Slowly We Rot (32 page)

Time continued to pass in an elastic
way.  After departing Hell’s Lost Mile, a period of days went by before he
arrived at a long overdue breaking point.  It might only have been a few days
or as much as a week or slightly longer.  On the day it happened, the first
thing he saw when his eyes snapped open in the morning was the clear blue sky
above him.  This was the first time it had reverted to its natural color in weeks
or months.  Longer than he could remember, at any rate.

          But Noah felt no relief,
nor was he able to spend any time marveling over what should have been a happy
development.  He’d awoken in a state of excruciating pain, the worst he’d
experienced by far over the course of a long string of miserable hangover
mornings.  His gut felt like it was on fire and his legs were cramping badly. 
Bile rose into his throat and he began to cough and gag.  Because he’d passed out
on his back, the scalding bile immediately went back the way it’d come, causing
him to cough harder and gasp for air.  Panic seized him as he realized he was
on the verge of choking to death on vomit.  An image from another hangover
morning, one from the pre-apocalypse days, flashed through his mind, and his
panic spiked to its highest level yet.

          In desperation, he
forced himself to turn onto his side.  The cramps in his legs had not eased one
iota and the physical effort redoubled the agony there.  He wanted to scream,
but couldn’t because he was choking.  Tears blurred his eyes as he clawed at
highway asphalt and flopped over onto his stomach.  His arms trembled as he put
all his remaining strength into pushing himself to his hands and knees.  He managed
to do it but paid a price in the form of more mind-searing agony.  His entire
body felt on the verge of utter surrender.  And yet his survival instinct was
still functional.  Caring about nothing other than clearing the blockage in his
throat, he coughed harder and harder and pounded at his chest with a fist.  He
was thinner than ever and frail after too many weeks of not eating well.  The
pain from pounding his chest was almost too much to take, but he kept at it
anyway, still unable to accept the only remaining alternative.

          At last, just as he was
sure he was about to die, the blockage cleared and he sucked in the first of
several deep, wheezing breaths.  After a few moments of weeping in relief, he
realized he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up much longer.  He gathered his
strength one more time, repositioned his body as best he could, and shoved
himself backward, crying out when his back smacked against a concrete lane
divider.  Still trembling all over, he clutched at his legs and tried to massage
out the cramps.  After a period that felt interminable, they finally began to
ease and he again wept in relief.

          He then put his face in
his hands as tears came faster and harder.  His whole body shook with the force
of emotional misery.  For many minutes, he was powerless to stop the outpouring
of anguish.  He wasn’t even sure what he was wailing about by that point, other
than perhaps a generalized combination of loss, exhaustion, and self-pity.

          When the outpouring at
last began to subside, he took his hands from his face and opened his eyes.  He
sucked in a breath and pressed his back harder against the lane divider when he
saw the dead thing staring at him.  It was standing in the street, its head
rolling around on its shoulders as its body swayed slightly.  The zombie was
tall and thin and had long, scraggly hair sticking out in all directions.  The
thing’s body was still mostly intact, but it had achieved a level of
putrefaction that marked it as at least six months dead.  It was wearing a long
leather duster, which was hanging open wide enough to reveal a Joy Division
T-shirt.  Noah’s hand went to the holster at his hip.  The revolver he’d lost
in Hell’s Lost Mile had been replaced by a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum he’d
scavenged from a gun shop at some point in the fairly recent past.

          In truth, he wasn’t
sure he was still strong enough to fire the thing without being blasted off his
feet.  But it didn’t matter much, because now he remembered he’d never gotten
around to loading it.  And his shopping cart was out of reach, along with the
other weapons inside it.  It was some twenty yards away to his left.  Bright
sunshine glinted off the clear packing tape he’d used to weatherize the bikini
model cutout.  It might as well have been twenty miles away.  He still lacked the
strength to get to his feet, much less do anything to protect himself.

          He tensed as he waited
for the dead thing to come at him.  His only hope was to get a good grip on its
throat once it got within grabbing range.  If he could manage to hold it far
enough away from his body to avoid bites long enough, he just might be able to
summon enough strength to overpower it and maybe bash its head against the lane
divider.

