Dalton, Rosie, and I spent about three more hours walking down the highway without a city or town in sight. There was nothing out here in nowhere, Nebraska. The walk this time was much slower paced, but at least we spoke. It felt a lot less professional now and more like we were just two teenagers, walking through the waist-high snow, except we weren’t. I had the constant reminder of the terrible life we were living in my leg. It burned, ached, and inflicted any other form of pain I could come up with. I could tell Dalton’s shoulder was hurting him, too. I couldn't find it in me to feel bad for what I did to him. Rosie looked to be in just as much pain. She was coughing and burning up, but we couldn't do much about it other than continue pushing forward. “Okay, say we do have, I don't know, 10 years left?” Having these metaphorical scenario conversations used to make me upset, but now they were kind of like a strategy game. They kept my mind sharp and ready for changes that may or may not happen. Anything was possible, so some of the scenarios seemed less metaphorical. “You think these blackened will still be around?” He laughed at my question. “Come on now,” I elbowed him. “Humor me a bit?"
“In ten years? Okay, so what do we know? Black plague symptoms only affect young children and generally, people with fully developed brains. That's the best way to put it. Critical hits don’t kill them immediately, so they don’t have pain receptors.”
“Well, obviously. They’re walking around in zero degrees with a t-shirt and shorts. You see that the lady’s fingers and nose fell off from frostbite?” He winced at the thought.
“Right. There’s that, too. Realistically, when it gets warmer, their bodies will decay, right?” I nodded to my own question. Since my hands were clutching my rifle, I spoke using shoulder and wrist movements. “I haven’t seen the infected in Pennsylvania or in Missouri, until now. They have to be new. They’ll decay eventually, though. In ten years, they’ll mostly be gone, and whoever is left will have to be a cleanup crew.”
“All good points, except you forgot an important trait about epidemics, pandemics, whatever the right word is. They evolve, Dalton,” I adjusted my gloves to keep them on my hands. “Once they all decay into screaming mush—which I really hope they don't have a conscience still—the body counts will go downhill, right?” He nodded to let me know he was listening. “Well, viruses are a lot like the human race. They want to live. If their primary hosts are dead, they’ll evolve to spread into different hosts and adapt to them instead. What sucks is that also, by then, the only survivors that were immune to them in the first place are going to be the prime age for the virus to take back over again. You see, it’s single-handedly going to take over the human race. It’s inevitable,” I realized that as I spoke, I truly was starting to see the reality of it all. My mouth was moving faster than my brain, and it was terrible once I started to connect the dots. I could feel the impending doom creeping up on me. "Good news, though," I choked it down. "When we turn into those things, everyone else will be one, too. No fomo."
“Way to be an optimist,” Dalton shattered the silence after my not-joke. “Of course, if we don’t have a cure within the next few years, I don’t think any of us are making it anywhere either.” He sighed.
“Way to be an optimist,” I mimicked him. “If the animals and the harsh weather don’t kill us first, you mean. I will say this much, though, if humans do make it through, our whole species is going to evolve. Only the strongest will survive, and their children are going to be natural-born robots who could eat a whole cow within their first months of breathing.” He was surprised to see me this way. Initiating conversations and talking without a purpose wasn’t the Amelia that he knew. I wasn’t sure why I was opening up to him all of a sudden, but I think I was slowly losing my mind. After what I had just done to survive and what we discovered, I figured I'd try to have a little fun with the new news of the next biggest tragedy.
“You’re making it really easy to keep my will to live.” Both of us stopped talking as Rosie coughed again. We came to a stop, and he patted her back, waiting for her to catch her breath. She was unnaturally quiet. “I’ve known this girl for a week, and already I feel like shes my firstborn.”
“Try two days. Let me see her,” He slowly sat her on the ground. She was wobbly when she walked. I ended up having her sit down. I took off my warm gloves and felt her forehead. She was still burning up. I could see something strange in her eyes, like a new cloudiness I had seen before. I felt behind her ears with a couple of my fingers. Her lymph nodes were very swollen. This wasn’t just a cold from being in the snow for so long. I looked up at Dalton, but the look he met me with let me know that he already knew. It was only a matter of time. “Let’s find somewhere we can stay. Maybe an old house somewhere in the woods, away from the city. Just until she… feels better. How does that sound?” I looked down at her. She nodded. Dalton lifted her back up, and we started to walk, sharing weary glances back and forth. We couldn’t speak these thoughts out loud. The kind of things we wanted to say would send her into a spiral.
