Slowly We Rot (21 page)

          Terror seized Noah in
that moment.  The night was ending in the worst possible way.  In a way that
felt almost predestined.  He couldn’t drink without calamity of some sort
happening.  This had been demonstrated many times, yet eventually there always
came a time when he failed to heed the lesson.  He was about to go to jail. 
Again.  His parents would soon be getting another late night phone call.  If a
gun had been in reach just then, Noah felt sure he would have put it in his
mouth and pulled the trigger.

          Instead, he pulled over
and awaited the inevitable.

          Soon a cop appeared at
the door.

          Noah rolled down his
window.

          “You boys been
drinking?”

          Something inside Noah—something
born from the terror of temporary incarceration, perhaps—reached out and took
control with a stunning laser focus.  He kept his voice steady and did not slur
his words as he said, “Only a beer or two, sir.  We were just on our way home.”

          “Uh-huh.”  The officer
frowned and glanced back down the street for a moment before saying, “I’ll need
your license.”

          Carefully extracting
the real one from his wallet rather than the fake, Noah handed it over and waited
in silence as the cop returned to his cruiser.  Noah stayed silent after that,
ignoring Luke’s loudly stage-whispered advice about how to handle the
situation.  The cop stayed in his cruiser for a period that seemed to go on
forever but was probably no more than five minutes.  When he came back to the
Pontiac, he asked Noah to step out of the car and onto the sidewalk.

          That laser focus, so
eerily precise and unwavering, came into play again as Noah got out of the car
and approached the sidewalk.  He did this smoothly, without once stumbling or
otherwise appearing visibly intoxicated.  On the sidewalk, the cop administered
a field sobriety test.  Noah was instructed to walk back and forth along a
crack in the sidewalk, which he did, again performing as instructed with
absolute perfection.  Next he was told to extend both arms outward and touch
the tip of his nose with his index fingers.  Again, utter perfection.  He was
then asked to recite the alphabet.  Noah did it, rattling all twenty-six
letters off in just seconds.  He didn’t skip a single letter or slur any of
them.

          The cop’s frown deepened
throughout this process.  By the end of it, the expression on his face was maybe
the most exasperated-looking one Noah had ever seen.  He didn’t say anything at
first and spent some more time looking up and down the street, at what Noah had
no idea.  There was no one else around.

          At last, he sighed and
looked Noah in the eye.  “Look, I know you’re drunk.  You smell like a brewery. 
I know if I administered a breathalyzer, your BA would be off the charts.  But
you passed the field sobriety test.  So here’s what we’re gonna do.  You know
anyone who can come pick you up?”

          Noah was too stunned by
what the cop was telling him to reply right away.  His terror aside, he’d taken
it for granted that this episode would end with his drunk ass sitting in jail. 
At no point had he envisioned any possibility of somehow getting out of it.  As
fucked up as he was, the idea was absurd.

          Finally, Luke piped up
from inside the Pontiac, saying he could call someone to come get them.  The
officer listened as Luke took out his cell phone and called some mystery
person.  Soon he hung up and told the cop his brother would be along shortly to
collect them.

          The cop told Noah to
get back in the Pontiac, which he did, feeling almost numb with disbelief as he
slid in behind the wheel.  When he pulled the door shut, the cop leaned down to
talk to them through the open window.

          “Listen up, assholes.” 
His voice was thick with disdain.  He sounded like he wanted to hit them.  Noah
couldn’t blame him.  “I’m heading back up to Broadway, but I’ll swing back
around in about ten minutes.  Your ride won’t get here that fast.  You better
still be here.  Otherwise you
will
be picked up and you
will
be
arrested.  Understood?”

          Noah nodded.

          Luke said, “You got it,
man.”

          The cop’s eyes narrowed
as he gave Luke a long look full of malice.  Then he shook his head and stalked
away to the cruiser without another word.  About a minute later, the cruiser
headed away, taking a left turn a block down the street.

