Strain

         If only the condom hadn’t broke. That’s what I was thinking as I laid next to Marissa in the tent, looking at the small bulge rising from her stomach. If it hadn’t we might still be in the same sleeping bag together, but instead she slept with about half a foot of distance between us facing away from me. Things hadn’t been the same since the day she figured out that she was pregnant. I guess you could say a rift opened between us. I don’t blame her at all though considering she had to drop out of art school since she felt morally responsible to keep the baby. Making it up to her would require a time machine. I didn’t have one.
         I stepped out of the tent into the morning sunshine. Large oak trees towered overhead and a single bird sung alone from her perch. I took a deep breath and stretched my limbs. After grabbing a Dr. Pepper from the cooler, I sat down in my folding chair and leaned my head back, staring up at the clouds.
         Did Marissa still love me? I asked myself that question a lot. In the four months since she and her father had shown up at the door, her crying her eyes out and he with a grave look on his face, we had spent a lot of time together, but little of it was romantic. Most of it was planning for the baby which I had agreed to help her take care of, though secretly I was a little reluctant. She hadn’t even so much as kissed me since then.
         I heard the other tent unzip behind me as Christian stepped out into the light wearing only his boxers and a wooly cap. He stretched out much in the same way as I had. Apparently our sleeping bags didn’t do such a good job of softening the Earth. He grabbed a Sunkist from the cooler and sat down beside me.
         “Good morning, Dad,” he said, jabbing me in the side.
         “Oh screw off,” I said with a tired grin. Christian was the first person I told when I learned that Marissa was pregnant. His advice to me was to fake my death and leave the country. As of yet I hadn’t felt inclined to follow it. Part of me still believed that I could salvage even some working parts from the wreckage of our relationship.
         “So how is she anyway? I mean she was quiet on the way up here, but are things better between you guys?” he asked.
         “I’m not really sure. Some days she seems like she still wants it to work, others it’s like she wants to tear out my jugular,” I replied with a deep sigh.
         “Hell, if any couple could get through it, it’d be you two. If Shannon got pregnant I’d ditch her pronto,” he said.
         “I heard that asshole!” Shannon replied angrily from the tent. She emerged into the sunlight wearing only her bathing suit. Her bronze body and long legs gave her the appearance of looking like a goddess, or at least the cover of a Sports Illustrated. Christian always had a way with the girls and Shannon had been his most beautiful catch yet. Too bad then that she was rather caustic and generally scatterbrained.
         “I’m just kidding,” he said putting his hands up in surrender. She walked over and sat on his lap, stirring some twisted jealous monster in the pit of my chest. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted her. I missed those sort of interactions. I’d be lucky if Marissa even held my hand ever again.
         “You’d better be, because I sure as hell ain’t raising one of those little shits alone,” she said. I hoped for the sake of her children that she wouldn’t get pregnant until she knew what she was doing, and she knew the difference between a human being and feces.
         “What’s all that yelling?” Marissa groaned, slinking out of the tent. Her eyes were bloodshot and she looked a little bit sick. Before I could even say good morning to her she waddled off into the woods to vomit. I could hear her retching behind a tree.
         When she finally returned she sat down in her chair without speaking, arms crossed and staring off into the distance. She deliberately avoided eye contact with me, and when I reached over to put a hand on her shoulder she pulled away immediately.
         “Well good morning to you too princess,” I said sarcastically.  I knew that I should have held my tongue. Marissa had become a bomb with a baby inside her, and it didn’t take much to set her off. On the bright side, she finally looked at me, but that look was a glare. I was sure she would unleash her unnatural pregnancy induced fury on me, but instead she sighed.
         “Good morning,” she said emotionlessly. Christian and Shannon both looked anxious as if they were a swat team watching the bomb expert try to defuse an intricate detonator. Even the bird up in the tree had seemed to hold its breath for a second, stopping her incessant chattering to make sure she wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire somehow.
         “Hey, let’s go down to the lake and swim,” Shannon said, trying to remove herself from the situation. Though Christian couldn’t care less what was going on, Shannon had picked up on the tension between Marissa and I right away during the car ride up. Suddenly a weekend campout with friends had seemed a lot less enticing.
