“Me too.” I smiled and ran a hand through my tangled hair, trying to put it back in some sort of order, but my fingers only caught in the strands and tore at my scalp until I gave up. “Tell me what happened.”
“You went into the fevers. I couldn’t wake you and there were a whole bunch of zombies around the building, like they knew we were there even though they couldn’t see us.”
“Like the ones at the back door.”
“Yeah,” Maibe brushed hair from her eyes. “You said something about upstairs and I saw the door and the stairs and—”
“You dragged me up here by yourself?” I wasn’t overweight, but I still must have weighed more than twice as her.
“I had help,” she said in a quiet voice and looked over her shoulder.
“You came across other survivors?” I planted my feet on the floor, ready to try standing again.
“I don’t think I would call them survivors.”
“What?” I couldn’t think of an alternative. She couldn’t mean those insane, infected people helped her bring me into this bedroom.
“I don’t know, it’s just, there’s something wrong with them.”
“Show me,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. My muscles felt weak from the memory-fever and I struggled to walk across a faded area rug without stumbling.
I followed her into a living room area. A small coffee table with a cinnamon spice centerpiece stood on a threadbare patch of carpet. Two sagging love seats with unmatched patterns formed an L-shape around it.
On these couches sat four people.
Two adults, two children. Matilda the owner was one, her dark hair and plump cheeks taking me into a coffee memory, the acidic smell and creamy taste of it suddenly on my tongue. I always put in plenty of cream. She sat with a stiff upright back, hands on her knees, feet flat on the floor, wearing her chef’s apron. Fly-away hair obscured her face, but, even still, it was obvious she stared at something to the left of me.
I turned, but there was nothing except for an oil painting of the family done up in their finest winter clothing, together for a posed, formal, uncomfortable-looking family portrait.
“What’s she doing?” I said, but then realized they all were like that. Her husband, her two children.
“Nothing,” Maibe said in a hoarse whisper as if afraid to break the spell that bound them to stillness.
But it made me want to do just the opposite. I wanted to shout or break something or pinch one of them, anything to wake them up, anything to remove the vacant gaze.
“They haven’t changed for four hours,” she said. “They helped me get you in here, the wife and husband did. They lifted you up and brought you to the bedroom and talked to you like, I don’t know. They wouldn’t talk to me. They wouldn’t answer any of my questions, but they called you by your name. They KNEW you and they would talk you, but not to me.” Maibe’s voice rose at the end and cut off as if she felt strangled.
Maibe had bunched her sweatshirt together at her neck. Her dark hair frizzed around the edges. Her dark eyes spoke of someone almost pushed too far, someone almost ready to break.
Matilda stood up. Brushed down her chef’s apron. “I’ll make some tea for us. I’m so glad you decided to visit us, Corrina. You like green tea, yes?”
The room seemed to shrink. I could not speak. I wanted to step back, to step away from her, from this creature who spoke to me in a voice I recognized, who knew my name, who acted like we had done this before, this make-believe tea party.
And then the dingy carpet and cinnamon centerpiece faded. Four pink walls decorated with teacups ghosted in. Matilda had been there, getting up to make tea as the other women, all dressed in black, ate cake and whispered about Sharal, the poor woman dead by her husband’s hand. Sharal had been a friend at the garden. I'd knelt side by side with her in the dirt to plant seeds. Sharal had always worn long sleeves no matter how hot the weather.
Matilda had known Sharal, and then at the memorial she had made me tea.
The pink walls faded back into gray. By then Matilda had filled the teapot and put out a cup and plate. The gas turned on and the flame licked the side of the teapot, flaring at some food scrap caught in its heat.
I moved back another step until I hit the wall. Matilda reached for the fridge door.
“No, don’t!” I said, but Matilda had already opened the thing. Smells of rotted meat, spoiled milk, slimed vegetables, filled the room. But Matilda did not seem to notice the wretched smell. She rummaged around on the top shelf.
Maibe gagged next to me. The rest of the family didn't move.
Sludge dripped off the bottom shelf and pooled on the linoleum floor.
“There,” she said. “You wanted cream, right?” Matilda held up a container triumphantly, then closed the refrigerator.
“We need to leave,” I said. I was weak, people might still be waiting for us outside, but I couldn't stay a minute longer in this black hole with these, with whatever this was, with these monsters.
“But we can’t leave them,” Maibe said.
“I thought that’s what you wanted to do before. They’re sick, they’re monsters, they’re zombies, they’re not people anymore.” Whatever this was, it made them different, less than human, and I didn’t want what happened to them to happen to me.
“But they’re just kids,” Maibe said.
I tugged her to the door as my mind raced. Clothes, shoes, jacket, wound freshly wrapped, no weapon. Maybe I should take a knife from the kitchen, but that would require getting close to the refrigerator. I steeled myself for the smell, but then remembered there were likely better knives downstairs. I decided to take my chances and wait.
I rested my hand on the door to the stairs. If I turned it and left these people to fend for themselves, I couldn’t take that back.
