The Apocalypse

Chapter 21

Ram

Western Desert



“You is such a p-ssy,” a cold voice spoke. It was the black girl they had been traveling with. She had picked up a gun from one of the dead bangers and had it pressed hard against his head. “And a back-stabbing son of a bitch. These were your friends!”

Ram shrugged and said, “They weren't. And they weren't your friends either.”

“Yeah but they kept us clear of the zombies, didn't they? Which is more than I can say for a gutless piece of shit like…”

“Drop the gun,” Julia ordered. She had crept halfway down the stair and had her shotgun aimed steadily despite that her red hair hung in her face and her chin dripped with tears.

The black girl put up her hands and said, “It's all good, cracker bitch. Be cool. I'm putting the gun down. There it goes.” She tossed it on the carpet and kept her hands up.

Picking up the gun, Ram nodded toward the door. “You still have one of your friends left and if you hurry you can catch him. You can take a gun with you.”

“Naw,” the girl replied. “You may be a p-ssy but I'll take my chances with Annie Oakley. She looks like she got some kick to her.”

“That's enough,” Julia said. “Mister, can you look at my mother? She's been shot.” When Ram started for the stairs Julia added to the black girl. “Have you considered the fact that I may not want you around? I don't like your mouth or your cheek.”

That she used the word 'cheek' had Ram giving her a closer look as he passed and now he noted that she was older than he had first thought. She was a woman of about thirty with thin delicate features.

However old her mother was, she wasn't going to make it to her next birthday. The poor lady had been shot through the gut and the bullet had exited her body through her right kidney. Had there been an actual operational hospital nearby, she could’ve lived. There wasn't one. Ram inspected the wounds and felt the woman's pulse; it grew quicker and lighter with each passing second. It was a sure sign that she was bleeding internally.

Ram took Julia into another room. “Your mom is not going to make it. The bullet took out one of her kidneys, and she had massive internal bleeding. I'm sorry.”

“How long?”

He could only shrug. There were too many variables; one of the chief of these was a person's will to live. Julia left him and went to sit on the stairs next to her mother, uncaring that she sat in a puddle of her blood.

“Julia, we're going to be right down stairs cleaning up,” Ram said in a soft voice.

“I'm not cleaning up shit,” the black girl announced.

Ram looked at her for a long time until she turned away and then he asked, “What's your name?”

“Cassie. It's short for Cassandra. And I ain't make none of that mess and I ain't gonna clean it up.”

“My name is Ram. It's short for Ramirez. And I know you didn't make the mess, but if you help clean it up. I'll make sure you get food and water. And if you don't, I'm going throw you out of here. I think that's fair, don't you?”

She gave a sullen shrug and then went about collecting the weapons and ammo from each of the bodies. She also checked their pockets for anything interesting. “This one was married. Ain't that something? He looks so young. He look younger than me. Can I keep his ring?”

“Stealing from the dead is bad luck,” Ram said. He didn't know if this was true, but he found the idea repulsive so he just threw that out there.

She kept the ring, as well as any odds and ends that she found desirable. “I ain't never been lucky anyway,” she explained. “Can I have some water now?”

“You're alive when most of the world isn't. I'd say that was pretty lucky.” They went to get water and they found that the taps in the house still ran and each drank until they were unpleasantly full. Ram brought two glasses up to the second floor. “You thirsty?”

“Why did you guys do this?” Julia asked as new tears ran down the tracks laid by previous tears. She touched her mother's shirt and then the skin of her face. The woman didn't stir. “You killed her. You killed my mother. My only family left in this world. Why did you do it?”

Ram wanted to proclaim his innocence. After all he didn't kill the lady and he had risked himself to protect her daughter, but that wasn't the real truth. “Because I'm weak,” he said in a choked voice. “I used to be strong…I use to be very strong, but then something just broke inside of me. It was all the zombies. They never, ever stop. Every day they came more and more, and I just broke. I should have stopped those bangers. I should have stopped them, but I couldn't, not until it was too late.”


