Junior pointed with his pistol at the corpse of Helen Stevens, still leaking blood across the sidewalk. “What should we do with it?”
“Dunno. I’m kinda sick of dealing with Helen Stevens. Never shut up about President Bush having the temerity to ask her to do her duty. She signed up to get away from this town and stepped on an IED wrong. Next thing you know, she’s back in Wilmington for the rest of her life whining about the bad job she signed up for. I won’t miss that about her.”
Junior Tate frowned. “I thought you’d shoot her in the guts, like you told me.”
“Well, I thought she might whine and complain about that, too.”
Father and son shared a laugh. “I told her one time, ‘Helen, everybody thinks you’re a war hero. I think war heroes should kill the enemy at least a couple of times. You’re just a victim parading around with that purple heart, advertising how you messed up.”
“Heh. How did that come up?”
“Last year. Her last salary review.”
Don Tate Junior laughed harder.
“I’m bone tired,” his father said. “Stringing up examples is a chore. Let her friends come get her. Let the peasants and pissants deal with old Helen. I’m past that noise.” Don Tate turned to go but his son put a shaky hand on his arm.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, Junior?”
“Can we pull up her dress? I’ve never got a close-up look at a real artificial leg before.”
Tate chuckled. “Sure.”
Long, ungentle journeys into night
The outlines of the trees had turned to whispering silhouettes as the orange glow of sunset melted and melded, colluding with the firelight until the dark took over. The forest was hushed as Anna rose from her sleeping bag and stepped into the bushes to relieve herself.
She had stepped into the trees as far as she dared, keeping the Spencer's campfire in sight through young leaves. The cool evening wind stirred tree limbs and their shadows, each a long arm with shivering, bony fingers. The woods were not as quiet as she had once imagined. It was always quiet at first, but when she stood still and waited, the forest stirred to life. Limbs creaked, small animals crawled and scrabbled along the forest floor here and there and the wind breathed through the trees.
The roar of machines made by humans — jet engines, cell phones and traffic — was gone, but the earth crept up and built again under the survivors as the soil and water and air and fire fed on the nutritious dead. Earth was gone. Gaia was on its way back.
Anna wondered how long the frustrated motorists had waited in their stalled parade? Had they let the gas run dry? Several had tried to navigate around the jammed traffic and only succeeded in plugging the road further.
The East-West roadblocks had forced everyone North. They’d seen license plates from many states. The people who had refused to abandon their cars, or had been too sick to leave them, were still down there on the road, fed upon. Birds and animals and bacteria and countless unnamed microbes ate, making room for whatever was to come next.
Once Anna awoke from a dream in which she imagined her father saying, “Don’t look at the ugliness of the corpses, Anna,” Theo said. “Imagine them as they were. They were so beautiful. Remember what they were. The cleaning crew will take care of this mess.”
The cleaning crew. The phrase haunted her. Anna had once liked birds. Now she knew their casual brutality. She worried that one day soon she would have to eat one. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to do that anymore, not given their gruesome diet. The road was their grisly buffet.
From Jack’s place by the fire, her mother said something Anna couldn’t quite make out. She could be talking to Jaimie, but she thought it more likely Jack was talking to herself. She did that more and more since their house had blown up.
Anna wondered if that’s what Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder did. She’d heard the phrase PTSD plenty, but what did it do besides freak people out and make you mutter a lot? They must all have PTSD. But there was nothing post-traumatic about it. The trauma was ongoing.
Each time Anna felt sleep coming — just before she submerged — she prayed she’d awake, not by a dead campfire, but in her own bed in Kansas City. The family would still be sleeping safe in their beds and Trent would be beside her. She would sneak him out of the house before her parents awoke.
Instead of sweet dreams of Missouri, Anna got nightmares that ended with a startled gasp. There was no comfort in sleep.
Each nightmare consisted of flashes of lightning through her sleeping brain: trap doors and dead drops into dreaded dimensions.
