by Perrin Briar
Had her father wandered out into the street, never to be seen again?
Dana jumped over Mr. Grierson’s corpse and ran out the door. She was relieved to find she’d at least been smart enough to close the garden gate when she’d entered.
Mrs. Grierson and Mr. Abbott were pushing against it, cajoling one another in what Dana suspected would be a fistfight before long. She left them to it, closing the door behind herself. Only Amanda and her father remained.
Dana ran up the stairs, taking care not to trip on Jenny. She checked Max’s room first, then the bathroom, and then her father and Amanda’s shared bedroom. There was movement inside, moonlit shadows dancing the merengue. Dana turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.
Amanda was buried in her wardrobe, pulling and knocking her clothes off their hangers. Was a part of her old self still active? Still able to cognitize? If so, what was she doing? Dana took no small amount of pleasure in aiming at Amanda’s head. This was one kill she would allow herself to savor.
A scream.
“Max,” Dana said.
Amanda heard it too, and Dana’s gasp. She turned to face Dana, who was already running for the door. Dana grabbed it and pulled it shut. A thud followed immediately on the other side as Amanda slammed into it.
Dana ran across the landing and down the stairs, stepping on Jenny’s corpse. It knocked her off balance, and she sailed into the umbrella stand at the bottom of the stairs. She ran through the front room to the kitchen, and then into the garage.
Somehow her father had managed to sneak behind her. It must have happened as Dana had moved from the living room to the hall. Dana shook her head. She should be more careful.
Max was still inside the car. Her father was pulling at the window wipers, grasping and tugging at anything he could get his hands on.
“Dumb shit,” Dana said.
She walked right up to him, aimed the pistol, and pulled the trigger.
Click!
Dana looked at the pistol. She pulled the trigger again.
Click. Click.
The new world certainly offered a steep learning curve.
Dana’s father growled, opened his mouth wide and reached for her. Dana whipped him across the face with the handgun. Then she reached over and grabbed the nearest weapon to hand: a pair of garden shears.
She beat her father across the face with their flat edge. His head smacked against the car’s window screen. Max screamed.
Dana grabbed her father by the shirt and pulled him off the hood. He got to his feet, his large lumbering shape the same as she remembered as a kid. He was big and hulking, a giant to a child. He seemed infinitely larger when he used to come into her room in the dead of night, reeking of alcohol and bad intentions.
Dana followed her rage. She was no longer a defenseless child. Now she could fight. It was always going to come to this, she realized. They were always going come to blows. One way or another.
Dana sneered. She loathed this man. She wasn’t sad at his passing. She was glad. And now, at least, she would get some justice for the things he’d done to her.
He reached for her with his sausage-sized fingers. Dana opened the garden shears and snipped at his probing digits. They fell to the floor. He attempted to grip Dana by the lapels, and seemed confused when he had no fingers with which to do so.
Dana shoved him off. He fell against the wall of power tools. Dana slammed the garden shears into the board, the blades on either side of his throat. He moved one way, the blades slicing at the flesh on his neck.
He growled, not in pain but annoyance, and then pressed himself against the other blade. This cut into his neck too. He groaned, a low resonant thing that seemed loud in the small space.
Dana spat at him. He didn’t even notice. She restrained herself. Max didn’t need to see her torturing him, though she desperately wanted to.
“You’re lucky Max is here,” Dana said.
She reached into his pocket and took out the car keys.
“Just taking her for a spin,” Dana said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Spittle ran down the side of her father’s face like he really did understand, his fingerless hands reaching for his failure of a daughter.
“Thanks very much,” Dana said.
She got into the car. Max had her head turned to the side, looking at the raving parental figure she’d once treasured.
“Daddy…” Max said.
“That’s not your father anymore,” Dana said.
Max didn’t turn away from the figure that had always given her so much love and attention in the past.
“He’s hurt,” Max said.
“Max, look at me,” Dana said.
She didn’t.
“Max,” Dana said softly.
Max turned. Her eyes shimmered with tears, and her bottom lip trembled.
“Our father is gone,” Dana said. “That man looks like him, but it’s not him. It’s just a shadow.”
Max turned to look back at her father. She didn’t understand. How could she?
“You love teddy, right?” Dana said.
“Yes,” Max said, wiping away a tear.
“Can he cuddle you?” Dana said. “Can he talk to you? Can he understand you when you talk?”
“No,” Max said.
“That’s what our father has become,” Dana said. “He might still be inside, somewhere, but he’s asleep. Something else is in charge of him now. Do you understand?”
Max was slow to nod.
“I think so,” she said.
Dana wondered if she really did. It was difficult to understand the mind of an eight year-old. It was a problem for later. Now, they needed to get somewhere safe.
Dana pressed the button for the garage door. It slid open like the curtains at the theater, revealing a whole new world.
A dozen lurching figures stood in the driveway. They ambled forward, into the garage. They must have heard the fighting.
Dana inserted the key in the ignition and turned it. The car chuffed, starting. At least the car worked.
