by Abner, Anna
“Can’t we sit down for a while?” Hunny asked, finishing the final fig cookie.
How had she survived this long with such awful instincts? “If we take a break,” I explained, “that Red from last night, Ben, will find us. We can’t stop until we get to a safe place.”
A branch snapped behind us. I didn’t see anyone in the trees, but either way, it was time to go. I grabbed Hunny and used her strength to help propel us both north toward the city.
Chapter Four
We stepped out of the cooler shade of a pine forest onto an exposed access lane behind a large subdivision of nearly identical, pastel-hued homes. This community hadn’t fared as well as mine. White smoke curled away from the charred remains of a two-story home. A pair of feral dogs fought over a human body lying in the gutter. Someone had painted “HELP ME” across his or her garage door.
I paused, taking the weight off my right knee. These people had experienced a level of fear and desperation that still lingered in the air. I may have been alone and uneasy on my cul-de-sac, but I’d never been afraid for my life. My sanity, yeah, but not my life. Setting up camp in one of these run-down houses was the last thing I wanted to do.
Uncomfortable with so many signs of anguish, I turned my back on the whole neighborhood. In the distance, peeking above swaths of green pines, were the tops of high-rises. My dad’s lab was somewhere out there, nestled among all those buildings, waiting for me to find it.
“We’re not going through the subdivisions,” I warned Hunny, who was already inspecting a fallen two-wheeler in someone’s driveway. If she sensed the sorrow in the atmosphere she didn’t let on. “We’re going to try to walk all the way to Raleigh today.” Though in this heat, with my aching knee, and no water we probably wouldn’t make it until tomorrow.
“Here, ride this,” Hunny offered. “Pretend it’s a wheelchair.”
I opened my mouth to politely decline, but on second thought, it wasn’t a bad idea. I’d move faster on two wheels than I could hopping around on one leg.
“We’re still not going through the neighborhoods,” I said, finding the right balance on the bike because my sword and backpack kept tilting me. I hadn’t ridden a bicycle since I was a little kid. “Stay close.”
“I’ll look for a real wheelchair.”
“I’ll be okay.”
And I would be. On the track team I’d had plenty of sprained ankles, twisted knees, and sore feet. This too would heal. Nothing was broken, just torn. An ice pack would help, not that I was going to find one of those.
After ten minutes of the most awkward bicycle outing ever, I wasn’t sure which was worse, scooting along on two wheels or hopping on one leg. Every time I pushed off with my left foot the chain rattled and I coasted a few feet. Push, coast. Push, coast.
But I wasn’t sweating anymore, and that was a big plus.
“Why are you all by yourself?” Hunny blurted out.
I’d been on my own for what felt like forever. Two weeks since Dad hadn’t come home, but even before the plague he’d worked long hours and I’d kept myself entertained after school. I’d often prepared my own dinners and gone to bed before he even drove into the garage.
But that’s not what the girl meant. “My family’s gone. I’m the only one who survived.” Though I didn’t know if the red virus had taken my dad and brother, it all amounted to the same thing. Gone was gone.
Because if Dad or Mason had avoided 212R, and then the zombies, they would have found me by now. For days I’d held out a strong, unshakable hope that Mason would escape juvenile detention and then Dad would find a safe route through the city and they’d both come home to Cherry Blossom Court. As if nothing bad had ever happened, my brother and my dad would walk up our driveway and knock on the bunker door.
But after two weeks, I’d given up on that dream.
“Yeah,” Hunny sighed. “I guess my family’s all gone, too.”
She jogged over and gave me a shove. I coasted even further. Giggling, she ran beside me, pushing me down a hill.
“Thanks, but keep the noise down,” I warned. Reds were attracted by sound, and we’d already produced more than our share.
I cruised past a Ford truck with all its windows shattered. And then I saw it. The I–40. And I knew we would be okay, after all.
