Daniel wrote back. I’m sorry. Which one?
Holly.
He wasn’t a man that Janice would have looked at twice before the change. Pudgy and balding, he had a port-wine stain splashed over his neck. On his days off he favored tall white athletic socks and Hawaiian shirts, paired with a garish green watch that had the numbers replaced by a human face at one slowly turning into a triangular alien face at twelve. No one wore watches any more. They checked the time on their cell phones. And they definitely didn’t wear a watch like that, but on dressed-down Daniel, it just served to complete the ensemble.
He was a dork, a happy and good-natured dork, but a dork nonetheless. They had nothing in common. Janice’s first husband had been a blond god of the college football field. Just his picture could make a woman sweat. Damon hadn’t done a very good job at being faithful during their twelve years of marriage, yet had ended up a Type 3 in the wild so she no longer held a grudge. It was terrible how low he ranked when she listed all the things she missed about her former life. He didn’t even make the first page. His position was rendered even more ignominious by falling under the tedious hours she used to spend on a treadmill in her home gym.
God, would she love to do that now, every morning from ten to eleven as she had done until the change. Flip through the pages of a brand new magazine, fill her head with celebrity fluff while the machine hummed under her sneakered feet. There wasn’t room for a treadmill in this house, and she was too tired from ferrying kids here, there, and everywhere to tack on yet another errand to the little gym downtown for herself.
“Uuuuuhhhhhhh.” Thump. Thump. Thump.
Holly’s special ed teacher had warned Janice at Friday pick-up that the girl didn’t look like she was feeling too well. She appeared perfectly fine to Janice, but Mrs. Frank had the uncanny ability of sensing when someone was coming down with something well before that person had the slightest inkling. Forty-five years of teaching had given her that. By Sunday morning, Mrs. Frank’s warning proved itself apt. Holly was definitely showing signs of a cold, her nose beginning to run and her energy lackluster. The spacey expression the girl had indicated a concurrent H1Z1 episode was on the way, too. A healthy immune system suppressed the virus and made it dormant, but it still lurked there in all of them. Laying in wait for a trigger. Janice had only had two episodes herself since her initial infection three years ago, and its mildness earned her a Type 1 diagnosis. She had just spaced out for days in bed and couldn’t figure out how to find the bathroom, let alone use it.
Damon would have flinched from putting her in an adult diaper and never touched her sexually again, but Daniel did the deed cheerfully and was back to goosing her when the children weren’t looking a mere day after the episode had passed. She’d married him fast because he was a good guy who worked hard at his unimpressive position in the provisional government, and because she was scared to be alone in this strange new world. He was also a Type 1, and fairly impervious to the myriad of bugs the kids brought home to share. The only episode he had ever had, besides when he was first infected, was a year ago. All he did was lie on the floor and sing rude songs in a slurred voice for a day while the children giggled outside the bedroom door.
Thump.
Janice and Daniel did have something in common. They wanted to live. And that trumped everything else. But he was still a dork, and her mother would be rolling in her grave to see Daniel and his pulled-up, shock white socks, his modest paycheck and sci-fi silliness. When Janice had confided in her that Damon was cheating, Mom had said that that was what a prince did, and the job of the princess was to overlook it. Mom was so proud of Janice’s marriage to a man of means and a small measure of fame in his career. The day Janice had traded her maiden name of Camendar for Augustine had been the greatest day in her mother’s life. The calendar had read 2018 at the time, but Mom was firmly ensconced in the 1950s, despite never having lived in them, and nothing had ever dislodged her.
Janice surveyed the kitchen for anything else that had to be put away. Her reflection in the barred window caught her eye. She didn’t look like a princess any more. The last few years had been hard. She bought cosmetics almost every time she went to the store, determined to make herself up the way she once did, and all of it was untouched in a big bag under the girls’ bathroom sink. They rarely played with it, Holly still content with her toys and Judy uninterested even as the girls around her at the junior high began to experiment.
