Running Red
Running Red
By Jack Bates
Copyright 2013 by Jack Bates
Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Also by Jack Bates and Untreed Reads Publishing
Monkey See, Monkey Murder.
“Ambrosia”
(in the anthology
The Killer Wore Cranberry)
Running Red
By Jack Bates
One
I can see the belly side of raindrops collecting on the lemon yellow roof of my tent. I know that if I flick the taught nylon, the drops will explode and the cooling rain will fall down on Yuki, my companion during these last thirteen months. She looks at me with her large, brown eyes. She senses something but is uncertain about what I’m thinking. She pulls herself closer to me, emitting a low whimper.
Yuki is my only family now. I’ve had contact with other humans, but out here, in the Wilds, which is any place other than the Safety Zone, there’s always a chance that any human I encounter is already infected with the rash. If they are, Yuki sniffs it out. I can’t explain how she knows. It reminds me of a link I clicked on once about dogs who could smell cancer in people. I worry less about being infected with Yuki around, even though there is probably more than one way to catch the infection.
Yuki stirs next to me. Maybe she senses I am plotting something, or that I am upset thinking about all that has gone wrong since the days of relocations. I reach up and snap my finger on the tent’s ceiling. Water cascades down on both of us. Yuki gives me a low growl that becomes a whine. She snorts and shakes the water from her face. It sprays over me. I laugh. Yuki puts a paw on my breast and I pull her on top of me, bury my face against her neck, and snuggle her. She returns my affection with a lick on my lips. Now it’s my turn to shake my face and make motorboat sounds with my lips.
The sun is already above the trees. The damp, coolness inside the tent is burning away. It’s time to move on. I know this and Yuki knows this, even though we like where we camped. It’s in the wooded median of a highway. There are no fences in the median. Abandoned cars and trucks make a barrier in the southbound lanes. There are very few obstructions along the median. About twenty miles on either end of a city, medians begin to narrow and eventually disappear. But cities offer different camouflage, and I’m just as good hiding in those.
I roll my sleeping bag and secure it with the elastic ties that snap together. I pack up the small things in the tent after using them: floss, toothpaste, hand sanitizer. I smear a glob of the antibacterial goop in my palms and slap it over my face, into my armpits, along my thighs. I know there are those who say the constant use of antibacterial soaps and lotions is what made us all susceptible to the rash, but I can’t help thinking it might also be preventing me from acquiring it. No one is really certain of the origin of the rash. I’ve heard all kinds of crazy ideas. If the Internet were still working, I’m sure there would be a ton of crackpot websites with a ton of wild reasons for why the rash is here and how it began, even though most of the people I run into now talk about the ants.
Yuki growls, reminding me it’s time to eat. I wish I had more to give her, but there’s only so much I can carry. We have no car, and there is no way to ride a bike with a dog as big as Yuki, so everywhere we go we have to walk and I have to carry what we have. Traveling light is essential. I can’t lug too many bottles or cans. As a result, my hunting skills have improved.
Living was difficult for Yuki and me when we first set out on our journey. Food was becoming scarcer the farther north we went. Just as winter was setting in, we crossed paths with a guy who called himself Old Flint. He wasn’t even close to being old; I figured he was somewhere around my dad’s age. It was Old Flint who taught me how to make and use an atlatl. Think of it as a foot-and-half-long, grooved rod with a nub at one end. A dart or a short spear with a notch on the end of its shaft rests over the nub. When the arm is slung, the projectile slides along the groove and shoots off the end of the groove. Old Flint said 12,000 years ago the weapon was so efficient for early man it probably contributed to the extinction of the wooly mammoth. Old Flint helped me make one, showed me how to hunt with it. It’s an ideal weapon for a surprise attack. I used it for a while. I keep the atlatl in my backpack and I make darts when I can.
Yuki barks once as a reminder. I open the pull tops of two big cans of cat food. I spill the contents of one onto a large, flat stone. Yuki laps it up. I scoop out the contents of the other can with my fingers and stuff it into my mouth. I don’t chew. It goes down in a couple of tough swallows. “It’s just ground meat,” I tell myself. The can says, “Ocean perch filet and chicken.” I don’t taste either.
Yuki barks. She wants more. We have a long walk in front of us and I give in to her demands. I open another can and dump it onto the same flat stone. She looks up at me with those apologetic eyes she’s mastered and I tell her it’s okay to eat. She looks at it, looks at me, and looks at the food again.
“Fine,” I say. I reach for the food. “If you’re not going to eat it, I will.”
Yuki growls. She gives me a warning bark before she sniffs and laps at the runny, minced meat on the stone.
I smile, knowing all along that the dog was playing me. I let her eat while I break down the tent. I am in the middle of rolling it when Yuki growls.
