Read Online Positive by David Wellington - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Wellington
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lank hair but every piece of torn clothing they wore, every sore and scrape and gouge on their faces. The jagged shapes of their fingernails.
Time passed; the stars wheeled overhead. Eventually the sun came back up, and most of them drifted away. Most, but not all. Five of them remained, clawing at the girders that supported me, occasionally smacking or slapping the steel beams so I couldnât even dozeâÂnot that I would have, since it might have meant falling from my safety directly into their arms. Dew collected on the steel support beams around me and I licked at it in my extremity. There was no food, but my brain kept convincing me there had to be, that there must at least be some more of those mints, useless as they were. My free hand kept rummaging through my pockets, looking for mints that werenât there.
My other hand had cramped into a solid claw by that point, still holding the knife in a death grip. I couldnât unbend those fingers.
Not that I would want to.
The time passed somehow. It always does.
Nothing lasts forever, not even the horrors in this life.
To tell the truth, I donât like thinking about the time I spent up on that metal scaffolding behind the road sign. When I do, my shoulders tense up and I start to sweat. It was a long time ago, but my body remembers.
Eventually I saw something moving, far up the turnpike, coming from the south. Moving toward me, slowly growing bigger. I thought it must be another army of zombies, come to fight over my body when I finally succumbed and dropped to the asphalt, curled and dry. I didnât pay it much attention at first.
Slowly details began to coalesce. It was actually a vehicle of some kind. I knew next to nothing of cars, but it seemed to be a big one. What I now know is called an SUV.
I was so parched, so mentally strung out by that point there was no emotional weight attached to seeing that vehicle. I didnât suddenly sit up and wave at it. I didnât take heart from its appearance. It was a vaguely interesting detail of the landscape. It wouldnât change anything, couldnât change anything, because the universe had frozen into a certain shape, a shape where I waited to die and the zombies waited for me to die, and there could be no other way for things to shake out.
The car kept coming closer, though. It got bigger, and its image shimmered a little in the heat haze on the concrete. I could make out more details. It was dark green in color and had tinted windows. One of its headlights was broken. Coils of razor wire were attached around its doors and on its top.
When it got close enough that I could see the streaks of dust on its hood, it slowed down and I realized it was going to stop, that it wasnât just going to roar by underneath me, bent on its own business. No, it was going to become part of my life.
The zombies noticed it about then, too. They started to turn to face it. They couldnât know what they were looking at; they could hardly imagine what the future held in store for them. But it was a moving object in their field, something else to focus on besides the piece of meat up on the girders that refused to fall down.
The SUV rolled to a stop, twenty feet away. So close. Iâd begun to think I could just jump down onto its roof and ride it away. I didnât care I would probably get tangled in the barbed wire on it. Just going somewhere else, moving on, seemed worthwhile.
The zombies started shuffling toward it. The driverâs-Âside window rolled down. Things seemed to happen out of order, or perhaps I just had no sense of time, as sleep deprived as I was. A manâs torso and arms and head craned up out of the window, his body twisting until he was sitting on the sill. He gestured at the zombies, spoke to them.
âThatâs good. Line up for me,â he told them. He didnât seem afraid at all.
When they were close enough, he reached inside the SUV and then brought
Time passed; the stars wheeled overhead. Eventually the sun came back up, and most of them drifted away. Most, but not all. Five of them remained, clawing at the girders that supported me, occasionally smacking or slapping the steel beams so I couldnât even dozeâÂnot that I would have, since it might have meant falling from my safety directly into their arms. Dew collected on the steel support beams around me and I licked at it in my extremity. There was no food, but my brain kept convincing me there had to be, that there must at least be some more of those mints, useless as they were. My free hand kept rummaging through my pockets, looking for mints that werenât there.
My other hand had cramped into a solid claw by that point, still holding the knife in a death grip. I couldnât unbend those fingers.
Not that I would want to.
The time passed somehow. It always does.
Nothing lasts forever, not even the horrors in this life.
To tell the truth, I donât like thinking about the time I spent up on that metal scaffolding behind the road sign. When I do, my shoulders tense up and I start to sweat. It was a long time ago, but my body remembers.
Eventually I saw something moving, far up the turnpike, coming from the south. Moving toward me, slowly growing bigger. I thought it must be another army of zombies, come to fight over my body when I finally succumbed and dropped to the asphalt, curled and dry. I didnât pay it much attention at first.
Slowly details began to coalesce. It was actually a vehicle of some kind. I knew next to nothing of cars, but it seemed to be a big one. What I now know is called an SUV.
I was so parched, so mentally strung out by that point there was no emotional weight attached to seeing that vehicle. I didnât suddenly sit up and wave at it. I didnât take heart from its appearance. It was a vaguely interesting detail of the landscape. It wouldnât change anything, couldnât change anything, because the universe had frozen into a certain shape, a shape where I waited to die and the zombies waited for me to die, and there could be no other way for things to shake out.
The car kept coming closer, though. It got bigger, and its image shimmered a little in the heat haze on the concrete. I could make out more details. It was dark green in color and had tinted windows. One of its headlights was broken. Coils of razor wire were attached around its doors and on its top.
When it got close enough that I could see the streaks of dust on its hood, it slowed down and I realized it was going to stop, that it wasnât just going to roar by underneath me, bent on its own business. No, it was going to become part of my life.
The zombies noticed it about then, too. They started to turn to face it. They couldnât know what they were looking at; they could hardly imagine what the future held in store for them. But it was a moving object in their field, something else to focus on besides the piece of meat up on the girders that refused to fall down.
The SUV rolled to a stop, twenty feet away. So close. Iâd begun to think I could just jump down onto its roof and ride it away. I didnât care I would probably get tangled in the barbed wire on it. Just going somewhere else, moving on, seemed worthwhile.
The zombies started shuffling toward it. The driverâs-Âside window rolled down. Things seemed to happen out of order, or perhaps I just had no sense of time, as sleep deprived as I was. A manâs torso and arms and head craned up out of the window, his body twisting until he was sitting on the sill. He gestured at the zombies, spoke to them.
âThatâs good. Line up for me,â he told them. He didnât seem afraid at all.
When they were close enough, he reached inside the SUV and then brought
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