“Where is she now?”
“I understand she’s leading an army. She’s on a ship somewhere out there, beyond the barricade, I suppose. She said we’d meet again.”
McInerney huffed. “And you believed her?”
“I know her…or at least I thought I knew her. But knowing what I do now? It makes sense. I should have known it on the beach in Dungarvan. She didn’t really ask. She told me I was moving in with her.” He shrugged. “It would take a different kind of man to say no to Ava. She didn’t hear the word ‘no’ a lot from anyone.”
Dayo patted him on the shoulder and went below to the warmth of the cramped cabin.
“Dr. Sinjin-Smythe,” McInerney said. “I have questions.”
“I thought you might.”
“Why did you call me for this? You barely know me and I don’t even remember working on you.”
“Two cavities last autumn. You told your assistant to demonstrate proper flossing technique for me. As if I didn’t know how to floss.”
“Doesn’t ring a ding,” McInerney said. “I told people that several times an hour.”
Sinjin-Smythe gave a lopsided grin. “You looked at me as if I was the only person on Earth who had missed the memo about the wisdom of flossing.”
McInerney tore his gaze from the horizon and stared, his heavy gray eyebrows knit over eyes burning with anger. “I asked why me? Why us? My wife and I were safe in our flat. If you hadn’t — ”
“You had a boat. That’s all. I didn’t know anyone else with a boat. I remembered the picture of your boat on the office wall when you did my fillings.”
McInerney cursed. “How long have you known about those zombie things?”
“Not long.”
“Long enough to warn everyone? You’re a virologist. How many people could you have saved if you’d run to the BBC instead of breaking into my office and calling me and my wife out of our warm bed? Calling us out from behind locked doors!”
It was Sinjin-Smythe’s turn to search the horizon. He found no answers there so he answered a question the dentist had not asked. “If you’d stayed in London, you’d be dead. As soon as the food ran out, you’d have to go outside and then you’d be dead.”
“And I would have had another few days with my Sheila. You took those decisions out of our hands. Always, remember, Doctor. When London fell, all you were thinking of was saving your own skin. You’re a coward.”
Sinjin-Smythe said nothing. Finally, he nodded. “I’m sorry. If there’d been more time and more options, I might have laid out your choices more clearly.”
“Might have?”
“Probably not. I’m a coward. That’s why I’m still alive.”
McInerney’s eyes narrowed. “What did she say on the phone?”
“Who?”
“I saw you out by the rail. You were going to swim ashore and let those things take you. And I was going to let you. You had one foot up on the rail and then your phone rang. You talked a long time. Now you’re full of business and bound for America again. It was her, wasn’t it?”
“She goes by Shiva now. It’s — ”
“I know what Shiva is, you idiot. Whatever you’ve got in that bag…you think you’ve got anything in there that can actually cure this madness?”
“Maybe I can make a difference.”
“For those little ones below?”
“No,” Sinjin-Smythe replied. “For my little one. Shiva’s got a hostage.”
“What’s her plan?”
“She’s taking the Sutr-Z infection to America. She’ll attack New York first. She’ll do to it what she did to London.”
“Why would she tell you that?”
“Because that’s where I’m supposed to meet her.”
But knowing will not lessen the surprise
The first bedroom on the left was Ben’s room. Jack had helped Brandy paint it while Ben was away at camp. Ben had just turned twelve and complained the clown wallpaper was “babyish”. Jack and Brandy had scraped off the wallpaper and painted it bright green as a surprise. The work was a chore, but Brandy kept the pizza and champagne coming and the friends had laughed like schoolgirls.
Ben grew into a handsome, charming and confident young man. He was Anna’s first date. However, as they moved through high school, they attended separate classes and their groups of friends didn’t mesh. Anna’s first crush fell apart. After the breakup, Anna kept her bedroom door closed all the time.
Jack had asked Brandy how it ended, but Brandy could only shrug. When pressed, she told Jack it was impolite to gossip about failed romances between families. “The world’s full of people to pick apart. Let’s not talk about our kids.”
