Chapter 2: The Liver Diskus Event
Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.
- Heinrich Heine, Augsberg Gazette, 1842
Heath runs across the courtyard as fast as he can while also being thoughtful of his footing. With the landmines scattered throughout along a grid pattern, he keeps in mind the cleared paths safe to take and is overly cautious not to place so much as one toe out of line. Across the courtyard Marshall, Georgia State's old warden, and his daughter, Millie, sit on the porch of the warden's house, drinking sweet tea while watching a flock of ducks swim down the river. One shot from Lou rings loud and clear, booming over the compound with such force that it startles the 31-year-old black man from Birmingham.
"We got a problem!" Heath shouts. Marshall stands from his chair, a little shaky on his arthritic knees. At seventy-one, he could easily pass for a man in his early fifties, the only problem is that his deceiving appearance is purely skin deep. He creaks and pops like any other old man. Not to mention that fifty years of smoking a pipe has left him with a rather severe case of emphysema.
Marshall puffs on his pipe, "What?" His voice is rough like sand paper, calloused and unforgiving. A notoriously hard man with a heart three sizes too small, Marshall is secretly despised by the entire group of survivors, and even more secretly detested by his youngest daughter, Millie.
Two shots.
"There's a group coming towards the prison, but the main gate is crawling with walkers." Heath announces, very much out of breath, as he finally comes to a rest in front of the porch steps. Shots three and four from Charlaine come in rapid succession, a quick double-tap flawlessly executed.
Millie rises so quickly that the old fashioned wooden chair she was previously sitting is sent teetering back onto two legs before slamming back onto the porch. Seeming somewhat operational solely on autopilot, Millie grabs the .9 mm handgun from the small table between her chair and her fathers.
With a scowl so deeply etched into his face that for a moment it seems Marshall's face will rip in two, he lets out a low scoff, "Survival of the fittest, Heath. If they can't defend themselves from a couple of walkers, then they ain't fit for this place."
"It's not just a couple walkers!" Heath shouts. Millie sheepishly looks at her father, very clearly waiting for him to give her some kind of permission that he never will. With a barely wrinkled hand placed on her arm, Millie sits back down, sadly looking down at the gun resting in her lap.
Five shots.
"I don't care if there's a hundred walkers or two. People around here need to learn to fight for themselves. It won't do nobody any good to get hand-outs all their lives." Marshall sneers.
"I COULD USE A LITTLE HELP OVER HERE, IF YOU DON'T MIND!" Charlaine's shouts as loud as she could possibly muster, however, across the courtyard it sounds faint, like the far away squeal of a pot of boiling water.
"You know, last time I checked - this wasn't a dictatorship, so you have no right to be such an ass." Heath snaps at Marshall before darting away – off to the gate, off to save those who Marshall would rather see perish than offer a little of his supposed southern hospitality to.
Six shots.
Marshall spits a wad of discoloured spittle over the edge of his wrap-around porch. Tonguing his front teeth, he gently eases himself back down into his chair.
Overly hesitant, Millie slowly turns to face her father, "We're good Christians, pa. We should follow the word of the Lord and help those–"
Marshall raises his hand up over his head, readying to strike his daughter like he has many times before. Instantaneously quieting, Millie instinctively shies away from her father. Millie's long chestnut coloured hair falls in front of her face as she shrinks down in her chair.
"That's what I thought." Smugly, Marshall eases back in his chair and takes a slow puff from his Mershon pipe, "That stupid nigger needs to learn his place 'round here. You hear him cussin' at me like that – like I was one of his homies?" Marshall scoffs at the absurdity of the idea. Millie turns to her father, glaring at the aging man with horn rimmed glasses and a wide brimmed hat whom she loathes in such a way that late at night it makes her question her faith. Marshall looks back at his youngest daughter, silently daring her to say something. But just like always, she doesn't for fear of not only his bare hands but also the wooden paddle he keeps nailed to the wall, right next to the front door for all of creation to see.
Knowing it would be a futile battle at best to say anything about her fathers deep-rooted racism, Millie gets up and walks back into the house, slamming the screen door behind her to the best of her seventeen-year-old ability.
Which is just enough to make Marshall's left eye, cold steely grey, twitch with barely contained anger.
By the time Heath gets to the gate, Charlaine has taken down seven walkers. Four maggot-sacks remain. While one rather severely decomposed cadaver with a blood-stained wife beater bearing some beer logo tears into the dead raccoon like it's a fucking gourmet all-you-can-eat buffet, the three others have caught whiff of the fresh meet darting through the field and are on the hunt, growling and snapping their jaws at the prospect of a fresh meal. The group of survivors coming towards the prison are entering from the North, the worst possible angle considering how far the tree line juts out. They probably can't even see the infected that limp-run towards them; they're blindly running into what could only be described as an undead ambush. You know, if the dead even have enough brains (pun intended) to perform an ambush.
