Project Pallid

by Christopher Hoskins

  “I SAID, GET BACK!!” I scream again, even louder this time, but she’s unfazed, scrambles, springs, and lands directly in front of me with a single pounce.

  I draw back, lunge forward, and aim straight for her head. Like I’d done with my dad, I don’t dare any other target. I don’t know what it takes to bring one down, and having already experienced the success—if you can call it that—of a direct head-strike, it’s my first move.

  It all happens so fast. The stake drives into one side of her head and out the other, and even I’m surprised by its opposite end, now coated in a thick film of white, pointed skyward behind her. And then, like a lead weight, her pale body crumples lifeless to the ground. Free from infection now, her collapsing weight rips the tape-wrapped end of my makeshift weapon loose from my hands.

  I’ve never hyperventilated before, but I think that’s what I’m doing. Or maybe it’s a panic attack. I can’t catch my breath. The trees are spinning around me. The air feels heavy, and it collapses me to the tar.

  Only briefly though.

  I’m quick to recover.

  Sensibility wins out, and I force deep breaths to regain composure. I’m a sitting duck, and if there’s one, there’s got to be more like her, still out there.

  I stand to shakily pull my stake from her skull, and it comes out with a sickening slurp before I scoop up my bag, leave my kill behind, and walk my bike down the remaining incline, until I’m only feet from the carnage I’d surveyed from on high.

  The picture is much clearer now as I creep along vehicles, noting passengers inside who were seemingly uninfected by illness, but who were rotting casualties of its victims, nonetheless. The stench is unimaginable when I step between cars and around palled-out corpses—most likely killed by one another as they competed for food. I poke each of them with the butt of my stick, just to make sure they don’t need its tip jammed through their skulls, too, but they’re totally lifeless. Their tattered clothes reveal more of their bodies than appropriate, if not for the circumstance, and their papery skin, thin and white, is nearly transparent; it clings loosely to even whiter bones and organs beneath it.

  The passengers of the cars are all in various stages of decay; the noxious smell of it hangs heavy and the flies swarm thick. So much so, that I have to pull a rag from my bag and tie it around my nose and mouth just to keep from gagging. From what I can tell, it looks like they must’ve all stopped at different times, and that all this didn’t happen simultaneously. Maybe one stopped to try and help the next—curiosity lured them in, but The Whitening held them forever. The thought begs me to consider whether I’m not doing the same exact thing. Whether I’m not headed down the same, morbid path. And that’s what returns me to the task at hand; there isn’t going to be anything here for me.

  Two of the cars are empty. I imagine their passengers escaped to flee on foot. Or worse, maybe they went white, and now they’re out hunting, too. It makes me pause to scan the surrounding tree line and to take second-look at the woman I just finished-off on the hill.

  And it strikes me that none of the rules apply anymore: that life is about survival now, and that no matter what I did before the outbreak, the game’s been irrevocably changed since then. When I grab the door handle of an empty, green, Ford Taurus, it opens easily. The scent of new car upholstery is totally unexpected, surprising, and in complete juxtaposition to the vileness of everything that’s contaminated my nostrils and lungs for weeks. It jolts my system, and it reminds me of a time when things could be new. It gives temporary hope, albeit remote, that things can be fresh and new again.

  I keep my feet grounded, for escape or attack, and lean into the car to fumble its floor for keys. I check the glove box, the visor, and the backseat, too. None. And when I get out, I leave the door hanging open; there’s no sense making any more noise than I need to.

  The other, empty car is sideways, nose-down in the ditch: a grey, Mercury Grand Marquis. An old one, too, like your grandparents might have—I doubt he, she, they, whoever owned it, stood much chance on foot.

  Its handle pops neatly up when I grasp it, and the door, much heavier than the car before, requires more might to pull open on rusty hinges. With a CREAK to wake the dead, it gives, and I climb aboard to gently close it behind me. But in spite of cautious maneuvering, its weight does most of the work, and it closes with a thunderous BANG!

