One Blink From Oblivion (12 page)

“Looks clear. See what you can find.”

While Max stands vigil over the door, Vinny and Brooke busy themselves looking for useful items. The space turns out to be an examination room, about ten feet wide and thirteen feet long. The doorway faces a bank of high and low cabinets with a built-in washbasin. To the right of the door sits a tall counter-weight scale of the type that always weighs you ten pounds more than you believe yourself to be. To the left and on the same wall as the door lies an examination table complete with a paper roll for your hygienic protection.

Vinny rips through the upper cabinets and finds several bottles of alcohol and a couple of ace bandages but not much else. He sets them on the counter and retrieves his handgun from his waistband.

Brooke handles the drawers and lower cabinets. She finds some tweezers and a scalpel. She slips the scalpel into her back pocket and hopes that her jeans aren’t so tight that she regrets the scalpels placement later.

“Hurry it up. I think I heard something on the roof!” Max says without turning around or taking his eyes off of the unexplored portion of the hallway.

Brooke tosses all of Vinny’s findings into the shoulder bag along with the tweezers. She had no practical reason for holding onto the tweezers but it seems to her that no girl’s purse is complete without them.

Max silently steps into the hallway and is once again swathed in the disco strobe lights. He takes a moment to adjust to the effect before continuing onward. The next door is about 10 feet away and on the opposite side of the hall. Max takes slow deliberate steps -not wanting to alert anyone or anything to his presence, or to slip in the viscous layer of congealed bodily fluids that covers the floor here. He can hear Brooke behind him breathing heavily and trying not to retch. He figures her reaction to be more from an accumulation of all the blood they’d seen in recent hours than this puddle of blood in particular.

He reaches the door. Not wanting to ask any more of Brooke right now, he decides to turn the knob himself. He reaches with his left hand and keeps his right hand on the gun with his finger on the trigger. Max turns the knob slowly and doesn’t release it until the door has cleared the jam. He takes a step back and again kicks the door inward in hopes of startling into confusion whoever may be on the other side. He immediately hears something move in the room. It’s a kind of scuttling sound like that of a small animal caught off guard and racing for the shadows. Max wishes he had a flashlight to shine into the space. The prospect of entering blind does not appeal to him even with the power of the shotgun on his side. The emergency light flickering over the doorway that he now faces only serves to exacerbate his lack of visibility.

Brooke -apparently reading his mind- begins to rummage through her newly acquired pack and produces the thin lady’s compact. Max looks a bit perplexed when she stretches her arm out and offers it to him. Sensing his confusion but not daring even a whisper to explain, she steps to the door and in front of Max. He opens his mouth to protest just before comprehension in her plan of action sets in.

Brooke opens the compact and tilts it so that it catches the light from above the door and shines it back into the room. Max and Vinny share a glance and half smile at each other in silent acknowledgement that Brooke always has been the brains of their operation. Brooke slowly pans her makeshift flashlight around the exceptionally dark area and finds it to be a storage room of sorts. It contains shelves, housing bandages and various sample medications, as well as cleaning supplies, toilet paper, paper towels, scrubs and surgical masks. She’s just about to share the good news of what she’s found when her light crosses something that doesn’t belong. The glimpse was too quick to be sure of what it was, and with the small circumference of intermittent light reflected by the compact she has great difficulty zeroing in on what she saw once more.

“I saw something!” She exclaims.

“What?” prods Vinny.

“Skin.”

Upon hearing this, Max leans in with the shotgun ready to blow whatever it is away.

“Wait!” Brooke puts up a hand and forces the shotgun to one side. “I think it’s a…” She pauses for a moment as her light finds its target, “child.”

Brooke’s light searches over a patch of bare skin as she tries to gain a more complete picture of whom or what it is. After a few moments and quick scans, the shape of a small, naked boy is revealed from the darkness. He is exceedingly thin and pale, no older than seven and without so much as a sock to cover his body; he shivers in the fetal position at the corner of the room with his back turned to the doorway.

