by Gibb, Lew
“Okay. But you don’t have to be in immediate contact with everyone all the time. Oh my god,” Rachel said, pointing at the screen. “It looks like a bunch of people were attacking that guy.”
“Where?” Lisa turned back to the TV.
“It’s gone now. One of them ran at the camera, and the screen went black.”
“You’re not bringing up that zombie stuff again, are you?” Lisa waved her hand in front of her face like she was swatting at a fly. “What I need to figure out is how am I going to get back to Denver with all this traffic?”
“I don’t think you’re going to make it,” Rachel whispered while she stared at the TV. Her arms hung limp at her sides, and the cleaning rag dropped from her hand.
Screams and a loud thump—like something heavy hitting the floor—came from the dining room, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Rachel and Lisa turned and started toward the kitchen door. Before they reached it, the door flew open and slammed against the wall. Phyllis, the chairwoman of the fundraising committee bustled in holding her left hand against her chest. A tennis bracelet with diamonds bigger than the one in Rachel’s engagement ring sparkled on her wrist in stark contrast to the blood dripping from her finger. She was in her mid-sixties but had always seemed younger to Rachel. The woman had the energy of a teenager.
“Oh my god, you’re bleeding!” Lisa said, hurrying over.
Phyllis’s face was pale and bloodless. “Yep,” she said, nodding. “He got the end of my finger.”
Rachel was impressed by how cool the woman was. She imagined that was how Jerry acted at the scene of an injury. Nothing like that ever seemed to freak him out.
Lisa led Phyllis to the sink, turned on the water, and washed the injury. Blood began to drip from the wound as soon as she removed her finger from the water’s flow.
Rachel looked around for the first aid kit but didn’t see anything out in the open.
“I can’t believe you’re so calm,” Lisa said, wrapping a clean white kitchen towel around the finger. “I’d be screaming my head off right now.”
“I wasn’t always a stuck-up rich lady.” Phyllis smiled and gave them a wink. “Before I married my Ed, I worked on my parents’ cattle ranch. This is nothing compared to being thrown into a split-rail fence by a two-year-old mustang.”
“What the hell happened?” Rachel asked. “And do you know where the first aid kit is?” Usually when she cut herself, she made do with a piece of paper towel and some duct tape—which worked far better than a Band-Aid—but she didn’t want to seem uncouth by suggesting it.
“We were just about to wrap up, and Harold Roberts just went crazy. He grabbed his wife Morgan around the neck and started biting her shoulder. I tried to pull him off, and he bit my hand. Morgan managed to pull herself away, but then he went after Chris. Two of the guys grabbed him and managed to hold him down, but he bit them, too. There’s a first aid kit in the office at the back of the kitchen there.” Phyllis pointed awkwardly while keeping the towel pressed against her injured finger. “We need to help the others.”
“You help her,” Rachel told Lisa and headed for the door. “I’ll see what’s going on out there.”
Chapter Eighteen
The scene in the dining room made Rachel stop as soon as she pushed through the door. A trail of bright red droplets led from the kitchen door to the overturned dining table. The Habitat for Humanity board members were all standing and looking at her. Spilled wine and food seemed to be everywhere. At the far end of the table, a gap in the diners allowed Rachel to see a pair of men bent over a third man who was lying on the floor and rocking his head from side to side. He appeared to be trying to bite his two captors. The younger of the two men had a tear in the shoulder of his pinstriped jacket, and a bit of padding puffed out like a feather from a pillow.
“What—” Rachel said before clamping her jaw shut so hard her teeth made a snapping sound. She wasn’t sure what to say.
A tall woman in a black cocktail dress stood in the entry hall with her back to the group. She held her cell phone against her ear with one hand while the other waved in the air as she talked.
“What do you mean, you can’t send anyone? We have four people here that have been attacked.” She started to pace. “We need someone to arrest him and an ambulance for the people who were bitten.” Her Sergio Rossi heels clacked against the oak floor as she stalked back and forth in the entry hall. “What do you mean we’re not the only ones?” She stopped in the center of the doorway and stared at the assembled diners. “Oh. I see. Okay. Thank you.”
