by M. Van
On the other hand, I still faced that situation. I couldn’t believe that the bite from a zombie could save my life. A zombie? Really? But this time around I didn’t face it with a family who would be able to move on after the inevitable. Ash depended on me. I couldn’t give in to the walls that were starting to form.
The sliding door opened behind me, followed by Radiohead crooning over the small speakers of my phone. Ash cursed in a struggle to get a chair over the threshold. I didn’t bother to turn around. I knew she wouldn’t appreciate the help.
My head jerked when something hit me from behind, and I felt a blanket drop from my shoulder. After a beat of silence Ash said, “What’s wrong?” She sounded angry, and the look on her face confirmed it. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and let out a breath.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Don’t give me that fuggedaboudit crap. You’ve been acting weird since we got here, and I want you to spill,” Ash said.
I looked at her from the corner of my eye and shook my head in disbelief before my gaze drifted over the rolling waves.
“I grew up near the ocean,” I finally said. “In fact, it was on the other side of this one. Well, sort of.” I didn’t think Ash would be interested in my geographical error by leaving out Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the North Sea, so I left it at that.
“So what? You’re homesick.” Her voice had softened. I slid along the railing down to the ground. When my butt hit the tar, I faced her. She watched me suspiciously. It made me wonder what went on inside that head of hers.
I wasn’t homesick, but I would want to apologize to my family, even though their babying me hadn’t been something I’d appreciated. Somehow, this felt better. They already thought I was dead. None of them would imagine me surviving for this long. So, I’d gotten my wish. My family wouldn’t see me wither to death. But what would I tell this kid? Sorry, I’ll be dying soon, and I’m trying not to be a bitch about it. Homesick would be a better explanation.
“We lived on the outskirts of Rotterdam, but my dad’s company was in the city. I never really liked big cities. Guess that’s why I never wanted to come here in the first place.”
Without replacing the incredulous look in her eyes as if she didn’t buy my distraction, Ash said, “You came on vacation to a place you didn’t want to go to?”
“Long story,” I said with a chuckle. “Could have been in the outback.” I caught the twitch in Ash’s glare. I could almost hear the what-if thought roaring inside her head.
“My dad and mom had built this international corporation selling computer parts, which meant their jobs were their lives. After my brother and sister left home for school, I’d usually go to sleep and wake up to an empty house. I didn’t mind, though. It gave me time to read and watch movies. I wanted to study literature at Oxford but ended up working at my dad’s company.”
“Why didn’t you go to Oxford?”
“Because my dad wouldn’t pay for it, because he didn’t think I’d be strong enough to handle it.” I absently rubbed my hair, which had grown out some.
“Did you resent him for it?” she asked. As I thought it over, my head fell against the railing, and I watched the clouds drift over our heads.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
I had fought him because of it and for everything else after that. It wasn’t as if he’d denied me the opportunity to study literature. He just hadn’t wanted me to study it abroad. He’d wanted to keep his little girl close, but I hadn’t seen it like that. It had laid the first foundation of my wall. It had resulted in my being physically close but pulling away from my family further than the North Sea would have taken me.
“I was an egocentric brat,” I said under my breath.
Ash smiled down at me, but I could see the thoughts flicker behind her gaze. Her eyes looked dejected and old and confirmed that I had been an egocentric brat.
“I like books, but I like music better,” Ash said. She gazed at my phone, which she clutched in her hands. That thousand-mile gaze had found a way back into her eyes.
“Yeah, music is a good substitute for books, short stories.” I let the words and sounds falling out of the tiny speakers touch me.
The cool October wind cut through the balcony railing, and I enjoyed the wind slicing through my hair. In the mirror this morning, even though it had grown out some, the look had reminded me of Sigourney Weaver in one of those Alien movies, but without the movie star quality.
“When’s your birthday?” I asked when the song was over.
“September,” she said absently.
“Really? Mine too. I guess we both missed our birthdays.” I got up, pulled an iPod from my pocket, and handed it to Ash. I had found it in a desk in an office-like room inside the house. It had sat next to a computer with the biggest music library I had ever seen.
Thank God, we still had electricity and water. The utilities must have been the military’s first priorities when all hell had broken out, or else there would have been no way for them to still be running.
“Happy sweet sixteen,” I said. “I know it’s not mine to give, but I’m sure the people who lived here wouldn’t mind. Besides, it contains a way bigger library. I’m sure you’re probably sick of my playlist.”
She looked up, and I was glad to see a slight smile on her face. “I like your playlist,” she said, her smile widening. “It’s grown on me.”
I leaned in, kissed the top of her head, and ruffled a hand through the short, light blond fuzz of hair that seemed to have a life of its own.
“Don’t stay out too long. It’s cold,” I said, and started to walk back inside.
“Mags,” Ash said before I could pass the threshold. I knew I had made a poor attempt to dodge her questions. My words felt like a mere shadow along the wall. I couldn’t hide this time and knew Ash would be the one to break my defenses.
I watched as she fiddled with her iPod and then switched to my phone and scrolled through the playlist. She settled on a song by Coldplay. I closed my eyes for a moment at the first notes of the soft keyboard sounds and listened to the music building. I walked back to the railing and leaned against it.