She saw her little brother in his hoodie standing on a jagged platform of rock at the edge of a roiling ocean. A savage storm raged behind him. Wings of fire spread out from his back and he rose into the sky. As lightning bolts shot around Jaimie, a horde of zombies stood before him, staring in awe at her brother.
In the nightmare, Anna screamed. “Ears! Ears!”
Then a monster flew down and grabbed Jaimie out of the air in its talons. Both crashed down into jagged, black rock. Jaimie and the monster were on fire as the zombies rushed forward to tear the combatants apart.
Then the image of a baby — not yet born — came to Anna. She could hear the child’s thoughts. The baby knew the future. It told Anna that she would have to make a sacrifice for the greater good.
Why am I seeing this night after night?
“Because curiosity is one of the most powerful forces,” the baby said. “You will no doubt feel an all-consuming need to know how this story ends. When the time comes, you will want to be there to fight alongside your brother. What you will sacrifice means you will not witness the final battle. We hope, in showing you this, your curiosity will be assuaged and you will be warned. No matter how much it hurts, you must make the sacrifice.”
“Who are you?” Anna asked.
Then she would awake in darkness and to the sounds of the forest. She lay there, listening to her family breathe and shift and mutter in their sleep. Anna wondered how much longer they would all breathe.
After a few minutes, the nastiest details withdrew a little and Anna tried to convince herself the bad dreams meant nothing. But she knew that was the worst kind of lie. It was a lie she wanted to believe.
She wondered what else she would have to give besides her life?
* * *
A branch rolled over with a clunk and firelight leapt up. Anna jumped at the sound. The climbing flame threw more light and reached for her, seeking her out as she groped for some scattered leaves to clean herself.
Fires, she recalled, used to be rare and just for fun. She remembered Papa Spence building a fire in the farm’s fire pit.
Anna had visited the Corners once when she was little. In the late afternoon, he'd laid a huge salmon on a sheet of tinfoil and nailed willow branches across the fish to hold it in place on a blackened plank. Her grandfather had let her use the hammer for a while, though with her small, clumsy hands she had struggled to pound the U-shaped nails around the willow branches, through the tin foil and into the old weathered boards.
“Smoked salmon tastes like cake,” Papa Spence said.
Anna pictured a fish with birthday candles, just for her. The salmon tasted good, but it tasted nothing like birthday cake.
After the salmon, they’d eaten apple pie with a slab of orange cheese on top. Anna wrinkled her nose at the cheese. She pretended to enjoy the sips of coffee Papa Spence offered her from his mug.
Jack did not let her drink coffee then. “Dad! Don’t! She’ll be up all night.”
“Good,” Papa said. “We’ll have more time to chat before you take my little girl away tomorrow.”
Papa Spence let Anna put another stick of firewood on the fire. Crackles sent sparks toward the emerging stars. When she jumped back, her grandfather cackled with delight.
“Have another sip of Papa’s coffee and put another log on the fire, Anna,” he said. “I
ndians build a small fire and sit close. White men build a big fire and sit way back.”
That was the last time she had been to the Corners, Maine. She wished she were a child again sitting in the safety of her grandfather’s lap and feeling the fire’s heat on her legs. When she recalled the nightmare and the baby warning her away, she knew she would never make it back to Papa Spence’s farm.
Another cool breath of wind on her bare bottom made her shudder and she felt a little dizzy when she stood up too fast. Bright, white phosphenes darted at the edge of her vision. She pulled up her pants quickly.
A sound behind her.
What was that? A breaking twig?
And another sound, but closer.
Had that been someone — something — taking in a sharp breath in the darkness? Had Carron, or the monsters from the Brickyard finally caught up with her family?
Anna hurried, but hurrying made her a clumsy child again. Her teeth chattered as she yanked at her belt buckle.
“Sh.” A young woman’s soft voice came to her. “All will be well, mademoiselle.”
Another dangerous lie.