"ABOUT FUCKING TIME!" Charlaine shouts down from the tower when she sees Heath's tiny form get to the main gate on the northeastern side of the compound.
"You think you can get the lead-" Heath begins, but before he can finish his sentence a shot – sounding more like a dulled firecracker than the heavy boom from Lou's sniping rifle - rings out and the walker that had been at the front of the pack falls to the ground; dead.
This time for good, too.
Two more shots not from Charlaine's gun echo around the compound in rapid succession, distanced sound waves bouncing off of so many surfaces that it becomes even more diluted. Almost peaceful, even.
"That wasn't me." Charlaine says breathily to herself as she peers beyond her rifle and out into the field where a small cloud of gun smoke hangs suspended in the humid air around the distant group. Even though Heath did not hear Louisiana, for there is no possible way he could of at such a distance, he looks up to Charlaine in the tower at the very precise moment she looks down at him. Telepathic words are exchanged, all filled with surprise and praise for the group that has to be at least a hundred and fifty feet from the zombies at this point: not an easy shot to be accurate with. For one to be able to get a clean headshot from that distance means that beyond a semi-reasonable doubt, someone of the five has weapons training. It is skills such as that which become the most coveted when the world ends. Remember: nothing is ever safe, only safer.*
Heath and Charlaine knew each other long before the world came crashing to its knees and that enables them to have the sort of faux-paranormal powers that they do. When Louisiana's Marine company was deployed to Iraq in late 2007, Heath was her Navy Corpsman – her field medic. The two forged an unbreakable bound under the intense pressure of undeclared war under the guise of keeping peace. It is a bond that neither quite understands but each wholly respects and treasures.
"Tell Michonne to open the gates!" Heath calls up to Lou.
Caught in the middle of reaching for the bulky walkie-talkie sitting on the cluttered desk in the office, Charlaine shouts down a quick, "Already on it." Then puts a call to Michonne over in the eastern most tower, quickly telling the katana-wielding woman to part the electronic gates.
On the porch of the warden's house, within the fence but completly seperate from the prison, still sipping his chilled sweet tea and smoking his pipe, Marshall mutters to himself a solemn, "Damn."
The crotchety old man with wire-thin blonde hair hates having more mouths to feed almost as much as he hates democrats and pinko hippie faggots. Hence why he has twice disconnected the radio transmitter within the prison.
Yet somehow, it never remains down for more than a day – though he has his suspicions that his youngest, and now only, daughter has worked up the nerve to correct the damage he does.
Charlaine and Heath work together to clear away the pile of bloody, permanently dead corpses from the main gate, creating a narrow dead-free pathway for the quickly approaching survivors. The walkers are light-weight in their dismembered and decomposed state, easily moved out of the way just as if they were trash bags waiting curbside for pick-up.
It works like a rhythmic machine with Charlaine wrapping her arms up to the elbow under the corpses armpits while Heath grabs their feet. Working together they swing the dead bodies back and forth until they build up enough momentum and then they fling the putrid beings off into a pile that quickly stacks high.
"I'm thinking s'mores tonight." Heath says as he wipes his dirty hands down the front of his khaki-covered thighs.
"We don't have any chocolate." Charlaine says.
"But Dianne hoards the stuff." Heath says, pointedly.
Charlaine rolls her two-toned eyes, "We're," with a back-and-forth wiggling of her index finger in the space between them, she gestures to herself and Heath, "not supposed to know that. "
She crouches down, wedging her bare arms under the next walker to be moved as Heath does the same to what is left of its feet – nothing more than two half-eaten stubs of torn flesh with the tattered remains of sneakers cupping a copious amount of coagulated brackish goo around the heels.
"Screw her. We've got to burn these bodies and I don't want to let a fire go to waste. Okay, one, two, three." They lift on the count of three, easily hoisting up the body.
"You don't think that's a little unsanitary?" Charlaine's words lack disgust, rather she sounds tired; grown bored with the macabre as it becomes her daily routine.
"Naw, fire kills everything."
"You sure about that? I've seen walkers running around, on fire. They seemed pretty not-dead to me."
As the body begins to swing faster and with more momentum, Heath hears a faint ripping noise, but before he can react, the corpse rips clear in two – spilling innards and repugnant goo all over the dirt path that serves as an entrance route. Louisiana is left holding on to the top half and Heath the bottom, a pile of rotten intestines and excrement swimming in a pool of blood gathering between.
Heath gags from the smell, having to drop the bisected pair of legs in order to vomit in peace while Lou looks on, her brow scrunched up and her lips pulled into a frown, "I never knew there was so much… crap inside of someone." She comments.