          They sat there in near
silence for several minutes.  Luke tried talking to Noah a few times, but Noah
stayed quiet.  Part of it was fury with Luke over initiating the search for the
elusive club.  But he was also angry with himself.  It was his fault he kept winding
up in these situations.

          He had his hands
clenched tight around the steering wheel when headlights appeared up ahead.  A
car was coming their way.  Noah hoped it was Luke’s brother coming to get them,
but it was the cop making his promised swing back by to check on them.  He
drove by slowly, taking a long look at them.  Then the cruiser accelerated and
Noah watched its taillights recede in the rearview mirror.

          Luke twisted around and
watched it go, too.  Then he sat forward again and glanced at Noah.  “Shit,
man, let’s go.  He’s gone.”

          Noah shook his head.  “No
fucking way.”

          Luke laughed.  “Don’t
you get what’s happening?  He’s letting us go.  He’s not gonna be back.”

          Noah frowned.  “Huh.” 
Despite his reluctance to disobey the cop’s instructions, the idea of not
waiting around any longer held a strong appeal.  “Do you know the way back to
your place from here?”

          “Yep.”

          “You sure?  Because I
will fucking kill you if we take even one wrong turn.  Swear to God I will.”

          “I’m absolutely sure. 
Now
go
.”

          Noah started the
Pontiac and pulled away from the curb.  He suggested Luke call his brother to
let him know he could go back to bed.  The suggestion made Luke laugh.  Turned
out Luke didn’t have a brother.  The whole thing had been a bluff.  Noah
couldn’t help it.  He laughed, too.  “You crazy fucker.”

          As they neared the
street where Luke lived, Noah noted a convenience store coming up on their
right.  It was a 24-hour store.  The lot was empty, except for the clerk’s car.

          “Pull in there.”

          Noah looked at Luke. 
“Why?  We’re almost back.”

          Luke grinned and showed
Noah his phone, which displayed a time of 2:51 a.m.  “Ten minutes before they
stop selling beer.”

          The idea was nothing
short of completely insane after what they’d been through that night.

          Noah pulled into the
store’s parking lot.  A few minutes later, they had a fresh case of Bud.  They
then made their way back to Luke’s place.  Luke put on some cheesy horror movie
and they drank for an indeterminate time.  Things got blurry and Noah
eventually passed out on Luke’s couch.

          He came to hours later,
sitting up with a groan and blinking blearily at the clock on Luke’s cable
box.  The time was just shy of ten in the morning.  Luke was nowhere in sight. 
Noah’s mouth was sandpaper dry.  He got up from the couch and stumbled into the
apartment’s little kitchen.  He took a tall plastic glass from a cupboard and
filled it with water.  He drank it down fast and followed it with another full
glass.  After that he went off in search of a bathroom.

          The bathroom was at the
end of a short hallway.  Luke’s bedroom was through an open door to the left. 
Noah glanced in and saw Luke sprawled out on a bed.  A rancid smell was coming
from the room.  Luke had pissed himself.  As hammered as he was, this wasn’t
surprising.  Noah proceeded on to the bathroom and took a long piss.  On the
way back, he glanced through the bedroom door again and paused in the hallway,
frowning as he detected another foul odor.

          Apparently, Luke had
also shit himself.

          Alarm bells went off in
Noah’s head.  The longer he stood there and stared at Luke, the more it seemed
to him that his drinking partner from last night wasn’t moving.  Like, at all. 
He was also lying flat on his back.  An intense sense of dread rose up in Noah
as he entered the bedroom.  Checking on Luke was the last thing he wanted to
do.  He felt like utter garbage and just wanted to get back to the couch and
lie down a while longer.

          But something wouldn’t
let him turn away from this.

          He stood at the edge of
the bed and stared down at Luke’s slack features.  His eyes and mouth were wide
open.  He wasn’t breathing and his body was utterly still.  There was a froth
of yellow vomit around his mouth.  More of it was on his chest.  Still more
stained the rumpled bed sheet beneath him.

