I hear tires on pavement. Multiple vehicles climb the long driveway. Doors open, and people flood out: militia soldiers responding to the shot and to Ithering’s failure to respond. And somewhere out there still, the shooter. Ithering’s people, maybe a dozen of them, rush the house.
I try the door to the apartment, but it’s locked. A quick strike from the stock of the G36 to the foggy glass panes on the upper half lets me reach in to unlock the dead bolt. But the knob isn’t there: it’s been removed. I can feel the gap where it should be. Risking more noise, I smash the inner window frames and hoist myself through the space, into darkness.
The one room apartment is carpeted with hotel-grade pile. Along the back wall is a double mattress and a curled form resting on it.
The girl is naked. Her hair is tangled, dirty. Her skin is scraped, cut, bruised. Bloody in sorrowful places. She skitters back against the wall when I enter, but her eyes are better adjusted than mine, and she recognizes me first. She climbs to her feet and stumbles toward me, collapsing against me, against the rifle in my arms. Her soft, warm skin like counterpoint. Phoebe sobs.
I want to ask her if she’s hurt, but the question would be a horror. I need to know if she can walk, if she can run, but any answer she could give wouldn’t change what I have to do.
“Get back against the wall,” I tell her, gently extracting myself from her arms. “Stay down. There are people coming.”
I go to the front window and unlatch it. I swing it wide open and feel the breeze of a misty morning. The air outside is clean. I brace the gun.
I’ve never been in a war. Some of my friends went to Iraq, Afghanistan, elsewhere. They knew what it was like to be holed up against an enemy on his own ground. Even as the collapse was happening around me, I never got caught in a situation like this. So I forgive myself for my shaking hands and set the selector to automatic fire. I’m going to have many sleepless nights, if I make it out of this.
But not as many as Phoebe will.
So I ready myself, because Marilyn was never wrong about me.
“Cover your ears, Phoebe. This is going to get loud.”
The shriek catches me entirely off guard. The three that follow it are even more surprising. But I recognize them. I’ve heard them up close. Micah’s recording, blasting loud through the speakers of the HRV. And when the HRV comes, bright red and growling, crashing onto the driveway and slamming hard into the last police car in the line, I almost shout with relief.
The door opens, and Marilyn falls out, stumbling from the height of the runner. She carries the Remington like she owns it, firing a shot and pulling the bolt, then firing another shot. She is shooting back onto the street, at something I can’t see with the house in the way. And I love her.
Because she came dragging Hell in her wake.
The horde isn’t the largest I’ve ever seen, but it’s at least five times bigger than the team of men inside the house. Marilyn jumps onto the hood of a police vehicle and moves with surprising speed across the tops of the other cars in the driveway, staying just in front of the hollow-heads. But they aren’t following her: they’re attacking the house, from which gunfire has just erupted as Ithering’s men begin to panic. I can’t see them, but I can hear the way they’re shooting, and I don’t think they have a chance. Fancy German guns and smart uniforms don’t make up for training and practice. Clarke County’s fences are just a little too secure.
“We need to go,” I say, turning back into the dark room. I sling the rifle onto my back and hurry to Phoebe, who shrinks away from me for a moment. But she knows me. She should be able to trust me.
She does. She reaches up to clutch my neck as I lift her into my arms. I kick the door until the lock breaks, then sprint down the stairs and across the gravel. My back aches from the strain of carrying Phoebe’s weight.
Marilyn sees us coming and turns back, heading for the HRV. I reach it only a few seconds after she does, and I help Phoebe in through the passenger side.
“You drive. You’re better.” Marilyn climbs in beside Phoebe, and I go around to the other door as the horde’s attention turns to us. Many of them are inside the house already, and many more have been reduced to bodies littering the sloped yard, but they refuse to give up. The hollow-heads have been worked into a frenzy, and they’re not going to leave until they have their meat or the last of them is dead on the grass. They sweep in our direction like a squirming pile of rats.
