Life I Left Behind (A Daryl Dixon Story)

Chapter Nineteen

Charlie

28 years old- Pre-apocalypse

“…just outside of Savannah, Georgia there has been yet another report of one of these unusual, violent attacks. The attacker was incapacitated by the police and both he and the victim are residing in area hospitals…”

“Hey, guess what?”

I heard Gabe yelling at me from the living room, where he was sprawled across my couch watching the news. I didn’t glance up from the meat in the frying pan as I pushed it around with my spatula.

“Yes?”

My brother poked his head around the corner of the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. “They caught another guy eating someone’s face off. That’s like the tenth time this month. There saying it’s some sort of rabies or something.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sounds like yet another epidemic of bath salts to me.”

Gabe grinned at me before disappearing into the other room again. “I don’t know, Char, maybe we should go get some rabies shots.”

I snorted with laughter. “You go right ahead. Maybe they’ll make rabies shots mandatory for college students.” I joked back. I scraped the meat from the pan and into a plastic bowl on the counter. “Turn that shit off, tacos are ready.”

“I can’t, I’m waiting to see if they’re going to show a video of this guy getting eaten.” Gabe hollered back.

I shook my head, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel before making my way into the living room. I perched myself on the arm of the couch, sparing a glance at Gabe and smirking a little at the enraptured look he was giving the television. I was surprised at how much I liked having my little brother around. He had pretty much begged me to let him move in to my Atlanta apartment after his sophomore year of college, claiming another year of dorm life would kill him. I tried to point out that I had lived in a dorm for three years and I was fine, but apparently that made me a minority. I had pretty much refused to give up my office for his bedroom at first, claiming the living room was a perfect living space for him, but in the end I had lost that argument also. To be fair, I don’t think I really would have made him sleep on the couch every night. Having Gabe around was great. Definitely not the nightly college frat party I had been expecting. I wrestled the remote from his hand without much of a fight and pointed it at the TV to turn it off. I hesitated a moment.

“With over two dozen cases of this strange, erratic behavior being reported across the nation, the so called rabies epidemic seems to be spreading at a rapid pace. The CDC asks that anyone displaying any signs of these unusually violent symptoms be taken to the nearest hospital as soon as possible. In the meantime, doctors and scientists continue to search for answers-“

I pressed the power button and the screen turned black. I tried to shake the bad feeling that had been clouding over me as I had watched the reporters.

“Hey, it was just getting good!” My little brother protested. He tried to swipe the remote from my hand, but I stood and held it out of reach. At twenty years old, Gabe was still a good head taller than me and could easily take the remote back but I knew he knew better than to argue with me about food.

“Dinner time.” I stated simply, pointing in the general direction of the kitchen. He made a face at me before pulling himself off the couch and disappearing into the other room.

“And its bath salts, Gabe. Not rabies.” I hollered after him. I tried to keep my tone light and joking,
but that dark cloud still hovered over me and I couldn’t rid myself of the knots beginning to twist in my stomach. I tossed the remote onto the couch cushion and followed after Gabe. I had no idea why I felt so worried about this. It wasn’t the first time the news had made a big deal about a sudden, unidentified illness spreading. Hadn’t that been the case when mad cow disease happened? When the bird flu happened? ‘Maybe, but this is the first time one of the symptoms of the disease was a sudden hunger for human flesh’, a voice in the back of my brain reminded me. Gabe must have caught the look on my face as I sat down at the table.

“What? You’re not gonna pull a ‘mom’ on me, are you?” He asked, perking an eyebrow.
I gave him a look before shaking my head. I knew perfectly well what he meant by that. Our mother was probably the most paranoid people on the planet. She watched the news religiously, and she took every single word seriously. Very seriously. The basement at my parents’ house resembled a bomb shelter of some sort. It was stocked with more canned goods and water jugs than any grocery store in Atlanta. And I’m sure when Gabe caught the look on my face then, he had automatically pictured me running off and buying out the canned good section of the grocery store and boarding up all the windows and doors. Fortunately, I hadn’t turned into our mother. Not yet anyways.

“People are on the news eating each other because, like I’ve said a hundred times, they took too many bath salts.” I reminded him, filling up a tortilla with taco meat.

Gabe shrugged. “Yeah…or the more obvious choice which is they’re all turning into zombies.” He said very seriously. We both shared a look before bursting out into laughter.

“You watch too many horror movies.” I chuckled.

“Yeah, well, it’s a thought. Zombies are supposedly real down in the Caribbean or something. You know, like voodoo priests and stuff.” He grinned.

I threw a piece of lettuce across the table at him. “Shut up and eat your dinner. You can fantasize more about the looming zombie invasion after you do the dishes.”

He opened his mouth to protest but I silenced him with a look. He grumbled something about ‘hating dishes’ but didn’t try to argue. I went back to carefully rolling up my taco, the bad feeling I had after watching the news slowly subsiding. It was silly to even feel the slightest bit worried. It was just bath salts, right?