          As it turned out, none
of this was necessary.  After staring at him in that dumb, expressionless
zombie way for several minutes, the dead thing turned away from him and
continued on down the road.  Noah frowned, staring after the thing in utter
incomprehension.  He was so dumbfounded by the encounter that he made no
attempt to get to his feet despite finally feeling capable of it.  Since the
beginning of the plague outbreak, he’d never known a dead thing to turn away
from a potential meal.  It was hard not to take it as another ominous portent,
though of what he wasn’t sure.  He was so rattled by it that he continued
staring after the zombie until it was an indistinct shape on the horizon.

          Eventually, however, he
shook off his stupefaction and got shakily to his feet.  Once he was upright
and sure he wasn’t about to topple over, he staggered over to the shopping cart
and peered into it for a long time.  Though the cramps in his legs had abated,
the fire was still burning in his belly and his hands were trembling.  His
stomach felt corroded, a result perhaps of too much booze and a diet that
barely existed.  A part of him feared this might be a symptom of something
direr, maybe his liver failing on him.  He wanted to believe he was still too
young for cirrhosis, but he knew it was foolish to think that way.  The amount
of alcohol he’d been pouring down his throat every day for so many months was
far beyond what would have been considered excessive even for skid row bums in
the pre-apocalypse era.  Maybe his liver wasn’t quite ready to fail or shut
down just yet, but it was, at the very least, horrendously overburdened.

          Inside the cart were
dozens of bottles of various kinds of booze.  He couldn’t remember having
acquired most of the stash.  In a world that had died fast, there was a
virtually endless supply of the stuff wherever you went.  He’d been in the
habit of grabbing more at almost every stop along the way since leaving
Henryetta.  At his current rate of consumption, what he had right here might
last a week or two.  He typically got through two or three fifths of liquor in
each waking period of any significant duration, enough to take him right up to
the brink of acute alcohol poisoning, perhaps beyond.

          There was a case of
bottled water in there with all the booze.  The shrink-wrap encasing the
bottles was intact.  Thinking about it now, he couldn’t recall the last time
he’d drank anything other than booze.  Days, at least.  It was no wonder the
morning cramps were getting so severe.  He was in a state of perpetual
dehydration.  Somehow he’d managed to keep going like this well beyond the
point of stretching his body to its absolute limits, but he knew the time to
stop had finally arrived.  He doubted he’d survive another episode like the one
he’d just endured.

          Noah ripped open the
shrink-wrap and took out a water bottle.  Sometimes water stored in plastic
bottles went bad or the bottles themselves degraded and the water leached out. 
Other times they were fine and the water as pure, seemingly, as the day it was
bottled.  It seemed to depend on the materials and bottling processes used by
the various companies.  Over time Noah had gotten a feel for which brands were
the most dependable.  This particular brand was one of the very best.  He
opened the bottle and guzzled down its contents fast.  He then opened another
bottle and did the same, feeling slightly better when he was finished.

          He reached into the cart
and took out a bottle of Patron tequila.  He cracked the seal on the neck,
removed the cap, and sniffed from the opening, sighing at the intoxicating
scent.  A pang of nostalgia accompanied it.  He thought of Mexican restaurants
and good times he’d had in the past.  His mouth watered as he recalled the
taste of tacos so vividly it almost made him swoon.

          Sighing again, he upended
the bottle and poured it out on the pavement.  He did the same with bottles of
Maker’s Mark and Stoli.  What he was doing was the right thing, of that there
was no doubt, but the smell of the booze awakened that undying need inside
him.  He considered taking a slug from the next bottle he opened, a fifth of
Jack Daniel’s.  Just for old time’s sake.  But that was his addiction talking. 
He poured out the fifth of Jack.  After that, he decided to cut down on the
possibility of surrendering to temptation by smashing the bottles on the
street.  Pouring them out was just taking too long.

          The destruction of his
booze stash took several more minutes.  Once it had been accomplished, the
relief he felt was so profound it bordered on exhilaration.  Not for the first
time, he was standing on the precipice of freedom.  There were tears in his
eyes as he contemplated a future in which he was no longer a slave to the
bottle.  He’d been here before.  Many times.  In the end, the need had always
been stronger.  It couldn’t be vanquished, not entirely.  And it could be endlessly
patient, just waiting for that right moment of weakness to arrive.

