Wasting Away (2 page)

I
turned and made my way along the driveway at the end of a row of cookie cutter
homes. I wound along a narrow walkway into the back yard through an unlatched
gate and crossed the patio to a partially opened window above an empty flower
bed.

I
tucked my fingers below the trim and pulled the window open. Hoisting myself
up, I crawled through the opening, using the rough stucco to gain traction up
the wall. Lonely voices echoed from the street, still searching. Inside, I
slipped over the counter and gently placed my feet on the floor. The air was
dank, a faint hint of old cooking oil mixed with neglect and age, the scent of
weeks and months gone by. It was a smell that the owners would never return to.

There
was a light drumming of feet outside, dragging over the cool asphalt, slipping
every other step. I checked the first door that I came to. Inside, a stocked
pantry, shelves lined in brimming mason jars, cans of beans and soup, boxes of
cereal, and instant meals. I ran my flashlight over every item, a smile
widening across my face - a smile for simple pleasures.

I
pulled up the ring on the can and I left the lid on my finger as I drank the
contents. I didn’t waste time savoring it. I let it slide down my throat and
slurped at the last remnants of syrup when it was all but gone.

Through
a small hallway, I found the living room. I placed my pack on the sofa and let
the flashlight wander. A dusty film played in the glow as I let the light drop
toward the floor. I had seen the same scene everywhere I had been. Everything
aged and left discarded.

I
took a seat next to my pack and watched the dead through grimy windows. They
wandered past; troubled, long faces searching in the darkness. I could make out
subtle differences in each one – a gash where an eye had once been, a circle of
rot, exposing feral teeth above a black gum line, all the sights the night
should have taken from my sight.

I
slowly pulled the shades, letting them drift down along the window without
notice. I lay back on the sofa and placed my pack beneath my head as a pillow.
The faint hymn of unearthly voices cooed me to sleep as I stared off at the
ceiling, wondering about coming days.

In
the morning, just after I awoke, I looked through the family’s photo albums. The
images made me smile. We’re all the same, really. We all pose the same way when
a camera is held to our face. We give our own special look so the photo won’t
taint our image; bright smiles and charming glances. We suck in our guts and
purse our lips, hoping that in the future, others won’t laugh at who we had
been. There was a time when I too had looked that way. There was a time when I
cared about appearances.

I
heard the yelping of dogs, fierce and angry. I placed the photo album back on
the shelf and returned to the living room. I looked out through the window and
watched while a feral pack of dogs attacked a corpse. I watched with quiet eyes
as they tore the thing to pieces. I watched as the creature struggled with the
strays and flailed its arms as if it were pleading for them to stop. I watched
as it writhed on the ground with stumps, torn and disfigured, trying to bite
back. No matter how much it protested and tried to defend itself, the animals
kept coming until it was no more than pink bone and a voiceless, screaming face.
It lasted for hours.

I
wished I could have felt something for it. I wanted to feel guilty for watching
idle while it was being eaten. I wanted to feel happiness for its death or hate
for what it was, but I couldn’t manage an emotion. Its eyes showed no pain as
it was torn apart. The only voice it offered against its finality was a low,
sorrowful moan before its tongue was ripped from its mouth.

Its
carcass reminded me of something from the Serengeti, some leftover husk waiting
for the vultures to finish it off. Gleaming white bone poked upward, pink along
the joints. Rows of ribs were exposed to the morning sun. A gore stained spine
below, racked with teeth marks where flesh had parted so slowly. Its head still
moved; twitching as it blinked away at the light that burnt its eyes. I
wondered what it had become. If it wasn’t a threat any longer, if not the thing
of nightmares, what was it?

I
might have remained in that house for weeks, it was hard to tell. There was no
calendar to mark my time. I read through the books that lined the shelves. I
ate the food that was stored in the pantry and I watched the pack of wild dogs
return to tear away at the dead.

There
were times when I would go into the upstairs bedroom and sit on the bed in the
child’s room and stare at the toys that were still scattered on the floor as if
playtime had never ended. I would consider my own childhood and how I grew into
the man that had survived the end. I would think of my wife and the times we
spent together. I played with the idea of how I would die out here alone and
there wouldn’t be anyone to remember me. If someone else happened to survive,
they would come across my remains and pass it by as easily as they would pass
any other. I would become an artifact like all the other scattered remains. 

Somehow,
I managed to stay quiet in that small house. The dead that wandered outside
never knew I was there. I was this invisible, needless thing in a world of
death and rot and slowly grinding teeth. In my mind, I was screaming, but no
one knew I was there.

I
took to leaving the house more and more, returning at night to the safety of
the walls and the familiarity of the family’s possessions. I moved slowly. I
kept my breath relaxed. I shuffled past them as if I were one of their own. I
was an elusive thing, neither living nor dead. It was as if I were in some type
of purgatory saved for special sinners, too foolish to die when the dying was
good.

I
gained great distances over the city, searching for a sign that there were
still people alive somewhere. At times, I would spend the night in an office
building or a convenience store as I made my way deeper into the city’s center.
Sometimes, I would spend days out among the dead, hoping to find even the
smallest trace of life. But I always returned to the house I had found when I
first arrived.

There
was something comforting about coming ‘home’. It might have been the pictures
on the wall or the well worn furniture which almost demanded to be used. I
wasn’t sure. All that I knew was that I felt pulled back to the house when I
was away for too long.

Somehow,
inside, it was like watching from afar. It was as if it were happening
somewhere else and I was looking through the screen, safely tucked away behind
glass and plaster and delusion.

