Silence.
Then the zombie turned jerkily and closed the door. It expended her mental capacity perhaps, which was why she stood there staring at the wall while Micah stared at her back. Her hair was to her shoulders, and there were leaves and twigs in it. The color could not be made out, nor her skin tone. Both were somewhere in the lighter ranges.
If they stayed still in the darkness, maybe she would not attack. They could cede this room to her and go back into the hallway. But Zaley was still in the cabinet, and the doors creaked so horribly. She wasn’t dead so they couldn’t leave her, yet they couldn’t get her out with that sound. It would have been better if she’d died.
The zombie gathered whatever wits she still possessed, and inspected the office. The lava lamp she observed without distress. A woman in her forties with a drawn face, she stared at the blobs. Her head jerked and she noted the phone and files, the boxes of paper, and the bulletin board. The red rim of the stamp on her neck was visible now.
Zaley groaned.
The zombie jerked and saw them huddled against the cabinet. Micah jumped to her feet and grabbed the base of the lava lamp, hissing rather than screaming, “Austin, get Zaley out of here!”
The vagueness in the zombie’s manner remained as Micah held up the lamp threateningly. Then sense came back into the woman’s features. Instead of lashing out, she crouched down to protect herself from the blow. “Oh God, p-please don’t hurt me!”
Human and not human, the jerk of the spine into a crouch rather than a graceful curling downward, the voice dry and graveled yet the words plainly clear. Micah lifted away in surprise. The woman fell onto the boxes of paper and down to the floor. She backed up into a ball with her hands over her head, expecting Micah to swing.
“Micah, don’t!” Austin cried, even though she was already lowering the lamp.
“Please don’t, please don’t,” the woman pleaded, and she was still. Austin edged open the cabinet door, squeezing it tightly and doing it one centimeter at a time to minimize the noise. Zaley was still unconscious, her knees buckled up against her chest and her face squashed against the back of the cabinet.
“What should we do?” Austin whispered.
If the woman wasn’t dangerous, then it made no sense to return to the hallway. Micah had him close the door, and the click made the woman raise her head. She looked at them and they looked at her, no one with any idea of what to say.
Austin
He could not remember all of them. Sammy, Kevin, Antoine, Jonny . . . they were the Squay 5, not four, and he had forgotten the last one. Nor did he recall their last names, but he knew that Kevin and Jonny were twins, that one of the guys worked at Pizza Whippers, that the twins’ mother found them in the field. It had only happened a few months ago, but already his life replaced their memory with other things. His secret of Blayre, buying a Christmas gift for Mamma . . . five lives had been subsumed into the past, the cut not as clean and stinging, and that was wrong. It should be as fresh as the first moment he heard the news that day. It should always be that way.
But his mind could not contain it all, the Squay 5, the children of Traehmer Forks, the president’s assassination and the others who died with him, all of Kingdom Come, the Hollingsway Civic Center bombing, those torched in the illegal confinement point and which state had that happened in? Every day, every single day churned up fresh earth in graveyards, chiseled names into stone, every day was filled from end to end with humanity ripping itself to shreds over a virus that measured less than five millionths of an inch. Tomorrow this high school holiday party would fill the news, horrified interviews with survivors, the numbers of injured and deceased repeated obsessively, and a scant two months from now, someone might think remember that party? California or Oregon somewhere? And the names of the dead would be gone from that person’s mind, just as the name of the fifth boy dead on the field was gone from Austin’s.
Gone. His memory erased by filling out applications to state schools. Eating dinner. Writing back and forth with Blayre. They had a game, Austin sending off ambiguous statements he found in personal ads and Blayre translating them, since he was more seasoned in the dating field. Emotionally vigorous meant drama queen. Hate raincoats meant unprotected sex. The ethnic Libran label hadn’t been changed on the profile and Austin knew why. Blayre was smart and funny and insightful, but above all, he was sloppy. His messages were riddled with errors of spelling and devoid of most punctuation. They arrived at all hours of day and night. He did his assignments the day they were due in a coffee buzz at three in the morning, even his papers. When a button popped off his shirt, he improvised with a grocery store twist-tie. A picture of the room he rented revealed a dismaying scene of clothes and trash and overdue library books all fighting to occupy the same space at once. Austin had laughed to see that picture, the carefree disorganization that permeated every facet of this guy’s life, and maybe in that laugh, the name of the last Squay boy slipped away.