We walked for a little over an hour until we gave up on trying to find a little house in the woods. Instead, we followed the next overpass exit road we came across. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere. With no businesses or houses in sight, there was a large gas station. The area for the pumps was four times larger than the actual store, but there was bound to be supplies inside. We could make something out of it. It would be a safe place for Rosie's... recovery. The roof above the pumps had completely caved in, and we realized that the whole place had been partially ransacked by the time we got up to the shattered door. Each window was lying in pieces all over the ground. We weren't as safe as we thought we would be, but it was a start. Maybe they would have some medicine here at least. The pain in my leg was killing me anyway.
We walked inside, and Dalton sat her behind the counter on the ground. It was out of the wind and out of sight from anything that might come running up from outside. As he did that, I walked through the ransacked aisles. There were occasional bags of chips, plastic silverware, and random boxes of tissues. There was no pattern to the items that I found anywhere. I lay down on the ground and shone a flashlight I had found underneath a fallen shelf. Empty bottles, opened candy, and cardboard pieces were scattered underneath the dusty shelves. I blindly swept my arm through and shoved out a few things. I hopped up onto my feet and held an orange box in the air. “Jackpot!” I yelled. “DayQuil!” I looked back down at the pile of medications. They had Antiseptic sprays and Antibiotic pills. I grabbed them, too, and joined Dalton and Rosie behind the counter. I opened the DayQuil first and took out the bottle. The instructions were only for adults. “Well, shit,” I screwed open the cap, smelling the bottle. I checked the date. It was still safe for consumption. “I don’t want to overdose her,” I poured half of the dosage it said for a 12-year-old child, and held it up to her lips. “It’ll make you feel better,” I whispered. She swallowed it and immediately started coughing afterwards. Dalton handed me her blanket from her bag, and I wrapped her in it. She curled up under the counter. I set the rest of the medications on top and started to take off my layers. I wiped some glass off the cleanest portion of the countertop before lifting myself onto it and straightening my leg across it. The wound still looked just as fresh. It was bleeding a bit from the innermost stitches. I couldn’t imagine how much internal bleeding was going on. I popped open the cap of one of the bottles and sprayed it into the cut. I clamped down on the cap, wincing at the pain. I set the bottle down. I just needed a second to breathe, then I'd flush it out again with another spray. It hurt just as much as pure alcohol.
“You want some help?” Dalton leaned against the edge of the counter right beside me. Slowly, he reached back, his face close to mine. I didn’t notice him grabbing the bottle through my confusion. He stayed in front of me, looking at my face, then poured the bottle over my wound. I was ready to push him with how close he was before pouring it onto me, but the pain took my breath away. I clamped my teeth, holding back the urge to punch him. He grabbed a few tissues and dabbed the wound dry, then picked up the Antibiotics. “I’ll grab some water,” he handed the pills over to me. I opened the bottle and poured three pills into my palm. I set out a couple more for him and handed them over when he came back. He exchanged the pills with some water, then I gave the bottle back to him when I swallowed all three pills. It was a fairly normal interaction with such a natural flow. Sometimes I forgot we were fighting to survive. I swished the water around in my mouth and let it sit for a second.
“Food, water, meds, anything else we need to grab before we hit the road?” he downed the rest of the water and scrunched the bottle into a little ball. I tied my scarf back around my head again, only leaving my eyes uncovered.
“Maybe some more ammo?” I tilted my head a bit and scanned the place. I didn’t see any ammo anywhere.