Dana hit the gas. The wheels spun and the car bolted forward. It slammed into the figures, their reanimated bodies bouncing off the car’s hood. Dana spun the wheel and took off down the street.
Dana couldn’t help but grin as she thought what they would do to the figure impaled to the power tool rack. Justice was served. The new world wasn’t without its benefits after all.
Chapter Nineteen
“IT’S OKAY,” Dana said. “You can sit up now.”
Max got up from her position in the footwell, peering over the dashboard at the streets as they slipped by. She climbed into her seat and put on the safety belt.
Dana took her time, swerving around the abandoned cars and overturned trucks. It was better to keep going at a slow speed than to sprint and suffer an accident.
“Where are we going?” Max said.
“I don’t know yet,” Dana said. “Out of Seattle, that’s for sure. Wherever people are, that’s where it’s going to be most dangerous. So, we’ll go where there are no people.”
“Like the moon?” Max said.
“Sure,” Dana said with a smile. “All we’d need to do is find a rocket.”
Max frowned, trying to figure out where someone might have a spare launch pad handy.
“Why do we have to go away?” Max said. “Why can’t we just stay at home? All my toys are there.”
“It’s not safe,” Dana said. “You saw what happened to Pop. That’s happening to everyone everywhere right now.”
Dana flinched, but was careful not to make a sound that would alarm Max. The bite wound on her arm throbbed, pulsing like it had a life of its own. A parasite that survived by feeding off her strength. She needed to get some antibiotics soon. Even if she didn’t turn into one of those things, she risked losing her arm or even her life.
“I need to make a quick stop at the hospital,” Dana said. “It won’t take five minutes.”
T
he first soldier Dana saw stood beside a blockade. His eyes moved left to right, taking in the surroundings. He wasn’t alone. There was a team of soldiers with him, arranged in a line before the blockade.
Dana slowed, coming to a stop behind a large military truck. She leaned out of her window to see there was a convoy of them, perhaps half a dozen, waiting at manually controlled traffic lights ahead. A soldier turned the sign around. Green. The convoy edged forward.
On the other side of the traffic lights were more trucks. Something was in the back, moving around. Dana didn’t like to think what they were.
There were civilian cars too. They were bursting with personal items, the families inside leaning forward in their seats to accommodate it all. Dana shook her head.
People were still thinking like it was the old world. Possessions meant nothing now. Only what helped you survive should be taken with you, otherwise it weighed you down, slowed you down, and could get you killed.
Perhaps Torres was right. Those who had nothing in the old world were suddenly better equipped to survive in the new. They had nothing to slow them down.
Max lifted her chin to see out the window. Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but confusion. She lacked comprehension over what was taking place in the city that had always been a caring home to her. How could it have become what it was now?
The same question was running through Dana’s mind. How something like this could have taken over the world, could have brought modern society to its knees, Dana didn’t know.
It had been easy to believe everything was well organized, stacked in humanity’s favor, but it turned out the world had always been on the verge of a great disaster.
The more developed it became, the more vulnerable it made itself. The old world had been a bunch of simple out-of-date superficial protocols that had done nothing to protect them.
“There must be some medicine or something for people like Pop though, right?” Max said. “Doctors can make him better?”
“Maybe, one day,” Dana said. “It’s just going to take a little time, that’s all.”
Dana thought back to the gang of undead entering their garage and finding their father pinned to the power tool wall. It was unlikely to end well for him, even if they did come up with a cure.
The roads grew more congested the closer to the hospital they got. Cars were parked on the sidewalk fender to fender, as far as the eye could see. The roads were blocked and there was nowhere Dana could see to turn round. She had a bad feeling about this.
A helicopter landed on the roof of Seattle General Hospital. People rushed in and out of the building, some on gurneys, some on foot. Soldiers lined the streets, dragging bloodied people away, keeping a close eye on others that looked untouched.
Dana forced the Saab up onto a curb and let the army trucks pass. They joined three dozen more trucks parked on the grassy verge.
A large tank sat to one side. It was massive, its barrel strafing side to side as if it were looking for its next target. There were smears of blood on its sides. An arm protruded from its treads like a toothpick.
Dana supposed it was meant to instill confidence in the general population, but Dana couldn’t think of a worse weapon to use against the undead. It was clumsy, heavy and slow. The undead would overpower it within minutes.
“Can’t we just go?” Max said.
Dana was tempted. Was getting antibiotics worth all this? Dana didn’t know. But she was here now. She may as well try.
“It’ll just take five minutes,” Dana said.
Max climbed out and joined Dana on the other side of the road. Dana held her hand and waited as a truck barreled down the street. They ran across the road toward the hospital entrance.
With all the armed guards, Dana should have felt safe. Far from it. She felt more exposed now than she had since this whole shit storm had first kicked off.
The military was attempting to do what it always did: to control the situation. Dana had seen the creatures they were attempting to control. It was not the best way to deal with them.
They needed to be fought, but in a constantly retreating position. The undead would never stop, perhaps didn’t know how to stop. Here, they were pinned in.
