Slowly We Rot (11 page)

          The mood had been
solemn as he talked, which was the norm when someone in group was ostensibly
baring their soul, but this time the new patient abruptly laughed out loud
after listening to Noah ramble for ten minutes.

          “You know what your
real problem is, asshole?”

          The speaker was a rail-thin,
hollow-cheeked guy with spiky blond hair who looked like he was somewhere in
his mid-twenties.  The smile curling the corners of his thin lips conveyed more
malice than humor.

          Noah glanced at the
group leader, hoping for a rebuke.  None was forthcoming.  A glint in the
counselor’s eyes betrayed intense interest in what the newcomer had to say.

          When Noah didn’t reply
after a long moment of tense silence, the new guy said, “I’ll tell you what
your problem is.  You think you’re different from the rest of us losers.  We’re
all just regular nobodies, but you…well, you’re just a special little snowflake. 
In your head, you’re the star of an epic movie based on your amazing fucking
life.  It’s called narcissistic personality disorder.  Look it up.  But the
truth is there’s nothing special about you.”

          Noah’s face had turned
red.  His hands were shaking.  “Fuck you.  You don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

          The guy laughed again and
shrugged.  “Fuck, man.  You’re not the first motherfucker to fall for some
chick and get dumped.  You’re one in a million.  And you’re not the star of a
movie.  Your story is ordinary.  You’re just another goddamn lying alcoholic
desperately hiding behind his bullshit to avoid the truth.  And the truth is
that you’re just like me.”  He swept his hand in a gesture meant to include the
other patients assembled in the little meeting room.  “You’re just like the
rest of these people, so unless you’re interested in telling the truth for a
change, maybe you should shut the fuck up for a while.”

          This was Noah’s
introduction to Luke Garraty.  The two of them would later bond and get into
some trouble together post-rehab, but that was in the future, one more bitterly
dark twist his life would take before the end of the world.

          After another
uncomfortable silence, someone else cleared their throat and started talking,
sharing a story of misery Noah would not remember later.  Still stunned, he sat
in his chair and stared across the circle at Luke, who stared right back at him
and grinned in his unconcerned, cocky way.

          Four weeks later, Noah
was discharged.

          Later that same day, he
had his first post-rehab drink.

17
.

Noah was still lost in thoughts
of the past when the sound coming from somewhere nearby finally registered, a moment
of awareness that happened just in time to save his life.  His head swiveled
left and right before tilting upward.  By then the dead thing had nearly
managed to scale the median.  It was teetering at the top and was on the verge
of toppling over and landing on top of Noah.

          Just as the creature
was tilting forward, Noah shoved himself away from the median and rolled out into
the empty highway.  The zombie fell over and landed with a soft thud next to
Noah’s backpack, which was propped against the median.  The rifle, however, was
pinned beneath the zombie on the asphalt.  But Noah wasn’t worried.  He had
other weapons within reach, including the holstered revolver at his hip and the
hunting knife on his utility belt.

          He didn’t immediately
act to kill the thing, instead brooding for a moment over the narrowness of yet
another close call.  His thoughts had been far away, but he should have
detected the thing’s approach anyway.  Zombies weren’t capable of stealth, which
meant this one must have been somewhere nearby all along.  Yet this creature
could not have emerged from one of the many old cars.  The people in them had
died several years ago.  Noah guessed this thing had been dead less than a year,
maybe only a few months.

          The zombie lifted its
head and stared up at Noah in the usual dumb dead thing way, with nothing in
its slack expression but the hunger driving it.  It tried standing up, failing
a few times before succeeding.  When the dead thing took its first staggering
step forward, Noah’s hand first drifted to the revolver.  The gun would be the
quickest means of eliminating the threat.  His fingers brushed the weapon’s
handle and lingered there a moment without closing around it.  After another
moment’s hesitation, an impulse made him take the big hunting knife from its
sheath instead.

          He rushed at the dead
thing, brushed aside the hand that made a weak attempt to grab his wrist, and
slammed the thick blade deep into its temple.  There was a squirt of dark blood
and the zombie went rigid as the blade pierced its brain.  When Noah yanked the
knife out, it toppled limply to the ground.  There were no death spasms or bowel
evacuation, as there might have been with a freshly killed human being.  It was
perfectly still, evincing not even the slightest hint of recent animation.  It
was as if he’d cut the strings of a puppet.

          Noah sheathed the knife
and frowned as he gave the thing he’d just killed a closer examination.  Its flesh
had been in a relatively early stage of decomposition, more like what the dead
things had looked like at the outset of the plague.  Other things also pointed
to a more recent death.  Like Noah, this dead thing had been wearing rugged
clothes.  A utility belt much like Noah’s own was strapped around its waist. 
It’d been stripped of gear.  The conclusion was obvious.  This was a person
who’d been surviving out in the world for a long time.  Noah’s mood turned
somber as he realized that here was someone who had been much like him.  The
only difference was that this guy’s luck had finally run out.

          Noah’s brain taunted
him with unsettling images of a future that seemed all too possible.  He saw
himself flat on his back, a newly vanquished dead thing staring sightlessly up
at the sky while some other guy (or girl) sat hunched over him and wondered who
he’d been when he was alive.  This scenario sent a shiver of dread through
him.  It was too vivid, almost more like a precognitive glimpse of his real
future than a product of imagination.

