Mitch gave Jaimie a friendly wink. The connection between them sputtered to life for just a moment.
The boy’s excitement grew. He was sure, in that flash of insight, that Theo was right. Mitch did have a gift for him and now he was sure. It was a book. He hoped it was a dictionary.
When the curtain falls, will you be sad?
The Earl of Burton rocked gently, tied up at the end of the long, uneven pier that stretched out into Poeticule Bay, Maine like a broken arm. The wharf’s black timbers were rotted through here and there, its beams shattered.
The town of Poeticule Bay lay spread on a long hill. Storms had battered the small town to defeat. Trees had fallen across several streets and no fishing or pleasure boats bobbed in the tiny marina to the North. To the left and right, the high tide thinned the coastline to ribbons of black rock beaches. The green Appalachian range stood close behind the town, making Poeticule Bay appear even smaller.
As soon as he stepped on deck, Sinjin-Smythe blurted, “Ghost town.”
Aasa looked up at him with her serious brown eyes and said, “No, doctor. It’s simply empty. Ghosts are people who don’t know they’re dead. Or they don’t want to know.”
“The first mate says this used to be a busy place,” Sinjin-Smythe said.
Aasa nodded. “A long time ago there was a ferry, from Nova Scotia to Boston and they’d stop here.”
“Oh?”
“Over there,” the girl pointed toward an abandoned marina, “and here, under us, the water is really deep. Cruise ships and oil tankers could dock here. Poeticule Bay needed the lighthouse because it’s so shallow over there at low tide.” Aasa pointed to the narrow beach.
“It doesn’t look it, but we’re at the edge of an underwater cliff. You can’t see until you fall off it. The first mate told me that if I drop something off the ship here, it falls so deep, nobody can get it back. It’s underneath us, right now. Who knows what’s down there in the dark? Think of all the ships that have come here, and all the things that somebody dropped over the rail. Hundreds of years of coins and trinkets and treasures! The first mate told me.”
The doctor felt a shiver down his spine as the little girl spoke. He could credit the Atlantic dawn for the cold jolt, but he decided to blame the child instead. “Ghost towns and ghost ships. Maybe we’re all ghosts and we don’t know it yet.”
Aasa frowned at him. “You don’t hang out with kids much, do you?”
“Um, no.”
“Don’t talk that way around my little sister. She scares easy.”
The virologist sighed. “I should be in Montreal, working on the Sutr-X vaccine with Ellen.”
“I should be in school,”Aasa said. “And my parents should be alive.”
The doctor frowned.
The girl shrugged. “I win.”
“Do you know the word, ‘annoying,’ Aasa?”
“Sure. Do you know the word, ‘petulant?’”
Sinjin-Smythe sighed. “It’s a very grown-up word. I’m surprised you know it.”
“Dayo explained it to me. She was talking about you.”
“Oh.”
Dayo appeared behind them and Sinjin-Smythe gave the woman a broad smile.
“I heard,” Dayo said, “and you’re lousy at faking sincerity, Craig.”
Aastha hurried to stand at the rail beside her big sister. The girls huddled close together for warmth. “It’s summer,” Aastha complained. “Why’s it so cold?”
Dayo crouched to put her arms around both girls. “When the sun climbs higher, it’ll warm up. It’s always colder on the ocean, but now, no more ships for us, okay? We’re settling down.”
“There?” Aastha pointed at the broken town of Poeticule Bay.
“Or thereabouts. Dream Boy says we will meet him in a place called the Corners. It’ll be a farm by a village even smaller than this one, inland.”
Moments later, Brother Bob and Desi returned to the Earl of Burton from an early scouting expedition. “Seems the town is abandoned as it looks,” the monk said.
“Kind of spooky,” Desi admitted. “We saw food left abandoned mid-meal. There weren’t many people there, but sometime in the last few days, looks like all the inhabitants left in a hurry.”
“Two days ago,” Aastha declared. “And it’s not scary. Aasa told them to get out of the way.”
Aasa tried to shush her little sister but the child was undeterred. “Aasa can go see people in their dreams, too.”
