The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “Apparently not,” Elania said bitterly. “And what good did it do? All they accomplished was spreading Sombra C further. We’ve gone from three kids at Cloudy Valley High with Sombra C to four dozen. Not to mention all of the other people infected through those dangerous ones roaming free.”

  Corbin had sent links to the lectures of an ethics professor, who believed that the vitriol was indicative of the rage in the Old Guard passing. It wasn’t okay to discriminate against blacks or Jews. Gays got married and women served in the front lines of the military. The world had been one way and now it was another, leaving many unable to change with it. It was indicative of the state of economics and education and mental health services, the angry disenfranchised finding (at last!) a group still acceptable to hate. It wasn’t truly about Sombra C, which the professor realized when a senator was attacked for considering legislation that made Sombra C sufferers a protected class. The protestors ranted and raved about special rights.

  The state of economics and education and mental health services . . . she could only think of the three arrested cullers. Two were unemployed at the time of the attack; the third was a feckless part-time cashier about to be fired from the box store Bulls-Eye. One was released on bail, as incredible as that was, and surely it wasn’t a coincidence that his father was a district attorney. The guy had also gotten infected that night with Sombra C, which seemed a fitting end for a culler. Bail was denied for the other two.

  Of the dead ones, fully half had been unemployed. The other half ran the gamut from a disbarred lawyer with untreated bipolar disorder down to a temp worker with a seventh-grade education and drug issues. The dead woman had been in and out of the foster care system her whole childhood and arrested twice for soliciting. Whoever those other shooters were stayed a mystery. Sombra C had united these disparate fellows in a collective cause, given them a focus for their anger or boredom at their own lives, and now Elania had a stamp and tensed up while passing red towns.

  Even the green towns weren’t welcoming by any stretch. The restaurants by the freeway were chains and didn’t allow stamps as a policy. The gas station restrooms in Dillery had a sign forbidding stamped to use them, Elania looking around nervously before slipping inside. She had to pee! Was she supposed to hold it all the way to San Diego? Afterwards Mom gave her money to buy some food in the Gas-O Cheap-O minimart. Humiliated and out of breath about the restrooms, Elania sank into her seat and whispered, “Mom, would you?”

  Mom went in. Fidgeting with the scarf, Elania forced her hand away and listened to the radio. Inigo security guards had apprehended two shooters. They were fourteen and fifteen years old. There were multiple wounded but no casualties reported.

  The gas station filled with cars rather suddenly, people climbing in and out to fill up, wash their windows, visit the restrooms and minimart. Three minutes later and Elania would have had to walk into a restroom full of danger. How was she to live with the feeling that a big target was around her?

  She wanted to go home. Go home and hide for the next seventy years. By the time Mom came back, Elania was crying. “Can we go back to Cloudy Valley?”

  “No,” Mom said thickly. “This world belongs to you, too.”

  They kept on driving. Past the rolling hills, the death camp for cows, the endless fields of agriculture, the handmade signs that read SEEN A ZOMBIE? CALL A SHEPHERD with a phone number. Mom kept to the slow lane, weaving around trucks at lengthy distances. All a driver had to do was look down from the cab . . . Elania stared straight ahead and whispered prayers when they passed. Traveling with Sombra C was not for the faint of heart. They should have gone at night.

  The news was full of awful things, as it always was. A young homeless couple, described as mentally sub-par and both infected with Sombra C, regressed and went on the attack in Florida. Social services were supposed to check up on them weekly, to supervise the taking of the pill and observe any changes in behavior. The worker assigned to them was overwhelmed by her caseload and forged the paperwork, claiming visits that she never made. The two went feral, the woman within a crowded bus and the man at a children’s pageant.

  “That social worker should be prosecuted,” Elania said. Shepherds descended on the homeless population instead, most singling out the stamped, and others shooting indiscriminately. Mom changed the station to music.

