"Mansfield,” he offered.
She nodded. "I've always thought of that as a small town, but … how many walking death factories constitute a lot? It was as bad as Columbus. The walkers were everywhere. But we had no choice. The baby was sick, had been since before this all happened, but now she was untreated and on the run. We had to get to … stable ground."
Jeff had left the safety of the car to pump the gas. He still had to pay for it! How’s that for irony? He swiped his card but it wouldn't work. He had to smash into the station itself and flip on all the pumps. How he knew to do that she had no idea, but he did. But all the breaking glass was a hell of a racket …
"They can still hear, you know,” she observed. It was out of the blue, from Roger's point of view, but he accepted it.
"I never thought about it. I suppose they can."
She looked at him more intently. "No. You don’t get it. They can hear!"
The walkers came from all directions. They weren't fast, but they were relentless. Jeff got the nozzle in the tank and started pumping before the first one got near. He battered it back with a hit that would have been a home run even in a major league park. It actually flew about five feet then landed skidding for another five. Its face was smashed and oozing blood. Not really bleeding. Bleeding requires a beating heart. But oozing. Its jawbone was broken and hanging from the left side of its face. Its tongue, the colour of a day old bruise, lolled below its face … and then it stood up, and came for him again. He batted it again, then spun to pound the one coming up behind him. The numbers on the gauge spun, .731, .854, .967, 1.001 gallons …
"If they can hear, can they feel? Can they see and taste and feel?"
There were about six of them now. Jeff spun from one to the next, battering them away, going through the whole bunch of them while the first recovered it's feet and came toward him again. It was a game of who can last the longest and it was a losing game. Jeff was getting winded, tired. But whatever drove the muscles of the walkers was inexhaustible. They would just keep coming and coming and coming. And there were lots of them. More arriving every second. 1.98, 2.07, 2.84, the numbers spun. "That's enough!" She screamed. "We have enough! Come back in! Please come back in!"
But that wasn't going to happen. She could see that clear enough. There were dozens of them now. Most were going for the pungent, sweaty meat of the man with the whirling bat, but some came to the doors of the car, sniffing and looking at Mira and the baby. Veal. She couldn't help giggling crazily. They see the baby and want VEAL.
"Can they feel pleasure? Can they feel pain?" she asked Roger. Her eyes wide, needing this important piece of data. Needing it more than anything else in the world.
A face was pressed against the passenger door. A woman's face. Well, the face of something that had once been a woman, bloated and mottled purple. The sickly tongue tracing sticky trails of clotted saliva along the glass. And then she heard a loud thump on the windshield. Jeff. His face was bloody and contorted with pain, his hand slapped the windshield, two fingers already missing and his agonized face cried: "Go! Go you stupid bitch! Get out of here! Take my baby and get to safety!"
And then his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he began to slide, lifeless, down onto the hood. In blind, unthinking panic, she slid across the seat, slammed the car in gear, and mashed the accelerator. The car lurched forward, bodies, including Jeff, flew from the car as she moved about ten feet and slammed headlong into the brick of the small convenience store that all modern gas stations had become. The nozzle was still lodged firmly in the tank, the hose pulled and wrenched loose where it was weakest, at the point where it joined the pump. Gasoline continued to surge from the tank, spilling to the ground and flowing along the concrete. She threw the car into reverse and backed out, then jammed it back into gear and, tires spinning, she shot out of the lot and onto the road, dragging the hose behind her.
"Tell me Mr. Watkins. Can they suffer?"
"I don’t know, Mrs. Effayant. I honestly don’t know."
"He was all torn up. He was bitten and bitten. And now … he walks. Do you think he feels the pain? Do you think he is hungry? I know they eat, but do they starve?"
Roger took her cheeks in both hands and forced her eyes to look into his.
"Listen. I cannot tell for sure. But I've killed dozens of these things, and … I've shot them, and bashed them, and broken their bones, and if they feel it, they don’t feel it like we do. That, I can promise you. Things that would hurt a human so badly they couldn't move, they just stand right back up and come back for more."
She leaned back, a little calmer. But hardly comforted.
"You killed them? They can be killed?"
"Yes. Sort of. Killed might not be the right word. Whatever it is that makes them move seems to be centred in the head. If you destroy the brain, they go down and don't get back up. We can just bury them normally at that point."
Her eyes widened at that.
"Then we can go back! We can go back and put Jeff down! Just in case he feels. Before he has to starve."
But Roger was already shaking his head.
"We can't Mira. Think about it. Think about the North Coast. Cleveland on one end and Toledo on the other and nearly non-stop urban area in between. Millions of people. Now most of them aren't people, but still millions. I don't know how you made it through that gauntlet once, but we can't do it twice more. Once down and once back. Mira we just can't!"
Calming again, she leaned back in her chair. She spent a few seconds smoothing her skirt back into 'pretty young mom' position, than looked back up at him.
"Why not?" she asked. "What else do I have to do with the rest of my life?"
"That is an excellent question. It's on my list of things to talk to you about. The answer is rebuild. We survive first, and then we rebuild civilization. You said your husband was a pilot, but what about you? What do you bring to us?"