Aasa’s cheeks flushed red. “Quiet! You pinky sweared, Aastha!”
“Sometimes they don’t even have to be asleep to hear her and see her,” Aastha persisted. “The people had to leave. Aasa says they have to be safe so, if we win, they can come back and they’ll fish for us. But I don’t like fish.”
All the adults stared wide-eyed at Aasa who, in turn, frowned at her little sister. “Do you know the word ‘annoying,’ Aastha?”
“Yup!”
* * *
Sinjin-Smythe watched the other European refugees. Dayo and Desi couldn’t seem to let go of each other. Aasa clung to Dayo’s leg. Little Aastha clung to Desi.
“Something wrong, Craig?” Brother Bob asked.
“They’ve been at it for twenty minutes. I hate viscous goodbyes.”
The monk leaned closer to the doctor. “We have to leave soon, but we can give them this.”
“I thought you were in a big hurry to beat the Alphas South.”
“Sure I am, but we might not be coming back, Doc. Anything left unsaid now is a debt unpaid.”
“How do I even know for sure I’m on the right boat? For all I know, you work for Shiva.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Why don’t I? You say we have to sail south. The boy didn’t tell me that. Why not?”
“When you have armies to manage, you have to delegate, Craig.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Montani semper liberi.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“Mountaineers are always free,” Sinjin-Smythe said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s what the boy told you once. You knew what the words meant but not what they signified.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Brother Bob sighed. “It means, trust me that I’m not representing anything nefarious. It also happens to be the state motto of West Virginia and, what it means to you in particular, is man up and be a mountaineer.”
Sinjin-Smythe shook his head in self-disgust. “Even then, Jaimie thought…knew I was a coward.”
“You’re a critical thinker. Maybe The Way of Things anticipated you’d need a code word for reassurance.”
Sinjin-Smythe turned to the monk. “I’ll prove you all wrong. I’ll head south with you. I have a lot to say to Shiva, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t try talking, were I you, Doc. She’ll kill you as soon as she sees you.”
“Probably.” The doctor leaned his back against the rail and tipped his head to stare straight up. “I spent years in school. First in my class at Cambridge. I’m among the world’s foremost experts on contagious disease. I memorized the Periodic Table at five.”
“Why would you memorize the Periodic Table?" Brother Bob scoffed. “It’s a table. It’s for reference. You aren’t supposed to memorize it. You’re supposed to go look at it when you need it.”
The virologist sighed. “My point is, I understand a lot, but I don’t understand Ava.” The sky, gray and as blank as an empty page, held no answers for him.
“She was never Ava, Doc. She was always Shiva wearing an Ava mask. You’re trying to understand someone who never was.”
Sinjin-Smythe gave a rueful chuckle. “Dayo says I can’t fake sincerity. She and I never hit it off, but…I knew Shiva for years. She could be pushy and exasperating and imperious at times, but I never suspected she was a genocidal monster.”
Brother Bob p
ut a hand on the virologist’s shoulder. “Before everything went to shit, Forbes magazine ran a piece on how psychopaths make great CEOs. I wonder how they’d feel about that idea now?”
“Psychopaths? God! It’s a wonder things didn’t collapse sooner.”
“Oh, I think everything was collapsing for a long time. William Gibson was a brilliant sci-fi writer. He said the future is already here. It just arrives at different speeds. The apocalypse is the same.”
Sinjin-Smythe shrugged off the monk’s hand. “I know the stats. Maybe two percent of the population were psychopaths and I guess Shiva managed to hook up with a bunch of likeminded bio-terrorists. Still — ”
“You know that intellectually, Craig. It’s a different thing when evil comes packaged as a beautiful woman, looking you in the eyes and telling you all the things you wish she’d say.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Jaimie showed me.”
“Why?”
“Because our orders are to kill her on sight. He wanted to be sure I knew what she looked like. Quite the looker. If God had thought to make her hideous, she wouldn’t have gotten this far, so you really can’t take all the blame.”
