by A. M. Geever
“Gabe, you need to get out of my way,” Doug said.
“We are not leaving her here! You stay away from her!”
Mike stepped beside Doug. Where Doug was willowy, Mike was broad. Doug’s pale complexion melted into the fog, but Mike’s dark skin stood in stark contrast to the gray vapor.
“She’s your friend, Gabe, I get it,” Mike said. “But she’s not going to make it. She’s not going to make it another hour. There’s no point moving her.”
“Stop saying that,” Gabe snapped. “Naomi’s tough, she’ll pull through.”
Doug shook his head. His face was etched with sympathy, but from the set of his jaw and the tension around his eyes, Miranda could also see his resolve. “She’s not going to pull through this.”
Gabe started to shake his head in denial.
“I’m sorry, Gabe,” Doug said, gentle but insistent, “but she’s going to die any minute. You need to get out of my way.”
Gabe’s hand moved to his hip where his knife was sheathed. Quick as a striking snake, Mike reached out and grabbed it. “Don’t be stupid, man.”
Unable to break Mike’s grip, Gabe twisted toward the rest of the group. “Are you really going to let them do this? Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?”
A board creaked under Mario’s foot as he stepped away from the porch rail. “We should bring her with us.”
Miranda’s head snapped to the porch where Mario stood.
Connor spoke next. “I think we should bring her, too.”
Miranda could not make sense of what she was hearing. Mario wanted to bring Naomi with them? He knew she was dying. And why was Connor, of all people, backing him up?
The look of surprise on Doug’s face matched her own. “What?”
“Leaving her here to die alone is wrong,” said Connor.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Miranda sputtered. “You want to put the rest of us at risk because she’ll die alone?”
“See,” Gabe said, freeing himself of Mike’s grip, “I’m not the only one!”
“Some of you seem to be suffering from the illusion that this is a democracy,” Doug said, his voice flint hard. His eyes raked over the small assembly. “Our mission is to get the serum to Santa Cruz so Mario and Henry can make the vaccine and get out of here. Anything that compromises that goal is not part of the plan. This is my call, not yours.” He looked at Gabe, his eyes alight with anger. “We are leaving in five minutes and Naomi will not be with us. Get out of my way.”
Gabe threw a punch. Doug neatly sidestepped and caught his elbow. Two seconds later Gabe was on the ground, whimpering in pain, his arm twisted high and Doug’s knee on his back.
“Naomi is going to die, Gabe. There’s nothing we can do about it. Turning her into zombie bait that gets the rest of us killed won’t bring her back. You will get up on that gun and do the job you were brought here to do,” Doug growled, his mouth close to Gabe’s ear. He released Gabe’s arm and stepped over him. “Connor, Mario, do not pull this shit again.”
Gabe cried, anguished. “You’re supposed to be a priest!”
Doug stopped mid-stride and turned back. “And you think I don’t know that?” He stood, momentarily suspended, fists clenched, then turned on his heel and stalked into the house.
Everyone stood frozen until Mike reached down to give Gabe a hand up. “You heard the man, we’re moving out. Let’s go, people.”
Gabe picked up his pack. He wiped his tear-stained face and walked slowly toward the Humvee, slumped and broken.
“He’s not, you know…” Seffie asked. She had stayed so quiet during the argument that Miranda had forgotten she was there.
“What? No, no…the Anointing of the Sick,” Miranda said. At Seffie’s blank face, she added, “Last Rites. He’s giving Naomi the Last Rites.”
“Oh.” Seffie looked at Miranda, Connor, and Mario. “I’ll see you at the Humvee.”
Connor and Mario stood on the porch steps. Two sides of a coin, the good and the bad of the men she had loved, still loved… She wasn’t sure anymore. Mario saw her looking at them and scowled with such venom that Miranda looked away, unable to meet his eyes. He grabbed a rucksack near the bottom porch step and left for the Humvee. Miranda watched, helpless, as Delilah trotted after him.
