by Joe McKinney
His kindness shocked me like a punch in the gut. Had our positions been reversed, I’m sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing for him, and it made me doubt if what he said was true. How many more people like me were out there? How many others had as far to go as I did?
His dream of building a world full of bridges was still a long way off—I knew that—but maybe it wasn’t impossible either. Maybe it could be more than a pipe dream.
With the keys in my hand I walked down the stairs and out the front door of the church. I walked through a haze the whole way. If the others watched me leave, I wasn’t aware of it. I wasn’t even aware of the cold night air against my face as I walked across the parking lot, found Tiresias’s car, and climbed inside.
Chapter 31
If there’s any truth to that old saying that cleanliness is next to godliness, then Tiresias’s ’88 Pontiac Grand Am was the window to a godly soul.
I have been inside thousands of cars as a policeman, but never have I seen a car with 120,000 miles on it that looked as good as his did. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. No trash. No smell of stale smoke. No soda stains on the seats. It was perfectly clean.
I rubbed an appreciative hand across the dashboard and put it in gear. Gravel crunched beneath the tires as I pulled out of the parking lot. I tried hard not to run over any bodies.
I drove Tiresias’s car through the cracked and broken streets of the east side, and for the longest time I saw nothing but blacked-out houses and moldering urban decay.
But even as I drove through those ruins, I felt my mind coming together, clearing. I still had a deep sense of urgency, a longing to get home that overpowered everything else I was feeling, but it was tempered now with the realization that things could make sense, that the world didn’t have to stay upside down. It was only a sense. Still, the answers, the answer, eluded me. But I took comfort in the hope of an answer, for before, even that had seemed impossibly distant. Now that I was moving, distance didn’t seem like such a massive obstacle.
I worked my way steadily northward from the church, and when I finally left the confines of the east side and turned onto a dark farm-to-market road that made a long loop all the way across the northern edge of San Antonio, I almost felt like I was floating.
Feeling better than I had all night I took the robbery detective’s phone from my belt and tried April’s cell again. The first time I just got static, but the second time it started to ring. I almost sensed that it would.
April picked up. “Eddie?” she said, her voice frayed around the edges. “Eddie, is that you?”
“It’s me, sweetie. I’m coming home. I’m on the way there.”
“Oh, thank God. Me too.”
“Is Andrew okay?” I asked.
“He’s crying. I’m taking him home to get the formula. He hasn’t eaten all night.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Eddie, don’t hang up. Please.”
“I’m not,” I said. But we were speaking across oceans of static. “April, are you there? April.”
More static, and then a moment of silence. I almost spoke her name again, but just then I heard her scream. It was a horrible, crippling sound.
“April,” I said, my own voice cracking. “April!”
There was nothing left of the connection. I tried calling again and again and got nothing but static.
Panicked, I stomped on the gas and ran at top speed all the way back to my subdivision.
Because I was coming in from the east, I took the Blackberry Lane entrance. I drove across the front lawn of somebody’s house to get around a knot of traffic, and then I was rolling again.
From Blackberry I turned onto Rock Gate and started up towards my house. Once Rock Gate crosses Border Beacon it curves sharply to the right and starts a gradual uphill slope that continues all the way across the subdivision. Just around the curve, Rock Gate comes together with Starlight Crest, meeting at a forty-five-degree angle.
My plan was to go past Starlight Crest, turn onto Lullaby, and take that back to my house, but as I got into the intersection I saw a black SUV coming from my left.
At the same time I saw a car with only one headlight coming towards the intersection on the other side of Rock Gate. It was swerving drunkenly from one side of the street to the other, completely out of control. I stared at them both in turn, my mouth in the shape of an O. It had been hours since I’d seen another moving vehicle, and here were two of them. And they were on a collision course.
The black SUV and the car entered the intersection at the same time, and I cringed in anticipation of the impact.
There was an aching crunch of metal and breaking glass. The back end of the SUV popped up and slid sideways, its momentum sending it into a 150-foot-long neutral skid. Still going sideways, it bounced over a curb and into a lawn, where it crashed into a tree.
The car spun counterclockwise and ended up sideways in the intersection, its front end crumpled beyond recognition.
When I got to the intersection there was a fine yellow cloud of smoke and dust in the air and the car’s horn was blaring continuously.
The SUV was nose down at the base of a tree, its back right tire still spinning uselessly in the air.
In the commotion it took me a second to register that the SUV was a Nissan Xterra.
I thought, April.
“April!” I yelled, and then, yelling her name over and over again, I jumped out of Tiresias’s car and ran for her.
Chapter 32
I ran toward the car yelling April’s name at the top of my lungs.
As I came up on the back end of the Xterra I heard the driver’s side door open.
“April,” I said.
I turned the corner to the driver’s side and saw April standing there with my Springfield .45 in both hands, pointing it right at my face.
