The October Light of August (15 page)

After looking around to see if any dead were there to observe me – there were none that I could see - I stepped off the sidewalk and into the brush and eased down the south-facing embankment. It was very steep, and I had to be careful I didn't take a dive. When I felt I couldn't be easily seen from above, I sat in the brush and rested. I felt a little dizzy – I don't think I had a problem with vertigo. I probably just needed calories after running so far, and to hydrate. I munched on a candy bar and drank some water, and wondered how long I could get by on crap like that. I would have to find some vitamin supplements at least, and try to figure out something for a better diet. I had no clue how to hunt, skin, dress, or cook anything. I supposed I could go to a library and see what I could find on that, but so far didn't have the inclination to do so.

“
You get hungry enough, you will,
” Jackie's voice drawled in my head. I pushed the thought aside.

As the sun lowered and shadows grew longer, the timing of the battle slowed.  A few distant gunfire reports, but hardly any explosions. The tower of dark smoke near Division Street still stretched up, but could have been less potent by then. The smudge of haze at the Monroe Street Bridge more or less blended in with the atmosphere. I wished I had some binoculars – another thing to hunt for. Immediately below me was an apartment complex, and then residential neighborhoods filled with dusty trees stretched as far as I could see from my perspective. I decided that I had sat still for too long and was about to get up when I heard the
pop
of a gunshot, only much closer than before. And then, faintly, someone calling out.

I immediately fell onto my side, and hopefully out of sight. The brush blocked my view of the world, and I even shut my eyes momentarily. I guess I reverted to a childlike state –
I can't see you so you can't see me!
Random gunshots broke the silence, and the voice grew louder.

“Tim!” I could finally make out. “God
damn
it - we have to go back!
Tim!
”

Two gunshots, silence, and then, “Tim!” Huh. It seemed Tim was having none of it.
I
certainly wished Tim would go back.
Just turn around buddy,
I thought.

“Tiiiiimmm!” screeched the voice again. I was reminded of a couple in my old apartment complex that felt the need to entertain the rest of us roughly once a month. Usually out in the parking lot around two in the morning. I was never sure if her name was 'Amber' or 'Goddamnfuckingbitch!' but I was pretty sure he was just called 'Asshole'. The voice below me now had the same pleading tone of Asshole's, alternating with indignant outrage.

“Tim!
God
damn it bro – I fucking
vouched
for you!” Closer still. Probably down on Post in front of the apartments.

“Tim! Don't – what are you doing? Don't fucking go up there – you might be seen on the hill!”

My ears pricked up at this. Hopefully, he just meant on Post Street. I could hear no feet tramping through the brush, and could see no reason for it. Still, I whispered a mantra into the dirt and weeds: “Just go away and quit yelling. Just go away and quit yelling. Just go away and quit
shooting
...”

“Tiiiiimmm! I fucking
vouched
for you!”

“FUCK. OFF.
EDDIE!
” a new voice roared. Ah. Apparently Tim was fed up.

Eddie was silent, and then several gunshots barked their way across the hill to me.

“Dude,” Eddie offered finally. “You can't just up and...
desert
like that! We have to -”

“What in the fuck do you think is happening down there, dipshit?” snapped Tim.

I could hear them clearly now, and I carefully raised up on an elbow to peer over the weeds. Between the apartment complex and the edge of the hill, I could see them in the middle of the street out on Post. Both were dressed casually for battle – Tim may have had on a Kevlar vest, but Eddie was just t-shirt, pants, boots with a rifle across his back and a pistol in his fist. Both were as shaggy and as unkempt as everyone else was, and I could tell both were bone tired. Tim was higher than Eddie on the hill, but I judged he was a head taller than him anyway.

“Tim,” Eddie pleaded. “They will kill us if they think we...you saw what Zack -”

“It. Is. All. BULLSHIT!” screamed Tim, and he leaned into Eddie, jabbing his pistol towards him. “We will never get across there, and between the dead-heads and the cocksuckers across the river it is a
lost
fucking cause! It,” he jabbed the gun into Eddie's chest, “Is all,” jab, “
Bullshit
.” Jab.