“You could have backed me up, Miri.”
Miranda whirled about, startled by Connor’s accusation.
“I could have backed you up? Do you have any idea how out of line you were?”
“I’m out of line?” Connor flared, indignant. “We’re leaving her to die!”
“Grow the fuck up,” she said, her shame and fury welling up, seeking a target. “This isn’t the first time I’ve left someone behind, and it won’t be the last. This is the rotting, decomposing shitpile of a world we live in, Connor. You know the worst thing? You already know that, and you did it anyway, like we have the luxury of ethical debates.”
For a moment, Connor didn’t speak. He just looked at her.
“All you see is what’s in front of you. You see this little piece and that little piece, but you refuse to see how they all fit together.”
“I get what needs doing done.”
Connor looked at her with pity in his eyes. “We’ve all done horrible things. Some of them haunt me to this day and they should. It lets me know I haven’t forgotten what it means to be human, that this world hasn’t turned me into a zombie with a pulse.”
Miranda’s chest contracted. Connor looked at her like she was a wild animal, a predator. Was that what he thought she was, a zombie with a pulse? Her eyes filled with tears that she angrily dashed away.
“You show up after all this time claiming to love me and that’s what you say to me? That’s what you think of me?”
“Miranda, that’s not what I meant,” he said. He started down the steps, his brown eyes begging apology.
Miranda thrust her arm out. “Stay away from me.”
“Miranda—”
“Stay away,” she repeated, holding her ground.
She walked to the steps where Connor stood and grabbed her rucksack.
“Miri,” Connor implored.
If he touched her, if he pleaded, she might believe him. She might believe there was still some small part of her that was not damaged, that was not selfish and mangled and twisted. She might even believe that she had not damned herself by loving Mario when he was not hers to love. Not that it mattered anymore. Mario had made his feelings about her abundantly clear.
Miranda looked up into Connor’s anguished eyes. From inside the house, she heard Doug’s footsteps on the stairs.
“Don’t dump your guilt on me, Connor. We have a job to do. If it’s more than you bargained for, that’s not my problem.”
“Miranda, wait,” he said, but she had already turned away.
34
Connor couldn’t pick a thing out of the gray mist.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Maybe it’s my imagination then, but I could have sworn…” Doug frowned as he worried the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Do you think that was just a coincidence, that attack?” Doug asked.
Connor shook his head.
“Do you think Mike or Seffie could have been the ones who sabotaged your sailboat on the way here?”
“And helped with that ambush? No way.”
“Are you sure?”
Connor thought about it. They had started with fourteen people from Mexico. Odds were better that the saboteur had died than been one of the three of them to survive, except the saboteur would also have been prepared when things went wrong.
“It’s possible, but my gut says no. Mike and I scouted all over South America. I trust him with my life, owe him my life. It’s not Mike. I don’t know Seffie that well but Mike vouched for her. That’s good enough for me.”
Doug looked at him for a moment, then said, “Okay. Let’s get back to the others.”
Connor cast an uneasy gla
nce over his shoulder before he jumped down from the fallen redwood. The soft carpet of needles felt springy under his feet. The last time he had been in a redwood forest the day had been hot, the dry air filled with the astringent smell of sap and dust. Today a wet fog hugged the ground, concealing the landscape in a shroud.
They had traveled ten miles from the reservoir over what was left of the tumble-down road without incident. They had stopped a few times to give the Humvee a push, or to shift rocks, fallen trees, and the occasional car out of the way. An hour ago they yielded for a pack of wolves. The shaggy patriarch paused to assess them, his yellow eyes wary but unafraid, before leaping over the derelict concrete divider in the center of the road. Although wolves had repopulated their historic range over the past ten years, sightings of the shy creatures were still rare.
Connor found himself wishing there were more obstacles in their path. A nice little land slide or a small traffic pileup. Not bad enough to put them in danger but complex enough to take a little time to figure out. The immediacy of a problem to be solved, a dilemma-free shared goal, was the only time the fractiousness among the group faded. Once the way was clear, the slow percolation of anger and division returned.
