“Since little Miss Howzer is quite incapable of telling you much of anything anymore, let me describe to you what is going to happen next.” The voice paused. “Or what happened hours ago, according to your perspective.
“I am going to release Megan Howzer in her current disoriented state back into the town proper. She’ll drive along as best as she can manage for a while before she crashes into light pole in front of the Gitchigumi Café. Zwiersky and Boris Romanoff will bring her in where everyone will fret over her for a while before everything starts to go crazy. How close am I so far?”
“Way too close,” Angie muttered.
“This has to be some kind of trick,” Johnny said. “Someone must have planted this message on the phone after all that happened.”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Beth said.
“Now really, does that sound at all likely to you?” the recording said. Beth looked puzzled at that. Angie, on the other hand, thought maybe she was beginning to see a pattern. “Now here’s what else will happen. As soon as I send Howzer on her way, I’m going to head into this nearby cabin and do the same thing to the tourists there that I just did to her. And then they will spread their infection to the sheriff and his partner and everyone else who arrives to answer the 911 call that the tourists are placing at the very moment I say this. Then all of them will head into town. They will bite and infect others. By morning, there will be one person left alive. Only one out of all of you huddling right there in the Mukwunaguk Historical Society Museum. Everyone else among you will be dead, either infected with my plague or burned to a crisp like the two in the café.”
Bingo. Angie instantly understood something, but as she looked at the faces of the others they didn’t seem to catch it. They were too busy being terrified by the supernatural voice predicting their fate.
“Who are you?” Boris asked the phone. “Why are you doing this? Or even how?”
The voice sighed. “Unfortunately, there are certain, oh, let’s call them forces higher than myself, that specifically stated that they want my influence to be minimal in this. I simply proposed that I would do my job here and deliver a zombie infection. I said it would be in the traditional vein, but that definition isn’t as clear cut as some would believe. I added in a few so-called ‘traditional’ elements that amused me.”
Such as zombies that moved suspiciously like Michael Jackson, Angie thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.
“That still doesn’t give us any answers,” Rudy muttered.
“Too bad, because that’s all you get. For now at least. I’ll monologue a bit about everything when you finally come face to face with me just before dawn. I know I won’t be able to resist. The two of you that will be left at that point will hang on my every word, I’m sure.”
“She’s got to be trying to psych us out,” Boris said. “There’s no way she can know who’s going to die and who’s going to survive.”
The recording laughed. “You really haven’t gotten a clue yet just what or who I am yet, have you? Or maybe you have a guess, but it’s probably wrong. Suffice it to say, I’m old. I’m powerful. And the Hell you are all experiencing tonight is just me practicing for what I will unleash in the future. So a little bit of clairvoyance to find out which of you aren’t going to make it isn’t hard. Hell, it’s not even the hardest thing I’ve done in the last five minutes.”
“Actually, I don’t think she’s as all-seeing as she says she is,” Angie said. “And I’m proving it right now with the fact that she doesn’t know that I’m talking.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the recording said. For a moment, Angie thought she had been wrong, that the mistake had been on her part rather than on the mysterious voice, but then it continued. “You can rage against me all you like, Kevin, but it’s not going to change anything.”
“Uh, I didn’t say anything,” Kevin said.
“Fine, since you all still don’t believe me, I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen next. Once this recording shuts off, Angela will turn on this phone’s stopwatch function. When it hits exactly thirty minutes and thirty nine seconds, you will be out of time to plan what you’re going to do next. Because that’s when one of the zombies I have roaming the streets will see a flash of light from your location and get the attention of all the others. Most of you will go on to the place of your final stand. Two of you will not. Sorry Kevin. Sorry Johnny.
“Oh, look at that. It looks like my little infection is starting to work its magic on Miss Megan. It’s about time I sent her running on along to you now.
“I will see some of you soon. I’m sure it will be entertaining.”
The recording ended.
Ten
As much as it loathed Angie to play into the mysterious voice’s expectations, the first thing she did was find the stopwatch tool on Megan’s phone and start it. There were a great many things the woman might have lied about and a few things Angie knew she got outright wrong, but if there was any truth at all to the amount of time they had then she wanted to be ready.
“I do apologize if I smell, everyone,” Kevin said.
“Why’s that?” Boris asked.
“Because I think I might have just shit myself in fear.” Beth looked at the seat of his pants just to make sure he was joking. At this point, Angie wouldn’t blame him if he actually had.
“This is insane,” Jasmine said.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Johnny said. “We can’t stay. The zombies can’t find us here in thirty minutes if we aren’t actually here.”
“Just calm down,” Angie said. “For all we know that could have been a ploy to get us to leave early and get us all killed.”
“Does it even matter?” Rudy asked, his tone more defeatist than anything Angie had ever heard from him. “You heard everything that woman said. Whoever she is, she can predict everything we’re going to do. There’s no way to escape it. Only one of us is going to live through the night.”
“Actually I don’t think that’s true,” Angie said. “However she’s doing this and whatever the reason, somewhere along the line she made a mistake.”