In moments, they’re blocking the driveway down to the street. I slam the door shut and check the windows, then put the HRV into reverse. The rear of the vehicle barrels into the hollow-heads behind us and I feel the shudder of the back tires climbing over the bodies. I turn the wheel hard, almost too far, and the HRV lifts off the ground on the right side. Bushes crack against the passenger window.
A trio of hollow-heads slams against the front windshield, streaking blood and bile on my field of view. They grasp at the glass. Then it breaks with hardly a sound: a spiderweb of cracks spun out from a small hole made by a stray bullet from the house. The shot has penetrated the cabin, passing through the top of the driver’s seat behind me.
The windshield holds, but now it shudders with every strike. I wrench the HRV into gear. If it were a sports car, the tires would be squealing for all the pressure I’ve put down on the accelerator. Phoebe is tossed around the cabin between us as I center the wheel and plow through the horde for the street, knocking over the mailbox and nearly tipping the truck into a ditch before we reach the road.
In the flesh-streaked side mirrors I see the horde turning away from us, making for the house again. I hear cries for help from inside, and then the slaughter is no longer in view or earshot. When I finally get a moment to think, I slow down and take the road more cautiously.
Marilyn breathes hard on the other side of Phoebe. The girl is leaning against her, holding on. Marilyn removes her shirt to give it to her and I see blood spilling from a wound in her side, just below the ribs.
Teeth marks.
“Lyn,” I say, looking forward again.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Just tell me what happened.”
“You made a promise, Sam.” Marilyn presses a hand to her side to staunch the bleeding. “I made sure you kept it.”
DAY SEVENTEEN, 10:00 A.M.
The HRV ran out of diesel just past Monroe, heading southwest to Conyers. We took it off the highway and parked it deep in a suburban subdivision, so that anyone tracking us wouldn’t have a bright red sign to follow. We slept in a garage, Marilyn and I taking turns to watch over Phoebe.
Marilyn tended to Phoebe’s wounds, to her anguish, while I kept my eyes open for hollow-heads and pursuers. The girl could walk, but not quickly, even after we found her some clothes and shoes that fit. And Marilyn was beginning to feel the fever of infection from the bite. We took our steps slowly, down Highway 138, and stopped outside of Conyers near midnight.
Now it is midmorning and we are coming to the interstate that will take us west back to the Little Five. We are in no condition for a fight, and if the Conyers men are still here and looking to get even, we’ll be in trouble—so I decide to leave Marilyn and Phoebe together in a gutted gas station north of the overpass while I scout ahead.
“I’d object,” Marilyn says when I tell her my decision, “but I don’t think I have the energy for it.” Her face is ashen, and she breathes with some labor. The last few hours of walking have been torturous for her: every step an ordeal, the fever and exertion making her face slick with sweat.
Phoebe is marginally better. She hasn’t spoken, and her focus is on the far horizon most of the time, but there are moments when she seems to have clarity. At those times, she clings to Marilyn or to me, suddenly afraid of the nameless horrors that she must have endured before I found her.
The door to the gas station’s convenience store is broken open. Inside, most of the aisles are empty, having been picked clean years ago.
A spin rack of cell phone chargers lies dead on the floor in front of the counter. Magazines in their racks are wet and limp. At some point someone smashed through the cashier’s window. Probably the same someone who took most of the cigarettes. There are signs of old blood here, too, partially washed away by rain coming through the broken windows. The place smells of mold, rat droppings, and oil.
I find a clean space behind the register, hidden from the windows and door. The floor is hard, but there aren’t any other options. Anything soft rotted away long ago or was taken for the same reason we need it now.
I help Marilyn settle down against the wall as Phoebe huddles under the front of the cashier’s alcove. I want to fuss over Marilyn for a while longer, but she resists my concern. “Go on,” she says. “Do your job. I’ll be all right.”
