The End of Ordinary

by Edward Ashton

  Had she gotten to school?

  “Oh, my God.”

  Kara dropped her hands.

  “What, Drew?”

  “Someone was here,” I said. “When I got back from LA, the house was wide open and my break-in loop was running. I thought it was okay, because Hannah must have been in school when it happened. I thought you were picking her up from practice. But you weren’t, were you?”

  She sat down beside me, our hips not quite touching.

  “Drew,” she said. “I need . . . we need to find her. You’ve been holed up here . . .”

  “I’ve been sick,” I said

  “Yeah,” she said. “No shit. You’ve got the Goo Flu, Drew.”

  I looked up. That was the first time I’d heard that term.

  “The what?”

  “The Goo Flu. Look at you. You’re all . . . yellow. That’s why I’ve been mouth breathing since I got here.”

  “Do I stink?”

  She sighed.

  “I wish. While we’re on it—shouldn’t you be trying to bang me right now?”

  I could feel my face twisting into a scowl.

  “No offense, Kara, but this isn’t really the time. Why would you even say something like that?”

  “Because that’s what Goo Flu zombies do, Drew. They screw like rabbits, and uninfected people apparently can’t resist them. Haven’t you been watching the news out of California?”

  I shook my head.

  “I told you. I’ve been sick. Really sick.”

  “Right,” she said. “Well, here’s a primer: a virus is spreading like crazy on both coasts. It’s sexually transmitted, and it turns people . . . yellow. Like you. It also makes them super horny, apparently—when it doesn’t kill them, anyway. NatSec is talking about quarantine. The UnAltered are talking about worse than that. It’s getting ugly out there, Drew, and it’s gonna get uglier.”

  I looked down at the backs of my hands. I was used to my skin being a mix of pasty pale and mole colored, but it wasn’t anymore. It was golden.

  This must have been what Meghan had been covering with the self-tanner.

  I turned to look at Kara. She was stone-faced, but a tear was sliding down her cheek.

  Without warning, I wanted her so badly that I had to clench my fists to keep from reaching for her. My voice shook when I spoke.

  “We need to find Hannah.”

  Kara nodded.

  “We need to find Hannah.”

  Here’s a pro tip: during the Slutty Zombie Apocalypse, nobody gives a shit about the whereabouts of your wayward daughter. My first thought was to check with the folks at Briarwood, to see if Hannah ever actually made it to school on the day everything started falling apart. I called the school office, and got a prerecorded message saying that any questions about the current situation should be directed to local health authorities. Next, I tried pinging the headmaster directly. I sent him a half dozen increasingly angry messages over the course of that afternoon and evening. He never got back to me, and by midnight I was screaming into his voicemail.

  I found out later that he was ignoring me because he was dead.

  Kara thought we should start with the county police, despite the fact that NatSec and the various CorpSec units had basically reduced the scope of local law enforcement to handling parking violations. It took most of a day to do it, but she at least managed to get somebody to talk to her, and to take down some information. Needless to say, though, we never heard back from them. Kara kept at it, calling them two or three times a day, talking to the same woman, until eventually their line started dumping straight into voicemail. It was right around then that we finally figured out that we were on our own.

  At that point, we did something that, in retrospect, was almost unbelievably stupid.

  We went out looking for Hannah.

  She’d been missing for more than two weeks. It made no sense to think that we’d just drive around until we found her, but we had to do something.

  I knew by then what the Goo Flu had done to me. Kara and I had taken to smearing VapoRub under our noses whenever we were together. I know, I know—that’s not how pheromones work—and admittedly, it didn’t entirely stop me from wanting to wrap myself around her, or her from wanting to let me. Maybe it was a placebo effect. Maybe there’s a tighter link between sense of smell and our gonads than we realize. Or, on the other hand, maybe VapoRub smeared under your nose is just so un-sexy that it overwhelmed the Goo Flu entirely. All I know is that it pushed the cravings far enough into the background that we were able to function.

  Not everyone, as it turned out, had access to VapoRub.

  The first place we thought to go was Briarwood, on the theory that Hannah should have been there on the day she disappeared, whether she actually had been or not. It was a Saturday, sunny and dry and weirdly warm for mid-October in Upstate New York. We drove together in Kara’s car, windows down to thin out the pheromone cloud.

  I mean, VapoRub only goes so far, right?

  “This isn’t so bad,” Kara said when we got onto the highway. “They’re calling Monroe County an epicenter, you know. From what the newsfeeds have been saying, I kind of expected it to be like Dawn of the Fucking Dead out here.”

  I laughed.

  “Nice, Kara. I see what you did there.”

  She shot me a heavy dose of side-eye.

  “You are a child, Drew.”

  I smirked, and raised both hands in surrender. Kara turned to stare out the window. We were well out into farm country by then, so it wasn’t too surprising that we weren’t seeing anyone out and about, but there was still a definite post-apocalyptic tang in the air.

  We rode in silence for a while. When Kara spoke again, her voice was bitter.

  “This is your fault, isn’t it?”

  I looked at her.