At the word bitten, Rachel’s skin went cold, and her scalp tingled. She felt she should be doing something but couldn’t think what. Her mind seemed to have locked in neutral.
The woman stabbed her phone’s screen with a finger and turned toward the group. “There appears to have been several incidents just like this one so the police can’t come right away. They suggested we tie him up or lock him in a room to keep him from hurting anyone else until they can get here.”
Everyone continued to stare at the woman in mute amazement.
Jerry had told Rachel the apocalypse would start with a rash of attacks that no one would recognize for what they were. She needed to get to her survival kit. She was glad she had brought the duffel bag inside even if she had just been humoring her husband at the time.
She finally shook off her paralysis and spoke to the group. “I think this is the same thing that’s happening in Brazil,” she started. A few people turned to look at her. The rest either focused on the man on the floor or continued to look, in disbelief, at the woman who had just been talking to the police. “There’s a virus related to rabies, and it’s very contagious.”
One of the guys holding the struggling man on the floor spoke first. “So, you think Harold has rabies?”
“Sort of,” Rachel said, running a hand through her hair and shaking her head. She wished she had paid more attention to Jerry when he’d talked about the thing in Brazil. “It’s a mutation of the rabies virus.”
“So we’re all going to end up like him?” the other man holding Harold said, his voice rising to a near shout. His extra chin overlapped his shirt collar as he struggled, red-faced and sweating, to contain the thrashing man.
“I can’t be positive, but I think it’s possible,” Rachel said, watching Harold repeatedly trying to bite his captors. “Did Harold say anything about how he got bitten? Or when?”
A man in an expensive-looking dark gray suit holding a corner of the white tablecloth against his hand said, “He told me he got into an accident on the way over here.” The red stain on the cloth expanded as he spoke. “When he got out to exchange information, she seemed to be struggling to get out of her car. Harold opened the door and was trying to help her out when she grabbed his arm and bit him. He said it barely broke the skin. He was able to pull away and slam the door on her because she still had her seatbelt on. He said it took three cops and the ambulance crew to get her onto the stretcher and tied down so they could take her to the hospital. He was pretty shaken up when he got here, but a couple Scotches calmed him down.”
“It’s possible she was on drugs or had a head injury,” Rachel said, thinking out loud and still fighting the idea of the apocalypse. “My husband has quite a few stories about people getting violent in his ambulance.”
“Well, Harold didn’t say anything about hitting his head,” an ancient woman standing next to Rachel said. She wore a blue sequined dress and had matching blue hair.
“People started arriving around five.” Rachel paced a little but kept her eyes on Harold. “It’s nine o’clock now. So he must have been bitten at about four thirty or four forty-five. That’s faster than they said on the blog.”
“What blog?” an older woman holding a bloody napkin against the base of her neck asked. “What are you talking about? And who are you?”
Rachel thought this must be Harold’s wife.
“So you’re saying
we’re going to be like him in less than five hours?” the other man holding Harold asked before Rachel could answer Harold’s wife. He sounded scared, nearly hysterical.
“I’m not positive, but yes. My husband read a blog by the doctor in Brazil who treated the first patients. He said this virus is transmitted in the saliva of the person who gets infected.”
They all looked at Rachel in disbelief. After about thirty seconds of silence, the fat older man holding Harold let go of him and got up. The arm of his tan jacket was bloodstained, and a semi-circular wound on the outside of his hand oozed blood. “I have to get to a hospital!” he said to no one in particular and ran for the front door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” the other man shouted. “I can’t hold him by myself!”
Rachel backed up a step toward the kitchen as she watched the man lose control of Harold and fall sideways. Harold was on him right away. He grabbed the guy’s arm and started pulling it toward his mouth, his jaw was working like he was already chewing the man’s flesh.