Now it was his turn to slip from someone else’s. That made him want to yell as loudly as he could that he was here, he had been here on Earth. But no matter how powerful the echoes, they would fade in the turning of the world. Remember that guy who died at the holiday party? Austin something?
He had been here. He had been part of this story. Not a big part like Ford Looper, a name branded into history forever, not like the president, not even one of the medium parts to turn up in the tiny font of a footnote. A little one, a miniscule piece of the nameless masses. But he had been here. They had been. Austin Bell. Micah Camborne. Zaley Mattazollo. Trevor Long. Shelly Cray. Corbin Li. Elania Douglas. They had all been a part of this, and they deserved to be remembered. He wanted to be the one remembering, not the one receding into someone’s memory. But that he did not control.
Her name was Nan Hormel.
The red light of the lava lamp bothered him more than her. It looked like globules of blood rising and falling behind the glass. Why would anyone want a lava lamp like that? Why not blue or green, something peaceful? Micah was keeping it in her lap for protection, the cord stretched down from the table, and it stained Austin’s jeans red. He hated that lamp, the person who bought it and wasn’t disturbed by its resemblance to blood, and the person who made it, too.
There was a smear of blood on the glass from Micah’s hand, and blood on his hand from holding hers. His chest was damp with Zaley’s blood, which had run down to his jeans. He hadn’t known what to do but follow Micah since the attack began, since she was more sober. And she had gotten him out with cool confidence, God bless her, out of that hellhole but into this one, six feet away from a woman with a stamp reading 49%.
Nan Hormel. When he’d asked her name, it took her several seconds to respond. This he had seen in hundreds of online videos, yet seeing it in person was altogether different. Trevor, Janie, and Shelly were not greatly infected, and whatever brain damage if any the virus had wrought in their minds before being arrested by Zyllevir was not remotely evident. But 49% was a different beast. There were dead spots in her brain, memories having to be accessed through a more circuitous route, which accounted for the time spent in quiet. She was searching for information that should have snapped to mind in an instant. Nan Hormel. After another pause, a shorter one, she added doctor.
“Do you work over at Knuller Hospital?” Micah asked.
Silence. “I- Knuller?”
“It’s in Cloudy Valley. Or Blue Hill Memorial?”
Silence. They did not speak or move, waiting to see if the circuit could be completed. The doctor’s hand jerked and Austin tensed, but she was only hooking her hair behind her ear. Clumsily, like a toddler trying to eat with a fork for the first time. “Sweet Grove. I live in Sweet Grove.”
“Where’s that?” Austin whispered.
“Southwest, near Velgen. It’s a tiny place,” Micah said. “Why are you here?”
Silence. The silence from the cabinet was worrying; Zaley’s upper arm was blown half to bits and
she had been rambling and laughing from shock and blood loss. She had to get to a hospital. It wasn’t like she had that much blood to lose, being as small as she was.
The woman had not been successful at pinning her hair back. The dirty blonde lank flopped against her cheek and she did not try a second time. Nor did she grimace, or even appear to notice it. “I don’t . . . I used to . . . I don’t practice any more. I- I can’t obviously . . . I can’t leave the facility. But they came in . . . they came in shooting . . . and we ran. Where- where am I?”
“This is a community center in Blue Hill,” Austin said.
“Blue Hill,” the doctor repeated in a whisper, her eyes fixed to the ceiling. “Blue Hill.” She traveled those dead places in her mind and made another connection. “I was transferred to Blue Hill’s Murdoch Rehabilitation for confinement. East . . . east wing. For the . . . less affected. We climbed out the windows in the gym . . . a community center? That’s where we came? And . . . you children . . .”
