As the sun falls toward the horizon, his eyes roam the landscape, searching for shelter. Wind rustles through the branches and the atmosphere feels moist against his skin. The sun drops behind western rain clouds, dimming air already darkened by the forest canopy, and Ray quickens his pace as a few random drops splat on the rim of his STEELERS hat. He emerges from the trees onto a grassy field covered with a riot of dandelions. At the other end of the field, a farmhouse stands quiet, its windows boarded up, three rotting bodies drawing flies on the porch steps. A tire swing sways from the stoutest branch of a massive oak tree.
He pauses here, listening to the buzz of insects in the tall grass. The world is so lush and beautiful it is sometimes hard to believe it is coming to an end. Then he remembers the world is not ending, just its dominant species.
The sky continues to blacken. Moist wind strikes Ray in the face, carrying a few drops of rain, and he opens his arms to it. The air feels electric. The clouds rumble with distant thunder, a melancholy sound. He takes a deep breath and decides to try the barn to ride out both the night and the rain. The house appears occupied and dangerous. Get too close to that place, he might get a lungful of buckshot, looking the way he does right now. He studies his hands—workman’s hands, hairy and powerful—and realizes his survival and recovery from Infection is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. He might have to fight again, and kill again, if he wants to make it home alive. Ray has a lot for which he wants to live. Nothing ambitious, just a deep, abiding appreciation for breathing in and out. When he thinks about his fever over the past few days—weeks?—it terrifies him because he remembers little of it. He dreamed; many of the dreams were horrible. But mostly, just darkness. Trying to remember those long days of nothing is like trying to remember the time before he was born.
Rain pelts the roof as he enters the barn. Rats flee squealing from his advance, melting into the dark spaces. The building has a rich smell of farm animals and hay and old dung, but the smell is stale, a memory; the animals are long gone, the hay is rotting. Ray sniffs the air again just to be sure, but detects no sour milk stench, the calling card of the Infected. Something crunches and scatters under his boots, and he looks down, only to wish he hadn’t; the floor is strewn with little piles of bones and children’s clothes. Bloodstains have turned the dirt floor the color of rust. The barn was a nest, then; a pack of the Infected killed here, ate here, slept here, but they moved on long ago. Ray waves away a small cloud of buzzing flies and thinks about burying the bones, but he is tired and it is getting late.
“Sorry,” he grumbles, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. Ray feels like an empty husk. Something in him died when the bug took him. Or maybe he was reborn, and is still finding out who he is. Either way, he has no fight in him anymore.
He climbs a ladder leading to the hayloft, pulls it up after him, and spreads out his old rolled-up blanket on a bed of moldy hay. He pulls off his boots and then his socks and sighs with relief despite the stink, wiggling his toes. Fishing in his pocket, he finds a couple of Band-Aids and applies them over the blisters on his heels. Minutes later, he falls into a deep, blissful sleep to the soothing sound of rain pattering on the roof. Mosquitoes feast on his blood during the night.
The next morning, Ray pisses hard into the hay, smokes a stale cigarette, and cuts open a can of cold SpaghettiO’s pasta, which he eats with a plastic spoon. The air is warm and humid; his body is already slick with sweat. His legs are sore and a part of him wants to sleep the day away again. He stares into space scratching at his bug bites until boredom drives him back down the ladder and into the farmer’s yard. Beyond, winter wheat stands hunched and wet under a dim, heavy mist that shrouds the distant fields and woodlands.
He decides he likes the mist. The mist could be his friend. As long as it lasts, he can hide in it. The house still stands quiet, but Ray is certain he is being watched. He feels a sudden urge to wave, or better yet flip them the bird, but doesn’t have the energy for it.
Shouldering his pack and gripping his walking staff, he disappears into the treeline.
♦
Minutes later, the mist surrounds him like a living thing. It feels cool and wet in his lungs. He cannot see more than a few feet in front of him but has the skin-crawling sensation he is still being watched. He is in danger here. Coming into the mist was a mistake, but it is too late to go back. He already no longer has a sense of where he started.
He closes his eyes and pictures sitting at a big desk in the station’s holding pen, where Unit 12, his old police unit at Camp Defiance, made its home. He and Tyler and his kid Jonesy and all the other guys in the unit, Cook and Salazar and the rest, laugh at some joke as they pass around a can of warm beer they scrounged up.
Ray just wants to go home. He does not have the stamina to live under constant threat like Anne and Todd. He needs people. He wants to be in a nice, safe place among friends.
Over time, his inability to see amplifies his hearing. Things tramp through the forest all around him. His own footfalls sound loud to his ears, as if he is walking on garbage bags filled with crumpled paper. But standing still is worse than making noise. Standing still is worst of all.
He remembers a dream he had while fighting his infection. A dream of something that happened to him when he was a kid. The dream so real, the actual memory so long ago, he wonders if it actually happened, or if he just dreamed it. In the dream, he shoved Shawn McCrea’s face into a tree while playing a trust game. That’s how he feels now, being led through the forest blinded by mist. At any moment, he is going to get sucker punched.
His father’s voice: Hey Ray, come here a minute.
Ray breaks into a run, hands splayed to ward off low-hanging branches. In his mind’s eye, his father is about to hit him. The fog is so blank it is easy to write one’s memories and worst fears onto it. He wants to outrun the old man, but, as in a dream, he cannot move. In his memory, he loves his father too much to leave, so he obeys; he walks meekly to his dad. And gets slapped. It feels good to get it over with. The worst part is the waiting. The cat and mouse game.
Leona, stay out of this or you’re next. Kid’s got to learn. He’s got to toughen up.
The sad thing is, Ray believed him. He believed his father was trying to help him when he got drunk and slapped him around for not being strong enough.
A black shape forms in the mist, coalescing into a gaunt, looming monster. Ray gasps and falls to his knees, his heart galloping in his chest.
This is it. I’m going to die.
It almost feels good to get it over with. As always, the worst part is the waiting.
It registers in his panicked brain that the monster is a tree. Ray curls up at its base, shaking with terror. It is like being back in the storage locker, trapped with his own memories and thoughts. It was his past that drove him back out into the light of day.
Ghostly voices call in the mist. The sound rakes across his already tattered nerves. A motor engine revs before cutting out. Then silence.
He feels light on his face and blinks into the fleeting glare of sunlight winking through the forest canopy above. The fog is dissipating, retreating into shreds and wisps.
The voices shout again, clearer this time.
Ray peers out from behind the tree. A Winnebago sits parked on the shoulder of the highway, a battered state police cruiser next to it. A man with a hunting bow stands guard near two men hunched over the RV’s engine, while a woman sits behind the wheel of the police car. They look as terrified as he feels.