Among the Living (13 page)

You stagger to your feet and immediately fall down the tiny landing, one stair, then the other. Your arm at your side, hand pointed as you land on it. A crunch, but you can’t feel pain, so maybe nothing is broken.

The hunger strikes again. Your stomach clenches tight; you need to eat. You stagger around in a half-circle and stare at the shape on the ground. You lean over and sort of fall back up the stairs, then an arm is in your mouth and you take a hearty chomp. Cold meat, cold flesh. It is in no way satisfying, but what choice do you have? The hunger is all you have.

Tearing at the meat, peeling sinew and muscle as you try to feed faster, but it is getting harder and harder to chew. Your bites slow down, and it turns into a slow-motion feeding as what few brain cells you have left cycle through the act of eating another human being.

If you could grin, you are pretty sure there would be a big one on your lips.

There is a sound down the hall. Your head comes up, and you hear a door slam. You drop the bloody arm and stand up.

* * *

“I picked up everything on your list except tomatoes; the ones at the store were old and soft,” Alice calls out as she pushes the door closed with her hip. She has a couple of bags of frozen meals but many more to bring in.

She pauses in the hallway as the smell hits her. Something familiar about it, something she has smelled before, like a fresh chunk of meat you just brought home from the meat market. Copper, like blood. But what in the world could Ken be preparing? It’s still too early in the day to roast a pork shoulder on the grill; maybe he is planning to cook one in the slow cooker.

She stomps down the hall and kicks her shoes off at the entrance to the master bedroom. Then it’s past Anthony’s room, which has been vacant for a few weeks now. She has stopped staring at it as she passes, stopped looking at the formerly warm room gone cold and empty just like the ache in her heart. He was such a good boy, where did we go wrong?

More movement comes from the kitchen. It sounds like a stumble. There is a moan. Oh my God, must be Ken. Is he hurt? Visions of him lying on the ground, clutching his chest race through her head. She speeds down the hallway and comes around the corner only to be met with horror.

The blood starts on the stairs and traces a path into the living room. The carpet used to be tan—it needed constant cleaning—but now it is drenched in blood. There is a shape lying near the dinner table, but her mind is having trouble comprehending what she is seeing. And there is Ken, standing by the entryway, hand held out toward her like a declaration of need.

“Honey!” she shrieks and stumbles toward him. His side is covered in blood, and a great ragged tear breaks the line of his neck. She stops in shock and then stumbles back.

Ken turns toward her and extends one arm. The hand is hanging the wrong way like it is broken. He extends his other hand, and a half-moan escapes his lips. Then her eyes settle on his, and the horror peaks.

Those eyes hold no life; they are empty, with blood-filled irises. Something that looks like a piece of raw meat hangs from his mouth. His maw is surrounded by even more blood.

Alice steps toward her husband in shock and disbelief. She takes another step, and they are close enough to touch. She stares at him through tear-stained eyes that distort his image. A loud sob bursts past her lips.

“Wait, I’ll get a towel for your cut, Ken,” she says and turns away to grab one from the kitchen. There is one on the stove. She reaches for it in a mechanical way.

Ken lurches toward her and grabs at her hair as she turns. He misses and is propelled forward by his momentum; he looks for all the world like a large toddler just learning how to walk. She shies away from her husband of twenty years and then ducks down and around him.

“Ken, I don’t understand. What’s wrong?” The phone is in the living room; she just has to reach it. He turns slowly and reaches for her again but catches only the strap of her purse. He grabs it tightly and pulls it off her shoulder. She staggers up the stairs, steps in the massive pool of blood and then settles her eyes on the shape on the ground.

A scream rips past her lips, and she falls. Stumbles and goes down, hands slapping into blood-soaked carpet. She crawls away as fast as she can, her body doing a herky-jerky shake as revulsion sends vomit spewing out of her mouth. She staggers to her feet and flees into the living room.

She snatches at the phone and sits on the couch as if it is just another day. She stares at the keys, then glances up at the TV on the wall, the TV in front of which she had planned to park herself all afternoon.

She hits ‘talk’ and tries to dial 911. Her first attempt has her pushing 812. She clicks the talk button again and then carefully stabs the correct three keys. Ken has found that her purse doesn’t contain anything he can eat, so he drops it in a heap. Bottles of pills, makeup, a compact cell phone, Tic Tacs, all scatter across the floor. A small bottle of perfume clatters along with the mess; the cap goes skittering across the floor and the smell of perfume fills the room.

As she puts the phone to her head, she glances at the body on the floor, the pile of matter next to it, and she thinks stupidly that Anthony has left a pile of play-dough on the ground and spilled ketchup on it. Damn kid, can’t he clean up after himself?

Her hand goes to her mouth as a sob escapes, then the phone connects and an operator answers.

“911 emergency.”

“Help, my husband … there is something wrong with him!” She stifles the urge to shriek and instead holds on to a high-pitched warble.

“Ma’am, please tell me what is going on.”

“There’s something wrong with him. I think his throat is hurt … he is covered in something. I think it’s blood. It’s like he’s drunk, but he doesn’t drink. Not anymore, he gave it up years ago!”

She shifts to the other side of the house as he makes it up the stairs and stumbles toward her with a shambling gait. The hand that is impossibly bent hangs at his side. The other is outstretched. He moans and smacks his blood-drenched lips.

“Ma’am, listen, you need to get away from him and get out of your house. I can’t stay on the line … we aren’t supposed to talk about them. Just get away. Lock him in a room, and someone will be there as soon as possible.”

“Them? THEM? What are you talking about? You’re 911, you have to help. Send the police, oh God, send the fire department, send anyone!”

“I can’t send the police if there is just one! Just get out of the …” Then another voice cuts her off in the background.

