Massachusetts

I like the sun. It doesn’t crap out on me.

The camera does, here and there. There are days when it doesn’t spew out anything, or it starts continuously taking shots every other second until it runs out of paper. I’ve got it wired up to an intervalometer so it’s meant to take pictures every hour or so, then spit them out on little squares of photo stock that land on the ground roughly five feet below it. It’s fixed to a metal stake, positioned to keep a watchful eye over the burial spot, which I’ve left unmarked. I can’t help but feel like a proper grave would draw looters in a way that the camera alone doesn’t, risky as it is.  

The whole thing’s wired up to a solar panel, so typically the only upkeep I have to do is refilling the camera with little rolls of paper every few days or so. It’s close enough that I can visit the spot pretty regularly, checking the little pile that’s accumulated beneath it for any signs of activity. 

It won’t prevent any pillaging, but that’s not what I care about, really.

I set the whole system up months ago, a little while after I’d found Sam. 

He’d been far away from the house, lying up against a pile of rock and amongst some others. His head had been angled back, eyes open, watching the sky swirl above our heads. For a few moments I could’ve easily mistaken him for a living person. 

I’d checked his eyes, his pulse, his tongue. It wasn’t until I’d pulled away his shirt collar that I could see the small patch of cool reptilian skin near his collarbone, undulating slightly. 

Inches away from my fingertips. 

I’d returned a day later, armed with a shovel and gardening gloves. I’d forfeited the cling wrap I usually would’ve used to cover my arms, in different circumstances. He wasn’t heavy, but it had taken me a while to find a bit of ground that wasn’t exclusively gravel and ash and bits of shrapnel. And I’d put him underneath it.

I’ve heard the infection takes a long time to fully take a person. It’s hungry like a parasite, but it still has to work slowly, lest it attract any premature attention. It takes the brain long before the rest of the body, even before any physical signs of contagion have shown up. You get woozy, you get tired easily. Nothing intense enough to scare you or alarm anyone close to you, but enough to ease you into a complicit fog as the more concerning stuff creeps in. Hallucinations, mostly. Seeing things you shouldn’t be. Contradictions to reality. Then the physical changes start, but I’m pretty sure the majority of people don’t survive to that point. Sam didn’t. That’s what I assume, at least. I’m not entirely positive – hence the camera.

If Sam decides to crawl out of the ground, I’d like to be privy to that. 

The first guy I’d seen in a long time showed up about a week or two ago. The photo quality isn’t good, but I could vaguely make out his hazy outline standing on top of Sam’s spot, eyes fixed on the camera, hands planted on his hips. He had a bright orange bag slung over his shoulder and something that could have been a crossbow hanging from his back, its barrel peaking up beside his head. He was only in one picture, which means he likely happened to be in the right place at the right time and wasn’t there for long. His eyebrows were quirked in curiosity, mouth bunched up in a perturbed expression. His presence wasn’t too remarkable. I’m pretty far up north, so I don’t see many people around here, but it’s not desolate. I was more intrigued by his solitude. Most folks nowadays travel in enormous packs, sharing their resources the best they can. This man was an anomaly. It made me wonder. 

 I thought about going out to the shed and building a little frame to put the picture in. Then I could hang him on the wall and watch him – this little human examining my camera while standing over Sam – with the same tepid intrigue that he was showing me. 

I’ve considered hanging up the photographs as decoration. The house could use it. It used to be nice – Sam’s grandfather’s house, I think. He described weekends spent here as a kid, lying on the living room floor to watch the boxy television set that’s been long dead at this point. Everything’s a little outdated, a little claustrophobic. Sam used to complain about it. 

Oftentimes he would sit on the aggressively floral sofa and softly muse about what he’d do if one of us was infected. I often stated that if it were me, I’d want to contaminate him as soon as possible, so we could go through it together. He would laugh at that. One night, he remarked that regardless of which one of us it was, he’d probably leave the house to keep me safe.

I don’t know what he meant by that, I never asked. 

The second bit of activity I spotted on camera was from a few days ago. It was a little cluster of travelers. They were sitting on top of the spot, backpacks strewn around them, forming a little circle. I think one might’ve been examining the photo pile that had accumulated below the camera. The quality was even poorer than it had been — their features were all melted together. Only one was looking at the camera, and the geometry of his face was completely unreadable. I looked at the picture long enough that its lines and angles began to swim in front of my eyes, drifting past the borders of the paper. And then I was on the shag carpet of the living room, eyes fixed on the couch. The faded flowers on the upholstery shifted here and there. I watched some of the buds open up. I waited there, looking up at the ceiling. 

Sam’s grandfather was actually quite well prepared when everything went wrong. He had loads of supplies stored in his basement and in little nooks and closets throughout the house – including the camera. I think he used to be a critic or a journalist or something, according to Sam. He was supposedly an avid documentarian, and I think he liked the idea of keeping a record of things as they started to escalate. Initially, these notes fill up a couple journals currently in the basement, likely strewn across the floor where I left them. Then some of his later notes began to progress onto his bedsheets and curtains. Then the mirrors. Eventually they found their way onto the walls. 

His handwriting got worse with his condition, which makes sense. I’ve heard the hands get funny pretty early on – I’d noticed it a bit when I was burying Sam. The marks on the wallpaper are almost animalistic in their desperation, though. It looks like he began using charcoal at some point, so the words and letters all merge together after a while. Or maybe it’s just my eyes. I don’t quite know anymore. 

I saw the last creature this morning. I had walked all the way down to the site to refill the photo paper and pick up the photographs where they lay on the ground. On the way I passed the guy with the orange backpack, lying underneath a tree. I stopped before him for a moment, taking in the enormous discolored patch that crept up his neck and across his cheek. I briefly considered going to sit by him. 

Eventually I made it to the camera. I didn’t immediately gather the photos. Instead I decided to sit on top of Sam’s spot and consider the sun. The sky. The rust-colored clouds that swam above my head. The gray dirt that crunched underfoot. I tilted my head back and I began to smile, and I don’t know why. 

Then I went back home.

The pictures are mostly the same. The same area of soil at different times of day, framed by sharp shadows cast across its borders. At one point at around midday there’s a rock in the corner of the photo that isn’t there in the other pictures. It could be a shadow. 

I don’t think I can trust myself, and I’m tired. 

Shuffled amongst the rest of the pictures, though, is a portrait of a monster. My eyes drink it in hungrily. 

He’s a reptilian thing, skin rippling with what looks like dark scutes all over him, especially around the more angular parts of his skeleton. He’s hunched forward, eyes fixated on something beyond what I can see in the photograph, twisted teeth cracking from his skull, smaller vestigial bits of jagged scaly flesh bursting from his collarbones, his ribcage, his spine. Beyond that, everything kind of blends together. I put the photo down on the table. The ground beneath him appears to be undisturbed, but I can’t help but wonder if this is Sam, somehow. 

I know it’s not, but I wonder.

Whoever he is, I wish him well. I really do.