CREATURES Page 3

  Why, why, why? Why me? I wanted to be like the others, unknowing, hardly more than amoebas squiggling around, hunting for someone somewhere to halt them in their tracks, to cut off their heads or blow them to pieces so they could never move again.

  If there was a God who had let this plague overtake us, it was terror enough that he allowed us to walk when we should be resting in peaceful graves, but to let me know it, oh no, that was impossible.

  I beat with my fists against the damp dewy earth and cursed him, cursed the thought of any god who might let me suffer this most unholy of unholy hells.

  June 7

  I slipped a note today beneath the door of my home. The brainless ones tried to stop me. They pushed and pulled and tried to take it from my hand, but I held them off. I wanted to say goodbye. That's all. I wanted to leave something behind saying that I loved them.

  I didn't tell them I am one of the dead. I couldn't go that far. When these pages are found they might know then, but not yet. I just told them that I had to be away. The army recruited my help, they had actually drafted me, and I could not come home again. Maybe for years. Maybe never. Because everyone knew how the military needed warm, willing bodies. I told my wife to stay inside and obey orders. Never to come outside without an army escort.

  I told them to be brave and that one day I hoped we'd be together again. I'd try everything I could to make that happen.

  I told them I loved them. I would always love them.

  Afterward, I wandered toward the edge of town, sorrow the guiding force. There is nothing else to do, nowhere else to go except away from the city. Downtown is empty except for the military. The army controls everything. The power plants, the telephone company, the farms, the deliveries to those few living urban dwellers who are left in their prison homes.

  I couldn't follow the freeway until I learned how to walk better, how to control the jerky movements of my extremities. I knew I wanted to go south, toward the islands. I wanted to leave the country. But I would have to learn, very quickly, how to pass for human to ever make it to Key West.

  There are people on the roads because the troops are there, coming and going, always on the move, hunting down zombies like rabid dogs, making deliveries of the goods that will keep civilization running for a little while more.

  I tried concentrating on my legs, my feet. The contractions, when I rise at dawn, draw my fingers toward my wrist, my thumbs toward the palm, my feet outward, toes curled under, my arms bent at the elbow up toward my face. Each time this happens, it comes on slowly, while I'm immobile and at rest, and I fight it, but unless I get to my feet and begin moving, it always works this way. I expect this is a form of rigor mortis returning, trying to make me like the real dead, the way I should be. It's nature insisting I lie down dead, fucker--lie down dead and silent and unmoving, you piece of shit.

  When I work really hard at it, I can get all my parts to move naturally. Pick one foot up, set it down, pick up the other, set it down. I found a way to do it in a small loping walk, as if perhaps I had a hitch in my hip, or an old war wound.

  Then I had to work on my arms, forcing them into a looseness so they would swing in rhythm with my strides. Flexing my fingers is the worst thing of all. The bones pop and I don't know for sure, I'm not conversant in anatomy or pathology, but I think those bones are breaking. Over and over again. The thought...as I flex and...stretch...makes me want to scream.

  It took miles and miles before I could learn to walk decently. Every time a convoy passed I had to duck into the palmettos and lie flat on my belly, eyes braced on the ground. Then up again, working at it, finding it easier the more I tried. I believe the only reason the others can't do so well, why they stagger and stumble and walk stiff-legged is because they cannot think, their brains are dead, so they can't concentrate the way I have managed to do.

  When I reached Interstate 95 it was like being drawn into an exodus. Whole families streamed north and south. They passed one another on each side of the freeway, staying clear of the rolling refrigeration trucks and the lines of green army jeeps. Again I brought my arm to my face to see how I smelled. I can suck in air and let it out. I can smell and taste, see, hear, and think. But I am corrupt. More and more each day. And I cannot speak. I have decided to pretend I am mute. I have no other choice.