          And maybe that moment
would yet come again.  Hell, it probably would.  But he made a deal with
himself as he stood there in silent contemplation of all that broken glass
glittering in the sunlight.  He would stay sober until he reached Ventura.  He
didn’t have far to go now, having crossed the border into California at some
hazy point within the last day or so.  On the off-chance Lisa was still
there—and still alive—he needed to be healthier than he was now when they were
reunited.  He was a walking wreck.  Maybe she’d really loved him once upon a
time, but he didn’t see how she could feel anything other than revulsion at
seeing him in his current condition.  So he would stay sober and do what he
could about that in the days ahead.  And he’d hope for the best.

          Noah glanced at the
bikini model cutout strapped to the front of the shopping cart.  Her smile
seemed phonier than ever now, no longer as inviting as he’d once imagined.  The
bottle of beer in her hand no longer added to her appeal.  He decided he’d seen
quite enough of her for one lifetime.  He took a knife from his utility belt,
cut the shiny, tape-wrapped slab of thin cardboard free of the cart, and tossed
it into the street.

          Then he put the knife
away, took up his usual position behind the cart’s handle, and started walking
again.

He made camp in a field adjacent
to an interstate ramp later that night, setting up his tent for the first time
in ages and then using a foldout entrenching tool to dig out a fire pit.  These
were some of his first steps in a renewed effort to live like a decent human
being again.  Tonight he would sleep under proper cover rather than sprawled
out in the middle of some road or wherever else he happened to pass out at the
end of any given day.  Also, after subsisting on canned food for longer than he
could remember, he decided it was time to dine on something with a little more
substance to it.

          To make this happen, he
ventured into a nearby wooded area, where he managed to capture and kill a
nicely plump rabbit.  He got a fire going in the pit and cooked the rabbit on a
spit.  It was the best-tasting thing he’d eaten in just about forever. 
Compared to his usual fare of barely tolerable crap, it was like feasting on
filet mignon at a five-star restaurant in Manhattan or Paris.

          Noah ate all of it he
could stand, which was a surprising amount.  His stomach gave him some trouble,
but not as much as he’d feared.  He forced himself to have more than he really
wanted, knowing his body was in dire need of an infusion of fuel that wasn’t
half-rotten.  There was nonetheless a good bit left over.  He saved what he
could of the unused portion, packing it away in the bag that had once contained
his weed stash.

          The weed was gone now,
scattered to the wind shortly after he’d set up camp.  This was done with mixed
feelings.  He had functioned well for years as a regular pot user during his
years of isolation on the mountain, with things only going to hell once booze
entered the equation again.  This wasn’t mere rationalization.  It was just the
damn truth.  And yet he knew he had to divest himself of the temptation
anyway.  He had arrived at a critical stage of his journey and didn’t need
anything clouding or coloring his feelings.  One way or another, whatever it
took, he meant to honor the deal he’d made with himself.  He was abstaining
from all intoxicating substances at least until he got to Ventura.

          Once he’d finished
eating and had packed away the leftover meat, he took a western novel from his
pack and spent a bit of time reading by the fire.  The reading didn’t work its
usual magic, however, and he stopped after getting through just a single
chapter.  Somehow reading about outlaws and avenging gunslingers had lost some
of its appeal.  His reaction to the book was so adverse, in fact, that he
considered tossing it on the fire, and all the rest of the books from his pack
along with it.

          In the end, however, he
packed the book away, attributing the destructive impulse to some of his recent
experiences.  It was something he thought he might regret later.  After all,
the act of burning books had some pretty uncomfortable historical
connotations.  He didn’t want to do anything that’d put him in the same company
as Nazis and murderous religious zealots.

          In the absence of any
other way of whiling away his time, Noah decided it was time to turn in for the
night.  He’d gone many hours without drinking, his longest stretch of sober
time since leaving Henryetta, and he did feel much better than he had in some
time, especially with a decent meal inside him.  But the reality was he was
less than half a day removed from the worst episode of alcoholic misery in his
life.  The need was dimmer than usual, but it was still inside him.  His hands
trembled and there were occasional tremors in other parts of his body.  He
didn’t need a medical professional to tell him these were symptoms of
withdrawal.  It was going to be a long time before he was truly recovered, if that
ever happened.  What he needed more than anything else was a long night of rest
with no trace of poison circulating in his system.