She fired as soon as she saw me and I heard the bullet whistle past my ear. I made a startled noise and jumped back behind the tailgate.
“April. What the hell?”
“Get away from my baby!” she said, shrieking it at the top of her lungs.
“April,” I said. “April. It’s me.”
“Get away. Leave us alone!”
“April, sweetie, it’s me. It’s Eddie.”
There was a really long pause before she finally said, “Eddie?”
“It’s me, April. It’s me.” I didn’t move from behind the car. “April, put the gun down, okay?”
“How do I know you’re not one of those things?”
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” I said under my breath. “You know it’s me because we’re having this freaking conversation.”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling.” But then I caught myself and made my voice go as small and as nonthreatening as I could. “I’m not yelling. April, I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. Okay? But it’s me. Eddie. Now please, April, put the gun down and let me show you.”
I waited for her to speak. I could picture her there, her lips trembling, holding that huge gun in her shaking hands and fighting against her fear and every motherly instinct in her body to believe what she was hearing.
It didn’t matter that she had almost killed me. The fact that she was willing to face down anything to protect our child made me so proud of her that I could have forgiven her anything at that moment.
“April?” I said quietly. From inside the car I could hear Andrew starting to cry. “April?”
“Eddie?”
“It’s me.”
I stood up slowly and inched over toward her side of the car. “April, I’m gonna step around the corner now, okay?”
“Okay.”
Very slowly, I put my hand around the corner and waved it. When she didn’t fire, I went farther, until I was completely around the corner, facing her. She stood there, shivering, tears running down her beautiful face, and so overcome by her emotion her whole mouth quivered with it.
I was looking straight down the barrel of the Springfield.
She looked me over, and her face gave way to recognition, and then to shock at the sight of me.
I didn’t realize how bad I looked until just then. I was covered in mud and grime and God knows what else. I barely looked like her husband. No wonder she tried to shoot me.
Finally she said, “Oh, my God,” and let the gun fall to her side.
“Are you guys okay?”
She covered her mouth with her hand, her body racking with convulsive sobs. “Eddie. Oh, my God, Eddie.”
I reached out to pull her into my arms, but she put up her hand to stop me. Her eyes went huge, looking at something over my shoulder.
I turned and saw a woman climbing out of the car that had just hit her SUV. She had a nasty-looking wound on her arm that had to be from a bite, it was so torn up.
She stumbled sideways into the street, confused by the blaring horn and the dust in the air; but when she saw us, all the confusion vanished. Her lips pulled back, and she came for us with all the speed she could muster.
“Get Andrew,” I told April. “We’ll put him in my car.”
April jumped into the backseat and worked the buckles on Andrew’s car seat. While she was doing that, I was scanning the area, looking for trouble.
I found it in the next yard. Two zombies were lumbering into the street, headed our way, and a third was coming up fast behind them.
I fired twice, and both zombies went down. While April kept wrestling with Andrew’s straps, I waited on the woman who had hit April’s car. When she was in range, I dropped her with my best shot of the night.
“What’s taking so long?”
“It’s the straps,” April said. “Something’s stuck. The buckle won’t come loose.”
“Hurry, April,” I said. The car horn and the gun shots were like a beacon for the zombies. I saw three more come out of a house across the street, and I could see more moving our way from down the street.
“You got it yet?” I yelled.
“No.” Her hands were all over the car seat, trying to get Andrew out. Andrew picked up on the emotion and started screaming, not hurt, but very scared.
I shot the three zombies that had just entered the street and then jumped into the Xterra to help April. She was right. The straps were stuck somehow, and the buckle wouldn’t give.
Out of the back window of the Xterra I could see more and more zombies. They were coming out of houses, between houses, out of everywhere at once.
A large, long group of twenty or so got between us and Tiresias’s car, and I knew we were out of time.
“Here,” I said, pushing April aside. “Let me get in there.”
I put my foot on the seat next to Andrew’s car seat and used all my weight to pull the strap toward me. When it finally let go I went tumbling backwards, into the front seat.
“Get him out,” I said. But she was already doing that. She pulled him out of the seat and then we were standing in the front yard of a stranger’s house, surrounded by a growing crowd.
I kept my breathing slow and under control. There was no way we could force our way through the crowd with Andrew in tow, and the only option was to stand and fight.
A woman in a white, floral nightgown was the closest. Most of her stomach had been eaten, and she walked hunched over so that the strands of skin that had once been her face dangled over her shoes like jelly fishing lures.
I closed the distance between us and put a bullet in her head. After that I burned through my two magazines in a hurry. Before I knew it, I had piles of corpses stacked up around the Xterra.
But for all my shooting, I didn’t make a dent in their numbers.
I was facing April and Andrew when I fired my last bullet at a man who was wearing nothing but a ripped T-shirt. Poor Andrew’s whole body flinched with the gun’s report.
“We’ve got to get to my car,” I said. “Where’s the gun you had?”
