The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  He should have stayed in bed. It was going to be that kind of day, he could tell. Why was he bothering to take exams when he couldn’t go to college? There was only five thousand dollars in his account, not enough even for a state school unless by some miracle they granted him a full ride. He didn’t have the grades for that, or any great athletic skill for a scholarship. Austin would have to go to junior college. While Kader and almost everyone else agonized, Austin should walk around with the smugness of the few for whom the decision was made or not even required. But he’d been looking forward to a real college.

  Setting the dishes to wash, he retreated to the den to space out with the television for a few minutes. Then he screamed to see the screen, the growing list of airport bombings having just now occurred, and understood as feet thundered through the house that they weren’t going to be taking finals today at all.

  Terra besieged the emergency numbers for information. When she finally got a human being instead of yet another level of voicemail, she exploded, “What’s happened to Flight 97 from JFK to Denver? Do you have word? My daughter is on that plane!”

  The bombs had triggered simultaneously in crowded ticket and security lines at San Francisco Airport. Oakland. O’Hare. Dallas/Fort Worth. Denver. Miami International. And JFK. Contact could not be made with several planes in the air. Videos taken on cells showed people screaming and running out of airports all over the country, luggage and animal crates strewn everywhere, sirens wailing and security pushing in as everyone else pushed out.

  Planes were falling out of the skies over New York, Florida, and Colorado. The ticker along the bottom read that all commercial and private air travel was officially suspended within the continental United States. All aircraft currently in flight were being brought down to the nearest runways. International flights coming into the country were being rerouted to Canada. Gripping her cell phone, Faye said helplessly, “Why isn’t she picking up?”

  “Because it’s Shalom!” Micah said harshly. “She always turns off her phone when we fly and passes out. She’s the only one I know who sleeps on planes like they’re five-star hotels.”

  “She’s sleeping,” Faye whispered. “She’s been up since three.”

  The grandparents, other relatives, and close family friends were alerted, and then everyone was hysterical and keeping in touch by text. A prayer tree was activated on the Christian side of the family and Faye’s mother offered to fly in as support before she remembered that no one was flying anywhere for now. A small group of older Wiccans happened to be meeting this morning at The Circle for a ritual and chat, and they asked for Shalom’s favorite color so they could burn a candle in the hopes that this daughter of the coven came safely home. Some old woman called for a video chat with Faye and said with terrible intensity over the laptop, “She’s strong. She’ll come home. She’s strong, Faye. You have to trust that.”

  Austin was almost crying at how much pain everyone was in. Looking at the screen with dislike, Micah whispered, “Personal strength and bombs don’t really have anything to do with one another.”

  The regular programming on every channel had been interrupted for different talking heads and the same videos. In England, a reporter was saying in a thick accent, “Oh, it’s very clear. This was an act of domestic terrorism. The United States of America is disintegrating.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Austin whispered, remembering a news segment from long ago. The gas tank should always, always be full, and there should be food and water to last in the house for a few days. There was little in the pantry and refrigerator since the Cambornes shopped on Saturdays. He picked up his phone and texted: Micah, we have to fill the tank and get some food.

  The four of them were arguing about it when Shalom called from a bus in Ohio, her flight having landed on a military base there. The passengers and crew were being taken to a hotel. While Faye and Terra spoke with her, Micah and Austin slipped out the door and ran to the V-6. Then they were down the road and around the corner, sweeping past blocks of Cloudy Valley’s finest homes. The first gas station they passed was a Royal Fuel, both of them exploding, “Shit!” to see the cars stretched out of the driveway and down the road in line. People honked their horns impatiently. At one pump, a woman was filling up a pitcher with gasoline.

  “Those wacky Shepherds,” Micah mused. “Whatever will they think of next?”

  “It was NSF with President Wu, not Shepherds,” Austin said.

  “This is Shepherd Prime. It has to be. Those people with NSF had a personal grudge with Wu, and they expressed it. Pitch isn’t rounding up people for confinement points like before Zyllevir, so what bone could NSF have to pick with her? That doesn’t make any sense. But Prime threw down the gauntlet with the transformers, and she told them to stick it up their ass. They’re escalating.”

