No one had a clue what was happening, and it took the Russian authorities much longer than it should have to shut everything down. They might have managed to contain it had they understood, but they did not understand.
Most of the Russian infected stayed home, but someone in Moscow who got bitten but was otherwise initially fine flew to Paris. Another boarded a plane to Seattle. A third flew to Cape Town, and a fourth to Mumbai. And it spread like a motherfucker from there. Quarantines were impossible. Governments everywhere were two or even three steps behind.
Since the plague’s insertion point in America was Seattle, the East Coast had more warning. Things might be a little bit better over there. Local governments could be two or three steps ahead. By the time the virus spread through Oregon and reached California and Idaho, the U.S. government knew what was happening. Containment was no longer possible, but at least they knew what was coming. New York, Miami, and Boston might not have had a single case before they knew what was coming. Maybe the Army was out in the streets. Northeastern Canada could have cut itself off completely for all Hughes knew. The Caribbean islands almost certainly did. Puerto Rico and Cuba might still be intact.
But Seattle was the worst place to be. Hughes’ family stood no chance, not only because they lived at ground zero but because of his wife’s … situation.
Sheila had been depressed for years. She went weeks in a row without leaving the house or even getting out of bed except to use the bathroom. Hughes earned just enough from his job that she didn’t need to work, so when Tyler was born, they agreed she should spend at least a few years taking care of their son. But it wasn’t long after she became a stay-at-home mom that she sank into a personal hell from which she never emerged.
Hughes never did figure out why. It wasn’t because she stayed home. He hadn’t forced her. He wasn’t that type of guy, and it was her idea anyway. She seemed to love it at first. She took more pleasure in taking care of that boy than anything else. But something switched on or off in her head and sent her spiraling into a void.
Sheila’s morbid depression frightened their son Tyler. He was too young to understand it. Hell, Hughes didn’t understand it either. At least he was an adult and knew these things sometimes happened to people, but he had no idea how to explain it to a six-year-old. Tyler did his best, though, to handle it stoically. He didn’t cry, didn’t complain, didn’t needle his mother about it. He was going to be just like his father. At least he would have been had he survived.
Hughes guessed she had some kind of chemical imbalance that altered her personality, but she never had a brain scan, never saw a doctor who did anything more than prescribe pills. And one day she just pulled the sheets over her head and never got up again, at least not for long.
The one day in her life when Sheila should have stayed in bed was the first time in over a month that she went into the living room and opened the curtains to let in some light.
Five of those things burst through the window.
She knew what was happening out there. Hughes had told her, but she paid little attention. News of the plague didn’t seem real to her clouded mind, as if it were just some story on the radio. It had to be seen to be believed, and Sheila hadn’t seen anything. It didn’t fully register for Hughes either until he went to the hardware store for supplies and found the door ripped off its hinges, the shelves stripped down to leftovers, and one of those things hunched over the body of the store clerk.
Or maybe Sheila just didn’t care. Perhaps she surrendered. Surely it must be easier for a morbidly depressed person to face the fact that the world was circling the drain. Sheila’s world had already circled the drain. Maybe she was suicidal there at the end. Opening the curtains was just her way of taking a bottle of pills. Hughes had to admit that was possible.
But he never wanted to know for sure because he’d never forgive her. One of those things damn near took Tyler’s head off before Hughes put a bullet through its spine.
His poor boy. Tyler fell to the kitchen floor, convulsed like he was being electrocuted, and bled out in less than a minute. At least he didn’t suffer for long, and he died before he could turn. Hughes didn’t have to put his boy out of his misery, nor did he have to shoot his boy to defend himself. Hughes doubted he could have done it. Unlike Sheila, his survival instinct was still intact, but if he’d had to kill his own son, even in self-defense, it would have been the second-to-last thing he ever did.
Sheila wasn’t as lucky as Tyler. She, too, was bitten, but she was bitten in the back while running into the bedroom. Hughes popped the one that bit her and finished the other three off in the hallway, then he barricaded himself next to his wife in the bedroom and did everything he could to make her last hours comfortable. He waited until she slipped out of consciousness before suffocating her with a pillow.
He buried them out in the yard before he left town.
Hughes hadn’t grieved yet. He had not even started. That particular circuit in his head had switched off. A whole series of pathways in his brain just went dark. He noticed it happening. The emotional part of his personality went into sleep mode and stayed there.
Maybe something like that was what happened to Annie, only she lost her memory instead of her feelings.
Hughes knew his emotions hadn’t died, though. They were just resting. They would be back.
Lane will be one lucky bastard if he dies one way or another before it happens.
* * *
Annie’s first night since she woke in the forest didn’t go well. Lane had designated a place for everybody to sleep, and she and Carol were sent to the floor near the restrooms. He promised everyone that he’d ease up when they got to the island and could spread out, but Annie didn’t believe him.
She lay on the cold floor next to Carol. They covered themselves in warm jackets and used fleece sweatshirts for pillows.
