The Dark Trilogy (74 page)

When he came out, Dalton still didn’t want to be touched. The thrill of seeing him again had been replaced by a growing dread. Dalton was alive, but what he’d seen out there had rattled him to the core. He was supposed to be the cool and rational one, the one who remained calm no matter what. Instead, he looked like some scared kid who’d been frightened nearly to death.

The next few hours were almost as bad for Megan as the time she spent waiting on Dalton to return from his trip outside. She prided herself on knowing her husband fairly well, but even a complete stranger could tell that something was terribly wrong with Dalton LeValley. After any stressful event, Dalton was always the first to make light of it, smile and joke, washing away the stress and forcing himself to forget. That was not the Dalton Megan was seeing here. It was then that she realized he was dealing with something more traumatic than a violent run-in with some teenagers.

Megan had seen the broadcasts and watched the scientists debate over what was causing the virus to be transmitted so easily from victim to victim. There were countless theories, but the one that stood out from all the others was that it was transmitted through the blood—through bites and scratches.

She didn’t want to accept it, but there it was. Megan wept as she tried to deny the truth of the matter. Dalton had been bitten, and he was infected.

Perhaps it was her crying that allowed him to see past his own pain for the first time since his return. He held out a shaky hand to his wife, beckoning her to where he lay on the bed. Megan fought against the urge to recoil as she looked at the wound on his arm. The bite mark had turned black and was surrounded by red, puffy skin. In fact, the skin on Dalton’s entire arm looked discolored and in bad shape. The infection was in his blood for sure.

Megan wanted so desperately to touch Dalton, but what if the infection didn’t just spread through the blood, but by touch as well? As she stood near the edge of the bed, her heart racing, Megan looked into the pleading eyes of her husband and realized she didn’t care.

She took Dalton’s hand in hers and climbed in next to him, feeling the heat radiating off of his body. He felt like a blast furnace as she touched his forehead. It was as if his brain were boiling in his skull. Megan sprang up from the bed, mumbling something about getting him a cold washcloth, and ran to the bathroom.

As Megan doused the cloth in cold water, her hands trembled. When she glanced at the mirror, a ghost stared back at her. There was no blood in her normally olive-toned skin.

“Get a grip, Megan. Keep it together. You have to for Dalton’s sake.” The whispered words were drowned out by the running water, but had the desired effect. Megan was able to resist the urge to break down crying again. Instead, she turned off the water and rubbed away the tears that had already fallen.

She returned to the bedroom, the washcloth cold and wet in her hands. She leaned over the stationary form of her husband and gently laid the cloth on his forehead, wondering if even though it was wet, it might burst into flames from the overpowering heat coming off of Dalton. When he grabbed her wrist, Megan jumped, startled. She yelped before she could cover her mouth with her free hand as she stared into his eyes. The hazel color she had always loved was beginning to cloud over with a milky film.

“Promise me … promise me you won’t let me change …”

It was only a whisper. Megan stared into his dull, weeping eyes, fighting to break free of their hypnotic effect. She wanted to shake her head and turn away, to avoid seeing the ravages of the virus as it changed Dalton, twisting and warping him into some kind of monster. Although it was still her beloved husband lying before her, he was already changing as his body was consumed with poison.

Megan touched his face gently. “Everything is going to be okay, baby,” she said in a surprisingly steady voice. She forced herself to look deeper into Dalton’s eyes. His fetid breath smelled of rot, and it was all she could do not to gag. Instead, Megan smiled weakly at him. She wanted to run to the toilet and throw up, but stood her ground. This was her husband, no matter what was happening, and she had to make sure he knew she was there for him, would stay by his side no matter what.

Dalton attempted to smile. Although he was wheezing and showing all the signs of a terminally ill patient, he seemed to be winning the battle with his fear.

He retained his grip on Megan’s wrist as he spoke again. “I’m going to head down to the basement. Please help me get down there. We have some oversized trash bags I can lie on. If you wrap a towel around the revolver, it will muffle the blast and not draw any attention to the house.”

