H1Z1 - Chapter 3

As I caught up with my son, who, in his haste to get away from the woman, hadn't waited for me, I heard a sound I hadn't noticed before. All through the store, there seemed to be a low keening sound, like a cross between a growl and a moan. There had to be at least 50 people in the store at any given time, and it seemed like every single one of them was making the same noises as the lady behind the gun counter.

Her name was Marie.

The realization stopped me cold in my tracks. Not because I had just remembered what her little blue name tag said in friendly white lettering, but because, in my mind, I had thought 'was'.

Was.

"Bill, wait," I managed, turning back toward the outdoors section.

"No, Dad. We can't go back there! Something is wrong with that lady and I'm scared!"

"I know, Son," I said as calmly as I knew how, trying to disguise the terror that kept trying to claw its way up the back of my throat. "You just wait right here while I go back."

"No!" This, he yelled, in spite of his usual amenable attitude. "I'm not leaving you! And I am NOT going back there!"

With that, Bill dug his heels in to the floor and my momentum pulled him over, both of us cancelling one another out with single-minded determination as the shotgun shells under his arm broke free of their boxes and spilled across the tile.

I wanted, no needed, absolutely had to go back and find out what was wrong with this lady; Bill was equally compelled to flee the store as rapidly as his little legs would allow. Althouh his flight instinct held sway over him almost completely, I couldn't help but feel pride in the fact that even though he was ready to run for his life, he would not leave my side - he'd run, all right, but not without my permission.

"Here," I said, dangling the keys to the truck in front of him. "Why don't you go wait in the car?"

"Uh-uh," he said, flatly determined that the two of us would not separate. "I am not going anywhere without you, Dad. Something is wrong here. Very wrong, and I want to get out!"

"Yes, Son, I know something's wrong." I could tell there was not going to be a happy medium here, so I let the steel of my "Daddy voice" temper my words. "We need to find out what it is and whether or not we can help."

"No Dad," Bill pleaded, his eyes gone dark with fear. "Please no."

He knew I had made up my mind, though, and his shoulders rounded with acceptance as I pulled him back to his feet.

"We'll just be a minute, Son," I promised, turning back toward the gun counter.

The lady, Marie, was gone. My steps faltered as I saw the empty corral.

"Look, under there!" Bill hissed, squatting down and pointing under the bottom edge of the swinging corral door.

"Why are you whispering, Son?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper itsself.

"I don't know," he whispered back.

"Ma'am," I continued, this time at regular volume, voice cracking a little. I didn't want Bill to hear how scared I actually was.

"Ma'am, are you ok?"

I leaned over the gate to the gun counter and looked down at her - she seemed to have passed out, and was lying flat on her back with a trail of blood-flecked foam dribbling down the side of her face.

"Stay here," I told Bill as I reached inside the counter to undo the catch on the swinging door.

This time he didn't resist, simply standing there, eyes as wide as ever I'd seen them and every muscle in his body as taut as a bow string. At a nod, he'd run; I could tell it was everything he could do not to take off down the aisle we'd just come up

I looked Marie's body over again. I could tell it was a body: she wasn't wheezing any more. In fact, her chest didn't move at all. Feeling for a pulse in her wrist as I bent down, I couldn't help but flinch at the slightly rotten smell I'd noticed before. It reminded me of the scent of a mass grave I'd ridden by in the back of a military truck in Sumatra after the tsunami hit in December of '04. It was all I could do to keep my racing mind from following that memory; I'd been dealing with the nightmares of that experience ever since, and the smell was something that would never, ever leave me.

Death. She smelled like death. She had smelled that way while she was still standing, while she was still moving.

"Dad, is she ..." Bill couldn't bring himself to end his question as I dropped her lifeless arm back to the ground.

"Yes, I'm afraid so, Son." Never had a phrase rung so truly. I was afraid. Very afraid.