The Hell Season (15 page)

Afterward, Thomas would wonder how he managed to stay sober through it all. A nearby liquor store had been raided and the alcohol was flowing in copious amounts. Thomas stood with Gerald and Dana near the edge of the throng. More shelves had been pushed out of the way and a couple of ping pong tables had been set up that were being used for enthusiastic games of beer pong. A stereo system blared everything from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to the Doors to Metallica. From out in front of the store gun shots could be heard which startled many of those present until it was discovered that it was only a few drunken revelers firing handguns indiscriminately towards the hole. Big screen TV’s were carried over and set up which enabled some intense Xbox and PlayStation competitions to take place.

“Those generators are getting a workout tonight,” said Thomas to his two companions.

“Cheers to that!” said Gerald and raised his red plastic cup filled with punch and vodka before taking a long drink. The sight of it made Thomas want a drink of his own badly but he was resolved to stick to his promise. No more alcohol. Not until he found his wife and his children. Not until he figured out what it was that had gone so terribly wrong with the world. And maybe not then either. Maybe never again.

At some point Ron and Tanya showed up. They weren’t drinking either. “Quite the celebration,” said Ron.

“People getting a little rowdy out front,” said Tanya. As if to accent her point there came the small
pop!
of a gun going off outside, barely audible over the interior din.

“Yeah, well,” said Gerald with a shrug, “it’s been a while since anyone here’s had a reason to have fun. Shit, seems like forever. They’re just letting off some steam. It’ll be good for them. Good for all of us. You should get yourselves something to drink. Join the fun. You too, Thomas. Who knows when the next time will come along when everyone’s in such a jovial mood.”

“I’m enjoying myself just fine,” said Ron.

Gerald laughed, took another drink. “Yeah, the life of the party, that’s what you are.”

Ron smiled and Dana sipped at the cup she held in her hand. The five of them watched the revelry unfolding around them for a while. Eventually Ron leaned in close to Thomas and said, “We need to talk.” Then he walked away toward the back of the store. Thomas followed him over to the automotive section where the noise was a bit more subdued.

“Strange? No. Can’t say that I have. Nothing besides what you’d expect from a guy who’s been recently killed and resurrected, brought back in the prime of his health.”

Ron nodded his head. “Alright. That’s good, I suppose.”

“Why? What’s this all about?”

“It’s just that… I did fourteen months in Iraq then seven more in Afghanistan a couple years back. Worked a checkpoint outside Baghdad for a while. Inspected any cars that seemed suspicious coming in. Used these mirrors on the ends of metal poles to look underneath them. Had to look in the trunk. Let the dogs take a sniff. Really stressful shit, let me tell you. I mean, any one of those vehicles could have been packed with explosives. You just never knew.”

“Sounds pretty damned stressful,” said Thomas.

“One time, there’s this big yellow car coming toward us. One of our guys goes out and signals for it to slow down. But it doesn’t slow down. Eventually… Well, we had no choice. We opened fire on it. Half a dozen semi-autos just giving it the business. It finally came to a stop about ten meters in front of the checkpoint. Steam pouring up from under the hood. Windshield all shot to hell. And what did we find inside? No explosives, that’s for sure. A woman. Middle aged. Three kids. All dead. Multiple gunshot wounds. I still wonder why she came racing up at us like that. Why she didn’t slow down, you know? Maybe she was crazy. Or just scared. Just freaked out for some reason and did the wrong thing. And paid for it with her life. And the lives of her children…”

“That must have been awful.”

Ron nodded again. “Yeah, it was bad. I still see them sometimes in my dreams.
When
I dream, that is. Not very often, thankfully. At least that I can remember. Because, to be perfectly honest, I just don’t sleep all that much. Not since I went over there. Not since I’ve been back. Because there was other stuff to be sure. Other dead bodies. Other killings. A good friend of mine taken apart by a roadside bomb. Stuff I don’t want to go into. Stuff that keeps me up at night. I like to go on walks, sometimes around three or four in the morning. Nobody up and out but me for the most part. And, well, here’s what I’m getting at... The past few nights I’ve gone out and I’ve seen your friend Gerald standing near the edge of that damned hole, looking in. And ever since the other day, since the zombies attacked and all those people died then came back… He’s had a few friends with him. Looks like it might be all of them, all the ones who’ve been resurrected, as a matter of fact, just standing there, watching, like they’re waiting for something, you know?” He paused. “The whole thing’s got me a little concerned is all.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been quiet these past few days. You know, nothing bad happening. Too damned quiet, you ask me. I’m sure you feel the same way. This shit isn’t over, whatever it is. No, not by a long shot. Something’s coming. Maybe something big. And your friend there might know something about it. Could be that he’s in on it.”

“Gerald? I don’t think so. I mean, the guy died, right?” Thomas frowned. “Okay, I’ll say it. I killed him. And then he came back. Out of that damned hole in the ground. As did the others who were killed. I don’t think it’s any big surprise that they might be acting a little strange. Do you?”

Ron leveled a deep, penetrating stare his way. Then he pursed his lips and sighed. “Maybe they’re not up to anything. I don’t know. How can we know anything for sure at this point? But do me a favor, will you?”

