Bangkok Z

by Stephen J. Carter

  * * *

  Luc was as good as his word. The repast he put before us was not like any farang food I’d had before. Maybe the events of the last 24 hours just made us more amenable. Whatever. The sauces disguised the fact it was entirely vegetarian, which under the circumstances no one objected to. What’s more, we knew it might very well be a while before we ate again in such style, so we savored every mouthful. Surprisingly nobody was very eager to hear of our discoveries. Their attitude seemed to be: we’ll hear your bad news soon enough, let’s not ruin a possible last supper. I didn’t blame them. Natt, though, had trouble sitting still. Finally Luc sat back and turned to me.

  “Okay, tell us!”

  I turned to Natt, yielding the floor.

  “First, there was very little on the zee’s. The internet crashed soon after the first reported turnings. There’s more on the pandemic. Second, we can’t prove a link between the zee’s and the pandemic, but two such unprecedented events happening in the same 24 hours. It’s very unlikely that’s a co-incidence. Okay?”

  The others nodded.

  “The pandemic is over. It was a true one-off cataclysm. It seemed to appear simultaneously in dozens of major cities. So it was instantly worldwide. I’ll describe it because it looks like the first undead turnings were the tail-end of that disease vector.”

  “You mean people died from the disease, then came back as zee’s?” Luc asked.

  “That’s how it looks,” Natt confirmed. “So understanding the disease could help us with the zee’s in ways we can’t predict. Except now the disease is done, so we likely won’t learn much more.”

  “How many people are dead?” Fai asked.

  “Almost everyone,” Natt replied flatly. “If we extrapolate, at most sixty or seventy million survived.” She fell silent after that.

  Less than one percent of us are left.

  I picked it up from there. “The infecteds fell into a coma, and after about six hours, death. Eighteen hours later, for some of those – reanimation as zee’s.”

  “Most of the world’s people are dead,” Onteera said. “Some of those came back as zee’s, and only a handful of survivors are left … That’s how the world stands now?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “In our last hour online the first bite victims were reported. The zee’s likely outnumber survivors ten-to-one.”

  “Six hundred million of those damn shakers!” Fai blurted.

  “But if the bodies in the Terminal were infecteds, and they haven’t turned yet, then that means they won’t turn,” Onteera said. “Right?”

  “As far as we know, yes,” I said. “But the number of zee’s here will increase … when they find victims to bite.”

  “Among the survivors?” Luc asked.

  Natt and I both nodded.

  “Do they need us, for food?” Fai asked. “Or do they just come after us for some other reason?”

  She had me there. “We don’t know, yet.”

  Then Behrouz surprised us all. “It opens up many questions,” he said, for all the world like a seminar speaker. “If they need us as food – they won’t survive long, given our numbers.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “But I think they don’t need us,” he continued, turning to Fai. “They attack out of a compulsion, some misplaced instinct.”

  I saw Fai suppress a half-smile. “Okay.”

  “You know what really terrifies me?” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “I’ll be scared if the zee’s ever become normal.”

  “Normal how?” Fai asked, frankly curious now.

  “Normal – you know, conscious, self-aware. Like us.” He visibly shuddered.

  He has a way of asking brutally uncomfortable questions, which might be something we’ll need in the coming months.

  Natt and Luc had gotten up and walked over to the thick windows that lined the far wall, and pulled the venetian blinds open. It looked out on the western runway, the roughly-maintained fields beyond, and Suvarnabhumi’s sturdy fence beyond that.

  “There’s a good perimeter fence here,” Natt said to no one in particular.

  I stood up and joined them.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, though I had a fairly good idea.

  “Why not just stay here?” she said suddenly.

  The others got up and joined us.

  “Because there are zee’s here,” Fai said. “And where there aren’t zee’s, there are dead bodies.”

  “And there’s nothing here,” Onteera added.

  I sat down by the window, the setting sun behind me comforting, maybe because it was so normal.

  “Where would you go?” I asked Fai, curious.

  “An island.”

  “Why?”

  “To escape all this joy and good cheer!”

