IN SEARCH OF ALICE

My eyes open. zzzzzzzzzz!!!

My eyes open. Where am I? Who am I? zzzzzzzzzz!!!

Flashes of light. Glimpses of forgotten memories-too fragmentary, too ethereal to hold onto.

Confusion. Where? What? 

Misery, as the reality of my situation filters through the murkiness.

Sorrow, as my brain fleetingly recalls my loss.

Hope. Maybe…zzzzzzzzzz!!!

My eyes open…

It’s night. I’m coiled up inside an airless, windowless, subterranean chamber but I know, instinctively, that the sun has gone down and it’s ghoul time. I can feel the outside drawing me like a magnet. zzzzzzzzzz!!!

For pity’s sake, let me hold on to one thought-just one- for longer than a micro second. With great difficulty, I rise; stiffly and awkwardly. My posture leans to the right, then to the left, unsure of itself, unable to achieve balance. Slowly, I place one foot in front of the other and struggle to remain upright, tottering. Now the other foot. Crash!

Pain. I remember pain. I try again. zzzzzzzzzz!!!

Alice! Her face appears in my mind. Somehow, against all odds, I have managed to find a corner of my brain that contains her image and no amount of static electricity can remove it. Just takes a while to find it. Alice, my wife; the sole reason that I still exist. If not for her, I would have checked out of this post-apocalyptic nightmare long ago. She’s out there, somewhere. I just know it and I have to find her. I can’t abide the thought of her suffering like me, a husk of the person I used to be before the…contagion.  zzzzzzzzzz!!!

My eyes open and I know immediately that it’s night, that I was thinking of her before my brain zapped out. Time to get out of here and search. I force myself to stand and I stagger clumsily towards the stinking pipe that leads from this silo and acts as a tunnel to the outside. I begin my ascent.

Fresh air, if burning fossil fuel is considered fresh. Still, the coolness of the night is good after the confinement below ground. Like all the others, I dare not venture out during daylight. The sun scorches my very eyeballs, burns up my skin.  

I cannot talk. In my lucid moments, I can form rational sentences but I can’t articulate them; my mouth twisting in ugly contortions yet uttering only incoherent gobbledegook.

It’s hard. So many fleeting, jumbled words assaulting my brain. Here one minute, gone the next. I endeavour to hold onto something but it usually turns out to be meaningless and, anyway, it’s just a temporary hold until static floods the neurons of my brain and, frustratingly, wipes it all away…again.

It’s not dark. The neon lights of long abandoned stores burn brightly though some are starting to fizzle in their death throes. As well, fires, fuelled by gasoline, burn all over town; cars mainly. I can see others emerging from their boltholes, their bodies moving jerkily, bizarre shadows in the eerie light.  

Time to feed. In my right hand, I carry an axe. In my left, a rusted Bowie knife. From past encounters, they should know to steer real clear of me but the static will have wiped their memories, yet leaving, hopefully, a vague, instinctive understanding that I am to be avoided at all costs. No sucker’s getting my flesh for supper.

There are green zones, places where those not infected congregate but I don’t know where they are and, even if I did, would not to dare to venture in their direction. From time to time, Zoners can be heard around town on loudspeakers, calling us out, lying that they have a cure. Some poor, lost souls must clamber from their sanctuaries, believing the hype, if the sound of flamethrowers and deathly screams are anything to go by. Other times, they just forget the subtlety and launch surprise attacks.

There is no empathy, no mercy. We, those infected like me, are a threat. We are the enemy and we must be eliminated. For a moment, I wonder if Alice might have already been destroyed in a ball of fire. No way of knowing and anything is possible. But I truly believe she is out there still. More than once, I think I have sighted her, my heart speeding up, my ungainly walk breaking into a blundering trot. Each time, I have been mistaken. zzzzzzzzzz!!!

Goddamn flashbacks! Helicopters, police sirens, army trucks, people fleeing, not knowing what from or where to. Pandemonium. The pungent odour of fear everywhere. Somehow I lost Alice, swept along with the mob; unable to fight against the wave of those heading away from the searchlights. Trucks and cars, unable to manoeuvre in the jam, being abandoned; their drivers and passengers joining the ever-growing exodus of terrified people. Everywhere, orders and threats being broadcast by loudspeakers, public address systems, walkie talkies, each blurring out the other, white noise overpowering and adding to the fear and confusion.