          Noah grabbed his pack
and pulled it into the tent with him.  Leaving the tent’s flaps open so he could
see by firelight, he opened the pack and took out his sleeping bag.  Thanks to
his longstanding habit of unplanned passing out, it’d been quite a while since
he’d used it.  He shook the bag out, pulled off his shoes, and climbed inside
it.  Using his pack as a pillow, he turned on his side and began to drift
asleep almost right away, only becoming truly aware of how utterly exhausted he
was as he stretched out on the ground.  He felt like he could sleep for days,
maybe even weeks.

          He was in the beginning
stages of a dream about Lisa when a sound from outside the tent dragged him
back to the waking world.  The first thing he felt as this happened was
annoyance.  In the dream, Lisa was with him on a California beach, a radiant
smile on her face as they walked hand-in-hand and barefoot in the sand.  She
looked beautiful in a little white dress.  It was sunset and the horizon out
over the water was breathtaking, the sky awash in a variety of brilliant hues.

          The next thing he felt
was terror.

          Noah had removed his
utility belt prior to getting in the sleeping bag.  He groped for it now as he
woke, endeavoring not to make a sound as his hand found the grip of the .357 and
drew it from the holster.  By contrast, the person outside his tent was making
no attempt at stealth.  Far from it, in fact.  Whoever was out there was
singing “Seven Drunken Nights”, a traditional Irish drinking song.  Noah knew
it because Lisa had introduced him to the song a lifetime ago.

          But this was not Lisa. 
This was a male voice.  After listening a few moments, Noah thought it was one
he recognized, but he knew he must be wrong about that.  There was no way the
person he was thinking of was outside his tent tonight.  Mostly because he was
no longer among the living.

          Noah crawled out of the
sleeping bag, peered through the open flaps of the tent, and saw a man sitting
on a log by the fire.  His back was to Noah so he couldn’t see his face, but
the general shape of him seemed familiar.  Though he was seated, it was clear
he was tall and lanky.  What really clinched it, though, was the spiky blond
hair, which looked just as it had all those years ago.

          The singing went on for
a while, with Noah’s visitor making most of his way through the song before
abruptly falling silent.  He turned his head in Noah’s direction, just far
enough for a partial glimpse of his face.  The glimpse was further proof of
what he already knew.

          Luke Garraty chuckled. 
“Hey, douchebag.  You gonna gawk at me all night, or are you gonna come out here
and have a drink with me?”

          Noah stared at the
apparition by the campfire a while longer, unsure of what to do or say.  He
hesitated long enough that Luke grew tired of waiting for him and resumed
singing, starting the same song again from the beginning.  He bobbed his head
in time to the rhythm he was belting out and swayed a bit on the log.  The log
appeared to shift beneath him, as if bearing an actual physical weight.  That
wasn’t possible, of course, so Noah accepted it as part of the hallucination he
was obviously having.

          He came out of the tent
and approached the campfire.  The disappointment he felt when the illusory
version of his old rehab friend failed to vanish was mild.  That would happen
soon enough.  He just had to be patient.  In the meantime, he figured this was some
troubled part of his mind wanting to have a conversation with him.  There was
nothing to do but accept it on its own terms and go with it.

          “You’re dead.  You know
that, right?”

          Luke snickered.  “Of
course I know that.  I’m a fucking ghost, man.  Haven’t you figured that out
yet?”

          “I’d say you’re more
like a voice in my head I’ve somehow externalized.  And for some reason my
fucked-up brain picked your image as an avatar for that voice.”

          Luke laughed and took a
swig from a pint bottle.  “You keep telling yourself that, brother, but deep
down you know the truth.  I ain’t no voice in your head.  I’m all that remains
of a human being you killed by leaving for dead a long time ago.  In other
words, a fucking ghost.”

          Noah turned from the
fire to look squarely at the hallucination.  “You were already dead.  It
couldn’t have been more obvious.”

          “Maybe you should have
checked for a pulse.”

          “Maybe you should go
fuck yourself.”

          Luke smirked.  “Snappy
comeback.  I’m impressed.”

