Slowly We Rot (17 page)

          Noah drummed his
fingers on the canteen and grunted.  “If you say so.”

          Aubrey gave him one of
her typically shrewd, appraising looks.  “You really wish that had booze in it,
don’t you?”

          “That obvious, huh?”

          “Yeah.”

          Noah shrugged.  “You
know, I hardly drank all those years you were gone.  I’d hoarded a bunch of
liquor, yeah, but I mostly left it alone.  I kind of thought I was over my
issues, but I guess not.  It doesn’t matter that the world ended.  The same old
fucking pattern plays out again anyway.  I’m hopeless.”

          Nick cleared his throat
after a brief silence.  “Well, that sort of brings us around to a subject we should
discuss.”

          Something in the
ex-soldier’s tone triggered a reflexive defensiveness in Noah.  “I don’t need
to hear another goddamn ultimatum or lecture.  I got the fucking message already.”

          Nick shook his head.  “I’ve
said my piece as far as that goes.  I think we both know where we stand there. 
And I actually don’t think it’s realistic to expect you to never drink again. 
You’re an alcoholic.  Which is why I think when we break camp in the morning,
we need to head back to the Smokies.”

          Noah’s expression
hardened.  “Not happening.”

          Nick held up a
placating hand.  “Just hear me out.  I know you’ve got this goal in mind, but
it’s one you conjured up out of desperation.  You need to let go of this
fantasy about reuniting with some girl who’s probably dead and focus on what’s
real.  You’ve got part of your family back.  You want to look for signs in
something?  Start right there.  Because that’s a goddamn miracle.  You need to
embrace that and head back to the mountain with us.  We’ll be safe there.”

          Noah said nothing for a
while as he thought about his close call out there in the body pit.  If Nick
hadn’t come along when he did, some reanimated dead thing would eventually have
crawled up out of the muck to take a bite out of him.  The world outside his
former retreat was a perilous place.  Nick was undeniably right about the
wisdom of returning to the mountain.

          For Noah, though, it didn’t
matter.

          His course was set, for
better or worse.

          “You and Aubrey can
head back.  I’ll be okay out here on my own.”  Noah said this without
confidence.  His track record so far pointed to a high likelihood of calamity
if left to his own devices.  But recognizing this in no way lessened his
determination to keep going.  “I’m not going back and that’s all there is to
it.”

          Nick heaved a
frustrated sigh.  “Noah--”

          “You’re wasting your
breath, man.  I’m seeing this through.”

          “But why?”  Now there
was an edge in Aubrey’s voice that hadn’t been there since that last day on the
mountain.  “Nick’s right.  She’s probably dead.  And even if she isn’t, she’s
thousands of miles away.  You’ll never find her.”

          Noah nodded.  “You’re
right.  You’re both right about everything.  But one way or another, I’m
getting to California to find out for myself.”

          Aubrey shook her head. 
“I just wish I understood why.”

          Noah shrugged.  “If I
went back to the mountain with you, we could all live safely up there a long
time.  I don’t dispute that at all.  But what you’re not taking into account is
how lonely I’ve been.  And I’m talking about lonely in a way that having you
guys around ain’t gonna help.  You and Aubrey have each other.  That’s
everything.  You don’t understand how big that is.  But me?  I’ve got nobody. 
And if I go back to the mountain, that’s how it’ll always be.  Maybe Lisa’s
dead.  You’re probably right about that.  But even a small chance that she’s
still out there somewhere makes the risk worthwhile to me.  If you can’t
understand that, fine, but I’m doing this anyway.”

          Another of those
contemplative silences descended, but it was short-lived.

          Aubrey locked eyes with
Noah across the fire.  “I’m going with you.”

          Noah gave his head an
adamant shake.  “No way.  I appreciate what you did for me today, but you don’t
owe me anything else.”

          “I’m going,
goddammit.”  Aubrey smirked.  “I can be just as stubborn as you, brother, in case
you’ve forgotten.”

          Nick threw up his hands
in surrender.  “Fuck it.  We’re all going.  I’d get bored as shit on that
goddamn mountain sooner or later anyway.”

          An impulse to argue
further came and went.  In truth, Noah was hugely relieved by this
development.  He had little to no faith in his ability to get to California on
his own.  Aside from the additional support and protection having company along
for the journey would afford him, the biggest thing was not being alone.  He’d
had enough of that for several lifetimes.

          Nick stood up and
stretched, groaning loudly as he twisted his back.  “You two get some sleep. 
I’ll take first watch.”

          A big yawn made Noah realize
how sleepy he really was.  He stretched out on the ground near the fire and
laid his head down on his backpack, using it for a pillow.  Within seconds, he
was asleep and dreaming about Lisa Thomas.  In the dream, she was smiling and
standing on the rear balcony of a beach house somewhere in California.  She was
as radiantly beautiful as Noah remembered.

          Until her flesh began
to rapidly rot and slide off her bones as the bright California sky turned
blood-red behind her.

26
.

Several days later they reached
the outskirts of Nashville.  By then it was early June and getting hotter.  The
increasing heat made them sluggish and reduced the amount of ground they could
cover each day.  Linda Brasher’s deteriorated physical condition also
contributed to a slower than optimal pace.  In the beginning, she was incapable
of traveling any significant distance by foot.

          Nick’s solution was to
improvise a carry sling with some bed sheets pilfered from the old man’s
house.  He carried Linda on his back, transferring the burden of transporting
his gear to Noah and Aubrey.  Nick was the biggest and strongest of them all by
far, making him the obvious man for the job, but even he could only carry her a
few miles at a time before rest became necessary.

