The Road in Red: One Flesh

"My will is at God’s hand, never within man’s teeth..."
-The Devil Wears Prada, Revive

Tears of joy flooded Noah’s eyes.  Relief swelled inside him like a warm bath.  He tucked the cane underneath his arm and put his face in his hands.  He had made it.  He had found his home.  Noah quickly wiped his hot cheeks with his palms and sniffed up the loosened snot from his nose.  No, he still had to go inside, still had to make it to the doors.  He hadn't made it yet.  He wasn't safe until he had passed through the threshold, until he had a solid barrier between him and the dead world outside.  The house was still half a mile away.  Being as sick and injured as Noah was, that half a mile felt like fifty.  The warm bath water relief turned ice cold as the realization that he might not make it came over him.  His heart could give out at any time.  Exhaustion was clawing at him.  Hunger was pulling his stomach into the dirt.  Put his home pulled him forward.

Noah walked as far as he could until the pain in his thigh took him to the ground.  It was as if someone had shoved a hot poker right through his flesh to the bone.  Noah tried not to scream, waited for the wave of pain to cease like it normally did, but it did not alleviate.  Sweat poured from Noah’s body causing the dirt to stick to his chest and stomach.  Noah rolled over on his back and could not hold in the hurt any longer.  The pain was not subsiding, only increasing in intensity.  He screamed out in absolute agony.  More liquid dribbled from the corners of his mouth.  The pain multiplied at an alarming rate and even worse, began to spread.  Noah could actually feel the disease of the bite worm its way down his entire leg and up into his groin, other leg and stomach.  It took hold of his testicles and intestines and squeezed.  It felt like everything was being blending in his body, liquified.  It was as if piranhas were inside of him, eating away at his insides, swimming and scurrying up and down the lower half of his body.

Noah fought the pain and turned over onto his stomach.  He began to crawl.  Guttural screeches of misery filled the clear sky and called the creatures to him.

Noah felt chilled to the bone despite the radiating heat of the sun.  The breeze was gone.  The rain was only a memory.  There was nothing and no one to help him now.  Goosebumps sprung along his body and raised the hair on his arms.  Noah continued to crawl, the dirt and rocks scratching at his nipples, his hair clinging to his forehead like a watery glue.  Noah crawled and crawled and seemed to make no progress at all.  He didn't even know if he was moving or imagining himself inching closer to his home.  Noah’s eyes began to cross and his vision started to blur and go black.  The pain came in waves of terrible to excruciating.  The painful poison spread completely to Noah’s legs and up into his chest.  Noah involuntarily vomited a milky yellow bile.  It heaved up in ropey strands, his stomach contracted so hard a rip of pain sliced through his torso and accompanied the pain that was already there.  The bile bubbled in the dirt.  Small particles were floating in it.  Noah crawled through the substance.

In the distance, he could hear the people coming again.  The dead people.  The things.  Maybe one of them was the lady with the tongue?  Had the wicked witch melted in the rain or was she one of the survivors?  Had he shot her, stomped her with his foot or cane?  He couldn't remember anymore.  Noah craned his neck back and with his limited vision, he could see the group lurching up ahead of him.  He was so close to home but he would never make it.  This was it.  They were all around him in every direction and he could not stand and fight.  He was practically dead.  What was going to get him first?  The existent bite mark or another bite from one of them?  Maybe they only wanted fresh meat?  Ever rational, Noah wondered if maybe they'd look over him as damaged, used up, and would go about their way?  Is it going to hurt when they bite into me? he wondered.  How silly a thought.  He was already in so much pain nothing would make it worse.   

Light me on fire, peel off my skin, pluck out my eyeballs.  It's all nothing compared to...this.  This is how it's going to end, after everything.  After making it so close.  God, why?  Why do you let me suffer so much?  Just let me go home or kill me now.  Take me before they do.  

Where are you?  Whereareyou...

Noah saw something dancing in his peripheral vision.  He looked over and it revealed itself to be a fairy.  The tiny woman's skin was made of silk and her wings of glitter.  She was snow white and naked, her breasts heaving as she flew around him.  The wings buzzed in his ear as she flew around his head.  She caressed his chin and ear and quietly sang to him.  He reached out to touch her and as he did, she dissolved into a million particles.