  The commotion I make isn’t wasted on absentee ears. Seconds later, while I fumble in search of keys, the metallic screeching returns—from two directions this time—and a white blur springs from the woods in front of me. It closes the divide between us with wind-milling hands and feet: it lands on all fours, leaps to a sprint, and returns to four. I only look for a second, but it’s coming at me so fast.

  I search the floor like a madman, and I’m contorting myself to reach under the driver’s seat while simultaneously struggling to lock the doors, when a THUD! lands a second one on the roof of the car.

  The first reaches its hood just as my hand grazes the keys I’ve been searching for. They throw themselves at one another, tumble, roll down its front, and I immediately recognize the impossibly large frame of the second attacker as Ryan Hayes—star, football freshman of Madison High. I’d snicker with satisfaction, but he’s already twisted his rival’s head completely around, and now he’s crouched, sniffing the air, and staring vacantly my way through empty, white eyes.

  “Oh SHIT!” I yell, and jam the key into the ignition to start the Marquis with a single crank of the engine.

  With a spring to the air, Ryan’s back on its hood. He looks cock-headed in at me and pants deep breaths. His nail-less fingers are completely white, and they drip with the even whiter blood of his most recent kill. They spin and dig at the glass as I throw the beast of a car into reverse and punch the accelerator into the ground. It lurches back, jolts forward, and I hit the pedal again. It pulls further back and shakes him from the hood before it rolls forward into the trench again. When I slam the pedal a third time, the car flings back and comes to a crashing stop as it T-Bones the car behind me.

  Ryan flings himself back to my hood, and his screech forces me to let go of the wheel to block my ears from its painful pierce. In his pause, I throw the car into drive, crank the wheel, and pound the gas.

  I’ve never driven before. I’ve never even been behind a steering wheel before, so it’s all new to me—especially with a car that could double as a tank—and I have to let off the gas and tug the wheel hard right to avoid driving off the opposite side of the road. All the while, Ryan keeps firmly glued to the car’s top. Sliding back and forth, he refuses to give up so easily.

  It’s only when I get the wheel aligned that I slam the gas again. I hit 30, then 40, then 50, in seconds flat, and he slides from the roof, tumbles down the back, and rolls to the ground behind me.

  And as I get to the end of the street and come to a split-second stop, I catch a final look over my shoulder to see him leap upright and take off, scramble-sprinting my way.

  I bang a left, and I don’t look back.

  Ryan Hayes isn’t worth another second of my time.

  May 11th: 10:27 A.M.

  Like I said, I’ve never been behind the wheel before, and I might as well have commandeered an alien spacecraft for all I know about driving. I stop a mile or two from the end of my road and pull over to adjust the seat and mirrors the best I can, and to accommodate the fact that I’m only 5’5” and driving an iron yacht, built for a twelve-man crew. The leather bench seat is alarmingly white—too reminiscent of the rest of the whiteness in my life right now—and the seatbelt is completely essential for locking me in place at the car’s helm. I learned that at the first sharp corner, when I slid across the seat’s slick surface and into the passenger side.

  Repositioned and focused entirely on the road now, I’ve nearly mastered the art of keeping the beast between the lines, and I stick as close to center as possible. Its heavy engine hums under the hood, and I can feel its power run th
rough the gas pedal and into my foot. It feels good. Like driving’s a weapon, all its own.

  Most of the route to Madison is a straight-shot from Platsville with almost no turns at all until you get to town, so the ride becomes an exercise in patience, more than in driving. Having already mastered the art of gas, brake, and straight-shot steering, I only slow enough to creep by intermittent houses, and I eyeball each one for signs of life.

  It’s like everything dried up and blew away during my time underground. There’s none, anywhere.

  Some houses are boarded up with cars that sit in barren driveways. I pass a couple on the sides of the road, too: stopped, broken-down, whatever. But like the ones on my road, they only look like trouble.

  It takes another ten minutes to cross the Madison town line, and the houses become tighter grouped; the opportunity to find life becomes more likely. Still, all I find is the absence of it. There’s hardly a bird in the sky, moreover, people in the streets. But they’re there. And there’re plenty of them, too: hordes of pallid bodies, littering lawns and strewn across the sides of the road, some even in it, and I have to swerve my yacht in back and forths to avoid them.

