Chapter 6

Desmond Slattery

The bunker stunk. It was not a musty stink from the small water leaks that tend to get into basements, but the stink of humans. Specifically it was the three of us. If someone decided to teach a class on what to pack in a post-apocalyptic bunker, they should focus on packing health care products like soap, toilet paper and deodorant. Three dudes in a basement with little ventilation during a hot summer, wiping their asses with their hands, was fucking gross. We had no soap hands or bodies, and although we showered daily while we had power, it was like a pebble trying to hold back a mudslide when it came to the stink. At least we still had toothpaste. If I had to put up with Seth’s nasty ass having dragon breath on top of everything else, I might have decided to end it right there.

The smell was not a deciding factor, but it was in the back of my mind when we decided to go out looking for supplies. That and the lack of information on what was happening in the world made us subconsciously repress the fact that we could just go get water from the well outside. It was just miserable sitting in that basement smelling like butt. The atmosphere surely played a part in deciding if a trip outside was worth the risking our lives. At the time we left it we thought the trip would be worth it.

The abnormal canopy of clouds had kept down the heat and the humidity somewhat, so if we had been wearing short sleeves it would have been fairly pleasant outside. Unfortunately we were wearing long sleeves, jeans and ball caps in hopes that we would not be mutated. John was wearing one of my 3x shirts and the extra long sleeves stopped just past his elbows. It left his forearms and down open to the air, so we had to cut off up some socks to cover the rest of him. Prior to leaving the house we had looked out of the ground floor windows and we did not see any indication an incursion to the yard by animals or mutants. Nothing was moving outside. The oily film from the light seeping through the windows already had me feeling dirty. Fully exiting the house had me feeling like we were walking through warm bathwater.

Covering up defiantly helped, but eventually my skin gradually heated up. The miasma permeated down into my muscles they began writhing under my skin like nest of snakes. I guess this is what was happening to everyone, the change that was turning normal people into mutated killers. I looked at my hands expecting to see my something undulating under my skin, but they were normal. I could swear the feeling was sinking into my bones. It was an odd sensation, causing the bones throb with every step. Each step sent a pulse that traveling from my feet up my legs and it dispersed into my torso.

I thought about asking John to pick up the pace, but even with the craziness happening under my skin I was honestly enjoying the walk. We were moving at a good pace, our long strides crunching on the gravel of the driveway. I was worried, but not overly so, and enjoyed the change in scenery and smells.

Thinking back, we should have been more tactical and taken the whole end of the world thing a little more serious. Walking up the drive to the street, it just did not seem like that big a deal. I had also not brought up the correlation between all things periwinkle and the gayness that was Big John directly to him. John was not a flashy homo by any means. He was just like any normal guy. We were basically the same person, minus the fact that he loves the cock. We dressed alike, spoke using similar patterns and had backgrounds that were much the same.

I had even seen Eric wear a similar purple in the past and overheard John complimenting him on the outfit. I felt it was time to address the elephant in the room, the periwinkle factor. There hasn’t yet been occasion for me to give him a hard time about much recently. It didn’t feel right to breach the subject while stuck in a basement and dealing with the fact that everyone he knew and loved, present company excluded, was most likely dead.

As I am a thoughtful and considerate person, my general rule of thumb was to wait at least a day before talking about a potentially touchy subject. I had waited more than a month at this point and it was time to start the friendly ribbing up again.

“Man this is so weird. I can feel it getting under my skin. Do you feel it too? I imagine this is what it feels like to be exposed to radiation, not that I know anything about that kind of stuff.” I blathered to John.

“Yea, my skin is burning,” he replied, still a little grumpily. He was not the type to make me go looking for supplies by myself, but he was not happy about being out here. Even knowing that it was needed, the supply run was mostly my idea.

“Hey, so…what color would you call this world ending atmosphere?” I asked. “Seems to be some shade of purple, but I don’t think I would call it quite that.”

“Purple works for me,” The big man seemed distracted as he replied to me, his eyes and head were swiveling as he warily watching the surroundings. That actually seemed a good idea so I started doing the same.

“Hmm, It’s not really a true violet, or and too light to be a grape, or an eggplant,” I grinned, looking at him from the corner of my eyes. “More of a periwinkle don’t you think?”

“You’re an asshole, Slate” A phrase that has been said to me many times from many people came out of John’s mouth. He looked over at me, but I could tell he was grinning with his eyes.

“Aw, come on man, the fucking end of the world is in periwinkle and you got nothing?” I exclaimed. I had expected more of a reaction from him and stewed on it a bit. I was getting tired of his sulking and wanted my friend back. Just because everyone being eaten by their previous neighbors who had been transformed into mutated cannibals didn’t mean you got to be a baby about it. He had retreated into his own world for too long and I was going to jolt him out of it.

