Holger steps through it, and an automated light turns on on the other side.
“You first,” William says smiling and stepping aside. “I’ve seen it before. Mind the step.”
Dan squeezes past him, steps down a single step onto a vinyl floor and sees a surprisingly large room. He stops in the doorway and stares around at what looks most of all like a pretty regular apartment. If it hadn’t been for the lack of windows and the big, heavy wooden beams supporting the ceiling, Dan would never have guessed they were still underground.
There’s a kitchen area with a stove and two large refrigerators, a dining area with a table big enough for four people, an old couch with a flat screen TV and a bookcase stuffed with books, and a home office with three laptops. The shelves in the kitchen are stuffed with cans and jars and something that looks like dried herbs and fruits.
But this is where the similarities to a normal home end.
Next to the dining table is what looks to Dan like a mini hospital, complete with a full array of surgical instruments, pill bottles and even an operating table hinged to the wall. On the opposite end of the room are two large metal cabinets with heavy padlocks, clearly marked with the next: FIREARMS, KNIVES & MACHETTES, EXPLOSIVES.
Holger has gone to the office area and activated one of the laptops. The screen shows eight live feeds from around the property, both inside and out—and the purpose of all the cameras suddenly becomes clear to Dan.
“This is insane,” he mutters as Mille steps past him, glaring around in stunned silence.
The fact that Holger built a big underground room is impressive enough. It must have taken him years—not to mention the structural knowledge and skills it would take—but that he also turned it into a seemingly perfect survival place with everything you would need to outlast a minor nuclear war …
“You haven’t seen it all yet,” William says, putting a hand on his shoulder, pointing to a door Dan didn’t notice until now. “Come on, I’ll show you the other rooms …”
TWENTY-ONE
Finn is staring blankly at the plate in front of him. The lasagna has gone cold but still it smells good. He just doesn’t have any appetite. That’s an understatement, really; appetite is no longer a feeling Finn understands. Food is an unknown concept to him.
The only thing still present in him is the thought of Lone. That she’s walking around out there right now with all the other lost souls. So many people dead all at once; it’s unfathomable. And yet, Finn really doesn’t care about all the rest of them. He has no relatives, no kids or siblings, so why would other people’s fate matter to him? All he cares about—all he ever really cared about—is Lone. And Lone is dead.
“Try to eat something, Finn.”
The voice causes him to lift his head and blink sleepily. Henrik is looking at him with an expression of warm concern.
“You’ll feel better if you eat,” the neighbor says, pointing to the plate.
Finn lets his eyes wander around the table. He has actually forgotten where he is and who else is present. There’s Trine, of course, Henrik’s wife. And Trine’s mother—Finn can’t recall her name, he’s not even sure she told him. Trine’s mom, who’s around Finn’s own age, is eating her lasagna neatly using both knife and fork, while trying to look as though everything is normal. Still she can’t help but dart a look towards the windows every time there’s a screech of fingernails scraping the outside of the glass. The windows are carefully blocked off with towels and blankets in the hope that those outside would stop trying to get in once they couldn’t see them anymore.
But they didn’t stop. Apparently, they don’t need to see them to know they are there. They can probably smell them. Like sharks, who can pick up on the smell of a single drop of blood at a distance of several miles. Finn saw that once in a documentary.
There’s also another reason why Henrik and his mother-in-law took great care to seal off every window in the house. They didn’t say it, but Finn knows it’s because they don’t want him to see—
“Finn?”
Henrik’s voice pulls him back once again.
“How’re you feeling? Have the pills started working?”
“The pills?” Finn repeats.
“I gave you a couple of Trine’s sedatives, remember?”
“Oh, right,” Finn mutters. “Yeah, I—I think they’re doing the job.”
“That’s good. I still think you should get some food, though.”
Finn picks up the fork and looks at it like it’s some sort of advanced piece of equipment he never operated before. He scoops up some lasagna and transports it to his mouth, chews it, swallows.
Henrik smiles at him. Then he goes on eating.
It’s warm and stuffy in the living room, since they can’t air out and because the evening sun is still baking away outside. He should have been sitting at the terrace right now, a cold beer in his hand and Lone by his side while she did her crosswords.
Finn forces down another bite and looks at Trine. She is the only one present who looks like Finn feels. Her eyes are red and distant, her lasagna untouched. She prods it with her fork now and then, only to put it down again.
“You too, honey,” Henrik says. “Try to—”
“Mind your own business,” Trine sneers, not looking up.
Henrik sighs. “I know it’s a terrible situation, but … I’m sure Dan is fine, and he’ll come home.”
Trine shakes her head slowly. “He’s not. You told him yourself to stay away.”
“Only because it’s not safe around here right now. You can hear them outside, can’t you?” Henrik gestures towards the window. “Would you really want Dan to come home while they’re still out there?”
Trine lets out a long, trembling breath, and Finn can see her eyes turn moist. “I’ve lost my daughter,” she whispers, “and now you’ve sent off my son to die …”
“Honey, please,” Henrik says, reaching for her hand.