          He was dead.  No doubt
about it.  And had been for a while.  Calling 911 wouldn’t do any good.  He was
hours beyond the help of paramedics.  Noah stood there a long time.  He was in
a kind of shock at first.  He’d never seen a dead person before.  It was unsettling. 
Eventually, though, this feeling passed and it hit him that this tragic
accident need not impact his life beyond this morning.

          Noah had never been
here before yesterday.  No one in Luke’s life knew who he was.  A reflexive
disgust at this notion came and went.  He had a moment of feeling like a
monster for even considering what was in his head.  But then he began to think
of it from a practical, unemotional viewpoint.  It would be so easy to just
walk away from this and pretend it had never happened.  His life would be so
much less complicated.

          Noah returned to Luke’s
bathroom to take a hot shower and scrub away the filth of the night.  The
shower was a long one.  In an effort to purge the toxins still polluting his
bloodstream, he stood under the water stream until it turned lukewarm.  He
emerged a half hour later feeling moderately refreshed.  And, more importantly,
no longer resembling a person coming off the tail end of a bender.

          He walked out of there
and never looked back.

The scream lodged in Noah’s
throat finally escaped, a ringing blast of denial and terror that brought a
stampede of footsteps from the kitchen.  He heard voices calling to him, but
the roaring in his ears rendered these sounds indistinct.  In desperation, he started
doing chest compressions, thumping hard enough to crack bones brittle from long
months of abuse.  He did this even though a distant part of him knew Linda was
beyond help.

          He screamed again when
someone grabbed him by an arm and pulled him off the bed.  That someone was
Nick, who immediately began his own attempt to resuscitate Linda.  Noah was
furious at having been tossed aside.  Linda was his responsibility.  He should
be the one trying to save her.  But it was clear from the start that Nick was
far more competent at administering CPR.  Obviously he’d been trained for it at
some point in his life.  As he watched the ex-soldier do his thing, Noah was
able to cling to a thin thread of hope.  Maybe everything would be all right
after all.  Nick would pull off the miracle and the four of them would be able
to head back to the mountain and live happily ever after, never again venturing
into the sad ruins of civilization.

          But then Nick ceased
doing the compressions and glanced at Noah.  “I’m sorry, man.  She’s gone. 
There’s nothing we can do.”

          Only then did Noah
realize his sister was hanging onto him.  Now she clutched harder at him and
tried to console him in a voice thick with emotion.  “I’m so sorry, Noah.  It’s
not fair.”

          Noah did not acknowledge
this.  He stood rigid for several long moments, staring at the awful sight of
Linda’s utterly still form, full comprehension of what he was seeing eluding
him.  Something primal inside him simply refused to accept the reality of it. 
But then, when denial was no longer possible, another, far more dangerous
feeling rose up inside him.  It felt like a fire exploding outward from the
center of his body, a molten rage that threatened to incinerate anything in his
way.

          He tore free of his
sister’s grip and gave her a hard shove away from him.  She cried out in
surprise as she fell to the floor.  But Noah didn’t hear her, nor did he hear
Nick’s thunderous rebuke.  His rage kept building and building as he approached
the bed with slow, deliberate steps.  His hands clenched into tight fists as he
stood over Linda and studied her slack features.  He was shaking when he felt
Nick’s hand fall on his shoulder.

          The big man said
something.  It didn’t register.

          Noah’s head turned
slowly toward him.  He glanced at the hand on his shoulder before glaring at Nick. 
“Get your hand off me.”

          Nick’s expression was
sympathetic but wary.  “You need to take a deep breath and count to ten.  I
know you want to blow up and I understand that.  But save that for later.  Right
now I need you to leave the room and let me take care of business.”

          “What the fuck are you
talking about?”