Jack had suspected that Ben had dumped Anna because, as sweet as Anna could be, she could also be a demanding princess.
“I wish you could see Anna now, Ben,” Jack told the empty room. The crisis had matured Anna. She didn’t act nearly so spoiled as she once had.
A broken thermometer lay on the floor by Ben’s empty bed. It looked like it had been stepped on. The sheets were soiled and brown.
Jack moved down the hall and held her breath before opening the next door. Brandy’s bedroom was in as much disarray as the rest of the house. It was impossible to deduce anything from the chaos.
Jack knew Brandy wasn’t there before she called out, but the sound of her own voice was a small comfort. “Brandy? It’s Jack! We’re getting out of here. We think we know a safe place. Come with us! Brandy…it’s me! I need you.” Hot tears slid down her cheeks.
The light was dimmest at the end of the hall. Jack’s heart pounded faster. The smell was strongest here and she took shallow breaths through her mouth.
The linen closet had been emptied, the door ripped from its hinges. The door lay on the floor and Jack had to step on it to peer into the bathroom.
Weak daylight outlined the bathroom door, which stood slightly ajar. Jack pushed gently. It didn’t budge. She pushed harder. Nothing. Her breath wheezed fast in and out.
Jack was sure Brandy was dead. She should run back to the van. How long had it been since she entered the house? Two minutes? Five? What if she ran out now and found the lieutenant waiting for her, his pistol to Anna’s head?
One bad investment after another, she thought. At the mall she had gained hiking boots and a handful of plastic bags. What could she gain here except to satisfy sick curiosity?
But Brandy was her best friend. She had to know what happened.
Jack held her breath and leaned all her weight against the door. It opened just enough for her to press her head into the opening.
The body against the door had been Brandy’s first husband, Tom. His eyes were open, staring through her into forever. By the look on his sagging face, his death had taken him by surprise. A wide, straight gash crossed his throat. The floor was dark with dried blood. Brandy’s bathroom tile had been bone white, but a stranger couldn’t have guessed that now.
Brandy was in the bathtub. Her clothes were torn. One perfect, cold breast was exposed. A long kitchen knife, the blade the same color as the floor, lay on the edge of the tub. In the light that shone through the frosted glass above the tub, Jack could see that Brandy had bled out. She was drained, almost marble white.
Jack could see the knife wound down her friend’s right arm. It stretched from elbow to wrist. Brandy’s eyes were closed. Eventually she had gone to sleep, but the wait must have been…what? Excruciating? Or had there been euphoria? Had it been a relief?
Jack pulled back, dropped to her knees and threw up on the closet door. She should run. She should jump in the van and go and go. That was the plan she had laid out the night before: leave the nightmares behind. Jack got up, steadied herself against the wall and made for the front door.
She got to the better light of the family room and looked out the window. She could see Anna leaning against the driver’s side window, watching for her mother but looking for enemies, as well. Ann
a’s right hand hovered over the van’s horn.
She was sure Jaimie’s eyes were on the dictionary in his lap. He wouldn’t move except to turn the page. Most of the time, it seemed her son was made of impenetrable rock. She envied Jaimie his world. Exposed to horror and loss, he’d take it in as more information. Her son, the moron. Her son, the robot. Her son whom some kids called Ears and Retard. Jaimie was above all this blood.
Her family waited for her, safe for now, but less safe for indulging this ghoulish goodbye. But there was no goodbye to that memory was there? The scene in the bathroom would visit again when she slept, Jack was sure. She’d get the awful reward of that bad investment over and over in the years to come, if she lived that long.
Brandy would come as a familiar ghost in nightmares, asking for company. “It’s lonely in the bathtub,” she would say. “That bathtub was a lonely place to lay down and die after I killed Tom. Come join me in the bathtub, Jack. It doesn’t hurt long and then you go to sleep. Sleep with me until the end of time. When time ends, we’ll have bubbly champagne in heaven.”