Within
the view of the window, a corpse wandered by. The simplicity of death wavered
over its gaze as crawling things came out from under its skin. The bugs ate
away and returned back inside for another bite. Only a few feet from the
window, the creature simply sighed and wandered off out of sight.

That
night I fell asleep in the living room again as I counted the bodies that
filtered out through the street. I ignored their moans and concentrated on
their swaying steps. Their footfalls, tapping along the road and shuffling
through the grass, set my mind to ease. As long as they kept moving, they
didn’t know I was there, just a few feet away.

I
could hear the house settling in the darkness, a dry crack, a quick pop, and
the dead sounding out in return. The minutes were fleeting as I awoke like this
every few hours. I would look around the room, making sure I was still alone
and adjust the pack under my head. I would stare at the ceiling again, a
particular dot that smudged the paint. Eventually, I fell back to sleep.

I
awoke to the first rays of sun filtering through the dirty, smeared window. In
a drifting haze, the light caressed my face and touched my eyes. I thought of
rolling over and pressing myself tighter to the back of the couch and burying
my face in my pack, but I let out a sigh and slowly rose.

My
back was tight, protesting the way I had slept. I twisted while I sat at the
edge of the couch and nursed the muscles back into place. I stared out through
the window and scowled below the glare at the silhouettes across the street.
The shambling forms teetered and swayed, engrossed with their own motions. The
mindless things rocked in place and staggered once more on a journey only they
could know. For a moment, I wondered what it was that kept them moving. I
pondered every step. I cursed them under my breath.

I
went upstairs into the master bedroom and shuffled through the closet. In the
back, behind a row of dresses, I found an old pair of boots, aged, but hardly
worn. They looked to have fared better than the hiking shoes I was wearing. I
took a pair of socks from the top drawer of the dresser and slipped them on.
The boots felt snug against my feet, still needing to be broken in. Their age
would help with that.

In
the master bath, I sorted through the medicine cabinet. A half of a bottle of
Tylenol
sat on the bottom shelf. I helped myself to a couple and swallowed them dry. I
closed the mirror and the image of another man stared back at me. Squinting, I
looked into his eyes, wondering who he was. There was so much grey in his hair
and streaked through his beard. It was hard to tell what I had become.

There
were new lines at the edges of my eyes, deep and sun burnt. My lips were dry
and cracked. The knots of hair about my head joined others where dirt and grime
merged. Shallow, sunken cheeks gave way to protruding bone. I tried to smile
them away.

In
the closet, I found a small gym bag with drawstrings. I took it with me as I
grabbed another pair of socks and tucked them into my pack.

I
packed away some food in the gym bag, cinched the top tight, and fastened it to
the bottom of my pack. I glanced over my shoulder before I left to see that
everything was in order, just the way it had been when I entered for the first
time. Besides where I had brushed away the dust, everything was in place. It
was as if the family had just left, escorted away by the military during the
first evacuations. I looked back at the pictures on the wall one last time and
closed the door.

Keeping
low, I wandered through the back yard and out through the gate beside the
garage. With a subtle click, the fastener released and I was out, keeping close
to the fences that separated the properties. When they noticed me, I would
change direction to another street or alley. Sometimes, I crossed through yards
to get out of their line of sight. Out of eyeshot, they would continue in the
direction they last saw me and wander aimlessly until they found something of
better interest.

It
went this way for hours. I would jump a fence or hide behind a parked car long
enough to let them pass by and continue on my way.

I
wandered through a group of warehouses and past an extension bridge that
supported a pedestrian walkway above the freeway. The neighborhood on the other
side changed dramatically as I traveled deeper into the poorer areas. Boarded
up windows graced the façade of many of the homes. There were run down
tenements and crack houses, abandoned buildings with char marks along their
roofs. Graffiti peeled along the walls. I could still hear the echoes of
children crying in the apartments above.  

Before
this all began, this portion of the city was set aside for low income housing.
This is where the poor were tucked away so as not to be seen by those commuting
to white collar jobs within the city’s center. This was the place where eyes
were diverted and car doors were locked for fear of assault. This is where I
used to spend my weekends volunteering at the shelter when I was able.

I
had always thought that places like this couldn’t exist in a fat America. I
believed that there was no way that poverty could fester in a land so rich and
resourceful. One day, on my way to work, I saw a woman sifting through the
garbage behind one of the grocery stores while her children played at her
heels. I slowed my car and took the next off ramp. I drove through the street
and into the parking lot where the woman was. I pulled up next to her and
rolled down my window. One of the children saw what I had in my hand and came
running. There was a thin layer of dirt on the child’s face like the film that
covered everything in that place. The little girl held out her hand and I
placed the money into her palm. The mother looked at me with vacant eyes and
cocked her head slightly. I told her to take it and buy something to eat. She
nodded and I drove away.

That
encounter lingered in my mind for days. I couldn’t get the images to go away.
There was this nagging guilt that ate away at me. When my wife asked me what
was wrong I told her I was going to volunteer, I told her what I had seen and
that I had to do something about it. To see those children playing in the waste
at their mother’s feet, to see the look of desperate times engraved on their
tiny faces – it was more than I could handle.

From
then on, I spent as much of my free time as I could to help out in that very
same neighborhood. It did little to ease my mind. It wasn’t a duty, it was an
obligation. When I had been given so much in life, it was hard for me to sit
idle and watch others suffer.

And
then, after so much time, I returned to the very same spot and looked at the
run down grocery store. I gazed past the cracked stucco at the dumpster I had
seen years ago, turned over on end in the back toward the alley. Sprouts of
grass and weeds darted up through the cracks in the asphalt, creating zigzag
patterns along the parking lot of green and gold and rusty brown.