The Hours

by Robert Barnard

  “EV1. It’s back. And we’re running out of time.”

  ELEVEN

  Jim sat beside his bed, sobbing. He’d pressed his revolver against the side of his head, pulled the trigger, and got nothing but a click. He squeezed the trigger five more times in rapid succession, and each time was met with the same horrible sound: that empty click.

  Nolan was right. He’d become complacent. He’d left his nightstand gun unloaded. As much as he’d convinced himself he was prepared for anything, he wasn’t.

  Not for this.

  A short while after Sherri had stopped jittering on the floor, she had sat up in a single, fluid motion. Came back to life. Her eyes had yellowed. Her movements were dumb, slow, robotic. She was just like one of the thousands of other infected Jim had faced during NYVO.

  He had infected her, he kept reminding himself.

  After she had sprung to life, she set her eyes on Jim, determined to attack him, to feast on his flesh, to rip him limb from limb. Before she had the chance, Jim took a ten pound dumbbell he had stored in the back corner of his closet and clocked it clear across the back of her head. There was a sickening explosion of skull and brain, and Sherri’s movements stopped.

  Permanently.

  And there Jim sat, dazed and lost in his bedroom. He’d turned into one of the infected, then somehow turned back. He was a walking enigma, and now he abhorred his own existence.

  The smell of metal clung thick in the air. Sherri’s blood had drenched the bedroom carpet, had drip-dropped deep into the floorboards.

  Jim stood, mechanically walked to his closet, pulled out a fresh t-shirt. He removed his old one—soaked in blood—and nonchalantly tossed it to the side of the room. He pulled the new one over his head, tugged it over his chest.

  He stumbled out into the house. His giant, cavernous manor perched along the hillside of Cherry Valley. He strode through the living room, across the kitchen, and towards the rear hall of the home. He walked towards Nolan’s door, stood in front of it, and waited.

  Silence. No sound from inside.

  He pressed his ear against the door and listened carefully. Faintly, across the room, was Nolan’s deep and rhythmic snoring.

  “Sherri must have knocked you out good, kid,” he said, “if you could’ve slept through all that.”

  Jim walked to the dining room, quietly grabbed a dining chair. He carefully lifted it above his head, tiptoed back to Nolan’s room, and gently set it outside his door, wedged between the doorknob and the floor.

  “I hope you held on to that envelope I gave you,” Jim said, and again he started to cry. “And take good care of my Chloe.”

  Jim paced the kitchen, thought of what to do. He thought he’d want to tell Chloe one last time how much he loved her, and how sorry he was for everything that had happened and was about to happen that night. He imagined her coming home, finding him and Sherri dead, being absolutely sickened with grief and confusion. He pulled out his cell phone, tried to dial her, but the call wouldn’t connect.

  He stumbled towards the kitchen counter, opened a drawer, and pulled out a pen and a writing pad. Feverishly, he started to write. He put down all the things he wanted to say to her. He explained how he’d been bitten two years back in New York, explained what happened to Sherri, and explained why he was about to take his own life as soon as he finished writing the note.

  When he was done, he looked the note over to re-read it one last time. Though he’d spent the better part of five minutes writing it, the only thing on the paper was gibberish. There wasn’t a single correctly written word. Scribbles in smudged black ink, smeared by blood.

  “What has happened to me?” Jim said, quietly.

  He crumpled the piece of paper and threw it into the trash, swiped his car keys from the kitchen counter.

  Sick with grief, confusion, and exhaustion, Jim slipped into the garage attached to the back of the home. He unlocked his old Suburban one last time and climbed in. “Why didn’t I ever sell this piece of shit?” he said, and then he pushed his key into the ignition and started the truck.

  He leaned back in his seat, noticed the garage door remote attached to his visor. Fearing that he might lose the nerve, he unclipped the remote from the visor and tossed it into the backseat of the car. Then, he rolled down each window of the colossal SUV and throttled the accelerator. In only a few short moments, the garage began to fill with smoke.

