Euphoria-Z (6 page)

Sal might have wanted to die, but he didn’t want to suffer. He needed relief in any form which meant he had to get to the bathroom. Standing would be painful so he didn’t try to go slow, didn’t try to minimize the pain; he just stood up. Once on his feet, the hammers were angry and hit him triple hard. He sweat cold as he walked slowly, as if he were balancing a stack of books on his head.

In the bathroom, he dropped to the tiles and grabbed the pain reliever from under the sink. As he fought to open the bottle, he noticed some forgotten prescription pain pills. Years ago he had broken a finger, and the doc had given him these. He took a handful of the pain relievers and the remaining four prescription pills. He drank from the tub, fell back, and waited for the hammering to slow and the drugs to kick in. He was just hoping he would die so his suffering would end. Quickly, the painkillers and booze kicked in, and he let them drag him away into a heaven of numbness and nothingness.

§

Sal woke to the sharp odor of urine, stale and musty. His body was grimed with sweat, his clothes were damp, and there was dried vomit all over him and the floor as if he had rolled in it. He had no idea what time it was or how long he’d been out.

His wife’s body was still in the kitchen, and he decided what to do for her during his long stay on the bathroom floor. He also thought a lot about what he should do with himself. He couldn’t think of a single reason to live and could think of about a hundred to die, but he couldn’t kill himself. He decided to lay his wife to rest and leave the city.

§

Sal dragged himself out of the bathroom and into the kitchen where he prepared to lay his Maria on the large wooden table she so loved. He remembered the day they found it at a flea market a few years ago, how difficult it was to get to the car and then home, how hard they worked scraping and sanding to refinish it, and how hard they laughed when she sat down at that table for the first time and jokingly said, “I don’t like it.”

It was time to take care of his wife. Her head was gone, her identity, her beauty, and he couldn’t bring himself to lift her. He wanted to hug her one last time, but he couldn’t even look at her. The discoloration of her skin and the shrinkage of the tissue were horrid. The smell was terrible. He knew when a person died they released their bowels and bladder, and she was a mess. He’d waited too long, and now she was a rotting corpse and not his dead wife anymore.

He took the old quilt off their bed and covered her. He lifted her as carefully as possible, but she was stiff and it was like lifting a mannequin. The feeling so unnerved him that he dropped her back into the chair. Her skin brushed his, and it was cold. He shuddered at the touch and felt guilty. He finally got her onto the table.

He laid her sideways on the table under the quilt. He gently wrapped her and made sure she was tucked in. He wondered why it felt so important to do when he knew it made no difference to her. He wanted to hug her, but he knew it wouldn’t be the experience he wanted it to be. When he was done moving the corpse he could mourn for his wife. He began weeping as he tore their house apart.

He ripped the cabinet doors off, broke up chairs, and hauled furniture into the kitchen and made a huge pile. He stacked the broken furniture under and around the table. He splashed gas over it all and struck a wooden match. He tossed the match onto the quilt, and with an audible whoosh flames sprung up to lick the ceiling. He left as the pyre quickly grew, and he knew the loud roaring and crackling was the sound of the flames that consumed his love’s body.

By the time he was on the street, thick smoke was pouring out the windows and the open front door. He headed toward the downtown area with no plan in mind.

He barely noticed the damage as he walked the streets of his neighborhood. At first he was worried about seeing someone he knew, but the bodies were so torn up and distorted by death, gunshots, and the infection that recognizing anyone wasn’t a possibility. The streets and sidewalks were covered in small craters, cars were riddled with holes, and glass was shattered from frames. He walked through several blocks of this until he came to a checkpoint. Three soldiers were stationed at a gap in a large wall of stacked bodies. Sal felt nothing as he walked through the gap in this horrifying barricade.

“Stop!” one of the guards yelled. They all raised their weapons. Sal continued to advance.

“Stop! Stop!” The young soldier wasn’t sure what to do. “Sir, do you speak English? Can you hear me?”