“In the car.”
I ran to the Xterra and rummaged through the front seat, but I couldn’t find it. “Where?” I asked.
“It’s there,” she said.
I looked again, pushing Andrew’s blanket and toys out of the way until I finally spotted it on the passenger-side floorboard.
I got control of the Springfield just in time to fire at a zombie a few feet from the car. When the bullet hit his forehead big chunks of the top of his head splattered onto the pebbled walkway behind him.
The Springfield was a serious weapon. It made the Glock look like a pellet gun in comparison. One shot was enough to make the zombie’s head and feet trade places and send him tumbling into the grass behind him.
“Eddie!”
I jumped out of the Xterra, trying to find April in the crowd I had let get too close.
Three zombies had cornered her near a line of bushes and she was slapping at them with her free hand, blocking Andrew from them with her body.
“Eddie!”
They towered over her, and as she turned to get away, one of the zombies managed to pull Andrew from her arms.
“Eddie!” she said, screaming it.
The zombie who had grabbed Andrew was an older woman in the process of losing her bathrobe. I hit her at a run, grabbing Andrew and yanking him away from her as I made contact.
The woman fell to the ground, but not before she swiped at Andrew’s face. She missed, hitting him in the arm instead, and leaving a thin, two-inch-long cut on his bicep.
He yelped in pain.
“Fucking bitch,” I said, and before she could get up I kicked her in the face with everything I had.
When I looked up April was nowhere to be seen. But there were zombies everywhere.
I backed up, and once I had a free lane through the crowd, ran for the street. From there, I could see April dodging for her life.
I yelled out to her, but I don’t think she heard. The Springfield had five shots left, and I used them all. I shot my way through part of the crowd and ended up around the corner from where the accident had happened.
I still had Andrew in my arms, and he was holding on to my neck, screaming. The crowd followed us, surrounding us again.
The only weapon I had left was my baton, and I snapped it open with my free hand.
“You and me, buddy,” I said to Andrew, and kissed his cheek. “You and me.”
I tensed up, ready for the fight. I knew that I was looking at the end, and I promised myself there’d be no escape without my son. I’d die before I gave him up, and if they took him from me anyway, then they could have me too.
“I love you, buddy,” I said, and dug in.
That’s when I heard a nasty series of thuds and the whine of a small-bore motor struggling to accelerate.
I watched in stunned silence as headlights momentarily backlit the crowd. A few turned to face the light, only to be mowed down by the front end of Tiresias’s car.
The car careened through the crowd and went sideways into a skid that stopped barely ten feet from me.
April threw the door open.
“Hurry,” she said, and I did.
I pushed my way into the car and we were rolling before I could even close the door.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, you?”
She nodded. “How is he?”
“One of them scratched him,” I said.
“Oh, my God. Where?”
I showed her.
“Do you think—”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Chapter 33
Looking out the passenger window, I watched the houses of our neighborhood slip past like snapshots of a lost world. Some of the neighborhood seemed so peaceful, so normal, it was hard to believe anything had happened.
Other parts were less so.
A white-haired woman in a green dress was on her knees at the corner of our street, eating someone’s arm. I closed my eyes.
Wrecked cars were everywh
ere. Wrecked people, too. Here and there they drifted into the street, watching us drive by with dead, empty eyes.
Andrew was in my arms, and I could smell him. Nothing intoxicates like the smell of your own baby. I pulled him close. His crying had given way to sobs and then to an unhappy silence. He was cold, wet, and hungry, but he sat still in my lap.
The cut on his arm filled the car with an uneasy silence. April and I both looked at it, and we both worried. I remembered Ken Stoler and Dr. Stiles both saying that the necrosis virus was transmitted through bodily fluids, or at least they believed that was how it was transmitted, and I prayed that none had passed to Andrew. Maybe a scratch could be just a scratch.
“Do you think it’ll be okay?” April asked as she pulled up to the front of our house.
“I hope so,” I said. But I didn’t know.
There were zombies milling our way from both ends of the block. “We need to hurry, April. Let’s get him inside and clean it. Then we’ll go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere out of the city.”
We hurried inside. April stopped right inside the front door and cupped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, my God.”
“I know,” I said, looking at the dead bodies I’d left spread throughout our home. “I was here earlier. Don’t worry. I’ll clean it.”
April went to work on Andrew. She cleaned the wound half a dozen times at least, scrubbing it even though he screamed in protest, then changed him and got a couple of extra clothes for him to wear.
Meanwhile, I loaded up the formula, bottles, and bottled water. While we worked, April told me about her night.
“Right after you called that first time,” she said, “I went around locking doors and windows. I had your guns with me, and Andrew and I were sitting on the couch. And then Mr. Cowper from across the street started banging on the door. I know I shouldn’t have, but he looked normal, and he was looking right at me, through the window. I opened the door, and, oh, my God.”