  “What’s my fault?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “The fact that we’re an epicenter, Drew. It’s your fault. You were yellow over a week ago. You’re Patient Zero, aren’t you?”

  I laughed again.

  “No, Kara. I am not Patient Zero.”

  As previously mentioned, I was in fact Patient Zero.

  “Sure you are,” she said. “Either you or the Cat Lady, anyway. Did she give it to you?”

  I sighed.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Kara scowled.

  “Then who?”

  “At this point, I’m pretty sure it was an old lady who sat next to me on the shuttle out to LA.”

  She turned to stare at me.

  “Jesus, Drew! You banged an old lady? What’s wrong with you?”

  “No,” I said. “I did not bang an old lady. She injected me with something. I thought it was a sedative, but . . .”

  Her face had settled into a disgusted scowl by then.

  “You let a random stranger . . . holy shit, Drew.”

  “I didn’t let her.”

  “She overpowered you?”

  I sighed again.

  “No, she didn’t overpower me. She kind of took me by surprise.”

  Kara shook her head.

  “If some old woman on a shuttle tried to stick a needle in me, I would literally break both her arms.”

  I leaned my seat back and closed my eyes.

  “I know, Kara. That’s just one of the many, many differences between us.”

  The Briarwood parking lot was full of cars.

  “Weird,” Kara said. “I thought this place was supposed to be closed for the duration.”

  We slid into a spot between an ancient pickup truck and a late-model scooter.

  “It is,” I said. “It’s also Saturday.”

  We climbed out of the car. The building looked abandoned, grass growing shaggy and windows dark. I walked up to the main entrance and rattled the handle, just to be sure.

  “Locked,” I said.

  Kara looked around.

  “So where is everyone?”

  A ra
gged cheer rose up then, off in the distance.

  “Dunno,” I said. “Maybe over there?”

  She looked at me.

  “Shall we?”

  We walked around the corner of the building together. I stayed three steps behind her and one to the left. The noise got louder as we went, cheers and laughter and incoherent whooping. When we got to the back parking lot, it was obvious it was coming from the stadium. Kara looked back over her shoulder.

  “Football game?”

  I laughed.

  “Football games are Friday nights.”

  “It’s the Slutty Zombie Apocalypse,” she said. “Nobody wants to go out at night.”

  We stopped at the edge of the lot, behind the bleachers.

  “What do you think?” I said. “Up the ramp, or around and onto the field?”

  Another cheer rose up.

  “Ramp,” Kara said. “This is the SZA, and I don’t actually think there’s a football game going on out there.”

  I looked at her.

  “SZA?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Slutty Zombie Apocalypse is a mouthful.”

  I smiled. She smiled back. Hadn’t seen that in a while.

  “Fine. Ramp it is.”

  I’m not sure I can adequately describe what we saw when we stepped out onto those bleachers. Start with one of those creepy-ass paintings by Hieronymus Bosch—not Death and the Miser, either. I’m talking The Garden of Earthly Delights, except maybe without the giant birds. Now throw in some classic footage from Woodstock, a high-school pep rally, and the palace orgy scene from Caligula. Swirl those all together in your head, and you’re probably at least getting the right idea.

  The football field was covered with people. Some were wearing clothing. Most were not. Most were yellow. Some were not. They were fat and thin and young and old, and in pairs, and threes, and fours, they were humping.

  “You see?” Kara said. “SZA.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That doesn’t look so apocalyptic to me. It mostly just looks like an open-air orgy.”

  Kara scowled and scanned the crowd.

  “She’s not down there,” she said finally.

  I turned to stare at her.

  “You thought Hannah was down there?”

  She shrugged.

  “You never know.”

  I looked down at my feet, then back up at her.

  “Can we go? I don’t think this is helping us find our daughter.”

  Kara nodded.

  “In a minute.”

  I ran my hands back through my hair.

  “Really, Kara?”

  She took a step down toward the field. I realized with a start that the wind had picked up. It was blowing across the field and up the bleachers, carrying a sheen of sweat and sex and . . .

  “Hey,” I said. “Kara?”

  One of the naked hippies down on the turf looked up from what he was doing and saw us.

  “Hey,” he shouted. “Up in the bleachers! You a virgin?”

  Kara took another step. He was looking at her, not me. I pulled the VapoRub out of my pocket.

  “Kara? I think you need a reload.”

  She broke into a run.

  The crowd on the field raised a ragged cheer.

  I hung around the bleachers for the better part of an hour. The mob wasn’t interested in me, and I wasn’t particularly interested in them. I was already yellow, and there weren’t enough uninfected folks down there for their smell to penetrate my double layer of VapoRub. People came and went. Every time an uninfected newbie showed up, the crowd cheered. I assumed Kara would get tired after a while, but apparently she was as indefatigable at group sex as she was at everything else she’d ever done. I thought about just leaving, but I’d already lost Hannah. Kara was all I had left.

  The air was crisp and the sun was warm, and believe it or not I was actually starting to drift off when the guy who’d first noticed us detached himself from the mess of bodies he’d been wallowing in, and made his way up into the bleachers.

  “Hey,” he said when he was a few steps below me. “How’s it going?”

