Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
I look at the wound, as clean as it’s going to get, and I can’t help but feel like it’s not good enough. I look at this leg and I see that there’s so much infected tissue that I can’t help but think that it’s no longer salvageable. The dead flesh is going to need to be removed. I’ve done the best that I can with what we have and that’s not saying much. We don’t have the proper supplies that I’d normally use to surgically remove some of the rotting and infected flesh to prevent the infection and necrotic tissue from continuing to spread.
I leave the tourniquet on and decide that removing the leg may still be the better option, no matter how miserable and horrific that experience is going to be. I don’t want the infection to spread into the blood and to flood the rest of his body, so I decide that right now, keeping his leg numb is for the best.
I look at Greg, offering him a sweet smile and rubbing his shoulder. “I’m done for now,” I tell him calmly. “I’m sorry it hurt so much.”
“Son of a bitch,” Greg gasps, breathing heavily and trying to get control of himself. There’s nothing that I can do to help with the pain. We don’t even have alcohol that he can down a few shots of. I feel bad for him. Even if we had painkillers, little help they would be. The infection is worse than I would have imagined.
The truth that none of us want to accept is that there are three seriously injured individuals around a newborn and though right now, we have a place to stay, we’re still too low on supplies for that to mean anything of importance. We need supplies and we need medical attention. If Lexi wants to be here alone, then we can just stay the course and let the infection in my abdomen and the infection in Greg’s leg end us all. But I think she’d prefer it if she wasn’t out here in the vast emptiness of the apocalypse by herself. So I look at her and Greg, and I know that some of us are going to have to make the hard decision to get out of here and go in search of better supplies. Looking at Greg’s leg, I know that he’s not going to be able to walk on it in the morning. So that just leaves Lexi and me. I shake my head and lie down on a dusty, stained cot that rests against the cinderblock wall, not even caring where the blankets have been. Something tells me that tomorrow is going to be a very long day. Why are the last days the longest?
Chapter Eleven
The storm raged on through the majority of the night, God’s hands working over the fresh lump of clay that is our world. Lightning ripped through the sky as I lay on the cot too afraid to close my eyes. But when they closed of their own accord, I could only picture the faces of the dead. It wasn’t just Marko or Noah or the others we left behind, but it was the faces of everyone I used to know out there in the world. I see the faces of everyone whom I had been friends with before all of this happened. It was like all of them had died, even though I had no clue if they were alive out there, fighting and scraping by for survival or if they were among the bleached bones that now cover the surface of the earth. I see their faces no matter their fate and I can only imagine what it would be like coming home to all of them. If they are calling to me from the other side, they are as silent as the bones they left behind. All I see are their somber, quiet faces, staring at me. Finally falling asleep, I can no longer tell what is a dream and what is delirium. Instead, I am left with the silence. I am left with the welcoming embrace of sleep and I can’t help but wonder if this is exactly what death is like.
Eventually, like all stormy nights, the dawn came and I slept through it. Awaking, I am genuinely surprised that I survived the night. I figured that I would have died in my sleep from the internal bleeding. I thought they’d find me with a swollen stomach and they’d see that I wasn’t moving and they’d just sort of push me off into some hole to leave me for the zombies to find and feast upon. But when I open my eyes, I am pleasantly surprised to see that the world around me is still dark, save for the windows high up near the ceiling where the light pours in from what would have once peeked out through the flower beds. It’s enough to cast a warmer glow around the basement, making it look aged and forgotten. It reminds me of an old barn that no one had entered in a very long time.
As I sit forward, the night falls off of me like a waterfall of bad memories and I immediately realize that I feel sick to my stomach. The feeling down in the depths of my abdomen means only one thing, that my worst fears are true. I lie back down on the bed, not sure if I should feel bad or if I should feel relieved. I am dying. I am dead. Closing my eyes and blindly lifting up the bottom of my shirt and sliding my fingers up from my waist, I feel the wrap around my abdomen and I know without a doubt. With every little fact that I’m finding, it feels like there’s another nail being driven into the coffin of my life. I can feel the warmth emanating from my belly. There’s a heat there that is unmistakable, which is a telltale sign that I’m in serious trouble. The flesh around my wound is stiff, hard, and swollen. The infection is setting in and as of right now, there’s nothing that I can do to stop it.
Rolling my head to the side, I see Greg seated at a chair, slumped and slanted with a shotgun on his knees, gripping it tightly. I wonder if he’s remembered to put the safety on or if he’s sitting there with a live shotgun on his lap. It wouldn’t surprise me if he forgot again. I look at his leg. He’s rolled up his pant leg and I look at his pale leg and I know that he’s going to have to find a way into the future without me. Because, unlike me, Greg has a chance to survive. Seeing him reminds me that there’s a way to save him. I just have to find the right materials. I just have to get out there in the world and I’ll be able to find what I need.