  They made it to San Diego at long last. The hotel had special rooms on the first and second floors for Sombra C families, Dad having requested a second floor room when he made the reservation since that was safer. Still, the doors were striped with bright red paint to remind the maids not to go in without taking extra precautions. Food was delivered on paper plates and plastic utensils, but Elania was grateful to have room service deliver at all. She could not deal with any more of the world today.

  They watched the news, a picture flashing on screen of adorable six-year-old Emmie Lou Songman, murdered as she stepped onto the stage to accept her crown. The Shepherds who attacked the homeless population had worn shirts with her picture on it, and a witness to some of the shootings said that he’d recognized local cops among the Shepherds. His identity was concealed for the interview. No arrests had been made. Fired from her job, the social worker was now in hiding. A furious relative of hers shouted at the camera, “She’s a nice girl who made a mistake! Stop calling her a monster!”

  That was the lead story, and those subsequent were no better. Sombra C was still flying about largely unchecked in some countries; an actress had committed suicide rather than be stamped and lose her livelihood; a schizophrenic man with the virus believed that God wanted him to spread it and was obeying His will in New York. Teenagers were having zombie parties and infecting themselves intentionally, then keeping it secret to avoid stamps and Zyllevir. They wanted to go feral. Elania thought that was insane. The stock market was in shambles, gun sales were booming, and some cult called this the Rapture and jumped to their deaths from a bridge.

  Mom turned it off and they took turns in the bathroom. After climbing into bed, Elania read HomeBase and sent a private message to Micah. I was a dick.

  Dammit, stop apologizing. I’ll feel bad for gluing a dildo to your locker.

  Ugh! It almost makes me pity Dale. Who keeps doing that to him?

  Probably Zaley. The quiet ones are always the biggest pervs.

  Elania couldn’t hold back a snicker and Mom said, “Honey, you have a big day tomorrow. Get some rest.”

  The morning flew by too fast, eating breakfast, showering, and Elania going back and forth between scarves to see which matched her nicest outfit best. She determined it was the sapphire blue. Then they were in the car and the ride was too short, she’d hardly had any time to prepare herself and there was Pewter College.

  She’d seen the front of the school so many times online that the sight was an old friend. The gray stone buildings, the ivy up the walls, the stained glass window of the library . . . the parking lot was full of parents and prospective students wending to the archway. The tour started at two, while parents had an informational session about college life, scholarships, loans, and other sources of funding. The tour was followed by a tea-and-snacks reception with professors and current students. After that was a question-and-answer period for everyone at four-thirty in Kennedy Hall.

  Elania was shocked at how casually some of the other prospectives had dressed: ripped jeans, midriffs, scruffy hair and flip-flops. It didn’t seem like this was a way to impress a college, looking like you’d rolled out of bed and couldn’t be bothered to drag a comb through your hair or find a clean shirt. Her eyes were drawn to anyone with a scarf, some clearly there for warmth or fashion, others drawn high and tightly wound. Only one boy had his stamp uncovered, and she thought of Micah tearing off the bandage with an audible rip on the shuttle ride home. Elania had wanted to do that, too, show the world she wasn’t ashamed, but she couldn’t. She had been really proud of Micah all the same for having such guts.

  It was a little
too real, actually being here at the school. Elania breathed slowly and deeply to keep calm as Mom separated to the parents standing to the sides of the tense yet happy hubbub. Folders were handed out, black on the front with a red lion in the middle, and red on the back with a black lion. Inside was a wealth of pamphlets and maps, Elania looking through them cursorily so she didn’t miss anything going on. There would be time to inspect the folder later. She loved the weight of it in her hands.

  A stout woman in a spotless suit came to the archway, announced herself as Theresa Marconia, the dean of students, and asked the Sombra C students to come forward for their tour. Elania looked at her without comprehension (she had expected to be broken up into groups, as there were well over a hundred prospective students gathered at the archway, but the Sombra C people went on their own?) and moved only after others did. People drew away, some sharply. Elania felt blood heat her cheeks.

