“Oh God.” Lexi cupped her hands over her mouth. “I didn’t know.”
“To be honest, he probably wouldn’t have told you if you had asked,” Chris replied. “He doesn’t talk about those days very often. He’s a good man, despite his faults. I’m afraid of what this world is going to do to him though.”
“You think he’s ever going to wake up? He’s been unconscious for so long.” Lexi’s eyes misted over.
“I don’t doubt it for a second. He’s a tenacious bastard. His family is here and they need him. He’s not done with this life yet.”
Lexi went to the freezer. She popped it open and smiled. “I bet I found something that will make him smile when he wakes up.” She reached in and pulled out six packs of vacuum sealed bacon. “Still cold too!”
“Nice! You win the scavenging hunt for tonight!” Chris beamed.
Heavy footsteps suddenly carried from the back of the house. They were slow and deliberate. Chris and Lexi spun around, nodding at each other before readying their weapons. The steps grew closer, sliding along the floor in slow shuffling sweeps. Chris’ pistol snapped as the safety was disengaged. They both trained their weapons at the corner, and waited.
“Man, you scared the shit out of me!” Chris exhaled as Joe’s face appeared. “Wait till you see what Lexi found!” Joe was sullen, his red eyes pointed out the door towards the pickup. Small trails of clean skin ran down his cheeks, and it was clear to Chris that his friend had been crying. “Joe? What’s up man?”
“There’s a crib upstairs.”
He placed a Disney princess snow globe on the kitchen counter. Its once clear orb now marred with dull red dripping across its glass surface and down the three tiny princesses on its base.
“I’ll be in the truck.” Joe walked out the door without another word.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The dreams faded into distant memory as the real world slowly came back into focus. The dreams were gone, but the aches and pains still remained. There wasn’t an area on my body that didn’t hurt. My lips were parched and my throat was as dry as I could ever remember it being. The warm sunlight on my face would have been a welcome comfort if my closed eyes did not ache from its intensity.
Even before opening my eyes I knew where I was. The familiar smells and sounds of the ancient farmhouse came to me in a flood. I don’t know how, but our journey was over. We made it.
“You call what you brought beer? I wouldn’t wash my pigs in the swill you brought me,” a familiar voice came from my right. “If I had any pigs left,” he added.
I turned my head away from the bright sun and opened my eyes. In an old wooden chair at the foot of my bed I saw Chris. His feet were propped against an open window sill overlooking the front of his property. He wore his old fatigues, pants tucked into his dirt caked boots. His collectors Mosin-Nagant rifle leaned against the wall next to him, a new scope that I had not seen before affixed to its top.
He slowly turned a block of wood in his hands, examining the areas he had carved away with a small pocket knife. Whatever he was making was a mystery to me. It was either the start of a doll with a block head, or a toy truck with legs. His eyes moved up and down, from his work, out the window, and then back to his wood work again.
I think I was more surprised by his whittling than the fact that I had just won a ten round bout with the afterlife. This man had once set a tree on fire because it held a nest that spawned a wasp that had stung his daughter. He was the type who would look more at ease juggling chainsaws, not sitting at a window whittling away at a block of wood.
“Not much else to do right now,” he said as if he had read my mind. “Electricity’s been out for a couple days now. Not sure why I picked it up, but it’s calming.”
“How long?” The words were like sandpaper dragged across my raw and dehydrated throat.
Chris just looked at me without answering. He looked as if he had aged ten years since I had seen him just a month prior. His normally clean shaven face carried days of dirty stubble. The only clean spots on his face were the streaks from his forehead to his chin where sweat had carried away the layers of dirt.
“Including today, it’s been five days,” he answered finally. “You’ve missed a lot since you’ve been out.”
“Abby?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Chris said. “You’re the one we’ve been worried about. You might want to say hello to the two strays you invited here,” he said, nodding towards the other side of the bed.
I expected to see Lexi and Jane. As far as I knew, unless someone hitched a ride with us that I didn’t know about, they were the only strays I was responsible for. Had my knee not been so tightly wrapped I would have leapt straight out of bed and bear hugged the two men.
Matt strode into the room, grinning from ear to ear as he took a seat in an old rocking chair. His normally clean shaven face gave way to an overgrowth of stubble standing against his dark complexion. His favorite Bears cap sat atop his head, covering the new growth of hair sprouting from his usually skin shaved scalp.