It only took two days before the symptoms took hold: the bloodied eyes, the open sores, the loss of coordination. Worst of all, the wiping of my memory, thoughts being erased, jumbled, discarded, slowly but surely. Each day, the mis-functioning of my brain grew more frequent. I’d found my own place to escape those hunting me, hunkered down, shivering, terrified; trying in vain to make sense of everything, I clung on tight to an image of Alice and made a permanent place for her in my cerebrum before it became too late; before I became completely lost in the fog. And, somehow, despite the electrostatic attacks that occur without warning and wipe my thoughts, I also managed to retain a tiny grasp of reality, much better than others, I believe. And, in doing so, I figured out why that was.

We have become cannibals. In order to survive, we have only ourselves to eat. No sense in trying to sugar coat things. But, where others, blindly, in our nightly forays, fed, even overindulged, on torsos, brains and vital organs, thereby, unknowingly, increasing the speed with which the plague took over their own bodies, I had restricted myself to limbs; my consumption barely enough to sustain life. And I seem to have slowed the disease’s progress. Enough, at least, to allow me to continue my quest - to find Alice. zzzzzzzzzz!!!

I open my eyes. I am sitting, upright, my back against the crumpled, stone wall of a building. Like wading through a swamp, I slowly regain my thoughts, realise how close this latest blackout has brought me to being killed; either by one of the infected or by a Zoner. I hate my brain malfunctioning on the outside, rendering me so vulnerable, and it’s been a while.

It’s raining; a gentle, persistent drizzle. As I gather my thoughts, I experience a brief moment of pleasure, the cool waters cleansing me, washing away the grime and blood that imbues my tattered clothing, offering relief to my suppurating skin.  

Alice! I remember. I was thinking of Alice. Always Alice who brings me back to reality. I need to move, continue with my search. I struggle upright, my bare feet slithering and sliding in the muddied ground, made slippery by the rainfall.  

Suddenly, the sky is filled with bright lights, the air charged with the chuff chuff sounds of choppers. Zoners! I dare to look up but my damaged eyes are unable to bear the glaring beams of searchlights trained on the ground below though I am aware of obscure figures descending swiftly on ropes.  

I need to flee, get away. I have only seconds. Momentarily, I grapple with which way I must go and, from behind, an escaping ghoul knocks me to the floor violently in its desperation to escape its fate. I hit the ground hard and, for a second or two, I am stunned. Then my own survival instincts kick in and I push myself up, my poor coordination causing me to tumble sideways. Again, I try to right myself and, this time, I succeed. But the glaring light atop a Zoner’s helmet is shining fully upon me as I slide away from it towards the bombed building until my back is set, once more, against the wall, as it was when I first came to in the rain and I cannot retreat any further. My time is up… and I know it.

I dare not look up into the light, even the peripheral luminescence is inflaming my bloodied eyes. I await my end. 

I feel relief of course; at last, an end to the misery that is my existence. Everything is caught in a warp as time seems to stand still. But, Alice…her image filters through all of my thoughts, becomes my sole focus. Ultimately, I have failed her. Forgive me, my love. My eyes sting and I realise that I am weeping. Of all times, I think, now would be a good time for a static blackout.

The brightness of the helmet torch recedes. I am still breathing. Have I been left unharmed? 

I raise my head and look up and realise that the Zoner has removed his helmet, placing it on the muddy ground beside him. But, as he does so, a cascade of long, blonde hair is released and falls in a fluid movement over the shoulders of the khaki uniform. I blink as I recognise that beautiful hair. Alice?

It is she! So she escaped the contagion after all. I smile for the first time in recent memory. My Alice, not a ghoul. Not living a haunted existence. I see her eyes; the recognition. I try to articulate: I searched for you…everywhere. But I know, even as I attempt to say these words that my mouth is distorted and the sounds I speak are just garbled noises.

I see the look of love in her eyes, her own tears. 

Then the revulsion as she steps back and raises the flamethrower. I want to tell her: it’s okay, my love. It’s okay. Do what you have to do to survive this awful time. I tried to find you but, in the end, really, what could I have done if I had been successful? Now, you have found me and it’s okay. It was meant to be. The weapon ignites as she pulls the trigger. I feel the heat. I welcome death.