Day 337 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 4.2 - (1,306 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 4.2

Rusty was still a little shell shocked, and he stood for a long time in the field just standing there and keeping himself alive through sheer force of will while his body and mind screamed at him that he should be dead.

Ben had made his call on the brothers and he did not think for a second that the crew would be taking him on board, bringing him into the fold and trusting him with even being adjacent to their lives. That was a non-starter, and in all honesty Rusty had just been positioning himself to live, not to suddenly switch teams. His brother had been killed; the lunatic partner of his was a bloodied pulp of tissue and sinew in the ground with their mindless thugs for companions.

He had wanted to leave before now, he’d taken the first steps more than once to just let go of his brother, the jealousy and the occasional mania that came with the power of control and a woman to impress. He had never made it though, he just kept extending his stay beyond the reasonable and handed him more and more rope, because they were kin.

Family, what a mess they brought to your door.

His brother had been vying for their mother’s love and attention from the moment that their Daddy had walked out that door in what was more than a single lifetime ago, in this day and age. No father figure and a young and impressionable mind, that was a recipe for disaster and future therapy bills just waiting to happen.

The teen years overtook Rusty and his brother switched focus on trying to impress his distant and solitary older brother, the one that looked like he would leave the family, the town and him all behind at the drop of a convenient hat. Rusty was finding his boundaries with girls, the law and the conventions of society and to his little brother; there was only one way to get his attention.

Do it all bigger and better, and get caught doing it, get famous for it. It was not enough to start smoking; he graduated to weed and did it openly, mocking the authorities in school to do something about it. He was getting a reputation for danger and for thumbing his nose at the consequences. That got him the girls, the one’s acting out or playing it rough to see the flavor of a different life, but nothing of a permanent nature. His status was growing in the kids above his age, and the people who hung with his older brother took notice and paid him the ultimate compliment of acceptance.

He was in, Rusty was out and they were both happy to be so. Rusty because he never belonged there and the outsider, cold and unfeeling persona that he took on was damaged by the care he showed in looking out for his younger brother, making the same mistakes that he had, but with the hindsight advantage and a smaller, slower scale.

His little brother’s habits and problems got steadily worse, arrested more than once and he would fuck his way through any girlfriend that would put up with his bullshit long enough, burn them out and move on.

Then the plague, the virus, the change or the Price happened, and everyone had a different name for it, all calling it what they wanted and hoping that the name would stick and with it their mark on the naming of history. Rusty’s little brother was in jail, the local Sherriff had him in lock up for selling to another schoolchild, a teenager a few years behind the boy, but connected enough to buy the dope through him and promptly overdose.

It was not enough to catch him and out him in the lock up, Rusty’s sibling had to take it to the limit and he hooked up with his old girlfriend the Sherriff’s rebellious and only just legal daughter, she had some serious father issues and a despair for humanity coupled with a hatred for authority and convention. That girl was a mess then and latched on the brothers like a lifeline and she bolstered Rusty’s little brother like a shot of cocaine to the blood stream. The pair fired each other up and they fired up the Sherriff, killing him and his deputies, blaming it on the chaos and hysteria that followed the Price.

They claimed it was not killing but euthanasia, the law department had all died through means nefarious or natural, it didn’t matter. They turned and then Rusty’s little brother started on the last campaign to impress his family, which now included the late sheriff’s daughter, who saw him as her Lord and Savior.

Now his brother was in the ground a few feet from her but separate in Rusty’s judgment so they could all find peace and quiet.

Family made you do mad things, and he was about to find out how mad it could get, even by his standards, he put his life on the firing line and he let them pull the trigger.

He sank to his knees, wondering if he would ever be able to get up again or whether or not shock would finish him off, it had been a hard day and he had been knocked like a boat on the rocks, unforgiving and undeniable in it’s force.

Ben had walked up to him and looked him straight in the eye and asked him a question. “What would you do?”

“I’d let me go. I’d fix it so I can’t follow you, whatever or me, does the language matter? Do the pronouns matter? I would? You should? Yeah. You. Should.” Rusty had held his hands in front of himself in what he thought was a mollifying and pacifying manner. “You should be shot of me, y’all don’t know me well enough to keep me on and frankly, my life has been shot enough of late. I carried too much weight that belonged to my brother and not me, so if it’s all the same to you? I’d just let me go.”

“Right.” Ben thought a moment and looked at the other four members. “They voted, and they are split, I won’t tell you who, but they are fifty-fifty on your being alive or dead at the end of this process. No one wants you to come along or join us, so in one respect I have to thank you for at least partially unifying the thought in this team. So I have the deciding vote on whether you live or die.”

“Well how about you vote live, I thank you profusely and hug you endlessly, but in non-homo-erotic way, and then you eventually shove me away, old yeller style and tell me to “Git! Git on home now, ya hear? How’s that working for you?”

Ben drew a gun from his pocket and cocked it. He held it out to Rusty who looked at it closely; wondering of this was some kind of test.

“How about you take this gun and then we see what happens, I won’t stop you no matter what you do.”

Rusty shook his head, smelling the trap even if there was not one, it smelled bad.  “No, thanks, I’m good.”

Ben nodded and held the gun out to his side at arm’s length. “For those that voted for his death? How about you take the gun and see what happens, I won’t stop you no matter what ya’ll decide to do.”

In that instant Rusty looked up and saw the face of death over Ben’s shoulder and paled in fright, in the sudden and shocking speed that the person moved in to take him out and return his body to his erstwhile and errant brother.