Having finished the windows in the house, Corey came in. “We should tie her down.”
“No,” Janice said. He gave her a long, accusatory stare, and she amended her statement to appease him. “Not yet.” During an episode six months ago, Holly had killed their second cat. It had also been unfortunately timed for a work trip of Daniel’s. Corey had never forgiven Janice for not restraining Holly in time.
“Uuuuuhhhhh.” Thump. Thump. Thump.
When Corey continued to stare at her, Janice said weakly, “You shouldn’t have to restrain children. It isn’t right. We didn’t have to do that before-”
“It isn’t before any more,” Corey said in a cold voice. Sweeping his shaggy reddish-brown locks from his forehead, he went to his room and slammed the door. Janice uncapped a whiteboard pen and wrote haircuts under notes. She wasn’t angry. She had been seventeen once and had known everything back then, too.
The children were going to grow up believing that this was a normal way to live. That made her heart hurt. Every fiber of her body wanted to go into Holly’s room and give her a cuddle, bring her out to the sofa and put on cartoons. She was such a cute little girl, big brown eyes and dark hair, brought in from the wild a shocking year after the change when everyone had given up hope of finding more survivors. Janice had been watching the news report when social services called to ask if she’d take in another one. It wasn’t like she had the option of declining. Every foster home was capped at five, and she’d had four then. But at least she was guaranteed that no more were coming. They only knew Holly’s name because it had been written on the tag of her sweater. That wasn’t necessarily her sweater either, but she responded to the name.
“Uuuuhhhhhh.”
It was pretty much the only time she vocalized. Holly had been almost mute since the day she’d walked in the front door, and her rescuers hadn’t heard a peep out of her in the time it had taken to transport her to Lincoln. After dashing into her new bedroom with an inquisitive call of Mama-Daddy-Brown-Bear, her face had fallen to find it empty and she’d clammed up. Months had passed before Janice heard another peep out of her, and that was after a nightmare. The girl woke up screaming, “Mama! Daddy! Brown Bear!” When she finally went back to sleep, she was half on top of Janice and still shuddering from terror. Janice slept there that night, unable to let go of her, and unwilling.
Doctors had found no physical reason that the girl wasn’t speaking, and concluded it was psychological. That was hardly surprising. A year out there with nothing but Type 3s for company . . . that Holly was alive was a miracle, and that she was damaged from the experience was to be expected. Her IQ eked just over the borderline. The doctors guessed that she was about five years old at the time of the change.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Now she was eight or so, and barely any bigger than she had been back then. Another word Janice had once heard out of that Cupid’s bow of a mouth, the groaning of episodes aside, was a frantic whisper of fire. Mason and Marquis had set their drapes alight while playing with matches, and Holly had dashed down the hallway to let Janice know. The only other times the girl spoke, it was to repeat one-one-two-one-slash-two-cobb. They heard that once every three to four months and had no idea what it meant. Another parent suggested autism at the infrequent repetition, but she didn’t meet any other criteria to be saddled with the diagnosis. Holly was just a dim bulb, a dim, traumatized, and darling bulb.
Mama-Daddy-Brown Bear. Janice wasn’t the person the girl truly wanted. She wasn’t what any of these
children wanted, and they weren’t whom she wanted. They just had to make do with each other. Make the best of it.
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
That had sounded like a head bump, and Janice winced. Holly wouldn’t be as aware of pain in her episodic state. It would only come later when the episode ended and she touched the bump on her forehead in surprise and pain. Another equally loud thump cracked down the hallway. “Uhhhhhhh.”
Above haircuts was the reminder that Holly had a four o’clock appointment at the psych center tomorrow. Janice would have to cancel that. The psychologist was pushing them to force her to speak, demand it of her, but it didn’t feel right doing that. Holly would talk when she was ready, when she felt secure. And with what had happened to her, it would take some time. Janice shuddered to think of a scared five-year-old girl foraging for food and hiding in shadows as zombies rampaged around her.
THUMP.
