Chapter 8

Slate

When my brain finally signaled that the monster was dead, I rushed over and knelt by John. His face was pale and he was not breathing due to obvious lack of the necessary piping. His hands were clasp over his neck in an instinctual attempt at self-preservation, and there was a sucking sound as I pulled them away to see the wound. He never had any chance of survival. The front third or so of his throat was missing, probably in the hound’s belly. I don’t know why I looked because the sight was something from my nightmares. It was something I wished I could un-see.

My right hand was not really working and the pain was picking up. A fun fact about the body is that traumatic injuries often take a while to hurt fully, and the true agony of mine was finally making itself known. Thick rivers of blood pumped from my arm to a tune that matched my heartbeat. My fate would soon be the same as my friend’s if it was left untreated, so I pulled off my shirt and wrapped it tightly. The cloth was fully soaked after moments of exposure, but the bleeding seemed to slow.

Oddly enough, now that my entire torso was exposed to the light it was starting to feel better. The lizard part of my brain seemed to think it was what I needed all along. The burning sensation had receded and it felt way more natural. Well, either that or I was focused on the pain receptors that were firing in my arm. Either way it seemed like the light was providing the energy to keep me going.

The hound had dug long furrows into the front of my body with its claws, but they were not deep. The amount of blood they leaked seemed negligible, but I am sure it added up quickly. My chest itself was a mess and looked like a bloody road map had been carved into my flesh. With these wounds I needed to get back to the basement before passing out from blood loss. I glanced again at John. I did not want to leave him, but there was nothing else I could do. I left, and headed back home.

Rather than taking the longer route down the road, I cut through the knee high cornfield and went directly towards my house, not quite running, but moving as fast as I was able with my injuries. Hopefully nothing would come looking for me by following the bloody trail that lead back to the bunker. After pounding on the door, Seth let me back inside. He was momentarily speechless at the sight of me, which was probably a first for him. He looked past me, looking around for John, and then back to me questioningly.

“Close the door, he’s dead.” I told him, voice harsh from the pain and loss.

I fumbled my way through the dark to my bed and was almost there when Seth lit up a lighter. I looked over at him, surprised that he still had one, since we had not had light in the basement for some time. There were a few more lighters stashed upstairs in the house, but I had not bothered bringing them down because we had not been cooking and no longer had any candles. I thanked him and he followed me as I stumbled across the basement.

“What happened,” He demanded, the small light flickering and showing his angry face. “Where is John? Did you get any water?”

That little shit had no right to pester me now of all times, but oddly all I felt was calm. It was like I was standing outside my body and was watching everything happen. My moment of frustration passed to quickly and I thought it was probably shock setting in.

Instead of snapping, my voice was monotone as I replied, “I said he is dead. Give me a minute to bandage this before I bleed out.”

Seth started pacing back and forth, muttering over and over “We’re going to die,” along with some other unintelligible words.

I dumped most of a bottle of peroxide over my arm and I lost a few minutes as fresh agony overwhelmed me. Woozy and weak, it took a lot of fumbling to finally wrap a fresh towel around my arm. It was secured in place with some duct tape and I began cleaning up my chest. Another towel later and most of the blood and gunk had been wiped off of my body. I tried to dab the furrows on my torso clean with peroxide, but I was beginning to fade. The feeling of floating got stronger, and my body went on auto pilot as my brain function slowed down.

Yea, this was definitely shock. I hoped it was an emotional reaction rather than the medical one which generally preceded death. The reality of my best friend’s death was sinking in, and his mutilated corpse was lying on my neighbor’s cold floor. Like I usually do after making a mistake, I started thinking about all the bad choices I made leading up to it. I was working myself up to a solid bout of anger and self-loathing when Seth spoke up again.

“What are we going to do now Darren? We are going to die without water. You and John were supposed to bring some back.”

“John is dead and if I don’t bleed to death I am going die of infection in a few days anyways.” I paused. Sometimes I speak before I think, and it hit me. Holy shit, I was going to die. There was no way to survive bite caused by that nasty ass creature without antibiotics. Hell, President Calvin Coolidge’s son died while he was in office from an infected blister on his foot because there weren’t antibiotics yet, and he was the freaking President. This was way worse than a measly blister.

Rationally I knew that someday I was going to die, but I never actually believed it would happen. It was one of those uncomfortable situations that I liked to ignore, hoping it would go away. Most of the time, I was not even willing to consider my own mortality. Even after watching millions die after the Voice’s first warning and then watching the world end from a cramped basement, I never doubted my own survival. I was always going to be that guy who miraculously lived when everyone else was dead. Bad shit is supposed to happen to other people, not to me.