I’m not going to cry anymore, Jack thought. Or I’ll cry someday, a long time from now. I don’t have time now. I’m sorry, Brandy, I can’t afford to cry anymore. Not now. When I can, I will. I promise.
The phrase “slit your wrists” is so common, she thought, she would have expected both Brandy’s wrists to be slashed. When you do it right on one arm — and from the looks of it, Brandy had been determined and thorough — you can’t slash the other wrist. Once you cut the tendons, you can’t hold the knife.
Unless you hold the blade in your teeth, Jack thought.
There was an interesting detail she hoped she would never have occasion to use. But there might come a time when that factoid would be good to know. She tucked that thought away as she headed for the van.
Anna asked about Brandy and Ben, of course. Jack stared ahead and drove toward Fanshawe Park Road.
“Mom?”
“I think Ben died of Sutr, honey. I’m sorry.”
Anna closed her eyes and put her palms to her head, massaging her temples with her fingertips. A few minutes later they turned south on Highbury Road. Only then did Anna speak again. “What about his mom?”
“Anna…when things really go to hell, there are lots of things that can kill you besides an invisible virus.”
Highbury was an empty, straight strip south. Jack pressed the accelerator as hard as she dared.
Jaimie looked behind him, to the old woman draped across the third row of seats. Mrs. Bendham’s eyes were closed, but her lips moved in a whispered, repetitive chant. Her aura was red.
The boy decided she was saying the words, but she was too angry to be speaking to God. He wondered if she knew she was speaking to herself.
Jaimie looked to his father, seated beside him, still holding the boy’s hand. Theo Spencer’s eyes were closed, his chin on his chest as he rested. Though physically depleted, Jaimie could detect no sign of the disease and his aura was a vibrant mix of violet and purple. His father looked closer to God than Mrs. Bendham could reach with her urgent, angry prayers.
He’d seen the Sutr virus infect people. He’d noted how the first signs of contagion looked like greasy wasps, invading their victims’ energy fields. His father was pure again. Theo Spencer was safe.
Jaimie turned his attention back to his Latin dictionary. The first entry his gaze fell upon was: mendacem memorem esse oportet. Liars should have good memories.
When you see the truth beneath the guise
As the Spencers turned on the highway, wrecks and abandoned cars squeezed the road down to one lane. Jack inhaled and exhaled faster and began to sweat. She was forced to a near stop to navigate around vehicles several times.
Decaying, empty-eyed corpses stared at them from behind glass. Though the spring days were still cool, the warm afternoons turned each dead vehicle into a sun-baked oven.
As they made their slow progress east, Jack second-guessed the escape plan. Trent Howler had wanted to take Anna with him to his parent’s cottage. Heading northwest might have been safer if Jack could have convinced the Howlers to take in the whole family.
Though his methods had proved disastrous, Jack was sure her conniving neighbor, Douglas Oliver, had been right to try to build a tribe. Jack had added Mrs. Bendham, their adopted, crazy neighbor lady. The rations the old woman had brought to the alliance were tucked safely away in a large cooler in the back of the van. If not for the preserves in that cooler, Jack wouldn’t have allowed the old woman on their desperate journey east.
Trent’s parents had refused to take the Spencers in at their cottage. The invitation had been reserved only for her daughter, based upon Anna and Trent’s tenuous high school romance. It was unfair of her, but Jack hated the Howlers no less for that.
Anna was young and healthy and smart. Her daughter could help them survive. But they had decided they were better off without her, Jaimie and Theo. The Howlers hadn’t given her family the courtesy of agonizing over the decision before pulling Trent back into their car and roaring off.
Yes, Jaimie wasn’t much of an asset in a survival situation, but he was human. If everyone pulled together and avoided panic, wasn’t that how things were supposed to work? So far, her real-life experience of the plague slapped that kumbaya theory stupid.
