Could this be possible? Suddenly my final conversation with Naceo came back to mind. “I’m tired of being the bad guy,” He vanished, and took the sea with him.
So you’re the bad guy now.
Naceo was gone, and he was no longer the strongest force upon this planet He left that job to me. No more water meant no more choices- and this time it would be the less pleasant type of insanity. This insanity… this beast I would become… would be unstoppable.
They were looking for answers from me. I simply shook my head. “I don’t know what this means.”
“It means…” snarled Krev, “Rage has taken his anger for you to the next level! He wanted us to kill you on the boat, now he hasn’t given us a choice.”
“Wait…” I cried as Augie timidly pointed his gun at me. “Let me see Eva again…”
Augie nearly lowered the weapon, but another shout from Krev and he was back in his uncertain yet readied stance. “You’re really playing with fire here, you idiots! Augustus, we can’t even get your bike off the ship anymore. How long do you suppose it will take us to walk back now?”
He was trembling like a flag in a storm.
Before I could argue anything on more on my behalf, he made his choice. The gun fell to the floor, cracking an already broken shell beneath it. Both Krev and I had an equal opportunity of seizing the weapon, but I let him make the first move. He did not hesitate to reach down and grab it.
Now the barrel was facing me from between Krev’s eyes. He narrowed them guiltily. “It’s not the first life I’ve taken, but it’s the hardest. You’re a good kid, Jace. If there’s anything you want me to do for you—to send a message- it would be my honor.”
I was considering Krev’s kindness more than I was his ultimatum. A few minutes passed in complete silence. There was no rush, and they would not pull the trigger without fair warning.
Would I die? No- I was more certain of this than I ever was before with a gun aimed at me. Naceo wanted me to fall prey to some version of his disease. Dying now would mean…. Neither.
“I want to see Eva…” I whimpered.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed, “even with his gun to your head, I can’t take you near the group. You’re too dangerous.”
He was more correct than he even knew, but I played his ignorance to my advantage. “Dangerous? What’s dangerous is leaving behind twenty helpless people in an area we know has a bad infestation… away from the two people capable of protecting them.”” They knew which two I was speaking of after having witnessed me fighting. “Look, I know I’m running out of time. But I still have time. If you can’t bring me to the group, bring Eva to me. I’ll wait here.”
“Let him come with us,” Augie whined, obviously not a fan of having to make the trip three more times. “I trust him.”
The guilt began to sink in.
We agreed that I should stay at the trail’s exit while waiting for Eva to meet up. It was just another reminder of how wild I’d become; forbidden to enter an establishment of humanity, doomed to reside in a creation of nature. When all of this was over, every piece of me that was once human would be gone. I would be nothing but a ravenous animal. I pondered these thoughts as we walked in silence, but nothing about it seemed to bother me. After all, what was I before if not just a fish?
We encountered a few more zombies on the trail, and though they were all thin and easy to take down, the darkening night made the job more difficult. Since Krev was wielding Augie’s gun, it was me working to protect them, nothing but a baseball bat between my fingers. It seemed ironic that the bullet he was reserving was for the man who was defending them, but we chose a different concern to discuss. “There’s been too many,” Augie gasped as I took down the last couple- two teens that looked like they’d been eating away at each other to satisfy their cravings. “I’m worried about our group. We’ve been gone for a while.”
“What if we get there and there is trouble? We won’t have time for this ‘last goodbye’ bullshit. I’m sorry…” Krev halted to place the gun back up to my ear, “but this is what’s best for everyone.”
We had just finished the trail, and I could see the town rising beyond the hills between us. Emerging from the silent tension was the shrill scream of a young girl.
“Something is going on down there!” I cried, “What’s best for everyone is if you let me help them!”
The scream repeated. The three of us took off running in its direction.
When we made it to the furniture store, everyone was gone. I noted that some things had been left behind. “They fled,” my eyes scoped for more clues, but I couldn’t come to a precise conclusion. If it were planned, Eva would have left a note. She would always leave notes for me to find.
Standing within the frames of the broken sliding doors with the store to our backs, we searched for another sign of our group’s whereabouts. The outlet had a grocery market- which we had already visited, a toy store, a shoe repair shop, and a laundromat. Just beyond the cluster of restaurants was the sports shop we raided earlier, with a pet store attacked to its side. The logo red “Fish and Friends.”
Suddenly two things became clear.
“Salt,” I muttered inquisitively.
Augie looked at me nervously. “…salt?”