*

It was well past midnight by the time the celebration wound down. The lights were finally extinguished around one-thirty, the generators turned off. Everyone agreed that the following morning would be a good one for sleeping in. Although, after lying there for what had to be two hours, Thomas was starting to wonder if he’d be able to sleep at all. Too much on his mind. His talk with Ron, for starters. There was Dana,too, sleeping just a few feet away in her own bed. He could hear her gently snoring on occasion, the sound oddly comforting. He wasn’t sure exactly where their relationship stood. They were friends, of course. He had to admit that he found her attractive. In another lifetime he may have even ended up with her instead of Julia. If he’d met her first, of course. If he’d never met Julia. The thought filled him with a deep sense of guilt. Even if it was only a thought it was still a betrayal, wasn’t it? A very small one but there nonetheless. Like some of the similar thoughts he’d had in the past, back before Julia was taken from him. There’d been other women—hell, one of them the wife of a work colleague—who’d struck him as attractive, intelligent women he wouldn’t have minded spending some time with. Again, if he’d never met Julia. Just thoughts, nothing more, but they’d always left him feeling guilty. Because the bottom line was that Julia was perfect for him. He had been the luckiest man in the world to have found her, to have had his love reciprocated by someone as special as her. He’d never cheated on her. Never really considered it. Not ever. But what if she didn’t come back? Would there ever come a time when he’d be able to be with another woman? Would he ever want to? And there was the guilt again. It was too early for such musings, wasn’t it? She was coming back. Or he’d be going to her, wherever she was. He’d find her and the children if it was the last thing he did. He’d die trying, if it came to that. He almost laughed. What if he couldn’t die? Look at Gerald and the others. What if he just kept coming back, time and time again, unable to die even if he wanted to? What then?

And then there was what Ron had said about things being too quiet lately, about something big possibly happening. Plenty there to keep him awake.

He turned his thoughts to his parents, pictured them in their house up north, located just outside of Pittsburgh. His mom puttering around the kitchen, baking bread or cookies for his dad and the neighbors. His dad sitting on the porch smoking his pipe, wondering when he could get down to Florida to spend some time with his son and the grandkids. It was a good image, a happy image that he struggled to hold onto. But there was another image too, the one in which his parents’ house, the place that Thomas had called home for so many years, was silent, devoid of life, where two sets of sleeping clothes lay empty beneath the covers of his parents’ bed.

As he lay there, Thomas noticed that his throat felt a little sore. He coughed into his pillow so as not to wake those sleeping nearby. Just as he was about to get up from the bed to get a drink of water, he heard the sounds of someone stirring. Lying still he opened his eyes and looked out into the darkness toward Gerald’s bed, saw the man’s dark form getting to its feet. A minute later, Gerald was wandering off toward the front of the store. Thomas was pretty sure he knew where his friend was headed. What was it that really drew him out there like that?
he couldn’t help but wonder. What did he and the others see when they stared down into that black, impenetrable abyss? Did they see the abyss staring back, as Nietzsche once so eloquently declared? Or something else? Something that only their experience with death allowed them to see, to comprehend, to face without running screaming into the darkness?

Eventually Thomas slept. He was plagued by cold and comfortless dreams filled with dark and dreary landscapes through which he walked, utterly alone, toward a promise of comfort he was never able to find.

CHAPTER 7

Saturday, July 3 to Saturday, July 17

Shouldn’t have drank so much last night
, was the first thought to go through Thomas’s head when he awoke. His head hurt. Real bad. Then he realized that it wasn’t just his head that hurt. He hurt all over.

Groaning, he opened his eyes then immediately wished he hadn’t. The dim lighting of the room around him flashed into his brain like a laser fired directly into his retinas. He groaned and closed his eyes tight against the pain. Just how much did he drink last night? Then he remembered. Nothing. He didn’t drink any alcohol at all. So what was this? What was with the terrible pounding in his skull, the nausea churning in his stomach, the ache coursing throughout his body?

A cup of water was pressed to Thomas’s lips and he drank like that lying down, wondering if he could summon the strength to get up if he wanted to. Which, right about then, he did not.

Jesus, what was wrong with him?

“A few of the others have gone to the hospital for antibiotics,” said Gerald. “One of those who went is a nurse. Angie. Tall, long black hair? They should be back soon. In the meantime, here, drink some of this.”

Another cup was pressed to Thomas’s mouth, this one smaller, made of thinner plastic. He swallowed the thick, licorice flavored liquid it contained, some sort of cold and flu medication.

“Hopefully that will help. If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one who’s sick. Far from it. Well over half of our numbers have come down with… whatever it is you’ve come down with. And I have to tell you, it’s no ordinary flu or anything like that. At least none that I’ve ever seen. The bruises on your face and arms, on the bodies of the others too. It’s like you’ve been physically beaten by… oh, I don’t know, some angry spirit that walked among us during the night.”

Thomas coughed, a deep racking cough that sent sharp waves of pain throughout his body. Once the fit had passed he spent a minute getting his breath. Then he asked, “What time?”

“Late. You’ve slept the entire morning away. Half the afternoon. It’s past three o’clock.”

“Damn,” he said. And then, quite mercifully, he drifted off to sleep once more.

*

As a child, I suffered a few what I guess could be called rather serious illnesses. There was the bout of chicken pox. A couple of years later, when I was nine years old, I came down with a case of the measles. The following winter there was the ear infection. And then, when I was thirteen years old, there was the strep throat that led to me having my tonsils removed. That last one was a doozy, let me tell you. I couldn’t swallow anything that didn’t come in liquid form for more than a week. I pretty much survived on soup broth and ice cream and water. The ice cream wasn’t so bad, I guess, but it was small consolation for the searing agony that accompanied any attempt at swallowing during that time, especially the first four or five days or so. I lost fifteen pounds that week, fifteen pounds I didn’t know I had to lose, skinny little twerp that I was. Yeah, it was a rough time, alright. I’ve been told that having one’s tonsils removed as an adult is even worse. But even that, I’m sure, could not compare to the illness that I and a good number of my fellow survivors were forced to suffer through during the heart of that terrible and hellish summer
.