          All the while, they
kept doing what they could to improve Linda’s health, giving her water and
feeding her a generous daily ration of antibiotics.  They even coaxed her into having
the occasional bite of dried meat.  At first making her eat was difficult.  Her
lips were still painfully sore from having been sewn together the last few
weeks, but eventually hunger overrode her discomfort.

          By the third day, she had
recovered enough strength to walk for short stretches at a time.  Her reliance
on Nick lessened significantly each day thereafter, to the point where she was
traveling entirely under her own power by the time they reached Nashville.

          They had agreed to
venture into the city more than a day ahead of arrival, with the intention of
foraging for supplies.  As with Knoxville, the highway lanes leading out of the
city were clogged with dead cars.  If anything, the evidence of chaos and
destruction was even more abundant here.  This included a massive pileup of
vehicles unlike anything Noah had ever seen.  It was even worse than the chain
reaction of carnage that had apparently occurred in the wake of the tanker
blast outside Knoxville.  For a long stretch, it was impossible to discern the
shape of anything much like an even partially intact car, just mounds of
twisted, blackened metal strewn everywhere.  There was so much of it that
threading their way through the wreckage was not an option, so they climbed
over the concrete median to the other side of the highway and kept going.

          The downtown skyline
was still several miles distant when it came into view.  Noah’s first glimpse
of it as it resolved into focus through the afternoon heat haze stirred
feelings of dread.  This had little to do with any potential danger lurking
inside the city.  The real reason for it was that he hadn’t been back there
since that fateful day spent carousing with an unhinged Luke Garraty.

          As they drew closer to
downtown, however, dread gave way to a mixture of horror and astonishment.  There
were gaping holes in several of the buildings.  A few of the more structurally
unsound ones looked on the verge of collapse.  Noah was sure at least one
skyscraper was no longer standing.  The wounded skyline featured a gap that
didn’t match his memory.  He pictured mounds of rubble clogging the area where
it had stood, his mind conjuring images similar to his fuzzy memories of the
9/11 tragedy in New York City.  The remaining tall buildings were likely all death
traps.  Anything worth scavenging wouldn’t come from that direction.

          Aubrey frowned at the
ruined buildings.  “Looks like a war zone.”

          Nick nodded.  “That’s
exactly what it was.  A war we lost.”

          “Maybe we should stay
on the interstate a while longer,” Noah said, glancing at Nick.  “Once you get
past the city there’s some smaller suburban areas.  They’ll be safer to check
out and will probably have most of what we need.”

          Nick scratched his
beard as he thought about it.  “I’m inclined to agree.  It looks like shit
really hit the fan in a big way here.  Some serious firepower was deployed.  Machinery
of war.  A bunch of those buildings were shelled pretty heavily.”

          Noah frowned.  “Why
would that happen?”

          Nick shrugged.  “I
imagine it had a lot to do with how fast things fell apart everywhere.  In the
case of the military, you had a seriously disrupted chain of command.  Some
overwhelmed, cut-off units may have opted to utilize some of their deadlier
assets in a last-ditch effort to turn the tide against the dead things.  Bear
in mind, I’m just speculating.”

          Noah’s thinking had
developed along similar lines upon encountering other scenes of destruction
during the first days of his journey.  His take on it, however, had been
slightly less generous in regards to the military, but he supposed that had been
unfair to a degree.

          After they’d walked on
in silence another few moments, Aubrey said, “My feet hurt.  I need some better
shoes.”

          Noah glanced at her. 
“Maybe we should raid a bike shop.  Pedal our way across the country.”

          Nick chuckled.  “Or
find some horses and a wagon to hitch them to.”

          Noah smiled, enjoying
the image of him and his traveling companions making the rest of their journey
Old West style.  “That’s not the worst idea ever, actually.  Assuming any
horses are still around, that is.”

          “Once we get out into
the country, we’ll scout out any farms we happen across,” Nick said, a
thoughtful look on his face.  “Of course, any horses that were stabled at the
end are likely either dead or surviving out in the wild.  Still, it’s something
to keep in mind.”

          Aubrey groaned and
tugged at the straps of her travel bag.  “Ugh.  Could we stop a minute?  I feel
like I’m about to give out.”

          Nick glanced at Noah,
who shrugged.  “All right.  Everybody take five.  Or ten.  Whatever.”

          No additional prompting
was needed as they all came to an abrupt halt and began the process of
shrugging off their various burdens.  Noah unbuckled the straps of his backpack
and let it fall to the ground with a careless clank.

          Linda fell wearily into
a sitting position with her back against the concrete median.  Noah eyed her
curiously as he sipped water from his canteen.  She seemed aware of his
scrutiny, but wouldn’t meet his gaze.  It was part of a continued pattern of
avoidance.  Most of her rare conversational contributions had been directed at
Aubrey.  Noah was trying not to take it personally.  After all, the horrendous
abuse she’d endured for so long had been perpetrated by a man.  Yes, he’d been
a victim of the same monster, but in her traumatized condition this might be a
meaningless distinction.

          To be fair, Noah had
contributed to this pattern of avoidance, rarely seeking to engage Linda in any
way.  At a guess, they’d directly exchanged no more than ten words since
leaving the old man’s house, the bulk of these being one word replies to simple
queries.  He examined his role in this now and decided a lot of it was
shame-related.  She had seen him at his weakest and most ineffectual.  A man
several decades his elder had beaten him senseless and had done so with ease.  And
now she was being made to trudge hundreds of miles—so far—toward a destination
that meant nothing to her.  So maybe she was harboring a fair amount of
resentment in addition to a general distrust of men.