  They passed the Comanico, which was in even worse condition than Royal Fuel. Cops were directing traffic, and a sullen man was sitting in the back of a squad car. Austin gawked at the insanity, unable to even speak with the deafening horns. A fight broke out between two drivers, since one had a license plate ending with an odd number.

  Beyond the Comanico was the fresh food co-op, people struggling out of the door with packed canvas bags loading down their shoulders. Seeing fright and desperation in the faces of people running to the co-op, Austin felt it mirrored in his own. What was going to happen now? Was this world just going to keep falling apart piece by piece until there was nothing left? He thought of the Camborne home in flames and shivered. Some in the community had donated to Brennan’s family, the Cambornes included, but nothing could replace what the Ortegas had lost, not even the fancy race bike given to him by the owner of Flash Past.

  Even the deli was overflowing with customers. The boutiques on either side of it were closed and dark. Necessities were important now, not vases and cute clothes. Lines of fidgeting people extended from the ATMs outside the bank, inside was a multitude of heads, and looping around the lot were cars wanting to visit the pair of ATM drive-thrus.

  The V-6 got caught in traffic between Mr. Foods and the Gas-O Cheap-O, both sides of the road blocked with cars fighting to get in and out of the parking lots. One pump had been reserved for people holding red gas cans. There were no visible spaces open at the grocery store. People unloading bags from their carts into cars didn’t have to walk the carts to the corrals or back to the store; others were shouting, “Can I have that? Can I have that please?” and taking the cart right there at the trunk the second the last bag cleared the side.

  Finally they broke through and swung over to Yerba. No children played outside, and televisions flickered through every uncovered window. Micah’s phone rang. She tossed it over to Austin, who answered the call. “Faye, we’re fine! We’re just picking up some supplies.”

  “The reporter is saying not to panic-”

  Panic. That was what he was feeling at this chaos on the streets of Cloudy Valley. Neither Oakland nor San Francisco was very far, and they had just had their airports bombed. He promised that they’d be careful and return soon. Taking back her phone, Micah said, “Uma can’t stretch beyond yoga positions.”

  “That’s not nice, Micah. She’s your mother.”

  “I’m not being insulting; it’s the truth! She can’t adapt beyond the world she has. But you have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances to survive, and she can’t. She has this one world she understands, a happy, orderly world, and it’s gone. That’s why she isn’t out here trying to adapt like we are!”

  Orange cones blocked both driveways to We Got Gas, with signs stretched between the cones reading NO FUEL. The minimart was dark. They stared at the sign and Austin said, “I have never seen that in my life.”

  Micah snapped a picture. “On the bright side, you might have gotten out of your dentist appointment Monday.”

  Wanting to tell her that this was serious, he couldn’t. God, he hated going to the dentist. Nothing would ever convince him that a hand holding
some sharp tool wasn’t going to slip and sink a metal edge into his gums. Even now in the car, he could feel the phantom slice.

  Turning around, they headed back to Gas-O Cheap-O. His earlier complaints over a line of four cars seemed ridiculous when now it extended for blocks. The V-6 pulled in at the very back. Immediately, three more cars pulled in behind them, followed by a fourth and fifth within the next minutes. Horns rang out since the fifth was blocking part of an intersection to do so. Austin held onto his scarf and leaned out the window to watch in amazement. A man ran by on the sidewalk, exclaiming into a phone, “Ten gallon limit at Comanico! They’re only letting people buy up to ten gallons! Come over to Cheap-O!”

  As they waited, Micah said, “Austin, we could be here for an hour or more. There won’t be anything left in Mr. Foods. Stay with the car; I’ll walk over to the store.” He climbed over to the driver’s seat as she got out, checked both ways, and sprinted across the street. The cars moved forward a space and he inched up.

  Oh, that’s appropriate! Elania wrote all of them. Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but really? Tone deaf much? Saylor just posted this on HomeBase: Here’s something to turn your frowns upside down today! Guess who was just accepted to Senner!