“You won’t,” I tell her. “If I knew it was safe—”
“I’ll watch over her,” Phoebe says. She says it softly, with nothing like her old confidence and teenage bluster, but they are heartbreaking and wonderful words.
I stand up from a crouch and turn to her. “I will be back in an hour. If anything happens—”
“I’ll find you,” she says. When I hesitate, she repeats: “I’ll find you.”
I hand Marilyn the Remington, though she isn’t in any shape to use it. I close the door behind me and continue south to the bridge, focusing forward instead of behind.
I arrive at the ramp to Interstate 20 without incident and discover incontrovertible proof that the Conyers men are not going to be a threat to us. Their machine gun technical, which they’d kept inside their tchotchke store home as a defense against hollow-heads, is positioned halfway across the bridge. The weapon is still strapped to the back of the truck. On the side nearer to me is a pile of hollow-head bodies, identifiable by their worn clothing and gaunt features—or what is left of those features.
I step past the rotting corpses and the swarms of flies and find the remains of the Conyers men in a similar pile on the other side of the technical. They are in worse shape than their enemies, with body parts ripped off and most of their faces missing. Buzzards feast on their flesh.
I might have told them it was a bad idea to rely on a machine gun for defense, especially in a bridge corridor like this. What happened here is easy to see. They must have been caught between two hordes and were unable to sweep their gun fast enough between the groups. Eventually they were overrun on one side. Since their personal weapons were in disrepair, they didn’t have the firepower for close combat.
Satisfied, I turn back, only to see Phoebe running down the center divide of the highway, throwing her arms in the air to get my attention.
“What happened?” I call to her as quietly as I can, rushing to meet her. “Where’s Marilyn?”
“We heard a truck. And then we saw it. It’s him.”
“Shit,” I mutter. Ithering is dead. Phoebe can mean only one other man: Randall.
Seconds pass before I can wrap my thoughts around the problem. Too long.
“Did he see you?”
She indicates to me that she doesn’t know by shaking her head— her words are gone again. “Stay here,” I say. I look behind me, at the technical. I waste more seconds while I consider trying to start it. But even if I could, I wouldn’t get very far with it. I can’t drive and shoot at the same time. I wouldn’t get close enough. If it was Randall who took out Ithering back in Athens, then he has a long-range weapon.
I sprint north, my finger on the G36’s selector switch. I should have kept the Remington. Given Marilyn the assault rifle. Randall will have an enormous advantage. I could try to find cover, but the gas station is too good a defensive position.
All of the decisions are made for me, anyway. Randall is standing among the gas pumps with a handgun against the back of Marilyn’s head. She is between us, shivering with the chills of her infection, her eyes closed. The U-Haul, ever the same one, is parked only a few yards away with the driver’s door open.
I lift the rifle when I’m fifty yards out.
“Where is she?” he calls over.
“Safe,” I answer. “Far from here.” I take a few steps forward. Randall, to his credit, doesn’t react by threatening me further. I would have to be within a dozen yards to have any chance of shooting without killing Marilyn.
“What is she to you?” Randall asks. “Just a girl. Not even yours. I don’t want to kill her. You know that.”
“Death would be a mercy over what you have planned.”
“Not me. I have nothing to do with that.”
“Whatever helps you sleep,” I say, taking another step. It makes me feel better, even though it doesn’t do me any good. “Why didn’t you kill me, before? You shot Ithering first and let me get away.”
He laughs. It sounds like amusement, not contempt. “Where were you going to go? You came for the girl. I could afford to wait and have you all in the same place.”
One more step. I still don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m not going to be able to distract him or make him angry. That was Barkov’s skill.
I think I just want Marilyn to look at me. Her eyes are still closed.
She’s trying to tell me something.
Always so goddamn slow.
I push the selector to full automatic fire with a grandiose motion, letting Randall see.
“You’re not going to shoot,” he says, still confident. “Don’t insult me.”
Stupid heroics. But this time, they’re not mine.
