The primary advantage of the baseball bat was that there was no risk of it getting stuck in the skull of an infected, which could happen with the machete. A skull-stuck machete could be a life-ending dilemma.
In the end, I slipped the bat into Russell’s backpack, with the handle sticking out of the top. Nothing else in the room appeared to be of any real value.
The master bedroom held a big bed, a television mounted on the wall, and a closet full of the kind of clothes that were well-suited to the modern world.
A small pair of hiking boots found its way into Russell’s backpack. They might fit Mandi.
In the nightstand, I found a drawer full of medicine. Murphy’s insistence that we search suddenly seemed well worth it when I came across a half-full bottle of amoxicillin. I opened the bottle and swallowed two of the antibiotic capsules immediately. I looked at the crusty bite scabs on my arm. I was probably out of the woods on infection, but the antibiotics were good insurance.
The antibiotics, a big bottle of hydrocodone, some aspirin, and ibuprofen all went into Russell’s backpack. The prescription medicines I wasn’t familiar with, I left at first. On reflection, I went back and picked them up. Medicines could be of great value to the people who needed them, and the supply would eventually run low. At that point, expiration dates be damned. People on the maintenance drugs would trade away anything to get them.
I heard Murphy’s and Mandi’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
Murphy said, “You need to see this shit.”
He took me over to the window that faced the street.
“What the fuck?”
Murphy said, “Uh-huh.”
Mandi asked, “What is it?”
Murphy answered, “I don’t know. Some kind of crazy follow-the-leader bullshit?”
Several blocks up a street that came to a t-intersection with our unburned street, a line of about thirty infected were jogging in single file, following a serpentine path that was visible only to them.
“What the fuck?” I reiterated.
Mandi asked, “Are those infected? What are they doing?”
Murphy said, “Man that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. When I was looking out the front window downstairs, I thought I saw movement way down the street. Then I saw those Whites coming along, playing follow-the-leader up the street all lined up. Just like that. Man, they do weird stuff, but this is really creepy.”
Mandi scooted away from the window. “It gives me the heebie jeebies.”
Murphy, Russell and I continued to stare. When the line of infected got to within half a block of our street, they all looked to their right in near unison. The group split in the middle and they jogged in their lines across a burned front yard, systematically around the remains of a house and a burned car, peeking through each gap and into each hole.
“What do you make of that?” Murphy asked.
I said, “They’re searching. Maybe they heard something.”
“Yeah, but look, they’re acting like a group.”
“I see that, but it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, they’re all brain damaged. They aren’t that smart.”
With Russell standing silently beside me, I watched as the group of infected finished going around the house’s remains and jogged back into the street where the relative disorder of the two groups resolved quickly into a single line of infected. They resumed jogging a serpentine path toward our street.
When the group arrived at the t-intersection a few houses over, the line made a right turn and jogged off to the north.
After a few minutes, Mandi asked, “Are they gone yet?”
“Yeah,” I answered, watching the empty street.
“What were they doing?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are they learning how to work together?”
“I don’t know. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Murphy said, “Creepy, huh?”
Both Mandi and I nodded.
“Snack?” Murphy asked.
“Yes!” Mandi said enthusiastically. She probably had several days’ worth of calories to catch up on.
Mandi sat on the bed and Murphy dropped down beside her. Russell and I sat on the floor. We shared a big box of kid’s cereal that we ate by the handful and washed down with warm soda or water.
Mandi and Murphy rattled on about the infected while I thought about the behavior and tried to squeeze it into the context of all the things I’d learned. When inspiration hit, I said, “Have you guys ever heard of emergent behavior?”
Mandi said, “I don’t even know what that means.”
I told her, “I have an idea about what we just saw.”
Murphy said, “Hey, Mandi, pass that cereal over here. This sounds like it’s going to be a long answer, and I don’t want go hungry while I’m pretending to listen.”
Mandi giggled.
I said, “Emergent behavior is something you see in birds, for instance. Let’s say you have one bird and you want to understand everything there is to know about bird behavior. You can watch that bird all day long for years and years, from the moment it hatches until the moment it dies, and if all you ever have is that one bird, you’d never know anything about flocks of birds.”
Murphy was focused on his cereal, and making no effort to listen or pretend to.
Mandi though, was politely intent. “Okay, professor.”
I rolled my eyes. “When you see a flock of birds, they all seem to fly together. They move like one giant organism changing direction as one, going up and down, choosing to land and to take off.”
Murphy, who apparently was listening, asked through a mouthful, “Aren’t they just following the head bird or something?”
“No, that’s just it. They’ve done studies on bird behavior, and they don’t follow one bird. They all seem to turn at pretty much the same time. Nobody knows exactly how they decide that. It’s the same with fish. They school, and when they’re in a school, it’s like they stop being individuals and start being one organism. Again, without a leader that can be identified. It’s like they’re operating by consensus, but nobody knows how they come to their consensus decisions.”
Murphy said, “C’mon, man, there’s got to be one in charge.”
“Nope, they’ve studied the movement with video at multiple angles with computers. There doesn’t seem to be a leader.”
