Fear of the Dead (19 page)

They each took the bags they’d packed with ammunition earlier in the day. Atton shouldered his bag while Eli retrieved a fresh magazine from one of its many side pockets.

Atton motioned for Eli to hurry up.

“
Stay on my six!”

Atton did, and positioned himself behind the two. Three zombies closed in. Atton was able to stop two on their tracks, but by the third click of his trigger, he was out.

“
Where do we go?” Eli asked, struggling in his condition to keep his voice above the gunfire.

“
Find a place!” shot Atton.

Eli scanned the immediate neighborhood for any viable position to hide in. The first he saw was a nearby club surrounded by concrete walls. The sign above it read
Llegada
in a bold red font. There were no windows inside. No immediate weaknesses. And most of all, the only way inside was through the closed, reinforced door up ahead.

Eli fired at the door until he managed to disable the lock, and the entrance opened itself. He pushed the door inward, propped it open for the rest to enter. Ellen ran inside first, followed only shortly after with Atton.

He closed the door, but by this point there was no keeping it locked. He pushed his weight against the door when a shockwave threw him back. Eli fought to keep his place, anchoring his feet on the floor as he forced as much of himself as he could against the door.

“
Grab some furniture.”

The club was rife with tables, chairs, and loveseats. Atton hurried to pile them one on top of the other, blocking the door until the weight was able to withstand the pounding pressure beating from the other side. The ravaging went on until in time it faded, and then, before they could anticipate it, it stopped altogether.

“
We’re alive,” Eli gasped. His shock turned into a cackle, and then into full-on laughter. “We’re alive.”

But neither Atton nor Ellen seemed to share in his celebration. Ellen even took a few steps away from him, a look of utter sadness and disgust painted on her face.

“
What?”

Atton sighed.

“
What?” Eli pushed on, his cheery demeanor fast waning to vile impatience. “What is it?!”

Atton swallowed.

“
Look at your arm brother.”

Eli looked down. A bite mark two centimeters above his elbow. Eli racked with confusion, and utter horror.

12:37 PM

Eli couldn’t tell when exactly everything around him started to change. But according to the time on his locket, it was precisely 12:37 PM when his once inmate and friend had a shotgun pointed to his face.

Eli trembled, knees shaking.

“
What the fuck are you doin’ Atton?”

“
I’m sorry brother. But it’s only a matter of time now. You know that as well as I do.”

“
Stop pointin’ that thing at me you stupid asshole. I ain’t turnin.’ Look at me. C’mon man look at my fuckin’ eyes!”

Atton did. But the expression on his face did little to improve.

“
I’m still fuckin’ me! Can’t you see it?”

Eli sneezed again. His nose started running like a waterfall. Only now instead of phlegm and mucus, it was blood.

Eli gasped.

“
The fuck? What the fuck is this?”

“
You’re changin’ man. It’s only a matter of time ‘til the infection kills you.”

“
So what? You gonna kill me first?”

Atton said nothing, easing the grip on his gun.

“
We can work this out.”

“
There ain’t nothin’ to work out. I’m feelin’ perfectly fine.”

But they both knew it was a lie.

“
You want to stay with us, you have to do what I tell you. Understand?”

“
Do what?”

“
Bathroom’s over there. We’re gonna lock you in while we figure out what to do. You don’t get out until I tell you.”

“
That’s bullshit! I ain’t goin’ in there.”

“
It’s either that, or you go outside.”

Atton straightened himself, cautiously aligning the barrel of his gun with Eli’s shifting position.

Eli had no choice.

“
Fine.”

Chapter Eleven

Day Five

Thursday

April 24, 2003

12:01 AM

“
Funny that. One minute I’m runnin’ for my life. The next I find it’s already gone. I been goin’ it over in my head, and up to now I can’t even begin to tell how it happened. There was so much goin’ on so fast. I didn’t even notice I was bit. How fucked up is that?

“
I can’t sleep. Haven’t even bothered tryin.’ I figure at this point why even bother? Why make life even shorter than it already is by spendin’ it with my eyes closed?

“
Thing is though, it’s been a little tough findin’ better things to do. I’ve been up all night drinkin’ my ass to goddamn oblivion. I suppose that’s something. Nice enough for Atton to stick me in with some booze. Lucky this place was a club. Otherwise I’d really be losin’ my mind ‘bout now.

“
Atton and the girl. Don’t know what they’re doin,’ but if I had to take a guess I’d say they’re both sleepin’ like a couple a’ babies. It’s midnight, so now’d be the time to do it. Meanwhile I’m down here locked inside the men’s room a’ some shitty nightclub, realizin’ how much a’ my life I done pissed away. How much I ain’t got to see or do in what little time I had. Never got to travel. Hell I ain’t never left the country. Don’t know how things are like down in Mexico, or up in Canada. Or over at Europe. I always wanted to climb up some Scandinavian mountain top. Imagine the kinda view I’d have a’ the world from up there.

“
It’s kinda funny if you think about it. For all the shit I been gettin’ myself into, I ain’t been so afraid a’ dyin’ as I am right now. Maybe it’s because I know that there ain’t no avoidin’ this one. This is happenin’ no matter what. And all it is is a matter a’ time.

“
So how long’s it going to be until I turn into one a’ them? Asshole on the news channels never did say for sure. Did he know? Did anybody? Is there an answer out there somewhere? Or am I goin’ to have to sit here and find out on my own?

“
The biggest disaster to hit the world, and there ain’t no one alive to know a goddamn thing about it.

“
You know, I ain’t ever done nothin’ to deserve what I got. I was just an asshole drivin’ a truck, mindin’ my own business. I never killed ‘nyone. I ain’t a criminal.

