by Megan Hart
Along the front window, next to the cash register, was a rack of pamphlets and brochures. The maps, unsurprisingly, were gone. There might still be power in some places, but the internet was gone and smartphones with their map apps were useless. But something else caught his eye.
UNDERGROUND STORAGE FACILITY
Dennis pulled the brochure from its place, the paper slick in his fingers. It was advertising tours of a place that had once been a mine and that now featured vehicle storage as well as server storage for big corporations to back up their data. It also had a food court and indoor park and a small “village” complete with high end shops. It was only a few miles away.
“Take a look at this,” he said to Kelsey when she came out of the bathroom with her hair dripping and her clothes changed.
She did. Then at him. He didn’t have to explain why he was showing her. She got it.
Kelsey beamed. “What do you think? Betcha there’s lots of stuff in there.”
“My mother used to tell me about a place where people could buy…like timeshares. In the event of the apocalypse. She was pretty derogatory about it, figuring that people needed to be able to stand on their own rather than do an a la carte type survival deal. But I’m pretty sure the place she talked about was here.”
“Which means…there’s a group in there?”
“Yeah.” Dennis looked at her. “Might be okay to hook with them, if we can. I mean, rather than trying to go it totally alone.”
She frowned. “What if they’re like the last group?”
“Then we don’t stay.”
“But we didn’t pay the timeshare fee.”
“If they’re not the group that’s there, or they don’t want to let us in, it’s still worth checking out. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” she said, but sounded hesitant. “I guess so. How long do you think it will take us to get there?”
He studied the map on the back of the brochure, then checked it against the one he pulled from his backpack. “A couple hours. We could be there before nightfall.”
“I say we do it.” She looked around the store. “Nothing else here?”
“Maybe a few things.We should take what we can. If they’re hesitant about taking us in, maybe having something will sweeten the deal.”
“Dennis…why, though?”
He took her hands and pulled her close. “I trust people who were prepared in advance more than I do the ones who’ve just gone power crazy in the aftermath. You know? These people were invested in this place. It’ll have everything we need to survive. And I want you safe.”
It was right thing for him to say. Kelsey beamed. She kissed him. And then again. They forgot about packing up the store for a while, their attention taken up with other things.
After, together they stripped the store bare of anything useful, then packed up the bikes and headed off. The roads were bigger, becoming highways. It was easier to ride them than it had been on the rural routes, even when they had to weave in and out among the stalled or wrecked cars.
“It’s getting cold,” Kelsey said when they stopped for a break. She shivered, looking at the sky, then into the distance. They’d reached the edge of a bridge leading into the city, which put them higher than everything else.
Staying in the south would’ve made winter easier to bear. It had been his idea to head north. Dennis had some idea that tornados weren’t as common there, though thinking of it now as they entered the suburbs of Pittsburgh to find nothing devastation, it hadn’t mattered much. The whole point was that the storms weren’t normal. Whatever had come through here had been big. And bad.
“Jesus,” Kelsey breathed from beside him. She put a foot on the cracked asphalt to steady herself. Under her feet, dead brown vines crunched. Even in the few months since everything had begun, the bridge had been overtaken by brush and growth, proof that what his mother had said was true. The earth would always take back what it wanted to. “What the hell happened?”
“The end of the world.”
She looked at him, brow raised. “Ya think?”
Dennis, to his surprise, because it always surprised him that he could find any humor in this, laughed. “Something like it, anyway.”
“The city.” She pointed. Smoke colored the air in several dirty plumes. Someone, somewhere, was burning something. “Let’s go the other direction, I guess? Bypass it? Go around?”
In the distance, there came a sound like a low hum. A throb. They looked at each other.
“I don’t know what that is,” Kelsey said, “but I vote we stay the fuck out of Pittsburgh.”
65
“It’s ridiculous!” The shout came from the back of the line, but echoed through the entire room.
Maddy had her roller skates on, and she twirled in a circle. Arms out, she went slower. Arms in, faster. She was getting dizzy.
“Who put this kid in charge? What kind of —”
Maddy snapped her fingers, and the guys who hadn’t been Dad’s friends before but were now, they all were now, if Maddy wanted them to be, grabbed him by both arms. He kicked and struggled, that old man, ugly old man, Mr. Porter his name was. Maddy didn’t care, really. He was a jerk.
Everyone who knew him stared without saying anything. The new people, the ones who’d come not long ago, they stared too, but with wider eyes. They wouldn’t say anything. Dad had told them it was their rules here, and if they didn’t like it they could get the hell out.
“What kind of place is this, where a kid’s in charge of everyone else? I paid my money the way everyone else did!” Mr. Porter screamed, kicking. “I paid my money and why should I have to wait in line for rations? Why should any of us --”
“Shut up,” Maddy said serenely, spinning. Spinning. “Take him to see my mother.”