         “I don’t wanna,” Christian said in a whiney voice. Shannon leaned back and whispered something in his ear that made his eyes go wide. He jumped up suddenly, ran into the tent and was back out with his swim trunks on in a heartbeat, already heading down the path towards the lake. Then it was just Marissa and I left in awkward silence.
         “I’m going for a routine ultrasound next week. I’d like you to be there,” she said finally, her tone even and a little guarded.
         “Yeah sure no problem. Maybe afterwards we can get lunch or something,” I offered.
         “Maybe,” she replied. She still wouldn’t make eye contact with me, and her body language made it seem like she wanted to get up and leave.
         There was another long pause of silence. Both of us tried to muster the words to say what we were feeling, but as people do in that situation we couldn’t seem to find them. I wanted with all of my heart to tell her that nothing had to change, but if I thought about it deep down it wasn’t actually true. We were being forced into the next stage of our lives. It was awkward, uncomfortable, and mildly depressing.
         “Do you still love me?” I finally asked.
         “What kind of question is that?” she said. There was the slightest hint of annoyance in her voice, and her facial expression became harsh for a second.
         “Look, we can’t keep denying that things have changed. I need to know if you still love me or not,” I told her.
         “I don’t know John, okay? All of this is just so crazy and I need time to sort all of it out. There’s a person growing inside of me. Do you know how freaking weird that feels?” she said. I had heard her say all of that a thousand times before.
         “You blame me for it, don’t you?”
         “You know… yes I do. You’re the one who wanted to have sex on our anniversary even though I was out of the birth control pills. I told you that it wasn’t a good idea, but you just had to have it your way,” she said icily.
         “I’m sorry. I really am,” I said.
         “Sorry doesn’t make up for the fact that I have to put my dream of being a painter on hold if not dump it in the trash completely. Do you realize that you’ve pretty much sentenced me to mediocrity? You can go to school because you don’t have to take care of the kid. How is that fair?” Her outpour of emotion was too much for her and she began shaking.
         “Forget I even brought any of this up,” I said angrily. It always went that way when we tried to talk things out. It was a stalemate, with neither side knowing how to make the necessary concessions to end the war and bring about peace. I feared not just for my relationship with Marissa but for the child growing inside of her. My child. I grew up in a broken home myself, and I didn’t want that for my kids.
         “My dad wants to talk about the wedding soon,” she said. I had agreed to marry her the night that she and her father showed up my door. Since then I had morbid dreams of her walking up the isle sobbing like it was all some sort of big mistake. As we said our vows tears streamed down her face and suddenly I felt more like a prison warden than the love of her life.
         “Okay. Do you still want to do it on the beach?” I asked.
         “Yeah,” she replied.
         There was yet another instance of silence between us as we sat in our chairs both looking in opposite directions. Two people that had been deeply in love less than half a year ago but now barely able to stand each other. There were two parts of me. The one that existed on the surface was dutiful and wanted what was best for Marissa and the baby, but there was also a more negative side deep down that pushed me towards leaving her. It was never a conscious choice on my part to think this way, but every once in a while a thought like that would come to the surface without any kind of filter. That part of me seemed to think that I had a right to be happy even if I made a mistake. It was hard to tell which one was right.
         I was broken from my self-induced trance by shouting down by the lake. I could make Christian’s voice out instantly, a loud howl of pain escaping from his lips followed by a string of profanities that would get the most devout saint sent to Hell. Shannon joined in as well, yelling frantically and unintelligibly. I immediately got up out of my chair and jogged down the path. Christian had a tendency to pull stupid stunts, so I figured he had probably tried to jump off the bank, missed the water and sprained his ankle or something. As I came up over the hill I could see that what actually happened was much worse.
         Christian was holding his shoulder which was spurting out blood in large quantities into the water. A now topless Shannon was screaming and covering her mouth as a large, bloated man made his way towards her with arms outstretched. I picked up a large tree branch and ran towards him.