Mandi asked, “So the short version is?”
I rolled my eyes again. “The behavior of the group, that is, the behavior that can’t be predicted from observing the behavior of the individual, is called emergent behavior. There’s this interesting study this guy did with ants…”
Mandi cut me off. “That’s okay, Zed. I don’t need to know about the ants. Is there a shorter version?”
“But it’s really interesting stuff,” I protested.
“No, Zed. I’m good. You make my brain hurt when you start talking all of your mumbo jumbo.”
I huffed and stuffed some cereal into my mouth.
Murphy said, “I don’t want to hear about the ants, but let’s say that you’re right about this emergent behavior thing. Zed, what does it mean for us in a practical sense? Do we need to be worried? Are the infected learning how to work in teams, like packs of wolves? Are they going to become more dangerous to us?”
I said, “I don’t know. I guess that you could classify pack behavior in dogs and wolves as emergent behavior. I’m not an expert in this stuff. So I’m kinda guessing. Wolves evolved to hunt together successfully, and they’re able to learn how to hunt certain animals in certain ways. I don’t know if the infected are learning to work together, or if what we saw was just a manifestation of some kind of herding instinct that’s hardwired into the human brain. I’m going to guess that it doesn’t present any added threat to us, but I think we should keep an eye on them and see what happens. We are all in new territory.”
Mandi rolled her eyes and smiled, “Yeah, today’s world, not yesterd
ay’s world. We’ve heard that speech already, Dad.”
Murphy laughed, “I think they’re all just a bunch of Russells.”
I said, “You guys can be a pain in the ass.”
That’s when Murphy spotted another line of the infected jogging out of the distance. There were more in that group.
A lot more.
As we watched, the group separated into a pair of lines that intertwined like a living double helix as they came up the street.
“There are hundreds in that bunch,” Murphy said.
I nodded.
“Are we safe in here?” Mandi asked. “Is there somewhere we should go?”
I heard the sounds of the infected from somewhere behind us. I ran to the back window to look.
The group of thirty that had gone up the street had come around the unburned houses and found their way to the decaying corpses. I don’t know if the sounds were jubilant, but they were loud. They fell on the pile of the dead and started to gorge themselves on the flesh.
“Those guys must be starved,” I said.
From across the room, Murphy said, “I think these guys heard that, because they’re hauling ass now. Shit! They didn’t turn like the other guys!!”
“Stay calm.” I ran to the front window and looked out. The wave of infected rolled across the street and broke on the block of houses. They spread out and flowed between the houses and into the backyards. They became very vocal.
I heard them running along the sides of our house.
“Shit!” I nearly shouted. “The back door is open.”
“Oh, no,” Mandi burst into tears.
We all stood there for a second, frozen as the sudden danger of the situation sank in.
Murphy said, “The infected might bypass the houses and go straight for the burned corpses…Maybe.”
But as Mandi cried, and Murphy hoped, I’d passed hope and sprung to action with a few steps toward the door.
I was already too late. The calm in the house shattered when the clumsy sounds of the infected burst into the living room below.
Mandi wasn’t ready for another bout with danger. She fell to her knees, with her face in her hands, trying to cover her mouth and muffle her cries.
Russell just stood beside me with a blank look on his face.
I looked back at Murphy, who raised his M-4 and ran his free hand across the bulges of grenades on his vest.
Thinking out loud, I looked around and mumbled, “No, this isn’t going to happen. There’s got to be a way out.”
I looked out the windows. There was no way to escape that way. I looked around the room and at the flimsy interior door. Its protective properties were nil.
I looked at the landing at the top of the stairs. Could Murphy and I shoot them all as they funneled onto the stairway?
I spotted a framed-out square in the center of the bedroom ceiling.
The attic!
The house was old. The ceilings weren’t that high. It might work.
I pointed at the attic access panel. “Murphy, get Mandi up there, now!”
I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. I jumped out onto the landing. Over the rail on my left, I spotted several infected were hurrying up, likely prompted by the sound of my voice.
I shouted, “God damn! We’re out of time!”
I drew my pistol and my machete. The last thing I saw before tunnel vision narrowed my sight to the lethal white monsters mounting the stairs was Murphy, jumping onto the bed and pushing the access panel out of the way.
The house was old so that the stairway was narrow, perhaps the only sparkling crumb of optimism in a rapidly deteriorating situation.
A shaggy-haired woman led the pack of infected charging up after us. As her foot landed on a step near the top of the stairs, her head came up above the edge of the rail.
Without a sliver of pause, I swung the machete in a powerful backhand that took off the top of her skull. A fountain of blood exploded in the air. She stiffened, but stayed upright as those behind her pushed ahead.
My momentum carried me the last four feet across the landing. Another half-turn put me face to face with the coming mob.
As the dead woman crumpled, I swung my arm down and clove another’s skull down through the eye socket.
Blood was everywhere, as the beating hearts of the two dying infected pumped the last life out of their bodies.