The massive, six-lane highway beginning west in Barstow, California and ending in nearby Wilmington, North Carolina was a two-thousand-mile-long ribbon of commuter technology, a grand symbol of everything the human race could accomplish and everything we’d lost. And it led straight into the heart of Raleigh.
A month ago it had been a busy super highway, but it had become an automobile graveyard. It was a packed parking lot of abandoned vehicles in various stages of ruin. Some were crumpled from accidents. Some had their doors pried open by vandals. Some looked shiny and untouched. But none of them were moving any time soon.
I ditched the bike at the on-ramp when space became limited and tapped a comforting beat on the trunk of a Prius with my fingernail. Ticky-tick. Ticky-tock.
Since the red virus hit I hadn’t been able to write a decent song. Before people got sick I’d been writing love songs and catchy country tunes every day. And then, like turning off a light, Dad hadn’t come home and I couldn’t string words to a melody to save my life.
But something about the mess of empty vehicles and the fresh air and the simple rhythm triggered my muse. Way down here. I disappear.
No, that was too miserable a thought. I didn’t want to compose a sad song. But I’d keep working on it. I repeated the rhythm a few more times to get it good and stuck in my head because I couldn’t record it on my iPad, and I’d left my guitar behind. All I had were my memories and the diary in my pack. I shifted the backpack around, knocking the short sword hanging from my belt.
Everything was so different…
“I thought you said zombies are attracted by noise,” Hunny shouted. “Why are you tapping on the car?”
Ignoring her, I said, “We’ll follow the highway into Raleigh. And if you see water bottles, please say something.”
“I’ll look for zombies, too.” Showing off, Hunny sprang onto the hood of a white Nissan and leap-frogged three cars ahead, scrambling over roofs and sliding down windshields.
I followed more slowly, picking unobstructed paths through the jumble of cars and trucks and using the vehicles as crutches.
In my junior year I’d trained as a sprinter. My track coach timed me at just over five minutes per mile. A six-minute mile was easier. If I ran at half speed along the guardrail, Raleigh was about three hours away. But my knee wasn’t getting better. In fact, the flesh around my joint was swollen tight and hot to the touch. Running was out of the question. I couldn’t even walk on my own. We were clocking a thirty-minute mile at best, which meant it would be hours, maybe the whole day, before we got to Raleigh.
I pushed off the doorframe of a luxury sedan with a discarded laptop on the front seat. There were no bodies in any of these cars, thank goodness. The infection, back when it was passed in handshakes, kisses, sneezes, and coughs, took three days to incubate inside a person. Three days to realize their fever was too high and wouldn’t go down, no matter what medicine they took. Three days to realize they were going to be a flesh-eating zombie.
People trying to flee the cities had clogged up freeways like this one. Hopelessly stuck, they must have walked, en masse, down the road before the three days were up and they lost all higher-level thinking.
I’d seen aerial footage of highways turned to parking lots and people streaming through them, children and luggage on their backs.
After watching coverage like that, I’d often fantasized how I would have spent my final three days of normal life. It didn’t matter anymore. There was hardly anything fun left, anyway. No more concerts. No roller coasters. No five-star resorts. But if given the chance, I would’ve traveled somewhere during my last feverish days.
I would have flown to Paris.
Or London. Or Moscow. I would have stuffed my face with all the cheeseburgers and chocolate brownie ice cream I could stomach. And then, my guitar strapped to my back, I would’ve found a warm spot on a quiet beach and waited for full infection to destroy everything about me.
Hunny jumped off a sports car and ducked behind a pickup truck.
“What did you find?” I called.
“Nothing.” She reappeared with a blank look and empty hands.
The girl made me nervous. I didn’t know a thing about her. Where she’d come from. How she’d avoided infection.
“How did you find Willa?” I asked.
“My mommy and daddy sent me to a hospital,” Hunny said softly. “They were so nice. They bought me a lot of things.” She looked up at me. “I had every one of the Saddle Club Girls. Do you know what those are? They’re dolls.” She mimicked rocking a baby in her bony arms. “You dress them up and fix their hair, and they all had their own pony and—”
“Hunny,” I said. “What about Willa?”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Mommy and Daddy made me go to a special hospital so I wouldn’t get sick. But everyone there got sick too except Willa and me. We ran away.”