I'm losing my mind, Noah thought.  The infection was starting to reach his brain.  Could he trust what he was seeing anymore?  Were these people even real or was he imaging them as well?  The moaning from the dead grew in range, twisting itself into a kind of song.  The trees above Noah danced and shook their branches to the morbid music that was going to be the death of him.  Sunlight came down, trickled through the moving branches, and resembled the sweeping points of light from a disco ball.  This was all a production, an elaborate musical number that would accompany his death.  The world was putting on one last show before he bowed out.  Noah turned onto his back again and slid his hand into his left pocket.  He looked up and saw a group of them heading his way.  The sun was shining directly behind them, their heads pitch black against the blinding sun, a halo of radiance setting their skulls aglow.

They looked like angels.

Noah blinked through teary eyes.  Three woman, one man and two that were indistinguishable.  They were fresh.  No missing body parts, no gashes or lacerations.  Some of them still looked human.  Maybe they were.  Maybe they were coming to save him.  But the groans told him different. 

Whereareyouwhereareyouwhereareyou...

Noah reached for the familiar lump and pulled it out of his pocket.  He raised the small box to his eye level.  He opened it and smiled.  The sun shone brightly on the elegant ring that sat safely tucked inside, untarnished.  The sparkle carried his mind off into his memories, the one place the sickness had yet to reach, the only scrap of safety he had left.

The Road in Red: Alone

“Oh, God!” Noah screamed.

Surrounded by dead bodies that were closing in all around him,  Noah realized there was no way to break through their rotted line of flesh.  The man and woman and their followers were closing in behind him and the new group wasn’t too far ahead of him.  Noah only had two bullets left, not even enough to put a dent in either group.  For a second, Noah thought that he should just take his chances and jump into the woods but quickly tore that idea from his temples.  The woods were too dense, too full of hiding places for those people.  They could be behind any tree, ready to grab him by the arm or neck and pull him down and that would be the end.  Noah then thought he could tackle them, break through their line.  The ones ahead looked a lot frailer than the ones behind him.  They had been dead for a long time.  Maybe they’d go down easily.  But what if they didn’t?  He could handle one but if two or three of them grabbed him all at once, he wouldn’t be able to fight them off, especially with the throbbing in his leg that was slowly crippling him. 

Noah stood there, not knowing what to do.  His mind raced but he couldn't think of anything in particular.  In an attempt to come up with a split second solution, he froze as a trillion other things blurred past the eyes of his mind.  Looking down, Noah noticed there were no tree limbs or heavy rocks for him to use, nothing to help him.  The rain began to hit his head harder, fatter drops of water splashing off his nose and hands.  Noah pulled out his gun.  With no more time to organize a surefire strategy, he decided to shoot the ones closest to him and hope they’d go down.  With enough luck, they would create a hole large enough for him to squeeze through.  The odds weren’t good but Noah was battling a sudden onset of exhaustion, fear and tremendous pain that wouldn't allow for a better plan.  The rain spread out and came down harder, drenching Noah and making visibility low.  The groans of the people were drowned out by the falling rain, splashing down on everything, turning the ground into slippery mud and stifling Noah’s concentration. 

One of the men approached, staggered, lunged his red hands at Noah, his mouth open, ready to receive Noah’s flesh. 

"Father, forgive them; forgive me," Noah said and with a flash of light, he shot the man in the face.  The man went down in a wet heap on the ground.  Noah aimed for the next person in line.  It  was a teenage boy not much younger than him, his throat torn open, his Adam's apple dangling onto his chest with every soggy step.  Noah raised his gun to the teenager and as he concentrated on the face of the person he was going to kill, Noah saw that the hair on his head was falling out, being washed away by the hard rain.  Noah’s eyebrows flared up in confusion.  In a matter of moments, the boy's nose fell right off his face.  His lips and cheeks were next, sloughing off his skull like wet tissue paper.  Soaked lumps of rotted meat slid off the teenager, splattering on the ground that was turning into thick mud.  Splat, plop, splash.  His outstretched arm, wet and full of protruding veins broke off at the elbow and fell with another wet thud.  Around him, the other people were also feeling the effects of the falling water.  One severely decomposed man’s head fell completely off his body, sending him to the mud with a sickening plop.