“I’d love to blame somebody else,” Sinjin-Smythe said. “But I let her in my lab, in my bed — ”
“Your heart.”
“Yeah. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t fallen for her lies — ”
“Don’t be a narcissist. You’re one factor among many that fell into place so she could poison the gene pool.”
“Name one other factor.”
Brother Bob sighed. “Craig, you aren’t taking responsibility. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself and sounding very upper class British. Just so damn…I don’t know…entitled to moral superiority. And when you figure out you’re not perfect, you feel so put upon. I can name lots of factors that contributed to the end of the world and you aren’t that important.”
“Thanks.”
“There it is again. Look, everyone on earth was a factor. Society was sick first. Hitler couldn’t have taken hold in the world if the rot hadn’t set deep in the roots first. Bad seeds need a lot of bullshit for fertilizer.”
“Am I the bullshit in this equation, Bro Bob?”
The monk laughed. “We all ignored a lot of symptoms and were blind to the signs. We all wanted to pretend everything was nice and normal. Shiva fooled you, but we were all fooled. You’re not alone. Just before most everybody died of the flu, doctors like you predicted for decades the killer pandemic was coming.”
“If we hadn’t been so wrong in the ’90s, maybe people would have listened better later.”
“It’s not all about you! We wanted to be comfortable. We wanted business as usual. We were all running around with cell phones made possible by slave labor and telling ourselves it was okay because…well, I’m not sure why. It was awfully convenient, I guess. We didn’t want to believe that on some level, most everybody’s part of something evil.”
“Okay! Okay! I’m off the hook! But am I ever going to get my baby from Shiva?”
“Not even the messenger can see the future — ”
“I’m so sick of that — ”
“No, Craig. The answer is no. I can’t see the future, either, but we’ve been told what the Alphas are…what they can do…how hard they are to kill. Barring some miracle, your baby’s dead. In my experience, miracles are rare.”
Sinjin-Smythe looked startled but he nodded slowly.
“I thought religious fellows like you believed miracles happened every minute.”
“Some say that. I’ve found those deep believers have a standard for what constitutes a miracle that’s pretty banal.”
“Oh?”
“Gotta be careful with talk of miracles. It plays well on Sunday morning to a willing crowd dressed in their best, but it’s a harder sell in a burn unit, or in a paediatric oncology wing….” Brother Bob pointed to the empty town of Poeticule Bay. “Or this sad place.”
Sinjin-Smythe swallowed hard, like he was trying to get down something heavy and sharp. Finally, the doctor said, “Thank you, Bro Bob. For your honesty about my baby.” His eyes filled with water. “You’re right. Shiva wants me dead. She only really wanted me to come to her because I had the research data on Sutr and now I don’t even have that. She was afraid I’d save the world, but Ellen Harper gets that prize, dammit!”
Sinjin-Smythe turned to see Dayo and Desi kiss. “My magna cum laude doesn’t buy what it used to, not anymore. I guess I’m not all that impressive. Without a microscope, I’m pretty useless.”
“Plenty of opportunities to save the world, Doc. I wish we’d started a bit earlier, but here we are. You’re brave, too. Give yourself credit. Your specialty is contagious disease. How could you not be courageous?”
“I don’t feel it now.”
Desi got down on his knees to hug Aasa and Aastha goodbye.
Sinjin-Smythe’s jaw set like concrete. “You know, sometimes I still mix up those kids’ names. Aasa and Aastha. So confusing, but after all we’ve been through…heh. I guess I would have been a lousy father, anyway.”
You'd like to think you're certain of what to do
Don and Elly Tate filled Don Junior’s hockey bag to bursting with supplies. Don gave his wife the job of emptying every device she could find of its batteries. He reached into the kitchen cabinets and swept all the canned goods into the bag with trembling hands.
Don couldn’t wait until they were safely away and on the road. His body shook and his voice quavered as he told Elly their son was dead.
She collapsed to the kitchen floor and wept. She asked why.
He said he didn’t know.
She covered her face with her hands and cried harder.
He grabbed her hands and made Elly look into his eyes. “Grieving is for later.”