“You’ve had two cans to yourself, missy,” I say. My back is to Yuki and I continue to prepare the tent for its sheath. “We don’t have many left. According to the road sign, the next town or village is twelve miles from here, and that’s just to the exit. Who knows where the town actually is. A mile, maybe two off the ramp. So you just be patient.”
Her growls have been growing steadily louder.
“Are you listening to me, Yuki?”
Yuki barks.
“Don’t go getting sassy with me, young lady,” I say. I sound like my mother. Laughing, I turn around to face Yuki, and that is when I see him. It is a him. Sometimes, depending on how far gone one of them is, it’s hard to be certain. The root stalks have started coming out of his ears. This one is covered in the bright pinkish-white blisters the size of pencil erasers. Some of them have popped, so not only can I see the reddish ooze on his face and naked torso, I can smell the juice as well: spoiled potatoes and dead mice. The ooze streaks the guy’s face, his arms, and any part of him that is exposed. It’s a continuous flow of vermillion pus. They call it “running red,” and those who become infected are called “runners.”
He’s standing on the shoulder of the road, staring at us. I don’t know how deep the rash goes on this one. The red juices are running on him. He might still be a little bit human. Even then they want only to latch onto you.
This one seems to be in between passive and aggressive modes of the rash. I’m not even certain he sees me. Some people say the runners lose all control of their senses once the rash attaches itself to the brain. The fungus becomes the puppet master, using the carrier as a kind of machine to drive to its next food source in order to pollinate on a new field of flesh. Once a runner latches onto a new carrier, the runner usually has a very short shelf life.
It isn’t that different from the discovery of zombie ants deep in a rain forest. A fungus that attached itself to an ant took control of the insect and drove it to find a specific tree. The fungus grew out of the head of the ant. It sucked up all the calcium the ant had, manipulated its muscles, and used the brain-dead creature to its full advantage to procreate. The ant meandered about like a drunkard; it is a condition the runners display. Once the tree was found, the fungus drove the ant to a specific part of a leaf where the ant attached itself in a death grip. Now in position, the fungus lived only to reproduce itself. Runners will chase or attack humans in a similar manner.
At first it was just a viral video on all the social networks. But then the bees began dying off and the Internet filled up with stories that the zombie fungus had mutated into them. It eventually crossed the species barrier to field mice and from there a new strand discovered us. What killed the dinosaurs? The same thing that is killing us: a microbe.
It’s why I have an obsession with hand sanitizer. It’s number two on my list when Yuki and I go shopping. Food, of course, remains number one.
Carriers are early risers. It’s a throwback to the zombie ants that made the bugs find the specific leaf and attach itself by noon, even though the ant wouldn’t actually die until that evening. The mutated fungus no longer needed a cue to activate the “humans” it infected, but part of the old strain must have remained. Sunrise until sunset was the toughest time to be out.
Cool temperatures in the evening slow the runners. Before the big outbreak, everyone thought one good, cold winter would wipe it out, at least in North America. Except winters kept getting warmer and warmer. We were getting tornados in February and early March. The weather was not going to be our ally in this battle.
The runner now facing me from the shoulder of the road remains motionless. His eyes look in our direction, but it is difficult to tell what he sees. I know carriers aren’t supposed to be able to see, but there’s something in the dead eyes that makes me think he’s checking me out. Yuki growls and barks, but there is no indication from the carrier that it is aware of our presence.
And then I see it. Recognition. A momentary connection of the former self’s synapses lighting up some semi-dead portion of the brain, the portion of memory. It’s just a flash. The runner takes one or two unbalanced steps towards us. Yuki drops down on her haunches. She bares her fangs, ready to pounce and tear into the runner.
“Easy girl,” I say. Still on my knees with the partially rolled tent in front of me, I reach behind my back and remove the wrist-rocket slingshot from my belt. I feel around inside a small pocket on my vest and pull out a stainless steel pellet the size of a gumball. Fitting the brace of the slingshot over my right forearm, I pull back on the rubber tubing attached to either fork, the pellet nestled in the leather cradle. I take aim. A second later I release my pinch on the cradle and let the ball fly.
For an instant I think my shot is too high and off to the right. Just as I lose hope, however, the metal ball bearing curves down and inside, smacking the runner in the soft, fleshy pulp of its forehead. The runner staggers to the ground. Like a turtle on its back, the runner’s hands claw at the air.
Early public service announcements on the Emergency Broadcast System had warned survivors that a blow to the head wasn’t enough. The carrier had to be completely terminated. The head had to be removed; it was the command center for the infection. Both body and head had to be burned. It was the government’s way of telling us there was no cure on the way for the infected. All I could hope was the government was working on a vaccination for the rest of us.
I think, though, the age of man has sung a dirge.