“We were having a holiday party with kids from our school,” Austin said as she stared. He realized the gunfire had stopped. They had not heard it for more than three minutes now. “Doctor-”
It spurred her back from silence. Although she spoke with urgency, she addressed the ceiling. “A high school party? Oh God . . . I’m sorry! I’m- I’m so sorry. We had nowhere else to go. They blocked us into the parking lot . . . You have to call for help. You must! It’s critical. They let out . . . some of the west wing escaped, too. They can’t . . . they can’t be allowed out. They’re wild. One attacked Vaughn . . . in the woods.” She shifted against the boxes, her head jerking back down to look at them in a delayed reaction.
“Someone has called them,” Micah lied, although Austin assumed people had. He had been so eager to leave the party, so buzzed still that it never occurred to him to call the police. His buzz was gone.
It was cold in the office and he shivered. The shooting had to have stopped because the police were here, taking care of those crazed zombies and forcing the cullers to drop their guns, getting the wounded to hospitals. Putting this madness back in order. His mind drifted to the impossibility of an elaborate prank, Shelly lifting her head and Trevor rising from the grass, Zaley wiping catsup from her arm with a giggle. The zombies and cullers were just people from the South Haven party playing dress-up. The doctor was one of their teachers, a new one that he didn’t recognize. They could laugh and go back to dancing, the president rise from his grave and the Squay 5 from theirs to return to school. This wasn’t real.
Dante. That was his name. The fifth boy was Dante.
The doctor jerked about to see something on the table. Then she sank back. “Do- do either of you have cell- cell phones?”
“Someone’s called the cops,” Micah repeated.
“I- I want to call . . . home. My husband. Please . . . may I borrow one? I’m not . . . you can dial and I can . . . talk on speakerphone. I won’t touch it. I’m not dangerous.” She was speaking to the ceiling.
Micah took her phone out. “What is the number?”
“Four . . . four . . . I don’t know.” Her chest heaved in a dry, agonized sob. “The nurse calls for me.”
“We could search her name online. Nan Hormel, Sweet Grove,” Austin said. Micah’s fingers flashed over the screen.
“Doctor,” the woman whispered, her head lurching back. This was breaking Austin’s heart, the effort behind her thoughts. She was trying so hard to stay focused, but the dead spots had to be circumvented. He could not imagine her trying to work as a doctor, or driving a car like this. Pumping gas, paying for groceries, even tucking her hair behind her ear, none of these basic skills were hers any longer.
“Brandon Hormel . . . search Brandon Hormel. We have . . . a house line.” Her chest heaved once more, her mouth distended and her frame wracked with distress, but she could not cry. “Oh God. Oh God. A party. I’m sorry.”
“What kind of doctor are you?” Austin asked to distract her.
Silence. “Neurologist at San Criata Health.”
Austin dug around for more questions, anything to stop her from returning to that terrible crying without tears. “Like you’re a brain surgeon?”
After the pause, she smiled with half of her face. Her eyes did not move together, both turning outward creepily. She lurched to the side to make one focus on him. “No. People always . . . always make that error. No such glory. Alzheimer’s . . . epilepsy, multiple sclerosis.” Her eyes came back to a more normal position. “Wear your seatbelt, young man. I see . . . some sad cases. Everything can change . . . in a snap. Like my . . . illness. A normal day. An elderly patient presented with . . . dementia . . . for an appointment. It was Sombra C. He . . . spat in my mouth during the examination.”
“Do you have kids?”
That circuit was still undamaged, judging by how readily she responded. “Two. I talk to my daughter . . . on the phone twice a week. She’s twelve. My son . . . won’t talk as often. He’s younger. Confused . . . He doesn’t know why I can’t- can’t come home. But he sends . . . pictures . . . to Murdoch for me. Magazines, pressed flowers.” Her chest heaved, and he thought of her young son crying to see his mother’s eyes turning outward in that frightening way. “They came in . . . shooting.”