The truth is, I’m fine with this fate. I would rather be the one dying than having to watch Greg die. It’s better to always be the martyr in the end than watching your beloved die in your arms. Yes, I’d rather be the one to give my life for his survival.
I push myself up, cautious not to use my abs as I do so. I’m going to do what needs to be done to save him. I will give whatever remaining little energy that I have to see to it that he survives. I look at his face, the face of the man that I fell so madly in love with once upon a time and I have to admit, I’m still madly in love with that handsome mug. He’s the perfect man. I could never have dreamt that I would find a man as perfect as him, so enduring and persevering all the way unto the end with me. I smile at the thought of him. We’ve been through the apocalypse together. How many couples can say that? I smile at the absurdity of it and I decide that it’s absolutely important that I keep him alive. He has to see the future. Unlike me, I want him to see what it is that Jason has in store for the world. I want him to see what it is he plans on doing to save all of humanity.
But more importantly, Greg will have the opportunity to protect and take care of my sister and my nephew. I glance over at Lexi who has set up a new little nest for my nephew. She’s going to need help out there in the rest of the world, whatever is waiting for her and Charlie. She’s going to need helping hands, a shoulder to cry on, and some muscle. She’s going to have a long road down the path of motherhood. I look at Charlie, thinking that he would have known Greg as an uncle even if the world had been normal. So why shouldn’t Charlie know Greg as the man who his aunt fought so hard to save? There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s going to need an uncle. Heck, Greg is going to be the closest thing to a father that Charlie will ever know. I think about my father and how important he was to me. Charlie should have that. Charlie should have a strong, daring man to look up to in his life.
Getting up, I stand on my feet and resist the urge to stretch. I want to stick out my arms and groan with euphoric ache as my entire body tenses, but that luxury is completely gone. I’m stuck with the pains and stiffness that I dare not test. I feel like I’ve been plowed into by a train and that I’m stuck limping along. Someone should put me out of my misery soon. If there was a merciful God still alive, I wouldn’t be left to suffer.
I make my way up the wooden steps to the door that’s lurking at the perimeter of the large basement, the single door that we’ve all been looking at with nervous, cautious eyes. I decide that it’s time to see if there’s a way into the rest of the house. I’m not sure if I think that the door in the basement is the door I should trust. For me, I would set some sort of trap on that door. I figure that if anyone should try it out, it should be the one who is the closest to dying. In the dim light of the basement, I look at the door, searching the edges to see if I can find any trip wires or if there are any machetes waiting to swing down if I twist the handle of the door.
Nothing comes flying out at me, nothing swings down to cleave me in half, and nothing shoots at me. Releasing a sigh of relief, I listen to the door, trying to see if I can hear the sounds of movement on the other side. Through the entire storm, we had all been sitting down here, waiting for something to move, but there was nothing. I don’t think there are zombies up there. They would have come clamoring down on us when Greg let out his colossal scream during the cleaning of his wound. Pulling the door open, I decide that if I’m going to find anything on the other side of the door, it’s going to be the barrel of a gun waiting to take my head off.
Swinging the door open, I see nothing more than the cream-colored paint on walls where there are pictures of a couple progressing back and forth through life. One picture has the couple as sage elders and another has them as youthful parents standing with their toddler in a park. I look at the pictures, checking the dusty glass for reflections that might give away an intruder. But what strikes me as the most peculiar right now is the fact that the door to the basement looks like it’s part of the wall on the other side, like this is some sort of secret passage. I look at it and I can’t help but feel like this is the strangest door I’ve ever walked through. Passing over the threshold, I look down the hallway that I’ve stepped into. The house is dark, but there’s light here, pushing through the slats between the boards protecting the windows.
We’ve seen our share of boarded up windows, but these still have the glass intact, which is a remarkable feat. I walk to my left, making my way into a front room that looks like it serves as the living room. I look around at everything in the house. It almost appears that nothing happened in this home. It has the feel of a grandparents’ home, like I could walk into the kitchen and find an old woman baking cookies while an old man rocks in his lounger, watching the game. But the house is silent. Staring at the couch, I look at the small tables, adorned with pictures and lamps and a phone in the cradle. I look at the table with the landline and see that there’s a phonebook sitting on the bottom shelf. I shake my head while gripping my stomach.
