by Tim Morgan
“Uh, no. Not at all. I mean, you’re the one who needs to buy a dress. I have it easy. I just rent a tux.” Dave’s palms were sweating—his palms would always sweat when he was nervous. He stuck his hands in his pockets and pretended he was fishing for change, just like he always did when he was nervous and didn’t want anyone to know.
“Thanks for asking me,” Meghan said. “I think it’ll be fun.” She gave Dave a hug. Dave closed his eyes and breathed in her scent; it was a flowery and feminine. He didn’t want to let go, but he didn’t want to wind up in detention since they were near the worst teacher in the wing—Dave didn’t know his name—but he had thick glasses and a bald spot on the top of his head that he tried way too hard to cover, and he was super strict. A boy and a girl shook hands and he called it a display of affection and both earned a trip to the office. God only knew what that guy would call a hug.
That afternoon Chris and Dave weren’t hanging shirts. This was the after-Christmas rush where they had to send back all the crap nobody wanted and someone in the office decided wouldn’t sell. It reminded Chris of Dave’s room, with stacks of somewhat folded clothes everywhere. The clothes were supposed to be sorted by manufacturer, but the night crew tended to just throw them everywhere. That meant Dave and Chris had to figure out what went together, box them up, and wheel them down to the shipping department.
“So Meghan said yes?” Chris asked.
“Yeah,” Dave said.
“Wasn’t a big deal, was it?”
“Not at all.” Dave finished packing the box. Chris took the tape gun and taped it shut, hurrying as usual. Then he cried out and dropped the tape gun. “You okay?” Dave asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just cut myself.”
“You what?”
“Shit!” They looked at one another. “Dude, what do I do?”
Dave unconsciously took a step back. “How bad is it?” He pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth. “It’s not airborne, is it?”
Chris looked at his hand. It was a paper cut, just a little slash in the web between his thumb and forefinger. There was a little blood like he’d nicked himself shaving, but that was it. “It’s not too bad. Superficial. And no, asshole, it’s not airborne.”
“Go wash your hands,” Dave ordered. “Then get a band-aid.” He slowly let the collar of his shirt down.
“Good idea.” Chris left.
Dave waited until he heard Chris’ footsteps go down the stairs, across the tile, and then out the door. He crawled over to one of the one-way windows and watched to make sure Chris was well on his way to the bathroom. Then he went and grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer and some paper towels. Dave handled the tape gun as if it were a live grenade, careful not to make any wrong moves that would set it off. He pumped a gob of sanitizer on the paper towels, then picked up the tape gun and wiped it down. When he was done, Dave checked the paper towels. No traces of blood on them. He tossed the paper towels in the trash, put the tape gun on the table, and pumped six or seven times on the sanitizer for his own hands.
ELEVEN
I finally got a signal again. We’re heading to Davenport in the morning. We need to get across the Mississippi. There were thousands of zombies that snuck up on us this morning. I’ve never seen so many! We got away from them and found a guy and his family. They were the first people we’d seen since we left the camp.
The father took a shot at us when we tried to talk to him. So we left. We rode off, but I realized the zombies were coming. We had to warn them. By the time we got back the zombies were already there. There was a girl in there—maybe four or five years old?
I can’t write anymore about this now.
Chris was right about Davenport—it was bigger than they expected. They saw the city limits from about a mile away, the road jammed with cars. It was a welcome sight after two days making slow progress through farmland, with crops of wheat or corn or whatever it was blocking the view most of the time. Abandoned cars and trucks were scattered along the road, some with bloody smears down the sides and smashed windshields. Along the way they could hear moaning in the fields every so often—a few sounded like they were just out of sight.
The tailwind helped them make pretty good time, but it also took away their early warning system. “Let’s be careful,” Chris said.
“Should we check the houses for food?” Meghan asked.
“We’ll see,” Chris said.
“We need to get across the bridge,” Dave said.
“And we will,” Chris said, “But we also need food and water.”
As they approached the town line the cars were jammed along the road. Some were slammed into one another; others were by themselves. Some had doors that were open while others were closed or even bent the wrong way. Smashed windshields and bloody smears were everywhere, with a seemingly endless number of flies and scraps of clothing strewn all over the road. The stench of death was overpowering; it stung their eyes and made it hard to breathe. All three of them pulled their shirts over their noses.
Dave took the lead, cautiously picking his way along beside the cars. He caught movement in a car on the left and pointed to the ground, signaling the others to slow. Dave peered through a smashed window as he passed the car.
Inside was a zombie, a woman. She let out an inhuman moan as Dave passed, thrashing against her seat belt and snapping her teeth. She groped at Dave with rotting hands. He turned his head forward when cold fingers reached out of a car to his right. Instinct stopped him as the hand closed around his wrist.
It was a man in a Corvette. His eyes were gone. A huge chunk of his neck was missing, now covered with a mass of writhing maggots. The man pulled Dave toward him. Dave dropped his bike and pulled back with all the strength he could muster. The zombie kept drawing him closer, its jaws snapping, maggots falling from its wound. “Chris! Help!” Dave shouted.