“Because you pussed out is why,” Cassie commented. “I watched you all this time and I can see you wanting to say this or that, but you never did. You just puss out all the time. Like when they did their thing on me. You shoulda done something but you up and pussed out instead.”

He nodded because that was the truth as well.

Julia sat there and her face was empty, yet she heard everything. “Are you still weak?” she asked, staring blankly at the wall with its red splatters. “Because I don't want you around if you're still weak. My mama was the strong one. She held it together as all the men around here died and became zombies…is that what they are?”

“It's a virus,” Ram said, thinking about the terrorists for the first time in…weeks? Had it been only weeks and not months? If felt as though the nightmare had been going on and on, day after day, hour after hour for longer than possible. It had been going on since the Iranian and Shelton and…”Shelton. Whatever happened to Shelton?” he asked suddenly and his face slipped into its hated grimace, and his mind felt like a record player that had hit a bad groove.

“Who is that?” Julia asked, looking around with a little more interest in the world. “Another one of your friends?” The word friends came out in disgust.

“No, a partner. My partner. My best friend, really, so yeah. We were in L.A. and there was a terrorist, he had the virus and we caught him but it was too late, but, but what happened to Shelton?” He looked to Julia, though his eyes were in another time and place. They stared at a world where there were still men fighting; real men and Ram had been one of those men. And so too had been Shelton.

“I don't know who that is,” Julia answered, looking at him sharply; her eyes were simultaneously blue and red. They beguiled Ram so that he couldn't think straight.

“Andra Shelton. He was with me before. He was there before Glendora. Before I got this,” Ram said holding up the M16. Where had the Shelton gone after that? He was there and then he wasn't. Just then Ram’s memory had the consistency of smoke.

“So much for you being strong,” Julia said, standing. Her face had been misery, but now it was stiff with anger as she looked down at her mother. “I have to shut up the house. They come mostly at night.” She left and Cassie went with her, wearing a sneer for Ram.

“I was strong,” Ram said to the corpse. Julia's mom was a ginger, like her daughter and she was thin as well, but the older woman had been weathered by the sun. Her skin had the leathery look of an old smoker. “I was strong when I thought I could stop the virus and I was strong when I thought we could win. When I thought if we could just hold out for another day that people would come for us. That reinforcements would arrive. They kept promising us reinforcements, only they never came.”

But what had happened to Shelton? His face kept popping up. Shelton had only his Smith & Wesson to fight with. “He didn't like it,” he told Julia's mom. “And he wasn't the best shot, you know. So he always hung back, but that was ok, because when the stiffs would get close, he always was there. He'd hang back but he wouldn't run. He would step up and if there was a stiff coming at me that I didn't see, Ol' Shelton would get him. He was tough in his own way and he never ran.”

“You ran,” Julia's mother said, though her lips didn't appear to move. She was still slumped against the wall and now her blood was dry, looking black in the dark.

It was only then that Ram noticed that the sun had long since gone down. “A lot of guys ran,” he hissed. The way her chin hung to her chest and how her hair fell forward made him nervous. Was she watching him? Had she turned? He brought his gun up with the growing certainty that she had.

“I'll shoot. I swear; I don't care whose f*cking mother you are.”

“Then shoot,” the corpse whispered.

Ram pulled the trigger. The safety was on. The gun did nothing; it just sat there in his hands cold and useless and now Ram began to back away from the corpse, sliding on the hardwood, kicking with his feet, as his hands fumbled desperately to figure out how to get his gun to shoot before it was too late before…

“Are you alright?” Julia asked from lower down the stairs. She shone a flashlight his way and for some reason he felt embarrassed and hugged his gun to his chest. He squinted around the light at her, making sure that she was still alive, making sure that her milky skin had not gone over to grey. She was fine, but the mother wasn't.

Mama was dead, dead, dead. But would she come back? Had she moved? Had she even spoken?

“I'm ok. I guess. We should move this thing. It's got to be burned. We can't trust it.”