Crap, indeed. In addition to everything that came spilling out from inside the walker, a large amount of fecal matter splattered on the dirt road. Perhaps the worst part of that is the fact that the shit smell doesn't even register. Instead, all that can be smelt is rot and decay, a disturbing smell greatly magnified by the humidity and heat.
With her arms still hooked under the dismembered torso's underarms, Charlaine perks up a little – causing the torso to sway and even more putrefied bodily fluids to spill onto the dirt road, "I bet he didn't have enough fiber in his diet. All flesh and no bran does not a regular colon make." She chuckles to herself, finding the joke immensely funny.
However, her sort of macabre humour only makes Heath's stomach church worse.
Gagging again from her unneeded, disgusting commentary, Heath doubles over and breathes in deep in a desperate attempt to not regurgitate any more of his lunch. But it's rather hard considering the breeze has picked up and he had the unfortuante foresight to step down-wind. As the smell grows in correlating intensity to the breeze, he again hurls.
"That. Was. Not. Funny!" Heath says when he is finally able to talk, though doing so hurts his throat.
Charlaine shrugs with one shoulder, letting out the tiniest of murmurs of agreement before hurling the torso into the nearby pile of corpses. As the torso flies through the air, its liver comes loose and shoots off in the other direction like a frisbee, flinging blood and curious chunky bits every which way as it spins.
Louisiana tries to be funny, to crack jokes like Heath does, but more times than not her particular brand of humour proves to disturb more than it inspires laughter.
"Hello?" A dubious greeting from a slightly wavering male voice steals the attention of both Heath and Louisiana who had previously had their backs turned to the field.
Louisiana turns around to greet five people, four men and one blonde woman, each looking more than slightly emaciated and sun burnt as if they had been traveling for days in the sweltering heat.
The baby face of a slender Asian man bears a green tint as he stares wide-eyed at the carnage left behind from the bisected walker, while the very same scene causes a tall man wearing a red plaid shirt, sans sleeves, who holds a crossbow to cock his head to the side, intrigued by the way a body could just tear in half like that. The blonde female holds the back of her palm over her nose and mouth, turning her torso to the side and thus putting the vile sight beyond her peripherals. A whispered "that's even grosser the second time around." can be faintly heard from her over the leaves that rustle in the gathering breeze. Neither of the two men who have unknowingly placed themselves two paces in front of the others look at the spilt carnage. Instead, a slim brown-haired fella in a tan uniform and a stalky man with black stubble over his head, both holding rifles, look straight ahead at Heath and Louisiana.
"Nice to meet ya'll, I'm Heath." Heath waves, still feeling unbearably queasy. The Asian boy gives him a subtle nod, empathizing with his pain.
Louisiana puts on a friendly, and decidedly fake smile, "And I'm Louisiana. How do you do?" she asks politely. The end of the world should not mean the end of manners; just because civilization dies out does not also mean civility should follow suit.
Life is what you make of it and all that other bullshit…
Being a lefty, Charlaine sticks out her left hand to shake whoever first accepts it, a friendly, harmless gesture by itself. Yet when she sticks out her hand, and therefore also sticks out her wrist with a bite-mark plain-as-day, it is as if she were instead offering them a basket full of poisonous apples.
"Damn! She's been bit!" The man with the sleeveless button-up shirt on exclaims.
The group collectively flinches away, putting a greater distance between themselves as a whole and the tall redheaded woman.
"It ain't nothin' to worry about." Lou says with a dismissive wave.
"The hell do you mean it ain't nothin' to worry about?" Crossbow man asks, a deep southern drawl blatant in his words – from somewhere in the backwoods, somewhere familiar to Louisiana. For as much as Yankees like to think there is only one southern accent, there most certainly is not. Each region has its own distinct accent. For example, Heath's Birmingham, Alabama accent is far different from Charlaine's Cajun accent - even though she tries to speak articulately and downplay her roots, there is no amount of willpower strong enough to completly erase the deeply engrained Cajun pronunciations from her pierced tongue.
Heath decides to explain their unique situation, since the extent of Charlaine's explanation goes about as far as because I said so, "See, it's just a scar," Heath grabs Lou's wrist gently, holding up so that the relatively new scar, still slightly pink, is more visible in the sunlight, "She's immune – can't get infected."
"Holy shit." The blonde woman exclaims in quiet surprise.
Charlaine takes back her wrist, exchanging a look with Heath that clearly expresses she is none-too-pleased with how he just waved around the very painful physical reminder of the first time she was bit as if it were nothing.
"That's impossible." The stalky black-haired man affirms with a shake of his head, so absolutely sure of something he knows little about. Perhaps it is that sort of ignorance that strikes such a passionate chord with Lou, or maybe it is the lack of gratitude for having saved their collective asses. But whatever it is, it sure puts a fire in her soul.