“Oh my God he must be terrified!” Brooke pushes the compact at Max who reflexively grabs it, and before he can protest, she rushes toward the fragile child grabbing a folded pair of blue scrubs along the way.

Max –in his loudest whisper- says, “Wait!” But Brooke is almost to the child, with no intention of stopping short. His instinct is to rush after her, but he realizes that he has the compact and would be totally blind in the room without its light. He raises it up and reflects the light back to the corner where the child trembles in place. Brooke has reached the boy and is crouching down behind him.

Brooke can almost smell the fear rising from the small shaking child as she reaches in to comfort him. He must have been disrobing for an exam when the attack came and had been fortunate enough to remain hidden until it was over. That at least would account for his current state of nudity. To find someone so delicate still alive amongst so much bloodshed was akin to finding an orchid thriving in the middle of the freeway.

Brooke gently touches the boy’s shoulder and can immediately feel his tremors subside. His skin is cool to the touch and Brooke remembers the scrubs.

“You must be freezing,” she says as she begins to drape them over the boy’s bare back.

The child is still curled in on himself with his knees to his chest and face buried in his arms. Upon hearing Brooke’s voice, he slowly begins to turn toward her. His short dark hair bristles against the scrubs. Brooke leans in to adjust the clothing and permit the boy a bit more modesty. In doing so, she blocks the light from the compact, once again loosing sight of the boy for a moment. She shifts the scrubs until the boy’s small frame is adequately robed. She relaxes back on her heels and allows the light to shine once again on the child who has turned halfway and is looking back over his shoulder at her.

The light above the door flickers and dies for a moment. When it returns, it shines with greater intensity than it had previously. The beam from the compact shines hard across the boy’s face and startlingly yellow eyes. Before the meaning of this can sink in, the boy is on top of Brooke gnashing his small gapped teeth as he lunges for her throat.

Many in the past had accused Brooke of being overly sympathetic but no one ever dared to label her a fool. She grips the boy by the throat with one hand and levers him away from her body. With her other hand she grabs the pepper spray that she’d found in the thin lady’s purse. Unlike its previous owner, she has every intention of surviving long enough to use it. She swings it between her face and the face of the small fiend she grapples with. She strains to straighten her arm that holds him at bay and as soon as her elbow is locked, she depresses the plunger as hard as she can. She closes her eyes, holds her breath and hopes that the can of pepper spray is not empty. She is not disappointed. The choking smell of cayenne fills her nostrils and she struggles not to inhale it. From the child, she hears that increasingly familiar shriek and feels the weight on her arm lighten. Brooke fights the urge to open her eyes but loses. There is just enough light for her to witness the boy leaping straight up and through a ceiling pane, sending fragments of plaster and cardboard raining down on her. Brooke covers her face and rolls to one side in time to avoid the larger pieces of debris that fall in the biter’s wake.

The whole event had transpired in mere moments. Max and Vinny are just beginning to move through the door toward the hole in the ceiling and Brooke respectively. Max booms the shotgun up into the dark recess of the attic space. He doesn’t expect to hit anything but hopes to frighten the small predator enough to keep it from immediately returning to its prey.

Vinny kneels beside Brooke and asks her if she’s ok. She nods in response and the two of them hastily come to their feet with a pressing desire to be clear of the death from above.

“Go!” Max commands, as he stands sentry under the hole cocked and ready to let fly if he hears so much as a roach move overhead.

“Just a second.” Brooke begins filling her bag with various items of use and a minute later, the three have retreated to the hallway.

“Will they be coming now?” asks Brooke.

“Let them come.” Vinny raises his magnum and puts on a game face, “I’m ready to break ‘em off a piece.”

Max raises a hand to quiet them both, “I don’t think so. With only one shot, it’s hard to get a bearing on where it came from. We should be ok for now.”

