The Hell Season (16 page)

*

The days passed in a fever dream, a phantasmagoria of terribly vivid images inflicted upon both his conscious and unconscious mind. It was difficult to tell what was real and what was imaginary. There was so much pain. Even with the medication brought back from the hospital. Thomas was put on an IV because by the second day of his illness he could not swallow anything at all. Water felt like liquid metal pouring down his throat. During the daytime he drifted in and out of consciousness. When he slept he dreamed, dark terrible dreams that offered him little solace from the agony of waking. Throughout much of his ordeal—which lasted for more than a week he would later discover—he was sure that he was going to die. And would that have been such a bad thing? Look how well death had treated Gerald and the others who had been killed and resurrected. They were young. Whole. Untouched by the illness that ravaged many of the survivors—another fact he would not become aware of until later. As much as the prospect appealed to him at times during those torturous days, it also filled him with a deep sense of misgiving. How could he be sure that those who had been resurrected were really the same people they were before they had died? Maybe they were some sort of clone or doppelganger, imposters dressed in the flesh and memories of the people they were only pretending to be. Maybe the souls of Gerald and those killed in the zombie attack—if there was, in fact such a thing as a “soul”—were at this moment somewhere else entirely. Maybe they were in the Hell he had visited during the hallucination he experienced after inhaling the powdered bug corpses. Or maybe they were wherever his wife and children were. Heaven. Or some alternate dimension. Or another version of this town, this world, where all these terrible events were hopefully not occurring. Maybe he was the one that was missing from that other world, the real world, leaving his wife and children confused and saddened, wondering where he could have possibly disappeared to. Maybe, maybe, maybe… Too many maybes with no real answers. One explanation seemed as plausible as any other. Although there was one thing he knew for sure: he didn’t want to die. There was no certainty that he would be resurrected, after all. There was always the possibility that there was only a specific window of time in which such a miracle, if that was the appropriate term, could have taken place. Maybe there would be no more resurrections. Even if he could be reborn the thought still frightened him. By its very nature the process rather profoundly changed a person. Death. Rebirth. Rejuvenation. How could it not? Thomas was quite happy with the person he was, thank you very much. So he held on to life, agonizing as it had become, with whatever strength he could gather. And he endured. Oh, how he endured.

The nights were worse than the days because at night he couldn’t sleep. At least it didn’t feel like he was asleep. He was aware of his surroundings, painfully so. He could feel the illness ravaging his body. The sounds of his suffering companions—the coughing, the raspy breathing, the moaning—seemed an endless tumult in the nighttime stillness. The one thing, however, that truly made him wonder if he was actually awake, or if maybe the fever was burning away his sanity, were the ghosts.

For the most part, the spirits that visited him in the night were strangers to him. Old men and women. Middle-aged. Couples in the spring of adulthood. Teens and children. The sight of the children in particular got to him as he had not seen any since his family had disappeared. A ghost would materialize out of the darkness of one of the store’s aisles, its form enveloped in a dim glow, then walk over and stand next to where Thomas lay. It would stare down at him, not speaking. He wouldn’t say anything either. Not because he didn’t want to. No, in fact he wanted to very much. He wanted to ask these visitors who they were and what they wanted. But he couldn’t. The fire in his throat robbed him of even the merest hint of a whisper. So he just stared back. They didn’t frighten him, frail, transparent things that they were. They emitted no feelings or intentions of ill will. Maybe some level of curiosity. Beyond that, they displayed no emotion whatsoever. On average, each wraith would only visit him for a few minutes. Then he or she would turn and disappear back down the aisle from which he or she emerged and another ghost would appear. And the cycle would continue throughout the night until he eventually fell into an exhausted slumber or the morning sunlight, exceedingly frail this far inside the building, made its way back to him.

Some of the spirits seemed vaguely familiar to him, like people he may have passed in the grocery store or at the gas station or maybe even the liquor store on occasion. A few he recognized. His neighbors, Ed and Sara, who lived just next door, Bill and Jane from down the street, all of whom had been over to Thomas and Julia’s house for the occasional cookout or Sunday afternoon get together when football season was in full swing. He came to surmise that the ghosts were the spirits of the people who had lived in this town, who had disappeared the same night Julia and Robert and Jenny had, the friends and loved ones of all of those who were now living—and many of whom were suffering—within the walls of this sprawling megastore. He kept waiting for Julia and the kids to appear but they never did for which he was simultaneously devastated and grateful. He wanted to see them so badly. But not like this, no, not like this. They had haunted him once already and that was enough. He had no idea why they didn’t make an appearance. Maybe because none of the spirits were really there at all, were only figments of his fever-ridden imagination. Maybe some part of his subconscious mind had decided to save him any further pain his family’s presence might instill in him. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

The days passed like that, one agony-filled minute after the next, ripe with visions and dreams and visitations from the lost souls of the town. It was a wonder he didn’t lose his mind completely during his ordeal which finally ended one day when the fever broke. He sat up on his sweat soaked mattress and asked Gerald in a harsh whisper—the man was sitting in a nearby chair—if he might have a glass of ice water and maybe a cup of soup.

Smiling, Gerald told him he most certainly could and went off to fetch what Thomas had requested. He came back with Angie who took his temperature and removed the IV and told him what a miracle it was that he had actually pulled through the way he had. The bruising that had marked his skin was still there but he was told that it had noticeably subsided. His body continued to ache but not as badly as before. Many of the others had not been so lucky, she told him. Some had slipped into comas. A number had died. And they had not, as of yet, emerged from the great hole that Gerald had climbed out of upon his resurrection.

Gerald led him over to an area near the toy section where the comatose patients had been placed in rows of beds. There were nineteen of them. Dana was there, lying on her back, eyes wide open, staring into nothingness, her breathing wet and raspy, the skin of her arms and face mottled with bruises.