  I looked him over. He was a townie—too young to be on the faculty at Briarwood, and too old to be a student. His hair was long and his abs were ripped and he was clearly 100 percent comfortable starting a conversation with a stranger while bare-ass naked. I hated him instantly.

  “Good,” I said. “It’s going good. Just hanging out here, catching some sun, waiting for my wife to finish banging every redneck in Wayne County. How ’bout you?”

  He tilted his head to one side.

  “Your wife? You’re as yellow as I am, Homes, and she’s a snow-white virgin.” His smile turned into a smirk. “Well, she was, anyway. How does that work?”

  I could feel my face twisting into a scowl.

  “I’ve spent the last two weeks not infecting her, asshole. Also, fuck you.”

  He held up both hands in mock surrender.

  “Whoa there, Homes. No need to go all douchey on me. I just came up here to invite you to the party. There’s not much fresh meat down there, but there’s still a bit. Even after they’re infected, it takes a few hours for them to lose that new-car smell. What say?”

  I climbed to my feet.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ve had a rough goddamned week. I mean, I know, the world has had a rough goddamned week, but I’m pretty sure mine has been worse than that, and your bullshit is the last thing I need right now. So why don’t you . . .”

  He took a step toward me.

  “Why don’t I what?”

  I didn’t answer, because I wasn’t looking at him anymore. I was looking at three pickup trucks that had just turned off the road and into the lot on the far side of the field. They were flying, bouncing over the curb and into the grass, skidding to a stop just short of the stadium fence. There were a half dozen men in the back of each, wearing what looked like homemade hazmat suits.

  They were carrying rifles.

  “Kara,” I called, then louder. “Kara!”

  I was halfway to the field when they opened fire.

  29. In which Hannah explores the limits of preparation and self-reliance.

  I was in Nathan’s room playing Deathstalker when the lights went out.

  We sat in silence for a solid fifteen seconds.

  “Huh,” Nathan said finally. “Guess I was right.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Guess so. Did you fill up your bathtub?”

  “I did,” he said. “Been squirreling away rations, too. You know—so you don’t have to eat me. You?”

  “Bathtub? Yes. Rations? No. How much do you have?”

  Silence.

  “Nathan? How much food did you put away?”

  Silence.

  “Look, Nathan. If you’re not going to share, I will definitely kill, cook, and eat you. How long is it going to be before I’m forced to do that?”

  He sighed.

  “Maybe a week, if we’re careful.”

  “A week?”

  “Two, if we don’t mind getting really hungry.”

  “Okay. How long do you think our water lasts?”

  Silence again.

  “Nathan?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking. The bathtubs are probably like a hundred gallons each, so that’s two hundred gallons if you filled yours all the way. A person needs about a gallon a day just for drinking. So . . .”

  “So, survival-wise, we’ve got a lot more water than we do food.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Looks like we do.”

  I heard him stand and walk across the room. After a minute or two of rummaging there was a click, and a light flared in his hand. I blinked. He was holding a hand-sized bright blue camp lantern.

  “Nice,” I said. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Sam brought it for me on my first day. I’m not a big fan of the dark. I’ve got another one, if you want it.”

  “Thanks, Nathan. I mean, seriously, thanks.” He handed
me the light. It didn’t exactly turn the night into day, but it was definitely enough to see by. “You’re a lot better at this than I am, aren’t you?”

  He smiled.

  “I always plan on everything going to shit. It’s kind of a gift.”

  Running while carrying the lantern was awkward. It wasn’t heavy, and it wasn’t big, but it threw me just a little bit off balance and I wound up having to switch hands every lap or so because I had arm muscles like wet noodles, and carrying it made them sore. I needed it, though. Without those lights, being in the dungeon was no different than being blind. There was literally not a stray photon bouncing around in there. I didn’t even want to think about what it would have been like if Nathan hadn’t been such a doomsday prepper.

  So, I appreciated Nathan’s paranoia. Nathan, however, did not appreciate my fitness needs. I was two laps into my first post-blackout run when he came out of his room to yell at me.

  “Hey! Hannah! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I didn’t break stride as I passed him.

  “Running, Nathan. It’s what I do.”

  He tried to chase me, but gave it up after a half dozen wheezy strides, and waited for me to come around again.

  “Stop, Hannah! You can’t do that! You’re wasting calories!”

  I waved and kept running. Next lap, he actually jumped out in front of me, arms outstretched.

  “Hannah! Stop!”

  I thought about just bulling past him, but he seemed pretty upset. So, I pulled up short, folded my arms across my chest, and gave him my best glare.

  “What are you doing, Nathan? I need to run.”

  “No,” he said. “You don’t. You need to lie as still as possible, and turn yourself over just enough to prevent bed sores. The more calories you burn, the more calories you need to eat to stay alive. Also, you may not have noticed, but the air circulators aren’t running anymore. I don’t know if this place is sealed up or not, but if it is, we may actually run out of oxygen before we run out of food. Running makes you burn up more of that too. Now go back to your room and take a nap. The best thing we can do right now is sleep as much as possible.”