“You tell me my son is dead and expect me to shake it off? Grieving isn’t for later. It’s forever.”
Don hugged his wife and rocked her in his arms. “He’d want us to live.”
That’s what got her moving. Too late.
Dragging the heavy bag behind him, Don pulled Elly by the hand to the back door. “Pick and pull what vegetables we have and let’s go!”
Phillip Bruce, stripped to the waist and covered in blood, swung the hoe as hard as he could. The rusty tip cut deep into Don Tate’s leg and swept the big man to the ground. The back of his skull hit the step by the back door with a sickening, wet smack.
Dazed, Don tried to pull the Colt from the holster on his hip. Pain shot up his arm.
He looked down, his eyes unfocused. The six-gun wasn’t in his hand. His hand didn’t even look like a hand anymore. Instead, a ragged, spurting wound was where his right hand used to be. The hoe’s blade had spared only his little finger and his thumb.
Elly Tate ran at Phillip. He jabbed her in the forehead with the dull end of the hoe and she reeled. Phillip pulled the pistol from his belt and shot Don’s wife through the belly.
She folded to the grass and curled into a ball, gasping and wide-eyed, seeing nothing beyond pain.
Don shoved his ruined hand tight under his left armpit and managed to prop himself up on one elbow. His gaze went from his wife to their attacker.
“I’m not bit, Don. My son wasn’t bit, either. But you knew that.”
Tate didn’t bother denying it.
“Your son killed mine.”
Phillip raised his pistol and shot Don Tate in the crotch.
From not far away came screams and shouts and the sound of running feet.
Phillip reached down and grabbed Elly by one ankle and dragged her around the side of the house by the gravel driveway. She was in too much pain to resist.
“They’ll eat her first. You’ll get to watch. Then they’ll come for you.”
Phillip stepped over Elly and returned to Don’s side. He knelt and patted Don’s cheek. “Ed wasn’t the bad one, Don. He had his mother’s red
hair and he was a good boy. He did the right thing. Just like I’m doing now.”
Don Tate gasped in pain. He tried to grasp his crotch but found he was using the wrong arm for the task. “You bastard. Why do the uninfected have to be assholes at the end of the world?”
“The apocalypse is like money, I guess. It frees us up. I know a lot about money. It just emphasizes what you already are.” Phillip smiled. “You were always an asshole, Don, long before the apocalypse.”
Phillip took Don’s six-gun and the stuffed hockey bag with him. He threw the bag into the truck.
The zombie horde ran up the hill toward the Tate house, drawn by Elly Tate's screams.
Phillip raised the Colt high. He fired into the air, spacing the shots out by a beat to make sure the zombies didn’t miss visiting Don and Elly Tate.
He almost used the last bullet on himself then, but a voice, a young man’s voice, whispered at the edge of his consciousness. He wished it was Ed’s voice, but it wasn’t. The voice said, “Do the right thing. Do the right thing. Do the right thing.”
He almost didn’t. When he pulled the trigger, Phillip gasped at the loud click. In his excitement, the accountant had counted wrong. The gun was empty. Phillip wiped tears from his eyes and put the truck into gear and drove away.
Phillip Bruce was the only human survivor of the bloodbath at Wilmington, Vermont.
The Sutr-Z infected continued to follow the bright beacon in the sky that only their fogged brains could register. The Army of Light marched East toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Phillip Bruce followed a different order. The voice in his head said one word and Phillip took it up as a chant. “Charleston. Charleston. Charleston.”
But maybe, like the Queen, you're a tool, too.
Sinjin-Smythe put his forehead against the Earl of Burton’s metal rail to cool it. His shoulders shook with each quiet sob. Brother Bob patted the doctor’s back gently as Sinjin-Smythe wept.
After a few moments, the doctor stood straight and wiped his eyes.
“Time to be British again?” Brother Bob said. “Stiff upper lip and all that?”
This Plague of Days OMNIBUS EDITION: The Complete Three Seasons of the Zombie Apocalypse Series Page 79