“The electric stove just uses the current and the coil to generate heat,” I say, showing off. Hana plugs the stove back in. One burner turns bright red. We high-five.
Hana cooks little canned hotdogs and soup that we found in the cabinet. So awesome. For dessert I have a pack of donuts and some more M&Ms. I feel less jittery and weird. Again, when my head hits the couch pillow, I pass out hard.
When I wake, it’s morning. The rain didn’t come in the night. The storm is still building. There are huge thunderclouds on the horizon. They look like they’re standing still, waiting for permission to come crashing toward us. I can see lightning strikes in the clouds, a lot of them. It will be a bad storm.
Hana cooks hash browns she found in the freezer. They weren’t frozen anymore but not rotten yet. She finds a box of fake eggs in the cabinet, too. The only thing we are missing is orange juice and bacon.
“Can we stay here until a rescue team comes?” I ask her. It’s such a nice hideout. And with the storm coming I don’t want to be anywhere else.
Hana drinks some tea she’d found in the cupboard and stares out the window. “Yeah, we could.” She’s deep in thought. “You know, I haven’t seen anything in the air.” She sips her tea. “That’s kinda weird.”
“Why aren’t there any planes in the sky?”
“Not sure, but if I was in charge, I’d have eyes in the sky. Even if they were scared of the virus, a sealed jet at twenty thousand feet wouldn’t catch it, but could still take survey pics. Don’t they want to know what’s happening on the ground?” We sit in silence for a long time.
“I think we might want to stay here.” She sips her tea. “Maybe for a while.”
“What about getting to our families?” I ask.
Hana shrugs. “There’s a possibility they have evacuated the entire area. If the government couldn’t stop the virus on New York Island, then they may have forced the surrounding region to evacuate. They may not be there.”
“What do you mean if they didn’t stop the virus?” I ask, feeling a tingle up my spine. I want my cell to work badly. I look at the TV and think of ways to get it working. I start to get mad. I don’t even know if my Ma survived. Did she get out? Is she dead, or worried sick about me? I have so many questions. The easy going feeling I slept with is gone.
“Yeah, let’s stay for a while.” Hana decides. “It will be safer with this storm coming. Maybe we can find a radio that works.”
I smile at her. “I can make a radio. I made one with my dad a few years back. It was so cool. I made the radio as part of a merit badge. I don’t know if there is everything here to make one like we did, but I think I can rig the one downstairs to work. We’ll just have to rip out the circuit board that’s fried.”
“Boy Scout, huh?” Hana says. “You get to Eagle?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. I’m Life. But I still know things.” I smile and strut like a chicken.
“Let’s do it.”
Downstairs on the worktable next to the patched boat is an old, beat up, paint-splashed radio. I open the plastic case. I pull the wires from the circuit board and connect them directly to the diode and the power supply — which will work thanks to the generator.
With Hana’s help, I spend the next two hours remembering how the radio fit together. Finally, static flows through the speakers.
Before we have a chance to find a signal the gate at the end of the walkway rattles loudly. It’s being kicked or something. Hana runs to the window. I’m right behind her. There are four people trying to rip down the gate.
Hana pulls out her pistol and watches them.
Chapter 1.15
Ben:
I’ve been running longer than I thought possible for my fat ass. My cells burn at every level. I can’t hear anything around me but the thumping of blood in my ears. I stop and gasp for breath. My hands find my knees and I throw up again. I’ve never thrown up as much as I have in these past three days. I begin to think about how nice it would be to just ditch these dudes and go home. I would stock up on food and water and maybe find some more weed. I’d get as much booze as I could find.
Markus and Ian come back for me.
Ian reaches for me. I wave him away. “I can’t run anymore.” I gasp to catch my breath. “Just, can’t do it, dude.”
Markus looks around, wheezing like a steam engine. “And on the seventh day, God rested.”
We don’t get to rest. Some bitch starts yelling from the roof of a six story building. She’s got a kid hanging onto her leg.