She draws it away hissing: “Don’t touch me.”
Henrik looks to his mother-in-law. “Kirsten, would you …?”
Kirsten nods, puts down her knife and fork and dabs her mouth with the napkin. “Listen to me,” she says, turning to her daughter. “Henrik did the right thing. I’m sure Dan is safe.”
“How would you know?” Trine asks as she begins stabbing the lasagna with her fork. “You don’t know the people he’s with.”
“As soon as the police get this under control, we’ll go and get Dan,” Kirsten goes on.
“We can’t,” Trine says, raising her voice. “’Cause we don’t know where he is! And he’s not answering his phone … do you think that’s a good sign, huh, Mom? Or do you think he might be dead somewhere, just like Jennie, just like my girl … my girl … my little girl … oh God …” Trine bursts into tears, and Henrik and Kirsten get up in unison.
“Let me take her,” Kirsten says, glancing at Finn. “Maybe he could use some sleep.”
Henrik nods and turns to Finn, while Kirsten helps her daughter to the couch.
“Would you like a nap, Finn?” Henrik asks.
Finn agrees without really thinking. Henrik helps him to his feet. They leave the living room and the sound of Trine’s sobbing cries, and they go down the hallway to a room slightly cooler, even though the window here is also blocked by a blanket.
“Is this … is this Jennie’s room?” Finn asks absentmindedly, looking at the posters of singers.
“It was,” Henrik murmurs. “Until yesterday.”
“Until yesterday?” Finn parrots, not understanding.
“Jennie’s dead, Finn.”
“Oh, right.”
“Come on, lie down.”
Finn lies down on the neatly made bed, folding his hands on his stomach. He stares up to the ceiling, where Jennie did a collage of photos of her and her friends having fun.
Henrik glances up at the pictures and swallows audibly. “Try to get some rest,” he says. “You just call me if you need any
thing, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you, Henrik.”
Henrik leaves the room, closing the door almost all the way.
Finn just lies there for a while, studying the photos without really seeing them. His eyelids are growing heavy when someone suddenly scrapes on the window.
Finn sits up and looks at the blanket. He can make out a low figure on the other side, hands groping the glass and the person uttering a low, almost pained moaning.
Could that be her?
Finn’s breathing automatically speeds up a notch. The silhouette could very well be Lone—but then again, what would the odds be? Henrik said earlier there must already be hundreds of them out there, so it could be anyone outside the window. Perhaps another one of the residents of the street. Perhaps a total stranger.
Perhaps … Lone.
Finn gets up and steps carefully closer. The tuneless groans from the figure grow slightly louder, the hands start fumbling more eagerly, as though the person feels him approaching.
The blanket is attached all the way around with tacks. Finn picks one of them out and gently moves the blanket a little aside, allowing him to peek out.
A strong dropping sensation in his lower belly almost makes him stagger.
Lone’s face is staring at him through the glass. Her mouth is open, and there’s dried blood on her chin and down her throat. Her glasses are gone, and her hair is messy and lumpy with more dried blood. The eyes aren’t the grey, loving eyes he remembers, but dull and white, empty and without a trace of anything human.
Or—are they? Are her eyes really completely empty?
The more Finn stares into Lone’s face, the more he begins to sense a remnant of her old self. She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to recognize him, as she just keeps running her hands over the glass and growling at him.
But maybe … maybe that’s her way of communicating? Maybe she can’t talk or move normally anymore, but who’s to say she’s not still in there? After all, how else would she have found him, if she wasn’t at least partly herself still? Maybe she could even be cured!
She shouldn’t be out there with all the rest of them.
The thought awakens a new feeling in Finn: fear. If he just leaves Lone own her own, who knows what might happen to her? She could be run over by a car or shot by the police. He can’t risk that. He can’t risk losing her for good.
So, Finn begins picking out more tacks. The blanket falls to the floor, exposing the view completely and letting the evening light pour into the room. Finn doesn’t notice, though; he just stares at his wife, who has by now greased up most of the window with her hands.
“Lone,” he whispers, placing a hand on the glass.
She eagerly tries to kiss his palm, and it causes Finn to tear up.
“I knew you were still in there somewhere,” he says, choking up. His hand goes for the hasp. A tiny voice at the back of his head shouts to him, telling him he’s making a big mistake, that Lone can’t be saved, that she’s dangerous and wants to hurt him.
But Finn can’t believe that voice. He can only believe what he sees, and knows Lone’s eyes seem even more human than just a moment ago, as though simply seeing him has cured her a little. If he lets her inside the room, she’ll probably become completely herself once more.
“I’ll help you, dear,” he whispers hoarsely, as the tears pour down his cheeks. “I can’t live without you, you know that.”
His hand unlocks the hasp.
No! the voice shouts.
“Yes,” Finn croaks, smiling as he opens the window.
TWENTY-TWO
Mille pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees. She’s sitting in the window looking out over Holger’s back garden, where the last of the sunlight is coloring the grass orange.
