Finally, I uttered a frightened squeal., Whirling I spun to face my attacker, but I calmed immediately, though my heart still thudded in my chest. It was Dan. He was looking up at me, panic evident in his every feature. Fear. I could almost smell it.
"Ashley?..." He croaked, throat rasping. "Something isn't right." He whispered, his bright blue eyes, dulled now, unsteady, wavering from my face, to the walls, to Trent, and back to me. I knelt at his side. "Shh.. rest. You are just sick." I replied, attempting to sooth him. "No!" He said loudly, his head snapping back and forth viciously, the grip on my wrist becoming vice-like in it's intensity.
"Something isn't right...it's inside...dark." He panted, voice rising in panic. His eyes suddenly widened, breathing shallow, his other hand scrabbled desperately, plucking at his breast pocket. "I got it." I replied, fingers submerging into the depths of his dirty tan pocket, pulling out his crumpled family photograph. Sighing, he held it close to his face, as though his eye-sight was failing him. He calmed visibly, caressing those memories of the past, captured forever as a smiling glimpse into a past now shoved aside by a rising, violent tide of the undead.
"Ahh, Carrie..." He crooned quietly, stroking her image reverently. "Where did you go? I came for you, but you had gone...Why did you leave me baby? Why? ..." I didn't realize I was crying until I saw a wet smudge bloom on his uniform. Sniffling I wiped a filthy hand across my face.
"This is wrong." he said, looking up at me, those sorrowful, so emptied of laughter and light, fixed on my face. I wanted to look away, but found I couldn't. I heard Trent move behind me, feeling his presence at my back.
"Ashley...Ashley, I don't want to be one of those things. I do want to go like that. Please...please?" He said weakly, squeezing my entrapped wrist. "No! Please Dan...Don't! I can't! You can beat this...please..PLEASE! Don't leave me here, we need you...I need you! Please..." I cried, my heart breaking, shattering, and I could feel as every piece as it smashed. I imagined I could feel the tiny pieces burn as they started through my arteries..burning a painful path downward.
I could only bow my head, eyes free of his skeletal face, almost completely devoid of the man I had come to know and care for over these few days. "Hero's aren't supposed to die..." I whispered.
"Sorry kiddo." He quipped. "This one has me licked." He finished, trying to smile, but fell into a fit of gurgling coughs. Leaning up, I took his head in my arms, heedless of the danger, cradling his head, trying to lift him so he might breath easier. After the coughing subsided, he beckoned me close, I leaned in obediently.
His following words have stuck with me to this day. I can even remember the tone of his voice, the feel of his wispy, dieing breath playing on the skin of my neck. He smelt like sweat, and a hint of sickness. I can't describe the smell, but you know the smell that envelopes you when you walk into a hospital? Well thats the smell.
Still gripping my wrist, he whispered...
"My time is done,used up. It's just my time. Awww...no. Shhhh, no don't cry." He said, shushing me like one would a fretful child. "I know you don't believe it, but you have what it takes. From the moment I saw you ...you were different. Hell kid, you are blessed. Maybe cursed, depending how you look at it. I don't know what, but I know this, there is a plan here. God always has a plan. Heavens knows what it is this time ..." He said, with a wiry chuckle on his lips. "You gotta get outta here, head for the mountains like we planned. Set up a safe place to ride this out."
"I don't know what to do..." I choked, tears just streaming from my eyes, down my face, splattering down on his uniformed chest. But he seemed not to even notice.
"No, you will Ash, you have what it takes...Do you trust me? Trust me, trust yourself. Trust your instincts, your gut feelings. You will make it..." He finished, his head falling back on the pillows. He seemed to shrink visibly. Breathing so low I couldn't even detect it anymore.
Panic rose to my breast. He was losing. "Oh god. Please. No.." I pleaded aloud. I felt Trent's hand fall comfortingly on my shoulder, the cold steel of the shot gun pressing lightly against my back, like a reminder of the undeniable, enviable ... the ending.
"Shhh." He murmured, eyes fluttering closed. Then, just when I thought he had left us, he began to whisper a phrase of age old wisdom, and in spite of myself, the thumping of my heart slowed. And even though I rarely frequent church I found myself reciting the phrases as though they were the prayers I used to utter even night in my childhood.
"Yea..though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me..."
Trent echoed the phrase with us, so quietly behind us that it seemed as though he talked only in a whisper. Repeating it once more, Dan looked up at me, and nodded...Standing shakily, I took from Trent the shotgun. Hoisting it as he finished the last word...a dieing whisper on his dry lips. The hefty wait of it, now familiar to my arms, gave me no comfort as I raised it to my eye.
"Be seeing you..." He murmured, then looked back down at the photo, a crooked finger brushing at it's surface, as though touching something more deeply then I could ever understand. Choking back a sob, I sighted, tears blurring my vision. "Oh god." I remembered thinking, Why has it come to this? Why is the world now only one of absolutes?
"Carrie..." He murmured once more, mind already in another place, one assuringly better then this hell. Then he slumpt back, breath rattling out, ringing out the finality of it all.
And the echoing boom of the shot gun blast sent him on. A bold salute as he flowed into oblivion. An accompaniment fit for a hero, as he moved on confident and with much faith, to his next adventure...