Chris and Meghan were off their bikes in a moment and by Dave’s side. “Get him!” Chris shouted, “Don’t get too close! You don’t want it to bite you!” They pulled against the zombie’s grip. “Damn, this thing is strong.”
“Get it off me!” Dave shouted.
“We’re trying!” Meghan shouted. Desperate to get more leverage, she put her feet on the door of the Corvette and pulled with all her might. The zombie’s arm cracked, then broke clean off. Chris and Dave pried the fingers apart and dropped the arm on the ground. The zombie kept moaning and snapping at them, oblivious to the wound.
“You okay?” Chris asked, “It didn’t bite you or break the skin?”
“No,” Dave replied with a quaking voice. “Scared the piss out of me, but I’m okay.”
Dave’s hands shook as he got back on his bike.
“Can you ride?” Chris asked.
Have I got a choice? Dave thought. “Yeah, I’m okay. Let’s move.”
The group rode through the rest of the smash-up faster than they probably should have, but none of them really cared. All they wanted to do was make it through this mess before something else reached out from a car and tried to tear them to pieces.
They entered town in what looked like an industrial area. There were office buildings and warehouses, some with smashed windows and others were boarded up at one time but now had the boards torn away. Scattered in parking lots were bodies, in places seven or eight deep.
They saw a black strip along the land up ahead, with a bunch of cars in behind it. At first Dave thought it was an illusion or something, the road playing tricks on them. As they got closer they saw it was no illusion. The road was scorched, dozens of cars were piled up on top of one another. There were five or six cars partially melted to the road midway through the scorch marks. A few dozen bodies lay scattered on both sides of the line. Some had the flesh on one side boiled away, revealing charred tissues and skeleton beneath. Others were mummified—emaciated skulls frozen in silent screams, curled up like fetuses with clenched fists. The fields on either side of the road were charred, with shoots of green just starting to rise fr
om the ashes.
Dave stopped. Meghan and Chris rode up beside him. It looked like a giant had reached down with a pencil and drawn a line.
Dave said. “I bet it was napalm.”
Chris looked around. “You read about this stuff, you see videos about it . . . I never thought it would look like this.” He walked along the edge of the scorched road, past a blackened adult skeleton clinging to a charred child skeleton.
Meghan said, “These people were trying to get away.” She felt a chill run through her although the air was hot and humid. “They never had a chance.”
Dave tried to imagine what happened. The chaos: people running everywhere, cars piling up on one another, the screech of a jet, and the thuds of bombs going off. “And Davenport is over there,” he said.
They reached out to one another and unconsciously held hands. They were silent for a long time. Chris finally spoke. “We need to go. Watch where you ride—there’s some scrap metal up there. You don’t want to blow a tire.” They rode on.
Rounding a bend they could hear water through the trees. Meghan checked the GPS. “That’s the Mississippi,” she called. “The bridge is a couple miles up, right near the center of town.” She took a sip of water, trying to ignore the burning in her legs and back.
There was no sign of any people. Where did they go? she wondered. The traffic jam on their way into town was a lot worse than what they saw going into Muscatine. There were no soldiers, no Humvees.
As they got closer to the center of town there were storefronts with smashed windows and all manner of junk scattered everywhere. One building, it was pretty big and looked like it may have been a Target, was a burned-out shell. Scorched bodies lay on the ground like action figures scattered by the blast of a firecracker.
Chris was in the lead and turned into the parking lot of a convenience store. Meghan and Dave followed. “Let’s see if there’s any food in here,” Chris said. “Look for candy or granola bars, nuts, Gatorade.”
The windows had been forced out of their panes and lay on the floor. Bloody smears covered the glass. Chris went in first. The lights were out, so he couldn’t see the back of the store. He kept up toward the front at first, close to the others. There were newspapers and magazines, and some lighter fluid and the blue stuff that you used to clean your windshield. But no food.
Meghan walked around, checking the shelves. Most were empty—she did find a couple of Butterfinger bars (which she didn’t really care for, but were better than nothing) that she stuck in her pack. Dave grabbed a handful of matchbooks from behind the counter. Stacks of cigarette packs were mostly full.
“Anyone want a smoke?” Dave asked.
Chris walked to the back of the store. He could just make out a door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. His hand reached out and touched the door when they heard a thud on the other side of the door. Chris’ blood ran cold and the hairs on his body stood on end. Meghan and Dave froze.
There was another thud. Followed by a groan.
Chris turned to Dave and Meghan. He gestured toward the front door. Meghan and Dave nodded. They crept toward the exit, watching their feet as best they could. Meghan’s pack snagged on a shelving rack and pulled it over before she knew what was happening.
The shelves crashed to the floor. The door in the back flew open. Something staggered out, moaning and flailing its arms. Chris ran backwards, pulling more shelves over in a desperate bid to slow this zombie down. The zombie threw everything in its path aside, moaning as it cleared each obstacle.
They got out of the store and jumped on their bikes. They rode as the moaning zombie staggered into the sunlight, its jaw half hanging off and dried blood smeared down its shirt. The groans echoed through the city, and were answered by others in the distance.
