by COE 3. 1. 0
After all, death – as the news stories had put it – could come within seconds, or hours, or not at all. The cases were still being studied and chronicled even as the world went ape shit.
Where were the other people?
“Felicity,” Oliver said, grabbing her forearm. “Look over there. Two o’ clock.”
She looked. In the two o’ clock position.
A man was coming over to them. No, not just coming. Running. And then there was someone else behind him, also running. And then there were three. And four. There was something about their running that wasn’t normal. It was a little too fast, a little too much like loping. Predatory loping, as if lions had just scented their prey.
“Felicity,” Oliver said, “run!”
So the fast mutants were grouping together now? Scenting one another out like birds of a feather?
Oliver grabbed her. “Felicity! Snap out of it!”
She did. Panic gave her feet sudden wings, and she followed Oliver to what she thought would be the nearest building, which was the one housing the cafeteria. But he diverted instead and pulled open the door of a stalled car, whose engine was still running.
“Get in!” he yelled.
She didn’t need to think twice.
The driver was slumped sideways on the center console and the front passenger seat. She was a bottle blonde whom Felicity had seen now and then on campus. Felicity’s gut quailed.
It could happen to any of us.
Oliver eased the dead blonde out and hurriedly placed her on the ground. Felicity liked the way he was deferential to the blonde’s body, even though the fast mutants were coming towards them at preternatural speed.
“Get in!” he said.
She tried the door, but it was locked. She looked up blindly. The fast mutants were approaching. She could hear their guttural cries of mad bloodlust and see the wildness and hunger on their faces.
The handle yielded and the door sprang open. Oliver had unlocked it. She bolted in and slammed the door behind her just as the mutants came up and launched themselves onto the car in a cacophony of thuds. One of them succeeded in smashing the back window as Oliver slammed his foot on the gas pedal and they sped away.
She looked behind them. The fast mutants were running after them.
“Hurry,” she said.
“I’m flooring it.”
And indeed he was. The car was a Honda and they sped away. The road was blocked by several other stalled cars, and he had to go on the curb to avoid them. She held on, too afraid to strap her seatbelt on and do anything but brace herself.
They made it out of campus this way, but the main road was now choked full of stalled cars in one way or another. Cars which had smashed into lampposts and storefronts. Cars which had smashed into each other. Bodies were everywhere – on the sidewalks, in the cars.
Oliver stopped the car.
“We can’t get through here. Come on.”
“Where are we going?” she said.
“I don’t know yet, but we need to seek refuge from all this.”
There were people moving around in the wreckage. They looked up, and she saw them for what they were.
The fast mutants noticed them, yowled with blood lust and gave chase.
“Quick, head for one of the buildings,” Oliver cried.
He caught hold of her hand and they delved into an alley, looking for an open door. None of those were safe either, she knew. A fast mutant could just spring out from one of them and launch himself onto her neck.
There was an open door in one of the buildings.
“Careful,” Felicity said.
“I will.” Oliver held the pointy end of the broomstick out as he carefully entered the doorway. He looked around inside. “Coast is clear. Come on.”
She turned. The fast mutants had caught wind of where they were. She dashed in after Oliver and slammed and bolted the door after them.
They were in a kitchen. No one was in it, though she caught the aromas of tomato sauce in the air. They sped to a quiet and luxurious lobby, which was empty but for a body on the floor. Oliver stabbed the UP button on the elevator bank.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“As far as we can from the mutants. And right now, it’s straight to the top.”
“What if we are cornered? What if we have nowhere to run?”
“We have nowhere to run to anyway down here. We might as well hole ourselves up somewhere until this whole thing tides over.”
What if it didn’t ride over? Felicity wondered. But she didn’t say it aloud. After all they had been through, they deserved a little optimism.
She could hear growling behind her. She turned and saw the fast mutants gathering at the front entrance, which was a revolving door.
“Oh, no,” she cried in dismay.
Oliver pressed the UP button again and again. “Come on, come on, come on.”
“Maybe we should take the stairs,” she said.
The fast mutants were actually hampered by the revolving door because they tried to enter through both sides. She was amazed at how many there were. Didn’t the news say the statistics were one out of every hundred? Why were there so many of them?
The elevators went ‘ping’ and the doors to a car slid open.
“Thank God,” Oliver said in relief.
Felicity stared at the dead body on the floor of the cab.
“Don’t look at it.” Oliver stepped over it into the can and hauled her inside. He pressed ‘DOORS CLOSE’ immediately, just as the fast mutants figured out a way to crash their way inside.
The doors slid shut and suddenly, it was silent inside. Felicity’s heart was beating so fast in her ears that she could barely hear anything, not even the deceptively soothing piped music which was being pumped innocuously through.