“What about that little fucker in the ceiling?” Vinny asks and before Max can respond a gravely voice from the shadowy hallway commands, “Now boy you best drop that cannon… before I drop you.”

The freeway-man slinks across the rooftop. The ever so palatable smell of fear has intensified in the corridors beneath him. His anticipation of their blood grows unbearably strong, but he must remain patient. Their adrenal glands must be pumping at full capacity when he dines. He will settle for nothing less than delicacy. He saddles up to an exhaust vent, moving with such fluidity that little sign of the trauma he endured when falling from the freeway overpass can be found in his gate. He feels no pain. In fact, he feels nothing- save hunger, pleasure and desire.

The freeway-man grabs hold of the exhaust vent’s grate and peels it back like the lid of a sardine can. He steps over the open vent and drops straight down into darkness.

***

Gilly was as green as they come. He was nineteen years old and fresh off the tobacco farm. He’d enlisted in the National Guard as soon as he was able to join without his parent’s consent. If it was up to them, he would have spent the rest of his life -and eventually his death- in the same small South Carolina town where his grandfather, great-grandfather and so on going back for generations had lived and died. Soon enough his father would be added to that number. He would be dammed if that farm would claim the best years of his life. He felt that he was meant for something greater than what his hometown had to offer. So first chance he got, he packed his high school gym bag with what few possessions he could call his own and headed for the National Guard’s local recruiting station.

He had been thrilled to learn that he would be stationed in Southern California. At the time, he couldn’t wait to see the bikini clad blondes with the perfect store-bought breast he’d heard so much about. He was finally going to do some living.

Boot camp had been a snap in comparison to farm life. He was no stranger to rising before the sun and working until his legs were weak. He had finally found his niche, a place where he could flourish and grow.

Now, looking back, that all seems so long ago. He can barely recall the euphoria of firing his weapon on the range for the first time, or the way the ladies batted their lashes whenever he walked by in his uniform. As the song says, ‘the thrill is gone’. It only took a couple of days for it all to go to hell in a hand basket. One moment he was on top of the world and the next, he was caught in the middle of a bloody typhoon washing its way across his newly adopted home. Ever since that damn earthquake everything had gone to shit, and quick.

All of that now brought him to this point; sequestered in a war torn clinic, standing in his comrades’ blood and staring down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun attached to the hand of an angry looking black man.

***

“Respect my shit and I’ll respect yours,” Max entreats the sturdy looking soldier on the end of a military issued M4. “You might wound me but I’ll splatter your ass all over that wall.”

The red headed guardsman ponders this for a moment and apparently agrees, because he lowers his weapon until the business end points harmlessly at the ground.

“Is that your ride out front?” Max slowly lowers his weapon as well.

“That ‘
ride
’ is the property of the United States National Guard, and definitely ain’t for civilian use. Besides only a fool would step foot out there.” Gilly’s southern drawl is thicker than molasses.

Brooke speaks up, “We just came from out there and it looked a whole sight better than it does in here.”

The young soldier, dressed in blood spattered full desert camouflage, a flack jacket and boots, adjusts his hat and shakes his head slightly, “You idiots, you’re in here ‘cause they let ya’ll in. See, this is their icebox and they’re saving our asses for dessert. Anyway, since we all goin’ die together ya’ll might as well know who you’re dieing with. My name is Gilly.”

Brooke answers, “I’m Brooke, and this is Vinny and Max.”

Max interrupts, “Now that we’re all acquainted you should know that one of those things is in here. It’s just a kid but he’s faster than anything I’ve seen. I took a shot at him but I’m pretty sure I didn’t hit anything.”

“Yeah, I’ve been huntin’ that little shit. He got bit when they overran us and it didn’t take long for him to change on account he was so small. He’s been running around here and suckin’ on anybody he can find with a drop of blood left in their veins. Where’d that little bugger get off to now?”

“He disappeared into the ceiling after I sprayed him with pepper spray.” Brooke answers.

