Cristian Lopez -- Where He Was Meant To Be (Patreon)

Cristian Lopez kept to side streets on his way across Nightfall. The sounds of the city had changed in the past twenty-four hours. The welcome noises of suburbia had been replaced by truck engines, helicopter rotors, automatic gunfire, growls, and screams. He just wanted to get out of town. He was no longer a member of the Colorado National Guard. Once his own unit broke down, he considered that the end of his tour of duty, and when they tried to kill him, well, that was another story.

He was just enjoying the end of his blue ice pop when he saw the woman coming at him.

“Help me him, please!” she yelled and ran for him.

Lopez barely turned, regarding her with as much interest as a toddler showing interest to a political debate. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help her. He didn’t want to help anyone. He was out of the helping game. It was a game to lose with no winners. She was a short black woman with long hair and a fit body, dressed in medical scrubs splattered with blood.

Not my type but not bad either.

It had been a while since he had felt the touch of a woman and especially of a man in a long time. He would take either right now.

Dammit, even with this outbreak, I still have sex on the brain.

She stood in front of him. As he moved forward, she backed away, facing him. “Please, my friend is trapped. I can’t get him out and there are infected coming. Please!”

Lopez stopped and walked diagonally away from her. “Sorry, I can’t really help you. I have to be somewhere. I’m sure somebody else will help.”

There was a pause before the woman spoke again, and this time her voice was raised in anger. “You are a soldier for God’s sake. Isn’t your job to help people?”

He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “Listen, lady, I’m not a soldier anymore. I’m only wearing the uniform until I can find a change of clothes.”

They both heard a shout from not too far away, though the voice was strained by the distance. He heard a name, Keisha. The woman spun towards the sound of the voice and ran off in its direction. Lopez frowned, threw the Popsicle stick into a pile of trash, and ran after her. He crossed the street, rounded a corner, and caught sight of the woman dashing into an alley. His instincts kicked in, and he raised his M4 rifle, paranoid of an ambush. What he found on the other side was much worse. 

A man stood at the top of a twenty foot extended ladder perched against the side of a brick building. With one hand he held a telephone wire sticking out of the building and with the other he held the top of the ladder. A half dozen infected waited at the bottom for him, clawing at the metal rungs. Seeing this, Lopez could not figure out why the ladder hadn’t fallen. It was possible the zombies put pressure from all sides and kept it upright or maybe the man was strong enough to hold it in place.

“Keisha,” he yelled, his voice a mixture of relief and fear. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”

Lopez angled towards her. “What’s in it for me?”

She glared at him and held her hands to her head. “What? What’s in it for you? What the hell do you want?”

He thought for a moment, not quite sure how to answer. “I want to sleep in a bed. I want a home-cooked meal. I want to watch a football game and drink cold beer.”

She crouched low and squeezed her eyes shut until he thought her head might pop or steam would flow out of her ears. When she stood again, she shook her arms, opened her eyes, and blew out a breath. “We’re leaving the city. I can offer for you to come with us. Brian’s family has a cabin past Chipper Ridge out in the woods. It has beds, and we have food. That’s what I have to offer.”

As they negotiated, the ladder shook and tipped to the side. Brian grunted and pulled on the top rung, holding it in place. “Why aren’t you two doing anything?” he yelled.

Lopez smiled at her and handed her a pistol from his belt. “Ever use one of these before? Point that out with both hands, elbows locked, steel at eye level, and squeeze the trigger. I doubt you’ll need to shoot any of them. I should have it covered, but shit happens.”

He lifted the rifle, flipped off the safety, and aimed.

---

Two minutes later…

The corpses of the fallen infected lie around the alley, their bodies in a tangle of twisted limbs. A swarm of flies had already set in, and their smell had turned putrid, as if in death some change occurred which produced a foul corrupt odor to seep from their wounds.

Brian was already descending the ladder, and Keisha was holding the bottom and encouraging him down, tears running into her mouth. While watching them, Lopez reloaded his M4 rifle and slung it over his shoulder. When Brian reached the ground, he fell into Keisha’s arms, and they kissed.

Mind if I join in? Lopez thought. Reward me for rescuing you?

Arm in arm, the two went around the pile of dead zombies, and Brian extended a shaking hand. “Thank you so much. I thought I was a dead man.”

“Well we can’t have that,” Lopez said. He noticed Brian had bruises and healed puncture wounds on his forearms.

Keisha introduced them by name, and she thanked Lopez as well. He really didn’t care about introductions. He wanted out of the city and for a bit of peace and quiet in a safe place with a warm bed, a plate of food, and someone by his side.

“We really should get out of here. Noise attracts these things, and my rifle may as well be shouting,’ hey over here.’”

Brian looked at him with surprise. “We? I’m sorry but we don’t really have room to take anyone else.”

“What the hell do you mean? I just saved your ass, and your girl made me promises.”

Keisha held her hands up like she was preparing to stop physical alteration for it started. “I said what I needed to say to get you to help.”

Lopez took a few steps back. “Are you kidding me right now? You lied to me just to save him? I don’t believe this. We had a deal, lady.”

“We really appreciate your help,” Keisha said, stepping closer to him. “I was desperate and just said whatever I had to say.”