  “Actually, that’s appealing, an island I mean,” Luc said. He was probably imagining a tropical beach, palm trees, the whole nine yards.

  “And once we clear it of zee’s,” Fai added, “it’ll stay clear!”

  I had to admit, that too was appealing.

  “Fresh, oceanswept, clean air,” Luc said. Oh brother.

  I turned to Onteera. “What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s find a gated residence somewhere outside Bangkok, but close enough we can get supplies.”

  “Shop till you drop?” Fai asked. Onteera blew her a kiss.

  I looked out towards the fence. “Why stay here, Natt?”

  “Because it has a perimeter fence. Zee’s are a problem now, but packs of soi dogs soon will be.” Street dogs.

  She paused to let this new problem sink in.

  “And because it has power,” she continued. “It has two big gennies and the fuel to keep them running for a month at least.”

  Luc leaned his head to one side. “And water comes here from a tower two miles further east. We can likely secure that source.”

  Onteera nodded. “And that means we won’t lose the showers. What about the sewers?”

  “They must go to the Gulf, twelve miles south,” Luc added.

  “But the bodies here,” Fai objected.

  Luc sighed. “Yes, there are thousands.”

  “Well, at least they won’t be turning,” Natt said.

  “We’d have to get rid of them somehow,” I said.

  “Or maybe,” Luc said slowly, “just a way to accelerate decomposition.”

  “How?” Natt asked.

  “Well, hydrofluoric acid would do it, but it’s fairly toxic. And it dissolves a lot more than just dead flesh. Sodium hydroxide would be better.”

  He looked at our puzzled faces.

  “We’d have to move the bodies. But if we had one of these chemicals, the bodies would decompose.”

  “How fast?”

  “A few days.”

  “It would be a toxic waste site here,” Onteera said.

  I leaned back. “We’ll face the same problem wherever we go,” I said.

  “Sodium hydroxide is just lye,” Natt said. “I say we tractor the bodies to the perimeter, and douse them with lye. They’ll be out of sight, and the health hazard is gone.”

  I looked around at everyone. “What do you want to do? If we do this, we can stay here for a few weeks. Anyway, until we find an alternative.”

  Natt hung back, letting the others make up their own minds.

  Luc nodded slowly. “I vote we stay.”

  “Once the bodies are gone,” Onteera said, “it should be okay, I guess.”

  Behrouz, our resident professor, looked around the large dining room. “It suits me.”

  I looked at Fai.

  “We have a hung jury, your Honor!” she said with a laugh. “Sure, let’s stay. I always dreamed of living in an airport!”

  Natt stood up. “I’m glad that’s settled.”

  “Tomorrow we can head into Bangkok and get those chemicals,” I said.

  I felt okay, hopeful even. What can I say? Mo
st of what we thought we understood about the zee’s turned out to be wrong.

  Hindsight is a bitch.

  4 Into the Wild

  A new day. Natt, Luc, and I sat high in the cab of the truck from the Operations lot. The others stayed back in the west concourse, making modifications to the lounge. Sure, why not. Behrouz found an old Thai Yellow Pages and got us the address of an industrial park, for the chemicals. So that’s where we were headed. And somewhere else after that, I decided during the night.

  We were barreling along the shoulder of one of the feeder expressways into the largely dead metropolis of Bangkok. For some reason the local roads around the airport had been mostly clear. That wasn’t the case on the expressway. We were weaving from lane to shoulder, back and forth, dodging overturned cars, fishtailed trucks, and buses half-on half-off the highway. The further west we got the more clogged it was. And we were dodging bodies too. Dead infected lay contorted and stretched out where they had fallen – around vehicles, on sidewalks, in buildings. In some places the undead could be seen eating dead infected. There were far more infected corpses than there were zee’s, just as there were more zee’s than us.

  “We may not get through,” Natt said from the driver’s seat.

  “We’ll walk around any obstruction, grab a new truck, and just keep moving.”

  The road had clogged again, so we got out and walked on. As a joke Natt chose a green and yellow Bangkok taxi. I sat in the front by Natt and set the meter.

