Victor saw the truck parked next to the post office sign and then noticed Chet’s body lying face first on the pavement. He looked at the bat one more time then looked at the body coming closer with each step. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Victor’s thoughts. Chet was to be a human piñata.
“It would have been better if he was still active, but I think the Existing Dead are dying off,” Kyle commented.
Victor didn’t respond. He dropped the rest of the items in his arms and raised the bat into the air. Without any hesitation, he brought the weapon down onto the body, making contact with the back of Chet’s leg. He raised it again and hit the same spot. The bone cracked after the third swing. Without stopping, Victor continued to pulverize Chet’s lifeless form while Kyle watched. In his mind, even this was too good for him.
“Stop swinging,” Kyle said, walking toward the body.
Victor took a few more swings at his back before stopping. The boy’s panting seemed to grow now that he was no longer swinging.
Kyle put his hands under Chet’s shoulders and rolled him to his back. He backed away from the body to put more things into the truck.
It didn’t take long for Victor to continue. His first swing made contact with Chet’s groin, then moved toward his face. It took three swings before Chet’s face was no longer recognizable. His head dug farther into the pavement as it began to liquefy. All that remained was a mess of flesh and bone. In any other situation, this would probably have made Victor vomit, but not now. Victor finally dropped the bat, exhausted.
Kyle sat inside the truck, waiting for Victor to finish with his revenge. He stared out of the rearview mirror and saw Victor climbing up onto the bed. He loosened the noose that was keeping Chet in place and tossed it to the ground. He jumped out and entered the truck. He buckled himself in and waited for Kyle to start the engine.
“Do you feel better?” he asked.
“Let’s just go, I’m ready to go home.”
Kyle knew that Victor was in no emotional state to deal with any more bad news, but he had to make sure that Victor understood that there was a chance that his mother was dead.
“Listen, I know we talked about this before, but I need to make sure you’re not going to go suicidal on me if we get to your house and your mom is dead, or worse, one of them. There’s no telling what we’ll find when we get there. This could all be a waste of time.”
Victor’s face squinted as though he couldn’t believe what was being said to him. “What about you?” he spat. “You’re the loser who’s driving to California to find some stupid girl that’s probably already dead. Talk about a waste of time. Oh wait … your wife killed your son then killed herself, so I guess it looks like you have nothing else going for you.”
The words spoken from Victor’s throat pierced Kyle as though he were being shot a hundred times by an automatic gun. At each syllable, a bullet broke through his skin. Who was he to judge about Victor’s motives about going home? He was basically in the same situation. Kyle didn’t know what he’d do if Jasmine were dead. She was all he lived for now. Mary and Eddie were both gone … the only other person that he would consider family was sitting next to him. He would do anything for this kid; even chase down his rapist, get him infected and bring him back for the boy to turn into a liquefied mess in the middle of a post office parking lot.
“You’re right,” Kyle said, breaking the tense silence. “I can’t judge. All we can do right now is go and see what we find.”
“Good. Let’s go. My face feels like shit and I have to take one.”
Kyle didn’t know whether to laugh at the comment or let it pass over his head. He stayed quiet and turned the engine. He figured it would be safe to laugh about the situation once Victor did.
The vehicle lurched forward out of the parking lot. Chet’s body remained on the ground like a piece of discarded trash. Kyle turned right and they continued their journey.
“Are you hungry? Maybe you should eat something with the pills I gave you.”
Victor searched the bag at his feet and picked out a large slice of beef jerky. He cut the slab of beef in half and handed a piece to Kyle. Kyle looked at the jerky, then to the disgusting, blood-covered hand holding it. It wasn’t like Kyle cared about hygiene while eating food; hell, he’d eaten pudding off of a public restroom on a dare. But staring at the blood-soaked hand, Kyle recoiled.
“Are you going to take it?” Victor insisted.
Kyle pulled the truck over and looked at Victor. “Grab one of the bottled waters and wash the blood off your hands.”
“Why?”
“Because that blood is probably infected. I don’t need you catching whatever the fuck is happening.”
Victor hopped out of the truck and took a bottle out of one of the water crates in the bed. The box was soaking wet. He opened the bottle and poured the water over his hands.
Kyle remained in the truck and began flipping through the AM radio stations. The message from Doctor Greenly was still being looped. If he knew how to track radio signals, he would consider finding the source of the message. It was intriguing, especially the part about the Existing Dead evolving. He didn’t know what that meant, but he speculated that the dead dropping simultaneously had something to do with this ‘evolution.’
Victor came back in after his hands were clean. He showed them to Kyle like a child would show its mother after washing up for dinner. The speakers in the car blared out white static, only coming clear when Kyle passed a station broadcasting the message.