“Son of a bitch!” the man yelled. He yanked his arm free, punched Harold in the face, then scrambled backward, keeping Harold at a distance with more punches till he hit the back wall of the dining room. He managed to get to his feet, but Harold was up too and reaching for the man’s arm. Blood ran from his now-crooked nose and splattered his white shirt. The man lowered a shoulder and ran through the grasping Harold like an All-American fullback.
Harold tumbled over backward and into the older woman Rachel thought was his wife. The other man kept running toward the front door. The rest of the diners were still frozen in place. The woman screamed and fell into the man with the tablecloth wrapped around his hand. He reacted quickly, grabbing her under the arms and pulling her to her feet while backing away from Harold. The woman’s screams seemed to break the paralysis gripping the other diners. Everyone turned and ran for the front of the house. The man with the tableclothed hand turned and pushed Harold’s wife into the arms of another woman, who took hold of the older woman’s arm and pulled her toward the door as she continued to scream Harold’s name. The man still had the tablecloth around his hand when he turned and shoved Harold hard toward the back of the dining room. Harold tripped over an overturned chair and went down.
Watching the older woman actually trying to go toward her crazed husband while everyone else was pushing and scrambling to get out the front door made Rachel feel like she was watching a movie. The man with the tableclothed hand pushed her out the door while Harold extricated himself from the fallen chair. He seemed not to notice Rachel and took off after the party goers without a glance.
Everyone was out the door except a short, round guy in khaki pants and a blue blazer who had stopped to collect an expensive-looking camel-hair coat from the heavy oak coat tree by the front door. He was just shrugging it on when Harold barreled into him and drove him out the door. Rachel sprinted after them, grabbing the coat rack on her way out the door. Harold and the man in the camel-hair coat were in a heap at the bottom of the stairs with Harold on top.
The smaller man had his forearm jammed against the bigger man’s face. “Harold, stop it!” he screamed.
Two cars were already speeding away from the house, spraying gravel as they made the turn into the street. Another car backed out of a spot on the far end of the parking area and fishtailed past the porch on its way out.
Rachel shook the two remaining coats free and gripped the top of the heavy coat rack two-handed as she ran across the porch and down the stairs. Harold was shaking his head back and forth, and the man beneath him was still screaming when Rachel swung the coat rack. It connected with the side of Harold’s head with a hollow thunk.
The short man used the momentum from Rachel’s blow to push Harold off himself. He stood and looked at Rachel. “Holy shit!” he said while backing away from Harold who was still fixated on him, crawling on hands and knees while reaching for the man’s legs. “What the fuck is wrong with him?”
Rachel didn’t take the time to answer. She swung the coat rack again and connected with the same side of Harold’s head. The sound was duller, and her hands stung. Harold collapsed on his face and lay still.
Camel hair looked at her, wide eyed, then blurted a quick “thanks” and sprinted for the parking area, where he jumped into a black Tesla two-door. The vehicle surged out of the spot and took off with only the sound of crunching gravel to mark its passing.
At least three sirens wailed in the distance and sporadic gunfire from the direction of downtown banged as Rachel retreated inside. When she slammed the door, she turned and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window flanking the door. Harold was still lying at the base of the stairs.
“Zombies,” Rachel whispered. The word seemed to come to her lips without conscious thought. There was no denying Jerry was right. “I can’t believe it.”
“Can’t believe what?” Lisa asked. The kitchen door swung shut behind her, and she looked around the room. “What was all that screaming?”
Rachel looked at Lisa. “It’s the zombie apocalypse,” she said in a soft voice.
“What?”
“It’s here.” Her voice was a little stronger. “Just like Jerry said.”
“Seriously?”
“You should have seen it. It was just like one of those movies.”
“Seen what?”
“The zombie. All he wanted to do was eat people.”
“Rachel. This isn’t funny anymore.” Lisa grabbed Rachel’s shoulders with both hands and looked into her eyes. “What really happened?”