“I have to let you go now, ma’am. Just get out of the house or kill the thing if you have to. It’s not your husband anymore. We ... we don’t even know what they are.”

Ken has made it across the room; empty eyes settle on her. She watches in utter horror as he comes closer and closer. She sits in place as if mesmerized, as if a hypnotist has popped into the room and put her under a spell. She wants to move, but her legs ignore her.

She stares at his lips and tries to figure out what is on them. Then it hits her: his bottom lip is hanging half torn off, and he is trying to suck it back into his mouth. She glances between this new horror and the body on the floor. The shredded arm, meat hanging in ragged chunks, and the pieces fall into place.

“To hell with this!” she yells and rockets to her feet. She gags again as she runs past Ken. He reaches out but only catches air, and she steers around him. A tiny gasp of sound like a sob breaks past her lips, adrenaline amps her body up and she is past him. She gags again as the smell hits her, copper, raw pork, old meat. She jumps over her son’s bloody body and comes down hard. She slips and nearly pitches down the stairs.

She hits the landing to the kitchen and pounds over the contents of her purse. Her hand covers her mouth, but vomit spews out anyway. Then she is down the hall, in the bedroom and slamming the door closed behind her. Her fingers fumble on the lock. They twist at it, slip off and then, fighting the shakes, Alice finally gets the thing turned.

She drops to her knees and pounds at her legs. Then she takes a deep breath that burns as vomit is sucked down her throat. She breathes in as much air as her lungs can handle and then screams until her throat is raw.

The afternoon rushes by as I type up my story on Seattle dives. This is why I love my job; I get to write in-depth articles that involve drinking large amounts of beer. My favorite dive had been a place called Jeans, which featured the worst selection of alcohol I have ever seen. They didn’t have top-shelf booze, in fact they didn’t even have medium-shelf. It was plastic jugs all the way, but they had a hell of a deal for cheap Budweiser on tap.

The phone rings, and it’s Rita. She found her cell phone and is charging it. She is more coherent. Now she paints a pretty clear image of what is going on at her place.

“The police have cleared out of the parking lot. Several ambulances arrived and started packing people into them. Some had to be restrained, but the medics looked like they knew what they were doing, you know, very professional.”

“How badly were they hurt?” I doubt she saw enough to make a judgment call; maybe I am just asking her questions to keep her on the phone.

“It was hard to tell. They didn’t go easy; the attackers had to be hit with those electric guns a couple of times.”

After my panic earlier, I’m reassured by her words. She then rants for a few minutes about how her neighbor Ted is constantly snooping around, asking her questions about her health, how she is enjoying the summer. She doesn’t like it. I think Ted is a nice enough guy, and maybe he is genuinely interested in her. It is sad to see her unable to recognize the attention.

I hang up the phone and stare at it, dejected. She could do so much if she would just get out of her damn apartment—the dark hole with old furniture from our marriage squeezed into every room. Things she won’t let go of, including most of Andy’s possessions. At one time she worked on a children’s book as the illustrator. Her background in architecture went a long way toward how the book came out. How she could draw! She would show her creations to Andy and judge a piece’s worthiness by the expression on his face.

She is so lost. I need to talk her into going to a psychologist again. She went for a while and felt better; the Zoloft helped, but she quit after a few months and threw the bottles away. I purchased books for her on how to deal with loss, and at one point her depression peaked and she bought a gun. I thought about having her committed. I loved Rita once upon a time, and we had a good life together. Now we are two lost people doing the best we can to survive.

With a sigh, I push myself away from apathy and go fetch a cup of coffee from the kitchen.

The story is done, so I do a few searches for random attacks, which turn up some prank videos. Then I try random violence, rage. Then endless variations of the words. The closest I get to a hit is someone’s cell phone footage of a man who appears to have a chest wound and still tries to stand up. The video is grainy, blurred and shaky. It is hard to tell if it is even real. I watch it several times before it suddenly disappears. Damn it! There is now a message that the video violates the terms of use agreement. There wasn’t even a write-up explaining where the video was shot.

I am starting to think I am in on a big hoax when a link comes to my inbox from Leonard. I open it to find a site that stores large downloads for free, provided you sit through a timer and stare at their ads. I go back to a search window until my time comes and then download the fifty-megabyte file straight to my desktop. It is in a common video format, so I double click and wait for Media Player to load.

The video is grainy, taken from a distance, probably on a cell phone. The sound is tinny, but I hear the unmistakable screams of several people. Erin leans over my shoulder while I hunt for the volume control. No reason to bring the entire office over.

“What is it?” she asks. I can smell her hair where it hangs near my face. I glance at her profile. She has her glasses off, and she looks very young to me. I find myself intensely attracted to her for the hundredth time today.

“Oh, something Leonard sent over. No message, just the link.”

The phone’s view jumbles around for a bit then comes into surprising clarity. There are half a dozen people surrounding the body of a man lying on the ground. Most of them are dressed in shorts and t-shirts; one of the women had a bikini top on. From the amount of trees surrounding the area, I guess it is a park.

A voice shouts over and over, “I had to do it! I had to do it! You all saw him attack my girl!”

One side of the man’s head is caved in. There is blood on his tropical shirt, great spots of it that turn the white fabric a shade of crimson, which is in sharp contrast to the yellow and green flowers. The man’s eyes stare straight up as the camera swings close. They are an odd color—the lids gray-lined, the eyeballs dull and lifeless. As the camera focuses, I sit back in my chair. I hear Erin gasp, and she puts a hand on my shoulder.

The man’s eyes are filling with blood as we watch. The whites are completely consumed in a matter of seconds. Then the man shrugs his shoulders, a shudder seems to ripple through his body, he coughs and then foam—white and blood-flecked—pours from his mouth. The camera jerks back as others scramble out of the way.