“Just now?”
“Yeah. Most people were in bed. Some of us were . . . in the gym. We can . . . watch TV with captions . . . the nurses pretend not to notice, if we’re quiet. Vaughn and Miley were . . . playing cards. They’re the most . . . most normal of us. Both 41%. But then we heard . . . the shooting. Cullers. They were shooting everyone. We . . . climbed out the window. They chased us . . . through the dark. They were everywhere. We couldn’t get . . . away. Oh God. You have to call the cops. The west wing is loose, you don’t- don’t understand. The west wing-”
“Got it,” Micah whispered. She dialed the number.
“Clear!” stated a deep baritone in the hallway. They jumped at the loudness. No one answered it. Click-click. Footsteps strode to another door. Click-click.
“I know that voice,” the doctor whispered in terror.
Micah gave the lava lamp to Austin and crawled behind the table to the woman. Holding out the phone, she said, “It’s gone to voicemail.” The message ended with a beep.
“Come on, come back,” Austin whispered when the doctor stared without comprehension at the phone. One of her eyes separated outward.
Click-click.
“Brandon?” the doctor burst desperately, the eye floating back to rejoin the other in harmony. “Honey, it’s me. I don’t know . . . where I am. Not Murdoch. But I love you. I love you. Tell the kids I love them. Tell Tucker . . . Oh God . . . please pick up. Please pick up, honey.”
The footsteps had stopped at her voice, and then picked up rapidly. Glass crunched under the man’s feet. The doctor grabbed up the cell phone from the floor and drew it close to her mouth. The light on the screen illuminated her stamp, the tan of her shirt. “Tucker, Mommy loves you-”
We just have to explain, Austin thought wildly. Tell the culler that she’s fine, not dangerous, to take her to some other confinement point (but a culler was there to cull the flock and keep it clean stock)-
The door was kicked open. A beam of light from a helmet flooded the office. A head turned, the face invisible beneath that light, and a rifle lifted. The red light from the lava lamp reflected on the metal. The doctor sobbed dryly into the phone, saying, “Oh, please, oh, please, God have mercy-”
“Don’t shoot!” Austin yelled, rising from the dark with his hands out. But it had happened, his mouth open in the cry as the gunshot split the air. The doctor came apart and Austin was sprayed with her blood, his face full of droplets, clogging his throat and forcing his plea back in. He choked out the debris in his throat. Shoving the torso off her, Micah was screaming and gagging down on the floor. The sound was unbearable with the gunshot still ringing in his ears.
The helmet light shone on Austin and
the man ordered, “Show me your neck!” He gestured with the gun as footsteps pounded down the hallway in a steady and menacing rain. Austin jerked his head to the side frantically, scraping the blood from his skin to show its bareness. Micah was vomiting, the beam going from Austin down to her bent double. But it wasn’t the stamp that made Sombra C, it was the blood, it was the fluid, it was the brain matter that had sprayed Austin and drenched Micah. The features behind the visor were pale and uncomfortably narrow, the nose overhung by a thick brow, the chin overhung by a thick upper lip. The face protruded from the darkness of the too-large helmet like a crag.
The light moved. The culler took in the bloodbath saturating Micah, the strings of tissue mixed into her hair. She wiped at her face but Austin knew it was too late for her with those gouges in her hand from the glass. The light from the helmet reflected in the whites of her eyes, yet they were no longer white. The culler drew the same conclusion that Austin did, and he aimed at her head.
Glass crunched in the hallway. “Freeze!” “Put down your weapon!”
Then the room was flooded with people, all armed and dressed in white suits and helmets that left no joint exposed. The overhead light was turned on. The culler was knocked to the wall, handcuffed, and dragged from the office. In fear at the guns, Austin put his hands in the air. A woman with a lock of dark hair pressed over her forehead shouted, “Kids! We got more kids in here!”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 29