It was the rain.

Suddenly, Noah remembered what his grandmother had told him. 

“The rain is only God’s tears, sugar.  It’s His way of letting us know He’s watching over us.  When the world has become too wicked, the Lord becomes sad and cries.  His tears fall from Heaven and those tears wash away all the bad.  When the rain dries up, man's sin has been cleansed and everything is made good again.”

Wash away all the bad.

One by one, the dead people collapsed and did not get back up.  They tried but the muscles that moved them were disintegrating.  They were becoming skeletal, the hard rain stripping all the flesh from them, the rotting smell of death and fat melting in the mud.  The rain fell intensely and Noah thought he heard a clap of thunder.  Or maybe it was a faraway gunshot.  Out of the estimated fifteen dead people, all but three had fallen, writhing in the mud, bellowing, dying again.  Enough were down to allow for Noah's escape.  He started to run through the mud and quickly slipped.  His legs flew out from underneath him and he fell on his side with a hard thud, right onto the bite wound.  Despite the softening blanket of mud, the ground beneath was still hard and provided no cushion for Noah's fall.  Pain ripped through Noah’s leg like white hot lightning and Noah screamed with abandon.  Rain fell into his open mouth, momentarily choking him. 

After a few moments of cradling himself in the mud, Noah collected himself.  The three dead people were still after him.  He had to get up.  He looked behind him to see the dead slipping and sliding in the mud.  One wasn't wearing shoes.  He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.  It also slipped in the mud and upon impact, its left leg fell off at the knee and its left arm fell off at the shoulder.  The others slid clumsily, trying to gain traction while keeping their focus on him.  If the threat of being eaten wasn't so close, Noah might have considered this comical.  If he weren't so exhausted, he might have laughed.  The dead thing on the ground pulled itself through the mud with its one good arm.  The other two were still coming, their faces slowly melting under the merciful rain.  Noah got back up and continued to run.  Their bodies fell out of view but their moaning followed Noah the whole way.

The Road in Red: Splinter Group

The lady with no jaw was coming for Noah.

She looked iridescent and ghostly in the limited light that struggled to break through the clouds.  Noah groped at his pockets.  The gun was in his right, the other item in his left.  He surveyed the ground beneath him.  Spotting a reasonably large tree limb, Noah picked it up and went to meet the woman. 

He found her, her arms outstretched, her tongue lapping at her teeth, her legs struggling to keep up with her urge to feed.  Noah's throat tightened.  His lower lids began to sting with the saline that was trying to crawl through.  His cheeks flushed.  His chest turned to lead.  Pity washed over Noah.  This woman so desperately wanted to eat him.  The one eye she had widened, glistening blue like the ocean, the depth of her hunger unfathomable.  Her tongue wagged at the sight of his skin.  If she had any lips, she might have been smiling. 

Noah had to do this.  This woman, this soccer mom or president of some club, this daughter or wife, this human being needed to be killed for her own peace.  Kill or be killed.  He hated killing them.  He just had to.  He thought about the old man.  He thought about the man before him, the two women, the child.  But with the exception of the old man, they were all sanitized by distance, dispatched by his gun.  He did not have the luxury of a bucketful of bullets anymore.  He had to get his hands dirty again. 

Please, God, forgive me.  Where was Gran?  Where were those cookies?  The woman got closer. 

No, I can't think of this now. 

Noah's mind tried to take him away from the happenings, an instant involuntary self-preservation mechanism.  He would go insane, snap if he had to deal with what he was going to have to do again.  His sanity was on the brink of breaking but he was also within teeth's reach of death.  Noah had to overcome his fear, his reservations, his own mind.  He breathed in the deep, death-filled air in a vain attempt to calm himself for the job at hand, to forget about the wonderful times that once brought him peace.  Those times were done.  Vanished forever in a fog of dead flesh.  Noah readied the tree limb.  He cleared out his mind and focused all thoughts on his swing.

But as the woman approached, Noah heard a shuffling from behind him.