“Help!” she screams. “Hey, help us!”
Ian and Markus run to the building. Ian flings the door open like an idiot. Bunch of do-gooders gonna get killed trying to rescue some dumbass chick and her snot-nosed kid.
Smoke pours from the front door. The building is an inferno and Ian isn’t a fool. He runs back to the middle of the street and yells, “Use the fire escape!”
She screams so loudly I expect the windows to shatter. “I can’t!”
Three walkers inhabit the fourth floor fire escape platform. They’re dumbfounded for sure. They don’t know how to climb ladders, but they pace back and forth like caged, hungry tigers. Well, fuck, if she can’t fight off a few of those ugly things she’s gonna get us killed for sure. “Leave them!” I yell. “She’s a goner!”
No one hears me. I watch Ian slip off his huge backpack and dash down the alley. Hero Ian pushes a dumpster under the fire escape. He jumps on the dumpster like some kind of cat. After pulling the ladder down he climbs up to the first platform. Monkey-boy do-gooder. Markus watches and prays. Maybe God would turn that walker into some weed so we could smoke it. Now that would be a miracle, more like a favor, for once. I look up to the dark clouds. “How ‘bout it, God?”
No response.
The glass door across the street falls from its hinges and smashes on the stairs. Walkers overflow down the steps like a gaggle of writhing snakes coming out of their den. I take a quick count. Six walkers, eight, no, ten. I run to Markus’ side as more appear out of the traffic jam, hatching from the silent vehicles and wobbling like baby birds.
“Hey, yo, can I borrow your bat?” I ask, feeling quite vulnerable. Markus looks and sees the walkers lumber toward us.
“You need your own weapon, son,” Markus says. He points to the alley where the dumpster was. “I saw a two-by-four over there. Make expedient use of that.”
I find the wood and stand on the sidewalk like I’m in the batter’s box.
More and more stupid walkers lumber toward us. There’s a crowd of them building up. “Come on, Ian!” I yell. “This shit is gonna go down any second!” I count twenty-one ugly bastards now. I wait at Markus’ side. We’ve got minutes before we’re surrounded. Thirty now. More stumble from buildings, alleys, and side streets. I fucking stop counting. “Dude, come on!!”
Ian yells from the fourth floor fire escape platform. “Heads up!” He tosses the walker off the platform. The walker hits the ground and kind of explodes like a water balloon. Blue shit goes everywhere. “Ahhh!” I cry. Some crap gets in my mouth! Markus is spared, conveniently sheltered by me. “You’re welcome, dude,” I snip. “Your Bible seems to be workin’ for you at least.”
There are two more and they don’t want to be tossed off the fire escape. Ian struggles and fights them off. He kicks and punches. Finally, another goes over the rails. Markus pulls me out of the way.
“Our escape is closing, Ian!” he yells.
We back into the alley, which is really fucking stupid because there’s no way out. Another dumpster and a twenty-foot-tall fence box us in.
The last walker goes over the side. It crashes to the ground, forcing us further into the alley. The crowd stumbling toward us closes off the entrance. “Shit, man. Where do we go?”
Markus and I climb onto the dumpster by the fence.
I look up at Ian. Seeing their way out, the woman and the boy fly down two flights of stairs. Fire erupts from the window facing the fi
fth floor stairwell. The woman and her boy can’t climb down to Ian. The window behind them shatters and black smoke engulfs the two.
“Hurry! Toss the boy to me!” Ian yells. They’re only one platform up.
“No!” she screams, choking on the smoke.
“Do it or die!”
The woman holds the boy over the metal railing and lowers him to Ian’s arms. Then she climbs over the railing and drops into him. She lands on him hard, knocking the wind out of him.
The walkers get closer to us, but they hesitate for some reason. Maybe it’s the fire inside the ground floor windows. They don’t like fire.
Ian, the boy, and Rice scamper down the fire escape to the bottom like Mario, Luigi, and Toad. Ian lands on the dumpster, takes the kid, and sets him on solid ground. He turns, as the lady, who’s a bit on the plump side, jumps into his arms. The walkers must smell them. They’re so close they lunge.
