Painted Red Read online

  “Perimeter check,” she says. All of us look outside the car for wendigos.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  “Clear,” I say.

  “Time?” she says in a monotonous voice.

  “Quarter ‘till noon,” Two responds.

  “Nikia—”

  “We have four hours to get in and out,” she says resting her head against the back of the seat.

  “Nikia—”

  “I just,” she slurs. “I’m—I—”

  “Nikia?”

  “I can’t see,” she says. “Everything is all blurry.”

  Two puts his hand against her mouth and smells it. He makes eye contact with me and shakes his head. “Get her water,” I say. “We’ve gotta go back—”

  “Don’t you dare Xavier,” she says. “You cannot abandon this supply run just because of me.”

  “Oh yeah?” I respond. “You gonna fight me for it?” ‘Cause that’s the only way you’re going to make this truck go to the hospital.”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “You’re all going to regret this,” she whispers. Two and I make eye contact. He nods his head to the left for the turn off to go back to the house.

  I flip the car around and drive over the median. The rest of the ride is silent as we make our way through the winding back roads. One of the youngin’s meets us at the gate. I roll down the window and show him the radio.

  “Nikia needs Doc—”

  “Was she bit?”

  “No.”

  “Near wendigos?”

  “Yeah, we all were.”

  “She has to go through screening. So do the rest of you.”

  “Kid,” Nikia wheezes. “Get Doc.”

  He hesitates, but eventually lowers his gun and radios him. I grab the kids arm. “I know you know who we are,” I respond. He looks back and forth between my grip and my glare. “But you have no fucking clue what happened out there, and I could be lying to you. Never lower your weapon.”

  The kid’s eyes bulge from his head. He nods and raises his rifle to my face. “Good,” I respond. “Keep it that way.”

  “I’ve got insulin,” Doc says. Two helps Nikia out of the car. “Oh lord. How long have the symptoms been showing?”

  “Well over an hour,” Two responds. “Her breath reeks of canned peaches.”

  “Screw you, Two,” Nikia mutters.

  “Can you lean on Doc for a sec,darling?” Two walks to the truck with his head dipped. “What do you think?”

  “We’ve gotta get those supplies,” I respond. “Winter will be back before we know it, and we can’t risk losing another vehicle or more people out there.”

  “I don’t think you should go,” Two responds.

  “Poor Nikia will suffer if we don’t,” One mumbles. “Besides, Doc is running low on everything. He needs to be well stocked just in case something happens, and we have to buckle down for a couple days.”

  “Well,” Two says. “You’re going to have to find someone else to go with you—”

  “Why?” One says leaning forward. “We need the extra firepower—”

  “No one will listen to Doc if Nikia is out of commission,” he responds. “Don’t tell me you forgot what happened the last time Nikia got sick. People jumped ship like crazy.”

  “So you leave us with two people short?” One yells.

  “There’s plenty of people who would go with you guys here—”

  “Like who? Boy scout sitting on the stump over there?” One says motioning towards our watchman. “You can think on your feet. We need you to come with us if we’re going to do this.”

  “I can’t leave the house unstable One,” Two responds. “If you wait until tomorrow—”

  “You’re going to be the death of me Larry,” One mumbles.

  “Don’t call me that,” Two says through gritted teeth. “My name is Two.”

  One laughs. “Whatever bro,” he says. “You do what you gotta do. Let’s go Xavier.” Two shakes his head and walks back toward Nikia and Doc.

  I back the truck through the gate and flip it around. “That was kinda harsh,” I say turning onto the main road. “You know he’s right. Doing this is stupid.”

  “Don’t matter if he’s right,” One responds. “He’s going to be the reason one of us gets killed one of these days. Feeling sympathy for that girl is where it all starts.”

  “Don’t say that. At least we’ll have a house to go back to once we get out of the hospital.”

  “Right, like my jackass brother will be able to hold things down over there.”

  “Hey now, he’s more than capable.”

  A couple seconds of silence pass. One snorts. “You didn’t correct me about him being a jackass.”

  I smirk and switch on the radio to fill the cabin with white noise. The truck purrs along the asphalt while One continues to click through channels searching for anyone calling—anyone to tell us what to do.

  “Perimeter check,” I say. We both check around the truck for movement.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear,” I respond.

  “Do you think we’re the only ones left?” One asks still clicking through the channels.

  “There’s the fort—”

  “I meant people outside of there,” he says sitting back in his chair. “Are we the only other humans surviving?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think like that.”

  “Well—then you’re an idiot,” he says pulling his machete and sharpening stone out of its pocket.

  “How so?”

  “We’re going on a suicide mission—again.” He points his blade toward the windshield. “What does this one make it—our third one in two weeks?”

  “Perimeter check.”

  “Clear.”

  “Clear,” I say. “I think it’s been four. If you count the one from earlier today.”

  “My point is, Nikia is a huge part of the reason we’ve been doing these medical runs,” he says sliding the blade against the stone. “She’s nearly out of insulin. Once that’s gone, so is she.”

