Wasting Away (17 page)

“Even
after you saw that, you can still go out and kill them?” she asked. “Even after
what you’ve seen, you can still see yourself on some mission to rid the earth
of the terrible monsters?”

“That’s
the problem, Mary,” I said. “Even after all that, they are still killers. They
will stop at nothing once they’ve seen you. I could walk right off the side of
a cliff and they would follow. I could set myself on fire and they would still
try to get at me. There’s nothing that will stop them. Whatever it is that has
brought them back also makes them the perfect killers. They will stop at
nothing to see me dead, to see
you
dead. They will kill until there’s
nothing left.”

There
are only so many ways to kill, and I have utilized every method. I’ve set them
on fire. I’ve shot them. I have beaten their skulls in until there was nothing left
but rancid pulp, and it felt nothing like it did when I killed that little old
lady.

Something
in my mind shut down that day, and I’ve never been the same since. I never look
them in the eyes anymore. Even as white and glossed over as they are, I’m afraid
I’ll see that pleading stare again. I’m afraid they’ll beg for forgiveness at
that moment before they sink their teeth into my neck. I’m afraid they’ll look
right through me before they draw blood.

I
no longer discriminate. They’re all the same thing to me now. They are the
things that took away my wife and unborn child. They are the things that have
gorged themselves on friends and family. They are everything that was wrong
with the world when they were alive, and I am burning inside to make sure they
never do it again.

I
fight them with everything I have, and still, it never seems to be enough. When
one falls, there is always another to take its place. But I continue and I move
forward a little bit every day. And I hope that eventually I’ll take my last
swing. I hope that I’ll be able to look around me and find that they are all
gone.

“They
were everything that was wrong with the world when they were alive?” she asked.
“What do you mean by that?”

“Look
at what we had,” I said. “We were living in a time where every bit of
information was available. For the first time in history, anything could be
researched and dissected. But what did we do with it? We downloaded songs and
stole television shows, pirated movies and corrupted language in text messages.”

“But
not everyone was that way,” she said.

“No,”
I agreed, “but when the majority does it, it becomes the norm, you said so
yourself. We were so preoccupied with our smart phones, our tablets, and our
silly gadgets that we forgot about who we really are. It was called the
information
age
, but it really was just misinformation and gossip. We were more
concerned with some readymade star than with science or medicine or truth.
Sports icons made tens of millions peddling shoes made in sweat shops in China
while scientists begged for a few dollars to find cures for diseases that
killed hundreds of thousands of people every day. Men with gold chains spewed
vulgarities against women and made a fortune while philanthropists fed starving
children and went unnoticed. So everything that was wrong with the world before
is still happening, but it has been replaced by something much simpler: they
now want to kill you and eat you rather than killing you slowly with their
readymade bullshit.”

“I
understand what you’re saying, don’t get me wrong, but I would take all that
bullshit
over this, any day.”

“We
have a chance, Mary,” I said. “We have a chance to make right what was so
wrong. Whether we like it or not, this isn’t going to go away. But, if we’re
lucky, we can make real change happen. We’ve been given a second chance and I
intend to do something about it, even if I have to look the other way while I
do it.”

“All
of those things are still out there,” she said. “All that information is still
available. What’s to say it won’t happen again? Do you think that whoever’s
left won’t try to get it all up and running again?”

“By
the time that happens, we’ll all be dead,” I replied. “All I can do is inform
people, show them that there is another way. What they do with it is their business.
At least I’ll know that I tried.”

Chapter 14

I
was on a familiar stretch of road, just miles away from where I had started. I
saw the ditch I had hidden in when the military truck had picked me up. I saw
the chaos and destruction. Bullet casings littered the road. A soft wind played
at the treetops. I was finally home.

“What
was it like, returning to the place it had all began?” Mary asked.

“It
was like living it all over again,” I replied. “So much had changed; I had to
look for the old landmarks to really get a sense of it.”

The
dead were so sparse that I wondered where they could have gone. A few
stragglers were here and there along the streets. Emaciated husks in the
gutter, some of the first ones to fall when the living took up arms, or at
least that’s what I assume.

And
there was our house.

The
grass was yellow with splotches of dirt, dry and dead, marking the yard. The
hedges were brown, burnt by the sun, and drained by the parched ground. I
looked up toward the second story and saw the window that I had escaped
through, still open. The front door was closed, but I could see faint light coming
through the small window on top.

A
knot rose in my throat. All through my journey, I had expected to find it the
same way. I had hoped that I could just come back and find nothing had changed.
With everything I had been through, I had hoped to start fresh, to find the
source of my suffering and be done with it.

I
pulled the pistol and made my way up the steps. It was so quiet inside. The
pictures of my wife and I hung askew on the walls. Smears of blood, old and weathered,
wound up along the paint, lines where fingers had dragged, where someone had
steadied themselves before moving on.

Working
my way through the living room, toward the kitchen, I sidestepped an arm chair
that had been knocked over. In mid stride, I stopped and looked down at it. I
put it back where it had been, situated under the mantle, next to an antique
reading lamp. I thought about the hours I had spent there, reading the newspaper
or flipping through old novels. I let out a sigh and went into the kitchen.

