The macabre corpses grasped my attention and refused to let go. I wondered about the people in that pile, who they were, what they did for a living. I wondered how many used to be pretty girls, which ones were doctors or teachers. I wondered how many children in that pile would never grow up, how many of those kids’ last days and last hours were spent running and screaming in terror, chased by rabid white monsters.
I wanted to look away but was transfixed. I didn’t even blink. The image slowly cooked itself into my memory. It was the kind of vision that hardens your heart or shatters your soul.
“Don’t stare at it, man,” Murphy said.
“You snuck up on me, Murphy,” I said.
“You were in a daze. Your sesame chicken is done. You want to eat out here?”
“No fuckin’ way,” I answered. “Uhm, it’ll be safer in the house. I just came out to see what the deal was with the electric lines.”
I walked out into the yard. Russell followed. Indeed, there was a pole at the corner of the yard. A line ran each toward our house and the house next door. Three broken, blackened cables hung off the other side of the pole. I pointed, “What the hell?”
Murphy asked, “So where’s the electricity coming from?”
I followed the lines back to the house with my eyes as I walked farther out into the yard. Russell stayed with me.
“Looks like you’ve got a new best friend, Zed.”
“Whatever.”
The line connected to the house just under the eaves at the back corner. Looking up onto the back roof, I saw rows of shiny, dark gray glass. “Look, Murphy. Solar panels. All across the roof.”
Murphy walked away from the porch so that he could see onto the roof as well. “I’ll be damned. They really do work.”
Like a puppy, Russell stayed on my heels and followed me back into the house. I went into the kitchen, where Mandi had set the table for four, with a microwaved dinner and a cold bottle of soda at each place setting.
I plugged my phone in and left it on the kitchen counter to charge while I sat down at the table. Russell took a seat beside me.
“I think he likes you,” Mandi joked.
I rolled my eyes. “We should have picked a different house.”
Murphy and Mandi sat down with us and I started to eat. I felt a measure of relief when Russell picked up his fork and started on his meal. If he hadn’t been capable of feeding himself, I didn’t know what we’d have done with him. Civilization had regressed past the luxury of providing care for invalids.
Also to my relief, Russell showed no undue interest in Mandi. Whatever cannibalistic tendencies lived in the squirming little brains of the other infected, Russell didn’t seem to have those.
As we ate, I told Mandi the story of Jerome, which, of course, led to the stories about our escapes from the gym and the jail. Mandi told us a little about herself. She worked part-time at a daycare for special needs children and went to school at the community college. She’d lived her whole life in Austin, in a house that was now ash, in a neighborhood that was gone.
After we finished eating and sat around the table, enjoying a moment of anachronistic normalcy, Mandi asked, “Can I say something?”
“You’re too polite,” Murphy observed.
I nodded. “I agree with Murphy, but go ahead.”
“I just want to say that I’m sorry.”
“Say what?”
I asked, “What are you sorry for?”
Mandi answered, “I’m sorry for crying on the back porch when we got here.”
I said, “Don’t worry about it.”
She nodded and said nothing for few moments while she collected her thoughts. “All those people burned to death back there…Do you think they were…do you think they were infected?”
“I’m sure they were,” I lied. In truth, I had no way of knowing.
“Yeah,” Murphy agreed. “They were infected who got caught by the fire. The infected aren’t that bright.”
Mandi argued, “Smart people get caught in fires, too.”
“Mandi, it doesn’t matter, not one single bit,” I said. “Not to sound cruel, but they’re dead. We can’t do anything about it.” My voice rose, perhaps more as a way to hide from my own weakness than to scold Mandi for hers. “If we’d been here when it happened, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. We’re all alive in a world that isn’t like the one we grew up in. We need to figure out how to deal with it. If not, we’ll die.”
“Dude,” admonished Murphy.
Mandi looked down at her plastic tray and fidgeted with a noodle for a moment. When she looked up, her eyes held restrained tears. “You don’t have to be harsh, Zed.”
I took a moment to think about what I wanted to say before I continued. “Mandi, I don’t mean to be an insensitive prick, but our new reality is harsh and violent. We all know it. We’ve all dealt with it firsthand, or we wouldn’t be here.
“Mandi, like I said before, I know you can be tough. And I do appreciate that you’re such a sweet girl that you feel like you have to ask for permission to ask a question. That kind of overly polite bullshit behavior probably served you well before, but it’ll just get you killed. Now, you need to be that tough girl that survived all those days in that bunker.”
Mandi, with an edge in her voice asked, “Why can’t I be both?”
I said, “I’m sure you can. Just don’t be too polite to stay alive.”
“And who are you, Zed? What part of yourself did you give up to be tough enough for today’s world?” Mandi said it as derisively as her excessive manners would allow, which made it all the more harsh.
Murphy said, “Now kids. We don’t need to argue.”
In a calm voice I said, “It’s cool, Murphy. Mandi, I’m not trying to offend you. I’m really not. You seem like a really, really nice person. I wish I’d known you before all of this went down. But to answer your question, I came into this world hardwired for success, and I think Murphy did, too.”