Maibe shook her head in a silent “no.”
I turned the knob and opened the door.
Light flared as if someone had turned on the electricity.
I stepped back into the apartment, but did not close the door. The hallway had been empty, the cleaner air refreshing, the freedom tantalizing.
Matilda poured something into a coffee cup but it overflowed the cup and oozed more onto the stove top.
I looked around but the electricity was still off.
“There,” Matilda said. She capped the bottle and set it aside on the counter. An oil bottle.
She had poured oil all over her counter and onto the stove top.
The tea kettle whistled and she bustled to it. Her chef’s apron dipped into the oil, brushed against the flame, and the flame caught. And engulfed. Matilda lit up like a matchstick, but she did not scream, she continued with her tea duty. She poured the oil into the cup and she turned with the cup in hand and held it in front of her and flames singed her clothes and crisped her hair and licked at her skin, blackening it. And she held out the cup and made as if to hand it to me and I screamed and Maibe screamed and I pushed her into the hallway. I slammed the door behind us and waited for Matilda to pound it down and smother me in the flames that surely would kill her.
Maibe fell to the ground and wrapped her hands around her shins and sobbed into her knees.
Something on the inside thumped, thumped again. Smoke tendrils curled from underneath the door. We should run, save ourselves from this horror, outrun Matilda’s fire-wreathed face and outstretched hands and steaming tea and kind smile. Pretend it was okay to leave them because they weren’t human anymore and it was worth it to save ourselves—our sick, infected selves.
And then I felt shame.
Before I knew my mind had made its decision, I threw open the door.
Black smoke billowed out but then cleared. Matilda had crumpled into her original seat on the couch. The oil tea cup spilled and a slick of fire covered the rug underneath the coffee table. The couches were on fire, their clothes were smoking. They did not move.
I coughed, raced to the bedroom, tore off the sheets. Eve
n those precious seconds seemed like an eternity. The bed sheet caught on one corner and even a yank with all my strength did not release it. I crawled over to the corner, freed the sheet, bundled all of it in my arms and raced back into the growing bonfire the couches had become.
I threw the boy onto the floor and rolled him into the sheet, smothering the wisps of smoke that had started to curl from his collar. The girl was next.
I started on the husband, but I could not budge his body from the seat and the fire had taken over his shirt and I burned my hand and arm and ear. I used this as an excuse to not look at Matilda’s slumped over form. I noticed the smell, like bacon fat frying in the pan, mixed with melting Tupperware.
“Corrina!”
I wiped the vomit from my lips and dropped to all fours because the fire had caught on a wall and we would all die of smoke inhalation soon.
“Corrina, they're coming!”
I turned and saw it, a shadow, three shadows, lurching out of the empty hallway through the door. They went for Maibe and the two sheet-wrapped forms on the floor.
Maibe backed away from the girl, and the three shadows fell on the two children. I stepped backward into the bedroom and pulled Maibe with me. I tried to close the door but a large woman whose shirt had ripped down to her dingy white bra raised her head as if scenting prey. She lurched to her feet and went for us. I shut the door in her face, but there was no lock. She threw herself against it and I thought of the man banging his head against my patio door again and again until he drew blood.
Maibe broke the window with a lamp. The glass shattered and brought me back. Fresh air filled the room. She leaned out, so far out I thought she might fall. I used all my weight to keep the door closed but I was losing this battle inch by inch.
A hand reached through, a woman’s hand, with pink acrylic nails. Though several tips had broken and several more fingers were bloody or missing.
This hand reached around, feeling the air, feeling, I knew, for me.
“There’s no ladder.” She peered out the window.
“There's no choice.”
Maibe stepped back, looked around the room. I wanted to yell at her to hurry.
She ran to the other side of the bed and felt around on the floor.
The door moved another inch. The gap would be big enough soon for one of them to force their body through.
Maibe carried three pillows back to the window. She dropped them outside, looked to see where they fell. She went back for the rest and dumped them out the window as well.
The door moved another inch and I fought to gain back some ground, but gained nothing except for a horrible popping sound in my knee.
“Go!” I yelled.
Maibe hopped onto the window ledge, teetered, and then jumped out of sight.
I released the door and made a run for the window. I pressed my hands onto the ledge, but snatched them back when the glass shards cut into my skin. I looked back. The woman lay moaning on the floor where she had fallen when the door gave way. Another figure disappeared into the smoke. The smoke obscured everything now.
I looked out the window. Maibe stood by the group of pillows and waved me on. I held my breath, placed my hands to avoid the glass, pushed myself through.
The asphalt still jarred my legs, my bruised knee. My hands slapped the pillows and slipped between them. The wound on my shoulder stung with the impact and matched my stinging hands.
Maibe stared up at the window.
We had landed in the alley between the restaurant and another building. There were two ways out. One way led back to the tracks, one way led around the front into the neighborhood.
I edged against the wall, its textured plaster catching my clothes like fingers. I held my breath and peeked around the corner.