“Wow, that actually worked huh? Well, don’t count on that working again. The longer they been infected and the more they drink, the stronger they get. Pretty soon he won’t remember what pain is.”

“So what happened here?” Vinny asks the question to which nobody really wants to hear the answer.

Gilly removes his hat, folds it and pushes it under a M.O.L.L.E. strap on his vest, “Well, officially our job is to keep the peace and defend places like this; hospitals, clinics, anyplace that folks might still be gathering for medical help. Most public places have been closed down since last night but with the virus going around we been trying to keep the hospitals open. Now unofficially, we been sent out here to round up as many of these fuckers as we can, so the pinheads at the CDC can use ‘em as lab rats. Me and my boys were handling both those duties when suddenly we got swarmed by a bunch of them things. I don’t know if it was all the folks in one place, the smell of blood here or what that brought them down on us, but once they started coming there weren’t no stoppin’ ‘em. We shot ‘em all up and they just kept coming like a bull with a foxtail up his ass. They’re faster than hell and stronger than any five men. These people here didn’t have a chance. Some, they carried off with ‘em, I guess to save for later. When I realized there weren’t no fighting ‘em I hunkered down in a closet and waited it out. I think with all the blood in the air they couldn’t smell me. I pulled a body in there with me to hide behind and maybe that helped too. Anyway, once it quieted down I came out and found that kid bitten but still live’n. I didn’t have the heart to put a bullet in him. Sure wish I had though. Now that he’s turned, I can’t seem to catch his little ass. Gotta keep lookin’ over my shoulder for that tiny bastard. To add another pile on top of that one, the only working radio is in the Hummvy so I’m kind of stuck.”

With the understanding that everyone Gilly had come with is dead, everyone stands in silence for a moment not knowing what to say.

Max finally speaks up with a nod in Vinny’s direction, “Is there anyplace a little safer that we can tend to my boy here?”

Vinny chimes in, “Yeah we don’t want to get caught with our dicks in our hands should your little friend return.”

Gilly shoots Vinny a sideways glance and the look lingers a little as he appears to study his face. He looks back at Max and then on to Brooke with a touch of concern in his eyes before saying, “This way.”

Max, Brooke and Vinny follow Gilly down the hall to its end and pass through a door to a room filled with large medical equipment, an ultrasound, EKG, defibrillator and oxygen tanks. The room has no working light source of its own but is intermittently lit by the flickering light from the hall. Several camouflage-clad bodies litter the floor like the castoff sacrifices of an Incan ritual. One of them lays half in half out of a small closet on the wall opposite the main door to the room.

   Brooke, obviously taken aback by the lack of attention paid to his brethren, asks Gilly, “You’ve been hiding in here with them just lain out like that.” She struggles through emotional and physical disgust to complete the sentence.

Gilly scratches his chin before he replies, “They’re already dead, so probably don’t give a shit one way or the other. Fact is, the smell throws them things off for a little while, and if I stacked ‘em up all pretty it would be obvious someone was still in here wouldn’t it. Although, they have been dead for a while now, and I imagine they probably ain’t smelling so fresh to those things out there no more. Before long they’ll be able to smell us, and then sure as shit they’ll be back.”

“Then let’s be ready for them. Brooke, take what you need for Vinny out of the bag and toss me the rest. I’ve got an idea.” Max turns his attention from Brooke to Gilly, “Couldn’t help but notice that your friends over there were pretty well armed. Any objections to us borrowing a few of those M4s and any extra 5.56 ammo you might have laying around?”

Brooke glances at the soldier to see if any of that ‘M4, 5.56’ business made any more sense to him than it did to her.

Gilly smiles and gives Brooke a wink, pausing to notice how easy she is on the eyes before turning back to Max, “A man that knows his weapons. Well you and me gonna get along just fine.”