  I keep a small pad and a pencil for writing notes. I took it, this notebook, a knapsack, fresh clothes, deodorant, soap, a washcloth, a pungent aftershave, and a flashlight from a deserted house. It was there I cleaned and bandaged my wounds. I put a large adhesive bandage on the bite at my neck. If someone asks about it, I'll just say it's a boil. Lack of iodine, you know, not enough salt in my diet. None of us get enough salt these days, or sugar, or coffee, or tobacco. Or milk for our children, never enough milk. I expect the shortage has something to do with zombies eating the cattle, but I can't be certain of that.

  My plan, what there is of it, is to flee Key West to Cuba. There I might find a ship or plane that will take me to Europe or South America. Or Mexico. I'd like to go to Mexico. There haven't been any reports from that country in months. Maybe things are better there. We have been told the plague is everywhere, it's worldwide, governments are in chaos, but I can't mingle with humans much longer. I expect it will be an easier task to search out someone like me in some place where the army is not in such tight control.

  Already there are sores erupting behind my knees, between my toes, in my crotch, and beneath my arms. Places where air doesn't circulate enough.

  I won't be able to pass as the living forever. I will make my escape and my search now before I have to begin repair on all these putrefying body parts.

  I have been dead a week.

  June 8

  There were some men and women traveling alone. I didn't stand out so badly. I kept my distance as best I could. I had to concentrate. I had to keep my eyes lowered so the soldiers and the passersby couldn't see that my eyes are sunken and they have no sheen. No moisture. It's getting more difficult to close my eyelids. I haven't any pain, but the grating of lid on eyeball is unnerving. Like sandpaper over old dry wood. I can actually feel them grinding down when I try to blink.

  And the sun is terrible, a fiery ball hanging overhead burning, scorching my back and shoulders, the top of my head. I should have taken a hat. I've been so stupid. I often catch myself gazing longingly at the refrigeration trucks. I could lie down and let the cold halt the deterioration of my cells. I could let the frost cover me over like silken threads.

  A stranger came alongside to walk with me a ways. I was grateful there was hardly any breeze to waft my scent to him. He tried to hold a conversation just as I feared he would.

  "Goddamn shame we're run out of the cities," he said. "The damn military thinks they can tell us when to take a crap and when not to. Myself, I'm going down to stay in my old fishing camp at Duck Key. Got enough ammunition here"--he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at a shopping cart he hauled behind him loaded with goods--"to blast any crazy dead fuck wants to mess with me."

  I nodded. Took my pad and pen from my shirt pocket and wrote, "I'm sorry, "I can't speak. I had an operation. Cancer."

  "Well, hell, that's too bad," he said. And then he proceeded to bitch about everything under the sun for the next two hours while I nodded and plodded and concentrated on keeping my feet in time with his and my fingers loose. And my gaze down.

  I really wanted to tell him. Tell him shut up! You're alive so don't complain, not about anything. Try feeling some kind of elation now. Feel some joy and love because dead isn't dead and being alive is all there is, no matter how bad you might think it is, and there is no God, THERE IS NO GOD.

  I told him nothing. I was a sounding board while the day waned, the sun creeped to the horizon, and the families drifted off into the grasses to build summer cooking fires. Still the trucks rumbled past, armed guards eying the crowds that lined the pavement.

  Finally my companion gave out. I waved goodbye while he called at m
y back, "You be careful on the road when it's getting dark! Don't take any shit off them assholes who come stumbling outta the dark, hear?"

  I waved. I went forward at a pace that would have winded a living man and put distance between me and anyone else who looked as if he might want to join up for a little chat.

  I'm writing this by firelight. All alone now. I see other fires from here, but the people are tiny black midget shadows moving about beneath a full moon. The trucks are fewer, the night is coming on thick and deep. Crickets chirp nearby, a reedy chorus, and bullfrogs croak down in the ditches. There are a few fleecy clouds overhead. A thousand stars shining down on this desperate planet.

  I stare at the open sky and wish to feel some kind of pleasure. I try very hard to feel something besides this cloak of loneliness and utter hopelessness. It's as if the numbness has also reached my heart and turned it to stone.