Rachel shook her head, shrugged Lisa’s hands off, and started for the kitchen.
Lisa followed. “Rachel, talk to me.”
“I would, but you don’t want to listen. That guy Harold turned into a zombie right here and attacked everyone. You should have seen his eyes. They were wide open and completely focused on whoever he was going after.” Rachel was thinking about Jerry’s timeline for the infection as she entered the kitchen and looked for her duffel bag. His eight-to-twelve hours seemed to be wrong by a lot. “His face had no expression at all.”
Lisa moved to one side as Rachel pulled her duffel from beneath the prep table and dropped it on the counter. “So what are you going to do now?”
“It’s not safe to try to go home right now. The streets are going to be a fucking nightmare.” She desperately needed to get home to Jerry, but there was too much stacked against her—the dark, the clogged roads, the zombies. A plan was forming in her mind to walk south and avoid the highway corridor. That was where everyone would be. Trying to get out of Denver, out of Boulder, out of the cities in between. Everyone would be on the highway.
Lisa narrowed her eyes. “I think you’re losing it, Rachel. This isn’t the zombie apocalypse. The government would have said something. There hasn’t been anything on TV.”
“Do you remember what happened with Ebola?”
“In Africa?” Lisa rolled her eyes again. “When everyone got all worried about it and there only ended up being like two cases here?”
“That’s my point.” Rachel gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. “Jerry had a friend who worked with Doctors Without Borders, and he said no one took it seriously. The people asking exposure questions at the airport were actually telling people to just answer no to all the questions and keep moving. And the people who were exposed lied about it so they could get home.”
“And still nothing happened.”
“Because it moved slow. This is happening way faster,” Rachel said, pulling her phone from her pocket and pressing the power button. “The normal progression of a disease around the world can take up to a year because the way people get infected is passive. But now it’s zombies who actually go after people. Fucking Social distancing wont get the job done here. If it affects the body in four hours, it could make it around the world in a week or less.” Rachel couldn’t believe she had absorbed so much of what Jerry had been saying. She thought she had been i
gnoring him.
“Rachel. There’s like a few billion people in the world. There’s no way they’re all going to catch this.”
“It’s actually around seven billion. And they don’t catch it. It catches them. There’s a big difference. Do you know anything about compounding?”
“What?” Lisa’s face twisted, and she narrowed her eyes. “Like interest at the bank?”
“Yeah. It works the same with a disease. Basically, it shows how a virus can infect all the people in the world in a short time.”
“How can that be? It takes, like, forever for a savings account to make any money. And a dollar sure doesn’t become seven billion dollars in a week.”
“That’s not how it works. It’s just a metaphor.”
“Whatever,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “I just came out to tell you I’m taking Phyllis to the hospital. She’s upstairs getting her stuff from the office.”
“The hospital? That’s the worst place you could go right now!” Rachel was almost yelling.
“Okay,” Lisa said her voice dripping with teen-snark. “Where should I take a person with a finger that’s been bitten off? The grocery store?” She turned her back on Rachel and started for the door. “You stay here and work on cleaning up. I’ll take Phyllis then come back and help you finish. All right?”
“No. Not all right.” Rachel grabbed Lisa’s upper arm, spinning her and looking her in the eye. “In about three and a half hours, Phyllis is going to be trying to eat you.”
Lisa shook her arm free and started for the door again. “You need to calm down.”
“If you even make it to the hospital.” Rachel followed and grabbed the door handle, preventing Lisa from opening it. “Stay here. We can hide till the morning and then figure out what to do.”
“Hide here from—” Lisa paused and made air quotes with her hands “—the zombies?” Her face twisted the last word into a disdainful sneer. “I can’t believe you’re taking this seriously.”
“I know it sounds farfetched. But if you would just listen, I could explain it better. If you saw that fucker biting those people.” Rachel took a deep breath to calm her self. “At least wear some protective clothes. I’m sure we can find something around here.”