“Back wall,” he pointed his thumb behind him. “Got some for mine, good to sharpen up those aiming skills,” He pulled out his gun and aimed it behind me. He let out a couple of shots. I could hear it pinging on the gas station sign across the parking lot. I swung my leg off the counter and walked over to the ammunition wall. There were tons of bullets in boxes that barely made any sense to me. I took the guns off my shoulder and took out the mags to look at each of the bullets. Maybe they would make some sense if I could match them up. With my luck, that still didn’t work. “Sniper doesn’t know what bullets go in what?” He stepped up behind me. He slid some of the boxes out of the way, grabbed one in the far back, and handed it to me. “For the sniper, and the yellow one for the rifle,” I reloaded some of my mags and took the rest back to put into the backpack. I loaded it all up on the counter as a cold breeze blew through the window. It carried some flurries with it. The snow was starting up again. I walked up to the window and looked at the overpass many yards away. Something was moving on it. Something big. Not like the bear, though. It wasn’t big in height, but wide in size. It was too big to be one being. I couldn’t tell what it was. I knelt by the windowsill and steadied my sniper on it, staring through the scope to get a better view. I immediately stood up, clutching my gun, and looked back at Dalton. He was kneeling, talking to Rosie.
“Hey, Soldier, we have a bit of a problem here. How about you pick up the child, and we get a move on? We’ve got a bit of a swarm of blackened heading towards us.” My tone got more panicked the longer I spoke.
“Hold on, give me a second, something’s wrong,” I cursed under my breath and looked back on the hillside. They knew we were here. I wasn’t sure how, though. Could they smell us? Then I remembered the shots Dalton fired at the sign. They heard the gunshots. I wasn't sure how so many infected people found their way out here, but I knew absolutely nothing about them.
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“Dalton, we don’t have a second,” I kneeled on the windowsill again and fixed my aim. I was too tense and breathing out of fear. I needed to relax. I took a breath and held it again, then started to glide my scope over them. I aimed at the ones in the front first, the ones that were sprinting full speed. I shot one and watched it roll, then another, and another. There were only about five that were running. The rest were moving quickly, but not with such haste. I reloaded again and kept firing, each shot getting slightly easier to handle the recoil. Still, I was struggling even though I landed almost every shot. This gun was too strong for me, and the constant shots were making my ears ring. I missed every few shots because of how hard I would flinch. I stood up, throwing the sniper over my shoulder and grabbing my rifle instead. “Dammit, Dalton! We don’t have a-” He stood up, Rosie in his arms. She wasn’t moving. I slowly lowered my arms to my side, my gun aiming at the floor.
“She was sick,” He carefully laid her on the counter and closed her eyelids. “It took less than a day.” Over the ringing in my ears and the overwhelming emotion, I couldn’t notice what was running towards me. It wasn’t until Dalton’s eyes locked onto an object behind me that I realized one of the blackened had made it farther than I anticipated. I jolted to the side and threw my arm up, and they jumped onto me, sending both of us crashing to the ground. I held my gun up and pressed it against their neck to keep their face from biting me. I didn’t know if it was how normal ‘zombies’ worked when it came to biting and spreading their disease, but I wasn’t willing to be the first one to test that theory. I could feel my arms burning from how much force I had to use. They were going to give out from muscle fatigue. One of the blackened's hands reached down, grabbing my thigh and digging their fingers into my wound. I screamed, and that was followed by gunshots. Finally, they rolled off of me.
“God!” I yelled, my hand hovering above my leg. I wanted to touch it, put pressure on it to maybe help, but I was scared half to death that it would make it worse. I couldn’t stop groaning, nor could I get up. It had ripped my stitches, I was sure. Dalton ran over, the bag over his shoulder, his gun held in his bad arm. He knelt in front of me and grabbed my arm to put around his shoulders. “Fuck, no, no, Dalton, I can’t-” We both looked ahead, two more of the infected running ahead of the mass. He let go and shot them down. “I just need a second. A second,”
“We don’t have a second,” He grabbed my arm again and pulled it over his shoulders, forcing me to stand.