Connor had spent enough time in the wilderness to know it was not unusual to go for days, sometimes weeks, without coming across zombies. The world was still a big place. But for it to be this clear so close to the largest known population center anywhere? These mountains were supposed to be crawling with zombies, but since Los Gatos, they had seen no sign.
From the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Connor turned, gun raised. A lone deer regarded him solemnly. He relaxed and it bounded off through the brush. It’s not all monsters all the time. He turned back to see Doug, barely visible ahead of him. Hurrying, he started off at a trot, but his foot came down on nothing where he expected the ground to be. It was another twelve inches before his boot connected but on a downward slope. Connor pitched forward and fell head over heels, tumbling down before landing with an ooof!
When his feet hit the ground again, Connor heard a snap. A net shot up from below him, the edge catching him at the waist. He twisted away, grabbing a tree root, but the fog made the bark slick. His lower body lifted higher. The tighter he clung to the root as he fought the pull of the net, the more his fingers seemed to slip. He scrambled for a better grip. His hand slid more, another inch—
“Gotcha!”
Doug caught his forearm and after a bit of tugging, pulled him free.
“Are you okay?” Doug panted from the exertion of the sprint he had just made. Despite the close call, his blue eyes flashed with excitement.
He’s an adrenaline junkie, Connor realized as he looked sideways at Doug, but somehow the thought did not disturb him.
“Thanks.” Connor stood and brushed himself off. The empty net dangled twenty feet above the ground. “What the hell is that doing here?”
“There aren’t supposed to be any people up here.” Doug’s mouth turned down as Connor gave him a hand up. “As far as we know.”
“That wasn’t set by a zombie.”
Doug’s face grew pensive. “Don’t tell the others about this.”
“But—”
“We have enough to worry about without throwing human traps into the mix. When we need to, we’ll tell them, but we keep this to ourselves for now.”
Connor was not sure if it was the look on his face or the tone of his voice, but he knew Doug used human not to describe who set the trap, but what it was meant to catch. Connor had not just walked into the net, but tripped on uneven ground that sent him tumbling into it. Only the ground had not looked uneven. He looked back up at the net.
“Why do you think that was set for people?” he asked, hoping his growing suspicion was wrong. “Anything could get caught in it.”
“Most animals would make a lot of noise if they got caught in that. Would you scream for help knowing it would attract zombies?”
Connor couldn’t argue with Doug’s logic. He walked back up to where he had stumbled and squatted down for a closer look. The damp earth showed sharp, slightly curved marks along the vertical edge where he had fallen.
“Here’s where I tripped, dug out with a shovel. If that net had been another foot over, it would have gotten me.”
“Come on, we better move it. The others will think something happened to us.”
As they started back, it occurred to Connor that somehow, Doug had missed the trap completely. “How did you miss it?” he asked.
Doug pointed at the disturbed trail of pine needles that began next to the tree where Connor had fallen. “I went around the other side.”
With the road now in sight, Connor slid sideways down the steep grade, one hand trailing the rocky soil for balance. His boots hit the ground with a thump. He took a deep breath to clear his mind, to stay alert despite his relief at the illusion of safety the Humvee represented.
He couldn’t bring the ghost train of cars that jammed 17’s northbound lanes to San Jose into focus. The fog was so dense all he could see were indistinct shapes. Connor feared there might be zombies trapped in those cars, strapped into seat belts they could never break free of, but there were no moans.
You should be relieved there are no zombies, he told himself, but their absence made him paranoid. There had been no threat from the other side of the road so they had not stopped to investigate. Satisfying his curiosity wouldn’t get them to Santa Cruz any quicker, but he couldn’t ignore the foreboding that settled heavier in his stomach with every meter they covered. Even before his narrow escape from the net, everything about these mountains felt wrong.