  “You don’t think she knows that?” I respond turning onto a dirt trail to wrap around the fort. “She knows it’s getting harder to find insulin—”

  “I’m sorry to burst your bubble Xavier, but I’ve been here way longer than you. Nikia will send us all into certain death if it meant one of us could bring back some meds. I don’t think she ever fully told you what happened the last time we went to this hospital.”

  “Yeah, she told me you all went in and Trenten didn’t make it out.”

  One laughs. “Selfish bitch,” he mumbles. “I’ll fill in the details she left blurry.

  The guy named Trenten? He was kinda like you, but not as crazy and definitely not as good of a shot. He had the idea of going on supply runs everyday. Nikia was all for it. One day, Trenten suggested going to the hospital. Two and I had just joined the house, so naturally we were still young and stupid enough to go along with it.

  Trenton, Nikia, my brother and I snuck in the front and back entrances of the hospital. It was absolute chaos. Patients were left to die at the hands of gangs. They were killing all the weak ones and taking the healthy nurses and doctors back to their camps. Anyone who fought back—they’d kill.”

  “I’m all too familiar with those assholes. I walked in during the middle of all that.”

  “So then you’re familiar with what the inside looked like. Two and I made it through undetected. In the insanity going on in those walls, it wasn’t that hard. When we found Nikia, she had two book bags filled to the seams with meds. No Trenten. When we asked her where he was, she wouldn’t give us an answer. She bolted.

  Two and I went looking for him. Nikia radioed us a dozen times, ordering us to come back. But we weren’t fucking soldiers. So we ignored her. When we found Trenten, it was too late. He had been stabbed so many times that he looked like an uncooked meatloaf that fell on the kitchen flo
or. Two wendigos laid in a pool of blood next to him. All he was able to get out was, ‘Nikia.’”

  “That doesn’t mean she did that to him—”

  “Let me finish,” he says. “When we got out, Nikia was gone. She ditched us. So, I found that Jeep, hot-wired it, and we drove back to the house in it.

  I confronted her about Trenten. She said she panicked—that Trenten and her were cornered by gang members. That she saw an opening and went for it. But it was all bullshit. She had a shotgun and a kukri . She was more than capable of defending herself. But she ran and left them to stab him to death while she made her escape—just because she had insulin and didn’t need his help anymore.”

  “Why did you stay at the house if you hate her so much?”

  “Because I’m scared. So is Two,” he responds. “I didn’t want to go back out there by myself. I knew our chances of survival were greater if we stayed. Even with her as head of the house.”

  I swallow and tighten my grip on the steering wheel. I understand One’s anger, but the survivor in me says she did the right thing. One said it best. Fear was the only main driving component behind everyone’s motives out here.

  “I know,” One says during my silence. “She sacrificed one to save way more. But she only did that because of her selfishness. Her book bags were filled with nothing but potassium and insulin. If it weren’t for Two and I, that trip would’ve only benefitted her.”

  “She told me she accepted that her disease was going to kill her—”

  “It was because of Trenten,” One responds. “He and her were fuck-buddies. And they didn’t keep it secret.”

  “I thought they were just looking out for each other?”

  “Dude,” he laughs. “That girl is a mystery. She definitely didn’t love Trenten, but made him love her. Doc told both of them that it was a bad idea. That they were poor influences on each other. But they didn’t listen. And now Trenten’s dead and gone.”

  “Perimeter check,” I say.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear,” I respond.

  “She sees him in you,” One says placing his machete in its sheath. “Don’t let her fool you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The day will come when she’ll try to make you into Trenten number two. Just be smart enough to walk away.”

  “It’s the god-damned apocalypse, One,” I respond. “I have my best friend trapped in the fort, and that is the only person—”

  “That you’ll ever want and care about and sleep with making babies until we all wake up from this horrible nightmare, forever and ever, amen,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “I get it man,” he says. “But Nikia likes and trusts you already. Just remember that.”

  “I will,” I respond. “Perimeter check.”

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  “We should get out here and walk the rest of the way,” One says. “Don’t want the tires slashed or someone else trying to swipe it out from under us.” I kill the engine and unbuckle my seatbelt.

  “Eyes open.” I look down at my watch. “We’ve got about two and a half hours to get in there and get out.”

  Two loads ammo into Nikia’s shotgun and cocks it. He slings his tactical book bag over his shoulders and tucks the straps into his pants. “Ready?”

  “Yeah,” I say grabbing two empty knapsacks and my own book bag. I stuff the keys into my corduroys’ pockets. “Let’s go.”

  Suicide Watch

  We crouch down behind an abandoned ambulance out front of the emergency room entrance. “Movement,” I say. “Inside the glass doors.”

  “There’s a couple people on the upper floors as well.” One shakes his head. “This whole run is fucked.”

  “We should probably circle around. Try another entrance—”

  “Nah,” One responds. “Everything we would need is either through those doors or in the pharmacy around the corner.”

  “That’s if it wasn’t moved.”

  “Trust me,” he says. “Those thugs didn’t want nothing to do with medicine. They’ve got one thing on their minds, and it ain’t how to cure the flu.”

  “All right, let’s go.”

