by Haga, A. H.
Soon enough, we left him behind.
There were no zombies on the next street over or the next after that, but the moaning followed us.
“Where do you think they’re all coming from?” I asked.
Shadia was quiet so long I wasn’t sure she’d heard me, but finally, she spoke. “You noticed how most of them were young?” I nodded. “We’re just a few blocks away from a high school.” She didn’t need to say anymore.
The schools, like the stadium, had been opened as refugee centers for those thrown out of their homes because their buildings were evacuated, or for the sick after the hospitals closed their doors, full past capacity. Some of the dead had been too small to be high school kids, but I guess they were younger siblings of the students. Families did whatever they could to stay together during something like this.
I wrapped my arms around my chest, trying to comfort myself. The thought of family gnawed at the wall I’d formed around the memory and grief of my own family. I hadn’t been a big part of it for years because of my health, but I still loved them.
The street we were currently on was one of the main roads through town, so we could walk a long way without having to cross another road. That was good. I could sense that Shadia needed some time to herself. We may be less than a meter apart, but with me in the chair and her behind, we might as well be in two separate worlds.
I never wanted kids, but Shadia did. We’d talked about adopting before I got sick, but her dreams were flushed down the toilet because of my poor health. Her head must be full of thoughts and memories of seeing those dead children. What was she thinking? Was she happy we never grew too close to a little soul just to lose it to this world? Or was she sorry we never got the chance, and would rather have loved and lost, than not loved at all? I knew, somewhere in her heart, she always hoped I would wake up healthy and fine one day, and we could resume our lives where the cancer had paused them; that we could start looking into adopting again. Now, that dream would never happen.
Even when we reached another road that needed crossing, we didn’t say a word. I felt her heartbeat through her back and against my chest as she carried me, but we might not even have been touching.
We reached another road. Just up to our right was a roundabout. There were no zombies there that I could see, hear, or smell. To our left, another road went toward the water. If we followed it, we would get to one of the most open roads in the city, and it should lead us right to the freeway.
I turned and looked up at Shadia. She met my eyes. Hers were a little distant like she was lost in thought, but she blinked and came back. “I was thinking,” she said. “There is a bike road along the freeway. That should be free of cars, right?”
“What if there are zombies?”
“There might be zombies on every other road. We don’t know.”
“You think we’ll make it there?”
“Yes.”
“OK, then we do that.”
Her grim face was frozen for a second before she smiled. It lit up her eyes and made her look alive.
7
We followed the sidewalk around the corner of the building and down to another street, which we crossed without issue. The road continued unobscured for a while before we reached another road to cross. Here, the cars weren’t as packed, and Shadia could maneuver me while in the chair to get through. It made the whole process a lot easier. My hands had acquired a weak shaking, but it didn’t seem to get worse as we moved along, so I tried to relax.
I’d gotten so used to the groaning and moaning of the zombies that I didn’t notice right away when it got louder. I don’t think Shadia did either. We did notice when the wind turned and brought the scent with it.
As the smell hit, Shadia slowed our process to a crawl and grunted in disgust. The smell seemed to fill my mouth and nose, and for a moment, I was completely lost in it.
“What street are we on?” Shadia asked, bringing me back to reality.
From somewhere ahead, a heavy, rhythmic thumping sounded again and again and again.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the smell. “Løvenskiold,” I said, looking at the street name on one of the buildings. Shadia stopped. “Sha?”
Turning to look, I saw her eyes were jumping around the street in front of us, and she was chewing on her bottom lip.
“It should be OK,” she said, more to herself than to me. “If we haven’t seen them yet, they should be confined.”
“Sha? What’s going on?”
She snapped out of her thoughts but didn’t take her eyes off the street. Instead, she started walking briskly. “Eyes forward. Be prepared for anything.”
I turned but said her name again, worry and fear creeping into my voice. She didn’t answer but pushed a little faster.
The thumping grew louder.
Just ahead, someone had put up a temporary chain link fence, and an arm shot through the links, small fingers clawing at the air. Without slowing, Shadia pushed me as far away from the wall as she could, so close to the cars a mirror smacked into my arm and almost threw the chair off balance.
We reached the chain link fence, and I saw children, teens, and adults, pushed up against it. They were all undead. One girl was dressed in a My Little Pony sleeping gown. A boy was in a Spider-Man set. A woman was in her bathrobe, and a man was naked but for a set of slacks. They all were either in their socks or had naked feet. Their fingers grasping through the fence to get at us. A few more of the smaller zombies got their arms through the links and reached.
“Shadia,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“Eyes ahead, habibi,” she said, her voice strained.
I tore my gaze away from the undead, but not before I glimpsed something through their ranks: a bloody mess on the ground behind them. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like a zombie with its stomach torn open. It even lacked its legs and most of its arms, but its head was still there, and it was tossing back and forth, clacking its teeth and looking at us with empty black eyes.