His walk was like that of a drunk man’s. His Hawaiian shirt had its sleeves torn off like he had been in a fight with a dingo. As I got closer to them a pungent stench filled that air, and I was certain that he had soiled himself.
“Get away from her right now buddy,” I warned, taking a step closer to him. He either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. I could hear Marissa yelling to be careful behind me and rushing to Christian’s aid. At least she cared enough to not want me hurt.
         “I said get away from her,” I said with a harder edge to my tone. Again the man ignored me, continuing to advance on Shannon.
         “I’m talking to you asshole!” I yelled, putting a hand forcefully on his shoulder. This stopped him in his tracks and for a moment he was as still as a statue. Slowly, he began to turn around. I felt bile build up in the back of my throat as I realized that the man was more than just drunk. The entire left side of his face was a bloody pulp and his jaw was visible through his cheek. His right eye was missing as well, and several of his teeth were shattered. Reflex kicked in and I pushed him back, sending him sprawling into the dirt.
         “What the hell?” I asked incredulously. The man was already getting to his feet again clumsily, apparently unfazed by my attack.
         “Dude he bit me. Be careful he isn’t right in the head,” Christian shouted weakly. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Marissa was wrapping her hoodie around the wound as a makeshift bandage.
         When I turned back to face the man he was already lunging at me and I had to backpedal to stop him from throwing me to the ground. He was taken down by the momentum of his own lunge slamming his face into a large rock formation on the way. A long red streak of blood marked his descent down the face of it. Incredibly the man showed no signs of pain, he simply climbed to his feet once more and growled at me ferociously like a feral animal. He reached out for me and I could see that two of his fingers were missing, bone jutting out where his pinky and middle fingers had been. Yet there was no expression on the man’s face. There was no agony, no pain, not even insanity. There was just nothingness.
         “Yeah no shit,” I muttered in response. With no other choice I smacked him across the face as hard as I physically could with the tree branch. I heard a snap as his nose broke and black blood dribbled down his face. He looked at me vacantly, unfeelingly and it immediately caused something in me to snap. I began flurrying him with blows to the head, sides and arms his body jerked with each hit but his facial expression never changed. In some sick way it would have been a relief for him to show pain.
         “How is he still standing?” Shannon asked in disbelief. I was sure her thoughts were mirrored in my face. As I hit him hard once more across the head I heard two cracks. One was his skull caving in on the side, the other was the branch snapping. He began to bleed from his good eye and I knew then that the bone must have crushed part of his brain. He stood there motionless for a second before falling to the ground with a loud thump.
         “Dude, was he a zombie?” Christian asked. I couldn’t tell if he was terrified or excited, or manic mixture of the two.
         “There’s no such thing as zombies. They’re impossible,” Marissa replied, but I could see in her face that she wasn’t quite certain of that herself.
         We all kind of stood there uncomfortably, looking down at the man I had just bludgeoned to death. On closer inspection his skin was a ghastly pale color, and he had deep infected wounds which were black and oozing pus. Then it really hit me that I had just murdered a man. I slowly stepped back, dropping the broken branch and shaking terribly. It had been self-defense. There was nothing I could do about it. Yet that somehow didn’t make me feel much better.
         By the time we had gotten Christian back to camp his bite wound was already an irritated red. While Marissa tended to the wound and Shannon changed into her clothes, I began rummaging through my bag for my cell phone. After dialing 911 and hitting the send button I waited for someone to pick up on the other end. A voice did end up coming over the line but it was a recorded message. All of the lines were full. I tried to remember hearing about something like that happening, but I couldn’t think of anything similar since the bombing of the World Trade Center.
         “I couldn’t get through. I’ll try again in a little while,” I told them. Originally Shannon had suggested we simply pack up and leave, but Christian interjected to remind us that we had in fact just killed a man. Leaving the scene of the crime was a dumb move. His wound wasn’t too bad, and the bleeding had stopped, so getting him to the emergency room could wait for just a little bit. I walked over to the car to look for the first aid kit I kept in the back seat, as I began to go through the stuff I felt my stomach turn over in a delayed reaction to my previous actions. I turned and threw up all over the parking stall next to mine.