The men who had not been Dad’s friends but who now did whatever Maddy said, took Mr. Porter out of the lunch room. A few other people had acted mad, too, but when they saw what happened to Mr. Porter, they got quiet. The other ones, the ones who’d already been to see her mother, didn’t say or do anything. They would, they could, if Maddy let them. If she told the wiggle worms with the whispering voices to make them do or say something, whatever she wanted. They would.
For now, it was enough to watch them staring in silence.
“If you’re good,” she announced, “we can all have ice cream!”
That was kind of a lie. The only cream they could have was the freeze dried pellet kind the astronauts ate, but it was, like her mom used to say better than nothing. Thinking of it now, she twirled again and again until the room moved even faster around her. She almost felt kind of sick, but with a twinkle of her inner thoughts, everything settled into place.
Maddy stopped twirling.
“I think,” she said, “it’s time everyone went in to see my mother.”
8
They’d talked idly about the end of the world, their fingers linked, sweaty thighs stuck to each other. Their heads on one pillow. It had been fantasy, something to distract them from the fact that their world was going to come to an end, no matter what they wanted. Yet here it was, the end of everything, and they were together.
Somehow, they’d found a way to be together.
Bill had never paid much attention to disaster preparedness, but to Maggie’s surprise he’d taken Jake’s advice about what was coming and how they needed to get ready for it. The men had gone into town with Bill’s truck and come back with it filled to overflowing with canned goods. Tools. Plastic tarps and bundles of rope and electrical wire. A generator. They’d filled the shed and the basement with shelves of supplies and spent hours boarding up the windows and the door. Making barricades.
“I maxed out every credit card, and so did he.” Bill said this into the quiet of the night as they shared a bed.
Not a pillow, though.
Not touching each other, either. The distance between them had been there for a long time, but hadn’t felt so vast before. Maggie tho
ught about reaching to take Bill’s hand, and then she made herself do it. Their fingers didn’t link. His hand was sweaty, and after a few seconds, she let it go.
“If this all blows over, we’re going to be in sad shape,” Bill went on. “I’ll go to my grave paying off that card.”
Maggie blinked into darkness.
“I wish the kids were here,” Bill said.
“They want to be with their families.” Maggie too wished their children were with them.
Her daughter Rachael, Rachael’s partner Samantha, their twins Hayley and Josiah. Her son Danny and his girlfriend Mia, soon to be his wife, were living with her parents until the wedding, half a year away. Maggie had called them. Caught up on their lives, made sure the storms hadn’t done any damage to them. She’d warned them carefully to stock up on food and supplies, knowing that Samantha would take her seriously and none of the others would. But she hadn’t asked them to come home.
“They should be here,” Bill said.
“They’re adults, Bill. They haven’t lived here for years, and they want to be with the people they love the most.”
“And that’s not us?”
Maggie swallowed tears, throat closing. She would never see her children again, not ever, not one time. She was convinced of that. “I didn’t want them traveling to get here. I don’t want them on a plane. Or on the road, my God, Bill. You think I don’t want to see my kids again? But I want them to be as safe as they can be!”
He said nothing, after that, one more thing they’d disagree on but not discuss.
Bill coughed and shifted, shaking the bed and tearing the covers off her. “Just because a lot of shit’s going down on the news and some preacher keels over during his sermon, that doesn’t mean that somebody’s not going to get this under control. I mean…shit, Mags. Aliens? We’re talking about aliens? Do you know how long it will take to pay everything off, if this all turns out to be some kind of temporary —”
“It’s not temporary,” Maggie said.
“You can’t know that,” Bill began, but she cut him off sharply.
“If he’s here, it means that it’s not going to blow over.” She drew in a soft breath, trying and failing to keep her voice steady.
Beside her, Bill said nothing.
She waited for him to ask, but he didn’t, and in a few minutes after that, the slow, uneven stutter of his snoring breaths began. She listened for awhile, remembering the days, in the beginning, when she’d thought the way he sounded as he fell asleep was endearing. Now, it meant she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without the help of a sound machine, or earplugs, or simple, sheer force of will.
She tried, she really did, to drift into dreams next to her snoring husband, but there was no way. Even if he hadn’t been snoring, how could she sleep with a basement full of riot gear and canned ravioli? How could she let herself fall into unconsciousness when there was no guarantee there’d be a world to wake up to?
Her stomach twisted, as it always did when her mind was awhirl. Maggie got out of bed, slipping into the silk kimono her grandparents had brought back from Japan when she’d been in high school. She found her way in the dark, needing no light, down the stairs with her hand gripping the railing carefully, so that if she happened to trip she wouldn’t plunge to her death.
In the kitchen, the light from the fridge was bright enough to blind her momentarily. When she turned with a small container of yogurt in her hand, just before the light went out she saw him. She knew it was Jake, but screamed anyway, biting it back before it could shoot out of her and wake the whole house.
“Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” Maggie grabbed a spoon and took a seat across from him at the table.
He’d helped himself to a glass of whiskey, though in the faint light coming from the appliances and a nightlight in the hall, it was hard to see how much emptier the bottle had become. The glass itself stayed in front of him. He touched it lightly as she took a seat, but didn’t drink.