The Road in Red: Sympathy for the Devil

A few yards ahead, Noah spotted one of them.  It was a woman.  Her back was facing him.  She was shuffling along the edge of the road among the opening of the trees.  Noah took in a deep breath and fixed his eyes to the back of her head.  He grabbed his gun from his pants and ran his hand along his left front pocket.  Still there.  It was comforting, reassuring, motivating him to continue forward to reach the end of this journey, of all this madness.  Noah slowed his pace, picking up each foot high off the ground so as not to shuffle and cause noise.  He inspected the ground before stepping to avoid any rocks or twigs.  His eyes took hold of the woman’s head as he slowly inched his way toward her.  Stepping carefully.  Slowly.  Methodically.  The woman just stood there, sometimes leaning one way or the other but mostly just standing still.  Noah had wished she’d walk around, at least for a bit, so that the crunching of her feet in the grass would somehow mask the sound of his own footsteps.  God, what was in front of that tangled mess of hair?  He tried to subdue his imagination, to stop the possible images of the woman's torn face from flooding the front of his mind.  He had seen some terrible things in the past few days...or was it weeks...but he still hadn't gotten used to the human carnage that still churned his stomach.  He had his gun and he could just shoot her easily but he didn’t want to waste bullets if he didn’t have to.  He only had four in the chamber and no more.  What if he needed them when he found himself in a more desperate situation?  What if the bullet he used on this woman could be used for when one of those people was right on top of him?  And there was no telling how much longer he would have to walk.  How many times had he driven down this desolate dirt road and never paid attention to the length of the drive, to the road signs, to the landmarks?  He had no idea how far away he was from safety and he cursed his careless ways.  He had never paid attention before but now he was making up for it, focusing all of his energy and concentration on his surroundings.  He couldn’t let another person sneak up on him like that old man.  He felt blessed to survive one close contact encounter.  He wasn't sure he'd survive another. 

Noah inched his way beside the woman.  Several feet of dirt separated them.  The closer Noah got, the more he could hear the woman.  She was moaning.  Was she is pain?  Was she tired?  The moaning became louder, more unsettling as he passed.  There was a wetness to the noise, as if she was gargling mud.  Moist.  Drowning in her own fluid.  Yet, alive.  A part of him wanted to shoot this woman, to put her out of her misery, to relieve her of the burden of her hunger.  He contemplated the woman just like he began to contemplate the old man.  Then, he stopped himself.  No, he had no time.  He couldn’t lose focus.  Besides, he didn’t want to kill anyone if he didn’t have to.  It felt filthy, sinful.  Noah stopped momentarily, lost in the wave of thoughts that seized his body and locked it into place.  These people had to be dead, right?  Shooting them would not be sinful.  I am not committing murder, he tried to rationalize.  But, there was no rationalization left.  Nothing made sense anymore.  The very nature of life and death was done, no more.  None of the rules of humanity or morality existed once the first dead body woke up.  Now, there was just survival.  There was just making it to the end alive.  Noah stared at the back of the woman's head, not looking at her but through her, allowing his mind to take him out of the dirt road and into some semblance of balance, into something that he could wrap himself in, a blanket of sanity, security. 

And then she shifted.

The Road in Red: Of Rain and Rapture

A work of fiction presented in five parts.

“Now this will be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples who have gone to war against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouth.  On that day a large-scale panic from the Lord will spread among them. One person will grab the hand of another, and one will attack the other.”
- Zechariah 14:12