Oliver pressed the top button, which said ‘P’. She assumed it was for Penthouse. Yeah, sure. Break into someone’s penthouse. She tried not to look at the body on the floor, which was that of an elderly woman leaking blood from her nose and staring at the wall out of empty eyes. The woman must have just succumbed, by the looks of the fresh blood. Felicity felt decidedly ill, and she wondered if it was just the start of the symptoms.
The elevator traveled without incident up to the top floor, and the doors slid open when the indicator went to ‘P’.
“We’re here,” Oliver said in relief. “But let me go first.”
He stepped outside, pointy end of the stick first. They had to get better weapons, she decided. But where?
The corridor outside was empty. Thank goodness. There were only two apartments up on this floor. With their luck, the doors were probably locked.
But when Oliver tried the first one – a double door façade – it opened.
“Look,” Felicity said, pointing at the blood stain on the welcome mat outside. “We have to be careful.”
“I think that’s going to be the buzz word from now on.” He held up his hand to signify he was going to check everything out first. “Stay here.”
She liked the fact that he was so instinctively protective of her. They said adversity brought out who you really were, and she figured long ago that he wasn’t the smug, condescending, psychological bully she previously thought he was.
After scoping the place out, he came back to her and said, “All clear. But we’d better barricade the entrances and exits.
“How?” she asked.
He pointed at a heavy-looking chest of drawers in the hallway. “With this. And anything else we can find.”
Together, they locked the doors from the inside and moved the chest of drawers in front of it. Then they added tables and chairs and everything else they could push. When they had finished, the entrance of the penthouse was a virtual barricade.
“Think that will do it?” she said.
“For now,” he agreed.
He went to the floor to ceiling windows in the lounge. She looked around. The penthouse was a beautifully
designed and decorated place. Family photos adorned a grand piano in the lounge – a Dad and Mom and two kids in portraits and picnics and beaches. Felicity’s heart twitched, remembering the blood on the mat. What had happened? Did both kids get ill, and Mom and Dad had to rush them to the hospital, only to succumb along the way?
This might happen to you and Oliver.
Oliver went to the kitchen.
“You hungry?” he called.
Her spirits lifted despite the doomsday scenario they were in.
“Yes!” she called back.
“Then come on in. We’ve got salami and bread and cheeses . . . gawd, these are gourmet cheeses. And ice-cream, and eggs, and a half-eaten bowl of pasta.”
She walked into the gleaming modern kitchen to find him rummaging in the refrigerator. His back was to her and she could admire the curve of his buttocks in his jeans. Not that she should be noticing such things when the world was falling apart. Or maybe she should be noticing such things because the world was falling apart.
“Oliver,” she said. And then she paused.
He looked up. His hands were filled with butter, a slab of ham and a loaf of bread. “What?”
“What if they come back?”
“Who?”
“The family. Who lives here.”
He thought about this for a while. Then he said gently, “I don’t think they’re coming back, Felicity.”
She swallowed.
Yeah, I know.
7
They spent the next few days holed up in the penthouse. No one came back and no fast mutant came clawing at the door.
Felicity was looking at the amount of food they had left. There was a freezer filled with steaks and fish and chicken, but it would soon dwindle and they couldn’t stay here forever.
“Felicity?”
It was Oliver from the lounge, where they had the seventy-five inch plasma TV on almost twenty-four seven.
“What is it?” She rushed out.
There was only static on the TV screen.
Oliver glanced at her. “The news channels have all stopped broadcasting.”
“But CNN was the last one.”
“I know. We are all in the dark now.”
*
That night, at a dinner she had whipped up – fried chicken and mashed potatoes – she said, “Things are not going to tide over, are they?”
He speared a forkful of chicken into his mouth. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
“How come we aren’t sick?”
“I’m sure we’re not the only ones.” He looked at the window. “There are probably plenty of people out there who are holed up in places like we are, only not so ritzy.”
She smiled. “Good choice.”
“It was very quick thinking on my part, I’ll admit.”
“It’s nice to see that you haven’t lost your ego.”
“Some things have natural stickiness.”
She went to the window and looked down at the street, fourteen floors down.
“I don’t see the fast mutants anywhere. I haven’t seen them since yesterday.”
“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“You think they’re closer to a cure for this?”
“It hasn’t been reported. And now it probably won’t be.”
She thought of all those news people . . . finally succumbing to the virus.
“Why not us?” she said. “What makes us different from the rest of them?”
“I don’t know. But there’s got to be something.” He looked at the last piece of chicken. “You want that?”
“No. I’m not hungry anymore.”
“You better eat while the going is good.” He grinned. “You’ve kind of lost weight since we got here. It suits you.”
“Really? Oliver Greene finally paying me a compliment? Pigs have flown.”