“I threw a packet of salt at the little zombie boy, remember? Maybe they went to the supermarket and saw that bloody mess. Maybe that’s why we heard screaming.”
There was no one in the supermarket. We were back in the aisle, standing over the ruins of fallen food cans, spilled guts, broken bones and baby skulls. Krev was annoyed. “I should have known… nobody screams like that just seeing something like this.” He turned away from the scene, inhaling deeply from the opposite end of the wretched smell.
“Prencess might’ve…” Augie tried generously, taking one last look at the mess.
So I was wrong. But I had a feeling my second thought wasn’t. This one would be more difficult to explain, and a whole day of breathing warm, dry air was starting to work its way up to my head. “What if salt water could replace sea water?” I licked my finger, dipping it into the spilled white crystals along the floor I must’ve forgotten that wasn’t exactly normal behavior, especially in the midst of all the other gore. Yet I only recalled my mistake when I saw the uncomfortable stares upon me.
The salt tasted awful. I tried scraping it off my tongue against my teeth. They were still staring. There was something off about my face again.
Krev was alert, the weapon back at my head. He began murmuring a chant.
“Once a seed and now a life,
I rest this beast upon my knife.
The wind, it blows, the river flows,
this is how our cycle goes….”
He winced and gripped the trigger.
It was a clean shot to the head. Though I was mostly numb, I could feel it when the metal drilled into my skull, sloshing against my brain.
The world scattered before me, little pieces of meaningless images coming and going in my eyes. Even though I couldn’t hold my focus on an idea for more than a second, I somehow still had the good sense to wedge my finger into the golf ball-sized hole over my right eyebrow to scoop out the bullet.
In a few moments I was nearly back to normal. Except for a strange glaze of red that coated my vision, I could plainly see the bewildered faces of Krev and Augie, gaping as I flicked the soiled chunk of metal to the floor. This was not normal. Not even for a zombie. A headshot was usually game over for the monster, even if it still continued to yelp and garble. I’d brushed this wound off as if Krev had sling-shot a cotton ball at my face.
Then there was the scream again, except this time it was certainly coming from inside the building we were in. A little girl- one of the children of the traveling families- was all alone. She recognized Augie and ran into his arms, delirious.
“Help me, help me!”
“What’s the matter…?” said Augustus, fear still present in his tone.
“I left… I went to go pee… when I came back everyone was gone! I think they hid! There’s zombies everywhere! You have to help me- they’ve been chasing me… you…”
“You’re safe now,” Augustus stroked her back, “don’t worry…”
She screamed again, the shrill siren scraping inside of my brain worse than the bullet had. She’d seen me.
There was no time to console, suddenly a large preteen zombie swung through the aisle and collided with a mountain of canned food, toppling over. Though he landed on his knees and palms, it did not slow him; he charged like a bull in the ring and dove back to his feet quickly. I didn’t hesitate to lunge back at him and pin him down to the floor, this time on his back. I planted my hand around his neck and pulled his throat out.,
My head spun to meet eyes with the girl. I remained calm. “Are there more?”
She nodded. “I counted four.”
It wouldn’t be a problem to take out three more- unless they all came at me at once. I wasn’t sure how long I would last like this anyways. My mind was already slipping. Krev continued to stare at me in terror. My last thoughts were trying to scramble together the last of my reasoning together, only to reason that I would probably eat Krev first.
We were running out of the market. I wasn’t chasing them yet, although it felt like I could be. Something about the way they trusted me was keeping me on their side for now. I looked to both sides and my eyes fixed on the Fish and Friends sign.
“Krev… I have my one last request for you.” I halted midway through the parking lot. He turned and stopped, and the others copied as I breathed, “lock me in that pet shop. Board the doors. I need to check if there’s one last way to save myself.”
He nodded firmly- but on our way to the doors, we heard snarling from the distance. I looked back and realized that the other three zombies the young girl was talking about were surrounding us now.
The red veil over my eyes began pulsing louder. Flesh was flying… bones were crunching… I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my own roar, burning the skin of my vocal chords.
I moved less passionately towards the next body that was coming for me. It reminded me of an old friend.
Though he patted me with a bat and chanted my name accompanied with the occasional, “please, stop!” I could not find the rage in me to add him to the pile of carcasses I would dine upon tonight. But then I realized I was being herded into a doorway. I hissed- but he and his partner now continued to provoke me, fighting against me as I attempted to open the door.
They succeeded in trapping me. Alone in the shop, I banged at the glass, screaming.
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