Three Paths

Appalachian Trail . McAfee Knob
Thursday April 13, 2013

Things too insane to believe. Words spoken with a grain of truth, grim promise. James looked on Kira as her mind stumbled through the minefield of his words… apprehension dawning, comprehension blossoming like a storm… and a world collapsing. If he could still feel pity, he would have looked in sorrow upon her… remembering what it was like to face, for the first time, the grim future now unfolding upon the world. Theories abounded, but mattered little in what had become for all, regardless of race, creed, or caste, a fight for survival in the face of a human tide reduced to it’s most animalistic instinct. To feed.

He could feel a rage boiling in his mind, like a fire living and blazing out of control. A conflagration of rationalizations and feeble explanations for this unjust collapse of all he once knew and loved… and hated. Looking upon this girl, this young woman, he felt a stir, a kaleidoscope of emotions burgeoning, feeding the fire stirring in his soul and pushing beyond the emotional barriers born of scars to recent, still tender. Wounds inflicted on his heart and soul by all he had witnessed as he cast aside his honor and his sanity, escaping mobs, running in terror from the screams of his own family… cries, desperate pleas for help still ringing in his ears… survival, flight his only thought.

He could feel his knuckles tightening, teeth grinding. He could see, through the red haze of anger clouding his vision, Kira. Her mouth was moving, forming words, but he heard no sounds, could feel no comprehension. A look was spreading in her eyes, pupils dilating… a look of fear. He felt in himself a sudden surge of violent thoughts, the look in her eyes awakening in him a hunger. There was no room for the weak in this new world of violence, devoid of civilization, thought. This frozen wasteland of anger.

A soft touch on his shoulder, and a succulent and sweet smell brought him to salivation. He could feel his mouth moving, his lungs pumping, making sounds instinctual, reflexive. He felt the world spinning before his eyes, drowning ever deeper under the red cloud before his vision. He could taste something warm, wet, and sweet.

His last rational thought, his dying comprehension, was a soul sickening feeling of awareness. He understood now, for one fleeting moment as his sanity departed and the virus fully brought down his last vestige of humanity, that look of rage and hunger screaming behind the eyes of the infected. He felt with unreal certainty a Sisyphean burden, holding up the convictions, beliefs, and labels that defined him in life… now, only a crushing weight. Legs buckling, and finally surrender… for what could he do, one lone man, under the weight of the world. A fleeting gasp of freedom, and in a breath, all comprehension was gone.

Kira felt frozen in time. She fought back a nervous laugh… she had never seen so much blood, she had never brushed so closely such a moment of horror. Like a broken record she kept relaying the last few moments, her mind trying to cope, understand what was happening. One moment, James was standing there… the next, he was panting, and eying her like a piece of meat, his frame trembling. The next moment Patrick had come from behind to lay a hand on James’ shoulder, about to open his mouth to say something. In response to that touch James let out some strangled sounding roar, and lashed out, tearing into Patrick’s jugular. Blood sprayed, screams shrieked on the wind, and as Patrick let loose guttural pleads the two rolled end over end, coming to a stop not five feet away, where, amidst sounds of tearing flesh Patrick had ceased to move. James, now crouched above him, emitted a low and inhuman, guttural growl as he raised his eyes to see Jessica, babe in arm, screaming, stumbling backward.

Kira felt a wave of heat ripple through her muscles like fire, and with a sudden clarity – an instinctual response to protect, she threw herself at the beast. Dropping her center of gravity low, she launched herself at his knees, arms wide. She ducked her head low and lead with her shoulder, connecting with full force at a right angle to his legs, breaking his knee with a meaty snap. She pulled in tight with her arms, bringing his legs together under her as she drove him flat into the ground.

Kira tumbled free, rolling to her feet. James, a snarling, blood spattered animal, clawed onto his hands and knees, shoulders hunched, a predatory look in his eye and a rasping growl in his throat. Kira licked her lips, her mouth dry and an acrid taste in her mouth, and slowly sidestepped, keeping her balance low, moving to position her back to the knob and its precipice. All the while staring James in the eyes, meeting his inhuman gaze, challenging him.

Fear was boiling in her stomach, like a poison, tempting her with sweet thoughts of flight and escape… but she refused to drink from that wellspring. Biting hard on her teeth, she tempered her will with a grim determination to survive. The screams of moments ago now faded, a uneasy, eerie silence fell on the moment… shattered just as quickly by a baby’s cry, and it’s mother’s furtive attempts to hush it.

James broke eye contact, his predatory stare darting to mother and child. His body began to lurch, and Kira let out a savage roar, bestial. James’ attention snapped back, and with a howl he began loping towards her, dragging his weight across his broken knee.

Kira was momentarily stunned by his nearly inhuman ability to move so fast, so damaged, and let her instincts take over as James reached out, arms wide in attack. She offered up her left arm, and as James began to grasp, jaws gaping, spittle flying, she brought her right foot back in a circle, twisting at her hips, in one single movement moving coming to stand shoulder to shoulder, predator and prey alike facing the sheer edge of the precipice before them. Kira arced her leading arm forward, using the wild momentum of James’ charge to launch him forward and past her, breaking his grasp, sending him careening, snarling and howling with rage, off the edge and to his demise.

Kira let herself drop to a knee, her body trembling, hands shaking, and looked around her. Patrick was laying a mere ten feet away in a pool of blood, bright red on the snow, his body broken, his neck an open mass of torn flesh. Jessica crouched over his body, racked with sobs, cradling her child, hands covered in blood, muttering nonsensically. Kira felt, in some corner of her heart, a tug of pity. Her mind still coming to grips, she felt as if she was looking on herself from afar, strangely detached. An observer to an unreal horror reserved for movies and stories. She felt a pressure in her feet, and saw her self coming closer to the woman, arm stretching out to lend a comforting hand on the tortured soul before her.

Jessica looked up into her eyes at that touch, puffy, red, and Kira felt her soul chill as it seemed before her very eyes, this woman’s mind departed, fleeing to some safe corner of psychosis. “I don’t understand.” Jessica muttered, words devoid of emotion. “We escaped. We were done. We were safe… ” Kira felt a strange sense of foreboding growing in her gut. Jessica continued, words lifeless, her eyes drifting to look on Patrick’s savage wounds, “I can’t do this. I wont do this to my child.” Her eyes seemed for one brief moment to find some understanding, and with slow, dreaded movements, she unfastened her shoulder cradle, and thrust her crying child into Kira’s arms. Jessica stared Kira in the eyes, and in those orbs Kira could see nothing… as if the woman was already dead. “You will survive.” Jessica stuttered, a flicker of life returning.

Kira began to stutter confused protest, her mind a crashing tide, the baby in her arms an awkward, confusing, and nervous weight as Jessica stood up without another word, looked to the sky, and ran ten fateful steps to throw herself from the world, disappearing into the abyss beyond that fateful precipice.