  There’s no movement from any one. They’re all dead now—at the hands of each other. As rampant, white blood cells exhaust their hosts, they turn to outside sources for survival. Anyone or anything is disposable—especially competition. Or so, that’s how I’ve assembled it all. And when there’s nothing else left, and when the fuel runs dry, the disease implodes like a star, and it leaves behind the worn out shells of people I once knew. People I once loved.

  There comes a point in downtown Madison where, in spite of my best maneuvering, the collection of corpses becomes so dense that they’re unavoidable. Solutions flash through my head—like stopping to clear a path, or turning around to find another route—but each alternative is marked with its own perils and dangers that I can’t rationalize as worth the added danger. And so slowly, with soft-spoken apologies and grimaced teeth, I ease the Marquis over the dead in downtown’s intersections.

  “I’m sorry,” I whimper. “Sorry.” “Ooomph.” “Sorry again.” It’s disgusting, not knowing who’s under my tires as I rise and fall over the fallen. But given the circumstance, I have to imagine they’d understand, and that they’d do the same thing in my shoes, and for the greater cause.

  And, clear of the white landmines, I’m only blocks from Catee’s house. It’s just at the end of the road and a few blocks in. The excitement of finally getting to her brings me to the cusp of carelessness as my foot pushes the pedal closer and closer to the ground; the determined hum of the engine grows in suit. Lost in thought—of what I’ll do when I see her—of what I’ll do if she’s not there—I nearly pass the street to her house, and I slam on the brakes and screech rubber; the car lurches and I almost lose control.

  At a stop, I’m facing the wrong direction, and I ease the gas and pull the wheel to a hard left. I make as sharp a turn as the behemoth’s oversized frame permits, and U-turn it onto her block.

  The fallout here’s as obvious as anywhere else I’ve seen; the silent desolation of it all is exactly the same. Windows are boarded, front doors swing open, cars sit vacant in driveways, and nothing moves. Not a person. Not an animal. Not even the wind through the trees. It’s like all the life has been sucked from Madison.

  And, like downtown, Catee’s road is littered with the white and the fallen. But the few who took final fights to the streets are easy to navigate, and I don’t have to contend with the sickly thump of speed-bump bodies any longer.

  Two turns later, I ease the Marquis into her driveway and leave the engine to idle as I scrutinize the house and yard, and I plot my next move. It’s intrinsic to want to dive out and rush in—to throw open the door and scream to her that I’ve finally made it—but that’s foolishness, and I can’t risk exposure after I’ve come so far and gotten so close.

  The house looks almost exactly as I last saw it. With Mr. Laverdier gone, there was no one left to board it up like so many of the others I’d seen along the way. The grass is longer, obviously unkempt, but aside from that, their house looks, in isolation, as though it’s entirely unscathed by the surrounding decimation.

  Not to be too weighed down, I select a small knife from my bag that seems easy enough to carry, but because I’ve got no place to put it without stabbing myself, I opt for the tried and true—my stake—at least until I figure a more functional way to carry my arsenal with me.

  The heavy door of the Grand Marquis squawks loudly as I ease it open, and I close it behind me with as much silent precision as possible. I scan the yard and try to peer through the closed windows of her house, and I wonder if she heard me pull in. Why isn’t she rushing out to me with open arms? When I get to the foyer door, it’s unlocked, and I pull it open and tiptoe inside. The garage door to my right sits open, and I scan its guts: Nothing. No one.

  Her front door is locked, and at the risk of getting too loud by breaking the glass, I leave it temporarily to head to the backyard and to the eave where I’d seen her retrieve their spare key a dozen times before. Luckily, it’s still there. And back at the door, it slides into the chamber and the locks pops loose. It swings inward all on its own, as if it’s inviting me in.

  Her house, like everything else since my surfacing, is uncommonly quiet to the point of discomfort. Uninviting before, its desolation has taken on an entirely different and magnified interpretation of the word. It feels like I’m doing something unlawful by walking in alone—like I’m breaking and entering. But then again, like carjacking, life—or whatever this is—is lawless now. It’s about survival. And my only job is to ensure that hers is safe.