Ian, the kid, and the woman evade the fumbling undead and run to us. “We go over the fence.”
I had a feeling that was the way we were going, but I was hoping for an alternative.
Ian and Markus help the kid and the woman over the fence. The kid makes it fine, but the woman bombs the pavement. She screams bloody fuckin’ murder.
The walker horde reaches us. Ian and Markus start batting heads like they’re playing croquet or some shit. I leap up the fence like a god-damned teenager runnin’ from the coppers. At the top of the fence I turn to go down the opposite side when I catch a glimpse of the alleyway we just left. Hundreds of walkers jam-pack the space between brick buildings. My heart stops tickin’ just for a moment.
I see a tall, thin walker moving faster than the others. It has a radar fix on us. I drop to the pavement. Ian and Markus join us on the safe side of the fence and we run to the main road. I get one last look down the alley. I expect to see the bastards leap-froggin’ over that fence but they don’t. Through the slats I can see that they don’t really know what to do with the dumpster. They aren’t climbing on top of it, just pancaking themselves into the side. Dumb fucks. I’m about to turn and run when I see that tall, thin guy. He climbs onto the fence and stares at me through a gap in the slats. He looks with his eyes, even though they don’t exist anymore. But those worms see me. I know it. He cries out and awkwardly climbs the fence. The others follow him. Monkey see, monkey do.
I run and catch up to Ian and the others. Walkers pepper the street, but they haven’t condensed yet. So we weave around them easily enough.
A window on the third floor of a building shatters and to my fucking surprise, a walker jumps from the building, trying to land on us. He gets close, but misses. His body explodes on impact. Again, I get soaked and Markus remains dry. Kamikaze bastard! Another fucker flies at us, splashing his guts.
I slip on blood and body parts. I think I’m going to barf again. NO! I order my stomach. Stop with this throwing up shit! More fuckers fall and splatter around us. One almost hits me but I dodge it. Popping like they do is weird, like they’ve built up pressure inside their bodies. I know dead bodies bloat up, but they don’t look bloated.
We sprint past an ever-growing crowd of the most fucked up, sorry sacks of walking corpses I’ve ever seen.
Two blocks away, with the walkers way behind us, we slow to a fast walk. I’m hot and dizzy. I just don’t have a high tolerance for pain.
Markus lets the woman hold on to his arm as we walk. She’s got the kid’s hand. “Are you guys okay?” he asks. “What’re your names?”
She’s plump, but has a cute face. She has brown hair with dyed blond streaks. I look at her huge boobs and then at her designer nails. I’d do her. I stop myself from thinking about that. Millions of people are dead and now walking around with roots in their eye sockets and I’m thinking about banging this fat chick.
“My name is Rice,” the woman says, out of breath. We’re all out of breath. “This is Andy. He’s my nephew.”
“You guys don’t feel sick?” Ian asks.
Rice shakes her head. The boy doesn’t speak. His brown hair is matted with crap and he’s got dark circles under his eyes. “When the news said there was something in the water making people sick I locked us inside my apartment. When they said it was harmless... I don’t know... I didn’t believe them. I didn’t trust the radio reports.”
“That was smart,” Ian says. “They should have been able to quarantine the city. I’ve seen the government’s secret, red-label, contingency-five plans on the Internet. The ones that direct the armed forces in case of a biological attack. First order of business is to blow the bridges and tunnels to isolate the infected. If that fails, they firebomb the infected area. So far, no firebombs, so they must have succeeded in making a quarantine line. All we have to do is get there, spend some time in isolation, and move on with our lives.”
We continue walking. If Ian is right, then I’ll be hitting the drive-thru somewhere very soon, and finding something to watch on HBO.
Markus nods. “They had plans, but it was for an identifiable viral attack on the city. What they found was some kind of bacteria in the water. Those tap water pipes fed other areas besides the New York Island. To control this outbreak, they’d have to seal off a five-hundred-mile area, including parts of Jersey and South Brooklyn.”