“Medications. Get the meds, get the sutures, get the ammo. I’ll hold them off, but we need it,” I pulled my arm off of his shoulders. My leg felt unnaturally hot as I stood. I could feel the pressure of blood coursing through me now that I was standing. I toppled to the side and grabbed the counter to hold myself. I aimed the rifle and started to shoot the horde heading towards us. I wasn’t good at estimating large numbers back when I was in school, but I was sure there were at least a hundred of them coming towards us. What was worse was that the whole front wall was accessible to them. Every window was busted out. I could hear Dalton scuffling around and grabbing everything he could to throw into the bag. I looked away from Rosie, who was just a few inches away from me. All of the infected that had pulled ahead were shot down, but the main group was shortening their distance from the building. Through the shots, you could hear the occasional ping of bullets hitting the gas tanks. I went to pull the trigger again, but all I heard was a click. I threw it over my shoulder and grabbed the sniper again. When it came to the bullet kill ratio, it was more accurate and efficient anyway.
“Got it! Let's go!” He yelled. He was holding the back door open. I started walking backwards, watching as they got closer and closer. I stood in front of the door and shot at the few that were crawling in through the windows. Once they were down, I didn’t stop. I knew they would keep following us. We weren't making it out of here. I aimed through the gas pumps, shooting the blackened that ran between them. I could hear some of the bullets grazing the metal surfaces. I shot again and again until a light appeared in front of us. One of the tanks sparked. “Come on!” he grabbed my shoulder, but I shrugged him off.
“Hold on,” I whispered. He pulled out his pistol and started shooting at more of them crawling through the windows. I took a breath and relaxed my shoulders. I found the exact hole I had shot into before, the hole that had made a spark. If I could get some gas leaked, I could spark it. I aimed away from the blackened and shot into one of the tanks until it started to leak. I heard Dalton’s gun click as he ran out of ammo, but he had another mag ready. I had never heard someone switch out mags so quickly. I started shooting towards the metal next to the spewing gas until finally a flame caught. “Go!” I yelled. I stepped back, pushing him through the door and slamming it behind us. I grabbed his hand and started pulling him, gritting my teeth through the pain in my leg until he could wrap his head around the fact that we were running. He was much faster than I was right now, and he knew it. He grabbed my arm and wrapped it around his shoulder, pulling down on my wrist from the other side while he pushed me forward with his free hand behind my back. He could hear my painful groans under my breath. Suddenly, we both fell to the ground as a powerful shockwave blew over us. We rolled into the snow, our ears ringing and the ground shaking. I looked down past my feet, my eyes wide and my hands brought up around my ears. I curled up as if it would save me from the bombs, but it wasn’t bombs. It wasn’t the planes again. It wasn’t bombers. It was the gas station. It was me, I had done it. I snapped out of the headspace I had immediately fallen into and crawled forward, pushing on my good knee to get into a standing position.
“What the hell-”
“Rosie! We forgot-” I had been yelling, but he grabbed me again, pushing us up the hill. We took off into the woods. We ran, running through the trees and dead bushes, brambles catching on our clothes.
“The deer stands,” He veered us to the right. I saw it as soon as we turned—a deer stand with a high ladder. I didn’t think any of the surviving blackened had caught up to us, but if they did, what were the chances they could climb? We got up to the ladder, and he let go of me and climbed up. I put my good leg on and used mostly my arms to pull myself up rung by rung until I got close to the top, where he could grab me and pull me up. We lay there, his arms still tight around me like I was going to fall back down. Our heaving breaths almost fell in sync. I was glad I was above him so he couldn’t see the tears streaming down my cheeks. Neither of us moved for a few minutes until our breaths were finally settled.
“I blew up a gas station,” I whispered. I slowly rolled over to the side and sat myself up. Again, I remember how much pain my leg was in. I didn’t realize how dizzy I was either, until I was sitting up. I looked down at my leg. There was a small patch of blood on the white pants I was wearing… on the outermost layer. I took them off and rolled down the rest of my layers to find my leg soaked with a deep red. The sight made me sick. “Okay, okay, you need to pack it and sew it shut, then bandage it,” I leaned against the chair. “I don’t think I'm going to be conscious long enough. That’s a shit ton of blood.”
“No, you’re going to stay awake,” He was digging through the bag. He ended up pouring everything on the ground and gathered a handful of gauze and bandages, then the new suture kit. The moment he put a little bit of pressure on my skin with his bare hands, the pain ached deep inside.