          “And while you’re
fucking yourself, maybe you should go ahead and fuck off, too.  I’m tired and
need to sleep.”

          Luke took another swig
from the pint bottle.  After that he shook the bottle and arched an eyebrow. 
“Have a drink with me, man.  Just one.  You owe me that much.”

          “You’re not real, so I
owe you shit.  Which, by the way, means that bottle isn’t real either.  And
that’s a good thing, because I’m done drinking.”

          Luke snorted and helped
himself to yet another gulp of ghost whiskey.  “Yeah, right.  Since when?”

          “This morning.”

          “Shit, you’ll be back
on the sauce in no time.  You know I’m right.”

          Before Noah could reply
to that, he was distracted by a sound of something moving out in the darkness
beyond the campfire.  He caught a glimpse of a low-to-the-ground shape pushing
through the tall grass.  In a moment, he discerned the pointed ears and long
snout of a coyote.  Remembering the gun in his hand, he raised it and squeezed
off a warning shot.  The boom of the high-caliber gun was immense in the lonely
patch of field.  It sent the animal scurrying back into the darkness, hopefully
not to return.

          Luke whooped in drunken
delight.  “Whoa, brother.  That’s some serious artillery you’re packing there!”

          Noah pointed the gun at
the apparition and fired again.

          Luke’s familiar smirk
was immediately back in place.  “You’re forgetting I’m a ghost and therefore
impervious to bullets.  It’s one of the few perks of being a spook, really.”

          Noah sighed.  “You’re
not a ghost.”

          “Am, too.  Come on,
man.”  He waved the bottle at Noah.  “Have a drink with me.  Just one.  You do
that, I’ll leave you alone and never bother you again, I promise.  And hey,
what harm could it do?  You said it yourself, this here bottle’s not real.  So
what’s the big deal?”

          Noah eyed the bottle
with some trepidation, wondering if maybe it wasn’t part of the hallucination. 
Maybe it was the one bottle he’d somehow unknowingly missed during the purge
earlier in the day.  And maybe the whole point of this delusion was a mental
construct designed to get him to drink it, his addiction’s most devious ruse
thus far.

          He took the bottle from
the apparition.

          Luke grinned. 
“Attaboy.”

          The weight and feel of
the bottle in his hand seemed real enough to Noah.  Also adding to an
impression of realism was the way the edges of the label were curling outward
as the old glue separated from the glass.  The smell of cheap, inferior whiskey
was just as convincing.

          Noah reared an arm back
and flung the bottle out into the night.

          Luke frowned.  “You
asshole.”

          Noah nodded.  “That I
am.”

          He started back toward
the tent.

          “Hold on, man.”  Luke shot
to his feet and gripped Noah by an arm.  “I’m not done with you just yet. 
Remember that first group meeting at Discoveries?  Remember what I told you
back then?”

          Noah grunted.  “How
could I forget?”

          “Well, that shit still
applies.  Your whole problem is your grandiose vision of yourself in the scheme
of things.  You keep telling yourself stories, inventing this epic myth. 
The
Story of Noah
, you could call it.  And I get it, man.  I really do. 
Because what else do you have but the lies you’ve told yourself to keep getting
by?  But it’s time to let go of all that shit and get in touch with the real
you.”

          “All right.  I’ll
play.  Who am I, really?”

          Luke’s expression had
turned somber.  “You’re nothing but an ordinary, flawed guy who’s in way over
his head.  You didn’t survive the end of the world because you were special. 
That’s your daddy’s doing.  And you’ve survived as long as you have out here in
the world through sheer luck.  But your luck is about to run out, Noah.  You
need to go home.”

          Noah frowned at the
hand gripping his arm.  As with the bottle, the pressure against his flesh felt
real enough, but the apparition’s fingers were like slivers of ice.  He pried
them loose and moved back another few steps.  “I told you, I’m tired.  I know
I’m no hero, for fuck’s sake.  And I’m not interested in resolving whatever
fucked-up thing inside me you’re supposed to represent.”

          “Wrong again, buddy. 
I’m a ghost.  How many times do I have to say it?  And I’m not the first one you’ve
talked to out on the lonesome highway.  Am I, Noah?”

          That stopped Noah in
his tracks.  He turned to face the apparition squarely again.  “What’s that
supposed to mean?”