Talker – Chapter Twenty-Five: Monsters
Author's Note: Hurrah, chapter twenty-five. Chapter twenty-six is now going through the editing process. Please enjoy, and big squishy hugs and cookies to all my reviewers thus far.
It was like being in a horror movie that you knew ended in everyone dying. He was walking right into the very situation that caused people to yell at a movie screen and jeer the character for his or her stupidity of going to 'check things out' knowing full well that a serial or supernatural killer's been rumored to hang around these parts. Even though this was different than a movie, even though he had no audience, ((Author's Note: give him some credit, he doesn't know)) he still felt like that idiot drunken teenager going outside to investigate the mysterious sound in the bushes. That was how they all died in those movies. But he didn't have a choice, much like those actors didn't have the choice. They got a script and they followed it. Somehow he felt the same.
His pace slowed, and every time he caught it doing so, he mentally kicked himself and returned his pace to normal. In and out, in and out, that's what Kenneth had said. If he lagged, he would make them all nervous wondering what the hell was taking him so long. He may as well get it over with, they would either notice him or they wouldn't. Any second now he would see their hideous faces, their gnarled skin and rotten bodies and have to try and pretend that it didn't make him sick. He'd seen it all before and so much worse, the only thing he had to worry about now was just not looking at them. They were dead, nonsentiant, non-existant for all intensive purposes and he needn't shed another thought upon them. Unless of course…he came through the crowd of them and they just happened to turn their heads. He realized again that his pace was slowing, and he sped up instantly.
He did have to admit that he wasn't sure this was the best course of action. For his own sake, anyway.
"You seriously don't have to do this."
"I don't want you to go."
"…if you don't come back…"
Well…not exactly words of confidence. Not only did he owe it to them to try, however, but he should be remembering his own self preservation as well. Even if he would be living as…whatever he was. Half dead? Infected? Whatever you would call it, it was standing on a thin line all the same. He occasionally let his mind graze over the possibility that it might just eventually kill him anyway. He had this immunity or happenstance or whatever had kept him alive so to speak, but with no explanation and certainly no garauntee. He supposed he should just feel grateful that, all things considered, he felt pretty okay. His fever and color blindness were gone and he wasn't dizzy or nauseous…yet.
He knew it wouldn't be much further now. He recognized the way the tracks started to swerve and he would soon see where they ended up; at the totaled jeep mashed up against a tree. His surroundings became more familiar, and in the next glance, there was the very picture he remembered. The twisted metal of the vehicle encasing the base of the heavy-rooted palm and the rotting appendage still decaying in the seat. But he didn't have time to think about the scene or reminice about it any longer than a few seconds, for just as he saw it, he saw them as well.
He froze, unable to move as he observed a scattered mess of them on the sand outside the resort, aimlessly meandering around on stiffened legs and waiting for some meal to come across them. From this distance, he couldn't even tell the difference from what they were. Bedraggled and falling apart, there was no clear sign as to whether they were young, old, male, female…for that he would have to get closer, and he didn't want to. He was just waiting, waiting for the moment they would spring to life and realize he was there. That sick, twisted, morbid urge for them to see him as human despite the fact of what they would do with such knowledge. He waited, terrified and shaking like mad, expecting them to move…waiting…
But nothing happened. They didn't see him from here, at least he knew that much. They didn't run screaming towards him in a wild frenzy, and he wondered if his luck was really that good. It was too difficult to move. He couldn't guess how long he stood there gawking, his mind went blank and his legs wouldn't listen to his comands no matter how hard he tried to get the message through. To move forward, he had to move forward. He'd come this far and he wasn't a coward.
At least… he told himself he wasn't a coward; up until now, he hadn't ever had the opportunity to prove otherwise. Determined, he pushed himself forward, almost stumbling in the process but successfully forcing his feet to fall onward. With seven short steps his pace slowed greatly, now only a scant few feet away from a group of them and heart thudding so hard that his chest ached. They still didn't seem to move.