  Will this even work? he thought. Will this put me down permanently?

  He thought of Sherri. Sweet, beautiful Sherri. The woman who had once rescued him, and how now sat smashed to pieces on his bedroom floor. He coughed as a thick haze of foggy exhaust seeped into the vehicle’s cabin.

  “I love you, Chloe,” he said out loud, and he kicked at the truck’s floorboards. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He thought of his daughter one last time, reclined deeper into the seat, and fell into a fuzzy stupor. His vision blurred, his ears rang, and he was out.

  Nolan shot up in his bed. He could have swore he heard a horrible noise in the garage, which was attached to the house from just behind his bedroom.

  He wiped some sweat from his forehead and climbed out of bed. What time was it? Three in the morning? Five? Sherri had given him two large white capsules after his panic attack. Whatever they were, they completely tranquilized him. He’d fallen into a sleep deeper and more soothing than anything he’d had in the past two years.

  The alarm clock on his nightstand read: 12:08 A.M.

  “It’s still so early,” he groaned, and he wanted to climb back beneath his comforter and wait for sleep to revisit him. But there was that awful noise in the garage. Something like a crash. Had it been part of his dream? Had he imagined it?

  He wiped his eyes and turned on a lamp, then stumbled to his bedroom door. The knob spun, but the door wouldn’t budge. He tried again; jiggled the knob, leaned against the door. No give.

  “What the fuck…” he mumbled, and he knocked on the door. “Hey,” he said. “Is anyone out there?”

  He stopped to listen. The house was silent.

  Another jiggle of the knob, another push against the door. This time it seemed to rock a little in the jamb, as if something outside was blocking his way and was ready to give.

  “Come on,” Nolan said. “If this is some joke—it’s not funny.”

  Fifteen seconds. Thirty. No reply.

  Deep down in his chest, Nolan felt that tiny ball of panic start to twist and roll around his insides once more. Even after all the sedatives Sherri had given him, it was worming its way through him again.

  “I’m going to break the door,” Nolan said. “So if this is some gag, it’s your last warning to knock it off. I’m getting claustrophobic in here.”

  Still, the house was quiet.

  Nolan lifted his right leg high and kicked forward. The wood surrounding the door knob burst and splintered, but the door still refused to swing out. He took a step back, paused, and gave one more high kick to the door. This time, the thin piece of wood practically split in half. He could reach his hand through the broken pieces, feel the chair that’d been pushed against the door, and moved it out of the way.

  He stumbled out into the hallway and called out. “Is anyone home? What’s going on? Can anyone hear me?”

  When he turned the corner of the hall and walked into the kitchen, he saw a trail of red footprints leading across the tile floor. Someone had been bleeding, and bleeding bad—or was covered in blood, Nolan figured—and they’d been pacing the kitchen.

  “Chloe?” Nolan called out. “Jim?”

  The house was silent. It sounded like maybe a television had been left on in Jim’s bedroom. Nolan strode across the living room and down the hall that lead to the bedroom, steadied himself with his palm pressed against the wall. He still felt sick and woozy from the anxiety attack, the sedative, and now all of this. Whatever this was.

  Nolan knocked on the door to Jim’s bedroom. It’d been left open
a crack. He could hear an infomercial playing quietly on the bedroom TV.

  “Jim?” Nolan said again. “Sherri? Please, someone answer me.”

  Nolan pushed on the bedroom door and it squeaked open. Ten feet from him, splayed across the floor, was Sherri. The back of her head had been caved in; there was a pool of brain and bone and blood beneath her neck.

  Nolan clutched at his stomach, steadied himself just before he fell to his knees. He pushed further into the room, looked for Jim, saw that he wasn’t there and bolted back towards the kitchen.

  He almost slipped on a bloodied footprint before he reached the landline phone bolted to the wall beside the refrigerator. He picked it up, and with numb hands he dialed 911.

  The phone rang once, then disconnected.

  Nolan thumbed a squishy, rubber button on the phone. The line disconnected, and he dialed again.

