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.

Noah sucked up a breath of air that expanded his lungs to their capacity.  His eyes lost focus for a second and his body lost its balance.  The woman began to walk and then staggered back, moaning and looking up into the sky.  Her balance looked shot as well.  She turned to her side and Noah saw that her face had lived up to his morbid imagination.  Her face had rotted away.  Or maybe it was bitten off.  The distance was too great to see clear enough to tell.  The sky that surrounded them became dimmer, laying a blanket of deadly dark on top of them.  Another drop of rain fell across Noah’s cheek and startled him.  He let in another sharp breath of air in response.  His heart pounded so hard that he knew the woman would hear the muscle in his chest crashing against his ribs.  The woman was missing all the flesh from her lower jaw, only bone and teeth remaining.  A black tongue uncoiled from her mouth and slid across her bloody lower teeth.  A black hole replaced the area where an eyeball once sat.  Her clothes were modest and tattered, an oversized sweater over a green shirt and a floral dress that was ripped in the back.  They were covered in blood.  He guessed she was in her mid-thirties.  Another drop of rain on his face.  Maybe she was a mother.  Another drop splashed on the tip of his nose.  She probably ate her kids.  Splash, splash.  The woman shuffled again but this time she turned her back to Noah.  Looking down, he noticed the road was clear of debris and he felt confident that he could safely make it past this woman without disturbing her.  At the very least, he could outrun her if she saw him. 

Low groans escaped the missing flesh of the woman’s mouth.  Pain.  Hunger.  Mourning?  A slight sadness squeezed its way into her fractured voice.  This poor woman, Noah thought as he walked backward, not taking his eyes off her.  Pitiful creature.  He raised his gun to her head.  Could he make the shot from here?  Noah's cheeks began to burn.  His teeth clenched.  Something was rising within him, filling up his torso and working its way to his eyeballs.  They blurred with tears as his stomach flew forward in sickness and sympathy.  The woman went out of focus as the tears blinded him.  God, help me.  He wiped the tears away and focused the point of the gun toward her head.  His arms were weak and felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.  He couldn't keep his aim straight.  Would he just hit her in her back or miss completely?  If so, she’d come for him.  She wouldn’t stop.  He could outrun her but she’d never stop following him.  He would tire out but she would not.  He lowered the gun and then turned around.

Noah began to walk when he felt something stab him in the leg.  The pain was too great to go unheard.  A wail of agony rushed through Noah's cracked lips.  He fell to his knees right into a group of rocks.  Sharp jabs of pain prickled his kneecaps.  He grabbed his leg, the one the man bit into.  Noah went out of his mind with pain for a brief moment.  As it slowly washed over him and away from him, he realized he wasn't stabbed or shot or attacked by anyone.  It was the bite that brought him down.  It was definitely infected and definitely getting worse.  The pain from his knees hitting the rocks tingled, almost tickled in comparison to the pounding in his thigh.

The woman with no face turned around.  She had heard him scream.  Her one eye fixed on Noah and she groaned, a sound of steadfast satisfaction.  She staggered toward Noah at the speed of hunger, much faster than Noah had previously seen these people go.  From Noah's perspective on the ground, the woman towered over him, the lady with no face.  Her skeletal arms were outstretched, thin and full of veins like thick, blue cables.  Her gait was jagged, one leg stiff, one leg damaged.  She staggered toward him, her jaw open and nearly unhinged from the rest of her skull, her greasy black tongue flapping in the air.

Noah immediately swore and groaned to himself.  Through clenched teeth, he let out a small scream to release the hurt and then stood up on his feet again.  The pain was dizzying.  His head swelled and his surroundings twirled around his eyes.  The woman was after him.  Her eye met his as a few more drops of rain fell onto his face and shoulder, startling him.  Early on, Noah had prepared for any random touch on his face or body to be an attack from one of them.  His defenses were up and his adrenaline was coursing through his body like a bad trip but it was only the rain that had reached him.  He relaxed slightly, as slightly as he could while being chased by a possibly dead woman with a mangled face.  He was still safe as long as they never got their hands on him, as long as she didn't touch him.  He began to run. 

Noah put quite a bit of distance between him and the woman, looking back only occasionally to see her getting smaller and smaller in his line of sight, yet still staggering toward him.  He slowed his pace when he noticed a large tree limb to his right.  His lungs were burning, like a fireplace in his chest.  There was a stitch in his side, as if someone were pinching his lungs.  It hurt to breathe but he craved as much air as he could inhale.  He breathed in heavily, taking in as much oxygen as his body would allow.  But, they were not cleansing breaths.  The smell of death permeated each mouthful of air.  The oxygen was tainted with decaying flesh, rising up off the dead and thickening the air.  The smell made Noah squint in disgust, the odor pushing its way into his nostrils, almost tangible in its viscosity.  Noah took a few moments to catch his breath and inspect the fallen tree limb.  It was brown and rough with long striations of bark that ran the length of the limb.  Noah thought he saw parts of people, severed arms, hands locked into a death grip, fingers flayed out in hopes of grabbing onto safety.  The darkening sky and the density of the trees fooled Noah's vision.  They were only smaller tree limbs, rough, gray branches that twisted like arms reaching out for his flesh.  The skull was only a collection of rotting leaves.  The tiny white body was just an abandoned doll.  At least that's what Noah thought.  He wasn't sure he wanted to really know.  Noah sat on the large limb to rest.  A cold wetness spread across the seat of his pants.  He raised his hand in front of his face.  What was that wetness?  Blood or bits of wet bark?  Or both?  Noah stared into his hand, into the tiny black bits that rested in the lines in his skin, into the shiny wet, getting lost in the mess in his palm when the moaning snapped his attention into place.  Noah's ears perked up and he looked to see the woman with no face still following him, her hunger guiding her to his body.  Noah's stomach gurgled.  Funny, he had ran away from the woman's hunger but he could not run from his own.  Despite being chased by frenzied, mangled people, his body still needed nutrients, still growled the way it would if he were not in danger.  He had hoped all bodily functions could be pushed aside in favor of safety.  This was not the case.  How long had it been since he had eaten?  Hours?  Days?  The pain in Noah's thigh began to sting in small trembling waves.  No time to worry about his hunger, his pain.   He had to keep moving.

The woman was catching up.