The last time he was here he had blindly tumbled into them, dazed and befuddled as he shoved through the crowd and in whatever direction would take him out of here. His world had been spinning, and truthfully, he didn't understand how he had gotten back to the others at all considering that he didn't remember the way. He just remembered… sensing them. Oh fuck. If that wasn't a zombie characteristic he didn't know what was. He was drawn to human flesh. He moved bolder now, still going towards the front door with corpses surrounding him as either side. He came nerve-wrackingly close to one, a tall former man with torn up lips and eyes wildly searching all around it at all times. This was the moment of truth…Tyler waved a trembling hand across the zombie's line of vision.
Nothing. It didn't make a move to him, it didn't look at him. Tyler found it to be a sort of bittersweet revalation. He did it again for good measure—but this time it's eyes snapped to him. Tyler was sure that his stomach had just melted in his body with the burning horror that struck him there, his hand pausing in mid air and his breath crashing into the sudden wall that had formed in his throat. It was looking right at him, there was no question.
It saw him. It saw him and could reach out at any moment it pleased to grab for him, but even still, he couldn't move. He was paralyzed with fear. The tall corpse made a sickening chuff through it's mutilated face and its eyes rolled upwards, foot falling back and then forward again as though it were trying to remember which direction it wanted to go.
Tyler knew that fainting was a very unmanly thing to do, but he felt pretty close to doing so at that. With an indignant grunt, he shoved the zombie back, an unfitting mix of bravery and ignorance in the gesture. The corpse hissed—but not at him. It didn't know a concept like revenge or rage anymore, just that something had happened, and if food was not involved, it had no reason to care. He wasn't food. Tyler stopped to think about that. He wasn't what they wanted. They weren't attacking him. Maybe it had been a bad gamble, but it'd turned up in his favor all the same. And for the first time in a very long time, Tyler thought for a brief moment that mabye, just maybe, he really was as lucky as they said he was. What a perverse feeling of rejoice that was… With a renewed confidence, he nervously dodged around them and at last arrived at the front door of the resort lodge, the door still broken open and dangling on its hinges.
Inside it was just as dark as he remembered it. Despite the straightening out they had done, furniture was turned over and the place was a mess all over again. One zombie that had been shot in the head during the struggle still lay motionless at the bottom of the stairs, bloated rotten arms lying like dropped sacks of meat outstretched before it. With a begrudging sigh, Tyler began his search…
It wasn't difficult to find the kitchen. Nothing in it had been touched aside from a few small things that he knew Ana and the others had used, a testament to the assumption that the resort itself had been taken over immdiately. That could also be guessed from the amount of untouched suitcases and personal items still left in all of the rooms. No, once the disaster struck, these people obviously didn't have time to run, and they certainly didn't use this place as any kind of a hold out. Perhaps there was some kind of emergency gather somewhere on this island that they would have fled to, but he wasn't about to go out there searching. He suspected that one day they would explore the island more out of obligation. Staying on one side of it forever would drive them crazy, and as long as he himself was there to investigate first, they could surely span out a little further.
So he finally had his use. Maybe he would be some good to this group after all. Even if up until this point he seemed to have only cause them damage. He'd so far caused them to fight, panicked them over his medical state, confused them in more ways than one, and not to mention killed their dog…And especially what he'd done to Ana. Though he seemed to have been forgiven, he couldn't imagine how she really felt. As much as he hated to admit it with the situation being as bad as it was, he had felt something for her that he hadn't felt in quite some time. Lust? His mind taunted cruelly. He mentally kicked himself and snorted, languidly shoving the non-parishable food items into the bag he had taken as his mind wandered. No, it hadn't been lust. Christ. Tyler had never considered himself a womanizer, to say the least. Truth be told, he'd never really done well around women.
No, all of his relationships had turned up pretty awful. Two had cheated on him, one he found out was a drug addict and he broke it off there. The others had just…gotten tired of him, he supposed. Or they just had something they needed more out of life than what they could ever have with him. Well why the hell had they bothered to stay in the first place? The sex? Fantastic. Said the logical half of his brain. You're doing something fucking important here, can we find a time to point out your shortcomings later? Right. What use was there to remember those girls anyway? Those days were over, and if he didn't focus on his job now, so would be the days at hand. If he found consolation anywhere it was in that he believed he would succeed, and at least give himself a sense of purpose if not the rest of them. He had to be useful, he owed them that much.