  Nothing comes to me, nothing enters into my thoughts, but dread. That and the creeping pain of hunger radiating from my belly outward to all my parts. I thought for a while that I could actually take food, but one bite of an orange from a grove tree taught me better. It made me retch and a ghastly trembling took hold of me so that I thought my stomach would come up my throat into my mouth and be expelled onto the ground.

  I know what the hunger means. I know what would satisfy it. And before I ever do that, I would rather stand before the army snipers and point to my head.

  If I could sleep, I might dream of life the way it was before and for a while escape myself. As it is I can barely keep a flicker of hope burning as the hours lumber by, trickles of sand in an hourglass.

  As I sit and watch, the fires burn down. The dark creeps closer on padded feet. The moon rides high over the world. At least I have an expectation of tomorrow crossing the long bridge over the aqua waters. Halfway to Key West.

  I miss, and this is the truth, I miss everything. I curse this new death and I can't tell you how much I wish I could blot these last days out, make them vanish, and return to my little dark house where my only trouble was to ration the milk until help arrived.

  June 9

  No one accosted me today. There was cloud cover and that helped the problem of the heat. This morning there were blisters on the backs of my hands. I broke them open with a needle tip from a palmetto frond. I mashed the skin flat again and wondered where I would ever find gloves before the blisters turned to festering, oozing sores.

  In Key West I have to do something. I've already had some looks from people on the road because I am dressed in long pants and a long sleeved shirt. In June. In Florida. Talk about being conspicuous. But I don't let their curious looks bother me. I am beyond the worry of social ambiguities. I don't look right? I may be mad? I want to shout at them: Fuck this shit, this dead dead shit! You'll be like me before too long!

  Just before dawn I traveled far into the palmetto and grassland hunting for zombies. I found a half dozen lying on their backs, mesmerized by the moonshine. I shook them. I brought out my pad and wrote, CAN YOU READ THIS?

  They tore at the paper and tried to stuff it into their mouths. They were mindless creatures. And hungry, always ravenous. But they all know I'm one of them, I don't know how. I can fool humans so far. But not another walking dead man. Can they smell me, do they know from my eyes, can they sense my blood lies cold in my veins? I don't know. I don't want to know. Fuck knowing how they

  recognize me.

  I came back to the highway in time for sunrise and moved into the stream of travelers south. Keeping my distance. Keeping my eyes down before me, watching the gravel roadbed beneath my feet.

  I will go out again tonight hunting someone who might read my message. I've made it to Marathon Key. There are a few lights, a few houses boarded against intruders. The crowds pass north and south; it seems neither stream of people know what they're doing, they just feel safe with the military presence on the roads to protect them, and after all, they're in the open, breathing fresh air, doing something more than lying in wait behind walls, hoping for a change, hoping the television will come on again and play their favorite shows.

  I despair. But it could change, couldn't it? Maybe I'll find a friend, someone to talk with, someone to commiserate about what it all means. It's what keeps me going.

  I will steal gloves tomorrow.

  Tonight I'll wrap bandages against the seepage behind my knees. And I'1l wash my clothes and my body in warm Gulf waters.

  The flies are thick. They love me. The ants and black gnats love me.

  All the little hungry things love me.

  June 10

  Key West! I've made it this far without detection. I think I'm beginning to smell something terrible. Despite my bath, my washed clothes, the deodorant and aftershave, I notice people shying from me. Not in any rude noticeable way, just drifting back behind me farther or moving slightly faster to get ahead of me. A cloud of black flies hovers all around. They get in my face, crawl into my nose, ears, mouth. I hate them and it makes me want to slap myself all over, like a comedian into the worst physical comedy routine, hurting himself just for one more laugh from a sullen crowd.

  Now I have to find a boat. I have to steal. There's nothing I have I could barter for a trip even if I didn't know I'd be found out because of my smell. Tonight I'll check among the zombies for someone sentient. And then I'll take a boat and leave this land.

  There must be someone...

  Please. Someone.