  On the other side of the archway was a stamped young man wearing blue plastic gloves. A paper mask was pushed down around his neck and he smiled warmly at the dozen kids coming through. Packages of gloves and masks were passed around, Elania tucking the folder between her knees and shielding herself in shame.

  “Is this necessary? I’m at 1%!” the boy with the exposed neck complained.

  “In order to be permitted entrance into the regular dorms, a Sombra C student has to be covered,” the guy said. His stamp read 2%. “Hi, I’m Lewis. I’m a Pewter senior, and I’ll be your tour guide-”

  “But really? Unless I’m spitting in someone’s mouth, having sex with them or wiping blood everywhere, no one in the dorms is going to catch it from me!”

  Elania wished the boy would be quiet, and she couldn’t believe he threw out having sex like that. The packages of the gloves and the mask were unopened in his hand. Lewis nodded with understanding and said, “But your dorm is like your home, and you should be comfortable with who’s there. As long as a Sombra C student takes personal responsibility for his or her condition, there’s no problem. This is a welcoming place. Why don’t we start with our Sombra C dorm? We call it Red Barn, but don’t worry, it’s not a barn!”

  They trotted after him across a clipped lawn to a white stone pathway that led to the dorms. They were three stories each, with balconies on the upper floors. Most were empty, but a sunbathing student waved from one and two girls studied in chairs on another. The 1% boy put on his gloves but continued to razz sourly. “Do non-infected students have to wear gloves and masks in Red Barn? Or do Sombra C students have to wear them in there as well? In their home?” People glared covertly at him.

  “Of course we don’t wear them in our dorm!” Lewis laughed. “That’s our home. No, non-infected students don’t wear protection when they come in, but generally they don’t come in. They can though; there aren’t rules against it. Now we’re passing our biggest dormitories, Sader and Price on the left, and we’ll double back to walk through the first floor of Price after the other tours have gone through-”

  Elania felt like she was breaking. Though she listened to the tour guide talk about the school’s history and traditions, nothing of what he said stuck in her brain. It was such a picture perfect school, and she was going through it in gloves and a mask. Red Barn was beyond the dorms, a two-story house with red doors and red-framed windows. The students inside were friendly, bent over books and laptops. One guy laughed about being late to a class last November since he had forgotten to pack a mask and gloves. Elania looked at him in dismay. Even there she had to wear a mask? That wasn’t even a rule at Cloudy Valley High!

  They passed other tours while walking the campus, students listening attentively to their guides and shooting out questions at every pause. The Sombra C group was quiet in comparison, especially in the dorms and classrooms and cafeteria where they had to fix the masks over their mouths and noses. Red Barn had a full kitchen and dining room. Sombra C students were allowed to join their uninfected friends in the regular cafeteria, but not eat there. Gloves and masks had to stay on at all times.

  Mom should have just turned the car around at the gas station. Then Elania could have let this place be forever the dream. The tour went to the health department, a woman at the front desk looking up in surprise. “Oh! We weren’t expecting a tour!”

  “It’s a really nice place,” Lewis said to the group after explaining who they were to the woman. “The nurses get you in and out fast for your spit checks. They call every Sunday night to remind you to take your Zyllevir, and they’ll keep calling until you pick up! If you’re ever not feeling well, come straight here and they’ll make sure your infection isn’t increasing. Just bypass the line if there is one. Your health is important to Pewter.”

  They walked to the library, where books checked out by Sombra C students (or even touched) were held aside for twenty-four hours to kill any germs accidentally left on the pages. Then it was on to the sports facilities, an unnecessary leg of the tour since they couldn’t use them. Administration was considering the idea of converting a storage room into a little gym. Lewis was excited about this.

  When it came time for the tea-and-snacks in the reception room, Elania just sat on a bench outside. This was not what she wanted, four years of sitting in a classroom with a paper mask over her face. Mom came out worried. “I was hunting for you! What happened?”