Megan only heard the first sentence, and then the blood pounding in her ears was just too loud. She’d felt faint before, but nothing like this.

A couple of minutes later—or maybe it was much later—Dalton was still holding her tight, and all she could remember was screaming “No! No! No!” over and over again while she battered his shoulders with her small fists. Dalton was weak, but still had enough strength to get control of Megan and hold her until she stopped. He waited patiently for her to regain some sense of comprehension before he spoke again.

“God I know this is hard, honey. There is nothing easy about it. I love you. More than you’ll ever know. But I CAN’T change what’s happening to me. Don’t you see? Either I have to do this myself or you have to …” At that, Dalton broke down crying, taking his arms away from Megan as his broad shoulders shook and heaved.

The world was ending right that second. Megan could feel it. There was nothing left. She would pull the trigger and murder her husband, then stick the barrel in her mouth to put an end to this nightmare. She sure as hell couldn’t stay here without him. That wasn’t going to happen.

At that moment, Megan was angry. Angry at herself for letting Dalton leave the house and angry for not letting him go a few days earlier when it might have been safe outside. She was angry with Dalton for coming back infected. She was angry at God, who seemed to be turning his back on them. The world was coming to an end, and God didn’t give a shit.

Dalton’s crying slowed as Megan’s rage grew. He tried to take a deep breath to steady himself, but a coughing jag took him and lasted several minutes. Megan sprang up and ran to get him a towel as Dalton spat up blood, bile, and tissue that had liquified as the virus tore through his system. He gestured for her to stay back, but to toss him the towel.

As the coughing died down, Dalton was able to speak again. “You have to live, Megan. No matter how bad you feel, you need to make it through this.”

The look in Dalton’s eyes told Megan that her husband knew what she’d been thinking. More tears flowed from her eyes as Megan shook her head violently. None of this should be happening. It wasn’t fair.

“I’ll be dead in a few hours, Megan. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s true. But you won’t be. You’re alive, and I want you to stay that way. You can make it through this crap, I know you can! The house is fortified, and by yourself there is enough food and water to last a long time.”

Megan could only stare at her husband. The idea of putting a bullet in Dalton’s head was abhorrent, but she knew that he would pull the trigger if she didn’t. That was as much a part of who Dalton was as anything else: once he made up his mind, he followed through to the bitter end. No chance things would be different this time.

Dalton took the towel and wiped away the spittle and sweat from his face, though his lips remained crimson from the blood he’d coughed up. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and Megan resisted the urge to rush to his side to help him. If he wanted to go down to the basement to commit suicide, he could do it by himself.

Megan wondered if the man she had loved since their third date would do more than say goodbye as he left their bedroom, or would realize he couldn’t go through with this and instead profess his endless love to her. It was a selfish thought, and she knew it. All she could think about was how this would affect her and her existence. She wanted Dalton to fight this thing, resist it, so she didn’t have to accept that this was truly the end of their lives together.

Megan watched as Dalton got out of bed and moved toward the door. He looked at her but said nothing. He could see the parade of emotions on her face and likely knew how impossible all of this was for his wife. And that was when it hit her.

Even as Dalton was dying, he was thinking of his wife, which was exactly what she was doing. In the last few hours of his life, he was more concerned with her well-being than his impending demise.

That was when Megan ran to Dalton and slid under his shoulder to help him make it down the stairs without stumbling or falling. She was too short for him to lean on her effectively, but the pained smile on Dalton’s face told her how grateful he was.

Dalton’s last few hours were better than Megan could have hoped for. They talked about everything, cried, and even laughed a few times.

Toward the end, Dalton touched Megan’s cheek with shaking hands as he started to fade. She watched as her husband fought to stay coherent, her face stunned and fearful.

Dalton had avoided telling Megan what to do up to that point, instead sharing the memories they both cherished in an attempt to forget the inevitable, if only for a little while. But as he felt his body shutting down and the pain gripping him so tightly he could barely resist crying out in agony, Dalton knew he had to explain what needed to be done.