Max and Gilly immediately get busy releasing the assault rifles from the single point slings that still tether them to their former owners. Next, they undergo the gruesome task of patting down their torn and broken bodies for additional magazines of 5.56 ammunition. Max finds a bowie knife on one of the bodies; he tucks it into his waistband and continues the pat-downs. While doing so he pauses to check for pulse on each soldier and he is relieved to find none. A lack of a pulse not only meant that the soldiers’ suffering was over; it also meant that none of them had -or could still- turn. He wants to be sure that they will have no more surprises from within the semi-secure walls of the clinic.

Max glances over at Brooke, who is carefully tending to Vinny’s injuries and wishes he hadn’t been such a fool for so long. Now, with everything that’s happened, it appears as though he truly has missed that bus. In a world where every moment is a battle for survival, surely there is no room for romance. Would there ever again be a time? He hopes so, with all of his heart. One thing he knows for sure is that before they could ever be together, she would have to know the truth about his past. She was so tender and forgiving; perhaps she could find a way to love someone like him.

***

Across the room, Vinny stares at the gentle lines of Brooke’s face as she swabs away Lisa’s blood and tends to his mangled shoulder. Her dark lush brows and impossibly long lashes, her full lips and the curve of her waist all stir such desire within him. He wonders if she knows how he truly feels about her or what he would give to be with her. He doubts that she is aware. It seems that all she could ever see was Max,
‘poor Max’
, who had come from the wrong side of the tracks to start anew, after committing an unspeakable act. Vinny has spent years trying to break free from Max’s great shadow, and oh how long that shadow is in Brooke’s eyes. He loves Max like a brother, but even a brother’s love has its limits. For so long, he’s had to play the fool just to get noticed and the charade was beginning to wear thin. If only he could get Brooke to stop and take a look at him, the real ‘
Vincent
’ beneath the persona she knows as ‘Vinny’, then perhaps she would understand what they could be together. But, those blinders she is wearing only allow her to see Max. Vinny often wonders if she would still feel the same about Max if she knew the truth about him… if she knew he was a murderer.

***

Brooke tends to Vinny’s shoulder and pretends not to notice his staring. He’s pined for her so long and even pretended to be a fool, like a child acting out in class and not knowing the difference between good attention and bad. The truth is, if Vinny had more confidence in himself then he wouldn’t be afraid to let the world see who he really is. How could she ever love someone who has no love for himself? Granted, physically he was no match for Max’s rugged good looks, but he did have plenty to offer the right woman. The sooner he realized that
that
woman was not she, the better off he would be.

Brooke clears the last of the blood from Vinny’s face and shoulder and is pleased to find his skin unbroken.

“See, I told you I was fine. You’ve been standing here looking like you were afraid I was going to bite your neck.” Vinny manages a reassuring smile.

“It looks like Max already set your shoulder better than I could, so I guess I’m done here once I wrap it. Now, you have a choice, you can either take a Vicodin for the pain or I can give you a shot of this morphine I found in the supply room. From the looks of your shoulder I would recommend the morphine.”

Vinny tilts his head back and opens his mouth.

“Look, don’t try to be all macho and pretend like it doesn’t hurt. Nobody here will think any less of you if you stay doped up on this morphine until we get back to Chatsworth.”

“Like I said, I’m fine.” Vinny says while flashing that reassuring smile again, and then he tilts his head back and opens his mouth once more.

Brooke tosses in two Vicodin and then adds one more for good measure. Vinny closes his eyes, chews the pills and swallows. Brooke spins to grab the thin-ladies bag and retrieve an ace bandage, but she is halted by a strong grip on her wrist. She turns back to see Vinny gazing at her and on the verge of saying something.

He hesitates and then appears to change his mind, “Thank you,” is all he manages to say and slowly releases her wrist.

Brooke decides it’s best not to pursue Vinny’s unexpressed thought and proceeds with wrapping his shoulder.

***

While Brooke is tending to Vinny, across the room Max and Gilly take stock in what they’ve collected.

“There should be more than enough guns and ammunition here to hold these things off.” Max says to Gilly while divvying up the magazines into three piles.