Mandi laughed out loud. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Murphy scoffed, “This one might be good enough to listen to. Heh, heh, heh.”
I said, “It’s like you said this morning, Murphy, when you were talking to Mandi. You put a smile on your face and take the world as it comes. You don’t attach your happiness to any false expectations of reality. You don’t expect the world to give you a big house and an expensive car and fat wife—”
“—Hey!” Murphy cut in, “Who said anything about a fat wife?”
I continued, “—you’re not going to be unhappy without those things. You’re happy with what you have, not with what you think you should have. More importantly, you don’t wallow in the tears over what you’ve lost. Not many people are like that, Murphy.”
I took a big gulp of soda and continued. “As for me, I’m kind of the opposite of Murphy, but with a similar benefit. I had a pair of sub-optimal parents.”
Mandi giggled, “Sub-optimal?”
Murphy said, “He has a philosophy degree. He makes things more complicated than they need to be.”
I ignored them both. “I don’t get attached to things and people, like most folks. That’s to say that in yesterday’s world, I could probably have been considered emotionally unhealthy. I was too detached. In today’s world, that works well for me. All the despair and horror drift by without affecting me.”
Murphy disagreed, “Dude, I’m not sure that’s true.”
“It’s true enough,” I argued.
Mandi said, “I like Murphy’s approach better.”
I said, “You don’t have to pick one or the other, just find a way within who you are to suck it up and deal with today. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Then why didn’t you just say that?” asked Mandi.
“Like Murphy said, I’m a philosophy graduate.”
Murphy laughed.
Chapter 20
It was after four o’clock. I was in the upstairs
office since it had a window that opened to the front of the house and one that opened to the back. I sat at the desk, which, unfortunately looked out the back window and onto the grotesque heap of the dead. Russell squatted on the floor beside me. His inexplicable need to stay by me was starting to creep me out.
Murphy was leaning on the window sill in the office, staring at the vastness of the fire’s destruction. Mandi was in the bathroom downstairs, using the water out of the toilet’s tank to wash all of the crap off of her skin from her time in the bottom of the bunker.
Murphy said, “I think we should stay here tonight.”
“It’s as good a place as any, I guess,” I answered.
“But before it gets dark, let’s go through some of these other houses and see if there are any goodies.”
“Like what?”
Murphy asked, “What do you mean, like what? I don’t know. You got a hatchet and a machete earlier. That’s good stuff.”
“Murphy, we’ve got everything we need for the moment. There’s plenty of food downstairs to last us for three or four days. We’ve got nearly as much ammo as we can carry.”
“You’re not thinking ahead, Zed.”
That rubbed me the wrong way, but I put a thin veneer on my irritation and said, “Murphy, I’m fuckin’ tired. My head is still pounding from when I got blown up by the grenade.”
Murphy laughed, “Don’t be such a drama queen, Zed. If you’re a pussy with a headache, just say, ‘I’m a pussy with a headache,’ and we’ll leave it at that.”
“Fine. Let me check my phone, and then I’ll go with you. But just a few houses, okay? I want to be back before it gets dark.”
“Fine by me. I’ll go check on Mandi.” Murphy left the office and tromped down the stairs.
I turned on my phone and saw that I had messages. I checked Steph first.
Chapter 21
Steph: Zed, are you there?
Steph: Zed, are you there?
Steph: Zed, I hope you’re alive to read this. But I know the truth of it. If you’re not answering this then it’s because you’re dead. Everybody is. So I’m just writing this to myself. Dear Diary, I can’t stop crying.
Steph: The first two groups all turned. Forty people infected and shot. We killed them. I feel like my heart is dying. We just infected twenty more.
Steph: It feels like suicide now. Nobody is talking here. Everyone stares at the walls or out the windows. There’s no hope. No hope, only prayers and tears.
Steph: If by some miracle you’re still alive and you read this, you need to know that I’m in the next group to get infected. I’m volunteering. Goodbye, Zed. Thank you for being a friend. I wish I’d gotten to know you better. I know I’ll die soon and I’m okay with that. I don’t want to be in this world anymore.
“Shit,” I blinked away my tears and looked around. I wanted to do something, anything, but I knew there was nothing. The messages were hours old. Steph had lost hope. She was likely infected. She was likely dying or dead.
That thought left me with a hollow, black feeling that stuck in my throat. Life had been so much easier without emotional attachments.
I texted Steph back several times. I stared at the pile of holocaust corpses as I waited for a response.
God, the world was so fucked up.
Chapter 22
With hopes that felt unrealistic as soon as they bubbled up, I tried calling Amber.
No answer.
After the last ring, my text message icon indicated that a message had arrived.
Amber: Zed, is that you?
Me: Yes.
Amber: I can’t talk right now. Text me back.
Me: Why can’t you talk? What’s going on?
Amber: I’m trying to stay as quiet as I can.
Me: Why? What happened?
Amber: Things got really crazy then it got real quiet.
Me: Tell me what happened, exactly.