“When did you start again?” She pointed at the glass.
“Today. Yesterday, I guess, technically.”
She laughed, uncertain why this struck her as so funny, only that it seemed hilarious. After a moment, he joined her. They laughed together, and it was suddenly so much like it had been, it had always been.
Then she wasn’t laughing, anymore.
“Why did you come here, Jake.”
“Because I promised you.”
“In all this time, there was no reason for you to stay where you were? Nothing to keep you…” She swallowed hard.
He was silent for a moment. “I promised you.”
“You could’ve broken it.”
“How could I break a promise to you?” Jake asked quietly. “When I knew that if I didn’t see you again now, there’d be no chance of ever seeing you. Ever.”
A strangled sob choked its way out of her. Maggie closed her eyes, though in the dark she could barely see him. It was better that way. Not being able to see.
“I hated you for a long time,” she told him finally. “I hated you so much.”
The glass clinked. He drank. He poured some more from the bottle, and she heard the sound of him drinking. It made her want to slap him. It made her want to die.
“You let me walk away from you, Jake. You just…let me walk away.”
“When you love someone,” he told her, “you want what’s best for them.”
Maggie hissed. “Is that what you think? That this was what was best for me?”
Jake was silent.
Her hands shook, so she clenched them tight inside each other. Her stomach twisted and turned. She didn’t want the yogurt anymore. She got up from the table and tossed the container in the trash. She put the spoon in the dishwasher.
With her back to him, she said, “I have missed you. Every. Single. Day.”
Her only answer was the click of the lock on the basement door as he closed it after him.
67
“Don’t look, baby. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
They manage to get all the way to the front door before Jordan comes after them. Moaning, grasping, fingers curled into claws. He looks nothing like her beloved child. Horrifically, he looks more like her husband than he ever had.
“Mama!”
“Run, Benji! Run!” Shoving him Abbie turns to face her other boy. Hands outstretched, voice calm, as though she’s dealing with a temper tantrum and not this…this thing.
This monster.
“No, baby, no,” Abbie says, over and over even as Jordan slashes at the air between them. Even when bites at her, snarling. She holds him back with a hand on his forehead, but he’s strong. So strong.
He sinks his teeth into her forearm, tearing and gobbling at the flesh, though he lets it fall out of his mouth. Not eating it. Just trying his best to hurt her. His arms pinwheel. He gets a handful of her hair and yanks it almost from her head.
Abbie punches her younger son in the face, breaking his nose. He stumbles back with a low moan. He trips over his own feet and goes down, hitting his head on the doorframe. The sound of it is like a melon hitting the floor. Her gorge rises, but she can’t give in to sickness. She can’t let herself falter now. She has Benji to think of, Benji who did not run the way she ordered him to. Benji, who stands sobbing and wailing in the grass grown up so high it’s as though he’s standing in a green and yellow sea.
Jordan isn’t moving, but she knows better than to think he won’t get up. She moves back from him, every instinct screaming at her not to abandon him while the other, harder part of her forces her to keep going. She has another son, one who hasn’t yet been infected. And the thing in front of her, though it might look like her boy, has become something else.
“Benji, we need to —”
“Mom?”
She turns. Benji as stumbled forward, parting the grass. On his hands and knees. In front of him, humped earth bulging with those flowers
, those fucking flowers. The red tendrils, creeping. The smell of them fill her nose, the taste rancid and burning on her tongue, and she screams for him to get away.
But it’s too late.
And behind her, Jordan gets up again.
Damn it. She’d fallen asleep. Abbie fought her way up from the dream, arms flailing, breath catching in her throat. She’d dropped the knife; it was gone. She searched all around her feet, but unless it had slipped between the cracks of the deck boards, it was gone. The boys had taken it, leaving behind another pile of small, broken toys. The detritus of their childhood. Once she’d have ranted and raved about the mess, the destruction, how poorly they treated their possessions. In her worst time, she’d once taken a trash bag and gone through their bedrooms, gathering up everything and hauling it to the garbage despite their wailing protests.
Abbie wept. Long, hard sobs that tore her up from the inside out and choked her until the world swam and her ears rang. The car accident that had damaged her lungs and made it always impossible for her to fully catch her breath had saved her from the infection, though she’d inhaled the spores so many times now she’d lost track. Three? Four? More than that? And each time she’d waited for them to take root inside her and turn her into one of those things. Instead, she’d merely started feeling like she had the flu. Constant, low-grade fever. Coughing that brought up blood and bits of black froth. Chunks of red-tinged black goo. Her head ached constantly. If she was dying, it was going to be slow, and before she gave in to that, she had to make sure her boys were taken care of.
In the months since she’d made her way home, the leaves had started falling from the trees. Soon there’d be little place for them to hide, though the truth was that she’d been surprised to find either of them capable of hiding at all. None of the others she’d seen since this all began would’ve been capable of such slyness. A mother’s pride, she thought as she swiped the tears from her exhausted eyes and fought to get herself upright. Her boys were different. Better than the others.