“Hold on, babe,” Brian said, pulling her to the side of the alley. They spoke low in animated gestures, mostly toward Lopez, even pointing at his rifle. This went on for a full minute, and when they returned to the three-way conversation, Keisha had a profound look of disappointment.

“Things will be tight, but of course you can come with us,” Brian said with a halfhearted smile.

They both glanced over at Keisha like they were waiting for her approval. She nodded with a scoff and started walking past them.

---

Thirty three minutes later…

The three of them rode along Interstate 70, though the traffic made it more of a crawl. Packed in a Jeep Cherokee, its paint faded down to the frame color of metal gray, its tires nearly bald, they weaved between abandoned vehicles, car fires, corpses, and piles of trash. Quarantine checkpoints were unmanned by the National Guard. Helicopters and fighter jets soared overhead, adding to the feeling of a war zone. They passed the living and the dead and the undead and stopped for no one.

Brian drove the Jeep and avoided all obstacles while keeping a steady pace. Lopez noticed Brian’s hands shaking on the wheel for the last mile or so, and he had started a conversation about last Christmas with Keisha. He spoke too fast — stream of consciousness. Keisha kept her focus on the road like a vulture searching for its next meal, eyes darting around and never in one place for too long. It’s only when Brian took an unplanned exit did Lopez worry.

“What’s up, man?” Lopez asked, leaning forward from the backseat. “There is no need to get off 70.”

“I forgot something important at my house. Luckily it’s not too far away.”

“Hey, I never asked what you to do for a living?” Lopez sat back in the chair and worked his hand to the grip of his pistol, though he kept it holstered.

Keisha turned toward the backseat. “We met in medical school. We’re first-year residents at Chipper Ridge Memorial.” She was just as jittery as Brian, and she was biting her lip almost raw.

They drove for another two miles through back roads and quiet streets, erasing all of the progress they had made to leave the city. Lopez said nothing. He always went with the flow. He figured he would wind up where he was meant to be. He didn’t trust these two, but he felt like they were harmless — maybe even too tragically incompetent to survive without him. When he thought about it, that’s always who he chose to be around. Throughout his life, he gravitated toward those who needed him, so he would always be waned.

They pulled up to the side of a small convenience store that already looked boarded up. The sign hanging over a green and white awning read NeighborMart — We Got What You’re Looking For. Trash cans were tipped over on the sidewalk and a huge dumpster had been pulled over nearly blocking the front door. Several bullet holes made a Y in a piece of plywood that stood blocking an alley. The remains of a large dog lie in the gutter at the corner.

“You forgot something here?” Lopez asked.

“We’ll be right back,” Brian said. He and Keisha got out of the Jeep without another word and rushed into the store.

Lopez sat alone for an unreasonable amount of time. Either they were both dead, or they left. But all of their stuff is here? He sat there for a while waiting for them, though in his gut he knew they were never coming back. This is always what happened. He made friends or acquaintances, and they left him. 

The lonesomeness crept in like cold weather, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he had pushed them too far. He had basically demanded to go with them. That’s not the way to start a relationship. Maybe he seemed too needy. Keisha was at least the merciful one and wanted to leave him right away in that alley, while Brian let him tag along only to abandon him later.

His watch showed six minutes had passed, so he stepped out of the Jeep with his rifle in hand. The glass front door of the convenience store flapped in the breeze. He pushed against and felt it move with ease into a store in complete disrepair and covered in trash. The shelves had been looted, blood was smeared on the counter, and a pile of excrement sat on the floor before an empty soda machine. Other than the whistling coming through the boarded windows, he heard whispering and snoring from a back room.

Following the sounds, he continued on through a doorway covered in a curtain of beads. On the other side he saw a room of couches and smoke and blankets and sleeping people. Brian and Keisha lay on a stained mattress in the corner, while two strangers huddled together around a burner plate. A woman sat on a lounge chair in the center of a room with a young man crouched over her lap.

Lopez moved to Brian and shook his foot to wake up. “Hey, let’s go.”

Brian rustled on the mattress and rolled on his back. That’s when Lopez saw it all: an empty medicine bottle, an empty baggie, a smoking glass pipe. Keisha lied next to him, wheezing and staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling.

He heard a growl, turned towards the woman on the couch, and aimed his rifle. The young man crouched before her pulled up his head, showing a mouthful of her blood which spilled out across his shirt. His face had a yellow tone with green freckles around his eyes, and his long fingers curled around her thigh.

The woman looked up at Lopez and smiled. “Hi there,” she said in a singsong voice. Holding up a thin glass tube, she offered it to him.

Lopez backed away and ran through the bearded curtain, out of the store, and grabbed his bag from the Jeep. He stumbled away, sickened and nauseated. For a quarter of a mile he walked. Was this the new world? Was he doomed to be alone? The outbreak did not bring infection to him but would take the world of everyone, leaving him the last person on the planet to bear it all alone. One by one they would all go or he would be forced to kill them just to survive. And what would he win? A world unto himself until he could live that way no more. 

He went full pace and only stopped to catch his breath by leaning against an oak tree at the corner of the parking lot. In the distance a trail of black smoke snaked up to the sky. Something was on fire, and in that moment he needed to see what was burning. It came from the direction he had been before — a house where he had stopped before. Someone was calling him there.