“What?” I asked warily. She let out a long breath, and from the corner of my eye, I found her staring at me.
“What?” I said with more force this time. She hesitated, fingering the iPod in her lap.
“You won’t jump off a cliff or anything,” she said in a tiny voice. “Will ya?”
“What?” I said for the third time. I stood to face her. What was she thinking? The look on her face, though, took me aback. Her big blue eyes were ready to drown behind a wall of tears, and the mask she usually hid behind barely kept them from spilling. Was she afraid I might kill myself? “Why would you say that?” I asked.
“You sometimes have this look in your eyes …,” she said drawing in a breath. “I’ve seen it before.”
I sighed. God, was I that bad? Had I looked like someone who would jump off a building? It wasn’t even that farfetched. I’d had those thoughts, and I’d had the same thoughts about her.
“I’m not suicidal,” I said rattled.
I watched her while uncertainty crossed her face.
To stress my statement I said, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Her shoulders relaxed, but she didn’t seem convinced.
“Listen, I won’t lie to you,” I said. “A lot of crazy shit goes around in this head of mine, and maybe I’m not always that present, but I promise you that suicide is not on my mind.” I lifted her chin so our eyes would meet, unsure of how I could convince her. “I promise.”
A faint smile raised the corners of her mouth. Silence lingered as she fiddled with both the iPod and the phone. “So, then,” she said, “what’s your crazy?”
My head dropped to my chest. I should have known she wouldn’t let it slide. I took a deep breath and said, “My expiration date, or ours, I should say.” She didn’t have to be a genius to know I meant
the remaining time doctors had given me.
“What, why? We’ve been doing so much better. You said Lieutenant Marsden said—” Ash started to ramble. I cut her off midsentence.
“Yeah, yeah, I know what he said, but I still worry,” I said. “It just doesn’t sit right with me that something that might mean the end of the world could save our lives. I guess I’m just a harder sell on hope than you are.”
Ash’s eyes dropped to the tar on the roof.
“What?” I asked.
“My date,” she said. “It has come and gone.”
I kneeled by her chair, rubbed a hand over my head, and asked, “When?”
“Last month.”
I let out a breath. This kid handled things so much better than I did. I shook my head and faced her with a crooked smile.
“I’m such a baby, aren’t I?” I said. Ash lifted her hand to shake it in the international ‘yeah, something like that’ signal. I watched her for a moment. She looked healthier than I’d ever seen her. The sunlight had warmed the color of her skin. I could see she had gained some weight and the muscles in her arms had strengthened.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, and tried to sound more upbeat as I cleared my throat to speak. “My date comes up in three weeks. When it comes and goes, I promise I’ll get my hopes up. Until then, we take it day by day, and you might have to endure some of my doom and gloom.”
Her chin rose, and her eyes met mine; she blinked away the residual tears. Her mouth lifted into a heartfelt smile.
“Do we have a deal?” I asked, extending my hand with the intention to shake hers.
“Three weeks?” she said in an exasperated voice.
“Well, excuse me for not being as mature as you are,” I said, faking offense. She grinned and gave my hand a firm shake.
“Deal.” I smiled, but instead of releasing her hand, I tugged her to me to grab her in a hug.
“Come here, you big dope,” I said. I tightened my hold on her.
“Mags,” she whined, “sharing is one thing, but this is off limits.”
“Not to me it’s not,” I countered. I knew she didn’t really mind when she didn’t pull away.
| 24
You thought you could run from me, Dr. Warren thought as he stood by the open door of a black sedan. The cold wind rattled his bones, but it was a price he would gladly pay. Had his darling subject thought she could tantalize him with such a precious jewel and then deceive him by concealing it from him? Who had she thought she was dealing with?
His aide, William, had made similar arrangements as the previous time, but Dr. Warren had needed to come out and see for himself.
The blood that he had collected from this latest subject would soon prove its fundamental significance to the world. He needed to bide his time, and then he would come for them both.
Tomorrow he would enter the final talks with members of the administration to discuss the details of his proposed disposition. The location had been set, and approval for the use of neoplasma malignum carriers had been given. All he needed now was permission to include the infected he had been collecting in his research. He needed the unwholesome not only to perfect the vaccine’s resistance to Mortem, but also to enhance abilities in certain recipients, abilities that would benefit the military in their struggle against the unwholesome.
And once the world had seen how the United States dealt with things, other countries would be begging for his solution. Not to mention the private sector.
He let his body sink into the sedan’s passenger seat and closed the door.
“The signal is strong. We’ll be able to track them unseen,” a cold voice said from the driver’s side.
Dr. Warren met William’s eyes with disdain. Warren was not concerned. If there was one thing the military was good for, it was protocol. Bag them and tag them. But even if they failed, he would have his backup plan in place.
| 25
The evacuation had left us with a ghost town, and breaking into houses proved adequate to keep us supplied through the winter. Besides a decent stash of toothpaste and shampoo, we gathered cereals, canned food, crackers, and other nonperishables. Refrigerators became an item to avoid. But come spring we needed to venture further into the neighborhood, which meant taking the car. This was not something that was on my to-do list, but Ash didn’t seem to mind. She got a kick out of going out at night.