Sal was hoping they would shoot him if he ignored them long enough. He couldn’t do it himself, but he could easily let it happen. The soldiers were backing up and talking to each other, rifles still trained on Sal.

“Damn it, what do we do? This guy doesn’t look infected. He’s not smiling. I think he’s in shock.”

“We have our orders.” Another soldier raised his rifle and fired, but the young soldier in charge acted quickly. He knocked the soldier’s rifle up with the barrel of his rifle, sending the bullet way off target. The shooter looked pissed, but he lowered his rifle.

“Damn it. You don’t fucking shoot unless I tell you to! Step aside and let this guy through. The city’s gone, and we’re just waiting for our orders.”

“Yeah, it’s only a matter of time,” another soldier added. “We’re guarding nothing here.”

Sal walked past them and considered grabbing for a rifle so he would get shot, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He dragged himself through the once safe and quiet small town he’d grown up in, the place where his perfect life had unfolded over a few decades only to be ripped away in a matter of days. All of his close friends and family were gone. He knew virtually all of them had gotten infected. They didn’t have Maria to force them to stay safe. He couldn’t remain in Monterey any longer. He walked down the middle of streets and roads and highways for hours on end.

Fifteen hours later, in the middle of the night, Sal was nearing Santa Cruz. He had been walking in darkness for hours but could see the starry sky and the silhouette of the landscape around him. Even the lines on the road were faintly visible. But once he came to the 17 he decided to take that road into the mountains, and he was now walking in near darkness. The stars were still above him, a sliver between the tall trees that grew to the very edge of the road, but there was little light near the ground and he couldn’t see where he was walking. He managed to stay on the road through the night.

Long ago, the pain of his blisters had disappeared, and the deep hunger in his gut had vanished. He was so fatigued he could barely lift his feet. But he pushed himself onward, hoping that when he fell he would die.

5.

The loud music and pitch-blackness were alarming to wake to, but feeling smothered caused him to panic. Cooper pulled the pillow from his face and the buds from his ears. The silence was jarring in its completeness. He jumped up and looked out the window; it was a beautiful day. He opened the window and listened—complete silence. There were no birds, barking dogs, drone of traffic, or distant sirens. It turned the beautiful day to a desolate and depressing existence. He wondered how many people were still alive on Earth.

As he peeped from the open door he saw bodies. The wider he opened it, the more bodies he saw. They were a thick tangle on the street, and the unhealthy smell of feces and putrefaction filled the air. These were ones that died from the infection, not gunshots. Their bodies were a mess, torn to shreds by the erupting boils. The street was wet with blood and other fluids.

Cooper felt his stomach flip. He closed the door and fell to his knees to vomit. The smell lingered, even over the stench of his own puke, and his stomach still rocked and flipped. It took the nausea a while to subside.

In the Range Rover again, he drove through the city looking for a way out. While downtown Monterey was only a few blocks across in all directions, the peninsula was a sizable piece of land. There were several small towns on it and forests too. There were many roads and highways over the hilly terrain, but very few that led off and on the peninsula. They all seemed to be blocked.

He drove with the windows up, but the stench still seeped in and gagged him. Piles of bodies blocked the lower floors of the downtown buildings from view. The corpse-wall surrounded the downtown area. Once he was inside, the streets were clear.

The piles were neatly formed, but the bodies were a mess. Cracked limbs, rib cages, and a jumble of human remains formed the wall, and Cooper had to force himself to not look. He drove past the burger joint where he had worked until recently; there was a pile of bodies in front.

The pile was a mess, like the wall only much smaller. Gray-white limbs poked out, shattered bones, heads and arms, and stretched articles of clothing. A trail of reddish sludge oozed from the pile and filled the gutter. He thought he recognized a face and quickly turned away. He didn’t want to see people he knew like that.

Cooper sat, engine idling and world stalled. He began to realize just how alone he was. The hundreds, even thousands, of people he crossed paths with on a daily basis were almost certainly dead.
How many of my friends are rotting in these piles?
The thought hit him hard.

