot. There are so many of them out there I can’t miss. I can’t hear the report, but the recoil feels good. No, I take that back, it doesn’t feel good, it feels great. It feels incredible, amazing and fantastic all rolled into one. I look over at Isaac, and he is smiling. I am too.

I motion for him to watch and I quickly pull the trigger, unloading my magazine and sending the bullets in random directions into the crowd. I feel like a kid playing a video game. I watch Isaac give a wolf howl or a yell to express his joy and he unloads his gun quickly in the same manner.

I reload and continue shooting. It feels good finally having some success after our time in purgatory. Even the stench of bloated and rotting bodies is welcome in the free flowing air out here. Hope and joy have returned to our world, and then I feel something on my skin that nearly brings me to my knees. I rub my hands against my face to help the falling rain wash the grime away. It is a light but steady rain that probably won’t last long, but its effects are instant. I feel alive again, reborn. Instead of simply surviving, I feel like I can live.