Mark leaned against the wall just inside the door. He was a big man, standing over six and a half feet with a gut any self-respecting beer drinker would be proud of. He was the only man I knew that would still be wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter, and that day was no exception. His wide smile was hidden behind a full blown lumberjack beard.
“Check this guy out,” Mark said. “He invites us to drive all the way out here, and he spends all his time in bed.”
“I know. And the beer! That was the best he could do?” Matt said, casting a disapproving look my way.
“Ah crap,” I said, closing my eyes, my head falling back on the sweat covered pillow. “I’m dead. You guys are here.” I lifted my hand slightly, pointing around the room in a circular motion. “This isn’t heaven.”
The room erupted in laughter. I even got a chuckle or two out before the fire in my chest forced a round of painful coughs. My throat was already severely parched, and the gauze bandage wrapping around my chest did little to stop the burning pain from my wound. My head throbbed as I coughed, partially from dehydration, and partially from the cut that had been stitched together on my forehead.
“Well,” yet another familiar voice floated in from the hallway. “Looks like someone’s finally awake.” Joe walked through the door pushing his glasses up with his middle finger. “Hey Rosa, your patient’s up!” he called out.
“Joe?” I said cringing at my raw throat.
“Yeah, I’m here too. Now don’t go tearin’ yourself up trying to talk. I ain’t going anywhere for a while,” he said, crossing his arms as he looked down on me.
What happened next shocked me almost as much as the dead tap dancing their way across the globe. It wasn’t so much that a tan skinned angel swooped in through the door. It wasn’t her striking green eyes that blew my mind either. However, when she came into the room and planted a kiss right on Joe’s lips, my sense of reality flipped upside down.
Joe was never much of a ladies man. He was the friendliest guy one could ever meet. He would do anything to help anyone, friend and stranger alike. That was his downfall with women, however. His kind nature always put him into the “friend zone” long before any romantic interest could be kindled. The last time I had spoken with him he had sworn off the chase, deciding he would be a bachelor for life.
“Thank you sweetie,” she said when she pulled away. “Would you mind waking Abby up, since no one in here thought she might want to know her husband is awake.”
“Yes dear,” Joe said, wrapping her in his huge embrace before exiting, his boots clomping their way down the hallway.
“You gave everyone a hell of a scare.” She sat on the bed next to me. She lifted the bandage from my forehead, the cotton breaking free of the wound it had stuck to. This sent stinging pain zinging across my scalp. “You had quite the nasty infection. If that mob of things didn’t leave when they did, I don’t know if you would have pulled through.”
“Rosa!” Chris snapped. “I thought we agreed not to tell him that part yet!”
“Oh God!” I gasped as my head sank deeper into the pillow. “I put everyone here in danger.” The faint sour smell that had been tickling my senses since I awoke suddenly made sense. The herd had followed me, and the smell of death still lingered in the air.
“No you didn’t. Dan, with all the livestock out there they would have found us,” Chris said as he stood from his chair. “They weren’t that far away from here, and you warned us in time.”
“They followed me. I put my family in danger!” the words were like fire erupting from my windpipe. My voice had lowered to just above a whisper, if that whisper had been raked across sharp gravel.
“Dan…” Chris started.
“Dude, calm down man. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Mark interrupted.
“Yes I did!” I rasped. “Everyone here could have died! I brought them here!”
“Excuse me!” Abby’s voice punched through the room. She stormed into the room, pointing back out towards the hallway outside. “Everyone see that door? Use it!”
Men can be prone to do stupid things. The term “hold my beer and watch this” was coined by men, for men. We have an innate need to get ourselves into worlds of trouble, just because we can. However, when a pissed off woman orders a man to vacate the premises, we listen. Even Chris, as heavily armed as he was, knew a tactical retreat was in order.
The men cleared the room in a silent, single file line. Each one of them carried the same “oh shit” facial expression as they tried to slip out the door as quietly as possible. I even toyed with the idea of trying to get out. Only Rosa remained as Chris slid out of the room. Her eyes locked on the floor as they glistened with tears that were on the verge of erupting.
“Abby, I’m…I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“I know,” Abby said softening her voice. “It’s okay, he would have found out sooner or later.” Abby turned her gaze to me, and I knew I was in trouble. “As for you, you can drop that martyr bullshit. Nothing that happened since we got here is your fault and everyone knows it. You can wait until you’re healed before you start beating yourself up again. Got it!”
