Heartland Junk - Part I: The End (A zombie apocalypse serial)

Chapter 3: High Ground

Heroin is like jumping into a hot tub. No, that's not quite right – heroin is like going swimming in an Arctic river and then jumping into a hot tub. It's a warmth that sweeps over your body and thaws out sections you didn't even know were frozen until suddenly they're melting like a slab of butter and all you can do is lean back wherever you happen to be sitting and shut your eyes and let that soothing water steal across your skin and soul.

At least, that's how it feels at first.

Then comes the nausea, the kind that hides in waiting until you do something as innocent as reach for a cigarette or try to scratch that fuzzy itch on the bridge of your nose. That's when it leaps out and wrings your stomach like a soaking dish towel and you spend a good five minutes taking shallow breaths while you try to will your roiling stomach to calm down. Sometimes you win the fight. Sometimes.

When Rivet stepped into the bathroom, I took a running lunge at him, because right then my mind wasn't working exactly right. See, zombies don't talk, and as far as I've seen, they never offer you drugs. But my brain sort of skipped over those two little details and fixated on the fact that a man who'd clearly been dead was now standing in front of me. The blood caked all over his face didn't do anything to dissuade me from my instant assumption that Rivet was now a living, breathing zombie.

I hit him shoulder-to-chest in a linebacker's charge, and even though he was clearly high as a kite, he had the wherewithall to aim the pointy end of the syringe at my charging shoulder. I went down in a heap of blankets and decided to just lie there for awhile while that deliciously warm hot-tub water wrapped around my body. Rivet made the appropriate oomph sounds when I rammed his solar plexus, but he managed to spin out of the path of my falling body and keep his feet.

I was just able to watch him through a golden haze as he advanced into the bathroom, syringe held in front of him, while Jennie screamed and shrank down into the far corner.

And just like that, the shadows around my brain shrank away.

Five minutes later we had gathered in my living room, all of us in various stages of debilitation. Rivet and Jennie were on the couch, Rivet's arm around her shoulders. Jennie had slipped on her clothes from last night. I was spread out over the stuffed armchair, still shirtless, cut and scraped from the glass, listening to Rivet run through his story for the second time.

"I was just a passenger," he said slowly, staring at the shattered coffee table between us. "There were these flashes where I could actually see what was happening, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't stop myself from doing it. I'm so sorry, Jennie. God, I'm so sorry." He tightened his embrace with almost frenetic urgency, as if she was an anchor that could hold him in reality. I had an idea of how he felt.

"What you were talking about," Jennie said. "The darkness. I think I saw something, too. It wasn't much, but what I did see felt...weird. Like something choking my thoughts." She stopped and wrinkled her nose, thinking. The expression bunched her freckles into little knots on her cheeks.

"That's exactly it," Rivet said. "Only then it started stealing them away. My thoughts, I mean. I couldn't think of anything, there was just this hunger, like going cold turkey and all you can think about is scoring a hit. I wanted more. More of...something. I don't know what."

I watched both of them. There was no need to add anything to the conversation; we'd all felt the same thing, apparently. But there was one question beneath everything.

"What?" I said. "What is it?"

Rivet looked at me. His earring gleamed dully. He'd cleaned up his face, but there was still a black crust clinging to his patchy sideburns that he'd missed. The puffy parts around his nose were quickly darkening to an ugly shade of midnight blue.