“Listen to this,” Kyle said.
The message Kyle heard played back for Victor.
“… All over town I have been seeing them collapse. I dragged one of them into my lab for research. What I have discovered is astonishing. The Existing Dead have begun to evolve … I am broadcasting on every AM frequency …”
“Is that what you saw?” Victor asked.
Kyle nodded after rubbing his eyes with his thumb and index finger.
“What do you think he means by ‘evolve’?”
“I’m not a science-bright person. But what I remember from some classes I took in high school is that life evolves to adapt to the surroundings and in some cases to solve problems within life. But like I said, I’m just a welder. I can’t even explain it right.”
“Well, that doesn’t help. Let’s just go. Whatever comes we’ll figure out on the way.”
“I need something to drink,” Kyle said unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door. The sky had finally started to clear up with specks of sunlight, and no heavy dark clouds loomed. But the wind blew wildly, as if God himself was blowing from the heavens above.
He took a bottle of water out of the crate and began to drink it slowly. There was no sense for him to rush. The streets were clear of all Existing Dead. It was probably like that around the world. Doctor Greenly said that all of the dead around his area were falling to the ground. It wasn’t just Kyle who had witnessed this. He really hoped that he would hear the remaining part of the message. Most of his questions would be answered.
Finishing the bottle of water, Kyle threw it to the ground. The entire world was now more or less a landfill, and tossing a plastic bottle onto the ground wouldn’t help, but it wouldn’t hurt either. He was about to enter the truck again, when Victor who was sitting in the passenger seat looked as though he was about to take an afternoon nap. Poor boy needed all the sleep he could get, without the proper first aid, sleep was literally the best medicine they had.
Kyle had the urge to examine the head he had stored in the bucket. He didn’t know what for, but he felt that there might be something, anything, that the head could tell him about what was going on. He picked up the bucket and dropped it onto the side of the road. Water splashed out as the head rolled on the ground and stopped upright, with its teeth grinding on the pavement. He stared at the teeth, one of them looked different than the others, it was as though the tooth was a small fang. Its eyes remained open, exposing the gray gloss that seemed to be the calling card of the Existing Dead. But there was something different now, its eyes seemed to be turning red. Kyle reached for the last metal spike in the truck bed and began gently poking the head. He walked around it and noticed something that he’d not seen before. A large brown bubble that resembled a boil had appeared on the side of the creature’s face, just above the right cheekbone. Kyle poked at it once and it felt tough, but he wasn’t sure what exactly it could be. He sure as hell didn’t want to touch the growth with his bare hand.
“Was that always there?” Kyle asked, but no one was listening.
The head in front of him began to move its eyes.
No words could describe Kyle’s confusion. This was something new, something unknown, something he didn’t have any answers to.
The eyes of the monster moved rapidly, first looking directly in Kyle’s direction, then toward the truck, and finally toward the open area to Kyle’s right. Its eyelids began to open and close at an alarming rate, as if the creature had an itch that it couldn’t scratch. It stopped suddenly and stared at Kyle.
The creature finally realized what Kyle was. He was the only thing that seemed to please the Existing Dead; he was fodder.
Kyle reached for the Glock holstered at the small of his back and pointed it directly at the creature’s temple. He took a deep breath and fired. The bullet ejected from the cartridge with such speed that it met its target within a blink of Kyle’s eye. The head jerked back a few feet from the force and rolled to its side, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. Brain matter covered the pavement where ground zero had taken place.
Victor opened the truck’s door and hustled toward Kyle, the blood-covered Winchester in his grip. He stared at Kyle and gave him a look, as if mentally asking where the danger was coming from. Kyle motioned toward the ground where the head lay and placed the Glock on the corner of the truck. He held on to the spike in his hand and used it to perch the head upright again. The bullet hole that appeared on its forehead was small. The round hadn’t done much damage to the face, only to the back of the head where the bullet had ejected. Kyle called Victor over.
Victor gazed at the creature’s lifeless face. Its right eye was half open and his left fully open, resembling someone with the worst case of lazy eye ever. Kyle used the point of the spike and aimed at the growth.
“Was this here before?”
Victor squinted the best he could with his overly droopy eyes and said, “I don’t think so. I can’t be sure, though. But that fang sure as fuck wasn’t.”
“I don’t remember seeing it, either.”
Kyle and Victor stared at the head for a few seconds and jumped back when the creature’s cheeks began to twitch. Its eyes rolled around the area as it had before and stopped once it locked eyes with Kyle’s. There was no possible way that Kyle had missed its brain completely. Half of it was splattered on the ground anyway. The creature, however, continue to move its eyes.