Noah felt the pain of the old man’s bite rip through his thigh, as if someone had injected boiling water into the veins of his leg.  The filthy old man managed to break Noah’s skin despite the thick denim material of his jeans.  Noah howled in pain, which only seemed to make the old man sink his teeth harder, deeper, into Noah’s thigh.  His withering arms flailed at Noah, tearing at his shirt and jeans.  Noah reciprocated, jerking his body and kicking up his legs the best he could, fighting the dead weight of the old man.  Noah hit the man in the head with his fists, clawed up clumps of dirt and threw them in the man’s eyes but it didn’t stop him.  The man held his grip on Noah’s thigh.  Noah managed to inch himself closer to the gun that was bucked out of his hand when the man tackled him.  He kicked and clawed and screamed his way to the gun, wrapped his finger around the trigger and then aimed it at the hungry old man’s face.  He started to squeeze the trigger but thought better of it.  He didn’t want to waste any bullets if he didn’t need to.  Instead, he took the end of the gun and jammed it into the old man’s ear.  The old man immediately let go of Noah’s thigh, a ropey string of slime and saliva coming off the bite.  The old man, too, howled in pain, an inhumanly low gust of agony that escaped his bloodied lips.  Noah repeatedly struck the old man in the ear and face.  His skull didn’t give as easily as Noah had hoped.  He was a fresh one.  Noah freed his good leg from under the old man and kicked him in the chest with all of his might.  The old man fell back and Noah took advantage of the man's temporary disorientation and pounced on him, straddling him to keep him pinned to the ground.  Noah raised the gun in the air and slammed it down onto the old man’s face, crushing his nose and releasing a spray of coagulated blood and cartilage.  The gun came down again and again, slowly caving in the old man’s face until it was nothing more than fragile bone covered in a thick mass of blackened blood and disassembled brain matter.  His arms and legs fell to the ground.  Shaking.  Twitching.  Still.  Noah’s chest heaved in a rush of adrenaline and exhaustion.  Noah stayed on top of the man for a few minutes, allowing his breath and heart beat to slow before using the old man's shirt to clean the mess off of his gun.

Noah got off the old man and stumbled to his feet.  He wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm.  Looking down, Noah contemplated the bloody mess that once used to be a man.  No, he didn’t have time for that.  Noah felt a rush of nausea hit his stomach but he willed it away.  He pulled his pants down to his knees and inspected the damage.  Jagged red marks formed an ellipse right between Noah’s kneecap and groin.  The old man hadn’t bitten too deep or managed to tear away any flesh but it still stung like hell.  Small scratches from the old man's fingernails were scattered about Noah's arms.  Most of them weren't deep, just superficial and slightly raised.  His stomach was sore on the outside and nauseated inward.  No time to be concerned.  Noah had to get back to his destination.  He’d be okay if he could just make it there.

The dirt road seemed to stretch into oblivion, when in reality it was just a few more miles.  Noah was flanked on both sides by the density of trees, their trunks and branches and twigs intermingling and creating a web of cover that was both a good and a bad thing.  They provided good cover and protection for him but also for them.  Noah could see nothing but straight ahead, which didn’t bother him in the slightest.  It made his destination easier knowing he wouldn’t have any detours or distractions.  It also made it more dangerous.  Those people could be hiding behind any tree, lumbering around in the tall grass and he would never know until they were upon him.  That was the case with the old man whose skull he had just bashed in.  Noah lost his concentration for only a few minutes.  He wasn’t paying attention, got to close to the trees and the man lept at him.  Noah silently swore at himself for being so careless, for not being alert enough.  He ran his hand over the lump in his front left pocket.  It hadn’t fallen out during the fall.  Good.

The light from the sun that was illuminating his path was becoming dimmer.  The sky was graying.  Clouds were filling in the blank spaces in the sky, meshing the red dirt with the gray sky into a muddled brown.  The air was dusky and dark.  This was good.  He had heard they didn’t have good eyesight.  Unfortunately, neither did he.  Noah had been walking for so long.  How long, he didn't know.  The days were flowing into one another with the same monotonous activities of walking and evading, sometimes running and defending against those people.  Monday, Tuesday, Deadday, Rotday, one giant day of the week, one giant week of the month, one giant lifetime of oblivion.  It would have been nice to sit somewhere but to sit in the road would have been stupid.  There was no shelter.  He had to move quickly through the darkening sky.  It looked like it was about to rain. 

“Fantastic,” Noah said out loud, right before putting his hand over his mouth.  His eyes widened in fright. 

No sounds! he reminded himself.  It was bad enough that he had to walk the dirt road filled with crunchy leaves and twigs.  He didn’t need to bring any more attention to himself by speaking.  Those people could hear him and would for him.  They were attracted to noise and movement.  Noah calmed himself down and continued to walk the path as it continued to blur in front of him.  Rain was definitely coming.  Just how soon?  Noah felt an unease come over his skin, sinking into his stomach and coming up through his throat, thickening his tongue and closing off the air in his lungs.  He shuddered.