          Aubrey was at his side
again.  He hadn’t heard her getting back to her feet.  His rage left little
room for awareness of anything else.  She touched him again, but more gently
this time.  “Noah.  Please.  You know what he has to do.”

          Noah’s face twisted in
confusion.  For a moment, he was sure these two were talking pure nonsense. 
They had lost their minds.  Either that or their inexplicable comments were a
product of yet another ham-fisted attempt to console him.  But then a moment of
awareness penetrated his rage.

          He sighed.  “Fuck.”

          Nick grimaced.  “It has
to be done.  You know that.  I’m trying to help here.  Leave the room and let
me do this for you.”

          He shook his head.  “They
don’t always come back.”

          This was true. 
Sometimes the freshly dead did not reanimate.  But often they did and the
reason why was a mystery.  No one had ever figured it out, at least not to
Noah’s knowledge.  Mostly the virus spread through zombie bite.  That was
pretty straightforward and easy to understand.  Infection resulted in death and
instant reanimation.  The cases of delayed reanimation in persons who had not
been bitten complicated things for plague researchers.  It happened about fifty
percent of the time.  These cases hinted at a secondary means of transmission,
one in which the virus remained dormant until after death.  It was just one of
many reasons no cure was ever found.

          Nick nodded.  “You’re
right.  Sometimes they don’t.  But this needs doing as a precaution.”

          Noah was shaking his
head with his eyes squeezed shut when he felt a hand clamp tight around his
wrist.  He gasped in shock and opened his eyes in time to see Linda’s wide-open
mouth arcing toward his forearm.  Her eyes had that glassy look common to all
the freshly risen dead, devoid of any lingering trace of humanity.  The only
emotion evident in the sharp twist of her features was that raw need they all
had.

          The shock of the moment
almost doomed him.  He was saved at just about the last possible millisecond
when Nick slapped one of his big hands around the zombie’s throat and stopped it
cold.  The thing that had been Linda growled and snapped at Noah’s arm, its
teeth nearly coming within grazing distance of his flesh.  The margin narrowed
again when the zombie gave its head another hard twist and tried propelling
itself off the bed.

          Like all the freshly
risen, this creature was possessed of unnatural strength and speed.  These
amped-up attributes normally faded within about a week, after which the dead
things became the shamblers they’d encountered on the road.  For that one week,
though, they were nigh-unstoppable killing machines.

          Noah tried jerking his wrist
free of the creature’s grip, but to no avail.  It twisted its head again,
growling more loudly this time.  Noah pulled harder, managing to move his arm
just the slightest fraction of an inch, which was just far enough to avoid
another snap of teeth.  In his peripheral vision, Noah glimpsed his sister
running out of the room.  He hoped she was fetching a weapon from the kitchen,
because he and Nick were both unarmed at the moment.

          Nick grabbed a handful
of the zombie’s hair with his free hand and pulled its head backward.  This
elicited another fierce growl.  The creature then got its feet planted a little
better on the mattress and was finally able to overwhelm them with its enhanced
strength, driving them backward so fast they were both thrown off-balance.  In
the process, Nick lost his grip on the thing’s throat. 

          The zombie wound up
atop Noah on the floor.  It had lost its grip on his wrist, but now he felt its
teeth on his neck.  He got a forearm wedged against its throat and pushed
backward, once again eluding doom by the barest of margins.  The problem was he
knew he didn’t have it in him to hold the thing off much longer.  A separate
part of him felt an immense sadness even as he fought for his life.  It was so
strange to look into the face of this thing and know that until a short while ago
it’d belonged to a woman he’d made love to the night before.  Because she was
so freshly risen, there was no decomposition.  Except for the savage twist of
its features, this thing still looked exactly like the Linda he had known.

          Until, that is, a shadow
fell over him and a big blade slammed into the zombie’s temple.  The big hand
gripping the knife’s handle kept it in place a moment after driving it in,
Noah’s rescuer waiting until it was clear the thing was finished as a threat. 
The zombie’s expression was a frozen snarl.  The rest of its body was just as
rigid.  The knife was removed.  A dribble of dark blood emerged from the ugly
wound to its temple.