“
But I guess life ain’t ever about what you deserve is it? Shit just happens, and all you can do is take it. You can’t never change what gets done to you. Nature comes aroun’ whether you like it or not. There ain’t no two ways about that. The only choice you got, is you can either sit back and laugh about it, or you can cry.

“
You know,
about twenty years ago I was sentenced to Wyden Hall for a raping and killin' some woman I ain't never heard of. Well, technically that ain't entirely true. I met the woman at some rest stop down in Milboro. See I used to drive trucks state to state. Started back in Houston where I grew up, and went at it for a few years. I was good at it too. Could squeeze a six axle in a compact, three seconds flat.

“
So anyway, I take a breather at some podunk highway pitstop down here in California. I get to talkin' to this girl Laurie. She was 19. Pretty little thing. Bright too. Said she was going to some college up in Santa Cruz, but she was doin' some travelin' around town to go visit some relatives.

“
I offered to buy her a drink. She told me she was 19. I told her that what the cashier on the other end didn't know wouldn't hurt him. We laughed, and for the better part of that night we wouldn't stop talking.

“
Then it got late. We said our goodnights, and I even bought her a bottle of scotch. Something to remember our conversations by. We set off on our own separate ways, and we never saw each other again.

“
Three days later, just as I'm about to make my delivery, an army o' cop cars start swoopin' in up in front of me. They stop me in the middle o' the 280 freeway, blocking traffic like it ain't nobody's business. And before I know it, I got a gun locked onto my right eye.

“
When I saw the cops in the rearview mirror, I wondered if it had to do with my drivin' or somethin.' Maybe I ran a stop sign somewhere, and the cops were out lookin' to collect themselves some state revenue. When I saw the guns come out though, I immediately figured it had to do with Laurie, and the event of me handin' alcohol to a minor. But it was even more than that. When they mentioned murder, that was when shit hit the fan.

“
At first I thought the cops were on somethin' serious. I saw Laurie three nights ago. No way was she dead when I left. And all we did was talk. I didn't touch her, let alone rape her. Told the cops all a' that. They didn't care. They found her dead in the woods, her clothes torn like some damn animal clawed it off. She'd been used too, right before being clubbed to death with a piece of wood. Cops didn't have any leads, so they pinned it down on the one asshole who saw her that night, and was dumb enough to get her drunk the night she died. They figured with me bein' a truck driver and all, it was the perfect MO. Cross country man with no connections to the places he goes to, rapin' and killin' women for kicks. Didn't matter to them that I didn't do it. Didn't matter that the shit they said I did disgusted me. They used whatever little shit they had to put me away for life.

“
Fascist retards.

“
What the fuck kind of a fucked up world is that? And how fucked up is it that after four months o’ gettin’ out of prison, I’m gonna die locked inside a bathroom?

“
You know, it’s strange seein’ just how easy people change when they don’t trust you no more. Atton thinks I’m gon’ turn at any second. No matter how many times I tell him I feel fine, that nigger don’t believe a word I say. And just cause a’ that, that asshole stuck a chain around the door. He says he’ll let me out in the mornin.’ But it’s goddamn bullshit. After all the times I saved his ass, this is what I get?

“
Christ it’s dark in here. I can’t even see myself. I can’t tell where I am.

If I manage to catch some sleep, then tomorrow when Atton opens that door, I’ll have to remember to kick his ass.”

4:34 AM

When the sky returned, bright enough to be able to see with, Eli could finally tell for certain where he was, and see for the first time just how far the infection had progressed in his body.

Eli’s hands had turned to milky white. The pink complexion on his skin was there, but fading. The blue veins on both his arms had gotten more pronounced, making their color stronger and thus easier to see. The lines also looked bigger somehow, but Eli couldn’t tell for sure. All he was certain of was that he could see more lines from his insides than anyone alive ever should.

As disturbing as it was to him, he’d already spent enough of last night worrying about what was going to happen to him. By now his fears were spent. And acknowledging the fact that there was nothing he could do only made the horror that much easier to bear. He saw himself in the mirror, and though he was disgusted by the sight, it failed to spark much dismay.

The bleeding on his arm had stopped, although the injury itself had never been entirely serious to begin with. The thing about bites, he told himself, was that it was never so much about stopping things from getting out, but stopping things from getting in.

His arm felt a little weaker than it did before, a fact that had only grown more apparent after the midnight hour. Eli didn’t want to think any longer on why that might have been. At least his sneezing stopped. His allergy seemed to have passed away on its own. That was, unless he had the medication to thank, or something else.

Not that it mattered, but Eli liked to think it had nothing to do with
something else
.

He checked the time, then peered out at the frost garbled window. All he could see was grey morning light. Any details beyond that were obscured by the opaque nature of the window’s glass. The restroom of a nightclub, it was no surprise they’d want to keep some privacy.

The time on his locket had stopped moving since 4:34 AM. But from what little traces of daylight he could scarcely catch outside, it had to be at least early six in the morning.

Ellen and Atton were still fast asleep. There was no one up for him to talk to aside from himself, but he’d already done that for long enough, and Eli was fast growing weary of his own company. He needed to get out. He needed air. He needed not to worry about spending the last few minutes of his life dying inside yet another prison.

If Eli had had his gun with him, he would have used it now to butt the glass on the window. But Atton had it taken away from him as he went inside. He had everything taken away. As it turned out, Atton was just as much a slime ball as everybody else he’d ever known in his life.

Fortunately, Eli didn’t have to wait for Atton. Eli Desmond was nothing if not a resourceful man. Confident that his shoes needed no protection from shards of glass, he kicked down the window as hard as he could, sending the glass crashing down one floor below the second. He heard the waking moans of zombies before he saw them staring down. They looked up at him with malicious intent, but they were too far down to reach. And not to mention dumb.