  Fuck you, Saylor. No one gives a shit, Corbin responded testily.

  Austin glanced at the time. He should be finishing up his computers final at this moment, not sitting in a car trying to get to Gas-O Cheap-O. Clicking onto HomeBase to kill time, he read Saylor’s announcement and the congratulations popping up beneath it. A silver lining to this gruesome day indeed, while people in lines were torn apart by bombs and fell from the sky to their deaths all over the country, while families wailed for parents and children never coming home and sleeping students were attacked in their beds, Saylor Anne Karrachesse got into college.

  The cars moved forward. Austin eased up on the brake and crept over the road inch by inch to make the distance appear longer and the progress more significant. Micah was out of sight. Her acceptances might be coming any second, and financial aid was not a concern. That made Austin furious, Mamma hamstringing him at the start of the race while all of his friends had parents giving them a push. Corbin might not be going anywhere grander than Penger Junior College, but he wouldn’t have to worry about paying for his classes or finding a place to live while he took them.

  Terra had said that Austin was welcome to stay through graduation. That was the end of June, and though it seemed far away, it wasn’t. The five grand in his bank account had to pay for an apartment and food, and what was he going to do for a job with Sombra C? Who would even rent to him? Most of the time he was too afraid to think of his life past June, but stuck in this line, it reared its ugly head and confronted him. Austin hadn’t had a direction for college as far as majors went, but he was still eager to go. New places, new faces, new ideas . . . he knew in his soul that some class would inflame him, turn a like into a love, and a career would fall into place from that. But rather than go to college and find out what that was, he was going to end up living on the street.

  It didn’t make a whit of difference if he was accepted anywhere. He couldn’t go. His life was over, Sombra C having thrown it out the window. Couldn’t get a job, couldn’t get a home, couldn’t even buy a video game unmolested . . . maybe he should take a bus to Inigo or Mirror Lake and throw himself at their mercy. Looking down to the announcement, he typed: Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have died horribly everywhere today and you think getting into Senner makes it better?

  A legion of her friends attacked him for being critical, Austin writing back snippily until a honk let him know to move up. He and the others received a text with a video attached from Micah. It was showing the inside of Mr. Foods. The first word that came to mind was swarm. A swarm of people were so packed into an aisle that nowhere could Austin see linoleum. They shouted and crashed their carts together, a man taking things from a woman’s cart as she stretched for cans on a top shelf. She turned and screamed to see what he was doing, but had no way to maneuver around her cart to stop him.

  People without carts clutched loaded baskets to their chests. It was strange to watch them move, in waves at the claustrophobic press of those around them. Everyone shouted at the waves, angry that the people nearby were causing them, but the movements were starting from much farther back as more people tried to pack into the aisle. A little boy wailed in the big basket of a cart, and a smaller one wailed in the child’s seat. A man, presumably their father, was ignoring them to jostle people aside and reach the shelves. The video ended.

  Gridlock, Micah wrote. I had to ditch the cart just to move.

  How are you TEXTING from within that insanity? Elania wrote.

  Still pictures followed of bare shelves. Produce had been wiped out to the last berry, the area a sea of empty bins. The bread aisle was also bare, and the tags with prices were scattered on the floor. After that was a decimated dairy section, with a bottle of heavy cream broken on the middle shelf. White fluid had sluiced down over the last boxes of butter, a hand reaching over to take one regardless.

  Men are yelling at a store employee for running out of batteries, Micah wrote.

  Get candles, Austin answered.

  Aussie, we have tons at home. Candles are to Wiccans as mezuzot are to Jews.

  He watched the video a second time, the swarm and shouts, the theft and waves and wailing. Someone would have to pay him a lot of money to go into a store that chaotic. A minivan pulled up beside the car ahead with its blinker on to merge into the gas line. Austin laid on his horn, as did the man behind him. Sticking his head out of the window, the guy yelled, “You get in fucking line like everyone else, lady!”