“Do it before I turn. Don’t wait long; it probably won’t take more than a minute or so after my heart stops.” Dalton’s eyes were closed as he spoke, and his skin was gray, almost translucent, as the virus’s victory over his body neared completion.

Megan heard the words, and despite the fact that Dalton’s eyelids remained closed, she nodded down at him, knowing that if she said anything, her voice would crack and she would lose control.

She was still considering pulling the trigger on the .357 Magnum not once, but twice. It would be so easy; they would escape this lunacy together. ‘Til death do us part—that was the vow, wasn’t it? But what if she didn’t want death to part them?

Megan remained lost in her thoughts, only half listening to the rattle of Dalton’s breathing, when she realized that the basement was silent. She glanced down at her husband and tried to hold back the flood of tears as she realized he was gone. His chest had stopped rising, and the loud and ragged breathing had cut off. Dalton lay there, his head resting on the garbage bag she had placed beneath him at his request, his eyes closed for the last time.

So when he sprang back up a moment later, Megan felt her heart stop and her bladder let loose. Dalton grabbed his wife’s arms, looking at her with eyes that were dead and unseeing.

Megan didn’t have time to ponder the fact that she had waited too long to do what he had asked. All she knew was that she was going to die on the basement floor as her husband attacked her. As he pulled her close, she prayed the pain would be fleeting.

Before she could scream out or squirm loose, he spoke.

“… make it … to keep fighting!”

It was all Dalton could spit out. He fell back so fast that his skull thumped against the concrete floor, his grip loosening. Later there would be welts where he had grabbed her.

This time there was no doubt that Dalton was truly dead. He was gone and had taken with him everything Megan loved in the world. His last words echoed in her head: he wanted her to keep fighting.

The terror of his death grip on her receded, and her heart rate dropped back to normal. Megan’s head was pounding, but she felt more alert than she had been in a long time. The jolt to her system had cleared her head.

Megan stared at the body of her husband as she stood. She lifted the dead weight of the pistol as she hovered over Dalton’s corpse. She was the only mourner he would ever have.

It was up to her to say goodbye.

Megan reached for the towel and wrapped it around the muzzle as Dalton had instructed her.

What if I wait?
The thought slithered through Megan’s head like a serpent, its forked tongue tickling and teasing her.
What if I wait to see if he gets back up? I’ll be able to look in his eyes and know for sure.

The thought that Dalton was somehow still in there, inside his ruined body, splashed Megan with irrational hope. She looked at him with love in her heart, wanting to touch him again and wanting him to touch her as well.
He’ll look at me and know who I am. He’ll understand what happened and know he’s still my husband.

The pain in Megan’s stomach made her double over. A huge knot had formed inside her gut. She moaned and almost fell to her knees, but somehow retained her balance.

“You’re the best man I’ve ever known. I will always love you, Dalton.”

As she pulled the trigger, Megan swore she saw her husband’s eyes opening. The gun kicked, and the towel covering the barrel shredded away as the bullet traveled at a tremendous velocity and blasted a hole the size of a dime in Dalton’s forehead. Megan blinked as she fired, and when her eyes opened again, she saw that Dalton’s eyes were still closed.

Megan avoided looking at the mess splattered across the garbage bags underneath Dalton’s head. Instead, she grabbed a couple of extra trash bags they’d brought down and laid them on top of him. She unwound the towel from the gun and dropped it beside the body, trying to be as clinical and removed from the situation as possible.

It isn’t Dalton; it’s just his corpse.
She repeated that over and over in her head in a vain attempt to drown out the part of her mind that wanted to believe that if Dalton had come back, he would have recognized and loved her still.

Megan’s thoughts bounced against one another, tormenting her until she raised an arm to her mouth and bit down, hard. The torment inside her head disappeared with a muffled scream as the coppery taste of blood filled Megan’s mouth. She kept screaming as she stumbled up the steps.