“This way!” Meghan shouted as they rode. The three of them pumped with everything they had. “We just need to take a right at this next intersection . . . ”“ They skidded to a halt. Before them was an elevated highway that led to the bridge over the Mississippi.“Oh crap.”
“What the fuck?” Chris shouted.
“These stupid maps stink!” Meghan shouted. “Let me see if I can download an update.” She tapped at the screen, trying to find the update menu.
Moans echoed through the city. There were clusters of them, a growing chorus that built to a deafening crescendo. They were close. Real close.
“We better move,” Dave said. “Those things are getting closer.”
“Just give me one more minute,” Meghan said, “I’m almost at the update screen.”
“Go!” Chris shouted. Meghan and Dave turned.
A mob of zombies darted around a corner not more than a hundred feet from them. They pedaled fast as they could, only to see another mass before them. The crowd in front was thinner than the one behind, so they went forward. As they darted between rotting hands and moaning, dead faces the stench brought tears to their eyes.
Meghan ducked under a pair of dead hands and pumped her pedals with everything she had, keeping one eye on the road while she tapped through screens on the GPS. A minute later her map download was complete and the GPS recalculated the route.
“This way!” she shouted. She pulled left, hopped the curb, and rode on the sidewalk. There were piles of cars to their right and a burned out shell of a building to her left. She hoped Chris and Dave were still with her as she took the next left tight to the corner.
She looked back and saw Chris right behind her. But where was Dave? The thought formed but didn’t register—all she wanted to do was get to the bridge and get out of this town.
Dave was a few lengths behind them and heard the footfalls and the moaning of the horde. He didn’t dare look back, he knew they were there and those zombies sure as hell could run. He saw Meghan and Chris disappear around a corner, cursed to himself, and commanded himself to fight the fatigue, combat the fire in his legs because dammit, he wanted to live.
The excess speed made him take the corner wide, and he almost spilled. He saw Meghan and Chris turning on a highway on ramp—he didn’t see the sign, didn’t care what it said, just wanted to get away from these things. He managed to put distance between him and the zombies and caught up to Meghan and Chris on the bridge. They had slowed and kept looking back.
“Thanks for waiting for me,” Dave said curtly.
“We made it!” Chris said, “We made it!”
“Through Davenport,” Meghan said. “We’ve still got to get through Rock Island.”
Wonderful, Dave thought, this has been the longest day of my life, and it’s only getting longer.
TWELVE
New Delhi, India (Reuters). Tensions in India exploded overnight with all-out rioting erupting in Mumbai. Military forces were sent in to restore order after beleaguered police forces were overrun. Communications from the epicenter of this year’s influenza outbreak were limited as telephone and internet service was severed by the government.
Stranded tourists have turned to satellite and cellular technology, sending reports of violence on an unprecedented scale and an increasingly harsh response from the government in an effort to restore order.
The White House issued a statement condemning the communications blackout and insisted the Indian government restore normal communications as soon as possible. “We are monitoring the situation,” says Press Secretary Gerald Parent. “We are making our concerns known to the Indian government, and we are sure the government of India will be able to bring the situation under control.”
The office of the Billerica Minuteman wasn’t quite what Dave expected. It was a small office in a small building, small even by Dave’s very limited expectations, and the office was in Chelmsford. What’s up with that, he wondered.
The editor seemed nice. His name was Tom and he looked like Dave thought an editor should look like: white hair, glasses, collared shirt. “So you’re going on a cross-country bike trip, huh? What made you think of that?”
“We wanted to end senior y
ear with a bang,” Dave said. “Do something memorable as our last hurrah.”
“That’s a long ride.”
“About three thousand miles.”
“Round trip?”
“No, one way.”
“And you’re going on bikes?”
“We’re riding out on bikes. When we get to Seattle, we’re shipping the bikes back UPS and flying home.”
“You must have someone following you in a car, right?”
“No, it’s just the three of us.”
Tom settled back in his seat. “It sounds like you’re going on one hell of a senior trip,” he said. “Trip of a lifetime.”
You think so, Dave thought.
“Tell you what—call me maybe once a week. I’ll write about your status. When you get back, we’ll have you write a series about the trip. How’s that sound?”
“Great!” Dave said. It was hard for him to hide his enthusiasm. He was going to write a series—a series! This was the stuff scholarships were made of.
“I won’t be able to pay much—maybe ten bucks an article,” Tom said, “but I can give you a byline. That’ll look good when you get out to Salem State.”
Dave agreed, the two of them shook hands and Dave left. Wow, he thought, life couldn’t get any better than this.
Chris tried six, maybe seven times to call Traci on her cell phone. Every time the phone would go to voicemail. Every time he knew she would see his number and ignore the call. Which is why he asked to borrow Meghan’s phone.
“I don’t know about this,” she said.
“She won’t answer when I call,” Chris said.
“She’ll be pissed at me,” Meghan insisted.
“I’ll take full responsibility.”
Meghan frowned. She handed Chris her phone. “She gives me any crap and I’ll kill you.”
Chris dialed her number. The phone rang once, twice. He heard Traci’s voice on the other line. “Hello?”