         “Are you okay?” Marissa asked. Those words should have been reassuring but they were just as guarded as ever.
         “I mean… I just killed a guy,” I said.
         “It was self-defense. You can’t think about that right now though. Christian’s getting pale and his shoulder looks really infected. He’s sweating too so he might be running a fever. We need to get that thing cleaned out now,” she said, pushing past me and digging through my stuff. As I waited for her to finish I eyed my hatchet lying carelessly on the floor near the other side. Four years in the Boy Scouts had taught me to always be prepared, so I always had it just in case, though I had never actually needed it before.
         When we got back to Christian his skin was nearly translucent, and the discoloration from his wound was just barely starting to sneak past the bandage. As Marissa cleaned out it out, I tried to call for help once again. The same recorded message played in response to me, and I ended the call angrily.
         “I’m going to end up like that guy,” Christian croaked. He looked up at me through bloodshot eyes.
         “This isn’t the zombie apocalypse, Christian. We’re going to get you to the hospital soon buddy. I’ll try 911 again in five minutes, and if they don’t pick up I’ll drive you there myself,” I promised him. He smiled as bravely as he could. There was a sudden wince of pain as Marissa rubbed disinfectant on the wound. Shannon was sobbing loudly from Christian’s chair.
         “Are you going to tell us what happened or what?” Marissa asked harshly. This caused Shannon to cry even harder.
         “You need to tell us how this happened Shannon, because we need to know if that guy had rabies or something,” I explained more gently.
         “We just saw him floating in the water so Christian went over to check on him, and when Christian turned him over he reached up and pulled him underwater with him,” she blubbered. I shot a glance over at Christian who nodded in confirmation.
         “Jesus Christ,” Marissa sputtered.
         “What is it?” I asked. When I looked up I answered my own question. There were people walking towards us through the forest. Except, it wasn’t really walking. They staggered in that same drunken fashion as the guy whose head I had bashed in. There were at least twenty of them and they were all growling loudly.
         “Alright we need to get out of here now!” Marissa commanded. As president of student council in high school she was a natural born leader. Scooping up a sickly looking Christian, we walked him over to the car and propped him up in the back seat. I turned around to tell Shannon to get it, but she wasn’t there.
         “Oh no,” I said in disbelief. Shannon was still sitting in the chair near the fire pit, and the people were slowly getting closer to her. It didn’t matter if they were zombies or not, their intent was far from good.
         “They’re going to rip her apart,” Marissa whimpered.
         “No they aren’t,” I replied. Mustering all of my courage, I reached into the car and pulled out the hatchet. I didn’t intend to kill anyone else that day unless I had to, but there was no way in hell I was going over there alone.
         I sprinted towards Shannon who seemed oblivious of the situation. She was still sobbing into her hands, and when she looked up at me I could see her makeup dribbling down her face. I grabbed her by the arm and began to lift me up, but a woman hit me from the side and nearly knocked me to the ground. I backpedaled and tried to keep balance. Shannon finally snapped back to the present and got up out of the chair. Instead of helping me she turned and ran to the car, leaving me to fight the advancing mob.
         The hatchet felt heavy in my hand as I watched the woman who had hit me continue to advance. Her right ear had been completely torn off, and her left arm had been severed at the forearm. That’s when I knew that they couldn’t be human. Yes, she was bleeding, which meant she wasn’t exactly a zombie, but there was no sign of life in those eyes. She smelled like death, but I could see her chest rising and falling. Dead people didn’t breath. Knowing very well that another death would be on my hands I raised the hatchet above my head with two hands. As she stepped into range I brought it down on her scalp, partially cleaving her skull. She fell to the ground immediately. Two more were already getting close, and I didn’t like the odds of trying to fight more than one of them with up close like that. I reached down to pull the hatchet out of her head but found that it was stuck. I placed one foot on the body and heaved with all of my might, finally pulling it loose with a wet squelch.
         I heard Marissa crank on the engine as I sprinted towards the car at full speed. The people – the infected, or really whatever they were – weren’t even fast enough to catch up, but I wanted to put as much distance between myself and them as possible. Marissa barely waited for me to climb into the passenger’s seat before she slammed her foot on the gas pedal and we were off down the dirt road towards the park’s exit.