“So they have.” He gestured to her vacated seat. “Sit down, Felicity. Let’s try to make sense of this and find out what we have in common.”
Sure. You’re gorgeous and hunky. I’m fat.
She sat down and looked into his brilliant blue eyes. He had shaved and he looked every inch of the phenomenally handsome college athlete he was. But sadder. Far sadder. She probably looked the same way, emotion wise.
“OK,” she said, feeling awkward. Why did she feel like she was on a first date? Not that she had ever been on a date. “We’re both smart.”
“Glad you acknowledged that, Marks.” He flashed his old smug grin. “What else? I don’t quite think I.Q. cuts it in the immune department with viruses.”
“My blood type is AB positive.”
“Mine’s B positive.”
She peered into his blue eyes. “Your eyes are blue. So are mine.”
He stared into her eyes, and she felt a pang of pleasure despite herself. “Yours are blue all right,” he said. “I actually never noticed them, but . . . they are very blue.”
She wondered if he meant it as a compliment, but she hastily brushed it aside. “We obviously don’t share the Y chromosome.”
“I don’t have two X’s. You have any disorders?”
“Disorders?”
“Like asthma or diabetes or stuff.”
She said wryly, “Do you consider obesity a disorder?”
He laughed. “I think you’re too hard on yourself.”
“No. You were pretty hard on me. For four years, Greene.”
He had the grace to look ashamed.
“Look,” he said, “when we are in college, we tend to say all sorts of things we don’t mean.”
“Oh, you meant them all right.” She wasn’t looking to pick a fight, but somehow, the bitterness came out.
He hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for all the mean things I said to you. But you said some pretty mean things to me too.”
“I only gave back as much as I got.”
“Et tu.” He sighed and leaned back. “OK, let’s make a list.”
*
When they finished the list two hours later, what they had was:
1. Blue eyes
2. I.Q. above 160
3. Like watching movies
4. Like fried chicken and burgers
5. Hate Professor Dickens’ Applied Chemistry classes because he talks like Daffy Duck.
“Not much of a list,” he admitted.
“That’s how much we have in common,” she said. “Maybe we have genetic traits that aren’t obvious. Traits which have to be diagnosed via a chromosome analysis.”
“Maybe.”
She paused for a bit. Then she said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.”
“No. I deserve it. Sometimes, I go overboard.” He held out his hand. “Truce?”
She took it. His hand was very warm.
“Truce.”
For as long as it lasted.
“Wait, I should add that in.” He took the list of commonalities again and wrote something. “Number Five. We both have dimples.”
She laughed. She never had a boy who noticed things like those about her before, and it was . . . nice. But don’t get too comfy, she warned herself. He’s only noticing stuff like that about you because he has to.
“You know,” she said, “we should make another list.”
His eyebrows rose inquiringly. “What list? Ten things you hate about me?”
“We’re in a truce, remember?” She got up from her chair. “No. This is a bucket list.”
“I think we’re too late for bucket lists,” he said wryly. “Or haven’t you noticed?”
“My bucket list is simple. I don’t need to do things like hand-gliding over the Andes or skiing down the Appalachians.” She wondered what on earth possessed her to think up something like this. Maybe it was for the sake of having something to do. “These are things I can do in this apartment.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . ” She lifted her chin. “Like wearing a pretty dress.”
&
nbsp; “You’ve never worn pretty dresses?”
Her eyes gleamed. “Not like the ones I saw in the walk-in closet upstairs.”
He smiled. “So what’s stopping you?”
*
The fact that she would be rummaging through someone else’s things, for one, but Oliver was right. The family who lived here wasn’t coming back.
The walk-in closet was three times larger than her bedroom at home. She had never known such things existed, and when she first came here, she was reluctant to explore it. But now, it seemed a shame not to wear a few things from it before she kicked her own bucket.
One side of the closet clearly belonged to Mrs. Maurier. Felicity knew her name because it was on her correspondence, which littered her study desk. Whoever she was, Janine Maurier – wife to Frederic Maurier – was clearly a Size 12, according to her labels.
Felicity stared at a silver gown which was to die for. Prada, the label said.
You know it can’t fit you.
I know, but I can still try.
She carefully stripped to her brassiere and panties. Then she carefully donned the gown. Or tried to. As she suspected, it was too small for her. She couldn’t even get her hips to wriggle into it.
Despondent, she rifled through the wardrobe again. Fancy that. She needed new clothes, and the only things she could find in the entire closet to fit her were Frederic Maurier’s clothes. So she consoled herself with a men’s silk shirt which could be worn as a fashion statement, she supposed, though she didn’t know squat about fashion.
When she came out, Oliver was reading a magazine in the lounge. He looked up.
“Don’t say anything,” she said.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You just said something.”
“I only said something to tell you that I didn’t say anything.”