She laughed.
"Nothing! I was a freelance writer! I write technical and science articles. Nothing we can use now."
His eyes brightened.
"That is fantastic."
She looked at him blankly.
"Really? How so?”
"Are you kidding? If nothing else you can write down the basics. As much as you can remember. That way, when our descendants start rebuilding the world, they won't have to start from square one. They won’t need to wait for another Archimedes or another Newton. They’ll already know."
"How can we survive in a world where we can't even die in peace! We will always have the walkers. They aren't going away. Even if they did, people are still going to die, then walk."
"Maybe the situation will change again. This virus or whatever …"
Her laugh cut through his words like a harpy’s screech.
"This is no virus. This is nothing natural. When this started it was very interesting. I figured there would be an article in it. I called some of my medical contacts. Do you know when it all started? Between 9:50 and 9:54pm last Thursday. That is as close as I could narrow it down, but that's a pretty damn narrow window. So I called a friend in Los Angeles. When did it start there? 6:50pm or so. Do you know what that means?"
Roger looked at her, very intent on learning, but he didn't get it. He shook his head.
"It means this is not a virus. It's not a disease. It's not anything like that. There was no 'patient zero.' There were no disease vectors. One minute, the dead laid still. The next they walked. Instantly, everywhere. All over the world. All at the same moment. This is not a natural process. There is nothing natural about this."
Roger looked up at the boy. Little big man. Did she get his real name yet? She couldn't remember. This distressed her. It meant an awkward social situation was impending. Can't have that. God forbid.
"Well," he said at last. "That is distressing, but even if it is supernatural, it seems to follow some rules. It's in the head, whatever it is. So we can … make them stop walking. We already know how to do
that from trial and error. In the future we'll have to come up with new funeral practices, but we can do that. Cultures change over time, as new needs arise. But you are wrong about them never going away. And think about this, as it may comfort you about your husband. They are well and truly dead. They rot. They have trouble sneaking up on you because you can smell them a mile away. This thing that is happening, whatever it is, it’s tied up somehow in the brain. In the meat. And it’s rotting. So the shambling millions will … Just rot away. And the living will inherit the earth.”
She stared distantly out at the slate coloured surface of the lake, and the sharp line where it met the blue sky at the horizon.
"I don't want to inherit the earth. They can have it. I'm finished here."
Suddenly, Roger lunged forward and seized her shoulders.
"Don't say that! Don't ever say that. You don't have the right! Do you know how many people are on this island? Twenty-six. Twenty-seven now that you are here. Eleven women and sixteen men. And you may be the smartest and best educated of the lot of us. Do you understand?"
"Stop hurting me!"
Just as suddenly, he released her. He held his hands, palms open, as if struggling to regain control. Then, he sat down again, coolly.
"I'm sorry Mrs. Effayant. That was uncalled for and unforgivable. I'm …"
He paused. Breathing deeply a couple of times.
"I'm the Sheriff. I'm the guy everyone looks to. You see, it's my job – my duty – to keep the people safe. To make them secure and happy. That means, in this case, I have to bring it all back. Forgive my lack of tact here, but eleven Eves is not a very broad breeding base. Even if we didn't have your wonderful brain, we still need your womb. A horrid thing to say to someone I just met, but you have to understand what’s at stake here. This is much bigger than any one of us."
But she was still staring, not at all startled by his poorly-timed honesty.
"No." She spoke so quietly that it was almost impossible to hear. "There are others. Other little islands. Other mountaintops. Other little heavens. It's not all on us."
"I'm sure you are right. But in the meantime, the only place I know for sure humanity has survived is right here. Until we know for sure, about others, we have to behave as if the whole future rests on us. We simply don't have a choice."
They sat in silence for a long time. Her eyes were lost, fixed to the horizon. Then, without warning, she pitched forward and vomited copiously on the wood planking of the porch.
The battered car plunged right through the gate at the little dock when she had run out of 'north' and came to the endless expanse of Lake Erie. The drive had been eventful, but easier than she imagined it would be. The roads were mostly clear, as people had taken to hiding in their homes when it all started going to hell. She did manage to run over one walker that seemed to be blundering along the centreline of the highway. The tank had just over four gallons in it. Not even half full, which was good because the gas cap was lost and the valve was held open by the nozzle. She was damned if she was going to stop to remove it now. She wasn’t getting out of this car till the last possible second. Twelve feet of hose had danced along the ground behind her the whole trip.
Like most docks, there was a fence around it to keep out thieves, but that was a different time. A different world. Thieves wouldn't just drive through the gate because it would make noise and wake the locals. Phones would dial, and the constabulary would come running. Not now. Mira didn't give a tinker’s damn who heard, and she mashed through the wooden planked gate without slowing down.