“Look at her, Randall. She’s shivering. You can see the sweat on her face.” I take another step. “Death would be a mercy.”
The click in Randall’s brain is as palpable as a thundercrack. The smug satisfaction radiating from his body is replaced with tension and surprise. Not surprise that Marilyn is sick; that’s obvious enough. Surprise that I would take such advantage. But this was Marilyn’s idea. I know because her eyes have opened. She is not afraid.
Barkov would have been impressed.
Moving toward the truck, Randall fires two shots in my direction, missing both times. He throws himself into the U-Haul and slams the door behind him. I fire at the windshield, shattering it, but hesitate to shoot at the engine or the tires. If I can stop Randall without damaging the truck, we can use it to get home.
It’s a mistake. The biodiesel engine roars and the truck heaves forward, with Randall still hiding below the wheel. At the last moment I realize the error and walk the fire downward, into the driver’s door and across the side of the truck as it swerves past me. I pivot as the U-Haul hops a curb and makes a wide right turn onto the northbound lanes. I shoot at the back tires, but they’re hidden under a few feet of metal. I’m too close; the angle is too steep. I throw myself to the pavement and shoot again, until I’ve emptied the magazine.
At least one bullet found its mark. The U-Haul sags to one side. It lists toward the sidewalk, but Randall is able to keep it in the road. It travels a quarter mile before slowing to a stop. I watch with steady eyes as I draw my SIG, waiting for Randall to emerge from the cab.
I keep waiting. I count two minutes. I itch to give chase, to seize the advantage, but despite my instructions, Phoebe has rejoined us. Marilyn is crouched against a gas pump. I have obligations that won’t let me risk another shootout.
I tell Marilyn and Phoebe to gather their belongings and go south while I count another two minutes. I stand by the pumps, watching, letting my hands go slick with sweat.
The truck lurches again, grinding one rim, then limps away, back toward Clarke County.
A quarter mile, and an infinite distance.
DAY EIGHTEEN, 7:00 A.M.
At least we were safe. As safe as we could be, as Marilyn’s health began to worsen. Many times, I considered running ahead, making it to the Little Five to retrieve one of the remaining Volvos, but I knew it was a fool’s errand. By the time I got back, the woman I loved could be gone. Or Randall might r
eturn. From time to time I regretted not going after him.
So I walked with them. I watched as Phoebe’s strength improved with each step away from Clarke County, and I watched as the fever began to take its final toll on Marilyn. Her body was tense with aches, and she moved with a slow shuffle.
We didn’t talk about what was happening. Sepsis, I knew, could be fatal on its own. But that wasn’t the worst possibility. With no way to control the fever, at some point along the way, Marilyn might suddenly feel better. We know very little about the virus that turns people into hollow-heads, but we know this: if a fever breaks early, and the patient feels better than she has in years, her friends and loved ones have six hours to say goodbye.
It is early morning, the seventeenth day after Abigail and Owen arrived at the gates of the Little Five, and I have only three hours left.
While Phoebe sleeps, Marilyn and I sit on a low wall by the side of the road and watch the sun rising on our right, shining through the trees, Marilyn’s last morning.
“I can feel it starting,” she says, almost absently. Then she turns to me and continues, “It’s like an itch in the back of my brain. And I’m losing track of certain memories.”
I don’t know how she can be so calm. Though I try to put on a brave face for her, inside I am screaming and crying and cursing the world. Cursing myself most of all, for having put her in the position that brought us to this. I should never have persuaded her to come with me. Because she was always right about me, but in the end, it wasn’t my life that was lost.
Marilyn Trainor is too serene for my pain. And it’s selfish of me to be worried about my own guilt when a woman I love is all but dying.
“Things were good, weren’t they?” she asks. “Between us, I mean. I never really let you go. I tried. I think I tried. But you were always there. Strong and stoic and alive. Anyone else might’ve been crushed, but you kept on.”
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