Cooper gripped the steering wheel, unsure what to do, as panic welled up from deep inside. Everyone he’d ever known—family, friends, strangers, even the assholes in his world—the ingredients of his life were gone forever. His throat tightened. He wanted to flee but had nowhere to go. His parents were in an RV in the desert, far out of reach and out of touch. His concern for his sister was far surpassed by his own desperate desire for the comfort of the familiar.

Movement caught his eye, and he turned to see the pile shifting. Bodies rolled off, and his first thought was that there was an animal underneath the pile eating the bodies. Or maybe the gases a corpse produced were inflating and shifting the bodies. But then he saw the limbs of some of the bodies moving, and he was stunned. He couldn’t accept that people who were apparently dead were moving. When the first corpse made it to its feet, there was no denying that the dead were rising.

He watched the corpse of a nude woman struggle to its feet and stand swaying for a moment. She began to look around, and Cooper couldn’t help but notice that she would have been attractive when alive. But now gray skin sagged from her bones, flecks of dirt and trash stuck to her, and half her scalp was torn off and hung from her head in a big flap. She turned, and the skin on her back looked as if it had been cheese-grated away. She might have been dragged behind a car.

Others corpses were struggling to their feet, many using arms to pull themselves along. Cooper floored the car and caused it to stall. His heart pounded painfully in his chest. He turned the key and nothing happened, another big scare, but he had simply forgotten to shift into park.

He looked back at the rising bodies. Driving through the infected was horrible, but seeing the dead stand up was terrifying. The bodies continued to shift and move around, and among them he saw his manager. His manager was looking right at him, and Cooper was shocked. He didn’t think he had done anything to attract attention.

He tried the engine again, and this time it roared to life. The large crowd of corpses turned and starting moving toward him as one. His manager was in the lead, and when Cooper finally was able to drive off, the dead man was grabbing at the car and got his arm into the partially rolled down passenger window. Cooper dragged the man a few yards before his arm tore off. He stopped, shifted into reverse, and backed over him to make sure he was dead. He knew right then that he needed to get out of the city and far from any populated area.

Bodies were rising up right before his eyes, and he seemed to be the only living person left in Monterey. As he drove off, he saw the giant piles of thousands of bodies shifting and moving. Bodies rolled off; some stood and some did not.

§

Cooper entered the parking lot of a large chain grocery store and immediately slowed down. Several people were running out of the place with armfuls of goods and carts piled comically high. He was heading toward the rear exit of the parking lot; it was a shortcut to the highway. As he drove across the tree-lined lot, a dirty, blood-soaked man broke from the thick underbrush and attacked a woman, tackling her to the ground and biting her. Cooper was more shocked to see living humans coming out of the store than the attacking dead one.

Suddenly the parking lot was filled with hundreds of corpses. They poured in from the thick underbrush across from Cooper, flowing like a wave, engulfing the living, and moving on. They continued to pour from the underbrush even as the first of them were halfway across the lot. People screamed as the dead dragged them down. A car screeched off but crashed into a tree as the dead dove headfirst into the open windows. Then all was quiet, save the moaning and munching coming from the dead. Cooper was driving slowly toward the rear of the store when a second wave of bodies poured in on his side of the lot.

He sped up and went behind the building. A corpse bum-rushed him head-on, and he had to hit it. The man was thrown about twenty feet but started struggling to his feet instantly. He could barely stand on his fractured bones and stumbled awkwardly toward Cooper.

He was driving along the side of the large building; a tall fence was to his right. He had to go forward and run the man down again to continue on. He gunned his car and hit the dead man so hard that he was thrown over the hood and landed on the windshield, a web of cracks appeared. He rolled over the roof of the vehicle, and in the rearview mirror Cooper saw him drop off the car.

He drove on and eventually came close to the street that would take him past the mall. Above the purr of the engine he could hear screaming, so he stopped and watched a handful of people farther down the street as they ran from the trees toward the mall. Moments later, another wave of corpses oozed across the street, instantly filling it from end to end. He backed up to find another way out of the city.