Naked trees decorated the sidewalks and median strip. They bathed the night in extra eeriness. Except for the stars shining over our heads, the town appeared gloomy and deprived of life. Streetlights didn’t work, and houses were dark. The SUV’s headlights were the only source of artificial light for miles. The weirdness of it didn’t escape me. It seemed as if Ash and I were the only ones with access to electricity. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, the absence of everyone and everything. There was no way the military had evacuated everyone without leaving a single infected person behind. What had happened to everyone?
To my left Ash glanced out of the window, as composed as if we were on a trip to the mall. Well, in a way, we were. I wanted to ask her whether she had any sensible ideas about what had been going on when everything around us had changed. We passed a church, Saint Something, when the oddest thing I had ever seen came into view. Ash gave me a curious look. I couldn’t answer. Ahead of us, a large fenced-off area that, according to the sign, used to be a playground held a herd of walking zombie corpses.
Disfigured bodies without room to move strained against the reinforced fences, most of them in ragged clothes, crusted in blood and dirt. Their faces were hollow in a way that accentuated the bones beneath their skin. Wails of hunger and agony filled the chilled night, if you could call it agony with them being brain-dead and all. Their blank stares and raised noses followed when they noticed our vehicle pass the fence. The metal creaked and moaned under the weight of the zombies pressing against the fence. A heavy chain with a padlock held the gate in place. Ash and I shared a glance before I hit the gas to get the hell out.
“What was that?” Ash asked, staring through the back window. I shook my head.
“No idea, but there must have been a hundred of them.” There wasn’t much time to evaluate. Shouts reached us from down the road.
The suburban street opened into an intersection where a crowd of regular people had gathered around an eighteen-wheeled flatbed. A cage sat on the truck that held at least twenty-five zombies.
Ash’s mouth fell open in the middle of an elongated, “What the fu-” and I could second that notion.
With the street blocked, I stopped the car. Men with sticks and nooses, those things dogcatchers used, tried to shove a woman in a thick overcoat onto the flatbed. Her jerky movements screamed infection.
“Maybe they’re building a zoo,” Ash said.
The sharpness of her tone made me turn, ready to frown, when a man stepped into our headlights. I jumped at the sight of a shotgun pointed at our windshield. My hands shot up in the universal don’t-shoot-me gesture. Unwillingly, Ash followed, giving me a disapproving glance.
“What?” I said. “He has a gun pointed at us.”
“And you have a gun on your lap.”
I glanced down and closed my eyes when they fell on the nine-millimeter automatic Mars had given me.
“Shit,” I said under my breath.
“Don’t move,” the man in the headlights said. His weapon gleamed in the lights, and the barrel seemed to point at my head. The man wore a long raincoat, and a beard hid his face. His hair glistened, wet, matted on his head.
He came to Ash’s side of the SUV. His hand motioned for her to open the window. Simultaneously, I shifted my legs to let the gun slide off my lap. I caught it with my knees where it remained out of sight. The man patiently waited until the window was all the way down. He eyed us both. The sight of Ash seemed to make him lower his gun.
“What’s your purpose here?” he asked. His voice didn’t match his threatening posture. Ash opened her m
outh. My little, throaty cough prevented her from spilling her thoughts. Of course, that earned me a scowl, but I ignored it.
“We live up on 144th Street and started to get low on supplies. We were looking to stock up. We don’t mean no trouble,” I said, all in one breath. He narrowed his eyes at me, which made his brows nearly reach his beard. The street I mentioned was nowhere near where we lived, because he didn’t need to know that information.
“Trying to hog other people’s findings,” he said.
“We’re not thieves,” Ash said, offended.
“That’s what they all say.”
“Well, we’re not,” I added.
“Yet you lie to my face,” he said, giving me a hard look. “You’re not from around here.”
“What do you mean ‘we ain’t from around’?” Ash said in her Brooklyn drawl. She looked ready for a fight, but I could go without one, and I placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I never said I was from around here,” I said. He eyed us for a long moment before he sighed, shouldering the shotgun. I wondered if Ash’s fragile demeanor had something to do with it.
“I guess you didn’t,” he said. His beard shifted. I hoped it meant a smile when he spoke again. “My name is Father Deacon, and I am sorry if I have startled you, but you can’t be too careful these days.” He opened his coat to reveal a priest’s collar.
“Welcome to our congregation,” he said as he gestured to the fifteen or so people still milling around the flatbed that carried zombies. Ash raised an eyebrow. I glared at him, wide-eyed.
“Congre- what?” Ash said, before she gave me a this-guy-is-nuts look.
“What is it exactly you …,” I said, and searched for the correct verb, “congregate?”
Father Deacon leaned on the door to look at us. “We tend to our flock, so when a cure is found, we’ll have our families returned to us.”
That shed some light on the playground filled with zombies. These people had placed them there for keeps. This had to be one of the most insane ideas ever concocted during the apocalypse. However, I wasn’t going to say that to a preacher with a shotgun.