So Hunny’s parents had been wealthy enough to send her to a quarantined hospital. For a lot of money, staff kept their clients healthy and virus free. But not even bleach, sterile gloves, and a high-tech security system had a chance against 212R. News channels had loved to run stories of hospitals overrun with disease. No one place was safer than any other.
“How did you get into my neighborhood yesterday?” I asked. We weren’t near any hospitals or quarantines.
“After our house got attacked we started looking for another house, but there were zombies.”
Speaking of…
I checked over my right shoulder and then my left. No Reds. Except for a few chattering birds searching for food scraps we were alone on the highway. Ben must have lost interest in us and went off in search of an easier meal. I wouldn’t have minded him following us, as strange as it sounded, just to see what he’d do next. But he wasn’t anywhere in sight, and that was probably for the best.
I had enough problems without a zombie on my tail.
I took another breather against a four-wheel-drive truck, flexing my right knee and then my ankle. It only marginally helped the pain.
Without warning the birds went quiet in mid trill, and then scattered into the skies.
My pulse spiked. I needed a place to hide.
I didn’t want to hurt anyone, not even the Reds, but they had no conscience or human compassion. I had to protect not only my own neck, but also the little girl’s.
Except I didn’t know the first thing about mortal combat. Yeah, I’d been in karate when I was seven but the skills hadn’t stuck. Over Christmas I’d volunteered at a local hospital, but knowing how to take a blood pressure wouldn’t help me now. My dad had taught me to be clean, not to fight.
Four zombies, three males and a female, trudged around a bend in the highway headed in our direction.
I ditched my backpack, snapped my fingers to get Hunny’s attention, and dropped to the trash-strewn asphalt, hot to the touch. It was no use trying to climb on top of a car or barricading us inside one. The moment the Reds saw us they would attack. They couldn’t climb but they would wait us out, tearing the vehicle to pieces of twisted metal until they pulled us out like plucking tuna from a tin can.
Hunny was a child, but she knew when to shut up. Thank goodness.
I slid over rough road, scraping the already scratched skin of my palms and forearms, and wrenching my knee so hard I teared up. Hunny scuttled beside me like a crab.
I tensed, my breath a locomotive in my head. People in Denver heard me panting.
Slow, uneven footsteps grew louder. Hunny made a hand sign for gun in front of my face. I shook my head. Maybe the little girl didn’t know how a single bullet could rip a person’s life to pieces so badly it could never be put back together. But I did.
My brother Mason had pulled a trigger and taken our mother away forever.
I would never carry one, let alone use one.
The Reds shambled closer, and my breathing grew even more out of control as I pictured their faces in my mind—blank red eyes, slack mouths, dirt and blood and who knew what else on their chins and cheeks and hands.
Two pairs of bare feet, one pair of brown boots, and one pair of leather sandals stepped into the path between a white delivery van and us. They sniffed and snorted and shuffled within three feet of our hiding spot.
The group paused and I knew, just knew, we were about to be dragged out kicking and screaming and then beaten to death. As a last resort I found finger holds in the smelly engine above me in order to hang on as long as possible.
Hunny gripped my shirt, and I was afraid even that whisper of sound would attract them. I held my breath.
New footsteps approached in double time. Someone else had found us. Five Reds versus one little girl and me?
Fists hit flesh and several of the Reds let loose frustrated groans.
No way… I knew Reds killed each other. They had to in order to find enough blood and flesh to eat. But I’d never watched a zombie brawl on the news.
One by one, the four zombies that had sniffed us out fell beside our hiding spot until a single pair of black work boots stood inches from my face. A strangely familiar pair of boots.
At home, my family had signed everything we said for Mason. My brother and I had signed together our whole lives. It was an instinct to spell out B-e-n with my right hand for Hunny to read.