“Yeah, you said something like that a minute ago,” Beth said. “What did you mean?”
“Didn’t you all hear? The conversation wasn’t as perfectly synchronized as she thought it would be. Kevin, that bit at the end where she responded to something you didn’t say? I’m betting that was where you were supposed to scream at her or threaten her or something.”
“And why would I have done that?” Kevin asked.
“Because you were supposed to be angry at her.” Angie took a deep breath, partially because she wanted to ground herself from getting too excited at the idea that they might have a way out of this. Also, though, it was for dramatic effect. “For the death of your wife.”
Beth raised her eyebrows. “Say what now?”
“You might have all been too shocked by what was going on that you missed it, but I didn’t. She said two people died in the fire, yet the only one who didn’t make it out was Bert. And every time Beth spoke, she acted like no one had said anything at all. According to our mystery woman’s visions, Beth isn’t supposed to be here anymore. And because she was wrong about that, we might have an opportunity to make her wrong about the rest of it, as well.”
“But how is that possible?” Jasmine asked. “She sounded so sure about everything.”
“I think maybe her miscalculation is right here,” Angie said. She put a hand against Megan’s forehead again. Sure enough she thought the fever might be breaking, and Megan reacted slightly to her touch.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Kim said. She’d been silent through the entire phone conversation. She hadn’t even looked like she’d been paying that much attention, instead holding Megan’s hand as she murmured in her sleep.
“I’m not quite following it either,” Johnny said.
“No, I think I get it,” Boris said. He smiled at Angie. She was
mildly surprised that the expression managed not to be creepy. “Beth was supposed to die because we weren’t supposed to be attacked by five zombies. We were supposed to be attacked by six.”
“You mean Megan herself?” Jasmine asked.
“Yes,” Angie said. “We were all afraid that she was going to turn into a zombie like the others. Well, I think she was supposed to. But she didn’t. Something happened that this woman couldn’t predict.”
“Okay, but where’s the difference?” Beth asked. “What happened that changed everything the woman saw was going to happen?”
Angie shrugged. “I don’t know. We might have to wait for Megan to be able to tell us. Or maybe Megan just won’t know. All that’s important is some kind of butterfly effect thing happened, so our dooms aren’t as certain as that woman said they are. We can still get out of this.”
Jasmine gestured at the clothed-over front door. “We can, but what about everyone else in town? They can’t all have been gotten by the zombies yet.”
Angie hesitated. “I…don’t know if there’s anything we can do for anyone else.”
“But we’ve got to try, don’t we?” Jasmine asked. “I’ve known these people my entire life. I can’t just let them die. Even the ones that are assholes.”
Angie shook her head, thinking of who else might be out there. Luke, the first boy she had ever kissed before he dumped her for a mathlete. Jenna, the Sunday school teacher who used to come into the café late on Sunday mornings. Despite being older than Angie by about ten years, Angie’s thoughts about Jenna late at night had been among the early indications she was something other than completely straight. Every single person who permanently lived in the town during the winter was a regular customer of hers at the café. She said hi to them on the street. She occasionally shared beers with them at the Sand Bar. There was a group of people, not exactly friends but closer than just casual relations, that she would sometimes play Euchre with on Thursday nights. Was she really prepared to accept that they were all dead or at least about to be?
There were a couple hundred of them. As much as it hurt her heart, she couldn’t save them all. She did have a chance, however, to save the eight other people around her.
“We can’t just run around the town willy-nilly checking everyone’s homes. Mukwunaguk may be small, but not small enough that we can do that without attracting whatever horde has gathered by now. And yes, despite any earlier arguments, I’m sure there would be enough zombies by now to be called a horde by any definition.”
Megan stirred and murmured. Her eyelids fluttered. Maybe she was about to wake up for real this time. Angie pointed at her. “If she is indeed some kind of x-factor that whoever was on the phone didn’t account for, then we have a real chance, just us, of surviving.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to just let my friends die,” Boris said.
“You have friends?” Kevin asked.
“Screw you.”
“They’re probably already dead, Boris. Or about to be. Soon enough that we won’t be able to do anything about it.”
Boris sighed. “Okay. So now what?”
“We have to get out of town,” Rudy said. “If we can’t call out, we need to at least get to somewhere else and warn everyone.”
“And how do you propose doing that?” Beth asked. “We sent Becca to go get a car, and we know what happened there.”
“We don’t need to get a vehicle,” Angie said. “We already have one, and it’s even big enough to fit all of us comfortably.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin asked.
“Oh,” Jasmine said. “I get it.”
“So do I,” Rudy said.
“Care to clue in the rest of us?” Boris asked.
“We passed our way out on the way in, actually,” Angie said. “In the garage out back.”
“The tour bus,” Johnny said.
“Do any of us even know how to drive that thing?” Beth asked.
“I might be able to,” Rudy said. “I hung around Bert enough to watch him do it. Not much different than driving a truck, really.”