  We did several more portages around pile-ups of infecteds and cars. A few times we crossed over the median and motored along on the wrong side. The constant weaving in and out, the gearing-down, the watching for zee’s wandering the byways – it started to wear us down.

  Eventually we had to abandon the expressway altogether, the vehicle pile-ups became bigger, the portages longer. The carnage of broken, twisted, torn infecteds almost felt worse than dodging zee’s. Almost. We’d occasionally see two or three moving about between the cars. More parasites than predators, they were content just to graze on infected. But occasionally some did take it in their heads to come after us.

  I had the rifle cinched by a short releasable strap, its barrel crossing my chest in an up diagonal. I could rest a hand on it as we walked. Release, safety off, aim and fire. After a bit of practice it took no longer than two seconds.

  The three undead appeared around a corner about twenty feet ahead of us, and came on fast. I released the rifle and got off two rounds, hitting the first in the shoulder and head. He went down. I caught the second in the throat, he stumbled, and started crawling. Natt and Luc had their Glocks out, but hadn’t fired. Natt swore and grunted, and shot. She caught the third zee in the forehead. He went down. No one shot the crawler again. It was over in about four seconds.

  We knew we couldn’t avoid the undead entirely. We didn’t expect to. We had no idea how easy things had been for us so far. Later that day it got much worse.

  We agreed to get the chemicals later, and head first to a shop off Phra Khanong in talat nam, the floating market – not far away now. As our next ride Luc chose a tuk tuk, a popular 3-wheeled Thai vehicle, like a golf cart but smaller, with a makeshift roof. Natt and I were in the back as he zig-zagged down wide avenues. In a crowded city like Bangkok tuk tuks are functional. They’re maneuverable and narrow, but they’re also low to the ground, which made us vulnerable. Sitting with the rifle in my lap, I was ready for zee’s. What I wasn’t ready for was a pack of soi dogs, gone fully feral. They’d gorged on infected, their stomachs were full, distended, so they should have left us alone. Whatever the reason they heard us and came on fast. I heard their howling beyond the median, ahead of us, but I couldn’t see them for obstructions in the road. An instinct gave me a moment of vertigo, a strange silence, and the world came crashing back … and I knew.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  I knew we had to get away, to a building or just up, out of reach. We were in the inside lane by the median, away from the worst clusters of infected along the sidewalks and storefronts. Bangkok’s rapid transit runs on elevated tracks about sixty feet up, and covers several of the main thoroughfares. We’d just passed Udom Suk, a Skytrain station about 50 yards back.

  “Come on!” I shouted as I climbed out and ran off towards the station.

  Natt and Luc were right behind me, and I could hear the pack, still over beyond the median. I turned and saw the lead dog breach the median’s hedge, about a hundred feet behind. We sprinted up a flight of steps to the first landing, I swiveled and brought the rifle around as Natt and Luc tore past. Safety off I fired a 3-shell burst, and another, catching the two lead dogs. They hurtled back toppling two of the others, but another leapt up and over. Slipping on a blood-spattered step it sheered sideways and scrambled up. I turned and fled up the third flight. As I bolted through the floor-to-ceiling turnstile barrier I saw another seven or eight dogs come bounding over the top step. They gyrated back and forth before the barrier, watching us intently, leaping forward and back. We scrambled up to the train level. A train was sitting in the station, its doors closed, its cars full of dead infected. We ran to the front, got down on the tracks, and started walking. I thought the dogs would not get past the barrier. I was wrong. Somehow they found a way.

  Six more leapt down and were soon about fifty yards behind.

  “Persistent, aren’t they?” Luc said.

  He was acclimating fast. We had talked earlier about keeping the threats in separate boxes in his mind, taking it an hour at a time. We kill to survive, there’s no choice really. We choose the good when we can, but we’ll have to do stuff we wouldn’t normally do. Natt and Fai both understood. But they relied on me to push them, take them where they wouldn’t normally go.

  The dogs had stopped. Yes, think it over.