But she didn’t know what I was doing and looked at me with a stunned expression. She waved her hand wildly between us, mocking me. I made a mental note to teach her the alphabet later. If we were going to be together for a while we should be able to converse silently and across distances.
Suddenly Ben’s face appeared in the space between car and asphalt. He reached for me and his fingers left three bloody bands across my forearm.
Swallowing a startled squeak, I shoved Hunny hard in the opposite direction. “Get out. Go. Run.” Following awkwardly, I hopped to my feet and bounced after her one-legged. She was faster than me, but I stayed with her for at least half a mile before I stopped to look back.
Ben wasn’t chasing us. He hadn’t moved an inch. We made brief eye contact, and then he bent over what must have been the bodies of the four Reds he’d attacked.
To protect us.
But Reds didn’t protect survivors. In fact, their strongest instinct was to feed. They didn’t have any other desire. More likely, he’d chased us all morning through the trees and the abandoned subdivision, killing the other four Reds in order to eat before he turned on us. That made more sense.
I stared at the bloody marks he’d left on my arm. Three wet bands.
It was possible Ben’s behavior wasn’t that unusual. Maybe the infected were evolving or even getting better.
“Maya, come on!” Hunny called from a hundred feet ahead.
I flinched at the sound of her voice, whipping around to check the surroundings. No new Reds. It was just me and Hunny and Ben. The birds had returned, though, and they chirped merrily as they foraged for crumbs.
We had to keep moving.
Ben’s protecting us, or at least seeming to protect us, couldn’t distract me from getting to Raleigh.
Something rustled behind us, something big. I spun, expecting to see another zombie, ready to either hide or fight. But it wasn’t a Red standing between two compact cars growling at me, it was a starving black Labrador with its head lowered and its eyes trained on Hunny.
As a kid I’d pleaded with my parents for a dog. I thought they were the most huggable, lovable, most adorable creatures in the world. I begged. I wrote letters to Santa. I called Grandma in West Virginia. My favorite breed was the Boston terrier and as a little kid, about Hunny’s age, I’d spent hours drawing pictures of black and white, snub-nosed puppies I would n
ame Princess or Queenie or Sparkle.
But my mom was allergic to dogs. And not slightly sensitive to dander. No, she was full-blown break into hives and suffer a sinus infection allergic. A dog would never be in our future. By the time the truth settled into my consciousness I’d wasted a lot of time and emotional energy wanting something I could never have.
“Here, buddy,” I cooed, offering my hand to sniff. He looked soft, and I desperately wanted to pet him. I constructed an entire fantasy in my head in those brief few seconds where the dog became my loyal and affectionate companion who would follow me everywhere, hunt for squirrels, and share them with me.
I’d call him Rooster and we would tackle this post-apocalyptic world as a team.
Were animals infected by the red plague? I’d often wondered things like that while alone in my panic room. Did their eyes go red too? Did they suddenly crave flesh and blood? Or was it only a human disease? Were there zombie hawks out there? Zombie hamsters? Zombie cockroaches, ants, and bees? Was every step beyond my four walls a minefield of infection and danger? It’s one of the reasons I’d stayed in my home for so long, not knowing what the outside world was like after the red plague.
Rooster’s head lowered even further and his upper lips curled back, revealing finger-sized canines. He growled like a chainsaw.
Two other dogs I hadn’t seen walked out from behind one of the compact cars and created a chorus of snarling and snapping noises.
Their vocal aggression triggered something primal in me.
Hunny recognized the trouble we were in and screamed like a banshee, sticking to me with superglue.
“I can’t run,” I panted, my heart pounding in a weird, uneven rhythm. “I can’t run.”
The black lab launched itself at us, his muscular legs pumping, his ribs showing in sharp relief through his dirty coat.
I stumbled a few steps, pushing off the cars around me, but it was obvious I couldn’t outrun Rooster. He’d be on me in seconds and I had no defense against his nasty bite.