It’s too bad, she thought, they couldn’t spend the night in a motel. There had to be one nearby. But of course it wouldn’t be safe.
She felt comforted by the fact that she could see. Lane had placed a candle in one of the checkout aisles, no doubt so he’d know if anyone tried to sneak around. She didn’t like his reasons, but she approved of the results. The stuttering shadows on the ceiling and walls reminded her of more peaceful times.
But she thought the light, faint as it was, might put them in danger since the boards didn’t reach all the way to the tops of the windows. If sunlight could get in during the day, candlelight could get out at night.
She was more afraid of the dark, though. She hadn’t yet seen the total darkness of night in a world with no power. She couldn’t remember seeing it anyway. She’d have to experience it for the first time all over again, and she wasn’t ready for that. Even the tiniest sounds would freak her out. She thought about taking the ring off her finger and letting her hand breathe, but she didn’t want to lose it on the floor so she just twisted it.
Carol was lying next to her. The poor thing was even more of a wreck, but her presence still gave Annie comfort.
“How you holding up, Carol?” Annie whispered.
“Okay, I think,” Carol said. “Thanks.” Carol did sound okay, especially under the circumstances. Maybe Annie’s presence was helping her too. “How are you holding up?”
“Okay. I’m a little bit numb.”
They were silent for a few moments. They both seemed to want to talk, but didn’t know what to say. Annie figured she should start with the basics. “How did you meet these guys?”
“Hughes found me on the road. He was on his way down to Portland. I was on my way up to Seattle. The roads were so jammed with cars that everyone had to walk. And then—”
Annie heard Carol swallow hard.
“It’s okay,” Annie said. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“I probably should talk about it.” She sounded a little more sure of herself now. “I’m not usually like this.”
“What did you do before?”
/>
“I owned a restaurant in the Pearl District in Portland.”
“Wow.”
“You know that part of town?”
“No, but it sounds fancy.”
“It is. It’s an old warehouse district that was gentrified by artists back in the ’90s, then upgraded again by people with money. It’s like SoHo in New York. Very prestigious, very expensive. Well, at least it was like SoHo in New York. Now I guess it must look like this place.”
Annie listened to her own breath. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears and the blood rushing into her head. She wondered if the Pearl District was as quiet as this place, or if it was loud because it was overrun with infected people.
“We were attacked,” Carol said.
“In Portland?” Annie said.
“No. On the road. Me and Hughes. Everyone, actually. There were thousands of us. We all had to get out of our cars and walk. I stayed on the right side of the road. Everyone did. Those going north walked on one side and everyone going south walked on the other side. Like we were driving, you know? You drive on the right side while oncoming traffic is on the left.”
“That’s when you were attacked?”
“We heard screams up ahead. The screams must have been a half-mile away at first, but they were loud. Incredibly loud and coming from the north. Everyone on my side of the street stopped. It was a pedestrian traffic jam. Then I started to get pushed the other direction. People who had been walking north were running south. People on the other side of the road were running now too. We weren’t going in two directions anymore. We were all running in a single direction. South. Away from the screams.” Carol paused, then continued. “It was those things. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. A whole army of them pouring out of Olympia.”
Annie could only imagine how terrifying that must have been. No wonder Carol was such a disaster.
An army of those things. Pouring out of Olympia.
Where her sister Jenny lived.
“I ran down the middle of the road,” Carol said, “where it was a little less crowded. There were cars, but less people. That’s when I saw Hughes. He was on the other side. I ran over to him because he looked like the kind of man who might protect me. You know? And he did. I might have thought he was scary if I saw him at night out by myself, but a big guy like him was exactly what I needed right then. So I ran up to him and grabbed his arm like it was a saving banister. He let me. As if what I’d just done was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should get in one of these trucks and get down.’ So we did. We found an unlocked SUV with tinted windows and we got inside and locked the doors. He got on the floor in the back and I crouched down in the front.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Annie said. “Lucky about those tinted windows, I guess.”
“It was a good idea. It’s the only reason I’m still alive. But that’s when it got really bad.”
Carol stopped talking. Annie wasn’t sure if she had paused or if she didn’t want to continue. Annie wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to push it. If Carol owned a restaurant in a prestigious part of Portland, she must normally be a competent and capable person, but now she was shattered. Like everyone else.
“I couldn’t see anything,” Carol said. “I didn’t dare sit up to look out the windows. It didn’t matter that they were tinted. Tinted windows aren’t like one-way glass, you know. You can sort of see through them. I didn’t want anyone or anything to see any movement inside. But mostly I didn’t want to see anything outside. And it’s probably a good thing I didn’t because if I could have seen what I was hearing, I wouldn’t have made it.”
Carol stopped talking again and Annie said nothing. Carol would either tell her the rest or she wouldn’t.
The silence felt a little bit awkward. Annie wanted to press Carol for more, but she didn’t. Finally, Carol finished her story unprompted.