  They turned and picked their way back. We sat and watched as they spent several minutes trying to jump back up to the platform. They needed to take a run and leap off their hind legs, but the track ties made that hazardous. Time after time one would set off on a run, only to fall ignominiously between the ties. Eventually the most daring in the pack made it up, battered and bruised. He waited for the others, not looking happy at all. Soon after that they were gone.

  I looked up at the buildings around us. This far to the east most only had four or five floors. The high-rise city core further west was fairly small compared to greater Bangkok.

  “It’s two more stops from here,” Natt said.

  “Let’s just stay up here and walk it then,” I agreed.

  “It’s sort of a nice day,” she said.

  Luc’s mouth quirked up. “We just escaped being mauled by a pack of rabid dogs.”

  “Yeah,” Natt pushed out her lower lip, a picture of sober reflection.

  I laughed.

  Luc looked vexed for a moment.

  “You two sort of freak me out,” he said.

  “I know we do,” Natt said. “We should freak you out. Especially Toey.”

  We laughed again.

  She bumped her hip against him.

  Luc will come round to this zee business, I realized. He can’t accept yet that everything he knew is gone forever, he knows it but he’s not living it yet. I smiled, knowing that Natt would set him straight, bit by bit.

  If I can keep them all alive, I thought, and shivered for the first time that day.

  Natt glanced at me, giving me a look. I swear there are times she can read my mind.

  “Let’s pick up the pace,” she said. “Are you sure you want to see the floating market?”

  I nodded. It was something we would need.

  There was something about our short-long steps on the train ties. I kept glancing at the empty streets below, at the absence of people walking and cars moving. I half-closed my eyes, and just opened myself to it. I felt okay. I felt somehow that we would get through this. How is that even possible, thinking that way now?

  We descended the stai
rs at Phra Khanong, looking about for zee’s and dogs. My rifle unstrapped, I stood ready at the bottom as Natt ran ahead to a Mercedes. She looked back and waved, we ran to join her. She held the door and bowed us into the spacious back seat, then slid in the front. She pulled away fast, and turned. The buildings here were taller, the streets less obstructed. A few times she used the car’s weight to nudge lighter vehicles out of the way.

  Natt knew the way from our previous trips here. In cities built on river deltas and tributaries the earlier strata of their history endure longer, old ways settle in pockets and byways of the river itself, and there – survive. The past is not as thoroughly lost. The old lanes and streets of Bangkok survive because they clustered along Thailand’s royal river, mae-nam Chao Phraya.

  Natt drove under an expressway, turning into a riverfront area where open-air floating markets had always thrived. We got out and walked along the wharf. About forty feet from shore there began a dense area of low wooden structures, built on barges. I looked closer at the water and saw several bodies floating face-down – infected. We looked further along and saw many more.

  A wooden pier that reached out from the shore took us to the nearest of the barges. We stepped onto a narrow bamboo course, and made our way among connected courses into a maze, a floating world. Wooden ladders reached down to the waterline, and early each morning would have been met by market boats. I could recall markets like this in Surat Thani, smaller, poorer, and more densely packed.

  Close your eyes and the aromas of a plethora of fruits and spices waft by. Or stop your ears and see the colors! I missed these markets during my years in Toronto. I’d miss them till my dying day now. This new silence jostling with my memories made it seem a grim place – still, silent, colorless. The beginning of decay was everywhere. The smell of the infected hung heavy, but I saw no zee’s.

  We reached a long open section of water, floating structures loomed on both sides. We climbed to an upper walkway, narrower than those below, running from building to building. We got about half-way along that, and turned into an open, narrow room. Its floor, as uneven as a woodland path, led to a single heavy door at its far end. I pulled out a key my friend had given me, opened the room, and we stepped hesitantly inside. It was mostly a living area, but along one side was a narrow inset wall like in old libraries. The inside of that held rows of small drawers. I went to one and pulled it out. I looked inside and smiled. It held a small pewter thep, an angel carving, left by the woman who had lived here. Beneath that was a small felt bag. It held about twenty home-pressed, cured, aged pellets, made from the one herbal hybrid I knew of that could safely release a subconscious theta state. The pellets’ potency and efficacy would increase with time. I zipped the bag in my breast pocket.