It was a moment of numb detatchment before he realized that the bag was full, so with a heave, he pulled it to the ground. He would have to find something else to carry his stuff in. Upstairs it was… He grimaced as he came back to the cadaver at the bottom of the stairs, willing himself to calm as he stepped over it in disgust. Instinctively he expected it to spring to life and snatch his ankle, despite how primitively foolish that sounded. Foolish maybe, and yet disturbingly plausible…he quickly spaced himself from it as he marched up the stairs. He was about to take the last step up when something caught his attention near his feet—the handgun that Terry had dropped. The one Tyler could have picked up had he stopped to think. Then again, had he stopped, it might have been too late. He reached down and grabbed it up off the step, placing it into the waistband of his jeans as he cautiously looked down the hall.
The upper region was much how they left it. The railing was broken and the hallway was thrashed, a grizzly smear of gore still splattered where he had sent one zombie to the floor and watched its head crack open. All the corpses, however, had migrated downstairs, most of them likely in chase and the others due to unconscious wander. So at least he wouldn't have to worry about dealing with them up here. It was difficult to ignore the clutter of his shoes against hardwood floor, an eerie echo in the desserted space surrounding him as he shuffled onward towards what had been his own room. He wasn't exactly sure why.
Inside the bed still had a slept-on look, his old, blood-stained clothes strewn onto the covers in a place he barely remembered putting them. He already hated this place. Just for what it was, or what it was supposed to be. He moved now with a renewed motivation to leave this place, grumbling something uncomfortable as he methodically reached for his old pants. Not quite registering his hand delving into a pocket, he realized that he had turned up his wallet. Why he was getting it he didn't know. Just because of the mere fact that it was his, he supposed…
Finding another duffle bag or two was easy; they were in pretty much every room. He threw in some First Aid kits without much thought, nodding to himself in satisfaction for the idea, and after fetching two more guns (including the rifle), went back downstairs. On his way, a knocked over digital clock on a broken nightstand told him that it was a little past eight. How…abstract the time seemed to be. Those numbers appeared to him futile and surreal, and he found himself confused as to how they had ever held a meaning at all. In an unorganized world such as this, what use was there for measuring the hour? He'd almost completely forgotten about it. He had to laugh to himself a little at that.
He found himself back in the kitchen in no time, apparently not having had as much trouble stepping over that dead zombie at the stairs as before. Maybe he was just too lost in thought. That seemed to be the norm as of late. He came back into the kitchen, setting the bag on the back counter and moving to the pantry when he heard a noise from outside. Just on the other side of the glass doors…It was a clunk and a moan, and he saw the shoulder of one of them at the glass, a yellowish streak of blood marking the place where it had been clumsy enough to walk right into it. He paused for a long while, caught between the reaction of either sneering at it or running away. Why was it trying to get in…? But his panic subsided as it wandered away, no more aware of his presence than it was of its own.
Somehow the idea of these creatures was beginning to anger him. He was angry that he still felt the tingling fear whenever he saw them, despite the fact that they had no intention of attacking him—well that fact alone didn't help. Without the fear for his life, he was free to see them for what they really were. They were just useless, dead bodies, and they seemed so harmless now that it was a torturous mockery to all who had died and struggled under their existence. He could walk out there and hack them to pieces with virtually no resistance whatsoever; these feared and dangerous things that had managed to outpopulate the human race could all be killed by one single man, couldn't they?… And why not just kill them all? How hard would it be?
He snorted to himself and closed up the bag. He now had three bags and a few guns, and with the weight, he knew he couldn't really carry anything else. Well…so that was it. He was pretty much done with this place…And as much of a relief as that was, that haunting grasp of fear still wanted to keep him from going back outside. It was a furious disappointment in himself that forced him to ignore that foolish fear, quickly struggling to pick up his supplies with two bags on one shoulder and the other on the opposite along with the shotgun. Without another thought to this god forsaken place, he turned and slipped out the door back into the lobby, then outside into the open where the mangled corpses still meandered.
