The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Archways. That was Pewter. He had seen the pictures on the website and how could she have forgotten Pewter?

  “Worse than that is I can’t remember my br-”

  “No!” Tears were rolling down his cheeks. She had gotten a dud pill and the infection took its chance to proliferate when all the while they had tons of pills right there! Now it was going to freeze her infection again, but not reverse the damage.

  She was still talking, still reasonable . . . it wasn’t that bad. He’d find her a pair of sunglasses to block the light. If she was beginning to snarl and get a little emotionally volatile and dangerous, there had to be a confinement point, a legal one, within the harbor. They’d set her up in a pretty room there and he’d visit every day, make sure that the nurses were taking care of her. They’d try harder if Austin were watching.

  Dropping everything to the ground, he hugged her and wept as she shook against his chest. He had gotten mad about the mixed up towels at the motel, and she’d mixed them up because her brain was damaged. Austin hated himself for that. He would hate himself for the rest of his life.

  The night was quiet around them. “How could you not tell me?” he whispered into her hair. “Did you tell anyone?” If Elania had told Micah, and Micah hadn’t told Austin, he was going to be furious with her.

  “No, you’re the only one who knows,” Elania whispered. “I had to . . . to think about it. If it was shock, or something more than that. But now I know I’m not mistaken.”

  Austin didn’t want her to say any more about it. “Elania-”

  “Now I’m missing bigger and bigger parts of myself . . . I spent half an hour in the shower once not knowing what to do . . . the light . . . and I don’t know where I am.”

  He had just told her that they were at the golf course, and already it was gone from her mind. “We’re at a golf course in San Francisco. Tomorrow morning, we’re walking the rest of the way to the car and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we’ll get around more braces until we’re at the harbor. There will be doctors there. They’ll help you.”

  “Doctors can’t help me.” Elania was accepting this better than he was. “Austin, I’m going feral.”

  “You are not!”

  She looked at him intensely. “You have to understand what . . . I’m saying. In a few days . . . in a few days I’ll be gone. When that happens, I’ll be dangerous to you, just like at the . . . behind the fence . . .” She stared up at him, but she wasn’t seeing Austin there. Her gaze drifted away. She’d spaced out.

  Jesus. Jesus.

  It was Elania, and Elania could never be one of those maddened creatures pounding on the doors and crying out in animal tongues. She had a ton of Zyllevir sweeping through her body now, so it wasn’t going to be like that! It had just gotten this far because she had gone a few days without medication, and then received a bad pill. She had a genetic predisposition for the virus to move quickly through her system, which was why her stamp read 2%. The rest of them had 1%. He had been so caught up in his mother kicking him out that he hadn’t paid much attention to Elania’s plight at the time. All of that came back to him, how scared she and her family had been to consider Zyllevir wasn’t enough for a system primed to let it flourish.

  And it hadn’t been enough.

  In his head, Micah’s wrist plunged down with the switchblade. Grasping Elania’s hands and squeezing them, he said, “Elania? Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t respond. That told him how bad this had gotten. He waited, counting the seconds, and hit four before her eyes regained awareness. There were dead spots in her brain that she had to circumvent. “We have to tell the others,” Austin said.

  “Tom-tomorrow,” Elania said. “Please? It’s too hard. Don’t . . . don’t wake them up for this. Will you just take my watch? I’m not . . . reliable.”

  “Of course,” Austin said. If he couldn’t stay awake all night, he’d wake up Micah and whisper what was going on. Cool-headed Micah would see a way to make this better when Austin was falling apart. But he didn’t want to tell the others either. Once he and Elania told them in the morning, it would be real.

  To test her memory, he said, “Least favorite subject? Best?”

  “M-math. I like . . . English so much better.”

  “Name of hometown?”

  She paused for two heartbreaking seconds. “Cloudy Valley.”