“Oh, damn,” said Thomas. He sat there on the floor by her bed for a while, holding her hand. At some point exhaustion overcame him and he began to slip toward sleep. “Come back to me, Dana,” he said just before he lay down on the floor and dozed off.

*

By Tuesday, the thirteenth, Thomas was feeling pretty much human again. He’d been up and about for a few days by then. Tired, sure. Not his usually peppy self. But fairly active and that’s what mattered. On the one hand, the sickness had seemed to come and go so quickly. On the other, it felt as though it had lasted a year or longer. He found that his joints still ached a bit and he was turning in at night somewhat earlier than usual.

“Not surprising,” Angie had told him, “considering what you’ve been through.”

Thomas figured she was right. He was happy that he’d been able to survive his ordeal. The same couldn’t be said for a number of those who’d also gotten sick. Nearly a dozen dead, their bodies slowly crumbling away into powder, taken outside and allowed to be carried away by the wind. It was an odd and confusing situation for Angie and her crew. Should they hold a memorial service for someone who might return from the dead? In the end, they had settled on a short litany involving the words “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” Then they would head back inside to continue caring for those who still needed their help.

Thomas spent some time each evening at Dana’s side, talking to her a little, holding her hand. She was on an IV, had been hooked up to a heart monitor. Her caretakers had done a hell of a job plundering the hospital. They’d brought back syringes, various types of medicine, bandages, anything they thought might be useful in fighting this plague and whatever other unforeseen injuries or illnesses might arise.

Tanya was occupying a bed near Dana’s. She too was in a coma. Ron had brought her over to the Wal-Mart the night they had both fallen ill. He had pulled through much as Thomas had, was just recently getting up and about himself. Tanya hadn’t been so fortunate.

“Looks like the majority of those not suffering from any of this are the ones who came back from the dead,” Ron said to Thomas. They were outside in the parking lot sitting on the lowered tailgate of a small Japanese pickup truck. Ron was drinking a beer, Thomas a soda. It was a few hours past sunset and Thomas was feeling the fatigue set in. The night air was hot and thick. The days had continued to heat up over the past week-and-a-half, topping out at a hundred and ten earlier in the afternoon. How much hotter could it get? There’d been no rain for a couple of weeks now. Thomas almost wished a bloodstorm would roll in, anything to help alleviate the heat. But then he imagined what the excessive heat would do to all that blood and shuddered. If no regular rainstorm came along to clean it up then it would undoubtedly linger in the air for days, every breath tainted with its cloying, coppery odor…

“Yeah, it seems that way,” Thomas agreed. He recognized the accusatory tone in Ron’s voice, as though he held those who had been resurrected responsible for the illness in some way. “And a good thing too. If everyone had gotten sick I wonder if we’d have made it, if we’d be here talking right now. They did help to look after us, remember?”

Ron nodded in agreement, albeit a bit reluctantly. He took a sip of beer. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for what they did. But I still have this feeling… I don’t know. Something isn’t right with them. Something I can’t put my finger on.”

“Yeah, they
died
and
came back to life
. Not the most normal thing in the world, I would agree.”

Ron grunted a laugh. “I suppose…”

They sat there for a few minutes without talking. The silence of their surroundings was absolute. No cars. No dogs barking. No wind. It was like the whole world was holding its breath, just waiting for something to happen. A shooting star crossed the night sky. Another one. Thomas’s daughter, Jenny, would have insisted that he make a wish. There was only one thing in the world that he wanted anymore. For some reason, he didn’t think a wish was going to make that happen. He tried anyway.

“Look, I trust your instincts,” said Thomas, breaking the silence. “I’ll continue to keep an eye on them. If I notice anything strange…”

“Strange… Hmmm. Yeah. Not really even sure what I’d consider all that strange anymore. They’d have to pull some real fucked up shit to get my attention at this point. But if they do… I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Ron drained the last of his beer, crumpled the can and tossed it onto the ground. He belched long and loud and laughed a little bit. Thomas was surprised to find himself laughing too. Anything to find humor in these days.

*

The next morning, Dana regained consciousness. So did a dozen others who’d been comatose along with her. She lay there blinking for a while. Thomas and Gerald were at her side. Angie was busy checking on all her patients. After a while Dana sat up. Thomas took her hand, asked her how she was doing. She didn’t say anything, just looked at him as if she wasn’t sure who he was. Then she glanced around like she wasn’t sure
where
she was either, like she’d been away a long time, had only now returned from somewhere else entirely. Thomas didn’t find the idea all that far-fetched. Maybe she
had
been somewhere else this entire time. Somewhere much different than this, the waking world. Somewhere terrible, most likely, judging by the way things had been going lately. The rules no longer applied anymore. The week-and-a-half she’d been under, fed through a tube, urinating through a different one—the care Angie and her few assistants had been able to administer went beyond commendable—may have seemed like an eternity from her perspective. Or no time at all. Only Dana knew. And for now, it seemed, she wasn’t talking. Thomas patted her hand.

“When you’re ready,” he told her. “No sooner, alright?”

Then he and Gerald left her as Angie came over to check up on her. Thomas was relieved to have her back but that look in her eyes, that thousand yard stare, it had him worried.

“What do you think?” he asked Gerald as they neared the front of the store, stopped to face one another at the end of checkout line number twenty-seven.

“I don’t know,” said Gerald. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“You know Ron doesn’t trust you.” The words were out before Thomas even realized he was saying them. “Not just you. All of those who died and came back.”

“Oh?” Gerald seemed genuinely surprised by this. He smiled. “I guess I can understand his concern. His military training and all that. Always on the lookout for a possible threat. Although I wonder what sort of threat he thinks we are?”

Thomas shook his head. “He’s not sure. It’s just a feeling…”