Amber: I don’t know exactly. I’ve been afraid to leave the room. What I know is that Felicity and Wilkins turned. They’re locked in a room down the hall. Another of the guys got the fever and they locked him up. Afterwards, there was a lot of shouting in the hall. Mark and Marcy were yelling at the other guys. There were shots then and I only heard Mark and Marcy’s voices. Mark started to run up and down the hall yelling and talking crazy with Marcy egging him on. It was insane for a while, Zed.
Me: For a while?
Amber: Not now. Everything is quiet.
Me: I’m coming to get you out. Right now.
Amber: No! Please don’t come here, Zed.
Me: Why not?
Amber: Zed, please don’t. Mark is crazy. He’ll kill you.
Me: No he won’t.
Amber: If you rush over here and risk your life you might not make it this time. If you keep risking your life, you’re going to get killed. And for what?
Me: To help.
Amber: Zed, we don’t even know yet that I need help. Mark and Marcy are probably infected. They’ve probably got the fever. That’s why they’re quiet. If I’m patient then they’ll wander off like all the other crazy infected do. If I sit tight for a few days, I’ll probably be fine.
Me: Fine. That makes sense. I hate doing nothing.
Amber: Besides, I might be infected, Zed. I might turn into one of them.
Me: Let’s hope not.
Amber: Hope is all I have, Zed.
Me: Hope is important. Hang in there. I’ll check in later, okay?
Amber: Okay.
Me: If anything changes, call. I have a full charge on my phone.
Chapter 23
The house next door yielded nothing. The neighbors had taken everything of post-apocalyptic value with them when they made their escape. There was, of course, a nice flat panel television, decent furniture, and plenty of clothing, none of which was of any value to me.
Would I eventually need a winter coat? Sure. But the world was my closet. I’d find a coat in the nearest house when it got cold. Not that it made any difference, but it was finally a tick on the pro side of my pros and cons list for the post-virus world—free clothes.
I smiled.
Murphy gave me a questioning look.
We moved on to the next house. That one left us all in a dark mood.
Prior to kicking in the back door, I beat on it with my fist, followed, of course, by Russell beating on the door as soon as I finished. It seemed like a good way to wake any infected before we made the mistake of letting ourselves in and letting them out. A man, a woman, and three children, all infected, came to the back windows of the house and pressed themselves against the glass as they howled their frustration at not being able to get their hands on us.
We hopped a fence and repeated the process at the third house. I beat on the door, expecting more infected. Russell beat on the door, too, but we got no response. So Murphy broke the door down.
Inside, the house’s floor plan looked to be the mirror image of Russell’s house. With Murphy in the lead, we searched the house, guns out. No infected were there to be found.
With the house clear, Murphy and Mandi started searching downstairs. Russell followed me toward the upstairs to look for goodies.
Almost immediately, Mandi cried, “Jackpot!” She liked that word.
She stood in front of the pantry, the first place she checked.
I shushed her and went over. I understood her glee when I saw the water. The water was a blessing that we all needed, and the bottles would make great little canteens for refill later. I tossed some in my bag and Russell and I went upstairs.
We started in a kid’s room, because I’d spied a school backpack there when we’d cleared the house. It lay on a bed covered with crumpled sheets.
With Russell observing, I removed some textbooks and notebooks from the backpack and stacked them neatly on the dresser. I don’t know why a tidy stack of schoolbooks was important to me. The back pocket on the pack held pens, keys, some change, a few markers, and a stu
dent ID.
I took a moment to examine the ID. Patrick Henry Dubois was a good-looking kid with a big grin. He must have been thrilled when they photographed him on his first day of ninth grade at the Science and Math Academy. The green polo shirt that Patrick wore in that picture was rumpled on the carpet along with a pair of kaki shorts, beneath Russell’s feet. A band instrument case stood against the wall. Posters of favorite bands and a college football team decorated the wall. A dormant computer sat on a desk. A kid had lived in this room, a kid who I’d taken for granted as dead.
I felt hollow.
I lay the ID on the dresser beside the book. I didn’t need to see his face. I didn’t need to know what school he went to. I didn’t need to know what grade he was in. It was all personal, humanizing information that made everything in the room real. It changed my activity from a scavenger hunt to a painful rummage through the possessions of a dead child.
I drew a deep breath and tried stifle what I was suddenly feeling.
Empathy for the dead and infected was an emotional luxury I knew I couldn’t afford. I had to find a way past it. I was having trouble enough paying for the empathy I felt for the living.
Russell complied when I asked him to stand still. Like a parent getting his child ready for school, I put the empty backpack on him and adjusted the straps. Russell wasn’t proving to be useful for much of anything, but he could at least carry his share of the load, a burden we were all going to have to get used to.
I searched the closet and found a twenty-seven-inch aluminum baseball bat, probably left over from the kid’s little league days. I picked it up and hefted it in one hand. It was long enough to be lethal, but light enough to be wielded in one hand.
I spent a moment debating whether I’d be better off with the machete or the baseball bat, for times when bullets weren’t the right answer.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 68