The light seared into his face again and he held up a hand. Julia kept it there regardless, studying him. “That's my mother you're talking about, so show some damned respect. We'll bury her in the morning. She deserves a proper burial. However, those friends of yours? They'll go into the pit with the others just as soon as the as the sun rises.”

“Is it nearly morning?” Ram asked. Time seemed a concept beyond him just then. Time was only the interval between killings. He would kill and eat and sleep and kill some more…except everything he killed was already dead. Just then Ram felt his soul as a jittery illusion, and his mind wanted to break into little pieces. His hands shook and the tears were back so he made an excuse to rub his face so Julia wouldn't see, but she kept the light on him.

“You're not ok, are you?” she asked.

“No he ain't,” Cassie said from further down the stairs. “He be talking to himself, sometimes. He never thinks none of us sees him do it, but I see. And his eyes are all crazy.”

“I'll be alright,” Ram said, trying to convince them. “Just it's…it's worse than it had been, before. You know? It's worse than when I…” He stopped talking. He had almost admitted that he had ran away, but that was his secret. His and Mama's. She knew. Somehow she knew that he had run and left men to die.

Julia held out her hand to him. “Come here. Let's go get something for you to eat. Mama made a pie yesterday. There's plenty left. And then maybe you should get some sleep.”

“He talks in his sleep too…” Cassie began.

“Why don't you hush!” Julia snapped. Softer, she said, “It's a wonder we all aren't bat-shit crazy. I know I'm close day to day, so I won't hold it against you Mister…”

“He calls hisself Ram though I think sheep be more like it,” Cassie answered.

This earned her another hard look from Julia, who then turned softer again. “Some food and some fluids, that will do you well. Mama can rest here until morning.”

Despite that her mother had just been killed, Julia pulled herself together remarkably. She fed two of the people who had been associated with her mother's murder and made up guest beds for them. She then went around and secured her home, drawing shades of black velvet and locking the heavy doors that had kept her safe.

Ram didn't think he would be able to sleep with the corpses in the house for fear that they might turn, but he dozed lightly until midnight when dreams came to him of them walking about the house like shadows…and then a dark figure crept into his room. He went from sleeping to wide awake in a blink and he had his gun pointed into the bare breast of Cassie before her mouth could even fall open.

“Can I sleep with you?” she asked in a whisper.


The words didn't jibe with his state of mind; in the dark he had been sure she was one of the undead and then a second later she was alive. Had that been a dream?

She didn't wait for an answer and climbed into the bed, naked. Her hands went to his body and he pulled back, confused. “What…what are you doing?” he asked, grabbing her hands.

“It's ok,” she said. “You don't need to share me no more. I know how some boys don't like that. Come on, I'll take care of you.” Her hands became insistent on him and he had to grab her roughly for her to stop. “What? Is you a racist?” she demanded. “Is that your problem? You'll stare all over that skinny, cracker bitch, but you won't give me the time of day? Well, f*ck you.”

“Cassie, that's not it,” he said.

The truth was that he hadn't had an erection since he could remember. It used to be that he always had one part of his mind on a passing hottie or on some chick's ass or on his girlfriend's rack. Now he could barely remember what she looked like. And worse, his dick just sat there all day long, useless and numb, except for when he had to take a leak.

Though with everything going on he hadn't really thought about it much. He had shoved his sexuality into a back corner of his mind and there it had sat, gathering dust. He had shoved a lot of himself back there.

“What is it then?” she asked. Despite making all the motions of leaving she hadn't left and was still in the bed with him.

“Things aren't working right,” he admitted, lowering his gaze to her body—and not feeling a thing. “It's all up in my head. Everything I've done. All the…look it's not you.”

“I could help. You be surprised how many boys get a little thing worked up in they mind. I can straighten you out.” Her hands went to him again and he began to tighten up and his face went into its hated grimace.

“No, thanks. Maybe in a few days. Right now it's in my head,” he tried to laugh off the ball of stress that had come to be within his chest. “Why would you want to anyways? I'm a sheep, remember you said that.”