“Fuck, Dalton! Shit!” I pressed my forehead into my arm. My jaw was already hurting from gritting my teeth, and my lungs were burning from my forgetting to keep breathing. I hadn't prayed since I was last with Phoebe, but now was the time to start. He shoved gauze into the wound and grabbed my leg, resting it on his knees so it was elevated. He kept pressure on it, ignoring my yelling in the first few seconds. “I hate you,” I whispered. Sweat beaded my pale forehead. He pressed down a little harder, making me tense.
“Hold it back, Sniper. I’m helping you here,” I pinched my eyes shut. “Smart move back there,” He tried to switch the subject to distract me. “Wait until the majority is in the flash zone, then let it blow. Strategic estimation,” He slowly released pressure.
“You'll have to take them out one by one. Slowly, to let the bleeding stop,” He nodded as I spoke, following my words. I had stopped watching. I kept my eyes pinched shut and my thumb and index wrapped around my temples. It took him around five minutes to safely hold the gauze in place, and then I was forced to look and hold the skin together. He grabbed the suture kit and sewed it shut. This was the least painful part. It seemed like a surface pinch instead of deep, unmanageable pain. Finally, he finished and wrapped my whole thigh in tight bandages.
“I hope you don’t hate me more,” He grabbed something from the ground and tossed it to me. Pain killers. I looked up at him after reading the label.
“If it didn’t take so much effort, I'd shoot you,” I weakly spoke, popped a couple pills in my mouth, and swallowed. I didn’t want to waste any more water than we had to. “Thank you,” I closed my eyes and leaned my head over on the seat next to me. “We’re never going to get there at this rate. If everything keeps going wrong, I mean,” I kept my eyes shut. I felt like it made the pain easier to manage. A new thought popped into my head that made my heart drop. Rosie. She had died within a matter of hours. I opened my eyes again and sat up, looking at him. “What happened to her?” He stopped picking up the objects all over the ground and looked at me.
“Rosie?” I nodded. “Her skin was black,” He slowly sat back. “I don’t know how long she was… like that, but from the second she burrowed under the counter, I think she was already,” He didn’t have to finish his sentence. She was young. Very young. That was a common pattern in this disease, for it was somewhat merciful with its quick fatality to the children.
“We can't tell her brother when we find him. Everyone’s little siblings, everyone's parents, grandparents, they’re all dead. There isn’t an explanation needed as to why or how, because in the end, they were all wiped out by the soldiers.” He looked at me like I was crazy. I did feel a little crazy. I would never say this. It made me feel like I didn't have any humanity left, but logically it was the right choice. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was the best decision. He saved his protests. “I do have a question, though. Back there, you ran out of ammo and switched out the mag within, what? A second at the max? How the hell did you learn to do that?”
“It’s the same skill you have, Sniper,” He put the rest of the objects back into the bag and sat next to me, handing me half of a cracker. “I’m gifted,” He joked.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Soldier,” I could see a strange reaction in his face when I called him that. I cracked a smile. I was getting under his skin for the first time. “Sniper and Soldier against the world. What will they face next?”
“The end of the world,” he muttered. I didn’t realize he had a bottle of scotch sitting next to him. Of course, he grabbed that amongst all other things in the gas station. He popped it open and took a swig. I could smell it. It was strong enough that it burned my throat from just the air. He handed it to me. “Mix that with some pain killers, and you’re set, yeah?” I scoffed, tilting it back and drinking until I felt my throat tightening. I put it on the ground, gripping the neck of the bottle and fighting back my vomit. I coughed and finally regained my grip. “You’ve got to be in a whole lot of pain.” He grabbed the bottle from me and took another swig. “Gifted in drinking, too?”
“Man, if only you could see me back in the days,” he laughed as I said that.
“Back in the days? Are we elderly, now?” I laughed too.
“Well, I was known to be at parties. I hosted one of the biggest ones in the state." I could see the look in his eyes change. He was seeing me differently now. "I'll tell you some stories so I don't pass out."
