We took turns guarding the door, neither of us sleeping very much. Ricky looked nervous, and suddenly I felt bad about getting him involved. I shouldn't have. I'm a man of convictions but I can't say that I'm a man of courage. Or maybe that's not it. I mean I'm not afraid of the vampires. At one time I was. I was mortified at the thought of them coming in & ripping me to shreds. I envisioned the excruciating pain of one of their bites. Of being alive as they began to suck the life right out of me. I used to fear death. Now I can't say I welcome it, but I can't say that if it came for me.....I guess I don't know what I'd do.
My thoughts are complicated. I'm not sure if it's clinically possible to diagnose one's self insane but I have no other description for where I think my mind is headed. Or perhaps where it already is. I'd be lying, if I were to tell you that I didn't hope at some point I'd lose. I don't feel that way all the time, but I do sometimes. They out number us 10 to 1. They're quicker. They're stronger. They're intelligent. They're harder than Hell to kill. We're all negative. Food & water may be scarce around here, but pessimism sure as Hell isn't.
I think what truly classifies me as a lunatic is that I keep on fighting. I sit here with my back against the door of a small church we found in our search for fellow survivors. A cross of Jesus hangs above the pipes of an organ. The water gun I hold full of what I believe to be holy water. We've been told vampires can't enter such institutions. We've been told that crosses & holy water work as lines of defense. Yet in the last 8 months, all we know to have an effect on them is sunlight. Something Ricky & I lost about 20 minutes ago & won't get for about 11 hours.
Hope is dead. I still think about a life before the vampires took over. I still think of how I told myself that one day I'd get back into racing & I'd make it to Nas Car. I took a detour to get an education. A promise that I made my mother & selfishly have to admit I now sit here & regret. A college degree didn't mean that much to me. Three years & eight months. I didn't even get to receive my degree to make her happy. The Vampires rose on the twenty-seventh of April. No warning. No nothing. We weren't able to call each other or email or anything. It was like a bomb hitting the whole country.
What I should've felt at that moment was sorrow, fear, confusion. We didn't have time to plan. It was either panic, run, fight or hide. I took off on a dead sprint as a group of vampires ran after me. I fell to the ground in complete exhaustion. When I was grabbed & lifted off the ground I kept waiting for the bite. For the fingernails to sink deep within my skin. Instead I was thrown into the back of a van as the doors slammed & we sped down the road.
I was given water as I sucked wind, coughed & threw up twice within an hour. Fellow students, two of which I didn't like & four of which I didn't know surrounded me. When I thought of my mom, all of my thoughts were numb. I wanted to feel fear of what might have happened to her. I wanted to break down and bawl at the thought of never seeing her again. I wanted to feel some sort of anger at what was happening. I wanted to feel something. Anything, but I didn't. It wasn't until a few days later when I thought of how in the summer after my senior year of high school, I had been offered an opportunity to go down & work in Daytona. I let my her talk me out of it. Talk me into getting a degree first & then going down to Daytona. When I thought of that, that's when the emotion I had sought came. When I realized that in this world now ruled by vampires, Nascar didn't exist & it never would again. That's when the tears I couldn't find for my mother, fell effortlessly from my eyes.
It's not contempt. At least not for her. I'm not angry with her. I don't feel she did the wrong thing. I think she did the right thing. I know she did the right thing. I don't know what in the Hell is wrong with me to where I can't feel that she did the right thing. I question my own morality. My own ethics & my own values? Am I am good person? How can I justify affirmative to that question, when my own tears reveal a sociopathic response?
I think that in partial is why I keep fighting. Why I continue to look for help & try and defeat the vampires. Why I look for those in trouble & try to save them. I still might not be a great person. I might still be the piece of shit who despite a desire wasn't able to shed a tear for his mother. I might still be the one who instead cried at the loss of selfish aspiration. I can in the least, pretend to be better.
I didn't know if I could do it on my own. I didn't like the idea of being on my own. Going out alone wasn't something I could do. So I selfishly recruited Ricky. It wasn't because I thought he'd be best to take along. He wasn't the smartest. He wasn't the fastest. He wasn't the strongest. I chose him simply because out of everyone else who volunteered, he seemed like the one who had the least to lose. Like the one who would keep swinging the steak, even if his arm was the only body part he had left. That's why I chose him.
I take a break from my thoughts as I look back in the direction of where Ricky had been trying to sleep. He's gone.
"Ricky!"
Suddenly he reappears.
"Hey." Rick speaks to me for the first time since we took off this morning. "There's a pantry in the back. I found some bread."
He reaches into his coat pocket as he hands me a piece.
"It's hard as a brick." He continues. "but no mold. It's still safe to eat."
"Thanks" I say as I take a bite.
"I drank some of the holy water." He speaks slowly as if he's afraid of the consequence that may result in his admission.
"Yeah." I say back to him. "We put some in our water guns too."
"Yeah." He continues to talk slow.
"Look." I say to him. "Jesus would want you to."
"You sure about that?" His question demands an unshakable answer. One that I can not give him, but I do anyway.
"Yeah." I'm no more sure about it, than I am anything in this crazy situation. I know Biblically speaking that deception is the utmost of sins. Yet I can't help but feel that since it comforts Ricky & it's the only answer he'll accept that being dishonest is the right thing to do.
"Eat some of that holy bread too." I say to him as I take a bite of my own while pointing at the piece he's holding.
He nods and takes a bite of it.
"Then later you can take a holy shit."
He cracks a smile. The first one I've seen upon a face that I thought only knew frowns & other looks of disappointment.
Sunlight for the first twenty-two years of my life was nothing more than crawling into my bed. pulling the blankets over myself, lying my head on the pillow & then waking up to it. That's all it was. That's all I ever thought it'd be. Now here I sit, my back up against a door, my eyes starring out a window into the darkness. A black, that with every second that passes, I'll watch until it turns to light.
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