Turning and looking down the hallway, I resist the urge to scream when I see Greg standing in the shadows, holding his shotgun and looking at me, as if we’ve established a plan before this and he’s waiting for the ‘all clear’ sign. There’s nothing remarkable on the ground floor. We walk into the kitchen and we find dozens and dozens of bottles of water stacked in the cupboards and on the counter. There’s a whole menagerie of bottles in the kitchen, like they were stockpiling when all of this started going down. I look in the pantry and I don’t find any food, nothing boxed or canned or jarred, which I find strange. You’d think that there would be a lot of food hidden somewhere if they had this much water. You don’t just stockpile one thing.
I look at Greg who is staring up at the ceiling, listening to a sound that has also drawn my attention. It’s a tapping that sounds almost like it’s raining, or maybe it’s the sound someone upstairs is making. I look at Greg who gives me a nod and I follow him, gripping my stomach. I don’t even waste time with grabbing my Sig. If I squeeze that trigger, I’ll drop the gun. Instead, I just follow my daring man as he makes his way to the stairs and slowly climbs them step by step. I follow him cautiously, worried that there’s a killer waiting for us at the top. As we make our way up the steps, it’s immediately shown to us that the second floor of the house is not nearly what we thought it would be. In fact, this whole house is not what we thought it was.
“My God,” I say, looking at all the open doors to the various rooms. There’s not a doubt in my mind that this is it. This was what my father wanted us to find. I don’t doubt that the bodies out there on the lawn belong to Jason and whoever was here with him. Maybe not him exactly, but he’s been driven off or he’s among the dead. Either way, we’re alone here.
The walls are covered with writings in every room. Some of the rooms are decorated in strange, peculiar themes, like this house belonged to a bunch of teenage girls at one point. But one of the rooms is completely dark, filled with mason jars that hold seed packets or tons of little seeds. Greg and I look through all of them, not just seeing vegetables or fruits, but flowers, grasses, bush bulbs, and hundreds of other plant beginnings that I have no way of knowing about. I walk room from room, looking at the writings on the walls.
Greg is fascinated by the drawings, hobbling and limping as he moves from one scribble to the next. Clearly, Jason was running out of paper, that or he was just used to writing on walls.
“What is it?” I ask Greg.
“Formulas mostly,” Greg says, moving to another writing. “It’s a lot of chemistry. I don’t understand a lot of it, and would have to work through it backwards, but I think this is definitely where your father wanted us to go. Only problem.”
“Where the fuck is Jason?” Lexi’s voice causes both of us to turn and see her in the doorway, holding Charlie cradled in one arm. I look at her and I see that she’s neither happy nor impressed by any of this. In fact, she’s absolutely furious at the sight of everything that’s in the room. “Where the fuck is he? Huh? Did Dad just send us to an empty house with a bunch of scribblings from a madman? What the fuck was he thinking?”
“I don’t know,” Greg says, looking back at the wall. “I mean, I don’t have a grasp on it yet, but I think he was isolating what was causing the mass destruction. From what I can tell, it’s degenerative. You know? I think he was under the impression that the toxin would run its course.”
“Yeah, so what?” Lexi snaps angrily. “It killed every fucking thing.”
“But it could be done,” Greg shrugs. “If he’s right.”
“So?” I lift an eyebrow. “So all we have to do is get out there and start planting seeds?”
“No,” Greg shakes his head. “I’m not sure about any of this, but he’s got designs, big designs. I think he was wanting to make new earth, new soil from the dust that’s left and fertilizer. It would make sense. It would explain all the fertilizer and wood down there in the basement. I think he was planning on building a hell of a lot of greenhouses.”
I look at Greg, admiring him more than I’ve ever admired him. I look at the walls and it might as well be Sanskrit, but to him, there’s logic to it. He can read it. He can decipher this madness and that makes me love him all the more. I need to get out there and find a way to save his life. If he can read this, then Greg can’t die. He can’t follow me into whatever awaits me beyond death. I have to keep him alive until he can get all of this insanity translated into something that Lexi and Charlie can use to help themselves. Even if it means hacking off his leg, I’m going to have to save his life. It’s not a prospect I savor. What if there is an afterlife and I have to wait for the man I love? That sounds greedy, I know, but I’m not interested in being apart from him that long. I love him.
“Greg,” I say to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I need you to stay here and see if you can make sense of all of this.”
“Why? Where are you going?” Greg asks me with a confused and worried look on his face. I don’t know why his mind immediately jumps to dark places, even though he’s right, but it bothers me. Why can’t he assume that I’m just going downstairs to relax?