“Dude,” Eddie pleaded, “If we get caught they'll make us take the ride...”

Tim stared at the smaller man is if amazed that anyone could be so clueless and dense. “There ain't gonna be no fucking
ride
no more!” he bellowed. “It's all over, and I am
done!
”

Eddie took a step back. “But...I told 'em you were cool. I fucking vouched -”

“What do you not get, Eddie?” yelled Tim. “The world is fucked and it don't matter where we go in it. I'm going home, and
you
and your circle-jerk buddies playing
army-men
can FUCK THE HELL OFF!”

Eddie stepped back again, staring sullenly at Tim. I thought I saw his eyes widen a fraction, and he raised his pistol. But Tim shot first, and Eddie wore a betrayed expression before he dropped to the pavement.

“You think you can draw down on me?” screamed Tim, veins standing out in his neck, and he emptied his clip into Eddie, whose body shook and twitched under the barrage.

Holy shit,
I thought.
Nothing crashes harder than a failed bromance...

“You think you can draw down on
me
, muthafucka?” he yelled again. “How's that? How you like that? Here's me vouching for
you
, shit-bag.” He began kicking and stomping Eddie's head. “You like that? You like
that
kind of vouching, you piece of shit?”

Tim became absorbed in the task of smashing Eddie's head into pulp. Too bad he didn't see the sprinter stumbling down the hill right into him. The nimble dead man grabbed tightly onto Tim, and his teeth ripped a sizable chunk of flesh out of the deserter's arm just above his elbow. I stood up, leaning against my spear for support.

Well this has taken an interesting turn
, I thought.

“Aw, shit!” screamed Tim, and managed to throw the sprinter to the ground, who then sank his teeth into his calf. Tim flailed away at the head of the dead guy with his empty gun. The sprinter's head just seemed to absorb the abuse, and Tim screamed in outrage as blood welled up through the denim around the dead guy's mouth.

“This is
BULLSHIT
!” he screeched, then his knees buckled and he went down. The warrior and dead man thrashed on the pavement, and as Tim drew back an arm to put some energy into a punch, another of the dead came into view and grabbed his wrist, wasting no time as he helped himself to a bit of Tim's forearm.

“This is
bull
shit! This is
bull
shit! This is
bull
shit! This is
bull
shit,” Tim screamed as he was eaten alive.

I decided his mantra was better than mine, and giggled nervously. I watched as a dead kid – he couldn't have been older than 11 or 12 – staggered into mix. As Tim kicked out at the boy, I heard a thrashing noise behind me, turned, and saw one of the dead tumble down the embankment to my right. I grabbed my spear tighter and twisted back in time to see another one step off the sidewalk above and into the brush. Her feet tripped up in the weeds and down she went, but she didn't fall beyond the brush line and into the loose dirt where I was. I began to move laterally across the hill, heading east. Another dead man appeared at the top of the hill, spotted me, and began to stumble in my direction.

Tim continued his litany of bullshit declarations, but his screams grew weaker and less adamant.
You won't get an argument out of me, buddy,
I thought bleakly.

My feet slipped and skidded in the hillside, and I used the spear as a walking stick as I hustled across the slope. I spared a glance at the dead guy heading my way - down he went, but then made an unlikely somersault, wound up on his feet, and grabbed some air as the momentum launched him right to me. I blindly struck out with the spear and felt it punch into the guy's chest. The force shoved the handle end into the hillside, but the dead man's inertia carried him forward to sail over my head, ripping the spear from my hands. He landed on his back in an explosion of dust and dirt, sliding to a stop about twenty feet below me and  began to flail weakly in the dirt, trying to push himself up.

The spear protruded from his chest at a jaunty angle. I could not afford to lose that, of course, and I began to side-step it down the hill towards him. I risked a quick look above, and the top of the hill seemed to be filled with the dead (although in retrospect there was probably only ten or twelve). Not knowing if they would all decide to step off the beaten path and join the festivities, I hastened my trip down to retrieve my weapon. The dead man was more interested in getting to me than the wedge of steel jammed into him, but he didn't seem to be able to understand the spear was preventing him from rolling uphill to reach me.