Zombies. It was a distasteful term. None of them were zombies. They just had a persistent infection, and in Janice it was particularly low-grade. She and Daniel, Corey and Marquis and Judy, all of them were Type 1s. When they had episodes, it didn’t amount to much. Marquis got a little rowdy and Judy pulled her hair out in clumps; Corey just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Mason and Holly were Type 2s, much more mobile in their episodes and very destructive. They had to be exceedingly careful with Marquis and Mason, because witnessing someone else’s episode brought on their own even if they were perfectly healthy at the time. Just the sound of the thumps and drawn-out moans coming down the hallway were dangerous to them. Most people who had chain reactions weren’t that ridiculously oversensitive, but these two would have to be alert all of their lives to who was around them, and what they were hearing. Neither would qualify to be foster parents, or be allowed to adopt. If they fathered their own children one day, their partners would have to monitor carefully.
Out in the wild, the Type 3s roamed. Their lives were now one long episode from which they were not emerging. Entire swathes of America had been ceded to them, Los Angeles and San Francisco, New York City and many other metropolitan areas. There was nothing else to be done. The Type 3s were too numerous to fight, numbering eighty to eighty-five percent of the population at the best estimate, and the simple act of just seeing them could trigger some 1s or 2s into a chain reaction. Janice had driven out of New York in a stolen car with 3s chasing after her, hungry for her flesh. Some had probably been 2s in a chain reaction. There was no way to tell the difference.
One month later, one terrifying month of scrounging for food and moving from place to place in the hopes somewhere was safe, she heard a rumor that Lincoln had cleared its 3s and reclaimed its ground. It was opening its homes and businesses for habitation. She stole a hybrid car with great gas mileage and drove like mad, forgoing food and water and sleep on the two-day drive. She peed in diapers and tossed them out the window. She only ever stopped to siphon fuel, quickly, quietly, and in fear that a 3 was going to notice her. The rumor about Lincoln had turned out to be true, and they welcomed her in. She decided to foster rather than grow corn or other crops. In their harder moments at home, she suspected the farmers had it easier.
Civilization hadn’t gone down entirely with H1Z1. Money still changed hands in reclaimed cities; armored trucks and armed drivers conducted trade and were paid very well for the risk. Airplanes were restricted to government use, and twice-a-year commercial, but they still slid across the sky. Janice hadn’t ever had any reason or interest in visiting Lincoln in her life before, but she was slavishly grateful to live in it now. It was safe. There was food and clean water, protection from 3s, and an approximation of how life had once gone. Yet it was only an approximation, a dim reflection of a former glorious canvas.
“Uhhhhhh.” The moaning was constant during episodes, brainless and loathsome. Holly had a sweet little voice on the rare occasions she employed it. That was what Janice wanted to hear. Even the persistent silence was preferable to the mind-numbing placeholder of uuuuuhhhhhh.
Janice crossed the kitchen and locked the door to the basement so Holly didn’t fall down the steps. Daniel had affixed a sturdy and complicated lock that no one in an episode would have a chance of opening. He was a better man for these times than spoiled, catered-to Damon. Mom would at least be relieved that Janice had insisted on keeping the grand last name of Augustine rather than trade it out for her new husband’s Feltz. Daniel believed it was because Janice was having a hard time letting go of her old life to live this one. While there was truth in that, Janice just preferred the regal-sounding Janice Augustine to plain old Janice Feltz.
The reflection in the glass had shown a Feltz. She needed to break out all of the cosmetics and do herself some justice. But the thought made her tired. The house had to be vacuumed, which was Mason’s chore but now he couldn’t do it, and she’d rather watch television.
THUMP.
Janice flinched. It wasn’t going to quit until the episode ended, so she’d better get used to it.