  “We came all this way for that?” Luc asked.

  “This is a species hybrid my friend grew – one of many,” I said.

  “Who was this friend?” he asked.

  “Ajarn Somkid, a scientist, professor, and ex-monk. He created many compounds over the years, which he usually stored here.”

  We set off to return to shore.

  “He lived here?” Luc asked, surprised.

  I shrugged. “For a time, with the woman who lived here.”

  We turned a corner and the riverbank came into view. I went utterly still.

  All along this section of the Chao Phraya, silhouetted against the overcast afternoon sky, were a mass of zee’s. Each time I saw them they seemed more aware, less confused, more ready to attack. And once they set off they had a shorter period of sideways approach, a shorter prelude to full attack.

  I felt it immediately. I pushed Natt and Luc further back along the course. The zee’s saw us and reacted. We turned and ran, leaping to the next barge. Each barge was held to the next by a jury-rigged car hitch. In principle barges sometimes needed to be detached, during monsoon season or if a barge was taking water. But the hitches I’d seen were rusted shut.

  I pushed them on, leaping onto the course of the next barge.

  “Are they following?” Natt asked.

  “Yes, but the water bothers them, slows them down.”

  Twice I saw the zee’s not far behind. When they reached a barge’s edge and saw the river, their run changed to a shambling, and they came on slower, uncertain. There were hundreds of zee’s filling all the courses and pathways behind us.

  I swore over the lack of boats – in a talat nam! I could recall seeing these canals chock-a-block with boats of every size and shape. Not today.

  Then I remembered, earlier that day, seeing the nose of a dhow nudging out from under the floor of a home, held up on stilts. It was between two barges at the far end. I pushed the others on, trying to place where I’d seen it. We came out on the second from last barge and it came to me. We crossed a footbridge to the canal’s other side, down an inside lane, and out. The dhow was there below us, not on a barge, on stilts sunk in the riverbed. Despite that the building stood lower in the water than those on barges. I swung down onto its wide stoop, reaching under for the bow rope. I snagged it and pulled. It was tied with thick, tarred rope. I pulled the bowie knife, and after several attempts slashed it through. We leapt in. I retrieved a pole sleeved under the gunwale, slid it into place and started pushing along the river’s bottom, only about eight feet deep this time of year.

  “That footbridge must have stopped them,” Luc said.

  “Maybe.”

  I push-pulled several times, and moved us along towards this end of the canal, to a smaller tributary that led out to the open river. It was mid-afternoon, yet these narrow waterways were in relative gloom. We moved along the short tributary. Again the zee’s took me by surprise. I looked up. They stood in a silent mass along the edge on the roof of this and the next floating structure. We punted along, held in their intent stare.

  Emerging into the river I hastily poled us into deeper water, turned our nose, and the current caught us. We drifted with the river towards the last big bridge, two miles away, before the river empties into the Gulf of Thailand.

  “We can get out at the bridge,” I said from my seat in the stern.

  “The airport expressway isn’t far,” Luc agreed.

  We fell silent. I watched the shoreline, and saw here and there small clusters of zee’s. They looked like prisoners in an exercise yard, going nowhere. The water looked peaceful as it passed by, unchanging, in a slow stately dance, just inches away. It was peaceful just to watch. Just flow into it.

  How did this happen? – the zee’s, the pandemic, the death? It’s like we crossed some invisible threshold, and a darkness now at the heart of things grows with each hour. We’ve lost a world. Did we do this?

  Natt and Luc – their voices like fireflies at the edge of my thoughts – had seemed far away.

  “Something’s different with the zee’s,” Natt said.

  “They’re faster,” Luc said.

  “They hardly hesitate now,” Natt added. “They see us, and they react.”

  I looked at them. “They don’t move or act like zee’s anymore. Maybe they don’t think like them either.”

  “What do you mean?” Natt asked.

  “Before, their eyes were empty. Now – there’s something there.”

  “Something worse,” Luc said.