“I would think that your people would have known that this one was coming,” I muttered that comment under my breath, but made sure it was loud enough for him to hear.

His breathing had picked up a little and I could see his shoulders shaking a little from the heaving. His face got a little flushed and I finally pushed him over the edge. The damn giant was going to snap me in half. I scooted sideways from him as he paused his walking, being sure to be out of his extended grabbing range.

He stopped and I could see the anger in his eyes as he looked over at me. He then shook his head, with its long hair greasy from lack of shampoo. The simple movement seemed shrug away his serious mood and I saw him smile. It was his first since this all started.

“Ok, Ok. You’ve figured it out. If someone as simple-minded as you could put it together, then you deserve the truth. The periwinkle was a little obvious after all. You are correct, my people have taken over the world. You will now all serve us as we bounce around on our rainbow eating unicorns.”

I start walking again, quickening my pace to just to be safe before glancing backwards. More stupid comments were tossed over my shoulder at him and he started to reply like old times. I know that some people would hate me for the way I talk to him, but fuck them. He is my best friend and our relationship will be defined by us and not by their prejudices or preconceived notions of how we should act.

Today, well pre-apocolypse, people were still victims of hate-crimes, where people are singled out and made victims for reasons of skin color, sexual orientation or whatever. It wasn’t as extreme as years ago, but there are always going to be assholes in the world that will use any excuse to be a jerk. I will never down play a person’s individual struggle but life is tough and everyone is trying to live their own version of it.

I just never felt that anyone else’s problems were bigger than mine. Everyone lives their own individual life and people handle pressure and adversity in a lot of different ways. Our relationship was just fine and we are happy with it. I just have no fucks to give for anyone who judges it. If John, my best friend in the world, had a problem with it, he would not be my friend.

To me, it is hypocrisy to claim that just because you’re gay, black, from Toledo (those dudes are weird), or whatever, to think that others are obligated to defer to you and your judgments on the way they should act in relationships that are not involved in. For example, I sympathize with those who are confused/comfortable or whatever with their gender orientation and consider themselves “transgender”. I wish them well in their search for personal happiness. But if others are uncomfortable because a chick with a dick decides to piss in the girls room beside their 4 year old, than it is their right be so. Their discomfort should not be ignored just because you feel it shouldn’t exist. Treat people as you want to be treated, don’t ignore others just to ease your own pain.

I don’t know what the answer is in a lot of those situations, I just feel like peoples personal views shouldn’t be forced on others. It’s easy to make rules when it physically hurts someone, it’s a lot tougher when its’ their feelings that are injured. I don’t know why I was thinking of it, that stuff probably doesn’t matter anymore. Morals in the new world will most likely be decided those in power and not the consensus of the people.

“Hey John, if I gender identify as a chocolate chip cookie, can I join you’re post-apocalyptic unicorn club?”

It was starting to feel halfway normal until we heard a rustle out in the fields. We knew it was not the wind, but John looked at me like he had been telling me to shut up the whole time. Nothing jumped out as us as we continued on but I drew out my Glock and kept it in my right hand for the rest of the walk.

My house set back from a rural two lane road about fifty yards. The walk to the neighbor’s driveway was about quarter mile down the road and then thirty or so yards down his driveway to his House. Even taking our time, the whole trip took less than ten minutes.

Built in the late 1990’s the one story brick rancher had lost a lot of curb appeal compared to my prior visits. No one had been mowing the lawn and the house had the looked to be sitting empty. Normally even a few weeks of neglect would see a couple feet of growth in a yard with the fertile Ohio soil; plant growth had been slowed down, probably due to a lack of sunlight. The grass was maybe eight inches or so tall right now, just enough to be uncomfortable walking through, but not high enough to stop you. In the dim light, it felt like we were watching the beginning of a scary movie. The type where you scream at the dumbass characters to stay outside.

The house was owned by Katy and Jud Carter. They worked in the city and had bought the house to because they did not want to live down town or in suburbia, but wanted to live close to where they worked. They had a cute little daughter, Misty, who was five years old. I have not had a lot of experience around normal healthy children but I dealt with many abused ones in my previous line of work. Hanging around Misty had been so different compared the broken ones I met in the past. She was a little ball of energy and laughs. She would run around from one thing to the next, playing pretend or just exploring. She almost always had a smile on her face and was so happy with the simplest things. I dreaded the thought of them being home, but changed. I always hated the zombie movies with infected children. They take something so innocent and precious and turn them into tiny walking horrors. If they freaked me out on the television, it would be a hundred times worse in real life.

Until we had walked up to the front door I still had the expectation that it would not be a huge deal to get some supplies from the neighbors. That we could just stop by, ask them to burrow a cup of sugar and what not, and then have a nice walk home. At the front door I noticed for the first time the unnatural quiet. There was no noise other than the soft rumbling of the clouds. The lack of cars running up and down the highway made my breathing sound abnormally loud, like a bellows pumping continuously to fan a fire. It seemed wrong to disturb the quiet, and looking at John it seemed like he felt the same way. Knocking on the front door right now seemed like another of my stupid ideas.