The sun had temporarily sheilded itself underneath a layer of cloud cover by the time he made it back outside, throwing ugly shadows over the faces of the zombies standing out front. Many had, for whatever reason, flocked closer towards the entrance—closer to him, and now he found difficulty in finding a route between them. Sighing in annoyance, he dodged past a broken apart woman who had ventured too close and edged away from a few more with only one or two nervous jitters. Just as he thought he had made it into the clear—
A hand clutched at his arm.
He felt bile hitch in his chest as he jerked around, meeting the cold, dead features of a nearly unrecognizable figure and unwittingly dropping all of his things in the process. It looked as though someone had scraped half of its face off with a blunt edge, mouth twisted into a torn-muscled rictus and tongue yellow with decay in its gaping jaw. It wasn't looking at him, exactly. Just staring off into the proverbial abyss wherein its rationality existed, but its fingers were gripping against Tyler's arm as if in an attempt to pull him closer. At first he was too horrified to react, staring up at the taller corpse with a blank numbness and a dizzying fear. It groaned and felt its clumsy, bloody hands over Tyler's body, unthinking, as though suddenly confused at this something in its way. It kept trying to push him away, but in the next instant, was pulling him into itself again.
Tyler flared out and shoved the groping creature against the chest, almost making it fall backwards. It regained its feet quickly and reached out for him again, stiff hands almost touching him before he grabbed its wrists and shoved it away. "Stop!" he snarled, knowing full well it was a futile command. It flailed at him more avidly, struggling with what looked to be the broken bones jutting from its hands. What reason it had to be on him like this was beyond his understanding, but needless to say, it was freaking the hell out of him. It came to grab him again, but this time Tyler felt that strange inhuman growl roll out from the pit of his chest, one he had no control over.
It stopped breifly as though considering that growl, but decided to try and reach him again after all. Tyler backed up in dumbstruck terror for the involuntary sound that he himself had made, shaking his head against the reasonings of his panicked mind that he could not control the instincts of an infected half. He wanted to tear the stupid fucker into shreds, and this coming from himself was frightening. He had always been calm, gentle, and to feel these foreign urges of violence made him break into a cold sweat. He was still backing away, the corpse looming down on him. Giving in momentarily, Tyler reeled back and slammed his weight into the zombie's torso, sending it sprawling head over feet back into the sand with a spasmatic tremor.
"No no no…" Tyler rubbed his face hard with his hands, shaking his head and continuing to back away. "Get away, go away…" he couldn't decided if he made this plea to the zombie reaching out for him or the zombie within himself. No, he wasn't a monster. No no, this was a disease, not a supernatural plague. Somewhere, somehow this could be explained by medical research, yeah, somewhere there was an obvious explanation for this if given time and resources. God damn it, he was fooling himself into being scared. That creature was not sensing him out as a fellow infected—it didn't know its fellows from a tree stump, it was just a useless hunk of flesh, just like Ana said. It was grabbing at him because it was suffering some random neuroligical reflex.
He looked up to see that it was up and coming at him yet again. Fuck, what did it want? Why was it coming for him? Why did he still feel that out of place rage? With another indignant snarl, Tyler pushed it over again, hands acting waywardly as his grip found the rifle. Before the creature could get up again, he fired into its head, bringing up a geyser of blood and pulp. These damn stupid fucking creatures, why the hell wouldn't they just leave him alone? He surveyed the mangled dead body for a long while. Watching the way blood still bubbled from the neck.
The gun slowly sliding out of his grasp to clunk to the ground. Eventually he found himself collapsed onto the sand, head in his hands as he felt another wave of tears grit past his throat. He'd never had the instinct to kill. The instinct to destroy something if it wasn't a fight for his life. He'd never had that desire to spill blood…until now. As much as he could never admit it before, the infection had effected him. Part of him was a monster. And he feared that more than he feared these army of undead millions.