The Plague Unto The End (26 page)

Curtis didn’t even look at the bodies for a split second.  He was too focused on finding the medicine for Frannie.  I still wasn’t sure how we were going to figure out what to give her or how much of it.  We couldn’t search for it on the Internet.  There wasn’t enough time to stop by a library to look for medical books and we wouldn’t even know what we were looking for to begin with.

Curtis walked right past several areas of the store we hadn’t checked yet.  His eyes were locked on a shelf behind the pharmacy counter.  I tried to catch up to him before he crawled over the counter, but he had too much of a lead on me.  Just before I reached the counter, a carrier dressed in a hazmat suit lunged at me from my left side.  She latched onto my left forearm with her boney fingers.  She immediately started trying to pull it into her mouth.  I jerked and pulled to get free, but her fingers had been worn down to the bone from clawing at something.  The jagged tips of her fingers ripped into my sweatshirt and cut into my arm.

I couldn’t get a good bladed stroke with my sword in my right hand.  I punched her in the face with the butt of the sword several times with no results.  She held on tight.  I looked at the counter and saw Curtis jumping back over.  He swung the butt of his shotgun and beat her in the head until her body went limp and fell to the ground.  I grabbed the fingers of her left hand and pried them out of my arm.  I was enraged and thankful to Curtis at the same time.  I wanted to shoot him for rushing into the store, but she had not bitten me.  I was scratched, like Frannie.  I looked at the still twitching military woman on the floor and began to kick her head repeatedly and stab her with my sword randomly.

“Dude, calm down,” said Curtis from behind me.

Curtis’ statement only enraged me more.  I had put up with a lot from Matt and Curtis over the last couple of days.  I felt a surge of dark thoughts begin to flow through my mind.  I looked down at my sword and thought about hacking him in the head.  I was so unsure about what was going to happen to me.  Was I infected or was I just going to get sick like his sister?  I didn’t want to go through either.  I stared at him thinking about how I could just kill him and head back to the church and tell the others whatever I wanted.  There would be no investigation.  No one would go looking for his body.  None of them would question my story.

Curtis began to look uncomfortable as I stared at him, “We’re at the pharmacy now.  We can get you something to help with your arm.  They’ve probably got bandages and everything here,” said Curtis.

He was right.  Panicking and overreacting would get me killed quicker than any infected cut would.  Now this search for the right antibiotic was personal.

“You’re right,” I said as I took a deep breath.  “First let’s make sure there are no more in here.  Then we can gather everything we can find.”

Curtis and I checked every possible place inside the store that might have a corpse hiding and—lucky me—I had been attacked by the only one inside.  We found a couple large lunch boxes for sale inside the store and Curtis filled one with all the pills he could stuff inside.  I told him to get everything with “-cillin” in the name and also some pain relief medicine.  Somehow he was able to name more pain medicine than I had ever heard of.  I went to the first-aid aisle to gather gauze bandages, medical tape and hydrogen peroxide.  I pulled back my sleeve and dumped most of a bottle over the cut on my arm before we left the store.  I wrapped the wound and we carefully wove our way back through the vehicles in the parking lot.

We put the lunch boxes in the van and I started to get in.  Curtis hesitated and stared at me.

“There is more stuff inside that store we could use,” he said.

“Yeah, but we need to get back to your sister, remember?” I said.

“You know there are all of those stores out there and we are probably the only people still alive for miles around.  None of us have changed our clothes since day one and I don’t know about you, but I really want to,” said Curtis.

I looked down at my gray, dirty sweatshirt and my muddy, bloodstained jeans.  “Yeah, I would love to change my clothes, but we need to get back.”

“I mean, I wasn’t saying we should do it right now.  I was just thinking...you know,” said Curtis as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

We headed back to the church and Curtis was driving slightly more aggressively than he had originally.  I was anxious to get back and finally be able to rest, so I didn’t tell him to slow down.  I could ask someone else to make the next couple of supply runs.  I tried to think about other things, but I could not stop thinking about my arm.  The cut burned and I thought about playing it safe and doing what Tracey had done for Sid.  I just couldn’t shake the thought that Frannie had lasted way longer than any bite victim and she didn’t seem to be going through the same process as they did.  I didn’t feel sick.  My arm just hurt and I felt hungry again.  I was, most of all, angry at myself.  I should have been watching for threats to myself before I worried about what Curtis was doing.

As we closed in on the church I could see that the noise Curtis had made when we left the church had drawn quite a crowd.  Curtis slowed to a stop about a block from the church.

“So what now?”  Said Curtis.

I thought for a moment.  “I guess if they followed the sound once, they will do it again.”

“What...shoot my shotgun again?” Curtis asked.

“Yeah, but shoot into the crowd.  We might as well take some of them out.  You know, so we’re not really wasting the ammo,” I said.

“But what are we going to do when they start surrounding the van?”

“We’re going to have to move further down the block.  What we need to do is make sure there is another route to the church before we start this though,” I said.