"Well that obviously ain't the case. I'm breathin', aren't I? Besides, you really think a dirty stinkin' walker would be able to take out all these motherfuckers from sixty feet in the air?," she waves a hand at the nearby pile of corpses, "No, I didn't think so. I've been bitten," she glares at crossbow redneck in silent reprimand for his slaughtering of grammatical correctness "but I'm alive. If you got an issue with that, I suggest you go back to wherever the hell you came from." Unfairly angry with the new arrivals, to the point where her cheeks have become rosy, a fuming Louisiana stalks away after delivering her spiteful sermon – the faint mutterings of cuss words left in her wake like a trail of bread crumbs.
"What the hell is her problem?" Daryl Dixon, the muscular brunette with the crossbow, asks Heath.
Officially having regained his composure, Heath lets out a singular, scoffing laugh, "She's… complicated. Best damn sniper I've ever seen and one hell of a Marine, but she could definitely use some improvement when it comes to dealing with people." He takes a small pause, quickly sensing from the palpable hesitation hovering around, caught in the humid air, that he is beginning to alienate the newcomers, "But she's good to have around and believe it or not, she actually grows on you. So, I take it ya'll heard our broadcast." Heath says, entirely interested in changing the subject.
The man in the tan sheriff's uniform, Rick, steps closer to Heath, "We did. And we'd be mighty thankful if-"
Heath holds up a flattened palm, "Say no more, say no more. Me casa es su casa!" Heath finishes with a wide smile, showing off his perfectly white and perfectly straightened teeth – the benefits of having running water and toothpaste apparent. Partially being so welcoming is like a big fuck-you to Marshall, Heath silently proving himself the better man, if only to himself.
An upbeat man, Heath clamps one of his large hands over the other man's shoulder, "Lady and Gentlemen, may I formally welcome you to Château du Georgia State!" with his free arm, he grandly gestures to the prison in front of them as if it were a gold gilded castle.
Which, with all things considered, Georgia State Penitentiary really may as well be a glittering castle just beyond St. Peter's gates.
"Just be sure to follow my exact steps – landmines and all." Heath says, raising a lone index finger.
"What?" The young Asian asks, his mouth slightly agape.
Andrea shakes her head passionately, "No. I just don't like it." She speaks in a hushed shout, extremely adverse to the idea of staying at the prison after having met Heath and Louisiana. Something about them doesn't feel right, and if Andrea has learned anything in the past few months, it has been to follow her gut instinct.
"If you have any better idea, I'd like to hear it." Thumbs hooked behind his belt as he leans back onto his heels, Rick patiently waits for Andrea to suggest something better. However, the blonde cannot even think of a single alternative, let alone something better, so she just purses her lips shut and crosses her arms under her chest, unhappy and glad to show it.
"Look at it this way, it ain't like they're keeping a bunch of walkers in a barn." Daryl offers lightly, trying his best to offer Andrea solace. She glares at him, her unhappiness even more obvious. With a faint roll of his eyes and an even fainter shaking of his head, Daryl straps his crossbow over his back and pays her no more mind.
Rick rubs a soothing palm over his sweat-sticky face, "Alright, look, Shane and I will go back and get the others before nightfall, bring 'em here. Let's at least give it a couple of days before we go jumping to conclusions. I'm sure they're all very nice people in there." He takes in a deep, calming breath, because in reality, he is not too fond of that young woman or the man, either – in a way that is inexplicable, a way that is purely instinctual. He quite simply just does not feel completely at ease. But with a complete lack of alternative routes, aside from a risky trek a hundred miles up the interstate, what choice does he really have? Yes, the people here may be a little weird, but this place – this prison offers something completely unique:
Safety.
Glenn, who had previously been chewing on his thumbnail looks at Rick with the spark of a thought clear as day in his dark eyes.
"You know, I read an article in a magazine or something a few years ago about an Ebola outbreak in Africa. There were these doctors who were able to immunize some people with a blood transfusion from someone who had gotten sick but survived. Something like that could work, right?" Glenn asks, unsure of his own words. Whether or not any of them even admitted it to themselves, the same exact question had been on the minds of Daryl, Rick, Shane and Andrea.
"Ya'll comin' or what?" Heath calls from the main gate, patiently waiting for them to catch up.
The group of five share meaningful looks with one another over a pregnant silence, each of them individually finding that even the possibility of a vaccination against the unknown disease ravishing the Earth is enough to override their unease.
As Rick takes a step forward, the words whispered to him by Dr. Jenner on that fateful day at the CDC come to the front of his mind and refuse to go away.
*Paraphrased from The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks.
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