Mom would be spinning in her coffin, had she been within one, to see this modest home in Nebraska. Stained carpet, odd gray walls that were all different shades from room to room, chips in the linoleum, cloudy glass. But she had been made over into a 3, and so mindless in the early days of the infection that she slammed through a plate glass window and bled to death. It was better that she never had to witness the horror of seeing her daughter with unpolished nails bitten to the quick, hair pushed back in a sloppy ponytail, a T-shirt and baggy sweatpants that were fraying at the inner thigh. Married to the high school president of the UFO Club and chasing after other people’s children. Her own two had been 3s. It was better not to think about it.
Thump. Thump. THUMP. Crash.
She hesitated on cancelling the appointment. Maybe this episode wouldn’t be as bad. They varied from bad to really bad, from short to long to longer. Janice had already swept Holly’s favorite toys and princess clothes into the closet and locked it, so there wasn’t much in the bedroom for her to destroy. No pictures or posters on the walls to rip down; no hutch full of glass animals to smash. Both of the girls’ mattresses sat on the box springs upon the floor; the bookcase was particleboard and low to the ground. The crash sounded like she had tipped it over. That wouldn’t take long to pick up, just tip it back and return the books to the two shelves. Judy’s beloved books were in the laundry room anyway, so the destruction of the ones in the bedroom was inconsequential. The bars would prevent Holly from breaking the window. There was a lock on the outside of the door, but Janice hadn’t turned it. It would be a while before Holly figured out the knob.
THUMP.
Janice cancelled the appointment since the office insisted upon twenty-four hour notice or demanded payment in full for the missed treatment. She couldn’t predict when the episode would end, and paying the money for nothing would gall her. It wouldn’t have galled her before when she had plenty, she’d thrown money around then, but now it was a waste she wouldn’t tolerate. They’d reschedule for next week and it was no loss. The psychologist wasn’t helping much anyway.
A car started outside. Corey had sneaked out and was taking the minivan. Janice was annoyed, but it wasn’t like she could leave Holly home alone. Daniel would have to talk to him again about being polite and asking.
“Uuuuhhhhhhh.”
Oh, baby, she thought, and wondered if she sat on the other side of the door and read a book out loud if any part of Holly could hear.
Chapter Two
Corey braked hard as a knot of people stepped into the road without so much as a split second glance for cars. Yeah, traffic wasn’t what it used to be in days of yore, but it still existed. He glared at their utterly oblivious heads. One of them was leading a four-year-old by the hand. Nice example being set there. What do we do when we cross the road, honey? We just charge across it, Mommy!
Adults were stupid. He was going to be an adult one day and that was depressing as hell. At least he couldn’t imag
ine it, his hair falling out, his gut pooching over his sweatpants, his life becoming so dull that he got excited when the butcher had meat on sale. Wow! Saving is amazing. The adults in his life sat around and moaned about how things used to be done, and always found some kid to call over and say you don’t know what you lost. You can’t. You just can’t. You’re young. You can’t fully appreciate it.
It was so dismissive. He knew damn well what he had lost. He had lost his father, his friends, his home, and a date with the hottest girl at Turley High. It depended on the moment which one hurt the most, and right now, it was the girl. Her name had been Gray, because she’d been born with gray eyes and they’d never changed. They had science and history together in the afternoons, so he got to stare at her for two solid hours. Her hair was blonde and fell to her lower back in a shining sheet. Some girls with big breasts walked in a hunch, embarrassed and exposed by them, but Gray wore tight shirts and stuck them out there proudly. Keefer had honked them at lunch the second week of school and she’d slugged him in the nose with enough force to break it. As he howled and clutched his nose, blood spurting from his nostrils, she pointed at her breasts and then wagged her finger at him. Look-ie at these babies but no touch-ie, you fucking prick. She got suspended two days for assault and he got suspended one day for sexual harassment. That was messed up. Keefer had been a douche since first grade when he followed girls around at recess and lifted the backs of their skirts with sticks he found on the playground. He’d been sent to the office in second grade when he did that to the teacher. After that, he got sent back to the office six or seven more times for raising his hand in class and saying Mrs. Thong? I mean, Mrs. Wong?
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