A New Type of Realism

(21) Method In Madness

"Just be quiet a second. Please?" Slade looked at me in annoyance as he tried to decide whether he should just walk away, or listen to what I had to say. Like I knew it would, his curiosity was too great for him to resist.

"What?" He said, as he moved towards me to better hear what I wanted to tell him. It was too late to back out now.

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"It's about the infected." I began. I watched Slade for some sort of signal that he was listening, and wanted me to continue, but his face was set in stone. His feelings were impenetrable. I was left to splutter for a few seconds before I took a deep breath and continued. "Kyle had this theory."

"Kyle was a smart man, I'm sure he had a lot of theories." Slade spoke with pure venom.

"But this one seems true." I left no pause between the end of Slade's words, and the beginning of mine. He motioned for me to continue. "So, Kyle was thinking about the nature of the infected. That they're not reanimated corpses or anything like that."

"Why does that even matter, either way, one gets hold of you, you're dead."

"When you die, the brain becomes starved of oxygen, so a reanimated corpse would never realistically have the power to reason." I was aware that I was beginning to sound insane. I continued regardless. "These infected; they can think. They can reason. I promise you, I've seen that with my own eyes." I began to tell him about my encounters with Cloud. Oddly enough, he didn't make a single snarky comment throughout, and his gaze was firmly fixed on mine. I'd never seen him so still or attentive. I resisted the urge to comment.

"So, they're just sick people then? I guess I'd be happy to have one as a flatmate. I'm sure it would relieve the boredom from life, you know. Although I'm not sure I could live with those dietary requirements." There it was, the sarcasm, but at least he had listened so far.

"There's more." I said after a brief smile with no feeling behind it. Slade nodded at me to encourage me to carry on. "This is the crazy part."

"My best friend was murdered, the world can't get any crazier, Dile. Especially with you around."

I began to tell him about all those times the infected had acted strangely. When I had seen the clarity of their eyes; when I thought I had caught them talking to each other in the hospital car park; when they slowed down to wait for us to enter the building to collect a radio; when they had moved out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, when they had cleared a path for a reversing truck; when they'd paid me no attention while attacking Kyle. I gulped after the last example, the emotion was still so raw.

"So? This isn't fiction. This is real life. Strange things happen."

"Yeah, that's what I thought... but these strange things kept happening. There's so much more than that, things I've forgotten..."

"What's your point? I'm missing out on some quality sulking time here."

I stared at Slade for a minute, wondering whether or not I could trust him with this. He hated me after all, and I hated him. Why had I chosen to spill my guts to this man? This one man who had made life unnecessarily difficult for everyone, and had turned my little family against me. Why? Logic gave way to my burning desire to talk. "Ben, Kyle, Cooper... There's a possibility that they're all still alive."

Slade laughed. He actually laughed. His hysteria caused him to double over, claiming his stomach hurt. His breath became short as he wheezed and snorted. His delirious guffaws filled the air. As suddenly as he had begun, he stopped and turned to me with raw hatred in his eyes. His expression screamed at me 'how could you say something like that?'

"Ben was here before you. He got caught outside the compound and was surrounded by a group of infected. I heard him scream. I saw him convulse, but the infected moved to shield him from everyone's view. No one actually saw him die. Kyle, like I said, they piled on top of him, I saw nothing. I heard him scream. I saw him convulse, but that was it. I didn't see him..." I left out the tiny detail of the blood to help my story. In my head, I had a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, but Slade would never accept it. "Cooper...no one saw. No one saw anything. We heard a scream. That was it."

"What the hell is your point?" Slade could barely contain himself. Rage oozed out of him in thick waves. I staggered back slightly.

"Slade, it's going to sound crazy."

"Damn right, you goddamn psycho."

"I promise I'm not mad! I have my mind, and its intact, I promise."

"Out with it!"

"I'm not insane."

"DILE."

"There's a possibility that..." I gulped again and debated whether I could trust him with this.

"WHAT?!" He pushed me back with his hands, trying to force the words out of my mouth.

"...the infected aren't real..."

Slade stared at me in shock. I could see it in his eyes; he thought I'd lost my mind. Actually, I don't think he really knew what to think, the only thing he could be certain of was the fact that I was spouting what must have seemed like the delusions of a dissociating child, who'd been faced with a reality that the mind couldn't handle.

"What." His whisper was deadly, and chilled me to the bone.

"I don't know why, or what for, but yeah. They might not even be slightly sick. Just actors, or something, I don't know."

"You've gone mad. You just can't cope with the guilt of having two people's blood on your hands. People that you actually liked, depended on, and looked up to. You're broken." He looked at me accusingly. Then, shockingly, his expression softened before he reached out for my shoulder. I flinched and withdrew, before he stretched his arm out further and managed to place his hand on the side of my arm. "Get through it."

I looked at him quizzically, wondering where this mix between hatred and compassion had come from.

"They depend on you." He looked to the side and frowned. He hated that the group had looked up to me, and resented even more, the fact that he could not take my place.

"Slade..."

"I still hate you, Devyn. I'll never forgive you for Cooper, but this group needs a leader, and it's not going to be me, now, is it?" The venom returned to his voice.

I glanced at my shoes before looking back at him.

"I'll try and fix the whole... 'you should've died' thing... they're just mad... it's what the emotionally stable do." Once again, his voice rang out with compassion. I frowned in confusion once more. Who was this man that stood before me? I thought I had known him as the snake, but I had now seen three sides of him that were each remarkably different to each other. Which one was the real him? Cooper's voice echoed in my head 'extraordinary defence mechanisms'.

"Thanks." I whispered. This version of Slade made me uneasy, the illusion seemed unstable, as if he would collapse into the Slade I hated at any moment.

"Don't thank me. Never thank me. I don't want or need your gratitude." He placed emphasis on the word 'your', and laced the entire speech with a snarky attitude that grated on my nerves. The Slade I hated had returned.

"I hate you, too." I managed to say after him, as he sauntered back inside the compound to Maggie and Martin. I didn't follow after him, but decided to pay my respects to the makeshift graves. If my theory turned out to be wrong, I'd regret not doing so. Besides, I wanted to give the three their space to cool down; I didn't want to be thrown out of the compound to face the probably real infected that waited outside the safety of the double fences.

I tried to find some words to say over the empty graves, but couldn't conjure anything up. My nose began to run as a few tears formed in my eyes, but I pushed them away. The wind picked up and began to howl in my eyes. I looked towards the skies. A storm was coming. I breathed in a few final deep breaths of fresh air, before turning around to retreat inside the compound, and to gently tell the others of the change in weather.

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Hope you liked the new chapter!

-ifindedcake