  June 11

  Here I am on the open sea. I'm afraid I've done something unspeakable. I've threatened another man's life. I made the captain of this ship take me off the island. I thought to go alone, but I was afraid I'd be lost at sea. I've only been motor boating off the coast of Miami and down through the canals in Fort Lauderdale. I'd never make it out of the sight of land. I don't really mean to hurt this man. Unless he makes me.

  His name is Bailey. Raymond Bailey. He was tied at the dock I haunted and about to set sail himself. Fishing, he said, but come to find out his hold was packed with weapons and supplies. Gunrunner. Guns and drugs are the most precious and expensive commodities in the world now. As if making money means anything. He says it's not the money, it's the principal of the thing. He fancies himself a savior, a man bringing help to those less fortunate than the paranoid Americans who were prepared for this new world event with guns in every home.

  He was on his way to Cuba anyway. I'm just a passenger, though he'd like to throw me overboard.

  I tried to explain. I feel, I told him. I'm not an animal. I'm not like those others. I'm a man just as he is, and through no fault of my own I've become this dead thing. But I'm not like all the other zombies, I repeat. I'm a new breed. I might be one of a kind.

  "You don't want to kill and eat me?" he asked, a waver in his voice.

  I tell him I control the hunger.

  He looks at me with distrust still.

  I think, Won't you try to understand anything I say, you cock-sucking moron?

  Couldn't he help me?

  He tried to blow my head off. I wrestled the gun from his fist and knocked him to the deck while the wheel spun and the boat circled in the moonlit ocean as we scuffled.

  I let him up and then I bent over and grasped my knees and tried to scream. I wanted to scream in frustration so loudly that he would understand my anguish, my frustration, but what rushed out through my dry throat and shrinking vocal cords was a harsh rasping whine that scared even me until I quit it. When I stood up, Raymond had climbed to his feet and gotten hold of the wheel. I could see his shoulders twitching, and his head wobbling on his neck. He had wanted to kill me, and probably still did.

  "All right," he said. "You want to go with me, just stay downwind out of my face, you understand that? I think you ought to throw yourself into the sea and be done with it, but if you want to go to Cuba, fine, we're on our way. But stay away from me. The next time you lay hands on me you'll have to kill because I won't have it. I just won't have a dead man touchin
g me again."

  I sat against the door leading into the cabin and watched him. He worked the little boat through the waters without ever glancing at me. A terrible longing came over me as I sat, staring. I thought of his arm, the hair there golden, the blood beneath the skin hot and red and ripe. The hunger seized me to take him. To possess him and to eat and to drink him as if he were a succulent pig roasted and stuffed and laid on a platter for my sole pleasure.

  I shuddered. The thought of eating this way, so repellent before, seemed to be changing inexorably into something that was not so wrong, so bad, so diseased. What can I do! To deny the urge is the last vestige left of my humanity. If I ever give in to the seductive clamor for human flesh, I'll be lost, even to myself.

  I began writing in this notebook to take my mind from the low rumble in my stomach and he heard the pencil scratching over the paper and he stiffened. I knew what he thought. That I was about to pounce, I suppose, catch him unaware. Eat him for supper. How close he came to that he'd never know. But he wouldn't talk to me and he drank whiskey, and once I saw him deliberately spill some of it on his clothes. Probably to keep my scent from making him vomit.

  I am in terrible shape now. I can't take off the gloves I found. Skin came off with them when I tried. Peels of gray wrinkled skin.

  I wonder if I'll disintegrate and know it. Watch it happen bit by bit, see my flesh fall from my bones, and then will my skeleton walk, will it still long for companionship, will this ever ever ever end?

  If I could just...give up.

  If I could just...let Raymond Bailey blow a round through my head.

  I don't know why I can't, why I want to keep going.

  I must be insane.

  I know that I am.

  June 27

  So much happened. I can't put it all down. I don't have time. Raymond got me to Cuba and I was smuggled onshore in a case of rifles. I spent a week looking for a zombie who might have a working brain. No one. No one. A family by the name of Valesquez was coerced--I forced them in other words--to take me with them to Mexico. I still believed that somewhere I'd find a companion.