         “Guys, Christian isn’t doing well at all,” Shannon said worriedly. I looked back over my shoulder and winced when my eyes fell upon his face. He was frail looking, and his eyes were bloodshot. His skin was turning a sickly greenish color in some places, and his breathing came out as a series of labored wheezes. The bite wound was filled with pitch black filth, and looked tender to the touch. The pus oozing out of it smelled disgusting.
         “We’re going straight to the hospital. We won’t stop for anything,” I told her.
         “Uh, you might want to think that over first,” Marissa said in a small voice. There were at least forty or fifty of them in front of us, some still climbing out of the overturned bus that had blocked the right side of the road. They immediately took notice of us and began walking towards the car which had come to a stop.
         “What do you we do?” Shannon cried.
         “Damn… Look there isn’t really another way out of here. You’re just going to have to gun it and try to run them down,” I said after a short period of deliberation.
         “Are you crazy? I’m not doing that!” Marissa yelled. She was visibly panicking, and for good reason. The bus crash victims were getting closer.
         “Just do it!” I yelled. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins visibly energizing her. She slammed her foot down on the pedal and sped towards them. Rather than getting out of the way like any normal human being would, they continued to walk towards it with arms outstretched. I braced myself for the impact with the first one, an obese woman wearing a blue dress. Her bones crunched as we slammed into her and I winced as she rolled underneath the car. As we rolled into the next one the car was already bouncing as if we were off road. We made it through about four zombies before we felt a distinct shift and the tires on the left side of the car lost traction.
         There was a horrible feeling of being jerked to the side as the car rolled over to the right, tail lights cracking as they slammed into the bus. The crowd of infected were still between us and the way out. I cursed loudly as I looked over at Marissa who had hit her head hard on the steering wheel. I could see a bruise forming at the center of her forehead.
         “We need to get out of here now,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. I fell down to what was once the roof of the car with a painful thud. I could feel pieces of the broken window stuck in my back and I grimaced. Rolling over onto my stomach I began to crawl out, grabbing the hatchet as I went. Then Shannon screamed from the back seat. I turned and looked back over my shoulder, seeing that an infected had made its way inside.
         I turned to try and fight it when I realized that he was hanging upside down, chewing through the neck of a trapped Shannon. I stopped dead in my tracks as my jaw dropped. Though some part of me had accepted that something was happening to Christian, watching him tear ribbons of flesh from a girl he had been in love with just hours before like she was a piece of steak made my body freeze up.
         “We have to go! There’s nothing we can do for her now, you know that!” Marissa said, pushing on me to get me to move. I snapped back to reality and forced my urge to throw up to the back of my mind. I crawled faster now, and I scrambled to my feet once I was clear of the vehicle. I could still hear Shannon screaming as I helped Marissa to her feet, a blue flower in bloom on her forehead.
         “Run,” I said, pulling her by the arm. I was limping slightly and I knew that my leg had been injured somehow but I refused to look down at whatever was wrong. I was breathing hard and I had my hand clenched so tightly around the hatchet that it made my knuckles white. We could hear the infected moaning and growling behind us, and the muffled scream as some of them descended upon the car. Others had turned their attention to us and were now in pursuit. They weren’t by any means catching up, but there was a tall fence surrounding the park that would eventually impede our progress.
         Sure enough after about five minutes of running as fast as our injured bodies would allow, we reached the fence. I frantically searched for a way over it, but there was no way that Marissa could climb something like that carrying the extra, cumbersome weight of a newborn in her womb. For a split second a terrible thought crossed my mind. How easy would it be just to leave her there? The darker, resentful part of me whispered this. For a moment, it seemed like the only option.
         Marissa was panting, and there a few little pieces of glass dust in hair. She was clutching at her stomach, consciously or unconsciously protecting her – our – progeny. Her shirt sleeve was torn, and I could see that she was picking a larger piece of broken glass out of her elbow. All the while I internally struggle as to whether or not to ditch her.
