SELF PRESERVATION: By Ryan Sayles
Monday, February 28th, 2011This is more about self-preservation than anything.
They were both bit; she was bit first. By the look of it days ago. It was just like her to not say anything about it, either. He didn’t even know she was pregnant until she had miscarried the child in the third month. For Christ’s sakes he was a doctor; you’d figure she would have had him exam her. The best care starts at home.
Of course, he was pretty sure she knew he was setting her up for a horrible, steam-rolling divorce. Maybe that’s why she kept to herself. No trust anymore. Maybe the pregnancy wasn’t his kid. That’s a good reason for her to not say anything about it to him. What’s a marriage with not trust?
She had gone comatose in the night. They were holed up in the attic of their expensive home. He called them zombies even though he wasn’t sure it was the proper term. He knew there was no clinical term for their condition. They all had some of the classic signs from all those old George A. Romero movies: they moaned, moved slowly, they were all suffering from some degree of rot and putrefaction although that seemed to have little effect on them.
It took severe damage to the cranial cavity to put them down for good. They wanted to eat living people. And they were everywhere.
So now, in the attic where he had established his makeshift laboratory with twenty years of collected medical implements and the stuff he raided from the ER when he was bitten, he had his loveless wife lying on a bed. IVs, a catheter, all sorts of monitoring devices.
There was still electrical power in the city so he was able to run numerous devices for tests. His anti-zombie clinic. He needed to save her. Not for love, not for a second chance.
For himself. After all, he was bitten too.
He experimented on her relentlessly. He had the skills to find a cure. He knew it. If nothing else he could halt it. Even if it stayed around he could put the brakes on it. Sure, he was in pain, but better to be in pain and still a functioning human than to be a mindless thing just trying to cannibalize someone else. Lord knows the world is running out of people.
When this plague started a month ago the first account he heard was from the state prison right outside of town. Some kind of horrific event that required the National Guard to quell. They actually brought an embedded journalist from the local cable news affiliate. He had just gotten back from Afghanistan so it was no big deal. Until, of course, they made entry. The camera footage was cut almost immediately. All anyone saw on TV was red splattered everywhere and what was surely human parts. He had worked bad car wrecks and the mangling looked the same.
So, no camera footage. But the audio kept him awake for days. The journalist just started screaming like he had entered into a world where a nightmare had come real. Then there were snarls and the screaming stopped with a wet sound. The National Guard did not come out from the prison. But they did.
As far as he could tell this zombie plague made decent people into bad zombies and bad people into worse zombies. No wonder the prison was in such gruesome shape.
“You’re a royal bitch, honey.” He says to his wife as he examines some her of print-outs. “Gotta stop you from waking up dead. You’ll be a handful. On a side note, now that we’re being honest here, you do make a better coma patient than a lover. You’ve got this down.”
He makes a few notations and loads a syringe with something he’s been working on. He injects her and steps back, waiting for a reaction.
Nothing.
“Well.” He says. “Change of subject. How did you find out about the divorce?”
He caresses her cheek and does not see as her fingers twitch. Just a little. He’s standing close.
“My money is on the fact that I used Marcus to draw up the papers. In the back of my mind I knew you two had something going on. You seemed to get along with the neighborhood better than me. That meant something, huh? Were you the proverbial bicycle?”
He trails his eyes across his wife’s delicate frame. Decades of marriage allowed him to recognize every curve, peak and valley of her lying down. Even as the outward signs of her turning into one of them were becoming more pronounced he could still see his old flame in there.
“I loved you so much and it was funny… how, at the same time, I wanted nothing more than to hurt you. Cut you down to the bone. Over and over. Which is why I’m halfway hoping this doesn’t work. Because then I can do it. And get away with it.”
He stares at the nape of her neck as her fingers tense. Her nails are jagged. He runs his fingers through her hair and the muscles in her gut contract. But he’s staring at her curls.
“On the other hand, if I can save you, I’ll know how to save me. And then, with both of us here and society around us obliterated, a divorce won’t cost a thing. So, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me save you. Work with me here, OK? Because I’d like to live long enough to kill you.”
He turns his head away and stares at the equipment. Her eyes open. There is no life there.
“Then maybe I’ll find Marcus and beat him to death with your severed head.” He says to his wife over his shoulder. “If he’s made it this long.”
He turns back. Her hands shoot up to his eyes and mouth. He is no match for her.
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©2011 Ryan Sayles
Ryan Sayles was born and raised in the Midwest. He has been military and law enforcement. He has been published on sites such as Powder Burn Flash, Heroin Love Songs, Nefarious Muse, Crainotomic and Short, Fast and Deadly. He has been included in Short Story Library’s 2010 collection Branded Words and SNM Horror Magazine’s 2010 collection Bonded by Blood III: Languish in Lament. Under the pen name Derek Kelly he has been published at Beat to a Pulp.com and has a forthcoming publication at Crime Factory.com.
