SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

65

LLOYD

Instead of basking in the delight of Denise's farewell kiss, only one thought occupied Lloyd's mind. Don't cut the cheese. Don't you fucking dare ruin this by farting.

Struggling to keep his degrading body in check, he barely felt her breaking away and standing off by his bedside. The way she stared down at him, with pity masked behind her affection, threatened to crack his heart in pieces.

"Get some rest. I'll stop by before my shift tomorrow," she promised, turning for the door.

He waved at her from his cot. "I'll be here."

It wasn't an exaggeration. Between packing on the pounds, the constant ache throughout his body, and showing the first telltale sores of radiation poisoning, he barely felt like getting up and going to the bathroom anymore. At least the pain coursing through his nerves took his mind off the uncomfortable slab passing for his bed.

She gave him a strained smile before departing. The shadows deepening under her eyes said more about her state of mind than her forced flash of teeth ever would. He wished he could do something – anything – to ease her burden. Watching her trying to put on a brave face for his benefit was pure misery.

Lloyd sniffled and wiped the moisture beading around his eyes. He shifted away from the door, causing a tuba to blat from his ass. The godawful stench festering in his rancid guts spread a moment later.

Normally, he'd offer another in a long string of apologies to the poor soldier trapped in the same room with him. This time, he didn't have the energy. It took everything he had to keep from breaking down while Denise was still in earshot.

"Fuck," he mumbled, fighting back the sorrow.

Over the last few days, he had gone through many of the stages of grief that one might expect from someone in his position. His shock over the initial diagnosis had progressed beyond layers of pain and guilt to anger and depression. He blamed Mueller. He blamed himself. He blamed God. It took a lot of soul-searching before he finally realized that there wasn't anyone he could hold responsible for his condition. It just was.

He knew this should have been the point that he was rounding the corner and moving towards some semblance of acceptance and hope, except there was none of that on the horizon. Accepting that his death was a certainty left him bereft of hope, while holding onto the hope that Mueller might discover a cure was no longer acceptable to him.

He was going to die soon. That was an indisputable fact. His end would come suddenly, without warning, and without finality. Under other circumstances, he could probably find some measure of peace in death. Now, all he could think about was coming back and hurting someone else – possibly even Denise. He couldn't bear that.

"Did you hear about Hanscom?" a man's voice asked from the hallway outside.

Lloyd glanced towards the exit. The speaker's voice, belonging to either a soldier or one of Mueller's assistants, carried down the corridor to his opened door.

"I heard they were overrun two nights ago," someone else responded.

"They weren't just overrun. The story I heard was that a new kind of zombie took out whole squads in a matter of minutes. They said it was a big one, made up of rolls of hardened fat. Hard enough to stop a bullet, even. It breathed some kind of toxic gas that poisoned everyone around it."

Lloyd's heart skipped a beat. A weak, smelly wheeze squeaked from his stretched gym pants. He poked his enlarged belly with a finger. Before now, he hadn't given much thought to becoming something worse than another typical, brainless zombie. This unexpected glimpse into his post-life future filled him with cold dread.