Absent fathers in cruel fights
The Sutr-Z army of the infected made their way North. Many of the original group from New York fell along the way. Their injuries from the nuclear strike had either been too severe for them to recover or the radiation finally took its toll.
Somewhere, from deep in a mountain complex in Colorado, the shambling column had been spotted via satellite. Whatever remained of the US military command at NORAD ordered another attack.
The general who had ordered the missile strike on New York was dead. His aide had grown up in Hell’s Kitchen. Seeing New York get vaporized via satellite brought on a psychotic break.
The captain pointed his sidearm at the general he’d served for two years and said, almost casually, “You’re really bad for morale, sir.” He shot the old man in the face four times.
Though the aide then turned the gun on himself, the remaining officers in the command structure had no stomach for more nuclear strikes on American soil. Instead, they opted for drone attacks.
At Peekskill and Mahopac, the drones whittled the numbers of infected. Drones strafed the zombie column. The zombies did not run for cover or panic. They should have been perfect targets, but there were too many for a drone to erase them all. The infected who were not vaporized were blown into the woods. Body parts rained down on rooftops. From monitors in fortified bunkers in Colorado and Nevada, the successful elimination of the Sutr-X threat to America seemed assured.
Twice, the military thought they had eliminated all the infected. Twice, they were wrong. Stragglers emerged and, along the way, attacked Sutr-X survivors. Repeatedly, smug people, so sure they were out of danger, were proven wrong.
As happened in London and Iceland and everywhere else, one person infected with Sutr-Z became two, then four, then eight, then sixteen. No matter how savage the attack, a few zombies survived to spread Sutr-Z’s powerful venom.
Unlike the Sutr-Z infected elsewhere, these zombies followed the beacon in the sky. The burning angel beckoned them North with the promise of food and so they stayed on course.
Humans who had survived the first plague, Sutr-X, were, unprepared for the arrival of Sutr-Z’s first emissaries. At a distance, the number of the infected was unclear and some kindhearted survivors actually ran to the zombies’ aid. Of course, they were bitten and sometimes fully devoured. The zombie army’s ranks grew again.
At Paramus, the zombies tore through a small refugee camp organized by Catholic nuns. In anguish, Jaimie had tried to warn the group the night before.
Mother Superior Marinda Hatcher-Grindstaff led the group of refugees with an imperious will. Brimming with optimism for the power of prayer, she was sure Jaimie was sent by the devil, or by God to test her.
“You believe God is experimenting with you? Teasing you just for fun? Isn’t that strange?”
“You must be a test,” the nun said.
“Why?”
“Because you say you’re not. Besides, God wouldn’t do this to me, or my people,” she said. “God will save us from this ‘invasion’ of yours.”
The use of the word “yours” made Jaimie feel terribly guilty. He tried to explain, “It’s The Way of Things! It has other plans that aren’t set up to protect you personally. This isn’t about you!”
“I have survived the plague. That is providence. My faith is my shield. You’ll see. Everyone will see and they will understand the power of belief.”
The next morning, Hatcher-Grindstaff went out to greet the zombie horde. Brave and foolish, too, the Mother Superior made her stand at the entrance to the camp. Secure in the knowledge that God would protect her and the innocents in her charge, she blessed the advancing force.
The Sutr-Zs ran at her and knocked her to the ground. As the first chunk of flesh was torn from her thigh by a savage, drooling ghoul in torn and fetid pajamas, the Mother Superior understood her mistake. As a final lesson to all who might witness, the nun screamed, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall!"
Then she forgot her name and limped off to join the horde's orgiastic feeding frenzy. Jaimie watched and wept for the nun and those who had trusted her. “Not so superior,” he said. The zombies never seemed to feel sated. Perhaps forgetting who and what each victim had once been was the Sutr-Z virus's one grim mercy.