Bile rose in my throat. I couldn’t stop it this time and threw up over the side of the chair. Fingers brushed the top of my head, and I jerked back, barely remembering to hold onto my hat and hitting my chin on the armrest and biting my tongue. Shadia never slowed down.
I retched, but nothing more came up. Shadia mumbled in Arabic and stopped so fast I almost flew out of the chair.
“Kit, come on, I need you with me.”
The urgency in her voice made me look up, blinking away tears. The road in front of us was blocked by a trailer. It had slid out of control and spun, so the back of it was embedded in the building on the other side of the road. Its nose was centimeters away from the building on the other side, the opening too small for anyone to get through. The way forward was blocked.
I turned, looking down the sidewalk. We could probably push down that way, but if I remembered the streets correctly, it would take us away from the road we needed to reach the freeway. It was clear.
The chain link fence wobbled as zombies pushed against it, and the thumping sounded faster and clearer, but I couldn’t place it.
Behind me, Shadia was murmuring to herself. Before I could ask what she was saying, she spoke up. “We need to climb.”
“What?” I turned to stare at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were on the trailer.
“We need to climb the trailer and get to the other side.” I wanted to argue that there was no way I could get up on that thing, but I knew there really wasn’t anything to argue about. Either we climbed, or we risked being taken by the zombies behind us, or new ones somewhere down the road.
“OK,” I said.
Shadia squeezed my shoulder and pushed me into the road, toward the nose of the trailer. Cars had stopped a little away, trying not to crash into it, making it easier for us to move.
The thumping grew louder, and I realized it was coming from somewhere on the other side of the trailer. I was about to stop the chair, but Shadia’s words
ran through my mind. It was this or risk meeting zombies somewhere else. I didn’t stop the chair, but let myself roll onward.
The stench was so strong I thought I might throw up again, but there was nothing left in my stomach. I was just glad the pain meds had kicked in before I spit them back up again.
“You first,” Shadia said as we reached the trailer.
Stone scraped against stone behind us, and we both turned. The zombies were pushed up against the fence, moving it forward with their weight. It would either topple or break enough so they could spill through an opening. No time to argue. No time to doubt. Just move.
I pushed out of the chair and almost fell on top of the trailer. Before I had time to right myself, Shadia wrapped her arms around my waist and lifted me up. I grabbed at the line between the window and the hood and somehow got support for my feet from the front lights. Appendages shaking from the effort, and with Shadia helping as much as she could, I managed to get onto the front window. I was on my own from there.
As I tried to climb, the muscles in my chest constricted and starting to cramp. On the ground, Shadia found a rope in one of our bags and folded up the chair. She tied the rope around the bags and chair alike before tying the other end of the rope around her waist.
The sound of metal scraping against metal grated against my ears, followed by the sound of stone against stone, as part of the fence was pushed far enough out to lose contact with the rest. Zombies spilled through it, seeming surprised to be free before they started moving toward Shadia. She didn’t hesitate but climbed after me. Long before the zombies reached us, she was up on the roof of the cockpit.
“Come on, Kit.”
I was panting, using every ounce of willpower and strength I had not to fall down. I knew the zombies could reach me. They would be able to grab my legs and pull me down to them, but I couldn’t move. Or, that wasn’t right. My entire body was shaking so much it almost dislodged me from my perch. I was afraid the shaking would take control if I moved.
“You have to move, Kit. Take my hand.”
I managed to turn my head to look at Shadia. She was reaching down for me, her hand resting on top of mine, ready to grab me if I loosened my grip. Gritting my teeth, I forced my hand to turn. It jerked and danced, trying to get away from Shadia’s hand, but she grabbed me around the wrist and pulled.
“Kick for me,” she said, and I did. With that boost, she was able to pull me onto the cockpit.
I slumped against her, my legs and arms dancing uncontrolled around me as I concentrated on breathing. My chest was vibrating, my diaphragm so tight there was hardly any room in my lungs for air.
“OK, it’s OK,” Shadia whispered against my hair, hugging me with both arms and legs.
On the ground, the zombies reached the chair and walked right past it, starting to claw at the car. The thumping was so close now, it felt like it was making the car vibrate every time it sounded, but that might just have been me.
After almost half an hour, my shaking calmed down enough that Shadia dared loosen her grip a little. All the while, she had been murmuring to me, trying to calm me. We both knew the shakes had to run their course, but we also knew that if I stressed or grew afraid it would get worse.
“Will you fall off if I put you down for a second?” Shadia asked, her lips brushing against my forehead.
“Why?” I managed through chattering teeth.
“I want to get our bags so I can find your eye-mask and headphones. Give you some rest.”
I couldn’t help the hoarse laugh. “Rest? Up here?” She didn’t answer, but I knew she was serious. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think we’re getting anywhere else any time soon.”
“Why?”
Her eyes jumped past me. I would have expected her to look at the group of zombies that had formed at the nose of the trailer, clawing and trying to get to us, but she was looking behind me.