“The screaming kept getting louder. Those things were screaming and so were the people. First people were screaming in terror and then were screaming in pain. They were being eaten alive, Annie. It was happening right outside the truck. They were being slammed against the side of it. There was this constant banging. The side window above my head cracked. I thought those things knew we were in there and were trying to bust their way in.”
Annie shuddered. She was not going to ask what she saw when she and Hughes finally climbed out of the truck. Surely Carol would never forget it, but also she might never want to discuss it. She reached toward Carol, found her hand, and clasped it.
They lay like that for a while, two new friends holding hands in the darkness. It felt good. Annie felt better than she had all day. She even forgot, for a moment, that she was being held hostage by Roland and Lane.
But Roland and Lane seemed like the least of her problems after hearing Carol’s terrible road story. She couldn’t get those images out of her mind.
Carol eventually let her hand go. Annie could hear her trying to get comfortable on the floor. It was impossible, but they both had to try.
Annie missed home so much that she ached. She wanted nothing more than to return to South Carolina even if it was a smoldering ruin. People breathe differently, more deeply, when they’re in the place where they come from. Annie breathed differently in South Carolina. She breathed differently in the whole American South, not just in South Carolina. The South was home. She didn’t like everything about it, but it was the place that raised her. It fit like a dress made just for her. The Northwest felt a little bit off, and a little bit foreign, even before all this happened. Not because there was anything objectively wrong with the Northwest, but because it wasn’t home.
Maybe things weren’t as bad in South Carolina. The virus came from Russia—that’s what Kyle told her, anyway—and it entered the United States in Seattle. So maybe the eastern part of America had more time to prepare. Maybe there were more survivors out there. The government might still even function. It was possible, right? She couldn’t really see how, but she had to believe it was possible.
Annie finally drifted off into a frightening dream world.
She ran down Fifth Avenue in downtown Seattle alongside hundreds of other people with the sound of screams, gunshots, explosions, and sirens behind her. Cars crashed into each other ahead of her. People jumped out of windows and onto the street. Some of them jumped from so high, they were instantly killed when they landed.
She woke up gasping and sweating and felt Carol’s reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Carol said. “You were just having a dream.”
When Annie finally fell back asleep, she fled a pack of the infected through a forest.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Parker was pissed. He felt a deep, abiding hatred for just about everybody. He could not fucking believe Kyle had Bobby’s gun in his hand out on the street and didn’t take Roland out. This whole thing would be over by now if he had.
But, no. Kyle couldn’t man up. Nor could Annie, who obviously had a silly girl’s crush on the dolt, inspire him in any way whatsoever to do what any fool should have known had to be done. And now Lane had him and the others locked in the cooler. Kyle couldn’t even do the decent thing and give Parker some space.
“At least they’re down one,” Kyle said.
“No thanks to you,” Parker said.
Kyle said nothing.
Parker couldn’t see a damn thing. He idly wondered what Hughes and Frank were whispering about, but he didn’t actually care. He pulled his army jacket tight against him so he wouldn’t freeze to death on the floor.
“We only need to take one more of them out,” Parker said. “Preferably Lane, but taking that other asshole out would have worked too. You could have done that today.”
“Yes,” Kyle said. “I could have shot Roland. And told every one of those things for miles in every direction right where we are. The water main brought a pack down on our heads when it exploded. There’s no telling how ma
ny more surged into the area. And besides, you don’t know what Lane would do if he found himself the last one standing. He might just start shooting.”
“Then shoot back.” Parker wanted to smack Kyle upside his head, but it was dark and he had only a vague idea where Kyle’s head even was.
“Listen,” Kyle said. “We’d be out on the streets with nothing if it wasn’t for me. I was the one who talked Lane into letting us stay here by offering to take everybody up to the islands.”
So what?
“Sure,” Parker said. “We’d be out there and disarmed. Instead we’re in here and disarmed and being held hostage. This is better how, exactly?”
“At least we’re safe from those things. None of them can get us in here.”
“You hope.”
“I do. You should try it sometime.”
He’d need to do something about Kyle. What, he had no idea. But he had to do something.
He should also try being less of an asshole. Things could only end badly between him and Kyle if they couldn’t learn to get along, but things weren’t going to end any better if Kyle couldn’t get all of his shit in one sock.
Parker was supremely annoyed with just about everyone, but he needed them to survive. He knew that, and he knew it consciously, but he still yearned for freedom from his dumb companions. He especially yearned to be free of Kyle. At the same time he feared dying violently and alone. Out there on his own? He’d be torn to pieces in the howling darkness for sure. He had to figure out a way to connect with these people. He had to.
Sometimes he felt twinges of envy for Kyle’s naiveté. How nice it must be to feel hope in this world, to believe all they had to do to build a new life is sail north. Did Kyle not understand that a person could die now from a toothache? A person could fucking well die from it. The infection could spread to the brain. Sure, they could raid pharmacies for antibiotics, but all the medicine in the world would expire eventually and most of the pharmacies had been looted already. Primitive man’s life expectancy was about thirty. Parker was pushing forty.
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