We drove around and found that there was a street that looped around to the other side of the church.  That road was more littered with abandoned vehicles and the houses in that area appeared to have suffered from a fire that had made its way from one house to the next.  Curtis and I set up on that side of the church, hoping that the carriers would get partially trapped in the maze of derelict cars.  Curtis stepped one leg out of the van and shot off one of the shells.  I could see the aimless lumbering of the crowd change into a more focused effort to locate the source of the noise.  I could see Curtis starting to panic slightly.  I held up my index finger and told him to wait.  We needed the crowd to start to weave into the cars before we tried for the church.  When the carriers started to come through the cars and were able to move more quickly toward us, I pointed at Curtis and he fired his second shot.  The crowd began to surge toward us and Curtis quickly slid back into the driver’s seat and pulled his door shut.

Curtis drove around the block at a fairly slow pace to make sure the carriers were going to keep following us.  He maintained that pace until the church was back in sight.  I told him to gun the gas and get us there.  There were only a few slow carriers left in front of the church as we rolled into the parking lot.  I could see Matt on the roof, looking down at us, as we stopped and got out of the van.  The others inside of the church had heard the shots and seemed to have figured out what we were doing.  Curtis and I got out of the van with the lunch boxes of supplies and ran for the front door of the church.  The door popped open just before we reached for the handle.  Rev stepped out and watched for any corpses trying to follow us inside.  Curtis and I ran into the open door and Rev stepped in behind us.

Beth was standing just inside the door along with Rev, Sid, and Jim.  They were all trying not to look Curtis in the eyes for some reason.  Beth looked like she had been crying.  They all looked like there was something they needed to tell him, but no one wanted to say it.  Finally Beth couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“I’m so sorry.  I...I checked on her a little while ago and she...wasn’t breathing,” she said, holding back more tears.

Curtis just stared at her for a few seconds.  “She needs her medicine...I got it for her.”

Beth let go and the tears started flowing.  She stepped toward Curtis to hug him, but he pushed her back and took off running down the hall.  The rest of us stood still.  I had so many thoughts running through my head.  I couldn’t believe that we just went through all of that for nothing.  He almost died.  I almost died and I got scratched just like Frannie was.  Now she’s dead.  I wondered what would happen to me.  Would I get sick like that and die?  It was all for nothing.  I had to know and see for myself if she was really dead.  I ran down the hall after Curtis and found him standing outside the room.  He had his hand on the doorknob, but wouldn’t open the door.

“Have you gone in yet?  Is she…?” I asked.

Curtis sniffled.  “I couldn’t go in.”

“We have to know.  If Beth is wrong, she needs the medicine.  If she is, then we need to know if she...is going to turn,” I said.

Curtis nodded his head and looked at the floor.  He looked back at me and slowly opened the door.  I followed him into the room and I could see her lying on a pile of blankets in the corner of the room.  She did not appear to be moving at all.

“Frannie?  It’s Curtis.  Are you OK?”  Said Curtis.

I kept my sword ready just in case.  Curtis walked over to Frannie and touched her shoulder.  He looked back at me and I could see that he was about to cry.  I walked over to Frannie and shook her shoulder.  Her arm was cold.  I looked down at the underside of her arm and there was blood pooling under her skin.  I was pretty sure that doesn’t really happen unless the person has been dead for several hours.  We couldn’t have been gone but for two hours at the most.  I looked over at Curtis and tried to think of what to say.  One side of me wanted to tell him how sorry I was that his sister was gone, but another side of me wanted to start asking questions.  So I decided to do both.

“Curtis, I’m really sorry for you and for your sister, but what in the world is going on?” I asked.

Curtis looked shocked.  “What do you mean ‘What’s going on?’  My sister is dead.”

“I see that, but when did she die?” I asked.

“Beth said that she found her...” Curtis started to say.

“No, you said she was doing okay when we left to go to the pharmacy.  She has been dead for hours!” I snapped.

“She was sleeping when we left.  I didn’t want to disturb her,” said Curtis.

“Are you sure she was even breathing when we left?” I asked.

“She was sleeping.  I tried to wake her, but she was sleeping so good,” said Curtis.

“We went all the way out there and I got scratched...to get medicine for your dead sister?” I said.

“She wouldn’t have gotten hurt if you had taken better care of her when you pulled her out of that clothing store!” Curtis burst.

“I did what I could.  You didn’t even want to come help us.  So you don’t get the right to blame me,” I responded angrily.

“If you had done what I said and went to get the medicine last night...I know she was alive last night!” yelled Curtis.

“And we’d probably be dead too.  There are too many of them to move around at night.  You know this!” I said.

Curtis stood up and looked like he wanted to hit me.  I stood up and threw my sword to the floor and shoved Curtis into the wall.  I heard the door behind us creak and I stopped myself from pummeling him.

“Beating each other up over it is not going to change anything.  God’s will is unstoppable.  He has other plans for the rest of us,” said Rev as he stepped into the room.

Curtis looked over at Rev and opened his fists, and wiggled his way out of my grasp, “So God wanted my sister to suffer for days, only to die lying on the floor?”

“All I am saying is, God’s plan for life doesn’t always go the way we think makes sense.  Sometimes things happen to bring about another path.  I can’t stand here and tell you I know what that plan is or why God decided this needed to happen, but it did happen.  Everything happens for a reason,” said Rev.

“Just leave me alone.  I haven’t had a chance to say goodbye to her,” said Curtis.

I reached down and picked up my sword just before Rev and I stepped out of the room.  Rev started to walk back toward where we had left the others.