“And it would have to be done in two days. That’s millions of people behind the lines,” Ian adds. “Tens of millions.”
Markus points to a group of walkers on an intercept course. “We have to run again.”
“Shit,” I say under my breath.
We start jogging, thankfully, at an easy pace. It’s so hot. I’m sweating badly.
“I know they blew the bridges. Before the planes stopped flying I saw jets and heard explosions, lots of them. If they blew all the bridges then we should find a boat to get us off this island,” Ian suggests. “Getting off the island is our priority.”
“Unless those ugly walkers can swim,” I mention.
“I know where we can find a boat,” Markus says. “Every year I do a youth retreat at a place called Swindler’s Cove.”
Chapter 1.16
Markus:
The flight to Tunisia is short, the landing rough. The airport is international and not a place I’d want to get lost. Signs in Arabic and French are everywhere. I have no idea what they say. I’m equipped with a Tunisian travel book that translates most of the signs, and I plan on hiring an interpreter. If you’ve ever been to a country that doesn’t speak your language, I’ll tell you, it’s unnerving to say the least. I hear French everywhere. The place is bustling. Thankfully, it’s easy enough to find my way outside.
I figure this land, being just north of the Sahara Desert, would be hot and dry, but there is a cool breeze, ocean smells, and bright blue skies. It’s only seventy-eight degrees, and there are lush palm trees and vegetation everywhere. I finally start to relax. I’m on a grand adventure, after all, and I’ve got God on my side.
I see a sign that’s slightly familiar; it points to the taxi area. I find a cab and give him a paper that lists my hotel. He takes me there. The roads are old but maintained, meaning they are narrow. Small cars and motorcycles zip everywhere — like traffic rules are more suggested than enforced. The buildings are dusty, cracked, and tightly packed. But there is a style, a feeling to them. They all work together in an isolated architectural standard that makes such bygone cities seem so beautiful.
My hotel is as nice as anything in the modern world. The outside looks brand new, five stories tall, fresh paint, and lots of decorative lighting. Reflective glass panels arch over part of the lobby. It’s a warm lobby with plants, rainbow colored lights, suited employees, and a comforting smell.
The bellhop helps me find my room and sets my suitcase on the bed. There’s satellite TV, a refrigerator, and a small kitchen sink. Perfect for an old man.
I eat curry lamb steak and yam and red bean stew at the hotel restaurant, which is unique, to say the least; I could go for some real green
s and some homemade gumbo or jerk chicken. I finish my tea and move to the bar to have a drink. Just then the stage at the end of the bar lights up and a beautiful olive-skinned woman takes the microphone. She sings in French next to a keyboard and bass player.
I wave the barkeep over. “Monsieur, Je voudrais vodka et tonique veuillez, Merci beaucoup,” I order in the worst French accent possible.
He slides me my vodka tonic. It’s wonderfully strong. Later, I asked the barkeep, “You speak English, young man?”
The barkeep nods.
“I would like to learn more about Islam and the history of this area. Where would you suggest I go?” I yell over the singing.
The barkeep cleans a glass while he answers, his accent thick, “I’m not Islamic. I’m Catholic.”
I’m taken back by his answer. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
“Not everyone here is Muslim. There are Protestants and Jews here, too. This is a tolerant country, contrary to what the West says.”
“I’m sorry for my assumption. I’m a preacher. I’d like to learn about how this area was affected by the Crusades. I’m on a learning expedition,” I say.
The barkeep gives me a phone number to the local parish. I retire for the night still feeling embarrassed by my ignorance. I pride myself on not being just another ignorant man from the West.
I call Marion from my hotel room. She says immediately, “You need to come home, Markus.”
“You have to be patient with me.”
“The other night someone broke into the house. They didn’t steal anything, just rifled through our things. They left a card on your desk. It has flames on one side and your name on the other. What does it mean?”
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