“But where would we even go with it?” Jasmine asked.
“Does that even matter?” Kevin asked. “We get out of town. Away from the zombies. The nearest place with a phone, anywhere.”
“I’ve got an even better question,” Beth asked. “How are we supposed to get it going? I mean, it’s not like any of just happen to have a set of keys to a random tour bus in our purses.”
“Old Bert would have,” Johnny muttered.
“Maybe we can start the tour bus the same way we got in here,” Angie said. “They must have kept a second set of keys around here, right?”
No one needed any more instruction after that. For the next fifteen minutes, every able-person in the group frantically searched the museum for a second set of keys. Kim even got up and did some searching, although she tended to search highly unlikely places like the dioramas. Once or twice, Angie went over to check on Megan and saw that she was coming around. She was awake but groggy enough that she couldn’t give Angie anything more than the occasional yes or no answers. As much as Angie wanted to stop and take a moment to question her more deeply, she knew they didn’t have time. As they looked for the keys, the smartphone kept counting. Getting closer and closer to that thirty-minute mark.
To everyone’s surprise, Kim was the one who actually found the keys. While everyone else searched the front counter or the back office or even the janitor’s closet, Kim had continued poking around the displays themselves. When she finally called out that she saw them everyone converged around her. She sat in the front seat of the Model-T, pointing at something by the passenger’s side.
The keys were sitting in the open glove compartment.
Johnny scratched his head. “Uh, do Model-Ts even have a glove compartment?” he asked.
“Apparently this one does,” Kevin said.
“But why?” Beth asked.
Angie handed Megan’s phone to Jasmine then gently pulled Kim out of the driver’s seat, moving in for a closer look. The “glove compartment” was actually just a metal box that had been bolted into the car. Whoever had made it had taken great care to use similar materials and make it look aged, although the bolts that held it on were obviously newer. The average person who didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be there would have assumed it was just a part of the car.
“Clever,” Angie said. “Although I kind of doubt that’s the sort of thing anyone would be able to get away with at any other museum.”
The ring inside the compartment held far more keys than she thought were needed just for the museum. One was obviously a copy of the key to the museum itself. There were multiple others that she couldn’t be sure of, at first, until she realized these were just the keys for here. This must have been an emergency key ring of entire historical society, including every place that they took care of throughout town. There were other historical sites and offices, after all. She thought for a moment that it wasn’t so smart to place them in a building where it was a local tradition for people to just walk off with random things, but given that it was also tradition that everyone brought them back she supposed security wasn’t their greatest concern.
Angie fingered through the keys, ignoring anything that was clearly supposed to be for a building until she found one that looked like it belonged to a vehicle. That would be the tour bus key.
“Great,” she said. “How are we looking on time?” She looked to Jasmine, who held up the phone for all to see. They still had just under five minutes.
“Okay, we can do this. We know what causes the zombies to find us. Light. So everyone turn off their flashlights.”
“That’s going to lead to a lot of barked shins,” Boris said.
“You can stub your toe or you can get your brain eaten,” Angie said. “Weigh the options and make your decision.” Angie thought for a second. The mystery voice would never have told them what would give them away if tha
t knowledge could prevent it. They had to add in another factor. “Give all the flashlights to Beth. She’s not supposed to be here, so maybe that will be enough to change things.”
Beth accepted all the flashlights from them. In the complete dark, even with their eyes adjusting, it was hard to see any expression on Beth’s face. But after a moment of hesitation unscrewed the caps of each flashlight and removed the batteries, putting them in a pocket well away from the flashlights. Smart, Angie thought.
“Good. Okay. Let’s find the back door and quietly make our way out to the garage,” Angie said. “Megan? Are you okay to walk yet?”
“I…huh?” Megan fumbled around as she awkwardly got to her feet. Something thumped as it fell on the floor, a heavy glass object from one of the displays that thankfully didn’t break. “Where? Am I?”
“Better than nothing,” Angie muttered. “Rudy and Jasmine, you want to stay on either side of her and steady her?”
Jasmine handed Megan’s phone back to Angie, and as the clock counted up from its current twenty-seven minutes, Angie turned it off. There had to be no light. None at all. She thought about the rest of the museum around them, trying to think of anything that could make that deadly flash of light. There were the overhead lights, of course, but those were closer to the front than they were now, and Angie had already instinctively herded her group away from them. There was her lighter in her pocket, but as long as she didn’t feel an uncontrollable urge to light up in the next couple minutes, that wouldn’t be a problem. Of course, in that patented way that nic fits seemed to have, the mere thought of cigarettes was enough to make her desperately want one. It was an urge she could ignore.
“Alright, back door,” Angie said again.
“I can’t even see where it is,” Kim mumbled.
“Through the office,” Rudy said.
“One last roll call,” Angie said, realizing she sounded suspiciously like the adult chaperones who would occasionally bring groups of kids through here. “Everyone here and ready?”
Everyone said they were ready, although Angie noticed one voice missing. “Johnny?”
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