The undead horde, and that was what they would be if they ever managed to swarm together, would attack at once, and from all directions. And in the center would be this hospital and the armed forces defending it.
It was a bloodbath waiting to happen. But it wasn’t Dana’s responsibility. She would be here five minutes and then gone.
A procession of ambulances clogged up the emergency entrance. Teams of doctors and nurses rushed to empty them as quickly as they could. Patients stumbled, supported by friends and loved ones. Splashes of red adorned their clothes and skin. Others held injuries with strips of gauze or swaddling. All under the watchful gaze, or rather intense glare, of the soldiers.
“Hold my hand,” Dana said. “We need to stay together.”
They joined a queue waiting to enter the hospital. For some reason, some were being allowed into the hospital while others were being filtered off and taken away to another location.
The nurses wore masks that covered their mouths. They used a small torch that they shone into the patients’ eyes, and based on that, and what their family members were telling them, they made a decision and the patients were taken in one of the two directions.
“Next,” a nurse said, her voice muffled by her facemask.
Dana approached a hefty nurse with shoulder length hair. Her facemask strained to stay in place.
“Hi,” Dana said with a smile. It never hurt to be friendly. “I’m here to get some antibiotics.”
The nurse flashed the torch in Dana’s eyes and didn’t seem to hear a word of what she’d just said.
“Have you noticed any dizziness, weakness, lethargy or burning sensations within the past few hours?” the nurse said with a tired voice.
“No,” Dana said.
The nurse frowned and flashed the light in Dana’s eyes again.
“Taken any narcotics today?” the nurse said.
Dana eyed the soldiers.
“Not that I recall,” she said. “Look, just give me the meds and I’ll leave you alone.”
The nurse bent down to Max, and the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes turned up.
“And how about you sweetie?” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Max said with a nervous smile.
The nurse flashed the torch in Max’s eyes and then smiled, ruffling her hair.
“You’re not listening to me,” Dana said. “Just give me some antibiotics and we’ll be on our way.”
The nurse stood up and faced Dana.
“What would you need the antibiotics for?” she said.
“I have a… condition,” Dana said. “It won’t develop into anything serious so long as I treat it early.”
But Dana could see the nurse wasn’t buying it. She was under strict orders.
“But I guess you’re not a pharmacy,” Dana said, flashing a friendly grin. She had butterflies in her stomach. “And you’re very busy. I won’t take up anymore of your time.”
The nurse’s eyes flickered to the left, to the closest line of soldiers.
“Come on, Max,” Dana said. “Let’s go.”
She turned and was faced by a serious-looking soldier in a helmet. He had a pair of clones on either side of him. As if he needed them, what with the rifle he wore with a calm ease.
“Excuse me,” Dana said.
The soldiers didn’t move. Dana’s heart was in her throat.
“When were you bitten?” the nurse said.
“I wasn’t bitten,” Dana said.
“Then that bandage is one hell of a fashion statement,” the nurse said. “I’ve seen more bandages than I’d care to over the past couple hours.”
“Then you’re in the wrong line of work,” Dana said stiffly. “We don’t want any trouble. We just want to leav
e.”
“I know a bite wound when I see one,” the nurse said. “I’ll ask you again. When were you bitten?”
It was one thing to be forced to repeat yourself. It was another to be told you were a liar. But Dana swallowed her anger. She had been bitten. The soldiers were going to hold her down while the nurse removed the bandage, and then they would all see she’d been lying.
“What time is it?” Dana said.
“What difference does that make?” the nurse said.
“Depending on what time it is, depends on whether it’s been over a day or not,” Dana said.
“A day?” the nurse said with a frown. “It hasn’t been a day.”
“It has,” Dana said. “You tend to remember when your boyfriend tries to kill you.”
The nurse cocked her head to one side in thought.
“Then you’re not only a liar, but a time waster too,” she said. “This is no time for either. You couldn’t have been bitten more than three or four hours ago. No one has. If you had, you’d have turned into one of those things.
“I’d wager you were bitten twice. The first time, the skin wasn’t broken and you were not infected. The second time, you were infected. Your pupils do not dilate. You are infected.”
The soldiers drew closer. Dana panicked. They were going to seize her and Max. For what purpose? She didn’t know. But it couldn’t have been anything good. There was only one way out she could see. She sidled up close to the nurse.
“Please,” Dana said. “Please, for my sister’s sake, let us go. I understand you’ve got a job to do, but we need to get out of here. Please. She doesn’t have anyone else left. Let me protect my little sister.”
The nurse barely even blinked. She must have heard this plea many times today.
“That’s precisely what I’m doing,” she said. Then, offhand: “I’m sorry.”
The soldiers seized Dana. One of the beefcakes wrapped his arms around her, pinning her own arms to her body. The bite beneath the bandage burned and screamed louder than Dana did herself.
Dana kicked with her feet, going wild. She caught the nurse across the side of the face, sending her sprawling. Dana barely even noticed.
“Let go of me!” Dana said. “Let go!”