“Yes ma’am,” I answered.
“Try not to strain yourself right now,” Rosa said, turning her attention to me again. “The fever seems to have broken, but you still have a lot of healing to do. I’m so sorry for stressing you out already. With everything that’s happened, I guess I’m not thinking like myself.”
“It’s okay. I prefer the truth anyway.” I squeezed her hand before she stood to leave. Another tear found its way onto her cheek as she walked out of the room. Outside I heard her and Joe’s voices trailing off as they walked down the stairs together. Their voices were cut off as Abby closed the bedroom door.
She lay beside me on the bed, taking my hand in hers as she leaned in to kiss my cheek. I looked into her eyes, and her tears flooded out as she broke into deep sobs. She buried her face into my arm, her tears soaking through my shirt. Her body shuddered as she cried.
“It’s okay. I’m alright,” I whispered as I stroked her hair. She hugged my arm so tight I could feel my fingertips tingle. I couldn’t bring myself to stop her though. I couldn’t imagine what she had gone through. While I was taking a stroll through Death’s rose garden, she had been surrounded by monsters that should only exist in our worst nightmares.
After what seemed like an hour, her grip loosened. My hand tingled as feeling rushed back onto it. She lay there, staring at the white, paint chipped ceiling. I wondered if she was on the verge of sleep when she spoke again.
“I don’t know what you said to Chris, but he got the message. We grabbed a few things from the kitchen before going down into the basement. Chris and Joe cleared out the ambulance, and they barely made it inside before the first ones showed up. We could see their legs through the window. They probably would have seen us too if Anna didn’t close the curtain. But we could see their shadows.”
“How many?” I asked.
“No idea. Eventually there were so many that they simply blocked out all the light from the window. That’s when we heard the livestock start screaming. I know how it sounds, but I heard it. They were screaming. We could hear those monsters ripping the animals apart. But the worst was when the animals stopped screaming. Then, all we heard was chewing. There were so many, we heard them actually chewing!”
She stopped, her eyes hinted at fear as she relived those horrifying moments. She shuddered, trying to wash away the memories.
“Rosa was scared to death,” she continued. “She kept whispering ‘I can’t do this…I can’t do this’ over and over again. But she did it. She stitched you together, kept you from bleeding to death. I thought you were gone, and she just wouldn’t let you die.”
Abby’s shoulders heaved as a new round of tears broke free. She got up from the bed and walked across the room towards the small make-up table Anna kept in the room. She passed in front of the window, her features silhouetted against the brilliant sunlight. I was reminded again how beautiful she was, and what drew me to her in the first place.
No, not that. Okay, maybe a little of that. Hey, I am a guy, right?
She gave off a radiance that I couldn’t explain. She was a strong woman, always willing to speak her mind, but tactful enough to spare as many hurt feelings as possible. Her joy with life made her someone that I never wanted to be away from. What we had lived through, what the world had become was threatening to take that Abby away from me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, snapping me out of my daydream. She lifted a tissue from the table, and made her way back to the bed. She lay next to me again, dabbing her eyes and wiping her nose before kissing my cheek.
“Joe is the one that amazed us all,” she continued without missing a beat. “He stood behind her, whispering to her while she worked on you. I don’t know what he said, but whatever it was, it helped. When she finished sewing you up, they sat in a corner, and he wrapped his arms around her. She only moved when she got up to check on you. After that, she would go right back to him. I think he made her feel safe.”
“How long were you guys down there?” I asked, wishing I had kept my mouth shut. I was willing at that point to wade through an army of zombies for a warm glass of dirty water to put out the fire in my throat.
“Two days,” Abby replied. “I don’t know if they just ran out of food, or if they just got bored, but they all left early on the second day. But we stayed until it got dark out. We had enough food and water to last a while longer to be safe, but you got really bad. You had a high fever, and Rosa didn’t want you down there anymore.”
“That explains the wacky dreams.”
“Dreams?” Abby questioned.
“Yeah. Probably fever dreams. Bad ones. My life flashed before my eyes kind of thing, but I think it was directed by Quentin Tarantino.” Okay, I really needed that water. My throat felt like I was close to coughing dust.