The front of the restaurant was covered three deep in people. People who seemed crazy and angry and infected. People climbing through the broken glass of the café windows.
I retreated, careful to step silently. I had not even brought a weapon. We had pillows.
“Corrina!”
I put my finger to my lips to warn Maibe to silence. But she wasn’t looking at me. She watched the window we had just jumped out. The window that billowed black smoke and carried the aroma of cooked meat and melting plastics—where a person leaned out.
This person tipped over until there was nothing left to do but fall. She landed head first into our little island of pillows. She did not get up.
A second person appeared at the window, leaned further and further, reaching out his hands to us on the ground as if to strangle us.
I grabbed Maibe’s sweatshirt. In spite of my knee and shoulder, we moved fast back to the tracks.
Something darted across the alley ahead of us.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“See what?” Maibe responded.
We were surrounded. They would come at us from the front, from the tracks, from above. There was no other way out.
I searched the alley for a weapon. It was bare except for an orange plastic bucket someone might have used once for washing. I picked it up, even though it wouldn't do much good.
The figure dashed across again.
I lowered the bucket. It was too small to be human. It appeared again, pivoting on all fours before racing down the alley, ahead of us to the tracks.
It was in sight for only a few seconds, but it was enough.
It was Blitz.
Chapter 12
I decided not to tell Maibe I was following my dead dog.
I think she knew I was following something from my brain, but she didn’t ask. We climbed back onto the tracks because that’s where Blitz went. Smoke engulfed the café behind us. The sick people inside it were burning up.
“We did the right thing, didn’t we?” Maibe said.
“I don’t know about that.”
Maibe hiccuped.
“But I don’t think there was anything else we could have done.”
“They were different than the ones trying to kill us before,” Maibe said.
She was right, but I had no idea what would make them so different. The Lyssa virus was supposed to be a form of rabies. It was supposed to make people go psycho. Yes, Matilda and her family were acting crazy—but they hadn't been violent. They had been sleepwalking, comatose-like at times. Matilda had clearly been reliving a memory. But none of them had the same skin issues as us, which meant they hadn't gotten the vaccine either.
I stopped walking when I realized Blitz had vanished. My heartbeat picked up speed. Maybe Blitz would come back. Even if he was a ghost, following him had felt comforting, as if he was leading me home.
I shaded my eyes with a hand and scanned the area. The run-down neighborhoods had given way to empty fields. A line of trees backed up the fields. The river cut in and out of sight between the trees.
Straight down the tracks, almost totally obscured by smoke, were the downtown skyscrapers. Though there was no fog today, the smoke smothered the color of everything except for the green fields, and something red.
I squinted, trying to make out what this red thing was in a sea of green.
It was boxy, falling apart, decaying. Like something out of the old railroad days. When I was ten and devouring the Boxcar Children book series, I pictured a boxcar like this—red and rusting, with weeds growing up past the wheel base, the sides built out of wood, and a sliding steel door.
I was sure it was some weird ghost-memory. I opened my mouth to ask Maibe if she could also see the boxcar and whether she’d ever read the books.
Then the steel door opened.
***
December
***
***
You make it sound like this is some kind of supernatural monster, like a great evil overtook people, when it’s some virus or something that brings out the evil in people that already have it…look, can I get a cigarette? I don’t actually smoke, I just—I don’t know. I need to do something with my
hands and it was the only thing I could think of…No, I understand. You don’t want to get too close. But that’s what I’m trying to explain, that it doesn’t matter how close you get. There’s nothing wrong with me. Actually, I can help protect you—
Chapter 13
Three people came out of the boxcar and then something was lifted down to them by two still inside the shadow of the door. The object was covered in a sheet. The shape of a body. The three were of varying ages and heights, in dark and torn clothing. One female and two males, though it was difficult to be sure from this distance and I couldn’t see how many still might be inside.
“I wonder who it is,” Maibe said. “I wonder who died.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Part of me wanted to go and help them carry their burden. Part of me wanted to run far in the other direction. People were dangerous now. “We should go.”
“It’s too late for that,” said a male voice behind us.
I whirled around. A young man with longish brown hair and a raggedy beard held what looked like a crossbow. I spoke softly, as if talking to a wild animal. “We don’t mean any harm, we’ll just be on our way.”
“Not my decision,” he said.
“What do you want?” I said.
“A hot meal and a water bed. What I get will be something different. Spencer will decide what he wants once they’re done.” His cheek twitched.
His eyes were wide-set. His hair was a curly, messy light brown. He was built like a football player. Markings crept up either side of his neck, pale and white like tattooed wings. From the cure. In spite of the ashy, aged look of his skin, he seemed younger than me. “Did you get infected?” I asked.
“Yeah, I was tagged with the cure,” he said. “And by the looks of you two, you know exactly what I mean.”
“Yeah, we know,” Maibe said.
“Munchkin,” he said. “I need to you to walk over this little hill and to the boxcar. Don’t be stupid, just slowly walk that way.”
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 17