“Think we should just knock?” I asked John. I asked him the obvious question hoping he would have some better solution.

“I don’t really want to be shot for breaking into the house if they are inside,” replied John.

I agreed with him wholeheartedly and gave the front door a couple easy taps. Waiting a bit, I gave it a couple of louder knocks and then a couple good thumps that could probably be heard back at my house. No one answered. I tried oddly placed center door knob and found it to be locked. I told John that I did not want it visible from the front that we had broken into the house and started around back. We found some sliding glass back doors that were conveniently unlocked.

I pulled the door open and the air rushed out, carrying with it the pungent odor of death. I had run enough calls back with CPD to recognize the smell of rotting corpses. This time it was far stronger than I was used to. Usually people found a dead body within the first few days of the person passing so the stench was usually manageable.

People generally had a decent support system in place to check on them if they were ill, so a friend or family member will find them within a day or two, or sometimes a neighbor will call. In an apartment complex people can usually smell their former roommates within about four days of their passing and so we also got calls that way. It was rare to come across a body as decomposed at this house smelled like, and I had only seen a couple. When they are this bad, you usually send for the fire department and put on self-contained breathing apparatus before entering. We were both gagging and unable to proceed. I pulled the door open all the way and motioned John to step away with me.

We needed the supplies and every house we went to was going just going to increase our risk of encounter, so after a talk we decided to go in anyways. I had a handkerchief in my pocket which I handed to John. I pulled my shirt up over my nose as he held it over his nose. It was just chance that had John was standing closer to the door, so he entered first. Thinking back that was another stupid ass decision. I was the one that was armed and trained to make house entries, but I had let him lead. I had always deferred to him though. With his size and looks most people did. It was just natural to follow him as he ducked down a little to get under a door frame and went inside.

It happened fast. As soon as I got inside I heard was the clacking of claws against the imitation Pergo wooden flooring. A beast jumped into John, knocking the big man onto his back and latched onto his throat before either of us could react. The skin covering his neck ripped as it was torn away and it made odd wet sound I had never heard before. The creature shook its head back and forth before pulling back with a disgustingly large piece of bloody flesh hanging from its mouth.

I knew instantly that John would not survive having the front half of his throat removed even though he was looking at me eyes that were pleading for help. The brutality of what just happened stunned me, locking me in place while the creature stared at me and chewed.

It looked to be my next door neighbor’s mutated golden retriever. The animal was no longer a seventy pound loveable ball of fur that would let Misty crawl all over it. Whatever had changed everything else had made it something else, something evil. The animal had somehow grown to around three and a half feet tall and looked to have put on another forty pounds of muscle that was spread across its figure in bulbous shapes that seemed to writhe in the dim light. I noticed as it stood there chewing that the front shoulders and head were a lot higher than its back half, giving it a lopsided appearance.

I was enraged, but it just ignored me as it calmly ate a piece of my friend. Forgetting about the gun, I stepped forward and kicked hard at its ribs. It tried to pull back but the tip of my work boot connected with a solid crunch that propelled it across the room. After scrambled to its feet, and instead of retreating like a normal canine would, it came charged at me. It lunged at my throat but I was able to bring my right forearm up in time to protect it. Instead of killing me, it latched onto the meaty part and hung on while I started throwing weak left handed punches into its ribs. Its oversized front paws were clawing and ripping at my shirt, leaving thin bloody trails behind with every swipe. Unable to support its weight I fell to my knees. My vision was tunneling and the only thing I could focus on was its teeth and the pain. In a brief moment of clarity, I remembered that I was wearing a Glock model 22. I pulled it from right him with my weak hand and pushed it into the creature’s side. Screaming and pulling the trigger I heard an impotent click.

I dropped the useless hunk of metal and pulled a small Strider tactical fixed blade knife from my belt. I shoved the knife into the freakish muscle on the animal’s side over and over until it let go. It fell to the ground and flopped around trying to stand up but its tiny back legs kept giving out. Refusing to quit the thing tried to pull itself away with its long forelimbs. The claws clattered against the floor again as it tried to scramble away but it couldn’t gain traction on the blood soaked floor. I glanced at John who was lying on his back no longer moving and then back at the thing that had killed him. Cradling my wounded arm to my chest I tried to stomp its head but it turned around and snapped causing me to miss. I gathered myself again and stomped halfway down its back, breaking bones repeatedly until it collapsed. Working my way up its body I continued to stomp the animal and its head finally crunched open. Still too worked up to stop, I kept abusing it until all that was left was a bloody piece of mashed meat with little pieces of white bone sticking out.