  “Radio silence,” he responds pulling out his machete. “No firearms.” I grip my new bow and nod my head.

  One steps to the right of the ambulance in plain view of the wendigo in the emergency room entrance. I hear the growl followed by footsteps. In one movement, I draw my bow and aim around the side of the ambulance. The arrow pierces straight into her collarbone. One whips out his machete and cuts about three inches down into her skull. Her body jolts and then goes limp.

  I jog out from behind the vehicle. We lower her body down, and One removes his machete. “In and out,” he whispers.

  I nod my head and sling my bow over my shoulder. As we make our way into the building, I hear a faint crying. “We need to move fast,” I say. We go into each exam room and pick the locks on the drawers.

  “Jackpot,” he says. “Gauze, syringes, rubbing alcohol, stitch kits—I’ll load up on these.”

  “Do you think insulin and the rest is at the pharmacy?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be fine here. Just go. Meet me at the ambulance.”

  I nod my head and pull an arrow from my quiver. The hospital has a thick silence floating in the stagnant air. Death fills my nostrils as I turn the corner. I flick on my lighter and hold it out in front of me.

  The walls are littered in deep fingernail scratch marks. The blood, which I can only assume is from the time One and the others came, permanently stains the walls. I turn into the open doorway of the pharmacy. The metal security gate still remains shut with a bloody handprint trailing down from the lock.

  I shake my head trying to rid the images that flood my mind. In the back, I can see the glass door of a fridge. “Please be cold.” When I open the door, a rush of coolness floods out. Trays upon trays of vials and IV bags sit in the tall stainless fridge.

  “Thank you.” I shovel them, each tray at a time, into my book bag until the entire fridge is empty. Voices echo down the blood-soaked hallways. Shit. I click on my radio and call out to One. Nothing.

  The voices get closer along with a dragging sound of metal against the security gate next to the doorway. The sound vibrates in my eardrums. I see the yellowed skin of an arm appear in the doorway followed by the frail body of a teenage boy. His hair is matted in a mess of knots. Four of them—there’s four wendigos. They shuffle past me with nothing more than their mumbles to each other. A clattering from the direction where I left One booms through the air. The growling comes out full blast, and the four wendigos take off in the direction of the emergency room. I slip out of the pharmacy and make my way down the hallway behind them.

  One lets out a yell. “Xavier, run!” I hear from around the corner. The wendigos let out a booming growl and take off after One’s voice. I draw my bow and release an arrow into the back of the boy with the matted-hair’s head. He collapses while the other three take off.

  I grab one of the chairs that was pressed up against the wall in the hallway and launch it at one of the windows—it bounces off the glass with a loud thud. Shit. The growling echos off the walls of the hospital. I know the only way out is where the wendigos went. Fuck radio silence—I pull out my pistol from my belt loop and take off in the direction I came from.

  The three wendigos pound on a metal door leading to a bathroom. I aim and fire three shots, each one hitting a different wendigo. One kicks open the door and swings his machete through one’s neck. I shoot three more bullets and take down the last of them. The third runs off in the direction of the south wing.

  “One?” You all right?”

  “Yeah,” he responds looking down and adjusting his shirt collar. “Let’s get back to the truck before more of these god damned things come for us.”

  “Agreed,” I say sliding my pistol into my belt loop.

  We jog through the empty par
king lot into the woods surrounding the hospital. I see the light brown of my truck tucked away in some brush. “I always knew that hospital was trouble,” One says once we reach the bed.

  “But it was worth it, right? Look at how much I got—”

  One swings his bag into the bed crying out as he grabs at his collarbone.

  “Are you all right, man—”

  “Get away,” he says holding a hand out to stop me from coming closer.

  “One, if I clipped you with one of my shots—”

  “Just leave—”

  “Let me check you out!” I say gripping his shirt collar. I rip his hand away and feel my heart drop.

  “I told Two he would be the death of me,” he whispers. “Looks like I was right.”

  I pull back his shirt to see the deep red pattern of teeth marks embedded into the crook of his collarbone.

  “I tried to tell you to run, dude—”

  I dig through my book bag for a syringe and antibiotics.

  “Xavier, what are you doing?”

  “I’m giving you something,” I respond filling up the syringe. “It’ll get rid of whatever’s in that bite—”

  “We both know that’s not how this works—”

  “It doesn’t mean we don’t try!”

  “I’m telling you not to, Xavier,” One yells knocking away the vile and syringe. “Look at my arm!”

  I glance out of the corner of my eye and my throat tightens; a slight purplish-red pulsing travels down his bicep to his fingertips.

  “It’s already there,” he whispers letting his head sink. “The disease is in my system.”

  “Some of the medicine might be able to cure it before it gets too far—”

  “Oh yeah, like it saved the others? Like the girl who’s brains were blown out across the yard by you!”

  I swallow and turn my gaze out towards the forest.

  “I’m sorry,” One says. He lets out a sigh and clicks on his radio. “I’m contacting the house. I’ve gotta report what happened.”

  I nod my head. “Take your time,” I respond and hop into the truck. One walks in the opposite direction deeper into the forest. I click on the radio and listen for his voice on the house’s channel.