  “Pick the fuck up,” he grunted under his breath.

  This time, there wasn’t even a ring. The phone refused to connect. A steady stream of hissing static was all that came back over the speaker.

  He hurried back to his bedroom, hopped onto his bed, flailed at the blankets in an effort to find his phone. He checked the screen. The Wi-Fi wasn’t connected, the battery percentage was down to twenty-nine. An icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen indicated that service wasn’t available, but he tried to call for help anyways. He thumbed at the glass screen, dialed 911 again.

  No connection. No answer.

  He felt his heart begin to race, so he stopped all that he was doing to take ten big breaths and focus on what was happening.

  “I need to get to Chloe,” he said to himself, softly. “I need to get to the police department.”

  He pulled on a pair of jeans and socks, then hurried toward the door just off of the kitchen. He slid on a pair of sneakers and opened the door to the garage. He’d hoped the Suburban was still there; Jim had given him an extra copy of the truck’s key a year or so before in the even of an emergency.

  But, the Suburban was gone.

  Nolan scanned the garage in awe. Not only was the Suburban missing, but it looked like whoever had drove off with it drove clear through the automatic door without bothering to open it first. All across the floor of the garage and driveway were splintered pieces of metal and door frame. The motor for the door in the center of the garage’s ceiling hummed and jerked, frantically tried to respond to pulleys and mechanisms that were no longer connected to it, that had been ripped apart by the force of the crash.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Nolan said, and he breathed deep. “I’ve got to get to Chloe,” he repeated. “I’ve got to get to her.”

  He looked around the garage once more. Hanging from a rafter was one of Jim’s old ten-speed bicycles. He plucked it from the hook it hung on, and set it on the floor of the garage. The tires were a little soft and the frame was a little rickety, but it beat walking.

  Nolan saddled the bike and whizzed out of the garage and down Hemming. The cool air nipped at his face. Here and there were little banks of snow, leftover from the week before. Nolan pedaled between them, careful to not ride into one and go skidding off the sidewalk.

  After just a few short minutes, he was passing Mrs. Collins house. The nice one, Nolan thought. The one who baked us cookies, who welcomed us to the neighborhood. The one Chloe liked….

  Nolan dropped the bike on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Collins house and ran up to the front door. He pressed the button for the doorbell and waited.

  He heard a chime, and then some shuffling behind the door.

  “Who is it?” Mrs. Collins said, not bothering to open the door.

  “It’s Nolan,” Nolan said, practically out of breath. “Nolan Fischer. From down the street. I live with the Whitemans.”

  “What’s the matter, child?”

  “I just—it’s that—it’s hard to explain. Can I please use your phone?”

  “Ain’t you been watching the news?” Mrs. Collins answered. “Phones are down. Whole country is a mess right now. And it’s after midnight. You best be getting home.”

  “Please,” Nolan begged. “There’s been an accident at home, and I need to call Chloe—”

  “Like I said, child,” Mrs. Collins said, and Nolan could hear the sound of a gun cocking through the door. “Phones are down. You best lockup back at home and stay safe. It’s getting crazy tonight.”

  Nolan stood at the door, didn’t budge.

  “I like you and yours,” Mrs. Collins said after an awkward silence, “but I feel a responsibility to inform you that on the other side of this door, pressed right around the area I imagine your head is, is the business end of a twelve-gauge shotgun. So I’ll kindly ask you once more, Nolan. Get. Out.”

  Nolan spun on Mrs. Collins doorstep, ran back down to the sidewalk, picked his bike off the ground and hopped back on.

  Again, he pedaled down Hemming. He thought of the police station. How far was it? Four miles? Five?

  The street was strangely silent, houses were darkened. He pedaled harder. His legs were already starting to burn. His body was fatigued from Sherri’s heavy sedatives.

  Overhead, the screaming roar of a low-flying jet startled him, pierced the quiet night air. Shortly behind it was a second, and then a third, fourth, and fifth. When it seemed as if they had all passed, a sixth came rocketing behind the other five, and the half dozen fighter jets flew in a diamond formation out and over the horizon of Cherry Valley.