The infected behind the dying pushed and howled. The woman’s body was pushed up by my feet with the guy crumpled on top. As the next one climbed over, she caught my machete in the neck and went down.
Russell caught my brief attention with a shrill scream, and swung down over the railing with the baseball bat I’d put in his pack. The bat connected with an infected woman’s head, but Russell was too uncoordinated to be much more than an irritating distraction. Still, he bounced his bat off the woman’s head again, and she stumbled.
With three dead infected and one down, it started to get harder for those below to push the mass. But the count of infected below was swelling, their frenzy growing. In seconds they’d scramble over the dead.
I was in a losing position.
Murphy stepped into my field of vision with his M-4 ready. He leaned over the rail and emptied his magazine down the stairs. In that moment, every one of those hundreds of infected outside knew we were there.
Firing the rifle was a mistake. That guaranteed our end.
Murphy yelled, “In the attic! Go!”
“But…”
“Go! God dammit!”
I spun and ran, shaking my head as I went.
Was Murphy sacrificing himself for the rest of us?
I felt my heart break.
I bounded up to the bed as a grenade explosion rocked the house. I fell of balance, bounced off the bed and hit the wall on the other side.
As I got up, Russell was standing on the bed, looking into the attic.
Murphy leapt into the room and screamed, “Get in the fucking attic! We only have a few seconds!”
I regained my feet and jumped up to the bed.
Murphy threw the front window open, pushed out the screen, and heaved a grenade.
I jumped and grabbed a two-by-four beam and hauled myself into the attic. Mandi tugged on my clothes to help me up.
A grenade explosion sounded from in front of the house just as Murphy ripped open the back window.
Russell screamed like an abandoned monkey and reached for the attic as tears poured across his face.
Another explosion rattled the house from the backyard.
“Jump, Russell!”
Russell waved his arms and bent his knees but was afraid to make the leap.
“Jump!”
Russell cried louder.
Then Murphy was on the bed, grabbing Russell in a bear hug around his thighs and lifting him up.
Mandi and I both grabbed whatever we could and pulled Russell in. As soon as his feet cleared the hole, Murphy hauled himself up.
“Get him quiet. Now!” Murphy hissed.
Mandi immediately put her arms around Russell and cradled his head on her shoulder.
Able to think of nothing else to do, I hugged Russell. He started to calm.
Murphy slid the attic access panel back over the hole and whispered, “It’s time to pray. Silently.”
Outside, the infected were howling and screaming, preying on the wounded. Downstairs, it was much the same, until the sounds of infected running through the house reached the top floor.
Murphy drew his knife, reached over and pushed it into my hand. His look at Russell told me what he expected.
Mandi’s face turned to anguish.
If Russell made a sound, I’d need to kill him as silently as possible. It would be him or all of us.
But he wasn’t a monster anymore. He was just like me.
Wanting to cry out under the burden of my choice, I begged the gods of every form to please keep Russell silent. I breathed as quietly as I could and sat as sti
ll as a statue. Our options were used up. Meager shreds of hope were all that remained.
Chapter 24
With an outside temperature in the low nineties, the attic was dangerously hot. If not for a couple of attic fan domes sucking the oven-hot air out, we wouldn’t have survived for long.
As soon as the noise from the room directly below us dissipated, Murphy withdrew bottles of water from his bag and gave us each one. We had to hydrate.
Thank God for our luck in finding those in the pantry.
Russell settled down and sat quietly beside Mandi, content to do nothing at all except remain in our company. The rest of us sat still and poured sweat onto the insulation below, despite expending no physical effort.
I returned Murphy’s knife to him, glad to be rid of it, glad to be rid of the mortal responsibility that it implied. Mandi glared at both of us during the handoff.
I wanted to judge Mandi harshly for her resistance to the possibility of killing Russell. Mandi was too kind. I wondered if she’d be able to harden her heart enough to survive.
I knew I’d spend a lot of time wondering over the potential immoral necessity of killing Russell to preserve three other lives. I wondered who I’d see the next time I looked in the mirror. Would it be Zed, the underachiever, or Zed, the child murderer? After all, that’s what Russell was, a child in a man’s body. But those were thoughts for another day.
I let my breath drain out of me.
I spent a long time staring into the insulation between my feet after that, deciding whether I was worth the effort of inhaling another breath.
The sounds of the infected downstairs, fighting over the carcasses of their dead brought my thoughts back into the now. Like the infected who were eating the immolated dead piled behind the house, those downstairs had to have gone hungry for days before happening upon us. Whether that meant that they’d run out of uninfected to eat, or if it meant the uninfected who were left had gotten good at staying off the dinner plate, I didn’t know.
I was coming to learn that well-fed infected were a lot less dangerous than the hungry.
An hour into our internment, the light coming in through the attic vents began to dim. An hour later, it was pitch black in the attic. Noises in the house below diminished significantly and finally disappeared. I pushed my flashlight into the loose insulation between the beams and turned it on. The dim light it provided was barely sufficient for me to make out the shapes of the others, but I couldn’t risk letting any amount of light leak out of the attic.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 69