"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
Revelation 6:8
Soft tapping on the window beside me. My eyes snap open, a sharp intake of breath as panic instantly grips me, wrapping around my chest like a cold vice. Frozen, quickly waking from the recesses of my troubled sleep, my mind assesses the danger. Rain..soft rain tilted just so, pattering on the pane like eager fingers. The vice slowly melts, allowing me to breathe once again, to recognise my surroundings as familiar. My hand steals slowly off of the mattress pad I'm lying on, wheelframe long ago discarded for silence, and rests on the familiar grip of my pistol. Wrapping my fingers around it, I pull it to me and hold it to my chest, its coolness comforting me. My eyes adjust to the darkness, identifying the dusty props of the ceiling fan above me. I think about how long it's remained motionless; stilled since the power died....since everything died.
With a soft sigh, I pull myself upright, my pistol still cradled against me, then falling into my lap as I run my hands over my face. My face feels old, the skin rough and dingy, like a coal miner. So much for my youthful 20s, I think with a wry smile. Water is a precious commodity, the rain buckets on the roof providing only a little relief from bodily odors and greasy skin. Not thats there's any need to bathe, I think. I stand, gripping the pistol now, quietly moving across the bedroom and into the bathroom. Laying the gun in the sink, I slide a plastic bucket under me, squatting with one hand propped on the bathtub ledge and relieve myself with practiced indignity. Hitching my trousers back up, I slide the bucket back behind the toilet and sit on the ledge, feeling into the tub for the water level. Just under half full, the wetted tips of my fingers reveal. Enough for a few more weeks, with caution. Dunking my hand briefly, I retract it and run it over my face, releshing the moisture. I look about the dark room briefly, wondering what time it might be, if time mattered. Light equals day, Night equals darkness and both don't belong to me anymore. All I own now is my life, survival my unwanted hobby, a forced occupation. God, how did it come to this, I wonder? I've forced my mind over that question, over and over, the broken record turning the possibilities inside and out like a scratchy sweater.
I think back to the days before the darkness, before they came. No one paid attention to the rumors, isolated reports showing up first in the tabloids, then on the footnotes of internet news blurbs. A virus, some sort of bird flu named Goliath of all things,that made its victims mad with fever, blood boiling in their heads, a large lump finally building on the brain, cracking their skulls like eggshells. A new fever, we all thought, so bloody what? American media was predictably efficient at silencing international reports of people collapsing in the streets, convulsing in their offices, homes, projectile vomiting blood and mucus in churches, police stations and hospitals. The CDC reassuring the public that the grainy, bootleg videos streaming out of Bangkok, Baghdad and Johannesburg showing shaky images of people clawing open their shirts, blood and sputum spewing out of mouths, noses and eyes were fabrications. Youtube shorts going viral, blogs springing up casting theories and conspiracies, "vaccines" needled into crying children in front of lines of anxious parents and yet....yet we dismissed it all, every ****ed word of it, and why? We buried it because of what was said about its inevitable conclusion, the apex of infection. Not the reports of a horrific death, mind you. That was actually sensationalized, eagerly snatched up by media dogs and regurgitated in the form of International on-the-scene journalists, tearing at one another like rabid beasts for photos of bloodstained gurneys, trucks piled with trussed corpses, the oily smoke of the bonfires. It wasn't until they started capturing video of the aftermath of Goliaths terrible hold that the censoring began. Journalists cut off as their cameras swung toward the shrieks of bystanders, the gunshots of police and military, the twitching in the piles of the dead. We were assured that increasingly frequent reports of American casualties staggering to their unsteady feet, slack-jawed and shuddering, were fabrications of internet-addicted conspiracy theorists. I remember the Secretary of Defense laughing out loud during a press conference at the very notion that said corpses were turning on the living, biting and consuming their flesh. We, on our armchairs, the AC blowing in our faces and lights on in every room, ate our microwaveable popcorn and nodded in relief. Everything would be alright, we were assured. The military and local law enforcement were handling the situation. We were in control,they said, and we swallowed that pill without even asking for a glass of water...