I turned in her arms, my head jerking back and forth three times before I was able to hold it still and look. The road was a mess of cars that had crashed into each other, into the side of the trailer, and into the buildings on either side of the street. I finally saw where the thumping was coming from. A zombie lay squeezed between two cars, it’s bottom half was caught by the warped metal, and it was hitting the car in front of it, trying to claw its way free. I could see it had already started to tear from rot; its upper body would soon leave the legs behind. And it wasn’t the only one. Three more zombies were stuck in the cars, trying to break free. But there were even more of them wandering freely. They filled the street, and I saw bones on the ground, not a morsel of flesh or blood left on them, picked clean by the zombies now trying to climb the cars to get to us.
I turned back and looked at the zombies that had gotten through the fence.
“Oh,” I said as Shadia pulled me so close I had trouble breathing again.
We were surrounded.
8
As my muscles calmed down, I slid out of Shadia’s arms and wrapped into as small a ball as possible. Shadia rested her hand on my shoulder, her fingers like ice against my flushed skin, until she was sure I wouldn’t slide off the car and into the arms of the waiting zombies, before she stood.
I wanted to look at her, to see how she was doing, but kept my eyes closed. I heard her walk to the edge of the roof, making the metal under us vibrate. Her breathing strained, and something soft hit the side of the car enough to send a jolt through my bones. Shadia mumbled in Arabic before she started moving again. She walked to the side; then, she was gone. I almost opened my eyes, but I could still hear her breathing and her steps, so I didn’t. I trusted her.
After a lot of sounds and cursing, in Norwegian, English, and Arabic, she came onto the roof of the car again. By the force of her first step, I thought she might have jumped from the trailer.
“Here,” she said as she sat beside me again, her shadow falling over my face.
“Thanks.”
I blindly reached out, but her hands closed around mine and lay them down against the warm car before her fingers carefully touched my temples. I squeezed my eyes shut as she pulled off the hat and my glasses, shortly followed by her lifting my head just enough to slide the sleeping mask over my eyes. It was soft and smelled faintly of lavender. The scent immediately made me more tired, and I couldn’t help suspecting that Shadia had brought a bag of lavender to help me sleep. Next, she put something soft under my head as a pillow. It smelled like her, and I thought it was her jacket.
“I can’t put in the earbuds for you,” she said.
I snorted a laugh, remembering the time she tried it and almost pierced my eardrum as my head jerked at the sudden feeling.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I’d rather listen to you anyway.”
“Listen to me?”
“I can hear your breathing, almost hear your heart. That’s better than the static of headphones.”
She didn’t answer but took my twitching hand in hers again.
We stayed there for a long while, her waiting and me slipping in and out of a kind of hazy darkness. We called it The Fog. It happened when I was too tired for my body to be able to push itself any longer, and it just shut down. It was a long time since it had happened at the same time as a seizure. It scared me just as much now as it had the first time, but I had to push that fear deep down and not let it take root. If I did, the seizure would get worse. The seizure was a physical reaction to my body being pushed too far, but it could be affected by my mental state.
Every time I woke from The Fog, the first thing I heard was the moaning and groaning and clawing of the undead. Some part of me would start dancing a little harder as my breathing shortened from fear. Then Shadia would squeezer my hand and start talking about something. It could be the weather or what she wanted to do when we got to the cabin or even gossip about an author she liked. It calmed me.
Through it all, my muscles felt like they would burst with lactic acid, and my bones felt lik
e something was gnawing on them, like someone kept poking my skin with warm needles. It was nothing new, but it hurt as if fresh every time, and I had to hold back so I wouldn’t cry from the pain. If I cried, Shadia would be more afraid, and that would only make this harder.
After slipping in and out of The Fog seven times, I woke to a still body. I could feel the shakes in my muscles and waited for the slightest hint that they’d start again, but I stayed still. No one was gnawing on my bones, and no one was poking me with needles. I was left with a tingling sensation running up and down my skin, and muscles that felt empty and airy, except for the hint of a seizure lying deep within, waiting.
“How are you feeling?” Shadia asked, her hand squeezing mine again. She had never let go, even when my hand spasmed and the grip grew so tight it must have hurt.
“Hollow,” I answered, my voice almost as empty as my body. I was so tired.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew we had to do something about our situation. We couldn’t stay out here during the night, and I could feel the early evening chill set in, even if the car was still warm from the sun. Despite all that, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was too tired, and I just wanted to sleep.
“I know, habibi,” Shadia said, stroking my hair with her free hand. She didn’t say that we had to move; she didn’t tell me the obvious. She was willing to risk staying out here to stay with me.
I turned my face toward her and considered pulling on the sunglasses, but instead used my free hand to lift the lower side of the mask so I could look at her with one eye. Her brow was wrinkled and her jaw set, but she smiled with her lips if not her eyes as we looked at each other.