         A moan from behind me told me that I didn’t have any more time to debate. I looked up at the fence and looked back at Marissa, whose teary eyes were staring at the mob of diseased cannibals that were slowly closing in on us. Finally, I took a deep breath and made my move. Grabbing Marissa by the hand I began to pull her along the perimeter of the fence. My aching leg seemed to threaten to give out at any minute, and I was going noticeably slower than before. Some of the faster infected were almost keeping pace with us. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up. Then as we reached one corner of the fence, I saw our way out.
         On the other side of the fence there was a long dock with a motor boat tied up at the end of it. On our side there was an electrical transformer sticking out of the ground, and it was just tall enough where we would be able grab on to the very top of it and pull ourselves over.
         “Get up there now!” I ordered Marissa. She started to say something, more than likely about my harsh tone, but she stopped and began to climb. She jumped and latched onto the fence, making sure not to harm the baby in the process. She was having trouble pulling herself up, so I limped over and gave her a boost, using all of my remaining strength to hoist her.
         When she was up and over, and safely on the other side I began to climb the transformer as well. Just as I began jumping I felt a hand around my ankle, causing me to trip forwards and land flat on my face. I rolled over onto my back and I was staring into a sea of blank, lifeless faces. Looking down at my leg I could see a gaping wound bleeding heavily. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, waiting for my end to come.
         Then I heard a voice calling out to me, and my eyes jolted open. I could hear Marissa sobbing from the other side of the fence.
         “Get up! Get up right now, you hear me?! I need you. I can’t do this alone,” she cried, and in that moment I knew that I couldn’t die there.
         The hatchet was only inches away, and I reached swiftly to grab it, ducking out of the way of what felt like a thousand hands. I rolled out of the crowd and lodged the blade directly into the skull of the nearest infected. This time when I went to pull it out it came free without protest. There was some sort of new strength in my body. There were still about twenty of them, but I was closer to the transformer than they were. I scrambled up it just as something crawled out of the water and grabbed Marissa by the leg.
         I jumped feeling my feet glide over reaching hands. I hit the side of the fence with a jarring thud, but managed to keep my grip. They were reaching for me but they barely managed to touch the ends of my shoe laces. I pulled myself up and over the fence as I watched Marissa kick at the infected person, a completely naked woman whose body was already turning green from saturation of the murky waters. I threw myself over the side and felt a finger on my left hand crack on impact. I screamed out in pain, but forced myself to roll over and stand up. I limped over to Marissa, speeding up as the infected woman moved in for the bite. Just as she was about to sink her teeth in I brought the hatchet down on the back of her neck.
         “Leave them alone!” I yelled unaware at the time of what I was saying. I pulled the hatchet back once more and hit her once more, just to make sure she was dead.
         I pulled Marissa up and checked her for wounds. Thankfully she wasn’t bitten or scratched. The infected on the other side of the fence were pressing up against it and beating on it, trying to force their way through. Marissa threw her arms around me and kissed me deeply for the first time in a long while. I push her away to get her to stop, not that I wanted her to, but time was of the essence.
         I ran as fast I could to the end of the dock, and before I could step into the boat an infected man lunged at me from the cockpit knocking me on my back. The hatchet skittered away into the water leaving me unarmed. I could smell his putrid breath and I gagged, his teeth were just inches away from my throat. Suddenly I heard Marissa shout and then the infected man was rolling off of me. He fell into the water with a splash, thrashing around slightly as he tried to compute the situation futilely.          
Luckily the keys were in the ignition. I cranked up the boat and sped away as fast as I could, not stopping until we were at the dead center of lake.
“You know, you said them instead of her earlier,” Marissa said. The sun was slowly setting, and we decided to spend the night out on the water.
         “Yeah, you’re carrying our child too. I’m protecting two lives here. The lives of two people that I love very much,” I told her. She slid her hand over mine and leaned on my shoulder, crying softly.
         It’s a good thing the condom hadn’t broke. That’s what I thought as we sat there staring into the uncertain future. Without Marissa, and our unborn child to protect I’d be dead right now, I realized. For the first time I was truly certain I could be a father.