Keep Busy

Epilogue

Roy could feel worms burrowing into his skin. Beetles and ants pinching at his wounds, scuttling away when he twitched. The sounds of the night danced around his good ear as he lay there emptying out like a discarded soda can. Though he couldn't see the dawn approaching, he felt like he could sense it. Maybe even smell the shift in the reposing foliage as they stretched, prepared to welcome the sun. Soon, he knew, the heat would start to beat down on him—begin to cook him. The vermin and scavengers of the forest would smell the decay and carefully approach.

A day. Maybe two, he figured, before an animal managed to tear into his brain and then it would all be over. He could go be with his wife and Jed and even Billy up in heaven. He'd finally be rid of Jane and Emily. He'd be free and eternally grateful for God's blessings.

After an hour or two, he began to feel the air warm as light gusts frolicked through the underbrush. He was reminded of putting on a shirt straight out of the dryer. The way his skin delighted as the radiating cotton slid over his face. His face that was once a face—that was now something macabre and horrific.

A few times he heard a distant rumble, like thunder, as if a storm was creeping over the horizon to the south. But it didn't smell like a storm was coming. He didn't feel it in his bones.

He did feel an itch though. Just under his nose. He scrunched up his face as much as he could, shifting his lips back and forth, twitching his cheeks like he'd seen jackrabbits do. There was no relief. All of his flexing and spasming did nothing to alleviate the problem. The itch felt like it was spreading—like maybe Emily had some kind of pussy fungus that seeped into his skin when she'd pissed on him. He shuddered and turned his head to the left, hoping to chance upon a tall weed or overgrown branch with which to distract the skin.

No luck.

Then, as if God himself had been witnessing Roy's struggles, he heard a distant crunching of leaves on the forest floor. It was an animal, Roy assumed, the animal that's come to take me away. God has sent my salvation. He was going to be arm in arm with Jesus way sooner than he'd expected.

The crunching got louder the closer they came to Roy. But they didn't sound precise or fueled by an instinctual caution. They were foot falls. Sporadic, imprecise and agitated. There were voices. Arguing voices.

"Just... fucking stop talking."

Roy's ear perked up. The itch was gone, quickly replaced by a crawling sensation rippling through his whole body. What was left of it. The voices were distant but getting closer. Emily's shrill intonations and overemphasized swear words, slicing through the trees.

"But, think about it-"

"Seriously Frank. Fucking shut your fucking mouth or I'm going to kill you right back. God, I wish I didn't need you." The crunching footsteps halted. Roy could picture Emily pointing into Frank's scruffy face. "You are delusional. You are fucking delusional. How... how..." She growled. Literally growled. "How does any of this make sense in your fucking head? I am not Jane. I am not going to fall in love with you like some fucking high school twat. You are out of your goddamn mind. You're a crazy person. You... you can't tell me there was anything logical about your decision. You fucking shot me in the heart. I'm dead now. And did you think I'd wake up, see you standing there all fucking stupid looking and jump into your arms? Like, oh Frank, thank you for making me a zombie, now let me suck your cock because Jane never got the chance, and I can fulfill your fucked up fantasy about falling in love in the most impossible situation in all of human history!" she screamed the last few words.

There was a brief pause during which the sounds of the leaves and trees creaking seemed to rise, as though they'd been given room to breathe.

"You done?" Frank asked.

"Fuck off," Emily spat as the sound of the leaves crunching resumed. They were within a few feet of where Roy lay, prone and fuming.

"Look. What do you want me to say? Sorry?"

"It'd be a fucking solid place to start." Emily walked up to Roy and kicked him hard in the ribs, cracking a few in the process. "Here! But you're gonna have to drag his sorry ass until we can find a car."

"Well, if you could've kept the Jeep on the road-"

"Fucking stop!"

"They had more trucks and shit back at the hangar."

"You wanna go back there? We don't know how many are left. There's no way those grenades took all of them out."

"Why didn't we go with your plan about going down into the luggage compartment?"

"Because you'd just fucking shot me in the fucking heart. I was a little pissed to discover I had a new goddamn hole between my tits."

After Emily had reanimated, she stood up gruffly, shook her head at Frank who in the moment appeared catatonic, shot out one of the small oval passenger windows and tossed out all three grenades. Before Frank could even snap from his trance, she was opening the airplane door and firing the AR-15 into the smoke. She stomped back to Frank, grabbed him by the collar and roughly pulled him after her. She'd said, "I so want to kill you but now, you're gonna have to take care of my sister."

Frank only had a second to look back over his shoulder at Jane laid out on the fuselage floor—her blood deep red and spreading—before Emily yanked him down the metal staircase into the echoing hangar.

Roy felt a ratchet strap being tired around his chest as Frank grumbled under his breath. Then he was being dragged across the weeds and long grass as they began their journey back up north.

What the fuck is all this now? He thought.