It’s almost eleven o’clock, and even though this has by far been the longest day of her life, she barely feels tired. Her body is exhausted, of course, but her eyes don’t feel like closing.
She can still taste curry from the stew Holger served. To her surprise she found herself ravenous and she cleaned off her plate in no time. After all, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast that morning.
Her brain is still fighting to keep up. It feels like it can’t really update its software, like it doesn’t want to compute how everything has changed. She should have been in Prague right now, she and Krista should have been lying in bed next to each other in a hotel room with two other girls from the class. They should have been complaining about the long, warm bus ride and talking about what sights they were going to see tomorrow morning.
Instead, Krista is dead, just like Mads and the rest of the class. Same probably goes for most of everyone else she knows. And she herself is sitting here, in a guy’s house with two other strangers and a German shepherd, as they simply wait for the world to end.
She looks around at the others. Dan is huddled in one corner of the couch, sleeping with a thin blanket wrapped around him. William is sitting on a chair, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the television, where the sound is turned down to a whisper. He looks like a soccer fan intensely watching a game which he bet a lot of money on—except it isn’t soccer on the screen, but a news report. They keep showing footage from the air and video recordings from cell phones. A lot of it is censored, and the reporters warn again and again about “strong imagery.”
The dog is lying faithfully right next to William, halfway dozing, but raising its head now and then, as though constantly listening for something no one else can hear. Holger is the only one missing; he’s down in the bunker to prepare something or other—he has barely taken a rest since they came here.
Mille didn’t understand half of what William told them during the tour of the bunker. All the technical stuff about how the generator produces power from the windmill and the solar panels, how the rainwater is cleaned and filtered, and how the security systems work went right past her. All she knows is that Holger obviously thought of every tiny detail when he built this place, and that you could probably live down there for years.
But who would want that?
She gets an image of herself four years from now, pale and long hair, not having stepped outside the bunker for even a second, the only company has been her three involuntary roommates, the rest of the earth’s population dead and the zombies are the only ones wandering around.
What would she have to live for in a scenario like that? Survival, and nothing else. Mille gets the chills.
It probably won’t come to that. They still have time to stop it.
But the news reports don’t seem great. Mille has also checked social media on her phone now and then. At first, she mostly read grieving posts from the relatives of those who died on the bus, and other people offering their condolences. Then, other kinds of tweets began ticking in, like:
WTF is going on in this town?? Anybody know anything?
And more and more started replying and giving their two cents worth, even though none of them seemed to know what was really happening. Mille read creative guesses like terrorism or natural disasters. One guy even suggested the whole thing was a giant prank, put up by a television network.
But as the evening progressed, the tweets became more and more grave.
Why aren’t the police doing anything?
and
One of them just walked by my window!
and
Just drove by the library—serious, stay away from there, folks! Not a sight anybody needs to see!
Slowly people began catching on to the seriousness of the situation, even though many were still utterly confused. But more and more often, Mille would see the magic word.
Zombies.
People began posting videos from their phones, either filmed from their windows or cars. Some more gory than others. Mille didn’t feel like watching any of them. A video from a press release also went viral, where a spokesman of the police told people to remain indoors and avoid physical contact with anybody unti
l further notice.
“They’re declaring a state of emergency,” William mutters.
Mille looks at the television and sees the prime minister talking to the camera with a very grave expression, her lips quivering slightly.
“The whole town is being shut off,” William says. “About damn time.”
Dan stirs from the couch, and the dog lifts its head.
“How many dead?” Mille asks.
“They aren’t giving any numbers anymore,” William replies, not taking his eyes from the screen, which is now showing a live feed from a helicopter somewhere over town. Three figures are staggering down the street, empty cars are left everywhere, and even from this distance and in the dying daylight, Mille can make out several dark bulges on the asphalt. “It must be in the hundreds, maybe even thousands by now,” William goes on.
“So, Holger’s calculations will prove true,” Dan says, rubbing his eyes, then gesturing to the whiteboard on the wall, where Holger drew a graph and wrote a lot of numbers. “Tomorrow evening, there will be no one alive in the town.”
“Not if they get their act together and send in the military, like I’ve been trying to tell them,” William says, obviously frustrated. He’s been calling the police several times, trying to convey to them the scope of the situation. Mille can’t blame whoever was on the other end of the line—probably some young on-duty cop—for having a hard time believing it.
“I promised to call my dad by now,” Dan murmurs and finds his phone. “Oh, shoot, it’s out of power. Does Holger have a charger, William?”
“Check the bedroom.”
Dan gets up and goes to the bedroom.
William finds his own phone. “I’d probably better call my mom too. How about you, you’re not going to—” He stops as he apparently remembers something, then he just shakes his head. “Sorry, none of my business.” He gets up and goes to the kitchen. A moment later, Mille can hear him talking to his mom.
Dead Meat (Book 3): Dead Meat [Day 3] Page 9