          A need to personalize
the dead man gripped him and he knelt next to the corpse to search its pockets. 
He didn’t expect the search to turn up anything.  In the absence of even a
rudimentary post-fall civilization, there wouldn’t have been any need to carry
around money or ID.  Money was worthless and notifying next of kin in the event
of death wasn’t possible.  So Noah was surprised to find a worn leather wallet
in a rear pocket.

          He opened the wallet to
examine its contents.  A few faded dollar bills were in the billfold.  Noah
initially found this puzzling, but supposed the man might have held onto the
currency for reasons that had nothing to do with practicality.  Maybe he’d kept
them as a tangible reminder of the way things once were.  The bills were all
singles.  Noah pulled one out and stared at the familiar green-tinged rendering
of George Washington.  He decided to keep the bill and pushed the rest back inside
the billfold.  The wallet also contained an Indiana driver’s license, a social
security card, some credit cards, and pictures of a good-looking young woman
who must have been the man’s wife or girlfriend.

          Noah pulled the
driver’s license from its plastic slot and frowned at an image of a smiling
young man who looked far too happy to be having his picture taken at the DMV. 
The photo conveyed a strong sense of someone who was good-natured and probably
had lots of friends.  His name had been Patrick Brasher and he’d been
twenty-five around the time of the apocalypse.  The same age Noah was now.

          He folded the wallet
and tucked it back inside the dead man’s pocket.  It was time to get moving
again.  He’d lingered too long here already.  He pulled the backpack on, fastened
the straps, grabbed his rifle, and started walking again.  His head was on a
swivel the entire time as he threaded his way through another stretch of stalled
traffic, more alert than ever now for signs of zombie activity.

          The stalled traffic in
the westward lanes didn’t extend as far out of the city as the jammed traffic on
the city’s eastern side.  The reason why soon became apparent.  Noah first
glimpsed the large mass of twisted, blackened wreckage after just a couple more
miles of walking.  From the looks of it, a massive explosion had taken out
dozens of vehicles, effectively ending any hope of escape in this direction, at
least for anyone using the interstate.  He studied the wreckage as he got
closer, determining that a tanker truck in the midst of it had jackknifed and
exploded.  There was little left of the vehicle, just some twisted shards in a
shape suggestive of a tanker.  Less obvious was whether the truck had been the
cause of the destruction or had simply been collateral damage in a larger
catastrophe.  Either way, it seemed clear a chain reaction of explosive events
had occurred.  The road itself was scorched black for at least a half mile.

          Noah’s mood again
turned somber as he imagined the suffering that had taken place that day.  He
could almost hear the anguished screams and cries of the dying in his head.  An
overwhelming smell of burning flesh and gasoline must have choked the air.  It
seemed likely that similar scenes of devastation had played out in countless
other cities across the country, hell, across the globe.  All of it happening
while he was safely tucked away in the family’s mountain cabin.

          He was relieved when he
reached the end of the stretch of blackened wreckage.  As he moved past it, the
depressingly vivid impressions of the long ago calamity began to drift apart. 
He resisted an impulse to glance back for a last look.  The road ahead now was
wide open on both sides and devoid of all but the occasional rusting automotive
relic.  There were no zombies as far as the eye could see, nor were there any
obvious places where a lurking dead thing might leap out and take him by
surprise.

          There would be a lot
more open road between here and Chattanooga.  It would take at least a few days
to cover it.  A western novel was tucked in a back pocket of Noah’s jeans.  He
took it out and flipped through the old, yellowed pages until he reached the
third chapter.

          As he kept walking, he
took another glance around to confirm the road was clear of zombies and other
potential threats.

          And then he began to
read.

18
.

Noah walked down the interstate and
read western novels all the rest of that day and all the following day without
incident.  At times he passed through areas where the highway narrowed to two
lanes on each side and was bordered by woods.  No dead things emerged from the
thickets to give him trouble.  Aside from the insects that occasionally buzzed
around his head, the only living things he encountered were birds perched on
road signs and power lines and a dog that came out onto the highway, got a look
at Noah, and promptly dashed back into the woods.

          For a time, a big black
vulture seemed to track him from high overheard, its long wings describing
countless circles in the sky.  This was mildly unnerving.  It made Noah wonder
if the bird of prey knew something he didn’t.  Maybe it saw him as future
carrion and was waiting for him to die.  After hours of this, Noah was
sufficiently bothered to take a shot at the thing with his rifle.  The shot
missed, but it was a near enough thing to spook the vulture and send it on its
way.

          Noah read three western
novels during this time.  The old paperbacks were short, nearly all of them under
one-hundred and fifty pages.  At the rate he was burning through them, he would
exhaust his supply of fresh reading material sooner than he’d like.  He hoped
he’d be able to acquire some more books along the way, because the reading made
the relentless grind of the long journey easier to bear.  It kept him from
being driven insane by his persistent doubts and fears about what he was doing.

          The reading also
distracted him from how empty the world was.  Since leaving the mountain behind
he’d encountered just two zombies and no living people.  The scarcity of
zombies wasn’t a bad thing, obviously, but it did heighten a growing perception
of being the only person left on the planet.  He doubted this was true, but it
sure felt that way a lot of the time.  It was depressing.