I gathered myself before continuing, “We were attacked by one of those creatures we saw on the news. It ripped out John’s throat and took this chunk out of my arm.”

I ignored his insistent questioning for the next few minutes and thought about what would happen over the next few days, which was all the time I had left in this life. There had been bits of rotting flesh in the hell hound’s teeth. That purification had to have gotten into my wound and no little bottle of peroxide would ever clean that out. This was actually happening. I was dying.

Taking a couple of sips from one of the remaining jugs of water I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. I wanted to think of what I would do in my final days but my thoughts were clouded. The fear and adrenaline dump that had kept me moving earlier was quickly fading and I was crashing hard. I fell asleep in moments.

I don’t know how much time passed as I entered a haze of fever induced hallucinations and pain. I could have been moments, days or even a week. I just remember the fiery torment in my arm. It had worked itself up to my shoulder and now was radiating throughout my entire body. I started experiencing extreme temperature changes. One moment I would be shivering under all the blankets that could be found, thinking I would never be warm again. The next I would be stripped to my boxers, sweating and feeling like I was taking a bath in a lake of fire.

Seth was constantly approaching and trying to talk to me, but the words did not reach me. I could hear them. The sounds he was making should have meant something to me, but I was unable to determine what they were. I only knew that I desperately wanted the irritating noises to stop. The noises had a physical presence which weighed down on my shoulders and was slowly crushing me. It had to stop. I needed it to stop.

In one of my hot periods I was laying naked on the concrete floor of the basement in a desperate attempt to cool down. Seth was standing over me, yelling down at me in a rage. I told him to fuck off, maybe not using words as couldn’t speak, but my body language was screaming it. Seth did not leave though, and he continued yelling at me. He started kicking my legs to get my attention. Hell, they may have been gentle nudges, I don’t know. My memory is not to clear on what actually happened, but the pain that filled my entire body made them feel like they were asteroids pummeling me from space. They were leaving craters in my body that may not have been visible to the naked eye, but they left pits of anguish in my flesh.

I bellowed, roaring at him and tried to get him to stop. Maybe anyways, I don’t know what happened. I could have been making whimpering cries or whistling Dixie, but he just would not stop. He would circle off only return and continue with the annoying little kicks. I was furious at him for bothering me, but something was pressing me to the floor and I could not escape him.

On next pass the babble coming from Seth’s mouth rearranged to form words that I could finally understand. He muttering something that sounded like “Fucking fag deserves to die like his fucking faggot friend.”

His face was angry when he said it, taking on a red glow in my sight. It was soon the only thing I could focus on, and it was the cause of everything that had every gone wrong in my life. He was the reason I was in pain. He was the reason John died. He was the reason why the world ended. He had to be stopped, and I was the one to do it.

Going into a rage only heard about in stories the weight that had been holding me down snapped with an audible sound. It sounded like your ears popping when you change elevation to fast, or the loudest bubble to have ever been popped in the universe. I flew from the floor and went charging at him. How dare Seth insult my friend? He had just sacrificed his life on a trip that the worm was to cowardly to make. I tackling Seth to the ground and put him in a full mount while pinning his arms down. I began to howl at him and grabbed his shoulders, shaking them up and down with all my strength so he would my point.

In my head I was telling him to treat my friend with respect and to be worth the sacrifice he made for us, but all that came out of my mouth was inarticulate wailing. Spittle covered his face as I howled at him and continued to bash him against the ground. His head began to flop back and forth, making wet thuds as back of it struck time and time again. When I felt like he understood my point, I got up and stumbled over to my bed. As I collapsed, I watched him roll around on the ground groaning. He slowly worked his way into sitting position and put his back to the wall, facing me. My last memory before passing out was of his face. It was no longer angry, but full of fear. He looked like he gotten too close to a dangerous animal. Now he was waiting, hoping really, that the animal would lose interest and he would be safe once again.

The haze passed, the world came back into focus as finally I woke up. Sitting up was so pain free that it took seeing the bloody bandages and sheets to remember what had happened. I unwrapped the crusty, dark red cloth from my arm and winced as the duct tape pulled several hairs off my arm. Underneath was something completely unexpected. What had previously been a lethal wound was in the process of healing. Instead of an angry wound full of puss, it looked healthy. Even indentions from missing flesh were filling back in and it was scabbing over. It looked like it had been healing for weeks.

I then realized that the room was still completely dark but yet I could see. I glanced over and saw Seth’s corpse was slumped against the wall, and then I heard the voice for the second time.

Holy shit, I just leveled up.