          The body was hauled
away and tossed aside.  Noah was unsurprised to see Nick standing above him, knife
in hand.  The big man was panting and his face was flushed from the exertion.

          Noah got to his feet
and saw that Aubrey was in the room again.  She was staring at her brother, her
eyes wide with concern and residual terror.  Noah assumed she had supplied the
knife Nick had used to save his life.  He knew he should be nothing but
grateful.  These two were making a habit of pulling him out of the fire.  But
then he looked at Linda’s corpse and the rage that had threatened to consume
him earlier began to rekindle.

          Aubrey came to him and
touched his arm.  “It’s not your fault.”

          Nick nodded.  “The old
fucker is the one to blame.  The internal injuries he inflicted got her in the
end.  That’s all.”

          Noah laughed and said
nothing.

          A wary glance passed
between Nick and Aubrey.

          Aubrey squeezed his
arm.  “Noah--”

          Noah shook his head. 
“What we did last night, that’s what killed her.  It was too soon.  It was too
much for her.”

          Nick frowned.  “That’s
bullshit.”

          A pained look crossed
Aubrey’s face.  “He’s right, Noah.  You know that’s not true.”

          Noah laughed.  “Oh, but
it is.  It’s one-hundred percent, absolutely fucking true.  I fucked her to
death.”

          His loudest laugh yet
followed this pronouncement.

          Nick and Aubrey
exchanged another troubled look, but they were at a temporary loss for words. 
Both seemed aware there was nothing they could say to short circuit Noah’s impending
spiral into deep darkness.

          Noah bolted from the
room before either of them could figure out how to deal with him.  He stalked
down the hallway and into the kitchen, where he tore open cupboards and rooted
through their depleted contents.  From one cabinet, he tossed out cans of
ravioli and chicken soup, as well as an already split-open bag of flour.  The
bag exploded when it hit the floor, sending up a puff of flour dust.  He
extracted pots and pans from another cabinet and tossed these over his
shoulder.  The clatter these made when they struck the floor elicited shrieks
of dismay from Aubrey, who’d followed him into the kitchen.

          He finally found what
he was looking for behind some dusty glasses.  A bit of the tension gripping
him eased as he pushed the glasses aside and took out the bottle of George
Dickel.  The fifth of whiskey was full, the seal around the cap never having
been broken.  It was like a gift from God.

          Or from the devil, more
likely.

          Aubrey gasped in alarm
when she saw it.  “Noah!  No, don’t you fucking dare.”

          Noah gave the cap a
hard twist, breaking the seal.  He flicked the cap away, knowing he wouldn’t be
needing it again.  He raised the bottle to his mouth and took a deep drink. 
Nick intervened when Aubrey tried to tear it away from him.  He pulled her out
of range as Noah took another, much longer drink.

          The burn of the whiskey
as it hit the back of his throat did not dampen Noah’s rage.  It inflamed it. 
At the same time, there was a sense of relief.  The darkness overtaking him was
scary yet also comforting in its familiarity.  He welcomed its return.  It felt
like coming home again.

          Aubrey shrieked and
thrashed against Nick.  But he held fast to her and tried to soothe her with
empty words of consolation.  “It’s okay.  Just stop.”  Like that, over and
over.

          Eventually, she did
wind down.  Her face was shiny with tears as she begged her brother to pour out
the whiskey.

          Instead he took another
drink.

          Aubrey wailed
pitifully, despair overtaking her.

          Nick was looking at
Noah again as he addressed Aubrey.  “Let him do it.  He needs to.”

          Noah sneered as he
headed for the back door.  “You should listen to the man.  He’s not as stupid
as he looks.”

          Nothing else was said
as he left the house, slamming the door behind him.