Pathogen - Chapter 16

Clambering up over the rocks, Cliff was greeted by Aaron and Grace. They were standing over him with faces plastered with expressions of concern.

Grace asked what they were both thinking, “Where’s Steve?”

“He’s gone,” Cliff muttered as he wrenched his shotgun out from between the rocks he’d lodged it into.

“Gone?” she pressed, “What do you mean, ‘gone?’”

“It means he isn’t here anymore,” Cliff explained as he cast his eyes over the rocky waves, “The ocean took him.”

Cliff thought it was best to leave out the details of Steve’s reanimation. He felt it might preserve Steve’s memory with a little dignity. Grace and Aaron were still stunned by the news, however. Struggling against the tears welling in her eyes, Grace turned away to look over the water too. Aaron, however, simply gaped with a stupefied expression on his face.

“I did not see that coming,” he admitted, “I thought for sure he’d become a zombie. Or maybe that he’d eat a gun after all.”

Turning to Aaron in order to regard him with a cool animosity, Cliff said, “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

“I’m not illing,” Aaron insisted, “It’s just what I thought would happen.”

“Still,” Cliff sadly shook his head, “I think you should be quiet for a while.”

Thinking it best not to push Cliff, Aaron complied and remained silent for a moment. Together the three of them stared out over the ocean. The icy water roiled and crashed while the wind howled all around them. Cliff wondered what had  happened to Steve in his watery tomb. Would he be adrift and swept up with the ocean’s currents, or would he wander the bottom of the sea floor as a zombie forever? Cliff shivered, but it wasn’t the weather that made him feel cold inside.

“He was going to become a zombie, wasn’t he?” Aaron spoke up, forgetting he was ordered to silence.

Cliff turned to glare at Aaron. “You have a problem with keeping quiet,” he snapped.

Throwing his hands up in protest, Aaron argued, “Hey now, I’m just trying to make sense of it all. Steve was sick, that much was obvious enough. But that kid in the DepartMart was sick too, and he turned up as a zombie a few minutes later.”

“So what?” Cliff asked impatiently. He didn’t care for the practicality of Aaron’s questions. All that mattered to him right now was respecting his deceased friend. Everything else could take a backseat for the moment.

“So,” Aaron pressed on unmindful of his friend’s agitation, “How’d he get it? What made him sick? Was he bit?”

“No,” Grace replied as she wiped her tears on her sleeve, “At least, I don’t remember him being bitten.”

“The kid’s mom was bit, and so was the guy who worked at the DepartMart,” Aaron reasoned, “And they turned pretty quick. The dude who worked there became a zombie in just seconds.”

“Steve was sick for at least an hour,” Grace argued, “So no, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t bit.”

“Maybe it’s airborne,” Aaron figured, “We could all catch it then.”

“Stop,” Grace protested, shaking her head and screwing her eyes shut, “I don’t want to think about that.”

Aaron began, “I’m just saying-”

“I’m just saying, ‘shut up!’ Christ!” Grace interrupted.

Aaron clammed up. Now he’d gone and upset two of his friends, and the other one was dead. He sighed, a melancholy sound that couldn’t be heard over the surf crashing into the breakwater. It was his turn now to stare out over the ocean.

It was a long minute before Cliff broke the friends’ silence. “I don’t think we’re sick,” he reassured Grace as well as himself, “We’d have some kind of symptom by now. After all, the thing seems to work pretty fast.”

“What, are you a doctor now?” Aaron asked.

“No,” Cliff shook his head, “Just optimistic.”

“I’m scared, man,” Aaron admitted, “What if we all end up like Steve?”

“Not gonna happen,” Cliff argued.

“But how do you know?” Aaron persisted.

Cliff turned to face Aaron before explaining his reasoning, “I don’t know for sure. But I do know that worrying about it isn’t going to make it go away. Hell, for all I know, worrying about it is just going to make things worse. So I’m not going to think happy thoughts, and none of us are going to get sick.”

“Do you see that?” Cliff asked as he pointed to the island ahead, only a few hundred metres away, “That’s safety. That place is going to be our fortress. They’ll never touch us there, not in a million years. Then maybe the coast guard will show up, and take us out of here. Or the military will come. Hell, maybe it’ll just be a few kids, and they say that the zombies have all been cleaned up. We’re going to live.”

Although Cliff was well pleased with his little speech, Aaron was less than inspired. The ocean had soaked him through, and he was freezing cold. Screaming wind cut him to the bone. The crashing waves thundered around him. All about him, his surrounding screamed violence and desolation.

Now that they were away from the glow of the city, countless stars twinkled overhead. When he was a little boy, the stars gave Aaron a feeling of wonderment. Back then, the infinitely large night sky captivated him with thoughts of endless adventures and exploration. Now, it filled him with an oppressive loneliness.

“Let’s just get out of here,” he murmured. “I’m not digging this place at all.”

“I second the motion,” Grace shivered, “It’s cold as balls here.”

Grace and Aaron left together, leaving Cliff alone on his rock. He was numb to the cold, and deaf to the breaking surf and howling wind. Staring out over the sea, he was desperate to see Steve once more. Minutes passed, and there still wasn’t any sign of him below the surface.

“Goodbye, friend,” Cliff bid his final farewell before hurrying to catch up with his surviving friends. They still had a lot of work to do if they wanted to survive.