  That much was unsullied, or at least still existed, even if through imperfect access. The doctor at the party had been at 49%. Though she hadn’t snarled . . . the office had been dark though. Had Austin shined a bright beam directly into her eyes . . .

  The doctor had the lurch and weird eyes, which Elania didn’t have, but Elania’s mental degradation was close to the doctor’s level. It was so hard to know for sure when the virus expressed itself differently from person to person. He asked Elania to recite her phone number and she rattled it off with ease.

  Then he asked where they were, and she was silent. Sweet Jesus, she didn’t know.

  He guided her around the hole in the green and to the blanket. Micah and Corbin hadn’t stirred. A gunshot rang out in the darkness from some other camp. Elania sank to her side on the blanket and he covered her in a towel. Then he retook his seat, the gun along his thigh. Someone was laughing far off, a wild caterwaul.

  Brain damaged. He watched over her still form in despair. She couldn’t write articles. She had to have her whole brain to do what she liked best. This night was worse than any of the nights he had spent in the confinement point.

  In the morning, everything was going to change. Someone always had to watch over Elania to make sure she didn’t wander off. When they got to the car, he’d tell Zaley to stop in a minimart for a cheap pair of sunglasses. Elania was going to need help eating, walking, bathing, thinking . . .

  The wild laugh was punctuated by shrieks that rattled back into the wailing of merriment. It was the voice of a madman. The plastic pool lifted and the big man came out. A rifle over his shoulder and a flashlight in his hand, he walked down the path and stared into the darkness where the laugh was coming from. After it stopped, he paced the camp. Several times, he announced, “Patrol!” so no one would be alarmed. Stopping at the toilets, he came out and flicked his beam over to the patch of trees. “Everything okay over there?”

  “Okay!” Austin called.

  A tent unzipped and Toby poked his head out. The glow of a camping lantern revealed a nervous face. “Cops?” he asked the man.

  “No cops,” the guy answered. “Just making sure we’re okay.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” Toby said. He retreated inside.

  The guy walked the camp a second time and stopped on the pathway to stand sentinel. His back aching from the unforgiving trunk, Austin lay down. The calls of patrol hadn’t bothered the three around him. A tent opened to release a woman, who went over to the man and gave him a soda. He drank it and she said, “Night, Big Larry.”

  “Night, honey, you sleep well,” Big Larry said.

  Austin’s eyes were stinging from tiredness. He propped his head up on his hand and closed them. It wasn’t sleeping when he was listening so attentively. The animal sounds were all emanating from genuine animals, in his opinion, and there were few of them. Some people were talking within the tents, their voices only coming over to the trees as sporadic crests of laughter. Most of the tents were dark and silent.

  Elania should take twice or thrice the dose every week and beat down the virus with extra firepower. They would pump her so full of Zyllevir that she’d have pills coming out of her ears. They’d give her extra help to get through the days and it would be all right. Not great, it couldn’t be great in her condition, but all right. Her friends and her family would be gathered around her to do what she couldn’t. She would always be loved. All of this he’d explain to Micah in the morning and she would agree.

  “Patrol!” Big Larry boomed.

  It was nice to have someone out there keeping watch. If Austin di
dn’t have a stamp hidden on his neck, the presence of Big Larry would make him feel safe.

  The tide bore him away to a dream of the ocean, Austin coming to a city at the water’s edge. The walkways and piers were made of wood, the tall buildings white stone and blue pieces of the sky brilliant in the angles and curves between them. Clarissa ran down the pier in a swimsuit and leaped off the edge to the water. Children waved from the waves and disappeared beneath them, mermaid tails breaching and slipping underneath the sea.

  Around the whole city was a fence that rose to the clouds. Shepherds shouted angrily to see Austin on the other side, but it was too high for them to climb and too thick to break through.

  He was safe. He was home.

  “Patrol!”

  His head sank down to the blanket, and he slipped into a deeper sleep.

  Elania

  Conor and Cormac and . . .