She knew where she was. Jeff's folks had a large powerboat that took them to the island. It was still carefully tied at its dock. She ignored it. Mira didn't even know how to start the damn thing, and now wasn't the time to learn. Abandoning the ruin of the car, she made her way down the short dock at the end, clutching the baby to her chest. A long line of small outboard motor boats – fishing boats, her father would have called them – lined the wood. She hopped into one after another, until she found one that was a pull start. She eyed the three walkers that had answered all the commotion. They were still minutes away. Mira pulled the start cord again and again, cursing each time. On the sixth pull, the little Evenrude sputtered to a coughing life. She slipped off the two ropes and kicked away from the dock. It had been years since she used her father's little boat, but it came right back to her. She twisted the handle and sped about forty feet away from the dock, then stopped to watch what happened.
Could they come after her? They just wandered around, seeming lost. One of the walkers fell in the water, but it seemed to be stuck; as if unable to let its head go underwater. It didn't need to breathe, but it didn't seem to realize it, so it couldn't follow her out into the lake. Saved by stupidity. Actually, that made sense, she guessed. It was, by definition, brain dead. How clever could it be? This thing was never going to take up a career in poetry or particle physics. Idly, she wondered how long it took the brain to die. Are there walkers that could still think for a period of time? She didn't know.
"God, if you are there, I beg you. Don't let Jeff still be able to think!"
She picked up Susie and touched her tiny cheeks and lips again. The child was so hot. Burning with fever. She had been sick for days, hell, Mira was sick, but she had a hundred pounds on the baby. She barely noticed, but the baby … Oh, she needed to get the baby to a doctor.
Mira put up a hand, arresting Roger's forward rush to help. That hand spoke without words: Please. The polite thing is to pretend I didn't just do something disgusting. She wiped her lips with her bare hand, trying to maintain what dignity she could.
"Breeding,” she said, straightening up. "You want me to have babies."
The GPS still worked. She was puzzled by that for a second, then realized she shouldn't be. Nothing could touch those satellites; they just sit up there and beam out a carefully timed pattern of data. All the magic was in her handset, which ran on battery and needed little maintenance. Hell, GPS may well be the last sign of intelligent life on earth, sending out its signals long after everyone is dead. The thing was still programmed with the location of, not just the island, but the dock nearest the house. Turning up the throttle, she turned the little boat toward the island.
Will I find life there? A doctor? God, Susie was so hot! She had been screaming and crying most of the way up, but the last ten miles of the drive she was pretty quiet. She drove the boat with one hand and held the baby to her chest with the other. Susie made the nibbling motions she always did when she was hungry. Without really thinking about it, she popped the buttons on her blouse and offered a breast.
With inhuman power, the toothless, bony gums mashed the tender nipple. Mira screamed and pulled away from the child. Nearly tipping the boat as she scampered to the far end. Susie fell to the damp bottom and, thrashed with far more strength than an infant should have. The tiny fingers hooked into clumsy claws, digging at the ribbed bottom of the boat. Her little body writhed, her head and feet came up and down as she tried to move. To come after her mother. Mira screamed and screamed as the thing wreathed horribly, it's eyes lolling about in its sockets, unseeing. It actually made some progress toward the front of the boat where Mira was crowded.
Screaming, Mira lashed out with her left foot, catching the child in the stomach, and kicked her in a high tumbling arc through the air. She landed with a small splash and sank like a piece of granite.
Mira must have spent two hours weeping in the bottom of the boat as the motor took her in circle after circle after circle …
She exhaled sharply, and looked up at Roger. His features looked very concerned as he watched her.
"I am afraid," she spoke, very slowly, "that if you want any deliveries, you are going to have to call FedEx. Because this girl is out of the baby business."
Roger reached out toward her for a moment, then pulled back, as if realizing touching her might not be wise. Too soon. He should have brought up the 'rebuilding' on his second vi
sit, or third. Too late now.
"Of course, Ma'am. I didn't mean to imply … I'm sorry. I'm just trying to keep things going here. Progressing. You know. We'll take our leave now. Forgive the intrusion." He slipped a hand into a hidden pocket on the inside of his coat and took out a small boat horn.
"The phones don't work anymore, I'm afraid. But if you have an emergency of any type, just give a blast or two on that and we'll come running. We haven't come up with a non-emergency method of communication yet, but we are working on it."
She smiled thinly, her hand still on her belly.
"Before we go, ma'am. Is there anything we can do for you? We don't have a doctor, but we have a guy who is a retired EMT."
"I'm fine. I'm more heart sick than stomach sick."
Roger began patting down his pockets. "I may have an aspirin or something."
"I'll be fine. I took something before you got here. Just waiting for it to kick in."
He smiled at her.
"I'm so sorry I upset you."
"Think nothing of it. It was either today or later. What has happened … isn't going away."
"Well, you have a good evening." He turned, heading down the walk to the golf cart he and little big man had arrived in.
"I will.” She smiled back. And she was already starting to feel better.
She had taken something a little before they knocked on her door. Two Tylenol, washed down with twenty ounces of drain cleaner. Burned like the fires of hell, but the pain had gone away soon enough. And she had satisfied her curiosity about how long it's possible to think after you become a walker. A good long time, it turns out. That conversation was even better than her multiplication tables plan.
Yeah, she was starting to feel better. She licked her dry lips as she watched little big man's chubby bare legs climbing onto the back of the cart.
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