Movies reinforced a happy worldview by focusing on the heroes. Hollywood reinforced the idea that most people were heroes-in-waiting and the odd snivelling coward who endangered the herd died horribly. Fear always killed the coward in a satisfying way for the cheering audience. That’s the narrative that made those movies work. She hoped life would start imitating art soon.
Jack steered around a gas truck that had crashed into a school bus. Jack told her passengers not to look. The bus was black and yellow, the husk of a big burned bee on its side. There were children in there. Had been, anyway.
Where was the near God-like, incredibly lucky, muscled and photogenic hero to lead them to safety? Where was the white-coated team of brainiacs who would suddenly appear above them in fleets of helicopters, spraying some chemical cure that would eradicate the threat of Sutr-X forever?
What was God doing right now that was so much more important? Miracles and wonders would be so impressive and gain Him a lot of friends if He came out of retirement now. Do that, and maybe even Theo would believe in God, she thought.
Jack had been the believer in the family. With all she’d seen, she hoped this test of her faith would be over soon, before she failed. If she lost a child now, for instance, she was sure she’d accept Brandy’s invitation and follow her into the bathtub.
“Don’t test me more, God. Walk with me. I can not do this on my own,” Jack muttered.
Anna looked at her mother. “What?”
Jack hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until her daughter touched her arm. “Nothing. Try the radio.”
Several FM stations were broadcasting but after a few songs it was clear that these were old recordings. The machines were still working somewhere, playing cheerful music that reminded the refugees these were not those times.
Jack stomped on the brake and swerved to avoid a body in a narrow gap between abandoned cars. It had been a woman. Three large blackbirds tore into the gore of her open belly.
Jack blasted the van’s horn. The birds backed away a few feet, but did not fly. In their retreat, the birds revealed more horror. The dead woman lay on her back, swollen and decomposing. The corpse was too close to avoid being seen. What was seen could not be unseen.
One eye protruded, swollen in its socket. The other eye was missing, lost to the vultures. The tongue, too, was fat and stuck out at an angle from the yawning maw. Then Jack spotted something worse.
In college, Jack had taken a course in Thanatology, the study of death. A cold description in a textbook resurfaced to describe the horror laid out before them. When a pregnant woman’s body decomposed, someti
mes the gas swelled the body so much that the fetus was expelled. The term for this desecration was a coffin birth.
“Everyone! Close your eyes! Close your eyes now and don’t open them until I tell you!”
Jack angled the van away from the corpse as sharply as she dared. Her right front fender scraped the bumper of a large abandoned truck. The gap was too narrow.
They bumped and thumped over some part of the corpse. Jack wished it was only the dead woman’s legs, but she knew better.
Perhaps, she thought, God is of no help because He must stay divine and pure. Maybe even God has to look away when the horror is too much.
They drove on as The Beach Boys sang about escaping to Kokomo.
The puzzle is not Death, but Life neverlasting
The baby kicked and Shiva put her hand to her belly. Another kick, barely felt. As the container ship plowed through the North Atlantic, the ocean’s rock and roll made the child in her belly less frantic.
Shiva sighed and opened her eyes. “Still alive?” she mused. “Surprising, but good, I suppose. In the new future, it’s survival of the fittest. You might make it, after all. You might meet your father yet.”
A far off klaxon sounded and the speaker by Shiva’s head crackled. “Dear Sister?” It was Lijon, sounding nervous.
“I’m here.”
“Captain Price reports there is a British frigate off the port bow. They’re demanding to board us.”
“I assume he transmitted the code?”
“He did, but to pass the blockade, they’re insisting on an inspection to ensure the contagion is not spread abroad.”
“Very well. Put a squad of guards on the stateroom with Stanhope in it.”
“There are already four guards there, Dear Sister.”
“Is the thing still agitated?”
“No. They think he’s eating.”
“Feeding, you mean, Sister Lijon. It’s an animal now.”
“Yes, of course…Dear Sister.”
“The guards need to be ready to shoot the boarding party if they enter that area. I will meet the boarding party to ensure that isn’t necessary. I’m on my way. Tell the frigate they may send a small boarding party.”
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