The Persistence of Injury

The veteran looked down at the thimble-sized hole in his coat.  Despite washing and rain, the hole was ringed with muted copper.  His eyes unfocused as he recalled the memory.

. . .

He felt the shot before he heard it.  A piercing, burning stab followed by a loud, reverberating crack.  A high-pitched buzz whipped past the veteran’s ear.  Stunned, he swatted at the noise before realizing he’d been shot.  It took seconds to duck behind the derelict car, but each heartbeat felt like a death knell—interminable and resolute.

The bullet passed straight through the veteran’s side.  He pressed down on the wound and felt his life coursing out in rhythm with his pulse. 

The worthless men came out of hiding and bore down on him, firing into the car as they walked in that feckless cadence peculiar to those with only the rudest vestiges of a conscience.  Shrapnel stung the veteran as the bullets punched through the car at unpredictable vectors.  He pressed up against the tire and looked under the car. 

There were three of them.

They fired their rifles more for effect than purpose.  The veteran closed his eyes and breathed in short, syncopated breaths.  Sound and color left his world.  His breathing slowed, and in the space between breaths, the veteran rolled to his stomach and placed two shots into each man’s chest.  Six successive cracks, followed by three heavy sounds: the dull percussion of a corpse dropping on tarmac.

As the adrenaline subsided, the veteran shuddered and his limbs became unresponsive.  He kept his rifle leveled at the three shapes in the distance, trying to discern any movement, but they remained as they would be.

He pulled back his jacket to see a discrete hole in his flesh, blackened at the edges.  From a pouch at the rear of his belt, the veteran pulled out a field dressing and pressed it on the wound.  He used his rifle as a crutch to pull himself off the ground.  The barrel burned his hand, but the pain kept him from going into shock.

There was no time to police the bodies. The noise was sure to attract even worse attention. He needed to get out of there.

All of the normal precautions and vigilance were cast aside as the veteran made his way back to shelter.  No one would follow him that day.

The girl unlocked the door and the veteran stumbled inside.  The bright look on her face quickly fell when she saw the dark, growing stain.  “Honey, I’m home.”  His pale imitation of a smile made things worse.

The veteran dressed the wound with the girl's help.  He took some antibiotics scavenged for such a contingency.  Still, he couldn’t move much for fear of reopening the wound.  So they remained confined, living off what they had gathered.

He would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes.  The wound would throb and burn—a fiery needle at the epicenter of radiating waves of dull pain.  The drugs kept the infection under control, but the veteran still felt crippled.  It was a month before he could go out again.

. . .

The veteran held his hand to his side, feeling the warmth spread.  The wound was healed, but sometimes he missed it.  He had almost grown accustomed to the pain.  It shook him out of the stultifying numbness that made it so difficult to distinguish the living from the dead.  It made him feel more alive than he had been in a long time. 

The girl was gone, too, and he thought of her.  There was familiar comfort in that old wound, but it cost him dearly every time. 

In Search of Lost Time

There was a low rumble, punctuated by heartbeat.  The sound of breathing seemed to come from inside his head.  It was dark.  He felt the languid sensation of floating.  Some place warm.  He could have been in the womb or the ocean, but he wasn’t aware of a body.  He was a mind adrift.

. . .

The man opened his eyes and stared.  The room was unfamiliar and vast.  Recognition came in a slow burn as his eyes traced the dark crosses of rafters.  He couldn’t move.  Only a thin sleeping bag covered him, but a heavy mass inside kept him from lifting a finger.

He sighed.  The air was thick and stale.  He willed his limbs to move and pulled out the earplugs.  The exertion left him drained.  The air cooled his open ears, but it also brought the sound of restless, moaning death outside.  It was a sound that would never diminish into white noise.  A sound that made a very demand on life.

He unclenched his teeth and fists.  The knot in his stomach remained.

The man had seen several people succumb to it.  If the naked threat of physical death wasn’t enough, the unyielding sound of the living dead could eat a person from within.  He felt crippled sleeping with the earplugs, but it was either that or shove a bullet in his brain.

He was alone. 

The warehouse was empty, but the man felt a privation more complete than isolation.  He tried to run down a mental list of all the people he knew, but the exercise left him with a dull throb at the temples.  He couldn’t see their faces any more.

Anyone that was anybody to him; they were all gone.  In the early days, he would replay memories of them over and over.  But they seemed to fade and diminish with each successive recollection. Sometimes he saw them in dreams, but even those diffused into the merest of suggestion.

There was nothing keeping him rooted to this life.  No connection.  No anchor.  Just the brute fact of existence.

A hand floated in front of his eyes, fingers flexing.  He felt a disconnect from even his own body.  Some times he would repeat his name, but even that felt strange and alien.  He wasn’t sure if he could speak anymore.  It had been so long.

Gravity rather than volition set his arm back down by his side.

The man felt cold tears pool in the cup of his ear and realized he was crying.  There were few luxuries in this new life, but he thought he could afford a little self-pity.  He laughed despite himself and wiped the tears from the side of his face.  He was a child again.

He sang a few bars of a meaningless song from his youth.  If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away.  Watch me unravel, I’ll soon be naked.  Lying on the floor, I’ve come undone.

The emotion quickly disappeared, having a half-life the span of a single thought, decaying with each heartbeat.  He mouthed these words, but no sound came out: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.

The man put in the earplugs and settled back into numb, dreamless sleep.

The One Less Traveled By

“You’re not disappointed?”

The veteran ground his boot into the dirt.  He took a long time in answering. “I’d have to care to be disappointed.”

Her eyes softened around the edges.  “How can you say that?”

“It’s the only way I know.”

Her nails bit into her palms.  She leveled her voice at him.  “Were you always like this?”

The veteran felt a brief spike of fear, worried what her careless outburst would bring upon them.  He looked at her in sharp reprimand.

The starved, defiant look on her face spoke of deprivations greater than the physical.  Some strange gravity pulled his eyes back down.

“No.”  The word carried dense, implacable finality. There was no place for such talk, not anymore.  He died to feeling in order to survive this altered landscape.  Yet the dull ache persisted.  The veteran slung the rifle over his shoulder, adjusted the strap, and started walking.

When he heard her footsteps falling in behind, he let out a heavy sigh.

. . .

These recent entries are excerpts from the zombie novel I will never write.

Eulogy

The man scattered memories like dirt on a grave.  Each memory laid to rest days gone by.  Each recollection a funeral in of itself.  He mourned possibilities forever lost--the death of things never given a chance to live.

And in the act of remembrance, realized what once was lost could never be found.

. . .

He stood up from the pyre; his face blackened and sticky.  But even his tears couldn't cut through the greasy soot.  The man walked and walked.  It could have been hours or days.  It didn't make much difference to him.  Nothing did.