  “An intention.” I paused. “Like some purpose is shaping them.”

  We didn’t want to explore yet what that might be.

  The current carried us to the far side of the river. I started poling the dhow in earnest, taking her closer to shore each time. With one last surge the bow scraped sand, and Natt leapt out. She held the gunwale as we joined her and hauled the craft half-way up the shore. We walked back to a less-steep section of the embankment, coming out beside a temple wall. Scanning for zee’s we followed it around to the road. I knelt by the entrance and looked closer at the gate. This was a wihan, a temple with a sacred Buddha image. I was tempted to duck inside, just for a moment. Natt poi
nted up the road to this side of the expressway ramp, to a large garage. It would have cars, and we needed another vehicle. I nodded. As we set off I glanced back at the open gates, and saw the image take shape in my mind. I sent out a pulse of gratitude, and pressed on.

  There were no zee’s in sight. We came to the end of this block, and the garage, in what must have once been a busy area. It had six maintenance bays and a body shop, and ran from this street back to the next. On the street adjacent to this empty lot were two parked trucks, one missing a wheel, and on the other a crashed-in cab window. Between them on the ground there lay a cluster of dead infected. Building, lot, and trucks sat in a row side by side, with a drive-in entrance to the lot at both ends. There were three cars parked at the lot’s far end. All was quiet.

  I touched Natt’s shoulder and pointed. As she turned my eye caught something in the gloom of the nearest garage bay. It was the unmistakable outline of a vintage Harley.

  “What?” Natt said.

  I pushed her forward, nodding to the three cars.

  “Go on,” I said, “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Luc laughed under his breath, seeing my interest in the road-bike.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Natt.

  I slipped into the open bay, hearing Natt’s protests as they set off for the cars.

  In the garage I approached what looked like a 1932 Harley Hillclimber, fully restored. Oh, baby – for a motorcycle hobbyist this is like the Hope diamond. I walked deeper inside. It was a double bay separated from the regular maintenance bays further along. At the back there was a raised area, probably for working on truck engines. I saw other bikes in the gloom, more Harleys, a BMW from before the war, and others I couldn’t place. I shook my head. Just then some instinct took hold. I turned on my heel and slipped back outside.

  I scanned for zee’s, and glanced among the dead infected. All clear.

  I was approaching the middle garage bay door on my right when six zee’s suddenly loomed up. They stood in the open door, watching. Almost stumbling from the shock I touched the ground before rising and breaking away fast. My stomach fell away as I heard them scuffle a bit and take off after me. The rifle was thumping on my chest, so I snapped the release and tossed it, reaching with my other hand for the Walther. I heard them gaining when Natt’s voice cut in loud.

  “Toey, down!”

  I dived to the ground rolling to one side and clutching the Walther as a rapid series of shots thudded into flesh behind me. I was on my back and saw two of the zee’s slew sideways. My arms came together, left hand over right pistol-in-hand, and fired two shots into a third zee, and a fourth see-sawed back as its head exploded. I scrambled to a crouch, ducking sideways under the reaching arm of the last undead, its hand grazed my back. I swung and landed the gun barrel on his temple, hearing the bone shatter. I staggered back as he kept coming on, and raising the pistol again I caught him above his left eye. He went down.

  The sound of gunfire had not gone unnoticed. I heard a scuffling across the lot, whirled round and saw a gaggle of zee’s piling out from between the two trucks. Where had they come from? I hesitated. They were forward and offside, cutting me off from Natt and Luc. I thought I heard car doors slam and an engine start up as the zee’s plunged in my direction, breaking instantly into a vicious sprint. Their speed! Coming my way – my will to flee just bled out the longer I watched. I shook myself, and dashed off back the way I’d come.

  A roar washed over me as a pulse of displaced air hit me. The car made impact from behind with three of my pursuers, their bodies careening off on the car’s other side. The tires screeched and the car sheered half-around as it swerved up beside me. As the passenger door sprang open I lunged forward and dropped inside, slamming the door. Natt gunned it with the brakes full on and the car jumped up, smoke pouring from its front tires as our rear slammed round, not moving forward. Zee’s insanely body checking us went flying. She waited, and finally released the brake. We shot forward and broke out into the road. She pulled the wheel over hard, turning us into the center lane.