I get up from the bathtubs edge, the numbness in my bum slowly receeding as I reclaim my pistol and softly make my way out of the bedroom, through the dark halls of my home. Rooms seem enormous in the gloom, devoid of the furniture that now lies piled up in front of the doors. I step into the living room, the grimy carpeting masking my steps as I head to a window, the sprinkle of rain outside still patting small blots on its surface. I tenatively pull back the thin curtains and peer through the boards, nailed securely onto the windowframe, into the night. The street is dark, barely visible without moonlight, the carnage of my neighborhood hidden gratefully from view. Then, just barely within the limits of my vision, I hitch my breath as a form slowly shambles into my view, out of the blanket of light rain. First simply the frame outlined, shoulders slumped as if in defeat. Head jutting forward, then moving sharply from left to right as if bieng pulled, neck bones popping from the effort. It moves closer into my vision on legs stiff, the occasional twitch causing it to stagger, then regain balance as it moves methodically closer. I can now see the clothes, drenched through with rain, shirt completely dark with the blood of its first demise. Sweat bottoms torn and sagging, stained also from the blood that oozed from its anus in the final convulsive deathstruggle it inevitably lost. Arms twitch, hands clench and claw at its sides as it moves even closer. My mind races with anxiety as I watch its lumbering approach. I know that though its eyes, white and bulging impossibly out of the sockets, cannot see, its hearing is excellent, even in white noise blanket of rainfall. I look, breath in short gasps, at the slack jaws, the chin hidden in old blood, the strings of sinew and flesh caught in broken teeth and the bulging forehead, incredibly large, jutting over the eyebrows like a giant grapefruit. The skin is split, festering, skull showing the fractures that appeared as the lump forced the skull to house its substantial mass, killing the victim and ensuring its reanimation. I watch as it stands, grey skinned body occasionally convulsing as if shocked, head still quickly jerking to the left, then right, as though its bieng twisted off by unseen hands. I imagine its soft moans and hisses, the milky eyes rolling about, on the verge of escape, the jaw that moves in a constant chewing motion. It lingers in my vision for a moment longer, then unsteadily and slowly lurches away.
I stare after it as it leaves toward the darkness of the street. This is what they didn't want us to see. This was what we were in control of. We believed..we had no reason not to, until they came crashing into our fragile lives and shattered every security pipedream we had. We believed, even through the gunshots and explosions merely blocks away. We had faith in our safety even through the screams of our neighbors and the startled wails of car alarms. I believed even when Rex was barking madly outside and my husband walked into the room with his pistol, usually locked up in the closet. I even believed when John told me to board up the windows and move the furniture to lock us in. I believed..until I saw Mrs. Tentlach tackled on the lawn by it, by them. They dragged her down, biting into her neck, her arms, her shrieks reaching a crescendo I thought impossible coming from a human bieng. I watched as they feasted...watched as my world changed before my eyes with gnashing teeth and clawed hands.
I move away from the window, wiping the blur of tears from my eyes. I steal into the kitchen, sitting slowly on the floor in the midst of discarded cans and wrappers. I peer into some of the cans, then probe them with my fingers, knowing that their contents have long since gone. I sigh, hoping to force my hunger away. Lately, it's been getting harder to stay fed. John, braveheart but not Mr. Survival, had at least known to fill the tub, bottle the toilet tank and fill every container with water, before the power went out. He compiled our food and taught me to ration it. He situated the buckets on the roof. He re-enforced the windows, doors and pulled guard as I slept. I watched him take less in the weeks following the end, always conserving, always keeping me fed while he became weak. He was the one who left me alone after he died on the roof, the single gunshot to his temple waking me from sleep and stripping away my last shred of security. Now I wander the house, eating a little, sleeping a little and watching them a lot. I see neighbors long turned, wandering the neighborhood. I see the bones of Rex in the backyard, (my mouth waters.) I see the water slowly receeding from my stores, the buckets on the roof gathering little. I see John....his bones in the kitchen where I gathered him in my desperation, his remains keeping me fed a little longer. I look down at the pistol in my hand and see my eventual salvation, should I find Johns courage/cowardice.
I see the world. It is pale....
Strongbow 11/03/10
