The Zom Diary (17 page)

Chapter 15

     Leaning against the tile wall of the hallway, I look upon the forms moving toward me.  Kyle’s AR-15 is top quality; all the bells and whistles.  Even in low light, the bare pin point of tritium on the red-dot sight makes a wondrous glow.  Radioactive material in gun sights had been illegal in California.  It is a blessing for me now.

     At fifteen feet, I begin taking head shots, and the bodies fall; wicked destruction behind them.  Tile pieces fly, wood doors splinter.  The Chinese soldier is now closest.  I aim just below the rim of his blue UN helmet.  Face shot.  His ammo belt looks like it is full.  I will check it for 7.62mm for the AK’s.  Not for the first time, I wonder about China.  Had they really avoided the zombie contagion?  As the last member state of the UN, they had claimed they offered aid, but many suspected it was really a salvage mission or perhaps, debt collection.  Sterilize the coast and bring back services; settlers would follow.  Wealthy high-ups in the communist party getting their own America—a people’s America.

     With a bit of luck, Kyle and Molly will make it to the truck without any major problems.  Their presence there will begin to draw the zombies away from the back of the clinic and the lab.  Molly was foolish to come in here bare handed, but if she’d rather run and dodge than destroy, that is her business.

     The torso of one nurse rises as I pass, her jaw torn off, but skull intact.  I push her down with my heavy boot feeling her putrefied flesh squish and roll away from ribs.  I bring the AR-15 to bear on her forehead and finished her off.

   Just then, a hand begins to pull at my back.  Before I can stop myself, I bring the butt of the rifle back and into Molly’s jaw.  What is going on?

     Molly slides down the wall slowly.  She looks dazed, but her eyes are open.  I can make out a few forms down the hall.  Kyle lies next to a thin form.  He is holding his leg; the zombie is motionless, possessed of no presence in my mind.  The one walking down the hall behind him is.  First things first.  Red dot resting over black form of head, let out breath, squeeze.  The butt snaps against my shoulder and the zombie falls; strings cut.  That resistance eases, but others press against me from all around--some faint, some terrifyingly close; behind walls, down the halls.

     I shoulder the AR and kneel beside Molly.  She is holding her face with both hands.  I can see that there is blood.

     “Sorry.  I thought you were gone.  Can you walk?”

    Her words come slowly.  It sounds as if her mouth were full of marbles.  “You dick.”

     “I’ll apologize later, what the hell happened?  Nevermind, we need to move.  Now.  Is he ok?”

     “He’s bit.”

     “How bad?”

     She just looks up at me with glassy eyes.  I know it is a foolish question.  There is no good bite.  But there is hope.  God saw fit to carry me through my sickness, and, perhaps he isn’t through with Kyle either.

     “Look, Molly. Can. You. Move?”

     She nods and grabs my hand, pulling herself up.  She wipes away blood from her mouth, and I see her swallow.  We walk quickly to Kyle.  He is obviously in shock.  His pant leg is cut open, and he is dabbing gauze on his leg weakly.  I call to him, but he is completely out of it.

     Molly grabs his right arm and wrestles away his Glock.  The effort must have taken the last of his strength, for he fades quickly after that; mouthing gibberish.  The fact that he is probably drunk doesn’t help matters.  He’s bleeding like a stuck pig.  I pick up a tan gauze roll and wrap it tightly over the wound.  The flow of blood slows, but soon the gauze has a spreading red patch over the wound.  I don’t want a direct compress; it might be better to let it bleed, the force of the flow pushing out contagion and foreign particles from the wound, but there is no way he can survive that, and we need to move.  I grab his hand and Molly takes the other.

     “We are going to have to drag him out of here.  I have his pack; just keep that Glock ready.  There are some zombies poking around the corners.”

    She nods.  Kyle is heavy.  He may not be the tallest man, but his frame is thick, and he is one of those people who weigh much more than you’d expect.  The trip down the hallway and past reception takes fifteen minutes.  I can feel the heavy thud of my heart, feel my lungs fill deeply with each breath, adrenaline coursing through my system, setting me up for a crash later but serving our expediency now.  We reach the entrance.