  As Natt straightened out two loud thumps sounded on the roof.

  “Zee’s have landed,” she muttered.

  One was spread-eagled on our roof as another rolled forward onto the hood and grabbed hold. They hung on, the one on the roof scrabbling at Natt’s window. They were kicking and pounding, single-mindedly looking for purchase, a way in.

  I just decided. If we survive this, I told myself, we had to get the hell out of Bangkok.

  Natt was massively, monumentally fed up. She was screaming at them, cussing them out. I took a deep breath, got the Walther in one hand and lowered the window with the other.

  I shouted at Luc. “Grab my feet!”

  I rolled my upper body out through the window, and up. Resting my butt on the window frame I brought my arms up and hand-over-hand fired three times, hitting the zee on the roof in the throat, and missing the one on the hood. I crashed back in through the window as he launched himself my way and hit empty air, crunching head first onto the roadway.

  I leaned back deep into the seat, shaking. Luc reached over and took the gun out of my hand. I slumped deeper in the seat.

  For a time I just blocked it out.

  Dead infected dotted the expressway. Natt was weaving her way among them. There were many more in the fields on both sides. And there were undead. Some wandered along the shoulder, and would often strike out across the lanes without warning.

  We were coasting through a more congested section, slowing down. My eyes rested on one cluster of bodies, on a small rise. I saw an arm lift up and fall to one side, then the body rolled over, dry-heaving in a spasm, pushing himself up on shaky arms. It wore a dirty green T-shirt with a black design.

  “Stop the car!”

  “What? What do you see?” Natt turned round in alarm.

  “Just pull over.”

  I pointed to the pile of bodies. The infected corpse in the green T-shirt was standing now, looking around. His stance was not as shaky as only moments ago.

  “The green T-shirt is a new zee. He just turned,” I said.

  “But you said—” Luc said.

  “I was wrong.”

  We looked over the fields, at the clusters of infected. We didn’t see any others turn.

  “This changes everything,” Natt said quietly.

  “Yes, it does,” I replied.

  We got back in the car, determined now to accelerate things, to get the others and leave the city. I watched, and thought I saw another infected turn. We drove on.

  In the past airliners on approach to Suvarnabhumi would cross over a barely noticeable rise in the land. We approached it ourselves now, crested it, and began the gentle two-mile ride down to the airport.

  My breath caught at what I saw. Natt stopped in the middle of the expressway.

  A solid mass of zee’s surrounded the main terminal and two concourses. Dispersed clusters of undead walked the airport’s grounds, the parking lots, even the runways. The airport was on zee lockdown, nothing was getting in or out.

  We sat very still. “The others,” Natt said.

  I slowly got out of the car.

  “Maybe they got out,” Luc was saying.

  I walked out front. Fai’s face surfaced in my mind, Onteera’s complaining voice echoed around me. I didn’t protect them! I leaned over, hands on my knees. I felt a sliding churning deep in my gut. Natt’s arms were suddenly around me, and we slumped to the ground.

  I don’t know how long we knelt like that.

  Luc was saying something.

  “W-what?”

  What’s he babbling? He wouldn’t stop.

  We looked up. Luc was pointing to a tower off on the side of the expressway. A beige van was parked in the small lot. I looked closer.

  Somebody was standing on the van’s roof, frantically waving his shirt.

  “Is that Behrouz?” Natt asked.

  Luc was grinning. <
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  “Come on!” he said, pulling us up. And we piled back into the car.

  I watched as Fai got out of the van. Her hand was shading her eyes as she looked our way. Her face suddenly broke into a smile. Onteera got out and joined her. They looked really played out.

  I closed my eyes in gratitude.

  I realized we had all protected each other, each in our own way. A sense of hope unlike anything I had ever felt arose in me. For a long time after, its glow lingered.

  We will survive, I thought.

  Even better, now I believed it.