“Barrett,” I said, “I’m sorry. So sorry. I don’t know what’s going on or how I can do these things.” I shook my hands in the air. “But I’m sorry. It’s my fault that you and Fannie Mae are dead. If there’s a piece of you left in there I know I can’t ask for your forgiveness but please know that I’m sorry and that I will end your suffering.”
I reached forward and grabbed his hand. I would have hugged him if I had the strength to get up, but it wasn’t in me. I held the thread for as long as I could but eventually I just let it go. His body slumped before me.
This was the end of the line.
26.
Okay, not really. Not a hundred percent at the end of the line. I guess there’s a little bit more to tell.
I could feel the call of the shotgun and wanted desperately to end my suffering and join my friends, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt too much like the easy way out and I didn’t feel like I deserved the easy way. I could see the carnage in front of me, the hundreds of people dead because of me, and know that my death wouldn’t be enough for them. It would only ease my guilt and my suffering and they deserved more than that.
I got up on wobbly legs after a time and went back into my trailer. I knew I no longer had anything to fear from the zombies. I’d destroyed them all, somehow. I left the shotgun outside and went in and took a cold shower and cleaned up as best I could. The cold water was little punishment for what I’d done. I packed a bag with a few sets of clothes and grabbed as much money as I could from the trailer. Mom and dad had some stashed away and I had a bit of my own savings, too. I knew that I could go rifle through the clothes of the bodies outside and get more money but I didn’t want to desecrate the dead any more than I already had. My mere existence was a desecration to them.
I walked cross-country and eventually found a ride with a trucker who was more than happy to take me as far as he was going. I later read the news reports and saw that the Litchville Police Department, and Mason’s dad, the Sheriff, eventually found their way into Rosie Acres and were puzzled and disgusted by what they found there. They called in the Feds and the best they could come up with was some kind of drug or disease got into people and drove them insane. How do you explain bodies walking around with the kinds of damage those people had taken? How do you explain the cannibalism and the things that had happened there?
They ultimately didn’t. There were a few survivors, but their stories weren’t believed. What person in their right mind could believe that zombies had walked the earth?
What am I? How do I have the power I do? How do I control this curse from Hell? I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I know that I can feel the threads of dead people. Walking by a graveyard is torture for me now. All those threads throb and want to come to life. If I’m too close to somebody who’s dying I can hear the siren call of their thread and feel it wanting to be set free. Now that I’ve woken up the power I can feel death everywhere.
It hurts to feel these things but yet it’s almost more than I can do to stop myself from plucking those threads. A part of me wants to release the horde upon the world. Pluck a thread in California, do one in New York, then maybe go back to the south and do it again… The urge is overwhelming sometimes.
I don’t want to be the end of the world. But sometimes, in my dreams, when my friends come to me and sit before the fire, I see the world burn.
And I wake up holding all those threads in my hand.
Epilogue
In the beginning was the darkness and only the darkness. Shapes frolicked and played and fought with each other. They would fight tooth and claw and nail until they were all ripped to shreds. Then there would be peace for a time until the shadows reformed into new and exciting shapes and destroyed each other all over again. It was fun and engaging and what did it really matter anyway? They were immortal and couldn’t die. They’d existed ever since the Nothing and would always exist as there would and could never be anything but the Nothing.
How could they see each other if there was nothing in the darkness but, uh, darkness? Even darkness has shape. Even shadows can be seen from the corner of the eye. Powerful shades grew form from the Nothing until they were able to control the lesser darkness and sometimes they would eat and eat and eat until nothing was left in the Nothing but huge tidal waves of darkness.
Then they would shit out new shapes and new shades and the process would begin anew.
This went on for… well, it’s hard to say. For the Nothing held no size or form or time in the void of itself. It had always been and always would be. You couldn’t say that it would exist until the end of time because that phrase had no meaning. There was no time that could end.
Until Something came from outside the Nothing. Which is a sentence that doesn’t even make sense. How can something come from outside something that has no sides? How can there be anything but the great Nothing, the great Void? The shapes and shades in the Nothing had no idea. It was like living your whole life in a two-dimensional world where the only directions that existed were left and right, backward and forward and then someone tapping you on the head and you have a big oh shit moment and realize that you’ve been missing out on this whole up and down thing.
Something came from Outside and ripped the top off of the Nothing and Light blazed in. Light in all its glory that showed the depravity and humiliations and pure, stinking Evil that existed in the Nothing. All the opposites came to bear. Good to their Evil. Life to their Death. Genius to their Stupidity. Knowledge was gained that showed the shades what they were and how they existed and how much better everything else was that existed outside the Nothing.
So they wanted in. Or out. It’s hard to describe directions in the Nothing. It’s not hard to imagine what they wanted.
The Something had its own, big, “oh shit” moment and quickly put the top back on the Nothing, but it was too late. The shades made it their mission to get out of the Nothing and since they had all the non-time that existed in their non-world, they had all the time of existence. Eventually some of them got free. They called home to their buddies and told them what existed Outside the Nothing. The Light hurt their eyes and made what passed for brains in their heads scream in agony, but they persevered and eventually others of their kind were freed.
This was a whole new world to play in. A world where Light existed, where time existed, where non-shades existed who could live and die and bleed. Whole new realms of fun opened up and when you shat out those mewling, bloody things they didn’t come back to life: they just ended. Most of the time.
So the shades played. Some whimpered and died when they were exposed to the Light but the Nothing always had more darkness to fuel them. Others grew strong on this new world and thrived and were worshipped as gods and grew fat on their power. They discovered new forms and shapes and forgot where they’d come from.