  “Fuck you!” the woman shouted, and the minivan pulled away with her middle finger extended. The cars in line pulled closer together so no one else got the same idea.

  Oblivious to the fight in Saylor’s comment thread, Kader commented: Have you seen the mess of people at Tic-Tac-Taco? Some guy just ordered thirty burritos!

  Fast food joints. Austin hadn’t even thought of those! While everyone was hitting grocery stores, restaurants would also have food, or an approximation of it.

  He moved the car up and up, adjusting his sideview mirror to get a look of what was going on behind him. Cars, cars, and more cars. A man with a Gas-O Cheap-O vest came down the line and knocked on windows to pass something in. Austin rolled his down as the man approached, a harried look in his eyes. Giving over a stiff blue card with the number 24 on it, he said, “Keep this card! You will be required to show it at the station to be allowed in to fill. If you do not present this card, you will be turned away.”

  “Thank you,” Austin said, but the employee was gone. Austin snapped a picture of the card and forwarded it to his friends.

  It was returning to a lovefest on HomeBase since he had stopped posting, Saylor accepting congratulations from all corners and offering them to Cory Meller, who’d gotten an acceptance email to a university in New York. A lengthy conversation ensued of schools that accepted by email, those that did it by paper mail, and the ones that did both. Austin glared at the avatar of every comment. How nice that they could just put this day aside to be happy for themselves! Someone commented that the bombings were ruining his birthday, and it was only a thin thread of control that forced Austin to send it to his friends rather than explode at such a selfish guy.

  Stop falling apart, America! It’s Manny’s birthday! Corbin answered.

  I can’t believe we go to school with these people! Austin fumed.

  “Did they run out of gas?” a man shouted on the sidewalk. Austin didn’t hear the answer, but since no one was moving in front of the V-6, he stayed put.

  An entire hour had gone by when he at last pulled into the station. An employee took his card and waved him to a pump. There was still a line of people carrying gas cans. Pulling in to number four, Austin got out of the car. The guy at number three lifted his trunk as the hose pumped fuel int
o his vehicle. Within the trunk was a load of gas cans, which he lined up by the pump. The employee with the cards shouted, “No, only the tank of your car! If you want those filled, you have to stand in that line!” and an argument burst out. The cars in line at the curb laid on their horns and shouted at the man over the gas cans.

  Micah returned from Mr. Foods, carrying new canvas bags. They were packed. Austin popped the trunk and she set them inside with heavy thumps. Calling at him to wait over in a parking space when the car was fueled, she ran into the minimart. A sign on the door read NO WATER AND NO BATTERIES.

  The handle flicked shut at eleven gallons. Austin put it back and ripped off the receipt. The man with the gas cans and the employee were still fighting, the guy saying that he had to get to Canada and the employee expressing just how much he didn’t care. Driving at a crawl around them, Austin pulled into a parking space. The next car in line lurched up to pump number four.

  ZOMG, my bestie was just accepted to Senner, too!

  Pop the champagne, Austin thought in disgruntlement. Certainly no one popped champagne for junior college. He shouldn’t even start up in the fall semester, not unless he’d secured a place to live, and had some means of income. When those emails and envelopes came, he shouldn’t even open them. Why dream of what could have been? Torture himself? His friends were moving on, and leaving him behind to tread water. He’d delete the emails unread, and put the letters into the fire unread to watch them burn to ash.

  These thoughts were going to put him in an even worse mood. He flipped on the radio as the man threw his gas cans back into the trunk and screeched out of the lot. –all bombed flights have been identified and located, Flight 551 out of-

  The passenger door opened. Micah pushed laden plastic bags on the floor and climbed in. She was sweating, her hair and scarf and clothing askew. “The lines, Aussie. The lines are amazing. You should hear them. There’s no water? What do you mean there’s no water? I need water. Are you getting a shipment of water later today? Batteries, too? The televisions in there are all playing at top volume on different news networks, little kids are screaming, people were giving this Middle Eastern looking guy filthy looks while he’s just standing there with a bag of cat food and some pretzels.”