  “Catee?” I softly ask the empty air. Aside from the vacant garage and the absent boxes from the hall, everything looks as it always had.

  “Catee???” I repeat, and inch closer and closer to her bedroom door.

  One hand on the knob, and with my stake propped against the closest wall, I knock gently. “Catee … it’s Damian …” I say in a hushed whisper. “Catee? Are you in there?”

  With no response, I turn its knob and the door pops open.

  The room’s empty.

  I step inside for a better look: under the bed, in the closet, she isn’t there. Dumbfounded, I stand in its center. What next? Where she could be? Is she okay, wherever she is? And then I see it: a handwritten letter that sits unfolded, on her desk. My name screams from its top in a handwriting that’s so familiar it brings tears to my eyes. It’s the first I’ve heard from anyone in so long, even if they are just words on paper, and my newfound hardness melts some; I can feel some of the soft Damian returning, but I shake him off. Not here. Not now. That Damian’s dead to me now. He’s of no use in this world.

  Damian,

  I don’t have much time. He broke my phone and he’s taking me away with him. I tried to stay and wait for you, but I can’t. I don’t have a choice.

  I hope we find each other before it’s too late. I’ll always remember you.

  I love you.

  Catee

  I can’t stop myself from becoming lost in the letter. I read it again, hold it tight, and I smell it in search of her scent. And with a sigh to release the air I’ve held deep in my lungs, my heartbeat returns, my eyelids open, and my reflection stares at me from above her desk.

  The paleness of my confinement is still there. My hair’s disheveled, and my complexion’s marred with caked-on dirt that’s streaked in trails of salty tears that I’ve too routinely shed. But there are none left in me to offer their dried-up beds. There’s only rage inside me now. A fiery one that burns behind the hardened stare I shoot at my own reflection.

  My clenched hands come undone. I lift the mirror from its hook, crash it to my knee, and shatter it to a thousand shiny fragments that clink to the ground. I hurl its frame across the room—hard enough that it smashes into her bedroom window and wedges itself there—before I pick-up the letter, refold its creases
, tuck it away, and storm from her room.

  My spear’s hurled into the back of the car, and I slam its door shut. Then the front one, too, as I climb aboard my Grand Marquis—totally ambivalent to the possibility of attack—not even worried about defending myself anymore. Why should I? I’ve got rage on my side now: untethered, unfiltered rage to keep me going, and nobody and nothing will stop me.

  Chunks of Mr. Laverdier’s lawn spin from under the heavy tires of my land yacht as I tear across it and smash his FOR SALE sign from its post. It clangs to the hood, shoots over the roof, and it clangs to the ground behind me.

  It’s just an empty house now.

  It’s never been, and it’ll never again be, anyone’s home.

  May 11th: 11:42 A.M.

  The ride to the university isn’t far—a few miles at most—and it isn’t unique to what I’ve seen elsewhere. As expected, its dense population has created even more victims, and the shredded bodies of the pale and maimed line the way there.

  Nicole and I aren’t what you’d classify as the best of friends—at least, not on the surface. But to judge us by dinner table demeanor alone, fails to address the deep-running roots we’ve got. It’d be like assessing the beauty of a tree in the dead of winter and failing to recognize its cyclical nature. We’ve had our ups and downs—more downs than ups as we hit our teens—but that’s true of any brother and sister. The strength of our bond runs much deeper than any snapshot can provide, and it’s built on the isolationism we both felt being raised alone, but together, in rural Platsville.

  She and I built our first, then our second, then our third, fourth, and fifth cabin in the woods together. And we’d spent countless summer days riding bikes and getting into more trouble than I can say. We’d been each other’s support systems long before we’d made outside friends, and long before their pressures and guilty pleasures pulled us further and further apart. Despite everything, Nicole’s my sister. She always has been, and she’ll always be. And with my dad gone now—my mom, too, in a sense—Nicole might be all the family I’ve got left.