Naturally, it wouldn't be any fun if some of the dead
didn't
come creeping out of the apartment complex below, so several did exactly that. Even though a retaining wall and fence would more than likely keep them from getting to me, I whimpered in frustration, grabbed the handle of the spear, gave a mighty tug to pull it free but it was stuck and only pulled the dead guy closer. I twisted the handle furiously, gave another stroke-inducing yank, and fell back as the spear popped free. I jumped up and began to run up and along the hill again. I rounded the ridge line that formed from the corner above and darted past a group of trees. Up at its top, Post Street looked fairly clear at the moment – only a few of the dead were on it - but as I ran down the embankment towards it a small block retaining wall gave me a two-foot drop I wasn't prepared for and I stumbled face down into the street, the spear clattering away as I received serious road-rash on my face, knees and arms. Yards away from me, Tim had all three of the dead feasting on him now and he was no longer making any noise.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my spear and began to run up Post, dodging several dead as they shuffled down the street. As I cleared the top of the hill, a dead guy lurched along with a port-wine stain from hell covering his whole face. It was a purple bruise that gave me the creeps, and then it dawned on me he had probably died face-down, and that's where his blood had pooled. That bit of knowledge didn't exactly make him look any less disturbing to me, and I started to avoid him but he spotted me, his teeth clacking in anticipation as he adjusted his course to intercept me. I was tired, hurt, pissed off and in no mood to dance. I rushed at him, spear thrust forward and knocked him down into the front yard of a corner lot. As he struggled to rise, I jabbed furiously at his neck and head until I finally hooked an eye socket and drove his head into the grass. I lifted the spear up and jammed it down over and over until he lay still. I gave him several vicious kicks that I could not afford wasting the time on, dodged a dead woman closing in on me and continued my sprint up Post.

Garland seemed
flooded
with the dead, but I shot past it and then took a side street and then an alley. I kept heading ever north, zigzagging on side streets and alleys until I was almost to Wellesley, then double backed to my alley off Post and into my garage. I slipped to my knees briefly on the cold and smooth surface of the concrete, wincing at the sting of the scrapes on my legs. I looked up at the loop of rope hanging in the gloom of the rafters and realized if I lost momentum now I would not be able to climb it for quite some time, so I rose and hooked the rope with my spear and pulled it down. I quickly tied the rope to the spear and I began the painful climb upwards, my hands raw against the rough fibers.

After hauling the spear up behind me and shucking the pack, I collapsed on my back and sucked in air, feeling my heart pound in my ears. I was restless from adrenaline, my feet working feebly against the plywood of the loft, my right arm thrown across my forehead, then back to smack against the loft, then back across my face. I knew I should get the first aid kit and start cleaning my scrapes, but I couldn't rise. I just lay there, and tried to review if there had been any possibility I had been bit and did not know it yet. I decided I didn't care too much about it at that point.

So much for a quiet stroll in the daytime
, I thought. And began to laugh. 

Summer retreated into autumn, and good riddance. My hair had grown longer, my beard thicker, and I wanted to hack at both of them. I'd never had a beard before, and for good reason. It was sparse and patchy and would do nothing to make me look manly – only point out the fact that I could only grow a miserable beard. Still, with the air cooling, perhaps it would help keep me warm in the coming months – if I lived that long.

Cooler air made for sluggish dead. Well, more so than they had been – but you have no idea how excited I was when I noticed how cold nights slowed them down. Actually, you probably do understand, but I hadn't even considered that freezing temperatures would work against the dead.  Suddenly winter wasn't that big of a worry to me. Could I actually live in a house with a fireplace? I was still leery of attracting any attention of the living, but it was something to think about.

The first night the temperature dropped below freezing and stayed that way for most of the morning I realized the loft would not work for wintering in. Even with the rolls of insulation piled around and the sleeping bag I had impulsively bought months ago, I was uncomfortable as hell. And, frankly, I was damned tired of climbing that fucking rope. So in mid-October, I began to scout for a new location. I had been venturing out towards Division much more lately, and one morning I had went so far as to stand at the top of the hill, right where it dropped, to look out over the city.