  She had no idea what came next. Conor and Cormac and . . .

  Blankness. She should know this. It was important.

  If a equaled b, and b equaled c, then a equaled c. That was still in her head, a random fact from a random class, when Conor and Cormac and . . . was not. It was something that should be there always, always, and it had been gouged out. That made her angry. Beyond angry to outraged, beyond that to furious, and then it faded.

  She was nothing but driftwood on a rushing gray stream.

  Then she was back. She could see him clearly in her mind’s eye. He was shorter than the other two by almost three inches. Sometimes he was mistaken for a year younger than his brothers and that was a gross insult to him. He was the last one lifted away from their mother in the C-section, but he’d been there! When Cormac went through a phase of calling him Shorty in kindergarten, Dad stepped in to stop it. That’s your brother. Your brother’s name is (fill in the blank, Elania’s mind didn’t fill in the blank) not Shorty.

  Cormac had a very round face. He was the stockiest of the triplets. The other one was the thinnest, and Conor was a halfway point between them. People didn’t usually have trouble telling them apart, and only in their earliest babyhood had Elania had any trouble herself. Conor and Cormac and . . .

  It was dark.

  She had known in the motel room, forgotten it and known again. She’d prayed to the bottle of Zyllevir and taken an extra pill in the bathroom. Maybe she took more than that. She kept forgetting. It came to her as a new idea (mostly new, déjà vu, Conor and Cormac and . . .) and then her fingers replayed a memory of twisting off the cap at an earlier time. Had she taken one then? Or forgotten halfway through?

  Your brother’s name is -----, not Shorty. Dad had been angry by the need for repeat lectures, the punishments that never stuck. Cormac was just that way. You had to play hardball with him, and as often as it took for the message to sink in. With Conor, you appealed to his better judgment. Cormac was work.

  Hiss in the back seat. Shorty.

  Hiss over the table at the restaurant. Shorty.

  Bellow from Dad. You lost TV.

  Bellow from Dad. Get up. You and I are going to the car.

  Whining, crying, raging. Eventually, the hisses of Shorty stopped. Dad said the four of them could grow into presidents or postal carriers or barbers, but they were not allowed to grow into bullies.

  Her mother’s purse had spilled in the car. Elania knew the intimate details of their home lives, but not her youngest brother’s name. She didn’t know their birthday either. She had known it yesterday and today it was gone. The knowledge that it once existed in her head and now was gone . . . that would fade, too. It was towards the beginning of the year, not the end.

  The television had played and played in the motel room, the words coming out too swiftly and meaningless images trading out for others on the screen. Commercials played for fast food places and she still recognized the jingles. Then the maps crinkled and she examined the webs of lines without comprehension. Why was everyone talking about San Francisco?

  They were in San Francisco. They were talking about San Francisco because they were in San Francisco. Her mind refused to retain the information. Why were they in San Francisco?

  The Zyllevir had stopped working.

  Conor and Cormac and . . .

  Sometimes she knew more than at other times, yet every day she knew less. She recited to herself what she found in her mind, her name and her age, her school and her friends . . . her brother’s name should have been more firmly rooted in her memories than the reflexive property of a=a. That had come from science or math or history . . . it came from P.E. Reflex. Muscles.

  Her brother’s name should have been inviolable. Conor and Cormac and . . .

  Please, God, give it back.

  Her petition to God was added to the stack. It sat on top of please, God, don’t let me die behind the fence and please, God, let me not be going crazy with Sombra C.

  It wasn’t how she had spoken to Him before, asking a Santa Claus God for presents. Please give me this, please give me that, I’ve been so good this year . . . She couldn’t remember her other language for Him. Even then, she hadn’t spoken it with fluency. Anyone who claimed to have mastered the language of God so easily was suspect. That was a life’s work, not a degree earned in school. God fashioned humans in His own image, but humans tried to fashion God in their own image.

  She wanted to write down these thoughts and puzzle over them, ask her parents what they believed. Work at God until she understood.

