The odor that swept over him as he stepped inside made the gall rise in Shepherd’s throat, as it always did, and he pulled the paper mask up over his nose and mouth.
Luke waited in the hallway, sputtering behind his speaker. His hands twitched against the bolts in his wrists as he held what was left of Peter. Shepherd now took the remains himself, cradled the dead weight of the full-grown man as best he could, and carried him to the workroom table. He laid the body down gently, and pushed the cord restraints off to the side, unnecessary for this operation.
In all the confusion of meeting another conscious person, he had neglected Peter. Good Peter. The first. The rock. The trusty follower. Shepherd pulled his stool up to the table and gingerly brushed back the matted, sticky hair on the good side of Peter’s head. Death had been kind to Peter, even if its means had been abrupt and gruesome. Despite the bruising, the un-healing lacerations, the crusted blood at the corners of his cracked lips, Peter looked like a man again. Peaceful in death despite his trials in life. Shepherd closed his eyes and tried to block out what he could remember of Peter prior to this moment, tried to erase the sound of his moan, the snap of his teeth, the feral glow in his eyes. When he looked back down at the corpse, he thought he could see what Peter had looked like before, when he was a son, a father, a co-worker, a neighbor to someone. He couldn’t be more than just a few years older than Shepherd himself, perhaps looking forward to a first grandchild, or a twentieth anniversary on a cruise ship in the tropics.
Or perhaps he was divorced, living in a one-room apartment alone, drinking at the corner pub morning, noon, and night, feeling the missing presence of his children like phantom limbs he swore were still there.
Shepherd shook his head at the sinking of his stomach. This was not the time to think about things like that. Instead, he took Peter’s cold, rough hand in both of his. Shepherd always thought Peter’s hands looked like a carpenter’s. Little crisscross scars danced up the sides and across the knuckles where a whittling knife might have pushed too hard against a knot of wood, slipped, and cut.
“May you rest in peace, my friend,” he said softly, squeezing Peter’s hand. “Please forgive me for not serving you better and for what I must do now.”
It was messy work, pulling out the motors and the bolts, prying back the cage that had kept Peter safe—safe for Shepherd, and safe for himself—and it took time. Each bolt broke the bones as they came out, spraying his masked and goggled face with moldy blood. The skin slipped and peeled back from the coagulated divots in the muscle. Twice, Shepherd had to get up and stand outside, leaning his forehead against the wall as he took deep, uninhibited breaths to clear the stench out of his nostrils and to settle his stomach.
Shepherd buried Peter in the grassy field beyond the runway. Ringing the grave, Martha, Paul, Matthew, and Luke stood quietly, wheezing and gurgling. Peter’s towel-shrouded body lay beside the grave. In the distance, Shepherd could hear one or two roamers, their moans and shrieks amplified by the stillness of the river and the flat of the runway.
His companions heard them too. Luke pushed his head forward, straining his neck and back against the metal restraints bolted into his flesh and bones. Martha’s eyes rolled from side to side, and her wheezing intensified; she stiffened at a distant howl, and her throat rumbled with a muffled cry in return.
“Stop it,” Shepherd whispered. “Stop it. You’re better than them. You don’t have to give in to the sickness.”
Paul gurgled at this, and a sludge of blood and bile oozed down his throat and dripped from his chin to the ground.
Shepherd hoisted himself up from the hole and laid the shovel aside. Peter’s body was light, what was left of it, and Shepherd carefully placed it in the bottom of the grave. There was a part of him that wished he could give Peter a proper burial, with a coffin and flowers and a minister’s ordained prayers, but the close-hugging blanket of dirt would have to do. At least it would keep Peter’s remains undisturbed by the gnawing teeth of free roamers.
No, not free, Shepherd reminded himself. They’re controlled as much as my flock are. More, because they have nothing to live for, nothing to hope for beyond the torments of this world.
Luke’s gasping, grunting moans grew louder as Shepherd shoveled dirt over Peter’s corpse. Luke wheezed, and the metal restraints groaned as he pushed against them. Back in the control tower, Shepherd knew the warning lights must be blinking, but he did not fear. He had given up on fear a long time ago.
He withdrew the weathered, life-beaten New Testament from his back pocket and turned to a page marked with a bloodstained fingerprint. Seeing it made him pause, catch his breath, remembering all too well the crack of nine-millimeter bullets entering the skulls of two very familiar heads, heads that had born faces twisted beyond recognition by the virus’s grasp on the minds within.
Once upon a time, Shepherd thought, and his trigger finger ached.
He should have realized then what he knew now: that the roamers could be controlled, could be guided and helped, at least for a while.
Luke quieted, as he always did when Shepherd read scripture to him. It warmed Shepherd’s heart to imagine that Luke was a God-fearing man, like himself, or had been before the virus trapped him in his body. Luke’s desire to listen, or appearance of it, was the one shining example of hope—a quiet, patient sign—that perhaps he wasn’t completely insane for thinking they could still be helped.
He was lying on the sofa, dry-eyed but shaking as he staring at the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the dark red streaks smeared down the wall and the lumps of the bodies where they’d fallen to the floor. His lips and the tips of his fingers were stiff and numb. He could feel his chest rising and falling, but he didn’t know if he was breathing.
The front door slammed, shaking the whole house, his eyes in their sockets, his heart in his chest, his brain in his skull. It shocked him back to life, and he sat up. The sofa springs creaked. His breath came in short gasps at first, short bursts he used to whisper her name. But his throat held back the cry. If she stopped, if she turned and came back, what else could he tell her that he hadn’t already tried? What could he say that would work? Would make her stay, make her forgive him?
She had called him, begged him to come home, to help her. Her trembling voice echoed in his ears: “Something’s wrong with Mom. I-I don’t think she’s breathing.”
He could still feel Anne’s fingers clawing at his arms, at his face, see the flashing white of her teeth and the blood oozing from the corners of her eyes. He could still hear Chris’s howling moan as he lurched out of his bedroom, his white T-shirt turned maroon and brown.
He knew what to do, knew what was best, the only option. Even when Penny screamed at the gunshots, caught his arm, tried to pull him away, he hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t thought about it, and he should have. He should have stopped. Should have controlled himself, or tried harder, anything . . . It was easy to shoot them. What did that say about him?
Clutching his head with his sticky hands, he felt a moan resonating in his chest. It seeped out from between his lips from some dark place within him, and cracked the silence left in the wake of the squeal of tires on asphalt as the last living person he cared about raced away from him into the night.