There
was old fruit in a basket on the counter, withered and rotten. A dried swatch
of brown smeared along the edge of the door where one of them had gotten
through. There was a cool breeze wafting through a broken window above the
sink. It was nothing more than fading memories of what had been.

I
sidestepped the pot and teabags I had dropped when I came out to check on my
wife so long ago. The water had evaporated, but the image was still there.
There was a faint pang of memory, an emotion of guilt and sadness. 

I
went into the yard and saw the place where she had died, but nothing remained.
She had gone away like everything else.

I
wrestled with the feelings as I sat down at the base of the stairs and wept. I
don’t know why I thought she would still be there. As if she would silently
wait for me to return.

“And
you never found her?” Mary asked.

“No,
not then,” I replied.

“It
wasn’t about laying her to rest, was it?”

I
looked up at her and shook my head. “I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for
not being able to forgive her before.”

She
looked at me with a confused expression.

“When
I said that it took so long for us to have a child, I should have said that I
couldn’t
have a child.”

“What?”

“I
couldn’t get her pregnant, I wasn’t able. I didn’t know it at the time, but I
finally went in and had myself checked.”

“But
you said she
was
pregnant.”

“We
had our problems, like I said. I was away so much with work that I didn’t pay
her the attention that she needed. She found that attention with another man.”

Mary
placed her hand over her face. “How did you find out?”

“She
told me,” I replied. “She was in tears after she came back from a doctor’s
appointment. I thought the worst. I thought maybe she had miscarried. I thought
that maybe they had told her it wasn’t possible to conceive. But it was worse
than that. She had been seeing a guy that she met at the gym. Some nobody she
had only seen a few times. It was just an affair, some small tryst because I
wasn’t around enough.”

“She
didn’t …”

“I
can’t blame her,” I said. “I was working something like sixty hours a week. By
the time I got home from work I was too tired to even think straight, let alone
pay her the attention that she deserved, that anyone deserves.”

“It
still doesn’t make it right,” Mary said.

“No
it doesn’t, but I couldn’t put all the blame on her. What you said earlier
about everyone needing to be loved, that it was human nature, you were totally
right. Life is all about love. We search so desperately for someone who
compliments us that sometimes we make a mistake and look for someone who
‘completes’ us. I think that’s what happened. She needed more than I could ever
offer. She looked to me as a lover, as a friend, as someone to spend her life
with. But me, I looked at her as someone to make my life complete. It was all a
part of my never ending dream of having a wife, a car, a beautiful house: all
trophies, symbols of a successful life. I was looking at it in the wrong way.”

“So
the child wasn’t yours.”

“No,
and that’s why she was crying. She was ashamed, absolutely terrified to tell
me.”

“But
she did tell you.”

I
feigned a smile. “Yes, she did. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever
heard. She let it all out. She told me everything, how it was a few nights of
passion while I was away at work. How she meant to stop it sooner. She’d even
thought about leaving me rather than facing me with the truth.”

“So
really, you went to find her for closure,” Mary said. “You wanted more to
forgive her than to put her to rest.”

I
nodded slowly. “I would have raised the child as my own,” I replied. “I would
have loved that baby to the ends of the earth just because I knew it was a part
of her. I would have tried.”

“You’re
a good man.”

“Not
really,” I said. “I also went back to end it. I would have found her and put
her to rest and then done what I couldn’t manage to do before the convoy found
me. I would have ended my life.”

“But
what about all the talk of making the world better?” she asked. “Would you have
given that up?”

“I’m
just one man,” I said. “I’m one man among millions of dead men. I mean, how
many people are left anyway? What would it matter?”

She
stood and gazed at me through tear filled eyes. Slowly, she came to me and
knelt down. She took me in her arms and touched my face. “You matter to me,”
she said in a whisper.

I
wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. I could feel her heart pumping
through her ribs. And with every breath she took, I could feel her relax in my
embrace.

She
led me into her room and we lay on the bed and held each other that way. Two
desolate figures in time spared the throws of death.

“And
how did you come to find me?” she whispered in my ear.

I
lay my cheek against hers and said, “Because you were the one I was truly
looking for.”

She
nestled her lips into my neck and kissed me there. A wave ran through my body.
Excitement, fear, and hope; it all stood out along her lips.

“I’ll
go with you,” she said. “I’ll go with you and be damned those who might stand
in our way.”

Chapter 15

“There
are less of them today,” Mary said, watching the dead through the window.

“We
could always just send the radio out and leave it attached to the battery,” I
said. “We could let them just enjoy the music as we get away.”

“No,”
she replied. “I would feel better if they just wandered off on their own. I
still don’t like the idea of being out there with them.”

“I
understand,” I said. “We’ll wait until you give the word.”

She
let her lips crest at the side of her mouth in a subtle smile. “Thank you.”

“It’s
fine, I’m in no hurry,” I said.

She
looked through the window in thought. “There’s something I need to tell you
before we go any farther.”