  The thoughts were gone. She drifted.

  When she returned to herself, she didn’t remember what she had been thinking about. Quickly, she sought out what was left in her mind. Her name and age and address, her school and friends, all of that was there . . . but yesterday she could have rattled off her classroom numbers, and today they were gone. They had numbers, written upon plaques and fastened above each door, but her brain failed to supply them. Soon she wouldn’t recall that they had numbers at all. It only went downward, ever downward, until the day she knew nothing.

  They were in San Francisco (were they still?) and it was dark.

  Darkness was easier on her eyes, the colors washed away by night. Behind them was a camp. A fire had been burning there and she’d disliked how it seared itself into her retinas. Blotting out everything else in its brightness, demanding she look at it and only it and that hurt. It hurt in its brightness; it hurt in its unsteadiness.

  The fire was out now. It was dark . . . she had made that observation before.

  She was going feral. Oh God, she was going feral.

  How many times? How many times did she think these thoughts and think them again like they were something fresh to her mind? It was only when the thought had played out that she felt a familiarity about it. The gray stream rushed by and everything was wiped clean for her to start the process anew.

  She didn’t know where they were. Austin had told her, but he was asleep. One day she wouldn’t know that Austin knew all that she was forgetting! Then she would be truly alone, yet not recognize that she was. This precarious perch was crumbling and she was desperate to hold onto Austin. Austin Bell.

  He was going to be washed away and she’d look upon him as a stranger. For now he was still Austin Bell, and she remembered going to the movies with him. He was always on time to pick her up for the walk to the theater so they could catch the previews. Every time they handed over their tickets and entered the foyer, they had engaged in the same old friendly squabble. She just wanted to pay for the ticket and watch the show, and to Austin the theater was an experience. Popcorn! Soda! Candy! How could you not add these things in? She usually gave in and bought a box of sour bombs and he went nuts and bought everything else. Once seated, he pushed half of his loot on her. It was sweet. Sharing was part of the experience, too.

  She couldn’t name a single movie they had seen.

  It was dark.

  Washed of color were tiny shapes of hills and valleys. She preferred the quiet shapes to the racket of the day. In the mot
el (what was the name of the motel?) she had gone into the bathroom and found her hand frozen upon the light switch. She didn’t need light to find the toilet or the shower. So she closed the door and locked it, peed and bathed all in the dark.

  That was when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  She had cried and forgotten why she was crying. Was it because of the days she had gone without medication behind the fence? It had only been a short time. But back in December, the doctor had been shocked at how fast the virus replicated in her system. They were terrified that her body in cahoots with Sombra C would thumb its nose at the influx of Zyllevir and go on doing what it liked to do. Her body wanted this virus to win.

  It was winning. Would it be winning regardless of regular pills? That happened to an unlucky few.

  She was one of the unlucky few.

  Conor and Cormac and . . .

  They had put her behind the fence and she was afraid of the pounding on the doors. Micah would have no choice but to turn her away any evening now, to the outside restroom and once expelled from there, Elania was going to be the one pounding on the doors and walls and windows of the lodge . . . let me in where it’s safe . . . let me in where it’s safe . . . except when she yelled, her words would be garbled and then her cries just wordless.

  She was going to be torn apart on the hillside. The kings . . .

  Kings belonged to other regions of the world and fairy stories. Kings and queens, princes and princesses, knights and ladies . . . she had a pleasant association with those words if no memories.

  The blade or the fence. Elania had to choose.

  No. She wasn’t behind the fence any longer. She had gotten out to a dark, soothing place, wherever it was. Austin was asleep on the blanket.

  She was so confused. Micah and Corbin were also asleep. Zaley had been with them earlier, but then she had gone somewhere else. Elania checked around for her and came up short. The fire was asleep, and that let her eyes rest. It had made her angry how it writhed and screamed with light. Look at me! Look at me!