At Ramsey, many children became orphans. Jaimie had tried to warn their families that they were in the path of a storm of teeth. Some families fled in the night, as soon as they awoke from the nightmares. Instead of speaking to them, Jaimie had shown them horrors. He’d gifted them with visions of their own deaths in gory detail. Then he told them the visions would be made real if they didn’t flee immediately.
Deadlines, Jaimie thought, are motivating. Not livelines. Deadlines. Dead lines. Lines of the Dead, bent on making more, headed North, inexorably.
Sadly, many naysayers stubbornly dismissed the bad dreams. Mass psychosis and trauma fatigue from a long siege of plague, hunger, depression, death and deprivation had inured the survivors to horror. Comfortable in their warm beds and secure in the cozy shelter of their denial, they called Jaimie’s warnings mere nightmares.
When the Sutr-Z army arrived in Ramsey, to their credit, the naysayers ran at the zombies, firing their weapons and ultimately sacrificing themselves that their children might live. The Sutr-Z zombies could die as easily as any human, but they were an enemy like no other, overwhelming barricades with sheer numbers. Those with guns expected their attackers to be slow or afraid of their weapons. Instead, the infected were attracted to the sound of gunfire and ran to it. Men with machine guns could cut down many carrying Sutr-Z, but when they paused to change mags, the zombies proved the superiority of ferocity in large numbers. Worse, the infected were so fast, many of the younger children lost the race for their lives.
The zombie army — the Army of Light, The Way of Things called it — grew larger again. They made up for losses to the drones.
By the time they’d walked as far as Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Sutr-Z infection had spread to more than six hundred.
Guided only by hunger and the fiery figure hovering in the sky that only they could see, the inexorable tide kept coming and growing.
Runners from surviving towns in the invaders’ path plowed North, racing ahead of the Sutr-Z invasion to warn others to avoid the march of the zombies.
To survive, the secret was to flee or cower in their fortified homes. Sutr-X survivors peered out at those infected with Sutr-Z. They prayed and wondered, had they been spared death by the Sutr flu only to feed the voracious cannibals who wandered past?
But The Way of Things insisted Jaimie stop trying to spare humans.
“Why?” Jaimie cried. “Please, stop killing people! Stop making me help you kill people!”
“We let you warn them in the Dreamscape. You must allow this story to unf
old.”
“How many more? Even with my warnings, it wasn’t enough to save all of them! I wasn’t enough! The children…”
“The righteous heeded the warning and escaped,” came the placid, self-satisfied reply. “The Army of Light must grow. Fate must be fed.”
And so Jaimie made his bargain with The Way of Things. That’s why the boy allowed the horrors that would soon occur to the people of Wilmington, Vermont. With their sacrifice, Jaimie hoped to spare us all.
* * *
The runners, brave Paul Reveres who sped ahead of the invaders, were the unsung heroes of the apocalypse. They saved thousands of lives by warning people that Death was coming up the road. People who would never believe a boy in a strange dream did heed the warning from terrified teenagers on dirt bikes.
When dawn came to Shaftsbury in the Arlington State Forest, two runners looked South for the horde. They were two girls, Michele Heeder and Shay West, aged sixteen and fifteen. Michele and Shay sat on their dirt bikes looking down from the crest of a long grade. They wondered what numbers they would report in the next town? How many of their relatives and friends might walk among the mindless, drooling cannibals?
The sun rose, but the first fingers of light did not reveal the expected column of zombies. The girls waited until noon. Eventually, they realized the zombie army no longer marched North. What Michele and Shay couldn’t have known was that zombies do not sleep. They kept going, following the burning angel (and the promise of fresh meat) through the night.
They stayed on the roads because the way was easier and new recruits to their army lived along the roads that twisted toward New England.
The Sutr-Z column turned East at Bennington. Their path would take them to the Atlantic and up the coast toward their final destination, at the foot of a lighthouse in Poeticule Bay, Maine.
But first, The Way of Things insisted that Army of Light had to feed. A despot and his followers had to be assimilated under the Army of Light’s banner. Many innocents would fall to Sutr-Z.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 69