  Elania gestured to the gloves and mask, too devastated to even cry. They sat together, looking over this exquisite school while people laughed and glasses clinked in the room behind them. Her shot of getting into this school was perilously small even without Sombra C, and now? How much stiffer the competition would be for a lousy two places! If twelve Sombra Cs had shown up for the tour, how many more of them were applying? A steep number, she guessed. This place was lost to her.

  The party moved over to Kennedy Hall in time. Some people were already leaving, the furious 1% boy among them. Elania stayed, wanting to see how bad it was to be in a lecture hall with her gloves and mask on. Maybe it would be bearable.

  The room in Kennedy was shaped like a half-moon. In the front was a long table of current students, professors, the dean of students, admissions and financial aid people ready to answer questions. Tables for students arched around the room, some outlined in red. Mom stood by the doors to stretch her back, which had been aggravated by the long drive. After sitting at a Sombra C table for a few minutes, Elania joined the line to the microphone intended for questioners to address the panel. Two people were ahead of her, a man with a question about work-study that went on for far too long, and a fawning girl who asked if it was possible to double-major and triple-minor because she had a lot of interests.

  The panel smiled politely when Elania approached the microphone. She wasn’t going here, she knew that now, so she stripped off the gloves and mask. The scarf she left on, unable to stand that mark in her skin. The smiles fell away as she blurted without any advance preparation, “My name is Elania Douglas, and I’ve never been more humiliated in my life than in the last three hours. I’m withdrawing my application. Since I first heard about Pewter, I’ve wanted to be a person worthy to be here.”

  Everyone froze from the panel to the tables. “I loved its principles of respect, and seeing yourself as part of a community instead of an island. But today I learned that you don’t hold true to the very principles you claim. You’re a place of education, but you’re not educated. You talk a good game about personal responsibility, but where is yours to learn about the illness I have? Rather than learn the truth about the risks, which are extremely minimal at the low percents you accept, you’ve made me into a boogeyman and imposed the most draconian measures I’ve ever seen in a bid to keep yourselves safe from someone who isn’t actually a threat. It is my job to manage my condition, to keep myself healthy as well as the people around me, and the community at large. I don’t need masks and gloves, separate tours and eating facilities, red doors and red tables, calls from a nurse about my medication, and I thought better of your school.�
� She swallowed hard. “But the true face of Pewter is that of any bigot who just wants me to ride in the back of the bus.”

  No one breathed a word, although mouths were starting to open at the panel. She wasn’t even sure if she had been coherent. Turning on her heel, she thrust the microphone at the boy behind her. He wasn’t stamped but she gave him no chance to hesitate about taking it. Mom was still at the doors, a fierce look on her face. She put her arm over Elania’s shoulders and they walked out the door.

  Brennan

  Every time he looked in the mirror, he saw the same face, the same stick-up hair, the same spindly build. But now he heard Papa’s voice hissing dirty blood in his ear. Brennan showered twice a day in scalding water, wanting to wash this filth from his body. By night he knelt at the side of his bed and prayed to God; by day he walked the two miles to St. Margaret’s and knelt among the red pews. The weather had turned cold and miserable with rain, but he walked regardless so that God could see Brennan was willing to suffer for healing.

  No aid came to him in the woods, leaving him to wake from the fever days after the attack and rescue himself. An angel must have carried his pleas to God’s ear, and God said Brennan? Who is Brennan? Prayers came to the heavens all day and all night, more than any holy being could hope to answer. Those who received the fast track to mercy were those who did not suddenly remember God only when they had need. Brennan was ashamed to realize this during one of his hot showers, and right there he got to his knees on the biting porcelain to pray for forgiveness.

  Their family had gone to Mass a little more regularly when he was younger, but fallen away piece by piece. Papa was pious yet did not want his Sunday at the television disturbed; Mama was exhausted from the week behind and the week ahead; Brennan was just as much a ghost in his religious schooling as he was in his secular and did not press. He had been baptized, but had never gone to confession or been confirmed. He did not have the name of a Patron Saint, though he knew how to make the Sign of the Cross. There was a picture Bible on his shelf, yet he had not read all of it.