“Cuz you a ram,” she said with a little shrug. “I thought it was the white girl what kilt all those boys, but she says it was you. And then there's this.” She held up something that was both familiar and ancient to his mind. It was his DEA badge. “You're a badass. A girl could do worse.”

He took the badge from her hands and touched its shining surface. How proud he'd been when he first earned it; he was still proud, he just wasn't proud of himself. He had run and left others to die, that wasn't what he'd been taught. That wasn't the way a man behaved.

“You want it?”

She smiled and her teeth were white in the darkness, like a cheshire cat's. “Yeah. But I'm going to need a gun. You and that white bitch…”

“Her name is Julia,” he said with a hint of warning.

“Julia, whatever. You guys don't think I should have a gun. No one thinks I should have a gun and that's just stupid. I gots to be able to defend myself.”

“In the morning I'll show you how to use one,” he left the words up in the air; a hint for her to go, but she just smiled more and snuggled deeper into the covers. “Ok. I guess,” he said to her. Just then he didn't think he had the capacity to fight even her.

She slept on him and snored loudly, and for some reason he found this reassuring. At daybreak he slipped out from her grasp and went down the stairs on tiptoe, wrapping the pink parka around himself warmth. In the kitchen he found Julia sitting at the table with a cigarette burning in front of her. She was pale and disheveled. Tears had dried upon her face and she seemed to be in a daze, but as he stood there she began to blink as if her mind was just coming alive.

“I would've killed you if it wasn't for that stupid coat,” she said with a sudden snort of laughter. “I thought you were a really ugly girl.”

“Nope, just an ugly man.”

This caused her to look at Ram in earnest. “You're not ugly.”

He felt ugly, if not on the outside then he certainly did on the inside. “Are you going to smoke that?” he asked about the cigarette in order to change the subject. “Or just let it burn away?”

“I don't smoke,” she said, turning to the grey wisps. “They were Mama's. From when I was a little kid that smell meant Mama was home. Oh how I used to hate it too. I was always on her about her damned cigarettes—They're going to kill you some day—I'd tell her. I guess I was wrong.”

“I'm sorry,” Ram said. He had apologized a dozen times already, and still he didn't think that he could ever apologize enough. “I didn't even know their names. I only just met them.”

“Cassie told me everything. Maybe too much. She tends to mix wishful thinking in with reality. Like the fact that you two are an item.” Ram's mouth dropped open and Julia smiled at it. “Oh yeah. You two are hot and heavy in one breath and in the next she admits she only just met you and didn't know your name until last night.”

“She's been through a lot.”

Julia turned suddenly bitter, “We all have. It's no excuse.”

Besides his own miserable life, excuses were all that Ram had left to him. Julia saw that she had wounded him with her words and she made a small fist of frustration and said, “I don't blame you. I'm sure you didn't know what would happen.”

Ram felt his face begin to pull back again and he turned away, saying, “That's what I keep telling myself, but it's a lie. I knew what kind of men those were, but I was weak. I'm sorry.” He wanted to say it again and again. And he wanted to say it to Cassie as well. He should've killed them when they were raping her.

“Yeah,” Julia said in a breath. “Can you do me a favor? I need to bury Mama. Can you watch over me while I do it? It can be dangerous out there if you're attention's divided.”

It was the least he could do. Ram wrapped the woman in the sheet Julia gave him and carried her out to the back of the house where three fresh graves sat looking very sad. When he had laid the stiffening body down in the grass, Julia went to give him her shotgun, but he refused it, handing over his own pistol instead.

“I'll dig. You can watch over me.”

He dug deep until his hands were blistered and Julia said it was enough. Then he left to stand away from her as she cried some more. Eventually she waved him over and he filled the grave around the body and then she asked in a choked voice, “Can you dig another? Right there?” She pointed to a spot on the far left.

“Who's it for?”

“Me,” she said simply, and then with a smile she put his pistol to her head. “I'm sorry too.”