He climbed back into the rear seat of the overfull Humvee and pulled the door shut. He tried not to jostle Miranda. She had not slammed the door on him when they left the house by the reservoir earlier. That did not mean she had been friendly.
“Nothing?” Mike said to Doug, who sat across from him in the front seat. Mike popped the clutch into gear.
“Maybe. Probably.” Doug shrugged. “I don’t know. Connor didn’t see anything.”
“As long as it’s not a herd of zombies, I don’t care,” Mike answered.
“Anyway, we’re almost to Laurel Curve.” Doug consulted a map spread across his knees. “The road is less twisty after that.”
As they descended into another valley, the fog began to dissipate.
“Thank God,” Connor heard Seffie mutter from behind him. She was hunkered down in the cargo area, sharing the space with Delilah and what was left of their supplies. “This fog is creeping me out.”
The Humvee came to an abrupt stop. Connor turned forward. Just before the road dipped, it disappeared. In its place, twisted pieces of rebar jutted out from a jagged lip across all four lanes. In the distance, the road reappeared and curved before twisting out of sight.
For a moment they sat there, staring.
“Seffie, take the rear,” Doug said, his voice decisive. “Mike and Mario, watch the sides and stay close, all of you. Connor, you’re with me.” Doug opened his door, then added, “Keep Delilah quiet, Miri. She’ll start barking at a squirrel and get us killed.”
Everyone scrambled out. Connor looked up to Gabe, who had a better vantage point from his perch at the .50 cal gun.
“What can you see?”
Gabe shook his head. “We need a bridge.”
Connor followed Doug, his heart pounding with every step. The break in the fog made it possible to look over the divider and check out the abandoned cars. Abandoned, but not empty. The cars were filled with skeletons. There was something about them that Connor could not put his finger on, something not quite right.
“Doug, come look at this.”
And then he saw it. There were chunks of skull missing, or deep cuts and caved in bones. Some of the skeletons had no skulls at all.
“What is it?” Doug asked as he reached where Connor stood.
“Look there, in the blue car. Look at their heads.”
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Doug’s lips pursed, as if he were tasting an idea he did not care for. “Lots of people killed themselves and their families rather than become zombies.”
Connor walked to the next car. “They didn’t usually beat little Suzie’s head in to do it. They used guns or pills, not bats and machetes.”
Doug swore softly under his breath. “Figuring this out is beyond our brief. C’mon.”
When they reached the edge a minute later, Connor couldn’t believe his eyes. The crater, hell, the ravine, was the length of a soccer pitch across and a third as deep. A melee of debris—fallen trees, smashed cars, boulders—littered the bottom. Rusted rebar that had once reinforced the concrete slabs of the pavement twined skyward from below their feet.
Doug whistled, long and low. “That’s no washout. Someone blew up the road.”
“The rebar’s rusted. This happened a while ago.”
Connor dropped to his knees and peered over the edge. The concrete slab they stood on jutted out into the air like a cartoon drawing. Wind and rain had washed out the earth beneath, creating a shadowy overhang below them.
“We need to back up,” he said as he rose. Looking down into the hole where the road should be sent an unpleasant shiver through him. “This slab is undermined. Our weight might break it free.”
Connor scanned the forest as they retreated. “We need to find a different route.”
“Ya think?”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Connor persisted. “The only thing blowing up the road stops is people in cars. Anyone, anything, on foot, can just go around.”
“It’s working on us,” Doug said as he squatted and opened his map on the ground in front of him. Without looking up, he raised his voice slightly and said, “Miri, why are you and Delilah not in the Humvee?”
Connor turned around. Sure enough, Miranda approached. A few feet behind her, Delilah paused to sniff as she followed.
“I had to see.”
“Don’t go any farther,” Connor cautioned. “The earth is washed out underneath.”
Miranda kept her face impassive as he spoke, but she could not hide the spark of pain in her eyes. She stopped next to Doug and leaned forward, as if she might be able to peer over the lip from this distance.