     The sunlight is shockingly bright, and I am momentarily blinded. I can sense resistance; a zombie close by.  Molly must see it, for I hear the report of the.45 before I have the chance to warn her.  Kyle looks bad.  His face is ashen and his hair is damp with sweat.  Out here in proper light, I will be able to do more good.  Fortunately for him, we now have plenty of stuff to patch him up.

     We lift Kyle into the bed of the truck; his feet at the tailgate.  I don’t sense any zombies out here, but the ones in the clinic are working their way to us, slowly navigating corners, gathering momentum.  Before I look at his leg, I feel in my cargo pocket for the handcuffs I always carry.  I hand them to Molly and she nods, hopping up onto the bed of the truck and cuffing Kyle’s hands together on his chest.  His chances of carrying the same mutation, the natural immunity to the zombie ‘bug’ as me are slim; probably on the order of one percent, but the chances of turning are great.  Better not to take chances.

     I rummage in a pack and find what I will need; hydrogen peroxide, iodine, bandages, and a nice wrap.  I undo his boot and it slides off easily, greased with his own blood.  His sock follows.  I rub iodine on my hands and pour peroxide over the bite.  In the light of day I can see that the wound is superficial.  I pull at a flap of skin and pull it off; blood oozes slowly from the bite, but it doesn’t look like any tendons or muscle are damaged.  I hear the Glock hammering away, and Molly shouts to me:

     “Hurry the fuck up, they’re coming!”

     Most of the blood, as it happens, poured from a small triangular wound about three inches above the bite.  Kyle had caught a bullet fragment from the round that had silenced his assailant.  It must have caught a major vessel because it still pours blood.  It isn’t pumping though, not an artery.  Good.

     I go back to the other bag to look for hemostats.  I want to get that fragment out or the risk of serious infection will increase dramatically. 

    Molly speaks calmly for the first time since we left the clinic.  She stands on the roof of the truck cab; Kyle’s Glock in hand looking down at us, “Should we be spending this much time on him?  He’s a goner; you know he is.  I don’t want to get caught out here just because everyone looks like a wounded puppy to you.”

     I snarl back at her; feeling my anger rise, “Shut up!  I would do the same for you and you know it.  He has as much of a chance as anyone of beating this, and we’ll give it to him.”

     She shrugs and taps the barrel of the Glock against her temple.  The bruise on her jaw is already turning purple.  “OK, Bryce, all I’m saying is that we can patch him up later, he’s not going to bleed to death,” she pauses and looks back to the entrance “so please hurry.”

    I ignore her.  I have found the hemostats and am already fishing around in the wound looking for the fragment that must be there.  I push the thin pliers straight in and move them in a short circle; turning, feeling for the tink of metal touching metal.  There.  I clip on to it and pull slowly, trying to avoid making new tears in the leg tissue.  The fragment is brass, a wicked orange peel of bullet casing.  It glints in the light.  There is black grease stuck to it as well.  Kyle stirs in his stupor.

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     The darkness sings about me.  Pain in my ankle is replaced by a neon rollercoaster. I tumble forward until I will myself to stop, but this only results in an overcompensation—I wheel to the right now.  Repeat, ad nauseam.  Now my mind is filled with flashes of red and orange light.  I am in hell.  No, I feel at peace.  My ankle, my whole body, is gone and only the tugging of this light sensation calls to me.

     Panic is replaced with euphoria.  I watch the great snake of unconsciousness coil and uncoil before me.  Yellow, blue, green stained-glass pieces swirl in Aztec patterns behind my eyes.  They obey my whims.  They swirl right, then left; floating, then dropping.  Black flecks mingle with the blue and the red and the green.  The serpent is changing.

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     I wipe the wounds clean and pour iodine on the shallow cuts.  Fresh gauze goes on next, and I wind layers of bandage tightly on his ankle before using the metal clips to fasten it in place.  Now that this is accomplished, I unwind the tight bandage from below his knee.  I count to thirty and no new blood seeped out.  There.  I close my eyes and speak:

     “Jesus, I’ve done what I can for this man.  If it is your will, bring him back to us.  Amen.”