  TWELVE

  Chloe sat in a windowless room of the Cherry Valley Police Department. Beside her was Hannah. The two took light sips off of their small, paper cups of coffee. They waited, not saying much of anything to one another, until Sergeant Fuller entered the room.

  After what must have been twenty minutes, if not longer, Fuller knocked on the door to the interrogation room and, without waiting for an answer, walked in.

  “Sarge,” Chloe said. “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “You two walked in on the tail end of a suicide pact,” Sarge said, flatly.

  “I know that,” Chloe said. “I mean…the fire, the people who were in there…why?”

  “They thought judgment day finally came,” Fuller said. “Maybe they were right. It was a hell of a first call for two fresh new cadets to answer on their own, but…that’s the world we live in now. Or, at least whatever’s left of it.”

  Chloe picked at the paper handle on her cup of coffee, flicked a speck of cardboard across the table, all the while studying Fuller’s pallid complexion. The man had served nine years in the United States Army. He wasn’t rattled easily. His nervousness worried her.

  “Why might they be right?” Chloe asked. “About the world ending?”

  Fuller eyed the door to the interrogation room. It’d been sealed shut.

  “Everything I say stays between the three of us?” the sergeant asked.

  Chloe and Hannah nodded.

  “And I mean that,” Fuller added. “You utter a word of this and half my force is likely to up and run—”

  “For Chrissake,” Chloe blurted. “Get on with it.”

  “For starters, the interstate travel ban has been put back into effect immediately. On top of that, we lost all contact with the state of California at approximately an hour and a half ago.”

  Chloe laughed. “We? As in—?”

  “As in the Department of Defense. As in all of us.”

  “Bullshit,” Hannah said. “We’d have heard something about that by now.”

  “Would you have?” Fuller asked. “News reports will start to leak within the next hour or so. But they’ll be a full ninety minutes behind the blackout.”

  “How does an entire state just…lose communication with the rest of us?” Hannah asked.

  “More easily than you might think,” Fuller said. “Every computer, every phone line—land line and cellular—is all processed somewhere before it can send a signal through. If someone sends an email, it’
s sifted through a data bank; if someone makes a phone call, it connects through a satellite. Now, all of those Californians, whenever they text or email or call, their device is registered as being within the borders of California. It takes a simple computer program in the data bank, or in the satellite, to label that message as originating in California, and then block it. We’re experiencing something similar here in Colorado. Landline and cellular phone use has been hit or miss for the past, say, twenty minutes or so.”

  “Who could do such a thing?” Chloe said.

  Fuller shrugged. “It’s big. Whatever’s happening, it’s wide scale. I can’t fathom who could orchestrate something so massive and insidious. It could be our government, blocking private communications to save bandwidth for emergency broadcasts. It could be a foreign government, testing us. Either option is, frankly, a bit terrifying.”

  “If it was our own government,” Chloe said, feeling a nervous tide roll up her back, “why would they need to conserve bandwidth for emergency broadcasting?”

  Fuller smiled. “Oh, Chloe. It keeps getting better. The hits keep on coming. In the past two hours, there have been six confirmed, documented cases of EV1 in the U.S. It’s yet to hit the major news networks. Not that it matters. Television broadcasts likely won’t make it to daylight before they’re axed.

  “The first of the night came out of Orlando, Florida. One of the theme parks. Though only one case is confirmed, several more are suspected, since the infected individual was found in such a crowded area.

  “The second and third came out of Pennsylvania shortly after. One in Scranton, one in Pittsburgh.

  “The fourth was in Cleveland, reported about eight minutes after Pennsylvania.

  “Number five came out of Wyoming, if you can believe that—middle of nowhere.

  “And number six, well…”

  Chloe stared at her sergeant. “Where the fuck is the sixth one coming out of?”

  “Battery Park,” Fuller said, “New York City. A homeless guy strolled into a Starbucks, took out three patrons before police responded.”