    “That’s it?”

     “Yes, Molly.  That’s it.”

     “You and your bullshit.  The only time I see you praying is when you’re eating or watching someone die.”

     “I’m sorry that you are so angry at God, but I do what I do because I think it’s right and not for your benefit.  Sorry.  It’s hard not to be upset these days, isn’t it?” 

     She doesn’t answer me, just glances behind her again, then changes the subject.

     “So.  Can we hit that liquor store on the way out of town?”

   It figures.  I have done what I can for Kyle.  Here, or back in town; it is up to the Father now.

    “Yes, of course.  I could do with a little something myself.  Let’s get going, they are still coming for us after all.”

     I toss the empty backpack up to her and close the tailgate.  I put a pack on either side of Kyle’s head for cushioning, then lay one of the dead John’s blankets over him.  Molly hops down from the roof, and we both climb into the cab of the truck.  The keys are in the ignition.  The engine turns over, sputtering a beat more than it should but the truck comes to life with a growl as I give it some gas.

     Pulling out of the clinic, we head east back to the touristy main street.  All the way, I keep an eye on the rearview mirror.  Molly is tapping Kyle’s Glock on her leg, to the beat of the dead ska band on the CD player.

     It is easy enough to retrace our route back to the main street.  I pull up to the liquor store.  It has a clapboard exterior and the old fashioned swinging saloon doors.  Molly chimes in over the music, “You feel anything?”

    I reach out with my senses.  The largest resistance is from the direction of the clinic.  There is a lone zombie maybe a quarter mile distant, slowly moving toward us. 

     “You have maybe twenty minutes to be on the safe side.  Be careful.  Remember, I can’t sense living people.”

     She nods and darts inside, pack in hand.  I can hear glass being smashed and other sounds of destruction.  It never occurs to her that someone might want to come back to this place one day.  So wasteful.  She jogs back out after a few minutes.

     “It’s been ransacked, but they didn’t get everything.”  She opens her pack, and I look over.  It is stuffed with plastic and glass bottles; huge plastic 1.75 liter jugs of cheap stuff, one nice dusty bottle of Kentucky bourbon, and a mad jumble of nips.

     “I got your rum and a bottle for Kyle, even though I think we’ll end up drinking it to his memory.  Hang on.”

     She tosses the booze in the back seat and dust kicked up from her heels as she runs back into the store.  She returns quickly with another load.  Time to go.

     “Time to go,” I say, she nods.

     At the edge of town, I pull over at the garage.  The pumps are dead and lifeless.  The closest zombie changes course to follow us until it is not very far away, then I feel it has stopped walking.  Maybe it has fallen down a hole.   

     “My turn.  Keep an eye on Kyle; I don’t think he will be going anywhere, but still.”

     Molly nods, then unscrews the cap on one of the nips.  She holds it in her teeth and tilts back her head; a trickle of fluid running from the corner of her mouth and down her neck, cutting a clean line through dusty grit.  She tosses the small empty bottle out the window and opens another.

     “Sure thing, Bryce.”

     The service station is small, but, being this far from a big town, they should have some small parts in stock.  Walking across the pavement between the pumps and the store, I notice that the red, blue and white caps that lead to the underground tanks are missing; pried off.  So much for that.

     It is good in a way.  Now that gasoline is going away, the future I imagine is more likely, as oil has no place in our means of production.  Small communities, insular and self sustained; centers for thoughtful people, held together by faith and strong relationships.  It will take time, but in this world time is less meaningful than it once was.

     The door to the station opens begrudgingly on grey and rust colored hinges.  Ceiling tiles, once white, sag and threaten to fall on unwary heads.  Old posters of auto parts suppliers adorn the walls, and, yes, there is the cliché bikini girl calendar.  A set of bone legs poke out from behind the counter still clad in jeans now stained an awful brown.